Whatever Happened, Happened
Title: Whatever Happened, Happened
Fandoms: Lost and Fringe.
Characters: Daniel Faraday, Walter Bishop, Eloise Hawking, Charles Widmore, William Bell, Peter Bishop, Olivia Dunham. Mentions of Charlotte, Walternate, Elizabeth, the Observer.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers up through 6x11 of Lost and 3x10 of Fringe.
Word count: 6031
Summary: What if Daniel and Walter had been in St Claire's together?
St. Claire’s Hospital, Essex, Massachusetts. 1997.
“Well, Daniel,” Eloise Hawking began as she stared around her rather disdainfully at the communal area of St Claire’s Hospital, “this is to be where you will stay the next few weeks at least. I hope that they will be able to do something to help with your memory.”
Daniel looked like he was about to reply, but a new voice interrupted them before he had the chance. “Welcome,” said a man who looked to be a few years younger than Eloise, although it was hard to tell, given that his beard obscured much of his face. “I should warn you, the butterscotch pudding leaves something to be desired.”
“Then it is fortunate that I selected this facility for the treatment it offers, and not for its culinary expertise,” Eloise snapped, looking at the man with distaste. “Tell me, Dr. Sumner, do you have a telephone I can use?” The doctor pointed her in the direction of a payphone, where she hastily dialled a number. “Could you not have found somewhere better than this, Charles?” she hissed.
“Maybe I could have,” Charles Widmore retorted, “if I wasn’t also having to fund the treatment for that poor young woman, Theresa Spencer.”
“You made the choice to take that on, Charles,” Eloise reminded him.
“And you made the choice to push Daniel into studying time travel,” Charles pointed out. “You’re the one who created this situation, Eloise.”
Eloise replaced the receiver without another word, turning on her heel and walking back towards Daniel and the man who had criticised the food. “Ms. Hawking?” Dr. Sumner asked. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine, thank you,” Eloise snapped.
“I understand that this can’t be easy for you,” Dr. Sumner began, “but you have no need to worry. Daniel will be safe in our hands.”
Eloise nodded. There could, after all, have been worse places that Charles could have found (she had looked around one in California called Santa Rosa and had not been impressed).
“I trust my instructions were clear?” she asked. “Daniel is to have no visitors other than myself.”
“Understood.” Dr. Sumner nodded. “I’ll make sure our staff are aware of that. The mental health of our patients is my priority, and if contact with others would be detrimental to that, then we will, of course, eliminate that.”
Charles had told Eloise of his last conversation with Abigail, the sister of Theresa Spencer, where she had demanded to know where she could find Daniel. Charles had managed to successfully convince her that he didn’t know, and apparently she had been slightly pacified by his offer of financial assistance towards Theresa’s care, but Eloise feared that if Abigail were determined enough, she could track Daniel down to St Claire’s. And contact with her was not what Daniel needed right now. It would only distress him further to be confronted with the reminder of his failure to save Theresa and his inability to remedy the situation.
Yet Eloise was determined that Charles himself should have no access to Daniel. She knew how it was meant to happen now; she knew from reading Daniel’s journal that Charles would be the one to approach Daniel with his proposition that Daniel should accompany his mission to reclaim the island from the Linus boy. (That was between the two of them, it wasn’t Daniel’s fight; why could Charles not just let him be?) And Eloise wondered whether maybe this was the best place for Daniel after all. Much as she would have loved for him to be cured so that he could live independently and hopefully one day return to his research, Eloise knew that as long as he was here, Charles would not be able to recruit him for his mission, and he would never end up in 1977 where Eloise would shoot him.
The man who had criticised the food was still talking to Daniel when Eloise returned. “I was sure that I’d seen your face somewhere before. But the man I saw in Ann Arbor...that must have been about twenty years ago, and he looked much the same age as you are now, if not slightly older. It’s a shame, if that had indeed been you, then it would have been fascinating.”
“Come along, Walter,” an orderly said, taking him by the arm and leading him away. “Don’t worry,” she turned around to whisper to Eloise. “He’s basically harmless. He has a few...issues with his memory. It’s possible that your son reminds him of someone he met before.”
But Eloise barely heard her. This man claimed to have recognised Daniel from 1977...it seemed that it was not going to work. No matter what Eloise attempted to do, Daniel’s fate was sealed, and the encounter with this man had only served to remind her of that.
Day 2:
Daniel pushed his butterscotch pudding away from him listlessly, having taken four mouthfuls and found himself unable to eat any more of the tasteless concoction.
“Dreadful, isn’t it?” came a voice from somewhere to his right; Daniel turned around to see a vaguely familiar-looking man with a beard. “The butterscotch pudding. Just as I warned you about when you arrived yesterday.”
“Uh, I’m sorry?” Daniel frowned, trying to remember. “Have we met?”
“But of course!” the man exclaimed. “When you arrived. My name is Walter.” He held out his hand, which Daniel shook. “I’m Daniel Faraday. Or, uh, did you already know that?”
Walter smiled. “Do not worry, Daniel,” he began. “I sometimes forget things too. But one thing I haven’t forgotten...blueberry pancakes. It’s several years since I had one of those, and after years of this butterscotch pudding every Monday, I find I miss them.”
Daniel wasn’t quite sure how to reply to this, but was saved from having to make any kind of response by a man to their left, who had suddenly and without explanation burst into song. “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream....”
“Did you warn me about him yesterday too?” he asked, but Walter had suddenly smiled. “That’s Carlos! He has the room next door to me. He does this a lot. It took some getting used to at first, but now I find that I can’t sleep without his singing. He was singing it yesterday - oh, of course, you don’t remember.”
But Daniel was frowning as Walter continued with his story. He couldn’t remember Carlos singing the day before, that was true. But he also couldn’t remember the name of the man standing before him.
Day 5:
“Is there something wrong?” Walter asked as he took in Daniel, standing by the payphone staring at the receiver in his hand, frowning at it.
“I was just trying to call Theresa,” Daniel explained. “Or her sister, Abigail. I need to know how things are with her. I can’t just leave it at that.”
Walter nodded, as though he knew what Daniel was talking about. Maybe he did; Daniel couldn’t remember whether he’d ever mentioned her to him or not.
“But I can’t even remember what her number is. I just tried calling and realised it was the number she had when I first met her four years ago. Then I kept getting all the numbers in the wrong order. I need to remember the number. I have to find out how Charlotte is.”
Walter stared at him. “Who’s Charlotte?”
Daniel frowned, shook his head. “What?”
“You were saying that you needed to know how Charlotte was. But a few minutes earlier, you were talking about trying to contact someone called Theresa. Who is Charlotte?”
Charlotte? Daniel stared at Walter, confused. Why would he have said that? He didn’t know anyone called Charlotte. Then an image flashed before his eyes: a young red-haired woman in a bar he remembered from his Oxford days, telling her friend that her mother wouldn’t be happy about her marrying an American, then the same woman, crying, with blood pouring from her nose. But who was she? Daniel couldn’t ever remember seeing that woman before.
“I don’t know...”
Day 23:
“Oxford?” Walter asked. “Is that how we know each other?”
