attitude | did you say your prayers?

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did you say your prayers?

You can live through anything, now. You'll survive if the world is turned inside out. And it will be. Sooner than you think.

There are days when sleep seems to be a shroud that slips over Faye in waves, occasionally clinging to her shoulders, eyelids heavy as lashes touch her cheeks. It's easy to sleep here. It grow still more so by the day, only the occasional interruption keeping her up at night, but her life has been a transient one ever since she woke up in that chamber, and so she's learned to cope with that long ago. People might disappear. People will, if patterns persist. But she'll survive through anything.

She always has.

A touch, cold like ice, brushes against her arm. Another, against her calf. A hand brushes away the sensation with an irritated flick, only to feel something hard knocking against her knuckles. Brow furrowing, Faye's hand turns, pressing harder still against a smooth, rounded surface, until glass jars against glass and her eyes fly open. Revealing butterflies in the sky.

The most beautiful butterflies in the world.

Her breath starts to shake as she glances down, gold darting between pearls of cerulean blue, marble after marble closing around her from all sides, scattered across the sandy beach, a sharp pain under her hand as she shoves herself to her knees.

"No. I need a knife, I need—"

Hands desperately grabbing through air, she tries to push them away, every one of the butterflies, until a face suddenly appears only yards away.

"Get back."

[ There are a thousand blue marbles scattered across the beach, most of them pooled by Faye's side, her 2012 NDPD. The butterflies mentioned in the narrative are not real; they're the result of nanomachines in her bloodstream. Faye thinks that the marbles are biological weapons as she once encountered in her world, but they're actually harmless, although she's very obviously panicked as a result. ]

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"He was killed," Faye confirms, and that's all there is to it, the words that she can offer on the topic. As far as how she feels, that's more complex. That he had to die was without question, and even if the same threat loomed over them now, Faye would make the same decision as Spike did, and Vincent would be able to meet his peace at last. But how she feels about it, and where the blame lies, it's all too much, too scattered, wrenching her heart to even think about. Some of what he did was unforgivable.

Some was inevitable.

But she looks up in time to catch Lily's movement, and for that she nods. Might as well start now, she thinks, a steady purge just as good, if not better, as struggling to rid the beach of every last one.

The answer doesn't surprise her, nor does the lack of information, so she just nods. It's enough for Lily, enough to understand, at least, why Faye isn't giving her a more in depth answer. It isn't the sort of thing that people aren't necessarily comfortable talking about a lot of the time and though she's never had anything like that happen to her, she can understand it in a way.

"Boat? Or are we just going to swim out there?" she asks with a small smile for Faye. If that's what she wants to do, Lily can do it. She's a strong swimmer, not as strong as some, but growing up around the ocean guarantees a certain level of comfort in the water. A boat would be easier, there's no doubt in that, but she's leaving the decisions up to Faye. It isn't her place to decide right now.

Standing on her feet, Faye stares out into the ocean, the wind brushing over the surface and drawing steady waves, cresting white in the distance and melding with the sky. Swimming won't take them far enough for Faye's taste, but she also isn't sure that she wants to bother with finding a boat, borrowing it from someone who she'll only owe favors to afterwards. So she shakes her head, eyes watchful as she glances back in Lily's direction.

"Neither," she says. "We'll take my ship. Redtail. There's enough fuel to last several dozen more trips, and it's not like we're going far."

She nods into the jungle behind them; Faye doesn't sunbathe all that far from her hut, and Redtail's parked just beside it. Once, she'd hidden it in the densest parts of the forests, but when one couldn't escape the island, theft seemed to be almost nonexistent.

Almost as soon as her excitement bubbles up, Lily makes the effort to push it back down. There's no sense hiding it entirely, not when she's told Faye before just how interesting she finds the idea of having been in space, but this isn't quite the right time either. "Really?" she asks, letting her smile grow as she glances back toward Faye's hut and the ship beside it.

Space travel has never been one of the things that caught her interest. She's always been a dancer, always intended on growing up to work at a professional company and, unlike most kids, the idea of being an astronaut never even crossed her mind. But here, with people surrounding her who have gone up there, Lily can't help her fascination with it.

