Lost Fiction, "All the Best Daddies Have Cowboy Issues" (C/C) PG

[ciircee]

Hurray! *throws mistletoe* It's the Snuggly OTP Ficathon! I got to write a fic for Lendolyn and this, as you may have guessed, is the fic. I had lots of fun doing the research and writing for this fic, so I hope that you all like it. *smooches*

Remember: All warnings (etc. etc.) are located in the story header under the cut!

Onward!



Disclaimer: Boo. I wanted to own something and I don’t. *pouts*

Dedication: To lendolyn, because this was her request at the ficathon found here. I was glad to get it because it was both interesting and a challenge. Also, I have enjoyed her fiction muchly and was happy to write fic for somebody such as her.

The Request: Astrology, Claire doing something heroic, Charlie doing something heroic, a happy ending. I hope the heroics are heroic enough, love, and that the astrology is what you were looking for.

Thank You: To teffyfor taking the initiative and running this ficathon. *smooch* Ta, love.

Author’s Note: La, I’m wordy. I hope you’ve all made it this far. This fic is AU, in as much as I have changed the ending of ‘All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues’ to suit. I had the idea before the episode aired. Also of note: In regards to the astrology, I’ve used the actor’s biographical information as much as possible (some bits did require guessing, obviously) in case you were wondering.

All the Best Daddies Have Cowboy Issues

“Well,” Charlie looked up at the sky framed by bamboo poles, “it’s an improvement.” He looked away from the top bars of their cage to smile at Claire. “How, I’m not quite sure yet.” Experimentally, he rattled the poles that made up what he considered to be the front of the cage. Firm. Solid. Shite. With a mild shrug to mask his concern he dropped to a crouch, hands skimming along the smooth, slender bars as he went, and looked at the rope-like ties that held everything together. No help there, even if he’d known what to look for. He sprawled back to sit and eyed Claire from underneath his lashes. “Very nice,” he said, patting the space beside himself. “Bare joist flooring, really lets the bamboo ride up into the most uncomfortable places imaginable.”

She laughed and he was immediately afraid that she’d start crying. She didn’t sound good at all. He clambered back to his feet and touched her arm when she turned away from him. “Claire?”

Claire only shook her head and refused to turn at his gentle pressure. He ducked in front of her and lifted her chin to study her face. The tear-streaked cheeks he expected, but her eyes had the blue-black bruised look of somebody who hadn’t sleep in days. “Oh…” he murmured, lifting his other hand to carefully touch the delicate skin under her eye.

“Claire?” Ethan stood just beyond reach outside their cell walls. He was carrying something.

Charlie put on his best king-of-the-concert sneer and stepped in front of Claire. “Shove off.” He silently wondered how Ethan had approached without either of them hearing him.

Ethan smiled, vacantly disturbing, and leaned to the left. “Claire?”

Shifting, Charlie kept himself between her and him as much as he could. “Means ‘go away’, Mister I-run-my-own-evil-jungle-society-and-never-told-you,” he spat.

For the first time in hours, Claire spoke. “Charlie!” she whimpered “Charlie, don’t!”

“He wants you, he’s got to get through me first,” Charlie said without taking his eyes off of Ethan. Surreptitiously he tried to shake the bone crushing grip Claire had on his arm.

“No,” she whispered, and he could feel her pressing all along his back. The baby kicked.

He glared at their captor, looking beyond him to the rest of the people seated in a ring around the small camp fire. “They don’t go near you,” he said in as hard a voice as he could manage.

“When Mr. Pace decides to quit acting as your guard dog, Claire, I’ve brought your dinner.” He set down the item he’d been carrying, which turned out to be one of the fold-up tray tables from the plane, and walked away from them.

Charlie looked from Ethan, to the food, to the white knuckled fingers that were drawing blood from his forearm. “Where’s mine, you bloody bastard?” he shouted after the retreating back.

“Charlie…”

He managed to reach out and catch hold of the tray without Claire loosing her hold on him, though he had to shake her off a bit to maneuver it into the cage with them. “No flatware, either? Savages!” he yelled, settling down with his back to the fire and the people who’d built it. He studied the food closely, tilting at different angles in the meager light. “Still, it looks all right.” He gathered a portion of something that looked like mashed yams and licked it off his finger. “Not as good as boar and bananas, mind,” he told her with a smile.

She was ghost pale.

“Claire?”

She started to shake, fine tremors that were felt as much as seen. He scrambled to his knees and reached for her, tucking her hair behind her ear with his thumb and middle finger, his index finger held carefully away to avoid getting food in her hair. “Claire?”

