Title: Five times Daniel tried to save Charlotte (and one time he did)
Characters/Pairings: Daniel/Charlotte
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Five times Daniel fails. One time he doesn't. AU.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 5x14; character death, potentially triggery stuff, dark themes.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
i.
The first time, he leaves her.
Not for anything but to save her, but still. (Still, he'll never forget this.)
Charlotte tells them about the well and John and James exchange nods, decision made, and it's only a second more of her hand cool and clammy between his, a fleeting look of panic (she'd never say it, don't leave, but he sees it, that thin, dark shadow of terror that passes through her gaze) before it gets lost to another memory. Something about that band, that one he barely remembers from his mother's creaking record player, and go, Daniel, she'd whispered, pain strung tight through her face, go with them.
So he does. Because what they're trying to do defies any kind of science he's ever seen, but he's still the one most likely to understand it, get John back to the rest of his people, the ones who left. So he goes.
Before, he makes her as comfortable as he can, props his knapsack under her head (fishes her gun out first, the only thing she'd managed to hold on to when that white flash first came, when flaming arrows lit up the beach; he clicks the safety off and leaves it near her hand, prays he's being overcautious) and kneels over her, leans his face flush with hers - there's breath, he hears it; rattling, thin, still there all the same - moves almost like to kiss her but ends up pressing his temple against hers instead, still too scared. Always too scared.
They make it to the well in another hour, and John disappears before there's another explosion of white, all around them, swallowing them whole. They start on their way back as soon as it's done, Daniel the first to notice the empty clearing alongside the riverbank, the only way they even recognize that certain stretch of green from Juliet's markings on the trees along the way.
"She's ... she's not here. She's gone."
Miles pushes past him - what are you talking about, genius?- and then stops, takes in the same space without the bag or the gun or Charlotte, with nothing at all.
"She might be around here; she could be lost. We need - we need to look for her."
They're all silent in the beat after that, won't meet his eyes, and that's when Daniel realizes - that's it, isn't it?Not even a body, not anything; just gone. Because he left her. Because he couldn't save her.
(He manages to follow Juliet and James and the others into the village - one foot in front of the other, up and down, that's what gets him there, the ground bumping underneath him - and at some point there's food, he thinks, and a bed with clean sheets, and jumpsuits with Dharma symbols and a little girl with red curls.
Two days before the sub comes - the one that's going to bring him back to the mainland, back to Ann Arbor and away from all of it; the redness of her hair, her blood, the white of her skin, the green of the jungle - Daniel's late coming home from one of the stations and eventually, sometime later that night when she drags herself back from the garage, Juliet will find a note, scrawled and half-finished and creased on the kitchen table. I'm sorry, I had to make sure, it'll say. That's all it'll say. And someone will explain they saw Daniel walking towards the fence, and soon they'll realize James' security code is missing from his desk, and there'll be grid searches for at least a couple of weeks before Juliet will sigh, rest her hand against James' arm, whisper stop, just stop. And they will.
Two days before the sub comes, Daniel will disappear into the jungle and never come back.)
ii.
The second time, Charlotte's only six years old, and Daniel gathers her into his arms before the shooting begins, the gun Kate gave him tucked into the pocket of his coveralls while the screaming starts around them, an explosion near one of the vans as Stu and his men storm through the barracks. He can feel her heart racheting against his own, tears warm along the curve of his jaw (mummy, she cries again, and it breaks his heart), and he only means to get her somewhere safe, get her out of the way of whatever might come, onto the sub or into the jungle.
Then the sound of the bullet tears through the air, and it takes him a second before he realizes she's gone still, blue eyes wide but something warm and sticky pooling against the front of his shirt, and then there's this burning, along his right shoulder like it's on fire and it's all over him too (blood, it's blood) -
Someone tackles him as her body slumps, still warm, from his grasp, suddenly a blank where who she isshould be (why he's there, what he's doing, it all seems to crack and fall away in his memory, sees Jack and Kate's frantic, horrified faces at the side of his vision and wonders why); as he falls he swears he can almost remember her name.
iii.
The third time, the plan works.
When he wakes up on September 22nd it's with the feeling that something, something, is different than before - than Caroline making him scrambled eggs for breakfast and the piano he still can't play and the equations that mostly just make his eyes swim, like they're in a foreign language - something he should remember (he struggles to keep it, clings to it, the fleeting thought that something important's happened and he needs to know what it is, to hold it close).
