[Fic]Seventy one survivors. (And one dog.)

[tempusfrangit]

Title: Seventy one survivors. (And one dog.)
Chapter One: Pilot (Part One)
Rating: 15 (Warning: Violence, dead bodies and deaths.)
Disclaimer: Really not mine. Coraline belongs to Neil Gaiman and Lost to a whole bunch of others. Word Count: 1671Summary: When Oceanic flight 815 crashes, Sawyer somehow finds himself in charge of one smartass twelve year old girl. Or rather one Coraline Jones finds herself in charge of a smartass grown up.
Notes: Don't even ask. I still blame haku for this madness and for getting me into Lost.
From the beginning

Chapter One: Pilot (Part One)

The first thought Coraline had when she started to wake up was that someone ought to stop the lady from screaming quite so loudly. Her head hurt real badly and the lady wasn’t making it any better. The second thought Coraline had was to wish herself back to sleep. She was awake, stuck in a nightmare world of fire and smoke and screaming and noise. It had to be a nightmare, she couldn’t really be awake. Could she?

Coraline sat up, pulling herself up onto her feet slowly as she looked around. There were lots of people running, stumbling and crying for help. Bits of clothes and debris danced across the beach as the engine, the engine from the plane broken and smashed, blew them about. There was a man yelling for his son and another man yelling for help. There was so much noise, so much pain... Coraline pinched her arm and yelped in surprise. That had hurt. That had hurt and she was still awake. It didn’t make sense, nothing made sense.

Coraline looked around watching then screaming as the engine dragged a man into it and exploded, bursting into fire and sending her flying. Coraline felt something sharp, fly past her cutting her cheek as she stumbled to the sand. Feeling the tears well up in her eyes, Coraline held her breath and sucked in trying not to cry as the world around her burst into flames and exploded. Touching her cheek, Coraline winced and put her hands in front of her. Her fingertips were covered in blood and her cheek hurt. Someone ran to her, picking her up and carrying her away from the wreckage. This wasn’t a dream; people didn’t get hurt in dreams.

Coraline watched the chaos numbly, shrieking as the plane wing dropped slowly and then fell suddenly. Everything exploded and Coraline screamed again, stumbling back and away. She sat down, pulling her knees to her chest as she tried to wake up from the nightmare. But she wasn’t waking up. The world got quieter, the sobs though and the screaming got louder as people replaced the noise of the machines. He was quiet though, the man who had got her. He stood, lighting up and wandering back over to the wreckage when things had calmed down. Coraline followed him.

“That’s bad for you,” Coraline said quietly, looking up at the man. He was smoking a cigarette and everyone knew that was bad for you but maybe this man didn’t or maybe he thought it was all a dream too. He inhaled, looked down at her and raised an eyebrow at her. His lips twitched, almost like he was going to laugh at her. She didn’t want him to laugh at her, she wanted him to take her hand and tell her that it was all going to be alright. But that wasn’t him. She didn’t know that then. He simply took the last drag of the cigarette and dropped it to the floor. He was laughing when he walked away, laughing when he watched Coraline squeak and frantically try to put out the cigarette

Fire is bad. Coraline remembered her mum telling her that when she had tried to make her own fire in the back garden. ‘Fire is bad, Coraline Jones. It’s dangerous. You could have hurt yourself; you could have hurt someone else. Don’t do that again young lady.’ That was what her mum had said. It looked like no one had told the others that, that fire was dangerous because they were all stood around determined in building a fire. Not for warmth, she’d asked why they were doing it, but so that their rescuers could see them and save them. Coraline wasn’t sure if anyone was going to come though, she kept away from the fire sitting right at the edge of the group and far away from anyone else.

“Here, it’s food you know to eat and stuff.” Coraline looked up at the voice, taking the offered tray from the big man with kind eyes. He passed her some cutlery and snuck her an extra juice cup before he put his fingers to his lips and smiled at her like he was passing on some big secret. Coraline wondered for one moment if he thought she was five but she took the juice and drank it down quickly anyway. The meal was cold, greasy and gross but she ate it all quietly and silently, watching as a girl painted her nails.

