Song Cannonball is copyright Damien Rice. Enjoy.
There really is no such thing as time, Sawyer thought, as he sat motionless. He had felt himself travel through the years back through his memories many times, most recently that punch that rocketed him through space to a time when he was still young and still unable to see that with every hateful blow he dealt, his innocence was shattering as jarringly as a beer bottle being shot off a fence. He had been there. In that moment.
And now, here it had only been a few seconds of him sitting silent behind Kate, and it felt like he'd been there for hours. He'd been thinking. It seemed no that anytime he was around her, he started thinking things he shouldn't be thinking.
Kate wasn't aware that he was there. Everyone was huddled around one end of the fire, focused on Charlie playing on the other side; but Sawyer hung back and watched the people instead of the player, deliberating his next move. It was like playing chess. No matter what, his mind always came back to that analogy in any situation. People's minds could be manipulated and conquered like pieces on a chessboard—you make your move, and if you were good, you'll know exactly what countermeasures would be taken. In this game, Sawyer was more than "good". Sawyer was the master.
And he was also in trouble, he realized, as he watched Kate. A wisp of hair had fallen loose from her face and was now dancing freely and erratically in a silhouette against the firelight, like a ghost in the wind. Sawyer found it completely mesmerizing. He wasn't sure exactly what had happened, but over the past month he had begun to slowly but surely feel his life slipping out of his iron grip—he had become the audience, when he was so used to being the director.
Everything he'd been doing had been meant to be yet another power-struggle pushaway, another way to burn a bridge. He'd flirted with her, shouted at her, and deliberately tried anything and everything in his power to make her feel uneasy, but she had kept coming back. He remembered her shocked face, burning white as a star, as he'd screamed at her to read the letter, shoved it in her face and glared with hate. The shock only increased when she read it aloud, and looked up at him. He'd told the tale so often he'd actually begun to believe it himself. He was Sawyer.
However, she had looked at him more with curiosity than disgust, something he hadn't expected. So he pushed further, just like he always did, until he burned his ties to ashes.
"So how about that kiss?" Sawyer asked again, spitting it in her face. And that had done it. She had walked away, and she probably would have stayed away if he hadn't gone weak. As Sayid had dug white hot tendrils of pain into his fingernails, he had felt heat and sharpness shoot through him like an electric shock, leaving him writhing and screaming until he lost his sense of pretense and he ached for someone to alleviate the pain that he had felt inside and out. The only lifeline he could think of at the time had been that look of curiosity in Kate's eyes. For that one moment of complete abandonment, he wanted to see someone look at him with something other than disdain, and in that one moment of complete weakness and desperation, he'd agreed to talk, but only to Kate.
The minute that they had left and Kate walked in, he knew he had made a mistake. Sawyer could read her like a book, just like everyone else, and it suddenly came to him in a flash that if he opened himself up too far, she'd be able to do the same thing. He'd be damned if she would make him that vulnerable. So he solved the situation the only way he knew how. Make her nervous. Get her to walk away. Mention that kiss again.
That kiss.
He didn't think that she would actually do it. It had been just another one of his battles for power, playing chicken until she backed down, but then she was kneeling in front of him, and moving her face closer, until her breath spiraled against his, forming a hurricane between their faces. Sawyer barely had time to think before she had closed the gap and then he wasn't thinking anymore, he was sinking fast down to the bottom of the sea.
And just like that, again time hadn't existed—that moment became an infinite expanse of time the moment she had sat with her knees on the ground coming towards him.
It was only after she pulled back, with a surprised sharp intake of breath that he had regained his senses, and remembered that he needed for her to hate him like everyone else did. Otherwise, after this, his life would be hell. There was a penetrating fear there of what would happen if she didn't hate him by the end of this, a fear that he didn't examine too closely to prevent poking holes in his rationally flawed logic. The only way to be certain of yourself is to not look to closely.
And that was exactly what she was doing—looking too closely at him.
"I don't have them." he said, and felt a sting on his cheek where she slapped, barely perceptible against all the other pains that were pulsing through his broken body. As she walked away there was a relief of returning to the status quo that washed over him, and that relief almost blotted out an indefinable sense of regret. Almost.
Sawyer blinked. Again, an entire day had flashed before his eyes, and here it was in another dimension only two minutes later, with Charlie finishing his song and the group clapping.
