Forever after days
Title: Forever after days
Characters/Pairings: Frank, Miles; Kate, Richard, Eloise, Sawyer, Claire, references to Charlotte, Daniel (minor Miles/Richard)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They call them the Ajira Six. They leave the island but it's not an ending, not really.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to the end of the series/rating for language, references to character deaths.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: So this is the 'holy-hell-I'm-SO-damn-sorry' late response to ozmissage requesting Frank and Miles catching up for a prompt meme from last year. It wouldn't write itself until the finale, go figure. Title from The National. Also presumes a minor character didn't necessarily die.
----
They call them the Ajira Six.
(The name sticks.
Frank hates it.)
There's no sneaking in the back door this time, he figures, what with the long-haul jet and everything, so he stretches the fuel as far as he can, gets them to some podunk Fijian air strip that's just big enough to land and fumbles through a couple words in local dialect (emergency landing is pretty damn universal anyway), manages to skid the ole bird to a stop before they go careering into the jungle beyond.
The hoopla when they get back is even worse than the PR dog-and-pony show last time; at least that's what Kate says while they get trotted through press conferences and gauntlets of photographers and coaching sessions from Ajira's media people, and it's all what to say and how much and don't be embarrassed to cry in front of the cameras, they smile, hush-voiced like they've got some kind of reverence for what the six of them have been through, but Frank'll be damned if they get that out of him.
(Not with 99 per cent of the freighter crew along the ocean floor or buried in jungle dirt -- him and Miles the only missing numbers, anomalies he still doesn't believe half the time -- and other people, good people, from Ajira 316 ending up who the hell knows where and more likely dead than alive.)
He could cry, but jesus he hasn't yet, and he's not gonna make a habit of it so Ajira can sell a few more jets on a 'holds-up-even-in-island-jungle-crashes' guarantee.
They don't lie this time, either (something else Kate adds; you'll get tired it, of all the running, she remarks, gaze lighting with a thousand different things since they walked off the runway) though it's mostly just maybes and I don't knows when they ask how a second plane crashed in the same place or what happened to the rest of the passengers (Hurley's mom is the worst; Sun's mother too, her little daughter squirming in his arms (Ji Yeon, her name wrapped in the smoke of late-hour campfires and dark, half-hooded looks and how the cotton of her shirt had rubbed against his skin, rubbed it raw almost, the one night she'd cried for the child she'd left behind, and they were together at the end all he can croak out).
Eventually he gets used to seeing his own ugly mug splashed across newsprint, in dozens of languages he can't even start to understand. The press loves all of them -- Kate decorated like a returning war vet even as she's being carted off to jail, Claire's practically Mother of the Year for coming back to her child, Richard like some damn movie star with his dark eyes and mysterious past everyone does a careful dance around -- but him especially, for some reason, and I crashed the plane, he wants to shout, holler, at the top of his lungs every (second fourth tenth millionth) time he gets asked "how's it feel to be a hero?", people died because I couldn't do my fucking job.
Miles shrugs away the attention, tries to explain -- everyone loves a man in uniform when he's in one of his pissy moods; the island wanted us and there wasn't anything you could do about it, Frank when he's feeling a little more charitable.
Neither one does a goddamn bit of good.
----
He has his first drink in months (an old pilot buddy -- friend of Seth's, too -- had gotten him the interview with Ajira a while after The Searcher docked in the States, warned dry up, Frank, or else I'm calling them and saying you fucked off to Barbados again or something) waiting for their charter back to Los Angeles.
Somehow (but not really; he's not stupid enough to keep convincing himself than anything not a coincidence these days) they end up in the same bar where Naomi briefed them the night before the freighter sailed out, him and Miles and Richard and Kate. Claire's back at the hotel Ajira's holed them up in until the media feeding-frenzy begins, too weirded out by the noise and the people and the crush of everything, Sawyer probably skulking around the city again (he and Juliet were, y'know, a thing, Miles explains under his breath, and Frank reads the grief -- sharp, fresh, a knife that still cuts -- under his words), while the rest of them nurse whiskeys and don't talk much. Kate slumps over her drink, behind a tangle of dark curls, and Miles and Richard sit just a little too close, and he's only trying to stir up conversation when he draws the heel of his hand against the bartop's sweating wood, remarks feels like we were here a lifetime ago.
