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sirowsky-stories · 2 months

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The Lost Island

Chapter 20 - Found

Recap: After saving the world by sacrificing yourself to allow a matriarch tree to grow impossibly fast, you've managed to use the last remaining strength of your soul to send Marcus back in time to when he first met you. And as the two timelines begin to merge, you and Marcus are left trying to rediscover each other, just as the island once again beckons for you.

Author’s Note: It's been a year and a half since I abandoned this poor thing with just one chapter unfinished. But thanks to @scorpio-marionette I've finally been able to finish it! Hope it won't disappoint!

Rating: Mature 18+ONLY Warnings: Cursing, comfort, fluff, reference to smut. Word Count: 5130 Masterlist (this story) Author’s Masterlist

Unsurprisingly, things got somewhat awkward after that impromptu reunion. Your clothes were scattered on the ground, some of them even lightly torn due to the sudden urgency of your need for each other, so once you’d both regained your breaths, it was a scramble to recover them and make your way inside. Thankfully, Missy had clocked what was going on out back and opted to hide in her room, hoping that none of the neighbours would’ve heard the two of you. But it wasn’t until you and Marcus climbed into his bed and just held one another, that you really began to grasp everything that had happened.

Again, it wasn’t as simple as memories. It was strong emotions and a lot of sensory input which was suddenly just there, as clear and real as they would’ve been to the version of you who had lived them. But after your rushed and bewildering coupling, you began to feel less like she was this other being which couldn’t be more than loosely connected to you, and more like you might actually be the same person.

Something which became a tad unsettling when you were getting ready to leave the following evening, and realized that both you and Missy had acted like old friends from the moment you’d walked into the kitchen that morning. Also, you knew where everything belonged in the entire house, which foods were the seven-year old's favourites, and even what Marcus’ morning mood was gonna be. And it was only after you’d stepped outside to fly the helicopter back to HQ, that any of this felt at all strange.

You’d had dinner with the two of them, chatted, cracked jokes and laughed, cleared the table and helped with the dishes, all without once noting that this was the first time you’d set foot in there, the first time you’d hung out with them. Hell, it was the first time you’d socialized with anyone other than what had been absolutely necessary, ever since you were sixteen. And it had felt completely natural and easy.

It was only when you stood there, by the aircraft, turning back to say goodnight to Marcus, that it even occurred to you, and you could see the sudden uncertainty in his eyes as he read the confusion in yours.

“I… wow… This is so weird,” you tried, failing to find words to describe the feeling.

“Are you okay?” was all he could manage, clearly unsure of what was going on with you, but unwilling to pressure you or do anything which might jeopardise your rekindled relationship.

And then it hit you how this had to be just as strange for him. Suddenly having you back, presumably exactly as it had been in the time he’d lived, and you were abruptly worried that he’d fall apart if you left again. He loved you like nothing you’d ever seen in anyone before. Like you’d never even believed possible.

“Are you?” you countered, and then watched him suck in a deep breath.

“I don’t have a clue…” he started, before it all came flooding out as if he’d been sitting on this all evening. “But I’m so scared. This all felt like before, and god, I missed it so much… feeling like a family again. But I’m so fucking scared that this was just a random thing and that you’re gonna fly off and everything will fade, and I’ll be alone again, and I can’t do it, Pita… I can’t fucking do it again. Please, don’t go.”

He was all but sobbing towards the end, and it tore at your heart to see that pain in him. You stepped away from the machine and hugged him, and the feeling was right there. That same desire and affection and devotion, telling you how much you loved this man, how you’d do anything for him. And suddenly it seemed impossible that you’d even contemplated leaving him just to return a helicopter that was unlikely to be needed during the night anyway.

You let him lead you back to the house, no longer sure what you’d been so confused about before. And when you fell asleep in his arms a little while later, it was with a feeling of comfort and familiarity, free of all doubts or troubles. This was where you belonged.

