Believe

I need you to believe in me
'til there's nothing left of us
oh I need you to believe in me

and I'm not running anymore
I'll stand to face it all
I'll fight for every breath
until there's nothing left of us

and oh
I need you to believe

“So, what happened back there?” Faye asked as she followed Spike through the doorway that led to the common room.

They were just returned from a stake-out on Callisto. The bounty was a 10,000-woolong bounty head named Andalf Gandaamen, a smooth-talking small-time criminal wanted for embezzlement of funds from a biotech company. She and Spike had chased him all the way to the frigid crater town of Jumo, where there was nothing to be found except for broken glass and broken lives crushed together in a mucky mess, making them all edgy and irritable. Just before cornering Gandaamen in an abandoned warehouse on the rough outskirts of the docking region, he’d said something to Spike that only the two of them could hear. Whatever was said, it ticked Spike off something good, and it took the strength of both Jet and herself to calm Spike down so that Gandaamen stayed alive long enough for them to collect on the bounty on his head. Afterwards, back on the Bebop, she had asked him about what had happened, but he adamantly refused to talk about it.

“Not now, Faye,” he grumbled in that deep voice of his. His trademark aloofness was surprisingly absent, though she knew that he was deliberately trying to put her off.

“Oh, keep your shirt on”, she retorted, glaring daggers into his back as he shuffled over to the worn yellow couch.

He ignored her and sank down into the cushions and closed his eyes as if preparing for a long nap. After all of the time they’d spent together on this ship, she knew that he was trying to piss her off by ignoring her.

She sat on the steps and pulled a nail file from her pocket. Bounty hunting was hell on her nails and she liked her hands to look good. As she buffed, she looked over at the couch, watching him from under her lashes as he lay with his hands clasped behind his head. He wasn’t sleeping, that she knew.

Spike had his dark side, brooding and uncommunicative, when he even shut Jet out, choosing to lie motionless on the couch, staring up at the ceiling fan as if the answer to life would be found somewhere in those revolving blades. Faye hated it when he was like this, but, she reasoned, life inside a syndicate must have made him like that, living on the front line where showing any emotion or divulging any personal information could cost you your life, or even worse, loss of respect of the others. Since she had known him, he’d never been that much of a talker, and he never told her anything about himself. What little that she did know, she had gleaned from the situations that they had found themselves in during the course of their lives on the Bebop.

Spike didn’t like showing weakness of any kind. Even though he no longer lived the syndicate life, remnants still lived within him, leaving him shell shocked and emotionally damaged. He rarely allowed anyone to get a glimpse of what he held inside. She understood because she could be like that sometimes as well.

She turned her attention back to her nails, stealing a glance every now and then at his face. When his silence became unbearable, she got up and stomped over to the couch, standing over him. He wasn’t in the syndicate any more, dammit, and his silence was making her angry.

“I want to know right now, what happened to you back there?” she pressed as she waited for him to answer her. When no answer was forthcoming, she leaned forward and sideswiped his head with the flat of her hand, then leaned back on her heels and waited, her hands on her hips.

Spike’s eyes sprung open and he stared up at her in disbelief, a spark of suppressed amusement flaring up in his natural eye. His thin lips curled into a half grin.

“Well?” She demanded tersely. “Spit it out already.”

Spike started to speak, but seemed to think better of it. “Faye, didn’t your mother tell you that patience is a virtue?”

“Idiot,” Faye scoffed. “You know I don’t remember anything from my other life.”

He watched her for a moment. “Yeah,” he said softly, regret battling for its position to replace the aloof expression on his face. He reached up and grabbed her hand, pulling her down to sit next to him.

She glared at him, insult ready to fly from her mouth.

“Give me a break and chill, Faye,” he said, meeting her gaze. He released her arm and leaned back, not breaking eye contact.

Disconcerted, she broke the stare as the retort died on her lips. He obviously was not going to tell her anything, so she chose to ignore him instead. I wonder, she mused as she lost herself in a sudden memory. What would I have been like if I had never gotten on that shuttle?

Instead, here she was, some fifty odd years beyond her time, sitting next to a tight-lipped bounty hunter like Spike, who rarely allowed anyone to get a glimpse of what he held inside. She understood because she was like that as well.

She thought back to the day he had left, when she had tried telling him about her returning memories, those fleeting remembrances coming back in incomplete drifts and wisps and the feeling of belonging. Since he came back, she noticed that the boys more often “forgot” to remind her that she was not a part of the crew, and treated her like one of them.

“Stop staring”, Spike mumbled, eyes closed.

“How do you know I'm looking at you?” she snarled, her cheeks reddening. She hadn’t even realized that she had been watching him and she wondered how his senses were so acute even when he looked like he was sleeping.

“You're not a very quiet watcher, Faye,” he retorted, cracking open an eye to peer at her. “I can hear you looking from way over here.” He closed his eyes again. “Me on the other hand,” he continued as he stretched his long legs forward to plop them on the table before him. “I was born to hear all and see all.”

“Yeah right,” she said sarcastically. “As much as you sleep.”

“Don't hate me because I'm better at it than you,” he told her. “Now leave me in peace.”

Faye looked around for something to throw at him. Spying his cigarettes on the table, she grinned. She'd found something better, namely, his nearly full pack that she'd smoke up instead. She cunningly reached over to snag the pack, and jumped when, out of nowhere, his hand slapped down on top of hers.

“No, you don't,” he drawled lazily, sliding the pack out from under her hand.

She glared at him, miffed at not being quicker than him, since she didn't have any more of her own.

“Aww, come on Spike, have a heart and spare me a few,” she whined, trying to wheedle her way into his cold heart.

“Get your own.”

That was when the sweet sense of belonging hit home.