Richard reads mostly confused but the curiousity's there too, though Kate doesn't bother looking up; Miles shoots him a glare that says he's either looking for trouble or just plain crazy, and hell, he's probably both at this point -- "Dan stumbled in an hour late, totally turned around, like who thought dropping that guy into a foreign city was a good idea. Naomi was some pissed, that's for sure."
He's rambling, knows that, but once he's started he can't stop, likely to start yammering his life story if the liquor keeps flowing; gestures at Miles -- "seem to remember Charlotte drinking you under the table, if I'm not mistaken."
There's an eyeroll, a mostly smirk, while Richard just looks far away, lost in some memory (and there must be tons, Frank figures, too many to ever catalogue in a way that would make sense to him). When he speaks up, Alpert, it's hesitating, eyeing Miles first and then Frank -- she was the red-headed woman, right?
They nod back, affirmation in concert, and even Kate seems interested, pauses clinking and shifting ice cubes across her glass to listen.
"I remember her, from the first time I saw all of you --"
(And there's that little, not-so-secret smile at Miles again, corners of his mouth tugged up; Frank doesn't know if he's jealous or totally weirded out, one or the other or maybe both filling his chest something fierce, pictures a barely-used apartment -- empty walls, empty shelves, bland white paint he keeps meaning to redo -- in a shitty L.A. condo that's waiting for him.)
"-- back in the '50s. Eloise's son was in love with her."
Richard stops, laughs.
"He convinced me to let him look at a hydrogen bomb just because he swore he'd never hurt her. Have to say I believed him."
The moment of something shared (memories like some kind of tenuous strand keeping them together, keeps them from spinning totally out of control, that I remember and so do you) dissolves fast, when Miles sneers and pushes away from the bar, suddenly furious -- "yeah, you're a real romantic, aren't you" -- and Kate whispers Jughead at the same time, more to herself than anyone else, transfixed on something that's not even close to where they are. (Survivors' guilt, Frank knows.)
Richard's busy watching Miles storm off, dark eyes soft with the full weight of his years, and the next part he says so quietly only Frank thinks he hears, Kate too busy throwing back another shot of something dark-coloured and strong-smelling -- we found her body in the jungle a few weeks later. When Daniel showed up at our camp ... well, I wasn't surprised. Jacob didn't allow for very many happy endings.
"So what about us?"
They both turn at the sound of Kate's voice, the subtle frankness of it; no sadness, just hollow -- quiet and numb and at the end of giving up, it sounds like -- and Richard shrugs, weary, leaves Frank meeting that green gaze with no words to offer.
(We're left, he traces against the swirling patterns of the wood, condensation beading under his fingernail, the only ones left.)
----
The drinking doesn't stop in Fiji; he sobers up enough for the TV interviews and a couple of pointless ceremonies with Ajira, and then it's back to five-star hotels and too-expensive room service and mini-bars stocked with liquor and beer and whatever else (he's not picky these days), Captain Lapidus, let me buy you a round.
After a couple months -- weekday bleeds into weekend into next week -- Miles manages to drag him first to some church off the highway in Long Beach and then all the way to England, even though Frank tells him just to bring his new boyfriend along for whatever guilt-fest road trip or two-week distraction from being back to normal he's got planned, what with Claire in Australia spending time with her son and Kate back in jail for her parole violation (at least temporarily -- Frank figures no jury's going to keep the woman who walked away from two plane crashes alive behind bars for long) and Sawyer taking care of some business he never bothered explaining in Albuquerque.
"It's the least we can do, douchebag," Miles grumbles, and Frank can't decide if some long-steeled kindness or his own sense of self-preservation that's behind the words. "Let them know what happened."
Them turns out to be the Eloise Richard mentioned -- Dan's mom; a white-haired lady running the church they visit, who sort of slumps back against a pew when they tell her, exhale shaky and hand clenched to her chest. Frank's starting to worry they're liable to have a heart attack on their hands -- she looks the age and hell, they just told her her son's dead -- before she looks up at them with watery eyes, moves her head just slightly.
"I was hoping ... I thought, maybe, there was a way to change things."
