Fic for eponine119: "All That You Can't Leave Behind," part 4
Title: All That You Can’t Leave Behind, part 4 (previous parts here)
Summary: Two years after their reunion, Danielle and Alex try to make their way in the wider world.
Rating: PG Disclaimer: Lost is all ABC’s; no money/ownership here.
Dedication: To
eponine119 , with best birthday wishes.
Author’s note: This series is a wholly independent companion to an on-island one. If you haven’t read that one, you only need to know that Alex learned on-island what happened to Robert.
Comments, feedback, and criticism are always welcome.
Alex decides, once she’s able, to try not to think any further than one day ahead. Beyond that is too much to handle. She doesn’t even know what there is to think about, beyond the fact that there’s a lot of it, and she has no idea what any of it is.
After dinner, Danielle’s siblings - her own aunts and uncle, she supposes; she isn’t used to the idea yet - help them review the information they’ve gotten. There are a dozen information sessions that someone has organized for the survivors and their families. When they’ve finished with that, Alex asks about the pool. She feels confined, cramped somehow, even though she has more space now than she’s had in weeks. One of the suggestion sheets said they should go swimming in the morning and the evening anyway, or else walking. The glimpses Alex has caught of the city are enough for her to know she’s not ready for that yet. She isn’t even ready to think about it.
“The pool is on the ground level,” says Sylvain. “The three of us were there this morning, but perhaps someone could join you?”
“I will go,” Danielle says. They go back into their bedroom and change into the bathing suits Thérèse brought them. Bathrobes with the hotel symbol on them are hanging in the closet; Alex supposes they should probably wear them. The fabric is heavy on her body, so thick that it seems to double the size of her frame.
There’s a strange smell in the corridor as they walk toward the pool. Danielle must notice it, Alex thinks, but she doesn’t seem disturbed. She inhales more deeply, to be sure she isn’t imagining things. “There are chemicals they use to keep the water clean,” Danielle says. “Because it does not flow on its own.”
“Oh.” Alex doesn’t like the smell of them, but if Maman doesn’t think they’re dangerous, then they aren’t.
“Alex! Danielle! Wait a minute!” Alex turns around and sees Claire coming down the hall, her body dwarfed in a white bathrobe identical to the ones Alex and Danielle are wearing. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Danielle says. She always answers that question the same way. “I’m okay,” Alex says. “Kind of…”
“Overwhelmed?” Claire asks.
“Yeah.”
“Me as well. Desmond’s looking after the kids while I get a bit of a break from everything.” She scowls. “From Aunt Lindsey, mostly.” Claire swings open a door bearing a sign that reads “Swimming Pool/Piscina.” Alex’s eyes sting immediately; they must have put in enough cleaning chemicals to sanitize an ocean. Danielle and Claire are both blinking a little more often than usual, but neither one of them looks ready to start rubbing her eyes, either. “They’ve got goggles on that rack,” Claire points out. “We should probably get bathing caps, too.” Alex has never heard of such a thing, but she can imagine that it’s to keep chemicals from getting in their hair.
The pool isn’t that big, although Alex supposes it’s probably no smaller than some of the inland freshwater ponds she’s used to. Don’t think about that. She gets in and begins swimming back and forth. The water’s a little bit colder than she’s used to, although she knows she’ll adjust to it quickly. Every stroke of an arm or leg makes a loud splashing sound that reverberates through the room, the sound echoing and amplified. Three people swimming are enough to give rise to a cacophony. Alex still hasn’t adjusted to it by the time she gets out of the water ninety minutes later. She supposes she doesn’t have any other choice, though, and she agrees to swap baby-minding turns with Claire in the morning.
She takes a long shower once she gets back to the room. The smell of the chemicals seems to cling to everything - her body, the swimsuit, the bathrobe and the towel she brought. It seems impossible that she’ll ever be able to tolerate it, but Claire and Danielle have both managed, somehow. She hopes it doesn’t depend on being introduced to it at an early age.