He wished that she hadn't come back and told him everything that was wrong with his life. He wished that she hadn't decided that she could fix him, like he was just some broken down Chevy that needed new engine parts and it would be all better. His flaws weren't something that he wanted erased.
Sawyer looked down at the pieces of paper in his hands. These as well had at first just been something to shut Kate up—at least that was what he'd rationalized. He was going to play nice guy. Freak them all out. Stir things up a bit. But now looking down at them, he realized how much he had put into them.
He could throw the paper in the fire and no one would be the wiser. No one but Kate, and Kate was self sufficient enough that she wouldn't be hurt. She'd never agreed to do this thing because she wanted some present salvaged last minute from all those bags. She was a lot like him. She didn't expect human connection, she'd been living so long without it.
But if he burned the papers, then it would be just like admitting how turned around he'd become in this whole situation. Sawyer never admitted his own weakness.
No. He'd play the nice guy. Freak them out. Hand them over, Merry Christmas and I'm gone. He'd done this sort of thing to countless gullible people before. No reason why he couldn't do it again.
It was an obligation, after all. Show it off that way, he told himself, going through his split second strategy that he always recounted before talking to anyone to get the desired effect.
Sighing in frustration, Sawyer reached out and tugged Kate by the arm.
"C'mere." he said, aggravated and hurried.
Surprised, Kate swung her head back and looked at him.
"What are you doing?" she asked in an annoyed whisper.
"You told me to play nice guy and go along with this Santa bullshit. . . kinda regretting it now, aren't you, now that you're on the receiving end?"
"What are you talking about?" Kate said, trying to keep her voice down, a blank and frustrated look falling on her face.
"Just come here for a sec and quit making a scene," he said, arguing back. ". . .Jesus."
Kate glared in aggravation and she tried to scoot away from her spot by the fire unnoticed. Sure, she was as usual a little separated from everyone else, a little further to the back—but that didn't mean it didn't take some doing. She crawled further and further from the fire until enough darkness surrounded her that she felt safe to stand without being seen as she followed Sawyer behind an outcropping of trees, out of eyeshot. She could still hear Charlie, distantly licking melodies off the strings of his guitar.
"Okay Sawyer. . . .what?" she said, her voice rough and antagonizing. This'll make it easier, Sawyer thought. . . I've already put her in a bad mood.
"Don't worry, Freckles, I won't keep you from your little warm fuzzies shindig," he snapped sarcastically with a smug smile, stepping closer. He shoved four or five pieces of paper into her hands. "Merry Christmas, and I hope you and every single one of those other hypocrites over there has a wonderful New Year."
Kate's eyes widened in surprise and confusion, and her mouth opened a little in suspended speech. Sawyer didn't wait to hear what she was planning to say. He began walking back towards the flickers of the fire and people laughing. He felt lonelier there with everyone around him than he did by himself, but if he was alone, no doubt Kate would try to follow him and try to make his heart grow three sizes or some shit.
All he heard was Kate's dumbfounded silence for the first ten steps as he walked away.
"Wait," she said. He stopped a moment. Mistake.
"Come back a sec." she called. Sawyer turned around and looked at her, planted defiantly in the same spot. In the distance the clapping died, and Charlie started a new song, soft and sleepy like snow falling in a field. Snow. Oh, the irony to think of a white Christmas when they were stuck here in a well-heated hell.
Sawyer stared at her with a dry smirk, arms akimbo, daring her to come up with some good reason for him to do as she said. Kate looked back at him with that practical, guarded expression she always wore, the one that had rational reasons of survival attached to her every decision, with no room for emotion whatsoever. Both had their poker faces on.
"I can't see what's written one these." she said staring at him blankly. She gave him a knowing look. "I know your lighter still works."
Sawyer looked at her a moment, slightly perplexed. Despite all of her seeming passivity, he thought he almost detected a scrap of need in her voice. Against his better judgment, he followed his curiosity instead of his pride, and began walking back towards her, tentatively. Charlie's voice began to filter in through the trees over his guitar.
Still a little bit of your taste in my mouth. . .
Still a little bit of you laced with my doubt,
Time threw him for a loop once more and he was standing in front of Kate holding out a light, not remembering the walk over to her.
Still a little hard to say what's going on. . .