It's recognition shining through her gaze when she looks at Miles, something that makes Frank pause and then not so much when he figures with all the time-travel whatever-the-hell there's a good chance they've met before, shared something, are stuck in a moment that maybe Dan was there (Miles had explained how he'd died and it still turns Frank's stomach thinking about it), remembering him and everything that's been shifting on a dime since the helicopter landed.
"When I sent him back ... I hoped he'd find a way."
Her chin's still quivering, head hanging low, when Miles pulls her aside and they talk in quiet tones, hushed though the strains still reach Frank's ears; he loved her and we tried to fix it, like he wanted.
("Never really liked the lies," is what he mutters after, while they're driving back to the airport, pocketing tickets to Heathrow and reserving a car for the drive to Bromsgrove, mentions stumbling across Daniel's 30-year-old grave in as few details as he can manage, "but man, I wish it was. I mean, it was all just a fucking waste." He grips the steering wheel, shoves hard against the grooved plastic with his other hand, swears and mutters Dan's name. "Just a goddamn waste.")
Charlotte's mother is worse, maybe because she knows less; just cries and cries and cries, clutching her teacup with trembling hands, tells them she's been searching for her daughter for three years and if only she'd been honest about the island and is there even a body?; Frank looks away (can't stand seeing the framed photograph of three redheaded girls, party dresses and gap-toothed smiles, along the living room wall), Miles down, and no, one of them answers eventually, I don't think so.
After that, when it's all rolling green on green and fields stretching to the horizon's line, when they've both lapsed into a silence just as long, Frank speaks again, ignores Miles' sigh that says what's the point of this or I give up or so many other things that he can't, that neither of them (not yet), can answer --
"They'll make their peace, eventually."
(What he doesn't add: we've got to, too.)
----
When they land back in LAX they get a not-exactly-warm welcome from a couple of muscly-looking security guards, ushered into some back room that's a little too far beyond the bright colours of the ticket counters than Frank finds comfortable. The door clicks shut behind them and Miles props his hands against the table, leans into an amused look -- "anything I should know about here, Frank?"
He raises an eyebrow -- what, other than the whole crashing a plane on a make-believe island thing that would make people real interested? -- and that's when the gunmetal grey of the door opens again, cut by a tall, dark figure they both recognize in a second.
"You're alive?"
Miles manages to spit it out first and Matthew Abaddon smiles (or as close as he comes to one, Frank figures) against memories of Ben's confession, the three shots that cracked through graveyard air, his face shadowed by the campfire's flickering and it was like listening to a ghost story, Frank had thought, or maybe that's exactly what it'd been; Abaddon presses down his tie with the flat of one had, watches them in a way that makes Frank's skin crawl -- "I suppose Mr. Linus didn't do as thorough a job as he assumed."
One hand dips inside his jacket as they balk, retrieves two crisp-cornered envelopes he places on the table in careful movements. "As per Mr. Widmore's instructions --"
"Widmore?" Miles scowls out his name, arms crossed, and Frank's just plain confused; even when he'd shown back up on the radar and started working for Ajira again he'd never been contacted by Widmore's people, minus one very sizable cheque that had appeared in his mail slot one day without a stamp. "Where the hell is he?"
Abaddon's gaze, inscrutable, turns upwards -- Mr. Widmore will not be returning from the island, he intones, ignores their twin stares, still as blank as ever -- and there's barely a break in the steel of his words before he continues, taps the envelopes with two fingers.
"Consider this your final payment from Widmore Industries. And an official release from your contract."
It's Frank that steps forward this time, feels like his eyes are going red at the sides, furious; "listen pal, Widmore doesn't give a damn about us. And as far as I can figure, we were released from our contracts the island that minute that damn freighter blew up."
Miles back him up, rounding on Abaddon and just as indignant, three years' worth of resentment and blame bubbling over. "What I want to know is why the hell is Widmore, the guy who basically fucked off and forgot about us for three years, suddenly back on the island?"
Abaddon glances up from the table, sighs, and for just a second Frank swears he actually looks a little human, something complicated behind his eyes. He only says two words --
-- his children.
