FIVE LITTLE INDIANS

A Cowboy Bebop fic

-For Fen, who wanted something with heart. And for Sally, who loves Bebop as much as I do.

Five little Indians: Ed

Ed was the last to come and the first to go.

She took off as suddenly as she'd come into their lives; no warning. Looking back, it wasn't really so unexpected. She'd used them to track down her missing father, and now that she'd gotten a fix on the useless bugger it was obvious she was set to stalk him with the same persistence she'd shown in first stalking the Bebop crew.

It really was for the best. However independent she seemed, she was still a kid in the end; she needed a parent. God knows they'd been completely useless at looking after her properly. All the same, she was such a strange one, it was still a shock to think of her with a father—even the weirdo they'd found. Ed was the oddest mix of genius and childishness he'd ever come across. Idiot savant didn't begin to describe her. It's like some crackpot scientist crossed a stray cat with the mess of electronic pulses that was the trans-solar 'net, and stuck the result in human kid's skinny body for a laugh.

Knowing she's probably better at taking care of herself than anyone four times her age, he hopes she's ok.

Four little Indians: Ein

Here's the thing; dogs are supposed to love best the one that feeds them; right? Cupboard love, they call it. So of course, the damned mutt had to be as screwed up as the rest of the Bebop crew, and choose Ed over his cooking. Which is pretty decent, if he says so himself. Which is not the point.

Right.

What is he; nuts? He just counted a dog as a member of the crew.

Three little Indians: Spike

If he's being honest here (and what else is there to be, rattling along alone in this beat up ship at the edge of the solar system, waiting out the bloodbath that's hit the colonies like everyone else), if he's being honest, then Spike leaving tore him up like nothing else has in his whole life. Not Alisa leaving him, not losing his arm, not being betrayed by his lying son-of-a-bitch partner, not shooting the lying son-of-a-bitch partner dead. Spike was a mix of comrade, friend and little brother. For three years they had each other's backs.

It hurts that in the end none of it meant enough to Spike. Spike chose that woman over everything: his friends, his life. Even over his own godamn life. He'd seen Spike's face after he'd gotten back from Julia dying; seen the hollowness behind the vague look that was Spike's default state; the flip side of his wild rages. He'd looked eager for his death, knowing it was right around the corner and approaching not a moment too soon.

He'd gone off to his end like some hero out of a story dying for grief of the loss of the beautiful maiden, taking down a solar-wide crime syndicate with that mad destructiveness of his. And Jet had stood back and let him die alone.

It was the hardest thing he's ever done; to stand aside and let Spike go out in a blaze of gunshots, crime-lords, and gore. But Jet's never been a hero; he's always been the steady level-headed partner; in the force and on the Bebop. The one who takes the crummy two-bit jobs no one else will touch, so that the ungrateful sods get to eat. And when the chips are down, it's the heroes who single-handedly bring the evil-powers-that-be to their knees—not because of the financial death-grip the evil-powers-that-be have around the collective necks of the colonists, slowly choking off their air supply; but because the hero's woman is dead.

The partners, being only human, stand humbly out of the way.

Spike, was she really worth dying for?

Two little Indians: Faye

Faye left last.

He still feels bad over the fight they had before she took off. He doesn't even remember what it was about; just that it ending with him ordering her off of "his" ship, and her storming out in a snit of skin-tight clothes and furious green eyes. Thing is, they were both so cut up over Spike being dead, you'd think they would have been brought closer together. You know; helped comfort each other.

It didn't work that way at all. They just ended up lashing out at each other, same as always, stuck in their own private miseries.

At the time, he'd felt completely justified; Spike was dead, and as usual, all she could think of was herself. But now that she's gone, he thinks that he should have held his temper. He's not always the quickest to pick up on these things, but he's starting to think that Faye actually had a thing for Spike. Until Spike left that final time to go get himself an early pass out of life, he'd never seen Faye cry. Hadn't known she was capable of it.

He's always seen Faye as the most unreliable of the crew. She irritates him more than Ed's wackiness and Spike's worst stubbornness put together ever could. She treated the Bebop like a second or third boyfriend; the ugly, boring one she could fall back on if the rich, handsome one she's chasing didn't work out. She was always running out on them when the going got tough—to spite them, or to prove she could,—and then sauntering back in like she owned the place. Occasionally she'd turn up in time to save the day, and then it was smugness all around.

