Fic: The Forsaken (Charles/Eloise)
Title: The Forsaken (4/6)
Characters: Charles/Eloise, Ensemble
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine. Seriously? Seriously.
Rating: PG13
Words: 4700
Spoilers: Up to The Incident
Summary: It starts and ends with a prophecy, but there’s really nothing divine about the mess Charles and Eloise made over the course of sixty-five years. Many thanks to angeldylan628 for her beta duties. For lenina20’s prompt Charles/Eloise “past”.
Part One - The Prelude (1942) and The Coronation (1954), Part Two - The Truce (1973), Part Three - Full Moon (1977)
x x x
1977 - Uninvited Guests
Charles does his best thinking while riding. After discovering Eloise’s secret, he spends the day on horseback. It sounds fanciful, and he would never say this aloud, but he believes Antigone, his horse, is his conduit to the island. Whenever her hooves pound the jungle floor or splash through the sea water, he feels the island itself vibrate through his body and speak to him. It grounds him, calls him home, and reminds him of his purpose.
“We’re all here to do our part,” Richard had explained when Charles was old enough to recognize the island was more than a sandbox meant for his pleasure, but a slice of paradise, the paradise, the one pictured in his mother’s Bible as a lush, wise and forbidden place.
“What will you do, Charles?” Richard had asked, his usual dose of solemnity doubled for the occasion.
“I will serve,” Charles had said, matching Richard’s seriousness and hoping the man was not looking for specifics.
”Then it shall serve you,” Richard had replied. Though he had smiled with his response, there was a sense of forbidding in what lay unspoken. Fail to serve the island, and it will punish you.
As Charles sits astride Antigone and watches the sun drop behind the valley, he contemplates how until now, he felt certain he had always bordered on the brink of failure in the island’s eyes. When he first arrived, he had been who they all had whispered about, the suspected special child Jacob’s prophecy spoke of. But then Eloise appeared in her party dress and crooked smile, having inadvertently managed to unleash space and time. From then on, if he wasn’t ignored, he was misunderstood, and yet he served. He risked his own life countless times to battle outsiders. He broke rules about worldly dealings only because he thought financial solvency gave them options. He dammed his soul and killed one of their own because he thought it best to protect the island. And for what?
But now, everything had changed. The island had seen fit to reward him like no other. It granted him a child and bestowed the mantle of fatherhood on him. Not even Richard could claim that honour. Undoubtedly, it was his own son or daughter that Jacob named in the prophecy; his flesh and blood will be the island’s true heir. That has to be the ultimate reward for his service, and a sign that all is forgiven.
As he steers Antigone home, Charles considers how to meet the new responsibilities coming to him. Now that they are bound together forever, he vows to cherish Eloise like never before. He promises to teach his son or daughter to be strong and wise; he will see to it that he or she will possess all the traits absent in father and mother - patience and kindness, loyalty and honour; his child will be a trusted and respected leader, and not need to rely so much on ancient words woven into a tapestry.
He is still brimming with the joy of his legacy when he rides into camp, and therefore doesn’t immediately notice the tense atmosphere. He dismounts and begins to rub Antigone down, all the while composing a list. Arthur, Hera, Ishmael, Athena. Charles chuckles as he realizes he is favouring names from the great myths - as if his child will not already carry with it the burden of grandeur. Something simple would be better. Jane, Matthew, Ann. One of his sisters was named Ann, he recalls, remembering a world where tea occurred everyday at 4:00 p.m., he wore short pants, and spent his days making model airplanes. For a moment he pauses, and is stuck unlocking a memory. What was his father’s name?
Dale, Darren, Dean…
His father was last seen on the veranda of the Widmore Tea Plantation dressed in his grey suit, hat in hand, stiff upper lip. Under the hot noon sun, the Japanese soldiers took him and his dignity away. Of course, Charles hadn’t seen this; he had been hiding in the fields with his mother and sisters, but he imagined this is what happened. Since then, he had done his research. He knew his father had not survived the prisoner of war camp, but the Widmore women had made it safely back home to Britain. He had watched his grown sisters from afar once, on one of his visits to England. He felt nothing when he saw them. They were a fussy bunch doused with lace and perfume, and seemed none the poorer for losing a brother at sea and a father to war.
He is certain his father’s name began with a D. David, Damien, Derrick…
If I have a son, he thinks, I would like to name him after my father. Charles looks up from Antigone to see Richard crossing the camp. There is someone who never forgets a thing. Perhaps he once told Richard his father’s name. Charles starts to call out to him until he remembers his promise to Eloise not to tell anyone about the baby yet. It is then he notices the entire camp is standing around, conversing quietly in small circles. Dinner sits cooked but uneaten. He slaps Antigone’s flank and she canters off into the meadow to graze. Snippets of anxious conversation greet his ears as he makes his way through the camp.
“The Dharma boy….”
“Richard believes…”
“The truce will be over…”
“The temple…”
Anxiety slivers down his spine until he finds Eloise. She is crouched at the far end of the camp, distributing rifles and hand guns from the burrow that houses one of their weapons inventory.
“Good, you’re back,” she says, when she spots him. “I need you to stand guard at the west ridge.”
Her habit of starting off with an order, rather than an explanation, naturally rankles him, but he is reminded of his earlier vow to cherish her, and therefore holds back from responding defensively. “What’s happening?”
His newfound patience gives him time to appreciate Eloise is not deliberately provoking him. She is actually at a loss for words herself. At first he reads this as pure fatigue; he notices she has to place each hand on her thighs to push herself upwards. Ever since she told him about the baby, he has been attentive to a new weariness in her. Although there has been little noticeable physical change, she carries herself as if already burdened with extra weight. Then he catches the displeasure in her face.
