fic, Lost: A Weak Man Has Doubts Before a Decision, a Strong Man Afterwards (Jack/Boone) PG13
Uhm, I guess that this is my masochistic side taking action. But it just wanted to be written. Now I can concentrate on card games, duh.
Title: A Weak Man Has Doubts Before a Decision, a Strong Man Afterwards
Rating: PG13, but see the warnings
Pairing: light Jack/Boone
Word counting: 4131
Disclaimer: This obviously didn't happen. If Lost was mine, it would have happened. Probably.
Spoilers: For Do No Harm.
Summary: Jack doesn't let Boone go.
Warning: if the idea of someone going around with an amputated leg isn't your cup of tea, keep in mind that it's one of the main points here.
A/N: for lostfichallenge #70, Season 1. This is a total AU by the way. Implied that the second raft was never finished and the whole Others business never happened and of course that Jack did amputate the leg and that Boone didn't die. Now, I swear I'd really want to write them fluff. Why can't I? *sighs* Anyway, also for 12_stories #2, decisions. Hoping the ending isn't too far out. Title stolen from a Karl Kraus quote found after half an hour of searching for fitting titles. Nominated for Best Fic with an Unusual Pairing at lost_fic_awards, April 2008.
He had asked Jack to let go.
He should have known better. He should have known that Jack wasn’t ever going to let go. It just wasn’t in his nature.
But it should have been his decision.
It was just the last straw. Thinking about it, in his short but very exciting life, he had never really managed to take a decision for himself that turned out to be for good.
With Shannon, she had really been the one deciding. When he decided to go with John and keep that whole hatch secret, look where it had brought him.
At least, dying should have been his fucking decision, right?
It wasn’t.
The pain didn’t come when Jack brought the door down. No. When Jack brought the door down, it was just two seconds, a clean and sharp noise, something feeling like a light brushing of something metallic on his skin.
Then the pain came.
If Boone had ever thought he had screamed in his life, well, it was time to change idea.
It took a second or two and then his lips parted and he screamed. Really screamed.
He didn’t imagine he’d have such air in his remaining lung, the one which hadn’t collapsed. But his scream was piercing, raw, he could feel his lung burning and he couldn’t help it. His throat hurt as much as his leg and he couldn’t stop for a second, he just screamed and winced in pain, every single muscle feeling useless, every single bone feeling broken, a perpetual taste of blood in his mouth. He could feel somewhat tears escaping his eyes because at one point he tasted something bitter mixed up with the blood and he was still screaming.
He knew he sounded like the Marshal, only worse; well, he didn’t give a fuck. They could hear him all the way down to the beach for all he cared.
No one tried to stop him, even if he could faintly feel Jack applying something where his leg was.
Was.
He felt like throwing up, but well, that would just have been a problem.
When he stopped screaming and passed out, he didn’t even know whether he was going to wake up.
Maybe it’d have been better if he didn’t.
--
Boone wakes up though.
He wakes up three days later and Sun tells him that he’s going to live.
He’s stable, seemingly. He doesn’t get a fucking thing of what is happening around him except that Shannon is fucking crying over him and he knows her hands are on his shoulders but he can barely feel them.
Later, Sun is going to tell him that they had given him most of the morphine they could put together, also thanks to Sawyer’s stash being emptied and he won’t wonder, then, why he felt so goddamn out of the loop and he couldn’t even form a proper sentence.
--
Morphine was good, in retrospective.
As long as he was high on that, he hadn’t realized what he had lost in the process.
--
His face is the only part of his body which looks still mostly intact. Sure, there is a quite ugly scar on his forehead, but he’d have happily traded a face full of scars to avoid all the rest.
His chest? When he had seen it the first time, he had thought about some slasher movies he had gone to see with his friends in his teenage days. Now it’s better because it scarred. But most of it is just a disgusting, shapeless scar that follows the line of that fucking cut. His lung is not ever going to work properly anymore and some nights he really has trouble breathing, but well, he could have settled for that. He had a stash of Sun’s leaves, for that.
It’s the leg. The right leg.
Or better, his former right leg, since now there isn’t anything under the knee.
The first time he saw it, he threw up. What, he doesn’t even know because it wasn’t like he had eaten anything to throw up recently, but he threw up and he got the urge to every time he looked down at it.
The worst thing of all was that he could feel it there, even if it wasn’t, most of the time.
Not to talk about the rest of the mess. Sun said that it was a miracle that his spine wasn’t hurt, but Boone doesn’t really think it’s much better, since it took a week before he could even fucking sit up.
At least if he had lost both he’d have gained some equilibrium out of it, he thinks trying to make some kind of fun out of it.
It’s the worst joke ever and he knows it. He knows it indeed.
Sayid forges him a pair of crutches two weeks after he wakes up, when it seems like he’s fit enough at least to stand.
