Because You Left, Part Two, Chapter 15: Go Ask Alice
Title: Because You Left, Part Two, Chapter Fifteen: Go Ask Alice
Pairing/Character(s): Ana Lucia Cortez, Michael Dawson, Charles Widmore, Ethan Rom, John Locke, Mikhail Bakhunin, Sayid Jarrah, Ben Linus Anderson, Blaine Anderson, Hugo Reyes, Eloise Hawking, Not-Tom.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: If you haven't noticed, the story went kind of non-linear a while ago. The show is, officially, all over the place.
Spoilers: Potential spoilers (kind of) for all six seasons of LOST. I feel like at this point I've warped Glee canon so much it's physically impossible for me to spoil anything from that show. Bat country. We are in it.
Standard-Issue Short-Form Disclaimer: I do not hold copyright to Glee or LOST, I make no claims to such, and I am not profiting from this.
Summary: All roads lead to Lima, Ohio. Ana's road has had more turns than most.
Author's Notes: This is a Glee/LOST AU crossover. This story is a work in progress, although Chapter Twenty is starting to feel less like progress and more like beating my head against a brick wall. Chapters are posted once every two weeks, always on a Tuesday. I may up that to once a week when I get to Part Three, depending on how things go. The masterpost has been reworked and updated, and you should go check it out. There's pictures!
As always, if I haven't adequately explained any of the LOST stuff, please feel free to leave a comment here and/or pm me. I will answer. Unless it's a spoiler; then I might hedge my bets a little.
seldnei and the-rainbow-jen have been very patiently beta-ing chapters as they are written and then rewritten and then rewritten some more, and helping me through when I stop writing entirely, and I am enormously grateful to them.
She sees him for the first time right before They come.
January 3rd, 2011
"So what do we do?" she asks; Michael turns and glances at her, just for a second, then turns his attention back to the road. Which is probably for the best, with the way it's snowing. All that white stuff. Ana's not used to this; she doesn't like it. "When we get to Ohio," she continues, when Michael doesn't answer her. "Then what?"
"Check in with Ben," Michael says. "See what's going on. If Ethan's showed his ugly face yet. And if he hasn't --" Michael shrugs. "Then we wait."
"Yeah, well, what if no one sees him? What if --" She spreads her hands as best she can in the cramped space of the car. "What if he just... sneaks up on them? What then?"
Michael just laughs and shakes his head. "Ana," he says. "This is Ohio. Trust me, if Ethan shows up anywhere in town in the middle of the day, he's gonna get noticed. And Ben's got that town wired. Plus he's got Sayid now, and Sun, plus --"
And maybe it's the doubt that makes Ana ask -- "So what does he need us for?"
Michael just smiles at her.
"I'm serious," Ana says. "I mean, he's so good at this, he's got Sayid, he's got everyone on his side -- why does he need us?"
"You want to go back to the Hotel California?" Michael asks her, eyebrow raised. "Hang out with Widmore's mercenaries all day, waiting for someone to finally let you go home, finally let you see your family again, see your mother --"
"Shut up," Ana says, and slumps into her seat, and scowls out the window. It's all she can say, really. Anything else...
Anything else would force her to take a side and she's not ready for that. Not yet.
on the Island
"We're really not bad people, Ana."
This is Ethan's line, over and over again. After they take Michael off to God knows where, after Libby and Bernard get sent away, after Jin's wife comes for him, after Sawyer finally works his way free. When it's just Ana and the polar bear cages and Ethan on the outside -- sometimes pacing, sometimes crouching in the dirt in front of her, and always talking, talking, talking. She tries electrocuting him; she tries stealing a gun so she can shoot him; she tries pretty much everything she can think of and none of it works. She can't kill him, she can't escape, and she can't get him to shut up.
"I know that you're suspicious," Ethan says. "And I'm not going to pretend you don't have your reasons, because I appreciate that you do. After what happened with... what's his name, oh -- Jason, wasn't it? After what happened to your --"
It's the fifth time he's brought up the shooting. The first two times, she lashed out. The third time, she pretended to be indifferent, which worked for about ten seconds, right up until he asked her whether she'd ever told her mother she was pregnant and Ana had to rush at the bars just to push him back because he was getting a little too close.
The fourth time, she cried, cried and actually begged him to stop and he almost looked ashamed, for a second.
This time, she looks up at him from her spot on the dirt floor on the cage and asks, "Why the hell do you care?"
And Ethan stops, and looks at her, and says, "Because you're not the list, Ana."
"What?" It's not the first time she's heard about the lists -- no one's mentioned them to her, specifically, but she hears them talking about the lists, Jacob's lists. She pretends not to listen, but she does, always.
"You're not on the list," Ethan says again, and rises up from his crouch and stands, pressed against the bars of Ana's cage, clinging to them with both hands. "You're not on the list, and you should be, and I want Jacob to see what you are, what you could be, if you worked with us. If you trusted us. I want him to see --"
"Why?" Ana picks herself up off the floor, makes her way to where Ethan is standing, so close. She could grab him. She could hurt him. She could do anything. Instead, she puts her hands on the bars just inches from his and asks, again, "Why do you care so much about me?"
"Because," Ethan says, right in her face, so close it's practically a kiss. "You're better than he thinks you are, and I want to prove it. I want him to believe in you."
But it's not her. This close to Ethan, she can see it so damn clear. Ethan's not trying to prove that Ana is worthy; he's trying to prove that he is worthy. That he's better than this Jacob thinks he is.
Ana doesn't have a whole lot of sympathy for Ethan, not really. There's too much blood under the bridge for that. But she can use this, maybe. The fact that he's using her to try to prove something; she can use that.
She backs up abruptly, turns around, and sticks her hands out through the bars of the cage.
"Put the cuffs on me," she says. "I'm ready to get out of this cage."
November 2010
"You say you saw someone?" Widmore asks her, pacing by the windows, hands folded behind his back. "At the docks, someone was watching you."
"His name's Michael." Ana says, arms folded, watching Widmore pace. She doesn't know if she trusts him; she doesn't know who to trust, anymore. But right now, he's pulling the strings, and Ana's not too stupid to know when it's her job to dance. "He was one of the survivors of Oceanic 815. Ethan sent him here."
