Back to the Future
Title: Back to the Future
Author: tellshannon815
Recipient: primarycolors92
Pairing and/or Characters: Daniel/Miles, Charlotte, Naomi, Frank, Minkowski, Eloise, Lara, Pierre, Radzinsky, original DHARMA scientists.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for S4 and S5
Prompt: Miles/Daniel AU freighter fic
Summary: Aboard the Kahana en route to the island, Daniel becomes unstuck in time and finds himself in the DHARMA headquarters in Ann Arbor in the days leading up to the Incident. His only hope is to reunite with his constant: Miles Straume.
Author notes: Sorry it’s such a long-ass fic but I just got carried away with this prompt!
Day 1:
“Hey, watch where you’re going, idiot!”
Daniel blinked in surprise at the sight of the man who stood before him as he prepared to board the freighter in Fiji. He appeared to be of Asian origin, much the same age as Daniel, and at that moment in time he was looking very pissed off.
“I - I’m sorry,” Daniel stammered, but the man wasn’t listening. “Just try walking with your eyes open in future, okay?” He turned and stalked off in the direction of the woman who appeared to be checking everyone in.
Daniel’s mother, Eloise, tapped him on the arm. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she said, and Daniel knew that she was going over to speak to the man he had collided with, to try and explain - what exactly? Was she going to tell him all about the memory problems Daniel had been experiencing, to try and excuse him somehow? This was exactly why he’d told Mr. Widmore originally that he wasn’t the man that he needed for his mission. How was he supposed to do all the complicated bearings Mr. Widmore wanted when he couldn’t even board the freighter without some kind of accident? And come the next day, he’d probably have forgotten that the collision even happened and make a fool of himself with the same man again. This had been a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t too late to tell Eloise he’d changed his mind, to ask her to take him back home, back to being looked after by Caroline again. Mr. Widmore probably wasn’t even telling the truth about this island being able to heal him, after all, the hospital he’d been in back in Massachusetts, St. Claire’s, had said there was nothing more they could do. Why would this island be any different?
“Hey. Is it you? Are you our engineer?”
Daniel blinked in surprise, having not noticed the man approaching him. “Uh, no. I’m, uh, part of the science team.”
The man shook his head. “Huh, crapped out twice. I just asked Kevin over there the same question, and he told me he was one of the deckhands. I’m supposed to be getting some guy named Brandon working with me, and he hasn’t turned up yet. Anyway, I’m George. George Minkowski.”
Daniel accepted his outstretched hand. “I’m Daniel Faraday.”
“Nice to meet you, Daniel. One of the other science team members checked in already, and we’re just waiting for some girl from England at the moment. So, uh, when you’re ready, check-in’s with Naomi over there, and I guess I’ll catch up with you on board.” Minkowski said as he glanced over Daniel’s shoulder to see Eloise returning to them.
Eloise pulled Daniel into a brief embrace, held him at arm’s length rather awkwardly. “Well, goodbye, Daniel,” she said at last. Daniel looked at her and wondered for a moment if she had been crying, although he didn’t know why she would have been; they were only supposed to be gone for a few weeks, and then he’d see her again anyway.
He started to make his way over towards Naomi as Minkowski had indicated, then turned back towards Eloise. “I’ll make you proud of me,” he said. “I promise you.”
He turned and followed the man towards the freighter. But it was odd; even though Daniel had never met that man in his life (or as far as he knew, anyway; it was no longer possible for Daniel to be certain of anything like that), it was almost as if he knew him from somewhere.
What the hell have I signed up for? Miles wondered as he followed Naomi’s directions towards the berth he had been assigned. Those dudes who’d shoved him into the van and told him he was on the wrong team might have had a point, considering some of the people he’d met since he got here. As well as the vague guy who’d collided with him earlier and then apparently sent his mommy after him to apologise, there had been some strange guy who was calling himself Kevin Johnson, which Miles knew (from the ghost named Libby who seemed to be following him) wasn’t his real name.
Then there had been the guy named Lapidus, who had cornered him with some strange story about how that plane recently, Oceanic Flight 815, might not have actually crashed after all, but that the wreckage had been somehow faked. Whoever Miles ended up sharing a berth with, he sure hoped it wasn’t that nut. The guy had a copy of the damn manifest of that flight, for Pete’s sake. If they were sharing, Miles wondered how long it would be before he ended up shoving the manifest up Lapidus’s ass. But based on the people he’d met so far, there didn’t seem to be many better alternatives.
Not long now until he hopefully found the answers he’d been looking for. He’d tried to tell himself he was just being ridiculous. After all, the chances were slimmer than none, really. And why should Miles even care? He didn’t know exactly when his father was supposed to have died, but he’d surely had enough opportunities to make contact with Miles over the years while he was still alive, if he’d ever given a damn. But when Naomi had talked about the “deceased individuals” on this island, Miles had immediately flashed back to the day when he’d asked his mother where his father was buried and she’d said “Somewhere you can never go”. What if he was right, and his father was buried on this island?
He was so lost in thought, he didn’t realise for a moment that he’d walked straight past his cabin. That was the one Naomi had directed him to, the last one on the right. Tentatively, Miles pushed open the door and stepped inside.
“Great,” he muttered when he saw the guy who’d bumped into him earlier. “It just gets better and better.”
Day 4:
Naomi gathered the science team together in one of the cabins for a meeting, the first time she’d spent any real time with them since they’d all boarded at Fiji. “Now, you may be wondering why we hired a science team for this operation,” she began.
“No kidding,” Miles muttered. “Seems like you gave us all a totally different explanation for why we’re here.” The third member of their team, Charlotte, nodded in agreement.
“I’m sure you’re all aware by now of the man that Mr. Widmore hired us to extract,” Naomi continued, holding up a photograph of a middle-aged man. “Benjamin Linus. This man is a very dangerous individual, and we have reason to believe that on our arrival on the island, he may mobilise his friends to launch a counter-attack on us. He’s done this before,” she went on to detail the effects of the gas he had used against a group of people back in 1992. Charlotte looked as if she was trying not to cry during that speech, and Daniel wondered why.
“Now, there’s something else I should warn you about before we get too close to the island,” Naomi went on. “Something which Captain Gault refers to as cabin fever. I wouldn’t use that term myself, but I need to talk to you about it anyway in case anyone gets any ideas about making their own way to the island without following a very strict bearing of 305.”
“Cabin fever?” Charlotte asked. “What do you mean by that?”
Naomi sighed. “Well, basically, this is something that can be caused by close proximity to the island. I don’t know why, but to put it in layman’s terms, if anyone gets too close to the island via any other bearing, it can lead to them becoming disoriented, getting headaches and nosebleeds, confusion about the past, present and future. In other words, they become unstuck in time.”
Miles rolled his eyes at Daniel and Charlotte. “Is she kidding us?” he hissed. “How stupid does that chick think we are?”
“Now, Captain Gault is fully aware of the situation and will make sure he remains on that bearing at all times, but should we ever lose that -“
Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1977.
“Jesus Christ, man, what’s the matter with you? You drunk or something?”
Daniel blinked in surprise at the man who had helped him to his feet. “Sorry, uh, Ryan. I guess I don’t feel so good.” That was strange. For a minute there, he thought he’d been on the boat again, and someone had been giving a talk to him and the rest of the science team, about the man they’d been sent to extract... No, it was gone.
“Well, if you’re planning to get on the sub to the island tomorrow, you better get over it,” Ryan growled. “I don’t think anyone’ll thank you for giving them your germs while you’re all cooped in that confined space like that.”
“Uh, I don’t think I’m gonna be on the sub,” Daniel replied, shaking his head. Then the memory of the boat came back to him again: the woman whose name he couldn’t remember was talking about going to the island as well. That was probably why he’d dreamed that, because he’d been thinking about the sub trip. But even as Daniel had thought that, something about it didn’t feel right. It was as though it was a memory, not a dream.
