"I want to talk."
"I gathered that," says the voice on the other end of the line. "And I take it that meeting face-to-face is out of the question."
"That's right," Daniel replies. He picks at a patch of rust on the railing of the boat. "I wanna make a new deal with Widmore."
"I'm not sure how he'll feel about that, considering that you've gone back on your last deal."
"Well, the last deal was garbage," he says bluntly. "And I haven't gone back on it, I'm just...altering the terms, a bit."
"Are you?" Abaddon sounds amused.
Dan grips the cell phone tighter. "If he wants his daughter to be safe, this is the way it has to be."
A pause. "Is that a threat, Mr. Faraday?"
"No, no, it's..." He shakes his head and gestures into the empty air. "Listen, he's worried about her because there's someone after him, isn't there? Someone watching his every move. That's why I'm here and he's not. Right?" He's met with silent confirmation. "So, how would it make any sense for me to report back to him? If he doesn't want anyone else to find out where his daughter is, then any record of her location is an unnecessary risk."
"What is it that you're proposing, then?"
He takes a deep breath. "Let me disappear. I'll stay with Penny to make sure she isn't in any danger, and in return, Widmore leaves me alone."
"And what makes you think he'll trust you to do so?"
"He trusted me enough to make me do all this in the first place," he says with a shrug. "And it doesn't matter, anyway, because it's not his decision. It's not my decision, either." He pauses to glance over his shoulder at Penny, who gives an encouraging nod. "It, uh. It wasn't my idea," he adds quietly.
There's a long silence that Dan forces himself not to break. "Fair enough," Abaddon says finally. "But, I imagine that Mr. Widmore would prefer to hear all of this from you, directly."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that he would." Daniel coughs once to clear his throat. "Anything else?"
"I suppose there isn't." That cryptic amusement is back in Abaddon's voice. "Good luck, Mr. Faraday."
With that, the line goes dead, and Daniel pulls the cell phone away from his ear to stare at it.
Too easy. It's far too easy. Two months of Abaddon breathing down his neck, and now he's free? Just like that? It doesn't make any sense.
He swallows against the lump in his throat. Maybe this is what Widmore wanted from him all along, and he isn't free at all.
He snaps the phone closed, tosses it into the ocean, and watches it sink out of sight.
"Some ground rules," Desmond begins sternly, like he's standing at the front of a lecture hall rather than the cramped interior of Our Mutual Friend.
"Wouldn't those be sea rules, then?" Penny deadpans from the kitchen, and Dan coughs once to cover his laugh.
Desmond shoots her a look, but amusement dances in his eyes. "Pen, this is serious."
She shoots him an overly serious look right back. "Of course," and she returns the floor to him with a grandiose wave of one hand. "Please, carry on."
He crosses his arms and returns his attention to Daniel, who sits up a bit straighter in his seat. "One, you pull your own bloody weight. If there's work to be done, you do it, same as we do. Two, you stay away from Charlie."
Penny rolls her eyes. "Des, really?"
Desmond doesn't look at her. "Nothing personal, brother, but I don't know you well enough to trust you, and what I do know doesn't make me want to." He shakes his head. "You're not exactly a shining beacon of responsibility."
The slight edge in his voice makes Daniel wince, but there's no denying that he's right.
"Third," Desmond continues, "And this is the most important of all–"
"Good that you've saved it for last, then," Penny interjects without looking up.
This time, the grave expression on Desmond's face doesn't change. "All that business you were doin' before this, trying to find a way back to the island?" He shakes his head again. "You don't do that, here. I know you mean well, but that place has taken too much from me already. I won't have my family getting mixed up in whatever nonsense is goin' on with that place, so as long as you're with us, neither will you."
Dan's throat feels thick, but he nods. Nothing's forever, after all; this is only temporary, and he'll be free to continue his work once he's on his own again.
"And don't plan on stayin' long, brother," Desmond adds, as if reading his mind. "I don't wanna be stuck with you for more than a couple'a months, yeah?"
He nods again. "Understood."
"What in God's name is that smell?"
Dan jerks awake at the sudden shout, nearly tumbling right off the seat. He catches himself and looks up to see a tired-looking Desmond standing at the top of the stairs. With a yawn, he sits up and gestures toward the stern, where Penny is crouched over the disposable barbecue she's set up on the deck. "Sausage."
"That is the smell of summertime," corrects Penny above the sound of the waves.
Desmond wrinkles his nose as he walks over to join her. "Summer seems like it might be a bit overcooked, don't you think?"
She shakes her head and waves the tongs at him with a grin. "It's a tradition. We're celebrating the first day of the season."
"Ah," Desmond says with a grin of his own. "A tradition that goes back how far, exactly?"
"Quiet, you." She gives him a playful shove. "'07's the year for starting new things," and she turns to call out to Daniel, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes in the cockpit, "Isn't that right, Dan?"
He shrugs in response. "It is the year of the pig."
"Does it even count as summertime when we're right at the equator?" Desmond asks, to another shove from Penny.
"Well then, you're more than welcome to go downstairs and have cold beans for your sad winter solstice breakfast, but the rest of us will be up here enjoying a nice sausage with the sunshine," she says brightly.
Desmond laughs. "Set one aside for me. I'll be festive once I've had a chance to wake up." He climbs back into the cockpit and pauses at the top of the stairway to address Dan. "While we're on the subject, aren't you supposed to be keeping an eye on Charlie?"
"I am." He motions toward the seat beside him, where Charlie is sleeping soundly in his little life vest, with Dan's own vest tucked neatly beneath his head as a pillow. "We're spending quality time together."
"Quality naptime. Of course." Desmond chuckles, then holds up a finger. "Oh, by the way, I think I found somethin' of yours, tidying up the bookshelf last night." He disappears below deck and returns a few seconds later. "Here."
"Oh." Daniel blinks and takes the object in question from Desmond with an awkward nod. "Thanks."
Desmond heads below deck for good this time, and Dan slowly runs his fingers across the cover of his journal. He never realized that it was missing at all; he'd assumed it was still buried in his pack somewhere, all along. How long has it been since he's even seen the damn thing?
He opens it to a random page, and an odd sense of nostalgia washes over him at all the scribbled figures and half-completed equations and scraps of information tucked between the yellowed pages. It's a flipbook of quantum mechanics and barely-coherent thoughts, all in his own scratchy handwriting and all from a lifetime ago.
It's as he's closing the journal, ready to take it back to his cabin and tuck it away somewhere safe to be forgotten again, that something strange catches his eye; he stops and opens it up again, to a page that he's sure he's never seen before. The smooth handwriting isn't his own, but it is familiar, in a way that he has trouble placing until he starts reading the actual words.
It's a letter. It's addressed to him.
And it's from Charlotte.
"Daniel?"
He snaps out of his trance. Penny is beside him, suddenly, holding the tongs in one hand. "...What?"
She frowns. "Didn't you hear me? I've been calling your name for a full bloody minute."
"Oh." He shakes his head. "No, sorry, I..."
"Daniel," Penny repeats, placing a concerned hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright?"
"I..." He makes a sound like a laugh. "I...don't know, I, um..."
He stares down at the journal in his lap, and the words all blur together.
"I think…" and he thinks for a long, long moment. "I think I have to go back."