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Pretty Blissfully
by Nicola
Rating: PG
Spoilers: #1.20, 'Do No Harm'
The day following Boone's death dawned bright and clear. As Shannon walked along the beach, the merest of breezes lifted her hair. The sun was warm, but not too hot. She was reminded of the Cote d'Azur in the springtime. Weather like this meant yachts and champagne and guys with names like Giacomo.
She walked for a long time after the makeshift tents and scattered belongings had ceased; venturing further than she would ordinarily dare. She walked until the sand was smooth and undisturbed as far as the eye could see. She walked until the wide-eyed stares of her fellow survivors were just a memory. People always stared at Shannon — but not like that; not with pity. It was a new experience, and she was pretty sure she hated it.
She had taken nothing with her, not even a towel. All she had was the bikini she wore — and her sunglasses, of course. It hadn't even been a conscious nod to minimalism; she'd just needed to get out of there. Get away from the screaming.
"We'll bury him. Today," Jack had said, with the perfect solemnity of a suited undertaker.
"No," she had argued. "Not here. You're not leaving him here to rot. He'll come on the raft. He'll be rescued." She had felt Sayid's arm tighten around her shoulders; she had felt the awkwardness of his embrace.
"Shannon," Sayid had said, a taut note of pleading in his voice. "It is something we must do."
It was then that the screaming had begun. It had taken her a moment to realize that it was Claire's baby, but by then Shannon had already begun to yell her own response.
"Get away from me! Get the hell away from me!" She'd pushed Sayid away, and felt the swift response of his hands, pushing down on her shoulders. Better at holding a prisoner down than comforting a girlfriend, she'd thought cruelly. When she had pushed him a second time, screaming in his face, he had let her go.
Shannon settled herself on the sand, stretching out her legs and angling her face carefully upward. She closed her eyes and thought of the French Riviera.
She didn't know how many hours passed, but by the time Kate arrived, the sun was low in the sky and she was feeling woozy and sun-stupid. Kate walked slowly along the beach, giving Shannon plenty of time to notice her – as if she were approaching a volatile animal.
"I brought you some food," Kate said in what Shannon recognized as her fake-y, soothing voice. She dropped a bag on the sand.
Shannon ignored her. She wondered how Kate had got this job: The Ambassador. Carefully neutral, not easily provoked. God, she'd probably volunteered for the task. Perfect Kate – another few brownie points and her halo would be fucking bullet-proof.
"I thought you could do with a friend," Kate said at last. Shannon didn't need to look at her to recognize the syrupy concern slathered over her face.
"I don't need a friend," Shannon said. She almost said: I need a brother. But, in truth, she'd never really needed that either.
Shannon waited until after Kate had left before inspecting the bag's contents. There were several bottles of water; two parcels of food (fish, fruit – no boar) wrapped up in leaves; and, to Shannon's faint amusement, a dog-eared copy of Vogue.
When Kate came the next day, Shannon had rotated so that she lay on her front, facing the ocean. Kate came to a halt a few feet away, just as before. She leaned down to briefly inspect yesterday's parcels of food that were now dried up and beginning to brown around the edges.
"You're not eating," Kate said flatly, like a nurse who is disappointed in her patient. "Shannon. This isn't a joke. You at least need to stay hydrated." She placed new food and more water in the bag, and then left.
On the third day, Kate didn't arrive until sundown. Her hair was loose, tangled and hanging in her face. Shannon — who was sitting, lotus-style — watched as she ran a hand through it distractedly. She looked tired. There was no ceremony this time as she dumped a papaya and two bottles of water in front of Shannon.
"Look, Shannon, maybe you should come back to the caves—" she began to say. Then she stopped herself, and Shannon could see the internal monologue continuing across her face. She sighed wearily. "No. God— you're probably better off here. Things are . . . well, they're not good. There's some stuff going on. It's . . . I think it might get bad," she finished cryptically.
"I have to go," Kate said. Shannon saw a flash of something like contempt cross her face. "Just . . . eat something, okay?"
It was later that night when Sayid finally came to see her. She was still sitting, staring blankly at the blackened ocean, when he crouched down beside her.
"Shannon," he said softly. He reached out a hand, as if to touch her hair, and then retracted it. He sighed slightly. "I am sorry that I have not seen you. I am needed elsewhere. Things at the caves, things between Jack and Locke. There must be action; there is no other . . ." He trailed off, letting his head drop wearily into his hands.
"So you're leaving me. You're leaving me to go off to war!" She giggled, and it sounded wrong to her ears; high-pitched and manic.
Sayid frowned. "You'll be all right. You never really needed me to take care of you." He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Then he was gone, swallowed up by the night.
On the fourth day, Kate found Shannon digging a hole. She was using her hands, clawing at the darker, damper sand under the surface with her nails. Her polish was already chipped beyond repair, anyway.
Kate stood with crossed arms, watching her. "What are you doing?" she asked, and Shannon was pleased to hear that the fake niceness had finally subsided into a wary bluntness.
"I'm digging . . . I'm digging my way out!" That laugh again; the one she didn't quite recognize as her own. "I figure if I just keep digging, I should be able to burrow through to the other side of the world." She paused, and added with slight wistfulness: "I should end up on the Cote d'Azur."
"France is beautiful this time of year," Kate replied.
"You've been to France?" Shannon said disbelievingly.
Kate smiled briefly. "I once lost $200,000 in one night at a casino in Monte Carlo."
