Fic: Reprise (1/1)
Title: Reprise
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Boone Carlyle, Shannon Rutherford, Hugo "Hurley" Reyes, Jack Shephard, John Locke, Sayid Jarrah, Theresa; mild, one-sided Boone/Shannon, Sayid/Shannon
Word Count: 2,240
Summary: Basically, the afterlife is pretty straight forward, pretty self-explanatory: it comes after, and it’s too much like the rest of his whole fucking life to be all that much of a surprise. For janie_tangerine, who requested “Boone Carlyle” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. Spoilers through 6.17 - The End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For janie_tangerine: I couldn't get this idea for Boone out of my head, even if it's a bit of a different voice for him than I usually go with; I hope it's to your liking :)
Reprise
Boone Carlyle’s not really much of a winner, in the broadest sense of the word. He never really played sports -- not seriously, at least; never even managed one of those medallions for participation, with the heavy bronze disc at the end of the tri-color band, dangling at his neck with his name engraved on the back. He never won a trophy at school, or got one of those mass-produced ribbons for thirteenth place in that pukey pea-green color, with the cheap metallic lettering that flaked off after a day or two of hanging off a drawer knob in a bedroom, bleached out in the harsh afternoon sun within a week. He doesn’t win things. He doesn’t come out on top.
So of course, he gets here first. Figures that he’d wait until death before he got around to winning a fucking race.
_________________
He figures out fairly quickly that, basically, the afterlife is pretty straight forward, pretty self-explanatory: it comes after, and it’s too much like the rest of his whole fucking life to be all that much of a surprise.
Weird thing is, though: the first morning he woke up here -- wherever here is, whatever here isn’t -- it’d been to the sound of his cell phone, and the first thought that came to mind was that the Island didn’t get reception for shit.
Which, admittedly, was followed quickly by the recognition of the bubblegum-poppy song his sister had assigned for her ringtone two years prior, that he’d never had the heart to change.
His heart races for a good twenty minutes once things start falling into place -- the memories, the sense-impressions, the whoosh of the traffic and the air conditioning different, so different from the waves; it takes him another ten minutes to remember what the passcode for his voicemail is.
The recording tells him that his last saved message was accessed seven hours ago.
Seven. Hours.
He has one unheard message.
Knowing that it’s Shannon doesn’t prepare him for the familiar whine of her voice, the weighty huff of entitlement never quite gone, even when she’s desperate, when she’s lost; it’s almost endearing, even bereft, unsaturated with the weight of sun and blood and salt, too many trees and too much ocean, everywhere. She’s telling him the same story, using the same words, and he laughs, his chest tight, a little hysterical: some things overcome, supersede there and here, life and death.
Like his sister being a fucking thorn in his side.
_________________
He gets back from Baton Rouge with a black eye and a bank account that’s out ten thousand dollars, all thanks to a fucker named Chad who had the godawful sense to screw his sister. He doesn’t bother getting too worked up about it, now; figures it can’t really matter that much, anymore.
He doesn’t really get the whole being dead thing -- thinks there have to be illusions, have to be veils and layers of awareness that are there just to keep him sane, get him by; he doesn’t quite understand how or why, what it means that he bruises, that he can feel the pulse in his neck if he puts his fingers to the side of his throat and just breathes. He doesn’t know.
Whatever.
He checks his messages -- sees the one from his mother, and accesses it while he heaves his luggage out of rotation at the baggage claim; he stops in front of a couple that walks into him from behind when he hears her recorded voice, crackly in his ear, asking when he plans on visiting his father.
Visiting his father. Who’s been dead since he was seven.
It takes some digging to see that his dad had the same stroke that Boone remembers killing him the year he entered the first grade, the day he came home with his first spelling test in hand, excited to show off the A+ he’d earned, written in red pen next to a sticker shaped like the sun. The stroke had happened, just like he remembered, except his father had survived.
If you could call it surviving.
He finds records, invoices and signatures that trace his father from care facility to nursing home and back again for more than a decade, before they tie up around December of last year with a thick stack of paperwork, all bearing the same heading: St. Sebastian Hospital.
He goes, midday -- the afternoon is overcast, and he wonders if the sky is even real, if he just imagines it, if it’s different for everyone.
He wonders if all the people around him are dead, too, or if they’re just figments of his imagination.
