Gift for Queen elliotsmelliot: a Desmond: The Missing Years fic
This is for Queen elliotsmelliot, which many apologies for the delay, but as usual with my fics, it just kept getting longer than I'd planned. I hope she'll enjoy it. :)
Title: Where You Go From Here
Author: hollycomb
Rating: PG
Characters: Desmond/Penny, Daniel
Summary: Years after escaping the Island, Desmond is in hiding with Penny when Daniel Faraday shows up at their door.
Notes: For Queen elliotsmelliot, who asked for Desmond: The Missing Years.
Desmond wakes up when he hears Penny shouting his name through the house. He's disoriented for a moment, and looks about the room. He's sitting at his desk, his back aching terribly. He fell asleep balancing his cheque book. Or maybe it was less like sleep and more like having a blanket thrown suddenly over his head. He stands up, and tries to think about anything but the growing list of incidents like this.
"Des?" she calls, and he comes to the landing of the modest two story cottage that they can barely afford. He pushes that thought away, too, and it's not hard to do when he recognizes the man standing in the front doorway, surrounded by late afternoon sunlight but still managing to look rather unglorious, slightly shriveled.
"Daniel?" Desmond stays on the landing, Penny frowning up at him in confusion. No one from their past knows what's become of them. They've got new names and no money and this is Desmond's biggest fear, someone discovering them and bringing it all back upon them, but he still breaks into a stupid grin when Daniel waves and offers a nervous smile.
"Come in, come in," Penny says once she's seen Desmond's reaction, and she draws Daniel inside, takes his bag. Desmond hurries down the stairs, the relief at seeing an old friend slowing giving way to curiosity about why he's come, and then the first touch of panic.
"How did you find us?" he asks, keeping his tone calm for Penny, and for Daniel, too, who looks frightened. Desmond hugs him, which is a bit awkward but probably what's called for. Daniel is all bones and sweat, and he's out of breath from the long walk up their drive. Their nearest neighbor lives ten miles down the coast.
"I, um." Daniel laughs, wrings his hands. "It's kind of a long story."
"You look exhausted," Penny says. "Come and sit down, I'll get you a glass of water."
"Oh, thanks, I, well. It's been a long day." Daniel looks up at Desmond once he's seated on the couch, as if he's waiting to be more aggressively questioned. Penny gives him a look of her own before heading into the kitchen to busy herself with refreshments, and Desmond smiles at her, hopes she won't notice the slight shake in his bottom lip.
"I'm sorry to come here like this." Daniel pulls his hands through his hair. Desmond wants to offer him things: bandages, a blanket? He looks like the survivor of some cosmic disaster, and Desmond wonders how long ago he left the Island.
"It's alright, brother. But, if you don't mind my asking, why have you come?"
Daniel rubs at the knees of his corduroy pants. He looks up at Desmond with the unguarded sincerity he always offers when he's not ranting in excitement about a scientific theory.
"I sort of, um. Needed? To see you?"
"Has something happened?" Desmond asks. "Has -- does anyone else know that we're here?"
"No, no, I -- I didn't tell anyone. I won't."
"And how did you find us?"
"That might, um, take a bit of explaining --"
"Here we are," Penny says, entering with two bottles: water and whiskey. "I'm not sure which sort of occasion this is exactly," she says, holding them both up.
"I'd better stick to water, thanks," Daniel says.
"Des?" she asks, going to their chipped sideboard for glasses.
"The usual," he says, and she grins, pours two glasses of whiskey, neat.
"To old friends, then?" Penny says when they've all got their glasses. "Daniel introduced himself as an old friend."
"Right," Desmond says, lifting his glass for a toast. Daniel, who is already gulping water, raises a hand in acknowledgment.
"How do you two know each other, then?" Penny asks.
"From Oxford," Daniel says breathlessly before Desmond can begin to try and explain.
"Suddenly you were at Oxford?" Penny says, raising an eyebrow in Desmond's direction.
"Not technically." Desmond takes another drink. "Not enrolled. But yeah. I was there."
*
They put Daniel up in the guest room that should be the nursery by now. Three years in, and it's still got only a twin bed and a small bookcase where a cradle and changing table might be. Desmond is reluctant to leave Daniel alone in the room, mostly because he looks like he's afraid he might be kidnapped.
"Did you get enough to eat?" Desmond asks, going to the bookcase to run his fingers over the dusty spines of novels Penny read in college.
"Yes, yes, thank you. You really -- I appreciate this, you have no idea."
"It's nothing. We're glad to have you." It's true, at least for Desmond. He'll learn Penny's true opinion of this reunion when they've switched off their bedroom lamp and rolled together at the center of their bed.
"We're almost afraid to talk about it, ya know?" he says. He sits at the end of Daniel's bed, and Daniel puts his legs under the covers like a child waiting for a bedtime story. "That place, and everyone -- who helped us. I still don't understand everything that happened -- to me, to any of them. I traveled through time," he announces with renewed surprise. He's never said it out loud.
"Yeah," Daniel says with eerie solemnity. "You did."
"Seeing you makes me feel a bit more sane, like I didn't just imagine the whole thing after all. You know what I mean?"
Daniel looks down at his lap, laughs.
"Yes," he says slowly, raising his eyes to Desmond's again. "I know exactly what you mean."
Desmond looks out the window; the wind is strong tonight, a storm is coming. He feels doomed around Daniel, always has, but only relationally, as if it's Daniel who is doomed and he's only doomed to fail at saving him.
"How did you leave the Island?" Desmond finally asks.
"Unpleasantly," Daniel says, his voice almost pinched away.
Desmond says goodnight and leaves him, understanding at once that this is the end of their conversation. He hurries down the hall to his bedroom and the familiar sight of Penny, reclining against a stack of pillows and wearing her reading glasses. She watches him shut the door.
"He's odd," she says before he can ask. "But sort of uniquely . . . kind?"
"Aye, he's that."
"Seems trustworthy," Penny says, book in her lap, frowning slightly. Desmond undresses and nods.
