Send help fic in which fem!reader gets stuck on the island instead of Bradley. Still brainstorming what direction to take this, but I will be writing it in chapters as I have free time.
Title is from “The Tide is High” by Blondie because, after seeing a post by @gray-zelle about it, I will never again be able to NOT associate it with Linda 🙏🏻 it’s wonderful
As you stood amongst your colleagues in the early morning air, dread pooled in your stomach, a dread which you’d been trying to squash and which had nurtured itself nonetheless ever since Bradley had given you those despised instructions. “If you’re going to be Donavan’s assistant in his new position,” he’d stated, “you need to come to Bangkok with us. Help us talk this out. Show me what you’re capable of.”
You were more than confident in your abilities to act as an executive assistant—Donovan was honestly incompetent enough that he’d need your help. You were not quite as confident in your ability to go for a flight without being ill. And so you were here, mentally trying to hype yourself up for a flight that would last no less than sixteen hours.
Suddenly, Bradley looked over your shoulder, a sneer overcoming his expression. “Oh, fuck me.” You turned to see the target. Towards the group of them strode… Linda Liddle? Was she supposed to be coming on the trip, too?
“Who’s ready and raring to fly high?” She cheerily questioned. “It’s me! I am!”
An awkward silence descended over the group. You waved back, as no one else seemed intent on responding to her. Not that it was so surprising; you knew that happened fairly often. It led to a balance of your sympathy and your feeling slightly fortunate that your social position in the office was at least a little more elevated than hers.
“Hi!” She latched onto this acknowledgement and greeted you then by name, voice chipper. Far too chipper for the situation at hand, in fact. Had she somehow managed to forget the fact that they were all about to be thousands of feet in the air? Of course, she always did have a reputation for her lack of awareness and boundless optimism. Or maybe she was a normal person and simply didn’t have an oppressive fear of flying.
“Hello, Linda,” you answered, a tension in your voice that you couldn’t quite squash. She frowned, which felt a little humiliating. If even the most socially oblivious person in the office can read me right now, I need to learn to put on a better front.
“Are you okay? You seem a little… off,” she suggested politely.
“I just don’t do great with flying,” you answered, voice low enough to keep this a private matter–or so you thought. But a snicker echoed through the group nearby the two of you anyway.
“I told you we shouldn’t have brought the two of them,” one of the men muttered. Hot indignation flushed your face. They always talk about you as if you weren’t right there. She glanced over at them, and her expression faltered for a moment, although it was quickly replaced by a smile again.
“Nothing is going to happen,” she said. “Airplane accidents are a lot rarer than car accidents, but I know you take a car to work every day.”
That didn’t help your fear. You weren’t afraid because it was rational. You were just afraid. There was no more to it. Regardless, it was kind of her to try to help. You returned a hesitant smile as everyone began to board.
As soon as you were on board, you made a beeline for the back. If nothing else, it would get the men slightly out of your hair, right?
Wrong. Right as you set your carry-on bag down and settled into your seat, the thwap of a life jacket hit your chest. “For when this thing goes down, since you’re so terrified.” Bradley cackled first, which was as obnoxious as it always was, and then his clique of nepo babies joined in. The flight attendant gave him an annoyed glance before polishing her expression once more, no doubt miffed by his displacement of a device she’d have to replace later. Your patience thinned a little. Every once in a while, you really did have to evaluate if the paycheck was worth the nightmare of dealing with them. Things had been so much more peaceful only a few months ago when Mr. Preston–the Mr. Preston you knew, anyway–had been in charge. You tucked the life jacket beside you. You could replace it after you landed, but you didn’t want to walk past him more than necessarily needed.
Linda settled into the seat across the aisle from you. That was sure not to help your case as far as the ridicule from the men went. Still, if you had to be next to anyone, she was your preferred option, you supposed. She settled down with a laptop. You had your own problems to worry about.
The flight attendant asked everyone to remain seated during takeoff, and as the plane began to pick up speed, it seemed to rumble slightly. Its wheels parted from the ground. You glanced around the plane, trying to find the source of the odd sound, feeling more than a little unnerved. Her eyes flickered to you, and concern colored her features.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” you confessed. “It feels like–is this takeoff really shaky? Am I imagining that?”
“It is shaky,” she responded, “but flights are always a little shaky. There is nothing to be afraid of.”
Your silence evidently didn’t convince her. “When an aircraft shakes when it’s in the sky, or when there’s turbulence, there’s pressure from every side working against it, not just downward pressure.” You nodded as she continued. “So it’s not like the plane is just waiting to drop out of the sky. There’s just as much air pressure working to keep us afloat as there is gravity doing the opposite.”
When River had first trained you and introduced you to the woman across her cubicle, she had always referred to Linda as weird, awkward, strange. Other coworkers echoed this sentiment quite frequently throughout the eight months since you’d come to work here. What they had also mentioned, however, was that Linda was extraordinarily intelligent–at least with facts, if not people. So a part of you earnestly trusted her.
“Thank you,” you quietly responded. “It really does help.” At least a bit. You no longer felt ninety percent certain that you would be dying today.
“Of course.”
After a few minutes, the plane reached a stable altitude. It did not seem, at least for the time being, intent on exploding. You turned then to a book which you’d stowed away on the back of your seat, and for a few hours, it consumed you. You were able to tune out your thoughts and immerse yourself in the story. You’d always been good at that, after all.
Eventually, a sound jolted you out of focus. Laughter, too much of it, and horribly loud. Bradley and all of his crowd were all so irritating. You turned to Linda, intent on seeing if she knew what they found so funny-
Tears in her eyes? Why was she crying? What was wrong?
Wait, that was absolutely her voice on whatever they were crowding around a laptop to watch. Were they making fun of her somehow? People always did this in this office—the woman was sweet! Okay, sure, she was a little socially inept, but she wouldn’t hurt a fly. This wasn’t high school. How immature were they planning to be?
You watched her shut the laptop, and you spoke to her from across the aisle. “Linda, are you okay?”
She quickly attempted to compose herself. “It’s no—yeah, it’s nothing, l just-“
An announcement sounded off over the intercom requesting that everyone put on their seatbelts.
The color drained from your face. You were well in the middle of the flight. For what reason could you possibly need seatbelts? Of course, you immediately buckled in—although your hands were unsteady doing so—and you heard as Linda did, too. You turned to her with a slightly worried look, and she returned a smile even shakier than the one you’d directed towards her earlier.
“Yeah, gentlemen, put your seatbelts on… if you’re a fucking pussy,” Bradley cackled from the front of the plane. Of course, everyone else laughed-
A scream–God, what was happening?--the plane lurched downward.
Bradley looked up with wide eyes, immediately lunging forward to reach for the lifejacket that he’d tossed your way–but the plane tipped further, and the pressure imbalance seemed to have formed a vortex which pulled him out of a rapidly widening hole which burst the side of the plane. Horrifyingly, multiple people followed suit, mercilessly tossed out into whatever lay outside. You wrapped the life jacket around yourself, buckling it–what would that even do? What could you even do?? Everyone who hadn’t already been seated scrambled.
Donovan had been launched into the air, too, but he had grabbed onto Linda’s legs as Chase grabbed onto his. “Don’t let go!” Someone screamed. She tried to help him, reaching down for his arms, but he latched onto her body instead. Donovan kicked Chase until he fell away, another victim of the vaccuum.
You watched with horror as Donovan grasped Linda by the neck as carelessly as if he were handling a pest animal. “Give me your seat! Give me your seat!”
There was no way that man, any man, had the gall to lay a hand on another person like that. Silverware began to clamber its way down the aisle. Spoons, a fork—a knife! You grabbed it and launched it full force, lodging it in his upper arm. With a shriek, he dislodged from Linda, and immediately he was sucked out of the plane just where Bradley had been pulled moments earlier. “Are you okay?” She gasped for breath and nodded.
But moments later, to your horror, his body began colliding with the side of the plane, seemingly held in place by his tie. “Linda! Do something!” He screamed. You screamed, too. Linda… slid the window cover shut. Well, that was effective, you supposed–good lord, the plane was splitting! Your life jacket was still on. You were still buckled in. Small mercies.
You didn’t remember much of what happened then.
Water rushing in every direction–flights of bubbles–a mangled corpse–a dreadful keeling sound–floating upwards–an object colliding with the side of your head–the world faded to black.
