LOST: Shadows Searching in the Night
Title: Shadows Searching in the Night
Fandom: LOST
Author: kawaiispinel
Feedback: ... Is loverly.
Word Count: 1756
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Penny, The Oceanic Six
Summary: She lingers like a ghost from their past, taunting them with things they don't know she knows.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Warnings: Spoilers for the remaining members of the Oceanic Six and some speculative spoilers for 4X07.
Author's Notes: I was a bit wary of posting this, because it was so spoilery, but I figured it might get jossed by canon by the time 4X07 finishes and I'd like to post it before that happens... Or something. This might be my lostfichallenge entry, but I'm not sure yet. It was written with that in mind, but... Yeah. Not sure.
When news gets out that the press wants to hold a banquet in their honor, they’re all obligated to attend. They all arrive in separate cars, but almost completely in unison, as if somehow they’ve become in sync with each other ever since they became the Oceanic Six and have, more or less, become the working mechanisms of one whole, rather than six individuals.
They’re diverted from the main party by men they’ve seen before. Men who taught them to lie and how to do it properly, who feel the need to remind them how crucial it is to everything that they continue to lie. They’re all standing in a row in their party clothes, listening to the lecture, and feeling like they’re elegantly clad victims in front of the world’s fanciest firing squad.
By the time they’re allowed to leave the room and enter the party, they’re prepared for every question, every possible scenario, everything, really.
Everything except her.
~*~
She moves with the grace of a tiger stalking her prey behind tables piled high with food and drink, her hand clasped around a champagne glass that she’s carrying for show and not because she actually intends to drink any of it. She finds Sun first, looking as perfectly at home in this beautiful tableau as her husband looks out of sorts with it and with the simple, casual gait of a woman who has just spotted a childhood friend, she approaches her.
"You probably don’t remember me," she says shyly, tossing blonde hair over her shoulder with a shake of her head. "It was a really long time ago."
Sun eyes her suspiciously and she smiles a little, the expression polite, restrained, and a little confused, because that’s the sort of reaction one gets when one is on the right track. "I’m sorry... Who are you?"
"You don’t remember," she replies, feigning puzzlement. "My mother has this picture of us in her photo album when we were just little girls. We’re wearing the most ridiculous frilly dresses and we look utterly miserable." She offers her the hand that isn’t currently clutched around her champagne glass. "It’s Penelope. Penelope Widmore."
"Oh," Sun gasps. "Oh I do remember that." She makes a disgusted face. "Those dresses really were horrible, weren’t they?"
Penny laughs. "Our fathers had some sort of business arrangement and somehow that led to us having to be paraded around like overdressed poodles." She shakes her head. "When I heard about the crash, I couldn’t help thinking about that. Silly what comes up in a tragedy, but maybe now that you’re here, we can get reacquainted."
"I’m afraid my husband and I aren’t here long," Sun frowns in response. "Just for this party, really. We’ll be going back to Seoul tomorrow."
"Well, it’s not that hard to get to Seoul," Penny smiles, actually taking a sip of her champagne glass, which served the dual purpose of showing off a wedding band she bought specifically for this occasion. A cheap shot, yes, but she’s not above anything. Not anymore. "Is that your husband?" She gestures to Jin, looking positively miserable over by the punch bowl.
"Yes, that’s Jin," Sun smiles warmly, glancing back at him, only to turn around and find Penny’s engagement ring catching her eye, which was precisely what she wanted.
"Are you married?" She asks and she’s not even sure why.
"I was," Penny replies and there’s a certain edge to her voice. Not threatening, at all, but still dark enough to give Sun pause. "His name was Desmond. Desmond Hume."
That was enough incentive for Sun to make some excuse to get away and return to her husband’s side.
~*~
It’s a different approach to each of them. She casually cuts into a conversation that Sayid was having with a distinguished gentleman she happens to know and invites his interest when she has a few opinions on the subject they addressing, so, by the time the other man leaves, the two of them have taken up the mantle of conversation, up until the subject of boating comes up, which eventually turns to sailing, which she eventually turns to the Elizabeth, and by that time, Sayid has also made his excuses to end the conversation and she’s one step further to her goal of making sure every single one of them knows her name and her face, if not what she knows.
With Jack, it’s a little more subtle, but no less effective. She chats up people in his line of sight just enough to get him to notice her and then as she slips away, she somehow manages to get her stiletto heel to snap just at the right moment so that she stumbles just as she passes him and he’s forced to catch her. She laughs and pokes fun of herself for being clumsy and he helps her to a chair and examines her shoe with all the care of someone whose pretending this to be a serious matter. He asks about her ankle, she asks him if maybe she should lift it up. Their eyes meet and it’s like he recognizes her as a ghost from someone else’s past and he’s apologizing and leaving her side as quickly as he joined it.
