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Two years after the fact, Faye and Jet agree on three things:
1. The bars in Mars are shit. Like the kind your mother (if you had one, honestly) would send you newspaper clippings about with little notes like: “Please don’t be a headline here!” or “Why you should carry more guns, okay?” Not to mention your beers are overpriced and Faye swears up and down that she can’t find decent whiskey.
2. Bounties get dumber. Seriously though. They get dumber. Beef’s a plenty when there are only two, but wow, wow bounties are losing their touch. There was that guy that tried to corner Faye, just outside a bank, all to bum a couple of smokes before he robbed his next bank. Jet and that stripper that tried to district him with Moby Dick quotes on her tits – that’s a story only he gets to tell, Faye swears.
3. Spike Spiegel is dead.
A job takes them to Mars. Jet hates Mars. Faye reasons it's because of the way things went down. Then again, she is not that naïve and holding on to something that happened that long ago makes her both a hypocrite and lazy, each of which she is not.
"It's good pay," Jet tells her finally. They sit in a bar. This is the beginning of a terrible joke, she thinks.
"Whatever," she rolls her eyes.
He nurses the beer. She fixes the whiskey. Or tries to, honestly. The bartender is keeping his attention between them and a guy at the end, near a television. The news is on high.
"I could shoot him," she offers. She's serious. The note said alive but there is nothing about a little boo-boo here or, you know, maiming. Maybe she is kind of cranky.
"You could," Jet agrees. "But think of the groceries. And your cigarettes. Think of your cigarettes."
She rolls her eyes. Her hand slides into her jacket. She pulls out her pack. There are two left. There are always two left. She closes it and shoves it back into her jacket, leaning back against her chair.
"I quit," she says, and Jet shakes his head. One of these is a lie, she thinks. Then she leans forward, resting her chin on her hand. "I still want to shoot him."
"Of course you do," he says. He says nothing roundabout about the cigarettes.
"You're going to let me shoot him, Jet."
"Nope." He takes a drink from his beer. "I'm not."
Faye lets out an exaggerated sigh.
This, of course, is not how it goes.
No one ever says a bounty is just a bounty.
This is not how it works.
Jet stays behind to placate the bartender, who turns out to be the owner, who turns out to be a man that can appreciate the fine art of leather pants and suspenders and - just trust her, it's all nonsense.
Meanwhile Faye whistles herself into following the bounty. The man with a suit takes her into a trek all over Mars; they end up in some odd corner of the city, balancing into the framework of a cluster of hotels and what are poor excuses for brothels. She can recognize girls anywhere. It's just the way it goes.
Then finally he sees her.
There is a click. Then it's her trigger, aimed high at his jaw. He is staring down at her too - gun to her cheek, then her mouth, and she can't help herself, the corners of her lips turning.
"Boo," she greets.
The man does not blink.
She tilts her head to the side. Her cheek presses harder into the gun.
"I'm guessing you don't socialize well with others, right?"
“I’m not looking for you,” he says.
Her mouth turns and pouts. “That’s too bad, man,” she says. “Because I’m looking for you. I’m looking for yo-uuu – isn’t that a song? Did I make that up?”
Faye keeps a steady wrist. The man keeps his gaze on her. She thinks he blinks this time around anyway. That’s important, blinking; she just needs to wait for another go around. It’s all a game too. She doesn’t know why he’s all into. She could read you his sheet. She will read his sheet to the Jet and Jet’s old cop friends, or old pseudo-cop friends that aren’t really his friends but hey, the old man’s got so much respect that the bad and the ugly spend a lot of time seeing him and don’t want to get caught. Can you blame them? Jet’s a grade-a tyrant.
So, then, this is the one where the guy stares her down, and then stares her down some more. She watches and waits: there is no slip of the mouth, there is sweat gathering at his throat and chin. His suit’s a little tight. She gives him a couple blocks if it’s about running.
Faye sighs.
“Let’s go,” she says.
And she kicks him in the knees.
You’d think that since there’s a show, someone would get a moment’s worth of common sense and write a tell all, or some kinda how to for bounties because they’re all really into making money.
But no one has. Faye won’t. Jet won’t. Pride’s important.
She has the guy cuffed to her ship. Jet is ten minutes late. She is leaning against a bench and staring lazily at the bridge across the street. The chain sways. She hums a little. Then she stops.
“Okay.”
Faye sits. She squints and meets the guy’s gaze.
“I’ll bite.”
He frowns. “Bite?”
“Whatever,” she waves a hand, and her wrist cracks. She sees Jet’s face in the back of her mind. Remember what we said, Faye? No killing the dinner? It’s a shotty memory; she still laughs under her breath. “I’m just saying, if you’re looking for someone, someone else has gotta be looking for that someone, so, basically, I’m just asking – is he or she or they worth my cigarette money?”
The man says nothing.
Faye sighs. “You’re no fun.”
