Author's Note: Egad! I wrote Lost-fic!! I am overjoyed. Er. This has been floating around in my head for several weeks, and I actually had it playing out cinematically one night and made the excuse to myself that I was much too tired to get out of bed and fumble about for pen and notebook. Therefore, I've forgotten most of the best bits. I've been trying to get it all straight again ever since, and it finally came, and I am thrilled. Details are purposely foggy, as we know far too little about Desmond and Penny's relationship and history. The last bit is probably during...whatever Desmond was doing in the Royal Scots Regiment of Her Majesty's Royal Armed Forces, not prison. Again, deliberately foggy, because if canon ends up contradicting anything, I will feel obliged to change it. (I'm that kind of obsessive writer. Go away.)
A House at the End of the World
by Vintage Blue
I.
Perhaps he loves Dickens because a long time ago, long enough that he's forgotten most of everything except the taste it left in his mind, Penny started reading it aloud for a lark, and he remembering being lost in the words and her voice and the candlelight on her hair.
Perhaps, then, it is because Dickens feels something like home.
II.
She liked to climb trees, Penny did: Penny had, anyway, also a long time ago. I like going places people can't follow, she said.
Once, much later, he asked why she'd stopped. She said, I feel so terribly old, and tried to laugh. Silly, she said. I'm silly. But her eyes looked like they went a long, long way in.
III.
He took her hands and told her he was going away, and she said, It's Father, isn't it, and he said, It always is, and the words tasted bitter, winding around inside his mouth. I'll write, he said. I'll write to you so often that the postman will hate me.
She said, Build us a house at the end of the world. I can't climb trees anymore and I want to go away. I could come with you now, I could--and--
He said, No, love, and felt her shiver in his arms, and he kissed her bright hair and remembered candlelight.
IV.
The world is very grey here, he thinks, and he remembers Penny's house at the end of the world and tries to build it inside his head, over and over again when everything is grey, is black, exploding. He would like to light a candle and watch it flicker over her hair, her mouth, her eyes. Cold, he thinks. It's the cold, is all.
It isn't.