Title: The Casket

Title: The Casket

Disclaimer: Not mine….none of it is. I cry every night over this fact (hypothetically of course)

A/N: I have far too many theories….here's another for who could possibly reside in that meddlesome death box sitting somewhere in the future. I swear this is the last one.

The Casket

The casket was heavy. The two men who had carried it into the hall left quietly after placing the thing on the table and the decorator approached, flowers in tow. He started at the floor and worked his way up arranging the flowers in an attractive fashion for the approaching wake. Once he had finished the outward display of flowers and photos he forfeited his place at the coffin's side to a woman standing quietly at the back with make up and brushes ready to work the magic of cosmetics to make it look like the body inside could be sleeping. She gently opened the lid and jumped, his eyes were open. She reached out and shut the lids over the glassy eyes stare and looked at the ceiling. This was not her job. She did not normally falsify dead bodies into sleep. She conducted research missions and expeditions for science. She had volunteered to do this as one small service of love.

When she had composed herself, refusing to cry the tears that had gathered behind her eyes when she saw the soft eyes of the man in the coffin, she opened the Ziploc bag on the table before her and brought out the artillery. She darkened the pallored skin that had once been so warm, she reddened the cheeks that had always smiled at her, and she smoothed the long hair that had always bothered her across the pillow. She had done her job well, she thought; he looked the way he used to when he slept beside her, only less rumpled and without the speedy movement of eyes in a dream.

Penny Widmore stared down at her Desmond lying there, cold and gone, like his friend Charlie. She sank to her knees on the kneeler at the base of the table and struggled not to cry. The dam did not hold, she rested her head on the table and sobbed in heart wrenching gasps. She shook slightly as she looked up to see Desmond's face one last time, the face she had searched for years to see. She sniffed and reached out her hand to touch his face but couldn't bring herself to touch the cold, waxy skin again. She put her hand back at her side and looked at her love's face before she closed the cover and kissed the smooth lid.

"I'll see you in another life." She whispered choking through her tears that splashed down on the casket. She sobbed again and covered her mouth, running from the funeral home. Once at her car she broke down completely. Crying tears of the purest desperation into her steering wheel and gasping for air as she called his name over and over again. Her world had been stolen from her again.