Fight for You IV
Title: Fight for You 4/7
Rating: PG/PG-13
Genre: angst, action/adventure, romance
Characters: Claire, Charlie, Desmond
Summary: AU. Claire is suspicious enough when Desmond comes and asks Charlie to help him with a project but when she discovers that Desmond nearly let Charlie get killed by Rousseau’s arrow trap, she realises that they’re both still keeping secrets from her. When she discovers that Charlie is actually planning to die in the Looking Glass so that she might be rescued, Claire insists that the decision be taken out of his hands and puts the other survivors to a vote. From there, it’s all AU fun and games!
Disclaimer: If Lost was mine, this is what would have happened instead of the season finale. The lyrics in the cut and used in the title are from “The Special Two” by Missy Higgins.
Part One, Part Two, Part Three
~*~
The water was icy cold and Claire struggled not to gasp as she kicked out against the suffocating mass of blue. Charlie’s hand was still in hers and he was pushing down through the water with his free arm, frog kicking his legs, his eyes trained straight ahead. Claire looked down too and together they kicked frantically, heading down down down through the water.
It seemed to be taking forever get to the bottom - even with the weight belt dragging them down. For a moment Claire panicked, thinking that maybe they wouldn’t be able to get far enough down before they both ran out of air. Maybe she shouldn’t have swum down too - she might be buoying the weight belt up too much and they’d have to swim back to the surface. Maybe she should just swim back to the surface? Let Charlie go down there alone?
She shut her eyes, steeling herself to just keep on swimming and hoping like all hell that Charlie still had his eyes open and was heading in the right direction. She began to feel a little sick as the pressure began to mount on her ears, but then just as she thought she couldn’t stand it anymore, she felt Charlie drop the weight belt and her eyes flew open.
They were underneath the station. Claire let out a small amount of breath and then instantly regretted it. She was beginning to feel faint now from lack of oxygen, her brain was screaming at her to surface, to FIND SOME AIR. Charlie’s hand was still holding hers tightly, desperately tugging her along. She could sense that he too was running out of air and energy so she kicked out again, feeling a little panicked as she saw him let out a long stream of silvery air bubbles. They both flailed through the water, kicking as hard as they could and then there was the moon pool above them and Claire let go of his hand, choosing to use both her hands and feet to propel her upwards even as the last of the air was crushed from her lungs…
They broke the surface of the moon pool together.
Claire sucked in a huge breath, gasping and choking on the air as it rasped into her fragile chest and filled her lungs. Beside her she could hear Charlie doing exactly the same thing and then he started laughing. Claire eyed him warily, honestly feeling that it wasn’t exactly the best time to try and be funny - for crying out loud, they’d both nearly just been sent to an early grave and he was laughing about it?
“Let’s get out of the water,” Charlie said in her vague direction, still chuckling as he executed a sloppy breast stroke over to a ladder which led onto the platform that surrounded the moon pool. Claire followed swiftly and allowed Charlie to gallantly pull her up the final step. The moment they were both on solid ground however, he gave a contented sigh and promptly collapsed onto his back.
“I’m alive!” Charlie yelled gleefully, his head thrown back. Claire collapsed next to him, relishing the feel of something solid beneath her and the realisation that she finally understood what Charlie had been laughing about before. “Ah! I’m alive!” Claire propped herself up on her elbows and beamed at him, giggling shakily as she too felt the giddy rush of adrenalin hitting her.
BANG.
Charlie and Claire spun around simultaneously as first one, then another unidentified person came charging into the room from a small side door, guns held at the ready. On closer inspection, Claire saw that both of them were women and that they were both armed. The first woman, a blonde, was levelling a handgun at them. The other had shorter, dark hair and sported a rifle. As she ran in, the second one must have hit a switch because the room was suddenly flooded with double the light.
All the better to see us, Claire barely had time to think before she and Charlie were scrambling backwards, Claire clutching at Charlie’s shirt and trying desperately not to scream, Charlie holding up his hands to convey their lack of weaponry as their two attackers cocked their guns threateningly.
“Don’t move a muscle!” the blonde woman who had the handgun barked. “Stay exactly where you are!”
“Oh dear,” Charlie muttered under his breath and Claire resisted the urge to hit him. Of all the times to be a smart aleck, she didn’t really feel that now was one.
“Who are you?” the blonde woman demanded, skirting the moon pool swiftly while her friend covered them from afar with the rifle.
Charlie and Claire remained silent, bodies tense as steel cables.
“Who are you?” the blonde woman yelled, losing her temper.
“Hi there!” Charlie blurted out in a voice that was so chirpy in comparison to his usual gravelly voice that Claire thought for a moment that the brunette with the rifle had spoken. She gaped at him in disbelief. “I’m Ken and this here is my girlfriend, Barbie! We’re looking for the summer fun house - can you lovely ladies give us directions at all?”
