Its Broken - Tumblr Posts

Oh god, and that screenshot.

The Other Side of the Rain

OK. So I tried to write an HEA for Jonathan and Arabella. I failed. Apparently I enjoy my heart shattering into tiny pieces too much.

So I wrote this instead - up on ffnet and AO3

debris / pinned down / it's broken

Coughing uncontrollably, Faye fell back against the wall despite the ominous way it creaked as her weight impacted against it. Well, fuck, if it was gonna collapse it should have done so in the upheaval that had just rocked the entire building. Faye had no sympathy for the wall, though she was grateful for the support it was offering her now as she tried not to choke on the air so thick with dust and debris.

Wheezing, she became aware of a sound that wasn’t due to the structure settling in the wake of the earthquake they’d just experienced. Relief flooded her at the groan that, while imbued with pain, was so familiar to her ears.

“Spike? You alive somewhere?” She called in a rough voice.

Another groan, as if he was fighting to regain or maintain consciousness. Faye scraped her back against the wall to assist herself in standing up before tentatively stepping away from the solid surface and moving off in the direction of the unhappy sounds of her partner. She was glad they were in a single story building because there was only so much roof that could tumble in on their heads here and, unless there was a fracture in the ground underneath their feet, there should be no risk of falling into the earth itself.

Well, she’d never hear the end of this, that was for sure. Nothing good came from Earth and nothing good happened if you overstayed your welcome topside either. The decision she’d made to try and uncover more of her own past had nearly buried her in it - though in her own defense it had been Spike’s idea to join her, so at least she wasn’t guilty of conning him into being there with her.

He’d displayed a peculiar curiosity in her upbringing when she had revealed to him and Jet that she truly did have her memories back. Her home was long gone but some of the places she’d gone to school had remained standing. Meteors had done a lot of damage to a lot of places, but the university had seemed stable enough to venture into. She’d only wanted to see if the mural she had painted in another life was still there on the wall of the health center, was that so much to ask? And maybe Spike’s interest had been due to how awful her drawing of Vincent had been - certainly his eyebrows had climbed his forehead when she admitted to having done such a huge piece of art with her friends before they all graduated.

Jet had no desire to see anymore of her artistic ability. He was still pretty pissed at her for convincing Ed to traipse off on her own, and Faye couldn’t blame him. She had been in a state of near-delirium at the time but even still… Ed was so trusting. So susceptible to suggestion. It was Faye’s fault that the child had gone off with only Ein as company.

Spike had been close-lipped about his own feelings on the matter. He’d shrugged and said that Ed was a big girl who could take care of herself. He’d been on his own at her age and on the streets of Tharsis which he argued was a harsher landscape than the deserts of Earth. But he had also quietly agreed that the ship was too quiet these days and had given Jet his woolong card to put gas in the Hammerhead so Jet could jaunt about in a vague search for the hacker.

The RedTail was still in no shape for flying, something which Jet admitted he wasn’t in a hurry to fix. And while the Swordfish II had surprisingly been left alone while Spike waltzed off on his suicidal takedown of a syndicate… its owner was not in the best shape himself. Begrudgingly, he’d volunteered to let Faye fly his ship over to the school grounds, but only if she let him tag along.

Being grounded from flying and also basically grounded from bounty hunting had been chafing at Spike for weeks now. Being stuck here on Earth hadn’t been helping much but they’d fled Mars at a limp, pushing the Bebop beyond its limits to get away from the red planet before the cops looked too hard into what had happened and who had walked away from the rubble.

Not that he’d been walking.

Anyway, speaking of rubble…

Faye caught sight of a round-toe shoe on the carpet in the next room. Following that point, her eyes traveled up the dusty pant leg to Spike’s upper body, where his left hand was clasped against his left side, and then further up to his face which was twisted with an expression of utmost discomfort. His right leg was mostly covered by a tall filing cabinet that was pinning him to the floor.

“Hey, cowboy,” She greeted with a rasp, coughing again. “You responsible for all this mess?”

He opened his eyes to glare at her. “You didn’t tell me this place was literally falling apart.” He muttered.

She rolled her eyes skyward. “It’s all fucking ancient, Spike. There’s been no maintenance whatsoever to keep shit in one piece, and moon bits have been raining down on everything for decades now. Anyway I think… well, when we landed over in the parking lot… did you notice something odd smelling?”

Clearly puzzled at her question, Spike frowned in thought. “Uhhh…”

Faye shook her head in dismissal as she went to his side. “I think some flammable natural gas went ka-blooey.” She gestured at his side. “You take some damage or what?”

Spike’s eyes widened at her explanation. “Faye, if you blew my fucking ship up somehow…”

“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” She replied with a shrug. “Don’t go borrowing trouble that we might not have. Now what’s going on here? Why haven’t you gotten up?”

He let out his breath in a hiss as she pressed against the hand held to his side.

“My fucking leg is pinned down by this piece of shit cabinet,” He muttered then, shifting his glare to the dingy green metal. “I tried to move it and…” He shut his mouth abruptly.

“Uh huh. Opened yourself back up a bit, eh?” She inhaled deeply and coughed again. “Well, we’re gonna have to see how bad this is before we mess around with that.” She prodded at his hand again and he swiped at her with his right hand, though the motion was enough of a twist that he stiffened and drew in a breath through tightly clenched teeth.

