Because You Left, Chapter Eighteen
Title: Because You Left, Chapter Eighteen: After All I've Been Through
Pairing/Character(s): Burt Hummel, Carole Hudson, Leslie Arzt, Claire Littleton, Tom Friendly, Dr. Juliet Burke, Ben Linus Anderson, Matthew Abaddon. (Nikki Fernandez and Boone Carlyle appear briefly; several other LOSTies are mentioned by name or reputation.)
Rating: PG-13 (for this chapter)
Warnings: Some descriptions of the aftermath of a plane crash, but everything's very soft-focus.
Word Count: A little over 7,000
Spoilers: Potential spoilers (kind of) for all six seasons of LOST, and up to and through Glee 2X08, "Furt."
Standard-Issue Short-Form Disclaimer: I do not hold copyright to Glee or LOST, I make no claims to such, and I am not profiting from this. The song referenced in this chapter is "This is Hell" by Elvis Costello
Summary: I need to introduce you to a man named Leslie Arzt. (In which we learn a few things about Karofsky's father, and Burt and Carole attempt to put the pieces together only to learn that a few of them have been left out.)
Author's Notes: This is a Glee/LOST AU crossover. Fic is a work in progress, but I do have a substantial backlog of chapters to post while I work on the newest ones. I hope to post once a week, on Sundays, barring fire, flood, corset-related disasters, and/or LJ outages. NOTE: This fic will be going on a four-week hiatus after Chapter 20, so I can get a good head-start on the more LOST-centric second section. There will be NO new chapters posted April 15 - May 6. After that, posting will resume on Sundays as normal.
Previous chapters and supplemental materials can be found on the masterpost (which has finally been updated. Sorry I'm a slacker).
As always, if I haven't adequately explained any of the LOST stuff, please feel free to leave a comment here and/or pm me. I will answer. This is a particularly Island-heavy chapter, so don't be shy, you guys.
day 1
It's the pregnant girl that makes him think of it.
She's little and cute and blonde and helpless-looking, and the moment she smiles at him, he feels like absolute shit. Because she shouldn't be relying on some stranger to help her with her bags; there should be someone with her, some boyfriend or husband or at least a father, someone to carry her things and take care of her and let her get on with the important business of just plain being pregnant, of giving life to something brand-new and wonderful. She shouldn't be alone. Not now. Not when she's about to have a child.
Which makes him think about Jennifer, who is alone.
And that's on him.
And that's what makes him think of it.
Leslie's not sure why -- maybe it's the fact that she carried his son, maybe it's how long they spent together, maybe it's just her -- but every time he gets nostalgic about some ex, it's always Jennifer. Never Rochelle, even though she was the first; never Aimee, although she was the most recent. Jennifer. Which kind of makes him wonder if she ever gets nostalgic about him. She's never remarried; every child support check he sends out is proof of that. And, granted, maybe she just hasn't met anyone new, being stuck in Nowhere, Ohio and all. But still. Maybe there's still something there. Maybe there's a reason he can't let her go.
Maybe.
Probably not, though.
He settles into his seat and fastens the belt and thinks about it anyway, because he might as well. Because that internet dating thing didn't go so great (probably should've just used his real picture from the start instead of borrowing someone else's, saved himself some trouble), and he's lonely, and sometimes it seems like it could be a good thing for him. It wouldn't just be stepping into his old life, of course; things have changed, and the boy's gotten big (Jennifer doesn't really write anymore, but she does send pictures -- a big, strapping boy in hockey pads, broad shoulders and kind of a goony smile, and Leslie never really thought that David looked too much like him, but now he's starting to see it, the resemblance). It'd be different from what it was. These things always are. But to have someone else in the house again, to not be alone. It'd be a nice change, a welcome change.
And hell, in a couple of years, they'll be sending David off to college. So even if three winds up being a crowd, it'll be just the two of them, soon enough. Which he could handle, he thinks. The fatherhood thing he was never too good at, but he thinks he was all right as a husband, for the most part. He could make it work. He could figure it out.
Of course, it's not really gonna happen. He knows that. He'll think about it for now, and it'll sound good at first. Sound great, even, sound perfect. Sound like it's just what he needs. But then the pregnant girl will stop looking so charming; she'll badger the stewardesses and use the restroom five times in an hour, and it'll start to remind him of what Jennifer could be when she stopped trying, how she used to nag him all the time, how nothing was ever enough for her. And he'll start thinking about the boy, how he was always a handful, always with some practice to go to or some Cub Scout meeting or some homework he needed help with or just pestering, the way he always did -- Dad, come throw the ball with me, c'mon. And it'll stop sounding so perfect, and start sounding a lot more like a pain in his ass. And he'll remember why he's been avoiding it for so long, why he's never written anything other than child support checks and the odd birthday card, why he doesn't call or come visit. He'll remember why he was the one who pushed Jennifer to head back to Nowhere, Ohio in the first place, and why he was the one who pushed for the divorce in the first place, and why he was the one who pushed. Who pushed them away.
Because the house and the wife and the broad-shouldered son with the goony smile? These are all great things. For other people. Not for him. He might daydream about going back sometimes, when things fall apart in the real world, but it's never going to be something he tries. Not again.
And by the time the plane lands at L.A.X., he'll have forgotten all about the whole thing. And it'll be some other girl, some other website, some other borrowed picture. And when that breaks up, he'll think about Jennifer again, for an hour or two. And then he'll forget her again until the next time. And the next.
Which is probably a sign that he shouldn't be thinking of her in the first place, really.
But hell, it's a long flight from Sydney to L.A., and it's not like he's got anything better to do. So he smiles at the pregnant girl one last time, and settles back into his seat, and closes his eyes, and dreams of going home to his wife and son, and knows that he's safe, because he knows he'll never really do it.
*
It's that first picture that Burt keeps coming back to, over and over again: the guy in the polo shirt, sitting in the stands at some game, somewhere, with his kid perched on his knee. The boy is smiling, this big, goony grin, but the guy himself isn't, not really. His eyes are squinting shut, and his lips are twisted in this fake sort of smirk, like he knows he should be smiling, but he doesn't really feel it.
"He --"
Kurt stops himself after the first word, when Ben (and everyone else in the room turns to look at him); there's a long pause before Ben very softly, very gently asks, "Yes, Kurt?"
"Just..." Kurt's shoulders heave as he takes a great big breath, and this time Blaine's the one to reach out, petting gently at Kurt's hand. "Karofsky. He -- he said --"
"He said that it was our fault," Blaine finishes, glancing sidelong at Kurt as if checking to see if he's offended by the interruption. He's not; if anything, he looks relieved. "My dad's and mine, I mean, not Kurt's. He said that if it wasn't for us, He wouldn't have come back. And that He ruined everything. He didn't say who'd come back, and I don't know if Kurt knew, but... It was his father. His father had come back. For us. David was... David was pretty upset about that. About his father coming back."
He didn't mention the whole suicide thing, the part where Dave Karofsky had apparently been so upset that he begged that Santana girl to kill him. And neither Kurt nor Ben nor Burt himself had reminded him about it. Hell, like the story wasn't grim enough. But Burt had been thinking about it. He'd been thinking about it the whole time. About that kid with the goony smile, damn near grown up now, coming to school with a gun, threatening Kurt and Blaine and Santana with it, and then begging to be shot when his plan went haywire.
Burt's not positive, but he's pretty sure he'll be thinking about that for a while, too. That it's going to be a damn hard thing for him to get rid of.
Carole sets a mug down at his elbow, then slides into the chair across from him, her own mug still firmly in hand. Burt picks the drink up, sniffs at it. "Coffee?" he asks. "At nine o'clock at night?"
"It's decaf," Carole replies, shrugging and taking a sip. "Anyway, were you planning on sleeping tonight? Because honestly, I'm not sure I'm even going to try right now."
Burt sighs, flips the folder shut, and leans in. Because he knows what she's going to say next, what he's been afraid of her saying all along. "Look," he says, quietly. "Carole."
"Don't you 'Look Carole' me," she retorts, immediately, and Burt draws back in surprise. "You have no idea what's on my mind, Burt Hummel, and I thought you knew better than to assume by now. You know what that makes you."
"Yeah," Burt says, and half-smiles, because damn, he loves this woman. He'll let her go if he has to; he's not going to risk her if that's not what she wants, but damn does he love her. "Yeah, I do. All right then, Ms. Unpredictable. Tell me what's on your mind."
*
day 1 (cont'd)
"Am I okay?" he demands, and part of him realizes it's stupid, but the thing is he just can't believe it. Everything is noise and heat and fire, people screaming and crying, the crackle of flames and the smell of smoke and gasoline and burning upholstery, and he can still feel it -- the shaking, the sudden drop that sent him straining against his seat belt, the oxygen mask pressed to his face and that odd, almost peaceful moment where they'd dropped again and he'd gone weightless -- and there's no way he's actually alive. There's just no way it could even make sense. "Look at me, am I okay?"
