Nimi: Through the Looking Glass (Twinkling Last Light)
Kirjoittaja: Valvehaukka eli minä
Ikäraja: K11
Fandom: Lost
Hahmot: Charlie, Desmond, Claire
Vastuuvapaus: En omista tekstissä esiintyviä hahmoja tai maailmaa, enkä saa tekstistä rahallista korvausta. Laulun sanat alussa ja lopussa kuuluvat Starsetille enkä ole niitä itse keksinyt.
Varoitukset: Sisältää spoilereita kolmoskauden lopusta, älä lue jos et ole vielä katsonut!
Yhteenveto: So much infinity in his eyes - she should have known that shooting stars only last for a while.
Inspiraatio iski viime yönä ja kirjoitin tämän yllättäen samalta istumalta alusta loppuun sekä suomeksi että englanniksi. Jos kielioppivirheitä tai muuta outoa löytyy väsyneiden aivosolujeni jäljiltä, niin huudahtakaa toki. 
Through the Looking Glass
(Twinkling Last Light)
"away, away, away alone
oh, this wasn't in my plans
abandoned ship and headed for the sand
oh, the albatross crashlands
I've got this sinking feeling
that I never can go home."
-Starset: Diving bell-
[/i]
Desmond has traveled through the silver-embroided fabric of time in search of something he will never have. Charlie has fallen from the bright sky into the darkest depths of treacherous ocean. As he bids Claire a fond farewell on the golden sand, a farewell which he cannot admit, he senses Desmond's gaze. Westwind sweeps through the island that no seeker can find and in which no one can return to, and they both know. The unstoppable approaches.
There is something important to be remembered about Charlie's humanity. The pains in his life never broke his goodness. His faults never, in fact, truly reached his heart. Seeing the flashing omens of the arrow, the lightning strike and the killing water behind his eyelids had made Desmond want to stop time. But hours and endless decades have never bent to his will; they were never his friend.
Charlie smiles sweetly and in agony as he tells Claire the final lie. They won't see each other again, but her face is blossoming with innocence and wariness of a crescent smile that tells of fear. Charlie's ring is left in the baby's bed where the salty beach air dances, but when the rescue later arrives will lonely Claire unknowingly leave it behind.
So much infinity in his eyes - she should have known that shooting stars only last for a while.
Seagulls scream from behind the iron sea. Charlie stands in a boat, in front of unconscious Desmond and holds the oar heart full of
heaviness.
"We both know you're not supposed to take my place."
Death can be cheated, but in time the reaper always comes to collect the debt.
Charlie has put a very precious piece of paper in the Scotsman's limp hand - may these memories find their way to Claire when I'm gone. He gives one last look to his friend and jumps into the ocean.
Cold depths swallow Charlie. Glassy surface above him has broken like a mirror, and thirst for oxygen tears his lungs - the need to draw breath is greater than the old need to numb mind and body with poisons, greater than the need to climb among stars. While diving he thinks back to old times, his voice coming for the first time from the car radio. The warmth of sun passes far behind. He floats down, down, far away from the life itself and those few he loves. Down here the hum of greyness becomes everything. It has been mauling and beautiful to exist above it, even if just for a short moment.
Yellow flickering light. Turn the switch. Save them.
The weights in Charlie's hands pull him down, and with burning lungs he swims to the underwater station. It resides ominously on the ocean floor. Resurrection through the pool's clear surface; he shouts from joy. The ultimate goal doesn't vanish from his mind. Not when the realization hits that he's not alone at the station. Not when he's getting shot at and tied to a chair, not when another enemy's bullets kill his capturers and he flees, the world pulsating with heavy heartbeat, and not when the horrific betrayal comes to light on a flashing screen. Not even when he stares into the communication room's flickering yellow lamp, a knocking echoes from the window, and then, the wicked grin of a diver behind the glass.
A grenade is thrown. Everything becomes like the lightning strike Charlie was supposed to die from. Everything flashes too fast. A moment before explosion.
Charlie turns around and locks eyes with Desmond who suddenly stands across the floor. When did he get there? Charlie's chest aches when he understands what's going to happen next. Goodbye, friend. I'm sorry.
He rushes through the bleakly awaiting air and slams shut the only door between him and Desmond. His words, yelling and banging behind the round window can no longer be heard, but Desmond doesn't stop. At that same moment the grenade explodes and a cut is torn in reality, the ocean roars in untamed from the opposite side of the room where Charlie has isolated himself. He feels no fear, only spreading ancient, freezing coldness. It is not the salt of mourning that's burning his eyes.
In the beginning there was a great flood. Isn't that what some people say? Well, they are clearly wrong: it seems to arrive at the very end.
As the water is quickly filling the small space Charlie thinks about all those times Desmond saved him from dying. Now he stands on the edge of the end, and almost accepts the tragic fate that was written for him. The water's horizon already reaches his throat. The island's fragmented time runs through his fingers and Desmond keeps kicking and scratching at the door, but no sound is coming through. There must be some way… some way to warn him and the others.
The Greatest Hits on the piece of paper rewind through Charlie's head. With that same marker he now scribbles three words across his palm, a shipwrecked at the edge of drowning; he whom a wide-eyed woman on the alley of shadows once called a hero.
Desmond stops hitting the door and surrenders to silence. A man whose broken heart is polished from gold, and whose life full of unraveled threads floats in the water's grip, out of his reach.
I could not save him. I'm so sorry. See you in another life, brother.
He can just stand there helplessly, a silent witness to the ocean gently taking Charlie under. They share a long look through the window that is now completely underwater. There is smothered pursuit in those fading eyes, but a glimmer of peace too.
For a moment his hand presses against the glass.
Not Penny's boat.
The meaning and weight of the words quickly unfolds to Desmond. He cries a tear of a stricken man. Charlie's open eyes have stopped looking.
Silence falls over the underwater station.
*
in my mind, endless sea
calling from the bottom but you don't hear me
stuck in time, stuck in me
broken on the bottom like a refugee
.[/i][/font][/size][/center]