Of course the first time he tries to walk with them he falls down because he can’t keep his balance and all the hurt goes on his left knee. It takes all of his force of will not to scream again.
Sometimes he thinks about what would his mother say, if she saw him like this. But he feels uncomfortable just thinking about it and he knows he’s probably not going to see her for a long time. Not like he cares.
--
Since Shannon left New York, he has wished for her to give him some kind of recognition. Not actually to show that she cares about him because that would have been too much, but just some recognition once in a while. Maybe a kind word or two. No more than that.
She visits every day when he’s still at the caves and either she spends the time crying or he’s still high on the damn morphine or both and he never really gets what happens even when Jack stops giving him the meds.
Then he’s at the beach and she’s more or less always there, looking at him like he was really God’s friggin’ gift to humanity, telling him every ten seconds that it’s a miracle that he’s even there and she really doesn’t care for the rest and oh, she’s so sorry and she was an idiot, it shouldn’t have taken that to realize whatever she realized.
At first it feels good, surprisingly good, but after four days he starts to feel crowded and the last thing he wants is for her to be miserable because for how relieved she is when she comes, she’s damn miserable and Boone can read her like no one else.
Which is why one day he manages to talk to Sayid and prays him to keep her as busy as possible, he gets a nod which is compassionate enough and from then she only comes in the evenings.
He’s suddenly thankful for Sayid’s existence. He’s also one of the few people who doesn’t talk to him like he’s suddenly become a magnet for all the worst kind of sympathy stares. Sure, he actually talks to him once in a while and he’s much more polite than he ever was before, but it’s alright. Sayid is not the problem.
--
He understood that it was going to be hell the day when he came back on the beach, struggling with his crutches, the wound on his chest barely showing through one shirt, Shannon, Sayid and Jack following him ready to run if he stumbled too much.
Sawyer was first in line. Their eyes met and for a second Boone had seen that he was going to throw him a nickname.
Oh, he wished for one, so much that it ached. But then Sawyer’s head shook, his eyes became almost sad for a second and he turned away.
If even Sawyer could spare him pity, that was going to be much worse than he could have ever thought.
--
Charlie and Hurley do talk to him, sure, but they look so weird and embarrassed when they do that Boone really wishes they’d leave him alone after two minutes.
Claire of course has barely spoken a word or two to him but well, it’s understandable. She just had a child. Exactly in the same moment Jack was amputating his leg, or something similar.
Boone can’t even sleep at night since their tents are near. He can’t stay in the caves, though. The bare idea of ever spending a night there makes him want to throw up as much as looking at his leg does.
So, he snaps a lot during the day. Fine. What do you want, when your leg is missing, laying on your back hurts, doing it on your stomach isn’t even an option and you sleep as much as Claire does?
He knows that he isn’t supposed to feel bitter. He sees in the faces around him that no one understands why he isn’t damn glad of being alive. If only they knew.
Sun and Jin seemingly made up and she’s one of the few people that understands more or less what he was going through. She has told him that before Jack did the amputation she had told him he should have just let go. She told Boone in order to apologize, but he hadn’t wanted apologies. He doesn’t tell her why; he knows that she knows he agrees with her.
She manages to get Jin to save him a couple of fishes every time he catches some; Boone is secretly thankful that he doesn’t speak English because the look of uttermost pity Jin sends him whenever he looks at him is as much as he needs. Words are superfluous.
He has never talked much with Kate and the situation doesn’t change now; but she doesn’t spare him the pitying glances whenever they exchange a word or two before she runs back to the caves.
She runs back.
Running seems a foreign concept to his brain, these days.
Michael once apologized for not helping Jack when...
Boone had stopped him before he could say it and answered that there really were no hard feelings. Hell, he wouldn’t have had the stomach to assist, either. He didn’t really need another witness of what happened that night, for that matter. His interactions with Michael aren’t frequent, after, but hey, he could have placed a bet on it.
He hasn’t seen Locke once, since he was back to the beach. Once he asked Sayid and Sayid had answered that he was pretty much avoiding the place.
“I’m sorry,” he had said.
“I’m not,” Boone had answered, and the conversation ended there.
--
Nonetheless, when Jack comes from the caves and checks on him, once every two days or so, he pretends to be fine. He pretends to be alright.
Because the first time he was ready to snap at him, wanting to throw in his face every damn thing, but he couldn’t do it.
Jack had found him the first time while he was kind of taking a walk, if we want to describe it like that. It was a fairly decent day, he felt kind of better than he usually did and he was going around with more ease than last time Jack saw him, he guessed. As soon as Jack called his name, he had turned, ready for dealing the blow. Who cared if all the beach was there.
But then Jack was smiling at him, there wasn’t an inch of pity there, and he looked so damn happy that he was doing fine and that he was around and that he was getting adjusted that Boone’s words died in his mouth and he had settled for a couple of absolutely idiotic and random answers because he was taken aback from it.
He found out he couldn’t do it.
