help-haiti drabbles: set ii
title: hail mary, heaven willing
fandom: lost
character(s)/pairing(s): desmond, charlie
rating: pg
word count: 163
spoilers: the looking glass
author's note: title from the thermal's back to gray
summary: the boat sways in the night.
The boat sways in the night. The midnight blue of the sky and the black ocean congeal around him, pushing in on him and backing away infinitely. Desmond closes his eyes on the view, rocking in his seat with the tide.
Suddenly he isn’t alone.
“You let me down, mate. It was supposed to be Claire in that chopper.”
Desmond doesn’t turn to face him, doesn’t need more evidence of his delusion. Whether the ghost that visits him is a manifestation of his guilt, his failure, or actually is Charlie’s spirit, he’ll never know. He’s never told anyone about the specter, afraid they would call him mad.
“I know.” He doesn’t apologize, the words worn out and weary on his tongue.
Footsteps track closer, and Desmond tilts his head, looks down. A pair of feet, baring one checkered shoe and one water-logged sock. He shivers in the warm night air.
Every time he calls his son’s name it feels like a Hail Mary.
title: butterfly asleep in its cradle cocoon
fandom: lost
character(s)/pairing(s): shannon/boone
rating: pg13
word count: 415
spoilers: none
author's note: prequel to this is not an aeroplane. if you're wondering what the song that's mentioned is, looky here. it seemed like the right time period, and i definitely remember it being popular.
summary: at seventeen, shannon is pretty sure prom is the most important thing that will ever happen to her.
At seventeen, Shannon is pretty sure prom is the most important thing that will ever happen to her. More than the SATs, more than dance recitals, maybe even more than that concert last year when she let the bass player fuck her up against a stack of guitar stands and then came thisclose to doing lines off some skanky chick’s stomach.
This is it. The culmination of her entire life.
(Later she’ll snort, remembering how stupid she was.)
Her dress is the prettiest shade of pink that she’s ever seen, like cherry blossoms and frosting and roses. She’s going with Jason Trug, because he was the cutest and he asked neither first nor last. But with just one look from Boone as she crests the staircase and she knows whose arms she’s ending up in tonight. It isn’t wrong, she figures, if it makes her feel this good.
Besides, she’s young. She has time to make mistakes.
They ride to the dance in a rented limo getting a little drunk with his football buddies and the cheerleaders on her squad. She’s proud of herself when she barely wobbles on her heels as she steps from the car, while Becky face-plants into the grass.
The prom committee decorated the room with twinkling lights and rice paper lanterns; her date leads her into the ballroom with one arm through hers and she thinks it looks like a dream land. They take a cheesy picture; Jason with his hand too far south on the back of her dress and her smile too plastic, looking distracted.
(She’ll stare at this photo later and realize she was searching for Boone in the crowd, her eyes too unfocused to be looking at the camera.)
Boone finds her on the dance floor and spins her away from her date with an apologetic shrug; Jason thinks nothing of it. Her hips are swaying to the harmony of some song about butterflies. Boone’s lips are fluttering at her ear and they could almost be anywhere, be anyone.
When Boone steers them to the edge of the dance floor and tugs her through the crowd, she’s already mapping out the schematics of the coat closets in the science wing.
(At this moment she is young and naïve and has no clue what the next few years will hold. Namely: a dimmed hotel room, his black eye, her favorite pink shirt forgotten on the floor. Then: two blue lines, runaway notes and, nine months later, her.)
title: we are far less than we knew
fandom: lost
character(s)/pairing(s): ana/sayid
rating: pg13
word count: 210
spoilers: set during collision
author's note: title from bright eyes' the center of the world
summary: like layers of wood around the already decaying hollowness of a dead tree, she was rotting from the inside out.
It had been a long time since Ana felt anything other than nothingness inside her.
Like layers of wood around the already decaying hollowness of a dead tree, she was rotting from the inside out. If you cut her open, she’s sure you could count the rings to trace the hard winters of years past, sure they would all be paper thin and sickly. Long dead but somehow still standing, waiting for the winds. Only instead of her bark growing soft and decayed, it had hardened, hoping to disguise the weakness within.
In truth, her own axe had been picking away at herself from the moment they crashed, hacking herself down in a forest where no one would be around to hear her fall.
The blade glints in the island sun, this time taking the form of a gun, her bloody fingerprints metaphorical but all over the grip. She throws it down.
"Go ahead, pick it up, I deserve it."
Another body, another life she had fucked up. She was a murderer even when she wasn’t trying.
But when she looks in Sayid’s eyes she sees the same thing reflected into the darkness of her own: hollow.
"What good would it be to kill you, if we're both already dead?"