Fic: Fallout - Part Three (Jack/Sawyer)
Title: Fallout - Part Three
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He isn’t going to get any sleep. He has too much on his mind.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: This is the next part of my continuing Jack/Sawyer, post-apocalyptic AU saga. :) Over all, this is a Jack/Sawyer story, but you’re going to have to bear with me because it’s going to take a little while to get there. Used for philosophy_20, prompt #17: lack of god. 20/20 :)
Previous Parts: Part One | Part Two
Sawyer tosses and turns in bed for two hours. He can’t find a comfortable position, not on his side, not on his back, not even on the living area’s couch (which he tried for ten minutes, then quickly abandoned).
When he can no longer stand it, he turns on the bedroom lights and climbs from the bed. He isn’t going to get any sleep. He has too much on his mind.
Namely, Jack Shephard. If that is, in fact, his name. Sawyer had, at one point, been able to spot one of them from a mile away. But then they had become smarter, and it is entirely possible that this business with the sister is a ruse meant to gain trust. That they were giving an old plan a second go.
Maybe he was going to have to bring in Sayid after all. Maybe it was the only way he could really know for sure. It galls him to think that he might have to go with Ana’s approach.
He sighs. He doesn’t like anything about this, but he can’t say that this is new territory. Maybe that’s why Ana’s finger is so quick on the trigger. She had become incredibly jaded, and all so fast. Maybe it was time he joined her.
*
If there is one thing that Jack is sure of, it’s that he’s probably going to die in this room. Maybe Claire had been here before him. He doesn’t want to think about what might have happened to her, or her baby.
They don’t seem excessively violent, but he knows that he can’t trust them. He can’t trust anyone. If these people mean him harm - and the more time passes, the more it begins to seem like they do - than he would have to think of a way to fight his way out. If they don’t, he will have to convince them to hand over his sister, or to let him leave to find her. There’s nothing else, it seems, that he can do.
He paced the windowless, tiny room, unable to sleep. There was too much on his mind, too many thoughts and not enough room in his head for all of them.
They had asked him who he was, where he had come from. The eyes of the blonde man who had come to see him were probing, suspicious. The eyes of his companion were venomous, accusatory.
Who do they think he is? What do they suspect him of?
Jack doesn’t know and he can’t guess. Maybe his father had been right all along. Maybe he does need to learn to let things go. Maybe this has all been an enormous, dangerous mistake.
He sits down on the ground, his back against the wall, and puts his head in his hands. He doesn’t know if he’s made of stern enough stuff to be able to handle this. He wonders if he ought to just resign himself to the fact that he may never find Claire, that he may not live to see tomorrow.
But he doesn’t, and he can’t. No matter how hopeless the situation seems, no matter how long and dark the road ahead looks from where he’s standing, Jack knows himself well enough to know that there was no way he could let Claire go, no way he could give up hope.
*
Sawyer leaves his room for good at around seven in the morning. It’s easily the earliest he’s been awake in a very long time. It’s the first night he’s gone without sleep in as long as he can remember.
The lobby is dotted with the few early risers among the group, including Ana, who is having what appears, from where Sawyer is standing, to be a heated discussion with Sayid. Sawyer clenches his jaw and barrels on down the stairs.
“You just can’t take bein’ told ‘no’, can you?” Sawyer interrupts, rudely. Ana turns to face him and clenches her own jaw in reply. She crosses her arms over her chest and Sayid closes his eyes and shakes his head, sighs at them like he’s sick of them both.
“You don’t seem to want to face the fact that that guy could be dangerous,” Ana replied, stubbornly.
“And you don’t see to want to face the fact that you’re jumping the damn gun for no other reason than you want somebody to punshin,” Sawyer fires back. At a different time, in a different place, Ana might have punched him. At a different time, in a different place, he might have returned the favor. But now wasn’t time for a fight - with anything other than their words.
“Sawyer,” Sayid interrupts, attempting to put an end to their back-and-forth, knowing very well the lengths it could get to if left unchecked. “I was just explaining to Ana that it is not yet the time to begin interrogating…” Sayid pauses and sighs, tiredly. “I’m sorry, I cannot seem to remember what you said this man’s name was.”
“I didn’t,” Ana replies, testily, obviously very discontent at being shot down at all angles. Sawyer narrows his eyes.
