LOST fic "Scattered Like Light" (Charlie, Dan PG)
Scattered Like Light
PG
Charlie, Dan (though not like that, unfortunately!)
Written for the "new friend" challenge at charliepacefic.
Much thanks for the wonderful beta skillz of zelda_zee, who is probably very tired of me by now! :D
Scattered Like Light
The first time he sees Charlie Pace, Dan has to tell him to move away from his equipment. It’s delicate, some of it, very delicate, he explains impatiently as he pushes himself between Charlie and the tripod. “You didn’t touch anything, did you?”
“No,” says Charlie, bemused. He backs up about three steps. “Should I have?”
“No!” Dan all but yelps. “Its, ah. It’s delicate.”
“You said that already.”
“Because it is.”
Charlie rolls his eyes skyward. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” It’s not really a question.
Dan nods, raking one hand through his hair. “I’m, um, I’m Daniel Faraday,” he offers. “I’m a physicist. Well, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated and delicate,” Charlie smirks, putting out his hand. “I’m Charlie.”
Charlotte’s voice from the edge of the clearing distracts him then, and Dan turns away to hail her, one arm half-raised in greeting. When he turns back around a moment later, Charlie is gone.
~ ~ ~
Dan wakes in the middle of the night for no reason at all. This happens sometimes, and sometimes often, but he’s gotten used to it, used to waking for no apparent reason, used to staring at the ceiling of his darkened bedroom, waiting fruitlessly to fall back into sleep. A prescription would take care of that, so he’s been told; a little Zopiclone or Dalmane would do the trick, but he doesn’t want to rely on pills. He tells people - when they ask, because sometimes they do ask - that it’s because he fears addiction. His caretaker, his doctors, his few remaining friends - they all go along with it. It’s certainly plausible enough.
What Dan really fears is that he’d take a pill or two, and forget that he took them, and so take another pill or two or maybe three and then forget he took those -
And so on.
Waking up two or three times a night, nearly every night, seems a small price to pay for ensuring that he wakes up still alive.
That’s stupid, he thinks sleepily, blinking in the dying firelight. Of course you’d wake up alive. No one wakes up dead.
There’s someone sitting by the fire, but from where he’s lying, Dan can only make out that it’s a man’s silhouette. He feels he ought to know who it is, but his mind is too sleep-muddied to come up with anything.
“You’re awake,” the figure says, and then Dan knows.
Charlie, Dan realises. He told me his name was Charlie. He’s slightly amazed that he remembers.
“So are you,” Dan says, and forces himself to sit up. But the blankets are tangled around him - he’s always been a restless sleeper - and he can’t quite get free of them. He hates this, hates feeling awkward - who gets stuck in a blanket, after all? - and he especially doesn’t want to look awkward in front of Charlie. He would rather Charlie think well of him.
“Need some help?” Charlie asks. And oh, is that laughter Dan hears in his voice?
“No,” Dan lies, finally wresting himself free. “I’m, um. I’m good.” He’s insanely glad that the flicker of the firelight is hiding the sudden, maddening blush staining his cheeks.
Charlie shrugs. “Come on, then.”
“Um… where?”
“With me,” Charlie says, and that’s that.
~ ~ ~
The jungle at night is almost impenetrably black. If there’s a trail here that Charlie’s following, Dan doesn’t see it. He can barely see Charlie ten feet ahead of him, gliding effortlessly through the underbrush.
Which is why Dan crashes headlong into him a few moments later, not realizing Charlie had stopped.
“Oi!” Charlie hisses. Dan immediately mumbles apologies while Charlie adds, “We’re here, anyway.”
Dan looks around. Where here is, he doesn’t know. This bit of jungle looks pretty much like every other bit of jungle that he’s seen over the past few days, and at night even more so. “Uh… where are we?” Dan asks hesitantly.
“Doesn’t matter,” Charlie says. A few feet away there’s a tree that’s fallen over, charred at one end as if it’s been struck by lightning. Charlie motions towards it. “Have a seat.”
