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June 19th, 2009
10:39 pm - Newspaper Cuttings
Title: Newspaper Cuttings
Characters: Helen Norwood. Mentions of Locke and Anthony Cooper.
Rating: G
Warnings: Spoilers up to The Life And Death Of Jeremy Bentham, one minor one for The Incident.
Pairings: mentions of Helen/Locke history.
Author's note: This assumes that what Abaddon told Locke in The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham was a lie.
Summary: Four times Helen said goodbye to Locke, as she reflects on their relationship through a series of newspaper cuttings about events in Locke's life.
COOPER, Anthony. Suddenly at home on August 16th, 1998. Memorial service to be held at St Francis' Church, Tustin, CA, August 23rd, 1998.
Looking back, Helen Norwood wished she hadn't read the obituaries in the paper that day. Or at the very least, that she'd pretended not to have seen that one. John wouldn't have read it. He never read the obits himself, just teased her about them. He wouldn't have known.
He hadn't spoken of his father in such a long time, at least not in Helen's hearing, since that day when she'd made it clear to him that when he stayed with her, he stayed with her, no more midnight visits.
The irony had been that Helen had thought at the time that this would have been the perfect opportunity for John to get closure on his father. They could go to the funeral together, consign the man to the past where he belonged, then move on with their future together.
It might even have worked, if he'd actually been dead.
If it had been true, John could have put Cooper behind him. But instead, he'd found himself in thrall to his father once more, going along with the scheme to help Cooper recover his ill-gotten gains.
And when Helen had asked John if he had anything to tell her after those men had turned up on his doorstep, he'd lied to her.
After she'd followed him and found out the truth, John had tried to claim that he'd done it all for her, for the life they could have together. But she didn't want to know. She didn't want the ring, or anything else he was offering, knowing it was bought with the dirty money from Cooper. And she didn't need another liar in her life. John could tell her all he liked that he wanted nothing more to do with his father, that Helen was his priority now. But it was all just words. Who was to say that if Cooper turned up again with another scheme, that John wouldn't fall for it again?
Sometimes, she'd wondered if she should have heard him out. But mostly, she was sure that she'd made the right decision. He wasn't the man she'd thought he was, and he wasn't the man she wanted to be with.
MAN SURVIVES FALL FROM EIGHTH-STOREY WINDOW
It's A Miracle He Survived, Say Doctors
Helen wasn't sure why she'd cut that article out of the paper.
She hadn't thought about John in a long time. He'd eventually stopped phoning after she'd kept refusing to take his calls. The last she'd heard, he'd been living on some hippie commune or something, although that had been a while ago. Since then, he'd seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, until now.
She'd thought briefly about going to see John after she'd read the article. But what could she really say? Anything about what she really thought of Anthony Cooper wouldn't be helpful, and she knew that if this hadn't happened, she probably wouldn't have thought of meeting up with him again anyway. John would have hated the idea that she was visiting him out of pity or something like that.
Besides, the fact was that he'd made his choice two years ago, and he'd chosen Cooper, not Helen, even knowing what kind of man he was. He probably wouldn't want her there anyway. Maybe he even blamed her, thought that if Helen had stayed, he wouldn't have gone back to Cooper. Maybe that was even true, but they would never know now. Or maybe her presence would remind him of Cooper, given that he'd been inextricably linked with their breakup.
She was sorry that this had happened to him, of course. She gathered from the paper that there had been some man there with him as they'd waited for the ambulance to arrive, which Helen was pleased about. At least he hadn't been alone.
And yet even as she'd thought this, she'd reflected that John was probably alone in the hospital right then. Cooper was last known to have been on his way to Mexico, the hippie commune people were long gone, and John had no other family that Helen knew of.
Helen thought about this as she toyed with the idea of visiting John. But in the end, she decided that it was better if she stayed away, gave them both a chance at moving forward.
She'd been living in the past for 20 years herself before she'd finally allowed herself to move on. John had been the one to help her with that, and she would always be grateful. But she wasn't sure that it was good for either of them to have contact now. It was better for them to move forward without each other.
PLANE DISAPPEARS OVER PACIFIC OCEAN
324 Presumed Dead In Worst Aircraft Disaster In Recent Years
Helen hadn't realised the significance when she first read about the tragedy of Oceanic Flight 815. Earlier reports had talked of 324 presumed dead, but hadn't mentioned any names apart from some rock star whose name she probably should have recognised, but didn't. It had only been when she'd read one of the Los Angeles papers, whose article concentrated on the local victims of the crash, that she knew.