He thinks, maybe, there's the faintest impression of red (red ... what? he can't remember) when he closes his eyes and he's happy, sohappy, more relief than joy, but then that's lost too.
(There's always the dreams, the ones he's had since Oxford and the experiments, when he'd jumped forward; of a beach and a boat and a place where nothing scattered quite right, a someone- someone important, special - always there. Grounded at his elbow, a hand on his arm, a breath along his cheek. He'd never told Theresa the last part.)
It doesn't make any sense at all until more than two months later, when Caroline brings him the latest edition of the Oxford alumni news, says it might help to do some reading, Danielin that cautiously helpful way, and he shrugs but accepts the paper anyway, figures he won't remember enough of it to feel the full hurt of not being there, of how much his research failed.
He's skimming through when something on the fifth page catches his eye; an article tucked into the corner under the 'In Memoriam' section. It's nothing big, just a block of text and a black-and-white photo, and he almost passes it over again but the smile catches him (she's beautiful, is the next thought, her hair curling around her shoulders and an award displayed in her upturned hands), and that he thinks he's felt that warmth before, like maybe there'd been one of those smiles just for him.
So he reads the article, fast enough he misses the name the first time through, gets to the details instead - graduate of the program in 1999 (at first he thinks that's it; maybe they worked in the same building, crossed paths somehow), award-winning anthropologist, dead at 33, brain aneurysm.
The last part sends a spike of dread, cool and creeping, through the pit of his stomach, though he's not quite sure why (it's red - red on his fingers when he pulls away from her face, red crusted at the corner of her lips, red blooming against the front of his coveralls with his mother above him). And that's when he gets back to the name, while his breath starts to hitch and his hands shake, and suddenly he knows, knows and wishes of all the things he can't remember this could be one, could stay locked in the dark of his broken mind forever.
Because he reads her name - Charlotte Staples Lewis- and that's when he knows the plan, the bomb, never really saved her at all.
iv.
The fourth time, he doesn't go back.
(In another world, he leaves Ann Arbor once that grainy black-and-white photo arrives, shows up on the sub and tries to blow up a bomb. The plan's different this time.)
At first, there's no plan at all (whatever happened, happened). Dharma manages to get him a position at the U of M campus working in the physics department, and for the first couple years he sort of drifts around Ann Arbor, working and going back to his dingy apartment when he's not in the lab, drinking at the campus pub when things get really bad and losing days to the bottom of a whiskey bottle (MacCutcheon's; if nothing else Dharma pays well) when they're worse.
He spends his 30th birthday just the same, listening to records and staring at the 1977 calendar curling against his wall (he does the math: 27 years until he's back to his own time, 16 until he starts his job at Oxford, or at least whatever newborn version of him that's in a couple states over will). That's when he figures it out, in a moment of clarity that comes so brightly it's almost blinding. That's when he comes up with his plan.
To wait.
He keeps working at U of M, resists the urge to visit Essex or his mother (it's Hawking that Dharma has recorded in his file, not Faraday), buys a modest three-bedroom a few blocks from campus; he makes a life, as much as he can, and ticks off the years as he goes. Along the way he meets someone. He doesn't mean to, exactly, but she's a kind woman - brilliant, the head of the biology department, seems to accept the explanation he'd lost someone he'd loved, why there's some things he won't share, easily enough. She reminds him of Theresa, actually, and the loneliness, it's too much sometimes, feels like it's splitting him apart at the seams with Charlotte (hisCharlotte, not the little girl across the ocean) so far away.
So he goes through the motions, does enough to keep up with the usual thread of life (gets promoted, even proposes after a few years, has a daughter and a son he loves dearly), and two decades later he quietly applies for a sabbatical, tells his wife he's taking a temporary lecturing position at Oxford and kisses his kids goodbye. It only takes a few weeks to find her, at the natural history museum closest to the school - he hates being on campus; too many memories, too many chances to see himself, and the theoretical implications there are just too much to even begin to understand - and Carthage, right?he says as he stands next to her at the exhibit, clutching the railing and pretending to study the plaques, trying desperately not to stare.
(She's so beautiful - time had smoothed over what he'd forgotten, filled in the blanks, but it doesn't even come close, doesn't even compare, especially with seven years of disappointment and frustration wiped from her features - as she returns his smile, watches him carefully. This is the Rome exhibit, actually, she explains, takes his in the duck of his head, the embarrassed grin, with even measure, a piqued interest,Carthage is down the other corridor.)
