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The first time he noticed her, he wished he hadn’t. She was screaming, the piercing sound audible over all the other noise on the beach. He wanted to storm over to her, shake her violently by the shoulders and tell her to stop, stop yelling, do something. He knew it wouldn’t help. Instead, he took a deep breath, put his head down, and got back to work, pulling people out from under twisted metal, setting up a makeshift place for the injured. After a few minutes, he was distracted enough that he didn’t notice her anymore.
The second time he noticed her, he was frustrated. How annoying that she wanted to join their hike, just to prove a point to her brother. He hoped she wouldn’t slow them down. As it turned out, she was the most useful person there that day. He watched as her brother yelled and bullied her into listening to the transmission. He wanted to shake the brother that day, to tell him to shut up and to talk to her himself. Try a gentler, encouraging approach. It was clear she didn’t want to help because she was convinced she would get it wrong. What had happened to her that she was so sure she would be useless? Then she spoke, and he stopped paying attention to her, only to the words she translated.
He ends up standing beside her the night Boone ‘takes charge’ of the water. Jack gives a speech, mentions some noble idea about ‘if we don’t live together we’re going to die alone’. He thinks he’s the only one rolling his eyes at that, but then he hears her. She mutters under her breath ‘Oh fuck off’ and he has to cover his sudden laugh with a cough. She looks at him sideways and grins a little, and he thinks maybe he’d like to share more jokes in the future, to see her grin again.
He notices her again when she has an asthma attack. His first instinct is to be annoyed that among everything, this was now the problem they had to deal with. He squashes the instinct; it isn’t fair, she cant help it, and he knows it. He isn’t generally this irritable, although he supposes there is nothing general about their current situation. He watches her struggle, and sees the cocky asshole hoarding medication just for the attention, and his irritability turns into familiar cold calculation. Someone should do something about this man. So, he does.
He doesn’t talk to her again until after he returns from Rousseau. He’d spent days isolated and confused, remembering Nadia, remembering who he was and where he came from. He comes back to the camp more determined than before to get off the damn island, to get to Los Angeles and finally back to Nadia. To beg her for forgiveness, and perhaps, if he is lucky, to start again.
As soon as he inspects the maps and sees the french scribbles covering them, he looks for her, sees her sunbathing on the beach. He’s almost at her side before he notices what she is wearing. Or rather, not wearing. She sits up as he kneels in front of her and asks for her help. As she sits, she pulls a pink piece of fabric over herself, covering her body just enough. She is obviously beautiful, all long limbs and tan skin, but he will not do anything other than ask for her translation help. He knows that although she is young, she has somehow already seen too much, taken a beating from life. He wont be another nuisance going after her body, another person showing her that all she has to offer is her looks. So, he is careful to keep his eyes on her face, watching her expression and not giving in to the desire to let his gaze wander down.
Perhaps it’s because he is watching her face so closely that he notices when her expression switches from flirtatious and open to guarded and defensive. It’s like watching a door slam shut at the thought of her brother manipulating her life. He pushes anyway, trying the gentler approach, and somehow convinces her.
He finds that in a month which should be the most shocking and unsettling of his life, she is the thing that surprises him the most. She is witty and funny and smart, and she makes him laugh in a way he thought he had forgotten. He knows she is still guarded, still keeping things from him, as he knows he is from her. Occasionally he will catch her looking at him when she thinks he’s distracted, and he feels proud, somehow, that he is the one who has her attention. He knows that eventually he will disappoint her, when she learns who he is and what he has done. But for now, he basks in her attention.
They spend their days working on the camp, collecting water and food, building shelters, sometimes looking over the useless maps. At night, they find each other by the fire, and he feels she is letting him in. He can easily reach over and hold her hand, touch her hair, hug her. He thinks he has never seen anything as mesmerizing as the firelight dancing in her eyes when she smiles at him. He thinks how nice it is to get to know someone, to get close without dark memories and guilt hanging over him. He thinks maybe she feels the same.
He notices how quickly she shuts off and reverts to nasty comments when her brother talks to her, and he doesn’t miss the angry (jealous?) looks thrown at him by Boone. After some gentle prodding, she opens up about their family. Losing her mother, gaining a step mother, gaining a brother, losing her father, losing everything else. She tells him about Sabrina tearing her down, telling her over and over how useless she was, and about how Boone always meant well, but couldn’t help reinforcing his mother’s words. About finding a passion in dance, and then teaching, and then losing those too. She cries that night, and he wipes the tears from her face, and takes a new step of kissing her forehead. She sighs, and doesn’t pull away. He allows himself a rare moment of hope, thinking that maybe, maybe, this could be something. Maybe what’s waiting for him is not guilt and desperate repentance, but a chance for something new and bright and beautiful.
His own guard is down the night they are lightheartedly talking about past relationships (or ‘flings’, as she calls them). She is vulnerable when she talks about an ex who cheated on her, so he wants to be too. He says that he spent 8 years trying to track down his childhood friend, trying to be a good enough person for her when he finds her. She’s quiet for a moment before she says that chasing a woman around the world for a decade sounds nice in a movie, but maybe a bit unhealthy in reality. She means it jokingly, but it makes him think, for the first time, maybe the way he has been chasing his future is not actually what he needs at all.
He sees her brother by the fire, throwing more wood onto the flame. He has tried to ignore the looks Boone sends his way, tried to stay distant and focus only on her. But that afternoon she had spoken of Saturday nights and rope and he was feeling cocky, and not overly charitable towards the boy who had loved her into thinking she was useless. He talked under the guise of a ‘curtesy’, but they both knew he was gloating. He should have known better, she was going to his head, and of course the boy knew exactly how to get under his skin. Exactly what to say to make him second guess every smile, every touch. As he walks away to his shelter, he thinks of course she is only using him. He feels bitter. He is broken and dark, and should not expect her to save him.
He ends it quickly, hoping he can be gentle, take this last chance to remind her that she is more than capable on her own. Of course she sees through him immediately, and when did she start to understand him so well?
He goes to the water, sits and looks at the horizon. She was a nice distraction, a friend to pass the time with. He knows now that rescue and Nadia and forgiveness must be his focus again. Nadia. He finds he can’t quite bring her face to mind, that his head is full of blonde hair and French songs and firelight in laughing eyes. He knows in time he will forget, or at least put the memories away, where he doesn’t have to find them. He sighs and stands up, preparing for another evening, this one spent alone and silent.
Thank god she is smarter than him. She finds him late that night, and he watches as she wraps her courage around herself, before leaning into him. She kisses him and he feels like, for the first time in years, he can breathe. He asks her why, if only to have something to say (he doesn’t care why, not really, not when she’s looking at him like that). She somehow knows exactly what he needs to hear. Her words wash over him, and he feels clean.
“Everyone gets a new life on this island. I’d like to start now.”