Fic: The Forsaken (Charles/Eloise)
Title: The Forsaken (3/6)
Characters: Charles/Eloise, Ensemble
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine. Seriously? Seriously.
Rating & Warning: PG13 - Includes a discussion of abortion.
Words: 5500
Spoilers: Up to The Incident
Summary: It starts and ends with a prophecy, but there’s really nothing divine about the mess Charles and Eloise made over the course of sixty-five years. Many thanks to angeldylan628 for her beta duties. For lenina20’s prompt Charles/Eloise “past”.
Part One - Prelude and The Coronation, Part Two - The Truce
x x x
1977 - Full Moon
Ever since the first one occurred almost four years ago, Eloise has come to regret making these monthly meetings a term of the truce. They were pure pantomimes; a midnight masquerade where each side donned false pleasantries and pretences instead of costumes, and then went through the motions of pretending they were each something they were not, namely, civilized. Even the very setting was theatrical; a table set for four at the quarry, the only location each side had each rights to. Originally Richard had scheduled these gatherings to coincide with a full moon, which Dharma had taken literally and opted for holding every meeting under the bright night sky. Perhaps Horace chose the time because he was hoping to witness the island natives shed their human skin and don their wolf hides or something equally ridiculous.
“So our botanist has identified the parasite as…,” Horace glances at his notebook and then proceeds to slaughter the Latin, “igidoporus lignosuungal.”
Richard’s expression remains neutral and his voice measured. “Which is a direct result of your removal of the ground covering that normally protects the tree roots.”
It’s an accusation but a fair one, and it comes with none of the smugness or irritation that Eloise would have marinated her words with. On the best of days she is terrible at pandering to the ignorant Mr. Goodspeed, but tonight she allows Richard to do all the talking. An outbreak of tree rot is nothing compared to crisis brewing inside of her.
Horace has enough sense to look sheepish for a moment. “Amy cooked with it, the moss. All the wives did for a while. It made delicious jellies and desserts.”
This gentle admission doesn’t bring its desired levity, so Horace’s companion LaFleur steps in to add, “But don’t you worry, we’re back to satisfying our sweet tooths with Dharma brand Pudding Pops.”
While Richard and Horace discuss the best approach to combating the tree rot, Eloise allows her mind to wander. Beyond the tedious business to attend to, tonight’s meeting has another purpose for her. It’s the only opportunity she will have to make her request. If she waits another month, it will be too late to doing anything safely. Yet even with a deadline of sorts looming, she is unsure if she will attempt to pass on the folded note in her pocket, addressed to a woman she’s never met. To do so would mean putting great trust in a stranger, and in accepting she is meant to so something with her recent visions.
For the last three months, quick flashes of what she guesses are a picture of the future overtake her once or twice a day. Eloise presumes she is meant to divine information from these glimpses of the island’s destiny, most of which appears to focus on the era that LaFleur and his party came from, long from now. Occasionally they are from a period closer in time, and involve Charles and the appearance of familiar and unfamiliar Dharamanites. It’s impossible to piece together a chronology; most of the flashes are fractured, without beginnings or ends, and reveal only the briefest information - a new face, a relationship, a betrayal, a death, a profession made known, but none of the context. If there is any consistency, it is the gloominess that prevails in all of them.
In them, she has never encountered herself and is not sure how to read that, though one answer is obvious; she is not here in the future. Yet the fact that she is being granted this access suggests she is somehow significant to the future. Why is another question altogether. Her only answer was that the arrival of her visions had coincided with Dr. Chang’s discovery of The Passageway and the breaking of ground at the site they call The Orchid and the new life that grows inside her. Perhaps one or both of these critical events have tampered with her sense of time.
Her private rumination is interrupted as she is asked to weigh in on the next agenda item. Horace has questions about this year’s early migration of seabirds. While Richard explains this is usually a sign that we are due for a heavier winter storm season, Eloise fingers the folded piece of paper in her pocket and studies LaFleur. Ostensibly, he is here as Horace’s protection, just as Richard is here for hers. He has been accompanying Horace for the last year and a half, ever since he became the head of their security force. All things considered, that had been a welcomed change in personnel. She loathed Eric Radzinsky and it was only her great disdain at touching him that had stopped her from reaching over the table and breaking his neck each time he opened his squeaky mouth.
Unlike his predecessor, LaFleur had an ounce of common sense and a certain grace. Through the privileged information she held about him, both from their previous meeting decades ago, and now from the visions, Eloise was quite aware that his actions served only himself, and perhaps by extension, the people he came with. It was to her people’s benefit that LaFleur or Sawyer or James or Jim or whatever he answers to, was too busy trying to hustle Horace and the rest of his fellow jumpsuits to worry much about the so-called Hostiles, and therefore he made a fairly agreeable attendee at these meetings. There was always the possibility he would push for a war behind the scenes, if needed as a cover for any suspicions Dharma had about him, but for the most part, LaFleur did what he could to check Horace’s behaviour and his keen senses kept Dharma from looking as foolish as they were.
LaFleur is quite aware of her study of him this evening, in fact he invites it. Like her, he has tuned Richard and Horace out as much as possible. He leans back in his chair, and folds his hands in his lap, giving the impression that by allowing Eloise’s eyes to fall on him, he is fulfilling some desire of hers. She imagines this is how he was on the outside, when he preyed on women for money. She smirks at the image of him trying to use his good looks and charm to lure her into bed. In response, he flashes a grin that tells her not to be so sure, few women have ever said no to him. At once, this gesture of his triggers one of her flashes.
She sees LaFleur lying in a bed arguing with the dark haired woman she recognizes from previous visions about the cages. She can almost feel the heat that rises up from their bodies; anger and resentment are mixed in with yearning. Taunts about an unwanted pregnancy are exchanged. The woman shuts him up with a slap and LaFleur is stunned. He had thought victory was near. The woman allows a solemn glance back before she leaves, it’s a look Eloise interprets as disappointed or even broken hearted, but only because she has had several visions of these two to piece together their complicated and frighteningly familiar back and forth history.
Then the vision lapses and she is back in the here and now. She notices in the seconds that have passed, LaFleur’s grin has vanished and he seems to be elsewhere too, not caught in a vision, Eloise is sure she is the only one having these, but for whatever reason, he has allowed himself to let his guard down and slip away. Perhaps he is thinking of the dark haired woman who left him behind. More likely he is wishing this meeting was over and he was back in his comfortable bed with the blonde woman he calls his wife, the one whom the note in her pocket is addressed to.
