Charlotte & Dan's Story, a lost fanfic

AN: Just snippets of scenes that are part of Charlotte and Dan's story. Half of them I made up and half were in the actual show. The bold word before them shows who's point of view it's from. I didn't seperate them into chapters because this is just supposed to be a one-shot. Anyways, enjoy! :)

Charlotte

I wandered around the ship, the Kahana, absorbing my new, unfamiliar surroundings. I had no idea why I was here, why they'd wanted me, but I had come. Why, I don't know. A change of scenery, a craving for being needed somewhere… I had made a snap decision to do it. However, now I was beginning to regret my choice to tag along. It was probably too soon to formulate an opinion and already have feelings of contempt for this place and this job, or whatever it was, this mission of finding Benjamin Linus. But I did.

"Charlotte!" someone called from a while away, behind me.

I twisted my head around to find someone gesturing for me to come over there, but I hadn't fully comprehended who it was, if I even knew them, when-

"Oh!" I gasped. I had walked straight into something, or rather, it had walked into me. A number of papers fluttered to the ground. Looking up, I saw a startled man standing before me.

His dark brown hair was all askew, his mouth gaping open. A tie hung from his neck, disheveled… Why was he wearing a tie? Who wears a tie on a freighter? "I'm so sorry," he said, flustered, his voice quieter then I had imagined it would be. "Didn't see you… I guess I shouldn't read when I'm walking…" He bent down to retrieve his papers, and I copied him.

"It's okay," I said, trying to reassure the poor guy, gathering papers into my hands. An open composition notebook was there, too, with lots of notes and diagrams that brought back bad high school physics memories. "What's this?" I asked, as we both stood up and I handed what I had collected back to him.

"It's, um," he looked down at the notebook where it was clutched in his hands. "My journal."

"It looks pretty complex. What's all that in it?" I wondered.

He scratched that back of his head. "Notes and… and things. I'm a scientist. A… physicist."

"Ah." I nodded. He shifted his feet awkwardly in the silence. "So… nice to meet you, anyway. I'm Charlotte Lewis."

"Daniel," he said, then paused. "Faraday."

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Charlotte

"Dan… do you remember?" I said softly. We were sitting on a couch below deck on the Kahana, practicing our usual card exercise.

Dan leaned forward, and laid his hands on the table in front of us, staring at the three facedown playing cards that were placed on it.

"Sure," he said quietly, concentrating. "First one's two of clubs." My hopes fell, knowing that was incorrect, but I kept a friendly smile on my face as I turned over the card.

"That's okay," I said. "Try the next one."

He nodded. "Eight of hearts."

Grinning, I revealed the front of the card, which sure enough was an eight of hearts. "Great! You'll get the last one, too, I'm sure! Go on."

He sat there staring at the cards some more, then guessed, "King… of diamonds?"

I flipped over the card, a king of hearts. "Close," I encouraged him.

But Dan sank back into the couch, his hand on his forehead. "I'm getting worse, Charlotte. What's happening?"

I bit my lip. "You're not getting worse, Dan, you're doing fine. You just need more practice." I pulled the pack of cards out of my pocket. "Let's have another go…"

Charlotte

"We're going down! Everyone get ready to jump!" Frank shouted over the noise, the excruciating mixture of the vicious storm outside and all our electronics going haywire.

I was rummaging through our things as best I could with the helicopter rocking like it was, frantically searching for my bulletproof vest.

Knowing we were running out of time, I desperately screamed, "I can't find my vest!"

"Check under your seat!" advised Miles.

"I already did!" I yelled back impatiently.

"Get ready!" hollered Frank, sounding far away.

Miles thrust something into my chest. "Here, just take mine!"

"Everybody get ready to go!" said Frank, and I hastily put on the vest.

Miles turned to Dan, who I noticed just now looked extremely terrified. "Hey, genius, go!"

"No!" said Dan.

"Go!" Miles was pushing him toward the open door.

"No!" Dan cried again, but Miles had already shoved him out the door. I ran to the window and was relieved to see Dan's yellow parachute open as he neared the trees.

I looked over to Miles, and knew then that it was my turn. I approached the door and looked down, feeling queasy. I couldn't see much through the rain, though, which was coming down in sheets. I don't think I had ever seen it rain so hard in my life. After a few seconds, I squeezed my eyes shut and took a breath as if I was diving into a swimming pool, then plunged down into the darkness…

Daniel

"Hey, Charlotte!" I called, approaching her on the beach as we all prepared to depart on the lifeboat and head back to the freighter. "Listen, I wanted to say, before you get on the boat, please-"

But she interrupted me. "I'm gonna stay, Daniel. For now, anyway."

I knew it really hadn't, but right then it felt as though my heart had skipped a beat. "Charlotte…" I said, placing a hand on her shoulder awkwardly and trying to reason with her. "There is no more 'for now.' If you don't come with me for now, it could be forever."

"Nothing's forever," was her reply.

Looking away, I paused and tried a different approach. "…Why?"

"Would it make any sense," asked Charlotte, "if I told you I was still looking for where I was born?"

I thought about that for a second, having no idea what she was talking about. "N-No…?"

She laughed lightly and pulled me into a hug, kissing my cheek. I knew that this was final, that she wouldn't change her mind now, and I was in agony at the thought of it.

