"All That You Can't Leave Behind," 7C
Title: All That You Can’t Leave Behind, 7C (previous sections or chapters)
Summary: Two years after their reunion, Danielle and Alex try to make their way in the wider world. (Gen with Alex/Karl; assumes canon through 3x23, when it was begun.)
Rating: PG-13/light R Disclaimer: Lost, etc., is all ABC’s; no money/ownership here.
Author’s note: Dedicated to my f-list, who have all been wonderful to me lately. They know the details.
Comments, feedback, and criticism are always welcome.
Note 2: In “Leaves,” I posited that Danielle’s mother was the daughter of an Englishwoman and a Swiss francophone.
Danielle returns to the house late in the afternoon. Today has been quiet: no disturbances, nothing unusual, just recording observations to be tabulated as data. Alex called her at noon, to say that she and Karl were back from the mainland safely. Danielle wanted to rush back to the house and confirm it for herself, to be certain that the two and a half days of Alex’s absence really are over. Instead she forced herself to continue with the day’s work: looking for any sign of foxes, identifying trees that are late or early or weak to bloom.
She is bringing food with her, things she gathered: cactus fruits, lupines, a rattlesnake she encountered that was strangely aggressive. She was careful to shoot its head off completely before picking it up; no sense in getting bitten. There were no snakes on the island where Alex grew up. All the ones here frighten her, although most of them are harmless and too small to eat. Danielle does not hunt them normally, is not supposed to. This is an island that has a name and a town and a ferry to the mainland every day; there are places to buy food, and then wilderness she is supposed to help protect. She tries to remember, but too many things have become automatic to her. When she is distracted, she forgets.
She is careful as she approaches the house. Only Alex and Karl are there; Alex rarely covers her tracks any longer, although Danielle insists that she practice it once in a while. Danielle still avoids leaving her own most of the time.
The snake and the plants she puts in the refrigerator. Being able to store food still astounds her. But it is too early now to begin preparing dinner; she has worked hard to break herself of the habit of eating whatever and whenever she can, and of making Alex eat as much as she is able. They fought sometimes on the island: Danielle did not like to eat before Alex had finished, did not share what she foraged as equitably as she was supposed to when the food was scarce and would not allow Alex to share the extra portions Danielle gave her. A few times here Danielle has insisted that Alex continue to eat when she said she had had enough. That habit was easier to break; twice Alex was sick afterwards, sluggish and nauseated, and Danielle herself was to blame for it.
There are linens hanging to dry in the garden behind the house. They should be dry now; Danielle brings them inside and folds them. A blanket from Alex’s bed; she carries it upstairs. The door is open, and going down the hall she walks quietly; she can see, curled under the sheet - but it isn’t Alex.
Her heart skips a beat.
No. She cannot lose her head.
She draws her pistol and cocks it slowly, almost silently. Approach from the feet. Don’t allow yourself to be kicked. With her left hand she pulls the sheet aside, and she is ready to shoot whoever has made his way into their house and kept Alex from being here to greet her. The sheet falls aside and she sees that it’s Karl, no one but Karl, the only person left who knew Alex as a child and Danielle has nearly shot him.
She holds her breath, lips pressed together, and closes her eyes. Deep breaths. She reactivates the safety and holsters the gun. Open your eyes.
It really is only Karl, freckled and sweat-flushed, nude atop the mattress. She reaches out to touch him, to reassure herself that this is real, and stops with her fingertips inches from his skin. Something inside her says she should not touch him, not now, and she obeys the instinct.
When she first saw Karl, when he came to that beach two and a half years ago, a memory came loose that had frozen away in her mind: sketching a marble statue in a museum, a few classmates around her, studying an ancient sculpture Karl somehow resembled. A grey, unmoving image, eyes cast on some abstract point and nose and hands and cock long eroded, but somehow Karl called it to mind. He is breathing, rhythmic and shallow; a drop of saliva hovers at the corner of his half-open mouth.
A patch of the fitted sheet is damp. Unbidden an image comes to her mind: the idea of Karl’s arms and torso, thrusting, how his face must have looked with Alex beneath him, and Alex herself... She does not want to envision Alex with that intensity of sensation written across her face and in her body, but the vision materializes in her mind nonetheless. Two years, insomniac, in a tent with Alex; learning how Alex sounded when her dreams become erotic was unavoidable, and now a part of Danielle’s consciousness fights the instinct to imagine those sounds amplified in every sense, to wonder if Karl has learned to satisfy her completely. Another part of it wants almost to cherish the possibility of the sudden sharp breath and the cry that might accompany it, the reality of that little death to add to the proofs that her daughter is alive.
