A/N: This story will be Skate, Shayid, Chlaire, Jana and Jun. (I don't think I've heard those last two terms before. I didn't know what was being used, so I made them up, though someone else probably made the up before me. I thought Jun was better than Sin! I hope no-one confuses it as being Jack and Sun together, because it's not).
Just in case you were wondering, I am a Skater, though I do love Shayid as well. Those will be the two main pairings in the story. There will be no slash.
Any spelling mistakes are either due to me being British, typos, or due to accents of the characters.
For those of you that don't know, when I use feet to describe the distance (I can't do metres or yards), a foot is 30 centimetres or 12 inches, so basically the size of your standard ruler.
I'll keep the author's note down next time.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost, and unfortunately I never will unless I win the lottery and can persuade those two great men who actually own lost, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof to sell it to me. Yeah, I didn't think so either. Anyway, the only thing I do own here is the plot, and my own characters.
Three Reasons for Fatherhood
Chapter One
It was the roaring sound high in the sky which first alerted them to the oncoming plane. They looked up in hope of rescue, that same hope quickly turning to dread at the sight of the large aircraft free-falling from the sky.
Jack Shepherd quickly grabbed what accounted for his medical bag on the island, and took off at a run for the beach. Others soon followed.
As he arrived at the beach, he saw that the plane had already crashed. He fervently hoped he had not arrived too late, and saw with some relief that the beach dwellers, led by Sayid, had already started to help.
He rushed towards the wreckage and came to a halt at Sayid's side.
"Have you found any survivors?"
"Not yet. It doesn't appear that there were very many people on the plane. Perhaps it was a private plane, or maybe the route has become as infamous as the Bermuda Triangle and no-one wanted to take the risk that they might disappear. That's assuming the plane was brought here under much the same circumstances we were." Sayid smiled wryly at the man next to him.
Sayid turned to his right when Locke and Hurley appeared, dragging a man and a woman. At the expression on Hurley's face, Jack knew they were dead, but he checked them anyway to see if there was any chance of resuscitating them. There wasn't.
"Sayid!" Shannon came round the corner of some wreckage, supporting a small child. Sayid ran up to her and saw that the young survivor was a girl who looked like she was middle-eastern. He helped the young woman with her and brought them over to where Jack was.
Jack's attention was caught as three figures came up next to him. He motioned for them to bring the girl a few feet away from the crash site. They found a spot on the sand and sat down, while Jack rummaged in his bag.
Noticing the girl shivering, Sayid took the long sleeved shirt he had on over his tank top off, and wrapped it around her small shoulders. He took his first proper look at her and was shocked by how much she reminded him of Nadia at that age, though with slightly darker features. She did not look at all like the dead adults that had been found, so he assumed they must have been her adoptive parents. It was unlikely that they were strangers, as they had found out that it had indeed been a private plane.
"Hello." He hoped she spoke English; otherwise he would have to try a few words of other languages he had picked up in his life as a soldier.
"Hello," came the timid reply. Sayid sighed in relief and gave her a big smile, the whiteness of his teeth contrasting with the colour of his skin.
Jack finished looking through his dwindling supplies and came out with a miniature bottle of alcohol, and a dressing for the wound on her head. He opened the bottle and paused. "This is going to sting a bit, but we need to do it to make sure that cut on your head is clean. Okay, ready?" She nodded, and took a deep breath, scrunching her eyes up at the same time.
Jack quickly swiped the cut clean and dressed it, then began checking her for any other injuries, including those that weren't visible. He took out his penlight to check her pupil responses, in order to see whether she had a concussion. It was hard to tell, if she had, it was a very mild one. They would probably have to keep her awake up into the night, just to be on the safe side.
While Jack was seeing to her, Sayid noticed that she was looking at him curiously.
"What's your name?" She asked him.
"My name is Sayid, the doctor is Jack, and the pretty lady holding your hand is Shannon." He smiled, amused as Shannon blushed. He had never seen her turn red before, and decided to see if she would turn any darker. "She's the one who found you." Shannon did indeed turn darker, especially when the girl hugged her and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
"What did you do that for?" Shannon scolded him.
"To see what colour you would turn." He admitted honestly.
"Well…"
"Well what Shannon?" He asked, slightly confused now.
"What colour did I turn?"
"It was a rather interesting shade, a mix between various colours, red, pink, purple, and orange I believe. Perhaps your tan affected the colour. In fact, it might have been an undiscovered colour, until now anyway. What do you think we should call it?" He asked the girl who was giggling at the expression on Shannon's face.
"Hmm..." She said, contemplating. "…how 'bout roinkle?"
The men laughed. "Roinkle," Jack asked, "how did you come up with that?"
"Easy. I just stuck parts of red, pink, purple, an' orange tergether." All of them laughed.
"How old are you…er…?"
"Ameerah. I'm six."
"Ameerah." Shannon echoed. "It's pretty."
"It's Arabic." Sayid said. Ameerah nodded.
"My daddy said it means 'princess.'"
"You're pretty clever for six aren't you?" Ameerah nodded again.
"Daddy started teachin' us how ter read an' write when we were four, said there might be some nights when he's too tired ter read us a bedtime story, so we should learn how ter do it ourselves."