“When were you there?”
“I was there for my postgraduate studies in the 1970s.” Walter informed him.
Daniel shook his head. “We wouldn’t have been there together then. I only left a couple of years ago. Maybe I studied you...I can’t remember.”
“I have it!” Walter exclaimed. “I know where we have met before. Wasn’t it that concert in Ann Arbor in June 1977? Geronimo Jackson supporting Violet Sedan Chair.”
“I don’t think so.” Daniel shook his head. “I wasn’t born in June 1977.” Yet even as he said it, he had a strange flash of himself at some stadium, listening to Geronimo Jackson singing their greatest hit, Dharma Lady. Where had that come from? How had Daniel even known that that was their greatest hit, when up until Walter had mentioned the name, he couldn’t even remember having heard of that group? And how could he have been at a concert on the date Walter had mentioned? Unless Walter had his dates wrong, he did admit that his memory wasn’t what it used to be...
“Violet Sedan Chair,” Walter continued. “I wonder whatever happened to them. It’s been a long time since they released anything new...”
“Walter?” An orderly interrupted. “Your visitor is here.”
“A visitor for me?” Walter asked. “I never have any visitors. Is it Peter?” He turned around to see a man with grey hair standing behind him. Daniel thought he’d seen this man come to visit Walter the previous week, but maybe he was wrong. The man did look familiar, though.
“No, Walter, it’s me, Doctor Paris,” the man replied, shooting Walter a look that Daniel couldn’t understand. “You asked me to come back, remember?”
“Of course,” Walter replied, allowing himself to be led away by his visitor. But as Daniel watched him walk away, he wondered who the man was and whether Walter really wanted him here.
Day 42:
“I hear your mother came to see you yesterday,” Walter said as he approached Daniel. “That must have been nice. I never have any visitors.”
“Didn’t somebody visit you a couple of weeks ago?” Daniel asked.
Walter frowned, shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Daniel shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t know...I can see this man with you, and I don’t know why...I remember things, but I don’t see how they can be true, like being at that concert you mentioned, and sometimes...I think I remember things that haven’t happened yet.”
“Déjà vu!” Walter exclaimed. “An interesting phenomena. My friend Belly and I were going to investigate that once. I can’t remember why we didn’t.”
“I don’t think it is déjà vu,” Daniel explained. “I remembered Carlos being taken out and restrained after he lost his temper with his brother...before it happened. It used to happen to my girlfriend as well, in Oxford.”
“Oxford? I was there once too.” Walter interrupted. “But carry on. Your story sounds fascinating. You say that you knew that Carlos was going to be restrained before it happened.”
“When I was at Oxford, my girlfriend and I were studying time travel.” Daniel began. “We had a machine which we used to send our consciousnesses back in time.”
“Was that Theresa? Or Charlotte?” Walter asked.
“Theresa. I managed to send her to the future. She knew the outcome of the general election in the UK four months before it happened, and she knew that Princess Diana was going to die. But something went wrong. Her consciousness became unstuck in time.”
“So she had nothing to anchor her to one time or another.” Walter mused.
“But I don’t understand why. That’s supposed to work. But I tried it on a lab rat, Eloise, and it didn’t work with her. I should have been her constant. And I should have been Theresa’s too. And I was reading my journal this morning, and I found this.” Daniel opened his journal to show Walter where he had written “If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.”
“Who is Desmond Hume?” Walter asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember meeting a Desmond. Maybe it’s someone I haven’t met yet. But it says in my journal that he’s my constant, so he’s obviously someone important to me at some time. Or maybe he already was. Maybe I did meet him, and I don’t remember.” Daniel shook his head.
“So he has not been your constant yet. But your research sounds very interesting. Tell me, what inspired you to start investigating time travel?”
“It was my mother’s idea,” Daniel explained. “She was the one who first suggested the idea to me.” Remembering that fearsome woman Walter had seen arriving on visiting days, Walter could quite well imagine how she might have pushed Daniel into studying time travel, whether it was what Daniel wanted or not. “But now it’s about Theresa again. If I could change the past so that what happened to Theresa didn’t happen...”
“What do you mean, Daniel?” Walter asked.
But Daniel looked at Walter as though he was no longer seeing him. “Theresa?” he said. “You can’t be talking to your Grandmother Spencer. You told me she died back in 1992...”
“Daniel?” Walter frowned, tugging on Daniel’s sleeve to get his attention. “Daniel?”
“Er, what year do you think it is?” Daniel asked, but Walter knew that he wasn’t talking to him, but to this Theresa.
Day 84:
“Turn the device to 2.342,” Daniel muttered to himself. “11 Hertz.”
“What do you mean?” Walter asked.
“It’s how I have to unstuck Eloise’s consciousness in time,” Daniel blinked, then stared at Walter. “I mean, how I did unstick her consciousness. But now I need to do it again, to send myself back in time. I have to send myself back to last year, so that I can fix Theresa.”
“And so that you can fix yourself?” Walter asked.
“That doesn’t matter,” Daniel replied. “I never meant for this to happen, that’s why I tested it on myself first, because I never meant to hurt Theresa. But I have to go back there, so I can fix things, so she never became dislodged from time.”
“I too have wondered what would happen if I were to go back,” Walter had never spoken of this since he had been admitted to St Claire’s, and he had believed that he never would, but something told him that Daniel was the one person there who could ever understand. “If I went back to 1985, I would be able to fix a mistake that I made. I wanted to save someone too...my son. Peter. He was seven years old, and he was dying, and I tried to find a cure, but I couldn’t. And so I crossed into another universe, to save another Peter who wasn’t mine, and I took him. And just as it was for you with Theresa, every time I look at Peter I am reminded of what I have done. I tried to fix things...I tried to find a way of getting Peter back home, but I couldn’t. I caused irreparable damage to the two universes when I crossed over; they could not stand it if I crossed over to take him back. And it would have done irreparable damage to my marriage as well. When I looked at my wife, Elizabeth, after I brought Peter home, I knew that I couldn’t let her lose him again. That I couldn’t let myself lose him again.”
“So what happened?” Daniel asked.
“He is still here. He’s travelling around Europe at the moment. He does not know that he is from another universe, and he never will.”
Day 96:
“Hey, uh, I got the impression that you didn’t want to talk about this any more, but I had this dream last night, and I thought you might understand what it meant.”
“What do you mean?” Walter asked.
“After you talked about that other universe, I...think I might have seen one in my dream.” Daniel began. “It was a universe where I’d never studied physics, where I was a musician. That’s what I wanted to be when I was a kid, before my mom encouraged me to start studying physics. But in this lifetime, I was a concert pianist.”
“And Theresa?” Walter asked. Daniel could tell he was interested despite himself as he replied “That’s the odd thing...she wasn’t there, and I don’t know why. But there was someone else there...someone whose face I’ve seen before, but I don’t know how I know her...someone called Charlotte.” Daniel didn’t know how he would begin explaining to Walter that when he had looked at Charlotte, it had been as though he loved her, although he hadn’t understood how that could be.
