[fic] all the mistakes one life contained
Title: all the mistakes one life contained
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Shannon POV; Boone/Shannon, mentions of Sayid (implied Sayid/Shannon), Locke, and Jack.
Warnings: Some general spoilers for LOST. [I was vague for people still watching S1! *g*]
Word count: ~1500
Summary: Shannon reflects on how she got good and lost.
Author's Notes: So, youcallitwinter wrote me some truly spectacular TVD fic, and in return she wanted me to write Boone/Shannon fic. [Please note this is a bit of a stretch since I wrote one drabble about them like a hundred years ago, so please read with a forgiving eye if you read it at all.] The specific prompt was Shannon's perspective on Locke saying "do you like him?" (He was talking about Sayid -or said he was- but it was obvious she thought he meant Boone.) from 1x17 "In Translation." It spiraled from there. Some dialogue lifted directly from 1x17. The title was lifted from the Staind song "So Far Away." {This photo must be a behind-the-scenes thing. You do know that Ian and Maggie dated, right, youcallitwinter?}
It starts at the end.
(Ironic, isn't it? She can still hear Boone's voice in her head even though she'd never tell anyone that. Especially not Sayid.)
She can remember kindness from him--even here, in this godforsaken place--he'd been kind when she'd been desperate, when she couldn't get a whole breath into her lungs.
(She doesn't think she's had a whole breath since he died.)
It was only the last couple of years that the meanness came out. As kids they'd fought like normal siblings, over the bathroom, over the phone, over the remote for the television. He would wrestle her for control over what music came out of the stereo, but he was 16 before he was strong enough to beat her.
She was two years younger, but Boone had been a late bloomer. In high school, he started lifting weights, and as his arms got bigger, so did his ability to pin her to floor and make her cry uncle so they could listen to crap like Green Day or Matchbox Twenty because he pretended he didn't like Backstreet Boys or 'NSync.
So she learned to use her barbed tongue then, but the hurt in his eyes always made her find a way to take it back.
It had only been since her father died that her ability to show him that she needed him had been reduced to when she thought she was dying, or when she was drunk, or when she accepted how totally alone she was in the world.
He had always been overly kind to her--she'd lost count of the girlfriends she had over that said things like I wish my brother were as sweet as Boone. She knew they didn't see past his big blue eyes and his 1000-watt smile, but then again, she couldn't reasonably be jealous just because he was pretty, could she? And she didn't have to be jealous because he never put those eyes on anyone but her. All the girls he played tennis with or went to private school with or took to cotillions weren't girls he ever brought to their house, despite his mother always wanting him to.
Of course, there came the time when having no money meant she had to pull out all the stops, and it was never hard to get her various boyfriends to go along with the plot, and like clockwork Boone always came through. Then, it became a game, and the only way to lord power over Sabrina, and she sort of got drunk on the feeling. So...after a while, he wasn't kind any more.
She did that to him, and she knows it.
On Craphole Island, the only thing Shannon has is that she and Boone are equally non-plussed. They're society kids who haven't ever had a day of hardship in their lives, not really, and so while they sit around with their proverbial thumbs up their asses, she consoles herself with the fact that she's not alone.
That is, until Boone decides he's a Jungle Freak and leaves her behind. It's not so bad, finding her own way to help (thanks to Sayid), but she still hates that Boone is gone, sometimes all day long, and when he comes back, he's exhausted, so he doesn't even talk to her, he just flops down on the ground beside her and sleeps like he's dead.
But then Sayid starts to look at her, with the same expression every man who wasn't her father has ever looked at her. The same expression Boone had had in Sydney...after.
She storms through the jungle, intent on having it out with him once and for all. He can hate her all he wants, but he doesn't need to talk to Sayid about anything.
"Just tell him to stay the hell out of my business," she says frustratedly when the only person she can find is Locke.
She tries to walk away with some sort of flair, but it's hard when you have to make sure you don't trip over any tree roots. Locke's voice stops her. "Do you like him?"
It's a weird moment, because she knows just what he means. Like, as in like. As in men and women, as in, how could anyone think that about her and Boone? Do they give off a vibe as to the fucked-up nature of everything between them? "What?" she asks, because there is no answer.
(She loves Boone. She hates Boone. She does not like him. She doesn't know why he loves her. She does know why he can't stand to look at her most of the time.)
"Sayid," Locke says in clarification.
Shannon can't stop her sarcastic response. "Are you serious?" She wants to take it a step further, what is this, junior high? but she reminds herself she's not actually arguing with her brother.
Locke goes on, like she asked for a lecture. "Because if you do, like him, what's it got to do with your brother? You're a grown woman. You can yell at Boone 'til you're blue in the face, but all you're doing is giving him what he wants."
She pauses, absorbs that, thinks maybe all those hours in the forest with his Jungle Buddy might have made Boone spill their pitch black secrets. "Yeah, what's that?" she asks, afraid of his response, but needing to know just the same.
She feels like Locke's silently laughing at her, though he makes no outward indication, not even a smile on his lips. "Your attention." He takes another pause, and when he speaks again, it's not a lecture, it's the edict she never knew she always needed to hear. "Everyone gets a new life on this island, Shannon. Maybe it's time you start yours."
She goes to Sayid, presses her lips to his. A new life is just what she needs. One that erases all the terrible things she ever did.
Too bad the one person who knows all too well all those things is still there with her, his eyes holding up accusations even when his mouth tells her he doesn't want to help her with the raft.
After she moves to New York (and then New Orleans, and then Paris, and then Sydney), she doesn't call him just when she's in trouble. (But she gets in trouble often enough, and he's the only fucking person she has in the world to call. The only reliable person in her whole miserable life.)
Every once in a while, she calls him just to talk, just to hear his voice, just to know that while Sabrina has tossed her to the wolves, Boone is okay, safe, sound, and working his ass off at a job he hates, but can't get out of.
But then he says stuff like, "Hey, I saw this movie today, and it made me think of you."
"Oh, yeah? What movie?"
"Mean Girls."
So then, she gets mad and hangs up on him. He calls her right back, laughing that he didn't mean anything by it, he was just trying to be funny.
But it can't be funny, not when part of her knows it's true.
The fragments piece together into some sort of misshapen equivalent of her life.
She becomes the poor little rich girl, the pitiful non-entity of someone who cons their way into men's beds so they'll take care of her, and then she even does it to Boone.
The last person she would ever want to hurt becomes her biggest victim. Because you can only wound someone to their core when you share it.
She doesn't sleep with him to blackmail him, she doesn't do it to get back at Sabrina, she doesn't do it because she doesn't understand that it's fifty kinds of wrong.
She's drunk, and sad, and the only thing that will make her feel better is him. She knows it, and she knows he'll do whatever she wants him to, even though he pretends for half a second that it isn't what it is.
(Like he never sang I Want It That Way, and knew all the words by heart.)
She feels guilt rush over her as soon as he pulls out, but it's only because he mutters something she can't quite hear under his breath. She assumes he's ashamed, because how can he not be? She's screwed him both figuratively and literally now. What is there left between them that's sacred?
So what it boils down to is this: Boone knew everything about her and loved her anyway. And by the time she understands that, it's too late.
It ends with a start.
Jack comes to tell her--something her ears can't hear and her brain can't process.
Locke's question is an echo in her heart. Do you like him?
And her answer: More than anyone I've ever known.