They sit there in silence for a few moments in the cloistering night, the jungle eerily quiet. Dan’s sure that jungles are supposed to be rife with life, but this one… isn’t. I don’t like it, he thinks. It’s too quiet.
“I know you’re not really here to rescue anyone,” Charlie says suddenly.
“Um,” Dan says noncommittally. Suddenly he’s not too sure he wants to be out in the middle of the jungle, at night, alone with Charlie. Charlie could be an ax murderer for all he knows, or worse. Although Dan’s not too sure what would be worse, all things considered.
“Um,” Dan says again, mainly to fill the silence.
Charlie gazes steadily at him, a faint smile curving the edges of his lips. “But I really wish you’d rescue Claire.”
“Claire?” Dan’s confused. He’s met a fair number of people the last few days, but he’s pretty sure there hasn’t been a Claire. “Who -?”
“And Aaron.”
Dan holds up his hand. “Wait, wait. Who are these people?” Who are you? Who are you really? he wants to add, but doesn’t.
Charlie smiles humourlessly. “You’ll have to find out then, won’t you, mate?”
“Right,” Dan mumbles. He closes his eyes, rubbing his forehead with one hand. He’s tired, really tired, and he’s starting to wonder what part of following this apparent maniac into the jungle had been a good idea. “Yeah. Why? Because just telling me would make too much sense?”
As the silence deepens around him, Dan looks up to find that Charlie has left again.
~ ~ ~
Dan stumbles out of the jungle nearly two hours later, looking somewhat the worse for wear. Dawn is filtering weakly through the leafy canopy. There’s mud on Dan’s pants where he’s slipped and fallen, and a small jagged tear at one knee. His white shirt isn’t so white anymore.
Charlotte, who’s in the midst of reorganizing her pack - something she does several times a day, if she can, which Dan thinks might border on the obsessive, but who’s he to judge - stops dead to stare at him open-mouthed. “Daniel, what on earth -?” she begins.
Dan waves her off. “Yeah. I fell down.”
“In what?” She trails after him as Dan heads toward the tangled bundle of his blankets.
“I, uh. I’m not… I don’t know.” Dan shrugs. “It was dark.”
Charlotte presses, “But where did you go? I woke up and you were just gone.”
“Charlotte, I…”
“Besides,” she hisses, her voice dropping to an angry whisper, “do you think I want these people to know…”
“Who’s Claire?” Dan asks abruptly.
“… that you’re prone to wandering, and…” Charlotte stops, gaping at him again. “What did you say?”
Dan yawns. He’d like nothing more than to curl back into his blankets and see if sleep will come.
“Dan?” Charlotte tugs gently on his sleeve and he flinches.
“Sorry, sorry,” he mutters. “Sorry, Charlotte.”
“Dan, it’s alright.”
“Who’s Claire?” Dan asks again. He wonders briefly if he’s dreamed it all, dreamed Charlie, dreamed everything. “I haven’t… Have we met a Claire? Who’s Claire, Charlotte?”
Charlotte stares, swallows, and finally says, “She’s not here, Dan. Claire’s with John Locke’s group. Her and her baby.”
~ ~ ~
After a couple of hours, Charlotte’s hovering has become just this side of annoying. How’d you hear about Claire, she keeps pestering. Who told you?
“I just heard,” Dan says evasively, loath to mention the Amazing Disappearing Charlie. Charlotte would probably dismiss it anyway; she’s like that, dismissive. What’s-her-name, Juliet - she’s dismissive too, and when she wanders over to confer in hushed tones with Charlotte, Dan’s quite happy to let them scuttle off and be dismissive together. Maybe Juliet needs her pack reorganized, Dan thinks.
“Stay put,” Charlotte calls over her shoulder at him. Dan just makes an impatient shooing gesture at her.
“Thought she’d never bugger off,” says Charlie, and Dan nearly jumps clear out of his skin.