Kate's eyes widened a moment as she looked over the papers. Suddenly a completely alien feeling stabbed in his gut as sharply as Sayid's knife had stabbed his arm days before, it was a strange brew of fear and pure emotional vulnerability. Sawyer shoved lighter in her hand and turned hurriedly to walk back to the safety of his anonymity at the fire. Before he could move a step he felt Kate's fingers close around his wrist, stopping him. Her hands were cold to the touch, despite the heat.
Kate's eyes were still fixed on the images, reading them as though they were a map. Before her on the page was a picture, painstakingly drawn and flawlessly portrayed. Kate looked down at herself in a black dress, dancing with someone whose face remained hidden behind her own head, amidst countless other young couples on the floor. A banner above the figures read PROM 1997. Though her figure was drawn stuffed in a crowd, her face was the only one animated, laughing, with naïve smiling eyes that spoke of the innocent immortality of youth rather than the life of worry and care that was her reality.
Still a little bit of your ghost, your witness. . .
Still a little bit of your face, I haven't kissed.
Kate flipped a page. There she was laughing again, in another picture, her hair flying back as she drove down the street in a Taurus from the early eighties, the window open, her and her friends singing along to a song blaring on the radio.
She turned the page again there was her teenage self again, seen over the shoulder of a faceless father, a sarcastic I-know-everything look written on her face in mid-eyeroll as her ripped into her for a transgression. The digital clock on the table read 2:30 AM.
Another picture, her crying to another girl in the high school bathroom, holding a yearbook picture of a boy in a letterman's jacket like it was a precious object. The girl's mouth was open in a muted consolation, a hand lifted and frozen, about to touch her shoulder.
Another picture, a snapshot of her exuberantly waving in a cap and gown with ten or so other friends, all trying to give each other bunny ears, shoving to get in the shot. Her face was stretched with her mouth with open in a triangle of laughter, her eyes squeezed shut and her body bent over in an uncontrollable moment of unknown hilarity.
Every picture showed her face, but at the same time Kate had a hard time recognizing it—there were no circles under her eyes, and they contained the spark of someone who was excited for the future. She was smiling. Even when she smiled now the corners were always weighed down a little by worry and care.
After a moment, Kate looked up at him, her face still stubbornly passive. Sawyer knew anyways. If life had been a little easier on her, and she hadn't ended up quite so guarded, that look would have been different. Inside her mind, he knew, tears were dripping off her cheeks like pennies in a wishing well.
You step a little closer each day,
that I can't say what's going on.
When Kate finally spoke, her words had the tiniest hitch of emotion, so small it almost seemed insignificant.
"These drawings are really good." she said, forcing things to be casual. Sawyer almost laughed. The both of them were each so equally afraid of breaking down barriers that they were freaking each other out. Both of them had had to fight through life.
"Yeah well, it's a talent you pick up when you're counterfeiting." he said, putting that grin back on his face and pretending that, like everything else, this was something he was just sliding through. What this was was a bad idea. He should have just burned the pictures.
Stones taught me to fly,
love taught me to lie,
life taught me to die,
so it's not hard to fall. . .
when you float like a cannonball.
They stared at each other, each with blank faces and tumultuous eyes. Without warning, Kate walked toward him suddenly and hugged him around his neck hard, like she was going to fly away at any moment if she didn't hold onto something. Not a word was spoken.
You step a little closer to me,
So close that I can't see what's going on. . .
Sawyer stood stiffly for a second, unused to the contact. The only times in his life when he had been this close to someone was when he was seducing someone out of their money. Completely different from this. This was more intimate; more personal. A little shaken, he slowly wrapped his arms around her returning the hug, his palms flat against the small of her back and her head nestled in on his shoulder. Steadily, instinctively, he began to feel her rock back and forth to the music in the distance, without a conscious thought of what she was doing.
Sawyer followed suit. It felt natural, and he was only half-thinking at that point anyways. Both had been stretched too tight, had been too long running away without the knowledge that they were running towards a cliff. And for just a second or two of complete impulse, both needed something to hold onto.
They continued to rock back and forth with their eyes closed, half asleep. They were dancing.
Stones taught me to fly,
Love taught me to cry. . .