The woman looks at him with perplexed eyes -- stares at him, really, then staggers on without answering. And he thinks he isn't okay at all. He thinks he's dead.
He's dead. And the woman who helped him up, the woman who couldn't tell him whether or not he was okay? She's dead too. And they're all of them dead, every last person on that plane. The pregnant girl, the nice middle-aged couple sitting ahead of him, Cindy the stewardess and the guy in the suit who kept calling her 'sweetheart.' The middle-eastern guy and that unwashed redneck who snarled at everyone who walked past his seat, the little boy who got snappy when his dad told him to put away the Nintendo DS, the long-legged blonde and her scowling boyfriend, the fat guy with the headphones, the scruffy-looking British guy with the painted fingernails. They're dead.
They're all dead. All of them.
And so is he.
A line from an old Elvis Costello song comes back to him -- You'll get used to it after a spell, for Heaven is Hell in reverse. He's not sure what this is. The fire and all the screaming are bad signs, sure, but those could stop. He thinks this place might be nice, if there weren't so much screaming. So really, it could be either. Could be both, maybe.
He'll have to wait for the obligatory performance of "My Favorite Things" to find out.
The leggy blonde girl's scowling boyfriend dashes past him, his blue shirt dirty with soot and sweat, shouting "Does anyone have a pen?"
With nothing better to do, Leslie chases after, shouting "I do! I've got a pen!"
*
"It's that damned banana," Carole admits, both hands curling around her mug of decaf, although she doesn't raise it.
Burt blinks at her from across the table, tilts his head to the side. There's a lot rattling around in his head right now -- poison gas and submarines, one man doing his damndest to sell his son, another man fighting just as hard to save his own -- he honestly can't remember how the banana comes into play. "Beg pardon?" he asks.
Carole shakes her head, looks down at the table. "What Blaine said," she says, her voice quieter now, and more than a little sad. "About his dad getting locked in that... in that room, and everything. And he stopped eating. And Blaine brought him a banana, and peeled it for him, and broke it into bites so he could --"
"Yeah," Burt says, and doesn't even stop to ask why his voice has all of a sudden gotten raspy, because he damn well knows. "Yeah, I remember now."
"He still does that," Carole says, looking up at him. "Blaine, he... Before Dr. Arzt showed up at the hospital, before things got... Well. I volunteered to go get some coffee -- Ben had just woken up; he was looking a little ragged -- and Blaine said that his dad hadn't had breakfast. And he asked me to bring back a banana for him." Carole shrugs, taps her fingers on the sides of her mug. "Obviously, that didn't happen. But when Ben came back from... whatever he did with that Dr. Arzt, scaring him off... When he came back, he had three cups of coffee, a bagel with cream cheese, and a banana."
And the thing is, there's no way Ben could have really understood why that banana was so important to his son; Burt believes that. He honestly, truly believes that whatever happened to Ben in that room (because he figures something must've happened in that room, even if it wasn't quite what Blaine thinks it was), he doesn't remember a moment of it. And he knows Ben doesn't remember his son coming in to take care of him afterwards; it was written all over his face, that sort of soft confusion. He knows that, as much as that banana meant to Blaine, it meant next to nothing to Ben.
Except, of course, it meant something to Blaine. And that'd be enough for Ben. It'd always be enough.
"It was the damndest thing," Carole adds, shaking her head. "I mean, not half an hour before, I watched Ben drag that Dr. Arzt down to the elevators, and I thought, he's gonna kill that man. There was absolutely, 100%, no doubt in my mind. I thought -- I've met some scary people in my life, Burt. Not a lot of them, but I've met a few. I have never seen anyone as absolutely terrifying as Ben Anderson was in that moment. Never seen anyone that... that dangerous." She sighs. "And then, twenty minutes later at most, he's sitting there, meek as a lamb, while his son peels a banana for him. And I... I couldn't reconcile it, Burt. The dad, and then the... the killer, because I do believe he's killed people, Burt, and I think that if there hadn't been so many witnesses, he'd have killed that Dr. Arzt right there in the hallway. I really do.
"But he didn't." She stares down thoughtfully, moodily at her coffee. "He didn't do it, because he would have gone to jail, and that would have meant leaving Blaine, and I don't think he'd ever do that, unless maybe he thought he was doing it to help Blaine. And when he brought back that banana, that was for Blaine, so Blaine wouldn't worry about him not taking care of himself. And then he let Blaine peel it for him, let Blaine take care of him a little, to keep him from going out of his skin with worry. That man would do anything for his son."
Burt cocks his head to the side, studies Carole for a while. "'Course he would," he says, eventually. "You and me, we'd do the same for ours. Wouldn't we?"
She looks up at him, locks eyes with him. "And yet neither of us is packing our bags," she points out. "And neither is Ben."
He thinks about that for a moment, sighs, drops his eyes back down to the table. "No," he says. "No, I guess we're not."
*
day 27
It kind of makes sense that, in the end, he's the one who finds her.
It's not something he meant to do. He's not exactly John Locke, the Great White Hunter, or Sayid the Soldier, or Boone the Lifeguard, or even Tree-Climbing Katie, who's always sticking her freckled nose into everyone else's business, wiggling her way into every hunt, every search party, every random hike that happens. He's not Sawyer the Redneck (who has a truly disturbing habit of pulling guns seemingly out of thin air), or Michael from New York, who doesn't really have any wilderness skills but keeps acting like he does anyway. He's not the Rock Star, or the Fat Guy, or even Scott or Steve. He's just Dr. Leslie Arzt, the guy with all the bugs.
And the thing about collecting all those bugs? It keeps him moving, wandering, all over the Island.
So it makes sense that, although he's not one of the people who goes searching for the Pregnant Girl after she gets herself kidnapped, he's the one who finds her. Just out in the middle of the jungle, sitting on a misshapen stump, happily crocheting a baby bootie. She looks up at him and smiles.
He takes a step back and looks around, trying vainly to figure out where and when he hit his head, or stumbled into a field of hallucinogenic plants, or passed out from dehydration, or whatever he did to wind up seeing this girl, here, in the middle of nowhere. Because whatever he's seeing, it's not real. He knows it's not real.
"I know you," the girl says, her voice a little dreamy-sounding. Arzt's heard that tone of voice before, mainly from his students. Not all of them; just the ones with a bad habit of breaking into the chemistry lab to swipe pipettes and flasks and anything else that might be vaguely bong-like. "Don't I know you?"
Leslie takes a couple of steps back in towards her, because that's not really the Pregnant Girl's voice at all, and for some reason, that's what makes him realize that this is actually happening. "Yeah," he says, still glancing around, because if this is real? Then there's trouble. And it's close. "Yeah, you do." He reaches out to take her by the elbow, and she flinches back a little, frowning at him. "C'mon. Hey, c'mon, uh... Chelsea, or Christine, or..."
"Claire," she says, and suddenly smiles again, holding out her hand for him to shake. "My name's Claire. What's yours?"
He grabs her hand and tugs her to her feet, catching her as she stumbles. "Leslie," he says. "My name's Leslie. It's... uh... it's nice to... Anyway, we gotta go now, so why don't you just --"
She lets herself be pulled a few steps before she finally digs her heels in, scowling again and shaking her head. "Nuh-uh," she says, and when he wraps his arm around her shoulders, she tries to shrink away. "No, it's fine. I can stay. Juliet told me I could stay until she got back. She promised."
Just the name Juliet makes chills go down Leslie's spine. "Yeah, about that," he mutters, managing to drag the girl a few more stumbling steps before she ducks out from under his arm, giggling. "About... uh... Juliet. Where'd she go, anyway?"
"That's a real good question," someone else drawls -- male voice, slow and confident. Arzt turns, slowly, and sees a man -- white hair, navy blue shirt, Dockers -- stepping out of the woods towards them. It's not anyone he knows, not one of his fellow survivors, so that means it must be one of Juliet's people. One of the Others. He pulls Claire in towards him; she's still giggling, stoned right up to the eyeballs, and this should not be him. This should be Locke, or Sayid, or Sawyer, or Kate -- this should be anyone but him. "Where is Juliet, anyway? Seeing as how she was supposed to be --"
"Listen," Leslie says, backing up slowly, pulling Claire with him as he goes. "My people, they know where I was going. If I don't come back, they'll know. They'll know, and they'll... They'll come for me. They'll find me."
The man chuckles, shaking his head. "They'll come for you," he says, still smirking. "Like they came for her? Because I heard a rumor that that didn't work out so good, last time."
