Fic, Lost: My Darling Clementine (Sawyer, Clementine, Walt), PG13, for lostfichallenge
So I've been slacking off with writing lately, but maybe this will get me back into the good old routine. Especially since I need to finish two things and post one which is done and lacks something I can't figure out.
Title: My Darling Clementine
Rating: PG13 to be safe
Characters: Sawyer, Clementine, Walt
Word counting: 2530
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine, goddamnit. I don't do time travel.
Spoilers: Up to the S4 finale.
Summary: “Well, I know your dad because I was in the same plane crash.”
A/N: won second place at lostfichallenge #78, the next generation, and 10_shakespeare, "Your 'if' is the only peace-maker; much virtue in 'if'!". It's, uhm, I don't know where the hell it came from. I'm not making use of the song of the title, though.
Life has been getting pretty damn boring during the last six months and Sawyer realizes it in the moment he starts thinking what if.
The first time he thinks those two words, he abruptly shakes his head, blocking out his train of thought. They are dangerous words, at least for him; and there isn’t a most dangerous pair that could come in his head in this specific place at this specific time.
He managed not to think about anything that doesn’t relate to his present situation for six months. He had roofs to fix, found himself helping Juliet while she tended Jin’s wounds (how he survived, now that’d be a question), witnessed Daniel and Charlotte’s cheesy exchanges without batting an eyelid. He even found out he can stand Miles when he’s on a good day and once per week he gets drunk in Juliet’s living room. That’s pretty much all the life he has had up to now and since there aren’t any roofs to fix anymore and he and Juliet decided that one hangover at week wasn’t really worth it, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
Things got boring, alright; the first time he manages to shake it out, but the second time it happens, he’s reading a book he already knows by heart, he’s on the verge of sleeping and the rational side of his brain isn’t fast enough while reacting.
He’s surprised by what he thinks, though.
There were plenty what ifs that could have come to him; in retrospective, he would have expected what if they were to be back right now, what if she had wanted me from the beginning, what if we didn’t fuck in that cage, what if I hadn’t jumped.
It isn’t any of this. He thinks, what if I wrote that letter Cassidy wanted me to write.
As soon as it’s thought, he finds out he has doomed himself.
It pops up any second of every day, while he’s dozing off, while he’s reading, while he’s talking with Bernard, while he changes a light bulb. He finds out he can’t help his head running with it and every time it’s a different path.
Everything starts with him writing that letter; he imagines himself in the action of writing it, but never thinks about the content of it. Then the outcomes are all different.
He writes the letter in prison, then throws it away and never gives it to Cassidy. He writes the letter in prison, gives it to Cassidy, doesn’t cheat his way out of cell and when he steps out of the gates six year later he finds himself faced with Cassidy holding the hand of a pretty blonde seven year old girl. He writes the letter in prison but only mails it when he’s out and makes sure Cassidy never finds him. He writes it when out of prison, goes to Albuquerque, drops it in Cassidy’s mailbox, runs away. He writes it when out of prison, goes to Albuquerque, knocks on her door, gives it to Cassidy in person, runs away.
He writes it when out of prison, to goes to Albuquerque, knocks on her door, gives it to Cassidy in person, stays.
He stops there, too terrified to go further; he’s sure he would have never thought about this outcome, a year ago. He finds his hands shaking at the realization that he has even allowed the possibility; he takes his head between them, closing his eyes and breathing slowly.
What if she didn’t want me to stay.
He knows this is the only what if that could never be. He has an idea that Cassidy would have had him back, at that point. Before she managed to start another life, sure.
What if I stayed.
That baby girl he has barely had a look at in that pic Cassidy showed him starts to haunt his dreams, blond soft hair and big blue eyes staring back at him; he imagines her grown up of six or seven years. He can’t help imagining her with dimples in her cheeks while she smiles and then he remembers how he called Cassidy and he wants to throw up. He imagines her starting to read and maybe starting to steal his books, if he had stayed and if he had written that letter.
