Fic, Lost: Make Your Own Kind of Music (Desmond) Pg13
Title: Make Your Own Kind of Music
Characters: Desmond, some Penny and Charlie, implied Des/Penny
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: Desmond isn't mine for sure and Mozart's stuff is, well, I guess his relatives have royalties?
Word count: 3500
Summary: For philosophy_20 prompt #11, extrinsic. The first time Desmond heard Mozart’s music, it was at his first job with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Spoilers: from 'Flashes Before Your Eyes' to the S3 finale; goes AU after it (means, uhm, Charlie lives).
A/N: I had wanted to do something on these lines since I saw 'Live Together Die Alone'; I think I really fell for Des when I found out he listened to Mozart. This has been sitting on my HD for at least a month and I still don't understand what to make of it, if it's any good or if it's too much of an exaggeration/if I pushed too much on the base of five seconds on show, but I really can't edit it all that much anymore and so it goes. Minor speculation about our man's younger days. About the Barbican Center, I actually researched and found out there's a theater there where the Royal Shakespeare Company set up some plays, though I don't know whether in the Hall they actually do opera and not only symphonic. Author's license, I guess. Now you can also read it with the dvd commentary turned on!
The Statue: Repent, change life. It’s your last chance!
Don Giovanni: No, no, I won’t. Stay away from me!
The Statue: Repent, wicked man!
Don Giovanni: No!
The Statue: Repent!
Don Giovanni: No!
From Don Giovanni, W. A. Mozart
--
The first time Desmond heard Mozart’s music, it was at his first job with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
He had moved to London after that disastrous monk experience. He had needed to go someplace else which was the complete contrary of what he was used to. Scotland didn’t fit the bill at all. It wasn’t like he was needed there, in the end. He didn’t feel like taking up studies again, it was too far from where he stood at that point and Eddington, it was a place he didn’t feel like staying in. It reminded him of Ruth, anyway. He sure wasn’t going back to the factory that had assured him, his mother, Micheal, Sean and Robert a roof over the head and dinner every evening and London seemed just what he needed. One of the biggest cities in the world, a crowd to get lost in, every possible opportunity displayed in front of him. And that lovely Penelope girl he met outside the monastery lived there. He had her number and her address; and it was a start to move in a big city when you already knew someone. So he packed what he needed, took all the money he had left, went to London and found himself an apartment, then searched for a job.
He had always been good at designing and helping with sets at a small theatre in Glasglow had been his second part-time job which brought him the money he didn’t send home; though, Desmond didn’t think he was going to get the job with the Royal Shakespeare when applying.
In the end he was wrong and the day he got the call, Desmond called Penny a minute after and suggested to celebrate his new employment with a meeting at the pub, which she gladly accepted. Nothing had happened, but Desmond came back home that evening feeling light like he hadn’t since his father passed away.
His first job was at the Pit at the Barbican Center. Him and another pal named Ernest or something like that had designed the set for some strangely placed version of Lady Windermere’s Fan and got free tickets for three evenings.
The first evening, he invited Penny along. The second one, he went by himself. The third he decided he was going to pass and he changed the ticket with one for some other event there at the Hall.
Desmond didn’t know why he exactly chose a showing of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Barbican Hall. Maybe because it was a rare happening, he knew that it was where the British Symphonic Orchestra played but he thought it was mostly symphonic music. Maybe because his mother was fond of opera records though Desmond never really paid much attention. Maybe because he wanted to try out something new.
He changed the ticket and got some very high seat in the gallery. He arrived half an hour earlier and bought a synopsis with a translation of the libretto. When the lights shut off, he wasn’t prepared at all.
It took thirty seconds for him to get completely lost in the music. Never in his life he had heard notes so powerful, so moving, so perfect but at the same so easy to get a grasp on. He suddenly felt overwhelmed, thinking that he had three hours of it in front of him. He also realized, at the end of the ouverture, that he had been holding his breath for the last minute.
At the end of the first act Desmond stood speechless in his seat, his hands trembling, his eyes fixed on the closed curtain. He sincerely couldn’t understand how could some music have that effect on him; he sure didn’t remember ever feeling so shaken by anything that concerned arts. Not a movie, not a painting and surely not music.