He waits outside the room, runs a hand over his face and wrestles air from in between his fingers as he paces, tries to figure it out -- he hasn’t seen his dad, can’t imagine him older, broken. Doesn’t want to.
His mother didn’t make him go to the wake to see the body; he’d said his goodbyes to a stone in the ground.
“You alright?” The voice takes his by surprise, the casual placement of a hand on his shoulder, coming from behind him. He turns, quick, doubles back without a step: those eyes are just like he remembers them -- not from the day of the crash, but from the night that he died.
And Boone, he tenses, just for a second; just as much as he can before Jack will notice, pull away; he swallows a sigh and lets his pulse race a little, just that bit too fast -- lets his breaths come slow and inconspicuous, a battle in his chest as he drinks in the touch; and death, well, it obviously has one hell of a sense of humor. Go figure.
He lets himself enjoy it before he nods, breaks the spell; it’s his fucking afterlife, after all. He can do what he wants.
_________________
It’s on a whim that he calls the number he finds, written in his mother’s scrawl, yellowed around the edges.
He holds his breath as the connection takes, as the rings start to echo, and he can feel the thrum of his heart bang, reverberate as he sucks in heavy breaths, unsure -- running up stairs and stumbling down them, even as he stands, stock-still.
“Hello?” The voice is pleasant, warm -- he knows it.
He clears his throat; it doesn’t help. “May I speak with Theresa please?” he croaks.
“This is she.” And that voice, it’s natural, curious -- fuck, but it’s alive.
He lets out a shaky breath and disconnects the call before the sob chokes up from his lungs, the sweat on his palms slipping, clinging to the counter as he holds on, keeps himself upright.
Maybe fate comes with its own rewards.
_________________
He flips the calendar over to July, and sees the little appointment-reminder postcard paper-clipped to the edge; figures that being dead doesn’t excuse him from keeping up with his dental hygiene, and calls the dentist to confirm his date and time.
It’s weird, because he knows where the office is, but can’t place the face of the guy who pokes around his mouth twice a year. It’s probably one of those things.
He finds himself noticing stuff more, though -- now, here; he sees if the secretary has a plant on her desk, if people are wearing wedding rings, if there are photos of family and friends scattered around a cubicle.
He’s waiting for his cleaning, propped back in the chair with the flimsy little paper bib clipped around his neck, when he sees it, sees her -- all bright smile and keen eyes, dark hair swept up off her face like it would when she’d swirl it around at the shore line, rub a bit of travel-sized shampoo into it before they’d run out, early in the morning before most people woke up.
When he looks closely at the man holding her tight in the photo, arm slung around her shoulders as he leans into her space, as she lets him -- when he looks, he remembers his dentist’s face. Remembers that his dentist’s name is Bernard.
And he thinks maybe, just maybe; death’s a little kinder.
_________________
He takes the flight to Sydney, doesn’t know why -- still isn’t sure what it means that he’s here -- and he knows where Shannon is, knows how it all goes down. He writes a check and doesn’t look back this time, doesn’t go to find her, bring her home. He doesn’t try to save her.
In this place, he’s pretty sure she doesn’t need saving; it’s either already happened, or it probably ain’t gonna.
It takes him a good chunk of the flight back home to convince himself to say anything to the man at the end of the row; the man he knows, who doesn’t know him. He watches Locke’s legs for hours, watches how they never move, and when he tells him he’s wasting his time, reading that tri-fold, it’s careful, calculated; it means more than even he intends it to.
He remembers why he isn’t bitter, remembers why he can’t bring himself to blame John for everything, for anything; never could.
He sips at his orange juice, sees it in John’s eyes as he lies, as he fabricates a reality that doesn’t exist, couldn’t -- but did, somewhere. Once.
There are enough reasons why John would pull his leg, after all; the afterlife’s just as unfair as anything else.
_________________
He’s hungry, and it’s the closest place that’s open; he doesn’t want a drive-thru, can’t put his finger on the why.
He doesn’t wait around for the ‘why’ so much, these days.
He doesn’t even bother wondering what twist in the fabric of things puts Hugo fucking Reyes at this particular Mr. Cluck’s at ten-after midnight on a Wednesday night; he figures it’s beyond him, anyway, or else too simple for him to buy in the first place.
He says hey when he walks past, doesn’t bother with reason or context, and he’s not all that surprised that, when he walks back through with his order, Hurley asks him if he wants the open seat across from him.
Aside from the handful of kitchen staff still mulling about behind the counter, they’re the only two people still there.
