[lost] symphonie fantastique
Title: symphonie fantastique
Author: lizzyrebel
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: lostfichallenge #86: hopes and frears
Character/Pairing: Daniel Faraday, Charlotte Lewis, some on-island members
Spoilers/Warnings: spoilers through 5x02, mild sexual content
Author's Notes: oh LOST, thank you coming back on. I'm really not creative when you're away. But for some reason, I'm not entirely happy with this fic, but after three rewrites (and 4 extra pages) I'm done with it. I think it must be time travel. I really don't like time travel.
i. daydreams - passions
Daniel Faraday does not dream in the normal way, but he does not dream in mathematical equations either, does not see the world lined up in the systematical order that the scientists paint the universe in.
He dreams of an expanding and collapsing universe, sees the brink of destruction, sees the explosion of life. If he could draw, he would paint out a myriad of colors, stars dotting the sky and the earth round in the center.
Once, his mother tells him that one day he’ll find a girl and she’ll understand, look into his eyes and see, and understand and on that day he’ll finally have all the answers to the questions he scribbles down in endless notebooks.
And then he won’t need to look for them anymore.
(-she presses her arm around his waist, and he wishes the band was strong enough to keep there, but she’s already halfway gone, disappeared into an infinity that he cannot describe.
“Am I dying?” she asks.
Her eyes are blue. So blue, he could drown in them).
He dreamt of time travel since the very beginning of his life. Einstein theory that if a person could ever travel faster than light itself then he would find himself looking back in time was the bible he read every night.
That is what he dreams of, mostly, going back and watching it happen, watching it unfold, the universe expanding. Daniel dreams.
(he dreams of going back, of finding himself years before, ripping the notebooks to shreds, going to the university, shaking himself, rattling all the questions against his skull.
“Don’t,” he will tell himself. “Don’t because you’ll kill her.”
He’s still looking for the answers, but there are none in his notebooks. Only a death sentence).
.
Daniel traces lines in the sand, charts out his future with one hand holding the pages of his notebook together, and the other a thin, shaky twig.
One eye rests on her, fiery hair aglow in sunset, holding one hand against her head, fighting a headache that she cannot hold off, not this one.
This is the first time Daniel has no answers for himself, no explanation, no reason why. Why her, why now. All he can think is that he has to fix this, has to find someway way to rewrite her destiny.
There is no way to change the past, he told Sawyer, and he wishes he hadn’t.
He signed her death warrant.
ii. a ball
(he takes off her shirt, cups her breasts gently, turns her over to trace his fingers across her back. In her skin he wants there to be an answer, carved deep into her flesh, something that says ‘this is how you save me. Save me, please’, wants to kiss her without thoughts pressing against his head. Thoughts like: please don’t let this be the last time, please stay with me, please don’t leave, don’t close your eyes.
“I can keep you here,” he tells her, hand pressed against the small of her back. “I can keep you here.”
She doesn’t believe it. Neither does he).
The first time he flashes forward, he has an odd memory. His mother, holding his hand, as they cross the busy street. There is a musical or something down in San Francisco, one his mother has been dying to see, put clippings from the New York Broadway production into a little scrapbook.
They’re nearly late to it. His mother has to stop, has to look at a man in top hat as he hails a taxi, hand outstretched. There’s a sad pinched look in his mother’s eyes, a look that he isn’t familiar with (but he will be), and he stares at the man, too. But all he sees is broad shoulders and a straight back, not what he mother sees.
“Well, then, let’s go,” she says and he forgets about him.
-“You alright?” Juliet draws him back with a hand on his shoulder, her face strained and unhappy, weary. He’s only been on this island for a handful days and he’s already nearly tired of it. Juliet is a testament of strength.
“Yeah,” he says, and they start walking. Up ahead is Sawyer, sourly and muttering to himself, and further Miles and further still-
(-“And you can’t change it? You’re sure?”
It breaks his heart, looking at her. “Please, I don’t-”
She kisses him, open mouth to open mouth, forcing all the air out of her and into him, holds him to her. But it is not a band. It will not keep her.
“I love you,” she says-)
Daniel has not the mind or the skill for music, cannot make sense of the climb of the notes, the alto and tenure, cannot make sense of the story through the lyrics, can only sit in the uncomfortable seat and press his hands into his knees.