"Whaddaya mean children?" Frank questions, brow creasing. "Penny was his daughter, but --"
"Both his children," Abaddon interrupts, voice firm, uncompromising. "His daughter and his son, who died on the island."
It's funny, in that way the island and everything after's managed to make things, but both of them get a lightbulb blinking at the same time; Miles turns away, hand at mouth -- Jesus christ, it was Dan -- and Frank swears, thanks a higher power his parents didn't turn him into some kind of sacrificial lamb.
"You all had a role to play, you were all chosen for specific reasons," he's continuing, tone still a low, dry drone, buttoning his jacket again and pacing to the door. "That two of you survived is ... a better outcome than we imagined."
The sound of metal on metal hums through the silence between them -- guy sure as hell knows how to make an exit, Frank mutters, watches as Miles clenches his fists, like all that anger's wound tight through his body and just under the skin, ready to pop.
"It's bullshit," he bursts out, more angry than Frank's ever seen him, even since they got off the island. "They just used us -- Widmore and that Jacob guy and all of them. And Richard got stranded for a century and Juliet never got to go home and Jin never met his daughter and Dan's parents just sent him off to fucking die --"
The guy's crying, Frank realizes with something close to wonder, maybe more like disbelief, tears sparkling against the creases of his eyelids, swiping at his nose with one quick hand.
"I don't know what I'm doing here," Miles manages to strangle out after a minute, slumps back against the table. "We're still alive and they're all not and what the hell are we supposed to do now?"
Frank laughs -- a real, solid chuckle; you think I've got any answers? -- and Miles pauses, breaks into an eventual smile, smirks figures; you were only ever good for a drink or a crash landing and that only makes him laugh harder, feels a weightless sense of relief wash over him like something dark and heavy's been thrown from his shoulders.
"Yep, that about covers it."
They stay like that for a long time, laughter ebbing eventually, and it feels to Frank like the first normal -- normal and nice and good -- thing he's done since his feet hit ground in Fiji, the island in his wake.
----
When they buy the piece of land in Malibu the real estate agent mistakes them for a couple looking to build some kind of oceanside love nest and Frank lets the mistake ride out just enough to piss Miles off; I mean, can you blame him? he says after, standing almost cliffside in the swaying grass, watching the water, it would make a damn gorgeous place to put a house.
Widmore's parting gift more than covers it -- with so much left to spare Frank still can't believe his bank statements and double-counts the zeros every time -- and it's almost fitting, he thinks, the least the bastard (whether he's dead or alive, though Frank's betting on the former) can do.
After everything's installed and the landscaping's done -- minimal, just upkeep; the place is beautiful enough without it -- and a contractor's hired to make sure it's gated and away from prying eyes a couple of them get together to see it, and maybe under less weird circumstances they'd call it memorial service or funeral or something, seeing as it's practically a ceremony in its own right (stones for Charlotte, Dan, Juliet, Sun and Jin, Sayid, even Miles' mom's remains moved and newly rested). Richard's there, and Claire with Aaron in tow, Kate just out of jail, Sawyer with a daughter he suddenly has, even Desmond -- back from the island too and won't explain a word of it, just says Hurley and Ben (Ben Linus of all people) helped him escape and that's that -- along with Penny and their kid. They don't invite the parents because it's too much; too much to explain, too much to take on faith, too many questions without answers, and maybe only Eloise would understand but Frank doesn't much want her there anyway, at least not yet.
Kate's crying as they walk the grounds and read the memorial stones, not bothering to pretend it's anything but, and Penny half-hides behind her son's thick curls, head ducked (Frank doesn't miss her eyes, rimmed red and raw), watches Claire wipe away smeared mascara and goddammit, he thinks, nobody got out alright.
But beside him Miles slips his hand into Richard's and Sawyer pulls his daughter closer and Kate leans into Aaron, runs a hand along his pale hair, and maybe that they got out is the thing, grabbed their lives back and rode off into the damn sunset, like a big ole eff you to the island. Because they're alive even if their friends and lovers and teammates aren't, they made it out in one piece and lived to tell the tale.
Survived, Frank considers, like it's something new and in a way it is, watches the sun spilling red across the horizon over his friends' silhouettes, over the dark, cool gravestones, names carved in granite like a memory, names they'll carry on, and he's pretty sure there's some kind of peace in that.
