belador (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} belador) wrote,@ 2007-06-10 12:59:00 |
|
Fic: Schism
So I was thinking about the finale, and a couple of things didn't make sense to me. How is Oceanic still operating in the flash-forward, considering it supposedly went bankrupt after the crash? If they had found Jack's body, and the bodies of all the other survivors, then how is Jack able to live under his own name, in his old job, unhassled, despite having 'come back from the dead'? (I know Naomi is not to be trusted, but Papa Locke said the same thing about the bodies, assuming he isn't part of a big conspiracy.) Now I'm sure the show will explain it all, but I thought up my own version. First part is here, more to follow at some point...
Title: Schism, part 1
Characters: This part, multiple; later parts, Jack/Sawyer and Kate
Rating: This part, maybe PG-13? Later parts, smutty!
Spoilers: Through the looking glass
Disclaimer: Don't own them, not making any money
A/N: I've read and absorbed so much fic it's possible someone else has used this title, so apologies. I also can't find the motivation to find out exactly where everyone was sitting on 815, so that's all a bit vague...
‘How can you trust him?’ she’d asked, biting the words out, her face hard and eyes fierce. He’d sighed, exhaustion making him hang his head. He rubbed a hand over his hair, longer now, an inch or so. He dug his fingers into his scalp, hard, trying to massage away the headache that he carried every waking moment these days.
‘What choice do we have?’ he’d replied in a flat tone. He was just about out of emotion, these days.
And she’d finally given him that, finally agreed, even though she couldn’t bring herself to say anything, just gave the barest of nods, and closed her eyes. He’d closed his eyes too, as their hands found each other, fingers entwining, gripping tight. He’d taken a breath, and stepped forward
trying not to think about the smile Ben had been unable to prevent, the small quirk of his lips as he’d closed the door on them, the triumphant smarmy little fucking smile that had made the acid churn in his stomach, the one that Kate hadn’t seen. But ultimately it didn’t change anything; he was still going to step through, they both were, because what choice did they have
and opened his eyes to see the back of a chair, the back of an airplane chair, the fuselage curving up from his left, glossy magazines with thumbed corners tucked in the back of the chair in front of him, beige acrylic glowing warmly in the sunlight.
I know this
He blinked, eyes made dry by the air con, and looked to his left, out through the window, out at blue sky, and far below, clouds. He looked to his right, no thoughts functioning yet, and looked into Rose’s concerned frown, and his heart lurched in his chest as a spike of adrenaline soured his gut.
‘You okay hon? You’re the one s’posed to be reassuring me!’ Rose chided gently, still frowning, a hint of nervousness in her voice. ‘Just a bit of turbulence, you said. Now you’re looking like we’re about to crash!’
He opened his mouth to speak, and caught himself just in time as a dislocating terror started to trickle up his spine. He’d been about to say, You’re dead.
He had a powerful urge to scream, or laugh, he wasn’t quite sure which, because he knew this. But this hadn’t happened.
All of a sudden Rose was looking like she wasn’t quite so glad of his company; she sat back in her chair, straightening up and looking down into her lap. He fixed his gaze on the back of the chair in front of him, felt sweat tricking down his neck into his collar, and he startled, looking down at his clothes, at the black suit, white shirt and black tie. What else? He slipped a hand into his pocket, fingertips brushing against the cold glass of a miniature spirits bottle. What else? Now all of a sudden his face was burning, his forehead was slick with sweat and blackness pawed at his vision. He dropped his head down between his knees, breathing hard until he no longer felt like he was fainting. Further down the plane, he could hear raised voices, a man, English accent. Charlie, his fevered brain whispered to him.
---
Time passed, maybe an hour or so, and he hadn’t moved from his seat. He was vaguely aware that he really wasn’t functioning, but it was only the pull of his full bladder that stirred him, that made him slip from his seat and walk unsteadily down the aisle. He felt like the plane was pitching from side to side, and he gripped the back of each chair as he passed it, his pulse pounding in his throat, heartbeat racing and guts churning. He made it to the toilet and pulled himself inside, locking the door and leaning on the sink, staring at his face in the mirror.
The light in the ceiling cast a sickly pallour over his features and it was no wonder Rose had recoiled from him; he could barely meet his own haunted gaze. His hair was short; his face clean-shaven. But when he’d stepped through that…door…he’d had a month-old beard, hair you could run fingers through. He turned on the tap, hands trembling, and splashed palmful after palmful of cold water over his face, until the cobwebs started to clear slightly.