It’s probably the most unsettling thought he has ever had his whole life or if it isn't, that's near the top; not to mention the most delusional, and he perfectly knows it. He just perfectly knows it as much as he knows that he isn’t ever leaving this piece of rock.
One day, Juliet comes to him with a pack of cigarettes, saying someone found them in some cupboard and no one else wanted them.
He opens it and sees that there are just four inside. He thanks her and thinks, if I had written it and if I stayed, would I have quit?
He decides he’s definitely getting crazy. Then he goes to the kitchen and picks up a box of matches.
There’s a room in his house where there’s a desk with a few sheets of paper and a couple of pens. He thinks that he got the house of someone fairly important, since no one else’s place apart from Locke’s has a desk, paper or pens. Or anything.
He picks up a white sheet which suddenly feels frail and thin under his fingers. He shakes his head and thinks what the fuck am I doing. It’s not like there’s a postal service and he shouldn’t waste paper. Not really.
He lights the cigarette, the familiar (or not anymore?) smell of tobacco filling his lungs; a few ashes fall over the upper right corner of the sheet, leaving a small, dull gray stain. He figures it doesn’t matter.
He picks a pen, thankfully he writes with his left hand but has always smoked with his right; he doesn’t write the date since he doesn’t even know it anymore.
He should start with Dear Clementine, but as soon as he has the tip of the pen just over the sheet he decides that it doesn’t sound right. He also thinks that Cassidy chose one of the worst names one could choose for a baby, who the fuck names her daughter like that, then smiles softly for maybe a second or two and even if he knows it sounds like a bad joke, he realizes he couldn’t start any other way. Even if he hasn’t met her and he hasn’t any right to call her as he’s going to call her.
The tip of the pen runs over the paper, smooth and eager to receive the ink, an action so easy and hard at the same time, as the words My darling Clementine take shape there, black over white.
--
Clementine Phillips is twenty years old when she receives the call.
At the time, she has left home to study American Literature there at Albuquerque’s university; her mother told her to ask also someplace else, but she had wanted to stay close. She comes home only on the weekends anyway and she feels like it isn’t much at all.
Sometimes Clementine wishes her mom had found someone; then she realizes she doesn’t see her mother settled with someone anyways.
She’s a pretty girl, short blond hair, big blue eyes and dimples that have earned her at least three or four idiots following her around and asking her out in her first semester; not that she gives them any credit. There isn’t a single one she likes among them anyway. She’s also pretty tall and that’s why she’s in the basket team; she likes it alright and it’s all good exercise anyway.
When the phone rings, she’s writing an essay; she expects it to be her mother but when she realizes the voice belongs to a young man she doesn’t know who says he knows her dad and if they please can meet so he can give her one thing, she’s tempted to close the conversation. But his tone sounds sincere and well, even if she thought she had suppressed a certain need for knowing about her dad that she had always felt when she was younger, she finds out she really wants to have whatever her interlocutor has to give her.
So she gives him an appointment in a crowded restaurant for the next day and hangs up.
Clementine doesn’t really know much about her dad; she knows his name, she knows his face because her mom always kept one picture of them together and she let her see it, not doing any arm in letting you know how he looked like. She knows he wasn’t a good man and she knows he died in a plane crash.
She also remembers vaguely hearing something about the six survivors of that same accident suddenly disappearing about a couple of years ago, or maybe one. She doesn’t really know, it’s not like she cared knowing that she wasn’t ever going to meet him.
She also reasons about what the young man said. He said I know your dad, not I knew your dad. She tries to understand how is that even possible, then figures all her questions will get an answer tomorrow. Or so she hopes.
--
He recognizes her from the book she brought with her and that they had agreed upon the evening before. He introduces himself as Walt Dawson, he’s in his mid-twenties, dresses casually; his half smile is sincere and Clementine can’t help thinking for a second about how his white perfect teeth contrast deliciously with his dark skin and eyes. His hand is warm when she shakes it, his skin smooth over the palm and ruined on his fingertips; she doesn’t ask him why, though. She figures it’d be rude.