A/N: This chapter deviates a little more from canon. Sorry for the slight delay! I’ve had some car troubles, which I still will need to fix in a few days, and had some other tasks that needed done. This chapter is a little longer, so hopefully it can make up for things a bit! 🫶 It was also super fun to write—it’s eventful. You’ll see!
I also wanted to thank you guys so sincerely for the support. It's a small fandom, but everyone here is so kind and supportive, and it genuinely means the world! <3 Every time I get a notification that someone commented something here or on AO3, it makes me so happy to know that someone else enjoyed the things that I wrote.
I hope that you guys enjoy this, and I hope that you're all having lovely days! <33
Slowly, little journeys around the camp became feasible. One day, the cries of an obscenely loud bird woke you up long before the sun would have. Linda shifted in her sleep but then rolled back over, seemingly unaffected. You tried to do the same. Sleep eluded you. After a frustrating half hour or so, the moonlight began to melt into the desaturated gray-blue of the morning.
If you couldn’t get any rest, you decided, maybe you could explore the area a bit outside of the beach. You quietly stood up and set off toward the center of the island. You were careful, regardless, to move slowly, determined both to be gentle with your leg and to let Linda sleep.
The first few minutes involved somewhat blindly trudging through the mud. A root hooked over your foot, nearly leading you to trip and fall into a bush. Fortunately, sunlight began to filter in rays through the gaps in the canopy. The island was bathed in the soft golden hues of dawn, and navigating became much simpler. A sound not unlike white noise beckoned you forward. Curious to discover its source, you circled a hill which you’d come to the base of.
Before you was a waterfall. Linda had mentioned the island had one. It was just a waterfall, a phenomenon of nature which, although objectively interesting, shouldn’t have captivated you so deeply. However, after such a long time with nothing to do but weave and stare at the ocean, it was easily the most beautiful sight you’d seen in days, and for the moment, you were spellbound. Pools of clear, crisp water had collected, and you carefully knelt down to rinse yourself off, immediately feeling like a new person. The difference between the feeling of being cleaned with freshwater or seawater was truly night and day. You noticed then that, in the sunlight, you were able to catch glimpses of your reflection. Wait–what was that moving behind you??
As your head whipped over your shoulder, rather than a boar or some other predator, Linda stood a few paces behind you. Your relief mixed with indignation. “You can’t just sneak up on me like that.”
“I’m sorry! I know that you’re right–but you just looked like you were busy. And, I mean, I was glad that you were getting a chance to see how nice you look. You’re glowing!”
Her flattery made it a little hard to stay indignant. “How did you know that I was here?”
“Your footprints weren’t exactly hard to follow. I mean, no offense, you’re just… not very good at keeping things hidden. Not that it’s a bad thing. Just, maybe it’s for the best that I’m the one who hunts.”
Memories of a week or so ago—a decapitated boar head, a blood-soaked (but unharmed) Linda. If that was what hunting looked like when the hunter knew what they were doing, you didn’t want to imagine your case. “I can’t exactly disagree with you.”
“And once I realized you’d wandered off, I wanted to make sure nothing happened and that you were okay.”
“You don’t have to babysit me all the time, you know. I won’t immediately get hit by a meteor if I try to do something alone,” you teased.
“I know. I just wanted to make sure.”
“I appreciate it.”
The sight of a white flower growing between the pools caught your eye. Kneeling down, you plucked it from the stem and stepped a little closer to her. One hand smoothed her hair as the other tucked the flower into it. For a second, it felt outrageously cheesy, and you were afraid you might risk coming off weird, but her face lit up instead. Of course–this was Linda Liddle. She lowered herself to the water, observing the sight of her reflection.
“You look pretty.”
She smiled immediately, and her hand reached up to touch the flower, then to fluff her hair up. “Thank you. So do you.”
When the tally marks you’d etched into the cup Linda had given you marked nineteen days since the crash, she made the suggestion that you go with her to explore the island a little. “What do you say we take a walk? Leg’s getting so much better–it healed really well, actually. We should keep rehabbing it. A little bit of a harder hike than the walk you took the other day.”
You trailed after her. “Where are we going?”
She smiled a little crookedly. “Surprise.”
The first stretch of the trek was nothing atypical, more forest floor and plants that she pointed out to you. At one point, a dragonfly landed on the end of your sleeve. It was a bright blood-red in color and rested for only a moment before flying away again.
Before long, however, you came to a mountain.
“We’re not going up that, are we?”
“Well… not if you don’t want to.”
“If I fall off of a cliff and die, I’m haunting you.”
“You’re not going to die, don’t be silly.”
“You’ll be stuck on this island with my ghost and a bunch of coconut trees.”
“I’ll have good company, then. I don’t see a problem.”
The first portion of the trail was, surprisingly, not as treacherous as you’d imagined. It took an hour or two to reach the spot that Linda had described from the beginning as “the tricky bit.” “Be careful here, okay? It’s a big gap.”
Looking down was the first time you properly realized the altitude you’d hiked to. It was impossible to tell with the angle, but the beach looked like it must have easily been hundreds of feet beneath you. It was more than a little nauseating.
She extended an arm to you. “Here, steady yourself, okay?” Grabbing her hand, you carefully half-stepped, half-jumped over the gap. For a moment, your stance wavered, but she pulled you closer to her as she held onto you securely. “You’re okay, I’ve got you. I wouldn’t let you fall.” The two of you ascended for another few minutes.
Finally, you reached what seemed to be the destination of your excursion. At the top of the path, a perfect view of the ocean around you unfolded. The sea formed a panorama that continued endlessly at every horizon. “Nothing for days,” Linda affirmed. She was certainly correct. This view only seemed to reinforce your isolation. “See? That’s us, down there on the beach.”
“Little foraging tip.” Linda stopped in front of a bush covered in small, round berries. They were a bright golden orange, like the tomatoes you occasionally saw at the farmer’s market back home. “You know, you never wanna eat a berry that’s yellow, green, or white. But if you really wanna know if it’s poisonous or not?” She smashed a berry against the skin of her forearm and rubbed it. A few moments passed before her skin began to bubble up with hives. That looked… rather painful, to say the least. “If there’s a reaction? Like that? Don’t eat it.”
“Is that going to-“
“It’ll go away in a few hours, don’t worry.” She led you another few steps along the trail. “See that X-shaped rock over there?” You nodded. “That part of the island, it’s all thornbushes and poison vines. Three steps into that, and–and you’ll be scratching your skin off for a week, so, don’t wanna go that way, ever.”
Even the thought of that made your skin crawl. “No south side of the island. Noted.”
“It’s going to get late. We should head back,” she urged. And you weren’t intent on disagreeing. The mountain had beautiful views to offer, yes, but few that seemed entirely worth the risk.
A sharp pain flared through your calf, forcing you still for a second. You carefully maneuvered over to the rocks beside you, finding a ledge suitable for rest and letting her pass you. “You keep going if you want, I’ll catch up; I just need to rest for a minute.”
“Yeah, take your time,” she agreed. “Big trek do-”
A scream. The ground beneath her feet gave way as she smoothly fell off the path entirely.
“Linda!”
You urgently reached out to her as you dove against the ground in the hopes that maybe, somehow, her body wasn’t already decorating the shore.
Miraculously, Linda had taken hold of a root. She’d nearly fallen, but not quite. You needed to help, somehow.
“Grab my hand!” And she did, a stream of panicked sounds still escaping her.
With all your strength, you tried vainly to pull her up, but it seemed impossible for a moment. Luckily, she had enough strength of her own, hoisting herself up. With a final roll of your body, the two of you collapsed back onto the ledge, her on top of you and both of you panting.
Without thinking of it, you ran a hand over her quickly. You squeezed her, reassuring yourself that she was here, in one piece, unharmed. She didn’t protest, so you decided after a moment that she was fine.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and—god, her breath tickled your cheek. Her body lay flush against yours, and from this close, every line in her skin, every fleck in her eyes, the angles of her jaw, were visible in a way they never had been before. You were grateful that the exertion of rescuing her gave you a reasonable excuse for your heart currently trying to hammer its way out of your chest.
“I owe you. A lot, actually.” And I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you now. To dispel this adrenaline that had overcome you felt vital. “Can you also promise that no more surprises will involve dangerously climbing the side of a mountain, ever? In fact, can we maybe never go here again?”
