Creature Of Hobbit (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tellshannon815) wrote2011-01-07 11:52 pm
tellshannon815) wrote2011-01-07 11:52 pm
Entry tags:
As Long As He Needs Me
Title: As Long As He Needs Me
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tellshannon815
Recipient:flaky_artist
Pairing and/or Characters: Ilana, Jacob, Esau, Richard, Ilana’s mother.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers for S6
Prompt: Ilana backstory, any time period, I would especially love something that explores her relationship with Jacob and/or her mother.
Summary: Jacob becomes a father figure to Ilana after rescuing her from the smoke monster.
Author notes: Sorry it took so long, Ilana prompt was too good to resist, Merry Christmas anyway!
How long had it been now? Ilana wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember how long it had been since the day she had fled from the molten lava, shaking earth, the smoke, the heat.
“Go, Ilana!” her mother had yelled at her seconds before the lava had reached them. “Save yourself. Do not worry about me.”
“I’ll come back for you!” Ilana had called, not really understanding. Her mother would be fine, just as she always was. She would be there to protect Ilana again, just as she had been at the beginning, on the boat that had brought them there. As the boat had tossed and turned, Ilana praying for anything to take away the nausea and the fear that the boat was just going to tip right over, expelling her and all her people into the choppy sea, her mother had been there to hold her close, to tell her that it wasn’t going to happen, that they were going to survive this because her mother was there to protect her. And it had been true; her mother had been there by her side the entire time as they had washed up on the island, as they had built their settlement and attempted to survive there. Ilana had been unable to imagine a time when her mother would not be there for her.
Yet her mother was gone now, as were all the rest of her people, unable to escape the destruction caused when the island’s volcano erupted. Ilana had raced back to her camp when the earth had stopped shaking, looking for her mother, sure that she was going to be waiting there for her, to pick her up and hug her and tell her that everything was going to be fine, just as she always had. But her mother would never be there for Ilana again; she lay in the remains of their old settlement, face so badly burned as to be barely recognisable.
Ilana had been out here ever since, foraging for food wherever possible by day and sleeping wherever she could find shelter, moving from place to place every few days.
Suddenly, Ilana heard a noise coming from behind her; a loud roar which seemed to be accompanied by a clicking sound. As she turned around, she realised she was being followed by what appeared to be a cloud of black smoke, heading straight for her.
“No!” another voice suddenly yelled, and the next thing Ilana knew, she was encircled by black ash. As the voice yelled something in Latin which Ilana could not understand, the smoke thing appeared to make a hasty retreat.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Ilana glanced up to see a tall man, fair hair, dressed in white, standing before her. Although he had startled her, compared to what had been chasing her earlier, this man had not scared her in the least.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Jacob.” The man crouched down to her level.
“I’m Ilana.”
“So, tell me, Ilana,” Jacob began, “what are you doing out here by yourself?”
“My home and my people are all gone now,” Ilana swallowed hard. “It was the volcano.”
Jacob raised his eyebrows. “You mean you actually survived that? I believed all had been lost.”
“I’m the only one.” Ilana explained. “I’ve been out here ever since it happened, and then that thing started chasing me. Now I don’t know where to go.”
Jacob took her by the hand. “You are safe now, Ilana,” he said, leading her away.
“What is this?” Ilana asked, taking in the strange figure of the statue before her.
“Its name is Tawaret,” Jacob explained, leading her down the stone steps into the chamber. Ilana glanced around her to see some funny-looking paintings, a few odd bits of furniture and what looked to be part of a tapestry hanging from a loom.
“And what’s that?” Ilana pointed at it.
“This,” Jacob began, “is my story and the island’s story.”
“Why’s it only half finished?” Ilana wondered.
“Because my time is not yet done,” Jacob informed her. “I still have work to do for the good of this island. But there will come a day when this tapestry is finished, and my time will then be over.”
Some time later that night, Ilana woke from a nightmare, the same nightmare that had haunted her nights ever since the volcano; she was running through the jungle, experiencing the same choking sensation and struggling to breathe, the same heat from the molten ash. Her mother was following her, calling out to Ilana to save her.