Across the way he sees a flash of red, a man getting up and holding a little girl to him, against him, murmuring comfortingly into her ear as she presses her head against his neck, shielding her face. They both walk away, and Daniel’s head turns to follow them.
Something like a memory flashes across his eye, and he strains, standing up on his seat, to follow the girl and the man, almost as if he needs to touch them-
(he holds her against him, crushing her, red hair tickling his nose, and thinks: please)
“Daniel,” his mother hisses, yanking back into his seat. “Stop it.”
-“Are you sure you’re okay?” Juliet asks, more concerned this time.
“Positive,” Daniel answers. “Just remembering something.”
.
The beach feels like it’s a safe heaven, even though Daniel knows it’s not. They’ve been dislodged from time, almost like a lifeless rock careening in space. They have no course, they have no trajectory. They are a grain of sand, and the wind will blow them where it chooses.
Her blood is still on his hand, dried and caking, but he hasn’t the strength to clean if off. There is so much to do, so little time. Some many things could go wrong. If Desmond is too slow, if he doesn’t understand then-
Daniel closes his mind to the possibility. He has failed countless times, but not this time.
Not this time.
.
(“I keep getting them,” she says airily, still rubbing at her temples. “Must be the climate. Isn’t that weird?”
“Isn’t that weird?” he agrees on a mumble).
The Island holds so many secrets, too many maybe, and Daniel has not the time to dissect them all. He came to the Island with every intention that he would, that he could, and instead he has not the time.
The irony is that, in reality, he has all the time in the world.
He no longer has the luxury of carefully picking apart the intricacies of the Island, the power that hums beneath it. Instead, he has stumble his way through, like a man blindfolded, loudly and recklessly, pulling the parts of the Island away with abandon, ripping at their insides to find what he needs.
But the Island guards its secrets closely and tells him nothing. There are no answers to his questions. There is not a glimmer of hope.
Time is a stream, and you cannot channel its energy. It bends to no man. Those are the rules.
“Dan, you’ve been out of it for the last couple of days,” Juliet says quietly, watching him with eyes that are more adept at peelings the layers of a person away then he wishes. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“It’s not about you,” he says quickly, nose still buried in his book. “It’s not about any of you, and I need to-could you please just-”
(she yanks the notebook at of his hand, tosses it into the dirt, her eyes blue, so blue, and watery. He could drown in them.
“Are they in there?” she demands. “Are the answers in there?”
They both know the answer. He drops his hands down to his side, useless).
“It’s okay, Dan,” Juliet says quickly. “You can tell me what’s wrong. I can help you.”
“No,” he whispers. “You can’t help me. There is no help-there isn’t any-”
He drops his book into the sand, his head pounding. Juliet curses at the light and they fall forward, always caught up in the stream that time runs along.
(he finds Miles when Sawyer and Juliet are off on their own. Grabs him roughly by his shoulders and pulls him down the beach. Miles curses and manages to land a fisted hand against the side of his head. He ignores the pain.
“There!” he snaps, thrusting Miles forward. “What do you see? Look at her and tell me!”
Down the beach, across the white sand, she bends down and cleans off the blood from her nose, her hands nearly dyed red with their constant wiping.
“Man,” Miles says thickly. “C’mon. You know you don’t want to know. People ask me that, but they don’t really want to know. They already know the answer. You do too.”
He does. It’s written so plainly, across her skin, the pallor and the blood dried there. So plain to see that it nearly gorges out his eyes.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Miles says quietly, visibly shaken, “is there?”
“Yes there is,” he says, sounding angry for the first time since he’s landed. “There is something. There is.” It doesn’t taste like a lie on his lips, though it probably is).
.
Later, in the dark, she presses her head against his shoulder. He loops his arm around her thin, bony shoulders. It’s funny. With every other girl he’s been near, he’s always been so awkward and unsure.
“You’re humming,” she says something. “I remember that song.”
“It’s something my mom took me to see once. She was a real big fanatic on musicals,” Daniel admits. “I was never really interested.”
“You do it nicely, though.”
iii. scene in the country
During her seventh nosebleed, he panics.
