Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. Thanks for letting me borrow. I live for comments.
Charlie's talking about his songs again.
"I'm going to call track nine 'Turnip-Head' after the little guy."
"That's sweet, Charlie." The words feel empty. Luckily, I'm sitting with my back to him, feeding said turnip-head so he can't see my expression. Charlie woke up this morning with this idea that the raft is going to work and we're all going to be famous-- especially his band-- and the whole thing leaves me with this empty pit in my stomach.
"Claire, we'd have such a good time in California. Have you ever been to the San Diego zoo?"
"Charlie, I've never been out of Australia before." He knows this already. He's already asked me if I've ever been to EuroDisney, Wicksteed or a Six Flags, whatever that is. He's making plans. I know Charlie well enough to know he's locking all this information in his head, mapping out our brilliant comeback and imagining myself and the baby at his side. He's wracking his brain of every family-activity he's ever done or heard of and picturing us in souvenir tee shirts taking pictures in one of those little photo booths.
"Well, Turnip-Head has to see the San Diego zoo," he proclaims.
"Don't you think we'd all have had enough of wild animals?"
"Well that's what I mean, he'll see wild animals as modern man was meant to see them: at the zoo. It'll give him perspective on things."
Tears are starting to form and I blink them away angrily. I don't want to burst his dream-bubble. I see the picture he's talking about inside and it seems so plausible to me. I'd like to start thinking about things like, 'when' we get off the island. But the side of me that had idealistic hopes and dreams took a major hit when Thomas left me alone and pregnant, another hit when that psychic put me on a plane he knew would crash and a third when we didn't get rescued in time for me to have the baby in a hospital with doctors and nurses and people who knew things about having babies. This is life, Claire: it's practical.
He's still going on. "You can come on tour with me! It'll be great, Claire, we'll go all over America and Europe-"
I can't stand it anymore. "Charlie, we're not going on tour with you."
"Look, I know the usual touring lifestyle isn't really a family situation, but Liam has a daughter--"
"Charlie, we're not going. We're not going to LA, either." Turnip-Head is drifting off to sleep, and I button my shirt back up.
"Oh," he says softly. "Why not?"
I turn to look at him, and he is completely deflated, sitting on the ground, guitar tossed aside. "Because we're not getting off this island, Charlie. For god sake-- look around you! It's been over a month. OVER a MONTH! And no one has come. No boats have come by, no planes, no helicopters. We're not leaving here. None of us. Not ever."
"You can't give up hope, Claire," he says, reaching a hand out towards me. "The raft is going to work--"
My blood begins to boil. "Oh yes, the raft is going to work. Maybe. For the four people who are going on it. And then, maybe, if those four people can get rescued-- oh, and let us not forget-- if the two who can actually speak English and are maybe old enough to give good directions get rescued-- then, maybe they'll be able to fly all around the ocean looking for this little dot of an island, and find us."
"Once they know we're out here and alive, they'll have to search for us," he exclaims. "That's the problem, love, they think we're all dead now-- that the plane is lost at sea-- they're not even looking for us in the right area." He kneels in the sand in front of me and puts his hands on my shoulders. "Once they know where to look, they'll find us. You and the baby can come live with me in Los Angeles-"
I pull away. "Goddamnit, Charlie, I'm trying to be logical, here, practical. Come live with you in Los Angeles? And what happens when you run out of theme parks to take us to? What happens then, Charlie? What happens when the baby won't stop crying and Sawyer isn't around to read him a bedtime story? What happens when you're a famous rock star touring with your band and Claire and the baby start to become another burden on your shoulders? Even if I did get rescued, we wouldn't be coming with you." I'm angry now. So very fucking angry at him. How dare he paint this wonderful picture of a life after rescue-- of a rescue!-- when there's no chance?
"Claire, I'll take care of you and the baby. I don't . . ." he pauses for a long moment. "I don't have to go back and be a rock star. I can— I can get a normal job, a regular job, if that's what you want."