“But if I didn’t know Theresa in this universe,” he continued instead, “then that means that somewhere out there she’s okay. She knows who and when she is, and she’s happy, because I never experimented on her.”
“I saw Peter once through an electronic viewing device,” Walter sighed. “I showed it to Elizabeth, thinking that it would help her when our Peter died. I thought that knowing that there was a version of Peter out there who would get to grow up and live his life would help her. Instead, it helped neither of us. Maybe it would have, if the other Walter had realised he had found the cure.”
“You saved him, Walter.” Daniel reached out and touched Walter’s arm. “Just remember that.”
“But at what cost?” Walter asked. “What have I done?”
Day 108:
Walter hadn’t told Daniel that he’d been trying to work on the half finished equations he’d seen in Daniel’s notebook. He’d thought at the time he started that it might be that it would come to nothing, that he would be unable to solve things. But he had to try.
Daniel had said that if he could send his consciousness back to the past, then he wouldn’t have experimented on Theresa. Maybe there was some way that Walter could do the same. If he could send his consciousness back to 1985, maybe he could cure his own son using the same cure that had been used to cure the Peter he had raised as his own. He could fix everything that had happened. And so could Daniel. He could go back and stop Theresa from ever having been a part of his experiments. All Walter had to do was show Daniel the equations he had come up with, and together, they could change the past.
But Daniel was not in the communal area when Walter looked for him, and he didn’t see him all day.
“Excuse me, Sydney?” Walter grabbed the arm of a passing orderly.
The orderly frowned, shook her head. “My name is Eve.”
“I am sorry. Tell me, where is Daniel Faraday?”
The orderly looked at him sorrowfully. “I’m sorry. Mr Faraday was released into the care of his mother this morning.”
Day 116:
“Belly!” Walter exclaimed. “I have it! I have a way to go back in time to 1985, to be able to save my son and stop all this from ever happening!”
But William was shaking his head. “You have to understand the consequences, Walter. Think about it. Think what would happen if you tried this.”
“I would succeed in saving my son...But what about the other Peter? Walternate had been distracted by the bald man and had not noticed that the cure he had found had worked - what if the same thing happened again? Could I really save one Peter and not the other? What if I saved my Peter then crossed over to make sure the other Peter was also saved? But then if I crossed over it would just cause the same damage to the universes again.” Walter sighed, realising that his friend was right and it was never going to work. “What have I done, Belly? What have I become?”
“And if you didn’t cross over, you would then have to make the choice of letting Peter from Over There die. “
“But what if I crossed over and stopped the man from distracting Walternate so he realised he had the cure...no, that still doesn’t work.”
William shook his head. “No, because the destruction you caused to their universe would still be caused. You have no way of preventing that man from getting into Walternate’s lab. You have set a chain of events in motion, and there is nothing you can do to stop it from having happened. There is only one thing you can do now, and I think you know what that is.”
Walter nodded, swallowed hard. “Will you help me, Belly? Will you do this for me? Will you remove those pieces from my brain?”
William nodded. “I will.”
March 18, 2010.
Walter shot up in bed, gasping for breath. He glanced at his clock, which read 4.42 am. What had that dream been about? He’d been sat there, writing the letter to Peter which he had destroyed earlier that same day, and Peter had called him about a case, something to do with time travel, and they’d finally tracked down the man responsible for killing passengers on a train, and just as Walter had exclaimed that the man had implanted a Faraday mesh, the man’s face had changed, changed so that it resembled the young man he had known in St Claire’s, Daniel Faraday, the young man who had spoken with Walter about time travel on so many occasions.
“Walter?” Peter, looking rumpled and slightly annoyed, stuck his head around the door. “You just shouted out something in your sleep. Is everything okay?”
Walter blinked. “Everything’s fine, son. I just had a strange dream. It was about another patient at St Claire’s, Daniel Faraday. We were friends, or as good friends as it was possible to be in that place, before he was discharged, but I have to admit I haven’t thought of him since you got me out of there. I regret that.”
Peter yawned. “Tell me about him in the morning, okay, Walter?” he mumbled, turning to go back to his own bed.
Alone once more, Walter wondered what that dream had meant. They had never investigated a case involving time travel, but then he had to acknowledge that it was perfectly possible that if there had been such a case, time had been changed so that Walter could no longer remember what had happened. Yet it had seemed so real, more real than a lot of his other memories.
More of it was starting to come back to him now - the man who had been so desperate to change time and prevent his fiancée’s death. That must have been why he had thought of Daniel Faraday, because he had been so determined that he would find a way to change time so that his girlfriend would not have been affected by his experiments. Walter wondered now whether Daniel had ever succeeded, or whether even now his attempts had driven him right back to being the man he had been when he had first been admitted to St Claire’s. Maybe even now Daniel was in some similar institution, telling his story to someone else. He could even have ended up back at St Claire’s itself at some point, although he hadn’t been there when Walter had returned to speak with Dashiell Kim. Daniel had been released into the care of his mother, that fearsome woman who had been his only visitor (strange, Walter thought briefly, that he could not remember Belly visiting him in St Claire’s yet he could picture Daniel’s mother very clearly). Walter decided that the next time he saw Agent Dunham, he would ask her if she had any way of tracking Daniel down. He would be interested to know what had become of him.
But the news Olivia eventually brought him was not good. “It seems he stayed in Essex after he left St Claire’s, living with a caretaker. I spoke to her myself, and from what she says, about three and a half years ago he had a visit from some guy named Charles Widmore.”
“As in Widmore Industries?” Peter asked. “The UK’s answer and rival to Massive Dynamic? Don’t they have a branch over here as well?”
Olivia nodded. “That’s right.”
“I think he approached Belly once about working together,” Walter mused, but Peter interrupted with “Walter, do you want to hear what happened to your friend or not?”
“So from what Caroline, the carer, told me,” Olivia continued, “Mr. Widmore had approached Daniel to see if he’d go on some trip or other. She wasn’t clear as to exactly what this involved, but she did know that he was supposed to board this freighter at Fiji.”
“Then what happened?” Walter asked.
“That’s just it. Nobody knows. The freighter never returned, and Widmore never spoke of it publicly.”
“Isn’t he supposed to have died in some weird circumstances himself?” Peter asked.
“Well, he was reported dead about three years ago, but I don’t know too much more about it.” Olivia replied, but Walter was no longer paying attention. If Daniel’s freighter had never returned, could that be because he had somehow found some way to travel back in time, found some way to save this Theresa? Walter didn’t know how he would track her down, since he couldn’t remember her last name (had he ever even known what it was?) Unless...
“What about going further back in time?” Walter asked. “Did you find any records of Daniel any earlier than that?”
“You know, it’s funny that you should mention it,” Olivia replied. “I wasn’t really expecting to find anything like that. But I did manage to find this. There were some records from a facility in Ann Arbor, back in 1977. They had a Daniel Faraday on their staff for a couple of years. I managed to get a photograph of him.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a piece of paper which she handed to Walter.
“It’s him,” Walter whispered.
“How is that even possible?” Peter asked, frowning.
