Fic: Suffering Son (1/1)
Title: Suffering Son
Rating: PG
Characters: Jacob, Jack Shephard
Word Count: 1,620
Summary: What no one ever realized was that he was not the author of this tale; he never had been, and he never would be. For flaky_artist, who requested “Mysteries & Mythology” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. Spoilers through 6.17 - The End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For flaky_artist: when you mentioned that crazy-awesome theory of Is Vincent Jacob?, this is what immediately came to mind. It is pretty much entirely centered on some stylized ideas of Process Philosophy, and more specifically, of Process Theology -- both of which are pet areas of interest for me, academically. The main relevant points of the idea for this are that Process theologians believe in 1) an all-loving deity/god-figure, 2) the freedom of humanity and the primacy of free will, 3) the co-creation of reality as it exists by humanity and the deity/god-figure, 4) shared experience/suffering between the deity/god-figure and humanity/shared and 5) a redefinition of classical (especially Christian) conceptualizations of the deity/god-figures omnipotence and omniscience. Aside from that, Jacob is considerably more sympathetic than I’d normally peg him for here, and he’s also portrayed as significantly more god-like than he likely ever was. Nonetheless, I hope that it’s to your liking :)
Suffering Son
His mother always spoke of it as a gift -- his brother, as a curse; the truth, he’s slowly found, lies somewhere uncertain, amorphous, caught between the two.
Sometimes, there’s more hurt than help, or more joy than pain -- sometimes, they come together, so strong and so fierce; undeniable, and they will burn the world to ash in their wake, slow and fast and hard and soft and flawless, marred -- desperate, even as they soothe, break, leave nothing behind.
This is one of those latter times.
And so it’s a last gasp, of sorts -- he’s clinging to this last chance, this last moment in which he can matter, can give, can share and ease and be, simply be, before the end, before the death, before everything is remade: unrecognizable, but still the same.
The soil smudges, gives beneath his weight as he moves with all the grace, the lithe speed of different legs, different limbs; close to the ground, he follows the scent of blood, the rustle of fronds, their sway.
It’s odd -- commonplace, and yet the only piece that fits -- the way it’s all turned out, the way this chapter has seen fit to close. It has the same symmetry as fate, he supposes, except that there is no fate, no destiny -- they were wrong about that, in the end. He wasn’t lying when he said that they all had a choice.
Always.
He’d only ever meant to help them learn to make the best of it.
He shudders, feels the rush of breeze and leaves against his back as he sidles through the jungle, leaves prints in the dirt, feels with precision when drops of red smear beneath each step; sometimes, he wishes he were better, stronger -- that he could have changed them, but not this time. He is not omnipotent, he cannot bend this world to his will; all that he treasures in this existence, in these people, rests in the way that they can live with a freedom he’s never quite known, that he reaches out to touch, in them, and merely brushes as best he can.
He knows they don’t see it, can’t know it: they still think of him as the author, the conductor -- the composer of this grand and desperate tragedy, this glory and this pain. They imagine him as powerful without ever knowing power. The secret, though, the sacred truth, is that he has changed them only so far as they have influence him in kind; their souls have moved his only because he crossed their paths before.
For every action, a reaction -- equal, opposite, echoed through eternity as a constant, a law. Most things are changeable; some things are not.
This simple fact is not.
His motion falters, and he relishes the slip of a traction, a balance that’s new, a novel experience in this myriad chaos, this winding climax; he wonders, for a moment, what they’d think of him if they knew: if they knew that he could be as solid as a man, as fleeting as a cloud of smoke, as ephemeral as a burst of energy, a blinding electromagnetic burst against the sky -- that he was only ever friend and foe because they needed both, and he needed them. They think him a tyrant, a heavy hand -- he doesn’t fault them; the good he desires often seems to find itself mired in struggle, in despair.
He tries, though, and he always has -- he would only wish that they could understand it, could sympathize.
