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alliecat8Title: Prisms and Echoes, part 2 of 4
Characters: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: PG-13 (this part), NC-17 (overall)
Word Count: 1526
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
A/N: This is an AU based on what might have happened if Pickett had gotten his way in 3:06, "I Do." I was in the mood for a little old-fashioned Jack-doctoring-Sawyer! The last chapter is finished but it's long so I thought I'd break it up, and I'll post the last part on Wednesday.
Thanks to the world's best beta,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eponine119
Chapter One is here
Prisms and Echoes, Chapter 2
Faraway So Close
“I can take the bullet out,” Jack told Juliet later in a private conversation far away from the presence of the other survivors. “But I don’t think that’ll bring back his sight or his hearing. More than likely, it would kill him.”
Juliet pursed her lips and nodded. Juliet was a survivor, and survivors had to be practical. “Then we’ll just have to teach him how to get on with life just the way he is.”
Jack took it on as if it were his personal responsibility. After all, it was, wasn’t it? This wasn’t like the times with Boone or with Libby; nothing short of a miracle could have saved them, and the island was fresh out of miracles. But Sawyer…if only Jack had been quicker. If only he hadn’t led them into a trap in the first place. If only….
Sawyer was having none of it, though. He didn’t want to be helped; he wanted to die. Sometimes Jack felt as if he was the only thing keeping Sawyer tethered to this new life he hated, and sometimes he asked himself why. Was it a challenge? Jack never backed down from a challenge. Was it a habit? Jack had saved Sawyer’s life twice before, and though he’d failed to fully save him the third time, he couldn’t accept total failure. Or was it something else, something that Jack wasn’t ready to name? All he knew was that he was Sawyer’s self-appointed rescuer, and he made it his personal mission to show Sawyer that life was still worth living.
Sometimes he felt frustrated half out of his mind. Jack had never been good with words, or with picking up signals with his eyes, either. Jack heard and saw best with his hands, his surgeon’s hands. His patience lay in his doctoring. It was a factor of his training and a part of his blood. He truly believed that if anyone could communicate with Sawyer, he could; but still the breakthrough didn’t come.
“You can still feel,” Jack signed at the height of his frustration, but Sawyer signed back, haltingly, despairingly, “it’s not enough.”
It had to be enough, though; they both had to learn how to live with what was left of him. When ordinary signing didn’t work, Jack invented his own language; one that only he and Sawyer could understand. The rest of the time, almost constantly, he talked aloud. It was uncanny, the way that Sawyer seemed to know what he was saying even then. He couldn’t hear the sounds, but he knew Jack well enough to anticipate what he was going to say before he said it.
“it’s not about you,” he signed when he’d finally learned how. “you, you, you you’re always blaming yourself get over it this happened to ME.”
Leave it to Sawyer to ferret out his guilt and turn it against him. Even blind, Sawyer could see straight through Jack. Sometimes it seemed that he could see Jack even better than Jack could see himself.
How does he know me so well? Jack wondered. All these weeks they’d been thrown together on the island, yet Jack felt as if he hardly knew Sawyer at all. All he knew of the man was that he was prickly, he was sarcastic, and he pushed people away every chance he got. That hadn’t changed, even now, when he needed people desperately. Now they were thrown together even more closely, in an almost obscene type of intimacy. Jack spoke with his lips against Sawyer’s cheek, words against his skin like a lover’s kiss.
Sawyer barely endured it, and then only from Jack.
One day Jack got held up with an emergency elsewhere in camp, and he didn’t reach Sawyer’s tent until the sun was high in the sky. He found Sawyer pacing, wearing a path in the small space that was almost his whole world these days. Jack had insisted that they remove the ropes that kept him from self-destructing, and for some reason Sawyer respected that enough to behave himself. But he rarely asked to go outside. It was as if the sun on his face, the cool water on his skin, brought back unbearable reminders of what he’d lost. He preferred to stay in the darkness and relative quiet of his tent.
