never finished that letter i was writing

[attitude]

At first, she'd assumed that Edward had disappeared. It would fall in line with how everything happened back home, with how each individual Faye came to care for vanished one after the other, by choice or by circumstance. Edward wasn't necessarily a person Faye understood, but she'd been a constant, one of the few that remained in the space after all the years Faye spent frozen, and that in of itself made her valuable. Grounding. Family, in a strange way. So to have that taken yet again only threw into sharp relief that which Faye feared most, and the reason why she was so hesitant to settle with Dean, or to show any level of happiness over having a child. Because everything, on the island, was transient.

But a couple days afterwards, Faye became smarter about the way she searched for anything Edward left behind. Began asking other islanders whether or not they'd caught a glimpse of the olive-skinned redhead, usually with a dog in tow.

Rumors led her to the junkyard. It took a fair amount of waiting that afternoon to finally catch a glimpse of Edward in the open, but Faye could wait.

She didn't appreciate being left behind.

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[radical_cowgirl]

Edward was free. No more sharing houses with people she didn't know, no more feeling like she was losing things that were important. Edward was free and on her own. Couldn't get left if you were already alone, right? And that was how Edward wanted it.

Ein was a little sad. But that was okay, Ein would feel better. It was for the best. Just the two of them.

The junkyard was always fun, even if Stark's robots watched her, but she found little bits and pieces and she thought she could build a nifty... something with what she found, something to make the ramshackle hut she was crouching in feel more like home. With pieces and parts in her bag and a large piece of metal in her arms, she was leaded home, whistling a nameless tune.

[attitude]

Faye was waiting by the hut. The one she figured was probably Edward's, at least, guessing by the sparse spread of items inside, little other than parts and pieces that even Faye couldn't make complete sense of. She looked up when she heard the whistle, pushing off of the wall of the hut and standing wholly on both feet. It didn't feel like as strong of a stance as it used to be. Then again, little seemed quite as strong and certain as it used to be.

The plight of people accustomed to living alone.

"So... just vanishing without a trace, huh?" she asked quietly, eyes watchful as Edward drew near.

[radical_cowgirl]

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." Edward didn't know how to answer that question quite right. She thought she'd left a note. Maybe she didn't. Oops. "Ein, did we forget the note?" The corgi's head only tilted in confusion. He didn't know.

"Edward is sorry, Ed meant to leave a note. Edward moved out."

[attitude]

"Not really what I meant," Faye replied, and although her voice was soft, the evenness of her gaze was something else entirely, folded over steel and shaking with all the movement of a girl digging her heels stubbornly into the dirt. Were she only a few years younger, she could treat the situation with all the petulance that Faye sometimes wanted to. Because she wasn't prepared for any of this— to be pregnant with a child, to be keeping the child, to be somewhat involved in raising a teenager.

She never asked for any of it. But it felt like she was bearing a heavy burden for all of it. Dean helped where he could, and he was bound to pull more than his share once the baby was born. Edward, however— that was a problem all Faye's own.

"Why'd you leave?"

[radical_cowgirl]

"Too busy in that house. Edward was too crowded." That... wasn't exactly what she felt, but it was the beginning of the truth. It was crowded in that place, at least to her. Dean, Dean's sister, the Angel-man... And none of them were her people. She chose the Bebop, she wanted to be there with the cowboys.

Not in a farmhouse with the people that weren't hers.

Except Faye. Which was part of the problem.

"Edward doesn't belong there." And belonging was supposed to be the best, wasn't it?

[attitude]

"Dean invited you there. I wanted you there. How do you belong more than that?"

They were hard-hitting questions. Direct, in a way that Faye wasn't often with people, let alone Edward. But it was the best way she could think of to express how she felt to Edward. If Edward didn't want to stay with Faye anymore, it wasn't something that she would stop, but some part of her couldn't help but think that Edward wasn't being better served or happier without Faye around. Without a home to easily return to.

"I want to belong too, you know. And Dean— he wants me there. He... wants to expand the family, he wants to bring us in. It's an invitation. You can belong if you want to."

[radical_cowgirl]

"Edward didn't choose. Edward went with Faye, but I didn't choose. Just went." How could she make Faye understand? "Edward goes where Edward wants and Edward doesn't get left behind."

Maybe that was it, maybe Ed just felt like Faye was leaving her behind. She went off and made this all-new family and Ed didn't even have her father-person anymore. She couldn't just go make one. She didn't really look at Faye, just kinda in her direction, as she went to place her day's scrounging on a table. "There is Faye's family, where there's going to be a Father-person and Mother-person and baby-person and it's not mine. Not my family. Not my father and mother. They're not here, I don't belong."

She didn't even notice as she slipped back into first-person pronouns, sitting in a chair and reaching down to run her fingers over Ein's head. To his credit, Ein rose up on his hind legs and placed his head on her lap. "Faye has her family there. Faye belongs. I have Ein. I belong here. Ein is Edward's family."

