tell me i'm spending too much time on happy endings.
Some people wake up screaming, but Faye always just wakes up sweaty. Nightmares don't bother her anymore, and that probably has something to do with the fact that she’s met nightmares before, physically, and they’re no big deal. You can punch a nightmare, you can smoke with a nightmare, you can laugh with a nightmare. When she has them, like tonight, they don’t bother her the way that they used to if only because she likes to pretend it’s that same nightmare just being a massive asshole, his own way of saying ‘hey, Faye, we didn’t forget you.’ But that’s sentimental even for her.
She runs the tap in the bathroom and smokes over the toilet, dropping ashes into the water and flushing them away every so often. Even with it as chilly as it’s been lately, her thin tank top still sticks to her skin with sweat that just keeps coming. The water she turned on isn’t even hot, so there’s no steam, but she plays with the idea of climbing into the shower and letting needle pricks of scalding hot water actually give her a reason to sweat. Her heart is still beating too hard for that, though, so she just flicks the cigarette butt into the ashy water and pulls out another one to brood over.
The bathroom floor is cool underneath her folded legs - long and white and unscarred, despite her choices in previous lifestyles - and it’s a strange contrast to the way her skin is heated.
When she’d woken up, the sheet had been tangled around her legs and wound up and around her torso, the comforter kicked to Fred’s side of the bed and the pillows all tossed to the floor. And she’d been burning and breathing too fast, like she’d just come down from running a race at high noon. But that’s nothing new: Faye is used to nightmares that wake her up in that fashion. She used to have them all the time after she turned twenty-one and then more frequently when she got her memory back, after Spike died.
That’s part of the reason that she hadn’t woken with a jolt or a gasp or anything that would denote any sort of surprise. She just… woke up. Woke up and then promptly decided that she needed to smoke a few cigarettes and get out of the bedroom before the weight of it crushed her, and because retreating into the bathroom is a much better idea than taking a walk or popping into the nexus, that’s where she decided that she would go, and that’s why she’s sitting on the floor with her head bent over the bowl of the toilet, like she’s drunk or sick or both.
Even with tobacco, she still has that familiar taste of liquid nitrogen across her palate. It’s as cloying as the whipped cream they use in coffee shops on frappuccinos and stuff like that, coating her mouth and the back of her throat even if it’s only a phantom sensation. Faye brushes her teeth twice and swishes with mouthwash. She has two glasses of water and three cigarettes before she hops up on the counter and swings her legs, staring at the shower just across from her.
There are memories that rattle around in her brain from time to time that she swears she never, ever made. It’s easy to distinguish them from the rest, because the others all hold one constant theme: faces. She can see Jet’s face plain as day, Spike’s too. She can even see Ed and Ein when she’s in a decent enough mood. The same goes for Witney, and she can see everyone that she ever knew in the City when she’s quiet, curled up on a couch or at some random bar or running, because she apparently likes to run now, like some ill-suited housewife who sincerely needs a gun in her hands and a reward in her eyes. Sometimes she sees Cassidy and tries to conjure up guilt but never feels bad, because the life she has now is something she hadn’t even realized she’d been wanting as much as she did. She never loved him as much as she liked to pretend anyway.
She sees Kitty’s face the strongest when she drinks tequila and buys cigarettes, because Kitty would always say things like, “Why you’d ever smoke those, I’ll never know. No, Faye, I don’t want to try - No.”
(In the bathroom by herself, Faye laughs.)
But there are images these days that she’s sure she never had, pictures of peoples’ faces that she’s never met. People from her past are different - she can pinpoint and name them by focusing in on setting and surrounding, by the way that they make her feel when she thinks of them. In her head now are people that she’s never met: a British man with blond hair and a man with red eyes and some delusional looking kid with a bright smile and a yellow jacket. There’s a man whose face makes her frown and bite on her cigarette, and too many images of Spike that she never had before she left that place.