“I promise.”
“Look what I found!”
“That’s a lot of very unripe bananas.”
“Not for long!” She knelt down in front of the fire, placing two of the bananas over the flames. “Give mother nature a little kickstart.” Her coconut chopsticks stirred the fruit steadily. “The heat turns the starch to sugar.” She pulled the banana, now covered with a layer of ash, from the flames and placed it in a coconut bowl, passing it to you with a look of anticipation. “Try one now.”
“Oh, my god.” Maybe it was the lack of manufactured food speaking to you, but this was one of the sweetest things that you could remember eating for ages. “Oh, it’s incredible.”
“Oh, this is nothing. You ever heard of pruno?” You shook your head. She grinned. “It’s what inmates use to get drunk. It’s also known as toilet wine.”
“You’re going to make toilet wine?” You couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“I already have. Been working on it for a few days,” she admitted between bites of banana. “Wanna get drunk?”
“Fuck yeah.”
A few bamboo “glasses” of wine later, a sort of comfort had settled over you and, you felt certain, over Linda. You sat around the fire together, close together on the log you used as a bench. Your thoughts felt a little sluggish. You took another sip of the wine. It was amazing, as good as any wine you’d ever tasted at home. The fact that it had been brewed on an island in the middle of nowhere made little sense, and you tried to think about how this could be possible, but your curiosities outran your working mind for the moment. “It’s so good.”
“Thank you, sweetie.”
You did a double take. “D’you you call me sweetie? Like your bird?”
“I… yes, but… sorry. Talk to her a lot. I’m used to it, I guess.”
“‘S okay. It happens. I don’t mind.” And you didn’t, really. It was probably the wine talking… but you were on an island in the middle of nowhere with a beautiful woman who you, decidedly, had become a little enamoured with. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if things ended up taking a turn.
“You know,” she began, “I didn’t ever understand why you started your career as Donovan’s assistant. Things really were very… uncertain. I guess I just want to know why you stuck around. That place drains you.”
“The idea of getting the position was important to me. It paid decently, but being an executive assistant was a title. My family… they always made it seem like I was behind. I wasn’t married, y’know. I needed to make a living for myself. It’s such a stupid thing now, but it felt so important to prove them wrong.”
Linda seemed particularly displeased by this story. She squinted as she stared into the fire. “No one should ever be trying to push a woman into marriage. So many… scummy people out there. My husband being one of them.”
Your stomach dropped. Husband? She’s been married this whole time? She didn’t bring that up? Your earlier thinking immediately felt fanciful, naive. “You’re… married?”
“I was. Yeah, ten years.” You mentally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Divorced? I mean, for the best, it sounds like.”
“No, he died.” Yikes. Okay, now you felt like a terrible person for having celebrated.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, don’t be. He was not very nice.” Relief again. “Yeah. I just… I don’t think he knew how to love.”
“Did you ever think about leaving him?”
“Oh, yeah. Every night. For years. Just kept hoping he’d change and go back to how it was in the beginning. You know, you just, you lie to yourself,” she slurred, “because you don’t want to be alone.” And that was a situation you were all too familiar with. Even not having been exactly in her shoes, you had watched so many women close to you throw away their chances for a better future for the sake of a man who didn’t care for them at all.
“How’d he die?”
“Car accident.” Her expression grew tense, and it was a moment before the rest followed. “He was a drinker, and uh, I’d always hide his keys when he got really, really drunk. And one night… Well, that night… We had a big fight, and he did some things he shouldn’t have. Awful things. Even for him. And he had this full head of steam, was looking for those keys.” Solemn, she punctuated her sentences with hand movements. “So I took ‘em out of my purse. Put ‘em on the table. Let him go. Poured him his last drink.”
Suddenly, it was perhaps a little more obvious why this was a story she was hesitant to share. She looked close to tears, almost, and the first glance would make it obvious that she still felt guilt over this, over leaving that horrible man to his own fate. “I can’t believe I told you that.” She laughed nervously, her gaze redirecting to the fire. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
Anything a man could do that would make Linda Liddle of all people finally have enough of him, to let him destroy himself after ten years… you couldn’t really imagine that he was a person very worth missing, nor whose death one should hold any guilt over. “Linda… you’re still not responsible for that.” The conversation had grown heavy, but you felt sure of this. “It’s not like you were the one who chose to drive when it was unsafe. You can’t save people from what they’re going to do to themselves. You can’t save people. That isn’t your responsibility.”
She leaned over, resting her head on your shoulder. It didn’t elicit nervousness the way it should have. It felt natural, warm. “You really think so?”
“I do.”
“Well, I kinda saved you, didn’t I?”
Your hand wrapped around her waist, a confidence aided by the buzz cloaking your brain. “You definitely did.” She answered with a pleased hum as she rested her head closer to the crook of your neck.
“You know what? I don’t think we should ever leave this place.”
“I think you’re drunk.”
“I think… you’re right.” She started laughing, which was infectious, and before long, both of you had dissolved into a fit of laughter, any seriousness in the moment melting away entirely.
The squall had come out of nowhere, pulling a cloak over the sky. Rain pummeled you, impossibly heavy, as wind shook the trees, tossed tools every which way. Linda grabbed a palm frond and handed it to you, forced to yell to make herself heard. “Here, cover the fire!”
But as the wind picked up, it became evident that this was a futile effort. She tossed the leaves aside. “We gotta get off this beach.”
You looked up then, just in time to watch as a coconut tree began to fall straight towards you. You braced yourself for impact, horrified. But the only impact came from the side as Linda tossed herself at you. Both of you collapsed against the ground in a heap, now spattered with mud but–very notably–not crushed.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes! Thank you!”
She glanced at the ocean, and you noticed lightning in the distance, a disastrous sign when surrounded by trees and open space. “We gotta go. Come on.” She grabbed your hand, tugging you urgently through the forest. The rain soaked through your clothes, obscured your view, and you couldn’t even begin to guess where she was trying to take you. Before long, however, you reached a cave, and Linda urged you inside. “In here.” The entrance widened and deepened into a shallow cave which, regardless, offered a reprieve from the storm. “Okay, watch your step. It gets real low here, so, be careful.”
“Okay. This’ll be good till it passes.”
“It’s fucking freezing in here.” The cave was relentlessly cold, colder than the windiest nights so far had been.
“Here, take that off. Take it off. It’ll help.” You began to tug off your clothing. It had been soaked and was already leading you to shiver feverishly. Linda did the same, forming a pile from your discarded garments. But the water had already pulled the heat far from you both. An idea crept to your mind, one that was doubtlessly a little bold but, you hoped, would alleviate your predicament.
After a moment of building up your nerve, you moved closer to her. “Body heat?” It came out as an excuse, an admission of guilt, despite being a legitimate reason.
“Yeah, that’s smart.” The perfume of the ocean enveloped you both as you pressed yourself against her. She nestled herself against you without a word, as if this were natural and you had done it dozens of times.
After a few moments, the shivering that had overtaken your body seemed to calm down a little. Although there was always a possibility she had only agreed for the sake of survival, the intimacy of the moment didn’t seem any less significant to you. You fell asleep enveloped with a feeling of peace.
The next morning, you awoke in the cave as Linda returned to it, your body respectfully draped with Linda’s suit jacket and your own clothing. “Good morning, sleepyhead.” Her voice had a little less of its usual enthusiasm.
“What’s wrong?”
“I went and scouted the beach. The camp is all… washed away.” You rose to stand beside her as she continued. “Probably pretty stupid of me to build so close to the shore. At least we still have the tools.”
“Linda, literally nothing that you’ve done has been stupid,” you argued. This seemed to get her out of her head a little. “No one stupid could ever have gotten us this far. Besides, we can rebuild. I mean, my leg’s really basically healed. I can help this time, right?”
She nodded, a little less gloomy. “I’d like that.”
A few days later, the two of you had established a new base on the grass beyond the beach. You’d been wanting to talk to her honestly, to ask her something, but it hadn’t exactly felt right until just now.
“Linda… I wanted to thank you.”
She turned to you curiously. “For?”
“Just… all the things you taught me out here. Everything you’ve done for me. In case they find us here, or in case this comes to an end. I want you to know that this time here, for me, it wasn’t wasted.” And you meant it.