"Goodbye, Daniel…"

Daniel

They were leading us to some building.

It couldn't be called a building, actually; it was more of a tent. Miles, at the front of our little group, entered it. With a rough push, the man who had brought us here forced Charlotte and me in, too.

"Take it easy!" I said sharply, spinning around to face him, but the man didn't respond, simply turning his back to us and walking out.

"It's all right, Dan," said Charlotte in a tired voice as she joined Miles where he had just sat down. "I'm fine."

"We are so dead," groaned Miles. I kneeled down next to them on the dirt floor, getting the overwhelming feeling that I was the leader here, just as Miles had told them, and not liking it one bit.

"Hey," I said. "No, no. We are not so dead. We're gonna be fine. We just need to keep it together 'til there's another flash. All right? Then all this disappears."

"When's that gonna happen?" asked Miles anxiously.

"Could be five minutes…" I said, shaking my head. "Could also be five thousand years."

"That's just awesome," mumbled Miles.

"What is going on, Dan?" Charlotte demanded, as if I knew. "Why are they doing this to us?"

"I'm not sure," I told her. "But they must think that we're with the American military, and if that's the case, our best chance of staying alive is to let them keep thinking it. All right? Let-"

But just then, I heard someone enter behind us, and I stood up instinctively to face him. He must be these people's leader… and yet, oddly, I knew him from somewhere…

"Sorry," he said. "Am I interrupting? Kelly tells me that you're not willing to reveal where the rest of your squad is?" Others were entering now, and my eyes flickered to each of them individually. I noticed one of them had bandages on his hands, covering burns – burns from radiation, a subject I was very familiar with.

"Why would I do that?" I said quietly. "So you can kill them, too?"

"We didn't start this, friend. Your people attacked us. You come to our island to run your tests, you fire at us, and, what, you expect us not to defend ourselves?"

"I don't know anything about that," I told him. "We are scientists."

He glanced over at Miles and Charlotte. "So, what, so they sent you here to recover it?"

'It' could only mean one thing, I assumed, glancing again at the man's burns. "If you mean our hydrogen bomb, then yes." Charlotte and Miles were looking at me as if I were crazy, which I probably was. "And I'm guessing from this man's radiation burns that the housing has been compromised. Is that right?" He didn't respond. "You need to listen to me. You have an unstable device that's capable of destroying this entire island and it's broken. If you don't allow me to render it inert, all of us are gonna die. All of us."

"How do I know you weren't sent here on some suicide mission? I'll take you out to the bomb, and you'll just detonate it."

Why couldn't he just trust me? It would make this so much simpler. All sorts of lies starting forming in my head: to lie about who we were, where we came from, what we were here to do… But then it hit me. Every since we'd been sent here, we'd been programmed to lie, lie, lie. Well, what if I didn't lie? What if I told the truth? Not the whole truth, of course, or he would think I was crazy. But a small part of the truth…

"Because…" I said softly. "I'm in love with the woman sitting next to me." Charlotte looked up, caught completely off guard, and I met her eyes. "And I would never… I would never do anything to hurt her."

The man stared at me. "All right. Take care of your bomb, but you try anything else, and you will hurt her." And with that he left. My eyes trailed back to Charlotte, who was now looking away, perhaps wondering what in the world was wrong with me.

Daniel

"Charlotte!" I yelled as she collapsed into my arms, shaking violently. "No, no, no, this can't happen…" I knelt down, laying her in the grass.

Miles was staring at her, a disbelieving look on his face. "What's happening?"

I shook my head, trying to think. "She's- she's seizing, having a seizure…"

"Well, stop it!" he said frantically.

"I can't stop it!" I yelled back as Miles knelt down beside me and started shaking her arm and calling her name.

"No, no, stop," I said. I frantically started to undo my tie.

"What are you doing, Dan?" said Miles desperately. "Help her!"

"I don't- I don't know-" I said. "I'm trying, Miles! Just be quiet!" I brought my hand up to her face. "Here-" Tilting her head back, I used the tie to get rid of the blood on her face and clamped my fingers on the bridge of her nose to stop any more from coming out. "You can't just stop a seizure, I don't think…"

"Charlotte!" started Miles again, trying to make her stop as I watched painfully, having no idea what to do. A few minutes passed, and I knew it should be over by now, that something was wrong, when suddenly- it stopped.

I flung myself onto her, putting my hand above her mouth, waiting for a breath, but one never came, then moved it down, feeling for a pulse on her neck, but not finding one. "Charlotte- Charlotte, no, come on-" I tilted her chin up again and brought my mouth down to hers, still holding her nose, and breathed out, once, twice, three times… But there was no response, no anything.

"Charlotte…" I murmured her name, feeling tears starting to sting in the corner of my eyes, then tried again to get her to breathe, with no success. "Charlotte, no…"

"Dan," said Miles gently, in an unfamiliar voice. "I don't think there's anything you can do… I think she's gone."

"No!" I yelled, fiercely, powerfully, with all the emotion in the world, glaring at him. And then I sunk down, staring at Charlotte's body, feeling the tears leave my eyes, and repeated myself in a much smaller voice. "No…" I pulled her up to me, cradling her body into a hug. "No…"