Because it’s not about him. There was a time, long ago, when it was -- about him and him alone, charged with this burden and haunted beyond space and time, too blind and too bitter to see a blessing, albeit a mired one, as anything but a curse -- and it was bleak. This is not about him, anymore.
But it’s not about them, either; and for all of the anger, all of the bitter tears and the vicious hate and the violence, the pain that it’s caused, he’s only every wanted them to understand it. To know it. To see what it means, and to feel what it’s worth.
Their worlds are interwoven; their futures intertwined. A knife to the gut, a bullet to the head, a kiss on the lips and a last gasp before the fall: to one, unto all. They live and die in very same breaths. And they haven’t seen it, not yet; but soon enough -- he has faith in that much. Because they are him, and he is them: and he’s only human, after all -- they’re only sparks of the divine.
Because he is gone, and yet remains; as do they all.
He rejoices, suffers with; to hurt is to be hurt, to kill is to be killed. To raise, to be raised; to save, and be saved in kind. He lost his parents, killed his father, broke his spine and birthed a son; they lost a brother and a mother, damned a man to live forever, crashed a plane and bent time to their will -- burned in the shadows of a statue and saved themselves.
Whatever any of them had ever sown, they’d reap together, eternal, and it was never meant to be a punishment, such a trial: his endgame, in truth, was never so deep, never so cruel.
And besides: endings, like the starts they ultimately quell, spur; well, it’s all relative.
And it was never about being right. It was never about manipulation, or about control, or about perfection, or the ends versus the means; even if he’d made mistakes, hoped for the hopeless and bet blindly on the lame horse one too many times -- even if the worst had come from his most meticulously laid plans, and he’d paved more than one road to Hell with the best of his intentions.
Yet even so, it was never about the world, the place, the beginnings and the ends; it had only ever been about love.
It was because of love, in the end, that any of it had happened. Love for a father, for a child, for a man or a woman, for people, for justice, for what had been taken, for what might still be wrenched away. All of the loss and the fear, all of the pain -- it was so easy to forget where it rooted itself in the love; to overlook what they were truly offering, acting, surrendering because of. And that sacrifice -- this sacrifice -- would always be made, was already made, had been made at the beginning as it was in the end, and would be made again until there was nothing, no one left -- it wasn’t so much ritual, so much as it was simply their way.
And to give of oneself, he thinks, is no sin.
He suspects they might fault him, because he refused to give it away, to reveal how it all would end. The ending, though, was never written, was never set in stone; and, besides, it wasn’t his story to tell: as much as anyone, it was his to live.
For his part, he thinks it was better this way; thinks there was beauty in the unknown, the discovery and the risk. The struggle, and the shame; above all, in the hope.
He can feel the sun, stretched long against him as he pants heavily, the exertion different like this, a new sort of thrill, and its bittersweet -- it all is. All of it, it always is.
When tired eyes find him, catch him as he scurries toward that broken body where it fell beneath the trees, wreathed in bamboo and aching, dying just a little more, just a little differently from the first time he greeted him, so long ago, so soon -- when there’s joy there, rising triumphant over pain and fear, Jacob loses grip on the regrets, if only for the moment, and it’s enough. The sorrow ebbs in both of them.
Together, they suffer; to ease one is to ease all.
A trembling hand reaches for him, grabs in his coat; clutches weak -- too weak -- and endings and beginnings may be matters of semantics, but a door is closing here, and he will be present, will bear witness and endure the key in the lock as it turns, in that split-second between the click of the latch and the opening of a window somewhere else, beyond. He feels blood mat in the golden strands covering this body, this host -- nuzzles closer, lets the gift of this form he’s in take over as he fits the canine frame along the human one sprawled on the leaves.
He settles, slow and still, curls for comfort and the pain in his side, phantom sting from the man next to him, of the life leaving that body as sluggish fingers bury in fur, stroke the last moments, the last breaths away against the roar of engines, the blue of the sky.
Jack Shephard smiles before his eyes slide closed, and Jacob -- tucked beside him, close enough to feel as the air rushes clean, as the beat in his chest stills at long last; Jacob thinks that maybe the suffering has finally come to an end.