“Yeah. I feel the same way.” Her tone softened as she paused her efforts, setting the palm fronds she’d been handling aside. “You know, there’s no one I would rather have been stuck with, I don’t think.”
“Agreed. You know… could I make you dinner? Tomorrow night? I just… I’d like to be able to do something for you for a change of pace.”
She smiled, her hand toying with her hair. “Well, that would be nice.”
It had turned out that assembling a meal through foraging and fishing while on an island trying to impress someone wasn’t such a simple task.
You had walked around the perimeter of the shore to find materials. Gathering the herbs to make the garnish and season the dinner had been simple. Spearing the fish, however, was a frustrating effort. You’d missed the first one a number of times before stabbing it crookedly, and the second seemed to deliberately avoid your spear as if to taunt you and waste your time until you intercepted it. Skinning them and removing the bones afterward was equally unpleasant. All in all, it gave you a renewed appreciation for Linda’s efforts. Luckily, as the fish smoked, you were able to prepare some berries that you’d found earlier. Before cooking with them, you remembered Linda’s advice and split one open, carefully rubbing it against your skin. Nothing happened, so you created a sauce, something like a salsa–a very minimalistic one, anyway–adding some of the herbs and drizzling it over the fish. Finally, you brought the completed dishes and two glasses of water back to the fire where Linda sat, waiting for you.
“Good evening, madam.” Linda, thankfully, seemed instantly amused at your over-the-top formality. She had a flower in her hair, much like the one you’d given to her all those weeks ago. Her shirt was slightly unbuttoned, and–goodness, she was beautiful. It nearly distracted you from your bit, but luckily, you recovered. “Here we have a pair of sea bass and a red berry salsa, garnished with herbs and all prepared fresh here in our scratch kitchen. You look absolutely radiant.”
“Thank you.” She admired the presentation of the fish, reaching down and selecting a piece with her bamboo chopsticks. As she tasted it, you had a chance to straighten up the area a little, which you did for the next few moments before sitting down.
You reached to take a piece from your own plate, but urgently, Linda shook her head. She coughed a little.
“Don’t eat that!”
You gave her a confused look. She looked… a bit disoriented, in all honesty. “Linda, are you all right?”
It took her a moment to formulate her sentence. Her words were composed of a mix of slurs and stutters, nothing like her usual confidence. “I think maybe–I just–what kind of berries were those? Where’d you find them?”
“They were little red ones. I found them over on the north side of the island.”
“I don’t feel right. Don’t… eat those.”
Panic immediately shot through you. “They’re poisonous? Is that what you think? Are you going to be all right?”
She raised her hand. “I only took… mm… little bite. ‘M not going to die or anything. I just need to…”
She suddenly started to sway. You immediately moved closer and reached out an arm, catching her and easing her to a seated position. “Sweetie, c’you get me some water?”
You immediately rushed over and grabbed her glass, which you’d already filled to set the table for dinner earlier. You held it to her lips, much the same way she had done with a coconut with you in the first place all those weeks ago. The drink seemed to soothe her for a minute, but then she tilted her head to the side, seeming to gag. Her appearance at the moment was frightening–as beautiful as ever, but pale, fragile. You kept a hand around her to steady her and used the other to pull her hair back out of the way as she began to vomit.
“Linda, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know, they weren’t yellow, they were red, they didn’t even have a reaction against my skin.” Guilt overwhelmed you. She could say she was going to be all right all she wanted, but what if this was worse than she thought? What if she has some sort of terrible health issue after this? Can poison paralyze you? What if she dies? I did this to her.
She continued to throw up for another moment before replying weakly. “Sweetie, you didn’t know–can you help me down? I really think… mm… need to lay down.” You helped ease her over to the cot where she liked to lay and steadied her on it. Then you rushed over and brought more water, which she sipped before another pained sentence. “‘M not going to die. It takes a lotta berries to be able to kill a person. Just lemme… get some rest.”
“Can I stay here?” It would be completely understandable if she were angry with you, but the thought of not being able to make sure she was alright only exacerbated your panic. You didn’t want her condition to worsen when you weren’t there to see it. She nodded as she closed her eyes.
After a moment of careful maneuvering, you positioned the two of you so that her head lay on your lap. “Is this okay?” She nodded again. Gently, you carded your fingers through her hair. If there was nothing else you could do, at least you could stay with her until you saw what would happen. You were still panicking.
A few hours passed as Linda had settled into a deep sleep, perfectly still. You were glad to see that she could get some rest, at least, but you still found yourself checking her pulse with embarrassing frequency, feeling for the rise of her and fall of her breath. The rhythms reassured you each time. They didn’t seem too slow, too fast, too thready.
After a few hours, she began to stir again. She opened her eyes slowly, still looking a little dazed. “Did you really not move all this time?”
“I figured staying was kind of the least I could do if I managed to poison you.”
“Even I didn’t know about the berries you were describing. You had no way to have known that from me, and you followed my advice. Either way, I’m not dead… obviously… so it isn’t… the worst thing that could have happened.” She groaned. “My stomach still really does hurt, though. Maybe from now on, either let me handle dinner, or double check with me first before you try foraging?” You laughed a little, just relieved beyond measure that some of the color had returned to her skin.
“That sounds like a good idea to me.” Guilt persisted, though. “I’m sorry that I ruined our night. I really wanted to do something nice for you.”
“You’ve always helped me as much as you could, and you’ve always kept me company. You’ve listened to me more than anyone ever has. You’ve been nicer to me than you think. You’ve taken care of me… even if you kind of poisoned me, too.”
“But… you know what I mean. I wanted to do something nice for you intentionally. Listen… Linda, if we ever get out of here, you need to let me take you somewhere nice for dinner. It’s not like I could ever repay you for all of this, not really, but I’d still like to do it.”
“I think that would be lovely.” She shivered a little–a symptom of the poison, or a reaction to the temperature?
“If you’re cold, I could move you closer to the fire.”
“No, it’s okay. You can lay down here too, maybe–I mean, if that isn’t weird for you. I like this better.”
A/N: Endings will be out soon, and I'm sorry that it didn't happen this weekend after all. Apologies, life got busy, but I love Linda and have really been wanting to update this fic--this was on AO3 already, but thank you @peggyharkness for the unintentional reminder to update here, too! :)
SEND HELP WILL BE OPEN TO STREAM DIGITAL STARTING TOMORROW! I will have to use that for motivation, perhaps
You’d always been fascinated by the night sky. Constellations, of course, rarely actually looked like the pictures they were named for, but it had been a pastime of yours to learn some of them in your spare time. Amateur astronomy, after all, was a cheap hobby. The sky was always free and available. And who could look up at the open space above them without feeling a sense of wonder, of being a part of something larger than oneself?
Here on the island, stargazing had become almost a habit. After all, it was much harder to work at night, and it only felt natural to turn to the familiar comfort of laying on your back and admiring the cosmos above you. A few times, what were distinctly planes had passed by overhead, their red lights blinking such an incredible distance away that they could have been mistaken for meteors or shooting stars if not for the color. It was a bizarre thing to remember that a little over a month ago, the two of you had been in one of them, bound for a business trip. In the storm that had destroyed your shelter on the beach, you had lost your beloved tally-marked cup. At the time, it had bookmarked thirty-one days on the island, a full month. But that had been… a week and a half ago now? Two weeks, maybe? You had both been so absorbed with the task of rebuilding the camp that for just a little bit, keeping track of the days had fallen to the wayside. By the time you remembered, it was too late to resume; you already had no idea how many days it had been. You weren’t so sure that it mattered anymore.
The life that you'd lived felt so distant from you now. You hadn't had access to running water, hadn't been able to talk to any of the people who loved you in over a month at least. You missed your friends, missed sleeping on a real bed with a pillow and sheets.
At the same time, however, certain things about the island had come to feel familiar. Waking up with the sun, basking in its warmth on cooler days and shying from it on hotter ones; not only paying attention to, but leaning into the rhythms of the weather and the tide; spending nearly all of your time with the person who had saved you and who, as you were absorbed in your thoughts, was walking over towards you.
Linda eased herself onto the ground beside you, mirroring your movements as she, too, gazed up at the sky. This closeness between you two was another thing that had become almost a habit.
“I really have to be honest with you,” Linda stated, “I don’t know too much about the night sky, except for how to tell the direction by it.”
"Really? That's a little surprising. You know so much about everything."
