Survival Of The Fittest

((Medea Parth continued from Vultures))

She didn’t know why she had come back this way. She knew it wasn’t where she needed to be. She needed to be at that research station, but instead she was back here at this shoreline. Actually, it wasn’t completely true that she didn’t know why she was here. She saw Eden’s corpse and… she just couldn’t handle it any longer. She just needed to get away for the time being. She went to sleep with little word, then immediately left the next morning and started wandering until she came back here.

She was on a small cliffside that overlooked the rocky shores, looking out towards the sea. Clouds had moved in now, no doubt bringing snow with them soon.

She shouldn’t be here, but maybe that was okay. She just needed to get away from it all for a moment. The scenery was rather beautiful despite everything. A testament to the world that God created that even in the darkness of her situation that she can enjoy the beauty of her surroundings. There weren’t many opportunities to really do that before. She was always on the move since the first day. Though, she didn’t find herself running up any more mountains.

((June Madison continues from Vultures))

And still she followed.

When she was younger, still in elementary school or so, sometimes June would have a tantrum, as kids often do. And often, her mom or dad would shout at her, talk down to her about why she was wrong, and she would cry, but then later they would be nice to her again, and things would be fine within an hour or two. But sometimes, her mom would ignore her. For hours and hours. Sometimes until the next day. And she would do it no matter how much she begged, and begged, and begged. Even when her dad told her to stop begging, she'd keep doing it, because she didn't want her mom to hate her forever, and what if she never talked to her again? What if she grew up to be an adult, and her mom still never talked to her? And the suspense just dragged on for ages, and ages, and ages, and all she could do in that time was think about what she did wrong, why she deserved this or didn't deserve this, how much it hurt. It hurt.

When she got a bit older, middle school, she learned to not beg anymore. She couldn't take, anymore, the humiliation on top of the neglect, so she'd made a decision then to keep up her pride and simply not talk. Let them not talk to each other for the rest of time, if that's how things ended up. And if her mom needed a glass of water, then she could get it herself, cause they weren't talking. If she wanted to share a news story, or make a casual remark about the weather, then she wouldn't even look at her. She'd notice eventually. And then her mom would get mad at her for disrespect or something, and start shouting, and then they could have the hour or two of outright war that June was, at least, used to. At least then, it would finally end soon. At least then, June wasn't left on her knees groveling.

June felt like a combination of the two right now. A little girl, tagging along behind her mom, waiting and waiting and waiting for the silence to end. If she tried to be positive, she could maybe think about how Medea at least hadn't screamed at her to go away. She'd just let her tag along. That was a good sign, right?

But still, the silence stretched on. Stretched on until the next day, past the fourth announcement. She wanted to beg, this time, she wanted to. But if she begged again, and Medea didn't answer her again, then it just might kill her. She'd be a little girl groveling, and it was the kind of humiliation that made her want to kill herself. And, she hated Medea for it. She hated that her best friend was making her feel this way.

...she hated Medea?

No she didn't.

She couldn't.

If the silence stretched on any longer, then maybe something might actually break, whether by rupture or atrophy.

June swallowed her pride.

"Medea, can we just talk?"

Medea didn’t turn when she heard June speak. She just kept her gaze off towards the sea, the breeze blowing in her ears and sending her hair flowing behind her. June had really followed her all this time, even with the silence that Medea left her in. It was like their positions were flipped from the first day. Medea had chased her up a mountain, while June had followed her to this shore. Perhaps it was cruel of her to just be silent towards her friend that meant so much to her, but what was she supposed to say? After everything that has happened her trying to maintain her optimism wasn’t as easy as it once was. All it took was one body to shatter her resolve. She had gone and raised up June’s hopes and now she was walking away in silence.

Maybe June hated her for it.

Could Medea blame her friend if she did?

Medea was self-aware enough to realize she was being selfish trying to put some distance between herself and that place. Walking away in silence from last night to the morning and now well into noon. Medea didn’t know if she was a good person, but she sure didn’t feel like one after worrying her friend.

