Scars & Bruises, Sawyer/Jack, Alex/Jack
Jul. 9th, 2007 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kricketsTitle: Scars & Bruises
Fandom, Characters: Lost, Jack/Sawyer, Alex/Jack, Richard (mentions of Kate, Danielle, Juliet, & Ben)
Rating (Warnings): Adult (Sex, Language, Death, Slash)
Premise: A trip back to hell. But here she is too, so that’s got to mean something.
Author’s Note: *smushes![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kmousie* Written for dayln03 who won a prompt in my fic meme, so dedicated to her and her total awesomeness.
He never wanted to deck Jack Shephard more than he does in this moment. Christ, he wouldn’t even be here if she hadn’t called, that voice so small, so guilty. You have to go to him, she had said.
That was no joke.
He smells of vomit and looks even worse, and how the fuck could he let it get this bad? Sawyer picks him up and tosses him into the shower. Water’s cold, and he yelps, curses, punches. But when Sawyer steps in with him, starts peeling off their clothes, he stills, lets his head drop to Sawyer’s shoulder, and weeps.
Sawyer presses his lips to Jack’s forehead and rubs a bar of white soap between his hands, then over Jack’s entire body. His touches are slow and deliberate, and not sexual at all, nothing like their last goodbye. He doesn’t even get hard. His hands pause over scars and bruises, remembering some, wondering about others, and preferring not to ever know about the rest.
“You gotta stop this, Doc,” Sawyer whispers later, hovering over him in the dark. Jack reaches up, pulls Sawyer down into a crushing kiss.
“I know,” he says, and slides a hand below Sawyer’s boxers, wrapping his fingers around him. “I know.”
Sawyer kisses him back, groans when Jack starts a steady rhythm, sinks beside him on the bed, and closes his eyes.
“Stay with me,” Jack begs as he works Sawyer’s swollen cock.
Sawyer pulls him in for another kiss, hard and needy. “Been too long,” he growls, not fully grasping Jack’s intent. His hips rise slightly off the bed, thrusting into Jack’s hand.
“I mean for good,” Jack says, his hand moving faster. “I’ll be better. I’ll end all this.”
Sawyer comes with a grunt, hot and sticky over Jack’s fingers. “Yeah, Doc,” he agrees then, trailing wet kisses along Jack’s freshly-shaven jaw. “Yeah,” he repeats, his palm sliding flat against Jack’s chest and slipping underneath the elastic band of his briefs. “If that’s what it takes.”
+
Jack tries. He honestly, truly tries. He stops the drinking and the pills, goes back to work, and he feels like himself again.
One weekend, they drive to Mammoth where they burn all his maps among the trees. They even bury them after. It’s his idea. It’s supposed to be cathartic – a cleansing. But when Sawyer isn’t looking, Jack stows a hand-drawn chart away in his pack.
It’s in this moment that he realizes it’s not over, he’s not fixed.
It’s useless – a piece of paper leading nowhere – and he wants to take it back, he wants to tear it up and drop it on the trail, leave it all behind, follow Sawyer back into life, but knows he can’t.
They fuck under the stars that night, and it reminds Jack of their first time, back on the island, all resentment and lust, an angry, sweaty mess in the jungle. He comes hard when the memory flashes through his mind, and has to reach around, fisting over Sawyer’s still-hard cock until he spurts into Jack’s hand.
No, this isn’t over.
+
The first time Jack sees him, it’s in the hospital. Down the corridor near his office, he catches sight of that unmistakable dark figure weaving through a sea of white and blue. Jack pushes his way through his colleagues, quickly past the shrill sound of the intercom, soft mumblings of MRIs, lunch plans, and test results, but when he rounds the corner, there’s no one.
He lets himself imagine that it was just a trick of the light.
The second time he sees him, there is no mistaking it. There’s no mistaking it because, this time, Richard is standing behind him in the master bathroom, peering over his shoulder through the mirror from behind dark eyes. Jack spins around, grabs Richard by the neck and pushes him against the wall.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he spits, his voice lowered, acutely aware of Sawyer sleeping in the next room.
Richard’s hands meet Jack’s at his throat in an attempt to peel out of the vice grip. “Air would be nice, Jack,” he grunts, holding his hands up in a gesture of good will.
Jack’s eyes narrow slightly before he eases his grip. “Why are you here, Richard?” he asks, shaking his head and stepping back. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” Richard repeats. “That’s not it,” he shakes his head. “It’s what you want,” he says levelly, and there’s something in his tone and in his eyes that makes Jack listen. “I can take you back. You just have to say the word.”