"No, really. I mean, it's beautiful, but I never really looked into it."
“I couldn’t tell you anything that’s useful for survival, like how to navigate by the stars or anything—that’s probably more what I guess you would want to know,” you mused, “but I know a ton of random facts.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” you responded, “you know all of those dark patches on the moon?” She nodded. “Those are called maria, named after the Latin word for seas. Back in the seventeenth century, when they were named, astronomers at the time did think that they were seas. Now we know, of course, that there isn’t water on the moon, and those are actually just basins, but the names stuck. Each mare–that’s the singular name–has its own name; when you translate them, it's names like the Serpent Sea, the Sea of Serenity, the Sea of Cleverness; they’re all super over the top like that."
"I kind of like that. It's fun."
"And the gravitational pull of the moon is the reason that we have seasons the way that we do. It keeps the tilt of Earth's axis stable, so without it, seasons would be entirely unpredictable."
"I really like having you be the one to teach me things for a change." You couldn't help but agree—and not just because you liked the way her eyes softened as she turned a little to listen to you. But the thought of the change of seasons reminded you of something that you'd been worried about, a nagging thought that had begun to eat away at every relaxed moment and which you'd carefully considered voicing.
"It's been getting much rainier here," you pointed out. "We're right at the start of monsoon season, aren't we? It's only going to get worse. Any shelters we make are probably going to be destroyed again pretty soon. I'm just worried about what will happen to this second camp we've made. Should we start trying to find a way off the island?"
”I don't think we need to worry about that. We could always take shelter in the cave," Linda answered, too quickly. She didn't seem to take your concern too seriously, which felt a little unfair—it was a legitimate worry.
"But every time we have to do that, all of the progress we've made resets. Or what if there's a typhoon? We'd have nowhere to take shelter. We could end up dead." She seemed to go quiet for the time being, and this made you feel certain that you had said the wrong thing. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be talking about this as if you're somehow able to fix it. I guess I'm just afraid."
"I get why you're nervous. But we're going to be okay, and you don't have to be sorry," she assured you, voice as confident as always. You reached out, feeling for her hand atop the sand underneath and between you two.
"Thank you."
She squeezed your hand in turn. "Always. We'll figure this out together, whatever happens."
A few small things had started to seem suspicious to you as this unique and peculiar relationship, devoid of any label but decidedly there, between the two of you persisted.
The first time that you realized something might be awry was when Linda brought back a pear for you when you had commented that you were craving some fruit. There had been a pear tree growing just down the street from your apartment. If a pear tree could grow so comfortably in a temperate climate, then also finding one in a tropical climate didn't seem reasonable.
But that wasn't suspicious in and of itself, perhaps. Maybe there were other varieties of pears that could grow in warmer regions. You weren't a pear expert. What was suspicious was Linda's repeated insistence that you never journey to the south side of the island. You weren't stupid, after all; the first four reminders should have been enough. At a certain point, it quite distinctly felt as if she was trying to keep you from something. She also made quite a few trips alone, and considering it would be safer to travel together—and she enjoyed doing so anyway, which she always made a point of saying—you began to wonder why she still guarded her solitude so staunchly.
So one night, you waited for Linda to fall asleep. Then you took a torch lit from the fire and, very cautiously, crept away, using the moon, which by now was half-full, as your guide.
At first, it didn't feel quite right to go on this little expedition behind Linda's back. Some part of you felt certain that if Linda were hiding something from you, there had to be a reason. But no possibility that you had considered made any sense. She could easily tell you about any sort of hazard if that were the danger. And you were just going to see what she was trying to hide from you, that was all. You would be back to camp before she would wake up, and no harm would be done. This would worry her, and that was the last thing you wanted to do. You just wanted the truth.
You took the shortcut through the forest rather than travelling the longer trail that circled the mountain. It would afford you valuable time so that you could still possibly get back to the beach before dawn.
At first, nothing about the south side of the island seemed suspicious. Notably, the foliage was no different than it was on any other part of the island. No vines choked their way around the coconut trees along the beach or around the trunks of the thicker trees in the jungle. There were berry bushes, sure, but none of them were so thick as to prevent your safe journey around them. In fact, the deeper you got into the south side of the island, the sparser the vegetation became. It wasn't to say that it wasn't still clearly part of the tropical island surrounding it, but it reminded you more of a well-kept park than true wilderness. You wondered if this was what she had been hiding. Have you two been stranded on some sort of wildlife range or private island? That would be weird, but why should she hide it from you?
It wasn't until you turned the corner around a particular thicket that you suddenly became aware of the reality.
A house jutted out against the rocks—here, in the middle of nowhere, where you'd been hiding for weeks.
The house's boxy structure and harsh shapes created a stark contrast with the tropical environment surrounding it. The lights inside were on. You circled around it once, slowly, looking for signs of life. You didn't see any people or hear any activity, nor any boats in the surrounding water that would have been able to take passengers to it. It must have been uninhabited, but then why were the lights on? You felt in a stupor, too shocked by the development to decide what to do about it.
Carefully, you walked up the stairs leading to the giant glass doors which created an entryway to the residence. You peered inside through a window and saw the heads of animals mounted on the walls, pop-art paintings, and expensive design choices decorating every aspect of the house. Whoever owned this home was evidently wealthy. More curiously, you noted that one of the glass doors was already open a crack. It took a moment of weighing your options in your head before you decided to enter. If anyone was home, you reasoned, you could claim that you had been seeking help. You could easily avoid any allegations of breaking in.
As you cautiously stepped over the threshold to enter the house, a variety of emotions and thoughts swirled in your head. Linda had known about this. There was no way that she hadn't. And she had kept it from you, had hidden it from you intentionally. Why would she do such a thing? What reason did she have for not wanting you to know that there had been other people on the island? Nothing that you could think of made any sense.
You walked over to the island in the kitchen, which was topped with a bowl of fruit that, sure enough, contained oranges, apples, and pears. Opening the refrigerator revealed bottles of water, wine—the wine. Of course she didn't brew that herself, no wonder it tasted so artisan—and even fish that had been prepared, rather recently, by the looks of it.
But the sound of footsteps slowed you to a halt.
From behind you, in that ever-cheery voice which normally calmed you but, at present, seemed to freeze your blood to ice, the most familiar voice in the world to you chimed in. "Sweetie… you found the house, I see."
You whipped around to see Linda already standing in the doorway you'd entered through, the silhouette of her body blocking the space and highlighted by the light of the quarter moon behind her. The sight of the knife on her waist, though you felt certain she would never use it on you—although what could you possibly pretend you knew about her, now that you knew she'd deceived you all this time?—sent a chill down your spine, and you fell still. "How did you even get here?" You had left after she was asleep. There was no way you wouldn't have had a head start. She must have heard you and followed behind. It was an eerie thought.
"It's a lot easier to navigate when you know where you're going. I knew you would get curious eventually," Linda purred, "but I really hoped that you would just listen to me, Sweetie. I wanted what was best for you. But I left the door open for you, just in case."
Indignation overtook you. "To keep me here is what's best for me? How could you decide that?" A horrible possibility took hold of your mind. "Are you trying to kill me? Is that what this is? You haven't revealed where we really were because you were going to try to be the only one to leave? Like this was some sick episode of Survivor?"
Her eyes widened, and she crossed the space to meet you, which led you to back up until you hit the counter.
I would never hurt you. How could you ever think that I would hurt you? She reached to the holster at her waist. Maybe—okay, this made her deeply nervous, but she would take a gamble that, even if you were furious with her, it wouldn't be enough to make you want to stab her. Besides, if worst came to worst, she still knew where in this house she could run to and where she could hide. She removed the knife and carefully handed it over to you, allowing you to grasp the handle. She decided to do her best to pacify you. She needed you to understand. She needed you. "I'm not going to do a thing to you, I promise. I would never hurt you."
You took the knife for only a moment before tossing it far out of both of your reach; it clattered against the tiles in the adjoining living room, a unique sort of music. A bit of relief, but she couldn't get too comfortable yet. She would need to navigate this delicately. This situation looked horrible; she knew that.
"I need to be honest with you," she began, "because I haven't done that nearly enough, and that isn't what you deserve." You nodded, expression unreadable but, at least, not outright hostile.
"I found this place within the first few weeks of our being here. So that means – yes, I'm sorry, I know, but we could have been rescued quite some time ago."