--
Point is, he actually does make some progress, not that he notices because to him it’s always a degree of the worst nightmare he has ever found himself in; he has to admit it, though.
The scars don’t fade and he still has the impression that his leg is still there, but he moves around with more ease. His mood is never exactly cheerful and he’s polite and detached at his best, but it becomes slightly better.
But Jack notices all the changes, even the smallest ones; and each of them always seem to make him so glad and relieved that Boone feels a lump in his throat form every time Jack congratulates him on something.
It doesn’t take much to realize it. He’s back to fucking square one.
Before that fucking plane, everything he did was in order to help. To feel useful. To feel like he was doing something good for someone else. Not for him, that had never kind of been in the equation since his last night in Sydney. Or in order to save Shannon’s pretty ass but whatever.
It was a brilliant policy; so brilliant that it earned him only failures and his current state. Just because he had to fucking please other people.
He had sworn he was never, ever going to do something like that again.
Then he finds out that he actually asks Shannon to help with the physical exercises Jack gave him for his remaining leg. That he follows Sun’s advice on the yoga breathing or some shit, he can’t remember the name, to help his fully functioning lung and use his other one as much as he can. He doesn’t stay put in his tent but goes out more often than not and doesn’t care if most people turn their eyes in the opposite direction. He’s way past paying attention.
But he doesn’t do it for himself. He couldn’t care less.
He does it for that smile he gets when Jack comes and sees him, for the congratulations he gives him, for that pat on the back which has absolutely no pity whatsoever in it.
He does it because, telling it straight, Jack looks proud of him every time and it’s still something he craves too much to renounce it.
--
After a month, he almost thinks he made it. That his condition is not important. That people have gotten adjusted.
Then Walt comes and everything crashes down and hits him as hard as nothing has hit him since he was back.
Oh, he gets that the intentions were good. He doesn’t really blame Walt for this, he knows that he was just trying to help. He appreciates it, indeed.
One day, Boone is sitting on the beach, staring at the sea; Walt comes near and asks if he’s up to a backgammon game.
Boone accepts, of course; he doesn’t have many distractions and one is always welcome. Problem is, he doesn’t know how to play backgammon. Walt says that it isn’t a problem, it’s really easy, he’ll explain the rules. It is fairly easy, to be sincere.
He grasps the rules so quickly that when Boone wins at the first shot and Walt congratulates him on beginner's luck, Boone manages a smile and waits until Walt is gone to crawl back into his tent and breaking down crying harder than he could ever remember crying.
He isn’t an idiot and the game was of an easy level; so easy that he had seen Walt deliberately making a wrong move in the end. He knew that Walt was good at it, it was like, Craphole Island’s first metropolitan legend; if he had just played badly he wouldn’t have noticed though, surely not at his first game.
But that move had been obviously wrong even for a beginner like Boone was.
Walt had let him win and it was all for nothing. Things weren’t ever going to go back to some sort of normal again, not if a ten year old kid felt the need to let him win at a fucking backgammon game only because he survived when he wasn’t supposed to. He could take the pity, he could take it from Sawyer, he could take it from everyone, but this? This was just too much.
He feels pathetic, just pathetic. He doesn’t want to cry like a damn schoolgirl, but he never did since he woke up without a leg and with an open wound in his chest and it looks like once one starts, trying to stop is useless. He bites his lip in order to be less noisy as possible, even if well, Claire’s baby’s cries are covering every other sound right now; he tries to hold his chest to stop it from shaking and he can’t because touching that scar hurts, hurts so much he can’t even begin to try.
He doesn’t even try to look at his right leg. If he did, it’d just be worse. He doesn’t even have something to break and he knows no one is ever going to try to come near his tent if he made a show out of this.
He already feels to much like a drama queen for his liking and so he tries just to be as quiet as possible. He’s suddenly thankful that Claire’s son is still crying and that half of the camp is running towards her tent. It’s good. No one is ever going to notice.
It’s so pathetic, really. Such a girlish thing to do. He retreats his left leg to his chest, almost feeling his right one; when he grabs for them, on the right side there’s only air.
He just cries harder.
--
When Shannon comes half an hour after, he doesn’t even let her in and tells her to leave him the fuck alone.
It was too long of a sentence for his voice not to give out what he has been up to. He only hopes she’ll keep it to herself and keep everyone else the fuck off, too.
--
“Boone?”
Oh, fuck. Sure, he should have expected it. She’d have done it, of course.
Jack is just the only person he doesn’t want to see right now.
“Can I... can I come in?”
“Yeah, sure,” he manages to answer. Thankfully the crying stopped, but he feels completely drained and his face has to be the worst mess in history.
He doesn’t raise his eyes when Jack comes in and sits.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“This isn’t nothing.”
“Well, I guess I am allowed sooner or later, right?”
He doesn’t mean to sound so harsh. He just can’t keep his head straight and he doesn’t want to say that the breakdown came for such a petty reason.