Widmore doesn't quite look at her; he stops, stands profile. Pretentious ass. "And why," he asks, "would Ethan do that?"
on the Island
Locke doesn't like her. It's not hard for Ana to figure out why. Whether she likes it or not, she's Ethan's. She's not on the list, not one of the good ones, and she was never supposed to be here. Ethan should've let her go, or killed her, or... Or whatever. But he didn't.
Instead, he brought her back to the cozy mustard-colored bungalows of New Otherton, their weird Stepford village in the middle of the freaking jungle, gave her a bungalow of her very own and started introducing her around like she belonged here.
(Some of them, she didn't need introducing to. Emma and Zach... Emma and Zach she introduced herself to, when she hauled Emma out of the ocean, Zach trailing along behind, that teddy bear dangling from his hands. When she forced the water out of Emma's lungs and breathed air into them instead; when she promised she would take them home to their mother. She introduced herself after the plane crash, and they remembered her, and they came running, and she sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around them and held them close.)
Locke's not the only one who doesn't like her. That Richard guy with the eyeliner was pretty squirrely around her at first, asking Ethan was he sure, and what about the lists, and -- But he was always polite to Ana, at least, and he's been here a long time. Longer than Locke, anyway.
But. No convert like a new convert, and that's what Locke is. Some boring white guy with a boring white guy life who crash-landed on the Island and has decided to go native. With his whole two weeks of experience telling him that he knows everything about everything, and that he's going to teach everyone. Fix everyone. Make everything work all right. He's the Great White Savior, and he wants to be treated as such.
Except Ethan's not embracing him and he's not sure why and it pisses him off and now, after everything, Ethan's chosen Ana in spite of Locke, in spite of Jacob, in spite of everything.
It's not that Locke doesn't like Ana, not really.
He fucking hates her.
Not that Ana really cares.
And she's definitely not going to let Locke keep her from tagging along on Ethan's little mission to the Flame Station. If that's their contact with the outside world, then she wants to see it. To learn it.
And if she learns a few other things while she's there; well, that's no one's business but hers.
"It's not as easy as just sending someone to collect him," Ethan says, voice tight, but patient. The dude with the eyepatch keeps looking up at him uneasily; the other guy, Sayid, is pretty much ignoring them. "Charles Widmore wasted seven years trying to bring Benjamin and his son back to the Island. Sent dozens of our best to drag him back home and out of all of those people? One actually came back alive. The rest..." Ethan waves his hands, irritably. "I'm not interested in sending more people out to be slaughtered. Not now that --"
And then he catches himself, and falls short, and stops.
Huh.
"But the fact that we've found him now." Locke almost sounds pleading. "You don't really believe that it's just a coincidence, do you? Living where you do, seeing the things you've seen; you can't just --"
Ana tunes them out for a moment, goes back to the image frozen on the screen. The man at the door, hand outstretched, little round glasses perched on his beaky nose, hair sticking straight up off his high forehead. He doesn't look like a mass-murderer, but. People do strange things when children are involved. Ana would know. And almost hidden behind his father, the boy -- slicked-back hair, blazer, tie. He's not a child, exactly. Fourteen, fifteen maybe. Probably the same age as Michael's son.
Ana looks at them for a moment, then turns her attention away, to the other boy, the one reaching out to take Ben Linus's hand. Same blazer. Same tie.
Private school, probably. Uniforms. A bunch of boys all dressed alike, blending together with one another. Walt could wear one of those uniforms. Blend in. Disappear. Hell, Benjamin Linus might even help him do it. Wouldn't be the first time he'd rescued a child from the Island.
"You should send Michael," Ana says, and enjoys the moment when the conversation all around her just stops. "Michael and Walt. Walt's fourteen, right? Enroll him at the school, get him a blazer and a tie... They can make friends. Do it slowly, undercover, rather than just jumping in guns blazing and hoping that he doesn't shoot back." Then she turns, looks at Ethan and Locke staring at her. Locke is, possibly, smiling; Ethan is not.
But hell, Ethan chose her. It was never the other way around, with them.
"Maybe bring some other people in, keep them scattered around. But low-key. Make sure he's relaxed, comfortable, feels safe, and..." Then she shrugs, smiles. "And then you get your man."
Locke's little smirk turns into a full-on grin; Ethan's face is sour.
Even Sayid is looking at her now, but Ana can't read his face at all.
January 4th, 2011
"To be honest, I don't really know what she'll do," Sayid says, softly. It's late, and the tea in their mugs has gone cold, and Ben has classes to teach tomorrow; his son is already in bed but almost certainly lying awake, afraid --
All of these things are important, and Ben will deal with them as soon as he can. But this, first.
"Michael seemed pretty sure that he knew who she was working for," Ben suggests, but Sayid dismisses it with a casual wave of his hand.
"I doubt she herself knows who she's working for," he says. "She's good at playing both sides."
"Well." Ben smiles; Sayid doesn't quite smile back. "I suppose we'll have to make our side the most convincing, then."
on the Island
The second time she sees him, it's after she gets Michael and Walt their "get out of jail free" card. She's trailing after Ethan and Locke (still arguing, but now Locke's got the upper hand). Ana watches them for a little bit, smiles -- enjoys the moment, and then turns to look back --
And there he is, behind Mikhail's weird little house in the middle of nowhere, the shock of white hair and the dark suit. Tom. Or, not Tom; she made that name up, it was never really is. But it's him, all the same. The man who brought her to Australia. The man who accidentally (or maybe not so accidentally -- he's here, isn't he?) brought her here.
He waves.
Ana stops, stares. She does not wave back.
"Ana," Ethan snaps, from several yards ahead of her. "Are you coming?"
She glances over at him, then turns back to the man with the white hair and the dark suit, but he's gone.
"Yeah," she says. "Just. Saying goodbye to the cow."
And then she turns and follows them, eyes dropped so she doesn't have to see John Locke watching her with speculative eyes.
January 2nd, 2011
"I told Hugo I was gonna get him out of this," Ana says, staring at the gun in her hands. The one thing she likes about this whole arrangement; at least she's not defenseless anymore.