Jack’s stance drops as he lets these words sink in, and the silence that follows lasts long enough for Richard to know Jack’s answer. But somehow Jack’s sure he already knew. He slowly lifts his eyes, affirmation evident in the deep brown.
“We leave tonight,” Richard says. “Get your stuff.”
He doesn’t wake Sawyer. He doesn’t see the point. It won’t change anything. Instead, he scrawls a note, leaves it by the bedside table. I promise I’ll be back. Wait for me.
+
He thinks she’s someone else – those curly brown tendrils, and the way she leans, gazing through one of the windows in the small private aircraft. But when her eyes flash up to meet his, it’s Alex, and not Kate, staring back at him.
He ought to have known better.
“Hey,” she says, her voice flat, disinterested, not giving away the fact that she’s just as shocked as he is at their meeting on this journey.
“Hey,” he says back, takes a seat in front of her.
There’s a measure of exposure, a feeling like he’s been found out, because he made the decision to go. And here he is, boarding a flight back to the hell he tried so desperately to escape. But here she is too, so that’s got to mean something. The difference between them is that for her, it was never a hell. It was home.
He remembers the last time he saw her, remembers the time just before they all came crashing back into the real world. Back then she was only a girl who had just watched the man she called father shot and killed, who had just left the only home she’d ever known. And he was only the man who had put Ben in front of the gun, the man who had taken them both from that place.
Now she’s more than a girl, and he’s less than a man, and it feels oddly right.
+
“I won’t stay,” Richard says after they’ve unloaded, all the questions they should have asked long before still weighing heavily on their tongues. “The compound is safe, and there’s power, but you’ll have to scavenge or hunt for food. There’s…” he pauses, a hint of remorse, maybe even pain, flashing in his eyes, his usual stoicism melting away, just for a second. “There’s no one left.”
They both look at each other, then back at Richard, nodding in understanding.
”Don’t mistake me,” he warns, the walls going right back up, business as usual. “There’s still a danger. You remember how to work the security gates, don’t you, Alex?”
She nods and leans down to pick up her pack. “I do.”
“Good. Use it. Take caution. Arm yourselves. Come in at night. And I suggest you stick together, until you find whatever it is you’re both looking for.”
He turns then, back towards the plane on its half-finished runway.
“Wait!” Jack calls. “How will we contact you?”
Richard stops and turns, casting a glance over his shoulder, and Jack notes for the first time that the lines on his face are drawn the same, and it sends shivers down his back. “I’ll be back when you’re ready for me to be back. Don’t worry.”
+
He’s forgotten how thick the air is, heavy in his lungs, and it should be stifling, but it’s not. It feels like coming up after a deep dive, like coming home, and he doesn’t even think of Sawyer’s rough hands, the curve of his hip, the soft corners of his eyes – one day gone and already forgotten.
Maybe promises left on bedside tables were never meant to be kept anyway.
Alex leads, and she’s faster than he is, and it makes him feel older than his years. “You never told me why,” he says, catching his breath against a shady rock, rings of sweat around his neck and arms. “Why’d you come back?” And he knows it’s not a fair question, because he could never answer it in return.
Alex turns, graceful yet feral, ever the animal she always used to be. “We have to keep moving,” she says, handing him a canteen. “It’ll be nightfall soon.”
“She’ll never come back with you, you know?” he says as she turns, and Alex stops but doesn’t look back. He doesn’t say it to hurt her, but only to tell her the truth. Danielle made that decision long ago.
“I know.” Her voice is much smaller than he’s ever heard it before. “And that’s not the point,” she says, and continues walking.
Alex never asks him why.
+
After inspecting the grounds, Alex finds Jack standing quietly on a front porch, surveying the scene before him. The place is in bad shape, but most of the quarters are still live-able, and comfortable at that. Not this one though, destroyed by a storm of some kind, its roof caving in, its guts soaked through, and a musty, rotting scent permeating the surrounding yard, with its grass grown high.
“This was Juliet’s place,” she says as she stands beside him, her shoulder brushing his.
“I remember,” he says and Alex can’t read his voice, hearing remorse or bitterness or both.
“She was always a mole, you know?” And she doesn’t say it to hurt him, only to tell him the truth. “I wasn’t always so sure. But she gave herself away at the end, didn’t she?”
“I know.” He nods, bloody hands flashing through his mind. He looks at her, really looks at her for the first time since boarding the plane. His broken gaze makes her feel small against his shoulder, like there are places buried behind his eyes that she could never imagine. “But she was more, too.”