[attitude]

"You're choosing to leave now," Faye clarified. She wasn't just going to let Edward brush this off as chance, wasn't going to accept full responsibility for supposedly abandoning Edward. Because she wasn't. Not everyone in the house felt like Faye's family yet either, but that was how Bebop had started as well. That was how practically any friendships she had following her memory loss had started, and even as a child, she thought friendships were beholden to the same laws of chance and circumstance. "Families aren't all the same shape, Edward. What we had on Bebop was a place where we belonged. But we were all strangers there once. It was only time that made us... into family."

She took a deep, steadying breath. "You're old enough that you should start realizing that now, Edward. I am inviting you to be part of my family. If you leave, that's not... that's not me leaving you behind. That's you choosing to leave. There's a difference, Edward. I haven't forgotten about you. I just found someone else along the way, too. And I don't want to be lonely anymore. I'm so... tired of being lonely."

[radical_cowgirl]

"But I chose Bebop, I chose you and Spike and Jet, and Ein chose me. Ed didn't choose Dean, or the Angel-man, you chose and Ed went with. Ed doesn't know if she wants to choose." There was panic in the edges of her voice, real fear, things and feelings she didn't understand. She knew that she could choose them, she knew she'd been invited, that Faye and Dean and everyone wanted her there but... everyone seemed to assume she wanted to. That they asked like it was already decided and Edward didn't get a say.

Edward said what was in Edward's life and this was different than the Bebop. This was babies and kids and pets and picket fences like in the old movies Jet liked.

She was afraid to choose now, because if she chose wrong and things... Ed had family leave before. Left her at the kid place and came back too late. "Ed knows Faye is happy. Edward wants Faye to be happy. But Edward isn't happy." And she didn't know what she wanted enough to vocalize it. "Edward doesn't know what I want to be happy."

[attitude]

There was something about the way that Edward put it that drew Faye to silence. She couldn't think of a retort to that. She simply couldn't. If Edward wasn't happy with Faye, that was another thing entirely, not a matter of trying to make the girl feel welcome, but instead a sheer inability to make her happy. Faye fell silent, her expression growing distant as it dropped down to the ground, gaze lingering about her toes. She'd never quite stopped to consider it, had she? The idea that Edward might be anything but glad to have caring people around her.

Faye didn't know what to make of that.

"If you decide that coming back would make you happy... you would, right?" Faye said quietly.

[radical_cowgirl]

This time Edward stayed silent as she nodded. Of course she would. If Ed decided there was where happy was, that there was where she belonged, then of course she would go back. Why wouldn't she?

Unless... unless leaving made them angry and she didn't want Edward back. She'd seen that, too. But Spike and Jet took Faye-Faye back whenever she came back from leaving, they even saved her package. Kinda. They opened it first and found the video tape. The one with the fountain and the place Faye belonged.

[attitude]

She let the silence linger for a few seconds, waiting, hoping, before Faye allowed herself a sigh, shaking her head minutely. For months, she'd already agonized over the difficulty she'd encounter in trying to be a mother, because none of that seemed to come naturally to her. Where Dean would bring up the sweetest nothings, where Dean was already so natural with Cori, Faye didn't know the first thing about comforting a kid. And if babies seemed hard enough, how was she supposed to dive into adolescence?

"You have to help me out a bit here," she murmured, sounding defeated. "There's a right answer, Ed. I'm not going to leave you if you ever want to come back. But I also can't force you to stay. You're almost grown, and I'm confused enough as it is."

[radical_cowgirl]

Edward was confused, and hurt and everyone was asking her things she didn't know answers to. Faye thought Ed had answers, but she didn't. And Faye kept asking her questions and questions and questions and Edward was trying to give her answers, but she just. didn't. have. them.

"I DON'T KNOW!" The shout startled Edward as soon as she heard it in her own ears. It sounded angry, but Edward wasn't angry. All she knew was that there was a family happening that wasn't her family. In a home that she followed Faye to, but didn't chose herself. That for a place that was so stuck in place, everything was changing and she didn't know if she liked what it was changing to. Nor did she know what she'd want it to change to if she could change it herself.

The only thing she knew was that Ein was hers and she was Ein's. And she knew she could take care of herself and Ein. So with her software all corrupted by emotion and change, she was wiping the hard drive and re-installing her operating system from the beginning. Edward 2.0. But she still had no idea how to explain all that, or even if anyone would understand it if she did.

Feeling defeated, she sunk to the floor and pulled Ein close so she could wrap her arms around him. "Edward doesn't know and Edward wants to be alone. Edward will take care of Edward here until Edward decides to be somewhere else."

[attitude]

Faye almost jumped when Edward suddenly shouted, any words on her tongue immediately silenced as she stared over at the girl. And she had to wonder. The question of belonging to a family had never quite been there for Faye, certainly never when she was Edward's age. She had a family that loved her, and even when she lost that family, it was in a way so whole and complete so as to leave her without even the faintest possibility of finding someone to attach herself to. In other words, that part of her life was painted in black and white.

There really wasn't an in-between.

Biting down on her lower lip, Faye's hand momentarily tightened in a fist by her side, which belied how much her fingers truly shook in that grasp. Because she couldn't answer those questions for Edward. It wasn't that she didn't want to, nor even that she wouldn't know how. Instead, she simply couldn't. Edward wouldn't let her; that much was clear.

"Okay."

And Faye didn't know what else to do. So she paused before turning, her whole body feeling slightly numb as she took a few steps away.