“Yeah, sure, but there has to have been something.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Boone, please, just...”
Oh well. He really wants it? Wonderful. He’s going to give him it all. He raises his head a bit, even if he doesn’t turn towards Jack.
“Alright. You want to know, I’ll tell you.”
He takes a breath. He’s going to get through what he has to say, Jack will hopefully get the hell out and he’s going to keep on being wonderfully miserable.
He can do this.
“So, yeah, there was something. It’s stupid. It’s kind of childish, too. But it was just the last straw.”
“The last...”
“Please let me finish. So, today Walt comes and asks to play backgammon. Which I do and in the end he makes a deliberately wrong move in order to let me win. You can say that it was a nice thing and maybe it even was but you know what, I’m sick of this. I can’t take it anymore. There isn’t almost anyone who doesn’t look at me like I was the Marshal’s ghost. I don’t want anyone to let me win at backgammon, if Sawyer started to call me names again I could kiss him. Hell, you know what, it’d be better if everyone just went and ignored me altogether.”
He takes a breath, trying to calm down. He doesn’t need to snap. He doesn’t want to snap.
“Because you know what, this already sucks but if they just left me alone about it, I could almost even see the positive side of it.”
“Boone, you’re alive.”
Jack says it putting way too much emphasis on the last word. This is when he turns and finally looks at him, knowing that his eyes are probably a disgusting mixture of red, white and blue, that there are probably still traces of tears on his face. Jack looks genuinely taken aback from his lack of seeing the positive side of his situation.
“That’s just the point, Jack. That’s just the point. I never asked you to save my life.”
He can see that he has delivered a blow, and a hard one.
Jack lowers his head, biting his lip, clenching his hands in his lap. He knows Boone is right. He had never decided to keep on living like that. it hadn’t been his decision.
But then Boone feels something else altogether aching somewhere inside and he regrets having said it. Because he knows everything there is to know about Jack, it’s not like he hasn’t spent two weeks inside his cave for nothing, not to count the time before the accident.
He knows that Jack takes everything too hard on himself. He knows that he doesn’t need to feel guilty because he didn’t let him die.
“I mean...” he says trying to find something to tone it down. Fuck, now he is trying to console Jack. Now, that’s fun.
“It isn’t that I’d rather be dead. Well, not exactly that. But this... this is just too hard, it’s difficult, I never... I mean, I already have to deal with this, I can’t deal with them. I just can’t, Jack.”
Jack doesn’t say anything, but then turns towards him, his eyes almost vibrating, a hand going to Boone’s shoulder.
“I couldn’t.”
Just two words, but they hit him like a punch.
“What...?”
“I couldn’t let you die. I just couldn’t. It was just... I realized I should have respected your decision but right then... Boone, I’ve never been good at letting go. Well, that’d be an euphemism. I’ve never been able to let go.”
Boone nods. He has figured it out by now. Jack’s hand doesn’t leave his shoulder and Boone prays it stays there because fuck, he thought he was better off alone but he’s damn helpless and finds out he needs it.
“Just... I’m sorry that you had to bear the consequences.”
And that was wrong, just wrong all over again.
“Jack, no. Don’t... don’t feel sorry for it. I just... it’s not your fault. You did your job. And I know. I mean, about letting go. A thing or two. I didn’t expect this to be easy but...”
But it’s worse than I could ever have thought, he adds without saying it.
“You are doing great.”
He has to laugh at it. it’s short and more out of incredulity than anything, but he does. It’s a start.
“Don’t lie. I’m totally failing at this.”
“You aren’t. Boone, I know it isn’t easy. You know, not having a breakdown all this time was remarkable.”
“Jack, why couldn’t you do it?”
“What?”
“I’m not... blaming you or anything. I just... I just want to know why you couldn’t let me go.”
“I don’t think I can begin to tell you.”
“Jack, you owe me that, at least.”
Jack has to nod at it.
“Yeah. Guess I do. Well, it’s just that... oh, hell.”
Suddenly Jack’s hands go to his cheeks, their touch firm but delicate; then Jack’s lips are covering his own, not really kissing but not brushing either. There isn’t much pressure, just enough to make this more than a peck but not enough to make it a proper kiss. But it’s sweet, Jack’s lips are warm over his own, it feels good. For the three seconds it lasts.
Then Jack retreats and stands up. Boone opens his mouth to say something, but Jack shakes his head.
“Don’t... just, don’t say a thing. If you want to see me tomorrow at the caves... well, I’ll be around. And I guess I could actually give you an explanation. Just... sleep on it, alright?”
Boone nods, too shocked to say anything else, watching Jack leave.
What the hell was it for? Even the rocks know that Jack has feelings for Kate.
Doesn’t he?
What the hell was that for? , he keeps on asking himself, because he can’t really wrap his head around it.
