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For the first time, in a long time, Fatin is at a loss for what to do next. Leah’s scream is guttural, one that scares her after living in the silence of her bunker room for the past few days.
She’d gotten used to the idea that they were safe, counting down the hours to reunification with both the girls and with her king-sized mattress back at home, and just as quickly as they’d dropped Martha in the raging river, that dream has slipped away.
But when the door opened and she rushed out onto the landing after Leah, it wasn’t her Egyptian cotton sheets that she was thinking about. It was the instant pain in her chest at hearing Leah scream until her throat was raw.
She felt the roar like a dagger in between her ribs. The absolute anguish coming out of the girl’s mouth at being trapped again causes Fatin’s attention to narrow in scope to just Leah, not even allowing her own brain to process the joke that her life has suddenly become.
There are pieces of the puzzle missing still; she read the note passed under her door earlier, but out of spite she had let the page sit there for a while before giving it any of her attention. If the bozo FBI agents wanted her attention they could knock on her door like an adult, not pass notes like a middle school crush.
She wasn’t able to get through the entire note before the click of her door lock pulled her attention, and the paper was forgotten. She didn’t even bother to bring it up once she was in the hallway locked in Leah’s arms, not caring much about whatever this Dr. Gretchen Klein had to say once in the company of her favorite person. Fatin was never a reader anyway, it was why her and Leah’s friendship worked.
She would never admit it but having Leah read aloud Martha’s trashy romance novel really did it for her. Sure, she claimed it would help her drift off to sleep at night in those last few days on the island, but her ulterior motive was really to let Leah’s voice permeate her synapses in hopes that she’d dream about the other girl, romance novel setting or not, she didn’t care.
Leah is still screaming and Fatin is still frozen, not sure what the next move should be. It was easier, god how fucked up is that, when they knew what to expect day after day on their island. It was easy to anticipate her girls’ moods, depending on how much sun they got the day before, or how long it took Rachel to make a joke about her handiness.
Now, she’s not even sure if this is their island. And she’s sure as hell not sure what to do about the sudden influx of testosterone surrounding them.
Freshly shaven Shelby appears in her peripheral vision - Fatin’s really going to have to unpack that with her soon - and Dot pulls up on her other side, a makeshift phalanx ready to defend their girl from the others or from herself.
She’s pretty sure that she and Shelby are still the only ones that know that Leah has been right about the whole thing, but being isolated from her friends for so long means they’re all on different pages, maybe even on different chapters now.
The silence is suddenly louder than Leah’s scream had been, the wind this high up whistling strangely in her ears. It’s not so much that the other girl had quit screaming, and more so that her voice had crackled out like a campfire at the end of the night. Instead, her breathing has become shallow, her body coiled anticipating a panic attack.
Fatin, spurred into action, nudges the girls on her side, “Dorothy, can you handle this?” She nods towards the suddenly overwhelmingly large group.
She knows Dot knows what she means like she knows Dot’s own facial microexpressions.
There’s shuffling around them, Shelby squeezes her shoulder, and then the close of the roof access door echoes in the wind.
Leah’s hands are gripping the roof railing, knuckles white, but when Fatin approaches her, the taller girl crumples, twisting so that she's bunched into a ball with her back pressed against the wall.
Fatin doesn’t really have to think, knows exactly how Leah best responds to comfort at this point. If there’s one benefit to Leah’s many breakdowns, it’s that Fatin has learned how best to help her get out on the other side.
They don’t speak this time, and Fatin’s not really sure what to say anyway. Leah has obviously been working through something in the time that Fatin spent staring at the ceiling in her room, and something has obviously gone wrong.
Instead, she settles next to her friend, pulling Leah’s head onto her shoulder so that she can wrap her arms around her easier in a cradling hug. She exaggerates her own deep breaths, knowing that it helps Leah regulate her own.
She thinks about how she knows this will help, and she realizes she’s not actually sure how she knows it will. Somewhere along the way, between their fiery anger at each other, their playful, sometimes downright flirty glances, and their surprisingly vulnerable talks, Fatin’s learned Leah inside and out.
So she knows that really what the other girl needs right now is the grounding reassurance that she’s alive and not alone.
Fatin’s not really sure how long they stay there; the wind dies down and the sun travels across the sky but doesn’t set. A bird, one that she hasn’t seen before, lands on the pavement across from them and stares. It’s so reminiscent of the pigeons from back home that she almost starts crying.
Her own brain is working on overdrive, trying to fit the events of the last week together to connect enough dots that would explain how they went from rescued by a fucking helicopter to stuck again on another fucking island.
She doesn’t realize Leah has woken up from her exhaustion-fueled nap until the other girl nuzzles into her neck.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
That’s another thing Fatin’s discovered about Leah - keeping her thoughts within her head ultimately leads to an explosion.
She’d be proud of how perceptive she’s become if this situation wasn’t so fucked up.
Leah sighs, reaching out to pick at a loose string unraveling from her sock. “I had her, I fucking had her, and I had them, and I had Ian at home who was helping, and I was going to win for us. And I don’t know what went wrong.”
Her voice cracks at the end, and Fatin reaches out to reroute her hand from the path it’s taking to her eyebrow.