Blonde-handgun-woman stared at him incredulously for a moment and then she turned her gun around and hit Charlie across the head with the handle. Claire screamed as he slumped forward, semi-conscious.
“Help your boyfriend get up,” the blonde woman said harshly, taking the safety off her gun. “Or I’ll shoot both of you.”
Trembling from her toes right up to her lips, Claire helped Charlie to his feet and followed the woman mutely.
~*~
Through The Looking Glass
Charlie’s head snapped back violently as the blonde woman punched him viciously under the chin in a perfect uppercut. For one terrifying moment Claire thought that the chair he had been tied to might tip backwards with his weight and he’d hit his head on the floor but then he was upright again and the blonde woman who had tied them both up was interrogating him again, circling him like a vulture.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Look,” her darker haired cohort said evenly from her seat on an upturned box. Obviously she was hoping that a softer approach might make Charlie more likely to talk. “If you tell us how you got down here, we won’t hurt you.”
Yeah right, Claire thought to herself but didn’t dare voice her sarcasm when she was trussed up so tightly and in the company of two deranged women with very real, very loaded guns.
The blonde woman had taken no time in tying both of them up - first Charlie had been bound to a chair and then Claire had been forced against one of the thin metal columns that were supporting a second level balcony right near where she and Charlie had gotten out of the water. Her hands had been tied behind her so tightly that her fingertips were already starting to go numb. During all of this, the brunette woman had watched both Charlie and Claire carefully, her finger tight on the trigger of her rifle, her face tense.
She really needn’t have bothered, Claire thought bitterly. Charlie had been so disorientated by the blow he’d received to the head that he’d been unable to co-ordinate himself enough to fight back and Claire had been shaking so much that she wouldn’t have been much use to anyone. Her teeth had still been chattering from fear when the women had decided to start their interrogation. Having gotten nothing out of Claire but stammering, they had quickly moved onto Charlie instead.
After they had ascertained that he was beginning to gather his wits again (due no doubt to the string of sarcastic jokes he had slung at them), the blonde one felt safe enough to start hitting him again in hopes that it might somehow convince him to tell them what they wanted to know.
“We came in our invisible submarine,” Charlie was saying to them now. He tipped Claire an enormous wink from across the room but Claire personally didn’t think that now was the time to be playing games, and she tried to convey this to him in her frown. “Don’t you see it?”
SMACK!
“Stop it!” Claire shrieked suddenly, surprising even herself with her sudden coherence. The blonde woman eyed Claire with apparent relish as she raised her hand to hit Charlie again, apparently pleased that she was finally getting a halfway decent reaction from one of them. With the first blow Claire screamed as loud as she could and as the woman continued to strike him, she struggled against her bonds so violently that she almost dislocated her shoulder.
“Hey! Take it easy,” the brunette said reprovingly before nodding at Claire who was still thrashing about like a fish caught in a net, panting from her sudden outburst. “She’s going to hurt herself.”
“Take it easy?” the blonde retorted, turning to her cohort with a look of utter disbelief on her hard face. “How am I supposed to take it easy when two of Them are down here?” she ran a scornful gaze over Claire. “And what do I care if she dislocates something?”
“Because,” the brunette said calmly, nodding towards Claire. “She’s not going to be any good to us if she goes into hysterics. And I don’t think that her boyfriend will be all that cooperative if she’s hurt either.”
The blonde seemed to consider this for a moment and then turned back to Charlie, leaning forward so her face was close to his. “Why are you here?” she pressed, her voice fractionally gentler. “Huh? How did you find out about this station?”
“Juliet told us,” Charlie said somewhat smugly, obviously feeling that this was something he could divulge freely. “She’s one of us now. In case you haven’t heard.”
The blonde woman scoffed and turned away from Charlie to look at Claire.
“Is he telling the truth or do I have to hit him again?”
“He’s telling the truth,” Claire said quickly, her voice shaky. “Juliet told us. But she thought that it was flooded.”
“See, I’m not lying,” Charlie said smugly. The blonde woman turned back to him again as he continued to talk to Claire from across the room. “Hey, just for future reference, don’t you worry about them hitting me, I can take it. And for all they know you might Hulk out on them and break free of your…”
The blonde one silenced him with another hard blow to the jaw. Claire winced as she saw a spray of blood fly from Charlie’s lips.
“Stop!” the brunette said firmly as Charlie hissed in pain. “We gotta call Ben.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said thickly around a mouthful of blood which he promptly spat out on the floor. “Let’s call Ben.”
Their captors glanced at each other and then disappeared into another room. Charlie watched them intently and Claire craned her neck to try and see what he was looking at. When that turned out to be an exercise in futility, she began to strain her ears to hear what the women were saying.
