Mercy for Pawns (fanon fic 4/5)
Summary: Boone and Charlie struggle to deal with the new souls entering the afterworld on the day of the massacre at Locke's camp. When Alex Rousseau arrives there is little they can do to console her. This is my fourth fic for the fanon as canon challenge and it is inspired by the story Dead but also Here by
janie_tangerine.
Characters: Boone/Charlie, Alex, Libby, Karl and Danielle.
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Death, dark themes and traumatic events.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost.
Author's Note: I've had this fic in my head for almost a month now. It has taken me a long while to write it down mostly because I felt so appalled by the way Alex was killed and how Charlie's sacrifice has been rendered worthless. Ghost!Boone has brought a peace to this fic which would have otherwise been a furious rant. In the end this was very cathatic. Thank you to Janie for making me see the potiential in Boone's character and for all your wonderful fics! Also pacey, I will be writing the Charlie/Penny portal fic soon!
Fanon: Dead but also Here by janie_tangerine
Quote: They aren’t alive, but they have a body. Whether it’s their own or whether it isn’t, they don’t know, but fact is, they do have it. They can touch each other and their skin feels exactly as it felt before; they have a beating heart but their blood doesn’t flow and their wounds last barely for seconds. Their nails don’t grow but Shannon’s skin tans and their hair grows if they cut it. No one tries to find some reason for this. It’s not like they care.
Mercy for Pawns
Boone had known it was coming. He couldn’t say he felt it in his bones, for being dead he no longer had bones or feeling, but in this form of his ever living consciousness he had sensed it. Ever since Charlie had arrived here Boone had been waiting for it. Charlie’s death had been like the leak in the dam, the teardrop from heaven, the beginning of the end. Now it was the time of the flood…
The newly dead came stumbling in from the tide, breaking like waves on the shore, twisting in dazed circles on the sand. They appeared in droves of two or three at a time. Doctor Arzt was trying gather them together like wayward children on a school outing. Libby was speaking softly to the French woman and the boy who had been the first to arrive this morning. Neither of them had registered their own deaths yet. They were more concerned for the one they had left behind. All the victims were clutching parts of their bodies; their chests, their stomachs, sometimes their heads. Those wounds hadn’t followed them into this world, but the memory of their indiscriminate killings still lingered…and pained them.
This was why Boone didn’t believe in guns.
Charlie was standing by his side, his face pinched and his eyes wide as saucers. Boone knew what he was thinking. He too had noticed that these people were all members of Locke’s camp. He knew that Charlie was now waiting with dread anticipation to see if Claire or Hurley or God forbid the baby appeared next on the beach.
To doom one human life it is to doom us all, Boone reflected sombrely. He had once scrawled this message in chalk on the pavement at an Amnesty rally that he had attended in his teenage years. At the time it may have only been the sentimental daubing of a young peacenik, but the words still rung true for him. They had come into his mind the day that Charlie had lost his long battle with fate and they echoed through his being again now...
…now as he looked to the far end of the beach and saw the girl.
Amidst the chaos nobody had noticed their latest arrival. Boone had been expecting her. He had known her chances of her survival were slim, but his heart still sank when she appeared in the sand. She was lying facedown, trembling all over, her shoulders heaving and her face hidden behind a curtain of walnut hair. With a shaky hand she brushed the dark tangles from her eyes. Boone could see that she was very young, little more than a child. Many of those who had come to this beach in the last few months had been young. Boone had been young himself when death had taken him. But he didn’t feel young any more. Age was a concept that had drifted beyond his understanding the longer he remained dead but here.
Boone touched Charlie’s arm, nudging him out of his trance and inclining his head towards the girl in the sand. Charlie’s face crumpled with dismay once more. Likely he was wondering why his brave sacrifice had not achieved salvation for these people as destiny had promised. Fate had skipped on their bargain. Now those people who Charlie had given his life for were tumbling into the afterworld like pawns being swept off a chessboard. Yeah, they were all pawns here, though Boone couldn’t imagine that any of them wished to hear it. Not Charlie and certainly not that poor girl who lay trembling in the sand. Boone couldn’t deny it, but he would have comforted them by saying that when this cruel game was over they would be purer and freer in their souls than the ruthless players who had sacrificed them.