Leslie swallows hard. "I..." He reaches for his back pocket, sudden inspiration striking. "I have a gun," he says, grabbing at nothing, hoping it'll look convincing. "I have a gun, but I... but I don't want to -- I don't want to hurt anyone, so why don't we just --"
"He's lying," a voice calls from behind him, and Leslie freezes into place, suddenly aware of how trapped he is. "He doesn't have a gun."
"Which is a damned good thing," the man says, shifting his eyes away from Leslie and Claire to the person coming up behind him. Juliet. "Considering that if he had, he might've --"
It's not much of a distraction, but it's as close as he's going to get, so Leslie grabs hold of the pregnant girl and starts running. There is a brief pause -- a very brief pause, and then he hears swearing and footsteps in the grass, and he tries to speed up, but the pregnant girl won't let him. "Stop it!" she shouts, twisting and slapping at him as he drags her along. "Stop! Let me go! Let me go!"
And the thing is, he barely has any kind of head start to speak of, and there's two of them chasing after him, and she's honestly just slowing him down and anyway, he can come back for her now that he knows where she is. Or send the others, send Locke and Kate and Sayid and Sawyer, which is probably a better idea anyway. So he mutters, "Suit yourself," and shoves her at the man in the blue shirt, breaking left directly in front of Juliet's furious face and darting into the cover of the trees.
Which seems like a really brilliant plan for about thirty seconds, until he catches his foot on a fallen branch and just barely has time to close his eyes before he's hitting the ground, actually skidding for a few inches, feeling the burning scrape of the rough ground against his face. He rolls onto his back, gasping and groping at his stinging cheek, his forehead, and then there's a pressure on his torso. His eyes flutter open and he sees Juliet, straddling him.
He has never seen that kind of anger on a human face before. Not ever.
"And you really thought she'd be better off with your people?" she demands.
Then her arm goes back, and there's a crack and a blossoming of pain in his jaw, and he's almost grateful when things start to swim for a second before going finally, mercifully black.
*
"The thing is, Burt, it's not that easy," Carole says. "Is it? For us, for the kids... I mean, think of everything we'd be leaving behind. Our lives are here, houses, jobs, school, friends..."
Burt nods, because yeah, he's thought about that, too. Thought about it a lot, actually. And maybe there's been times when it wouldn't have been so bad -- last year, when he and Kurt could've just packed up and gone without it aching too badly, without missing too much. Even now, really, there've been moments when Kurt just seemed so alone in the world, and Burt wondered if maybe moving on wouldn't be the best thing for them. But there was the shop to think of, the shop he'd worked so damned hard for, and Carole too, always Carole nowadays. And Kurt might've been mad at his friends, some of them, but Burt knew how much he loved them, knew that sooner or later he'd come back to them or they'd come back to him or... or whatever. And sure enough, he had, and they'd stuck up for him when he needed them the most and to leave it all behind now...
Still, though. "Doesn't seem to have slowed Ben and Blaine down much," he says.
"Doesn't seem like Ben and Blaine have ever had that much to leave behind, before," Carole retorts. "That whole story of his -- I could count on one hand the number of people who actually stuck up for either of them. Your Annie, although Blaine wasn't around back then, that Tom fellow, Eloise --"
"Yeah, well, he kinda started rushing past the specifics there, towards the end," Burt says. "There could've been more. Maybe not on that Island, but all those places they lived after that: Portland, or New Paltz, or wherever. There could've been more."
Carole just shakes her head. "There weren't, though."
"Yeah?" Burt asks, and he almost wants to sound skeptical, but he can't make himself sound anything but curious. Because that's what he is, curious. He's always known Carole was smart, but here she is putting things together in a way he never would've done, and he wants to know just what she's seeing that he's missed. "What makes you so sure?"
She just shrugs. "Because if there had been, we wouldn't have been the first ones in danger," she points out. "His people would've gone after them, the way he thinks they're coming after us. And he'd have his plans all worked out, instead of just... making it up as he goes along. Like he's doing now."
Burt raises his eyebrow at that. "That sounds like a vote of no confidence, Carole."
"It's not..." She sighs, presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. "I don't doubt his ability to get us out of here, if that's what we decide to do," she says. "And when I say 'we,' I mean we, Burt. The four of us, together. So don't you dare go trying to make that decision for me."
It's hard not to smile, when she uses that tone of voice on him, but he does his damndest. "But," he says, trying to prompt her into continuing.
"But it's gonna take time," she says. "I mean, he even said it himself, that it wouldn't be until after the wedding at least. All the paperwork, the social security numbers and fake IDs, getting our assets gathered up and everything... And then to have to turn around and do it all for himself and Blaine, and with Blaine's leg, and --"
"And the tumor," Burt murmurs, thinking back to how worried Kurt had been that night after he and Blaine went to the play, how worried he'd been afterwards, how worried he still was. And I know it's benign, Dad, he'd said, but I just keep thinking... And just because of where it is -- I mean, all the websites say that if it's growing, then it could -- and Blaine never said it was, but he never said it wasn't either, and it took him so long to tell me in the first place and I just --
Carole stares at him hard for a long, long time -- too long, really. And Burt thinks back about everything that was said at the Anderson's, and everything that wasn't, and he realizes why she looks so shocked. "He didn't say a damn thing about it," he says, quietly. "Did he? He didn't say a damn thing because he didn't want us to know."
*
day 136
Some days, Leslie thinks that being captured by the Others is quite possibly the best thing that could have happened to him.
Admittedly, he's still trapped on Mystery Island, with no hope of rescue. He's still surrounded by armed jackasses -- a slightly different set of them, but still. There's still a distinct lack of television, Chinese takeout, and attractive cheerleaders in short skirts. But there's less overall danger, less cave-ins and fistfights and random polar bear attacks, more clean water and decent food, and he has a house to live in. He has students to teach again (three of them, all under the age of thirteen, but still). He even has a modicum of respect now; sure, he got off on a bad foot with Tom and Juliet, but the other Others are warming up to him. They call him Doc. Karl even brings him insects to study sometimes, and while they're all pretty commonplace species, nothing interesting, he appreciates the gesture. And while overall, it's not quite the life he's been used to...
Well, maybe it's not so bad.
If nothing else, it beats huddling on the beach, in a tent, living off a steady diet of boar and mango.
Which is why, when Tom comes to tell him that Ethan's got work for him to do, he almost balks. Almost.
But then he thinks of his little field trip off to the other Island, thinks of Sayid in the polar bear cage with his bruised and bloody face, thinks of The Room and the way Walt's face gets pinched and anxious every time they mention it around him, thinks of Jin and Sawyer breaking rocks in the hot sun.
And he does what he's always done. He does what's best for him.
He goes.
*
"You knew," Carole says, quietly, but it's obvious that she's no more comfortable with playing Devil's advocate than Burt was. "Maybe he just assumed we all did, if you knew."
"I knew because Kurt told me, Carole," Burt points out. "And Kurt doesn't tell me a lot of things. Which Ben is damn well aware of." He shakes his head. "If he'd wanted us to know, he would've said something. Hell, he was pretty friggin' explicit about all those people he killed. Because that's what he wanted us to be thinking of. The dangerous guy. The guy who'd done anything, the guy who could do anything, if he had to. But he didn't want us to know about that room, and he didn't want us to know about the damned bananas, and he didn't want us to know about this."
Carole cups her mug in both hands, pulling it a little closer but not lifting it off the table. It's not steaming anymore; lukewarm by now, and Burt's sure his is the same. He thinks, briefly, about getting up to get a refill, but there's no way he's leaving his seat right now. Not for anything. "Must be pretty serious," Carole says, quietly. "If he's keeping it this close to the chest."
"It's not cancer," Burt tells her, although it's far from reassuring and he knows that. "He's not... I mean, best of my knowledge, he's not dying or anything. But it's..." He takes his cap off, rubs one hand over his sweaty scalp. "Don't know if you were paying much attention to this," he says, "but after Blaine told that whole story, when Ben was standing up, he sort of... You could see it wasn't easy. And he was sort of rubbing at his back a little, down low. He did it before, too, when he was getting out of the car. Kind of does it a lot, actually. Like it hurts him."
Carole lets out a low whistle. "Burt," she says, softly. "I'm no doctor, but... I've been working in the radiology department for ten years now, and I've seen my fair share. That's a bad place to have a tumor, benign or not."
"Yeah," Burt says, quietly. "Yeah, that's what Kurt says."
"He doesn't want to go," Carole says, and it's not really a question, but it kind of is anyway. "Kurt, I mean. He wants to stay."
Burt just shrugs. "When's the last time you heard of Kurt turning his back on somebody who needs him? If Ben and Blaine are staying, then Kurt's gonna want to stay too. And that's just that."
