I am so very sorry this took so long to get up. I found some problems in my outline and had to completely redo my plans for future chapters before this one could be finished accordingly. The corrections should make future updates more easy, but this is a difficult fanfic to write under a lot of circumstances for me.
Anyway, you get an extra long chapter to compensate for the lag :D
Please forgive typeos, I wanted to get this up right away.
7: Child in my Mind
"All right, where are you?" Jet growled, scanning the desert that had once been the boondocks of Los Angeles. The metropolitan area had long since sunk into the sea after fallen moon fragments gave the fault line a shove. Now all that remained of the city's suburbs was sand, with the shell of a building or freeway ramp sticking up every so often between the cacti.
Jet hated Earth.
He was looking at the large, ocean bordered plain of desert where he'd dropped off Margaret only a day or so before. She couldn't have gone far on her own, he knew. She would have to know the area pretty well to confidently ask to be left in such a place. Flying low in the Hammerhead, Jet saw no sign of any petite, dehydrated corpses so he could only assume she'd made it to the hills where a few settlements remained.
California. He'd sent an angry and defensive Faye to the ex-state not long ago, and hadn't heard from her since. Now she was missing, assumed dead, and here he was flying over damn California looking for a brat that might fit the puzzle pieces together.
With a heavy and annoyed sigh Jet forced his ship to the right and cursed the stupid sense of responsibility that had gotten him into this mess. For perhaps the billionth time since entering Earth's atmosphere Jet replayed the past week in his head, ending it with his last conversation with Yolan Davis:
"About that favor..." The druggie said. He'd been making nervous attempts to tip the scales in his favor ever since Jet caught him.
Jet rolled his eyes. "What makes you think you can ask for favors?"
"I c-can tell you what you want to know, and Marg can tell you s-stuff too, she knows...knows so much..." the problem with Yolan, Jet discovered, was that he was just crazy enough to tell what he believed to be true, and just nervous enough to be ambiguous about it.
"And what do you want me to do for this information— let you go?" Jet laughed. Davis had been fishing to make a deal with him for his escape all afternoon. He kept insisting he had a job to do, and would turn himself in once if was done. "That's not going to happen."
"No...no I wasn't expecting it," Yolan shook his head; he'd subdued into minor reasonability. "Just... just find her—find Marg. Take care of her, while I'm in jail...don't let them get her back— call me at w-whatever prison you're sending me to, sh-show me that she's safe, and I...we--we'll tell you everything we know about Faye Valentine, a-and the other murders."
...
Jet grimaced at the repeating recollection. He still wasn't quite ready to believe that Faye was dead. If she knew someone was after her, it was more likely that she disappeared, for such a woman could never had avoided her creditors for so long without knowing how to make herself vanish into thin air. That was probably one of the things about Faye that actually surprised him, maybe even impressed him. Maybe.
Faye Valentine didn't exactly exude subtlety. She was loud, boisterous, flashy, always quick to make a scene and the kind of woman who turns heads when she walks into a room. How did she hide? She must have gotten it down to an art by now, Jet could only guess. For if the hand was quicker than he eye, Faye was quicker than the hand.
That was why he'd asked if Yolan had seen the murder. It had been bad enough, sitting in that death-quiet ship waiting for Spike. Waiting, wondering... he refused to do that again. No more ifs, just the facts. Until he came up with either a witness or body, as far as Jet was concerned, Faye was still alive. She'd vanished into the woodwork again, but like hell Jet was going to let her stay there.
After all, he told himself, she still owes me money.
"So what's the bounty?" asked Faye, peering over Edward's left shoulder while Spike leaned over the right.
"Marco Polo, twenty-two thousand," Spike read off Tomato's screen. "Is that really his name?"
"Polo-person is a judo-sumo-pseudonym," announced Ed. She threw back her head so fast the goggles fell and hung around her neck. "Hits drug stores and mini marts. Armed robbery, four injured, none dead. Edward will look for pattern, please stand by!"
Spike shrugged. "That's fine, I'm taking a shower." He cast a sidelong glance at Faye. She wore a towel around her body and another around her head. Spike momentarily wondered if she'd left him with nothing to use but the hairdryer.