Today, though, something was different. For one thing, Sawyer looked clean. Someone (probably Rose, who’d adopted the role of “mother,” the only other survivor that Sawyer allowed to touch him) had taken him to the water to bathe. She’d trimmed his hair so that now it lay soft and gleaming around his face. It seemed to help his mood. Just for just an instant, when Jack opened the flaps of his tent, Sawyer’s eyes – those beautiful, useless eyes – seemed to reflect a spark of hope.
Then Jack saw what he carried in his hands, a book. It was Hindsight, a book about revisiting the past, and he felt his heart break just a little. The pages were thumbed-through and so well-worn that Jack knew Sawyer had read it time and again, back in the days when he could read. Mutely (for Sawyer rarely used his voice anymore, as if being unable to hear them had stolen it, and Jack secretly mourned the cadence of it and his once-impressive vocabulary -- even the nicknames) Sawyer held the volume out to Jack and Jack took it, bewildered.
“What do you want me to do with this?” he asked, forgetting for a moment that Sawyer couldn’t hear him. Then, when there was no response, only a waiting silence, Jack reached for his hand and traced a question mark against his palm. Sawyer ducked his head, cleared his throat, and said hesitantly, “Read.”
He was asking the impossible, Jack thought – how could he read to Sawyer when his words couldn’t break the silence in his head? Then Jack had an idea. This book was clearly familiar to Sawyer, and suddenly Jack saw how he could use it to give Sawyer back his words. Still touching his hand, he held open the book with the other and began to trace words against Sawyer’s skin.
Sawyer allowed it, and Jack felt a heady surge of triumph. He’d fought lots of battles against Sawyer, but the battle against Sawyer’s own self-loathing had been the hardest. By locking himself into darkness and silence Sawyer seemed to be punishing himself. Jack couldn’t understand why; if he’d wanted to punish anyone it should have been Jack – Jack who’d let him down, who’d allowed this to happen to him, who had failed. But now he thought he’d found a way to maybe redeem them both, at least a little bit. Jack pulled Sawyer out of the tent, into the bright sunshine, as words began to spill from his fingers.
Not only did Sawyer allow it, after a time he seemed to revel in it. His skin took on a faint glow as Jack’s fingers traced patterns and shapes like tattoos across his flesh, and his eyes grew far away, as if he could see things in that other world that were lost to him in this one. He leaned forward, almost eagerly, as if he was listening. He took the words that Jack offered him and signed them back, memorizing them. Jack had always known that Sawyer was whip-smart, and the alacrity with which he drank in the phrases and sentences impressed and amazed him. It was as if Sawyer had been starving and dying of thirst, and Jack was giving him a feast. It wasn’t enough, Jack knew, but it was something. It was as close to a miracle as they’d found.
He read all through the day, and as the sun began to dip beneath the horizon he felt a twinge of regret, a sense of loss that sank with the fading rays of the sun. As the light waned it seemed like fewer and fewer words were getting through, and though Jack hadn’t noticed the cramps in his fingers during the day, now they began to ache and throb. Still, he wanted to finish the book, and there were only a few pages left. He let go of Sawyer’s hand and touched his cheek instead. Gently he pulled Sawyer’s face in close so that his lips rested against his temple, against that soft, clean, shining hair, and he began to speak. He felt it then, a subtle change in Sawyer’s posture, in the air around him. It was as if Sawyer was hearing him. As if he was understanding. And if it was true, if Sawyer sensed something from Jack that got through to him in a way that Jack hadn’t been able to get through since the tragedy, maybe he could sense and understand even more. He spoke the words “The end” against Sawyer’s skin, and then he slid his fingers down to cup Sawyer’s jaw, and he bent his head and used his mouth for something else. He used it to kiss him, and then he couldn’t stop, and then they were kissing and kissing and kissing in the red sunset.
TBC
Link to Chapter 3
Characters: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: PG-13 (this part), NC-17 (overall)
Word Count: 1526
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
A/N: This is an AU based on what might have happened if Pickett had gotten his way in 3:06, "I Do." I was in the mood for a little old-fashioned Jack-doctoring-Sawyer! The last chapter is finished but it's long so I thought I'd break it up, and I'll post the last part on Wednesday.
