the sun burns a hole in my pocket (Esau, Claire, Jacob, PG-13)
Title: the sun burns a hole in my pocket
Fandom: LOST
Characters: Esau, Claire, Jacob (Jacob/Claire)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,275
Summary: No one knows just what she is.
(for fc_smorgasbord , words sharper than a knife. Also for my alphabet meme, Q is for Quaeritur. I don't know who prompted it, but it ate my brain and I had to write it.)
Esau is no fool. He knows where she runs to when he grows tired of her presence, her shoulders shaking with the weight of the harsh words that slip from his mouth.
She returns before the sun rises, her voice thick with wine and need for sleep.
Jacob doesn't realize the favor he's doing him. Claire wakes up and empties her stomach, spitting out his brother's lies along with the wine. Each morning she is reborn into a void Esau can shape with his own hands, twisting her to his way of thinking.
He teaches her with forced gentleness, his back tense with suppressed power as he promises never to leave or forget her. She clings to his every word, eyes wide as he presses a rifle into her hands.
Claire is a blank slate, perfect in her weakness.
Esau despises her.
-
The creature who calls itself Jacob's brother doesn't deserve her trust, her hair tangled around its fingers. Jacob pours Claire another glass of wine, grinning mirthlessly as they drown out the thought of her master, its name sliding heavy down their throats.
Claire rests on his thin mattress and he sits beside her as delusion takes hold of her. He listens as she weaves wild love stories, innocent ideas tainted by betrayal and murder. Jacob folds his fingers together to keep them away from her, biting down the need to purge Esau's darkness from her mouth.
Jacob forces the wine down, churning sickly in his body. Each affair, each kidnapping and corpse she creates fills him with guilt and disgust. He touches her, touches her like he was never supposed to. Her lies fall silent as he kisses her, the wine sweet and forbidden on her tongue.
Claire rubs her forehead when he pulls away, her eyes foggy. With a far away sound she mumbles, "I was wondering when you were gonna stop me."
-
Esau doesn't touch her, he doesn't yell at her, he doesn't do anything to her. That is what upsets her the most, causes tears and a whispered, "Please don't leave me."
He's not angry so much as disappointed. He's made so much progress with her. He hates the setback, hates her wandering back to the camp he helped her build, the late afternoon sun hot on his face as she sings Jacob's praises, tries to convince Esau his murderer is still a good man.
Claire stomps off into the jungle when he refuses to listen, her arms awkwardly clutching the weapon she still struggles with.
He hears when she cries for his help, gasping in pain as she searches for his name. Esau doesn't move, lets her consort come for her.
If she wants Jacob, he's finished with her.
-
Jacob rails at her, scolds her with gritted teeth as he takes the bullet from her leg.
"So I'm not very good with a rifle, okay?" Claire defends, her voice too soft, too calm, barely flinching as he heals her.
"He did this to you." Jacob needs her to agree, to share in his rage over the mere possibility of Esau bringing her harm, but she chews on her lip thoughtfully, then shakes her head.
"Not on purpose."
Jacob stands and turns away, not willing for her to see how much Esau's power over her affects him. "He's dangerous, Claire."
She limps over to him, glaring up at him as he steadies her. "I know, Jacob. I'm not stupid. I know what he did to you, how he hurt you back because he didn't know how to do anything else."
"I don't know what-"
"Right here," Claire interrupts. She slips her hands under his shirt, splaying her fingers over his abdomen. "He stabbed you, here." Jacob shudders as she reads his scars, wounds that faded and disappeared hundreds of years ago. "You cried," Claire continues softly. "You both did. You were angry, and scared. You thought he was dead."
"He was," Jacob chokes. "He is." He backs away from her, but she follows, her hands inexplicably sharp against his body as he hits the stone wall.
"It was raining," she whispers.
He remembers. The knife had slipped in his wet hands as he tried to remove it, twisting deeper in his gut. He had whimpered, begged for mercy, but the creature spat out his name in his brother's voice. I'm going to kill you, Jacob.
Jacob closes his eyes, as if that could shut out the imagined sound. "How do you know that?"
It was a terrible storm, lightning snapping and burning through the jungle. When it was over, water slipped like blood down the trees, pale blue sky peeking mournfully through blackened leaves.
Claire presses a kiss over his healed skin. "I just know."
-
Claire comes back like, and unlike, she has countless times before. She manages to speak first, "I always miss you more."
It stops the angry greeting dead in his throat, leaves him curious. Her voice is tinted with frustration, and he can't decide if it's directed at him or Jacob or herself.