“Don’t, Charlie,” she said on a gasping breath, as though she’d not been breathing.

“Don’t?” He wasn’t about to let go of her, not when she seemed in real danger of fainting. The firelight made her eyes gleam and he realized that they were swimming with tears. He drew her closer, his arm tight around her shoulders. “Talk to me, Claire. I’m listening.”

He was honestly startled when hands, already balled into fists, thumped him solidly on the chest. “Don’t! Don’t act like you don’t know!”

“I…”

“They’ll kill you, Charlie! They’ve already tried! And if you give them a reason...”

“No, Claire…”

“Don’t you leave me alone with them! I’ll never forgive you. Not ever.”

“I won’t. I won’t, I swear.” He kissed her temple, her forehead, her hands gathered in his. He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, wiping away the few tears that had escaped her hold on them. “I’m safe with you, Claire,” he told her. “No, listen,” he said when the incredulous fury sparked in her eyes. “When they tried to…earlier, you saved me.”

“No I didn’t,” Claire whispered into his chest. Charlie smiled and smoothed his hand along her spine.

“Yes, you did. You screamed.”

“I wasn’t doing it to save you,” she said dryly.

He laughed and tucked her head against him, resting his face against her hair. “I know. But it did, love. You managed to let Jack, or Locke, or Jack and Locke, or whoever it was that was following us, you managed to let them know right where we were. You’ve got quite a set of pipes. Ever thought of joining a band? You’ve all the makings of a great lead singer.”

Claire made a sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob, and Charlie eased her back to smile at her. He touched her face again. “Tell me something, Charlie,” she said quietly and he felt his heart twist and soar at the same time. “Something good.”

“Let you in on a secret?” He waited for her nod before continuing. “They’re still out there, looking for us. That’s why Ethan and his friends haven’t made a move to do anything to me, even though they probably want to. Because if they want me they’re going to have to get past you first. And that’ll bring the others to us on the quick, won’t it?” He let go of her, his hand trailing away down her arm as he said, “That’s something good, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he smiled at her, unable to help himself. Looking down, away, he nodded at the abandoned tray. “You should eat. It’s really not bad,” he added hastily at her dubious look, “and it hasn’t killed me yet, so it’s not poisoned. Come on,” he said gently, helping her to sit. “It’s safe as houses, I’m sure. They’re not going to try anything on you because of the baby. ‘S why they brought me along, innit?”

He watched her eat, shaking his head at her offer to share. There was a lot of give to the bars of the cage and he discretely pushed at them in an attempt to judge how far and how hard he’d have to shove in order to break them.

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother if I were you.” A young man was suddenly there. He was crouched down, inches away at eye level, as though he’d melted out of the vague shadows like a Cheshire cat.

Charlie skittered back; he was unsure of where exactly Claire was but he wanted to keep her out of the line of sight of this new menace nonetheless. “Bugger off, Ethan junior.”

The newcomer smiled in the same nastily serene way, his head cocked like a bird’s. “Bamboo has the tensile strength of steel.” His head twisted, quick and sharp. “Get some rest, Claire; this is only a stopping place and we’re leaving as soon as there’s enough light.” With that, he reached in to the cage.

Claire made some faint noise of protest and alarm. Groping around Charlie found her hand. “You’re not touching her,” he growled.

Ethan-junior stilled. “Of course not, I merely wanted the dinner tray.”

Charlie threw it at his head.

By sheer, dumb luck somebody doused the fire at that same moment and, with the sudden loss of light, Ethan-junior—like anybody with eyes—needed a moment to readjust and Charlie scored a direct hit.

“Whoops. Clumsy me,” he snorted in amusement.

The man touched the area of his forehead where he’d been hit and then examined his fingers as he drew them away. There wasn’t any blood that Charlie could see, but as the other man looked up, met his eyes, Charlie wished he’d simply handed the tray over. There was something feral and animal about the man now, something physical that Charlie could see and not just feel. Something in his eyes, and the long, sharp lines of his crouched body and Charlie gripped Claire’s hand tighter, as much for himself as for her.

He didn’t see the lunge that brought the other man’s head and arm into the cage; he only felt the iron-like grip on his throat and the hard press of a forehead against his own. “Oh, whoops.”

“Levi.”

Charlie felt the choking grasp disappear but refused to be grateful to whomever it was that had called Levi away. He also refused to rub at the skin where he knew bruises would form. “That’s right,” he muttered at the shadowy figures slowly disappearing into the deeper shadows of the night-time jungle ground. “And eat it.”