Carole nods, still staring down at her mug. "And you really think Ben and Blaine are staying."
"Don't you?" Burt asks. "You said it yourself, Carole. These things take time. How much time do you really think they've got?"
She doesn't answer him, not right away, anyway. She takes a big, deep breath, and her hands tighten around the mug. "So Kurt's staying," she says, and lifts her head up, looking him square in the eye. "Guess I don't need to ask you what you want to do, do I?"
"Nah," Burt admits, and reaches across the table to cup her hands with his. "But it can't just be me and Kurt, Carole. It's gotta be all of us. So I'm asking. What do you want to do with all of this?"
Carole takes another deep breath, then another, and her eyes never leave his.
*
day one (redux)
At least there's no pregnant girl on the plane this time. Leslie is thoroughly, absurdly, grateful for that.
Not that it matters, really.
He wonders, a little bit, about Jennifer. He wonders why she was so willing to take him back, after everything. Maybe they bribed her; hell, probably they bribed her. Maybe it was a little, maybe it was a lot; either way, it doesn't matter. He's not planning on staying in her hair for very long. Get in, get the guy, get out again. That's all he needs to do. Simple enough.
"His name's Ben Anderson," Juliet tells him, her voice sounding tight and tense the way it always does when she speaks to him. Never did forgive him for shoving that pregnant girl. Like she wouldn't have done the same, if it were her neck. "He's posing as a math teacher. Your son was in his pre-calculus class last year; since Anderson's the only person at this school remotely qualified to teach calculus, he'll have him again this year. All you have to do is find something to be unhappy about -- David's grades, the quality of the material... You were a teacher, too. I'm sure you can think of something remotely plausible."
And he will, too. Hell, he heard every complaint in the book, back when he was in Tustin. Grades, subject matter, college applications -- once he spent an hour at parent-teacher conferences listening to some insane woman hector him about her son's peanut allergy and how he couldn't let any of the other students bring in candy bars or peanut butter sandwiches. Never mind that no food was even allowed outside the cafeteria, and definitely not in a science class. And when he'd finally managed to get that through her pointy little head, she started going on about "nut dust" contaminating their notebooks and textbooks, and what if a student had eaten peanuts at lunch and then chewed on their pencil and then passed it to her precious son -- her precious son who Leslie'd seen sitting on the school steps, choking down Apollo Nut Clusters like it was some kind of contest (which, knowing his students, it probably was) just two days previously. So, yeah. He'll think of something.
He always thinks of something, sooner or later.
So he'll get in. Get the guy. Get the hell out again. And while he's there, maybe he'll take a little time to see what it might have been like, if he'd stayed with Jennifer all these years. Get to know the kid with the goony smile, who has to take after his old man at least a little bit -- he is taking calculus, or about to be, and even at a big school, there's not a whole lot of kids with that kind of smarts. Hell, maybe he'll even take his time; Ethan didn't seem too worried about the freighter. Then again, he was at least a little worried about the freighter, so maybe Leslie won't take his time. But maybe he'll stick around for a while, after. Enjoy himself.
After all, he's not entirely certain that Jennifer had to be bribed to take him back. Maybe she just... missed him. Maybe she mourned him, when she thought he was dead. Maybe she's glad he's coming home. It's been a long time and she never remarried. Maybe this is what he needs; not the Island, not Tustin, not that girl in Australia. Maybe this was meant to be, all along.
And admittedly, it probably isn't. He doesn't need a pregnant girl sitting across the aisle to remind him of that. It's probably just going to be another pain in his ass. And if it is, then he'll just get in, get the guy, and get out.
Shouldn't be that hard.
*
"Obviously, we'll still have to talk to the boys," Carole says, and Burt nods solemnly. "But this... Burt, I just can't see us doing this any other way. It's not... I just can't see it."
"Damned bananas, anyhow," Burt mutters, and this time, Carole actually cracks a grin. He reaches across the table, takes her hand, smiles at her. "So," he says, stroking one rough thumb over her knuckles. "Think you can sleep now?"
Carole shakes her head, still smiling. It's amazing, the relief on her face. It reminds him again just why he knew, almost as soon as he met her, that she was the one. Never a doubt in his mind. "Nope," she says, sliding her hand away from his and pushing herself out of her chair. "But let's go to bed anyway."
"Sounds like a plan," Burt says, and stands up, and takes her hand.
They leave the mugs and the file on the kitchen table, turn the lights out, and head upstairs.
*
day... whatever
The thing is, he's always been out of his depth in this.
He's not as cocky as everyone thinks he is -- he never once thought he was going to come out on top, whatever coming out on top even means in a situation like this. He never tried to benefit in any way, didn't fool himself that he was gonna get a pile of money or some great scientific discovery or love or, hell, even a peek at Juliet's admittedly pretty decent breasts. But he always thought, most of the time, that he was at least gonna survive. Maybe he'd have to do some awful things, in the end; maybe he'd wind up selling out some people that he probably wouldn't have, if the stakes had been anything other than life or death. But he did think he was going to survive.
Now, he's not so sure.
He sits on his cheap bed, in his cheap motel room -- the tv's on, some repeat of Expose. It's not one of Nikki's episodes; he's never seen one of Nikki's episodes, but still, the show always makes him think of her. She wasn't ever anybody he really knew, but hell, a pretty girl with an interest in his collection -- it was enough for him, enough to make her memorable. He wonders if she's still alive, if anyone he knew back on the Island is still alive. He wonders what happened to his collection. He could use it right now, maybe. The Medusa spider; he could use her now, maybe. Eight hours of false death; it might be enough.
It'd probably be just enough to land him in some morgue somewhere. If he got really lucky, maybe he'd wake up before they took out too many of his internal organs.
"They'll come after me," he says, and it's his turn to clutch at Linus's arms; Linus just stares back at him, implacable, and Leslie has no idea where he got the idea that the guy was soft. He's about as soft as cold steel. "They'll find me. They found you, didn't they? They'll find me."
"Not if they're not looking," Linus says, coolly. "Which they won't be, if you do as you're told."
"I can't --" Leslie shakes his head, lets go of Linus, starts pacing, wringing his hands. "I wouldn't even know where to start. I never --"
"You did," Linus tells him. "You've been dead for a year and a half now, Leslie. Surely it's taught you something. Or has Ethan really underestimated me that much, that he'd send someone this completely incompetent to bring me back?"
That stings, enough to make Leslie jerk his head in Linus's direction. "I'm not --" he splutters.
Linus just smiles at him, and Jesus, Leslie never knew a smile could be that damned scary. "Well," he says. "For your sake, I hope not. Oh, and Dr. Arzt?" He waits until he's sure he's got Leslie's attention, then smiles a little wider. "This time, when you die? Stay dead."
Then he turns and walks back towards the hospital.
The thing is, Leslie wouldn't have a problem with this. He could stay dead; he could stay away from his son, from his ex, from Lima, Ohio for the rest of his damn life and never have a problem with it, never miss a thing. But it's killing himself in the first place -- that's the part he can't figure out. What's he supposed to do, crash another plane? How is a man supposed to kill himself without actually dying in the process?
Then he hears the knock on the door, and he realizes that it's no longer up to him. Someone's come to help him out. Maybe it's Juliet or one of her people; hell, maybe it's Ben himself, or someone he's sent -- the man has a ridiculous number of friends. But whoever it is, they've come for him.
And they're not real patient, because before he's even had time to assess the odds of successfully crawling out through the window (unlikely -- the thing with cheap hotels is that the windows are damn near always painted shut), they're knocking again.
So he does the only thing he can think of to do. He answers the door.
"Yeah?"
"Dr. Arzt?" It's dim, outside, and Leslie can't really make out the man's features that well, but he's tall, and bald, and has a sharp-lined face that's edging towards the cadaverous, and he wouldn't be totally surprised to find out that he's not a man at all, but some kind of... angel of death, or something. "My name is Matthew Abaddon. I believe we share a common acquaintance."
"Yeah?" Leslie asks again, because hell, if he's gonna die anyway, no sense wasting time being polite. "Who's that?"
The man doesn't take a step forward, doesn't take a step back. He just stands there, tall and thin and perfectly composed, and honestly, if he's not an assassin, someone somewhere screwed something up. Because he damn well should be. "Benjamin Linus."
Leslie nods, slowly, jams his hands in his pockets because he's pretty sure they're gonna start shaking and he's not about to let this man see him like that. "So you are here to kill me," he says.
It's possible that the man smiles; it's too dim for Leslie to really be sure, but it's possible. "No," the man replies. "No, Dr. Arzt, I'm not here to kill you. I'm here to save your life."
"Oh." Leslie thinks about it for a second, asks himself how long he's going to keep acting like he could possibly survive this, and then shrugs and decides that he can keep the charade up for a little longer, anyway. "Well. In that case, come in."