So Boone laughs to himself as he takes the seat, a little bit buoyant, just from seeing Hurley, seeing the grin he shoots Boone’s way as he unwraps his Chicken Club; thinks that some things never change.
_________________
When this -- all of this -- finally starts to come to a head, he’s ready for it; that’s not to say that, had it never reached a breaking point, he’d have had any regrets. All in all, this place did alright by him.
But when the ends start to converge, start to form into means, he knows his part to play; like it was something he’d always known, just never had a use for.
It really is a bitch, getting his sister back to the States, but Hurley’s set on this, and Boone, well, it’s a mindjob, not being the only one anymore, the only one who knows -- but it’s also kind of nice, so he goes with it.
He tells all sorts of lies he knows won’t convince her, won’t change her mind; eventually, he begs her, and that always works. Shannon likes to be needed.
He’d begged, that night in the hotel. He’d begged.
He’s never really gotten over that; in this life, or the last.
He watches the reunion, watches as his hands cup her face; as she smiles, the kind of smile that didn’t exist before the Island, before the heartbreak and the hurt, and Boone tries not to think about it, tries to ignore whatever snaps between his ribs when Sayid kisses her.
And inexplicably, beyond all logical reason: losing stings just as bad here, and now, as it ever did.
_________________
There are certain things in life that Boone Carlyle never did. He never won a trophy, or a ribbon. He didn’t eat anchovies. He never put pictures of his sister in his room. He didn’t write out his whole first name in his signature, just the first initial. And he didn’t go to church.
These things never really changed after he’d crossed over. Till now.
But whatever, he’s here, and it’s okay. The pew’s hard at his back as he leans, watches. Takes it in, as everyone meets again, as everything falls into place. He’ll admit -- it feels better this way. Feels right.
And basically, the afterlife really is pretty straight forward, pretty self-explanatory: it comes after, and lingers long, and it’s a lot more like life than he’d ever dared imagine. It’s like a sequel, a good one: where the plot’s just about the same, little quirks, the actors all stayed on to reprise their roles, and while things are a little different -- a little bit more -- it’s really just a reprise, in the end; repetition, more of the what he knows. It comes after, and it’s mostly just the same.
But if anything, it’s sweeter.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Boone Carlyle, Shannon Rutherford, Hugo "Hurley" Reyes, Jack Shephard, John Locke, Sayid Jarrah, Theresa; mild, one-sided Boone/Shannon, Sayid/Shannon
Word Count: 2,240
Summary: Basically, the afterlife is pretty straight forward, pretty self-explanatory: it comes after, and it’s too much like the rest of his whole fucking life to be all that much of a surprise. For janie_tangerine, who requested “Boone Carlyle” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. Spoilers through 6.17 - The End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For janie_tangerine: I couldn't get this idea for Boone out of my head, even if it's a bit of a different voice for him than I usually go with; I hope it's to your liking :)
Reprise
Boone Carlyle’s not really much of a winner, in the broadest sense of the word. He never really played sports -- not seriously, at least; never even managed one of those medallions for participation, with the heavy bronze disc at the end of the tri-color band, dangling at his neck with his name engraved on the back. He never won a trophy at school, or got one of those mass-produced ribbons for thirteenth place in that pukey pea-green color, with the cheap metallic lettering that flaked off after a day or two of hanging off a drawer knob in a bedroom, bleached out in the harsh afternoon sun within a week. He doesn’t win things. He doesn’t come out on top.
So of course, he gets here first. Figures that he’d wait until death before he got around to winning a fucking race.
_________________
He figures out fairly quickly that, basically, the afterlife is pretty straight forward, pretty self-explanatory: it comes after, and it’s too much like the rest of his whole fucking life to be all that much of a surprise.
Weird thing is, though: the first morning he woke up here -- wherever here is, whatever here isn’t -- it’d been to the sound of his cell phone, and the first thought that came to mind was that the Island didn’t get reception for shit.
Which, admittedly, was followed quickly by the recognition of the bubblegum-poppy song his sister had assigned for her ringtone two years prior, that he’d never had the heart to change.
His heart races for a good twenty minutes once things start falling into place -- the memories, the sense-impressions, the whoosh of the traffic and the air conditioning different, so different from the waves; it takes him another ten minutes to remember what the passcode for his voicemail is.
The recording tells him that his last saved message was accessed seven hours ago.
Seven. Hours.
