"We are all candy
covered on the outside,
Peel away the shell and
we're frightened on the inside.
We are all angry, angry
on the outside,
Peel away the shell and
we're rotten on the inside."
Jack Off
Jill
Heather is going through Sawyer's things one day, organizing them. She's now privy to where he hides the bulk of it, and has even dragged some of the stuff she managed to scrounge for herself into the same spot. Currently though, she is inside of the tent, organizing things by size and purpose—not only does it help her put the things in order, but it lets her make a mental checklist of what they have and do not have. There is a rustle at the flap of the tent, and Heather looks over to see Sawyer toss in his shirt.
"And what are you doing?" She asks, arching an eyebrow at his grin.
"Gonna go get some more wood for Sayid's signal fire that isn't going to do a damn thing," He replies, playfully cocking his head to the side, something she hadn't seem him do in a while.
"With your shirt off?" Heather responds in a long drawl.
"Sorry sweetheart, but there are other women on this beach too you know. Gotta give them something to think about on the long island nights."
"Oh, get out of here already!" Heather picks up some non-consequential item and chucks it at him as he dives out of sight. When she is finished with the smallest pieces of the wreckage (how Sawyer managed to find lone screws and bolts she'll never know), Heather lays back, no interest in going out in the sun. She takes the shirt Sawyer threw at her, at it is surprisingly enough, not sweat drenched. Using this as a pillow, she stretches out for a nap, falling asleep to the irony of the faint smell of cologne on a deserted island. I wonder when he's going to run out of that, is her last conscious thought
It's still light out when she wakes up, though the intensity of it has changed. Sitting up, she finds that her jeans have been unbuttoned and unzipped, left provocatively open. Rolling her eyes, she fixes this, muttering "asshole" under her breath, but not without affection.
Heather turns to straighten out his shirt, so that it isn't a bundled heap on the floor (he must have came back while she was napping and gotten another, instead of waking her), when something falls out of it. She thinks it might be trash at first, but opens it to make sure. Dear Mr. Sawyer, the first line reads in the sloppy scrawl of a child. Seeing this, and without going on, she wonders if maybe Sawyer has a little boy or girl; then again, 'Mr. Sawyer' isn't exactly what you'd call your father.
Instinctually, something tells her to put it down, but it isn't that easy. Though she doesn't want to read it, she feels obligated to: something deep in her gut demands that she read it. As if… as if it's ordering her to face something that she already knows.
Slowly, she begins to read.
Dear Mr. Sawyer, you don't know who I am, but I know who you are- Her gut tightens, and suddenly she feels nauseas, not quite unlike the day Boone died. and I know what you done. Fighting down the urge to vomit, she's glad that she's inside the tent and not standing. The room seems to spin, and she knows that's its not all because of the letter.
It's because for some reason she's fighting something inside of herself. Something that's struggling to get out in the open, something she's known since- since when? Since Walt got hurt. Around then. When that bloody hole was opened up in her mind and everything tried to crawl inside.
Heather isn't sure what she's fighting, only that it hurts. She's never been empathetic, able to feel what others are feeling, until this place, until Walt. Even then, premonitions, reaching into a memory and then feeling it, are different things. Put it down! Her mind screams, though her gut is tangled and still urging her forward. For Christssake, put it down!
She clenches her jaw, continues, squinting against the dizziness around her. Reading it is one thing, but feeling… feeling whatever hatred and pain has gone into this, it feels like she's tearing a half-healed wound open again, the wound that Walt created.
You had sex with my mother and then you stole my dad's money all away. There are tears in her eyes, trying to stop FEELING this, trying to stop SEEING it. So he got angry, and he killed my mother. And then he killed himself, too. A dark, screaming nightmare rises up to her consciousness, again, something from the dark days after healing Walt.
She hurries over the next few lines, unable to stop but not wanting to absorb any more of it. All I know is your name, but one of these days, I'm gonna find you and I'm gonna give you this letter, so you remember what you done to me. You killed my parents, Mr. Sawyer At this she throws the letter back to his shirt, and stumble-crawls out of the tent—once outside, Heather only manages about three steps before she cannot keep the contents of her stomach down, and vomits into the sand.
"Hey!" She hears Sawyer cry out behind her, and then he's running over to her, on his way back from the caves, with water. "Hey!" He drops the bag he's carrying without any hesitation, goes to her. She's shaking, hates that this is always the way her body reacts now: involuntary shaking, queasiness, dizziness. He turns, goes into the tent, and she can hear him ruffling through things, looking for something—there is a sound of bottled pills (probably aspirin, Tylenol) and then, suddenly, silence. Heather already knows what he's found, and then the man comes out from inside of the tent.