Characters/Pairings: Frank, Miles; Kate, Richard, Eloise, Sawyer, Claire, references to Charlotte, Daniel (minor Miles/Richard)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They call them the Ajira Six. They leave the island but it's not an ending, not really.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to the end of the series/rating for language, references to character deaths.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: So this is the 'holy-hell-I'm-SO-damn-sorry' late response to ozmissage requesting Frank and Miles catching up for a prompt meme from last year. It wouldn't write itself until the finale, go figure. Title from The National. Also presumes a minor character didn't necessarily die.
----
They call them the Ajira Six.
(The name sticks.
Frank hates it.)
There's no sneaking in the back door this time, he figures, what with the long-haul jet and everything, so he stretches the fuel as far as he can, gets them to some podunk Fijian air strip that's just big enough to land and fumbles through a couple words in local dialect (emergency landing is pretty damn universal anyway), manages to skid the ole bird to a stop before they go careering into the jungle beyond.
The hoopla when they get back is even worse than the PR dog-and-pony show last time; at least that's what Kate says while they get trotted through press conferences and gauntlets of photographers and coaching sessions from Ajira's media people, and it's all what to say and how much and don't be embarrassed to cry in front of the cameras, they smile, hush-voiced like they've got some kind of reverence for what the six of them have been through, but Frank'll be damned if they get that out of him.
(Not with 99 per cent of the freighter crew along the ocean floor or buried in jungle dirt -- him and Miles the only missing numbers, anomalies he still doesn't believe half the time -- and other people, good people, from Ajira 316 ending up who the hell knows where and more likely dead than alive.)
He could cry, but jesus he hasn't yet, and he's not gonna make a habit of it so Ajira can sell a few more jets on a 'holds-up-even-in-island-jungle-crashes' guarantee.
They don't lie this time, either (something else Kate adds; you'll get tired it, of all the running, she remarks, gaze lighting with a thousand different things since they walked off the runway) though it's mostly just maybes and I don't knows when they ask how a second plane crashed in the same place or what happened to the rest of the passengers (Hurley's mom is the worst; Sun's mother too, her little daughter squirming in his arms (Ji Yeon, her name wrapped in the smoke of late-hour campfires and dark, half-hooded looks and how the cotton of her shirt had rubbed against his skin, rubbed it raw almost, the one night she'd cried for the child she'd left behind, and they were together at the end all he can croak out).
Eventually he gets used to seeing his own ugly mug splashed across newsprint, in dozens of languages he can't even start to understand. The press loves all of them -- Kate decorated like a returning war vet even as she's being carted off to jail, Claire's practically Mother of the Year for coming back to her child, Richard like some damn movie star with his dark eyes and mysterious past everyone does a careful dance around -- but him especially, for some reason, and I crashed the plane, he wants to shout, holler, at the top of his lungs every (second fourth tenth millionth) time he gets asked "how's it feel to be a hero?", people died because I couldn't do my fucking job.
Miles shrugs away the attention, tries to explain -- everyone loves a man in uniform when he's in one of his pissy moods; the island wanted us and there wasn't anything you could do about it, Frank when he's feeling a little more charitable.
Neither one does a goddamn bit of good.
----
He has his first drink in months (an old pilot buddy -- friend of Seth's, too -- had gotten him the interview with Ajira a while after The Searcher docked in the States, warned dry up, Frank, or else I'm calling them and saying you fucked off to Barbados again or something) waiting for their charter back to Los Angeles.
Somehow (but not really; he's not stupid enough to keep convincing himself than anything not a coincidence these days) they end up in the same bar where Naomi briefed them the night before the freighter sailed out, him and Miles and Richard and Kate. Claire's back at the hotel Ajira's holed them up in until the media feeding-frenzy begins, too weirded out by the noise and the people and the crush of everything, Sawyer probably skulking around the city again (he and Juliet were, y'know, a thing, Miles explains under his breath, and Frank reads the grief -- sharp, fresh, a knife that still cuts -- under his words), while the rest of them nurse whiskeys and don't talk much. Kate slumps over her drink, behind a tangle of dark curls, and Miles and Richard sit just a little too close, and he's only trying to stir up conversation when he draws the heel of his hand against the bartop's sweating wood, remarks feels like we were here a lifetime ago.
