Title: Spread My Wings
Rating: (This Chapter) K+ for mild language (whole story) T for violence, language, and some sexual references
Charachters (in this chapter): Jack, Charlie, Sayid, unnamed dude in the hatch, Shannon, Claire, and "Mysterious Girl"
Warning: I forgot to mention in the last chapter, there is a charachter death warning for upcoming chapter, and yes, it is an important charachter
Ships:CharlieClaire, ShannonSayid, JackKate or SawyerKate (I haven't decided which yet), HurleyOC, and WaltOC (this story is going to take place over a span of many years, the last two won't be for a while)
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost. But I do own this storyline, and my "mysterious girl"
Author's note:Thanks to everyone who reveiwed the first chapter, which is NO ONE. Hmph. What if I say I won't post the next chapter until someone reveiws this one?
"One of the Others? Are you sure?" Jack asked, taking the girl's limp body and laying her on the makeshift bed.
"No, but she refused to tell me who she is," Charlie replied. Then, suddenly, a huge realization swept over Charlie, but he didn't want to tell Jack about it.
"Do you know what happened to her?" Jack asked, oblivious to Charlie's epiphany.
"She said she got attacked by a wild boar,"
"Is that all she told you?"
Charlie nodded, "Well, I'll leave you with your patient," He left Jack to his work, needing to find Sayid and tell him what he had realized.
Charlie found Sayid in the hatch, on button duty with some guy…Charlie couldn't remember his name.
"Sayid," Charlie panted, "I need to talk to you,"
"What's wrong?" Sayid asked, his face showing deep concern.
"I found this girl out in the jungle…she refused to tell me her name…she was injured and she collapsed, so I took her back to camp," Charlie began, "Sayid, I think she may be the crazy French woman's daughter, Alex,"
Sayid's expression changed from concern to shock, "Rousseau's daughter? Where is she?"
"She's back at the caves," Charlie replied, "come on, we can send down a replacement when we get back to the caves.
Back with our dear friend, Jack…
Jack watched as Charlie left, and then turned his attention back to his patient. Wearing a windbreaker like that in this heat, he wouldn't have been surprised if her fainting was partly because of heatstroke. He unzipped the windbreaker and pulled it off her slender body-then he just barely bit back a yell of shock.
Underneath the windbreaker, she was wearing a black t-shirt with a huge gash on her left side. That explained all the blood. But that wasn't the part that scared Jack so much. Protruding from each shoulder blade, through large slits cut in the tee, were two…wings. Dark gray with lighter speckles; large feathery wings folded close into her back.
"What the…?" Jack whispered. He struggled to pull her shirt off, a difficult task with her wings in the way. He stared in awe. They were indeed real. His fingers traced the place where they connected to her shoulder blades.
Then he snapped back to reality. He was treating her wound. He cleaned the gash and found that it wasn't as bad as it looked. But it probably was infected. He felt her forehead and sure enough, she had a fever. He wrapped a bandage around her wound, then fished out the antibiotics and gave them to her. Just then, he heard Charlie's voice outside the tarp hiding his little "office".
"How is she? Can Sayid and I come in?"
"Um…yeah. There's something you should see," Jack replied. Wordlessly, he gestured toward the sleeping girl and her…abnormalities.
"Bloody hell…" Charlie breathed, his face pale, his eyes wide with shock.
"Is this her? Is this Alex?" Sayid asked in barely more than a whisper, "She does look quite a bit like Rousseau,"
Charlie nodded faintly, "I wonder what the gloves are hiding."
"We'll just have to wait until she wakes up," Jack sighed.
One hour later…
She opened her eyes and blinked. Where was she? For a moment, she thought she was back with…them. But as she rid her bleary eyes of the sleep, she could see that she was not back in the lab. She sat up and stretched. Then a horrid realization hit her.
Where was her windbreaker!
She was wearing her black tee, but her windbreaker was no where to be seen! Her wings were fully exposed! Then she realized she was in the corner of a cave, the rest of the cave hidden by a blue tarp. But she could hear voices, and see silhouettes moving. Just then, the man she had met before, Charlie appeared from the other side of the tarp. She let out a squeak of terror, trying to hide her wings from view.
"Oh, good, you're awake," He said, seeing her sitting up, "I'll go get Jack and Sayid,"
So the Charlie must know…and Jack, whoever he was, obviously knew…and the other man he mentioned, Sayid. But how many others knew?
She trembled as Charlie returned with a tall brown haired guy, and an Arab man.
The brown haired guy smiled at her, "Glad to see you awake. But you're gonna have to take it easy for a while. Your wound is infected and you have a fever,"
She didn't say anything; she just slid as far away from them as the cave walls would permit.
"You don't have to be worried. We trust you, and you can trust us. Your wings don't matter. We've seen weirder things on this island," he continued, "My name is Jack, by the way, and that's Sayid," He gestured towards the Arab man.
"What is your name?" Sayid asked, looking a little too curious for her taste.
She shrank away. She still didn't trust them.
Charlie placed a hand on her arm, "Don't worry, we're not going to hurt you,"
In a flash, her gloves were off and on the ground, revealing normal looking hands, but as they soon saw, with long, retractable claws. She dug her claws into Charlie's arm.
