The round rust-colored orb sank deep in the Martian horizon, obscured with a soft haze of oxidized iron shavings kicked up from the surface in a dust storm beyond the city limits. A wave of earth-imported water brushed up gently against the hull of the ship, darkened to an opaque midnight blue with the exception of small opalescent slivers spread sporadically and frequently across the stretch of sea, mimicking the golden glow of the setting sun and gradually-darkening hues of the skies above like thousands of tiny shards of a mirror.
Faye blinked, her tears finally abated for the time being, and hugged her knees closer to her body. Rubbing away the evidence of her melancholy, she lifted her gaze to the sanguine pastel heavens and wondered. If heaven was meant to be a place in the skies above the earth, what was in the skies above Mars?
"Maybe it's Hell." She chuckled quietly and humorlessly, shaking her head as another tear escaped the grip of her eyelashes and ran down her cheek. She stared at the sun again, and brushed her waist-length, stick-straight, violet strands behind her shoulder, allowing a few shorter pieces to dangle beside her face.
"Unbelievable." Her thought patterns circled around, once again landing on the mark, the one revelation plaguing her mind all day. Her forehead rested against her knees, and a fresh bout of tears swelled.
Julia was alive. The moment she saw that grey-blue gaze focused on her, all of Faye's preconceived explanations of Spike going off to exact revenge for his dead blonde lover were shot to smithereens. She seemed older, happier, since the last time they met. Her golden locks trimmed to just below her chin, rather reminiscent of Faye's own old hairdo. On her though, it matured her face, and framed it elegantly. Her eyes were warmer; though the deep crevices still emanated a sense of untold tragedy in the past, the once-glacial blue had turned more to the comforting hue of a summer sky.
Over a cup of coffee in a quaint little kitchen in a small Destiny Park-adjacent townhouse, she finally learned why he did what he did. He did have Julia in mind, but not in the way she had believed to be true for so long.
"You need to understand something…He needed to end things with the syndicate and get rid of Vicious. It wasn't just for my sake, it was for his own. It was for my little boy's sake, it was for your sake, Faye. There was no way he could have avoided it. He died so that all of us could live. And I can tell you, though I was never in love with Spike, when I look at my son, I don't see his father, I see his namesake. Spike is his hero, and mine."
She got the feeling Julia was leaving something out, that there was one more variable to the equation, but she couldn't figure out what it might be. Her conscience was telling her to leave it alone, that if Julia wasn't telling her something, it was for her own good. But the curiosity plagued her as her memories she had so carefully hidden in the deep recesses of her mind flooded back to her. It did no good dwelling on the past, she had learned that the hard way years ago, but she was defenseless against the waves pounding her thoughts.
"…it was for your sake, Faye."
"For my sake? He left for my sake? What does that mean? What does it all mean…heroes aren't supposed to die…"
Her words slurred as she choked on a sob and closed her eyes against her forearms, her ragged breathing rendering her hearing ineffectual. Thus her proximity at the far edge of the bow of the ship was not close enough to the dock to discern the telltale noise of a car's engine shutting off, followed by the opening and closing of two of its doors.