Permanent
Title: Permanent
Character: Sawyer, hints of Jack/Sawyer
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Though 3.04 “Every Man For Himself”
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Dedication: For lostsquee Luau Queen bbmarcello, who wanted "hurt" and "stars".
Sawyer Ford would never get a tattoo. It was too unchangeable, too distinguishing a mark. He needed to be everyone and anyone, charm the good girls and the bad girls alike, and he needed to disappear and never be found.
With the plane crash, he guesses he's now succeeded on all three counts.
James Ford would never get a tattoo because he didn’t like needles. And because up until now, he couldn’t see a single one and not be reminded of the small one his mother had on her shoulder - his father’s name.
It was a small detail that tormented him later when he overheard that the tattoo was one of the only identifying marks that his grandmother had to claim the body as her daughter’s.
To him, tattoos were never a good thing. They were the numbers inked harshly onto that old man’s forearm who came over once in awhile to play bridge with his grandparents. Even when he was too young to know what they meant, looking at them never made him feel anything but sad, almost worried.
In prison, the other men wore them as badges of pride, mementos of past loves and triumphs, or marks of regrets and poor choices made. Girlfriends who were or weren’t waiting for them on the outside, mothers who still did or didn’t love them after their crimes, gangs they were once members of who either would welcome them back or turn them out after it was all over.
He was one of the few who remained unadorned, skin perfectly pristine save for the odd cut or bruise or blackeye that inevitably came about. But he felt marked anyway, labeled as surely as if it was inked on his skin. If was as if he had the tattoos, but they were invisible.
Sawyer stares at Kate as she turns her back on him, spitting out live together, die alone with that look on her face that reeks of disappointment and determination. She may as well have Jack written across her heart, though most days he suspects she never knows it is branded there.
Jack. Now when he sees tattoos, he thinks of Jack.
When he first saw Jack’s artwork, he had to admit he was surprised. At first he thought it was a good guy obnoxiously trying to wear bad boy cred like a mask, but then he realized it was no put-on display. The tattoos were a part of him, inked forever into his skin, something a shade darker than the rest of him appeared to be.
Sometimes he caught himself staring at them, at the stars that swirled up the length of his arm. It must have hurt like hell, all those colors, all that detail. It would have taken a long time to complete, longer than those Chinese characters and that five on his shoulder. It would have been painful, and Jack did it all willfully.
That’s how he knew he and Jack were the same. They invited the pain in and wouldn’t let it leave. Jack wore his on the outside, on permanent display for everyone to see. It was hidden in plain view and no one ever seemed to realize it, whereas Sawyer kept his pain buried deep down inside, punishing himself with it. And everyone knew it.
He wishes that maybe he had reached out and touched those deep blue stars, felt Jack’s pain under his fingertips. He wishes he had done something, anything, to show Jack he was marked too. He both loved and hated Jack for being the one that would understand.
Sawyer was afraid to be understood.
But considering that Jack held the meaning of his tattoos as a closely guarded secret, maybe he was afraid to be understood as well.
Long before they were locked in cages, they were already prisoners, separate, apart. He may not have the ink to prove it, but that's a part of him that will never change.
It'll always be every man for himself, but not because he's selfish, like he pretends. It's because he doesn't want to drag them down with him.
He looks at Kate one more time before turning away.