Disclaimer: This is a little segment I like to call 'If Counterspark Owned Lost', keyword being 'if', because she obviously doesn't: If Counterspark owned Lost, Charlie would rule the island from above the highest mountain cliff, and his right-hand-man would be the polar bear, who would eventually hook up with Vincent (the polar bear was a girl) and spawn a hybrid polar bear-dog species, who would later reek havoc on the island, killing all except Charlie, Claire, and Aaron, who had learned to live in harmony with the Polar Bogs. Obviously, this is greater than anything J.J Abrams ever wrote, and he would beg me to be his replacement. (The gist of this was...I don't own Lost!)
Anyway...Thanks for the Reviews: You know you guys have got my mad love.
A/N: Why has it taken forever for me to write the sixth chapter of "The Pilgrimage"? Well, in order to adequately answer this question, I will respond with a question of my own. Why do beavers live in dams? Why does the world turn? The answer: Just 'cuz!
But seriously, I really don't know why it's taken forever, and if it's annoying you guys, I'm really sorry. It's just I've been brainstorming a lot for this story, and also school's almost out and they're giving us craploads of work so we won't leave early. How wonderfully nice of them. Anyway though, I promise that I now know where this story is headed, and believe me...it's somewhere action-packed! Not so much for this chapter...it's somewhat of a transitional piece...the calm before the storm if you will...but action-packedness is coming up soon! I'm getting ahead of myself so I'll just shut up and let you read the newest installment of "The Pilgrimage"!
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Freddy's heart throbbed crazily in his chest, primarily from fear, but also a tinge of rabid confusion. Who were these people? Why were they staring at him? And oh dear God, why did the man with the traces of gray in his five-o-clock shadow have a shotgun pointed directly against his temple?
With fumbling, clumsy lips, he strained to speak aloud, and even as he spoke the words seemed so far away...lost in a distant sea. "Who-Who are you?"
The man with the graying stubble on his angular jaw line cocked his head to the side and smiled at him- a cruel, malevolent smile that held no goodness or humor. "No, Freddy. I think the question is," he said, pushing the gun deeper into his forehead, "Who are you?" The sadistic, mad tone of his voice chilled him to the bone.
"Jack." The beautiful blonde woman with the striking light-blue eyes spoke firmly, her eyebrows furrowed in some mixture of confusion and discrepancy. Freddy thought she was really pretty...maybe even prettier than his old pal Bette. Not that he would ever tell that to Bette though, oh hell no. "Jack, I think you should calm down-"
"Calm down? You're asking me to calm down?" Jack's voice rose slightly with anger as he pushed the gun again, hard enough to leave a mark. "He's one of them, Claire! Just...look at him!"
He did indeed have a point. The very little that the select group of islanders had seen of the Others were all very similar. Dressed in rags, disheveled...filthy. And Freddy was all of those three, except that his filthiness seemed to breach some new level of it. He was caked with mud, and he stank like boar stool.
"Jack, she's not saying he's not an Other. Just...calm down." Now the bald man spoke, one hand on his hip, the other outstretched in the air towards Jack, extended with some look of warning. "He's defenseless."
Jack laughed shortly at this. "You mean he is now that he tried to shoot me!"
"Wait! I-I didn't try and shoot you!"
In unison, the three of them looked at Freddy dumbfounded.
"I...well...you startled me. I'm not a real heavy sleeper, Mr. Jack, and as soon as heard you yelling I got really scared and pulled the trigger!" His moody blue eyes floated down towards his gunshot wound, which was still trickling out blood and hurting like hell. "And look what a heap of good that did me."
A heavy blanket of silence enveloped the four of them, and it seemed like an eternity before anyone spoke again. It was the pretty blonde girl who broke the silence, and Freddy couldn't help but stare at her lips as she spoke, the words tumbling out in some weird foreign accent that he found both strange and slightly arousing. "What were you doing out here then, if you weren't intending to harm us?"
Like a bolt of lightning, Freddy was reminded of his responsibility...the oath he made to the Boss (that he, at the time, did not understand nor did he now), the promise to never betray him. He could remember Zeke warning him of an even higher boss, the Big Boss they called him. A boss he hadn't met before, who would behead him were he to tell anyone anything. And if he had anything at all on this crazy island, it was Zeke's trust. "I can't."
"You can't? Ha!" Jack was now grinding the end of the shotgun into Freddy's temple, his gritty fingertip putting pressure on the trigger. "I'm going to count to three, Freddy. And if you wanna keep up this vow of silence you've got going, I'm going to shoot you. And this time it won't be in your leg. Got that?" He paused. "One."
The pretty girl started to shout, her face slated in disbelief and alarm. "Jack- what are you doing? Listen-"
"Two." He said, eyes narrowed at Freddy, completely disregarding the woman and the bald man, who were shouting at him in unison. Freddy's eyes locked with Jack's for one brief second, and the absolute determination- the thirst for his blood- in Jack's eyes made Freddy's stomach feel empty and cold and sick.