Everything else sucks, but at least she's got a damned gun again.
"Hugo's gonna be fine," Michael says, too easily, too confident. "Don't worry about Hugo. He's being taken care of."
"Don't tell me, let me guess," Ana says, still contemplating the gun. Hard to tell who to trust anymore. The urge to just get the hell out of this situation entirely, to just shoot her way free... She's not going to. But the urge is there. "Sayid's got him. He's working for Benjamin Linus too, and he's going to take Hugo to Ben, and he'll be there waiting for us to show up. And then we're all going to kill Ethan, and then we'll hide the body, and no one else will ever come for us and we're all going to be free. That about the idea?"
"Not quite," Michael says, and when Ana lifts her eyes to look at him, he's actually smiling. Smiling. "But close enough."
She stares at him for a little while, but he just looks at her, steady. God help her, she believes him. She really believes that he's working with Benjamin Linus. That he's not on Ethan's side, not any longer.
It's almost what she wanted.
Almost.
She stares back down at the gun in her hands.
"Listen," Michael says, sitting down next to her. "You and me, we don't actually have a hell of a lot of reason to trust each other. I get that. I do. But do you really think, for one second, that I would willingly put another father through what I went through? Do you really think I would drag Ben, drag his son back to that Island, knowing exactly what's going to happen to them?"
Ana takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. "No," she says.
"I saw you, you know," Michael adds, and Ana doesn't let herself tense -- he's too close, he'll see -- but it's tricky. "I saw you with those kids from your end of the plane. Zach. Emma. You really cared about them."
Another deep breath. "So?" she asks.
"So that's why I'm trusting you," Michael says. "That's why, whether you know it or not, Ana, we're on the same side. Just... think about it." Then he stands up again, says, "Get some rest," and heads through the adjoining doors back into his own hotel room, closing the door behind him.
Ana contemplates her gun, and waits for Michael to throw the bolt, to lock himself in for the night. But he doesn't do it.
She could leave, that's the thing. She doesn't have to go through with this. She could walk into Michael's room, put the gun to his head, and demand he hand her those keys. Hell, she doesn't even need the keys. No one gets to be a cop without a little bit of crook in them; she learned that early on. She could hotwire the rental. Money she could figure out, somehow. She could get herself out of this.
But then there's the children to think about. Zach, Emma.
Walt.
The hell of it is, this was her idea. She got them here, to Ohio. She got them close to Benjamin Linus.
This is her fault, and it's her job to get them out of it. No matter what she has to do.
November 2010
"You know I know who you are," Ana says, because she's already tired of this little game. Where Widmore talks about how mean and awful Ethan is, and how he'll do anything to get what he wants, and blah blah blah and the implication is that Widmore would never hurt anyone, never do anything wrong, never send an army of mercenaries to the Island because if he can't have it back, he'll burn the whole thing down. "I spent a month on that damn boat with the people you sent to kill every single man, woman and child on that Island; I know who you are."
Widmore finally turns and looks at her, hands resting on the back of his chair. "You do, do you?" he asks, calmly. "Well. Then. Presumably, if you know who I am, you know what I'm capable of." He pauses, smiles, face shadowed in the dim light. "I wonder, does Michael know? Who I am? And what I'm capable of? How about his son -- Walt, is it? What do you think he knows about me?"
Underneath the table, Ana's hands ball into fists, and she bites her next words back because she does know what he's capable of, and she probably shouldn't threaten him, not right now.
Widmore's smile widens. "Of course," he adds, "no one has to get hurt, Ana. There are easier ways to do this. If you'd rather."
on the Isand
Ethan's not as interested in her after Michael and the others are sent after Ben Linus.
Not that Ana cares very much. Besides, she's got bigger things to worry about.
Like the guy in the suit, the one with the white hair, the one that stands just outside the pylons that guard the Barracks and watches her. He never says anything, never calls her by her name (never calls her "Sarah" either, for that matter). Vanishes as soon as he knows that she's spotted him. But he won't go away; he won't leave her alone.
It doesn't make any damn sense. She left him behind in Australia. She left him there to drink himself to death and she knows for a fact that he didn't follow her. He wasn't on the plane. And yet, somehow, here he is.
He is driving her crazy.
And because like calls to like, sooner or later John Locke finds her, staring out into the jungle, searching for the man in the suit.
"Five-four-four-three-nine," he says, striding through the tall grass towards her.
Ana blinks at him for a moment. "What?" she asks.
"The code," he says. "For the fence. So you can leave. It's five-four-four-three-nine."
She's not going to get a reasonable answer from him; no one gets answers from John Locke. She asks anyway. "Why are you telling me this?"
Locke just shrugs. "Because," he says. "Whatever the Island wants to tell you, I figure it's pretty important." Then he grins at her, says, "Good luck out there," and turns away again.
January 4th, 2011
Blaine is still awake when Ben wheels into their shared bedroom.
He doesn't say anything; he's trying, of course, to pretend that he's still asleep. But Ben knows his son too well to be fooled.
He could pretend, of course. He could wheel over to his hospital bed, lower the rails, lift himself up -- carefully, so carefully. He could lay in bed, listening, and wait for Blaine to fall asleep.
Ben has spent a long time waiting for things to happen. Truth be told, he's getting a little tired of waiting.
He makes his way to his son's bed, positions his chair as close as he can, and reaches out to comb his fingers through Blaine's dark hair. Blaine turns toward him, instinctively. He's grown so much since the first time Ben sang him to sleep, but he's still a child. He will always be a child, to Ben.
"Dad," Blaine whispers, and Ben shushes him.
After a moment, he even starts to sing.
catch a falling star and put it in your pocket,
never let it fade away
on the Island
The last time Ana sees him, it's Hurley's fault.
It's not really Hurley's fault; that's not fair. It's this whole business with the freighter, with what Libby said about it. That it wasn't Penny's boat (whoever the hell Penny is, anyway), that they shouldn't trust the people on it. And Ana loved Libby; she really did, but the truth is that she doesn't give a crap whose boat it isn't. It's not Ethan's boat either, and that's good enough for her.
But it's not good enough for Hurley.