They sit at a table, she orders a pancake and he orders coffee. He coughs once and then speaks. Clementine isn’t surprised about the fact that he doesn’t dance around the reason why he’s here.
“I’m sure you’re expecting some explanation. About what I told you yesterday.”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, I know your dad because I was in the same plane crash.”
Clementine’s hand holding the pancake stops in mid-air.
“That isn’t possible. There were only…”
“It was a lie. There were forty eight survivors. Among which me, him and my dad.”
His voice breaks a little over the last word. Clementine nods and takes a bite even if she can’t taste anything anymore.
“It would be too much to explain right now and it would also sound crazy, so I’ll just… go straight to the point. You read when the Oceanic Six disappeared. Right?”
“Sure.”
“I was with them.”
“How could you if…”
“We had crashed on an island. I had left before in… other circumstances. And they left under other circumstances. They… well, they went back and I did, too. I was… well, searching for my dad. Or so I hoped.”
“Why?”
“He’s dead.”
“I’m… I’m sorry, I…”
“Don’t worry. I think I knew it already. I just needed to… well, I still had hope. Anyway, there were still some survivors there. And… your dad, too.”
She should get up and go away, this is way too crazy; but when she looks into his eyes, she realizes he’s telling the truth. She swallows and nods; he keeps on talking.
“They… just… well, no one can leave.”
“Why?”
“It’s… God, I can’t explain that. It’s just a mess and I’m not sure I understood the whole thing myself. I just know they can’t leave. But I could.”
“Why?”
He laughs for a second, a bitter smile forming on his lips.
“Looks like I’m special or something. Or maybe it’s because I have no reason to stay there. But anyway, I could go back here and figured I would. The reason I was there… you know. It wasn’t there anymore. And… well, your dad told me to give you this. He says it’s probably too late but he wants you to have it anyway.”
Walt’s hand goes straight to his jacket’s pocket and takes carefully out an envelope; then he hands it to her.
Clementine’s hands tremble as she takes it; the paper of the envelope is old and of a light yellow color, it isn’t even sealed; she turns it and reads for Clementine in a neat, almost elegant handwriting which she suddenly recognizes. There was a sentence written behind that picture her mom kept hidden in a drawer and took out once in a while, looking at it almost fondly; she doesn’t remember it right now, but she thinks it’s the same. Her grip becomes suddenly tighter and she wonders if the paper would break. She loosens it.
She raises her eyes and nods at Walt, licking her lips and thinking about something she should say right now. He smiles again and it’s a bit wider as he shakes his head.
“You don’t need to tell me anything else. It’s fine. I just… I get it.”
“Thank you. So… is he alive now?”
“Yeah. He… he is.”
“You say there isn’t a way to… you know… go where he is?”
“Not now. There might be, but… well, I can give you a call whenever I have an idea.”
It’s clearly a joke, she thinks as he stands up and pays the bill. She leaves the half finished pancake where it is and joins him outside the door.
“Just… thanks again.”
“Oh, it was nothing.”
“Uhm… listen, could you tell me where do you live? If it isn’t too much of a personal question.”
He shakes his head.
“In New York.”
“God, that’s far.”
“Well, it was worth the trip. Now I really should go though, I have to arrange a plane back and...”
“Sure.”
They shake hands again and he turns; for a second Clementine thinks that he walks as he has a weight on his shoulders. Then she calls him back before she has thought about it.
“Hey!”
He turns to her, a questioning look in his eyes.
“If you want to call even if you… well, don’t know how to get wherever the hell is that place… just… you could. If you’d like,” she blurts out at once. She sees him smiling again and raising his hand.
“Sure. I will, if you’d like.”
She nods and he disappears in the crowd. He might as well have been an hallucination, if not for that envelope still in her hands.
She runs back to her room at the campus, thankful for her roomate not being in; she sits on her bed, her hands trembling, as she takes out of the envelope a thin, frail piece of paper folded in two. The upper right corner is dirty with something she thinks has to be cigarette ashes, there’s still a faint smell. There’s no date, but the sheet is filled until the end, an endless sequence of sentences written in that same handwriting. She closes her eyes and takes a breath. She doesn’t really know why a certain and strange warmth floods in her veins from somewhere inside when she reads the words My darling Clementine first.