“He says it’s Jack Shephard,” Sawyer answers Sayid, who’s face suddenly takes on an unexpected appearance of complete surprise and astonishment. Before Sawyer even knows what’s happening, Sayid is running down toward the stairwell and he has to sprint to keep up - with Ana hot on both of their heels.
*
“Get away from the door, now,” Sayid demands the second he entered the basement room where Locke and Eko stand in front of the closet door where they are keeping Jack, chatting absently with one another. They start at the unexpected, demanding tone of Sayid’s voice. They glance at each other, confused, but move aside as Sayid’s momentum never breaks.
Sawyer and Ana enter the room, breathless, a few moments behind Sayid, and watch as he unlocks the door and yanks it open.
Jack looks so small, sitting with his back against the wall, his head down and buried in his arms. He looks tired, defeated - two emotions that Sayid has rarely seen in Jack and finds disconcerting.
“More questions?” he asks, without lifting his head to look up. Sayid shakes his head and curses that Jack has been put through this while, at the same time, wondering what he’s doing here at all. There were so many questions to be asked, and answered, but, if there’s anything that they have now, it’s an overabundance of time.
“Jack,” Sayid says, simply, and Jack’s head shoots up in an instant. He looks up at Sayid as if he’s seeing a ghost. His mouth hangs open, agape, and nothing comes out - not even breath.
“Oh my god,’ he finally says, in a voice almost to quiet to be heard. He shakes his head, marveling as he looks Sayid up and down. “You’re alive.”
Sayid nods, unable to keep a small smile from his face. He had known all along that Christian would use his disappearance to tout the dangers of the surface, and the lack of his return as a certain sign of his death. Christian was predictably grandiose that way.
“Yes,” he answered. “I am.”
“So, you two know each other, huh?” Sawyer asks, as if he’s annoyed at being left in the dark. Actually, there’s no “as if”. He is annoyed. Ana stands beside him in the doorway, seeming aggravated at being wrong about Jack (or wrong at all). Locke and Eko are behind the both of them, watching and listening intently - as is their way.
“Yes,” Sayid confirms. “We do.” He turns back to face Jack. “Jack is from below ground as well.” There’s so much more too it than that, but now isn’t the time for long explanations.
“No wonder he’s so damn pale,” Sawyer muses aloud, and under his breath. Ana turns to him with a sour face. He ignores her and she turns her sour expression back on Sayid and Jack as they continue to exchange the meaningful glance of two old friends who have gone a very long time without seeing on another. Sayid reaches his hand out to Jack.
“You don’t have to stay in here anymore,” Sayid tells him. Jack seems to breath a small sigh of relief as he grips Sayid's hand in his and is pulled, shakily, to his feet.
*
Sawyer calls an emergency meeting, brings everyone that matters into the largest conference room the hotel has to offer shortly after Jack is freed from his broom-closet prison and they have a whole new set of problems to address. They seem, by an large, apprehensive and distrusting, but Sawyer had expected that.
So, he had abdicated control of the meeting to Sayid. Sawyer can’t figure out which way is up at the moment, or who the newcomer to their makeshift society is. But Sayid does. Sawyer sits back in his chair and takes in things from another angle as Sayid stands up from his chair at the head of the table (with Jack in the chair to his right, looking timid as all hell).
“Six months ago, I left my home in a small society that has lived below the surface for nearly two hundred years,” Sayid declares. “You know this story. I have explained this before. This man,” Sayid gestures to Jack and Sawyer thinks that, if Jack could will his chair to swallow him whole, he would. “is Jack Shephard. I have known him since I was very young. I will allow him to explain the situation further.”
Sayid sits back down and looks to Jack, who stands, uncomfortably. He lets out a sigh and shakes his head. “About a week ago, I left the place that I’ve lived all my life to come up here - to a place that I’ve heard was not only dangerous but uninhabitable since I was a child. I came up here to look for my sister. She was kidnapped, just like Nikki. And I don’t know by who. Or why. I just know that I…I need to find her. I need to bring her, and her baby, back home.”
Jack falls silent and takes a long breath. He glances away from the unfamiliar faces down to the conference table before sitting back down in his seat.