“…Ben, it’s Bonnie. Ben, are you there? Can you hear me, Ben?”
Suddenly a voice crackled back in return. “Why are you breaking radio silence?”
“Two of Them are down here.”
The voice on the other end yelped. “I’m sorry, what?!”
“We have them tied up,” the blonde woman - Bonnie - informed him. “But they’re here. They swam down here.”
“Who?” Ben demanded from the other end. “Which ones?”
“They won’t tell us,” Bonnie said grudgingly.
Claire jumped when Charlie yelled out to them. “It’s Charlie!” he sounded positively gleeful. “Tell him I said hi!”
Claire rolled her eyes. Well there went their cover…
“How did...” Ben spluttered from the other end, temporarily speechless. “Who’s the other one with him? And how do they know about the station?”
“He said Juliet told them about the station,” Bonnie said flatly. “And the other one is a wimpy little blonde girl.”
There was a long silence in which Claire bristled indignantly and then the radio crackled again.
“That’ll be Claire Littleton,” Ben said grimly. Charlie and Claire eyed each other worriedly. Just how much did these people know about them? “And I wouldn’t be so sure that she can’t handle herself. For now just sit tight and don’t do anything. I’m sending help.”
Charlie pursed his lips and nodded as he turned his chair away from the control room. Bonnie and her brunette friend were still in there arguing about something in hushed voices. Claire took advantage of their momentary distraction to meet Charlie’s eyes from across the room, desperately wishing to convey to him just through her eyes her fervent desire that he just stop talking, stop giving them a reason to hit him, stop giving away who they were and why they were here. Never in her life had she been so scared. Charlie stared back at her blankly for a moment, and then he did something truly amazing.
He smiled at her, sweet and reassuring - and despite the situation they were in, despite everything that had happened, Claire found herself smiling back at him.
“We’re gonna be okay,” Charlie mouthed to her, and then added. “Promise.”
Claire nodded bravely but after a long moment of staring at each other, Charlie cut his eyes away and the smile faded slowly away from his face. The moment gone, Claire’s smile faded as well and she leant her head back against the column she was tied to and gave a dry sob.
~*~
It seemed hours before Bonnie finally stopped hitting Charlie. Seemingly encouraged by the voluntary revelation of his name, she had informed her dark haired friend that she was going to see what else she could get out of him. After a fresh wave of brutality sparked nothing new however, she had taken to simply attacking him verbally as she toyed with her gun.
The brunette woman hadn’t seemed pleased by Bonnie’s actions but rather than sit and watch her, she had dutifully assigned herself to interrogating Claire instead. Her name had been revealed as Greta and she seemed to be under the delusion that if she was soft on Claire that she would get the answers that she sought. Claire was finding it surprisingly easy to ignore her questions, answering only the most trivial of them with monosyllables and otherwise watching Charlie carefully to see how he was holding up against Bonnie.
“I’m gonna ask you this one more time,” Bonnie finally said to Charlie in a would-be-patient sort of voice. “Why are you here?”
Charlie sighed and glanced over at Claire for a moment, considering. Claire shrugged her shoulders and shook her head in an obvious ‘your call’ gesture.
“I’m here,” Charlie said, eyes moving slowly from Claire back to Bonnie. “To turn off your jamming equipment. It’s in there,” he turned towards the command room as he spoke. “Next to the flashing yellow light.”
“How do you know about that?” Greta asked, forgetting her whispered interrogation Claire for a moment in the wake of her surprise.
“I know, because I know,” Charlie said condescendingly. “Whatever you ladies do to me, I’m going to turn it off.”
“You are, huh?” Bonnie said disbelievingly.
“Most definitely am,” Charlie informed her.
“So what’s the code?” Bonnie asked.
Charlie stared at her, non-plussed. “What?”
“Oh Charlie if you’re gonna turn off the jamming equipment you’re gonna need the code,” Bonnie shook her head at him pityingly. “And only three people know it. Me, her…” she jerked her head at Greta. “…and Ben.”
“Well,” Charlie considered for a moment. “I guess I won’t need the code. Since this entire station’s gonna be flooded anyway.” A smug smile began to form on his lips. “I just turn off your little jammer and the helicopters come and rescue all my friends.”
“But if this station floods…” Bonnie said slowly. “What happens to you?”
Charlie grinned at her, obviously relishing the words in his mind before he spoke them.
“I die.”
A long, tense silence followed this pronouncement and Charlie looked supremely smug at the stunned expressions on Bonnie and Greta’s faces.
“What about your girlfriend over there?” Bonnie said, trying to sound blasé and failing dismally.
