Fic: Inheritance (1/1)
Title: Inheritance
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Daniel/Charlotte
Word Count: 3,227
Summary: They lead as a team, a unit; they keep their People safe. For valhalla37, who requested “Daniel/Charlotte, established relationship” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. AU, General Series Spoilers Through Season Five.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: This was just one of those ideas that hit me, and so I ran with it. I hope you enjoy!
Inheritance
He follows behind Richard, his own personal vanguard; he stays concealed in the shadows for a moment as he hears them bicker, lets them iron out the most grating details, the trivialities before he advances, before he takes the reins.
It’s not that he doesn’t like Horace Goodspeed, but they have a Treaty. They have had a Treaty for quite some time, now, and there are rules. And if one side insists on flaunting their agreement so flagrantly, they both know who will win the war.
Particularly when it involves his wife.
He cracks his knuckles and steps into the wan campus lighting that drowns out the moon, and he thinks, not for the first time, what life might have been among people such as this.
He never comes up with anything good.
Horace catches his approach before Richard deigns to acknowledge it, as is their way -- they play off of one another, an airtight dynamic between them, Richard’s gravitas concealing a compassionate core, where his own soft-spoken politeness belies his shrewdness, his own relentless need to get what he wants, to protect his people; this Island.
He watches with little pleasure as Horace blanches in the yellow gleam, as he swallows hard, throat working quick around his discomfort as he clears his throat. “Mr. Widmore,” he says, steady but too low, not his own voice -- they’ve been dealing long enough for it to be noticeable, now; “this is,” Horace pauses, swallows again, and it’s just a little thing, almost imperceptible, except he catches it, the way the Dharma leader’s hands tremble just inside the cuffs of his jumpsuit; “This is certainly a surprise.”
“Horace,” he speaks softly; he wants answers, and obedience, but he doesn’t want them to fear him. Not yet. “How many times have I asked you to call me Daniel?”
__________________
She’s reading through reports, things Daniel’s tried to convince her to let slide for the time being, when she hears the telltale scuffling of a visitor outside her tent.
“Who’s there?” she calls out, cranes her neck without putting down the perimeter security briefs in her hands when a familiar face peeks through the flap.
“Eloise,” Charlotte greets with a smile, abandoning her work and rising gingerly to her feet as she gestures to the makeshift settee in the corner near the table, the one Benjamin Linus made them as a wedding present. “Please, have a seat.”
Eloise settles onto the far end of the sofa, folding her hands in her lap as Charlotte scrounges for clean cups to serve some of the watered-down decaf she’s been nursing all morning -- she really cannot wait for the houses to be finished; Dan had promised they’d be ready within the month.
“How are you, dear?” Eloise calls, just as Charlotte’s blowing clean two mugs she finds stuck in the back corner of a low shelf. She groans as she uses her palms on her thighs for leverage, completely unaccustomed to the shift in her body, the changes in her weight.
“Well enough,” she replies, pouring the coffee and adding cream to her mother-in-law’s.
“Your parents are causing a stir, again,” Eloise comments as Charlotte hands her the cup and sits down at her side.
“So I’ve heard.”
“Daniel’s gone to speak with them, I assume?”
“Mmm,” Charlotte hums around the lip of her mug. “With Horace, yes.”
“And left you here to sort out the particulars?” Eloise raises an eyebrow and grins knowingly.
“Not without a fight,” Charlotte returns the smile, more exasperated than fond. “I can promise you that.”
“Don’t hold it against him, dear,” Eloise says in that mothering voice she has, that soft, indulgent tone that Charlotte imagines would spoil a grandchild and lightly scold a son. “He’s out of his mind with worry for you.”
Charlotte scoffs as Eloise reaches out and places a good-natured hand upon her knee. “For no good reason, mind,” Charlotte protests. “I’m absolutely fine.”