When her skin has started to wrinkle, again, from the shower, she gets out and changes into one of the new sets of pyjamas. They’re too loose on her, but they’ll stay on. Maman is in their room sitting on the bed, which, Alex notices, is bigger than the tent they shared, bigger than almost every tent on the beach. For a minute she wonders why Danielle isn’t with her brother and sisters in the central room, but she understands the reason before she can ask. Too much for one day. Alex couldn’t deal with it either.
As if anticipating the unvoiced question, Danielle looks up. “I have said our good-nights. They are tired as well.”
“I’m done in the shower, if you want to have one.”
Danielle nods. “Those chemicals, I think they are like salt water.”
“You get a rash if they stay on your skin?”
“Perhaps… I am not sure what I remember. But it makes sense.”
“They must. I’ll wait in here.”
“All right.” Maman makes her way to the bathroom. Alex doesn’t want to think about anything, suddenly. There are books on the bedside table, she sees. She’s disappointed to find that there’s only a Bible, one of the few books they had on the beach and consequently one she’s read a hundred times, and a Los Angeles phone book, which looks too dense to be comprehensible. She pages through it anyway. Page after page of names and numbers in tiny print, and then listings for an equal number of businesses. Most of them have headings that Alex has never even heard of - actuaries, bail bonds, clerical garments, diabetic supplies, escort services, forestry services, glass restorers, hearing aids… she gives up at “irrigation specialists” and puts the directory back in its place.
She flips on the television. They had a few closed-circuit ones when she was growing up - in the compound; she thinks of it as both. This one is newer and has hand-held controls, but it’s easy enough to figure out. She flips through the stations at random. There are a ridiculous number of them. Local news, about some idiot who drove a bus into a tree. World news, all bad; weather, which she can figure out without any help; golf, American football, something in Spanish. What looks like a movie about a knife-wielding masked man carrying a bouquet of flowers. Another movie with a woman who looks like something from the magazines Karl thought Alex didn’t know he borrowed from Sawyer sometimes. A dull-coloured image of a red-faced man in an indoor amphitheatre, shouting about Jesus to a bunch of people who look drugged. The U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, whatever that is. A woman showing how to cook an omelette, and another how to plant a flowering shrub of a kind Alex has never seen before. A programme about the wildlife of southern Polynesia - one of the same butterflies they had back home, feeding on the same kind of flower.
The announcer is from England, Alex thinks; his accent sounds like Desmond’s girlfriend’s. It doesn’t really matter to her. She only wants to focus on this butterfly, this plant, the familiar facts that the narrator’s voice is intoning. She’s seen similar scenes any number of times in her life, and she’s always been able to smell them, to hear the sounds of the forest and the shore that go along with it, to feel the earth under her feet. She never once stopped to think about it.
Her mother emerges from the bathroom, wearing what must be a new nightgown. Danielle looks toward the television and draws in a sharp breath, then sits down beside Alex on the bed and puts a hand on her wrist. “Alex. Not yet.”
“It’s called an eggfly. I had to learn the scientific name once,” she says. She doesn’t know why she’s saying it, or why she thinks it matters. “It feeds on asystasia.”
“Hypolimnas bolina,” Maman says. “Robert told me.” She hugs Alex briefly and then puts her hands on her shoulders, looking her straight in the eye. “You will not forget the island, Alex. But you cannot keep reminding yourself of it either. Especially now.”
She nods and switches off the television. “Okay.” She returns Danielle’s hug. “I’m tired.” She doesn’t think she’ll be able to sleep, but if Maman turns out the light it’ll be easier, somehow, for Alex to pretend she’s not about to cry.
“So am I,” says Danielle. After a moment’s pause she adds, “There is another room, if you would like your own.”
The kids all had their own rooms growing up; Ben believed in a certain level of privacy, or at least said he did. It would have been strange to think of sharing a room with him. But she and Danielle have shared a tent every night for the last two years. “Not yet,” she whispers. She knows she’ll have to get used to her own room again eventually, sooner rather than later, and that it might be harder for Maman than it is for her, but she can’t summon the determination to start with that right now.
“No,” Danielle whispers, switching off the bedside lamp. “That is too much for today.” She kisses Alex’s head and wishes her a good night.
Alex surprises herself by falling asleep. One moment she’s returning her mother’s good night, and the next it’s six o’clock in the morning and sunlight is filtering through a gap in the curtains, and they’re rushing to meet Claire at that chemical pool.
