Title: "Thursday's Child"
Author: monimala
E-mail:mala@malisita.com
Fandom: "Lost"
Rating/Classification: adult language, adult situations, AU, future fic, Claire.
Disclaimer: Bad Robot!
Summary: Fourth in the as-yet-unnamed series that includes The Girl Most Likely, Nowhere Man, and About a Boy. It's called 'survival of the fittest.'
Driveshaft memorabilia becomes something of a collector's item. She finds someone selling a CD single of "You All Everybody" on eBay and can't resist.
All this time and she's never heard Charlie's hit song.
So, she brings it with her to Sun's place in Jersey one year. They drink green tea while Walt takes Adam down to the beach. Adam loves the beach. "Home, Mum!" he calls it...and she wonders how he could possibly know. He was so little. Just a baby.
But, then again, so was she. At least, when it all started.
"It's..." Sun looks at her, so serene as the vocals and the guitar and the drums blast from Michael's prize home entertainment system and shake the floorboards.
"Yeah, it's..." Her voice catches in her throat. Strangles. "Um..."
"It's AWFUL!" they both gasp out at the same time, bursting into helpless laughs.
She laughs until she cries.
The fantasy is always better than what's real.
She's so glad that Charlie died when he did.
He never had to learn that about her.
***
"Claire, you gotta tell me one thing. Why were you always so damn nice to Sawyer?" Michael is on his fourth beer. She catches Sun's eye across the room and the other woman just shrugs. They all get through these evenings the only way they know how and she can no sooner control Michael than he can control her. It is part of why they've held it together all this time.
She's not even sure why she arranges these things. Only that she can't seem to stop. That a year can't go by without her looking into Jack's eyes and seeing that pity. Without her stumbling over ScottorSteve and embarrassing herself because she *still* can't remember which one of them died. Without her seeing that Sayid hurts so much worse than she does because at least she has Adam.
Yeah. At least she has Adam.
"I'm nice to everybody," she reminds Michael, smiling.
That's how she survived there, right? Smiling. Always. Smiling so hard her teeth hurt.
She smiled every day at Charlie's grave.
And she screamed every night.
These are the people who lived, she reminds herself.
These are the people who lived.
***
There's so much noise. So much light. Flashbulbs and microphones and shouting and Adam's fingers curl into her blouse, his nails digging in so hard that she gasps. "Mamamamamama," he says, over and over, and she rocks him against her, trying to shush him. "It's all right...it's all right, I'm here."
Maybe if she stands real still, the journos won't notice them. They're busy...busy with the ninth survivor. The one who wasn't on Oceanic flight 815, Danielle Rousseau. She stands apart from the rest of them...like she always did. She's in handcuffs. Leg chains, too. They're going to hold her accountable for all of her fellow scientists. All the people she killed.
At least someone's going to pay for what they did out there.
"Claire." Jack drags his eyes away from the media circus, from the freak show. "Claire, I really mean it."
"No," she says, for the thousandth time, shifting Adam on her hip.
"You should come home with me. Let me take care of you both," he urges. And he has that same look...that same, "goddammit, I can SAVE you" look he had for every person on that island. For every corpse. For every grave. All that time, all that death, and he never lost it. It just got worse. More intense.
"Who's going to take care of *you*, Jack?" she wonders, softly.
The question makes him turn back to Danielle. Silent.
And, over the yelling and the pushing and the soldiers who are desperately trying to close ranks around them, she hears a question for her. An Asian guy with a tape recorder. He looks a little like Jin...but she thinks all Asian men are going to look like Jin to her now. "Miss Littleton!" he shouts, saying it 'Rittleton.' "Miss Littleton...how did you and baby survive?" And his 'r's are 'l's. It's all turned around. Everything's turned around.
*How did you and baby survive?*
Silence won't work for her. Because everyone else goes quiet. Waiting.
They want to know.
"I guess I..." Adam fusses and she kisses his head. So soft. He smells like the medicinal de-lousing shampoo they used at the base hospital. Can she even tell them the truth? "I guess I..."
Made a deal with the Devil.
"I guess I had God watching over me," she lies.
***
"Ma'am...I need you to..." the officer prompts. "It's just a formality. So we can send the fax to Sydney and get the paperwork started."
He's so young. Scrubbed clean. Like he's never been dirty. That's all she can think as she sits in front of the desk with her hands folded one over the other. He's probably older than she is, but, God, he just seems like he was born yesterday.
"Ma'am," he says, again. He has an American accent. What she now thinks of as an American accent. That slow drawl. So polite and gentleman-like, able to turn harsh on a dime.
"Littleton," she murmurs, tilting her head. "Adam Littleton." He's with the doctors. She last saw him playing with a stethoscope and giggling. "He was born about a month after we crashed. You do the math. Pick a date."
"No apparent signs of trauma," they'd said.
No, of course not.
The adults are the ones with trauma.
"Father's name?" Officer...Harris--that's what his name badge says--blushes, but he has to ask. For citizenship purposes.
She gives him a name off the passenger manifest and his eyes widen as he checks his neat little list. "But that's..."
"Impossible. Yeah. I know. Just put it down."
She wonders if he notices her knuckles are white.
He doesn't. He just types in the name.
After all, it's just a formality.
***
"Jesus, Claire. You're nuts. You know that, right?"
They're sitting on the beach, side by side, and the sun is setting. They're not doing something so sentimental as watching it.
Almost sixteen months and they've gone from 46 survivors to nine. Not counting the dog. They're starting to think Vincent might outlive everybody. He's getting grizzly about the muzzle, aging before his time, but he sits watch over Adam when she's out on nights like this. He's more trustworthy than most people.