The second act didn’t disappoint him either, oh, not at all, even if he had overcome the first shock. This, until the scene in which the satue asks Don Giovanni to repent and he doesn’t.
No., he said each time; a cascade of Nos that seemed never to end, until the last one and until Hell opened under his feet.
The last segment of the opera didn’t catch Desmond’s attention at all, stuck as he was on that little word. It wasn’t only the fact that he didn’t repent and didn’t consider his life a sin; Desmond thought it was one of the most perfect representations of free will he had ever heard. Saying yes meant regretting his whole life, however it had been spent; it meant giving up his beliefs and choices and decisions, it meant playing accordingly to some commonly accepted rule.
But Don Giovanni says no and he denies it. True, he pays with his life, but what’s life in front of something so magnificent?
Desmond walked out of the hall shaken and wide eyed, like he had witnessed the greatest thing ever happened in mankind’s history; the day his paycheck came, first thing he paid the rent for the following month. Then went to a record shop, talked to the cash girl and came out with a comprehensive edition of Mozart’s works. Then he went to a bank where he had opened an account with all the money he brought from Scotland, saw that even if he didn’t have much he had enough to live for two months, took the rest of his paycheck, called Penny and asked her out on a proper dinner.
That night he kissed her for the first time and it had been also the first time they shared a bed.
--
Konstanze: Is it possible? Which delight, to press you to my breast, after so many days of grief!
Belmonte: Which delight, to find you! Now all grief must disappear! Oh, how pleased my heart is!
From The Abduction from the Serraglio, W.A. Mozart
--
The day he came back from Widmore’s office, it’d have been plain reductive to say he was enraged. He was beyond enraged and it wouldn’t have been a good idea to tell Penny all that he was thinking of her father right then. Oh, she might have agreed, point taken, but the problem was that he was agreeing with him on more than one thing and he didn’t want Penny to know just how bloody low his self-esteem was right then. Well, when one felt less worthy than a whiskey bottle, it meant his self-esteem was beyond low.
She understood how it went at once and she didn’t need any recap of the encounter, saying she could imagine it just fine.
Desmond shouldn’t have felt like crying in front of her when she told him he was a good man, at least good enough to marry her. That night he remembers making love to her and it being sweet, complete, filling, slow. It was his most resisting memory in years, the feeling of her skin under his hands, her hair against his face when he kissed the crook of her neck, how soft her lips felt, the way he felt like she was the only end he was ever going to reach. He remembered not feeling worthless at all.
--
Tamino: How sweet, how fair this likeness is, so sweet as never eye beheld! Its heavenly image fills my breast, my heart, with new emotion pressed, some quality I never could name, yet it burns with steady flame. Should this emotion love be called? Yes, it is to love I yeld! Ah, could I now but find her here! If to me she were near [...] I should embrace her tenderly, close to my heart in ecstasy, and then forever she’d be mine.
From The Magic Flute, W.A. Mozart
--
After that half of a breakdown, he didn’t put a foot outside.
Not at all.
He found The Magic Flute in the records he had never looked at and was caressing the covers, unable to believe he could find there something from a world he didn’t even remember anymore but that he missed, oh, he missed it, and it ached so much.
The alarm went off just then, he couldn’t believe 108 minutes had passed already. He went to the computer, inserted the goddamn bloody numbers and turned to the record player.
His hand shook while he put the first vinyl of The Magic Flute into the slot, heavenly music filling the air, reminding him of when he had brought Penny to some crazy Mozart marathon which lasted all day and for which she had blackmailed him for weeks. Sometimes he had this flashes of them together which he didn’t know whether to love or hate. It was a bit like a single drop of water given to a man who had been stranded in a desert for three days. A temporary relief, good enough for a second but too brief for lasting more than that; and after it, your oppression is worse than before.
He sat on the sofa, motionless, until the music quieted and left place to the first recitative, then stood up and walked a few steps around the room until the music started again and it was slow and sweet and wasn’t this the part when the hero sees the picture of the heroine and falls in love with her?, he thinks and his eyes fall on his and Penny’s picture which is there on a shelf and he starts crying.