So he goes stomping off through the jungle in search of Ethan, even though he doesn't even know where the Barracks are and he's going to get lost and fall off a cliff or discover another hidden hatch with an angry Scotsman in it or... do whatever Hurley does, but the point is he gets in trouble a lot, and Ana likes him too much to let him do that, so she goes chasing after him.
Three hours later, she finds him, standing in front of a cabin.
There aren't any whispers. There's nothing at all. But everything feels so wrong that it's all Ana can do to not turn and run away.
"Come on," she says, and reaches out for Hurley's arm. "Let's get --"
When Hurley turns, that's when the white-haired man in the suit appears, standing behind Hurley. He smiles, and Ana stumbles back, falls flat on her ass. There's dust on her hands, ashes, and she remembers something she read a long time ago, about how people used to try to trap witches in circles of ash.
"Ana?" Hurley asks, like there's no one at all behind him. "Are you --"
And then a bullet whizzes past his ear, right through the place where the man in the suit was standing just a second ago (the place where he is, of course, no longer standing), and Hurley's eyes go wide and his mouth snaps shut.
Then the clearing around the cabin fills up with paramilitary types in camo uniforms, and Ana is almost relieved when she feels the barrel of a gun pressing into her temple, because at least she knows what a gun can do to her.
January 1st, 2011
"I had a plan," Ana spits, dragging Michael into an alleyway. Keamy's men are barely half a block behind them; if this were the Island, she, Michael, and Hurley would already be dead now.
But it's not the Island. It's L.A. Keamy can't just open fire on them like he did back at the Barracks, not if he doesn't want to bring the whole thing crashing down. And Ana was a cop here, she knows the lay of the land.
"What was it?" Michael asks. "Playing along, trying to save your own ass, until Widmore crossed you one too many times and you turned on him? Because it seems to me that didn't work out so well for you the last time."
"Worked great for you, though, didn't it?" She leads him past two more doors, around a dumpster, following the sound of clattering dishes and voices calling out in spanish. "Got yourself all set up, nice and safe out in Ohio with your son -- So tell me, Michael, what the fuck are you doing here?"
"Me?" Michael asks. "I'm doing the right thing. Heard you used to do that, back in the day. Back when you were a cop."
Ana turns and looks back at him for one disbelieving second, eyebrow raised. Then she shakes her head, turns back to the door in front of her. There's no handle on the outside -- never is, but with the right amount of force in the right spot. "So, what, you're offering me the chance to redeem myself? Go back to playing good cop again?"
"Hate to say it, Ana, but given what just happened back in that hotel, I don't know that you've got much of a choice."
"You think?" She's on him in a second, barrel of her gun tucked neatly under his chin -- the clip's empty and there's nothing left in the chamber, but Michael doesn't need to know that. "I could turn around right now, walk you up to Keamy and his men. They'd take me back."
Whatever's gotten into Michael, it's potent -- he doesn't even flinch. "You sure about that, Ana? 'Cause if I were one of them, I'd be wondering why you didn't just grab me the moment you saw me in that hotel. Why you let me get you out, get Hugo out, and only gave me up after you were caught in a blind alley with nowhere to run to. I mean, you wanna take that chance, that's your call. But it's a chance, Ana. It's not a sure thing."
"Neither are you," Ana points out.
She takes a moment, takes a breath. At one end of the alleyway, footsteps, coming closer. At the other end, a sheer brick wall, no toeholds or garbage cans to climb. Ahead of her, the sounds of a Spanish-speaking kitchen.
She looks back at Michael. "You want to stay alive?" she asks. "You do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you to do it. And we might get out of this."
Without waiting for a reply, she drops her gun to her side, turns to the door, and kicks it in.
November 2010
"So what do you want?" she asks, fists still clenched under the table. It's not the first time she's made the Devil's bargain, but it never gets any easier.
Widmore turns away from her, off to a little cabinet, a tiny bar. He pours a glass of... something, contemplates it for a moment, then turns and carries it over to her. "Your friend," he says. "Michael. You said he was looking for Benjamin Linus."
Ana looks up at him for a long time, then finally forces her hands to relax, lays them on the table in front of her. "That's right," she says.
"I have reason to believe that he and Benjamin Linus have found each other," Widmore says. He sets the glass down in front of her, then takes a few steps back. As offers go, it's a pretty unambiguous one. "There is a possibility that he'll be willing to take you there. If the opportunity comes up, I think you should go."
"Just as a social call?" Ana asks. She doesn't reach out for the glass. Not yet.
Widmore smiles thinly at her. "No," he says.
January 6th, 2011
It's a big house, bigger than Ana'd been expecting. Linus has some money, looks like. "So this is it, huh?"
"Yeah," Michael says. His confidence seems to be fading; he's twitchy; nervous. But when he looks at Ana, his eyes are steady, and he sounds sincere when he says, "Thank you, Ana. For... For being here."
Ana musters a smile; it's easier than it really should be. "Let's do this," she says.
Michael smiles back at her for a second, then unbuckles his seatbelt and starts fumbling under his seat for his gun.
For a moment, just for a moment, Ana hesitates. Then she grabs her own gun, and clocks him in the head with the grip, knocking him sideways into the window. He slumps against the glass, unconscious.
"Sorry," Ana says, and it's true. It doesn't matter, and it doesn't change anything, but it's true. She is, in her own way, sorry.
Then she climbs out of the car, gun in hand, and makes her way towards Benjamin Linus's house.
*
"Can I help you?"
The woman at the receptionist's desk does not look up; Eloise suppresses a sigh. So much for everyday politeness.
"My name is Eloise Hawking," she says; the woman at the receptionist's desk still does not look up. "I'm here to visit a student. Miss Brittany S. Pierce?"
The woman leans to the side, starts rifling through a drawer of her desk. "Relationship to the student?" she asks, eyes still down.
Good Lord.
"She's my god-daughter," Eloise explains.
Finally, the woman glances up, gives her a blank stare. Then she drops her eyes back to her drawer again. "Sign in on the log," she says, rummaging a little further until she finds a badge. "This is your badge; wear that while you're in the building. Should I find her schedule for you?"
"That's all right," Eloise says; she signs the ledger with a flourish and then picks up her plastic visitor's badge. She contemplates it for a second, then sighs and clips it to her shawl. "I'll find her."
