Castaways
Pairings: Mostly Noah/Courtney and all of the canon pairings at the end of TDWT.
Warning: Violence and Character Deaths. This story is pretty dark, especially in the beginning.
Summary: After the end of Total Drama World Tour, some of the contestants wash up on a deserted island. Will they be able to get together and survive?
A/N Yeah, I guess this fic is officially AU with the coming of the new season. Serves me right for taking so long to update, hm?
Part Three
Right now, Bridgette hated the ocean. It was blasphemous and wrong. She was a surfer. At one with the sea, and all it's creatures or whatever, but now the sun was starting to sink down below the horizon and she was starting to wonder if Chris really intended to look for them at all.
This couldn't be for real? Could it?
He had seen Ezekiel hit Chris's boat, sinking it, but she had the feeling that the host got away. He was like a roach in a way. Nothing could keep him down, and despite Bridgette's personal goal to try to see the good in everyone, she was having a lot of trouble seeing any of his positive attributes.
"Bridgette-uh-"
The blonde surfer turned to the source of the voice, berating herself for swimming so far ahead of Geoff. He was pretty athletic, but she was still the stronger swimmer.
"Are you okay? I can help you rest-" She asked, trying to get him to lean on her. She had had worked summers as a lifeguard. She could handle it.
"No. I'm fine." Geoff said, lightly batting her hands away, "I don't need to lean or anything."
He always turned down her offers to help, but now he wasn't even looking at her anymore. It was a far cry from the constant physical affection he had shown her before. They were the couple that was always making out, but now Geoff was being cold and distant.
"It would make me feel better." Bridgette tried to coax him. She put a hand on his shoulder, but he pushed her away.
"What's your problem?" Bridgette exploded, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice.
Geoff turned away. "Sorry," he mumbled, "I've just been thinking, y'know?"
He looked back at her, and she could see that he was letting her get close again. She swam beside him again, and he wrapped an arm around her, with more firmness than she thought was left in him.
"Do you think the others are okay?" he asked. "That eruption was pretty powerful. What if-?" Geoff closed his eyes. He looked like he was wrestling with something.
Bridgette shuddered. For the first time, she allowed herself to think that this was all real. The water was getting colder and she felt a grain of fear.
DJ, Beth, Lindsay, Courtney, the names flashed in and out of her mind, making her heart twinge. If they were all gone-If they were all gone- and she couldn't even stand to lose even one of them.
"Bridge?" a low voice, interrupted her thoughts. Geoff sounded so quiet.
"We might have to hold off on those surfing lessons you offered me. I don't think I like the ocean very much"
She looked at Geoff, who gave her a weak smile at the joke attempt.
She laughed quietly. She couldn't hug him any harder.
They would be alright.
Eva saw them, hugging together in the ocean, and she couldn't suppress the envy that was just strong enough that she couldn't fully deny it.
Geoff and Bridgette. Always together. She almost didn't want to call out to them.
They would ask about the others and she would have to tell them what she saw, what she couldn't stop. Everything had happened so fast and her training hadn't done anyone any good.
They were in their own little world, and judging by how far ahead of everyone they were, they had been removed in their own little world. In her mind, she bitterly mashed their names together, GeoffandBridgette, GeoffandBridge, GeoffBridge.
Ugh. And now she was going to have to waltz into their saccharine world and tell them what was really going on and wreck everything.
For some reason, it felt more violent than hitting something.
"Bridgette," she said firmly, waving unenthusiastically.
The girl looked up from her hug with Geoff, her eyes growing wide.
"Eva?"
"Yeah," she said lamely.
"Geoff, look! Eva!"
They both swam over to her enthusiastically. Bridgette was suddenly hugging her. Eva didn't usually do hugs, but just this once-
"Did you see anyone?" Geoff asked, knowing that an affirmative answer would not be accompanied with good news. After all, Eva was alone. If she had seen anyone, then-
"Yes. Justin and Izzy."