“Charlotte,” Eloise tightens her grip just a little around Charlotte’s leg, eyes turning dark and serious, “you know-”
“Of course I know,” Charlotte interrupts, perhaps a little too sharp, and she regrets it immediately, she does; it’s just maddening, the way they all hover when she hasn’t so much as sneezed wrong in the past seven-and-a-half months. “But Ethan’s been keeping a close enough watch on me, not to mention the fact that Richard’s taken to me like a damned bloodhound on a scent,” and Eloise laughs at that -- sympathetically, like she knows -- and the tension is effectively dispersed.
“There’s absolutely nothing to be concerned about,” Charlotte reiterates with a wave of her hand, adding wryly: “and if anything does pop up, one of them will probably notice before I do.”
Eloise sighs, putting her coffee down and turning more fully to face her daughter-in-law. “It’s difficult, dear, that much I know,” she says, a little nostalgic, and Charlotte feels a bit guilty -- knows who, and what, she’s remembering; “but what comes of it will be more than worth the struggle, I can promise you that.” She reaches out tentatively, pats Charlotte’s growing stomach, quick and gentle, and Charlotte can’t help but smile -- Eloise is a character, that’s for sure.
“I know,” she says, putting her own hand on the ever-expanding bump of her midsection and rubbing gently, as she finds herself doing more and more often of late. “I just,” she lets out a long breath, resigned, tired; “I feel a bit useless.”
Eloise nods, that indulgent smile back on her face, and Charlotte feels warm when its directed at her, that expression; always has. “Just remember that no one else thinks that what you’re doing is useless.” She reaches out, smoothes down Charlotte’s shoulder and breaks eye contact, her voice a little strained. “Everyone else things it’s a little bit of a miracle.” She flashes a watery kind of smile and looks away again, and Charlotte almost wants to reach out and and reassure her, but Eloise isn’t the type. Neither of them are.
“Are you going to see Charles today?” she tries instead, hoping that it feels like an olive branch, a compromise, instead of an intrusion.
“I am,” Eloise says, stoic; she always is, at first, when it comes to this, to him.
Charlotte bites her lip for a moment before she asks: “Can I join you?”
And Eloise; there’s something that drains out of her, something that leaves her smaller and more quiet, but she sounds almost relieved when she nods: “Of course, dear.”
__________________
It’s far into the jungle, near the Safe Line, and part of her loves Eloise just that little bit more than ever for never ones suggesting that they turn back, that Charlotte should just stay behind -- that instead, she simply moves slowly, walkes carefully across the longer path that’s a little more even, a little less rocky; that she merely stays close by and balances Charlotte when she wobbles without saying a word.
Daniel would throw a fit if he knew she were climbing to the summit at the edge of Grid 772.
By the look of the sun, it’s been a couple hours since they set out by the time they reach their destination -- she can’t know for sure; she’s still waiting for a replacement battery for her watch from the mainland. She lags a bit behind to catch her breath, gain her bearings as Eloise steps up to the small stone marking the grave, veers to the left to pick some flowering grass Charlotte can’t identify by name, and gathers it close in her hands as she approaches the headstone.
Charlotte doesn’t move until Eloise is done talking to the memory of her husband, isn’t meant to hear that conversation.
And Charlotte, she doesn’t remember much of Charles, he’s been gone so long; he’s mostly a shadow, a silhouette in her memory from when they found her, wandering and lost, and took her in, a stray from the enemy camp: she remembers missing her parents desperately, and the impression of Charles -- a mirages, flanked by real faces at his sides: Eloise, and Daniel as a boy -- comforting her as best they knew how so that she wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t fear.
She doesn’t remember much of Charles, but he was kind enough, in her mind -- and so she always pays her respects after his wife, his son; as Eloise walks back, she makes her way forward.
__________________
It’s after nightfall by the time they make it back to camp. When she catches Daniel’s eyes across the firelight that marks their territory, their place; when she sees how wide his gaze stretches, how pale he looks even in the orange of the flames, guilt wars heavy with defiance within her. She swallows the latter at the hand on her shoulder as Eloise smiles knowingly and makes her way to her own tent, leaving Charlotte to speak privately with her husband as he nearly jogs toward her at the edge of the light.
