The Other Half Lives for placating
Title: The Other Half Lives
Author: tellshannon815
Recipient: placating
Pairings or Characters: Ana Lucia, Sayid, Nadia, Walt, Vincent, Johnny, Hurley, Michael, Kate, Claire, Jack, Boone, Shannon, Charlie, Sawyer, Locke, Helen, Juliet, Libby, Jin, Sun.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers right up through 5x16.
Prompt: Let's say there's a reset, and the flight 815 never crashes. Where are our favorite former crash survivors a year after they safely land in Los Angeles? What are they doing?
Summary: Those who were in 1977 remember everything that happened before the reset. Those who weren't, don't.
Author notes: I did try to incorporate parts of your second prompt in there as well, hence Nadia and Helen who you said were your favourite minor characters!
Tom had been right, Ana Lucia thought (she still called him that, even after she saw that picture in the paper with the news of his death and realised it wasn’t his real name). Parents and children really shouldn’t work together. Ana certainly thought things had been better for her and her mother since she’d left Teresa’s department. She couldn’t go back to the police, of course. Not after what had happened with Jason McCormack. Things had gone too far for that. So she’d gone back to her old security job at the airport - they’d given her a dressing down for taking that trip to Australia at such short notice, but they’d eventually agreed to have her back.
And things with Teresa seemed to be working okay, now they weren’t in each other’s pockets 24-7. It had been as Teresa had said - the investigation into Jason McCormack’s death had turned out to be a dead end, and if they were looking at Ana, she didn’t know about it. Maybe Teresa had pulled a few strings, but Ana realised that she didn’t want to think about it. As long as she didn’t know, she and her mother could get along, without any tension.
She‘d even told “Ton“ he was right, after having attended his memorial service. She‘d sat at the back, of course, not wanting to intrude on the family. It was weird, though, as it turned out that Tom was actually the same person that guy Jack was talking about, the one she’d met at Sydney airport whose father had just died. What were the odds of that? Ana hadn’t made herself known to him at the memorial, though. She hadn’t thought that was what Jack would have needed right then.
The nightmares about her baby seemed to have stopped as well. She used to have them all the time, ever since she’d left the hospital - either Danny standing before her, accusing her of killing the baby, or sometimes the baby itself would appear to her asking Ana why she killed her. There had just been that one night in November where it had been different. That time, it had been a woman around twenty years old who appeared in front of her, blood pouring from her stomach, saying “Why’d you kill me, Ana?”
“Is this you?” Ana had asked. Could this be her daughter, or what she would have looked like had she grown up? But that wasn’t possible. Ana and Danny were both Hispanic. This woman was tall and blonde, and looked nothing like either of them.
Ana awoke in a cold sweat. What the hell had that been all about?
It had been Nadia’s idea for them to go to Berlin for their anniversary. Sayid had suggested other places, such as Paris, Rome or Florence, and they’d talked about other places, had said that it did not matter where they went as long as they were together. And had they eventually settled on somewhere else, that would probably have been true. Nadia had understood why Sayid had said no to Sydney; she knew how much he still blamed himself for Essam’s death, and being back there would have just reminded him of it. But Sayid had known that deep down, Nadia had set her heart on Berlin; how could he deny her that? He could never explain to her about the memories of his time there with Elsa and with Benjamin Linus.
How could he? It was never going to happen now.
Now that their past had been changed and Flight 815 had not crashed, Sayid was never going to become part of the war between Ben and Charles Widmore. And wherever Elsa was now, she would live out the rest of her days without their ever meeting.
Of course Sayid thought of her, wondered about her as they walked past the cafe where they had first met, remembered as they passed the restaurant he’d taken her to on their first date. He wondered whether she was still working for the man she had called an economist, a pawn for him just as Sayid had been a pawn for Ben.
When Ajira Flight 316 had crashed, and Sayid had realised he was back in 1977, he had said to Sawyer that he felt he had a purpose now, which he had lacked before. He has achieved that now. He has helped to change the past; Nadia’s death never happened. Now Sayid has his original purpose back; to build the future with Nadia that he had only dreamed of. It will be easier this time around; Nadia had asked him some questions before about his time on the island which he could not answer. But this will not happen now.
“What are you smiling at?” Nadia asks.
“I am just happy to be here with you.”
Dear Brian,
I’m not sure why I’m writing this letter to you now, since I’ve written to you about fifteen times since getting here and you never reply.
But things are okay here. Vincent’s good, but I think he still misses you sometimes. He’s acted a bit strangely a few times, when he’s gone up to people in the street and it’s been as if he’s known them, even though there’s no way that’s possible. It’s only happened a couple of times recently, though. One couple seemed quite pleased to see him, although this other guy looked a bit freaked out by the whole thing.
Things are going better with Michael Dad now too, although they were a bit weird at first. He used to leave me with my gran a lot while he went out to work, but he’s spending a lot more time with me now. I think my gran said something to him. But he’s taken me to see all the sights of New York now, and you know what? You were right about him. He is cooler than I’d thought.
Anyway, I’m still not sure why I’m writing this. But I’m gonna send it anyway.
Walt & Vincent
Johnny had proposed this road trip as a way of making things better between him and Hurley. He knows things have been off between them ever since the whole Starla thing. And for a while, Hurley had been kinda okay with it as long as he only saw Johnny on his own, without Starla.