Without thinking of it, she extends her hand to the mark on the sheet. It feels viscous under her fingertips; unsurprising and a relief, another confirmation: Alex is alive. There is no blood. Was Alex fortunate, then, or has she done this before? Not on the old island, but -
“Maman?” Alex stands in the doorway, dressed in a bathrobe; vaguely Danielle thinks that she heard the shower turn off a moment ago. “Qu’est-ce que tu fais?” Her voice is sharp.
What are you doing? Danielle blinks quickly. “I saw someone lying under the sheet,” she whispers. “It wasn’t you. And I was so afraid - ” She balls her hand up against her mouth.
Alex comes into the room and pulls the sheet back over Karl. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “We should let him sleep.” She tiptoes out of the room again, and Danielle follows her into the hall. Alex looks at her quickly, and then at the ground; Danielle is not sure what to do. “Will you come downstairs with me?”
Alex nods; after Danielle, she sinks into the low-slung old sofa in their living room. “Men will always fall asleep afterwards,” Danielle says. She wonders if that was worrying Alex; she remembers how much Karl slept in his first weeks at their camp, weak and confused. “Most of them,” she adds. “Robert would stay awake… I miss him so much.” She looks at the floor as if to conceal the welling in her eyes. Alex puts a hand on her knee, and Danielle does not know whether to be grateful for the reassurance or to hate herself for needing it when she should be offering to Alex instead.
She turns to face Alex and touches her cheek: she is really there, looking a little frightened. “He would be so proud of you,” she whispers. “Of everything you have grown up to be. Like I am.” There are tears Danielle cannot suppress this time, half of a wish that she were beside her mother in the ground: she has seen so little of that growing up, has had so little do with it, because she did not protect Alex well enough, so many years ago. “Was it the first time?”
Alex shakes her head. “At Jack and Sayid’s house. She worries the sleeve of her bathrobe. “Yesterday.”
Alex was not expecting it to happen, then. Danielle may have been surprised herself, twenty-five or thirty years ago; perhaps the boy was surprised as well. She is uncertain; she can’t remember anything about it, when or where it happened or who the other person was. It doesn’t matter. “Are you safe?” Danielle asks, wanting to cradle Alex against her. She cannot be there in the bedroom to protect her daughter, cannot herself secure Alex’s well-being; there were the women on the island, there are ailments and plagues that have spread and not abated in the world in Danielle’s absence from it, and she thinks the fear could drive her mad.
“Yeah,” Alex says, dabbing at her eyes, “we’re safe.” She offers a weak smile. “I kind of panicked anyway,” she says. “The other day. Claire calmed me down a little.”
“Claire?”
“Yeah. I called her.”
Alex called Claire, and not her own mother… What would Danielle have done as a child of nineteen or even younger, wondering? Can she remember her mother’s voice, answering the same questions Alex would perhaps like to ask now? Her memory yields nothing of it, only other voices, speaking of her mother: Bien, c’est pas juste, le demander d’une Suisse. Indulgent and amused but half-judgmental, speaking of her mother. Cette demi-anglaise, explique ça à ta fille? Whose voices said those things, told Danielle what they must have blushed at telling their own daughters, whatever they claimed? Were they aunts, friends’ mothers, older cousins or even Thérèse, sometimes stammering a little and offering Danielle a cigarette she was almost too enthralled to smoke? … Alex has never touched a cigarette, Danielle thinks; she herself has not in twenty years. Now she hears her mother’s voice within her memory: It’s a filthy habit, Danielle. You had better not pass it on to Sylvain. “It overpowers you, sometimes,” she says, almost in memory. “To want it so much.”
Alex is still for a moment, looking as though she is thinking something over. Eventually she nods.
“And there are so many things I should have said to you. So long ago.”
“It’s okay,” Alex says, dabbing at her eyes again and forcing another almost-smile. “Maybe you should tell me now.”
“Maybe I should.” She kisses Alex’s forehead. “There are things you will learn together, you and Karl.”
Alex nods into Danielle’s shoulder. “I love him. When he was gone...”
“I know… Alex. When he says he loves you he is telling the truth.”
She nods again. “Good. I know.” She looks up. “I like it,” she says shyly. “Being with him.”
“In time you will like it even more.” Alex’s stomach growls, and Danielle remembers the food she has brought home. “We can make dinner while we talk.”
“Okay.”
“If Karl wakes up in time he can help us with it.”
Alex smiles and nods but says nothing. She rises from the sofa and stops to hug Danielle as they go into the kitchen.
**Image credits:
colorization,
pirategraphix,
silverflamed,
darknumb,
mediocrechick, and
caffeine_minds.