“Yes, hold on, Mother,” Ilana had said. “I’ll come back for you.”
But when she had turned round, her mother was as she had been when Ilana last saw her, face all burned away. She walked towards her with slow, leaden footsteps, reaching out to her with those horrible burned arms.
Ilana sat up in her makeshift bed, sweating and panting, looking around for Jacob. She tiptoed past the strange tapestry she had seen the previous night, made her way towards the steps that led out of the statue. There he was, talking to someone; an unfamiliar man’s voice. Tentatively, Ilana took a few steps towards the sound of the voices, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man Jacob was talking to.
“You can speak all you like of the evil surrounding us,” Jacob was saying. “And you can continue to plead your case that it was not your fault, that it was a natural disaster. But you and I will both always know the truth. Yet you have failed. One survived.”
“Then you know what I must do,” came the second voice, a harsh, angry voice. “You know what we were always told. It always ends the same.”
“You are the one who causes the destruction around here,” Jacob continued. “Not any of my people. You have destroyed them.”
“And do you remember how my village was destroyed?” the other man asked.
“You know that was not my doing,” Jacob stated.
“You did nothing to stop her,” the man reminded him. “In my mind that makes you equally culpable. You took my means of escape from me, you took away everything that I was before. Now I am going to take everything from you. You may have allowed her to live, but it will not be so for long.”
“No one will ever be able to harm Ilana while I am around,” Jacob retorted.
“You know that will not be forever,” came the response. “One day, there will be a day when I will find a way to break what she did to us, and I will kill you.”
“You know where to find me,” Jacob snorted, turning away and walking back towards the chamber. Ilana hastily turned away and ran back to where she had been sleeping, covering her face with the blankets and hoping Jacob wouldn’t realise she’d heard any of that. But she determined that if Jacob ever needed her, she would always be there to protect him, just as he had vowed to do for her.
Eight Years Later:
Ilana found herself thinking about that night as she made her way to a beach she’d never been to before, trying to catch some fish for herself and Jacob to eat. Jacob had never mentioned the end of his story again apart from once, not long after he had rescued her, when he had caught her unpicking some of the tapestry. When questioned, Ilana had admitted that she’d thought by sabotaging the tapestry and delaying its completion, she would be delaying Jacob’s end, keeping him with her for as long as possible.
“You do not need to worry, Ilana,” Jacob had reassured her. “It will be a long time before I will leave you. But you must not destroy my tapestry. You cannot rewrite time.”
Reassured by this, Ilana had barely thought about it again. She had never heard the other man’s voice again either, nor had she become aware of any other man on the island. Eventually, she had wondered if she had dreamed the whole thing.
She realised she was humming under her breath, the old Russian lullaby about the little grey wolf which her mother had always used to sing to her when they were on the boat, and here (possibly even back in Russia, although Ilana couldn’t really remember that).
“Yes, I remember that too, Ilana.”
Ilana gasped; took a few steps back in shock.
Standing before her was her mother.
“Yes, that is right, Ilana. Don’t be afraid. I am here for you, just like I always will be.”
“Mama?” Ilana stammered. “But you’re...you’re dead.”
“So that is what he told you.” Her mother shook her head.
“What do you mean? Do you mean Jacob?”
“Yes. He has lied to you. Did you really believe that I could ever have left you?” Her mother smiled sadly. “When you have said what you wish to say to him, I will be waiting for you at our old camp. We will be together again.”
“I told you I would come back for you,” Ilana swallowed hard. “I’ll be there.”
“Did you catch anything?” Jacob began, but broke off when he registered the look on Ilana’s face. “What is the matter?”
“I just saw my mother,” Ilana cried. “She told me you were pretending that she was dead.”
“Oh, Ilana,” Jacob sighed. “I know that you have never stopped missing her. But the person you saw was not your mother.”
“Then who was it?” Ilana asked, confused.
“You met him before. He was in his form of black smoke.”
“That thing that chased me through the jungle?” Ilana gasped.
