Heaven and Hell, pt. 1
Feb. 1st, 2007 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alliecat8Sequel to yesterday's Prologue, The Mind is its Own Place. This can be read alone but then you'll be ALL confused when the story gets seriously weird tomorrow.
Characters: Sawyer, Kate
Rating: PG
Word Count: 709
Spoilers: Through recent promos
Prompt: robots, a swim at twilight, a fairly clean handkerchief
Summary: Death comes a-creeping.... (but nobody actually dies)
Disclaimer 1: Only mine in my dreams
Disclaimer 2: Though Milton has hijacked my brain, I'm not about to go all religious on you
A/N 1: Yessterday's title and today's quote stolen blatantly from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Heaven and Hell
The mind is its own place
And in itself can make
A heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.
They could’ve been happy, but that would’ve been too easy. Sawyer’s life had never been easy, so he hadn’t harbored any fantasies that a corner had been turned now. Yeah, she told him she loved him and yeah, he said the words back to her. And yeah, here they were, back on their own island, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the white sand under a sunset so gorgeous it would make the angels weep. If there was a recipe for happiness, this one deserved five stars, but instead he was miserable. He’d heard the one about hope being God’s cruel joke, and he knew enough to believe it. So he sat beside Kate and waited for the inevitable.
It came at twilight, just as a fat orange moon was rising over the ocean. “We have to go back,” she said in a wooden voice. “First thing in the morning, we have to go back and get Jack.”
He was surprised that it had taken her so long to bring it up, but then again, she’d been quiet every day since their return. She’d fallen back into their old routine easily enough, but her movements had been robotic, her emotions flat. She hadn’t come to Sawyer’s tent and he hadn’t asked to come to hers. It was clear to him that she was pining for the Doc, that no matter what she said about love it was Jack she wanted, and though Sawyer didn’t mind taking secondhand goods, he’d be damned if that's what he'd be.
He’d known all along that she was preoccupied with the thought of Jack; the only surprise was that it had taken her this long to demand that they launch a rescue mission. Long enough that he’d compiled a list as long as his arm of reasons why that wouldn’t work. How could they take enough people, when all they had was a canoe? Their stash of weapons had dwindled to little more than Locke’s case of knives, and they’d be no match for the Others’ arsenal. But more than anything else, their biggest hindrance was the apathy that now ruled the camp. The destruction of the hatch, the tales Kate and Sawyer had told of an apparent civilized society somewhere nearby who were now their sworn enemies, more deaths by mysterious forces, had taken away what little spirit they’d once had. And more than anything else, the thing that seemed to frighten them the most, was Desmond. Desmond, who could suddenly, mysteriously, see into the future. Who stood at the water’s edge, bearded and wild-haired like a prophet, and proclaimed, “It doesn’t matter what we do. We’re all dead anyway.”
That chilling prophecy seemed almost self-fulfilling. The will to survive, to conquer the elements and protect themselves and one another, seemed to have been leeched out of the survivors like their very lifeblood. Even Kate had seemed dead inside, until this beautiful moonlit moment that should have been happy but instead seemed to shrink and condense until all Sawyer could see was her grief, all he could hear was the sound of her weeping. He couldn’t tell her no, but he knew that to tell her yes would be futile. How could they save Jack when no one even seemed interested in saving themselves anymore? So instead of answering her he pulled a mostly-clean handkerchief from his pocket and silently wiped her cheeks.
At first he thought it was a trick of the dying light. Just a flutter on the horizon, a flash of white that distracted him from Kate’s sad eyes. His muscles tensed as he watched it get closer. Then it stopped, and that’s when Sawyer knew for sure. It was a boat, one very much like the sailboat that Desmond had arrived in. The one that the Others had taken from them. It wasn’t moving at all, so someone aboard must have dropped anchor. Still, Sawyer thought that it was, just barely, in swimming distance. It could be a trap, he told himself. It probably was a trap. But he had to know. “Go get help,” he told Kate, and he ran into the water.