Shannon stopped digging, squinting up at Kate. She tried to imagine her trussed up in pearls; a black evening gown; stiletto heels. "You're lying," she said at last, without certainty.
"Believe what you want." Kate's eyebrows flicked upwards, the smile returning. She walked away, and Shannon continued to dig.
By the time the sun had begun to set, Shannon's hole was waist-deep. She tried to lie down in it, but its diameter was too small. Instead, she curled up into a ball, resting her cheek against the cold, wet sand.
Boone finally appeared to her many hours later, as the sky lightened and the sun threatened from beneath the horizon. She scrambled to her feet, reaching out to touch his face.
"Hi . . ." she whispered, stroking at him desperately. "I missed you . . ."
"When have you ever greeted me like that?" Boone laughed hollowly. "I guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder. That's if you actually have a heart, Shan. I could never really be sure."
He lifted his own hands to his face, pulling hers away. He pushed her gently, and she awoke screaming, the sensation of falling filling up her throat.
The hole was shoulder-deep by late afternoon on the fifth day. Shannon thought of how her head must appear sliced off at the neck as she stood there. Just like Marie-fucking-Antoinette.
Kate arrived, on schedule, with the grave expression of an executioner. "It's Boone's memorial service," she said. "At sundown tonight."
"You buried him," Shannon replied tonelessly.
"If you want to be there, I can take you . . ."
"I don't."
Shannon's words were sharp. She sat down abruptly, twisting her legs under herself so that it almost looked like a fall. She was lost in the shadows of her hole. To her surprise, Kate sat down, too. Seated adjacent to the hole, she appeared to Shannon as a silhouette, raised above her, blocking the sun's last rays.
"Tell me about Monte Carlo," Shannon said distantly. There was silence, and she thought that Kate had chosen not to answer. Until, at last, she replied—
"It was . . . like a fantasy. Nothing there was real. All tourists and businessmen and crooks. It made me feel . . . unreal. Fake." She whispered the last word: "Fearless."
"Which were you? Not a businessman . . ."
"A tourist," Kate said with certainty, and Shannon heard the lie.
"On vacation from your life," Shannon said dreamily, her fingers drawing circles in the damp sand. "Who was the guy?"
"What guy?"
"There's always a guy."
"His name was Robert."
"You mean Roberto . . ."
"No, plain old Robert. From Arkansas. He sold insurance. And liked to take things."
Kate was quiet for a long time, and Shannon wondered: how much did he take from you? The sun had almost set and Shannon could barely make out the contours of Kate's shape in the new darkness.
"Who was the guy?" Kate asked suddenly.
"What guy?" Shannon said reflexively, without realizing she was parroting Kate's question.
"The guy in Sydney. Your Robert or Roberto or . . ."
"Brian was the Australian. Built. Tan. Just the right amount of wrong," Shannon said, digging her damaged nails into the sand. "But the guy . . . the guy . . ." She laughed, low and mean. "Wedding planner? is that better or worse than insurance salesman?"
There was a long silence, and then finally Kate stood up.
"It'll be over by now, won't it?" Shannon whispered. "The service . . ."
"Yeah, it'll be over . . ." Kate's voice floated back to Shannon as she began to walk away.
Shannon felt the tears, thick and warm like seawater. She drew her knees to her chest, leaning her cheek against her thigh. She cried until it hurt to breathe.
"I want to swim!" Shannon cried on the morning of the sixth day, running into the surf like a giddy child.
"Shannon— don't!" Kate stood on the beach, watching with the paralysis of a concerned parent. She darted forward, and then stopped. Reluctantly, she began to roll down her shorts. Her t-shirt joined them in a heap on the sand, revealing her underwear. She ran into the ocean.
Shannon, weak from grief and starvation, was a poor swimmer, but surprisingly tenacious. She was several hundred meters distance from the shore by the time Kate caught up to her.
"The rip-tide," Kate gasped, treading water beside Shannon, "it'll catch you."
"I just want to float in the middle of the ocean . . ." Shannon stared at Kate with big, glassy eyes, her head bobbing above the surface. "And if I drown . . . if I start to drown . . . there's no one left to save me, is there?"
The water was surprisingly calm, and it buoyed Shannon as she spread out like a starfish. She floated on the surface like a discarded rag doll, wondering how it would feel never to breathe again.
"You're right." Kate's voice looped inside Shannon's ear, muffled by the water. "No one's going to save you. No one's gonna stop you from drowning. No one's gonna stop you from lying down in that grave you're digging and never getting up again." Kate's last words were faint, like the dying broadcast of a transceiver.
There was silence: Shannon could feel its enormity; the ocean that stretched on forever, the sky that could swallow even the loudest sound. She closed her eyes and floated.
Kate was seated where she had been the night before when Shannon finally returned to the beach. She shivered in spite of the hot sun, walking in a drowsy line.
"I don't want to go back," Shannon said. She looked over at her hole, and then sat down next to Kate. The sand stuck to her damp legs, creating strange contours and patterns along her thighs and calves.
"That's okay," Kate said. She didn't look at Shannon; she just continued to stare out at the ocean.
Shannon spread her hands out in the sand, the grains sticking to her palms. She hesitated, and then said: "Stay with me, okay? Just for a while."
Kate nodded. The faintest smile touched her lips. "This place isn't so bad, you know. It's not the French Riviera. But at least it's real."
April 2005
Muse music: 'The View' by Modest Mouse
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