Forget Me Not
Chapter One
Note on series: This story is part of a series, which can be found in my bio page, along with an order list.
Disclaimer: Lost belongs to J.J Abrams and co. at ABC.
IMPORTANT!
Due to the fact that I was actually right about some things in the finale, I've decided what I want to keep and take out in this fic, so pay close attention so you don't get confused!
1. I'm keeping my plot with Claire and the Black Rock, and the B.R. being connected to the hatch, which should be a big hint to things later on in this story. This means that Claire has had her baby, but it was when she was taken by Ethan, and they believe it to be dead.
2. The Locke/Boone background stays the same. I think I'm in love with it.
3. My version of the Jack/Sarah story remains in play in this fic, but the only thing is: does Jack know the kid's actually his?
4. Everything's that's been done with Kate in the show is now taking place here too, so that includes that part about the plane. However, I am keeping the plot about how she killed her father, it just wasn't him who gave her the plane.
5. I'm keeping every plot I've used with Sawyer, except for why he was in Australia.
Also note: That I'm still not sure who I want to do flashbacks on in this story. I'm thinking Shannon, because I'd like to do someone different, but I'm not sure. I think that the next fic will be Jack-centric, or Boone-centric. I also want to do a Sawyer-centric fic, but I don't have the slightest idea of what the island story will be about. And a Danielle story- now that one I'm excited about doing. Let's all be surprised.
Summary: Alex takes Jack out to investigate the newly found tail section, while the discovery of an island mystery may prove to be the solution to Shannon and Sayid's rocky relationship.
Fire does things to you. It puts you to sleep, keeps you awake, and it makes you think. It traps you inside within yourself. Thinking about fire reminded Alex of an old song she had once heard on the radio. She wasn't sure who it was by, maybe Willie Nelson, but it was something about a burning ring of fire and going down, down, down. Funny how little things like that popped into your head when you were alone on an island.
Of course, she wasn't totally alone. Jack was there for her, as he had made a point in saying just three nights before. But the past three days had been the loneliest she had ever experienced. Three days of sitting on the beach, staring into fires. She couldn't even sit by the shore anymore, because all that did was bring back memories of her recent encounter with Adam, and just the thought scared her half to death.
"I guess this is yours," Jack said from behind her, breaking Alex from her thoughts as something heavy landed on the ground beside her.
Moving her head for what felt like the first time in weeks, Alex saw that Jack had dropped her backpack beside her. She hadn't even bothered going back to the caves for it, and almost didn't want to. Everything about her past haunted her, and Alex was more afraid than she had ever been. She didn't want to know dead people, didn't want to be able to talk to them.
"How're you doing?" Jack asked, though Alex knew he had his own theories.
"Just fine," Alex muttered, not giving so much as another glance to the only key left to her past.
Not buying it, or maybe just wanting some company, Jack swung his leg around the log Alex was sitting on, and sat down. He looked at her, watching her watch the fire, waiting for the right moment to speak again.
"I've been worried about you," Jack admitted, finally, "everyone has."
"No they haven't," Alex said with a snort.
"What makes you think that?"
"I hear them talk about me," Alex said quietly, "like I'm some burden. They're afraid of me- my mom. Like we're aliens or something."
"They just aren't sure how to react," Jack said, though he knew that wasn't entirely true, "they'll come around, but until then, you can't let it bother you. If you keep living like this-"
"I told you I'm fine," Alex said with slight aggravation, and looked over to Jack, making eye contact with him and then glancing back down to the ground again.
"You've been sitting out here for days," Jack told her, as if she didn't know this, "you haven't been eating, sleeping. Come to the caves, get yourself cleaned up. Your mother's worried about you."
"If she's so worried about me then why did she have to send her messenger to talk to me?" Alex said dully.
"She just not sure how to handle things right now," Jack said, beginning to sound like he was an expert with estranged relationships, "this is just as new to her as it is to you."
"Yeah?" Alex said, not convinced. "The only difference is that this is all her fault."
Jack looked at her.
"What makes you think that?"
"You heard her," Alex said, her voice suddenly full of hatred, "how my father must of 'moved me to LA'. Yeah, well where was she?"