<><><><><>

Marcus woke up the next morning to a phone that simply would not stop ringing no matter how many times he ignored it. Which he did because his arms were still around you, and he wasn’t gonna let you go until someone forced him. Eventually, he got annoyed with the insistent disturbance and used his threads to move the device away to the kitchen, not even glancing at the screen to see who was trying to reach him. All he wanted to see was you.

He’d lost this. He knew what it felt like to have to give this up, to know that he’d never again get to feel the warmth of your body against his, or the steady rise and fall of your chest, the rhythmic beating of your heart and how his own body synchronized to match. If this was really happening, if you really were somehow merging with his version of you, then there was a chance he’d never have to give you up again. But if it wasn’t… then he’d have to suffer that pain all over again, and he knew now he couldn’t survive that. So yes, he’d hold on to you for as long as he could.

The day was still young, and you showed no signs of waking up yet, so he just laid there, enjoying every second and trying not to think about the fears which still lived in his heart. But of course, it wouldn’t last forever.

“Dad! Will you please answer your phone!” Missy called from further away in the house, apparently having gotten up already.

It was a Friday so that wasn’t surprising, she was good at getting up in time for school, sometimes getting some reading done during breakfast, or just sitting outside in the morning sun, listening to her favourite music. Where his phone hadn’t bothered you, Missy’s voice instantly made you stir, which made a wonderful sort of warm softness spread through him. You cared about her, as much as he did. Reacted to her as readily as a mother would.

“What time is it?” you sleepily grumbled, clearly fighting against having to get up, but also clearly fine with waking up in his bed and arms.

“Early. You can stew for another half-hour if you want,” he answered in a whisper, to keep from fully rousing you and let you slip back into sleep if you wanted.

“Mmm…” was all you responded with, which he interpreted as you feeling much too good to get up.

But he still had to. He squeezed you just a little tighter, pressing a light kiss to your head, just behind the ear, and then carefully pulled away, hating how the sudden loss of contact made him feel cold as he padded barefoot to the bathroom and closed the door.

You’d only gone to bed and slept last night, but the few heated minutes out on the patio would never leave his memory for as long as he lived. Because it had been you. He’d seen it in your eyes, the exact same expression as you’d had that one and only time the two of you had been together prior to this one. It didn’t matter that that was all the experience he had to go on with you, because there was so much more to your relationship than the physical, and in those few minutes, everything had been just as he remembered.

Standing there, staring at his own reflection in the bright vanity lights around the mirror, he could clearly see the fear that still held him in a tight grip. The crippling fear that even after everything that had happened, everything he’d been through, he might still lose you. But he couldn’t live under the constant weight of that fear without turning into a wreck of a human being. So, he tried not to think about it, tried to focus instead on getting the day going, planning the morning out in his head while he did his morning toilet, before sneaking back out into the bedroom, somehow still relieved to see you there.

Taking a breath, trying to keep himself levelled, he left the room and headed to the kitchen, where the fucking phone was still ringing incessantly. He picked it up, noting that the caller-ID said Granada, but whatever she wanted, it couldn’t be good, and he wasn’t in the mood for bad today. Could he not get to take one day off from bad stuff?

“It’s work, right?” Missy wondered, already seated at the table with her cereal bowl.

“Yeah,” he replied simply, still just staring at the phone.

“Then you should answer, it might be really important.”

“I know, I just don’t wanna be the Heroic right now. Not today.”

Technically, both you and Marcus had been a bit awol for the past day and a half, seen as how you both still had a job to do, which you’d completely ignored in favour of just being together.

“Because of Ace? She stayed last night, right?” she probed, trying not to sound overly interested, but not quite succeeding.

Apparently, the same melding process which seemed to be happening with you, was happening with Missy as well. Suddenly she too appeared to know about things that had occurred in his timeline, as though she’d lived them herself, which only increased his hopes of this being a permanent displacement.

“She did, and I really wanna focus on her right now. Things have happened lately, that… well, it’s complicated,” he tried, but it was a poor choice of words.

“You guys aren’t like… having problems or anything?” she sounded worried now, which in a backwards kinda way made him happy, because worrying meant she cared about his relationship with you.