Esau never misses Claire. He isn't occupied with thoughts of her when she's gone, doesn't spend his time imagining her tugging at his arm for safety. He doesn't need her.
But he finds, more often than not, that he doesn't mind her. Every once in a while he enjoys her company, amused by the sound of her nervous laughter as he frees himself, unharmed, from a trap she's rigged incorrectly, as eager to teach her the proper way as she is to learn it.
Claire grows increasingly aware of herself and her surroundings, returning from Jacob less drunk, less confused. The desire to pretend with her begins to fade, and she confirms his thoughts along with her own cleverness. "I don't need you to be my father."
He raises Christian's eyebrows at her, mutters a nonchalant "Oh?" It's become second nature to hide Esau's feelings under someone, anyone, else's face. It's not easy to admit, even (especially) to himself, that sometimes he wants to protect her no matter who he is.
She touches his arm, looks up at him with bright and honest eyes. "I like it when we trust each other."
Esau doesn't need to spend years, or minutes, considering and scheming about it. He slips into the skin that feels the most like belonging. Claire smiles and whispers a name, "Samuel."
Maybe he was once that man, and maybe he was never that or any man, but the sound of it in her mouth washes over him like rain, cool and comforting and real. He doesn't ask how she knows, because for the first time since gaining access to an island full of minds and intellects and vocabularies, he can't think of a word to say.
She seems to have a strange hold over him, and he's not sure whether he likes it or not.
-
Jacob kisses her greedily, jealous of the time she spends away from him. No matter what he says he can't keep her from Esau, and whenever she visits him, not as often as she used to, she is distracted.
"Do you love me?" Claire asks suddenly, limbs wrapped loosely about him.
He doesn't (can't) answer, his lips pressed to her chin, but she is not deterred.
"If I were his, would you still want me? Would you fight for me?"
Jacob stops, breaths short and harsh. It's been centuries since the word has been anything other than a meaningless noise in the jungle, Jacob loves you.
"I-" he tries, then shakes his head in frustration. He draws his power from her presence, his life from her mouth. More than any petty human emotion, he needs her. "How can you ask me that?"
Quiet, displaced from any path they might have been traveling, Jacob runs his hand along the seam of her blue jeans, wishing she made sense. Claire's arm is tight around his neck as she whispers in his ear, "He loves me."
Jacob pushes away from her, forcing words through his constricting throat. "Did he tell you that?"
"He doesn't know." There's no disgust in her voice, and no longing, just smart, matter-of-fact acceptance, and somehow this makes him angrier than anything else.
Jacob turns his back, wondering why he always feels like he's the one running away. "Do you have any idea what he is?"
"Yes," Claire says, and he can feel her piercing blue eyes on his back. "Do you?"
Jacob swallows the bitter taste forming in his mouth. "You should go, he'll wonder where you are."
-
The black smoke becomes less of a presence in the jungle, fewer of Jacob's people suffering violent deaths, after Esau discovers that Samuel's palm fits comfortably over Claire's back as she guts a rabbit. She grins up at him, leaning into his touch. "Soon I'll be teaching you how to hunt."
Esau shakes his head with a grunt, the closest he can come to a laugh of agreement. He appreciates her for what she is now, rather than what she could be. There is a history he hadn't noticed before, tangled in the bright waves that sweep the sides of her face, hieroglyphs written in the crossing lines of her button-up shirt. The earth hugs her curves, weaves her into her setting like a goddess of the woods.
Claire studies him, and he knows Jacob speaks to her just as fervently. She comes to her own conclusions, wise and unassuming. "You're a good man, Samuel," she murmurs, her mouth brushing like a soft breeze on his cheek. "You and Jacob have just forgotten that."
The need to breathe, to be, burns in his chest. Anger heats his face as he realizes that she is the first truly beautiful thing that has sprung from this wretched island, anger at Jacob for squandering its potential.
Anger at himself for feeling, for the first time, that she's turned this place into home.
-
Jacob searches for answers in the ridges and dips of her body, desperately needing to figure out how she's slipped so thoroughly under his skin. As always, Claire utters nonsense, his hands shaking as she takes them away from her and rests them against the ground.
"Can you feel it, Jacob?" she says. His stomach twists, wanting so much he's not allowed to have that it makes him sick. "The island is damaged. You're going to have to give something back."
It hurts worse when she makes sense. He's used those words before, instructing the leaders of his people on the status quo, but himself-
Jacob has never taken anything.
