Lost Fic: The Eternal Mystery of Ghost Donuts (Boone, Shannon)

Title: The Eternal Mystery of Ghost Donuts
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: None, really. Yep, I'm writing a Boone and Shannon fic without going for the incest angle. Weird, I know. Some implied Jack/Boone, though.
Summary: Where the fuck did it come from? Is it a ghost donut? And if it is, and Boone’s a ghost, does that mean that ghost donuts will make his ghost ass fat?
Spoilers: Up to "Abandoned".

Author's Notes: So, last season when Boone died, I ended up writing an angsty Shannon character piece. Now Shannon's dead, and even though I'm just as sad and pissed by her death as I was by Boone's, I end up writing post-death humor. I have no idea why--I just got an image in my head of ghost Boone eating a ghost donut, and this is what happened.





When Shannon opens her eyes, the first thing she sees is Boone. He’s standing over her eating what appears to be a donut and, of course, smirking.

“Hey, Shan,” he says, still chewing. “I was wondering when you were gonna wake up.”

She sits up. The last thing she remembers is a sudden hot, blooming pain in her chest and blood running down her shirt. No, wait—the last thing she remembers is that look on Sayid’s face. What he’d said to her. It was this totally wonderful, perfect moment in Shannon’s life, and now she’s lying here on the dirty forest floor while her dead brother stands over her eating a donut.

Its kind of a metaphor for Shannon’s entire life: one minute she’s happy with some amazing guy, the next minute Boone’s there with a snack and a smirk, just waiting to fuck things up for her.

If she’d seen Boone yesterday, she would have cried and hugged him and told him how much she missed him. Or, yeah, okay, given her reaction to creepy dripping Walt, she’d probably have screamed until he went away again. Today, though, she just pulls herself to her feet, wipes the mud off her ass, and crosses her arms irritably. “What. The. Fuck.”

He does that eyebrow arch thing that she hates so much and says, “Hmm?”

“What the fuck? What are you doing here? Where did everyone go? Why are you eating a donut?”

He makes an incoherent noise and points to his full mouth, and she waves her hand impatiently, gesturing for him to hurry up and swallow. (Any other time, Shannon would say something about Boone’s propensity for swallowing, but she’s kind of in a hurry to hear those answers, and besides, its Boone. He’ll open himself up for another easy joke in about five minutes.) When he finally does, he says, “Well. I’m eating a donut because I’m hungry, but only sort of hungry. I figure I’ll wait until dinner to eat an actual meal. Everyone’s gone because its dark and they had to, you know, carry a body back to camp. And third, I’ve been here the whole time. Its just that you can see me now because you’re dead.”

Shannon’s quiet for a long time. She looks at her nails, glances down at her bloody shirt, and then, when she feels like she can speak again, she says, “I hate it when you answer my questions backwards.”

Boone shrugs. “I was answering them in descending order of importance. Its what you’re supposed to do when you have to deliver shocking news. Besides, I figured by the time you heard the ‘you’re dead’ thing, you wouldn’t really care about the donut anymore.”

Actually, no. The dead thing actually makes the donut thing even weirder, because if Shannon’s dead, then this isn’t just a weird backward-talking dream, which means that Boone’s really standing here in front of her. And he’s dead. Where did he get a donut? Why does he even want donuts anymore? He hadn’t even really liked donuts when he was alive—he was always bitching about their fat and sugar content and the rise of obesity in America or something. Although she always sort of suspected that it was just because he was worried about his own ass getting fat, which isn’t really a concern for him anymore, since he’s dead.

Still, where the fuck did it come from? Is it a ghost donut? And if it is, and Boone’s a ghost, does that mean that ghost donuts will make his ghost ass fat?

Shannon really wants to stop thinking about donuts.

She focuses on the dead thing instead. “I’m dead?”

“Well, you did get shot in the heart. I mean, I’m no doctor—”

She snorts. “No shit, Bic boy.”

He glares at her, and then continues, “But I’m pretty sure that ‘bleeding chest wound’ thing should’ve tipped you off. Besides, you had that whole touching deathbed moment with Sayid.” He rolls his eyes at Sayid’s name. Typical fucking Boone—he never gets over anything. “And hey, at least you have me here. When I woke up, I didn’t have anyone to explain the whole ‘dead’ thing to me. I just stood around for a few hours and got pissed that everyone was ignoring me. Took me a while to figure out that I was that corpse everyone was crying over.”

His face softens a bit. Shannon decides that if he mentions her crying over him, she’s going to find a ghost gun and shoot him in his ghost foot. “So?” she says, hoping to forestall the whole awkward moment. “Okay, you’re here. Explain the whole ‘dead’ thing to me, since you’re apparently such an expert.”

Victory—he narrows his eyes. “You’re dead. The end.”

“Except, you know, apparently not, since we’re still here. And why am I still bloody?” If there are donuts in the afterlife, does that mean there’s club soda? And can she get some?

“Oh,” he says, looking down at his feet, “that. Um, yeah. I don’t really know what the deal with that is. We’re just sort of…here. And, you know, bloody.”