“I don’t know. But he did it. It was him I remembered meeting before. He found a way back to the past. He just...ended up going further than he’d intended to go. And I wonder whether he managed to change anything, whether he managed to save the girl.”
“So what are you going to do?” Olivia asked.
“I remember his mother,” Walter replied. “She will know. I will visit her, find out what happened to Daniel.”
Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1977.
Daniel had never expected to be returning to the island, not after he’d boarded the sub, and even as he made his way to the drinks reception for those who were going, he still believed he wouldn’t be accompanying them. As he made his way into the room where the reception was being held, a man stormed out in the opposite direction, colliding with him.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” Daniel began, even though the collision had been the other man’s fault, but the man didn’t look back. Strange, Daniel thought. He was convinced he recognised that man from somewhere, but for some reason, he didn’t think it was from Ann Arbor, but longer ago than that.
“You will have to forgive Belly,” another man said as he approached him. “He is best left to himself for a while. He and I have just been told that there is no place for our ideas in the DHARMA Initiative. They say that travelling to another universe is not possible, and are not prepared to consider our ideas.” With a shock, Daniel realised that he was looking at a younger Walter Bishop. So it had been true, then, all those times in St Claire’s when Walter had insisted he recognised Daniel from somewhere... And the other man, the one Walter had called Belly, that was the man who had visited Walter sometimes. Hadn’t he been called something else, though? Daniel wondered. Then he shook his head. Everyone knew who William Bell was, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognised him sooner. And Daniel’s memories of that time were still so uncertain anyway.
“For myself, I am disappointed, but it would not be a good time for me to go out to the island right now,” Walter continued. “My wife, Elizabeth, called me today. It is very early days, so I maybe should not be telling you this, but she is expecting our first child.”
Daniel forced a smile. “Congratulations.” He held out a hand to shake Walter’s. He had to find a way to extricate himself from this conversation; he couldn’t risk saying anything that might lead Walter to know that he knew the future, that he knew what was in store for Walter and the as yet unborn child.
“I know it is too early to know, of course, but I have a feeling that the child will be a son.” Walter carried on happily, oblivious to the effect his conversation was having on Daniel. How could he carry on with Walter, listening to him talk about the hopes he had for the future, knowing all the time that the child his wife was carrying would not live beyond his seventh year and that Walter’s attempt to save the life of another Peter Bishop would tear holes in the fabric of two universes? That was part of the reason why he had been unable to remain on the island with Miles and the others, because he had found it so difficult to look at Charlotte and keep hidden the knowledge he had of her future fate.
“Elizabeth and I were talking about names on the phone,” Walter continued. “We chose a name for our son, but I cannot remember what we chose.” He shook his head, smiling.
“Peter.” The name slipped out before Daniel had time to stop himself. He cursed himself for his error, but Walter did not appear to have noticed anything amiss.
“Peter! That is it. Whatever made you think of that?”
Daniel forced a smile as he shrugged. “I...guess I just liked the name.”
“Tell me something,” Walter went on, “have we met before? Only you seem very familiar.”
“Geronimo Jackson supporting Violet Sedan Chair in concert on tour, here in Ann Arbor in June.” Daniel hastily replied, remembering Walter’s own guess at where they could possibly have met back when they were in St Claire’s together. Daniel had, in fact, ended up going to that concert after all, but had forgotten at the time that Walter would also be there.
“Of course, of course. Well, I must get back to console Belly. But it was nice to have met you,” Walter said as he reached for Daniel’s hand. Daniel shook it mechanically, forced a smile as he parted from Walter, made his way slowly towards the reception for those leaving for the island. For a moment he wondered if he should run after Walter, warn him somehow of what was to happen. But instead he turned his back, continued towards the reception. There was nothing he could do to change things. As he’d always said before, whatever happened, happened.
Los Angeles, California. 2011.
“Hello. I don’t know whether you remember me. My name is Walter Bishop, and I was in -“
“I know who you are,” Eloise Hawking informed him. “I suppose you had better come in.”
Walter followed her through the hallway, took a seat on the uncomfortable leather couch. Absentmindedly, he picked up a photograph of Daniel from a table beside him.
“That was taken on the day Daniel graduated from Oxford,” Eloise explained.
“I recognise the buildings,” Walter replied. “I was in Oxford myself, although several years before Daniel attended. The girl next to him, is that Theresa?”
Eloise’s lips thinned as she took the picture from Walter. “Mr. Bishop, why are you here?”
“I consult with the FBI now,” Walter explained, “and about a year ago we had a case that reminded me of Daniel’s experiments. He’d talk of how he wanted to change time, and I was interested in his ideas for reasons of my own. My friend Agent Dunham gave me this,” he continued, passing the DHARMA photo of Daniel to Eloise. “He is older than I remember him, yet this was taken in 1977. And so I came to the conclusion that Daniel had succeeded.”
Eloise shook her head. “No, he did not succeed. Daniel was unable to change the course of events that led to his finding himself in the 1970s, and ultimately to his death at my hands. I shot my son, Mr. Bishop, and twenty seven years later I sent him back to that same island with the full knowledge that it was unlikely that time would be changed. The universe has a way of course correcting, and whatever I tried to do, it would never be enough. I said these words once before, long ago, when speaking to a man who wanted to change his past. I knew he would never succeed, and yet I still attempted to change mine.”
“Course correcting.” Walter repeated. He had used those same words to Peter only a few days earlier, when speaking of the Observer. “Ms. Hawking, I don’t know if Daniel ever told you of anything we talked about at St. Claire’s, of how I crossed over into another universe and stole a son who wasn’t mine. I did not know of the events I was setting in motion at the time. I could not have known that my determination not to lose my son would mean that another man would end up losing his. And I did not know exactly how much damage I was causing to both our universe and another. And I also did not know that there would come a time - it hasn’t happened yet, but it will - when I will have to sacrifice my son anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Eloise asked.
“He was supposed to die, in our universe and in the other. I created a paradox by saving Peter. And now the man who helped me save him is trying to correct his mistake.”
“Why have you come to me, Mr. Bishop?” Eloise asked. “There was nothing I could do to save my own son, and there is nothing I can do to save yours.”
“I do not know,” Walter admitted. “At first I hoped that Daniel would be able to help me, that he may have found some way that I can save my son. But now I am beginning to see that there is nobody who can fix this.”
“You know, you remind me of someone else I met the day Daniel died, and again thirty years later,” Eloise mused. “The man I spoke of earlier. His name was Jack. He knew Daniel too, and he also tried to fix things so that Daniel and others need not have died. But he was also unable to change the past.”
“I am beginning to see that I will be unable to change anything myself. But I still intend to try.”
Eloise smiled. “You remind me of my son in a way as well, Mr. Bishop,” she said. “I can see why you were friends. I wish that there was some way I could help you save your son. But if there had been, I would have done it myself. So all I can do is wish you luck, Mr. Bishop.”
And when Walter looked back at Eloise, he realised that he recognised himself in her as well. Both had had to come to terms with the sacrifice of their loved ones; both had wished to change the course of events. And Walter wondered how he would handle it when the time came, as he now knew it would, that he would have to let Peter go as Eloise had let Daniel go. He only hoped that he could be as strong as the woman standing before him today.