“Well,” Sawyer says, rising from his seat and finding the attention of the room shifting back to him. That was certainly a lot to take in, and it will take longer than ten seconds to make sense of it all. What he does know is that he may be able to help Jack, or at the very least give him answers. He also knows, however, that it’s not going to happen all at once. “I think we might be able to get a couple of your questions answered for you. If there’s something you can offer us in return.”
Everyone turns back to Jack and he becomes flustered. “I…I-I don’t…”
“Jack is a doctor,” Sayid offers for him. Sawyer nods, liking the sound of that. Of all of the things that he would have accepted from Jack, that one’s near the top of the list.
“Yeah, that’ll do,” Sawyer replies. Jack finds himself sitting back in his chair, feeling confused, disconnected. He feels as though he has gone from zero to one hundred in a second flat. He feels like he's still catching up.
“Jack, are you feeling alright?” Sayid asks. They eyes on Jack aren’t helping the situation, and he leans his head down in his hand and rubs his temples. He’s starting to feel dizzy.
“I, uh,” he says, standing irrationally. “I ran out of food a few days ago. And water a little after that.”
“It’s a fuckin’ wasteland out there,” Sawyer comments, with more concern than he knew he felt. Sayid rises from his chair and attempts to hold Jack up as he wobbled. Sawyer isn’t far behind, holding onto Jack’s shoulder, trying to keep him steady. “You tellin’ me you haven’t eaten in two days?”
“Uh-huh,” Jack says, as he loses his balance for good, falling dizzily to the ground, landing on his ass and closing his eyes.
There is a great commotion around him but he doesn’t see what’s going on. He feels two hands on his shoulders and can only assume that Sayid and Sawyer have followed him to the ground.
“I’ll get him some water,” a female voice says, twinged with a British accent. Jack tries to remember her. She was the only other woman in the room. Pretty. Hanging off the arm of a serious looking, dark-haired man with a beard.
His head spins a little as he is handed a cup full of cold water. He drinks it like a man dying of thirst because he probably is. He actually manages to savor the cool sensation of the water sliding down his throat before he passes out.
*
Jack comes around slowly, lifts himself from the fog in his head and finds himself laying in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room that smells faintly of stale, long-since smoked cigarettes. His head still feels heavy, but his body seems to be glad for the rest. He’s far from rejuvenated, but that’s nothing a few more hours of sleep, a plate of food, and a shower can’t cure.
He sits up, gradually, and takes in his surroundings. It looks like he’s in a bedroom, which may have, at one point, been fairly elaborate at one point, but looks very lived-in now.
No one has yet explained to him where he is, but, between them finding out that he wasn’t a threat to them (why they had believed to begin with is another matter entirely) and Jack passing out, he has to admit, there wasn’t much time to ask questions or to have them answered.
His eyes scan the room until they land on a fairly surprising sight indeed: Sawyer sitting in a burgundy arm chair, eyes glued to the window, his expression miles and miles away. Jack doesn’t know what to say, if he should say anything, so he just sits, dumbly, until Sawyer looks up and notices that he's awake.
“Feelin’ any better?” Sawyer asks, his voice caught somewhere between gruff and warm. Jack doesn’t know if he’s still deciding whether or not to trust him, or if he’s still pretty well mired in the thoughts he’d been thinking not a minute ago. Rationally, it’s probably both.
Jack shrugs, because he really isn’t sure yet. He still feels like he’s catching up to everything that’s happening. “Where am I?” he asks, needing at least one question answered - if, for nothing else, than his own peace of mind.
“My room,” Sawyer answers. Jack screws up his face, confused. “It was the closest. Sayid and I brought you here, ‘bout forty-five minutes ago.”
“And you’ve been sitting there the whole time?” Jack asks, simultaneously disturbed and comforted by the thought.
“Hey, it’s my room,” Sawyer replies, attempting a joke, but there’s too much bite to it and Jack flinches slightly. Sawyer sighs. “Sorry,” he offers, then looks back out the window. “Got a lot on my mind.”
Jack nods as he watches Sawyer gaze out the window. “Yeah,” he says. “I know the feeling.” Because he does. It’s how he’s feeling now. It’s how he’s felt many a time before now. He sees the look on Sawyer’s face, in his eyes, and feels a kind of kinship to the man because he has worn both before.
