valhalla37

Half-awake in a fake empire [OUaT]

2012-05-25T00:48:24Z

Title: Half-awake in a fake empire
Characters/Pairings: Jim/Frederick, Kathryn/Abigail, mentions of Regina/Evil Queen, David/Prince James and Mary Margaret/Snow White; Frederick/Abigail
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Post-finale. It's not fair that your life so far's been measured in years spent waiting. (Or, Frederick wakes up.)
Spoilers/Warnings: Up until 1x22, pure speculation after that; some cursing.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Title from The National. Credit to this theory for partly inspiring this story (or at the very least for the headcanon it's framed around).

-----

You're out running when you remember -- when it hits you.

And it does hit you, with a force that almost bowls you over, half an hour in and a couple miles away from that well your runs always seem to wander past, never entirely on purpose. Sweating and breath coming hard and jarred to a stop, on automatic you think earthquake but you've subbed enough for Mrs. Henderson's third-grade science class that you know Maine almost never gets hit like this. You've just about righted yourself, started to wonder whether you should be worried about a stroke or something, when all of it begins to creep in.

It starts as a slow trickle of memories, as you steady yourself on your feet; just impressions.

Of your mother's touch, gentle as she tucked you into bed; of your saddle creasing against your knees and the thunder of hooves; of cold steel, steady in your grip.

(Blonde hair and blue eyes and that smile)

Then it's a tidal rush.

Thoughts, feelings, colours and sounds and smells and words (like your real name, like saying your wedding vows, like swearing your oath to protect the king), not a gym teacher but a knight -- a prince -- of Midas's realm. The memories keep coming, so many and so fast it's like your mind can't hold them all and they blossom and ebb away like they're slipping through a sieve. Abigail, you think, desperate, and then it's the scent of fresh hay, then a blanket of stars stretched across the night sky, an expanse of velvet black across the tops of the trees. And laughter; tiny, chubby hands twined around your neck, the perfect surety of your child safe in your arms --

(My girls)

-- and love. True love. It takes you a minute to piece it together, that warm feeling that seems to sink right down to your bones. Familiar, though the impression of it now makes the ache of its absence before even keener. And suddenly you get why this life -- Jim's life -- has always felt like a washed-out imitation of something better, a shadow of what it could be. Why no one ever really seemed to fit as well as they should have. Your parents, your brother, your ex-girlfriends ... hell, you even spent half a second considering asking Ms. Blanchard out one time (Snow -- gods, that was Snow) because she was pretty and helped you figure out the coffee maker in the teachers' lounge and because her sadness always reminded you of your own.

You start running again, fast and hard until the breath burns in your lungs, back towards the house you know your wife used to share with James. That's where you keep your thoughts -- your feet slam against the asphalt, pain starting to lance through your shins, travelling up your legs -- on your wife who's alive and safe even with bruises still blushing pale against her skin, because you've found each other and if you start to think about whether the rest of your family is out there (and worse, if they're not) then you might lose your damn mind.

Because it's not fair -- it's not fair that your life so far's been measured in years spent waiting, trapped and torn away from the people you love. A decade and a half training to become the captain of Midas's guard, to be worthy of your princess's hand. Five years in gold while the world moved on and Abigail grieved. (It's a shame, the Evil Queen had said when she appeared on one of your scouting runs the week before the wedding, trying to barter for a spy in Midas's inner circle on your parents' tainted memory and their traitor's blood, my friends seem to have a habit of avoiding bad luck.)

You get one year -- one perfect, wonderful year -- with Abigail, and when she mentions the orphans from the Ogre Wars in the village, the ones who so desperately need parents, and you see the two little girls with dark-coloured curls hiding behind her skirts -- that's when everything finally, fully starts to makes sense. That this is your happy ending.

Only it doesn't last, because the Evil Queen won't rest until Snow's destroyed and everything goes with her, and all of it disappears into a curse that turns your wife into a stranger and your daughters gone and everything fucking wrong in a way that makes you want to stop running and stop fighting and let the world crash and burn around you if you think about it too much.

(Salt stings your eyes. Sweat or tears, you can't tell.)

You stop thinking and keep running, the feel of the road under your feet keeping you anchored as you wind back into the heart of town and finally to Abigail's street. To her house.

By the time you reach her porch you're a wreck -- sweat ringed around the collar of your T-shirt, red-faced and huffing -- and the way you knock (bang, actually, hammering on the door with your fist) has got to be making her panic but you can't stop, not when all that's separating you from the love of your life is a piece of wood and not overprotective fathers or evil queens or gold, and you fully intend to climb in through a damn window if you have to --

The window, as it turns out, doesn't end up having to be an option, because on your fifth or sixth knock the door flies open and there's Abigail, one hand trembling against her mouth, white and wide-eyed and like she's seen a ghost, and in a second you know she remembers too. And you only have that second to think because then she's in your arms, fingers curled into the fabric of your shirt and body pressed tight to yours, her tears warm against your neck.

You stand together on her porch, everything so silent and still it's almost eerie except for the quiet sobs when Abigail gasps out a breath. You don't move, either of you, because to move means the fight's starting again, the constant battle just to cling to what you love. And though you know now you won't ever stop, you want to stay in the moment for just a second, and love your wife and worry about your daughters and not think about the curse or the Queen or the fate of your realm. Just a second, and then you're going to find the rest of your family, find Snow and James and all the others, and figure out how to take back a kingdom.

And your sword.

You're definitely gonna need your sword.

As heavy as a history book can be, I will carry it with me [Once Upon a Time]

2012-04-30T04:26:42Z

Title: As heavy as a history book can be, I will carry it with me
Characters/Pairings: Kathryn/Jim
Rating: PG-13
Summary: True love isn't easy. Four times Jim almost asked Kathryn out, and one time she did.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 1x19; some language and references to past traumatic events, nothing major.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: So this is my first foray into the OUaT fandom, and my first full-length fic in months and months. I don't even know where this came from, especially since Frederick/Jim's had a total of like, four lines in the show so far. Needed an outlet for my Abigail/Frederick love though, apparently. Title from Dry The River.

i.

He spends almost an hour in the hospital gift shop, debating between daisies and carnations, and then another dozen minutes deciding what should go on the card.

"Name?" The florist doesn't even bother looking up, pen poised against the cheery pink-and-green paper. "Who's it from?"

"Uh --" Guy who found your car and hasn't stopped thinking you? Gym teacher who's spent way too much time hanging around the hospital lobby since you got admitted? Is it weird to leave my number for someone who's under medical observation? "Jim. I guess."

The florist quirks one eyebrow in a way that broadcasts volumes of sarcasm, scrawls his name and hands the card to him. She looks about ready to sigh in relief when he pauses, studying the spray of daisies and carnations in his hands.

"Sir?"

Marigolds, he thinks for some reason, suddenly sure, dropping his other bouquet and picking up the yellow flowers next to the cash instead. Definitely marigolds.

ii.

The first thing Emma notices when she comes back for a follow-up interview are the flowers, the burst of golden-yellow perched on the dresser at the far side of the room, a mysterious gift that had appeared during one of Kathryn’s naps with an even more unfamiliar name.

"Nice," she admires as Kathryn reaches for the water on her bedside table and takes a delicate sip, Emma thumbing the card to peer at the name and adding "Jim? As in, the gym teacher?" with a curious look.

"Jim the gym teacher." Kathryn pulls a face mid-drink. "You've got to be kidding me."

The gym teacher, as Emma explains it, is the guy who found her car on the side of the road near the edge of town and called the sheriff's office.

"If it weren't for him, everyone would have figured you left for Boston," she says, in that sort of bright and wide-eyed, well of course way she has of departing information. "I mean, it could have been days before we even knew you were missing."

Missing. That word deflates Kathryn a little, brings back the smells of antiseptic and dank, old air and sunlight filtered grey, the sleepy undercurrent of whatever drugs they'd fed her.

"My knight in shining armour, apparently," is what she mumbles instead, ignoring the sour look that crosses Emma's face. Only seconds later her expression changes again, shifting into muted shock and then a welcoming smile as her attention gets captured by something over Kathryn's shoulder.

"Jim," she says, shooting a meaningful glance at Kathryn, who sits up in surprise. "Hi."

Kathryn tracks Emma's gaze to the man standing in the doorway; the eyes and the hair and that smile, it hits her with a force that takes her breath away, a sense of familiarity that's too overwhelming to be anything but, though she couldn't place him if she tried. He seems to be doing the same thing, brow creased in confusion, and through their slack-jawed silence Emma seems to take it as a cue to leave, promising to come later in the afternoon.

"I'm sorry," Kathryn asks, still bewildered, in the wake of Emma's departure. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

“I … found your car?” he laughs, like he realizes how crazy it seems, and Kathryn decides in an instant that she loves the sound. “Just wanted to check and see how you were feeling.”

“Better, thanks,” she smiles, resting back on her pillow as he takes a step into the room. “And thank you for what you did. Calling Emma and everything. And for the beautiful flowers.”

Jim cracks a grin at that, moving to the end of her bed and folding his fingers against the edge of the frame. “I’m, uh, I’m really glad you’re okay,” he says plainly, the levity leaving his expression, now a wash of concern. “When I heard, that they thought you were …”

“Yeah,” she interrupts, her throat going dry. “Yeah.”

Kathryn hates that the tears start then, tears she’s managed to hold back since Emma found her behind the diner, since the haze of the drugs lifted and she was left with an empty blackness where memories should be, fragments of half-remembered pieces and no reason why. Dead, they all thought I was dead. She turns, face flushing with embarrassment, and reaches up to wipe the tears away.

She doesn't notice Jim moving closer but then the hospital bed sinks under his weight, his grip curling gently around her hand, like a sign, a signal, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.

She squeezes back.

iii.

Two weeks after Kathryn gets out of the hospital she shows up at the tail-end of his beginners' karate class, pacing a tight orbit around the back of the gym until he dismisses the kids.

"Kathryn, hi," he says, jogging over the mats to meet her, the question mark in his voice. She'd basically dropped off the earth since she was discharged, and the 'N' page in Storybrooke's barely existent phone book had stayed circled and dog-eared, closed, on his kitchen counter. "How're you doing?"

"Better, thanks." He doesn't miss how tight her smile gets, how one hand strays up to tuck her hair behind her ear, the tension in the set of her shoulders; frustrated, angry. Scared, maybe. Beautiful, still. "So do you just teach these classes to the kids?"

For the first time, he notices that she's wearing workout clothes, a gym bag slung over one arm, and the pieces start coming together.

"Six to 18 usually," he says slowly, "why?"

"I -- I deferred my first semester at law school." She shakes her head, biting her bottom lip, and Jim's struck by such a deep sense of longing, this desperate urge to do something for her, can only stare helplessly at his hands as Kathryn continues. "I was just so sure I was ready to go, to leave Storybrooke and start over in this amazing new life and then ... someone kept me in a basement for days. I don't know who it was, if they're still out there waiting to do it again, and part of it's the investigation and that I want to help find the bastard who did this, but now I just can't seem to leave --"

She stops herself, suddenly, like all the breath's collapsed out of her lungs, her fingers going back to worry the same lock of hair. "I want to learn -- I want you to teach me. It's something tangible, you know? A way I can protect myself, until we catch the guy." That same, tight smile shows up again, like she's cradling so carefully everything that wants to spill out just behind it, and it damn near breaks his heart.

There's no hesitation this time. "Okay."

"Okay?" Surprise filters across Kathryn's features, chased by pleasure. "Even if I'm a little older than the rest of your students?"

"Hey, maybe you'll pay more attention," he grins, a funny twisting in his gut at her smile, full of relief and like he's given her something, however tenuous, to hold on to. "Wanna try it out? I can show you some beginner techniques."

"Sure," Kathryn replies, a little more evenly, dropping her bag to the side and meeting to move him on a mat. Jim shifts behind her, positioning them in front of the mirror.

"This is heiko-dachi, or open parallel stance," he instructs, touching her hips lightly and showing her where to plant her feet, trying not to crowd her. "And this," he continues, raising her right hand to her ear then sweeping her arm down and out, supporting it with his own, "is soto-uke, which is an outside forearm block. Good?"

Kathryn glances up at him, and he swears he sees something in her eyes that makes him feel like he's been waiting to be looked at like that. For her to look at him like that.

She smiles.

"Good."

iv.

He makes it up to her porch before he freezes.

In all the stupid shit Jim figures he's pulled in his life -- screwing up his shoulder senior year and losing his full-ride scholarship to Ohio State, not talking to his father for the last five years of his life, getting stuck in Storybrooke like he always, always promised himself he wouldn't -- this has got to rank up there pretty damn high.

He'd dropped Kathryn off at her place after a karate lesson the other week, fumbling through a drawn-out goodbye in the front seat of his car. Now somehow he's back here, on a cold Friday night, watching his breath frost in the air and debating if he's qualified for stalker territory yet. Okay, not somehow, exactly -- he'd gone out for a couple beers with some of the other teachers after work, and decided to walk the long way home. Which, completely incidentally, led right past Kathryn's house.

Jim isn't a brave guy -- the path of least resistance and all that. Which is why he's a gym teacher and not playing football (as much as he does love teaching). Which is why his father could barely remember his name, at the end (forgiveness scares him more than almost anything else). Which is why he's still here (though meeting Kathryn, crazy as it sounds, is starting to finally make it feel like it was the right choice).

If he does this, it'll be one of the bravest (stupidest) things he's ever done.

He knocks.

--

She's not expecting anyone at all, so the knock at the front door takes her by surprise. Even more surprise than usual these days, when every nerve in her body feels like it's alight, on fire with all the tension and frustration and paranoia; the last thing she wants to be is what everyone expects, staying cooped up in her house and locked away, like their sympathy's well-placed -- poor little Kathryn, dumped by her husband and then kidnapped, the eternal victim.

(But her phone stays off and her favourite black dress and her completely impractical heels stay tucked away in her closet, and instead, there's a bottle of red wine and a chenille throw and really bad cable to keep her company.)

There's another knock after the first, more tentative than before, as she abandons her wine glass on the coffee table and goes to the door. One lock gets shifted out of place, and then another, and Kathryn cracks the door open to Jim of all people, fidgeting on her doorstep with his hands shoved into the pockets of his coat.

"Hi," she says softly after a pause, wrapping her sweater around herself against the chill and leaning her hip against the doorframe. “Nice to see you.”

“You too,” Jim says, lips twitching into a smile, still looking sheepish. “Was in the neighbourhood, saw your lights on.”

Something inside her goes warm at that. “Well, come inside then. It’s freezing out.”

It’s strange, at first, having Jim in her house, settled onto the same couch where David used to sit, surrounded by the old photos she still hasn’t had the energy to put away since she got home from the hospital. But then he cracks another joke that’s just this side of terrible, or looks at her with so much tenderness, and it’s still a little strange, but strange like how wasn’t he here before?, like how didn’t she notice this void until David, in his graceless way, woke her up from her sleepwalking life.

They talk and drink wine and talk more, about things like work and growing up in Storybrooke (wondering over the fact they never managed to cross paths before) and her non-starter marriage and his string of relationships that never really went anywhere, things she'd never said to David, so freely and so openly it all just sort of spills out, and eventually Kathryn notices that they've both migrated to the middle of the couch, pulled in close to each other's space.

She leans in to him a little, without meaning to, just falling into a natural kind of gravity that says she needs to be closer to him. Jim mimics the same, head bowing gently against hers. He smells like clean laundry and the faintest traces of his night before this -- smoke and whiskey and cold night air -- and then her hands find his face, moving to frame the line of his jaw, fingers curling against slope of his neck.

"Is this crazy?"

His voice is soft, and she laughs at that and then he does too, still so close that the sound reverberates with a low sort of rumble through her chest. "Maybe," she whispers back, still smiling, and it makes her ache, that tremble of tension that lets her know she could just lean over, just tilt her chin even slightly and make all of this real. It's an ache that pierces deep, tightens through her shoulders, arms, frozen in stillness and with how much she wants to -- it shocks her just how much -- and then Jim grins at her again and she kisses him.

He kisses her back, hard, one arm wrapping around the small of her back, the other tangling in her hair as they fumble through it (too much force, not enough finesse) and she half forgets how to do this but god, it feels so good she doesn't know how she could have. And then Jim's hand is tracing the curve of her thigh as he keeps kissing her, palm hot through the material of her jeans, and she wonders if it was ever like this with her and David -- so desperate, so wrapped up in each other -- and if it was, she can't remember, and maybe it’s the wine or his touch or how he keeps looking at her like she’s so precious --

“Jim.” She pants out his name, pulling back a little but still close enough to feel his breath, hot and shallow, along her cheek. “Jim.”

“What’s wrong?” He sounds almost frantic, hands framing her shoulders and staring at her intently. “Are you okay?”

"Nothing, nothing -- I'm fine," she says, her hand resting against his chest; not pushing away but holding them in the moment. "I just -- maybe we should slow this down? It's a lot for me, all of this, right now. It’s just … not easy."

Jim nods, easing into a smile. He shifts back on the couch and Kathryn swears she feels the distance, right down to her bones. "I should probably get going."

She leads him to the door, and he's practically out on the porch when he stops in his tracks and turns around, stepping back and leaning into her, lips barely grazing her cheek. The ghost of a kiss.

It feels like a promise; I'll wait for you.

Even after he leaves, it lingers with her.

I'll wait.

i.

It's been a month and a half since she got out of the hospital, but school doesn't start until the fall and she can't seem to find the energy to go back to work, and so she's left drifting aimlessly, redecorating her house (the Nolan's sign gets taken to the dump, the wedding photos stashed deep in an upstairs closet), drinking countless cups of coffee at Granny's, volunteering for whatever bake sales comes up.

So when her friends on the PTA mention chaperoning the school dance, Kathryn jumps at the chance, pointedly ignoring the stares, the looks of pity, the whispers of Mary Margaret.

It's not about her. She's not going to let it be about her -- she and David are together and happy and that's good. The way they did it -- definitely not good -- but she's willing to move past the lying and the cheating because now it feels like things with David never really fit to begin with, like not being with him anymore has finally stripped away some kind of invisible weight from her shoulders, the illusions of what they had.

She's dialled Jim's number more than a dozen times since that night at her house, never getting past the third digit. Kathryn's not sure what there is to say -- she asked him for time, and he's given it to her; the rest she's making up as she goes along -- but it hasn't stopped the want, the strange, tenuous connection to him she still feels. When she shows up at the school gym -- decked out in balloons and streamers and spangly stars hanging from the ceiling, pockets of giggling girls clustered together along one wall, sullen boys at another -- she doesn't see Jim at first. Eventually, as the night wears on and she's helped refill the punch and re-hung some of the wilting decorations, she finally spots him. He's at the other side of the room, chatting with some of the other teachers, and the sight of him, it hits her with almost as much force as the first time. She's so caught up in it that she doesn't notice the dark-haired boy hovering nearby until he's right next to her.

"Hi, Mrs. Nolan!" Henry chirps. He perches by her side on the front-row bleachers and starts pulling at his tie with irritation. "What are you doing here?"

"Hi Henry," she smiles warmly in greeting. "Just helping out. Why aren't you dancing?"

"Dunno." The boy shrugs, turning away to watch his classmates sway to the music. "Don't feel like it. Why aren't you?"

Knowing, dark eyes meet hers when she looks down, Henry turning his gaze to Jim with purpose. "I like him," he continues without pause; pleasant, conversational. "He's really nice. He makes sure I never get picked last for dodgeball."

A pause, then -- "you should go dance with him."

Kathryn laughs, incredulous, staring at him in surprise. "What makes you say that?"

"Dunno." Henry's smile brightens, and he rises from the bleachers to rejoin the other kids. "Just an idea. Bye, Mrs. Nolan!"

She's left stunned to silence in Henry's wake, her thoughts racing, and that’s when her gaze finally catches Jim’s from across the gym, and it’s still there, whatever’s been pulling them together.

It feels like more than just a simple action, when she gets up and crosses the room to him. Like she’s putting something in motion, moving towards something. Something important. Moving towards where she’s supposed to be.

She reaches out to him, extending her hand.

“May I have this dance?”

He accepts with a grin, taking her hand and following her out into the throngs of kids gathered at the start of a slow song. They settle into the music, drawing closer together.

“So I was thinking,” Kathryn says, unable to stop the way her feelings colour her voice, bringing her arms to rest along Jim’s shoulders, “would you like to have dinner sometime?”

He beams at her. “I would love to.”

She can’t help but smile back at him, reflecting the same; elation, surprise. Hope.

And she doesn’t say anything after that, because she was right before – there isn’t anything she needs to. She doesn’t need words – just the feel of Jim’s hands at her waist, the weight of his body against hers, realizing that even if she doesn’t know where she’s going, she’s headed in the right direction.

It feels like they're taking their time, making their own way.

The song keeps playing, and Kathryn’s rests her cheek against Jim’s shoulder, listening to the rhythm of his breathing.

In-and-out, over and over, never ending.

Still hasn't hit bottom [The River]

2012-04-23T03:14:12Z

Title: Still hasn't hit bottom
Characters/Pairings: Lena/Jonas
Rating: PG-13
Summary: She holds his hands. Finale AU.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 1x08; some bad language, reference to violence.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Goes AU after mid-1x08, in that the character death ends up being a non-life-threatening injury instead. Written for drabblefix's prompt #11, from Richard Siken's Seaside Improvisation. Title from the poem as well.

--------

She holds his hands; tight, fingers twined around his, sweat-sheened palms hot against his skin.

It's to hurt, at first. You bastard, she hisses, tears catching on the words, grip crushing, like if she lets go it'll be to hit him or worse, you stupid bastard.

She's on first watch, gun tucked into her pants and kneeling in front of his bunk, head bowed like supplication. Like prayer.

His throat's still red-raw when he swallows. Her grip goes slack, tension unwinding into itself.

I'm so sorry, he whispers, all the words he has -- a surrender.

She doesn't let go.

death is no parenthesis [The River]

2012-04-02T03:23:57Z

Title: death is no parenthesis
Characters/Pairings: Lena/Jonas
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This wasn't the plan. A meditation on the events of the finale and what could (never) have happened after.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 1x08; references to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: This fic includes events from the finale but also plays with canon. Admittedly, it also focuses on Lena and Jonas' friendship/flirtation pre-finale, and conveniently downplays Lena/Lincoln from the last few episodes. Title from the e.e. cummings poem.

This wasn't the plan.

(He wasn't part of the plan.)

----

The trail's rough and barely maintained, rocks slipping under her worn-in hiking boots and roots tripping her up every few steps, and she's about half a second away from telling Jonas they should give up and head to the hostel when he stops, throws a grin back at her, camera resting against the crook of his shoulder.

Almost there, Len, he says, and her heart seems to skip a little at that, that he's taken her name and made it his. It's been four months since they got out of the Bouina and though Jonas' first instinct was to get as far away as possible (somewhere freezing, he'd joked, how'd you feel about Canada?) somehow they'd ended up through most of South America, lingering in Sao Paulo for the last few weeks.

There's a shitty minimum-wage job and no father and a family that thinks he's dead waiting for them back in the States. Tess and Emmet and Lincoln and the rest hopped the first plane; she and Jonas take their payment from Clark and buy backpacks and supplies in the first town they find.

Jonas takes her hand for the last part of the trail, extending his arm in exaggerated chivalry, and her cheek bumps his shoulder as they make their way up, the cotton of his shirt soft against her skin (it's been weeks of separate beds and muted looks and careful spaces between them, and not for the first time Lena's grateful, or frustrated, or relieved to have a friend first). When they get to the top he makes her close her eyes for the final few steps, her hand still anchored on his arm. She feels, through the blackness of her eyelids, Jonas shift behind her, the familiar whirring of his camera coming to life.

Okay, he murmurs, open.

Then it's like the jungle's alive in front of her, glowing and pulsing pinpricks of green against the blanket of night. So much life it almost takes her breath away, like it could fill her veins, this beauty, this magic.