And she knew June was worried. She had to be. Medea was more or less ignoring her to wallow in her own self-pity. But not once did June give up on her. Just like how she didn’t give up on June during that first day.

Medea looked out towards the sea, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocky shore filling her ears. She breathed in and out to steady herself.

“If you want to.” Medea said. She paused, shaking her head and looking at the ground. “No, that isn’t fair. You deserve better than that. I’ve been dragging you across this island and you should be able to talk with me.”

"Yeah," June said meekly, looking at the ground. She said it with only a fraction of the annoyance, anxiety, resentment, vitriol she meant it with. She remembered the mistake she'd made yesterday, yet still, she found it so, so hard to avoid repeating it.

Long trails of water vapor emanated from her nostrils, puff, puff, as she tried to vent out the excess emotion before she spoke. She looked up.

"You know I love you, right? As a friend, like..." she pulled at the ends of her jacket sleeves. "I suck at showing it sometimes, and sometimes I take it out on you and K and Clover and Peyton and all but, I love you guys." She gulped. "I know I scared you badly yesterday, and I know I did it when you really needed someone just to tell you things were okay, and I'm really, really sorry for that but I just..."

Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes, again. She rapidly wiped them away with the back of her hand.

"There's not enough time for this. I don't know if we make it out or not, but if we don't, there's not enough time for us to be doing this. It'd kill me if one of us dies, and our last moment together is this..." she gestured at the snow-patched rocks around them, "this iciness."

She swallowed again.

"I'm sorry, Medea."

"Please?"

Medea listened to June speak, patiently and carefully. She analyzed every word spoken, and a twinge of guilt struck her. She looked to the ground, frowning and folding her arms. She had dragged June all the way out here in nothing but complete silence. Medea could only imagine how worried June must have been. It wasn’t like Medea normally did this sort of thing.

Medea sniffled, looking around the air for a moment.

She paused, thinking for a second.

She turned towards June, quickly closing the distance between them and wrapping her friend in a hug.

“I’m sorry.” Medea whispered. She sniffled again, tears starting to run down her cheeks as she buried her head in her friend’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, June. I love you too. I-I-I didn’t mean to worry you l-like I did. I know y-you care.”

The tears were flowing freely now, sobbing loudly now.

“I-I-I-I j-just- I-I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what to do, June,” she muttered through sobs. “I’m scared. I-I will be fine, b-but… I just needed to be a-alone, I think.”

Medea was talking to her, finally, and she was apologizing even.

She shakily outstretched her arm, placed her hand on the back of Medea's head.

"It's okay, Medea, it's okay."

All her anger sublimated into the air, wisps of white that intermingled with the sea spray into nothing. It all became nothing.

And yet somehow she felt worse.

"Shh, shh, it's okay."

June tightened her stomach, tried to suppress the shakes in her breath as she ran her hands through Medea's hair, trying to swallow down the inky shame.

It wasn't about her. it was never about her. She'd been so wrapped up in her fucking feelings that she hadn't even considered the simplest answer of them all: Medea was scared. It wasn't anger at June, it wasn't hatred of June, it was just fear.

"Shh. Shh. Shh. Medea, listen to me."

She pulled slightly away from Medea, and she held her face in her hands with a gentleness, a care that had been completely absent the day before.

"You don't need to know what to do. Trust me, you don't. You don't need to have the answers. You just need to try. And that's what we've been doing, we've been trying. We've been trying as much as we can."

Pick up the pieces again. Try to wipe away the fear you inflicted. Try.

June let go, took a couple steps back, but kept her gaze on her.

"I... I'm sorry for imposing myself on you before. And for yesterday, I'm really sorry. Do you want some more time alone?"

