A/N. It was bugging me all afternoon so I had to write a love-triangle. I hope to see a Miles-Charlotte-Daniel love triangle in the future. Might spice things up a bit. Green is not a good color on Miles Straume.

Defining Care

"Define care" Miles quipped to Sayid when asked about Charlotte Lewis, easily the most irritating member of their "team" besides Daniel "Genius" Faraday who was... well, in layman's terms an idiot and he was almost glad Charlotte would have the job babying him, and would get Dan off his back for a very comfortable while. Sawyer hadn't been great company either, but the change in scenery was always nice.

To Miles, caring was usless when death was imminent and death was always imminent.

He remembered Claire. She didn't know how close to death she was. It was intriguing to watch the naive go about the motions. Claire just carried on as if she would have time left and he wondered what it would feel like to be that blissfully ignorant.

He couldn't be blissfully ignorant, it was hard to be once you knew. When death was always so close that you could smell it, taste it from the fleeting breath of others. He should have sensed it with Naomi but he guessed he wanted to believe he was wrong about any intuitions he had. Now it was confirmed. Caring was pointless.

And then there was Charlotte. She sounded so unbelievably educated and proper when she spoke, it was like nails to a chalkboard. But the sound of her voice was familiar now he was reunited with her. It was one of the few things that didn't remind him of death.

"This camp, they're all fit for the looney bin" Charlotte sat on the beach when Dan had left. Miles was shocked Dan had stepped up and been a man - taking the boat back to the freighter. Something had to have happened to him since he's been on this island, Miles considered. Or maybe Charlotte had him more whipped than he'd originally considered.

Miles chuckled at her words. He ran his finger over the sand, absently tracing patterns.

"I mean it, you think they'd be a little more civilized a little less..."

"Lord of the Flies?" Miles offered.

It was Charlotte's turn to smile. A smile that made him forget about death... for just an instant... just until he pictured her rotting corpse and realized again why he was detached from any human failings that led to pining after the dead.

Care. Miles didn't care. He didn't care about what would happen to them. He didn't care about anything but his mission. He didn't care about Charlotte. He didn't care that she spent the last days with Dan who might have been man enough to make a move considering what had changed since he'd been away. He didn't care that she was too pretentious to care about a guy like him, not when she could have conversations with geniuses like Danny boy. He didn't care that she was poised and stunning yet she seemed so fascinated in everybody else. He didn't care how it amused him to no end that for someone that studied humans in detail she seemed to fail again and again with relating to them.

He didn't care that he had to shut her up about Ben. And he didn't care that he didn't want Dan to ever come back. He'd stay with Charlotte. They could piss the entire camp of people off together. They could fight... then make up with invigorating passion. Do all those things that would be possible if he could let himself care, or if she wasn't Dan's girl.

Miles wished he had an excuse to break Dan's fingers for real. He wished he could have done worse than throwing him out the helicopter. Often he wished that he didn't survive the fall. And he knew if he was really as apathetic about life as he pretended, he wouldn't think about that. He wouldn't think about the woman to his right that had a knack of digging herself under his skin and staying there. And suddenly there was a revelation of another thing Miles couldn't be blissfully ignorant of just as Claire was about her mortality.

The truth that he'd lied to Sayid... just like he'd been lying to himself. He could define care himself quite fine. His eyes went over her crinkly red hair and offbeat grin and he felt something hard pull at his stomach. Now where was Dan so he could break some fingers?

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