Survival Of The Fittest

Samuel Hunter was an extraordinarily awkward man.

He hadn't always been. He had been a quiet boy, many years ago, quiet and almost somber in demeanor and always, always reading. Fast forward a good fifteen years and you'd find him loud, jovial, constantly smiling and dancing and making new friends in unusual places. Hunter's Pizza, the pizzeria he and his wife Jacqueline had maintained back in California, was renowned not only for its extraordinary pizza but for its joyous atmosphere, the love the couple that owned it put into their work, their habit of taking breaks from production to have a friendly chat with their customers.

And when Garrett was born, everyone said the boy couldn't have hoped for better.

Until Jacqueline was killed.

Samuel lost his spark- it was she, after all, who had given it to him to begin with, and with her gone, he began to regress. Used to his prior gregariousness, he tried to carry on with his sociability and outgoing tendencies, only to find himself flustered and stuttering. People said that with his wife killed by a mystery murderer, Samuel, whether he acknowledged it himself or not, found it next to impossible to trust anyone. He didn't express it through paranoia or cynicism, like most would, but some subconscious instinct said, they could have killed your wife. Any of them could have done it.

So Samuel wasn't much of a talker anymore. Even trying just to feign normalcy, to carry on with small talk, was an effort. He worked in the kitchen at a crappy Domino's, wasn't spoken to, didn't speak. His only connection was to Garrett, who had never been a talkative sort, and hadn't exactly gotten any better having come home. Garrett spent most of his time locked in his room, or lying on the couch, hardly ever venturing out of the house, and Samuel hardly had the heart to try to talk about Survival of the Fittest with the boy. He just let him be. Garrett was hardly the type to accept help anyway.

There was a bang on the door.

Samuel ignored it. It was probably the paparazzi again. The one time he'd made the mistake of actually letting one in to talk to Garrett, Garrett had punched him. Given that he'd been in a wheelchair at the time, the fist landed in a rather unfortunate spot.

There it was again.

Samuel wandered tentatively over to the door, peeking through the eyehole, expecting to see a camera lens glinting on the other side.

Taken by surprise, he cracked the door open. He recognized the woman who stood on the other side.

"H-hello, Eloise."

The past few months had not been kind to the Nesas.

Financially they remained in solid form; Jean had more or less turned over the running of his business to his managers, and the cafe was staying profitable enough to keep them afloat.

But the cafe was left alone because Jean Nesa was no longer a man worthy of the title. He sat at home, and stared at pictures, or into space, and wept.

Eloise--on whom the burden of the house had fallen--had not become so withdrawn. But all her old friends avoided her; her eyes held too much pain, and her face too much grief, for anyone to feel comfortable with it. Had Garrett answered the door, he might have recognized the emotion in that face; the same emotion Belle had worn in the Tunnels, just before they parted ways.

"Hello, Samuel," she said. Her voice, in spite of her appearance, was gentle and respectful; whatever her problems with the man's son, she had never had anything but respect for the quiet, always-sad Samuel Hunter. "How have you been?"

"N-not well."

The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them, and he immediately felt awful. Of all the parents of all the children in the senior class of Bayview Secondary School, he was one of the precious few lucky ones- one of the few whose child had come back to him alive. With a chunk missing, in Garrett's case, and surely broken, but still, alive. Eloise Nesa could not say the same- Mirabelle had not made it off the island. It wasn't as though Samuel hadn't known that- even if he hadn't been watching Survival of the Fittest all along, Garrett's behavior upon his return would have made it quite clear.

He had watched, though. Someone had to keep an eye on Garrett. He'd cursed at his television set- cursed, for the first time in years- when his boy got shot in the leg. He'd thought for sure it was over, even as Garrett kept moving, for the exact reason the boy came home in a wheelchair. He hadn't taken care of the wound, and it was so obvious to anyone watching who knew him that Garrett thought he was too good to let a little injury get him down. And it hadn't. But if he'd been a little more careful, a little more meticulous and patient in letting his wounds heal, maybe he'd have two legs, and maybe he'd have something to do with his life.

Or maybe he'd be dead.

Samuel caught his mind wandering again and turned his attention back to Eloise with a visible start.

"S-sorry. I didn't...I'm s-sorry. That was...insensitive..."

