you know the first rule of combat?

"Marbles!"

Edward scampered across the sand picking up the blue marbles one after another, occasionally tossing one up in the air. They looked familiar, but she couldn't place them and it didn't matter. Marbles were for playing. Playing what, she couldn't remember, but they were for playing.

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It's strange that this is kind of getting familiar now, although of all the people she might have expected to see panicked, Faye isn't one of them. Still, she can't walk away. Couldn't walk away from Nina, couldn't walk away from Sawyer and she can't walk away now. It's part of getting attached to people, she thinks, which isn't something she has a problem with, it just isn't something she's expected to have happen so quickly.

"Faye," she says sharply, trying to get her to focus for even a moment. That way she can ask what's going on, why there are marbles all over the beach and, most importantly, why Faye's acting as if they're the end of the world. Someone's bound to step on them and take a pretty spectacular fall, but it isn't that bad. It isn't.

"Hey, come on," she says and her voice softens a little, but only slightly.

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Finnick notices the marbles first, the tiny blue spheres nearly blanketing the beach shore.

He notices the girl half a second later, her violet hair shimmering in the sunlight as he approaches her carefully, drawn to her frantic movements. Trying to make sense of them.

But he stops short when she whirls around to face him, raises both hands palms out. "It's okay, I'm not trying to hurt you."

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attitude

"Edward, step back, they're—"

A breath caught in Faye's throat as she watched the girl shuffle over the shore, collecting the marbles until they threatened to slip through her nimble fingers. The only saving grace was the fact that Edward had been exposed to the vaccine before, she was immune. Heart still feeling as though it was thudding in her throat, Faye reached out for the girl's shoulder, trying to pull her straight.

"Don't you recognize these? Ed, they're not toys. They look exactly like Vincent's."

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attitude

Faye's eyes squeezed shut, trying to ward off the wings fluttering across her vision, painfully beautiful even while shrouded in the darkness of her closed lids. The most beautiful sight she'd ever see, Vincent once claimed, and she can't help but think it true now, even as the sight of Lily's eyes, the furrow of her brow, breaks through in the space between one insect to the next.

Lily. No.

"Shit— Lily, no, you need to—" With a gulp for air, Faye's hands reach out for the other woman's shoulders, gripping tight as she shakes her head, heart pounding in her ears and throat alike. "They're not marbles, they're— virus, and you need the vaccine—"

Although they sink first in the sand, Faye's feet find purchase as she tugs both of them away from the spot.

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attitude

Any other day, and she'd see that the man in front of her is younger, leaner, and that the lines draw out smiles instead of frowns. His hair hangs differently. He carries himself with a different type of confidence. But as the air is littered with the dusting of golden wings, all that Faye can see is Sam, Sam, and the denouement she's brought upon all of them.

"No, that's not—"

She shakes her head, disoriented, the lights in her eyes all moving, almost cacophonous against the pounding of her heart in her ears, dizzying even as she squeezes her lids shut. "We need to get out of here. Sam, you need to run."

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Frowning slightly, Finnick shakes his head. He keeps his hands where they are and takes another careful step toward her. This isn't the first time someone has mistaken him for this mysterious Sam, though Finnick has yet to meet the man himself.

"I'm not Sam," he says, careful to keep his tone quiet and even. "It's okay. Just let me help you; what do you need?"

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Lily lets Faye pull her along, even as she glances down at the spheres in the sand, trying to work out how they might be a virus. And if they are, how they have any hope of finding a vaccine. If one exists at all, she imagines it belongs to Faye's world, as the marbles do, and unless it's arrived here, too, Lily isn't sure they're going to have any luck with the Compound clinic.

"What are you talking about?" she asks, one hand lifting, covering Faye's on her shoulder. She squeezes lightly, still trying to get Faye to focus for just a moment. "They're just..."

They look just like marbles. There's nothing about them that makes Lily think they're a threat, not like she imagines a virus might look, especially not if it's weaponized, which sounds like it's the case from the way Faye is speaking. But then, she realizes, she has no idea what something like that might look like. Nothing to base it on, no experience. The only thing she knows in a situation like this is that she trusts Faye.

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attitude

It's not Sam. The sound of his voice is enough to show Faye that much, not quite as worn or deep, and certainly bearing a softer tone than she can remember Sam ever using with her. The two of them aren't especially close, in spite of Faye dating Dean— or perhaps that's the very reason for their inability to communicate easily, each making too concerted of an effort towards the other for Dean's sake.

"We need to get out of here," she insists, the back of her hand rubbing ineffectually against her eyes, hoping to brush the gold away. "Those marbles aren't safe; they carry this, this virus, and..." Breathing, Faye squints through the light.

"You don't feel strange?"

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attitude

The light squeeze of a hand on her shoulder as Faye stumbling to a stop, none too graceful for the way that the comfort strikes her off-guard. Slowly, logic begins to weave its way in, making itself sharply known. She's watched people die from that virus. She's watched as they bled, as their throats constricted, as they found themselves gasping for air and finding none of it. Even with wings still stretching across her vision, sparking before dissolving away at intervals, Faye can see that Lily's still standing tall.

And unless she already has the vaccine running in her veins, that simply wouldn't be the case.

"You feel... okay?" Faye asks, voice barely above a whisper. "Nothing hurts? Nothing feels weird? I thought that it was—" Brow furrowing as her expression crumples, Faye glances over at the marbles. Maybe it's a trick. Maybe it's all just some type of sick, twisted trick.

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"I feel fine," Lily answers after doing a quick mental inventory of her body. Her muscles are sore, but it's an ache she's familiar with, nothing more than a reminder that she'd been in the studio the day before, that she'd pushed herself a little too hard, resulting in the pain in her foot. Beyond that, there's nothing out of the ordinary.