“No, not like that. We just, uh… need to figure some stuff out.”

“Dad, that’s exactly what grown-ups say when they have problems,” she said, starting to sound genuinely concerned now.

“And I’m also saying that you don’t need to worry, she’s not going anywhere as long as I have a say,” he reassured her, which appeared to be enough to calm her down.

But then that took her focus back to his phone.

“Gosh, just answer her already. She’s not gonna stop.”

He sighed again, deeper this time, but reached for the device all the same.

“Moreno.”

“God damned it, Marcus, I was about to send a tac-unit to your house!” Granada shouted in his ear, making him twitch his head away from the speaker for a moment.

“Well, good fucking morning to you too, Boss…” he snapped back, earning a snicker from his daughter in between bites of cereal.

“I need you to come in as soon as possible, we’ve got a major problem,” her tone was enough to get his blood going, and he threw a worried glance at Missy, who had now buried her nose into one of her textbooks.

“What is it?” he questioned, trying to keep his tone casual.

“It’s the island. And since you’re the only one that knows what might be going on, I need you to get your ass over here.”

Shit. He should’ve known something would happen to disturb his chances at a quiet week. It wasn’t like he’d had more than a moment’s chance to relax and recover ever since that damned plane crash. How long ago was that now?

“I’ll be right there,” he promised, and then ended the call.

“Should I call Abuela to come drive me to school?” Missy asked, still looking at her book.

“Yeah. I’m sorry, kiddo.”

“You’re not going back to fieldwork, though. Right?”

“I might have to,” he admitted, not wanting to lie to her. “To stop something really bad. I don’t know yet.”

“What about Ace?”

The chopper was still in his backyard, and he didn’t know how to fly it, whereas you did.

“She’s gonna take me to work and return the helicopter she borrowed in the process.”

“So, you’re gonna go together?” she puzzled, sounding quite pleased with the idea.

“Like I said, she’s not going anywhere unless it’s with me.”

It took you no time at all to get up, get dressed and get the aircraft warmed up, once Marcus had made it clear that you were needed at HQ. Not that Granada had said anything about needing you. He did, though. It was amazing to observe how you kissed the top of Missy’s head in passing, both of you acting as though it was the most ordinary thing, wishing each other a good day before you left the house with him.

The flight was also dealt with in record time, meaning that the two of you stepped into Granada’s office just twenty minutes after the call. She didn’t look surprised to see you walk in behind him, and just asked you to close the door before her focus landed on Marcus.

“Ah, the runaways return,” she remarked, but then got straight to business before either of them could mount a defence. “The island has become visible to our satellites since yesterday. Do you know why that might be?”

“I’m not sure,” he pondered, genuinely surprised by the news. “Our theory in my time was that the island itself was responsible for the cloaking, since it vanished when I killed it.”

“You killed what? The island?”

“Yes. But so far as we know, it’s still very much alive right now, so I really don’t know. Although… it is possible that the portal has something to do with this.”

“How so?”

“It created the time-displacement which started when we arrived there, probably because it sensed my powers. So, maybe our recent visit was enough for it to react the same way, or perhaps it actually remembered me. Either way, that thing is a lot more powerful than we can ever fully grasp, and considering that it’s been a prisoner there for a long time, I’m prepared to believe that it could’ve disrupted the island’s cloaking capacity, if it somehow figured out how to free itself without our help.”

“From what you’ve described, I don’t think we want to get up close and personal with that entity again. But we obviously don’t want the island to develop or distribute deadly spores either, which is what I gather will happen if the cloak stays down. So, any suggestions?”

“Yeah. We figure out how the tree produces those golden particles and try and bring some of it to the island, so we can kill those spores and then send the Ozsha home without destroying their world.”

“And you’re sure you could convince the portal to cooperate?”

“Actually, I don’t think I have to. In the future, I was able to pull it to me and control where and when it opened, and since my powers don’t seem to have changed by coming here, I’m pretty sure I can still do that. But I also think that the portal kind of wants us to help the aliens get home.”

