The Paradox - Chapter Nine
Title: The Paradox - Chapter Nine
Authors: falafel_fiction, sapphire_child and pacejunkie
Character’s: Charlie/Claire, Liam, Penny, cameos from most of the rest of the Losties and numerous flashback characters
Rating: PG
Summary: Charlie chases a Scottish man through the rainy streets of London, which leads him to a fateful meeting in an antique shop. Six years later, he starts to experience strange dreams about being stranded on a mysterious island. As he discovers more about this island and its occupants, he begins to realise that he is living out two different lives simultaneously. What will happen when these two existences finally collide?
Disclaimer: Lost doesn’t belong to any of the three of us (sadly). The Paradox theory belongs to cylune9 and pacejunkie.
Author's Note: Phew! It's been a long journey from when falafel_fiction wrote her original Paradox fic to now - thanks so much for sharing the ride with us all! There's one more installment after this chapter (the epilogue) but don't except everything to get wrapped up neatly by the end of it! In true Lost spirit there'll be some threads left hanging for you to make up your own mind about what happens next. Maybe one day we'll come back and write more on this (remember that's a maybe - not a definitely!) and maybe we won't but it's been great sharing this fic with you guys and keeping the Charlie love alive. Hopefully you've all enjoyed it - thanks once again to everyone who reads and reviews, without you there would be no fanfictions like this so thank you!
Prologue, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight
Charlie spent most of Christmas Eve night in a local church. They had been hosting Midnight Mass when Charlie walked by and he had decided to slip inside to attend the service. He lit candles for each of his loved ones, both on and off the island, and then sat in a shadowed corner of the church whispering quiet prayers to himself. When mass was over, a priest came to him, perhaps sensing that he was in trouble, and offered to take his confession. Charlie politely declined, but asked if it would be okay for him to rest in the church doorway until morning. The priest regarded him with sympathy and gave him a blanket.
When first light dawned Charlie started his long walk from the suburbs into the city centre. He couldn’t really think where would be the best place for him to make for or how the hell Penny’s team were supposed to find him. But he decided that he should stick to busy pedestrian areas with lots of people milling around. That had to be better than wandering around in a lonely part of town where he could easily be kidnapped by these others that Penny had warned him would be looking for him. Charlie shuddered and pressed on.
It was mid-morning when he reached the city and by then it was getting hot. Charlie took his leather jacket off as he wandered around Darling Harbour. He stood and paused there for a while, watching the clustered groups of families enjoying their Christmas celebrations on their boats off the pier. After a while that hard lump rose in his throat rose again. Charlie had always treasured Christmas as a time for family. Why did it have to be this day that he was forced to leave them?
When he couldn’t stand it any longer he trudged back into the city centre and before too long he came to a service station with a coffee club tacked onto the end. This was the first café that Charlie had come across which was open today. He hurried over to its door and joined the sad lonely collection of customers who were sitting at its tables.
“Coffee please,” Charlie muttered to the man behind the counter. “No milk.”
“A pommy eh?” the man noted. “You on your way to visit family or something?”
Charlie chewed his lip and looked down at his hands. He really didn’t want to talk about families. He had left two families behind him, one here, one on the island. But the man was still watching him expectantly, so he nodded stiffly.
“Hey, don’t suppose you heard about that plane crash what happened a few months back?” the man asked him suddenly as he was pouring his coffee.
Charlie rolled his eyes. This guy really was hitting on all the best conversation topics.
“Yeah I heard,” he muttered. “What about it?”
The man nodded towards the pile of newspapers on the end of the counter.
“I was just reading a news article about it this morning,” he said. “Apparently they gathered up a flock of seagulls off the coast of New Zealand. One of them had a note attached to its leg - a note that said it was written by survivors of Flight 815, saying they were alive and living on some island!” The man shook his head, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “Somebody’s sick idea of a joke, I reckon. They already found all the bodies, didn’t they? I can’t understand why anyone would write something like that. Haven’t those poor families been through enough?”
Charlie didn’t respond to him, but quickly snatched up the newspaper and his coffee and then seated himself at the nearest booth. His heart was pounding as he rifled through its pages until he found the article. As he predicted the newspaper was denouncing the bird’s message as a hoax, but they had still printed out a copy of the letter in full. Charlie recognised the words and the handwriting immediately.
