Title: Echoes of Love
Genre: supernatural, angst, romance
Original Post Date: 08/08/2007
Spoilers: up to the end of season three with speculation for season four
Summary: Claire is dreaming of helicopters and rescue but when it finally comes will she have the courage to leave the island after all?
Disclaimer: Argh I hate disclaimers. Don't own Lost, never have, never will.
Claire doesn't sleep much anymore. She says she's not scared but in reality she's terrified to even close her eyes because her dreams – usually so hazy – have become frighteningly lucid and she remembers them better now than she ever has before.
Under normal circumstances this wouldn't be a problem – but nowadays all she seems to dream about is Charlie.
Sometimes the dreams are peaceful – memories or projected memories of what they once had together, before the Looking Glass incident. Once or twice they've been fast and frenzied – a mash of teeth and tongue and flesh and everything that was left unsaid and undone between them. But more often than not she spends her subconscious hours beating frantic fists against a wall of glass while he fades slowly on the other side and when she wakes up, she's gasping with tears.
Claire's not the only one who's grieving however. Most nights when she puts Aaron down, he cries in his sleep and nothing she can do will wake him from whatever nightmares he's having. She sits there for hours at a time, white knuckles clenched on her knees as she watches him sobbing quietly to himself, tears running down her own face to see him in such pain. Jack suggests singing to him, rocking him, cuddling him, sleeping with him in her arms…
Nothing works.Claire has never known a pain like this before. This is real pain, grief of the highest degree. And while she's had her heart broken before, it's certainly never been shattered into as many pieces as it is now. Some days I feel like I've forgotten how to smile. I've never felt so lost before – or so alone…
The tip of her pen pauses in its relentless scratching as she glances blindly over the still semi-decimated beach camp for a long moment. Her own shelter needs some repair work done but she still hasn't gotten around to it yet. At least four people have offered to help her and she has refused all of them. She doesn't want them to help her fix her shelter. Somewhere in the corner of her mind she's still waiting for Charlie to come back and do it – and maybe mend her broken heart while he's at it. Missing Charlie isn't the same as missing anyone else. I've never hurt like this before – not just in my heart and soul but in my physical body as well. It hurts
Desmond watches her closely – despite the fact that she is no longer speaking to him. She came very close to strangling him to death when he told her what Charlie had done and why. He bore the brunt of her initial reaction bravely and he still has the bruises to show for it. From then on he's kept his distance, giving her the space to continue her grieving in peace. But he's always there, just on the periphery and it makes her uneasy. He still stubbornly wants to make sure that when the helicopter comes for her that she gets on it. Claire is undecided whether she wants to trust his visions or not anymore after what happened to Charlie.
But then her dreams begin to change.
Suddenly Charlie is coming to her every night. She's always sitting in her shelter when he comes hurrying up, takes her by the hand and leads her off down the beach. He never says a word to her, simply pulls her along aimlessly and then she wakes up.
In her waking hours, she talks the dream over tentatively with Sun who is just as non-plussed at what its meaning might be.
'It seems that he wants you to go somewhere,' she muses, bouncing Aaron in her arms and looking totally comfortable. Claire tries to keep her jealousy under control. She has this awful feeling that Sun is going to be one of those naturally maternal people who is going to embrace being a mother like it's her cosmic destiny. 'But where would he be taking you?'
'I don't know,' Claire mourns. 'He never tells me – never says a word. We're just running off down the beach together and we just never seem to get to wherever we're going.'
Sun purses her lips as Aaron begins to cry and Claire takes advantage of the moment to snatch him back into her arms again.
That night Charlie pulls her all the way down the beach to the cable in the sand. Claire's dream self stops dead and a sudden chill freezes her where she stands.
There's a helicopter on the beach, hovering mere metres above the sand.
'Hurry up!' Charlie yells, beckoning to her frantically with his free hand. 'If you don't come now you'll miss it!'
Claire takes several horrified steps backwards away from him, her hand slipping out of his grasp, and then she turns tail and runs. When she wakes, Charlie's voice is still echoing desperately in her ears, calling her name. The sound of his voice, so familiar and yet impossible seems to cut deep into her. She rolls over onto her side and sobs desperately into her hands until she feels a large, warm hand on her shoulder.
She hiccups in surprise but doesn't turn to see who it is as they stroke her hair and gently pull the blankets up to cover her shoulders. Eventually their touch calms her sobs and she falls into the first dreamless sleep she's had in weeks.