I roll my eyes. "This is a silly conversation. We're not leaving the island, Charlie. There's not a sodding chance in hell of us ever getting out of here, don't you realize that?"
"Claire-" he starts.
"Enough, Charlie. Enough. This is real, don't you understand that? You act like this is some kind of grand holiday. What a great novel idea this all is. You can hang out on the beach, write songs about your daring adventures and play Uncle every once in a while to a baby—"
"I don't want to be his sodding uncle, Claire," he starts back, and I bite my lip, surprised by the viciousness of his words. I realize for the first time that I've never really seen Charlie angry. Even when he killed Ethan he wasn't angry. Just determined. I don't know how to handle him when he's angry. Thomas's anger was easy. He'd blow up and storm out and be back a few hours later with a few drinks in him and a cheery look on his face and all was forgotten. But there's no pub on this island Charlie can go off to. And he's moving towards me, his face going ruddy and his eyes alight.
"You ought to take a look in a fucking mirror," he says, his voice dangerously low. "You're the one who's pretending like we're not stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere. Like this is still the world you knew before and you're surrounded by the people you knew before, and that tomorrow and the next day and the next are going to be exactly like they were before." He's nearly nose to nose with me and my mouth is dry because his energy is palpable and hot and part of me thinks he's going to hit me, baby in my arms or not and I'm frightened.
"Let me ask you, are you still planning to give the baby away?" he says, his eyes cold, his breath bathing my face.
"No," I choke out. "Never."
"Then the world has changed, Claire. You have changed. Do you really think you're the only one?"
He pulls away from me and stalks off in the sand and I'm about to sigh in relief when he turns back to me, his eyes just as piercing from six feet off as they were from six inches. "Forever means the same thing in Los Angeles as it means on a deserted island."
He turns and leaves me breathless on the sand.
The baby is happily asleep in the carrier Sun put together for me, a backpack lined with towels with tiny holes cut for his arms and legs. He rests easy against my chest as I walk along the edge of where the ocean meets the sand. Charlie has spent most of his time at his shelter, just a few yards from mine, strumming on his guitar.
He's not very far off and it made me uncomfortable, so I packed up Turnip-Head and off we went. It seemed like a great plan four hours ago, but the sun is beginning to set and I'm hungry for some of the fish I can smell roasting by the beach fires that have sprung up. The baby will no doubt be up soon, too, wanting food.
My mind has been replaying what Charlie said over and over again. Have I been living in the past? If so, I wasn't the only one. Charlie had all these grand ideas of a glorious comeback, but even when Driveshaft had been big, they hadn't been that big. Hadn't been. There I go again. It is so hard to think in the present tense. All I know of the future comes from my experiences of the past. What else are we to base our actions, our feelings on?
Thomas is never coming back to me. I have known this for months, but I think it's the first time that I've gotten the thought without a twinge of self-pity, regret or doubt. Thomas is not a part of my life anymore. He is an afterthought, a footnote. I gently tease little Turnip-Head's foot. I've got to stop calling him that. He'll grow up with a complex. Grow up. What complex? He'll never see a turnip, never know it's an insult. He'll probably never go to school even. Never learn to read, to write, never fall in love. Tears prick at the corners of my eyes. How can I raise a child to such a desolate future? This isn't life here. This is survival. This is running from unseen monsters and eating boar and fish and sleeping in a wooden cradle. Nothing is important here.
Looking at my baby, I can only feel despair. There's nothing for him. Nothing for any of us, but more wretched survival. I sob, rubbing his tiny arms, and then someone is rubbing mine.
I turn and Charlie is behind me, his hands running up and down my arms. "Shh, love, don't cry." His words just make me cry harder and he puts an arm around my shoulders. "Come on, now, you'll wake the little one," he says, gently. All hints of anger are gone, and in his eyes I can only see tenderness and concern.
