Lost HoHoHo fic, Doc there's a hole where something was, Doc there's a hole where something was
Red. In that moment, it was all he could see. An ever-expanding circle of red blossoming across her chest. The necklace he gave her last Christmas had rested in the very same spot. He had rested his head there in Sydney while idly tracing a group of freckles across her shoulder.
It takes him an instant that lasts a century to force his gaze to meet her own and he knows the shock he sees in her eyes must be mirrored in his. He can’t process this, can’t think about anything other than her. Her face, her laugh, her smile, her scent; a thousand memories blur through his mind faster than he can bear and all at once he is painfully brought back to the present.
The motion of her body as it falls to the ground is finally enough to spur him into action. He’s spent most of his life trying to catch her as she falls, with her fighting him tooth and nail every step of the way. This couldn’t be real. Any second now she was going to push him away like always; the untouchable princess that doesn’t need anything from anyone.
Something breaks into pieces inside of him as she collapses in his arms. His pulse seems unbearably loud in his mind and he can’t feel anything other than the crimson warmth spreading across his hands. He wants to yell for Jack, for anyone that could possibly reverse this moment but he can’t breathe or think or feel.
For once, she’s complacent in his arms. There is none of the usual warmth or friction or spark he’s come to associate with her. There’s a hole where something used to be inside of him and he can’t help but wonder how much more they’re all going to lose before this nightmare is over.
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Nothing really stands out in his mind until the moment he sees her again. Most of his days are spent around the simple wooden cross that feels more real beneath his hands than anything else this island has to offer. If he lingers near it long enough he can almost feel her warmth against his side, hear her laughter running through his mind.
He knows he should be more alarmed when he opens his eyes and finds her there. She looks as alive as ever, the perfect picture of radiant light spread out across the sand. The simple “miss me?” she offers him and the smile that goes with it are as familiar to him as the color of her eyes and, for this moment at least, he’s perfectly content to just sit and be with her.
He’s always been a logical guy. Two plus two always equals four, and when a bullet tears its way through your chest there is no coming back from that. But she’s here, smiling and whole. They aren’t fighting and she isn’t walking away and in the end, it really doesn’t matter why she’s here.
He just needs her to stay.
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“You know you’ve got to stop doing this, right? There are things that need to be done.”
The cryptic talk couldn’t be more out of place coming from her, and he couldn’t be more grateful for the familiar, underlying current of irritation he can hear in her voice. He knows her, inside and out, and if he wasn’t afraid to touch her he would slap a hand over her mouth to cut off the oncoming rant he knows she is working up to.
Dead Shannon seems to have an even shorter fuse than his Shannon and more than anything he just wants to ask her to stop, to stop talking and planning and scheming and just be with him. The world is always coming to an end on this island and at this point he’s just waiting to see how it all plays out. Letting it end means being with her and the scowl that crosses her face makes him wonder if death finally allows her to understand him.
“God, Boone! You’ve got to snap out of it! Don’t you get it; you’ve got to get up! They need you!”
As a rule, he doesn’t respond to dead Shannon. He doesn’t touch or talk or do anything that might disturb whatever is going on and cause her to leave. He can sense her frustration; practically feel the urgency in the slope of her shoulders, and he knows that this is the moment where his Shannon would stalk off, leaving a trail of anger and bitterness in her wake.
He isn’t surprised to find an empty beach in front of him when he opens his eyes.
At least this time, he knows she’ll be back.
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He knows this isn’t healthy. It isn’t getting any better and he loses touch with reality a little bit more as every day goes by. Everything fades to gray in his mind except for stolen moments with a ghost by a grave. She isn’t coming back and sooner or later he’ll be left with nothing more than fragmented memories of broken conversations.
When he looks up to meet her eyes, he can’t really decide which of them is more shocked by the tears streaming down his face. He wants to stop, go back to the comfortable routine they’ve established since her death, but everything feels tight and heavy and he can’t seem to get enough air into his lungs.
He can’t help but wonder if this is what dying feels like, if having a bullet tear through your insides causes the same sort of suffocating feeling he’s drowning under now.
“Oh, Boone.”
Her hand on his face feels like the first real thing he’s felt in weeks and whatever restraint he had left goes out the window when she pulls him into her arms. This isn’t real.
This isn’t real this isn’t real this isn’t real this isn’t real.
It doesn’t matter how many times he tries to say it, he can still feel hear and smell her and wrap himself up in her and he never wants to leave this moment.
“Boone. Boone, you have to get up.”
He knew this was coming. Everything has been building towards this for weeks and the throbbing in his head quiets down with every sweeping motion her hand makes.
“I don’t want you to go. I can’t do this without you.”
His voice is scratchy and foreign and painful to his ears. He doesn’t want to have this conversation, doesn’t want to do anything other than wrap himself around her and watch this miserable island full of miserable people go up in a blaze of glory.
“Boone, you have to get up. They can’t do this without you. You’ll see me again, I promise, but for now you have to get up. I need for you to get up.”
“Promise. Promise me I’ll see you again.”
The demand comes out more childlike than he intended but right now he’s too far gone to care. Something is coming, that much is obvious, but he can’t do this without knowing he’ll see her again.
“I promise. We don’t have any more time.”
“I’m ready.”
And he was. Whatever was coming, he was ready. One way or another everything was about to change. Either way, once this was finished, at least he knew he’d see her again.
“Good. They’re here.”