Karl comes by the suite after breakfast, asking if she’d be up for a round of darts. Apparently there’s a billiards room; Alex agrees, although Karl’s so clumsy at darts that he’s not a good partner. “I didn’t know you liked darts,” she says as they make their way there.
“About as much as you like playing with me,” he says. At what must be a puzzled look from her, he adds, “I just wanted to talk to you alone, see how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine. You?”
“Fine.”
“What’s your family like?”
“They’re all right. How about yours?”
“You first. You already know a little bit about mine.”
They play a half-hearted game of pool as Karl tells her about his aunts and uncles, and what they’ve said about his parents. Alex isn’t surprised to learn that there are a few other people like Ben in the world - nowhere near as successful as he was, for the most part, and not always as dangerous, but there nonetheless. Apparently Ben wasn’t the first one to impress Karl’s parents, just the last of a string. Karl’s gotten the impression that the leader of one of the aunts’ church isn’t much different. “Aunt Linda," he says. "She keeps calling me Conrad."
“I’ll stay away from her.”
“Her and her husband. The rest of them are okay, though.” One uncle is a doctor, a paediatrician who’s married to a co-worker and has a son in college. Another aunt is an interior decorator, divorced; her kids are staying with their dad right now, but they’re eager to meet Karl. Karl has what they call an open invitation to visit any of them any time, no advance notice required. They’ve told him he’d like Oregon.
“Are you going to live there?” Alex asks.
“I don’t know.” Karl puts down his cue; they’ve given up the pretence of playing. They both sit down on the ledge of the table. “I remember them a little, from before. I want to get to know - most of them, I guess. But I want to be near the rest of you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Live one place and visit the other, I guess.”
“They’re so far apart!”
“It’s a day or two train ride, my uncle said.”
“I just don’t want - you know - ”
“You think I want to start my life here running away from you?”
Alex has never been good at lying, and she’s never wanted to be, but she can’t tell Karl that part of her is afraid that the answer is yes. Even from the glimpses of everything she’s seen, there’s something about Karl's having spent the first five years of his life in this world that’s making all of this easier for him. He’s going to be able to get close enough to used to it again much faster than she will, and she’s afraid that in no time, he’ll start to like one of the endless number of girls he’ll meet, someone who can live here more or less the way people are supposed to. He’ll go off to someplace Alex will never be able to tolerate, and she will have lost the last person in the world who knows about the sixteen years that even Danielle will never be able to understand. “I know you don’t,” she says.
“It’ll be okay. I know you want to be with everyone else.”
“With my new family?” Two years and more since she heard those words for the first time, and the memory still makes her cold.
“Yeah,” says Karl.
Alex knows she isn’t being fair. “Yours too,” she adds. Maybe everyone else’s, if not as much, even after the losses. Kate. Sawyer, whose death hasn’t finished hitting Karl, or anyone else for that matter. Locke and Cindy, for what good people might remember of them.
When Alex has been silent for a few minutes, Karl says, “Tell me about Danielle’s sister.”
“She’s got two. And a brother.” Alex can recite their names and occupations and children easily, but there’s something about the way they relate to each other - or the way they relate to Danielle, maybe. “The way they remember my mother - it’s so different from the way she is now,” Alex says, half in a whisper.
Karl bites his lip. “You thought she would have been the same?”
“No, it’s just - ” It’s just that Danielle as she is now is Alex’s mother, and the only version of her that either of them can ever know is the one that exists today, and Danielle might be the only thing Alex has in this world, and she loves her mother so much that it’s painful. She loves Karl, too, but she isn’t always sure of how.
The clock on the wall moves toward half past one; they’ve both agreed to lunch with their aunts and uncles. Everything inside Alex’s mind is a mess, but she kisses Karl and finds herself wanting him to come back with her as well. She’ll see him again soon, she reminds herself. They’ll meet each other’s families.