“Charlotte,” he exhales -- a long, labored sigh -- as he steadies her in both his arms, his gaze open and raw; never angry, not with her. “Where were you?”
“With your mother,” she answers pointedly, gripping him back firmly, a tactile reminder that she’s safe, she’s fine; “visiting the grave.”
He sighs again, somehow deeper this time, more weary as he runs his thumbs back and forth over the globes of her shoulders, as he leans in and draws her close against him, hugs her to him and breathes her in at the crook of her neck. “I was,” he starts, shakes his head and ducks lower, tighter under her chin as he presses a kiss to her throat, lets a hand slide low to her stomach as he exhales, shudders, and she wraps her arms close around him in kind, to remind him that what he fears isn’t what he knows.
“I know,” she murmurs against his hair, heaves a bit of a sigh herself. “I won’t be sorry for leaving, Dan,” she whispers, cupping his cheek as she lifts his eyes to hers. “I’m won’t be a prisoner in my own camp, among my own people,” she says softly, apologetic but firm as she leans in to press a kiss to his mouth; “but I am sorry for worrying you.”
His shoulders heave, resigned to her boldness, to how headstrong she is; he fell in love with that, and she knows he can’t resent it, not entirely. “That’ll have to do, I suppose.”
She smiles at him, lets him wrap an arm around her shoulders as they amble slowly, a little awkwardly, but happily. “How was Horace?”
“As well as can be expected,” he says, a bit guarded, and it’s not that he’s hiding anything; she knows all there is to know about the situation between the Dharma Initiative and their people.
“Did he agree to the terms?”
“Not all of them, and not lightly,” Daniel tells her, unsurprised. “We’ll have to negotiate further, but Richard is willing to take the helm for that.” She nods, satisfied; Richard has been in contact with the heads of the Dharma camp for decades, now -- he’s the best they have.
She swallows before she asks her next question; can tell that Dan’s waiting for it, patiently -- ready, but unwilling to push. “And...” her voice falters for a moment before she finishes: “the Lewis’?”
Daniel opens the flap on their tent and leads her over to the rocking chair he’d found for her -- an early house warming gift, for when their home in the jungle is finished and ready. “They want to see you.”
It had been a surprise when her birth parents had returned to the Island; Charlotte herself wouldn’t have remembered them, but in her dealings with Horace at Daniel’s side, gossip had spread that the lost little Charlotte Lewis bore striking resemblance to Charlotte Widmore beyond the mere sharing of a name.
When David and Jeanette returned from their off-Island assignment and came back to the main compound, there was only so much time that could pass before the heartbreak of years prior -- the daughter they lost to toddling wanderlust and the blink of an eye when the perimeter fence was down for transports -- was laid upon them once more, in the suspect reappearance of the Hostiles’ fiery new strategic lead.
She wouldn’t have recognized them, but they only had to catch a glimpse through curtained windows to know her. And they’d been trying to bring her “home” ever since.
They could never understand, though; she didn’t expect them to, of course, but the fact remained. She was never going to leave these people, this place. She was never going to leave her family.
“They want you treated by the Dharma doctors,” Dan adds, hesitant, and his eyes are where she suspects them to be when her head snaps to meet them: trained upon her, wary.
“Ethan is perfectly capable,” Charlotte starts, her temper rising, because she’s not an invalid, she just fucking pregnant, and there’s a goddamned difference.
“I know,” Daniel speaks softly, stroking the back of her hand absently; “but he’s young.”
“And Richard,” Charlotte continues, because that man’s brilliant, and he’d delivered plenty of children for their people before... before.
“His time is limited,” Dan counters, and Charlotte’s eyes widen.
