title: Remember Babylon?
rating: overall PG-13, with definite R and NC-17 moments in later chapters
summary: "She had to grow up sometime". When Charles Widmore attempts an island coup, the only safe place for Alex Linus is far, far away. With Richard Alpert overseeing her safety, everything should have been fine, but nothing Ben wants ever works out precisely as he had planned, and even for Richard, things do not stay entirely the same. Alex/Richard romance that develops over time, along with a few other pairings, island history and Richard back-story.
pairings: Richard/Alex mainly, mentions of several others, particularly rare pairings
author's note: Inspired by Godless things, among them possessiveness and Nabokov, fickle weather and Oscar Wilde, Radiohead, world history and the Marquis de Sade.
warnings: semi-graphic sexuality in later chapters, some violence and character deaths
I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb. But to have continued the same life would have been wrong because it would have been limiting. I had to pass on. The other half of the garden had its secrets for me also. - Oscar Wilde De Profundis
"Child of the pure, unclouded brow And dreaming eyes of wonder! Though time be fleet and I and thou Are half a life asunder, Thy loving smile will surely hail The love-gift of a fairy tale" - Lewis Carroll
Wake... from your sleep
The drying of your tears
Today.. we escape
We escape.
Pack and get dressed
Before your father hears us
Before.. all hell.. breaks loose.
Breathe... keep breathing
Don't lose.. your nerve.
Breathe... keep breathing
I can't do this.. alone. - Radiohead "Exit Music"
i.
"Take this," Richard instructs her, catching her before she can leave the hotel room. He presses a coat into her hands, long and grey. She has never seen it before, but Richard came prepared. "It's cold outside."
It is an island, but all wrong. Alex roams inland, trapped within the confines of the city. No scent of salt sea here, no cerulean waves. The Thames is all flooded muddy banks and dark brown water and rimes of sullied ice, and the only smells that linger remind her of abandonment and things left to rot. Cold, always cold no matter how fast she walks, or even if she runs. The snow comes down, frozen crystal she examines in the palm of her hand, gone numb. The snowflakes really are individual, but they melt before she can truly appreciate the pattern.
Hours later, waiting for the Tube, she realizes she hates being trapped underground. Her hands shake, fingers stained with newsprint from the free paper she tries to distract herself with. An advertisement for a holiday in Tahiti makes her tear up, overwhelmed with longing and nostalgia. She stares at the picture of the pristine ocean and the shady grove of coconut palms until the image blurs with her tears, and then finally the subway train comes, whisking her away. She reads the map wrong, takes a bus in the opposite direction, ends up in Docklands and cries with her hands covering her face as the train jostles over Canning Town and East India, names that sound as foreign to her ears as the tales of her home might to any one of the passengers sharing her ride. The gleaming hotel lobby, frighteningly immaculate the first time she saw it, is a welcome sight.
"I want to go home," Alex says, the first words out of her mouth as she steps into the hotel room. Closing the door behind her, she stands there, waiting, as though Richard might leap up from the chair where he sits and guide her downstairs, summoning a taxi to take them to the airport. Her hands, frozen and unfeeling, clench and unclench. "I don't like it here," she continues, when Richard does not speak. She blushes slightly, feeling childish and petulant under his even gaze, but cannot help the emotion. "I hate it here," she declares, more strongly.
It reminds him nostalgically of Ben, and Richard almost smiles, but thinks better of it. "I'm sorry you feel that way. We can leave London in a few days, if you prefer, as soon as my work is done. Where is it you want to go, Alex?"
She takes off the coat, flings it onto the ground as though in punishment for her circumstances, kicks off the shoes. She does not have her father's patience. "Back," she tells him earnestly. "Let's just go back home."
Richard glances out the window into the night. The sounds of traffic flow by, a summons in the language of speed and metal. Time ticks faster here than back where they belong. "You know we can't do that."
"No," Alex corrects him. "No, I don't. Why can't we? I want to!" Her temper sounds sophomoric even to her own ears, and she gazes at the painting of two lions on the wall, averting her eyes.
"It's not safe. Not yet." Not for us, he thinks, but does not add. "Your father asked me --"
"Ben is not my father!" Alex says defiantly. "And it isn't up to him what we do."
"We are not going back, Alex, and that is that."
The slam of the bathroom door is deafening. Alex turns on the light, grateful for the roaring hum of the fan that comes with it, which silences the sound of her crying. She runs a bath for herself, nice and hot to bring the feeling back to her chilled skin, tears dripping down her cheeks as she does so. The smell of the hotel's sample bottle of shampoo - island breeze - brings a fresh round of sobbing after she lowers herself into the scalding water. For a long time, she remains there, locked away. Several times, after silence has reigned for twenty minutes or more, Richard grows concerned, wondering what she is up to, but it is usually around that time that the water grows too cold for Alex's liking and she drains it, running a fresh, piping hot bath. Each time he hears the renewed gush of water, Richard sighs, half from relief and half from disappointment. A few more seconds of worry might have provided an excuse to go talk to her.
...
As usual, Richard does not realize he has fallen asleep until he wakes up. It is early morning, the cusp of dawn, and Alex is standing by the window, enclosed in a golden haze. Bright and shadow duel across her features as she stares out the window at the rising city, studying the patterns of traffic flow and narrowing her eyes at the crowds.
"Good morning," Richard says, standing up. His muscles feel stiff and sore from the hours spent dosing in the chair. "Did you sleep?"
Alex shakes her head. "I can't here. It's too loud," she says, without last night's virulence. Sighing, she turns her back on the window and crosses her arms. "What now?"
"Whatever you want."
"No, not exactly," she speaks, and she mimics Ben's smile, the quick flash, mirthless, that he uses when he is sad or upset. His expression looks at odds with Alex's face. "We can't go home." Shrugging, she looks back to the window as though drawn to it and presses her forehead against the cool window glass, her expression turning dispassionate again, tinged lightly in sorrow. The gleam of the sunlight reflecting off a nearby building gives her a halo, an aureole encircling her dark curls. "When?" she asks. Her voice is buoyed with false confidence, but her eyes are vulnerable as they lock with Richard's.
He goes to her then. It is the first time he has touched her since she was a child, when he would sometimes take her hand to help her up a steep incline or over a gnarled tangle of tree roots. Settling a hand on her shoulder, Richard pulls Alex back from the window so she turns and faces him.
"Soon," he promises. "It's not forever," he tells her, and he should know. To his surprise, Alex bursts into tears. He pulls her close, enfolding her in a hug the way he might have done when she was just a little girl, and had skinned her knee, the way he wanted to when Karl broke her heart. Alex's arms go tightly around his neck, holding on for dear life. She might be drowning.
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