The Past Has Passed Away

[Frozen Smoke]

((Faith Clementine Marshal-Mackenzie continued from Sun Giant))

Faith wasn't exactly comfortable as she perched on top of a fallen tree, but she was at least partially dry, for the first time in multiple days. Her bra was still damp, and it occurred to her that it probably belonged amongst the pile of clothes that hung in various ways around the fire the two of them had constructed in the morning, but actually doing something about it would only draw more attention to the fact that she'd kept it on in the first place. The material of her emergency blanket crinkled loudly as she hugged it closer to herself.

It was dumb, really, wasn't it? People were dying, and she was worried about something as mundane as Matthew's reaction to briefly seeing her partially naked. She'd trusted him with her life as she'd slept last night, and he'd done the same the night before, but some part of her was still trying to make sure Matthew didn't get the wrong idea about things. It wasn't like a bit of comfortable nudity around friends hadn't veered in that direction a few times in her life. Plus, he sure looked like the kind of guy who cried on Reddit about being friendzoned, but in the pathetically genuine way, rather than the ironic shitpost way that Demetri would.

Then again, in her absent daydreams, she'd have expected him to be an extra at best - Cowering away from the gunfire somewhere, whilst she rode up like the cavalry, ready to deal with the threat. In practice, things were a little different than that. Imagining herself shooting some terrorist, or faceless school shooter, or whatever the nameless threat of the day happened to be was easy. Shooting someone like Shauna, hell even Sierra, that was hard to picture herself doing. Making the choice to kill someone who hadn't made the choice to be here in the first place. It wasn't murder, not really, Adam Dodd had been cleared of everything. She was pretty sure he hadn't even had to go to court - But that didn't make it feel any less like murder as she thought about it.

Faith sighed, and looked away from the dancing of the fire, and over at her companion. The silence had stretched on for too long. She needed to break it. Right now.

"You know, I wish we'd talked more at school." she observed, her tone light and conversational. "I feel like we could have got on, like, I dunno."

She stopped herself abruptly before walking into the trap of telling him she'd thought he'd be different. That would lead into him asking what she had thought of him. Between having to lie about that and insulting his intelligence, or being honest about it and actually insulting him, choosing neither seemed like the smartest option.

[Super Weegee]

((Matthew Hunt continued from Sun Giant))

"I'd probably bore you to death, to be honest." Matthew said as he tossed a small rock upwards. When gravity forced it to come down as it usually did, he easily caught it with his hand. Then he proceeded to throw it towards the sky again. Then he caught it again.

He had been doing it almost non-stop since he woke up. Just something to do while they waited for the announcements. It was practically a schedule for them at this point: wake up, listen for the speakers, walk around, pray that nothing kills them today, and eventually find somewhere safe to spend the night. Rinse and repeat. What else can they do? It's not like the other options were that better.

Gazing over towards his hung red hoodie, he could tell that it still hadn't dried up yet. The rain did a number on it, even managing to soak through the fabric and touch his blue shirt. Thankfully, it shouldn't be too much longer before it dries up, considering how less wet it was compared to the others once it stopped raining.

Matthew looked at Faith as he continued to think. He's been with her for the past three days, but they never really talked. Like..the talking about jobs and dreams kind. They've never gone too in-depth about one another, only focusing on the problem at hand. Hell, he doesn't know what she might be thinking in her head. Her set of friends, maybe? Where to search next? Who her first kill will be? Who knows, she might be wondering about what he's thinking as well.

There was another stretch of silence before Matthew spoke again.

"It's probably late for me to ask this," he said, catching the small rock once again, "but what was your first day here like?"

A little too simple of an icebreaker, but something was better than nothing. Besides, the silence was starting to make him uncomfortable. Maybe this will set things rolling.

[Frozen Smoke]

Faith's appreciation for his self awareness was evident in the softening of her expression into a thin smile. When stress had been put on him before he'd seemed so bullish, determined to follow up every little thing up aggressively as he could, and she'd almost expected him to continue to be like that in everything.

He was right, too. They probably would have at best bored each other back in Tennessee, and at worst gotten on each others nerves, but instead of that they'd both stayed out of each other's way. Not really with any intent on either of their parts, just due to the different groups of people they were closest to. The people she worried would be on each side of every announcement. Wyatt, Erika, Julien, Ivy, Mercy, Meilin, Erika...