Pairing/Character(s): Burt Hummel, Carole Hudson, Leslie Arzt, Claire Littleton, Tom Friendly, Dr. Juliet Burke, Ben Linus Anderson, Matthew Abaddon. (Nikki Fernandez and Boone Carlyle appear briefly; several other LOSTies are mentioned by name or reputation.)
Rating: PG-13 (for this chapter)
Warnings: Some descriptions of the aftermath of a plane crash, but everything's very soft-focus.
Word Count: A little over 7,000
Spoilers: Potential spoilers (kind of) for all six seasons of LOST, and up to and through Glee 2X08, "Furt."
Standard-Issue Short-Form Disclaimer: I do not hold copyright to Glee or LOST, I make no claims to such, and I am not profiting from this. The song referenced in this chapter is "This is Hell" by Elvis Costello
Summary: I need to introduce you to a man named Leslie Arzt. (In which we learn a few things about Karofsky's father, and Burt and Carole attempt to put the pieces together only to learn that a few of them have been left out.)
Author's Notes: This is a Glee/LOST AU crossover. Fic is a work in progress, but I do have a substantial backlog of chapters to post while I work on the newest ones. I hope to post once a week, on Sundays, barring fire, flood, corset-related disasters, and/or LJ outages. NOTE: This fic will be going on a four-week hiatus after Chapter 20, so I can get a good head-start on the more LOST-centric second section. There will be NO new chapters posted April 15 - May 6. After that, posting will resume on Sundays as normal.
Previous chapters and supplemental materials can be found on the masterpost (which has finally been updated. Sorry I'm a slacker).
As always, if I haven't adequately explained any of the LOST stuff, please feel free to leave a comment here and/or pm me. I will answer. This is a particularly Island-heavy chapter, so don't be shy, you guys.
day 1
It's the pregnant girl that makes him think of it.
She's little and cute and blonde and helpless-looking, and the moment she smiles at him, he feels like absolute shit. Because she shouldn't be relying on some stranger to help her with her bags; there should be someone with her, some boyfriend or husband or at least a father, someone to carry her things and take care of her and let her get on with the important business of just plain being pregnant, of giving life to something brand-new and wonderful. She shouldn't be alone. Not now. Not when she's about to have a child.
Which makes him think about Jennifer, who is alone.
And that's on him.
And that's what makes him think of it.
Leslie's not sure why -- maybe it's the fact that she carried his son, maybe it's how long they spent together, maybe it's just her -- but every time he gets nostalgic about some ex, it's always Jennifer. Never Rochelle, even though she was the first; never Aimee, although she was the most recent. Jennifer. Which kind of makes him wonder if she ever gets nostalgic about him. She's never remarried; every child support check he sends out is proof of that. And, granted, maybe she just hasn't met anyone new, being stuck in Nowhere, Ohio and all. But still. Maybe there's still something there. Maybe there's a reason he can't let her go.
Maybe.
Probably not, though.
He settles into his seat and fastens the belt and thinks about it anyway, because he might as well. Because that internet dating thing didn't go so great (probably should've just used his real picture from the start instead of borrowing someone else's, saved himself some trouble), and he's lonely, and sometimes it seems like it could be a good thing for him. It wouldn't just be stepping into his old life, of course; things have changed, and the boy's gotten big (Jennifer doesn't really write anymore, but she does send pictures -- a big, strapping boy in hockey pads, broad shoulders and kind of a goony smile, and Leslie never really thought that David looked too much like him, but now he's starting to see it, the resemblance). It'd be different from what it was. These things always are. But to have someone else in the house again, to not be alone. It'd be a nice change, a welcome change.
And hell, in a couple of years, they'll be sending David off to college. So even if three winds up being a crowd, it'll be just the two of them, soon enough. Which he could handle, he thinks. The fatherhood thing he was never too good at, but he thinks he was all right as a husband, for the most part. He could make it work. He could figure it out.
Of course, it's not really gonna happen. He knows that. He'll think about it for now, and it'll sound good at first. Sound great, even, sound perfect. Sound like it's just what he needs. But then the pregnant girl will stop looking so charming; she'll badger the stewardesses and use the restroom five times in an hour, and it'll start to remind him of what Jennifer could be when she stopped trying, how she used to nag him all the time, how nothing was ever enough for her. And he'll start thinking about the boy, how he was always a handful, always with some practice to go to or some Cub Scout meeting or some homework he needed help with or just pestering, the way he always did -- Dad, come throw the ball with me, c'mon. And it'll stop sounding so perfect, and start sounding a lot more like a pain in his ass. And he'll remember why he's been avoiding it for so long, why he's never written anything other than child support checks and the odd birthday card, why he doesn't call or come visit. He'll remember why he was the one who pushed Jennifer to head back to Nowhere, Ohio in the first place, and why he was the one who pushed for the divorce in the first place, and why he was the one who pushed. Who pushed them away.
Because the house and the wife and the broad-shouldered son with the goony smile? These are all great things. For other people. Not for him. He might daydream about going back sometimes, when things fall apart in the real world, but it's never going to be something he tries. Not again.
And by the time the plane lands at L.A.X., he'll have forgotten all about the whole thing. And it'll be some other girl, some other website, some other borrowed picture. And when that breaks up, he'll think about Jennifer again, for an hour or two. And then he'll forget her again until the next time. And the next.
Which is probably a sign that he shouldn't be thinking of her in the first place, really.
But hell, it's a long flight from Sydney to L.A., and it's not like he's got anything better to do. So he smiles at the pregnant girl one last time, and settles back into his seat, and closes his eyes, and dreams of going home to his wife and son, and knows that he's safe, because he knows he'll never really do it.
*
It's that first picture that Burt keeps coming back to, over and over again: the guy in the polo shirt, sitting in the stands at some game, somewhere, with his kid perched on his knee. The boy is smiling, this big, goony grin, but the guy himself isn't, not really. His eyes are squinting shut, and his lips are twisted in this fake sort of smirk, like he knows he should be smiling, but he doesn't really feel it.
"He --"
Kurt stops himself after the first word, when Ben (and everyone else in the room turns to look at him); there's a long pause before Ben very softly, very gently asks, "Yes, Kurt?"
"Just..." Kurt's shoulders heave as he takes a great big breath, and this time Blaine's the one to reach out, petting gently at Kurt's hand. "Karofsky. He -- he said --"
"He said that it was our fault," Blaine finishes, glancing sidelong at Kurt as if checking to see if he's offended by the interruption. He's not; if anything, he looks relieved. "My dad's and mine, I mean, not Kurt's. He said that if it wasn't for us, He wouldn't have come back. And that He ruined everything. He didn't say who'd come back, and I don't know if Kurt knew, but... It was his father. His father had come back. For us. David was... David was pretty upset about that. About his father coming back."
He didn't mention the whole suicide thing, the part where Dave Karofsky had apparently been so upset that he begged that Santana girl to kill him. And neither Kurt nor Ben nor Burt himself had reminded him about it. Hell, like the story wasn't grim enough. But Burt had been thinking about it. He'd been thinking about it the whole time. About that kid with the goony smile, damn near grown up now, coming to school with a gun, threatening Kurt and Blaine and Santana with it, and then begging to be shot when his plan went haywire.
Burt's not positive, but he's pretty sure he'll be thinking about that for a while, too. That it's going to be a damn hard thing for him to get rid of.
Carole sets a mug down at his elbow, then slides into the chair across from him, her own mug still firmly in hand. Burt picks the drink up, sniffs at it. "Coffee?" he asks. "At nine o'clock at night?"
"It's decaf," Carole replies, shrugging and taking a sip. "Anyway, were you planning on sleeping tonight? Because honestly, I'm not sure I'm even going to try right now."
Burt sighs, flips the folder shut, and leans in. Because he knows what she's going to say next, what he's been afraid of her saying all along. "Look," he says, quietly. "Carole."
"Don't you 'Look Carole' me," she retorts, immediately, and Burt draws back in surprise. "You have no idea what's on my mind, Burt Hummel, and I thought you knew better than to assume by now. You know what that makes you."
"Yeah," Burt says, and half-smiles, because damn, he loves this woman. He'll let her go if he has to; he's not going to risk her if that's not what she wants, but damn does he love her. "Yeah, I do. All right then, Ms. Unpredictable. Tell me what's on your mind."
*
day 1 (cont'd)
"Am I okay?" he demands, and part of him realizes it's stupid, but the thing is he just can't believe it. Everything is noise and heat and fire, people screaming and crying, the crackle of flames and the smell of smoke and gasoline and burning upholstery, and he can still feel it -- the shaking, the sudden drop that sent him straining against his seat belt, the oxygen mask pressed to his face and that odd, almost peaceful moment where they'd dropped again and he'd gone weightless -- and there's no way he's actually alive. There's just no way it could even make sense. "Look at me, am I okay?"