“Wait, wait… Did you just say you can manipulate space-time?” she sceptically questioned, to which he shrugged.

“To some degree. If I’d been able to assert complete control over it, I would’ve found a way back to Pita much sooner, but I couldn’t create a permanent displacement on my own.”

“Then how do you know if you can put the Ozsha back on Eqlo’e permanently?”

“Because I know that this isn’t their original time either, and the cosmos wants things to be in their correct time and place. That much I’m certain of.”

“Right. Well then, I’ll get the departments working on those particles.”

<><><><><><><>

It took two weeks for the science department to crack the puzzle of the matriarch, and in the meantime, the line between you and Marcus’ Pita kept on blurring. Until you could usually not even recall how you’d only known him for a fraction of the time it felt like. You really were merging though, because you could still recall the events that had happened in your own time, as well as his, which meant you weren’t being erased or replaced with her. It was more like she was being added to you.

Your lives were identical up until the moment of Mo’s transition into this time, so it was really just those three years which were being imparted to you, but they sure left behind some massive impressions. Going back to the island once again only strengthened your experiences from there, helping you to recall every detail, and leaving you incredibly grateful that it had somehow not ended in utter failure, because holy shit had there been a lot of close calls.

Six canisters of golden spores had been prepared for you to set up on locations around the entire island, before an automatic trigger would open them and disperse the shimmering particles evenly across the small patch of land. And since this felt more personal to the two of you than anyone else, you’d opted to do this alone, although a ship carrying the entire Heroics team was anchored nearby, just in case.

One canister was to be placed right on the forest line of the beach where you’d first washed up that day after the crash, so you left it for last. When it was done, you walked down further onto the beach and just stood there, looking out at the ocean in silent remembrance. Not about anything in particular, just the fact that you’d survived all this crap. You made a mental note to call Chris as soon as you got a chance, because the spores reminded you of the painful goodbye that day. The regrets you’d felt.

Then you registered a movement in front of you, and refocused on the present only to find the Ozsha having appeared in the waves as far as your eyes could see. But they weren’t behaving threatening, and it took you a moment to realize that it was probably because Marcus was talking to them. Letting them invade his mind so he could show them his memories and help them understand that this was all an effort to save them.

“It’s okay, Pita. You can press the button, they’re gonna stay right there and let the spores infect them,” he reassured you, and you did as he asked.

The canisters performed their function as intended, and within minutes, the entire island and the surrounding waters were covered in gold, sparkling under the sun. Mo then nodded at the Ixo, before turning away from the water, heading up the beach and towards the west side of the mountain.

“That just leaves the portal,” he said while he took your hand and settled in for the trek.

“Do you think it’ll come out swinging like last time?” you pondered, remembering your first trip to their home-planet, and how cataclysmic it had been to your relationship with this man.

“I don’t know. I’m kinda curious to find out if it somehow knows about all that. It seemed to know absolutely everything before.”

“Yeah, but if memory serves, that was only after it first emerged from its hibernation.”

“So far as we knew, you mean. It could’ve understood everything from the start, manipulating us with its every move.”

“Hm. I guess so. Did we ever figure out why it plopped us out with a three-month delay after we’d sent the Ozsha home?” you asked, and saw him smile a little, probably at the way you expressed these past events as your own experiences now.

“I believe that was related to us learning that the island could still destroy us. Although, why we needed to be that far into the future after destroying it to understand it, I still don’t know.”

“Maybe the goo got it wrong. No one’s infallible.”

He chewed on that for a minute, while you made your way through some thicker underbrush, but then he grumbled quietly, like he’d been arguing with himself internally.

“No, I don’t think it did anything at random. We might not be able to suss out why it did such a thing, but I’m certain there was a reason.”

“Like what?” you wondered, not challenging him, just curious about his reasoning.

“I think it might’ve looked at every conceivable way to avert the disaster of this planet being destroyed, finding just one viable solution. And I think that everything it did was with surgical precision, specifically to get us to the places we needed to be in the exact moments we needed to be there.”