+
They sleep soundly that night, with miles and anticipation behind them, and a different kind of journey ahead of them. In the morning, Jack finds Alex in the artillery, tells her he’ll help her find her mom, that it’s more important than whatever the fuck it is he’s doing out there.
She doesn’t speak, but places a hot palm over his knuckles, nods her head, and hands him a pistol. They’re a team now.
The hike in was brutal, and Jack wonders briefly if he can still do this, but days go by and he’s already reacquainted with the terrain, like riding a bike. Weaving in and out of the underbrush, over rocks and streams with Alex, they speak in gestures and eye contact, body language and single words.
He remembers how time ceases to function out here, in the wild, as Sawyer once called it, how days seem longer and shorter all at once, how weeks can drag on endlessly or slip by without a warning.
He marks the days in a small notebook he finds in a drawer in the house with pictures of Tom and a man he doesn’t recognize still hanging dusty on the walls. After a few pages are filled, and no trails to lead anywhere, he starts to believe that they will never find Danielle. And when Alex slips into his room one night, takes off her shirt without a word, covers his wet mouth with hers, and reaches for his zipper, he knows she believes it too.
But this isn’t about the truth. This is about illusion. The longer she can fool herself, the longer she can hold on to her mother, and maybe more than that. And the longer he allows her to do that, the longer he can fool himself too.
Sometimes, he fucks her in the mornings, and that’s really the thing, the sign that they’ve lost hope, because daylight is not a thing to be wasted, and this has now become a salvage mission.
He likes the way she feels next to him, and words aren’t something they need, as he’s needed them with all his other lovers, save one. And he doesn’t even really think of him anymore.
“Why didn’t Karl come with you?” he asks one midnight, his wiry frame surrounding hers on the bed, both fucked-out and still breathing heavily.
She turns to look at him, her eyebrows knitted, bothered by the question and its timing. “What about Sawyer?” she asks defiantly
Jack doesn’t respond, his eyes avoiding hers, traveling up to the ceiling, and down to the door, an escape he knows he won’t take.
“Richard told me,” she adds quickly. “I didn’t mean to–”
“No,” he says. “No, it’s fair. I asked you first. Sawyer….” His thoughts trail off somewhere between guilt and a heavy heart, that part of himself he doesn’t allow to miss him surfacing for just a moment before he continues. “He never got it. I had to lie to get him to stay. Because this,” he gestures towards the walls around them, but she knows he means this place, this island, “is a place he’d sooner die than see again.”
Alex nods and catches his lips with hers. “Karl too,” she says quietly afterwards, and once again, they understand each other.
+
This was a bad idea. Those are the words that run through his mind when he hears Alex’s frantic voice over the walkie.
They should never have split up.
He can make out his name, her voice trapped in her throat, thick with fear and tears and pain. She mumbles something about going back, and then the signal’s gone.
“Alex!” He shouts her name into the walkie, his voice absorbed by thick jungle, but there’s no answer.
The pungent smell of smoke hits his nostrils before he ever sees the fire. It’s nightfall already, and he’s exhausted from running, but the smell of burning wood, the sound of the flames, propels him forward.
Alex is dead, he thinks, by now his mind trained to arrive at the worst possible scenario. Dead. Dead. Fucking dead! And the thought weighs empty on his heart, because all he can think is that one word. D-E-A-D.
But she’s not dead. And he nearly collides with her as he rounds one of the houses towards the fire. She’s carrying a box of what looks like old records, and he catches her in his arms. The box falls, crashing to the ground at their feet, and Alex’s eyes are brimming with tears. Her face is darkened with dirt or ash or both, and she pushes him away.
“She’s dead,” she screams, echoing his thoughts. “Fucking dead.” And when she runs towards the flames, she reveals a dark green tarpaulin laid across the yard. On top of it, Jack sees, is a decomposed corpse that can only be Danielle’s remains, dragged from the forest by her own daughter.
The building that’s ablaze and Alex’s only concentration, he realizes, is the one she shared with Ben all those years – her childhood home. And Jack doesn’t stop her as she hauls furniture, books, old records and anything she can put her hands on and carry to the front stoop, tossing them into the blaze.
Who else could she possibly blame for all of this but Ben?
She collapses on the ground, dangerously close to the flames, and Jack picks her up, carries her limply in his arms to the edge of the property. They sit in silence, watching the house fall down around its foundation. And maybe this isn’t just about Danielle. Maybe she’s finally mourning the life of the father who raised her.