Now, he’s not sure it matters. Since he’s known Charlie and Libby, he’s only felt indifference for them anyway.
But he knows he can’t explain any of that to Johnny. Because as far as Johnny’s concerned, Hurley’s plane never crashed. He made it home for his mom’s birthday. And he never met Charlie and Libby.
Sometimes, he’s even wondered if he’s just made them all up. Look at them, for Pete’s sake. Charlie, his best friend, was well known once upon a time. Okay, so Hurley and Johnny used to think his band kinda sucked, but still, he’d been famous once. And he got Hurley in a way that Hurley’s not sure Johnny ever really did. And Libby…well, Dave had put it better than he ever could. Oh, right, right, right, Libby -- the mega cute blonde chick who magically appeared from the other side of the Island. Oh, oh, oh, yeah -- and who just happens to have the hots for you.
Dave would certainly say he’d made it all up. But Hurley knows deep down he hasn’t. Charlie, Libby, all of them are real. And sometimes Hurley’s thought about going to find them, but he knows he won’t. All that only happened because they were there on the island. In the real world, would they want to know?
Johnny and Hurley’s road trip ends up taking them to New York. In a way, Hurley’s pleased they’ve actually got somewhere, because there had been a lot of awkward silences between them when they’d been in the car, just the two of them. He’d never had that with Charlie, Hurley thinks, then hates himself for doing so.
“Vincent! Hey, Vincent!” comes a familiar voice suddenly.
The next thing Hurley knows, he’s finding himself being launched upon by a very enthusiastic Labrador, who leaps up to him, licks his face.
“Uh, sorry, man.”
Hurley knows that voice, too. But he’d never wanted to hear it again once that man had left in the Others’ boat, and he’d never given a thought to the idea that once they’d reset time, there was a possibility he might.
“He’s done that a couple of times now. Nearly knocked some woman flying once. The woman, Rose, she was okay about it, even thought she obviously wasn’t…” Michael breaks off. “You okay, man?”
Johnny frowns. “Yeah, dude, you okay?”
But Hurley can’t say anything. He’s frozen in time, and it’s like he’s back in that moment where he’s just found out what happened to Libby.
He still can’t forgive Michael for what happened. But it makes no sense, since now they’ve changed time, Michael isn’t ever going to shoot Libby.
“What’s the deal with that guy?” Walt asks after the big guy’s friend takes him away, with a muttered apology for Michael and Walt. “Vincent was only trying to be friendly. The other guy understood that.”
“I don’t know, little man.” Michael attempts to shrug it off. “Some people are just like that.”
Walt seems satisfied with the explanation, and changes the subject, starts talking about the Statue of Liberty. But Michael’s not sure that his own explanation makes sense to him. It’s crazy, since he doesn’t think he’s ever met that guy in his life. But there was something about him, something that Michael had thought he recognised, and a feeling…was it guilt? But why should it be? As Walt pointed out, Vincent jumping up at him had been such a minor thing.
That night, he has a dream. He’s somewhere he doesn’t recognise, a jungle maybe? The big guy from that day is there, and some other people Michael feels like he should recognise, but doesn’t, two men and a woman.
It is the man from earlier who’s speaking. Did you kill them? Ana Lucia and Libby? Did you?
Ana Lucia? Libby? What? Who? Michael thinks. He’s never met anyone called Ana Lucia, or Libby.
Then he sees the two women, one Hispanic, one blonde, both standing before him, blood trickling from their mouths.
It was just a dream, Michael tells himself when he wakes up. But he’s not so sure that’s true.
Katherine Anne Austen, you are charged with fraud, arson, assault on a federal officer, assault with a deadly weapon, grand larceny, grand theft auto, and murder in the first degree.
She knows which way it’s going to go today. Since there was never any crash, and Diane never believed that Kate was dead, she never changed her mind about testifying. Agent Mars survived, so he was able to give his testimony too. Kate’s lawyer had tried to argue that he wasn’t even a good witness, since he seemed to be enjoying the idea of punishing Kate too much. But the judge had seemed to find him convincing, and of course, Jack wasn’t there to provide a character witness statement to counterbalance that.
And Aaron wasn’t there. Since Kate never met Claire, she never ended up taking care of Claire’s son and telling everyone he was her own. She wonders what’s happened to him now. Claire had been determined to put him up for adoption before the original crash - could she have done that now? Or might she have changed her mind, decided to bring him up herself after all?
Kate knows now how selfish it sounded coming out of her mouth when Carole Littleton had asked her why she hadn’t come to Claire’s family sooner. “Because I needed him”. But it’s true, before landing on the island Kate had never had anyone she could truly call hers. And now that they’ve reset time, she never will. Dad Sam, Tom, Kevin, Jack, they could never be hers. And she’d lost Sawyer anyway, even before they changed time. Whether Aaron’s ended up with Claire, or another mother altogether, he’ll never know Kate. And maybe that’s best for him, Kate isn’t sure.
Because if she’s honest, she could never have really called Aaron hers, she understands that now. There was always going to be some question she couldn’t answer, maybe some medical emergency would have revealed the truth, or maybe even some relative of Claire’s would have put two and two together and started wondering.
It’s only a matter of time now before they give the verdict. Kate knows what it will be, but doesn’t care. She’s already in a prison of her own making.
At the exact moment Kate is wondering what has become of Claire and Aaron, Claire is pushing her son through the park in his pram.
