tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-22:379120Just A Dream ...vettacvettac2010-03-28T15:44:11Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-22:379120:8869Bebop Drabble Triangle2010-03-28T15:43:01Z2010-03-28T15:44:11Zpublic0Disclaimer: I own neither Cowboy Bebop or any of the lyrics quoted herein. <br /><br /><em>Why I Have My Grandma's Sad Eyes by Kill Hannah<br /></em><br /><em>It started like this,<br />I was here right, standing leaning back,<br />My deer in the headlights look never fails<br />but hearing all the things that you said,<br />Cut me to the core, blew me away,<br />Like I got hit with a gunshot, like a bomb dropped,<br />Stabbed with a white hot knife in the heart,<br />While all these people still ask me<br />why I have my grandma's sad eyes.</em><br /><br />Spike leaned against the side of the Swordfish, under the wing, hands in his pockets and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He had needed some air, and even though there was a slight breeze, the oppressive heat of the Martian sun was impossible to escape. A strong gust swirled up, blowing smoke into his face. He welcomed the burning in his eyes as the image of Faye washed away along with the tear that rolled down his cheek. He took a hand from his pocket to discard the butt and swiped his face on his jacket sleeve as he pushed himself off from the ship.<br /><br />After dinner earlier that evening, he had been simply minding his own damned business, watching Big Shots and debating whether a two hundred thousand woolong bounty was going to be worth his time and energy.<br /><br />For some reason still unknown to him, he had looked up to find Faye's eyes upon him, and for a few minutes neither of them had said a word, simply staring each other down.<br /><br />Then she had turned and walked away, leaving him to watch her small figure disappear down the hallway to her room.<br /><br />The crushing pain that hit him was unlike anything he had felt in a long time; it started from deep down in his gut and traveled all the way up his torso, sitting like a ball of lead in his chest. He found it hard to swallow that thick knot in his throat, and for a moment he wondered if Jet had put something in tonight's dinner that had not sat well in his stomach.<br /><br />He reached in his pocket and pulled out another cigarette to light.<br /><br />Who was he kidding?<br /><br />He knew exactly what the problem was, had known for some time now.<br /><br />It was that woman with the green eyes.<br /><hr /><br /><em>Mind Over Money by Turin Breaks<br /> <br />Mind over money, bent over backwards<br />Light up my life like a very last cigarette<br />Time after time dear we will just lie here<br />Staring at ceilings it doesn't really matter where we are<br /><br />Wearing a smile like it's going out of style<br />Look at your self, there's nothing in there<br />Just put points on a grave stone, can you see yourself sinking<br />Staring at ceilings it doesn't really matter where you are<br /><br />That's alright I warned myself<br />Keep blood on the inside and nowhere else<br />Up on a shelf that's where I need to be</em><br /><br />His eyes were closed as Faye watched him, his hands clasped across his stomach, a self-absorbed smirk across his face. He looked the picture of peace and contentment. She could have no idea of what was going on inside his head.<br /><br />In his mind he was recounting all of the near-misses in his life, trying to figure out how many lives he had used up or given away, and how many he had left.<br /><br />The first one, he figured, was the day he walked into the Red Dragons headquarters, signing away his autonomy and independence.<br /><br />The second was when he had had allowed himself to be talked into swapping out the eye he was born with for one owned by Mao and the Dragons, pulling him deeper into the dungeon and away from himself.<br /><br />The third life was wrested away from him during crossfire between the Dragons and a rival syndicate, and that was the first one from which he almost did not make it back. He and Vicious became fast friends from that point on, and enjoyed a long run of camaraderie while moving up the ranks together.<br /><br />Then a stone dropped like lead to the bottom of a cesspool, when Julia entered the scene. Despite warnings from Vicious and Mao, he gave away another life by falling in love with her.<br /><br />When finally he had to rid himself from the oppressive life that the Dragons had become, he faked his death to escape, nearly losing his life in the process. The rest were easy to figure out: mad Pierrot, Vincent, the destruction of Vicious and the Red Dragons.<br /><br />Now another woman, whose existence in his time and space threatened to sluice out another life.<br /><br />He cracked open an eye and made himself look at Faye’s still figure, fast asleep, mouth ajar as soft snores emanated from her pretty little mouth.<br /><br />He closed his eyes. Yeah, he guessed he could hold on to this last life for awhile.<br /><hr /><br /><em>Seeds of Night by The Cave Singers<br /><br />Oh my love <br />This is our town<br />Where gray cloud wander <br />Over heaven and ground<br /><br />Oh, thinking of heaven<br />Oh, thinking it's night<br />Oh, thinking of heaven<br />Oh, maybe next time<br />Next life down the road</em><br /><br /><br />Faye had grown tired of waiting for Spike and decided to venture off on her own. She wandered along the avenue, stopping to glance up at a high-rise building displaying the weather report. She wondered briefly whether an umbrella could offer protection against meteor showers the way that her pink umbrella with the Dalmatians used to when she was a child …<br /><br /><em>“Today’s forecast: 80% chance of clouds today.”</em><br /><br />Faye skipped merrily along the sidewalk, her pink umbrella over her head as she jumped into every puddle that she came upon. Daddy had bought it for her as a present when he returned from his last business trip. When she opened the big box, she had pulled out the pink umbrella that had oodles of her favorite kind of dog, along with her favorite movie, 101 Dalmatians. She had begged Daddy to buy her a Dalmatian of her own, but he had told her no, because when she had grown tired of the dog and the responsibility that came with caring for it, the task would fall to the servants. Faye had sulked for weeks until a new obsession had taken her interest away from a Dalmatian.<br /><br /><em>“Today’s forecast: 80% chance of meteor showers today.”</em><br /><br />Faye heard the patter of small stones hitting the ground behind her, and she ducked under the awning of a building, waiting until the wave had passed. Once the showers had passed, she ventured out to continue her walk.