Title: Scenes From a Disaster Area
Pairing/Characters: Ensemble. Pairings(in no particular order): Jack/Kate, Kate/Sawyer, Jack/Juliet, Juliet/Sawyer, Charlie/Claire, Desmond/Claire, Claire/Sawyer, Desmond/Penny, Sun/Jin, Sun/Michael, Hurley/Libby, Rose/Bernard, Alex/Richard
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1409
Spoilers: Up to The Looking Glass
There's a small part of her, and then a not so small part of her, that hates him. For loving her.
It makes things so much more complicated. If he didn't love her she wouldn't have to be guilty or pressured or any of the emotions she avoids feeling for a reason. Repercussions make her anxious, as they should, but she's not sure the fall out from this will be any short of catastrophic.
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There are moments, when her eyes twinkle in the moonlight and her hand fits perfectly into his, that he thinks that they were made for each other.
They make plans for when he returns; her hair is too long, she thinks, and he nearly gasps when her wrist snaps to just below her chin for an estimate. The protests go dry on his tongue when she smiles at the prospect and he kisses her, soft, slow, like they could do it every day for the rest of their lives and promises he's a straight cutter. He thinks that if this wasn't a one way trip they could really come full circle, and not exactly forget the time and the pain that's flipped before him and within him, but learn from it, grow with it. He hums the song and remembers.
But even they aren't that perfect.
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There are times when he feels like he's in a coffin, because he's nearly sure he'll die here. But then again there are other times, when he can almost see the exact color of her eyes in the creases of a book or hear her laughter in his alarm clock or taste her lips in the burn of whiskey, that he hopes. There are times when he knows for sure he'll see her again.
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Sometimes he feels useless, vestigial, inanimate. They will figure out how to live life without him, if they haven't already. There was a moment when he could almost hope, almost resign himself to the fact that they would go on. But then there she was, pulling him, prodding him. Convincing him he wasn't a fool when she couldn't believe the same about herself.
It's the oddest thing, their give and take, the way his soothing words stung her and her encouragement made him ache somewhere deep inside. He simply couldn't figure her out and when he got tired of trying he stopped being able to be in her presence. Because he was more than a little jealous of the fact that she wasn't tied or cuffed, that he had to stay grounded and keep everyone from offending gravity while she could float away on a wave or sink into the sand.
But now as he lets his head roll back and his eyes to lazily draw behind his eyelids, that he lets himself sink to the bottom with her.
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They would drive up the coast, stopping only to peer in through the shattered windows of old shacks, wondering who had lived there and how long ago. Why they left it all alone. She would pick up the shiniest shells and he would smile because she was, even though he didn't like sand anymore and the ocean made him a little nervous. He could touch her and they would laugh about stupid things that only mattered in the most superficial or deep conversations. He would be happy and so would she, and guns were only for military or rednecks.
His fingers are running through her fair hair and her pale eyes are looking at him so sharply that he's sure she can see his heart, when he wakes up and realizes that the ocean still makes him nervous but she isn't there to make it seem better.
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His optimism annoys her, like before when they were still living in different worlds but back then she was pretty sure she believed his words. They tasted like sugar and butter on her tongue when he kissed her, but now its like stale bread and salt. Of course that could just be her tears.
She can't be furious when she's looking into his eyes because she has a feeling this could be the last time she sees him and she doesn't want to be angry and sad over him at the same time. But when she turns away, feels his eyes on her back, she recognized this smoldering hole in her chest as shear ferocity.
He keeps leaving her and part of her thinks he's doing it on purpose.
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She used to think that it was her destiny to be docile and subordinate, second to whomever wanted to rise above her and third to those she stepped aside to let past. But it's here, that she realized that's not the case at all. She's not scared anymore and she finds that she likes power, apparently more than the others because she's nearly the only one left standing. It's selfish and greedy and so perfectly not her that it almost is her.
It's the reason why she does it. Because she wants to and she's never heard of a better reason to do something than that. She doesn't expect anything, doesn't worry about what he'll say or what she'll do, because she managed win a battle without ever raising a sword.
So she smiles, smirks even, and keeps walking. She's not just a series of spinning doors anymore.
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Sometimes her innocence keeps him from looking her in the eyes, makes him fidget under her gaze. He's so flawed, so unreparably broken, that he doesn't want his shattered pieces to make her bleed. But then, sometimes she looks at him, really looks at him, and he knows she's not as perfect as she appears.
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She thinks that they're not so different. There's living, then there's surviving, and then there's the line after those two that she knows she's crossed. Her teeth chatter when she thinks about it too long, wondering if she'd do it again and trying to recall the way the blood seeped into the threads of her shirt and the echo of the shot against the waves. If she would have done it if she hadn't felt trapped, if she'd been able to breathe and see the sky.
She thinks it doesn't matter how well she remembers the shade of red or if there'd been less shadow across her face. She still would have followed through. And, as she looks out at the ocean, wondering if he's having the same conversation with himself, knowing that he's reached the same conclusion.
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None of his words seem like enough as he breaks the surface of the water with his hands. He'd been so sure he was right, but as he imagines the expression on her face, the wet on her cheeks, all of his reasons seem empty, like there was a tiny hole at the bottom and they'd slipped out while he wasn't watching.
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He doesn't understand her, a map with no key he can't read. She knows it, and he knows that she knows, so when she smiles absently after glancing at his face, he's sure she likes being the cryptic one. His whole life he'd been the guarded one, the one with all the secrets and the scarves up his sleeve. It frustrates him to be on the other side of the tinted glass, have no upper hand, so when she giggles at his annoyed face he doesn't need a translator to get the reason why.
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She knows he's thinking about her, right then, pondering over her words and how to find a loophole. Sometimes it seemed like they'd known each other forever, but there was still so many little things they hadn't mastered. But she doesn't think those small details really matter if she can feel him from across an island.
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She stops wondering if the island had existed before they came. It's an irrelevant thought, like wondering what the universe was like before earth because in the end it didn't matter. It was safe to assume it had always been there and would continue to be after they had left. She knows he'd been here, somewhere, her whole life, but she discovers it wasn't time that was consequential to her. Just like the island and the universe, he'd been here before and he would be here after.
But she doesn't like to think about after.