belador (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} belador) wrote,@ 2007-09-21 23:30:00 |
|
Fic: Fated
14 weeks since last updated, oh the shame...
Title: Fated
Rating: R for language mostly
Characters: Jack/Sawyer, minor mentions of others
Spoilers: Not really; mention of possible S4 characters
A/N: Another weird one I'm afraid, just got this idea in my head and couldn't get it out...
‘Fuck,’ breathed Sawyer.
Jack nodded, then, realising Sawyer probably didn’t see him in the darkened room, said ‘Yeah’, in a flat, terse tone. He shone his flashlight up and along the stack after stack of dusty VHS tapes.
‘Any idea what it is?’ muttered Sawyer.
‘Maybe some kind of observation room. Like in the other hatch.’ Jack stepped forward into the room, pushing the heavy metal door back fully. Dust lay everywhere, thick, cloying. He felt it catch in his throat as he breathed, and he coughed.
‘You know dust is something like 70 per cent human skin cells,’ drawled Sawyer, and Jack snorted, he couldn’t help himself; a snort that turned into another cough.
‘Dignified,’ said Sawyer.
‘Fuck you.’
Jack wiped his fingers over the buttons of some kind of console underneath the shelves holding the video tapes, blew at the dust covering a small, rounded screen. Time felt heavy here, weighing down on him, weight on his chest, over his heart.
‘I’m gonna look at the other rooms, check Kate hasn’t stumbled across any more crazy fake rescuers.’
‘Go for it,’ muttered Jack as he bent to squint at some of the faded labels on the tapes. The movement must have been awkward somehow, because it sent a stab of pain up from his leg. He didn’t quite bite down on a cry as his hands snapped to grip the front of the console. ‘Dammit,’ he hissed.
‘You okay?’ said Sawyer from the doorway, after a pause.
‘Yeah.’
‘Sure?’
Jack didn’t reply the second time, just nodded, not caring it was dark and Sawyer couldn’t see it. He hated the way they reacted sometimes, like he was fragile now, felt it hot and sharp. He knew it was crazy to be angry, so he never trusted himself to speak at those moments, knew the anger would come out in his tone somehow.
After another pause, he heard Sawyer leave. He let out the shuddering breath he’d been holding, his right hand going to his thigh, fingers digging in through his jeans. He could feel the scarred skin through the denim and his stomach gave a little flip, as it always did (worse when he had to look at it), but he rubbed in anyway, massaging hard with his fingers.
Then he froze.
A tape, stuck out a little from the rest, with just one word on the label.
Jack
His own name, in what looked like, but couldn’t possibly be, his own handwriting.
---
A week later, and the others were sleeping. Jack paced the small kitchen in this new hatch, fingers digging viciously into his leg, as if he could physically tear out the cramp that was crippling his thigh. He breathed in bursts through his nose, anxious not to make too loud a noise and wake anyone. Not weak, he repeated in his head. Not weak.
As the cramp began to ease, he paused, leaning on the worktop they’d just about got clean yesterday. Maybe tomorrow they could eat something resembling a proper meal again. He looked up, through to the living quarters, at the sleeping forms inside. Sawyer, Kate, Desmond, Juliet. Sun, but not Jin. And Daniel.
The others were out there somewhere, but there was no reaching them. Not yet.
Jack turned away when he felt the acid rise in his stomach as he stared at Daniel. His leg twinged at the memory of how it was almost ruined; as Daniel stood there as that bastard had screamed at Jack, gun held over his knee; as Jack had yelled back through the blood and torn lip and cracked rib that he would never, ever tell him where they were; as the trigger was pulled and only Jack’s instinctive jerk had stopped the bullet shattering his knee, instead sending it tearing through his thigh just above.
And now Daniel was here, sleeping peacefully, his fingers still trailing against Kate’s shoulder where they slept together.
Going slowly, so as not to make any noise, Jack walked to the tape room.
---
He pulled the door shut behind him; it was a corridor and a turn away from the living quarters, but the latch made a sharp report when it slipped home; too loud. He turned in the darkness, his flashlight picking out the tape instantly, even though he’d turned it around, so the black strip of the tape casing faced out instead of the label.
He carefully pulled it out from between the dozens of others, slipped it out of its cardboard sheath.
Nothing on the top, just the label on the side.
Jack
He stood there, for hours it felt like, just staring at it as it lay in his hands, until suddenly, in a movement that half surprised himself, he pushed it into the deck in the console, making sure the volume control was cranked down to zero. It started playing automatically, and gooseflesh rose all over his body as he saw his own face staring back out of the small screen.
