Disclaimer: Cowboy Bebop belongs to Shinichiro Watanabe.

Summary: What was Jet thinking when he asked Edward to water his bonsai trees?

A/N: In which Jet thinks way too much...

Lady of the House

By: gure

Jet stood in the doorway and stared at the puddle of water as it slowly spread toward the toes of his boots. He sighed, and took a half-step back, away from the water.

His eyes traveled across the floor, over the water, and up to the rows of bonsai trees. Water leaked over the edges of the pots, drained from the holes in their bottoms, and ran across the stepped platforms to drip steadily to the floor.

Jet heaved another sigh, and muttered quietly, "Edward."

Boredom was a constant problem on the Bebop, especially for a young girl like Edward. Jet chuffed a quiet laugh. Who was he kidding? Hell, all of his charges had a tendency to get into trouble when boredom settled in on the ship. He knew, if left to their own devices to amuse themselves, it was quite likely he wouldn't even have a ship once they were done.

He didn't have a great deal of control over what Spike and Faye did with their time, but Edward was still a child, and nominally under his care. He was, after all, the adult in this situation. With that in mind, he had given Edward a job. A simple thing, really. He had asked her to water his bonsai trees.

In retrospect, that might not have been the wisest of decisions. Edward, sweet girl that she was, was not...typical. She was good, and she was kindhearted, and heaven knew she loved that dog, Ein, but she was not, by any stretch of the imagination, gentle. Jet watched the steadily dripping water. No, not gentle at all. Edward was wild and free-spirited and energetic. She also had no concept of moderation. Some of his trees were practically treading water!

If Jet were in a more charitable mood, he'd say she was vivacious. However, his half-drowned trees attested to the fact that Edward probably had more in common with Ein than she did with the more human inhabitants of the Bebop.

He wasn't sure where she had hidden herself at the moment. He didn't think he really wanted to find out, either. Instead, Jet backed out of the doorway and went in search of a towel. Or three.

Moments later, he returned with a couple of bath-towels, and threw one down on the floor to begin mopping up the mess. He knew he should have Edward do this. Cleaning up her own mess would teach her a little responsibility. Responsibility was important. Someday, she'd be on her own, and would have to fend for herself.

The thought brought Jet up short, and his hands stilled where he had just settled the second towel in between two trees on the topmost platform. Edward had already been on her own. How had she gotten by? Was she able to live on her hacker reputation alone? To his knowledge, he and the others were the first to see who Radical Edward really was. Maybe she was more like a wild animal than he had thought. He had to admit that she had good instincts.

He thought back to how she had manipulated her way into their lives. He hadn't paid much attention at the time, but she had been determined to stay with them. How desperate had she been? Where did she come from? Jet realized with a start that he knew very little about Edward. She never mentioned parents or a home. Was there anyone to worry about her?

Perhaps she was just as lost as the rest of them. She had been tracking them for ages. Perhaps she, in her own way, had adopted them. Maybe she needed a family, regardless of how mismatched and unsuited they might be.

Jet snorted at the idea, and moved the towel along the shelf to the next group of trees. His housemates, a family? There were many days he hesitated to even call them friends. He didn't choose any of these people. They just attached themselves to his life. And his food. And his ship. The mopping ceased, once again. Wasn't there a saying, 'You can choose your friends, but you can't choose family?' Something like that. Well, he certainly hadn't chosen his housemates, yet he shared everything he had with them. They all shared, mostly. Maybe Edward was on to something. Maybe they were a kind of family.

Jet wadded up the towel in his hands and stooped to pick the other one up from the floor. Water dripped from the soaked towels, and Jet growled. What a mess. He looked around the room. There was still water on the platforms as well as the floor. His towels were waterlogged, and would drip all the way down the hall to the hamper. With a muted curse, Jet dropped the sodden wad on the floor, and stalked back down the hall for more towels.

He closed the linen closet door, and glanced down the long hall. Speak of the Devil. There was Edward, curled up in a ball on the floor, sound asleep. Ein was next to her and lifted his head to regard Jet. The expression on the dog's face was unreadable, but Jet was unnerved all the same. That dog was uncanny.