Still rather bewildered by Eloise's sudden appearance, he quietly welcomed her inside the house, making his way straight to the kitchen. If there was one thing Samuel could do, it was cook. He was best at pizza, of course, but he'd been making all the meals in the Hunter household for years now, and Garrett was a picky eater. When he was nervous, he cooked, and of course he cooked for guests, so this seemed like an opportune time to make some lunch.

"Wraps okay...?" he mumbled, showing Eloise to a seat- their cramped apartment made due with a dinner table in the kitchen. He started collecting ingredients- tortillas, pre-cut vegetables, turkey and homemade dressing- from the refrigerator, trying to focus on something that wouldn't make him incredibly nervous. He had no problems with Eloise, in fact he was rather fond of her (whatever dislike he was sure she felt towards his son), but her being here, now...there was only one thing she was likely for her to wish to talk about. And he wasn't sure he was ready.

"...S-so what brings you here, Eloise...?"

Eloise watched Samuel move about nervously, twitching from place to place. She vaguely considered reassuring him that she wasn't hurt--after all, nothing so minor as a careless word could hurt her now--but decided against it. There wasn't time to worry about him.

"Your son, Samuel," she said. "I'm here to see him."

"Oh?"

Samuel pulled the tortillas from the microwave, where they'd sat for exactly 45 seconds, and began to load the ingredients onto them. It was quite clear that Eloise didn't have time to waste, and it seemed likely that she wouldn't stay long enough to eat, but his hands moved over the meal he was making almost automatically. Wraps are portable, if nothing else, he mused. She could take one with her if she left suddenly, or he could give the second one to Garrett. The boy hadn't eaten all day, not that that was unusual nowadays.

He knew Garrett was in his room. He also knew he probably didn't want to be disturbed.

"E-er...now might not be the best...best time. H-he's still...still...fragile..."

Eloise considered Samuel for a moment. She had no desire to hurt a man who'd already been dealt such tragedy by life. He wanted to protect his son; that was an instinct Eloise could sympathize with all-too-well. But she had no time to spare--not now. It was not his son she'd come seeking, really. It was her daughter. And she was not going to allow Samuel Hunter to get between her and the remnant of her Belle.

"We're all fragile, Samuel," she said. "And he's the only one-" She broke off and closed her eyes, gathered her strength against the squall of sorrow raging from her heart. She had not cried yet. She would not cry yet.

"Turn me down now if you have to, Samuel," she said. "And I will leave. But I won't stop coming back until I see him."

Samuel bit his lip. To say he was a hard man to affect would be a big, obvious lie, but even midst his general weakness he had a special soft spot for women in pain. He could hardly stand to look at Eloise, focusing instead on the food he was preparing, trying so very hard to pretend he hadn't heard what she'd said, or at least to pretend that it wasn't affecting him. What could he say? She would come back. She wasn't just saying that- she would. He could hear that in her voice, the truth in her words, the pain behind them, her need for...what, closure?

Samuel remembered, very suddenly, that Garrett was probably the last living person to see Mirabelle before she died.

He hadn't seen exactly what had happened- no one had. The cameras didn't follow them into the tunnels- they saw Mirabelle and Garrett and their companions go down into their depths, and they saw Garrett come out on the other side without her. Him and that other boy- Jeremy, was it? Samuel didn't remember, there had certainly been no love lost between him and Garrett.

Mirabelle had been gone, lost forever in those tunnels, and at the time Garrett had seemed hardly affected. Garrett was rarely affected by anything. And maybe he could've forgotten the girl, at least pushed her to the back of his mind, if he'd kept his leg. If he'd been able to do any of the things he wanted to do with his life. If his dreams weren't crushed. If he hadn't confined himself to his room. To think. To dwell.

The truth was, Samuel knew Eloise needed this. But he didn't want to make his son go through any more-

"Dad."

He whirled around.

Garrett's door had opened, and the boy stood on the other side, his blue eyes hard and weary. He was very thin, and he was not in his wheelchair- not that that was anything new. He'd refused to use it from the beginning, seeing it as a sign of weakness, finding other ways to get around unless a long journey made it absolutely necessary. He relied mostly on a prosthetic- which he was not wearing right now. His loss was obvious as he stood, holding tight to his crutches, one leg nonexistent past the knee. His arms were still strong. He had little trouble making his way to the kitchen. It was obvious that he'd heard everything.

