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June 22nd, 2009
09:05 pm - After You've Gone
Title: After You've Gone
Characters: Juliet, Harper, Karl, Alex, Danny Pickett, Tom, Bea Klugh, Richard.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: slight Alex/Karl.
Warnings: Spoilers up through S5
Summary: The story of the Others while Ben is being held in the Swan, and their feelings towards their absent leader.
They're all looking to her for leadership, now Ben is gone.
Some people have come to Juliet with ideas of trying to get Ben back. Others are aware that Ben never does anything without a reason, so he'd obviously had some motive for allowing himself to be taken prisoner. They just had no idea what it was.
And how can Juliet answer their questions? She isn't sure either.
The question she'd mostly been dreading had been the one from Alex, which in the end hadn't been the one she was expecting.
When Alex had come banging on her door yelling "Where is he?", Juliet had gone into the spiel she'd used for everyone else, that Ben was fine, he'd be back soon, he'd had his reasons.
"You think I'm asking about my father?" Alex had raged. "I want to know what they've done with Karl."
She'd had to get Danny to take Alex away after that, get Colleen to keep an eye on her. But it didn't get any easier. She couldn't explain about the tumour, because Ben only wanted essential people to know at that stage.
And she couldn't explain why he'd wanted to be taken. Dawson was in their camp now, and from what Beatrice had said, it was only a matter of time before he agreed to bring Shephard to their camp. There seemed no reason for Ben to have done this.
A range of emotions flood through her the day she visits Dawson; envy at the fact he is getting a chance to leave the island, something she has only been able to dream of, relief at the idea of him taking his son away, and dread at the idea of having Ben returned to them.
She's watching from the Flame with Mikhail the day it happens. Cortez, the woman who took Goodwin's life, is dead.
But she cannot even process how she feels about that, because she knows that what she dreaded is about to happen.
It had been Ben who had broken the news of Goodwin's death to Harper.
He'd looked at her and told her he was sorry, explained that one of Them had probably realised that Goodwin wasn't on the plane. But Harper hadn't been fooled for one minute. She knew full well that Ben had engineered this himself because of Goodwin's affair with Juliet.
Juliet Burke, baby doctor. Harper hadn't liked her even before the affair with Goodwin had begun. All that fanfare over bringing in this wonderful baby doctor who was supposed to fix the fertility problems, everyone getting all excited over research that was never going to work. She, Harper, was the one who had to listen to all the women gushing in the obligatory therapy sessions for those who were trying. She was the one who had to force a smile as she listened to all the mothers talking about the hope they had now the new doctor was there, who had to continue to smile even as the symptoms began to develop. And when the inevitable happened, it was Harper who had to pick up the pieces of the husbands.
Technically, it had been one of the tail section survivors who had taken Goodwin's life. When Harper had first found out, she had confronted Juliet, reminding her of the long-ago warning that Juliet had not heeded. "It may have been one of Them who did the deed," she had spat, "but his blood is on your hands."
But Harper knows now that the responsibility lies at the door of the man who had ostensibly been trying to comfort her while trapping her into confiding more than she had meant: Benjamin Linus.
Ben is gone now, Goodwin is gone. Harper is here, with the woman she is still unable to forgive for her role in Goodwin's death.
And a large part of her hopes Ben will not return.
The irony is that Karl had thought that it would make things easier if Mr. Linus wasn't around.
He and Alex have been sneaking around for a while now. It hadn't always been this way; when they were kids Alex's father had always seemed happy with them playing together. It was only this last year that things had been weird.
Even without Mr. Linus around, Karl had had to admit that they still would have had to be careful. The likes of Danny would probably have reported everything straight back to him as soon as possible. But Karl had a suspicion that Juliet would have understood.
He hadn't questioned it when Juliet had asked him to drop off more X-rays at her house. Karl had been allowed to help her from time to time, since Juliet knew that he wanted to go into the same field as her when he was older. But when Tom had turned up at Juliet's house that day, he'd been met by those two goons Tom and Danny instead.
He doesn't remember much of what happened after that, but he does know that he's been here ever since, in the cage on the Hydra island with no company other than Tom and Danny who occasionally come to check he hasn't escaped and won't tell him how Alex is.