“Please, Charlie,” Claire whispered against his shoulder, the words making warm patches on his tee shirt, “don’t do that. I know that I ‘saved’ you before, but I really don’t want to have to do it again.”

He twisted to look at her and found her smiling. True, it was trembling around the edges and its customary brightness was gone, but it was there on her face and in her eyes. Please God, he thought let me find a way to keep her safe. What he said was, “Duly noted.” He smiled over his shoulder at her, as real as he could manage himself. “You might have to keep reminding me. I tend to talk nineteen to the dozen with nary a thought.”

“You don’t say.” Her smile strengthened and it foolishly reminded him of her giggle.

“I do say! In fact,” he moved, resettling himself to face Claire comfortably. “I…” he stopped suddenly and did a double take at the front of the cage, something clicking into place in his brain. “Do you see that, Claire?”

“What?”

“This.” He rubbed his thumb over the white mark that had caught his eye. In the moonlight the bright patch seemed to glow against the green-black of the poles. “There’s a chip gone missing.” And he knew from his earlier examination that the nick hadn’t been there before. “The tray must have gouged it out.”

On a sudden burst of inspiration he tugged the heavy Drive Shaft ring off of his finger and set the bottom point to the wood. Thank you, Liam, he thought when a long silver and green curl slid and twirled around the ring as he ran it down a short length of bamboo.

“Charlie!” Claire leaned past him and touched the new mark. “You’re a genius,” she whispered.

Charlie had never felt more like a hero. “Lucky is more like.” He examined the groove he’d made and nodded. “Right. Right. All right. All we have to do is use my ring…well, guess I should say that all I have to do…”

“Charlie?”

“And the ring, yeah, use that to just scoop out bits,” he made a sweeping, scooping motion.

“Charlie.”

“Then we, mainly me because of the baby, I mean, we just bam” he mimed kicking the bars, “bash our way free. But the noise...” he frowned, thinking hard.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, Claire, I’m working on it. Maybe if we just…just sang really, really loudly to cover the noise. Do you know ‘Pop goes the Weasel’? Because that’s got the ‘pop’ that’s just a shout and that would…” he stopped talking, lost his train of thought entirely, when Claire placed her hand over his mouth.

In the darkness he could see her peering at him closely. “Finished?” she asked quietly. When he nodded she removed her hand and he spared a second of regret for the loss of contact. Despite everything she still managed to smell sweetly, faintly, of the beach. “I have an idea,” she was saying. “We can’t break the bars one by one without somebody hearing it. But we can carve away at them, weaken them, and when we have enough done to make a big enough hole, we can break them all, all at once.” He watched in incomprehension as her hands moved near her breasts. He didn’t understand until he felt something warm, and undeniably metal, press into his palm. “Use this, it’s bigger.”

He didn’t know if she could see him smiling at her, not with so soft a smile as it felt like, but he hoped that she could. “Who were you calling a genius?” Charlie fancied that he could feel her amusement like a warm wind. He looked to where the fire had burned earlier and back to Claire, little more than a softly glowing shape in the starlight and made an executive decision. “We’ll do the back. That will give us a bit more room to run, if we need to.” He had every intention of getting away without being heard or pursued. “It would probably be best if we worked low. They won’t think anything of us sitting up and talking all night. Standing might raise a few eyebrows.”

He set to work, using the large, flat edge of Claire’s necklace to make a short, curved cut. As he worked to make the shallow depression deeper he felt the niggling worries, the ‘what if’s and worst case scenarios begin to jitter in his stomach. They made his hands shake.

Claire must have noticed because he suddenly felt her touch, warm through his sleeve, slipping down to circle his wrist. “Are your hands tired? Do you want me to take over?”

The sound of her voice soothed him, her accent wrapping the vowels around him like an embrace. “No,” he shook his head, pressing the make-shift lathe harder into the wood. “No, I’m…I need a distraction so that I can focus. I tend to slip off, thinking about all the horrible things that could happen and the next thing you know I’m running over puppies in Liam’s car because I don’t drive, but somebody’s having an epileptic fit and I’m all that’s left and I also don’t know how to find the hospital.”

“I miss warm showers and hot bubble baths,” she said immediately the second he stopped talking.

In that moment Charlie realized why he made her promises and why he thought about her and why he wanted, so badly, to be her friend. She felt like his music.

“Banoffee pie,” he responded. “Something else, please. I need to…to…think, so that I can’t think. I used to write songs on my grandmum’s kitchen floor whilst on my hands and knees with a rag, a sponge, and a three-fourths mix of water to bleach. Tell me about…” he cast about, mind fluttering from one interesting thing about her to another. “About your astrology,” he decided finally.