June held Medea close, the proximity of which brought some level of ease to Medea as she sobbing quieted down. The quiet shushing, the hand through her hair, even when June pulled back and cupped her face with a surprising gentleness that Medea had not expected helped ease her troubled spirit. It was plain to Medea that even if June had been angry with her before, what she was doing now was giving Medea love. Unconditional, platonic love. Medea’s vision blurred as tears obscured the sight before as June spoke words of comfort.

Medea sniffled, her breath hitching in her throat as she kept her gaze on June. Even as June let her go and stepped back, she knew it was because her friend truly cared about her and wanted to give her the necessary space to collect herself.

Medea loved June. She loved her friends so deeply and dearly.

Thinking back to the first day when she awoke on the island, she pursued June without rest until they reached the top of a mountain. She did it out of love and concerned for her friend. That same love made her dragged June across this island on the thin hope of making out of it together. Reflecting, she realized the only thing that kept her going despite everything happening was love.

Her love for her friend.

Her love for her fellow classmates.

June’s love.

God’s love.

You just need to try.

Medea wiped her eyes with her sleeve, continuing to keep her gaze fixed on June. She had put her friend through so much. She had gotten her hopes up, and made her believe they could do this. And through it all, June had stuck by her side. Medea knew she could never repay the debt she owed her beloved friend, but she had to try.

Taking a deep breath, Medea nodded her head.

“Y-yeah,” she answered, her voice sounding somewhat hoarse due to the crying. “I think I-I just need a little more time to… sort myself out. Maybe thirty minutes or so. I-I-I will shout if I need help.”

A small, uneasy smile began to spread on Medea’s lips. First time she smiled since before stumbling upon Eden’s body.

“Thank you for… staying with me, June.” Medea said. “You are a good friend.”

"And you're a better friend."

Medea's uneven smile mirrored June's.

Tentatively, she took one step back, two steps back, three, keeping her eyes fixed on Medea all the while.

She turned herself away before Medea could see the tears well in her eyes, and she disappeared behind a nearby boulder.

As June backed away and eventually turned away, Medea felt a strong need to reach out for her friend. She didn’t want to have June leave. If anything, she wanted to keep hugging her and cry while June kept telling her things were going to be okay.

But what she wanted and what she needed were two totally different things.

Once June disappeared from view, Medea turned away from her friend’s direction as tears rolled down her face. She started to walk away, wind blowing through her hair and pushing her forward.

It was almost amazing how incredibly shitty Jezzie could feel here. Without being murdered, anyway.

[[Enter Jezzie Stark, arms crossed as she stares at the ground, the look on her face expressing frustration as well as sadness.]]

Even after the rest of the day was fine and she spent about half of it ranting to the cameras (the audience, really) that she was not actually anti-semetic, she just didn’t want to risk death by crazy bitch, her stomach felt like it was doing somersaults. Every part of her was screaming, but it was all screaming for different reasons.

One part screamed at her for running. Letitia was still alive, unsurprisingly, and she probably hated her guts. Maybe even more than she hated the crazy girl, if she actually let her live. Assumption maybe, but the girl with the gun hadn’t been on the announcements, so it wasn't anything immediately fatal at least. And now that Jezzie had run and didn’t give Letitia what she wanted-whatever it was she wanted-there was a target on her back. One the other girl would probably let anyone shoot, so long as they knew all the details.

Another part screeched about running having been the correct choice. She shot at her. She nearly got fucking shot! If she hadn’t tripped, there probably would’ve been a bullet in her body! Fuck her reputation, she was lucky to get out of that alive! Plus, she’d already killed two people, and while she can still talk to people and explain it was self defense, it was still Survival of the Fittest, with an asshole announcer who’ll probably make every death sound bad, even if it was an accident. A good number of people probably already saw her as a threat.

That got more parts shrieking and howling over whether or not that was bad. Would people really want to fight someone who wasn’t afraid to kill? To stab repeatedly until they stopped breathing? Or would they take that as a challenge, wanting to take out people with numbers to their name? People were already going insane, so the possibility was up there, and with Janice and that Alex guy dead, killers didn’t have any sort of illusions of invincibility to pretend to have. It was open season, as far as the eye could see.

