Silver, I've read your stuff, so you have no idea how happy I felt to see that you'd reviewed. That gave my ego quite a boost. lol.
I'm glad everyone is liking the flashbacks, because, honestly, that's the hardest part to write.
AN: So this is kind of new for me. I'm not from New York, I've only ever driven through it (I was 7 at the time) and I have very little knowledge of New York's foster care system. If anyone has any feedback (negative or positive) please give it to me, because it totally helps build the characters.
The poem is called The Road Not Taken, and it was written by Robert Frost. Ian's interpretation of fate is my interpretation of both the poem and "fate". I didn't rip the idea, and it's not everyone's opinion. So don't rail on me. I'll post the poem at the end, for those of you who don't know it.
This is NINE pages long! I can't believe it! And all of this on ONE character. Wow.
Chapter 6- The Road I Took
The knife, as Ian had suspected, lay imbedded deep in the boar's abdomen, true to its mark. As Sawyer brushed away the tree branch in their way, Ian shot him a snide smirk. Sawyer frowned. "Yeah, yeah, you caught yourself dinner."
The boar, which they were now three yards from, twitched, its legs flailing as it tried to right itself. It squealed, twitched again, and then lay still.
"Now let's see you carry it back."
Ian strode smugly toward the boar. "I can carry it."
"Sure. And you can also leap tall buildings and change clothes in a telephone booth. You wearing tights under those jeans?"
"I can carry the damn boar."
"Want me to make you a cape? I think I got a red towel on the beach. If you stay here I can hurry back and fetch it."
"Shut up."
"Aw, damn. I was looking forward to driving the Batmobile with my trusty sidekick."
"Hey, I killed the boar."
"Sidekick always does the dirty work. I'm telling you, this whole seniority thing is pretty damn nice."
"Shut the hell up about "seniority" and get your lazy ass over here."
"Hey! I told you a million times already to watch that mouth of yours."
"And I told you to stick it."
Sawyer glanced up, wielding the hunting knife that had, a few minutes previously, been sticking out of the boar, and frowned at the red liquid smearing the metal. "Boy, you got a few lessons you ain't learned yet. You're supposed to respect your elders."
"Yeah, well, foster care isn't the best place to learn that stuff."
It was quiet for a moment, as Sawyer studied Ian, and Ian felt the uneasiness wash over him, covering him like a heavy blanket. He resisted the urge to bolt. Finally, Sawyer turned his head.
"You use that line with the ladies?"
Ian laughed, thankful that at least Sawyer wasn't going to throw him a pity party.
"Hey, you know how the women like a screwed up guy just waiting to be fixed. Women like to think they can fix things."
"Tarzan, you don't know shit about the women. I bet you're a virgin."
"I'm nineteen!"
"You didn't deny it."
"I'm not a virgin."
"Well, then you're a man. And men carry their own weight. And their kill."
"How long were you setting that one up?"
Sawyer merely grinned.
"You're not even going to help me a little?"
He shrugged. "I would, really I would. But I got this bum shoulder to think about."
"And you're going to milk it for all it's worth."
"Gotta play the game, brother, or the game plays you."
Hands stuffed into jean pockets, Ian idly kicked an empty beer can which had likely been discarded the night before, thrown from the fire escape as one of the inebriated college students drank. A man was digging through trash bins at the side of the building, his clothes ratty and disgusting. Ian examined them for a moment, realizing that the pants were blue jeans under all the grime, and that his jacket had once been red. He slipped past virtually unnoticed, as the homeless man continued to dig through the trash. Above him, a man and a woman were yelling at each other across the alley, heads hanging out windows on either side. The dispute had something to do with the mysterious disappearance of the woman's pink lacy underwear, which had been strung along the clothesline hanging from her window to his. When a large, flying ceramic pot became involved, Ian ducked for cover, hurrying down the litter-covered street. Two cats hissed and howled at each other, vying for territory.
A few feet later had him ducking into a doorway and pushing the door open. The inside was sparsely lit, and without bothering on ceremony, he scaled the winding stairs upwards. At the third floor an obese, loud-mouthed black woman swung her door open, nearly catching his nose. "You look skinny, boy. That woman feeding you at all?"
Ian shrugged. "I'm eating."
"Well, you ever want something you just knock on my door, you hear? Just knock on old Bessy's door, and I'll fatten you right up. You skinny as hell."
"I've always been that way."
