Two Ficlets: Alex/Richard + Charlotte/Miles
Title: Dreaming Comes Easily When It's All You've Ever Known
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Richard (implied)
Word Count: 449
Rating: PG
Summary: Pre-series. "You've been off the island before you know." Richard brings up, out of the blue, years late in correcting her previous notions. The question 'why now?' creeps up to the tip of her tongue but never quite past her lips.
“You’ve been off the island before you know.” Richard brings up, out of the blue, years late in correcting her previous notions. The question ‘why now?’ creeps up to the tip of her tongue but never quite past her lips.
“I think I’d remember that,” she replies, instead, searching the recesses of her mind for something beyond sand, ocean, and trees. There is nothing beyond those memories. “Trips between the islands don’t count.”
He almost doesn’t let her get her sentence out. “You were four. Maybe three; it was a long time ago,” he adds, by way of explaining both her lack of memory and his. Children don’t really begin to remember things, to store solid, real memories, until that age (she knows this from reading everything she could get her hands on, including old textbooks).
For a second, she wonders why her father would hide that from her, just before she realizes it’s exactly the kind of thing he’d hide. “Why? With who?”
She can see he regrets giving as much as he has already. “Ben was concerned about some ongoing events; he thought it was best to take you with us when we went - we were doing some recruiting.” His details are vague; he’s backtracking as much as he can while still answering.
“He’s always concerned.” She reminds him.
“This was a different time,” is the only answer he’ll give. She decides not to push anymore, knowing that doing so will only make him less likely to give her this much next time.
Instead, “Will you take me back there again?”
“What?” It catches him off guard, she knows, even if she can’t see it on his face.
“You took me off this island once; why can’t you do it again?”
“Those were different times.” It’s becoming his answer for everything.
She lets her hand fall on his arm, a small tug, a gesture to place his attention, his eyes, back on her. “Just try, okay?”
His “alright” is too quiet, nearly swallowed up by the breeze, and that should’ve been a sign, it should’ve made her give up hope right then and there.
Alex has always been a dreamer.
Months go by and she knows he’s either forgotten or isn’t trying (they both know what Ben would say but it’s the lack of effort that bothers her the most), it just isn’t until the night before he leaves again, another errand of her father’s, that it really sinks in.
She should have known better than to let her imagination run wild - that sometimes it’s better to simply dream than to try and make them a reality. It’s always a letdown. Always.
This (he) is no different.
---
Title: I Guess We're Going To Pretend
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Charlotte/Miles, slight Charlotte/Daniel
Word Count: 416
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: #21 - You'll Do for un_love_you
Summary: She hates him. She's hated him since the day she met him, hated his sarcastic comments and his confidence. She despises it all.
She hates him. She’s hated him since the day she met him, hated his impulsiveness, and his sarcastic comments, his confidence. She despises it all.
But Miles is one of them. One of their little group. The last one (because Lapidus went back to the damn freighter and Daniel...she doesn’t know where he is, it’s been days, and she has a feeling that she doesn’t want to, not if she’s going to keep some level of sanity here). And there’s a degree of trust, a degree of companionship, that she feels towards him, one that can’t be helped, because of it.
It didn’t mean Charlotte intended to fuck him. It just happened. She’s been doing (and saying, or rather not saying) a lot of things she didn’t intend to.
Besides, it’s easier to forget what’s going on, easier to forget that you have an eternity here, probably, and it’s your own fault (she should’ve gone with him because he’s either safe or dead and either is preferable really), when you’re pulling at clothes and skin, grasping for something solid and warm, and feeling someone else’s hands doing the same.
They don’t necessarily need each other, but they need someone.
“Always thought it was Dan you were after.” He remarks, one night, over the fire. They’re the last two up, or at least the last two who aren’t feigning sleep. She isn’t stupid; she can tell breathing patterns, see the outlines of too tense bodies in the firelight, the moonlight.
Charlotte pushes a stick into the flames, watches the tip turn black, watches it burn. She feels like destroying something.
“Guess that means I was wrong.” She wants to nod, tell him that yes, he is, always is, remind him that he knows nothing about her and thus shouldn’t pretend that he does. But (of course, there’s a but) he continues before she can. “Or maybe you’ve just given up on him. Love ‘em and leave ‘em type, right?”
She will not let him know he’s hit a nerve.
She will throw him down to the ground extra hard tonight. She will leave bruises and scratches. The “fuck you” slips off her tongue a little too easily, into his ear, as she comes, and she regrets it, because he’s too smart not to know what she’s referring to. She can see it in his eyes.
He still doesn’t know her, or understand her. He’s got nothing on her.
And he never will, if she can help it.