“That’s right. Long ago, before you ever came to the island, I had a twin brother. We were brought up by the island’s then-protector, just like you were. And one day, when I was angry and upset with him, I made a mistake. I created the monster you saw when you first came here. The man you overheard me arguing with when you first came here, that was him taking his original form as my brother. But he can take other forms too, those of the deceased. That is how he made himself appear as your mother.”
“But why would he do that?” Ilana asked.
“He is determined that one day, he will kill me. At this time, he cannot do that, because our mother made it so. But I fear that he will find a loophole. If he were to manipulate another into killing me, he may succeed. He has tried several times. I believe that is what his attempt to convince you that I was keeping you from your mother was about.”
“He will not succeed,” Ilana vowed. “I will make sure of that.”
“I appreciate your loyalty, Ilana, but there may come a time when you are unable to guarantee that. When that time comes, I will need you to ensure that all the candidates for my replacement are here, and that you protect them. Don’t worry, you will be well prepared for your task.”
“I won’t let you down.”
Seven Years Later:
Ilana watched Jacob for as long as possible as the boat carried her away from the island in preparation for her mission (and tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed the figure in black who was also watching her departure).
She read the piece of paper bearing the name of the first person Jacob wanted to make sure was brought to the island, although she didn’t need to; she knew the name – Ricardus Alpert, knew his circumstances, and knew how she was supposed to bring him there.
El Socorro, Tenerife, Spain.
That was the man, riding past her in his frantic hunt for a doctor who would be able to save the life of his wife, Isabella. Ilana knew that it would be futile, that Isabella could not be saved, and that Ricardus was on the first steps of his journey that would lead him to the island, to Jacob.
She still disliked her mission, and the thought that one day, Jacob would no longer be there to protect the island, even as she had done when Jacob first began to prepare her, had made it so that she could not be killed until the eventual successor was in place. Yet she had vowed that she would do anything she could to assist Jacob, and the time had come for her to honour her promise.
“You are in search of a doctor?” she asked. “I have the name of one right here.”
Jacob feared there would come a time when his journey would be over. But there were others whose journeys were just beginning.
Author:
tellshannon815Recipient:
flaky_artistPairing and/or Characters: Ilana, Jacob, Esau, Richard, Ilana’s mother.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers for S6
Prompt: Ilana backstory, any time period, I would especially love something that explores her relationship with Jacob and/or her mother.
Summary: Jacob becomes a father figure to Ilana after rescuing her from the smoke monster.
Author notes: Sorry it took so long, Ilana prompt was too good to resist, Merry Christmas anyway!
How long had it been now? Ilana wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember how long it had been since the day she had fled from the molten lava, shaking earth, the smoke, the heat.
“Go, Ilana!” her mother had yelled at her seconds before the lava had reached them. “Save yourself. Do not worry about me.”
“I’ll come back for you!” Ilana had called, not really understanding. Her mother would be fine, just as she always was. She would be there to protect Ilana again, just as she had been at the beginning, on the boat that had brought them there. As the boat had tossed and turned, Ilana praying for anything to take away the nausea and the fear that the boat was just going to tip right over, expelling her and all her people into the choppy sea, her mother had been there to hold her close, to tell her that it wasn’t going to happen, that they were going to survive this because her mother was there to protect her. And it had been true; her mother had been there by her side the entire time as they had washed up on the island, as they had built their settlement and attempted to survive there. Ilana had been unable to imagine a time when her mother would not be there for her.
Yet her mother was gone now, as were all the rest of her people, unable to escape the destruction caused when the island’s volcano erupted. Ilana had raced back to her camp when the earth had stopped shaking, looking for her mother, sure that she was going to be waiting there for her, to pick her up and hug her and tell her that everything was going to be fine, just as she always had. But her mother would never be there for Ilana again; she lay in the remains of their old settlement, face so badly burned as to be barely recognisable.
Ilana had been out here ever since, foraging for food wherever possible by day and sleeping wherever she could find shelter, moving from place to place every few days.
