Richard Starkey: thanks for the review! i'm glad you liked the Hurley scene loli love writing scenes with him in it he's hysterical jigs also rock my socks i have a collection of them :)
Sharpsnout:thanks for the review too! i heart labs too i have one named Jack. thank you, yes, Washington was wicked fun, except for the neverending walking:)
this chapter has two names since i can't decide between the two of them. and i'm hungry and want food. :)
disclaimation: i don't own Lost or Lord of the Rings. i wish i did. that would rock.
Ari is fine. Nothing is wrong with him. He thinks that nothing is wrong with him.
Jack thinks differently. He thinks that Ari may be going crazy. He may be. Ari had told him that he used to see a therapist before they crashed. Jack thinks that his mind may have warped or something due to the fact that he's had no one to talk to.
"That's ludicrous, Jack," Locke says. "He's not crazy."
"Can you prove it?"
"Does he seem crazy to you? You were just thinking that Jake is an Other, damn it! Stop worrying about them. There's nothing wrong with Ari physically, and mentally we have no way of knowing, so stop worrying about it. You're going to end up driving yourself crazy."
Ari pokes his head into the tent. "I've been talking to Vincent," he informs them.
Locke glances at him, then turns to Jack. "See, he's been talking to Vincent. The boy is fine. Leave him alone. Let him enjoy the time he has with Jake." He turns back to Ari. "How long have you been separated from him?"
"I dunno, a couple weeks maybe."
"See? He has two weeks of talk and stuff he needs to catch up on with Jake. Let them talk, and then see if you still believe that Ari is going crazy."
"I'm going crazy?"
"No," Locke answers, and at the same time, Jack answers "Yes."
Ari stares at them. "Okay then. Yeah. So. I'll…um…bye." He pulls his head out of the tent.
As he walks back toward Jake, Ari has a flashback of a past conversation he had had with Jake.
"You're goin' crazy," Jake tells him, grinning.
"I don't see how you can't here," Ari mutters, waving his hand around the vast wasteland of a jungle surrounding them.
Was he going crazy? Is it possible to think that you're going crazy? Can you make that decision on your own, or do other people decide for you?
A bit freaked out by his own mind, Ari shakes the thought off and continues walking.
"Look what you did," Locke mutters. "You're gonna make him question his own sanity now. If he goes crazy like you say, it's all your fault, you know that? Just let people live."
"We'll see after two weeks," Jack mutters back at him.
"Jack thinks I'm going insane," Ari says, sitting down next to Jake in the sand. "Do you think I am?"
Jake shakes his head. "Nah," he answers. "Jack thinks a lot of things, so I've heard. But he did know about my panic attacks. That was pretty good; no one really knows what they are when I have one for the first time in front of them. They think I'm gonna, like, die in front of them or something."
"You said 'in front of them' twice in two sentences back to back," Ari points out.
"So?"
Ari shrugs. "I dunno. It just sounds weird."
"In front of them. In front of them."
"Yeah. That's weird. Right."
As the two of them continue to ramble on about weird sentence structure and other pointless things people talk about when they're bored, someone screamed. A girl.
"What the hell was that?" Ari yelps, startled.
"I dunno. Come on," Jake answers, pulling Ari to his feet.
"Where are we going?"
Jake points to an area a few yards away from them. "Wherever they're going," he tells him as he breaks out into a run. Ari follows him.
When they get there, they peek over the shoulders of other people surrounding the site.
"I can't see anything," Ari mutters. He grabs Jake's shirt. "C'mon, we're going in." With that, he yanks Jake into the mass of people and leads him to the front.
When they burst out, Jake wishes they didn't go to the front.
His eyes are wide, shell-shocked. His vision becomes blurry with tears, and his body begins to tremble. He opens his mouth to speak, but he can't find the words. Finally, his tears erupt and he breaks down sobbing.
It's his mother.
"Jake…" Ari says softly, embracing his best friend, unsure of what to say in a position like this. He tries to think back to what Jake did for him when his dad died.
"That's…no…she…" Jake stammers, unable to get any real sentences out.
Sun looks at the two of them from across the circle of people. She gasps as she realizes who the woman is. She goes over to Jake and Ari.
"Jake," she says soothingly. "It's all right. It'll be all right. Everyone here will help you through this." She gives him a soft kiss on the top of his head.
Ari can't stand it. He starts crying, too. It reminds him too much of the church, the funeral home, the family members and total strangers who came to honor his dad's life. His dad was a police officer.
"Wait," Jack says softly, then repeats it louder, with more authority. When he has everyone's attention, he continues. "This isn't right. She's not real."
A confused silence envelopes the castaways.
"What the hell you talkin' about, Doc?" Sawyer demands.
Jack lifts up the woman's hand. "This isn't human. It's fake. A prank." Seeing that most people still don't understand, he tries to figure out how to phrase it.
"Like in Lord of the Rings!" Charlie yelps. "You guys have all seen that, right?" Most people nod and murmur to themselves about the trilogy.
"You remember when Boromir dies and they send him down the waterfall in the boat? Sean Bean didn't do that; they made a replica of him to send down it," Charlie explains.
"Yeah, Charlie," Jack says, nodding at him. "That's exactly what I'm talking about."
Jake stares at the mangled replica of his mom's body. What if she really is like that? She's gotta be alive somewhere. There's no question now. They've got her, and they want them to know it.