XXXIII: Detox Mansion

Sawyer would have expected the first words to come from them to be something sharp, something angry. He has been lying there for a while, listening to them as they talk around him, trying to get his senses working right again. He almost has got them sorted out, and maybe he moves a little bit. Maybe his hands twitch. Maybe his eyes move beneath his eyelids. Maybe he swallows. Whatever it is, he can feel someone leaning down to stare at him, and he tenses. Beneath a swaddling of bandages, he can feel his wounded right shoulder grow taut. It doesn't hurt, though. He must be doped up pretty thoroughly.

A question is asked of him, startlingly casual. A male voice. Yankee accent. "Want a beer?"

His own question in return."… what?"

The first question, phrased more explicitly. "Would you like a beer?"

That definitely makes Sawyer start in shock. He opens his eyes, staring directly into the glare of a harsh fluorescent light. All around the light is darkness, although he's not sure if it's the room or his own tunnel vision that keeps everything else dark.

"Beer?" His voice cracks on the word. He can almost taste it already. It's been months, and what he wouldn't give for a beer. "Hell, yes," he answers without hesitation. He should be suspicious, he knows, but whatever's going to happen will happen whether or not he's drunk. He doesn't have the willpower to refuse. There is one concern, though, that presents itself at the fore of things. "What sort of beer? I ain't about to drink Bud." I would, though. Anything. Even that crap. And at least I'm not stammering anymore, he thinks. I'm still feeling fuzzy, but at least I can talk right.

A little green bottle is set nearby his unbandaged arm, and as his vision starts to clear, he sees that the bottle, glinting in the light, is set on a metal table nearby. He recognizes the brand of beer. What he can see beyond that, the undecorated walls and the tiled floor, looks like a hospital ward, and is just about as antiseptic, but there's nothing beeping around him, no nurses bustling around the bed.

"Rolling Rock? But you had to get the tiny bottles," Sawyer points out, trying to force a grin on his face. It almost works. He's too uneasy to really keep it up, though. "Shows how much you think of your company." He swallows, reaching out for the bottle, popping the top. "But thanks," he adds, not wanting to be misunderstood. He can't afford misunderstandings.

He takes a long swig of the beer, and it could be ambrosia. It tastes just about that good. He gulps it down thirstily, downing the bottle in a few short sips. It's the best thing he's ever tasted. As he drinks, he swells his chest out, trying to tell as much as he can. No restraints on the bed. He lets the empty bottle drop, eases his head back down onto the pillow, tries to see something beyond walls, light, table, beer bottle. "So what am I being bribed to do?"

They've shot him up with something again. He can tell. He feels drunker than drunk, and it's not because of the Rolling Rock. They want him to be good. Has he done something bad? Has he screwed up? He figures probably so. That's how he gets through the day.

As his vision clears more, he sees cigarettes and a lighter. He goes for those, too. Nothing wrong with having a smoke, as long as he's already drunk. He lights the cigarette with shaky fingers, takes a drag, blinks rapidly to try and get his eyes to clear some more, to be able to see the person that had offered him the beer.

It occurs to him then: There are loopholes. There are ways to get out of this. They're not going to keep a close enough watch on me to care if I have a smoke. He can act like he's thankful for whatever they've done to his shoulder, charm them, and get out of here. It will work. It will have to work.

He breathes out the cigarette smoke, watching it dissipate into the air, scatter in a little cloud and then drift away. He wants to drift away, too. Maybe if they give him more drugs, he will. That Irish guy, Desmond, he had drugs. But these folks aren't Irish. They're American. So I'll bet they have more drugs. America's a bigger country. There is something about that train of thought that strikes him as vaguely illogical, but he isn't about to question it at the moment. "So, hey, Colonel Klink – where the hell am I?"

"The same place that you were when you passed out, except you're on the inside." If the speaker has taken offense at the nickname, he hides it well. Not a word is spoken of it. "

He sees red again. He can't get a straight answer out of anyone lately. "Yeah, and where's that?"

There's no answer. Instead, there's silence, and he hears plenty of condemnation in the silence. They're not happy with him. He's asking too many questions. He should just be content that he has been given beer and cigs, become pliable like a normal person, instead of sticking to stubbornness like some damn pushy bastard. That's what they're thinking; he can tell. He stares at the light for a moment longer, wets his lips, feels like he should offer them an apology.

They've been good to him, really. They've fixed up his shoulder. They haven't explained anything to him at all, but that's all right. He shouldn't ask, really. Not if he stands a chance of losing his beer and cigarettes privileges and, besides, he has to make certain his shoulder's fixed. Then he'll leave. He'd thought about taking off earlier, but that was before they started not answering his questions.

"And what's about that body, anyway? Why'd you guys have to do that? What the hell was that for?"

"A warning. For you, not your Irish guide. You didn't listen to it. You don't listen to a lot of warnings, do you?"

"It's a gift." Sawyer moves the cigarette towards his lips again.

It doesn't get there. The Marlboro or whatever is grabbed from him in a preternaturally quick gesture, the cigarette flipping out of his fingers. It doesn't move that far, though. Lit side down, it's pressed against his bare hand, the hot, sharp pain searing into his hand. He yelps aloud, trying to jerk his hand away. It only flails uselessly.

"We want to be nice to you, Mr. Ford."

"No, you don't." How the hell does Colonel Klink – whomever it is – know my name?

The cigarette hovers again. He can feel the heat of it streaming down onto the burn, making it feel a billion times worse without even touching. "Yes, we do."

