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blinkaftermidnight · 2 days ago

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Moments

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Tentative work summary: [Some things are harder than others to forget.] Or, one moment that sticks with each of the sixteen teenagers after they leave the island, for better or for worse, and a glimpse at post-island life.

Chapter One – Berkeley

[Leah]

When she has to think about it, when her brain refuses to let her focus on anything else, she tries to remember only one part. Whenever Leah’s brain requires her to think about the island, she redirects it to only one memory. The only one that really matters, maybe. And her memory of it is crystal clear, like if Leah closes her eyes, she almost feels like she’s back there, on the final day, in their final moments on that second island. Doesn’t matter if she’s seated in class, or walking across campus, or in her apartment. She can still feel the relief, can still recall the way Fatin’s face lit up, can still feel that nervous anticipation deep in the pit of her stomach when Fatin moved closer.

Leah expected Fatin to hug her. Even now, almost two years later, Leah still doesn’t quite believe how it went down. Maybe because everything seems to move so slowly, even as the time races on. They haven’t had many opportunities to physically be in the same space, since Fatin’s been in New York. But while they were on that beach, watching the approaching helicopter – a helicopter obviously affiliated with the government – Leah braced herself for a bone crushing hug, like the one she shared with Fatin back on their fifteenth day, or when they reunited in the bunker. Leah remembers her muscles tensing, remembers preparing to lift her arms to be able to hug Fatin back. Because they all knew this rescue was for real. Ian and Young pulled it off.

Leah’s arms rose but hung awkwardly in the air when Fatin decided not to hug her, when Fatin took Leah’s face in her hands and kissed her instead. Leah’s eyebrows raised, and she barely managed to kiss Fatin back in time, didn’t register any of the other people around them. They had their own moments, surely. Leah hugged Rachel, after Fatin pulled away from her, grinning so widely that it had to hurt, and Fatin went to Dot, Leah knows. But all the after stuff is hazy, and that’s okay, because Leah remembers the important part. Fatin validated Leah’s feelings. It was the one time on the island that Leah felt truly…okay. Maybe even peaceful, but Leah isn’t sure she wants to go that far.

Her phone buzzes on the table next to Leah’s hand, and Leah snaps out of the memory, realizes she’s been staring into space for at least five minutes instead of studying. Leah glances around the library before looking down at her phone. Leah smiles without being aware of it, picks her phone up and lets her eyes linger on the screen.

Fatin Jadmani, 3:53 p.m. hey i’m coming home next week so obviously we have to get together and i won’t take no for an answer

As if Leah would ever say no.

[Fatin]

New York is new. It’s the change of scenery Fatin desperately needs. It keeps memories of the island away. When Fatin’s awake, or at least, not in bed, surrounded by darkness. The dark always serves as a reminder of Fatin’s worst night on the island. It doesn’t matter that Fatin can wrap herself up in her sheets or reach for her phone and flood the room in dim light. Doesn’t matter. Once her mind throws her back, she’s stuck with the feeling. The dread and the fear and the panic that all choked her after Leah swallowed the rest of their benzos.

It’s the memory that refuses to go away.

Fatin has tried everything. She sleeps with the lights on for a while, but she starts to relive it in her dreams instead, and Fatin determines that that’s worse. Much worse. At least when she’s conscious, she knows Leah’s alive. Fatin is vulnerable in her sleep, but if she can’t pull herself out of it on her own, she can grab her phone and – if she must – reach out to Dot. Or Leah, occasionally.

They haven’t really spoken about it, even after two years. It’s one of those things they still kind of dance around. Fatin’s afraid to bring it up, lest it trigger something for Leah, and Fatin figures if Leah wanted to talk about it with her that she would, and she hasn’t tried.

The night before Fatin is set to fly back to the Bay – to visit Leah, though that’s not exactly how Fatin framed her visit when she told Leah – Fatin is yanked back into the memory of that night, and she fumbles for her phone. For once, Fatin is happy for the time difference between New York and California, hoping that Leah’s still up.

2:27 a.m. are you up?

