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“So, how’s the arm?”
Ana Lucia’s question was met with an indignant gasp from Shannon and a dejected sigh from Jack, as he finished packing the things he’d used to change the bandages on Shannon’s arm.
“What’s the murderer doing here?!” Shannon asked, full of outrage.
“You don’t look murdered to me,” Ana Lucia retorted without missing a beat.
“Please,” Jack mumbled.
It was unclear if he was begging for civility from them or for patience from God. Either way, he was suddenly in an urge to leave.
“Jack,” Shannon exclaimed. “Are you seriously going to leave me alone with her?!”
He stood in the middle of her tent, and he looked from Shannon to the newcomer.
“I’m unarmed,” Ana Lucia said, raising both hands and sounding a little amused for someone who just recently shot the woman whose tent she was invading.
“Call me if you need anything, okay?” Jack said before exiting the tent.
In the silence that followed, the two women finally had time to really look at each other for the first time since their… complicated first meeting.
“You better be damn good at apologies,” Shannon said, choosing to be the one to break the silence.
“That means ‘I’m sorry’ won’t do?” Ana Lucia asked her.
Shannon couldn’t tell if the brunette’s grimace was intentional or an unfortunate attempt at a smile.
“Not by a mile,” Shannon answered, crossing her arms over her chest and wincing at the strain it put on her still-fresh gunshot wound. “You could’ve killed me,” she added, prepared to bring that up at least a thousand times more in the near future.
However, the look of utter misery that passed by Ana Lucia’s features was so strong that even Shannon, in her quite-warranted anger and despite her possibly questionable skills in empathy, noticed. Not so questionable then, she thought, a little proudly, as she studied Ana Lucia and her apparent guilt.
“I really am sorry, Shannon,” Ana Lucia said. “I obviously didn’t mean it. Shit, I don’t even know you. It was a very intense moment, of a very stressful day, in a long line of horrifying weeks. I just… heard those whispers, and I lost it.”
There was a part of Shannon that only got even angrier at Ana Lucia for making sense, having good reasons, even sparking her curiosity with the mention of the creepy whispers. Plus, there was the fact that even at the worst of times, Shannon could recognize when her name sounded nice from the lips of another woman.
But she had to hold on to her anger. It was all she had at that moment.
“That doesn’t fix my arm, does it?” Shannon said.
Ana Lucia scoffed. Loudly. She had her hands on the front pockets of her jeans, and she turned away from Shannon as if she couldn’t stand to look at her.
“Whatever,” she grumbled, and Shannon took note of how naturally that came to Ana Lucia, grumbling, literally. “I made a mistake. Apologized. You’re alive. I’m done here.”
She seemed to genuinely believe that, and that was only salt in the wound for Shannon. This offense couldn’t be ushered away with a poorly-made apology and a scoff. It demanded far more attention, regret, groveling if necessary, even if she had to pry it from Ana Lucia’s closed fists. She decided to improvise.
“Hey,” she exclaimed just as Ana Lucia was exiting the tent. When the brunette turned around, Shannon narrowed her eyes at her and used the coldest tone she knew she was capable of to say, “Watch your back.”
To her dismay, Ana Lucia’s first reaction seemed to be amusement. And yeah, maybe that was fair, Shannon thought, considering how they met and what little could be inferred from them. However, of course Shannon remembered, from the hurried explanations and excuses that Jack and company told her, Ana Lucia’s state of extreme paranoia. It manifested right on time, as Ana Lucia’s smug expression turned into something sour and uneasy right before she left.
Was it wrong of Shannon to exploit that vulnerability? Possibly. But her arm hurt, she was upset, and how could she be sure they should trust these new people? Didn’t they bring Sawyer half dead, too? She successfully ignored the guilt and tried to relax.
The only problem was that there wasn’t much to do while resting all alone in her tent. Before she drifted off to a restless sleep, Shannon couldn’t help that the main thing on her mind had been Ana Lucia.