Geoff swallowed nervously. "Yeah?" The one word was filled with questions, as though the party boy was afraid of asking her outright.
Bridgette was avoiding her eyes.
"Izzy swam up ahead. The loon was looking for Owen. Even I couldn't even keep up with her. You know how she is."
Geoff grunted.
"And Justin- He was with me. I tried to carry him with me after one of the rocks hit him." She put a hand over her eye, showing where Justin had been hit. He had cried, and told Eva that he couldn't see. "Of course not, idiot," she had yelled at him, unable to do anything but lash out in anger. She hated herself for that outburst. God, was that the last thing anyone had said to him?
No. She didn't have time to wallow. She just had to tell the damn story and they could move on.
"I got him to hold onto me for a bit, but I wasn't able to swim fast enough."
Geoff drew Bridgette closer. The girl glanced at Eva for a second before looking away.
"We both got hit a bit, but Justin- the piece that got him was too big. It-" Eva trailed off.
Bridgette sighed and Eva could see it was taking everything in her to confront this. "Eva. I'm sorry-"
"Forget it. Let's swim." Eva said suddenly, not wanting to deal with a pep talk from Bridgette. "There's land up ahead."
"What?" Geoff and Bridgette cried, almost in unison.
"You see that rock behind those clouds?" Eva asked, pointing behind Bridgette.
The couple gasped at the sight. They had been so focused in swimming in one direction, they had started swimming away from the island within their range.
"Do you think it's populated?" Bridgette asked.
"Don't know. Don't care. I'm sick of swimming," Eva huffed, "Anything is better than this."
Truthfully, Leshawna thought she would be more annoyed. Tyler and Lindsay weren't the brightest of companions, but something about their oblivious nature made the whole ordeal more bearable.
Tyler was a clumsy athlete, but he still had the basic endurance and strength from the sheer amount of effort he put into his athletic activities. Occasionally, they rested for Lindsay, but sometimes Tyler would just let her hold onto him while he pulled her along. Sometimes Lindsay would call out for Beth, but for the most part, they were pretty quiet.
Lindsay and Tyler mostly focused on each other, which gave Leshawna time to think, and their presence gave her a little bit of security so she wasn't totally alone.
Now she could focus on find Harold and Gwen. They just had to be okay. They had to be.
After all, she could see dry land ahead, so there had to be hope.
DJ hadn't said a word since they found Beth ten minutes ago.
At first, Harold couldn't get him to stop crying and panicking about everything, long enough to get out of the eruption zone. That is, until they came across Beth's body, floating facedown in the water. Her leg had looked severely injured as though she had been hit by a rock from the eruption. She was so far out, it looked like she kept trying to swim and ending up drowning instead.
Now everything was eerily silent.
"They're probably up ahead." Harold said
DJ sniffed.
"Beth just got unlucky. She must have got hit, so she couldn't swim as well as she could have. Everyone is probably ahead of us."
Harold didn't really believe any of the optimistic drivel that was coming out of his mouth.
After all, Courtney, Noah and Owen were definitely not up ahead. Courtney may have been flattened by the rock that hit Heather.
But DJ didn't have to know that. He was going to find Leshawna, and there was no way she wasn't leading the pack on their way to swim to dry land.
DJ started to cry again.
"It'll be okay," he said lowly, not sure if he was trying to convince himself or DJ.
END OF PART THREE
Yeah, I'm sorry this chapter took forever to come out! I had a lot of IRL stuff piled up on me.
Yeah, so I decided to focus on the other characters. We'll get to statuses Gwen, Trent, Duncan and Izzy later. There are a lot of characters, so it looks like this is gonna be a pretty long fic.
I wanted to include more Courtney and Noah stuff, but I felt this was good stopping point if I wanted to post this chapter now. It was getting long (by my standards) so I had to stop here. Besides, I wanted to give the next few interactions a better focus.
