[lost] fall freely
Title: Fall Freely
Author: lizzyrebel
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: lostfichallenge #71: unfinished business
Character/Pairing: Jack, with a side order of Sawyer
Spoilers/Warnings: post-rescue, up to 4x10
Author's Notes: you know, if Matthew Fox wasn't Jack I probably wouldn't like Jack as much as I do. Foxy just does that puppy face so well and it kills me. Guh. Plus, I love the juxtaposing of Jack and Sawyer's characters. Jack's hard to write, though. Hell, everyone on the island is hard to write. But Jack's a pretty complex guy what with all those daddy issues.
These choices he makes, they’re his own. And that should comfort him. But they don’t. It’s his decision to down a full bottle of vodka every two hours, to stay in the pleasant buzz of intoxication for most of his day.
They aren’t the best decisions, and he sure as hell doesn’t need anyone telling him that. But they’re his decisions, and that’s something.
Or it’s nothing. Jack considers his reflection in the dark-tinted bottle. Probably nothing.
But at least he isn’t like Hurley, who spends all his days listening to unreal ghostly apparitions, believing that he’s dead, believing that they’re all dead and this some branch of heaven they’re living in, and he can go out in the grounds of his asylum and listen to a dead man talk.
Jack isn’t like that. Whenever he thinks that he sees his father, he turns and goes the other way. The dead are dead, and that’s all they’ll ever be. He isn’t some insane patient locked up in a small room with only a barred window giving him light.
His apartment-the one he moved into when he realized he couldn’t spend all day camped out in his office at the hospital-smells of stale clothes and old food, and the bottles and bottles of liquor he keeps on hand.
He takes another swig, and feels the pressure on the sides of his face lessen. He gets that sometimes, like strange whispers that flood into his ears, and if for a moment he gives in an inch they’ll have him and he’ll be worse off than poor Hurley locked up and forgotten about.
So he focuses on things like cancer-but he doesn’t remember Ben’s spinal cancer-and he focuses on the little girl who came in yesterday with her marrow ripped to shreds, who died on his table, who made his hands shake because she had been blonde and tiny and not-yet-twenty and pregnant.
But if he thinks about that, about the real world, then he can’t really hear those suffocating whispers anymore. The let-me-in-Jack whispers that flatten his brain against his forehead and send him careening into walls.
No one chose his path for him. Not God, or some ghosts that followed him off an island. Not his father, and not Kate, and not her not-son.
He presses himself into the corner of his small kitchen, dropping another empty bottle onto his poorly tiled floor. He can afford a better apartment-he has enough money to keep him in alcohol and pain killers for the rest of his life-but there doesn’t seem to be a point. Most days, he can’t even muster up the effort to head into his bed and he usually just passes out wherever he flipped off the cap of his first beer.
If Kate could see you now, Jack thinks and feels his lips twist and his stomach drop. He’s fairly certain that Kate loved him-if she ever loved him-for his strength. Jack’s glad she doesn’t call or accept his phone calls anymore.
Jack doesn’t like to think about them. Kate and Aaron. Mostly Aaron, though, because with Kate he can remember how it was, when he was on the island and when he was a better person and when the real world rules didn’t apply. But with Aaron all he can think about is how he had looked wrapped up in Claire’s arms and remembers all the things he doesn’t want to remember.
“Hey, Jack,” a voice says and Jack grinds his teeth and pulls what’s left of his sanity together and forces the voice away.
He is not going to think about it. About Claire or the island. He isn’t going to think about Aaron. He isn’t insane, and ghosts aren’t real.
But he does. He remembers the weight of Aaron in his arms, and the sand churning underneath his feet. He remembers Kate’s hands taking the baby from him as Sawyer told him, again and again, “I don’t know where Claire is. I don’t know where she is.”
Sawyer. Jack isn’t sure if he had been mad at Kate for throwing Sawyer between them again, or if he’s mad at Sawyer for doing what he should have.
Because he remembers, remembers the chill of the ocean as he kicked and gagged and pushed his way onto the life raft taking them to the freighter and he remembers Sawyer, dragging a dead Jin in his arms, and he remembers Hurley clutching Aaron as Kate and Sayid pulled a sobbing Sun out of the water.