Pairing/Character(s): Ana Lucia Cortez, Michael Dawson, Charles Widmore, Ethan Rom, John Locke, Mikhail Bakhunin, Sayid Jarrah, Ben Linus Anderson, Blaine Anderson, Hugo Reyes, Eloise Hawking, Not-Tom.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: If you haven't noticed, the story went kind of non-linear a while ago. The show is, officially, all over the place.
Spoilers: Potential spoilers (kind of) for all six seasons of LOST. I feel like at this point I've warped Glee canon so much it's physically impossible for me to spoil anything from that show. Bat country. We are in it.
Standard-Issue Short-Form Disclaimer: I do not hold copyright to Glee or LOST, I make no claims to such, and I am not profiting from this.
Summary: All roads lead to Lima, Ohio. Ana's road has had more turns than most.
Author's Notes: This is a Glee/LOST AU crossover. This story is a work in progress, although Chapter Twenty is starting to feel less like progress and more like beating my head against a brick wall. Chapters are posted once every two weeks, always on a Tuesday. I may up that to once a week when I get to Part Three, depending on how things go. The masterpost has been reworked and updated, and you should go check it out. There's pictures!
As always, if I haven't adequately explained any of the LOST stuff, please feel free to leave a comment here and/or pm me. I will answer. Unless it's a spoiler; then I might hedge my bets a little.
seldnei and the-rainbow-jen have been very patiently beta-ing chapters as they are written and then rewritten and then rewritten some more, and helping me through when I stop writing entirely, and I am enormously grateful to them.
She sees him for the first time right before They come.
January 3rd, 2011
"So what do we do?" she asks; Michael turns and glances at her, just for a second, then turns his attention back to the road. Which is probably for the best, with the way it's snowing. All that white stuff. Ana's not used to this; she doesn't like it. "When we get to Ohio," she continues, when Michael doesn't answer her. "Then what?"
"Check in with Ben," Michael says. "See what's going on. If Ethan's showed his ugly face yet. And if he hasn't --" Michael shrugs. "Then we wait."
"Yeah, well, what if no one sees him? What if --" She spreads her hands as best she can in the cramped space of the car. "What if he just... sneaks up on them? What then?"
Michael just laughs and shakes his head. "Ana," he says. "This is Ohio. Trust me, if Ethan shows up anywhere in town in the middle of the day, he's gonna get noticed. And Ben's got that town wired. Plus he's got Sayid now, and Sun, plus --"
And maybe it's the doubt that makes Ana ask -- "So what does he need us for?"
Michael just smiles at her.
"I'm serious," Ana says. "I mean, he's so good at this, he's got Sayid, he's got everyone on his side -- why does he need us?"
"You want to go back to the Hotel California?" Michael asks her, eyebrow raised. "Hang out with Widmore's mercenaries all day, waiting for someone to finally let you go home, finally let you see your family again, see your mother --"
"Shut up," Ana says, and slumps into her seat, and scowls out the window. It's all she can say, really. Anything else...
Anything else would force her to take a side and she's not ready for that. Not yet.
on the Island
"We're really not bad people, Ana."
This is Ethan's line, over and over again. After they take Michael off to God knows where, after Libby and Bernard get sent away, after Jin's wife comes for him, after Sawyer finally works his way free. When it's just Ana and the polar bear cages and Ethan on the outside -- sometimes pacing, sometimes crouching in the dirt in front of her, and always talking, talking, talking. She tries electrocuting him; she tries stealing a gun so she can shoot him; she tries pretty much everything she can think of and none of it works. She can't kill him, she can't escape, and she can't get him to shut up.
"I know that you're suspicious," Ethan says. "And I'm not going to pretend you don't have your reasons, because I appreciate that you do. After what happened with... what's his name, oh -- Jason, wasn't it? After what happened to your --"
It's the fifth time he's brought up the shooting. The first two times, she lashed out. The third time, she pretended to be indifferent, which worked for about ten seconds, right up until he asked her whether she'd ever told her mother she was pregnant and Ana had to rush at the bars just to push him back because he was getting a little too close.
The fourth time, she cried, cried and actually begged him to stop and he almost looked ashamed, for a second.
This time, she looks up at him from her spot on the dirt floor on the cage and asks, "Why the hell do you care?"
And Ethan stops, and looks at her, and says, "Because you're not the list, Ana."
"What?" It's not the first time she's heard about the lists -- no one's mentioned them to her, specifically, but she hears them talking about the lists, Jacob's lists. She pretends not to listen, but she does, always.
"You're not on the list," Ethan says again, and rises up from his crouch and stands, pressed against the bars of Ana's cage, clinging to them with both hands. "You're not on the list, and you should be, and I want Jacob to see what you are, what you could be, if you worked with us. If you trusted us. I want him to see --"
"Why?" Ana picks herself up off the floor, makes her way to where Ethan is standing, so close. She could grab him. She could hurt him. She could do anything. Instead, she puts her hands on the bars just inches from his and asks, again, "Why do you care so much about me?"
"Because," Ethan says, right in her face, so close it's practically a kiss. "You're better than he thinks you are, and I want to prove it. I want him to believe in you."
But it's not her. This close to Ethan, she can see it so damn clear. Ethan's not trying to prove that Ana is worthy; he's trying to prove that he is worthy. That he's better than this Jacob thinks he is.
Ana doesn't have a whole lot of sympathy for Ethan, not really. There's too much blood under the bridge for that. But she can use this, maybe. The fact that he's using her to try to prove something; she can use that.
She backs up abruptly, turns around, and sticks her hands out through the bars of the cage.
"Put the cuffs on me," she says. "I'm ready to get out of this cage."
November 2010
"You say you saw someone?" Widmore asks her, pacing by the windows, hands folded behind his back. "At the docks, someone was watching you."
"His name's Michael." Ana says, arms folded, watching Widmore pace. She doesn't know if she trusts him; she doesn't know who to trust, anymore. But right now, he's pulling the strings, and Ana's not too stupid to know when it's her job to dance. "He was one of the survivors of Oceanic 815. Ethan sent him here."