“Richard has seen fit to take a Dharma boy in.” Giving him a moment to process this remark, she removes the band of cloth that keeps her hair off her face, and scoops back loose curls that had escaped throughout the day. She smoothes the hair back and replaces the band. “We expect them to come looking for him.”
“What would possess him to do something like that?”
“The boy was near death,” she pauses, and then delivers more startling news. “Richard took him to The Temple.”
Charles’s jaw falls open. He thinks he would be less shocked if Eloise announced Richard transformed into a giraffe.
“He bound one of them to us?”
“He claimed it was Jacob’s will.” Eloise says this with a resignation that acknowledges the trouble Richard’s decision will bring to their camp and the changes that could follow for everyone, especially the two of them. The last thing that had been Jacob’s will was Eloise becoming their leader.
Without another word, Charles leaves Eloise and marches over to Richard’s tent. He tells himself to be diplomatic, but that promise dissolves as he sees Richard is bent over his wash bowl, scrubbing his hands carefully. It seems symbolic and not just a sign of the man’s fanatical neatness. Charles reads the act as Richard washing away his responsibility for such a breach in protocol, and perhaps washing his hands of any previous pronouncements of Jacob’s will.
Without looking up, Richard greets him calmly, the way he would if an innocent invitation to play chess was to follow. “Charles.”
Charles plants himself firmly behind the wash bowl, determined not to be easily pacified by the judiciously sound remarks Richard has prepared to explain his actions. Of course his poise loses some of its punch when he finds himself automatically handing over a towel for Richard’s outstretch hands.
“Thank you.” Richard dries his hands as thoroughly as he had cleaned them. “I suppose you are here about Ben.”
“Ben?” The name seems all too familiar on Richard’s lips, like he had spoken it many times before or at least thought it.
“Young Ben is to be our guest until he is strong enough to return to his people.”
Richard had never been a fan of democracy, so it is no surprise to Charles that the matter is not up for discussion. Still, he is immediately relieved to know the boy is not staying; however, that does not excuse the danger Richard has placed them in or the breach of their most sacred ground.
“You do realize what this could cost us?”
“LaFleur brought him to me. Explaining that will be his problem, not ours.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“LaFleur has been sent here for a reason. Maybe this is it.”
Putting any trust in the cowboy called LaFleur is another matter altogether, but he leaves that for now. “But The Temple, Richard? How could you bring him there?”
“He is only a child, Charles.”
“He is not our child.”
“One doesn’t have to fall from the sky or wash onto our shores for Jacob to have called them to us.”
“You shouldn’t have…” He is about to chastise Richard further and risk his wrath, when another idea occurs to him. “If you had bothered consulting Eloise, you would know we have much to risk by taking an outsider in now.”
Richard’s only response is to raise his eyebrow. That gesture carries with it the weight of centuries and is usually enough to silence any debate. Yet Charles continues, bolstered by the confidence that flows from having something Richard never will. “Eloise and I are expecting a child.” Richard stands there expressionless, so he adds, “Ellie’s pregnant,” and then feels ridiculous at the need to be so explicit. Certainly Richard does not need a diagram drawn for him.
“I see,” he remarks and Charles knows it is a lie. Clearly he had not seen. An awkward smile and puff of laughter follows. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Then Richard nods to where Eloise stands, arranging for sentries. “When things settle down, we’ll have a proper celebration.” Apparently that is all Richard has to say on this monumental matter. He retrieves a platter of food covered with a cloth and ducks into his tent. As he does, Charles gets a peek at the unconscious boy. The slight figure on Richard’s cot hardly looks like a troublemaker. He would pass as harmless if not for the wound in his chest. What would provoke someone among the child-loving Dharma clan to shoot this boy? Once he’s awake, Charles plans to grill him for information and more importantly, make sure young Ben knows where he belongs.
x x x
In the three days following Ben’s arrival, the camp remains on high alert. Charles’s interrogation of the boy comes to nothing. His mind is too muddled from Richard’s ministrations to provide them with any intelligence. The only thing clear is his desperation to stay with them. Under other circumstances Charles might have found Ben’s pluck admirable, but now he could too easily become Richard’s new pet. Luckily, Richard has other plans in mind and there is no need to force the issue. Believing Ben is more useful to them on the other side, Richard makes preparations to send a message to LaFleur for a pick-up as soon as Ben is strong enough to walk back. Until then, they keep him concealed and sentries on at all times. Everyone’s eyes are keen to pick out a brown jumpsuit slipping through their landscape.
Still no one expected anyone from Dharma to arrive so boldly, marching right into their camp, waving a weapon and demanding to see Eloise. From his post on the west ridge, Charles sees the slim man approach and train his gun on Richard. He notes Eloise is on top of this and takes the opportunity to mount Antigone and circle back to pick up the man’s trail and ensure he came alone.
Charles can see why young Ben wants out of Dharma. If he needed any other proof of how foolish an operation they were, it is the man’s companions he finds gawking in the bushes like they were trying to avoid paying the entrance fee to some peep show and not infiltrating their enemy’s camp. The man and woman jump ten feet at the sound of Ellie’s rifle shot, and he and Erik take the two in with little fuss.
He returns to camp, his prisoners in tow, to find Eloise the picture of bewilderment. She’s standing over the intruder’s body wearing an expression that reminds Charles of a day long ago, when Eloise still had a lisp and wore her hair in pigtails. He had found her standing over the dead iguana she had kept in cage and fed crickets and greens. Richard had called it her first lesson in life and death. At the time, Charles had privately thought she had been an idiot to keep it caged and that’s what probably did it in. Since then he had seen Eloise stand over the bodies of the dozens of men and women she had killed, the American GIs and a considerable amount of Dharmanites before the truce. While she had never been overly triumphant in her kills, he had never seen her so taken aback at the sight of one before her. She soon recovers herself to query the man and woman he captured. They are put in her tent, but Eloise delays going to them. She remains hovering over the corpse clutching some book, her face drained of all colour.