“Eloise?” Richard prompts, bringing her back to the business at hand. “Do you have anything to add?”
She has lost the subject of conversation completely but trusts Richard knows what he is doing. “No.”
“Jim? Are we good?” Horace asks.
LaFleur sits up straight; the far away look is replaced with one that suits his head of security persona. “On Wednesday I’ll be sending Kwon to the north peninsula. Make sure all your people are aware of this.”
Richard nods; it was an arrangement he had worked out with LaFleur soon after he arrived. The time travellers were allowed onto their territory once a month to search for their missing friends. In return, John Locke was to be taken to Richard immediately upon his arrival. Meanwhile, Horace is oblivious to the nuances of this transaction and smiles because he thinks the Hostiles are being compassionate.
“’Til next month then.”
Horace’s statement is what always ends these awkward gatherings. The four of them rise from their seats, and LaFleur collapses the card table. Eloise hands him her chair to stack, and without further internal debate, she passes the note to him. He palms it without a reaction and slips it into the saggy pocket of his jumpsuit. Then she turns on her heel and accepts a torch from Richard. The two of them leave the quarry and retreat back into the jungle.
As always, Charles is waiting for them below the ridge. He’s leaning against a tree with binoculars hung around his neck; his rifle is slack in his hand. She knows for the length of the meeting it had been raised and his sniper scope had been directed at Horace’s head. Early on Charles had accompanied her to one of these meetings when Richard had been away. To call it a disaster would be polite. If she has slim patience for the silly truce she had manufactured, Charles had none. He had deliberately provoked Horace and even came to blows with Radzinsky, which was well deserved, but unacceptable. If the truce were to end, it will be on her terms, not because Charles had a temper. Since then, he had been banned from the meeting, her decision, not Dharma’s. He makes do with accompanying her on these journeys and prides himself on having her back should Dharma turn on them.
He greets her with a kiss on the cheek. Waiting in the dark always makes him amorous, and she knows it is only a prelude for what will follow when they reach their camp. Sometimes she allows Charles to have her here, in the clearing under the moon. She imagines the only reason he doesn’t turn these meetings into a massacre is because he knows he would be out of her good graces, and thus out of her bed, for a long while. Tonight she does not encourage him; she is too tired to do anything but curl up in her bedding and fret about what LaFleur will do with the note.
Charles wraps an arm around her shoulder; his breath tickles her ear. “Did Pumpkin Face mention their new project?”
“Of course not. They have no idea we know about The Orchid,” she snaps, but it has no bite. The torch she’s carrying seems unbelievably heavy, or maybe it’s her limbs that weigh so much. How could a creature that she imagines is no bigger than her own thumb steal so much energy from her? She could not do six more months of this, she was sure of that. Absentmindedly, she rubs her neck, and for once Charles seems to notice her weary posture, and takes the torch from her.
“I could always pay a little visit to Dr. Chang.” He suggests as they continue on toward their camp. As usual, Richard has gone on ahead of them. “He has a new baby now and could be persuaded to divulge more details than we have taken from their files.”
“Lovely idea, Charles.”
Her sarcasm frustrates him, and in turn he replies with an unnecessary lecture. “We should consider any means necessary.”
“I’m on top of it.”
She resents his implication that she is unaware of The Orchid’s great importance. If she did not allow her own lover access to The Passageway, she certainly did not want a fool like Horace harvesting the power to bend time and space. Ever since The Orchid site was revealed to them, Charles has led a team to clandestinely study Dharma’s progress. There were already plans in place for a natural looking sabotage of the site but she wanted to hold off until they had all of Chang’s research. She has always wanted to be able to control the energy there, and she believed Chang and his staff had the resources to learn more than she ever had about that location’s potential.
Still, her blood runs hot and cold at the mention of the doctor’s newborn and Charles’s purposed use for it. If he knew about their own baby, he would likely see him or her as an object too, something to be used to solidify his position with her or even the island. To be honest, she doesn’t know if she is any different. Ever since her short sighted reasons for a truce, her favour had slipped with Richard and her people. Being chosen by Jacob to have a child and giving the island an heir might woo them back to her. But it’s not something she is sure she would want for herself or the child. She is not sure she wants this child at all. It marks her as weak and different, an outsider in her own community. She is a shepherd, a warrior, and a daughter of the island. She is not a mother.
Charles abandons his lecture and walks beside her silently. Meanwhile her mind returns to LaFleur. Undoubtedly he’ll ignore the fact that her note is addressed to Juliet and read it himself first. Then he’ll have to decide whether to throw it away, pass it on to Horace or actually show it to his wife. Given all this, there is a very small chance, that the woman Eloise knows from her visions as Dr. Burke will meet her at The Staff Station in three nights, and help her get rid of the baby she carries.
x x x
On the day she is supposed to meet Juliet, Eloise keeps busy. At dawn, she accompanies a group to the shore and clears out and resets their shellfish traps. She spends the morning tending to the fire as they steam crabs. The smell turns her stomach and at one point she vomits in the bushes. After that, she collects laundry and brings it to the basin. She takes great satisfaction in beating the wet clothes against the rocks. Then she spread the laundry to dry on the nearby grass and in the mellow afternoon sun, she lets her eyes close as she rests against a tree.
She dozes for a bit, and then wakes on the edge of a dream, or possibly, it’s a flash thrust upon her. If so, it’s the first one she had ever seen that included herself, a much older version of herself. Looking down, her hands are spotted and wrinkled, and she carries herself with the burden of age. Eloise can see she is dressed in fashion she vaguely remembers her mother wore - sensible heels, stockings, a stiff coat over a skirt and jacket. She is doing a good job of pretending to be a lady, she thinks. Palm trees sway nearby, but the blaring horns and screeching tires tell her she’s on a sidewalk off a busy street. Beside her, Charles stands in the dark, his curls gone, and his face ashen. Even decades later his eyes were still the blue of the ocean after a storm. Like her he was dressed differently, a dark suit and coat. She thinks he looked the way outsiders dressed for a funeral. Who died, she thinks?
Then she speaks. The preordained words feel clumsy in her mouth but she spits them out with great force. “Sacrifice? Don't you talk to me about sacrifice, Charles.” She can feel her hands, in fact her entire body, shake with a delicate rage. “I had to send my son back to the island, knowing full well that-”
Unlike now where Charles always matches and often surpasses her anger, this Charles is quieter, almost calm, resigned even. He simply says, “He was my son, too, Eloise.”