He moans into her throat, cursing the earth thrumming beneath her. Claire bestows him with kisses that were never his, always belonging to someone else. Jacob swears, damning the island, damning her, in every language ever whispered across its shores.
His voice rises, blasphemous words he's never learned pouring from his mouth, until he's screaming and she's sobbing.
"Jacob, stop," she commands, and his name brings him back. He falls and she catches him, fingers entwining over his shoulders, wet with the rain that slips through the opening in the statue. He feels her mouth next to his ear, and she hisses, a call for silence. Jacob forces his breath to slow.
The disappointment is thick in her voice as she admonishes him. "You never learn to listen."
-
It was only a matter of time.
Twigs and branches snap under him as he hurries, never fast enough as a man, but he doesn't have a choice. Esau can feel the impending storm tugging at his arms wrapped around her tiny body. Claire gasps, whimpers as her head bounces back harshly. He can't stop for even a second to support her properly, or it will be over, everything good on this island slipping away.
He should have known. Jacob can never accept what he doesn't understand, can't protect what's sacred, can't love anything.
And Esau fought Jacob's arrogance with his own. He ignored every accusation about things that never belonged in his head, memories that weren't his, cities that were never home, women he had never touched. He pretended with Claire as he had with himself for hundreds of years, that he could have something that Jacob would not take away.
Claire grows weaker, asking for her son in another sharp breath, hurt and confused. Esau can't ignore the fact that it's his own knife sticking through her stomach. He doesn't have time to pull it out, to try and stop the bleeding. He could never play the healer, whereas Jacob had twisted himself all too easily into Esau's role as destroyer.
He tells himself she means nothing, that his only reason for saving her life is to defy Jacob, because it's the only way he can keep moving. His too-human feet stumble whenever he thinks about the curls resting limp against his chest, her arms wrapped around his elbow at odd angles. It hurts to imagine the light fading from her eyes.
Dogen is waiting at the entrance to the temple, fulfilling his given duty, keeping Esau out. "You cannot go any further," the man grunts, but his eyes are soft when they focus on the dying girl.
Esau sets her in Dogen's arms wordlessly. He can manage nothing but a strangled "yes" when Dogen makes him swear that, in exchange for Claire's life, he will never pass through his guarded walls.
As Esau, or Samuel, or the black smoke, walks away, selling the soul of the only woman he ever loved, he can't figure out how he and his brother ever came to be such fools.
Fandom: LOST
Characters: Esau, Claire, Jacob (Jacob/Claire)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,275
Summary: No one knows just what she is.
(for fc_smorgasbord , words sharper than a knife. Also for my alphabet meme, Q is for Quaeritur. I don't know who prompted it, but it ate my brain and I had to write it.)
Esau is no fool. He knows where she runs to when he grows tired of her presence, her shoulders shaking with the weight of the harsh words that slip from his mouth.
She returns before the sun rises, her voice thick with wine and need for sleep.
Jacob doesn't realize the favor he's doing him. Claire wakes up and empties her stomach, spitting out his brother's lies along with the wine. Each morning she is reborn into a void Esau can shape with his own hands, twisting her to his way of thinking.
He teaches her with forced gentleness, his back tense with suppressed power as he promises never to leave or forget her. She clings to his every word, eyes wide as he presses a rifle into her hands.
Claire is a blank slate, perfect in her weakness.
Esau despises her.
-
The creature who calls itself Jacob's brother doesn't deserve her trust, her hair tangled around its fingers. Jacob pours Claire another glass of wine, grinning mirthlessly as they drown out the thought of her master, its name sliding heavy down their throats.
Claire rests on his thin mattress and he sits beside her as delusion takes hold of her. He listens as she weaves wild love stories, innocent ideas tainted by betrayal and murder. Jacob folds his fingers together to keep them away from her, biting down the need to purge Esau's darkness from her mouth.
Jacob forces the wine down, churning sickly in his body. Each affair, each kidnapping and corpse she creates fills him with guilt and disgust. He touches her, touches her like he was never supposed to. Her lies fall silent as he kisses her, the wine sweet and forbidden on her tongue.
Claire rubs her forehead when he pulls away, her eyes foggy. With a far away sound she mumbles, "I was wondering when you were gonna stop me."
-
Esau doesn't touch her, he doesn't yell at her, he doesn't do anything to her. That is what upsets her the most, causes tears and a whispered, "Please don't leave me."
He's not angry so much as disappointed. He's made so much progress with her. He hates the setback, hates her wandering back to the camp he helped her build, the late afternoon sun hot on his face as she sings Jacob's praises, tries to convince Esau his murderer is still a good man.