“What are we doing?” he whispers when her breathing becomes steady, ready to fall asleep in his arms under the warmth of the fire.
“We’re going back to the beach,” she says, “to your camp.” And all emotion has left her by then. “We’re going to bury her with your people.”
+
He leads. The way back to camp etched so clearly in his memory. The jungle is unnaturally cool, a stark contrast to last night’s flames. They’re still covered in ash, and Alex never says a word, just carries her end of the stretcher behind him.
The beach is empty, and it feels all wrong, missing the life Jack once knew. What did he expect? The shoreline has completely changed, and he’s amazed to see some of their structures still standing, though torn up and broken, the pantry with its tarpaulin overhead, no longer a color you could call blue, held permanently to the trees that have grown around its bindings, encasing them.
The cemetery is overgrown, but he can still see the grave markers peering out from behind the dense vegetation. He pauses there a moment, bows his head. He doesn’t pray or cry. He wouldn’t. He can’t feel for them. They are so far away now and not a one of them a martyr.
He stands there a while, trying to muster up some sympathy, any remorse at all, before Alex finds him and presses her hand into his. ”We can’t stay long,” she says in that vacant way of hers. “Storm’s coming. We’ll need shelter.”
They dig a grave for Danielle farther down the beach, where the ground is soft and pliant underneath their Dharma-issued shovels. But they’re tired from the hike, and the digging is slow. They don’t finish until well after nightfall, and the rain comes down hard and thick and hot.
“We should come back,” he shouts over the storm, soaking and muddy.
“No,” Alex shakes her head, wiping wet ringlets from her forehead. “We have to finish it.”
They bury Danielle’s remains without a word, shoveling in piles of mud and wet sand as quickly as possible. Neither of them really knows why they’re doing this. After all, she was little more than a stranger to the both of them.
When they’re finished, Jack walks to the tree line, tosses the shovel to his side and drops to the ground. He lies back, arms and legs spread wide, letting the rain bathe his skin and his back sink into the sodden ground. He closes his eyes, the warm, wet droplets splashing over his eyelids.
He feels Alex joining him on the ground, curling next to him. He pulls her close and she slips easily on top of him, straddling him. His eyes fly open, and he finds her staring at him. The rain falls down her face and he knows those are the only tears she’ll ever shed for her mother. She lifts her tank, slipping the wet garment over her head, and then attaches her fingers to the hem of his sullied t-shirt, pushing the soaking material up, her tired hands attacking his chest, all the breath going out of him.
And then it’s just the two of them on this island at the edge of the forest, wild creatures in the dark just like any others, white skin smeared with brown as he enters her, both grunting and clawing. It would be easy to say this is the result of grief or even need, with her mother’s fresh grave mere yards away, but when she catches his mouth in hers, bites hard enough to bleed, it feels more animalistic, like somehow they’ve forgotten how to be human, like they’ve become a part of this untamed place, for better or for worse.
They lie together afterwards, her on top of him, breathless and feeling somehow emptier than before – but known…and each other. He is Alex. And she is Jack. And there aren’t anymore questions. There is no one else. There is nowhere else.
He knows Richard will be back. She’s completed her journey. And he doesn’t even know where his starts.
“He’ll be coming for you, you know,” he says to her, one hand smoothing over her naked back, the rain washing them both clean. “You’re free to go. I can do this alone.”
Alex lifts her head, presses warm, wet lips to his mouth, finds his hand at her side, and laces her fingers through his. And it isn’t an answer, but it feels like a promise.
Fandom, Characters: Lost, Jack/Sawyer, Alex/Jack, Richard (mentions of Kate, Danielle, Juliet, & Ben)
Rating (Warnings): Adult (Sex, Language, Death, Slash)
Premise: A trip back to hell. But here she is too, so that’s got to mean something.
Author’s Note: *smushes
kmousie* Written for dayln03 who won a prompt in my fic meme, so dedicated to her and her total awesomeness. He never wanted to deck Jack Shephard more than he does in this moment. Christ, he wouldn’t even be here if she hadn’t called, that voice so small, so guilty. You have to go to him, she had said.
That was no joke.
He smells of vomit and looks even worse, and how the fuck could he let it get this bad? Sawyer picks him up and tosses him into the shower. Water’s cold, and he yelps, curses, punches. But when Sawyer steps in with him, starts peeling off their clothes, he stills, lets his head drop to Sawyer’s shoulder, and weeps.
