Lost Fic: She Held Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand (Charlotte)

[ozmissage]

Title: She Held Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand
Character: Charlotte (slight Charlotte/Dan)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2,759
Warnings: Some sexual content.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Spoilers: Through “Confirmed Dead”.
Summary: All Charlotte ever wanted was to go home.
A/N: This is an only slightly late birthday present for the wonderfulvalhalla37. I know I said it was going to be Faraday fic, but Charlotte hijacked my brain. I hope you enjoy it anyway

Charlotte’s first memory was of sand. She was two, maybe three years old at the time. She was on a beach and she reached down and scooped up a palm full of pristine, white sand and balled her tiny hand into a fist. She remembers laughing at the scratchy feeling of grains slipping through her fingers and then watching in amazement as the wind caught the sand in mid-air and made it take flight. She wondered how far it would go and if it might end up on some other beach in some other place where another little girl would watch as it slipped through her fingers.

Then she remembers looking down at her dirty, empty hands and feeling afraid. She was supposed to stay clean and she knew her mother would be angry. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her sundress as she approached her mother. Much to her surprise her mother didn’t yell when Charlotte showed her the mess she had made. She just smiled and wiped Charlotte’s tiny hands across the leg of her tan jumpsuit leaving a dark streak behind and then she twined her fingers with Charlotte’s as they walked back towards their house.

***

One day when she was seven, Charlotte stood on a beach in England and frowned at the murky brown sand on her palm. It didn’t look anything like the sand she remembered from when she was small and it felt different too, rougher somehow.

She asked her mother if she remembered the day when Charlotte was small and she didn’t get into trouble even though her hands were filthy.

Charlotte’s mother nodded and said, “Of course I remember. That was the day I found out I was going to have your little sister.”

“Where were we, Mum?” Charlotte asked.

“In Cardiff I think. We were visiting your Aunt Jo.”

Charlotte frowned and furrowed her brow. That wasn’t right at all. In her mind the sun was too bright and there were trees behind her that were greener than any trees Charlotte had ever seen since. The beach was clean and it stretched on forever and there was no one else there, no families with crying babies or teenagers shouting to one another.

It was just Charlotte and the ocean and the sand.

When Charlotte told her mother this she pursed her lips and told Charlotte she was much too old to still be playing make believe.

***

Charlotte lost her virginity when she was sixteen. She was at a bonfire with her mates from school and she let Dougie Harper lead her away from the group down to the end of the beach. When they reached the dock they walked underneath it and Charlotte felt like she was entering some sort of cave. They spread a blanket on the sand between two wooden pillars and Charlotte stretched out on top of it and then gazed up at the support beams; she could see moonlight filtering through the cracks.

When’s she’s older she’ll struggle to remember what Dougie looked like. Mostly she’ll just remember that his kisses were too wet and his mouth tasted like stale Guinness and cigarettes, but she’ll remember everything about the beach.

Every time Dougie would thrust into her Charlotte would feel the ground shift beneath her. She imagined that when it was over she would be able to see the imprint of her body in the blanket and it would look like some sort of strange attempt at a sand angel.

She’ll remember the smell too--- a mix of salt and damp wood that she could taste sharp and tangy on the tip of her tongue. She could hear her friends down the beach and the sound of their voices mingled with the soft grunts Dougie made against her ear, but then she closed her eyes and focused on the sound of the ocean instead. She tried to match the movement of her hips to the steady march of the waves rolling in to the shore.

Right before she came, Charlotte dug her fingers into the sand. Her hand felt cool there buried in the earth while the rest of her was hot and shivering, and the moment Dougie gave one final thrust she closed her hand around the sand and squeezed it into a fist. She remembers how her breathe hitched in pain.

She opened her hand slowly and looked down at her palm, there was a small, white shell stuck painfully in her skin. Dougie grimaced and pulled the shell out of her hand. He clucked his tongue sympathetically, but all she could do was watch the small line of red blood mingle with the dirt on her hand and smile.

It seemed appropriate somehow.

