Reading Between the Lines

by Dreamality

Part Two: Solitary

And now, simply because LOST is a breeding ground for plot bunnies, I am continuing with my drabbles. This batch is based off lines from the most recent episode, "Solitary," so if you don't want to be spoiled (spoilt?) don't read these.

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Losing Control (Jack POV)

"Change your own bandages."

As soon as he said the words, Jack regretted them. As soon as he saw the flash of triumph in Sawyer's eyes, he felt properly shamed. It was a moment of weakness for him, and revealing weaknesses to the enemy was never a strategic move when engaged in war.

While outwardly he remained the perfect image of a man in control of his life, deep within himself Jack was really nothing but an impulsive idiot. It was a lesson he had learned a long time ago when all his "good deeds" ended with black eyes and disappointed looks from his father. The ultimate blunder occurred when he made a mistake so heinous it drove his father away from him forever.

When the corpse on the cold metal table of the morgue in Australia was revealed to him and Jack realized that his father was dead, a familiar vow flashed through his mind. Never again. As he had a hundred times before, Jack swore to himself. Never again will I lose control. I won't act rashly.

Now, barely two weeks later, Jack had already broken the promise to himself. He had allowed himself a moment of impulsive action. He had abandoned his civil duty to assist those who needed it. Above all, he had given Sawyer fuel for his fire. In the battle for the attention of a particular freckled beauty, Sawyer had the upper hand.

Sawyer had been goading him, and Jack had fallen for it. Now, not only was Sawyer's smug look boring into his back, but Kate was speaking angrily to him. She was berating him for a mistake he regretted deeply. A mistake borne of an impulsive action. Jack's control was slipping, and soon he feared he would lose it all and become nothing more than what his father had left the world as.

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Disappointed (Jack POV)

"Accidents happen when you torture someone."

The disappointment in her eyes cut through Jack's heart more cleanly than any knife or bullet could have.

He had seen such disappointment in another pair of eyes. His father's eyes. On countless occasions Jack had tried to please him only to be rewarded with cold, hard anger. It was his father's specialty, even more so than surgery.

As much as Jack hated to admit it, even to himself in the quietest, most private of moments, once his mind recovered from the initial shocking grief of hid father's sudden death, he felt almost relieved. No longer would he have to strive daily to meet his father's expectations only to fall short by a milestone. No longer would his life's purpose be to simply get a smile or a nod of approval from his father. Jack didn't have to be perfect anymore. As quickly as he realized this fact, Jack recognized that since he had programmed himself to act in such a way, overcoming that would be difficult. Gradual. So on the island Jack acted normally, acted as his habits told him to. Then, slowly, he started to make mistakes. Not exactly on purpose, but not entirely on accident. No one here would care, surely. No one here needed him to be perfect, as his father had.

Now Kate was looking at him with that same disapproval. Within his chest, Jack's heart turned strangely, as though it were being wrenched away from him. Slowly, he came to the realization that his life was already too succumbed to the urge to be the perfect model. He had established himself as the model citizen, and now that he was revealing his short fallings, the others could not accept it.

Had it been anyone else looking at him that way, Jack might have been able to shake it off. But this was Kate. Her opinion mattered above anyone else's, for reasons Jack could not explain. He just looked to her for approval, and in some instances guidance. The growing rift between them, which began with the splitting of the camps and was now culminating now in Sawyer's admittedly unjust torture, made Jack uneasy.

Especially when he remembered Sawyer's reference to making out with Kate and the lingering look he caught between Kate and Sawyer later that day.

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Hope (Sayid POV)

"She's dead because of me."

The guilt had been eating at Sayid for years –nearly a decade, in fact –yet somehow speaking them aloud doubled the intensity of the pain. His very vocal chords seemed to burn with unadulterated remorse and his lips seemed to recoil in disgust when his breath carried the sentence into the air.

Nadia. Beautiful and vulnerable and strong, all at once. So trusting when she looked into his eyes that day, asking like a child what he had brought her. As if she expected him to pull out a quaint toy from the marketplace and crouch down to show her how to play with it. When she saw the feigned coldness in his eyes and heard the forced threat in his voice, her soft eyes had taken on a new edge. Sayid saw that, while Nadia was capable of acting the innocent, she was more than ready to display her true strength.

Fighting back tears as he marched in front of Nadia, flanked as she was by two soldiers who had never known her as the giggling girl in the schoolyard, proved to be harder than any test set for him as initiation into the Republican Guard. When he dismissed the two guards and was left alone with Nadia, he thought that for just a fleeting instant there had been fear in her eyes. It was quickly replaced with determination.

Her offer, her plea for him to accompany her, was tempting. Very tempting. But he had heard the stories. He knew what happened when a soldier deserted the army of Saddam Hussein. Should he be found, merciless torture would precede death, and if he were not found, his family would be tortured to extract the information they did not have. Sayid knew he could not go with her, as much as he would have liked to escape his life of cyclical brutality.

The pain of the bullet entering his flesh and embedding itself in his muscle was nothing compared to the pain of knowing that, in addition to being an enemy of the country, Sayid had just placed "murder and attempted murder of Republican Guardsmen" onto Nadia's list of crimes. Should she be found –and the methods for finding traitors were numerous and nearly flawless –she would undoubtedly be shot on sight. No chance for questioning, no chance for explanation, just quickly administered death and one more name on the list of eliminated dissidents among Hussein's people.

Now Nadia was dead. How could she not be? How could she escape the wrath of the Republican Guard, especially now that she was blamed for the murder of one of their own ranks? Sayid's one chance for love, his one chance to set his soul free, was gone. His heart shuddered as he lay strapped to the cold metal bed, his body still screaming in protest to the electrical shocks.

The French woman, his adductor, the one who had brought up these memories and forced him to remind himself of the evils lurking in his past, stroked his face. There was compassion in her eyes. Tenderness in her touch. Gentleness in her face.

Perhaps, if not love, Sayid might find hope again in this world, in this woman, and he knew from watching Nadia that hope was all one really needed to survive.

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To Be Continued…