Boone and Charlie began moving down the beach, but before either of them could reach the girl, they were overtaken by Karl.
“Alex! Alex!” he called, his voice giddy and frantic. “Alex, you’re here!”
Karl skidded to his knees in front of her. With two grappling hands he took her by the shoulders, trying to raise her up from the sand. Alex looked into his animated face and let out a scream, shaking off his grasp and scrambling away from him. The last time Alex had seen her boyfriend he had been shot through the chest. She had seen his eyes rolling back in his skull and the blood trickling from his lips. She hadn’t thought she would ever see him again. Not in such a place as this.
“Give her some space,” Boone advised, pulling Karl away from her. “She’s scared and shaken up naturally. She’ll be okay though, man. We’re all here for her…”
Boone smiled reassuringly at the boy. His clumsy eagerness reminded him very much of himself when he was younger and alive. Karl nodded weakly in consent.
“One of us needs to talk to her, Boone…”
He turned to see Libby approaching and Danielle leaning against her arm. The French woman was almost buckling at this sight of Alex which must surely have wounded her more deeply than the bullet that had killed her. Her face was a mask of agony and despair.
“My daughter…” she choked out, taking a step forwards.
“No…please Rousseau…” said Boone, laying a tentative hand on her arm. “You’re not the right person to handle this.”
“She…she’s my daughter,” Danielle repeated, brokenly.
“Please listen to him,” Libby said in soothing tones. “Boone has been here longer than any of us. He knows what’s best.”
Boone felt strengthened by Libby’s words. They treated him like a leader here. On the island Boone had often tried to take the initiative. He had tried to save lives. He had tried to establish a sense of democracy. But for all his trying the island had chosen him as its first sacrifice. He supposed with its appetite for wars, purges and slaughter the island had little use for a pacifist liberal. No, the island didn’t need a humanitarian. But God they needed one here.
“I think Charlie should be the one to talk to her…” Boone said considerately.
Boone sensed that this was right based on the fate that Alex had suffered. There were different ways of experiencing death. For Danielle and Karl it had come so suddenly they barely had time to notice. It had been a quick bound between worlds; a death that's relatively painless and free of trauma. That's very different from being made to wait for death. They didn’t know how it felt to have death's shadow creeping over them with slow excruciating inevitability. Boone had spent a long day and an even longer night waiting for death to close its fist on him. Libby had suffered through a similar ordeal. But neither of them could claim to know more about waiting and preparing for death than Charlie did.
"Oh, cheers Boone, thanks a lot..." Charlie muttered under his breath.
Boone smiled grimly. He had an instinctive faith in Charlie. They hadn’t been close on the island, but he remembered that Charlie had been there the night he had died. In those brief moments when he had been slipping between states of shock and muddied-consciousness he could recall hearing Charlie’s panicked voice bouncing off the cave walls as he asked everyone he could corner for their blood type. He had stayed at his bedside until Jin had arrived and told them that Claire was having her baby. Charlie had left then and Boone didn’t blame him. He knew now there was more to fear for those being birthed into the world than those passing away from it.
Charlie was still looking at Boone uncertainly, wondering why he had been chosen to speak with the girl. He was a novice when it came to dealing newcomers, but Boone knew he needed to get through this. It would help Charlie to come to terms with his death too. This was a barrier they all had to cross. Dutifully Charlie crouched in the sand before Alex. She was sitting there like a bird that had been knocked from the sky and was now lying wounded in a heap of its own feathers. The girl sniffed, narrowing her eyes on him.
“I…I remember you…” Alex stammered.
“You do?” Charlie frowned. “How do you know me?”
“You were the one they hung from the tree,” she told him, bluntly. “You were the one who was with Claire the day we took her to the Staff.”
“Ah, I see,” said Charlie, shifting uncomfortably. “You were with the group that took us then? I don’t, erm...I don't exactly remember that day too well myself.”
Boone remembered that day. He remembered he had been so desperate to make a worthy contribution to the camp. He knew that people thought he was a joke; him and his sister. He hadn’t joined the hunting trips or the fishing because he hadn't liked the thought of killing an animal. He had failed to save Joanna and had suffered the indignity of being rescued himself by Jack. He had tried to recover Shannon’s asthma medicine only to be beaten to a bloody pulp by Sawyer. So when Boone had heard about the man called Ethan Rom who wasn’t on the plane and who had seemingly kidnapped Charlie and Claire, he had quickly and assertively volunteered to be one of the rescue party.