"What's happening?" she asks when he turns to her again.
"I don't know," he answers honestly, and he stands there for awhile, as if he's waiting for permission to fall into the comfort of their bed. She pats his pillow, and he's grateful for the gesture, slides against her.
"I don't think it's anything bad," she whispers when their faces are together. "But. You know that feeling when someone's died, and your family gathers and there's food and talk and drink and at moments you forget why you're together and it's just sort of blasphemously -- not joyful but fleetingly comfortable?"
Desmond nods. In his family it was mostly drink, but those aren't unhappy memories.
"That's how I feel," she says. "Do you know what I mean?"
Desmond sniffs appreciatively, strokes her cheek.
"I know exactly what you mean, love."
*
Desmond leaves for work at four o'clock in the morning, and spends the day pulling crab traps. It's a joke he wishes he could tell everybody he meets, the fact that he makes his living on a boat, but the background information is too clumsy, would spoil the humor.
He considers going home for lunch, worries about Penny and Daniel alone in the house together, that the combined value of them might draw the attention of some malevolent force. He thinks that this must be what having children is like, but Daniel is a grown man with his own agenda. Desmond doesn't understand his own disinterest in discovering the reason Daniel has found him, or even how, but he feels weightless and not especially concerned. He slept well, and he hasn't blinked away any blackouts so far today.
When his shift ends at four o'clock in the afternoon, he drives home with a sense of impatient trepidation. He doesn't really feel as if he'll find anything in disarray back at the house, but he does have an uneasy sense of missing some opportunity, being held away from something important as he makes the long drive back to the cottage.
He finds Penny and Daniel in the garden, standing in silence and staring at something with rapt attention. When he walks up behind them Penny turns and puts a finger to her lips. Daniel smiles at him with something that would look like pity on anyone else, but his expression is constantly one of sympathetic disappointment.
"A hummingbird," Penny whispers. Desmond holds his breath and stands beside her, slips an arm around her shoulders. She reaches up to put a hand over his and they watch the bird drinking from the bell-shaped blossoms on the vine that grows over the east wall of their backyard fence.
"They look like aliens," Daniel says. "The way they move."
"It's the first one I've seen this summer," Penny says.
The hummingbird is just a little green shine, a winged coin moving from flower to flower. Desmond wants to go in the house to wash up and have a beer, but he stays in place, in reverence of their moment.
"Have you been watching birds all day?" he asks when the tiny fellow flies off and disappears into the dense green of the hickory tree that leans over their property.
"We went into town," Penny says as the three of them walk into the house. Desmond is startled by the idea, as if Daniel is a secret they need to keep.
"Did you?"
"I'm afraid this isn't much of a tourist destination," Penny says. "I showed Dan the library and the bakery, tried to talk him into getting his hair cut at the barber shop for a bit of excitement. He wouldn't hear about it, though."
"I don't always like people touching me," Daniel says. He laughs at himself, embarrassed. "I mean, uh. That came out wrong."
"Whiskey?" Penny asks, skipping over to the sideboard.
Desmond thinks: this is the part where we remember why we're together. Someone died. But that's just the metaphor, unless Daniel has come bearing some bad news. It's something else that's dead, or maybe the problem is that it's not dead enough.
After dinner they linger in the sitting room, all retired to their studies: Penny catches up on her grant writing work, Daniel jots in his journal, and Desmond pages through Don Quixote, which Penny told him he must read.
"How are you liking that?" she asks him at one point. Desmond looks up from the book, heavy-eyed. He usually goes to bed much earlier.
"It's funnier than I expected," he says.
"Isn't it a relief when things are?" Penny is a little drunk, should probably put her work away for the evening. Daniel laughs into his journal.
"Sorry," he says, looking up. "But that's -- that was -- that's true."
"No need to apologize," Penny says. Sometimes she puts her regal airs back on, though never unkindly. Desmond smiles, likes to hear her boarding school lilt return once in awhile.
*
When Desmond comes home the following afternoon, there is a hummingbird feeder hanging in the garden. Penny is at the kitchen counter slicing apples and tossing them into a giant bowl that is already overflowing with apple slices. Daniel is sitting at the table and staring out at the garden, a book open in front of him. For the first time since he arrived, Desmond wonders how long he plans on staying.
"You're cooking?" Desmond says with surprise, and she gives him a mock offended look.
"I thought I'd make a tart for dinner. For dessert, I mean."
"Looks like you've enough there to make three. I guess you were at the market today?"
"Should we not be at the market?" Penny asks, and Desmond wasn't aware that his paranoia was so clearly resident in his tone.
"No, love, it's fine, it's great." He smiles at her and then Daniel, who is watching them now. "You know I'm fond of tarts," he jokes, but she only turns back to her cutting.
After dinner, and a bit of overly crispy tart -- Penny got distracted watching the hummingbird discover the new feeder -- Desmond tries and fails to teach Daniel how to play poker.
"It's not as complicated as you're making it, brother," he says.
"I think I -- want it to be more complicated?" Daniel says. Desmond looks up to find Penny dosing on the couch, hugging a cushion over her stomach.
"We should go for a walk," Desmond says. Daniel strokes his beard, nods at the floor.
They walk down toward the coast but stay just at the edge of the beach. The night is warm and the wind is still strong. Desmond has been waiting for a hurricane all summer, thinks the countryside could do with a bit of cleansing. Nothing catastrophic of course, just something loud.
"Hasn't rain since you've been here," he says, thinking aloud. Daniel shrugs.
"Is that unusual?"
"Not yet."
Desmond stops walking when they're roughly a mile from the house, and Daniel turns back. He seems to know what's coming.
"Aren't you going to tell me anything?" Desmond says, and he feels guilty immediately, as if he's breaking a peace treaty. But having Daniel in his home makes him vulnerable to an old destiny that might still reclaim him, and he can't shoulder it much longer without a clear reason.
"Well--" Daniel shuffles in his expert way. "What do you want to know?"
