Characters: Desmond and Faraday with mentions of Charlie, Penny and Donovan.

Author: pacejunkie

Authors Note: Yup, this is the end for now I'm afraid. I hope that this little switch of perspective gives the fic some satisfactory closure. I know a lot of you were pining for a reunion scene and this isn't it, but just to let you know sapphire is considering writing one. She might need to have to have a little breather from it first though! Thanks again for sticking with this story everyone who made it this far!!

EPILOGUE – THE ISLAND

Desmond's return trip from the freighter was mercifully uneventful. Overjoyed, he felt as if he could have floated back on the clouds alone. Penny still loved him, and she hadn't stopped looking for him. He still couldn't believe he had spoken to her, although the warm tones of her voice still lingered in his ear like gourmet cuisine on a palate, feeding his weary soul as water restores a drought ridden land. It was only when he and Sayid returned to the beach camp and the familiar tents and cooking fires that the giddiness began to wear off. Desmond realised what a task Penny had set before her. How would she ever find this island when he didn't even know where the bloody hell he was?

After a welcome home handshake from Jack, Desmond asked after Daniel, the odd physicist he had spoken to on the phone and visited in his past. Jack pointed down the beach to where the Oxford professor stood in the kitchen area with the red-headed woman whose name escaped him. Desmond wasn't too bothered; he felt lucky to recall his own name after what had happened. He had learned quite a bit about what had happened on the boat but was still in need of answers, particularly having to do with why this was all happening to begin with. Why did Desmond have these flashes, travel through time, become 'unstuck' as Faraday had put it? The trip to the freighter had not had the same effect on Sayid, and although Desmond knew it had to be connected to his previous time travel experience, he still lacked insight into the actual cause.

The red head walked away as Desmond neared. When he was within a few feet Daniel looked up and broke into a curious smile and a sigh. He seemed relieved to see him, almost too relieved, as though Desmond were his best mate despite having just met him.

"You're okay!" Daniel exclaimed.

Desmond ignored the response and plunged right in. "I want you to tell me everything you know about what's happened to me."

When Daniel recovered he nodded vigorously, clearly anticipating Desmond's curiosity now that the danger had been averted. "That's...kind of a tall order. I'd like to ask you some questions first if that's okay. It might help me to answer yours."

Desmond nodded and the two sat down at the bamboo table. "When was the first time you remember time travelling? Was it on the island?"

"It began with the Swan station, an underground hatch in the jungle where I lived for a while," said Desmond, thinking. "There was…an incident, a build-up of electromagnetism. The station had a computer that released it but it was broken so...I had to turn a fail-safe key. I thought I'd died, but instead I woke up and it was 1996. I was back in my old flat, even though I could remember everything that had happened on the island."

Daniel didn't seem surprised or sceptical of any of this, but instead he looked at Desmond as though he were considering something. Glancing over his shoulder, Daniel spied the redhead lass several tents away talking to Jack. Satisfied, he jumped up.

"I want to show you something, Desmond," he said. "Wait here."

Desmond shrugged and waited until Daniel returned a moment later with a black leatherette notebook. Daniel rifled through the lined pages full of diagrams and equations until he came to a page somewhere near the middle and stopped. Then he turned the book towards Desmond so he could read it. The undated text was in capital letters and red ink, boxed and underlined.

If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.

"What the bloody hell's this?" Desmond asked, "Some kind of joke?"

Daniel was smiling. "I assure you Desmond, it's no joke. It's happened to me too. I was exposed to large doses of radiation in my research, as we talked about at Oxford. I knew you might be here, and I knew that on this island, time travel was possible. I also knew there was a chance of becoming unstuck getting in or out of here. I came to the island hoping to find you to anchor me."

Desmond couldn't believe what he was hearing. He began to wonder whether Daniel was the reason Naomi had his name and photo; in all the confusion he never did get that question answered on the freighter.

"How did you know I was here?" he asked.

When Daniel answered him, the physicist delivered the second sucker punch of the day, growing more excited by his own tale by the minute.

"Donovan told me, after you told him," Faraday said. "He was a colleague of mine in the Physics department at Oxford. Most people there thought I was crazy but he was strangely fascinated by my work. Finally one day he told me why. He told me about you."

It was so neat it was almost obvious. Of course, his friend was also an Oxford physicist. Desmond ought to have made the connection himself. But the answer only raised more questions, namely how Donovan could have acted on something that he only knew because Desmond had travelled back in time and told him.

"Does that mean by going back, I changed the future?" Desmond asked, remembering his encounter with Daniel in his 1996 research lab. "When I saw you at Oxford, you said we couldn't change the future."

"You can't, not exactly," Daniel explained, his eyes lifting up to the heavens, searching for the right words to explain. "The universe prevents it, it's like…"

"…like course correcting?" Desmond filled in.

Dan looked down again, surprised. "Yeah. How did you know?"