Boone winced remorsefully as he remembered how the two trails had divided in the jungle. Often he wished that he hadn’t chosen to follow Locke. If he had only gone with Jack and Kate then he could have been there when they had saved Charlie. He could have helped and contributed the way he wanted to. Instead he had taken the path with Locke, who was probably more interested in meeting the island’s inhabitants than rescuing the captives. That was the day they had found the hatch door and Boone had been drawn into his conspiracy with the old hunter; a secret pact which had ended with Locke choosing to sacrifice him at the island's demanding.
Boone didn't care about the island. He never had. Saving innocent lives, that was something that he cared about. Ever since he was a kid he had felt troubled when watching news reports about hostages who were taken in the Middle East and other war-torn areas of the world. Harmless civilians, who were imprisoned, tortured or sometimes executed for things they had nothing to do with. After seeing too many news reports of this kind, Boone had started with his marches, his petitions, his letters to the government and his plans to join the Peace Corps. There was something deep inside him that couldn’t stomach the idea of innocents being killed in somebody else’s feud. It was the reason he had wanted to help Charlie and Claire that day. It was the reason his soul burned for Alex now.
“I remember…” Alex said to Charlie after a pause, retreating into these ugly memories because maybe they were preferable to considering her present situation. “I remember you were kneeling on the ground. You were crying into your blindfold. And when Ethan said we were going to have to kill you…you wet your pants…”
Charlie swallowed. "Err...yeah...that sounds about right."
Alex cringed, her eyes misting over. Her hands reached down to her own crotch, feeling for the wetness there too. She looked so ashamed. Boone wanted to tell her it was okay. Most of them had lost control of their bodies when the end had come. He could still remember his degradation as he lay helpless on the airline cushions, sweating and trembling, his body jerking out of control, screams tearing from his mouth and blood gurgling up from his throat. He too remembered the squirmy wetness between his legs that had made him feel vulnerable as an infant again. They had all been through it. It was nothing to be ashamed of. Your body can’t be brave when it knows it is shutting down. You can only find courage in your soul.
Alex’s hands reached for her head now. She sat rocking and cradling her skull as if she could still feel the gunshot ringing in her ears and her hair growing sticky with blood. Charlie clasped hold of her shoulder.
“You’re not wet and you’re not bleeding…” he assured her in desperate ragged words. “I know it was horrible, but…it’s over now, Alex. It’s done with.”
“I…I’m sorry…” she stuttered to Charlie.
“Hey...you’ve no reason to apologise to me, love.”
Alex shook her head. “I heard my dad say it,” she explained. “I heard him when he told Mikhail to kill you. He told him to kill Bonnie and Greta too. They were on our side. He always said we weren't killers…but I heard him give the order.”
Charlie stroked her shoulder. There was no judgement in his face.
"Forget it..." he said. "Forget him..."
“I never told anyone,” Alex continued regardless. “Locke and Sawyer, they were mad and they…they wanted to kill him. I knew if I told anyone my dad had ordered Mikhail to kill you it would have just made them madder. And I didn’t want him killed. I know that he isn’t a good man. I know he’s killed a lot of people, though he lies about it. I really hated him sometimes, but…but he….he was the only father that I…”
Alex screwed her face up, pinching her eyes closed.
“He…he didn’t save me,” she said quietly. “He wouldn’t come out. He said I was just a pawn. He said I meant nothing to him.” Her voice grew strangled and hoarse. “My daddy said I meant nothing...”
Charlie took her by the shoulders then, looking her in the eyes with sternness, but also a fierce compassion. Boone had often seen Charlie look at Claire this way. He hoped that Charlie could make Alex feel secure again.
“Listen to me, Alex. Come on!” said Charlie, snapping her into focus. “That man was not your father. And you are ten times the person that he is. Ben took you away from your real family. But they’re here for you now. They care about you, Alex. They’re just waiting to show you how much they care.”