Wait, wasn't Mercy dead already?

The corners of her mouth drooped a little. She couldn't remember. It felt like the kind of thing she should have remembered, but she just knew she'd heard her name, once. She rubbed her hand across her face. Either way, it was bad, really. Mercy wouldn't go out there and kill someone, she was sure of it, so she'd either been killed - Or someone had tried to kill her and she'd been forced to react. Not that that nuance would be translated into the announcement, of course, no.

She wished she could just tune it out. It would be easier not knowing.

"-what was your first day here like?"

"Huh?"

Faith made eye contact with Matthew again. Her brain only just about registering the question, and she paused for half a second, before quelling the surprise in her expression and making a little correction.

"Oh."

It was something else to think about, at least.

"Not great really. I was on my own for the first half of the day or so, just in the wilderness. Then I ran into Sierra."

Her expression soured a little.

"She distracted me whilst someone else snuck up behind me. I managed to hit the girl who came at me in the chest - Oh, uh, I got like a rocket powered pistol thing as my weapon. Shot these like, thumb sized stakes. Sounds cool, right? - Complete piece of shit. Barely fucking tickled her."

She gestured ineffectually as she tried to mimic the ungainly shape of her assigned weapon. She ended her statement with a laugh as she shook her head.

"Don't really remember what happened next. I just woke up a little bit later with this cut on my face from where I hit the ground, all my shit gone, and my hands and legs duct taped together. Eventually got my legs free, and ran into Juliette, Blaise, Camila and Dante."

Dante was definitely dead. She remembered that.

"I- I thought Blaise was helping Dante. He had a wound in his leg. A bad one, a real bad one, but he was alive at least. He was leaning on Blaise and she was helping him move. We were going to meet somewhere the next day. I wanted to find some other friends, more people so we could band together and be safe, find someone smart enough to come up with a plan.

Fuck."

Faith took a sharp breath in through her nose, and let it out through her mouth as she looked up. She wasn't going to cry. She'd done enough crying. Far too much crying.

"Sorry."

[Super Weegee]

Matthew listened as Faith told her story. How she was robbed by Sierra and some other girl, and meeting up with Dante's group afterwards. He smiled a bit when she called her weapon useless, probably forgetting about his assigned 'weapon'. At least with her weapon, she could get a good shot in on someone's eye. Yeah, it might not do much, but it was a gun.

Putting his thoughts back on track, he went into thought about who robbed her. Sierra was the one who did it? Considering how they don't really like each other back home, that didn't surprise him as much as it should. if anything, it would've been suspicious if Faith or Sierra didn't do anything to each other. Though, Matthew is the one travelling with her right now, so Sierra might not trust him simply off of that. That was unlikely, but still.

Blaise, however? She murdered Dante in his sleep, so she can't pull any shit about how she needed to do it. It was obvious, really. After all, she went on to kill three other people after that, including Joanne. Matthew grimaced when she thought about her. He wanted to talk to her at least once, even if she wasn't...

...Well, it's too late now. Can't do anything about it now.

He figured that he might as well reassure her. It's not like she's psychic or anything.

"It was the first day, Faith." Matthew said, "You couldn't have known."

Still, she probably wasn't done telling him about her day, and he was curious for the next part.

"What happened next?"

[Endellion]

Well, there was a sight for sore eyes. "Hello, Faith." He had an honest reason to smile for the first time since being brought here, and smile he did.

[ Julien Leblanc continued from Quinnspiracy Theory. ]

Julien looking about as bad as he felt did take some of the edge off of it though, sleep not having come by easily and need to see to cleaning and redressing the hole punched in his thigh with trembling hands proving especially slow and painful. But he had done it, had gotten up and dragged himself along until he saw the fire and went towards it. That was good enough.

"And yeah, ah... Whatever it's worth to you, if you had figured that the idea might start being to get rid of Dante, as an educated guess, Blaise probably would have turned on you." They hadn't been the quietest of people, so he'd been listening in as he approached. "They'll do just about anything to delude themself into magically being right."

It wasn't lost on him that once upon a time, he might have loved the chance to see Faith half-stripped, not least in a place looking like this. Now, though? He honestly didn't care.