“I can’t help you,” Dan blurts out by way of greeting. “With Claire. I mean, I’d like to, really, but I’m not… I’m not in charge of that sort of thing. Rescue, that is. I don’t… I can’t help you.” He squints a bit in the bright tropical sunlight. It’s so much brighter here than in the jungle, the sun bouncing off the lazy ocean waves, and everything smells of seawater. No, Dan thinks. Charlie, Charlie smells of seawater, odd as that sounds.
“Yeah,” Charlie says, scuffing his toe in the sand. “I know. It’s okay. You can’t rescue anyone. Not even yourself, Daniel.”
It’s not so much anger welling up in Dan as it’s a slow smoldering sensation. Because, really, what is it about him that makes people think he needs rescuing? Okay, alright, yes, there’s a bit of trouble with his memory - quite a bit, actually - and it’s true that back home he’s required to have a caretaker (a role that now seems to have fallen to Charlotte), but rescue? Dan doesn’t need rescue; he’s doing fine. He’s fine. He’s just fine.
“I don’t need rescuing,” Dan mumbles.
“Nah,” Charlie agrees affably. “Course not. Who here does?”
Dan swears under his breath.
“Hey,” says Charlotte. “You alright?”
Dan’s head jerks up at the sound of her voice.
“Because you’re standing here talking to yourself,” Charlotte adds.
“I wasn’t,” Dan protests. But then he realizes with a strange unsurprised dismay that Charlie’s no longer there. “I was just… thinking out loud,” he finishes lamely.
Charlotte eyes him thoughtfully. “You know what they say about people who talk to themselves, Dan?”
“Yeah,” Dan mutters darkly. “I know.”
~ ~ ~
The first time Dan wakes that night his eyes only flutter briefly before he falls back to sleep, but the second time he looks around for Charlie, fully expecting to see him. All he sees by the light of the low fire are huddled sleeping forms scattered here and there. Charlotte, of course, is nearest to him, only a few feet away. Easier to keep an eye on him, Dan supposes, though it must be difficult to watch someone when both your eyes are closed.
It’s amazing how many stars he can see out here, all those constellations he’d barely known existed. Well, he knew they existed, of course; he hadn’t been living under a rock. But he’d never had time to appreciate them, and…
“You should sleep,” Charlie whispers, his breath warm against Dan’s ear.
Yeah, Dan thinks just before his eyes drift closed. Otherwise I might start hearing things.
~ ~ ~
It’s morning by the time Dan wakes again, though barely so. Charlotte, ever a morning person, is already awake, propping herself up on one elbow, eyeing him thoughtfully.
Dan yawns, stretches.
“You talk in your sleep,” Charlotte says. She’s smirking in a very Charlotte-y manner, haughty and friendly by turns. “Did you know?”
“Mmph,” mumbles Dan, closing his eyes again. He’s still three-quarters asleep. It’s strange, he thinks, how he almost feels rested, except for the rock jabbing him under one shoulder. He’d like to lie here like this for a while, just listening to the roar and crash of the surf, with the faint salt breeze whispering over his skin. Behind his closed eyelids the sunlight is pinkish, soothing.
The rock is really, really uncomfortable though, and Dan shifts slightly so that he’s on his side. He cracks one eye open a bit to peek at Charlotte. She’s still watching him, still smirking.
“Who’s Charlie?” she asks.
Dan’s eyes fly open. “What?”
“You talk in your sleep,” Charlotte reminds him.
~ ~ ~
It’s nearly dusk by the time Charlie finally returns, falling easily into step beside Dan. “Miss me?” he asks cheekily.
Dan shifts his armful of firewood slightly. Gathering firewood had been Charlotte’s brilliant make-work idea, of course; Dan hasn’t the faintest idea if he’s gathered enough of it or if the wood’s the right kind or any of that Boy Scout stuff. He has missed Charlie. He’s spent most of the day missing Charlie, in fact, though he doesn’t want to admit it, especially because by now Dan’s pretty sure he’s actually made Charlie up. He’s heard that stress can make the human mind do crazy things sometimes. And anyway, he’s also pretty sure that you’re not supposed to miss your hallucinations, even if they do have a knack for making you feel appreciated.
