My offering for lostsquee Queen <user site="livejournal.com" us

[alliecat8]

Title: With the Eyes of Eagles
Pairing: Jack/Sawyer
Spoilers: Through the Looking Glass, set post-rescue
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams



With the Eyes of Eagles



Even bruises can be beautiful.

“Motorcycle vs. median, no helmet.” That’s the first Jack hears about Sawyer after they've rescued him from the highway accident. And here he is again, being handed unceremoniously into Jack’s care, bleeding again, thankfully unconscious so that Jack doesn’t have to listen to whatever words of welcome or leave-me-the-fuck-alone Sawyer might have in store for him. After all this time, he still doesn’t know which way the wind will blow with this one.

“How’d it happen?” he asks, and the paramedic shrugs. “Lost control, I guess. No signs of drugs or alcohol in his system.” Jack looks at the prone form skeptically. Sawyer only loses control in times of extreme stress. Unlike Jack, who hasn’t felt a modicum of control since they’ve returned. Jack with his maps, his books, his never-ending supply of hired experts. Jack, never the man of faith, blindly flying into the unknown in the hope-against-hope that fate will repeat itself. His prayers to a god he doesn’t believe in.

On impulse he searches the torn pockets of Sawyer’s jeans, and there it is. Nothing but a crumpled piece of paper, but one that tells him everything he needs to know. Sawyer has been following the deaths, too, as one Oceanic survivor after another takes himself out of this world, looking for either another one or oblivion. How easy it would be, he thinks, to just give up, but for Jack giving up doesn’t seem to be his destiny. Now he looks at Sawyer’s paper and wonders if he’s found another one who feels the same way.

Pushing away a nurse who’s only trying to do her job, he cuts away Sawyer’s asphalt-crusted clothes. The scars are still there. In the golden sheen of a tropical sun they’d been all but invisible but here, under the unforgiving fluorescents, they stand out in stark relief. The tiny scar on Sawyer’s lower lip that Jack had put there himself in a fit of temper. The gash on his arm that Sayid put there the first time Sawyer should’ve died on the island. The bullet wound in his shoulder, the gash on his cheek inflicted a short time later by what was likely the same gun. The innumerable small scars on his body that happened while he was in captivity, including the mysterious two near his heart that he will never speak of. And others, unnoticeable on the island but glaring here, in their new old world.

But none from the motorcycle accident. Jack inspects him carefully, as any healer would, but all he can find are livid bruises, in deep burgeoning shades of blue, red and green. They’re enough like his own tattoos to unnerve him. They’re enough like his own tattoos to convince him. Jack reaches for the pills that are never out of his grasp, and swallows four. He sees that Sawyer’s eyes are open, watching him. The room around him is suddenly colorless but for the sea-green of the tiled walls, the matching hue of Sawyer’s eyes, and the vivid stains of bruises, of ink. “It doesn’t mean what you think it means,” Sawyer says, and his voice seems to come from a long way off. From the island itself. “'He walks among us, but he isn’t one of us.' That’s just what they wanted to believe.”

“I know,” he says. “We have to go back.” His fingers trace the vivid map of scars on Sawyer’s body. “We’re supposed to go back.”


Standing alone in the autumn cold:
The Hsiang flowing northward,
Orange Island, the cape.
I see thousands of hills in crimsoned view,
The woods piling up in deep-dye;
The mighty stream, in its gleam of jade,
One hundred barques racing by.
Eagles high up, cleaving the space,
Fish gliding above shallow ground;
Ten thousand creatures, under frosty a sky,
all fighting for freedom.

In the waste's dreariness brooding,
I ask the blue space without bonds:
Who masters fate's rise and descent?

Once I came here with a hundred companions,
Vivid the months and years yet, filled with pride.
Schoolmates we were, and young altogether,
Upright and honest, in the bloom of our lives;
Impetuous students, full of enthusiasm,
We cast all restraints boldly aside.
Pointing to China, its mountains and rivers,
Setting the people afire with our words,
And counted for muck all those ranking high.
Do you still can remember:
How, venturing midstream, the oars lashed the waters
And the waves yet staying the flight of our boats?

--Ch'ang-sha 1925


Even bruises can be beautiful. To glean something beautiful from pain, not in the coolness of rescue, but in soaring through the air and being blazed home to earth.

End

Comments

[inthekeyofd.livejournal.com]

I think the luau may kill me this year. Beautiful, just beautiful!!

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! *hugs and kisses and yay for summertime!*

[toestastegood.livejournal.com]

That was gorgeous. I loved the careful stock-take [bad word for it, but it's all that's coming to mind!] of all of those scars - a nice/not-so-nice wander down a painful memory lane.

I also love the unrealness [again, a bad word for it - this'll teach me to try and write comments at one in the morning] throughout the entire thing, and this sense of them connecting through a common purpose. The idea of the other survivors slowly offing themselves is damn painful and then that beautiful poem ends it so... guh! Wonderfully!

And now I'm gonna go to bed before I can try and carry on with any more nonsense rambling. In short form: I loved it, this was beautiful. :)

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

Did you know that the poem is what the tattoo on Foxy's arm was taken from? "Eagles high up, cleaving the space." I like that so much better than the interpretation the show gave them.