“His time?” And she’s not entitled, she’s not, but if there are only two things she’s learned since the two of them started down this road, it’s that there’s nothing their people wouldn’t do for their leaders, and there’s nothing that Daniel wouldn’t do for her.
Daniel hears it in her voice, understands -- always does; he gathers her hands in his own and brings them to his lips, kissing her fingers and nuzzling her wrists. “You are priceless to me,” he murmurs, breathless with the conviction of the words, and it sends shivers down her spine every time; “the both of you.” And his eyes flicker down with her own to the swell of her belly, and she smiles when he does, thinks of the possibilities for them, the future -- can only think of good things, can’t understand why everyone else is so steeped in the bad.
“And Richard,” Dan drops her hands, places his own on her thighs and grounds them both in the now. “I trust him implicitly. But he will be occupied with solidifying this Truce with the Initiative. I won’t have his attentions split between you.”
Sometimes, Charlotte’s so immensely proud of her husband, and it hits her suddenly, unexpectedly -- to think of him as this beautiful man, responsible for so many lives, for a tenuous, but lasting peace between enemies; this man who she loves, and who loves her back.
Dan sighs, and breaks her musing, but the warmth stays with her as he speaks. “There’s a woman, among them. Doctor Burke-Ford. They want her to monitor you.”
“Daniel,” Charlotte says, a whine in her tone that she hates, just a little, but that she can’t entirely suppress, because damn it, they’re in this together. Because they lead as a team. Because when Charles died, Eloise had struggled until Dan came of age, leaned on Richard as much as she could, but had crumbled nearly as soon as Daniel relieved her, exhausted and overwhelmed, as soon as Dan had given Charlotte a ring and the two of them had taken the helm of their community as a unit, a pair. They’d promised: together, or not at all.
“Apparently she’s a fertility expert,” Dan ventures on. “They’re willing to send her here, as a gesture of goodwill. It’s an underhanded attempt to demonstrate their willingness to cooperate, I’ll grant you, a way to convince me to be lenient in my demands,” he concedes with a sly smile, but it fades quickly when Daniel reaches for her again, presses a hand to her cheek and pulls her halfway toward him, eyes locked on her own. “But if it will help you? If it could save you?” He leans in as if to kiss her, but doesn’t, not quite, just breathes close to her lips and whispers, like a prayer: “I’ll do anything.”
She lets out a breath, the fight leaving her for the time being, because Daniel -- her Daniel -- he looks so lost, so helpless and alone and he isn’t, he’s not and he needs to remember that, that’s the first thing he should remember, but it’s all too much. It’s all been too much since the moment she told him, when she saw the soul-searing joy in him for a half-a-heartbeat before it was crushed, drowned by terror. It just isn’t fair.
“I’m fine, Dan,” she whispers, kisses him soft and sweet before she gathers his hands, one in each of hers, and places one deliberately on her chest, and one just below; “we both are.”
“For now,” Dan says, hollow, and he’s not supposed to sound like that. Not ever. “I’ve seen what happens, Char. I can’t,” he breathes against her, broken, emotion thick in his voice; “I won’t.”
And it’s not as if she hasn’t seen it, too; it’s not as if she hasn’t tended to the dying, buried the children, half-grown, fragile -- it’s not like she hasn’t mourned the death of every woman they’ve lost, the slow dwindling of their makeshift tribe. It’s not as if she doesn’t know that she’s somehow managed to defy nature, that she’s lasted longer than any of them.
It’s not as if she doesn’t know that Daniel’s terrified for her, for their child. It’s not as if she isn’t, too. She just... she can’t give into it. She can’t. Not yet.
She has to hope.
“Shhh,” she hushes, burying her face in his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin because it calms him, always has: the thought that she’s warm and safe against him; she doesn’t know if he’s aware that it does the same for her, in kind, the sound of his heartbeat under her ear, but it does. “It’ll be fine,” she whispers against the pulse between his collarbones, and prays that he believes it, that he can believe in her, in fate and promise and the world, for once, against all odds.