Leah Rilke, 2:28 a.m. Yeah

2:30 a.m. i think we need to talk when i get back

It’s not the talk that Leah’s expecting; Fatin figures that out immediately. Leah’s hopeful, and Fatin guesses Leah think they’re going to talk about what happened before they were rescued, or about the obscene amount of text-flirting they’ve been doing. And Leah looks so good, and her eyes are so bright, and Fatin doesn’t want to crush her by bringing up one of the worst things they endured together. Fatin wants Leah’s eyes to stay bright and her smile to stay wide.

But Fatin needs to know.

“Did you try to die because of me?” Fatin blurts.

Leah startles, and then emotions start to flicker across her face. Surprise and confusion and hurt, and then she whispers, “Is that what you’ve thought for two years?”

When Fatin can’t say no, Leah knots their fingers together and leads them to her couch, and they don’t hold anything back, for once. And Fatin sleeps that night without any problems.

Chapter Two – San Diego

[Raf]

He just keeps swinging. Even in the nightmares he has once they’re free of the island, he just keeps swinging. He barely hears Kirin yelling at him to stop. Just brings his fists down into Seth’s face over and over and over. Raf feels his knuckles split, and even that can’t deter him. It feels good, in spite of the pain. He wants to see Seth bleed, wants Seth’s face to swell up until he’s unrecognizable, wants to inflict the same pain onto Seth that Seth inflicted onto their entire group.

But especially onto Raf. Raf sees no point in lying to himself about his motivations. He isn’t beating Seth’s face into a bloody mess to stand up for Josh. Josh has never given much of a shit about Raf. Kirin – who refuses to get Raf’s fucking name right – already defended Josh, anyway. So no, this is entirely personal. Raf wants revenge, and Kirin won’t be able to stop him. Seth humiliated Raf, made him look like a fool, played with Raf’s emotions. Manipulated Raf. Wanted Raf’s help to manipulate the others for him, without Raf realizing that’s what was happening, not until it was already too late. Raf realized too late that he chose the wrong side, that he sided with the wrong person. All because Raf was stupid enough to believe that Seth was his friend, that because they were friends, Seth wouldn’t lie to Raf. Of course he wouldn’t.

But once Raf knows the truth, once they’re stuck out in the middle of the ocean together, seeking help Raf knows they won’t find, Raf seizes his opportunity to get back at Seth, to take out all of the frustrations that have been building for weeks. Once Seth attacks Kirin, Seth is fair game.

Kirin pulls Raf off, eventually. Forces Raf to the other side of the raft. In Raf’s nightmares, sometimes Kirin isn’t even there. Sometimes it’s just him and Seth, and sometimes –

The nightmares don’t really matter. It’s not like Raf wouldn’t remember if he didn’t have the nightmares. Raf sees Josh in passing in the halls at school for senior year, and Josh is unrecognizable, and Raf remembers his bloody knuckles and barely being able to breathe and the boat that supposedly rescued them, the so-called authorities that slapped handcuffs onto Raf’s wrists and told him that he was a murderer, that Seth was dead. That Raf killed him. Raf is relieved first, horrified later. Same thing happens when Raf learns Seth is actually alive. Relieved that he isn’t a murderer, horrified that Seth is alive and on the island with them.

On the first day of senior year, Josh waves, just by raising his hand from across the hall, and Raf raises his hand, too. Maybe it’s not a wave.

Maybe it’s just an acknowledgment of what they survived together.

[Josh]

He comes home different, and his parents assume the island made him into a man. That’s what Josh’s father says. Looks like your vacation turned you into a man.

Josh could tell his parents how they’ve wrecked his life, but there’s no point. Josh returns to San Diego and stares at himself in the mirror and feels like he’s been replaced by someone else. That’s his face in the mirror, sure, but it’s not him. It’s not who he was, the last time he stood in his bathroom. He’d made them all swear not to bring it up, told them he wanted to forget about it, and they all kept their word. So he stares himself in the mirror and he tells himself: I’m not going to remember it.