"That aside, though... By all means, go on. I'd like to hear what you've been up to."

[Frozen Smoke]

Another breath held and released. She mumbled a thanks that lacked so much energy it was almost silent.

She looked back down, making eye contact with Matthew, and opening her mouth momentarily as she began to think up how to continue. Another voice cut in before she could though, the barest hint of annoyance flashing across her face before she recognised Julien's rather particular way of speaking, and a smile broke out to take it's place as she looked in it's direction. Finally, a voice that was familiar in a way that didn't immediately raise her hackles.

Faith wasn't sure she bought the whole plotting thing. If that was the case then she should have been able to see through the charade, rather than her just being some irrational little shit that had whimsically decided to do something evil for it's own sake, but that wasn't important. Julien meant well, and whilst her smile shrank to be just a crease of her lips, it remained alive. Just about.

"You look like shit, Julien." She observed wryly, adding a little chuckle to it. Chances were she didn't look much better, as a head full of unkempt hair poking out of her reflective blanket, but it felt like an appropriate greeting at least. His eyes were a little bloodshot, and there was little bit of beard starting to dot his face, which she was pretty sure she'd never seen on him before. His clothes were filthy too, with the arm of his shirt torn off and mud all over his jeans.

Faith gestured vaguely nearby on the tree as she shuffled up on it, freeing up enough room for him to sit down as well, inviting him to join the two of them. Her eyes flicked over to Matthew, realising he probably wouldn't know who Julien was.

"Don't worry, he's a friend." she reassured, flashing her smile a little wider for emphasis before turning back in Julien's direction, and continuing the story.

"Well, Blaise ended up freeing me, actually. After that we all kinda scattered. I went back to try and find my bag with all my clothes in it but well, couldn't find it. Imagine they're all fucked by the rain now anyway. After that, I tried to make it towards the coast - Don't know why - Ended up having to run away from fucking Tyrell. He was covered in blood, had just killed someone."

The image was hard to forget.

"So I just ran until I made it to the beach... Not much after that really, just slept, then I ran into you, Regina and-" Faith blanked on the names "-The other two."

"So, uh, yeah. Not a great day." she summarised, scratching the back of her head awkwardly as one hand kept her blanket clutched close to her in a bundle.

[Super Weegee]

Whatever was going to come out of Faith's mouth was lost when another voice came through, making Matthew jump slightly. Turning his head to the source, he saw Julien standing there. Wasn't he a friend of Faith or something like that? Other than that, Matthew was drawing a blank. Is he really trustworthy or is he a trigger-happy nutcase?

It's probably nothing that he had to worry about, considering that Faith was putting in a good word for him.

"What's up?" He said to Julien, smiling a bit.

After the sudden arrival, Faith continued with describing what happened and it wasn't really all that eventful, except for her running from Tyrell. No doubt that she would've been part of his kill count if she wasn't so fast. All the more reason to try to avoid him as much as possible.

"Tyrell has no excuse for what he did." He declared with a small amount of anger evident in his voice.

If I run into him, I better be prepared to draw first. When I get a weapon, that is.

Looking over towards Faith and Julien, Matthew figured that it was his turn now. It was only fair, really. Catching the rock once more, he refrained from tossing it up in the air again as he began.

"As for what my first day was like," he began, pausing for only a second to get their attention, "I met up with Mike, Regina, and...some other kid I don't know..." He tried to remember what his name was, but nothing was really popping up...there was a few details that he vaguely remembers, though...

"...he said he was the prom king and on football...?"

Shrugging, he continued.

"Eh, I'll probably come to me later. Anyways, whatshisface made a big speech about how sticking together is important for survival and asked that we all group up. We agreed, but we heard someone scream before we could decide on anything and we quickly checked it out. We found out that it was Drew, curled up on the ground and crying, and we got to work on calming him down."

Everybody except him, but it was a small detail that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

"Then Amber showed up out of nowhere and lost her mind. She screamed her head off and started rambling, and Regina and I had to calm her down. It was mostly Regina, though, because all I did was shake Amber like crazy. Stopped her rambling, at least."

He let out a chuckle before continuing.