Sawyer presses his lips to Jack’s forehead and rubs a bar of white soap between his hands, then over Jack’s entire body. His touches are slow and deliberate, and not sexual at all, nothing like their last goodbye. He doesn’t even get hard. His hands pause over scars and bruises, remembering some, wondering about others, and preferring not to ever know about the rest.
“You gotta stop this, Doc,” Sawyer whispers later, hovering over him in the dark. Jack reaches up, pulls Sawyer down into a crushing kiss.
“I know,” he says, and slides a hand below Sawyer’s boxers, wrapping his fingers around him. “I know.”
Sawyer kisses him back, groans when Jack starts a steady rhythm, sinks beside him on the bed, and closes his eyes.
“Stay with me,” Jack begs as he works Sawyer’s swollen cock.
Sawyer pulls him in for another kiss, hard and needy. “Been too long,” he growls, not fully grasping Jack’s intent. His hips rise slightly off the bed, thrusting into Jack’s hand.
“I mean for good,” Jack says, his hand moving faster. “I’ll be better. I’ll end all this.”
Sawyer comes with a grunt, hot and sticky over Jack’s fingers. “Yeah, Doc,” he agrees then, trailing wet kisses along Jack’s freshly-shaven jaw. “Yeah,” he repeats, his palm sliding flat against Jack’s chest and slipping underneath the elastic band of his briefs. “If that’s what it takes.”
Jack tries. He honestly, truly tries. He stops the drinking and the pills, goes back to work, and he feels like himself again.
One weekend, they drive to Mammoth where they burn all his maps among the trees. They even bury them after. It’s his idea. It’s supposed to be cathartic – a cleansing. But when Sawyer isn’t looking, Jack stows a hand-drawn chart away in his pack.
It’s in this moment that he realizes it’s not over, he’s not fixed.
It’s useless – a piece of paper leading nowhere – and he wants to take it back, he wants to tear it up and drop it on the trail, leave it all behind, follow Sawyer back into life, but knows he can’t.
They fuck under the stars that night, and it reminds Jack of their first time, back on the island, all resentment and lust, an angry, sweaty mess in the jungle. He comes hard when the memory flashes through his mind, and has to reach around, fisting over Sawyer’s still-hard cock until he spurts into Jack’s hand.
No, this isn’t over.
The first time Jack sees him, it’s in the hospital. Down the corridor near his office, he catches sight of that unmistakable dark figure weaving through a sea of white and blue. Jack pushes his way through his colleagues, quickly past the shrill sound of the intercom, soft mumblings of MRIs, lunch plans, and test results, but when he rounds the corner, there’s no one.
He lets himself imagine that it was just a trick of the light.
The second time he sees him, there is no mistaking it. There’s no mistaking it because, this time, Richard is standing behind him in the master bathroom, peering over his shoulder through the mirror from behind dark eyes. Jack spins around, grabs Richard by the neck and pushes him against the wall.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he spits, his voice lowered, acutely aware of Sawyer sleeping in the next room.
Richard’s hands meet Jack’s at his throat in an attempt to peel out of the vice grip. “Air would be nice, Jack,” he grunts, holding his hands up in a gesture of good will.
Jack’s eyes narrow slightly before he eases his grip. “Why are you here, Richard?” he asks, shaking his head and stepping back. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” Richard repeats. “That’s not it,” he shakes his head. “It’s what you want,” he says levelly, and there’s something in his tone and in his eyes that makes Jack listen. “I can take you back. You just have to say the word.”
Jack’s stance drops as he lets these words sink in, and the silence that follows lasts long enough for Richard to know Jack’s answer. But somehow Jack’s sure he already knew. He slowly lifts his eyes, affirmation evident in the deep brown.
“We leave tonight,” Richard says. “Get your stuff.”
He doesn’t wake Sawyer. He doesn’t see the point. It won’t change anything. Instead, he scrawls a note, leaves it by the bedside table. I promise I’ll be back. Wait for me.
He thinks she’s someone else – those curly brown tendrils, and the way she leans, gazing through one of the windows in the small private aircraft. But when her eyes flash up to meet his, it’s Alex, and not Kate, staring back at him.
He ought to have known better.
“Hey,” she says, her voice flat, disinterested, not giving away the fact that she’s just as shocked as he is at their meeting on this journey.
“Hey,” he says back, takes a seat in front of her.
There’s a measure of exposure, a feeling like he’s been found out, because he made the decision to go. And here he is, boarding a flight back to the hell he tried so desperately to escape. But here she is too, so that’s got to mean something. The difference between them is that for her, it was never a hell. It was home.
