Chapter Text
Where do you start?
Which part of you do you preserve
first? Imagine your shoes are filled
with tomorrow, but you're trying to wade through
yesterday. Imagine yesterday
is made of sand
and tomorrow is made
of flood.
Imagine there is no sun,
just the promise of one. Every day
you get up thinking, "But this
is where they said it would
be, where the sun would herald
a right to live among the living
again. This is where I find
morning, renewal, tomorrow
that isn't made of night."
If everything is made
of night then how do we ever
get to call it a new day?
- Tara Hardy, from
My, My, My, My, My; "Fatigue"
~
Trust? What is trust when your mind can't trust your memories? When your eyes can't trust what they see in the mirror, when your hands can't trust your brain itching for just one more time, just one more time, just one more fucking time -
And so she doesn't realize how drained of energy until she's collapsed on the shitty little hotel couch, shoes and makeup still on, tumbling into a deep, deep sleep that her bones have needed for...
Well, for a while.
This is a regular occurence, this collapse into exhaustion, this breaking of her knees under her, the fitful and turbulent sleep that has hit her in practically every place on the Bebop except for her own bed - on the couch, in the seat of her ship, even at their little kitchen table. And how she never realizes until afterwards that her body has been screaming, screaming for rest. She's just never been used to trusting herself.
When she wakes up, she'll have to deal with the makeup smeared all over the cheap fabric, the straps of her clothes digging deep into her skin, the sore and swollen feet - but for now, she's dead to the world.
They - she and Spike - have been chasing after a bounty on foot for a full week in this city, and her feet are aching almost as much as her stomach. She's tired of the endless alleyways, of the hot and dusty planet they're on, of the hotel room with the broken air conditioner and the empty mini-fridge that sits directly across from her bed and taunts her every morning she wakes up, and the price on the asshole's head isn't even that much, but as always, they'll take anything that they can get. And this time...
They call Ed whenever they get a chance, and would talk to Jet, too, but he stopped being able to function verbally on about day three - that's why they're on this wild goose chase, now, perpetually with the picture of Jet pale and shivering on the Bebop's couch in their mind. He's desperately in need of medicine that this bounty money is supposed to buy, and Faye tells herself that the reason she's so focused on the prize this time is because without a pilot, they don't have transportation, but then she'll think of the small bonsai she keeps in the corner of her room on the Bebop -
She can tell that the chase is wearing on Spike, too. His mannerisms are changing like they always do when he's seriously stressed about something - they come back to the room in early hours of the morning, and while Faye immediately crashes onto the thin blankets, he pushes all of the furniture against the door, shuts the blinds tight, and shadowboxes for hours.
Sometimes when they're onto a bounty with a particular high price, or an especially exciting chase, Spike will get this gleam in his eyes, and this sharp grin that flashes his canines, and his aura hums with energy - Faye can feel it, and when he'll smile at her, she can feel something buzzing deep within her own chest, but there's been none of that spark on this mission - it's been a set, serious, expression, and he rarely looks at her, let alone smiling, and it hits her like another weight to shoulder, on top of Jet's deteriorating condition and the way that Ed asks every time when they're going to bring food back.
She hates that she's grown dependent, soft, for this ragtag almost-family, and when it's late at night and Spike's finally laid down to sleep, she'll open the window and think about disappearing up into the stars, but then she'll hear him shift and sigh and she can never bring herself to do it.
So now she's sunk deep into the couch cushions, dead to the world, sleep bringing a blessed quietness to the raging, swirling, inner monologue of anxiety that's only been coiling up and increasing in volume since the moment they landed on this planet - the comforting darkness of sleep, like a thick blanket covering her body, like a forgotten childhood memory of arriving home late at night and being carried up to her room -
Sometimes, she wonders how much of her already scant memories is shit she's made up, copied from movies and other people's reminiscing, that maybe she was never carried up to her bedroom, that that's something her mind has fabricated to fill that emptiness inside her, some brushstrokes on a blank canvas...
And she leans into that, the distrust of her own memory, because the alternative, that these faint wisps are all that's left of something (someone) that was once living, and colorful, and vibrant - is absolutely terrifying. Gut-wrenching, throat-choking, burning-in-the-back-of-her-nose, curled up in pain on her bedroom floor screaming a silent scream so that no one hears kind of terror.
So this. Sleep. Deepness. Quiet. Almost calm, almost at peace, except for a churning deep within her - half anxiety and half near-starvation.
She's a cold sleeper - slightly shivering and shaking, but never quite enough to wake her, but she's used to waking up disoriented, groggy, and with fingers and feet so cold they're almost numb - the flipside of an impromptu nap.
