In-depth storyline (WIP)
BACKGROUND
Born on May 30, 1956 as the unwanted, premature child of teenager Emily Locke and the much older Anthony Cooper. He survived a number of illnesses, the nurses calling it a miracle that he was alive. When informed that she could hold her baby for the first time, Emily ran out of the hospital ward. John was signed into adoption.From this point on, John's life became a long line of foster homes. At one point, when he was five, the mysterious Richard Alpert, who had been present at his birth, showed interest in John, saying he came from a school for "very special children" like him. He aligned several objects on a table, and asked the child to pick the item which was "already his". They included a compass, a bottle of sand, and a knife, which John picked, prompting Richard to leave in a hurry, saying he wasn't ready yet.He joined the Cub Scouts, learning various of the skills he'd later show in nature. At a teenager age, his love of science attracted bullying, and one of his teachers reported that Mittenlos, the scientific branch of the Dharma initiative, had shown interest in his science projects and was interested in granting him a scholarship. However, John favored sports over science, not wanting to limit himself to being a lab rat. When the teacher told him he didn't really have a choice, John replied with "Don't tell me what I can't do".Fast forward to his adulthood, where he made a living with different temporary jobs, with no real vocation. He was working as a clerk at a toy store, when he noticed an older woman throwing him constant, strange looks. Upon noticing her again at the exit, he ran up to her and asked for an explanation: she was none other than Emily, the mother that had abandoned him. She was another one to tell him that he was "special", and had no father: he was immaculately conceived. Investigating further, Locke tracked his living father, as well as a record of his mother's psychriatic issues.Upon finding Anthony Cooper, John visited him, and the man appeared to be enthusiastic about his newly found son. He invited John into hunting trips, bonding with him. He thought it to be the real father-son relationship he'd never found in foster care. On one visit, he found Cooper attached to a dialysis machine, in what he thought to be an unexpected, accidental turn. John offered him his kidney, and before the operation, mentioned their encounter must have been an act of fate. But when he woke up post-surgery, Cooper was nowhere to be found.Emily visited him away, and she confessed to everything being an elaborate, manipulative con orchestrated by Anthony himself, who had paid her into doing it. John man enragedly drove to his father's house, where the security guard denied him access, and he could just stare at the security camera, where Cooper would surely be watching. John couldn't bring himself over this, and so, he joined a therapy group on parental trouble, where he compared the others' problems to his own and devalued them. However, one good thing came out of this: it was where his attitude attracted Helen Norwood, a practical and open woman, who approached him after a session, understanding of his state, and there was an instant, mutual attraction.They started seeing each other, but at night, while she slept, John had started picking up the habit of driving towards his father's house and stalking him. Cooper found out and confronted him about it. Topping things, Helen found out as well, making him choose between the two of them. For a while, John and Helen lived together, and he was preparing a marriage proposal. However, one morning, while she was glancing through the newspaper's obituaries, she happened to come across Anthony Cooper's name.The two attended his funeral, noticing two strange-looking men there as well. That same afternoon, Cooper, who had faked his own death out of stealing a grand sum of money from the two thugs, showed up, intending to make a deal: if Locke would help him retrieve the money, he'd give him half of it. He agreed to this, giving himself excuses to do it. After all, what could go wrong? Except one thing: Helen caught the two counting bills, and left John, angrily realizing he wasn't capable of letting go. Even as he kneeled and went through with the marriage proposal, she refused, and Cooper didn't even flinch as he drove away from the uncomfortable scene.Devastated, John found solace in a Californian commune of farmers who all treated each other like family, and secretly grew and sold marijuana. One day, he was driving around and picked up Eddie, a hitchhiker, who helped him out of some trouble with the local guards. John invited him into their little "family", and the two grew fond of each other and bonded over six months. They kept the access to the glasshouse where they grew the pot strictly controlled, and after all this time where Eddie insisted John show him, he agreed to do it. What he didn't know was that this younger brother figure was, actually, an undercover cop: that very afternoon, the keepers of the farm told him in a desperate rush, as they were destroying files which could incriminate them. Once again, John had trusted the wrong person.That evening, he lured Eddie into the forest and held him at gunpoint, telling him he wouldn't