Suddenly, Ilana heard a noise coming from behind her; a loud roar which seemed to be accompanied by a clicking sound. As she turned around, she realised she was being followed by what appeared to be a cloud of black smoke, heading straight for her.
“No!” another voice suddenly yelled, and the next thing Ilana knew, she was encircled by black ash. As the voice yelled something in Latin which Ilana could not understand, the smoke thing appeared to make a hasty retreat.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Ilana glanced up to see a tall man, fair hair, dressed in white, standing before her. Although he had startled her, compared to what had been chasing her earlier, this man had not scared her in the least.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Jacob.” The man crouched down to her level.
“I’m Ilana.”
“So, tell me, Ilana,” Jacob began, “what are you doing out here by yourself?”
“My home and my people are all gone now,” Ilana swallowed hard. “It was the volcano.”
Jacob raised his eyebrows. “You mean you actually survived that? I believed all had been lost.”
“I’m the only one.” Ilana explained. “I’ve been out here ever since it happened, and then that thing started chasing me. Now I don’t know where to go.”
Jacob took her by the hand. “You are safe now, Ilana,” he said, leading her away.
“What is this?” Ilana asked, taking in the strange figure of the statue before her.
“Its name is Tawaret,” Jacob explained, leading her down the stone steps into the chamber. Ilana glanced around her to see some funny-looking paintings, a few odd bits of furniture and what looked to be part of a tapestry hanging from a loom.
“And what’s that?” Ilana pointed at it.
“This,” Jacob began, “is my story and the island’s story.”
“Why’s it only half finished?” Ilana wondered.
“Because my time is not yet done,” Jacob informed her. “I still have work to do for the good of this island. But there will come a day when this tapestry is finished, and my time will then be over.”
Some time later that night, Ilana woke from a nightmare, the same nightmare that had haunted her nights ever since the volcano; she was running through the jungle, experiencing the same choking sensation and struggling to breathe, the same heat from the molten ash. Her mother was following her, calling out to Ilana to save her.
“Yes, hold on, Mother,” Ilana had said. “I’ll come back for you.”
But when she had turned round, her mother was as she had been when Ilana last saw her, face all burned away. She walked towards her with slow, leaden footsteps, reaching out to her with those horrible burned arms.
Ilana sat up in her makeshift bed, sweating and panting, looking around for Jacob. She tiptoed past the strange tapestry she had seen the previous night, made her way towards the steps that led out of the statue. There he was, talking to someone; an unfamiliar man’s voice. Tentatively, Ilana took a few steps towards the sound of the voices, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man Jacob was talking to.
“You can speak all you like of the evil surrounding us,” Jacob was saying. “And you can continue to plead your case that it was not your fault, that it was a natural disaster. But you and I will both always know the truth. Yet you have failed. One survived.”
“Then you know what I must do,” came the second voice, a harsh, angry voice. “You know what we were always told. It always ends the same.”
“You are the one who causes the destruction around here,” Jacob continued. “Not any of my people. You have destroyed them.”
“And do you remember how my village was destroyed?” the other man asked.
“You know that was not my doing,” Jacob stated.
“You did nothing to stop her,” the man reminded him. “In my mind that makes you equally culpable. You took my means of escape from me, you took away everything that I was before. Now I am going to take everything from you. You may have allowed her to live, but it will not be so for long.”
“No one will ever be able to harm Ilana while I am around,” Jacob retorted.
“You know that will not be forever,” came the response. “One day, there will be a day when I will find a way to break what she did to us, and I will kill you.”
“You know where to find me,” Jacob snorted, turning away and walking back towards the chamber. Ilana hastily turned away and ran back to where she had been sleeping, covering her face with the blankets and hoping Jacob wouldn’t realise she’d heard any of that. But she determined that if Jacob ever needed her, she would always be there to protect him, just as he had vowed to do for her.