"Crashed on some island in the South Pacific," Jack replied, though the question was rhetorical.
"Not according to my dad," Alex shook her head, "he said she died in a car crash. Why would he lie about that?"
Jack let his shoulders droop, defeated.
"I'm sure she'll tell you when you're ready to know," Jack said, standing up, "but it looks like you've got it all figured out, so-"
"Wait!" Alex said, jumping up.
Jack stared at her, waiting for her to go on.
"There's something I should've told you a few days ago," Alex said, looking down to avoid his silence that followed and his eyes, "I..um.." she finally had to look up at him, "I found the tail section of your plane. Flight 815."
"What?" Jack said, stunned. "Are- are you sure? Where?"
Alex looked at him, as if trying to figure out if Jack would be up to the trip.
"I'll show you," Alex said, "if you're up for it."
Jack glanced towards the jungle and nodded.
"I am."
(Space)
Shannon hid in the shadows of the caves as she listened to Michael and Sayid talk about a third raft they had begun building. Word had it on the beach that Alex had blown up the second, though no one had a clue as to why. She waited in the dark until her patience got the best of her, and she stepped forward in front of Michael and Sayid, shadowing them from where they sat on the ground.
"Did you need something?" Sayid said finally.
"Yeah," Shannon said, after staring at him for one second too long, "can I talk to you?"
Sayid glanced at Michael who shrugged.
"Go ahead," Michael said, "I've got to go catch up with Jin and Sawyer anyway, to see if they're willing to do this again."
At the mention of the word 'again', a cut on Michael's forehead suddenly stood out a mile to Shannon, and she wondered if that had been from the raft wreck. She gave herself no time to ponder this though, and waited until Michael was out of earshot.
"Something on your mind?" Sayid asked, immediately turning to the stream behind him, and reached down, splashing some of the cool water on his face.
"Yeah," Shannon said, annoyed with him, "you."
Sayid looked at her in surprise.
"Don't give me that look," Shannon scolded. "Why have you been ignoring me?"
"As if you don't know," Sayid sighed, shaking his head.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Shannon demanded.
"Why don't you ask Boone?" Sayid said, turning away from her and picking up some maps and drawings he had been studying with Michael.
"What?"
"I saw you two in the jungle the other day," Sayid said, standing back up and facing her, "maybe next time you two should pick a more private place to 'talk'."
It took a moment for Shannon to realize what he was talking about.
"Oh that," Shannon said, rolling her eyes, "that was over a week ago!"
"You kissed him!" Sayid protested, disgusted.
"He kissed me!" Shannon corrected. "And I'm guessing you didn't stay long enough to see me slap him."
Sayid grew silent, and looked down, thinking of how to react to that mistake.
"I'm sorry," he said finally, "I did not know."
"Yeah?" Shannon said. "Well just a hint, the next time you decide to stop talking to someone for a week, make sure that they actually did something to deserve it."
"I'm sorry," Sayid said again, "is there anything I can do to make up for it?"
Shannon smiled at the offer.
"Want to go for a walk?
(Space)
"So how's it been going?" Locke asked as he and Boone made their way back to camp for the night.
"Excuse me?" Boone said casually.
"The withdrawal," Locke said, glancing back to Boone, who had been lagging behind.
"What are you talking about?" Boone said, nervously picking at a bug bite on his neck.
"I'm not blind Boone," Locke said, sidestepping a log that stuck out of the ground, "anybody who crosses your path can see that something's wrong. You might was well tell me now rather than later. You ran out of the drugs, didn't you?"
"Not so much ran out as- lost them," Boone flushed in the dark, embarrassed by how that sounded.
How could he lose something so important to his life?
"And Jack has no replacement drug?" Locke asked, and Boone was surprised that Locke was actually speaking like he cared.
"He's been giving me these sleeping pills to help me so I can go to sleep without yelling in my sleep or something," Boone said, "he's acting weird about it though. I think the drugs might be his."
"We all have our secrets," Locke said wisely, as if expecting to hear exactly what Boone had said.
"So are you ever going to tell me how you got that hatch open?" Boone said, desperate to get the conversation off of him.
Locke stopped to rest, and placed a hand on Boone's shoulder to steady himself.
