AN: An un-betaed oneshot and my first fic, so please give some con/crit when you finish.
Morning was heralded by the smell of burning flesh and the steady twack of iron meeting wood echoing off the sheer cliffs. Steve cleaved through log after log of dried lumber, not even breaking a sweat, the ax being lighter than the weighty picks he used to mine ores. He found the repetition of chop, turn, chop to be almost cathartic as it warmed up his sleepy arms for another day of construction.
The pile to his left had nearly doubled in the last half hour; log quarters littering the area around the tree stump so thickly that Steve could not see the grass underneath. With one last swing, the miner drove the ax down in to his impromptu chopping block and began to gather up the wood. One load went to the work area he had set up by the sheep pen, the next two went in to the shed and the following he placed by the pig sty, which he had plans to begin extending later that day.
The last armload was gracelessly carried in to his cabin (Steve had shut the door and, without dropping a single log, was forced to execute a number of yoga positions that would make a lesser man cringe just to turn the knob) and dumped in to a crudely made basket by the dying fireplace. The miner lowered himself down to one knee and considered the flames for a moment before grabbing one of the freshly cut logs and tossing it in to the hearth. The fire latched on to the new source of fuel almost instantly, spreading its familiar scent through the room. It was the smell of summer, of his grandfather's small sugarcane farm. Steve tipped himself in to a sitting position and planting himself on the floor so he could watch the fire more comfortably.
'What is my family doing right now? What will they think of me if I ever go back?'
In Waialua, Steve had been the (slightly) chubby runt of triplet brothers. He was the vanilla child, the boring one, while his brothers won surfing trophies and robotics medals, Steve was being dull, fat Steve.
The miner absent-mindedly poked his belly, the fat had been lost during the first few starving weeks of his existence hear and never came back thanks to the relentless exercise that came with survival. In its place he gained lean muscle, making his legs faster and his arms… lifty-er. If he ever found his way back, his girlfriend would appreciate his lack of chub, he was sure. It was her, after all who had seemingly made it her life mission to make him take care of his body back home.
'And all it took was wakening up on an uncharted continent,' he thought bitterly, 'swarming with an army abominations.'
He felt like a soldier of some sort, he had killed, he had bled, he had been scarred and broken. Steve's face fell as he felt his heart twinge. His mind's eye flooded with the images; his knuckles, striped of skin… pus flowing like a river of putrid milk from a spider bite... bloodied hands griping the arrow and pulling. Every single moment of agony sketched in to his dark skin, reminding him of what he lived through. But he wasn't a soldier; he was a twenty six year old Hawaiian native, alone, being assaulted nightly by things they only talk about in faerie tales. He was not fighting for anything but the right to live till morning, to see his family one more time, to kiss his girl.
The twinge in his heart began to rise. He had been hear for what must have been months, was his family still looking for him? Or had they already given up and had the funeral? What of his college friends, how had they been affected?
More and more questions flooded his mind, making his tongue go numb and his head swim. He tried to wade through the deepening fear of alone… alone… alone…
The twinge was at this throat now, making it hard to take in air. Pictures now accompanied the storm of questions in his brain; flashing by so fast Steve hardly had the time to realize what they were of before another replaced them. The tearful face of his mother, his roommates cleaning out his part of the apartment, Thanksgiving dinner with one empty chair. With every new image the twinge rose higher and higher until… His dog, Bee, sitting alone by the door, waiting for someone who would never come back.
And for the first time in a very long while, Steve let himself cry.