“Yeah,” Dan says finally. “Where’ve you been?”
Charlie shrugs. “Around. Here and there.”
Dan thinks this might be a lie. He’s never seen Charlie anywhere in camp or on the beach - and he’s certainly spent enough time today furtively searching him out - or in the jungle, or anywhere except where Dan happens to be alone. And no one’s mentioned Charlie, no one at all.
At last Dan says, “I made you up, didn’t I?”
Charlie stops, looking very carefully at Dan for a few long seconds before he says, “You think I’m not real?”
Dan shrugs. “I don’t know what to think,” he answers honestly. “Are you? Are you real?”
“I was on the plane too,” Charlie says, and Dan breathes an inward sigh of relief. “Ask Jack. Ask Kate.”
“Um, I don’t… I don’t think so,” Dan says, shifting the firewood in his arms again. “I don’t think either of them like me all that much.”
Charlie lets out a bark of laughter that makes Dan grin despite his strange worries. “Their loss then, yeah?”
~ ~ ~
He’s not eavesdropping; he doesn’t do that sort of thing. Eavesdropping is more Miles’ style, or even Charlotte’s, but certainly not Dan’s. He’s really just looking idly through the food stores, and their voices - Jack’s voice, Juliet’s voice - carry on the still air.
- I’m not so sure it was a good idea, bringing them here.
- What are you saying, Juliet? After all that I went through…
- Jack, that’s not what I meant!
They bicker a lot, those two, Dan thinks. If he hadn’t heard otherwise, he’d have taken them for an old married couple.
- After all we went through! Charlie drowned to help us!
- I know. I know, Jack.
- So their being here is for a reason. Don’t you understand that?
Drowned. Huh. Dan supposes he should be surprised - shocked, even - especially considering that from what he can figure out (not that he was eavesdropping, of course) it must have happened before his team got to the island. He’s a little dismayed to find he really isn’t very surprised at all.
Charlotte would have a field day with that, which is exactly why Dan’s not going to tell her.
~ ~ ~
I'm as real as you need, Charlie tells him later. Despite the fire, the night’s a cool one, and Dan’s huddled close to it, wrapped in his blankets. Charlie, he notices, doesn’t seem to mind the chill night air. Dan wonders if this is because the ocean is cold, or because death is cold, or maybe because dying in the ocean is especially cold. He wonders briefly if this is what insanity feels like, making friends with the dead.
“I’m going crazy, I think,” Dan says.
“You’re not crazy, mate,” Charlie reassures him. “It’s just that kind of island.”
It’s not actually that reassuring, and Dan wonders if maybe this is just the aftermath of all those years of unauthorized experiments, all the years of equations and theorems and lab rat after lab rat.
“Wait ‘til you see the polar bears,” Charlie adds. “First time I saw one of those, I thought it was the bloody drugs.”
What drugs? Dan wonders.
“To be honest, I was a total junkie,” Charlie says, “I always thought that’s what’d do me in.”
The corners of Dan’s mouth twitch, and in seconds he has to clap a hand over his mouth to stifle the giggle that’s trying to escape.
Charlie glares at him, clearly annoyed. “It’s not all that sodding funny, y’know!”
“I know, I know,” Dan manages. “It’s this. It’s you. It’s us. All this.” More soberly, he adds, “I mean, I’m having a conversation with a dead man. You don’t think that’s a little weird? I think that’s a little weird.”
“Yeah,” Charlie agrees. “But I’m not bad company, am I?”
This time Dan lets the giggles come; he can’t help it. It’s just that kind of island.
I’m as real as you need, Charlie tells him again, and Dan thinks that maybe this reality might not be so bad after all. In fact, it might just be the kind of rescue he needs.