Kate is a little harder. She avoids her gaze, ignores her waltzing around in her line of sight (with a new pair of heels to replace the ones she broke as a part of her plan- really, she prepared for everything), and eventually Penny has to resort to cornering her in the lady’s room while she’s fixing her make-up. There’s an exchange of compliments regarding dresses and hair and simple things that women often note when they’re freshening up. Penny doesn’t make a single remark about the trial, but Kate might have been able to deal with that if she had. What she can’t handle is what she catches when she looks up into the mirror and finds that the other woman's reflection is no longer idly powdering her face, but wearing a look that says, in no uncertain terms, that she knows what she did and it has nothing to do with who she murdered.
She almost feels bad doing this to Hurley. He’s so innocent, so awkward in his tux as he lingers at the refreshment table, occasionally stealing glances at the bevy of foods, but somehow not finding it in his heart to eat any of it as if he firmly believes it might be tainted. She doesn’t have to do much though, there’s a moment where their eyes lock across the crowded room. He stiffens and then he’s off at a run, looking a little green. It hurts a little, because she doesn’t want to hurt people by doing this, but it’s the only way.
They need to know that there’s one person who doesn’t believe the lies they’re perpetuating and being force-fed. If anything, she wants them to know that she wants to help them if they, in fact, want to be helped.
~*~
Not surprisingly, it’s Sun who finds her in the parking lot when she leaves early, cornering her behind a row of cars, out of the light and almost completely in shadow so that her features are mostly obscured by the darkness. She doesn’t want to be seen, obviously. Penny makes no move to call her on it, merely leans against her car and meets her gaze firmly.
"You don’t understand what you’re dealing with." Sun’s voice isn’t angry, merely frightened. Her hands move almost unconsciously to her stomach and Penny winces, because she didn’t even notice that the woman was clearly pregnant when she engaged her earlier, too full of her game. She would never want to consider herself her father’s daughter, but sometimes she slips, and she hates herself for it each and every time it happens.
"Wouldn’t you do the same?" She asks, her voice calm, only shaking slightly. "If it were Jin..."
"We’ve all made sacrifices," Sun cuts her off, before she can take that any further, her voice suddenly harsh. It’s the tone of a woman who doesn’t want to be lectured on this subject by another woman who really has no business being involved in this scenario at all in her eyes.
"I didn’t deserve to have to make mine," she responds, somehow managing not to sound as curt as Sun in her reply. "I didn’t choose my sacrifices."
Because she knows a lot more than they think she does, and her saying that has enough of an effect to get Sun to turn around and walk right back to the hotel, her stiletto heels echoing across the parking lot like a discordant melody.
~*~
She doesn’t give up, because that’s not what she does. She has money, she has determination, and she only needs one of the two to get what she wants. She presses, but never threatens. She lingers in their line of sight, like a ghost from the past, taunting them with things they don’t know she knows, but most are starting to suspect, waiting for one of them to break. Waiting for one of them to come to her and give her the answers she needs to complete this three-year odyssey.
She almost thought it would be Sun, especially after Jin’s death, but the woman never approached her again and she didn’t have the heart to pursue her after what happened, especially since the woman had a baby without a father and the weight of one more sacrifice on her shoulders. What she’s doing might be wrong on so many levels, but it will never be wrong enough to take advantage of another woman's heartbreak.
It's after that, that she stops looking, in the hopes that one of the others would eventually give in on their own. She doesn’t cut a figure that’s all that easy to forget, so she figures someone will break in time.
It’s Hurley and Jack, completely in tandem,- two cogs separating from the full mechanism and breaking a mechanical chain that’s been functioning for far longer than it should- who eventually show up on her doorstep some months after Jin’s funeral, both of them soaked from being out in the London rain and neither of them looking happy.
"You’re not the only one who can find people," Jack says the second she opens the door, eyes going wide at the sight of him and Hurley on her doorstep. "I think this conversation’s long overdo."
They’re expecting the firing squad again, because they’re not even sure what they were expecting from her. All she’s been is a lingering presence in their lives that won’t go away, and what she wants from them was never open for discussion. They’re not even sure if it’s something they can give, but she’s the only person they can go to now and so here they are.
So it surprises them when she simply smiles at them. "So I guess you’re ready to go back to the island now, aren’t you?"
And they are. They just need someone to show them the way and she needs someone to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. This is an alliance that will serve them all in the long run, and it's precisely what she's been looking for all this time.