Disclaimer: Oh, damn, I wanna own CB... ;_;
AN: Lalala... This fic has been sitting in my head for a while, and I figured that I should at least do it the favour of typing it out. It is a post-series fic and thus contains The Spoiler. You know, The Spoiler? I tried to get Faye in character, and I think I failed. I did pretty well with Jet, though (I think) and so it's at least half-plausible. Any traces of Jet/Faye were only semi-intentional. Oh yeah, and I made Faye shave her legs. ^_^ Extreme angst zone ahead.

AFTERMATH

Jet found Faye in the bathroom, sitting on the floor and watching as the blood dripped her left wrist. She hadn't finished yet- she would be going all the way through with it, which meant that she wasn't yet ready to die.

'Forgot about the razors, dammit,' he thought to himself. He'd taken away her gun the first time she'd tried, when he'd walked in just before she would have blown her brains out. Faye shaved her legs, didn't she, walking around in those shorts all the time? But the razors hadn't even crossed his mind. Now he would have to deal with it.

She looked up. Her eyes were red, tears were drying slowly on her cheeks, and Jet found it amazing that she'd still done her makeup that morning.

"You've really got to stop doing this, you know."

Faye shrugged and managed to look nonchalant even sitting on the floor bleeding herself dry.

"Well, I'm bored."

Tugging her off the floor, he grabbed a towel and wrapped it as tightly as possible around her wrist. It would have to do until he found a first aid kit. There was one somewhere on the ship, although he couldn't remember where he last saw it...

"I'm getting you to the couch."

"No."

"The kit's probably there, and bandages will help more than a towel."

"I don't need the towel. You can take it off."

"You'll die."

"No, really..."

"Come on."

"Carry me, then."

And he did. Faye was surprisingly light. Then again, she probably hadn't been eating lately. He made a mental note to cook her something as soon as possible.

She smirked as he set her down lightly on the couch.

"You *do* know how much this looks like a scene from a cheap romance novel."

"Then you should think of that before killing yourself next time."

"You make it sound like you want there to *be* a next time."

She laughed. Faye laughed a lot now that Spike was dead, and it was so unnervingly fake it made Jet flinch just to hear it. There were two sides to Faye, and he preferred the other side. When she was almost cheerful like this you couldn't turn your back on her.

He found the first aid kit lying on the rug beneath the coffee table. Picking out the roll of gauze, he carefully wrapped it tightly around her wrist. She frowned slightly.

"Why don't you just leave me alone?"

"What?"

"You obviously don't give a damn about me, so why bother keeping me alive like this? It's not like I'm any use to you anyway. You'll just leave me sometime."

"Of course not!"

She snorted.

"Sure. How many times have I heard that before? Everyone I've ever actually cared about in my life has either betrayed my trust or died. I have debts because I cared. I have scars because I cared. I have a guilty concience because I cared, and the people I cared about obviously didn't give shit about me!"

Faye was yelling by now, no longer calm. She had started to cry again, and her eyes were shining like stars in the cold flourescent lighting of the ship.

"And then I found you guys. And I kept running away, because I *knew* that you were the people I'd care most about yet, and I knew you'd leave me. And somehow I couldn't keep away, and I was right! I WAS RIGHT! Because right about now Ed's gone, and even that stupid dog, and Spike's rotting in the ground! It isn't fair, dammit! What gives HIM the right to die and leave me all alone...?"

She broke down ino hopeless sobs. For some odd reason, she was the most beautiful that Jet had ever seen her.

He knew, instinctively, that if he tried to comfort her she would scream at him. He did anyway. And as she punched at him, still yelling, he tried to explain. It was as much to himself as it was to her.

"Some people have pasts so awful that no matter what, they could never let go of them totally. Spike was like that. He was a dead man walking the moment he first met Julia. He was never really here... he was always looking to the future, to her, with one eye. I don't have that kind of problem, because what's happened to me is insignificant enough to move on from. I won't leave you alone."

And she kept beating at him, but she understood. And they sat together on the couch when she had calmed down.

"...Faye?"

"Yes?"

"Faye, I... nevermind."

END