"What?" Faye snapped irritably as she noticed him staring.
"What's the destination after we get that ship?" he asked. It had suddenly occurred to him that beyond 'get off mars', the game plan was rather sketchy.
She scrunched up her face and glared at the question. "Well I've got some stuff to discuss with Yolan Davis," she announced ominously. "I've got to find out just what the hell is up with those flowers before they kill me."
"Whatever," Spike shrugged. "Ed, you can get on Davis's trail after you find me that bounty."
"Edward has the bounty-head right now!" replied the girl. She was still sitting on the floor, but she sat up straight so that her head was visible on the other side of the bed. She rested her chin on the mattress, while making hand motions high above her head as she explained.
"Marco Polo emptied all his accounts from an ATM machine at Highler Mall an hour ago."
"Really?" Faye's ears would have perked up like a dogs had it been possible. "How much cash is on him, then?"
"Four hundred fifty thousand woolongs," Ed announced. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a lot, but it was more than the bounty and definitely enough to pay for their ships, although maybe not dinner afterwards.
"Down girl," Spike rolled his eyes as Faye squealed in delight.
"Sit on it, Spike," she snapped back. "We get the bounty off this guy, and who's to say he didn't drop his wallet in the chase?"
He continued to glare at her. Faye assumed it was because he didn't like the idea, stealing is stealing and blah blah blah, but she was wrong. He was glaring because he'd actually had the same idea, but agreeing with Faye was a concept best taken with a grain of salt...or a spoon full of sugar, whatever the expression was.
Spike didn't mention his thoughts, however. Instead he focused on a different part of her sentence. "Whose this we? I don't need your help for a small fry."
Her eyes and cheeks flared in indignation. "Who the hell said this was your bounty? I'm the one who needs to get off planet, and it's not like I wasn't going to help out with your little Swordfish fund. I'm far more generous than you give me credit for!"
"Yeah, I've seen your generosity, but I was just pointing out that your assassin's still loose," Spike replied, cool amidst her fury as always. "But by all means, get your head blown off. More cash for me—and good luck bounty hunting in a towel, by the way."
Faye opened her mouth to retort, but had to shut it again as she realized her clothes were still sopping wet in the shower unit. Great, even without the assassin part, Spike was right. She couldn't go out like that, but she also couldn't admit it to Spike he'd called it properly.
"Fine," she growled instead. "I've got to call the impound lot anyway; make sure they don't turn my ship into a cube or something."
"It's so nice when you cooperate," he crooned with his twisted smile. He was almost out the door when something hard hit him right between the shoulder blades.
"AND TAKE YOUR DAMN PHONE WITH YOU THIS TIME!"
Faye hadn't realized just how much she hated the back of Spike's neck until she had to stare at it all over again. Faye glared at the door for a long moment after it closed. A wet strand hair escaped her towel-turban and she blew it out of her eyes with a frustrated huff a breath before turning back to face the room.
Ein lay on the bed, and yawned when her eyes passed over him. Ed was hunched over Tomato, and from the looks of her Faye knew she wouldn't be talkative until she was done with whatever the hell she was up to. When her gaze finally landed on the other girl they'd picked up, Margaret, she nearly blinked in surprise for a part of her had forgotten their newest guest.
But then it all came back to her. The "showdown" with the assassin Dismer, and how this Margaret girl had interrupted the fight seeming all too familiar with the situation. This kid knew something—something about Dismer, the poppies, and probably something about the new moon as well. And of course, Margaret also seemed to know something about Faye, something she herself didn't know, and that was something nobody liked even without a touch of amnesia.
Whatever this kid knew, Faye was gonna find out.
But first things first....
With another once-over of the room, she located the telephone underneath last week's newspaper on the floor beside the nightstand. Sitting down on the bed, she set the phone in her lap, lifted the receiver—
And stared at it.
Her fingers hovered dumbly over the numbered buttons as she experienced a sudden, sullen paralysis and she wondered just what the fuck she was supposed to say. She had to talk to Jet, that much she knew, and that knowledge surprised her. It surprised her enough to second guess herself, because although she didn't know what to do, some new part of her brain only recently created was telling her—-assuring her—-that Jet could make everything better.