“Yeah, well maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Ryan snorted. “Sounds like they got themselves a situation over there anyway. A Hostile tripped the perimeter yesterday and got himself caught, and those yahoos couldn’t decide how to deal with him. I mean, he violated the truce, for Pete’s sake, they know the protocol. They wrote the protocol! A Hostile trips the perimeter, they shoot! Stu Radzinsky, he had the right idea. But Horace dithered about it, kept saying he needed more time. And what happened? He floored one of the security guys and got away. And now he’s shot Roger Linus’s kid, Ben. A twelve year old kid, and they don’t even know if he’s gonna live or die because Horace couldn’t make a damn decision. That place has gone to the dogs if you ask me. About time they ditched the hippy and let someone who could lead, lead.”
“Ben Linus...” Daniel repeated. That name had been mentioned on the boat as well, he remembered now, it was the name of the man they were being sent to extract...
“Hey, what’s the matter with you?” Ryan demanded. “You’re acting weird even for you, and that’s saying something -“
The Kahana, somewhere in the Pacific. 2004.
“Daniel?” Charlotte was asking. “What’s wrong?”
Daniel grabbed her by the arm. “Where am I?”
“On - a - boat,” Naomi began, speaking with exaggerated patience as though she were speaking to an idiot. “Going - to - the - island.”
“The island?” Daniel gasped. “What do you mean? Where’s Ryan? I’m supposed to be in Ann Arbor! I wasn’t meant to be going to the island. How did I get here?”
“What’s wrong with him?” Charlotte whispered to Naomi, who just shook her head. Miles looked as if he had lots of questions to ask, but in the end he plumped for “Who the hell is Ryan?”
“He’s one of my fellow scientists,” Daniel replied mechanically. “In the DHARMA Initiative. He’s supposed to be getting the sub to the island tomorrow, but I wasn’t going to go - how did I get here?”
“What’s the DHARMA Initiative? Who the hell even heard of that?” Miles demanded, but Charlotte had frozen. “I have. They used to live on the island where we’re going to. Or I should say we did, because my family were a part of it. But I moved away with my mum when I was little. That’s why I’m on this ship, to find where I was born. My mum -“ Charlotte hesitated, appearing to decide that she didn’t want to carry on talking about that. “But when Mr. Abaddon recruited me, he said that they weren’t on the island any more, that they - haven’t been there since 1992.” Charlotte swallowed hard before continuing, glancing warily at Naomi first. “Er, Daniel? What year do you think it is?”
“What are you talking about?” Daniel frowned. “It’s 1977!”
Miles shook his head. “Daniel, it’s 2004.”
Naomi addressed her first remark to Miles. “Do you still think I was kidding earlier?” to which Miles sullenly shook his head. “Look, I think we’d better take him to the sick bay, let Ray take a look at him. Charlotte, you take one arm, I’ll take the other.” She muttered something under her breath, which Daniel couldn’t quite catch but it sounded like what she was going to say to somebody called Matthew when she got back.
“Wait!” Daniel cried. “I need my journal.” There had to be something in there, something he’d written when he was carrying out his experiments in 1996 which would help him understand what was happening now, how one minute he could be in 1977 and the next in 2004...
“You mean that ratty old book on your bunk?” Miles asked. “I’ll get it.” He had to admit it was a relief for him to escape the situation as he ran down the deck towards the berth he and Daniel shared, ignoring the cry from a startled Regina as he collided with her. Grabbing the book, he began leafing through it. Faraday thinks this crap’s gonna help him? Miles thought to himself as he flipped through page after page of incomprehensible equations. Well, maybe it would mean something to him, but it certainly didn’t to Miles.
Wait a second. What was that?
Miles froze as he turned to a page with some kind of logo, a hexagonal shape with some kind of pattern around the sides of the hexagon and another in the centre. Beside it, Daniel had scrawled “The Orchid”.
He’d seen that logo before. He must have been about eight, and it had been when they were living in the old apartment...
Miles couldn’t even remember what he’d been looking for, but he did remember going through one of Lara’s cabinets and finding some paperwork with a similar logo to the one in Daniel’s journal. “What’s this?” he’d asked.
Lara had angrily snatched the paperwork away. “Where did you find this?” she’d demanded.
“It was in the cabinet,” Miles had explained.
“Never go through my things without asking me again!” Lara had yelled, before storming out of the room and slamming the door. That night, after Miles had gone to bed but hadn’t been able to sleep, he’d watched her from his window as she’d burned what appeared to be everything containing the octagonal logo.
Later, when she’d calmed down, she’d apologised to Miles for overreacting, and they’d never spoken of it again, firstly because Miles was too afraid of her temper to bring it up, and then later because, after a while, he’d forgotten about the entire incident.
Until he saw the logo again. Where had it come from, what did it mean and how did it connect to Daniel? Why had Lara reacted so strongly when Miles had come across it? How did Daniel’s past connect to Miles’s own?
“Right, here we are,” Naomi began, helping Daniel over the threshold. “This is Dr. -“
“I don’t need a doctor,” Daniel rounded on her. “I just want to know how I ended up back here!”
Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1977.
“Frankly, we’re all wondering that,” Ryan snorted. “What were they thinking when they recruited you? What’s the matter with you today?”
Daniel shook his head, which was beginning to ache. “Trust me, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“You know what? Don’t even bother.” Ryan turned away in disgust, turning instead to another of their fellow scientists, Ian. “Didn’t you say the island had sent us the new recruits’ picture?”
Ian rolled his eyes, elbowed him good-naturedly. “You just want to see if they’ve got any good-looking chicks in this year. I think you might be disappointed actually, although there is this one girl -“ He pointed at someone in the front row. “Apparently, she’s in the motor pool.”
Daniel caught a glimpse of the photo as Ian was passing it to Ryan, then suddenly stopped and stared. How could that be? That was Kate that Ian was talking about, and Jack and Hurley with her. Yes, he remembered now, he remembered the three of them. And he remembered the boat he’d been on, remembered the names of the people he’d just been with, Naomi, Charlotte...and Miles. He’d met them all before he came here, he’d met them on the island, and then they’d been rescued...but how had they ended up in 1977? There had to be something, some variable that had come into play...
But that would be later, when he actually got back to the island. What mattered now was that he remembered it all, that he now understood what was happening to him. He’d seen this before, with Theresa, when she’d suddenly lapse into conversation with long-dead relatives. Somehow, Daniel had found himself back on the freighter, before he ever arrived on the island, before Ben Linus had turned the wheel, stranding them eventually in 1974.
Or could the freighter be his current present, and the DHARMA Initiative his future? Theresa’s consciousness had skipped to the future a few times as well; Daniel remembered her telling him about events in the UK that were yet to happen (while the election of Tony Blair as Prime Minister had come as no surprise, there had been no way Theresa could have known about the death of Princess Diana). Daniel didn’t know which of these was his past, and which his future. But he did remember from his previous research at Oxford how he could stop this temporal displacement.
He needed a constant. He needed Miles.
They hadn’t got off to a great start when they’d first found themselves as bunkmates on the freighter, but Daniel remembered how they had bonded over time, and how the defining moment in their relationship had been in their first week as members of the DHARMA Initiative, when Daniel had found himself escorting a sick-looking Miles back to the barracks from the cafeteria after Miles had been talking to the Asian man who had processed him, and a woman who appeared to be his wife.
“So, uh, you want to tell me what happened back there?” Daniel had asked as he’d led Miles back to the barracks.
“That man and woman back there?” Miles had gestured vaguely towards the cafeteria. “That was my mom and dad. Well, it was my mom, anyway, and she said that they were married. I never met my dad, as I told you on the freighter, but like I said to you, I always wondered about him. I told you what my mom said to me before she died, right? I just...never expected to actually meet him here.” He’d broken off at that point. “Great, I’m rambling even more than you, so I’m just gonna shut up now.”