The next day, and at the worst possible time, just when it first occurred to Shannon to think of the unfortunate scar that the wound would leave on her arm, she received another unwanted visit from Ana Lucia.
“Here. You should have some fruit,” Ana Lucia said, skipping over any other formal greeting.
Shannon’s first reaction was to laugh. It was just so… absurd. She was on the world’s creepiest island, she chased a kid who may or may not have been a ghost, and she got shot by a woman she had never met before, and now this woman was bringing her fruit to bed? What was one to do if not laugh in that kind of situation?
“Is it poisoned?” Shannon asked her.
“Why would I poison you?” Ana Lucia asked her, with the tone of someone talking about the most irrational thing in the world.
“Oh, I don’t know, Ana Lucía,” Shannon snapped. But she didn’t miss the quick flash of a pleased smirk on Ana Lucia’s lips, as if the only saving grace from this unfortunate situation was that they got to hear their names spoken by each other. “Why would you try to fucking kill me?”
“I didn’t!” Ana Lucia yelled at her, right before groaning, taking a step, closing her eyes, and pinching the bridge of her nose.
She looked like she couldn’t believe that Shannon made her lose her control like that. Good, Shannon thought.
“What part of ‘it was an accident,’ don’t you understand?” Ana Lucia asked her.
“The part where I could be dead right now because of you!”
“Well, you’re not,” Ana Lucia snapped. “So stop the pity party. Seriously, Shannon, have you even left your tent at all today? I shot your arm, not your leg.”
“Excuse me?!” Shannon exclaimed, completely careless of losing her control now because she really felt that affronted by Ana Lucia’s comment. “You are the last person on Earth who should try to tell me what to do! Get out.” When nothing else had worked before, this time Ana Lucia did look a little surprised by Shannon’s order. “I said, get out!” Shannon insisted.
“Fine by me,” Ana Lucia said.
She didn’t leave right away, though. In fact, she took Shannon by surprise by stepping even closer to her. Shannon was slightly embarrassed about it, though a little less than Ana Lucia seemed to be hurt by it, but she flinched a little when Ana Lucia reached out toward her. All she did was leave the little bowl of fruit on her lap. Though she did pick up a piece of mango herself before silently leaving Shannon’s tent.
Too late, Shannon realized that she’d let Ana Lucia kind of have the last word this time. She just felt a little thrown off by the tension that nearly suffocated them in such a brief encounter. It was interesting just how effortlessly they could push each other’s buttons and make each other snap. Shannon didn’t feel discouraged about her anger, she was determined to keep holding on to it. It was warranted. It was fair.
It was, also, a sort of distraction.
That realization made her actually groan out loud in the solitude of her tent.
Wasn’t it easier to be angry at Ana Lucia and her stupid gun than focus on… Well. Literally everything else?
As much as she hated to prove Ana Lucia right, Shannon did start to leave her tent a little more often after her second visit.
It wasn’t without a plan, though.
Just two nights later, their little community got together in an important meeting, requested by Shannon herself, to discuss the permanence of the tail-section survivors in their beach camp. None of them were present in the meeting, for obvious reasons.
“I just think, why should we have to share everything we’ve been working so hard for with them?” Shannon asked, setting off the discussion.
Was it cruel? Yes, she knew it. Was it her best plan to get back at Ana Lucia? Yes.
The arguments sparked right away. Charlie agreed with her. Hurley argued, “Dude, because we’re nice.” Then Charlie agreed with him. She didn’t even have to do all the work. Some people brought up the fact that Sawyer nearly died because they didn’t let them return right away. That got Kate’s interest. The arguments were weak at most, but they were an argumentative group, so the debate extended for an hour at least, even if it got wildly off course at times.
Shannon was just pleased to put the seed of doubt and make it clear that this was discussed. It was considered. It wasn’t completely impossible to think that she could get Ana Lucia kicked out. That was the point she was trying to make.