"Anything. How you found us here, how you got off the Island, what the hell -- I mean -- why you came here at all. To shop for bird feeders with Penny? It's all well and good but it's not making a whole lot of sense."
"Actually, uh." Daniel scratches his head. "I always liked you, or appreciated you, I guess, or -- well, both, really -- because you kind of took things at face value? Like with the whole, um. Time travel experience?"
Desmond draws his hands through his hair, groans. He looks at the ocean for awhile, checking it for the storm that is still just the smallest threat, a smell on the air, the dry cool before the damp. The sanctuary he's found here with Penny is tenuous, even after three years, when it's begun to feel like nothing can touch them anymore. He knows that this a poisonous sort of feeling, that it spreads easily and numbs the senses.
"Like, looking back, I sort of can't believe you cooperated," Daniel says.
"Dan!" Desmond coughs up a laugh. "I was the one convincing you to help me, remember?"
"Oh, yeah."
Desmond has the odd impulse to hug him, puts his hands on his hips to stop himself. His memory of jumping through time is hazy at best, but he does recall the smell of Daniel's office at Oxford, chalk and stale sunlight, and the gratefulness that bloomed through him until he felt crazy with hope, when someone actually listened to him, believed him.
"Alright," he says, placing a hand on Daniel's shoulder. "You don't have to explain."
"It's just that, um." Daniel lets out his breath. "It's been hard. I've been having a hard time -- and -- this helps. Not having to, you know. Say it out loud. I can't decide if that's good or bad yet."
"I guess you're leaning toward good," Desmond says, slinging an arm around his shoulders and leading him back toward the house.
"Yeah, good, well. I usually try to lean toward that."
When they reach the front walk, Desmond glances through the windows and sees the living room couch empty. He tries to steady himself, but his hand is already shaking when he reaches to open the door. He leaves Daniel in the foyer and hurries through the house, checking the kitchen, the backyard, the sitting room, then bolts up the stairs.
"Penny?" he calls, his voice too raw already. When he throws open the bedroom door and stares in, breathless, Penny frowns at him from the bed, her knees pulled to her chest, a grant proposal spread across them.
"Des? What's the matter?"
He shuts the door behind him, shakes his head. He feels like he should wash up before he gets near her, needs to scrub his brief panic away. He's still coated with it, and it feels contagious in the worst way.
"Nothing's wrong," he says. He sits on the bed, pulls off his boots. "Or maybe it is. What's he doing here, Penny? I know he doesn't mean us any harm, but he might bring it."
"No, no, I don't think so."
"How can you be so bloody sure?"
She gives him a long look, and he sighs.
"I don't mean to shout --"
"Do you want him to go, Des?"
"No, and that's the part I don't understand. He's -- I feel like I'm contented when I shouldn't be. And he won't tell me how he found us, won't even tell me what he's doing here, why he's come."
"Well, he's told me," Penny says, and Desmond turns around to look at her fully. He finds her most beautiful like this, sitting in bed and preparing for a night of sleep beside him. It's a simple comfort that for a long time he stopped knowing how to even wish for.
"He has?"
"Yes, today in the garden."
"Well? And what is it then?"
She watches him for a moment, and he can't tell if she's looking straight into him or right through him.
"Now I'm not sure I should tell you."
Desmond throws up his hands and lets them fall heavily to his knees. He walks into the bathroom to have a shower, doesn't want to admit to even himself that he's actually relieved not to know.
*
On Daniel's second week of house guesting, Desmond has a day off of work and Penny talks him into a picnic on the beach. She goes to the market early, and returns with bags of special cheese and fragrant bread, begins collecting utensils and cloth napkins.
"What will Daniel do all day?" Desmond asks, sitting at the table and watching her work.
"He'll come with us, of course."
Desmond expects Daniel to politely decline, but he is attached enough to his afternoons with Penny that he agrees. As they walk down to the beach with their supplies, Desmond wonders if Daniel is in love with his wife, but decides he probably isn't, because if he actually was, Desmond wouldn't be so amused by the idea.
"Did you go to the beach often, growing up?" Penny asks Daniel when they arrive.
"No, we were, um. We lived in Detroit, so."
"Detroit! Why does that sound glamorous to me? Have they got gangsters or something?"
"Yeah, or, they did. At one point. And cars. I mean, production plants, and, you know."
Desmond uncorks the bottle of Rioja that Penny brought along. Sometimes listening to Daniel talk is rather exhausting. He's huddled under the umbrella Desmond put up, though the sun is behind a sky-spanning layer of pale clouds.
"Too bad we haven't got better weather," Penny says, holding her hat on her head when the wind picks up. "Oh, and we'll have sand in everything. It's been so windy lately."
"We can thank the wind for blowing Dan in, I think," Desmond says. He waits to see a look of secret acknowledgment between Penny and Daniel, if he even explained to her how he got here and not just why he came, but they're both looking at him.
"Yeah, you know, the last three years have felt a lot like that," Daniel says.
"Like what?" Penny asks when he doesn't continue.
"Like wind," he says.
"You know, my father went to Oxford," Penny says, as if this explains everything. Desmond laughs into his hand and she grins, swats at him.
"What did he study?" Daniel asks.
"World domination," Desmond says.
"He was on scholarship for it," Penny adds, and she and Desmond laugh until they've fallen onto each other.
They finish off the bottle of wine and then another. Desmond is surprised that Daniel drinks at all. He's got to stop thinking of him as a child, a boy who wandered in off the street looking for shelter. He's a brilliant scientist; he saved Desmond's life. But still, when the wind comes in harder, Desmond stands and drapes a towel around his shoulders.
"You look cold," he shouts over the crashing noise of the ocean and the blank sound of the wind whipping by. Daniel lets the towel fall to his waist and pulls the ends tight, as if he's buckling himself down.
"I hope the hummingbird is alright," Penny says.
"Think we should head back up?" Desmond asks. He's ready for a bath and a nap before dinner.