There had been no couple in Los Angeles. Claire had called Malkin, the psychic, asking him what the deal was, but he’d just mumbled something stupid about something not being supposed to happen, at which point Claire had put the phone down on him.
She’d not really given much thought to what she would do if the whole thing fell through. Her own fault really, for believing what the psychic had said to her. At the time, she’d still been leaning towards putting her baby up for adoption, until one night when she had a dream. There was a man there, in a white coat, and they were having a conversation about the possibility of Claire giving up her baby, then the guy gave her an injection. Some other guy with a beard appeared and got angry with him, but Claire wasn’t entirely sure why. Then some teenage girl appeared, dragged her away. Don't scream. They're going to do it tonight.
Claire had been shaken when she’d woken up. She knew she’d never met any of those people before. But the dream had been so vivid, it was like it was trying to tell her something.
So she’d given birth to her son, then gone home to her Aunt Lindsey. Sometimes she takes the baby to see her mother, Carole, in the hospital, although she still doesn’t know if Carole’s aware that they’re there.
“She’d be proud of you, you know, for changing your mind and raising him yourself,” Lindsey says one day, and Claire feels sure that’s true.
Things are still strained between Jack and Margo, even after this amount of time.
Since she never thought he was dead, Margo’s still blaming Jack for what happened to Christian. She still brings it up about how if Jack hadn’t reported Christian, then he wouldn’t have gone to Australia in the first place, and maybe if he’d got to him sooner, he might have saved him. Jack isn’t sure that it would have made much difference, but he knows there’s no point arguing with Margo when she’s like that.
One day, when Jack’s on duty at St Sebastian’s, a familiar patient is brought in following a collision with another car. Boone Carlyle, twenty-two, severe internal injuries. Shannon’s there, clutching blindly at Jack with no signs of recognition. “Save him. Please will you fix my brother?”
She doesn’t remember him from her father’s accident, doesn’t remember any of her time on the island. But Jack remembers it all, and he’s determined that this time, he’s going to fix him. Boone might have let him off the hook last time, but Jack’s not letting himself off this time.
As he learns that the operation was a success, Jack reflects that the reset has done some good after all.
It’s a relief to get out of the sodding house, Charlie thinks as he prepares to take Megan for a walk. Liam’s obviously taken Charlie’s parting words to heart since he left him in Sydney that day - “You never looked out for me.” Now, Charlie feels Liam’s in his face a bit too much.
He understands why, though. After leaving Liam, he’d flown out to Los Angeles to meet up with Meat Coat, but once they’d realised Liam wasn’t there, their attitudes had changed pretty quickly. “We said it was all of you or nothing. Liam’s the one we wanted. He is the band. And if you’re not gonna bring him, you can piss off.”
He doesn’t remember much after that, until he woke up in the hospital, Liam by his side. “Why didn’t you just call me, you nutter? I’d have been out here like a shot. Why did you do this?”
There’s blank spaces after that, too, from the time after they’d flown back to Australia, when Liam had checked Charlie into the same rehab place where he’d been before. He’s been living with Liam ever since leaving rehab, knowing he should really think about moving on, but not sure what he should do. Music and drugs had been his life for so long by that time. Without them, he doesn’t know where he’s heading.
“Come away from there, Megan!” he says suddenly, realising his niece has wandered over to some girl with a pram and is peering into it. “Leave them alone.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” the girl smiles. “I don’t mind. How old’s your daughter?”
“Oh, she’s not mine. She’s my brother’s, and she’s three. How old’s…” Charlie gestures towards the pram.
“Aaron’s coming up for one now.” the girl explains.
“Aaron…” Charlie repeats. He can’t explain it, but he thinks he recognises that name. And now he thinks about it, the girl’s familiar too. “Do I…know you?”
“You know, it’s weird, but I was just thinking that I recognise you from somewhere. Don’t know where, though.” she smiles.
Another time, Charlie would have immediately started singing the chorus of You All Everybody, made some stupid comment about his DriveSHAFT days. But he doesn’t this time, just holds out his hand. “I’m Charlie.”
The girl shakes it. “I’m Claire.”
At this point on the original flight, Sawyer had been thinking about what he would do to Hibbs when he got back. Son of a bitch, with his crap about the guy who he’d let him believe was the man he’d been hunting for years. Now he’d killed this man over some lousy debt of Hibbs’s?
And he didn’t have a name or a face back then, so that would have eaten away at him.
He knows the name now, knows that the man’s still out there somewhere. But it doesn’t matter now. Not now he’s away from her.
Jack-ass had thought that they’d all be strangers once it had happened, once he’d changed time so that they never crashed. Sawyer wonders if he’s somewhere now, watching the reports of Freckles’s trial, wondering if there’s some way he can get back to her again.
But it’s easier for him. They’re in the same country. Sawyer doesn’t even know where Juliet is.
He’s spent the whole goddamn year trying. He’s checked out Miami, where Blondie had said she was from before Ol’ Bug Eyes brought her to the island, but no one there’s seen her since 2001. He’s even gone to that place Hugo told him about, where that Other woman had told them all how to get back. But Faraday’s mom’s not there. Course, now they changed time, she never shot her son, so she’s probably still there on that frickin’ island.
He wonders if somewhere out there, Juliet still remembers him, and is thinking of how she can get back to him.
Locke’s surprised Helen’s actually come out to him now. The real one, that is. She’d refused to take his calls all the time in the days after they first broke up, after what happened with his father.
