The first thing Jack noticed as his eyes blinked slowly open was that it was dark, really dark. He blinked again, confused. Hadn't there been light just a minute ago? Pausing, Jack tried to collect his thoughts, even though it felt like someone had just taken a blender to his brain.
Yes, yes, there had been light. He could remember it, the nice, warm glow that floated through the opening in the cave as he tried to rearrange the luggage that the group of survivors he'd led up to the water had brought along with them. There was actually more than he'd thought there'd be at first, and it didn't help that cleaning was definitely not what he had been thinking about.
Then, then Charlie had come in, looking like crap.
'What was with him lately, anyway?'
Jack wondered why he just couldn't seem to calm down; it was like he had suddenly acquired a nervous twitch or something. But, anyway, he'd come in, yelling about something. What had he been yelling about? Jack squinted trying to remember and feeling cold, hard stone beneath his head... stone... rock... Rock God?
That was something he'd said, at least, something about being a Rock God and getting respect. And then... while Jack was trying to calm him down so he could actually understand him, the ground that had been so solid while he was moving around bags, suddenly shook and then...
Then there were crashes, lots of them. He could remember that vividly now, thanks to the pounding headache throbbing in his temples. Of course he'd done the first things he could think of doing, covering his head, dodging falling rocks, and jumping out of harms way.
But he'd done all that. Why wasn't it light? He should have landed outside, that's where he had meant to go. So where was he? Closing his eyes, not that it made much of a difference, he tried hard to remember what had happened during the rumbling, but most of it was a survival-mode blur, like a bunch of poorly developed pictures.
There was the ducking, the covering, and yes, yes he had jumped, but why had...and then it hit him.
He'd jumped the wrong way.
In all the confusion, he hadn't even looked to where he was jumping just before he'd taken off. Why had he been so foolish, so stupid, so... well, like himself?
Acting without thought; that's what everyone else always seemed to be convinced he did, no matter how much evidence he had otherwise. First burning the bodies, then moving the camp location, and he was sure there were other things his fellow survivors would remember if he ever bothered to ask. Shaking the thought from his mind, he settled back to the bleak, but all too true, likelihood that he was trapped in the cave in and was probably running out of oxygen at that very moment.
But Jack was not about to settle for that. No, he was not ready to die at the hands of his own stupidity, not yet. All he'd have to do is stand and look, there had to be another exit. A thin cave wall, a back hole, anything. Taking a deep breath, he slowly sat up and moved his feet closer to slide into a squatting position.
Or at least that's what he had every intention of doing, but he hadn't gotten farther than lifting his head a little off the ground when suddenly the rest of his body stopped obliging his orders.
'What the...?' Jack tried to move his right hand over, but found that it too seemed to be weighed down by something. Twitching his left hand carefully, he slowly moved it over to his leg and then up, feeling something hard, rough, and cold.
A rock.
Jack faltered. A rock? He was under a rock? Well... maybe...maybe he could move it. Move it and escape. Find a way out to freedom.
He pushed.
Once, twice... three, four, five times. It didn't even budge.
Damn.
Now there was no way he could save himself, unless...
What if he yelled? Someone could hear him and...
"I'm a bloody Rock God!" Crashing, crumbling, and then darkness.
No, better not.
Jack took a deep breath. Now was not the time to loose it. He needed all his senses keen and clear to find a way out of this.
How could he get out... He could still hear the rocks crashing down around him in his head. It made it harder to think; he wouldn't have been surprised if it'd bugged the whole camp, too.
The Camp!
Somebody, anybody, had to have heard the crash.
"Please let them have heard it, please." Jack whispered to the silent cave.
But what if they didn't know he was in there? What if they just thought he'd gone down to the beach for more supplies or something? By the time they'd figured it out, he would suffocate, because really, who would think to look for him in the collapsed cave when he was likely miles away on the beach? Hurley had taken one of the last bags, a guitar or something, from Jack a good twenty minutes before the collapse happened, he guessed. Then he'd gone off to find Charlie, which seemed to be taking longer every day.
Wait, Charlie.
Charlie could tell them! He'd been there and he had to know that Jack hadn't come out after him...
If he'd even come out at all, that was.
Jack was not a religious man usually, but he found himself now praying to any saint and deity he could think of that Charlie had made it to safety, and not just so he could send rescue, either. He seemed like a nice guy, sure he had a few issues, but didn't everyone?
And Charlie had been angry at him because Jack had done something... said something maybe, that had really offended him. He hadn't ever given much thought to Charlie before that day, but when he did, he felt really... well, sad for him. Something was wrong with that guy, something Jack thought he should talk to him about. But of course he hadn't acted on it before things had gone out of hand. He'd been too busy thinking about himself and his issues rather than trying to help Charlie when, as was pretty obvious now, Charlie needed the help far more than himself.
His father had been right, Jack couldn't help most people. Hell, he couldn't even help himself.
Why had he been so stupid? It was his own damn fault he was going to run out of air and die in that dark, cold tomb and he seriously doubted whether that many people would actually care. Maybe Hurley, maybe even Claire, she seemed to care about everyone, but that would be about it.
It was silent again in the cave for Jack as he stopped thinking just for a moment. Then something dawned on him.
Jack had to laugh out loud at the irony of his situation. He'd spent his whole life shuffling in his father's footsteps, and now he'd even managed to model his death; far from home, alone, and friendless. The thought didn't amuse him at all, but laughing was a hell of a lot better than screaming, which was what he felt like doing.
He'd hit rock bottom, literally, and not only was it dark, it was like a hope sponge, sucking it all away from him as he stared at what he assumed somewhere above was the rock ceiling.
As he thought about it, though, he realized the thought of dying didn't bother him nearly as much as what he was leaving behind. So many people who could one day need him, even if he was a failure at helping them, not to mention everything that Jack had meant to do, meant to tell people, one person in particular.
Not that he even knew if she'd care, but he wished she'd known anyway.
Yes, he'd felt something for Kate lately, although he couldn't quite trace back to where it had started. Nevertheless, there was so much he'd wanted to tell her in particular.
First, he didn't hate her. He wasn't mad at her, he wasn't sure if he could ever be mad at her. Kate never seemed to do anything worth getting angry over, to him at least. It was, he assumed, a positive sign, not that it really mattered now.
Jack also wanted her to know that it was okay with him if she stayed on the beach, if it was what she really wanted. He'd been so, unsurprisingly, stubborn and selfish by continually prodding her to come when he knew that she was already having trouble making up her mind, mostly, he assumed, because of his unintentional manipulating.
And last, well, last was something Jack would've rather carried to the grave than risk telling her, which seemed to be a growing option for him.
With his last thoughts on her, he closed his eyes, taking slow breaths and savoring the last of the air.