She prays that she can believe it, too.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Daniel/Charlotte
Word Count: 3,227
Summary: They lead as a team, a unit; they keep their People safe. For valhalla37, who requested “Daniel/Charlotte, established relationship” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. AU, General Series Spoilers Through Season Five.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: This was just one of those ideas that hit me, and so I ran with it. I hope you enjoy!
Inheritance
He follows behind Richard, his own personal vanguard; he stays concealed in the shadows for a moment as he hears them bicker, lets them iron out the most grating details, the trivialities before he advances, before he takes the reins.
It’s not that he doesn’t like Horace Goodspeed, but they have a Treaty. They have had a Treaty for quite some time, now, and there are rules. And if one side insists on flaunting their agreement so flagrantly, they both know who will win the war.
Particularly when it involves his wife.
He cracks his knuckles and steps into the wan campus lighting that drowns out the moon, and he thinks, not for the first time, what life might have been among people such as this.
He never comes up with anything good.
Horace catches his approach before Richard deigns to acknowledge it, as is their way -- they play off of one another, an airtight dynamic between them, Richard’s gravitas concealing a compassionate core, where his own soft-spoken politeness belies his shrewdness, his own relentless need to get what he wants, to protect his people; this Island.
He watches with little pleasure as Horace blanches in the yellow gleam, as he swallows hard, throat working quick around his discomfort as he clears his throat. “Mr. Widmore,” he says, steady but too low, not his own voice -- they’ve been dealing long enough for it to be noticeable, now; “this is,” Horace pauses, swallows again, and it’s just a little thing, almost imperceptible, except he catches it, the way the Dharma leader’s hands tremble just inside the cuffs of his jumpsuit; “This is certainly a surprise.”
“Horace,” he speaks softly; he wants answers, and obedience, but he doesn’t want them to fear him. Not yet. “How many times have I asked you to call me Daniel?”
__________________
She’s reading through reports, things Daniel’s tried to convince her to let slide for the time being, when she hears the telltale scuffling of a visitor outside her tent.
“Who’s there?” she calls out, cranes her neck without putting down the perimeter security briefs in her hands when a familiar face peeks through the flap.
“Eloise,” Charlotte greets with a smile, abandoning her work and rising gingerly to her feet as she gestures to the makeshift settee in the corner near the table, the one Benjamin Linus made them as a wedding present. “Please, have a seat.”
Eloise settles onto the far end of the sofa, folding her hands in her lap as Charlotte scrounges for clean cups to serve some of the watered-down decaf she’s been nursing all morning -- she really cannot wait for the houses to be finished; Dan had promised they’d be ready within the month.
“How are you, dear?” Eloise calls, just as Charlotte’s blowing clean two mugs she finds stuck in the back corner of a low shelf. She groans as she uses her palms on her thighs for leverage, completely unaccustomed to the shift in her body, the changes in her weight.
“Well enough,” she replies, pouring the coffee and adding cream to her mother-in-law’s.
“Your parents are causing a stir, again,” Eloise comments as Charlotte hands her the cup and sits down at her side.
“So I’ve heard.”
“Daniel’s gone to speak with them, I assume?”
“Mmm,” Charlotte hums around the lip of her mug. “With Horace, yes.”
“And left you here to sort out the particulars?” Eloise raises an eyebrow and grins knowingly.
“Not without a fight,” Charlotte returns the smile, more exasperated than fond. “I can promise you that.”
“Don’t hold it against him, dear,” Eloise says in that mothering voice she has, that soft, indulgent tone that Charlotte imagines would spoil a grandchild and lightly scold a son. “He’s out of his mind with worry for you.”
Charlotte scoffs as Eloise reaches out and places a good-natured hand upon her knee. “For no good reason, mind,” Charlotte protests. “I’m absolutely fine.”