He hadn’t stayed too long at the box company after the walkabout company sent him home. He hadn’t known which was worse at the time; GL12’s well-meant sympathy and encouragement, or Randy Nations’s gloating about how it could never have happened anyway.
And there’s something else, too, something Locke can’t explain. Even when Randy and others had been telling him he couldn’t do it, Locke had always held on to some hope, something he thought stemmed from his childhood. Someone making contact with him, telling him he was special…was it something like that?
No. It’s gone. He can’t picture the man’s face, can’t remember his words. It’s like it never happened at all.
Locke doesn’t know why Helen took this particular call from him, when she’d ignored so many others. But he’s happy she did. They have this chance now to rebuild their relationship again.
After all, a voice sounds in his head, you don’t have much time left to be with her now.
Locke freezes. Where the hell had that come from?
Goodwin hadn’t understood why Juliet had ended their relationship. He’d offered to leave Harper again, as he had so many times during their relationship. And he’d tried to brush Ben off again, wondering what he could possibly do to hurt their relationship. Juliet knew the answer to that one now, of course, but she was never going to tell him. It wasn’t going to happen anyway. She had seen to that herself.
But she could never return to the relationship with Goodwin, not now she knew what else was out there.
She’d thought the memories would all be gone once she’d detonated the bomb and none of the last three years had ever happened. But she still remembers all of what happened, remembers her time with James. And she wonders now whether she’s the only one who still knows what happened, or whether James is somewhere out there now, trying to find a way back to her.
Of course, he could be out there trying to find a way to Kate, she considers. But either way, Juliet still remembers one thing from the last three years, the one thing Ben probably hoped she would never know.
The sub’s still intact now, since Locke wasn’t there to blow it up, but Ben won’t let her anywhere near it. But there is another way.
If Juliet turns the wheel, as Locke had, she can be free from the island, back with Rachel at long last. And she’ll go and look for James, so she can be with him again.
“Libby?”
Libby turns around in the direction of the man who had spoken. She knows the face…yes, it’s the guy from Santa Rosa, the one she thought she’d seen at Sydney Airport for a minute. She’d remembered him particularly because he’d kept talking to someone named David, which had been her late husband’s name. But she hasn’t given him a thought since they landed at the airport, hadn’t even for a long time before she’d seen him again.
Ordinarily, she might have pretended she hadn’t heard. She didn’t like being reminded of the time she’d spent in Santa Rosa. So far no one from that time has actually tried to approach her, but she wouldn’t have welcomed it if they had.
Something of her thoughts seems to be showing in her face, because the guy (Hugo? She thinks) starts backing away from her. “Uh, sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you. It was a bad idea. So I’ll just…”
He starts to walk away, but for some reason, Libby stops. She can’t explain it, but for some reason, she doesn’t want to walk away from this man any more, feels comfortable with him in a way she can’t explain. It’s as though she knows him from somewhere other than that place, although she can’t think where that would be.
“No, it’s fine,” she says. “How are you doing?”
Jin hadn’t thought any of it through at the time Jack first told him of the plan. Jack had told Jin he’d found a way of getting him back to his wife. But what Jin hadn’t realised until the very moment of the white flash was that what Jack had in fact done was send them back to the day when Sun had wanted to leave him.
He’d remembered what his father had said about that errand being the last thing he was to do for Mr Paik. And he had intended that it would be. Maybe he would even have abandoned that, left with Sun and started a new life anyway. But when the man had spoken to him in the bathroom about how he could never hope to escape because Mr Paik would always find him, Jin had believed it. So he had determined that he would do this one last thing for him. But he had not given up hope that one day, he and Sun would make a fresh start somewhere else, away from her family.
But it was not to be. While Jin remembered all of the events after the crash, Sun remembered nothing. To her, Jin was still the same man that he had been before the crash, the one man that he had never wanted to be again. After he had found out from Juliet that Sun had been with another man, he had come to understand why Sun had no longer wanted to be with the man that Jin had become.
But he was not that man any more. He’d come to terms with his own past, could accept Sun’s, he could be the man that he wanted to be. And Jack’s reset had taken that away from him.
But Jin has not given up hope altogether. He remembers something Desmond once said his girlfriend had told him - “With enough money and determination, you can find anyone.” And he has managed to find out where Sun is now. She’s right on the other side of this door.
As Jin knocks at the door, he knows that this will decide his future.
She’d thought that she was doing the right thing at the time. When Jin had given her the flower at the airport, Sun thought she’d glimpsed a trace of the man her husband used to be. But he was still doing his work for her father, and it didn’t look like that was ever going to change.
Since leaving Jin, however, Sun’s had increasing doubts that she made the right decision. She can’t explain why she feels this way, but she has this nagging thought in her head: Jin can change. He already has. And sometimes, she dreams of a baby looking just like Jin, even though she knows that is impossible as Jin could not father children.
Sometimes, she’s seen herself in a helicopter, with Jin far below, waving and trying to get her attention but the helicopter carried her away. Just something symbolising the fact that you are moving on with your life without him, her neighbour who was interested in dream interpretation had said, but Sun wasn’t so sure. It had felt too real, somehow, to be that.
When the knock comes at the door, Sun’s not surprised to see who’s on the other side. Jin’s holding a flower out to her, just as he had done that day at the airport.
She still doesn’t remember their past. But she’s sure now they have a future together.