End.
Title: My Darling Clementine
Rating: PG13 to be safe
Characters: Sawyer, Clementine, Walt
Word counting: 2530
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine, goddamnit. I don't do time travel.
Spoilers: Up to the S4 finale.
Summary: “Well, I know your dad because I was in the same plane crash.”
A/N: won second place at lostfichallenge #78, the next generation, and 10_shakespeare, "Your 'if' is the only peace-maker; much virtue in 'if'!". It's, uhm, I don't know where the hell it came from. I'm not making use of the song of the title, though.
Life has been getting pretty damn boring during the last six months and Sawyer realizes it in the moment he starts thinking what if.
The first time he thinks those two words, he abruptly shakes his head, blocking out his train of thought. They are dangerous words, at least for him; and there isn’t a most dangerous pair that could come in his head in this specific place at this specific time.
He managed not to think about anything that doesn’t relate to his present situation for six months. He had roofs to fix, found himself helping Juliet while she tended Jin’s wounds (how he survived, now that’d be a question), witnessed Daniel and Charlotte’s cheesy exchanges without batting an eyelid. He even found out he can stand Miles when he’s on a good day and once per week he gets drunk in Juliet’s living room. That’s pretty much all the life he has had up to now and since there aren’t any roofs to fix anymore and he and Juliet decided that one hangover at week wasn’t really worth it, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
Things got boring, alright; the first time he manages to shake it out, but the second time it happens, he’s reading a book he already knows by heart, he’s on the verge of sleeping and the rational side of his brain isn’t fast enough while reacting.
He’s surprised by what he thinks, though.
There were plenty what ifs that could have come to him; in retrospective, he would have expected what if they were to be back right now, what if she had wanted me from the beginning, what if we didn’t fuck in that cage, what if I hadn’t jumped.
It isn’t any of this. He thinks, what if I wrote that letter Cassidy wanted me to write.
As soon as it’s thought, he finds out he has doomed himself.
It pops up any second of every day, while he’s dozing off, while he’s reading, while he’s talking with Bernard, while he changes a light bulb. He finds out he can’t help his head running with it and every time it’s a different path.
Everything starts with him writing that letter; he imagines himself in the action of writing it, but never thinks about the content of it. Then the outcomes are all different.
He writes the letter in prison, then throws it away and never gives it to Cassidy. He writes the letter in prison, gives it to Cassidy, doesn’t cheat his way out of cell and when he steps out of the gates six year later he finds himself faced with Cassidy holding the hand of a pretty blonde seven year old girl. He writes the letter in prison but only mails it when he’s out and makes sure Cassidy never finds him. He writes it when out of prison, goes to Albuquerque, drops it in Cassidy’s mailbox, runs away. He writes it when out of prison, goes to Albuquerque, knocks on her door, gives it to Cassidy in person, runs away.
He writes it when out of prison, to goes to Albuquerque, knocks on her door, gives it to Cassidy in person, stays.
He stops there, too terrified to go further; he’s sure he would have never thought about this outcome, a year ago. He finds his hands shaking at the realization that he has even allowed the possibility; he takes his head between them, closing his eyes and breathing slowly.
What if she didn’t want me to stay.
He knows this is the only what if that could never be. He has an idea that Cassidy would have had him back, at that point. Before she managed to start another life, sure.
What if I stayed.
That baby girl he has barely had a look at in that pic Cassidy showed him starts to haunt his dreams, blond soft hair and big blue eyes staring back at him; he imagines her grown up of six or seven years. He can’t help imagining her with dimples in her cheeks while she smiles and then he remembers how he called Cassidy and he wants to throw up. He imagines her starting to read and maybe starting to steal his books, if he had stayed and if he had written that letter.
It’s probably the most unsettling thought he has ever had his whole life or if it isn't, that's near the top; not to mention the most delusional, and he perfectly knows it. He just perfectly knows it as much as he knows that he isn’t ever leaving this piece of rock.