“No, Miles, I understand more than you probably realise,” Daniel had begun, pushing open the door to Miles’s house as he spoke. “I didn’t say anything at the time, but, uh, actually I saw my mother too. You met her too, actually, in 1954. You remember Ellie?”
“Blonde chick, right?” Miles asked, startled. “That one who was holding you at gunpoint?”
Daniel had nodded. “That’s right.”
Miles had whistled. “And I thought my family dynamic was screwed.”
Daniel had chosen to ignore this. “I’d thought when I first saw her that I recognised her somehow, but it took me a few minutes to actually place her. I’d never seen any pictures of her at that age, and I’d never heard anyone call her anything but Eloise.”
“And you couldn’t say anything to her, obviously,” Miles had pointed out.
“Actually, she might have been more likely to believe me than your mother would have to believe you,” Daniel had mused. “My mother was always interested in the science behind time travel, and had encouraged me to study it. Of course, I’m not sure whether that was the case in 1954, so maybe she wouldn’t have.”
“What about your dad?” Miles had asked, his mind appearing to have been taken off his own problems as he listened to Daniel’s story.
“Uh, I never knew who he was. My parents had separated before I was born, and I never even knew his name. I always got the impression that my mother didn’t want me to know.”
“Looks like we have more in common than we first thought when we met,” Miles had replied. “Who knows, maybe your dad’s someone we’ve seen, or we will see. You better hope it’s not that asshole who was with Ellie back in ’54!” he’d laughed, elbowing Daniel in the ribs.
Daniel had shaken his head. “I doubt it.”
“Did you...ever wonder about him?” Miles asked. “Like, who he was or anything?”
Daniel knew without being told that Miles had often wondered about this, that it had taken a lot for him to raise the subject with Daniel, that he probably would never have asked had it not been for the fact that he’d just seen his parents (and that he’d probably deny ever having said anything if anyone else ever asked).
“I wondered about it more when I was younger,” he’d answered. “But once I understood that my mother really didn’t like me asking, I just dropped it. And then, after I’d been performing my experiments for a while, I guess I just forgot to wonder about him.”
“I wondered about him all my life,” Miles had admitted. “Even though I knew I shouldn’t care, since he kicked us out when I was a baby, I always wondered why. And now that I’ve seen him, I’m more confused than ever. They looked happy together. There was nothing there to explain what happened.”
“Well, it hasn’t actually happened yet, and won’t for another three years,” Daniel had pointed out, stopping as he caught the glare on Miles’s face. “Sorry.”
“Why am I even wasting my time thinking about this?” Miles snapped, not looking at Daniel. “He made his choice. He may not be dead yet, but he is to me. Why should I care about him?”
“I guess for the same reasons I used to care about who my father was,” Daniel had replied, pulling Miles closer to him, stroking his hair, kissing him on the lips.
Yes, he remembered now, remembered his past (future?) with Miles, and he knew that Miles was the person he needed to save him.
And when he had found Miles again, and he knew which of these was his present and which was either his past or future, Daniel knew what he had to do. He understood now that he had seen Jack, Kate and Hurley that he had to somehow prevent Oceanic Flight 815 from crashing, their freighter from ever setting sail to the island. He’d be able to save Charlotte, Naomi, all the people who hadn’t survived the plane crash. And he would make Eloise proud of him.
But before he could do any of this, he needed to find Miles again.
The sick bay, the Kahana. 2004.
“Oi!” Charlotte exclaimed, tugging on Naomi’s sleeve. “I’m talking to you! I asked you what was happening to him. He’s been out of it for the last bloody hour.”
“Look, I don’t understand it any more than you do,” Naomi began, but Miles interrupted as he dashed in, carrying Daniel’s journal. “From what Mr. Abaddon explained to me, when this happens, people think they’re back in their own past. But I can’t see how this can be possible. Daniel’s not old enough to have been working with the DHARMA Initiative in 1977.”
“Because that’s not my past!” Daniel yelled, taking the journal from Miles’s hands (“Well, thank you, too,” Miles muttered). “This is!”
Ray, the freighter’s physician, shook his head in disgust. “You were right about him. He’s crazy.”
“I am not crazy,” Daniel attempted to explain. “I know what’s happening.”
“Sure you do,” Ray replied. “Now, I’m just going to give you something -“
“No!” Daniel exclaimed. “You can’t sedate me. I have to get back to the island, so I can stop this -“ he gestured vaguely towards them all - “from happening!”
“That’s right, Dan,” Ray said soothingly. “We’re on our way to the island now.”
“No, I have to get back there in 1977!” Daniel cried. “They’re all there, back in DHARMA, all of them. Jack Shephard, Kate Austen, Hugo Reyes. They’re in 1977, and they’re not supposed to be. None of us are. And I have to get back there to stop it, so that none of this ever happens!”
Miles looked at Charlotte. “You have any idea what he’s talking about? Who are those people he just mentioned?”
“I don’t know, okay?” Charlotte snapped, tearful and frustrated. “I don’t remember anyone’s name from that time. I was six years old when I left, and for years, I wasn’t even sure if my memories of DHARMA were real, because my mum always used to tell me that I’d made it all up. I’m sorry, I don’t know who they are.”
“But I do.”
Frank Lapidus had entered the sick bay, carrying the flight manifest in his hands. He laid it on the table in front of them all.
“Ugh, not that damn manifest again, Lapidus,” Miles groaned. “Do you really think this is the time to start boring us with your conspiracy theories?”
“Actually, it is.” Frank pointed at a name on the manifest. “Faraday mentioned Hugo Reyes. There he is. He had seat 20G and 20H on Oceanic Flight 815. Jack Shephard was in Row 23, and here’s Kate Austen over in 27H. Austen was all over the news when they caught up with her in Australia after that Marshal had been looking for her for three years, and I’m sure they said she was 27. There’s no way she could have been on the island in 1977.”
“I think Miles is right about that thing,” Ray sighed. “Faraday’s obviously remembered the names from Lapidus going on and on about it, he’s heard about the DHARMA Initiative from somewhere, it’s all stuck in his head and he’s totally lost it.”
“Let me explain,” Daniel pleaded - but how could he? How could he tell them what he remembered, that a few days from now Ray would be dead, his body washed up on the beach with the throat cut, before it had actually happened on the freighter? How could he tell an already upset Charlotte that she only had approximately three weeks to live before she succumbed to the effects of temporal displacement?
“After we get to the island,” he eventually began, “Ben Linus will do something that will...dislodge us.”
“From what?” Charlotte asked.
“Time.” Daniel explained. “So what’s happening to me...it’s in the past, but it’s also in my future. And if it carries on, it’ll be like Naomi said. I won’t be able to distinguish between them. The only way I’ll be able to stop this happening is if I can find a constant.”
“What’s that?” Miles asked.
“It’s something that’s present in both times, something familiar, something I really care about, something that can keep me anchored. Miles...I need to find you.”
“What?” Miles frowned. “That’s impossible. In 1977, I was only a baby. I was born on March 23rd, 1977, in Encino, California. I wasn’t anywhere near Ann Arbor. Or the island.”
“Are you sure about that?” Charlotte asked. “Because when I first saw you, I remembered that I’d heard the name Miles somewhere before, and then I remembered -“
The Galaga, approaching the submarine dock on the island. 1977.
“Christ, how much of the tranq did they give you back in Ann Arbor? Someone slipped up and gave you too much, that’s for sure.” The voice sounded very far away to Daniel, although he knew it must be somewhere close by.
“Guy’s been out of it the last couple of days,” Ryan muttered. “I highly doubt it made a difference.”
“What the -“ Daniel began. He attempted to struggle to his feet, but found that he had been strapped to one of the beds on the submarine. “Why am I here? Why am I strapped in?”