"Not yet," Penny says. She flips her hair away from her face, grins at him. "It's really kind of fantastic, isn't it?"
"Being beaten by the wind?"
"Yeah," Daniel says, surprising them both. "It's, like. You know. It makes you feel, like, heavy. Like you're in one place."
"You are in one place, darling," Penny says. She gets up and walks toward the ocean, laughing as she's nearly tipped over by the gales.
"We should go in," Desmond says, though he loves the sight of her laughing in the face of danger. It's what's kept them alive so far.
"Wait," Daniel says. As if on cue, the umbrella shoots up from the sand and sails over their heads. They watch it twirl out over the ocean, and Penny waves to it as it goes.
*
Two days later Desmond's alarm goes off at the usual time, well before sunrise, and he moans his way out of bed, dresses in the dark. Penny has become accustomed to his early hours and doesn't stir, the perfect curve of her back under the blankets an invitation he can't accept often enough.
He goes downstairs yawning, and realizes when he reaches the first floor why things sound strangely quiet. The wind has stopped for the first time in weeks. Outside, everything is still. He receives this as an omen and has an impulse to go upstairs and check on Daniel.
Before he can, he sees Daniel in the kitchen, looking out the back window. Desmond jumps a bit even when he's already realized who it is. He has the sick sort of feeling that this is only a ghost, that if he goes upstairs he'll find another Daniel asleep in bed.
"Oh, hey," Daniel says. "I fixed your stove."
"You -- what?"
"It was -- Penny was complaining that the back burners weren't firing, so I took a look at it, and, um, well, I fixed it."
"Thanks. You got up at half past three to fix the stove?"
"No, I'm actually, um. Leaving, so."
"Oh." Desmond takes a seat at the kitchen table, has lost his appetite for breakfast. "You don't have to, you know. You can stay."
"I know. I know. It's -- I've got research to do."
"Where will you go?"
"Back to America for awhile."
"Will we see you again?"
"Oh, definitely, definitely!"
Desmond gets the feeling he doesn't mean this. Daniel stutters and hesitates less often when he's lying.
"It's funny that we sat on a beach together the other day," Daniel says. "It was like, I don't know. Coming full circle." He forces a laugh.
"Aye, I suppose. Have you said goodbye to Penny?"
"I actually. Can't?"
Desmond doesn't know how to respond to that. He stands, and sees that the small, filthy duffel bag Daniel arrived with is packed and sitting at his feet.
"Need a ride to the airport?" Desmond asks. "The train station? Bus stop?" He doesn't know why, but he hopes with everything he has that Daniel will say yes.
"I can't," Daniel says again.
"Did you find what you came for?" Desmond asks with a doubtful scoff. He still feels that he's bidding goodbye only to Daniel's ghost, that he'll keep some more important Daniel here in the house regardless of this one's departure.
"Yeah," Daniel says. "I did, actually."
Desmond doesn't watch him walk away from the house, feels both forbidden and afraid to witness his disappearance. He walks upstairs and checks the guest bedroom. The twin bed is made up with a lumpy attempt at neatness that rends his heart.
He considers staying home from work, but can't risk losing his job. Upstairs, Penny is still fast asleep. He can't let her wake up and simply find Daniel gone, so he sits beside her, already late for work, and brushes her hair away from her face.
"Pen," he whispers. "Penny?"
She moans in annoyed acknowledgment and slides her hand against his side.
"I'm on my way to work," Desmond says. "I just wanted to tell you, Daniel left. He had to go -- something about work, his research. Penny? Are you awake, love?
"Des? What's wrong?"
"Nothing -- I -- Daniel's gone. He says goodbye."
"Oh." She keeps her eyes shut, doesn't move even an eyebrow.
"I'll see you this afternoon?"
"Have a good day," she murmurs. Desmond isn't sure she's understood, but at least he tried.
Work is slow and long, the ocean unnaturally calm. The sky is orange-tinted in a post-apocalyptic way, and the air is too thin. Desmond thinks about calling Penny at lunch, but he hasn't got any change for the pay phone on the dock.
When his shift is over he drives home expecting to find Daniel in the garden with Penny, watching the bird feeder, his mind changed and his sails turned around. He parks out front and lingers nervously in his truck, then curses himself and climbs out.
Penny is in the kitchen when he comes in, standing at the window. He's not surprised when she turns and has tears in her eyes. Daniel meant something to her even before she met him. Desmond told her Daniel saved his life. He never got into the specifics of how, not because he thought she wouldn't believe him, but because it had all become so jumbled and sacred in his mind, he was afraid that if he said it out loud he would start to doubt it himself.
He goes to Penny without speaking and wraps her into his arms. She exhales a sob that sounds surprised, a kind of stuttered gasp. He pets her hair, kisses her head.
"I'm such a fool," she says, trying to smile up at him. "Look at me, in tears because the hummingbird's gone. He used to come every day, in the morning and evening, and now he's just gone."
"He's fine," Desmond says. "Don't worry about the little fellow. Birds know how to survive in strong winds, and now it's stopped. He'll be back."
"Des." Penny looks at him like he's mad. "He won't be back, not this year anyway. I'm not worried he got swept away. He's migrated, you see? I knew it was coming. Daniel told me it was nearly the season for it. It's nature, it's what they do, but here I am crying like an infant. It's just so frightening to think about. They fly five hundred miles over the ocean, all by themselves."
Desmond wipes her cheeks, thinks she must be really thinking of Daniel, alone on his mysterious journey, pulled away by forces unknowable.
"It's rather like you were," Penny says. "Alone for so long. Away."
He leans in to kiss her, but she speaks again before he can.
"You know he was in love with you, don't you?"
"Sorry -- what?"
"Daniel Faraday. He told me you were his constant. He told me he would have vanished if he hadn't found you. He would have died."
"Oh, Penny."
He doesn't know what else to say, but she lets him kiss her this time, and he doesn't need to explain. He thinks of the hummingbird out over the ocean, and just a week ago in the garden, when Daniel spotted him sitting on a tendril that grew from the vines on the fence.