hesitate to shoot, because he wasn't a farmer, but "a hunter". John asked him if the police had chosen him specifically, and it turned out that his psychological profile revealed he was "amendable for coertion". As the younger man walked away, and as much as John wanted to, he couldn't bring himself to shoot. As the cops raided the commune, Eddie noticed Locke watching from a distance, but he didn't say anything.Severely depressed after this long string of failures, John started receiving government insurance. One day, he was approached by Peter Calbot, a young man looking for information on one certain Anthony Cooper. The boy's mother, a rich older woman, had recently been engaged to him, but Peter had the suspicions it was all about the money, and he had found John by tracking the kidney transplant. He didn't tell the boy anything, but instead contacted Cooper, threatening to expose him as a conman. Cooper said he was trying to leave his criminal life behind and genuinely loved the woman. But a few weeks later, the police turned on John's doorstep, revealing that Peter had died under strange circumstances. Panicked, the man visited his father on an expensive apartment, where Cooper denied responsability, and said the woman had called off their wedding. When Locke asked to verify this information, his father pointed to a phone in front of a glass window, and the first moment John dropped his guard, he pushed him through it, throwing him down eight stories.John broke his back as a result of this incident, and appeared dead until a strange man, Jacob, approached him. Once in the hospital, Locke couldn't accept the fact he needed to be on a wheelchair, and broke down in tears at the sight. However, an orderly named Matthew Abaddon convinced him that he should not despair, that he still was special, and destiny had a lot in store for him. It was this man who encouraged Locke to go on an Australian "Walkabout", a self-discovery experience consisting on going to the jungle with nothing but a knife and compass, even though he could not walk.About four years after the accident, still paralyzed waist-down, John worked in a box company, where he was often ridiculed by his boss, Randy. He hadn't really accepted his disability, and refused to let it affect the way he lived. Furthermore, he was trying to re-enact his relationship with Helen with a phone sex operator who went by the same name, and who he called to talk hours on end. When he invited her over to the Walkabout experience, she declined, destroying his fantasy.In the end, he wasn't discouraged to take the tour. He flew to Australia, fully intending to take on it, but was not allowed to, due to his condition. He tried to argue the attendant's arguements about him not mentioning the paralysis, insisting that he had been through intense training, preparing for it. He firmly believed it was his destiny, and as the agent walked away, he screamed for him not to tell Locke "what he can't do". But it turns out that destiny had a different plan for John, since his flight back to LA was the fateful Oceanic Flight 815. Much to his embarassment, he had to be carried into it by flight attendants. However, the flight would never reach the LA X airport. Instead, it crashed on an island which didn't appear in the maps.
ON THE ISLAND
The moment he woke up on the island, in midst of the wrecked remains of the airplane, a red mark across his cheek the only perceptible wound, John noticed he could move his toes. He stepped up, feeling his legs - able to walk again. As every other survivor around him screamed, panicked, he was the first one to know that this island was not ordinary. That it had given him back his legs, when the doctors had said there was 98% of chance that he'd never feel them again. Locke conceived this as his miracle, something he couldn't explain, but which was proof that someone, something, had brought him there for a reason. And he was determined to figure it out, but most of all, to return this favour.On the first days, Locke seemed crazed and distant to the other survivors, feeling comfortable in the island. He was the only one not actively participating in their plans to go back. He earned their respect by hunting, when the initial provisions ran scarce. He was also the first one to see the "Monster", a violent cloud of black smoke, as he was hunting for boar in the jungle. He felt at home, exhilarated. He was a man in love.One day, he saved the doctor Jack Shepard from falling off a cliff, after the doctor had seen what he thought to be a hallucination of his dead father. Locke told him that this was a place where everything may be possible, but never explained his former paralysis and how the island had cured him: he just said he thought everything happened for a reason, that he had looked into the eye of the island, and what he saw, "was beautiful."From this point on, although unknown to the rest of survivors, Locke started actively boycotting their attempts to leave of the island. For example, he destroyed the equipment they were trying to use to track a distress signal. He bonded with the teenager Walt, first carving a whistle in wood to call his dog Vincent, who had run into the jungle, and then teaching him how to throw a knife. He also built a cradle for another