So he doesn’t. When he does have to think about the island, like on the first day of senior year when he happens to spot Raf from across the hall, he thinks about the one moment he felt almost okay on the island. He thinks about the game of Frisbee they played, as a group. He thinks about his excitement when he caught the Frisbee, such a stupid little thing, but it felt like an accomplishment in the moment. He thinks about Ivan’s persistence, thinks about Ivan throwing the Frisbee at Kirin until Kirin finally caved and joined the game. He thinks about Kirin hauling Raf to his feet, thinks about Raf getting hit in the side of the head with the Frisbee and Kirin’s over the top apology. He thinks about the sand on Scotty’s face and Scotty splashing through the water. He thinks about Henry’s reluctant smile. He thinks about Bo falling to the sand to make a throw, hugging Bo when he got to his feet.

And Josh just doesn’t think about what cut their game short. He doesn’t think about the rest of it. He’ll probably have to, one day, hopefully far into the future. Maybe his parents will eventually figure out that something happened, that something is wrong, and force Josh to actually go to therapy. He knows the other guys are going – either by choice or because their parents have forced it on them – but Josh’s parents think he’s better now. They think Josh is okay, and Josh is determined to be okay.

So he thinks about the game of Frisbee they played on their last day on their island, and he lets that be the takeaway. The camaraderie. Maybe they weren’t all friends, but they felt like they were something in that moment. A group, at least, connected by their circumstances. That’s what Josh chooses to dwell on, so when he sees Raf in the hall on the first day, he waves. Maybe even smiles a little.

Raf waves back, and they go their separate ways, and Josh tries to move forward with his life.

Chapter Three – Fort Travis

[Dot]

Dot’s very good at not letting shit get to her. Or maybe more accurately, she’s very good at storing all those inconvenient feelings away for later. Dot does her suggested stint in therapy, at Shelby’s urging, mainly. Fatin admits she does two weeks and drops. Leah never gets out, by choice. Shelby tells Dot that Toni drops after a month, Martha stays in, Rachel and Nora stay in. Dot stays as long as the social worker told her she should stay, and then she’s out, too.

Dot’s able to let most of it go, by the time their two year anniversary of being free from all that island bullshit rolls around. Aw, you made real progress in therapy is how Fatin puts it when Dot tells her that the island doesn’t get under her skin, that remembering the island isn’t an unbearably painful experience for her.

Except for one piece. Only days before they were rescued – for real – when everything was falling apart, when Dot couldn’t hold fourteen people together, because eight was hard enough the first time around. How was she supposed to hold the six other girls together, plus herself, plus seven strangers who were hiding something, and cope with the knowledge that Leah was right, and Nora was spying on them? How was she supposed to do it?

Obviously she couldn’t.

Rachel found her in the woods, losing her shit. Dot isn’t really the losing her shit type. Dot isn’t used to breaking under pressure. Especially not around another person, and her instincts told her to make Rachel go. So it’s the one thing Dot can’t shake, even after her suggested time in therapy, even after she lets go of most of the rest. She can’t shake Rachel’s refusal to leave her by herself in her moment of grief. She told Rachel to go, and she expected Rachel to listen to her.

Dot talked about it, once, and not with her therapist but with Shelby, after their last day of high school when Shelby says they should get ice cream or something, and Dot tags along. Dot has never had many friends, and Shelby dropped all of her old ones when they got back, so Dot and Shelby stick together.

“I just don’t get why she wouldn’t go.”

“I don’t think any of us would’ve walked away, Dottie,” Shelby says softly, “but especially Rachel, after what she went through on our island. How could she?” Shelby pauses with her spoon sticking out of her mouth, eyes scrutinizing Dot before she continues, “You could talk to Rachel about it. Maybe it’d give you some peace.”

Dot has as much peace as she thinks she’s gonna find, but she makes a mental note to call Rachel later.

[Shelby]

Returning home feels impossible, but Shelby does it. She rejected the offer Toni made while they’re being rescued from the island for real. Toni just said it out of nowhere while everyone else was still celebrating, just told Shelby that she could come live with her and Martha in Minnesota, and they would find a way to make it work out, and Martha’s mom wouldn’t have a problem with it. Shelby told Toni in the moment that she would have to think about it for a while; she was a little preoccupied by Fatin finally making a move, and Kirin’s strange howling at the sky.