One day, Juliet comes to him with a pack of cigarettes, saying someone found them in some cupboard and no one else wanted them.
He opens it and sees that there are just four inside. He thanks her and thinks, if I had written it and if I stayed, would I have quit?
He decides he’s definitely getting crazy. Then he goes to the kitchen and picks up a box of matches.
There’s a room in his house where there’s a desk with a few sheets of paper and a couple of pens. He thinks that he got the house of someone fairly important, since no one else’s place apart from Locke’s has a desk, paper or pens. Or anything.
He picks up a white sheet which suddenly feels frail and thin under his fingers. He shakes his head and thinks what the fuck am I doing. It’s not like there’s a postal service and he shouldn’t waste paper. Not really.
He lights the cigarette, the familiar (or not anymore?) smell of tobacco filling his lungs; a few ashes fall over the upper right corner of the sheet, leaving a small, dull gray stain. He figures it doesn’t matter.
He picks a pen, thankfully he writes with his left hand but has always smoked with his right; he doesn’t write the date since he doesn’t even know it anymore.
He should start with Dear Clementine, but as soon as he has the tip of the pen just over the sheet he decides that it doesn’t sound right. He also thinks that Cassidy chose one of the worst names one could choose for a baby, who the fuck names her daughter like that, then smiles softly for maybe a second or two and even if he knows it sounds like a bad joke, he realizes he couldn’t start any other way. Even if he hasn’t met her and he hasn’t any right to call her as he’s going to call her.
The tip of the pen runs over the paper, smooth and eager to receive the ink, an action so easy and hard at the same time, as the words My darling Clementine take shape there, black over white.
--
Clementine Phillips is twenty years old when she receives the call.
At the time, she has left home to study American Literature there at Albuquerque’s university; her mother told her to ask also someplace else, but she had wanted to stay close. She comes home only on the weekends anyway and she feels like it isn’t much at all.
Sometimes Clementine wishes her mom had found someone; then she realizes she doesn’t see her mother settled with someone anyways.
She’s a pretty girl, short blond hair, big blue eyes and dimples that have earned her at least three or four idiots following her around and asking her out in her first semester; not that she gives them any credit. There isn’t a single one she likes among them anyway. She’s also pretty tall and that’s why she’s in the basket team; she likes it alright and it’s all good exercise anyway.
When the phone rings, she’s writing an essay; she expects it to be her mother but when she realizes the voice belongs to a young man she doesn’t know who says he knows her dad and if they please can meet so he can give her one thing, she’s tempted to close the conversation. But his tone sounds sincere and well, even if she thought she had suppressed a certain need for knowing about her dad that she had always felt when she was younger, she finds out she really wants to have whatever her interlocutor has to give her.
So she gives him an appointment in a crowded restaurant for the next day and hangs up.
Clementine doesn’t really know much about her dad; she knows his name, she knows his face because her mom always kept one picture of them together and she let her see it, not doing any arm in letting you know how he looked like. She knows he wasn’t a good man and she knows he died in a plane crash.
She also remembers vaguely hearing something about the six survivors of that same accident suddenly disappearing about a couple of years ago, or maybe one. She doesn’t really know, it’s not like she cared knowing that she wasn’t ever going to meet him.
She also reasons about what the young man said. He said I know your dad, not I knew your dad. She tries to understand how is that even possible, then figures all her questions will get an answer tomorrow. Or so she hopes.
--
He recognizes her from the book she brought with her and that they had agreed upon the evening before. He introduces himself as Walt Dawson, he’s in his mid-twenties, dresses casually; his half smile is sincere and Clementine can’t help thinking for a second about how his white perfect teeth contrast deliciously with his dark skin and eyes. His hand is warm when she shakes it, his skin smooth over the palm and ruined on his fingertips; she doesn’t ask him why, though. She figures it’d be rude.
They sit at a table, she orders a pancake and he orders coffee. He coughs once and then speaks. Clementine isn’t surprised about the fact that he doesn’t dance around the reason why he’s here.