His finger slammed onto the pause button, and he stared at the face on the screen. It was him, but somehow not; a jagged scar ran down one cheek near an eye; the eyebrow above it didn’t grow quite right. His hair was a little longer; so was his beard. His eyes were bloodshot, red, raw-looking.
With some strange dislocating sensation flooding his thoughts, Jack turned the volume up a little, pressed the play button.
‘-never work out what I’m supposed to say. You? Me? We? How the fuck am I supposed to know? No-one’s ever been in this fucking situation before.’
Jack sank slowly down into the moth-eaten chair. On the tape, his voice was hoarse, his tone a little too loud.
‘Anyway, that’s not important. What’s important is the message. My message, to you. To us. Whatever. The same fucking message that’s been left time after time after fucking time. Each time a little different, but fundamentally the same. Because it never. Fucking. Works.’
‘You never know exactly what was said the time before this one, because you have to record over the same tape. That’s the first rule. And you can never say exactly how it happened to you, because it would be irrelevant, because each time happens differently. That’s the second rule.’
‘But what the fuck am I talking about rules for? Because there are big fucking rules that this whole thing shits all over. Rules of fucking physics, of how the Universe is supposed to work. Rules of science, of logic, of sanity.’
The Jack on screen paused for a moment, looking away from the camera. He seemed to compose himself.
‘The message, Jack. The message. I think, for the first time, I’ve worked it out. Because the tape I watched warned that it wouldn’t work. That soon, there would be a situation where you had to make a choice, you had to choose, and that it wouldn’t work. That I had to try something else, anything else, because one of them always dies. Every single time you choose, and one of them dies.’
‘Now it might seem like an easy choice to you, sitting there. It might seem simple. But this you need to understand. You have loved them both. With all your fucking heart-’
Screen-Jack’s voice cracked; his face twisted in agony. After a moment, he went on, his voice quieter.
‘You have loved them both. And it’s not as simple as save the one you love this time round. It’s like a research paper; with four conditions. You love Kate, she dies. You love Kate, she lives. You love Sawyer, he dies. You love Sawyer, he lives.’
Jack felt heat flood through his gut, through his face. His mouth went dry.
‘This whole thing has been on a loop for God-knows how long. You have loved them both, over and over and over again. It doesn’t matter who it is this time, it doesn’t matter who it is…was…for me.’
‘You can’t choose.’
‘So the message. This is the message, Jack, so listen up hard.’
‘It has to be you.’
‘This place wants blood, and it never works when you choose her over him or him over her. It just starts the loop over again. Oh, you get time to come back here, to leave this message for the next time around, to warn against it, but it never works.’
‘You have to let go, Jack. Let go of the idea that you can fix it, you can fight it, you can make it work. Because you can’t. You love them both, and the only way to save them both is to choose yourself. To choose to save them both, and for you to die.’
‘You got that? You hearing me? It has to be you. This is why this message is different from all those that go before it.’
‘Some point soon, there will be a situation where you have to make a choice. And instead of making the one choice or the other that we have been making for eternity, you need to stop, and think, and know that there’s only one way out of this.’
‘And maybe it will end it. Maybe if you die it will end. It has to. Because you can’t fucking live like this.’
Jack thought the tape was going to end then, as he sat there, his heart thumping in his throat. But it didn’t, not quite yet. Screen-Jack now had a challenging look on his face, a defiant look.
‘Now I know I said it doesn’t make a difference who it was for me, but of course it does. It was Sawyer. Started when Eko brought him back after he was shot. Thought I could ignore it but it’s a world of difference when you’ve got your hands on him. That game of poker was the real breakthrough though. I went to get the meds and ended up fucking him into the sand.’
A pause; Jack’s face was burning; he squirmed in his seat.
‘If he’s there, Jack, if he’s with you,’ and Screen-Jack’s face twisted again, ‘if he’s there, you make him feel it. Somehow. Make him fucking feel it.'
'You don’t have much time.’
And that was the end, the screen swallowed once again by blackness and the silence and gloom thundering back into the small dark room. Jack blinked, and was suddenly blinking past tears, something overwhelming clawing at his mind as he sat there, shaking.
‘Impossible,’ he whispered noiselessly, then jerked forward, slamming the eject button, hitting it again and again as it slowly spat the tape out. He scrabbled at the opening to the case, trying to prise it open until he lost patience and tore it from its pins. He reached in, closing his fingers around the film, preparing to rip-
‘Don’t,’ came Sawyer’s voice from the doorway.