The hotel is ridiculously big; it could house three or four times as many people as Alex has met in her entire life. The doors and hallways are all the same, leaving the place without any landmarks. She’s grateful, suddenly, for the convenience of numbered rooms; she would have a hell of a time finding her way back without them. She’s halfway afraid she’s got the wrong door somehow; she’s hesitant at pushing it open until she hears her mother’s voice: “ - my God, Thérèse, I did not want to, I loved him, I wanted to die instead - ” Danielle sounds much smaller than herself, somehow: timid and ashamed.
“No. I know how much you loved him, Danielle. I know.”
“But I cannot see Maëlys now. You know that I cannot speak to his mother.”
“We will think of something. You must not keep her from meeting her granddaughter.”
Maman stifles what sounds like something between a moan and a bitter laugh. “Alex. You need something to eat.”
Alex accepts the food that’s brought to her, if only with difficulty; she’s not hungry at all. Maman eats enthusiastically, but she always does, no matter how upset she is. Alex wonders, suddenly, whether that’s always been Danielle’s habit. She’s never given it any thought.
Alex is grateful that no one tries to start much of a conversation during lunch. Afterwards they clean up in silence as well. Alex offers to help, but she’s grateful when Sylvain says that he and Marie-France can handle them. All she really wants to do is sit next to her mother. There’s nothing Alex can say to her right now, she knows that much from experience, but there are times when proximity seems to reassure Danielle as much as anything else. “Your voice is like your father’s,” Danielle whispers. “And the way you walk, somehow. It reminds me of him.”
Alex wonders, for the first time, if those reminders cause as much pain to Danielle as they do comfort. She doesn’t ask, just squeezes her mother’s hand. After a minute, impulsively, she says, “There’s a field across the street, isn’t there?” She doesn’t have any good reason for asking; it’s just a distraction, for herself as much as anyone.
“Oh, the park? Yes, there is one,” Marie-France says.
“Can we walk there?” The question is more for Danielle than for anyone else, but it’s Sylvain who answers. “Of course. Let me finish with the dishes first, and then we will go.” Maman looks nervous, and her body is tense, but she presses Alex’s hand harder and nods. Alex is afraid she’s been careless and terrified her mother, asked her to do something that neither of them is ready for, something she herself knows nothing about, but after a minute Maman smiles weakly. “Yes. I think we should.”
**Image credits: tarya-san and Iselin89 at lost-forum.
Summary: Two years after their reunion, Danielle and Alex try to make their way in the wider world.
Rating: PG Disclaimer: Lost is all ABC’s; no money/ownership here.
Dedication: To
eponine119 , with best birthday wishes.
Author’s note: This series is a wholly independent companion to an on-island one. If you haven’t read that one, you only need to know that Alex learned on-island what happened to Robert.
Comments, feedback, and criticism are always welcome.
Alex decides, once she’s able, to try not to think any further than one day ahead. Beyond that is too much to handle. She doesn’t even know what there is to think about, beyond the fact that there’s a lot of it, and she has no idea what any of it is.
After dinner, Danielle’s siblings - her own aunts and uncle, she supposes; she isn’t used to the idea yet - help them review the information they’ve gotten. There are a dozen information sessions that someone has organized for the survivors and their families. When they’ve finished with that, Alex asks about the pool. She feels confined, cramped somehow, even though she has more space now than she’s had in weeks. One of the suggestion sheets said they should go swimming in the morning and the evening anyway, or else walking. The glimpses Alex has caught of the city are enough for her to know she’s not ready for that yet. She isn’t even ready to think about it.
“The pool is on the ground level,” says Sylvain. “The three of us were there this morning, but perhaps someone could join you?”
“I will go,” Danielle says. They go back into their bedroom and change into the bathing suits Thérèse brought them. Bathrobes with the hotel symbol on them are hanging in the closet; Alex supposes they should probably wear them. The fabric is heavy on her body, so thick that it seems to double the size of her frame.
There’s a strange smell in the corridor as they walk toward the pool. Danielle must notice it, Alex thinks, but she doesn’t seem disturbed. She inhales more deeply, to be sure she isn’t imagining things. “There are chemicals they use to keep the water clean,” Danielle says. “Because it does not flow on its own.”
“Oh.” Alex doesn’t like the smell of them, but if Maman doesn’t think they’re dangerous, then they aren’t.