***

When it came time to pick her major at university Charlotte didn’t hesitate when she chose anthropology. She knew her father would be pleased; he had always encouraged her love of history, but she knew her mother would see right through her.

Charlotte stopped mentioning the island when she was sixteen. It had been the subject of a many a row with her mum and eventually Charlotte realized that arguing was a waste of time. She knew she wasn’t crazy---the island was too real in her mind to be a childish fantasy.

She had walked on a beach, she had went to a little school and been taught by a woman in a tan jumper and she had went to sleep every night in a pink house where she could hear the echo of waves in the distance. It was real and now that she was old enough to do so, she was going to prove it.

When she told her father she was going to be an anthropologist he wrapped her in his arms and told her that she had made a fantastic choice. Her mother just arched an eyebrow at her daughter and then looked away.

***

Charlotte’s first major expedition took her to the Gobi desert. She had heard tales of sandstorms before, but she had never witnessed one. Her team was in the middle of a dig when a storm appeared on the horizon. It was a massive, churning thing and when Charlotte looked into it all she could see was red. It blotted out the sun and the sky and it was as if the earth had suddenly risen up to meet her. The force of it caused the ground beneath her feet to quake and she felt the reverberations all the way in her chest.

She stood there transfixed. It was the most amazing, horrible thing she had ever seen and she started to laugh at the sheer wonder of it. One of her crew members, David, grabbed her around the waist and hauled Charlotte into a nearby tent.

“Charlotte, what the bloody hell were you thinking?” he asked.

Charlotte felt dazed. All she could do was shrug and wait for the storm to hit. She was almost bitter about being inside, she knew how dangerous these storms could be but all she could see when she closed her eyes was that wall of sand surging onwards towards some unknown destination. She wondered how far the sand would travel, if some of it just might be heading towards an island where the water was so blue you could look straight down and see the fish swimming around your feet.

She looked at her friend and grinned. “We have the best job in the world, yeah?”

David shook his head as if she were insane. “You are completely mad,” he muttered.

***

By the time she was thirty Charlotte had seen nearly every corner of the world. She was constantly moving and always working; her mum complained that she never came home to visit, but Charlotte was afraid of allowing herself to take a break. She was terrified of losing momentum.

Every now and then she would find an artifact that pointed her towards the island. A whisper about a certain Dharma Initiative, a long lost piece of wreckage from a ship everyone thought was lost at sea, but the trail would always dry up as quickly as it began.

But she didn’t give up. She discovered that she wasn’t the only one looking. Many of her colleagues swapped stories of a mythical island, some untouched Eden that would hold the answers to all the great mysteries of the world. They all wanted to find it, but very few of them actually believed it existed. Mostly it was just a ghost story whispered about at the end of a long day. It was no more real to them than Excalibur or Big Foot; it was just a tale to pass the time.

But Charlotte knew it was real and when she got the call about a collar found in Tunisia she finally had proof.

***

Charlotte was accustomed to having dirt under her nails and a fine layer of dust clinging to her clothes. It was an occupational hazard; if you spent most of your time digging through layers of earth looking for signs of life you were bound to get a little dirty. It had become a part of her over the years and she didn’t mind a bit of dust in her hair, but when the occasion called for it Charlotte certainly cleaned up nice.

She was a desired guest at dinner parties, many in society regarded her as something of a Lady Indiana Jones. Her reputation preceded her wherever she went. She had mastered the art of commanding a table. She had amassed an impressive arsenal of stories over the years and she was happy to regale guests with tales of marauders and snakes and all of the other fanciful things that films had convinced people to expect from anthropologists and archeologists alike.

She knew how to use a pause to keep her listeners on the edge of their seats, she knew when to punctuate a joke with a hearty laugh, and more than that she knew when to shut up and listen. She was the perfect guest---both attentive and entertaining. She had a closet full of cocktail dresses and shoes for any occasion.

Of course she hated every minute of these functions. They were often boring and the people were insufferable and her mind always threatened to drift back to her work, but they were a necessary evil. If she ever wanted to get back to the island she was going to need connections.