“You should get some more sleep,” Sawyer suggests, with as much gentleness as he’s capable of at the moment (the amount of which still manages to surprise Jack because it’s more than he would have expected). “It’ll be dinner soon.”
“Dinner?” Jack asks, his mouth literally watering within seconds. Sawyer offers him a heartfelt chuckle and shakes his head at Jack’s almost child-like enthusiasm. Though, Sawyer rationalizes, if he had gone two days without food and water, then spend the night in an old broom closet in the basement of a hotel, he might be overly enthusiastic about the prospect of a hot meal too.
Nevertheless, Jack needs more sleep. So Sawyer says, “Easy, cowboy. Get a few more hours of sleep and you can have all the dinner you can eat.”
“Why are you taking care of me?” Jack asks, out of nowhere, as he lays his head back down onto the pillow. He sees a look of surprise pass over Sawyer’s face, as if Jack has taken him off-guard. It is soon replaced with an expression that Jack can’t quite distinguish, and then a wry smile and a small shrug.
“Let’s just say, I could use the good karma,” Sawyer answers, and Jack is suddenly reminded of all of the times that he had been on the outside of one of Sayid and Shannon’s inside jokes. Sawyer’s words don’t connect, but they seem to mean something to Sawyer, who repeats, “Sleep.”
Sure enough, Jack begins to feel the weight of his drooping eyelids and finally lets them fall, curling a little bit further into himself. He yawns and loudly and feels his exhaustion pulling him back under.
Sawyer watches all of this from his vantage point across the room, in his favorite old chair. He looks back out the window after a few moments of allowing himself to watch Jack’s prone form. What he sees on the other side of the glass is a stretch of barren land dotted here and there by old, run-down, hollowed out buildings. But mostly, it’s miles upon miles of barren desert. It’s cracked and baked by the sun. It looks like a battlefield, or rather, like no-man's land, the expanse between two warring trenches. And that is what it is.
That Jack had been able to survive out there for a week (and two days without food or water) is a testament to the kind of stuff the man is made of. And, if Sawyer believed in such things at all, he would say that it’s some kind of miracle too. But he doesn’t.
And looking at Jack while he sleeps reminds him of the reality of the situation, of the dangerous days to come. Of the fact that there’s nothing miraculous about this place.
Part Four
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He isn’t going to get any sleep. He has too much on his mind.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: This is the next part of my continuing Jack/Sawyer, post-apocalyptic AU saga. :) Over all, this is a Jack/Sawyer story, but you’re going to have to bear with me because it’s going to take a little while to get there. Used for philosophy_20, prompt #17: lack of god. 20/20 :)
Previous Parts: Part One | Part Two
Sawyer tosses and turns in bed for two hours. He can’t find a comfortable position, not on his side, not on his back, not even on the living area’s couch (which he tried for ten minutes, then quickly abandoned).
When he can no longer stand it, he turns on the bedroom lights and climbs from the bed. He isn’t going to get any sleep. He has too much on his mind.
Namely, Jack Shephard. If that is, in fact, his name. Sawyer had, at one point, been able to spot one of them from a mile away. But then they had become smarter, and it is entirely possible that this business with the sister is a ruse meant to gain trust. That they were giving an old plan a second go.
Maybe he was going to have to bring in Sayid after all. Maybe it was the only way he could really know for sure. It galls him to think that he might have to go with Ana’s approach.
He sighs. He doesn’t like anything about this, but he can’t say that this is new territory. Maybe that’s why Ana’s finger is so quick on the trigger. She had become incredibly jaded, and all so fast. Maybe it was time he joined her.
*
If there is one thing that Jack is sure of, it’s that he’s probably going to die in this room. Maybe Claire had been here before him. He doesn’t want to think about what might have happened to her, or her baby.
They don’t seem excessively violent, but he knows that he can’t trust them. He can’t trust anyone. If these people mean him harm - and the more time passes, the more it begins to seem like they do - than he would have to think of a way to fight his way out. If they don’t, he will have to convince them to hand over his sister, or to let him leave to find her. There’s nothing else, it seems, that he can do.
He paced the windowless, tiny room, unable to sleep. There was too much on his mind, too many thoughts and not enough room in his head for all of them.
They had asked him who he was, where he had come from. The eyes of the blonde man who had come to see him were probing, suspicious. The eyes of his companion were venomous, accusatory.