"It's funny to actually see him sit still," he said. "I didn't think he had it in him."
*
Title: Where You Go From Here
Author: hollycomb
Rating: PG
Characters: Desmond/Penny, Daniel
Summary: Years after escaping the Island, Desmond is in hiding with Penny when Daniel Faraday shows up at their door.
Notes: For Queen elliotsmelliot, who asked for Desmond: The Missing Years.
Desmond wakes up when he hears Penny shouting his name through the house. He's disoriented for a moment, and looks about the room. He's sitting at his desk, his back aching terribly. He fell asleep balancing his cheque book. Or maybe it was less like sleep and more like having a blanket thrown suddenly over his head. He stands up, and tries to think about anything but the growing list of incidents like this.
"Des?" she calls, and he comes to the landing of the modest two story cottage that they can barely afford. He pushes that thought away, too, and it's not hard to do when he recognizes the man standing in the front doorway, surrounded by late afternoon sunlight but still managing to look rather unglorious, slightly shriveled.
"Daniel?" Desmond stays on the landing, Penny frowning up at him in confusion. No one from their past knows what's become of them. They've got new names and no money and this is Desmond's biggest fear, someone discovering them and bringing it all back upon them, but he still breaks into a stupid grin when Daniel waves and offers a nervous smile.
"Come in, come in," Penny says once she's seen Desmond's reaction, and she draws Daniel inside, takes his bag. Desmond hurries down the stairs, the relief at seeing an old friend slowing giving way to curiosity about why he's come, and then the first touch of panic.
"How did you find us?" he asks, keeping his tone calm for Penny, and for Daniel, too, who looks frightened. Desmond hugs him, which is a bit awkward but probably what's called for. Daniel is all bones and sweat, and he's out of breath from the long walk up their drive. Their nearest neighbor lives ten miles down the coast.
"I, um." Daniel laughs, wrings his hands. "It's kind of a long story."
"You look exhausted," Penny says. "Come and sit down, I'll get you a glass of water."
"Oh, thanks, I, well. It's been a long day." Daniel looks up at Desmond once he's seated on the couch, as if he's waiting to be more aggressively questioned. Penny gives him a look of her own before heading into the kitchen to busy herself with refreshments, and Desmond smiles at her, hopes she won't notice the slight shake in his bottom lip.
"I'm sorry to come here like this." Daniel pulls his hands through his hair. Desmond wants to offer him things: bandages, a blanket? He looks like the survivor of some cosmic disaster, and Desmond wonders how long ago he left the Island.
"It's alright, brother. But, if you don't mind my asking, why have you come?"
Daniel rubs at the knees of his corduroy pants. He looks up at Desmond with the unguarded sincerity he always offers when he's not ranting in excitement about a scientific theory.
"I sort of, um. Needed? To see you?"
"Has something happened?" Desmond asks. "Has -- does anyone else know that we're here?"
"No, no, I -- I didn't tell anyone. I won't."
"And how did you find us?"
"That might, um, take a bit of explaining --"
"Here we are," Penny says, entering with two bottles: water and whiskey. "I'm not sure which sort of occasion this is exactly," she says, holding them both up.
"I'd better stick to water, thanks," Daniel says.
"Des?" she asks, going to their chipped sideboard for glasses.
"The usual," he says, and she grins, pours two glasses of whiskey, neat.
"To old friends, then?" Penny says when they've all got their glasses. "Daniel introduced himself as an old friend."
"Right," Desmond says, lifting his glass for a toast. Daniel, who is already gulping water, raises a hand in acknowledgment.
"How do you two know each other, then?" Penny asks.
"From Oxford," Daniel says breathlessly before Desmond can begin to try and explain.
"Suddenly you were at Oxford?" Penny says, raising an eyebrow in Desmond's direction.
"Not technically." Desmond takes another drink. "Not enrolled. But yeah. I was there."
*
They put Daniel up in the guest room that should be the nursery by now. Three years in, and it's still got only a twin bed and a small bookcase where a cradle and changing table might be. Desmond is reluctant to leave Daniel alone in the room, mostly because he looks like he's afraid he might be kidnapped.
"Did you get enough to eat?" Desmond asks, going to the bookcase to run his fingers over the dusty spines of novels Penny read in college.
"Yes, yes, thank you. You really -- I appreciate this, you have no idea."
"It's nothing. We're glad to have you." It's true, at least for Desmond. He'll learn Penny's true opinion of this reunion when they've switched off their bedroom lamp and rolled together at the center of their bed.
"We're almost afraid to talk about it, ya know?" he says. He sits at the end of Daniel's bed, and Daniel puts his legs under the covers like a child waiting for a bedtime story. "That place, and everyone -- who helped us. I still don't understand everything that happened -- to me, to any of them. I traveled through time," he announces with renewed surprise. He's never said it out loud.
"Yeah," Daniel says with eerie solemnity. "You did."
"Seeing you makes me feel a bit more sane, like I didn't just imagine the whole thing after all. You know what I mean?"
Daniel looks down at his lap, laughs.
"Yes," he says slowly, raising his eyes to Desmond's again. "I know exactly what you mean."
Desmond looks out the window; the wind is strong tonight, a storm is coming. He feels doomed around Daniel, always has, but only relationally, as if it's Daniel who is doomed and he's only doomed to fail at saving him.
"How did you leave the Island?" Desmond finally asks.
"Unpleasantly," Daniel says, his voice almost pinched away.
Desmond says goodnight and leaves him, understanding at once that this is the end of their conversation. He hurries down the hall to his bedroom and the familiar sight of Penny, reclining against a stack of pillows and wearing her reading glasses. She watches him shut the door.
"He's odd," she says before he can ask. "But sort of uniquely . . . kind?"
"Aye, he's that."
"Seems trustworthy," Penny says, book in her lap, frowning slightly. Desmond undresses and nods.
"What's happening?" she asks when he turns to her again.