And she's never seen Faye like this. For the time being, that's more pressing than anything she might be feeling. If there's any reason to be genuinely afraid, it's probably too late, so she'll worry about it later.

"What about you?" she asks. "Nothing hurts?"

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Well, that's a loaded question - Finnick isn't always sure how he feels at any given moment, especially lately. But whatever she's describing, whatever this virus is she's warning him about, he can't say he can detect it.

Shaking his head, Finnick again takes another step forward, his hands still out where she can see them. "I don't," he says before carefully reaching down to pick one up. It doesn't sting and isn't hot to the touch. The granules of sand sticking to it make its surface rough, but it seems otherwise harmless. "Should this be hurting me?"

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"Ohhhhhh, Edward remembers." And she did, trying to find the Vincent-man, the man with the tattoo. Faye had hijacked the weather station, that had been fun. She also remembered the little blue balls now, filled with the bad things and she frowned.

"What is Faye-Faye doing with these? Where did they come from?"

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attitude

The statement is met with a quick sigh, one that feels stretched thin and on edge as Faye drops down to the sand, the skin of her knees grating against the rough surface of the dune. Lily must be right. Faye isn't sure how that can be the case, how on earth Lily might have stumbled across the proper vaccine or some type of overall immunity, but with that problem solved, it's all a matter of trying to figure out how much of an effort it'd take to develop more of it.

"It wouldn't," she tells Lily. "Not even if there were a hundred times this many. I was... made immune to the effects of the virus a long time ago."

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attitude

Sometimes, Faye envied Edward's calm. Other times, she found herself completely baffled, enough that it slowed her response; this time, unfortunately, was the latter. Blinking in the girl's direction, Faye quickly shook her head, trying to rid herself of the intermittent glow that still passed through her vision, although not with half the strength that it had before.

"The island dropped them off, I'm guessing," Faye replies, quickly trying to gather as many as she can. "And who knows how many? All I know is that we need to start making that vaccine if we want to say any of these people."

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attitude

He picks up the marble, and it's almost as though suddenly, her chest has been pulled tight. She fails to breathe at first, before her body slowly comes to relax, each passing second making it all the more unlikely that the virus has made the trip intact. Neither of them know each other. She doesn't even know his name. Yet in front of him right now, she does something that she wouldn't trust everyone to see, even those she's known for years.

Lowering herself to the sand, Faye presses her forehead to her knees, taking a second to compose herself.

She can handle this, she's sure. How many times has she brushed by death? Her friends? There's no stopping it, and there's no point in expecting something nicer here and now. Maybe this island is just a chance at a reprieve, curtains tugged shut to avoid seeing the worst, tunnel vision aimed at hope.

"If they were Vincent's," she says, even though he has no way of understanding, no context— and even she never dug for more after he passed away, his story fading with his last breath. "You'd be bleeding out by now."

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Finnick watches her, growing more curious and more concerned by the second as she folds herself in half in the sand, forehead resting against her knee. The marble slowly warms to the temperature of his skin and he palms it gently before lowering to a crouch before her. But he still doesn't move any closer, approaching as though she's a wounded animal.

He glances down at himself, partly for show though she's not looking at him and says, "But I'm not. See?" He picks up another few marbles, glass clinking dully against glass in his hand. "It's okay. We're both okay."

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Edward looked around, trying to examine the marbles. "Did one break, Faye-Faye? Because if they didn't break the bad stuff can't get out." But Edward was starting to get a little worried. How could they make the cure? Spike had to steal it, Jet had to get all the old people to fly it up.

There aren't any planes here.

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When Faye sinks to the sand, Lily follows, kneeling in the midst of the marbles and she brushes one away absently as she studies her friend carefully. The marbles, whatever they are, aren't making her sick and she thinks that's enough to suggest -- at least to Lily -- that they're not what Faye thinks they are.

"What kind of virus?" she asks, wondering why it would be here, why it would show up on the island. The only explanation, if it's not the virus, is that they're here simply to mess with Faye. It hasn't happened often, but at that thought, Lily feels a dull flicker of anger toward the island, as if it were something sentient, something that can think.

There are other questions, too. Why is it here? Why does it look like this? Why was it made? But for now, she just settles on asking the one.

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attitude

Before his voice manages to quite fade into silence, Faye raises a hand, nothing more. Her palm is facing the young man, letting him know as well as she can, without trying for words, that she's fine. That being pitied or taken under a wing is the exact opposite of what she wants, yearning instead to stand on her own two feet. Hoping to never need more than herself for just about any goal there is in my world. She needs to know that the next time the world slips out from under her feet, that she'll manage to hang on.

Because it still seems like its own inevitability.

"Sorry," she croaks, voice feeling hoarse. "I'm sure you think I'm crazy. But. I guess this is another case of the island being a bitch."

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Crazy isn't a term Finnick tends to use lightly and he doesn't think it applies to this girl, marbles or not. After all, Finnick has his own nightmares to contend with. At least his tend to stay relegated to the night.

Curling his fingers around the marbles, he smiles easily. "I hear that happens a lot," he says before motioning at the scatter of remaining marbles, some of which are disappearing into the sand with every fresh wave. "Does it always leave such a mess?"

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attitude

"You're not seeing butterflies? I—" Faye shook her head, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand, still trying to pool all of the marbles into a small hole that she pushed into the sand. "I keep on seeing flashes, and it's the same as when Vincent gave me the cure. And the marbles in that room were all whole, scattered over the ground."

Maybe she shouldn't have shared. Maybe it was better to keep her mouth shut. But more than anything else, Faye wanted to make sure that no one else was hurt.

"Dammit," she bit out. "I don't know who we can ask. Can you do anything with your laptop? Check the composition of these marbles."

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