Fandoms: Lost and Fringe.
Characters: Daniel Faraday, Walter Bishop, Eloise Hawking, Charles Widmore, William Bell, Peter Bishop, Olivia Dunham. Mentions of Charlotte, Walternate, Elizabeth, the Observer.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers up through 6x11 of Lost and 3x10 of Fringe.
Word count: 6031
Summary: What if Daniel and Walter had been in St Claire's together?
St. Claire’s Hospital, Essex, Massachusetts. 1997.
“Well, Daniel,” Eloise Hawking began as she stared around her rather disdainfully at the communal area of St Claire’s Hospital, “this is to be where you will stay the next few weeks at least. I hope that they will be able to do something to help with your memory.”
Daniel looked like he was about to reply, but a new voice interrupted them before he had the chance. “Welcome,” said a man who looked to be a few years younger than Eloise, although it was hard to tell, given that his beard obscured much of his face. “I should warn you, the butterscotch pudding leaves something to be desired.”
“Then it is fortunate that I selected this facility for the treatment it offers, and not for its culinary expertise,” Eloise snapped, looking at the man with distaste. “Tell me, Dr. Sumner, do you have a telephone I can use?” The doctor pointed her in the direction of a payphone, where she hastily dialled a number. “Could you not have found somewhere better than this, Charles?” she hissed.
“Maybe I could have,” Charles Widmore retorted, “if I wasn’t also having to fund the treatment for that poor young woman, Theresa Spencer.”
“You made the choice to take that on, Charles,” Eloise reminded him.
“And you made the choice to push Daniel into studying time travel,” Charles pointed out. “You’re the one who created this situation, Eloise.”
Eloise replaced the receiver without another word, turning on her heel and walking back towards Daniel and the man who had criticised the food. “Ms. Hawking?” Dr. Sumner asked. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine, thank you,” Eloise snapped.
“I understand that this can’t be easy for you,” Dr. Sumner began, “but you have no need to worry. Daniel will be safe in our hands.”
Eloise nodded. There could, after all, have been worse places that Charles could have found (she had looked around one in California called Santa Rosa and had not been impressed).
“I trust my instructions were clear?” she asked. “Daniel is to have no visitors other than myself.”
“Understood.” Dr. Sumner nodded. “I’ll make sure our staff are aware of that. The mental health of our patients is my priority, and if contact with others would be detrimental to that, then we will, of course, eliminate that.”
Charles had told Eloise of his last conversation with Abigail, the sister of Theresa Spencer, where she had demanded to know where she could find Daniel. Charles had managed to successfully convince her that he didn’t know, and apparently she had been slightly pacified by his offer of financial assistance towards Theresa’s care, but Eloise feared that if Abigail were determined enough, she could track Daniel down to St Claire’s. And contact with her was not what Daniel needed right now. It would only distress him further to be confronted with the reminder of his failure to save Theresa and his inability to remedy the situation.
Yet Eloise was determined that Charles himself should have no access to Daniel. She knew how it was meant to happen now; she knew from reading Daniel’s journal that Charles would be the one to approach Daniel with his proposition that Daniel should accompany his mission to reclaim the island from the Linus boy. (That was between the two of them, it wasn’t Daniel’s fight; why could Charles not just let him be?) And Eloise wondered whether maybe this was the best place for Daniel after all. Much as she would have loved for him to be cured so that he could live independently and hopefully one day return to his research, Eloise knew that as long as he was here, Charles would not be able to recruit him for his mission, and he would never end up in 1977 where Eloise would shoot him.
The man who had criticised the food was still talking to Daniel when Eloise returned. “I was sure that I’d seen your face somewhere before. But the man I saw in Ann Arbor...that must have been about twenty years ago, and he looked much the same age as you are now, if not slightly older. It’s a shame, if that had indeed been you, then it would have been fascinating.”
“Come along, Walter,” an orderly said, taking him by the arm and leading him away. “Don’t worry,” she turned around to whisper to Eloise. “He’s basically harmless. He has a few...issues with his memory. It’s possible that your son reminds him of someone he met before.”
But Eloise barely heard her. This man claimed to have recognised Daniel from 1977...it seemed that it was not going to work. No matter what Eloise attempted to do, Daniel’s fate was sealed, and the encounter with this man had only served to remind her of that.
Day 2:
Daniel pushed his butterscotch pudding away from him listlessly, having taken four mouthfuls and found himself unable to eat any more of the tasteless concoction.
“Dreadful, isn’t it?” came a voice from somewhere to his right; Daniel turned around to see a vaguely familiar-looking man with a beard. “The butterscotch pudding. Just as I warned you about when you arrived yesterday.”
“Uh, I’m sorry?” Daniel frowned, trying to remember. “Have we met?”
“But of course!” the man exclaimed. “When you arrived. My name is Walter.” He held out his hand, which Daniel shook. “I’m Daniel Faraday. Or, uh, did you already know that?”
Walter smiled. “Do not worry, Daniel,” he began. “I sometimes forget things too. But one thing I haven’t forgotten...blueberry pancakes. It’s several years since I had one of those, and after years of this butterscotch pudding every Monday, I find I miss them.”
Daniel wasn’t quite sure how to reply to this, but was saved from having to make any kind of response by a man to their left, who had suddenly and without explanation burst into song. “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream....”
“Did you warn me about him yesterday too?” he asked, but Walter had suddenly smiled. “That’s Carlos! He has the room next door to me. He does this a lot. It took some getting used to at first, but now I find that I can’t sleep without his singing. He was singing it yesterday - oh, of course, you don’t remember.”
But Daniel was frowning as Walter continued with his story. He couldn’t remember Carlos singing the day before, that was true. But he also couldn’t remember the name of the man standing before him.
Day 5:
“Is there something wrong?” Walter asked as he took in Daniel, standing by the payphone staring at the receiver in his hand, frowning at it.
“I was just trying to call Theresa,” Daniel explained. “Or her sister, Abigail. I need to know how things are with her. I can’t just leave it at that.”
Walter nodded, as though he knew what Daniel was talking about. Maybe he did; Daniel couldn’t remember whether he’d ever mentioned her to him or not.
“But I can’t even remember what her number is. I just tried calling and realised it was the number she had when I first met her four years ago. Then I kept getting all the numbers in the wrong order. I need to remember the number. I have to find out how Charlotte is.”
Walter stared at him. “Who’s Charlotte?”
Daniel frowned, shook his head. “What?”
“You were saying that you needed to know how Charlotte was. But a few minutes earlier, you were talking about trying to contact someone called Theresa. Who is Charlotte?”
Charlotte? Daniel stared at Walter, confused. Why would he have said that? He didn’t know anyone called Charlotte. Then an image flashed before his eyes: a young red-haired woman in a bar he remembered from his Oxford days, telling her friend that her mother wouldn’t be happy about her marrying an American, then the same woman, crying, with blood pouring from her nose. But who was she? Daniel couldn’t ever remember seeing that woman before.
“I don’t know...”
Day 23:
“Oxford?” Walter asked. “Is that how we know each other?”
“When were you there?”