Than her.
"I'm not crazy." She stares out at the water. It's so blue, so gorgeous. You could never tell that it swallowed so many of them. The ones that the beast didn't get. "There's no other explanation for it."
"You ever think maybe you're just lucky?" He skips a smooth stone out into the rising tide.
"You call this 'lucky'?" She laughs. Laughs and laughs. Did he visit the same psychic she did? Does he even know what he's saying? All those frantic warnings...telling her she had to keep her baby...that she couldn't let him be raised by another. What a load. What an utter load. 'Cause she's kept him, she's kept her boy, and everyone else is dying because of it. "My baby and I are alive while people *stronger* than us get killed. That's not lucky...that's damned."
"Haven't died yet," he points out. "Maybe I'm damned, too."
"I dare you." She rises to her knees, facing him. Head on. "Prove me wrong."
He kisses her, hard, and she tastes her own blood. Alive. Fresh. "I hate you, you crazy little bitch."
He's the only one who says these things to her. The only one who doesn't think she's sweet and nice and needs to be protected. She made certain of that.
But that won't save him.
"Prove how lucky I am," she says, pushing him backwards, straddling him as she yanks down his fly. "Live."
"No problem, Baby. I've got a great track record. Ain't plannin' to fuck it up now."
Later, she's wiping off her mouth and he's straightening himself up and talking about teaching Adam how to tickle fish like a bona fide Gypsy. He loves her son. He would do anything for her son.
Anything.
She looks at him with clear eyes. With resolve. And the words come out without shaking.
"Walk into the ocean, Sawyer. Or you'll never see him again."
***
"Fucking you is like fucking a kid," he snarls, rolling her beneath him. "You make me feel like a sicko..." But that doesn't stop him. It never stops him. He strips off her clothes and his. He takes what she gives. He never says no. Not anymore.
"Shannon's watching the baby tonight," she gasps out. "You can see him tomorrow." He speeds up, slamming her into the blanket so hard that she'll find scratches and bruises in the morning. Scratches she'll count, bruises she'll savor.
"Harder," she tells him, because Charlie isn't around to ask who hurt her or what she tripped over. "Please...please...harder."
He pulls out before he comes. He always pulls out. She tells herself it's because he cares. Because he doesn't want her to cry like Shannon does. And not because he can't bear to stay inside her.
Adam said his first full sentence this morning.
It was "I want Sawyer now."
Claire understands that.
She gets it all too well.
***
She first time she goes to Sawyer, he turns her down.
"What exactly do you think I am, Little Mama?" he asks her.
Easy? An escape? The kind of person who can make her scream loud enough to drown out the sounds Shannon made when her little girl died?
So, she leaves, but the ache inside her doesn't go away and she comes back again and again until he finally says "yes." Only, he doesn't say it. He just shoves aside the scratchy blanket and starts unbuttoning his jeans. He closes his eyes when she climbs on top of him.
And she gives him the only payment she can in return.
She lets him start teaching Adam how to walk.
***
After a while, she realizes they're dying because of her.
It's totally logical. She writes it down. Charts it.
There are three people with her when she gives birth to Adam: Kate, Jin, and Charlie. No one accuses her when the night monster gets Charlie. She's too busy crying and they feel sorry for her and they don't bother her when she goes and sits by the marker with his name on it. No one thinks it's a coincidence either when Jin drowns trying to get the raft out into the sea. The tide was high. It was too soon to try. He just couldn't hold on.
She remembers how he laughed and danced when the baby was born. How he freaked out the first time she put his hand on her fat belly. He was a nice man. Whenever she tells Sun that, there is no disagreement. At least not out loud.
Kate...Kate has to be her fault.
Kate held Adam in her arms. The first person to hold him. It's an even trade, right? His life for hers?
Nobody judges her when they carry Kate's body into the clearing.
And she just writes it down. Makes note. One more.
"Your theory is full of shit," Sawyer tells her one morning when she comes to pick up Adam after his nap. "You ain't the reason people keep kicking off, Little Mama. It's called 'survival of the fittest.' "
And that same week, he starts looking at her like she might be right.
Like he might be next.
"I don't think you should watch the baby anymore," she tells him.
And that's right about when he starts to die.
***
Everyone crowds around her. They want to see and she lets them even though her legs can barely hold her up. It's a bright new day and she has a son. It's a gift. How could she ever have thought she didn't want him?
He grabs her finger, tight, and she knows that everything she's ever done in her life, every choice she's ever made, was for this one moment. For this little guy. Her world.
"Can I...?" Sawyer is still standing there when most of the others have drifted away. He'd hung back, at the edge of the circle, but now he moves forward. "Can I...um...?"
"What?" She's never seen him like this before. Smiling. Smiling so bright that his teeth must hurt.
Sawyer's a mystery to her. To most of them, really. Charlie says it's not one they ought to bother solving. But sometimes, she can't help but wonder. Does he have babies of his own somewhere? Nieces or nephews? Or just a hole inside him that needs to be filled? Is that what makes him so mean to everybody else but still nice to her?
"Can I...hold him?" he asks, kicking at the sand. And there is such hope in his eyes...
She never noticed, before, how beautiful his eyes are. How sad and deep and...vulnerable.
And it's too amazing a day to be selfish.
She'll never be selfish again.
"Sure," she whispers as he slowly reaches out his arms. "Sure, he's all yours."
It's the first lie of many she'll tell.
--end--
April 7, 2005.