“Alex! Danielle! Wait a minute!” Alex turns around and sees Claire coming down the hall, her body dwarfed in a white bathrobe identical to the ones Alex and Danielle are wearing. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Danielle says. She always answers that question the same way. “I’m okay,” Alex says. “Kind of…”
“Overwhelmed?” Claire asks.
“Yeah.”
“Me as well. Desmond’s looking after the kids while I get a bit of a break from everything.” She scowls. “From Aunt Lindsey, mostly.” Claire swings open a door bearing a sign that reads “Swimming Pool/Piscina.” Alex’s eyes sting immediately; they must have put in enough cleaning chemicals to sanitize an ocean. Danielle and Claire are both blinking a little more often than usual, but neither one of them looks ready to start rubbing her eyes, either. “They’ve got goggles on that rack,” Claire points out. “We should probably get bathing caps, too.” Alex has never heard of such a thing, but she can imagine that it’s to keep chemicals from getting in their hair.
The pool isn’t that big, although Alex supposes it’s probably no smaller than some of the inland freshwater ponds she’s used to. Don’t think about that. She gets in and begins swimming back and forth. The water’s a little bit colder than she’s used to, although she knows she’ll adjust to it quickly. Every stroke of an arm or leg makes a loud splashing sound that reverberates through the room, the sound echoing and amplified. Three people swimming are enough to give rise to a cacophony. Alex still hasn’t adjusted to it by the time she gets out of the water ninety minutes later. She supposes she doesn’t have any other choice, though, and she agrees to swap baby-minding turns with Claire in the morning.
She takes a long shower once she gets back to the room. The smell of the chemicals seems to cling to everything - her body, the swimsuit, the bathrobe and the towel she brought. It seems impossible that she’ll ever be able to tolerate it, but Claire and Danielle have both managed, somehow. She hopes it doesn’t depend on being introduced to it at an early age.
When her skin has started to wrinkle, again, from the shower, she gets out and changes into one of the new sets of pyjamas. They’re too loose on her, but they’ll stay on. Maman is in their room sitting on the bed, which, Alex notices, is bigger than the tent they shared, bigger than almost every tent on the beach. For a minute she wonders why Danielle isn’t with her brother and sisters in the central room, but she understands the reason before she can ask. Too much for one day. Alex couldn’t deal with it either.
As if anticipating the unvoiced question, Danielle looks up. “I have said our good-nights. They are tired as well.”
“I’m done in the shower, if you want to have one.”
Danielle nods. “Those chemicals, I think they are like salt water.”
“You get a rash if they stay on your skin?”
“Perhaps… I am not sure what I remember. But it makes sense.”
“They must. I’ll wait in here.”
“All right.” Maman makes her way to the bathroom. Alex doesn’t want to think about anything, suddenly. There are books on the bedside table, she sees. She’s disappointed to find that there’s only a Bible, one of the few books they had on the beach and consequently one she’s read a hundred times, and a Los Angeles phone book, which looks too dense to be comprehensible. She pages through it anyway. Page after page of names and numbers in tiny print, and then listings for an equal number of businesses. Most of them have headings that Alex has never even heard of - actuaries, bail bonds, clerical garments, diabetic supplies, escort services, forestry services, glass restorers, hearing aids… she gives up at “irrigation specialists” and puts the directory back in its place.
She flips on the television. They had a few closed-circuit ones when she was growing up - in the compound; she thinks of it as both. This one is newer and has hand-held controls, but it’s easy enough to figure out. She flips through the stations at random. There are a ridiculous number of them. Local news, about some idiot who drove a bus into a tree. World news, all bad; weather, which she can figure out without any help; golf, American football, something in Spanish. What looks like a movie about a knife-wielding masked man carrying a bouquet of flowers. Another movie with a woman who looks like something from the magazines Karl thought Alex didn’t know he borrowed from Sawyer sometimes. A dull-coloured image of a red-faced man in an indoor amphitheatre, shouting about Jesus to a bunch of people who look drugged. The U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, whatever that is. A woman showing how to cook an omelette, and another how to plant a flowering shrub of a kind Alex has never seen before. A programme about the wildlife of southern Polynesia - one of the same butterflies they had back home, feeding on the same kind of flower.
