sapphire_child | lost fic; the smallest things remind us

Title: The Smallest Things Remind Us
Rating/warnings: PG
Character/s: Aaron, Claire
Spoilers: speculation only for the end of season three – so no spoilers per se
Summary: Aaron Littleton was six years old when his mother lived off nothing but peanut butter for a month straight... Aaron watches as Claire continues to grieve for Charlie long after he’s gone and they have returned home.
Disclaimer: Lost belongs to ABC etc and not me. I’m just highly obsessive and highly crazy and have written way too much fanfiction.

~*~
Aaron Littleton was six years old when his mother lived off nothing but peanut butter for a month straight. It wasn’t just regular peanut butter, but all the variants (crunchy, smooth, extra smooth) and not just alone (she also had it between pieces of bread and on top of celery sticks) but it was always always always peanut butter morning, noon and night. From then on, the smallest whiff of peanuts was enough to make Aaron feel like he was going to be sick.

~*~
Aaron Littleton was twelve when his mother went to pick up a turnip in the vegetables section at the supermarket and then promptly burst into tears for no apparent reason. Aaron was embarrassed and his mother was too incoherent for him to understand what she was saying through her sobs. He took her firmly by the hand and led her out into the car park, abandoning their half full trolley in the middle of the shop.

~*~
Aaron Littleton was seventeen when his mother sold the broken red guitar that she never played. When she put it up for auction on eBay, he was more than a little incredulous. The thing hadn’t played for years - its body was warped from moisture and the strings were all snapped as well. How she ended up getting so much for the stupid thing Aaron couldn’t quite figure out – but she used the money to help him get into a decent university and every time she saw the empty corner where the guitar used to stand she would go glassy eyed and her hands would tremble.

~*~
Aaron Littleton was eighteen when his mother first showed him a picture of his father. Having none of her own and not being in contact with his brother she had to go online and Google him (of all things). His bands official site was long since been taken down but there was still an unofficial site with a fair few photographs from their tour days. Aaron spent hours reading and re-reading the biography section and the meticulously transcribed magazine articles. He sent away for all of the albums and listened to them in private so he didn’t upset his mother, trying to single out his father’s voice in the backing vocals.

~*~
Aaron Littleton was twenty-one when he got his first full time job. The first thing he bought with his newfound wealth was a guitar to replace the one his mother had sold to fund his education four years ago. It was red as well, second hand, although it still had a nice sound when it played. She looked blank when he gave it to her - you really shouldn’t have Aaron - and although she never plays it, it fills the empty corner where the old one used to rest.

~*~
Aaron Littleton was thirty-five when his mother died quite unexpectedly. In her will she asked for Aaron to inherit all her possessions and wealth, to do with as he saw fit, and also for her body to be cremated and her ashes scattered into the Pacific Ocean. Aaron fulfils her wishes alone (his wife is at home, eight months pregnant with their first child) and when she’s gone he reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out the clunky ring that she always wore around her neck for as long as he could remember.

He rolls it between his fingers curiously. He knows surprisingly little about the man who wore it – apart from the few precious memories his mother shared with him and the cold blankness of a buzzing computer screen displaying his grinning face, long since dead.

For a split second he considers seeing how much the ring would fetch on eBay – surely more than the broken guitar? But then he is shocked with himself. This is the only tangible connection he still has with his father and with a decisive twist of his mouth, he slides it onto the middle finger on his right hand and watches the silver glint dully against his skin.

The red guitar that never got played is now his and he learns to play – although he never becomes truly good at it. And when people ask him where he got “that unusual ring from” he always tells them (in a low quiet voice filled with pride and just a little sadness),

‘It was my fathers.’