Alex blinked, raising her head to look into the yearning eyes of Danielle and Karl who were being gently restrained by Libby. She rose slowly to her feet and made her way towards them. She was wobbly and unbalanced like a newborn fowl learning to walk. That's what a bullet to the head will do for you. Boone caught her by the arm as she stumbled, almost falling. He looked the girl in the face. She really was beautiful. No, more than beautiful; she was radiant. Boone wondered if Alex had been this beautiful when she was alive. Perhaps not. He remembered seeing a difference in Charlie when he had arrived on this beach. He was like an ugly ducking transformed into a swan. In life the body doesn’t always reflect the person it holds inside, but here…here people looked the way they are. And Alex looked beautiful.
Boone gave her courteous nod that was almost a small bow. He wanted Alex to know that she was respected here; she was valued. Boone wouldn’t allow anyone in this world to make Alex think that she was worth nothing. He watched the girl as she crossed the sand towards her mother and boyfriend in whose awaiting arms Alex found the thing she had recently been pleading for and had not received. Mercy.
“Alexandra…” he heard Danielle whispering into her hair.
Boone looked away, turning his attention back to Charlie. His friend's eyes were shining with something like tears, but there were no tears in this world either. Charlie was still thinking like a living person. Boone would have to shake him out of that habit. But for now he simply wrapped an arm around Charlie’s shoulders and led him to the tree where his guitar lay in the shade. Then Charlie sat strumming while Boone meditated, trying to find a sense of peace for both of them.
I know how feel, man, Boone whispered to Charlie in a telepathy that drifted over his music. I know because when I was clinging to that radio and the floor of that plane was shaking beneath me, I thought I could be the hero too. Sure, I knew the plane might fall and I could end up hurt or dead, but if it had gotten everyone rescued, that’s something I was prepared to die for. I know you were trying to do the same thing. I know you feel used by that stinking island and your sacrifice has been ripped off. But you've got to let it go, man. You need to realise that the real game isn’t even about who wins or who stays on the board the longest. We may not have changed the state of play the way we wanted to, but we still changed ourselves into the people we always hoped we could be. That’s what matters, man...
Charlie stopped his playing for a moment. He kept his eyes settled on the rippling ocean, but at the same time he stretched out a hand, which Boone quickly clasped in his own.
I know, Charlie replied. I just...I wish it was enough...
The End
janie_tangerine.
Characters: Boone/Charlie, Alex, Libby, Karl and Danielle.
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Death, dark themes and traumatic events.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost.
Author's Note: I've had this fic in my head for almost a month now. It has taken me a long while to write it down mostly because I felt so appalled by the way Alex was killed and how Charlie's sacrifice has been rendered worthless. Ghost!Boone has brought a peace to this fic which would have otherwise been a furious rant. In the end this was very cathatic. Thank you to Janie for making me see the potiential in Boone's character and for all your wonderful fics! Also pacey, I will be writing the Charlie/Penny portal fic soon!
Fanon: Dead but also Here by janie_tangerine
Quote: They aren’t alive, but they have a body. Whether it’s their own or whether it isn’t, they don’t know, but fact is, they do have it. They can touch each other and their skin feels exactly as it felt before; they have a beating heart but their blood doesn’t flow and their wounds last barely for seconds. Their nails don’t grow but Shannon’s skin tans and their hair grows if they cut it. No one tries to find some reason for this. It’s not like they care.
Mercy for Pawns
Boone had known it was coming. He couldn’t say he felt it in his bones, for being dead he no longer had bones or feeling, but in this form of his ever living consciousness he had sensed it. Ever since Charlie had arrived here Boone had been waiting for it. Charlie’s death had been like the leak in the dam, the teardrop from heaven, the beginning of the end. Now it was the time of the flood…
The newly dead came stumbling in from the tide, breaking like waves on the shore, twisting in dazed circles on the sand. They appeared in droves of two or three at a time. Doctor Arzt was trying gather them together like wayward children on a school outing. Libby was speaking softly to the French woman and the boy who had been the first to arrive this morning. Neither of them had registered their own deaths yet. They were more concerned for the one they had left behind. All the victims were clutching parts of their bodies; their chests, their stomachs, sometimes their heads. Those wounds hadn’t followed them into this world, but the memory of their indiscriminate killings still lingered…and pained them.