Author: tellshannon815
Recipient: placating
Pairings or Characters: Ana Lucia, Sayid, Nadia, Walt, Vincent, Johnny, Hurley, Michael, Kate, Claire, Jack, Boone, Shannon, Charlie, Sawyer, Locke, Helen, Juliet, Libby, Jin, Sun.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers right up through 5x16.
Prompt: Let's say there's a reset, and the flight 815 never crashes. Where are our favorite former crash survivors a year after they safely land in Los Angeles? What are they doing?
Summary: Those who were in 1977 remember everything that happened before the reset. Those who weren't, don't.
Author notes: I did try to incorporate parts of your second prompt in there as well, hence Nadia and Helen who you said were your favourite minor characters!
Tom had been right, Ana Lucia thought (she still called him that, even after she saw that picture in the paper with the news of his death and realised it wasn’t his real name). Parents and children really shouldn’t work together. Ana certainly thought things had been better for her and her mother since she’d left Teresa’s department. She couldn’t go back to the police, of course. Not after what had happened with Jason McCormack. Things had gone too far for that. So she’d gone back to her old security job at the airport - they’d given her a dressing down for taking that trip to Australia at such short notice, but they’d eventually agreed to have her back.
And things with Teresa seemed to be working okay, now they weren’t in each other’s pockets 24-7. It had been as Teresa had said - the investigation into Jason McCormack’s death had turned out to be a dead end, and if they were looking at Ana, she didn’t know about it. Maybe Teresa had pulled a few strings, but Ana realised that she didn’t want to think about it. As long as she didn’t know, she and her mother could get along, without any tension.
She‘d even told “Ton“ he was right, after having attended his memorial service. She‘d sat at the back, of course, not wanting to intrude on the family. It was weird, though, as it turned out that Tom was actually the same person that guy Jack was talking about, the one she’d met at Sydney airport whose father had just died. What were the odds of that? Ana hadn’t made herself known to him at the memorial, though. She hadn’t thought that was what Jack would have needed right then.
The nightmares about her baby seemed to have stopped as well. She used to have them all the time, ever since she’d left the hospital - either Danny standing before her, accusing her of killing the baby, or sometimes the baby itself would appear to her asking Ana why she killed her. There had just been that one night in November where it had been different. That time, it had been a woman around twenty years old who appeared in front of her, blood pouring from her stomach, saying “Why’d you kill me, Ana?”
“Is this you?” Ana had asked. Could this be her daughter, or what she would have looked like had she grown up? But that wasn’t possible. Ana and Danny were both Hispanic. This woman was tall and blonde, and looked nothing like either of them.
Ana awoke in a cold sweat. What the hell had that been all about?
It had been Nadia’s idea for them to go to Berlin for their anniversary. Sayid had suggested other places, such as Paris, Rome or Florence, and they’d talked about other places, had said that it did not matter where they went as long as they were together. And had they eventually settled on somewhere else, that would probably have been true. Nadia had understood why Sayid had said no to Sydney; she knew how much he still blamed himself for Essam’s death, and being back there would have just reminded him of it. But Sayid had known that deep down, Nadia had set her heart on Berlin; how could he deny her that? He could never explain to her about the memories of his time there with Elsa and with Benjamin Linus.
How could he? It was never going to happen now.
Now that their past had been changed and Flight 815 had not crashed, Sayid was never going to become part of the war between Ben and Charles Widmore. And wherever Elsa was now, she would live out the rest of her days without their ever meeting.
Of course Sayid thought of her, wondered about her as they walked past the cafe where they had first met, remembered as they passed the restaurant he’d taken her to on their first date. He wondered whether she was still working for the man she had called an economist, a pawn for him just as Sayid had been a pawn for Ben.
When Ajira Flight 316 had crashed, and Sayid had realised he was back in 1977, he had said to Sawyer that he felt he had a purpose now, which he had lacked before. He has achieved that now. He has helped to change the past; Nadia’s death never happened. Now Sayid has his original purpose back; to build the future with Nadia that he had only dreamed of. It will be easier this time around; Nadia had asked him some questions before about his time on the island which he could not answer. But this will not happen now.
“What are you smiling at?” Nadia asks.
“I am just happy to be here with you.”
Dear Brian,
I’m not sure why I’m writing this letter to you now, since I’ve written to you about fifteen times since getting here and you never reply.
But things are okay here. Vincent’s good, but I think he still misses you sometimes. He’s acted a bit strangely a few times, when he’s gone up to people in the street and it’s been as if he’s known them, even though there’s no way that’s possible. It’s only happened a couple of times recently, though. One couple seemed quite pleased to see him, although this other guy looked a bit freaked out by the whole thing.
Things are going better with Michael Dad now too, although they were a bit weird at first. He used to leave me with my gran a lot while he went out to work, but he’s spending a lot more time with me now. I think my gran said something to him. But he’s taken me to see all the sights of New York now, and you know what? You were right about him. He is cooler than I’d thought.
Anyway, I’m still not sure why I’m writing this. But I’m gonna send it anyway.
Walt & Vincent
Johnny had proposed this road trip as a way of making things better between him and Hurley. He knows things have been off between them ever since the whole Starla thing. And for a while, Hurley had been kinda okay with it as long as he only saw Johnny on his own, without Starla.
Now, he’s not sure it matters. Since he’s known Charlie and Libby, he’s only felt indifference for them anyway.