“Gonna have to have words with the other side about watching how much of the tranq they give people. This was explained to you before you got on board. We always have to strap people in because this last leg of the journey can be turbulent. But we’re almost at the island now, and Dr. Chang is supposed to be sending someone to meet you all and show you to your quarters.”
“Miles?” Daniel gasped. “Will he be sending Miles? I need to see -“
The Kahana, 2004.
“Miles!”
“I’m right here, Dan,” Miles answered.
“Okay, Miles, I need you to remember this conversation. Three years from now, your father’s going to ask someone to help him arrange for a party of scientists to be brought from the submarine to the DHARMA barracks. I’m going to need it to be you.”
“My father? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Dr. Chang, the lead scientist at DHARMA. He’s going to ask you to meet our party, and I need you to go with him and meet me at the Pala Ferry. Once I’ve made contact with you in both times, this will stop happening,” Daniel went on, but he could see that Miles was barely listening.
“No, what was that about my father? My father is dead!” Miles slammed his fist into the palm of his hand, ignoring the raised eyebrows of Charlotte and Frank.
“Not in 1977,” Daniel attempted to explain, but then he suddenly became aware that Charlotte was staring at him.
“Daniel, your nose, it’s bleeding...”
The Pala Ferry, 1977.
Oof. The wind was completely knocked from Daniel’s body as he found himself slammed face down against the dock.
“You might want to clean yourself up a bit, man,” came a voice from somewhere above him. “Looks like you injured yourself when you fell. You’re bleeding.”
“No, it’s - it’s not that,” Daniel began, but the man who had addressed him brushed that off. “Whatever. Look, Radzinsky’s over there to check us in.”
Daniel scanned the crowd looking for any sign of the face he wanted to see. Radzinsky appeared to be arguing with Ryan about who knew what, while Dr. Chang was helping someone else with his suitcase. He attempted to hoist his own through the hatch, but quickly realised he was going to struggle with it.
“Hey, could someone give me a hand with this?”
“Yeah, I got it, man,” a voice began, then hesitated. “Daniel?”
“Miles!” Daniel exclaimed, running forward to meet him. “You remembered!”
Miles nodded. “Of course I did. Did you really think I wouldn’t be here waiting for you?”
“Listen, I don’t have much time,” Daniel began. “The next time I go back, it’ll be the last. I’ll be back in 2004. But I want you to know that I’m sorry about the way I broke it to you about your father.”
“Shh!” Miles hissed; Pierre Chang was nearby, still helping the other scientist with his luggage. “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t to know that I didn’t know. And you were there for me when I first saw them both in the cafeteria that time. Except you might not know about that yet.”
“No, I still have all my memories of the last three years. I still remember that night. But when I go back to 2004, I don’t know if I’ll remember any of it, because it won’t have happened for me yet. But I’m sorry for leaving you behind as well.”
“You did what you had to do at the time,” Miles reassured him.
“What I thought I had to do,” Daniel corrected him. “But all this, it reminded me what was important. If I did anything to change time, to make none of this have happened, then you and I would have never met. Or we’d have been kept apart, with you being brought up by DHARMA and me by the Hostiles. But either way, we wouldn’t have been together. And what’s been happening to me, it’s reminded me of what’s important. I’m not going to leave you again, Miles...”
The Kahana, 2004.
“Daniel?” Charlotte repeated, pointing at his nose again. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Daniel replied; the bleeding had stopped, the confusion had stopped, he knew where and when he was now. “Thank you, Miles, for, uh, what you’re gonna do.”
Miles shook his head. “Um, okay.”
“Look, I think maybe you better get him back to your cabin, Miles,” Frank suggested. “It’s been kind of a long day. For all of us.”
“You’re not kidding,” Miles muttered, taking Daniel by the arm and leading him out of the sick bay, brushing off Frank and Charlotte’s looks of concern.
“Could you be any more fidgety?” Miles asked that night as he lay in the bunk below Daniel, trying to sleep.
“Sorry,” Daniel mumbled, turning over.
“No, I’m sorry,” Miles replied, instantly feeling guilty. “I couldn’t sleep myself anyway, not just because of that.”
“What’s the matter?” Daniel asked.
“Forget it,” Miles snapped. “You probably won’t remember anyway.”
“I don’t remember much of what happened,” Daniel began. “But some of it...it seemed familiar, only I didn’t understand at the time. I thought it was just because I’d been researching the island, and the DHARMA Initiative, that it was something like Ray said, that I got confused. But I thought about it, and I remembered some of the experiments I used to do.”
“What do you mean?” Miles asked despite himself.
“I stopped doing it after Theresa,” Daniel continued. “She didn’t know which was her past and which was her future, just like me. But I’d managed to send my consciousness to the future, too. I’d forgotten most of what I’d seen, after all the exposure to radiation. Most of it hadn’t made any sense to me at the time anyway. But now, I think that I must have seen some of my future back then. And I thought that I wouldn’t remember it, but I do.”
“Do you, uh, remember what you said to me about my father?” Miles blurted out, then instantly regretted asking. Whatever the hell had happened to Daniel back there, he didn’t need that dumping on him.
“Your father?” Daniel repeated. “Did I mention him? I’m sorry, I don’t remember that part.”
“I never knew him,” Miles began, reflecting that Daniel was the first person he’d ever felt he could talk about this with. The kids he’d grown up with knew, of course, that Miles’s father hadn’t been around, but he’d never really discussed it with anyone, and once he knew that his father had died, it had become easier to just leave it at telling people that. “He kicked us out when I was a baby, and I’ve never known why. Eventually, when my mother knew she hadn’t much longer to live, she admitted that he’d died, and that his body was buried somewhere I could never go. But when Naomi recruited me, she told me she wanted me to talk to some deceased individuals, and I wondered if maybe it was the island she meant. I never even had a name for him before. Straume’s my mother’s maiden name, and she reverted to that after they split up. I’d never even heard the name Chang. So when you mentioned him, it kind of freaked me out, you talking about him as if we both knew him.”
“I’m sorry,” Daniel replied. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Guess it kind of freaked me out too. That’s why I can’t sleep. I keep seeing all these images in my head, things that haven’t happened yet. There’s my mother, standing in a camp holding a gun. Charlotte, with her nose bleeding. In fact, when I first saw you in Fiji, I felt as though I’d seen you somewhere before, although I had no idea where. And the one thing I do remember is that I wanted to try and change things so that none of this ever happened.”
“I was about to say that was the craziest thing I ever heard,” Miles said, “But after today, I’m not even sure that’s true.”
“It’s okay,” Daniel reassured him. “I got pretty used to people thinking I was crazy. When I was at Oxford, my students all used to call me by the name of that guy from Back to the Future.”
“Doc Brown?” Miles laughed. “But didn’t that guy end up ripping up Marty’s letter without even reading it in the first movie, in case he ended up altering the future?”
“I can’t remember.” Daniel admitted.
“Wait. He sends Marty back at the end with the idea of doing exactly that. So maybe your students’ comparison wasn’t really that stupid.”
“I don’t know,” Daniel mused. “If I did somehow change things, and I’m not saying that’s even possible, then you probably wouldn’t manage to get closure on your father.”
“Do I?” Miles couldn’t quite believe that he was asking this. “In the future, I mean. Do I know why he sent us away?”
“I can’t remember much,” Daniel admitted. “But I think you do.”
While Miles appreciated knowing that, he also knew that just being told that by Daniel wouldn’t help him to get closure, that he would need to experience whatever was to come in order to achieve that.
“And I understand how much you need that,” Daniel continued, “but there were other things I wanted to change. But I don’t know if I can. My mother always used to tell me that the universe has a way of course correcting, and even if I changed anything, it might still happen anyway.”
But as he leaned in closer towards Miles and pulled him towards him, Daniel knew that there was one thing that he would never change.