Charles glances between her frozen stature and the body. He thinks there is something vaguely familiar about the young man with the bloodstained jumpsuit. Perhaps they had an encounter in the war or maybe he had once been Eloise’s prisoner. Her sentimental side always struck at the oddest times, he muses. Maybe this is the infamous pregnancy hormones LaFleur’s wife warned her about. After awhile, Eloise’s interests shifts from the man’s body to his book. When Charles dares interrupt her reverie and ask her about the man, she brushes off his questions and goes to talk to prisoners whom she insists are not Dharma at all.
Charles decides to approach a source he suspects will be more willing to talk. A shot of adrenaline surfaces when he finds Richard’s tent empty. For a moment he fears Dharma had gotten the drop on them and taken Ben back. Then he hears laboured wheezing coming from below the cot.
“Come up here boy, don’t be a coward.” There’s a shifting under the cot and shortly Charles can see his boots reflected in the boy’s eyeglasses. “No worries. You’ve been given a reprieve. No one’s dragging you home to mommy yet.”
The boy crawls up from under the bed and dusts the dirt off his pyjamas and bandages. “My mother is dead.” He says this with a hint of scorn, like it’s a fact Charles should already be aware of.
“Well, I hope that man out there was not your father.” It was a comment originally intended as a sneer, but it comes out with real sincerity when Charles realizes making Ben an orphan would likely implore Richard to keep him.
Now that Ben has Charles’s attention, he starts pouring on the pity routine, hoping to prick his sympathy chords, and get an invitation to stay. “My dad wouldn’t come here for me.”
“Well, someone did.” Charles grips Ben by his skinny shoulders and takes him to the tent door and points across the body. “Who is he?”
Ben takes a tentative step forward and then shirks back. “I don’t know. A scientist? He’s wearing grey.”
Charles doesn’t let him escape back to the tent. “Go on, take a closer look.” He tries to propel Ben forward, but for a boy with little body weight and a gaping wound, Ben does a tremendous job of remaining where he is. Charles stops short of manhandling him when he see Richard is watching them from where he kneels, taking his own vigil by the scientist's body.
“Did you shoot him?” Ben asks with a shiver.
“Yes.”
“Will Richard take him to The Temple?”
“No,” Charles sighs, and then reconsiders. For all he knew, Richard would have done just that if the man had lived long enough to be healed, just to prove he could. Suddenly he feels very out of the loop.
Ben changes the subject. “Why are there no other kids here?”
“Because we eat them.” Charles doesn’t wait to see if Ben takes his reply seriously. He leaves the boy where he is and goes to Richard’s side. “Tell me something. Why is it that this man looks familiar to me?”
Richard’s bottomless eyes look to him with what appears to be great pity. He can’t query it because Eloise appears, interrupting them.
“Richard, you and Erik are coming with me.”
“Going with you where?” For once Richard’s confusion matches Charles’s.
Eloise nods to the prisoners Erik had taken from her tent. “You can untie them,” she tells Richard, unfolding a blanket and stretching it over the scientist’s body. “I’m taking them to the bomb.” Richard’s eyes go wide and then turn mournful at her next instruction. “Would you mind giving us a moment?”
Sometimes Charles believes he spends half his days waiting for Eloise to explain herself, and the rest trying to understand her meaning. This is no exception. He waits anxiously, rocking back on his heels, for her to reveal her plan and his part in it.
She closes the dead man’s eyes with surprising tenderness. “This man is…was Daniel Faraday.”
The name means nothing to Charles, except it triggers the memory he had been searching for. Daniel. That had been his father’s name. He is so pleased to remember this that he almost misses what Eloise says next.
“He is the physicist I took to the bomb.”
“Ah,” Charles says, pretending this was the only piece of the puzzle he lacked. So he had come with LaFleur and now died out of time. He guesses that is rather unfortunate.
“He…,” Eloise trails off. Wetness pools at the corner of her eyes causing Charles to fumble for the handkerchief in his pocket. He hands it to her and all she does is clutch it, letting the tears fall. “He thought he could change the past.”
“A little late for that, I would say.”
“What if he was right?”
“There’s nothing in my past I would want to change.”
Eloise nods at this statement and smiles at him through her tears. She returns his handkerchief unused, and then plucks the book tucked under her arm and opens it for him to read.
“That’s my handwriting.”
Charles reads the familiar script, Daniel, No matter what, remember, I will always love you. Mother. He looks from the leather bound journal to the body and then to Eloise, a horrifying thought dawning on him. As he pieces together what they knew about the time travellers, his earlier thought echoes in my ear. If I have a son, I would like to name him after my father.
“No.” His voice sounds frail and weak. Charles feels like he’s aged a hundred years in as many seconds.
“Before he died, he called me mother.”
He refuses to believe. “LaFleur’s wife must have told them you were pregnant. It’s a trick.”
Eloise encircles her hands over his clutched fists and draws him to her, placing his palm flat against her stomach. “I wish it were.”
He swallows, bucks up, and pushes down the nausea circling his throat. “What are you planning with the bomb?”
