Another chapter! I'm trying to get the rewrites up as soon as I can while I still have spring break, because I know after that things will slow down. Hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter Three:
They had been on the island for almost two weeks, and Elliot wanted off.
There was a plan to triangulate the receivers and pick up where the signal that had been broadcasting for sixteen years was coming from. Make up by Sayid, of course, technology extraordinaire.
She volunteered to go with them because she was bored, goddammit, and she had to do something. She loved Finn, but she was about ready to bit his head off if he made one more smart arse remark, and she had far too much at stake back home to be gone for so long.
There was also the fact that she didn't want her father interrogating her too much when she got back, if she got back. He had probably guessed, by now. He was a smart man after all, blood of her blood. Smart, and cruel, and not very loving.
Boone and Kate offered to go as well, and Finn's hand shot up like an arrow the moment his crush volunteered. Kate, Sayid and Elliot would walk through the jungle and split up with different receivers and the transmitter, while Finn and Boone would stay on the beach. At exactly five we would each set off fireworks, signaling they were ready.
Elliot was comfortable in silence, but Kate, nice girl that Elliot took her as, tried a few times to engage her in conversation. Elliot knew she put Kate off a bit. Too young, too odd, too cold. Not nice, like a normal teenager. Not normal that's why I took you, you're special, not like the others.
"So Elliot, you're eighteen, are you still in school?" Kate started, smiling awkwardly over at her.
"I'm a senior," she replied curtly, clutching the straps of her bag tighter.
"Senior year. I remember that. Party it up before you leave for college, right?" Kate smiled invitingly. "You gonna leave England to go to college, or are you going to stay there for university?"
"I go to school in Lost Angeles," Elliot muttered, fidgeting, eyes downcast, hands bloodless tight on her bag.
Kate stopped trying so hard, after that.
Kate and Sayid rambled on about inconsequential things for the next few minutes, before a rustle in the bushes interrupted them. They all froze, half turning in fear and curiosity, ugly, silly feelings that they were.
Instead of the boar they had all been expecting a different type of animal crashed into the small clearing grinning rakishly.
"I've come to help out," Sawyer was smiling, tilting his head so that blonde locks fell into his handsome face.
"We don't need help," Sayid told him tersely, and Elliot almost smiled. She liked his anger, when it wasn't directed at her.
"Well, you've got it. Why don't I go with freckles here and you and Brit can go your separate way with the transmitter, since you two are the tech geniuses. Sound good to you, cupcake?" he smiled at Elliot, who resisted the urge to bare her teeth back.
"That doesn't seem like a good-" Sayid started, but Kate cut him off.
"Fine. Let's just get to it. There's not much time and we have a lot of walking to do," she said, lips tightening as she avoided looking at Sawyer.
He started to the right, and Kate followed halfheartedly after him.
Sayid and Elliot walked in silence after that, reaching their destination in record time. It seemed, Elliot thought to herself, that awkwardness will do that to people. Make them hurry the fuck up.
Sayid's watch said that they still had an hour until five, so as he set up the bottle rocket Elliot took a seat in the sun warmed grass and pulled out her notebook.
"What are you doing?" Sayid's voice filtered through her intense concentration a few moments later, and she glanced up to see him sitting across from her, fingers drumming impatiently in the grass.
"Making a map," she answered low, looking back at the notebook and marking the area where the natives had met her a few days before.
"You think we'll be here long enough to need a map?" he asked, obviously disgruntled at the thought. Elliot almost smiled again.
She took a breath, lungs filling with fresh mountain air, and paused for a moment before answering. "I think it's a high possibility. Two weeks and no one has found us. That doesn't make for a very good situation, in my book."
He was silent for a few beats.
"You lied about not knowing what had happened to you before Locke found you in the jungle the other day," he said finally, and when she looked up his eyes were firm on hers, and she felt a flash of recognition surge through her throat, then nothing.
So she sighed, put down her pencil, clasped her hands beneath her chin, and fixed her gaze fully on him. Blue on brown, steady and heavy.
"Why would I possibly do such a thing?" she responded after a moment, once she had fully focused her attention and all her brain power towards him.
"I have no idea. But you did. I know a liar when I see one," he shrugged, eyes narrowing, but still holding tightly to her own.
She raised an eyebrow and finally let that feral smile she had been holding out, dimples creasing her cheeks. "I've found that often, liars can spot other liars. So what does that say about you?"
They stared at each other for a few moments, something silent but sharply there crackling between their eyes for just a moment, before she pulled her gaze away.
She picked up the notebook again and began jotting down more trails, more trees, more names. They didn't speak for a long while.
"It's time," Sayid said after checking his watch an hour later, and he moved to light the bottle rocket. They stepped back as it fizzled and spit, leaving its cover in an explosion of black and red sparks as it rose to the darkening sky.
They waited until they saw the next rocket go off and Sayid turned the knob of the transmitter, laughing in delight when it blared with a signal.
"Yes! Yes, yes, yes," he chanted, holding it up and grinning wide.
And just like that, everything went black.
...
"What happened?" Jack asked, cleaning up the wound on Sayid's head. Elliot sat, hand in palm, gritting her teeth against the onslaught of a vicious headache.
"I don't know," Sayid huffed in frustration, teeth baring in a way Elliot found all at once familiar and oddly disconcerting. "One moment we had a signal, and the next we woke up and it was gone, transmitter broken."
"Elliot?" Jack looked over, taking in her pained expression with concern creasing his friendly face.
She waved a hand towards Sayid, closed her eyes against the throbbing of her head. She felt as if she was being hit multiple times over her skull with a dull hammer.
"Yes, what he said. Why is everyone so bloody loud?" she growled, eyes snapping open to glare at the people milling about the Adam and Eve cave Jack had found.
The doctor laughed. "It seems you're alright after all. Why don't you go back to the beach?"
Elliot trudged to the beach and Finn, who ran up to her the moment she stepped out of the cover of the trees, a grin wide on his face.
"It didn't work," she snarled when he reached her, and the smile melted from his face as he stared at her with concern.
"Okay. Are you alright?" he reached for her head, and she bent from beneath his touch.
"Fine. I need to lie down," she rubbed her tongue hard against her teeth to distract herself from the pain in her head.
He shrugged and pointed to their tent before traipsing back to Boone and his stepsister.
Elliot glared after his retreating blonde form with a fierce defiance before moving to the tent, curling onto her side, and falling into voluntary darkness.