"I met someone, in my past, someone I didn't meet before. She was an older lady that worked in an antique shop and she knew my name and all about the island. She explained about course correcting." Desmond thought back to the white haired lady who liked roasted chestnuts and added with a small smile, "I didn't believe her."

"How did she know all those things?" Daniel asked.

"Don't ask me brother, you're the scientist. Maybe it was happening to her too," said Desmond.

Daniel waved off that mystery for the moment. "Besides telling Donovan about the island, is there anything else you did differently when you travelled into the past?"

Desmond thought hard. "I did a lot of things. I was hit with a cricket bat meant for a bartender, and…" he stopped as the words caught in his throat with sudden realisation, "and Charlie. I saw Charlie."

"Who's Charlie?" asked Dan.

"He was one of the plane crash survivors," Desmond explained hurriedly. "When I was in 1996 I saw him playing guitar on the street and I spoke to him. He didn't know who I was. He just thought I was some nutter going on about an island."

Daniel nodded, following easily on his own little train of thought. "After that happened and you returned here, did Charlie remember the meeting?"

"No, he…"

"Did he have any side effects at all?" Dan interrupted.

Desmond felt like he had been hit in the face with a sledgehammer. Charlie bloody well did have side effects. After Desmond returned, the universe had made it its primary purpose to kill the poor sod.

"Desmond?" asked Dan sharply, trying to bring his attention back, "Where's Charlie now?"

"He's dead," said Desmond in a hollow voice, eyes staring off into the distance towards the frigid ocean that had claimed him. "After I returned from the past I began having these flashes of Charlie's death. I'd do something to prevent it and then the next day I'd see another death and then another. They were always about Charlie. Oh my God, could that be it?"

He turned on Daniel, more desperate for answers than before, but the more he learned the more his anguish grew.

"Did I cause this?!" He demanded.

It was all making sense in the most horrible way imaginable. It had been him. Desmond had been responsible for Charlie's death, but not in the way he had first thought. He had been beating himself up over his decision to tell Charlie about the rescue helicopter. By telling him he saw Claire and Aaron get rescued, Desmond had convinced Charlie to swim down to the station, face his death and cause events to happen on his own terms. Desmond was already living with that guilt, but it was even worse than that. It now turned out that he had started the whole mess happening in the first place.

"Actions in our past can have enormous consequences," Dan explained, his voice steady and even in an attempt to calm him. "It's like a ripple effect. You couldn't have known what would happen when you spoke to him on the street. Whatever you did caused the universe to eliminate Charlie from the island."

Desmond thought of the young man with a girlfriend and child and the death sentence he had unwittingly brought upon him, "But why? Why would it do that?"

"There's only one reason for course correcting, and that's to prevent a paradox," Daniel said. "Let's say, for example, the Charlie you spoke to in 1996 never got on Flight 815. But time isn't linear it's more like a spiral so…" he stopped and dropped the hands he was using to illustrate his meaning, and then tried again. "Charlie was already here in 2004 when you saw him in 1996. The universe can't have two Charlie's living parallel lives, and eventually it will find a way to course correct, particularly if it thinks the two Charlie's may one day intersect. They can't ever be allowed to meet each other."

Desmond struggled to follow, "But if Charlie had to die, that would mean…"

"That Charlie may still be alive, but off the island," said Dan. "It's a possibility. And if he's out there somewhere Desmond, he may be trying to get here. At least that would explain why the course correction suddenly began to take effect when it did."

"And Penny spoke to him," Desmond realized with a burst of comprehension.

"What?" asked Dan.

"I spoke to Penny on the freighter – my constant – and she said that she spoke to Charlie and is trying to find me. Charlie spoke to her from the underwater station here just before he drowned. If Charlie's name is all she had to go on she may have found the Charlie that's still in London."

"Now remember, this is just a theory, Desmond," Daniel cautioned. "We don't know anything for sure yet."

But Desmond didn't care. He still felt elated, rejuvenated by the mere possibility. The burden of responsibility hadn't lifted but he now had something he hadn't had apart from his few moments with Penny on the phone – hope. If Charlie was still out there, helping Penny find the island, there was hope, not only for him but for Claire as well. He thought of the young single mother who had collapsed before his eyes upon hearing the news of her friend's tragic death. Perhaps he hadn't destroyed a family like he thought he had. Desmond shook Daniel's hand with vigour and left him, perplexed in the dust, as he walked off to face a new day.

It was just like Brother Campbell had said all those years ago. Desmond had underestimated the value of sacrifice. He had long failed to see the reward in it, but here, finally, the reward was clear. Charlie had made the ultimate sacrifice, a necessary step to bringing about not only their salvation, but also Charlie's own.

If only Desmond had known that Charlie didn't need saving. The lad may have saved himself.

Maybe that was it, he thought as he reached the three sided bamboo and tarp tent that had begun to feel like home, maybe that was Charlie's destiny. Here I was thinking he had to die for Claire and Aaron's rescue to happen but that was only part of it. He had to die so he could live, and rescue us all.

THE END