SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

When little Johnny was an even smaller Johnny, he had learned of this thing called Sola Fide. It's a term the church people he spend his childhood around used, some fancy Latin basically meaning that someone could receive salvation just 'cause his faith was strong enough. Not a literal translation, to be fair. Didn't really know what it meant in English, though he could've sworn he knew it at some point.

Either way, Johnny thought it was pretty cool. The world was full of people so much better than him in all matters important. All these good people, all these powerful people. All these people who grew up to be fruitful and successful and diligent and helpful and then there was him - Johnny McKay, incompetent fool extraordinaire. To know that even he, he and his simple-minded soul would find happiness just by believing was chilling. But in a good kind of way.

For a moment, between soft sobs and the heaves of his friend he pondered. Was it faith that he had lacked so long?

No, no it wasn't. It wasn't faith he was lacking. He looked at Raina, and he knew that he believed in her. Believed in her more than in everything else he had believed in. Even when she left, even when all semblances of plans or hopes died, even in this most dire time did he believe in her.

An irrational kind of faith, one some people would call all religious belief, but one Johnny held regardless.

It wasn't faith he was lacking.

"Raina... I, I am so fucking sorry."

It was ability.

"I...I really am. Raina, please."

It was skill.

"Please, forgive me. This is, I just can't do it."

He had nothing. He was nothing. And now, over Penny's dead body he realized that was all he ever'd amount to be.

"Raina..."

If only, it were not for her.

Forgive him. Forgive him for what? Standing there like a useless lump? That was all Johnny ever did and Raina was past the point that she could expect any different. She wouldn't have trusted Johnny to be able to find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight if she hadn't been desperate.

She just sat there, hair plastered to her cheeks with tears and probably some vomit splatter. Some of it had gotten on her shorts too. Every time she breathed in, she got a lungful of rot and bile.

That was it then. This was all she had left. Johnny and a bunch of corpses.

She wouldn't get them off the island. She couldn't even save Penelope's life. By the time she got her shit together and made any sort of progress, there wouldn't be anyone left.

How much longer would she last?

Raina's throat closed up again. She had told herself that she was being objective, but the truth was, she had been in denial as much as Beaks had since the first day. She had convinced herself that she would get out of here alive, that she would be the one to pull it off. But almost everyone she had spoken to since then had died or killed, and their numbers were dwindling ever faster, and here she was with nothing but a grenade and various kinds of dead weight.

She almost wanted to laugh at how stupid it all was. How stupid she was. God, it was like walking away from an argument, so sure she was right, only to look up the subject and find out that she had been way off the mark all along. She might have laughed if she wasn't so busy crying.

Eventually her tears slowed though, and her sobs quieted to sniffles. She was tempted to just curl up in the fetal position right here, but too much of the space was occupied by her puddle of vomit or the bodies of her friends.

"I..." Raina swallowed thickly before she was able to continue. "I want to get out of here. I want to leave. Let's leave."

"Yeah, me too. Let's leave."

So much for his grand little dreams. Spend a few days lunging around with a pretty girl, waiting for the end and 'though he got his chill and he got his girl all Johnny felt was terrible.

The bunch of bodies around - including Penny's - and the sight and smell of Raina's vomit wasn't exactly doing their best to make this place as appealing as it could be. And now? Well, it got something worse than any corpse or any bodily liquid.

It was a bad memory.

And like most people, he had wished he could just forget it.

Johnny raised from his position near the floor, looking at Raina. It was cold, and though he had noticed it duly, he had not yet experienced until that moment. Weird, his hand wasn't really hurting anymore. And yet it didn't seem like he could move it.

He held it out for Raina.

[[Johnny McKay, continued elsewhere]]

Raina's stained fingers closed around Johnny's and she let him pull her to her feet. She didn't look back at Penelope or Sam. They would probably want to be together, right? It was okay to just leave them here.

Raina couldn't get the image of Penelope's waxy, tear-stained face out of her head. They had known each other almost their whole lives - surely she had some other memory of Penelope that she could call up instead. She couldn't do her the disservice of only remembering her like... that.

If anyone deserved to go out suffering and begging, it was Dorothy, or maybe someone like Alessio. Not Penelope.

No. No, that wasn't true either. Dorothy and Alessio were terrible, but they had been made that way. The mastermind behind all of this deserved that. Danya? Raina wasn't even sure if he was the mastermind, or just the face of the operation and the fall guy for whenever it did finally come tumbling down. Whoever it was that had dreamed this up in the first place, they deserved to have all of it turned back on them and more.

But here Raina was, powerless to do anything of the sort. Even if she'd had the ability to do something like that, she didn't think she had the energy anymore.

She leaned on Johnny for support as they left the library behind.

((Raina Rose continued in The Path to Eternal Happiness, I Found It))