Title: "The Girl Most Likely"
Author: monimala
Fandom: "Lost"
Rating/Classification: adult language, angst, Shannon/Sayid-ish, future fic
Disclaimer: Bad Robot!
Summary: She doesn't go to any of the "reunions."
She doesn't go to any of the "reunions." A nice, hokey, high school word for the glorified group therapy sessions where they pretend they're Gilligan and Mary Ann and Mr. Howell and their two year island adventure was a beach vacation with a coconut radio. Where they trade healthy helpings of "you look great" and "how are you adjusting?" Painfully polite ways of saying, "Wow, you're still fucked in the head."
She ignores Claire's messages, cursing the day they all agreed to exchange contact information. She blames it on the trippy shit the base doctors injected into her i.v. "Restoring your electrolyte balance," they said. Ha. What-the-fuck-ever.
And now Claire calls once a month. Nice calls for their intimate little class get-togethers. Bring your issues, a cheese tray, and a bottle of wine. Luckily, she's no longer the Girl Most Likely To. Maybe she never was.
***
She used to place bets with herself on who would make it. Too many "Survivor" viewings back in the real world or maybe just a morbid hobby to pass the time. She'd predicted her own death by wild boar, tropical fever, and even Sayid strangling her in her sleep because he realized what a heinous bitch she was. Dark, hunky, Othello to her Desdemona. With Boone's Iago whispering in his ear.
Don't look so surprised, she tells her pale reflection in the mirror. You *do* know how to read.
And apparently how to survive, too.
Because she made it. She got on that rescue chopper without stumbling, without looking back.
She beat people who had much better odds.
She still sees their faces.
She remembers that Kate had a pretty smile, the sexiest underwear, and deadly aim. That Locke looked at everyone and saw the best in them, saw what they could be. She remembers that Hurley was a terrible golfer, that Jin spoke flawless English to baby Adam when he thought no one was listening, and that her brother... her brother loved her even if he was the biggest asshole on the planet.
She had it all wrong.
And she couldn't even get dying right.
***
A month and a half After--and it's always "After"--Claire invites her to Adam's 2nd birthday party. In Sydney. Where it all began. Thanks, but no thanks, she says to the answering machine.
They e-mail her pictures of the little monster shoving his face into the cake. She deletes them and blocks any further messages from addresses that end ".au."
***
She expects the calls to stop eventually. They don't. Sometimes it's Claire. Sometimes Sun. Once Walt, his voice cracking as he pleads with her to come hang out. She wonders if he's shot up six inches like he kept bragging he would. If he plans to play center and forward AND guard for the Knicks. If Vincent still chews on his sneakers.
And then she hits "erase."
***
The girls she used to know Before--and it's always "Before"--are still obsessed with Jimmy Choos and Prada and getting the perfect all-over tan on a topless beach in Cabo. *They* stopped calling. After she turned down Barbara Walters. She's fine with that. Besides, she can't wear a bikini anymore. Because *her* all-over tan no longer qualifies as perfect. Nothing about her does.
"Why don't you get that removed? I can give you the number of the guy that did my lipo..."
As if Paris Hilton and her delusions of cellulite are sisters-in-arms with Shannon and her scars.
She strokes the ugliest one when she can't sleep, when the bed is cold and the whirring of the A/C unit is no substitute for the ocean. Her fingers run over the jagged knots of skin that bisect her belly. Jack stitched her up with black thread from someone's sewing kit. He cut her open with one of Locke's knives, boiled sterile over the fire. His scalpels had gone missing from his medical bag almost eight months before.
"Not my best work," he'd apologized, softly.
"Not mine either," she'd countered, hoarsely, squeezing her eyes shut as he wrapped up the tiny body, pulling cloth over the little blue face.
"Malnutrition. I'm sorry," he'd said. As if her not eating was somehow his fault. "There was...there was nothing we could've done, Shannon."
Of course not. Of course there was nothing. She hadn't even known she was pregnant. Years and years of bulemia, of fluctuating weight, never being skinny enough, perfect enough, had fucked with her body chemistry and gotten her used to skipped periods. She could go months at a time without increasing sales for Tampax. It had seemed like a blessing after the crash. For a long time there. But after four months of swollen feet that Sayid couldn't find shoes for--and it's always "After"--there was no denying it.
Bits of black thread still caught in her skin are all she has left.
That and permanent vocal cord damage from the screams.
The Navy medic on the aircraft carrier had made some lame joke about how she'd never sing soprano again. Fucking idiot. She guesses she didn't look to him like the kind of girl who sang at all.
They named the baby Nadia and buried her in the shade near the herb garden. She'd balked at Sawyer's suggestion that they call the baby "Eve," beating him with fists she could barely clench until he admitted they weren't in Eden no matter how hard Claire tried to make believe it. Sawyer, Sawyer, Sawyer. He'd carried her back to the caves before she could pass out in front of everyone. He'd pulled a blanket up to her chin and whispered "there, there" and "hey now" until Sayid returned from the grave and picked up the chant. And even then, he'd stayed. They'd both stayed with her all night. Sayid tasted like freshly dug earth and death and Sawyer cut it with bitterness.
But that was him. That was his way.
Sawyer walked into the ocean a month before they were rescued. A month.
"Wow," she whispers, sometimes, toasting him with Daddy's Chivas Regal. "You're still fucked in the head."
Right up until his body washed onto the beach, she'd been convinced he'd be the last man standing, the ultimate Survivor. Someone like that was too mercenarial to die.
But maybe he wasn't like that. Maybe he never was.
Maybe it had been her all along.
***
There is a long list of thing she doesn't do anymore. Besides answering the phone. She doesn't fly--a given. She doesn't paint her toenails. She doesn't starve herself or throw up when she does eat. She doesn't speak French. Of course, she doesn't sing. She doesn't laugh. Or cry.
Boone's mother stops asking her how she's adjusting right around the time Adam turns three. He calls Aunty Shan himself and she thinks maybe it's time to change her number.
But she doesn't do that either.
***
The bedroom door clicks shut and she looks up from the wedding portfolio she's been working on for a billionaire and his fourth wife. The bride should definitely wear white...diapers. She's practically an infant. If she was still capable of it, Shannon would laugh herself to death every time she reads the name on the file: Eve.
"They missed you this time."
"You always say that," she murmurs, putting aside the sketch of a bare midriff gown she'll never be able to wear herself.
"It is always true."
Sayid slides under the sheets, plucking the file folder from her hands. She puts up a mild protest until he pulls her against his chest and kisses the tip of her ear, breathing her name and "*I* missed you." He's warm, solid, and his close-cut beard tickles. She'll sleep tonight. She'll sleep well. She won't dream.
"Did Sun tell you that you look great?" she wonders.
"No. Michael did," he chuckles. "And it was Jack who asked after our adjustment."
Jack who Sayid almost killed once for suggesting the emergency c-section. And again after the first incision made her scream.
Jack no longer practices medicine.
And Sayid no longer kills people or threatens to. But he holds her like he did that night and almost every other night for two years. Like he'll hold her for the next two, ten, fifty.
Wow.
She's still...
Still.
Alive.
--end--
February 19, 2005.