“Charlotte,” Eloise tightens her grip just a little around Charlotte’s leg, eyes turning dark and serious, “you know-”
“Of course I know,” Charlotte interrupts, perhaps a little too sharp, and she regrets it immediately, she does; it’s just maddening, the way they all hover when she hasn’t so much as sneezed wrong in the past seven-and-a-half months. “But Ethan’s been keeping a close enough watch on me, not to mention the fact that Richard’s taken to me like a damned bloodhound on a scent,” and Eloise laughs at that -- sympathetically, like she knows -- and the tension is effectively dispersed.
“There’s absolutely nothing to be concerned about,” Charlotte reiterates with a wave of her hand, adding wryly: “and if anything does pop up, one of them will probably notice before I do.”
Eloise sighs, putting her coffee down and turning more fully to face her daughter-in-law. “It’s difficult, dear, that much I know,” she says, a little nostalgic, and Charlotte feels a bit guilty -- knows who, and what, she’s remembering; “but what comes of it will be more than worth the struggle, I can promise you that.” She reaches out tentatively, pats Charlotte’s growing stomach, quick and gentle, and Charlotte can’t help but smile -- Eloise is a character, that’s for sure.
“I know,” she says, putting her own hand on the ever-expanding bump of her midsection and rubbing gently, as she finds herself doing more and more often of late. “I just,” she lets out a long breath, resigned, tired; “I feel a bit useless.”
Eloise nods, that indulgent smile back on her face, and Charlotte feels warm when its directed at her, that expression; always has. “Just remember that no one else thinks that what you’re doing is useless.” She reaches out, smoothes down Charlotte’s shoulder and breaks eye contact, her voice a little strained. “Everyone else things it’s a little bit of a miracle.” She flashes a watery kind of smile and looks away again, and Charlotte almost wants to reach out and and reassure her, but Eloise isn’t the type. Neither of them are.
“Are you going to see Charles today?” she tries instead, hoping that it feels like an olive branch, a compromise, instead of an intrusion.
“I am,” Eloise says, stoic; she always is, at first, when it comes to this, to him.
Charlotte bites her lip for a moment before she asks: “Can I join you?”
And Eloise; there’s something that drains out of her, something that leaves her smaller and more quiet, but she sounds almost relieved when she nods: “Of course, dear.”
__________________
It’s far into the jungle, near the Safe Line, and part of her loves Eloise just that little bit more than ever for never ones suggesting that they turn back, that Charlotte should just stay behind -- that instead, she simply moves slowly, walkes carefully across the longer path that’s a little more even, a little less rocky; that she merely stays close by and balances Charlotte when she wobbles without saying a word.
Daniel would throw a fit if he knew she were climbing to the summit at the edge of Grid 772.
By the look of the sun, it’s been a couple hours since they set out by the time they reach their destination -- she can’t know for sure; she’s still waiting for a replacement battery for her watch from the mainland. She lags a bit behind to catch her breath, gain her bearings as Eloise steps up to the small stone marking the grave, veers to the left to pick some flowering grass Charlotte can’t identify by name, and gathers it close in her hands as she approaches the headstone.
Charlotte doesn’t move until Eloise is done talking to the memory of her husband, isn’t meant to hear that conversation.
And Charlotte, she doesn’t remember much of Charles, he’s been gone so long; he’s mostly a shadow, a silhouette in her memory from when they found her, wandering and lost, and took her in, a stray from the enemy camp: she remembers missing her parents desperately, and the impression of Charles -- a mirages, flanked by real faces at his sides: Eloise, and Daniel as a boy -- comforting her as best they knew how so that she wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t fear.
She doesn’t remember much of Charles, but he was kind enough, in her mind -- and so she always pays her respects after his wife, his son; as Eloise walks back, she makes her way forward.
__________________
It’s after nightfall by the time they make it back to camp. When she catches Daniel’s eyes across the firelight that marks their territory, their place; when she sees how wide his gaze stretches, how pale he looks even in the orange of the flames, guilt wars heavy with defiance within her. She swallows the latter at the hand on her shoulder as Eloise smiles knowingly and makes her way to her own tent, leaving Charlotte to speak privately with her husband as he nearly jogs toward her at the edge of the light.
