Straight Line [1/3] [PG] [Jack, Charlotte]
Title: Straight Line [1 of 3]
Characters: Jack, Charlotte
Pairing: Jack/Juliet implied, Charlotte/Daniel if you squint
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Season 5 AU (Jack jumps, Charlotte lives, Juliet gets pregnant, they decide to leave the island during the 1970s)
A/N: On the submarine, Jack and Charlotte discuss what leaving the island means to them. Yet another part of the "Jack jumps" series for nighttiming1022 (it contains a reference to another fic in that series, "This Place").
~~
Jack ducked through the porthole, stepping forward quietly as if he was afraid to step down any harder, as if the floor of the sub might vanish from underneath him if he did. Charlotte turned abruptly when she heard him, looking away from the monitor on the wall.
“Hey,” he offered, his eyes searching the cabin surrounding them. Miles was nowhere to be found, which must have meant that Claire had needed calming down again, which meant that things might still have been getting better, but probably not at the rate that any of them had hoped.
“How’s she doing?” Charlotte crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, looking back and forth between him and the monitor.
“She’s-well, actually, she’s throwing up right now.”
Charlotte laughed quietly.
“And Dr. Shephard didn’t want to be in attendance for that?”
“She kind of-kicked me out.” He said sheepishly, stepping farther into the room to sit on one of the benches lined up against the wall. “She said if I wanted to hold her hair back, I should have done it after last year’s Dharma drinking contest.”
“You would’ve had your work cut out for you then,” Charlotte closed her eyes, making a face.
“So it really was that bad?”
“I think she thought she needed to set an example-as head of security.”
“Didn’t want to be shown up by the research team, huh?”
“She made me drink so much that I could barely make it to the toilet. You’re lucky you were taking care of those chemical burns on Hydra Island, or she probably would’ve gotten you to enter too.” She shook her head and then hesitated, looking a little more serious. “It’s normal, though, isn’t it, what’s happening to her now-the vomiting?”
“Yeah,” he considered, “Yeah. It’s less common in the third trimester, but it’s normal. And it’s not happening frequently enough to hurt her or the baby.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing slightly, before changing the subject. “How are things up here? Everything still on course?”
“Yeah. Daniel dropped out of contact a couple of hours ago, but he told me that would happen. It’s got something to do with the route we’re on, and satellite interference? I have to admit I didn’t exactly follow his explanation.”
“I’m surprised you got that much. When will we hear from him again?”
“Not until a few hours before we reach Ann Arbor. So now all we have to do is just sit tight, and wait.”
She leaned against the wall and scratched her arm. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?” he said after a moment, smiling a little sheepishly.
She grinned back at him.
“Yeah.”
“It-it feels strange,” he observed after a long moment, “Finally leaving after all this time.”
“You don’t exactly sound relieved.”
“I don’t-of course I'm relieved, but it’s weird. I know we had to go, because of Juliet and David, and Claire-”
“Don’t forget the massive H-bomb threatening to destroy the island.”
“That too,” he acknowledged, with a wry twist of his mouth that vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. “I know we had to, but running away-it doesn’t exactly feel like victory.”
“Not like in the storybooks, anyway, hey?”
“Alice in Wonderland, maybe.”
Charlotte laughed.
“Except instead of waking up in the end,” he continued, “we’re going deeper into the rabbit hole.”
“That’s one way of describing the 1970s.”
“But-you know what I mean, don’t you? It’s not-”
“Symmetrical?”
“That’s stupid, isn’t it? But, yeah.”
“You were going to fix things.”
He nodded.
“If it hadn’t been for-” he sighed, “well, if it hadn’t been for a lot of things, I'd probably still be-”
“Do you think we could have done it? Stopped the plane from crashing? Stopped-whatever happened-from happening again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Daniel said it didn’t matter what we did-that it was all going to happen over and over again.”
“But he stayed on the island for over two years trying to work out the math with those people. You can’t tell me that that was all in bad faith.”
“I guess it’s a lot easier to say, ‘Whatever happened, happened,’ than it is to believe, even for him.”
“Nobody wants to feel like they’re going in circles.”
“I don’t know, Jack,” she contradicted him suddenly, “some people like it.”
He raised his eyebrow at her, unsure if she was taking a shot at him. In the almost three years he'd known her, he had never known Charlotte to hold back.
“Circles are easy,” she elaborated, “You know exactly where it is where you’re going: it’s just back to all the places that you’ve been.”
“Are you-”
“I came to the island to find out about my past, to find out if the things I remembered were true, because I just couldn’t get over the idea that my mother had lied to me: that I was right, and she was wrong. And what happened? I got there and found out that I was right, and she was wrong, that everything I had always suspected-” she trailed off, “And then I almost died there.” She looked up at him suddenly, an odd, half-grateful, half-embarrassed look in her eyes, and he knew she was thinking of the day in front of the well when he had saved her life. “If I’d died-what good would it have done me to have known that I was right?”
“So you’re saying-”
“I’m saying that just because this doesn’t feel like victory, that doesn’t mean it isn’t one. Leaving this island might be the only real choice any of us ever made. It might be the only real choice there ever was.”
“To walk away.”