He had no reason not to; no one was watching him and he wasn’t so far gone as to believe in ghosts. Not yet. No one was here to call him a coward except for himself. He just wanted her to be there and tell him he was a good man again; Desmond hadn’t believed it, for a long time, but whatever she told him, if she were there, he would have believed it. Maybe he would have believed whatever a stranger would say. But strangers, he thought, were the only thing that bloody island lacked.
He realized he was stuck alone in the middle of nowhere with a button to push and a little less than two hours to do it. This meant he wasn’t going to get any decent sleep, he wasn’t going to get to talk to anyone, he was only going to have a button to push for damn good company.
He decided to get over with it right then and waited for his own personal river of tears to stop until he got a grip on himself. He just sat again, closing his eyes and thinking only about the music, trying to get in tune with it and not with all the rest. Thinking that when you are the hero of the story and you’ve got to overcome trials and danger to get back with your beloved one, your life is definitely easier than one could think.
When the two lovers embrace at the end of the first act just to be separated soon after, the alarm started beeping, completely ruining the mood he was in.
Desmond guessed that you can’t escape reality forever.
--
I sigh and lament without wanting to, I twitter and tremble without knowing why, I find peace neither night nor day, but still I rather enjoy languishing this way. You who know what love is, ladies, see if I have it in my heart.
From Le Nozze di Figaro, W. A. Mozart
--
He was delighted to find his records safe in the Elizabeth.
Too bad that it was the only positive thing.
Forty days pushing that button alone were too much for someone to stay completely sane; but two and a half weeks of going around in a circle around that same, bloody, fucking piece of rock that he’s come to hate with all his heart, well, is enough to drive anyone completely insane even without having spent forty days pushing a button every 108 minutes.
So he does the only thing that can keep him sane. He lets the boat go wherever she likes, closes himself in the cabin and listens to music all the time in which he isn’t trying to sleep, which is always for no more than, what a surprise, 108 consecutive minutes.
Desmond knew every note by heart but it sure didn’t bore him. Listening to it all over again gave him something else to concentrate on, not to think about the fact that he was stuck, damn stuck, and that there was really no better that he could do. He was too far gone even for reading his book. He just drank, too desperate to do anything else, and actually started to flash those damn operas and he always was the male hero and Pen always was the heroine, fucked up as it was.
Most of the time he was just too wasted to do even that. He knew he wasn’t ever going to find some kind of peace, peace didn’t exist anymore in his world, and that was what he was thinking when someone started going around on his head, he started shooting and the doctor and the two other guys found him there.
--
Lucky is the man looks at everything on the bright side
And lets reason guide him through all circumstances and trials.
What makes others cry, is for him reason of laughter;
And in the middle of the world’s storms, he’s going to find a perfect peace.
From Così Fan Tutte, W. A. Mozart
--
He had almost thought he could make it.
The hatch exploded. The button didn’t exist anymore for anyone to push. And he actually found himself among other people. While the mere idea of it was enough to scare him for good, when someone offered him a tent and a long towel to sleep him first he tried not to break down crying, then took them with too many thanks and the actual setting hadn’t been too bad. The survivors were mostly friendly or at worst perplexed and he could understand why.
For an handful of hours, he believed he had found at least some of that peace of mind he had been longing for; the one that after you passed all the possible trials you can be forced through brings you in that happy place where you get to laugh when everyone else is scared and doesn’t know what to do and that makes you stand still in the middle of all the storms that can happen in everyone’s life. Penny was the only missing piece of the puzzle.
Then the first flash came.
Then the second.
Then Desmond understood that peace wasn’t a word which was meant to fit with him. He didn’t need this too. He didn’t need another responsibility, especially when it was a responsibility of that kind. At least, if the flashes weren’t only about Charlie, it would have been bearable, but they weren’t and after each time he saved him his head pounded louder.
He wanted to both laugh and cry at that situation. There wasn’t a bloody bright side to look on, really, because Charlie didn’t understand that it was for him and God help him, he probably was thinking that he was becoming interested in Claire of everyone, like he was going to fuck around camp a day after they took him in.
When Charlie got him drunk and Desmond had to spill it out, he almost felt lighter the morning after. Or at least his head felt much more clearer.
