Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2008-03-24 03:33 pm
sophinisba) wrote2008-03-24 03:33 pm
Crossover Madness: Three Travelers that Never Landed on the Lost Island
Here's what I did for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
purimgifts, originally posted here over three days. I wrote for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roga, the challenge mod, who is fond of crossovers. The theme was characters who are women and/or Jewish and/or persecuted by evil viziers, and the last part was what inspired her to put the movie Aladdin on her list of requested fandoms. Each one of these is a little under 1000 words and can be read independently. Thanks to claudia603 for the beta.
Part 1: Lost/Aladdin crossover
Featuring: Jasmine, Sayid
Rating: G
Title: Flying Carpet Detour
Well, fine then, let him spend another evening with Khalil, the new vizier who had to stick his nose in everything. It wasn't as if Jasmine had nothing better to do than lie around in the royal bedroom, waiting for the sultan to join her. It wasn't as if it bothered her.
Jasmine was starting to find the palace air suffocating, again. When she'd first met Aladdin he was the one who took her away from all that, who taught her to fly, taught her to be free. But their marriage had turned him into a prince, and her father's death had turned him into Sultan of Agrabah. And once that had happened he'd gotten soft, lazy. These days he spent hours at a time lying on a divan, feeding candied dates to Abu or laughing at the Genie's tired old comedy routines. Sometimes Jasmine wondered how Aladdin would fare if an enemy came after him again – he seemed to have lost all the quick wits and quick moves of the boy she'd fallen in love with.
Things had only gotten worse since Khalil's arrival a few weeks ago. Now all Aladdin wanted to do was let someone else feed him the candied dates.
Well, no matter, she could go out for some air on her own.
The carpet was waiting for her on the balcony, as usual. It had been lying flat and despondent, but when Jasmine stepped outside it immediately perked up; it hovered a few inches off the floor, sending a ripple through itself to simulate wind and movement despite the oppressive stillness of the air around them.
Jasmine sighed to think it had been nearly a year since she and Aladdin had gone out for a ride together.
"I need a change of scenery," she told the carpet as knelt down, drawing her fingers affectionately through one of its tassels, "and maybe a change of company. Is there still any part of the world that's new? If there's a world that even Aladdin hasn't seen, that's where I'd like to go."
So the carpet took her farther than she'd ever gone before, so high that she shivered with the cold and so fast that she clutched at the tassels for dear life. But when it slowed again the air was warm and clear, and it set her down on a beach of clean white sand. Within minutes a group of strangers had gathered around her, and though all of them were talking, Jasmine couldn't make out a word.
"I don't understand," she told them. "Please, where are we?"
At first everyone went silent, as they continued to stare at her, but then a man with dark curls and a kind, handsome face stepped forward and offered her his hand.
"Peace be with you," he said, and though his accent was strange, Jasmine was delighted that at last someone was speaking to her in words she recognized. As princess and later sultana Jasmine was used to receiving visitors from faraway lands, so she had learned patience and concentration for understanding other dialects, and knew how to make her own speech simpler and more formal, less particular to Agrabah.
"Peace be with you," she answered clearly, smiling at the stranger despite her continued apprehension.
"Are you hurt, madame?"
"No, I am lost and confused, but the landing was gentle."
"Then you are lucky –"
He was interrupted by one of the others, a tall man with short dark hair and the air of one who likes to be in charge, and he called Jasmine's new friend Sayid.
"Sayid, is that you?" Jasmine asked when he had answered.
"Yes, my name is Sayid Jarrah."
"And I am Jasmine of Agrabah." She held out her hand and he kissed it respectfully, but she sensed that the names meant nothing to him
"How did you get to this island, Sayid Jarrah? Did you fly here from our part of the world, as I did today?"
"No, that is, not on a direct flight." He smiled but Jasmine did not really understand. "I left Iraq years ago to live in Europe. Later I lived in Australia, and I was on my way from there to Los Angeles with these others when we crashed over this island."
"I thought I was a great traveler and a woman of the world, but I have never heard of some of these places you name. And you have lived in so many countries, and you speak their languages. You must be a very special man. And I think travel must be much easier in your time than it is in mine." For she had understood by then that the carpet hadn't just taken her across space, but through time as well.
"In some ways," he said. "We have" – he said a word that Jasmine didn't understand – "that can take us from one country to another faster than ever before. But every time I travel there are more police on the borders, and none of them want to let me in."