If only he could go back. Ask those questions to the man who knew the answers.
.
(he follows Dr. Candle for days, like his own shadow, watching the man, studying him, trying to find some kink in the armor he’s build around himself, writes down each day in a notebook.
“Can I help you with something?” Candle asks, turning to him and acknowledging him at last.
“Can you change it?” Daniel nearly shouts, wants to pull out his hair, wants to shake Candle. Wants to make him see how he needs this answers, see what he needs the answer to be. “Just one thing. Can you change it? Go back and change it?”
“Of course not,” Candle snaps. “There are rules. There are always rules and if you don’t follow them, the world could end.”
He outlines them for him, and Daniel goes and writes them down in a little notebook, his shackles. Those pages are dotted with tiny splats of water, and they dry and crinkle when he turns them).
Daniel lies awake beside her, his eyes open to the sky, and thinks about those rules written down in his little notebook tucked under his pillow.
What did he care if the world burned?
.
When she finds him next, she cuts a fiery path across the sand to him, stares at him hard for a moment.
“The truth. I want it.”
He shakes his head. The truth? He isn’t ready to hear it.
But she presses on, like a valkyrie. Grips his shoulders and draws him to her, her eyes so hot and blue he could drown in them, nearly wishes he was drowning. So he could go first, before her, and meet her on the other side.
“I’m dying, aren’t I?” she demands.
It sounds like a sing. A long, funeral march that makes him shake, makes something inside him snap and shout no!
“No,” he says, and pulls her the last distance between them, crushing her against him, his arm a band around her waist. “I can keep you here. I can keep you here.”
Her arms come up around his neck, shaking in terror and holding on so tight. Maybe she believes he can, keep her there. Maybe he does, too.
iv. march to the scaffold
(it isn’t the first time he’s skipped without the others, but it’s the worst. He stumbles to the empty camp, eyes squinted and fingernails gritty with sand.
He finds his little notebook and opens it, finds Desmond’s name and writes in a shaky scrawl beneath it, tears streaming down his face, breath heaving. He doesn’t have much time. He can almost feel the tug, the next skip, and there is somewhere he needs to go.
No, you’re not, he writes).
With her out with painkillers from her headache, Daniel makes his way back to his makeshift tent, pushes through the mess of blankets, and the reams of loose-leaf papers, and the things that have spilled out of his bag when he tossed them there.
He finds his notebook and pulls it out with shaking hands, remembers his promise. I can keep you here. There is a way, because there are rules, rules that can kill you, and rules that can save you. And he can save her with them. He can be what she needs him to be.
There is a new note there, one he doesn’t remember writing.
No, you’re not, it says.
His fingers are white where he holds the notebook and he sinks to his knees. He wants to rip the page out, pretend it was never there, pretend that he never saw it.
But what Daniel does is close the book, holds it against his forehead, and prays for deliverance.
.
Deliverance does not come, Daniel finds. After all, this Island is hidden from all eyes, dislodged from the fabric of space and time.
God’s eyes cannot reach here, cannot hear him.
v. dream of a witches’ sabbath
Once, Daniel’s mother told him that he would find a girl, the girl, and she would understand him, see him, accept him, and he wouldn’t have to look for his answers anymore. He would find them written across her skin.
Daniel’s mother was wrong. He found the girl, but he hasn’t stopped looking for answers.
(she presses her mouth against his, and her blood is warm and wet on his skin, rolling down his chin. She’s gotten so skinny, so thin and pale, and it feels like if he holds her too tight, she’ll snap and break.
Against his mouth, she whispers, “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry.”
He’s sorry enough for the both them).
There is no way he can stop looking, not when he knows what’s happening to her. Not when there has to be something he can do, not when he is constrained by the thick rules of this Island, Candle’s voice so mocking in his head.
He wants to believe that he can save her. Has to believe that, has to believe that somewhere it is written, this is how you save the woman you love, and that he just has to find it. It’s here, somewhere, hidden beneath the green of the Island. He just needs to find it.
And if he can everything will be okay. The blood will stop and she will tan like she’s supposed to and smile at him with less exhaustion.
If Daniel has to burn the Island to the ground to find his answers, he will then. He knows how to be stubborn when it counts.