This was why Boone didn’t believe in guns.
Charlie was standing by his side, his face pinched and his eyes wide as saucers. Boone knew what he was thinking. He too had noticed that these people were all members of Locke’s camp. He knew that Charlie was now waiting with dread anticipation to see if Claire or Hurley or God forbid the baby appeared next on the beach.
To doom one human life it is to doom us all, Boone reflected sombrely. He had once scrawled this message in chalk on the pavement at an Amnesty rally that he had attended in his teenage years. At the time it may have only been the sentimental daubing of a young peacenik, but the words still rung true for him. They had come into his mind the day that Charlie had lost his long battle with fate and they echoed through his being again now...
…now as he looked to the far end of the beach and saw the girl.
Amidst the chaos nobody had noticed their latest arrival. Boone had been expecting her. He had known her chances of her survival were slim, but his heart still sank when she appeared in the sand. She was lying facedown, trembling all over, her shoulders heaving and her face hidden behind a curtain of walnut hair. With a shaky hand she brushed the dark tangles from her eyes. Boone could see that she was very young, little more than a child. Many of those who had come to this beach in the last few months had been young. Boone had been young himself when death had taken him. But he didn’t feel young any more. Age was a concept that had drifted beyond his understanding the longer he remained dead but here.
Boone touched Charlie’s arm, nudging him out of his trance and inclining his head towards the girl in the sand. Charlie’s face crumpled with dismay once more. Likely he was wondering why his brave sacrifice had not achieved salvation for these people as destiny had promised. Fate had skipped on their bargain. Now those people who Charlie had given his life for were tumbling into the afterworld like pawns being swept off a chessboard. Yeah, they were all pawns here, though Boone couldn’t imagine that any of them wished to hear it. Not Charlie and certainly not that poor girl who lay trembling in the sand. Boone couldn’t deny it, but he would have comforted them by saying that when this cruel game was over they would be purer and freer in their souls than the ruthless players who had sacrificed them.
Boone and Charlie began moving down the beach, but before either of them could reach the girl, they were overtaken by Karl.
“Alex! Alex!” he called, his voice giddy and frantic. “Alex, you’re here!”
Karl skidded to his knees in front of her. With two grappling hands he took her by the shoulders, trying to raise her up from the sand. Alex looked into his animated face and let out a scream, shaking off his grasp and scrambling away from him. The last time Alex had seen her boyfriend he had been shot through the chest. She had seen his eyes rolling back in his skull and the blood trickling from his lips. She hadn’t thought she would ever see him again. Not in such a place as this.
“Give her some space,” Boone advised, pulling Karl away from her. “She’s scared and shaken up naturally. She’ll be okay though, man. We’re all here for her…”
Boone smiled reassuringly at the boy. His clumsy eagerness reminded him very much of himself when he was younger and alive. Karl nodded weakly in consent.
“One of us needs to talk to her, Boone…”
He turned to see Libby approaching and Danielle leaning against her arm. The French woman was almost buckling at this sight of Alex which must surely have wounded her more deeply than the bullet that had killed her. Her face was a mask of agony and despair.
“My daughter…” she choked out, taking a step forwards.
“No…please Rousseau…” said Boone, laying a tentative hand on her arm. “You’re not the right person to handle this.”
“She…she’s my daughter,” Danielle repeated, brokenly.
“Please listen to him,” Libby said in soothing tones. “Boone has been here longer than any of us. He knows what’s best.”
Boone felt strengthened by Libby’s words. They treated him like a leader here. On the island Boone had often tried to take the initiative. He had tried to save lives. He had tried to establish a sense of democracy. But for all his trying the island had chosen him as its first sacrifice. He supposed with its appetite for wars, purges and slaughter the island had little use for a pacifist liberal. No, the island didn’t need a humanitarian. But God they needed one here.
“I think Charlie should be the one to talk to her…” Boone said considerately.
Boone sensed that this was right based on the fate that Alex had suffered. There were different ways of experiencing death. For Danielle and Karl it had come so suddenly they barely had time to notice. It had been a quick bound between worlds; a death that's relatively painless and free of trauma. That's very different from being made to wait for death. They didn’t know how it felt to have death's shadow creeping over them with slow excruciating inevitability. Boone had spent a long day and an even longer night waiting for death to close its fist on him. Libby had suffered through a similar ordeal. But neither of them could claim to know more about waiting and preparing for death than Charlie did.