"Well, it ain't natural, you being so tall and so skinny. You got legs like skyscrapers. How tall are you anyway?"
"Just south of 6' 3"."
"Damn. No wonder you such a skinny white boy. You don't do no growing out, you just keep going up. And why do you do your hair like that anyway? Makes you look like a chicken."
"Bessy, don't worry about my hair. That's just what it does."
The woman shook her head. "Boy, one of these days…"
"I'm going to figure out that you were right about everything, but I'll be too late to thank you because you'll be dead and gone, and I'll wish I'd thanked you when you were still around. I've heard."
"Smartass."
"And proud of it."
Again, Bessy shook her head. "Get the hell outta here. Go eat a horse. You need one to make you look normal."
"Later, Bess!"
"You come on back now!"
"Maybe!" he cried, as he continued up the stairs.
He'd almost reached the landing where his own apartment lay when he was stopped again, this time by a man who seemed to chew on his tongue almost constantly. He had slicked back hair and a cigarette in his hand, but Ian had never actually seen him take a drag from it, it just sat there, between two fingers, smoke rising up from it, ashes dropping onto the landing as the man used it to gesture and point.
"Hey kid!"
Ian stopped. "Hey Johnny."
If Ian hadn't known better, he'd have thought Johnny was part of the Mafia. He disappeared for weeks at a time, on "business" as he called it, and made exorbitant amounts of money at some place other than his job (a hot dog stand on 35th). But he never moved, and Ian didn't understand why a man of his means (he'd found out a month ago that Johnny took pictures, sent them to magazines, and got paid by the companies to use his shots) wouldn't make a change of living situations. "I like it here," was always Johnny's explanation, and Ian never understood it. What was there to like?
Ian nodded at the stack of papers in Johnny's hand. He held a newspaper, a magazine, the day's mail, and an unmarked envelope. "What's all that for?"
Johnny used his cigarette to point. "This," he indicated the newspaper, "is my reading material for the day. The magazine has a motif of my shots in it, and the mail's all bills. This," he tapped the blank white business envelope with the butt of his cigarette, "is for you."
Ian took it, glancing at the Italian man, his hair slicked back and his brown eyes gleaming with excitement, as he gingerly pulled the envelope from Johnny's pile of things. "What is it?"
"Open it."
He did. He pulled the flap free from its place tucked into the inside, then stared through the slit.
His heart raced at the stack of green paper, and just before he shut it again he noticed the number at the corner of the top bill.
100.
"I can't take this."
He tried to give it back to Johnny, but Johnny refused to take it. "Kid, I'll never spend that. It's for you."
"There's got to be thousands of dollars in here."
Johnny nodded in amusement. "Been saving it up since we met."
"I really can't—"
"You don't take it, I'm giving it to the drug addict across the hall from me, and you'll have to go downtown and report her again. Her kids will get taken, and you know what the system is like. Least here they got Bess.
"I'm giving you the money so you can get out."
"John…"
"Take it. Go fly to Italy. Send me a postcard telling me all about what home's like, since I haven't been there since I was two. Go visit those damn aborgees or whatever the hell they are like you're always talking about."
"Aborigines."
"Yeah, them. I'm never going anywhere; at least you'll put good use to that money."
Slowly, Ian pocketed it. "I…Thanks. I guess."
"Better get home. Saw Jeff popping off a Jack Daniels few hours ago."
"Yeah. I should go." He didn't move. He felt a swelling in his heart that he hadn't felt in years. The last time he'd felt this good, his foster parents were trying to adopt him. He could leave. He had enough money to survive anywhere he wanted to go. He could fly across the ocean, get a job…never have to rely on anyone again…
"Don't get yourself hit again, kid. People's convinced you got delicate bones, 'round here. You get another one of them black eyes and someone might murder that jackass."
"I told you I got the black eye from school."
"Yeah, and if I bothered to get off my lazy ass and call that school of yours, they'd tell me you haven't showed up in a month."
Ian sighed.
"Well, go."
Ian nodded.
"And Ian?"
"Yeah?"
"Leave Bess a note, will you? She gets worried about you, and she'll be hell on wheels if she doesn't know where you gone missing to."
He nodded. "Sure. I'll leave a note."
He stuffed the envelope into a jean pocket, treading slowly up the last set of stairs that led, inevitably, to the apartment that had been his home for the last six months.