“I was there for my postgraduate studies in the 1970s.” Walter informed him.
Daniel shook his head. “We wouldn’t have been there together then. I only left a couple of years ago. Maybe I studied you...I can’t remember.”
“I have it!” Walter exclaimed. “I know where we have met before. Wasn’t it that concert in Ann Arbor in June 1977? Geronimo Jackson supporting Violet Sedan Chair.”
“I don’t think so.” Daniel shook his head. “I wasn’t born in June 1977.” Yet even as he said it, he had a strange flash of himself at some stadium, listening to Geronimo Jackson singing their greatest hit, Dharma Lady. Where had that come from? How had Daniel even known that that was their greatest hit, when up until Walter had mentioned the name, he couldn’t even remember having heard of that group? And how could he have been at a concert on the date Walter had mentioned? Unless Walter had his dates wrong, he did admit that his memory wasn’t what it used to be...
“Violet Sedan Chair,” Walter continued. “I wonder whatever happened to them. It’s been a long time since they released anything new...”
“Walter?” An orderly interrupted. “Your visitor is here.”
“A visitor for me?” Walter asked. “I never have any visitors. Is it Peter?” He turned around to see a man with grey hair standing behind him. Daniel thought he’d seen this man come to visit Walter the previous week, but maybe he was wrong. The man did look familiar, though.
“No, Walter, it’s me, Doctor Paris,” the man replied, shooting Walter a look that Daniel couldn’t understand. “You asked me to come back, remember?”
“Of course,” Walter replied, allowing himself to be led away by his visitor. But as Daniel watched him walk away, he wondered who the man was and whether Walter really wanted him here.
Day 42:
“I hear your mother came to see you yesterday,” Walter said as he approached Daniel. “That must have been nice. I never have any visitors.”
“Didn’t somebody visit you a couple of weeks ago?” Daniel asked.
Walter frowned, shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Daniel shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t know...I can see this man with you, and I don’t know why...I remember things, but I don’t see how they can be true, like being at that concert you mentioned, and sometimes...I think I remember things that haven’t happened yet.”
“Déjà vu!” Walter exclaimed. “An interesting phenomena. My friend Belly and I were going to investigate that once. I can’t remember why we didn’t.”
“I don’t think it is déjà vu,” Daniel explained. “I remembered Carlos being taken out and restrained after he lost his temper with his brother...before it happened. It used to happen to my girlfriend as well, in Oxford.”
“Oxford? I was there once too.” Walter interrupted. “But carry on. Your story sounds fascinating. You say that you knew that Carlos was going to be restrained before it happened.”
“When I was at Oxford, my girlfriend and I were studying time travel.” Daniel began. “We had a machine which we used to send our consciousnesses back in time.”
“Was that Theresa? Or Charlotte?” Walter asked.
“Theresa. I managed to send her to the future. She knew the outcome of the general election in the UK four months before it happened, and she knew that Princess Diana was going to die. But something went wrong. Her consciousness became unstuck in time.”
“So she had nothing to anchor her to one time or another.” Walter mused.
“But I don’t understand why. That’s supposed to work. But I tried it on a lab rat, Eloise, and it didn’t work with her. I should have been her constant. And I should have been Theresa’s too. And I was reading my journal this morning, and I found this.” Daniel opened his journal to show Walter where he had written “If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.”
“Who is Desmond Hume?” Walter asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember meeting a Desmond. Maybe it’s someone I haven’t met yet. But it says in my journal that he’s my constant, so he’s obviously someone important to me at some time. Or maybe he already was. Maybe I did meet him, and I don’t remember.” Daniel shook his head.
“So he has not been your constant yet. But your research sounds very interesting. Tell me, what inspired you to start investigating time travel?”
“It was my mother’s idea,” Daniel explained. “She was the one who first suggested the idea to me.” Remembering that fearsome woman Walter had seen arriving on visiting days, Walter could quite well imagine how she might have pushed Daniel into studying time travel, whether it was what Daniel wanted or not. “But now it’s about Theresa again. If I could change the past so that what happened to Theresa didn’t happen...”
“What do you mean, Daniel?” Walter asked.
But Daniel looked at Walter as though he was no longer seeing him. “Theresa?” he said. “You can’t be talking to your Grandmother Spencer. You told me she died back in 1992...”
“Daniel?” Walter frowned, tugging on Daniel’s sleeve to get his attention. “Daniel?”
“Er, what year do you think it is?” Daniel asked, but Walter knew that he wasn’t talking to him, but to this Theresa.
Day 84:
“Turn the device to 2.342,” Daniel muttered to himself. “11 Hertz.”
“What do you mean?” Walter asked.
“It’s how I have to unstuck Eloise’s consciousness in time,” Daniel blinked, then stared at Walter. “I mean, how I did unstick her consciousness. But now I need to do it again, to send myself back in time. I have to send myself back to last year, so that I can fix Theresa.”
“And so that you can fix yourself?” Walter asked.
“That doesn’t matter,” Daniel replied. “I never meant for this to happen, that’s why I tested it on myself first, because I never meant to hurt Theresa. But I have to go back there, so I can fix things, so she never became dislodged from time.”
“I too have wondered what would happen if I were to go back,” Walter had never spoken of this since he had been admitted to St Claire’s, and he had believed that he never would, but something told him that Daniel was the one person there who could ever understand. “If I went back to 1985, I would be able to fix a mistake that I made. I wanted to save someone too...my son. Peter. He was seven years old, and he was dying, and I tried to find a cure, but I couldn’t. And so I crossed into another universe, to save another Peter who wasn’t mine, and I took him. And just as it was for you with Theresa, every time I look at Peter I am reminded of what I have done. I tried to fix things...I tried to find a way of getting Peter back home, but I couldn’t. I caused irreparable damage to the two universes when I crossed over; they could not stand it if I crossed over to take him back. And it would have done irreparable damage to my marriage as well. When I looked at my wife, Elizabeth, after I brought Peter home, I knew that I couldn’t let her lose him again. That I couldn’t let myself lose him again.”
“So what happened?” Daniel asked.
“He is still here. He’s travelling around Europe at the moment. He does not know that he is from another universe, and he never will.”
Day 96:
“Hey, uh, I got the impression that you didn’t want to talk about this any more, but I had this dream last night, and I thought you might understand what it meant.”
“What do you mean?” Walter asked.
“After you talked about that other universe, I...think I might have seen one in my dream.” Daniel began. “It was a universe where I’d never studied physics, where I was a musician. That’s what I wanted to be when I was a kid, before my mom encouraged me to start studying physics. But in this lifetime, I was a concert pianist.”
“And Theresa?” Walter asked. Daniel could tell he was interested despite himself as he replied “That’s the odd thing...she wasn’t there, and I don’t know why. But there was someone else there...someone whose face I’ve seen before, but I don’t know how I know her...someone called Charlotte.” Daniel didn’t know how he would begin explaining to Walter that when he had looked at Charlotte, it had been as though he loved her, although he hadn’t understood how that could be.
“But if I didn’t know Theresa in this universe,” he continued instead, “then that means that somewhere out there she’s okay. She knows who and when she is, and she’s happy, because I never experimented on her.”