He has one unheard message.
Knowing that it’s Shannon doesn’t prepare him for the familiar whine of her voice, the weighty huff of entitlement never quite gone, even when she’s desperate, when she’s lost; it’s almost endearing, even bereft, unsaturated with the weight of sun and blood and salt, too many trees and too much ocean, everywhere. She’s telling him the same story, using the same words, and he laughs, his chest tight, a little hysterical: some things overcome, supersede there and here, life and death.
Like his sister being a fucking thorn in his side.
_________________
He gets back from Baton Rouge with a black eye and a bank account that’s out ten thousand dollars, all thanks to a fucker named Chad who had the godawful sense to screw his sister. He doesn’t bother getting too worked up about it, now; figures it can’t really matter that much, anymore.
He doesn’t really get the whole being dead thing -- thinks there have to be illusions, have to be veils and layers of awareness that are there just to keep him sane, get him by; he doesn’t quite understand how or why, what it means that he bruises, that he can feel the pulse in his neck if he puts his fingers to the side of his throat and just breathes. He doesn’t know.
Whatever.
He checks his messages -- sees the one from his mother, and accesses it while he heaves his luggage out of rotation at the baggage claim; he stops in front of a couple that walks into him from behind when he hears her recorded voice, crackly in his ear, asking when he plans on visiting his father.
Visiting his father. Who’s been dead since he was seven.
It takes some digging to see that his dad had the same stroke that Boone remembers killing him the year he entered the first grade, the day he came home with his first spelling test in hand, excited to show off the A+ he’d earned, written in red pen next to a sticker shaped like the sun. The stroke had happened, just like he remembered, except his father had survived.
If you could call it surviving.
He finds records, invoices and signatures that trace his father from care facility to nursing home and back again for more than a decade, before they tie up around December of last year with a thick stack of paperwork, all bearing the same heading: St. Sebastian Hospital.
He goes, midday -- the afternoon is overcast, and he wonders if the sky is even real, if he just imagines it, if it’s different for everyone.
He wonders if all the people around him are dead, too, or if they’re just figments of his imagination.
He waits outside the room, runs a hand over his face and wrestles air from in between his fingers as he paces, tries to figure it out -- he hasn’t seen his dad, can’t imagine him older, broken. Doesn’t want to.
His mother didn’t make him go to the wake to see the body; he’d said his goodbyes to a stone in the ground.
“You alright?” The voice takes his by surprise, the casual placement of a hand on his shoulder, coming from behind him. He turns, quick, doubles back without a step: those eyes are just like he remembers them -- not from the day of the crash, but from the night that he died.
And Boone, he tenses, just for a second; just as much as he can before Jack will notice, pull away; he swallows a sigh and lets his pulse race a little, just that bit too fast -- lets his breaths come slow and inconspicuous, a battle in his chest as he drinks in the touch; and death, well, it obviously has one hell of a sense of humor. Go figure.
He lets himself enjoy it before he nods, breaks the spell; it’s his fucking afterlife, after all. He can do what he wants.
_________________
It’s on a whim that he calls the number he finds, written in his mother’s scrawl, yellowed around the edges.
He holds his breath as the connection takes, as the rings start to echo, and he can feel the thrum of his heart bang, reverberate as he sucks in heavy breaths, unsure -- running up stairs and stumbling down them, even as he stands, stock-still.
“Hello?” The voice is pleasant, warm -- he knows it.
He clears his throat; it doesn’t help. “May I speak with Theresa please?” he croaks.
“This is she.” And that voice, it’s natural, curious -- fuck, but it’s alive.
He lets out a shaky breath and disconnects the call before the sob chokes up from his lungs, the sweat on his palms slipping, clinging to the counter as he holds on, keeps himself upright.
Maybe fate comes with its own rewards.
_________________
He flips the calendar over to July, and sees the little appointment-reminder postcard paper-clipped to the edge; figures that being dead doesn’t excuse him from keeping up with his dental hygiene, and calls the dentist to confirm his date and time.
It’s weird, because he knows where the office is, but can’t place the face of the guy who pokes around his mouth twice a year. It’s probably one of those things.
He finds himself noticing stuff more, though -- now, here; he sees if the secretary has a plant on her desk, if people are wearing wedding rings, if there are photos of family and friends scattered around a cubicle.