Summary: Two years after their reunion, Danielle and Alex try to make their way in the wider world. (Gen with Alex/Karl; assumes canon through 3x23, when it was begun.)
Rating: PG-13/light R Disclaimer: Lost, etc., is all ABC’s; no money/ownership here.
Author’s note: Dedicated to my f-list, who have all been wonderful to me lately. They know the details.
Comments, feedback, and criticism are always welcome.
Note 2: In “Leaves,” I posited that Danielle’s mother was the daughter of an Englishwoman and a Swiss francophone.
Danielle returns to the house late in the afternoon. Today has been quiet: no disturbances, nothing unusual, just recording observations to be tabulated as data. Alex called her at noon, to say that she and Karl were back from the mainland safely. Danielle wanted to rush back to the house and confirm it for herself, to be certain that the two and a half days of Alex’s absence really are over. Instead she forced herself to continue with the day’s work: looking for any sign of foxes, identifying trees that are late or early or weak to bloom.
She is bringing food with her, things she gathered: cactus fruits, lupines, a rattlesnake she encountered that was strangely aggressive. She was careful to shoot its head off completely before picking it up; no sense in getting bitten. There were no snakes on the island where Alex grew up. All the ones here frighten her, although most of them are harmless and too small to eat. Danielle does not hunt them normally, is not supposed to. This is an island that has a name and a town and a ferry to the mainland every day; there are places to buy food, and then wilderness she is supposed to help protect. She tries to remember, but too many things have become automatic to her. When she is distracted, she forgets.
She is careful as she approaches the house. Only Alex and Karl are there; Alex rarely covers her tracks any longer, although Danielle insists that she practice it once in a while. Danielle still avoids leaving her own most of the time.
The snake and the plants she puts in the refrigerator. Being able to store food still astounds her. But it is too early now to begin preparing dinner; she has worked hard to break herself of the habit of eating whatever and whenever she can, and of making Alex eat as much as she is able. They fought sometimes on the island: Danielle did not like to eat before Alex had finished, did not share what she foraged as equitably as she was supposed to when the food was scarce and would not allow Alex to share the extra portions Danielle gave her. A few times here Danielle has insisted that Alex continue to eat when she said she had had enough. That habit was easier to break; twice Alex was sick afterwards, sluggish and nauseated, and Danielle herself was to blame for it.
There are linens hanging to dry in the garden behind the house. They should be dry now; Danielle brings them inside and folds them. A blanket from Alex’s bed; she carries it upstairs. The door is open, and going down the hall she walks quietly; she can see, curled under the sheet - but it isn’t Alex.
Her heart skips a beat.
No. She cannot lose her head.
She draws her pistol and cocks it slowly, almost silently. Approach from the feet. Don’t allow yourself to be kicked. With her left hand she pulls the sheet aside, and she is ready to shoot whoever has made his way into their house and kept Alex from being here to greet her. The sheet falls aside and she sees that it’s Karl, no one but Karl, the only person left who knew Alex as a child and Danielle has nearly shot him.
She holds her breath, lips pressed together, and closes her eyes. Deep breaths. She reactivates the safety and holsters the gun. Open your eyes.
It really is only Karl, freckled and sweat-flushed, nude atop the mattress. She reaches out to touch him, to reassure herself that this is real, and stops with her fingertips inches from his skin. Something inside her says she should not touch him, not now, and she obeys the instinct.
When she first saw Karl, when he came to that beach two and a half years ago, a memory came loose that had frozen away in her mind: sketching a marble statue in a museum, a few classmates around her, studying an ancient sculpture Karl somehow resembled. A grey, unmoving image, eyes cast on some abstract point and nose and hands and cock long eroded, but somehow Karl called it to mind. He is breathing, rhythmic and shallow; a drop of saliva hovers at the corner of his half-open mouth.
A patch of the fitted sheet is damp. Unbidden an image comes to her mind: the idea of Karl’s arms and torso, thrusting, how his face must have looked with Alex beneath him, and Alex herself... She does not want to envision Alex with that intensity of sensation written across her face and in her body, but the vision materializes in her mind nonetheless. Two years, insomniac, in a tent with Alex; learning how Alex sounded when her dreams become erotic was unavoidable, and now a part of Danielle’s consciousness fights the instinct to imagine those sounds amplified in every sense, to wonder if Karl has learned to satisfy her completely. Another part of it wants almost to cherish the possibility of the sudden sharp breath and the cry that might accompany it, the reality of that little death to add to the proofs that her daughter is alive.