“I saw Peter once through an electronic viewing device,” Walter sighed. “I showed it to Elizabeth, thinking that it would help her when our Peter died. I thought that knowing that there was a version of Peter out there who would get to grow up and live his life would help her. Instead, it helped neither of us. Maybe it would have, if the other Walter had realised he had found the cure.”
“You saved him, Walter.” Daniel reached out and touched Walter’s arm. “Just remember that.”
“But at what cost?” Walter asked. “What have I done?”
Day 108:
Walter hadn’t told Daniel that he’d been trying to work on the half finished equations he’d seen in Daniel’s notebook. He’d thought at the time he started that it might be that it would come to nothing, that he would be unable to solve things. But he had to try.
Daniel had said that if he could send his consciousness back to the past, then he wouldn’t have experimented on Theresa. Maybe there was some way that Walter could do the same. If he could send his consciousness back to 1985, maybe he could cure his own son using the same cure that had been used to cure the Peter he had raised as his own. He could fix everything that had happened. And so could Daniel. He could go back and stop Theresa from ever having been a part of his experiments. All Walter had to do was show Daniel the equations he had come up with, and together, they could change the past.
But Daniel was not in the communal area when Walter looked for him, and he didn’t see him all day.
“Excuse me, Sydney?” Walter grabbed the arm of a passing orderly.
The orderly frowned, shook her head. “My name is Eve.”
“I am sorry. Tell me, where is Daniel Faraday?”
The orderly looked at him sorrowfully. “I’m sorry. Mr Faraday was released into the care of his mother this morning.”
Day 116:
“Belly!” Walter exclaimed. “I have it! I have a way to go back in time to 1985, to be able to save my son and stop all this from ever happening!”
But William was shaking his head. “You have to understand the consequences, Walter. Think about it. Think what would happen if you tried this.”
“I would succeed in saving my son...But what about the other Peter? Walternate had been distracted by the bald man and had not noticed that the cure he had found had worked - what if the same thing happened again? Could I really save one Peter and not the other? What if I saved my Peter then crossed over to make sure the other Peter was also saved? But then if I crossed over it would just cause the same damage to the universes again.” Walter sighed, realising that his friend was right and it was never going to work. “What have I done, Belly? What have I become?”
“And if you didn’t cross over, you would then have to make the choice of letting Peter from Over There die. “
“But what if I crossed over and stopped the man from distracting Walternate so he realised he had the cure...no, that still doesn’t work.”
William shook his head. “No, because the destruction you caused to their universe would still be caused. You have no way of preventing that man from getting into Walternate’s lab. You have set a chain of events in motion, and there is nothing you can do to stop it from having happened. There is only one thing you can do now, and I think you know what that is.”
Walter nodded, swallowed hard. “Will you help me, Belly? Will you do this for me? Will you remove those pieces from my brain?”
William nodded. “I will.”
March 18, 2010.
Walter shot up in bed, gasping for breath. He glanced at his clock, which read 4.42 am. What had that dream been about? He’d been sat there, writing the letter to Peter which he had destroyed earlier that same day, and Peter had called him about a case, something to do with time travel, and they’d finally tracked down the man responsible for killing passengers on a train, and just as Walter had exclaimed that the man had implanted a Faraday mesh, the man’s face had changed, changed so that it resembled the young man he had known in St Claire’s, Daniel Faraday, the young man who had spoken with Walter about time travel on so many occasions.
“Walter?” Peter, looking rumpled and slightly annoyed, stuck his head around the door. “You just shouted out something in your sleep. Is everything okay?”
Walter blinked. “Everything’s fine, son. I just had a strange dream. It was about another patient at St Claire’s, Daniel Faraday. We were friends, or as good friends as it was possible to be in that place, before he was discharged, but I have to admit I haven’t thought of him since you got me out of there. I regret that.”
Peter yawned. “Tell me about him in the morning, okay, Walter?” he mumbled, turning to go back to his own bed.
Alone once more, Walter wondered what that dream had meant. They had never investigated a case involving time travel, but then he had to acknowledge that it was perfectly possible that if there had been such a case, time had been changed so that Walter could no longer remember what had happened. Yet it had seemed so real, more real than a lot of his other memories.
More of it was starting to come back to him now - the man who had been so desperate to change time and prevent his fiancée’s death. That must have been why he had thought of Daniel Faraday, because he had been so determined that he would find a way to change time so that his girlfriend would not have been affected by his experiments. Walter wondered now whether Daniel had ever succeeded, or whether even now his attempts had driven him right back to being the man he had been when he had first been admitted to St Claire’s. Maybe even now Daniel was in some similar institution, telling his story to someone else. He could even have ended up back at St Claire’s itself at some point, although he hadn’t been there when Walter had returned to speak with Dashiell Kim. Daniel had been released into the care of his mother, that fearsome woman who had been his only visitor (strange, Walter thought briefly, that he could not remember Belly visiting him in St Claire’s yet he could picture Daniel’s mother very clearly). Walter decided that the next time he saw Agent Dunham, he would ask her if she had any way of tracking Daniel down. He would be interested to know what had become of him.
But the news Olivia eventually brought him was not good. “It seems he stayed in Essex after he left St Claire’s, living with a caretaker. I spoke to her myself, and from what she says, about three and a half years ago he had a visit from some guy named Charles Widmore.”
“As in Widmore Industries?” Peter asked. “The UK’s answer and rival to Massive Dynamic? Don’t they have a branch over here as well?”
Olivia nodded. “That’s right.”
“I think he approached Belly once about working together,” Walter mused, but Peter interrupted with “Walter, do you want to hear what happened to your friend or not?”
“So from what Caroline, the carer, told me,” Olivia continued, “Mr. Widmore had approached Daniel to see if he’d go on some trip or other. She wasn’t clear as to exactly what this involved, but she did know that he was supposed to board this freighter at Fiji.”
“Then what happened?” Walter asked.
“That’s just it. Nobody knows. The freighter never returned, and Widmore never spoke of it publicly.”
“Isn’t he supposed to have died in some weird circumstances himself?” Peter asked.
“Well, he was reported dead about three years ago, but I don’t know too much more about it.” Olivia replied, but Walter was no longer paying attention. If Daniel’s freighter had never returned, could that be because he had somehow found some way to travel back in time, found some way to save this Theresa? Walter didn’t know how he would track her down, since he couldn’t remember her last name (had he ever even known what it was?) Unless...
“What about going further back in time?” Walter asked. “Did you find any records of Daniel any earlier than that?”
“You know, it’s funny that you should mention it,” Olivia replied. “I wasn’t really expecting to find anything like that. But I did manage to find this. There were some records from a facility in Ann Arbor, back in 1977. They had a Daniel Faraday on their staff for a couple of years. I managed to get a photograph of him.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a piece of paper which she handed to Walter.
“It’s him,” Walter whispered.
“How is that even possible?” Peter asked, frowning.
“I don’t know. But he did it. It was him I remembered meeting before. He found a way back to the past. He just...ended up going further than he’d intended to go. And I wonder whether he managed to change anything, whether he managed to save the girl.”