"I don't know," he answers honestly, and he stands there for awhile, as if he's waiting for permission to fall into the comfort of their bed. She pats his pillow, and he's grateful for the gesture, slides against her.
"I don't think it's anything bad," she whispers when their faces are together. "But. You know that feeling when someone's died, and your family gathers and there's food and talk and drink and at moments you forget why you're together and it's just sort of blasphemously -- not joyful but fleetingly comfortable?"
Desmond nods. In his family it was mostly drink, but those aren't unhappy memories.
"That's how I feel," she says. "Do you know what I mean?"
Desmond sniffs appreciatively, strokes her cheek.
"I know exactly what you mean, love."
*
Desmond leaves for work at four o'clock in the morning, and spends the day pulling crab traps. It's a joke he wishes he could tell everybody he meets, the fact that he makes his living on a boat, but the background information is too clumsy, would spoil the humor.
He considers going home for lunch, worries about Penny and Daniel alone in the house together, that the combined value of them might draw the attention of some malevolent force. He thinks that this must be what having children is like, but Daniel is a grown man with his own agenda. Desmond doesn't understand his own disinterest in discovering the reason Daniel has found him, or even how, but he feels weightless and not especially concerned. He slept well, and he hasn't blinked away any blackouts so far today.
When his shift ends at four o'clock in the afternoon, he drives home with a sense of impatient trepidation. He doesn't really feel as if he'll find anything in disarray back at the house, but he does have an uneasy sense of missing some opportunity, being held away from something important as he makes the long drive back to the cottage.
He finds Penny and Daniel in the garden, standing in silence and staring at something with rapt attention. When he walks up behind them Penny turns and puts a finger to her lips. Daniel smiles at him with something that would look like pity on anyone else, but his expression is constantly one of sympathetic disappointment.
"A hummingbird," Penny whispers. Desmond holds his breath and stands beside her, slips an arm around her shoulders. She reaches up to put a hand over his and they watch the bird drinking from the bell-shaped blossoms on the vine that grows over the east wall of their backyard fence.
"They look like aliens," Daniel says. "The way they move."
"It's the first one I've seen this summer," Penny says.
The hummingbird is just a little green shine, a winged coin moving from flower to flower. Desmond wants to go in the house to wash up and have a beer, but he stays in place, in reverence of their moment.
"Have you been watching birds all day?" he asks when the tiny fellow flies off and disappears into the dense green of the hickory tree that leans over their property.
"We went into town," Penny says as the three of them walk into the house. Desmond is startled by the idea, as if Daniel is a secret they need to keep.
"Did you?"
"I'm afraid this isn't much of a tourist destination," Penny says. "I showed Dan the library and the bakery, tried to talk him into getting his hair cut at the barber shop for a bit of excitement. He wouldn't hear about it, though."
"I don't always like people touching me," Daniel says. He laughs at himself, embarrassed. "I mean, uh. That came out wrong."
"Whiskey?" Penny asks, skipping over to the sideboard.
Desmond thinks: this is the part where we remember why we're together. Someone died. But that's just the metaphor, unless Daniel has come bearing some bad news. It's something else that's dead, or maybe the problem is that it's not dead enough.
After dinner they linger in the sitting room, all retired to their studies: Penny catches up on her grant writing work, Daniel jots in his journal, and Desmond pages through Don Quixote, which Penny told him he must read.
"How are you liking that?" she asks him at one point. Desmond looks up from the book, heavy-eyed. He usually goes to bed much earlier.
"It's funnier than I expected," he says.
"Isn't it a relief when things are?" Penny is a little drunk, should probably put her work away for the evening. Daniel laughs into his journal.
"Sorry," he says, looking up. "But that's -- that was -- that's true."
"No need to apologize," Penny says. Sometimes she puts her regal airs back on, though never unkindly. Desmond smiles, likes to hear her boarding school lilt return once in awhile.
*
When Desmond comes home the following afternoon, there is a hummingbird feeder hanging in the garden. Penny is at the kitchen counter slicing apples and tossing them into a giant bowl that is already overflowing with apple slices. Daniel is sitting at the table and staring out at the garden, a book open in front of him. For the first time since he arrived, Desmond wonders how long he plans on staying.
"You're cooking?" Desmond says with surprise, and she gives him a mock offended look.
"I thought I'd make a tart for dinner. For dessert, I mean."
"Looks like you've enough there to make three. I guess you were at the market today?"
"Should we not be at the market?" Penny asks, and Desmond wasn't aware that his paranoia was so clearly resident in his tone.
"No, love, it's fine, it's great." He smiles at her and then Daniel, who is watching them now. "You know I'm fond of tarts," he jokes, but she only turns back to her cutting.
After dinner, and a bit of overly crispy tart -- Penny got distracted watching the hummingbird discover the new feeder -- Desmond tries and fails to teach Daniel how to play poker.
"It's not as complicated as you're making it, brother," he says.
"I think I -- want it to be more complicated?" Daniel says. Desmond looks up to find Penny dosing on the couch, hugging a cushion over her stomach.
"We should go for a walk," Desmond says. Daniel strokes his beard, nods at the floor.
They walk down toward the coast but stay just at the edge of the beach. The night is warm and the wind is still strong. Desmond has been waiting for a hurricane all summer, thinks the countryside could do with a bit of cleansing. Nothing catastrophic of course, just something loud.
"Hasn't rain since you've been here," he says, thinking aloud. Daniel shrugs.
"Is that unusual?"
"Not yet."
Desmond stops walking when they're roughly a mile from the house, and Daniel turns back. He seems to know what's coming.
"Aren't you going to tell me anything?" Desmond says, and he feels guilty immediately, as if he's breaking a peace treaty. But having Daniel in his home makes him vulnerable to an old destiny that might still reclaim him, and he can't shoulder it much longer without a clear reason.
"Well--" Daniel shuffles in his expert way. "What do you want to know?"
"Anything. How you found us here, how you got off the Island, what the hell -- I mean -- why you came here at all. To shop for bird feeders with Penny? It's all well and good but it's not making a whole lot of sense."