You breathed in deeply, and she quickly rushed to ease your anger. "And I promise, if I had any reason to believe that being here would hurt you, if I thought you were in any danger, I would have. But I didn't need to, because I knew that I could take care of you. Of us. I knew that I could keep you safe here, away from everyone else. And all of this was such a perfect opportunity for us to get closer. I'd always wanted to do that, long before we even got here. Don't you think there's a reason that, out of everyone on that plane, we were the only two that survived? No one else was meant to. Just us. Maybe it was written in the stars."
"We could have gotten closer back at home," you argued, "not thousands of miles overseas, in the middle of nowhere, with me thinking that at any given time, we could just die and never be rescued or found." Guilt tugged at her stomach. You did have a point. She should have done better to make sure that you were okay, to make sure that you were taking this well. You must have been so afraid.
"I know it isn't going to seem like the truth to you right now. And I promise, if you want to go home, then we can go home. I know the schedule of the boats that come here—this house has caregivers. It should be in about a week or so that the next one will come. And I know this was wrong of me to do. I'm sorry. I understand if you don't want anything to do with me now. But please believe me, I was never trying to hurt you. I love you, I really do."
It was beyond just that, really. You were the most important person in the world to her, the only person she had felt truly appreciated by or cared for in years. She couldn't bear the thought of this wonderful bond between the two of you being dissolved. Please don't hate me. I don't think I could take that.
A part of you still felt betrayed and kept in the dark by her dishonesty. But what she was saying now felt like the truth, or at least what she genuinely believed to be true. After all, had she really just wanted to kill you, she'd had more than enough opportunity to do so. You were alone on an island, isolated, and she had a weapon at all times, whereas you never had one. She had intimate knowledge of which berries on the island were poisonous and cooked for you every night, but you'd never had so much as indigestion. She was more than capable of hurting you, but she never had.
And you couldn't deny that a part of you truly did feel elated at the thought that she cared enough about you to do something like this. Sure, it was probably a result of the fact that the island had worn away at your psyche, but that was beside the point. Her saving you and taking care of you hadn't simply been because of her good nature as a person, although certainly that was a part of it too. She cared about you, you specifically, and the way that she was talking now made it feel impossible that she didn't feel at least a fraction of the way you had come to feel about her. And you cared about her, too; you really did, even in spite of all of this.
"If you want to leave, please just tell me that," Linda pleaded. "I promise I'm not going to keep you here if you don't want to be. But hasn't this been so good? Things are so peaceful here. It's just us. None of the nonsense of corporate life. No one to belittle us. No need to worry about money or careers. We only have to worry about setting up shelter and getting food. Speaking of which—with the fridge here, we can preserve anything we need to. We won't have to worry about the seasons or things ever being scarce. What even is there for us to go back to? At least for me, I know that there's nothing. It's just you."
The possibilities before you rolled around your head like marbles. You could return home, return to the life you had always known. It had been imperfect, as every life was, but it had been yours—although things would be different now. You wouldn't be returning as just an office worker. You would be returning as a survivor of a terrible tragedy. Maybe that could actually be to your benefit. It could mean more opportunities. But it would also almost definitely mean that your peace would never be protected in the same way it had been again. You knew that people would have questions, that there would likely be a lot to solve when it came to returning to your job and your apartment. A hassle would be inevitable.
On the other hand, staying on the island with Linda provided its own challenges. As you had worried prior, you would still be somewhat at the mercy of the weather and of any passing storm. Even if, in an emergency, the two of you decided to take shelter in the house, it wasn't necessarily safe from a typhoon either. If one of the two of you had a medical emergency, there may be no way to get help in time. It would quite certainly involve taking a risk. But you could live out your days—at least for the moment—surrounded by sunshine and this tropical island that had become so familiar to you that it truly was a home now, as much as any other place had ever been. And you could do all of it with her here by your side, with someone who you knew loved you. That was something so rare to find anywhere. You could be free of the stress of every artificial aspect of human society forever, or at least for the foreseeable future.
As you considered all of these things, Linda gazed at you with an expression that appeared equal parts wary and hopeful. You knew that, whatever choice you made, you would need to be thoughtful about it.
A/N: I decided to do something a little different with this chapter and include a different perspective. This one is somewhat short, because I've been brainstorming the ending (not to mention busy with midterms.) I finally decided that I want to make it an interactive one. :) One ending will involve staying on the island with Linda... at least for the meantime... and one involves returning with her to the mainland. If you guys have any other endings you'd like to see, let me know, and I'll write them! Again, you'll be able to choose your ending. <3
The chapter after this, which hopefully will come out tomorrow or Thursday, will be the penultimate one. The endings will be posted this weekend!
I hope that you're having a lovely day, as always!
The report would have taken anyone else a week to complete at absolute best. There were months' worth of poorly recorded data to analyze, and all of it had to be organized into a document that the executives would understand–because, as everyone knew, no one in upper management actually understood much of the data they were asking for. It would have been an impossible ask to have the report requested on Monday and finished for the Thursday briefing, at least for anyone else. Linda, however, knew that she could accomplish it.
Donovan had given her the data with a somewhat pitying air, probably expecting that she would balk under the work and ask for someone else to help her complete the project. But she had, and would, do no such thing. Did she enjoy working with other people? Of course! But she wasn’t going to be made to feel like she needed to, or like her own work wasn’t enough. If there was one quality she made a point of exemplifying, it was being hardworking. So Linda sat at her desk, furiously working to compile the report.
A sound distracted her, however. River, sitting in the cubicle across from her, was making conversation with someone, showing them around. Linda was the most experienced person in the section by far, so of course, she supposed it was no wonder they hadn’t asked her to train this new person. She had other tasks that were more vital to the company, although she could have been more than capable to handle a trainee, but that wasn’t something to worry about now. Linda had promised herself that she would focus on this project, that she wouldn’t chat with any of the assistants sitting around her. She had work to do, and she needed to devote her full attention. But this was a new voice, and, well, she couldn’t just leave someone new to show up and feel unwelcome. What if they felt like she was ignoring them, like she didn’t like them? That would be rude, and Linda was never rude. She pulled her headphones out and swiveled her chair to face the pair of them.
“Got a new person to join us here in the office, I see?”
River’s mouth pressed into a thin line, perhaps embarrassed at having been interrupted–but there was no need! She was getting paid for the time it took to train anyway, Linda had been here long enough to know how it worked. “I was just showing her the-”
“Linda Liddle!” She held out her hand with a broad smile to the new hire.
The woman before her shook her hand, looking amused. “It’s nice to meet you. I like your sweater.” As soon as she introduced herself, however, River urgently cut her off, beginning to tug her in the opposite direction. “We have more things to get to. Come on, I’ll show you the breakroom. I’m sorry. That’s Linda Liddle. She’s been here forever, and she…”
Linda couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation (despite her attempts to do so). There was something about this new woman that she couldn’t pinpoint. She seemed so approachable. She had a good fashion sense. Her expression seemed to illuminate the space it filled. Linda was normally quite good at rationalizing, but none of these things were quite what intrigued her. It took a few hours of mostly focusing on the project at hand–but with these thoughts in her periphery–to realize what was going on.
Ever since a puppy crush in her school days, Linda had a vague awareness that, on occasion, she could be as attracted to women as she was to men. There was nothing wrong with such a thing, of course-love was love, and she had never been one to support inequality. However, just as she carefully kept the exact circumstances of Bill’s death to herself, she felt that aspect of her identity too private to ever divulge–including, of course, to Bill, who when alive had been quite vocal as time went by about his firm belief that marriage should be “between a man and a woman, because it was sacred”. A bit ironic considering he didn’t know how to stop beating me, she thought, but then stopped herself. That isn’t a productive train of thought. Don’t think about him.
She never told anyone at work anything about her personal life, anyway. They could know her as the reliable, friendly worker who could be trusted to handle anything thrown her way. And all of that was true! It just wasn’t all that there was to know about her, or even most of it.
All of these things considered, she certainly wasn’t someone, assumedly, who people in the workplace would expect to be interested in women. She hadn't really been interested in anyone, actually, for quite some time, and what was happening was unfamiliar. It nagged her in the back of her mind as she settled in for sleep.