His remark infuriates her and the only deserving response is a tight slap across his face. As she does this, she is struck by how warm and tender his wizened face feels under her hand. She is tempted to cup his cheeks and search his face for understanding, but her hand is withdrawn with haste. There is no rebuttal from Charles. The vision ends there.
Off island with Charles, obviously not on a casual trip for supplies? That alone takes her breath away. She can’t even begin to contemplate the mention of a son discussed in the past tense with such regret and loss from both of them. A son who had been on the island when they were not? Eloise closes her eyes again, and lays the palm of her hand on her still flat belly. A son, she thinks. She tries to imagine a little boy clinging to her hand, as she shows him all the wonders of the island. It’s not an image she can hold before it dissolves into only the words she projected.
The laundry is dry. She gathers it and returns to camp, distributing it to the appropriate tents along the way. As she eats her dinner, she sees the crab shell held with the same hands from her vision. Not only were they older, but they were soft, and free from the calluses that exist now. It disturbs her and she loses her appetite. After dinner Eloise sits and absentmindedly chats with some of the women who are working on a quilt. It seems to take forever for dusk to dissolve in darkness. Finally she says good night to Charles who is engrossed in a game of chess with Richard by a campfire. He’s close to winning, and barely acknowledges her comment about needing her sleep, which is her way of saying for him to stay in his tent tonight. Then she goes and sits cross legged on her blankets, meditating and failing to focus. Once she hears the first snores around her, she slips out of her tent, leaving her rifle and torch behind, but allowing for a knife strapped around her ankle. She fades into the jungle and before long she crosses into Dharma’s territory.
The moonlight reflects off the corrugated roof of The Staff Station. Eloise flattens herself against a tree and watches. There are fresh tire treads across the path but none of the Dharma jeeps are in sight. It looks and sounds deserted, not open until morning when the nurses and technicians arrive to run their tests. Of course, that is how it should look if no one is coming to meet her or more likely, if she is walking into some trap. She waits and listens.
A splatter of rain begins, heavy at first, then light. She manages to stay fairly dry under the tree cover. Within five minutes the shower is over and afterwards the jungle briefly awakens from its slumber. A monkey calls out and another responds. There’s a fluttering of wings as birds rearrange themselves in their damp nests. A tree frog splashes in a puddle at her feet. It almost masks the snapping of a branch. Swiftly, her knife is in her hand and flashes at the throat of the person approaching her from behind.
“Whoa, Nelly!” LaFleur says, his hands held high in protest, his neck craning away from the sharp steel pointed at it. “You invited me.”
The knife doesn’t lower as she takes him in. At first she almost doesn’t recognize LaFleur without his jumpsuit. He’s dressed in dungarees and dark green shirt, a fashion choice that suggests he is off the clock.
“I didn’t invite you.”
“You saw fit to use me at your messenger, so here I am.”
Eloise lowers the knife but keeps it gripped tightly in her hand. She swiftly looks from side to side but sees and hears no one else. “Are you alone?”
With the knife gone, he lowers his arms. He doesn’t answer her question and instead tosses it back to her. “Are you?”
She gives a quick nod. If this is going nowhere, she wants the meeting over quickly. Thankfully LaFleur wastes no time with small talk.
“Who the hell is Dr. Burke?” he asks.
“Your wife,” she responds, and clarifies when she realizes she doesn’t know the exact status of their relationship. “Juliet, the woman you came with.”
“The woman I came with works in the motor pool. She’s no doctor.”
Eloise purses her lips, and runs her tongue over her teeth. She expected this query from him and decides information will do just as well as an actual explanation. She takes a deep breath and releases what she has gained about him from her visions. “You’re real name is James Ford. You used to be and probably still are what they call a Confidence Man. You like to read books and throw around insults. In twenty-five years you’re going to crash on this island and become a major source of annoyance for everyone. One day you’ll choke a man to death in that the wreck of that ship you told Horace you were looking for.”
He remains unflinching throughout her report. With her last comment, he feigns any disturbance and shrugs. “Yeah? What’s my hat size?” he drawls. She doesn’t respond, just stands with her free hand on her hip. His eyes narrow and he takes a step toward her. “I know some things about your people too. By the time I get here, there’s no bossy broad playing Queen of the Island. Nor is your hulking paramour around. In fact your entire little band of merry men is being led around by a bespectacled troll who likes bunnies.”
“Fascinating.” It comes out sarcastically, but it actually is pretty interesting. And his statement confirms the conclusions she had drawn from her own absence in the flashes. That being said, what happens twenty-five years from now is not her priority, at least not tonight. “Is that all?”
“Let’s get one thing straight. Tonight’s a one time deal.” LaFleur raises his finger. “If you even look at Juliet in a way that upsets her, I’ll send your ass back to the other Neanderthals you live with in trash can. Your people show up looking for you, and I sound the alarm. If you ever mention this meeting to anyone-”
“A list of how macho you are is not necessary, Mr. LaFleur. Discretion is what I’m looking for too. Is she inside?” Eloise nods toward The Staff.
“Come on.” Sawyer looks both ways before he leaves the cover of the jungle and crosses the jeep trail. He throws open the door and beckons her to go first. She steps over the threshold, descends the concrete steps and goes through a corridor that slopes downward. When LaFleur closes the door behind them, any light disappears. She feels him brush passed her in the dark and turn a corner. At the end of the hallway, one of the rooms is lit up. She follows him toward the light, very aware of her pounding heart and heavy breathing. She remembers seeing a doctor once, in her life before she came here. He had banged on her knees with a little hammer and given her brown syrup to make her chest feel better. This place smelled the same: the soap was not strong enough to wash away the sickness that lingered on the walls.
Juliet sits on a stool in the office and appears more like a patient waiting to see the doctor than a physician herself. Eloise notes she has a calm, poised face, and suspect it’s a reflex to bury any emotion from public, and perhaps even, private scrutiny. Like LaFleur she is dressed as a civilian, her jumpsuit left behind.
Eloise steps into the office. She sees Juliet stare at her hand, and realizes the knife is still there. Eloise turns it over in her hand and returns it to her ankle strap. LaFleur observes all of this from his position in the doorway until Juliet turns her quiet gaze on him and some silent message is passed between them.
