SUMMARY:

Meet Amy Reading, survivor of Oceanic 815. Excerpt: "I thought the island cured me," she would write into her journal later, "but I now realised there'd been nothing to show me. It was biding its time. This island was full of the unexpected." Ben/OC R&R

DISCLAIMER:

I do not own LOST, or any of its affiliated charcters/settings/yadda yadda... even if I really like to think I do. *cries*

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

This is my first try at writing LOST fanfiction, but hopefully not my last. Saying that, it's up to you guys. Well, it isn't, but I like to give you people the false idea of power over my writing. Only joking; you lovely lot are the motivation to keep writing – read and review, please!

In keeping with the style of LOST, some things may not make sense right now, but will later... (Note for other LOST writers: this is as good as it gets in the way of excuses for any plot discrepancies!) ... Always assuming I remember to make them make sense.

Also, I would like to introduce you to one Amy Reading, my OC. She's very eager to meet you.

Well, I've rambled on enough. Want more rambling? Join a hiking club!

Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats.

The lights go off, the curtains are drawn back... and so our show begins...

"Mom," A small girl races through to the kitchen and tugs at her mother's back. "Mom, grandma's hurt. She fell down, had accident."

She'd seen her fall down the stairs. She had tumbled down them after slipping on a magazine that lay at the top of them. All the way to the bottom, landing there like a thrown doll.

The girl's mother turns from the cooker, holding her spatula like a weapon. She points it at the girl and frowns.

"Amy Reading. What have I told you about stories?"

Amy shakes her head frantically, her brown eyes wide in her face as she stares at her mother. The woman's hair is tied up in a loose ponytail, some short strands framing her face. She blows a strand from her forehead exasperatedly as Amy watches her.

"No story. Grandma's hurt." Amy feels her bottom lip begin to tremble as she wills her mother to believe her. "Sore back, mom."

She'd been lying there, unmoving. Bent at a funny angle, groaning softly.

"Amy," when her mother finally speaks, her voice is laced with warning. She looks angry. "That's not a nice thing to say. Don't make up stories."

Mom looks angry –Amy feels angry. She doesn't believe her. Amy is only telling her what she saw. She feels tears welling up. "No story!" Amy shouts, clenching her fists and staring at her mother resolutely, "Grandma hurt!"

Grandma broken. Grandma in pain. Grandma hurting. She had had to tell someone.

"Amy!" now Mom's angry too; Amy hears it in her voice, sees it in her face, and feels it in her hand as she grabs Amy's too tightly and pulls her over to the phone. She punches in a number, all the while staring at her daughter with a firm expression.

"Hello, mom," Her voice is falsely cheerful, in sharp contrast to the angry eyes that stare at Amy now. Amy feels herself shrink back from her mother's gaze, and she tries to twist her hand from the tight grip.

"I've got a young lady here that wants to say hello to you..."

Amy doesn't want to say hello. She wants to say 'told you so'. She wants grandma to be hurt, as selfish as it is, so Mom can see she's right.

Now, Amy realises she should have warned her. At four years old, she simply did not have the capability of knowing how to handle it.

The phone is passed to Amy.

"Hello, darling," comes her grandma's soft voice, "Are you being good for mommy?"

Amy shakes her head, not allowing herself to believe that her grandma's okay when she's seen her broken beyond repair, and drops the phone at her feet. No. This is not right. Grandma is hurt.

"Grandma... fall... sore...." Her quiet voice, too small, too unsure, probably can't be heard in the mouthpiece of the phone.

Mom bends and scoops the phone up as Amy hears her grandma speaking on it. "Sorry, she's been being a little funny today. I thought she'd like to speak to you, but you know how kids are..."

Lies, mother, thinks Amy, and you know it. At least, you did afterwards.

Amy takes her mind away from this conversation, this impossibility. She sees, in her head, grandma falling, and grandma breaking. Now she hears her speaking to her mother on the phone.

Too soon, her mother ends the conversation with grandma. She turns back to Amy and pulls her through to the kitchen. There is smoke. Something is burning. Amy's mother gasps and heads for the cooker. She empties a jug of water onto the contents of the frying pan that has caught fire. There is more smoke, and the oil hisses like an angry snake. She turns back to Amy.

"Look what you did, Amy. I told you not to tell stories, didn't I?" She sighs angrily and shakes her head. "Supper's going to be late now. That's where not listening gets you."