Desmond decided to try to think about it in some rational way.
If this was the next trial fate or that old hag or whatever had in store for him, he guessed there wasn’t much to do about it.
He could be the coward Mr Widmore thought him to be, leave Charlie be and do nothing. Which eventually would have brought Charlie to some certain death.
Or he could keep on trying and fight it because what the hell, he was repenting of having done what that hag said he was going to do in first place.
He looked at his side, where Charlie was playing guitar and a few people were listening.
Well, brother, seems you can’t get out of this, he thought standing up and walking in the opposite direction, feeling the burning sand shift under his bare feet and a fresh breeze blowing through his hair.
And if Charlie had an appointment with fate, Desmond was going to make sure it was postponed as much as possible.
--
The Statue: You invited me to dinner, now you know your duty. Answer me: will you come to dinner with me?
Don Giovanni: No one’s going to ever accuse me of cowardice. [..]
The Statue: Will you come?
Don Giovanni: My heart is steady in my breast. I’m not afraid, I’ll come. […]
Don Giovanni: Which cold is this?
The Statue: Repent, change life. It’s your last chance!
Don Giovanni: No, no, I won’t. Stay away from me!
The Statue: Repent, wicked man!
Don Giovanni: No!
The Statue: Repent!
Don Giovanni: No!
The Statue: There’s no time anymore.
From Don Giovanni, W. A. Mozart
--
When Desmond sees Charlie in that room, Penny (Penny!) on the monitor or whatever it is and that Other outside the window about to shoot the grenade, he understands at once what Charlie is going to do.
He wants to close that door and fucking drown there like... like his bloody flashes said.
It’s destiny, Desmond thinks for a second. It’s destiny, it’s got to be fulfilled, it’s how it’s supposed to be, it must end like this and it was meant to end here anyway. Yes.
But then he has another flash and it’s a different one. It’s the flash of a man who couldn’t imagine the mere existence of islands, hatches, timers, failsafe keys, destinies; who just wanted to ask out that gorgeous girl he met, seriously asking out, who remained speechless for three hours, lost in a whirl of music and of people singing in a language he didn’t understand in the slightest, watching a fictional character who seemed real just as he was, who had the courage of going to hell just to say No and prove that he was the one who decided what was going to happen in his life and not someone else.
No, Desmond thinks. For another brief second another flash of thought says There’s no time but Charlie is closing the door already and...
No.
Desmond runs like he never ran in his life and his body is between the door and the wall in the exact moment in which Mikhail throws the grenade and water begins to flood everywhere. He feels a fucking sharp pain shooting through him because hell, Charlie has practically smashed him, but he tries to ignore it. He takes a breath and before Charlie can say anything Desmond tugs his arm and, realizing they’ll never be able to run since the water is rising too high, he motions for Charlie to take a breath and fucking swim. Charlie doesn’t seem too convinced but Desmond really doesn’t have the strength to talk and hopes the homicidal look he’s sending Charlie is enough for him to understand.
He starts swimming and checks whether Charlie is following. He feels the sun burning on his face, tastes the salt of the water on his lips, sharp and bitter; the boat is solid under his hands and he manages to help Charlie to get on board. Charlie coughs a few times and then looks at him.
Enraged, seemingly.
“Des, the bloody hell were you thinking?”
“What did she tell you?” he asks avoiding the question altogether.
“That isn’t her boat.”
Desmond suddenly feels sick but it isn’t time. Not here. Not now. They’ve got to hurry back.
“You haven’t answered me,” says Charlie again.
“Well, if that isn’t her boat, brother, I guess you don’t want Claire to go with anyone who’s there, do you?”
“But it was my...”
“No, brother, it wasn’t.”
“It was fate.”
“Wrong answer, Charlie. You can make your own,” Desmond answers.
“What happened to you?”
“Can’t one bloke realize he’s been wrong?” he replies.
Charlie first looks down, then smiles at him, shakes his head and starts helping him to move the boat. What did that other song say, make your own kind of music?
Well, screw fate, it was exactly what he was going to do from now on. Then he thinks at that brief moment in which he saw Penny and smiles slightly.