"Sayid, I understand most of what you say, but what is a…" she tried to imitate the word she'd heard him pronounce before."
"An airplane? It is a flying machine. It takes us through the air, between countries and over the oceans. Most of us here were riding on an airplane that broke apart over this island. For months we have been trying to get away, but since we have no airplane and no boat worthy of the great ocean, we are stranded here."
"My airplane is very small," said Jasmine, gesturing at her carpet. "It will only carry two people at most. But I believe it will take me home. Will you come with me, Sayid?"
After all, Aladdin had his viziers. Why shouldn't she have a companion of her own? She held out her hand, and Sayid took it.
Part 2: Lost/Buffy the Vampire crossover
Featuring: Willow, Hurley
Rating: G
Title: Willow and Palm Trees
Willow's just starting to get the hang of travel by astral projection when she slips from a tree branch in a lush tropical jungle and realizes she can't project her way out of a hard landing. Even once she's lying flat on the ground she can't really stand to move, let alone find her way home. So, maybe she'll be stuck here for a little while, but she's made her way out of worse situations before. That's what she always tells herself.
There's a rustling of leaves a few yards away, and a few minutes later three men are standing over her and one of them, a Korean guy, who must be the one who saw her fall, points down at her and says simply, "Other."
"Like I haven't heard that before," Willow mutters to herself, but then she smiles at them. "Help me up, guys? I got the wind knocked out of me."
One of them starts to reach out a hand to help her but the third stops him, saying, in a suspicious voice and a British accent, "Where did you come from then? Do women just fall out of the sky onto our island now, they don't even need planes or helicopters?"
Willow grimaces and pushes herself up to a sitting position on her own. She decides she can answer the first question at least. "Sunnydale, California."
"Hey!" The big guy who tried to help her before grins broadly. "High five!" It's awkward to give it to him, but he crouches down and their hands touch. "I'm from L.A., but my buddy Johnny grew up in Sunnydale. Him and his mom left, um, after some of that stuff that happened."
"Yeah," says Willow, "my girlfriend and me too, after some of the other stuff that happened."
"So, um," after an awkward pause, "I'm Hurley, this is Charlie and Jin. We were on Oceanic flight 815." She feels like he's about to add, and we're all straight.
"Willow. Sorry, guys, didn't mean to embarrass you. Don't you have gay people on your island?"
"Hard to say," says the British guy, Charlie, "the way people keep secrets around here. Not to mention the way more people keep crawling out of the jungle." Willow ignores the way he frowns at her.
"Scott and Steve?" Jin says hesitantly.
"Well, they were traveling together," says Hurley, "but I was never really sure…"
"Huh," says Willow. "What about Jews? Am I the only one of those on your island too?"
"Isn't Steve Jewish?" says Charlie.
"Dude, that was Scott."
"Really?"
"Hey, why don't you ask them? Is that weird for you? 'Cause if it is, I don't mind asking them for you. It's more awkward for me to be the only one…" Not that I'm not used to it, she thinks.
"It's not so much that, as, one of 'em got killed a while back, and the other, um, I just haven't seen him around for a while. Have you guys?"
They shake their heads and avoid looking at Willow.
"Killed?" she says.
"There was this guy," says Hurley. "We thought he'd been on the plane with us, only he turned out to be, like, not."
"Other," Jin says again.
Willow finds that she can walk by then, and as the four of them make their way out of the jungle toward the beach Willow learns about more of the adventures, disasters, and dark secrets that have come out since the crash. The more she hears, the more frustrated she gets.
"You know," she says, "I may not have been on a deserted island before, but people used to try to kill my friends and me. A lot. And…okay, sometimes they managed to do it, but most of the time we helped each other out and we got through it. You'd think, all of you being stranded on an island together, you'd do your best to stick together and help each other out. But instead it's all, 'Oh, but I never told you I've got this secret stash of weapons,' or, 'Finders keepers, losers weepers, just because I've got medicine and you need it doesn't mean I should give it to you,' or, "Look-y look, I pretended to be one of you but I'm actually a secret psychopath who kidnaps pregnant women!'"
"Yeah, well," Hurley says unhappily. "I mean, yeah, but not us. It's these other guys, Jack, Locke, Ben, Sayid – they're always trying to get ahead of each other. But us guys, Charlie and Jin and me, and Sun and Claire and Rose and Bernard – we all get along pretty good. Don't worry, we won't attack you in your sleep or anything."