Jonas hovers at her back. Photuris lucicrescens -- fireflies -- right? I know you mentioned the bug thing, and I heard it was crazy up here, so I figured --

She shoves the camera away, grasps his face in both hands and kisses him, and swears it's the first time since the Bouina that she's felt like she's still living.

----

This wasn't the plan.

She's holding onto his body, the sheet (she'd been left to cover him -- nobody else bothered; killer, Clark had sneered) bunching at his throat, sagging and heavy and red with blood. The rest of him's as pale as when they found him the first time, the ashy skin and dark, sunken eyes and flat, placid gaze that said death, and he's gone, gone for real this time, not balancing some thin, strange line between that and living, and maybe he wasn't ever real at all, she thinks, just a jungle-fevered figment of her imagination.

Not real at all, and she strokes the fringe of hair away from his forehead, pretends it's sweat and not blood slicked there.

She should hate him, this almost-stranger who stumbled into and out of her mess of a life.

She should hate him for trying to kill Emmet, for shooting Lincoln instead, for letting Kurt take the fall --

-- there are a thousand reasons why the man she's holding gathered in her arms, huddled in a grimy corner of the hallway outside the galley while Lincoln screams and screams and screams and one of the cameras clicks into position above her, is a monster. A million more why she should have killed him herself.

She should hate him.

But she doesn't.

----

Get up, Len, he whispers into her ear, and his voice tastes like cigarellos and toothpaste and last night's rum, feels like the softest rustle of a breeze across water, I promise there's coffee.

The sun's already slanting through the window, Sao Paulo's heat sticking to her in ways she should be used to after so many years on the river and Jonas makes it worse, the curve of his jaw settled against her neck, all stubble and sweat and skin that's still warm from a days-old sunburn. She feels the play of muscles as he fumbles for the bedside table, hears him thumb his password into his phone and she cracks her eyes open to his teasing grin and the phone suspended above their heads.

She protests but Jonas wins, keeps the camera recording as he musses her hair and kisses her good morning (professional quirk, he says, committing everything to memory, the kind that always lasts). The sheets twist around them, sun catching on all the corners of the room, and she feels so good -- even after her father and Lincoln and everything on the river -- it's like it almost can't be true, can't be real.

Jonas kisses her again, his smile twitching against her lips and the heat of him surrounding her, surrounding her with so much, so much life --

----

This was never the plan.

(She knows that now.)

Everlasting light [The River]

2012-03-05T02:42:15Z

Title: Everlasting light
Characters/Pairings: (previous and current) Lena/Jonas
Rating: PG
Summary: Post-1x04. Things get clearer once Jonas shows up.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 1x04, A Better Man; wildly vague reference to past injuries.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for drabblefix and the prompt give. No clue when I decided to write Lena/Jonas fic, or even when I started liking The River. Who knew? Title from the Black Keys song.

It's warm, in the circle of his arms, the darkness stretching to all the ship's corners, keeping them shrouded in the shadows at the end of the deck.

Her hands map the space between the angle of his hips and where his ribs start to rise, linen rough against her palm. She knows every bruise, every scar (that stupid story about the girl and the waterfall, the trip where he trashed his bike), can follow them like a compass.

The jungle gave him back his life. Gave him back to her.

This time, she doesn't plan on losing her way.

Five Acts

2011-10-15T03:04:19Z

+ Post a list of your five favorite acts/kinks to read about. Check out this list if you need some inspiration. At the bottom, add what fandoms/pairings you're interested in.
+ Read other people's lists here.
+ Post comment-fic based off of other people's interests.

1) Nursing back to health (love me some hurt/comfort)
2) Confessions and reunions (secrets being exposed, absolution, bonding through sharing, secrets breaking a pairing apart or bringing them back together)
3) Music (musicians, characters going to concerts or listening to music, fic inspired by music)
4) Ensembles (fics centering on a particular pairing but including friends or family as well, group dynamics, others influencing a pairing coming together, match-making, partners being introduced to family/friends)
5) Supernatural (ghosts, anything spooky or weird, exploration of the afterlife, mysticism, reunions)
Lost: Daniel/Charlotte, Eloise/Charles, Charlotte/Daniel/Juliet/Sawyer, Charlotte/Daniel/Miles, Juliet/Daniel/Charlotte, Charlotte/Anyone (specifically Sawyer, Jack, Miles, Jacob, Juliet or Kate), Jack/Juliet, Miles/Naomi, Desmond/Penny, Eloise/Richard, Jack/Kate, Miles/Kate and Juliet/Miles

Fringe: Alt!Lincoln/Alt!Livia, Alt!Livia/Lincoln

Community: Troy/Annie, Troy/Annie/Everyone

X-Men (either comics, movie or cartoons -- preferably the first two): Gambit/Rogue

Off The Map: Tommy/Mina

The Hunger Games: Beetee/Wiress

Crossovers: Lost/Supernatural (Daniel or Charlotte and anyone), Lost/Fringe (same)

Three ficlets from various places ...

2011-07-05T20:09:59Z

Just a repost of one newer ficlet and some older stuff from aaaaages ago ...

----

Title: In comes the morning
Characters/Pairings: Charlotte/Daniel
Rating: PG
Summary: AU, with both Charlotte and Daniel as students at Oxford.
Spoilers/Warnings: None, really.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for ciaimpala for the Texts From Last Text Fic-a-thon and the prompt You drunk dialed me talking about the stages of mitosis. There is no way you didn't ace your bio final.

--

Charlotte manages to make it up to the fourth floor balancing the tray of coffees in one hand and a paper bag in the other, stumbling up the winding stairwells -- the elevator to Daniel's floor is eternally broken, it seems -- and up to his flat without wasting anything. It was a gloriously bright Sunday morning, which -- she notes with only a little glee -- must be a hell of a pleasant wake-up for him right about then.

She raps on the door to his flat with the back of her knuckles, trying to keep the coffee upright. There's a beat of silence where Charlotte wonders whether a call to his landlord or the police might be in order, and then there's the sound of shuffling, a muffled curse word before something clatters to the floor. Eventually she hears the lock being shifted back, and the door creaks open to Daniel's mussed hair and red-rimmed eyes and the wafting smell of last night's liquor.

"Charlotte?" He blinks at her, bleary, looking like even getting the syllables of her name out is taking everything he has.

"I have scones," she says in reply, hoisting the bag up as evidence. "From that place down the street. And coffee. You look like you need both."

Charlotte thrusts the bag into his hands before he can get a word in, maneuvering her way through the open door and around a pile of Dan's shoes, which --

"-- why you do have one white shoe?"

"Huh?" Daniel looks up at her from the bag of scones, which he'd apparently been studying with complete perplexity, and then down at the floor. He looks even worse than she first noticed: T-shirt and sweatpants rumpled and creased, practically hanging off his frame, only one sock on and the other foot bare.

"You've one black shoe --" Charlotte motions at the scuffed-up Converse thrown in the corner, another mismatched tennis shoe along with it. " -- and then this white one, which looks about three sizes too big and is clearly not yours ..."

"I ... don't ... know?" Each word comes out independent of the other, an afterthought as his gaze scours the room and the scones get abandoned on the kitchen counter. "Sorry Charlotte. There was this, uh, physics party last night, and I think ... maybe I had too much to drink? I don't even -- I'm not even sure how I got home."

"Oh, I know."

Charlotte smiles at him, primly seating herself on the edge of his couch, away from abandoned take-away containers -- Dan had apparently thought he could tackle four different kinds of Indian curry on the way home last night -- and watches as his confused look furrows his brow even deeper.

"You know? There wasn't anyone from the anthro department there. How do you know ...?" All of a sudden his features seem to freeze in pure terror, and Dan disappears to his bedroom for a second and comes back with his cell phone in one hand and his mouth hanging open in question. "I found this, next to my pillow, this morning. I didn't -- I didn't call you, did I?"

"Actually, we had a very illuminating conversation about the stages of mitosis. Well, the third call was about your biology final. The first and second were about how much you liked your drink -- which was named after something about a gorilla you thought was bloody hilarious -- and I think ... the fifth was just you mumbling to yourself. You may have fallen asleep by the time I answered. Oh, and that was after you rang me to tell me how red my hair is. Very red, red was your scientific conclusion, apparently."

"Oh my god." Speaking of red, Charlotte figures if Daniel blushes any harder his head may just explode; at this point, it looks like he'd be relieved to be put out of his misery, as he sinks down on the couch beside her and covers his face with his hands and she barely manages to swallow back her laughter. "Charlotte, I can't believe -- I'm so, so sorry. The drinks, they just tasted really good, and we were playing some game and I completely lost count --"

"Dan, it's alright." This time she does laugh, placing the tray on his coffee table and patting his shoulder in a no hard feelings kind of way. "It was pretty adorable, actually. And you told me something else that was rather interesting."

"Oh?" He squints at her, running one hand through the hair fanned across his forehead, cringing expectantly. "More interesting than a eukaryotic cell separating the chromosomes in its nucleus?"

"Shockingly, yes," Charlotte smirks. "You told me you liked me."

It turns out Daniel's disproving her earlier theory -- he's officially the shade of a tomato, and gawking at her like she's suddenly grown two heads. "I -- what?"

"Well, like liked me is how you put it. And not in a lab-partners-and-school-mates kind of way."

"I told you that?"

Her teasing smile falters a little, feeling her own face start to flush as she notices just how closely they've ended up sitting next to each other, and she swallows before she says: "Is it true, then? Did you mean it?"

"I -- Charlotte ..." He rubs his hand through his hair again, leaving it even messier than before, his gaze levelling with hers -- confident, self-assured all of a sudden, even as his voice drops to almost a whisper. "Of course it is."

"Oh." It's like the air mostly goes out of her at that point; she's struck by his closeness again, how they've leaned into each other. And Charlotte wants to kiss him, really wants to kiss him, even with his hair every which way and the grungy T-shirt, but --

"You smell like whiskey and Indian food," she laugh, her nose crinkling. "Maybe you should brush your teeth, yeah? Wouldn't want the coffee to go to waste either."

"Um, yeah," Daniel starts and then grins at her, a little sheepish, finally pulling himself away and rising from the couch. "Probably a good idea."

He stops before he gets to the bathroom, though, as Charlotte settles back on the couch and reaches for her coffee cup, seeming to struggle with what to say, how to say it.

"You're not --" The question, because she knows that's exactly what it is, seems to stop there, Daniel ducking his head and giving her a side-eyed, bashful look, hands hovering in the bathroom doorway.

"I'm not going anywhere," she says in confirmation, finishing his thought. "I brought scones, remember?"

"Scones, right." He smiles back at her, even more brightly this time. "Be right back."

"I'll be waiting."

And she smiles too, sipping at her coffee, because she would be.

----

Title: Anyone's Ghost
Characters/Pairings: Daniel; Daniel/Charlotte
Rating: PG
Summary: He will do this a thousand times. Some things never change.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up the end of S5, at least.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for mustaza for Five Acts: Round Four edition, and the prompts science and fiction and love and passion. Title from The National.

--

He will do this a thousand times.

(There's some comfort in that.)

He will try to save her a thousand times.

His chalk scratches against the blackboard, another flaking white line joining dozens more. The numbers mean so much they barely mean anything at all -- just that she's gone, and he can't get her back.

(Not here, at least. Not in this lifetime.)

That he's 30 years behind where he should be, stuck in a dingy Ann Arbor classroom while the rest of everyone he knows is hundreds of miles away on an island that defies the rules of everything he's ever known. But the variables -- there's pages and pages and hundreds of experiments and years supporting his work, that whatever happened, happened, but he just can't give a damn, not with what's happened, with what he's lost.

And so he keeps working, passing too many hours in the basement lab and his basement apartment, days bleeding into months into years, until he comes into work one morning and there's a wrinkled, black-and-white photo thumb-tacked into the cork board outside the breakroom.

And he knows what he needs to do.

When the bomb goes off, it's more a splintering than a shattering of time -- think of it like infinite lines, all branching off from the same beginning, he would explain it to Charlotte, if she were there to hear it, running parallel but never intersecting.

There's one where nothing changes at all: all the rest of them get bounced forward in time, and Juliet dies (more blood on his hands) and eventually some leave the island and some never do.

There's another where they do meet at Oxford, trading smiles across pints in the crowded student pub; where he plays a charity fundraiser and she lingers around the piano all night; where he runs into her, literally, in the middle of an archeology exhibit on Tunisia.

Sometimes things change, sometimes they don't. Sometimes she still dies.

Things change, but no matter the place or the universe or the time he finds one constant: he will always try to save her.

He will always, always love her.

----

Title: here's to the next year (hope it's better than the last)
Characters/Pairings: Miles, Richard, other Freighties; mild Miles/Richard, Daniel/Charlotte
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It's the end of the world, but they're still surviving. AU for S6 sideways!world.
Spoilers/Warnings: Some mild spoilers for the S6 finale; some violence, unpleasant themes.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for pann_cake for Five Acts: Round Four edition, and the prompt apocalypse.

--

When the cold metal of the gun barrel bites into his temple, all Miles can think is: man, definitely not the way I wanted to spend my New Year's.

Because, really, it's the last of his many, many problems, that there's a psychopath ex-Marine with his Beretta all shoved up in his business. And it's hilarious, honestly, that it's come to this -- that this is easy stuff, compared to the rest of it, the zombies and and the plummeting human population and the end of the world. That it would be a relief, really (it's the only way -- he can't, just can't become one of those thousand voices that crowd his head by his own hand).

"Got anything else to say, short stuff?"

The guy, Keamy -- some soldier-turned-mercenary meathead they ran into while they were scavenging for supplies at the rundown mall around the corner -- sneers at him, doesn't budge the gun an inch; behind him, Miles can see the prone form of Naomi, curled up on one of their dingy blankets with her back still glistening red, Charlotte with her hands fisted and ready to fight and Daniel two steps behind her, and that new guy -- Richard, maybe, pretty damn cute but quiet, barely said a word since he joined their group -- hanging back in the shadows, slumped against the wall and not even bothering to watch his impending execution. Well thanks, buddy, Miles thinks as Keamy draws even closer, so close Miles figures the gun must be making an imprint in his forehead.

"She's not infected." Miles is amazed at himself that the words are coming out so even. "I saw. She got cut, but she's not sick."

And he did. They'd run into a group of them when they'd been trying to scout out a new section of the neighbourhood and Naomi had been bringing up the rear, had gotten pushed back on a piece of scrap metal during the fight and shredded her back pretty bad. But they'd kept the zombies back from her while Richard had picked her up and slung her over his shoulder (strong, too, Miles had thought idly, impressed), and gotten back to their penthouse "fortress" -- an apartment on the top floor of an L.A. highrise they'd been fortifying for the last few months, since that earthquake in September and the strange, clicking smoke and the monsters straight out of Night of the Living Dead started roaming the streets.

"She has to be," Keamy shrugs. "Besides, even if she wasn't bit she's lost too much blood -- no sense of keeping her around, using up supplies. Survival of the fittest, right buddy?"

He clicks off the safety with barely a movement, and Miles has a moment to marvel again at the fact that this guy doesn't seem to give a flying fuck he's ready to off two people when stepping outside these days is certain death. "No harm in adding you to the pile too if you're looking to say different."

That's when Charlotte throws herself at Keamy, landing a solid punch alongside his jaw. The guy's big enough it only stuns him, though, twisting back to slam the but of his gun against the side of her head. Daniel catches her as she stumbles back, blood trailing down her cheek, and it looks like he's about to unleash whatever crazy fighting skills concert pianists pack when there's another flurry of movement, and the Richard guy is at Keamy's side in half a second flat. It takes him maybe two, three moves before Keamy's the ground, both men wrestling back and forth -- Miles loses sight of the gun for one terrifying second -- before there's a loud crack of sound and Keamy slumps back on the floor, gasps once, and then fades away.

Richard rises up to his full height and swipes his palms against the front of his jeans, smearing more dirt and grime there, while Charlotte wipes blood out of one eye, Dan still hovering worriedly at her elbow.

"You alright?" Richard's looking at him, concern shining clear through his dark gaze, and all Miles can do is nod, mutter thanks, mind reeling and any other words a little beyond him for at least a few minutes.

"Well, we need to get rid of the body; the smell will only attract their attention." Charlotte's matter-of-fact, and Miles is glad for the millionth time that he managed to at least keep his childhood friend -- and her boyfriend, who's a hell of a nice guy, though Miles still wishes his skills ran a little more useful than piano-playing -- around through everything. His dad -- well, he's not thinking about his dad at this point, because his voice hasn't joined the chorus in his head, and he can't cradle such a cautious hope until he's got a chance to get out and explore more of the city. To find out if Pierre could still be alive.

Richard agrees, and they do quick work of scouring as much as she can from Keamy before she, Richard and Miles haul him up to the building's rooftop while Daniel stays behind to look after Naomi -- who's somehow still breathing and even conscious again, waking up when they drop Keamy's body their first try out the doorway -- and over the top into the garbage dumpster on the street below. Afterward, Charlotte starts to head back down the stairs and Miles hangs back, touching Richard at the elbow to keep him from entering the stairwell.

"Look, Richard," he starts, and stops, doesn't really know how to finish as Richard looks up at him, waiting patiently. "I, uh -- thanks, man. Could've been a sticky situation back there."

There's an gentle, hesitant smile that breaks slowly across Richard's face; a nice smile, Miles thinks, though like he doesn't really remember how to use it anymore.

"You're welcome," he says finally, and then, "I think it's past midnight."

Both of them blink up at the sky at the same time, like that'll give any indication, but it's only inky blackness, the same unchanging pinpricks of white even as the city still churns and smokes below them. No light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, Miles figures, but at least something's moving ahead, moving forward, moving towards something else.

"Happy New Year's," he murmurs after a silence, watching the skyline, and here's to one better than the last, Richard says back, and then they both stand there under the sky, together, for a long time.

Five Acts 2011

2011-05-09T22:36:11Z

(I super should not be doing this, but I can't resist ... ;P)

+ Post a list of your five favorite acts/kinks to read about. Check out this list if you need some inspiration. At the bottom of your post, add what fandoms/pairings you're interested in.
+ Read other people's lists; the master list of lists is here.
+ Post comment-fic based off of other people's interests.

1) Nursing back to health
2) Confessions (secrets being exposed, absolution, bonding through sharing, secrets breaking a pairing apart or bringing them back together)
3) Music (musicians, characters going to concerts or listening to music, fic inspired by music)
4) Ensembles (fics centring on a particular pairing but including friends or family as well, group dynamics, others influencing a pairing coming together, match-making, partners being introduced to family/friends)
5) Supernatural (ghosts, anything spooky or weird, exploration of the afterlife, mysticism, reunions)

Lost: Daniel/Charlotte, Eloise/Charles, Charlotte/Daniel/Juliet/Sawyer, Charlotte/Daniel/Miles, Juliet/Daniel/Charlotte, Charlotte/Anyone (specifically Sawyer, Jack, Miles, Jacob, Juliet or Kate), Jack/Juliet, Miles/Naomi, Desmond/Penny, Eloise/Richard, Jack/Kate, Miles/Kate and Juliet/Miles

Community: Troy/Annie, Troy/Annie/Everyone

Off The Map: Tommy/Mina

***I'm also more than happy to receive any crossovers, even if I haven't named the characters or particular pairings here but you know I'm at least familiar with them: Lost, Supernatural, Fringe, Community, etc.

A few more holiday drabbles-turned-ficlets ...

2011-02-11T21:48:56Z

A/N: Both of these kind of got away from me, especially the second for joyypg. Sorry it's more Juliet than Charlotte, and more friendship fic than something shippy (with some added Miles and minor Daniel/Charlotte and Juliet/Jack) -- hope you still enjoy!

----

For lenina20:

It doesn't seem fitting, that the next time they meet it's in a church, spires crawling towards heaven and the sky lost to its stained-glass dome, the reds and greens and yellows reflected down on the pews too beautiful, too bright for a moment laced with so much dark.

(In some ways, it's perfect -- the place for souls to seek forgiveness. Absolution. Charles doesn't spend too much time reflecting on the irony.)

She's almost softer looking than she'd been the last time they'd met, outside the hospital, when defiance -- that last clinging, desperate hope coiled tight with anger -- had still lit up her face, snarled her words. The side of his cheek stings with the memory.

Now -- now her expression's slack, lips pinched thin together. She turns towards him, expectant, one brow raised in what are you waiting for? and it's like the entire gesture exhausts her. (This is what hope left in its place; for their son, at least.)

"I'm leaving for the island tomorrow," he tells her, straightening up alongside one of the pews. "With Desmond."

Eloise watches him, still the shrewdness behind the pale, tired cast of her eyes. "I'm rather certain that isn't his plan."

"He had to be convinced, but it's no matter," Charles shakes his head, "he doesn't have a choice."

This time it's a laugh that seems to crackle with all the rawness in her voice, her expression; both of them, stripped clean from the pain and the nightmares and their history, right down to their bones, nothing left to scavenge. "None of us have a choice, Charles. We never had a choice."

It's well-tread ground between them -- he thinks something can still be changed, that following Jacob's commands and returning to their home might tip the balance, undo their wrongs (imagining Charlie, Daniel, is too cruel an image, even as he hopes); Eloise says we've done our part, made our sacrifices, leave them be -- and it stops the conversation cold like always.

She turns away again and Charles knows he's been dismissed, still can't stand to leave with her condemnation ringing through the gaping silence between them.

"I chose you," he says, without thinking, the words never feeling less true. "We chose each other. You'll see, Ellie."

When he leaves, the church doors swinging shut behind him with more finality than he likes, he prays this choice might be right, that it might be the one to save them both.

--

For joyyjpg:

At first, it's just nothing, Charlotte thinks. All white, like the colour's been drained from her gaze, bleaching out the sand and the water and the jungle and the tiny smudges of smoke from the freighter and Dan's Zodiac on the horizon. It recedes after a few minutes, pulls back like a curtain to expose the world, and when it does they're left with even less -- everything gone from the camp, which the dentist who knows Morse code is already panicking about, no boats out on the waves (dammit, Daniel, she thinks, lets her worry hardened into frustration).

They all mill around on the beach for the first few minutes, gazing around wide-eyed like it's going to bring anything back, Charlotte still watching the endless flat of blue for any sign of life, before Miles ambles over -- still with his damn peanuts -- and smirks.

"What?" She'd absolutely love to remove that expression from his stupid, smug face. Forcibly remove.

"Keeping watch for the genius?"

She scowls at him, eyes narrowed, anger mounting between his maddeningly vague comment earlier and this. "Not at all," she lies.

"Well good, because the other doc's getting drunk," Miles says in return, slinging a thumb over one shoulder, pointing back to a spot down the beach where Charlotte can spot blonde hair, a patch of blue. "Probably should go make sure she doesn't drink herself into a coma or something, considering we've only got one of them left."

Charlotte rolls her eyes, making sure her irritated sigh is loud and audible, but figures he does have a point -- if this is a permanent thing, whatever it was that stole away all their belongings (if Dan was here, she starts to think, stops herself), then they need to start making plans and not falling apart.

She makes it down the beach a few minutes later, draws to a stop close enough to Juliet to spot the symbol on the rum bottle, feel her chest twist at the sight of it.

"What exactly are you doing?" Charlotte asks as Juliet takes another swig and barely marks her arrival, arms crossed in a way she knows must come off as annoyed, but that's exactly what she is and she doesn't have time for this with everything else going wrong.

"What does it look like?" Juliet shrugs, then tips the bottle towards her, never tearing her eyes away from the spot where the freighter used to be.

When Juliet doesn't do anything more Charlotte settles down in the sand beside her, takes the bottle without a word and slings back a swallow. There's silence as they pass it back and forth between them, for long enough that Charlotte's starting to feel the warmth creep up her veins, blanket her thoughts, the bottle almost empty before Juliet says I don't think they're coming back.

"The people who left in the helicopter -- Sawyer, Kate," she adds, then pauses, like she's rolling the next name around her mind. "Jack."