Pulling her legs up - and Fred might have something to say about her bare soles on the bathroom counter - Faye absentmindedly lights another cigarette and wonders if she’s going crazy, if her memory is going through one of those lapses again where it overloads her until she has nothing left to do but run and try to find these things. That’s what she did the last time she rememebered anything at all about herself. She took off so far and so fast that coming back to the Bebop had been a surprise in itself even to her, but things are different now. She doesn’t want to run and she doesn’t want to leave. She wants to stay here and have a niche and drink coffee and laugh genuinely.
Faye taps ashes into the sink and puts her feet down, jumps down with a soft thud of feet on tile. Washing the mess down the drain, she catches herself in the mirror and is startled: twenty-five, dark hair, bright eyes, fair skin. She’s pretty, and she knows that, but there’s only one person she wants to notice that she’s pretty these days, and there’s only one person she wants pointing it out when she doesn’t look her best.
Like right now, with her skin still sweaty and her shirt hanging too far down because it’s too soaked through. Her hair is a tangled mess. She looks strung out and caught half-afraid of herself and like she needs to eat something before she falls apart, which is funny because she feels sturdy standing there. Despite all her bones and muscles aching, she feels aligned. Despite these faces floating in her head, she feels safe enough.
Faye passes a hand over her hair and makes it lie flat, tosses her fourth cigarette into the toilet and flushes it before she turns the tap off and yanks her shirt off over her head. Nude from the waist up, the tank top joins the pillows on the floor and she pulls some random shirt that isn’t hers out of the closet and buttons it up before sitting on the edge of the bed and gripping the mattress, because she doesn’t sleep in nothing unless she has a good reason to.
When she closes her eyes, she doesn’t feel tired, despite the late (early) hour. She just feels caught up and calm, and part of her knows that it’s not from the four cigarettes and rush of nicotine she just experienced in the bathroom. Her skin is still clammy, and there’s still a small stitch in her chest where it feels like she ran too far too fast, or stayed underwater too long (fifty-four years is a long time), but none of it is bad. She smells like someone that she loves (probably, most likely, obviously) and knows that she’s done running for now.
The sky is already starting to turn gray around the edges of the windows when she gets up again, and Faye thinks that maybe she’ll try cooking something that doesn’t crumble into black char when she pokes it with a fork. Even she has to start somewhere.
She runs the tap in the bathroom and smokes over the toilet, dropping ashes into the water and flushing them away every so often. Even with it as chilly as it’s been lately, her thin tank top still sticks to her skin with sweat that just keeps coming. The water she turned on isn’t even hot, so there’s no steam, but she plays with the idea of climbing into the shower and letting needle pricks of scalding hot water actually give her a reason to sweat. Her heart is still beating too hard for that, though, so she just flicks the cigarette butt into the ashy water and pulls out another one to brood over.
The bathroom floor is cool underneath her folded legs - long and white and unscarred, despite her choices in previous lifestyles - and it’s a strange contrast to the way her skin is heated.
When she’d woken up, the sheet had been tangled around her legs and wound up and around her torso, the comforter kicked to Fred’s side of the bed and the pillows all tossed to the floor. And she’d been burning and breathing too fast, like she’d just come down from running a race at high noon. But that’s nothing new: Faye is used to nightmares that wake her up in that fashion. She used to have them all the time after she turned twenty-one and then more frequently when she got her memory back, after Spike died.
That’s part of the reason that she hadn’t woken with a jolt or a gasp or anything that would denote any sort of surprise. She just… woke up. Woke up and then promptly decided that she needed to smoke a few cigarettes and get out of the bedroom before the weight of it crushed her, and because retreating into the bathroom is a much better idea than taking a walk or popping into the nexus, that’s where she decided that she would go, and that’s why she’s sitting on the floor with her head bent over the bowl of the toilet, like she’s drunk or sick or both.