Author: tellshannon815
Recipient: primarycolors92
Pairing and/or Characters: Daniel/Miles, Charlotte, Naomi, Frank, Minkowski, Eloise, Lara, Pierre, Radzinsky, original DHARMA scientists.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for S4 and S5
Prompt: Miles/Daniel AU freighter fic
Summary: Aboard the Kahana en route to the island, Daniel becomes unstuck in time and finds himself in the DHARMA headquarters in Ann Arbor in the days leading up to the Incident. His only hope is to reunite with his constant: Miles Straume.
Author notes: Sorry it’s such a long-ass fic but I just got carried away with this prompt!
Day 1:
“Hey, watch where you’re going, idiot!”
Daniel blinked in surprise at the sight of the man who stood before him as he prepared to board the freighter in Fiji. He appeared to be of Asian origin, much the same age as Daniel, and at that moment in time he was looking very pissed off.
“I - I’m sorry,” Daniel stammered, but the man wasn’t listening. “Just try walking with your eyes open in future, okay?” He turned and stalked off in the direction of the woman who appeared to be checking everyone in.
Daniel’s mother, Eloise, tapped him on the arm. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she said, and Daniel knew that she was going over to speak to the man he had collided with, to try and explain - what exactly? Was she going to tell him all about the memory problems Daniel had been experiencing, to try and excuse him somehow? This was exactly why he’d told Mr. Widmore originally that he wasn’t the man that he needed for his mission. How was he supposed to do all the complicated bearings Mr. Widmore wanted when he couldn’t even board the freighter without some kind of accident? And come the next day, he’d probably have forgotten that the collision even happened and make a fool of himself with the same man again. This had been a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t too late to tell Eloise he’d changed his mind, to ask her to take him back home, back to being looked after by Caroline again. Mr. Widmore probably wasn’t even telling the truth about this island being able to heal him, after all, the hospital he’d been in back in Massachusetts, St. Claire’s, had said there was nothing more they could do. Why would this island be any different?
“Hey. Is it you? Are you our engineer?”
Daniel blinked in surprise, having not noticed the man approaching him. “Uh, no. I’m, uh, part of the science team.”
The man shook his head. “Huh, crapped out twice. I just asked Kevin over there the same question, and he told me he was one of the deckhands. I’m supposed to be getting some guy named Brandon working with me, and he hasn’t turned up yet. Anyway, I’m George. George Minkowski.”
Daniel accepted his outstretched hand. “I’m Daniel Faraday.”
“Nice to meet you, Daniel. One of the other science team members checked in already, and we’re just waiting for some girl from England at the moment. So, uh, when you’re ready, check-in’s with Naomi over there, and I guess I’ll catch up with you on board.” Minkowski said as he glanced over Daniel’s shoulder to see Eloise returning to them.
Eloise pulled Daniel into a brief embrace, held him at arm’s length rather awkwardly. “Well, goodbye, Daniel,” she said at last. Daniel looked at her and wondered for a moment if she had been crying, although he didn’t know why she would have been; they were only supposed to be gone for a few weeks, and then he’d see her again anyway.
He started to make his way over towards Naomi as Minkowski had indicated, then turned back towards Eloise. “I’ll make you proud of me,” he said. “I promise you.”
He turned and followed the man towards the freighter. But it was odd; even though Daniel had never met that man in his life (or as far as he knew, anyway; it was no longer possible for Daniel to be certain of anything like that), it was almost as if he knew him from somewhere.
What the hell have I signed up for? Miles wondered as he followed Naomi’s directions towards the berth he had been assigned. Those dudes who’d shoved him into the van and told him he was on the wrong team might have had a point, considering some of the people he’d met since he got here. As well as the vague guy who’d collided with him earlier and then apparently sent his mommy after him to apologise, there had been some strange guy who was calling himself Kevin Johnson, which Miles knew (from the ghost named Libby who seemed to be following him) wasn’t his real name.
Then there had been the guy named Lapidus, who had cornered him with some strange story about how that plane recently, Oceanic Flight 815, might not have actually crashed after all, but that the wreckage had been somehow faked. Whoever Miles ended up sharing a berth with, he sure hoped it wasn’t that nut. The guy had a copy of the damn manifest of that flight, for Pete’s sake. If they were sharing, Miles wondered how long it would be before he ended up shoving the manifest up Lapidus’s ass. But based on the people he’d met so far, there didn’t seem to be many better alternatives.
Not long now until he hopefully found the answers he’d been looking for. He’d tried to tell himself he was just being ridiculous. After all, the chances were slimmer than none, really. And why should Miles even care? He didn’t know exactly when his father was supposed to have died, but he’d surely had enough opportunities to make contact with Miles over the years while he was still alive, if he’d ever given a damn. But when Naomi had talked about the “deceased individuals” on this island, Miles had immediately flashed back to the day when he’d asked his mother where his father was buried and she’d said “Somewhere you can never go”. What if he was right, and his father was buried on this island?
He was so lost in thought, he didn’t realise for a moment that he’d walked straight past his cabin. That was the one Naomi had directed him to, the last one on the right. Tentatively, Miles pushed open the door and stepped inside.
“Great,” he muttered when he saw the guy who’d bumped into him earlier. “It just gets better and better.”
Day 4:
Naomi gathered the science team together in one of the cabins for a meeting, the first time she’d spent any real time with them since they’d all boarded at Fiji. “Now, you may be wondering why we hired a science team for this operation,” she began.
“No kidding,” Miles muttered. “Seems like you gave us all a totally different explanation for why we’re here.” The third member of their team, Charlotte, nodded in agreement.
“I’m sure you’re all aware by now of the man that Mr. Widmore hired us to extract,” Naomi continued, holding up a photograph of a middle-aged man. “Benjamin Linus. This man is a very dangerous individual, and we have reason to believe that on our arrival on the island, he may mobilise his friends to launch a counter-attack on us. He’s done this before,” she went on to detail the effects of the gas he had used against a group of people back in 1992. Charlotte looked as if she was trying not to cry during that speech, and Daniel wondered why.
“Now, there’s something else I should warn you about before we get too close to the island,” Naomi went on. “Something which Captain Gault refers to as cabin fever. I wouldn’t use that term myself, but I need to talk to you about it anyway in case anyone gets any ideas about making their own way to the island without following a very strict bearing of 305.”
“Cabin fever?” Charlotte asked. “What do you mean by that?”
Naomi sighed. “Well, basically, this is something that can be caused by close proximity to the island. I don’t know why, but to put it in layman’s terms, if anyone gets too close to the island via any other bearing, it can lead to them becoming disoriented, getting headaches and nosebleeds, confusion about the past, present and future. In other words, they become unstuck in time.”
Miles rolled his eyes at Daniel and Charlotte. “Is she kidding us?” he hissed. “How stupid does that chick think we are?”
“Now, Captain Gault is fully aware of the situation and will make sure he remains on that bearing at all times, but should we ever lose that -“
Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1977.
“Jesus Christ, man, what’s the matter with you? You drunk or something?”
Daniel blinked in surprise at the man who had helped him to his feet. “Sorry, uh, Ryan. I guess I don’t feel so good.” That was strange. For a minute there, he thought he’d been on the boat again, and someone had been giving a talk to him and the rest of the science team, about the man they’d been sent to extract... No, it was gone.
“Well, if you’re planning to get on the sub to the island tomorrow, you better get over it,” Ryan growled. “I don’t think anyone’ll thank you for giving them your germs while you’re all cooped in that confined space like that.”
“Uh, I don’t think I’m gonna be on the sub,” Daniel replied, shaking his head. Then the memory of the boat came back to him again: the woman whose name he couldn’t remember was talking about going to the island as well. That was probably why he’d dreamed that, because he’d been thinking about the sub trip. But even as Daniel had thought that, something about it didn’t feel right. It was as though it was a memory, not a dream.
