Wow...now I hadn't been expecting this. I was all set to get to work on TBotE again, and then...I happened to watch the season finale of Lost. And this just came pouring out, because it was obvious and I was extremely annoyed at what happened. I've got to warn you, though, this story may be just a bit confusing.
Notes and warnings: Desmond's POV. Also, spoilers for the season finale.
Pairings: Implied Desmond/Penny and (probably) one-sided Desmond/Charlie.
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Not Penny's Boat
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Marker. The bloody bastard was actually writing something on his hand in marker as the water rose over his head. I half-heartedly wondered if it wasn't enough that he had shoved me out of the room and locked himself in with his own death. Did he have to try to give me this message, to do me this last favor, before he died? He hardly owed it to me. Desperation began to overwhelm my mind, and I slung the heavy canister into the window as hard as I could, yelling for him over and over even though I knew he couldn't hear me. He gave me a look that clearly told me to stop, that this was the way it had to be. And I suppose I knew that. He held his hand to the window and gestured as frantically as he could in the water for me to read it.
"Not Penny's boat." That was what he'd written. Penny. My Penny who I had loved and run away from. My Penny who had searched for me ever since. My beloved Penny who I had believed was coming to save me from this place, this hell surrounded by hundreds of miles of ocean. I'd seen her face right there on the monitor behind him, behind Charlie, just moments before the waters rushed in.
"Not Penny's boat." I should have been upset, disappointed that she wasn't coming. Or maybe I should have been relieved that she was still far away from the dangers of this god-forsaken place. "Not Penny's boat." Those words should have meant something to me.
But they didn't.
What meant something was the color visibly draining from Charlie's face, the oxygen-deprived blotches forming on his hand as I held mine up to it, palm-to-palm, from the other side of the glass. From the safe side he'd made for me, and for everyone, in a way. He smiled, just a bit, as I reread the message he'd worked so hard to write for me. Three messy words in black marker- that would be his last legacy, the final of his woefully meager contributions to this world.
Stupid, I wanted to say. Foolish, unnecessary, bloody stupid was what this was. He could have run right as the grenade's blast tore through the window. The opening in the floor wasn't far away- we might have made it.
But we wouldn't have. I looked back at him, sadly, through that horrible glass. I had seen all of this before, seen him staring at me through the window as his final breaths were swallowed by the unmerciful sea. Every night I awoke, shaking and sweating, to another dream of him dying. He'd ask me what was wrong, and I'd tell him, even though I was always sure he already knew. And when the moment came, he'd try desperately to live, and I'd try desperately to save him. And the next night, I'd see him die again, in an ever-spinning, vicious cycle.
But this time, I knew there was no saving him, because I'd also seen what would have happened if he'd run. I'd seen Penny's distraught face blur and disappear from the screen as the water had crashed through the window. I'd seen him bolt from the room in alarm and felt him roughly grab my hand, pulling me out with him. I'd seen the exit ahead of us, moving closer as we dashed towards it.
And I'd seen us fall short. Seen, though I would have thought it impossible, the entire side of the underwater structure give out from the immense pressure. Seen the raging waters bowl us over, pushing us with their awful force into the far wall of the chamber before we could get out. Seen, felt his hand slip from mine as we died together.
He didn't have the power to see, not the way that I did. But as I stared through that barrier of glass, watching his smile fade as his lungs ran out of air, I knew he'd seen it too.
Or maybe, I realized, he had just gotten tired of waiting.
Sometimes I think he must have hated me, this prophet, this angel of death that followed him wherever he went. I absently wondered what we could have been if I hadn't been that prophet. He had intrigued me ever since I'd first met him here on the island, and though he was obviously close to Claire and her child, I know I had fascinated him as well. I'd tried to get closer to him, but the wall of his fear and distrust of me was never really given the chance to fall. Our trips out into the woods, drunken evenings, even the times I'd saved his life had only chipped it, never broken it. I can't really make myself blame him for that, though. After all, what could it possibly be like to be loved by your own Grim Reaper?
"Not Penny's boat." The message slipped from the window as he finally lost his grip and floated limply out to the middle of the room. With his last ounces of strength, he began to make the sign of the cross. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit...
He grew still before he could make the final sign.
"Not Penny's boat." The words were still scrawled across his motionless hand, I could see them. And I wished I could make myself care about their meaning more than about their lifeless canvas, the hand of a person I had probably cared for much more than was good for either of us in a place like this.
But for the life of me, I couldn't.
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Fin
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Well, that's that. I haven't done first-person in a while, not to mention I've never even read a Lost fanfiction before, let alone written one. Still...I'm actually rather fond of how this came out.
(To those who don't like the slash...I'm sorry. It was the whole Tsubasa-esque hands-touching-through-the-window bit. I just couldn't resist.)