“Most people find it pretty boring,” she said skeptically.

“When,” he asked her, letting his hands drop to his sides momentarily so that he could turn to fully face her again, “have I struck you as being akin to ‘most people’?”

He hadn’t realized that she was still holding his wrist until she lifted his hand and pressed his fingers back to the bamboo. “Never,” she said solemnly; he joggled the pendant, trying to get a thicker section to peel away, willing it to simply fall apart in his hands.

Silent seconds trickled by, but Charlie could sense Claire’s thoughts gathering, running like thread through a shuttle, and he waited. “Sagittarius, right” she rewarded him moments later.

“Right. What gave it away?” And he meant it.

Claire’s smile shone through in her voice. “Everything. You are a quintessential Sagittarius. But I bet that your Mars, at least, is in conjunction with your Sun.”

“My what is where?”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her shift, relaxing back onto her hands, her legs stretching out behind him. “Exactly. Everybody thinks astrology is crap because all they think about is ‘what’s your sign, baby?’”

He laughed at her mimicry. He saw her duck her head and he looked away from her, back to the task at hand. “Well, you already know my sign ‘baby’,” he grinned at her giggle feeling inordinately proud of himself. “So tell me more. What do the planets have to do with the stars? Beyond the obvious.”

“Everything. Astrology is all about how everything works together. Me, for example. I’m a Capricorn, and I have a Capricorn moon. Do you know how serious, unbending, and ambitious that makes me?”

“No.” He pulled a face. “And that’s not you at all. My father, yes. You, no.”

“See!” She sounded triumphant. “But I have a Sagittarius ascendant and my moon isn’t just in Capricorn, it’s in square with Mars, conjunction with Mercury, and is Sextile with Jupiter. Neptune is in conjunction with my Sun. I have a trine between Venus and Mars, my fourth house is in Aquarius and my fifth is in Pisces. All of that makes me emotional, open hearted, optimistic, a fighter…it makes me, me.”

Charlie nodded. “You don’t say.” He waited a beat before chuckling, “Do you mind me asking what a ‘trine’ is and why you seem to have multiple houses?”

Claire laughed softly, too. “Everybody has multiple houses, Charlie. The sky is divided into twelve houses, to match the zodiac. Which house is where, which planets are relative to each other, is all determined by the date and time and place of your birth. Sextile, trines, squares, come from the way the planets are arranged in the houses, along with the places of the Sun and Moon. It…” she stopped and he glanced over at her.

“Hm?”

“It’s a lot to explain. When we get back to the caves, I’ll teach you all of that, all right?” Her voice was strong and sincere. Her optimism touched him and made him warm.

“Only,” he bargained, “if you let me teach you to play the guitar. All the best lead singers play.”

“It’s a promise.”

“What are you doing?” Charlie asked as he felt the cage rock slightly. Claire was on her knees, stretching out her hand toward something on the ground.

“Reaching,” she muttered.

“Ah.”

“Got it!” She drew back into the bars holding a short stick. “If you know when you were born, I can do your chart.”

“Touching, love, but I think the stars are a bit different in Germany. Liam and I were military nomads; my Dad was stationed in Berlin when it was time for me to make my debut.”

Claire nodded, drawing something in the dirt that looked like lopsided clock. “Date and time?”

“Eighth December, at ten fifty-nine in the morning. What are you doing?”

“Your chart.” He watched her tuck a strand of hair away from her face and was struck by how pretty she was, all golden hair and peach skin limed in the silver light of night. “The sky moves pretty predictably, once you get to know it, and I’ve been doing this for years. I know the charts for almost everywhere.”

He wanted to ask her about it, but didn’t want to distract her. One look upward told him how many things she probably had to map.

She seemed to know what he was thinking, to realize that he still needed her to distract him. “You can keep talking, if you like; I can do these in my sleep.”

“How’d you get into astrology? If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”

Her drawing faltered.

Charlie immediately felt bad. “You don’t have to answer. In fact, I withdraw the question altogether. I never spoke. It never existed.”

“It’s all right, Charlie, I don’t mind. It’s just…not a happy story.” He watched her resume her drawing and recognized the set of her shoulders as determination. “My older sister ran away from home when I was thirteen.”

“Rough.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “For years we didn’t hear a word and then one day a letter for me, from her, was posted to one of her friends. She was in America and she was working as a telephone girl, doing tarot cards and horoscopes. But she’d fallen pregnant, had a baby girl she named Amber, and needed more money. So she’d told her clients that she’d do their natal charts for them.”

“I think I see where this is going,” Charlie said, carefully looking at her only in sideways glances in case she was uncomfortable. “Made her hugely popular, right? Couldn’t keep up?

