in your shoes [Lost Luau. Alex, Richard. role reversal AU]
Title: in your shoes
Summary: AU. Alex has lived for over a century serving Jacob, and Richard is much too young to pester her with all these questions.
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Alex, Richard
Rating: PG-13
Notes: For crickets at the 2010 lostsquee Luau.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Lost.
BTW:May go on hiatus from the Luau for over a week.
Ever since the boy could speak and comprehend, and when Ben wouldn't satisfactorily answer all his questions, Richard would immediately go to the tall, dark haired woman that often met with his father, and ask her.
Alex later realized her first mistake was to answer him at all. After that, the boy would keep going to her whenever Ben couldn't meet his expectations. At first, his questions were harmless, not much different from ones other children his age had.
But then on his fourth birthday, Richard asked when was hers.
She quickly made something up, but that familiar unsettled feeling in her stomach returned. When he noticed she didn't age, he asked her why.
Admittedly, it wasn't terribly unique; many children had been born and grown on the Island, and noticed her presence, her status, and wondered the same. Alex wondered why she kept going in such circles. She even told Richard the same answer she gave other children: "Jacob made me this way."
"Why?"
"Because I have work to do for him."
"What do you do?"
"Whatever he asks." Alex paused, then said, "Your father does the same."
When the child asked if he'll have to work like dad and her when he's bigger, Alex finally shooed him away, and although he looked hurt, he still went back to her again and again with more questions.
Later, Richard asked her about his real parents. Ben had considered for a moment saying that Richard took completely after his mother and inherited rarely anything physical from him, but he soon nixed that idea, deciding it was too unbelievable, that he could not convince the boy that they were of the same blood. Instead, her leader edged closer to the truth and told Richard that he was adopted.
"I don't know. I do know adoption rules say that if they're alive, they can't contact you, that they have to be a secret."
"How come?"
Instead of answering, Alex asked very carefully, "Are you mad at Ben?"
At the time she had thought the inane argument between the 6-year-old and her leader had been hilarious, but now she was concerned that it was symptomatic of something more serious. But Alex was surprised when the boy seemed to seriously consider the question, looking older. "Sometimes," he admitted in a hesitant voice. "But not really--I mean, he's my dad, a good one. But I'd still like to meet my first one, and my mom."
Her people had wondered if the child would ever come to see Alex herself as a mother, but so far he hadn't, and for that Alex was grateful. Granted, she tried not to act motherly with him. She had acted that way before with others--and they had died before her, either violently or diseased or aged, while she remained the same--she didn't much feel like repeating that feeling now. If anything, Ben was the last she somewhat regarded as her own child, and even now she was wary of losing him--and not just through death, she'd been wondering ever since he had been saved at the Temple how changed he truly was, if she had been losing him bit by bit.
Richard kicked at a rock. "You said 'if they're alive'--do you think they're dead?"
"It's possible. Like I said, I really don't know--I wasn't the one who did the adoption."
Richard scowled, his uniquely dark eyes blackening further; "Dad won't tell me anything." The immortal silently thought the boy was more angry with his father than he thought, or he would grow to be.
"He'll probably tell you when you're older," Alex soothed with a lie.
When Richard was an infant, Alex made sure to only speak Latin in his presence, taking advantage of that window of opportunity such youth offered for learning languages. Ben agreed, taking up talking exclusively in English in front of the boy, and so between the two of them the child ended up speaking both naturally.
But she continued to teach him Latin, in the way English was still taught him, covering it in more depth, though he didn't need much in the way of fluency anymore.
The boy took the Latin for granted, actually--was rather bored with it (the same with English). Thankfully he didn't do something foolish like skipping class or acting disrespectful toward her--instead, he asked her about learning another language.
Immediately Alex offered to teach him French.
Ben had practically banned Spanish in their territory on the Island, in what Alex felt was his own irrational concern over any reminder of the boy's real mother, still out there in the jungle and undoubtedly growing more mad. He had once confessed to Alex that before he took the boy, he heard the woman call him 'Ricardo' instead (so the child didn't even have his own true name).
