Chapter 37

Tea Party

Penny steadied herself on the kitchen counter as she moved to take a shaky seat back down at the table.

'I take it that was him?' Eloise hoped to god the girl was going to hold it together. They had a lot to get through.

'Yes. It was him.'

'And now you remember it, don't you, Desmond?'

Desmond was staring at her wide eyed. She could see the fear in him now. She studied his face in fascination. Incredible. She hadn't been certain how it would work, how the memory would actually change. And here, now, she'd witnessed it happening. She felt elation and hope surging up inside her as she leant forward eagerly. 'So Desmond, what do you remember now? Do you still remember the fact that Penny never phoned you? Do you have both memories… or has the new memory superseded the old one?'

Desmond just stared at her. He looked as if he was about to throw up.

'Well?' her impatience was turning into a strong impulse to pick the frustrating man up by his throat and shake him. Hard. 'Desmond, do you still remember when Penny didn't phone you?'

He was still staring at her, his expression completely unreadable. Finally she heard his whispered voice, 'It was a dream.' She wasn't even sure if she'd heard him correctly, his voice was so faint and his eyes had taken on a distant, unfocussed look, his gaze drifting off to the window and the dying sunlight through the curtain.

She heard Penny's breath hitch. 'I don't understand… ' she began, then stopped and took another breath. 'How can there be two… '

'How can there be two of them?' she finished the question for her. 'Because there are now two Desmonds in this time-frame; the one at Millar Barracks and this one, sitting in front of us. The Desmond we have here is from 2004. That's right, isn't it Desmond?' Desmond dragged his eyes away from the curtain-covered window. They were hollow and empty. Desmond has just left the building, she thought ruefully.

'So he hasn't been drugged?' She could see Penny scrabbling to understand. Desmond's eyes flicked over towards her.

'No. Though I can see why he might think that. There is a certain logic there. But no, Desmond, I hope you can see now that you haven't been drugged, and as bizarre as it looks, you are traveling through time and space and you have been since you turned that failsafe key in the Dharma Station.'

Desmond looked up at her slowly.

'Look Desmond, believe it or not, I am trying to help you. Whatever you did in that Dharma Station released enough EM energy to blast you across half the galaxy. And now you are displaced in space and time. So. You can either indulge in your conspiracy theories about who did this to you or wake up and try and at least help yourself get out of this mess. Understand?'

Desmond shifted uncomfortably and then cleared his throat. 'The Dharma Station,' he said quietly, 'It was being watched. They were watching us.'

Of all the things to bring up, he starts on this? 'Of course it was being watched. The Dharma Initiative was obsessed with watching everyone, including themselves. But by the time you were on the Island the Dharma Initiative were no longer there. All of the equipment you saw was obsolete.'

'Hang on, who are the Dharma Initiative? What are you talking about?' Penny's voice cut across the conversation. Eloise sighed. Was it worth going into all of this. One look at Desmond and the fact that he seemed genuinely interested in the question convinced her that yes, it probably was.

'The Dharma Initiative were a bunch of hippies who thought they could work outside the laws of physics. They set up a little camp on the Island in the early 1970's and played god for a while. And Desmond spent three years there, stuck inside a Dharma station managing the EM energy for them. Until something happened and he blew the whole thing to smithereens. That's right, isn't it Desmond?'

Desmond was still staring at her hard, but now she could see the guilt and fear in his eyes.

'I had no choice,' he whispered, 'The computer was smashed. I had to use the failsafe key.'

Finally, finally she was getting through to him. She almost breathed a sigh of relief. 'The failsafe key? What exactly did you do, Desmond?'

'There was a failsafe under the main room. I just turned the key.'

'And then what? What happened then, Desmond?'

He stared at her and shook his head.

She felt like wringing the man's neck in exasperation.

'Wait… you say Desmond was managing the energy? How?' Oh god. Would Penny just keep up? Still, Desmond had ground to a halt again so she may as well get Penny up to speed.