He leans against her ship and looks away. Faye checks her watch. She looks at him again. The suit isn’t tight anymore. She doesn’t want to admit it either. She thinks he let her catch him. She doesn’t want to think about what that means. Because that could mean a number of things; above all this is Mars. There is more than just a saying. You just don’t trust Mars.
But this is how she starts to see it: the red pleats, the thin tie, the long and puckered scar embedded into his jaw – and yeah, so, cold dead eyes are kind of a thing around these parts. If this were a bar, she’d ask what’s your story because that walks you right into a free drink.
Faye is not rusty.
“Thought your mother died,” she says. It’s quiet. It tastes thin; it’s not like a code, but she figures that all these guys are the same. Home. Mother. Cigarettes. Brotherhood. The syndicate will always be the syndicate.
The man’s posture relaxes. “Stories are still stories,” he says.
“And that’s just bullshit,” she says. Her hand shields her eyes. She left her sunglasses in her room.
“So is looking for a dead man with a gun, or a cowboy – ” there is a pause and all Faye wants to say is: you don’t know jack because if he’s talking about who she thinks he’s talking about and seriously, she thought she was done, so done with the imagining of all those answers.
This is a full fledge panic attack. She feels it pulsing in the back of her throat. Her tongue twists. She leans into her knees. She’s hot and flushed. She can hear her heart pounding – arump-papump-pump and sound the alarm. All this guy is really doing is watching her and talking (god, is it, like, a requirement to be a condescending knucklehead with meatball for brains and quoting a lot of that quid-pro-quo shit or whatever?) and she swears she should probably hear her but then her ears start to ring.
Faye digs her nails into her knees. There is a siren.
She’ll remember her last thought too.
Fucking Mars.
Faye wakes up.
In a bed. With cuffs. There’s a hole in the sleeve of her blouse, or rather, Jet’s old shirt but there’s nothing she can do about that. It’s an old shirt.
She pulls at the cuff. They rustle and yank into her skin.
“Fuck,” she snarls. “Fuck.”
The room is dark. She can only see the outline of the city in the window. It etches in shadows against the wall. Her eyes feel bleary. Her head is starting to throb. She tries and yanks her wrist again.
“I wouldn’t do that,” comes from somewhere to the right. Her ears feel a little grainy. “Gonna hurt yourself.”
“What’s it to you, moron?”
And now there’s a laugh.
Faye ignores it. She forces herself to sit up. It takes some time; her knees don’t fold well and her jeans and boots are awkward into the sheets. She has to re-twist her arm, shifting her body underneath it so that she’s comfortable, some kind of comfortable, so that there’s something she could control.
She lets out a sigh.
“Rough day?”
“Why are we talking in the dark?”
A pause comes. “You’re still a bitch.” She settles and listens to a chair push back into carpet? Carpet. You learn, you see, to listen to things that people don’t really want to listen to. The tiny boring things that mean nothing, right – you never know what’s going to catch you breakfast.
“Dead men can’t talk,” she says quickly. Then she stops herself. Her fist presses into her mouth. “Unless – ” her eyes narrow “ – my debts have been settled for two years, dickface, so I’m not really interested in rehashing whatever you think I owe you still.”
“Nothing,” the voice says pleasantly. It’s a man, but not the man. Later, she’ll just blame it all on her whiskey. That seems like the right thing to do. “I took back the cigarettes. A debt’s a debt.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
It’s like catching up after a bad run. She knows she’s speaking before she’s thinking, or whatever that means. But then what little light there’s in the room pulls his face forward and into her space, all she can think that stupid shit because this is something he’d do.
“I know you’re not looking for me.”
The bed sinks slowly. She feels her knees crack.
“But you found me,” she says. Her voice takes a tremble. “Or –”
“Is that important?” he asks, and it’s he, because she is staring into a pair of mismatched, misinterpreted, miswhatever eyes that makes her start to breathe hard. It’s so anticlimactic after two years, or three – depending on how you really look at it.
“Let me guess: shouldn’t be looking for you.”
There are fingers on her wrist. The cuffs are adjusted. Asshole, she thinks.
“You’re going to do what you want,” he says.
“Should I ask how?”
“Do you want to know?”
“Are you going to tell me how?” she spits. She twists herself forward, her leg failing out. Her foot hits his side and he drops, groaning. He’s real. “Of course not,” she says. “And here I thought, if you were ever alive, you’d come back, rolling in, blazing fires and all.”
“Woman,” he growls.
“Friend of yours?” she shoots back.
“Nope.” His fingers are somewhere near her hip. They crawl and cling to her thigh. He twists and then he’s over her, gaze sharper. “Doesn’t matter, Faye. You just got to let this one slide. It’s the right thing to –”
“Don’t you dare finish that.”
“Do,” he quips.
His face is over hers. Her body feels too inclined to know where it is. This is a memory. You are all elbows and knees, Faye. Wobbly and such; it’s kind of cute! Should it really matter who said that? He didn’t.
She can’t close her eyes. She still can’t remember the last time she did.
It’s unflinching, the way she stares back.
“It’s been a long time, Faye,” Spike finally says.