Women! Of the whole unreasonable, infuriating species, she's the worst of the lot.

Only now that she's gone, he's remembering a few things she said to Spike before Spike walked out that last time. Some things (among others) about her memories coming back; and her still having no place in the solar system to call her own but the Bebop. And he's been remembering those stories his Mulligatawny gran used to tell him about the fairies; those beautiful creatures that looked young but weren't, because they'd lived hundreds of years without aging. And how their faces wore human expressions, but you shouldn't be fooled, because underneath they were blank as a pearl and couldn't feel things as a proper person would. So they acted in ways that would seem selfish, and cruel, and thoughtless to you or me, but really, they just didn't know any better.

And now he's remembering that the Faye he knew on the Bebop—who was vain and selfish and desperately looking for something to fill the empty space that sat inside where her memories should have been,—That Faye maybe didn't have so much in common with the Faye who'd remembered her past and had begged Spike not to leave. And cried.

Damn.

One little Indian: Jet

So here he is, alone in his battered old ship, waiting for the fall-out to be over that came of Spike bringing down the Syndicate. Never let anyone say that Spike didn't make an impression on the universe with his life, short as it was. He broke the strongest power in the solar system all by himself, even if he didn't give a damn about anything but Julia when he did it.

The news is pretty bad. The small-time thugs and crime-lords are out to fill the power void and grab the biggest pieces of the big time they can get. And while they're fighting it out, the ISSP are for once hitting the mobsters with everything they have, getting revenge for being threatened and bribed to look the other way for all those years. Jet sympathizes. No one likes being made a sham. But he's left the force, and it's not his fight anymore. Right now he's going along with the majority; the rest of the millions who are doing what they do best: hiding, and waiting for the whole thing to blow over so they can get back to living.

So he's back where he was more than three years ago; before Ed, before Ein, before Faye, before Spike. He's got his beloved bonzai, his chess set, his kitchen and his contacts all over the solar system. He's got the Bebop, good old girl that she is, and the peace and quiet he would have given his other arm for a month ago. And the quiet is seeping in by the hour through the Bebop's humming, creaking, hollow shell from the vast black emptiness of space outside, building up the pressure inside his chest until he can't breathe.

And he's thinking (since The hell else is there to do but think?) about what to do when it's safe (or safer) to fly to the colonies again. About why in this system of gated planets and moons with millions of people on each one, it's so damn hard to meet anyone who actually makes you give a damn. About how small the chance is that out of the millions in all the colonies you'll actually meet the person who is right for you in your short life, or even know them for the right person if you do. It's about as likely as two random particles from opposite ends of the solar system colliding: you can't even see the probability for all the zeros.

And Jet's been thinking about Spike's crazy destructiveness, giving it all up for one woman; and how it would have been wrong to try and stop him, much as it hurts to live without him. And he's thinking about Faye, who's God knows where right now; who he shouldn't have let go, and who he could have stopped.

And he's thinking about the old Faye, the Faye he never could have stood a chance with, and the new Faye—the one who's not missing the greater part of herself anymore,—and if there's really that much of a difference between the old Faye and the new one. And Jet wonders if he's crazy for considering chasing after a woman who's vain, and flaunts her sexiness like her gun, and has more debt on her head then either of them can pay off in a lifetime. And who's in love with a dead hero; his best friend. Who's to say she'd ever settle for the steady, already balding partner?

Jet could never compete with Spike. But Spike's dead, and he's alive. And if he's learned anything, it's that the random connections you make are sometimes the only ones that matter.

So Jet's going to take the Bebop when this whole thing's blown over, and he'll look for Faye so he can tell her he's sorry; and he's going to find her if he has to search the entire damn solar system to do it.

SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY

YOU'RE GONNA CARRY THAT WEIGHT

Author's Note: Title and "Little Indians" theme taken from Agatha Christie's wonderful murder mystery "And Then There Were None," whose theme I have wanted to use in a story for a long time.