Just how the hell Jet would fix this, Faye had no idea. She didn't even have any idea what exactly needed to be fixed, only her trusty instinct that something wasn't right. She knew what she should do, yet her fingers still wouldn't press the keys. The automated operator's voice came over the earpiece—'if you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again...'—and she set the receiver down with her fingers still over the numbers.
Running her bottom lip against her top row of teeth, Faye tried to think. For the longest time, she'd played the game one way: her versus the rest of the solar system. Those were the sides: she was good, the rest were bad and deserved what she did to them. But then things had changed, and it wasn't her against the universe, it was her...and occasionally the Bebop crew against everything— and then Spike had gone off and died and everything turned back to normal. Just her again, because she didn't think she could handle that kind of a betrayal all over.
But now...now it seemed like someone had drawn a new set of battle lines. Now, it felt like it was her and Jet and Ed against what Spike had put them through, and she felt suddenly defensive. The Lunkhead's leaving and coming back had sparked an array of emotions she'd never had to fight off before, and she didn't know how, so she could only believe—and more hope, than believe—that Jet did.
So why, then, couldn't she dial? Pride, maybe...or just that she didn't know what to say—what could she say? 'I've got to tell you something Jet, are you sitting down?' or perhaps, 'I've got some good news....maybe' or what about 'Hey Jet, you remember Spike, don't you? The guy who ran off to get himself killed? Well it turns out, he still pretty much sucks in that department...oh and by the way, I've got a hit man on my ass.'
Oh yeah, that was priceless.
Faye ran through every scenario she could think of, trying to come up with an easy way to get the whole story out. In the end she decided, "Fuck this, I'm just gonna come out and say Spike's alive and let him take it from there." And she smiled. It was the perfect plan, and besides, Jet had never known her to be anything but blunt, so why should today be any different?
The smile turned into a smirk. For the first time since the jarring shock of seeing the moon—no, for the first time since she'd told off Jet back at the Bebop, she felt like Faye Valentine again. She had to admit, that Valentine wasn't a woman she agreed with or even liked a lot of the time, but there was a certain strange pride that came with her persona.
That was the one thing, and probably the only thing she could thank Spike for. He'd spent so much time running away from himself, all the while letting his old life grow stronger as it chased him until it nearly devoured him in the end. Faye had already decided she wouldn't be like that, not like him. She could see their similarities—he ran away, and she ran toward. Toward a past she couldn't catch, toward a life she couldn't have, toward a Faye she couldn't be.
Well screw that.
If she couldn't reclaim her past, then she'd better get started on her future—-especially since she had a twenty-four year late start. She was going to have to be Faye Valentine now, and if that was a woman she didn't like, well then she'd just have to change because she'd be damned if she was going to walk around hating herself.
So, Faye Valentine it was. And Faye Valentine wouldn't bother with this stupid phone anyway.
The smirk grew wider, and Faye found that she was finally liking the feeling of it again. There would be no more of this whining and pouting and wondering. There would be no more self-pity, no more letting herself get walked on. She wasn't going to sit around like some sailor's girl and wonder if Spike was ever coming back—it was his decision, and she was just going to give him a piece of her mind about it as soon as he got back.
Another thing she wouldn't stand for was Jet's asshole attitude. She remembered what he'd been like lately, and with that memory she set the phone back on the floor and decided that Jet could figure out for himself that Spike was alive—preferably while Faye was there to witness the dead man walking into the ship and scaring the old guy out of his pink shirt.
It really did feel good to smile again.
"Faye-Faye?" she looked up to find Ed staring at her.
"Damn it, I'm hungry," she announced, enjoying the return of her appetite along with her confidence. She remembered her last meal, a small bowl of broth from that Indian chief which had been all she could stomach at the time. "All right, I'm calling room service."
"Yay! Foooood! Edward wants—AH! Uh-oooh...."
"What?" startled, Faye rolled across the bed to look over the hacker's shoulder. Ed had stopped typing, her fingers rigid and spider-like over the keys and her mouth a squiggly line. "What's wrong? What?"