Rating: PG
Characters: Jacob, Jack Shephard
Word Count: 1,620
Summary: What no one ever realized was that he was not the author of this tale; he never had been, and he never would be. For flaky_artist, who requested “Mysteries & Mythology” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. Spoilers through 6.17 - The End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For flaky_artist: when you mentioned that crazy-awesome theory of Is Vincent Jacob?, this is what immediately came to mind. It is pretty much entirely centered on some stylized ideas of Process Philosophy, and more specifically, of Process Theology -- both of which are pet areas of interest for me, academically. The main relevant points of the idea for this are that Process theologians believe in 1) an all-loving deity/god-figure, 2) the freedom of humanity and the primacy of free will, 3) the co-creation of reality as it exists by humanity and the deity/god-figure, 4) shared experience/suffering between the deity/god-figure and humanity/shared and 5) a redefinition of classical (especially Christian) conceptualizations of the deity/god-figures omnipotence and omniscience. Aside from that, Jacob is considerably more sympathetic than I’d normally peg him for here, and he’s also portrayed as significantly more god-like than he likely ever was. Nonetheless, I hope that it’s to your liking :)
Suffering Son
His mother always spoke of it as a gift -- his brother, as a curse; the truth, he’s slowly found, lies somewhere uncertain, amorphous, caught between the two.
Sometimes, there’s more hurt than help, or more joy than pain -- sometimes, they come together, so strong and so fierce; undeniable, and they will burn the world to ash in their wake, slow and fast and hard and soft and flawless, marred -- desperate, even as they soothe, break, leave nothing behind.
This is one of those latter times.
And so it’s a last gasp, of sorts -- he’s clinging to this last chance, this last moment in which he can matter, can give, can share and ease and be, simply be, before the end, before the death, before everything is remade: unrecognizable, but still the same.
The soil smudges, gives beneath his weight as he moves with all the grace, the lithe speed of different legs, different limbs; close to the ground, he follows the scent of blood, the rustle of fronds, their sway.
It’s odd -- commonplace, and yet the only piece that fits -- the way it’s all turned out, the way this chapter has seen fit to close. It has the same symmetry as fate, he supposes, except that there is no fate, no destiny -- they were wrong about that, in the end. He wasn’t lying when he said that they all had a choice.
Always.
He’d only ever meant to help them learn to make the best of it.
He shudders, feels the rush of breeze and leaves against his back as he sidles through the jungle, leaves prints in the dirt, feels with precision when drops of red smear beneath each step; sometimes, he wishes he were better, stronger -- that he could have changed them, but not this time. He is not omnipotent, he cannot bend this world to his will; all that he treasures in this existence, in these people, rests in the way that they can live with a freedom he’s never quite known, that he reaches out to touch, in them, and merely brushes as best he can.
He knows they don’t see it, can’t know it: they still think of him as the author, the conductor -- the composer of this grand and desperate tragedy, this glory and this pain. They imagine him as powerful without ever knowing power. The secret, though, the sacred truth, is that he has changed them only so far as they have influence him in kind; their souls have moved his only because he crossed their paths before.
For every action, a reaction -- equal, opposite, echoed through eternity as a constant, a law. Most things are changeable; some things are not.
This simple fact is not.
His motion falters, and he relishes the slip of a traction, a balance that’s new, a novel experience in this myriad chaos, this winding climax; he wonders, for a moment, what they’d think of him if they knew: if they knew that he could be as solid as a man, as fleeting as a cloud of smoke, as ephemeral as a burst of energy, a blinding electromagnetic burst against the sky -- that he was only ever friend and foe because they needed both, and he needed them. They think him a tyrant, a heavy hand -- he doesn’t fault them; the good he desires often seems to find itself mired in struggle, in despair.
He tries, though, and he always has -- he would only wish that they could understand it, could sympathize.
Because it’s not about him. There was a time, long ago, when it was -- about him and him alone, charged with this burden and haunted beyond space and time, too blind and too bitter to see a blessing, albeit a mired one, as anything but a curse -- and it was bleak. This is not about him, anymore.