French, Alex figured, was acceptable, and she had the mastery to teach it.
Richard agreed without a second thought. (Alex noted with some satisfaction the greater quality in his coursework after that.)
Richard was 13 when he left the Island for the first time.
Alex had found him brooding in a tree one day, and when she asked what he was pouting over, he didn't rise to her taunt, just quietly muttered 'Dad,' and that was it.
On a whim, Alex promised him that he could visit the mainland with her when she left to recruit a doctor in Miami.
Immediately the boy brightened, excited, questions about Miami tumbling out of his mouth as he climbed down, but Alex just tuned him out and waved him off as she went to speak with Ben.
Alex didn't feel like she was giving Richard false hope, fully confident she could convince her leader. Persuading him took longer than she liked, with Richard and her leaving a week behind the schedule she'd drawn up.
Richard knew Karl had a crush on Alex, and would always tease him mercilessly about it, and it was no different when he got to leave with her--if anything, it increased.
Mostly he teased his friend since he didn't really understand the other boy's infatuation. Richard still saw the older ageless woman as just his father's friend and advisor, but someone with greater loyalty to Jacob and who got to see him the most; just as his teacher; just as someone he'd known (well, interacted with) his whole life. The more analytical part of himself figured he was blooming later than Karl; he still hadn't found much interest in the opposite sex or anything remotely related to what his father had tried talking to him about before.
But one night when they were in Miami, he quickly ran into their hotel room to grab a map, in a rush to explore more of the city--he must've been real sudden, because Alex just froze in the middle of slipping on her pajama shirt. Richard hadn't seen much actually, barely any skin; but there was something different about her hair this time, the way it fell in curls over her neck and his cheeks reddened and--
she's outside a little house with green all around and smiling but no that's not Alex's smile though the dark waves are the same aren't they
"Isabella?" The boy whispered in a very small voice as something started to ache and burn behind his eyes.
"What?" Alex asked (her pajama shirt completely on now), and she helped him sit down after he grabbed at his head.
"Nothin,'" Richard mumbled, while his thoughts went very fast:
Great--I'm either imagining sex with an imaginary girl or Alex fuckin' Rousseau--
"You called me someone else--"
"I told you, it's nothing--"
"Richard--"
The boy jerked away from her, finally growling, "I swear, I don't know what the hell that was."
"Just try to explain to me what happened--we might be able to figure it out...."
After his fingers tightened around a pillow corner, Richard finally asked instead, "You're going to bed already?"
Alex sighed, then replied, "I have an early day tomorrow."
Nodding, the boy then snatched up the stupid map and dashed out, ignoring Alex sternly calling after him.
Sleeping that night wasn't very restful. He kept seeing Alex or a woman that looked like her in his dreams--no, it was definitely one that looked like her, because there was one odd image where they both stood side by side. Either way, he tossed and turned, his headache growing, something tightening in his chest, there was something about those two--
It was still dark when he woke up, flush and humiliated to find something stand straight up, like it had never done before.
He muffled some foul words in Latin into his pillow, then breathed slowly, considering that according to what he learned, this was natural and normal and it was going to happen sooner or later, and apparently it was sooner after all.
(Though he was pretty damn sure seeing a woman he had never met before or imagining her or making an almost clone of Alex in his head wasn't exactly natural.)
Richard's new-found anxiety and awkwardness with Alex dropped away when she returned to the hotel room, looking exhausted.
"What's wrong?"
She shook her head; "Dr. Burke agreed to come, that's all." She silently considered him for a moment, then said, "Get to sleep, we're having a driving lesson tomorrow, and you'll have to wake up early for that--best time for empty parking lots."
By the end of it, Richard eagerly got out of the car for air, admitting he didn't like driving. Privately Alex agreed that driving didn't seem to suit him, but insisted it's something he should know; told him it was not something he'd get in a day; and promised that either she or Ben or Tom would teach him in full.