Marco Polo's bounty profile was on the screen in a slightly minimized window, and in another window was what looked to Faye like a scanned copy of some kind of document. "What's that?"
"That is Polo-lo-lo's medical file," Ed answered, pointing with a rubbery finger. "Mr. Bounty Head's got a condition. He's got hemophilia."
Faye blinked at the screen, trying to see what Ed saw but all she came up with was a lot of doctor-talk and Latinlike jargon. "That means...he doesn't stop bleeding even if it's just a little scrape, right?"
Ed nodded with enthusiasm. "Corectomundo, Faye-Faye! Marco-Parco's got no platelets in his plasma."
"I'll take your word for it," Faye assured her. She'd already slid back across the mattress to where the phone sat on the nightstand. She had to warn Spike about this guy, else their money ticket might end up dead from a bloody nose or other Spiegelesque injuries, like bullets et cetera. She dialed quickly and—
no connection. "Aw hell, that idiot!" she growled and slammed the receiver down with a bang and a cling. "He probably never charged the damn phone since the Bebop!" either that, or he just didn't want to answer her...frankly, Faye preferred the option that made Spike look stupid.
She made a rush for the bathroom where her clothes were, but a voice stopped her. "I'll go," offered Margaret. She'd already put her large red sweater back on and was brushing the dog fur away. "I can still catch him, but you don't have time to get dressed."
"Now hold on—" Faye started, but the kid slipped out the door too fast. She stood in the middle of the room and wondered if it would be worth it to give chase. That girl, whoever she was, knew a lot about her current hit man problem, so it probably wasn't too good an idea to let Margaret out of her sight. Still...back at the chapel, it sounded like Margaret had gone through a lot if effort to track her down, and therefore probably wouldn't just run off.
In the end, Faye shrugged and decided that whatever the little mongrel was up to, it wouldn't do her any good to run down to the lobby in a towel. And besides, Ed seemed to trust her---more importantly, Ein seemed to trust her---so why bother babysitting?
Faye jumped back on the bed, smiling as she bounced a little. This place sure had better springs that the Bebop's mattresses. She found the remote and decided that now would be as good a time as any to see what was new in Martian Hollywood. Then she remembered her lunch plans and smirked to herself—whoever had the bill on this room was gonna be in for a surprise. Still smiling, she dialed room service.
Spike hated the mall with a vengeance normally reserved for mutant lobster and low rank mafia. He wasn't exactly sure why, maybe it was just a bitter feeling from being surrounded by stores and no money for them. But then again, even if he wasn't broke, he certainly couldn't picture himself as a customer any of the mall's stores. In fact, shopping that didn't involve food was close to making fourth on Spike's hate list, right behind proud women.
To make matters worse, Highler was kind of a 'yuppie' mall, as Faye might call it. A lot of brand named, expensive specialty shacks and shops for the uptown crowd too good for anything with 'mart' in its name. Grimacing and suppressing a groan, Spike resumed his usual forward lean and tried to blend into the sea of the polo-wearing posh.
He was suddenly very glad he'd left the shrew back at the hotel room, since had she come along she'd probably drag him into some store and make another attempt at trashing his favorite blue suit. 'You're so out of date' she'd told him once, as if she herself was one to talk.
He took a seat at one of the food courts metal tables on the second floor where he could overlook the plaza below. It was the mall's center spot, and hopefully his target would pass by sooner or later as Spike sure as hell was not going to duck into Abercrombie's 93rd anniversary sale to search for him.
"Hey..." someone suddenly tapped him on the shoulder, and Spike eased his head back to find the twerp with the sunglasses in the corner of his vision. "Is your phone dead? I've got a message for you."
"Make it fast, I'm busy here," he said, turning back to look over the rail again while simultaneously retrieving a cigarette from his pocket.
"Yeah, I can see that," muttered Margaret. Her voice gave Spike the mental image of one thin eyebrow raised over the frame of her glasses. "Anyway, Ed found out Marco's a bleeder."
"What's that mean?"
"It means you can't scrape him up if you want your money," she suddenly stepped around him and sat down across the table. She leaned over so her chin went just past the rail, and stared down into the plaza. "Did you find him yet?"