“Erase my mistake. It is worth a-”
Normally Charles found fault with all of Eloise’s decisions, be they small or big. He routinely derided her choice of location for their winter camp and questioned her list of supplies to be purchased off island. It was a reflex, one that came from being eager to prove he had something to contribute too, and because he hated the sheep mentality the camp had toward their chosen leader. But mainly, he did this because Eloise had a habit of making outrageous decisions with severe consequences based on nothing more than a feeling. Two of the biggest ones had been her choice to fill in The Passageway and to make a truce with Dharma. Now she had presented him with what sounded like her worst idea yet; a vague plan based on a huge leap in logic, dependent on a dead man’s whims, and involving a weapon that could destroy them all. Charles had every right to call into question her sanity and shut down this operation now. Instead he takes a deep breath, and simply says, “Do it.”
Eloise flinches at his quick agreement. He wants to say more, and explain his newfound trust in her, or perhaps in the man called Daniel, but Charles says nothing because doesn’t want to have to dig any deeper beyond the gnawing ache in his chest. Eloise grips his hand once more and turns from him. He watches her gather the prisoners and relay orders. The last thing he sees her do is lovingly place the journal in her satchel. Once she’s gone, Charles stays where he is. Two men come to remove the body and he sends them off. He remains sitting back on his heels; one hand rests on Daniel’s covered feet. They, like the rest of the body, seem far too large to belong to his son.
x x x
Two, three hours pass and still he doesn’t leave Daniel. The sun reaches its highest point and begins to drop. Charles can feel the progression as the heat passes across his back like the hands of a watch. People step around him, whispering. He should make an effort to assure them in Eloise’s absence, but he can’t leave Daniel alone.
A shadow appears beside him. Charles moves to shoo whoever it is away, when he sees that it is Ben. The boy’s small hands are cupped in front of his bandaged wound, which, Charles notes, is exactly where Daniel was shot too.
“When people die at the Dharma village, someone always sits with the body until their pyre is ready.”
“Is that right?”
“But they do it in shifts. Everyone takes a turn.”
“Did your mother die here?”
“No. But I see her here sometimes. It’s scary, but I like it too.”
Charles is deaf to Ben’s last words. He had shifted his feet, causing blood to rush to his numb ankles, filling them with pins and needles. His brain similarly buzzes with an idea. Whether Eloise’s plan failed or succeeded, there is still something he could do. He turns to Ben and looks him up and down. “Ben, would you be good boy and sit with Daniel until I get back?”
Ben’s mouth hangs open. “The children never sit with the bodies.”
“Well, you’re quite the young man now. I would take it as a personal favour. I know Richard would appreciate it to,” he adds, getting to his feet.
Ben nods, and sits down with his legs crossed, about a foot away from Daniel.
“If you feel sick, ask someone else to replace you. Don’t leave him alone, do you hear me?”
“Where are you going?”
“A good man always has a plan, Ben.”
Charles leaves the camp at a brisk pace and heads in the direction opposite to where Eloise left. Along the way he whistles for Antigone. She appears a minute later from the mango grove with sticky sweet juice on her velvet lips. She comes to him, and he scratches behind her hooded ears. Charles grabs her mane with the hand not holding his rifle and mounts her. Without directing her, she knows to head north toward the Dharma border which they cross without trouble, and onward to The Orchid.
He leaves the horse about a mile away from the station and continues on foot. He encounters no traffic or security patrols. The entire region appears deserted. When he arrives at the station, he finds it too is devoid of vehicles and personnel. Deep tires treads are left in the mud, suggesting people had left recently in a hurry. He takes their absence as a sign this is meant to be.
The building’s layout is identical to the stolen plans he has studied and he finds the entrance and elevator easily. He unlatches the safety on his rifle before the door opens, but no one is inside either. In the office, computers have been left on and coffee sat in half empty mugs. He looks through a hole in the incomplete floor and scuttles down the utility stairs to the shaft below.
Smooth reinforced steel make up three walls in the lowest level. In front of him is the crudely dimpled mass of concrete he and Eloise had poured down The Passageway a week after Daniel and John Locke’s first visit. She had been right all along. Having the power to bend space and time was not meant for mankind. The least he could do now was ensure Dharma could not use it. Perhaps that would mean in the future, his son would not be lost in time.
A sledgehammer drill rests against a wheelbarrow. Charles goes to take it, and then has a better idea. He returns upstairs and stares at the newly installed chamber built up against The Passageway and begins to fulfil their long delayed plan for sabotage. Charles places any metal object he can find inside the tube - garbage pails, chairs, a heavy stand, even someone’s tin lunch pail with half a ham sandwich inside. For good measure he carries up both the drill and wheelbarrow, and throws them in too. Then he seals the door and flips on every switch he can find. At the main computer terminal he enters a sequence of numbers he remembers from the documents they stole from Dr. Chang - 4 8 15 16 23 42.
At first, nothing happens. Then the floor beneath him vibrates and Charles skids into the sharp corner of the desk behind him. Sparks begin to fly in the chamber. A loud whirling noise flares and that is followed by a deafening bang. The lights flicker and the computer monitors in front of him dim and short out. Grey smoke pours from the chamber.
Covering his mouth with his handkerchief, Charles races downstairs again and sees his efforts have cracked open the Passageway. Part of the old wheel is exposed and loose. It quivers in place as if Charles had imbued it with life, not death. His hand reaches to steady it. As he grips the smooth wood he had helped carve, another explosion erupts from above him. The handle slips out of his grip and lodges firmly in a knot of fragmented concrete. He’s about to look for the dynamite he knows is stored here and finish the job, when the floor begins to shake again and a bright light creeps out of the fractured rock and turns the room a white yellow. He watches the column of light seep through the entire station. It appears to have enough capacity to the fill the entire island.