“Which would mean my sacrifice was the only solution, all along. And nothing we did differently could’ve changed anything for the better.”

“True. But what if it also saw this?” he pondered, lifting your joined hands to indicate your restored closeness. “What if it knew that you are so fucking powerful, you’d find a way back to me, even after death?”

You just smiled at that. There was every chance it was true, just like there was every chance it wasn’t. But either way, however strangely and complicatedly you’d gotten here, you were together. Against all odds, you’d found a way to each other across space and time. How could you ever argue against that?

Reaching the black lands, you were once again met by the portal’s defences, but Marcus easily averted them as you made your way to the center of the area, and the large flat rock. You stood silently in the middle of it, waiting and watching the surrounding rocks, until that same screech could be heard from somewhere to the north. It quickly multiplied until it was coming from all directions, and then hundreds of little black pools of liquid were converging around you.

But unlike that first time, they didn’t try and engulf you now. They gathered into the black gateway between all of the cosmos, right in front of you, and you felt Marcus laugh lightly beside you.

“What?” you asked, and he looked at you with a puzzled brow.

“You can’t feel it?” he responded, smiling wider, but you had no clue what he was talking about, so you shrugged, and he threw a thumb towards the portal. “Don’t be afraid of it, cariño. You know it, just like it knows you. Let it show you.”

Still not clear about what he meant, you turned your focus on the thing, feeling ambivalent about whether it really was a friend, after everything it had put you through. But then a feeling started to creep up your spine, and suddenly, images flooded your mind. Like a movie being played out inside you, Marcus’s entire life was shown to you, from his childhood to his marriage and the birth of Missy, all the way to everything the two of you had been through, including all the lost time you couldn’t remember.

The three months you’d mentioned earlier, now revealed to you in full, as you’d been brought to the Hawaiian Islands back before Akela’s party had left. You’d lived with them in their time, gotten to know them, shared in their joys and sorrows, for no other reason than that your fates were linked, and it was important that you’d always know each other, even if the memories were no longer there. That was how Akela had so easily read you. How he’d known you even when you’d been brought before him three years prior to the events which had supposedly been your first encounter.

From there, the black liquid took you to the memories of Marcus’s Pita as she’d been merged with the matriarch tree. How she’d spent an entire year conserving energy, refusing to grow while she’d waited for the right moment, knowing she could do it. That she could give him everything back. That she could give you both everything you’d ever dreamed of.

When the images faded, you and Mo both dropped to your knees, crying with the overload of sensations, the months and years of emotions you’d experienced in the space of mere minutes.

“Oh, god… I saw your life,” you started, still squeezing his hand while you tried to stop trembling. “I saw everything we missed.”

“Me too,” he panted, struggling to get his breathing under control, having clearly experienced something similar. “I saw your parents, your birthday… your career. And then…”

“Hawaii,” you filled in when he had to pause for a moment.

“Yeah. I finally know what Kahele means,” he breathed, smiling despite the strain to his system, and you mirrored him.

“The home,” you whispered. “The most fitting name I’ve ever heard for anyone. You’ve been my home all my life, I just never knew it.”

He pulled you to him then, embracing you as you both sat there on your knees before the giant black door, finally able to understand everything, and therefor, finally able to let it go. Akela had asked you to deliver a message to his daughter after he’d passed, but now you knew that it had always been meant for you, since the Chief had always been meant to live on. That the message had actually come from the portal itself, taking the shape and sound of a man you trusted so that you would always remember it.

‘Eha ke ola – Life hurts

He’d said that she would know what it meant, and you did. You knew it wasn’t about pain, but about the struggles of life making you impossibly strong. That the real message had been for you to believe in yourself, because every day of your life had prepared you for this battle. Every moment of self-doubt and fear had been there to teach you just how much you could endure. And how much you could give.

The portal vanished then, and a moment later, so did the island and the Ozsha, leaving just a barren piece of rock under your feet. A dead volcano, completely natural to this world, not cloaked by any alien lifeforms or sprouting any blood-sucking trees. Your work was done.