"Actually, uh." Daniel scratches his head. "I always liked you, or appreciated you, I guess, or -- well, both, really -- because you kind of took things at face value? Like with the whole, um. Time travel experience?"
Desmond draws his hands through his hair, groans. He looks at the ocean for awhile, checking it for the storm that is still just the smallest threat, a smell on the air, the dry cool before the damp. The sanctuary he's found here with Penny is tenuous, even after three years, when it's begun to feel like nothing can touch them anymore. He knows that this a poisonous sort of feeling, that it spreads easily and numbs the senses.
"Like, looking back, I sort of can't believe you cooperated," Daniel says.
"Dan!" Desmond coughs up a laugh. "I was the one convincing you to help me, remember?"
"Oh, yeah."
Desmond has the odd impulse to hug him, puts his hands on his hips to stop himself. His memory of jumping through time is hazy at best, but he does recall the smell of Daniel's office at Oxford, chalk and stale sunlight, and the gratefulness that bloomed through him until he felt crazy with hope, when someone actually listened to him, believed him.
"Alright," he says, placing a hand on Daniel's shoulder. "You don't have to explain."
"It's just that, um." Daniel lets out his breath. "It's been hard. I've been having a hard time -- and -- this helps. Not having to, you know. Say it out loud. I can't decide if that's good or bad yet."
"I guess you're leaning toward good," Desmond says, slinging an arm around his shoulders and leading him back toward the house.
"Yeah, good, well. I usually try to lean toward that."
When they reach the front walk, Desmond glances through the windows and sees the living room couch empty. He tries to steady himself, but his hand is already shaking when he reaches to open the door. He leaves Daniel in the foyer and hurries through the house, checking the kitchen, the backyard, the sitting room, then bolts up the stairs.
"Penny?" he calls, his voice too raw already. When he throws open the bedroom door and stares in, breathless, Penny frowns at him from the bed, her knees pulled to her chest, a grant proposal spread across them.
"Des? What's the matter?"
He shuts the door behind him, shakes his head. He feels like he should wash up before he gets near her, needs to scrub his brief panic away. He's still coated with it, and it feels contagious in the worst way.
"Nothing's wrong," he says. He sits on the bed, pulls off his boots. "Or maybe it is. What's he doing here, Penny? I know he doesn't mean us any harm, but he might bring it."
"No, no, I don't think so."
"How can you be so bloody sure?"
She gives him a long look, and he sighs.
"I don't mean to shout --"
"Do you want him to go, Des?"
"No, and that's the part I don't understand. He's -- I feel like I'm contented when I shouldn't be. And he won't tell me how he found us, won't even tell me what he's doing here, why he's come."
"Well, he's told me," Penny says, and Desmond turns around to look at her fully. He finds her most beautiful like this, sitting in bed and preparing for a night of sleep beside him. It's a simple comfort that for a long time he stopped knowing how to even wish for.
"He has?"
"Yes, today in the garden."
"Well? And what is it then?"
She watches him for a moment, and he can't tell if she's looking straight into him or right through him.
"Now I'm not sure I should tell you."
Desmond throws up his hands and lets them fall heavily to his knees. He walks into the bathroom to have a shower, doesn't want to admit to even himself that he's actually relieved not to know.
*
On Daniel's second week of house guesting, Desmond has a day off of work and Penny talks him into a picnic on the beach. She goes to the market early, and returns with bags of special cheese and fragrant bread, begins collecting utensils and cloth napkins.
"What will Daniel do all day?" Desmond asks, sitting at the table and watching her work.
"He'll come with us, of course."
Desmond expects Daniel to politely decline, but he is attached enough to his afternoons with Penny that he agrees. As they walk down to the beach with their supplies, Desmond wonders if Daniel is in love with his wife, but decides he probably isn't, because if he actually was, Desmond wouldn't be so amused by the idea.
"Did you go to the beach often, growing up?" Penny asks Daniel when they arrive.
"No, we were, um. We lived in Detroit, so."
"Detroit! Why does that sound glamorous to me? Have they got gangsters or something?"
"Yeah, or, they did. At one point. And cars. I mean, production plants, and, you know."
Desmond uncorks the bottle of Rioja that Penny brought along. Sometimes listening to Daniel talk is rather exhausting. He's huddled under the umbrella Desmond put up, though the sun is behind a sky-spanning layer of pale clouds.
"Too bad we haven't got better weather," Penny says, holding her hat on her head when the wind picks up. "Oh, and we'll have sand in everything. It's been so windy lately."
"We can thank the wind for blowing Dan in, I think," Desmond says. He waits to see a look of secret acknowledgment between Penny and Daniel, if he even explained to her how he got here and not just why he came, but they're both looking at him.
"Yeah, you know, the last three years have felt a lot like that," Daniel says.
"Like what?" Penny asks when he doesn't continue.
"Like wind," he says.
"You know, my father went to Oxford," Penny says, as if this explains everything. Desmond laughs into his hand and she grins, swats at him.
"What did he study?" Daniel asks.
"World domination," Desmond says.
"He was on scholarship for it," Penny adds, and she and Desmond laugh until they've fallen onto each other.
They finish off the bottle of wine and then another. Desmond is surprised that Daniel drinks at all. He's got to stop thinking of him as a child, a boy who wandered in off the street looking for shelter. He's a brilliant scientist; he saved Desmond's life. But still, when the wind comes in harder, Desmond stands and drapes a towel around his shoulders.
"You look cold," he shouts over the crashing noise of the ocean and the blank sound of the wind whipping by. Daniel lets the towel fall to his waist and pulls the ends tight, as if he's buckling himself down.
"I hope the hummingbird is alright," Penny says.
"Think we should head back up?" Desmond asks. He's ready for a bath and a nap before dinner.
"Not yet," Penny says. She flips her hair away from her face, grins at him. "It's really kind of fantastic, isn't it?"
"Being beaten by the wind?"