Karl wonders how Mr. Linus is faring over on the main island, how They are treating him. And he wonders what the people are really like, the ones who hold Mr. Linus as a hostage. He's seen the files, of course, and he knows everyone says Zack and Emma will have a better life now, but he's no longer sure that's true.
But Karl does know that he wouldn't have a better life at the other camp, because that would be a life without Alex.
Alex isn't sure how she's supposed to feel right now.
He's still her father, when all's said and done, and he is being held prisoner somewhere by the people from the plane.
But Alex knows that her father's obviously got some reason why he wants to be there. He had had a choice in the matter. Karl had not.
And in Ben's case, Alex at least knows he's still alive. Their people are monitoring him from either the Flame or the Pearl. They won't let Alex anywhere near either, which makes her wonder what they don't want her to see. But she knows he's alive.
When she asks about Karl, however, no one will answer her questions, not even Richard. She has to allow herself to believe he's still alive somewhere, maybe on the Hydra island in one of those rusty old cages that haven't been used since the DHARMA zoo. She's tried to persuade Beatrice to let her take the food to Walt, to give him the support she knows Karl's not getting. Yet even though Beatrice blatantly fears going in there, probably as much because of Room 23 itself as of Walt, she refuses all Alex's offers.
Alex can't even get over there to find out anything for herself. They've got Colleen with her, watching her like a hawk so that she doesn't try anything. Alex doesn't have the freedom she's used to any more.
But Alex has to carry on hoping that Karl is still alive. And if that isn't true, then she's not sure she wants her father released. Because if anything happens to Karl, she doesn't care what happens to Ben.
It's a hell of a resemblance, Danny thinks to himself as he watches Ford on the monitor.
He can't understand how it's possible. He's gone through Ford's file with a fine tooth comb, and there's nothing on there that can explain it. He doesn't even seem to have any relatives of the name "LaFleur".
But there's no denying the resemblance between Ford and the man he's spent his whole life hating.
He'd been quite young when it happened, but old enough not to forget. Danny had known every detail of the face of the man Jim LaFleur. He'd never liked the man much himself anyway, even in the days when all of DHARMA admired him. Danny had always found him rather full of himself. But it hadn't been until the Incident, which had taken the life of his father along with others in the DHARMA Initiative, that Danny had truly hated him.
He's hated the memory of the man who helped cause the Incident ever since, even though LaFleur was presumed dead too at the time. And now here is this man, James Ford, who reminds him so much of LaFleur that Danny can barely stand it.
"I don't understand," he says one day when Richard comes to relieve him. "How can he look so much like LaFleur? According to the file, there's no connection."
Richard looks at him oddly. "That's because for him, it hasn't happened yet."
Ben's out of his tree, Tom thinks as he watches the monitor at the Pearl. He's been acting strange with them all for a while now, and Tom doesn't know why. Just a couple of days before he'd disappeared, he'd got angry at Tom for having supposedly left the door to the Pearl wide open. Well, Tom didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He was always careful when he came down here. But Ben wouldn't have it.
And this Karl and Alex thing. Surely it would be a hell of a lot easier to keep them apart if Ben was actually there, rather than this cage thing which Tom hates (but had had his head bitten off when he'd tried to argue this point with Ben). He hoped it didn't end up coming to Room 23. Tom hated that video himself.
Still, at least being here's better than taking the food to the kid, he thinks. He and Beatrice have argued with Ben until they're both blue in the face, shown him the evidence of the dead birds (and Tom knows Juliet has at least once too), but he still kept on insisting. The kid was important, it was Jacob's will. He stayed until Dawson brought Shephard to them.
As Shephard himself appears on the monitor, Tom smiles to himself. He guesses there's at least one compensation.
Bea knows her hands are shaking as she prepares the food. She really can't face the thought of going in there. None of them can.
Alex is the only one who ever offers, and Bea knows that's only because she thinks it will give her a chance to see Karl. Ben's ordered them all to keep Alex away, but sometimes she sneaks past Colleen and tries to get to Karl anyway.
The truth is, sometimes Bea's tempted to just let Alex take the food instead. Anything so she doesn't have to go in there herself, be screamed at by the kid, or worse, have him watch her silently with that creepy stare of his.