The woman looks at him with perplexed eyes -- stares at him, really, then staggers on without answering. And he thinks he isn't okay at all. He thinks he's dead.
He's dead. And the woman who helped him up, the woman who couldn't tell him whether or not he was okay? She's dead too. And they're all of them dead, every last person on that plane. The pregnant girl, the nice middle-aged couple sitting ahead of him, Cindy the stewardess and the guy in the suit who kept calling her 'sweetheart.' The middle-eastern guy and that unwashed redneck who snarled at everyone who walked past his seat, the little boy who got snappy when his dad told him to put away the Nintendo DS, the long-legged blonde and her scowling boyfriend, the fat guy with the headphones, the scruffy-looking British guy with the painted fingernails. They're dead.
They're all dead. All of them.
And so is he.
A line from an old Elvis Costello song comes back to him -- You'll get used to it after a spell, for Heaven is Hell in reverse. He's not sure what this is. The fire and all the screaming are bad signs, sure, but those could stop. He thinks this place might be nice, if there weren't so much screaming. So really, it could be either. Could be both, maybe.
He'll have to wait for the obligatory performance of "My Favorite Things" to find out.
The leggy blonde girl's scowling boyfriend dashes past him, his blue shirt dirty with soot and sweat, shouting "Does anyone have a pen?"
With nothing better to do, Leslie chases after, shouting "I do! I've got a pen!"
*
"It's that damned banana," Carole admits, both hands curling around her mug of decaf, although she doesn't raise it.
Burt blinks at her from across the table, tilts his head to the side. There's a lot rattling around in his head right now -- poison gas and submarines, one man doing his damndest to sell his son, another man fighting just as hard to save his own -- he honestly can't remember how the banana comes into play. "Beg pardon?" he asks.
Carole shakes her head, looks down at the table. "What Blaine said," she says, her voice quieter now, and more than a little sad. "About his dad getting locked in that... in that room, and everything. And he stopped eating. And Blaine brought him a banana, and peeled it for him, and broke it into bites so he could --"
"Yeah," Burt says, and doesn't even stop to ask why his voice has all of a sudden gotten raspy, because he damn well knows. "Yeah, I remember now."
"He still does that," Carole says, looking up at him. "Blaine, he... Before Dr. Arzt showed up at the hospital, before things got... Well. I volunteered to go get some coffee -- Ben had just woken up; he was looking a little ragged -- and Blaine said that his dad hadn't had breakfast. And he asked me to bring back a banana for him." Carole shrugs, taps her fingers on the sides of her mug. "Obviously, that didn't happen. But when Ben came back from... whatever he did with that Dr. Arzt, scaring him off... When he came back, he had three cups of coffee, a bagel with cream cheese, and a banana."
And the thing is, there's no way Ben could have really understood why that banana was so important to his son; Burt believes that. He honestly, truly believes that whatever happened to Ben in that room (because he figures something must've happened in that room, even if it wasn't quite what Blaine thinks it was), he doesn't remember a moment of it. And he knows Ben doesn't remember his son coming in to take care of him afterwards; it was written all over his face, that sort of soft confusion. He knows that, as much as that banana meant to Blaine, it meant next to nothing to Ben.
Except, of course, it meant something to Blaine. And that'd be enough for Ben. It'd always be enough.
"It was the damndest thing," Carole adds, shaking her head. "I mean, not half an hour before, I watched Ben drag that Dr. Arzt down to the elevators, and I thought, he's gonna kill that man. There was absolutely, 100%, no doubt in my mind. I thought -- I've met some scary people in my life, Burt. Not a lot of them, but I've met a few. I have never seen anyone as absolutely terrifying as Ben Anderson was in that moment. Never seen anyone that... that dangerous." She sighs. "And then, twenty minutes later at most, he's sitting there, meek as a lamb, while his son peels a banana for him. And I... I couldn't reconcile it, Burt. The dad, and then the... the killer, because I do believe he's killed people, Burt, and I think that if there hadn't been so many witnesses, he'd have killed that Dr. Arzt right there in the hallway. I really do.
"But he didn't." She stares down thoughtfully, moodily at her coffee. "He didn't do it, because he would have gone to jail, and that would have meant leaving Blaine, and I don't think he'd ever do that, unless maybe he thought he was doing it to help Blaine. And when he brought back that banana, that was for Blaine, so Blaine wouldn't worry about him not taking care of himself. And then he let Blaine peel it for him, let Blaine take care of him a little, to keep him from going out of his skin with worry. That man would do anything for his son."
Burt cocks his head to the side, studies Carole for a while. "'Course he would," he says, eventually. "You and me, we'd do the same for ours. Wouldn't we?"
She looks up at him, locks eyes with him. "And yet neither of us is packing our bags," she points out. "And neither is Ben."
He thinks about that for a moment, sighs, drops his eyes back down to the table. "No," he says. "No, I guess we're not."
*
day 27
It kind of makes sense that, in the end, he's the one who finds her.
It's not something he meant to do. He's not exactly John Locke, the Great White Hunter, or Sayid the Soldier, or Boone the Lifeguard, or even Tree-Climbing Katie, who's always sticking her freckled nose into everyone else's business, wiggling her way into every hunt, every search party, every random hike that happens. He's not Sawyer the Redneck (who has a truly disturbing habit of pulling guns seemingly out of thin air), or Michael from New York, who doesn't really have any wilderness skills but keeps acting like he does anyway. He's not the Rock Star, or the Fat Guy, or even Scott or Steve. He's just Dr. Leslie Arzt, the guy with all the bugs.
And the thing about collecting all those bugs? It keeps him moving, wandering, all over the Island.
So it makes sense that, although he's not one of the people who goes searching for the Pregnant Girl after she gets herself kidnapped, he's the one who finds her. Just out in the middle of the jungle, sitting on a misshapen stump, happily crocheting a baby bootie. She looks up at him and smiles.
He takes a step back and looks around, trying vainly to figure out where and when he hit his head, or stumbled into a field of hallucinogenic plants, or passed out from dehydration, or whatever he did to wind up seeing this girl, here, in the middle of nowhere. Because whatever he's seeing, it's not real. He knows it's not real.
"I know you," the girl says, her voice a little dreamy-sounding. Arzt's heard that tone of voice before, mainly from his students. Not all of them; just the ones with a bad habit of breaking into the chemistry lab to swipe pipettes and flasks and anything else that might be vaguely bong-like. "Don't I know you?"
Leslie takes a couple of steps back in towards her, because that's not really the Pregnant Girl's voice at all, and for some reason, that's what makes him realize that this is actually happening. "Yeah," he says, still glancing around, because if this is real? Then there's trouble. And it's close. "Yeah, you do." He reaches out to take her by the elbow, and she flinches back a little, frowning at him. "C'mon. Hey, c'mon, uh... Chelsea, or Christine, or..."
"Claire," she says, and suddenly smiles again, holding out her hand for him to shake. "My name's Claire. What's yours?"
He grabs her hand and tugs her to her feet, catching her as she stumbles. "Leslie," he says. "My name's Leslie. It's... uh... it's nice to... Anyway, we gotta go now, so why don't you just --"
She lets herself be pulled a few steps before she finally digs her heels in, scowling again and shaking her head. "Nuh-uh," she says, and when he wraps his arm around her shoulders, she tries to shrink away. "No, it's fine. I can stay. Juliet told me I could stay until she got back. She promised."
Just the name Juliet makes chills go down Leslie's spine. "Yeah, about that," he mutters, managing to drag the girl a few more stumbling steps before she ducks out from under his arm, giggling. "About... uh... Juliet. Where'd she go, anyway?"
"That's a real good question," someone else drawls -- male voice, slow and confident. Arzt turns, slowly, and sees a man -- white hair, navy blue shirt, Dockers -- stepping out of the woods towards them. It's not anyone he knows, not one of his fellow survivors, so that means it must be one of Juliet's people. One of the Others. He pulls Claire in towards him; she's still giggling, stoned right up to the eyeballs, and this should not be him. This should be Locke, or Sayid, or Sawyer, or Kate -- this should be anyone but him. "Where is Juliet, anyway? Seeing as how she was supposed to be --"
"Listen," Leslie says, backing up slowly, pulling Claire with him as he goes. "My people, they know where I was going. If I don't come back, they'll know. They'll know, and they'll... They'll come for me. They'll find me."
The man chuckles, shaking his head. "They'll come for you," he says, still smirking. "Like they came for her? Because I heard a rumor that that didn't work out so good, last time."