A shadow passes over Charlie's face as they walk through the last of the palm trees and then step out onto the beach.
"Just like sunny California, huh, Willow?" Hurley says, smiling. "Same ocean anyway."
Nothing else is the same, of course. The sand is finer, whiter, and the beach is covered with make-shift dwellings, shelters for one or two people. It's lovely though, in its own way, and Willow thinks it won't be too bad, staying here for a few days or weeks until she's strong enough to find her way back. Hurley introduces Willow to the women and men that come to greet them, and they're cautious but not unfriendly. Willow may still feel a little out of place, but it seems there will be a place for her.
Part 3: Lost/Pushing Daisies crossover
Featuring: Chuck, Desmond
Rating: G
Title: Lost and Lonely No More
Upon booking her first trip away from her aunts since the age of nine, lonely tourist Charlotte Charles was promised a high-seas adventure. Nor was she disappointed. And, although she did not find true love for herself on that voyage, she did witness it, and she was pointed in the right direction for the return journey.
Two days out from a planned stop in Tahiti, her cruise ship entered a storm in which one of the other passengers was swept out to sea. Charlotte, who could not have known that this man had intended to smother her with plastic bag while she was fetching ice that very evening, grieved for him as she would have for any other stranger and fellow traveler.
Still, she had very little time for tears, for as soon as the storm cleared someone shouted that there was land in view, and the captain announced that they would be making port, not because there was an actual port or they expected to find any of the supplies they needed on the tiny island, but because they'd received a distress call.
The mention of Oceanic flight 815 meant little to Charlotte, who in sympathy with her aunts' phobias had forgone watching television news in recent years. But it put the other passengers in a foul, anxious mood. When a call went out for volunteers to help with the rescue mission, only a few were willing to go.
So Charlotte, Frank, Miles, and Daniel approached the wide, sandy shore in two small motorboats with what medical supplies they could carry. They could see a knot of people waiting on the beach, looking a lot less famished and bedraggled than Charlotte might have expected. Only one of them really looked like a castaway – a tall, lean man with a scruffy beard and long hair – and that man was so impatient that he ran out into the waves to meet Charlotte and Daniel before they could get out of the boat.
"Did Penny send you?" he demanded, and the way he clutched at the side of the boat and the half-mad gleam in his eyes made Charlotte slightly nervous, but she also thought it was understandable, considering how long he'd been stranded here.
"Excuse me?" she said, as gently as she could while shouting over the waves.
"Your ship, your voyage," he yelled, "was it funded by Penelope Widmore?"
She shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. My voyage was funded by Deedee Duffield of Boutique Travel Travel Boutique. And Daniel here…" She hesitated.
"Oxford University," said her fellow rescuer. "They, uh...thought I needed a vacation."
"You've not heard of Penny then."
"No," said Charlotte, hating the way his face fell. "We do have a large luxury cruise ship though, and there should be room to take all of you back."
"There's shuffleboard," Daniel offered, "and dance reviews four nights a week. The food's really good."
"You really just want to get back to Penny though, I can see," said Charlotte.
"More than anything."
"Let's get on our way then. How many of you are there?"
He climbed into the boat and came to shore with them. Charlotte liked this young man, whose name was Desmond. He spoke with a Scottish accent, which she'd always found had an intoxicating effect on her – she'd lose track of the words a man was speaking if he pronounced them in that particular way. But she thought how much she would like to hear someone speaking about her the way Desmond spoke about Penny, no matter what kind of accent he used.
On shore they found out that no one was actually injured or starving, and that some of them weren't even interested in being rescued. But those who did want to leave climbed into the boats happily enough. Desmond seemed to know a lot more about boats than Charlotte or Daniel did, and he took over steering them back toward the cruise ship. Charlotte watched him, thinking that she'd never cared about anyone, or had someone care about her, the way Desmond seemed to care for Penelope. She loved her aunts Lily and Vivian and knew they loved her, but she also understood that the two of them would help each other through whatever storms came their way. They had known each other all their lives, and they didn't truly need anyone else. What did Charlotte have to go back to in Coeur d'Coeurs when her sojourn in the South Pacific was over?
But perhaps there was someone after all. Charlotte thought back to her childhood, to before she'd gone to live with her aunts, before the sudden and untimely death of her father. There was a boy she used to play with, a boy who called her Chuck and grinned in her memory out of a red and green pterodactyl costume. She wondered where he was now, and whether he was as lonely as she was.
