(no subject)
Title: I Thought You Said Forever (Over And Over Again)
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Richard, mentions of Ben.
Word Count: 2,535
Rating: R
Prompt: #39 - Eternal at 50_darkfics
Spoilers: Up to "There's No Place Like Home"
Author's Note: For Day 5 at rounds_of_kink, written for the amazing superduperkc. Italics denote flashbacks.
Summary: He ignores the rustling in the bushes, that is until he hears her voice come through, loud and clear, "just like old times right?"
There’s something to be said about living as long as he has, for never being done.
You lose a lot of people.
You also never get used to it.
---
There are cameras, by the barrier, leading to the barracks. Ben had a thing with cameras, wanted to see where everyone was, at all times. He liked controlling people, it made him feel important, and that was neither here nor there to Richard, because it just kept people from looking to him. Ben didn’t have authority over him anyways, even if he thought he did. Richard has been here longer than Ben has even been alive, and that is what gives him authority.
The point is Ben liked to see people coming and going, wherever he was, and that was why there were stations from which to view the cameras in three separate places. The other island, the barracks, and The Temple. And, in the interest of self-preservation in times when helicopters flew overhead full of people who wanted nothing more than to doom the people on the island, someone was generally in the room full of computers, watching them.
“We have a problem,” leads to him scanning the screens to pinpoint just what he was called in here for. It doesn’t take him long.
She kneels on the ground, punching in the code, tears falling down cheeks that are too red from the sun and fear and nervousness. There’s a man with a gun to her head.
There isn’t anything he can do but watch.
---
“This is why your father doesn’t trust you with Karl.”
She looks at him like she doesn’t understand what he means. Like white sheets aren’t the only thing that is obscuring bare skin from the too warm air and his eyes. Like she still has some innocence left.
She might, he just has yet to encounter it.
“He’s looking in the wrong direction then, isn’t he?” Because she isn’t in bed with Karl, and he has yet to understand why. He has yet to understand her.
That’s probably why they’re where they are.
---
Ben has always fancied himself ten steps ahead of the competition.
“She’s not my daughter. I stole her as a baby from an insane woman. She’s a pawn, nothing more. She means nothing to me. I’m not coming out of this house. So if you want to kill her, go ahead and do it.”
The slam of the door as Richard leaves coincides with one single gunshot.
He knows how this story ends.
---
“I know what you’re up to.”
Richard’s eyes never leave the book that sits in front of him.
Ben doesn’t like to be ignored. “Stay away from her, Richard, or you’ll be sorry.”
---
He doesn’t see Ben again and he thinks it’s probably better that way. He’s grown tired of the man’s games, his power trips.
Locke isn’t much better, but he’s new, still learning things, and so Richard still has the upper hand. He likes that.
He tells him things like Ben moved the island and Jack and the others left the island like it’s news to him. The barracks were attacked, he says, and Richard simply nods, asking about casualties. A few, but they left the bodies, and Locke seems awfully eager to ignore the dead. It’s what’s going to make him perfect for this job.
---
When he treks out to the barracks the day after that he finds three bodies.
None of them are hers.
---
“He went to their camp. To the crash victim’s camp.” She tries too hard for seductive, for open arms and open legs. The whole kids will play while the parents are away has the opposite effect of what she was trying for, and it ends up making him see her as another teenager who doesn’t know what she wants.
He keeps her at arm’s length for the next few days.
This does not sit well with her.
---
He spends the night in the jungle, a risky idea until you factor in that he is a part of the reason everyone’s so scared to do this. The Others. Everyone needs something tangible to fear, a known threat.
Richard doesn’t fear anything.
It’s for this reason that the rustling in the brush surrounding him goes ignored.
That is, until her voice comes through, loud and clear. “Just like old times right.”
---
Alex used to lie in the grass in her backyard and watch the stars. She used to name them (with Karl, but he treats that as unimportant), silly things that had more to do with her perception of them than anything else.
She still does. Now it’s just alone.