“Yes. She asked me if I would help her, she figured that I hated ballet lessons as badly as she had. I didn’t, but I wanted to help her. The picture of Amber that she’d sent was so sweet that I…I really wanted to help her. So I quit tutoring and started studying. And I’ve been doing it for almost eight years. It’s how I met Thomas. A friend recommended him to freelance; for an extra fee clients could get a very artistic rendering of their chart.”

He didn’t know what to say, but he also didn’t think that Claire expected him to say anything. It was a comforting feeling. “Amber is a pretty name,” he said, just because it was rattling around inside his head.

“It is,” Claire agreed. She sounded sad, wistful. She seemed to shake it off, mentally and literally, with a toss of her head. “Is it my turn now?” she asked, nodding at his hands.

Charlie handed the pendant over with a cheeky grin. “Yes. I have no problems with being a liberated man.”

“And your fingers were cramping.” She was smiling at him, the moonlight making the curve of her lips luminous. “You can try and hide it, but I saw you shaking out your hands.”

“Caught.” He sat in the place where she’d been sitting, feeling the leftover warmth of her body and he couldn’t help the strange little smile that fought its way onto his face as he watched her begin to work, her legs folded under her and her elbows resting against the prominence of the baby, looking for all the world like the Lady Madonna.

He was startled when Claire suddenly stopped and stroked her fingers over the rough cuts that he’d made. “It’s funny,” she said quietly, “the situation with my sister and me. Mother was so angry when she found out about me helping her, and when I got pregnant and moved in with Thomas, she disowned me. But she’s still trying to convince Helen to come home.”

Charlie wanted to touch her, to stroke the hair back from her forehead and make her smile again. Instead he nodded. “I know what you mean.” He caught her eye when she looked over at him and on impulse held out his hand to her. Hers was cool when she placed it in his. He squeezed. “It’s not the same, yeah, but I understand what it’s like when they get everything you want and then some stuff that you didn’t even know you wanted and you’re just…left. Leftover.” He rubbed his thumb over hers and then shrugged, letting her hand go again. “This could get awkward. It might already be awkward. I don’t think it is, but you might think it. I’ll give you an out. Tell me about my chart. Looks like a clock having a heart attack, with a big triangle pointing about noon-ish.”

She laughed. “Thank you, Charlie.”

“Claire,” he said, just because he wanted to say her name. “For what?”

She wasn’t looking at him, but he felt like she was, like her smile was aimed right at him. “For everything. For saying the right thing.”

“Really? What was it? I’d like to be able to say it again, if needed.” He meant it; she made him want to say the right thing, all the time.

But she shook her head, laughing quietly underneath her breath. “There are a lot of ways to read your chart,” she said, “but I like to do it house by house, starting with the ascendant. Start at nine o’clock and work anti-clockwise. What do you see?”

“A circle and a line and a wriggly looking thing,” he said after a minute or two of study. “Then there’s a pointy bit and earlier in the day there’s something that looks like a four.”

There was the muffled sound of choked laughter, caught behind a hand just in time, and then Claire said, “A wriggly thing?”

“And a line with a circle,” Charlie agreed matter-of-factly. “I told you, it looks like a clock having a heart attack. With a very decorative border.”

“Decorative…” she giggled. Charlie ducked his head, feeling extremely pleased with himself. “Oh, Charlie.”

“Make you a deal; you look at my clock and I’ll take over our prison escape.”

“Pest,” she said, sounding affectionate. “No, I’m fine. I just got started.” There was a moment of silence, filled with grinning and the absence of anything other than the pure goodness of the moment. Then Claire giggled again. “You’re lucky the first bit of your chart is so empty.”

“Is that a good thing, then?” Charlie asked curiously, looking down at his stars.

Claire shrugged. “Nothing in your chart is a ‘good’ thing or a ‘bad’ thing; it’s all up to you. But with all your planets on one side, it makes it easier to remember. Your first house is in Capricorn. Mars and Venus are both in there.”

“Wait…you said to start with the ascendant. Is that the same as starting with the first house?”

“Your first house is set at your ascendant.”

Something about that tickled his memory. “Your ascendant is Sagittarius.” He waited for her nod. “And mine’s Capricorn?” Another nod. “Does that make us perfect for each other?” He realized what he’d said only after he heard his mouth say it. “Perfect for being friends, I mean? We can be friends together?”

“It means…it’s the way you react to the world, when it’s new and…” she trailed off and then turned to face him, her hands still pushing the metal through the bamboo. “Maybe…maybe we understand each other. Better than the others.”