After she found the collar she booked a flight to England. Shortly after she landed she made a stop at her barely used flat and poured herself into a stunning black cocktail dress and strapped on a pair of expensive stilettos and talked her way into an invitation to billionaire Charles Widmore’s birthday party.

She had heard through a series of very reliable sources that she and Mr. Widmore had a common goal. He seemed to be assembling a crew to make an expedition to an uncharted island and Charlotte had decided that she had no choice but to convince him that she would make an invaluable member to his team.

When she spotted Widmore across the room she marched up to him and extended her hand.

“Excuse me, Mr. Widmore. I wanted to wish you a happy birthday. My name is Charlotte Lewis and I was wondering if we could discuss a business proposition.”

Charlotte felt satisfied when Widmore smiled as he shook her hand.

***

She didn’t get much sleep on the freighter. As much as Charlotte loved the ocean she had never actually spent much time on it. She always preferred standing on the edge of the beach and letting the waves wash over her feet; she never actually had any desire to go to sea.

Being out in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight unsettled her. At night she paced the decks feeling like an animal in a cage. She missed the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet and the ability to move further than from the bow to the stern.

She wasn’t the only one who had trouble adjusting to life on the freighter. On her very first night she found Daniel Faraday sitting on one of the crates near the helicopter with a deck of cards in his hand. She had watched as he played a memory game. He laid three cards out in front of him and then closed his eyes and muttered to himself for a moment before flipping the cards over. Each time he would wince or sigh, and even in the dim starlight she saw that his expression was pained.

He had looked startled when she joined him that first night and she could tell that he wasn’t used to the company. It wasn’t until she had joined him three nights in a row that he really began to talk to her---or remember her name for that matter, but once he did he was by her side constantly.

Straume snapped at her one morning about her new shadow and Daniel had ducked his head to hide the bright red blush that crept across his cheeks.

Charlotte had given Straume her deadliest glare before catching Daniel’s hand.

“Come on Dan; ignore him he’s just being an ass. I like having you around.”

She had meant it to.

Three days later they caught their first glimpse of the island. Charlotte laughed and threw her arms around Daniel without thinking about it at all.

***

When she jumped from the helicopter Charlotte was terrified but she was also elated. It was too dark and the rain was too heavy for her to see anything below, but she imagined it was as beautiful as she remembered.

When she hit the tree the branches left long lashes across her arms and she knew that she would have a dozen angry, purple bruises if she didn’t die from the impact of the fall. She gasped when her parachute caught suddenly and brought her to an abrupt stop. She had just enough time to register the fact that she was upside down before she blacked out.

***

The moment she landed in the water she felt like she was three years old again, splashing in the ocean and laughing as the waves knocked her over. She was hit with an overwhelming feeling of home that she had never felt before.

She had been to dozens of places, many of them beautiful, some of them breathtaking but there wasn’t another place on the face of the earth that felt like this.

Of course the feeling was short lived. John Locke and his merry band of travelers chose that moment to come stumbling out of the jungle to find Charlotte splashing around in the water like a child.

***

It wasn’t until Sayid negotiated the hostage exchange that she really had a chance to enjoy the fact that she was actually on the bloody island.

As she walked towards the beach with Daniel by her side she wondered if it would look the way she remembered. She was almost afraid to see it; she had had more than thirty years to build this place up in her head and now that she was walking towards it she couldn’t help but wonder if she had exaggerated a detail here and there. It wasn’t fair to expect a place to be paradise; it was just a place after all, just like any other.

She swallowed hard as she walked towards the water’s edge. Her chest was still stinging from the shots Benjamin Linus had tried to put into her chest. She had barely been on the island for five hours and she had already averted death twice.

She held her breath as she bent down to scoop up a palm full of sand. She could feel Daniel hovering just behind her. His shadow fell across her as he approached, momentarily blocking out the sun. He knelt down beside her and she turned to him and smiled, she could feel tears stinging her eyes but she ignored them as she tipped the sand into Daniel’s hand.

She watched as his eyes widened in amazement as the sand slid through his fingers.

“It feels different, doesn’t it?” she asked.