Donovan came up to her desk the following morning. “Hey, Linda,” he greeted with the same half-smile he always did. “So… I know you mentioned that you might have that project done a little bit early. Is there a chance I could see it, maybe, y’know, look at your numbers a bit, just to double check? Not that I don’t trust your work, I just want to familiarize myself.”
“Here you go.” She handed the report over. "And I'll be there when you actually present it, so if there are any other questions you have, I can handle 'em."
"You're amazing." Donovan smiled, looking over the pages. "Thank you."
“That new woman who just got hired,” she questioned, “who is she? Or, I mean, what’s her position?”
Donovan gave her a curious look. “She’s my assistant, or she’s going to be. Why, what’s wrong?” Oh, so he was already having trouble handling the workload. That was no surprise, she supposed; he'd already started to fall a little behind, hence why he'd been having to offload some of his work to Linda and the other managers. She felt a little sorry for you, then, as she knew the hell you'd be in for working under him.
Over the next few weeks, the things that Linda heard about you were deeply impressive. Donovan had even stopped asking Linda to handle so much of the work that, really, was his job—so now, perhaps, was yours too. He'd had a number of assistants quit within weeks or even days because of the excessive amount of work he tended to dump on them. But from everything she'd heard, you'd easily been able to handle the workload. You must have been intelligent. And she'd chatted with you a few times offhandedly when she managed to get a chance; you were always so kind to her, so charming with everyone, without letting anyone walk over you. It only led the feelings she'd begun to experience to spiral further. You weren't friends, per se, but you were surely acquaintances, and she felt confident that she could get closer to you if the situation should allow.
“I told you, Sweetie,” Linda narrated, chopping pieces of cucumber and romaine lettuce before adding them into her salad bowl, “I really can’t get a read on her. And it’s not like I haven’t been trying, if you know what I mean.” She began to narrate her unfortunate failure from earlier in the day.
She had been walking by your desk, trying to make it seem like accidental wandering and not the very purposeful diversion around her way from the breakroom that it was. But Quinn had already been there, leaning against your desk, entirely too close and not the slightest bit respecting of your personal space. He had the posture of a rooster approaching a hen, strutting and entirely too confident.
“So,” he’d asked, “are you free Saturday? There’s this Italian place nearby, and, well, you said you like Italian food. We should check it out.”
Immediately, a sense of indignation had overtaken Linda. You hadn’t mentioned liking Italian food, you said that you liked Greek food. And she had already picked out a Greek restaurant to suggest that you two could visit on the weekend, one that happened to be right near a used bookstore, since you loved reading fiction and they had a wonderful collection. It would just be a way to hang out as friends, to get to know each other, and if it happened to lead to something more, well, all the better. Quinn had no such wonderful plan, because he hadn’t paid a bit of attention to you. And now, her Saturday plans with you, which hadn’t been solidified but which she’d finally been prepared to invite you to after practicing with Sweetie so many times, were going to be ruined, because you were going to be going on a date with this man who didn’t even know you.
Except… maybe not? You didn’t look particularly enthused, actually.
“I appreciate the offer,” you had said, “but I’m already busy Saturday, I’m so sorry. I really have to weed my garden.”
Quinn immediately deflated. “Well… whatever. I’ll see if Amanda wants to go.” He’d turned on his heel and practically run away. You turned then to her, and she definitely wasn’t mistaking it, you looked quite exhausted. As soon as he was out of earshot, you turned to her, whispering in a tone that immediately made her heart flutter-you were turning to her to talk intentionally, after all, and that had to mean something. Of course, she could have been overthinking, but she would take what steps she could get.
“He’s tried to ask me to go on a date with him three times. I wish he would take the hint. I mean, it’s not like I’m trying to be mean. I just wish he’d stop asking.”
“Haha, well, you know how men are,” Linda had answered–rather smoothly, she decided later, given the situation. But she’d distracted herself from the script she’d planned to stick with, and now she was at a loss for words. And you were going to be busy Saturday. Her plans with you wouldn’t have worked out anyway. A part of her was relieved at the fact that she didn’t have to risk your rejection, but a larger part of her was devastated that her hopes had been squashed. In an attempt to save face, she hastily suggested “Well, you have a great weekend!” before grinning and rushing off, not much more gracefully than Quinn.
It wasn’t a moment or two later, mentally replaying the situation as she somewhat hid behind the wall of her own cubicle, that she realized that if you hadn’t really wanted to go on a date with Quinn, then chances were high that your being busy Saturday may have been an excuse, and besides, it was October–any garden would probably be dead for the season anyway. And if you had declined a date with Quinn–was there a chance that it was because you had eyes elsewhere? Maybe eyes for a certain manager with glasses and wavy hair? Sure, you had barely talked, but if she had been thinking of you, surely you could be thinking of her, too. Then again, what were the chances that you were into women?
Linda turned back to her computer. Maybe she was being foolish for worrying about all of this anyway. She would have her new position as vice president soon. Worrying about something as silly as a relationship wasn’t what she needed to be doing.
This was what she told herself, anyway. She tried to keep small talk with you to a minimum, tried to be exactly as friendly with you as she would anyone else without putting too much of herself into any interaction. But when, a few weeks later, a conflict with Bradley Preston meant an invitation to a business trip to Thailand—one that you'd also be attending—she couldn't deny the flutters of hope that she continued to feel.
When Linda first walked along the beach after the crash and saw your body splayed across the sand, her hands shook as she ran over to examine you. Horror pooled in her stomach as she knelt beside you, moved your waterlogged clothes aside to feel for warmth against your skin. Please don't be dead, please don't be dead. A flip to a supine position, a sternal rub, produced a groan that soothed her first worries. You were—albeit miserably, in your current state—alive. As she inspected you, blood oozed from a gash to your calf. It wasn't terribly deep, but it would certainly mean a decently lengthy healing process, which would mean you would have to depend on her…
Regardless, yes, you would have to depend on her here.
You were alive, safe. She would do what it took to keep it that way. This could be her chance to show you that the part of her that everyone at the office knew, the part that they underestimated, was irrelevant in the face of all else that she could be. She was knowledgeable here. The two of you could survive, she was sure of it. More specifically, she could make sure that you survived. And it was just you! None of those horrible men had survived to terrorize either of you or to interrupt her efforts. It was a luck that she couldn't believe.
She rushed off to the forest beyond the shore and got to work.
Part 2 of Send Help fic in which fem!reader gets stuck on the island instead of Bradley.
A/N: This chapter was written after classes and after a shift at work, it’s 2 AM here, so it’s definitely possible that I missed something in my own proofreading. If so, let me know! Anyway, I’m having so much fun with this and can’t wait to continue working on it, especially now that I’m on spring break!
Something wet and a little cool patted the side of your face.
You came back to awareness amidst perhaps the worst headache you’d ever experienced. A hangover, a migraine, nothing else would compare. You felt as if your brain had shrunk away from your skull.
There had been a horrible accident. The crash.
It might have been a nightmare, but your body certainly felt more bruised and beaten than anything sleep could possibly elicit. And the thought of opening your eyes and needing to assess the damage was horribly disagreeable. But the movement against the side of your face proved that at least someone else had survived; it was gentle and deliberate. You blinked back to awareness slowly. Looking down on you, expression softened with relief, was Linda Liddle.
“Look who decided to join the land of the living,” she teased, in much the same way a parent might tease an asocial teenager. You laughed a little, an absurd reaction which abruptly cut short as you remembered the situation. A canopy, clearly handmade, had been draped over your head to shield you. You looked around; you had been tucked under a tree, and a few items–logs, a stick sharpened to a spear, a pile of some long grass gathered in a bundle… but, notably, no other people.
“Are there any others?”
“No. I found some wreckage from the plane, but no bodies, and no one alive, either.”
A part of you, honest if nothing else, breathed a sigh of relief. Being trapped on an island with any amount of men sounded like the beginning of a horrifying cautionary tale of some sort. But a feeling of guilt quickly overtook you for the same reason. Multiple people are dead, people I’ve worked with, people who I knew. I should definitely be sadder than this. Still, the emotion that predominated was relief at your luck. In such a horrible accident, you had survived.
“It’s lucky for you that you had that life jacket on,” she mused. “You must have passed out at some point; you washed adrift with it still on.”
That was certainly true. Skill aside, swimming from… wherever the plane wrecked to this island would have been impossible, surely. Goodness, if Bradley had gotten that life jacket instead of you…
“How long was I out?”