Eight Years Later:
Ilana found herself thinking about that night as she made her way to a beach she’d never been to before, trying to catch some fish for herself and Jacob to eat. Jacob had never mentioned the end of his story again apart from once, not long after he had rescued her, when he had caught her unpicking some of the tapestry. When questioned, Ilana had admitted that she’d thought by sabotaging the tapestry and delaying its completion, she would be delaying Jacob’s end, keeping him with her for as long as possible.
“You do not need to worry, Ilana,” Jacob had reassured her. “It will be a long time before I will leave you. But you must not destroy my tapestry. You cannot rewrite time.”
Reassured by this, Ilana had barely thought about it again. She had never heard the other man’s voice again either, nor had she become aware of any other man on the island. Eventually, she had wondered if she had dreamed the whole thing.
She realised she was humming under her breath, the old Russian lullaby about the little grey wolf which her mother had always used to sing to her when they were on the boat, and here (possibly even back in Russia, although Ilana couldn’t really remember that).
“Yes, I remember that too, Ilana.”
Ilana gasped; took a few steps back in shock.
Standing before her was her mother.
“Yes, that is right, Ilana. Don’t be afraid. I am here for you, just like I always will be.”
“Mama?” Ilana stammered. “But you’re...you’re dead.”
“So that is what he told you.” Her mother shook her head.
“What do you mean? Do you mean Jacob?”
“Yes. He has lied to you. Did you really believe that I could ever have left you?” Her mother smiled sadly. “When you have said what you wish to say to him, I will be waiting for you at our old camp. We will be together again.”
“I told you I would come back for you,” Ilana swallowed hard. “I’ll be there.”
“Did you catch anything?” Jacob began, but broke off when he registered the look on Ilana’s face. “What is the matter?”
“I just saw my mother,” Ilana cried. “She told me you were pretending that she was dead.”
“Oh, Ilana,” Jacob sighed. “I know that you have never stopped missing her. But the person you saw was not your mother.”
“Then who was it?” Ilana asked, confused.
“You met him before. He was in his form of black smoke.”
“That thing that chased me through the jungle?” Ilana gasped.
“That’s right. Long ago, before you ever came to the island, I had a twin brother. We were brought up by the island’s then-protector, just like you were. And one day, when I was angry and upset with him, I made a mistake. I created the monster you saw when you first came here. The man you overheard me arguing with when you first came here, that was him taking his original form as my brother. But he can take other forms too, those of the deceased. That is how he made himself appear as your mother.”
“But why would he do that?” Ilana asked.
“He is determined that one day, he will kill me. At this time, he cannot do that, because our mother made it so. But I fear that he will find a loophole. If he were to manipulate another into killing me, he may succeed. He has tried several times. I believe that is what his attempt to convince you that I was keeping you from your mother was about.”
“He will not succeed,” Ilana vowed. “I will make sure of that.”
“I appreciate your loyalty, Ilana, but there may come a time when you are unable to guarantee that. When that time comes, I will need you to ensure that all the candidates for my replacement are here, and that you protect them. Don’t worry, you will be well prepared for your task.”
“I won’t let you down.”
Seven Years Later:
Ilana watched Jacob for as long as possible as the boat carried her away from the island in preparation for her mission (and tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed the figure in black who was also watching her departure).
She read the piece of paper bearing the name of the first person Jacob wanted to make sure was brought to the island, although she didn’t need to; she knew the name – Ricardus Alpert, knew his circumstances, and knew how she was supposed to bring him there.
El Socorro, Tenerife, Spain.
That was the man, riding past her in his frantic hunt for a doctor who would be able to save the life of his wife, Isabella. Ilana knew that it would be futile, that Isabella could not be saved, and that Ricardus was on the first steps of his journey that would lead him to the island, to Jacob.
She still disliked her mission, and the thought that one day, Jacob would no longer be there to protect the island, even as she had done when Jacob first began to prepare her, had made it so that she could not be killed until the eventual successor was in place. Yet she had vowed that she would do anything she could to assist Jacob, and the time had come for her to honour her promise.
“You are in search of a doctor?” she asked. “I have the name of one right here.”
Jacob feared there would come a time when his journey would be over. But there were others whose journeys were just beginning.