---
He walked back to his seat slowly, taking the scenic route. He wanted to count them off in his head. There, from the back; blonde hair, highlighted, falling just above the shoulder: Shannon, Boone next to her. A mass of brown curls marked off Hurley. Sun and Jin made him pause; she had her hands in her lap, her head bent and eyes cast down, as Jin spoke at her, gesturing angrily. He switched aisles, now seeing faces, staring at each of them. Sayid was reading and didn’t look up. James did, and Jack stopped, utterly stricken as their eyes met, but James’s gaze slipped off him like water and went back to the magazine. James was frowning, and Jack wondered he was getting a headache, and something inside him twisted.
Sawyer, not James.
And then he saw Kate, and knew that she had been watching him the entire time, and that she remembered, because her brow shone with sweat and she was breathing hard through her nose, her mouth set in a hard line and her eyes, her eyes, were screaming at him. He stopped again, stock still, and everything but her eyes and his raging pulse, thumping in his temples, faded from his awareness, until the stewardess who had been trying to get his attention touched him on the shoulder.
‘Could you take your seat, please sir?’
He blinked. The marshall
You’re dead. I killed you.
had looked up, was watching him with a frown. Kate was fighting back tears.
‘Sir?’
He turned to the stewardess. ‘I’m sorry?’ His voice sounded raw, weak.
‘You need to take your seat, sir. For the descent.’
He had a sudden powerful urge to find Michael and Walt, to look into their faces and see what their eyes told him, but the marshall was still watching him, and the stewardess had a wary look on her face.
‘Sure,’ he whispered, and walked back to his seat.
---
‘Hey man, you all right?’
Jack flinched, blinked, as he realised he was stood staring at a virtually empty luggage carousel, at the last few bags going round and round. He turned, his mouth going dry as he looked into Boone’s concerned face.
‘Fine,’ he managed.
You’re dead. I held you as you died.
‘Boone!’
Shannon appeared at Boone’s side, pulling hard on his arm. Her gaze slipped over Jack, appraising, finding not worthy.
‘The stupid assholes lost my bag, Boone! What are you going to do about it?’
Boone smiled apologetically at Jack as Shannon pulled him away. ‘Take it easy man, you look out of it.’
He was halfway to the car park when he remembered. He stopped, for a few minutes completely unable to decide what to do. Eventually, he went back.
‘No sir, we have no record of any coffin on board,’ the desk clerk said, the same wary look on her face as the stewardess on the plane.
‘Fine,’ he whispered, and left.
---
His father came back, a day later; flew in from Sydney. He turned up at Jack’s apartment, steaming drunk. Jack could barely concentrate on what Christian was saying, so he interrupted.
‘My sister wasn’t there, was she?’ he blurted, and his father paused, swaying where he stood. He left soon after. The next day, he was dead. Heart attack, brought on by a drinking binge.
---
Jack finally noticed the light blinking on his answerphone. The first message brought him to his knees, made him cry so hard he threw up. His father had phoned from Australia, the evening before Jack flew home, from a bar, it sounded like. He said he was sorry, that Jack had been right, that he loved him and forgave him – no, thanked him. He had to replay the second message once he had stopped sobbing; it was from Kate, terse and to the point; she’d got away, was on the run again, and here was a number he could reach her on, but not for a while.
‘How can it be?’ she’d asked, but he doubted she expected him to have an answer.
He sat, dishevelled, on his apartment floor, and drank whiskey until he passed out. Just before oblivion overwhelmed him, he thought about James, and knew that somehow, in this place, James had convinced his father to call home. He wondered if his father had convinced James not to commit murder.
That’s why the Red Sox will never win the series
---
After several letters and phone calls, and a little bit of cashing in favours, he eventually got a meeting at Oceanic’s offices. One of their customer service managers, grey suit, instantly forgettable. That was probably the point. The man’s expression and manner was bland enough to begin with, but that soon changed as Jack diverted from the cover story he’d concocted in his letters, as he started talking about the crash, the island, the cover-up. Jack was on his feet and shouting by the time security reached the office.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ he yelled as he was escorted out. ‘I will not drop this!’ He stumbled and fell as they shoved him out onto the pavement; several people tutted, and he felt their eyes on him. He stood, brushing himself down with as much dignity as he could muster, then headed for the nearest bar.
He was so hungover he could barely move the next morning when his doorbell rang, insistently and incessantly. He opened the door, still wearing his clothes from the night before, to another bland man in a suit. The man flashed Oceanic I.D., which got Jack’s attention.
‘Dr Shephard, may I come in?’
Jack stared at the paperwork on his coffee table, fighting down wave after wave of nausea. He should be angry, furious that they were trying to buy him off. But as he looked down at the papers, at the ‘golden pass’ that the man had referred to, a thought got lodged in his mind.
Maybe that’s how we get back.
He looked up.