He doesn't feel like arguing. He argues nonetheless, moving his hand away as soon as he gets the chance. Damn, it hurts. He won't give them the satisfaction of showing them that, though. "All right, you do. You have my best interests at heart, I'm sure. That's why you haven't let me get off this damn island, or any of us. That's why you took the kid and got me shot for it. Yeah, brilliant move there. You guys are real Einsteins."

"You got yourself shot. The doctor wouldn't have been able to save you. We have to, as much as we'd rather see you die – as much as you'd rather die, right?"

It's not right. He doesn't want that anymore. He doesn't tell them that, though. "Why?"

"You hear their voices. That was why we brought you here to the island in the first place."

He's not going to lie. He can't risk being caught up in the lie later. "I hear Duckett's voice, man. That ain't sayin' I hear voices, plural."

Colonel Klink finally decides to make himself visible, leaning forward. Sawyer catches a glimpse of red hair, finely-tailored clothes, a face whose features are shadowy, indistinguishable from the gloom in the room. The guy's not imposing at all. That's funny, he thinks as he cradles his pained hand. "We know you hear Duckett's voice," the other man says, moving to stub the cigarette out. "You know that was a setup. You don't know how much."

Sawyer stares for a long moment, shaking his head. "Aw, hell," he begins, but he can't really find words beyond that. He's not sure what to say. There are a million things he wants to say, but none of them work as well as they ought. One question presents itself, then, nags at him so much that he finally figures out how to ask it: "Why me? If that was a setup – why me?"

"Because nobody would miss you, and we knew you would fall for it," Colonel Klink says. His eyes bore into Sawyer's, and he points out, "You thought you were conning people. You're the one that was conned all along, Mr. Ford. Or is it Sawyer now?" There was a little laughter at that. "That's what we heard. That's pretty funny; I'll say that much. You deluded yourself over that search enough to name yourself after it." The man's shoulders shake with laughter, but the enjoyment reaches neither his eyes nor his lips. "Mr. Sawyer's been dead for almost fifteen years now, you idiot."

If anything can cripple him, that's it, right there. Sawyer can't process this, can't believe it. He sinks back down onto the pillow, shaking his head, glancing back to the light like that will hide the array of expressions that sweep over his face. Disbelief, doubt, acceptance, worry, terror, then back to disbelief and the whole cycle starts all over again. He feels himself being consumed by the grief all over again. He had felt like a bastard when he'd killed the guy, and he feels worse now, hates the redemption more than the damnation. What he did wasn't even an honest mistake, then. What he did was done with someone else pulling the strings, and he had sworn that would never happen. He had promised himself that much.

They can't be telling him the truth. Then the rest of it was all pointless, the search through God knows how many states and a couple of countries as well, and the trip, and the con jobs that he hoped were bringing him closer and closer still to the other Sawyer, and the murder, and the – "I don't believe you," he declares suddenly, fighting hard to maintain his disbelief. "Ain't no damn way. And if it was all one big con, why here? Why on some damn island? Why with these other people?"

That's where the answers stop. Colonel Klink apparently has decided that he does not feel like answering any more questions. In a way, Sawyer can't blame him. Whatever they're doing, he must have messed things up by getting himself shot, and they can't afford losing him, it seems, although he still thinks the reason is bull. At any rate, instead of answering, Colonel Klink leans back away again, out of the light, and gets up again.

The motion makes Sawyer glance that way, and he's conscious of a sudden movement behind the redhead's shoulder. Cameras. Jesus Christ, they have cameras. "Hey, have we been watched this entire time we've been on the damn island, or what?"

Colonel Klink doesn't answer. He only tells Sawyer, "Rest," in that same irritatingly patronizing way that Desmond had told him to rest earlier. "We'll talk later. For now, though, you need to get your strength back, get all of the symptoms of the injury out of you, calm down. Just lie here, smoke some cigarettes, drink a little beer. You won't leave." The man sounded convinced of that. "If you do, you'll find out that the jungle has a mind of its own when it comes to eliminating annoyances. And you are definitely an annoyance."

To you or the jungle? Sawyer thinks, but he knows better than to ask that. He lifts his hand – stinging all the while – to his side and then up, giving the Colonel a stiff Nazi salute. "Ja wohl." If he could, he'd click his heels, too. "At least get me another beer, man. If I get sloshed, I won't bother you."

Maybe that's encouragement, because Colonel Klink removes a couple of mini-bottles of beer from wherever they are being kept and places them on the table before setting on his way. Sawyer reaches that way without looking for a lighter, fumbles around, touches something metal. It's not the lighter. It's way too thin to be the lighter. It is strangely warm, though, and he seizes on it. It might even burn him a bit, but what with the pain on the back of his hand, he can ignore a little irritation to his fingertips.

He knows what it is already. It's his dogtag, which they took out of his pocket but apparently did not take yet, and he wonders why it's so warm. He turns it over, staring at it a few times. 'JEANY' is written on it. It's misspelled. The initials beneath it - 'M. I.' or something close enough, are chiseled into the surface. He glances up to see if Colonel Klink is still around. Nothing. He's safe. The tag has gone unnoticed. He pockets it. Whatever's going on with it, he wants to control it. There's no way he's letting these bastards get their hands on it.

They're right about one thing, though. He needs rest. He needs for his shoulder to not hurt, without the dope. He needs to be able to use his arm. He needs to play by their rules for a little while, and then he can try to escape like he intends. The conversation has made him more curious, but it's a curiosity that he's willing to sacrifice to haul ass out of here. He just needs to be able to move his shoulder a little better. He has to be able to take them out when the time comes, and he can't do that one-handed.