Staggering, she gets to her feet, wiping her mouth. She can see the fury (and maybe fear) on his face, and knows that she will not cave under it—it's not in her nature, just as it's not in Sawyer's to be understanding before succumbing to anger.
"You read it, didn't you?"
"Yes." No point in lying.
"You think you have the right to go through my personal stuff?" She doesn't say anything in response, but gives him a steadying glare, wishing she were more sure of her footing in the uneven sand. Heather does not bait him with the fact that she WAS going through his things and he didn't seem to mind before. "So?" He asks, tone curt and poisonous.
She's looking at him like a beaten dog, and knows already that anything she says is going to incriminate her. Heather looks at the sand, tries not to sway: "Sawyer… I know what happened. I know that you wrote it. I-"
"Sure you did!" He roughly jabs at his temple. "Because all you have to do is look around, donchyou? What gives you the right-"
"I never." Her growl is forceful enough to stop him for a moment, his body tense and leaning forward, fists clenched. "I have never tried to read your thoughts, if that's what you think this is. Never."
"Then how the hell do you know that I wrote it?" He tone is full of a dark triumph, and Heather's jaw opens, knowing that this is going to be uglier than she thought.
"Because I saw it. I saw all of it when I picked the fucking letter up. It was like sticking a knife in an electrical socket." Her tone is cold, trying to even with him, and know that it's useless.
Sawyer judges her for a moment, and then under his breath hisses, "Bullshit."
"Don't make me prove it," Heather's voice is guarded, prepared. "Don't do this to us." God only knows how fragile this whole thing is, she thinks to herself.
"I've got one thing you need to know, missy. I'm a man with secrets, and I'm not sure if there can be an 'us' between me a fucking psychic, mind-reader, whatever you are." He steps closer to her, menacing, and then it hits her like a wave: secrets—and as he says this, those very secrets he wants to hide come floating towards the top of his mind, he's practically SCREAMING them in her ears.
All the conning (which she partially knew about from reading the letter and the guesswork about the name, but didn't want to believe).
All the self-hatred (which she most certainly was aware of).
There is rain.
There is a gunshot.
"Oh God Sawyer," Her tone changes from defiant to an almost whisper, eyes not seeing him but seeing through him and his past. If he wasn't FORCING this on me, then I could stop it. I'd never want this, she assures herself. After all, she's never gone prying into Sawyer's mind, and never planned on it. "What have you done to yourself?"
Suddenly his large, calloused hand is tight around her upper arm, squeezing painfully, bringing her close to him. The pain brings her sharply out of her spell, and his mind closes like a door slamming shut in her face—now they are just two people, a man and a woman on the beach at dusk.
"You're hurti-"
"Stay out of my mind," This is the most frightening she has ever seen him, and his words are clearly a threat. "And I don't want your fucking pity-" Before he can finish, Heather retaliates: she pushes herself into his head, attacks blindly. For him this feels like someone has somehow found the most vulnerable part of him, a center where physical and emotional sensations come together, and wrenched it as hard as they can. He staggers back—Sawyer is not new to physical pain, but the intensity of the emotional pain is something that he has not allowed to reach him in decades.
"Don't you ever lay a hand on me in anger!" Heather screams at him, unable to keep the hysterics out of her voice. She's frightened for Sawyer, doesn't know how badly or what exactly she did to hurt him, and she's afraid of him. Of all people, she wants to shout in his face, of all people you should fucking know better! However Heather doesn't have time for this, turns on her heels and runs—runs like she used to in the mornings across Sahara flatlands.
It couldn't have been long ago that she promised Sawyer she wouldn't be doing this anymore, the running off. Regardless, the woman takes off into the quickly darkening jungle.
She runs for hours, until she cannot run any longer, is all but crawling. Finally, unable to force herself further, Heather collapses against a tree, panting, her heart beating hard in her chest. Fading in and out of consciousness, she replays the scene in her mind over and one: Sawyer's parents, his fathers boots from under the bed, and then a gunshot. Then rain, mud, someplace secluded, and another gunshot—this time Sawyer's behind it, and there's an innocent (though innocence is so very relative, isn't it?) in front.
This island is pulling me apart, she thinks, crying, and it starts to rain—and the rain is as it always is here, heavy and drenching without warning.
"What do you want from me!" The woman screams, but her voice is lost in the trees and the darkness and the rain. She feels that hole inside of her that Walt, the island, opened up, and she feels impossibly naked, bared down to her soul. She didn't ask for this, doesn't want the weight of anyone else's past but her own. "How am I supposed to fix this?" She croaks, soaked to her bones, sobbing.
Consciousness teeters into unconsciousness, and night on the island devours her. Somewhere in this time, something dark and foul creeps up to her, and nests inside that hole.