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Pain. A headache. That's the first thing that came to mind when I became conscious. I could feel hard stone beneath me, also. Well, I have one of my five senses working; touch. I could taste blood in my mouth; 2 out of 5 working; taste. I could hear the ocean in the distance; 3 out of 5; sound. It smelled as if it had rained not to long ago; 4 out of 5; smell. But when it came to seeing, all I saw was darkness.
"Oh my God! I'm blind." I thought frantically. After panicking for a few more seconds, my rational side kicked in.
"Breath, Shannon, just breath, in, out, in, out. Now, OPEN your eyes..."
I opened my eyes and saw... the cave. Not the most enlightening sight to see, but I wasn't blind so I'm not complaining. After doing a little happy dance, in my head of course, I remembered the intense pain from when I had first came too, God, did my head pound. I also realized that the blood in my mouth was from a cut lip. What? Extremely bad headache and a cut lip don't add up. What happened? As I laid there pondering that very question, Jack walked into my line of vision, he looked meditative.
'God, who died?' I thought. I was just about to voice this question when Jack glanced at me and saw that I was awake. His uptight face immediately relaxed.
'Ah,' it was all becoming clear 'I was the one who had died.' Well, not literally, but,... ah, you know what I mean.
"I was starting to think you weren't going to wake up." Jake commented.
He bent down and seemed to be inspecting some injuries on my face.
"Ow," I said as he touched an extremely sensitive bump on my head.
"Well, you probably have a mild concussion, but nothing to serious. You have a few bumps and cuts, and a couple bruised rips, but those should get better in a few days. Other than that, you're perfectly healthy."
'Other than that.' I felt like mimicking, but then I remembered that I wasn't five years old anymore.
'I wonder where Boone is?' I thought. 'Ah, probably still off with that Locke guy.' About a month ago Boone, just, sort of, stopped paying as much attention to me, like he had finally gotten over me or something.
As I started to sit up, this big, furry, blonde colored thing attacked me, and I mean ATTACKED; there was licking and slobbering and trying to kill me by sitting on me, I mean the works. This creature was trying to tear me to bits. After a scream of bloody murder and many "ow, ow, ow's" I realized that this creature was the dog that belong to that kid. Oh, you know, the one whose name is like something from a cartoon. And his father's name is from a cartoon, also. What is it? Marty, Marly, Matty, Monty, Minnie, Mickey... yes, yes, something like Mickey... MICHAEL! That's what the father's name is. The kid's name is something like Ward, Wade, Waldo...WALT! Like Walt Disney (the guy that came up with cartoon movies and that mouse Mickey). And their dog (the creature that viciously attacked me) Vernon, Vance, Vangie, Valda, Victor...VINCENT! That's it. Huh, no cartoon connection there, what, Pluto wasn't a good enough name for Mickey and Disney?
"Vincent, get off the nice lady... leave her alone, you oaf!" Pressure from dog on chest lightens as Disney, along with the help of Mickey, pulls the thing off me. "I'm sorry, miss, if my dog hurt you." Miss? Nice lady? Why is this kid being so polite, isn't this the kid that can make a grown man cry, just by opening his mouth, and saying some creepily mature words for a ten year old? Man, am I confused. Mickey now approaches me and gives me this really grateful look and says something along the lines of "thank you so much, I don't know what would have happened if you weren't there." Not knowing what else to do I mutter a "your welcome."
This is making no since whatsoever. I'm cut and bruised, a kid is being polite, AND the father is telling me "thank you"? What happen while I was knocked out? I started searching my brain for answers, grasping at anything that surfaced in my brain. While in the process of doing this, Sayid walks over and sits down near me, we make eye contact, he opens his mouth as if to say something, but decides against it and BAM! Everything comes rushing back.
Boone and I had had a fight (surprise, surprise) before Michael had came over asking if we had seen Walt. Boone, always the 'Boy Wonder,' had joined in the search for the kid and the dog, but before leaving had told me to "stay put, don't be stupid and try taking a shower in the rain or something idiotic like that, stay here." After he had walked off, the rebellious Shannon had decided to go for a walk and casually look for Disney and Pluto along the way. Well, as luck would have it, I found the kid, standing near the edge of the forest, yelling for Pluto... in the middle of a friggin' thunder and lighting storm. Idiot. So, I'm soaked to the bone from the rain, all because this IDIOT was looking for his dog! I got angry, what can I say? I have a quick-temper. Anyway, so I start stomping (as best as I could in the wet sand) over to the kid to ask him what the hell did he think he was doing and that his father and a couple other people were looking for him. When I was about seven feet away, this lighting bolt hits the tree that Disney was standing near. Instinct kicks in, and I'm off like a bullet, running as fast as I can to the kid and shoving him out of the way of the falling debris. I trip and hit my head on a nearby rock, and there's debris falling all over me, and let me tell you, not all that debris were twigs, some of them were really heavy. And then I wake up here, in the cave.