TBC
Link to Heaven and Hell, pt. 2
Characters: Sawyer, Kate
Rating: PG
Word Count: 709
Spoilers: Through recent promos
Prompt: robots, a swim at twilight, a fairly clean handkerchief
Summary: Death comes a-creeping.... (but nobody actually dies)
Disclaimer 1: Only mine in my dreams
Disclaimer 2: Though Milton has hijacked my brain, I'm not about to go all religious on you
A/N 1: Yessterday's title and today's quote stolen blatantly from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Heaven and Hell
The mind is its own place
And in itself can make
A heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.
They could’ve been happy, but that would’ve been too easy. Sawyer’s life had never been easy, so he hadn’t harbored any fantasies that a corner had been turned now. Yeah, she told him she loved him and yeah, he said the words back to her. And yeah, here they were, back on their own island, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the white sand under a sunset so gorgeous it would make the angels weep. If there was a recipe for happiness, this one deserved five stars, but instead he was miserable. He’d heard the one about hope being God’s cruel joke, and he knew enough to believe it. So he sat beside Kate and waited for the inevitable.
It came at twilight, just as a fat orange moon was rising over the ocean. “We have to go back,” she said in a wooden voice. “First thing in the morning, we have to go back and get Jack.”
He was surprised that it had taken her so long to bring it up, but then again, she’d been quiet every day since their return. She’d fallen back into their old routine easily enough, but her movements had been robotic, her emotions flat. She hadn’t come to Sawyer’s tent and he hadn’t asked to come to hers. It was clear to him that she was pining for the Doc, that no matter what she said about love it was Jack she wanted, and though Sawyer didn’t mind taking secondhand goods, he’d be damned if that's what he'd be.
He’d known all along that she was preoccupied with the thought of Jack; the only surprise was that it had taken her this long to demand that they launch a rescue mission. Long enough that he’d compiled a list as long as his arm of reasons why that wouldn’t work. How could they take enough people, when all they had was a canoe? Their stash of weapons had dwindled to little more than Locke’s case of knives, and they’d be no match for the Others’ arsenal. But more than anything else, their biggest hindrance was the apathy that now ruled the camp. The destruction of the hatch, the tales Kate and Sawyer had told of an apparent civilized society somewhere nearby who were now their sworn enemies, more deaths by mysterious forces, had taken away what little spirit they’d once had. And more than anything else, the thing that seemed to frighten them the most, was Desmond. Desmond, who could suddenly, mysteriously, see into the future. Who stood at the water’s edge, bearded and wild-haired like a prophet, and proclaimed, “It doesn’t matter what we do. We’re all dead anyway.”
That chilling prophecy seemed almost self-fulfilling. The will to survive, to conquer the elements and protect themselves and one another, seemed to have been leeched out of the survivors like their very lifeblood. Even Kate had seemed dead inside, until this beautiful moonlit moment that should have been happy but instead seemed to shrink and condense until all Sawyer could see was her grief, all he could hear was the sound of her weeping. He couldn’t tell her no, but he knew that to tell her yes would be futile. How could they save Jack when no one even seemed interested in saving themselves anymore? So instead of answering her he pulled a mostly-clean handkerchief from his pocket and silently wiped her cheeks.
At first he thought it was a trick of the dying light. Just a flutter on the horizon, a flash of white that distracted him from Kate’s sad eyes. His muscles tensed as he watched it get closer. Then it stopped, and that’s when Sawyer knew for sure. It was a boat, one very much like the sailboat that Desmond had arrived in. The one that the Others had taken from them. It wasn’t moving at all, so someone aboard must have dropped anchor. Still, Sawyer thought that it was, just barely, in swimming distance. It could be a trap, he told himself. It probably was a trap. But he had to know. “Go get help,” he told Kate, and he ran into the water.
TBC
Link to Heaven and Hell, pt. 2