He brings two trembling fingers to his lips, tracing them lightly. It’s already too late to stop it when he finds out that the corners of his mouth are turned slightly upward.
End.
Title: A Weak Man Has Doubts Before a Decision, a Strong Man Afterwards
Rating: PG13, but see the warnings
Pairing: light Jack/Boone
Word counting: 4131
Disclaimer: This obviously didn't happen. If Lost was mine, it would have happened. Probably.
Spoilers: For Do No Harm.
Summary: Jack doesn't let Boone go.
Warning: if the idea of someone going around with an amputated leg isn't your cup of tea, keep in mind that it's one of the main points here.
A/N: for lostfichallenge #70, Season 1. This is a total AU by the way. Implied that the second raft was never finished and the whole Others business never happened and of course that Jack did amputate the leg and that Boone didn't die. Now, I swear I'd really want to write them fluff. Why can't I? *sighs* Anyway, also for 12_stories #2, decisions. Hoping the ending isn't too far out. Title stolen from a Karl Kraus quote found after half an hour of searching for fitting titles. Nominated for Best Fic with an Unusual Pairing at lost_fic_awards, April 2008.
He had asked Jack to let go.
He should have known better. He should have known that Jack wasn’t ever going to let go. It just wasn’t in his nature.
But it should have been his decision.
It was just the last straw. Thinking about it, in his short but very exciting life, he had never really managed to take a decision for himself that turned out to be for good.
With Shannon, she had really been the one deciding. When he decided to go with John and keep that whole hatch secret, look where it had brought him.
At least, dying should have been his fucking decision, right?
It wasn’t.
The pain didn’t come when Jack brought the door down. No. When Jack brought the door down, it was just two seconds, a clean and sharp noise, something feeling like a light brushing of something metallic on his skin.
Then the pain came.
If Boone had ever thought he had screamed in his life, well, it was time to change idea.
It took a second or two and then his lips parted and he screamed. Really screamed.
He didn’t imagine he’d have such air in his remaining lung, the one which hadn’t collapsed. But his scream was piercing, raw, he could feel his lung burning and he couldn’t help it. His throat hurt as much as his leg and he couldn’t stop for a second, he just screamed and winced in pain, every single muscle feeling useless, every single bone feeling broken, a perpetual taste of blood in his mouth. He could feel somewhat tears escaping his eyes because at one point he tasted something bitter mixed up with the blood and he was still screaming.
He knew he sounded like the Marshal, only worse; well, he didn’t give a fuck. They could hear him all the way down to the beach for all he cared.
No one tried to stop him, even if he could faintly feel Jack applying something where his leg was.
Was.
He felt like throwing up, but well, that would just have been a problem.
When he stopped screaming and passed out, he didn’t even know whether he was going to wake up.
Maybe it’d have been better if he didn’t.
--
Boone wakes up though.
He wakes up three days later and Sun tells him that he’s going to live.
He’s stable, seemingly. He doesn’t get a fucking thing of what is happening around him except that Shannon is fucking crying over him and he knows her hands are on his shoulders but he can barely feel them.
Later, Sun is going to tell him that they had given him most of the morphine they could put together, also thanks to Sawyer’s stash being emptied and he won’t wonder, then, why he felt so goddamn out of the loop and he couldn’t even form a proper sentence.
--
Morphine was good, in retrospective.
As long as he was high on that, he hadn’t realized what he had lost in the process.
--
His face is the only part of his body which looks still mostly intact. Sure, there is a quite ugly scar on his forehead, but he’d have happily traded a face full of scars to avoid all the rest.
His chest? When he had seen it the first time, he had thought about some slasher movies he had gone to see with his friends in his teenage days. Now it’s better because it scarred. But most of it is just a disgusting, shapeless scar that follows the line of that fucking cut. His lung is not ever going to work properly anymore and some nights he really has trouble breathing, but well, he could have settled for that. He had a stash of Sun’s leaves, for that.
It’s the leg. The right leg.
Or better, his former right leg, since now there isn’t anything under the knee.
The first time he saw it, he threw up. What, he doesn’t even know because it wasn’t like he had eaten anything to throw up recently, but he threw up and he got the urge to every time he looked down at it.
The worst thing of all was that he could feel it there, even if it wasn’t, most of the time.
Not to talk about the rest of the mess. Sun said that it was a miracle that his spine wasn’t hurt, but Boone doesn’t really think it’s much better, since it took a week before he could even fucking sit up.
At least if he had lost both he’d have gained some equilibrium out of it, he thinks trying to make some kind of fun out of it.
It’s the worst joke ever and he knows it. He knows it indeed.
Sayid forges him a pair of crutches two weeks after he wakes up, when it seems like he’s fit enough at least to stand.
Of course the first time he tries to walk with them he falls down because he can’t keep his balance and all the hurt goes on his left knee. It takes all of his force of will not to scream again.