"Sorry, this is a shitty time for me to admit that I'm a little excited about that," she says, turning to Faye again. "But I'm probably not hiding it all that well."

"No, it's... it's fine," Faye replies with a slight shake of her head, trying for a smile that ends up just being a quirk of her lips, crooked and faintly amused. While she's not quite capable of drumming up the same level of enthusiasm for a ship that used to be her everyday means of transport, she appreciates having Lily around to help distract her nonetheless. Another person's joys, after all, can be just as consuming as one's own.

"There's only a single seat in there, but it carries the weight of two, easy. You'll just have to hang on, but nothing around here's going to jolt us out of the sky, anyway. The skies are calm here. No traffic."

"I'll be okay," Lily agrees, then reaches out to touch Faye's elbow as she nears her. It's not a good day, she knows that much, and there's really no sense trying to force Faye to pretend she's alright. They'll get rid of the marbles, though, as best they can. Her help is really all she can offer and it isn't something she's always good at. Sometimes, Lily knows, she pushes too hard or too fast. Expects too much of people. She knows she's done this with Nina before.

Most of the time, she doesn't even realize she's doing it, but she tries. More than anything, what Lily wants is for the people around her to feel good and she'll try to help that wherever possible.

"Come on, let's get rid of these things," she says, giving Faye's arm a light squeeze. "Then we can go get a drink."

"Heh, a drink," Faye grins in spite of herself, even though there's a part of her still incapable of throwing everything off for a bit of fun. Drinks sound pretty ideal, though, letting the world fade into a subtle blur and letting everything else be wiped from her mind, her worries. "Might be more than a few. Provided I don't think Dean will kick me out of bed for indulging once in a while."

She thinks of their agreement briefly as she walks, Dean's sobriety in exchange for cutting her smoking habit. She hasn't relented yet, and she doesn't plan on relenting now, the only cigarettes left being the few that Spike hadn't burned his way through yet after she handed them off to him.

"Yeah, let's go," she says, the glass of the cockpit already visible now, a reflection that shines from the distance. "Work fast enough, we'll get this done long before sundown."

"And then plenty of time left to not think about it, if that's what you prefer," Lily says. Or, if Faye would rather, she can talk about it all she likes. Sometimes, a drink or two tends to help a person talk, Lily knows that better than most and though she's not going to slip something into Faye's drink to help loosen her tongue, she's done such things before. Sometimes people need to let go and she isn't above giving them a bit of a hand, whether they've asked her to or not.

"I think he might understand on a day like today," she continues, hefting the bag filled with marbles as they near the ship. She doesn't know Dean at all, but she knows he cares about Faye, that he'll be concerned about what's happened today on the beach. "Besides, it isn't as if I'm going to get you completely wasted and then leave you at the Winchester passed out on a table."

"True," Faye murmurs, trudging forward as the ship comes fully into view, the rounded and almost spherical cockpit window still polished and practically like new. If anything, Redtail is in better shape here on the island than she's ever been during her use back home, the result of Faye's sheer inability to do anything else. Can't fly the thing often, for fear that it'll run out of fuel. Can't let it fall into complete disrepair without feeling trapped, or worried that she may need it in an emergency, some moment like this.

So she keeps her baby as clean as can be.

"But Dean's been cutting back on his own drinking," she concludes, sounding fond, if slightly unsure. "Last thing I want to do is anything that might pull him back. He's... he's something else. I told him that I loved him. And I have never done that before."

"Never?" she asks, although she isn't necessarily surprised. They're words Lily hasn't often said herself, not because she doesn't love people -- she does, often -- but because she doesn't fall in love completely. That's often what someone hears when she says that she loves them, so she doesn't say it, not unless she's sure she means it. And it's been a long time since she's been in love with anyone.

But if Faye's happy, in love for the first time or simply secure enough to say it for the first time, then Lily's happy. "Well, then I promise, for his sake, that I'll make sure you only have one or two," she says with a faint, fond smile. "Alright? We won't risk anything."

She thinks just getting rid of the marbles might help, too. The drink may not even be needed once they're done.