When she got home, she decided, she'd do her best to find out.
purimgifts, originally posted here over three days. I wrote for roga, the challenge mod, who is fond of crossovers. The theme was characters who are women and/or Jewish and/or persecuted by evil viziers, and the last part was what inspired her to put the movie Aladdin on her list of requested fandoms. Each one of these is a little under 1000 words and can be read independently. Thanks to claudia603 for the beta.Part 1: Lost/Aladdin crossover
Featuring: Jasmine, Sayid
Rating: G
Title: Flying Carpet Detour
Well, fine then, let him spend another evening with Khalil, the new vizier who had to stick his nose in everything. It wasn't as if Jasmine had nothing better to do than lie around in the royal bedroom, waiting for the sultan to join her. It wasn't as if it bothered her.
Jasmine was starting to find the palace air suffocating, again. When she'd first met Aladdin he was the one who took her away from all that, who taught her to fly, taught her to be free. But their marriage had turned him into a prince, and her father's death had turned him into Sultan of Agrabah. And once that had happened he'd gotten soft, lazy. These days he spent hours at a time lying on a divan, feeding candied dates to Abu or laughing at the Genie's tired old comedy routines. Sometimes Jasmine wondered how Aladdin would fare if an enemy came after him again – he seemed to have lost all the quick wits and quick moves of the boy she'd fallen in love with.
Things had only gotten worse since Khalil's arrival a few weeks ago. Now all Aladdin wanted to do was let someone else feed him the candied dates.
Well, no matter, she could go out for some air on her own.
The carpet was waiting for her on the balcony, as usual. It had been lying flat and despondent, but when Jasmine stepped outside it immediately perked up; it hovered a few inches off the floor, sending a ripple through itself to simulate wind and movement despite the oppressive stillness of the air around them.
Jasmine sighed to think it had been nearly a year since she and Aladdin had gone out for a ride together.
"I need a change of scenery," she told the carpet as knelt down, drawing her fingers affectionately through one of its tassels, "and maybe a change of company. Is there still any part of the world that's new? If there's a world that even Aladdin hasn't seen, that's where I'd like to go."
So the carpet took her farther than she'd ever gone before, so high that she shivered with the cold and so fast that she clutched at the tassels for dear life. But when it slowed again the air was warm and clear, and it set her down on a beach of clean white sand. Within minutes a group of strangers had gathered around her, and though all of them were talking, Jasmine couldn't make out a word.
"I don't understand," she told them. "Please, where are we?"
At first everyone went silent, as they continued to stare at her, but then a man with dark curls and a kind, handsome face stepped forward and offered her his hand.
"Peace be with you," he said, and though his accent was strange, Jasmine was delighted that at last someone was speaking to her in words she recognized. As princess and later sultana Jasmine was used to receiving visitors from faraway lands, so she had learned patience and concentration for understanding other dialects, and knew how to make her own speech simpler and more formal, less particular to Agrabah.
"Peace be with you," she answered clearly, smiling at the stranger despite her continued apprehension.
"Are you hurt, madame?"
"No, I am lost and confused, but the landing was gentle."
"Then you are lucky –"
He was interrupted by one of the others, a tall man with short dark hair and the air of one who likes to be in charge, and he called Jasmine's new friend Sayid.
"Sayid, is that you?" Jasmine asked when he had answered.
"Yes, my name is Sayid Jarrah."
"And I am Jasmine of Agrabah." She held out her hand and he kissed it respectfully, but she sensed that the names meant nothing to him
"How did you get to this island, Sayid Jarrah? Did you fly here from our part of the world, as I did today?"
"No, that is, not on a direct flight." He smiled but Jasmine did not really understand. "I left Iraq years ago to live in Europe. Later I lived in Australia, and I was on my way from there to Los Angeles with these others when we crashed over this island."
"I thought I was a great traveler and a woman of the world, but I have never heard of some of these places you name. And you have lived in so many countries, and you speak their languages. You must be a very special man. And I think travel must be much easier in your time than it is in mine." For she had understood by then that the carpet hadn't just taken her across space, but through time as well.
"In some ways," he said. "We have" – he said a word that Jasmine didn't understand – "that can take us from one country to another faster than ever before. But every time I travel there are more police on the borders, and none of them want to let me in."
"Sayid, I understand most of what you say, but what is a…" she tried to imitate the word she'd heard him pronounce before."