Kate had been focused forever on simple things, her survival, putting one foot in front of the other, keeping walking away. She had convinced herself that she needed nothing else, nothing but herself and the essentials. Self-reliance, that was what Emerson had always preached, and Kate had come to use his words as a life raft to float on in every storm. Still, there was a small star glowing inside her, deep in her chest, that ached with the desperation of someone about to implode for a life that could have been something resembling normal. A life of careless youth, one similar to what those drawings had depicted. That star was eating through her skin now and shining out everywhere, but Kate was too broken down at that moment to suppress it.
This must be what it feels like to let go. Just for a second, let me do this, she thought.
So come on courage, teach me to be shy. . .
cause it's no hard to fall. . .
Sawyer wasn't thinking, and for once he liked it that way. Take care of damage control later, but just let me float for a second. He sighed, and her hair rustled underneath his breath, soft waves rolling out on a sea of calm. This was just a moment, he knew. It wouldn't last. But for this one moment, he didn't feel that impulse to run, that discomfort that kept him from keeping two feet planted and growing roots. For this moment, he felt home.
And I don't want to scare her,
It's not hard to fall. . .
And I don't want to lose. . .
This changed nothing, she knew, but Kate still squeezed him tighter, embedding herself in his warmth. Both had their eyes closed, half asleep, half content.
It's not hard to grow,
when you know that you just don't know.
Far off, they heard people clapping for Charlie as the last chords cut to silence. Kate and Sawyer continued hugging each other desperate not to let go after going so long without really touching someone. Slowly, Kate slipped her hands away, and took a step back sitting down in the sand.
Without warning, an overwhelming wave of exhaustion began washing over her, a feeling she had shoved aside like so many others. And without a collective knowledge of what was happening, she lay flat down on the sand and closed her eyes.
A shiver went through her, and she suddenly realized how cold it was away from the firelight. A protective hand touched her lightly on the shoulder as she shook a moment from the cold. Sawyer. In her fatigue, she had lost awareness of him for a second, but there he was now, laying beside her. She could feel the warmth of his breath wash over her back as she drifted to sleep.
Kate woke in the morning with the electric warmth of someone's head resting against her back. It took her a moment to remember things clearly, and when they did, her eyes shot open, and she jolted, sitting immediately into an upright position. There was a feather-soft cushioned sound as Sawyer's head dropped into the sand.
Panic. What had she been thinking? She hadn't, that was the problem. She knew that Sawyer was good at seducing women—Kate couldn't believe that she had been gullible enough to fall into that situation. Now she was starting to feeling like another tally mark in the long list of women that Sawyer had seduced.
Kate shook her head and stood. She refused to be seen as conquered territory. She refused to be conquered at all.
Sawyer's head rose as he groaned, sitting up and looking at her.
"Hi." he said. His face didn't give much away. Nothing new.
"Hi." she responded, completely devoid of sincerity. Without another look in his direction she began walking away down the beach, away from him, away from the camp, and into oblivion.
"Hey!" she heard him shout, and sure enough, there he was running after her with a furrowed, angry look on his face. He began walking beside her, mimicking her hurried pace.
"What the hell is up with you?" Sawyer said with a glare.
"Nothing. You ever heard of needing some alone time?" she snapped. He grabbed her arm roughly, pulling her to a stop.
"Honey, my whole life has been alone time." he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Now what is it really that's got your undies in a bunch?"
Kate ripped her arm away and kept walking.
"Jesus—would you just leave me alone?" she shouted.
"Why?"
"Because I want you to go away, that's why!"
"Would you sit still for five seconds?" he grunted, grabbing hold of her shirt and struggling to keep her in one place.
"Would you quit thinking with your dick for five seconds?" she retorted, glaring at him.
"Christ, it's not like we slept together or anything. . ."
"Yeah well, we might as well have as far as everyone else is concerned."
"Since when did you give a shit what everyone else thinks?" he asked, his eyes angry and penetrating.
Kate closed her eyes. She hadn't meant to say that. Truth be told, she was terrified of turning into a person that cared about expectations—and that's exactly what she saw herself becoming in this situation.
"I'm not, I—" she said, waving her hands in front of her, trying to erase what she said. "The point is, while I appreciate the gift, I don't appreciate that fact that you're trying to pry my head open and get to me with it."
Sawyer looked at her a moment in a gaze of searing irony.