(“I love you,” he says, long after she has stopped being able to hear.
His scream is soundless as he holds her against him, crushing her, red hair tickling his nose, and thinks: please but knows there is no one listening. Knows he’ll have to take her back, to the beach, let Sawyer help him bury her, wash the blood on her face away first.
But he doesn’t move, and instead looks down into her still, lifeless face. He wasn’t her Constant, couldn’t be, even though he had nearly convinced himself he was, that he just had to unlock their paths, find a connection between them, to keep her stable.
There are rules, and he is bound to them. No man can harness the power of the stream that Time flows in, and Desmond has not heeded his desperate plea.
And she’s dead. Dead. He cannot go back to save her, because you cannot change the past, can barely change the future. Humans are fixed statues in the eye of Time. It cannot be controlled, or moved.
And yet-)
Across the sand, Daniel watches her, feels his heart in his throat, and knows the truth in his gut.
Charlotte is dying, and there is nothing he can do about. He cannot save her, not from this. There are rules, and he is bound to them. He cannot break them. He told Sawyer that himself, has known all along that he must existence within the confines of those rules.
So Charlotte has to die, and Daniel has to watch her, watch her die, because he cannot change it, not this-
(the man and his redheaded daughter exit the theater. Daniel sucks in a breath and crosses the street to them, screaming her name.
“Please!” he shouts when he reaches the man, the girl turning her bright blue eyes from her father’s neck to watch him. “Whatever questions she has, don’t answer them. Don’t let her find out about it. Keep her in the dark. Don’t let her come.”
“What are you talking about?” the man demands, trying to walk away. Daniel blocks his path.
“The Island! Don’t let her come! She’ll die. Please, listen to me.”
“Who are you?” the man demands breathlessly, eyes wide and fearful, hands tight around his little girl.
“I’ll love her,” he says, light bursting against the sides of his eyes. “I’ll love her so much, so please don’t let her come to the Island. Don’t let her come back.”
And he’s gone, back, and she’s still buried in her grave. On her gravestone, he can nearly see it written.
You cannot change the past).
-and yet.
Author: lizzyrebel
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: lostfichallenge #86: hopes and frears
Character/Pairing: Daniel Faraday, Charlotte Lewis, some on-island members
Spoilers/Warnings: spoilers through 5x02, mild sexual content
Author's Notes: oh LOST, thank you coming back on. I'm really not creative when you're away. But for some reason, I'm not entirely happy with this fic, but after three rewrites (and 4 extra pages) I'm done with it. I think it must be time travel. I really don't like time travel.
i. daydreams - passions
Daniel Faraday does not dream in the normal way, but he does not dream in mathematical equations either, does not see the world lined up in the systematical order that the scientists paint the universe in.
He dreams of an expanding and collapsing universe, sees the brink of destruction, sees the explosion of life. If he could draw, he would paint out a myriad of colors, stars dotting the sky and the earth round in the center.
Once, his mother tells him that one day he’ll find a girl and she’ll understand, look into his eyes and see, and understand and on that day he’ll finally have all the answers to the questions he scribbles down in endless notebooks.
And then he won’t need to look for them anymore.
(-she presses her arm around his waist, and he wishes the band was strong enough to keep there, but she’s already halfway gone, disappeared into an infinity that he cannot describe.
“Am I dying?” she asks.
Her eyes are blue. So blue, he could drown in them).
He dreamt of time travel since the very beginning of his life. Einstein theory that if a person could ever travel faster than light itself then he would find himself looking back in time was the bible he read every night.
That is what he dreams of, mostly, going back and watching it happen, watching it unfold, the universe expanding. Daniel dreams.
(he dreams of going back, of finding himself years before, ripping the notebooks to shreds, going to the university, shaking himself, rattling all the questions against his skull.
“Don’t,” he will tell himself. “Don’t because you’ll kill her.”
He’s still looking for the answers, but there are none in his notebooks. Only a death sentence).
.
Daniel traces lines in the sand, charts out his future with one hand holding the pages of his notebook together, and the other a thin, shaky twig.
One eye rests on her, fiery hair aglow in sunset, holding one hand against her head, fighting a headache that she cannot hold off, not this one.
