The pain.
The pain was what had brought her back to conciousness.
She felt it from her head to her toes, all over, everywhere, never ending,pain, pain, pain.
She wanted to scream, let the sound of it fill her lungs, shake her very soul from the inside out.
But she held it in.
She was silent.
Tears rolled down her blood-stained face, leaving streaks like war-paint on her cheeks. She wanted Charlie. She wanted him sooo bad. She wanted to have him pull her close, comfort her, make the pain go away. She wanted to smell the sea salt in his hair, the sun on his brown skin. But he wasn't here. Or, maybe, she wasn't there. On the beach. She didn't know where she was. She was lost. She didn't want to open her eyes, to see an absolute nothingness around her, and to see that she was alone. But she did. She opened them to see something large and blurry in front of her face. At least, it looked big. She couldn't really tell, as she couldn't focuse on the object. She squinted, and saw that it was a bunch of half-squashed mangoes. In confusion, she tried to move away from the pile, and screamed as a shock of pain shot through her right arm. She laid there, gasping, her head spinning as her arm throbbed.She slowly turned to look at her arm, and nearly fainted from what she saw. Her arm was snapped between the wrist and elbow,the bone sticking out in a unnatural way. "Ohhhh please, God, don't let this be real, please oh please don't let this be real," she moaned over and over.She rolled onto her back, to look up at the treetops.Just above her, a branch hung by splinters, dangling high above her head. She stared at it for what felt like hours, when the memory of what happened came back to her.
A snap, a scream, and a cold blackness that enveloped her in its clammy hands.
she had been trying to gather mangoes for the group, and because the trees closest to the beach were stripped, she had wandered out farther than usual. She saw a tree loaded with ripe fruit, and without thinking she had ran out to it, and had started to climb, her knapsack strung around her neck.She had gotten to the very tip of the branch, straining to reach the bunch with her knife. When everything went black.
She slowly, gingerly, sat up, cradling her broken arm. She inched her way to the nearest tree, pressing her back to its trunk,and push herself up to a standing position. She stared in every direction, searching for something, anything, that was familiar.Her eyes locked onto her knapsack,lying a few feet from her, with rotting fruit spread around it. She stumbled towards it and lifted it up, letting mangoes roll out. Her knife had fallen nearby, and after retrieving it, she took hold of the bag with her teeth and torn it in half. She draped one of the handles over her neck, and let her arm slip into the torn portion of the bag. "At least I have a make-shift sling," she sighed. Swaying slightly, she made her way through the underbrush, in what she hoped was the right direction.
It felt like days later since she had drank anything. Her tongue felt swollen and raw, and her body was beginning to overheat. So she nearly cried when she came to a flowing stream filled with clear water. She drank her fill, and then laid down on its bank to sleep. She awoke to a strange noise, like voices,like...whispers. She sat up and the whispers filled the air around her, drowning out the sounds of the brook.She called out, demanding for the whisperers to show themselves.Nothing happened. She stood,transfixed with fear, as the bushes moved aside and Ethan Rom stepped out towards her."Your dead," she rasped out, confusion freezing her urge to run.He stood in front of her and laughed. "Things are not always what they seem,are they? He pulled a coiled rope from behind him and hissed, "feel like hangin' around, Arra?"
She blinked and he seemed to disappear. "I must have been hallucinating," she thought, still trying to calm herself. She left the stream soon after that, aiming for another direction this time.
She had lost track of day and night by now. She passed out so much from the pain in her arm, she didn't have any idea what day it was. Wednesday? Saturday? There was no way to know.
Her feet told her that it had been years. She had blisters on top of blisters. She couldn't walk as much any more. But she kept walking anyway.She had to get back.
She was so tired, she kept hearing voices in her head.Once, she had sworn that she had heard Sayid's exotic call echo through the jungle. She ran towards where she thought it was coming from, but stopped, disappointed, when she realized that she was more lost than before.
"I'm going insane," she said out loud, followed by a maniac laugh. No food, no water,
no relief from her throbbimg arm. "It's got to have been at least 8 days since I fell," She mumbled as she picked at a rotten mango, trying to find something edible. Spitting out seeds,
she looked up to see something blue out past the grove of trees. Slowly, she sped up, trying not to get excited. She ran,crashing through the branches, crying for joy as she hit the sand on her knees. She felt the sun, warm on her face, and she watched the waves crash on to the shore. So close, yet so far. "Just follow the beach, and I'll be home," She whispered, looking for shapes in the passing clouds.
"Taking off my shoes, was not a good idea," She moaned, wincing as she took another step forward. Her feet were bleeding from the biting sand, and she still had no sight of the camp. She was feeling delirious by now, and her legs kept giving out from under her.
" Lord, kill me now and get it over with, let the polar bear eat me, I don't care anymore."
She threw her last strength into climbing a sand dune that rose steeply towards the sun's rays, and as she reached the top, she found herself looking down onto a valley,But the sun was too bright to see through. Suddenly, she was struck by an overwhelming dizziness, and before she faded into darkness, A single tear fell from her eye and dissappeared into the endless sands.
More voices. The whispers rose and fell like tides on a crimson sea. She could make out few words of what was said, but those she did, scared her.
"Captured?"
"Blood everywhere."
"Dead long ago."
She started to scream, thrashing against invisible foes. She felt strong hands grip her shoulders, pinning her down. People shouted, names were called, more voices answered. She began to cry uncontrollably, willing for her captors to kill her and end her pain. But something calmed her.
A cool, soft voice murmured in her ear, and she felt herself being lifted up by warm arms.
They rocked her back and forth, singing a song that was familiar to her. She could smell the sea salt in his hair, the sun on his brown skin.
She opened her eyes to the most beautiful face in the world. She was home.