“So, maybe?”

“So yeah,” Claire disagreed with a smile. “Just, yeah.”

“Okay.” Charlie flew. “What about the four?”

Claire looked up at the stars dramatically. “The four,” she muttered. “That’s Jupiter. In Taurus, right? The little circle with horns, in the decorative border?” she said, just as he opened his mouth.

“You’re like the first time I ever held my guitar,” Charlie told her. He ignored the blush that rose in his cheeks and the way she turned her head slowly to look at him and then quickly away. “And yes. The round-with-horns picture.”

She seemed a little flustered. “Um, that’s the third house. Your third house. Social and intellect,” she explained. “In Taurus it means that you like to be home, or to feel at home. You like to have things, but that’s balanced by Jupiter. Not just the good sense of values, either, since yours was in trine with Venus; that indicates a good hearted, generous nature.”

He supposed that it was inevitable that confusion set in early. “But my Venus was in Capricorn.”

“Oh, it is. Trine is just…one of those things I’ll teach you later. It’s just the way Jupiter and Venus are set to each other, for now,” Claire said.

“All right. So what does Venus do to Capricorn?” Charlie mentally reviewed what he’d said. “Did that sound suggestive? Because I didn’t mean it to do.” Claire’s shoulders were shaking and even though he knew that it was mirth, he still scooted to her side and appropriated her necklace. “Give over. You read the chart and tell me what’s what before I suddenly have Saturn rolling around the floor with Aries.”

She didn’t protest. “Your Saturn is not anywhere near Aries, I’ll have you know.” She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “And the position of your Venus indicates that you’re basically attracted to people with problems, and then you take on those problems.”

He turned to her and narrowed his eyes. He leaned in, putting his hands on her knees, letting the necklace dangle so that he could feel her skin under both his palms. “I thought we talked about this.”

“It also means that your feelings are deep, stable, solid, and definite.” Claire was looking him dead in the eye and Charlie felt amazingly dizzy.

“Don’t forget it,” he murmured; he meant to sound warning, in a playful way, but he thought it sounded more like what it really was: an entreaty. Don’t forget me.

“I couldn’t possibly,” she said, and if she meant to sound amused she missed the mark by a good bout of solemnity.

With a racing heart he turned back to the bars he was supposed to be scraping away at. The progress wasn’t what he’d hoped and night was fading. They’d already lost the moon and the feel of the air was more dark blue than black. “So, all right. What’s next?”

Claire cleared her throat. “The moon. It’s in Cancer. Very sociable and likable. Like you didn’t already know that,” she teased.

Charlie laughed. “What else?”

Again there was a funny pause and then Claire shrugged. “Your seventh house is in Cancer. Barely, but there. It’s…well. Mostly everybody likes it. People with this arrangement usually have nice little families.”

He could understand the reason why she’d paused. With her pregnancy and his protectiveness…and the way he felt…it had to be a little weird. “Well, that’s good. I love kids.”

She made a sort of strangled sound and he turned. She was biting her lip. He gestured to her, the universal ‘say it’ gesture. She sighed. “Your moon is in the fifth house,” she cut off his question by pointing to the lines she’d drawn earlier, showing him the places that marked the house lines. “Not only do you like children, but you’ll probably have a lot.”

Charlie looked at her stomach and then bit his own lip. Things were going to get uncomfortable, quickly, if he said what he was starting to think. “Uranus,” he pulled out his most cheerful voice. “Always a planet that interested me, Uranus. Do you see it?”

“Do I…!” Claire clapped both hands over her mouth and Charlie had to bite his fist and concentrate hard on the cutting in order to stifle himself.

“Sorry,” he gasped.

“Charlie,” she spluttered, still giggling, “you’re so…”

“Amazing? Fantastic? Sensual?”

She sat up at that last. “Have you been reading my book?” she demanded.

Charlie believed in fate. “No. Let me guess, sensual is a word that comes up, no pun intended, love, with this arrangement.”

“Yes.”

“Claire?” Charlie put the necklace to the pole and watched it every millimeter of the downward slide. “Do you think we might be meant to be kissing friends?”

Claire took her necklace away from him and began to chip away sharply at another bar of their cage. “Kissing friends?”

He couldn’t tell if she were angry. He just wasn’t sure. “Not…” he ran his hands through his hair, gripping it tightly. “I mean what I said. I think about you, about how you must feel. And I want to be your friend and talk to you and listen to you. I want you to be the one to know about the sugarplum fairy and my mum’s linen cupboard and I want to know your middle name and your best friend’s last birthday party. But,” he swallowed hard and dropped his hands to his sides. “Every now and again, when your back hurts you especially, or when you agree to watch Walt for the afternoon, or when you’re wearing your hat…”

“My hat?”