PG
Charlie, Dan (though not like that, unfortunately!)
Written for the "new friend" challenge at charliepacefic.
Much thanks for the wonderful beta skillz of zelda_zee, who is probably very tired of me by now! :D
Scattered Like Light
The first time he sees Charlie Pace, Dan has to tell him to move away from his equipment. It’s delicate, some of it, very delicate, he explains impatiently as he pushes himself between Charlie and the tripod. “You didn’t touch anything, did you?”
“No,” says Charlie, bemused. He backs up about three steps. “Should I have?”
“No!” Dan all but yelps. “Its, ah. It’s delicate.”
“You said that already.”
“Because it is.”
Charlie rolls his eyes skyward. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” It’s not really a question.
Dan nods, raking one hand through his hair. “I’m, um, I’m Daniel Faraday,” he offers. “I’m a physicist. Well, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated and delicate,” Charlie smirks, putting out his hand. “I’m Charlie.”
Charlotte’s voice from the edge of the clearing distracts him then, and Dan turns away to hail her, one arm half-raised in greeting. When he turns back around a moment later, Charlie is gone.
~ ~ ~
Dan wakes in the middle of the night for no reason at all. This happens sometimes, and sometimes often, but he’s gotten used to it, used to waking for no apparent reason, used to staring at the ceiling of his darkened bedroom, waiting fruitlessly to fall back into sleep. A prescription would take care of that, so he’s been told; a little Zopiclone or Dalmane would do the trick, but he doesn’t want to rely on pills. He tells people - when they ask, because sometimes they do ask - that it’s because he fears addiction. His caretaker, his doctors, his few remaining friends - they all go along with it. It’s certainly plausible enough.
What Dan really fears is that he’d take a pill or two, and forget that he took them, and so take another pill or two or maybe three and then forget he took those -
And so on.
Waking up two or three times a night, nearly every night, seems a small price to pay for ensuring that he wakes up still alive.
That’s stupid, he thinks sleepily, blinking in the dying firelight. Of course you’d wake up alive. No one wakes up dead.
There’s someone sitting by the fire, but from where he’s lying, Dan can only make out that it’s a man’s silhouette. He feels he ought to know who it is, but his mind is too sleep-muddied to come up with anything.
“You’re awake,” the figure says, and then Dan knows.
Charlie, Dan realises. He told me his name was Charlie. He’s slightly amazed that he remembers.
“So are you,” Dan says, and forces himself to sit up. But the blankets are tangled around him - he’s always been a restless sleeper - and he can’t quite get free of them. He hates this, hates feeling awkward - who gets stuck in a blanket, after all? - and he especially doesn’t want to look awkward in front of Charlie. He would rather Charlie think well of him.
“Need some help?” Charlie asks. And oh, is that laughter Dan hears in his voice?
“No,” Dan lies, finally wresting himself free. “I’m, um. I’m good.” He’s insanely glad that the flicker of the firelight is hiding the sudden, maddening blush staining his cheeks.
Charlie shrugs. “Come on, then.”
“Um… where?”
“With me,” Charlie says, and that’s that.
~ ~ ~
The jungle at night is almost impenetrably black. If there’s a trail here that Charlie’s following, Dan doesn’t see it. He can barely see Charlie ten feet ahead of him, gliding effortlessly through the underbrush.
Which is why Dan crashes headlong into him a few moments later, not realizing Charlie had stopped.
“Oi!” Charlie hisses. Dan immediately mumbles apologies while Charlie adds, “We’re here, anyway.”
Dan looks around. Where here is, he doesn’t know. This bit of jungle looks pretty much like every other bit of jungle that he’s seen over the past few days, and at night even more so. “Uh… where are we?” Dan asks hesitantly.
“Doesn’t matter,” Charlie says. A few feet away there’s a tree that’s fallen over, charred at one end as if it’s been struck by lightning. Charlie motions towards it. “Have a seat.”