"It just all seems so useless, Charlie," I choke. "He's never going to go to school." I'm just bawling now, and Charlie eases me a few feet up from the water, and sits me on the ground. He pulls hair from my face and takes Turnip-Head from the pack, gently cradling him in his arms. He puts an arm around me and holds me while I cry, making soothing noises, though for my benefit or the baby's, I don't know.
He speaks when I quiet down a little, my energy spent. "I'm sorry I was cross with you this afternoon," he ventures. "I push too hard, I know I do, and I know you're not ready for all that yet." I don't know what to say to that. "But you can't go on like this, love. You've got a baby to raise, and you can't teach him about life when you're not living it."
"What kind of life is this?" I ask him honestly. "Sitting, waiting for a rescue that's probably not coming, running from monsters and scrounging for food?"
"Who says we're waiting for a rescue?"
"You said-"
"Hoping, love, not waiting."
"What's the difference?"
"Let me paint you a picture," he says. "Turnip-Head is going to start sleeping through the night soon. He won't wake you up every four or five or six hours asking for a feeding or a burping or a cleanup. He's going to crawl and walk, and run, and play Backgammon with Locke, and have Jack teach him to swim. We can teach him to read and to write and to draw his name in the sand and how to build a shelter and how to play a guitar and he'll grow up and fall in love with Shannon and Sayid's daughter-to-be or Jack and Kate's daughter-to-be or Sun and Hurley's, or whomever and have children of his own and they'll do the very same things." He looks into my eyes. "It doesn't matter if it's here or in Los Angeles or Sydney or London, or wherever, Claire. He'll live. Things will go on. Don't you want to be part of that? Don't you want to hope and not wait?"
The baby starts to fuss in Charlie's arms and I reach out for him. Charlie passes him off to me. I gently place my finger in the baby's mouth and feel him immediately start sucking. He's hungry. I unbutton my blouse and feel Charlie get up to leave. I reach out and place a hand on his forearm. "Don't go, Charlie." I smile sheepishly. "They're just breasts, after all."
The baby begins to suckle at last and I adjust him so he has better access. Charlie sits beside me, his hand rubbing my back. "Claire, I love you," he says softly. "And I love your baby. I love him . . . like a father." His voice nearly cracks on the last word. "And if I love you both here on this island, where there's nowhere to go, nowhere to run away to, I'm faced with the fact that I love you both, and I'll love you both forever. That doesn't scare me. You don't scare me. I just wish that I didn't scare you into running away."
A memory comes up just then, flaring hot and white in my mind, and I see Charlie sitting next to me, smiling. "People don't seem to look me in the eye around here. I think I scare them." "You don't scare me."
I blink and the Charlie beside me has eyes brimming with tears. "That's what I really wanted to tell you this afternoon," he said softly. "I just . . . didn't know how to say it."
And I don't know what to say back to him. I want to tell him that no one loves anyone forever, I want to admonish him and tell him that he's naïve to think that love works that way, I want to tell him that he's wrong. But there's an honesty in his eyes that stuns me to silence and there's a look in his face that tells me he'll never love another this way.
"Charlie, you don't scare me," I say finally. "I just . . . I don't have that certainty that you do. I don't know if I can ever have that again."
His eyes sink, and I can feel his disappointment. He expects more. He wants more. He wants me to open up and tell him that I love him too, in that beautiful, unconditional way he loves me. He wants me to give myself to him wholly and completely and place my trust in him, and every time I think it's safe, I can only see Thomas running away when he sees me hanging curtains. "I understand," he says at length. I know that he doesn't. He feels that there's something wrong with him.
"Charlie, it doesn't mean I don't want to try," I say cautiously. "It doesn't mean that I don't love you back." My hand finds his and squeezes it tightly. "I need your faith."
"I need you," he says hoarsely. "I need you both."
"You have us now, Charlie. You have us now."
He holds us tightly, as the sun slips beneath the horizon and night dawns, rushing us forward into the future.
FIN