And he remembers Juliet, and remembers the sound of her gun as she shoots Keamy to give them time to get away. He remembers Rose, in the sand, her hands pressing down into Bernard’s wounds.
It’s like he’s still gripping Sawyer’s arm, trying to haul him onto the raft as it drifts away. He feels the tense muscles, smells the scent of Sawyer’s fear as he lets Jin’s body drop into the ocean, unable to look at Sun. He remembers that look in Sawyer’s eyes as he said he had to go back, had to find Claire, had to save Aaron’s mother.
“I can’t leave her there,” Sawyer says and shakes his arm free and begins to swim toward the shoreline. He doesn’t look back, not at Jack, and not at Kate, who leans over the rift, her face dark and unreadable, her lips pressed together.
Jack knows. Knows he should have grabbed Sawyer, and strong-armed him onto the raft, knows he should have entrusted Kate and Aaron and everyone else’s protection to him and leapt into the ocean and swam back to the island to find Claire. He knows he should have gone back to Juliet, who stared down at Keamy’s unmoving body, knows he should have gone back to Bernard and Rose, knows it was his duty to find and save Claire, because Claire was his, not Sawyer’s.
But all he had been able to think about was how desperately he had wanted to get off the island, get free, and he had felt Kate’s hand on his ankle and Jack had thought, why not let Sawyer go? I’m tired of being the hero.
He should have stayed. And it all comes back to that. Instead of turning away from the island, instead of letting Sawyer take his place, he should have peddled into the ocean, caught up with Sawyer, and told him to go. Sawyer would have gone, if only for Aaron, knowing that there was someone there to care about Claire.
If he drinks enough the ache in his chest usually dulls, and the pain pills he takes like antacids help make him forget about people like Juliet and Rose and Bernard and Sawyer and Claire.
Except he can’t ever forget Aaron, blonde and blue-eyed, and how much he is starting to look like Claire, and that no matter how hard Kate tries, Aaron’s going to stop believing her when he gets old enough to understand. And he’s going to want to know.
That was his decision. To go when he should have stayed. But it was his. He wasn’t falling in line with some island’s great plan, because he doesn’t believe in that, and he won’t listen to ghosts who tell him he is wrong.
His fingers close over the long neck of the beer bottle, and he feels so tired that he just wants to drift in endless exhaustion, live a half-life in limbo, and pretend he did die in the plane crash and everything else is some half-formed nightmare.
“Let’s have a chat, you and I.”
“No,” Jack says, almost unsure of why he’s even fighting it. But then he remembers. “You’re not real.”
To prove it, there is no answer.
He closes his eyes, and sees the sunlight on blue water, and sees the line of green trees, and sees the black silhouettes of the people on the beach. He hears Aaron’s gasping and unhappy sobs, Kate’s quiet whimpers, Sun’s mourning wail, Sayid’s unnatural silence and Hurley, repeating again and again, “oh God, oh God.”
They all left the others there, to rot on that damned island. Not just him, but somehow it’s worse for him. Worse for Jack because he’s never acted as if he was selfish, that if the time came he’d leave without looking back.
He sees Claire, her blonde hair matted to one cheek, her eyes wet and devastated as Hurley tells her how Charlie died. He sees Sawyer, saying he has to go back.
And then he realizes: he is a failure of the highest order. He chaffed under his chosen role of knight, he pushed the burden to another, and destroyed all the morals he had treasured in himself. They had counted on him-Claire, Sawyer, and everyone else-and he had grabbed and held to the raft and hadn’t looked back.
They were all his decisions. But they were the wrong ones. Every single one of them.
When he opens his eyes, Christian Shephard is seated in front of him, a beer bottle held loftily in his own hand, and he’s smiling widely, almost laughing.
“You ready talk to now, Jackie boy?” his father asks.
Jack smiles, his chapped lips cracking and bleeding. He takes another long, deep gulp from his bottle and Christian Shephard isn’t going anywhere.