When the discussion ended, and her side lost, by much, Shannon didn’t even feel that bothered by it. In fact, she felt relieved. She made her point, and she wouldn’t have to deal with the inconvenient guilt of having actually gotten anybody kicked out of the camp. Plus, she got to sneak a look at Ana Lucia´s upset expression on her way to her tent that night. Maybe Shannon would’ve liked to see that expression up close, and hear what Ana Lucia had to say about it all. Either way, she slept soundly that night. Once again not thinking too hard about the fact that one more time, Ana Lucia was the last thing she thought about before falling asleep.
Against Shannon’s expectations, Ana Lucia returned to visit her. This time, what looked like her peace offering was a plate with meat of whatever new animal they had caught recently. Shannon was still trying not to care about that.
“Jack said you haven’t been eating,” Ana Lucía said, once again disregarding the habit of a proper greeting.
“Hello to you too, almost murderer,” Shannon replied. Only after Ana Lucia rolled her eyes at her, she asked, “And Jack sent you, of all people on the island, to bring me food? I would’ve preferred the polar bear.”
“The what?!”
“Forget it,” Shannon replied, taking her turn to roll her eyes, and extending a hand to take the plate of food from Ana Lucia because, despite her pride, she really was hungry.
Ana Lucia didn’t move, though.
“He didn’t ask me,” Ana Lucia said. “I took the plate from the blonde British guy and scared him away.”
Shannon fought back a smile at the image of Ana Lucia scaring Charlie away. She wasn’t his biggest fan, but at least he was familiar. She would prefer his company to the presence of the woman who almost killed her. Or, at least, maybe she should.
“Okay,” Shannon replied.
She used her best uninterested and impatient tone, knowing how well it worked on making people insecure about having said too much to someone who didn’t care. It used to work really well. But Ana Lucia only seemed to get even more comfortable there in the middle of Shannon’s tent, holding her food captive.
“So what’s this?” Ana Lucia asked, nodding at Shannon lying in her rudimentary bed.
“Excuse me?” Shannon replied, because not only did the question not make much sense to her, but she was also completely thrown off by the sight of Ana Lucia picking a piece of meat from the plate, Shannon’s plate, and putting it in her mouth.
“This bird with a wounded wing act,” Ana Lucia explained with her mouth full, paused to swallow the food, and then continued, careless of Shannon’s look of disgust. “The island’s princess hypes up her injury, earns everyone’s pity, makes a huge spectacle, and then what? What’s the goal here, Shannon?”
“Okay, first, I think a gunshot wound is a pretty big deal,” Shannon retorted, took notice of Ana Lucia tensing up slightly, whether in guilt or sympathy, and went on. “Second, give me my food, and get the fuck out of my tent.”
With how quickly and calmly Ana Lucia stepped forward and offered Shannon her plate, Shannon should’ve seen it coming that as soon as she reached out for it, the other woman would slyly pull it back. That’s what infuriated Shannon the most. But, before she got to complain about it, Ana Lucia beat her to it.
“Wait. I got it,” Ana Lucia said, with faux enthusiasm that lit up her face in a completely new way… Before her expression darkened quickly, she added, “Your goal was to get me and my friends kicked out of your little beach camp, wasn’t it?”
“You? Absolutely. Them? Collateral damage.” Shannon answered, keeping a straight face and her chin held high, even though the sudden change in Ana Lucia’s demeanor made her a little uneasy at the very least. “But I lost, didn’t I? Clearly, you’re still here. Unfortunately.”
“Yeah. Well, you do look like someone who gives up that easily. For a moment, I thought maybe that wasn’t the case,” Ana Lucia said.
Shannon was hit by wave after wave of unexpected realizations from just a few words from Ana Lucia. How much did she have to think about Shannon to reach those conclusions? Was she really one of those very rare people who expected more than the obvious from her? Or was that just a tactic to then crush her when she inevitably said…
“But maybe you are exactly what you look like, Shannon.”
“You don’t know me at all,” Shannon replied without missing a beat, driven mostly by habit, having lost count of how many times she had to tell somebody else those exact same words. But Ana Lucia took her by surprise once more. Maybe, and shockingly to her, this wasn’t about Shannon at all.