Which is why she's surprised and confused to, when her mind tunes out of sleep and back into reality, to feel - warm?
She blinks her eyes open and her eyelashes brush against something, her own breath warm against her chin, and her sight flits from the broken celing fan to the cracked and faded wallpaper to the blanket that's carefully covering her, tucked between her side and the couch cushions to hold in her body heat.
Then she turns her head and sees Spike, hunched over with his back to her, sitting on his bed, stripped of its comforter.
Still coming into consciousness, it takes time for the fullness of her senses to register: the softness of the blanket that cushions her bare legs, strips of streetlight poking in between the cracked plastic blinds and painting Spike in brushstrokes of golden light, and - what finally jolts her into full awakeness - that the room's usual smell of mold and cigarette smoke has been replaced by the smell of something delicious cooking.
Faye shifts underneath the blanket, torn between the promise of her first real meal in days and the reluctance to leave the warm sanctuary of the couch, and the sound catches Spike's attention.
He turns towards her, and Faye can't see him that clearly in the dim lamp light, but his shoulders look relaxed - something she hasn't seen since they landed - and he's wearing a slight smile. Bordering on smug, which any other time she would've given him shit for, but she can't when she sees that he's holding two steaming cups of instant noodles in his hands.
"Just in time."
He's briefly illuminated as a car passes on the street below, and yeah, he's definitely smiling.
Faye makes a move to get up from the couch, but he stops her, throwing a hand towel in her direction, and walks over to hand her a cup of noodles.
"Thanks," Faye says, because she's not rude, and all Spike says is "Yeah, don't spill," but he's looking into her eyes and that makes her feel warmer than either the blanket or the steam coming off of the soup does, and any other time that would worry her, but the presence of actual tangible food in her hands takes priority over any worries that this fucking asshole has managed to somehow break in past the meticulously constructed walls that she's spent years putting up.
There's this awful, instinctive urge to smile back at him, and she stuffs her mouth with noodles before it can do anything to betray her.
She can still feel Spike's eyes on her, and when she glances up at him, he turns his head so fast it's almost funny, like he's been caught red-handed - for someone who's natural expression is "calm, cool, and collected", it's kind of endearing to see his ears turning red.
He's seated in the shitty little swivel chair at the rickety desk, and it's just a little bit too low for him, his knees raised at odd angles and legs sprawled out, stretching until they almost reach the bottom of the couch that Faye's sitting in. He's shed his coat, shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows (Faye knows that while she runs cold, he runs hot, and then her mind is drifting to how warm his hands must be right now -) and then he's the one catching her looking at him, and Faye's face is warm, but not from the soup, and it's all so juvenile and silly, this cat-and-mouse game of caught glances and smiling eyes, but it's like a breath of fresh air, a moment of levity, in a week of hell.
He's like a breath of fresh air, Faye thinks suddenly, and where the fuck did that come from?
"How did you get money for these?" Faye gestures with her chopsticks to her now almost-empty cup.
"Went for a walk, saw some rich assholes outside of a bar, mugged them in an alley."
Faye can hear the hint of cockiness that's returned to his voice, and she laughs. "With what? Didn't you lose your gun back on Europa?"
Unfortunately, that just puffs him up even more. "They didn't know that." He tips up his cup to drink the last of the soup. "Besides, it was worth it." He meets Faye's eyes deliberately, confidently, knowing exactly how to get to her. "You were hungry."
And damn it if that doesn't make the last wall that Faye's put up crack, crumble, and fall to the ground.
She can't hide her smile this time, but he doesn't call her out on it, twisting in his chair to find a good station on the staticky little room radio, settling on a station playing old Earth songs, and something about the music coming through the crackling speaker is brushing against an old memory at the base of Faye's mind - of summer nights and bare feet on carpet and warmth. Always, warmth.
They finish their food without needing to talk further - every time Faye looks up from her chopsticks, Spike's eyes are there - steady, soft, and she doesn't want the moment to end, doesn't want to leave this blanket of warm light and Spike's smile, and there's this double awareness of the moment - the knowledge that when they turn the lights off and go to sleep in their separate beds, this memory will remain in her mind - full, golden and shining, and she commits her mind to memorizing each detail of the moment, from Spike's tangled hair to the faded hotel room carpet.
Trust. Trust like trusting her mind not to let this memory go, trust like trusting Spike not to leave in the middle of the night, trust like trusting herself enough to feel the tiredness still deep in her skin and going back to sleep, in a real bed this time, heart full of warmth.