Widmore doesn't quite look at her; he stops, stands profile. Pretentious ass. "And why," he asks, "would Ethan do that?"
on the Island
Locke doesn't like her. It's not hard for Ana to figure out why. Whether she likes it or not, she's Ethan's. She's not on the list, not one of the good ones, and she was never supposed to be here. Ethan should've let her go, or killed her, or... Or whatever. But he didn't.
Instead, he brought her back to the cozy mustard-colored bungalows of New Otherton, their weird Stepford village in the middle of the freaking jungle, gave her a bungalow of her very own and started introducing her around like she belonged here.
(Some of them, she didn't need introducing to. Emma and Zach... Emma and Zach she introduced herself to, when she hauled Emma out of the ocean, Zach trailing along behind, that teddy bear dangling from his hands. When she forced the water out of Emma's lungs and breathed air into them instead; when she promised she would take them home to their mother. She introduced herself after the plane crash, and they remembered her, and they came running, and she sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around them and held them close.)
Locke's not the only one who doesn't like her. That Richard guy with the eyeliner was pretty squirrely around her at first, asking Ethan was he sure, and what about the lists, and -- But he was always polite to Ana, at least, and he's been here a long time. Longer than Locke, anyway.
But. No convert like a new convert, and that's what Locke is. Some boring white guy with a boring white guy life who crash-landed on the Island and has decided to go native. With his whole two weeks of experience telling him that he knows everything about everything, and that he's going to teach everyone. Fix everyone. Make everything work all right. He's the Great White Savior, and he wants to be treated as such.
Except Ethan's not embracing him and he's not sure why and it pisses him off and now, after everything, Ethan's chosen Ana in spite of Locke, in spite of Jacob, in spite of everything.
It's not that Locke doesn't like Ana, not really.
He fucking hates her.
Not that Ana really cares.
And she's definitely not going to let Locke keep her from tagging along on Ethan's little mission to the Flame Station. If that's their contact with the outside world, then she wants to see it. To learn it.
And if she learns a few other things while she's there; well, that's no one's business but hers.
"It's not as easy as just sending someone to collect him," Ethan says, voice tight, but patient. The dude with the eyepatch keeps looking up at him uneasily; the other guy, Sayid, is pretty much ignoring them. "Charles Widmore wasted seven years trying to bring Benjamin and his son back to the Island. Sent dozens of our best to drag him back home and out of all of those people? One actually came back alive. The rest..." Ethan waves his hands, irritably. "I'm not interested in sending more people out to be slaughtered. Not now that --"
And then he catches himself, and falls short, and stops.
Huh.
"But the fact that we've found him now." Locke almost sounds pleading. "You don't really believe that it's just a coincidence, do you? Living where you do, seeing the things you've seen; you can't just --"
Ana tunes them out for a moment, goes back to the image frozen on the screen. The man at the door, hand outstretched, little round glasses perched on his beaky nose, hair sticking straight up off his high forehead. He doesn't look like a mass-murderer, but. People do strange things when children are involved. Ana would know. And almost hidden behind his father, the boy -- slicked-back hair, blazer, tie. He's not a child, exactly. Fourteen, fifteen maybe. Probably the same age as Michael's son.
Ana looks at them for a moment, then turns her attention away, to the other boy, the one reaching out to take Ben Linus's hand. Same blazer. Same tie.
Private school, probably. Uniforms. A bunch of boys all dressed alike, blending together with one another. Walt could wear one of those uniforms. Blend in. Disappear. Hell, Benjamin Linus might even help him do it. Wouldn't be the first time he'd rescued a child from the Island.
"You should send Michael," Ana says, and enjoys the moment when the conversation all around her just stops. "Michael and Walt. Walt's fourteen, right? Enroll him at the school, get him a blazer and a tie... They can make friends. Do it slowly, undercover, rather than just jumping in guns blazing and hoping that he doesn't shoot back." Then she turns, looks at Ethan and Locke staring at her. Locke is, possibly, smiling; Ethan is not.
But hell, Ethan chose her. It was never the other way around, with them.
"Maybe bring some other people in, keep them scattered around. But low-key. Make sure he's relaxed, comfortable, feels safe, and..." Then she shrugs, smiles. "And then you get your man."
Locke's little smirk turns into a full-on grin; Ethan's face is sour.
Even Sayid is looking at her now, but Ana can't read his face at all.
January 4th, 2011
"To be honest, I don't really know what she'll do," Sayid says, softly. It's late, and the tea in their mugs has gone cold, and Ben has classes to teach tomorrow; his son is already in bed but almost certainly lying awake, afraid --
All of these things are important, and Ben will deal with them as soon as he can. But this, first.
"Michael seemed pretty sure that he knew who she was working for," Ben suggests, but Sayid dismisses it with a casual wave of his hand.
"I doubt she herself knows who she's working for," he says. "She's good at playing both sides."
"Well." Ben smiles; Sayid doesn't quite smile back. "I suppose we'll have to make our side the most convincing, then."
on the Island
The second time she sees him, it's after she gets Michael and Walt their "get out of jail free" card. She's trailing after Ethan and Locke (still arguing, but now Locke's got the upper hand). Ana watches them for a little bit, smiles -- enjoys the moment, and then turns to look back --
And there he is, behind Mikhail's weird little house in the middle of nowhere, the shock of white hair and the dark suit. Tom. Or, not Tom; she made that name up, it was never really is. But it's him, all the same. The man who brought her to Australia. The man who accidentally (or maybe not so accidentally -- he's here, isn't he?) brought her here.
He waves.
Ana stops, stares. She does not wave back.
"Ana," Ethan snaps, from several yards ahead of her. "Are you coming?"
She glances over at him, then turns back to the man with the white hair and the dark suit, but he's gone.
"Yeah," she says. "Just. Saying goodbye to the cow."
And then she turns and follows them, eyes dropped so she doesn't have to see John Locke watching her with speculative eyes.
January 2nd, 2011
"I told Hugo I was gonna get him out of this," Ana says, staring at the gun in her hands. The one thing she likes about this whole arrangement; at least she's not defenseless anymore.
Everything else sucks, but at least she's got a damned gun again.