He has enough presence of mind to think before he is blinded, “What have I done?”
x x x
To be continued here.
Characters: Charles/Eloise, Ensemble
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine. Seriously? Seriously.
Rating: PG13
Words: 4700
Spoilers: Up to The Incident
Summary: It starts and ends with a prophecy, but there’s really nothing divine about the mess Charles and Eloise made over the course of sixty-five years. Many thanks to angeldylan628 for her beta duties. For lenina20’s prompt Charles/Eloise “past”.
Part One - The Prelude (1942) and The Coronation (1954), Part Two - The Truce (1973), Part Three - Full Moon (1977)
x x x
1977 - Uninvited Guests
Charles does his best thinking while riding. After discovering Eloise’s secret, he spends the day on horseback. It sounds fanciful, and he would never say this aloud, but he believes Antigone, his horse, is his conduit to the island. Whenever her hooves pound the jungle floor or splash through the sea water, he feels the island itself vibrate through his body and speak to him. It grounds him, calls him home, and reminds him of his purpose.
“We’re all here to do our part,” Richard had explained when Charles was old enough to recognize the island was more than a sandbox meant for his pleasure, but a slice of paradise, the paradise, the one pictured in his mother’s Bible as a lush, wise and forbidden place.
“What will you do, Charles?” Richard had asked, his usual dose of solemnity doubled for the occasion.
“I will serve,” Charles had said, matching Richard’s seriousness and hoping the man was not looking for specifics.
”Then it shall serve you,” Richard had replied. Though he had smiled with his response, there was a sense of forbidding in what lay unspoken. Fail to serve the island, and it will punish you.
As Charles sits astride Antigone and watches the sun drop behind the valley, he contemplates how until now, he felt certain he had always bordered on the brink of failure in the island’s eyes. When he first arrived, he had been who they all had whispered about, the suspected special child Jacob’s prophecy spoke of. But then Eloise appeared in her party dress and crooked smile, having inadvertently managed to unleash space and time. From then on, if he wasn’t ignored, he was misunderstood, and yet he served. He risked his own life countless times to battle outsiders. He broke rules about worldly dealings only because he thought financial solvency gave them options. He dammed his soul and killed one of their own because he thought it best to protect the island. And for what?
But now, everything had changed. The island had seen fit to reward him like no other. It granted him a child and bestowed the mantle of fatherhood on him. Not even Richard could claim that honour. Undoubtedly, it was his own son or daughter that Jacob named in the prophecy; his flesh and blood will be the island’s true heir. That has to be the ultimate reward for his service, and a sign that all is forgiven.
As he steers Antigone home, Charles considers how to meet the new responsibilities coming to him. Now that they are bound together forever, he vows to cherish Eloise like never before. He promises to teach his son or daughter to be strong and wise; he will see to it that he or she will possess all the traits absent in father and mother - patience and kindness, loyalty and honour; his child will be a trusted and respected leader, and not need to rely so much on ancient words woven into a tapestry.
He is still brimming with the joy of his legacy when he rides into camp, and therefore doesn’t immediately notice the tense atmosphere. He dismounts and begins to rub Antigone down, all the while composing a list. Arthur, Hera, Ishmael, Athena. Charles chuckles as he realizes he is favouring names from the great myths - as if his child will not already carry with it the burden of grandeur. Something simple would be better. Jane, Matthew, Ann. One of his sisters was named Ann, he recalls, remembering a world where tea occurred everyday at 4:00 p.m., he wore short pants, and spent his days making model airplanes. For a moment he pauses, and is stuck unlocking a memory. What was his father’s name?
Dale, Darren, Dean…
His father was last seen on the veranda of the Widmore Tea Plantation dressed in his grey suit, hat in hand, stiff upper lip. Under the hot noon sun, the Japanese soldiers took him and his dignity away. Of course, Charles hadn’t seen this; he had been hiding in the fields with his mother and sisters, but he imagined this is what happened. Since then, he had done his research. He knew his father had not survived the prisoner of war camp, but the Widmore women had made it safely back home to Britain. He had watched his grown sisters from afar once, on one of his visits to England. He felt nothing when he saw them. They were a fussy bunch doused with lace and perfume, and seemed none the poorer for losing a brother at sea and a father to war.
He is certain his father’s name began with a D. David, Damien, Derrick…
If I have a son, he thinks, I would like to name him after my father. Charles looks up from Antigone to see Richard crossing the camp. There is someone who never forgets a thing. Perhaps he once told Richard his father’s name. Charles starts to call out to him until he remembers his promise to Eloise not to tell anyone about the baby yet. It is then he notices the entire camp is standing around, conversing quietly in small circles. Dinner sits cooked but uneaten. He slaps Antigone’s flank and she canters off into the meadow to graze. Snippets of anxious conversation greet his ears as he makes his way through the camp.
“The Dharma boy….”
“Richard believes…”
“The truce will be over…”
“The temple…”
Anxiety slivers down his spine until he finds Eloise. She is crouched at the far end of the camp, distributing rifles and hand guns from the burrow that houses one of their weapons inventory.
“Good, you’re back,” she says, when she spots him. “I need you to stand guard at the west ridge.”
Her habit of starting off with an order, rather than an explanation, naturally rankles him, but he is reminded of his earlier vow to cherish her, and therefore holds back from responding defensively. “What’s happening?”
His newfound patience gives him time to appreciate Eloise is not deliberately provoking him. She is actually at a loss for words herself. At first he reads this as pure fatigue; he notices she has to place each hand on her thighs to push herself upwards. Ever since she told him about the baby, he has been attentive to a new weariness in her. Although there has been little noticeable physical change, she carries herself as if already burdened with extra weight. Then he catches the displeasure in her face.
