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darkwing-katy · 4 months ago

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Lost in the Jungle - Oneshot

Pairing: Henry Gale/Ben Linus x Reader (non-romantic)

Word Count: 2,523

Summary: You’re lost in the massive jungle of the Island at night when you run into a stranger who may or may not want to kill you.

Just a short oneshot that wouldn’t get out of my head. I figured I’d post it today, 8/15, because, well, that’s a fun little LOST date right there. It’s been forever since I posted a reader insert. Good golly. Enjoy!

Tagging: @primosflowergarden

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You mutter a curse to yourself as you stumble over the fourth tree root of the night. “This was a dumb idea.”

The trees tower above you, and though your eyes have long since adjusted, you can’t see beyond the trees that don’t immediately surround you. A breeze rustles the enormous leaves surrounding you and you freeze, unsure whether you actually heard something or imagined it. Your strained ears pick up no strange sounds, and, to be fair, there’s no way in hell you’re gonna see something that isn’t immediately in front of you, so you decide to continue in your attempt to find the camp.

“Just had to go on an adventure, didn’t you, (Y/N)?” you whisper as you reach a small clearing. It’s maybe fifteen, twenty feet across, but it’s a straight stretch where you’re probably not gonna be accosted by roots. That’s a bit of a relief, even if you have no frickin’ clue where you’re supposed to be going anymore. “Multiple people offered to go with you but noooooooo. ‘I can do it by myself’, you told them. Idiot. Moron. Imbecile. The absolute most stupid-ass decision you’ve ever made in your life, and that includes getting on the plane in the first place.”

You pause a step into the clearing in an attempt to reorient yourself. Idiot, you think. You’re just so tired of walking. You want to get home, you want to sit by the fire and be surrounded by people again. You want food that isn’t fruit. You want—

Your skin prickles uncomfortably despite the humidity. The sensation doesn’t pass, and you begin to wonder if there’s a wild animal nearby, watching you. What the hell are you supposed to do if another polar bear or boar charges at you? You don’t have a gun—and you wouldn’t know how to shoot it if you did. All you have is your backpack with two water bottles and a couple of bruised mangoes and bananas. Oh, and an extra pair of clothes, just because you never knew what was gonna happen on this godforsaken island. You suppose that if push came to shove, you could try to swing your backpack like a sling, but it’s liable to hurt you more than any animal.

Oh, shit, what if it’s the Monster? you wonder, and wish you hadn’t even thought of that because now every sound is the Monster—every breath of wind, every creak of the tree trunks, every crunch of footsteps—wait.

You stare ahead of you. You swear you heard something this time.

You wait, inhaling through your nose and breathing out your mouth as quietly as possible, even as your heart thuds in your ears. The longer you wait, the more you begin to wonder if you’ve finally gone crazy, if the steady diet of fresh fruits and fish mixed with constant fear of, well, everything, has made you hallucinate. You wouldn’t be the first of the survivors to do so. Everyone had seen Charlie’s madness with baby Aaron, and you’d heard rumors of others seeing things that weren’t there. No matter where people were, one thing held true, always: people loved to gossip.

You take in another breath, hold it for a moment, exhale it out. Probably nothing, you think, and you’ve almost convinced yourself of that. ‘Almost’, because right as you’re about to start walking again, a man stumbles out of the trees.

You’ve never seen this man before, and that detail alone makes your stomach twist in apprehension. He’s wearing a torn shirt that exposes his right shoulder, where a white patch of gauze glows in what little light there is. There’s a dark splotch on the gauze that appears to be spreading, though not fast. He’s breathing fast, like he’s running from something. He doesn’t even notice you until he’s halfway through the little clearing, and then he freezes. His head tilts in your direction, and though you can’t see the color of his eyes, you know that he’s fixed them on you. You can feel them.

“Are you okay?” you ask without really meaning to, your eyes bouncing between the gauze and his face, which remains carefully blank.

The man says nothing.

You lift your arm to point at his shoulder. “You look like you’re hurt. Do you need help or something?”

Still nothing, and the silence is filled with something ominous. You can taste it in the air between you.