'The Dharma Initiative royally screwed up,' Eloise explained, 'The Island has certain… properties. It turns out that, among other things, it holds a huge reservoir of Electromagnetic Radiation. Some of the clowns from Dharma Initiative drilled into a pocket of the EM energy and then the idiots had to find a way to make it safe.'

'And where does Desmond fit in? I don't understand.' She could see Penny beginning to panic.

'Desmond had to manually release the charge build up.'

'So… what?'

'So I pressed a button every one hundred and eight minutes for three years.' He said softly.

'On your own?'

Desmond swallowed hard. 'No. Kelvin was there, for most of it. We were waiting for a replacement. We…'

Penny held her hands up, stopping Desmond mid sentence. 'Wait, back a bit - how did you get on this Island? I mean, there was the army, and…'

Desmond looked down at the table. 'After I left the army, I went on a round the world race and I was shipwrecked. Kelvin found me and I stayed with him.'

There was silence for a moment. Eloise could see Penny counting up the years. Seven years. Plenty of time for lots of little Desmond adventures.

'And Kelvin? Is he…? ' Penny was looking around as if Kelvin was hiding in some cupboard somewhere.

'He died. It was an accident.' Desmond's expression twisted. Eloise pushed down the choking laugh. Yes. An accident. The guilt was written all over him. Still, that was none of her business.

She pulled the conversation back on track. 'So even after the Dharma Initiative left the Island, they still had a lot of equipment lying about. Obsolete equipment.'

Eloise paused. She'd often wondered herself what happened to the Dharma Initiative. She knew most of them had been killed – gassed – but she'd left the Island by then and had never quite worked out who was responsible for releasing the gas. Of course it had been either Benjamin Linus or Charles. Or both. Not that it mattered now. Or maybe it did. She suspected that both Charles and Benjamin Linus had had a hand in it. Richard Alpert was probably the only one who really knew. And Richard - being Richard - wouldn't be breathing a word. And typical of Charles, he wouldn't have bothered to look into what the Dharma Initiative had left behind – two people stuck in one of the old Dharma Stations making sure the Island stayed safe.

'It was a ridiculous system.' She added, thinking aloud. 'Manually releasing the energy. They should have automated it, but the Dharma Initiative never liked to do anything the easy way, and they probably thought it was an opportunity to study the behaviour of people stuck in a small room endlessly pressing a button.' She had Desmond's full attention now. At last. 'So, in answer to your question, Desmond, those observation stations weren't in use when you were there. No one was watching you. I don't think anyone even knew you were there. Charles certainly didn't.'

'Charles… my father?' Penny's forehead scrunched in annoyance.

'Yes, he was in charge for a while. Until Benjamin Linus took over and threw him out.'

She could see she had both their attentions now. Penny was chewing her lip and looking thoughtfully down at the table and Desmond, well, Desmond was looking like some drunken fool who had just been doused with a bucket of cold water.

Penny stood up suddenly. 'I don't know about you, but I really need a cup of tea.'

Eloise sighed and then gave a curt nod.

'Des?' Penny looked at him expectantly. He gave her a thin smile as she headed to the kitchen area. 'I think I've got some chocolate biscuits here somewhere.'

The tea seemed to cocoon the conversation in an air of almost-normality. Desmond sat hunched over his cup, quietly dunking his biscuit into his tea, with Penny squeezed into the seat next to him. She'd moved over to be closer to him. It would have been sweet if it hadn't been so nauseating. And Desmond hadn't been such a drip. She concentrated on her tea and let the silence engulf them all. She blew on it hesitantly, taking a few small, scalding sips. The silence was almost companionable. When she looked up again she was surprised to see that suddenly she had a receptive audience. The wonders of a cup of tea – and almost an hour of hard work trying to prise their minds open. This was probably as cozy as it was going to get, and her best chance of getting Desmond to tell her what she really needed to know.