The fact that she’s searching for him makes him feel somewhat warm and it’s better than he has ever felt since a lot of time.
End.
Characters: Desmond, some Penny and Charlie, implied Des/Penny
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: Desmond isn't mine for sure and Mozart's stuff is, well, I guess his relatives have royalties?
Word count: 3500
Summary: For philosophy_20 prompt #11, extrinsic. The first time Desmond heard Mozart’s music, it was at his first job with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Spoilers: from 'Flashes Before Your Eyes' to the S3 finale; goes AU after it (means, uhm, Charlie lives).
A/N: I had wanted to do something on these lines since I saw 'Live Together Die Alone'; I think I really fell for Des when I found out he listened to Mozart. This has been sitting on my HD for at least a month and I still don't understand what to make of it, if it's any good or if it's too much of an exaggeration/if I pushed too much on the base of five seconds on show, but I really can't edit it all that much anymore and so it goes. Minor speculation about our man's younger days. About the Barbican Center, I actually researched and found out there's a theater there where the Royal Shakespeare Company set up some plays, though I don't know whether in the Hall they actually do opera and not only symphonic. Author's license, I guess. Now you can also read it with the dvd commentary turned on!
The Statue: Repent, change life. It’s your last chance!
Don Giovanni: No, no, I won’t. Stay away from me!
The Statue: Repent, wicked man!
Don Giovanni: No!
The Statue: Repent!
Don Giovanni: No!
From Don Giovanni, W. A. Mozart
--
The first time Desmond heard Mozart’s music, it was at his first job with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
He had moved to London after that disastrous monk experience. He had needed to go someplace else which was the complete contrary of what he was used to. Scotland didn’t fit the bill at all. It wasn’t like he was needed there, in the end. He didn’t feel like taking up studies again, it was too far from where he stood at that point and Eddington, it was a place he didn’t feel like staying in. It reminded him of Ruth, anyway. He sure wasn’t going back to the factory that had assured him, his mother, Micheal, Sean and Robert a roof over the head and dinner every evening and London seemed just what he needed. One of the biggest cities in the world, a crowd to get lost in, every possible opportunity displayed in front of him. And that lovely Penelope girl he met outside the monastery lived there. He had her number and her address; and it was a start to move in a big city when you already knew someone. So he packed what he needed, took all the money he had left, went to London and found himself an apartment, then searched for a job.
He had always been good at designing and helping with sets at a small theatre in Glasglow had been his second part-time job which brought him the money he didn’t send home; though, Desmond didn’t think he was going to get the job with the Royal Shakespeare when applying.
In the end he was wrong and the day he got the call, Desmond called Penny a minute after and suggested to celebrate his new employment with a meeting at the pub, which she gladly accepted. Nothing had happened, but Desmond came back home that evening feeling light like he hadn’t since his father passed away.
His first job was at the Pit at the Barbican Center. Him and another pal named Ernest or something like that had designed the set for some strangely placed version of Lady Windermere’s Fan and got free tickets for three evenings.
The first evening, he invited Penny along. The second one, he went by himself. The third he decided he was going to pass and he changed the ticket with one for some other event there at the Hall.
Desmond didn’t know why he exactly chose a showing of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Barbican Hall. Maybe because it was a rare happening, he knew that it was where the British Symphonic Orchestra played but he thought it was mostly symphonic music. Maybe because his mother was fond of opera records though Desmond never really paid much attention. Maybe because he wanted to try out something new.
He changed the ticket and got some very high seat in the gallery. He arrived half an hour earlier and bought a synopsis with a translation of the libretto. When the lights shut off, he wasn’t prepared at all.
It took thirty seconds for him to get completely lost in the music. Never in his life he had heard notes so powerful, so moving, so perfect but at the same so easy to get a grasp on. He suddenly felt overwhelmed, thinking that he had three hours of it in front of him. He also realized, at the end of the ouverture, that he had been holding his breath for the last minute.
At the end of the first act Desmond stood speechless in his seat, his hands trembling, his eyes fixed on the closed curtain. He sincerely couldn’t understand how could some music have that effect on him; he sure didn’t remember ever feeling so shaken by anything that concerned arts. Not a movie, not a painting and surely not music.