"If you'd believe it," she replies with a raised brow, mostly jaded by now, though there are times when she's still able to look on the past with some level of fondness, "I used to be the type of girl to believe in happily ever after. Decided I wanted to save it all for someone I could see myself spending the rest of my life with. Thought I found a guy, and... turns out, he was a big, fat liar. Saddled me with millions in debt. A girl learns to watch herself after something like that."

She leaves off the rest of it, the fifty years she spent in cryogenic freeze, because that's no one's fault much, just the result of intense curiosity. Taking her places that weren't safe in the first place. She never had the right to make that choice, Faye thinks. She had no idea what it would really entail.

"I'm sure that if this place relied on cash and had a bit more wiggle room, I wouldn't have settled down at all."

"Yeah, I don't blame you. That's shitty," she says honestly. It's not the sort of thing anyone expects either, especially not when you trust a person, care about them. At least on the island, for what it's worth, no one can be interested in another person for their money. There are still other things Lily is sure might draw one person to another that aren't entirely honest, but she doesn't know how often that happens.

"Settling down," she repeats with a faint smile, trying to imagine the same for herself. It isn't entirely impossible, she supposes, but the situation would have to be right. "I always figured I'd wait until I was retired before I thought about anything like that," she admits.

They step onto the platform that holds Redtail, flat boards that Faye did her best to weasel the Building Crew into nailing together. The ignition key to the craft is one that she nearly keeps on her at all times, and she tugs that out of her pocket now, tugging open the unlocked door to allow the both of them inside. Rather than forcing her into the back, Faye sits further to the side on the pilot's seat, leaving ample room for Lily to squeeze in.

"Don't get me wrong," she counters, almost feeling as though she needs to defend herself, convince herself that she isn't falling too far, too fast. "I don't plan on playing house. I only mean that when it comes to people... I don't think I'm running from him anymore, god forbid."

"Hey, if it works for you, I'm certainly not going to try and bring you down," Lily answers as she slips into the ship with a moment of almost unreality. She's still aware of what she's saying to Faye, still present in the conversation, but for a moment she's also very aware of the fact that she's stepping into a ship, inside something she never would have hoped to see in her own time and place.

"I mean that," she adds softly, her free hand falling to rest on the pilot's seat. The bag at her hip makes a soft clinking noise, the sound of the marbles shifting together as she finds the right place to stand. "Just because I can't necessarily picture something for myself right now doesn't mean it's not the right way for someone else. I like when the people I like are happy."

And it really is as simple as that. All the things she's done to Nina -- for Nina -- have been about making her happy. She only wants the same for Faye.

When she's like this, inside the ship, she can almost forget that she's trapped on an island. She can insert the ignition key and almost feel like she's just about to pass through into orbit, getting to see the Earth from afar, all of the colors and swirls and clouds like the shifting tendrils of mist that they are. They won't get that far, not even close, but Faye feels an ache of loss in her chest just by being here at all, starting up the ship until they hover several dozen yards above the ground, landing wheels retracting.

"I'm not arguing that it can't be for anyone," Faye replies with a casual arch of her brow as she takes the ship out over the ocean, her stomach turning in muted excitement. "But it's not my thing. It was my parents', but I guess I ended up falling pretty far from the tree."

For a moment, Lily can't respond as they rise, her gaze drawn to the sand disappearing below them. She's never been one of those people who love to fly, but she certainly doesn't hate it either and this is something she knows people from her time has never been able to do. It's the sort of thing she never would have even known to imagine and that's what makes it more exciting.

"It looks different from above," she says, then laughs, knowing how ridiculous that sounds. It's true, though, and she stares down at the ocean for a moment. "Sorry, I'm just... you don't think of things like this when I'm from. Or some people do, but it isn't something that I thought of or even knew to think about."

"It's fine," replies Faye, voice quick yet hushed. She understands when people want to marvel at the world below from such a height, as there's something undeniably majestic about it all. The waters are calmer from above, and the world seemingly small, yet here— uniquely, here— endless still. It's the very type of wonder that brought her to signing up for all those space missions, the first commercial flights, and the very thing which inadvertently sent her down this long, winding, impossible path. "Believe me, no matter what my dreams were as a girl, it's not exactly like I predicted having something like this to myself, either. Even after you don't go up for months, you... start to forget what it's like."