Coraline watched the girl for a while, sipping her other juice cup until a loud noise distracted her. Turning around Coraline looked curiously at the trees as the noises got louder and creepier. The trees moved, rustled then fell down like they were being trampled by something. Coraline dropped her juice cup as something let out a-a howl. There were monsters in the trees. Coraline moved away quickly towards the sea, hiding at the back of the crowds as the monster moved through the trees until it was quiet again.

The grownups whispered, talking about the monster quietly trying not to scare her as she sat down, this time as far away from the trees as she could. Though she thought she wouldn’t be able to, it didn’t take Coraline too long to fall asleep. She didn’t even wake when someone moved her and covered her with a blanket.

Coraline dreamt that night about the plane, about her parents and about one of the air hostesses- Cindy. Cindy had greeted Coraline and her parents on the plane, she’d led Coraline to her seat and brought her a notebook to write and draw in. Cindy had, had a nice smile. Big and bright. Only in this dream the smile melted from her face as she burned, burned bright with her skin crackling and popping. She leaned over Coraline’s seat asking what was wrong whilst her eyes dropped out of her skull and fell into her lap. Coraline had woken up with a gasp and a stifled scream. She’d also woken up back on the beach, in her nightmare.

With the dream still in mind Coraline looked around for Cindy but she hadn’t found her yet, not amongst the survivors anyway. That’s what an older man had called them; she’d had to get him to spell it out for her. He’d looked at her awfully weirdly before telling her slowly. S-u-r-v-i-v-o-r. She’d written it down carefully on some paper she’d found in a backpack. They were survivors and the others, the others were dead. They were careful not to say that around her, especially when she asked if they’d seen her parents and where she’d told them they were sat when asked. They didn’t like to talk to her about the tail section; they didn’t like to talk much to her at all.

Coraline sat on her own, looking at the debris and the dead bodies lying where they had been left or where they’d landed. Coraline kept looking at them. No one was doing anything about them, moving them or burying them or even covering them up. A woman approached one of them, bending down to the corpse. Coraline watched as she touched her feet and began to pull her shoes off her body, she looked real sad but she didn’t stop. Coraline almost jumped out of her skin when a hand dropped onto her shoulder and pulled her away, turning her around and pushing her in the opposite direction of the bodies. Coraline looked over her shoulder, the man from the plane stared at her.

“Go on kid scat,” He said. She didn’t ask him why, she didn’t ask him much of anything though she wanted to. Instead she just walked in the direction he’d pushed her, walking to the other groups of survivors and trying to ignore their stares and attention.

The thing about Coraline was that she didn’t like attention; she had always been the awkward girl in her school, the girl who spent far too much time in her fantasy world rather than reality. And she had always been that way ever since she could remember; a quiet, curious child playing in her own world only coming out of it to ask non-stop questions about things that interested her. People would often forget she was there in the room with them, even at home her parents forgot about her and often Coraline had to make her own way home or make her own food. She was used to people ignoring her; she wasn’t used to being stared at or noticed by people. And they stared at her now, her and the only other kid left. His name was Walt.

She drifted around a group, going to sit on her own in the sand. She pulled the paper out from the backpack she was clinging to and began to draw. She was drawing the monster in the trees. In her mind it had button eyes and claws to push the trees down, it was hungry always hungry for children. It was going to take her and Walt eventually. They were going to take her. Coraline looked up as something wet dropped onto the paper smudging her lines.

Rain. It was raining.

Coraline shrieked, the rain coating the paper and washing away the ink on the page. The monster washed away into nothingness. Coraline pushed the paper away, running for cover and ducking underneath the fallen wing of the plane. Pushing through the adults, a warm arm wrapped around her and pulled Coraline’s slender frame to her side. Coraline blinked looking up at Rose curiously before something else caught her attention. There was a loud crack coming from the jungle. Coraline watched the trees rustle and crunch.

“Don’t worry dear, you’re safe here with us. Nothing will get you,” Rose said reassuringly, looking down at her.

Coraline doubted they were safe. Coraline doubted they were safe at all.

There were sixty nine survivors. (And one dog.)
*