Except, one night, when she pulls on his hand, dragging him out to the backyard.
“This isn’t a good idea. Someone will see us.” He resists, but only barely, and one good tug gets him moving again.
“It’s after midnight.” She reminds him. “No one’s going to see us.”
---
He sits up, resting his elbow on the ground to support him, squinting in the dark to get a good look at her. Alex’s dark hair falls in waves down her shoulders and her lips are stained the color of raspberries and his eyes tell her that she’s very much alive.
Appearances are very deceiving.
“Aren’t you going to say something?”
---
“You are aware that there are actual names for these stars, right?” He would think that, if nothing else, Ben would’ve taught her something of astronomy. He would’ve picked up on her interest.
She rolls off her back, onto her side, her hair tickling his arm, as she settles her head against his shoulder. “What fun is that?”
Richard isn’t a man who does things based on what is fun and what isn’t. There are things that need to be done and he does them. This is child’s play. But it makes her smile.
That’s what matters.
---
This wouldn’t be the first time he’s seen someone who isn’t really there. On this island, it’s for the most part understood that dead does not mean gone. Not really. But it’s her. No one else but her. And she’s always been able to get to him.
His hand comes up to her face, to smooth skin (he hates that you can feel these ghosts too - it would be so much easier if you couldn’t), and his thumb settles against the center of her lower lip. Her head drops, mere centimeters difference, biting down on the pad of his thumb, her eyes closing for the briefest of seconds.
Then, finally, “Why are you here?”
---
At some point, she shifts closer to him, into him, and her hand is mere centimeters away from the last button of his shirt, sort of hovering, like there might be a plan, this might be her plan, and he could fight this, but he knows he won’t.
“Don’t you ever just wish it was always like this?”
“Like what?” He would try to look at her but he can’t quite see past the top of her head from his position.
“Without the hiding and the lying and the...” she trails off, her voice lost, fading into the night, before she finds it again, “don’t you wish sometimes that we were normal people? That this was normal.”
He doesn’t even hesitate on the, “No.”
Richard doesn’t. Not only does he not think about these things but he also realizes that the circumstances, the lives they lead, are the only reason they are laying here right now. They aren’t people who would find each other off the island. They shouldn’t even be finding each other on the island.
“No, I don’t.”
---
“Were you looking for my body?” Alex doesn’t answer, she has questions of her own, she always did. “Is that why you’re out here?”
“Aren’t you all knowing?” He doesn’t know much about the dead, about what happens to them here, what allows them to manifest themselves, what allows them to become something tangible. But he imagines that if she’s a ghost, by island definitions or otherwise, then she can see what she chooses, unrestrained by time and space.
“It’s not like I can read your mind.” His hand has moved back to trace her jaw line, and she leans forward, a tiny smile against his palm. “So, were you?”
---
She sits up, seemingly taken aback by his words. Her eyes seem sad, maybe a little bit hurt (he forgets that he can crush her dreams so easily), but then something in them changes, and she leans down to capture his lips, shifting her body as she does so that she’s straddling his hips. It’s a bold move and he’d be more nervous that someone would find them if he knew what was good for him.
Somehow going with the flow was easier here.
He tries to still her hands over the fly of his pants but she just shakes her head, whispers, “You only live once.”
She doesn’t know how wrong that statement is in regards to him.
---
“You do know your father is gone -“
“He wasn’t my father.” Abrupt. There’s still hurt there.
He’ll continue anyways. “Your father is gone. He moved the island. He can never come back.”
Alex remains unfazed, whether because she already knew or for indifference’s sake. “For now. But you know him; he’ll find a way back, even if he isn’t supposed to.”
She never did really understand how this works.
“Enough about him.”
---
His fingers work their way under her shirt, along her sides, counting ribs on the way up before they hit the soft material of her bra, smoothing over the fabric there, feeling her nipples harden through the fabric. It only makes her hands move faster, undoing his pants and pushing them down as far as she can while still staying on top of him. His shirt is an afterthought as she struggles with the buttons in the dark.