This is the first time Daniel has no answers for himself, no explanation, no reason why. Why her, why now. All he can think is that he has to fix this, has to find someway way to rewrite her destiny.
There is no way to change the past, he told Sawyer, and he wishes he hadn’t.
He signed her death warrant.
ii. a ball
(he takes off her shirt, cups her breasts gently, turns her over to trace his fingers across her back. In her skin he wants there to be an answer, carved deep into her flesh, something that says ‘this is how you save me. Save me, please’, wants to kiss her without thoughts pressing against his head. Thoughts like: please don’t let this be the last time, please stay with me, please don’t leave, don’t close your eyes.
“I can keep you here,” he tells her, hand pressed against the small of her back. “I can keep you here.”
She doesn’t believe it. Neither does he).
The first time he flashes forward, he has an odd memory. His mother, holding his hand, as they cross the busy street. There is a musical or something down in San Francisco, one his mother has been dying to see, put clippings from the New York Broadway production into a little scrapbook.
They’re nearly late to it. His mother has to stop, has to look at a man in top hat as he hails a taxi, hand outstretched. There’s a sad pinched look in his mother’s eyes, a look that he isn’t familiar with (but he will be), and he stares at the man, too. But all he sees is broad shoulders and a straight back, not what he mother sees.
“Well, then, let’s go,” she says and he forgets about him.
-“You alright?” Juliet draws him back with a hand on his shoulder, her face strained and unhappy, weary. He’s only been on this island for a handful days and he’s already nearly tired of it. Juliet is a testament of strength.
“Yeah,” he says, and they start walking. Up ahead is Sawyer, sourly and muttering to himself, and further Miles and further still-
(-“And you can’t change it? You’re sure?”
It breaks his heart, looking at her. “Please, I don’t-”
She kisses him, open mouth to open mouth, forcing all the air out of her and into him, holds him to her. But it is not a band. It will not keep her.
“I love you,” she says-)
Daniel has not the mind or the skill for music, cannot make sense of the climb of the notes, the alto and tenure, cannot make sense of the story through the lyrics, can only sit in the uncomfortable seat and press his hands into his knees.
Across the way he sees a flash of red, a man getting up and holding a little girl to him, against him, murmuring comfortingly into her ear as she presses her head against his neck, shielding her face. They both walk away, and Daniel’s head turns to follow them.
Something like a memory flashes across his eye, and he strains, standing up on his seat, to follow the girl and the man, almost as if he needs to touch them-
(he holds her against him, crushing her, red hair tickling his nose, and thinks: please)
“Daniel,” his mother hisses, yanking back into his seat. “Stop it.”
-“Are you sure you’re okay?” Juliet asks, more concerned this time.
“Positive,” Daniel answers. “Just remembering something.”
.
The beach feels like it’s a safe heaven, even though Daniel knows it’s not. They’ve been dislodged from time, almost like a lifeless rock careening in space. They have no course, they have no trajectory. They are a grain of sand, and the wind will blow them where it chooses.
Her blood is still on his hand, dried and caking, but he hasn’t the strength to clean if off. There is so much to do, so little time. Some many things could go wrong. If Desmond is too slow, if he doesn’t understand then-
Daniel closes his mind to the possibility. He has failed countless times, but not this time.
Not this time.
.
(“I keep getting them,” she says airily, still rubbing at her temples. “Must be the climate. Isn’t that weird?”
“Isn’t that weird?” he agrees on a mumble).
The Island holds so many secrets, too many maybe, and Daniel has not the time to dissect them all. He came to the Island with every intention that he would, that he could, and instead he has not the time.
The irony is that, in reality, he has all the time in the world.
He no longer has the luxury of carefully picking apart the intricacies of the Island, the power that hums beneath it. Instead, he has stumble his way through, like a man blindfolded, loudly and recklessly, pulling the parts of the Island away with abandon, ripping at their insides to find what he needs.
But the Island guards its secrets closely and tells him nothing. There are no answers to his questions. There is not a glimmer of hope.
Time is a stream, and you cannot channel its energy. It bends to no man. Those are the rules.