Charlotte takes another drink instead of answering, recognizes the edge of longing that underlines Jack's name, watches Juliet's stony, careful expression -- like everything's held beneath the surface -- and sees it, even still, what he probably did. (Does.) In front of them, the empty horizon's like a taunt.

"They'll be back," she says finally, forces the assuredness in her voice, and she only means to lean over and pat Juliet's shoulder or something, give some kind of acknowledgement that they shouldn't be giving up, not yet, but between the booze and how bad Charlotte is at comforting on her best day it ends up in an awkward half-hug squeeze, her arm around Juliet's shoulder and fingers tangled in the hair that's fallen limp with sweat along the back of her neck, and there's definitely not enough space between them after the alcohol and the kind of day she's had, so she pulls away a second later before Juliet even has a chance to react.

"I'm sure they will," Charlotte amends, tries to ignore the look of gentle surprise crossing Juliet's face as she rises from the sand and brushes off her jeans.

Juliet nods at her, still holding the rum bottle -- there's the flicker of a smile, Charlotte thinks -- and caps it, decisive, before Charlotte moves to leave, still holding that almost-smile in her memory as she nods back in goodbye.

Miles is waiting for her when she gets back up to the camp, asks where's the doc? with lazy curiousity as he lounges in the sand.

"She's fine," Charlotte says, and there seems to be something in her answer he believes, goes back to munching on his peanuts with a shrug while she retrieves the knapsack that got abandoned beside him. When Charlotte straightens back up, slinging the bag over her shoulders and giving a glance around the camp's new emptiness, that's when she notices the bobbing silhouette of a boat on the horizon, the Zodiac's familiar shape, feels her chest fill in a way that's completely different from before.

She can't wait to brag to Juliet.

Three ficlets for the post-holiday season ...

2011-01-30T03:07:52Z

So this is the first set of holiday drabbles that are wildly, horrible late into the post-holiday season; I'm so sorry, you guys! I'm endeavouring to have the next batch posted in the next couple days, and hopefully all of them up within the week. They also ended up being double- or triple-drabbles as well; maybe the extra word count will go towards how foolishly behind I am in writing this? ;D

----

For ozmissage:

Charlotte waves him over through the crowd, one mittened hand raised in greeting; her eyes brighten when she spots him, Miles, over here!

By the time he manages to squeeze his way over -- between the two million other people like Dan who figured skating was a genius idea when it's so cold he can pretty much see his breath freeze -- he spots Charlotte stamping her boots into the show, either from trying to keep warm or impatience or both.

"Finally," she rolls her eyes at him, tugs on his arm to get him closer, burrows against the front of his jacket away from the wind and cups her hands around his; most of his body's already gone numb, tingling from the cold, but Miles appreciates the effort. "Daniel's gone for hot chocolate and I'm freezing."

When Dan does get back, three Styrofoam cups balanced between his fingers, there's snow clinging to his hair and his smile's so damn sweet -- Charlotte accepts two of them, trades a kiss in return -- that when he points towards the ice and lifts up his skates in question, Miles just can't say no, nods his head while Charlotte grins and lets the two of them drag him there, their hands warm in each of his.

----

For mustaza:

One of her first memories, at least she thinks, is her own baptism.

She'd been almost three by the time her mother decided to go ahead with the ceremony, finally giving up on waiting (Ji Yeon hadn't understood it then, that nameless void where someone else was supposed to be, knows now to call it her father) and ushered her parents into a church on a Sunday afternoon.

Ji Yeon's seen the photographs -- the white dress frilled out around her legs (thinks she remembers the swish of lace against her skin), her grandfather's tight smile, light slanting through the stained-glass windows, scattered through the pews -- but the memory's too crisp to be false, too precious to be forgotten: cold water prickling her forehead, streaming behind her ears.

It's the same, now, on the island, with Aaron huddled behind her in the trees while the rain -- a downpour, appeared out of nowhere -- thunders down on them. She steps out into it, doesn't stop for the hesitating hand on her arm, feels it, feels this place (the place her parents lived; where they died).

Her other baptism was her first. This is the one that feels true.

----

For mollivanders:

He's pretty sure his son is dressed as a Christmas tree.

Or some kind of decoration? Daniel can't tell to save his life, even though Charlotte had slaved over the costume for almost a week (and taught the kids a few new curse words while she was at it), and how a production of A Christmas Carol would ever need dancing plant life he's got no clue, but Oliver's up on stage dressed in green and draped in what looks like the tinsel that probably used to be around their banister at home --

"He's a ghost, Dan," Charlotte whisper-hisses from the seat beside him, before he can even open his mouth to ask. "Those are supposed to be the chains."

"It, uh, it looks great, by the way," he whispers back, thinking that maybe ghosts aren't the best choice for a play with eight-year-olds, can practically hear her eye roll in return as she pats his arm. From the next seat down his mother raises an eyebrow, sharp in question, and then turns her gaze towards the stage, settling back next to his father with a sleeping Ellie propped up in his lap, one tiny hand fisted into the soft plush of her favourite stuffed polar bear.

It's also the exact same moment Oliver stumbles over the tinsel -- chains, Charlotte insists, when he points it out, politely declines to remind him where their son's coordination was inherited from -- and practically takes down Scrooge with him. He hears his father snicker, his mother's stern hush in reply as Ellie startles awake and yawns loud enough to get glares from the row behind them, and we're a hopeless lot, aren't we, Charlotte sighs, laughing, rests her head against his shoulder in defeat; we do alright, Daniel smiles wide, watches Oliver right himself and sneak a wave towards them, his parents waving back, I think we do alright.

Five times Daniel tried to save Charlotte (and one time he did)

2011-01-09T06:35:47Z

Title: Five times Daniel tried to save Charlotte (and one time he did)
Characters/Pairings: Daniel/Charlotte
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Five times Daniel fails. One time he doesn't. AU.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 5x14; character death, potentially triggery stuff, dark themes.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for the Five Acts meme, and hitlikehammers's request of angst and near-death experiences. I'm sorry this got so weird and long; hope you enjoy regardless!

----

i.

The first time, he leaves her.

Not for anything but to save her, but still. (Still, he'll never forget this.)

Charlotte tells them about the well and John and James exchange nods, decision made, and it's only a second more of her hand cool and clammy between his, a fleeting look of panic (she'd never say it, don't leave, but he sees it, that thin, dark shadow of terror that passes through her gaze) before it gets lost to another memory. Something about that band, that one he barely remembers from his mother's creaking record player, and go, Daniel, she'd whispered, pain strung tight through her face, go with them.

So he does. Because what they're trying to do defies any kind of science he's ever seen, but he's still the one most likely to understand it, get John back to the rest of his people, the ones who left. So he goes.

Before, he makes her as comfortable as he can, props his knapsack under her head (fishes her gun out first, the only thing she'd managed to hold on to when that white flash first came, when flaming arrows lit up the beach; he clicks the safety off and leaves it near her hand, prays he's being overcautious) and kneels over her, leans his face flush with hers -- there's breath, he hears it; rattling, thin, still there all the same -- moves almost like to kiss her but ends up pressing his temple against hers instead, still too scared. Always too scared.

They make it to the well in another hour, and John disappears before there's another explosion of white, all around them, swallowing them whole. They start on their way back as soon as it's done, Daniel the first to notice the empty clearing alongside the riverbank, the only way they even recognize that certain stretch of green from Juliet's markings on the trees along the way.

"She's ... she's not here. She's gone."

Miles pushes past him -- what are you talking about, genius? -- and then stops, takes in the same space without the bag or the gun or Charlotte, with nothing at all.

"She might be around here; she could be lost. We need -- we need to look for her."

They're all silent in the beat after that, won't meet his eyes, and that's when Daniel realizes -- that's it, isn't it? Not even a body, not anything; just gone. Because he left her. Because he couldn't save her.

(He manages to follow Juliet and James and the others into the village -- one foot in front of the other, up and down, that's what gets him there, the ground bumping underneath him -- and at some point there's food, he thinks, and a bed with clean sheets, and jumpsuits with Dharma symbols and a little girl with red curls.

Two days before the sub comes -- the one that's going to bring him back to the mainland, back to Ann Arbor and away from all of it; the redness of her hair, her blood, the white of her skin, the green of the jungle -- Daniel's late coming home from one of the stations and eventually, sometime later that night when she drags herself back from the garage, Juliet will find a note, scrawled and half-finished and creased on the kitchen table. I'm sorry, I had to make sure, it'll say. That's all it'll say. And someone will explain they saw Daniel walking towards the fence, and soon they'll realize James' security code is missing from his desk, and there'll be grid searches for at least a couple of weeks before Juliet will sigh, rest her hand against James' arm, whisper stop, just stop. And they will.

Two days before the sub comes, Daniel will disappear into the jungle and never come back.)

ii.

The second time, Charlotte's only six years old, and Daniel gathers her into his arms before the shooting begins, the gun Kate gave him tucked into the pocket of his coveralls while the screaming starts around them, an explosion near one of the vans as Stu and his men storm through the barracks. He can feel her heart racheting against his own, tears warm along the curve of his jaw (mummy, she cries again, and it breaks his heart), and he only means to get her somewhere safe, get her out of the way of whatever might come, onto the sub or into the jungle.

Then the sound of the bullet tears through the air, and it takes him a second before he realizes she's gone still, blue eyes wide but something warm and sticky pooling against the front of his shirt, and then there's this burning, along his right shoulder like it's on fire and it's all over him too (blood, it's blood) --

Someone tackles him as her body slumps, still warm, from his grasp, suddenly a blank where who she is should be (why he's there, what he's doing, it all seems to crack and fall away in his memory, sees Jack and Kate's frantic, horrified faces at the side of his vision and wonders why); as he falls he swears he can almost remember her name.

iii.

The third time, the plan works.

When he wakes up on September 22nd it's with the feeling that something, something, is different than before -- than Caroline making him scrambled eggs for breakfast and the piano he still can't play and the equations that mostly just make his eyes swim, like they're in a foreign language -- something he should remember (he struggles to keep it, clings to it, the fleeting thought that something important's happened and he needs to know what it is, to hold it close).

He thinks, maybe, there's the faintest impression of red (red ... what? he can't remember) when he closes his eyes and he's happy, so happy, more relief than joy, but then that's lost too.

(There's always the dreams, the ones he's had since Oxford and the experiments, when he'd jumped forward; of a beach and a boat and a place where nothing scattered quite right, a someone -- someone important, special -- always there. Grounded at his elbow, a hand on his arm, a breath along his cheek. He'd never told Theresa the last part.)

It doesn't make any sense at all until more than two months later, when Caroline brings him the latest edition of the Oxford alumni news, says it might help to do some reading, Daniel in that cautiously helpful way, and he shrugs but accepts the paper anyway, figures he won't remember enough of it to feel the full hurt of not being there, of how much his research failed.

He's skimming through when something on the fifth page catches his eye; an article tucked into the corner under the 'In Memoriam' section. It's nothing big, just a block of text and a black-and-white photo, and he almost passes it over again but the smile catches him (she's beautiful, is the next thought, her hair curling around her shoulders and an award displayed in her upturned hands), and that he thinks he's felt that warmth before, like maybe there'd been one of those smiles just for him.

So he reads the article, fast enough he misses the name the first time through, gets to the details instead -- graduate of the D.Phil program in 1999 (at first he thinks that's it; maybe they worked in the same building, crossed paths somehow), award-winning anthropologist, dead at 33, brain aneurysm.

The last part sends a spike of dread, cool and creeping, through the pit of his stomach, though he's not quite sure why (it's red -- red on his fingers when he pulls away from her face, red crusted at the corner of her lips, red blooming against the front of his coveralls with his mother above him). And that's when he gets back to the name, while his breath starts to hitch and his hands shake, and suddenly he knows, knows and wishes of all the things he can't remember this could be one, could stay locked in the dark of his broken mind forever.

Because he reads her name -- Charlotte Staples Lewis -- and that's when he knows the plan, the bomb, never really saved her at all.

iv.

The fourth time, he doesn't go back.

(In another world, he leaves Ann Arbor once that grainy black-and-white photo arrives, shows up on the sub and tries to blow up a bomb. The plan's different this time.)

At first, there's no plan at all (whatever happened, happened). Dharma manages to get him a position at the U of M campus working in the physics department, and for the first couple years he sort of drifts around Ann Arbor, working and going back to his dingy apartment when he's not in the lab, drinking at the campus pub when things get really bad and losing days to the bottom of a whiskey bottle (MacCutcheon's; if nothing else Dharma pays well) when they're worse.

He spends his 30th birthday just the same, listening to records and staring at the 1977 calendar curling against his wall (he does the math: 27 years until he's back to his own time, 16 until he starts his job at Oxford, or at least whatever newborn version of him that's in a couple states over will). That's when he figures it out, in a moment of clarity that comes so brightly it's almost blinding. That's when he comes up with his plan.

To wait.

He keeps working at U of M, resists the urge to visit Essex or his mother (it's Hawking that Dharma has recorded in his file, not Faraday), buys a modest three-bedroom a few blocks from campus; he makes a life, as much as he can, and ticks off the years as he goes. Along the way he meets someone. He doesn't mean to, exactly, but she's a kind woman -- brilliant, the head of the biology department, seems to accept the explanation he'd lost someone he'd loved, why there's some things he won't share, easily enough. She reminds him of Theresa, actually, and the loneliness, it's too much sometimes, feels like it's splitting him apart at the seams with Charlotte (his Charlotte, not the little girl across the ocean) so far away.

So he goes through the motions, does enough to keep up with the usual thread of life (gets promoted, even proposes after a few years, has a daughter and a son he loves dearly), and two decades later he quietly applies for a sabbatical, tells his wife he's taking a temporary lecturing position at Oxford and kisses his kids goodbye. It only takes a few weeks to find her, at the natural history museum closest to the school -- he hates being on campus; too many memories, too many chances to see himself, and the theoretical implications there are just too much to even begin to understand -- and Carthage, right? he says as he stands next to her at the exhibit, clutching the railing and pretending to study the plaques, trying desperately not to stare.

(She's so beautiful -- time had smoothed over what he'd forgotten, filled in the blanks, but it doesn't even come close, doesn't even compare, especially with seven years of disappointment and frustration wiped from her features -- as she returns his smile, watches him carefully. This is the Rome exhibit, actually, she explains, takes his in the duck of his head, the embarrassed grin, with even measure, a piqued interest, Carthage is down the other corridor.)

Somehow she agrees to go with him for a coffee (he tries not to think about how he's twice her age, how his wedding band is tucked in a drawer back in his bedroom; he explains he's in town for doing independent research for the university and she seems just as fascinated by his work as last time). Then it's a drink, and then another, and eventually there's lunches and dinners and the first time she spends the night at his flat he can't stop just looking at her, trailing his hands through her hair. She smirks at him from across the pillow, laughing -- what is it? -- and I'm too old for you, he mumbles, buries back everything else (guilt, shame, dread) he's feeling.

"You're not," Charlotte laughs again, leans over to kiss him, brush the hair back from his forehead. "Besides, you're not too grey yet, yeah?"

There's six months where he just lets himself be with her, makes her dinner while she's working on her thesis, spends weekends in London when she can spare the time from school and everything's fine (fine as it can be), until one night they're sprawled on his couch, watching a movie; completely slipped my mind to tell you, Charlotte says, I finally got my funding approved for the Tunisia trip. She's excited, he can tell, expecting him to share in it, but instead he pulls away, shaking his head.

(Whatever happened, happened)

"Daniel, what is it?" There's concern in her voice as she sits up, watches his face fall. "What's wrong?"

He gulps in a breath. "I need you to stop looking for the island."

Daniel watches her brows crease in utter bewilderment -- not confusion; she knows exactly what he's talking about -- but shock at the fact he does too.

"What --" she struggles to get the word out. "What are you talking about?"

"I know about the island," he says, rushing through it before he loses his nerve, "I know you were there, with your parents -- with Dharma -- and you've been searching for it your whole life, Charlotte, and you can't, you cannot go back there."

"Dan, how?" There's panic, now, instead; he can see her gaze darting across the flat, the fear there. "How do you know that?"

"I can't -- I can't tell you," he shakes his head again, grasps her hands in his. "But please -- in seven years there'll be a freighter, a man named Charles Widmore will hire you to go back there, and bad things will happen, Charlotte, if you do. Please -- just stay. Stay with me."

He can't say anything after that; the breath sticks in his throat, feels like he can barely draw a gasp, only notices the tears after they start to wet his cheeks. Now silent, still, Charlotte just leans forward and wraps her arms around him, clutches him tight (she doesn't say a word; he isn't sure what that means). Eventually, he must drift off, because he wakes with a crick in his neck and a blanket thrown over his legs in the dim morning light.

Charlotte's things are gone; so's she. All that's left is a lined piece of paper, pulled from one of her course books and left abandoned on his coffee table.

I'm so sorry, Dan. I have to try.

v.

The fifth time, he manages to convince her.

He's late to the debrief the night before the freighter's scheduled to leave, only stumbles into the bar while the rest of them are filtering out -- one of the men, the older guy, shoots him a what can you do kind of smile, the other just scowls -- and Naomi rolls her eyes, shoves a file folder into his arms and gestures over her shoulder; Lewis will fill you in on the rest.

He already knows exactly (well, not exactly but enough) from his journal who he should be looking for; after the experiments there'd been the dreams (visions?), and notes, lines of scribbled names and dates and impressions, all through the pages. (These are things he believes to be true: that a woman named Charlotte Lewis will be on the ship, that he will fall in love with her, that the island will be where she dies.)

So when he sees the redhead perched at the corner table, freckled and sunburnt and toying with a drink, there's not any doubt.

Daniel spends the next two hours showing her everything, throwing out facts about her life and history like evidence -- her parents' names, where she grew up after the island, where she went to school -- and begging her, begging her, not to go. It takes four stiff drinks and a couple intensive studies of every page in his journal, more than a few questions, and then Charlotte sits back, arms tucked against her sides, turns to him (he sees the tears in her eyes, even as she tries to brush them away) and says okay.

"Okay?" he echoes, not meaning to.

"I believe you." Her words cut short; she looks like she wants to say more, changes the thread of conversation instead. "Why were you going to the island?"

"I ... I'm, uh, I'm sick." The explanation comes with a tilt of his head, a vague, practiced gesture. "Mr. Widmore said the island ... he said it would heal me."

"Why would you give that up?" Charlotte's looking at him, hard-edged, straight in the eyes. "Why would you do that for me?"

"Because ..." His gaze strays down to his journal, resting against the table top, his voice growing soft. "Because I'm going to be in love with you."

Charlotte listens to that, laughs, but it's a brittle sound; you don't even know me, Dr. Faraday.

But they do get to know each other, eventually. It starts with letters and e-mails while she's on expedition, while Daniel's back in the States still trying to remember himself, and then phone calls and visits (it helps, to know she's out there, to hear her voice, practice memory games when she comes to visit, heals him in a way he doesn't understand). Soon Charlotte's finding more excuses to do work in Boston, and the same day she calls with news she's taken a position at the natural history museum there Daniel tells her he loves her.

They're married a year after that and he thinks they're happy, knows they are. But still, there's a part of her he can't reach, the way the island would have linked them together, the ways they were broken that never healed. As time passes, that something inside of Charlotte grows harder, harsher; she spends more time idle around the house, staring out their kitchen window for hours, won't tell him what's wrong. She doesn't go back to work after the kids start school (he's at MIT by that point, his memory better than ever); they go to the coast in his desperate attempt at a vacation and as soon as they get in sight of the beach Charlotte refuses to leave the car, just sits clutching the door handle and weeps.

One afternoon he finishes at school earlier than usual, picks up dinner from the Indian place Charlotte likes and calls her cell on the way home while he's gridlocked in traffic. There's no ring, just goes straight to her brisk, efficient voicemail recording (you've reached Charlotte Lewis; please leave a message) and that's when some strange, unnamed panic grips him. By the time he pulls into his driveway he's near frantic, wrenching his seatbelt off and slipping out of the driver's seat just as quick.

She's in bed when he finds her, a breeze fluttering in through the window -- she'd propped it open, even though it's barely above freezing, thrown back the curtains -- and her lips, her skin as white as the sheets.

(This time there's not even a note, just the bedside table and the empty pill bottle that silhouettes their wedding photo.

This is the thing that is true: he lost her the second she didn't get on that boat.)

vi.

The last time, he uses what will (what should) kill her.

By the time they stumble to the well Charlotte's on the verge of collapse, eyes shadowed and lips cracked and bloodied, the rest of their group left behind somewhere back in the jungle, but Daniel keeps her moving, props her up when she starts to trip and falter. They make their way down the rope with aching slowness, stopping every few feet so Charlotte can rest her arms, but finally they touch down deep underground, where the stones are beaded with the cold and Daniel starts to feel himself shiver.

Charlotte sits back against one of the cavern walls, her eyes half-lidded with exhaustion, red trickling between her nose and mouth again; Daniel, she whispers, I don't think, I can't... The rest gets lost in another cough, the sound echoing, violent. He rushes to her side, pulls her up again, winces at her groan of pain -- Charlotte, Charlotte it's okay, just a little bit more, alright? -- and step by step they make their way to the wheel (that it's even really there is beyond belief, exactly what he'd read from the Dharma files, and the part of his mind not full of worry is sparked by curiousity).

She's breathing hard by the time they position themselves on the wheel's far side, even more blood creasing the sides of her cheeks, and it's fine, it's fine, he murmurs to her, grasping at her waist with one hand, the other covering hers, pressed into the cracked, rough wood. Daniel pushes forward, digs his feet into the earth, and the last thing he hears is Charlotte's sob of pain, the grinding, groaning sound of metal on metal, before everything disappears into white.

He wakes up with sand burning his nose, mouth -- swears he must still be on the island -- and it takes a second before he can make his muscles work, cracking his eyes open to an endless blue, hands moving experimentally through the dirt and dust that seems to surround him on all sides. When he manages to prop himself up (and everything hurts), takes in the landscape -- sand, all sand, one lone security camera that means Widmore's people will be there soon -- that's when he knows it worked and Charlotte, he chokes out, hoarse, turning towards her.

There's an endless moment where she doesn't move, not at all, a trail of blood twisting down her features, along the curve of her neck; then she starts to cough, shoulders shaking, and Daniel feels himself nearly collapse with relief, his hand drifting to her neck, the slow, steady pulse there like a reassuring thrum under his fingerstips.

"Dan." Her voice is barely a whisper after all the coughing, thick with fatigue, but she still manages to turn her head, smile at him weakly. "You did it."

He smiles back, moves closer to press a kiss against her temple, to settle in until help arrives, and yeah, he allows himself to think, finally, fading into the joy, the sheer relief, of it, I think I did.

Five Acts Meme

2011-01-07T01:28:34Z

(I really, really shouldn't be doing this, but I just can't resist ... ;P)

Based on the community five_acts , toestastegood is hosting a Five Acts fic-a-thon for the week. In short:

+ Post a list of your five favorite acts/kinks to read about and a list of fandom/pairings.
+ Read other people's lists -- the master list is here -- and leave a link to your own.
+ Post comment-fic based off of other people's lists.

(Like last time, going vanilla all the way! And, more excitingly, expanding my list of fandoms to a grand total of two! ;P)

1. Adrenaline and crises
2. Role reversal
3. AUs
4. First times (no "losing virginity" though, please)
5. Friendship to something more (Gradual, accidental, casual relationship, companionship becoming romantic, sudden seduction, seeing someone in a new light, unrequited feelings being returned, etc.)