Richard reads mostly confused but the curiousity's there too, though Kate doesn't bother looking up; Miles shoots him a glare that says he's either looking for trouble or just plain crazy, and hell, he's probably both at this point -- "Dan stumbled in an hour late, totally turned around, like who thought dropping that guy into a foreign city was a good idea. Naomi was some pissed, that's for sure."
He's rambling, knows that, but once he's started he can't stop, likely to start yammering his life story if the liquor keeps flowing; gestures at Miles -- "seem to remember Charlotte drinking you under the table, if I'm not mistaken."
There's an eyeroll, a mostly smirk, while Richard just looks far away, lost in some memory (and there must be tons, Frank figures, too many to ever catalogue in a way that would make sense to him). When he speaks up, Alpert, it's hesitating, eyeing Miles first and then Frank -- she was the red-headed woman, right?
They nod back, affirmation in concert, and even Kate seems interested, pauses clinking and shifting ice cubes across her glass to listen.
"I remember her, from the first time I saw all of you --"
(And there's that little, not-so-secret smile at Miles again, corners of his mouth tugged up; Frank doesn't know if he's jealous or totally weirded out, one or the other or maybe both filling his chest something fierce, pictures a barely-used apartment -- empty walls, empty shelves, bland white paint he keeps meaning to redo -- in a shitty L.A. condo that's waiting for him.)
"-- back in the '50s. Eloise's son was in love with her."
Richard stops, laughs.
"He convinced me to let him look at a hydrogen bomb just because he swore he'd never hurt her. Have to say I believed him."
The moment of something shared (memories like some kind of tenuous strand keeping them together, keeps them from spinning totally out of control, that I remember and so do you) dissolves fast, when Miles sneers and pushes away from the bar, suddenly furious -- "yeah, you're a real romantic, aren't you" -- and Kate whispers Jughead at the same time, more to herself than anyone else, transfixed on something that's not even close to where they are. (Survivors' guilt, Frank knows.)
Richard's busy watching Miles storm off, dark eyes soft with the full weight of his years, and the next part he says so quietly only Frank thinks he hears, Kate too busy throwing back another shot of something dark-coloured and strong-smelling -- we found her body in the jungle a few weeks later. When Daniel showed up at our camp ... well, I wasn't surprised. Jacob didn't allow for very many happy endings.
"So what about us?"
They both turn at the sound of Kate's voice, the subtle frankness of it; no sadness, just hollow -- quiet and numb and at the end of giving up, it sounds like -- and Richard shrugs, weary, leaves Frank meeting that green gaze with no words to offer.
(We're left, he traces against the swirling patterns of the wood, condensation beading under his fingernail, the only ones left.)
----
The drinking doesn't stop in Fiji; he sobers up enough for the TV interviews and a couple of pointless ceremonies with Ajira, and then it's back to five-star hotels and too-expensive room service and mini-bars stocked with liquor and beer and whatever else (he's not picky these days), Captain Lapidus, let me buy you a round.
After a couple months -- weekday bleeds into weekend into next week -- Miles manages to drag him first to some church off the highway in Long Beach and then all the way to England, even though Frank tells him just to bring his new boyfriend along for whatever guilt-fest road trip or two-week distraction from being back to normal he's got planned, what with Claire in Australia spending time with her son and Kate back in jail for her parole violation (at least temporarily -- Frank figures no jury's going to keep the woman who walked away from two plane crashes alive behind bars for long) and Sawyer taking care of some business he never bothered explaining in Albuquerque.
"It's the least we can do, douchebag," Miles grumbles, and Frank can't decide if some long-steeled kindness or his own sense of self-preservation that's behind the words. "Let them know what happened."
Them turns out to be the Eloise Richard mentioned -- Dan's mom; a white-haired lady running the church they visit, who sort of slumps back against a pew when they tell her, exhale shaky and hand clenched to her chest. Frank's starting to worry they're liable to have a heart attack on their hands -- she looks the age and hell, they just told her her son's dead -- before she looks up at them with watery eyes, moves her head just slightly.
"I was hoping ... I thought, maybe, there was a way to change things."