She bent down, pushing one hand into her bag and pulling out the two precious journals, placing them carefully face down beside the notepad she was working on.

'Do you recognize this, Desmond?' she picked up the black book and held it in front of him – Daniel's original journal. Desmond's expression was blank. 'Or this?' then she lifted up the stack of paper she'd found on Daniel after he'd collapsed in his office. The papers with 'Battlestar Gallactica Raptor navigational log' printed across the top of each page. She held them up in front of him. His eyes opened with surprise before he carefully schooled his face again.

'Right, so you know what this one is. But you haven't seen the black book before?'

'Eloise, what is this all about? What have these got to do with Desmond?'

She took a deep breath.

This was it.

She placed one hand over the old leather book in front of her, closed her eyes for a fraction of a second and when she opened them she started speaking. 'When I was… younger… I lived on the Island with your father. One day a strange man came into the camp waving a gun around. He asked to see me, but because he was threatening one of my people, I shot him in the back. As he lay there dying he told me he was my son.'

Penny gave a gasp, her hand over her mouth.

'Yes,' she said, her voice quavering in spite of her attempts to hold it steady. 'It was Daniel. It turned out that he had traveled back in time to speak to me.'

There was a long silence. Penny was just sitting there, her hand covering half her face. 'It was Daniel?' she half whispered.

Eloise nodded.

'I don't understand how that's possible.'

'No.' she agreed grimly, 'Nor do I. But he was there, just like Desmond is in front of us now.'

There was another long pause, then Penny's face creased in a frown. 'Why…? '

She snapped her head up. 'Why? Why did I shoot him or why was he there?'

Penny winced. 'Well, both, actually.' Penny was eyeing her with something bordering on distaste. 'You say he was looking for you. I just wondered why.'

'He wanted to change a possible future.'

'But…'

'He came back in time because he wanted to stop someone from dying. A girl he was in love with.' She watched as Penny shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

Penny swallowed hard. 'And this was, when? '

'1977.' She could see Penny was scrabbling desperately for her bearings. She had to admit, though, she was impressed. She was Charles' daughter alright. She had that steel in her.

Penny's mouth formed a small 'O'. Desmond hadn't said anything to these latest revelations, but she noticed that his eyes were brighter and he was watching her closely.

Eloise looked down at the book in front of her, for once not wanting to make eye contact. 'When Daniel… died on the Island, he had this with him.' She gently put her hand on the battered leather book. 'It documented his life – his working life anyway. When I read it, I realized that Daniel had come from the future – from 2004. And that the child I was carrying at the time was the same person.' She steeled herself as the familiar scene played out in her mind, his last words coming to her loud and clear. 'You knew, you always knew, you knew this was going to happen and you sent me here anyway.' Of course his words weren't lost on her. She understood what they meant, that somehow she had done all this before. It wasn't exactly comforting. Or maybe it was. Maybe she and Daniel were in some endless cycle, a time loop of him coming back to the Island, of her shooting him dead, of them having another chance to change it, and then another and another until she succeeded. Or perhaps that wasn't how it worked. Perhaps this was it, the last and only time. Well, she would change it. From his words, she knew he hadn't stumbled on the Island by accident –that wasn't what he had said to her. He had specifically said that she'd sent him back. She shuddered. Well, at least that was something she could avoid this time round.

The sound of a tea spoon clinking on a saucer brought her out of her thoughts. She looked up to see both sets of eyes on her. She had their full attention now and suddenly she wished she hadn't. This wasn't comfortable. She hadn't told anyone before now. Of course Charles knew, but that was different. He'd been there, on the Island, and apart from the occasional snide comment, they never really talked about it. And God knew he had enough on his conscience. But the two people sitting in front of him, staring into the fiber of her shame, this was different. She didn't like it one little bit.