Somehow she agrees to go with him for a coffee (he tries not to think about how he's twice her age, how his wedding band is tucked in a drawer back in his bedroom; he explains he's in town for doing independent research for the university and she seems just as fascinated by his work as last time). Then it's a drink, and then another, and eventually there's lunches and dinners and the first time she spends the night at his flat he can't stop just looking at her, trailing his hands through her hair. She smirks at him from across the pillow, laughing - what is it? - and I'm too old for you,he mumbles, buries back everything else (guilt, shame, dread) he's feeling.
"You're not," Charlotte laughs again, leans over to kiss him, brush the hair back from his forehead. "Besides, you're not too grey yet, yeah?"
There's six months where he just lets himself be with her, makes her dinner while she's working on her thesis, spends weekends in London when she can spare the time from school and everything's fine (fine as it can be), until one night they're sprawled on his couch, watching a movie; completely slipped my mind to tell you, Charlotte says, I finally got my funding approved for the Tunisia trip. She's excited, he can tell, expecting him to share in it, but instead he pulls away, shaking his head.
(Whatever happened, happened)
"Daniel, what is it?" There's concern in her voice as she sits up, watches his face fall. "What's wrong?"
He gulps in a breath. "I need you to stop looking for the island."
Daniel watches her brows crease in utter bewilderment - not confusion; she knows exactlywhat he's talking about - but shock at the fact he does too.
"What -" she struggles to get the word out. "What are you talking about?"
"I know about the island," he says, rushing through it before he loses his nerve, "I know you were there, with your parents - with Dharma - and you've been searching for it your whole life, Charlotte, and you can't, you cannotgo back there."
"Dan, how?" There's panic, now, instead; he can see her gaze darting across the flat, the fear there. "How do you know that?"
"I can't - I can't tell you," he shakes his head again, grasps her hands in his. "But please - in seven years there'll be a freighter, a man named Charles Widmore will hire you to go back there, and bad things will happen, Charlotte, if you do. Please - just stay. Stay with me."
He can't say anything after that; the breath sticks in his throat, feels like he can barely draw a gasp, only notices the tears after they start to wet his cheeks. Now silent, still, Charlotte just leans forward and wraps her arms around him, clutches him tight (she doesn't say a word; he isn't sure what that means). Eventually, he must drift off, because he wakes with a crick in his neck and a blanket thrown over his legs in the dim morning light.
Charlotte's things are gone; so's she. All that's left is a lined piece of paper, pulled from one of her course books and left abandoned on his coffee table.
I'm so sorry, Dan. I have to try.
v.
The fifth time, he manages to convince her.
He's late to the debrief the night before the freighter's scheduled to leave, only stumbles into the bar while the rest of them are filtering out - one of the men, the older guy, shoots him a what can you dokind of smile, the other just scowls - and Naomi rolls her eyes, shoves a file folder into his arms and gestures over her shoulder; Lewis will fill you in on the rest.
He already knows exactly (well, not exactly but enough) from his journal who he should be looking for; after the experiments there'd been the dreams (visions?), and notes, lines of scribbled names and dates and impressions, all through the pages. (These are things he believes to be true: that a woman named Charlotte Lewis will be on the ship, that he will fall in love with her, that the island will be where she dies.)
So when he sees the redhead perched at the corner table, freckled and sunburnt and toying with a drink, there's not any doubt.
Daniel spends the next two hours showing her everything, throwing out facts about her life and history like evidence - her parents' names, where she grew up after the island, where she went to school - and begging her, begging her, not to go. It takes four stiff drinks and a couple intensive studies of every page in his journal, more than a few questions, and then Charlotte sits back, arms tucked against her sides, turns to him (he sees the tears in her eyes, even as she tries to brush them away) and says okay.
"Okay?" he echoes, not meaning to.
"I believe you." Her words cut short; she looks like she wants to say more, changes the thread of conversation instead. "Why were you going to the island?"
"I ... I'm, uh, I'm sick." The explanation comes with a tilt of his head, a vague, practiced gesture. "Mr. Widmore said the island ... he said it would heal me."
"Why would you give that up?" Charlotte's looking at him, hard-edged, straight in the eyes. "Why would you do that for me?"