“…I want to kiss you. Just a little bit,” he confessed.

“Oh.”

“Claire…”

“Charlie, I…”

He turned toward her at the same time she stopped hacking at the pole. She looked stunned, a little frightened, but not angry.

“Charlie,” she said again and she definitely wasn’t angry.

He held up a hand to stop her anyhow, shooting up to his feet feeling sick at heart. “The light,” he said quietly as Claire pulled herself up to stand beside him. “It’s almost day.” Somehow, between the siblings and the stars and the rushes of feeling, the night had run through all the shades of blue and had edged into the first deep gray of dawn. He looked at their night’s worth of work; he could easily take out several of the bars and slide through. The same couldn’t be said of Claire.

It seemed that she knew it, too. A full-body shudder wracked her and then she straightened her back. “Bring back as much help as you can,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how long they’ll look for you before moving on, so be quick. Please.”

He couldn’t even process what she meant for a full minute. “No,” he said, the effort of not shouting making his voice rough. “Not a chance. Not one chance in a million.”

“They won’t hurt me, Charlie,” Claire said and he watched her knuckles whiten as she lacked her hands together. “They want the baby.”

“What?” But even as he said it, he realized that she was most likely right. Why her and not any of the others? He wondered if Malkin hadn’t just stranded her in the very darkness he’d seen around her child.

“You have to hurry, Charlie,” Claire said and she stretched up to kiss his cheek.

He started at her in incomprehension until he felt the baby surge and roll. “You said you’d never forgive me,” he reminded her.

“Charlie,” she sounded like she was going to cry. Good. He felt like he might start any second. “They’ll see. I’m safe for now…but how long is now?”

“I’m not going to leave you. I’m not going to leave the baby. I don’t care how long now is, I’m not leaving.”

“Yes, you are,” Claire insisted. “You’re going to go and you’re going to find the others. You said they were out there.”

“Do the heroic thing and run away? Who do I look like to you, Claire?” Charlie asked rhetorically, fighting down hysteria. “John Wayne? Superman? Sorry, love, but you’re stuck with an ex-Rock God…” he caught a glimpse of the tray Levi had apparently forgot the night before and swooped down on it, seizing it and slamming the edges deep into two more of the bamboo poles. “…and we’re both leaving.” With that he kicked the bars with as much strength and rising panic as he could muster.

The cage bars shattered with a sickening crack like the breaking of bones. He plunged through the rough opening, trying to tramp down the sharp remains that protruded like broken teeth in a gaping mouth. He felt the hot trickle of blood as one spear-like edge slashed through his blue jeans and didn’t care. He wasn’t sure how his heart was managing to pump his blood around, lodged as it was in his throat. He pulled Claire out behind him, wishing that he didn’t hear her hiss of pain, or the sounds of waking voices.

“Oh my God, Charlie,” Claire whispered breathlessly.

“Ditto,” Charlie offered. “The trees, come on.”

Waking voices were replaced by the sound of moving bodies. Experience told Charlie that they didn’t have much time to get to cover. “Claire,” he said, clutching her hand tightly, “run faster.”

“I can’t,” she gasped in return.

“I know,” he answered. “I just want you in the jungle and out of sight so that Ethan and his mates have to waste a few minutes trying to track us.”

Charlie thought he was going to cry as his feet pounded in cadence with Claire’s sobbing breath, running faster. The thick jungle trees enveloped them seconds before the explosive shouts resounded. Charlie wasted one precious second to stop, to make Claire stop, and he smiled at her feeling grateful and foolish and terrified. For one more, crazy second she smiled back at him and then, as though by consensus, they ran on.

“Claire!” A voice, probably Ethan’s though they all sounded alike, called out. “You really mustn’t, Claire. He’s only going to get hurt.”

Panting behind him, Claire snorted. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered.

“Read my mind,” Charlie wheezed, ducking under a low-hanging trail of vines.

“Does ‘cliff’ mean anything to you, Claire? Mr. Pace?”

Charlie glanced back over his shoulder. “Do you suppose it’s too much to hope that Cliff is one of their mates?”

He expected a laugh, even just a smile, but got an ear-piercing shriek. A second later he was falling back as Claire jerked hard on his shirt. He tumbled to the ground and rolled quickly, trying to cushion her landing as she overbalanced and fell. She landed on his lap, hard, knocking some of the breath out of him. “All right? Claire?” he asked with what he had left.

“Found the cliff,” she said weakly.

