did you say your prayers?

[attitude]

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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[attitude]

Her fingers press against the front of his chest, panic rising up around her throat, until all she can do is cling; the world that spins around her slow as she takes deep, labored breaths. And that's when she notices. She tries the slightest of tugs, a hand slipping out to press against the back of his neck, fingertips brushing against the hair at the nape of his neck. The strength is what catches her off-guard.

"You bleed out," she says, blinking her eyes open again, stars and butterflies speckled at the edges of her vision. "It goes to your brain, and when it attacks, all you see are butterflies. The most... beautiful butterflies."

Green eyes flicker up towards his voice, but landing his gaze takes a little more time. "You don't see them, do you? You should've seen them by now. They all died in seconds."

[weary_head]

"I don't see butterflies," says Dean, cupping her face between his hands, holding her steady against the panic he can see in her wide eyes. If there is a virus, if it's as deadly as she says, he's already fucked, and if one or both of them is dying, Dean's not going to be anywhere but right here with her.

"I don't see anything but you, and I feel okay. How are you? You feeling okay?"

[attitude]

She shakes her head lightly, but with Dean's hands on either side of her face, Faye finds herself calming just enough, hands reaching up to rest over his fingers and holding them there. If there was a virus, he'd be exposed already. If there was a virus, she'd never forgive herself. But the seconds pass and waves crash out in the ocean, and he's fine, still standing, his voice calm.

"I'm immune to it either way," she replies, taking a slow breath, shuddering less than her last. "Sometimes I see them— just on any old day."

[weary_head]

"Okay, let's just. Sit a sec," Dean says, drawing her down into the sand with him, suspicious enough by now of all those marbles to keep her back to them. "Is that why you're scared?" he asks, tucking a lock of violet hair behind her ear. "You see them right now? How do you know you're immune?"

[attitude]

Deep breaths in and out. Faye forces herself to take those same measured breaths, hands on her lap, refusing to buckle underneath the weight of it all, not when she has more now than she ever managed to find back then. She remembers running through that entire mission, knowing that Jet and Spike wouldn't come to her aid, not unless she managed to call them for it. That was a running theme in the whole team dynamic— Faye could take care of herself, let her deal with her trouble.

"They're everywhere," Faye replies quietly, gesturing left and right with her hands, as though waving invisible specs away. "But I know I'm immune because... Vincent, he was the one guy who survived the first outbreak. Forced some of his blood on me. Thought we could watch as the rest of the world fell to pieces."

Her brow furrows. "I still don't know why he picked me."

[weary_head]

"Did you know him?" Dean asks, and he can guess, maybe, as much as he can guess why any crazy person does anything, why he'd pick Faye. Even at his lowest - when John died, when Sam died, when the both of them disappeared - for all that Dean had wanted to pull the world down piece by piece, he can't imagine seeing someone like Faye and wishing that she be spared.

"Or were you just in the right place at the wrong time?"

[attitude]

"They placed a bounty on his head. That's all. Biggest bounty that anyone had ever seen, which should've clued us all in, but we were... running on our last dime, as always. Wanted a challenge, as always. All the other bounties would've only held us up for a week, but Vincent, three hundred million woolongs," Faye exhales, closing her eyes, still seeing the glow cast itself in front of her. "Even someone who gambles as much as me would have some trouble casting that off. It wasn't the right place at the wrong time, it was having no way of conceiving of how big this was."

A sliver of green peeks through when she opens her eyes, holding her hands out in front of her, and the butterflies start fading away, crumbling into so much dust.

"Bioterrorism. You can't call it anything less than that."

[weary_head]

"He sounds like a peach," says Dean, feeling better for the way her eyes focus on him, hopes that if her gaze holds long enough, there won't be any room for butterflies. He rolls his shoulders, back straight. Big enough to fill her vision. Takes her hands and holds them so she can feel him.

"But you got away. You stopped him somehow."

[attitude]

While not quite ready to walk away, Faye finds herself capable of clinging to the smaller details, her fingers pressing into his palm or eyes darting across the faint color of freckles by the bridge his nose, where the sun's shone any number of times. Keeping herself busy's the only way to escape the most consuming of emotions, she's found, be it fear or mere restlessness, rustling quickly through memories she's not sure she ever spent the time to reflect upon. What was the point, after all? Thinking about a madman no one could save.

"Spike did," she corrects, biting down on her lower lip. "We all stopped the virus, but I didn't get away from Vincent. Vincent left. Guess I was only so interesting after a point."

Closing her eyes, Faye shakes her head. "Can we get rid of them? There's no point in keeping those things around."

[weary_head]

"Bottom of the ocean sound good?" Dean asks, catching her cheek in his palm, thumb stroking at the hollows there until her eyes open.

"We could steal a boat, make a day of it."

[attitude]

Sometimes, it feels like the island's trying to tear everything down brick by brick. Faye knows that she's not the only person who's been through a difficult time, and a scare, in the end, is nothing. It's just a scare. Nothing happens, nothing lasts, and it's only up to her to continue life as it has been. Pulling her lower lip in momentarily, Faye glances up to meet Dean's gaze and tries to smile.

"Bottom of the ocean," she agrees, trying to stamp down frayed nerves. "You've got someone else watching over Cori?"

[weary_head]

"She's with her Aunt Thrace," says Dean, mouth twisting only a little for the words. He stands up and offers her both hands, eager now to get rid of those little blue bastards.

"Bottom of the ocean. We got this, Faye."

[attitude]

She takes it easy in finding her footing, lips curving instinctively at the name Dean uses for Kara— if Dean's the brother and Kara's the aunt, she wonders what exactly that means for the two of them. But once her balance is sure, Faye doesn't wait too long before slipping her hands out of Dean's, leaning in instead to wrap her arms around his shoulders, trying to hide the slight shake in her fingers as she presses her forehead to the line of his jaw.

"Thanks," she murmurs, voice muffled where her lips are close to his neck, inhaling deeply before her breath escapes her in a flutter.