Then you throw the possibility of allies in and it gets more messy. Did she even want allies? Her best times so far were when she was all alone, talking to cameras to give whoever watched a piece of her mind-that she was just a girl doing what she could to survive a horrible situation. Throw other people into that and it’s either awkward or just not happening. But fuck if some of those moments with people actually felt nice. Commiserating with Jack about barrel girl being stupid. Calvin giving her some comfort after what happened with Steve. There were some bad moments with D and Jacob W at the hot spring, but at least they had some peace together near the water.

And weaponry. Can’t forget about that! Especially when it’s as shitty as what she’s stuck with. The tiny little knife had done well so far, yeah, and the twisted knife seemed good, but they were still just knives. Other people had guns, swords, and who knows what other kinds of crazy shit! How was she supposed to compete when the best she had was taking anything at arm’s length?!

The numbers added up but she refused to think about the sum of it all. She just wanted something nice to think about for a little bit. Was that too much to ask? The view of the water may not be picturesque, but she would take what she could get, so long as what she got was nice.

It was almost like she was in a daze, moving forward in a slow, monotonous gait as she lost herself in thought and her own emotions. Still, Medea made a conscious effort to not get too lost in her misery to forget where she was in relation to where she had last seen June. She would eventually turn back, after all.

She did her best to recall everything that had happened up til now. Every decision she made, every word she said, every person she met and quickly left behind.

She thought long and hard, running different hypotheticals in her mind, trying to figure out where she had gone wrong and what she could have done differently. Perhaps if she had not left Juanita behind, or lingered too long in the town, or perhaps stuck with more people than just June then maybe, just maybe, certain little butterflies would have flapped their wings in different directions and certain people would still be alive. Logically, she knew Eden Glass’ death was not her fault, but it sure felt like it was. Try as she might she could not shake the feeling that she could have prevented June’s death. Maybe she could have prevented a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering many were experiencing on the island. Maybe not all of it, but her actions wouldn’t be devoid of merit.

At least, that’s what she told herself.

Continuing her trek, something started to come into view. Something that stood out from the scenery. It snapped her out of her thoughts and focused, eyes widening to see a person.

Namely, Jezzie Stark.

Medea stopped dead in her tracks, like a deer in headlights. Jezzie had not seemed to notice her, at least yet, and instead focused on the sea outstretched before her. Medea looked around frantically for a moment, taking a few steps back. Jezzie had killed people. She killed Steven, killed Bill.

She wondered briefly if she should run back towards June. She wondered if she should call for help.

She stopped her retreat and focused back on Jezzie. In a way, seeing the other girl standing there looking out to the distance was almost peaceful. A sight that one would be forgiven for thinking she didn’t kill people.

But she did.

Jezzie killed.

…But could one really fault her?

Survival of the Fittest put people in an impossible position, held a gun to their heads and told them to be monsters. Some did of course, but how much can they truly be accountable? She’s known her classmates for years and she doubted under normal circumstances they wouldn’t do what they’ve done. Fear was a powerful motivator, but it was one that clouded judgment. So how could she stand there and judge Jezzie for her actions, especially when she was not present for them?

But Steve and Bill are still dead. She could be very dangerous. Medea could walk away right now and she’d still be okay with Jezzie being none the wiser. She already walked away from so many people, inadvertently divorced herself from the suffering of her fellow classmates up until now. What was one more?

But… What’s one less?

Medea closed her eyes, inhaled deeply and steadied herself. She exhaled, opened her eyes and stepped forward.

Slowly she closed the distance between herself and Jezzie, her heart pounding furiously in her chest while her instincts screamed at her to go back. She ignored these and continued to march forward until she was about ten feet away.

She opened her mouth to speak, feeling an uncomfortable dryness in her throat as she trembled slightly to bring up the courage to actually speak.