<br /><br />She saw Spike heading towards her from the opposite direction. Judging by the sour look on his face, she must have been gone longer than she thought. She put her hand up to her ear and realized that she had also forgotten to turn on her earpiece. <br /><br />She stopped and waited for him to reach her.<br /><br />“Where were you?” He towered over her imposingly.<br /><br />Faye gave him an arrogant look of her own.<br /><br />“You took too long.”<br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vettac&ditemid=8869" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-22:379120:8487In This Place2009-06-20T15:26:42Z2009-06-20T15:26:42Zcalmpublic0Title: In This Place<br />Fandom: Cowboy Bebop<br />Character: Spike Spiegel/Faye Valentine<br />Rating: PG<br /><br />Faye scanned the room searching for signs of movement. Jet was nowhere in sight, so she figured he was in the bonsai room, his sanctuary for when the stress of boredom became intolerable, or when he was trying to avoid her. The Swordfish was in the hangar, which meant that Spike was somewhere around, and since all he ever liked to do was to sleep, she knew that she could find him in his usual spot.<br /><br />Faye could see the large feet hanging over the edge of the couch, and she moved forward stealthily. The ship’s engines shifted in response to a pre-programmed command to adjust course, and she froze when the unexpected groan of gears reached her ears. Praying that Spike would not wake up, she stole a glance at his face, watching his eyes for signs of movement. Sure enough, the tell-tale signs of dreaming were evident as she watched the way his eyelids fluttered. She sighed in relief and crept closer, crouching down to look into his face.<br /><br />More times than she cared to admit, she watched him while he slept. Sometimes she did it to reassure herself that he was still breathing when he was recovering from serious injuries. Other times, it was simply because she liked looking at him, fascinated by the range of emotions that would surface. She knew every phase that played out upon his face.<br /><br />There was his semi-conscious phase, one ear hearing every word spoken around him, while the other listened to whatever was going on in his own warped brain. Those were the times when his eyes would be appear closed, save for a thin sliver of an opening beneath the lids, and he’d mumble incoherently to her or Jet, a half-truthful, somewhat wistful and completely inaccurate version of what he thought he heard. Those were the times when Faye wanted to pull him into her arms to stroke the sadness away.<br /><br />During his sneaky-fake-sleep phase, Spike listened to everything going on in the room, storing up tidbits of information to be later used as bribery for a few woolongs or to annoy the hell out of her. He thought he was quite masterful at feigning sleep, and anyone watching him would never even be able to tell. Except for her, that is. Because only she knew that during his fake-sleep phase, his eyelids would flutter just like he was in REM sleep mode. But she had figured out that Spike’s cybernetic eye would flutter out of sync with his natural eye, something that happened only when he was conscious.<br /><br />Then there was his ignore-Faye-fake-sleep phase, when he would lie on the couch with his eyes closed and his arm draped across his eyes, and pretend to be asleep, knowing that she knew he faking, just to annoy her. If she wanted something from him, whether an answer to a question or a cigarette from his pack, he would launch into the phase, complete with snoring sound effects. During those times, she tried her damndest not to let him provoke her into blowing up and throwing a shoe or an ashtray at him.<br /><br />Sometimes it worked.<br /><br />Faye inched closer to his sleeping form, watching for signs of activity. Her hand hovered near his face, then reached over to trace a finger over his cheek, marveling at the feel of the silky stubble against her fingertip. “You would kill me for doing this if you were awake, wouldn’t you?” she whispered, so sure of her knowledge of his sleep phases that she knew he wouldn’t answer him. She talked to him about some of her recently returned memories, and of one in particular, a memory of a rainy Saturday morning, lying on the floor of her bedroom listening to the radio. She told him about how much she had loved to dance, and when one of her favorite songs had queued on the radio, how she had spontaneously grabbed one of her teddy bears to be her dancing partner, the two of them whirling around the room, until the song ended, and they had collapsed to the floor in giddy exhaustion.<br /><br />***<br /><br />His eyelids fluttered as Faye’s voice wafted through to his unconsciousness. He focused on her voice, trying to make sense of the words, sliding his eyes open to watch her. He was sure she didn’t know that he was awake, completely lost as she was in her story. The last time, she had told her story to the dog, so apparently she liked relating memories to inanimate objects. He guessed he could count himself in that category.<br /><br />“… and that was the last time I was ever in my room,” she whispered as she watched the fan above her. “The last time I ever hugged my Velvet bunny, the last time I ever saw my home. ‘Cause the next day was my long awaited trip into space.”<br /><br />Faye sighed and looked down at Spike, gasping when she realized that his eyes were open.<br /><br />Their gazes locked.<br /><br />He watched her with an inscrutable expression, but he remained silent.<br /><br />“You’re awake,” she muttered, looking away. She wasn’t embarrassed really, she told herself; just annoyed that now he had more ammunition to torture her with. “Did you hear the whole thing?”<br /><br />She swallowed a lump in her throat. It was completely irrational for her to think that he could ever understand anything about her. He had never asked her anything about her life, and he had never volunteered anything about his.<br /><br />She leaned against the couch to rise from the floor, but he caught her chin in his fingers and tilted her face toward his.<br /><br />She gasped as he forced her to look at him. She found herself mesmerized by his eyes as the cybernetic eye fluctuated in varying shades of burnished umber and rust, and she exhaled when a sense of calm overcame her.<br /><br />Spike leaned in to brush his lips over hers, a whisper of a touch. Her heart pounded in her ears as the unfamiliar pleasure of his caress flooded her mind. He leaned back and looked at her.<br /><br />“Feeling better now?” he asked, his trademark smirk gracing his lips.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vettac&ditemid=8487" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments