Fic: Seven Tomorrows (TWW/LOST)
I finished it!
Seven Tomorrows
Fandom: The West Wing / LOST
Disclaimer: Neither The West Wing nor Lost belong to me. The former is property of the genius Aaron Sorkin and the latter of JJ Abrams and the crew.
Rating: R
Word Count: 7,991
Summary: It took seven days to shape the world. There are seven seals of the apocalypse. And it takes seven, seven events, seven days, seven years, seven, to bring the world to its knees. Planes are meant to crash and nukes are meant to detonate. Men are meant to kill and buildings are meant to fall. Fate is real, fate is a religion and a man not named Henry Gale is its only prophet. He's counting to seven.
Warnings: Spoilers for Lost Season 2 and no specific The West Wing spoilers, though this story takes place sometime during the second season. That said, timelines are fudged, at best.
Author's Note: First thing's first: this fic is my baby. It is my grand opus, my epic, and is one of the longest one-shot pieces of fic I've ever written. There are three different "plots" going on here, and the story covers the course of a year. I don't know where the idea came from, and I have to confess, the bulk of this was conceived and penned in the throes of insomnia at 3 in the morning. Needless to say, it's cracked out. It started out kind of fun, and (like everything I write) got bleaker and bleaker until it was this: a giant, depressing apocalyptic musing on fate. You've been warned.
There is also a soundtrack to go with this fic on the way. I'm going to upload it and all that jazz as soon as I can. Thank you again and hope you enjoy!
. .
[ They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. - Fyodor Dostoevsky]
. .
[ We set to sail on the clipper that’s bound for South Australia
The weather’s warm there, the natives are dark and nubile
But if you listen, quiet, you can hear the footsteps on the cross-trees
The ghosts of sailors passed, their spectral bodies clinging to the shrouds
So, good night, boys, good night.
Say good night, boys, good night.
- "Shanty For the Arethusa" The Decemberists]
. .
I had a dream.
I had a dream once, and there, it was a land man could scarcely imagine as real. I thought it would come to look like all we had never seen but had scarcely dared to dream of. I had a dream. It looked a bit like the beginning, the dawn of time.
I had a dream that tomorrow wouldn’t be like today; I thought tomorrow was supposed to be something better, something we work for, strive for, every single day.
I had a dream. It never looked like this.
. .
"My fellow Americans, I speak to you as a fellow citizen…"
Toby knows how this goes. After all, he wrote it. Another speech, another speech all about the betterment of society, vision of the future, the promise of peace in this, "the new era of globalization." Blah. Blah. Blah, empty rhetoric. This really isn’t his style.
Needless to say, he wouldn’t consider this is his best work. A wave of laughter envelops the crowd and the president continues. Toby wasn’t listening. Toby doesn’t have to.
"My computer breaks, and I dial up tech support. I’m talking to some guy in Bangalore, India about my busted internet connection and he’s advising me what to do, telling me what buttons to press and when to restart or reboot, this and that, continents away while I sit in my office in New Hampshire. Our borders are eroding; cultures are sloshing over the sides of lines drawn on maps: McDonalds all over the planet, Starbucks on every corner. They say that we are turning the world into a giant Walt Disney World resort, complete with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and the belittling of the cultures of others. That’s not the worst of it. Weapons and terrorism are traded like playing cards, one country to the next. We live in a new era, and you, the graduates of this prestigious university sit here before me, ready to inherit the earth, ready to rise in this, the new era of globalization."
Toby remembers writing that line.
"Nice speech," Sam says, leaning casually against the wall. His glass is empty and he twirls it in his hand, idly, not noticing.
Toby nods. "We did good. In a nice, empty, very vague and meaningless sort of way."
"Toby…"
Toby turns to him fast.
"It sounded like we took some random columnists from the New York Times, asked them for their thoughts on globalization, stuck them in a blender, and spit this out on some paper and called it a speech."
"It was a commencement address, Toby, not the goddamn Gettysburg Address. And at the University of Dayton, for Christ’s sake."
Sam’s hand is on his hip and it’s just another day at the office.
"Right, Sam. So it really doesn’t matter what the hell we tell the future generation of our country."
Sam chuckles, his arm reaching out towards the crowd of students, caps in the air, applause and cheers.
"Hell, they’re probably not even listening anyway."
Toby smiles a smile he doesn’t mean and jams his hands in his pockets, leaning back on his heels. "Is this your polite way of saying we’re doomed?"
. .
The sun rises high above the city of Sydney as the moon smiles up above the glowing architecture of D.C. Abe Lincoln sleeps and traffic lights blink; the sky is dark and empty and the stars aren’t ever seen.
An island floats in the Pacific, in the sea, in this world. It floats among the waves and the water and the seaweed and the sounds. Silence, silence, silence. An island floats in the Pacific, floats on secrets, floats on dreams and waits in the middle of nowhere.
A man says a prayer in a foreign tongue, a prayer to a god that requires no sign of the cross. A man studies plans, running fingers over numbers and conjectures and wonders if this is what God felt like on the seventh day, knowing completion was to be found with the setting of the coming sun. A man pretends to sleep but is really just counting the minutes, counting until dawn, until morning, counting them down until it all begins again.
The clock inside the Dharma Laboratory is waiting to announce the departure of Oceanic Flight 815.
A man waits. A man waits because despite the cynicism and lack of faith that envelops each day, fate is anything but false. A man waits.
Fate is anything but false and a heart beats a pulse, slow, steady, counting down -
. .
The weather is surprisingly warm for September.
Charlie opens the door to the Oval Office with an air of grace and propriety he never knew he possessed.
"Mr. President?"
A rustle of papers, and Jed pulls his glasses down the bridge of his nose, a half-smile gracing his lips.
"Yes, Charlie."
"Leo’s here."
"Send him in."
Jed waits.
Leo enters with a clearing of his throat and anxiously clasped hands. Jed leans back in his chair. It’s a surprisingly warm day in September; it’s a slow immersion into hell.
"Sir, I have some bad news…"
The door shuts behind Charlie.
CNN announces breaking news.
. .
CJ Cregg loves her job. Really. She does. There are just some days where she absolutely hates it.
She knows the saying. People like to shoot the messenger, and being the bearer of bad news puts you right in the line of fire.
"Yesterday on September 22 commercial airlines Oceanic flight 815 bound for LA from Sydney disappeared off the radar somewhere off the coast of Fiji. Air traffic control efforts by both the US and Australia have been unable to make contact with the flight and satellite imaging has proved equally fruitless. Most passengers on board the international flight were Americans, including a US Marshal and recent lottery winner Hugo Reyes of Los Angeles."
She wonders how exhausted she looks on TV.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and the president promises a thorough and complete investigation."
Hands shoot up in earnest before she even finishes her sentence.
"CJ, does this mean the search has been called off?"CJ takes her glasses off, props her elbow on the side of the podium. They would ask that. They would.
"We don’t even know where to look." She swallows hard. "We’ll let you know when we have more information."
Leaving the podium amid shouts of her name and blurred and blended questions, she thinks she should have said ‘if’ as opposed to ‘when.’
It is September 23. CJ Cregg hates her job.
. .
Elton John is singing on the radio. He thinks it’s going to be a long, long time.
The phone rings. Donna answers.
"Josh Lyman’s office."
"This is Sara Thomas with Widmore Labs."
. .
It was harder to transport them than he thought it would be. It was harder. But not impossible.
They all fell down and they were all tied and gagged. They dragged them through the jungle, the sun shining down and sweat dripping down, and he had just followed. Slow and patient footsteps falling the in the wake of his men’s frantic shuffle. They knew where to go, and he followed in silence.
The breeze is rough on the dock. He stands and watches and he can feel it, power, he can feel it strumming through his veins.
They kneel there down before him and it’s exactly as it should be (it’s exactly as he planned).
Hurley leaves, slow and sad, two men gripping his forearms tight, unnecessary.
Henry stands solemn, still, hands clasped behind his back.
"Soon," he whispers. "Soon."
The ground shakes and quakes and he can’t hear. The sky is painted violet, purple, unreal, unnatural and his hands fly over his ears; it aches.
It subsides just as abruptly and he stands up straight.
They’ll all know it’s time.
. .
"Josh!"
Donna grabs his arm outside the mural room and he cocks his head her way, an eyebrow raised in question.
"So, someone called from Portugal. Widmore Labs. Something about electromagnetic pulses in the Pacific."
She waves the fax in his face and stops, hands on hips and stares at her.
"What the hell am I supposed to do with it?"
"I don’t know. They told me to give it you."
"They?"
"By they, I mean CJ."
He tries an angry glare, but it doesn’t really work because he is Josh and she is Donna and they really aren’t good at things like that.
"Son of a bitch. I handle domestic issues, Donna. I battle, epic, hand-to-hand combat style, fight to the death on the Hill. I don’t do electromagnetic doo-wops from Portugal."
He starts to walk away, and her long legs skitter after him in his wake. She decides that he struts as opposed to walks and the thought makes her lips quirk into a slight smile.
"You are a regular megalomaniac. And, actually, not to nit-pick or anything, the electromagnetic doo-wop was in the Pacific. The Portuguese were the ones who detected it."
He sighs.
"Give me that." He snatches the fax from her. "I want notecards, Donna!"
. .
Hurley finds the camp easily. He walks aimlessly, swiping branches out of his path, skittish and scared and strangely not lost.
His mind is empty. His mind is empty save for the numbers repeating, repeating in an insanely quick fashion and as night begins to fall he can see the campfires and he can hear their voices.
There’s a broken door with the word ‘quarantine’ painted on it. He doesn’t go any farther.
He drops his backpack with a heavy thud, sinking awkwardly to his knees, and roughly begins to cry.
He stays there all night, watching the campfires and listening as the voices subside and sleep claim the camp.
He thinks what he is feeling is guilt. He knows this is really nothing new.
Come morning, when he crosses over into the sand, wiping sweat off his brow, tears long gone, he finds Sayid waiting for him.
"What happened?" Sayid asks, no, demands. He already has a gun in his hand.
. .
"Donna, light of my life, what’d you find for me?"
He perches on her desk and she looks up from her computer, her fingers still moving over the keys.
"Well…see that’s the thing…"
"What’s the thing?"
He drinks her coffee and he grimaces. She stops typing, dropping her hands in her lap.
"I don’t really know."
"You don’t really know…what?"
"What I found."
He stares at her blankly, picking the coffee mug back up and stopping just shy of his lips.
"Josh, what’s the Dharma Initiative?"
. .
Franklin Delano Roosevelt liked to talk about freedom. He named four of them in 1941, and they were the usual, the banal, those to be expected. You can say what you want and you can pray to whatever god you please, or choose to do the exact opposite. You can chase whatever dream keeps you up late at night and you have the freedom to want.
His fourth freedom is where he got it right, where he made it interesting.
‘The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor - anywhere in the world.’
In 1941 our nation’s president told us we should be free from fear. He told us this, and he told us in order to achieve this, we need less weapons in this world.
I made my fortune polishing rifles and handing them out to the troops. Blood money; I made my fortune through bullet holes and dismemberment and graves filled with the nameless, the dead.
It took me several decades to get what he meant. It took me several decades to realize he was right.
What’s really important here is, it took me far too long.
. .
Sayid hears that Sawyer and Kate and Jack were left on a dock in the company of the Others and that Michael and Walt set sail. He hears that they let Hurley go and that he was supposed to tell them not to go searching.
Sayid knows that Henry can’t be that stupid.
Eko and Locke stumbled out of the jungle with an unconcious Desmond towed between them yesterday. Eko agrees with Sayid without a moment’s hesitation today.
Tomorrow they are heading out.
Tomorrow Henry is waiting for them, a rising sun behind him, the wreckage of the hatch around him.
Tomorrow he tells them he’s in charge.
. .
There’s a history here and it’s a history that hasn’t been and never will be recorded, and if it is, the words will be smeared by the victor and it will all be remembered differently.
It was supposed to be simple.
We thought we could change the world. We thought if we built enough alliances and if we convinced the right people that peace could be achieved instead of just dreamed and that weapons would be left to rust and diplomacy would be comprised of words as opposed to armed fronts and promises and declarations of war.
The Dharma Initiative was supposed to be simple.
I made my first mistake by hiring him.
Tomorrow doesn’t belong to me anymore.
. .
"Department of Heuristics and Research on Material Applications Initiative."
"What?" Josh asks, hanging up the phone, leans back heavily in his chair.
"It’s what Dharma stands for. Apparently it’s an acronym."
"The Department of…?" He waves his hand on, forgetting the rest, prompting her to continue.
"Heuristics and Research on Material Applications. Initiative, of course."
They look at each other silently, her hip cocked, resting against the doorjamb, and he, his fingers a steeple before him, watching her.
"What does that even mean?" He finally asks.
"I thought you’d know."
They don’t laugh. It’s not very funny.
"It was founded in 1970," she continues, reading off the pages of the heavy file held in her hands, "by the University of Michigan…uh, doctoral candidates. Karen and Gerald de Groot."
"De Groot?"
"De Groot. And, um, the Hanso Foundation financed it?"
"What’s the Hanso Foundation?"
"Some thing started by Alvar Hanso."
"The weapons guy from Denmark?"
"The very one. But he got sick of creating weapons systems, and instead wanted to devote his time to, and I quote, ‘to focus instead on the development of new technologies to create a brighter future for all humanity.’"
"How kind of him."
"There’s a lot of big science words…cryogenics, electromagnetism, eugenics and genomic advancement, life extension, and get this, the quest for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Apparently they were all about peace. How nice."
"So, they were really nerdy hippies with a chemistry set?"
"Really nerdy hippies trying to change the world through science experiments as opposed to Woodstock. So, yeah, more or less."
He chuckles, and the smile slides from her face, her mouth pulled tight, frown lines and a look of intense concentration. Donna is quiet.
"What?"
"I don’t…I don’t know."
Her face is grim as she hands him the file.
"Oh, fuck," he murmurs. "Fuck, fuck…fuck. Get Leo on the phone. Now."
. .
Jack had expected there would be labs, labs and doctors and syringes laced with mind control.
There are no labs. There aren’t any labs, but there are barracks and signs that Jack doesn’t understand. There are clocks on the wall that count down not up and they all look the same as the one in the hatch and Jack just waits, waits for the hieroglyphs to flash his way and for the sky to finally drop in around him.
Jack doesn’t want to know what the countdown is for.
He doesn’t want to know, but when he closes his eyes he sees a blank map, a blank globe, and he knows, he knows what comes next.
Jack closes his eyes and the world is empty.
. .
They sit there in silence, the occasionally rustle of paper and pages punctuating the quiet staff meeting.
Toby mutters under his breath from time to time and Sam’s face is knit in confusion. CJ skims quickly, flipping through once and then back to the beginning to start again.
Leo exhales and drops the file. It’s too loud.
"Why didn’t you come to me sooner with this?" He asks, not quite angry, but more so frustrated.
"We…we didn’t realize," Josh starts. "These bastards, they set up camp in Russia and the Mid East and God only knows where else."
"I’m sorry, I missed a step," CJ interrupts, raising a hand in question. "What are we even talking about? I’ve read the file, and I still don’t get it."
"The Dharma Initiative," Josh replies, brusque, impatient.
"Who are they?" CJ asks.
"Devils," Leo whispers.
. .
Sayid had told himself that he was through with taking orders.
He finds himself here, on this island, and a man that he tortured and a man that he beat and a man that lied is telling him what to do.
They are building. They are building, but what, he doesn’t know.
He’s in the army again, he tells himself. They’re in the army now.
He never dares to think that they’re building a new civilization.
. .
Leo used to drive drunk all the time. It was almost habitual. He’d hit a bar, look at his life through the bottom of a glass of scotch, which slowly, as the night wore on, became a bottle and not just a glass. The bartender would offer to call a cab or call a friend, and Leo, he would rise on steady feet, and say, clearly, no slurring, that he was fine, that he could handle it.
He’d drive home drunk and he would wonder if maybe that green light was really red and he was driving off to meet death head-on.
He always made it home.
. .
Wayne used to tell Kate that the devils were in the heavens and not the other way around. He said there was nothing safer than earth, than firm ground beneath your feet, and the limitless sky was where the trouble truly brewed.
She heard him whispering those words over and over again, the lecherous drunken slur and deep twang, as the plane took off on September 22. She heard it as the wheels left the runway and her ears popped in protest of altitude and ascent, and with the leveling out of the plane and the sweating of her palms, she realized he was probably right.
When her fingers closed around an oxygen mask and her heart hammered a counterbeat to the engine failure, all traces of doubt were erased. He was right. He was right.
. .
It is a cold day in December and Jed can’t seem to stay warm.
His face is flushed with anger and he slumps in the high-back armchair.
"Let me get this straight, Leo. We’ve known about these guys. We have known that they exist, that they were forming their own colony, so to speak, and we didn’t do a damn thing about it?"
"Sir, forgive me, but there’s a little thing known as the first amendment, but not only that, these people are not Americans, and better yet, they’re not even on American soil! We have whackjob groups all over this damn planet, sir. We can’t police them all; we won’t police them all. We didn’t think of them as a threat."
Leo glances out the window; hail is rattling off the windowpane. "Looks like we were wrong," Jed whispers.
Leo turns back, leaning towards the president.
"Sir, intelligence shows they have people in Russia, they have people in Iran, Iraq, North Korea and China. Information on South America is sketchy at best, and we’re working with Interpol on Europe. Our best guess is that there’s a station in Denmark, based solely on Hanso’s nationality."
"Is Hanso even alive?"
"We don’t know."
. .
Sawyer’s hair has grown too long again. This is how he knows they have been here for longer than the marks on the wall record; the ends of his hair brush his shoulders and it’s been too damn long since he’s seen anything but the graying walls of his cell.
He watches the clock on the wall until the numbers blur or his eyes cross or he blacks out, falls asleep.
Kate sits in the cell next to him, steel bars separating the two of them; an entire maze of mystery and silence separates them from Jack. They quit asking about him. They don’t want to know.
She stirs slightly and he turns to catch her eye.
"Look," she whispers.
He does.
Three.
Two.
One.
Tired and dehydrated and hopeless and lost, Sawyer has enough sense about himself to understand that the five ancient hieroglyphics spell out ‘time’s up’ and that this, the quiet, the cell, the solitude, is just a prelude to something else.
. .
I had a dream.
I had a dream there were no wars, and I could see a quiet world, a prosperous world. A happy world.
I had a dream there were no wars.
I had a dream. I was wrong.
. .
"...and I believe we have our Middle Eastern correspondent Margot Sinclair on the line. Margot, can you hear us?"
The newscaster sits there, behind a desk, a hand to her ear, waiting.
"This is Margot Sinclair reporting live from Beirut." There is silence on the airwaves, silence and static. "This connection won’t hold for long…This is Margot Sinclair reporting for CNN from Beirut.
"The Iranians have bombed Israel. I repeat…The Iranians… have nuked Israel.
"This is Margot Sinclair…"
The screen goes black.
. .
The situation room is dark and still, and they stand there, the president, the Chief of Staff, five star generals, huddled around a phone.
"Mr. President? Mr. President?"
"Yes, yes, we’re here, son. We’re here."
"They’re here…they’re here…"
"I’m sorry, son. Could you repeat that?"
"The Chinese have taken the city…the Chinese have taken Tokyo. The Chinese -"
He stares at the phone; Leo touches his elbow. He shakes his head.
. .
At the staff meeting they are interrupted.
Bombs are have gone off in Berlin. Bombs have gone off in Paris. Bombs are exploding on buses in Spain and the underground is exploding in London.
The switch maps from Asia and the Mid East to a map of the world.
Two hours later, they are interrupted again.
Bombs were detonated in Europe. Bombs were detonated, but they didn’t send just debris and detritus everywhere.
There was smallpox in those bombs.
Leo grabs the phone.
At the staff meeting they discuss gas masks and air raids and the end of the world.
. .
RIOTS SWEEP THE U.S.
CAN PRESIDENT BARLET STOP THE VIOLENCE?
168 DEAD IN BOSTON RIOTS
43 MUSLIMS BURNT IN CHICAGO
NATIONAL GUARD STATIONED AT HOSPITALS
DEATH TOLL IN MID EAST MOUNTING
UNTOLD DEAD IN EUROPE
SCHOOLS CLOSED!
BANK CRASH!
Toby throws the newspapers down on his desk. This has to be journalism, and writing, at its absolute worst.
. .
Sayid is dead.
They go to sleep that night, wary and exhausted beneath heavy palms and on rough sand. They go to sleep after a day of construction, of heavy labor, and an evening where Sayid argued and bargained and pleaded with Henry for the release of Jack and Kate and Sawyer, using threatening words like revolt.
They awoke to Sayid swinging from the branch of a tree, his neck broken, his arms limp and hanging heavy.
No one calls it suicide. No one believes it was.
Instead, they all work extra hard and no one dares to meet Henry’s eyes.
They know an example when they see one.
. .
A mosque was torched and burnt and a synagogue disemboweled and brought down to its foundation, and even then, the bricks were taken away, taken away and broken until there is little more than a crater in the earth between the Green Street Laundromat and an ironically closed 7-11. CJ doesn’t talk about it in the briefing. Japan is now China and Israel is now the cradle of radiation as opposed to religion and it’s the eighteenth century in Europe, full of the plague and unstable governments and belligerent mobs.
Someone is always mad at someone else because of God. There’s nothing newsworthy about that.
. .
Mr. Eko’s hands hurt. They are calloused and blistered and worn rough by the constant handling of dry wood and twine. The walls stand tall and proud, in a quiet homespun kind of way, and the half-assembled pews make him think of hollowed out classrooms too rarely attended by a youth that will never know recess or trading snacks at lunchtime. It’s depressing and makes him think of dusty lots with broken planks for baseball bats and men that shape a future freewill has no say in.
The ax comes down hard.
. .
Her freshman year of college CJ fell down the steps of her dorm.
Her overflowing hamper of laundry rose to the tip of her nose, a month of dirty clothes piled high in her arms, and on the the third floor she hit a step the wrong way, and she slipped.
It was all slow motion, cartoonish antics.
The clothes flew in the air and the basket bounced off the stairwell. Her long legs were stretched before her and her back met the stairs too sharp. She rolled and she fell and as she hit the landing, her back sore, her legs too long, her clothes fell down around her and she started to laugh as she thought of that old saying and its all too literal manifestation at two in the morning in a residence hall. You’re not supposed to air your dirty laundry in public. You’re especially not supposed to break your neck in the process.
She met Toby that night. He only tells the story when he’s drunk and they’ve run out of amusing things to say. She only laughs when she’s sober.
After too many cocktails and a buzzing bloodstream the memory feels too much like death, and there’s really nothing amusing about that.
. .
Locke finds Eko leaning over a river, washing his hands clean.
They stare at each other warily, and finally Eko speaks.
"What are we doing here?"
Locke gazes off into the recesses of the jungle, not answering the question. Not directly. "We are at the crux of something great here. Don’t you see? And I imagine, after this, there will be no turning back."
Eko rises from the river, angry, maybe sad.
"You’ve seen these men, John. You’ve seen what they do. How can you call any of this greatness?"
"I said it was great. I never said that it was good."
. .
Henry says strange things to them while they’re in captivity. He tells them that Tokyo has fallen and the Chinese live there now. They think it’s a test and they don’t understand what he means. He smiles and it’s smug and it’s eerie and scars still decorate his empty face.
He tells them that small pox has found a home in Europe. Jack thinks this is come kind of payback for his own captivity and torture. Henry punishes with words and mind-games while Sayid had used his own brand of physical interrogation.
Neither method really works.
He says the Jews are out of Palestine. Jack says he doesn’t care.
He smiles and Jack asks what’s so funny, the edge still present in his voice, pledging an authority that no longer exists. The grin grows, and Henry says President Bartlet doesn’t stand a chance.
Jack doesn’t ask any more questions.
Henry says the trumpets will be singing soon.
. .
It’s the night before Boone died all over again. It’s that night stretched over too many hot, nameless days and the thought that entered his mind that night amplifies itself until he can’t ignore it any longer.
John Locke has believed this island was meant to be discovered by the survivors of flight 815 the moment his eyes opened on blue skies and burning, melting metal. He believed there was a purpose. He believed.
Somewhere along the line the word became past tense and he’s left now with little more than an ambiguous fluttering of doubt and the full comprehension of the words lost and limbo.
Maybe they were meant to be here. Maybe that’s not a good thing. Maybe destiny can be just as ugly as life and the thought hurts too much for him to bear.
After the crash and after he walked he thought that maybe God lived on this island. That this was His temple and they were meant to find Him because only they were worthy and He would teach them the ways and their lives, their world would be all the better for it.
John Locke met a man not named Henry Gale. John met a man they shouldn’t call Henry but aren’t sure what else to call him. He met him, and now, he realizes he couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
. .
The door flies open and protocol has dissipated in the face of disaster.
"Sir, North Korean missiles have struck California."
Jed says a prayer, and for once, he doubts it will be answered.
. .
CJ’s head hurts. She swallows two aspirin with a swig of stale, lukewarm water.
The TV’s on. The news is not. Satellite images are scattered on her desks. Papers with words like ‘pestilence’ and ‘vaccine’ and ‘mass graves’ sit before her.
Toby is at the door. The TV is on, black and white. Staff meeting. Now. He leaves. The TV is on. Greta Garbo wants to be left alone.
. .
Sam enters the Oval Office to find Josh and Leo standing face-to-face, far enough apart to be some kind of High Noon showdown. The president sits behind his desk, watching without seeing and CJ and Toby hover near the door.
"There is no such thing as inevitability in history!" Leo rages. "No, what you’re telling me is that everything is meant to happen, that it’s preordained, then what the hell are we doing here? Engaging in a nice little exercise in futility? No, we decide. We shape the future. That is our jobs. We sit in here and we decide which direction the world is going to turn, and we write the history. History doesn’t write us."
"When you say it like that, Leo, it almost sounds like we’re playing God."
"Maybe we are."
. .
" ‘And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendth it not.’ Do you remember that passage, Mr. Eko?"
Eko sits as Henry stands and the imagery and symbolism is not lost on Eko.
"Yes. I do. I also remember and know that it is dangerous to confuse vision with action and that the moment a man realizes he has ascended humanity and it is he that controls the weather and the universe, he shall surely be cast down."
"Or maybe, Mr. Eko, he shall cast the doubters down."
. .
"There are seven seals of the apocalypse," Donna says, almost conversationally, the carton of Chinese food sitting forgotten before her. "It starts with religion, then there’s war, famine, sickness, the killing of the saints, signs in the heavens, and then come the seven trumpets and the seven bowls."
"Seven trumpets?" Sam asks, raising his head.
"When the first trumpet sounded, a third of the earth was burned. When the second, a third of the sea turned to blood. The third, and a star fell from the sky turning the water on earth bitter. The fourth led to a third of the day without light and the fifth brought locusts, the first of the three woes. The sixth brought the second woe: the death of a third of all mankind. And the seventh trumpet sounded the seven bowls: sores and sickness, the death of all creatures of the sea, rivers running blood, a too hot sun, darkness, a gathering of kings at Armageddon and then… the collapse of the earth." She says it like a grocery list, a list of things she needs to buy, ticking them off, one by one by one. CJ thinks God and Sam can see hell.
"How do you know all this?" Josh asks, a hand running through his already messy hair.
"I read."
There is silence.
"We’re being punished," Toby whispers.
"For what?" Sam asks, looking up abruptly, almost disbelieving.
"Everything," he shrugs.
"By who?" CJ asks and she doesn’t bother to mask the fear.
"Whom," he corrects, almost gently, out-of-character. She glares at him, not expecting him to shrink away, and expecting even less for an apology.
The room is silent as Toby sips his coffee. The room is silent and they wait for him to explain himself. The phones ring. No one answers. No one answers them.
"Who’s punishing us, Toby?" Margaret asks, the fear plain and tired across her face.
"Fate. Of course."
. .
Kate and Sawyer wait. They wait in a cell they now share, but that is no longer visited, and they both have stopped counting the days.
She sits in the corner and he stands by the door.
He’s not sure when she started speaking, but now, looking over his shoulder, he can see her: hunched in the corner, rocking back and forth, hushed words leaving her mouth.
"What?" he murmurs, and moves in a little closer. The closer he gets, the better he hears, and the more he wishes he could turn and run.
"We’re going to die, we’re going to die, we’re going to die, we’re going to die…"
He crouches to his knees before her, and brings her face up to his.
"We’re going to die…"
There are tears on her cheeks and he wipes them away. She looks away, and she won’t stop talking, she won’t shut up, and she keeps repeating that same line over and over and over again.
He pulls her to him, tight.
"We’re going to die…we’re going to die."
He kisses her hair, buries his face in it, and moves his hands over her body. She clutches his forearm, nails digging in, and she wriggles her way into his lap.
"We’re going to die," she whispers. "We’re going to die."
He kisses her, kisses her everywhere but her lips, breathing heavy in her ear as she grinds herself down on him. His fingers move, in and out of her, hips bucking slightly, a slight pant, small gasp.
"We’re going to die…we’re going to die…"
He doesn't argue with her.
. .
They won’t all survive.
He knows this; he knows that it is impossible for them all to come out of this whole, as a unit. They won’t all survive and he knows, the sun too bright, that he’ll be the man that carries the responsibility for their deaths.
Jack will live. Jack has to. He made a promise once, and for him, a man who shouldn’t be called Henry, a pledge made is a pledge kept, especially those made to the dead.
Locke will remain, because he, like himself, is a man of vision, and if they are to carry on with tomorrow on their backs, they need men who can peer into the future, men who can trust and believe in destiny, in fate.
There was Sayid, Sayid who’s name might as well have been ‘liability’ or ‘risk.’ He was vital to the survival of that group, of those lone survivors of a plane crash. He was vital to their success; he was a danger to the future.
Kate and Sawyer were dead already.
And there is Eko, a solid, stoic embodiment of religion, a fundamental asset, a foundation, for every civilization of the past. Henry imagines that the word ‘past’ is key and watches the man as he raises a large wooden beam overhead.
. .
No one shows up for work anymore. The subways no longer operate and there is no more gas. Cars sit in parking lots and crashed on the side of the road. There’s looting and trashed grocery stores, rotting milk and fruit and meat. The newspapers are no longer printed and before the electricity was lost, the televisions played an empty static.
No one shows up for work anymore. And the staff of the West Wing never leaves the office.
There’s nothing left for them to do. Leo says words like wait and Josh mutters obscenities and Donna tries not to cry. Toby doesn’t talk, but instead, writes, pages filled with his tight, cramped penmanship, the laptop dead before him, the electricity now rendered useless. No one knows what he’s saying. No one knows who he is telling. CJ fills the silence with specious speculations and the president argues and refuses to hear about bunkers and safety and contingency plans courtesy of the NSC. What he doesn’t say but means is that there’s nothing left to govern so it really doesn’t matter if he lives or dies or does something in between, something they have been doing for days and for months, ever since the word Dharma was uttered and the fallout that came too soon, too quiet descended upon them.
Sam watches without comment, because, really, it’s what he’s always been quite good at.
Toby says fuck and opens a desk drawer with too much force, sending its contents to the floor. His pen is out of ink.
Leo says wait. We still have tomorrow.
. .
Their cell smells like stale sex. Kate doesn’t say anything about it, and if Sawyer notices, he remains equally taciturn and polite.
It’s unlike him. It’s unbecoming.
. .
His hands shoot out in front of him, instinctual, desperate to break the fall that is about to come. The ground meets his face, rough, gritty, blades of grass dancing before his eyes, swaying, an invisible breeze, the wave of unconsciousness, and Mr. Eko lies there, still.
He can taste his own blood on his tongue. He can taste his blood, and as he gasps - one last breath, just one last breath - he can taste the dirt.
It tastes like Africa. It tastes like Africa and heroin and dirty bars with dirty beer. It tastes like unmentionable and unforgiving mistakes.
It tastes like good deeds and the promise of punishment.
He thinks he can hear his brother calling. He thinks he might join him, and then, maybe then, with the taste of dirt and their homeland, all the right words will be said, all the right pardons will fall and everything will be the way it was supposed to be.
He can hear his brother. He can hear Yemi.
He can hear tomorrow.
. .
Josh’s life didn’t flash before his eyes when that bullet sprang through his chest, knocking him back and up against the railing. There was no mental scrapbook, no recalling of learning how to ride a bike or his fifth birthday or his father’s laugh or a lover’s embrace. He always thought that if any moment in life was bound to be cliched and the same across the board, the seconds leading up to death would have to take the honor. Gasping for breath, he realized he was wrong.
There was nothing. It was just the unforgiving metal against his neck, the hot blood flowing too hard, too fast, through his fingers and lights that shined too bright and hurt his eyes.