There had been a list; somebody who had won the lottery the year before, the son of the founder of that big wedding company Carlyle Weddings, some local spinal surgeon who'd managed to fix a woman who had never been expected to walk again. And then she had come to the next name on the list.
John Locke, 48, of Tustin, CA, who had been employed by Box Squared of the same city.
There was some statement by some guy named Randy Nations, who apparently had worked with John, something trite and generic about how he'd been a valued employee and would be sorely missed. Just the kind of thing he would have hated.
She felt sad, reading that, to think that there was no one closer in John's life to write some kind of tribute to him. It had been a while since she'd thought about him, yet she remembered, reading that, how she had loved him and maybe part of her always would.
Helen wondered what she would have said if she'd been the one to write the tribute to John. A memory came into her mind, unbidden. "Don't knock the obits -- the nicest part of the paper. No one ever says anything mean about people once they're dead." That had been the last day before Cooper had come between them, the beginning of the end for her relationship with John.
Loyal, she considered. After all, he'd certainly stayed loyal to that father of his long after anyone else would have cut their losses. But he'd shown no loyalty to Helen by choosing Cooper at the last.
Or maybe brave, and always one to follow his dreams. From what the article said, the reason John was in Australia in the first place was to go on that walkabout she knew he'd always dreamed of. but while Helen knew how much John didn't like being told what he could and couldn't do, was it really more foolish to have attempted the walkabout in his condition?
In truth, it was difficult to find the words to sum up this unique man. But he had been the man that Helen had loved. Maybe that was all the tribute that was needed after all.
MAN FOUND DEAD IN DOWNTOWN LOFT
The body of Jeremy Bentham of New York was discovered shortly after 4 a.m. in the Westerfield Hotel.
If there hadn't been a photograph of the man who was calling himself Jeremy Bentham, Helen wasn't sure she'd have believed it. But it was there, in black and white.
She couldn't understand how this could have happened. It had seemed quite clear at one time that all the passengers of Flight 815 had been killed on impact. And then, barely a month after the news that the wreckage had been found, had come the revelation that actually there had been survivors after all.
For one brief moment, after the Oceanic Six had been rescued, Helen had considered the idea of going to see one of them, to find out if any of them had remembered John from the plane. Maybe they'd talked to him, been there with him as the plane crashed. But in the end, she'd dismissed it as ridiculous. Even if, by chance, one of them had sat next to him on the flight, they probably hadn't really talked anyway. And even if they had, how likely were they to remember, given everything else that had happened to them?
But now, faced with this newspaper cutting, Helen began to wonder if he'd ever even been on that flight at all. The whole thing reminded her too much of the fake death of Anthony Cooper so many years earlier. And if the father could do it, then so could the son. For all Helen knew, this could have been some scheme the two of them cooked up together, possibly ending with the father, heartless conman to the last, taking the life of his son.
Helen didn't want to believe that. But nothing else made sense, given the information she had. Why else would John disappear off the face of the earth, allowing everyone to think he had died in 2004 only then to reappear under a false name?
If anything, it just confirmed what she'd thought all those years ago; John needed his father's love more than hers. And it confirmed to her that she'd done the right thing in walking away. She'd wasted so much of her life being angry, the last thing she needed was to waste more years in the same way.
But in spite of herself, Helen wanted so much for it not to be true. She just couldn't honestly believe that their years together had all been the lie that she had started to suspect just a few minutes earlier. She had to believe that John had loved her just as she had loved him.
She wanted to yell at him, to ask why he'd let everyone believe he was dead, to say all the things she'd imagined saying to him so many times over the years.
Now she will never get that chance.
And just for one moment, Helen allowed herself to wonder what might have been.
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Comments:
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/86969792/14364466) | | From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aurilly |
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| Date: | June 20th, 2009 02:53 am (UTC) |
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This is such a neat idea, telling important parts of Locke's life through newspaper articles. For such a quiet man, it IS interesting that he kept being in the paper like that. The part about how he would have hated the kind of obituatry that was written about him was heartbreaking. This was such a great story. Thanks for sharing! I love Locke so much and it's such a treat to find great gen fic like this about him, through someone else's eyes.
I think it would especially have annoyed him that it was Randy writing it! Thanks for reading!
