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Finn was at work. Kaatje was at work. Tallulah was at class and Nick, he was at work. Laney wasn't answering her letters, and they'd taken away her cell phone after they'd found her sending text messages to people on the contact list. In short: boooo. The one thing they couldn't really stop her from doing was going out. She had, in fact, snuck out a first-floor lobby window (because the front door was Off Limits) and gone wandering.

Things she had: fourteen dollars and seventeen cents, a transit pass with forty dollars on it, and a backpack containing exactly the three-eyed raven from Game of Thrones, a book on birds of the Audubon, and a water bottle. The water bottle didn't last long, and it was hot, and there was a cafe advertising their weekly Battleship competition. It was two dollars to enter, which Arkady certainly had, so she forked over eight quarters and settled herself where she was told.

The man that sat down across from her looked ever so familiar. It was the hair. Or maybe the nose. Or maybe his eyes, which were a really lovely color, but not as lovely as Finn's (no one was as lovely as Finn). She gave a little wave and said, "Hi! I'm Arkady, and I'm going to kick your butt, okay?"

"Maybe," she said, carefully laying out her ships. Clustering them close together was probably a bad idea, unless… hm. Hm. She bit her thumbnail and clicked her ships into place, leaning back in her chair just in case he thought she was trying to cheat. "I mean, before, maybe I was. I have a, um, a brain problem? I was very sick, so I don't remember much." She thought she might find this place familiar. The view was, anyway.

She adjusted the collar of her sweater, and finished placing her ships. "It's nice to meet you, Marlo," she said. "Do you want to go first?"

Well, if it wasn't that uncommon of a story… Arkady sighed and smiled a little, relieved. At least she didn't have to be worried about people being mean about it, it looked like. She was working on pretending to be normal, really she was. But. It wasn't going so well. "No, no," she said, distractedly. "No, it wasn't a coma. I had, um, I had Chaos in my heart. Like a chip of ice. Hvergelmir said so. And then Sailor Cosmos came down and she made me better, but she had to take away my memories to do it. This cat sweater was mine, before." She plucked at the shoulder of it. "I like it. It's the kind of shirt that people don't like to look at, don't you think? You missed, by the way. Do you have anything at G-10?"

She looked at him again, harder. "Do I know you from somewhere? You look really familiar."

"Noooo," she said, plunking a white peg into A-4. Haha, yesss, she just had to go up or left now, right? She started to smile, but the expression faded before it really had a chance to grow. "I'm not stupid," she objected, quietly, expression downcast now. What had she even done that was stupid? God, she couldn't even think right, she just didn't know enough.

Maybe it'd be better to just shut up and be quiet, all the time? She racked her brains for who the brother without the wings would be, but only ended up slumping in her chair a little further. She didn't remember, she just didn't, there was a great big hole in her head that was all filled with golden fog and nothing.

In the end, Arkady salvaged just one mental image. "I kissed you once," she said. "But I don't think I meant it very much." Surely she didn't. That would be dishonest, because the only person she loved that way was Finn. Could people have wings? No one had told her so, but… had the white lady… no, no. That was stupid. "G-9," she said.

Oh goodness she knew exactly where the next hit would be. She bounced a little in her chair, clapping once and only once before chirping, "F-10! Don't try to tell me miss because I tried putting these diagonal and they don't go!" She marked his hit with a little red pip, and said, "Oh. You hit something, by the way."

They didn't have to talk about the kiss. Arkady nodded and then frowned. "Oh," she said. "There are enemies? I don't know anything about that." She made a face. Why wasn't anyone telling her anything? She needed to know all about what was out there trying to get her! "You look more like a Marlo than a Pollux." She, of course, was an Avalon more than an Arkady. But that was a matter of perspective, too.

"I'll be more careful," she said, biting her thumbnail gingerly.

She shook her head slowly, making a great big frown at his miss. He would never guess, she thought with a little bit of glee, she was so good at this game. Gonna kick his butt all over the dang place gosh dang, she thought, the exaggerated frown drifting upwards into the slow curve of a smile. “Oh no,” she said, “I live with Finn. And the White Lady’s too busy to deal with people like me. I was very sick, and she made me very better, and I can’t be mad about that.”

Arkady said, “E-10, please,” and then she tipped her head sideways, red hair falling over one shoulder. “Would I still be allowed to see Finn, if I went to stay with you? He’s important to me. He’s mine, you see. No one else is allowed to have him, just me.”

"He's my boyfriend," she said, a little secretively. She couldn't tell him that Finn was Babylon. Obviously! He'd just said that. She bit her knuckles and said, "D-10? Have I sunk it yet?"

Arkady slumped a little in her chair, but she nodded. Well, of course she needed help. Wasn't that why the White Lady had had to save her, anyway? She closed her Battleship board, taking Marlo's failure to name a new target as a sign that their game was over. "You'd tell me what to do," she asked, tapping her fingers on the lid of her board. "Finn just says, don't make friends with people whose names end a certain way or wear too much black. But it's hard to tell! No one wears their uniforms, Marlo," she explained, her voice hushed. "They always hide them. Even me! Even though I don't want to. I'm good at being the other me. I'm terrible at being this me. I'm all weak and too tall and nothing fits right, it's awful."

Heavily implied suggestions did sound like orders to her. She liked the sound of that; she liked knowing what she was supposed to be doing. Other things she liked: not being broken because of how tall she was. She was very tall, after all. Not taller than Marlo, thank goodness. She held out an arm for him to take, very gentlemanly. "I would appreciate that, Mr. Xanis. Lead the way?"

[FINNERS]