‘I’ll need two of these.’
To be continued.
So I was thinking about the finale, and a couple of things didn't make sense to me. How is Oceanic still operating in the flash-forward, considering it supposedly went bankrupt after the crash? If they had found Jack's body, and the bodies of all the other survivors, then how is Jack able to live under his own name, in his old job, unhassled, despite having 'come back from the dead'? (I know Naomi is not to be trusted, but Papa Locke said the same thing about the bodies, assuming he isn't part of a big conspiracy.) Now I'm sure the show will explain it all, but I thought up my own version. First part is here, more to follow at some point...
Title: Schism, part 1
Characters: This part, multiple; later parts, Jack/Sawyer and Kate
Rating: This part, maybe PG-13? Later parts, smutty!
Spoilers: Through the looking glass
Disclaimer: Don't own them, not making any money
A/N: I've read and absorbed so much fic it's possible someone else has used this title, so apologies. I also can't find the motivation to find out exactly where everyone was sitting on 815, so that's all a bit vague...
‘How can you trust him?’ she’d asked, biting the words out, her face hard and eyes fierce. He’d sighed, exhaustion making him hang his head. He rubbed a hand over his hair, longer now, an inch or so. He dug his fingers into his scalp, hard, trying to massage away the headache that he carried every waking moment these days.
‘What choice do we have?’ he’d replied in a flat tone. He was just about out of emotion, these days.
And she’d finally given him that, finally agreed, even though she couldn’t bring herself to say anything, just gave the barest of nods, and closed her eyes. He’d closed his eyes too, as their hands found each other, fingers entwining, gripping tight. He’d taken a breath, and stepped forward
trying not to think about the smile Ben had been unable to prevent, the small quirk of his lips as he’d closed the door on them, the triumphant smarmy little fucking smile that had made the acid churn in his stomach, the one that Kate hadn’t seen. But ultimately it didn’t change anything; he was still going to step through, they both were, because what choice did they have
and opened his eyes to see the back of a chair, the back of an airplane chair, the fuselage curving up from his left, glossy magazines with thumbed corners tucked in the back of the chair in front of him, beige acrylic glowing warmly in the sunlight.
I know this
He blinked, eyes made dry by the air con, and looked to his left, out through the window, out at blue sky, and far below, clouds. He looked to his right, no thoughts functioning yet, and looked into Rose’s concerned frown, and his heart lurched in his chest as a spike of adrenaline soured his gut.
‘You okay hon? You’re the one s’posed to be reassuring me!’ Rose chided gently, still frowning, a hint of nervousness in her voice. ‘Just a bit of turbulence, you said. Now you’re looking like we’re about to crash!’
He opened his mouth to speak, and caught himself just in time as a dislocating terror started to trickle up his spine. He’d been about to say, You’re dead.
He had a powerful urge to scream, or laugh, he wasn’t quite sure which, because he knew this. But this hadn’t happened.
All of a sudden Rose was looking like she wasn’t quite so glad of his company; she sat back in her chair, straightening up and looking down into her lap. He fixed his gaze on the back of the chair in front of him, felt sweat tricking down his neck into his collar, and he startled, looking down at his clothes, at the black suit, white shirt and black tie. What else? He slipped a hand into his pocket, fingertips brushing against the cold glass of a miniature spirits bottle. What else? Now all of a sudden his face was burning, his forehead was slick with sweat and blackness pawed at his vision. He dropped his head down between his knees, breathing hard until he no longer felt like he was fainting. Further down the plane, he could hear raised voices, a man, English accent. Charlie, his fevered brain whispered to him.
---
Time passed, maybe an hour or so, and he hadn’t moved from his seat. He was vaguely aware that he really wasn’t functioning, but it was only the pull of his full bladder that stirred him, that made him slip from his seat and walk unsteadily down the aisle. He felt like the plane was pitching from side to side, and he gripped the back of each chair as he passed it, his pulse pounding in his throat, heartbeat racing and guts churning. He made it to the toilet and pulled himself inside, locking the door and leaning on the sink, staring at his face in the mirror.
The light in the ceiling cast a sickly pallour over his features and it was no wonder Rose had recoiled from him; he could barely meet his own haunted gaze. His hair was short; his face clean-shaven. But when he’d stepped through that…door…he’d had a month-old beard, hair you could run fingers through. He turned on the tap, hands trembling, and splashed palmful after palmful of cold water over his face, until the cobwebs started to clear slightly.