“Richard has seen fit to take a Dharma boy in.” Giving him a moment to process this remark, she removes the band of cloth that keeps her hair off her face, and scoops back loose curls that had escaped throughout the day. She smoothes the hair back and replaces the band. “We expect them to come looking for him.”
“What would possess him to do something like that?”
“The boy was near death,” she pauses, and then delivers more startling news. “Richard took him to The Temple.”
Charles’s jaw falls open. He thinks he would be less shocked if Eloise announced Richard transformed into a giraffe.
“He bound one of them to us?”
“He claimed it was Jacob’s will.” Eloise says this with a resignation that acknowledges the trouble Richard’s decision will bring to their camp and the changes that could follow for everyone, especially the two of them. The last thing that had been Jacob’s will was Eloise becoming their leader.
Without another word, Charles leaves Eloise and marches over to Richard’s tent. He tells himself to be diplomatic, but that promise dissolves as he sees Richard is bent over his wash bowl, scrubbing his hands carefully. It seems symbolic and not just a sign of the man’s fanatical neatness. Charles reads the act as Richard washing away his responsibility for such a breach in protocol, and perhaps washing his hands of any previous pronouncements of Jacob’s will.
Without looking up, Richard greets him calmly, the way he would if an innocent invitation to play chess was to follow. “Charles.”
Charles plants himself firmly behind the wash bowl, determined not to be easily pacified by the judiciously sound remarks Richard has prepared to explain his actions. Of course his poise loses some of its punch when he finds himself automatically handing over a towel for Richard’s outstretch hands.
“Thank you.” Richard dries his hands as thoroughly as he had cleaned them. “I suppose you are here about Ben.”
“Ben?” The name seems all too familiar on Richard’s lips, like he had spoken it many times before or at least thought it.
“Young Ben is to be our guest until he is strong enough to return to his people.”
Richard had never been a fan of democracy, so it is no surprise to Charles that the matter is not up for discussion. Still, he is immediately relieved to know the boy is not staying; however, that does not excuse the danger Richard has placed them in or the breach of their most sacred ground.
“You do realize what this could cost us?”
“LaFleur brought him to me. Explaining that will be his problem, not ours.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“LaFleur has been sent here for a reason. Maybe this is it.”
Putting any trust in the cowboy called LaFleur is another matter altogether, but he leaves that for now. “But The Temple, Richard? How could you bring him there?”
“He is only a child, Charles.”
“He is not our child.”
“One doesn’t have to fall from the sky or wash onto our shores for Jacob to have called them to us.”
“You shouldn’t have…” He is about to chastise Richard further and risk his wrath, when another idea occurs to him. “If you had bothered consulting Eloise, you would know we have much to risk by taking an outsider in now.”
Richard’s only response is to raise his eyebrow. That gesture carries with it the weight of centuries and is usually enough to silence any debate. Yet Charles continues, bolstered by the confidence that flows from having something Richard never will. “Eloise and I are expecting a child.” Richard stands there expressionless, so he adds, “Ellie’s pregnant,” and then feels ridiculous at the need to be so explicit. Certainly Richard does not need a diagram drawn for him.
“I see,” he remarks and Charles knows it is a lie. Clearly he had not seen. An awkward smile and puff of laughter follows. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Then Richard nods to where Eloise stands, arranging for sentries. “When things settle down, we’ll have a proper celebration.” Apparently that is all Richard has to say on this monumental matter. He retrieves a platter of food covered with a cloth and ducks into his tent. As he does, Charles gets a peek at the unconscious boy. The slight figure on Richard’s cot hardly looks like a troublemaker. He would pass as harmless if not for the wound in his chest. What would provoke someone among the child-loving Dharma clan to shoot this boy? Once he’s awake, Charles plans to grill him for information and more importantly, make sure young Ben knows where he belongs.
x x x
In the three days following Ben’s arrival, the camp remains on high alert. Charles’s interrogation of the boy comes to nothing. His mind is too muddled from Richard’s ministrations to provide them with any intelligence. The only thing clear is his desperation to stay with them. Under other circumstances Charles might have found Ben’s pluck admirable, but now he could too easily become Richard’s new pet. Luckily, Richard has other plans in mind and there is no need to force the issue. Believing Ben is more useful to them on the other side, Richard makes preparations to send a message to LaFleur for a pick-up as soon as Ben is strong enough to walk back. Until then, they keep him concealed and sentries on at all times. Everyone’s eyes are keen to pick out a brown jumpsuit slipping through their landscape.
Still no one expected anyone from Dharma to arrive so boldly, marching right into their camp, waving a weapon and demanding to see Eloise. From his post on the west ridge, Charles sees the slim man approach and train his gun on Richard. He notes Eloise is on top of this and takes the opportunity to mount Antigone and circle back to pick up the man’s trail and ensure he came alone.
Charles can see why young Ben wants out of Dharma. If he needed any other proof of how foolish an operation they were, it is the man’s companions he finds gawking in the bushes like they were trying to avoid paying the entrance fee to some peep show and not infiltrating their enemy’s camp. The man and woman jump ten feet at the sound of Ellie’s rifle shot, and he and Erik take the two in with little fuss.
He returns to camp, his prisoners in tow, to find Eloise the picture of bewilderment. She’s standing over the intruder’s body wearing an expression that reminds Charles of a day long ago, when Eloise still had a lisp and wore her hair in pigtails. He had found her standing over the dead iguana she had kept in cage and fed crickets and greens. Richard had called it her first lesson in life and death. At the time, Charles had privately thought she had been an idiot to keep it caged and that’s what probably did it in. Since then he had seen Eloise stand over the bodies of the dozens of men and women she had killed, the American GIs and a considerable amount of Dharmanites before the truce. While she had never been overly triumphant in her kills, he had never seen her so taken aback at the sight of one before her. She soon recovers herself to query the man and woman he captured. They are put in her tent, but Eloise delays going to them. She remains hovering over the corpse clutching some book, her face drained of all colour.