The second act didn’t disappoint him either, oh, not at all, even if he had overcome the first shock. This, until the scene in which the satue asks Don Giovanni to repent and he doesn’t.
No., he said each time; a cascade of Nos that seemed never to end, until the last one and until Hell opened under his feet.
The last segment of the opera didn’t catch Desmond’s attention at all, stuck as he was on that little word. It wasn’t only the fact that he didn’t repent and didn’t consider his life a sin; Desmond thought it was one of the most perfect representations of free will he had ever heard. Saying yes meant regretting his whole life, however it had been spent; it meant giving up his beliefs and choices and decisions, it meant playing accordingly to some commonly accepted rule.
But Don Giovanni says no and he denies it. True, he pays with his life, but what’s life in front of something so magnificent?
Desmond walked out of the hall shaken and wide eyed, like he had witnessed the greatest thing ever happened in mankind’s history; the day his paycheck came, first thing he paid the rent for the following month. Then went to a record shop, talked to the cash girl and came out with a comprehensive edition of Mozart’s works. Then he went to a bank where he had opened an account with all the money he brought from Scotland, saw that even if he didn’t have much he had enough to live for two months, took the rest of his paycheck, called Penny and asked her out on a proper dinner.
That night he kissed her for the first time and it had been also the first time they shared a bed.
--
Konstanze: Is it possible? Which delight, to press you to my breast, after so many days of grief!
Belmonte: Which delight, to find you! Now all grief must disappear! Oh, how pleased my heart is!
From The Abduction from the Serraglio, W.A. Mozart
--
The day he came back from Widmore’s office, it’d have been plain reductive to say he was enraged. He was beyond enraged and it wouldn’t have been a good idea to tell Penny all that he was thinking of her father right then. Oh, she might have agreed, point taken, but the problem was that he was agreeing with him on more than one thing and he didn’t want Penny to know just how bloody low his self-esteem was right then. Well, when one felt less worthy than a whiskey bottle, it meant his self-esteem was beyond low.
She understood how it went at once and she didn’t need any recap of the encounter, saying she could imagine it just fine.
Desmond shouldn’t have felt like crying in front of her when she told him he was a good man, at least good enough to marry her. That night he remembers making love to her and it being sweet, complete, filling, slow. It was his most resisting memory in years, the feeling of her skin under his hands, her hair against his face when he kissed the crook of her neck, how soft her lips felt, the way he felt like she was the only end he was ever going to reach. He remembered not feeling worthless at all.
--
Tamino: How sweet, how fair this likeness is, so sweet as never eye beheld! Its heavenly image fills my breast, my heart, with new emotion pressed, some quality I never could name, yet it burns with steady flame. Should this emotion love be called? Yes, it is to love I yeld! Ah, could I now but find her here! If to me she were near [...] I should embrace her tenderly, close to my heart in ecstasy, and then forever she’d be mine.
From The Magic Flute, W.A. Mozart
--
After that half of a breakdown, he didn’t put a foot outside.
Not at all.
He found The Magic Flute in the records he had never looked at and was caressing the covers, unable to believe he could find there something from a world he didn’t even remember anymore but that he missed, oh, he missed it, and it ached so much.
The alarm went off just then, he couldn’t believe 108 minutes had passed already. He went to the computer, inserted the goddamn bloody numbers and turned to the record player.
His hand shook while he put the first vinyl of The Magic Flute into the slot, heavenly music filling the air, reminding him of when he had brought Penny to some crazy Mozart marathon which lasted all day and for which she had blackmailed him for weeks. Sometimes he had this flashes of them together which he didn’t know whether to love or hate. It was a bit like a single drop of water given to a man who had been stranded in a desert for three days. A temporary relief, good enough for a second but too brief for lasting more than that; and after it, your oppression is worse than before.
He sat on the sofa, motionless, until the music quieted and left place to the first recitative, then stood up and walked a few steps around the room until the music started again and it was slow and sweet and wasn’t this the part when the hero sees the picture of the heroine and falls in love with her?, he thinks and his eyes fall on his and Penny’s picture which is there on a shelf and he starts crying.