---
He walked back to his seat slowly, taking the scenic route. He wanted to count them off in his head. There, from the back; blonde hair, highlighted, falling just above the shoulder: Shannon, Boone next to her. A mass of brown curls marked off Hurley. Sun and Jin made him pause; she had her hands in her lap, her head bent and eyes cast down, as Jin spoke at her, gesturing angrily. He switched aisles, now seeing faces, staring at each of them. Sayid was reading and didn’t look up. James did, and Jack stopped, utterly stricken as their eyes met, but James’s gaze slipped off him like water and went back to the magazine. James was frowning, and Jack wondered he was getting a headache, and something inside him twisted.
Sawyer, not James.
And then he saw Kate, and knew that she had been watching him the entire time, and that she remembered, because her brow shone with sweat and she was breathing hard through her nose, her mouth set in a hard line and her eyes, her eyes, were screaming at him. He stopped again, stock still, and everything but her eyes and his raging pulse, thumping in his temples, faded from his awareness, until the stewardess who had been trying to get his attention touched him on the shoulder.
‘Could you take your seat, please sir?’
He blinked. The marshall
You’re dead. I killed you.
had looked up, was watching him with a frown. Kate was fighting back tears.
‘Sir?’
He turned to the stewardess. ‘I’m sorry?’ His voice sounded raw, weak.
‘You need to take your seat, sir. For the descent.’
He had a sudden powerful urge to find Michael and Walt, to look into their faces and see what their eyes told him, but the marshall was still watching him, and the stewardess had a wary look on her face.
‘Sure,’ he whispered, and walked back to his seat.
---
‘Hey man, you all right?’
Jack flinched, blinked, as he realised he was stood staring at a virtually empty luggage carousel, at the last few bags going round and round. He turned, his mouth going dry as he looked into Boone’s concerned face.
‘Fine,’ he managed.
You’re dead. I held you as you died.
‘Boone!’
Shannon appeared at Boone’s side, pulling hard on his arm. Her gaze slipped over Jack, appraising, finding not worthy.
‘The stupid assholes lost my bag, Boone! What are you going to do about it?’
Boone smiled apologetically at Jack as Shannon pulled him away. ‘Take it easy man, you look out of it.’
He was halfway to the car park when he remembered. He stopped, for a few minutes completely unable to decide what to do. Eventually, he went back.
‘No sir, we have no record of any coffin on board,’ the desk clerk said, the same wary look on her face as the stewardess on the plane.
‘Fine,’ he whispered, and left.
---
His father came back, a day later; flew in from Sydney. He turned up at Jack’s apartment, steaming drunk. Jack could barely concentrate on what Christian was saying, so he interrupted.
‘My sister wasn’t there, was she?’ he blurted, and his father paused, swaying where he stood. He left soon after. The next day, he was dead. Heart attack, brought on by a drinking binge.
---
Jack finally noticed the light blinking on his answerphone. The first message brought him to his knees, made him cry so hard he threw up. His father had phoned from Australia, the evening before Jack flew home, from a bar, it sounded like. He said he was sorry, that Jack had been right, that he loved him and forgave him – no, thanked him. He had to replay the second message once he had stopped sobbing; it was from Kate, terse and to the point; she’d got away, was on the run again, and here was a number he could reach her on, but not for a while.
‘How can it be?’ she’d asked, but he doubted she expected him to have an answer.
He sat, dishevelled, on his apartment floor, and drank whiskey until he passed out. Just before oblivion overwhelmed him, he thought about James, and knew that somehow, in this place, James had convinced his father to call home. He wondered if his father had convinced James not to commit murder.
That’s why the Red Sox will never win the series
---
After several letters and phone calls, and a little bit of cashing in favours, he eventually got a meeting at Oceanic’s offices. One of their customer service managers, grey suit, instantly forgettable. That was probably the point. The man’s expression and manner was bland enough to begin with, but that soon changed as Jack diverted from the cover story he’d concocted in his letters, as he started talking about the crash, the island, the cover-up. Jack was on his feet and shouting by the time security reached the office.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ he yelled as he was escorted out. ‘I will not drop this!’ He stumbled and fell as they shoved him out onto the pavement; several people tutted, and he felt their eyes on him. He stood, brushing himself down with as much dignity as he could muster, then headed for the nearest bar.
He was so hungover he could barely move the next morning when his doorbell rang, insistently and incessantly. He opened the door, still wearing his clothes from the night before, to another bland man in a suit. The man flashed Oceanic I.D., which got Jack’s attention.
‘Dr Shephard, may I come in?’
Jack stared at the paperwork on his coffee table, fighting down wave after wave of nausea. He should be angry, furious that they were trying to buy him off. But as he looked down at the papers, at the ‘golden pass’ that the man had referred to, a thought got lodged in his mind.
Maybe that’s how we get back.
He looked up.
‘I’ll need two of these.’
To be continued.