"Don't project your goddamn fragility on me, I'm fine." He turned his attention to Eloise with a raise of an eyebrow. "What do you want?"

Samuel sighed. Trying to protect Garrett was pointless. It always had been.

A long moment of silence, as thoughts brewed on Samuel's face. She held her peace; she would not give up, but she would not break this man to do so. He had lost less than she had, but he had still lost.

Garrett entered. As she had from the first time she'd seen him, she felt distaste flood her chest and coat the inside of her mouth.

"Don't be rude to your father," she said sharply. "He cares very much for you."

She stared at the boy--the boy who'd beaten her Belle and who her Belle had beaten. There was a small company operating out of Seattle devoted to digging through the footage to find information that could help parents. As far as they knew, Garrett and Belle had been travelling together when the end had come; Garrett, undamaged, had left the Tunnels. According to the Announcements, she had died defending Liz Polanski.

"What happened?" she asked.

There was a pause.

It seemed to stretch on forever.

Samuel had never asked. The man was hardly a psychologist, he didn't know a thing about psychoanalysis or repression or how therapeutic talking could be, and Garrett had flat-out refused to talk to the therapist assigned to him back at the hospital. It seemed to Samuel that Garrett had good reasons for not wanting to talk- it seemed to him like an intrusion, and a reaffirmation of events better left alone. How could one forget something that was brought up again and again? He realized it was naive to think that way, to think that Garrett could forget and move on- a part of him was left on that island. And a bigger part was left in the hospital. But he had to try to believe it. What else could he do?

That's why he was surprised when Garrett opened his mouth.

Garrett had been waiting for this.

He didn't want a fucking psychologist analyzing every goddamn move he made on that island, no, fuck that. They'd put him on some medication and then he wouldn't be Garrett anymore really and fuck that fuck that hard and sideways. Didn't want to talk to his dad either, because his dad didn't want to hear it and what's the point of saying shit to someone trying hard not to listen? The man was in denial. He rolled his eyes at Eloise's words- like she knew shit about Samuel Hunter.

But he did want to talk. He'd been living these moments over and over in his head, and he needed to share them with someone who gave a shit. Not that he thought that Eloise gave a shit about him, but she gave a shit about what happened, and that was good enough.

She also gave a shit about Mirabelle Nesa, and that was probably the only thing they had in common.


/to be followed by a second post

[[this should have been written ages ago but then I took an arrow to the knee got extremely sick and also extremely distracted by holiday-type things.]]



"We were...running. Close as I could get to running on my gimp leg, anyway."


His eyes were closed. The darkness helped him place himself back where he was then, back in the dark from whence he'd came, back in those godforsaken tunnels. He'd hated them. Goddamn, he'd hated them, more than he could even rationalize, even before terrible things started happening there- they were claustrophobic, and black, and smelled like death. Anything could have been down there and he could have just stumbled right past.

Garrett didn't add any of these details, but a shudder rippled through him.

"The tunnels. We were following Liz Polanski, you probably saw up to that point, she didn't break every fuckin' camera...I saw them, the terrorists, land, I found them in the mansion, warned them that we had to run...probably should have spent a little more goddamn time coming up with a plan that made some sense."

"But they found us."

They found us...


"MIRABELLE, JEREMY, GARRETT, GET! THE FUCK! OUT! NOW!"

What was that kid's name? Brendan? Yeah, Brendan. Garrett'd heard he'd gotten off the island too. At the end of the day their little get-the-fuck-out-of-Dodge club had had a 60% success rate, not counting Madeleine, who'd bailed anyway. Not bad, particularly considering Liz had essentially been committing suicide when she walked in that tunnel.

Anyway. Did it matter? The important person in this story was the one who didn't live.

"They blew some chick's collar, I don't remember who it was, all I know is that we knew they could kill any of us any time they wanted. Any of us but Liz. She had some plan, I don't know what she was doing but we all trusted that she knew what she was doing. We were just there to...I don't even know. Protect her, maybe? Help? The party got crashed pretty fucking fast anyway."

His brow furrowed.

"And then we heard those fuckers calling us out from outside the tunnel."