"Hugo's gonna be fine," Michael says, too easily, too confident. "Don't worry about Hugo. He's being taken care of."
"Don't tell me, let me guess," Ana says, still contemplating the gun. Hard to tell who to trust anymore. The urge to just get the hell out of this situation entirely, to just shoot her way free... She's not going to. But the urge is there. "Sayid's got him. He's working for Benjamin Linus too, and he's going to take Hugo to Ben, and he'll be there waiting for us to show up. And then we're all going to kill Ethan, and then we'll hide the body, and no one else will ever come for us and we're all going to be free. That about the idea?"
"Not quite," Michael says, and when Ana lifts her eyes to look at him, he's actually smiling. Smiling. "But close enough."
She stares at him for a little while, but he just looks at her, steady. God help her, she believes him. She really believes that he's working with Benjamin Linus. That he's not on Ethan's side, not any longer.
It's almost what she wanted.
Almost.
She stares back down at the gun in her hands.
"Listen," Michael says, sitting down next to her. "You and me, we don't actually have a hell of a lot of reason to trust each other. I get that. I do. But do you really think, for one second, that I would willingly put another father through what I went through? Do you really think I would drag Ben, drag his son back to that Island, knowing exactly what's going to happen to them?"
Ana takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. "No," she says.
"I saw you, you know," Michael adds, and Ana doesn't let herself tense -- he's too close, he'll see -- but it's tricky. "I saw you with those kids from your end of the plane. Zach. Emma. You really cared about them."
Another deep breath. "So?" she asks.
"So that's why I'm trusting you," Michael says. "That's why, whether you know it or not, Ana, we're on the same side. Just... think about it." Then he stands up again, says, "Get some rest," and heads through the adjoining doors back into his own hotel room, closing the door behind him.
Ana contemplates her gun, and waits for Michael to throw the bolt, to lock himself in for the night. But he doesn't do it.
She could leave, that's the thing. She doesn't have to go through with this. She could walk into Michael's room, put the gun to his head, and demand he hand her those keys. Hell, she doesn't even need the keys. No one gets to be a cop without a little bit of crook in them; she learned that early on. She could hotwire the rental. Money she could figure out, somehow. She could get herself out of this.
But then there's the children to think about. Zach, Emma.
Walt.
The hell of it is, this was her idea. She got them here, to Ohio. She got them close to Benjamin Linus.
This is her fault, and it's her job to get them out of it. No matter what she has to do.
November 2010
"You know I know who you are," Ana says, because she's already tired of this little game. Where Widmore talks about how mean and awful Ethan is, and how he'll do anything to get what he wants, and blah blah blah and the implication is that Widmore would never hurt anyone, never do anything wrong, never send an army of mercenaries to the Island because if he can't have it back, he'll burn the whole thing down. "I spent a month on that damn boat with the people you sent to kill every single man, woman and child on that Island; I know who you are."
Widmore finally turns and looks at her, hands resting on the back of his chair. "You do, do you?" he asks, calmly. "Well. Then. Presumably, if you know who I am, you know what I'm capable of." He pauses, smiles, face shadowed in the dim light. "I wonder, does Michael know? Who I am? And what I'm capable of? How about his son -- Walt, is it? What do you think he knows about me?"
Underneath the table, Ana's hands ball into fists, and she bites her next words back because she does know what he's capable of, and she probably shouldn't threaten him, not right now.
Widmore's smile widens. "Of course," he adds, "no one has to get hurt, Ana. There are easier ways to do this. If you'd rather."
on the Isand
Ethan's not as interested in her after Michael and the others are sent after Ben Linus.
Not that Ana cares very much. Besides, she's got bigger things to worry about.
Like the guy in the suit, the one with the white hair, the one that stands just outside the pylons that guard the Barracks and watches her. He never says anything, never calls her by her name (never calls her "Sarah" either, for that matter). Vanishes as soon as he knows that she's spotted him. But he won't go away; he won't leave her alone.
It doesn't make any damn sense. She left him behind in Australia. She left him there to drink himself to death and she knows for a fact that he didn't follow her. He wasn't on the plane. And yet, somehow, here he is.
He is driving her crazy.
And because like calls to like, sooner or later John Locke finds her, staring out into the jungle, searching for the man in the suit.
"Five-four-four-three-nine," he says, striding through the tall grass towards her.
Ana blinks at him for a moment. "What?" she asks.
"The code," he says. "For the fence. So you can leave. It's five-four-four-three-nine."
She's not going to get a reasonable answer from him; no one gets answers from John Locke. She asks anyway. "Why are you telling me this?"
Locke just shrugs. "Because," he says. "Whatever the Island wants to tell you, I figure it's pretty important." Then he grins at her, says, "Good luck out there," and turns away again.
January 4th, 2011
Blaine is still awake when Ben wheels into their shared bedroom.
He doesn't say anything; he's trying, of course, to pretend that he's still asleep. But Ben knows his son too well to be fooled.
He could pretend, of course. He could wheel over to his hospital bed, lower the rails, lift himself up -- carefully, so carefully. He could lay in bed, listening, and wait for Blaine to fall asleep.
Ben has spent a long time waiting for things to happen. Truth be told, he's getting a little tired of waiting.
He makes his way to his son's bed, positions his chair as close as he can, and reaches out to comb his fingers through Blaine's dark hair. Blaine turns toward him, instinctively. He's grown so much since the first time Ben sang him to sleep, but he's still a child. He will always be a child, to Ben.
"Dad," Blaine whispers, and Ben shushes him.
After a moment, he even starts to sing.
catch a falling star and put it in your pocket,
never let it fade away
on the Island
The last time Ana sees him, it's Hurley's fault.
It's not really Hurley's fault; that's not fair. It's this whole business with the freighter, with what Libby said about it. That it wasn't Penny's boat (whoever the hell Penny is, anyway), that they shouldn't trust the people on it. And Ana loved Libby; she really did, but the truth is that she doesn't give a crap whose boat it isn't. It's not Ethan's boat either, and that's good enough for her.
But it's not good enough for Hurley.