Later when Richard read the newspaper (he had been consuming every media outlet since he arrived in Miami), he focused too long on a story about a man being run over by a bus. The man's name was Burke, same as their new recruit.
That night, Richard couldn't bring himself to say much over dinner, especially when Alex watched him with a tired, knowing eye.
They went home to the Island, and Richard still wasn't sleeping very well. The dreams were becoming stranger, more full--there was the ocean, raging; and a ship; horrible horrible chains; a Monster, made of dark roiling smoke, that made those same terrifying clicks and howls heard from the jungle in his waking life, where everyone told him and Karl to stay away from. And now in the nightmares Alex and the woman who resembled her were being carried away by that Monster, plucked up and away and screaming (though it never sounded like Alex despite the femininity of that shout).
His father fretted over the sleeplessness in his eyes. Alex finally pulled him aside and demanded he tried to explain what was going on--and so he did, the best he could. The boy had an ulterior motive in mind anyway.
When Richard was done, and Alex already starting to mull it over, he asked, "Were you recruited too, or were you born here?"
"Want to ask my age while you're at it?"
Richard instead just gave her a flat stare that made her wonder how much he was learning from Ben and herself. She then ran a hand through her hair, murmuring, "My mother's ship crashed on this Island; then I was born here." She turned her back on the boy, calling over her shoulder, "That was 134 years ago."
"And he mentioned a man that looked extraordinarily like yourself, Jacob."
Her master finally glanced at her from his tapestry. "Anything else?"
"No, but I imagine he'll think up more the next time he sleeps."
"'Remember,' actually."
Alex whirled on him, snarling, "What did you do?"
"Possibly prepare your replacement. You've grown tired of the job, haven't you?" Jacob sighed. "I suppose if we were to get very specific, you're actually his."
She began to pace, rubbing her forehead. (Didn't have the energy to comprehend that she was not Jacob's first choice.) "I take it this isn't Richard's first life, then?"
Jacob shook his head.
"And that he came from the Black Rock?"
Her master nodded.
"That's been there since I was a child."
"Yes--so you could say Ricardus is older than you."
Alex finally stopped, staring down at Jacob, still seated by his tapestry. "Why him?"
"He and I have unfinished business," and that was the last he would say on the matter, besides an order that Alex could not share any of this with the boy.
"What did he say?"
"Excuse me?"
"Didn't you go to Jacob to ask about--?"
"He said you have to be patient, Richard."
When he was 16, Richard lost his virginity.
Yet Alex wondered. Because in the heat of the moment, she knew for a fact that this wasn't his first time. The beginning nervous energy had soon morphed into something well practiced. And yet she was positive he had not lain with anyone else before (as she had reminded Ben, there was a woeful lack of female peers for Richard or even Karl to connect with in the slightest, but granted there was the pregnancy problems still at large; and she doubted anyone but her--for whom age had become practically meaningless past a certain point--would be interested in someone so young). Alex had never forgotten what Jacob said. That, and Richard had said 'my love,' in Spanish. He could've learned it on his own, the boy was rather clever with other languages. (He had lately pestered Mikhail for some Russian vocabulary and phrases.) And it wasn't like 'mi amor' was difficult to grasp.
But Alex was fairly certain the boy didn't know Spanish, had not lain with anyone else before, and she couldn't explain how he had that knowledge or sense of experience unless from another life....
Perhaps Alex was over thinking it, giving too much weight to Jacob's words (when he so often kept quiet, misdirected, or outright lied). But afterward, the boy turned his back on her and said not a word, and she realized that she may be onto to something after all. Alex could practically feel the confusion roll off him in waves. (At least he hadn't called her Isabella. He hadn't done that in her presence since the very first time years before in Miami.)
"Alex, a plane crashed on the Isl--"
"I know, Richard; I'm watching TV and it's on every news channel right now."
"Are you coming back soon, then?"
"Yes."
"…Alex, my dad hasn't said anything about helping the people go back home--"
"…I'll see you soon, all right?"