“Dan, you’ve been out of it for the last couple of days,” Juliet says quietly, watching him with eyes that are more adept at peelings the layers of a person away then he wishes. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“It’s not about you,” he says quickly, nose still buried in his book. “It’s not about any of you, and I need to-could you please just-”
(she yanks the notebook at of his hand, tosses it into the dirt, her eyes blue, so blue, and watery. He could drown in them.
“Are they in there?” she demands. “Are the answers in there?”
They both know the answer. He drops his hands down to his side, useless).
“It’s okay, Dan,” Juliet says quickly. “You can tell me what’s wrong. I can help you.”
“No,” he whispers. “You can’t help me. There is no help-there isn’t any-”
He drops his book into the sand, his head pounding. Juliet curses at the light and they fall forward, always caught up in the stream that time runs along.
(he finds Miles when Sawyer and Juliet are off on their own. Grabs him roughly by his shoulders and pulls him down the beach. Miles curses and manages to land a fisted hand against the side of his head. He ignores the pain.
“There!” he snaps, thrusting Miles forward. “What do you see? Look at her and tell me!”
Down the beach, across the white sand, she bends down and cleans off the blood from her nose, her hands nearly dyed red with their constant wiping.
“Man,” Miles says thickly. “C’mon. You know you don’t want to know. People ask me that, but they don’t really want to know. They already know the answer. You do too.”
He does. It’s written so plainly, across her skin, the pallor and the blood dried there. So plain to see that it nearly gorges out his eyes.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Miles says quietly, visibly shaken, “is there?”
“Yes there is,” he says, sounding angry for the first time since he’s landed. “There is something. There is.” It doesn’t taste like a lie on his lips, though it probably is).
.
Later, in the dark, she presses her head against his shoulder. He loops his arm around her thin, bony shoulders. It’s funny. With every other girl he’s been near, he’s always been so awkward and unsure.
“You’re humming,” she says something. “I remember that song.”
“It’s something my mom took me to see once. She was a real big fanatic on musicals,” Daniel admits. “I was never really interested.”
“You do it nicely, though.”
iii. scene in the country
During her seventh nosebleed, he panics.
If only he could go back. Ask those questions to the man who knew the answers.
.
(he follows Dr. Candle for days, like his own shadow, watching the man, studying him, trying to find some kink in the armor he’s build around himself, writes down each day in a notebook.
“Can I help you with something?” Candle asks, turning to him and acknowledging him at last.
“Can you change it?” Daniel nearly shouts, wants to pull out his hair, wants to shake Candle. Wants to make him see how he needs this answers, see what he needs the answer to be. “Just one thing. Can you change it? Go back and change it?”
“Of course not,” Candle snaps. “There are rules. There are always rules and if you don’t follow them, the world could end.”
He outlines them for him, and Daniel goes and writes them down in a little notebook, his shackles. Those pages are dotted with tiny splats of water, and they dry and crinkle when he turns them).
Daniel lies awake beside her, his eyes open to the sky, and thinks about those rules written down in his little notebook tucked under his pillow.
What did he care if the world burned?
.
When she finds him next, she cuts a fiery path across the sand to him, stares at him hard for a moment.
“The truth. I want it.”
He shakes his head. The truth? He isn’t ready to hear it.
But she presses on, like a valkyrie. Grips his shoulders and draws him to her, her eyes so hot and blue he could drown in them, nearly wishes he was drowning. So he could go first, before her, and meet her on the other side.
“I’m dying, aren’t I?” she demands.
It sounds like a sing. A long, funeral march that makes him shake, makes something inside him snap and shout no!
“No,” he says, and pulls her the last distance between them, crushing her against him, his arm a band around her waist. “I can keep you here. I can keep you here.”
Her arms come up around his neck, shaking in terror and holding on so tight. Maybe she believes he can, keep her there. Maybe he does, too.
iv. march to the scaffold
(it isn’t the first time he’s skipped without the others, but it’s the worst. He stumbles to the empty camp, eyes squinted and fingernails gritty with sand.
He finds his little notebook and opens it, finds Desmond’s name and writes in a shaky scrawl beneath it, tears streaming down his face, breath heaving. He doesn’t have much time. He can almost feel the tug, the next skip, and there is somewhere he needs to go.