They sit there in silence for a few moments in the cloistering night, the jungle eerily quiet. Dan’s sure that jungles are supposed to be rife with life, but this one… isn’t. I don’t like it, he thinks. It’s too quiet.
“I know you’re not really here to rescue anyone,” Charlie says suddenly.
“Um,” Dan says noncommittally. Suddenly he’s not too sure he wants to be out in the middle of the jungle, at night, alone with Charlie. Charlie could be an ax murderer for all he knows, or worse. Although Dan’s not too sure what would be worse, all things considered.
“Um,” Dan says again, mainly to fill the silence.
Charlie gazes steadily at him, a faint smile curving the edges of his lips. “But I really wish you’d rescue Claire.”
“Claire?” Dan’s confused. He’s met a fair number of people the last few days, but he’s pretty sure there hasn’t been a Claire. “Who -?”
“And Aaron.”
Dan holds up his hand. “Wait, wait. Who are these people?” Who are you? Who are you really? he wants to add, but doesn’t.
Charlie smiles humourlessly. “You’ll have to find out then, won’t you, mate?”
“Right,” Dan mumbles. He closes his eyes, rubbing his forehead with one hand. He’s tired, really tired, and he’s starting to wonder what part of following this apparent maniac into the jungle had been a good idea. “Yeah. Why? Because just telling me would make too much sense?”
As the silence deepens around him, Dan looks up to find that Charlie has left again.
~ ~ ~
Dan stumbles out of the jungle nearly two hours later, looking somewhat the worse for wear. Dawn is filtering weakly through the leafy canopy. There’s mud on Dan’s pants where he’s slipped and fallen, and a small jagged tear at one knee. His white shirt isn’t so white anymore.
Charlotte, who’s in the midst of reorganizing her pack - something she does several times a day, if she can, which Dan thinks might border on the obsessive, but who’s he to judge - stops dead to stare at him open-mouthed. “Daniel, what on earth -?” she begins.
Dan waves her off. “Yeah. I fell down.”
“In what?” She trails after him as Dan heads toward the tangled bundle of his blankets.
“I, uh. I’m not… I don’t know.” Dan shrugs. “It was dark.”
Charlotte presses, “But where did you go? I woke up and you were just gone.”
“Charlotte, I…”
“Besides,” she hisses, her voice dropping to an angry whisper, “do you think I want these people to know…”
“Who’s Claire?” Dan asks abruptly.
“… that you’re prone to wandering, and…” Charlotte stops, gaping at him again. “What did you say?”
Dan yawns. He’d like nothing more than to curl back into his blankets and see if sleep will come.
“Dan?” Charlotte tugs gently on his sleeve and he flinches.
“Sorry, sorry,” he mutters. “Sorry, Charlotte.”
“Dan, it’s alright.”
“Who’s Claire?” Dan asks again. He wonders briefly if he’s dreamed it all, dreamed Charlie, dreamed everything. “I haven’t… Have we met a Claire? Who’s Claire, Charlotte?”
Charlotte stares, swallows, and finally says, “She’s not here, Dan. Claire’s with John Locke’s group. Her and her baby.”
~ ~ ~
After a couple of hours, Charlotte’s hovering has become just this side of annoying. How’d you hear about Claire, she keeps pestering. Who told you?
“I just heard,” Dan says evasively, loath to mention the Amazing Disappearing Charlie. Charlotte would probably dismiss it anyway; she’s like that, dismissive. What’s-her-name, Juliet - she’s dismissive too, and when she wanders over to confer in hushed tones with Charlotte, Dan’s quite happy to let them scuttle off and be dismissive together. Maybe Juliet needs her pack reorganized, Dan thinks.
“Stay put,” Charlotte calls over her shoulder at him. Dan just makes an impatient shooing gesture at her.
“Thought she’d never bugger off,” says Charlie, and Dan nearly jumps clear out of his skin.