“What about everybody else?”

“Everybody else who?”

Shannon bangs her head against a tree in frustration, which is weird. She feels solid, and the tree feels solid, but it doesn’t actually hurt or anything. “I cannot fucking believe how self-centered you are. The other people who died, Boone. The people in the crash, that woman who drowned, Scott—”

“You mean Steve,” Boone says in that condescending voice he always uses on her. Then he wrinkles his forehead. “Actually, maybe you’re right, it might’ve been Scott. I dunno. I see them around sometimes, but we don’t actually talk or anything.” He pauses for a second. “They’re still bloody too, in case you’re wondering. Except the girl who drowned. She’s just wet.”

Shannon just stares at him, because that is possibly the stupidest thing she has ever heard. If you’re dead and stuck on an island, and there are other people around who’ve been dead longer than you, the first thing you do is see if they know what the deal is. That’s just common fucking sense.

Of course, now that she thinks about it, the living do the same thing. A lot of weird shit has happened on the island, she knows a lot of weird shit has happened, even if she doesn’t know specifically what the weird shit is, and maybe if everyone got together one night and compared stories over the fire this whole island thing would make more sense.

Everyone is stupider than Shannon, and now that she’s dead, she can’t even point it out to them. Of course, she hadn’t even thought about this whole thing until after she died, so maybe it’s a moot point, anyway.

She sighs. “Fine. What about…you know, everything else?”

“You mean the weird island shit?”

Shannon sighs again. Right when she’s ready to totally write Boone off as a lost cause who will never understand her, he always saves it by proving how well he knows her and the inside of her head. She hates that about him.

“Yeah,” she says. “The weird island shit.”

“I don’t know.” He looks strangely serious, and kind of sad. “I don’t know. I mean, I get to hear and see a lot more than I did when I was alive, so I have a few more of the pieces, but…no. It still doesn’t make any sense. I still don’t know what the big mystery is.” He must hate that—Boone was always the type who looked at the end of the book to see who the murderer was. The type who paid attention to every single detail of a movie just so he could say, ‘I totally saw that coming’ and annoy everyone with his powers of omniscience.

Shannon kind of wants to hug him and punch him at the same time. She settles for saying, “At least you finally got to see Jack naked.”

Boone tilts his head, considering. “There is that.” Shannon feels her eyes widen in surprise—Boone never would have admitted his stupid Jack-crush when he was alive—and Boone snickers. “Hey, you’re not the only one who’s grown, little sister. Death does that to a person.”

“So you’re at the mental age of, like, nine now?” Boone rolls his eyes, and Shannon rolls her eyes, and its exactly like it was when they were both alive. Weirdly normal. Except they’re dead, and she wants club soda to get this blood stain off her clothes. “Okay. So we’re still stuck on the island. We’re dead. You don’t talk to any of the other dead guys, and no one who’s alive can see you. What do you do all day?” Boone snickers, and she frowns. “What?”

“Nothing,” Boone says, laughing. She hits him on the arm “Nothing, shit! Its just that you asking me what I’m doing with my life is a weird reversal of roles. Does that mean I get a ballerina now?” She smacks him again, and he yelps. “Ow!”

“God, you are such a pussy. That doesn’t hurt.”

“No,” he says. “Actually it doesn’t.” He gets that serious look again. “There isn’t really that much to do when you’re dead. Mostly I just wander around, look at stuff. Watch people. Living people, I mean.”

Shannon nods. Living people, she thinks. Because I’m not alive anymore. “We need to go back to the beach. I want to see Sayid,” she decides.

Boone looks concerned. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she snaps. “I love him. I want to make sure he’s okay. Jesus, Boone, we’re dead, and you can’t even get over yourself and just—”

“No,” he says quickly. “I mean…it’s only been a few hours. Your, you know…body is still there. It can be…kind of weird to see. Trust me, I know.”

“Oh,” she says. Yet more typical Boone—always trying to protect her. Always trying to save her. Still, she wouldn’t let him do it while she was alive (unless she really, really needed him to) and she’s not going to start now. “I don’t care. I need to see him.”

Boone sighs. “Fine, okay. Come on, we better start walking if you want to get there while he’s still conscious. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone hits him on the head with a rock to keep him from killing that girl who shot you.”

“Oh yeah, her. What the hell was that? I can’t believe some girl I’ve never even seen before shot me.”

“Maybe you slept with her boyfriend.”

“Maybe you slept with her boyfriend, and since you’re dead she had to settle for shooting me instead.” Shannon glares at him, and they start walking together over the rocky ground. “Why do we have to walk, anyway? Shouldn’t be able to fly, or like, think ourselves over there or something?”

“Yes, Shannon. The fact that we’re dead means that the basic laws of reality will shift to fit our whims.” He rolls his eyes like that’s the dumbest idea ever in the history of existence. Because in the sentence ‘dead people can’t fly’, its totally the flying thing that’s the weird part. Right.

“Shut up.” They continue walking in silence until Shannon just can’t stand it anymore. “Okay, wait. One more thing: where the hell did you get that donut?”

END