“I’m sure you’re expecting some explanation. About what I told you yesterday.”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, I know your dad because I was in the same plane crash.”
Clementine’s hand holding the pancake stops in mid-air.
“That isn’t possible. There were only…”
“It was a lie. There were forty eight survivors. Among which me, him and my dad.”
His voice breaks a little over the last word. Clementine nods and takes a bite even if she can’t taste anything anymore.
“It would be too much to explain right now and it would also sound crazy, so I’ll just… go straight to the point. You read when the Oceanic Six disappeared. Right?”
“Sure.”
“I was with them.”
“How could you if…”
“We had crashed on an island. I had left before in… other circumstances. And they left under other circumstances. They… well, they went back and I did, too. I was… well, searching for my dad. Or so I hoped.”
“Why?”
“He’s dead.”
“I’m… I’m sorry, I…”
“Don’t worry. I think I knew it already. I just needed to… well, I still had hope. Anyway, there were still some survivors there. And… your dad, too.”
She should get up and go away, this is way too crazy; but when she looks into his eyes, she realizes he’s telling the truth. She swallows and nods; he keeps on talking.
“They… just… well, no one can leave.”
“Why?”
“It’s… God, I can’t explain that. It’s just a mess and I’m not sure I understood the whole thing myself. I just know they can’t leave. But I could.”
“Why?”
He laughs for a second, a bitter smile forming on his lips.
“Looks like I’m special or something. Or maybe it’s because I have no reason to stay there. But anyway, I could go back here and figured I would. The reason I was there… you know. It wasn’t there anymore. And… well, your dad told me to give you this. He says it’s probably too late but he wants you to have it anyway.”
Walt’s hand goes straight to his jacket’s pocket and takes carefully out an envelope; then he hands it to her.
Clementine’s hands tremble as she takes it; the paper of the envelope is old and of a light yellow color, it isn’t even sealed; she turns it and reads for Clementine in a neat, almost elegant handwriting which she suddenly recognizes. There was a sentence written behind that picture her mom kept hidden in a drawer and took out once in a while, looking at it almost fondly; she doesn’t remember it right now, but she thinks it’s the same. Her grip becomes suddenly tighter and she wonders if the paper would break. She loosens it.
She raises her eyes and nods at Walt, licking her lips and thinking about something she should say right now. He smiles again and it’s a bit wider as he shakes his head.
“You don’t need to tell me anything else. It’s fine. I just… I get it.”
“Thank you. So… is he alive now?”
“Yeah. He… he is.”
“You say there isn’t a way to… you know… go where he is?”
“Not now. There might be, but… well, I can give you a call whenever I have an idea.”
It’s clearly a joke, she thinks as he stands up and pays the bill. She leaves the half finished pancake where it is and joins him outside the door.
“Just… thanks again.”
“Oh, it was nothing.”
“Uhm… listen, could you tell me where do you live? If it isn’t too much of a personal question.”
He shakes his head.
“In New York.”
“God, that’s far.”
“Well, it was worth the trip. Now I really should go though, I have to arrange a plane back and...”
“Sure.”
They shake hands again and he turns; for a second Clementine thinks that he walks as he has a weight on his shoulders. Then she calls him back before she has thought about it.
“Hey!”
He turns to her, a questioning look in his eyes.
“If you want to call even if you… well, don’t know how to get wherever the hell is that place… just… you could. If you’d like,” she blurts out at once. She sees him smiling again and raising his hand.
“Sure. I will, if you’d like.”
She nods and he disappears in the crowd. He might as well have been an hallucination, if not for that envelope still in her hands.
She runs back to her room at the campus, thankful for her roomate not being in; she sits on her bed, her hands trembling, as she takes out of the envelope a thin, frail piece of paper folded in two. The upper right corner is dirty with something she thinks has to be cigarette ashes, there’s still a faint smell. There’s no date, but the sheet is filled until the end, an endless sequence of sentences written in that same handwriting. She closes her eyes and takes a breath. She doesn’t really know why a certain and strange warmth floods in her veins from somewhere inside when she reads the words My darling Clementine first.
End.