“And if you keep messing with me, if you try to give my friends or me any trouble, you’re going to get to me really well,” Ana Lucia said, all while very suddenly coming even closer to Shannon, leaning over her as she lay in bed. “The first wound was accidental, Shannon. Don’t try to earn a second one.”
Ana Lucia finished her threat by leaving the plate of food right on Shannon’s lap. Then she walked out of the tent quickly and without looking back.
Shannon’s only wish was that Ana Lucia had walked away fast enough so that she wouldn’t hear the exasperated groan that she had to let out.
Shannon really wanted to blame Ana Lucia. She wanted to believe that Ana Lucia did this completely on purpose. That she knew Vincent was Shannon’s responsibility, and that she sat down on the beach to share her food with the dog in a strategic spot where Shannon could see them. That she did it all to get Shannon’s attention, to make her feel bad for neglecting the poor dog in the last few days, maybe even to earn her pity or her sympathy or just to convince Shannon to stop hating her.
But just as Shannon was convinced that it made perfect sense to hate somebody for nearly killing her, technically speaking, she knew that Ana Lucia’s current location was nowhere near a spot that she could easily glimpse from her bed. Shannon knew it was she who saw Ana Lucia walk past her tent, saw Vincent follow her a few seconds later, and made the choice to stand up, walk outside, and stare from afar as those two shared what looked like a frustratingly harmless and even wholesome moment.
Another thing Shannon wanted to tell herself was that she did it all for Vincent. That she was watching out for the dog, in case Ana Lucia still had a gun hiding somewhere. But the accusation wasn’t all that fair. And her excuse wasn’t real at all.
She missed Ana Lucia.
But it wasn’t like that. It wasn't as easy as that. In fact, it was so complicated that it gave Shannon a dull headache to match her healing arm. Which, at least, was a distraction from any impulse to even think about a possible ache in the middle of her chest as she watched the near-murderer share a laugh with Vincent. Frustratingly adorable.
Shannon was just starting to admit that she could, maybe, miss the way she felt while arguing with Ana Lucia. Sue her for getting bored while recovering in bed on a mysterious island. As long as she didn’t look at the feeling too closely, close enough to think about how she missed the way Ana Lucia made her feel, the way she looked at her, how she made her heart race with a dozen different and often contradictory feelings, and how she would kill to confirm Ana Lucia felt any of that too…
Her conflicting train of thought was interrupted when she noticed that Ana Lucia and Vincent’s playful moment was abruptly cut short when Vincent ran away. The dog ran away with Ana Lucia’s knife in its mouth. Shannon would’ve laughed at the image, the dog with a knife, and especially Ana Lucia chasing said dog. However, Vincent was running straight toward her, guiding Ana Lucia in the same direction.
Caught red-handed standing outside watching them, all Shannon could do was take it in stride. She crouched down to welcome Vincent, accept the knife from him, and pet him as well as she could, still mindful of her wounded arm.
“What’s this?” Shannon asked the dog, and when she was sure Ana Lucia was close enough to hear, she added, “Did you get involved with bad company, Vincent?”
“That’s mine,” Ana Lucia said as soon as she arrived, skipping the greetings and ignoring Shannon’s comment.
Although Shannon could’ve sworn she heard the ghost of a laugh there.
“Is it?”
It wasn’t exactly Shannon’s plan to look at Ana Lucia with a smirk and possibly batting her eyelashes, but it might have happened nonetheless. Either way, the result was that Ana Lucia, even though she was staring with the same scowl as usual, took a beat longer than usual to find the words to reply to Shannon. She counted it as a win.
“Don’t be difficult, Shannon,” Ana Lucia sighed, “Just give me the knife.”
“I don’t know, Ana Lucia, that sounds kind of dangerous,” Shannon answered, standing back up to face her. “Can we trust you with a knife?”
“It’s mine.”