Community: Troy/Annie, Troy/Annie/Anyone

Lost: Daniel/Charlotte, Eloise/Charles, Charlotte/Daniel/Juliet/Sawyer, Charlotte/Daniel/Miles, Juliet/Daniel/Charlotte, Charlotte/Anyone (specifically Sawyer, Jack, Miles, Jacob, Juliet or Kate), Jack/Juliet, Miles/Naomi, Eloise/Richard, Jack/Kate, Miles/Kate and Juliet/Miles

A world of white

2011-01-06T01:57:23Z

Title: A world of white
Pairings or Characters: Daniel/Charlotte; Eloise, Charles, Richard
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It doesn't snow for another five days. Then Daniel shows up on her doorstep. AU; no Purge, no bomb, no Flight 815, just two people moving in and out of each other’s lives.
Warnings: None; spoilers up 5x14 at least.
Author’s Notes: Written for mollivanders for the Lost HoHoHo fic exchange, with the prompt Dan/Charlotte, anything with a winter theme. Sorry this got a little more Christmas-y as opposed to winter-y, and that th e length got a little out of hand. One important note – Charlotte’s birthday is kept to the original date of 1979, and if there are any logistics that seem out of place, call it artistic license. ;D

----

London, 2004

December 3rd

--

It's too green.

That's what Charlotte thinks, staring out across the sad little portion of lawn that came with her garden flat when she bought it the year before, feeling the warmth sink through her fingers, wrapped around a cup of tea, and watching out her kitchen window at the grass, damp with melted snow. She never grew up with it, snow at Christmas -- only the few holidays her mother took her to visit her aunts and cousins up north, and then not again until she left for uni at Oxford -- and maybe that's why she looks forward to it, almost childishly, every year. But it's the first week of December and the weather's been so warm and the snow so light that everyone on the telly's calling for a green Christmas, and though she misses home and her parents most of the time (her sisters defected to England as soon as they turned 18, too; one's finishing up a medical degree at Cambridge, the other already married off to some rich lawyer type Charlotte hates, both more practical than anthropology, her parents cluck) not having the snow there in London makes her more homesick, as strange as it is. Reminds her there might not be anywhere other than the place she was born (not really born but raised; whatever) where she really feels she belongs.

It doesn't snow for another two days. Then Daniel shows up on her doorstep.

--

Her mother always jokes that Charlotte doesn't have a romantic bone in her body (they were always too much alike; scientists, realists, practical, no time for anything that didn't produce tangible results, quantifiable effects).

And she doesn't -- doesn't have time for it, doesn't care for it. She's had boyfriends, sure, even men she's been serious with, been in love with (never enough that she'd settled more than half a year anywhere or stuck around London past more than two seasons without leaving for a dig or excavation, but still).

But still, there'd been Daniel.

Thinking back, she feels like it’s the history that's maybe made it more than it was -- they'd been young when they'd first met (10 years old and she'd wandered out into the jungle herself, furious with her mummy for stealing away the chocolate she'd gotten from the cafeteria, that she'd so carefully hidden under her pillow and saved until after school; he'd been 12 and had followed a rabbit from his camp, gotten turned around in the trees) and that it'd always been so secret (her parents had figured out by her 14th birthday there was a boy, assumed it was some classmate and watched her curfew even more carefully) and that she'd left, had only seen each other – briefly – during one trip home, a few letters exchanged, since.

It could be, more than that, the fact she'd shared first everythings with him, so close in age; he'd even said I love you first, said it again the night before she'd left (not a romantic, her, but with him it was like every part was exposed, open to the world) and she'd shook her head, what's the point?, buried her face deeper into the collar of his flannel shirt instead. She was leaving and he was staying and that was the end of that (well, minus that two weeks she'd gone back after uni had let out – not like getting there was ever an easy trip, and the Initiative was only willing to foot the sub bill for her parents so often, and he'd stayed after that too, made the decision for her).

And thinking back, it's silly now – foolish daydreams of a marooned teenager, believing they'd ever manage (between their families and his responsibilities and how desperate she'd been to leave, even if she misses it now) – and nice for a good bit of nostalgia when she's complaining to her friends about how dating in London is the worst, or for brooding over her tea when it's a quiet day and she's feeling a little lonely, but that's it, that's all.

(It could have been that she'd loved him just as much.)

That's all, and mostly she's just shocked when the bell chimes right after dinner – she's up to her elbows in soapy water, halfway between annoyed and curious as she wipes off her hands and heads to the door – and it's Daniel, shivering even though he's in a winter jacket and with the same canvas messenger bag crossed against his chest, same dark, shaggy hair, a thousand different things spilling out through those big eyes, the wavering expression.

"Charlotte, hi."

Her first instinct's to slam the door shut, too overwhelmed to process any of it, and the second's to tackle him into a hug; she settles on grabbing him by the sleeve of his jacket, yanking him inside with you must be freezing after a too-long pause. He looks even stranger standing in her front entrance, but mostly she notices his hands, his neck, where the skin's red and raw from the cold.

"You don't have gloves? Or a scarf?" She feels bloody ridiculous, standing in her hallway in the sweatpants she always trades for work clothes, interrogating Daniel like she's his mother. Maybe not any more ridiculous than the fact he's there at all, though.

He smiles, gentle, says forgot how cold it gets here and she almost laughs, because here is practically anywhere in the world for him, and that's ridiculous too, takes one of his hands between hers instead, not really thinking but only wanting to see if she can take some of the chill away and maybe, hell, to make sure he's actually real.

"Daniel," she starts; wants to start, clears her throat and tries again. "Dan, what are you doing here? When did you get to London, and how did you -- I mean, you didn't even write to say you were coming."

She realizes she's still holding his hand, pulls away under the pretence of offering to take his coat.

"I know." He slips his bag off his shoulders, doesn't break his gaze. "I'm sorry."

"Where's the rest of your things?" A fair question, a safe question; she almost feels proud for not giving way to the million other things she wants to ask, like how did you get here and how long will you stay and what, exactly, does it mean?

Daniel blushes, and for a second looks exactly like that little boy in the jungle, too small for all the trees. "They're in the car," he gestures, vaguely, outside. "I, um, I came here, right from the airport."

Oh, well good, Charlotte says as she picks up his abandoned bag, gestures for his jacket with the other, still marvelling at her own sense of calm, you can stay here then. It only takes a second before he's stumbling through a polite refusal, mentioning something about hotel reservations; he fishes a battered-looking envelope she recognizes as one of her own, her address scrawled in the top corner, out of his pocket, saying that he just wanted to see her first –

She feels her chest tighten at the last part, ignores it and shakes her head; don't be foolish, she mutters, I've got a spare room and how often are you in London, anyway?

"I'm here on business, for my father," is his reply, like it's some kind of answer to a question she didn't ask, looks more apologetic than anything until she rolls her eyes, steps closer and lifts one hand to his cheek, stilling him even as his eyes grow wider (she remembers this part, how to slow his racing mind).

"Daniel, I'd like you to stay."

He blinks at her, smiles; she can feel the crease of it under his palm -- okay.

"Okay." Her own grin's even in return, matches, finally gets the jacket peeled away from his shoulders, shuffles everything into the closet. "Now let's finally get out of my hallway, shall we?"

Charlotte slips her hand into his again as they make their way towards the kitchen, without really meaning to, just for a second, his grip loose, familiar, weaved through hers; familiar like a thousand things she can't be close to, that she feels like she might finally have a piece of again.

--

She dreams that night, for the first time in weeks – dreams of that first time she'd stumbled into Daniel between the trees, where he'd been rubbing tears from his eyes.

I'm lost, he'd whispered, I don't – I can't find my way back home.

You're lost? she'd questioned, still twisting around roots, the hem of her dress fisted into her hand. That's silly. I'm 10 years old and I don't get lost. She'd watched him for a second, feeling more curiousity than pity, thinking he was too skinny and too pale to be living in the jungle – and he must have been one of those, one of the bad people her parents whispered about that lived just beyond their fence, though he doesn't look bad at all – that was so full of so many interesting, wonderful things.

How old are you? she asked.

I'm 12, he'd sniffed, and she'd rolled her eyes, grabbed his hand in one quick movement – c'mon -- steered him back towards where the leaves and grass had been creased underfoot (her mummy and daddy had taught her how to mark the trees, find things to remember which way you'd come, figure out footsteps), followed the path until smoke had started to scent the air and think I'm home, he'd whispered, his gaze darting between her and the tops of the tents she could spot.

Thank you ..., he started, humble, words drifting away as he looked up, waiting for her name.

Charlotte, she'd answered primly, taken his hand like she'd watched all the grown-ups do when they were trading names, and Daniel, he'd replied, shyer than before. Then, brow creased with thoughtful concern – do you know the way back? Of course, she'd snorted, the silliest question in the universe, and he'd acquiesced, smile wan. She was already started back towards the path, hands swinging by her sides, brushing against the folds of her dress when he spoke next.

I hope I see you again, Charlotte. There weren't any tears or questions or pauses, then.

She hadn't answered, just turned and smiled – already late, already thinking about what excuses mummy and daddy would believe, why she'd been gone so gone – figured it was enough (I hope so too) before she'd slipped back between the trees.

Even then, she hopes.

--

The wind's rattling at her window when she wakes up, takes in the fuzzy, familiar shapes in her room; isn't sure if it's the wind or something else that brought her from sleep but Daniel is the next thought, and after she slips down to the kitchen for some water she pauses by the spare room, glass still in hand, not sure exactly what she's looking for, what excuse she'd use. The door's cracked open and Charlotte glances in through the slot of darkness, expects to see the shape of him curled in bed. But he's not there – the blankets are still perfect, patted down – and the panic that grips her is almost surprising, that he's practically still a spectre in this existence (just doesn't make sense without the jungle full and green behind him, without the shore silhouetting his figure) but she feels that lack, that empty spot, so much.

Charlotte doesn't even bother changing out of her pyjamas, just throws on a jacket and boots and opens the front door against a snow that's suddenly blowing hard, snowflakes swirling around her ankles. It takes a decent 10 minutes but she manages to find the indents of his footsteps, crescent moons left by the heels of his boots (even growing up in the wilderness and still half the time he’d never thought to cover his tracks), follows the path down her street and to the park, just a small patch of green surrounded by houses, at the end of her block.
He's the only thing she sees, against a grey-scoured sky and empty space, head tilted back and hands dropped to his side, snow batting down against the grass.

Daniel -- she doesn't mean to shout his name but it comes out loud, and his gaze swings around, open-mouthed, and she's by his side a few seconds later, partly charmed, mostly infuriated; this – Daniel, too romantic and flighty and captured by the smallest things in the world – she knows. What are you doing out here?

"Oh. Charlotte." He doesn't turn again, just throws the words over his shoulder, still transfixed on the sky, sounds pleased to see her and not at all bothered, not like there's anything even slightly crazy about being out in the middle of a storm half-dressed and convening with the weather gods like an absolute nutter (she doesn't care enough about her neighbours to worry if they've noticed, instead remembers the way he used to get caught up in how the trees shifted or the angle of the light or shadows stretching across one of the valleys during their afternoons together); the snow, coming faster and harder, making it look neutral, like negative space. "I'm sorry. It's been, uh, I think it's been a long time since I've seen ... this."

There's a well-worn sigh ready on her lips – Dan, she'll scold, like she always does, ready to steer him back to reality – but then she looks up at him again, at the smile that's almost rapturous and the snowflakes threading in his hair, and she can't, just can't, take the moment away from him. Charlotte, he says again, in a way that settles her thoughts, clears away the rest of it, matches her gaze to meet his up towards the sky (it's beautiful, she realizes, like it's some kind of revelation), and when her arms draw around his waist – cheek pressed between his shoulder blades, against the wool of his sweater – all she sees, all she feels is the snow.

--

The island, 1989

The next time she sees him it's just along the borders of the barracks, a few months later. That dark-haired man – Richard; she'd heard his name whispered by the adults before, almost in awe, seen him meet with Dr. Chang and Dr. Goodspeed and all the other very important people who worked with mummy and daddy – is there, just outside the fence pacing (with an angry look like sometimes daddy would wear when he came home from work or when him and mummy would talk at each other in loud voices), along with a blonde woman. She's not supposed to be out at the playground after dark but her parents are still busy cleaning up after dinner and she manages to slip out the kitchen door while they're doing dishes, the swing creaking under her weight as she pushes into the dirt and watches her feet against a purple-blue sky.

She's never seen them so close up (most of the other adults are all meeting in the rec centre and everyone else at home; it feels like she's the only spectator to whatever's going on), and she watches as Dr. Goodspeed emerges from a crop of buildings and stalks into the treeline, exchanging a tentative shake with the blonde woman, another with Richard. They disappear into the shadows and Charlotte leaps off the swing, figures it's as good a time as any to sneak her way over to the fence (Dr. Goodspeed's kept it off, at least for a few minutes), follows along until she sees a group of silhouettes gathered beside some bushes and she’s two more steps into some tall grass to hide – barely close enough to overhear the rumble of voices – before there’s something hard and painful around her arm and she’s being jerked up from the ground.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

The voice is gruff, angry, and all she gets is the impression of smells (dirt and smoke and meat and sweat, kind of like her daddy but less clean), of long hair and a beard, grime-covered clothing; the arm around her wrist is big and weathered.

She has enough time to be terrified before there’s a second voice -- don't -- and she thinks she knows that one, lifts her eyes up (and there are no tears, she's not crying, even though her knees starting to bleed and sting, she's not a little baby) and it's Daniel, that boy from the jungle, standing so tall and straight for a second she doesn't recognize him at all. And he doesn't say another word, just watches the man still clinging to her arm (it hurts, the way his fingers, his nails, dig in, and his smile's so mean and big it looks like it might split his face); that Richard man appears in her line of sight and speaks up -- she's an intruder; she's broken the truce -- and Daniel only moves to tilt his head, tell him no, she isn't, in the same calm, slow voice. The man beside her's getting restless, she can tell, but finally Richard breaks his gaze with Daniel, waves in her direction; let her go.

The pretty blonde lady comes back then -- Charlotte feels a minor thrill when she speaks just like her and her parents; England, her mummy had called it, even though she doesn't remember being there as a baby, like some big, magical place where anything could happen -- and she's quiet too, watching Daniel and Richard and the man, frown pursing her lips. Let her go, she echoes, and the man releases Charlotte's arm with a huff, sneers as he pulls away.

She doesn't like the way the woman who talks like her mummy is looking at her; mad and sad and the same kind of stare her parents give her if they're upset with her when she disappears into the jungle and lies saying she was at the beach, oh Charlotte, go to your room and think about the worry you've caused. Then Daniel's hands are on her shoulders – you need to go home, he tells her, not even stern but like he's trying to say something between every word, and good thing because he's not the boss of her, but suddenly she gets that this isn't another game or fun or her just being naughty.

There’s another look exchanged between him and the woman, and Daniel steers Charlotte back to the fence while the blonde lady scowls; Charlotte scowls back until her attention's drawn again to Daniel, who's whispering we can't break the truce, we'll get in trouble before he guides her the last few steps, turns to leave and she scrambles back across before Dr. Goodspeed returns, watches Daniel's retreating form for a few seconds more.

Just to show him – she steals the code for the fence a few months later, figures out the security camera's blind spots just after her 11th birthday (there's so much about the place she doesn't know; he does, and she's not going to let that go) and by the time she's sneaking out every other week she has a new friend.

--

In the morning Charlotte decides to skip the burnt toast and rubbery eggs (she’s still better at cooking in cast iron over a campfire than she’ll ever be in a kitchen) and takes Daniel out for a proper English breakfast at the pub just around the corner. She knows he’s only left the island a half a dozen times; he still seems on the edges of social engagement, watching too long and too quiet when they pass through the crowds bustling around her neighbourhood market, when the waitress comes to take their order, still the gentle intensity but none of the calm leadership she'd seen back home in the way he'd played off his parents – and christ, Eloise and Charles were the furthest thing from soft – and taken control of his people, the jungle, even as a boy. She'd called him heir to the island once as a joke, and he'd gotten quiet, face still and dark in a way she knew to take seriously, told her that's not how it works, Char, our leaders aren't chosen by birth; please, she'd countered, finger pointed his way, you can't tell me Richard, your parents, aren't grooming to take charge, to impress that Jacob bloke. (He hadn't had a reply for that.)

Even still, Daniel explains he'd had a head enough for numbers (always, always better than her at maths growing up, music too, though social sciences had stumped him) that his father had wanted him to get a handle on the family's investments, how they did their business, made him a vice-president of research and development solely on his name; it's not bad, so far, he says, the research's fascinating, especially in such a primary stage. Could do without the parties, though.

"So how long will you be here for?" The sugar packet feels thick between her fingers; she rips at a corner, stirs it into her mug.

"Oh, uh, only a couple weeks." He shrugs, a wry smile blooming. "My mother doesn't feel the same about ... the necessity of me leaving the island."

"Well, no surprise there." Charlotte takes a sip -- strong, too strong -- and tries not to make a face. "So, what -- meetings?"

"Guess so."

"You sound so pleased."

Daniel looks weary, all of a sudden, leans forward and drums his fingers against the tabletop, pauses just as quick like his body's finally managed to catch up with his brain. "What're you doing here, Charlotte?"

"Here?" She glances around the pub with exaggeration, dim lights warming against dark wood panels and bits of tinsel strung along the wall, only a few other diners for breakfast. "Having a crap cup of coffee and waiting for my food, which is taking a bloody long time now that you mention it.”

”I mean … so far away from home.” The words catch on his hesitation, but his expression’s firm; not pushing, never pushing, but asking for the truth.

It surprises her, the hot, coiling anger that seems to catch in her chest in the moments after his words, like who does he think he is to appear out of nowhere and start judging her choices, the island’s golden boy and she’s the crazy one for wanting to prove she could exist outside of it, make a life that wasn’t just theirs, Dharma’s or Jacob’s or whoever else controlled that tiny universe of green; “there’s more to the world than the island, Dan,” she snaps, tries to ignore the wounded look painted across his features, the hurt and surprise there.

”You never even asked if I had a boyfriend, or a husband. Hell, a girlfriend.” She’s fully aware her voice’s rising, in octave and pitch too, that the waitress is starting to watch from behind the bar but she couldn’t give less of a damn; she’s furious, all of a sudden. “So what, you figured you’d just show up at my door and we’d get on like always and that would be that? I’m not your bloody guest house in the real world.”

Throwing a fistful of bills on the table and storming out would be the immature thing to do, Charlotte knows.

She does it anyway.

When she’s gotten back to the house and had a proper pout – and christ, she feels stupid but also like she’s 16 again and totally adrift in a million feeling she can’t understand – she puts on some water for tea, curls up into her favourite section of the couch with the reading she needs to finish for work. Daniel shows up a half-hour later with a bouquet of flowers already wilting from the cold under one arm and a tiny toy polar bear, a big red bow drooping around its neck, under the other.

”I just wanted to tell you, I just thought --” He sighs, the flowers and the bear held out in front of him like some kind of offering. “I’m sorry. It’s not -- it’s none of my business asking you that. And I’m glad, I mean, I’d like to stay, if that’s, um, if that’s okay with you.”

Charlotte accepts both, settles the bouquet on the side table and the bear in her lap, its chubby, plush paws splayed out against her notes on ancient Carthage. “Apology accepted. And I meant what I said, but I didn’t have to be a right bitch about it.” She tugs at the bow, perking up the ribbon. “So I’m sorry for that.”

He joins her on the couch after that, looking relieved – she is too, that he didn’t run off to the posh hotel he should be taking advantage of instead of being cooped up in her tiny flat – and eventually the notes and the books get shuffled aside for some sickeningly sweet holiday movie on the telly, and after that somehow Dan’s feet get tucked in behind hers and by the time most of the daylight’s gone and the television’s starting to flicker shadows across the ceiling, everything in a wash of blue, she’s resting her head on a pillow tilted against his thigh (definitely like she’s 16 again), not minding at all the feeling of his hand threaded through her hair.

--

December, 1993

It's the lights that get his attention – strung from the living room windows of each of the little yellow houses, wound around a few of the smaller trees – and he asks why they’re there when they meet up just beyond the fence for another nightly walk. She's 14 so Santa doesn't hold much appeal anymore but she tells him about the holidays anyway, about Father Christmas and gifts under the tree and snow. Daniel mulls it over, murmurs that it seems nice, and sounds a little wistful; of course his people didn't do anything like that, though she remembers him mentioning something about funerals that sounded much more interesting than anything the dumb old Initiative ever did.

The next week when they meet – this time so Daniel can keep teaching her about the native plants, which heals and which is good to eat and which to stay away from – she brings photos pilfered from her mum's album, from Christmases with her little sisters and her parents, in their pyjamas and surrounded by wrapping paper, and they sort through them when they stop next.

Really, he’s fascinated by anything that exists beyond the island’s grasp – the music (later, when she’s just past 16 she borrows a van on the pretence of a supplies run to the Orchid, spends the afternoon playing Geronimo Jackson and some classical piano tapes from the rec centre for Daniel while they lounge in the backseat), the food (he loves Apollo bars almost as much as she does), the books (she starts a secret stockpile of science literature with every sub trip, brings him a new one every month). It’s a trade-off, really – in return she spends hours poking around the Black Rock, searching through the dust and moss and dirt for whatever treasures she can find, escaping the summer’s heat under the waterfall Daniel shows her (the water makes her tank top stick to her sides and she catches him staring a little too long), even sees a lighthouse and a foot, of all things, that Dharma doesn’t know about, has her itching to explore but he makes her promise to stay away, whispers one word -- Jacob -- and it sounds so much like a curse (or a threat or a prayer; she’s not sure) that she listens and stay away.

(That’s about the same time she starts to realize there are things about the island – dark, scary, terrifying things – she doesn’t understand. Like when that clanking sound of metal-on-metal first fills her ears; Daniel grabs her hand, pulls her into a crop of banyan trees with a jerk and they both kneel there, his heart beating a staccato rhythm between her shoulder blades and his thin arms strung hard against her stomach while whatever it is – smoke, it looks like smoke – passes and disappears.

“What – what was that?” she whispers when the cold feeling prickling the back of her neck’s gone, hating how shaky her voice sounds. He’s still breathing fast, doesn’t let her go; “something bad,” he answers, and she gets the idea there might not be anything more – anything that means anything – to it than that.)

On the 25th, she sneaks some leftover turkey and stuffing and vegetables (her last Christmas before she leaves for university there’ll be eggnog and spiced rum, too) into a container, grabs the flat, square gift she’d wrapped and hidden under her bed weeks before and stuffs everything into a knapsack, hopes the after-dinner cleanup and her sisters on sugar highs will keep her parents from noticing she’s gone.

They meet in their usual spot, and he tucks into the food so fast she barely has enough time to watch him it (“it’s delicious,” he mumbles through a mouthful of cranberries and potatoes); while he’s still wiping his hands she pulls out the present, offers it in upturned palms. Daniel accepts, his lips round with surprise, and tears back the red-and-green paper, runs his fingertips along the journal’s leather binding.

“I thought with how much you like music and all that physics stuff, you should have somewhere to write it all down --” She trails off when she notices that Daniel’s flipped open the front cover and is reading the inscription (Merry Christmas. Love, C -- her pen had hovered over that last bit before she’d written it).

Charlotte doesn’t have a second to think before his arms are around her, smothering her in a hug, breath noisy in her ear as he kisses her cheek. His lips rest against the curve of her face until she ducks her head, inch by inch, and when he finally says thank you she feels the words along her skin before he’s kissing her again, this time his mouth pressed against hers and she figures she’s more than happy to give Daniel presents every year if this is the kind of thank you she gets.

--

At first all the touristy day trips make Charlotte feel ridiculous (the Thames, Big Ben, Piccadilly, the lights on Oxford Street) – minus the natural history museum; she could recite the floorplan by heart – but he loves it enough she stops feeling silly after a while.

A week after he arrives she even stops on the way home from work at whatever shop has Christmas stuff left and spends an hour hanging stockings and decorating a pathetic-looking tree before Daniel gets back from wandering the city. (He does it every day while she's at the office, walks and walks and comes back with a dozen stories about things she never would have looked twice at; a few times while she's trying to juggle her briefcase and coffee out the front door he’s come down the stairs in a suit, looking better than she's willing to admit, drives her to work in a town car that gets impressed whistles from her friend at the Anthropology department building.) She's still fidgeting with a string of lights – 15 minutes through the battle of untangling wires – when Dan gets back.

"Charlotte. Wow."