“I can’t help you,” Dan blurts out by way of greeting. “With Claire. I mean, I’d like to, really, but I’m not… I’m not in charge of that sort of thing. Rescue, that is. I don’t… I can’t help you.” He squints a bit in the bright tropical sunlight. It’s so much brighter here than in the jungle, the sun bouncing off the lazy ocean waves, and everything smells of seawater. No, Dan thinks. Charlie, Charlie smells of seawater, odd as that sounds.
“Yeah,” Charlie says, scuffing his toe in the sand. “I know. It’s okay. You can’t rescue anyone. Not even yourself, Daniel.”
It’s not so much anger welling up in Dan as it’s a slow smoldering sensation. Because, really, what is it about him that makes people think he needs rescuing? Okay, alright, yes, there’s a bit of trouble with his memory - quite a bit, actually - and it’s true that back home he’s required to have a caretaker (a role that now seems to have fallen to Charlotte), but rescue? Dan doesn’t need rescue; he’s doing fine. He’s fine. He’s just fine.
“I don’t need rescuing,” Dan mumbles.
“Nah,” Charlie agrees affably. “Course not. Who here does?”
Dan swears under his breath.
“Hey,” says Charlotte. “You alright?”
Dan’s head jerks up at the sound of her voice.
“Because you’re standing here talking to yourself,” Charlotte adds.
“I wasn’t,” Dan protests. But then he realizes with a strange unsurprised dismay that Charlie’s no longer there. “I was just… thinking out loud,” he finishes lamely.
Charlotte eyes him thoughtfully. “You know what they say about people who talk to themselves, Dan?”
“Yeah,” Dan mutters darkly. “I know.”
~ ~ ~
The first time Dan wakes that night his eyes only flutter briefly before he falls back to sleep, but the second time he looks around for Charlie, fully expecting to see him. All he sees by the light of the low fire are huddled sleeping forms scattered here and there. Charlotte, of course, is nearest to him, only a few feet away. Easier to keep an eye on him, Dan supposes, though it must be difficult to watch someone when both your eyes are closed.
It’s amazing how many stars he can see out here, all those constellations he’d barely known existed. Well, he knew they existed, of course; he hadn’t been living under a rock. But he’d never had time to appreciate them, and…
“You should sleep,” Charlie whispers, his breath warm against Dan’s ear.
Yeah, Dan thinks just before his eyes drift closed. Otherwise I might start hearing things.
~ ~ ~
It’s morning by the time Dan wakes again, though barely so. Charlotte, ever a morning person, is already awake, propping herself up on one elbow, eyeing him thoughtfully.
Dan yawns, stretches.
“You talk in your sleep,” Charlotte says. She’s smirking in a very Charlotte-y manner, haughty and friendly by turns. “Did you know?”
“Mmph,” mumbles Dan, closing his eyes again. He’s still three-quarters asleep. It’s strange, he thinks, how he almost feels rested, except for the rock jabbing him under one shoulder. He’d like to lie here like this for a while, just listening to the roar and crash of the surf, with the faint salt breeze whispering over his skin. Behind his closed eyelids the sunlight is pinkish, soothing.
The rock is really, really uncomfortable though, and Dan shifts slightly so that he’s on his side. He cracks one eye open a bit to peek at Charlotte. She’s still watching him, still smirking.
“Who’s Charlie?” she asks.
Dan’s eyes fly open. “What?”
“You talk in your sleep,” Charlotte reminds him.
~ ~ ~
It’s nearly dusk by the time Charlie finally returns, falling easily into step beside Dan. “Miss me?” he asks cheekily.
Dan shifts his armful of firewood slightly. Gathering firewood had been Charlotte’s brilliant make-work idea, of course; Dan hasn’t the faintest idea if he’s gathered enough of it or if the wood’s the right kind or any of that Boy Scout stuff. He has missed Charlie. He’s spent most of the day missing Charlie, in fact, though he doesn’t want to admit it, especially because by now Dan’s pretty sure he’s actually made Charlie up. He’s heard that stress can make the human mind do crazy things sometimes. And anyway, he’s also pretty sure that you’re not supposed to miss your hallucinations, even if they do have a knack for making you feel appreciated.