To whom it may concern: We are survivors of Oceanic Flight 815. We have survived on this island for 80 days. We were six hours into the flight when the pilot said we were off course and turned back toward Fiji. We hit turbulence and crashed. We’ve been waiting here all this time - waiting for rescue that has not come. We do not know where we are. We only know you have not found us. We’ve done our best to live on this island. Some of us have come to accept we may never leave it. Not all of us have survived since the crash. But there is new life, too, and with it, there is hope. We are alive. Please don’t give up on us.
Charlie remembered how he and Claire had been standing on the beach together as the sun set over the ocean. His mind was hurtling back to the first time when he had read Claire’s message. Once again the pure simple words almost moved him to tears. He felt so proud of Claire. Her idea had worked! And even if the rest of the world didn’t believe it, Charlie knew that they were alive and he wasn’t giving up on them. At that moment he knew he would never give up until they were saved.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a woman stumbled against his table and Charlie’s coffee spilt all over his chest and lap. Charlie yelped and jumped to his feet as the burning liquid seeped through his clothes and scalded the skin beneath.
“Oh my God!” the woman exclaimed. “I’m so sorry...I didn’t mean...”
Charlie didn’t wait around to hear the rest of her clumsy apology. He hurried to the toilets and locked himself inside one of the cubicles. He was whimpering under his breath as he grabbed a clump of loo roll and tried his best to clean up the stain that was now covering his jeans. It still looked embarrassingly like he had pissed himself. His skin was red and throbbing and his hands trembled uncontrollably. Charlie dropped the paper and sat down on the toilet seat, breathing raggedly and holding his head in his hands. He was a bag of nerves. It only took a stupid thing like a drink being spilled on him to shatter his composure. He told himself to get a grip. He couldn’t crumble now...
...and then suddenly he sensed it.
There was somebody else in the toilets with him.
He wasn’t sure how he knew. He didn’t think he had heard the click of the main door. He just knew that there was another presence nearby and that presence felt very oppressive. Careful not to make a sound Charlie slipped off the toilet seat, crouched on the floor of his cubicle and tilted his head to look underneath the door.
There was a pair of feet in leather shoes a few inches from his eyes.
Charlie had to place a sweaty hand over his mouth to keep himself from screaming. He pressed his back against the wall of the cubicle, feeling like a cornered animal. Who was it that was waiting outside the door? Could it possibly be one of Penny’s team? No, thought Charlie. This feels wrong. It’s one of them. They’ve found me first.
Charlie slowly rose to his feet and slipped his hand into his jacket pocket, clasping hold of the pepper spray he had taken from Karen’s purse. He had one shot at this. If he could take this guy by surprise, then he might have a chance of escaping. If he was overpowered, then he would be caught and God knows what these people would do to him. Charlie would never make it to Penny. If he never got to Penny he’d never find to the island. He took a sharp breath, pulled back the latch and threw the door wide.
Standing outside his cubicle was a tall black man in a dark suit. His eyes were wide and emotionless as they stared out of his high bald head. Charlie wasn’t prepared for how tall he was. He barely managed to re-angle his arm in time. The man tried to turn his head aside but the spray caught him in his left eye. He raised his hands and staggered back against the urinals. It was only then that Charlie noticed the tall man had been holding a needle, which clattered onto the tiled floor as his hands flailed.
Charlie felt a chill of horror passing through him, but he didn’t waste another second. He turned and bolted from the service station loos and darted through the tables of the cafe. As he ran towards the door the woman who had spilled his drink rose to her feet, blocking his path and holding out a fresh cup of coffee.
“I really am sorry, sir,” she blathered. “Here…I bought you another...”
Alarm bells sounded in Charlie’s head. He realised that this woman was probably one of them too. She had knocked over his drink on purpose to get him into the toilets where the creepy tall guy could drug him and abduct him. In a burst of fury, Charlie shoved the woman aside and sent the cup flying across the floor in a spray of coffee. He reached the door and pushed it open, only glancing over his shoulder momentarily to see the woman and the man behind the counter staring at him in dismay.
“Yeah...Merry bloody Christmas to you too...” Charlie sneered at them.
Charlie didn’t stop running once he was out on the pavement. He had little idea where was running to or how best to protect himself, but he felt he had to keep moving. The roads before him were desolate. There were wide silent gaps stretching between the cars. Charlie tried yelling and waving his hands desperately at the few motorists that drove passed him, but the only response he got was some disturbed glances through the windows before the drivers increased their speed.