She knows Ben won't like the deal she made with Dawson. But she doesn't care, none of them do. Just as long as the kid's out of there. The outcome will still be the same; Dawson will bring Shephard to them, just as Ben had wanted.
Ben doesn't like it when anyone questions his judgement. But even as she dreads facing him when he finds out about the decision she's taken, she thinks even that will be preferable to facing the kid and the dead birds again.
Richard smiles to himself as he watches Ben with John Locke on the Pearl monitor. Ben thinks none of them know why he's chosen to be taken. He thinks his secret died with Ethan, when he'd sent him to the fuselage knowing he was sending him to his death.
He's never known that Richard's known the truth all along.
With Ellie and Charles gone, there are none left on the island to remember Richard's encounter with John Locke in 1954, where he'd claimed that one day, he would be their leader. To be frank, Richard hadn't been convinced himself at the time. Even if it hadn't been the case that the selection of the leaders took place from an early age, from what Richard had seen of John in his youth, he really hadn't seemed that special.
It wasn't until he found out that John had regained the use of his legs after crashing on the island, having been in a wheelchair for the past four years, that Richard began to believe he had underestimated John. Jacob had healed him; Jacob clearly believed he was special.
Jacob had made his choice when he cured John's paralysis yet allowed unworthy leader Ben, who he would not even see, to be stricken with cancer that would require the assistance of Shephard to cure. Ben had believed that by allowing himself to be taken prisoner in John's camp, he would be able to thwart his destiny. But Richard knew that was never going to happen.
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Comments:
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/89600160/8714619) | | From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) siluria |
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| Date: | June 23rd, 2009 08:34 pm (UTC) |
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That last bit about Richard and Jacob and the latter not healing Ben made me really think about the finale... *ponders*
Love teh pov's by the way, and it's such an original idea!
Thank you! I'm wondering myself now what's going to happen next year regarding Jacob, Ben, fake Locke etc., and especially why Jacob didn't cure Ben.
You tied everything we learnt in the 5th season to rest of he show so well - i am stunned. This fic was so cool to read. The different connections characters have (often in the background and unseen), and little things like Richard remebering John, or Walt killing the birds. As someone who clearly remembers such distant things, i had so much fun reading here =) Good work!!
Thank you! To be honest I sometimes find the Others more interesting to write than the likes of the triangle, wonder if we ever will find out if Danny and LaFleur was right? (well, it will remain in my personal canon anyway!)
Loved the idea that Danny was in DHARMA and that why he hates Sawyer. With the birth of Ethan been shown in S5, I wish we'd seen young Danny or something too. Though, I suppose it is possible for S6. As siluria said, the ending with richard got me wondering about the possibilities for S6 and why Jacob didn't heal Ben. I believe there's a reason to the whole thing, I'm just not sure what. I loved the expansion on why Harper dislikes Juliet, and that it's not just about Goodwin, but also that Harper has had to deal with all this potential parents who Juliet has raised the hopes of. As always, great fic, and you capture the personalities of the Others perfectly.
It seemed clear to me that Harper and Juliet didn't get on even before Juliet's affair with Goodwin, and this seemed to explain it. Harper has been seen as a bitch, but she's had a lot to deal with!
I suppose it may be possible to see young Danny in S6, because to my mind that's the only thing that explains the Sawyer thing. However, we're more likely to get stuck with Sarah's crappy lover instead!
I hope we find out why Jacob didn't heal Ben though.
I'd never thought about Harper not liking Juliet before the affair with Goodwin, but yes, looking back there was some hostility there, and your explaination certainly works.
I don't know about Danny in S6. Have you heard the comic con news? They made out like DHARMA times were done.
Oh yes, I'd love to find out why Jacob didn't heal Ben, and a million other things about Jacob. they're SO got to bring him back in some shape or form in S6.
I'm trying to avoid spoilers but I've heard some of the news - great that Richard's becoming a regular eh?
And to be perfectly honest I'm not that sorry to see the back of DHARMA anyway, but would have been interested to know if I'd got something right!
Yeah, I was thrilled about that bit of news!
Yeah, I'm not too bothered to see the back of DHARMA either, though you're right, it would have been nice to see if you're right. Hopefully though, we might go further into the past; I'd love to see more of Jacob's time and what he did to make Richard ageless. |
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