“Yeah,” Dan says finally. “Where’ve you been?”
Charlie shrugs. “Around. Here and there.”
Dan thinks this might be a lie. He’s never seen Charlie anywhere in camp or on the beach - and he’s certainly spent enough time today furtively searching him out - or in the jungle, or anywhere except where Dan happens to be alone. And no one’s mentioned Charlie, no one at all.
At last Dan says, “I made you up, didn’t I?”
Charlie stops, looking very carefully at Dan for a few long seconds before he says, “You think I’m not real?”
Dan shrugs. “I don’t know what to think,” he answers honestly. “Are you? Are you real?”
“I was on the plane too,” Charlie says, and Dan breathes an inward sigh of relief. “Ask Jack. Ask Kate.”
“Um, I don’t… I don’t think so,” Dan says, shifting the firewood in his arms again. “I don’t think either of them like me all that much.”
Charlie lets out a bark of laughter that makes Dan grin despite his strange worries. “Their loss then, yeah?”
~ ~ ~
He’s not eavesdropping; he doesn’t do that sort of thing. Eavesdropping is more Miles’ style, or even Charlotte’s, but certainly not Dan’s. He’s really just looking idly through the food stores, and their voices - Jack’s voice, Juliet’s voice - carry on the still air.
- I’m not so sure it was a good idea, bringing them here.
- What are you saying, Juliet? After all that I went through…
- Jack, that’s not what I meant!
They bicker a lot, those two, Dan thinks. If he hadn’t heard otherwise, he’d have taken them for an old married couple.
- After all we went through! Charlie drowned to help us!
- I know. I know, Jack.
- So their being here is for a reason. Don’t you understand that?
Drowned. Huh. Dan supposes he should be surprised - shocked, even - especially considering that from what he can figure out (not that he was eavesdropping, of course) it must have happened before his team got to the island. He’s a little dismayed to find he really isn’t very surprised at all.
Charlotte would have a field day with that, which is exactly why Dan’s not going to tell her.
~ ~ ~
I'm as real as you need, Charlie tells him later. Despite the fire, the night’s a cool one, and Dan’s huddled close to it, wrapped in his blankets. Charlie, he notices, doesn’t seem to mind the chill night air. Dan wonders if this is because the ocean is cold, or because death is cold, or maybe because dying in the ocean is especially cold. He wonders briefly if this is what insanity feels like, making friends with the dead.
“I’m going crazy, I think,” Dan says.
“You’re not crazy, mate,” Charlie reassures him. “It’s just that kind of island.”
It’s not actually that reassuring, and Dan wonders if maybe this is just the aftermath of all those years of unauthorized experiments, all the years of equations and theorems and lab rat after lab rat.
“Wait ‘til you see the polar bears,” Charlie adds. “First time I saw one of those, I thought it was the bloody drugs.”
What drugs? Dan wonders.
“To be honest, I was a total junkie,” Charlie says, “I always thought that’s what’d do me in.”
The corners of Dan’s mouth twitch, and in seconds he has to clap a hand over his mouth to stifle the giggle that’s trying to escape.
Charlie glares at him, clearly annoyed. “It’s not all that sodding funny, y’know!”
“I know, I know,” Dan manages. “It’s this. It’s you. It’s us. All this.” More soberly, he adds, “I mean, I’m having a conversation with a dead man. You don’t think that’s a little weird? I think that’s a little weird.”
“Yeah,” Charlie agrees. “But I’m not bad company, am I?”
This time Dan lets the giggles come; he can’t help it. It’s just that kind of island.
I’m as real as you need, Charlie tells him again, and Dan thinks that maybe this reality might not be so bad after all. In fact, it might just be the kind of rescue he needs.