"Jack!"
Suddenly, Freddy saw someone standing behind Jack...a man with a full gray beard, clothed in rags. He was speaking, and every word that left his lips seemed low and melodic, like some forbidden ancient tune. "Tell him, Freddy. I'll be okay. Tell him."
"Zeke-" he whispered, tears burning in his eyes and welling up in his throat. How he longed to be back with him again...the closest thing he had ever had to a father.
"OKAY!" Freddy screamed, and when he looked up once more for Zeke's figure in the dim orange glow of the sunrise, he was gone. A voice so frightened that it didn't even seem like his own escaped his lips hurriedly, shaking and dipping all over the place. "Okay, I'll tell you everything; just please, don't hurt me." When he tried to draw a breath, he was hit with a painful shudder as the tears started to stream down his filthy face. "Please."
And as he opened his mouth, everything spilled out easily and frantically, as though it had been pent up for too long and waiting to be released. He told them everything with no breaks in between. He told them about Zeke, about Charlie, about the baby (at this the pretty woman's face grew cloudy and pale, and Freddy thought she was going to puke)...he told them everything. And the one thing that kept repeating itself over and over again in his pulsing brain was the faint cry of hope that he was not doing the wrong thing.
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The march started immediately, and Charlie found the pace nearly impossible to keep up with. His boar wound was throbbing worse than ever, and every limb and ligament seemed to be screaming out at him in fury, asking him 'WHY?' over and over again in the most pleading of voices. His muscles were crying out in protest, and every time his foot fell on the springy ground, his fractured knee burned like hellfire.
But the worst thing by far about the march was the horrible gnawing feeling that he was indeed leading these people (Zeke, Bette, and a few others) to Aaron- sweet, innocent Aaron- and allowing them to do whatever they pleased with the child; to hurt him, use him for some twisted plot...maybe even kill him. He couldn't deny that he loved the boy...in fact, for a short time he had been the world to him. He had made him feel like a father. But unfortunately enough, things had recently taken a horrible, freakish turn for the worst, and now he was solely responsible for whatever was going to befall Aaron when they reached the camp, and the thought made him want to keel over and die.
"Charlie."
He groaned as he could feel her breathy whisper on his neck, pleading and seductive. "What is it, Bette?" Charlie asked, trying oh-so hard not to sound like he could've cared less. Currently, he was finding himself growing distant from her, which was almost laughable considering he had only met her hours ago. Truth was, he was too lost in his own personal hell to pay any attention to her, or her beggings for sexually-related things. In fact, she had actually tried to sleep with him last night, but Charlie found allowing her impossible. Especially since his heart had already been wrapped up in Claire, and any chance of that grasp loosening seemed distant. Not to mention he was weak as hell, and actually trying to perform a sexual act on the girl would've been both utterly sad and pathetic.
"Things are going to be okay." The easiness with which she said it made Charlie want to strangle her, not only for actually believing that things could actually be okay, but for looking at him with those mopey, faux-hopeful eyes. She had absolutely no idea, and the realization that he was all alone in his desolateness hit him like a ton of bricks. It was enough to make any man break.
He struggled to answer her, trying so hard to hold back shameful tears. "I heavily, heavily doubt that."
They marched on without a word.
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"He's not telling us something," Jack said, tightening his grip on his gun. He had sat the gun down in his lap as Freddy poured out everything he knew, but now the trepidation in his heart had once again returned, and he was reminded of the cunningness of these people. True, Freddy look very genuine. Differential diagnosis would be that the man was a tad slow...the way he spoke as well as the aloof way in which he carried himself all pointed to that.
But the Others were crafty; he knew that as well. And perhaps tricking him into thinking that Freddy (if that was his name) was harmless could potentially lead to his and the rest of the castaways downfall.
"I told you everything," Freddy said, his voice high in pitch and desperation. "Just please, let me go."
Jack felt a evil sort of laughter ripping at his insides, and nothing had ever felt as good as letting it out. Claire visibly twitched at the mad tone in Jack's voice, but at this point he no longer cared whether or not he looked like an madman. He didn't even care for his own sanity anymore; he was going to learn the secrets of Freddy, the secrets of Zeke, and the secrets of the Big Boss that Freddy spoke of whom he knew almost nothing of. Hell, he was going to learn all the secrets this godforsaken island could keep.
Reality came and pulled Jack out of his vicious train of thought and hurled him right back into the situation at hand. For a few quiet moments he couldn't really remember why he was laughing, but then it all came flooding back in a warm current of remembrance. "Do you really think I'm going to let you go?"
Freddy looked downcast at his hands angrily, bewildered by how badly they were shaking. His face went totally slack at this; his eyes dead and lifeless behind his droopy lids. The words came sputtering out again, confused. "But...that was part of the deal."