But he knows he can’t explain any of that to Johnny. Because as far as Johnny’s concerned, Hurley’s plane never crashed. He made it home for his mom’s birthday. And he never met Charlie and Libby.
Sometimes, he’s even wondered if he’s just made them all up. Look at them, for Pete’s sake. Charlie, his best friend, was well known once upon a time. Okay, so Hurley and Johnny used to think his band kinda sucked, but still, he’d been famous once. And he got Hurley in a way that Hurley’s not sure Johnny ever really did. And Libby…well, Dave had put it better than he ever could. Oh, right, right, right, Libby -- the mega cute blonde chick who magically appeared from the other side of the Island. Oh, oh, oh, yeah -- and who just happens to have the hots for you.
Dave would certainly say he’d made it all up. But Hurley knows deep down he hasn’t. Charlie, Libby, all of them are real. And sometimes Hurley’s thought about going to find them, but he knows he won’t. All that only happened because they were there on the island. In the real world, would they want to know?
Johnny and Hurley’s road trip ends up taking them to New York. In a way, Hurley’s pleased they’ve actually got somewhere, because there had been a lot of awkward silences between them when they’d been in the car, just the two of them. He’d never had that with Charlie, Hurley thinks, then hates himself for doing so.
“Vincent! Hey, Vincent!” comes a familiar voice suddenly.
The next thing Hurley knows, he’s finding himself being launched upon by a very enthusiastic Labrador, who leaps up to him, licks his face.
“Uh, sorry, man.”
Hurley knows that voice, too. But he’d never wanted to hear it again once that man had left in the Others’ boat, and he’d never given a thought to the idea that once they’d reset time, there was a possibility he might.
“He’s done that a couple of times now. Nearly knocked some woman flying once. The woman, Rose, she was okay about it, even thought she obviously wasn’t…” Michael breaks off. “You okay, man?”
Johnny frowns. “Yeah, dude, you okay?”
But Hurley can’t say anything. He’s frozen in time, and it’s like he’s back in that moment where he’s just found out what happened to Libby.
He still can’t forgive Michael for what happened. But it makes no sense, since now they’ve changed time, Michael isn’t ever going to shoot Libby.
“What’s the deal with that guy?” Walt asks after the big guy’s friend takes him away, with a muttered apology for Michael and Walt. “Vincent was only trying to be friendly. The other guy understood that.”
“I don’t know, little man.” Michael attempts to shrug it off. “Some people are just like that.”
Walt seems satisfied with the explanation, and changes the subject, starts talking about the Statue of Liberty. But Michael’s not sure that his own explanation makes sense to him. It’s crazy, since he doesn’t think he’s ever met that guy in his life. But there was something about him, something that Michael had thought he recognised, and a feeling…was it guilt? But why should it be? As Walt pointed out, Vincent jumping up at him had been such a minor thing.
That night, he has a dream. He’s somewhere he doesn’t recognise, a jungle maybe? The big guy from that day is there, and some other people Michael feels like he should recognise, but doesn’t, two men and a woman.
It is the man from earlier who’s speaking. Did you kill them? Ana Lucia and Libby? Did you?
Ana Lucia? Libby? What? Who? Michael thinks. He’s never met anyone called Ana Lucia, or Libby.
Then he sees the two women, one Hispanic, one blonde, both standing before him, blood trickling from their mouths.
It was just a dream, Michael tells himself when he wakes up. But he’s not so sure that’s true.
Katherine Anne Austen, you are charged with fraud, arson, assault on a federal officer, assault with a deadly weapon, grand larceny, grand theft auto, and murder in the first degree.
She knows which way it’s going to go today. Since there was never any crash, and Diane never believed that Kate was dead, she never changed her mind about testifying. Agent Mars survived, so he was able to give his testimony too. Kate’s lawyer had tried to argue that he wasn’t even a good witness, since he seemed to be enjoying the idea of punishing Kate too much. But the judge had seemed to find him convincing, and of course, Jack wasn’t there to provide a character witness statement to counterbalance that.
And Aaron wasn’t there. Since Kate never met Claire, she never ended up taking care of Claire’s son and telling everyone he was her own. She wonders what’s happened to him now. Claire had been determined to put him up for adoption before the original crash - could she have done that now? Or might she have changed her mind, decided to bring him up herself after all?
Kate knows now how selfish it sounded coming out of her mouth when Carole Littleton had asked her why she hadn’t come to Claire’s family sooner. “Because I needed him”. But it’s true, before landing on the island Kate had never had anyone she could truly call hers. And now that they’ve reset time, she never will. Dad Sam, Tom, Kevin, Jack, they could never be hers. And she’d lost Sawyer anyway, even before they changed time. Whether Aaron’s ended up with Claire, or another mother altogether, he’ll never know Kate. And maybe that’s best for him, Kate isn’t sure.
Because if she’s honest, she could never have really called Aaron hers, she understands that now. There was always going to be some question she couldn’t answer, maybe some medical emergency would have revealed the truth, or maybe even some relative of Claire’s would have put two and two together and started wondering.
It’s only a matter of time now before they give the verdict. Kate knows what it will be, but doesn’t care. She’s already in a prison of her own making.
At the exact moment Kate is wondering what has become of Claire and Aaron, Claire is pushing her son through the park in his pram.