“I’ll be outside,” he says, peeling himself off the doorframe reluctantly. “Keeping watch.”
His footsteps echo loudly in the empty hall. Once they fade, Juliet asks Eloise to sit down. She looks to the raised table covered with a sheet and pretends it’s not there. Instead she pulls a chair from the wall and sits across from Juliet.
The two women stare at each for a minute, and Eloise thinks they both must be contemplating how strange this is. Though, she reasons, a time travelling doctor playing mechanic must be used to strange. Juliet might not even recognize normal anymore.
“So…,” Juliet begins, and Eloise suspects she will go through the same questions as her husband, asking how she knew she was a doctor and so on. “How are you feeling?” she asks, surprising Eloise.
“Fine.” It comes out quick, like a defensive kick. It’s not too late to pretend this meeting has nothing to do with her body. “How are you?” she asks.
Juliet appears to find Eloise’s question a pleasant surprise and her lips turn up. She has one of those smiles that small or not, lights up the whole room. “Fine. I’m fine.”
Unlike the quarry meetings, this actually feels sincere, and Eloise relaxes a little. “Thank you for seeing me,” she begins. “I need your expertise.” Juliet gives nothing away and waits for Eloise to continue. She takes a deep breath and says for the first time out loud, “I’m pregnant.”
There is a history to such a statement that hangs in the air between. She imagines it is something that one woman has said to another with joy and grief billions of times. Confessing this gives her unexpected relief. It is no longer just her secret.
“How far along are you?”
“Three months.”
“Is there no one in your camp who could help you?”
At first Juliet’s question raises Eloise’s shields. It’s something an enemy might ask to check the opponent’s strength and skills. She might be also probing for information about their people’s odd birth rate which had been at zero long before Charles and Eloise arrived as toddlers. Jacob brought people to them and created communities not families. However, Eloise needs to remember that it was her who had come to Juliet, and she needs to trust her, if only for tonight.
“There are women who I’m sure hold some knowledge, but this is not something I could bring to them.”
A light seems to go on in Juliet’s eyes. “Are you thinking of terminating your pregnancy?”
Juliet’s words cut the air like a weapon, and Eloise has to think twice before she leaves her knife where it is. Still, her body rages as if attacked; her heart races and her muscles strain. She balls her fists to prevent herself from wiping that tender look off Juliet’s face.
“No.”
At first she thinks it is Juliet who has spoken and given an outward refusal to Eloise’s unspoken request. Then her mouth goes dry when she realizes that word exited her own lips.
“No,” she repeats. “I would just like you to….,” she searches for the proper term, “examine me and make sure the baby is all right.”
It takes a moment for Juliet to respond which gives Eloise a moment to reconsider. There are voices in her head telling her to backtrack and say yes to Juliet’s question, but she chooses to ignore them and follow the new thumping in her heart. Juliet’s response is to stand and look around the room. She searches through some drawers and hands Eloise a gown. She tells her to change into it and leaves the room. Eloise stands alone clutching the soft cotton robe. One more time, she whispers to herself, “No.”
x x x
The vitamins Juliet gave her rattle in her pouch. She doesn’t know if she’ll take them; Juliet had pronounced her healthy as a horse, but Eloise likes the noise they make, like dried seeds inside a gourd. After walking south from The Staff for about ten minutes, she realizes someone is following her. There’s an extra beat to the rattle, a shuffle of steps meant to stay hidden and in time with the noise she makes. She continues on as if unaware, listening carefully. It’s not LaFleur’s heavy tread or Juliet’s light steps. It’s possible someone else from Dharma is tracking her, but she doubts they would be as subtle. There is a more likely explanation.
She pauses, her feet sinking into the soft mud. It grounds her, makes her feel apart of the island. “Charles?” The wind picks up her call, and carries it along on its course. As the breeze increases, the wetness settled on the tops of leaves from the earlier rain, scatters, falls on her hair and face. She removes the scarf around her neck, and dries her face. She does not want him to think there were tears.
As if summoned from nowhere, Charles appears both brazen and shamed, rifle slung over his shoulder. He had not wanted to be found, but nonetheless wanted to be known. He looks younger to her, so loose and fresh in the moonlight, almost vulnerable. Maybe it’s just a contrast to her earlier vision of him so proper and aged and buttoned up.
“Charles.”
“Ellie.”
He rarely calls her that. In front of the rest it’s always Eloise and has been for years, ever since she turned eighteen and became the test of a prophecy. Occasionally it slips through his lips, often when he’s speaking to Richard about her and thinks she can’t hear; an attempt to infantilize her, for sure. When they’re alone, he usually calls her nothing; there is no need for labels or reminders, but sometimes it comes out as a sigh late at night when he’s near sleep and fully satisfied or a gasp when her legs are wrapped around his waist. The last time it was uttered outside their tent was years ago, when she told him saving his life was the reason she made the truce. Back then it had fallen from his mouth, in awe and in disappointment. Ellie. It had sounded like a stain, blood spreading across on a white cloth. Tonight it comes out tinny like he’s far away and not beside her, like they’re speaking on a telephone across an ocean with a poor connection.
This is the Charles that makes a rare appearance. The one who restrained himself from killing LaFleur and storming into The Staff looking for her. It is the one who dug in and found a morsel of trust that she knew what she was doing. This is man who will have no cruel retort for her after she slaps him on a city street decades from now. This is the Charles who calls her Ellie.
“They had something we did not,” she begins.
The worry is plain on his face and so odd to see. “In the medical station?”
“I needed to talk to LaFleur’s wife, a private matter, between women.”
He remains quizzical and when he whispers her name again, she knows she made the right choice. “Ellie?”
“We’re having a baby.”
A thousand possibilities cross his face, too many for her to interpret beyond the fact that it makes his mind whirl. He’s running through the potential meanings of this for her, for him, for them, for all them. Throughout this he has no words to express his thoughts, and there are few things that turn Charles Widmore speechless. Just the same, he shares how he feels. His rifle is thrown to the wet ground in careless manner so unlike him, and he crushes her in an embrace. It’s a promise, she thinks. He is with her, for them.
As he holds her close, she turns her face upwards. It will only remain dark for a few more minutes. Soon the edges of dawn will creep across the sky: pinks turning to purples and greys. A new beginning is coming, she thinks. Charles is correct. The possibilities are endless.
Soon Eloise will learn how wrong she is; there is to be only one terrible possibility.
x x x
To be continued here.