"No it wasn't," Jack said grinning. "The deal was that I wouldn't kill you."
Locke shifted beside Jack and crossed his hulking arms firmly. His stony face set once more into its usual look of deep thought. "So what are we gonna do with him now, then? He told us everything he knows."
Jack's head swiveled around quickly to look at Locke intently. "Do you believe him?"
A moment's pause. "Yes, I do."
He laughed lightly and threw his arms on his narrow waist, turning towards Claire, who at the moment look both perplexed and badly shaken. "How about you, Claire?"
She pursed her pink lips together and hesitated a moment before nodding. Jack noticed the way Freddy's eyes were drawn to her in absolute gratitude, a loopy, crooked smile drawn happily on his face. If Jack didn't watch himself, he could start falling for the boy's horseshit. Apparently Locke and Claire already had, what with his glowing aura of innocence. Claire looked down towards Freddy and smiled before addressing Jack once more. "So, if we're not letting him go, what are we going to do with him?"
"That's easy," he said, that same wicked grin ripping at the corners of his mouth. Nothing made him happier than being on the very edges of finding out the answers to this island. "He's going to take us to his Boss."
Both Claire and Locke nodded, while Freddy looked aloof to the situation. Truth told, he had no idea what to think. He just hoped Zeke wouldn't be too pissed. He hated it when he was mad at him.
"Charlie's with him, right?" Claire asked Freddy with an untamable fire of hope burning and thawing the icy blue of her eyes. She appeared to be near tears as the question released itself.
Freddy smiled. "Yep."
"Good."
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"Hey, mate. You ever heard of Driveshaft?"
Zeke looked at Charlie slowly, trying very hard not to lash out at the boy. They had been walking for hours and hours now, and recently Charlie had become not only annoying but nauseatingly persistent. Perhaps this was his idea of payback. If so, it was working. "Have I ever heard of what?"
"Driveshaft."
The lengthy way in which the word or name or whatever it was came rolling out of his lips was infuriating enough, but the way his grayish-blue eyes shot him a look of bafflement was enough to make a man explode. It was as if his eyes were saying, you've never heard of Driveshaft? Well, you bloody git! Zeke chose not to respond, and hoped for the best that it would result in Charlie shutting up.
It didn't. "You know? You all everybody! Youuu allll everybody!"
"Damnit, boy!" Charlie's piercing falsetto rang in his ears with utter dreadfulness. "What is that you're saying?" Later, he regretted asking.
"You all everybody? It's a song! By my band, Driveshaft. We were bloody brilliant, I can't believe you've never heard of us. What, you've been living under a rock for the past ten years?"
How 'bout an island for the last forty. Zeke shook his head and stared directly at the endless green ahead of him. "What is it gonna take to shut you up, boy?"
The jungle was almost silent, except for the birds, as Charlie thought deeply about the question. At length, he answered. "You got any heroine on ya?"
Zeke chuckled as he remembered watching the boy about a month and a half ago from a distance as he sat in front of a fire, trembling as the drugs left his system. And now he wanted more. "I thought you were trying to quit that shit, Charlie." In fact, he knew he was trying to quit that shit. But actually asking the questioned person seemed logical. Plus, he was halfway interested in the answer he would give him.
Charlie hesitated before answering in a much lower, sad tone. "Doesn't matter much anymore, huh?"
The pity hit Zeke harder than he could've imagined, but even as he felt the cold sympathy freezing through his veins, he fought it as hard as he could. He had to do this. Pity is deadly. Especially if the Big Boss is involved. As he thought all of this, he dug through his dirty trouser pocket and pulled out a small brown bag of heroine, retrieved from the preacher's brother's plane. "No, I suppose not," he said, tossing the bag to Charlie.
He caught it in a single swoop of the hand, firmly grasping the all-too-familiar shape of the little plastic bag. And as he dumped a small amount of the heroine into his palm, examining it under the scorching sun, he prayed silently that perhaps the upcoming fix would take his mind off of this awful happenstance-this terrible fluke. And it did...for a little while at least. But even as his brain found itself clouded in the high, he knew somewhere in the dreadful conscious of his mind that no amount of heroine would make anything better. No amount of heroine could save a child's life.
Silently, he cried, head drooped in shame.
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Next time: Just exactly where will Freddy decide to lead Jack, Claire, and Locke? How soon will the band of Others be reaching the island, and ultimately, Aaron? Will Charlie go through with this? Find out on the next installment of "The Pilgrimage"!
A/N: Have I successfully made my comeback from the month-long hiatus? I'll never know if you don't tell me (reviews, please please please)! And also, if you want to talk about Lost in general (you won't spoil me, I'm fully knowledged), tell me what you thought about that latest episode, with Ana and all. I was wigging out!
-Counter Spark