Clearly these people were all on their way to a nice family Christmas and had no interest in stopping for deranged hitchhikers. Charlie kept running, not even daring look over his shoulder now. He feared he would see a car following him, a car filled with dark suited people. He could imagine this car overtaking him, its passengers stepping out in front of him, surrounding him and sedating him, before smuggling him into their vehicle, never to be seen again.
Then out of nowhere Charlie caught sight of his salvation. A taxi with its ‘For Hire’ sign illuminated was cruising up the road towards him. Charlie hailed the cab frantically. When it pulled up on the curb beside him, he practically dove onto its backseat.
“Go, go, go!” Charlie yelled breathlessly to the driver. “Please! Get me out of here.”
The driver chuckled softly and then took to the road again, heading back into the city. Charlie looked out of the rear window to see if any suspicious looking cars were tailing them. He couldn’t see anything yet.
“You can’t escape from it, mate,” the cab driver said to him.
“Wh-what?” Charlie stammered nervously, confused by the remark.
“I know what it’s like,” the cabbie continued. “Your relatives annoy the hell out of you, those cheesy bloody songs on the radio are wearing on your nerves, you’ve probably forgotten half the presents you were supposed to buy...but it doesn’t help to run away from it. You can’t escape Christmas mate - you just have to ride it out.”
Charlie smiled weakly at the drivers attempt at humour. He reached into his pockets again and clasped his hands around Liam’s credit card. He really didn’t want to use it, mainly because he feared he could be traced through it. But Charlie desperately needed to be in a safe public place right now.
“Take me to a hotel,” he instructed. “Any hotel that’s busy this time of year…and has lots of bloody security on its doors,” he added.
“Whatever you say, mate...” the cabbie said smoothly. “I know a good one in town.”
Charlie nodded and slumped back against the leather seating. He let out of a sigh of relief, allowing his eyelids to droop closed. When he got to this hotel there would be plenty of normal people around - people who would surely come to his rescue if any creepy strangers attempted to kidnap him from their premises. There would also be coffee at the hotel. Strong coffee. He could drink strong black coffee, sit in the lobby in front of reception and wait for Penny’s team to find him. He just hoped that they would arrive for him before his exhaustion took over and he gave way to sleep.
Charlie was dimly aware that the cab driver was speaking to somebody on the taxi radio. He didn’t listen at first. Then he realised that his driver was speaking in a hushed voice, as if he didn’t want him to hear. Charlie frowned and cracked his eyelids, straining to listen to the voice speaking on the other end of the line.
He couldn’t make it out at first. There was too much static.
Then suddenly he heard it very clearly.
“...is our target acquired?” asked the voice.
The driver glanced at Charlie in his rear view mirror, a smile on his lips.
“Yeah...I got him,” he replied.
Charlie’s eyes became wide. He felt his blood running cold. His face was twitching with shock and disbelief. The driver was one of them too! Jesus. How big was this conspiracy? What the hell did these people want?!
“Just relax, Charlie...” the driver said, still smiling. “You’ll soon be...”
“Let me out of this bloody taxi!” he yelled in a panic.
Charlie grabbed at the nearest door handle and started tugging it, only to find that it was locked from the inside. He banged and kicked at it in his desperation, continuing to scream demands that the taxi driver let him out immediately. The driver sighed and pulled over onto the curb. For a moment Charlie thought that he was actually going to release him. Then he turned around to look through the back window. Two men were hurrying up the street towards the taxi. One of the men held some sort of phone or radio in his hand which he was quickly stuffing into his jacket pocket. Charlie watched as the two men parted ways, rounding the cab to the passenger doors on either side of him.
Charlie braced himself. These men were blocking his escape. He tried to estimate which of the two guys was smaller. The bloke on the left, Charlie decided. He looks like he might be rather skinny under his jacket. I might be able to knock him down...
“Hey, take it easy...” the driver was telling him.
Charlie wasn’t listening. He scrambled away from the door on the right. When the left side door opened, Charlie lunged at the man in his path, raising up his knee and kicking the man sharply in the groin, dropping him to his knees. Charlie shoved him aside, climbing out of the car and then staggering out onto the road. He looked around frantically. The car had turned onto a narrow side street. The road was silent and deserted. The buildings that surrounded him were warehouses.
Charlie’s heart plummeted.
Nobody will even hear me scream here, he thought.