Characters: Charles/Eloise, Ensemble
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine. Seriously? Seriously.
Rating & Warning: PG13 - Includes a discussion of abortion.
Words: 5500
Spoilers: Up to The Incident
Summary: It starts and ends with a prophecy, but there’s really nothing divine about the mess Charles and Eloise made over the course of sixty-five years. Many thanks to angeldylan628 for her beta duties. For lenina20’s prompt Charles/Eloise “past”.
Part One - Prelude and The Coronation, Part Two - The Truce
x x x
1977 - Full Moon
Ever since the first one occurred almost four years ago, Eloise has come to regret making these monthly meetings a term of the truce. They were pure pantomimes; a midnight masquerade where each side donned false pleasantries and pretences instead of costumes, and then went through the motions of pretending they were each something they were not, namely, civilized. Even the very setting was theatrical; a table set for four at the quarry, the only location each side had each rights to. Originally Richard had scheduled these gatherings to coincide with a full moon, which Dharma had taken literally and opted for holding every meeting under the bright night sky. Perhaps Horace chose the time because he was hoping to witness the island natives shed their human skin and don their wolf hides or something equally ridiculous.
“So our botanist has identified the parasite as…,” Horace glances at his notebook and then proceeds to slaughter the Latin, “igidoporus lignosuungal.”
Richard’s expression remains neutral and his voice measured. “Which is a direct result of your removal of the ground covering that normally protects the tree roots.”
It’s an accusation but a fair one, and it comes with none of the smugness or irritation that Eloise would have marinated her words with. On the best of days she is terrible at pandering to the ignorant Mr. Goodspeed, but tonight she allows Richard to do all the talking. An outbreak of tree rot is nothing compared to crisis brewing inside of her.
Horace has enough sense to look sheepish for a moment. “Amy cooked with it, the moss. All the wives did for a while. It made delicious jellies and desserts.”
This gentle admission doesn’t bring its desired levity, so Horace’s companion LaFleur steps in to add, “But don’t you worry, we’re back to satisfying our sweet tooths with Dharma brand Pudding Pops.”
While Richard and Horace discuss the best approach to combating the tree rot, Eloise allows her mind to wander. Beyond the tedious business to attend to, tonight’s meeting has another purpose for her. It’s the only opportunity she will have to make her request. If she waits another month, it will be too late to doing anything safely. Yet even with a deadline of sorts looming, she is unsure if she will attempt to pass on the folded note in her pocket, addressed to a woman she’s never met. To do so would mean putting great trust in a stranger, and in accepting she is meant to so something with her recent visions.
For the last three months, quick flashes of what she guesses are a picture of the future overtake her once or twice a day. Eloise presumes she is meant to divine information from these glimpses of the island’s destiny, most of which appears to focus on the era that LaFleur and his party came from, long from now. Occasionally they are from a period closer in time, and involve Charles and the appearance of familiar and unfamiliar Dharamanites. It’s impossible to piece together a chronology; most of the flashes are fractured, without beginnings or ends, and reveal only the briefest information - a new face, a relationship, a betrayal, a death, a profession made known, but none of the context. If there is any consistency, it is the gloominess that prevails in all of them.
In them, she has never encountered herself and is not sure how to read that, though one answer is obvious; she is not here in the future. Yet the fact that she is being granted this access suggests she is somehow significant to the future. Why is another question altogether. Her only answer was that the arrival of her visions had coincided with Dr. Chang’s discovery of The Passageway and the breaking of ground at the site they call The Orchid and the new life that grows inside her. Perhaps one or both of these critical events have tampered with her sense of time.
Her private rumination is interrupted as she is asked to weigh in on the next agenda item. Horace has questions about this year’s early migration of seabirds. While Richard explains this is usually a sign that we are due for a heavier winter storm season, Eloise fingers the folded piece of paper in her pocket and studies LaFleur. Ostensibly, he is here as Horace’s protection, just as Richard is here for hers. He has been accompanying Horace for the last year and a half, ever since he became the head of their security force. All things considered, that had been a welcomed change in personnel. She loathed Eric Radzinsky and it was only her great disdain at touching him that had stopped her from reaching over the table and breaking his neck each time he opened his squeaky mouth.
Unlike his predecessor, LaFleur had an ounce of common sense and a certain grace. Through the privileged information she held about him, both from their previous meeting decades ago, and now from the visions, Eloise was quite aware that his actions served only himself, and perhaps by extension, the people he came with. It was to her people’s benefit that LaFleur or Sawyer or James or Jim or whatever he answers to, was too busy trying to hustle Horace and the rest of his fellow jumpsuits to worry much about the so-called Hostiles, and therefore he made a fairly agreeable attendee at these meetings. There was always the possibility he would push for a war behind the scenes, if needed as a cover for any suspicions Dharma had about him, but for the most part, LaFleur did what he could to check Horace’s behaviour and his keen senses kept Dharma from looking as foolish as they were.
LaFleur is quite aware of her study of him this evening, in fact he invites it. Like her, he has tuned Richard and Horace out as much as possible. He leans back in his chair, and folds his hands in his lap, giving the impression that by allowing Eloise’s eyes to fall on him, he is fulfilling some desire of hers. She imagines this is how he was on the outside, when he preyed on women for money. She smirks at the image of him trying to use his good looks and charm to lure her into bed. In response, he flashes a grin that tells her not to be so sure, few women have ever said no to him. At once, this gesture of his triggers one of her flashes.
She sees LaFleur lying in a bed arguing with the dark haired woman she recognizes from previous visions about the cages. She can almost feel the heat that rises up from their bodies; anger and resentment are mixed in with yearning. Taunts about an unwanted pregnancy are exchanged. The woman shuts him up with a slap and LaFleur is stunned. He had thought victory was near. The woman allows a solemn glance back before she leaves, it’s a look Eloise interprets as disappointed or even broken hearted, but only because she has had several visions of these two to piece together their complicated and frighteningly familiar back and forth history.
Then the vision lapses and she is back in the here and now. She notices in the seconds that have passed, LaFleur’s grin has vanished and he seems to be elsewhere too, not caught in a vision, Eloise is sure she is the only one having these, but for whatever reason, he has allowed himself to let his guard down and slip away. Perhaps he is thinking of the dark haired woman who left him behind. More likely he is wishing this meeting was over and he was back in his comfortable bed with the blonde woman he calls his wife, the one whom the note in her pocket is addressed to.
