A/N: Because I haven't posted a Cowboy Bebop story up, I thought I'd stick a one-shot up here.

Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop. Let's all cry.

Spike Spiegel was dead.

She hadn't cried. Hadn't said a word. But the sadness swirled in the bottom of the whiskey bottle that dangled from her hand, in the puffs of smoke that escaped her ruby lips. Jet tried to call; Ed had hacked through her to her computer system, only to be switched off along with the power to anything electronic in the dingy hotel room.

It was only her, the bottle, and the fan that creaked above her head.

The smell of past passions clung to the bed sheets of the dark room, and stains of alcohol dotted the yellowing curtain. The sun was blotted, casting dark shadows upon the floor. The door, riddled with the bullets of earlier arguments, was latched, but not locked. There was an ironing board that protruded from the wall, but the weight of her gun holsters and yellow whore garb forced it low to the ground.

She coughed.

Her disheveled plum hair fell over tired olive eyes. Red nails dug welts into pale palms, and another cloud of smoke floated up to the ceiling. The heat that hugged her lithe figure was the only thing that kept her from loading her gun and blasting her brains out. She had been in a stupor, desperately searching Big Shot's past archives of bounties for Spike's name. Needing to know he was still causing trouble somewhere, Faye had tried to keep herself together.

She fancied she loved him. Dry sense of humor and gangly arms. Wrinkled suit and sparkling, if not mismatched, brown eyes. Mismatched like they were, like they always would have been. He could have never loved her, and she couldn't not have loved him.

Maybe he might have wanted her if she was his golden angel, the key to his freedom from the memories, his Julia. She had been an angel, among all that smoke from her cigarette that day. Smoke very much like the wisps around her face now. It was almost as if it were the same cigarette; the butt glowing red like her welts.

But how could a man who dwelled in his past love a woman who had none?

Another swig of the burning amber slid down her throat, and the coughing returned. She forced her head into the sheets, trying desperately to suck the passions they undoubtedly had experienced into her own memories. Had he ever known she was watching?

Memories and smoke. Both swirled around the fading floral wallpaper and it seemed that the only thing that chased it away was a shot glass and an open window.

She sat up.

Annoying him had been her greatest past time. Notorious for rampant bitchiness, she was the terror of his life. But even as a terror, he was focused on her. And in a way, Faye saw it as a sort of challenge. A devotion that would pass, as he would often remind her whenever anyone else entered onto the scene, or when he would yet again become lost in reverie.

A quiet sigh escaped her lips, shoved by another cough. Another puff of smoke.

Partners. What was she thinking when she had offered that? Who could come close to something as otherworldly as Julia? Spike was constantly reminding her that she could never be his Julia. But who could be blamed for wanting to be a part of greatness, a part of unattainable beauty? Another gulp of the burning whiskey, before the empty bottle crashed to the ground.

She stood.

His laugh echoed in her ears, mocking her for always watching but never seeing. Always watching him, but never knowing him. His revenge, his dare for her to love him.

He knew. He had to have known.

He showed her the difference between himself and her when he left that day. One brown eye that saw the future and then one that saw only memories. Only Julia. She couldn't compete. Not when her own jade eyes were hazed to her own remembrances, not when all they could see were his nightly martial arts practices, and not if they didn't hold a place in the array of his demons

. She blinked suddenly, and made her way over to the balcony. She threw open the rickety door and leaned against the cement wall of the terrace, entranced by the dying sun.

So many days it has seen. So many loves it has started and ended. She idly wondered if it had finally ended hers. She ran her hand through her hair.

There were shouts of laughter in the streets, of children whose whole lives panned out optimistically before them. She smiled sardonically. She could still be them, if she wanted.

But she didn't. She had wanted to be a part of his memories. A part of the haze that drifted into the air like her cigarette.

She stared at it quietly. What had made it so addicting, this cigarette? Nicotine, the cause of the rush? The heady feeling she got when he was annoyed, when he cursed her name? The cloud that floated incessantly around all of their heads in fits of boredom, which wafted over her now?

She shook her head, her attention fixed upon the white roll.

No, it wasn't the nicotine in a cigarette that made it so like him. The nicotine in it was an acid, and he couldn't have been anything but a base. A base to her acid, a right to her wrong.

No, he was like the smoke.

She couldn't remember the name of the chemical, but she had heard that it reacted to the acid of the nicotine and turned it into a base, making the euphoric feeling of smoking enter the body faster. It made people happier more and the smoke waft easier.

She jabbed the cigarette angrily against the rusted balcony pole, the violent sunset of Venus glowing on her already exhausted face.

Ammonia. Spike was like ammonia. Julia was his nicotine.

"And me," Faye whispered quietly, flicking the wretched white tube over the pole, "I'm just the wrapping."

-FIN-