"After that fiasco, whatshisface pretty much offered Amber a place on the team and she was on board with it. No less than fifteen or so seconds after she did that Drew decide to leave us. Me and Regina tried to convince him to stay, but he was set on it. He wouldn't say why, he just said that he was leaving." He shook his head. "Grateful guy, right? Not even a thank you?"

[Endellion]

"Drew did much the same thing to me when I saw him, but I did get a thank you for doing what I could about the chunk someone blew off his arm, so there's that. And prom king was Connor."

It was interesting that he could fill in some of the blanks that the both of them seemed to have in their time here. And since they had both summed up what their first days here had been like, it'd only be proper for Julien to act accordingly.

"Well, ah," he sat down where Faith had made space for him as he said it, sitting down immediately proven for the fucking horrible choice he'd known it was but taken anyway, and it showed on his face.

"I woke up here myself, got out of the bath I'd been left in, and ran into Ivy," and it came to mind unbidden that in some manner of karma the leg he'd near enough caved her ribs in with was the same one that had a bullet hole in it now, "as soon as I decided to actually go anywhere. Found Abel after that, along with Mikki and... two others. Can't remember their names right now. So I went and found something to cover him with, as much as he could be."

He wasn't lost to the fact he was lying by omission to one of his dearest friends, but she would have reason to take issue to him whenever they finally got around to announcing what he'd done. And knowing his luck, she'd find out about Ivy at some point too.

"I wound up meeting Valerija, Claudeson, Camille and Princess that night. That went by more peacefully, at least. That's about it."

[Frozen Smoke]

Faith nodded patiently as she listened to them talk, trying to put faces to names as best she could, before spotting the pain that crossed Julien's expression as he sat down. It only took a tilt of her head to see it, shaping her expression away from passive interest, even as she brought herself back to polite eye contact with him and waited for him to finish. She wasn't quite sure what had happened in particular, but there was a tear in his jeans that she could see bandages through, and he was keeping that leg still even as he sat. She wasn't sure if it was blood seeping through, or just dirt, or maybe just her imagination. The light that came from the fire and filtered through the canopy above was constantly dancing around, forming shadows and then dissipating them as her eyes played catch up.

She wished she had some coffee.

Faith waited, just for a moment, as she tilted her head forwards for a moment, expecting a continuation. There was more to the story, she could see there was more to the story, but that was where he'd chosen to end it. She pulled her head back for a moment, before slowly nodding, as she tried to collect her thoughts.

"Look, Julien. I'm not-" she began, before cutting herself off, for a moment, rephrasing.

Letting out a half breath, calming herself.

"I just have to ask, is there anything we can do for your leg?"

[Super Weegee]

"Ah," Matthew said, "that's what his name was."

It was a bit funny, really. No doubt Connor was high on the social ladder, and he couldn't be bothered to remember him in detail asides from the whole 'ditching them' part. Just when Matthew was about to continue, though, Julien jumped in with a story of his own. Not that it wasn't unwelcome, but couldn't Julien have waited until he was finished first? Well, at least he finished quickly.

Faith offered to do something about his leg, and that caused Matthew to eye the bandages that were underneath his jeans. Considering that he was on the opposite side of them, it was hard to see how bad the injury was. Even then, what could they even do for Julien? It's not like the first aid kit came with an instruction manual.

"There's probably not much we can do beyond changing the bandages," he added on, "unless you happen to know what a bunch of the shit in the first aid kit even are."

Realizing that he probably needs to finish his story, he took a few seconds to recall the details of what happened after Drew left.

"Continuing where I left off," he said, again pausing for a second to get their attention, "after Drew left, Amber proposed voting on a leader. I jumped in with Regina as the leader because I didn't know jack shit about Connor, Mike voted for Connor to be the leader, and Amber..."

...

...Oh boy, Amber.

"...She went rational all of a sudden and went on a big speech about how both trying to escape and playing the game suck and...to make the long story short, she knows about them because she watched Survival of the Fittest when she was younger while she was cutting herself. Then, as if nothing happened, she voted for Regina to be the leader."

After letting that sit for a bit, he continued.