Who do they think he is? What do they suspect him of?
Jack doesn’t know and he can’t guess. Maybe his father had been right all along. Maybe he does need to learn to let things go. Maybe this has all been an enormous, dangerous mistake.
He sits down on the ground, his back against the wall, and puts his head in his hands. He doesn’t know if he’s made of stern enough stuff to be able to handle this. He wonders if he ought to just resign himself to the fact that he may never find Claire, that he may not live to see tomorrow.
But he doesn’t, and he can’t. No matter how hopeless the situation seems, no matter how long and dark the road ahead looks from where he’s standing, Jack knows himself well enough to know that there was no way he could let Claire go, no way he could give up hope.
*
Sawyer leaves his room for good at around seven in the morning. It’s easily the earliest he’s been awake in a very long time. It’s the first night he’s gone without sleep in as long as he can remember.
The lobby is dotted with the few early risers among the group, including Ana, who is having what appears, from where Sawyer is standing, to be a heated discussion with Sayid. Sawyer clenches his jaw and barrels on down the stairs.
“You just can’t take bein’ told ‘no’, can you?” Sawyer interrupts, rudely. Ana turns to face him and clenches her own jaw in reply. She crosses her arms over her chest and Sayid closes his eyes and shakes his head, sighs at them like he’s sick of them both.
“You don’t seem to want to face the fact that that guy could be dangerous,” Ana replied, stubbornly.
“And you don’t see to want to face the fact that you’re jumping the damn gun for no other reason than you want somebody to punshin,” Sawyer fires back. At a different time, in a different place, Ana might have punched him. At a different time, in a different place, he might have returned the favor. But now wasn’t time for a fight - with anything other than their words.
“Sawyer,” Sayid interrupts, attempting to put an end to their back-and-forth, knowing very well the lengths it could get to if left unchecked. “I was just explaining to Ana that it is not yet the time to begin interrogating…” Sayid pauses and sighs, tiredly. “I’m sorry, I cannot seem to remember what you said this man’s name was.”
“I didn’t,” Ana replies, testily, obviously very discontent at being shot down at all angles. Sawyer narrows his eyes.
“He says it’s Jack Shephard,” Sawyer answers Sayid, who’s face suddenly takes on an unexpected appearance of complete surprise and astonishment. Before Sawyer even knows what’s happening, Sayid is running down toward the stairwell and he has to sprint to keep up - with Ana hot on both of their heels.
*
“Get away from the door, now,” Sayid demands the second he entered the basement room where Locke and Eko stand in front of the closet door where they are keeping Jack, chatting absently with one another. They start at the unexpected, demanding tone of Sayid’s voice. They glance at each other, confused, but move aside as Sayid’s momentum never breaks.
Sawyer and Ana enter the room, breathless, a few moments behind Sayid, and watch as he unlocks the door and yanks it open.
Jack looks so small, sitting with his back against the wall, his head down and buried in his arms. He looks tired, defeated - two emotions that Sayid has rarely seen in Jack and finds disconcerting.
“More questions?” he asks, without lifting his head to look up. Sayid shakes his head and curses that Jack has been put through this while, at the same time, wondering what he’s doing here at all. There were so many questions to be asked, and answered, but, if there’s anything that they have now, it’s an overabundance of time.
“Jack,” Sayid says, simply, and Jack’s head shoots up in an instant. He looks up at Sayid as if he’s seeing a ghost. His mouth hangs open, agape, and nothing comes out - not even breath.
“Oh my god,’ he finally says, in a voice almost to quiet to be heard. He shakes his head, marveling as he looks Sayid up and down. “You’re alive.”
Sayid nods, unable to keep a small smile from his face. He had known all along that Christian would use his disappearance to tout the dangers of the surface, and the lack of his return as a certain sign of his death. Christian was predictably grandiose that way.
“Yes,” he answered. “I am.”
“So, you two know each other, huh?” Sawyer asks, as if he’s annoyed at being left in the dark. Actually, there’s no “as if”. He is annoyed. Ana stands beside him in the doorway, seeming aggravated at being wrong about Jack (or wrong at all). Locke and Eko are behind the both of them, watching and listening intently - as is their way.
“Yes,” Sayid confirms. “We do.” He turns back to face Jack. “Jack is from below ground as well.” There’s so much more too it than that, but now isn’t the time for long explanations.