"An airplane? It is a flying machine. It takes us through the air, between countries and over the oceans. Most of us here were riding on an airplane that broke apart over this island. For months we have been trying to get away, but since we have no airplane and no boat worthy of the great ocean, we are stranded here."
"My airplane is very small," said Jasmine, gesturing at her carpet. "It will only carry two people at most. But I believe it will take me home. Will you come with me, Sayid?"
After all, Aladdin had his viziers. Why shouldn't she have a companion of her own? She held out her hand, and Sayid took it.
Part 2: Lost/Buffy the Vampire crossover
Featuring: Willow, Hurley
Rating: G
Title: Willow and Palm Trees
Willow's just starting to get the hang of travel by astral projection when she slips from a tree branch in a lush tropical jungle and realizes she can't project her way out of a hard landing. Even once she's lying flat on the ground she can't really stand to move, let alone find her way home. So, maybe she'll be stuck here for a little while, but she's made her way out of worse situations before. That's what she always tells herself.
There's a rustling of leaves a few yards away, and a few minutes later three men are standing over her and one of them, a Korean guy, who must be the one who saw her fall, points down at her and says simply, "Other."
"Like I haven't heard that before," Willow mutters to herself, but then she smiles at them. "Help me up, guys? I got the wind knocked out of me."
One of them starts to reach out a hand to help her but the third stops him, saying, in a suspicious voice and a British accent, "Where did you come from then? Do women just fall out of the sky onto our island now, they don't even need planes or helicopters?"
Willow grimaces and pushes herself up to a sitting position on her own. She decides she can answer the first question at least. "Sunnydale, California."
"Hey!" The big guy who tried to help her before grins broadly. "High five!" It's awkward to give it to him, but he crouches down and their hands touch. "I'm from L.A., but my buddy Johnny grew up in Sunnydale. Him and his mom left, um, after some of that stuff that happened."
"Yeah," says Willow, "my girlfriend and me too, after some of the other stuff that happened."
"So, um," after an awkward pause, "I'm Hurley, this is Charlie and Jin. We were on Oceanic flight 815." She feels like he's about to add, and we're all straight.
"Willow. Sorry, guys, didn't mean to embarrass you. Don't you have gay people on your island?"
"Hard to say," says the British guy, Charlie, "the way people keep secrets around here. Not to mention the way more people keep crawling out of the jungle." Willow ignores the way he frowns at her.
"Scott and Steve?" Jin says hesitantly.
"Well, they were traveling together," says Hurley, "but I was never really sure…"
"Huh," says Willow. "What about Jews? Am I the only one of those on your island too?"
"Isn't Steve Jewish?" says Charlie.
"Dude, that was Scott."
"Really?"
"Hey, why don't you ask them? Is that weird for you? 'Cause if it is, I don't mind asking them for you. It's more awkward for me to be the only one…" Not that I'm not used to it, she thinks.
"It's not so much that, as, one of 'em got killed a while back, and the other, um, I just haven't seen him around for a while. Have you guys?"
They shake their heads and avoid looking at Willow.
"Killed?" she says.
"There was this guy," says Hurley. "We thought he'd been on the plane with us, only he turned out to be, like, not."
"Other," Jin says again.
Willow finds that she can walk by then, and as the four of them make their way out of the jungle toward the beach Willow learns about more of the adventures, disasters, and dark secrets that have come out since the crash. The more she hears, the more frustrated she gets.
"You know," she says, "I may not have been on a deserted island before, but people used to try to kill my friends and me. A lot. And…okay, sometimes they managed to do it, but most of the time we helped each other out and we got through it. You'd think, all of you being stranded on an island together, you'd do your best to stick together and help each other out. But instead it's all, 'Oh, but I never told you I've got this secret stash of weapons,' or, 'Finders keepers, losers weepers, just because I've got medicine and you need it doesn't mean I should give it to you,' or, "Look-y look, I pretended to be one of you but I'm actually a secret psychopath who kidnaps pregnant women!'"
"Yeah, well," Hurley says unhappily. "I mean, yeah, but not us. It's these other guys, Jack, Locke, Ben, Sayid – they're always trying to get ahead of each other. But us guys, Charlie and Jin and me, and Sun and Claire and Rose and Bernard – we all get along pretty good. Don't worry, we won't attack you in your sleep or anything."
A shadow passes over Charlie's face as they walk through the last of the palm trees and then step out onto the beach.