Daniel nodded slowly. “It’s softer…lighter or something…it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Charlotte grinned as she ran her fingers across the sand. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

 

Comments

[phelipa.livejournal.com]

This is fantastic!
There's not a lot of Charlotte-centric fic out there and it's really a shame, she is such an interesting character. I love the litte snippits of her life from her childhood through adult life - you seemed to capture her perfectly. I would have loved to see more about her on the show but you did a great job showing that through fic - the little hints of Daniel/Charlotte were also perfect and I love the little scene on the freighter. Great job, I loved reading it!

[ozmissage.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for such a lovely comment! I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

I agree I wish we had seen more of Charlotte on the show, she's such an interesting character it's a shame they didn't explore her some more.

[tellshannon815.livejournal.com]

Love these glimpses into Charlotte's past! Wish we had seen more of her. Great job.

[ozmissage.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! And me too, there was so much they could have done with Charlotte that didn't involve her dying.

[jupiter4299.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed this! I was fascinated by Charlotte and her life long search for the island, and was irritated we didn't see more of her in the show. I like the way you fill in some of the blanks here. Great work.

[ozmissage.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!

[valhalla37.livejournal.com]

THIS IS AMAZING -- thank you so, so, so much. Don't worry, I'm not disappointed in the least that Charlotte's voice ended up being louder in your head than Dan's -- I absolutely love it to pieces.

I adore how you fill in the blank spots of Charlotte's history, something I desperately wish the show would have done. This is a million time better, though; everything is so wonderfully and just fits, but the places you take her character are still so imaginative and interesting. And the way you the image of the beach, and sand -- how those first memories stay with her throughout her life -- is just ... wow. Breathtaking.

I mean, I love all of this, but I think my favourite parts were Charlotte losing her virginity -- and what an awesome way to show insight in the character -- on the expedition (because it's just so Charlotte) and convincing Widmore to include her in the freighter trip. You have such great range as a writer, and all these snippets definitely showcase that. Oh, and Dan! So sweet and lovely and adorable, especially Charlotte reacting to Miles and sticking up for him.

I just wish I had the words to explain how much I absolutely adore this -- a little bit hungover, lol -- and how hard I squeed through the entire thing. Again, thank you SO MUCH. What a wonderful birthday present! :D

[ozmissage.livejournal.com]

*Sigh of relief*
I'm so relieved that you liked this! I was worried about taking Charlotte to so many different places (you have no idea how long I agonized over the losing her virginity scene, I very nearly cut it), so I'm so glad to know that you enjoyed it.

I love writing Charlotte's because like you said, there are so many blank spaces in her history and because let's face it for a character who was in so little of the show---she pretty much kicked ass the whole time. ;)

[missy-useless.livejournal.com]

This fic is incredibly beautiful. Oh wow. Amazing! You have given Charlotte such a wonderful, original, perfect story and she still feels in-character throughout the whole piece and ... just wow. I love all the glimpses into her life you have given us here - you made me remember why I wish they would have explored her character more on the show. Fantastic and breathtaking and so very well written; thanks a lot for sharing!

[ozmissage.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for reading and for leaving such wonderful feedback! Charlotte had so much potential, I really wish they had explored her more on the show.

[elliotsmelliot.livejournal.com]

What a lovely tale. The sand motif was done so well, and never felt forced. I applaud you for giving Charlotte a substantial history and having her be such a driving force in her own past. Your story was also full of so many memorable details, such as the tiny shell that pressed into her hand. I just loved this!

[ozmissage.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I didn't want to over do it with the sand motif, so I'm glad to hear it didn't feel like too much.

Charlotte is such a cool character. I wish the show had taken the opportunity to explore her backstory more while they had the chance.

[mollivanders.livejournal.com]

And she comes full circle :) Sand is a really simple, elegant way to tie Charlotte's search to the island! And then there's this:

ut all she could do was watch the small line of red blood mingle with the dirt on her hand and smile.

It seemed appropriate somehow.

...premonitions! Let's pretend everyone lives happily ever after, k? K :p

Fantastic job here <3

[ozmissage.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!

We can totally pretend if it makes you feel better. ;)