“Yeah, well maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Ryan snorted. “Sounds like they got themselves a situation over there anyway. A Hostile tripped the perimeter yesterday and got himself caught, and those yahoos couldn’t decide how to deal with him. I mean, he violated the truce, for Pete’s sake, they know the protocol. They wrote the protocol! A Hostile trips the perimeter, they shoot! Stu Radzinsky, he had the right idea. But Horace dithered about it, kept saying he needed more time. And what happened? He floored one of the security guys and got away. And now he’s shot Roger Linus’s kid, Ben. A twelve year old kid, and they don’t even know if he’s gonna live or die because Horace couldn’t make a damn decision. That place has gone to the dogs if you ask me. About time they ditched the hippy and let someone who could lead, lead.”
“Ben Linus...” Daniel repeated. That name had been mentioned on the boat as well, he remembered now, it was the name of the man they were being sent to extract...
“Hey, what’s the matter with you?” Ryan demanded. “You’re acting weird even for you, and that’s saying something -“
The Kahana, somewhere in the Pacific. 2004.
“Daniel?” Charlotte was asking. “What’s wrong?”
Daniel grabbed her by the arm. “Where am I?”
“On - a - boat,” Naomi began, speaking with exaggerated patience as though she were speaking to an idiot. “Going - to - the - island.”
“The island?” Daniel gasped. “What do you mean? Where’s Ryan? I’m supposed to be in Ann Arbor! I wasn’t meant to be going to the island. How did I get here?”
“What’s wrong with him?” Charlotte whispered to Naomi, who just shook her head. Miles looked as if he had lots of questions to ask, but in the end he plumped for “Who the hell is Ryan?”
“He’s one of my fellow scientists,” Daniel replied mechanically. “In the DHARMA Initiative. He’s supposed to be getting the sub to the island tomorrow, but I wasn’t going to go - how did I get here?”
“What’s the DHARMA Initiative? Who the hell even heard of that?” Miles demanded, but Charlotte had frozen. “I have. They used to live on the island where we’re going to. Or I should say we did, because my family were a part of it. But I moved away with my mum when I was little. That’s why I’m on this ship, to find where I was born. My mum -“ Charlotte hesitated, appearing to decide that she didn’t want to carry on talking about that. “But when Mr. Abaddon recruited me, he said that they weren’t on the island any more, that they - haven’t been there since 1992.” Charlotte swallowed hard before continuing, glancing warily at Naomi first. “Er, Daniel? What year do you think it is?”
“What are you talking about?” Daniel frowned. “It’s 1977!”
Miles shook his head. “Daniel, it’s 2004.”
Naomi addressed her first remark to Miles. “Do you still think I was kidding earlier?” to which Miles sullenly shook his head. “Look, I think we’d better take him to the sick bay, let Ray take a look at him. Charlotte, you take one arm, I’ll take the other.” She muttered something under her breath, which Daniel couldn’t quite catch but it sounded like what she was going to say to somebody called Matthew when she got back.
“Wait!” Daniel cried. “I need my journal.” There had to be something in there, something he’d written when he was carrying out his experiments in 1996 which would help him understand what was happening now, how one minute he could be in 1977 and the next in 2004...
“You mean that ratty old book on your bunk?” Miles asked. “I’ll get it.” He had to admit it was a relief for him to escape the situation as he ran down the deck towards the berth he and Daniel shared, ignoring the cry from a startled Regina as he collided with her. Grabbing the book, he began leafing through it. Faraday thinks this crap’s gonna help him? Miles thought to himself as he flipped through page after page of incomprehensible equations. Well, maybe it would mean something to him, but it certainly didn’t to Miles.
Wait a second. What was that?
Miles froze as he turned to a page with some kind of logo, a hexagonal shape with some kind of pattern around the sides of the hexagon and another in the centre. Beside it, Daniel had scrawled “The Orchid”.
He’d seen that logo before. He must have been about eight, and it had been when they were living in the old apartment...
Miles couldn’t even remember what he’d been looking for, but he did remember going through one of Lara’s cabinets and finding some paperwork with a similar logo to the one in Daniel’s journal. “What’s this?” he’d asked.
Lara had angrily snatched the paperwork away. “Where did you find this?” she’d demanded.
“It was in the cabinet,” Miles had explained.
“Never go through my things without asking me again!” Lara had yelled, before storming out of the room and slamming the door. That night, after Miles had gone to bed but hadn’t been able to sleep, he’d watched her from his window as she’d burned what appeared to be everything containing the octagonal logo.
Later, when she’d calmed down, she’d apologised to Miles for overreacting, and they’d never spoken of it again, firstly because Miles was too afraid of her temper to bring it up, and then later because, after a while, he’d forgotten about the entire incident.
Until he saw the logo again. Where had it come from, what did it mean and how did it connect to Daniel? Why had Lara reacted so strongly when Miles had come across it? How did Daniel’s past connect to Miles’s own?
“Right, here we are,” Naomi began, helping Daniel over the threshold. “This is Dr. -“
“I don’t need a doctor,” Daniel rounded on her. “I just want to know how I ended up back here!”
Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1977.
“Frankly, we’re all wondering that,” Ryan snorted. “What were they thinking when they recruited you? What’s the matter with you today?”
Daniel shook his head, which was beginning to ache. “Trust me, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“You know what? Don’t even bother.” Ryan turned away in disgust, turning instead to another of their fellow scientists, Ian. “Didn’t you say the island had sent us the new recruits’ picture?”
Ian rolled his eyes, elbowed him good-naturedly. “You just want to see if they’ve got any good-looking chicks in this year. I think you might be disappointed actually, although there is this one girl -“ He pointed at someone in the front row. “Apparently, she’s in the motor pool.”
Daniel caught a glimpse of the photo as Ian was passing it to Ryan, then suddenly stopped and stared. How could that be? That was Kate that Ian was talking about, and Jack and Hurley with her. Yes, he remembered now, he remembered the three of them. And he remembered the boat he’d been on, remembered the names of the people he’d just been with, Naomi, Charlotte...and Miles. He’d met them all before he came here, he’d met them on the island, and then they’d been rescued...but how had they ended up in 1977? There had to be something, some variable that had come into play...
But that would be later, when he actually got back to the island. What mattered now was that he remembered it all, that he now understood what was happening to him. He’d seen this before, with Theresa, when she’d suddenly lapse into conversation with long-dead relatives. Somehow, Daniel had found himself back on the freighter, before he ever arrived on the island, before Ben Linus had turned the wheel, stranding them eventually in 1974.
Or could the freighter be his current present, and the DHARMA Initiative his future? Theresa’s consciousness had skipped to the future a few times as well; Daniel remembered her telling him about events in the UK that were yet to happen (while the election of Tony Blair as Prime Minister had come as no surprise, there had been no way Theresa could have known about the death of Princess Diana). Daniel didn’t know which of these was his past, and which his future. But he did remember from his previous research at Oxford how he could stop this temporal displacement.
He needed a constant. He needed Miles.
They hadn’t got off to a great start when they’d first found themselves as bunkmates on the freighter, but Daniel remembered how they had bonded over time, and how the defining moment in their relationship had been in their first week as members of the DHARMA Initiative, when Daniel had found himself escorting a sick-looking Miles back to the barracks from the cafeteria after Miles had been talking to the Asian man who had processed him, and a woman who appeared to be his wife.
“So, uh, you want to tell me what happened back there?” Daniel had asked as he’d led Miles back to the barracks.
“That man and woman back there?” Miles had gestured vaguely towards the cafeteria. “That was my mom and dad. Well, it was my mom, anyway, and she said that they were married. I never met my dad, as I told you on the freighter, but like I said to you, I always wondered about him. I told you what my mom said to me before she died, right? I just...never expected to actually meet him here.” He’d broken off at that point. “Great, I’m rambling even more than you, so I’m just gonna shut up now.”