The announcer is from England, Alex thinks; his accent sounds like Desmond’s girlfriend’s. It doesn’t really matter to her. She only wants to focus on this butterfly, this plant, the familiar facts that the narrator’s voice is intoning. She’s seen similar scenes any number of times in her life, and she’s always been able to smell them, to hear the sounds of the forest and the shore that go along with it, to feel the earth under her feet. She never once stopped to think about it.
Her mother emerges from the bathroom, wearing what must be a new nightgown. Danielle looks toward the television and draws in a sharp breath, then sits down beside Alex on the bed and puts a hand on her wrist. “Alex. Not yet.”
“It’s called an eggfly. I had to learn the scientific name once,” she says. She doesn’t know why she’s saying it, or why she thinks it matters. “It feeds on asystasia.”
“Hypolimnas bolina,” Maman says. “Robert told me.” She hugs Alex briefly and then puts her hands on her shoulders, looking her straight in the eye. “You will not forget the island, Alex. But you cannot keep reminding yourself of it either. Especially now.”
She nods and switches off the television. “Okay.” She returns Danielle’s hug. “I’m tired.” She doesn’t think she’ll be able to sleep, but if Maman turns out the light it’ll be easier, somehow, for Alex to pretend she’s not about to cry.
“So am I,” says Danielle. After a moment’s pause she adds, “There is another room, if you would like your own.”
The kids all had their own rooms growing up; Ben believed in a certain level of privacy, or at least said he did. It would have been strange to think of sharing a room with him. But she and Danielle have shared a tent every night for the last two years. “Not yet,” she whispers. She knows she’ll have to get used to her own room again eventually, sooner rather than later, and that it might be harder for Maman than it is for her, but she can’t summon the determination to start with that right now.
“No,” Danielle whispers, switching off the bedside lamp. “That is too much for today.” She kisses Alex’s head and wishes her a good night.
Alex surprises herself by falling asleep. One moment she’s returning her mother’s good night, and the next it’s six o’clock in the morning and sunlight is filtering through a gap in the curtains, and they’re rushing to meet Claire at that chemical pool.
Karl comes by the suite after breakfast, asking if she’d be up for a round of darts. Apparently there’s a billiards room; Alex agrees, although Karl’s so clumsy at darts that he’s not a good partner. “I didn’t know you liked darts,” she says as they make their way there.
“About as much as you like playing with me,” he says. At what must be a puzzled look from her, he adds, “I just wanted to talk to you alone, see how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine. You?”
“Fine.”
“What’s your family like?”
“They’re all right. How about yours?”
“You first. You already know a little bit about mine.”
They play a half-hearted game of pool as Karl tells her about his aunts and uncles, and what they’ve said about his parents. Alex isn’t surprised to learn that there are a few other people like Ben in the world - nowhere near as successful as he was, for the most part, and not always as dangerous, but there nonetheless. Apparently Ben wasn’t the first one to impress Karl’s parents, just the last of a string. Karl’s gotten the impression that the leader of one of the aunts’ church isn’t much different. “Aunt Linda," he says. "She keeps calling me Conrad."
“I’ll stay away from her.”
“Her and her husband. The rest of them are okay, though.” One uncle is a doctor, a paediatrician who’s married to a co-worker and has a son in college. Another aunt is an interior decorator, divorced; her kids are staying with their dad right now, but they’re eager to meet Karl. Karl has what they call an open invitation to visit any of them any time, no advance notice required. They’ve told him he’d like Oregon.
“Are you going to live there?” Alex asks.
“I don’t know.” Karl puts down his cue; they’ve given up the pretence of playing. They both sit down on the ledge of the table. “I remember them a little, from before. I want to get to know - most of them, I guess. But I want to be near the rest of you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Live one place and visit the other, I guess.”
“They’re so far apart!”
“It’s a day or two train ride, my uncle said.”
“I just don’t want - you know - ”
“You think I want to start my life here running away from you?”