"What's important now Boone," Locke said, avoiding an answer, "is that it stays open."
Ignoring Boone's confused look, Locke removed his hand and continued walking down the path, back to camp.
The phone rang as soon as Boone stepped foot inside his new apartment. Recently purchase, the place cost four hundred a month, plus the rest of the bills, meaning that Boone had to keep himself busy and working, which was hard while trying to go to school at the same time. At twenty, Boone was the youngest in his psychology class: the only subject he was the slightest bit talented in. Along with the course, he also had to take a pre-calculus class he had skipped taking in high school, an English lit class, and a two hour biology course that was held at a 'convenient' eight in the morning. Who could focus on anything- let alone science- at that time of day?
"Hello?" Boone sighed into the phone, dropping a bag of frozen pizzas and canned soda onto the bare counter.
"Finally moved out, huh?" A voice on the other line said.
Boone recognized it, but he couldn't place a name, which made him slightly nervous. He glanced around, and even lifted up a blind from the window over the kitchen sink.
"Who is this?" Boone said into the phone.
"It's David man!" Said the suddenly turned enthusiastic voice on the other line. "You know, your best friend that took you out one night, got you drunk, and then you stole his car and killed a mother and her daughter?
Boone winced at David's angered voice, but of course, the guy had every right to it.
"Look," Boone said, forcing himself to talk, "I'm sorry about that, I-"
"Sorry?" David repeated, outraged. "Sorry? I've got cops all over my place every other month questioning me, reporters tying up my phone line, and some crazy-ass guy who lives across the street that keeps looking at me like he just caught me sleeping with his wife!"
"I'm sorry," Boone said again, "I didn't know this was that bad. Nothing's even been mentioned about the wreck here since it happened."
Suddenly Boone was grateful that he could assume that David didn't know where 'here' was, nor did Boone know where he was receiving the call from.
"Well I wonder why," David said sarcastically, and it became clear with his slurs that he was drunk, and Boone could almost smell the achohol through the phone, "maybe it's because it's taken the damn police two years to find out who's car it was that murdered the poor girl and her mother, and now here I am, a suspect for homicide. Little do they know, they have the wrong guy."
Boone froze. Why hadn't he seen this coming? It was only too obvious what David was planning on doing-
"You better get down here to New Mexico(what was he doing in New Mexico- Boone shook himself from the question) and straighten this out," David said into the phone, "or I'm coming after you, and let me tell you, this is one story that won't have a happy ending."
David hung up as soon as he called, and the conversation already seemed years away to Boone, who sank down against the cabinets. On the floor he sat, rubbing his hands over his face and through his hair, trying to come up with some kind of plan. Coming up with the only idea he could, Boone reached out his pocket, and took the first step in the same plan he had been carrying out for two years.
The small bite-sized pills stacked together in the capsule like jellybeans in a jar at the county fair, waiting for some soul to randomly guess its quantity. But it never really was the quantity that mattered, was it? Boone decided that for the first time, he agreed with this as he popped three or four of the small drugs into his mouth, enough to make him drift off into a deep sleep for hours, able to forget the days events.
Author's Note: Surprise! Boone-centric! I know how I want this story to end, and a middle, and some bits and pieces, but it might take me a while to outline it all. Thanks for all the reviews from last story- you guys rock!
Okay, here's what I have planned for some future fics, but I'm not sure what 'centric' they'll be, and I'm still working out the order of events.
Influenza- While Kate secretly takes care of Jack, who's fallen victim to a mysterious island flu, a crazed Locke surprises the beach camp with a spilt secret about one of its castaways.
The One Who Always Ran- Kate tries to stop Sawyer from getting the revenge he's always wanted(can't give too much away about that). (not sure of a 'b' plot yet)
Wash Away(or Madman Across the Water or something else, who knows)- The castaways prepare a third raft for launching, along with a new member to its crew.
Dead Men Tell Tales(working title)- Alex learns more about her family history, including the story of Danielle and her father, and Danielle and Robert, who may not be so dead after all.
In the future of "Forget Me Not":
More castaways discover the hatch, and even take a trip down in it, which will end up being the ride of some of their lives.
Thanks again for the reviews!
October Sky