attitude | but my mind didn't change and I still feel the same

He told me to leave the past in the past. That it didn't matter. That everything we have to learn from the past, we've already taken in, and that getting trapped is... pointless. There's nothing to learn from it. Nothing to gain. For a long time, I fought against that idea in my head, because I guess I never really let go of the notion that I had a past at all.

But I do. And whether I like it or not, he's part of it.

There was this gym that I'd seen Jason climbing around before. Never really that I looked out for on the island, because when you have an abundance of trees and all too much bamboo to know what to do with, you're not short on objects to train with. But now that the island's turned into cities and buildings, let's just be honest: I don't know what to do with myself. I can't go punching walls, and the ghostly natives aren't about to stop for my boot anytime soon. So, armed with that little slip of paper, I go around searching for that gym. I find it before too long, not too far from the Compound, right around New Atlantis just as it was before. With heavy wrought iron and plenty of pads sprinkled around, it's just about the best place for me to be.

Dropping my leather jacket on the ground, wearing nothing more than a tank and trousers in the wintry air, I start punching the nearest bag with a sharp exhale.

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They say the snow will melt any day now. That everything will return to some semblance of 'normal,' and that the city streets will give way to sand once more. I don't know that I look forward to the return to status quo. As disorienting as the change first was, sound travels faster through the cold air and the fact that there's no snow makes it easier for me to suss out the environment with which I'm surrounded. There are a group of "ghosts" about a hundred yards in front of me. A horseless carriage trundling past me on the right. And the sound of someone hitting something very hard to my left.

Naturally, I indulge my curiosity and head to my left.

A distinctly feminine voice colors the sound of the exertion accompanying each hit, and it takes me only a few seconds to pinpoint it as someone I know.

"Faye?"

Forever a question. I have to sell this somehow.

Don't blame him, Faye. Don't let all of this fall on the shoulders of people uninvolved. Don't let yourself depend on them, because no matter how many times you try to hold on, people slip through your fingers anyway. I repeat each one of these lines in my head with every impact I make against the punching bag, but somehow, it doesn't hold. I'm supposed to be capable of letting go. There was a time when I tried to pass myself off as Romani, never able to stop, always needing to wander free. And I think to myself that, honestly, that might be one of the biggest lies I've ever told.

I can't let him go.

I want to just pull my pistol out, fire in whichever direction my heart takes me, the one where there's this stupid pull, the one of a hollow carved out.

"Matt," I reply, voice almost challenging as I slam my arm against the target. Is he going to point out that something's wrong? I'm not exactly trying to hide it, am I?

Each impact paints a better picture of the scene I've chosen to walk into, and there's no direction to go but closer. She's upset; I hesitate to describe it as angry, if only because rarely is anything so simple as rage.

Sometimes, I wish it was.

"Sounds like you're having a good time."

Damn. Damn it. I can feel it at my throat, that pressure constricting from all sides. What's the first lesson you learned, Faye? Faye Valentine, sleeping beauty, girl without a home and without a life to go back to. The first thing that you learned after you woke up in that broken down hospital was never to trust others. That leaning on them will only end up backfiring. God, I thought that I'd managed, that Spike was nothing more than a blip on my radar, and—

"Just wonderful," I reply, sending another kick flying at the bag as my heel scrapes against the ground, the force numbing the skin under the impact. Something in me feels spent, while the rest of my body is restless, seeking more by the second.

I stop, because it's starting to feel rude. "Best workout I've had in months. Apologies if I stink of sweat. Which is not, by the way, an invitation to point it out. Ladies still have limits."

I'm not yet close enough to smell much of anything, my senses too overwhelmed by the rest of the city to get a good lock on Faye; the realization catches me by surprise. I'm no stranger to my limitations here, but still, to know what I was once capable of doing without thinking and to be met with what little I can do here again and again is always somewhat disheartening.

So I walk until I do smell something other than soot and wet streets and sharp winter air.

"I smell only spring flowers," I lie, my mouth twisting in a smile.

"Jackass," I reply, but god, it almost gets a laugh out of me. It's possible that Matt Murdock is the exact kind of person that I need in this type of situation. Dean's— if I ran after Dean right now, I'd just feel afraid. Like us belonging is just an excuse for the island to tear us apart. But Matt and I, we don't belong to each other much at all. I hardly know him. I've spoken to him more often than most people on the island, but I always feel like I hardly know him. There's more to him, I think, but it's not really my place to ask or speculate.

I heave a breath, and it shudders in my chest.

"You have people from home on the island, don't you? Or in the city now, whatever."

I bark out a laugh. It's probably not appropriate, but I could care less. It feels like home in a way I only get from precious few here, being called out like that. Natasha and Peter are pretty much the only ones, the others friends, but not the types that invite casual and caustic conversations.

"I do," I reply, leading with the truth, but following with a lie. "Clients, mostly. Former ones, obviously. Why?"

I can take a guess.

A quick exhale leaves my lips when he laughs. Well, no. Fine, it's a laugh. There's just something about calling another person out as a jackass when you know they're joking with you. Maybe trying to cheer you up, or just not wanting for you to take yourself so damn seriously. And it works. This is nothing, I tell myself, nothing compared to losing my parents, to losing half a decade. I've lost Spike before.

This is just more of the same.

"So what do you do when someone vanishes before you could deliver the beatdown they deserve?" I ask, swiping my hand over my forehead. I'm not expecting an answer that'll come to anything, but maybe I just need someone to know. Someone who isn't Edward.

I can't talk to Edward about this. Not from the position of someone who hates the fact that he's gone. Or feels abandoned. Whatever I'm feeling, it must be twice as bad for her.

This isn't hypothetical. It's the first thing my mind jumps to, and the funny thing is, it would've been the same at home, too. People have a tendency to vanish just about everywhere, even if the meaning is undoubtedly more literal here.

"Based on the evidence afforded to me..." I say, "beat up something else instead. What is this place?"

"Last time this happened, I riddled our ship with bullet holes," I remark, and though he can't see it, my lips are curved in a tight smile. God. Dammit. I should be used to this by now. (But I'm not, and it's because I've sunk myself in where I never have before.) It should comfort me, knowing that it wasn't Spike's choice. (Yet that makes it worse, somehow.)

Another huff of air, and I shake my head. "I don't know, it's just some gym that I've seen Jason Todd hanging around in his spare time. Changed a little with our surroundings, but I'm pretty sure it's the same place. I've never really asked about it, but I don't look gift horses in the mouth."

I don't ask why she's not riddling anything else with bullet holes in the absence of a ship, because I'm too grateful that she's apparently not packing the Victorian version of heat. I'm not a fan of guns. I've been on the receiving end of one too many bullets.

"Are your hands wrapped, at least?"

You'd think that I might suddenly feel a twinge of pain when I look down at my hands. I did wrap them as well as I could on short notice, but apparently it wasn't enough to keep a couple of knuckles from peeking through, the skin sloughing off in places, an angry shade of red.

"Mostly," I reply. "Guess I wasn't careful."

but my mind didn't change and I still feel the same

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