"Let's go down to the pier to go fishing, Faye-Faye!"
Faye started at the sudden request and looked up from her nail polish, having seen only thirty seconds earlier a completely immersed and focused-looking Ed typing away furiously on her 'Tomato'. She blinked, staring at the girl now hopping up and down with excitement, wondering what exactly had made her want to drop everything and go fishing. She seriously doubted it was because of a sudden hankering for sea bass sashimi.
Still nonplused, Faye nodded weakly. "Okay."
She wasn't planning to do anything else that afternoon, so she figured she could humor the girl. After giving the nail polish cap a quick twist, she grabbed the keys and took Ed right out to the Red Wing, not needing to bring anything else with her. Ed had already taken the liberty of finding the old tackle box and rod, and was now hastily stuffing them and herself behind the driver's seat.
"Faye-Faye COME ON!" she urged emphatically. There was definitely a hidden motive somewhere in all of this. Faye quirked her mouth sideways in wary uneasiness as she sidled into the cockpit. She had learned not to bother with asking Ed simple questions about her ulterior plans though, from past experience she knew it would only serve to make her more suspicious and confused.
It had been a whole year now since she had moved in with Radical Edward. A year of some well-needed healing and moving on. She hadn't exactly started going after bounties yet, but just one week earlier, she decided to present Ed with the prospect of employing her in their hunts. Needless to say, Ed jumped at the chance. Literally. For several hours.
The only thing preventing them from beginning their work right away was the fact that Faye's ship was most definitely not fit for being a primary vessel for she, Ed, Ein, and a potential tied up bounty head to travel in. And besides, she couldn't very well go searching for fugitives in every corner of the solar system with an inconceivably hyper teenager and a just-as-hyper Welsh Corgi in tow.
There was the option of leaving Ed and Ein at home while she went off alone and did the dirty work, but it was probably a bad idea leaving the two of them alone so far away. Even if her father had been home at the time, she didn't like the idea of being alone herself, even if her only friends left were just on the other end of a communicator. It wouldn't take much to push her off the deep end again, and she was just plain scared of what would happen if she were separated from Ed for too long. If this were two years ago, she would have laughed at the thought of clinging to weird little Ed like a lifeline, but that's how it was now.
Her sleep hadn't gotten any better despite the fact that her consciousness was recovering significantly. Every night was plagued with anguish and unrest, every night waking to her own sobs and cries like a snake eating its own tail. It was an endless cycle that had resulted in her fearing the sunset so passionately that often she would stay awake as long as possible to delay, if anything, the shadows of images that the darkness tended to incessantly conjure.
Somewhere along the way, though, she began to give into the terrors and succumbed to her haunting dreams without a fight. She had discovered that losing sleep on purpose to drown Spike's memory only made her more miserable.
There's no use attempting to drown water, after all.
A quick five minute flight later, Faye docked the zip-craft in a public parking space, trying with all her might to ignore Ed's anxious bouncing and singing.
"Faye-Faye, come and play! Ed's showing Faye something good today..." she chanted excitedly and braced herself before rocketing out of the opening hatch, forgetting about the fishing rod, and with Ein following close behind. She began running towards the pier on all fours, imitating the canine and matching each other stride for stride. Faye ambled out of her seat a few seconds later and cocked an eyebrow at the interesting pair.
"Wonder what's got them all excited..." she sighed and gathered the fishing supplies before reaching up to close the hatch. She glanced down at the rusty tackle box and flimsy rod to confirm her second-guess of hesitation. "I guess since they're ah...preoccupied, we won't be needing these eyesores."
She dropped them back in the cockpit and silently closed the hatch. Locking the craft with practiced ease, she turned toward the ocean and sighed. The glimmering expanse of blue waters always managed to calm her. Walking slow, soothing steps towards the horizon, she caught herself humming a certain tune and halted.
All those times Spike managed to end up unconscious on the old yellow sofa, she eavesdropped on his internal conversations enough to pick up the simple lulling melody he released in his sleep that seemed to both haunt him and relax him. She smiled lethargically when she subconsciously retrieved a related memory, and gazed at a random spot on the asphalt; in her mind's eye staring at a scene she could recall quite easily.
"Off-key...you were practically unconscious, what did you know..."
It had only been recently that when she thought of Spike she could smile instead of sob.
She continued at a lazy saunter in the general direction of the boardwalk, her thoughts more involving the past and her concentration on the present waning with every step. She stared at her old white boots, her now-shoulder-length grape-colored hair swaying past her jawline.
A yipping bark caught her off-guard and the stream of memories broke off abruptly. She glanced ahead of her to see Ein barreling back towards her from around the corner of a building on the left of the clear shot to the waterscape. She furrowed her brows in confusion before Ed came careening around the same bend, on two feet this time.
"What the..."
"FAYE-FAYE! COME SEE! COME SEE!" Faye blinked, utterly perplexed, and cautiously decided to follow Ed to the edge of the boardwalk. She warily turned her head in the direction Ed was currently sprinting in and widened her jade eyes in realization.
What she saw made her almost faint, overcome with disbelief, surprise, and a little relief.
"Edward tracked him down on Tomato and found out about the course he set for earth for finding information about a bounty." She nodded knowledgeably, obviously pleased with herself.
Faye smiled tentatively and approached the rusted, old fishing vessel, one word hastily sprayed onto the patchwork scrap metal, glowing a faint neon crimson in the ambient illumination of the mid-day sun.
BeBop.