“Don’t bother,” he groans, as she moves against him, just enough so that his pulse quickens. It’s both for reasons of time and practicality. They are, in fact, outside, and he can already feel random twigs digging into his skin. No need to give them better access with bare skin.
She hisses her approval as her shirt comes off with one hand, that same hand coming back up to undo the clasp of her bra. His free hand travels back down the outline of her body, down the planes of her stomach, to where the waistband of her jeans meets her skin. He hesitates there, lets his hand linger, and it’s more teasing than second guessing, but she takes it as such. “Come on,” she tells him, feeling his erection pressing into her and only becoming more impatient as time went on.
Slower than absolutely necessary he fiddles with the buttons of her jeans, pulling them off along with her underwear and then sinking into her.
---
“Did you watch?” He knows exactly what she’s talking about, is able to keep track of her train of thought even when it keeps jumping around, but he pretends not to and instead gives her a blank look. “There are screens at the Temple. Did you watch? Did you know what was going on?”
There’s no reason to lie. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you do something about it?” From her reaction he thinks she probably would’ve rather he’d said no.
“We were too far away. There wasn’t enough time.”
“You didn’t even try, did you?”
He drops his eyes. “No.”
Richard expects tears from her; he doesn’t get them. Instead she pulls away from his grasp and gets up, paces. “I was too young to die. Sixteen. Sixteen fucking years old and my father - Ben - decided to gamble. I’m too young for this. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. And you didn’t even try.”
And just like that he thinks he can guess why she’s still here. At least a part of why she’s still here. She has unresolved issues. She’s not done here. She hasn’t accepted what’s happened. “We don’t get to decide when we die. That’s not a luxury we enjoy,” he starts.
“He did.” She hisses back. “He chose.”
“They would’ve shot you even if he had turned himself in.”
“It was still a chance.”
“Hindsight, Alex.” His voice is steady, too steady when compared to his mind. He doesn’t agree with what Ben did, and yet he’s still trying to make her understand. He repeats, like if it didn’t get through the first time maybe it will the second, “Hindsight.”
---
They come, one after the other, in dead silence.
He doesn’t know how long they lay like that. Her laying half on him, heavy breathing, his lips pressing soft kisses to her neck as he closes his eyes and waits for the other shoe to drop.
---
“This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen.” Defiant as ever. It all comes down to the fact that she is sixteen; she is still far too young for these things. She still thinks she’s invincible. Even in the environment she’s grown up in, where people die under mysterious circumstances and they’re always fighting something, she still thinks this way.
“We don’t...” he can’t quite get out this lie, has to rephrase it, “we can’t all live forever.”
“Right,” and there’s a bitterness to that word and to the ones that follow, “just some of us.”
“So you know.” It pains more than it should.
Jealousy in her eyes, she spits out, “I know.”
---
“This isn’t what you want at all is it?” She eyes him, carefully, from across the room. Ben is gone, the barracks are half-empty, off retrieving Shephard, Austen and Ford, enacting the next step of their plan. “This is just a time occupier for you. Good while it lasts right?”
It’s not entirely true. She isn’t just a good lay, but no, this isn’t what he wants, and it’s easier to tell her that part. “No, it’s not.”
Alex won’t look at him now and he can tell it stings. There’s a long moment, while she forces tears down, swallowing hard, and he ponders the thought that this is probably one of the hardest things he’s had to do in this place. Then, “I’m going to find Karl. I know my father has him somewhere and I want to find out. I want to get him back.”
Because he wants what she wants and Alex is learning the lesson that sometimes you can’t get what you want and when that happens there is second best, there is back up. Sometimes you have to settle.
So this is where it ends and begins at the very same time.
---
It happens sometimes after that. He’ll be half-asleep in his bed, or in the jungle, or in the room with the monitors - always alone - and she’ll appear.
Can’t let go.
She’s just like her father in that respect.
Richard wonders if she’ll ever forgive him for this curse he didn’t choose to be plagued with.