And Jack froze.
...TBC
14 weeks since last updated, oh the shame...
Title: Fated
Rating: R for language mostly
Characters: Jack/Sawyer, minor mentions of others
Spoilers: Not really; mention of possible S4 characters
A/N: Another weird one I'm afraid, just got this idea in my head and couldn't get it out...
‘Fuck,’ breathed Sawyer.
Jack nodded, then, realising Sawyer probably didn’t see him in the darkened room, said ‘Yeah’, in a flat, terse tone. He shone his flashlight up and along the stack after stack of dusty VHS tapes.
‘Any idea what it is?’ muttered Sawyer.
‘Maybe some kind of observation room. Like in the other hatch.’ Jack stepped forward into the room, pushing the heavy metal door back fully. Dust lay everywhere, thick, cloying. He felt it catch in his throat as he breathed, and he coughed.
‘You know dust is something like 70 per cent human skin cells,’ drawled Sawyer, and Jack snorted, he couldn’t help himself; a snort that turned into another cough.
‘Dignified,’ said Sawyer.
‘Fuck you.’
Jack wiped his fingers over the buttons of some kind of console underneath the shelves holding the video tapes, blew at the dust covering a small, rounded screen. Time felt heavy here, weighing down on him, weight on his chest, over his heart.
‘I’m gonna look at the other rooms, check Kate hasn’t stumbled across any more crazy fake rescuers.’
‘Go for it,’ muttered Jack as he bent to squint at some of the faded labels on the tapes. The movement must have been awkward somehow, because it sent a stab of pain up from his leg. He didn’t quite bite down on a cry as his hands snapped to grip the front of the console. ‘Dammit,’ he hissed.
‘You okay?’ said Sawyer from the doorway, after a pause.
‘Yeah.’
‘Sure?’
Jack didn’t reply the second time, just nodded, not caring it was dark and Sawyer couldn’t see it. He hated the way they reacted sometimes, like he was fragile now, felt it hot and sharp. He knew it was crazy to be angry, so he never trusted himself to speak at those moments, knew the anger would come out in his tone somehow.
After another pause, he heard Sawyer leave. He let out the shuddering breath he’d been holding, his right hand going to his thigh, fingers digging in through his jeans. He could feel the scarred skin through the denim and his stomach gave a little flip, as it always did (worse when he had to look at it), but he rubbed in anyway, massaging hard with his fingers.
Then he froze.
A tape, stuck out a little from the rest, with just one word on the label.
Jack
His own name, in what looked like, but couldn’t possibly be, his own handwriting.
---
A week later, and the others were sleeping. Jack paced the small kitchen in this new hatch, fingers digging viciously into his leg, as if he could physically tear out the cramp that was crippling his thigh. He breathed in bursts through his nose, anxious not to make too loud a noise and wake anyone. Not weak, he repeated in his head. Not weak.
As the cramp began to ease, he paused, leaning on the worktop they’d just about got clean yesterday. Maybe tomorrow they could eat something resembling a proper meal again. He looked up, through to the living quarters, at the sleeping forms inside. Sawyer, Kate, Desmond, Juliet. Sun, but not Jin. And Daniel.
The others were out there somewhere, but there was no reaching them. Not yet.
Jack turned away when he felt the acid rise in his stomach as he stared at Daniel. His leg twinged at the memory of how it was almost ruined; as Daniel stood there as that bastard had screamed at Jack, gun held over his knee; as Jack had yelled back through the blood and torn lip and cracked rib that he would never, ever tell him where they were; as the trigger was pulled and only Jack’s instinctive jerk had stopped the bullet shattering his knee, instead sending it tearing through his thigh just above.
And now Daniel was here, sleeping peacefully, his fingers still trailing against Kate’s shoulder where they slept together.
Going slowly, so as not to make any noise, Jack walked to the tape room.
---
He pulled the door shut behind him; it was a corridor and a turn away from the living quarters, but the latch made a sharp report when it slipped home; too loud. He turned in the darkness, his flashlight picking out the tape instantly, even though he’d turned it around, so the black strip of the tape casing faced out instead of the label.
He carefully pulled it out from between the dozens of others, slipped it out of its cardboard sheath.
Nothing on the top, just the label on the side.
Jack
He stood there, for hours it felt like, just staring at it as it lay in his hands, until suddenly, in a movement that half surprised himself, he pushed it into the deck in the console, making sure the volume control was cranked down to zero. It started playing automatically, and gooseflesh rose all over his body as he saw his own face staring back out of the small screen.
