things you forget

[krickets]

→ lostsquee is hosting a Lost Drabble Challenge! Pretty awesome! Here's my contribution so far.

No One Knows I'm Gone, Claire, Richard, gen, pg,

→ Something I completely forgot to mention. I finally updated (almost) all my fic to Archive of Our Own -- with the exception of everything in this post. My one-and-only invite went to slybrunette -- I don't know if we'll ever get more invites but if I do I'll offer them/it up first come first serve.

→ And, all of this reminds me, I kept meaning to post my lost fic battle 2009 stuff in my own journal because I like to keep it all here more or less. So here's that. I was particularly proud of both of these pieces.

title, rating: when you were dead, pg
fandom, pairing, count: lost, dan/charlotte, 172
notes: written for the lost fic battle 2009, posted here

You make your choices, and you stick with them.

Charlotte had said goodbye, decided to stay, told him that she belonged here.

They all had reasons. This was hers.

For forty-five minutes, she thinks he's dead. The light fills the sky and something shifts, and then the people on the beach gather to make sense of what's just happened. There's word of an explosion. The freighter. Dead. All of them.

Daniel, she thinks, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up, urging her toward the water.

Forty-five minutes is a long time when you've never told him how you feel.

When the Zodiac finds land, it's a mile up the beach and Charlotte sits at the edge of the treeline, her knees pulled to her chest, the heavy feeling of emptiness beginning to settle in her stomach.

It will be twelve and a half minutes before she hears his footsteps behind her, before she looks toward she sunlight, shields her eyes and sees his face.

Twelve and a half minutes.
-fin.




title, rating: was your heart too soft?, r
fandom, pairing, count: lost, sun/jack, 631
notes: written for the lost fic battle 2009, posted here

It's not enough to say that Sun blames Jack, nor is it enough to say that she hates him, even if those things might feel true.

But the other truth, the one that she's faced with now, is the fact that that they both want the same thing.

To go back.

It's at the airport in London when she sees him for the first time since those first few days after rescue. If it were Hurley or anyone else, she would hug him, ask him how he's been. But this is Jack, and she just can't bring herself to pretend.

"I have a car out front," she says, cold, all business. It's easier this way. He nods. He looks haggard, his crisp suit and short hair unable to hide his exhaustion, his desperation, his loss.

She's better at this.

Hiding.

Lying.

It's what mothers do. It's what Korean wives and daughters do -- what she'd done with her father, even with Jin for a time.

Weeks go by, and Sun manages to avoid Jack despite such close quarters, sharing cars, hotel rooms, business meetings, elevators and meals. Together they plot and plan and prepare.

It's early morning, three a.m., when Jack stumbles into the hotel room, a busted nose and bleeding at the arm.

"Didn't go well," he explains (and not at all), and Sun follows him into the bathroom. He practically slams his body against the porcelain toilet, when he sits down, raising his head to stop the bleeding from his nose. She's fumbling with bandages and kneeling in front of him with alcohol and cotton swabs and it's ten minutes at least before she feels it. Genuine concern. Urgency. Worry.

She stops, and his hand covers hers, hovering over the wound on his other arm.

"You know, I can do this," he says, his eyes meeting hers momentarily before she looks down again. "You don't need to."

There's a minute of hesitation and Sun thinks of Stockholm Syndrome, stories of captives growing sympathetic of their captors, wonders if this is anything like that, a simple human response to proximity over time.

She moves her hand away from his, reaches for another bandage. "No," she says, "I do."

After that, it's different -- like they're finally in the same room again, and Sun allows herself to see him, to rationalize, to forgive.

Jack never says a word, never acknowledges the change.

Sun silently thanks him for this.

One night, when all the pieces they've been shuffling are nearly in place, she ends up in his bed. He doesn't act surprised, his fingertips falling to her hips when she kisses him, sliding across the skin at her lower back. Sun isn't sure what got her there -- proximity, an act of forgiveness or desperation, loss of hope, simple human need? She pulls him closer, opens her legs to him, knowing this will be the only time. He lets her, indulges her by sliding on top of her, giving her whatever it is that she's asking him for in this act. She wonders briefly, when he presses into her, if he feels guilty, if he hopes this will make it all better, wonders if she should tell him that none of this is his fault, that it never truly was, that she knows that now.

In the morning, she wakes to the sound of him on the phone, serious tones and nonsensical words filtering through her dreams before she's fully conscious.

He stands naked in the window, looking out to the city, the sunrise over the skyline.

"Who was that?" she asks as she sits up, pulling the sheet over her in a sudden sense of modesty.

"Our passage," he says, his tone serious, all-business. It's easier this way. "We leave tomorrow."

-fin.