It's recognition shining through her gaze when she looks at Miles, something that makes Frank pause and then not so much when he figures with all the time-travel whatever-the-hell there's a good chance they've met before, shared something, are stuck in a moment that maybe Dan was there (Miles had explained how he'd died and it still turns Frank's stomach thinking about it), remembering him and everything that's been shifting on a dime since the helicopter landed.
"When I sent him back ... I hoped he'd find a way."
Her chin's still quivering, head hanging low, when Miles pulls her aside and they talk in quiet tones, hushed though the strains still reach Frank's ears; he loved her and we tried to fix it, like he wanted.
("Never really liked the lies," is what he mutters after, while they're driving back to the airport, pocketing tickets to Heathrow and reserving a car for the drive to Bromsgrove, mentions stumbling across Daniel's 30-year-old grave in as few details as he can manage, "but man, I wish it was. I mean, it was all just a fucking waste." He grips the steering wheel, shoves hard against the grooved plastic with his other hand, swears and mutters Dan's name. "Just a goddamn waste.")
Charlotte's mother is worse, maybe because she knows less; just cries and cries and cries, clutching her teacup with trembling hands, tells them she's been searching for her daughter for three years and if only she'd been honest about the island and is there even a body?; Frank looks away (can't stand seeing the framed photograph of three redheaded girls, party dresses and gap-toothed smiles, along the living room wall), Miles down, and no, one of them answers eventually, I don't think so.
After that, when it's all rolling green on green and fields stretching to the horizon's line, when they've both lapsed into a silence just as long, Frank speaks again, ignores Miles' sigh that says what's the point of this or I give up or so many other things that he can't, that neither of them (not yet), can answer --
"They'll make their peace, eventually."
(What he doesn't add: we've got to, too.)
----
When they land back in LAX they get a not-exactly-warm welcome from a couple of muscly-looking security guards, ushered into some back room that's a little too far beyond the bright colours of the ticket counters than Frank finds comfortable. The door clicks shut behind them and Miles props his hands against the table, leans into an amused look -- "anything I should know about here, Frank?"
He raises an eyebrow -- what, other than the whole crashing a plane on a make-believe island thing that would make people real interested? -- and that's when the gunmetal grey of the door opens again, cut by a tall, dark figure they both recognize in a second.
"You're alive?"
Miles manages to spit it out first and Matthew Abaddon smiles (or as close as he comes to one, Frank figures) against memories of Ben's confession, the three shots that cracked through graveyard air, his face shadowed by the campfire's flickering and it was like listening to a ghost story, Frank had thought, or maybe that's exactly what it'd been; Abaddon presses down his tie with the flat of one had, watches them in a way that makes Frank's skin crawl -- "I suppose Mr. Linus didn't do as thorough a job as he assumed."
One hand dips inside his jacket as they balk, retrieves two crisp-cornered envelopes he places on the table in careful movements. "As per Mr. Widmore's instructions --"
"Widmore?" Miles scowls out his name, arms crossed, and Frank's just plain confused; even when he'd shown back up on the radar and started working for Ajira again he'd never been contacted by Widmore's people, minus one very sizable cheque that had appeared in his mail slot one day without a stamp. "Where the hell is he?"
Abaddon's gaze, inscrutable, turns upwards -- Mr. Widmore will not be returning from the island, he intones, ignores their twin stares, still as blank as ever -- and there's barely a break in the steel of his words before he continues, taps the envelopes with two fingers.
"Consider this your final payment from Widmore Industries. And an official release from your contract."
It's Frank that steps forward this time, feels like his eyes are going red at the sides, furious; "listen pal, Widmore doesn't give a damn about us. And as far as I can figure, we were released from our contracts the island that minute that damn freighter blew up."
Miles back him up, rounding on Abaddon and just as indignant, three years' worth of resentment and blame bubbling over. "What I want to know is why the hell is Widmore, the guy who basically fucked off and forgot about us for three years, suddenly back on the island?"
Abaddon glances up from the table, sighs, and for just a second Frank swears he actually looks a little human, something complicated behind his eyes. He only says two words --
-- his children.
"Whaddaya mean children?" Frank questions, brow creasing. "Penny was his daughter, but --"
"Both his children," Abaddon interrupts, voice firm, uncompromising. "His daughter and his son, who died on the island."