There had been no couple in Los Angeles. Claire had called Malkin, the psychic, asking him what the deal was, but he’d just mumbled something stupid about something not being supposed to happen, at which point Claire had put the phone down on him.
She’d not really given much thought to what she would do if the whole thing fell through. Her own fault really, for believing what the psychic had said to her. At the time, she’d still been leaning towards putting her baby up for adoption, until one night when she had a dream. There was a man there, in a white coat, and they were having a conversation about the possibility of Claire giving up her baby, then the guy gave her an injection. Some other guy with a beard appeared and got angry with him, but Claire wasn’t entirely sure why. Then some teenage girl appeared, dragged her away. Don't scream. They're going to do it tonight.
Claire had been shaken when she’d woken up. She knew she’d never met any of those people before. But the dream had been so vivid, it was like it was trying to tell her something.
So she’d given birth to her son, then gone home to her Aunt Lindsey. Sometimes she takes the baby to see her mother, Carole, in the hospital, although she still doesn’t know if Carole’s aware that they’re there.
“She’d be proud of you, you know, for changing your mind and raising him yourself,” Lindsey says one day, and Claire feels sure that’s true.
Things are still strained between Jack and Margo, even after this amount of time.
Since she never thought he was dead, Margo’s still blaming Jack for what happened to Christian. She still brings it up about how if Jack hadn’t reported Christian, then he wouldn’t have gone to Australia in the first place, and maybe if he’d got to him sooner, he might have saved him. Jack isn’t sure that it would have made much difference, but he knows there’s no point arguing with Margo when she’s like that.
One day, when Jack’s on duty at St Sebastian’s, a familiar patient is brought in following a collision with another car. Boone Carlyle, twenty-two, severe internal injuries. Shannon’s there, clutching blindly at Jack with no signs of recognition. “Save him. Please will you fix my brother?”
She doesn’t remember him from her father’s accident, doesn’t remember any of her time on the island. But Jack remembers it all, and he’s determined that this time, he’s going to fix him. Boone might have let him off the hook last time, but Jack’s not letting himself off this time.
As he learns that the operation was a success, Jack reflects that the reset has done some good after all.
It’s a relief to get out of the sodding house, Charlie thinks as he prepares to take Megan for a walk. Liam’s obviously taken Charlie’s parting words to heart since he left him in Sydney that day - “You never looked out for me.” Now, Charlie feels Liam’s in his face a bit too much.
He understands why, though. After leaving Liam, he’d flown out to Los Angeles to meet up with Meat Coat, but once they’d realised Liam wasn’t there, their attitudes had changed pretty quickly. “We said it was all of you or nothing. Liam’s the one we wanted. He is the band. And if you’re not gonna bring him, you can piss off.”
He doesn’t remember much after that, until he woke up in the hospital, Liam by his side. “Why didn’t you just call me, you nutter? I’d have been out here like a shot. Why did you do this?”
There’s blank spaces after that, too, from the time after they’d flown back to Australia, when Liam had checked Charlie into the same rehab place where he’d been before. He’s been living with Liam ever since leaving rehab, knowing he should really think about moving on, but not sure what he should do. Music and drugs had been his life for so long by that time. Without them, he doesn’t know where he’s heading.
“Come away from there, Megan!” he says suddenly, realising his niece has wandered over to some girl with a pram and is peering into it. “Leave them alone.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” the girl smiles. “I don’t mind. How old’s your daughter?”
“Oh, she’s not mine. She’s my brother’s, and she’s three. How old’s…” Charlie gestures towards the pram.
“Aaron’s coming up for one now.” the girl explains.
“Aaron…” Charlie repeats. He can’t explain it, but he thinks he recognises that name. And now he thinks about it, the girl’s familiar too. “Do I…know you?”
“You know, it’s weird, but I was just thinking that I recognise you from somewhere. Don’t know where, though.” she smiles.
Another time, Charlie would have immediately started singing the chorus of You All Everybody, made some stupid comment about his DriveSHAFT days. But he doesn’t this time, just holds out his hand. “I’m Charlie.”
The girl shakes it. “I’m Claire.”
At this point on the original flight, Sawyer had been thinking about what he would do to Hibbs when he got back. Son of a bitch, with his crap about the guy who he’d let him believe was the man he’d been hunting for years. Now he’d killed this man over some lousy debt of Hibbs’s?
And he didn’t have a name or a face back then, so that would have eaten away at him.
He knows the name now, knows that the man’s still out there somewhere. But it doesn’t matter now. Not now he’s away from her.
Jack-ass had thought that they’d all be strangers once it had happened, once he’d changed time so that they never crashed. Sawyer wonders if he’s somewhere now, watching the reports of Freckles’s trial, wondering if there’s some way he can get back to her again.
But it’s easier for him. They’re in the same country. Sawyer doesn’t even know where Juliet is.
He’s spent the whole goddamn year trying. He’s checked out Miami, where Blondie had said she was from before Ol’ Bug Eyes brought her to the island, but no one there’s seen her since 2001. He’s even gone to that place Hugo told him about, where that Other woman had told them all how to get back. But Faraday’s mom’s not there. Course, now they changed time, she never shot her son, so she’s probably still there on that frickin’ island.
He wonders if somewhere out there, Juliet still remembers him, and is thinking of how she can get back to him.
Locke’s surprised Helen’s actually come out to him now. The real one, that is. She’d refused to take his calls all the time in the days after they first broke up, after what happened with his father.