“No, Miles, I understand more than you probably realise,” Daniel had begun, pushing open the door to Miles’s house as he spoke. “I didn’t say anything at the time, but, uh, actually I saw my mother too. You met her too, actually, in 1954. You remember Ellie?”
“Blonde chick, right?” Miles asked, startled. “That one who was holding you at gunpoint?”
Daniel had nodded. “That’s right.”
Miles had whistled. “And I thought my family dynamic was screwed.”
Daniel had chosen to ignore this. “I’d thought when I first saw her that I recognised her somehow, but it took me a few minutes to actually place her. I’d never seen any pictures of her at that age, and I’d never heard anyone call her anything but Eloise.”
“And you couldn’t say anything to her, obviously,” Miles had pointed out.
“Actually, she might have been more likely to believe me than your mother would have to believe you,” Daniel had mused. “My mother was always interested in the science behind time travel, and had encouraged me to study it. Of course, I’m not sure whether that was the case in 1954, so maybe she wouldn’t have.”
“What about your dad?” Miles had asked, his mind appearing to have been taken off his own problems as he listened to Daniel’s story.
“Uh, I never knew who he was. My parents had separated before I was born, and I never even knew his name. I always got the impression that my mother didn’t want me to know.”
“Looks like we have more in common than we first thought when we met,” Miles had replied. “Who knows, maybe your dad’s someone we’ve seen, or we will see. You better hope it’s not that asshole who was with Ellie back in ’54!” he’d laughed, elbowing Daniel in the ribs.
Daniel had shaken his head. “I doubt it.”
“Did you...ever wonder about him?” Miles asked. “Like, who he was or anything?”
Daniel knew without being told that Miles had often wondered about this, that it had taken a lot for him to raise the subject with Daniel, that he probably would never have asked had it not been for the fact that he’d just seen his parents (and that he’d probably deny ever having said anything if anyone else ever asked).
“I wondered about it more when I was younger,” he’d answered. “But once I understood that my mother really didn’t like me asking, I just dropped it. And then, after I’d been performing my experiments for a while, I guess I just forgot to wonder about him.”
“I wondered about him all my life,” Miles had admitted. “Even though I knew I shouldn’t care, since he kicked us out when I was a baby, I always wondered why. And now that I’ve seen him, I’m more confused than ever. They looked happy together. There was nothing there to explain what happened.”
“Well, it hasn’t actually happened yet, and won’t for another three years,” Daniel had pointed out, stopping as he caught the glare on Miles’s face. “Sorry.”
“Why am I even wasting my time thinking about this?” Miles snapped, not looking at Daniel. “He made his choice. He may not be dead yet, but he is to me. Why should I care about him?”
“I guess for the same reasons I used to care about who my father was,” Daniel had replied, pulling Miles closer to him, stroking his hair, kissing him on the lips.
Yes, he remembered now, remembered his past (future?) with Miles, and he knew that Miles was the person he needed to save him.
And when he had found Miles again, and he knew which of these was his present and which was either his past or future, Daniel knew what he had to do. He understood now that he had seen Jack, Kate and Hurley that he had to somehow prevent Oceanic Flight 815 from crashing, their freighter from ever setting sail to the island. He’d be able to save Charlotte, Naomi, all the people who hadn’t survived the plane crash. And he would make Eloise proud of him.
But before he could do any of this, he needed to find Miles again.
The sick bay, the Kahana. 2004.
“Oi!” Charlotte exclaimed, tugging on Naomi’s sleeve. “I’m talking to you! I asked you what was happening to him. He’s been out of it for the last bloody hour.”
“Look, I don’t understand it any more than you do,” Naomi began, but Miles interrupted as he dashed in, carrying Daniel’s journal. “From what Mr. Abaddon explained to me, when this happens, people think they’re back in their own past. But I can’t see how this can be possible. Daniel’s not old enough to have been working with the DHARMA Initiative in 1977.”
“Because that’s not my past!” Daniel yelled, taking the journal from Miles’s hands (“Well, thank you, too,” Miles muttered). “This is!”
Ray, the freighter’s physician, shook his head in disgust. “You were right about him. He’s crazy.”
“I am not crazy,” Daniel attempted to explain. “I know what’s happening.”
“Sure you do,” Ray replied. “Now, I’m just going to give you something -“
“No!” Daniel exclaimed. “You can’t sedate me. I have to get back to the island, so I can stop this -“ he gestured vaguely towards them all - “from happening!”
“That’s right, Dan,” Ray said soothingly. “We’re on our way to the island now.”
“No, I have to get back there in 1977!” Daniel cried. “They’re all there, back in DHARMA, all of them. Jack Shephard, Kate Austen, Hugo Reyes. They’re in 1977, and they’re not supposed to be. None of us are. And I have to get back there to stop it, so that none of this ever happens!”
Miles looked at Charlotte. “You have any idea what he’s talking about? Who are those people he just mentioned?”
“I don’t know, okay?” Charlotte snapped, tearful and frustrated. “I don’t remember anyone’s name from that time. I was six years old when I left, and for years, I wasn’t even sure if my memories of DHARMA were real, because my mum always used to tell me that I’d made it all up. I’m sorry, I don’t know who they are.”
“But I do.”
Frank Lapidus had entered the sick bay, carrying the flight manifest in his hands. He laid it on the table in front of them all.
“Ugh, not that damn manifest again, Lapidus,” Miles groaned. “Do you really think this is the time to start boring us with your conspiracy theories?”
“Actually, it is.” Frank pointed at a name on the manifest. “Faraday mentioned Hugo Reyes. There he is. He had seat 20G and 20H on Oceanic Flight 815. Jack Shephard was in Row 23, and here’s Kate Austen over in 27H. Austen was all over the news when they caught up with her in Australia after that Marshal had been looking for her for three years, and I’m sure they said she was 27. There’s no way she could have been on the island in 1977.”
“I think Miles is right about that thing,” Ray sighed. “Faraday’s obviously remembered the names from Lapidus going on and on about it, he’s heard about the DHARMA Initiative from somewhere, it’s all stuck in his head and he’s totally lost it.”
“Let me explain,” Daniel pleaded - but how could he? How could he tell them what he remembered, that a few days from now Ray would be dead, his body washed up on the beach with the throat cut, before it had actually happened on the freighter? How could he tell an already upset Charlotte that she only had approximately three weeks to live before she succumbed to the effects of temporal displacement?
“After we get to the island,” he eventually began, “Ben Linus will do something that will...dislodge us.”
“From what?” Charlotte asked.
“Time.” Daniel explained. “So what’s happening to me...it’s in the past, but it’s also in my future. And if it carries on, it’ll be like Naomi said. I won’t be able to distinguish between them. The only way I’ll be able to stop this happening is if I can find a constant.”
“What’s that?” Miles asked.
“It’s something that’s present in both times, something familiar, something I really care about, something that can keep me anchored. Miles...I need to find you.”
“What?” Miles frowned. “That’s impossible. In 1977, I was only a baby. I was born on March 23rd, 1977, in Encino, California. I wasn’t anywhere near Ann Arbor. Or the island.”
“Are you sure about that?” Charlotte asked. “Because when I first saw you, I remembered that I’d heard the name Miles somewhere before, and then I remembered -“
The Galaga, approaching the submarine dock on the island. 1977.
“Christ, how much of the tranq did they give you back in Ann Arbor? Someone slipped up and gave you too much, that’s for sure.” The voice sounded very far away to Daniel, although he knew it must be somewhere close by.
“Guy’s been out of it the last couple of days,” Ryan muttered. “I highly doubt it made a difference.”
“What the -“ Daniel began. He attempted to struggle to his feet, but found that he had been strapped to one of the beds on the submarine. “Why am I here? Why am I strapped in?”