“About a day and a half,” she answered. “I thought I lost you there for a second.”
She brought a coconut up to your mouth and tipped it. As you sipped the water inside, it occurred to you that you had perhaps never been this thirsty in your life. It soothed the soreness which had built in your throat. Then, it occurred to you to wonder how she had gotten freshwater to begin with.
“Is there a lake around here or something?”
“No, but I was able to gather some rainwater.”
This piqued your curiosity, but learning more about it wasn’t quite your priority yet. You still wanted to get your bearings. You still quite certainly felt awful. You attempted then to stand up, but you gasped as your vision flashed white and pain shot through your calf. Linda, who had temporarily moved to get another coconut’s worth of water, immediately rushed back over to you with a cautious expression.
“Don’t put weight on that. You need time to rest.”
“What happened?” You began to ask, but she interrupted you.
“It isn’t broken, don’t worry! It’s just a laceration. But you’ll definitely need to take it easy for a little bit.”
“But if we’re going to survive here, I need to be able to move around and do something. Don’t I?”
She shook her head, looking almost… amused? “I’ve really got us in a better place than you think. If you really want to do something to help,” she suggested, “you could always weave some mats that I can use to build things. That wouldn’t require you to move from your spot. But at least for a few days, I would rather you not walk on that leg. And I’m going to have to clean it up a little better at some point soon. I’d hoped that I would have clean water before you’d wake up and I’d be able to do that while you were still out. But I couldn’t do that before we had a fire, which is something I still need to work on.” The thought of having the cut washed was already making you squeamish, but you nodded. “In fact, I’ll be right back.”
“Linda,” you cut in quickly, “thank you for helping me.”
She smiled. It was an odd thing, but her expression was more vibrant, more radiant, than it ever had been to your recollection. Her movements, too, had a new confidence in them. She always was cheery, of course, but this was so clearly different. Distantly, you were astounded that someone who could be as affected by things like the earlier mocking of your coworkers—which seemed marvelously frivolous now—could also prove so calm in the face of singlehandedly ensuring two people’s survival. “It’s not like I would leave you there, don’t be silly. It’s the least that I could do. Besides, I need the company, or I’d go crazy.”
“Still, I just need you to know that I appreciate it.” And you really did. You couldn’t imagine anyone else would have gone to the same lengths to make sure that you were okay.
Given your gratitude, you felt all the more compelled to find some way to contribute. You reached for the pile of grass, grabbed a few pieces, and gingerly sat up straight, beginning to attempt to weave some of the grass together. You didn’t actually know how to make a mat, but Linda had already set off toward the trees nearby with a determined air, and to bug her with more questions seemed rude. Trial and error it is.
A half hour later or so, you had experimented with some pieces of grass until you at least determined how to make a somewhat sturdy base, and you began expanding on it. The process was far slower than you’d like, particularly because you wanted to ensure that it would be somewhat waterproof. Regardless, you were grateful to have something to do, something to keep busy, as you were convinced you otherwise may be spiraling far more over the situation at hand. As of yet, trivial concerns picked away at your attention. The food in my refrigerator is going to go bad. Will my bank account still be charged rent if I’m presumed dead? At what point will they lose patience, dump my things out, move someone else in? That’ll be such a headache to solve... You carefully avoided thinking too hard about any one subject, lest your mind stray to an acknowledgement that you may very well not make it back.
Your thoughts were interrupted as Linda shrieked with joy and began jumping up and down, overtaken with glee. Maybe it could be an obnoxious thing to most people under some circumstances, but really, you needed all the joy you could get. You turned toward her with a teasing grin. “You got the fire started, I assume?”
“YES! Yes!” She cheered enthusiastically a few more times before rushing over to you, her voice still in a shrill scream. She squeezed you for a second, rapidly, before rushing back over to the fire pit. “WE HAVE FIRE!” You then heard the sounds of furious scraping.
After a few minutes, Linda sat down beside you and held up a piece of something cooked. It looked like fish. She blew on it for a moment before handing it to you. “Careful. It’s hot. Now eat. You need to get your strength up.”
You paused before taking it to your lips. “Do you know for sure that this isn’t poisonous?” From what you were able to see where you were at, you were on some sort of tropical island. Surely, plenty of the things swimming in the ocean around you had to be full of toxins.
She looked amused once more. “I promise it isn’t. Generally, if something’s poisonous, there are ways to know.” She ripped off another piece of the fish and ate it herself. “I know… a lot more about this stuff than you’d think.” And admittedly, that was correct, so your chances couldn’t be so bad. The fish tasted well cooked, but honestly, you were so hungry that you would have eaten it virtually no matter what it tasted like.
She really did know a lot more about this stuff than you’d think, and so as you devoured the fish, you ventured to understand her. “Where did you learn how to do all of this?”
She stirred the fire with another stick she had repurposed into a poker. “Honestly, I’ve always been interested in survival. In the outdoors in general. I’d spent hours in the woods as a kid, you know, climbing trees, foraging for plants. I camp any time I can get away for a bit, and I love hiking. I’ve read so many books about nature and surviving in it. As for the rest of it… I, uh, got really into Survivor when I was a teenager. And the interest just snowballed from there, because then, it became a dream of mine to become a contestant. I always knew that I’d be way more prepared than the average person.”
“Oh, you’d survive easily. You definitely have the skills for it,” you mused. “I don’t think we would be alive otherwise. Did you ever actually, you know, audition?”
Her expression faltered then, a trace of the meekness that you’d seen a few times in the office. It quickly smoothed it over again, the corner of her mouth tugged upwards. “I made a tape, although I didn’t get a chance to send it in, but, hey, once we get back home, we’ll basically already be finalists!”
“You have a point.”
Over the course of the next few days, Linda took a number of trips out into the jungle again; during that time, you’d tend the fire and find some mind-numbing task to accomplish as your leg continued to heal. When she was back at camp, of course, she worked to explain where she’d been and what she’d learned about the island. She was kind to you, always, and patient. She taught you a number of things—what plants to look for and look out for, what wildlife lived on the island, how to assemble a shelter, how to gather rainwater, how to start your own fire (the last issue was deceptively simple and embarrassingly difficult). But it wasn’t just survival skills you learned about; Linda herself quickly became interesting to you.
Mundane facts about any person grew more interesting as their importance in your life grew. Linda’s favorite color was pale coral pink, like the color of the bra she wore when she waded out in the ocean to wash off. She loved cats, but she was allergic to them and so had never owned one. She owned a cockatiel named Sweetie whom she missed dearly, although she’d boarded her with a cousin before the trip and was sure she would be well taken care of should they be pronounced dead. 70s music was her favorite.
At night, you slept beside her under the canopy. Of course, there was a space maintained between you; you were never touching each other, nothing like that. But when wind howled too loud in the trees or when you heard the cries of an animal that you couldn’t identify, the sound of her breath beside you helped soothe your nerves and lulled you to rest.
You really did feel quite lucky to be there with her, of all people.
Linda returned to camp one day with a holster on her waist. That was new, certainly. “What do you have there?”
She brandished a knife—a kitchen knife, which seemed ridiculously out of place. “I found it on the beach.” She paused for a moment, rotating it, seeming to watch the way it shined in the sunlight, and then sat down beside you, offering it to you to inspect. You turned it over.
“That’s so odd.” And it was. What were the chances of a knife in such perfect condition washing up on shore? The metal wasn’t tarnished; the wood wasn’t rotted or worn. You passed it back to her. “Did you find it near the wreckage of the plane? Maybe it was something the flight crew had brought with them.”
Linda’s eyebrows knitted together. “Yeah, there were pieces of rubble around the spot where I found it. I guess that does make sense, doesn’t it?”
I am very open to requests for any Frankenstein, Hunger Games, Stardew Valley, Send Help, or Phantom Of The Opera characters. I do mean any. I am a Wiress self shipper, I get liking obscure characters and want to help others with obscure characters get some fics!
I love to write for female characters—but of course, I’m open to anything!
If you're reading this, I hope you have a lovely day! <3
The Hunger Games
Wiress x reader general headcanons
Frankenstein
Year of Memories—Frankenstein’s creature x reader drabble
NOT my works--Frankenstein recommendation list!
Send Help
I’m Gonna Be Your Number One (Linda Liddle x fem!reader)
