Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop or any of the characters from aforementioned title. No profit has or will be made on this story. I'm only in it for the fun.

A/N: Well, I'm back, and attempting to write things down as they come to me in one sitting, so I don't loose interest halfway through. Hopefully the debut of this little piece marks the re-emergence of me to the writing world.

If you haven't seen the Cowboy Bebop movie, Knockin' on Heaven's Door or the last episode of the show, then you may not get the ending or the references in italics. I'll include a short explanation about it at the end of the fic.

Enjoy, and thank you for reading!

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To Live Again

By Siluial

"There once was a tiger striped cat. This cat lived a million lives and died a million deaths, then revived and kept on living."

The tiger striped cat had finally run out of lives.

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Blood. So much fucking blood. So much, in fact, that Faye turned away and vomited, emptying all in her stomach, and then some. She knelt, bent sharply at the midsection, heaving for so long that her lungs burned and ached and hot tears stung at the corners of her eyes. As soon as she finished, she wiped her mouth furiously and turned back to Jet. He didn't look at her, but squeezed her fingers tightly when she slid her hand into his.

"I'm not going there to die..."

The blood stood out sharply against the pale tiles.

"I'm going to find out if I'm really alive..."

How could someone be alive after that? So much blood. All she could see was red.

---

If someone was dead, why was there so much noise?

A steady beep-beep-beep-ing hummed in the background, strangely hypnotic, accompanied by a zigzagging green line that moved up and down in sharp turns. Liquid drip-drip-ed from a clear bag into a tiny tube that was connected to his body through a needle. A faint whoosh signified the collapsing and expanding of an accordion-like tube within a plastic cylinder.

Studying it, Faye found it so strange that a machine so simple as a rising and falling tube could keep someone breathing. It seemed like it could break by merely being bumped, effectively cutting off the air supply to the poor sap it was attached to, making the dancing green line flatten and run, unbroken and straight, across the screen.

Eventually, her green eyes fell to the bed, glancing over the lax and unmoving features of his dark face, to the one arm that lay limply above the stark white hospital linens, the fingers loosely curled in towards the palm.

Drawing a deep breath, she marched over to the window, drawing the curtains back fully and throwing open the window. The air that blew into the room stank of pollution and sweat and filth, but anything was better than the still odor of death that had accumulated in the room during her absence.

Moving back to the bed, she perched in the chair beside it, smoothing the blankets nearest to her. Her eyes locked onto his curled fingers.

"He's probably not coming back. They may have killed him already..."

Sighing, she leaned back, allowing her eyes to move upwards across the heavily bandaged torso that peeked from the top of the blanket to the face that was turned slightly towards her, apparently sleeping. "Well," she began, licking her lips, "I've got a bit of bad news for you, pal." She leaned forward again, propping her elbow on one knee and cradling her chin in her upturned palm. "Seems there's a limit on how long you can stay in a fancy room all to yourself. They've got other veggies to move onto." Her lips quirked into a faint semblance of a smile. "Word is 'round here that if you don't show an signs of waking within the next 24 hours, they're pulling the plug on you, Spike my boy." She cocked her head, as if listening before speaking again. "Yeah, I know. Rough, isn't it? Not everybody gets frozen for half a century till something can be done for them. Reserved for the special kids like me, you know?"

Her free hand was rooting though the pockets of the jacket hung on the back of the chair. Moments later, a cigarette was popped into her mouth, and a lighter lit and held just off the end. She ignored the "No Smoking Please" sign and moved the flame closer. Nicotine laden smoke suddenly burst into her lungs, and she blew rings with it when she exhaled.

One after the other she smoked, waiting until a pile of cigarette butts had accumulated before taking them all and dumping them out the window. She was looking for another to light when the door bumped open and a nurse entered. Faye immediately dropped the cigs back into the coat pocket, pulling out a crumpled tissue instead and making an act of dabbing her eyes.

The nurse smiled sympathetically as she went about checking the machines and medication, her face growing dimmer with the more time she spent in the room. Faye could almost read the girl's mind: "No hope for this one. Pretty soon he'll be getting his own min-fridge in the basement with all the other stiffs." Which was funny, because Faye's thoughts were running on the same wavelength.

The patch of sun in the room moved from the floor to the wall, lengthening, turning a rusty orange. Eventually that disappeared, and Faye still sat. A different nurse than the one before came in at one point to usher her out, saying that she could come back tomorrow in a soothing, motherly voice. That too was funny, because tomorrow, if she wanted to visit Spike Speigel of Hospital Room 798, infamous Bounty Hunter or the Bebop Crew, she would have to consult with the morgue.

"Sleep tight, lunkhead," she called back at the slowly shrinking hospital.

---

"You want anything?"

His gruff voice pulled her out of her television induced haze, and she looked up at him through wet bangs. She raised an eyebrow at the honey colored liquid in the glass he was holding, making him grin and take a seat in the armchair across from her, as she was stretched out upon the couch.

"Some of this, maybe?" He gestured to the glass.

"Eh," she replied, grimacing and turned her attention back to the screen, folding her arms under her head to prop it up slightly. Strangely, she had a near immunity to alchohol. No matter how much of the stuff she chugged down, it hardly ever fazed her. It looked like he had a glass of whiskey, no doubt from the secret stash of Spike's behind the fridge. Even if the bottle had been full, the whole thing would have barely gotten her started. "I prefer not to drown my troubles in liquor, Jet."