Without thinking of it, she extends her hand to the mark on the sheet. It feels viscous under her fingertips; unsurprising and a relief, another confirmation: Alex is alive. There is no blood. Was Alex fortunate, then, or has she done this before? Not on the old island, but -
“Maman?” Alex stands in the doorway, dressed in a bathrobe; vaguely Danielle thinks that she heard the shower turn off a moment ago. “Qu’est-ce que tu fais?” Her voice is sharp.
What are you doing? Danielle blinks quickly. “I saw someone lying under the sheet,” she whispers. “It wasn’t you. And I was so afraid - ” She balls her hand up against her mouth.
Alex comes into the room and pulls the sheet back over Karl. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “We should let him sleep.” She tiptoes out of the room again, and Danielle follows her into the hall. Alex looks at her quickly, and then at the ground; Danielle is not sure what to do. “Will you come downstairs with me?”
Alex nods; after Danielle, she sinks into the low-slung old sofa in their living room. “Men will always fall asleep afterwards,” Danielle says. She wonders if that was worrying Alex; she remembers how much Karl slept in his first weeks at their camp, weak and confused. “Most of them,” she adds. “Robert would stay awake… I miss him so much.” She looks at the floor as if to conceal the welling in her eyes. Alex puts a hand on her knee, and Danielle does not know whether to be grateful for the reassurance or to hate herself for needing it when she should be offering to Alex instead.
She turns to face Alex and touches her cheek: she is really there, looking a little frightened. “He would be so proud of you,” she whispers. “Of everything you have grown up to be. Like I am.” There are tears Danielle cannot suppress this time, half of a wish that she were beside her mother in the ground: she has seen so little of that growing up, has had so little do with it, because she did not protect Alex well enough, so many years ago. “Was it the first time?”
Alex shakes her head. “At Jack and Sayid’s house. She worries the sleeve of her bathrobe. “Yesterday.”
Alex was not expecting it to happen, then. Danielle may have been surprised herself, twenty-five or thirty years ago; perhaps the boy was surprised as well. She is uncertain; she can’t remember anything about it, when or where it happened or who the other person was. It doesn’t matter. “Are you safe?” Danielle asks, wanting to cradle Alex against her. She cannot be there in the bedroom to protect her daughter, cannot herself secure Alex’s well-being; there were the women on the island, there are ailments and plagues that have spread and not abated in the world in Danielle’s absence from it, and she thinks the fear could drive her mad.
“Yeah,” Alex says, dabbing at her eyes, “we’re safe.” She offers a weak smile. “I kind of panicked anyway,” she says. “The other day. Claire calmed me down a little.”
“Claire?”
“Yeah. I called her.”
Alex called Claire, and not her own mother… What would Danielle have done as a child of nineteen or even younger, wondering? Can she remember her mother’s voice, answering the same questions Alex would perhaps like to ask now? Her memory yields nothing of it, only other voices, speaking of her mother: Bien, c’est pas juste, le demander d’une Suisse. Indulgent and amused but half-judgmental, speaking of her mother. Cette demi-anglaise, explique ça à ta fille? Whose voices said those things, told Danielle what they must have blushed at telling their own daughters, whatever they claimed? Were they aunts, friends’ mothers, older cousins or even Thérèse, sometimes stammering a little and offering Danielle a cigarette she was almost too enthralled to smoke? … Alex has never touched a cigarette, Danielle thinks; she herself has not in twenty years. Now she hears her mother’s voice within her memory: It’s a filthy habit, Danielle. You had better not pass it on to Sylvain. “It overpowers you, sometimes,” she says, almost in memory. “To want it so much.”
Alex is still for a moment, looking as though she is thinking something over. Eventually she nods.
“And there are so many things I should have said to you. So long ago.”
“It’s okay,” Alex says, dabbing at her eyes again and forcing another almost-smile. “Maybe you should tell me now.”
“Maybe I should.” She kisses Alex’s forehead. “There are things you will learn together, you and Karl.”
Alex nods into Danielle’s shoulder. “I love him. When he was gone...”
“I know… Alex. When he says he loves you he is telling the truth.”
She nods again. “Good. I know.” She looks up. “I like it,” she says shyly. “Being with him.”
“In time you will like it even more.” Alex’s stomach growls, and Danielle remembers the food she has brought home. “We can make dinner while we talk.”
“Okay.”
“If Karl wakes up in time he can help us with it.”
Alex smiles and nods but says nothing. She rises from the sofa and stops to hug Danielle as they go into the kitchen.
**Image credits:
colorization,
pirategraphix,
silverflamed,
darknumb,
mediocrechick, and
caffeine_minds.