“Charlotte,” he exhales -- a long, labored sigh -- as he steadies her in both his arms, his gaze open and raw; never angry, not with her. “Where were you?”
“With your mother,” she answers pointedly, gripping him back firmly, a tactile reminder that she’s safe, she’s fine; “visiting the grave.”
He sighs again, somehow deeper this time, more weary as he runs his thumbs back and forth over the globes of her shoulders, as he leans in and draws her close against him, hugs her to him and breathes her in at the crook of her neck. “I was,” he starts, shakes his head and ducks lower, tighter under her chin as he presses a kiss to her throat, lets a hand slide low to her stomach as he exhales, shudders, and she wraps her arms close around him in kind, to remind him that what he fears isn’t what he knows.
“I know,” she murmurs against his hair, heaves a bit of a sigh herself. “I won’t be sorry for leaving, Dan,” she whispers, cupping his cheek as she lifts his eyes to hers. “I’m won’t be a prisoner in my own camp, among my own people,” she says softly, apologetic but firm as she leans in to press a kiss to his mouth; “but I am sorry for worrying you.”
His shoulders heave, resigned to her boldness, to how headstrong she is; he fell in love with that, and she knows he can’t resent it, not entirely. “That’ll have to do, I suppose.”
She smiles at him, lets him wrap an arm around her shoulders as they amble slowly, a little awkwardly, but happily. “How was Horace?”
“As well as can be expected,” he says, a bit guarded, and it’s not that he’s hiding anything; she knows all there is to know about the situation between the Dharma Initiative and their people.
“Did he agree to the terms?”
“Not all of them, and not lightly,” Daniel tells her, unsurprised. “We’ll have to negotiate further, but Richard is willing to take the helm for that.” She nods, satisfied; Richard has been in contact with the heads of the Dharma camp for decades, now -- he’s the best they have.
She swallows before she asks her next question; can tell that Dan’s waiting for it, patiently -- ready, but unwilling to push. “And...” her voice falters for a moment before she finishes: “the Lewis’?”
Daniel opens the flap on their tent and leads her over to the rocking chair he’d found for her -- an early house warming gift, for when their home in the jungle is finished and ready. “They want to see you.”
It had been a surprise when her birth parents had returned to the Island; Charlotte herself wouldn’t have remembered them, but in her dealings with Horace at Daniel’s side, gossip had spread that the lost little Charlotte Lewis bore striking resemblance to Charlotte Widmore beyond the mere sharing of a name.
When David and Jeanette returned from their off-Island assignment and came back to the main compound, there was only so much time that could pass before the heartbreak of years prior -- the daughter they lost to toddling wanderlust and the blink of an eye when the perimeter fence was down for transports -- was laid upon them once more, in the suspect reappearance of the Hostiles’ fiery new strategic lead.
She wouldn’t have recognized them, but they only had to catch a glimpse through curtained windows to know her. And they’d been trying to bring her “home” ever since.
They could never understand, though; she didn’t expect them to, of course, but the fact remained. She was never going to leave these people, this place. She was never going to leave her family.
“They want you treated by the Dharma doctors,” Dan adds, hesitant, and his eyes are where she suspects them to be when her head snaps to meet them: trained upon her, wary.
“Ethan is perfectly capable,” Charlotte starts, her temper rising, because she’s not an invalid, she just fucking pregnant, and there’s a goddamned difference.
“I know,” Daniel speaks softly, stroking the back of her hand absently; “but he’s young.”
“And Richard,” Charlotte continues, because that man’s brilliant, and he’d delivered plenty of children for their people before... before.
“His time is limited,” Dan counters, and Charlotte’s eyes widen.
“His time?” And she’s not entitled, she’s not, but if there are only two things she’s learned since the two of them started down this road, it’s that there’s nothing their people wouldn’t do for their leaders, and there’s nothing that Daniel wouldn’t do for her.