Sometimes he thinks about what would his mother say, if she saw him like this. But he feels uncomfortable just thinking about it and he knows he’s probably not going to see her for a long time. Not like he cares.
--
Since Shannon left New York, he has wished for her to give him some kind of recognition. Not actually to show that she cares about him because that would have been too much, but just some recognition once in a while. Maybe a kind word or two. No more than that.
She visits every day when he’s still at the caves and either she spends the time crying or he’s still high on the damn morphine or both and he never really gets what happens even when Jack stops giving him the meds.
Then he’s at the beach and she’s more or less always there, looking at him like he was really God’s friggin’ gift to humanity, telling him every ten seconds that it’s a miracle that he’s even there and she really doesn’t care for the rest and oh, she’s so sorry and she was an idiot, it shouldn’t have taken that to realize whatever she realized.
At first it feels good, surprisingly good, but after four days he starts to feel crowded and the last thing he wants is for her to be miserable because for how relieved she is when she comes, she’s damn miserable and Boone can read her like no one else.
Which is why one day he manages to talk to Sayid and prays him to keep her as busy as possible, he gets a nod which is compassionate enough and from then she only comes in the evenings.
He’s suddenly thankful for Sayid’s existence. He’s also one of the few people who doesn’t talk to him like he’s suddenly become a magnet for all the worst kind of sympathy stares. Sure, he actually talks to him once in a while and he’s much more polite than he ever was before, but it’s alright. Sayid is not the problem.
--
He understood that it was going to be hell the day when he came back on the beach, struggling with his crutches, the wound on his chest barely showing through one shirt, Shannon, Sayid and Jack following him ready to run if he stumbled too much.
Sawyer was first in line. Their eyes met and for a second Boone had seen that he was going to throw him a nickname.
Oh, he wished for one, so much that it ached. But then Sawyer’s head shook, his eyes became almost sad for a second and he turned away.
If even Sawyer could spare him pity, that was going to be much worse than he could have ever thought.
--
Charlie and Hurley do talk to him, sure, but they look so weird and embarrassed when they do that Boone really wishes they’d leave him alone after two minutes.
Claire of course has barely spoken a word or two to him but well, it’s understandable. She just had a child. Exactly in the same moment Jack was amputating his leg, or something similar.
Boone can’t even sleep at night since their tents are near. He can’t stay in the caves, though. The bare idea of ever spending a night there makes him want to throw up as much as looking at his leg does.
So, he snaps a lot during the day. Fine. What do you want, when your leg is missing, laying on your back hurts, doing it on your stomach isn’t even an option and you sleep as much as Claire does?
He knows that he isn’t supposed to feel bitter. He sees in the faces around him that no one understands why he isn’t damn glad of being alive. If only they knew.
Sun and Jin seemingly made up and she’s one of the few people that understands more or less what he was going through. She has told him that before Jack did the amputation she had told him he should have just let go. She told Boone in order to apologize, but he hadn’t wanted apologies. He doesn’t tell her why; he knows that she knows he agrees with her.
She manages to get Jin to save him a couple of fishes every time he catches some; Boone is secretly thankful that he doesn’t speak English because the look of uttermost pity Jin sends him whenever he looks at him is as much as he needs. Words are superfluous.
He has never talked much with Kate and the situation doesn’t change now; but she doesn’t spare him the pitying glances whenever they exchange a word or two before she runs back to the caves.
She runs back.
Running seems a foreign concept to his brain, these days.
Michael once apologized for not helping Jack when...
Boone had stopped him before he could say it and answered that there really were no hard feelings. Hell, he wouldn’t have had the stomach to assist, either. He didn’t really need another witness of what happened that night, for that matter. His interactions with Michael aren’t frequent, after, but hey, he could have placed a bet on it.
He hasn’t seen Locke once, since he was back to the beach. Once he asked Sayid and Sayid had answered that he was pretty much avoiding the place.
“I’m sorry,” he had said.
“I’m not,” Boone had answered, and the conversation ended there.
--
Nonetheless, when Jack comes from the caves and checks on him, once every two days or so, he pretends to be fine. He pretends to be alright.
Because the first time he was ready to snap at him, wanting to throw in his face every damn thing, but he couldn’t do it.
Jack had found him the first time while he was kind of taking a walk, if we want to describe it like that. It was a fairly decent day, he felt kind of better than he usually did and he was going around with more ease than last time Jack saw him, he guessed. As soon as Jack called his name, he had turned, ready for dealing the blow. Who cared if all the beach was there.
But then Jack was smiling at him, there wasn’t an inch of pity there, and he looked so damn happy that he was doing fine and that he was around and that he was getting adjusted that Boone’s words died in his mouth and he had settled for a couple of absolutely idiotic and random answers because he was taken aback from it.
He found out he couldn’t do it.
--
Point is, he actually does make some progress, not that he notices because to him it’s always a degree of the worst nightmare he has ever found himself in; he has to admit it, though.
