“Turniphead!” Charlie called, waving a hand in front of the baby’s face energetically. He looked up at Claire, smiling sheepishly. She gave him a severe look and went back to hanging up some freshly cleaned nappies. “Sorry,” he said, then looked back at the gurgling baby. “Aaron! Look over here!”

Claire looked at him again, this time she was grinning. “Charlie, you know he’s only three months old. He has no idea what you’re doing.”

Charlie lowered the stick he’d been holding high over his head. “I think he’s at a perfect age to learn The Force.” He looked back at Aaron, who was eating one of his toes. “Look, he’s laughing! He likes Star Wars already.”

She stared at the British man, looking bemused. Finally, she laughed and shrugged. “Okay, so what are those called again?”

He held the stick up in its previous position. “This is a lightsaber.” He managed to explain it rather simply and without treating her like she was insane when she said she had no idea what a lightsaber was. And he only stared at her for about two minutes when she said she’d never seen the films. So, really, he thought he was doing quite well not to pass out at the thought of a non Star Wars fan.

“It looks like a stick,” Claire replied, placing a hand on her hip and surveying said stick (which still had some twigs sticking out of it, and was decorated with leaves). Charlie made a face and started trying to tear the offending leaves off.

“It won’t if you use your imagination,” Charlie stated, turning back to his captive audience (who had finished with his big toe and was now trying to eat his other foot). “Tell your mummy how important it is that you learn everything there is to know about Star Wars.”

Claire giggled quietly to herself, but the only response Charlie got out of the baby was some more gurgling.
“Who uses lightsabers?” Claire questioned, cocking her head to the side and watching as Charlie sliced the stick through the air, making some sort of odd “wooom” sound with his mouth as he fought an invisible partner.

He stopped abruptly and turned to her. “A Jedi. Such as Anakin Skywalker, or Luke---”

“Whose Luke again?”

Charlie plopped down onto the sand beside Aaron’s cradle and started rocking him slowly. It was a habit of his, to get down to Aaron’s level and rock him. The baby seemed to like it, and his mother seemed to enjoy the peace and quiet it provided. “Luke Skywalker,” Charlie said thoughtfully, his eyes on Aaron. “Is Anakin’s son. Darth Vader’s son.”

Claire had finished hanging up the laundry and went to sit across from him; she tucked her legs beneath her and got herself ready for a long explanation. Charlie tended to go off for hours on certain subjects, and she was just learning that Star Wars was one of those long-winded subjects.

“And did you say earlier that he kills his own father?” She tucked a piece of stray hair behind her ear and turned to the ocean, which had just started getting a bit choppy, as the wind picked up.

“Yeah,” Charlie replied, trying to pull a rather stubborn leaf off the lightsaber. “But Darth Vader isn’t exactly your normal ‘Hi, honey, I’m home’ kind of father.”

Claire sighed and looked at her baby, who was happily playing with a toy duck Charlie had found in the luggage pile that seemed to belong to no one. “I never had that kind of father either.”

Charlie reached over and put his hand over hers, smiling fondly at her when she turned her eyes to his. “Turniphead…I mean Aaron…he won’t grow up like that.”

“But Thomas…” Claire trailed off, at a loss for words; she wasn’t sure what Thomas was. Certainly he’d been out of her life for a while before the plane crash, but now that she was keeping their baby she wasn’t sure if he’d want anything to do with his son once they returned to the real world. “Thomas is gone,” she settled on eventually, shrugging to show she didn’t care (even though a lot of the time she did).

“I want to be there for Aaron,” Charlie stated evenly, giving her hand a little squeeze. “And you. I could be his sort of surrogate dad. That way, he won’t have to grow up without a dad, like we did.”

Claire smiled, tears shining in her eyes. “I’d like that,” she said finally, her voice quiet.

Charlie pulled his hand back and reached into the cradle to pull Aaron onto his lap. He kissed the top of the baby’s head and smiled at Claire. “Me too.”