The breathlessness threading through his tone takes her back (that one book, she'd given him that book on physics ordered from a sub; when she'd snuck him into the rec centre to see the piano – he'd played one during the handful of off-island trips with his father and loved it – while she was supposed to be in bed and the grown-ups had been at one of their boring meetings), a burst of memories, and it's that same surprised elation, like it's the best thing he could image, that still gets her.

I know it's not much, she gestures to the tree, the lights blinking white and red against the curtains, but it's the holidays, yeah? and Charlotte, he shakes his head, all gentle disagreement, kneels next to her on the carpet, the tree above them, it's great -- it's ... amazing.

He picks up one of the ornaments when she doesn't say anything after, reaches out to hang it from one of the branches and sturdies it carefully, picks up another and lets it dangle near where her fingers are resting in the pine needles, still trying to untangle the same thread of lights. Before she can fully process what's happening he's leaning over, his lips just brushing hers, the faintest impression of anything, dry and soft and barely there, and then he's pulled away again, concentrating on the next decoration.

She's shocked, for a second, only a little more than when she opened her door to him on the front step, lost in memories a million miles away; something in her chest sort of flips, halfway between panic and nervous excitement before she murmurs you should stay.

She barely says it, more like breathes it, he's still so close and it feels like anything more will scare him away. "You're never here, and I could take a few weeks off work. And it's -- well, it's Christmas."

The corners of his eyes crinkle when he smiles; "you want me to spend Christmas with you?"

There's a chance to keep this light, she knows, he's giving her a way for this not to mean what it could; he grins again and all of a sudden she doesn't want to take it.

"Yes." Then, because that doesn't seem like enough, fingers curling around his collar, she kisses him, pulls away and only gives herself a fraction of space to add --

"-- absolutely."

--

This is what she remembers, always, even when she won't admit it to herself: the deck's wooden splinters catching at her heel, how the heat of his palm, imprinted half against her shirt, half her skin, along the small of her back had made her sweat, her arm angled around his neck and how the ends of his hair had tickled, the up-and-down rise of his chest against hers, shallow and breathless. It'd felt so new and terrifying, those first kisses, with everything warm and strange and she'd had a second to think am I doing this right? Even after the first ones she’d still felt a sort of thrill, uncertainty and excitement and like everything was moving endlessly around her, could come crashing down at any second but it never did (not until that last kiss on the dock, before she’d left on the sub for university – he hadn’t even said goodbye, just I’ll see you soon, like it was something inevitable – and then again when she’d visited, the sub only an hour from loading and he’d kissed her just as sweetly, face cupped between her hands, told her I’ll always love you, Charlotte and she’d known that he meant it, every word, but he still didn’t leave, didn’t leave with her).

Not so much crashed to an ending but flickered and died, when he chose. When they didn’t make a choice at all.

(The island chooses you, and you have to choose it back, he had said once, and she knows now – knows it watching Daniel finishing the decorating and how the tree’s blinking colours play off the creases of his smile – that any light gone out can be relit.)

--

On Christmas morning they bundle up against a storm that's suddenly turned slushy, rain and ice pelting down from the sky, slosh through it to her sister's house just outside the city; they're soaked by the time they get there and Charlotte's a little white-knuckled from the drive, but when Abby opens the front door it's a rush of baking and pine needles and her three tiny nieces and nephews flying at her (Oliver attaches himself to Daniel's leg and he grins at her, bright-eyed) and she's happy, really, to be there.

Once the kids are settled in to their mountain of presents, Abby's husband joins Daniel on the couch and her sisters drag her into the kitchen, waiting until the swinging door's settled before the questions start spilling out; where'd you meet? and how long has this been going on? and are you sure you've never brought him 'round before?

(The answers: "we're old friends, we're just friends and no, I'm positive.")

Elizabeth shrugs – “strange, I swear he looks familiar” – and then she’s on to where he works and whether they’ve slept together yet. Later, when she’s pouring coffee, Abby pulls Charlotte to the other side of the kitchen island, smile sly.

She feels her brows furrow in confusion. “What?”

“I know him, Char.” Abby leans closer, whispering. “He was on the island, wasn’t he? When we were little? I remember seeing you come back from sneaking out from my window and he was with you.”

Charlotte doesn’t say anything – Elizabeth starting to watch, curious, from the other side of the kitchen with the coffee pot in hand – but her smile creeps up anyway.

“Well.” Abby grins again, pleased, squeezes Charlotte’s hand before she grabs a plate of biscuits and heads back to the sitting room. “I’m just glad you found each other again.”

The door swings open in Abby’s wake and for just a second she sees Daniel, still on the couch and smiling at something she can’t see, and me too, she thinks.

Me too.

--

December, 1996

That last Christmas on the island, there is definitely eggnog. And rum. And even more rum, and somewhere along the way of swapping back and forth the bottles curled up next to the big tree near the fence they get the genius idea to sneak into his camp (she’d only been close enough to see them, before; Daniel’s parents, their leaders, the rest of his people and I can’t well leave not even having seen the island’s indigenous people up close, she’d slurred, knocking Dan in the shoulder, s’not being a very good anthropologist, is it?). They’d crept through the brush, skirting around the last campfire and the last person up keeping watch, and into his tent, with his cot and his books and the place under his mattress where he kept his journal; she feels like it’s an entire new world, wants to know every corner of it, feels like it’s the easiest thing to step in the circle of Daniel’s arms, kiss him soundly, fold herself into his embrace as he kisses her back with just as much fierceness.

Merry Christmas, he whispers, and it's the last thing she hears before she gets lost to it, shrouded in the warmth of it all.

When she wakes the tent's already capturing the heat of the day, sunshine filtering through the canvas and Charlotte groans against a headache that's already grown large, the blankets stifling all of a sudden and Daniel's arm still hanging loose against her hips and how the hell did she fall asleep? Her parents will be losing their minds and that's if she even manages to sneak out of camp at all --

"Daniel --" She hears the voice muffled by distance and the tent's flaps, and then suddenly the glare's spilling in and it's so bright, for a second all she sees is a silhouette, then blonde hair like a halo. Eloise doesn't say a thing, just stares at them through narrowed eyes – Daniel's stubbornness, Charlotte knows where it comes from suddenly, the steel under the surface – and Charlotte can't help but squirm a little under the blankets, pulling them closer and feeling every inch of them against her skin while Daniel bristles, features set as close to defiance as she's seen him get.

"Daniel." Eloise’s voice, it's like ice – crystallized hardness, unyielding – and she doesn't spare Charlotte another glance. "Outside. Two minutes."

They both slip into their clothes as fast as they can – Charlotte fights back the redness creeping into her cheeks; more from anger than embarrassment – and move out into the clearing, where Eloise and Charles (she knows him from sight, from stories) and even Richard are waiting. It’s blue on blue, both their gazes; evenly divided between sharp anger and gentle amusement, and Charlotte tries not to shrink back into her sweatshirt when Eloise turns those eyes on her again.

Her voice is low, dangerous. “Daniel, I can’t even begin to imagine what you were thinking bringing her” – there’s a snide half-wave in Charlotte’s direction – “here. You broke the truce. You put your people in danger.”

“She’s not a danger to us.” Daniel’s tone is just as quiet, as even, a fearlessness to it.

Eloise laughs, shakes her head just slightly; beside her, Charles stays quiet, though Charlotte catches the look, vaguely impressed, he sends towards his son. “And how would you know that, you silly boy?”

For a second Daniel doesn’t seem anywhere near as young, his expression softening, just the slightest hesitation, and then steeled with resolve as he throws a look back Charlotte’s way – “because I’m in love with her,” he says, and it’s enough to shock the rest of them into silence, before Richard grins to himself and Charles bites back a happy laugh, watching Eloise, who stays grim-faced.

“Leave it, Ellie,” Charles speaks up, quietly, hand at her back, and she seems to blink back to consciousness, firms up her stance without looking at him and issues an get her back to the border, Daniel before she stalks away.

Still smiling, Charles steps towards them, eyes Charlotte carefully. “And you’re with Dharma, yes? You were raised on the island?”

Charlotte keeps her expression set firm, shoulders back; “I’ve lived here since I was two years old.”

Charles laughs again, claps Daniel on the shoulder – you could do worse, son -- and follows Eloise’s path, Richard trailing behind. When they’re all gone Charlotte grabs Dan’s hand, dares to kiss him again; can’t believe that worked, she murmurs, feels relief at his laugh, the other words still beyond her (still a choice she can’t make).

She leaves two weeks later – a semester behind everyone else but she figures other students aren’t travelling on a bloody sub’s schedule – and swears she won’t cry as she boards.

(She almost makes it).

--

It’s only when the tires crunch over new snow, settled in the driveway she’ll have to shovel the next day, that Daniel’s eyes crack open, smiles at her half-asleep from the passenger seat, the back of her car loaded with leftover turkey and presents.

Charlotte clicks off the ignition, leans back in her own. “We’re home.”

“Good.” Daniel sighs, blinks a little more into wakefulness. “Charlotte, listen …”

She's still watching the snow blowing across the front walk, gathered in wisps and moving, shuffled by the wind, like grains of sand; three weeks ago and she'd felt so homesick, a little lost, and maybe she doesn't know anything more, anything different, but it feels like she could and that's enough; her life could be or the island could be and that's for her to decide.

"I'll stay," Daniel's saying, as soft and open as ever, his expression pinpricked by the shadows of falling snowflakes through the windshield. "I mean, I won't go back if you don't want me to."

"Is that even a choice, Dan?" Charlotte sighs, studies the steering wheel like it's the most absolutely fascinating thing she's ever seen, some uncovered treasure; his words burn in her memory.

He doesn't flinch. "I'll make it one."

"And what if I want to go back with you?" Even saying the words, making that tangible connection between her mind and her mouth, her breath stutter in her throat, because she doesn't know what she wants, thinks maybe with Daniel she could. "What if I want to go back home?"

"You'd leave ... you'd leave all this?" He ends up waving at mostly her flat and her car, but it's her job, too, and her sisters and her friends and London and travelling, not to leave or lose but change; return.

"Maybe." (She means each syllable.)

"My parents live there," Daniel points out, after a pause; so do mine, she echoes back, teasing, and I'm sure they'd be thrilled to meet the boy I've been sneaking off into the jungle with since I was 10.

They both laugh, and then he's leaning forward, one hand pressed against her neck and the other at her hair, pulling her closer; so -- the word comes out as warm breath against her cheek, makes her smile – I guess we'll, uh, figure it out then?

"I guess so," she murmurs back, hoping he's not close enough to see the sparkle of tears she swears she feels against her eyelids, doesn't want him to think she's sad when really it feels like everything might be falling into place, wherever she lands. "Now let's get the hell out of the cold and enjoy the rest of our Christmas, yeah?"

He nods, grinning, gathers her even closer for just a second, kisses her before they part, before they slip outside (his hand finds her, the warmth just enough) and disappear into the swell of white that’s all the world.

Keeping still to move

2010-11-12T04:31:34Z

Title: Keeping still to move
Characters/Pairings: Charlotte/Daniel
Rating: PG
Summary: Since she was a little girl, she's collected truths. An AU take on one scene in particular from the S4 finale.
Spoilers: Up to end of S4.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for carlitwo 's request of Charlotte/Daniel, and time can go so fast / when everything's exactly where it's at its very best at the Shiny Happy Comment Ficathon. I don't think it's as shiny or as happy as I hoped it would be, but that's what happens with too much wine and The National on repeat. ;D

----

Since she was a little girl, she's collected truths; like they were something she could see, hold on to while everything else -- little yellow houses and sun that baked against her shins and everything, anything about her father -- sifted away. Time fades, corrodes (you're dreaming, her mother scolds for the millionth time over a decade, starts to sound a little more true, dust and sand collects against another ruined temple wall, another broken-down testament to people long gone) -- but not all. Not everything. Not truths.

(There is an island -- this is one -- and it's her home, her new beginning.

There is a man -- this is another -- who she's found too, who means more than she'd like.)

He's soaked when he gets back from the first run to the freighter, the zodiac beached in the distance and his dress shirt clinging against thin arms, the sparse outline of his body as she half-laughs through her goodbye (better, easier than admitting time's stamped its finality on whatever's between them), tells him nothing's forever in a way that almost gets to light-hearted. She hopes that's true, too.

After, she starts to walk away, almost doesn't-quite-hear him at first, the words in one breath at her back, rolling out with the waves a whisper.

"I'll stay."

"Huh?"

Her expression's betraying confusion, she knows, when she turns, brows lifting and then creased while he mirrors the same, grin in time with her question. He stumbles through a backtrack -- I mean, I thought -- I know you want to, and maybe, I just thought -- hands tumbling, splayed against the ocean's background, placating. I would too?

(There is a phantom memory -- a cool, light touch at the base of her neck, Frank's look incredulous, the helicopter surrounded by green -- and she almost laughs at that, because it's like nothing's changed when everything has, like no time's passed when it's always leaving them behind.)

"What about --" Her eyes squint shut, just for a second, trying to remember; curling, fine lines of pen strokes, flowering out through the journal's page. "-- the protocol, the secondary protocol. You said we needed to leave before --"

He shakes his head, firm -- doesn't matter -- and he smiles again, wider, more confident, steps through the sand towards her and his touch anchors at her elbow, his other hand fidgeting against her shoulder then stilling, heat through cotton from the imprint, the shape of his fingers.

That smile; it'd been seconds, just seconds, since she'd pressed her palm to his cheek, kissed him, and now she feels like she doesn't know what comes next, how to navigate this moment that feels endless with everything laid bare, her heart in her throat and giddy and silly and happy. We've got time, she hears him say, nods her assent, watches his eyes flutter closed as her hands snake up against his neck, still feels the twitch of a grin when she rocks forward onto her toes and kisses him.

When the white light comes (like time's been stretched to its limit and everything's true, infinite and perfect and endless, Dan's arms still around her) she keeps her eyes open, just to make it last.

Halloween drabbles, part deux

2010-11-09T03:30:36Z

A/N: So here's the second half of the Halloween drabbles -- and only over a week late! I reeeeally don't know where any of these came from, to be honest; the first one's set in an alt version of the alt!verse, the second in the regular ole S6 and the last is some weird post-The Incident universe. But regardless, hope you enjoy ciaimpala, missy_useless and ozmissage! ;D

--

Shannon's not really sure how she got guilted into volunteering at the gross mental hospital her stepmother donates to when she wants good PR, ends up wasting every fourth Saturday there, wearing a pink apron-thing that's not her colour and keeping far away from the patients.

Still, there's one who grabs her attention -- young, blonde hair that could use serious conditioning -- and she'd be pretty cute if the ratty bathrobe didn't ruin it. And she's so sad (Aaron, she sighs) that Shannon starts sitting with her, reading her kids' books and soon it's sneaking between scratchy white sheets.

Shannon swears she tastes like sand and salt, like gasoline.

--

Both of David's parents disappears in late September, after the concert.

He shows up at Daniel's door the next day in tears, emergency bus money clutched in one hand; I can't find them anywhere. Charlotte fixes David lunch while Dan calls the police.

By the end of October there's still no word, David's living in his condo; Charlotte figures Halloween candy might cheer him up.

"I don't --" He loses the words. "My mom used to take me." (There's a photograph in his room; Juliet in scrubs and cat ears).

Instead they spend the night playing piano -- Chopin's nocture in C minor, the keys sticky with chocolate.

--

There aren't any answers, even on an island with killer smoke and neither of them, Miles realizes, have a damn clue.

The others are gone by then -- the sonic fence breaks quick, they've only got one bungalow left barricaded; thank god for Linus' homemade arsenal -- and the supplies is going the same way.

"They look like --" Miles fumbles the words and Richard catches on the end of his gaze, desperation mirrored. "Like fucking monsters. Something out of Aliens or some shit."

A last bottle of kerosene's on the kitchen table between them, shadowed by the lantern's low light; Richard's hand clenches his as it sputters.

They wait.

Three Halloween drabbles ...

2010-11-01T01:01:41Z

A/N: So I've got half of them finished, and I know I'm going to miss my Halloween deadline on the rest, but they should be posted very, very shortly -- I promise! As for the three below, Happy Halloween angela_weber , mollivanders and lenina20!

--

All she sees is green, at the end.

I'll save you, he says (maybe only thinks she hears him), brands her with the words, rapid and shallow and if the lie weren't there already it is then.

I wish --, she says, syllables staccatoed by a cough that won't stop, something (blood) thick in her throat, drenches the words in a finality they don't need. I wish we'd met at Oxford.

He laughs through a sob -- me too -- cradles her closer; she can almost imagine navigating first everythings, his hand snaking through hers between library stacks, a kiss they'll never share.

(The tree above will mark her grave.)

--

It's funny -- growing up, he was never scared of ghosts.

Never had his mother check under the bed, never saw monsters in the corners of his room.

He's still not -- even after everything -- but after Charlotte there's shadows that weren't there before, whispers while he paces the barracks (swears he hears her voice); can't help but feel haunted, feel like there's something just bordering his vision, the faintest impression of fingers around his wrist.

And it's funny, the memory that always grabs him is another goodbye, their first; Charlotte at the shore, and he can almost hear her again, a sadness in the whispered sound --

-- nothing's forever.

--

A silly tradition, is what she tells Daniel when he asks to do it, scoffs at the idea with a tight expression that's becoming more practiced every day, his eyes downcast, the pumpkin in his hands sagging.

(Charles had told her the legend, when they'd been young -- she'd found him carving one in their camp, his knife working through soft, orange flesh, the pulpy seeds until a rough face emerged; it's a Jack-o'-Lantern, he'd explained, smiling that infuriating smile when he knew something she didn't, a man doomed to wander the earth forever.)

She changes her mind the next day; their lantern glows bright like a pathway home.

a thousand ways of wasted time

2010-10-15T22:36:56Z

Title: a thousand ways of wasted time
Characters/Pairings: Cindy/Lennon
Rating: PG
Summary: They meet on a plane. Post-S6 premiere.
Spoilers: For S6.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for the Sweet Drabblethon and cloudytea 's request of Cindy/Lennon, how you crumble when I shake. I wouldn't call this fluff but it didn't come out as angsty as I would have liked -- just couldn't get sideways!world out of my head. Hope you enjoy! Title from Blue October.

----

They meet on a plane.

(Of course.)

--

After 815 lands in L.A. she ends up with a few days off before her next run, spends them mostly sticking around the halfway decent hotel Oceanic puts them up in (better than the last one in Las Vegas, with the dingy air conditioner and the drapes that smelled like smoke) lounging in a bed that's a million times nicer than the one in her condo in Sydney and not even sneaking a look at the room service prices before she orders and sunning next to the pool in a bikini -- she buys it in one of the airport stores and almost returns it half a dozen times -- that gets more than one appreciate stare.

She feels restless in a way she hasn't in a long time, since 815's wheels hit the tarmac, like something's been set in motion, in flight, she can't quite control, like there's nothing left to do but get caught up in the current, the rush of it all, like she's still waiting for something but it's not long out, whatever (whoever) it is.

(One night she she drinks a whole bottle of chardonnay to herself, balcony doors open wide against the wind coming off the ocean water, and listens to the White Album -- another random airport purchase -- on repeat. The breeze seems to carry the scent of incense, candles, dirt and earth and trees; old, familiar.

The next morning, in the slice of seconds before she's fully, really awake and everything's mostly a dream, it's like the whole room's baptized, bathed, in white, pure and warm and never-ending. Just a second, and then the impression's gone. She listens to Blackbird with the sun edging through the pre-dawn horizon of her window ledge one more time just the same.)

--

When she boards the 740 to Sydney mid-morning a few days later it's with her uniform newly pressed and a neatly packed suitcase. (Her sunburn's already chafing against the collar of her shirt, like some kind of reminder.)

It's almost right after takeoff when the passenger call light blinks red, on and off, along with the cheery bing of the unfasten seat belts sign; Rachel gives her a pleading look, clicking her own seat belt free and smoothing out her uniform, launches into her typical song-and-dance -- "please, Cin? I had to do a red-eye into LAX last night and I'm dying for a coffee."

She's a little less upset when the guy at the other end of the call signal ends up being pretty cute (hair's too short, though, she thinks without meaning to, and he'd look -- he looks -- better with glasses, though that makes even less sense), shoots her a sweet, perplexed smile when she shows up at his seat in executive class.

"I was just trying to get my tray down, I swear." He grins a little again, sheepish. "I didn't even mean to hit it."

She shows him how, finds out he's a translator going to Sydney on business for the next few months, even manages to knick him an extra orange juice and muffin while they're doing the breakfast run. By the time they land in SYD she's got plans for drinks that night and five dates later she's got a new boyfriend who prefers sleeping on her balcony on warm nights and walks around her condo barefoot and reads Japanese poetry.

It feels like being with a ghost, sometimes, even though she loves him (loves him so fast it's almost shocking), a shadow of something she can't quite grasp, knows they both feel that way, catches his long looks that seem to say who are you, really?

She doesn't know. Neither of them do.

(But she will; they will. She'll remember exactly five months, eight days, three hours and thirty-two minutes later, when she's taken two weeks' vacation to visit him in L.A. and they spend half the days tangled in bed and the other half on the beach, anywhere outside; one afternoon they drive to see the ruins of some old mountaintop resort above Altadena where the sun slants against pale rock, seems to light it on fire, and she only realizes there's tears in his eyes too when he grasps her hand hard, won't let go.

She'll remember: they'll be buying odds and ends at the supermarket, stuck in the pasta aisle debating the merits of fettucini versus penne. He'll brush her arm, accidentally, boasting about his legendary marinara sauce and the box of noodles will scatter, splinter over the tile floor.

She'll remember years alone. Lonely, on an island that pulled her into its grasp, never let go.

It's you -- that's all she'll say, over and over, all she'll be able to say, grasping the front of his t-shirt, everything suddenly tangible and real and caught firm between her fingers, and eventually he'll look down at her, lips twisting into a smile that's almost sad, almost at peace, and he'll just whisper of course it is, Cin before he pulls her close and kisses her, kisses her and it all burns away, all the years and the pain and the death, burns away like the brightest of light, fierce and strong and true; of course it is.)

--

They meet.

(Of course.)

Three Five Acts ficlets

2010-09-25T00:40:04Z

Title: Terrible love
Characters/Pairings: Charlotte/Daniel
Rating: Hard PG-13/soft R
Summary: She doesn't mean for anything to happen with her and Dan.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 5x05; references to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for primarycolors92 for the Five Acts meme, for the prompts mistake sex and outdoors. Title from The National.

----

She doesn't mean for anything to happen with her and Dan.

Honestly.

Even though she knows he loves her (is in love with her), she doesn't intend for anything more than a few minutes away from the others, away from the proof the time-travel nonsense they're going through is real (scattered in pieces across the sand, heaved ashore on the beach) and not some bloody nightmare she's bound to wake up from any minute.

(She does that too, when they've stopped for water and no one's looking; wake up, she thinks, desperate, squeezes her eyes shut hard, wake up. It's the first time she's wished for the freighter's cramped, smelly cots or that pathetic excuse for a bedroll they'd used back at the beach camp, but it's always more green -- so much green -- the sky impossibly high over their heads when she opens her eyes. Always. And that's when the pragmatic part of Charlotte's mind -- which is plenty; even with almost-daydreams of yellow houses and mysterious islands she's a realist before anything else -- chimes in, reminds her that there isn't any escape, that she's weaved her own end on this godforsaken place, and that this will be, this place will be, the last thing she ever sees.)

Miles' doom-and-gloom is driving her batty, and Locke keeps marching around like throwing off pronouncements about what the island wants them to do like he's gone completely nutters and Sawyer and Juliet are trapped in their own drama, apparently, so once the commotion over the ship wreck calms down (she doesn't have the time for professional curiousity, not now; her nose runs red again and it's a precious commodity, something finite she can almost see sift through her fingers) Charlotte gets Daniel's attention, steers him away from the group and towards the treeline.

"We're going to need some firewood, yeah?" she says in way of explanation, trodding down the beach and trying to fight off the aching buzz clamping down on her temples. "Don't know about you but I'm freezing."

