Claire; Foe and Friend

[sapphire_child]

Title: Foe and Friend
Spoilers: an episode tag to Maternity Leave
Summary: Claire muses on Ethan and Charlie and tries to decide which of them is the real monster.
Disclaimer: Lost is by other people and the lyrics in the cut are also by other people (The Fray).
Author’s Note: written for lostfichallenge #58: good and evil

~*~
“Who is he? Ethan?”

“Ethan...Ethan’s the bad guy.”

Claire didn’t remember Ethan very well – and that which she did recall was confused, addled by the drugs he had administered. She remembered how he’d looked after her, how he had taken her on walks and smiled at her and been delighted in the sensation of feeling her baby kick out against his hand.

The clearest memory she had of him was of being chased by him through the rain, his eyes blank and cold. Somewhere inside the sweet exterior, the concern for her wellbeing, was something dark and twisted and horrible. Something that made her clench her fists so tightly that she could feel her fingernails digging into the skin of her palm and making moon shaped indents.

“What happened to Charlie?”

“Charlie? Oh, he's fine. When we got far enough away from camp, I let him go back.”

Some of her earliest memories on the island were of her various exchanges with Charlie. Sweet, funny, drug addicted Charlie. Some of them are still a little scrambled but she remembers him bringing her water, blankets, anything and everything she needed. He was sweet and shy with her, endearing in a way that a Heroin addict shouldn’t have been.

She had only been truly afraid of him once – when he had levelled a gun and shot Ethan at point blank range. The coldness in his eyes was an exact mirror of her pursuer. But then there was an obsessive darkness that clouded both men and it had crept out when Claire had least expected it.

When did foe become friend and vice versa? Claire had seen Charlie steal her son from him – but hadn’t Ethan been going to cut him out of her for research in the first place? At least Charlie’s motives had been to save Aaron – or at least he’d said that’s what he had told her.

Claire looked over the top of Ethan’s unmarked grave to where Charlie was sitting alone with his guitar, back bent under the burden of his own thoughts and worries. She considered the two men for a moment longer, weighing them up in her mind.

Charlie was a technically good man – she knew that. She hadn’t forgotten the love he had tried so desperately to convey to her. She had merely realised the he also had faults and rash impulses just like anyone else. Ethan had been crazy – almost deranged at times with his anger. But he’d had his moments of compassion, when he had admitted to Claire that he would miss her when she was gone. It was then that she had seen a softer side of him, one that made her wonder if he had been all bad as the others presumed.

Nobody knew both Ethan and Charlie as she did. And still Claire was confused about them both. As she stood and brushed the sand from her jeans she wondered vaguely if she could ever go back to the simplicity of a childlike world where there are no shades of grey between bad and good.

It would make everything so much easier.

Comments

[mistojen.livejournal.com]

Yay more fic!!! I loved this. I never thought of it that way, but, yeah, to Claire it must be awfully confusing trying to sort out the bad guy between Charlie and Ethan when she can't clearly remember her experiences with Charlie before the kidnapping... Beautiful as always, my dear :D

[823freckles.livejournal.com]

That was good. I liked reading about Claire thinking about Ethan.

[meagan4dominic.livejournal.com]

That was so good, you made an excellent point about how both men had been trying to take Aaron from her & they both claimed it to be for his own good & that they were just trying to protect him. I really liked the look back over that situation - a very interesting fic

[pacejunkie.livejournal.com]

Yay, you're doing another challenge! Very interesting to compare Ethan and Charlie and the examples you use are great, particularly how you point out that they got the same look in their eye the night of the shooting. Of course Ethan was chasing Claire and Charlie was protecting her but still, the point being that the potential for evil is in everyone. I'm not one of those that tries to make excuses for the Others' behaviour and show them as the misunderstood good guys (in fact it makes me crazy when people do that) but it works here because you're not trying to turn morality on its head. You're just shining a light on the good, evil and shades of grey in all of us. I can see Claire's confusion during this time just after Charlie's babynapping so the setting makes it believable.

[elliotsmelliot.livejournal.com]

I had never thought of the parallels between Ethan and Charlie before, but you are so right. At this point in the story, it makes sense for Claire to ponder their displays of compassion and coldness, and also righteousness when it comes to Aaron. Well done!

[falafel-fiction.livejournal.com]

Oooh, this creeped me out (in a good way!)

It is very disturbing to make Charlie/Ethan parallels. But with two rivals you often find that there is some common ground. In this case it would be their intense feelings towards Claire and Aaron.

Charlie was shockingly cold when he killed Ethan, but then so was Ethan when he threatened Charlie and the camp (the "I'll kill you last" moment). Maybe you could say it was a case of having to fight fire with fire. I've often wondered if Ethan was equally cold when he hung Charlie. I would imagine he was, but we still don't know exactly what happened.