“No wonder he’s so damn pale,” Sawyer muses aloud, and under his breath. Ana turns to him with a sour face. He ignores her and she turns her sour expression back on Sayid and Jack as they continue to exchange the meaningful glance of two old friends who have gone a very long time without seeing on another. Sayid reaches his hand out to Jack.
“You don’t have to stay in here anymore,” Sayid tells him. Jack seems to breath a small sigh of relief as he grips Sayid's hand in his and is pulled, shakily, to his feet.
*
Sawyer calls an emergency meeting, brings everyone that matters into the largest conference room the hotel has to offer shortly after Jack is freed from his broom-closet prison and they have a whole new set of problems to address. They seem, by an large, apprehensive and distrusting, but Sawyer had expected that.
So, he had abdicated control of the meeting to Sayid. Sawyer can’t figure out which way is up at the moment, or who the newcomer to their makeshift society is. But Sayid does. Sawyer sits back in his chair and takes in things from another angle as Sayid stands up from his chair at the head of the table (with Jack in the chair to his right, looking timid as all hell).
“Six months ago, I left my home in a small society that has lived below the surface for nearly two hundred years,” Sayid declares. “You know this story. I have explained this before. This man,” Sayid gestures to Jack and Sawyer thinks that, if Jack could will his chair to swallow him whole, he would. “is Jack Shephard. I have known him since I was very young. I will allow him to explain the situation further.”
Sayid sits back down and looks to Jack, who stands, uncomfortably. He lets out a sigh and shakes his head. “About a week ago, I left the place that I’ve lived all my life to come up here - to a place that I’ve heard was not only dangerous but uninhabitable since I was a child. I came up here to look for my sister. She was kidnapped, just like Nikki. And I don’t know by who. Or why. I just know that I…I need to find her. I need to bring her, and her baby, back home.”
Jack falls silent and takes a long breath. He glances away from the unfamiliar faces down to the conference table before sitting back down in his seat.
“Well,” Sawyer says, rising from his seat and finding the attention of the room shifting back to him. That was certainly a lot to take in, and it will take longer than ten seconds to make sense of it all. What he does know is that he may be able to help Jack, or at the very least give him answers. He also knows, however, that it’s not going to happen all at once. “I think we might be able to get a couple of your questions answered for you. If there’s something you can offer us in return.”
Everyone turns back to Jack and he becomes flustered. “I…I-I don’t…”
“Jack is a doctor,” Sayid offers for him. Sawyer nods, liking the sound of that. Of all of the things that he would have accepted from Jack, that one’s near the top of the list.
“Yeah, that’ll do,” Sawyer replies. Jack finds himself sitting back in his chair, feeling confused, disconnected. He feels as though he has gone from zero to one hundred in a second flat. He feels like he's still catching up.
“Jack, are you feeling alright?” Sayid asks. They eyes on Jack aren’t helping the situation, and he leans his head down in his hand and rubs his temples. He’s starting to feel dizzy.
“I, uh,” he says, standing irrationally. “I ran out of food a few days ago. And water a little after that.”
“It’s a fuckin’ wasteland out there,” Sawyer comments, with more concern than he knew he felt. Sayid rises from his chair and attempts to hold Jack up as he wobbled. Sawyer isn’t far behind, holding onto Jack’s shoulder, trying to keep him steady. “You tellin’ me you haven’t eaten in two days?”
“Uh-huh,” Jack says, as he loses his balance for good, falling dizzily to the ground, landing on his ass and closing his eyes.
There is a great commotion around him but he doesn’t see what’s going on. He feels two hands on his shoulders and can only assume that Sayid and Sawyer have followed him to the ground.
“I’ll get him some water,” a female voice says, twinged with a British accent. Jack tries to remember her. She was the only other woman in the room. Pretty. Hanging off the arm of a serious looking, dark-haired man with a beard.
His head spins a little as he is handed a cup full of cold water. He drinks it like a man dying of thirst because he probably is. He actually manages to savor the cool sensation of the water sliding down his throat before he passes out.
*
Jack comes around slowly, lifts himself from the fog in his head and finds himself laying in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room that smells faintly of stale, long-since smoked cigarettes. His head still feels heavy, but his body seems to be glad for the rest. He’s far from rejuvenated, but that’s nothing a few more hours of sleep, a plate of food, and a shower can’t cure.