So he goes stomping off through the jungle in search of Ethan, even though he doesn't even know where the Barracks are and he's going to get lost and fall off a cliff or discover another hidden hatch with an angry Scotsman in it or... do whatever Hurley does, but the point is he gets in trouble a lot, and Ana likes him too much to let him do that, so she goes chasing after him.
Three hours later, she finds him, standing in front of a cabin.
There aren't any whispers. There's nothing at all. But everything feels so wrong that it's all Ana can do to not turn and run away.
"Come on," she says, and reaches out for Hurley's arm. "Let's get --"
When Hurley turns, that's when the white-haired man in the suit appears, standing behind Hurley. He smiles, and Ana stumbles back, falls flat on her ass. There's dust on her hands, ashes, and she remembers something she read a long time ago, about how people used to try to trap witches in circles of ash.
"Ana?" Hurley asks, like there's no one at all behind him. "Are you --"
And then a bullet whizzes past his ear, right through the place where the man in the suit was standing just a second ago (the place where he is, of course, no longer standing), and Hurley's eyes go wide and his mouth snaps shut.
Then the clearing around the cabin fills up with paramilitary types in camo uniforms, and Ana is almost relieved when she feels the barrel of a gun pressing into her temple, because at least she knows what a gun can do to her.
January 1st, 2011
"I had a plan," Ana spits, dragging Michael into an alleyway. Keamy's men are barely half a block behind them; if this were the Island, she, Michael, and Hurley would already be dead now.
But it's not the Island. It's L.A. Keamy can't just open fire on them like he did back at the Barracks, not if he doesn't want to bring the whole thing crashing down. And Ana was a cop here, she knows the lay of the land.
"What was it?" Michael asks. "Playing along, trying to save your own ass, until Widmore crossed you one too many times and you turned on him? Because it seems to me that didn't work out so well for you the last time."
"Worked great for you, though, didn't it?" She leads him past two more doors, around a dumpster, following the sound of clattering dishes and voices calling out in spanish. "Got yourself all set up, nice and safe out in Ohio with your son -- So tell me, Michael, what the fuck are you doing here?"
"Me?" Michael asks. "I'm doing the right thing. Heard you used to do that, back in the day. Back when you were a cop."
Ana turns and looks back at him for one disbelieving second, eyebrow raised. Then she shakes her head, turns back to the door in front of her. There's no handle on the outside -- never is, but with the right amount of force in the right spot. "So, what, you're offering me the chance to redeem myself? Go back to playing good cop again?"
"Hate to say it, Ana, but given what just happened back in that hotel, I don't know that you've got much of a choice."
"You think?" She's on him in a second, barrel of her gun tucked neatly under his chin -- the clip's empty and there's nothing left in the chamber, but Michael doesn't need to know that. "I could turn around right now, walk you up to Keamy and his men. They'd take me back."
Whatever's gotten into Michael, it's potent -- he doesn't even flinch. "You sure about that, Ana? 'Cause if I were one of them, I'd be wondering why you didn't just grab me the moment you saw me in that hotel. Why you let me get you out, get Hugo out, and only gave me up after you were caught in a blind alley with nowhere to run to. I mean, you wanna take that chance, that's your call. But it's a chance, Ana. It's not a sure thing."
"Neither are you," Ana points out.
She takes a moment, takes a breath. At one end of the alleyway, footsteps, coming closer. At the other end, a sheer brick wall, no toeholds or garbage cans to climb. Ahead of her, the sounds of a Spanish-speaking kitchen.
She looks back at Michael. "You want to stay alive?" she asks. "You do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you to do it. And we might get out of this."
Without waiting for a reply, she drops her gun to her side, turns to the door, and kicks it in.
November 2010
"So what do you want?" she asks, fists still clenched under the table. It's not the first time she's made the Devil's bargain, but it never gets any easier.
Widmore turns away from her, off to a little cabinet, a tiny bar. He pours a glass of... something, contemplates it for a moment, then turns and carries it over to her. "Your friend," he says. "Michael. You said he was looking for Benjamin Linus."
Ana looks up at him for a long time, then finally forces her hands to relax, lays them on the table in front of her. "That's right," she says.
"I have reason to believe that he and Benjamin Linus have found each other," Widmore says. He sets the glass down in front of her, then takes a few steps back. As offers go, it's a pretty unambiguous one. "There is a possibility that he'll be willing to take you there. If the opportunity comes up, I think you should go."
"Just as a social call?" Ana asks. She doesn't reach out for the glass. Not yet.
Widmore smiles thinly at her. "No," he says.
January 6th, 2011
It's a big house, bigger than Ana'd been expecting. Linus has some money, looks like. "So this is it, huh?"
"Yeah," Michael says. His confidence seems to be fading; he's twitchy; nervous. But when he looks at Ana, his eyes are steady, and he sounds sincere when he says, "Thank you, Ana. For... For being here."
Ana musters a smile; it's easier than it really should be. "Let's do this," she says.
Michael smiles back at her for a second, then unbuckles his seatbelt and starts fumbling under his seat for his gun.
For a moment, just for a moment, Ana hesitates. Then she grabs her own gun, and clocks him in the head with the grip, knocking him sideways into the window. He slumps against the glass, unconscious.
"Sorry," Ana says, and it's true. It doesn't matter, and it doesn't change anything, but it's true. She is, in her own way, sorry.
Then she climbs out of the car, gun in hand, and makes her way towards Benjamin Linus's house.
*
"Can I help you?"
The woman at the receptionist's desk does not look up; Eloise suppresses a sigh. So much for everyday politeness.
"My name is Eloise Hawking," she says; the woman at the receptionist's desk still does not look up. "I'm here to visit a student. Miss Brittany S. Pierce?"
The woman leans to the side, starts rifling through a drawer of her desk. "Relationship to the student?" she asks, eyes still down.
Good Lord.
"She's my god-daughter," Eloise explains.
Finally, the woman glances up, gives her a blank stare. Then she drops her eyes back to her drawer again. "Sign in on the log," she says, rummaging a little further until she finds a badge. "This is your badge; wear that while you're in the building. Should I find her schedule for you?"
"That's all right," Eloise says; she signs the ledger with a flourish and then picks up her plastic visitor's badge. She contemplates it for a second, then sighs and clips it to her shawl. "I'll find her."