She took a deep breath and sat up straighter in the chair. 'I'm not proud of what I did. Not a day goes by that I don't regret it and wish that I had... But – it was dangerous back then, and he was wild and – I had responsibilities – and…' her justifications dried in her mouth as she looked at their blank faces. The room was quiet. Neither one of her audience moved. 'I wish I'd done it differently.' She said quietly, 'and I have to live with that. But I have spent every day since then trying to make sure it doesn't happen again, making sure that it never happens in the first place.'

The silence stretched out until Penny's voice cut through the quiet. 'You want to change the past?'

'No.' she looked up to see Penny's eyes on her. 'I want to change the future. It hasn't happened yet. It's 1997 now. Daniel didn't return to the Island until 2004.'

'I'm sorry, I…'

'When you phoned Desmond at the barracks he said he had no memory of you ever phoning him there. And now he remembers. You changed his past – but of course it wasn't the past for you or for Desmond.'

Penny shook her head in confusion.

'I don't think anyone really understands it – but Daniel did something that changed Desmond's future, and I've no idea what happened to either of them.' She looked pointedly across at Desmond, still silent.

Penny's head snapped up. 'Daniel did something? Wait… what? '

She sighed. 'Daniel mentions Desmond in his earlier journal – the journal I found on him after he died.' She picked up the book and flicked through it. 'There are pages and pages where he's trying to find a way to change the future. He has a lot of theories and a lot of different ideas, but here,' she turned to the page, 'Here he talks about Desmond Hume – he must have met Desmond on the Island and-'

'Des?' Penny was looking over at Desmond.

Eloise watched as Desmond shook his head. 'I never met him before… Well. I never met him on the Island.'

Eloise sat back in her chair. Was that good or bad? She had no idea. 'Well, you haven't met him yet. Who knows?… but from what I've seen, the universe has a rather unpleasant tendency to self-correct. Just because you haven't met him on the Island yet, doesn't mean you won't.'

'I'm not going back there.' Desmond said firmly.

She gave a sharp laugh, 'My dear boy, you may not have a choice.'

'You think that because it's written in there, it's going to happen?' Penny pointed over at the battered book.

'If I believed that, I wouldn't be sitting here now. But according to Daniel's diary, it has already happened. And yes, it is also our un-chartered future. I think Daniel was right when he observed that it would take a significant event to force history out of its groove, but he obviously thought that what happened when Desmond released that EM wave was big enough to do that. At some point Daniel met Desmond and found out about the EM wave. And here,' she pointed to the page in the journal, 'he has some rough workings that show exactly how to redirect its trajectory.'

'And that would change the future?'

'He certainly thought so.'

Penny thought for a moment. 'And did he use it when he came back in 1977?'

Eloise had to admit that she was sharp. Considering the situation, her questions were incredibly perceptive. She shook her head. 'No. He didn't have the equipment. He pursued another theory instead.'

'Which was?'

'Well, that doesn't matter now. It didn't work.' She wasn't going to drag this conversation out by describing their ridiculous attempts to detonate that hydrogen bomb. 'In that time frame, he died,' she added. 'For nothing.'

'So this time round, he's trying again?' Penny's tone was questioning, almost disbelieving, but with enough sincerity to avoid being rude.

'No. I'm trying again. Daniel doesn't know.'

Penny looked even more confused.

'I never told him. He doesn't know. He doesn't know about this,' she held up the battered book, 'or what happened to him when traveled back in time. He didn't even know that time travel was possible.'

'Why didn't you tell him?'

'If you were a mother, would you want to tell your son that you'd shot him in the back, in cold blood?'

'Well,' she swallowed uncomfortably, 'when you put it like that, no, I suppose not.'

'Besides, I didn't think he needed to know. If I could change the past – the future – then it never happened. I found the reference to Desmond in his journal, and when he produced this machine that he said could pick up EM energy through the folds of space-time, I copied down the numbers and gave them to him. That was six months ago. The next day I went back and found him unconscious on the floor of his lab. And he had this with him.' She held up the sheaf of loose papers. 'When he woke up his mind had gone.'