“So what are you going to do?” Olivia asked.
“I remember his mother,” Walter replied. “She will know. I will visit her, find out what happened to Daniel.”
Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1977.
Daniel had never expected to be returning to the island, not after he’d boarded the sub, and even as he made his way to the drinks reception for those who were going, he still believed he wouldn’t be accompanying them. As he made his way into the room where the reception was being held, a man stormed out in the opposite direction, colliding with him.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” Daniel began, even though the collision had been the other man’s fault, but the man didn’t look back. Strange, Daniel thought. He was convinced he recognised that man from somewhere, but for some reason, he didn’t think it was from Ann Arbor, but longer ago than that.
“You will have to forgive Belly,” another man said as he approached him. “He is best left to himself for a while. He and I have just been told that there is no place for our ideas in the DHARMA Initiative. They say that travelling to another universe is not possible, and are not prepared to consider our ideas.” With a shock, Daniel realised that he was looking at a younger Walter Bishop. So it had been true, then, all those times in St Claire’s when Walter had insisted he recognised Daniel from somewhere... And the other man, the one Walter had called Belly, that was the man who had visited Walter sometimes. Hadn’t he been called something else, though? Daniel wondered. Then he shook his head. Everyone knew who William Bell was, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognised him sooner. And Daniel’s memories of that time were still so uncertain anyway.
“For myself, I am disappointed, but it would not be a good time for me to go out to the island right now,” Walter continued. “My wife, Elizabeth, called me today. It is very early days, so I maybe should not be telling you this, but she is expecting our first child.”
Daniel forced a smile. “Congratulations.” He held out a hand to shake Walter’s. He had to find a way to extricate himself from this conversation; he couldn’t risk saying anything that might lead Walter to know that he knew the future, that he knew what was in store for Walter and the as yet unborn child.
“I know it is too early to know, of course, but I have a feeling that the child will be a son.” Walter carried on happily, oblivious to the effect his conversation was having on Daniel. How could he carry on with Walter, listening to him talk about the hopes he had for the future, knowing all the time that the child his wife was carrying would not live beyond his seventh year and that Walter’s attempt to save the life of another Peter Bishop would tear holes in the fabric of two universes? That was part of the reason why he had been unable to remain on the island with Miles and the others, because he had found it so difficult to look at Charlotte and keep hidden the knowledge he had of her future fate.
“Elizabeth and I were talking about names on the phone,” Walter continued. “We chose a name for our son, but I cannot remember what we chose.” He shook his head, smiling.
“Peter.” The name slipped out before Daniel had time to stop himself. He cursed himself for his error, but Walter did not appear to have noticed anything amiss.
“Peter! That is it. Whatever made you think of that?”
Daniel forced a smile as he shrugged. “I...guess I just liked the name.”
“Tell me something,” Walter went on, “have we met before? Only you seem very familiar.”
“Geronimo Jackson supporting Violet Sedan Chair in concert on tour, here in Ann Arbor in June.” Daniel hastily replied, remembering Walter’s own guess at where they could possibly have met back when they were in St Claire’s together. Daniel had, in fact, ended up going to that concert after all, but had forgotten at the time that Walter would also be there.
“Of course, of course. Well, I must get back to console Belly. But it was nice to have met you,” Walter said as he reached for Daniel’s hand. Daniel shook it mechanically, forced a smile as he parted from Walter, made his way slowly towards the reception for those leaving for the island. For a moment he wondered if he should run after Walter, warn him somehow of what was to happen. But instead he turned his back, continued towards the reception. There was nothing he could do to change things. As he’d always said before, whatever happened, happened.
Los Angeles, California. 2011.
“Hello. I don’t know whether you remember me. My name is Walter Bishop, and I was in -“
“I know who you are,” Eloise Hawking informed him. “I suppose you had better come in.”
Walter followed her through the hallway, took a seat on the uncomfortable leather couch. Absentmindedly, he picked up a photograph of Daniel from a table beside him.
“That was taken on the day Daniel graduated from Oxford,” Eloise explained.
“I recognise the buildings,” Walter replied. “I was in Oxford myself, although several years before Daniel attended. The girl next to him, is that Theresa?”
Eloise’s lips thinned as she took the picture from Walter. “Mr. Bishop, why are you here?”
“I consult with the FBI now,” Walter explained, “and about a year ago we had a case that reminded me of Daniel’s experiments. He’d talk of how he wanted to change time, and I was interested in his ideas for reasons of my own. My friend Agent Dunham gave me this,” he continued, passing the DHARMA photo of Daniel to Eloise. “He is older than I remember him, yet this was taken in 1977. And so I came to the conclusion that Daniel had succeeded.”
Eloise shook her head. “No, he did not succeed. Daniel was unable to change the course of events that led to his finding himself in the 1970s, and ultimately to his death at my hands. I shot my son, Mr. Bishop, and twenty seven years later I sent him back to that same island with the full knowledge that it was unlikely that time would be changed. The universe has a way of course correcting, and whatever I tried to do, it would never be enough. I said these words once before, long ago, when speaking to a man who wanted to change his past. I knew he would never succeed, and yet I still attempted to change mine.”
“Course correcting.” Walter repeated. He had used those same words to Peter only a few days earlier, when speaking of the Observer. “Ms. Hawking, I don’t know if Daniel ever told you of anything we talked about at St. Claire’s, of how I crossed over into another universe and stole a son who wasn’t mine. I did not know of the events I was setting in motion at the time. I could not have known that my determination not to lose my son would mean that another man would end up losing his. And I did not know exactly how much damage I was causing to both our universe and another. And I also did not know that there would come a time - it hasn’t happened yet, but it will - when I will have to sacrifice my son anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Eloise asked.
“He was supposed to die, in our universe and in the other. I created a paradox by saving Peter. And now the man who helped me save him is trying to correct his mistake.”
“Why have you come to me, Mr. Bishop?” Eloise asked. “There was nothing I could do to save my own son, and there is nothing I can do to save yours.”
“I do not know,” Walter admitted. “At first I hoped that Daniel would be able to help me, that he may have found some way that I can save my son. But now I am beginning to see that there is nobody who can fix this.”
“You know, you remind me of someone else I met the day Daniel died, and again thirty years later,” Eloise mused. “The man I spoke of earlier. His name was Jack. He knew Daniel too, and he also tried to fix things so that Daniel and others need not have died. But he was also unable to change the past.”
“I am beginning to see that I will be unable to change anything myself. But I still intend to try.”
Eloise smiled. “You remind me of my son in a way as well, Mr. Bishop,” she said. “I can see why you were friends. I wish that there was some way I could help you save your son. But if there had been, I would have done it myself. So all I can do is wish you luck, Mr. Bishop.”
And when Walter looked back at Eloise, he realised that he recognised himself in her as well. Both had had to come to terms with the sacrifice of their loved ones; both had wished to change the course of events. And Walter wondered how he would handle it when the time came, as he now knew it would, that he would have to let Peter go as Eloise had let Daniel go. He only hoped that he could be as strong as the woman standing before him today.