Ana Lucia was seething. She stepped even closer to Shannon, but somehow, all of it just emboldened her smirk.
“What are you going to do? Shoot me?” Shannon asked her.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Ana Lucia’s question finally made Shannon speechless, and eased the grin off her face. She sounded genuinely curious, and something else that Shannon couldn’t quite put her finger on. Most importantly, since she was close enough to touch, Ana Lucia’s hand found Shannon’s wrist. Not her fingers wrapped around the knife. Not even the handle of the knife. Just Shannon’s wrist. Her fingers wrapped around her wrist gently. Much gentler than Shannon would’ve expected or felt like she deserved at the moment.
She was saved from coming up with some kind of answer by a different voice posing yet another question.
“Is everything alright?”
It was Sun, standing a safe distance away but looking worriedly at them. She sounded so kind, and Shannon instinctively turned around to face her. This gave Ana Lucia the chance to brush her fingers down Shannon’s hand and quickly swipe the knife out of her hand. She started walking away before Shannon managed to mumble a vague reassurance to Sun.
So, Shannon didn’t lose her arm, despite her best threats to Ana Lucia’s and complaints to everyone willing to hear her. The wound was even healing quite well, at least according to Jack. The pain had receded a lot, too. Even Ana Lucia’s visits had… slowed down. It was harder to stay mad at her while noticeably healing her wound. Just as it seemed to be harder for Ana Lucia to find excuses to visit her when Shannon was finally pushing herself out of her tent for food and water. Not that they hadn’t found a few moments here and there to start a new argument. Even if it was something as mundane as “Stop looking at me like that.”
Judging by how many times Jack had told her to “Please give Ana Lucia a chance” or “Can you two stop it?” and even “Please, promise me you won’t try to hurt her or anything stupid,” Shannon thought it was safe to assume it was still believable and noticeable that she hated her. And she did! Shannon swore to herself that she would never forgive her. It was just… Complicated. It was a little more than boredom that pushed her to seek out Ana Lucia’s reciprocal anger.
But there was something else also making Shannon restless.
Now that she felt somewhat better physically and, surprisingly, also emotionally, past worries came back to the forefront of her mind, even if a little less urgent than before. Now she knew what had really happened to Walt. But that only increased the mystery of what she knew she saw. So, it looked like it was time to possibly continue that quest.
As she wandered into the jungle that night, gripping Vincent’s leash tighter than ever, Shannon started to lose a little hope in her plan. Maybe Walt was back on the island. Maybe he had briefly escaped from the others, and only she managed to see him. Maybe she was wrong. Either way, she hadn’t seen him again. It was unlikely that she would find him. At least that night.
As it turned out, before she gave up, someone else found her first.
Vincent heard it first. The dog tugged on the leash, and Shannon was quick to panic. She’d chosen a night with a full, bright moon, and she was carrying a torch, but still, the darkness made her heart race. At first, she saw nothing but the leaves rustling. In fact, she heard her voice first.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ana Lucia asked her.
Shannon sighed, relieved, but trying to make it sound already exasperated.
“Did you follow me? What the fuck?” she retorted.
“I asked first,” Ana Lucia replied without missing a beat. “Coming to the jungle, alone, in the middle of the night… Seriously, Shannon?”
After making sure her eye roll was fully visible to Ana Lucia, Shannon bent down to leave her torch on the ground.
“First, I wasn’t alone, I had Vincent,” she said, and the dog sat down patiently, looking incapable of hurting a fly, let alone protecting Shannon from one. “Second, it’s not your business. Third, what’s the worst that could happen? I’d get shot?”
“Oh my God, will you get over it already!”
“Over a gunshot?! Yeah, sure! It’s whatever,” Shannon scoffed. “What would you do if someone shot you?!”
“Last time it happened, I killed him,” Ana Lucia answered, and for once, she didn’t look amused or frustrated or even angry at Shannon. She looked just tired, a little sad, and frighteningly honest. “So, unless you’re planning on trying that…”
Well, that was one way to win an argument, Shannon thought.