Yeah, so I saved a kid from a couple cuts, I don't see anything all that impressive to make everyone be so nice to me, but, hey I'm not complaining. If they want to worship me, I have no quarrels against it. The others had all dispersed, Jack went off somewhere with Kate, Mickey had gone off to ask Sun something, and Disney was playing with that people-killer dog. A deep, accented voice pulls me away from my rambles.
"Shannon, I hope that you are feeling all right." Sayid. My heartbeat quickens, ever since that night by the fire a month ago when I sang "La Mer" to him and I saw how he was looking at me, I've been feeling giddy, restless, happy, and confused whenever he's around, it's even worse when he chooses to grace me with that voice of his, God, I could sit here all day just listening to him talk.
"..." My reply to his question.
"Shannon?"
"Oh, sorry, I was... ah... lost... in ... um... my train of thought." I wince, my voice had ended in a squeak. This island is doing some strange things to me, if I had been back home I wouldn't be so self-conscious around a guy I liked, I would flirt, and flaunt and casually try to impress him. But with Sayid I'm always to flustered and witless to be able to impress him. I'm sure he thinks I'm just a brainless rich brat, but I'm not, well... I am a rich brat, but I'm not brainless, I graduated with high honors for Christ's sake.
"Shannon? Are you sure you're feeling all right, because you took a pretty hard fall...?" Everything else that he's says after that is lost to me, I'm to busy paying attention to what his eyes are telling me; he's genuinely concerned for my well being. Well, that's nothing new, people have been concerned for me before, like Boone and so on and so forth. But the fact that it's Sayid, my Sayid, that's concerned for me, well, that just left me dumbstruck. "... maybe you should lay down, it might help with the pain..." He's rambling.
"Thank you." Suddenly, I find my voice.
"Excuse me?" Sayid's confused.
"Thank you, for everything. For believing I could translate French, for being concerned for me, for everything."
"It was nothing." He's modest. "I did nothing, you learned French, you put yourself at risk for that young boy, you did it all. I did nothing."
I open my mouth to say something more, but I get interrupted.
"Thank you." Disney and Pluto.
"What?"
"I said thank you, you know, for being brave and saving me and everything."
I say the first thing that comes to mind. "Trust me, kid, if you felt the pain that I am feeling right now, you wouldn't call it brave, you'd call it stupidity. But you're welcome all the same."
The kid gives me a full-fledged smile, and I see out of the corner of my eye Sayid crack one also. I can't help but smile to them both, first Walt and then Sayid, but when I flash Sayid my smile, a look comes over his face, like the look that he gave me when I was singing "La Mer," I blush in response. Our eyes meet and we get this unbreakable eye contact, just looking into his eyes makes my head stop pounding, it calms me, it gives me peace.
"Ok, well, I gotta go, hope you feel better." The kid ruined the moment. Damn, I should have let him die. I glance back over at Sayid, but the look he had a moment ago is gone. And my head is pounding again.
"Yes, I should get going, too," My face drops, and he sees this, "but, I promise to come see you for dinner." I give him a halfhearted smile, suddenly, just knowing that he's leaving makes me feel lonely.
"I'm happy to know that you are okay." Standing up he takes my hand and kisses it and walks towards the beach. My whole hand tingles from his touch, and with out even thinking I stand up to follow him.
"Sayid!" I call out. A look of worry passes over his face.
"What is it, is there something wrong?"
"Yes, there is. You never got your thank you gift."
"Shannon, I told you, I did noth-" His sentence is cut short when I lean over and give him a kiss on the cheek. As I'm pulling back, I hover a few centimeters away. 'To Hell with it' I think 'I just saved a kid's life, I can sure as Hell do this.' I turn his head towards me, take a deep intake of breath and in a very bold move, I kiss him on the lips. Suprisingly, he did not pull back like I thought he would, he kisses me back. The kiss is not long, but not short either, it's just... the perfect kiss. And as we pull away, a smile spreads over both of our faces and a little thought creeps into the crevasses of my brain: 'This just might be love.'
Fin