He looks at her for a long moment, like he can't quite figure out what she's up to (and it's nothing, honestly; there's no time -- again, she can't escape it -- to think about Dan's words to that Alpert bloke in the Hostiles' camp, about why repeating it back made her breath sort of skip, made all kinds of things she doesn't even want to start picking apart swell, warm and bright, in her chest) but nods and follows along anyway, in between trees and along the jungle's edges, starting to collect twigs and branches they drop in a pile in the brush.

That's why she doesn't mean to step too closely while she's reaching to break off a dead branch, doesn't mean to turn against the curve of Dan's arms, into his chest, when they're only a fraction apart and it's like all the jungle's hums and chirps just fall away until all she can hear is her own heartbeat, doesn't mean to watch him lick his bottom lip, nervous and wide-eyed, to tilt her head up and brush her mouth open against his. For him to kiss her back.

When she's got the knot of Dan's tie -- half-soaked and thick with wear, days spent on the beach -- between her fingers, yanking it free, starts at the buttons of his ridiculous dress shirt she's thinking this is a mistake because it is, because it's not fair to have gone there looking for home and to find something else entirely, it's not fair and it's not right that there's blood crusted under her nails and she's always moving closer to the end and this (his teeth scrape just beneath her jawline and she gasps) won't make it easier. They stumble a couple steps back; bark catches against the stretch of her t-shirt, pulls against her skin, starting to scratch when his hands have caught hers, thumbs carving along the insides of her wrists. When he finally pushes inside everything goes white for a second, not like those damn flashes but in a way that's blank, beautiful (not about blood or death or future things written in stone; just them) and at the end it's white again, against her eyelids, Dan's breath hot and frantic along her cheek, the only thing against the jungle's full thrush of sound, the soft humidity cradling their skin.

Daniel's quiet after, his head bowed and resting along her shoulder, hair damp, sweaty against her skin. Eventually he moves away and she wriggles back into her jeans, tank top; both ends of his tie hang loose against the front of his shirt, and "Daniel," she starts, uncertain. "I don't want you to get the ... well, the wrong idea about us. It was sweet, what you said back in the Hostiles' camp, and this ... but I'm not -- I mean, I don't --"

(It's better, Charlotte tells herself, firm, it's better this way.

She doesn't mean it at all.)

But Dan just gives her a gentle smile, seems to hesitate and then steps towards her anyway, brings his hands up to frame her face and kisses her softly, carefully, just seconds and then he smiles again, still close enough she can feel the heat of his breath as he murmurs I know and then moves away. She feels the tears but wipes them away when he's not looking, as they're walking back towards the beach with wood piled under their arms (I know; he's a bloody genius and sometimes she still doesn't give him enough credit) and when she stops to straighten his tie before they round the last of the beach's curves to their friends she doesn't plan to leave her hands lingering against his neck (thank you comes out in a whisper, air still between them), to kiss him again, lightly, longer than she should, before they keep walking through the sand but she does.

(She means it more than anything.)

--

Title: Calling Bluffs
Characters/Pairings: Miles/Juliet
Rating: PG
Summary: Two deserted time travellers and a bottle of wine make for an interesting evening.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 5x08.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for ozmissage for the Five Acts meme, for the prompts confessions.

----

"You totally like me."

Miles regrets the words half a second after they leave his mouth -- hell, probably half a second before, if they'd even entered his wine-addled brain and he's not sure they actually did -- and Juliet pauses with her glass halfway to her lips (they're practically stained purple and her cheeks are blushing red; it happens every time, she'd moaned earlier, I look like a tomato) and stares him down.

Uh oh.

She doesn't say a thing, just sips delicately at the rest of her drink, watches him over the rim of her wineglass.

Why in in the flying blue fuck is he telling her this again? Oh right, because he makes stupid decisions when he's drunk, and they've got three empty bottles of Dharma-brand chardonnay proving just that point. So he shrugs, takes another gulp of wine and fights through the buzz that's pressing against his temples, figures it can't get any worse, even if they've only been with the hippie scientists for a month and if they're stuck in time for however long (Dan's apparently going for a mumbly weirdo world record and has barely strung a sentence together since they arrived) this could get all kinds of awkward --

"Listen, I know when a chick digs me."

Whatever. Let her call his bluff. He likes her -- that's the thing; he likes that she doesn't take any shit and she looks just as hot as she does badass with a rifle under her arm and the way tucks her hair behind her ear and even that smirk -- and what's the worst that could happen? She'll laugh and they'll open another bottle of wine and if he's lucky it'll get lost in the hangover tomorrow.

The corners of Juliet's lips lift, just barely, into a smile, and she leans forward, lets her glass clink down against the coffeetable.

"You're right."

Miles already has a smartass brush-off ready to go, and he almost stumbles into anyway before what she says filters through the haze; he stutters out an um, freezes up again, finally manages to squint at her with a I am? that sounds way more shocked than he likes.

He has to say it doesn't even compare to a few seconds later, when she rises from the couch and stumbles to the front of his chair, leans down and plants one on him. She tastes like wine, and it's sloppy as hell, but it's pretty much the best damn thing that's happened to him ... well, almost ever, so he's not going to complain. Instead, Miles kisses her back, doesn't say a word when Juliet murmurs don't let it go to your head before she pulls back and reaches for another bottle, grins at him with corkscrew in hand.

He grins too, and yep, he thinks, totally digs me.

----

Title: A wellmade mistake
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Kate; Marc, Aaron
Rating: PG
Summary: As soon as she gets her name cleared, she's gone.
Spoilers/Warnings: AU take on S4, post-the O6 returning.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for angela_weber for the Five Acts meme, for the prompts absence makes the heart grow fonder. Title from Fiona Apple.

--

As soon as she gets her name cleared -- he perjures himself and the orange jumpsuit gets traded in for business casual and there's one parking garage conversation where he doesn't (can't) say what he really means -- she's gone.

Grabs Aaron, drains the rest of her Oceanic settlement money and runs.

He tells himself he's not surprised.

(He is.)

Marc tries for diplomatic when he first hears, mumbles some platitudes, finally hands him a drink -- they're at the bar closest to the hospital, at the end of a bad shift; some little boy that reminds him too much of Aaron who'll never walk again -- and sighs you blew it, man; the kid comes as part of the package.

(Jack doesn't flatter himself by thinking it has anything to do with him at all.)

--

About two weeks after he keeps expecting to see her mug shot flashed across the TV screen, in black and white on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, Jack runs into her lawyer in the cereal aisle at the supermarket. It takes a minute to recognize the guy, out of his thousand-dollar suit and in a wrinkled polo and jeans, but hi, Jack says, squints out a smile, Jack Shephard; I testified for Kate Austen? He'd been grabbing a box of Cheerios (Aaron's favourite; at least that's what Kate had said) right before he'd spotted the guy and now he stands with the cereal halfway into his shopping basket, feeling ridiculous while the lawyer explains (with a stiff upturn of his lips that says I don't get paid enough to deal with the relationship bullshit) that Kate's all settled into her new place, Aaron's adjusting well and the area's nice and quiet --

"Wait, I thought -- I thought she'd be in trouble," Jack counters, still with a grin that's starting to turn hard around the edges. "She jumped parole, didn't she?"

"State of California, Mr. Shephard." The lawyer's already grabbing his own items and pushing his cart further down the aisle, nodding a barely goodbye. "As long as Kate keeps in contact with the local parole office and stays in the state for the next decade, she's in the clear."

It's another ten minutes before Jack finally puts the Cheerios down, leaves the store with nothing at all.

(She'd run, sure. But not that far.

Just far enough away from him.)

--

About two weeks after that, the letters start.

Sometimes they're postcards, stamped from some county in northern California, sometimes they're handwritten on carefully folded paper, postmarked the same but no return address, over months and months and months; mostly about Aaron, never about why she left, always ending with I miss you.

She even sends a picture one time, in an e-mail that comes without words -- his high-speed's on the fritz and the computer slowly chugs out the photograph; it's of Aaron (he's so blonde now, like Claire, and so big) on a swingset, tiny hands wrapped in an uncertain set around the chains, looking so serious. Kate's shadow stretches long, insubstantial lines across the grass (must have been late afternoon, wherever they were; another dot on the map) from behind the camera and that's all he has, all the evidence he's got of her.

He clicks 'reply', types four words.

Where are you?

Please.

The e-mail bounces back; no address found.

--

(When things get really bad -- when his receptionist cancels his appointments because he knows he stinks like whiskey, when he forgets to shave for the third fourth fifth day in a row, when he blacks out and wakes up drooling to a blaring alarm clock, pills spilling onto his bedside table -- that's when he pretends (hopes imagines) they're still back on the island, him and Kate, and that they could be still together, be still and stop running and just be okay. Just be.

One prescription runs out and another gets filled and he doesn't remember if it ever was that simple, but he likes to think it was.)

--

There's another letter, finally, after he gets suspended from the hospital, this time on plain, blue-lined paper, and his hands start to shake as he rips open the envelope, spots the neatly printed address in the top-left corner.

Get clean, it says. Come find us after that.

--

It's pretty clear from the second he rolls past the 'Welcome to Alturas' sign there's not a hell of a lot to the town -- mostly it's scrubby trees and highway, some county buildings in the town centre, a few diners with red neon lighting up their windows. It doesn't take long, either, to find the tidy bungalow off a side road just past the downtown, but when the driveway gravel starts crunching under the rental car's tires he thinks for two seconds about just leaving, like he never even came.

Running.

Instead he slides out of the driver's seat and makes his way up the front walk, and that's when he notices her, hair pulled back and feet bare, that she'd been watching the whole time through the screen door. Waiting to see. When he's close enough she eases the door open, gaze still tracking him. He can hear cartoons blaring in the background. There's a heavy pause while Kate gives him an up-and-down (three months' sober, NA chip tucked into his pants pocket like proof) and then she smiles, hi, Jack, and he hears the tears in her voice before he sees them. Doesn't see them at all, because he's already got his arms around her, face lost in her long hair, and hi, he whispers back as they stand there, perfectly still against each other, hi.

Five Acts meme

2010-08-28T02:57:22Z

Based on the community five_acts, toestastegood is hosting a Five Acts fic-a-thon for the week. In short:

+ Post a list of your five favorite acts/kinks to read about and a list of fandom/pairings.
+ Read other people's lists -- the master list is here -- and leave a link to your own.
+ Post comment-fic based off of other people's lists.

(As a sidenote, this is my first time participating in Five Acts -- eeee! -- and looking at my list, apparently I am totally vanilla, haha.)

1. Nursing back to health
2. Role reversal
3. Established relationships/domesticity
4. Unexpected encounters ('unexpected' as in the location, circumstances or the people involved)
5. Dramatic separations/reunions

(Aaaaaand, totally boring, as I only have one fandom! ;P)

Lost: Daniel/Charlotte, Eloise/Charles, Charlotte/Daniel/Juliet/Sawyer, Charlotte/Daniel/Miles, Juliet/Daniel/Charlotte, Charlotte/Anyone (specifically Sawyer, Jack, Miles, Jacob, Juliet or Kate), Jack/Juliet, Miles/Naomi, Eloise/Richard, Jack/Kate, Miles/Kate and Juliet/Miles

--

Filled: Lost, Jack/Kate, absence makes the heart grow fonder, PG, for angela_weber
Lost, Miles/Juliet, confessions, PG, for ozmissage
Lost: Charlotte/Daniel, mistake sex and outdoors, hard PG-13/soft R, for primarycolors92

Received: Lost, Daniel/Charlotte, unexpected encounters and reunions, from janie_tangerine
Lost, Miles/Juliet, domesticity, from ozmissage
Lost, Daniel/Charlotte, nursing back to health, from angela_weber
Lost, Kate/Jack, nursing back to health, from ciaimpala
Lost, Eloise/Richard, nursing back to health, from bittersweet325

never let it fade away

2010-08-26T19:30:28Z

Title: never let it fade away
Characters/Pairings: Juliet, Richard, Sawyer, Daniel, Charlotte, Aaron, Miles, Naomi. (Juliet/Richard, Juliet/Sawyer, Daniel/Charlotte, Miles/Naomi, Miles/Richard)
Rating: PG
Summary: Five pairings in five moments, pre-series to post-series; 300-600 words each.
Spoilers/Warnings: For the entire series; reference to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for the lostsquee's luau, specifically knights/princesses greedyslayer , colourmayfade, lady_blackwell, glass_radical and joyyjpg -- I hope I didn't forget anyway who was so kind to offer an incredible queenly gift! These ficlets are sort of interconnected, sort of not at all and can be read as standalones or all together; the third is set in this universe, since lady_blackwell asked me to write more of it, and the fourth is in sideways!land. Title and lyrics from Perry Como.

----

(before)

She first catches him humming it while he's packing up his briefcase, after the morgue (Edmund's body -- or what was left of it -- already turned that pale, greasy colour that made her stomach turn) and a meeting not so benign as the first, tentative handshakes and smiles exchanged and fresh ink drying on the six-month contract he slips back in with his things.

Her lips quirk into a smile, even against the roil of emotions -- "not quite in Portland," is what Mr. Alpert (Richard) had told her, and she's nervous, hesitant, worried about Rachel, hell, excited -- churning inside; "that's an oldie," she remarks, smooths down the collar of her blouse, remembers the words from some school day memory, tumbling through the playground.

(catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day)

Richard latches closed his briefcase with a final click, smiles back, but there's something almost sad about it, something she doesn't remember (recognize) until later, until it's too late.

"It is." He drapes his jacket over one arm, gives a final nod of his head. "I'll see you in two weeks, Dr. Burke."

(Her tears stain the front of his shirt and the sonar fence hums at his back, yellow lights of the barracks burning even beyond that; she's been trapped almost three years.

-- put it in your pocket, never let it fade away --

"What's that song again?" Her voice comes out muffled against linen, forehead curved into his neck, and she knows she sounds -- looks, feels -- a thousand years older, older than him even, and Catch a Falling Star, he murmurs, stares up into an unforgiving blackness and then they stand for hours, watching the constellations tilt against the night sky.

Three years more and it's too late and the sky's the last thing she sees before she falls.)

----

(after)

Well ain't this just damn domestic.

(This is what he thinks, at least.)

There's spaghetti simmering on the stove -- between him and Juliet neither of them are great shakes in the kitchen but they somehow manage to throw together a marinara sauce -- and Miles and Jin are gone raiding the cafeteria for another box of Dharma wine to go with their weekly family dinner (he calls it that one time as a joke and it sticks), the air already thick with the smell of the garlic bread they somehow managed to keep browned instead of black.

(He never says it, though, because she'd probably take it for a cut or a dig, and it isn't. He doesn't know why but it's not.)

Somehow while they're waiting the boys and Dharma's crappy excuse for sauvignon (or so Juliet says; the Dharma beer suits him just fine) the vegetables get abandoned on cutting boards and they end up sprawled on the living room's shaggy carpet, Juliet easing back against the sofa's frame and him next to the coffeetable, sorting through a fan of vinyl albums Horace had hauled over once they'd gotten settled a couple months back. Miles had already swiped all the Stones and Beatles albums for his place, leaving Juliet with one Geronimo Jackson record and a whole lot of easy listening.

"How about this?"

Juliet holds up a battered-looking record with some smirking crooner, the name emblazoned across cardboard through the shiny cellophane.

"Perry Como? Gee thanks, I'll pass." Sawyer picks up another album sleeve, edges against his palms, catches her sort-of wistful shrug as she carefully lays hers back down on the carpet. "What about this one?"

Downtown -- Juliet's eyes flash, go dark, lips pressed into that familiar hard line, the one that looks like she's caught between a lie and a truth and he can't ever tell the difference; no. It sure as hell ain't a suggestion.

"Okay Blondie, no need to go getting your back up for nothing," he grumbles, dropping the record back in the pile with the rest, and James, she sighs, the heel of her hand pressed hard against her brow, the sound more tired than angry, says his name again like the possibility of anything else's escaped her.

They're both silent, for a long time after that, and he can't think of a thing to say -- they're both angry and they're both tired and the way he's settled in here all sort of fine-and-dandy itches under his skin, and there's another thing he can't name, another thing he doesn't understand. But Juliet's a part of it -- this, them, him, now -- and eventually his fingers tangle in hers against the shag of the carpet, only move at the sound of boot steps on the front porch, the door creaking open.

He sees her smile as she rises and heads over to the stove, Miles and Jin already settling in around the kitchen table.

(And that, he thinks, gaze tracing the corners of her grin, is something he damn near likes.)

----

(in another world)

Aaron cries and cries and cries their first night off the island.

He'd been quiet in the lifeboat, and on Penny's ship too, just peered out from under the hood of his blue blanket, taking them all in with stunned, too-serious curiousity. But the second they're on land (in Bali, at least for a couple days until a military transport takes them to Hawaii) and at the hotel Oceanic puts them up in Aaron just starts to wail -- howls and shrieks until he's red-faced, his tiny body heaving with cries. All Dan can do is hover, feeling useless, while Charlotte tries everything -- another bottle, a new diaper, sitting, rocking, pacing the length of the suite's carpet -- and nothing seems to work; haven't a bloody clue, she mutters at the end of another lap, bouncing Aaron against her shoulder as she sits on the edge of the bed, my sisters' kids usually calm down by now.

"What about, y'know, a lullaby, or ... something?" Daniel says, collapsing onto the mattress next to her, starts to rub slow, wide circles between Aaron's shoulder blades and cringes again when he gives another bleating wail. At first Charlotte shoots him a please kind of look, all sarcasm and eyebrow crooked over top the baby's thin fuzz of pale hair, but after a second she seems to pause, her features soft, and then starts to sing.

She's got a nice enough voice -- pleasant but a little shaky, not exact on-pitch -- and Aaron's cries kind of sift away into hiccups while she gets into the second verse, and then nothing at all. Eventually Charlotte chances laying him back on the bed, stretches out with her arm folded across a pillow beside him, and he wriggles around for a bit before his eyes start to droop shut and finally flutter closed into sleep.

There's a long exhale of relief -- thank god, she mouths to him, eyes bright -- and he can't help but stare, knows everything he's feeling is written right across his face, but he thinks he might actually be a little bit more in love with her (if it's even possible; it feels like it's infinite, whatever makes his heart expand and constrict whenever she's around) and he lays down across from her, Aaron curled in between, while she explains, hushed, I heard his mum, that Claire girl, sing it to him once, when we were hiking to the barracks; thought it might do the trick.

Daniel leans over to touch her cheek -- that pull too, it never stops -- and he can feel the curve of her smile against his palm, leans further to kiss her (like he's suddenly gotten brave but really it's just that he can't stand not kissing her anymore), and she pauses for a second, an eternity, in surprise before she kisses him back. It's only a moment and then Aaron fusses in his sleep; they both pull away, and he's blushing so hard it feels like he's about to break a sweat but Charlotte presses her mouth to his again, something in the blue of her eyes that wasn't there before, whispers let's get some rest, shall we? and he nods; okay.

He waits for the rise-and-fall beat of breath from her body, curved around Aaron's, and then he sleeps.

----

(in another life)

They meet in the middle of a bar fight in one of Encino's less-nice dives; bloody knuckles and whiskey sloshed through broken glass, the pile-of-junk jukebox missing a couple beats of some oldies crap -- Catch a Falling Star or something that always used to play on one of the classics radio stations his mom loved -- when one guy goes careening into it. He'd only stopped in at the end of his shift for a drink before heading home, and instead of a cold Bud in his hands he's got two rough-looking bikers getting their asses whooped by some chick in a leather jacket and his beer in a puddle on the floor.

She's got a split lip and a fringe of dark hair that's hanging wild around her shoulders, mostly escaped from a ponytail that probably used to be neat, when she finally comes up for air, the second dude heaved back against the bar top and still recovering, stunned, from a mean right hook.

Miles takes the breather to step in between and I'm a cop, he says, like an apology, like he really wouldn't love anything more than to watch her go through another couple rounds with these guys (and he would, that's the truth; she's got this swagger and the body to match, and something about her eyes that screams dangerous in exactly the kind of way he digs), and I am too, she smirks, folds one guy's arm behind his back in a way that's gotta be painful and presses him gut-first into the counter.

"They're fugitives, jumped parole in Nevada." Cuffs appear from the back of her belt, her gun holstered there too, and she latches them around the guy's hands, heaves him upright by the back of his shirt -- "you must be one of the local blokes, yeah?"

Miles kind of stutters out a yep, still a little shocked (hot accent and law enforcement, check and check on his dream girl list), and points to the LAPD detective badge hanging around his neck; she grabs his hand in hers for a quick, brisk shake. "Naomi Dorrit. U.S. Marshal."

"You sound pretty British to be a marshal." He's not sure what he's expecting with the smartass comment but he gets an eyeroll for his efforts, and Naomi throws a thumb back at the other guy who's taken a dive on the floor with the jukebox's shattered glass littered around him, groaning and starting to stir.

"Mind helping me with that one? My team should've arrived by now." She pauses, eyes him closely, seems to give him a passing grade. "I'll even buy you another beer for your trouble."

The second biker takes a try or two to peel off the floor; he supports most of the guy's weight when they stand and pins his arms back, follows Naomi out of the bar's gaping crowd -- "maybe we can get you some ice for that lip too," he smirks, and the grin she flashes back over her shoulder is definitely something he'd like to see more of -- and into a night filtered through the sirens' red and blue.

----

(the end)

Miles is smoking cigarettes like he's angry at them when Richard wanders outdoors in his wake, sucking back clouds of grey and then stubbing them out until they crumble and split, ash getting under his fingernails, and Richard knows it shouldn't make him laugh but it sort of does, after all they've seen (been through, survived, escaped). He's leaning back against the bus depot's brick exterior in Las Cruces, on their way to see Frank in Florida and the pesky business of Richard still waiting on a fake passport means Greyhounds most of the way; catches Richard smiling and snaps what?, exasperation lacing through the words.

He's sick of his wonder at everything, Richard knows (not a new world -- he'd made enough trips off-island doing Jacob's bidding for it to be that -- but that it's his world now, a century he belongs to, can fall in step with the rhythm of chronology, that undercurrent missing before) and their elation at making it off the island in one piece has already started to fade. Now, six weeks out, Miles is mostly annoyed (a thin veil for his fear), or frustrated (feeling aimless), or doesn't talk at all (grief).

Richard shakes his head, smiles again, tilts his gaze up at the sky, the deepening blue along New Mexico's wide open space, stars like pinpricks on the horizon. It's gorgeous -- breath-taking, really -- and it does a funny thing to him, fills him with a swell of longing for a place that was a prison, that was home. Gratitude there, too, that it isn't anymore.

"Nothing," he says. Pauses. "Miles, you need to relax."

"Relax?" Miles crams another cigarette into garbage bin, shoves his hands into jeans pockets. "You're telling me to relax, after everything -- whatever, man."

"Jacob wasn't good at giving answers," Richard hedges, uncertain what he means to say next, not sure how to even start convincing him it's only the future that does, can, matter now. "You might have to ... be alright with that."

Miles snorts, scuffs as the dust coating the pavement with the toe of his boot. "Fine, it's all gonna be mysteries forever, but riddle me this, Zen Master -- why? Why us? Why'd we get chosen to be that Jacob yahoo's special friends? Why'd we even make it off the island?"

There's a thousand ways he could answer -- you were special, you were destined, everything happens for a reason, Jacob specialized in ruining lives -- but none of them feel right, or fair, not with Miles in front of him and that hurt darkening his eyes. So instead Richard steps a little to his left, one hand coming up to cradle his shoulder, and points up into the sky, remarks I wonder if we'll be able to see the same constellations here.

Miles roll his eyes but there's the hint of something there, a careful spark of possibility, like he gets it -- for a guy who's been around forever you sure don't know a hell of a lot, he grumbles but follows the line of Richard's arm anyway -- and they watch as a single stream of white cuts across the sky; a falling star, Miles smirks, leans just barely back against him, and Richard feels like maybe it's just for them (them and Juliet and everyone else who left the island one way or another), that sign, that signal -- you're finally free.