She stared at Ana Lucia’s eyes. Only then did she realize how close they kept moving toward each other every time they had an argument. Shannon considered a few different ways she could react to that. Nothing felt completely right, so she guessed nothing could be too wrong either.
“No need to be so dramatic, Ana Lucia. Jesus,” Shannon said, grimacing, and moved away from her.
Shockingly, Ana Lucia laughed. It wasn’t exactly a gleeful laugh. In fact, Shannon did briefly wonder if she’d pushed her buttons too far and how tempted exactly Ana Lucia was to strangle her right then and there. While Ana Lucia decided, Shannon went to tie Vincent’s leash to a nearby tree. Maybe she was hopeful this conversation wouldn’t end too soon. Maybe she just wanted to sit down for a moment.
“You’re impossible to deal with, you know that?” Ana Lucia asked her.
“Then why do you keep trying?”
And that was the main question, wasn’t it?
That was what they were trying to solve that night in the middle of the jungle, wasn’t it? It had to be. Maybe they had been doing a terrible job at talking about it, but they finally had a chance to figure it out.
Ana Lucia moved to sit down at a fallen tree log, and Shannon was moving toward her, convinced that they were finally moving forward and she’d get a clear answer from Ana Lucia. But…
“Why did you come out here in the middle of the night, Shannon?” Ana Lucia asked her again.
It wasn’t what Shannon had been hoping to hear, but for once, they had time and space to talk past the initial spark of their argument. With her walls down and not many reasons to keep resisting, Shannon really wanted to answer honestly. It just so happens that her truth was a little difficult to put into words.
“I was… looking for answers, I guess,” she said, well aware it was something very vague, but considering the lives they were all leading on that island, it could be enough.
Hopefully, it seemed to be for Ana Lucia at least.
“And you haven’t found them yet?”
Shannon stared directly at one of the answers she didn’t know she was searching for, and shook her head.
Ana Lucia hummed, looked away from her, and patiently waited. She had to know Shannon’s questions were coming.
“Why did you follow me?” Shannon asked her. “Do you just feel guilty?”
Ana Lucia shrugged as if this were the most inconsequential thing in the world. But, for someone as intense as she was, her faked nonchalance spoke a thousand words.
“Of course I feel guilty. I shot you. I could’ve killed you,” Ana Lucia answered without looking at Shannon. “That’s why I stopped by the first, second, maybe third time…”
“And now?”
“Well, it was incredibly stupid to come out here alone.”
Shannon rolled her eyes, but this time she didn’t quite hide her smile.
“Unless… I was hoping you’d follow me,” she said.
“Shannon.”
Ana Lucia’s tone was firm, as if she didn’t completely believe her, or as if she were giving her a warning. But it wasn’t harsh anymore. It was something else. Something that pulled Shannon closer to her.
“Why? Why are you here with me?” Shannon insisted.
After testing Ana Lucia’s patience so much since their very first conversation, Shannon finally pushed her too far.
Ana Lucia leaned in quickly. She pressed her lips to Shannon’s and kissed her through her gasp of surprise and the appreciative hum that followed. Much better than a gunshot in the arm, Shannon thought. Even though it didn’t feel any less dramatic. She chased Ana Lucia’s lips until she finally pulled away from her.
“Because I really wanted to do that,” Ana Lucia whispered her answer to the question that Shannon had half-forgotten she’d asked in the first place.
The truth was that Shannon could hardly do more than stare at Ana Lucia’s mouth, smile, and try to find those lips again. But Ana Lucia’s hand had found her face, and she cradled her cheek, slowing her down, teasing her with a brush of lips and warm breath, before playfully pulling away.
“Finally got you to shut up.”
“Hey!” Shannon gasped, and without pulling too far away, found a way to hit Ana Lucia’s arm.
“And I see your arm is all good now,” Ana Lucia added.
“Shut up,” Shannon groaned, but she happily kissed the smirk off Ana Lucia’s lips.