His finger slammed onto the pause button, and he stared at the face on the screen. It was him, but somehow not; a jagged scar ran down one cheek near an eye; the eyebrow above it didn’t grow quite right. His hair was a little longer; so was his beard. His eyes were bloodshot, red, raw-looking.
With some strange dislocating sensation flooding his thoughts, Jack turned the volume up a little, pressed the play button.
‘-never work out what I’m supposed to say. You? Me? We? How the fuck am I supposed to know? No-one’s ever been in this fucking situation before.’
Jack sank slowly down into the moth-eaten chair. On the tape, his voice was hoarse, his tone a little too loud.
‘Anyway, that’s not important. What’s important is the message. My message, to you. To us. Whatever. The same fucking message that’s been left time after time after fucking time. Each time a little different, but fundamentally the same. Because it never. Fucking. Works.’
‘You never know exactly what was said the time before this one, because you have to record over the same tape. That’s the first rule. And you can never say exactly how it happened to you, because it would be irrelevant, because each time happens differently. That’s the second rule.’
‘But what the fuck am I talking about rules for? Because there are big fucking rules that this whole thing shits all over. Rules of fucking physics, of how the Universe is supposed to work. Rules of science, of logic, of sanity.’
The Jack on screen paused for a moment, looking away from the camera. He seemed to compose himself.
‘The message, Jack. The message. I think, for the first time, I’ve worked it out. Because the tape I watched warned that it wouldn’t work. That soon, there would be a situation where you had to make a choice, you had to choose, and that it wouldn’t work. That I had to try something else, anything else, because one of them always dies. Every single time you choose, and one of them dies.’
‘Now it might seem like an easy choice to you, sitting there. It might seem simple. But this you need to understand. You have loved them both. With all your fucking heart-’
Screen-Jack’s voice cracked; his face twisted in agony. After a moment, he went on, his voice quieter.
‘You have loved them both. And it’s not as simple as save the one you love this time round. It’s like a research paper; with four conditions. You love Kate, she dies. You love Kate, she lives. You love Sawyer, he dies. You love Sawyer, he lives.’
Jack felt heat flood through his gut, through his face. His mouth went dry.
‘This whole thing has been on a loop for God-knows how long. You have loved them both, over and over and over again. It doesn’t matter who it is this time, it doesn’t matter who it is…was…for me.’
‘You can’t choose.’
‘So the message. This is the message, Jack, so listen up hard.’
‘It has to be you.’
‘This place wants blood, and it never works when you choose her over him or him over her. It just starts the loop over again. Oh, you get time to come back here, to leave this message for the next time around, to warn against it, but it never works.’
‘You have to let go, Jack. Let go of the idea that you can fix it, you can fight it, you can make it work. Because you can’t. You love them both, and the only way to save them both is to choose yourself. To choose to save them both, and for you to die.’
‘You got that? You hearing me? It has to be you. This is why this message is different from all those that go before it.’
‘Some point soon, there will be a situation where you have to make a choice. And instead of making the one choice or the other that we have been making for eternity, you need to stop, and think, and know that there’s only one way out of this.’
‘And maybe it will end it. Maybe if you die it will end. It has to. Because you can’t fucking live like this.’
Jack thought the tape was going to end then, as he sat there, his heart thumping in his throat. But it didn’t, not quite yet. Screen-Jack now had a challenging look on his face, a defiant look.
‘Now I know I said it doesn’t make a difference who it was for me, but of course it does. It was Sawyer. Started when Eko brought him back after he was shot. Thought I could ignore it but it’s a world of difference when you’ve got your hands on him. That game of poker was the real breakthrough though. I went to get the meds and ended up fucking him into the sand.’
A pause; Jack’s face was burning; he squirmed in his seat.
‘If he’s there, Jack, if he’s with you,’ and Screen-Jack’s face twisted again, ‘if he’s there, you make him feel it. Somehow. Make him fucking feel it.'
'You don’t have much time.’
And that was the end, the screen swallowed once again by blackness and the silence and gloom thundering back into the small dark room. Jack blinked, and was suddenly blinking past tears, something overwhelming clawing at his mind as he sat there, shaking.
‘Impossible,’ he whispered noiselessly, then jerked forward, slamming the eject button, hitting it again and again as it slowly spat the tape out. He scrabbled at the opening to the case, trying to prise it open until he lost patience and tore it from its pins. He reached in, closing his fingers around the film, preparing to rip-
‘Don’t,’ came Sawyer’s voice from the doorway.
And Jack froze.
...TBC
