The Island fic: Renovatio
Title: “Renovatio”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG
Summary: It’s not about living; it’s about survival. Lincoln Six-Echo ponders everything he’s been through after the escape from the centre. Please R&R!
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘The Island’.
A/N: Just watched this film yesterday. It was amazing! Too fast-paced in the end, but that’s just me. I’d love more philosophy.
RENOVATIO
The first thing the real world shows him is that it’s not about living as he had always been taught, but about survival.
Keep running until your lungs give out… or until you get caught.
He is so tired, exhilarated and shocked when his human counterpart gets shot that he doesn’t even take time to be surprised at the lucky twist of fate. He had a fifty per cent chance, and he won the jackpot.
Tom Lincoln’s life.
Tom Lincoln never was a hero. In fact he was nothing. Rich, wanton and fatally ill - that’s it.
Lincoln Six-Echo is something entirely different. He is three years old; he knows nothing and owns nothing. Instead, he is supposed to be owned. He is someone’s insurance policy, betrayed by the owner and tossed out into the predatory world that has nothing to do with the peaceful monotonous environment he grew up in.
Some things in this world are a lot scarier than global contamination.
Lincoln stands on top of a red mountain, the sand sizzling hot beneath his feet. It radiates heat into the soles of his shoes, and it scorches his lungs, and it’s so… real and pure, the scent of life in it sickening and sweet. Lincoln’s heart is thumping. People in white scurry around, gaping at the bluest sky they could ever see (except in the infomercials advertising the Island). Lincoln knows their feelings and reads in their hearts. Not so long ago he was the same: naïve, frightened, amazed. He stood in awe over the crimson dunes, his eyes so dry it hurt.
Not anymore.
He has fought. He has killed and he has won.
It feels strange to have matured from three to thirty overnight. Right now he can take a generous bite out of life to make up for all the lost years. He has memories to compensate for it, but no real experience. He locks his teeth around the very heart of it and bites so hard the juice trickles down his throat and stings unbearably. It is this air; it is the gasps of his fellow clones, brought out into the real world which differs vastly from what they possibly imagined (he knows, only too well); it is the dirt and the sweat (everything was so clean back in the centre, so unhealthily white!); and Jordan’s understanding, beautiful eyes.
“We could live like real people,” she had said.
For all he knows, Lincoln Six-Echo is every bit as real as any man. And so is she, and he feels it once again as their lips lock in a tender kiss, and the countdown of their new life starts.
Having survived both artificial peace and real cruelty, Lincoln begins his renovation process as the waves splash beneath the bottom of his yacht that carries him and the woman he loves into the future.
June 8, 2008