He sits up, gradually, and takes in his surroundings. It looks like he’s in a bedroom, which may have, at one point, been fairly elaborate at one point, but looks very lived-in now.
No one has yet explained to him where he is, but, between them finding out that he wasn’t a threat to them (why they had believed to begin with is another matter entirely) and Jack passing out, he has to admit, there wasn’t much time to ask questions or to have them answered.
His eyes scan the room until they land on a fairly surprising sight indeed: Sawyer sitting in a burgundy arm chair, eyes glued to the window, his expression miles and miles away. Jack doesn’t know what to say, if he should say anything, so he just sits, dumbly, until Sawyer looks up and notices that he's awake.
“Feelin’ any better?” Sawyer asks, his voice caught somewhere between gruff and warm. Jack doesn’t know if he’s still deciding whether or not to trust him, or if he’s still pretty well mired in the thoughts he’d been thinking not a minute ago. Rationally, it’s probably both.
Jack shrugs, because he really isn’t sure yet. He still feels like he’s catching up to everything that’s happening. “Where am I?” he asks, needing at least one question answered - if, for nothing else, than his own peace of mind.
“My room,” Sawyer answers. Jack screws up his face, confused. “It was the closest. Sayid and I brought you here, ‘bout forty-five minutes ago.”
“And you’ve been sitting there the whole time?” Jack asks, simultaneously disturbed and comforted by the thought.
“Hey, it’s my room,” Sawyer replies, attempting a joke, but there’s too much bite to it and Jack flinches slightly. Sawyer sighs. “Sorry,” he offers, then looks back out the window. “Got a lot on my mind.”
Jack nods as he watches Sawyer gaze out the window. “Yeah,” he says. “I know the feeling.” Because he does. It’s how he’s feeling now. It’s how he’s felt many a time before now. He sees the look on Sawyer’s face, in his eyes, and feels a kind of kinship to the man because he has worn both before.
“You should get some more sleep,” Sawyer suggests, with as much gentleness as he’s capable of at the moment (the amount of which still manages to surprise Jack because it’s more than he would have expected). “It’ll be dinner soon.”
“Dinner?” Jack asks, his mouth literally watering within seconds. Sawyer offers him a heartfelt chuckle and shakes his head at Jack’s almost child-like enthusiasm. Though, Sawyer rationalizes, if he had gone two days without food and water, then spend the night in an old broom closet in the basement of a hotel, he might be overly enthusiastic about the prospect of a hot meal too.
Nevertheless, Jack needs more sleep. So Sawyer says, “Easy, cowboy. Get a few more hours of sleep and you can have all the dinner you can eat.”
“Why are you taking care of me?” Jack asks, out of nowhere, as he lays his head back down onto the pillow. He sees a look of surprise pass over Sawyer’s face, as if Jack has taken him off-guard. It is soon replaced with an expression that Jack can’t quite distinguish, and then a wry smile and a small shrug.
“Let’s just say, I could use the good karma,” Sawyer answers, and Jack is suddenly reminded of all of the times that he had been on the outside of one of Sayid and Shannon’s inside jokes. Sawyer’s words don’t connect, but they seem to mean something to Sawyer, who repeats, “Sleep.”
Sure enough, Jack begins to feel the weight of his drooping eyelids and finally lets them fall, curling a little bit further into himself. He yawns and loudly and feels his exhaustion pulling him back under.
Sawyer watches all of this from his vantage point across the room, in his favorite old chair. He looks back out the window after a few moments of allowing himself to watch Jack’s prone form. What he sees on the other side of the glass is a stretch of barren land dotted here and there by old, run-down, hollowed out buildings. But mostly, it’s miles upon miles of barren desert. It’s cracked and baked by the sun. It looks like a battlefield, or rather, like no-man's land, the expanse between two warring trenches. And that is what it is.
That Jack had been able to survive out there for a week (and two days without food or water) is a testament to the kind of stuff the man is made of. And, if Sawyer believed in such things at all, he would say that it’s some kind of miracle too. But he doesn’t.
And looking at Jack while he sleeps reminds him of the reality of the situation, of the dangerous days to come. Of the fact that there’s nothing miraculous about this place.
Part Four