I don't own Lost. Wish I did.
This is utter and complete Charladay fluff. Spoiler for most of season four, up to 'Something Nice Back Home.' Enjoy.
Oh, and a huge thanks to everyone who reviewed my previous piece, Not His.
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On sleepless nights they would play a game.
It had started out innocently enough. They were on the freighter, two days out from Fiji. He'd spent nearly the entire evening leaning over the railing, wishing and praying for relief from the nausea. All that greeted him back, though, was the churning of the sea. The Pacific Ocean was named because it was supposedly calm, but he found it anything but. "The thing to do is to take your mind off it." When he looked up she was standing there next to him. The corner of her mouth was pulled up slightly in a friendly smirk.
"Excuse me?" he grunted through his queasiness.
"You need to do something to take your mind off of it," she said, explaining herself further, "Focus on something else. I find that having an engaging conversation usually helps. For example, my name is Charlotte Lewis. Cultural anthropologist." It was only when she held her hand out that he realized she was making a proper introduction. He shook it.
"I'm, uh, Daniel Faraday." He slurred his words and wished he could keep better control over them. "I guess I'm a, um, physicist? Well, I was a professor at Oxford too, teaching physics." His voice lowered as he finished his sentence.
"Really?" she said, a bright look in her eyes, "I did my PhD work there. Hey, maybe you and I met once, or passed each other in the hallway or something. "
"Maybe," he said softly. He had no idea what to say next and lapsed into silence.
"So, why aren't you a professor anymore?" She sensed his lack of social skills and made up for them with her own. "Let me guess: you left in favor of a life of sailing the high seas and committing acts of piracy, but forgot that you couldn't step foot on a boat without getting horrendously sick." He smiled to himself.
"Not exactly; at least, not the part about the piracy."
"Really, you don't think that's for you? No swashbuckling swordfights, or eye patches or parrots or anything like that?" The smirk returned to her face. "I don't know, I think you could probably use that tie of yours to make a good headband."
"Do pirates usually wear headbands?"
"I guess," she admitted, shrugging, "I mean, I'm only going on what I've seen in the movies. So, enlighten me: how exactly did you become an ex-professor?"
"I, uh, I was let go." A concerned look marred her face. "I – I guess you could say they didn't like my – extracurricular activities. There was an incident, and this woman I was working with, she suffered some, uh, side effects. The official reason, they said, was for my health. They said that they didn't want to take any financial responsibility, if something happened to me. If I hurt myself."
"Did you? Hurt yourself, I mean." He thought about it and shook his head, not because he was denying the claim but because he had no idea how to answer it.
"I don't know yet. I think it's too soon to tell." He fell silent, his expression falling, then lighting up soon after in realization. "The seasickness, it's gone." She smiled at him.
"See? You just had to take your mind off it for a bit."
The nausea was worse the next day. He didn't think he could even open his mouth without hurling. But she was willing to do most of the talking that evening. She told him stories about the various digs she'd been on and the cultures she'd seen and studied. It took him a while to find any sort of solace but she didn't seem to mind, and neither did he.
It was his relief.
A couple days later, he felt he'd finally conquered it. The creaking of the ship no longer inspired the queasiness, but it still kept him up at night. The churning noises made it sound like the ship was alive, the engine resembling a beating heart beneath his feet. It was difficult enough for him to fall asleep under the best of conditions. The firing mechanisms in his brain had a hard time shutting off, so he'd gone up on deck to find her there. He didn't tell her he'd gotten over his nausea. She figured it out, though, but said nothing about it.
At first they would talk about the here and now, 'current events' he called them: their careers, impressions of their fellow team members. They came to a general consensus: Frank was a drunk but easy to get along with; Miles was annoying but preferable to Keamy and his ilk; Naomi, distant. "She seems preoccupied most of the time," she added, "I think there's a lot she's not telling us."
"About the mission?"
"Yeah. I think she expects us to find something when we get there."
After these talks he found it much easier to sleep. He enjoyed them, but he wished he wasn't so much of a bother to her. He got the feeling that when she wasn't with him she was somebody else entirely. He wondered who she had been before this; she didn't talk much about her past. He didn't know her at all, not really. But he thought he might like to.
She never told him that their talks made it easier for her to sleep too.
It was his lullaby.
On the island, their first night on the beach, they found shelter in an abandoned lean-to. He was grateful for the lull of the waves against the shore putting him to sleep. Maybe she could get some rest too. "So what all happened while I was being held hostage?" He looked over at her. "You didn't think I'd forgotten about our nightly ritual, did you?" she said with that familiar smirk on her face. He nodded, agreeing with her and thanking her at the same time.
"I met up with the survivors first, then we got Miles' signal on the, uh," he said, snapping his fingers in an attempt to remember, "On the phone, so we went to go find him. And he made them take us to Naomi's body." She made a sympathetic noise at this.
"She's really dead, then?"
"Yeah, she is," he said in a small voice, "And then, after that, we got your signal on the phone, and we were about to head your way when some of the other survivors ambushed us." She gave a frustrated sigh.
"These people are awfully hostile, don't you think?"
"Well, I guess they have some reason for being that way. I mean, they came with us when we went to find you. And that guy – Sayid, I think – he trekked halfway across the island to get you. That's – that's pretty nice of them."
He told her about the late payload, the news of which didn't seem to faze her. She told him about getting shot, and that bit worried him more than any rift in time or space probably ever could. They talked about their mission, and the survivors. They wondered what could have happened to make them so aggressive. He suggested conflicts with the island's indigenous people coupled with their own personal hardships; she was happy to assume that they just wanted someone to blame and take their frustrations out on. "To which we have provided the perfect outlet."
More than anything else, though, they took silent solace in each other's presence, the only familiar thing in what was quickly becoming a dangerous situation.