Before Charlie could even try, a hand reached around him and covered his mouth. There was something soft and moist held inside its palm; a chloroform pad that was being firmly clamped under his nose, its sharp scent drowning his senses. Charlie moaned and struggled, but another arm looped his waist, securing his arms to his sides. He quickly grew limp and dizzy. He slumped back against the man who was holding him, his heels dragging over the tarmac as he was pulled back towards the car.
“Sorry about this, Mr. Pace...” said a voice in his ear.
~*~
Charlie felt the haze clearing from his mind. He blinked his eyes and found he was lying on a sofa, a blanket thrown over him. He wasn’t restrained or tied down so he took that as a good sign. He turned his head to the right. There was a woman sitting on a chair beside him. He recognised her instantly from Desmond’s photograph.
“Penny?” he murmured, groggily.
She smiled and nodded, handing him a glass of water.
“It’s good to meet you at last, Charlie Pace,” she said with a polite nod. “I’m dreadfully sorry for having you kidnapped.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been kidnapped worse.”
When Charlie said this he was thinking of the time Ethan had dragged him and Claire into the jungle or when the women in the Looking Glass had tied him to a chair and interrogated him. He began to realise that those memories from the island were as real to him as the memories he had experienced in this world. In some ways those memories were more real. His other self was still alive in him.
Charlie sat upright on the couch. He took the water Penny offered him and drank it down in gulps. The water took dryness from his throat and cleared the last of the fuzziness from his head. He tried not to think of drowning.
“You know my team almost didn’t recognise you with that new haircut,” Penny informed him. “They tried to tell you that they were bringing you to me, but you were panicking. There was no time to explain. They needed to get you out of the city fast. They weren’t the only ones searching for you this morning.”
“Yeah, I gathered,” said Charlie, shivering as he remember the tall creepy man in the service station toilets. “What time is it?”
“A little before midnight. I’m afraid you’ve spent most of Christmas unconscious. Nobody wanted to wake you though. You looked like you needed the rest.”
“So where are we now?” Charlie asked.
“This is one of the safe houses used by my team. We have them on the outskirts of most major cities. Don’t worry. Nobody will find us. Even so we shouldn’t remain here long. I’ve a private aircraft that will take us back to London tomorrow.”
“London?” he spluttered. “My brother, Liam, I need to call him...”
Penny frowned, her expression pinched with regret.
“It isn’t safe to contact him at the moment, Charlie,” she said. “I’m sorry, but the less your brother knows the safer he and his family will be. If you wish to protect them I’m afraid you must let them believe that you have...gone missing.” She winced at her own suggestion. “I know that this is hard. I promise you once matters have settled down we’ll try to send a secret message to Liam to let him know you are safe. But we can’t let him know of your whereabouts. Not until all this is over.”
Charlie snorted. He had been greatly relieved when he had found he was in the care of Penny’s team, but it still seemed he was entering a life of secrecy and captivity. It appeared that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the house or even make a phone call without their permission.
He started to think of Liam and Karen. He imagined the police would tell Liam that the last place his younger brother was sighted was a café near the harbour where he had been throwing coffee cups and raving like a lunatic.
A café by the harbour...most likely the police would suspect that his depressed and delusional brother had committed suicide, throwing himself from the pier into the ocean. The story would be that Charlie Pace had drowned. He would be a victim of drowning in both his worlds. Charlie knew that Liam would support this story in the public eye. He would have to. If he told the truth then this other group would target him and his family for information just like Penny was warning him. Charlie hoped that behind closed doors Liam might at least tell Karen of their secret. But either way Charlie wasn’t sure if he would see either of them again.
“As long as they’re safe,” Charlie said quietly. “I don’t know what’s going on here. But I don’t want my family getting dragged into it, alright?”
“Of course,” Penny answered respectfully. “You should eat.”
Penny reached for the side table beside the couch and handed him a sandwich on a plate. Charlie was still feeling weak and sickly after his strong dose of chloroform but his stomach was rumbling with hunger. He took the slices of white bread in his hands and smelt their corners.
He raised an eyebrow. “Turkey sandwiches?”
“With cranberry sauce,” said Penny with a faint smile. “Christmas has come at an odd sort of time, hasn’t it? You slept through most of it. I myself have been flying across the world. I haven’t had any time for feasting and presents. Apart from the gifts I received two days ago...the transmission from the Looking Glass station and then the phone call from the boat. Those were the best presents I’ve had in years...”
Penny released a happy sigh. Charlie wanted to ask her more about these ‘gifts’ but he still had his mouth full. Suddenly a door opened on the far side of the room. A studious looking Indian man stepped into the room.