He remembers the last time he saw her, remembers the time just before they all came crashing back into the real world. Back then she was only a girl who had just watched the man she called father shot and killed, who had just left the only home she’d ever known. And he was only the man who had put Ben in front of the gun, the man who had taken them both from that place.
Now she’s more than a girl, and he’s less than a man, and it feels oddly right.
“I won’t stay,” Richard says after they’ve unloaded, all the questions they should have asked long before still weighing heavily on their tongues. “The compound is safe, and there’s power, but you’ll have to scavenge or hunt for food. There’s…” he pauses, a hint of remorse, maybe even pain, flashing in his eyes, his usual stoicism melting away, just for a second. “There’s no one left.”
They both look at each other, then back at Richard, nodding in understanding.
”Don’t mistake me,” he warns, the walls going right back up, business as usual. “There’s still a danger. You remember how to work the security gates, don’t you, Alex?”
She nods and leans down to pick up her pack. “I do.”
“Good. Use it. Take caution. Arm yourselves. Come in at night. And I suggest you stick together, until you find whatever it is you’re both looking for.”
He turns then, back towards the plane on its half-finished runway.
“Wait!” Jack calls. “How will we contact you?”
Richard stops and turns, casting a glance over his shoulder, and Jack notes for the first time that the lines on his face are drawn the same, and it sends shivers down his back. “I’ll be back when you’re ready for me to be back. Don’t worry.”
He’s forgotten how thick the air is, heavy in his lungs, and it should be stifling, but it’s not. It feels like coming up after a deep dive, like coming home, and he doesn’t even think of Sawyer’s rough hands, the curve of his hip, the soft corners of his eyes – one day gone and already forgotten.
Maybe promises left on bedside tables were never meant to be kept anyway.
Alex leads, and she’s faster than he is, and it makes him feel older than his years. “You never told me why,” he says, catching his breath against a shady rock, rings of sweat around his neck and arms. “Why’d you come back?” And he knows it’s not a fair question, because he could never answer it in return.
Alex turns, graceful yet feral, ever the animal she always used to be. “We have to keep moving,” she says, handing him a canteen. “It’ll be nightfall soon.”
“She’ll never come back with you, you know?” he says as she turns, and Alex stops but doesn’t look back. He doesn’t say it to hurt her, but only to tell her the truth. Danielle made that decision long ago.
“I know.” Her voice is much smaller than he’s ever heard it before. “And that’s not the point,” she says, and continues walking.
Alex never asks him why.
After inspecting the grounds, Alex finds Jack standing quietly on a front porch, surveying the scene before him. The place is in bad shape, but most of the quarters are still live-able, and comfortable at that. Not this one though, destroyed by a storm of some kind, its roof caving in, its guts soaked through, and a musty, rotting scent permeating the surrounding yard, with its grass grown high.
“This was Juliet’s place,” she says as she stands beside him, her shoulder brushing his.
“I remember,” he says and Alex can’t read his voice, hearing remorse or bitterness or both.
“She was always a mole, you know?” And she doesn’t say it to hurt him, only to tell him the truth. “I wasn’t always so sure. But she gave herself away at the end, didn’t she?”
“I know.” He nods, bloody hands flashing through his mind. He looks at her, really looks at her for the first time since boarding the plane. His broken gaze makes her feel small against his shoulder, like there are places buried behind his eyes that she could never imagine. “But she was more, too.”
They sleep soundly that night, with miles and anticipation behind them, and a different kind of journey ahead of them. In the morning, Jack finds Alex in the artillery, tells her he’ll help her find her mom, that it’s more important than whatever the fuck it is he’s doing out there.
She doesn’t speak, but places a hot palm over his knuckles, nods her head, and hands him a pistol. They’re a team now.
The hike in was brutal, and Jack wonders briefly if he can still do this, but days go by and he’s already reacquainted with the terrain, like riding a bike. Weaving in and out of the underbrush, over rocks and streams with Alex, they speak in gestures and eye contact, body language and single words.
He remembers how time ceases to function out here, in the wild, as Sawyer once called it, how days seem longer and shorter all at once, how weeks can drag on endlessly or slip by without a warning.
He marks the days in a small notebook he finds in a drawer in the house with pictures of Tom and a man he doesn’t recognize still hanging dusty on the walls. After a few pages are filled, and no trails to lead anywhere, he starts to believe that they will never find Danielle. And when Alex slips into his room one night, takes off her shirt without a word, covers his wet mouth with hers, and reaches for his zipper, he knows she believes it too.