“Yeah, Dad.”
Author: lizzyrebel
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: lostfichallenge #71: unfinished business
Character/Pairing: Jack, with a side order of Sawyer
Spoilers/Warnings: post-rescue, up to 4x10
Author's Notes: you know, if Matthew Fox wasn't Jack I probably wouldn't like Jack as much as I do. Foxy just does that puppy face so well and it kills me. Guh. Plus, I love the juxtaposing of Jack and Sawyer's characters. Jack's hard to write, though. Hell, everyone on the island is hard to write. But Jack's a pretty complex guy what with all those daddy issues.
These choices he makes, they’re his own. And that should comfort him. But they don’t. It’s his decision to down a full bottle of vodka every two hours, to stay in the pleasant buzz of intoxication for most of his day.
They aren’t the best decisions, and he sure as hell doesn’t need anyone telling him that. But they’re his decisions, and that’s something.
Or it’s nothing. Jack considers his reflection in the dark-tinted bottle. Probably nothing.
But at least he isn’t like Hurley, who spends all his days listening to unreal ghostly apparitions, believing that he’s dead, believing that they’re all dead and this some branch of heaven they’re living in, and he can go out in the grounds of his asylum and listen to a dead man talk.
Jack isn’t like that. Whenever he thinks that he sees his father, he turns and goes the other way. The dead are dead, and that’s all they’ll ever be. He isn’t some insane patient locked up in a small room with only a barred window giving him light.
His apartment-the one he moved into when he realized he couldn’t spend all day camped out in his office at the hospital-smells of stale clothes and old food, and the bottles and bottles of liquor he keeps on hand.
He takes another swig, and feels the pressure on the sides of his face lessen. He gets that sometimes, like strange whispers that flood into his ears, and if for a moment he gives in an inch they’ll have him and he’ll be worse off than poor Hurley locked up and forgotten about.
So he focuses on things like cancer-but he doesn’t remember Ben’s spinal cancer-and he focuses on the little girl who came in yesterday with her marrow ripped to shreds, who died on his table, who made his hands shake because she had been blonde and tiny and not-yet-twenty and pregnant.
But if he thinks about that, about the real world, then he can’t really hear those suffocating whispers anymore. The let-me-in-Jack whispers that flatten his brain against his forehead and send him careening into walls.
No one chose his path for him. Not God, or some ghosts that followed him off an island. Not his father, and not Kate, and not her not-son.
He presses himself into the corner of his small kitchen, dropping another empty bottle onto his poorly tiled floor. He can afford a better apartment-he has enough money to keep him in alcohol and pain killers for the rest of his life-but there doesn’t seem to be a point. Most days, he can’t even muster up the effort to head into his bed and he usually just passes out wherever he flipped off the cap of his first beer.
If Kate could see you now, Jack thinks and feels his lips twist and his stomach drop. He’s fairly certain that Kate loved him-if she ever loved him-for his strength. Jack’s glad she doesn’t call or accept his phone calls anymore.
Jack doesn’t like to think about them. Kate and Aaron. Mostly Aaron, though, because with Kate he can remember how it was, when he was on the island and when he was a better person and when the real world rules didn’t apply. But with Aaron all he can think about is how he had looked wrapped up in Claire’s arms and remembers all the things he doesn’t want to remember.
“Hey, Jack,” a voice says and Jack grinds his teeth and pulls what’s left of his sanity together and forces the voice away.
He is not going to think about it. About Claire or the island. He isn’t going to think about Aaron. He isn’t insane, and ghosts aren’t real.
But he does. He remembers the weight of Aaron in his arms, and the sand churning underneath his feet. He remembers Kate’s hands taking the baby from him as Sawyer told him, again and again, “I don’t know where Claire is. I don’t know where she is.”
Sawyer. Jack isn’t sure if he had been mad at Kate for throwing Sawyer between them again, or if he’s mad at Sawyer for doing what he should have.
Because he remembers, remembers the chill of the ocean as he kicked and gagged and pushed his way onto the life raft taking them to the freighter and he remembers Sawyer, dragging a dead Jin in his arms, and he remembers Hurley clutching Aaron as Kate and Sayid pulled a sobbing Sun out of the water.