"Oh, cheers Boone, thanks a lot..." Charlie muttered under his breath.
Boone smiled grimly. He had an instinctive faith in Charlie. They hadn’t been close on the island, but he remembered that Charlie had been there the night he had died. In those brief moments when he had been slipping between states of shock and muddied-consciousness he could recall hearing Charlie’s panicked voice bouncing off the cave walls as he asked everyone he could corner for their blood type. He had stayed at his bedside until Jin had arrived and told them that Claire was having her baby. Charlie had left then and Boone didn’t blame him. He knew now there was more to fear for those being birthed into the world than those passing away from it.
Charlie was still looking at Boone uncertainly, wondering why he had been chosen to speak with the girl. He was a novice when it came to dealing newcomers, but Boone knew he needed to get through this. It would help Charlie to come to terms with his death too. This was a barrier they all had to cross. Dutifully Charlie crouched in the sand before Alex. She was sitting there like a bird that had been knocked from the sky and was now lying wounded in a heap of its own feathers. The girl sniffed, narrowing her eyes on him.
“I…I remember you…” Alex stammered.
“You do?” Charlie frowned. “How do you know me?”
“You were the one they hung from the tree,” she told him, bluntly. “You were the one who was with Claire the day we took her to the Staff.”
“Ah, I see,” said Charlie, shifting uncomfortably. “You were with the group that took us then? I don’t, erm...I don't exactly remember that day too well myself.”
Boone remembered that day. He remembered he had been so desperate to make a worthy contribution to the camp. He knew that people thought he was a joke; him and his sister. He hadn’t joined the hunting trips or the fishing because he hadn't liked the thought of killing an animal. He had failed to save Joanna and had suffered the indignity of being rescued himself by Jack. He had tried to recover Shannon’s asthma medicine only to be beaten to a bloody pulp by Sawyer. So when Boone had heard about the man called Ethan Rom who wasn’t on the plane and who had seemingly kidnapped Charlie and Claire, he had quickly and assertively volunteered to be one of the rescue party.
Boone winced remorsefully as he remembered how the two trails had divided in the jungle. Often he wished that he hadn’t chosen to follow Locke. If he had only gone with Jack and Kate then he could have been there when they had saved Charlie. He could have helped and contributed the way he wanted to. Instead he had taken the path with Locke, who was probably more interested in meeting the island’s inhabitants than rescuing the captives. That was the day they had found the hatch door and Boone had been drawn into his conspiracy with the old hunter; a secret pact which had ended with Locke choosing to sacrifice him at the island's demanding.
Boone didn't care about the island. He never had. Saving innocent lives, that was something that he cared about. Ever since he was a kid he had felt troubled when watching news reports about hostages who were taken in the Middle East and other war-torn areas of the world. Harmless civilians, who were imprisoned, tortured or sometimes executed for things they had nothing to do with. After seeing too many news reports of this kind, Boone had started with his marches, his petitions, his letters to the government and his plans to join the Peace Corps. There was something deep inside him that couldn’t stomach the idea of innocents being killed in somebody else’s feud. It was the reason he had wanted to help Charlie and Claire that day. It was the reason his soul burned for Alex now.
“I remember…” Alex said to Charlie after a pause, retreating into these ugly memories because maybe they were preferable to considering her present situation. “I remember you were kneeling on the ground. You were crying into your blindfold. And when Ethan said we were going to have to kill you…you wet your pants…”
Charlie swallowed. "Err...yeah...that sounds about right."
Alex cringed, her eyes misting over. Her hands reached down to her own crotch, feeling for the wetness there too. She looked so ashamed. Boone wanted to tell her it was okay. Most of them had lost control of their bodies when the end had come. He could still remember his degradation as he lay helpless on the airline cushions, sweating and trembling, his body jerking out of control, screams tearing from his mouth and blood gurgling up from his throat. He too remembered the squirmy wetness between his legs that had made him feel vulnerable as an infant again. They had all been through it. It was nothing to be ashamed of. Your body can’t be brave when it knows it is shutting down. You can only find courage in your soul.