“Um, Jezzie?”

It...really was a nice, view, honestly. Maybe not the prettiest thing she'd ever seen, but still scenic. Like something you'd see on a postcard.

Focusing on something else, though. That made it harder to focus on other things.

Like keeping her breathing even.

Like keeping her arms from shaking.

Like keeping her face from getting wet.

Jezzie wasn't crying. She couldn't cry here. She was Jezzie Stark. She was stronger than that. She was better than that. She was a future star. Stars didn't break down unless they were dying, and she was not going to be dying here. She needed to live long enough to get off this island, be Somebody. She-She wasn't Nobody! She just...she needed everyone to know she was Somebody. They can't...they have to know her as Somebody, because she can't just be...another name on that list of dead kids. Another 'gone too soon' story of Survival of the Fittest. Another forgotten high schooler who's only official job was stacking cans and checking out customers who don't even know how to wear a face mask in a grocery store-!

Jezzie's breath caught in her throat.

A voice had her thought train go off the tracks.

She looked towards it, and felt like a deer in the spotlight.

She saw it. She saw her break character.

Improv was what she despised most, and this moment only doubled that hatred as she struggled for a line.

"M...Medea?"

“Yes, hello, it’s me.” Medea said. Her face cringed somewhat when she noticed the frantic way she spoke.

Medea shifted uncomfortably when Jezzie turned her attention towards her. Lingering nerves over the whole situation. Part of her still wanted to run, but she felt that maybe this could go well. After all, Jezzie wasn’t trying to attack her so that made her feel somewhat more at ease. She was still scared to some extent, just not automatically assuming the worst.

Jezzie was a classmate of hers and Medea had to remind herself that these were extraordinary circumstances. Normally Jezzie likely wouldn’t do anything bad. She reminded herself over and over that she was most likely safe.

Swallowing and steeling herself, she gave Jezzie a concerned look.

“Jezzie, I…” She began to trail off, unsure how to start this conversation. After a brief pause she continued. “A-Are you okay? I-i-it’s a dumb question, I know, but… Are you okay?”

She didn't know what to do.

She didn't know what to do.

She was supposed to be strong. Get through this Hell without a tear shed, because she could do anything.

She was going to be a star.

She would be the best thing that ever hit Broadway.

She would be the face you could see on practically any show, on any channel.

She would be the youngest person to win an Oscar for Best Leading Actress, before she's even old enough to legally drink.

She was supposed to be big. Bright. Beautiful.

Why couldn't she feel like that right now?

She felt small. Dim. Ugly.

Like she really was nothing.

Medea asked her something, but it was in one ear and out the other. Only could tell it was a question.

"I..."

She tried for something to respond with. Anything that could make this okay again, anything to stop the flood-

"I...I-I'm sorry!"

But the cracks didn't stop.

The dam was destroyed, and Jezzie could only break down into sobs, almost forgetting the other girl as she tried to cover her face - cover her shame.

Medea blinked, a frown forming on her face as Jezzie apologized to her whilst she broke down into sobs. She watched for a moment, briefly looking around to see if anyone else was around to potentially overhear what was happening. As far as Medea could tell, they were alone. The part of her brain that had been telling her to run had gotten quieter now. It was still there, but seeing one of her fellow classmates breakdown right before her eyes ignited her sense of compassion.

Jezzie didn’t answer her question, but still gave Medea all the answers she needed. Jezzie was hurting. Maybe Medea didn’t know in full how she was hurting, but she was.

Tentatively Medea took a few slow, careful steps towards the other girl.

Maybe it was crazy to approach a potentially dangerous person — one who was in the midst of an emotional breakdown — but that didn’t matter to Medea at the moment. What she saw was a girl, a fellow human being in great pain. And she wanted to help ease that pain if she could and if Jezzie would allow.

“H-Hey, it’s alright,” Medea said, keeping her voice calm and light. She stopped after getting three feet closer. “Everything will be okay. You can talk to me.”