And he remembers Juliet, and remembers the sound of her gun as she shoots Keamy to give them time to get away. He remembers Rose, in the sand, her hands pressing down into Bernard’s wounds.
It’s like he’s still gripping Sawyer’s arm, trying to haul him onto the raft as it drifts away. He feels the tense muscles, smells the scent of Sawyer’s fear as he lets Jin’s body drop into the ocean, unable to look at Sun. He remembers that look in Sawyer’s eyes as he said he had to go back, had to find Claire, had to save Aaron’s mother.
“I can’t leave her there,” Sawyer says and shakes his arm free and begins to swim toward the shoreline. He doesn’t look back, not at Jack, and not at Kate, who leans over the rift, her face dark and unreadable, her lips pressed together.
Jack knows. Knows he should have grabbed Sawyer, and strong-armed him onto the raft, knows he should have entrusted Kate and Aaron and everyone else’s protection to him and leapt into the ocean and swam back to the island to find Claire. He knows he should have gone back to Juliet, who stared down at Keamy’s unmoving body, knows he should have gone back to Bernard and Rose, knows it was his duty to find and save Claire, because Claire was his, not Sawyer’s.
But all he had been able to think about was how desperately he had wanted to get off the island, get free, and he had felt Kate’s hand on his ankle and Jack had thought, why not let Sawyer go? I’m tired of being the hero.
He should have stayed. And it all comes back to that. Instead of turning away from the island, instead of letting Sawyer take his place, he should have peddled into the ocean, caught up with Sawyer, and told him to go. Sawyer would have gone, if only for Aaron, knowing that there was someone there to care about Claire.
If he drinks enough the ache in his chest usually dulls, and the pain pills he takes like antacids help make him forget about people like Juliet and Rose and Bernard and Sawyer and Claire.
Except he can’t ever forget Aaron, blonde and blue-eyed, and how much he is starting to look like Claire, and that no matter how hard Kate tries, Aaron’s going to stop believing her when he gets old enough to understand. And he’s going to want to know.
That was his decision. To go when he should have stayed. But it was his. He wasn’t falling in line with some island’s great plan, because he doesn’t believe in that, and he won’t listen to ghosts who tell him he is wrong.
His fingers close over the long neck of the beer bottle, and he feels so tired that he just wants to drift in endless exhaustion, live a half-life in limbo, and pretend he did die in the plane crash and everything else is some half-formed nightmare.
“Let’s have a chat, you and I.”
“No,” Jack says, almost unsure of why he’s even fighting it. But then he remembers. “You’re not real.”
To prove it, there is no answer.
He closes his eyes, and sees the sunlight on blue water, and sees the line of green trees, and sees the black silhouettes of the people on the beach. He hears Aaron’s gasping and unhappy sobs, Kate’s quiet whimpers, Sun’s mourning wail, Sayid’s unnatural silence and Hurley, repeating again and again, “oh God, oh God.”
They all left the others there, to rot on that damned island. Not just him, but somehow it’s worse for him. Worse for Jack because he’s never acted as if he was selfish, that if the time came he’d leave without looking back.
He sees Claire, her blonde hair matted to one cheek, her eyes wet and devastated as Hurley tells her how Charlie died. He sees Sawyer, saying he has to go back.
And then he realizes: he is a failure of the highest order. He chaffed under his chosen role of knight, he pushed the burden to another, and destroyed all the morals he had treasured in himself. They had counted on him-Claire, Sawyer, and everyone else-and he had grabbed and held to the raft and hadn’t looked back.
They were all his decisions. But they were the wrong ones. Every single one of them.
When he opens his eyes, Christian Shephard is seated in front of him, a beer bottle held loftily in his own hand, and he’s smiling widely, almost laughing.
“You ready talk to now, Jackie boy?” his father asks.
Jack smiles, his chapped lips cracking and bleeding. He takes another long, deep gulp from his bottle and Christian Shephard isn’t going anywhere.
“Yeah, Dad.”