“Eloise?” Richard prompts, bringing her back to the business at hand. “Do you have anything to add?”
She has lost the subject of conversation completely but trusts Richard knows what he is doing. “No.”
“Jim? Are we good?” Horace asks.
LaFleur sits up straight; the far away look is replaced with one that suits his head of security persona. “On Wednesday I’ll be sending Kwon to the north peninsula. Make sure all your people are aware of this.”
Richard nods; it was an arrangement he had worked out with LaFleur soon after he arrived. The time travellers were allowed onto their territory once a month to search for their missing friends. In return, John Locke was to be taken to Richard immediately upon his arrival. Meanwhile, Horace is oblivious to the nuances of this transaction and smiles because he thinks the Hostiles are being compassionate.
“’Til next month then.”
Horace’s statement is what always ends these awkward gatherings. The four of them rise from their seats, and LaFleur collapses the card table. Eloise hands him her chair to stack, and without further internal debate, she passes the note to him. He palms it without a reaction and slips it into the saggy pocket of his jumpsuit. Then she turns on her heel and accepts a torch from Richard. The two of them leave the quarry and retreat back into the jungle.
As always, Charles is waiting for them below the ridge. He’s leaning against a tree with binoculars hung around his neck; his rifle is slack in his hand. She knows for the length of the meeting it had been raised and his sniper scope had been directed at Horace’s head. Early on Charles had accompanied her to one of these meetings when Richard had been away. To call it a disaster would be polite. If she has slim patience for the silly truce she had manufactured, Charles had none. He had deliberately provoked Horace and even came to blows with Radzinsky, which was well deserved, but unacceptable. If the truce were to end, it will be on her terms, not because Charles had a temper. Since then, he had been banned from the meeting, her decision, not Dharma’s. He makes do with accompanying her on these journeys and prides himself on having her back should Dharma turn on them.
He greets her with a kiss on the cheek. Waiting in the dark always makes him amorous, and she knows it is only a prelude for what will follow when they reach their camp. Sometimes she allows Charles to have her here, in the clearing under the moon. She imagines the only reason he doesn’t turn these meetings into a massacre is because he knows he would be out of her good graces, and thus out of her bed, for a long while. Tonight she does not encourage him; she is too tired to do anything but curl up in her bedding and fret about what LaFleur will do with the note.
Charles wraps an arm around her shoulder; his breath tickles her ear. “Did Pumpkin Face mention their new project?”
“Of course not. They have no idea we know about The Orchid,” she snaps, but it has no bite. The torch she’s carrying seems unbelievably heavy, or maybe it’s her limbs that weigh so much. How could a creature that she imagines is no bigger than her own thumb steal so much energy from her? She could not do six more months of this, she was sure of that. Absentmindedly, she rubs her neck, and for once Charles seems to notice her weary posture, and takes the torch from her.
“I could always pay a little visit to Dr. Chang.” He suggests as they continue on toward their camp. As usual, Richard has gone on ahead of them. “He has a new baby now and could be persuaded to divulge more details than we have taken from their files.”
“Lovely idea, Charles.”
Her sarcasm frustrates him, and in turn he replies with an unnecessary lecture. “We should consider any means necessary.”
“I’m on top of it.”
She resents his implication that she is unaware of The Orchid’s great importance. If she did not allow her own lover access to The Passageway, she certainly did not want a fool like Horace harvesting the power to bend time and space. Ever since The Orchid site was revealed to them, Charles has led a team to clandestinely study Dharma’s progress. There were already plans in place for a natural looking sabotage of the site but she wanted to hold off until they had all of Chang’s research. She has always wanted to be able to control the energy there, and she believed Chang and his staff had the resources to learn more than she ever had about that location’s potential.
Still, her blood runs hot and cold at the mention of the doctor’s newborn and Charles’s purposed use for it. If he knew about their own baby, he would likely see him or her as an object too, something to be used to solidify his position with her or even the island. To be honest, she doesn’t know if she is any different. Ever since her short sighted reasons for a truce, her favour had slipped with Richard and her people. Being chosen by Jacob to have a child and giving the island an heir might woo them back to her. But it’s not something she is sure she would want for herself or the child. She is not sure she wants this child at all. It marks her as weak and different, an outsider in her own community. She is a shepherd, a warrior, and a daughter of the island. She is not a mother.
Charles abandons his lecture and walks beside her silently. Meanwhile her mind returns to LaFleur. Undoubtedly he’ll ignore the fact that her note is addressed to Juliet and read it himself first. Then he’ll have to decide whether to throw it away, pass it on to Horace or actually show it to his wife. Given all this, there is a very small chance, that the woman Eloise knows from her visions as Dr. Burke will meet her at The Staff Station in three nights, and help her get rid of the baby she carries.
x x x
On the day she is supposed to meet Juliet, Eloise keeps busy. At dawn, she accompanies a group to the shore and clears out and resets their shellfish traps. She spends the morning tending to the fire as they steam crabs. The smell turns her stomach and at one point she vomits in the bushes. After that, she collects laundry and brings it to the basin. She takes great satisfaction in beating the wet clothes against the rocks. Then she spread the laundry to dry on the nearby grass and in the mellow afternoon sun, she lets her eyes close as she rests against a tree.
She dozes for a bit, and then wakes on the edge of a dream, or possibly, it’s a flash thrust upon her. If so, it’s the first one she had ever seen that included herself, a much older version of herself. Looking down, her hands are spotted and wrinkled, and she carries herself with the burden of age. Eloise can see she is dressed in fashion she vaguely remembers her mother wore - sensible heels, stockings, a stiff coat over a skirt and jacket. She is doing a good job of pretending to be a lady, she thinks. Palm trees sway nearby, but the blaring horns and screeching tires tell her she’s on a sidewalk off a busy street. Beside her, Charles stands in the dark, his curls gone, and his face ashen. Even decades later his eyes were still the blue of the ocean after a storm. Like her he was dressed differently, a dark suit and coat. She thinks he looked the way outsiders dressed for a funeral. Who died, she thinks?
Then she speaks. The preordained words feel clumsy in her mouth but she spits them out with great force. “Sacrifice? Don't you talk to me about sacrifice, Charles.” She can feel her hands, in fact her entire body, shake with a delicate rage. “I had to send my son back to the island, knowing full well that-”
Unlike now where Charles always matches and often surpasses her anger, this Charles is quieter, almost calm, resigned even. He simply says, “He was my son, too, Eloise.”