But it’s not about them, either; and for all of the anger, all of the bitter tears and the vicious hate and the violence, the pain that it’s caused, he’s only every wanted them to understand it. To know it. To see what it means, and to feel what it’s worth.
Their worlds are interwoven; their futures intertwined. A knife to the gut, a bullet to the head, a kiss on the lips and a last gasp before the fall: to one, unto all. They live and die in very same breaths. And they haven’t seen it, not yet; but soon enough -- he has faith in that much. Because they are him, and he is them: and he’s only human, after all -- they’re only sparks of the divine.
Because he is gone, and yet remains; as do they all.
He rejoices, suffers with; to hurt is to be hurt, to kill is to be killed. To raise, to be raised; to save, and be saved in kind. He lost his parents, killed his father, broke his spine and birthed a son; they lost a brother and a mother, damned a man to live forever, crashed a plane and bent time to their will -- burned in the shadows of a statue and saved themselves.
Whatever any of them had ever sown, they’d reap together, eternal, and it was never meant to be a punishment, such a trial: his endgame, in truth, was never so deep, never so cruel.
And besides: endings, like the starts they ultimately quell, spur; well, it’s all relative.
And it was never about being right. It was never about manipulation, or about control, or about perfection, or the ends versus the means; even if he’d made mistakes, hoped for the hopeless and bet blindly on the lame horse one too many times -- even if the worst had come from his most meticulously laid plans, and he’d paved more than one road to Hell with the best of his intentions.
Yet even so, it was never about the world, the place, the beginnings and the ends; it had only ever been about love.
It was because of love, in the end, that any of it had happened. Love for a father, for a child, for a man or a woman, for people, for justice, for what had been taken, for what might still be wrenched away. All of the loss and the fear, all of the pain -- it was so easy to forget where it rooted itself in the love; to overlook what they were truly offering, acting, surrendering because of. And that sacrifice -- this sacrifice -- would always be made, was already made, had been made at the beginning as it was in the end, and would be made again until there was nothing, no one left -- it wasn’t so much ritual, so much as it was simply their way.
And to give of oneself, he thinks, is no sin.
He suspects they might fault him, because he refused to give it away, to reveal how it all would end. The ending, though, was never written, was never set in stone; and, besides, it wasn’t his story to tell: as much as anyone, it was his to live.
For his part, he thinks it was better this way; thinks there was beauty in the unknown, the discovery and the risk. The struggle, and the shame; above all, in the hope.
He can feel the sun, stretched long against him as he pants heavily, the exertion different like this, a new sort of thrill, and its bittersweet -- it all is. All of it, it always is.
When tired eyes find him, catch him as he scurries toward that broken body where it fell beneath the trees, wreathed in bamboo and aching, dying just a little more, just a little differently from the first time he greeted him, so long ago, so soon -- when there’s joy there, rising triumphant over pain and fear, Jacob loses grip on the regrets, if only for the moment, and it’s enough. The sorrow ebbs in both of them.
Together, they suffer; to ease one is to ease all.
A trembling hand reaches for him, grabs in his coat; clutches weak -- too weak -- and endings and beginnings may be matters of semantics, but a door is closing here, and he will be present, will bear witness and endure the key in the lock as it turns, in that split-second between the click of the latch and the opening of a window somewhere else, beyond. He feels blood mat in the golden strands covering this body, this host -- nuzzles closer, lets the gift of this form he’s in take over as he fits the canine frame along the human one sprawled on the leaves.
He settles, slow and still, curls for comfort and the pain in his side, phantom sting from the man next to him, of the life leaving that body as sluggish fingers bury in fur, stroke the last moments, the last breaths away against the roar of engines, the blue of the sky.
Jack Shephard smiles before his eyes slide closed, and Jacob -- tucked beside him, close enough to feel as the air rushes clean, as the beat in his chest stills at long last; Jacob thinks that maybe the suffering has finally come to an end.