“Oh she’ll get out somehow,” Charlie shrugged carelessly. “She’s not even supposed to be here.”
“Well why is she here then?” Greta asked, turning back to Claire and folding her arms. “Does she have a death wish or something?”
“Why don’t you tell them Claire?” Charlie said, yawning a little. “Maybe then these two’ll lay off and we can all get some sleep.”
All eyes turned to Claire and she squirmed a little under their scrutiny - especially Charlie’s.
“I’m here to make sure he doesn’t die,” she muttered eventually, feeling foolish.
“Why?” Bonnie asked roughly. “The world would probably be a better place if he did end up drowning.”
Claire flinched but Charlie looked amused.
“Ooh,” he said mockingly. “The big bad lady doesn’t like me.”
“Oh shut up,” Bonnie snapped then turned to Greta. “I can’t be bothered with this for now and we both need to get some sleep. I’ll take the first shift to watch these two idiots and you can go...”
“No I’ll take the first shift,” Greta interrupted swiftly. “You’re too tired. And you never got to finish your dinner before.”
Bonnie looked for a moment like she might argue but then she rolled her eyes and with a muttered “whatever” she disappeared through a door that led to another room - presumably their living quarters. After she had gone, Greta pulled a crumpled cellophane packet out of a pocket in her cargo pants and she offered a stale looking cracker to Claire.
“It’s not poisoned or anything,” she said, actually sounding hurt when Claire pointedly turned away from what was clearly supposed to be a peace offering. “You won’t be getting anything else for a while if you don’t eat this.”
There was a stale mate then in which Greta and Claire regarded each other silently. Then Charlie spoke up.
“Just give it to me to try first,” he offered cheerfully. “I’m going to die anyways so if it is poisoned…”
“Oh for…” Greta scoffed and then broke off a piece of the biscuit and chewed it up very pointedly, gnashing her teeth at them both. “See? It doesn’t have arsenic or anything in it.”
Claire rolled her eyes and then opened her mouth, accepting the broken cracker gladly. It had been hours since she’d last eaten and she was feeling - unsurprisingly - incredibly hungry now. Greta smiled, appeased, and then moved around the moon pool to give Charlie the other cracker.
“You know,” she said quietly whilst he munched away and Claire licked crumbs off her lips. “We’re not really all that bad. Bonnie’s mainly just pissed off because you interrupted her dinner.”
Claire and Charlie caught each others gaze and then they both burst into nervous giggles. The idea of Bonnie being upset over such a trivial matter seemed utterly absurd.
“I’m being serious,” Greta said earnestly. “She’s okay once you get to know her a little better…”
When neither of them responded and merely continued to laugh, she seemed to grow almost embarrassed. “Right,” she said awkwardly. “Well then I’ll just shut up now shall I? Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.”
And with that, she trooped into the command room, plopped down onto the chair, put her boots up on the desk with a resounding thud and then laced her fingers behind her neck with a heavy sigh.
Claire raised her eyebrows at Charlie from across the room and he grinned at her, wiggling his eyebrows to show his amusement. Claire giggled quietly for a moment but when Charlie shushed her, she bit her lip to stop herself from getting too carried away. The last thing any of them wanted was for Bonnie to come back out again and see the two of them laughing and carrying on.
Claire let out a sigh and pulled gently at her bonds, trying to get a little more comfortable and work some feeling back into her frozen limbs. After she’d wriggled around for a while she looked back up at Charlie again. His head was resting on his chest - he had fallen asleep.
Nice for some, Claire thought jealously. Charlie had this strange ability to fall asleep almost anywhere pretty much instantaneously - Claire had never been able to do that.
She watched him for a while, memorising the rise and fall of his chest underneath his thin cotton t-shirt. She didn’t even realise that she’d fallen asleep until Bonnie arrived to take over her shift, unnecessarily stomping about in her boots. An indeterminate amount of time later, Claire woke again and realised that Greta was back on duty again - she was leaning on the wall outside the command room, her finger resting on the trigger of her rifle as she stared off into space, clearly bored.
Claire caught Charlie’s sleep fuddled gaze and smiled tiredly at him. He smiled back easily though the skin on his face pulled against the dried blood underneath his nose and on his chin.
“You okay?” she whispered to him. Her voice echoed slightly in the cavernous space and Charlie nodded tiredly. Greta glanced over at them both, eyeing them beadily in case they said anything suspicious.
“Go back to sleep,” he told her, pointedly ignoring the attention that Greta was paying to him. “I’m okay.”
Claire nodded - her eyelids already felt heavy.
“Sleep sweet Charlie,” she murmured to him as her chin dropped to her chest of its own accord.
“Sleep sweet my Claire,” Charlie whispered back, and Claire’s eyes flickered shut once again.
NEXT CHAPTER