It's funny, in that way the island and everything after's managed to make things, but both of them get a lightbulb blinking at the same time; Miles turns away, hand at mouth -- Jesus christ, it was Dan -- and Frank swears, thanks a higher power his parents didn't turn him into some kind of sacrificial lamb.
"You all had a role to play, you were all chosen for specific reasons," he's continuing, tone still a low, dry drone, buttoning his jacket again and pacing to the door. "That two of you survived is ... a better outcome than we imagined."
The sound of metal on metal hums through the silence between them -- guy sure as hell knows how to make an exit, Frank mutters, watches as Miles clenches his fists, like all that anger's wound tight through his body and just under the skin, ready to pop.
"It's bullshit," he bursts out, more angry than Frank's ever seen him, even since they got off the island. "They just used us -- Widmore and that Jacob guy and all of them. And Richard got stranded for a century and Juliet never got to go home and Jin never met his daughter and Dan's parents just sent him off to fucking die --"
The guy's crying, Frank realizes with something close to wonder, maybe more like disbelief, tears sparkling against the creases of his eyelids, swiping at his nose with one quick hand.
"I don't know what I'm doing here," Miles manages to strangle out after a minute, slumps back against the table. "We're still alive and they're all not and what the hell are we supposed to do now?"
Frank laughs -- a real, solid chuckle; you think I've got any answers? -- and Miles pauses, breaks into an eventual smile, smirks figures; you were only ever good for a drink or a crash landing and that only makes him laugh harder, feels a weightless sense of relief wash over him like something dark and heavy's been thrown from his shoulders.
"Yep, that about covers it."
They stay like that for a long time, laughter ebbing eventually, and it feels to Frank like the first normal -- normal and nice and good -- thing he's done since his feet hit ground in Fiji, the island in his wake.
----
When they buy the piece of land in Malibu the real estate agent mistakes them for a couple looking to build some kind of oceanside love nest and Frank lets the mistake ride out just enough to piss Miles off; I mean, can you blame him? he says after, standing almost cliffside in the swaying grass, watching the water, it would make a damn gorgeous place to put a house.
Widmore's parting gift more than covers it -- with so much left to spare Frank still can't believe his bank statements and double-counts the zeros every time -- and it's almost fitting, he thinks, the least the bastard (whether he's dead or alive, though Frank's betting on the former) can do.
After everything's installed and the landscaping's done -- minimal, just upkeep; the place is beautiful enough without it -- and a contractor's hired to make sure it's gated and away from prying eyes a couple of them get together to see it, and maybe under less weird circumstances they'd call it memorial service or funeral or something, seeing as it's practically a ceremony in its own right (stones for Charlotte, Dan, Juliet, Sun and Jin, Sayid, even Miles' mom's remains moved and newly rested). Richard's there, and Claire with Aaron in tow, Kate just out of jail, Sawyer with a daughter he suddenly has, even Desmond -- back from the island too and won't explain a word of it, just says Hurley and Ben (Ben Linus of all people) helped him escape and that's that -- along with Penny and their kid. They don't invite the parents because it's too much; too much to explain, too much to take on faith, too many questions without answers, and maybe only Eloise would understand but Frank doesn't much want her there anyway, at least not yet.
Kate's crying as they walk the grounds and read the memorial stones, not bothering to pretend it's anything but, and Penny half-hides behind her son's thick curls, head ducked (Frank doesn't miss her eyes, rimmed red and raw), watches Claire wipe away smeared mascara and goddammit, he thinks, nobody got out alright.
But beside him Miles slips his hand into Richard's and Sawyer pulls his daughter closer and Kate leans into Aaron, runs a hand along his pale hair, and maybe that they got out is the thing, grabbed their lives back and rode off into the damn sunset, like a big ole eff you to the island. Because they're alive even if their friends and lovers and teammates aren't, they made it out in one piece and lived to tell the tale.
Survived, Frank considers, like it's something new and in a way it is, watches the sun spilling red across the horizon over his friends' silhouettes, over the dark, cool gravestones, names carved in granite like a memory, names they'll carry on, and he's pretty sure there's some kind of peace in that.