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On the evening of Day 30 on the island, something unimaginable happens. Something unexpected, something that Fatin did not see coming at all: for a little while, they actually have fun.
Which, considering that they’ve been stuck in hell for a month, and lost Nora just a week ago, is kind of a big deal.
It’s their first night in the new camp, and it feels, a bit absurdly, like an ordinary housewarming party: all of them sit around the campfire, and share snacks - nothing fancy, just tepid water and some very mushy berries, but still - and laugh as Martha puts on a show, cuddling the plastic torso that is Marcus and coming up with grand declarations of love. Toni and Shelby are curled together on their new bed, unable to stop touching each other like the honeymooners they are, which is equal parts irritating and cute. For once unconcerned with conserving resources, Dot keeps throwing more kindling into the fire, letting it burn bright and hot, and the flames cast a comforting, cozy orange glow on their new home. Even Rachel is smiling, which is a welcome surprise after everything she’s been through. If someone were to ask Fatin, she’d go as far as to admit that she’s enjoying herself, and here’s the crazy thing: it wouldn’t be a total lie.
Until Dot straightens up. “Wait, guys. Where the fuck is Leah?”
“She said she was going to the bathroom, Dottie,” Shelby replies, distracted, mindlessly playing with Toni’s hair.
“Yeah, I know, but that was, like, thirty minutes ago.”
Dot’s words kill the cheerful mood, like one of those sudden tall waves that drown the entire beach in a handful of seconds, leaving behind only cold wet sand. Fatin’s stomach twists on itself, the sensation sickening - it’s guilt, she knows, even as she stubbornly ignores it. She used to never let Leah out of her sight. In fact, she spent the past week or so watching Leah like a hawk, desperate to prevent another incident of the Leah running into the ocean to drown herself variety. But after what Leah did today… Well, let’s just say Fatin needs a break. All afternoon she replayed their fight on the beach, in her head - the way Leah said Fatin’s name, in that small, pleading voice, when Fatin grabbed her wrist to drag her away, the stutter in her breath when Fatin pinned her hard against the cliff wall, the raw anguish in her eyes - but she can’t bring herself to regret any of it, not when Rachel’s screams still echo in her ears. No more coddling Leah. Fatin hopes this time she was stern enough - mean enough, a little voice corrects, uncompromising, inside her brain - to shock her out of her fucking obsession for good.
“I’m sure she’s alright,” Fatin says. She aims for indifference, and hears concern in her voice anyway, and so she adds, dismissively: “Probably just hiding somewhere after the stunt she pulled earlier.”
But Toni frowns, teeth worrying her lower lip. “Yeah, I don’t know, Fatin. She’s never hid from us before, and she’s done plenty of dumb shit.”
“No, I agree, this isn’t normal. She’s been gone way too long, she could be lost, or hurt. Especially since she’s not at her most” -- Dot pauses, searching for the right word -- “stable,” she settles on.
“Understatement of the fucking century,” Fatin grumbles. And yet, she’s the first one to get up, brushing dirt from her knees. “Fine, fine. Let’s go look for her.”
“I’ll stay.” They all swivel towards Rachel, whose gaze remains fixed on the fire. “If that’s cool.”
“Yeah, of course,” Shelby replies, softly.
“I’ll keep you company,” Martha offers. “In case she comes back before you guys find her.”
The rest of them all start walking away from camp, each in a different direction, to cover as much ground as possible.
“Leah!” Fatin calls out, as she trudges through the underbrush. Her stomach aches, laden with guilt still, and uncontrollable, debilitating fear creeps up at the back of her throat. She quells it all with anger, deliberately, thinking of Rachel sobbing on the beach.
The woods at night are unfamiliar, eerily quiet, and, if Fatin’s honest with herself, straight-up creepy. Who knows what kind of beasts lurk in the shadows, waiting to take a bite out of her? “Leah,” she tries again, with more trepidation this time, “it’s not funny anymore, where the fuck are you?” Silence. “Leah! I’m serious, nobody’s in the mood for your little games!” More silence. Fatin’s jacket catches on some thorny branches, and she curses as she tears herself free. “I swear to fucking God, if I find you still looking for your goddamn pit, I’m gonna…” she trails off, not actually sure how to finish her threat. What else can she do? She’s tried everything already.
When Leah came to her at first, after the shark attack, with tales of Nora and cameras and a secret pit in the woods, Fatin listened patiently. Though she knew, from the start, this was all probably some sort of fucked-up coping mechanism, she still agreed to go on multiple walkabouts with Leah, traipsing through the woods in search of evidence. When, of course, they didn’t find anything, she switched gears, encouraging Leah to get her mind as far away from her theories as possible by constantly giving her easy tasks to do: collecting wood, boiling water, gathering berries. She thought keeping Leah distracted would stave off her delusions - to no fucking avail.