'And this was six months ago – when Daniel… well, when he first got confused?'

'That's right.'

'And do you know what happened?'

'No. Of course it was obvious that he was conducting some sort of experiment using the numbers I'd given him, but I don't know what he did. Or what happened to him or Desmond. And until I know more, I can't help either of them. I can only assume from this,' she held up the pile of loose papers, 'that Daniel somehow ended up with Desmond somewhere.' she isolated the last page and held it up. 'He wrote this,' She read out loud, ''In a Raptor; Apollo got us out of the cells in Galactica. I was right- it is a space craft. Desmond is here and a man they call the Chief.' Then two pages of numbers.' She looked up. 'Does this make any sense to you Desmond?'

Desmond frowned, but stayed silent.

'Please.' Yes, she was begging now. 'If you know anything about what happened to Daniel, I need to know.'

Desmond's eyes were boring into her. He sat totally still, just watching her. Then he cleared his throat. 'The Raptor was a kind of jump jet,' he said uncertainly. 'Apollo was the pilot – that was his call sign, his real name was Lee - and Galactica was the ship with the prison. And I still don't believe it was a space craft.'

'And the numbers?' she asked tightly.

'Calculations. He said he was trying to figure out the coordinates to get us back.' Desmond now looked completely unhinged. But at least he was finally giving her the answers she wanted.

'Back to where?'

'To the Island.'

'Of course.' She breathed out a sigh. She recognized some of the formula from the first few pages – Daniel was clearly trying to put down everything he remembered from his journal, but the final pages, the newer calculations, she'd had no idea what they were referring to.

'And what happened to his journal? It looked exactly like this one.' She held up the battered old book with the blood stain in the corner.

Desmond shook his head. 'He was asking about a book. Apollo said there wasn't time to get it.'

Damn. That would have had the information about the experiment he would have conducted that night in Oxford.

There was silence in the room. She sat and absorbed what Desmond had just told her. Her mind was in a whirl. She had no idea what to make of it. How could she even begin to think about it? A spacecraft? She'd read that sentence over and over, and just assumed that Daniel had written it after his mind had become confused. But now, here was Desmond, from the future, talking about actually being there with Daniel. On a spaceship.

Penny was chewing on her lip. 'I don't understand.'

'No. I don't think any of us do. But it looks as if Daniel succeeded in doing something that catapulted both of them through space and time.'

There was long pause. 'So… how does he… I mean, what happens to Desmond now?'

'I don't know. But at the moment there are two of him. I suppose somehow he needs to get back to his current reality.'

Another silence. 'And how does that happen?'

'I have no idea.' She sat still for a moment. She could feel the tension building between them. She could see that neither Penny nor Desmond was happy. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. What was she feeling now, guilt? Why on earth was she feeling guilty? Desmond had screwed up his own life long before she started messing around with it, but even so, she had to admit that she had no idea what was going to happen to him, and that she was directly responsible for his predicament. She stood up quickly, the chair scraping on the wooden floor.

'I have to go.'

'What?' Penny was up on her feet. 'You can't – I mean, we need to sort this out!'

'I'm sorry. I don't know any more. Look, I need to go away and look into this further. Nothing is going to happen tonight. I'll phone in the morning. Unless there's anything more?' She looked expectantly at Desmond. He hadn't moved, but was sitting with one hand on his tea cup, the other resting idly in his lap. 'Well? Did Daniel tell you anything else?'

Desmond was staring into his tea cup, but this time she could see that he was looking inside himself. Remembering. Then he looked up slowly shook his head. 'No.' he said finally, 'Nothing.'

She saw Penny give him a sharp look, then she shook her head, sighed and rubbed her hands wearily over her eyes. 'OK. So, um, I'll go and get Daniel's things.'

She nodded. 'Goodbye Desmond.'.

He looked up, but didn't acknowledge her.

Shifty. She sniffed in disapproval as she swept out of the room.