(lost) Fin
Title: Fin
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Danielle Rousseau
Spoilers: Through Season 4
Prompt: lostsquee - Photo and Character Prompt
Summary: Danielle loved the city. The way it breathed and moved like a living thing. Its rich diversities ever as abundant as the jungles in which she had spent most of her life and which had brought her to this suburban one.
Danielle loved the city. The way it breathed and moved like a living thing. Its rich diversities ever as abundant as the jungles in which she had spent most of her life and which had brought her to this suburban one. No where was this more evident than in the train station where she sat waiting. Tourists with their bulky cameras and hip packs mingled with rebellious youths in awkward fashions. The prosperous mingled with the destitute.
On the other side of the platform, she could see a vagabond sprawled across a bench seat, his eyes wild with hunger, loneliness, and abandonment. Nearby, a businessman glanced nervously over his newspaper pages at the grimy man beside him who had begun muttering to demons and loved ones only he could see. Visions from his past maybe, haunting his mind like a vengeful ghost, claiming his sanity in exchange for past sins.
She shifted her eyes toward the opposite side of the platform where a young mother stood holding the hand of her small daughter. The little girl chattered like a bird in a cage while her mother glanced up and down the track impatiently and then over her shoulder as if she expected someone to emerge from the crowd and snatch the girl from her tightly grasping hand. A train appeared around the bend and as it slowed to a halt, she watched through its windows as the mother ushered her daughter into the car, still desperately clutching her hand, even as the doors closed and the train sped away.
She closed her eyes for a moment and said a quick prayer for the mother and her child. As she whispered her Amen, she felt a twitch within her stomach. She raised her hand to her swollen belly and smiled. “Bonjour, bébé,” she whispered, feeling rather foolish. She felt a warm hand on her shoulder and turned her head and smiled. “Robert.”
“Sorry I’m late, my dear,” he apologized eyeing the large suitcase and travel bag at her feet. His Yorkshire accent seemed discordant amid the musical French that was spoken around her, but to her, it was the most pleasing sound in the world. What love would do.
“You should have let me come pack for you,” she replied, twisting around in her seat so that she could see how much luggage he carried. Two bulky bags were slung over his vast shoulders, a third he held in his hand, and a large suitcase sat on the ground next to him.
She looked up at him, amused. “You do realize that it is a research vessel and not a cruise ship, yes?”
A smile crept out from behind his neatly trimmed beard. “Actually,” he said as he presented her with the bag he held in his left hand, “this one is for you.”
“For me?” She beamed as she took the bag and placed it on the seat beside her. He nodded confidently, crouching down so that he was at eye level, and reached out to lay his hand on her stomach as if it was the head of a much beloved dog.
Her heart warmed at his touch as she pulled out an antique wooden box from within the bag. Its surface was covered with detailed carvings, fixed into the wood by skilled hands. She traced her fingertips over the intricate design and looked up at him. “Oh, Robert, it’s beautiful,” she replied. “But you really should not have.”
“Well, you won’t let me put a ring on your finger…” She threw him a quick look which he reciprocated with playful exaggeration. “Open it.”
As she gently lifted the ornate lid, two tiny, dancing figures rose and began twirling to a gentle melody, one which Danielle immediately recognized. It was the “Intermezzo” from Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen, and it immediately brought forth memories of her mother humming the melody as she combed her hair as a child or rubbed her back while she lay at sleep’s doorstep.
Tears threatened to form in the corners of her eyes as Danielle looked up at Robert. “This song… How did you know?”
He smiled sweetly and cupped his hand to her cheek. “I remember everything you’ve ever told me, love.”
She leaned into his hand and brought her own up to lay upon his as the melody slowed until it trailed off completely. “The perfect gift from the perfect man,” she sighed as she closed the lid.
“Perfect, am I? Can I have that in writing for the next time I am nothing more than a sting of unintelligible, foreign swear words?”
Danielle rolled her eyes, and Robert rose from his crouched position, his knees cracking as he stood. He glanced down at his wristwatch, then out toward the tracks where a train would soon be arriving that would take them to the airport and eventually on to Tahiti. Danielle thought about the many years that separated her from the last time she had stood upon the island of her birth, and her hand rose to her stomach.
“You must think me foolish.”
Robert turned around to look at her. “What?”
“The expedition,” she said. “I know that you must be thinking it would be better for me and the baby to stay behind. But this is my project, Robert. You know that I have struggled for years to find even a small amount of funding, and then out of nowhere we are approached by the Hanso Foundation with an offer to finance the entire expedition at a moment’s notice. It is like an answer to a prayer. I am going to do this, and neither you nor the child growing inside of me is going to stop me.”
“Are you finished?” Robert grinned, “I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do, Danielle. I’d never have lasted this long if I thought I could have a hold over you.”
“Quite true.” The baby kicked again and Danielle settled back into the stiff seat in contentment. She twisted the windup key of the box in her lap and opened the lid so that her mother’s favourite melody surrounded her, her love, and their unborn child like a protective net as they waited for their train.
She thought of that music box now as she lay face down on the jungle floor, heard its melody play in her ears as she did that day when her beloved Robert had given it to her, when she had balanced it on her growing stomach and had felt the baby kick. Her baby. Alexandra. Alex.
She tried her best to turn her head so that she might see her daughter again, but her body would not obey her thoughts. And so it was that in the last moments of her miserable life she lay silent and alone, breathing in the wild scent of the jungle that had claimed her sanity while the daughter she had fought so hard to survive for turned her back and fled.