Sawyer snapped his fingers as he took a seat next to Ian, and Ian blinked. He watched Sawyer sit out of the corner of his eye, noticing that Sawyer still favored his right arm as he lowered himself onto the sand, using a log as leverage.
"You gonna stare out there all night?"
Ian shifted, staring down at his lap, his head resting on arms that were stretched out on top of the bent knees. "I was just thinking."
Sawyer nodded distractedly, also staring out at the ocean, and idly, Ian wondered about Kate, whom Sawyer said very little of, but who Ana was very curious about. "Know how that goes. You want me to leave?"
Ian shook his head, still wondering about the mysterious woman Ana claimed Sawyer talked about in his sleep, and who, Ian knew, Sawyer continued to think about in the light of day. "Doesn't matter."
He felt Sawyer's eyes on him, but refused to acknowledge the soft, older-brotherly look. He knew he had a kindred spirit in Sawyer, but he wasn't willing to admit that Sawyer probably understood him perfectly. It was better to try and make himself believe that Sawyer had no idea what his life was like, that Sawyer didn't have him figured out.
After a while, Sawyer turned his own head out to the ocean, fingering something—it sounded like paper—in his pocket. Instinctively, Ian knew the woman was no longer on his companion's mind.
Ian began to speak. "You know…I always second guessed fate. I was never sure…what it really was, or whether or not it even existed. But I guess sometimes you just have to figure out what fate is to you, right?"
He waited, not really expecting a response from Sawyer.
"What do you think fate is?" It was spoken softly, as if he was almost afraid to know.
"I think…I think it's hope. And luck. I think you make choices all on your own, and that you make your own fate. You choose a path and that's the road you're on."
"Sounds pretty dismal to me."
Ian didn't call him on the words. Despite Sawyer's outward look, Ian knew he as a smart man. "I think you can switch roads, though. Even if you can't turn around and go back, there's always another path nearby that forks off. You just have to get through the obstacles in your way. Like…like that poem, you know? The Road Not Taken, or something like that, by the snow guy."
"Robert Frost," Sawyer supplied.
"Yeah. You know it, then. I mean, I think that's what fate is. There's a fork in the road and you pick one path over the other, and you might think that's it. That your path is set. But it isn't. There's forest on either side and you're on this path, wondering how to get somewhere else, and the path just keeps forking off. And maybe you'll end up on the other path you could have taken. But I think what it is, what fate really is, is when you step off the road and into the woods. It's…darkness, and unease, and depression and every other emotion you could possibly feel, but eventually, after you've let the forest take over for a while and you survive it, you'll make it out, and you've chosen your destiny."
Bess—
I left this because…well, because even in this Craphole place, you're bright and fun and happy, and most of all caring. You're everyone's mom here.
I promise you that someday, when I'm grown up and straightened out, I'll visit you, and show you that you were wrong, because I realized finally that you were right and I let you know it. Maybe I already know, but subconsciously I just can't admit it yet.
I wanted you to know that I was leaving. I'm getting out of here, and I'm starting out fresh. Tell Johnny I'm taking pictures and I'm sending them back. He'll know what you're talking about. And don't freak out. You've got your own kids to worry about, because God knows even if you raised them right, they're going to give you hell.
But mostly I wrote this so that I could thank you. For yanking my chain when it needed a pull, and for taking care of me. You're an amazing woman, and some day, I'll be able to pay you back for al you've done for me.
Ian
AN: I'd like to point out that Sawyer saying the word "dismal" and using it correctly should not be all that odd. He puts out this image out Southern Hick, and granted, when he's comfortable he talks with a definite lilt, but in my opinion, he's very refined. Now, that doesn't mean I don't see him as the type of guy to sit at home in an old chair that fits him perfectly, in a flannel shirt and balancing a Corona (or a Coors, or whatever beer is appropriate where he is) on his stomach as he watches a football game, but IMHO he has to be pretty refined to pull of all of his cons. While women like him for the charm and the southern lilt (and the stunts between the sheets) he's obviously occupying their mind, as well. I like to think that he was a regular smart-ass in high school, who always knew the answer and read the books and at least looked over the homework, but never did it, and was always fighting with his superiors because he knew the material, but was too badass to recite it.
This is my take on what Ian was like, as well. I know many guys (and men) like this, and I have a feeling Sawyer is one of them.
So don't get on me about that. That's how I see Sawyer, and if you've got a problem with it, talk to me, but don't criticize me.
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.