His remark infuriates her and the only deserving response is a tight slap across his face. As she does this, she is struck by how warm and tender his wizened face feels under her hand. She is tempted to cup his cheeks and search his face for understanding, but her hand is withdrawn with haste. There is no rebuttal from Charles. The vision ends there.
Off island with Charles, obviously not on a casual trip for supplies? That alone takes her breath away. She can’t even begin to contemplate the mention of a son discussed in the past tense with such regret and loss from both of them. A son who had been on the island when they were not? Eloise closes her eyes again, and lays the palm of her hand on her still flat belly. A son, she thinks. She tries to imagine a little boy clinging to her hand, as she shows him all the wonders of the island. It’s not an image she can hold before it dissolves into only the words she projected.
The laundry is dry. She gathers it and returns to camp, distributing it to the appropriate tents along the way. As she eats her dinner, she sees the crab shell held with the same hands from her vision. Not only were they older, but they were soft, and free from the calluses that exist now. It disturbs her and she loses her appetite. After dinner Eloise sits and absentmindedly chats with some of the women who are working on a quilt. It seems to take forever for dusk to dissolve in darkness. Finally she says good night to Charles who is engrossed in a game of chess with Richard by a campfire. He’s close to winning, and barely acknowledges her comment about needing her sleep, which is her way of saying for him to stay in his tent tonight. Then she goes and sits cross legged on her blankets, meditating and failing to focus. Once she hears the first snores around her, she slips out of her tent, leaving her rifle and torch behind, but allowing for a knife strapped around her ankle. She fades into the jungle and before long she crosses into Dharma’s territory.
The moonlight reflects off the corrugated roof of The Staff Station. Eloise flattens herself against a tree and watches. There are fresh tire treads across the path but none of the Dharma jeeps are in sight. It looks and sounds deserted, not open until morning when the nurses and technicians arrive to run their tests. Of course, that is how it should look if no one is coming to meet her or more likely, if she is walking into some trap. She waits and listens.
A splatter of rain begins, heavy at first, then light. She manages to stay fairly dry under the tree cover. Within five minutes the shower is over and afterwards the jungle briefly awakens from its slumber. A monkey calls out and another responds. There’s a fluttering of wings as birds rearrange themselves in their damp nests. A tree frog splashes in a puddle at her feet. It almost masks the snapping of a branch. Swiftly, her knife is in her hand and flashes at the throat of the person approaching her from behind.
“Whoa, Nelly!” LaFleur says, his hands held high in protest, his neck craning away from the sharp steel pointed at it. “You invited me.”
The knife doesn’t lower as she takes him in. At first she almost doesn’t recognize LaFleur without his jumpsuit. He’s dressed in dungarees and dark green shirt, a fashion choice that suggests he is off the clock.
“I didn’t invite you.”
“You saw fit to use me at your messenger, so here I am.”
Eloise lowers the knife but keeps it gripped tightly in her hand. She swiftly looks from side to side but sees and hears no one else. “Are you alone?”
With the knife gone, he lowers his arms. He doesn’t answer her question and instead tosses it back to her. “Are you?”
She gives a quick nod. If this is going nowhere, she wants the meeting over quickly. Thankfully LaFleur wastes no time with small talk.
“Who the hell is Dr. Burke?” he asks.
“Your wife,” she responds, and clarifies when she realizes she doesn’t know the exact status of their relationship. “Juliet, the woman you came with.”
“The woman I came with works in the motor pool. She’s no doctor.”
Eloise purses her lips, and runs her tongue over her teeth. She expected this query from him and decides information will do just as well as an actual explanation. She takes a deep breath and releases what she has gained about him from her visions. “You’re real name is James Ford. You used to be and probably still are what they call a Confidence Man. You like to read books and throw around insults. In twenty-five years you’re going to crash on this island and become a major source of annoyance for everyone. One day you’ll choke a man to death in that the wreck of that ship you told Horace you were looking for.”
He remains unflinching throughout her report. With her last comment, he feigns any disturbance and shrugs. “Yeah? What’s my hat size?” he drawls. She doesn’t respond, just stands with her free hand on her hip. His eyes narrow and he takes a step toward her. “I know some things about your people too. By the time I get here, there’s no bossy broad playing Queen of the Island. Nor is your hulking paramour around. In fact your entire little band of merry men is being led around by a bespectacled troll who likes bunnies.”
“Fascinating.” It comes out sarcastically, but it actually is pretty interesting. And his statement confirms the conclusions she had drawn from her own absence in the flashes. That being said, what happens twenty-five years from now is not her priority, at least not tonight. “Is that all?”
“Let’s get one thing straight. Tonight’s a one time deal.” LaFleur raises his finger. “If you even look at Juliet in a way that upsets her, I’ll send your ass back to the other Neanderthals you live with in trash can. Your people show up looking for you, and I sound the alarm. If you ever mention this meeting to anyone-”
“A list of how macho you are is not necessary, Mr. LaFleur. Discretion is what I’m looking for too. Is she inside?” Eloise nods toward The Staff.
“Come on.” Sawyer looks both ways before he leaves the cover of the jungle and crosses the jeep trail. He throws open the door and beckons her to go first. She steps over the threshold, descends the concrete steps and goes through a corridor that slopes downward. When LaFleur closes the door behind them, any light disappears. She feels him brush passed her in the dark and turn a corner. At the end of the hallway, one of the rooms is lit up. She follows him toward the light, very aware of her pounding heart and heavy breathing. She remembers seeing a doctor once, in her life before she came here. He had banged on her knees with a little hammer and given her brown syrup to make her chest feel better. This place smelled the same: the soap was not strong enough to wash away the sickness that lingered on the walls.
Juliet sits on a stool in the office and appears more like a patient waiting to see the doctor than a physician herself. Eloise notes she has a calm, poised face, and suspect it’s a reflex to bury any emotion from public, and perhaps even, private scrutiny. Like LaFleur she is dressed as a civilian, her jumpsuit left behind.
Eloise steps into the office. She sees Juliet stare at her hand, and realizes the knife is still there. Eloise turns it over in her hand and returns it to her ankle strap. LaFleur observes all of this from his position in the doorway until Juliet turns her quiet gaze on him and some silent message is passed between them.