Rebellion (Lies) (2/4)

2010-08-17T01:15:58Z

Title: Rebellion (Lies) (2/4)
Characters/Pairings: Juliet; Jack, Claire, Charlotte, Daniel, implied Juliet/Jack, Charlotte/Daniel, others in later parts
Rating: PG (this part)
Summary: They'd both been doctors, before the world started to fall apart; before the human race suddenly had its own expiration date staring it in the face. Crossover with Children of Men (mostly the film, a few minor details from the book).
Spoilers/Warnings: Vague spoilers for throughout the series; spoilers for Children of Men, but nothing beyond the general concept in this section.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for the lostsquee Luau and the combined requests of mollivanders, who wanted rebellion, and missy_useless, who wanted crossovers. Somehow that became a four-part Lost/Children of Men series (though I'm using crossover in the loosest terms -- basically it's Lost characters plunked down in the CoM world and takes extreme liberties with both canons). Title from Arcade Fire.

----

It's already close to midnight when they exit off the back road they'd been following two hours out of the city and pull the jeep in where it's hidden by brush, camp along the dried-up creek bed of some smaller canyon and pitch tents near the trickling water running through cracked mud. The cavern walls are high enough Charlotte figures they can chance a fire, so all of them sit huddled with the flames licking at their shins, sharing the cold meat and bread and cheese Dan pulls out from a cooler pack once they've settled into the blankets Charlotte hands out, the quiet hum of nighttime chirps enfolding around them.

"So do you have, uh, a name yet?"

Dan asks it conversationally, smiling through the smoke sifting off the campfire, watching Claire with gentle eyes; it's funny, it strikes Juliet, that they're so willing to accept -- doctors and scientists and they're clinging to the miraculous -- that the facts, the truths, of their world have been turned upside down and still professional curiousity's losing out to pure relief. Not that it's any different for her; bumping down the last dirt road before stopping at the canyon and then unfolding tarps and it was like her memory would reset every time she'd spot Claire's rounded profile, like a new swell of joy she still couldn't quite believe.

"Um, no," Claire hesitates, returns a clumsy grin. "Not yet. Do you -- do you have any children?"

(Before -- before -- it was the kind of question ingrained into the fabric of casual conversation, along with where do you live? or what do you do?, so much that it drove Juliet nuts, the inevitable looks of confused disappointment and questioning when she'd brightly answer nope, no kids, like she had to be defective or crazy not to have them, not to want them -- and she tenses on instinct while she waits for Dan's reply, feels a pang of sympathy for Claire and her flushed embarrassment just after the fact.)

Instead, Dan's gaze gets even softer than before and he shifts, pulling a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, flattening out the creases before he hands it to Claire; Juliet's surprised to see it's a picture, of a dark-haired, blue-eyed little girl -- only three or four, maybe -- grinning at some long-past photographer, frozen in the filmy lines of the photograph. All of a sudden Charlotte's rising to her feet, almost getting tangled in her knapsack as she stands, features hard-edged like stone -- I'm going to get some more wood, she tosses over her shoulder before she marches off.

He gestures back to the picture, sort of a halfway motion that falters and falls as he watches his wife's quick exit, and her name was Ellie, Dan says, doesn't need to add our daughter; nobody misses the past tense. "It was the, uh, the influenza pandemic, seven, eight years back. After that -- well, joining the Initiative made even more sense."

Claire's still holding the photograph, runs one fingertip along the worn edges, and Jack's just watching the flames, the fragile crack and pop as the wood shifts and splinters into dust and white-hot fire, meets Juliet's eyes and she feels like there's a thousand messages running between them, in the flicker of his brow and the tug at his lips, and it's like a foreign language to her, now, like the Latin she was always so bad at in school (it wasn't always). It's too much, him being there, that moment, can still hear Charlotte's heavy steps through the trees near them so she rises from the warmth of the campfire and follows her trail, slipping a flashlight out of the bag Charlotte had abandoned on the way.

Her steps are careful, moving along the path winding parallel with the stream, curses when her foot angles against a rock the wrong way and almost tumbles to the ground. Then there's the crunch of boots on brush, branches giving way and Charlotte appears with an armload of wood, smirks at her; careful love, wouldn't want a broken ankle on our hands.

There's something in the smugness of her look, her words, that pisses Juliet off (not like she asked to be on a furtive getaway with her ex and his unexplainably pregnant sister, stuck in the California desert; not like she left much behind but a water-stained apartment and a job that'll replace her by Monday) but she also catches the glimmer of hurt in Charlotte's gaze, wavering underneath the stiff clench of her jaw (itching for a fight but at least there's some left in her, Juliet thinks, feels a flush of envy). So instead she smiles in reply, tries to keep exhaustion out of the gesture -- "I used to be a doctor. I'm sure we'll be fine."

Charlotte seems to relax a little at that, drops the hesitating anger and keeps adding to the collection of wood and sticks stacked against a nearby tree trunk while Juliet joins in, scouring the brush for more campfire fuel. Eventually: "I used to be an anthropologist; what the hell kind of good is that going to do in a couple decades?"

A gasping sort of laugh gets caught in Juliet's throat just then, as she picks up her water bottle from the ground -- I was a fertility specialist; I never wanted kids, though -- and it's funny, right? That this is her ideal world, or at least some version -- no one to raise their eyebrows, give that polite look of condescension, purse their lips at childfree -- and then Jack's sister appears like some sort of second coming of Eve and Juliet still wouldn't have kids, even now, but it's a sort of ache of longing that sets in when the impossibility becomes tangible, in the terse lines of Charlotte's silhouette, in Dan's subtle, quiet grief, that we end here and this is what we have to show for it.

"So you and Jack." Charlotte lets the rest linger in the air, raises a brow in question. "Kate mentioned he was married."

"Divorced; we're divorced, a few months ago." Juliet pauses and uncaps her water bottle, takes a slug -- it's lukewarm, tastes like dirt -- and only grimaces a little, tries to remember why they'd split up in the first place; it was everything, she thinks, it was nothing at all. "I'm sorry about your daughter."

Another armload of branches gets dropped to the ground and Charlotte stops, rests against a boulder, wipes grimy hands against the front of her khaki shorts, the I don't want to talk about it crystallized in her gaze and they must be almost the same, Juliet figures as they bundle the wood together and head back towards camp, both worn raw from the pain; all nerve endings and emotions exposed, nothing left between them and the world.

--

She's never been a good sleeper, not really, and the near-silent lull of the desert -- away from the familiar white noise of the city -- doesn't do much to help her rest, the smallest, slightest sound and her hand clenches Charlotte's loaned gun, hidden underneath the cool fabric of her pillow. When Juliet finally gives up on the restless back-and-forth, only snatches of dreams that all seem grey-tinged, she rolls over, blinks her eyes open against the low rumble of voices filtering in through the tent's nylon walls (Jack pressed into the other corner); it's Daniel and Charlotte, a few meters away in their shelter, Claire already asleep like a log in her own nearby.

There's heat to Charlotte's words though she can't quite make out the conversation and then the mellow rhythm of Dan's voice as he replies, over and over until brief silence, then something else, something Juliet recognizes (shifting against the mattress, fabric on fabric, a stifled moan), and she feels her cheeks burn, more from the intimacy of it than any sort of embarrassment, remembers a time when that would have been her and Jack (his stubble catches against the curve of her throat and he kisses her like he wants to drown in it, drown in them, hands slipping past the hems and waistbands of scrubs), when they were young and stupid and full of the fiercest kind of passion, like nothing would ever change. Like they would never change, and now. Now they're older and greyer but still not a hell of a lot smarter, she thinks.

Once everything lapses into silence again Juliet rolls over, props herself up on one elbow. "This is crazy."

Even in the thick darkness she can tell Jack's awake, staring up at the canopy of their tent, where the plastic's starting to sag a little; "I know," he replies, doesn't say anything else.

"What are we even doing here? We should be getting Claire to a doctor, or --"

"We're both doctors." He almost sounds amused, still watching the shifting blue material of their shelter, and she wants to smack him for it.

"You're a spinal surgeon, Jack. And I used to be a fertility researcher. I haven't done prenatal care since my residency."

Sighing, he turns to face her, his question more weary than anything else, makes her wish again she could read the lines of his face like she used to, decipher those unspoken words; "what do you want me to do, Juliet?" His fists clench and release, palms upwards like he's offering something (anything) to her, and my sister's the first pregnancy across the world in the last ten years, he shrugs, supplicating, it's not like I've got a rulebook on this.

Her smile cracks before his, both sharing a second to breath.

"You never supported the Initiative before," she counters, cautious, hoping the moment won't crumble and crack and disappear, a nostalgia she can't quite name gripping her insides tight. "Why now?"

"I know they're trying to do good work, work to help everyone," Jack explains after a pause. "Not like the government. And if it keeps Claire and her baby safe ..."

"Do you think they can?"

He's quiet again, for too long -- "I don't know."

"That's a lot not to be sure about," she adds next, wants to ask what the hell have you gotten me into? but it's not anger, frustration, that's carved out a place in her chest but relief (more than Claire and the sight of her hands rounded around her stomach) but just that's something given, not a light at the end of the tunnel but more than floating through her limbo of existence, wondering when it might end.

Juliet almost jerks away when Jack's fingers close around hers, stretched out across the tent's dusty floor, her own hand twitching and then twining into his.

"I'm glad you're here," he whispers in a voice that's already growing thick and drowsy, and she doesn't reply, but smiles instead into the darkness as she finally drifts to sleep.

Rebellion (Lies) (1/4)

2010-08-11T18:39:14Z

Title: Rebellion (Lies) (1/4)
Characters/Pairings: Juliet; Jack, Claire, Charlotte, Daniel, implied Juliet/Jack, Charlotte/Daniel, others in later parts
Rating: PG (this part)
Summary: They'd both been doctors, before the world started to fall apart; before the human race suddenly had its own expiration date staring it in the face. Crossover with Children of Men (mostly the film, a few minor details from the book).
Spoilers/Warnings: Vague spoilers for throughout the series; spoilers for Children of Men, but nothing beyond the general concept in this section.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for the lostsquee Luau and the combined requests of mollivanders, who wanted rebellion, and missy_useless, who wanted crossovers. Somehow that became a four-part Lost/Children of Men series (though I'm using crossover in the loosest terms -- basically it's Lost characters plunked down in the CoM world and takes extreme liberties with both canons), of which the other three parts should come relatively soon. Title from Arcade Fire.

----

The phone call comes in the middle of the night; Jack's breathless, words coming out in short bursts, like a frantic pulse of sound -- Jesus christ, Julie, I need help.

When the handset clatters back against the cradle it feels almost like she'd been waiting for it, all along.

--

"When did you find out?"

They're standing in the middle of Jack's living room -- her living room, it used to be too, still hates the cream carpet they'd never gotten around to replacing, misses the bay window with the old cushion that sagged just right in the middle; she'd let Jack keep the house in the divorce settlement, getting an apartment close to the shop instead -- and the girl, Jack's Australian half-sister who hadn't existed until an hour before, is slumped on the couch, her ratty blond hair tumbling around her shoulders.

"Tonight." He paces a few steps, one hand anchored to his hip and the other cresting his forehead, so familiar she presses her palm tight against the side of her thigh, fights the habit desire need to loop fingers around his wrist, make him still. "I mean, she just -- she showed up, tonight. A few hours ago. I haven't seen her in years, haven't heard anything about her or her mom since we started college."

(They'd both been doctors, before the world started to fall apart; before the human race suddenly had its own expiration date staring it in the face.

After med school and residency -- Jack had managed to propose between study sessions and coffee runs and 24-hour rotations, in dirty scrubs on the fire escape of their crappy third-year apartment, drunk on boxed wine and eating bad Chinese takeout -- she'd become a fertility specialist, but 10 years and no babies (no pregnancies at all, all the men unable to reproduce and sperm counts plummeting without any reason, no science to explain, too many women and couples leaving her office weeping or angry or just plain given up) and after that last Korean couple she'd given up too, left medicine entirely and put all the childhood Sunday afternoons spent trailing behind her father in their garage, tinkering with his latest pet project, learning about engines and shocks and spark plugs, to use.

It's easier to lose herself in the grime and the grease, the physicality, of the work, like she used to with her patients, ignore the newspapers and the broadcasts and the way everything feels like it's sliding out of sync; Jack doesn't even bring the divorce papers by himself after they separate and that just feels like another step towards the end.)

At first when she'd arrived and been ushered in by Jack, had spotted Claire -- gotten a half-hearted wave, a grim, sort-of smile -- she hadn't noticed the familiar curve of her stomach under the bulky sweatshirt. But then Juliet had -- stained, thin material straining against the roundness, last trimester for sure, probably eight months at least -- and oh god, like the floor was about to give way under her feet, blinking against tears and mind a blank, whirring mess, barely believing until Claire had eased back against the cushions, cupping her stomach with both hands and gritting out a sigh, expression knotted with discomfort.

How, um, how many weeks? she'd murmured, trying to keep her face still, set, stop it from collapsing and 34, I think, Claire had said, squinting through her uncertainty, letting Juliet do a quick exam with the medical supplies Jack pilfered from the hospital earlier that night.

(She'd slipped away to the bathroom and cried for 10 minutes straight, after that.)

"How did this happen?"

Jack shrugs. "She was dating some guy -- a musician or something -- and got pregnant. She didn't know what to do, so she squatted in one of our father's old properties just outside the city. She started to panic, getting so close to nine months, and I guess decided to look me up."

"So what's the plan?" she asks and Jack steps in closer, voice dropping; I have a ... friend, he explains, watches Claire flip idly through television channels out of the corner of his eye, with the Dharma Initiative; I think they might be able to help. At least get her somewhere safe until we figure out what to do.

Juliet buries back her surprise at the Initiative mention -- when the science foundation had started bombing buildings to prove their point about the ban on non-government-sanctioned infertility research (or that was the government's storyline at least; Juliet doesn't prescribe to either side, or much of anything, but she knows nothing's as black and white as the news reeling off grainy, shaky video of smoking buildings, officials condemning the attacks) Jack had been one of the first she knew to write them off as crazy hippies with guns. She guesses miraculously pregnant half-sisters change priorities. That, and he'd always loved having a plan.

"Claire, we have to leave, alright?" He sounds like he's trying to soothe a spooked animal, and she's still got a brain, Juliet wants to snap, swallows her irritation instead, files it away with the other vestiges of their broken-down relationship. "We need to go somewhere safer, somewhere you won't be seen. It's too dangerous having you out in the open like this."

Even before Jack's started ramping up his argument his sister gets a look of terrified confusion crossed with stubborn refusal -- for a second Juliet swears she sees the family resemblance -- and no, she shakes her head, why can't we just stay here; I mean, you're a doctor and --

Jack's cell buzzes in the space between her words, and he looks down at the number lighting up the screen, back up at them with new urgency; "we have to go now," he amends, "our ride's going to be here any minute."

Stepping towards the couch Juliet catches Claire by her elbow, the initial wave of wonder burned through by weathered pragmatism (the same thing that used to get Jack so endlessly frustrated; jesus Julie, do you have to be so cold?) -- because she knows damn well people aren't going to just bow weeping in the streets at the sight of her, knows they're more liable to pick her apart and leave the pieces scattered behind.

"You need to come with us." Her voice is as hard as her grip on the girl's forearm, the pads of her fingers digging into white, soft skin but it doesn't matter, matter less than then the marks they'll leave on her if they know (for science, they'll say, rationalize, justify a child growing up in a glass prison and a blond body buried somewhere; the new religion of bloodshed). "You'll die if you don't come with us."

Claire, Jack echoes again, and his tone carries more weight this time, enough that she nods quick, bundles her ragged bag under one arm and pulls her jacket around the swell of her stomach. Juliet doesn't hesitate and palms her gun, leads them out of the building with Claire sandwiched in the middle of them, her head almost bowed between Juliet's shoulder blades as they descend the steps and then into the next-door alley while Jack slips a phone out of his jeans and types something, mutters they'll be here soon.

A jeep skids to a stop at the lip of the alleyway moments later, sends a shower of dirt across the pavement before the passenger door flies open, a redheaded woman -- fair-skinned, freckled, a few years her junior, Juliet figures -- hopping down and rushing to them, her own weapon eased back against the crook of her shoulder; "you Jack?" she demands, English accent clipped, and at his nod hustles them into the back of the vehicle, cramming into rickety seats before the door swings shut again and they peel away from the curb. The world passes by through the mud-stained window, and Juliet watches downtown Los Angeles slip away, leaning her head against the cool glass and letting her eyes flutter closed, only for a second, before the woman's words bring her back.

"I'm Charlotte," the redhead's saying, turning from the passenger seat to face them, take stock. "And this is Dan."

She motions to the driver, a young-ish guy with shaggy, dark hair and a beard, and between the wedding band and familiar inflection wrapped around his name, it's enough for Juliet to think married couple, her hands finding each other and thumb rubbing absently just above the knuckle of her ring finger -- there's still a pale sliver of skin there; for the first month after the divorce papers she'd turned stupidly sentimental and wouldn't take it off -- as Charlotte continues, explains someone named Kate sent them (Jack's eyes flicker downwards; his contact, then, probably that old high school girlfriend if she's remembering the right name) and Juliet can see Claire's brow furrowing deeper and harder before she utters who exactly are you people?

"The Dharma Initiative," Charlotte replies, gaze steady, adds though the government prefers the Hostiles, which is bloody cheeky of them if you ask me and Juliet watches the driver -- Dan -- smile in the rearview mirror.

"Hostiles?" Claire's voice has risen a full octave, hands clenching the edge of the grubby seat cushion, her entire body radiating tension; Juliet exchanges a warning look with Jack over the girl's head, like we've got our work cut out for us. "But all the bombings, you killed all those people --"

"We didn't."

Dan speaks up for the first time, so low and gravelly Juliet practically has to lean forward to hear him, but the firmness, the certainty bleeds through, and Claire looks abated, at least for the moment.

"We're scientists. The government, it shut down all our labs, our research, slashed our funding, once people stopped being able to conceive. They only want a cure if they're the ones who have it, so the rest -- it's just ways to discredit our work, what we're trying to do."

"We can get you somewhere safe, love," Charlotte jumps in, still watching Claire carefully. "Somewhere our scientists will work with you -- not on you -- and protect you and your baby. We can get you to a safehouse by tomorrow night, and we've got a freighter leaving for our research facilities in the South Pacific the day after that. Okay?"

Claire pauses -- as long as my brother can come, she intones, and waits for Charlotte's assent -- then dips her head in agreement, her curtain of blond hair moving and shifting with the gesture, reaching out to curl one hand in his, petite, pale fingers lacing through Jack's rough, wind-chapped ones; Juliet catches the thin, grim line of his mouth, eyes dark with worry, knows they're both thinking the same thing.

Her look's a question: what are the chances of this turning out alright?, already knows his answer --

Almost none at all.

--

Part II

The ending so much as the start

2010-07-28T15:09:31Z

Title: The ending so much as the start
Characters/Pairings: Charlotte; Daniel, Jeanette Lewis, Charles Widmore (Charlotte/Daniel)
Rating: PG
Summary: A life lived isn't always a puzzle complete.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to S6 finale; character death
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written both for hazyflights's Ladyfest Ficathon, and the lostsquee Luau and airbefore's request of badass bitches. Title from Feist.

----

33.

Her life can be arranged like puzzle pieces, she thinks as she dies.

Shapes and angles that never fit quite right, never slotted together or clicked in a way that made her think there; I'm finished, I'm done, it all makes sense now. Nothing makes sense, even at the end; it makes less sense, even -- that she's here, that she's home, that she's about to die. Doesn't make bloody sense and it's not bloody fair, that she'd only ever had the faintest outlines of the full picture (crystal blues and greens all bleeding together in her memory), that she'd thought this place would make her complete.

But this place is death -- she knows that now -- and the thing she'd wanted most still hangs just beyond her fingertips, always, forever out of reach.

----

6.

Mummy, where are we going? she asks for the millionth time, feels her mother grasp her hand tighter, too tight, push her favourite teddy into her arms. Why can't Daddy come with us?

She gets lifted down from the van and the alarms hurt her ears -- it's so loud (firecrackers too, she thinks, back near the playground) and that sad man told her she had to leave and she's scared, clutches her bear and it smells like her house and her daddy and why can't she just go home? -- before she stumbles down the dock and gets loaded into the sub. It's dark in there, and cold (there's a man and a woman who get to go in first, and they've both got blood on their faces, like someone was mean and beat them up, and she doesn't like that); her mommy lets her hold Dr. Chang's new baby, though, and that's alright, because he's so little and his dark eyes watch her every time she moves and she feels proud she's a big enough girl to take care of him.

Eventually Dr. Chang's wife takes the baby away and gives her a cup of orange juice instead. She drinks it down in one gulp and sleep, her mother whispers, tucks her into one of the bunks and it almost feels like nap time at home -- I want a story first, she mumbles, but she's already so tired, her eyes drooping shut -- and get some rest, darling, Mommy says again, sleep and forget about this dream.

----

13.

She only smokes to piss her mother off.

Comes home with the smell clinging to her clothes, fingertips covered in ash, and it does -- it's only a tipping point (it's the cigs or the broken curfew or the stolen alcohol or the shirt that smells like boys' cologne first and then always, always the island), and you're mad, Charlotte, her mother fumes as David shakes his head, silent, says it in that voice of deadly calm that means she's struck a nerve, you made the island up when you were a child and I've no time to indulge your silly bedtime stories anymore.

"I'm not crazy," she hollers back, yells so hard she feels tears peaking at the corners of her eyes, wetting her cheeks, so hard it's like she can't even breath, because she does remember -- yellow houses and stretches of white sand and an endless jungle just past the fences. The swingset creaking as the world flew under her feet. The vague impression of someone, so faint he's like a ghost -- dark eyes, hair, no features she can remember but just that sadness; that she'll never forget -- telling her she had to go.

"I'm not," she says again, barely breathes it out this time, catches the softness in her mother's eyes before she's out the door and into the night.

----

22.

"Charlotte's home!"

Both of her sisters fly at her in a whirlwind of red plaits and school-uniformed plaid, latch onto her legs as she laughs and slips off her knapsack, dumps the rest of her belongings accumulated during her past year at school in the hallway of her mother and step-father's house.

They're still so young -- 10 and eight, barely older than when she left the island -- too young to understand, so she kisses them both against the crowns of the heads, acquiesces to pleas for a story and settles into her middle sister's bed with each of them curled under her arms, reads the next chapter of The Last Battle. Later, when they've finally drifted off and slumped back into the pillows, she pulls the blankets up to their chins, abandons the dog-eared book and retreats to the kitchen, accepts a cup of tea from her mother and doesn't say much.

She's older now, and tries not to argue like they used to -- they stick to the weather (too hot for summer in Bromsgrove), her grades (top of the class, even in her last year in Kent's anthropology program), the boy she was seeing (not anymore; she'd laughed off the kids-and-marriage question and stopped returning his calls).

The island still hangs over every word, every look, but they don't talk about it anymore, especially with her sisters old enough to understand the fighting and David the weary peacemaker, watching her with a tight smile that says give it up, Char; this is one fight you won't ever win. He doesn't understand, her sisters and friends don't either, even with their fragile stalemate her mother still refuses to --

Charlotte comes home the next Christmas and starts scheduling December digs after that.

----

33.

Hitting the water -- even half-tangled in her parachute gear, the icy cold hitting her lungs like a jackhammer, none of her team in sight and a group of wary strangers on the banks in front of her -- is the best feeling in the damn world, the most feeling she thinks she remembers in years. She's almost dizzy from it, the tactile sensation of the river against her skin, wrapped in I'm here, I made it.

It's a long way from London, from the moment Widmore had given her the job (she'd crashed one of his ridiculously elabourate arse-kissing parties in a black dress cut low in the front and even lower in the back, got whisked away to his study by one of his security detail and fought to bite back her surprise when he already had an offer for a place on his freighter -- sealed by a handshake and a glass of MacCutcheon's -- ready), from her mother's lies.