"I guess she's autistic or something like that. Anyways, after that bit, Connor said that he was going to scout ahead, told us to listen for his signal, and to meet at the waterfall if we get seperated. Without even discussing it with us, he ran off. I'm sure you can guess by the oh-so suspicious lack of Connor that he was ditching us in reality. Everyone else ran after him like idiots, except for me and Regina."

He paused to take a breath.

"After that, we wandered around for the rest of the day. When we woke up, we walked to the cliff and met Faith and...yeah. That's pretty much it."

And with that, he started the new cycle of throwing the rock into the air and catching it.

[Endellion]

Autism, hm? All that had happened, when they first woke up here and afterward, and autism was the best fucking thing he could come up with. Talk about a joke. Julien didn't even bother wondering whether it had been like this before, because he knew the answer and he'd been all too guilty of it himself.

"Could have been a mental breakdown. Being condemned to die horribly will do that to more people than you might expect, however they show it." He wasn't sure how he managed to sound nice, but he managed well enough by his standards; they were probably skewed by how much he was hurting, but they were at least still there.

And he did find himself wondering about other things, though. It was... close enough to the time when the speakers crackled up to life again to announce who was doing 'well' and who'd been dealt the worst hands of them all. Ashlynn being on the list now of all times would be just sickeningly ironic enough that Julien was willing to bet it would be there.

So why was he lying when the truth would out so soon, he wondered? A question for the ages, and one with all the answers rooted in pathetic, impulsive weakness. He'd given in to that enough for one lifetime already, give or take one other. There was no point trying to cling onto scraps of sentiment that would blow away before long.

"And yes," he said, "there's nothing to be done for it. Erika took a big chunk of that thigh out, and I expect it's a matter of time until it gets infected and I'm really fucked. I prefer it this way though, all things considered."

[Frozen Smoke]

Faith had listened to Matthew with as much polite attention as she could manage, her eyes only trailing to the side to see how Julien was reacting a few times, whilst the tale he was telling wrapped itself up. The names mentioned gave her a few second thoughts. Would Connor really just abandon people like that? He'd stuck with Madison for so long, despite all the problems that caused him, and he'd always seemed like a gentleman to her when their paths had crossed. A little distant, maybe, but not the sort to leave someone to die, surely?

Maybe Connor hadn't realised that leaving someone on their own was leaving them to die yet. There were a few pieces missing to his retelling of the story that Julien wouldn't know, what came after that, where she'd been reminded of that particular truth again. Their run in with Violet, too, but that was less important.

By the time she opened her mouth to speak, Julien had already begun, and she stopped for a moment - Giving him the chance. She tried her best to remember what she was going to say, to keep the thought formulated whilst paying attention to what he was saying, waiting for a chance to interrupt. A fragile state of mind that was snapped in half with his final assessment.

"I prefer it this way though, all things considered."

Faith blinked, almost looking shocked, before her expression finally tipped over into an actual frown. That wasn't the Julien she knew, not one bit. Something had happened, something was fucking wrong. He should be fighting this. Julien wasn't a quitter, she knew that, she'd seen that.

"What the fuck does that mean?" she asked bluntly, her tone bitter and disappointed for a moment. It took a half-second before a tinge of remorse ran through her, as she realised she was berating a friend, and a wounded one at that. Her expression and her tone softened as she tried her best to offer a backpedalling follow up.

"Shit, at least have the decency to sound mad about it dude, fuck!"

Maybe she could make it seem like she was mad at the whole situation, and not him.

[Super Weegee]

"Maybe," Matthew said, shrugging, "but she was always kind of strange back home, even without her showing her cuts and all."

That couldn't have been a more dickish thing to say if he tried, but what else could he say? Oh, she isn't really that weird once they get to know her? Watching the terrorist's game to emotionally self-harm is perfectly normal? There's a line between having an emotional breakdown, and then just digging a deeper grave for herself.

In all honesty, the questions that she wound up raising aren't worth answering. Not anymore, really.

Julien mentioned how it was Erika who shot him and how he...prefers it that way for some odd reason. Unsurprisingly, Faith didn't like how he was just brushing off a soon-to-be-infected wound like it was nothing.

"Could have been worse," Matthew said, "Erika might've shot his heart or lung. At least he's still breathing this way. Hell, from the way you're looking, Julien, you probably have a thigh pain tolerance."

