Disclaimer: Cowboy Bebop does not belong to me.

Author's Note: I am not a fic writer, not by a very long shot. This was posted as a two-part story on AO3 but I'm clubbing both here. Both parts were just longish short stories I ended up writing because I accidentally spent a lot of time with these characters and had like a million thoughts leftover in my head. They were spontaneous writes, just exploring one version of things. This story is anachronistic so you do have to read it all to get it.

Alba city had always fascinated him, though he had not spent much time here when he was younger. It was this spilling milieu of lives and cultures, much like the larger cities of Earth. He had read about them long ago.

He was sitting in a cafe of all places, next to the river. He remembered doing things like this earlier, back when life had been simpler. Depended on how you defined simpler really. It was definitely another lifetime. This was his third one, after all…or maybe fourth. He would come to places like this at times to watch the water. Its flow always helped calm him down. The place didn't matter-it could be a rock by the riverside or, during the Syndicate days, the window of a high rise seven star hotel. They were all the same to him. He was here right now because the ten-mile meandering walk he had taken this morning had left him hungry.

He missed her. Sitting here, by himself, he missed her even more. She might have liked this place…and he had a feeling that's what had made him pick it. It had that air of high sophistication, the kind of place she would feel right at home in.

In her absence things seemed…faded. Everything was the same, nothing had really changed except for some recent exits from his life…a kid, a man, a woman…a dog. But those he could live without…well, maybe the kid not so much. He'd never let it on but it was nice having her around. She'd made everything simpler, brought innocence into the lives of people who knew it little otherwise. He had wanted to sell her to the circus once but her energy had given them all fuel on bad days…to say nothing of her sheer genius.

The dog…well they hadn't really gotten along that well in the beginning but he wasn't that bad to have around. Didn't take up much space and never really bothered Spike much so he hadn't really cared.

The man and the woman…well, they were a different story entirely. It would be a lie to say they had not mattered to him. They had, they had mattered quite a bit but he just didn't have the energy to dwell on that anymore. It was done and over with. But it meant little now because he had lost her in the process. Nothing really mattered much anymore, not with her gone.