Locke decides to keep her in one of the houses once they get back to the barracks (that's another high; cresting over a hill and seeing those pinpricks of yellow, the schoolhouse, the swingset, one little bungalow with a saggy porch that brings back a burst of memories), hands chaffing against the rope and her chest still aching and the larger bloke -- Hurley -- her only company.

"This place is awfully well-kept," she remarks, keeping her voice light, watching as Hurley shrugs, offers yeah dude, the Others kept it pretty tidy once they moved in and Hostiles, her mind translates, feels a chill. He explains all of it after, like he's reciting some far-off history or something from a book -- the purge that had wiped out all of Dharma, the bodies buried in some pit (Dad, she thinks, plaintive, remembers Widmore's mission for them to shut down the Tempest, never explaining why).

She's so angry after that, even when Sayid gets her traded back to Dan and the beach camp, none of them understand (Daniel tries, he does, but he just can't) and there isn't anything to map out to the rest of the puzzle, no clues to follow to the answers she's so desperate for. They manage to deactivate the station (swears if she ever sees Ben Linus again she'll be the one shooting first) and help the survivors -- not that they let them out of their sight once they're back from the station -- and when they start to leave for the freighter she stays, but it's still not enough.

It's not enough and then the nosebleeds start.

Days (weeks, months) later, one piece starts to fit, though, as the light at the corner of her eyes starts to dim and everything just feels so heavy, dragging -- the breath in her lungs and her arms as she tries to raise them, tries to stand and tell Daniel it's fine, I'm alright. He looks so sad, and she just wants to let him know that she can fight this, not to worry so much, tell her the bloody truth already, and something clicks, something that never had before (in Fiji, on the freighter, on the island -- he'd looked so familiar and she could never place it).

I think that man was you.

Then there's the taste of chocolate; bittersweet.

----

33.

Dan's waiting for her offstage when she gets her award, after she rushes through a clumsy reiteration of the speech she'd scribbled out on notecards and crammed into her purse earlier that day (too much champagne, she thinks, cursing herself) and leaves the microphone, holding another modern-looking crystal thing that'll get put on her bookshelf and never be dusted. She's proud -- of course she's proud; Dan is too, gathers her into a sweeping hug and kisses her deeply the second she's behind the curtains, and her sisters and parents, clapping brightly in the audience -- but it's the work that matters, and sometimes between the hobnobbing and the charity galas and the ridiculous fundraisers (though it's also how she met her impossibly wonderful musician boyfriend, so she's not completely ungrateful) it seems like people forget that.

Granted, the funding for next month's Tunisia trip had suddenly fallen through at the last minute -- Daniel's father having second thoughts about the value of the trip or some rubbish like that; rumours of the polar bear skeleton they'd found there have her itching to go but they'll be other digs, other just-as-interesting discoveries -- and sometimes she still gets the strangest urge to buy the next ticket to the South Pacific and charter a boat, find the island her parents had taken her to for a few years as a toddler, the one with some hippie commune science community (she'd told Dan the story one night and he'd paused for a second, brow creasing, produced a journal with what looked like bearings scratched into a page and neither of them have talked about it since).

"Let's go on a trip," she says on impulse as they thread back through the crowd of overdressed researchers and wealthy patrons towards her family, Charles and Eloise, along with Dr. Chang and Miles, seated beside them. "With my dig cancelled I've got a few weeks free."

He grins and leans forward to kiss her cheek, hand skimming the small of her back, tells her absolutely as they rejoin their table, her mother and father, younger sisters, beaming with pride, Daniel's parents and Pierre and Miles starting with congratulations, and she can't help but let a swell of warmth -- happiness; whole, complete -- settle through her.

Turning back to Dan, Charlotte smiles.

"How d'you feel about Fiji?"

Natural ghost

2010-07-22T01:47:13Z

Title: Natural ghost
Characters/Pairings: Cindy/Lennon
Rating: PG
Summary: A meeting in the jungle.
Spoilers/Warning: Up to midway through S6; references to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for cloudytea at the lostsquee Luau, with the request of the Temple folk. This is my first crack at any of them, so hope you enjoy! ;D Title from Ryan Adams.

----

She's collecting fruit in the jungle -- it's a long rebuild that's facing them, trying to prop up the crumbling ruins of what that monster left behind, salving wounds and replacing brick and trying not to shudder every time a strong wind filters through the trees -- and the folds of her robe are already heavy with mangos, something about the weight of them, the mundane step-by-step of the task reassuring, and that's when she sees him.

Feels him, first, like a cold hand trailing down her spine, swears she hears her name as she crouches amongst the roots of a tree; takes a minute to steady herself because it can't be, she's just gone a bit mad with everything that's happened, temporary insanity, because there's no way --

(They'd lit funeral pyres, after the intruders -- three years and they aren't her people anymore, that connecting thread of 815 dissolved and ebbed away -- had left, after their numbers had been so brutally diminished. They'd lit the pyres and worn whatever white linens they had left and there'd been so many -- too many to bury -- but tradition still means something, Jacob's traditions means something, so the fires had burned and the soot had stained their clothes and she'd waded in, soaked up to her thighs, shift slicked against her skin, until his had disappeared.)

"Cindy."

This time she turns (because that wasn't just her mind but something much worse; swears she smells smoke) and it is him, standing knee-deep in the grass of the clearing, dripping wet and smiling that crooked, not-quite smile she always tried to pretend she didn't catch and her hands scrabble at dirt, fingers shifting nothing but dust (that's what he is, she thinks without meaning to, that's what he should be), turns on instinct to make sure Zack and Emma are safe, are gone.

Eventually her legs get beneath her and she shoots to her feet, realizes with some sick churning feeling, bark against her palms, that she's trapped, faces him pressed back against the trunk and eyeing any way to escape (the kids, she thinks, frantic, I need to get back to them, I need to protect them --).

"You're not supposed to be able to take another body." She swallows the ends of her words, so hard she thinks he must be able to hear it, hear the breath stick and catch in her throat. "After John Locke, you're not supposed to --"

His smile widens, then drops, and he steps towards her, starts to reach for her but seems to reconsider and lets his arm sag back against his body instead.

"Cin, it's me."

It still feels like the oxygen won't quite reach her lungs, knows it's been too late since he first opened his mouth; "what's your favourite song then?"

He's almost to her, now, and you know that, he replies, half-admonishing, but too light, too sad, you know it's Let It Be, and that's when she really does lose her breath, sags back against the tree trunk in pure relief, watches all the fruit fall and bruise around her feet and she doesn't care, doesn't care about anything until his arms are around her, her hands trailing up to cup his face, curl against his neck; why are you here? she asks, so she doesn't have to notice how close he is, the wet, musty, sweet-incense smell of his clothes (just like before), the scar slicing across his neck (almost like before), how?

There's a quiver in his brow, his smile, like she's watching his heart break, crack and crumble right in front of her, and because you need to lead now in Dogen's place is what he explains; she begins to shake her head, no, not stilling under the weight of his gaze, fine and well to look after the kids but that's her responsibility, she loves them like her own, doesn't need however many more (there's the glow of the funeral pyres along the river in her memories, too many to count) depending on her, looking to her for answers she can't know.

"You can do this," he whispers, lips straining upwards, and his eyes turn dark and sad behind his glasses. "You were meant to do this."

And then he kisses her, like he doesn't remember he never did before -- before when time stretched out in front of them like it was endless, fluid and infinite behind the temple's walls, across Jacob's land -- and she kisses him back just as fiercely, strong like she thought she couldn't be (like she knows she is), tells him, okay, and brushes her mouth against his again, closes her eyes; okay.

She knows he's gone before she opens them, feels the heat of his body, his breath against her face sort of fade, withdraw back to the trees and this time she doesn't bite back the tears, the ones she refused to cry before, the ones she didn't have time to cry with Zack and Emma's watchful, wavering eyes always on her, with so many wounded or dead or just lost. The sob chokes her throat and she half-laugh, half-cries, wipes at her cheeks, can't tear her gaze away from the clearing, like maybe he'll come back, like maybe she's due one more moment.

He won't, and she's not (she knows this; doesn't make her heart clench any less).

Instead she crouches back down to collect the loose fruit, inspects the skin for bumps and bruises and gathers it in her robe, starts the trek back to the temple with a list already building in her mind -- what needs to be done next, who can do it, step after step -- distracted enough she almost misses that last call of her name as she keeps walking, like a whisper filtering through jungle air; Cindy.

She doesn't stop (it sounds like goodbye).

Long way back to the beginning

2010-07-16T20:21:53Z

Title: Long way back to the beginning
Characters/Pairings: Juliet; Rachel, Sawyer, Julian, Daniel, Charlotte (Juliet/Sawyer, references to Juliet/Jack)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It feels like a homecoming, back to whatever home she's got left. AU S4 fic, with an alternate Oceanic 6.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to end of S4; character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: So the credit for the concept – of having the Oceanic 6 be Juliet, Sawyer, Daniel, Charlotte, Jin and Aaron instead – goes fully to the amazing soda_and_capes, who wrote a series of ridiculously awesome drabbles (here) about them. Otherwise, this is written for the ever-lovely and talented ozmissage and the lostsquee Luau. She wanted Lost’s ladies, and I couldn’t resist giving her Juliet. ;D

----

When the plane touches down in Hawaii she's almost dizzy with relief, every rolling bump of the wheels against tarmac like another step closer, another further away from everything binding her to the island, and she can't stop the thudding of her heart, feels like it might beat right out of her chest as they finally groan to a stop, wait while the door's being lowered.

Aaron's curled into the crook of Dan's arms, Charlotte beside them, unreadable; Sawyer and Jin stony, silent. And she gets it -- knows for them moving ahead means leaving people behind (she gets it, thinks of the feel of Jack's face under the hands, the play of stubble against her fingertips) or not knowing what's next -- but still she clutches the stuffed animal she managed to grab for Julian as Oceanic's people groomed them for their big reveal (some stupid toy; she'd agonized over the colour until Charlotte had gripped her arm, murmured relax, I think he'll just be happy to see his aunt again) and it feels like a homecoming, back to whatever home she's got left.

Once they’re on the runway, heat from the pavement practically shimmering it’s so hot, her scan of the crowd’s fast, frantic -- it takes a minute, but then Juliet spots her, watches her own hands tremble, legs like they might just give up and release beneath her, like the joy (and it’s been so long; almost barely remembers something that wasn’t tinged with manic desperation, the weight of dead hopes) is almost too much.

Rachel’s skin is still a little ruddy, a little rough (side effects from the chemo, Juliet knows, can still list all the symptoms from memory), but her hair's almost past her shoulders again and her face is full of colour and she just looks so happy, Julian clinging to one leg of her jeans, thumb anchored in his mouth.

Hey big sister, she whispers, feels like it’s all she has the strength for, stands perfectly still as Rachel’s arms fly around her, embrace strong and tight and almost winding her with the force of it, feels her sister’s tears start to mingle with her own.

----

It turns out she did relapse -- only months after Julian was born -- the cancer even more aggressive than before, Rachel explains as they crowd into the back of a cab after landing in Florida, Julian in her lap and reporters and cameras clustered around the glass outside, all desperate for photographs, sound bites of the doctor who miraculously survived a shipwreck three years earlier on the same island where Oceanic 815 crashed (Juliet knows it’s a weak story, almost as unlikely as an excavation team from Widmore Industries sailing to their rescue by happenstance).

It was like a miracle, Jules, Rachel says, eyes sparkling, describing do not resuscitate forms inked and wills signed and nurses whispering terminal when they'd thought she couldn't hear. I had weeks -- days -- to live, and then one morning I woke up and I just felt better. I was better.

There's a pause, her expression awash in memories -- there was this one doctor; tall guy, such a sad smile. I remember him sitting with me, telling me everything would be alright. Rachel's grin grows brighter than ever, clasping Juliet's hands in hers, gaze tracking the highway as they speed closer to home. And then it was.

Juliet smiles back fierce against her churning stomach, that rattling sense of it'll never be done that seems to invade her lungs, pats her sister’s hand and for once actually wishes Benjamin Linus was a liar.

----

She gets nine months with her sister -- Juliet sleeps in Rachel's barely used guestroom, sweeps away dust and mothballs, folds their mother's favourite quilt on the edge of the sheets; they make pancakes almost every Saturday and Julian always makes a mess; most Thursday nights they spend on the couch, sipping too much red wine and doing running commentary for whatever crappy comedies are on TV; Juliet convinces her they need to burn through at least a little of Oceanic's settlement money that James and Jin had divided between everyone and decide on flying up to L.A., bringing Julian to visit their father, living in a retirement community in Malibu. We need a vacation, Rach, she'd begged, I'd love it if we could all go visit Dad together.

She gets nine months, and they're crossing a downtown street when some tall, blond man asks her for directions and then this sound, this crash, and she's holding her sister (holding her like she did so many times in the hospital, remembers thin shoulders like she could crush them to dust and the sick-sweet smell of medication) as she bleeds to death against the pavement.

----

After the funeral, after she's retired the one black dress nice enough to wear in church back to the storage closet, there's nobody -- nobody in the universe; not her mother, years gone, not Jack -- she wants to see more than Rachel, have her bustle through the door at the end of the day, scoop Julian up into a hug, sooth them both; don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine.

(Juliet doesn’t know how to be a mother, let alone an only child.)

But the universe is funny sometimes, is what she's learned, with secret islands and smoke monsters and men who never age, so it's almost fitting, she thinks, that the person who shows up next is the person she wants to see least.

Charlotte's reheating another donated casserole in Rachel’s kitchen and Daniel's trying to explain a toddler-versioned theory of relativity to Julian with his building blocks in the living room -- Aaron down for a nap -- and they've been so good to her, organizing the memorial service through quiet phone calls and taking care of the lawyers and making so much tea she feels water-logged half the time. Juliet loves them for it, she does, but the quiet hush of almost-reverence hanging around the house is getting to her, so she pulls on her jacket and tells Charlotte she's going to grab a coffee and of course she insists on doing it for her, tries to usher her back to the table and --

I just need a damn coffee, she almost shouts, her voice thundering in her ears, feels like her lungs and heart and head are about to explode under the weight of her grief, her guilt (if I hadn't come back, she considers, if only I'd stayed gone), Julian and Daniel sharing twin looks of wide-eyed concern, confusion, and alright, Charlotte acquiesces, hands up, alright.

Juliet's barely gotten through the first couple sips of her grande bold something-or-other, hunched against a wind that's too cool for Miami's fall, when the chair next to her scraps against the pavement, a presence shadowing alongside her seat.

"Hello Juliet," Ben smiles down at her, like they’re old friends. "It's a real pleasure to see you again."

----

He'll come after Julian next, is what he tells her. Your friends too.

(This is his pitch, to work for him and try to bring Charles Widmore down one underling at a time, and or what? she wants to sneer, you'll send Richard along with another bus?)

Her first reaction, really, is plain horror mixed with confusion, even still feeling red-eyed and raw with grief, even knowing exactly what he's capable of; Ben, she whispers, hands straying to her temples, pressing against the pressure there, why the hell would I want to do that?

The photographs get dropped on the tabletop without ceremony; filmy greys and blacks and whites, a man behind the wheel of a Jeep, location and time and date (not like she'll ever forget) imprinted across the top in tiny block letters -- "this is him. This is the man who killed your sister. He works for Widmore Industries."

"Besides," Ben adds too casually, watching her. "It's not as if you haven't killed before."

She seethes at him -- fuck you, Ben -- slapping her coffee off the table with one furious push, bolts from her chair and every inch of her body feeling electrified, red-hot with anger, not caring about the shocked stares. Makes it as far as the street corner and hedges, pushing a walk signal that seems millions of years away before she gives up, admits defeat; she doesn't bother turning around after that, feels his smile against her back anyway, curled with expectation.

----

Her first assignment comes a few days later, after she's managed to convince Dan and Charlotte they're alright to retire from babysitting duty and back to their own lives in England, in a manila envelope that appears in her mailbox, unaddressed and unstamped; a name and a photograph neatly folded in with an itinerary, map of Miami with one street circled in red. Burn this is the only note that comes with it, in Ben's neat, curling script.

The gun is already tucked away in a shoebox upstairs.

She figures by all rights the first one should be the hardest, but that’s not the truth at all -- it still doesn’t feel real, the pull of the trigger catching against her fingers and cracking snap of the gun releasing (louder than she could have imagined, a sound that rings in her ears for hours after, gets a silencer the next day), the kick that crushes back against her wrists, makes her shot go a little too high, a little wide.

Doesn't miss, though. She wasn't hired to miss.

(That night she goes home and scrubs away blood in the hem of her shirt, makes Julian peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.)

The next one's harder (she waits a second too long and he begs for his life, all the breath rushing out of him as the bullets thud against his chest) and so's the third and the woman in Germany who could have been her (maybe not now, but before; same age, same hair colour, same business-casual, professional-woman look), who she follows down a winding sidestreet, keeps her footfalls against the cobblestone silent, waits under another streetlight flickers before she moves in.

Juliet finds the gun after, holstered tight against the woman's ribs, ID she knows is fake, and maybe now is right, after all.

----

After six months and half a dozen jobs (she likes that word better; it makes sure she gets some sleep at night between redeye flights to Europe and Julian’s preschool plays), the next envelope has a plane ticket to New York and reservations at one of the Upper East Side’s nicer hotels, a pass to some gala fundraiser ball tucked in between.

The dress is just enough to get attention but not too much, hair straight and loose against her shoulder blades, and it's easy enough to blend in with the wave of people filtering up the staircase as she makes a quick check of her cellphone to see if the weekend babysitter's called, if Julian's alright. After that it only takes a few minutes to spot her mark when she glides into the ballroom, accepts a glass of champagne she doesn't drink, and only seconds more to recognize the man standing with him.

Fuck.

Juliet spins on her heels but he's quicker, brings the smell of smoke and whiskey and New York's spring air (not like before, not like the island) as he anchors his hand under her elbow, directs them down one marbled hallway to the elevators and then to his room, some penthouse suite overlooking the grey-tinged bustle of a rain-drenched Fifth Avenue.

Stepping inside, she pushes back a handful of hair, settling back against the dark oak desk with her purse (gun tucked neatly into its folds) still clutched against her thighs; "so how are you, James?"

He barks out a laugh, walks to stand in front of her, arms crossed. "Cut the crap, Blondie. What the hell are you doing here?"

"Work." She raises one eyebrow, head tilted. "What about you? Here to con the people of Manhattan out of their paycheques? You don't need the money."

"I’m in business now, sweetheart; real legitimate." James pauses, loosening his tie. "What does work mean anyway? Last I heard you were in Miami with that nephew of yours."

His eyes darken, reflect back something she can't quite name -- sympathy or empathy or just plain pity -- and I'm sorry about Rachel, he adds, sharp edges of his tone dulled, softer.

The words roll out before she can even stop them -- "I'm working for Ben. Taking care of Widmore's people."

James sneers, spits out his words -- the hell you are; what's wrong with you? You waited three years to get away from him and now he's your boss? -- and she flings them right back; Widmore killed my sister. What was I supposed to do? She's furious, livid, anger curling through her veins, that he gets to judge her, that it's been more than four years and two continents and she's still not a free woman -- grief clamped tight like a ghost that won't let go, the island still always haunting the edges of her vision -- not at all.

She does something even stupider next, grabs James by the shoulders and crushes her mouth to his, feels like she’s drawing the breath from his lungs, pushes deeper and harder and snakes her arms around his neck, surprises herself when she doesn’t wish for dark eyes, darker hair when she finally pulls back and watches him, silently (she’s past hoping for anything, with anyone).

“Juliet,” he starts, tone low, husky, “I --” and don’t, she interrupts, means it, already working the buttons of his shirt, means I don’t have any answers and neither do you, kisses him again, leaves his words stillborn against the air.

After, she shimmies back into her stockings, her dress, tries to pretend James isn’t watching from where he’s lounging in bed, sheet draped over his thighs.

“Where you rushin’ off to, Blondie?”

Juliet smoothes back her hair, collects her purse, barely spares him a glance -- "don't try to find me," she tells him, with a voice comes out cool, flat; still against everything else threading through her chest. "I mean it."

He’s sliding out of the bed, tugging on his pants and turning to face her, smirk still splitting his features, like it’s all some kind of damn joke; or what?

Her smile comes out crooked, it feels like, edges too sharp, too sad, hand straying to the doorknob.

Or I'll have to kill you, she says last, and the door clicks closed softly behind her.

----

Months later when Ben says it's over, that they're finished, it's as anti-climatic as anything else that's happened to her. Like her work on the island. Like the field mouse that couldn't carry to term. Like Jack; James, too. All loose ends, broken strands, meaningless starts-and-stops of things she never accomplished, never got right.

Anchorless, she waits another month until Julian's preschool is on summer vacation and takes him to Oxford, curls up on Dan and Charlotte's sofa with whatever books she can get her hands on and watches Aaron totter through the backyard, chasing after her nephew. Charlotte perches beside her eventually, starts the conversation off light -- you know we love having you, Juliet, and you're welcome to stay as long as you like --

"-- but what the hell am I doing." Juliet smirks, expression dry. "No clue."

Suddenly she wants to tell her everything, the need pounding harder against her ribs than anything in a long time (it’s a luxury she hasn’t allowed herself since her deal with Ben, why she never picks up when the New Mexico number flashes on her cellphone), and just as she’s opening her mouth Daniel appears, ushering the kids back inside, their knees and elbows covered in grass stains, bits of green through their hair.

“It took them all of 10 minutes, I’m not kidding,” Daniel sighs, scooping Aaron up against his hip and prodding Julian towards the bathroom to Charlotte’s laughter, and Juliet feels the relief like a wave over her, like a close save, like maybe this is one time her instincts are right, that the universe hasn’t steered her wrong on this, of all things.

There are, she thinks (thinks of Ben and the island and how much she always hated that one shade of yellow), some secrets she still needs to keep.

----

They get back to Miami two weeks later, Daniel and Charlotte promising a fall visit, and Julian watches her with too-serious scrutiny, hangs alongside the kitchen counter as she packs a basket with blankets, a flashlight, some of the marshmallows she almost never lets him eat. It’s past his bedtime, late, and he knows it -- “what are you doing, Aunt Juliet?”

She smiles, tosses in the last of the items sprawled across the table -- a pair of lambskin gloves, some maps, leftover boarding passes she’d never gotten around to destroying (next to the job application for the research position waiting to be faxed) -- the gun, silencer, bullets already floating at the bottom of the bay somewhere; “we’re going to have a bonfire, buddy. What do you think about that?”

Julian shrugs, toes the kitchen tile with one socked foot, still hesitating against the strangeness of everything, makes her pause and gather him into a hug, murmur against his hair (Rachel’s darker blonde, already getting thick and unruly like hers) everything’s going to be alright.

After he’s bundled into a sweatshirt they drive down to the beach, a rocky cove Juliet knows will be deserted this time of night, enlists Julian to gather twigs and brush and eventually their fire sparks to life right next to the shore, flames crack and pop while he giggles, spears another marshmallow onto a stick.

Juliet reaches into the basket and dumps the rest of it -- all of it -- into the pit, watches as it gets swallowed by blue and red, starts to crisp and then turns to dust. Just ashes, all of her life; all her before.

She calls out to Julian and he looks up from the fire, his marshmallow starting to droop and wither against the heat, tiny face flushed from flames -- “how’d you like to go on another trip? My friend has a little girl near your age, Clementine; you guys could play together. That would be fun, huh?”

He wrinkles his nose -- a girl? -- pulling his sticks back from the fire and inspecting it with sticky fingers; guess so.

The sand shifts as she settles down next to him, tucks the blanket up around his shoulders and rests back against her palms, takes in the stretch of night sky above her. Julian’s already digging back into the bag of marshmallows when she feels the buzz of her cellphone against her hip, slips it out of her sweater pocket and looks at the bright-coloured digits, smiles at the Albuquerque area code.

This time she answers.