Honestly, at this point Fatin’s considering digging this imaginary pit herself. And then throwing Leah in it, where she would have no choice but to stay put, safe and unable to hurt herself or anyone else, until she calmed down. Like a child you send to stand in the corner and think about what they’ve done. Yeah, maybe she’s onto something, maybe that’s what they need to do - put Leah in some sort of time-out.
Her eyes catch a flash of familiar navy blue - Leah’s shirt. There, far to her right, sitting against a tree. Fatin exhales in relief. “Yo!” she shouts, exasperated, as she strides towards Leah. “I’m sure you’re mad at me or whatever, but can you fucking answer when I call you?”
She gets a better look at her, and stops in her tracks. Something’s wrong. Leah’s eyes are glassy, eyelids drooping, her mouth half-opened. She’s not moving, not reacting at all. Fatin’s heartbeat fastens. “Leah?” she says, but this time her voice cracks, the fear unmistakable. She rushes until she’s close enough to spot the pill bottle in Leah’s hand. And then her entire body turns cold.
“No. No, no, no.” She drops to her knees, pries open the bottle - empty. It’s the benzos, she took all the benzos, she – fuck.
“Dorothy!” Fatin yells, her voice piercing the quiet. “Dot! Anyone! Help!”
She presses her fingers to Leah’s throat, finds a pulse. Is her heart beating too slow? Too fast? Fatin can’t tell, brain hazy from sheer terror. “Leah, what did you do?” Leah doesn’t answer, doesn’t move. Fatin shakes her by the shoulders, desperate, tears welling up in her eyes. Still no reaction. She hears footsteps, and her name.
“Over here! Please!”
Shelby emerges into the clearing, breathless. “What’s going on? What’s-”
“The pills, she took all the pills, I think she… she tried to…” Fatin’s voice grows hoarse, wet, and she clamps her jaw shut. She looks up at Shelby, but Shelby isn’t looking at her - her eyes are on Leah, and she’s frozen in place. Even in the dim moonlight, her skin seems paler than usual. “Oh, Lord,” she says, one hand reaching to touch her cross, and Fatin wants to snap at her that this isn’t the time for prayer, but she thinks if she opens her mouth she’ll start crying, and she can’t, she won’t, not when Leah needs her.
Thankfully Dot and Toni arrive just a few seconds later. While Toni joins Shelby, who’s standing still as a statue, and places a gentle, worried hand at the small of her back, Dot crouches down in front of Leah, next to Fatin. With characteristic efficiency, she checks her pulse, like Fatin did, and holds the back of her hand in front of Leah’s opened mouth. “She’s breathing, heartbeat’s regular, she’s alive,” she rattles off, more to herself than to anyone else, but it’s enough to finally relieve some of Fatin’s anxiety.
“What do we do?” she asks Dot. Her voice is barely louder than a murmur. Her mind flashes to the beach a week ago, and conjures up the memory of Rachel lying on her back, screaming in pain, everyone reeling from Nora’s abrupt disappearance. Fatin feels just as nauseous, just as powerless now as she did then, and it’s too much, it’s all too much, they can’t lose Leah too, she can’t lose Leah…
Dot pats Leah’s cheek, twice, not too hard. “Hey, Leah, can you hear me?” She pulls one of her eyelids open. Leah’s gaze stays horribly vacant, her face expressionless.
“Fuck, how many did she take?” Toni says. She’s still rubbing Shelby’s back, standing a few feet away from them. Shelby hasn’t moved ; her grip is so tight around the cross at her neck that her knuckles have turned bone-white.
“She finished the bottle,” Fatin lets out.
“We had, like, five or six pills left.”
Toni shakes her head. “That’s not enough to OD. Right?”
“I don’t know.” Dot swallows. “Probably not? I don’t…” Her jaw clenches. “Fuck it.” And, without any warning, she slaps Leah across the face, hard enough that Leah’s head reels back, thumping against tree bark - hard enough that red spreads instantly on her skin.
Leah blinks. And raises a trembling hand to her face.
“Jesus,” Toni mumbles.
Fatin takes Leah’s hand in hers. Her palm feels clammy and cold. “Can you hear us?”
Leah brushes her fingertips against the reddened cheek, and nods, slowly, and they all breathe out, in concert, even Shelby. Leah looks haggard, confused, barely there - but she is responding, at last, and that’s a relief.