"…All right."
Summary: AU. Alex has lived for over a century serving Jacob, and Richard is much too young to pester her with all these questions.
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Alex, Richard
Rating: PG-13
Notes: For crickets at the 2010 lostsquee Luau.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Lost.
BTW:May go on hiatus from the Luau for over a week.
Ever since the boy could speak and comprehend, and when Ben wouldn't satisfactorily answer all his questions, Richard would immediately go to the tall, dark haired woman that often met with his father, and ask her.
Alex later realized her first mistake was to answer him at all. After that, the boy would keep going to her whenever Ben couldn't meet his expectations. At first, his questions were harmless, not much different from ones other children his age had.
But then on his fourth birthday, Richard asked when was hers.
She quickly made something up, but that familiar unsettled feeling in her stomach returned. When he noticed she didn't age, he asked her why.
Admittedly, it wasn't terribly unique; many children had been born and grown on the Island, and noticed her presence, her status, and wondered the same. Alex wondered why she kept going in such circles. She even told Richard the same answer she gave other children: "Jacob made me this way."
"Why?"
"Because I have work to do for him."
"What do you do?"
"Whatever he asks." Alex paused, then said, "Your father does the same."
When the child asked if he'll have to work like dad and her when he's bigger, Alex finally shooed him away, and although he looked hurt, he still went back to her again and again with more questions.
Later, Richard asked her about his real parents. Ben had considered for a moment saying that Richard took completely after his mother and inherited rarely anything physical from him, but he soon nixed that idea, deciding it was too unbelievable, that he could not convince the boy that they were of the same blood. Instead, her leader edged closer to the truth and told Richard that he was adopted.
"I don't know. I do know adoption rules say that if they're alive, they can't contact you, that they have to be a secret."
"How come?"
Instead of answering, Alex asked very carefully, "Are you mad at Ben?"
At the time she had thought the inane argument between the 6-year-old and her leader had been hilarious, but now she was concerned that it was symptomatic of something more serious. But Alex was surprised when the boy seemed to seriously consider the question, looking older. "Sometimes," he admitted in a hesitant voice. "But not really--I mean, he's my dad, a good one. But I'd still like to meet my first one, and my mom."
Her people had wondered if the child would ever come to see Alex herself as a mother, but so far he hadn't, and for that Alex was grateful. Granted, she tried not to act motherly with him. She had acted that way before with others--and they had died before her, either violently or diseased or aged, while she remained the same--she didn't much feel like repeating that feeling now. If anything, Ben was the last she somewhat regarded as her own child, and even now she was wary of losing him--and not just through death, she'd been wondering ever since he had been saved at the Temple how changed he truly was, if she had been losing him bit by bit.
Richard kicked at a rock. "You said 'if they're alive'--do you think they're dead?"
"It's possible. Like I said, I really don't know--I wasn't the one who did the adoption."
Richard scowled, his uniquely dark eyes blackening further; "Dad won't tell me anything." The immortal silently thought the boy was more angry with his father than he thought, or he would grow to be.
"He'll probably tell you when you're older," Alex soothed with a lie.
When Richard was an infant, Alex made sure to only speak Latin in his presence, taking advantage of that window of opportunity such youth offered for learning languages. Ben agreed, taking up talking exclusively in English in front of the boy, and so between the two of them the child ended up speaking both naturally.
But she continued to teach him Latin, in the way English was still taught him, covering it in more depth, though he didn't need much in the way of fluency anymore.
The boy took the Latin for granted, actually--was rather bored with it (the same with English). Thankfully he didn't do something foolish like skipping class or acting disrespectful toward her--instead, he asked her about learning another language.
Immediately Alex offered to teach him French.
Ben had practically banned Spanish in their territory on the Island, in what Alex felt was his own irrational concern over any reminder of the boy's real mother, still out there in the jungle and undoubtedly growing more mad. He had once confessed to Alex that before he took the boy, he heard the woman call him 'Ricardo' instead (so the child didn't even have his own true name).