Charles glances between her frozen stature and the body. He thinks there is something vaguely familiar about the young man with the bloodstained jumpsuit. Perhaps they had an encounter in the war or maybe he had once been Eloise’s prisoner. Her sentimental side always struck at the oddest times, he muses. Maybe this is the infamous pregnancy hormones LaFleur’s wife warned her about. After awhile, Eloise’s interests shifts from the man’s body to his book. When Charles dares interrupt her reverie and ask her about the man, she brushes off his questions and goes to talk to prisoners whom she insists are not Dharma at all.
Charles decides to approach a source he suspects will be more willing to talk. A shot of adrenaline surfaces when he finds Richard’s tent empty. For a moment he fears Dharma had gotten the drop on them and taken Ben back. Then he hears laboured wheezing coming from below the cot.
“Come up here boy, don’t be a coward.” There’s a shifting under the cot and shortly Charles can see his boots reflected in the boy’s eyeglasses. “No worries. You’ve been given a reprieve. No one’s dragging you home to mommy yet.”
The boy crawls up from under the bed and dusts the dirt off his pyjamas and bandages. “My mother is dead.” He says this with a hint of scorn, like it’s a fact Charles should already be aware of.
“Well, I hope that man out there was not your father.” It was a comment originally intended as a sneer, but it comes out with real sincerity when Charles realizes making Ben an orphan would likely implore Richard to keep him.
Now that Ben has Charles’s attention, he starts pouring on the pity routine, hoping to prick his sympathy chords, and get an invitation to stay. “My dad wouldn’t come here for me.”
“Well, someone did.” Charles grips Ben by his skinny shoulders and takes him to the tent door and points across the body. “Who is he?”
Ben takes a tentative step forward and then shirks back. “I don’t know. A scientist? He’s wearing grey.”
Charles doesn’t let him escape back to the tent. “Go on, take a closer look.” He tries to propel Ben forward, but for a boy with little body weight and a gaping wound, Ben does a tremendous job of remaining where he is. Charles stops short of manhandling him when he see Richard is watching them from where he kneels, taking his own vigil by the scientist's body.
“Did you shoot him?” Ben asks with a shiver.
“Yes.”
“Will Richard take him to The Temple?”
“No,” Charles sighs, and then reconsiders. For all he knew, Richard would have done just that if the man had lived long enough to be healed, just to prove he could. Suddenly he feels very out of the loop.
Ben changes the subject. “Why are there no other kids here?”
“Because we eat them.” Charles doesn’t wait to see if Ben takes his reply seriously. He leaves the boy where he is and goes to Richard’s side. “Tell me something. Why is it that this man looks familiar to me?”
Richard’s bottomless eyes look to him with what appears to be great pity. He can’t query it because Eloise appears, interrupting them.
“Richard, you and Erik are coming with me.”
“Going with you where?” For once Richard’s confusion matches Charles’s.
Eloise nods to the prisoners Erik had taken from her tent. “You can untie them,” she tells Richard, unfolding a blanket and stretching it over the scientist’s body. “I’m taking them to the bomb.” Richard’s eyes go wide and then turn mournful at her next instruction. “Would you mind giving us a moment?”
Sometimes Charles believes he spends half his days waiting for Eloise to explain herself, and the rest trying to understand her meaning. This is no exception. He waits anxiously, rocking back on his heels, for her to reveal her plan and his part in it.
She closes the dead man’s eyes with surprising tenderness. “This man is…was Daniel Faraday.”
The name means nothing to Charles, except it triggers the memory he had been searching for. Daniel. That had been his father’s name. He is so pleased to remember this that he almost misses what Eloise says next.
“He is the physicist I took to the bomb.”
“Ah,” Charles says, pretending this was the only piece of the puzzle he lacked. So he had come with LaFleur and now died out of time. He guesses that is rather unfortunate.
“He…,” Eloise trails off. Wetness pools at the corner of her eyes causing Charles to fumble for the handkerchief in his pocket. He hands it to her and all she does is clutch it, letting the tears fall. “He thought he could change the past.”
“A little late for that, I would say.”
“What if he was right?”
“There’s nothing in my past I would want to change.”
Eloise nods at this statement and smiles at him through her tears. She returns his handkerchief unused, and then plucks the book tucked under her arm and opens it for him to read.
“That’s my handwriting.”
Charles reads the familiar script, Daniel, No matter what, remember, I will always love you. Mother. He looks from the leather bound journal to the body and then to Eloise, a horrifying thought dawning on him. As he pieces together what they knew about the time travellers, his earlier thought echoes in my ear. If I have a son, I would like to name him after my father.
“No.” His voice sounds frail and weak. Charles feels like he’s aged a hundred years in as many seconds.
“Before he died, he called me mother.”
He refuses to believe. “LaFleur’s wife must have told them you were pregnant. It’s a trick.”
Eloise encircles her hands over his clutched fists and draws him to her, placing his palm flat against her stomach. “I wish it were.”
He swallows, bucks up, and pushes down the nausea circling his throat. “What are you planning with the bomb?”