“Shelby,” Dot says, without taking her eyes off Leah, “I need you to go back to camp and stay with Rachel. Send Martha to us with water.”
“What?” Toni protests, eyebrows rising. “Why can’t she -”
But Shelby puts a hand up, and Toni falls silent. “Thanks, Dottie,” she croaks out. She squeezes Toni’s shoulder, wordlessly, and steals one last glance at Leah, before hurrying back towards their camp.
Dot moves an arm around Leah’s shoulders. “Both of you, help me get her on her knees, away from the tree.”
“What was that about?” Toni asks, even as she complies. “With Shelby?”
“Not my place to say,” Dot replies, succinctly. If Fatin’s mind wasn’t entirely blank, she’d wonder, too, what the deal is with Shelby, who’s usually pretty reliable in a crisis. Instead, she helps drag Leah towards the middle of the clearing, fighting nausea. Leah might be alive, and awake, but she doesn’t act like it, and her body is heavy and cumbersome - like a corpse. Fatin has to stop herself from remembering Jeannette, teeth gnashing together.
“What now?” she asks, glancing at Dot.
But it’s Toni who answers her question, matter-of-factly. “Gotta make her puke.”
“Get as much of that shit out of her system,” Dot adds, nodding in agreement.
Leah still hasn’t said a single word. Fatin’s chest feels like a building that caved in on itself - ruined, empty, at risk of complete collapse. “But I thought,” she argues, “I thought you weren’t supposed to make someone throw up if they eat poison or whatever? Doesn’t the same rule apply to meds? What if”-- her mouth grows dry, and she has to pause, and swallow -- “what if it hurts her? Makes it worse?”
“It won’t.” Toni attempts a smile, though it’s closer to a grimace. “Nothing’s gonna happen to her, except she’s gonna have a pretty shitty next few days.”
“Yeah, sorry, but how the fuck can you know that for sure?”
Toni looks Fatin straight in the eye, unbothered by her acerbic tone. “Not my first time handling someone who popped too many pills. Trust me.”
A silence. Fatin looks away first. Dot sighs. “Okay, let’s get this over with. One of us needs to -”
“I’ll do it,” Toni interrupts. “Seriously. Done it before.”
“Okay, cool. Then I’ll hold her in place, and Fatin… you try and make her comfortable, okay?”
“Hmm.”
They get ready. Dot positions Leah on her hands and knees, both arms around her waist, supporting her weight. Toni grips Leah’s jaw, and sticks two fingers inside her open mouth, prodding until Leah gags, and Fatin - Fatin watches, one hand keeping Leah’s hair out of the way, gathered at the nape of her neck, the other rubbing between her shoulder blades. There are silent tears running down Leah’s cheeks, but she doesn’t say a word, doesn’t make a sound, apart from the retching - and it’s a disturbing sight, an upsetting sight, and Fatin is hit with the urge to take Leah in her arms, to kiss her sweaty forehead and wipe the tears away and tell her she’s so fucking sorry.
She doesn’t do any of these things. Instead, she waits until Leah stops puking and looks at Toni, asking a silent question, but Toni shakes her head. “Again.”
They make her vomit three more times, until all that’s coming out of her is clear, bilious liquid. Leah cries through the whole thing, quietly. At one point, Martha appears, carrying two of their water bottles, and sits besides Fatin as they wait for this ordeal to end.
“You did good, it’s over,” Martha tells Leah, afterward, as they lean her back against the tree, and wipe her face clean, and force her to drink, sip by sip, the two bottles. She rubs the bare skin above Leah’s knee, softly. “You’re gonna be okay.” It’s the same words she said, earlier, when they were sitting around the campfire, laughing about Marcus. It feels to Fatin as if years have passed since then, since she foolishly let herself believe they could have a respite. One good night. A bit of fun, amid all the horrors they’ve suffered. And instead, this happened - something unimaginable indeed.
“You’re gonna be okay,” Martha repeats. Fatin is now pretty damn sure that none of them are going to be okay, and Leah least of all. No, Leah is going to die here, on this island, isn’t she? Clearly, that’s what she wants. Leah’s going to die, and Fatin is going to have to watch. And how the fuck is she supposed to feel about that? Half of Fatin wants to slap Leah just as hard as Dot did, maybe harder, right across her stupid, pretty face, wants to wrest an apology out of her, and a promise that she’ll never ever do anything like that ever again. The other half wants to hold Leah and bury her face in the crook of Leah’s neck, and cry and beg her to stay alive. But Fatin doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t touch Leah at all. Her chest burns, acid coming up her digestive track like the physical manifestation of her conflicted feelings.