No, you’re not, he writes).
With her out with painkillers from her headache, Daniel makes his way back to his makeshift tent, pushes through the mess of blankets, and the reams of loose-leaf papers, and the things that have spilled out of his bag when he tossed them there.
He finds his notebook and pulls it out with shaking hands, remembers his promise. I can keep you here. There is a way, because there are rules, rules that can kill you, and rules that can save you. And he can save her with them. He can be what she needs him to be.
There is a new note there, one he doesn’t remember writing.
No, you’re not, it says.
His fingers are white where he holds the notebook and he sinks to his knees. He wants to rip the page out, pretend it was never there, pretend that he never saw it.
But what Daniel does is close the book, holds it against his forehead, and prays for deliverance.
.
Deliverance does not come, Daniel finds. After all, this Island is hidden from all eyes, dislodged from the fabric of space and time.
God’s eyes cannot reach here, cannot hear him.
v. dream of a witches’ sabbath
Once, Daniel’s mother told him that he would find a girl, the girl, and she would understand him, see him, accept him, and he wouldn’t have to look for his answers anymore. He would find them written across her skin.
Daniel’s mother was wrong. He found the girl, but he hasn’t stopped looking for answers.
(she presses her mouth against his, and her blood is warm and wet on his skin, rolling down his chin. She’s gotten so skinny, so thin and pale, and it feels like if he holds her too tight, she’ll snap and break.
Against his mouth, she whispers, “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry.”
He’s sorry enough for the both them).
There is no way he can stop looking, not when he knows what’s happening to her. Not when there has to be something he can do, not when he is constrained by the thick rules of this Island, Candle’s voice so mocking in his head.
He wants to believe that he can save her. Has to believe that, has to believe that somewhere it is written, this is how you save the woman you love, and that he just has to find it. It’s here, somewhere, hidden beneath the green of the Island. He just needs to find it.
And if he can everything will be okay. The blood will stop and she will tan like she’s supposed to and smile at him with less exhaustion.
If Daniel has to burn the Island to the ground to find his answers, he will then. He knows how to be stubborn when it counts.
(“I love you,” he says, long after she has stopped being able to hear.
His scream is soundless as he holds her against him, crushing her, red hair tickling his nose, and thinks: please but knows there is no one listening. Knows he’ll have to take her back, to the beach, let Sawyer help him bury her, wash the blood on her face away first.
But he doesn’t move, and instead looks down into her still, lifeless face. He wasn’t her Constant, couldn’t be, even though he had nearly convinced himself he was, that he just had to unlock their paths, find a connection between them, to keep her stable.
There are rules, and he is bound to them. No man can harness the power of the stream that Time flows in, and Desmond has not heeded his desperate plea.
And she’s dead. Dead. He cannot go back to save her, because you cannot change the past, can barely change the future. Humans are fixed statues in the eye of Time. It cannot be controlled, or moved.
And yet-)
Across the sand, Daniel watches her, feels his heart in his throat, and knows the truth in his gut.
Charlotte is dying, and there is nothing he can do about. He cannot save her, not from this. There are rules, and he is bound to them. He cannot break them. He told Sawyer that himself, has known all along that he must existence within the confines of those rules.
So Charlotte has to die, and Daniel has to watch her, watch her die, because he cannot change it, not this-
(the man and his redheaded daughter exit the theater. Daniel sucks in a breath and crosses the street to them, screaming her name.
“Please!” he shouts when he reaches the man, the girl turning her bright blue eyes from her father’s neck to watch him. “Whatever questions she has, don’t answer them. Don’t let her find out about it. Keep her in the dark. Don’t let her come.”
“What are you talking about?” the man demands, trying to walk away. Daniel blocks his path.
“The Island! Don’t let her come! She’ll die. Please, listen to me.”
“Who are you?” the man demands breathlessly, eyes wide and fearful, hands tight around his little girl.
“I’ll love her,” he says, light bursting against the sides of his eyes. “I’ll love her so much, so please don’t let her come to the Island. Don’t let her come back.”
And he’s gone, back, and she’s still buried in her grave. On her gravestone, he can nearly see it written.
You cannot change the past).
-and yet.