He had no reason not to; no one was watching him and he wasn’t so far gone as to believe in ghosts. Not yet. No one was here to call him a coward except for himself. He just wanted her to be there and tell him he was a good man again; Desmond hadn’t believed it, for a long time, but whatever she told him, if she were there, he would have believed it. Maybe he would have believed whatever a stranger would say. But strangers, he thought, were the only thing that bloody island lacked.
He realized he was stuck alone in the middle of nowhere with a button to push and a little less than two hours to do it. This meant he wasn’t going to get any decent sleep, he wasn’t going to get to talk to anyone, he was only going to have a button to push for damn good company.
He decided to get over with it right then and waited for his own personal river of tears to stop until he got a grip on himself. He just sat again, closing his eyes and thinking only about the music, trying to get in tune with it and not with all the rest. Thinking that when you are the hero of the story and you’ve got to overcome trials and danger to get back with your beloved one, your life is definitely easier than one could think.
When the two lovers embrace at the end of the first act just to be separated soon after, the alarm started beeping, completely ruining the mood he was in.
Desmond guessed that you can’t escape reality forever.
--
I sigh and lament without wanting to, I twitter and tremble without knowing why, I find peace neither night nor day, but still I rather enjoy languishing this way. You who know what love is, ladies, see if I have it in my heart.
From Le Nozze di Figaro, W. A. Mozart
--
He was delighted to find his records safe in the Elizabeth.
Too bad that it was the only positive thing.
Forty days pushing that button alone were too much for someone to stay completely sane; but two and a half weeks of going around in a circle around that same, bloody, fucking piece of rock that he’s come to hate with all his heart, well, is enough to drive anyone completely insane even without having spent forty days pushing a button every 108 minutes.
So he does the only thing that can keep him sane. He lets the boat go wherever she likes, closes himself in the cabin and listens to music all the time in which he isn’t trying to sleep, which is always for no more than, what a surprise, 108 consecutive minutes.
Desmond knew every note by heart but it sure didn’t bore him. Listening to it all over again gave him something else to concentrate on, not to think about the fact that he was stuck, damn stuck, and that there was really no better that he could do. He was too far gone even for reading his book. He just drank, too desperate to do anything else, and actually started to flash those damn operas and he always was the male hero and Pen always was the heroine, fucked up as it was.
Most of the time he was just too wasted to do even that. He knew he wasn’t ever going to find some kind of peace, peace didn’t exist anymore in his world, and that was what he was thinking when someone started going around on his head, he started shooting and the doctor and the two other guys found him there.
--
Lucky is the man looks at everything on the bright side
And lets reason guide him through all circumstances and trials.
What makes others cry, is for him reason of laughter;
And in the middle of the world’s storms, he’s going to find a perfect peace.
From Così Fan Tutte, W. A. Mozart
--
He had almost thought he could make it.
The hatch exploded. The button didn’t exist anymore for anyone to push. And he actually found himself among other people. While the mere idea of it was enough to scare him for good, when someone offered him a tent and a long towel to sleep him first he tried not to break down crying, then took them with too many thanks and the actual setting hadn’t been too bad. The survivors were mostly friendly or at worst perplexed and he could understand why.
For an handful of hours, he believed he had found at least some of that peace of mind he had been longing for; the one that after you passed all the possible trials you can be forced through brings you in that happy place where you get to laugh when everyone else is scared and doesn’t know what to do and that makes you stand still in the middle of all the storms that can happen in everyone’s life. Penny was the only missing piece of the puzzle.
Then the first flash came.
Then the second.
Then Desmond understood that peace wasn’t a word which was meant to fit with him. He didn’t need this too. He didn’t need another responsibility, especially when it was a responsibility of that kind. At least, if the flashes weren’t only about Charlie, it would have been bearable, but they weren’t and after each time he saved him his head pounded louder.
He wanted to both laugh and cry at that situation. There wasn’t a bloody bright side to look on, really, because Charlie didn’t understand that it was for him and God help him, he probably was thinking that he was becoming interested in Claire of everyone, like he was going to fuck around camp a day after they took him in.
When Charlie got him drunk and Desmond had to spill it out, he almost felt lighter the morning after. Or at least his head felt much more clearer.
Desmond decided to try to think about it in some rational way.