“Erase my mistake. It is worth a-”
Normally Charles found fault with all of Eloise’s decisions, be they small or big. He routinely derided her choice of location for their winter camp and questioned her list of supplies to be purchased off island. It was a reflex, one that came from being eager to prove he had something to contribute too, and because he hated the sheep mentality the camp had toward their chosen leader. But mainly, he did this because Eloise had a habit of making outrageous decisions with severe consequences based on nothing more than a feeling. Two of the biggest ones had been her choice to fill in The Passageway and to make a truce with Dharma. Now she had presented him with what sounded like her worst idea yet; a vague plan based on a huge leap in logic, dependent on a dead man’s whims, and involving a weapon that could destroy them all. Charles had every right to call into question her sanity and shut down this operation now. Instead he takes a deep breath, and simply says, “Do it.”
Eloise flinches at his quick agreement. He wants to say more, and explain his newfound trust in her, or perhaps in the man called Daniel, but Charles says nothing because doesn’t want to have to dig any deeper beyond the gnawing ache in his chest. Eloise grips his hand once more and turns from him. He watches her gather the prisoners and relay orders. The last thing he sees her do is lovingly place the journal in her satchel. Once she’s gone, Charles stays where he is. Two men come to remove the body and he sends them off. He remains sitting back on his heels; one hand rests on Daniel’s covered feet. They, like the rest of the body, seem far too large to belong to his son.
x x x
Two, three hours pass and still he doesn’t leave Daniel. The sun reaches its highest point and begins to drop. Charles can feel the progression as the heat passes across his back like the hands of a watch. People step around him, whispering. He should make an effort to assure them in Eloise’s absence, but he can’t leave Daniel alone.
A shadow appears beside him. Charles moves to shoo whoever it is away, when he sees that it is Ben. The boy’s small hands are cupped in front of his bandaged wound, which, Charles notes, is exactly where Daniel was shot too.
“When people die at the Dharma village, someone always sits with the body until their pyre is ready.”
“Is that right?”
“But they do it in shifts. Everyone takes a turn.”
“Did your mother die here?”
“No. But I see her here sometimes. It’s scary, but I like it too.”
Charles is deaf to Ben’s last words. He had shifted his feet, causing blood to rush to his numb ankles, filling them with pins and needles. His brain similarly buzzes with an idea. Whether Eloise’s plan failed or succeeded, there is still something he could do. He turns to Ben and looks him up and down. “Ben, would you be good boy and sit with Daniel until I get back?”
Ben’s mouth hangs open. “The children never sit with the bodies.”
“Well, you’re quite the young man now. I would take it as a personal favour. I know Richard would appreciate it to,” he adds, getting to his feet.
Ben nods, and sits down with his legs crossed, about a foot away from Daniel.
“If you feel sick, ask someone else to replace you. Don’t leave him alone, do you hear me?”
“Where are you going?”
“A good man always has a plan, Ben.”
Charles leaves the camp at a brisk pace and heads in the direction opposite to where Eloise left. Along the way he whistles for Antigone. She appears a minute later from the mango grove with sticky sweet juice on her velvet lips. She comes to him, and he scratches behind her hooded ears. Charles grabs her mane with the hand not holding his rifle and mounts her. Without directing her, she knows to head north toward the Dharma border which they cross without trouble, and onward to The Orchid.
He leaves the horse about a mile away from the station and continues on foot. He encounters no traffic or security patrols. The entire region appears deserted. When he arrives at the station, he finds it too is devoid of vehicles and personnel. Deep tires treads are left in the mud, suggesting people had left recently in a hurry. He takes their absence as a sign this is meant to be.
The building’s layout is identical to the stolen plans he has studied and he finds the entrance and elevator easily. He unlatches the safety on his rifle before the door opens, but no one is inside either. In the office, computers have been left on and coffee sat in half empty mugs. He looks through a hole in the incomplete floor and scuttles down the utility stairs to the shaft below.
Smooth reinforced steel make up three walls in the lowest level. In front of him is the crudely dimpled mass of concrete he and Eloise had poured down The Passageway a week after Daniel and John Locke’s first visit. She had been right all along. Having the power to bend space and time was not meant for mankind. The least he could do now was ensure Dharma could not use it. Perhaps that would mean in the future, his son would not be lost in time.
A sledgehammer drill rests against a wheelbarrow. Charles goes to take it, and then has a better idea. He returns upstairs and stares at the newly installed chamber built up against The Passageway and begins to fulfil their long delayed plan for sabotage. Charles places any metal object he can find inside the tube - garbage pails, chairs, a heavy stand, even someone’s tin lunch pail with half a ham sandwich inside. For good measure he carries up both the drill and wheelbarrow, and throws them in too. Then he seals the door and flips on every switch he can find. At the main computer terminal he enters a sequence of numbers he remembers from the documents they stole from Dr. Chang - 4 8 15 16 23 42.
At first, nothing happens. Then the floor beneath him vibrates and Charles skids into the sharp corner of the desk behind him. Sparks begin to fly in the chamber. A loud whirling noise flares and that is followed by a deafening bang. The lights flicker and the computer monitors in front of him dim and short out. Grey smoke pours from the chamber.
Covering his mouth with his handkerchief, Charles races downstairs again and sees his efforts have cracked open the Passageway. Part of the old wheel is exposed and loose. It quivers in place as if Charles had imbued it with life, not death. His hand reaches to steady it. As he grips the smooth wood he had helped carve, another explosion erupts from above him. The handle slips out of his grip and lodges firmly in a knot of fragmented concrete. He’s about to look for the dynamite he knows is stored here and finish the job, when the floor begins to shake again and a bright light creeps out of the fractured rock and turns the room a white yellow. He watches the column of light seep through the entire station. It appears to have enough capacity to the fill the entire island.
He has enough presence of mind to think before he is blinded, “What have I done?”
x x x
To be continued here.