But this isn’t about the truth. This is about illusion. The longer she can fool herself, the longer she can hold on to her mother, and maybe more than that. And the longer he allows her to do that, the longer he can fool himself too.
Sometimes, he fucks her in the mornings, and that’s really the thing, the sign that they’ve lost hope, because daylight is not a thing to be wasted, and this has now become a salvage mission.
He likes the way she feels next to him, and words aren’t something they need, as he’s needed them with all his other lovers, save one. And he doesn’t even really think of him anymore.
“Why didn’t Karl come with you?” he asks one midnight, his wiry frame surrounding hers on the bed, both fucked-out and still breathing heavily.
She turns to look at him, her eyebrows knitted, bothered by the question and its timing. “What about Sawyer?” she asks defiantly
Jack doesn’t respond, his eyes avoiding hers, traveling up to the ceiling, and down to the door, an escape he knows he won’t take.
“Richard told me,” she adds quickly. “I didn’t mean to–”
“No,” he says. “No, it’s fair. I asked you first. Sawyer….” His thoughts trail off somewhere between guilt and a heavy heart, that part of himself he doesn’t allow to miss him surfacing for just a moment before he continues. “He never got it. I had to lie to get him to stay. Because this,” he gestures towards the walls around them, but she knows he means this place, this island, “is a place he’d sooner die than see again.”
Alex nods and catches his lips with hers. “Karl too,” she says quietly afterwards, and once again, they understand each other.
This was a bad idea. Those are the words that run through his mind when he hears Alex’s frantic voice over the walkie.
They should never have split up.
He can make out his name, her voice trapped in her throat, thick with fear and tears and pain. She mumbles something about going back, and then the signal’s gone.
“Alex!” He shouts her name into the walkie, his voice absorbed by thick jungle, but there’s no answer.
The pungent smell of smoke hits his nostrils before he ever sees the fire. It’s nightfall already, and he’s exhausted from running, but the smell of burning wood, the sound of the flames, propels him forward.
Alex is dead, he thinks, by now his mind trained to arrive at the worst possible scenario. Dead. Dead. Fucking dead! And the thought weighs empty on his heart, because all he can think is that one word. D-E-A-D.
But she’s not dead. And he nearly collides with her as he rounds one of the houses towards the fire. She’s carrying a box of what looks like old records, and he catches her in his arms. The box falls, crashing to the ground at their feet, and Alex’s eyes are brimming with tears. Her face is darkened with dirt or ash or both, and she pushes him away.
“She’s dead,” she screams, echoing his thoughts. “Fucking dead.” And when she runs towards the flames, she reveals a dark green tarpaulin laid across the yard. On top of it, Jack sees, is a decomposed corpse that can only be Danielle’s remains, dragged from the forest by her own daughter.
The building that’s ablaze and Alex’s only concentration, he realizes, is the one she shared with Ben all those years – her childhood home. And Jack doesn’t stop her as she hauls furniture, books, old records and anything she can put her hands on and carry to the front stoop, tossing them into the blaze.
Who else could she possibly blame for all of this but Ben?
She collapses on the ground, dangerously close to the flames, and Jack picks her up, carries her limply in his arms to the edge of the property. They sit in silence, watching the house fall down around its foundation. And maybe this isn’t just about Danielle. Maybe she’s finally mourning the life of the father who raised her.
“What are we doing?” he whispers when her breathing becomes steady, ready to fall asleep in his arms under the warmth of the fire.
“We’re going back to the beach,” she says, “to your camp.” And all emotion has left her by then. “We’re going to bury her with your people.”
He leads. The way back to camp etched so clearly in his memory. The jungle is unnaturally cool, a stark contrast to last night’s flames. They’re still covered in ash, and Alex never says a word, just carries her end of the stretcher behind him.
The beach is empty, and it feels all wrong, missing the life Jack once knew. What did he expect? The shoreline has completely changed, and he’s amazed to see some of their structures still standing, though torn up and broken, the pantry with its tarpaulin overhead, no longer a color you could call blue, held permanently to the trees that have grown around its bindings, encasing them.
The cemetery is overgrown, but he can still see the grave markers peering out from behind the dense vegetation. He pauses there a moment, bows his head. He doesn’t pray or cry. He wouldn’t. He can’t feel for them. They are so far away now and not a one of them a martyr.
He stands there a while, trying to muster up some sympathy, any remorse at all, before Alex finds him and presses her hand into his. ”We can’t stay long,” she says in that vacant way of hers. “Storm’s coming. We’ll need shelter.”