I have often thought that if *I* were an Oceanic Six, I would have probably ended up googling myself and the other people on the plane and *surely* the fact that one of the people on the plane had previously miraculously survived a fall out of eighth story window would have come up at some point, which would prove that John actually had grounds for believing what he did and that he wasn't batshit after all. But then, I guess in reality that's a bit of a long shot. :-P
Anyway, I really liked this. Lots of bits that ran true (
There was some statement by some guy named Randy Nations, who apparently had worked with John, something trite and generic about how he'd been a valued employee and would be sorely missed. Just the kind of thing he would have hated.) although the idea that Helen would conclude John had ended up dead because he'd gone back to working with his father after all broke my heart. (And made me hate Ben a little more, because dammit why couldn't someone have just been genuinely nice to John for once. :/)
I am also still pretty cross about them killing Helen for NO REASON so, yeah.
The part about her wondering if Locke was working with Cooper again was a bit of a strange one for me to write, because I didn't really like to think of her believing that, but I did have to consider that she probably would have had no idea what else to believe (given that by claiming she was dead, Abaddon had prevented them from having contact and giving Locke a chance to explain).
I know there was a theory at one point about the maps visible in Jack's room in Through The Looking Glass were somehow connected to the locations of the survivors before the crash. If there was anything in that, then maybe Jack did Google them too? Or maybe it's just another theory that won't pan out, who knows?
They should never have killed her!
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/72723362/8714619) | | From: | siluria |
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| Date: | June 20th, 2009 12:32 pm (UTC) |
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Nicely done!! I like how she reads into John's life through newspapers, I think you handled that very well!
Thank you! I thought it was an interesting idea.
I really enjoyed this! I always liked Helen (and was MAJORLY pissed when she was killed off), and you gave her a strong voice despite the fact that she hasn't been seen much on the show. And the newspaper format is wonderful. This is great!
Glad you liked that format! She should never have been killed off, thanks for reading!
I like the way you've structured this with the newspaper clippings; it works so well and fits in with Helen's character. Her voice is strong and believable, and you capture her side of their relationship very well. Nicely done.
I hated the way they disposed of her on the show - good on you for giving her some much-deserved fic attention. :-)
I hated that too (hate character deaths in general anyway but there was no reason to kill her off like that.)
And I've always liked to give different characters fic attention (right now I'm working on something with the Others ensemble while Ben's in the Swan) - but Helen is seriously underused!
Glad you liked the newspaper articles, thanks for reading!
This fic was such a cool idea. First, to do it from the POV of someone like Helen, because in any scene with her, we'd probably only have ever been thinking about what Locke was feeling. So that offered no perspective on all of that, and then ti tell a story through the newspaper articles. To have someone have to make up the story on her own because she didn't know the truth (and never would), that i really loved.
Good work =D
I like writing the POV of characters like that who don't get as much attention from writers, so this was an interesting one to write - really, what could Helen think given the information she would have had at the time?
Thanks for reading!
OMG! This was so wonderfully touching and so sad. :( Very well done.
Thanks! I enjoyed writing this one, since Helen is so under-used and it was interesting looking at her POV on their relationship.
This is a great idea and concept and well-executed; I enjoyed reading it. I have always been intrigued by Helen and her relationship to John, and I like your take on it. Great job!
Thanks! This was interesting to write, and I'd barely attempted Helen before, so pleased to hear people think I pulled it off!
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/87759366/12054859) | | From: | gl12 |
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| Date: | June 22nd, 2009 01:49 am (UTC) |
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This was terrific! John & Helen = OTP.
Thanks! Glad you liked, their relationship is an interesting one!
This was so interesting. I especially like the twist with Helen discovering Jeremy Bentham's death and comparing John's other death to a con. I also liked how in each section Helen stuck by her decision to not be with John, but each time it seemed like she needed more closure herself.
Great work! My mother-in-law always reads the obituaries. That was a neat piece of characterization.
She probably wouldn't know what else to think, given that by claiming she'd died, Abaddon and Widmore hadn't given Locke a chance to tell his side!
Glad you liked this one!
This is so fantastic! I adore the concept, and your execution is incredible. I love your Helen, and the new perspective she brings to Locke; this fic made me regard the character in a way I never have before. Great work!
Thank you! (and thanks for the rec as well - I've been surprised at the amount of positive feedback I've had for this one!) |
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