Shelby considers the offer, seriously, when she has the time. But Shelby says no. She flies back to Texas alongside Dottie, and she returns to her family even though her hair hasn’t grown in as much as it needs to, but she easily tells them that Gretchen did it, that it was all Gretchen. Shelby figures out very quickly that her family knows nothing about what happened out there. At least not yet. Surely it’ll all start to come out in the future, but that’s something to worry about later.

For now, Shelby tries to be the person her family knows, but more than ever, Shelby feels like she’s an actor, playing the part of the perfect daughter. Readjusting to her life is hard, even with the help of her therapist. The island would be a lot to unpack on its own, without all the stuff Shelby carried onto the island from before. And more often than not, Shelby finds her mind drifting back to one moment on the island – not even their rescue, and Toni springing that offer on her.

It’s not the memory Shelby would expect it to be. It’s not when she came out to the group, awkwardly, shortly after they moved inland. Even though that’s quite a memory, with Fatin’s wolf-whistling and Dottie not hiding how proud she was. That’s not what decides to resurface, over and over. What resurfaces is the first time Shelby kissed Toni in front of the entire group, without Shelby even thinking about it.

Shelby barely realized she’d done it, at first. She froze, instinctively, upon pulling back, and Toni noticed, eyebrows pulling together as Shelby looked around at the rest of the girls. But none of them reacted.

Toni touched her palm to Shelby’s cheek, drawing Shelby’s eyes back to her, quietly asked, “You okay?” and after a moment, Shelby realized her answer was yes. More than okay, actually, as the relief set in, as no one made a big deal about it.

So when Shelby goes home, that’s what she holds onto.

Chapter Four – Seattle

[Ivan]

He still carries it with him, even now. The first day back at school. There are whispers – more about Kirin than Ivan, but eyes linger on Ivan more than usual, too. He touches his fingers to it, in his pocket, neatly folded. The dollar. His phone buzzes in his other pocket, and Ivan pulls it free just as he spots Luc, ducking into a classroom across the hall. It stings, but Ivan redirects his attention to his phone. Henry. Asking how it feels to be back at school. Saying it’s strange for him, understandably.

Ivan walks into homeroom, and his expression sours as his eyes land on the blonde douchebag seated at the back of the class. As their eyes lock, Kirin’s lips press into a thin almost-smile, and Ivan nods curtly and chooses to sit in the front row. He answers Henry’s text – yeah it’s weird af – and fidgets with the dollar in his pocket. The dollar with Luc’s handwriting on it.

The memory resurfaces, not for the first time, of sitting in Henry’s room in the bunker. Henry felt like the only person Ivan could seek out, and Ivan had a vague feeling that Henry would understand, if Ivan made the effort to speak with him.

Order by pairs and title by location: Leah/Fatin – Berkeley, Raf/Josh – San Diego, Dot/Shelby – Fort Travis

Toni

Reuniting with Martha in the bunker after thinking she was dead

Martha

An Uno tournament held in the bunker, with all girls and boys, as Martha chooses to dwell on the good instead of the bad

Rachel

Finding out from Leah that Nora is alive and realizing her second chance

Nora

Swimming out to save Rachel just for Gretchen to pull her from the experiment

Seth

Having handcuffs slapped onto him after Kirin kicks his ass right before rescue

Henry

Almost being drowned by Seth

Ivan

Explaining the dollar with be tender on it that he carries to Henry in the bunker and admitting he misses his boyfriend

Kirin

Finding out what happened to Josh and forging a friendship with a boy he never expected to

Scotty

Nearly slipping off a cliff and being saved by Bo

Nearly being killed by the jaguar

Leatin

Dot & Rachel

Rachel & Nora

Kirin & Josh

Shoni

Martha & Toni

Bo & Scotty

Ivan & Henry

This is when I was trying so hard to find a way to incorporate the boys after season 2 came out, and I was just failing over and over lol. It led to at least a few incomplete projects, as we've been seeing. I included my notes at the end here as well as the friendships/relationships I expected to emphasize. I didn't really know the remaining order, hence why that's not listed. But hey, at least I got Leatin's piece finished lol.

#my fic #the wilds #leah rilke #fatin jadmani #leatin #and actually everyone else too

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