DISCLAIMER ALERT: COWBOY BEBOP NOT MINE AT ALL!
Jet fidgeted with the intercom, waiting for that urgent signal. It was hard to sneak past Faye since she turned protective, possessive and insomniac all at once. His hands had been shaking as he slipped a sedative into her fried eggs, had watched her spoon and chew every mouthful of it into her mouth like some bad mystery theatre criminal. That woman had the metabolism the speed of a bullet train, and he did not want to have her trailing along behind him on this rendezvous.
Judging by the flickering of her eyelids – she'd passed out.
Wouldn't take very much to put her to sleep, he thought, her body was aching for it already. So now it was time to get on the Hammerhead and head out.
He slipped into the interior. With a sigh he slipped onto the seats, taking comfort in the mould of his body imprinted into the seats from so many long years of usage. His appraisal of the interior was delaying him from thinking about Spike.
Ed's face flashing open on the intercom screen meant that he couldn't put it off any longer. It was time.
He rubbed the furrow in his brow with a tired hand, groaning into his palm. Enough procrastinating. Get going. When Ed first told him of her findings on Spike, he was in the midst of debating what kind of funeral to hold for him. A funeral seemed so… regimented, suffocating, something that Spike wasn't.
It seemed more appropriate to toast the guy with some moonshine and crack a joke before spreading his ashes into the wind. That's how Spike would have wanted it. Flying off into the wind, leaving nothing substantial of himself behind. Jet thought it would have made a poetic eulogy if it wasn't laced in resentment.
He hated himself for it.
There were so many comrades that he'd outlived, and none of them so valued to him as Spike. And yet he was the only one that he'd ever spoken ill of after his death. He was going to find Spike and pay his last respects to the vagrant bounty hunter, best friend and closest thing to a son he ever had. Little brother. Jet amended with a grunt. He was balding, but he was not old.
"You're going to wreck the engine leaving it on idle."
"FAYE?" Jet nearly screeched in surprise, finally noticing Faye seated in the Red-tail opposite.
"Hi!" she waved with a lazy flick of her wrist, her smile a pantomime of his guilty one. Tipping her head forward, she lit the cigar protruding between her lips. Another annoying habit. Jet thought with a grimace, knowing she was studying him under her hooded gaze. "Where you off to?" she asked then, her tone suddenly somber and suspicious.
"Hmph… While you're out of commission for the next month catching up on some sleep, somebody has to keep food on the table." Jet growled at her menacingly, hoping she wasn't going to follow him.
"Really?" Faye laughed in a low womanly chuckle. "I thought you'd finally found a rich widow to seduce." She was referring to the white suit he was wearing, coupled with the fedora hat – articles of his ISSP days.
He regarded her knowing green eyes, expectantly waiting for his answer to confirm her suspicions. She never paid this much attention to him unless it was something of personal interest. Maybe I DO look too suspicious in a suit and a hat. He considered reluctantly.
"A man's affair has nothing to do with a meddlesome, provoking woman." Jet admonished, with the patience of a father at his last straw. His tone was unequivocal, his tense 'before the storm breaks' facial expression ominous enough to send ISSP rookies running home to change their shorts.
The meddlesome, provoking woman, however, was slipping on her gloves as if he had said nothing at all. "A man's affair? A man only starts being huffy and officious when he's got something to hide." At this, she gripped the handles with a resolute glint in her eye. "I'm going with you."
They glared at each other through the heated silence. The hair on Jet's beard was bristling as he sat back in his chair, regarding his willful adversary. And then he noticed that Faye's eyes were fighting to close. Her grimace wasn't a frown directed at him, she was fighting herself to stay awake! That stubborn, headstrong girl!
He let out a low, amazed chuckle and began counting. 3…2…1…
BANG.
Faye hit the dashboard snoring.
888
"Don't!" Came Jet's strangled yell as he watched the orange-haired girl bend to the ground and sniff at the blood-crusted ground. Like a hyperactively protective mother, he fished a handkerchief from his front pocket, held the back of her head in one hand and wiped vigorously at her nose with the other. "Didn't anybody tell you not to put your nose where it doesn't belong?"
She eyed him with that unsettlingly innocent gaze of hers, as if turning his phrase over in her mind to check its merits. And then she began to laugh. "Hee hee… that's what Jet-person said to Faye-Faye when she was asking about Jet-person's girlfriend."
After the last year of living in denial, Jet felt relieved to hear Ed's innocent and girlish laugh again. He gave her a warm smile and a ruffle on the head. It would have been an endearing moment, if they weren't standing over Spike's final conflict with Vicious.
"Doesn't this scene bother you at all?" Jet asked, feeling guilty for exposing her to the scene. In all their months living together, he'd taken care NEVER to expose her to the seedier sides of their job. It was like taking a baby to a strip-joint.
"I don't know." She replied truthfully, her pink dress fluttering in the wind. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she looked off into the distance over the grey city of Tharsis. It was a beautiful sunny day. "You said Spike-person had to take care of old business, and that he died?" The last word came out so plainly, no hush or catch in her voice. As if it was an everyday occurrence. Jet thought, his own eyes starting to itch and water. Damn wind.
"I thought Spike had taken all his unfinished business to the grave." Jet managed to say between puffs of smoke. "I heard some news that Vicious was still alive. I want to see him for myself."
"You're going to kill him?" Ed's voice was uncharacteristically hushed as she pinpointed his true intent. Unlike the shrewd glint Faye had in her eye when he lied, hers were all-knowing and he felt all his dirty secrets were open to her.
Before he could answer, however, she'd gone whooshing off, clambering over the rubble like a monkey with Ein close on her heels. She'd reached the top and yelled something about circles and tangerines before using it as a platform to dive off into Jet's anxiously beckoning arms.
The look of complete girlish pleasure in his arms made him start laughing out loud for the first time in ages. Well, he decided generously, since he'd already asked for his favour it wouldn't do them any harm to enjoy rest of the day as a surrogate father and his offbeat daughter.