Disclaimer: I don't own Netflix's "The Rain" or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: I recently got into "The Rain" and fell in love with Jean's character. This is an examination of what could have happened after Jean was taken by the Strangers before being reunited with the others in the final episode of season one.
Warnings: insomnia, missing scene fic, emotional hurt and comfort, loneliness, a smidge of Jean x Lea if you squint – could be seen as pre-relationship.
Alene
The tablet from the bunker glowed softly on the side table as he shifted. Trying to get comfortable.
11:34pm.
He'd found it wedged inside a box of wafers in the store room, battery dead. He'd charged it out of curiosity and lack of anything else to do. Heels kicking nervously against the table in the main room. Eying the hall that led up to the courtyard in Apollon's headquarters and the door his palm-print wouldn't open. Knowing it was just a matter of time before they came for him.
It ended up being more of a guide to the bunker than the normal tablet he'd been expecting. It showed the other bunkers, which must have been how Simone had been able to lead them around. But there were still parts he recognized, like the music library and the internet explorer.
He only had his hopes up for a couple seconds, long enough for the Wi-Fi to error out. But still, he couldn't help but be disappointed. Just like his old cell and the computers at the library the day after the first rain, even if you did have power, nothing worked anymore. As far as he knew, the entire world had gone dark.
He missed the internet.
He missed a lot of things.
Things he hadn't had the energy to think about until they'd found Simone and Rasmus.
He hid the pad when a group of doctors in white coats and latex gloves came in and did an exam. Giving him a supplement he forced them to take first before he knocked it back. Watching them talk amongst themselves for a few minutes before the one with graying hair pointed at the bowl of fruit and told him to eat as much as he liked because he was 'too skinny.'
He'd almost laughed in her face.
He hadn't been full in years.
Not until the other bunker anyway.
Instead, he asked what they were going to do with him.
They left without giving him satisfying answer.
Which he figured spoke for itself.
No one saw the people the Strangers took again. Everyone knew that. He'd made his decision, now he had to live with it. However long that was going to be. He wondered if he'd live long enough to start feeling guilty about it. Guilty about killing. Guilty about meaning to kill. Guilty about wanting too. Part of him was afraid to find out. Wondering what is said about him if he didn't end up feeling guilty at all.
It wasn't until he was sure they were gone that he started scrolling idly through the recent tabs. Crunching his way through three bowls of re-hydrated cereal and some sort of powdered milk he'd added water to.
There were 456 recent tabs.
Everything from repeatedly trying to get internet access to searching the Apollon database for people's names. Like the people who'd been trapped here had been looking for family and friends. People they'd lost in the rain, or maybe ones they'd lost to the Strangers. Trying to reconnect. Trying to find out what had happened to the people they cared about.
It was the note pad that was the worst part. Dozens of people had made notes. Pleads for help. Observations about the bunker and the routines of the doctors. How they came and took people one by one. How no one came back. People talked about themselves, their families, children. Writing down prayers and secret hopes- all dated throughout the years. Each one more cynical than the last. Like the people before him had found the messages, just like him, long after the original authors were gone and added their words- their names- to a continuous memorial. Hidden from Apollon. Hidden from the Strangers. Something that was there's, their legacy.
His legacy.
The ironic part was he had no idea what to write. For the first time in a long time his brain felt muted. Overwhelmed by everything he could say, but knew he probably didn't have time for. Overwhelmed by how much of himself was now tied to the others. Like who he'd been before the rain was barely even real anymore.
12:04am.
All that aside, it wasn't the messages that were keeping him awake.
He squinted up at the ceiling. Huffing in frustration. You'd think it would be because he was probably going to die tomorrow, or the next day, that had him on edge. But it wasn't. He didn't want to die. But he had more or less accepted it. It was what happened if you got caught. Everyone knew that.
The truth was, he'd forgotten how to sleep alone.
1:55am.
It had been hard to deal with at first, the way Lea and Beatrice got into his space. Budging up against him. Even sandwiching him between them like there was this unspoken rule that no one slept alone. They had been relentless, Lea most of all. Sometimes Beatrice would take the hint when he moved his sleeping bag to the far corner of the greenhouse. But Lea never did. And the funny thing was, he never had the heart to say anything to her either.
Lea had a habit of making him feel like that.
Before all this he'd been used to his own room and his own bed. He'd never been able to sleep anywhere else. And, being an only child, he'd also been used to not having to share much of anything else either. Not food or his parents attention. Not even money.
"Spoiled," his mother had told him kindly. Shaking her head with a tired smile when he'd returned from a sleepover at a friend's house one Sunday. Complaining loudly about just about everything as she made lunch. Things six years later he would have killed for. Like sharing a real bed, and those clean, but scratchy sheets his friend had given him when he finally sulked his way to the bedroom floor. Too proud to admit he regretted it as he listened to the unfamiliar sounds of another house shifting. "And maybe a little selfish, Jean. Come now, there had to be somethings you liked? Don't forget how lucky you are, love."
2:25am.
He was still selfish.
But not in the same way he used to be.
3:47am.
Now he couldn't sleep because there was no one pressed up against him. There were no sounds. No breathing. No shifting. No scritch-scritch of the outside of a sleeping bag dragging on the ground. No muted conversations. No hair in his face or the light weight of Lea's arm slung over his side in that way they never talked about. No rustling and pacing from whoever was on watch. Nothing.
There was nothing.
He was alone.
He stared up at the ceiling, throat constricting.
The minutes ate sound.
The sound ate the spare oxygen.
He couldn't remember what Lea's voice sounded like as she wished him good night.
It didn't matter what happened tomorrow or the next day, he hated that most of all.
4:55am.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. This story is now complete.
Reference:
- alene: Danish for "alone."