Lost fic: 8 Years
Mar. 12th, 2010 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
illwyndI wrote this sometime last summer, and hey, I'm dead tired, trying to get done with finals, and feeling inexplicably posty.
Title: 8 Years
By illwynd
Disclaimer: I don’t own Lost.
Rating: PG for themes
Characters: Danielle Rousseau, mentions of some others.
Summary: Danielle knows one thing for certain.
Warnings: None, except spoilers if you're about three seasons behind.
X-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lost_fanfic.
It has been eight years. She has not yet lost count. She has celebrated seven birthdays—not her own, which she cannot bring herself to care about, but Alexandra’s.
She has made a life on the island, as far as that term applies. From the time that the rest of them got sick, she has been on her own here, and she is no longer surprised at what she can do when she must. She has learned to make traps, she has learned to hide, she knows every tree and hollow on her side of the island. She has learned to survive. She knows that the island has changed her, not as it changed her friends, but simply by being there for so long, alone.
She remembers how difficult it was in the first few years. Survival was hard, and wishing to survive was harder. For a while, perhaps, she was crazed with grief, with loneliness, with a new reality for which she could not have been prepared. She remembers whole days when she barely moved from her shelter, unable to bring herself to care about the empty twinges in her stomach, and days where she moved through the jungle with only wordless thoughts, feeling the leaves brush against her hands, feeling the ground pass under her feet, and knowing that was all there was. After that, things became even stranger. She remembers talking to people who were not there, asking them… Now she can only smile grimly at the memory, for she knew even then that she was alone, that it was simply her own fantasy. It was something like when she was a child and had made her dolls speak, and she knew now that she had been trying to let herself become insane. It had not worked. Each morning she woke up, staring out at the verdant jungle, hearing only wind and the calls of birds and her own breathing. She could not make herself hear the voice of a happy, normal 7-year-old girl beside her, no matter how hard she tried.
Sometimes she thinks of Robert, as he was before they came to the island. At night, just before she falls asleep, she imagines his touch, his warmth. His eyes, and his arms around her. His curiosity that had always been a match for her own, and the way he had tapped a foot with an energetic lack of rhythm when he was working and thought he understood something new. It had been difficult when he perished; that Robert was already gone, and she had not been sure what she was mourning. And sometimes, like a nightmare, other memories intruded—the look in his eyes when his hand had lifted, automatic and certain, to shoot her. Then she would feel glutinous sweat spring up on her skin as if she were one of the frogs that croaked around the shelter, and the inevitable island rain could not come soon enough.
Sometimes she finds herself standing on some bare hillside, staring out at the mountains rising up above her head, noticing the countless shades of living green in sun and shadow, and realizing suddenly how beautiful it is. Tears stream down her cheeks, and she does not know why.
But she knows she is not insane. If she were, she would not feel each day as if it were the first, and as if she has been here for a million years. She would not see so clearly how far she is from the young woman who came to this island eight years ago, a young woman who had hopes and passions, a husband, a child waiting to be born, and no idea of what she would lose. If she were insane, it would not hurt so badly. She is sure of that.
Title: 8 Years
By illwynd
Disclaimer: I don’t own Lost.
Rating: PG for themes
Characters: Danielle Rousseau, mentions of some others.
Summary: Danielle knows one thing for certain.
Warnings: None, except spoilers if you're about three seasons behind.
X-posted to
lost_fanfic.It has been eight years. She has not yet lost count. She has celebrated seven birthdays—not her own, which she cannot bring herself to care about, but Alexandra’s.
She has made a life on the island, as far as that term applies. From the time that the rest of them got sick, she has been on her own here, and she is no longer surprised at what she can do when she must. She has learned to make traps, she has learned to hide, she knows every tree and hollow on her side of the island. She has learned to survive. She knows that the island has changed her, not as it changed her friends, but simply by being there for so long, alone.
She remembers how difficult it was in the first few years. Survival was hard, and wishing to survive was harder. For a while, perhaps, she was crazed with grief, with loneliness, with a new reality for which she could not have been prepared. She remembers whole days when she barely moved from her shelter, unable to bring herself to care about the empty twinges in her stomach, and days where she moved through the jungle with only wordless thoughts, feeling the leaves brush against her hands, feeling the ground pass under her feet, and knowing that was all there was. After that, things became even stranger. She remembers talking to people who were not there, asking them… Now she can only smile grimly at the memory, for she knew even then that she was alone, that it was simply her own fantasy. It was something like when she was a child and had made her dolls speak, and she knew now that she had been trying to let herself become insane. It had not worked. Each morning she woke up, staring out at the verdant jungle, hearing only wind and the calls of birds and her own breathing. She could not make herself hear the voice of a happy, normal 7-year-old girl beside her, no matter how hard she tried.
Sometimes she thinks of Robert, as he was before they came to the island. At night, just before she falls asleep, she imagines his touch, his warmth. His eyes, and his arms around her. His curiosity that had always been a match for her own, and the way he had tapped a foot with an energetic lack of rhythm when he was working and thought he understood something new. It had been difficult when he perished; that Robert was already gone, and she had not been sure what she was mourning. And sometimes, like a nightmare, other memories intruded—the look in his eyes when his hand had lifted, automatic and certain, to shoot her. Then she would feel glutinous sweat spring up on her skin as if she were one of the frogs that croaked around the shelter, and the inevitable island rain could not come soon enough.
Sometimes she finds herself standing on some bare hillside, staring out at the mountains rising up above her head, noticing the countless shades of living green in sun and shadow, and realizing suddenly how beautiful it is. Tears stream down her cheeks, and she does not know why.
But she knows she is not insane. If she were, she would not feel each day as if it were the first, and as if she has been here for a million years. She would not see so clearly how far she is from the young woman who came to this island eight years ago, a young woman who had hopes and passions, a husband, a child waiting to be born, and no idea of what she would lose. If she were insane, it would not hurt so badly. She is sure of that.