“Claire? It sounds like you’ve discovered the cliff,” Ethan called out. He sounded closer than he had before. “You should both come away from the edge. It’d be a terrible shame if Mr. Pace were to take a misstep; it’s rather a little bit of a drop.”

‘Little bit’ was a large, large understatement. The cliff was more of a steeply dropping slope than a sheer drop, but it made Charlie feel faint when he looked over the side. It was littered with shrubby trees and bald-faced rock outcroppings. The road to salvation had never looked more dangerous. “We’re going to have to jump,” he said, trying to sound brave and bracing.

“Jump? Down there?”

“Claire? Mr. Pace?”

“I know,” Charlie whispered, tipping their heads together and running his hands over her hair. “I know how it looks, but I won’t let anything happen to you. Sit at the edge and I’ll sit close behind you, put my arms round you, and we’ll push off. You’ll have the honor of being the first woman to ride Charlie Pace, singer, bassist, and songwriter extraordinaire, as a sled.”

“No,” Claire’s words ghosted across his lips. He could feel her shaking her head. “I won’t let you do it. I won’t let them hurt you. I won’t.”

“Oh, but I’m afraid you don’t have that choice, Claire.” Ethan stepped out of the trees only a few feet away from them. “He’s obviously a bad influence on you.”

Charlie’s heart stopped when Claire stood up and crossed to Ethan, shaking hard. Her voice was trembling when she asked, “If I come with you, will you let him go?”

“No!”

“It’s a very unstable ledge, Claire; I can’t make any promises,” Ethan said, holding out his hand to her.

Claire reached for his hand. “Please…”

“Claire,” Charlie cried out, “no!”

“Please,” Claire repeated as she took Ethan’s hand. “Take a hike,” she finished savagely, twisting his arm and kicking him hard in the knee. Since there wasn’t any bamboo that Charlie could see, and since Ethan was falling with a noise like a wounded elephant, he figured that the cracking sound was probably Ethan’s kneecap.

Love rose in him so strong, so swift, that he could only grin like a madman as Claire raced back to him. “That’s my girl,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her as she lowered herself to sit at the edge of the drop-off.

“Don’t get hurt,” she begged him as he tightened the muscles in his legs.

“Deep breaths, love,” he urged, wishing he could promise her that he wouldn’t, couldn’t, get hurt.

He pushed off.

For a moment they slid slowly and then gravity caught them and pulled them down with a vicious yank. The world went around in a whirling ride of greens and grey-blues and browns. There were hard, jarring, bruising bumps and stinging scratches from flailing bits of nature and raking bits of stone. Charlie was aware of them only peripherally; his whole focus was on Claire. He shielded her with his body, rolling and twisting to take as much possible, staying between her and the fall in the same manner as he’d tried to stay between her and their captors. Keeping Claire in his arms, keeping her and the baby away from as much harm as was possible took up every thought he could catch.

When the water splashed up around him, closing over his face, he was very nearly oblivious to it. What registered was the fact that cold water was soaking into the place Claire should have been. He struggled up to his elbows in the shallow creek.

“Ah, Charlie,” Locke leaned over him, a strange, upside-down man, smiling with open, honest pleasure. “We were just about to come up after the two of you.”

Darkness was threatening, trying to gathering in the corner of his vision but he ignored it. “Where’s Claire?”

“Right here,” Jack said from somewhere nearby. “Boone, prop him up a bit. She’s all right. In better shape than you, by the looks of it.”

A moment later and Claire was kneeling by him in the water and Boone was making a place for her. “Hey,” she whispered. Her face was dotted with blood and sand. There was a twig tangled in her hair. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

“Hey,” he replied. “Is the baby all right?”

Claire nodded. “Kicking away,” she said, with tears in her voice. She shifted and he rolled and he pressed his face against her stomach.

“Hey in there,” he murmured. “What do you think?”

Fingers carded through his hair, comforting and soft. “He probably enjoyed the ride.”

“Falling with you?” Charlie asked “who wouldn’t?”

Claire shook her head, her smile so bright that he couldn’t help but dredge up one of his own in answer. “Falling with you,” she repeated “who couldn’t?” She stroked his hair again and he closed his eyes, finally relaxing.

“Claire?” he said softly. He wanted to tell her he loved her, but the words felt too little, too insubstantial. Instead, he caught her hand and kissed her wrist.

“Charlie,” she said, just as softly and he knew it was an answer to what he hadn’t said.

Beneath his cheek the baby fluttered and Claire pressed their hands over it. “You too,” he whispered to the baby, who kicked again as though he’d heard what Charlie had said.