<><><><><><><>

You agreed to marry him just a few weeks after your return from the island, and the wedding was one for the books. All the Heroics and their families were there, your brother, and some of the senior staff, and it was mostly just a lovable kind of chaos. It hadn’t ended until the following morning, after the last bouts of games and wrestling matches had finally drained your guests of their energy, leaving you and Marcus to drive off into the sunrise together.

But you hadn’t travelled anywhere for your honeymoon. You’d been away for long enough already. Instead, the time off work had been spent in an oceanside cabin not far from your now shared home, in the throws of affection and unbridled passion, resulting in the arrival of Missy’s little brother, nine months later. She adored being a big sister, doting on the baby boy every chance she got, insisting that you name him Kal, after Superman’s real name, because she had decided that any kid who had managed to get born in spite of spacetime displacements and interdimensional warfare, had to be the most superpowered kid to have ever existed.

Needless to say, you’d both caved. Baby Kal it was. But he soon earned his own nicknames as well, such as Mini-Ace, MM Junior, and Kaliber, all based on his large and utterly charming personality. Surprisingly, just like his big sister, he never developed any abilities. And Marcus was actually glad for it, because it meant that Missy would never feel excluded. That the two of them would always be equals, and therefor, hopefully develop a strong and lasting bond.

Not that you would’ve allowed them to drift apart even if they’d been in danger of it. That was where your experiences of a shattered childhood turned you into supermom, because whatever they did, you always knew how to keep them together. How to keep them united against the struggles of life, so they would always have an ally and a safe place to run to if things got difficult.

Marcus often sat and just watched you teach them these invaluable lessons, marvelling at how naturally you’d taken on this role which had seemed so impossibly difficult and frightening to you at the start of this relationship. He remembered how you’d panicked at the mere mention of your childhood during that first dinner, and how scared you’d been of somehow ruining Missy by just being in her life.

It all seemed so far away now. But he also remembered how it had felt when you’d died in his arms. First on the island, then with the tree. And whenever those images and feelings gripped him, he understood every nuance of the panic you’d suffered. The crippling fear of knowing that you could utterly destroy those you loved, simply by loving them.

The rewards of that love, however, would always outweigh the fear, which was why those memories never darkened his spirit or made him doubt anything about his life. He would go through it all again, a hundred times, if it meant he’d get to see you play with your children, cheer at their successes, share their burdens and carry their pains. He would never take it for granted and he would never stop thanking your soul for the strength it gave him, every single day, to know how hard you’d fought to get to be with him.

The island was always doomed to be lost, a mere footnote in history, the scope of which most people would never even understand. But to the two of you, it would always be the place where your lost souls had found their way to each other. So, every year, on the anniversary of the plane crash, you went back there and planted a tree, leaving it to the elements with the hope that it would survive until the next year. And by the time you’d grown old enough to have grandchildren, an entire forest covered the island once more.

No one had wanted anything to do with it after it had been deemed safe, so you and Marcus had claimed it. Not to be turned into a resort or even your own private vacation spot, but simply to keep it alive, as a monument to your story. And together, you’d named it Loa’a.

Found.

THE END

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If anyone has come back to finish this with me, just know that you're amazing! I'm letting the taglist tag along since this story pre-dates my writing blog, so my apologies to anyone who didn't wish to be notified about this anymore.

Beyond that, I'm just so pleased to have this finished, and a huge THANK YOU to anyone who gave or gives this crazy story a chance!

@deadhumourist @idreamofboobear @dornish-queen @ladyphantom96 @sarahjkl82-blog @shsoba05 @cannedsoupsucks @toomanystoriessolittletime @tintinn16 @nolanell @prostitute-robot-from-the-future @myfavpedrothings @generalfoolish @tanzthompson @harriedandharassed @spishsstuff

#the lost island fic #marcus moreno fic #marcus moreno x female reader #marcus moreno x reader #we can be heroes fic #we can be heroes au #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal character fanfic #sirowsky stories

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