He hadn’t stayed too long at the box company after the walkabout company sent him home. He hadn’t known which was worse at the time; GL12’s well-meant sympathy and encouragement, or Randy Nations’s gloating about how it could never have happened anyway.
And there’s something else, too, something Locke can’t explain. Even when Randy and others had been telling him he couldn’t do it, Locke had always held on to some hope, something he thought stemmed from his childhood. Someone making contact with him, telling him he was special…was it something like that?
No. It’s gone. He can’t picture the man’s face, can’t remember his words. It’s like it never happened at all.
Locke doesn’t know why Helen took this particular call from him, when she’d ignored so many others. But he’s happy she did. They have this chance now to rebuild their relationship again.
After all, a voice sounds in his head, you don’t have much time left to be with her now.
Locke freezes. Where the hell had that come from?
Goodwin hadn’t understood why Juliet had ended their relationship. He’d offered to leave Harper again, as he had so many times during their relationship. And he’d tried to brush Ben off again, wondering what he could possibly do to hurt their relationship. Juliet knew the answer to that one now, of course, but she was never going to tell him. It wasn’t going to happen anyway. She had seen to that herself.
But she could never return to the relationship with Goodwin, not now she knew what else was out there.
She’d thought the memories would all be gone once she’d detonated the bomb and none of the last three years had ever happened. But she still remembers all of what happened, remembers her time with James. And she wonders now whether she’s the only one who still knows what happened, or whether James is somewhere out there now, trying to find a way back to her.
Of course, he could be out there trying to find a way to Kate, she considers. But either way, Juliet still remembers one thing from the last three years, the one thing Ben probably hoped she would never know.
The sub’s still intact now, since Locke wasn’t there to blow it up, but Ben won’t let her anywhere near it. But there is another way.
If Juliet turns the wheel, as Locke had, she can be free from the island, back with Rachel at long last. And she’ll go and look for James, so she can be with him again.
“Libby?”
Libby turns around in the direction of the man who had spoken. She knows the face…yes, it’s the guy from Santa Rosa, the one she thought she’d seen at Sydney Airport for a minute. She’d remembered him particularly because he’d kept talking to someone named David, which had been her late husband’s name. But she hasn’t given him a thought since they landed at the airport, hadn’t even for a long time before she’d seen him again.
Ordinarily, she might have pretended she hadn’t heard. She didn’t like being reminded of the time she’d spent in Santa Rosa. So far no one from that time has actually tried to approach her, but she wouldn’t have welcomed it if they had.
Something of her thoughts seems to be showing in her face, because the guy (Hugo? She thinks) starts backing away from her. “Uh, sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you. It was a bad idea. So I’ll just…”
He starts to walk away, but for some reason, Libby stops. She can’t explain it, but for some reason, she doesn’t want to walk away from this man any more, feels comfortable with him in a way she can’t explain. It’s as though she knows him from somewhere other than that place, although she can’t think where that would be.
“No, it’s fine,” she says. “How are you doing?”
Jin hadn’t thought any of it through at the time Jack first told him of the plan. Jack had told Jin he’d found a way of getting him back to his wife. But what Jin hadn’t realised until the very moment of the white flash was that what Jack had in fact done was send them back to the day when Sun had wanted to leave him.
He’d remembered what his father had said about that errand being the last thing he was to do for Mr Paik. And he had intended that it would be. Maybe he would even have abandoned that, left with Sun and started a new life anyway. But when the man had spoken to him in the bathroom about how he could never hope to escape because Mr Paik would always find him, Jin had believed it. So he had determined that he would do this one last thing for him. But he had not given up hope that one day, he and Sun would make a fresh start somewhere else, away from her family.
But it was not to be. While Jin remembered all of the events after the crash, Sun remembered nothing. To her, Jin was still the same man that he had been before the crash, the one man that he had never wanted to be again. After he had found out from Juliet that Sun had been with another man, he had come to understand why Sun had no longer wanted to be with the man that Jin had become.
But he was not that man any more. He’d come to terms with his own past, could accept Sun’s, he could be the man that he wanted to be. And Jack’s reset had taken that away from him.
But Jin has not given up hope altogether. He remembers something Desmond once said his girlfriend had told him - “With enough money and determination, you can find anyone.” And he has managed to find out where Sun is now. She’s right on the other side of this door.
As Jin knocks at the door, he knows that this will decide his future.
She’d thought that she was doing the right thing at the time. When Jin had given her the flower at the airport, Sun thought she’d glimpsed a trace of the man her husband used to be. But he was still doing his work for her father, and it didn’t look like that was ever going to change.
Since leaving Jin, however, Sun’s had increasing doubts that she made the right decision. She can’t explain why she feels this way, but she has this nagging thought in her head: Jin can change. He already has. And sometimes, she dreams of a baby looking just like Jin, even though she knows that is impossible as Jin could not father children.
Sometimes, she’s seen herself in a helicopter, with Jin far below, waving and trying to get her attention but the helicopter carried her away. Just something symbolising the fact that you are moving on with your life without him, her neighbour who was interested in dream interpretation had said, but Sun wasn’t so sure. It had felt too real, somehow, to be that.
When the knock comes at the door, Sun’s not surprised to see who’s on the other side. Jin’s holding a flower out to her, just as he had done that day at the airport.
She still doesn’t remember their past. But she’s sure now they have a future together.