A week later, her mom received a phone call. Grandma had slipped on a magazine and fell down the stairs. She was dead. That's where not listening gets you, mom, thought Amy.

I told you so, mom, sings Amy's four-year-old self, I told you so.

She'd broken her spine in two places, and died because no one was there to help her. Because no one knew anything was wrong.

That's when her mother knew Amy was different. She was scared of her from then on. To be honest, Amy was scared of herself. Mom found her when she ended the call that brought the news of grandma's death. There was fear in her eyes - fear and sorrow and regret. Amy didn't say anything to her because she didn't need to. Her mother didn't say anything because she didn't know what to say.

That day, Amy's mother realised where not listening got her. And Amy realised where telling someone got her. That's when she realised she had this... well, call it a gift, if you will, which is a strange thing to call something that is not welcomed, or wanted or even pleasant.

No, it is not a gift. It is... a difference that keeps her apart, thinks Amy. A difference that has confused her and left her unable to conform to society, with her peers, with anyone.

It is the difference that put her on Oceanic flight 815. She saw herself on that plane, and knew it would happen. Because everything happens; not logically, not always pleasingly, but things happen as she sees them. This was something she learned at a young age, and something she cannot forget.

She hesitates before describing this... ability. She has tried before to write things down, to structure out her thoughts on it but to no avail. Perhaps because she does not have the capability to describe it – perhaps she is as incapable as a child is when it comes to this.

It happens mostly during waking hours, although sometimes she wakes up knowing she's seen something. She tends to write these visions into her journal. It's not often and not frequently that she blacks out fully. Mostly she just sees something. Like, that flicker of a picture when you flick through television channels really quickly. Sometimes, it's like watching a movie playing in slow motion. Sometimes it's as if you're there, unable to help, unable to move or interfere. Sometimes she gets a sense of a name, a place, a smell, a taste, an emotion.

Every time, it's confusing. Frightening, even.

They don't happen logically. When she sees something in the future, sometimes the visions and then their happening will be within the space of a few hours, sometimes a few weeks, and other times there are years between the vision and the actual happening. When it's the past, it can be recent, or years ago. Sometimes it's the present, but in a different location. That is what frightens her most: the uncertainty.

Sometimes she sees the past, sometimes the future... but she doesn't feel special. She feels strange, awkward, out of place.

She realises she uses the word "sometimes" far too much when she tries to describe her ability. But that's the thing – it's not predictable, none of it happens conventionally. And it's all about times. She's just stuck between times, being shown how things go.

She wasn't shown the crash; she was as surprised as the rest of the passengers. She didn't see anything for weeks on the island. She thought she was over it. She could behave normally, what she thought was something only other people could do – a belief she had grown up with.

For a few weeks, she found she was happy with her circumstances. She didn't know what the future held. She was stranded on a desert island with unexplained mysteries and monsters but... it was present. She didn't know what would happen next, which to some may seem like a negative thing. But, living her life as it is, she knows it is not. It is better to take things as they come.

Others may not understand this, thinks Amy, but what is the point in knowing what will happen when you can't change it? When it will happen anyway, regardless? It's like being an unimportant extra in a movie – you get the script, you know what will happen but you don't really matter. You do what's in the script and nothing more.

So yes, she was happy on the island. She felt cured. She was making friends. She was accepted.

And then, then she saw something. Lying in her tent, in the darkness, noticing there was a hole in the corner that she would need to fix, noticing she could see the stars through it, and how pretty they looked...

Her eyes snapped shut and her breathing grew heavy, but she was not sleeping.

There was fear, and surprise, she could feel them.

She saw, could almost feel, as if it was tangible, the movement of a trap being set off, a man being dragged up and strung up from the tree.

The net, swinging; a cry of surprise.

A man's shout for help.

For some reason, the importance of this man seemed to be impressed into her. Important, something told her, this man was important.

Orange? Something was orange.

Her eyes snapped open. Her breathing was low and rasping. She felt exhausted.

Deep down, she supposed she had known that she wouldn't fit in. That she would always be different. She had hoped against hope that ... this would not happen. Just when she felt accepted.

"I thought the island cured me," she would write into her journal later, "but I now realised there'd been nothing to show me. It was biding its time. This island was full of the unexpected."

Author's Note:

I don't really like this first chapter, but I wanted to give a bit of background to the character. I have the next chapter typed up, and depending on reviews, will submit it for your judgement/enjoyment.

READ & REVIEW!