It was his forum.
Around the survivors she was cool as ice; unbreakable and stiff. She was warmer around him most of the time. But there were moments when he'd get a glimpse of her other side. She wasn't exactly harsh, just a little sarcastic. "Why do you wear that tie day in and day out?" Her words caught him completely off guard. He fingered the item in question while thinking of an appropriate answer.
"I guess, because it's something that's familiar. Something that's constant. I like consistency." His answer surprised him. "It helps, I think, with the memory issues, to always have something familiar that I can attach myself to. It's not the most potent reminder, and I think a place or person would probably work better, but it helps. Just a little." Did I just tell her that?
After that she offered to help him. She laid three cards out facing up and told him to focus on them for two minutes, then flipped them over. He had ten minutes to think about them, to remember them, before she would ask what they were. "With progress we'll shorten the length of time you can look at them." He tried to focus on the cards, but couldn't help remembering the way he felt when she referred to them as 'we.' He liked the sound of it.
The cards helped somewhat, but they weren't nearly as effective as their talks. She noticed, and strove to keep the conversation fresh. Delving for new topics, she told him random facts – her favorite color, what high school she went to – and encouraged him to reciprocate with his own specifics. She didn't intend for it to turn into a game, but one evening he'd made reference to an event he remembered as occurring in July. "That's the month your birthday's in, right? July?"
"Yeah," she said, surprised. She hadn't asked him to remember that bit of information, but he had, and over a much longer period than ten minutes.
The next night, he made an observation. "We've not played cards in a while."
"I know. We've got a new game." It was probably more effective for him to focus on her than the cards, anyway.
It was his therapy.
The game was simple: one of them would ask a personal question – not too personal, though – and the other would answer, then they would ask a question of their own devising. It was mostly trivial facts they shared, with the requirement that they'd have to elaborate on the answer as much as possible. "Even if it's embarrassing," she added. He found himself looking forward to it during the day, and would prepare his questions ahead of time. He called it his 'homework.'
There were only two nights that they didn't play. The night after they went to the Tempest had been the first. She was fatigued; probably more so than she'd ever been since they'd arrived on the island. But she smiled at him sleepily and mumbled an apology. "Tomorrow, I promise." She bade him good night and lay back onto her blanket, falling asleep almost instantly. He stayed up a little while, watching her, the image of her sleeping face raising just as many questions as it answered, perhaps more.
The second time had been the night after they'd gone out to the abandoned station for the medical supplies. She seemed grumpy and said nothing to him. He'd seen Jin talking to her after they got back (though exactly how they'd been able to have a conversation was beyond him), but he didn't ask her about it. She lay down on her blanket without saying anything to him. He knew she wasn't asleep; during sleep she would usually toss and turn and make little noises, and he would wonder what she was dreaming of to make her sigh so contently. But that night she lay still with her back turned to him, making no noise. Her breaths weren't slow enough to signify slumber. He stayed up, watching her. It took a while for sleep to find him that evening.
He tried to make up for it the next night. "Who was your first kiss?" It was a little forward of him, yes, but he'd been building up the confidence for this little by little. There were so many more questions he wanted to ask her but he figured he should start small. He would fill in the blanks as best he could. How many boyfriends have you had? How many of them told you that they loved you? How many of them did you love back? Did they have any inkling of how singularly lucky they were to have ever owned your heart? How did they ever let someone as beautiful as you slip away from them?
She laughed and smiled to herself, biting on her lower lip. It was a little too personal and she knew it. "His name was Paul." Looking at her, he nodded for her to continue, to elaborate. "I was fourteen. There was this dance at school, and he, uh – he asked me to go with him. It was my first date, if it can even be called that. My mom – oh God," she stopped short, placing a hand on her face, the color of which nearly matched her hair.
"What?" he asked, by this point fully engaged in her story. She sighed and brought her hand away from her face, and he saw that she was smiling despite her apparent embarrassment.
"My mom bought me this horrid dress to wear: it was purple and it had these puffy sleeves, and a low-cut neck. I mean, it wasn't that low, but – yeah, you get the idea. So we're dancing and everything, and after a while we, uh, we go off behind the seats in the gym," she said, pausing to bite her lip again, "I remember it was really dark under there. People were sitting on them above us, tapping their feet along with the music, and bits of dust were falling down on us. And, uh, and then he leans in close, and we – kiss, I guess."
"That's it?" From her embarrassment he had expected the story to end with more of a flourish.
"And after he pulled away I sneezed in his face." Laughter erupted from both of them. "Because of all the dust, of course!" She joked about how she had to ask him a really embarrassing question now. But he would have told her anything, no matter how painful the memory.
It was his research.
She seemed to know herself very well. Her answers were usually quick, with concise and exact explanations. He wondered if she spent time thinking about these things, thinking how she would best describe herself if asked. He tended to have a little more trouble; before, when she'd asked him what his favorite song was he couldn't come up with a response. He didn't think about his favorites. He probably could have counted on one hand all the movies he'd seen in the last ten years. He felt like a void compared to her. Little by little, though, he began to fill in the blanks.
"My favorite color is white."
"Why white?"
"Because," he paused, unsure if he could put his thoughts into words, "Because if you think about it, it's not really a color at all. It's the lack of any and all color. It's unique, because it only exists in the absence of anything else. It's empty but it's clean. It needs something else to define it, to make it whole." She raised her eyebrows in a thoughtful gesture.
"What's your favorite song, then?" Music had never meant much of anything to him. He understood the rise and fall of the notes well enough. But the creative aspect of it confused him. He had little patience for something that was always recreating itself, that didn't have any limits. He didn't understand the emotions that went into the creation. But he was making up for it, making baby steps towards some sort of conclusion.
"'Ring of Fire.'"
It was his answer. And the answer was her.