If this was the next trial fate or that old hag or whatever had in store for him, he guessed there wasn’t much to do about it.
He could be the coward Mr Widmore thought him to be, leave Charlie be and do nothing. Which eventually would have brought Charlie to some certain death.
Or he could keep on trying and fight it because what the hell, he was repenting of having done what that hag said he was going to do in first place.
He looked at his side, where Charlie was playing guitar and a few people were listening.
Well, brother, seems you can’t get out of this, he thought standing up and walking in the opposite direction, feeling the burning sand shift under his bare feet and a fresh breeze blowing through his hair.
And if Charlie had an appointment with fate, Desmond was going to make sure it was postponed as much as possible.
--
The Statue: You invited me to dinner, now you know your duty. Answer me: will you come to dinner with me?
Don Giovanni: No one’s going to ever accuse me of cowardice. [..]
The Statue: Will you come?
Don Giovanni: My heart is steady in my breast. I’m not afraid, I’ll come. […]
Don Giovanni: Which cold is this?
The Statue: Repent, change life. It’s your last chance!
Don Giovanni: No, no, I won’t. Stay away from me!
The Statue: Repent, wicked man!
Don Giovanni: No!
The Statue: Repent!
Don Giovanni: No!
The Statue: There’s no time anymore.
From Don Giovanni, W. A. Mozart
--
When Desmond sees Charlie in that room, Penny (Penny!) on the monitor or whatever it is and that Other outside the window about to shoot the grenade, he understands at once what Charlie is going to do.
He wants to close that door and fucking drown there like... like his bloody flashes said.
It’s destiny, Desmond thinks for a second. It’s destiny, it’s got to be fulfilled, it’s how it’s supposed to be, it must end like this and it was meant to end here anyway. Yes.
But then he has another flash and it’s a different one. It’s the flash of a man who couldn’t imagine the mere existence of islands, hatches, timers, failsafe keys, destinies; who just wanted to ask out that gorgeous girl he met, seriously asking out, who remained speechless for three hours, lost in a whirl of music and of people singing in a language he didn’t understand in the slightest, watching a fictional character who seemed real just as he was, who had the courage of going to hell just to say No and prove that he was the one who decided what was going to happen in his life and not someone else.
No, Desmond thinks. For another brief second another flash of thought says There’s no time but Charlie is closing the door already and...
No.
Desmond runs like he never ran in his life and his body is between the door and the wall in the exact moment in which Mikhail throws the grenade and water begins to flood everywhere. He feels a fucking sharp pain shooting through him because hell, Charlie has practically smashed him, but he tries to ignore it. He takes a breath and before Charlie can say anything Desmond tugs his arm and, realizing they’ll never be able to run since the water is rising too high, he motions for Charlie to take a breath and fucking swim. Charlie doesn’t seem too convinced but Desmond really doesn’t have the strength to talk and hopes the homicidal look he’s sending Charlie is enough for him to understand.
He starts swimming and checks whether Charlie is following. He feels the sun burning on his face, tastes the salt of the water on his lips, sharp and bitter; the boat is solid under his hands and he manages to help Charlie to get on board. Charlie coughs a few times and then looks at him.
Enraged, seemingly.
“Des, the bloody hell were you thinking?”
“What did she tell you?” he asks avoiding the question altogether.
“That isn’t her boat.”
Desmond suddenly feels sick but it isn’t time. Not here. Not now. They’ve got to hurry back.
“You haven’t answered me,” says Charlie again.
“Well, if that isn’t her boat, brother, I guess you don’t want Claire to go with anyone who’s there, do you?”
“But it was my...”
“No, brother, it wasn’t.”
“It was fate.”
“Wrong answer, Charlie. You can make your own,” Desmond answers.
“What happened to you?”
“Can’t one bloke realize he’s been wrong?” he replies.
Charlie first looks down, then smiles at him, shakes his head and starts helping him to move the boat. What did that other song say, make your own kind of music?
Well, screw fate, it was exactly what he was going to do from now on. Then he thinks at that brief moment in which he saw Penny and smiles slightly.
The fact that she’s searching for him makes him feel somewhat warm and it’s better than he has ever felt since a lot of time.
End.