He’s still staring at you, but he straightens, like he’s making himself taller, more intimidating. You catch a glint of something in his left hand. When you realize it’s a gun, you yourself become very, very still.

You don’t recognize him, and he has a gun.

Jack had mentioned something about a prisoner in the hatch, someone that they were sure must be one of the Others. He’d given you all very little information about this supposed captive, but even without any identifying traits, you know this must be him. This is the man from the hatch, the Other.

Why is he out?

More importantly, how did he get a gun?

He hasn’t looked away from you since the moment he saw you, his eyes tracking every movement you make. He is still panting, but he looks like he’s working hard to steady his breathing, like he doesn’t want you to think he’s weak.

Your eyes adjust to him in the darkness, and you can see just how beaten up this man is. He has little cuts all over his face—his lips, his nose, his forehead. He might have a dark eye, but you can’t tell in this lighting.

He must be so scared, you think, then chastise yourself. He must be scared? Hell, I’m scared! But as scared as you are, as afraid as you are of the gun in his hand, you find yourself feeling some sympathy for the poor man. Sure, the Others had attacked you. Sure, the Others had stolen Claire and killed Scott. Sure, they were a constant threat that hung over the entire group, but how would you feel if you were in his place? How would you feel if you’d finally escaped from the people you saw as villains and then you had the misfortune to run into one in your escape?

Slowly, as if trying to show the man that you weren’t about to do anything to hurt him, you take your backpack off of your shoulders. “Hey. You’re the guy from the hatch, right? The one Jack told us about?”

He neither nods nor shakes his head. Just stares, his eyes digging deep into you.

“I have water in my bag. Do you want it?”

He blinks, but that’s it. You take that to mean yes, so you drop the bag to the ground. You keep your chin pointed at him as you unzip it and rummage around for the full water bottle. “I don’t have any weapons in here, in case you’re afraid of that,” you say in a soft voice. “Just food, water, and extra clothes.”

Silence. But he hasn’t lifted the gun to you, which has to count for something, right? You feel the plastic of the large water bottle and lift it up, holding it out to the man. He looks at it, finally taking his eyes off of you, but he doesn’t make any move to accept it.

Maybe he’s scared of you, you think to yourself. Maybe he thinks you’re about to attack him.

With what? you counter mentally. What am I gonna do? Throw mangoes at him? That’d be a waste of good mangoes!

You feel around until you touch the cool skin of a banana. Slowly, you lift that out as well. It’s a little bruised from the bottles, but it’s still edible. You leave the backpack opened on the ground as you get back to your feet, palms out to show him that you have nothing in hand. He watches as you pick up the water bottle and the banana, watches as you inch forward until you’re halfway between him and your bag. You set the items down on the ground and back away equally as cautiously. “In case you’re hungry,” you say.

“Why?” he asks, and there’s a sharp edge to his voice. In that single word, he’s cut into you, but hey! at least he hasn’t shot you.

You shrug as you feel for your backpack with your heel. “Because you look like you need it,” you reply.

His gaze is still suspicious, but he puts the gun in his waistband as he steps forward and bends down to pick up the water and the banana. He twists the cap off and lifts it to his lips. As he guzzles the water, he keeps those eyes locked on you, and you know that if you do anything he doesn’t like, he’ll have no hesitation in shooting you.

He’s chugged half of the water when he puts the lid back on. He doesn’t peel the banana but puts it in the pocket of his cargo shorts. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” he commands, and you obey.

Oh, shit, is he gonna capture me now? That would be just my luck, you think with some bitterness.

The man takes a wary step towards you, then another, and another. It’s like he’s checking to make sure you’ll listen to him. You keep your hands out, palms open, fingers splayed wide like a high-five. He reaches you, and you hold your breath, certain that he’s going to try and knock you out or something, and you notice that his shirt is an orangish color because you’re so close to him, but then he’s passed you by. His head turns as he walks so that he’s keeping you in his line of sight. When he reaches the opposite side of the clearing, the direction you’d just came from, he pauses. He turns his entire body towards you, and you tense.

This is the moment where he shoots me, you suddenly realize in despair. This is it. This is how I die. Showing kindness to one of the Others.