Giving up on that for the moment, Faye got to her feet and started poking around the debris.

Spike watched through half-lidded eyes. “What are you looking for?”

She shrugged again. “This is the health center - or was. I mean, this room probably has jack shit to offer but one of these other rooms might have some gauze or skin glue or something to piece you back together long enough to get us back to the ship where Jet can fix you up better. What were you doing in this office anyway?”

He glanced over at the window which had either broken during the earthquake or had been broken at some point before. It was impossible to tell old damage from new, and the floor near the window was littered with shards and dust. There was something bright outside and Faye moved closer to try and get a better look. Glass crunched under her boots as she pressed herself against the wall in shock.

There it was. The mural.

It was painted onto the outside wall of the next section of the health center, with a grassy area in between the two buildings. Faye remembered there being a handful of trees there at one time, and a bunch of benches. It was supposed to be an area where people could retreat to nature while on campus, a little respite from the brick and concrete buildings. The school had offered therapy sessions out there in the open air on nice days. The administration at the time of Faye’s attendance had judged the area too sterile despite the blossoming trees. They had held a competition for students to come up with artwork and then settled on a winner whose concept would find a home on the outer wall.

It hadn’t been Faye’s drawing that won. She simply wasn’t that good of an artist, then or now. Her friend Miyuki had been an amazing artist and had won the competition. Faye and the others had helped her paint a rich landscape scene of Pulau Ubin. It was somewhat chipped these days but the sense of calm evoked by the mossy stone covered shoreline meeting the lapping waves… the scattering of clouds catching glimmers of varying colors as the sun set (or rose depending on how the viewer chose to see the picture)... it was at once heartbreakingly familiar and devastatingly far from who she was now. She could remember adding blues to the water, adding cream to the sky… She could remember their gossip, their laughter, the way their presence buoyed her even on her worst days. She could remember sitting on the bench after they were done, enjoying the fruits of their labor, and best of all overhearing the delighted reactions of everyone who came and saw.

It was such a soothing piece. The perfect thing to offer consolation to a wounded heart, or inspire hope in someone whose spirits were flagging. It was, even now in disrepair and with portions missing entirely, just as beautiful as she had thought it was when it was fresh and she was surrounded by the loving and supportive friends she’d had for years - and thought she’d had forever.

“Faye?”

Startled momentarily by the intrusion into her reminiscence, Faye jerked her head around at Spike’s call. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead and blood beginning to soak through his shirt and jacket to touch on the paleness of his hand.

“I… I’ll be back,” She managed before fleeing the room. Quickly, she darted into the next space and the next until she was finally able to acquire some of the medical supplies she’d desperately hoped might still be in the building. Gauze and bandages tended to hold up decently well over the passage of time, and that was fortunate because that was what he needed the most.

She made her way back to the office where Spike remained trapped. A shiver of fear raced down her spine when he silently allowed her to help him shrug off the blood soaked clothing of his upper body, though that was quite a painful ordeal no doubt. It always made her nervous when he went quiet like this, and when he let her wrap him up. A bitchy Spike meant a Spike that was feeling well enough to bitch. A silent Spike was a Spike troubled by either physical ailments or mental anguish and neither boded well.

Afterwards, as he recovered from the shifting around required to undress him and affix the bandages tightly into place, she carefully rolled out the drawers of the filing cabinet one by one and emptied them of the various contents. Once done with that, she eyed her partner up before taking a deep breath.

“Ready?”

Spike grit his teeth and nodded.

The filing cabinet was lighter now with the drawers empty, though it’d be lighter still if she’d been able to remove the drawers entirely, something she’d briefly attempted but had given up on when the struggle involved seemed to add too much agony to Spike’s features. He still gave a sharp gasp as she managed to lift and then twist and drop the heavy piece of office furniture.

Glancing down, she observed with relief that his leg appeared to be fine. Or, at least there were no bones protruding anywhere she could see. Turning from her cursory inspection of his newly revealed limb, she crouched next to him and used a bit of gauze to wipe at his sweaty face.

“Okay there?” She queried.

“Think my ankle might be broken,” He replied in a grumpy voice.

“Better a break than a sprain,” Faye said then. “Breaks heal, sprains are never quite the same. You need a minute or you ready for me to haul you up?”

He took stock of his condition for a moment before looking back at her. “Let’s do it.”

Once steady on his feet, or rather once he was upright and leaning heavily on her, Spike tilted his chin towards the window.

“I wanna see it before we go. Went through all the hassle of getting here…”

Wordlessly, Faye worked with him to maneuver to the broken window. They stood there for several long minutes as Spike regarded the scene and Faye strove to stay in the present moment while memories tried to tug her back. The grounds covered in verdant green, the trees laden with leaves that whispered in the breeze, the presence of good company making her feel less alone in the busy nearly-adult world of university.

Spike’s warmth at her side was reassuring. He was lost to quiet contemplation but it didn’t worry her this time. It didn’t seem pain-driven, merely the effect of taking in the mural. A part of her heart flickered with appreciation at sharing this with someone once more. She may not be surrounded by friends, but she wasn’t alone either.