Thanks to the world's best beta,
eponine119Chapter One is here
Prisms and Echoes, Chapter 2
Faraway So Close
“I can take the bullet out,” Jack told Juliet later in a private conversation far away from the presence of the other survivors. “But I don’t think that’ll bring back his sight or his hearing. More than likely, it would kill him.”
Juliet pursed her lips and nodded. Juliet was a survivor, and survivors had to be practical. “Then we’ll just have to teach him how to get on with life just the way he is.”
Jack took it on as if it were his personal responsibility. After all, it was, wasn’t it? This wasn’t like the times with Boone or with Libby; nothing short of a miracle could have saved them, and the island was fresh out of miracles. But Sawyer…if only Jack had been quicker. If only he hadn’t led them into a trap in the first place. If only….
Sawyer was having none of it, though. He didn’t want to be helped; he wanted to die. Sometimes Jack felt as if he was the only thing keeping Sawyer tethered to this new life he hated, and sometimes he asked himself why. Was it a challenge? Jack never backed down from a challenge. Was it a habit? Jack had saved Sawyer’s life twice before, and though he’d failed to fully save him the third time, he couldn’t accept total failure. Or was it something else, something that Jack wasn’t ready to name? All he knew was that he was Sawyer’s self-appointed rescuer, and he made it his personal mission to show Sawyer that life was still worth living.
Sometimes he felt frustrated half out of his mind. Jack had never been good with words, or with picking up signals with his eyes, either. Jack heard and saw best with his hands, his surgeon’s hands. His patience lay in his doctoring. It was a factor of his training and a part of his blood. He truly believed that if anyone could communicate with Sawyer, he could; but still the breakthrough didn’t come.
“You can still feel,” Jack signed at the height of his frustration, but Sawyer signed back, haltingly, despairingly, “it’s not enough.”
It had to be enough, though; they both had to learn how to live with what was left of him. When ordinary signing didn’t work, Jack invented his own language; one that only he and Sawyer could understand. The rest of the time, almost constantly, he talked aloud. It was uncanny, the way that Sawyer seemed to know what he was saying even then. He couldn’t hear the sounds, but he knew Jack well enough to anticipate what he was going to say before he said it.
“it’s not about you,” he signed when he’d finally learned how. “you, you, you you’re always blaming yourself get over it this happened to ME.”
Leave it to Sawyer to ferret out his guilt and turn it against him. Even blind, Sawyer could see straight through Jack. Sometimes it seemed that he could see Jack even better than Jack could see himself.
How does he know me so well? Jack wondered. All these weeks they’d been thrown together on the island, yet Jack felt as if he hardly knew Sawyer at all. All he knew of the man was that he was prickly, he was sarcastic, and he pushed people away every chance he got. That hadn’t changed, even now, when he needed people desperately. Now they were thrown together even more closely, in an almost obscene type of intimacy. Jack spoke with his lips against Sawyer’s cheek, words against his skin like a lover’s kiss.
Sawyer barely endured it, and then only from Jack.
One day Jack got held up with an emergency elsewhere in camp, and he didn’t reach Sawyer’s tent until the sun was high in the sky. He found Sawyer pacing, wearing a path in the small space that was almost his whole world these days. Jack had insisted that they remove the ropes that kept him from self-destructing, and for some reason Sawyer respected that enough to behave himself. But he rarely asked to go outside. It was as if the sun on his face, the cool water on his skin, brought back unbearable reminders of what he’d lost. He preferred to stay in the darkness and relative quiet of his tent.
Today, though, something was different. For one thing, Sawyer looked clean. Someone (probably Rose, who’d adopted the role of “mother,” the only other survivor that Sawyer allowed to touch him) had taken him to the water to bathe. She’d trimmed his hair so that now it lay soft and gleaming around his face. It seemed to help his mood. Just for just an instant, when Jack opened the flaps of his tent, Sawyer’s eyes – those beautiful, useless eyes – seemed to reflect a spark of hope.