Daniel hears it in her voice, understands -- always does; he gathers her hands in his own and brings them to his lips, kissing her fingers and nuzzling her wrists. “You are priceless to me,” he murmurs, breathless with the conviction of the words, and it sends shivers down her spine every time; “the both of you.” And his eyes flicker down with her own to the swell of her belly, and she smiles when he does, thinks of the possibilities for them, the future -- can only think of good things, can’t understand why everyone else is so steeped in the bad.
“And Richard,” Dan drops her hands, places his own on her thighs and grounds them both in the now. “I trust him implicitly. But he will be occupied with solidifying this Truce with the Initiative. I won’t have his attentions split between you.”
Sometimes, Charlotte’s so immensely proud of her husband, and it hits her suddenly, unexpectedly -- to think of him as this beautiful man, responsible for so many lives, for a tenuous, but lasting peace between enemies; this man who she loves, and who loves her back.
Dan sighs, and breaks her musing, but the warmth stays with her as he speaks. “There’s a woman, among them. Doctor Burke-Ford. They want her to monitor you.”
“Daniel,” Charlotte says, a whine in her tone that she hates, just a little, but that she can’t entirely suppress, because damn it, they’re in this together. Because they lead as a team. Because when Charles died, Eloise had struggled until Dan came of age, leaned on Richard as much as she could, but had crumbled nearly as soon as Daniel relieved her, exhausted and overwhelmed, as soon as Dan had given Charlotte a ring and the two of them had taken the helm of their community as a unit, a pair. They’d promised: together, or not at all.
“Apparently she’s a fertility expert,” Dan ventures on. “They’re willing to send her here, as a gesture of goodwill. It’s an underhanded attempt to demonstrate their willingness to cooperate, I’ll grant you, a way to convince me to be lenient in my demands,” he concedes with a sly smile, but it fades quickly when Daniel reaches for her again, presses a hand to her cheek and pulls her halfway toward him, eyes locked on her own. “But if it will help you? If it could save you?” He leans in as if to kiss her, but doesn’t, not quite, just breathes close to her lips and whispers, like a prayer: “I’ll do anything.”
She lets out a breath, the fight leaving her for the time being, because Daniel -- her Daniel -- he looks so lost, so helpless and alone and he isn’t, he’s not and he needs to remember that, that’s the first thing he should remember, but it’s all too much. It’s all been too much since the moment she told him, when she saw the soul-searing joy in him for a half-a-heartbeat before it was crushed, drowned by terror. It just isn’t fair.
“I’m fine, Dan,” she whispers, kisses him soft and sweet before she gathers his hands, one in each of hers, and places one deliberately on her chest, and one just below; “we both are.”
“For now,” Dan says, hollow, and he’s not supposed to sound like that. Not ever. “I’ve seen what happens, Char. I can’t,” he breathes against her, broken, emotion thick in his voice; “I won’t.”
And it’s not as if she hasn’t seen it, too; it’s not as if she hasn’t tended to the dying, buried the children, half-grown, fragile -- it’s not like she hasn’t mourned the death of every woman they’ve lost, the slow dwindling of their makeshift tribe. It’s not as if she doesn’t know that she’s somehow managed to defy nature, that she’s lasted longer than any of them.
It’s not as if she doesn’t know that Daniel’s terrified for her, for their child. It’s not as if she isn’t, too. She just... she can’t give into it. She can’t. Not yet.
She has to hope.
“Shhh,” she hushes, burying her face in his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin because it calms him, always has: the thought that she’s warm and safe against him; she doesn’t know if he’s aware that it does the same for her, in kind, the sound of his heartbeat under her ear, but it does. “It’ll be fine,” she whispers against the pulse between his collarbones, and prays that he believes it, that he can believe in her, in fate and promise and the world, for once, against all odds.
She prays that she can believe it, too.