Lips thin, Faye releases some of the pressure on the craft before opening a small window to the side and letting her towel fall open while her craft continues ahead on autopilot. "Hand me the bag?" she asks, eyes watching close as the marbles fall into the ocean, white foam rising to the surface after.

Carefully, Lily unzips the bag, then hands it over to Faye. She can see where the marbles hit the ocean far below, though once they're under the water, that's the last she sees of them. They're too close in colour, they drop too quickly, and once the foam settles where they've hit, there's no sign of them at all. It's best this way, she thinks, to rid of them in a manner that's quite permanent. There are tides, of course, currents, but the chances of the ocean bringing all these marbles back to the beach are slim.

"So they're gone," she says, although not all of them have gone into the water yet and she pauses, watching Faye with the bag. They'll be gone soon, too, disappearing into the ocean. "You can throw the whole bag in there if you want. I can find another one." Gym bags aren't hard to come by out of that box and she doesn't mind if it's brightly coloured, so long as it fits the things she needs to be carrying.

The wind catches sharply in the gym bag, but all it takes is a sharp flick of Faye's wrist before it's back inside the craft, and she presses a few buttons to close the open space in the cockpit, the pressure sharp against her ears before everything falls quieter for the calm. Running her fingers through her hair where it's whipped around her eyes, she shakes her head in Lily's direction.

"It's fine," she says, pressing her lips tightly together and willing the words to make themselves true. "Wouldn't want to make you sit in front of the clothes box for several hours to replace something you used to help me. Bag doesn't hold the virus, anyhow."

With a soft groan, Faye leans back in her seat, pressing a couple of buttons to retrace the path of their flight, leaving the craft on a slow autopilot.

"God," she says. "This place is run by an asshole."

"It is," Lily agrees simply, tucking her hair behind her ear to get it off her face. Although she still isn't sure what she believes about the island, who's in charge or why things happen, she does know that she doesn't like the way it plays with people. It seems like a game, more than anything, and although Lily is on board with all sorts of fun, she prefers it to be the consensual kind. There's nothing consensual in what the island does to the people who live there.

A game, a power struggle, she doesn't know, but she doesn't like it either.

"Do you feel any better, though? With them gone?" she asks, leaning her arms against the seat gently, her chin resting against them.

"Marginally," Faye replies, glancing over with a solemn look, the kind that she tries so hard not to need around anyone on the island. She'd used it freely with Spike. Most of the time, she managed not to worry too much about stepping back in such a way with Dean. But on the whole, she didn't want people to worry, or to sense her weaknesses, some part of her still terrified that they'd leak out through the cracks in her heart, coming back later to freeze them all.

"But it's still a shock, you know? Just a reminder that there can be worse that that the island brings here. In that way, no, I don't feel any better. This is the devil I know. What happens when it's the devil I don't?"

Lily think that's the sort of question that can be asked about life in general, but there is a different sense of direction here. A purposefulness that isn't always part of life off the island. Things here seem to happen because something is directing them, because it wants a reaction and so she understands what Faye means in a way.

"I don't know," she says honestly, then sighs. "I know you're not really expecting me to have an answer, but I wish I did. I imagine there are a lot of people with that same question."

Lately, she's been thinking on it more and more often. Nina's poster, the marbles on the beach, things meant to make people feel something, even if it's negative. She doesn't know what to make of it.

She allows herself the slightest of smiles then, shaking her head. The burden of explaining any aspect of life and the whys isn't one that Faye would wish on anyone, not even her greatest enemy. Because life is too big, too complex, too everything for a single mind to contain.

"Even if you did have an answer, which some people do," Faye begins, eyes taking on a softer look in her amusement, "knowing me, I wouldn't be able to take your word for it. Sometimes, you have to answer things for yourself."

And then, she thinks of sunset over a glittering span of water, the splash of a fountain in the distance, and the cries of gulls in the air.

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did you say your prayers?

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