She nodded. “To walk away.”
~~
Part Two
Characters: Jack, Charlotte
Pairing: Jack/Juliet implied, Charlotte/Daniel if you squint
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Season 5 AU (Jack jumps, Charlotte lives, Juliet gets pregnant, they decide to leave the island during the 1970s)
A/N: On the submarine, Jack and Charlotte discuss what leaving the island means to them. Yet another part of the "Jack jumps" series for nighttiming1022 (it contains a reference to another fic in that series, "This Place").
~~
Jack ducked through the porthole, stepping forward quietly as if he was afraid to step down any harder, as if the floor of the sub might vanish from underneath him if he did. Charlotte turned abruptly when she heard him, looking away from the monitor on the wall.
“Hey,” he offered, his eyes searching the cabin surrounding them. Miles was nowhere to be found, which must have meant that Claire had needed calming down again, which meant that things might still have been getting better, but probably not at the rate that any of them had hoped.
“How’s she doing?” Charlotte crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, looking back and forth between him and the monitor.
“She’s-well, actually, she’s throwing up right now.”
Charlotte laughed quietly.
“And Dr. Shephard didn’t want to be in attendance for that?”
“She kind of-kicked me out.” He said sheepishly, stepping farther into the room to sit on one of the benches lined up against the wall. “She said if I wanted to hold her hair back, I should have done it after last year’s Dharma drinking contest.”
“You would’ve had your work cut out for you then,” Charlotte closed her eyes, making a face.
“So it really was that bad?”
“I think she thought she needed to set an example-as head of security.”
“Didn’t want to be shown up by the research team, huh?”
“She made me drink so much that I could barely make it to the toilet. You’re lucky you were taking care of those chemical burns on Hydra Island, or she probably would’ve gotten you to enter too.” She shook her head and then hesitated, looking a little more serious. “It’s normal, though, isn’t it, what’s happening to her now-the vomiting?”
“Yeah,” he considered, “Yeah. It’s less common in the third trimester, but it’s normal. And it’s not happening frequently enough to hurt her or the baby.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing slightly, before changing the subject. “How are things up here? Everything still on course?”
“Yeah. Daniel dropped out of contact a couple of hours ago, but he told me that would happen. It’s got something to do with the route we’re on, and satellite interference? I have to admit I didn’t exactly follow his explanation.”
“I’m surprised you got that much. When will we hear from him again?”
“Not until a few hours before we reach Ann Arbor. So now all we have to do is just sit tight, and wait.”
She leaned against the wall and scratched her arm. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?” he said after a moment, smiling a little sheepishly.
She grinned back at him.
“Yeah.”
“It-it feels strange,” he observed after a long moment, “Finally leaving after all this time.”
“You don’t exactly sound relieved.”
“I don’t-of course I'm relieved, but it’s weird. I know we had to go, because of Juliet and David, and Claire-”
“Don’t forget the massive H-bomb threatening to destroy the island.”
“That too,” he acknowledged, with a wry twist of his mouth that vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. “I know we had to, but running away-it doesn’t exactly feel like victory.”
“Not like in the storybooks, anyway, hey?”
“Alice in Wonderland, maybe.”
Charlotte laughed.
“Except instead of waking up in the end,” he continued, “we’re going deeper into the rabbit hole.”
“That’s one way of describing the 1970s.”
“But-you know what I mean, don’t you? It’s not-”
“Symmetrical?”
“That’s stupid, isn’t it? But, yeah.”
“You were going to fix things.”
He nodded.
“If it hadn’t been for-” he sighed, “well, if it hadn’t been for a lot of things, I'd probably still be-”
“Do you think we could have done it? Stopped the plane from crashing? Stopped-whatever happened-from happening again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Daniel said it didn’t matter what we did-that it was all going to happen over and over again.”
“But he stayed on the island for over two years trying to work out the math with those people. You can’t tell me that that was all in bad faith.”
“I guess it’s a lot easier to say, ‘Whatever happened, happened,’ than it is to believe, even for him.”
“Nobody wants to feel like they’re going in circles.”
“I don’t know, Jack,” she contradicted him suddenly, “some people like it.”
He raised his eyebrow at her, unsure if she was taking a shot at him. In the almost three years he'd known her, he had never known Charlotte to hold back.
“Circles are easy,” she elaborated, “You know exactly where it is where you’re going: it’s just back to all the places that you’ve been.”
“Are you-”
“I came to the island to find out about my past, to find out if the things I remembered were true, because I just couldn’t get over the idea that my mother had lied to me: that I was right, and she was wrong. And what happened? I got there and found out that I was right, and she was wrong, that everything I had always suspected-” she trailed off, “And then I almost died there.” She looked up at him suddenly, an odd, half-grateful, half-embarrassed look in her eyes, and he knew she was thinking of the day in front of the well when he had saved her life. “If I’d died-what good would it have done me to have known that I was right?”
“So you’re saying-”
“I’m saying that just because this doesn’t feel like victory, that doesn’t mean it isn’t one. Leaving this island might be the only real choice any of us ever made. It might be the only real choice there ever was.”
“To walk away.”
She nodded. “To walk away.”
~~
Part Two