"Because ..." His gaze strays down to his journal, resting against the table top, his voice growing soft. "Because I'm going to be in love with you."
Charlotte listens to that, laughs, but it's a brittle sound; you don't even know me, Dr. Faraday.
But they do get to know each other, eventually. It starts with letters and e-mails while she's on expedition, while Daniel's back in the States still trying to remember himself, and then phone calls and visits (it helps, to know she's out there, to hear her voice, practice memory games when she comes to visit, heals him in a way he doesn't understand). Soon Charlotte's finding more excuses to do work in Boston, and the same day she calls with news she's taken a position at the natural history museum there Daniel tells her he loves her.
They're married a year after that and he thinks they're happy, knows they are. But still, there's a part of her he can't reach, the way the island would have linked them together, the ways they were broken that never healed. As time passes, that something inside of Charlotte grows harder, harsher; she spends more time idle around the house, staring out their kitchen window for hours, won't tell him what's wrong. She doesn't go back to work after the kids start school (he's at MIT by that point, his memory better than ever); they go to the coast in his desperate attempt at a vacation and as soon as they get in sight of the beach Charlotte refuses to leave the car, just sits clutching the door handle and weeps.
One afternoon he finishes at school earlier than usual, picks up dinner from the Indian place Charlotte likes and calls her cell on the way home while he's gridlocked in traffic. There's no ring, just goes straight to her brisk, efficient voicemail recording (you've reached Charlotte Lewis; please leave a message) and that's when some strange, unnamed panic grips him. By the time he pulls into his driveway he's near frantic, wrenching his seatbelt off and slipping out of the driver's seat just as quick.
She's in bed when he finds her, a breeze fluttering in through the window - she'd propped it open, even though it's barely above freezing, thrown back the curtains - and her lips, her skin as white as the sheets.
(This time there's not even a note, just the bedside table and the empty pill bottle that silhouettes their wedding photo.
This is the thing that is true: he lost her the second she didn't get on that boat.)
vi.
The last time, he uses what will (what should) kill her.
By the time they stumble to the well Charlotte's on the verge of collapse, eyes shadowed and lips cracked and bloodied, the rest of their group left behind somewhere back in the jungle, but Daniel keeps her moving, props her up when she starts to trip and falter. They make their way down the rope with aching slowness, stopping every few feet so Charlotte can rest her arms, but finally they touch down deep underground, where the stones are beaded with the cold and Daniel starts to feel himself shiver.
Charlotte sits back against one of the cavern walls, her eyes half-lidded with exhaustion, red trickling between her nose and mouth again; Daniel, she whispers, I don't think, I can't... The rest gets lost in another cough, the sound echoing, violent. He rushes to her side, pulls her up again, winces at her groan of pain - Charlotte, Charlotte it's okay, just a little bit more, alright?- and step by step they make their way to the wheel (that it's even really there is beyond belief, exactly what he'd read from the Dharma files, and the part of his mind not full of worry is sparked by curiousity).
She's breathing hard by the time they position themselves on the wheel's far side, even more blood creasing the sides of her cheeks, and it's fine, it's fine, he murmurs to her, grasping at her waist with one hand, the other covering hers, pressed into the cracked, rough wood. Daniel pushes forward, digs his feet into the earth, and the last thing he hears is Charlotte's sob of pain, the grinding, groaning sound of metal on metal, before everything disappears into white.
He wakes up with sand burning his nose, mouth - swears he must still be on the island - and it takes a second before he can make his muscles work, cracking his eyes open to an endless blue, hands moving experimentally through the dirt and dust that seems to surround him on all sides. When he manages to prop himself up (and everything hurts), takes in the landscape - sand, all sand, one lone security camera that means Widmore's people will be there soon - that's when he knows it worked and Charlotte, he chokes out, hoarse, turning towards her.
There's an endless moment where she doesn't move, not at all, a trail of blood twisting down her features, along the curve of her neck; then she starts to cough, shoulders shaking, and Daniel feels himself nearly collapse with relief, his hand drifting to her neck, the slow, steady pulse there like a reassuring thrum under his fingerstips.
"Dan." Her voice is barely a whisper after all the coughing, thick with fatigue, but she still manages to turn her head, smile at him weakly. "You did it."
He smiles back, moves closer to press a kiss against her temple, to settle in until help arrives, and yeah, he allows himself to think, finally, fading into the joy, the sheer relief, of it, I think I did.