If the Fates Allow
Title: If the Fates Allow
Characters: Desmond
Rating: PG
Words: 600
Disclaimer: Lost does not belong to me. This is what it would look like if it did.
Spoilers: Cabin Fever
Summary: Desmond slowly awakes to his precarious position on the freighter.
A/N: Nominated for Best Gen Fic at
lost_fic_awards for May 2008.
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Desmond feels wobbly as soon as Sayid disappears from sight. He grips the railing and fights the nausea that rolls across his abdomen. If it was Penny who had given him back his chronology, finding him a beginning and hopefully an ending, it had been Sayid who had grounded him in the here and now. Over the last week, he had leaned on Sayid literally and figuratively. While parts of his own mind still lingered somewhere between the past and present, Desmond had gratefully allowed him to take charge of their situation on the freighter. He had become the man’s shadow, eating when he ate, sleeping when he slept and following him until he could follow no more.
As he stands on the deck, legs trembling and heart pounding, trying to recover the equilibrium lost with Sayid’s absence, Desmond reconsiders his decision to stay onboard. Initially returning to the island felt like too much of a risk. Not only was he worried about tumbling through time again and becoming trapped once more within the island’s jaws, there was the simple fact he had told Penny he was on a boat. Once he had discovered it was her father’s ship, he felt confident she could follow the bread crumbs and paper trails to this very position. He has no idea how she will accomplish this; as far as he knew, she doesn’t have an equivalent fleet and army at her fingertips. Still, he has clung to her promise to find him like a drowning man clings to the memory of oxygen.
Like a drowning man clings to the memory of oxygen.
The nausea vanishes; instead his gut twists and clenches at the thought of Charlie, who he had done such a good job of forgetting. Desmond could almost, almost believe the cold thick glass still imprinted under his palm and the image of a solemn face succumbing to a prophecy were simply a nightmare born from the stress of journeying across the island’s borders. He might have dismissed this recollection as just another one of the side effects Faraday had warned him about if it wasn’t for the existence of a fragile piece of paper in his shirt pocket. Its presence was a reminder of a responsibility left unfilled, one he hadn't been able to bring himself to deliver in front of so many judging eyes. He hopes that failure isn’t an omen that his vision of Claire and Aaron’s rescue would go similarly unfulfilled.
Remorse over remaining on board settles in before the mad man begins shooting and the doctor and captain fall. It happens before he catches Michael’s eye and finds in them a familiar shame and culpability. It occurs to him before he notes that without Sayid by his side the freighter feels more claustrophobic than the hatch and just as deadly as the island.
Like most things, his realization lies with Penny. The inertia which had coated him since their phone call dissolves with two sudden notions. As he watches the men load the helicopter with an assortment of weaponry, Desmond recognizes he can’t wait around for Penny to appear; to do so would only lead her directly into the crossfire of a war. Nor can he face her again wearing a more tarnished badge of honour than when they last met. He’s at a lost of what his next move might be but he’s resolved that a move needs to be made. If the fates allow he will figure out a way to help save himself and the others.
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