Title: Last Chance Pt. 1
Author: ficklemuse
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Dr. Jack Shepard/Boone Carlyle
Prompt: 032. Past
Word Count: 238
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: For slash_me_twice

The jungle closes in on Jack. Every tree root and vine conspires to choke the life out of him. The harder and faster he runs the more tangled up he gets.

Jack falls over an exposed tree root and when he tries to push himself up on his hands and knees he can feel a foot plant squarely in his back and push him back into the mud. Turning his head Jack can see the other man's face. The face of the one who betrayed them all. It's streaked with blood, mud and rain and twisted into such a look of evil that Jack barely recognizes him.

"Not done with you yet Jack. Not by a long ways. You took her! Where is she? Where did you put Claire? I'll find her you know. You can't stop me. You're weak." He puts extra force behind his kick to Jack's ribs.

The voice is the same. Somehow the sameness makes it worse. Hearing Charlie's voice coming out of someone who isn't the Charlie any of them knew anymore is worse than any physical pain.

Jack struggles to stand but Charlie keeps kicking Jack in the ribs until Jack can feel at least two of them break. "Charlie!"

"Charlie!"

"Charlie!"

"Charlie!"

Charlie who betrayed them to the DeGroots.

Charlie who got Kate, Sun, Michael and Eko killed all for his plane full of heroin.

Charlie lifted his hand and Jack can see a heavy rock. Just before it comes crashing down against Jack's forehead…



He wakes up.

Just like almost every night since they were rescued from the island, Jack sits up in bed covered in sweat, shaking and fighting the urge to throw up.

Title: Last Chance Pt. 2 - Little Earthquakes
Author: ficklemuse
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Dr. Jack Shepard/Boone Carlyle
Prompt: 033. Present
Word Count: 499
Rating: G
Author's Notes: For slash_me_twice
Disclaimer: I don't own 'Lost' or any of their lovely characters. All hail ABC etc.


Coming down the stairs of the farmhouse Jack's greeted by a friendly face and a wag of the tail.

"Morning Hershey." Pausing at the bottom of the step Jack gives the puppy deep scratches behind her ears and a belly rub.

Normally he wasn't much of a cat or a dog person. But Hershey had been a gift from a grateful patient and Jack couldn't say no. In the past few months he'd grown fond of the chocolate lab's company.

The life of a 'country' doctor still seemed completely foreign, but Jack was slowly learning to adapt. It came about on the spur of the moment. One minute he'd been sitting in the office of the Chief of Staff trying to angle to get his old position at the hospital back and the next minute he was tendering his official resignation and walking out of the hospital without a plan or a place to go for the first time in his life.

He'd found the house and the practice through an old medical school friend and bought it sight unseen. All he knew was Schaffer California was as far from Los Angeles in state of mind as he could get. The office in the converted granary was open four days a week. Mon-Thursday with an emergency visit every now and then whenever some dumb high school kid managed to get tangled up in some barbed wire.

He wandered into the kitchen and grabbed the carton of orange juice out of the fridge. Leaning against the counter, Jack surveyed the open kitchen/dining room/living room with satisfaction. The remodel of the farmhouse hadn't exactly been one of his priorities when he'd bought the place but his mother had been so horrified by its condition Jack used it to his advantage. In exchange for free reign in remodeling the place, Jack's mother agreed to let Jack live relatively in peace. He still visited her once a week for unbearably awkward dinners but she'd stopped lamenting that he was throwing away his future. As far as he was concerned it was a win/win situation.

After breakfast Jack pulled on his boots and started for the barn. He wanted to let the horses out and get to work mucking out the stalls before the temperature started to climb.

He pulled open the front door and came to a complete halt. Blinked. Rubbed his hands over his face and blinked again.

"Jack?"

The voice was raspy, from lack of use and the eyes behind weeks worth of beard were bleary, red rimmed. The excruciatingly thin body in front him looked as if it could barely stand much less have climbed the front porch steps.