He’s waiting for his cleaning, propped back in the chair with the flimsy little paper bib clipped around his neck, when he sees it, sees her -- all bright smile and keen eyes, dark hair swept up off her face like it would when she’d swirl it around at the shore line, rub a bit of travel-sized shampoo into it before they’d run out, early in the morning before most people woke up.
When he looks closely at the man holding her tight in the photo, arm slung around her shoulders as he leans into her space, as she lets him -- when he looks, he remembers his dentist’s face. Remembers that his dentist’s name is Bernard.
And he thinks maybe, just maybe; death’s a little kinder.
_________________
He takes the flight to Sydney, doesn’t know why -- still isn’t sure what it means that he’s here -- and he knows where Shannon is, knows how it all goes down. He writes a check and doesn’t look back this time, doesn’t go to find her, bring her home. He doesn’t try to save her.
In this place, he’s pretty sure she doesn’t need saving; it’s either already happened, or it probably ain’t gonna.
It takes him a good chunk of the flight back home to convince himself to say anything to the man at the end of the row; the man he knows, who doesn’t know him. He watches Locke’s legs for hours, watches how they never move, and when he tells him he’s wasting his time, reading that tri-fold, it’s careful, calculated; it means more than even he intends it to.
He remembers why he isn’t bitter, remembers why he can’t bring himself to blame John for everything, for anything; never could.
He sips at his orange juice, sees it in John’s eyes as he lies, as he fabricates a reality that doesn’t exist, couldn’t -- but did, somewhere. Once.
There are enough reasons why John would pull his leg, after all; the afterlife’s just as unfair as anything else.
_________________
He’s hungry, and it’s the closest place that’s open; he doesn’t want a drive-thru, can’t put his finger on the why.
He doesn’t wait around for the ‘why’ so much, these days.
He doesn’t even bother wondering what twist in the fabric of things puts Hugo fucking Reyes at this particular Mr. Cluck’s at ten-after midnight on a Wednesday night; he figures it’s beyond him, anyway, or else too simple for him to buy in the first place.
He says hey when he walks past, doesn’t bother with reason or context, and he’s not all that surprised that, when he walks back through with his order, Hurley asks him if he wants the open seat across from him.
Aside from the handful of kitchen staff still mulling about behind the counter, they’re the only two people still there.
So Boone laughs to himself as he takes the seat, a little bit buoyant, just from seeing Hurley, seeing the grin he shoots Boone’s way as he unwraps his Chicken Club; thinks that some things never change.
_________________
When this -- all of this -- finally starts to come to a head, he’s ready for it; that’s not to say that, had it never reached a breaking point, he’d have had any regrets. All in all, this place did alright by him.
But when the ends start to converge, start to form into means, he knows his part to play; like it was something he’d always known, just never had a use for.
It really is a bitch, getting his sister back to the States, but Hurley’s set on this, and Boone, well, it’s a mindjob, not being the only one anymore, the only one who knows -- but it’s also kind of nice, so he goes with it.
He tells all sorts of lies he knows won’t convince her, won’t change her mind; eventually, he begs her, and that always works. Shannon likes to be needed.
He’d begged, that night in the hotel. He’d begged.
He’s never really gotten over that; in this life, or the last.
He watches the reunion, watches as his hands cup her face; as she smiles, the kind of smile that didn’t exist before the Island, before the heartbreak and the hurt, and Boone tries not to think about it, tries to ignore whatever snaps between his ribs when Sayid kisses her.
And inexplicably, beyond all logical reason: losing stings just as bad here, and now, as it ever did.
_________________
There are certain things in life that Boone Carlyle never did. He never won a trophy, or a ribbon. He didn’t eat anchovies. He never put pictures of his sister in his room. He didn’t write out his whole first name in his signature, just the first initial. And he didn’t go to church.
These things never really changed after he’d crossed over. Till now.
But whatever, he’s here, and it’s okay. The pew’s hard at his back as he leans, watches. Takes it in, as everyone meets again, as everything falls into place. He’ll admit -- it feels better this way. Feels right.
And basically, the afterlife really is pretty straight forward, pretty self-explanatory: it comes after, and lingers long, and it’s a lot more like life than he’d ever dared imagine. It’s like a sequel, a good one: where the plot’s just about the same, little quirks, the actors all stayed on to reprise their roles, and while things are a little different -- a little bit more -- it’s really just a reprise, in the end; repetition, more of the what he knows. It comes after, and it’s mostly just the same.
But if anything, it’s sweeter.