Then Jack saw what he carried in his hands, a book. It was Hindsight, a book about revisiting the past, and he felt his heart break just a little. The pages were thumbed-through and so well-worn that Jack knew Sawyer had read it time and again, back in the days when he could read. Mutely (for Sawyer rarely used his voice anymore, as if being unable to hear them had stolen it, and Jack secretly mourned the cadence of it and his once-impressive vocabulary -- even the nicknames) Sawyer held the volume out to Jack and Jack took it, bewildered.
“What do you want me to do with this?” he asked, forgetting for a moment that Sawyer couldn’t hear him. Then, when there was no response, only a waiting silence, Jack reached for his hand and traced a question mark against his palm. Sawyer ducked his head, cleared his throat, and said hesitantly, “Read.”
He was asking the impossible, Jack thought – how could he read to Sawyer when his words couldn’t break the silence in his head? Then Jack had an idea. This book was clearly familiar to Sawyer, and suddenly Jack saw how he could use it to give Sawyer back his words. Still touching his hand, he held open the book with the other and began to trace words against Sawyer’s skin.
Sawyer allowed it, and Jack felt a heady surge of triumph. He’d fought lots of battles against Sawyer, but the battle against Sawyer’s own self-loathing had been the hardest. By locking himself into darkness and silence Sawyer seemed to be punishing himself. Jack couldn’t understand why; if he’d wanted to punish anyone it should have been Jack – Jack who’d let him down, who’d allowed this to happen to him, who had failed. But now he thought he’d found a way to maybe redeem them both, at least a little bit. Jack pulled Sawyer out of the tent, into the bright sunshine, as words began to spill from his fingers.
Not only did Sawyer allow it, after a time he seemed to revel in it. His skin took on a faint glow as Jack’s fingers traced patterns and shapes like tattoos across his flesh, and his eyes grew far away, as if he could see things in that other world that were lost to him in this one. He leaned forward, almost eagerly, as if he was listening. He took the words that Jack offered him and signed them back, memorizing them. Jack had always known that Sawyer was whip-smart, and the alacrity with which he drank in the phrases and sentences impressed and amazed him. It was as if Sawyer had been starving and dying of thirst, and Jack was giving him a feast. It wasn’t enough, Jack knew, but it was something. It was as close to a miracle as they’d found.
He read all through the day, and as the sun began to dip beneath the horizon he felt a twinge of regret, a sense of loss that sank with the fading rays of the sun. As the light waned it seemed like fewer and fewer words were getting through, and though Jack hadn’t noticed the cramps in his fingers during the day, now they began to ache and throb. Still, he wanted to finish the book, and there were only a few pages left. He let go of Sawyer’s hand and touched his cheek instead. Gently he pulled Sawyer’s face in close so that his lips rested against his temple, against that soft, clean, shining hair, and he began to speak. He felt it then, a subtle change in Sawyer’s posture, in the air around him. It was as if Sawyer was hearing him. As if he was understanding. And if it was true, if Sawyer sensed something from Jack that got through to him in a way that Jack hadn’t been able to get through since the tragedy, maybe he could sense and understand even more. He spoke the words “The end” against Sawyer’s skin, and then he slid his fingers down to cup Sawyer’s jaw, and he bent his head and used his mouth for something else. He used it to kiss him, and then he couldn’t stop, and then they were kissing and kissing and kissing in the red sunset.
TBC
Link to Chapter 3
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 01:53 am (UTC)It was as if the sun on his face, the cool water on his skin, brought back unbearable reminders of what he’d lost. He preferred to stay in the darkness and relative quiet of his tent.
I like this whole paragraph but that part especially.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 03:37 pm (UTC)Maybe a little better. Still bummed, but maybe finishing the story will help?
no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 05:49 am (UTC)But I loved the last little bit, which was so romantic.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 06:05 pm (UTC)P.S. I think Juliet's appearance was wonderfully in character!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-11 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 06:16 pm (UTC)The moment with Jack reading to him was beautiful. I'm hoping for an island miracle with the healing. *fingers crossed*
no subject
Date: 2008-09-11 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-19 10:16 pm (UTC)