Alex has never been good at lying, and she’s never wanted to be, but she can’t tell Karl that part of her is afraid that the answer is yes. Even from the glimpses of everything she’s seen, there’s something about Karl's having spent the first five years of his life in this world that’s making all of this easier for him. He’s going to be able to get close enough to used to it again much faster than she will, and she’s afraid that in no time, he’ll start to like one of the endless number of girls he’ll meet, someone who can live here more or less the way people are supposed to. He’ll go off to someplace Alex will never be able to tolerate, and she will have lost the last person in the world who knows about the sixteen years that even Danielle will never be able to understand. “I know you don’t,” she says.
“It’ll be okay. I know you want to be with everyone else.”
“With my new family?” Two years and more since she heard those words for the first time, and the memory still makes her cold.
“Yeah,” says Karl.
Alex knows she isn’t being fair. “Yours too,” she adds. Maybe everyone else’s, if not as much, even after the losses. Kate. Sawyer, whose death hasn’t finished hitting Karl, or anyone else for that matter. Locke and Cindy, for what good people might remember of them.
When Alex has been silent for a few minutes, Karl says, “Tell me about Danielle’s sister.”
“She’s got two. And a brother.” Alex can recite their names and occupations and children easily, but there’s something about the way they relate to each other - or the way they relate to Danielle, maybe. “The way they remember my mother - it’s so different from the way she is now,” Alex says, half in a whisper.
Karl bites his lip. “You thought she would have been the same?”
“No, it’s just - ” It’s just that Danielle as she is now is Alex’s mother, and the only version of her that either of them can ever know is the one that exists today, and Danielle might be the only thing Alex has in this world, and she loves her mother so much that it’s painful. She loves Karl, too, but she isn’t always sure of how.
The clock on the wall moves toward half past one; they’ve both agreed to lunch with their aunts and uncles. Everything inside Alex’s mind is a mess, but she kisses Karl and finds herself wanting him to come back with her as well. She’ll see him again soon, she reminds herself. They’ll meet each other’s families.
The hotel is ridiculously big; it could house three or four times as many people as Alex has met in her entire life. The doors and hallways are all the same, leaving the place without any landmarks. She’s grateful, suddenly, for the convenience of numbered rooms; she would have a hell of a time finding her way back without them. She’s halfway afraid she’s got the wrong door somehow; she’s hesitant at pushing it open until she hears her mother’s voice: “ - my God, Thérèse, I did not want to, I loved him, I wanted to die instead - ” Danielle sounds much smaller than herself, somehow: timid and ashamed.
“No. I know how much you loved him, Danielle. I know.”
“But I cannot see Maëlys now. You know that I cannot speak to his mother.”
“We will think of something. You must not keep her from meeting her granddaughter.”
Maman stifles what sounds like something between a moan and a bitter laugh. “Alex. You need something to eat.”
Alex accepts the food that’s brought to her, if only with difficulty; she’s not hungry at all. Maman eats enthusiastically, but she always does, no matter how upset she is. Alex wonders, suddenly, whether that’s always been Danielle’s habit. She’s never given it any thought.
Alex is grateful that no one tries to start much of a conversation during lunch. Afterwards they clean up in silence as well. Alex offers to help, but she’s grateful when Sylvain says that he and Marie-France can handle them. All she really wants to do is sit next to her mother. There’s nothing Alex can say to her right now, she knows that much from experience, but there are times when proximity seems to reassure Danielle as much as anything else. “Your voice is like your father’s,” Danielle whispers. “And the way you walk, somehow. It reminds me of him.”
Alex wonders, for the first time, if those reminders cause as much pain to Danielle as they do comfort. She doesn’t ask, just squeezes her mother’s hand. After a minute, impulsively, she says, “There’s a field across the street, isn’t there?” She doesn’t have any good reason for asking; it’s just a distraction, for herself as much as anyone.
“Oh, the park? Yes, there is one,” Marie-France says.
“Can we walk there?” The question is more for Danielle than for anyone else, but it’s Sylvain who answers. “Of course. Let me finish with the dishes first, and then we will go.” Maman looks nervous, and her body is tense, but she presses Alex’s hand harder and nods. Alex is afraid she’s been careless and terrified her mother, asked her to do something that neither of them is ready for, something she herself knows nothing about, but after a minute Maman smiles weakly. “Yes. I think we should.”
**Image credits: tarya-san and Iselin89 at lost-forum.