"I've got no illusions about you…"
Ani Difranco

Chapter Twenty-One

"Hey, where'd you get that from?" Michael asks Sawyer, who has taken out the CD player, and is looking through the bag of CDs that Heather gave him some hours ago.

"Heather gave it to me."

"It still works?" Sawyer nods, and Michael decides to leave him alone, because for once Sawyer seems to be happy enough to be left doing what he's doing, and isn't bothering anyone. Besides, Michael could swear that the man's eyes were red and somewhat swollen earlier, and if Sawyer was crying, that's enough to warn Michael off from upsetting the situation.

Sawyer stops shuffling through the CDs when he sees ones that has something handwritten on it. Across the top of the CD is a small, but entirely legible scrawl: Play me! Track #4! Sawyer arches an eyebrow. "What the hell, why not," He says softly under his breath, and Walt gives him a brief sideways look, and then Sawyer pulls the headphones on, puts the disc in, and skips to the fourth song.

"You can't hide behind social graces,
so don't try to be all touchy-feely."

Right away, Sawyer snorts. Maybe the message hadn't been for him. He's never seen Heather's handwriting, and someone could have written that for her in the first place, not for him at all. The next line though, seems to strike deeper, and he starts to listen in earnest.

"Cause you lie, in my face of all places
But I've got no problem with that really."

Could be to him after all, he thinks, without much pleasure. He has done his share of lying on this island, that's for sure. Christ, he thinks, jaw tight. You're entire life. All the people that've ever known you call you…call you after him. Sawyer. His brow furrows, and he closes his eyes, knows that Walt is watching him but tries not to think of that.

"What bugs me, is that you believe what you're saying.
What bothers me, is that you don't know how you feel.
What scares me, is that while you're telling me stories,
you actually believe that they are real."

Oh come on, Sawyer thinks. It may not seem fair to him, but he knows that that's him to a T. This is how she sees you too, isn't it? You don't know how you feel, you're full of shit and for some reason you believe all of it. But there isn't any malevolence in it: it only really gets under his skin because it's so goddamn true.

"And I've got, no illusions about you."

Sawyer's chest tightens. Had she known about him all along? No, she didn't. She didn't lie when she said she didn't know. She just… suspected. Now shut the fuck up and just listen. That was the point. She hadn't known, and even when she did, she still took him as what he was.

"And guess what? I never did.
And when I said, when I said I'll take it,
I meant,
I meant as is."

"As is," The man said quietly, half-snorting, but then his mouth turned down, feeling bewildered, hurt, and more than anything else—lost. Heather hadn't wanted to change him, and that was the reason they got on so well together: she had never made any move to try and make him something he wasn't. As is.

"Just give up and admit you're an asshole;
you would be in some good company."

Sawyer snorted again: Oh, it's definitely for you, cowboy.

"I think you'd find, that your friends would forgive you.
Or maybe I'm just speaking for me."

Another stifled laugh, but his throat is too constricted, and it feels like he wants to cry more than laugh. He could have hurt her… he might have hit her, the other day, if she hadn't stopped him. How could anyone forgive that? But she knew. She knew his past—or parts of it, didn't she? How could she forgive him that?

"Cause when I look around,
I think this, this is good enough.
And I try to laugh at whatever life brings
Cause when I look down
I just miss all the good stuff,
When I look up, I just trip over things."

And Oh God, why had he left? He could have stayed, could have gotten better maybe, if he had only tried harder, then maybe, maybe-

"And I've got no illusions about you..."

Sawyer puts his head in his hands, and wishes his stupid little ponytail wasn't pulling his hair back, so that he could try to hide behind some of it. Michael smacks the back of Walt's head (not too hard, and Sawyer doesn't hear it after he's turned the volume up nearly as loud as it will go), and roughly gestures for the boy to stop staring at him. Jin just stares out over the water, leaning against their makeshift 'mast'.

"You can't hide behind social graces,
cause I don't buy it like everyone else."

Maybe 'social graces' wasn't the right term for it, but the gist was the same: Heather had accepted his bad-boy antics, but she hadn't been fooled by them. She'd taken everything about him with a grain of salt, and that was why on the beach, when she came to tell him he didn't have to go, the bad-boy, asshole front hadn't scared her away. She'd probably seen through him the second he opened his mouth to her at the caves. It's a humbling thought, that Heather had understood him from the start: it makes Sawyer feel all too exposed, especially trapped on this tiny raft.

"And you can lie, in my face of all places
Just don't lie to yourself."

How long had he been lying to himself? Telling himself that he couldn't get better, that assholes are always assholes, that he had chosen to be this way for life, that redemption was just a pretty word for Catholic girls and boys? Why is it so fucking hard just to come clean with it all?

"Cause I've got no illusions about you.
And guess what? I never did.
And when I say, when I say I'll take it,
I mean,
I mean as is."

"I'm trying. I promise, I promise I'm trying," Sawyer murmurs into his clenched hands, feeling guilt ache through his body, something he's all too familiar with. In that guilt though, there is something different, something new: something he hadn't let himself consider in so long. Hope. Hope that he can pick up the pieces and make things work for once. That hope only makes the guilt harder to bear, but Heather had said that he needed this time to sort himself out, and that's what he's planning on doing.

"I'll get my shit together. I mean it."

"…As is…"