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There were a few times in the six years that followed Spike’s death when Jet thought he saw Edward again. There would be a shock of orange hair on a crowded Martian street, or a glinting pair of goggles outside of a market stall on Callisto. Once, passing by an alleyway on Earth, he even heard a bark he could have sworn belonged to Ein. He didn’t know whether he snagged on these things because they were actually there, or because he wanted them to be. Faye insisted that it was the latter, but each passing glimpse disappeared before he could be sure.
Until, of course, one didn’t.
They had stopped to refuel on Europa, and Faye’s (rigged) coin toss had determined that Jet would be the one restocking groceries, as it always did. He had given her a good bit of grumbling, as was customary, but the truth was that he didn’t really mind; it gave him a chance to breathe some open air and to make sure that all the foods in their stores were things that he liked.
He had walked to the dusty outskirts of the city in search of some more authentic Europan cuisine and was scoping out the stalls at some kind of pop-up street market when a pair of sun-tanned girls barreled past him, shrieking with laughter. He was smiling wryly after them when he noticed that the older of the two looked achingly familiar.
Her hair was longer, and she’d stuffed it into two messy buns on either side of her head, but it was that same vibrant shade of orange. Rather than a white crop top above her black leggings and her bare feet she had on a loose, stringy tank with something like a binder or a sports bra visible underneath. The detail that tipped the scales, however, was the pair of glinting green goggles around her neck.
He was deciding whether or not he should say something to her when the younger girl, the one he didn’t recognize, pointed at him.
“Edward, look!” she cried. “He has a metal arm! Just like—!”
“Jet!”
Jet felt a tug in his chest at the casual way she chirped his name, as if no time had passed between them at all.
“Long time no seeee,” she warbled, immediately dispelling that sensation. She raced up to him with her arms flung wide at her sides, and Jet noticed, with a pang, that she’d grown almost up to his shoulders. “You have grown old and withered, cowboy!”
“I—hey! I have not!” he sputtered.
“Your fur is going graaayyy,” she insisted. “Just like Ein’s!”
“It is not!”
Jet noticed Ein for the first time, panting up at him from the younger girl’s feet. The corgi had, indeed, begun to go white around the eyes and snout.
“Where’s Faye-Faye?” the other girl piped up, racing over to stand beside Ed. “And Spike?”
Another pang lanced Jet’s heart.
“Faye’s back on the ship,” Jet answered, pasting on a grin. “Probably trying to crack the new safe, if I had to guess. As for Spike, well.” He cast an uncertain glance Ed’s way before answering. “If Edward here’s been telling it right, you know that cowboy never stays in one place for too long.”
The girl looked a bit crestfallen, but Ed shot Jet a grin that looked something like relief.
“Would you mind if I talked to Ed in private for a minute?” Jet asked the little girl.
“Are you gonna ask her to hunt bounties with you again?” she parried, stage-whispering.
“No need,” Jet said. “She knows she’s always got a place on the Bebop, if she wants it.”
The way Ed turned her golden eyes on him, however, made him wonder if she had known that after all.
“I just wanna catch up,” he continued past the tightness in his chest. “See how she’s doing. That’s all.”
Edward gasped, then, as if she’d been struck by a brilliant idea.
“Mona,” she cried, “you and Ein should go sniff for ghosts!”
It was the little girl—Mona’s—turn to gasp.
“Yeah!” she agreed. “Come on, Ein! Ghost hunt!”
Ein, ever obliging, put his nose to the ground and led the girl off, until her intermittent shouts of “Come on, Ein! Good boy, good boy!” were distant enough to tune out.
Edward led Jet to an aging metal railing that stood alongside the market street and leaped up to sit on it, long legs dangling. Jet tested the railing’s strength with a cautious push, then leaned up against it beside her, arms crossed.
“If Ed plays with Mona and tells her lots of stories, Mona’s momma lets Ed and Ein stay over for dinner,” Ed explained. Then, after a pause, she added, “Thank you for not telling her about Spike, by the way.”
Jet winced. “So you know about that, huh?”
Ed smiled wide, but Jet thought he saw a flicker flash through it.
“Edward knows ev-rything,” she reminded him in that wobbly sing-song of hers.
Jet huffed a short laugh. “Guess you do, huh?”
Ed nodded.
“Ed went diving for him,” she said. “In the data channels. He wasn’t hard to find.”
“He put your pinwheel up on the Bebop, you know,” Jet told her. “Before he left. First real decoration she ever had.”
Ed smiled again; this one didn't quite dimple her cheeks. There was a moment’s silence before she spoke again.
“I’m not sorry for leaving,” she said, watching her feet as she swung them to and fro. “Not mostly. I think I had to.” She looked up at Jet with those golden eyes again, and Jet almost didn’t have the nerve to look back. “But I am sorry you were alone.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Jet said gruffly. “Faye was there.”
“But Spike used to be there,” Ed said. “And Ed. And Ein. And then we weren’t, all three of us, all at once.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sorry for that.”
Jet shook his head.
“That’s not your fault, Edward,” he said. “Don’t ever think it.”
The two of them looked up at the far-off sound of Ein’s yapping bark; he and Mona seemed to be celebrating the capture of a midday ghost. In spite of himself, Jet’s lips twitched in a smile.
“I meant what I said earlier, you know,” he mumbled after another moment, crossing his arms more tightly over his chest. “There’s always a spot for you on the Bebop, if you want it. I know you left and all, and I know it’s probably not as steady of a gig as this one. I won’t get my feelings hurt if you don’t want to come back, or if you feel like you can’t. I just.” He swallowed. “It would be nice to have someone who could look after the bonsais every now and again, that’s all. Faye never really picked up the knack, you know. And I know you… well, I know you liked that.”
“Hmmm,” Edward mused, leaning back over the railing until she hung from it by her knees, her hands pressing into the pavement below. “More Bebop time does sound like fun,” she conceded.
Jet’s breath caught.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Mmhmm!” she chirped.
She pulled herself back up, first into a sitting position, then standing to balance on the rail like a tightrope.
“Soon,” she told him. “But not right now.”
“Oh,” Jet said, deflating a little.
Then Ed surprised him by bending at the waist so she could wrap her arms around his shoulders.
“Soon,” she said again, and for the first time Jet heard the woman she was growing into as well as the girl she would always be. “But Bebop won’t find Ed, remember? Ed will find Bebop!”
Jet returned her hug, but gently, careful not to unbalance her.
“Alright, then, Edward,” he said, though the tightness in his chest had now crawled into his throat. “Soon’s good enough for me. I’ll leave the light on for you, okay?”
Ed nodded and gave him one more brief squeeze before jumping down from the railing and beginning to make her way toward the faint barkings and shoutings of Ein and Mona, swinging her arms and exaggerating her strides. Jet stayed leaning on the railing for a moment, watching the buns in her hair bob up and down, before finally pushing off with an exhale. Just as he was turning to go back to his shopping, however, a clear, joyful shout cut through the air:
“See you, space cowboy!”