"Just like sunny California, huh, Willow?" Hurley says, smiling. "Same ocean anyway."
Nothing else is the same, of course. The sand is finer, whiter, and the beach is covered with make-shift dwellings, shelters for one or two people. It's lovely though, in its own way, and Willow thinks it won't be too bad, staying here for a few days or weeks until she's strong enough to find her way back. Hurley introduces Willow to the women and men that come to greet them, and they're cautious but not unfriendly. Willow may still feel a little out of place, but it seems there will be a place for her.
Part 3: Lost/Pushing Daisies crossover
Featuring: Chuck, Desmond
Rating: G
Title: Lost and Lonely No More
Upon booking her first trip away from her aunts since the age of nine, lonely tourist Charlotte Charles was promised a high-seas adventure. Nor was she disappointed. And, although she did not find true love for herself on that voyage, she did witness it, and she was pointed in the right direction for the return journey.
Two days out from a planned stop in Tahiti, her cruise ship entered a storm in which one of the other passengers was swept out to sea. Charlotte, who could not have known that this man had intended to smother her with plastic bag while she was fetching ice that very evening, grieved for him as she would have for any other stranger and fellow traveler.
Still, she had very little time for tears, for as soon as the storm cleared someone shouted that there was land in view, and the captain announced that they would be making port, not because there was an actual port or they expected to find any of the supplies they needed on the tiny island, but because they'd received a distress call.
The mention of Oceanic flight 815 meant little to Charlotte, who in sympathy with her aunts' phobias had forgone watching television news in recent years. But it put the other passengers in a foul, anxious mood. When a call went out for volunteers to help with the rescue mission, only a few were willing to go.
So Charlotte, Frank, Miles, and Daniel approached the wide, sandy shore in two small motorboats with what medical supplies they could carry. They could see a knot of people waiting on the beach, looking a lot less famished and bedraggled than Charlotte might have expected. Only one of them really looked like a castaway – a tall, lean man with a scruffy beard and long hair – and that man was so impatient that he ran out into the waves to meet Charlotte and Daniel before they could get out of the boat.
"Did Penny send you?" he demanded, and the way he clutched at the side of the boat and the half-mad gleam in his eyes made Charlotte slightly nervous, but she also thought it was understandable, considering how long he'd been stranded here.
"Excuse me?" she said, as gently as she could while shouting over the waves.
"Your ship, your voyage," he yelled, "was it funded by Penelope Widmore?"
She shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. My voyage was funded by Deedee Duffield of Boutique Travel Travel Boutique. And Daniel here…" She hesitated.
"Oxford University," said her fellow rescuer. "They, uh...thought I needed a vacation."
"You've not heard of Penny then."
"No," said Charlotte, hating the way his face fell. "We do have a large luxury cruise ship though, and there should be room to take all of you back."
"There's shuffleboard," Daniel offered, "and dance reviews four nights a week. The food's really good."
"You really just want to get back to Penny though, I can see," said Charlotte.
"More than anything."
"Let's get on our way then. How many of you are there?"
He climbed into the boat and came to shore with them. Charlotte liked this young man, whose name was Desmond. He spoke with a Scottish accent, which she'd always found had an intoxicating effect on her – she'd lose track of the words a man was speaking if he pronounced them in that particular way. But she thought how much she would like to hear someone speaking about her the way Desmond spoke about Penny, no matter what kind of accent he used.
On shore they found out that no one was actually injured or starving, and that some of them weren't even interested in being rescued. But those who did want to leave climbed into the boats happily enough. Desmond seemed to know a lot more about boats than Charlotte or Daniel did, and he took over steering them back toward the cruise ship. Charlotte watched him, thinking that she'd never cared about anyone, or had someone care about her, the way Desmond seemed to care for Penelope. She loved her aunts Lily and Vivian and knew they loved her, but she also understood that the two of them would help each other through whatever storms came their way. They had known each other all their lives, and they didn't truly need anyone else. What did Charlotte have to go back to in Coeur d'Coeurs when her sojourn in the South Pacific was over?
But perhaps there was someone after all. Charlotte thought back to her childhood, to before she'd gone to live with her aunts, before the sudden and untimely death of her father. There was a boy she used to play with, a boy who called her Chuck and grinned in her memory out of a red and green pterodactyl costume. She wondered where he was now, and whether he was as lonely as she was.
When she got home, she decided, she'd do her best to find out.
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