He nodded, and knocked back half the glass in one gulp. She watched him with a detached interest, no longer focusing on the commercials running across the screen perched on the table between them. He drank down the rest fairly easily, disappeared for a few moments and then reentered the room with the bottle in hand. Faye observed him as he poured another glass, and another, and...

"It's too...dull around here now." He spoke with a drunk man's drawl, one Faye knew well, but she did nothing but listen. "He ain't here to...raise hell anymore..."

"Hell yes, he was nothing but trouble!"

She vaguely became aware that Jet was speaking again, lending merely half an ear because of boredom. And maybe, just maybe, she was a little lonely. She knew that he reminisced quietly for a while more before she slipped into her own musings. She was reminded of her past, of her long dead family, and her present, of her slowly falling apart family. The cute little kid and the animal had exited stage left on the sitcom she called her life, and now the emotionally constipated asshole was standing half in the stage lights and half out while she was unable to help him to stand back onstage, and she was sitting here listening to her only other co-star ramble drunkenly about days gone by, and....

"W-what have you done to me...Why am I not dead?"

No. Not her, she wasn't dead, but Spike was going to be, and she couldn't help her precious comrade out in the slightest. She was useless when it came to problems that physical force couldn't solve. Spike was dying

(why does everyone around me die?)

and there was nothing she could do for him. Couldn't offer to hold his hand (not that it was likely he would let her) as he slipped from reality to the dream. Couldn't give him one last puff on a cig. She felt totally useless. All she could do was keep coming back everyday in hopes of meeting his scowling face in her direction for waking him. All she could do...

"...Why am I not dead?"

"Spike, he lived through everything, y'know?" Jet again. She nodded minutely.

"I've given you some of my blood. Now you'll live through anything..."

Blood.

"...my blood... now you'll live through anything..."

Live.

She shot up from the couch, making herself as dizzy as Jet probably was, and pelted down the hall. Throwing open the metal door to the hangar, she swore loudly at the sight of her still damaged ship. Wouldn't be getting anywhere in that, she was sure about that little fact. Blindly, she leapt to the next nearest ship, and tore open the cockpit hatch. Shoving herself inside, it wasn't until she had torn through the corrugated metal door leading out of the hangar and was flying through the inky sky that she realized she was flying the Swordfish II. Jet had let her fly it back to the Bebop from where Spike had landed it the day he had left without a look over the shoulder. They figured he wouldn't need it anymore.

Her mind on autopilot, she touched down in front of the automatic glass doors, unconsciously pleased to see them whip open before she had even finished exiting the airship. She stormed into the lobby like hell on wheels, whipping down the hall and to the elevator, hearing the calls of the nurses behind the desk. Hearing the voices getting closer and impatient that the elevator was taking so long to arrive even after she had stabbed the button repeatedly, Faye dodged to the left and into the stairwell. Tearing up the stairs, she was only aware of the steady thump-thump of her shoes against the cold metal of the stairs, and the pounding of her heart against her ribcage.

Moving with easy recognition down the hallway, she jerked to a stop in front of his room, the brass numbers 798 glaring at her in the stark brightness of the lighting above her. The door shoved open under her touch, and she slammed it closed, locking it with the heavy bolt near the top.

"My blood...You'll live..."

She could help.

Muffled yelling on the other side of the door. Heavy thumping. Cries for immediate security assistance.

She didn't hear any of it. Only the faint whoosh and beep-beep-beep and drip-drip of the medical equipment that surrounded him like a crowd of adoring fans. That's right kids, just sit back and relax, 'cause the show's about to begin.

She tasted copper in her mouth, like she had been sucking on pennies. Faintly, she felt the stab of pain in her lower lip where she had been worrying it so badly between her teeth that she had broken skin. Moving to his bedside, she leaned over him, over his forever-sleeping face, seeing a dewdrop of red splash onto his cheek from her lip.

Another crash at the door.

It was now or never.

Sucking hard on her lip, she closed the distance between them and pushed her lips onto his. She parted his lips with her tongue, allowing her blood to enter his mouth. Moving back, she licked her lip, then bit into her thumb hard enough to split the skin there. Quickly, she sucked on the protesting digit, then placed her mouth onto his once more, forcing the metallic tasting liquid into his mouth.

Come on, swallow, lunkhead, swallow or all this goes down the drain...

Sitting back onto the edge of the bed, she watched for any signs from him, eyes glued to his throat. There! His Adam's apple bobbed almost unperceivable soft, but she caught it...

It was the most panic-riddled, tense three and a half minutes of her life.

His mouth moved slightly, the tip of his tongue snaking out to catch the blood lingering on his lips.

She leaned forward so that her face was aligned with his. The thumping and shouting on the other side of the door ceased to matter.

"Look at my eyes, Faye..."

And as they opened, all she could do was look.

---

A/N: Well, I hope this wasn't a total waste of your time. Be gentle with me, I bleed easy. ==;

So, Faye is thinking about blood...this is the reference to the movie. (All the other quotes are from the final episode) In the film, a man puts his blood into her system so that she can be immune to these crazy nano-machines that are running amok. He says his little "My blood, live now, blah blah" line, and we can all go home happy. So Faye's mad 'cause she can't help out Spike, and this little idea pops into her head. "Hey! I'll give him some of my superman blood!" and performs something akin to an uber blood transfusion thingy...

God, I hope no medical-saavy people have read this. They would have to slap me for my terrible medical abuse...

Thanks again for reading!