“Gonna have to have words with the other side about watching how much of the tranq they give people. This was explained to you before you got on board. We always have to strap people in because this last leg of the journey can be turbulent. But we’re almost at the island now, and Dr. Chang is supposed to be sending someone to meet you all and show you to your quarters.”
“Miles?” Daniel gasped. “Will he be sending Miles? I need to see -“
The Kahana, 2004.
“Miles!”
“I’m right here, Dan,” Miles answered.
“Okay, Miles, I need you to remember this conversation. Three years from now, your father’s going to ask someone to help him arrange for a party of scientists to be brought from the submarine to the DHARMA barracks. I’m going to need it to be you.”
“My father? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Dr. Chang, the lead scientist at DHARMA. He’s going to ask you to meet our party, and I need you to go with him and meet me at the Pala Ferry. Once I’ve made contact with you in both times, this will stop happening,” Daniel went on, but he could see that Miles was barely listening.
“No, what was that about my father? My father is dead!” Miles slammed his fist into the palm of his hand, ignoring the raised eyebrows of Charlotte and Frank.
“Not in 1977,” Daniel attempted to explain, but then he suddenly became aware that Charlotte was staring at him.
“Daniel, your nose, it’s bleeding...”
The Pala Ferry, 1977.
Oof. The wind was completely knocked from Daniel’s body as he found himself slammed face down against the dock.
“You might want to clean yourself up a bit, man,” came a voice from somewhere above him. “Looks like you injured yourself when you fell. You’re bleeding.”
“No, it’s - it’s not that,” Daniel began, but the man who had addressed him brushed that off. “Whatever. Look, Radzinsky’s over there to check us in.”
Daniel scanned the crowd looking for any sign of the face he wanted to see. Radzinsky appeared to be arguing with Ryan about who knew what, while Dr. Chang was helping someone else with his suitcase. He attempted to hoist his own through the hatch, but quickly realised he was going to struggle with it.
“Hey, could someone give me a hand with this?”
“Yeah, I got it, man,” a voice began, then hesitated. “Daniel?”
“Miles!” Daniel exclaimed, running forward to meet him. “You remembered!”
Miles nodded. “Of course I did. Did you really think I wouldn’t be here waiting for you?”
“Listen, I don’t have much time,” Daniel began. “The next time I go back, it’ll be the last. I’ll be back in 2004. But I want you to know that I’m sorry about the way I broke it to you about your father.”
“Shh!” Miles hissed; Pierre Chang was nearby, still helping the other scientist with his luggage. “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t to know that I didn’t know. And you were there for me when I first saw them both in the cafeteria that time. Except you might not know about that yet.”
“No, I still have all my memories of the last three years. I still remember that night. But when I go back to 2004, I don’t know if I’ll remember any of it, because it won’t have happened for me yet. But I’m sorry for leaving you behind as well.”
“You did what you had to do at the time,” Miles reassured him.
“What I thought I had to do,” Daniel corrected him. “But all this, it reminded me what was important. If I did anything to change time, to make none of this have happened, then you and I would have never met. Or we’d have been kept apart, with you being brought up by DHARMA and me by the Hostiles. But either way, we wouldn’t have been together. And what’s been happening to me, it’s reminded me of what’s important. I’m not going to leave you again, Miles...”
The Kahana, 2004.
“Daniel?” Charlotte repeated, pointing at his nose again. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Daniel replied; the bleeding had stopped, the confusion had stopped, he knew where and when he was now. “Thank you, Miles, for, uh, what you’re gonna do.”
Miles shook his head. “Um, okay.”
“Look, I think maybe you better get him back to your cabin, Miles,” Frank suggested. “It’s been kind of a long day. For all of us.”
“You’re not kidding,” Miles muttered, taking Daniel by the arm and leading him out of the sick bay, brushing off Frank and Charlotte’s looks of concern.
“Could you be any more fidgety?” Miles asked that night as he lay in the bunk below Daniel, trying to sleep.
“Sorry,” Daniel mumbled, turning over.
“No, I’m sorry,” Miles replied, instantly feeling guilty. “I couldn’t sleep myself anyway, not just because of that.”
“What’s the matter?” Daniel asked.
“Forget it,” Miles snapped. “You probably won’t remember anyway.”
“I don’t remember much of what happened,” Daniel began. “But some of it...it seemed familiar, only I didn’t understand at the time. I thought it was just because I’d been researching the island, and the DHARMA Initiative, that it was something like Ray said, that I got confused. But I thought about it, and I remembered some of the experiments I used to do.”
“What do you mean?” Miles asked despite himself.
“I stopped doing it after Theresa,” Daniel continued. “She didn’t know which was her past and which was her future, just like me. But I’d managed to send my consciousness to the future, too. I’d forgotten most of what I’d seen, after all the exposure to radiation. Most of it hadn’t made any sense to me at the time anyway. But now, I think that I must have seen some of my future back then. And I thought that I wouldn’t remember it, but I do.”
“Do you, uh, remember what you said to me about my father?” Miles blurted out, then instantly regretted asking. Whatever the hell had happened to Daniel back there, he didn’t need that dumping on him.
“Your father?” Daniel repeated. “Did I mention him? I’m sorry, I don’t remember that part.”
“I never knew him,” Miles began, reflecting that Daniel was the first person he’d ever felt he could talk about this with. The kids he’d grown up with knew, of course, that Miles’s father hadn’t been around, but he’d never really discussed it with anyone, and once he knew that his father had died, it had become easier to just leave it at telling people that. “He kicked us out when I was a baby, and I’ve never known why. Eventually, when my mother knew she hadn’t much longer to live, she admitted that he’d died, and that his body was buried somewhere I could never go. But when Naomi recruited me, she told me she wanted me to talk to some deceased individuals, and I wondered if maybe it was the island she meant. I never even had a name for him before. Straume’s my mother’s maiden name, and she reverted to that after they split up. I’d never even heard the name Chang. So when you mentioned him, it kind of freaked me out, you talking about him as if we both knew him.”
“I’m sorry,” Daniel replied. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Guess it kind of freaked me out too. That’s why I can’t sleep. I keep seeing all these images in my head, things that haven’t happened yet. There’s my mother, standing in a camp holding a gun. Charlotte, with her nose bleeding. In fact, when I first saw you in Fiji, I felt as though I’d seen you somewhere before, although I had no idea where. And the one thing I do remember is that I wanted to try and change things so that none of this ever happened.”
“I was about to say that was the craziest thing I ever heard,” Miles said, “But after today, I’m not even sure that’s true.”
“It’s okay,” Daniel reassured him. “I got pretty used to people thinking I was crazy. When I was at Oxford, my students all used to call me by the name of that guy from Back to the Future.”
“Doc Brown?” Miles laughed. “But didn’t that guy end up ripping up Marty’s letter without even reading it in the first movie, in case he ended up altering the future?”
“I can’t remember.” Daniel admitted.
“Wait. He sends Marty back at the end with the idea of doing exactly that. So maybe your students’ comparison wasn’t really that stupid.”
“I don’t know,” Daniel mused. “If I did somehow change things, and I’m not saying that’s even possible, then you probably wouldn’t manage to get closure on your father.”
“Do I?” Miles couldn’t quite believe that he was asking this. “In the future, I mean. Do I know why he sent us away?”
“I can’t remember much,” Daniel admitted. “But I think you do.”
While Miles appreciated knowing that, he also knew that just being told that by Daniel wouldn’t help him to get closure, that he would need to experience whatever was to come in order to achieve that.
“And I understand how much you need that,” Daniel continued, “but there were other things I wanted to change. But I don’t know if I can. My mother always used to tell me that the universe has a way of course correcting, and even if I changed anything, it might still happen anyway.”
But as he leaned in closer towards Miles and pulled him towards him, Daniel knew that there was one thing that he would never change.