"Now hold it—" Spike started. His voice sounded a little higher with his added annoyance, but he kept the tone relatively level. "First of all I've been here all of fifteen seconds so no I haven't, and second of all is there something else you have to say? Cause if not, why don't you just go on back to the hotel, or wherever you're from and..."
He frowned as something occurred to him. This kid had appeared out of what seemed like nowhere in the chapel ruins. His group being who they were, Spike had just assumed in the back of his mind that here was another freeloader, but he really had no idea who this girl was aside from the name Ed had given them and her antique computer.
"Who the hell are you, anyway?"
Margaret's head cocked to the side, her expression bland with a kind of aggressive, adolescent boredom. "I'm the hostage," she said. "Thanks for the rescue, by the way."
Spike's jaw dropped a bit—when had he rescued her? He felt like he'd fallen asleep sometime during the movie of his life and completely missed a scene. "Okay kid, let's start over here..."
"Do you see this guy anywhere?" she interrupted with a kind of whine. Leaving her chair, she leaned as far as she could over the railing, as if trying to see what was under the awning on the other side. "If he stays inside one or two stores, we're never gonna catch him this way."
"Hold on kid--"
"Margaret."
"Whatever; there's no 'we' in this," Spike asserted. "I work alone—and those times when I do need a partner, I don't look for rugrats." He'd stood up straight and was trying not to just start shouting at this kid, since she wasn't paying attention at all. He was starting to get the first inklings of what he referred to as the Andy Symptom. Faye liked to call it an juvenile mood-swing, but whatever it was, it was just the way Spike tended to act around mutts, kids, shrews and poser cowboys.
Spike's frown deepened. No way was he gonna baby-sit and bounty hunt at the same time, there are just certain things a Spiegel will not multitask with...unless Ed was involved, but that really didn't count as baby- sitting anyway, since the hacker was a just enough bigger help than burden.
He sent the girl the worst look he could come up with, and had just started to contemplate scaring her with his gun when her arm suddenly straightened out and jutted forward. "Look! Isn't that him?" she pointed, and Spike saw with relief that she was right: Marco Polo, walking out of a kitchenware shop on the other side of the court.
He jumped up at once, the table toppling over as he gave chase. The crowd around him looked over, startled at the racket. Marco Polo heard it as well, and when he looked up to see a green haired man stepping over the fast-food covered tables to get with him, he dropped his bag of silverware and ran.
Spike was in immediate pursuit, following his quarry into Weston's second floor lingerie department, leaving Margaret in the food court to watch him vanish into the store. She didn't mind that though. She walked off in the opposite direction, headed for the downstairs escalator, and from there her destination: mall security. A grin formed on her lips; it came from knowing that she was finally making progress. If she played things correctly, she'd be able to watch Spike's chase on the security cameras, and maybe get some questions answered.
A half hour later, a very grumpy Spike had managed to track the elusive Marco Polo to the alley between the parking garage and the mall building. His suit was covered in food, he'd been assaulted by a mannequin display, his hair smelled like perfume samples, he'd nearly choked on a bra in that lingerie shop, and his new mission in life was to personally make sure every mall in the solar system was burned to the ground.
He was too angry to even bother with softening his steps. Let Polo know he was coming, it would make him all the more defensive and give Spike even more excuses to hit him. Spike had graciously run through all the pummeling techniques he knew of that didn't involve blood, and he wanted to give this jackass at least half the list for all the trouble he'd caused.
But when Spike turned the corner, the alley dead-ended, and waiting for him was a surprise. Marco Polo lay on the ground, uncommonly pale and sweat slick, but still breathing. He was unconscious, but when Spike knelt down for a closer look, he couldn't find a mark. From the skin coloring...it looked as if the man had feinted.
"I got tired of waiting." Spike's head snapped up---and then down again, finally noticing the rug-rat with the sunglasses sitting against the alley wall. "Can we go now?"
To Be Continued
Yay for Faye's empowerment portion :) I ordinarily have a lot more to say during authors notes, but I don't have it in me at the moment. If you so doubtfully care about them that much, I'll have my thoughts on this chapter in my author's profile soon enough.
Review please!