Lost fic: A Diamond Ring [Sawyer, PG]
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine.
Spoilers: Through the end of season 3, just to be safe.
Notes: Written for fanfic100 #48, Diamond.
Summary: Some things endure.
A Diamond Ring
by eponine119
February 13, 2008
Sawyer never wanted a kid. The letter he carries with him demonstrates why his genes aren't worth passing on. The rage that roars within him wasn't made, it was born.
For Sawyer, having a daughter is worse than having a son. It horrifies him. A boy might be the boy he sees in his dream, helpless and lost until he finds the anger that fuels him, that saves and destroys him. A girl is just a victim. Someone to be preyed upon, like he's feasted on hundreds of women. Not just a victim, but willing, complicit, seduced into her own annihilation.
Cassidy asks him for a letter because she wants words. She knows the strength of them, especially his. He wrapped her in a fiction so delicious even he began to believe it. He knows the power of words too, the ones written down when you are young, scarring your heart so you carry them with you forever. Even after the physical representation is gone, torn into a million tiny pieces, scattering what's left of your soul.
There have been a lot of opportunities for him to write that letter. He's passed on every one of them. He remembers sitting on the rocking waves, the sun overhead searing the tender skin of his ears, peering through cobbled together glasses. Unrolling notes between his fingers, messages in a bottle to be delivered to their loved ones. He could have put a message in that bottle. No one ever would have known. But he didn't.
Now, as he makes his choice, he finds himself putting scratchy ballpoint to the torn corner of a salt-softened map. There's a little girl out there who's never going to know the truth. That's fine with him -- truth's not worth telling. But he's got something for her, something that might mean something to her someday. Something she might hold on to, unlike the mess of folded green bills dumped in a safe deposit box in a bank somewhere in New Mexico.
It's a diamond, bright as a falling star and the size of the bruised nail on his smallest finger. Yeah, it was stolen even before he took it, and a couple of people on this island found it worth dying for. But it's real, and it's the only thing he has that's worth leaving to her. He doesn't think she'll have much use for half a bottle of sunscreen, expired antibiotics, a couple of plaid blankets, and some vintage girlie magazines: the sole contents of his estate.
He writes her a note, not the one her mama wanted, but words on paper. He looks at them, the half-backward flow of cursive, so different from the letter he sees when he closes his eyes, written in pencil by a child. He folds it around the stone until it's barely noticeable, no more than a seed or a solid drop of water.
It's easy to slip the folded page into Jack's pocket when he hugs him goodbye. It's a real hug, hard and clinging. They both hold on tight, and when he pulls away, he sees tears in the doc's eyes. Sawyer ducks his head so Jack won't see them mirrored in his own.
Jack makes promises, but Sawyer doesn't listen. He knows better. Jack doesn't lie, but the world isn't like Jack. The world is like Sawyer, telling him what he wants to hear, never intending to keep his word.
Jack gets rescued, and Sawyer stays behind.
…
When Clem was little, her mama used to sing her a song. It went like this: "Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring, and if that diamond ring turns brass, Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass…"
Mama doesn't sing anything anymore, and she never bought Clem anything better than cheap chains that turned her neck green under the hot sun. She got that diamond ring, though. A man brought it to her in the desert, and it had been rubbed rough in all the time he carried it, looking for her. It wasn't brass, but it didn't shine either.
"What about the looking glass?" she asked, thinking of the song, of her consolation prize.
It spooked the man. Those words meant something else to him. "I have to go back," he said. Realization dawned across his face. She could see the fear in his eyes, fear and longing and confusion. "I have to go back."
End.
Spoilers: Through the end of season 3, just to be safe.
Notes: Written for fanfic100 #48, Diamond.
Summary: Some things endure.
A Diamond Ring
by eponine119
February 13, 2008
Sawyer never wanted a kid. The letter he carries with him demonstrates why his genes aren't worth passing on. The rage that roars within him wasn't made, it was born.
For Sawyer, having a daughter is worse than having a son. It horrifies him. A boy might be the boy he sees in his dream, helpless and lost until he finds the anger that fuels him, that saves and destroys him. A girl is just a victim. Someone to be preyed upon, like he's feasted on hundreds of women. Not just a victim, but willing, complicit, seduced into her own annihilation.
Cassidy asks him for a letter because she wants words. She knows the strength of them, especially his. He wrapped her in a fiction so delicious even he began to believe it. He knows the power of words too, the ones written down when you are young, scarring your heart so you carry them with you forever. Even after the physical representation is gone, torn into a million tiny pieces, scattering what's left of your soul.
There have been a lot of opportunities for him to write that letter. He's passed on every one of them. He remembers sitting on the rocking waves, the sun overhead searing the tender skin of his ears, peering through cobbled together glasses. Unrolling notes between his fingers, messages in a bottle to be delivered to their loved ones. He could have put a message in that bottle. No one ever would have known. But he didn't.
Now, as he makes his choice, he finds himself putting scratchy ballpoint to the torn corner of a salt-softened map. There's a little girl out there who's never going to know the truth. That's fine with him -- truth's not worth telling. But he's got something for her, something that might mean something to her someday. Something she might hold on to, unlike the mess of folded green bills dumped in a safe deposit box in a bank somewhere in New Mexico.
It's a diamond, bright as a falling star and the size of the bruised nail on his smallest finger. Yeah, it was stolen even before he took it, and a couple of people on this island found it worth dying for. But it's real, and it's the only thing he has that's worth leaving to her. He doesn't think she'll have much use for half a bottle of sunscreen, expired antibiotics, a couple of plaid blankets, and some vintage girlie magazines: the sole contents of his estate.
He writes her a note, not the one her mama wanted, but words on paper. He looks at them, the half-backward flow of cursive, so different from the letter he sees when he closes his eyes, written in pencil by a child. He folds it around the stone until it's barely noticeable, no more than a seed or a solid drop of water.
It's easy to slip the folded page into Jack's pocket when he hugs him goodbye. It's a real hug, hard and clinging. They both hold on tight, and when he pulls away, he sees tears in the doc's eyes. Sawyer ducks his head so Jack won't see them mirrored in his own.
Jack makes promises, but Sawyer doesn't listen. He knows better. Jack doesn't lie, but the world isn't like Jack. The world is like Sawyer, telling him what he wants to hear, never intending to keep his word.
Jack gets rescued, and Sawyer stays behind.
…
When Clem was little, her mama used to sing her a song. It went like this: "Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring, and if that diamond ring turns brass, Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass…"
Mama doesn't sing anything anymore, and she never bought Clem anything better than cheap chains that turned her neck green under the hot sun. She got that diamond ring, though. A man brought it to her in the desert, and it had been rubbed rough in all the time he carried it, looking for her. It wasn't brass, but it didn't shine either.
"What about the looking glass?" she asked, thinking of the song, of her consolation prize.
It spooked the man. Those words meant something else to him. "I have to go back," he said. Realization dawned across his face. She could see the fear in his eyes, fear and longing and confusion. "I have to go back."
End.