Claire stomps off into the jungle when he refuses to listen, her arms awkwardly clutching the weapon she still struggles with.
He hears when she cries for his help, gasping in pain as she searches for his name. Esau doesn't move, lets her consort come for her.
If she wants Jacob, he's finished with her.
-
Jacob rails at her, scolds her with gritted teeth as he takes the bullet from her leg.
"So I'm not very good with a rifle, okay?" Claire defends, her voice too soft, too calm, barely flinching as he heals her.
"He did this to you." Jacob needs her to agree, to share in his rage over the mere possibility of Esau bringing her harm, but she chews on her lip thoughtfully, then shakes her head.
"Not on purpose."
Jacob stands and turns away, not willing for her to see how much Esau's power over her affects him. "He's dangerous, Claire."
She limps over to him, glaring up at him as he steadies her. "I know, Jacob. I'm not stupid. I know what he did to you, how he hurt you back because he didn't know how to do anything else."
"I don't know what-"
"Right here," Claire interrupts. She slips her hands under his shirt, splaying her fingers over his abdomen. "He stabbed you, here." Jacob shudders as she reads his scars, wounds that faded and disappeared hundreds of years ago. "You cried," Claire continues softly. "You both did. You were angry, and scared. You thought he was dead."
"He was," Jacob chokes. "He is." He backs away from her, but she follows, her hands inexplicably sharp against his body as he hits the stone wall.
"It was raining," she whispers.
He remembers. The knife had slipped in his wet hands as he tried to remove it, twisting deeper in his gut. He had whimpered, begged for mercy, but the creature spat out his name in his brother's voice. I'm going to kill you, Jacob.
Jacob closes his eyes, as if that could shut out the imagined sound. "How do you know that?"
It was a terrible storm, lightning snapping and burning through the jungle. When it was over, water slipped like blood down the trees, pale blue sky peeking mournfully through blackened leaves.
Claire presses a kiss over his healed skin. "I just know."
-
Claire comes back like, and unlike, she has countless times before. She manages to speak first, "I always miss you more."
It stops the angry greeting dead in his throat, leaves him curious. Her voice is tinted with frustration, and he can't decide if it's directed at him or Jacob or herself.
Esau never misses Claire. He isn't occupied with thoughts of her when she's gone, doesn't spend his time imagining her tugging at his arm for safety. He doesn't need her.
But he finds, more often than not, that he doesn't mind her. Every once in a while he enjoys her company, amused by the sound of her nervous laughter as he frees himself, unharmed, from a trap she's rigged incorrectly, as eager to teach her the proper way as she is to learn it.
Claire grows increasingly aware of herself and her surroundings, returning from Jacob less drunk, less confused. The desire to pretend with her begins to fade, and she confirms his thoughts along with her own cleverness. "I don't need you to be my father."
He raises Christian's eyebrows at her, mutters a nonchalant "Oh?" It's become second nature to hide Esau's feelings under someone, anyone, else's face. It's not easy to admit, even (especially) to himself, that sometimes he wants to protect her no matter who he is.
She touches his arm, looks up at him with bright and honest eyes. "I like it when we trust each other."
Esau doesn't need to spend years, or minutes, considering and scheming about it. He slips into the skin that feels the most like belonging. Claire smiles and whispers a name, "Samuel."
Maybe he was once that man, and maybe he was never that or any man, but the sound of it in her mouth washes over him like rain, cool and comforting and real. He doesn't ask how she knows, because for the first time since gaining access to an island full of minds and intellects and vocabularies, he can't think of a word to say.
She seems to have a strange hold over him, and he's not sure whether he likes it or not.
-
Jacob kisses her greedily, jealous of the time she spends away from him. No matter what he says he can't keep her from Esau, and whenever she visits him, not as often as she used to, she is distracted.
"Do you love me?" Claire asks suddenly, limbs wrapped loosely about him.
He doesn't (can't) answer, his lips pressed to her chin, but she is not deterred.
"If I were his, would you still want me? Would you fight for me?"
Jacob stops, breaths short and harsh. It's been centuries since the word has been anything other than a meaningless noise in the jungle, Jacob loves you.
"I-" he tries, then shakes his head in frustration. He draws his power from her presence, his life from her mouth. More than any petty human emotion, he needs her. "How can you ask me that?"
Quiet, displaced from any path they might have been traveling, Jacob runs his hand along the seam of her blue jeans, wishing she made sense. Claire's arm is tight around his neck as she whispers in his ear, "He loves me."
