Title: My Darkest Hour
Rating: PG-13/T for violence and dark themes
Summary: Desmond's visions after Charlie's death have only turned darker.
Characters: Desmond, Claire
Warnings: angst, despair, character death. This fic is dark, dark, dark.
Word Count: 1,149
Disclaimer: Playing with my Lost toys again, the ones I do not own. No money has changed hands here, so no worries.
They've got me now, and they won't let me go until they get what they want. I don't know how to explain that I can't give it to them. I've tried, but all I see is darkness.
Charlie had been dead for only three bloody hours before the visions returned, battering my mind with the intensity of a hailstorm. This was no longer about just one man -- this time the destruction they foretold was far more widespread, causing Charlie's death to seem like merely an appetizer for some monstrous appetite.
They had arrived in their boat, just like the poor bloke had said they would, right before he drowned. When I first got back, I had tried to warn them like Charlie wanted me to but they were all too damned excited to hear me, chattering away about leaving the island and reuniting with their families. They wanted to believe that rescue was coming; they wanted it so badly that they convinced themselves of it. And I was just some water logged nutter that had failed to save their friend.
Their hopes were destroyed along with their defenseless bodies when the rafts came to shore, full to overflowing with troops armed to the teeth. I had seen it coming of course, but only moments before – confusing flashes of blood turning the sand to rust, screams of shock and pain renting the tropical air.
When I had freed Charlie and he had gone to enter the code the visions had stopped. I had thought it was over, my own personal hell, but it had only metastasized, tainting everyone around me with the permanent stains of death. I watched as my campmates died, as helpless as I had been to change poor Charlie's bitter fate as he disappeared smiling into the deep.
They took me, along with Claire and Aaron. Everyone else they left for dead on the beach. Claire was crying, terrified, curled up into a tight ball in the cell opposite me deep in the hull of the ship. The pitching and rolling only intensified the already sick feeling in my stomach. They had taken Aaron from her. I threw useless words of comfort in her direction, but they dissipated in the air like wisps of smoke. There was no comfort for this girl, and her friend had died for nothing.
And it was all my bloody fault.
I wanted them to stop, but the visions taunted me as mercilessly as my captors, like an enemy living inside me, breaking me down. What was more was these men knew. I can't explain it but somehow they knew. They'd visit me, asking me odd questions about where we were going and what was going to happen – questions that made no sense unless you were asking someone to predict the future. They smiled as they spoke, toying with me, like cats playing with a wounded mouse. I ignored them, and tried as hard as I could to block the images from my mind that once again grew more frequent and disturbing.
Apart from one.
The last night on the ship, I saw Penny. She hovered in my cell like an angel from above. Her eyes red, tears falling down like drizzling rain, but I couldn't tell if they were tears of joy or anguish because she was also smiling, as if she were trying to put on a brave face. It would be just like Penny to put on a brave face, a more courageous human being than I'd ever be.
I love you Desmond, she said.
I tried to glimpse the scenery around her to know where she might appear in my future, but it was all but a blur. I reached out to touch her cheek but she was gone, like a sweet dream that fades upon awakening, to be replaced by another flash. All before my eyes turned black, darker than all the lights in the universe extinguished. It was a sight more frightening than all of the visions of the screams of life, because I knew what it meant.
The following morning, we had arrived at some location and I was transferred from the ship to a cell on land. That was the last time I saw Claire. I remember yelling more empty words over my shoulder to her as they dragged me away, that everything was going to be all right, but she was beyond hearing me. She looked wasted, her eyes staring right through me, without an ounce of happiness left to lift her spirits or support her thin frame. All I could think of was Charlie and how lucky he was not to have seen this. If he had survived the station, he would likely have died on the beach with the others anyway.
I began to envy him and his peaceful death.
After a few hours in my new dark cell, a silver haired man in a suit arrived. He knew my name. He crouched down to where I sat in the cold stone corner, careful not to touch his trousers to the dirty floor, and looked me straight in the eye, as if trying to read my thoughts.
What is my future, he said. What will become of me?
I don't bloody know, do I, I said. Why don't you let me go?
The man stood. You have a rare gift, he said. And you will assist us.
With that he left, but I called after him, asking what they did with Claire and her innocent child. He ignored me. I closed my eyes and focused on Penny's face as I cried. When Charlie had come to the end of his days he had nothing but his memories. It was as if he had taken a vow of poverty as part of his penance for his life, stripping himself bare of all but his essentials.
All I had were those two visions of Penny and the darkness. I felt cloistered again, but in a different type of monastery, as uncertain of my path as I was then but equally unsure that I could ever repay the debt of my sins in full.
The next day the tests began. After several days of them I was plagued with intense headaches. Every night I prayed for the vision of darkness to return, willing the future to arrive so I could embrace it and allow it to fill me up. The men still wanted answers, but my prophecies were only for myself these days. The days bled into one another until time because something else altogether, something I hated.
I don't know how it happened but at some point fear of the dark had been replaced by a longing, and I began to understand why Charlie had gone so willingly to his death to escape a life of pain.
My darkest hour draws near.