“Ah!” the stranger said brightly. “I see that our little time-space anomaly has woken up. Excellent! We have much to talk about...”
“Donovan, don’t start,” Penny scolded gently. “He’s had a rough couple of days. Just let him eat and relax and then we’ll...”
Charlie slammed his sandwich back on the plate.
“No, I want to talk about it,” he insisted. “Really, I want to know what is going on. I don’t think I’ll even be able to have a good night’s kip until I understand this...”
Donovan looked pointedly at Penny.
“Shall we show him then?” he suggested.
Penny threw a concerned glance at Charlie, but seeing the determination in his face, she gave a reluctant nod. She crossed the room to the television set in the corner and placed a disk in its player. She turned back to Charlie.
“This is a recording of the transmission I received from the island...” she explained.
Without further ado, Penny pressed the play switch. Charlie shuffled forward on the sofa and squinted at the monitor. He could see nothing but a cloud of static at first. Then slowly a crackling voice broke through the fuzz...
“Yes! Yes I can hear you...Charlie! I’m Charlie Pace. I’m a survivor of Flight 815. Oceanic Flight 815. We’re on an island...we’re alive...”
The static cleared and suddenly it was like Charlie was looking in a mirror. He jumped up from the couch and fell to his knees before the TV. For the first time he was seeing his other self. The Charlie from the island. The Charlie who was dead.
He looked skinnier, a little famished from his island diet. His hair was damp and filthy, his fringe plastered over his forehead. His skin was dappled with cuts and bruises. His lower lip was badly swollen. But aside from all this the Charlie on the screen was grinning and wide eyed as he stated that Desmond was with him.
“He’s here! He’s here with me. He’s brilliant! Hey…are you on the boat? Your boat. 80 miles off shore. Err...Naomi. Parachutist...”
There was the murmur of Penny’s confused reply. Then Charlie’s smile faded and was replaced by a frown. Suddenly he turned and leapt out of his chair, distracted by something in the right corner of the screen. In the next moment, he darted out of shot. Then came a rumbling explosion...followed by blackness and silence.
Charlie looked away, wheezing, feeling shaken to his core.
“The transmission just cuts off,” said Penny. “We’re not sure what happened to him after that, what caught his attention. Can you shed any light for us?”
Charlie nodded solemnly.
“He...he drowned. He’s dead. He was in an underwater station. There was a porthole window that was blown open. The room flooded with seawater. Pretty soon it rose over his head and he...he drowned.” He looked at Penny. “Desmond’s fine. I closed...he closed the door of the comms room, sealing off the rest of the station from the flood. The last I saw Desmond he was safe on the other side. I think...I think that I told him...somehow...that it wasn’t your boat.”
Penny swallowed. “You saved his life. Thank you.”
“I’m not the one who saved him, love,” he replied flatly.
“Why would your other self shut himself inside?” Donovan asked, confused. “Couldn’t he have sealed the door from the other side and survived?”
Charlie shrugged, impotently. “He knew that he was gonna die anyway. Desmond kept having all these visions of him dying. Flashes we called them. They came every few days. Desmond kept saving my life...or his life rather, but it wouldn’t stop. I think that in the end he just wanted to die on his own terms, you know? He wanted to sacrifice himself to help his friends...”
Charlie blinked as he came to a realisation.
“If...if Desmond hadn’t saved me for so long...you guys wouldn’t have found out about the paradox. We never would have made contact, right?”
Donovan waved his hand interrupting his point.
“Charlie, back up a little...you say that Desmond was having visions of your other self dying?” Charlie nodded and then Donovan beamed, as if he was coming to a revelation of his own. “Of course! Paradoxes are very dangerous and unstable. The universe can only sustain them temporarily. It has to course correct. It has to put the timeline back on track. Charlie, I believe Desmond did time travel. When he spoke to you on the street he altered your path. The universe needed to eliminate your original existence to allow for this alteration.”
Penny shot Charlie another sympathetic look as Donovan got to his feet and began pacing the room in a flurry of intellectual excitement.
“This truly is remarkable!” he exalted. “This is incredible!!”
“Yeah…wonderful,” Charlie muttered. “I’m so delighted to be involved in this miracle of weird science. Excuse me if I don’t jump for joy, but as you can see...” Charlie pointed an angry finger at the black screen, “...I’m dead!”
“Yes!” said Donovan turning back to him and fixing him with an intense gaze. “But Charlie - you are also here.”