Jacob pushes away from her, forcing words through his constricting throat. "Did he tell you that?"
"He doesn't know." There's no disgust in her voice, and no longing, just smart, matter-of-fact acceptance, and somehow this makes him angrier than anything else.
Jacob turns his back, wondering why he always feels like he's the one running away. "Do you have any idea what he is?"
"Yes," Claire says, and he can feel her piercing blue eyes on his back. "Do you?"
Jacob swallows the bitter taste forming in his mouth. "You should go, he'll wonder where you are."
-
The black smoke becomes less of a presence in the jungle, fewer of Jacob's people suffering violent deaths, after Esau discovers that Samuel's palm fits comfortably over Claire's back as she guts a rabbit. She grins up at him, leaning into his touch. "Soon I'll be teaching you how to hunt."
Esau shakes his head with a grunt, the closest he can come to a laugh of agreement. He appreciates her for what she is now, rather than what she could be. There is a history he hadn't noticed before, tangled in the bright waves that sweep the sides of her face, hieroglyphs written in the crossing lines of her button-up shirt. The earth hugs her curves, weaves her into her setting like a goddess of the woods.
Claire studies him, and he knows Jacob speaks to her just as fervently. She comes to her own conclusions, wise and unassuming. "You're a good man, Samuel," she murmurs, her mouth brushing like a soft breeze on his cheek. "You and Jacob have just forgotten that."
The need to breathe, to be, burns in his chest. Anger heats his face as he realizes that she is the first truly beautiful thing that has sprung from this wretched island, anger at Jacob for squandering its potential.
Anger at himself for feeling, for the first time, that she's turned this place into home.
-
Jacob searches for answers in the ridges and dips of her body, desperately needing to figure out how she's slipped so thoroughly under his skin. As always, Claire utters nonsense, his hands shaking as she takes them away from her and rests them against the ground.
"Can you feel it, Jacob?" she says. His stomach twists, wanting so much he's not allowed to have that it makes him sick. "The island is damaged. You're going to have to give something back."
It hurts worse when she makes sense. He's used those words before, instructing the leaders of his people on the status quo, but himself-
Jacob has never taken anything.
He moans into her throat, cursing the earth thrumming beneath her. Claire bestows him with kisses that were never his, always belonging to someone else. Jacob swears, damning the island, damning her, in every language ever whispered across its shores.
His voice rises, blasphemous words he's never learned pouring from his mouth, until he's screaming and she's sobbing.
"Jacob, stop," she commands, and his name brings him back. He falls and she catches him, fingers entwining over his shoulders, wet with the rain that slips through the opening in the statue. He feels her mouth next to his ear, and she hisses, a call for silence. Jacob forces his breath to slow.
The disappointment is thick in her voice as she admonishes him. "You never learn to listen."
-
It was only a matter of time.
Twigs and branches snap under him as he hurries, never fast enough as a man, but he doesn't have a choice. Esau can feel the impending storm tugging at his arms wrapped around her tiny body. Claire gasps, whimpers as her head bounces back harshly. He can't stop for even a second to support her properly, or it will be over, everything good on this island slipping away.
He should have known. Jacob can never accept what he doesn't understand, can't protect what's sacred, can't love anything.
And Esau fought Jacob's arrogance with his own. He ignored every accusation about things that never belonged in his head, memories that weren't his, cities that were never home, women he had never touched. He pretended with Claire as he had with himself for hundreds of years, that he could have something that Jacob would not take away.
Claire grows weaker, asking for her son in another sharp breath, hurt and confused. Esau can't ignore the fact that it's his own knife sticking through her stomach. He doesn't have time to pull it out, to try and stop the bleeding. He could never play the healer, whereas Jacob had twisted himself all too easily into Esau's role as destroyer.
He tells himself she means nothing, that his only reason for saving her life is to defy Jacob, because it's the only way he can keep moving. His too-human feet stumble whenever he thinks about the curls resting limp against his chest, her arms wrapped around his elbow at odd angles. It hurts to imagine the light fading from her eyes.
Dogen is waiting at the entrance to the temple, fulfilling his given duty, keeping Esau out. "You cannot go any further," the man grunts, but his eyes are soft when they focus on the dying girl.
Esau sets her in Dogen's arms wordlessly. He can manage nothing but a strangled "yes" when Dogen makes him swear that, in exchange for Claire's life, he will never pass through his guarded walls.
As Esau, or Samuel, or the black smoke, walks away, selling the soul of the only woman he ever loved, he can't figure out how he and his brother ever came to be such fools.