A/N: Oh my goodness! Two months without posting on Lucifer's garden! Oi! But fear not! I'm almost done with chapter four and hopefully I'll post it soon, possibly Monday. If I work really hard, Imay even post it tonight. :D No promises, but soon. I'm not sure if anyone remembers the original This Is How We Cope (Ah... Those were the salad days) but this is an intesely reworked version with a different ending and a different feel. Although its not my favorite of the oneshot hoard (I'm still plugging Some People) but I do like it a lot. Consider this my gift to you for the holidays and an offering of peace. Forgive me! And review:D

Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop

This Is How We Cope

She was being too quiet. On any other day, it would have been fine; Jet had been particularly pissy lately, and her silence was usually a good survival tactic. But not today. Today was the day she was supposed to scream and cry and throw things at the wall. Today was the day she had to be angry, be furious, because that's what they expected. What they wanted. And maybe she wanted it, too. But then it had happened, what she had been waiting for, and she hadn't… She hadn't felt anything.

So she had run. Not because she hated him and not because she was scared of him, but because the second he wandered back, she had known.

They didn't need her anymore.

Well, fuck them. She didn't need them, either. The two of them, they were nothing but trouble. Nothing but fucking trouble. As Faye Valentine sat, huffy and beautiful, in that skeezy ass bar on Callisto, she decided that everything would be better without them. Running away was like… her Christmas present to herself. The gift of a new beginning. Starting with a drink.

Bottoms fucking up.

Knuckles rapped the counter and the bartender ambled over, took her order, turned away. A moment later a drink was sliding down the bar. Faye caught it, her eyes scanning the bar lazily. It was all done up for Christmas in the tacky way only men could truly appreciate. There was shit everywhere. White lights strung up on the wall behind the bar, a tree in the corner, streamers and wreaths and nutcrackers in every available space, on every wall, sagging lamely to the ground. Christmas carols were crackling out of an old stereo, cigarette smoke and pine were mixing in the air and the entire bar was sort of earthy and heady and intoxicating. But it was the lights that caught Faye's eye, and it was the lights she watched. And when the barstool next to her creaked and a man sat down beside her, a man she didn't even have to glance at to identify, it was the lights that kept her from standing up and walking away from him.

"You could've at least said hello, Faye."

"Why waist breath on a dead man?"

From the corner of her eye, she could see him slide a cigarette into his mouth. His lighter flared and he took a deep, beautiful breath. Dead men didn't breathe.

"How long have you been waiting to use that one?" Humor was thick in his voice and Faye was twitching with the overwhelming desire to slap the crap out of him.

"Fuck you." She brought her glass up to her lips and took a sip, but swallowing was hard. As the pretty pink cocktail settled into her sticky, glaringly empty stomach, she had to work not to gag. Her throat sealed itself closed. Faye blinked because she had to do something, and found herself relishing the little pinpricks of white light against the black of her eyelids. She hated Callisto and had since Gren, but in some small way it was good to be back. She hadn't loved Gren, didn't pretend she had, but it was nice to remember that not everyone was like Spike.

Spike.

"You had to know it would come down to Vicious and me. I don't know why you were surprised."

"I wasn't."

"Then why did you try to stop me?"

Faye hesitated and the pause was almost wistful, easy and unbearably hard at once. "You wouldn't understand."

"Make me." He said, cool as he crushed his cigarette in the ashtray.

"I can't explain it."

"Try."

She looked at him for the first time then. Her green eyes were kind of hazy, but that was okay. It just made the moment all the more surreal, his death all the more amazing. He was dead, he had to be. Faye understood that, could see the beauty and the poetry in it. And looking at him, she knew he wanted to be dead now that there wasn't anything left to live for. She could smell it, his wanting, on the air. Past the music and the lights and the pine, that's what she could sense.

When she spoke, her words were lovely in their deliberateness. "I don't want to."

By now he was looking at her, too, and she could tell he already knew. Maybe he had always known in that fucked up way of his. Maybe he had known as she put the gun in his face that she wasn't trying so god damn hard for him or for Jet or for Julia. Maybe he had known as he walked away so neatly that whatever she was doing she was doing for herself.

It was always for herself, and that was fucking fine.

Hesitation.

"Did you find your stuff?" Faye asked quietly, letting her gaze drop back to her drink on the bar. His eyes were still on her and she didn't mind. She owed him that, at least.

"No," Came the reply, laced with his old humor. "It was long gone."

"He gave you time."

"I know."

"Made a kind of deal-"

"I heard about it while I was digging through the trash." There wasnobitter edge to his tone, but something in the way the words came out madeFaye want to cry. Her eyelids, suddenly unspeakably heavy, slid closed.

"I hope all of this was worth it, Spike."

"Me too."

"Give me a cigarette." Faye's elbow hit the bar hard, her palm flat so he could give what she asked for. He did. With the unlit cigarette hanging limply from her very red lips, the whole world seemed that much easier. Past the darkness of her eyelids and the lingering kisses of the Christmas brightness, a light flared. He had lit the cigarette for her.

"You know, I'm not always gonna be so generous. Enjoy it while you can," He said smugly from beside her. Faye's eyelids cracked and she gave him an almost sultry sideways glance.

"I plan to."

"Feeling better, I see."

A pause as Faye turned back to those lights on the wall, a faint smile on her lips.

"Hardly."

And they, in all of their apathetic glory, let the conversation lie.

A/N: Yes, the point is that they cope by not really coping all that much. So, I hope you liked it! I'm off to work on chapter four now, here in my lovely venizian hotel room because I don't have any parties to go to... sniffles I hope you guys enjoy the night, and I'll try and post the next installment of Lucifer's Garden soon! I love you guys lots and lots and lots, happy holidays, and have an amazingly cool new year!

Yay!

Love, Lucy