They dig a grave for Danielle farther down the beach, where the ground is soft and pliant underneath their Dharma-issued shovels. But they’re tired from the hike, and the digging is slow. They don’t finish until well after nightfall, and the rain comes down hard and thick and hot.
“We should come back,” he shouts over the storm, soaking and muddy.
“No,” Alex shakes her head, wiping wet ringlets from her forehead. “We have to finish it.”
They bury Danielle’s remains without a word, shoveling in piles of mud and wet sand as quickly as possible. Neither of them really knows why they’re doing this. After all, she was little more than a stranger to the both of them.
When they’re finished, Jack walks to the tree line, tosses the shovel to his side and drops to the ground. He lies back, arms and legs spread wide, letting the rain bathe his skin and his back sink into the sodden ground. He closes his eyes, the warm, wet droplets splashing over his eyelids.
He feels Alex joining him on the ground, curling next to him. He pulls her close and she slips easily on top of him, straddling him. His eyes fly open, and he finds her staring at him. The rain falls down her face and he knows those are the only tears she’ll ever shed for her mother. She lifts her tank, slipping the wet garment over her head, and then attaches her fingers to the hem of his sullied t-shirt, pushing the soaking material up, her tired hands attacking his chest, all the breath going out of him.
And then it’s just the two of them on this island at the edge of the forest, wild creatures in the dark just like any others, white skin smeared with brown as he enters her, both grunting and clawing. It would be easy to say this is the result of grief or even need, with her mother’s fresh grave mere yards away, but when she catches his mouth in hers, bites hard enough to bleed, it feels more animalistic, like somehow they’ve forgotten how to be human, like they’ve become a part of this untamed place, for better or for worse.
They lie together afterwards, her on top of him, breathless and feeling somehow emptier than before – but known…and each other. He is Alex. And she is Jack. And there aren’t anymore questions. There is no one else. There is nowhere else.
He knows Richard will be back. She’s completed her journey. And he doesn’t even know where his starts.
“He’ll be coming for you, you know,” he says to her, one hand smoothing over her naked back, the rain washing them both clean. “You’re free to go. I can do this alone.”
Alex lifts her head, presses warm, wet lips to his mouth, finds his hand at her side, and laces her fingers through his. And it isn’t an answer, but it feels like a promise.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 12:24 pm (UTC)Right from the first scene, them in the shower, Jack just crying on Sawyer's shoulder, and the kiss on the forehead, and this line
His hands pause over scars and bruises, remembering some, wondering about others, and preferring not to ever know about the rest.
Ohhh *sigh*. I love it!
And Jack telling Sawyer that he'll stop, if he just stays, but he knows he KNOWS from the very beginning, even when they burn the maps that he's not gonna change, that it's not over, and it just kills me, in a good way though, in all the right spots. (hmm, that came out kinda wrong, LOL).
I love Richard, he's so very Richard. I know that's kind of a silly thing to say, but he's just so perfectly in character, everything he says and does I can just see in my head.
I also love Alex, because she's just plain awesome, and the way you managed to work them both into the plot.
In fact, now that I think about it, the plot in general is probably my favorite thing about the whole fic! I love that you could take the prompt I gave you and put a whole new spin on it and create this awesome story with so much detail, and meaning, and it's awesome!
The fact that Jack doesn't even miss Sawyer, doesn't really remember, doesn't really need him anymore, that he knew he was really lying to him the whole time...*cries*..but..it fits, like that's what should happen and has to happen, and I LOVE the interaction between Alex and Jack.
That they've formed this team and this bond and they can go with so much unspoken...it's gorgeous!
I think someone actually already quoted this line, but I couldn't resist, it's probably one of my favorite lines ever..
They lie together afterwards, her on top of him, breathless and feeling somehow emptier than before – but known…and each other. He is Alex. And she is Jack. And there aren’t anymore questions. There is no one else. There is nowhere else.
Guh, just amazing. I have no words, for real.
None, nada, zip, zero.
I love you and that's it!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 05:06 pm (UTC)I have no words, for real.
None, nada, zip, zero.
^You are a big fat liar, you know? LOL.
I'm so pleased this came out better than you expected, 'cause it came out better than I expected too, haha. Plotwise. I am not really sure where it came from, it just did. And it was so complicated, all these different facets, all these different moments. And I thought for a while I couldn't make it work, at least not succintly. But it all came together and I am so so pleased. And you make me happy. Mkay?
I'm gonna miss you today! I'm sure we'll talk before I head off though. And I'll probably call you! So... *muah!*