Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop in any way.

After having written that Spike fic... I just had to write a Faye one. And here it is... this kind of just wrote itself anyway.

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Things Left Behind

Delicate as a butterfly's wings and just as fleeting.

It was a perfect description of her memories. They fluttered and teased, flirting with the edges of her conciousness, with no regard to her desperate attempts at catching a hold of them.

Butterflies...

Beautiful to look at, but always out of reach.

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They said finding something you needed was, at most times, frustratingly difficult. It was true, her countless run-ins with dead leads were evidence enough – but when you turn your head, when you've finally given up on looking, it would sneak up on you, like lightning. Because she sure as hell didn't expect her past to come waltzing back in a neat little package called a video tape and an eccentric little girl who talked in rhymes and song, who painted her toe nails a barrage of different colours and had a tendency of calling her 'Faye Faye'.

It would have been laughable if not for the fact of how much hope was riding on that one parcel alone. She couldn't exactly say that she had given up on finding out about her past, but things had a way of snowballing when it came to the important things. And her memories were no different.

She had spent an entire year and a half after waking up from her cryo-sleep reading and re-reading about patients with amnesia, while coping with this utterly new and yet familiar world. Despite her efforts, nothing turned up; the only conclusion was either 'it will eventually return' or 'it will never return at all'. That had been the killing blow. Hope dwindled, and she went through a period of self-delusion and denial.

That had barely gotten her through another year. Somehow, and she was still confused about the whole thing, she had managed to dig herself out of the hole she had dumped herself in and gave herself a good slap in the face. As cliché as it sounded, memory or no, she was going to make it in this world. And, of course, what better way to start then to pay off her unbelievably large debt. The road to her memories became her road to gambling.

So that had been the all-consuming task occupying her life for a while. And like all 'good' things, or in this case, just 'things', it came to an end – she still gambled, but it was more of a hobby rather than the driving force of her life – when the one good attempt at getting rid of her debt was foiled by this bunch. She had been livid, but hey, this new fork in the 'road of life' led to interesting things. Sure, she was getting no where when it came to paying off her debt – and she doubted she would ever be rid of it – but at least it kept her thoughts off the desperate niggling at the back of her mind. Most of the time.

However, she couldn't exactly push it aside any more, could she? This was right in her face and no amount of ignoring could make it go away. The video tape was her link – a delicate, flimsy line threading her past, her memories to herself. The question now was how she was going to go about her search.

At least, that was the case before Ed decided to shed some light onto her dark little void.

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She let out a shaky breath and curled under the setting sun. The warm ground offered what little heat it had left and she wound herself tighter into a ball. The deep, straight gouges marking out her 'bed' only drove reality's unforgiving knife deeper into her gut.

She had what she wanted, but in the end, it was insignificant. At least she had a future, huh? She gave a mirthless chuckle. For too long she had felt incomplete. The one defining thing in life was missing, and just how was she supposed to move on when she didn't know who she really was?

But now that she was enlightened... what to do? More importantly, what had she been expecting? Someone to greet her with open arms? Or just somewhere to return to?

Damn Spike for being right. Was he laughing now?

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Author's note: Er... I'm not sure if Faye's completely OC, but ah well... Oh and the reference to butterflies has nothing to do with the movie.