"Don't. Touch. Me." She said through gritted teeth (which the guys noticed were unnaturally long and sharp).
"Yeeouch! Okay! I'm sorry!" Charlie cried, backing away from her.
"We know you have been though a lot," Sayid began, "But maybe we can help you. Though you may feel like one, you are not a monster. We were hoping perhaps you could help us discover some of the island's secrets, so we can survive here,"
To their surprise, her eyes filled with tears. But she bit them back, not willing to show weakness. She sighed.
"My name," She said, "is Alex,"
Sayid and Charlie exchanged a significant glance as their suspicions were confirmed.
"Where did you come from?" Sayid asked her.
Alex sighed irritably, "Since I doubt that will be the last personal question you ask me, how about I just give you my life story and we'll go from there?" She said sarcastically.
"That sounds good," Charlie replied.
Alex blinked at him, "okay then," And so, she launched into her story:
"When I was a baby, I was stolen from my family that had crashed on this island. I think they all died after that." She stopped at the look on Sayid's face, "What? Do you know something about my family?"
Sayid shook his head, "Go on. I will tell you later,"
"Anyway, I was taken to this lab as a baby and I've basically spent my life in a cage. When I'm not having tests done, that is. I have bird and cat DNA in me, they've had many attempts to clone me (all of which have failed; they don't really have the cloning down yet). I've had so many surgeries I've lost track of what they did to me…if anything. And they do other tests too…they make this chemical things, and they force feed them to me…it's awful,"
The guys nodded sympathetically, and waited for Alex to continue her story.
"But I did have one friend. A girl named Paige who is several years older than me. Whenever it was her week to do the graveyard shift, she would teach me how to read and write and stuff like that. But she didn't tell me a lot about the company that was doing this to me. She knew even if she did help me, she could get in a lot of trouble for being a part of an illegal operation like this. She didn't even tell me the name. But she did help me escape,"
"But why did you wait so long to escape?" Charlie asked.
"Well, for one thing, Paige didn't start working there until about four years ago, when I was twelve. And another thing…a couple weeks ago, one of your people showed up in the cage next to mine. A boy named Walt. He told me about the crash, and how he was kidnapped from the raft, and so I decided to escape, knowing there were people on the island who could help me, and I could help him. I didn't want him to end up like I have, spending years with the scientists and becoming hideously deformed,"
"They have Walt?" Jack exclaimed.
"Where is the headquarters for this place? How soon can we leave?" Sayid asked, his voice rising with excitement.
"Hold it, hold it, hold it! You can't leave for a while. If we were gonna go and rescue Walt, we would have to go at night, so the place wouldn't be crawling with scientists. Second, we'd have to go when Paige was on night duty; any other scientist would raise the alarm. And Paige is on night duty once a month, on the 5th of that month, through the 10th of that month," Alex explained irritably, "What's the date today,"
Jack, the ever-organized doctor, pulled out a pocket planner, "November 18th," He sighed. Charlie and Sayid looked disappointed.
"Well, you have almost a month to prepare," Alex said, "And, by the way, the entrance to the lab is in the Black Rock,"
"You mean the ship?" Alex nodded, "Why?"
"I dunno. I guess they thought it would hide it well,"
Jack looked thoughtful, "Well, okay then. I need to go tell the rest of camp about you, so they don't panic when they see a stranger with…um…wings. You should get some rest,"
With that, the three men turned to leave. But before he left, Jack turned to face Alex.
"One more thing," He said suddenly, "Why were you just sleeping in the middle of the jungle? You, of all people, should know what's out there,"
Alex looked confused, "I wasn't. I took shelter in that old plane, the one with all the little statues in it,"
"Hmmm," Jack said, "I'll have to have a word with Charlie about that," And with that, he finally left Alex in peace to go address the survivors.
"ATTENTION, EVERYONE!" He yelled. That shut them up. And so, he launched into the story of how Charlie had found Alex in the plane, and where she had grown up, and so on. Everyone had a million questions, of course, but Jack simply had to tell them to wait until she was healthy and ask her.
During the chaos after Jack made his announcement, Claire showed up in the caves.
"What's going on?" She asked Shannon, who was standing nearby, "Where's Charlie?"
"Up with Jack," Shannon replied, "He found the French lady's daughter in the plane where-," Her voice caught on the word, and she took a deep breath before continuing, "The plane with all the drugs in the little statues,"
"Drugs in the statues?" Claire asked, confused. She knew about the plane, but she had never heard anything about statues.
"Yeah, in the plane, there are a whole bunch of Virgin Mary statues with heroin inside," Shannon explained.
And then the pieces began to slide together. Why Charlie had lied to her…the ceramic statue in Charlie's pack…and the fuzzy memory she had of someone (she didn't remember who) telling her they used to be a heroin addict.
Claire's head began to feel fuzzy. Charlie, the man she had basically trusted her and her child's life with…he was a heroin addict. How could he do this to her? She had trusted him! She felt tears starting in the corners of her eyes.
"Thanks, Shannon," She mumbled distantly. She looked up at Charlie through blurry eyes, and found that she could not take it any longer. Tears slid down her face as she set off at a dead run back towards the beach.
To be continued…