Todd Revisited: Lost (Chapter 6)

Being at The Sun had shaken him up more than he realized. Stopping in an alley and sitting against the wall, he looked at his hands and saw them tremor in front of his eyes, before he closed them. In an attempt to close out the moment he had clobbered his own son and knocked him out. Jack. I would never hurt Jack. He relived the moment that the body turned over, and the face was just a boy, just his son. How he had grown to be a handsome man, who was clearly a lost soul.

He squeezed his eyes tightly and sighed out heavily, his breath catching with a stifled sob. How did he get here, in this situation, homeless, with no one? Why was he alone in an alley outside the Manning Building, the one he bought and purchased for the love of his life, and that birthed The Sun that he grew into a newspaper giant? He gripped his hands together, hoping to stop the shakes and gain peace of mind somehow.

Starr. Thinking of her usually gave him that kind of solace, even if he did not understand why. And Blair. One look at her, as he did by the pool that day, could bring him to a place of calm, as she always could. As he sat there searching for that inner calm he needed, he could only see in his mind the photo he had just viewed on The Impostor's desk at The Sun. The rage had risen in his chest like a wave of nausea, and he had pushed it down until it hardened in his gut. It still sat there, seething. His wife and his daughter, (in his mind, she was still his wife, he always had trouble not calling her that) were the only thing that had kept him alive each time he was near the end of his rope.

Closing his eyes again, he leaned his head back against the brick behind him, and tried. One more time, he tried. You can do this, just think. Think. Think of them, and think of then. Once again a small fire of speckles passed before his eyes as he attempted to bring up memories of the last time he saw Blair and Starr, or anyone for that matter, in 2003, before he was at The Agency. Try as he might, the speckles of light and heat began to expand, and the pain in his temple pounded a warning. He jerked to a more upright sitting position, and put his hands over his ears. To stop it, he picked up a nearby bottle and smashed it. That was the second time that the crash of glass interrupted the pain - he had learned well from the incident with the photo at Llanfair.

It wasn't working. He couldn't find an ounce of memory of the last time he had seen their faces before last week without being subjected to excruciating pain. And he knew he had to stop before something happened, something that he could not control.

Instead, he made his way further down the alleyway, and found a homeless community, further out of street view. There were a few men sleeping, or passed out; there was a vacant mattress, and a few smouldering fires. Stepping over and through, he came out on the other side in a grassy area, and, suddenly feeling overwhelmed and tired, he sat against a secluded tree and closed his eyes again.

"Son, can you hear me?" a voice was calling to him.

His eyes fluttered open. "I hear you." His voice sounded like a child's, meek, soft, almost inaudible. "What time is it?"

"It's morning."

"Where am I?"

"You're with us, Aman and Lilly, in our cottage in Inishcreg."

He waited until his eyes fully opened and focused on the face of a woman, whose gray hair was tied back but frizzed out from the elastic in many spots. She was strange to him, but she was kind; he could see this by her face.

"Inishcreg?" he could barely make himself say the word. He was too exhausted.

"Yes, dearie, Inishcreg. You're in Ireland. Do you remember anything, Son?"

His heart began to race. "Ireland." That was louder than anything else he had said. "Ireland."

"Yes." She took a cloth and gently patted his forehead.

"Am I dead?"

"No, lad, you're not dead. You're here, and you're very sick. You're fightin' a fever. Aman went to get help for you. A doctor we know, a friend."

"Do you. . ."

"What is it lad, take your time."

"Do you . . . know me?"

She pulled back a bit from washing his forehead and wet her cloth again. "Now what kind of question is that? You must rest. God and Mary with you."

"Do you . . . know me." More insistent this time, more like a statement than a question.

"No, Son, I don't know you."

"Do I know me?" and with that, he faded into sleep. And he dreamed. In his fever, he dreamed of faces, gunshots, of The Wild Swan (not knowing that it was The Wild Swan) and of a woman with long, brownish locks, (not knowing who she was), and a man beside her, with shoulder length hair, and a foggy glen, where he stood at one end opposite a different, beautiful, fair-haired woman, carrying a child. He did not know her, but he wanted to go to her, and in the dream, he began to cross the glen. Again the shots rang out, and he paused, waiting for the hot-white pain. Instead, he saw the woman drop the child and fall to the ground.

"NO!!!" he screamed, and Lilly, doused in water from the spilled pan, held his arms to still him as he came out of his own dream.

"It's all right, lad, it's all right. Wake up, you're having a nightmare. Stop, lad!"

Too tired to fight her, he halted. He looked into her face, and lifted his head the most he had lifted it in the few weeks he had been there, unconscious. "Find her! Find me!"

He jumped and sat up, knocking the back of his head against the tree. It was summer, he had seen his family, he was here and alive, and they didn't even know that he was.