Location: Lost (PG: Hurley, Walt)

Title: Location
Author: emilythelost
Fandom: Lost
Character(s)/Pairing: Hurley, Walt
Rating: PG
Word Count: 500
Prompt: Flawed Prompt at drabble_redux
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Lost. I've never earned anything with the infamous numbers, either. And I never saw if there was a name on the shirt that Hurley wore in 1x18 Numbers so I just went with the first name with "chicken" in it that I could find.


Hurley took a long drink of water. For the fifteenth time today, he wished he had brought more batteries with him. Life on the island was lived in fits and starts and today was a fit. Everyone had taken a dip in the ocean, eaten a bit of roasted boar and some fish mixture Jin had finally been able to convince everyone to try. It had tasted vaguely gritty, if grit actually had a taste.

Now there was nothing to do. He almost wished he were back at the Chicken Shack, working on the drive through at lunch rush. At least he had something to complain about back then. The constant stream of stupid questions had been irritating but had given him something to roll his eyes about.

Even if he were back in the States, he wouldn’t be working at the Chicken Shack. There was never a good time to roll his eyes at his accountant’s questions. He had tried once. The man had thought he was disapproving of a stock and had sold it. The day after, it had tripled its worth.

“You wanna play a game?”

Walt sat down beside him, his face hopeful. It looked like Hurley wasn’t the only one bored out of his skull. “Sure, dude. I’m feeling good about my choices today.”

“I won’t really make you pay all that money. It’s just a joke.”

He shook his head. “Nope. You won it fair and square. When we get back to civilization, you’ll get your money.”

“Do you think…” but he didn’t finish the sentence.

“Think what? That we’ll ever get back?”

Walt nodded, the same forlorn smile on his face that he had been wearing since he got on the plane. Hurley had remembered seeing him, thinking it was nice that a father and son got to travel together. He and his dad had never done any traveling, except maybe going down to the corner grocery store for an ice cream cone on warm days.

“Hey, they’ll have to find us eventually. Someone’s bound to be looking for one of us.”

“No one’s looking for my dad and I. I wouldn’t care if we lived here. I like playing backgammon with you. And Locke is teaching me a lot about the jungle. There aren’t any jungles where we’re going to live. I asked.”

It was easy to see what the kid was saying. Life was pretty good here on the island, especially now that Ethan was gone. They were protected from the strange animals that kept cropping up and were able to hunt any of them they needed for food. There was water to drink and water to clean with.

Besides, here the curse didn’t seem to touch him quite as much as it did back home. He liked that. Here he was safe from himself.

The one flaw in the plan was the lack of batteries for his music. “Dude, you know any songs? I’m going to go crazy without tunes.”