Now was his chance. He could poke Edward awake, hand her the stack of towels, and tell her to get to mopping. He knew she would do it. Generally, she cheerfully did whatever he asked. Why was that? Shouldn't she be a sullen teenager by now? Not that he minded her cheerfulness. Spike and Faye more than made up for the sullen teenager bit, and they were already grown! He took a step toward her, and paused. Edward twitched a little in her sleep, and smiled. There were times when that smile was feral, and more than a little disconcerting. Asleep, however, she just looked very, very young.

Jet shook his bald head, turned, and headed quietly back up the hall to rescue his trees. Edward slit her eyes open, and watched Jet walk away.

Several towels later, Jet was finally satisfied that his bonsai trees were no longer in danger of floating away, and that he was no longer in danger of slipping and breaking a hip on the wet floor. He scooped up the pile of towels, and nearly dropped them when he turned to find Edward standing uncertainly in the doorway. He gasped, then coughed, trying unsuccessfully to hide his surprise. "Edward! Don't do that!" The kid was quieter than a cat, when the mood struck her.

Edward ignored the admonishment, and looked up at him with liquid eyes. "Did Edward not do a good job?"

Jet regarded her. Now, how was he supposed to answer that? No, she hadn't done a good job. She'd nearly drowned his beloved bonsai trees and made a glorious mess. A mess that he couldn't bring himself to force her to rectify. She had seemed so pleased to have a job and help out. She had even made up a song about it. Not all that surprising, though, since Edward made up songs about everything, but still. He decided to be diplomatic, and lie.

"You did good, Edward. These trees won't have to be watered again for...a while." A long while. And certainly not by Edward. Although Jet knew that wasn't true. He'd risk it again, just to give her something to do. Something to make her feel a part of their...family, or whatever the hell they were. He hoped his trees could handle it. He made a mental note to be certain all the planters had decent drainage. Some of his pots were more suited to that sort of thing than others. Why wasn't there some kind of drainage standard?

Edward continued to look up at him, and Jet was surprised by the knowing expression in those golden eyes. How could he have thought that she might not have the same cares as the rest of them? That she might not need some kind of family? Like the rest of them, she was looking for a place to belong. Jet wondered if his ship would be her final destination. Surely there was a better place for her to be besides living in the presence of a former gangster and a has-been police detective and...whatever...Faye had been. Regardless, if this was just a brief stay, Jet decided he'd try to make her visit count.

He opened his mouth to say more when Edward blinked, and the expression was gone, leaving him to wonder if it had been there at all. Then she grinned, spread out her arms, and revved her engine. A moment later, she was flying down the hall as if nothing had happened.

The airplane sounds faded as Edward tore off down the hall. Jet shook his head and wondered if she had ever even seen an airplane. Judging by her curiosity over Faye's betamax tape, he guessed no, and that brought up a whole slew of questions he just wasn't willing to ask right then.

Jet looked down at the pile of towels in his arms and cursed when he realized the water had soaked through his shirt. He stomped down the hall to the laundry and dumped the pile onto the mountain of dirty clothes overwhelming the hamper. Then he stripped out of his shirt and rummaged around in the basket of clean clothes for a fresh one. Faye, with much protesting, had brought the clothes in off the line, but of course Spike hadn't folded the laundry. It was too much to hope that he might have paid attention to the to-do list pinned up in the kitchen.

With a sigh, Jet made a mental note to fold them later. Then he began dumping dirty laundry into the washer. Really, he was turning into a woman: cooking, doing laundry, and worrying over the children. Jet snorted a laugh and dropped one of Faye's tiny t-shirts back onto the pile in the hamper. He'd had enough. Let everyone else whine when they had nothing but pajamas and formal wear to put on their backs.

Jet left the washer half-loaded and picked up a book from his room on the way outside. They had been moored in this bay on Mars for a few days now, and the weather had been lovely. He resolved to sit on the deck in the sunshine with his book and not worry about Edward, or the laundry, or how all that fit into this tentative notion of a family dynamic on his ship. He might just stay out here and watch the sunset and let the others wonder and speculate on what he was up to. He chuckled at the thought. Well, as the lady of the house, he felt he deserved a vacation.