Jack wanted to slam the door and possibly curl up in the fetal position. But instead he found himself drawing nearer. His fingers reached out reluctantly to confirm what he was seeing. Just as Jack's fingers would have reached the other's face, he collapsed in a heap on Jack's porch.

"Boone?

Title: Last Chance Pt. 3 - Fear
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Jack Shepard/Boone Carlyle
Prompt: 003. Truth
Word Count: 832
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: For slash_me_twice


Jack was four glasses of scotch into a previously unopened bottle by the time the body on his couch stirred.

'The body'. He couldn't bring himself to think of him as 'Boone'. Because Boone was dead. Jack watched him die. Jack buried him in a hole on the island. So there had to be some other explanation.

But for the life of him he couldn't figure out what in the hell that explanation might be.

He looked like Boone. Underneath the scruffy beard the features were Boone's. Same eyes. Same mouth. Once Jack had pulled him in from the porch and placed him on the couch he'd shoved up the ragged leg of his pants and inspected his leg. Obviously something had happened to it but it was no where near the mangled wreck Boone had died with.

"Huh?" Boone struggled to sit up. "Jack? What's going on? Where are we?" Boone's eyes darted around the room.

"The first day of the plane crash – what's the first thing I said to you?" Jack congratulated himself for being able to get the question out without stammering.

"What is this? A quiz? I don't remember! I don't remember anything including how I got here!"

"The first day on the beach. You were giving Rose CPR…" Jack prompted. "What did I say?"

Boone slumped back down on the sofa. "You said I was doing it wrong. That I was just blowing air into her stomach."

Jack nodded, unsure whether he was relieved or not. "I don't understand. How?"

"How what? Come on Jack. Tell me what happened! Where are we? Where's everyone else?"

Jack reluctantly inched closer to the couch and sat on the coffee table across from Boone. "What's the last thing you remember? Where were you before here?"

"The plane." Boone said after a minute. "The little Cessna." He looked at Jack. "I sent out a distress call on the radio. Somebody answered." Boone frowned. "Then I was in the caves."

"What else?"

"Nothing!" Panic crept into Boone's voice. "Why can't I remember? What happened to me?"

Instinctively Jack's hand came to rest on Boone's shoulder. The moment froze in time. Looking into Boone's eyes, feeling the warm flesh under his hand made everything real for Jack in a way nothing else had. "You –" Jack's mouth worked to get the words out. "The plane fell off the cliff and…" Of all the things Jack's said, the diagnoses he's pronounced, the words of comfort he's had to say, nothing comes close to what's about to come out of his mouth. "You died. Your leg was in bad shape and there was a lot of internal bleeding." The words, at first slow and halting suddenly burst forth lie water through a broken dam. "I was going to try and take the leg to control some of the bleeding."

"But I wouldn't let you." Boone finished. His lips set in a thin line. "I woke up and told you to let me go."

Hearing the words for a second time made Jack scramble to his feet and being pacing. "This is crazy. I'm crazy. I've finally lost my mind. This isn't happening. You're not here and I'm not having this conversation with you." He stopped in front of the liquor cart and paused for another shot, downing it in a single gulp.

"Can I have one of those?"

Jack spun around and Boone gave a smile that didn't come close to reaching his eyes.

"If I'm going to be a ghost I should at least get to drink."

Jack drew a shaky hand over his face. "You're not a ghost. There's no such thing. You're a hallucination. A delusion. A physical manifestation of my fucked up God complex."

"Excuse me Dr. Freud, but this physical manifestation has to go to the bathroom." Boone suddenly gave Jack a genuine smile.

"What? Why are you smiling?"

"Nothing. It's just typical Jack. You over think everything." Boone got to his feet. "Coming up with every explanation except for one." Boone gestured. "Maybe, bear with me I know this is radical idea, just maybe you made a mistake. I wasn't really dead. I've read about that happening to people before. They made a movie about it – that guy in Jamaica…"

"Boone you died. We buried you."

"Right. Because you can't ever be wrong." Boone rolled his eyes. "Fine. I'm a hallucination. Whatever. Just point me to a phone, I'll call Shannon and I'll be out of here."