She intertwines their fingers, squeezing their palms together, before knocking her forehead into the top of Leah’s, prompting her companion to look up.
“Okay, it’s okay. This is what we’re going to do - you’re going to bring me up to speed on whatever Nancy Drew shit you’ve been working on since I last saw your beautiful face and we’re going to carry this together from now on.”
She scoots so that she’s sitting cross-legged in front of Leah now, instead of curled up against her side.
Fatin reaches out to put her hands on Leah’s knees, still bunched up against her body, “You and I are a team from now on. I’m not letting you fixate on any of Dr. Evil’s bullshit on your own anymore, especially now that there are even more cooks in this kitchen.”
“Fatin I —,” Leah interrupts.
“Nope, this is non-negotiable Rilke. I let you spiral once on your own and I’m not going to sit by and let you do it again. Leah, look at me.”
Leah picks her cheek up from where she had it leaning on her crossed arms, over her knees, and Fatin is struck by how clear her blue eyes are. The repositioning knocks a piece of hair into her face, and Fatin doesn’t think before pushing it back behind Leah’s ear.
“Literal hours before that fucking helicopter came Shelby and I found this GPS phone device thing. That’s when I realized you’d been right the entire time. And I wish I had been brave enough to tell you and everyone else as soon as we found out.”
Fatin shakes her head, still frustrated at her own stubbornness and her tendency to want a semblance of control in all situations, especially those having to do with Leah.
She continues, “I know everyone was hesitant to believe you before, but the girls have your back. And we’re going to make these boys believe you too. Odds are none of their dumb asses figured out this was all fake yet.”
At that Leah chuckles a bit, and Fatin can’t help but grin.
“That’s my girl.”
Fatin stands and reaches both of her hands down to prompt the other girl to follow. Pulling Leah up, she doesn’t let go once she’s fully standing, instead pulling Leah’s hands around her waist so she can force the taller girl to initiate a hug, before Fatin unravels her own to twine around Leah’s neck.
It’s a funny thing, watching Leah duck down and curl into Fatin in order to hold each other in this position. She’s not really used to being the shorter one in any of her female friendships, but the big sister in her knows how to hug for comfort.
Like she did when they were first separated in the bunker, she pulls back but keeps Leah’s face held between her hands. Fatin thinks about how far they’ve come, from frenemies at best to whatever this unspoken intimacy is between them.
She knows that she would go to the ends of the Earth for Leah, has known since she realized how giddy she was to show Leah the device that she and Shelby uncovered in the tree, and not just because Leah was the most suspicious, but because she wanted to share everything with her.
There’s something about being known by another person. Sure, she knows the six other girls, better than she ever thought possible. So well that she can tell what Dorothy’s eye twitching on the left or right side means. But Leah knew who she was before the island, and that counts for something else.
It doesn’t matter that they weren’t friends before they were forced to be. Leah was there the day Fatin nailed her oral report on Catch-22 in Lit, and she was there when Leah presented her history project on the differences in the role of women in Ancient Egypt vs Ancient Rome.
There’s a level of knowledge between them, that they don’t even realize matters yet.
With Leah’s face still within her grasp, Fatin realizes that Leah is her best friend and at this point, she's certainly her person. She kisses the apple of Leah’s cheek again, and warms at the same rate as the blush spreading across the other girl’s face.
When Fatin pulls away, grabbing again at Leah’s hand and tugging the both of them towards the door and back into their current reality, it’s Leah that squeezes her fingers in a silent question.
Fatin turns back, worried, “Hmm?”
Maybe it’s just because she hasn’t seen the other girl in over a week, or because their last moments on the island and the helicopter were rushed and confused, but Fatin’s sure she’s never seen Leah’s expression as peaceful as it is in the moment.
“I just want you to know that I really love you,” Leah says, bashful but also sure of herself.
Fatin knows the way her brow pinches when she’s fighting off her anxiety to share something, and butterflies explode in her lower belly when she realizes the crinkle isn’t there at these words.
An ear-splitting grin widens across Fatin’s face, and she drops Leah’s hand to wrap her arms around the taller girl’s neck again, dropping a few rapid kisses at her temple.
“Okay, we’re going to talk about this later, you sap. But I love you too, just so you know.”
Leah chuckles again, and she feels the vibrations rumble against her biceps. There’s something about making the other girl show any positive emotion that sends a spark down Fatin’s spine, and she thinks about how determined she is to keep that feeling alive.
When she’s sure that they’ve held on to each other long enough (is there such a thing?) she pulls back, but not before she feels lips press close to the corner of her lips this time.
Fatin winks, allowing some levity into the situation for the time being. They’ll have time to talk about this more later when they’re curled together in the same bed, too tired of being apart to split any longer than necessary.
For now, she’ll anchor herself to Leah’s side, the ying to her yang, working together to outsmart whatever wool Dr. Klein thinks she’s pulled over their eyes. They might just be teenagers, but Fatin’s sure as shit that she’s underestimated every one of them.
And if there’s one thing she knows about the women waiting within the depths of that bunker, and perhaps even of the men too, it’s that they’ve learned just how strong they are in the time that they’ve spent on the godforsaken island.
And when they’re together, working towards the same goal, anything is fucking possible.