"Oh, I get it. . ." Sawyer prodded an accusatory finger at her chest. "You don't like it when the shoe's on the other foot, do you? How does it feel, huh Freckles? How does it feel to have someone try and rip your heart out and read all the pieces like some goddamned treasure map? Cause that's what you've been trying to shove in my face for the past few weeks! Doesn't feel too hot, does it?"
Sawyer leaned in close to her face, his eyes biting.
"But unlike you," he snarled in a whisper, "I don't need to try to get to you. That—" he said, pointing back to the discarded pile of papers lying by the trees, "that, was just a Christmas gift, and idea I might add, that you coerced me into." Sawyer took a step back and shook his head. That self-serving sardonic grin began to spread across his face, and then disappeared once more that moment he spoke.
"No Freckles, I don't need to try to get to you. I've had you pegged for a long time."
"And what do you mean by that that?" Kate said through gritted teeth in a voice of quiet bitterness.
"I mean, Freckles, that you've been spending the majority of your time running away from more than just the police." he said with that knowing, cynical smile.
Kate let out a short laugh of disbelief.
"Oh, that's rich!" Kate said disdainfully. "You, of all people, have the gall to psychoanalyze me!"
"Your point?" he asked threateningly.
"Nothing, I just can't believe that you would have the guts to point fingers at me when you're so emotionally screwed up, it's probably irreparable!"
"You're absolutely right! I can't be fixed! Thank God you finally realized that!" he shouted, both arms flailed out. "But there's one part where you're wrong: that doesn't give me the guts to psychoanalyze you—it gives me the right to." His voice lowered. "Because when it comes to shit like this, you and I are exactly the same."
His face had gotten close to hers again, and Kate was having a sudden trouble coming up with words to throw back at him.
"Fuck you!" she screamed, letting out her frustrations and shoving him with all her might.
"That's original." he said, spitting out sand and breathing hard. He was looking at her with that defensive suspicion that he regarded everyone else with. "What else you got?" he breathed.
"I'll tell you what I got." she said, her voice faltering as a lump in her throat began to form.
No. She'd never cry. Not about something like this.
"I've got cuts and bruises sustained from a plane crash."
Kate took a moment to breathe.
"—I've got the man who's been controlling my decisions for the past fifteen years or so lying in a shallow grave. . . I have a past that weighs me down like lead in the pit of my stomach. . .I have broken dreams. . . I have secrets. . . I have suspicion. . . I have alienation. . . I have fear. . . And I have you, trying your damndest to get into my head, and screwing me up completely in the process."
Her eyes were burning, and her voice was hoarse from trying not to cry. She let herself collapse into the sand, hugging her knees as an anchor. Her vision started to blur, and she buried her head in her arms to compact the pain.
With the rise and fall of each breath, her whole body shook.
"So, fuck you." she said, and let it drop.
A half hour or so later, Kate looked up with a face of serene calm. She'd bottled everything back up again, and had reemerged out of her cocoon with that same self-assured look, if not a little bit more hollow than before.
She knew he was still sitting beside her, but she didn't look at him. She just stared out at the sea, much as she had a couple days earlier, sitting nest to him. Things had come full circle. Only this time, she had cried. A part of herself cursed her for crying, but another part of her felt oddly relieved. She just took Lennon's advice and let it be. She wasn't going to change anytime soon.
Things remained silent for a long while.
"So'd you have a good Christmas?" she heard him say, casual as always, but the words were weighted.
"Yeah. Got some good presents."
"Yeah?" There was a smile in his voice.
"Yeah. How bout you?"
"Got to punch the Iraqi in the face. That makes it a Christmas well worth it."
Kate laughed at that, a loud and long release.
Sawyer stood up, holding a hand out to help Kate do the same. She took it.
"Here's to a Happy New Year." he said, pulling her up.
"A Happy New Year for me and every single one of those other hypocrites over there?" she said, quoting his words from last night.
"Yep. Myself included."
Kate laughed again.
"Alright then." she began walking back.
"And here's to a New Year's Eve kiss." Kate turned and looked at him, his countenance questioning.
"Not unless you sweet-talk Hurley into giving you one."
Sawyer smiled, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned up against a palm tree in a perfect James Dean pose.
"Maybe I can get Sayid to tie me to a tree for something. . . bet that'd change your mind."
"That'll happen when pigs fly." Kate said, strutting away independently. Sawyer watched her go with a knowing smile. Her eyes had smirked a Maybe.