When they finally march her back to camp, Leah doesn’t protest. Dot guides her, one hand firm around Leah’s right arm, patient as Leah stumbles like a newborn calf on the uneven forest floor. Martha’s on Leah’s other side, carrying the empty bottles, Toni leads the way, and Fatin brings up the rear. Nobody talks, apart from Dot’s soft hums of encouragement, though Toni keeps sniffling, and impatiently rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. Fatin’s eyes are dry, her jaw clenched so tight it’d make her dentist wince.
They find Shelby huddled up on one of the beds, and Rachel pacing around the fire. Rachel stills when she sees them. “Leah? Fuck, are you okay?”
“She’s fine,” Dot replies, tiredly. Leah keeps her eyes down, staring at the soft dirt instead of any of them, wobbly on her feet, face tear-stained, and very obviously not fine.
Rachel’s gaze flickers from Leah to Dot to Fatin, apprehensive. “Did she really try to…?”
“Looks like it.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Alright, maybe we should give her some space.” Shelby jumps to her feet, and takes Leah by the hand. “Come on, Leah, let’s put you to bed.” She speaks softly, kindly, but guilt is written all over her face, and it echoes Fatin’s own guilt so strongly that she has to look away.
While Shelby leads Leah towards one of the bamboo platforms, Fatin flees towards the bed farthest away from them, without a word, and lets herself fall down on her back, staring at the canopy, at the night sky visible through the thick foliage. She misses the beach, suddenly, violently. The woods don’t feel like home.
“We should keep an eye on her, right?” she hears Toni asks, in a low whisper.
“Yep.” Dot's voice, colored with gritty determination.
“I can take the first watch,” Martha offers, and at this point in the conversation Fatin slaps both hands over her ears, and shuts her eyes tight. She can’t do this. All she wants is to fall asleep, and not think about Leah anymore, or the way she looked when Fatin first saw her - unmoving, hazy-eyed, a shell of a girl. Or the fact that, if Leah had succeeded, Fatin’s last words to her would have been I’ll fucking kill you.
“Hey.” The platform dips under some sudden weight on her right, and Fatin opens her eyes, and uncovers her ears. Dot is sitting beside her on the edge of the bed, forearms resting on her knees. “You good?”
“Uh huh. Peachy.”
Dot sighs. “We’re gonna have to figure out some shit in the morning. Obviously, she can’t be allowed anywhere near the meds, and we should probably not leave her alone again for a while. But we also gotta make sure we keep an eye on Rachel. I’m thinking if we each double our daily chores, we can…”
“Dorothy, no offense, but I’m not really in the mood to discuss scheduling right now.”
“Ah, so you aren’t that peachy.”
“I’m just tired. Need my beauty sleep.”
“C’mon, Fatin.” Dot’s hand comes to rest, gently, on Fatin’s thigh. “You’re the one who found her. That’s gotta be some pretty haunting shit. How are you feeling, really?”
A small laugh escapes from Fatin's lips, surprising even herself. “Didn’t take you for a therapist. You got any good mindfulness exercises for me to do?”
“Fuck off.” Dot punches the side of Fatin’s leg, lightly. “I’m trying here, asshole.”
“I know, I know. I’m fine, I promise. Not gonna snap on you.”
“Okay.”
They stay silent for a couple of minutes. Despite herself, Fatin leans up on her elbows, and peers across the campfire, where Leah is lying on her side, eyes open, staring at nothing. “I don’t get it, you know.”
“Hm?”
“How anyone could do that. Could ever want to end it. It’s so fucking selfish.”
Dot doesn’t answer for a while. “I guess sometimes the alternative feels worse,” she says, eventually, and there’s something in her voice that gives Fatin pause, but Dot’s face is closed off, and Fatin understands that now’s not the time to push, so she simply hums in acknowledgment. At last, Dot rolls her neck, and gets up. “Alright, gonna get some shuteye.” She glances at Fatin. “Hey, I get being mad, but don’t be too harsh on her, okay?”
“I’m not mad at Leah,” Fatin replies, unconvincingly, as Dot walks away. And it’s not the truth - she is, deeply, mad at Leah - but it’s not a lie either.
The truth, of course, is that Fatin is angry at herself. And not just because she failed so badly to protect Leah from her own traitorous mind. No, she’s angry because she knows better. This is what happens when you put so much of your heart into someone else’s hands ; inevitably, they hurt you. Inevitably, you run the risk of losing them.
If only Fatin could stop caring.