[Endellion]

He knew he shouldn't have expected anything less... but it still scraped against frayed nerves and heart like sandpaper. He could take a lot of pain, yes, but limits only stretched so far.

"So, let me get this straight... My friends are stuck here, people I love and care about are going to fucking die horribly, and you, ah, all you've got is being pissed at me because I have more important things to care about than what happens to me?" Julien looked down at the bandaged, bloody mess that was his leg. The pun had somehow been at least a little funny, so stupidly fucking brazen that it wound around to being amusing, which was quite an achievement considering what it was about. It helped make his laughter a little less bitter, grinding some of the edge away from it.

"I, ah... fuck. Wow."

Of course, that wasn't all just yet.

"I don't want to live because I don't really care for the idea of knowing I walked over my friends' corpses to fuck off home back to mom and dad and nothing ever being the same anyway so I end up pushed out of a place that I need because it's all I've got left of my poor dead fucking friends while I get to go on with life."

He'd thought about it a time or two before, what might happen if he managed to fuck up badly enough to push everybody away. The answer was never anything good. And now look at where he'd ended up.

"So, sorry to fucking disappoint you, Faith, but I'm not strong enough to push through that. So the idea is to leave it in the hands of someone I trust to do it, and if it takes being left in this place..." Julien shrugged. "Not like I'll have to live with it, will I?"

[Frozen Smoke]

It almost felt like an afterthought as the name being talked about filtered through the haze of emotion, another extra prod layered on top of everything else, as the face came into her mind. Erika. A friend, and a soft one, at that. Faith had heard the name in the announcements, as much as she'd tried to block them out, but it was easy to chalk it up to self defence. If things had been different, well, she still remembered the girl with her dark hair. She still remembered pulling the trigger of a gun that was pointed at her. Faith couldn't remember making the choice to kill her, it had all been too fast for that, for thinking. She'd just reacted.

But Julien wasn't going to rush at someone with a weapon. At least, she was pretty sure he wasn't going to, and Erika had still shot him.

She shoved it to the side, trying to force a reaction to Matthew's shit joke other than glaring at him, her cheeks crinkling up as her jaw stayed clenched tight. There was no laughter to the smile, as it sat there, unchanging for a few seconds. The pretense faded quickly as Julien began to talk again, a tense, neutral expression taking over her face as she held her tongue.

Everything he said felt like a point to butt in, a mistake, something she disagreed with. But part of her felt she owed him the courtesy of listening him out, and part of her hoped that maybe he'd come to realise what he was saying, or that he was building up to something good. Building up to anything.

His speech crumbled into a pathetic shrug and a rhetorical question, impotently crashing to the floor without a point to bring, without even the courtesy of an excuse. Her mouth hung slightly agape for a moment, belying her shock, before she closed it and swallowed. Her throat felt dry again, as she tried her best to keep her mouth shut, pressing her lips together between her teeth as she tilted her head and gaze away from him.

She tried her best to expel the initial reaction. The desire to just scream at him that this wasn't fair. That she needed someone to just not be a fucking problem for 5 seconds.

"Living's not the point." she settled on, a second later, as she faced him once again. Her expression was more turbulent now, as she swallowed words of pity and frustration equally, trying to force something out of herself that made sense.

"We- I mean, shit, maybe it is. Maybe someone else figures out how to find help. There's been escapes before. But even if no-one does, it- You have to try, right? To do the right thing."

A tense, half-second pause as she took a breath.

"I mean, fuck, do you think you're special? Do you think I want to go home out of here with my hands covered in blood?" Faith continued, gesturing at herself and then in a random direction flippantly.

She shook her head.

"Fuck no!"

"But what fucking important thing do you care about? What gives you the right to abandon everyone else, to just put up your hands and be like, 'Well, I guess the terrorists win'? Seems like the only thing you care about right now is pretending not to give a fuck."

The words tasted bitter in her mouth the second after they flowed out of her, making her pause and press her mouth into a tight, bitter line again to stop herself from continuing. There wasn't a point here, was there? Julien was already dead, like every other friend she'd met here, his body just hadn't caught up with his brain yet.

Faith barely registered it as Danya's voice began to echo through the speakers around them, the faux friendliness bouncing off of her, as she continued to stare back at Julien.