Man, this is such a stupid way to go.

You squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the gunshot. There’s no use in running—if he’s one of them, then he probably knows how to chase you, how to kill you, how to hide the body so no one will ever know. You’ll just have disappeared, another victim of the wild jungle.

“Why?” you hear.

You open one eye, then the other. The man is looking at you, his head once more tilted at that curious angle like he’s not yet decided what to do about you.

“Uhm,” you say, confused. “Why what?”

“Why are you helping me?”

“Uhhhh. Because you’re hurt? And because…” your eyes flick to the gauze, now shadowed but still visible on his shoulder. “Because I’d want someone else to do the same for me if the situation was reversed.”

“Hmm,” is all he says, but he’s still looking at you. You feel the weight of his gaze, some strange unspoken bond forming between you two. “I suppose that’s as good a reason as any.”

He turns away from you, his hand never once reaching for the gun at his waistband. You’re still waiting with bated breath, unsure if he might abruptly change his mind, but he’s almost vanished into the darkness by now.

“Wait!” you call.

You see his dark form stop, his shoulders tensing, but he doesn’t look back at you.

“I hope you find your people.”

His shoulders relax.

“Thank you,” you hear him say. His voice is less strong now, but then again, he’s not facing you and he’s a few feet away. He’s not speaking loudly, either.

And then he’s gone, a ghost that was never there. The only proof you have of his existence are your memories and the fact that your backpack weighs less than it had before. You exhale a sigh of relief—you’re not dead. It’s possible this is a cruel trick, but you’re going to choose to believe otherwise. You can’t stand here all night worrying that he’s gonna suddenly pop out and shoot you; you need to get back to the camp. Back to your people.

You turn, though your ears are straining to hear anything that might indicate the man’s return. You pull your bag back up and cross to the opposite side of the clearing, the direction he’d come from.

At least now you have a good idea of where you need to go to get back home.

It’s about an hour later when you run into John Locke and Mr. Eko. John is hobbling along, trying his best to keep up with the other man, but it’s clearly difficult for him, from the way you see the sweat trickling down his face in their torchlight. “(Y/N)!” he exclaims.

“Hey, John. Mr. Eko.” You give them a nod in greeting. “Nice night for a trek through the jungle.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Henry anywhere recently, have you?”

“Who’s Henry?” you ask, even as you understand that this must be the name of the man you’d encountered.

“He’s, uh, our man in the hatch.”

“The one Jack told us about the other day?”

“Yeah. He, uh, he escaped about an hour ago. I don’t suppose you’ve seen him, have you?”

“John, we do not have time for this,” Mr. Eko warns, his voice deep and rumbling. He steps towards you with purpose and gives you a nod as he passes by.

You look back at John and shake your head. “Nope. Sorry. I’ve been lost in the jungle for the last few hours and I’m just now finding my way back. Haven’t seen anyone aside from you two.”

You’re not sure why you’re lying, but it’s too late now to do otherwise. You’ve committed to this. As John sighs in dejection, you think back to the man—Henry—and his shoulder, the cuts and bruises all over him. You didn’t think he deserved to be beaten up or even killed. You’d been bothered enough when you’d learned that Charlie had killed one of them, even if Ethan had been a horrible, horrible man.

John staggers past you, following Mr. Eko. “Sorry,” you say to him.

He holds up a hand. “It’s fine, (Y/N). It was a long shot anyway.”

“Good luck looking for him.”

“Thanks.”

And then they, too, are gone into the jungle. You can recognize where you are now, even though it’s still dark. You’re close to the hatch, which means all you have to do is turn a little bit and keep walking and then you’ll be back at camp.

You gnaw on your lips as you walk. I really hope I don’t regret this, you think.

You’re surprised to find that you don’t, even when you learn the next morning about Libby and Ana Lucia’s deaths.

Henry might be a killer, but he didn’t kill you, and that’s gotta mean something, right?

#Ben Linus x reader #Benjamin Linus x reader #henry gale #lost #lost fanfiction #lost 2004 #lost tv show #Ben Linus #Benjamin Linus #reader insert #kate writes

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