There was nothing when they strapped him down and there were too many people and too many voices, too many instructions and promises that he was going to be okay.
There was nothing but a sharp slant towards unconciousness during the frantic ride to GW.
There was nothing until they burst through the doors of the hospital, and suddenly there was everything.
His father had died and he was in an airport. He had graduated and there were photographs and a cake with too much buttercream frosting. He was a Fulbright scholar and his mother had cried and his father had pounded him hard on the back, atta boy, or some equally congratulatory phrase. There was Sam and too many beers and too much stupidity, and there was Toby and CJ and Leo and Donna (there was Donna asking him for a chance, telling him, that, yes, yes, he would come to find her valuable and maybe he did, maybe - ) and there was New Hampshire and a man named Jed and the promise of something great.
There was New Hampshire and there were men around him talking about his lungs and the word collapse was being said too many times. There was New Hampshire. And Josh had realized, dimly, drunk off pain and blood loss, that if this is death and this is the end, that’s okay, that’s alright. There was New Hampshire. Later when he’s alive and well and stamped with the word ‘recovered’ he remembers this. He remembers this and doesn’t talk about it. He’s not sure what it says about him if laid out on an operating table with only his accomplishments on his mind and a bullet in his chest he was so willing to accept death. He’s pretty sure it’s nothing to be proud of.
. .
"It’s snowing," Donna whispers. "It’s September and it’s snowing."
His feet fall from his desk to the floor and he rises quickly. Papers flutter in his wake, abandoned, ignored and days old at best.
"It’s snowing," she whispers again.
He stands behind her and they both stare out the window as the sky falls down in the shape of tiny, white and dancing flakes.
"That’s not snow," he mutters, slow and calm, belying a strange sense of urgency underneath it all.
"Those are ashes."
Donna swallows hard. He watches her shoulders shake, just once, and he’s close enough to feel her body tremor against his own.
Ashes are falling from the sky. Ashes are falling, only they don’t know from where.
"I love you, you know."
Josh has never thought about saying those words. Not to Donna. Maybe he always found it implicit, a given between the two of them, that they loved each other and that they knew it and it didn’t need to be announced in some pompous, arrogant fanfare all too-fitting for himself.
He never thought about saying those words, but now, in retrospect, if he ever were to think about it, he never thought they’d be said like this. It’s a little too painfully melodramatic, but it’s the truth, and he likes to think that even now that has to mean something.
Donna presses her forhead against the glass pane of the window, the surface warmer than she expected. She wonders if he thinks that by saying it, saying he loves her, all this will melt away and everything will be whole again. She can’t admit it, she won’t admit it, but she kind of wants to believe the same. She presses her forehead against the glass and the ashes still fall down.
"I know," she whispers. "I know."
Boston is on fire. Baltimore is under siege. The Potomac is full of bodies. The phones ring. No one answers.
Saying she loves him too isn’t going to change a thing.
They watch the ashes fall.
. .
The clock never starts back up again. The hieroglyphs just hang there on the wall, bright red and almost mocking. Kate watches them, praying they’ll disappear. They never do.
On a morning or in an evening, in a time when days and nights mean nothing, where there are no windows and there is no sun, two men walk through the door of their cell.
They carry syringes.
Kate fights, and Sawyer throws a punch or two in vain. It makes her smile, even as the needle meets her vein, because, yes, the poison is in her blood, and yes, he is telling her that he loves her, but they fought back, they fought back and they weren’t completely lost…they weren’t completely lost…before…
. .
They finally got their way. They finally got their way, and as the men of the NSC lead them down the stairs, he feels nothing short of defeat.
Leo walks beside him, arms swinging by his sides, head held up almost high. He lets the president enter first. Leo follows at his heels.
Jed turns quickly, grabbing Leo by the arm.
"What will tomorrow bring for us?" he asks, sad and solemn and almost sure there will be no answer.
Leo smiles.
"What it always does: a fresh start, and the promise of salvation."
Jed inhales, a heavy breath. He places his hand on Leo’s shoulder, and he nods.
"What’s next?" he whispers.
The door closes.
. .
The waves beat a tattoo of death and wonder and the surf washes up the empty shore. Fish lay behind in its wake, dead and rotten and sorry.
The waves beat a promise and a premonition and a man with no name and a man with no past and no job save to shape the future watches from above.
He has his city on the sea. He holds the promise of tomorrow.
The cliff is steep and jagged and the sun hides behind clouds, clouds formed from an accumulation of dust and disaster thousands of miles away, thousands of miles away and gone. There is a singing on the air and it sounds like children crying.
He watches the water, glassy and unreflective. He watches the water and he doesn’t smile; he never smiles.
Tonight they come for them. Tonight they come.
The birds are silent.
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
He shakes his head.
"Blessed are the bold, for they shall claim tomorrow as their own."
. .
I had a dream.
It looked just like tomorrow.
. .
fin.
. .