French, Alex figured, was acceptable, and she had the mastery to teach it.
Richard agreed without a second thought. (Alex noted with some satisfaction the greater quality in his coursework after that.)
Richard was 13 when he left the Island for the first time.
Alex had found him brooding in a tree one day, and when she asked what he was pouting over, he didn't rise to her taunt, just quietly muttered 'Dad,' and that was it.
On a whim, Alex promised him that he could visit the mainland with her when she left to recruit a doctor in Miami.
Immediately the boy brightened, excited, questions about Miami tumbling out of his mouth as he climbed down, but Alex just tuned him out and waved him off as she went to speak with Ben.
Alex didn't feel like she was giving Richard false hope, fully confident she could convince her leader. Persuading him took longer than she liked, with Richard and her leaving a week behind the schedule she'd drawn up.
Richard knew Karl had a crush on Alex, and would always tease him mercilessly about it, and it was no different when he got to leave with her--if anything, it increased.
Mostly he teased his friend since he didn't really understand the other boy's infatuation. Richard still saw the older ageless woman as just his father's friend and advisor, but someone with greater loyalty to Jacob and who got to see him the most; just as his teacher; just as someone he'd known (well, interacted with) his whole life. The more analytical part of himself figured he was blooming later than Karl; he still hadn't found much interest in the opposite sex or anything remotely related to what his father had tried talking to him about before.
But one night when they were in Miami, he quickly ran into their hotel room to grab a map, in a rush to explore more of the city--he must've been real sudden, because Alex just froze in the middle of slipping on her pajama shirt. Richard hadn't seen much actually, barely any skin; but there was something different about her hair this time, the way it fell in curls over her neck and his cheeks reddened and--
she's outside a little house with green all around and smiling but no that's not Alex's smile though the dark waves are the same aren't they
"Isabella?" The boy whispered in a very small voice as something started to ache and burn behind his eyes.
"What?" Alex asked (her pajama shirt completely on now), and she helped him sit down after he grabbed at his head.
"Nothin,'" Richard mumbled, while his thoughts went very fast:
Great--I'm either imagining sex with an imaginary girl or Alex fuckin' Rousseau--
"You called me someone else--"
"I told you, it's nothing--"
"Richard--"
The boy jerked away from her, finally growling, "I swear, I don't know what the hell that was."
"Just try to explain to me what happened--we might be able to figure it out...."
After his fingers tightened around a pillow corner, Richard finally asked instead, "You're going to bed already?"
Alex sighed, then replied, "I have an early day tomorrow."
Nodding, the boy then snatched up the stupid map and dashed out, ignoring Alex sternly calling after him.
Sleeping that night wasn't very restful. He kept seeing Alex or a woman that looked like her in his dreams--no, it was definitely one that looked like her, because there was one odd image where they both stood side by side. Either way, he tossed and turned, his headache growing, something tightening in his chest, there was something about those two--
It was still dark when he woke up, flush and humiliated to find something stand straight up, like it had never done before.
He muffled some foul words in Latin into his pillow, then breathed slowly, considering that according to what he learned, this was natural and normal and it was going to happen sooner or later, and apparently it was sooner after all.
(Though he was pretty damn sure seeing a woman he had never met before or imagining her or making an almost clone of Alex in his head wasn't exactly natural.)
Richard's new-found anxiety and awkwardness with Alex dropped away when she returned to the hotel room, looking exhausted.
"What's wrong?"
She shook her head; "Dr. Burke agreed to come, that's all." She silently considered him for a moment, then said, "Get to sleep, we're having a driving lesson tomorrow, and you'll have to wake up early for that--best time for empty parking lots."
By the end of it, Richard eagerly got out of the car for air, admitting he didn't like driving. Privately Alex agreed that driving didn't seem to suit him, but insisted it's something he should know; told him it was not something he'd get in a day; and promised that either she or Ben or Tom would teach him in full.