Leslie swallows hard. "I..." He reaches for his back pocket, sudden inspiration striking. "I have a gun," he says, grabbing at nothing, hoping it'll look convincing. "I have a gun, but I... but I don't want to -- I don't want to hurt anyone, so why don't we just --"
"He's lying," a voice calls from behind him, and Leslie freezes into place, suddenly aware of how trapped he is. "He doesn't have a gun."
"Which is a damned good thing," the man says, shifting his eyes away from Leslie and Claire to the person coming up behind him. Juliet. "Considering that if he had, he might've --"
It's not much of a distraction, but it's as close as he's going to get, so Leslie grabs hold of the pregnant girl and starts running. There is a brief pause -- a very brief pause, and then he hears swearing and footsteps in the grass, and he tries to speed up, but the pregnant girl won't let him. "Stop it!" she shouts, twisting and slapping at him as he drags her along. "Stop! Let me go! Let me go!"
And the thing is, he barely has any kind of head start to speak of, and there's two of them chasing after him, and she's honestly just slowing him down and anyway, he can come back for her now that he knows where she is. Or send the others, send Locke and Kate and Sayid and Sawyer, which is probably a better idea anyway. So he mutters, "Suit yourself," and shoves her at the man in the blue shirt, breaking left directly in front of Juliet's furious face and darting into the cover of the trees.
Which seems like a really brilliant plan for about thirty seconds, until he catches his foot on a fallen branch and just barely has time to close his eyes before he's hitting the ground, actually skidding for a few inches, feeling the burning scrape of the rough ground against his face. He rolls onto his back, gasping and groping at his stinging cheek, his forehead, and then there's a pressure on his torso. His eyes flutter open and he sees Juliet, straddling him.
He has never seen that kind of anger on a human face before. Not ever.
"And you really thought she'd be better off with your people?" she demands.
Then her arm goes back, and there's a crack and a blossoming of pain in his jaw, and he's almost grateful when things start to swim for a second before going finally, mercifully black.
*
"The thing is, Burt, it's not that easy," Carole says. "Is it? For us, for the kids... I mean, think of everything we'd be leaving behind. Our lives are here, houses, jobs, school, friends..."
Burt nods, because yeah, he's thought about that, too. Thought about it a lot, actually. And maybe there's been times when it wouldn't have been so bad -- last year, when he and Kurt could've just packed up and gone without it aching too badly, without missing too much. Even now, really, there've been moments when Kurt just seemed so alone in the world, and Burt wondered if maybe moving on wouldn't be the best thing for them. But there was the shop to think of, the shop he'd worked so damned hard for, and Carole too, always Carole nowadays. And Kurt might've been mad at his friends, some of them, but Burt knew how much he loved them, knew that sooner or later he'd come back to them or they'd come back to him or... or whatever. And sure enough, he had, and they'd stuck up for him when he needed them the most and to leave it all behind now...
Still, though. "Doesn't seem to have slowed Ben and Blaine down much," he says.
"Doesn't seem like Ben and Blaine have ever had that much to leave behind, before," Carole retorts. "That whole story of his -- I could count on one hand the number of people who actually stuck up for either of them. Your Annie, although Blaine wasn't around back then, that Tom fellow, Eloise --"
"Yeah, well, he kinda started rushing past the specifics there, towards the end," Burt says. "There could've been more. Maybe not on that Island, but all those places they lived after that: Portland, or New Paltz, or wherever. There could've been more."
Carole just shakes her head. "There weren't, though."
"Yeah?" Burt asks, and he almost wants to sound skeptical, but he can't make himself sound anything but curious. Because that's what he is, curious. He's always known Carole was smart, but here she is putting things together in a way he never would've done, and he wants to know just what she's seeing that he's missed. "What makes you so sure?"
She just shrugs. "Because if there had been, we wouldn't have been the first ones in danger," she points out. "His people would've gone after them, the way he thinks they're coming after us. And he'd have his plans all worked out, instead of just... making it up as he goes along. Like he's doing now."
Burt raises his eyebrow at that. "That sounds like a vote of no confidence, Carole."
"It's not..." She sighs, presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. "I don't doubt his ability to get us out of here, if that's what we decide to do," she says. "And when I say 'we,' I mean we, Burt. The four of us, together. So don't you dare go trying to make that decision for me."
It's hard not to smile, when she uses that tone of voice on him, but he does his damndest. "But," he says, trying to prompt her into continuing.
"But it's gonna take time," she says. "I mean, he even said it himself, that it wouldn't be until after the wedding at least. All the paperwork, the social security numbers and fake IDs, getting our assets gathered up and everything... And then to have to turn around and do it all for himself and Blaine, and with Blaine's leg, and --"
"And the tumor," Burt murmurs, thinking back to how worried Kurt had been that night after he and Blaine went to the play, how worried he'd been afterwards, how worried he still was. And I know it's benign, Dad, he'd said, but I just keep thinking... And just because of where it is -- I mean, all the websites say that if it's growing, then it could -- and Blaine never said it was, but he never said it wasn't either, and it took him so long to tell me in the first place and I just --
Carole stares at him hard for a long, long time -- too long, really. And Burt thinks back about everything that was said at the Anderson's, and everything that wasn't, and he realizes why she looks so shocked. "He didn't say a damn thing about it," he says, quietly. "Did he? He didn't say a damn thing because he didn't want us to know."
*
day 136
Some days, Leslie thinks that being captured by the Others is quite possibly the best thing that could have happened to him.
Admittedly, he's still trapped on Mystery Island, with no hope of rescue. He's still surrounded by armed jackasses -- a slightly different set of them, but still. There's still a distinct lack of television, Chinese takeout, and attractive cheerleaders in short skirts. But there's less overall danger, less cave-ins and fistfights and random polar bear attacks, more clean water and decent food, and he has a house to live in. He has students to teach again (three of them, all under the age of thirteen, but still). He even has a modicum of respect now; sure, he got off on a bad foot with Tom and Juliet, but the other Others are warming up to him. They call him Doc. Karl even brings him insects to study sometimes, and while they're all pretty commonplace species, nothing interesting, he appreciates the gesture. And while overall, it's not quite the life he's been used to...
Well, maybe it's not so bad.
If nothing else, it beats huddling on the beach, in a tent, living off a steady diet of boar and mango.
Which is why, when Tom comes to tell him that Ethan's got work for him to do, he almost balks. Almost.
But then he thinks of his little field trip off to the other Island, thinks of Sayid in the polar bear cage with his bruised and bloody face, thinks of The Room and the way Walt's face gets pinched and anxious every time they mention it around him, thinks of Jin and Sawyer breaking rocks in the hot sun.
And he does what he's always done. He does what's best for him.
He goes.
*
"You knew," Carole says, quietly, but it's obvious that she's no more comfortable with playing Devil's advocate than Burt was. "Maybe he just assumed we all did, if you knew."
"I knew because Kurt told me, Carole," Burt points out. "And Kurt doesn't tell me a lot of things. Which Ben is damn well aware of." He shakes his head. "If he'd wanted us to know, he would've said something. Hell, he was pretty friggin' explicit about all those people he killed. Because that's what he wanted us to be thinking of. The dangerous guy. The guy who'd done anything, the guy who could do anything, if he had to. But he didn't want us to know about that room, and he didn't want us to know about the damned bananas, and he didn't want us to know about this."
Carole cups her mug in both hands, pulling it a little closer but not lifting it off the table. It's not steaming anymore; lukewarm by now, and Burt's sure his is the same. He thinks, briefly, about getting up to get a refill, but there's no way he's leaving his seat right now. Not for anything. "Must be pretty serious," Carole says, quietly. "If he's keeping it this close to the chest."
"It's not cancer," Burt tells her, although it's far from reassuring and he knows that. "He's not... I mean, best of my knowledge, he's not dying or anything. But it's..." He takes his cap off, rubs one hand over his sweaty scalp. "Don't know if you were paying much attention to this," he says, "but after Blaine told that whole story, when Ben was standing up, he sort of... You could see it wasn't easy. And he was sort of rubbing at his back a little, down low. He did it before, too, when he was getting out of the car. Kind of does it a lot, actually. Like it hurts him."
Carole lets out a low whistle. "Burt," she says, softly. "I'm no doctor, but... I've been working in the radiology department for ten years now, and I've seen my fair share. That's a bad place to have a tumor, benign or not."
"Yeah," Burt says, quietly. "Yeah, that's what Kurt says."
"He doesn't want to go," Carole says, and it's not really a question, but it kind of is anyway. "Kurt, I mean. He wants to stay."
Burt just shrugs. "When's the last time you heard of Kurt turning his back on somebody who needs him? If Ben and Blaine are staying, then Kurt's gonna want to stay too. And that's just that."
Carole nods, still staring down at her mug. "And you really think Ben and Blaine are staying."