The scars don’t fade and he still has the impression that his leg is still there, but he moves around with more ease. His mood is never exactly cheerful and he’s polite and detached at his best, but it becomes slightly better.
But Jack notices all the changes, even the smallest ones; and each of them always seem to make him so glad and relieved that Boone feels a lump in his throat form every time Jack congratulates him on something.
It doesn’t take much to realize it. He’s back to fucking square one.
Before that fucking plane, everything he did was in order to help. To feel useful. To feel like he was doing something good for someone else. Not for him, that had never kind of been in the equation since his last night in Sydney. Or in order to save Shannon’s pretty ass but whatever.
It was a brilliant policy; so brilliant that it earned him only failures and his current state. Just because he had to fucking please other people.
He had sworn he was never, ever going to do something like that again.
Then he finds out that he actually asks Shannon to help with the physical exercises Jack gave him for his remaining leg. That he follows Sun’s advice on the yoga breathing or some shit, he can’t remember the name, to help his fully functioning lung and use his other one as much as he can. He doesn’t stay put in his tent but goes out more often than not and doesn’t care if most people turn their eyes in the opposite direction. He’s way past paying attention.
But he doesn’t do it for himself. He couldn’t care less.
He does it for that smile he gets when Jack comes and sees him, for the congratulations he gives him, for that pat on the back which has absolutely no pity whatsoever in it.
He does it because, telling it straight, Jack looks proud of him every time and it’s still something he craves too much to renounce it.
--
After a month, he almost thinks he made it. That his condition is not important. That people have gotten adjusted.
Then Walt comes and everything crashes down and hits him as hard as nothing has hit him since he was back.
Oh, he gets that the intentions were good. He doesn’t really blame Walt for this, he knows that he was just trying to help. He appreciates it, indeed.
One day, Boone is sitting on the beach, staring at the sea; Walt comes near and asks if he’s up to a backgammon game.
Boone accepts, of course; he doesn’t have many distractions and one is always welcome. Problem is, he doesn’t know how to play backgammon. Walt says that it isn’t a problem, it’s really easy, he’ll explain the rules. It is fairly easy, to be sincere.
He grasps the rules so quickly that when Boone wins at the first shot and Walt congratulates him on beginner's luck, Boone manages a smile and waits until Walt is gone to crawl back into his tent and breaking down crying harder than he could ever remember crying.
He isn’t an idiot and the game was of an easy level; so easy that he had seen Walt deliberately making a wrong move in the end. He knew that Walt was good at it, it was like, Craphole Island’s first metropolitan legend; if he had just played badly he wouldn’t have noticed though, surely not at his first game.
But that move had been obviously wrong even for a beginner like Boone was.
Walt had let him win and it was all for nothing. Things weren’t ever going to go back to some sort of normal again, not if a ten year old kid felt the need to let him win at a fucking backgammon game only because he survived when he wasn’t supposed to. He could take the pity, he could take it from Sawyer, he could take it from everyone, but this? This was just too much.
He feels pathetic, just pathetic. He doesn’t want to cry like a damn schoolgirl, but he never did since he woke up without a leg and with an open wound in his chest and it looks like once one starts, trying to stop is useless. He bites his lip in order to be less noisy as possible, even if well, Claire’s baby’s cries are covering every other sound right now; he tries to hold his chest to stop it from shaking and he can’t because touching that scar hurts, hurts so much he can’t even begin to try.
He doesn’t even try to look at his right leg. If he did, it’d just be worse. He doesn’t even have something to break and he knows no one is ever going to try to come near his tent if he made a show out of this.
He already feels to much like a drama queen for his liking and so he tries just to be as quiet as possible. He’s suddenly thankful that Claire’s son is still crying and that half of the camp is running towards her tent. It’s good. No one is ever going to notice.
It’s so pathetic, really. Such a girlish thing to do. He retreats his left leg to his chest, almost feeling his right one; when he grabs for them, on the right side there’s only air.
He just cries harder.
--
When Shannon comes half an hour after, he doesn’t even let her in and tells her to leave him the fuck alone.
It was too long of a sentence for his voice not to give out what he has been up to. He only hopes she’ll keep it to herself and keep everyone else the fuck off, too.
--
“Boone?”
Oh, fuck. Sure, he should have expected it. She’d have done it, of course.
Jack is just the only person he doesn’t want to see right now.
“Can I... can I come in?”
“Yeah, sure,” he manages to answer. Thankfully the crying stopped, but he feels completely drained and his face has to be the worst mess in history.
He doesn’t raise his eyes when Jack comes in and sits.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“This isn’t nothing.”
“Well, I guess I am allowed sooner or later, right?”
He doesn’t mean to sound so harsh. He just can’t keep his head straight and he doesn’t want to say that the breakdown came for such a petty reason.
“Yeah, sure, but there has to have been something.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Boone, please, just...”