This is not a game.
This is the truth.
Spike will not come back into her life. Or Jet’s. He doesn’t need to. They don’t need him to. It would be easier to say that Spike is a selfish asshole who will continue rolling on, probably grieving for Julia and best friends but mostly Julia’s pretty red lips and pretty blonde hair. Spike floats. Spike is only good at floating in and out.
But this is what happens:
“I’m not going to hit you,” she says, after awhile, and Spike is already through both cigarettes, those last two cigarettes, lying on the bed right next to her. He is long and limber - still, she hates to think – and his boot keeps knocking into her legs. She does not want to know what he’s doing. She does not want to think about running into him (she will) again.
“Cuff’s staying on,” he says pleasantly. “Call it insurance.”
“How long?”
He sighs. The smoke waves right into her nose.
“Not important,” he says.
It is to me, she doesn’t say. “Now I want to hit you,” she mutters, and looks away. Or turns her head. Think about what matters.
“Of course you do,” he shrugs. The bed shifts. “Didn’t think it would be this way though. I had planned on seeing no one again.”
“Funny how that shit works.”
Spike laughs. Because he would laugh. And it’s exactly how she remembers – it’s curt, too much like half of something, half a cigarette, half a shot of whiskey; she fills it in most of the time too.
“So that guy,” she says. Bounties are safe.
“Nope,” he says.
“Not even a small thing.”
She can hear the grin in his voice, the stupid shit. “Not even one,” he says.
Faye snorts. She feels the trouble in the air. Her free wrist flicks and hits somewhere on his arm. He makes a sound and she thinks if anything this was it and wonders if she start prepping her goodbyes. Nice knowing ya. You made us all lose sense. We’re better without you dickface. That one, right there, would be the easiest and maybe a little too true.
But she feels out of body, out of mind, and her head is nowhere near clear. She thinks about Jet. She stops thinking about Jet. Jet will know sooner or later.
“I don’t even want to know,” she says tiredly. Her hand goes to her face. Her fingers pinch her nose. “All my debts are settled. You’re a debt.”
“Cute,” he agrees.
She sighs. “Life goes on without you, man. As much as I want to flay you alive and bring you home to Jet just so I can say I told you so - man, that would feel kinda good.”
“You being you is keeping you alive right now though,” Spike points out, rather absently. She sits up slowly.
It’s how she notices the room. There is a bruise on her hip. There is a mug of coffee on a table, its shadow hitting the wall. The lights on Mars are obnoxious; it’s all clear, plastic, hey Vegas, as if Vegas on Earth was still same Vegas she remembered all dreams and dramas and dead bodies made for television. That’s a story for another time, cowboy. And it involves listening.
But she’s too aware of the windows cracked open, half-baked with its curtains. It’s dark outside. She always remembers Mars as dark. She knows she’s missed her check in and Jet will probably be busy being Jet. Faye still remembers her promise though. And it went a little something like:
sticking around I guess
ya okay don’t forget the peppers
Doesn’t matter who said what. Just know she quit smoking a week later.
“Can I go?” she asks. It’s not pleasant. Her voice tastes like gravel and hits her throat just enough.
“In a little while,” Spike says.
And that’s how that part finishes.
The rest follows:
(you shouldn’t be surprised because Faye is still very much Faye and with Faye’s body and Faye’s mind and a lot of scars, still very angry at him for clawing himself into her skin and not giving her a peace of mind – that’s what she wanted, you see, just a peace of mind.)
Faye presses her mouths to his.
Spike breathes. Then he breathes again. He pulls back and his fingers thread through her shirt. She is still cuffed. Her knees feel awkward and he is heavy on his hip with an elbow at her breast.
“Faye,” he says. His eyes are bright in the dark.
“I’m taking it back,” she shrugs.
She kisses him this way – all teeth, literally all teeth, marking his skin because she can. She tastes the cigarettes in his lip. He swallows her laugh and pulls himself underneath her.
His hips arch up. She pulls at her wrist. The cuffs jingle against the bed frame. She breaks her knuckles against the wood and pushes her hips back into his. It’s buttons and jacket after that, then, then, his fingers are pushing into her panties and she digging her knees into the bed, ready when his dick is pressing against her thigh. She’s flushed. She’s wet. She’s human. She doesn’t think about dead blonde girls running around.
“Shit, Faye,” he breathes and he sinks a fist into her hair.
She used to think a lot about this. It’s never over.
Poker Alice plays a mean hand.
When Faye comes back, Jet is waiting with dinner.
Her bones ache. He wears her apron, all pink frills and it’s an old joke.
“So,” he says.
“A waste,” she says, and he looks back at her, pan in hand. His gaze is heavy. The corners of his mouth are firm. She sits at the table, stretching out. “How about we head elsewhere?”
“Safe bet?” he asks.
Her lips turn.
He makes her a plate. She makes sure to get up and grab him a bar.
A week later, there is a blurb on the news. It flashes quickly. Jet changes the channel and they argue about ship parts.
Dragons or something.