A/N: A little Faye-centered fic, as requested by the ever so loveable Dragon Faere. I couldn't resist throwing a little holiday theme in either. Happy holidays, all!

Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop and am making no profit from this fan fiction.

Dash Away

By Nessie

All around the solar system, people were laughing, drinking eggnog and listening to the joyful songs of carolers and the jingle of bells. There was a certain happiness assured on Christmas Eve.

But where Faye Valentine stood in the grand casino on Saturn, she heard people cursing, she drank bad bourbon she couldn't afford, and she listened to the aggrieved moans of gamblers and the jangle of money sliding desperately into machines. There was nothing about her Christmas Eve that could be labeled as happy.

She was, like so many of the people here, in need of feeling. Even if it was the hard angles of warm dice, the cool flatness of chips, the rough green of a blackjack table. Even if it carried no true human emotion, there was texture beneath her hands, she could feel the traces of things touched by hundreds of others. In lieu of a caring embrace, she surrounded herself with competitors who didn't give a damn.

"Aces. Mr. Kotiya wins."

"Damn," she muttered under her breath, casting a bright green glare at the triumphant, suit-clad businessman raking in his chips at the other side of the table. Plastering a smile upon her face, she tossed her head in what she knew was a confident way. "Well, gentlemen, it seems this isn't my game tonight. I think I'll go try my hand at another table."

"I'd have thought you'd know better," chortled another player. "Poker Alice should stick to the poker." There was a gleam in his bright blue eyes, and Faye figured out quicker than the changing of the blinking lights on the adjacent Christmas tree that he' was a bounty hunter. Taking a step away from the table, she turned and lifted a hand in a wave, calling out an empty promise to wire the winner money she didn't have.

She felt something else, then. Pursuit. She was being followed by the blue-eyed hunter, and smiled to herself, believing in her deceptive mind that there was no sadness to it. The truth was, she stayed in the bars and the casinos all night on holidays – especially Christmas – in the hope that the flashing of slot machines and that the spinning of roulette wheels would dash away the images in her mind…images she could never see clearly, pictures of Christmases in a phantom past.

Suddenly desiring to release energy that had pent up in the course of the evening, she broke into a run. The footsteps behind her sped up as well.

"Wait right there!"

"Merry Christmas!" she called over her shoulder before whisking out the door and into the night that was brightened with its festive lights and its contented families.

Faye knew that she would never really have a merry Christmas ever again.

The End