“I’ll be outside,” he says, peeling himself off the doorframe reluctantly. “Keeping watch.”
His footsteps echo loudly in the empty hall. Once they fade, Juliet asks Eloise to sit down. She looks to the raised table covered with a sheet and pretends it’s not there. Instead she pulls a chair from the wall and sits across from Juliet.
The two women stare at each for a minute, and Eloise thinks they both must be contemplating how strange this is. Though, she reasons, a time travelling doctor playing mechanic must be used to strange. Juliet might not even recognize normal anymore.
“So…,” Juliet begins, and Eloise suspects she will go through the same questions as her husband, asking how she knew she was a doctor and so on. “How are you feeling?” she asks, surprising Eloise.
“Fine.” It comes out quick, like a defensive kick. It’s not too late to pretend this meeting has nothing to do with her body. “How are you?” she asks.
Juliet appears to find Eloise’s question a pleasant surprise and her lips turn up. She has one of those smiles that small or not, lights up the whole room. “Fine. I’m fine.”
Unlike the quarry meetings, this actually feels sincere, and Eloise relaxes a little. “Thank you for seeing me,” she begins. “I need your expertise.” Juliet gives nothing away and waits for Eloise to continue. She takes a deep breath and says for the first time out loud, “I’m pregnant.”
There is a history to such a statement that hangs in the air between. She imagines it is something that one woman has said to another with joy and grief billions of times. Confessing this gives her unexpected relief. It is no longer just her secret.
“How far along are you?”
“Three months.”
“Is there no one in your camp who could help you?”
At first Juliet’s question raises Eloise’s shields. It’s something an enemy might ask to check the opponent’s strength and skills. She might be also probing for information about their people’s odd birth rate which had been at zero long before Charles and Eloise arrived as toddlers. Jacob brought people to them and created communities not families. However, Eloise needs to remember that it was her who had come to Juliet, and she needs to trust her, if only for tonight.
“There are women who I’m sure hold some knowledge, but this is not something I could bring to them.”
A light seems to go on in Juliet’s eyes. “Are you thinking of terminating your pregnancy?”
Juliet’s words cut the air like a weapon, and Eloise has to think twice before she leaves her knife where it is. Still, her body rages as if attacked; her heart races and her muscles strain. She balls her fists to prevent herself from wiping that tender look off Juliet’s face.
“No.”
At first she thinks it is Juliet who has spoken and given an outward refusal to Eloise’s unspoken request. Then her mouth goes dry when she realizes that word exited her own lips.
“No,” she repeats. “I would just like you to….,” she searches for the proper term, “examine me and make sure the baby is all right.”
It takes a moment for Juliet to respond which gives Eloise a moment to reconsider. There are voices in her head telling her to backtrack and say yes to Juliet’s question, but she chooses to ignore them and follow the new thumping in her heart. Juliet’s response is to stand and look around the room. She searches through some drawers and hands Eloise a gown. She tells her to change into it and leaves the room. Eloise stands alone clutching the soft cotton robe. One more time, she whispers to herself, “No.”
x x x
The vitamins Juliet gave her rattle in her pouch. She doesn’t know if she’ll take them; Juliet had pronounced her healthy as a horse, but Eloise likes the noise they make, like dried seeds inside a gourd. After walking south from The Staff for about ten minutes, she realizes someone is following her. There’s an extra beat to the rattle, a shuffle of steps meant to stay hidden and in time with the noise she makes. She continues on as if unaware, listening carefully. It’s not LaFleur’s heavy tread or Juliet’s light steps. It’s possible someone else from Dharma is tracking her, but she doubts they would be as subtle. There is a more likely explanation.
She pauses, her feet sinking into the soft mud. It grounds her, makes her feel apart of the island. “Charles?” The wind picks up her call, and carries it along on its course. As the breeze increases, the wetness settled on the tops of leaves from the earlier rain, scatters, falls on her hair and face. She removes the scarf around her neck, and dries her face. She does not want him to think there were tears.
As if summoned from nowhere, Charles appears both brazen and shamed, rifle slung over his shoulder. He had not wanted to be found, but nonetheless wanted to be known. He looks younger to her, so loose and fresh in the moonlight, almost vulnerable. Maybe it’s just a contrast to her earlier vision of him so proper and aged and buttoned up.
“Charles.”
“Ellie.”
He rarely calls her that. In front of the rest it’s always Eloise and has been for years, ever since she turned eighteen and became the test of a prophecy. Occasionally it slips through his lips, often when he’s speaking to Richard about her and thinks she can’t hear; an attempt to infantilize her, for sure. When they’re alone, he usually calls her nothing; there is no need for labels or reminders, but sometimes it comes out as a sigh late at night when he’s near sleep and fully satisfied or a gasp when her legs are wrapped around his waist. The last time it was uttered outside their tent was years ago, when she told him saving his life was the reason she made the truce. Back then it had fallen from his mouth, in awe and in disappointment. Ellie. It had sounded like a stain, blood spreading across on a white cloth. Tonight it comes out tinny like he’s far away and not beside her, like they’re speaking on a telephone across an ocean with a poor connection.
This is the Charles that makes a rare appearance. The one who restrained himself from killing LaFleur and storming into The Staff looking for her. It is the one who dug in and found a morsel of trust that she knew what she was doing. This is man who will have no cruel retort for her after she slaps him on a city street decades from now. This is the Charles who calls her Ellie.
“They had something we did not,” she begins.
The worry is plain on his face and so odd to see. “In the medical station?”
“I needed to talk to LaFleur’s wife, a private matter, between women.”
He remains quizzical and when he whispers her name again, she knows she made the right choice. “Ellie?”
“We’re having a baby.”
A thousand possibilities cross his face, too many for her to interpret beyond the fact that it makes his mind whirl. He’s running through the potential meanings of this for her, for him, for them, for all them. Throughout this he has no words to express his thoughts, and there are few things that turn Charles Widmore speechless. Just the same, he shares how he feels. His rifle is thrown to the wet ground in careless manner so unlike him, and he crushes her in an embrace. It’s a promise, she thinks. He is with her, for them.
As he holds her close, she turns her face upwards. It will only remain dark for a few more minutes. Soon the edges of dawn will creep across the sky: pinks turning to purples and greys. A new beginning is coming, she thinks. Charles is correct. The possibilities are endless.
Soon Eloise will learn how wrong she is; there is to be only one terrible possibility.
x x x
To be continued here.