"Was your daddy on the plane with you Ameerah?" Jack asked.
"No. That was father. We got 'im an' mother 'bout a year ago, but they never have time fer us, they're mean, and I miss my real Daddy!" Jack cringed when he realised he had made her upset. He tried to think of something to take her mind off of it.
"Who's 'us'?" Shannon blurted out, curiosity finally getting the better of her.
Ameerah's eyes widened. "My sisters, they were on the plane too!" She started to get up but was pushed back down by Sayid.
"It's all right, Ameerah, there are many others looking for them, I'm sure they're okay." The little girl smiled in gratitude.
Just then a shout reached their ears.
"Jack!" They looked up. "Over here." He ran in the direction of Charlie's voice, Sayid following after he made sure that Ameerah and Shannon were okay to be left. They found him on the sand with another little girl in front of him.
Jack knelt next to them. "Is she breathing?" He quickly acted after the British man shook his head, tilting the girl's head back to clear her airways. He breathed in to her mouth twice, and then began trying to start her heart again, adjusting his strength so as not to break her ribs.
Fifteen presses later, he blew twice more into the girl's mouth, laughing with joy as she started to cough. After checking her over for injuries and finding none except various bruises, he let Sayid pick her up and carry her over to where Ameerah and Shannon were sitting.
Ameerah peered into the face of what was obviously her sister.
"Are ya okay Kalila?"
"She should be fine, but she needs to rest for a while. She'll be able to once we've sorted everything out here and found everybody else. How many people were on the plane?" Jack answered for her.
"Umm, there was the pilot, the co-pilot, and two ladies, as well as my parents, me, Kalila, and my other sister."
"Does your other sister look like you too?" He found himself asking out of interest.
Kalila answered for her. "We're triplets." She looked at Jack worriedly. "Do you think you'll find her?"
He smiled reassuringly back at her. "I'm sure we will, Kalila, as well as everyone else on the plane."
"Well I hope you don't find our parents!" Ameerah shocked them with this outburst.
"That's not a very nice thing ter say, 'meerah." Kalila said, frowning slightly at her sister.
"I know it's not, but they're not very nice people now, are they, 'Lila?"
Kalila looked down. "You're right, they're not."
Jack and Sayid shared a look with each other, knowing they would have to tell the girls sometime about what had happened to their parents.
They were startled when Charlie skidded to a halt in front of them, something very hard to do in the sand without falling over. He took a couple of seconds to catch his breath before getting Jack off to the side to talk to him alone.
"We found four more bodies, all the crew of the plane."
Jack sighed. "That's all of the adults accounted for then. Have you found another girl?"
Charlie nodded. "Yeah, me'n Locke found her under some wreckage…"
"Alive?" Jack interrupted.
"Yeah, but her leg looks pretty bad, it's a tad bit grisly, you know, what with the bone comin' out through the skin and everythin'." He started to look rather queasy.
"Charlie…" He came back into focus.
"Er, yeah Jack?"
"Are you actually going to take me to her?"
"Oh right, yeah, she's this way."
He started running back to the far end of the crash, Jack collecting his bag and Sayid on the way.
One he arrived, he saw that the girl had been carefully moved away from any obstacles and was being kept calm by Hurley, who was desperately trying not to look at the blood.
Jack told Hurley to go and find Shannon. The last thing he needed was the rather heavy Hurley fainting on someone's face again and suffocating them.
As soon as that was dealt with, he told everyone to get out of the way and to wash up quickly in the sea before heading back to the caves, so they attracted as little insect attention as possible.
Locke got up from where he had been sitting and after making sure that they had the ID of the bodies, put them under part of the plane with the help of some others. They would be cremated later that night. Claire would want the IDs for the ceremony.
He washed the blood and grime off of himself quickly before picking up his bag and setting off to hunt.
Jack looked carefully at the leg, and then at the face of the girl. Good she had passed out. It was better for her this way.
With Sayid's help, he managed to get the bone back under the skin and in place where it belonged. After checking to make sure that there weren't any slivers of bone left in her leg, he carefully cleaned the wound and sewed all the relevant parts together. After wrapping a bandage around her leg, he used some clean cloth rags from his bag and with them, tied the two sticks Charlie had been sent to find at the edge of the jungle, on either side of the girl's leg to make a splint which would support the bone, and stop it from slipping out of place.
It was the best he could do considering he couldn't make a proper cast for her. Her leg should heal normally, though if the splint slipped at all she might end up with a slight limp. The worst danger now was that of infection. He made a note to give her antibiotics as soon as they made it back to the caves, though he realised it was probably going to be difficult to get the tablets down a six year old.
He looked up from his finished work to find Sayid and Charlie constructing a stretcher out of tree branches and lianas. Like everything Sayid made, even if it seemed likely that it wouldn't work, it did. Jack lifted the girl carefully onto the stretcher with Charlie's help; after Sayid had placed the shirt he had gotten back off Ameerah onto it to cushion it slightly. Sayid and Charlie picked up either end of the stretcher and slowly started back to the caves, Jack, Shannon and Hurley following with Ameerah and Kalila.
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