"Yeah," Daniel says, surprising them both. "It's, like. You know. It makes you feel, like, heavy. Like you're in one place."
"You are in one place, darling," Penny says. She gets up and walks toward the ocean, laughing as she's nearly tipped over by the gales.
"We should go in," Desmond says, though he loves the sight of her laughing in the face of danger. It's what's kept them alive so far.
"Wait," Daniel says. As if on cue, the umbrella shoots up from the sand and sails over their heads. They watch it twirl out over the ocean, and Penny waves to it as it goes.
*
Two days later Desmond's alarm goes off at the usual time, well before sunrise, and he moans his way out of bed, dresses in the dark. Penny has become accustomed to his early hours and doesn't stir, the perfect curve of her back under the blankets an invitation he can't accept often enough.
He goes downstairs yawning, and realizes when he reaches the first floor why things sound strangely quiet. The wind has stopped for the first time in weeks. Outside, everything is still. He receives this as an omen and has an impulse to go upstairs and check on Daniel.
Before he can, he sees Daniel in the kitchen, looking out the back window. Desmond jumps a bit even when he's already realized who it is. He has the sick sort of feeling that this is only a ghost, that if he goes upstairs he'll find another Daniel asleep in bed.
"Oh, hey," Daniel says. "I fixed your stove."
"You -- what?"
"It was -- Penny was complaining that the back burners weren't firing, so I took a look at it, and, um, well, I fixed it."
"Thanks. You got up at half past three to fix the stove?"
"No, I'm actually, um. Leaving, so."
"Oh." Desmond takes a seat at the kitchen table, has lost his appetite for breakfast. "You don't have to, you know. You can stay."
"I know. I know. It's -- I've got research to do."
"Where will you go?"
"Back to America for awhile."
"Will we see you again?"
"Oh, definitely, definitely!"
Desmond gets the feeling he doesn't mean this. Daniel stutters and hesitates less often when he's lying.
"It's funny that we sat on a beach together the other day," Daniel says. "It was like, I don't know. Coming full circle." He forces a laugh.
"Aye, I suppose. Have you said goodbye to Penny?"
"I actually. Can't?"
Desmond doesn't know how to respond to that. He stands, and sees that the small, filthy duffel bag Daniel arrived with is packed and sitting at his feet.
"Need a ride to the airport?" Desmond asks. "The train station? Bus stop?" He doesn't know why, but he hopes with everything he has that Daniel will say yes.
"I can't," Daniel says again.
"Did you find what you came for?" Desmond asks with a doubtful scoff. He still feels that he's bidding goodbye only to Daniel's ghost, that he'll keep some more important Daniel here in the house regardless of this one's departure.
"Yeah," Daniel says. "I did, actually."
Desmond doesn't watch him walk away from the house, feels both forbidden and afraid to witness his disappearance. He walks upstairs and checks the guest bedroom. The twin bed is made up with a lumpy attempt at neatness that rends his heart.
He considers staying home from work, but can't risk losing his job. Upstairs, Penny is still fast asleep. He can't let her wake up and simply find Daniel gone, so he sits beside her, already late for work, and brushes her hair away from her face.
"Pen," he whispers. "Penny?"
She moans in annoyed acknowledgment and slides her hand against his side.
"I'm on my way to work," Desmond says. "I just wanted to tell you, Daniel left. He had to go -- something about work, his research. Penny? Are you awake, love?
"Des? What's wrong?"
"Nothing -- I -- Daniel's gone. He says goodbye."
"Oh." She keeps her eyes shut, doesn't move even an eyebrow.
"I'll see you this afternoon?"
"Have a good day," she murmurs. Desmond isn't sure she's understood, but at least he tried.
Work is slow and long, the ocean unnaturally calm. The sky is orange-tinted in a post-apocalyptic way, and the air is too thin. Desmond thinks about calling Penny at lunch, but he hasn't got any change for the pay phone on the dock.
When his shift is over he drives home expecting to find Daniel in the garden with Penny, watching the bird feeder, his mind changed and his sails turned around. He parks out front and lingers nervously in his truck, then curses himself and climbs out.
Penny is in the kitchen when he comes in, standing at the window. He's not surprised when she turns and has tears in her eyes. Daniel meant something to her even before she met him. Desmond told her Daniel saved his life. He never got into the specifics of how, not because he thought she wouldn't believe him, but because it had all become so jumbled and sacred in his mind, he was afraid that if he said it out loud he would start to doubt it himself.
He goes to Penny without speaking and wraps her into his arms. She exhales a sob that sounds surprised, a kind of stuttered gasp. He pets her hair, kisses her head.
"I'm such a fool," she says, trying to smile up at him. "Look at me, in tears because the hummingbird's gone. He used to come every day, in the morning and evening, and now he's just gone."
"He's fine," Desmond says. "Don't worry about the little fellow. Birds know how to survive in strong winds, and now it's stopped. He'll be back."
"Des." Penny looks at him like he's mad. "He won't be back, not this year anyway. I'm not worried he got swept away. He's migrated, you see? I knew it was coming. Daniel told me it was nearly the season for it. It's nature, it's what they do, but here I am crying like an infant. It's just so frightening to think about. They fly five hundred miles over the ocean, all by themselves."
Desmond wipes her cheeks, thinks she must be really thinking of Daniel, alone on his mysterious journey, pulled away by forces unknowable.
"It's rather like you were," Penny says. "Alone for so long. Away."
He leans in to kiss her, but she speaks again before he can.
"You know he was in love with you, don't you?"
"Sorry -- what?"
"Daniel Faraday. He told me you were his constant. He told me he would have vanished if he hadn't found you. He would have died."
"Oh, Penny."
He doesn't know what else to say, but she lets him kiss her this time, and he doesn't need to explain. He thinks of the hummingbird out over the ocean, and just a week ago in the garden, when Daniel spotted him sitting on a tendril that grew from the vines on the fence.
"It's funny to actually see him sit still," he said. "I didn't think he had it in him."
*