Oh well. He really wants it? Wonderful. He’s going to give him it all. He raises his head a bit, even if he doesn’t turn towards Jack.
“Alright. You want to know, I’ll tell you.”
He takes a breath. He’s going to get through what he has to say, Jack will hopefully get the hell out and he’s going to keep on being wonderfully miserable.
He can do this.
“So, yeah, there was something. It’s stupid. It’s kind of childish, too. But it was just the last straw.”
“The last...”
“Please let me finish. So, today Walt comes and asks to play backgammon. Which I do and in the end he makes a deliberately wrong move in order to let me win. You can say that it was a nice thing and maybe it even was but you know what, I’m sick of this. I can’t take it anymore. There isn’t almost anyone who doesn’t look at me like I was the Marshal’s ghost. I don’t want anyone to let me win at backgammon, if Sawyer started to call me names again I could kiss him. Hell, you know what, it’d be better if everyone just went and ignored me altogether.”
He takes a breath, trying to calm down. He doesn’t need to snap. He doesn’t want to snap.
“Because you know what, this already sucks but if they just left me alone about it, I could almost even see the positive side of it.”
“Boone, you’re alive.”
Jack says it putting way too much emphasis on the last word. This is when he turns and finally looks at him, knowing that his eyes are probably a disgusting mixture of red, white and blue, that there are probably still traces of tears on his face. Jack looks genuinely taken aback from his lack of seeing the positive side of his situation.
“That’s just the point, Jack. That’s just the point. I never asked you to save my life.”
He can see that he has delivered a blow, and a hard one.
Jack lowers his head, biting his lip, clenching his hands in his lap. He knows Boone is right. He had never decided to keep on living like that. it hadn’t been his decision.
But then Boone feels something else altogether aching somewhere inside and he regrets having said it. Because he knows everything there is to know about Jack, it’s not like he hasn’t spent two weeks inside his cave for nothing, not to count the time before the accident.
He knows that Jack takes everything too hard on himself. He knows that he doesn’t need to feel guilty because he didn’t let him die.
“I mean...” he says trying to find something to tone it down. Fuck, now he is trying to console Jack. Now, that’s fun.
“It isn’t that I’d rather be dead. Well, not exactly that. But this... this is just too hard, it’s difficult, I never... I mean, I already have to deal with this, I can’t deal with them. I just can’t, Jack.”
Jack doesn’t say anything, but then turns towards him, his eyes almost vibrating, a hand going to Boone’s shoulder.
“I couldn’t.”
Just two words, but they hit him like a punch.
“What...?”
“I couldn’t let you die. I just couldn’t. It was just... I realized I should have respected your decision but right then... Boone, I’ve never been good at letting go. Well, that’d be an euphemism. I’ve never been able to let go.”
Boone nods. He has figured it out by now. Jack’s hand doesn’t leave his shoulder and Boone prays it stays there because fuck, he thought he was better off alone but he’s damn helpless and finds out he needs it.
“Just... I’m sorry that you had to bear the consequences.”
And that was wrong, just wrong all over again.
“Jack, no. Don’t... don’t feel sorry for it. I just... it’s not your fault. You did your job. And I know. I mean, about letting go. A thing or two. I didn’t expect this to be easy but...”
But it’s worse than I could ever have thought, he adds without saying it.
“You are doing great.”
He has to laugh at it. it’s short and more out of incredulity than anything, but he does. It’s a start.
“Don’t lie. I’m totally failing at this.”
“You aren’t. Boone, I know it isn’t easy. You know, not having a breakdown all this time was remarkable.”
“Jack, why couldn’t you do it?”
“What?”
“I’m not... blaming you or anything. I just... I just want to know why you couldn’t let me go.”
“I don’t think I can begin to tell you.”
“Jack, you owe me that, at least.”
Jack has to nod at it.
“Yeah. Guess I do. Well, it’s just that... oh, hell.”
Suddenly Jack’s hands go to his cheeks, their touch firm but delicate; then Jack’s lips are covering his own, not really kissing but not brushing either. There isn’t much pressure, just enough to make this more than a peck but not enough to make it a proper kiss. But it’s sweet, Jack’s lips are warm over his own, it feels good. For the three seconds it lasts.
Then Jack retreats and stands up. Boone opens his mouth to say something, but Jack shakes his head.
“Don’t... just, don’t say a thing. If you want to see me tomorrow at the caves... well, I’ll be around. And I guess I could actually give you an explanation. Just... sleep on it, alright?”
Boone nods, too shocked to say anything else, watching Jack leave.
What the hell was it for? Even the rocks know that Jack has feelings for Kate.
Doesn’t he?
What the hell was that for? , he keeps on asking himself, because he can’t really wrap his head around it.
He brings two trembling fingers to his lips, tracing them lightly. It’s already too late to stop it when he finds out that the corners of his mouth are turned slightly upward.
End.