Later when Richard read the newspaper (he had been consuming every media outlet since he arrived in Miami), he focused too long on a story about a man being run over by a bus. The man's name was Burke, same as their new recruit.
That night, Richard couldn't bring himself to say much over dinner, especially when Alex watched him with a tired, knowing eye.
They went home to the Island, and Richard still wasn't sleeping very well. The dreams were becoming stranger, more full--there was the ocean, raging; and a ship; horrible horrible chains; a Monster, made of dark roiling smoke, that made those same terrifying clicks and howls heard from the jungle in his waking life, where everyone told him and Karl to stay away from. And now in the nightmares Alex and the woman who resembled her were being carried away by that Monster, plucked up and away and screaming (though it never sounded like Alex despite the femininity of that shout).
His father fretted over the sleeplessness in his eyes. Alex finally pulled him aside and demanded he tried to explain what was going on--and so he did, the best he could. The boy had an ulterior motive in mind anyway.
When Richard was done, and Alex already starting to mull it over, he asked, "Were you recruited too, or were you born here?"
"Want to ask my age while you're at it?"
Richard instead just gave her a flat stare that made her wonder how much he was learning from Ben and herself. She then ran a hand through her hair, murmuring, "My mother's ship crashed on this Island; then I was born here." She turned her back on the boy, calling over her shoulder, "That was 134 years ago."
"And he mentioned a man that looked extraordinarily like yourself, Jacob."
Her master finally glanced at her from his tapestry. "Anything else?"
"No, but I imagine he'll think up more the next time he sleeps."
"'Remember,' actually."
Alex whirled on him, snarling, "What did you do?"
"Possibly prepare your replacement. You've grown tired of the job, haven't you?" Jacob sighed. "I suppose if we were to get very specific, you're actually his."
She began to pace, rubbing her forehead. (Didn't have the energy to comprehend that she was not Jacob's first choice.) "I take it this isn't Richard's first life, then?"
Jacob shook his head.
"And that he came from the Black Rock?"
Her master nodded.
"That's been there since I was a child."
"Yes--so you could say Ricardus is older than you."
Alex finally stopped, staring down at Jacob, still seated by his tapestry. "Why him?"
"He and I have unfinished business," and that was the last he would say on the matter, besides an order that Alex could not share any of this with the boy.
"What did he say?"
"Excuse me?"
"Didn't you go to Jacob to ask about--?"
"He said you have to be patient, Richard."
When he was 16, Richard lost his virginity.
Yet Alex wondered. Because in the heat of the moment, she knew for a fact that this wasn't his first time. The beginning nervous energy had soon morphed into something well practiced. And yet she was positive he had not lain with anyone else before (as she had reminded Ben, there was a woeful lack of female peers for Richard or even Karl to connect with in the slightest, but granted there was the pregnancy problems still at large; and she doubted anyone but her--for whom age had become practically meaningless past a certain point--would be interested in someone so young). Alex had never forgotten what Jacob said. That, and Richard had said 'my love,' in Spanish. He could've learned it on his own, the boy was rather clever with other languages. (He had lately pestered Mikhail for some Russian vocabulary and phrases.) And it wasn't like 'mi amor' was difficult to grasp.
But Alex was fairly certain the boy didn't know Spanish, had not lain with anyone else before, and she couldn't explain how he had that knowledge or sense of experience unless from another life....
Perhaps Alex was over thinking it, giving too much weight to Jacob's words (when he so often kept quiet, misdirected, or outright lied). But afterward, the boy turned his back on her and said not a word, and she realized that she may be onto to something after all. Alex could practically feel the confusion roll off him in waves. (At least he hadn't called her Isabella. He hadn't done that in her presence since the very first time years before in Miami.)
"Alex, a plane crashed on the Isl--"
"I know, Richard; I'm watching TV and it's on every news channel right now."
"Are you coming back soon, then?"
"Yes."
"…Alex, my dad hasn't said anything about helping the people go back home--"
"…I'll see you soon, all right?"
"…All right."