"Don't you?" Burt asks. "You said it yourself, Carole. These things take time. How much time do you really think they've got?"
She doesn't answer him, not right away, anyway. She takes a big, deep breath, and her hands tighten around the mug. "So Kurt's staying," she says, and lifts her head up, looking him square in the eye. "Guess I don't need to ask you what you want to do, do I?"
"Nah," Burt admits, and reaches across the table to cup her hands with his. "But it can't just be me and Kurt, Carole. It's gotta be all of us. So I'm asking. What do you want to do with all of this?"
Carole takes another deep breath, then another, and her eyes never leave his.
*
day one (redux)
At least there's no pregnant girl on the plane this time. Leslie is thoroughly, absurdly, grateful for that.
Not that it matters, really.
He wonders, a little bit, about Jennifer. He wonders why she was so willing to take him back, after everything. Maybe they bribed her; hell, probably they bribed her. Maybe it was a little, maybe it was a lot; either way, it doesn't matter. He's not planning on staying in her hair for very long. Get in, get the guy, get out again. That's all he needs to do. Simple enough.
"His name's Ben Anderson," Juliet tells him, her voice sounding tight and tense the way it always does when she speaks to him. Never did forgive him for shoving that pregnant girl. Like she wouldn't have done the same, if it were her neck. "He's posing as a math teacher. Your son was in his pre-calculus class last year; since Anderson's the only person at this school remotely qualified to teach calculus, he'll have him again this year. All you have to do is find something to be unhappy about -- David's grades, the quality of the material... You were a teacher, too. I'm sure you can think of something remotely plausible."
And he will, too. Hell, he heard every complaint in the book, back when he was in Tustin. Grades, subject matter, college applications -- once he spent an hour at parent-teacher conferences listening to some insane woman hector him about her son's peanut allergy and how he couldn't let any of the other students bring in candy bars or peanut butter sandwiches. Never mind that no food was even allowed outside the cafeteria, and definitely not in a science class. And when he'd finally managed to get that through her pointy little head, she started going on about "nut dust" contaminating their notebooks and textbooks, and what if a student had eaten peanuts at lunch and then chewed on their pencil and then passed it to her precious son -- her precious son who Leslie'd seen sitting on the school steps, choking down Apollo Nut Clusters like it was some kind of contest (which, knowing his students, it probably was) just two days previously. So, yeah. He'll think of something.
He always thinks of something, sooner or later.
So he'll get in. Get the guy. Get the hell out again. And while he's there, maybe he'll take a little time to see what it might have been like, if he'd stayed with Jennifer all these years. Get to know the kid with the goony smile, who has to take after his old man at least a little bit -- he is taking calculus, or about to be, and even at a big school, there's not a whole lot of kids with that kind of smarts. Hell, maybe he'll even take his time; Ethan didn't seem too worried about the freighter. Then again, he was at least a little worried about the freighter, so maybe Leslie won't take his time. But maybe he'll stick around for a while, after. Enjoy himself.
After all, he's not entirely certain that Jennifer had to be bribed to take him back. Maybe she just... missed him. Maybe she mourned him, when she thought he was dead. Maybe she's glad he's coming home. It's been a long time and she never remarried. Maybe this is what he needs; not the Island, not Tustin, not that girl in Australia. Maybe this was meant to be, all along.
And admittedly, it probably isn't. He doesn't need a pregnant girl sitting across the aisle to remind him of that. It's probably just going to be another pain in his ass. And if it is, then he'll just get in, get the guy, and get out.
Shouldn't be that hard.
*
"Obviously, we'll still have to talk to the boys," Carole says, and Burt nods solemnly. "But this... Burt, I just can't see us doing this any other way. It's not... I just can't see it."
"Damned bananas, anyhow," Burt mutters, and this time, Carole actually cracks a grin. He reaches across the table, takes her hand, smiles at her. "So," he says, stroking one rough thumb over her knuckles. "Think you can sleep now?"
Carole shakes her head, still smiling. It's amazing, the relief on her face. It reminds him again just why he knew, almost as soon as he met her, that she was the one. Never a doubt in his mind. "Nope," she says, sliding her hand away from his and pushing herself out of her chair. "But let's go to bed anyway."
"Sounds like a plan," Burt says, and stands up, and takes her hand.
They leave the mugs and the file on the kitchen table, turn the lights out, and head upstairs.
*
day... whatever
The thing is, he's always been out of his depth in this.
He's not as cocky as everyone thinks he is -- he never once thought he was going to come out on top, whatever coming out on top even means in a situation like this. He never tried to benefit in any way, didn't fool himself that he was gonna get a pile of money or some great scientific discovery or love or, hell, even a peek at Juliet's admittedly pretty decent breasts. But he always thought, most of the time, that he was at least gonna survive. Maybe he'd have to do some awful things, in the end; maybe he'd wind up selling out some people that he probably wouldn't have, if the stakes had been anything other than life or death. But he did think he was going to survive.
Now, he's not so sure.
He sits on his cheap bed, in his cheap motel room -- the tv's on, some repeat of Expose. It's not one of Nikki's episodes; he's never seen one of Nikki's episodes, but still, the show always makes him think of her. She wasn't ever anybody he really knew, but hell, a pretty girl with an interest in his collection -- it was enough for him, enough to make her memorable. He wonders if she's still alive, if anyone he knew back on the Island is still alive. He wonders what happened to his collection. He could use it right now, maybe. The Medusa spider; he could use her now, maybe. Eight hours of false death; it might be enough.
It'd probably be just enough to land him in some morgue somewhere. If he got really lucky, maybe he'd wake up before they took out too many of his internal organs.
"They'll come after me," he says, and it's his turn to clutch at Linus's arms; Linus just stares back at him, implacable, and Leslie has no idea where he got the idea that the guy was soft. He's about as soft as cold steel. "They'll find me. They found you, didn't they? They'll find me."
"Not if they're not looking," Linus says, coolly. "Which they won't be, if you do as you're told."
"I can't --" Leslie shakes his head, lets go of Linus, starts pacing, wringing his hands. "I wouldn't even know where to start. I never --"
"You did," Linus tells him. "You've been dead for a year and a half now, Leslie. Surely it's taught you something. Or has Ethan really underestimated me that much, that he'd send someone this completely incompetent to bring me back?"
That stings, enough to make Leslie jerk his head in Linus's direction. "I'm not --" he splutters.
Linus just smiles at him, and Jesus, Leslie never knew a smile could be that damned scary. "Well," he says. "For your sake, I hope not. Oh, and Dr. Arzt?" He waits until he's sure he's got Leslie's attention, then smiles a little wider. "This time, when you die? Stay dead."
Then he turns and walks back towards the hospital.
The thing is, Leslie wouldn't have a problem with this. He could stay dead; he could stay away from his son, from his ex, from Lima, Ohio for the rest of his damn life and never have a problem with it, never miss a thing. But it's killing himself in the first place -- that's the part he can't figure out. What's he supposed to do, crash another plane? How is a man supposed to kill himself without actually dying in the process?
Then he hears the knock on the door, and he realizes that it's no longer up to him. Someone's come to help him out. Maybe it's Juliet or one of her people; hell, maybe it's Ben himself, or someone he's sent -- the man has a ridiculous number of friends. But whoever it is, they've come for him.
And they're not real patient, because before he's even had time to assess the odds of successfully crawling out through the window (unlikely -- the thing with cheap hotels is that the windows are damn near always painted shut), they're knocking again.
So he does the only thing he can think of to do. He answers the door.
"Yeah?"
"Dr. Arzt?" It's dim, outside, and Leslie can't really make out the man's features that well, but he's tall, and bald, and has a sharp-lined face that's edging towards the cadaverous, and he wouldn't be totally surprised to find out that he's not a man at all, but some kind of... angel of death, or something. "My name is Matthew Abaddon. I believe we share a common acquaintance."
"Yeah?" Leslie asks again, because hell, if he's gonna die anyway, no sense wasting time being polite. "Who's that?"
The man doesn't take a step forward, doesn't take a step back. He just stands there, tall and thin and perfectly composed, and honestly, if he's not an assassin, someone somewhere screwed something up. Because he damn well should be. "Benjamin Linus."
Leslie nods, slowly, jams his hands in his pockets because he's pretty sure they're gonna start shaking and he's not about to let this man see him like that. "So you are here to kill me," he says.
It's possible that the man smiles; it's too dim for Leslie to really be sure, but it's possible. "No," the man replies. "No, Dr. Arzt, I'm not here to kill you. I'm here to save your life."
"Oh." Leslie thinks about it for a second, asks himself how long he's going to keep acting like he could possibly survive this, and then shrugs and decides that he can keep the charade up for a little longer, anyway. "Well. In that case, come in."