Alex’s hands reached for her head now. She sat rocking and cradling her skull as if she could still feel the gunshot ringing in her ears and her hair growing sticky with blood. Charlie clasped hold of her shoulder.
“You’re not wet and you’re not bleeding…” he assured her in desperate ragged words. “I know it was horrible, but…it’s over now, Alex. It’s done with.”
“I…I’m sorry…” she stuttered to Charlie.
“Hey...you’ve no reason to apologise to me, love.”
Alex shook her head. “I heard my dad say it,” she explained. “I heard him when he told Mikhail to kill you. He told him to kill Bonnie and Greta too. They were on our side. He always said we weren't killers…but I heard him give the order.”
Charlie stroked her shoulder. There was no judgement in his face.
"Forget it..." he said. "Forget him..."
“I never told anyone,” Alex continued regardless. “Locke and Sawyer, they were mad and they…they wanted to kill him. I knew if I told anyone my dad had ordered Mikhail to kill you it would have just made them madder. And I didn’t want him killed. I know that he isn’t a good man. I know he’s killed a lot of people, though he lies about it. I really hated him sometimes, but…but he….he was the only father that I…”
Alex screwed her face up, pinching her eyes closed.
“He…he didn’t save me,” she said quietly. “He wouldn’t come out. He said I was just a pawn. He said I meant nothing to him.” Her voice grew strangled and hoarse. “My daddy said I meant nothing...”
Charlie took her by the shoulders then, looking her in the eyes with sternness, but also a fierce compassion. Boone had often seen Charlie look at Claire this way. He hoped that Charlie could make Alex feel secure again.
“Listen to me, Alex. Come on!” said Charlie, snapping her into focus. “That man was not your father. And you are ten times the person that he is. Ben took you away from your real family. But they’re here for you now. They care about you, Alex. They’re just waiting to show you how much they care.”
Alex blinked, raising her head to look into the yearning eyes of Danielle and Karl who were being gently restrained by Libby. She rose slowly to her feet and made her way towards them. She was wobbly and unbalanced like a newborn fowl learning to walk. That's what a bullet to the head will do for you. Boone caught her by the arm as she stumbled, almost falling. He looked the girl in the face. She really was beautiful. No, more than beautiful; she was radiant. Boone wondered if Alex had been this beautiful when she was alive. Perhaps not. He remembered seeing a difference in Charlie when he had arrived on this beach. He was like an ugly ducking transformed into a swan. In life the body doesn’t always reflect the person it holds inside, but here…here people looked the way they are. And Alex looked beautiful.
Boone gave her courteous nod that was almost a small bow. He wanted Alex to know that she was respected here; she was valued. Boone wouldn’t allow anyone in this world to make Alex think that she was worth nothing. He watched the girl as she crossed the sand towards her mother and boyfriend in whose awaiting arms Alex found the thing she had recently been pleading for and had not received. Mercy.
“Alexandra…” he heard Danielle whispering into her hair.
Boone looked away, turning his attention back to Charlie. His friend's eyes were shining with something like tears, but there were no tears in this world either. Charlie was still thinking like a living person. Boone would have to shake him out of that habit. But for now he simply wrapped an arm around Charlie’s shoulders and led him to the tree where his guitar lay in the shade. Then Charlie sat strumming while Boone meditated, trying to find a sense of peace for both of them.
I know how feel, man, Boone whispered to Charlie in a telepathy that drifted over his music. I know because when I was clinging to that radio and the floor of that plane was shaking beneath me, I thought I could be the hero too. Sure, I knew the plane might fall and I could end up hurt or dead, but if it had gotten everyone rescued, that’s something I was prepared to die for. I know you were trying to do the same thing. I know you feel used by that stinking island and your sacrifice has been ripped off. But you've got to let it go, man. You need to realise that the real game isn’t even about who wins or who stays on the board the longest. We may not have changed the state of play the way we wanted to, but we still changed ourselves into the people we always hoped we could be. That’s what matters, man...
Charlie stopped his playing for a moment. He kept his eyes settled on the rippling ocean, but at the same time he stretched out a hand, which Boone quickly clasped in his own.
I know, Charlie replied. I just...I wish it was enough...
The End