Even with tobacco, she still has that familiar taste of liquid nitrogen across her palate. It’s as cloying as the whipped cream they use in coffee shops on frappuccinos and stuff like that, coating her mouth and the back of her throat even if it’s only a phantom sensation. Faye brushes her teeth twice and swishes with mouthwash. She has two glasses of water and three cigarettes before she hops up on the counter and swings her legs, staring at the shower just across from her.
There are memories that rattle around in her brain from time to time that she swears she never, ever made. It’s easy to distinguish them from the rest, because the others all hold one constant theme: faces. She can see Jet’s face plain as day, Spike’s too. She can even see Ed and Ein when she’s in a decent enough mood. The same goes for Witney, and she can see everyone that she ever knew in the City when she’s quiet, curled up on a couch or at some random bar or running, because she apparently likes to run now, like some ill-suited housewife who sincerely needs a gun in her hands and a reward in her eyes. Sometimes she sees Cassidy and tries to conjure up guilt but never feels bad, because the life she has now is something she hadn’t even realized she’d been wanting as much as she did. She never loved him as much as she liked to pretend anyway.
She sees Kitty’s face the strongest when she drinks tequila and buys cigarettes, because Kitty would always say things like, “Why you’d ever smoke those, I’ll never know. No, Faye, I don’t want to try - No.”
(In the bathroom by herself, Faye laughs.)
But there are images these days that she’s sure she never had, pictures of peoples’ faces that she’s never met. People from her past are different - she can pinpoint and name them by focusing in on setting and surrounding, by the way that they make her feel when she thinks of them. In her head now are people that she’s never met: a British man with blond hair and a man with red eyes and some delusional looking kid with a bright smile and a yellow jacket. There’s a man whose face makes her frown and bite on her cigarette, and too many images of Spike that she never had before she left that place.
Pulling her legs up - and Fred might have something to say about her bare soles on the bathroom counter - Faye absentmindedly lights another cigarette and wonders if she’s going crazy, if her memory is going through one of those lapses again where it overloads her until she has nothing left to do but run and try to find these things. That’s what she did the last time she rememebered anything at all about herself. She took off so far and so fast that coming back to the Bebop had been a surprise in itself even to her, but things are different now. She doesn’t want to run and she doesn’t want to leave. She wants to stay here and have a niche and drink coffee and laugh genuinely.
Faye taps ashes into the sink and puts her feet down, jumps down with a soft thud of feet on tile. Washing the mess down the drain, she catches herself in the mirror and is startled: twenty-five, dark hair, bright eyes, fair skin. She’s pretty, and she knows that, but there’s only one person she wants to notice that she’s pretty these days, and there’s only one person she wants pointing it out when she doesn’t look her best.
Like right now, with her skin still sweaty and her shirt hanging too far down because it’s too soaked through. Her hair is a tangled mess. She looks strung out and caught half-afraid of herself and like she needs to eat something before she falls apart, which is funny because she feels sturdy standing there. Despite all her bones and muscles aching, she feels aligned. Despite these faces floating in her head, she feels safe enough.
Faye passes a hand over her hair and makes it lie flat, tosses her fourth cigarette into the toilet and flushes it before she turns the tap off and yanks her shirt off over her head. Nude from the waist up, the tank top joins the pillows on the floor and she pulls some random shirt that isn’t hers out of the closet and buttons it up before sitting on the edge of the bed and gripping the mattress, because she doesn’t sleep in nothing unless she has a good reason to.
When she closes her eyes, she doesn’t feel tired, despite the late (early) hour. She just feels caught up and calm, and part of her knows that it’s not from the four cigarettes and rush of nicotine she just experienced in the bathroom. Her skin is still clammy, and there’s still a small stitch in her chest where it feels like she ran too far too fast, or stayed underwater too long (fifty-four years is a long time), but none of it is bad. She smells like someone that she loves (probably, most likely, obviously) and knows that she’s done running for now.
The sky is already starting to turn gray around the edges of the windows when she gets up again, and Faye thinks that maybe she’ll try cooking something that doesn’t crumble into black char when she pokes it with a fork. Even she has to start somewhere.