survivor who was pregnant as a birthday present. He also helped Charlie, a former rock star, overcome his heroin addiction, by emphasizing on the importance of struggle as a strenghtening mechanism of nature. Aside from these signs of appreciation, Locke kept at a distance.While searching for two survivors who had been abducted by the island's inhabitants, he and the young Boone found a metallic hatch buried in the jungle, and spent a few days exposing it and trying to figure out how to open it. John wanted to keep this a secret from the other survivors, but Boone was dependantly attached to his sister Shannon. John knocked him unconscious and gave him an hallucinogen, which would embark him into a psychedelic trip to realize that his relationship with Shannon was unhealthy. This way, he helped Boone sever ties with her, and allow her some space. However, the friendship between the two would end tragically. Locke had a dream one night of a Beechcraft crashing nearby, and Boone all bloodied-up repeating a creepy mantra. When he told his younger companion, it turned out to be that it was significant to the younger man's past, and so, he believed Locke's vision. However, his legs had stopped working all of a sudden: he was terrified that the island could take the gift away if he didn't open the hatch. However, the very same day, a red plane crashed nearby, just as it happened in the dream, and it was up to Boone to try climbing up to it. As he did it, though, the plane tipped and fell, giving Boone fatal injuries.John returned to the camp with the injured younger man, not telling Jack about the real causes of the wounds. Because of this, the doctor couldn't save Boone. John disappeared, scurrying off to the hatch, pounding on the little window as he screamed and begged for it to give him a sign. And, as though to reaffirm his faith, a bright light lit on the other side immediately, prompting him to go back to the camp the next day during Boone's funeral, and tell everyone about it.The fact that he had lied considerably diminished Locke's credibility, and Jack never fully trusted him again. As they headed back to a crashed ship where some dynamite was located, with the intention of opening up the metallic door, the black smoke monster tried to drag Locke into a hole, only scared away by some dynamite which Kate threw into it. However, the man had repeatedly told his companions to let him go, firmly believing the monster only wanted to "put him to test", not hurt him. This started Locke's and Jack's debate on faith versus science, strenthening their differences.In the end, John himself lit the dynamite up to blow the hatch open. They would later identify it as the Swan, one of the eight stations of the long-gone Dharma initiative. Inside, Desmond, who at first seemed crazed, had been in charge of a countdown mechanism which counted 108 minutes. When it was approaching zero, he had to enter a code of numbers, "4 8 15 16 23 42" and press a button. This way, the countdown would restart. Apparently, although he didn't know exactly how, by doing this he was saving the world. He had also been led to believe the exterior was inviable, and ran away as soon as he learnt otherwise, leaving Locke and Jack to continue pushing the button.As Locke believed it was extremely important to keep pushing the button, the castaways took rotating turns to fulfill this task. However, a disrupting presence would soon come in the form of a man who had been captured in the jungle, who called himself "Henry Gale". Henry apparently had crashed in the island as he travelled the world in a helium balloon alongside his wife, who had died. That was the version of events he told, anyway: other survivors had a different opinion, that he may be one of whom they called "Others," the island's inhabitants who had repeatedly assaulted them. As the perceived leaders of the group, Locke and Jack kept him locked in the hatch until they could verify his story.Strangely, "Henry" had a way of subtly manipulating John. He'd introduce little elements of discord between him and Jack, making them confront each other for leadership. Locke initially believed his assertion that he was not one of the Others, and he even drew a map to where a group of survivors could find his crashed balloon. During a strange event in which the hatch entered a state of hermetic lockdown, with only Locke and "Henry" inside, the hunter called for the other man's help, as his leg got caught under one of the doors. A strange bond found its genesis into their relationship, and when the countdown came close to zero, "Henry" offered to enter the numbers, putting an end to the lockdown. Locke was inmensely grateful when the other man came back instead of running away, perceiving him as the first person he could trust in a long line of people who had deceived him. Just then, a few of the survivors came back from their trip in search for "Henry"'s balloon. They had indeed found it, but still not believing him, the former officer Sayid had dug into the supposed grave where "Henry"'s wife was buried. However, there was not a woman's corpse in there, but a skeleton with a wallet which contained the ID of a man, Henry Gale. After this, the survivors kept "Henry" locked until they figured out what to do with him.
.TBC...