"Garrett Hunter, you have thirty seconds for HQ to tell me you're running down the tunnels to the other side of the mountain. Otherwise, you lose your head."

Garrett said the words exactly as he remembered them, admittedly with a mocking tone that was not present in the original intonation. Much easier to sound like a cocky asshole than to remember exactly how he'd really felt at that moment- afraid.


"So, I guess the question was, what's gonna be more helpful to this escape-plan Houdini bullshit we were supposed to be doing? Stand around watching Polanski fiddle with things while we get our heads blown off one at a time, or get the hell out and think up a plan that's not a lost cause? Polanski was dead and she knew it, we all knew it, but the rest of us could get out alive and regroup on the other side. If we stayed the revolution would die with us."

More words than Samuel had heard Garrett speak since he'd gotten home.

"...I tried."

And for the first time, Garrett met Eloise's eyes.

"I had thirty seconds, and I spent twenty of them explaining that to her. And then I ran. When I got out of the tunnels, I turned around, and the only person there was fucking Jeremy Franco."

Why? God fucking dammit, why? Who the fuck could be that goddamn stubborn and- fuck-

He didn't notice that he was shaking.

"I fucking tried."

Eloise watched the boy, though the boy did not watch her. His eyes were somewhere else--beneath the place he'd left her Belle behind.

No. Beneath the place where her Belle had stayed.

Her hands shook in her lap. She did not notice that Garrett Hunter was shaking, too. Her world had gone dark and blurry.

Stayed behind. My Belle stayed behind.

The greatest lesson is to live without fear.

She should have gone with him. Maybe she could have made it back.

She would never have turned back. Not my Belle.

But he tried.

Without quite looking at the boy, she placed a hand on his arm.

Garrett shook the hand off his arm. He felt the sympathy, the pity, rolling off in waves from the simple action, and he resented it. That pity that he'd been running from, in the least literal sense of the word (limping from, more like), come back to haunt him. His father had given up, and he'd been grateful for it. He'd wanted so badly to speak, yes, but- but what was he expecting? A silent acknowledgement and nothing more? Would that have made him happier? In truth, if he were to look at this from a reasonable standpoint, Eloise was about as neutral as she could possibly be. But nothing about this could be neutral, normal, nothing, never ever. There were few things less normal than this.

"She got lucky."

He wasn't shaking now. Or maybe he was, maybe he was shaking worse than ever, he couldn't tell. There was a bitterness, an acidity in his tone, but he couldn't look at Eloise anymore. It wasn't an acidity, no, not really, but it was bitterness all the same. It was the bitterness of someone who had seen far too much. And he wasn't sure, really, if he was saying the words to sting and shock as he had so many times before, or because he meant them.

He felt the throbbing in his phantom leg then and thought, I would've been lucky.

He didn't say that. He didn't say anything.

Instead he turned around and hobbled away. Slowly. Back to his room. Not waiting for a response or listening if there was one. Something had crumpled inside him, something he didn't want anyone to bear witness to, and when he finally reached his room and let the door fall shut behind him, it was all he could do not to cry.

He left behind his ghost-faced father, who slowly turned towards their visitor.

"Eloise..."

His brow furrowed.

"H-he...didn't mean that, I'm sure..."

And Garrett, still hearing, didn't bother to correct him.

She wanted to slap him.

She wanted to wound him, scream at him, make him weep. She wanted to remind him of what a spoiled brat he was, what sort of brat he'd always been. How she loathed him at that moment, this ridiculous, squalid boy, with his pretensions of toughness.

Oh, how she loathed him for being alive when her Belle had died.

She got lucky.

Her daughter was dead, and this arrogant salop had the gall to...

Lucky.

Her palm folded, left tiny pinpricks of blood. She looked at Samuel a moment, frosty, regal, dead. She shook her head. "Yes," she said. "He did."

She stood up and swept to the door. Because her daughter had stayed behind--she knew her daughter, knew her fears and weaknesses, knew that in a moment of crisis she could only have stayed behind, to do less would have been to hate herself. And she knew what she had always known, that Garrett Hunter, who'd fled in the dark, was as weak as she'd always thought, and knew it himself, and that he could never flee from that knowledge. And now, from this moment on, all of them--Garrett, Samuel, Jean, and her--would live in misery and bitterness.

He was right. Her Belle had been lucky.