The respite is short-lived however – the next night she returns to the dream again. The helicopter on the beach is back and Charlie is there too – gazing at her sadly as she tries desperately to back away. Tonight however, he keeps a firm grip on her hand.
'I'll help you get in,' he offers. 'Come on Claire…'
'I'm not getting in!' she tugs at his wrist but he doesn't relinquish his grip. 'Please, let me go back Charlie!'
'Why do you want to stay here?' Charlie looks utterly bewildered now. 'You've got a chance to leave the island – to have a real life again! That's the whole reason I did this!'
'How can I go back?' Claire's dream self sobs and she finally gives up trying to pull away and instead steps towards him and reaches up to place her hands on either side of his face. His cheeks are rough against her palms and Claire almost breaks down with the strength of the sensory memory she's hit with. 'Why would I go back? There's nobody for me to go back to!'
Charlie shakes his head sadly and her hands slide from his face onto his chest. 'Claire don't you see? There's nothing for you to stay here for!'
'What about you?' she says tentatively.
He barks out a laugh and for a moment he's alive again in her mind. 'I'm dead luv. Dead and gone. You need to think about yourself now – and Aaron.' Claire shakes her head but then Charlie touches her cheek and leans his face close to her hers. His touch and the intensity in his grey eyes makes her stop. 'You don't have to worry about me anymore.'
When she wakes it's still dark but she wastes no time in bundling a sleepy Aaron up into her arms and trudging down the beach until she finds the cable in the sand. She follows it to the edge of the sea and stands there for a long time, tears running down her face and an unspoken prayer on her lips.
After four hours have passed the sun is just thinking about rising. Claire wipes her face and retraces her steps back to her shelter as the horizon flares with light.
The morning passes without event until Desmond comes belting up to her just after midday and before Claire can even think, he's grabbed her by the hand and is pulling her up the beach. The déjà vu hammers itself into her brain as she gasps for breath, Aaron is clutched tightly against her breast.
The helicopter is there, waiting for her.
'You've got to go,' Desmond says breathlessly. 'Now. Before everyone else hears it and tries to get on it too. They said there's only room for one but Aaron hardly counts as a second person being as he's so small...'
'I'm not getting on,' Claire says shrilly, her voice trembling.
'What do you mean you're not getting on?' Desmond looks panicky. 'Claire – you're going home!'
'There's nothing for me to go back to,' Claire says bleakly, quoting her dream self. But there's no conviction in her voice and Desmond seems to sense this, even as she presses on. 'There's nothing waiting for me back home but life as a single mother.'
'There's nothing left for you here either!' Desmond exclaims, echoing Charlie's words from her dream. Claire is taken aback but then he's talking again and he's almost pleading with her now. 'Please Claire, I've got to know that I didn't send Charlie needlessly to his death – that some good will come out of his sacrifice. I need to know that you and the little one will be saved.'
Claire stares at Desmond for a long moment. He looks quite as bereaved as she feels – his eyes are quivering behind a pool of unshed tears and the downturn of his mouth is simply heartbreaking.
She throws her arms around his neck and buries her face in his neck. Desmond jerks like he's been electrocuted but then puts his arms around her minute shoulders and for the first time since Charlie has died he holds her in his arms and the two of them cry together.
And through her despair, through her grief, Claire finally begins to see why Charlie did what he did. If he had survived the Looking Glass station, she wouldn't be leaving the island – there was no way she would have considered getting onto this helicopter if Charlie wasn't going home with her too.
And he'd known it.
The bastard – he'd known it and he'd still gone! Hadn't he known how she felt about him? The honest answer was no – Claire had never told him and she knows now how incredibly stupid she was for never saying anything, for never telling him that she would miss him if he went away…
'It wasn't meant to be this way!' she sobs suddenly against Desmond's shoulder. 'He-he promised me that he was going to take care of us both! He said that I could stay with him in Los Angeles, that we could both start over again…'
'He kept a part of his promise,' Desmond amends, pulling back to gaze into her pale eyes, his own are still bleary from tears. 'He promised to take care of you and the little one and he did that. You're going home. You're going to survive Claire.'
Claire swallows her grief down in one gulping sob and then allows Desmond to help her up into the helicopter.
It isn't until she's well away (until Desmond is nothing more than a speck of sand on the beach) that she realises that in the mad rush to get her away, she has left everything behind. For a moment she panics about her clothes, her diary, the people she didn't say goodbye to…
But then she looks down at Aaron, quiet and still in her arms and she knows that all she really needs is within him and within herself. Because Charlie's love, however briefly it was expressed and fostered, will continue to resonate within the two of them long after he's gone.