Thank you so much for reading, and for the feedback! ♥

[eponine119.livejournal.com]

I think I like your explanation for the clipping the best. It makes the most sense of anything I've heard.

This makes me so sad for Sawyer in so many ways. And the contrasts with Jack -- his books, his maps -- are so vivid. There's something so striking about the list of hurts he suffered on the island, real physical scars, verses the real world inflicting only bruises. Which we should be grateful for, because the island heals. But that's what Sawyer's fighting against, isn't it?

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

I think it's strange that, as far as we know (and we've looked) Sawyer didn't have any marks before he came to the island, in spite of the rough life he led. The island inflicts scars one after the other. And I just got intrigued with the idea that if he were ever unintentionally bruised, he'd be bruised in the way that Jack intentionally "bruised" himself. I think Sawyer thinks they're connected like that, though he'd never say so. Thank you for reading this! :)

[zelda-zee.livejournal.com]

Ooh, so melancholy! This was lovely. I'm so glad you're writing again! :)

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

Oh, hon, it feels so good to be writing again. It's proof, finally, that dry spells DON'T last forever, even when they feel like they will. And thank YOU for reading. Just as soon as I catch up on all that I missed, the world will feel right again. ♥

[holycitygirl.livejournal.com]

Well this is clearly (or should be) the start of something. I love the angst, the unsettled drive the boys both have to return, move forward by going back. It fits so perfectly (and sadly) with canon.

Excellent love. Excellent. :)

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

Well this is clearly (or should be) the start of something

Oh, you're so smart! And psychic! It *is* the start of a longer fic, it just seemed to fit the prompt "as is," but it's part of a much bigger story. I'm so, so glad you liked it!!! :D

[haldoor.livejournal.com]

Beautiful imagery! Gorgeous fic! Thanks!

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

You're so welcome! This luau is bringing out so much great stuff in everyone. Thank you for reading! :)

[uhzoomzip.livejournal.com]

wow, honey, this is fabulous. i love that sawyer is keeping track of the deaths as well, and jack pushing away the nurse trying to cut sawyer's clothes off (of course jack would need to be the one to do that). and how creepy that the bruising matches the tattoos! i'm intrigued.

thanks so much for this! and i'm so glad to see you writing/posting again! :-)

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

YAY, I'm so glad you like it! I'll tell you a secret: this ficlet really just a prequel to a bigger story, one that I'll finish after the luau and dedicate to you, since your prompt inspired it. I'm gonna tell more about the bruises/tattoos and the scars...so I'm really pleased that you liked this part. That inspires me to keep going! Thank you SOOO much! ♥

[siluria]

Wonderful last line. The mystery that is Lost was really captured in this - fantastic! :)

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I love Lost's mysteries, even if they can be frustrating. I'll write more of this after the luau so that maybe the mystery of the bruises and tattoos will be explained. Thank you so much for reading and feedbacking!

[gemjam.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love this. It has such a haunting, tragic and beautiful feel to it, and I love how you can hit all of those things so perfectly here. Nothing's really spelt out or brought together, and yet it fits perfectly, if that makes any sense at all. There's a lot between the lines here, between these really moving and well constructed pros. I love that they kind of come together here, more by circumstance than design, and yet once they've found each other in this moment, it's like they know that it's supposed to be, they know that they're on the same page. They're broken, but they haven't given up yet, not like the person in the coffin and others who have given in. They're stronger than that, even as they're falling apart, and that's just such a beautiful thing. I love the idea that, now they've found each other, they're going to kind of find a way through this together. Wonderful work, sweetie.

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

GRIN, I'm so glad you love this! I left it vague so I could fill in the blanks later. The sheer volume of luau fics kind of mandates that we just skim the surface, but that's great because it inspires ideas that we might not have had otherwise, and we can go back and expand on them when the month-long party is over. And yes, thank you for picking up on the idea that they *are* on the same page and they're fighting the same fight. Oh, how I hope we see something like that in canon!

Thank you so much for reading! *hugs*

[slybrunette.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, this is amazing!

Jack, never the man of faith, blindly flying into the unknown in the hope-against-hope that fate will repeat itself. His prayers to a god he doesn’t believe in.

I love that part, because the Jack we saw in the finale feels like a bit of a contradiction to this man-of-science we're used to.

Your description of the scars is great as well...kind of sums up their time on the island in a certain way.

Lovely!

[alliecat8.livejournal.com]

Your icon sends me straight to my happy-place. *contented sigh*

I initially wrote this fic with a lot more detail, especially about the scars and more of an explanation about the poem that translates to Jack's tattoos, but I realized that it needed to be longer and more complicated than a luau fic should be. I temporarily cut a large part of it, and I mean to give you and uhzoomzip and the other readers a more filled-in version after the luau. THANK YOU for liking it as it is, though. This way leaves some things up to the imagination (like, why do the bruises and the tattoos match?) and when I'm in the right mood I think imagining things is fun...which is why I don't mind putting up with Lost, I guess! But like the Lost writers, I promise to fill in the answers to the questions one day, hopefully in the not-too-distant-future. Again, thank you lots and lots!