Lost fic: If You Never Say Goodbye (Sawyer, post-series, 4500 words)
Summary: Sawyer, back in the real world.
Notes: Post-series. Character death, mostly canonical (Given the way canon ended...)
It's the end of the story, it's what happens next
- PM Dawn, “If You Never Say Goodbye” from Songs in the Key of X
If You Never Say Goodbye
by eponine119
February 27-29, 2020
He lies his ass off for about three days after the Ajira plane lands, and then they start to leave him alone.
Kate offers him half her settlement. For about thirty seconds he thinks about taking her up on it. But he says no.
She also tries to get with him, but he knows she's still in shock about leaving Jack on the island. It's not really him that she wants; and it's not really her that he wants; and he doesn't do that anymore.
He has some other things to do anyway. And Kate and Claire have a lot to work out.
His throat is dry as the phone rings on the other end, waiting to connect.
“Hello?
“Miss Carlson?” Those old Southern manners drilled into him so long ago come out at the oddest times.
“This is Rachel,” she says.
Suddenly there's tears in his eyes and his throat is closed and even though he rehearsed this twenty times in his head, the words are gone.
“Hello?” She's about to hang up.
“Wait,” he says. “This is about your sister. Can we meet up and talk about Juliet?” It's shocking how much it hurts him to say her name.
There's a long pause. “Are you one of those conspiracy types?”
“No.”
“How much eyeliner are you wearing?”
He laughs, for real. So she's met Richard. That's going to make this all easier to explain.
His laugh buys him entrance. He doesn't even have to answer the question. “Come to the house tomorrow, around ten.”
That night, in the hotel, he dreams about Juliet. It's so real that he's shaking when he jolts awake. He can almost still feel her in his arms. He closes his eyes and lets the tears run for a minute, then squeezes his eyes closed to make them stop.
The next day, Rachel gives him a long look when she opens the door. Measuring him. He looks down and away, then meets her eyes. She doesn't look like Juliet at all, but then she nods to let him inside, and he can see it.
The living room is comfortable - cozy - and she has tea set up on the coffee table. “I'm Rachel,” she says. Sawyer is still trying to figure out what to say. Where to start. “And you're -?” she says after a moment.
“Oh, god,” he says, realizing he hasn't said, and is additionally acting like an idiot. “James. Jim. Sawyer. Um, Ford.” Her eyebrow rises with every name he says. “James.”
“James,” she says. “So what have you come to tell me about my sister?”
He scrubs his hands against his thighs. “It's weird, but --”
“I know about the island,” Rachel says. “You guys keep coming here to talk to me. Though it's been awhile since the last one. He was... different.”
“Our friend with the eyeliner?”
“No, he was the first. He recruited her for that gig.” She takes a deep breath. “So tell, me, James. Is my little sister ever coming back?”
“I'm --” He looks at the ceiling and shakes his head, then looks at her, hard. “I'm sorry.”
She nods again and it's a knife in his chest. “For us, she's been gone since she got on the plane to go. I guess I kind of knew. You were in love with her.”
“She died in my arms.” He didn't mean to do this this way. “I loved her,” he confirms.
“You're her type,” Rachel says. “That other guy who came, the Oceanic Six guy... not so much.”
“Jack was here?” He feels hot all over at this revelation, like he's been caught in a lie.
“Yeah. He told me there were still survivors on the magic island, and that she was one of them. They lied to protect the ones who were left. From... the eyeliner guy, I guess. And the others. The little one with the bug eyes.” She shrugs. “They lie about their names. But they saved my life. My son's life.” She glances toward the collection of photos on the mantel. “I wouldn't have had him, without her. Wouldn't still be here. I had cancer... really, really bad.” She looks at Sawyer again now. “It was supposed to be me.”
“All she wanted was to come home,” Sawyer says.
“All she ever wanted was to save other people,” Rachel says, and he realizes it's true. “I think I want you to tell me the whole story. The true story.” And suddenly he wants to. “But I can tell you want to go look at the pictures first. Are you hungry?” She doesn't wait for an answer, going into the kitchen.
He stands up slowly, and sways when he reaches his feet. Then he goes to the mantel, thick with framed photos. A lot of them are of Juliet's nephew. He knows he should be trying to figure out how to tell the story, how to spin it, what not to say. What he wants. But he reaches for the frames in the back instead.
Teenage Juliet, so awkward and so beautiful. Looking goofy with her sister at Disney World in the 70s - the first time through the 70s. How many stories about herself did she not tell him before they ran out of time?
Rachel comes back in, starts setting things down on the coffee table. Sandwiches and beer. He likes her already.
“We're gonna have to make a trade,” he says.
“Oh?”
“Story for story.”
“You're on,” Rachel says. She pops the tops off two bottles of beer, and hands one to him. He holds it out to clink, and she does, and they drink.
He gives her a long look over the table. “She told me,” he says. “About you.”
“Can't imagine what she said.”
“She loved you,” he says.
“God, we used to fight. You have brothers? Sisters?” Rachel asks, and he shakes his head. “Then you don't know. But even when I was being mean to her, and she was yelling at me and crying - because, god, she cried all the time when we were kids - I knew she'd do anything for me.”
“She always had my back.”
“Yeah, like that.” She pulls herself out of the past.
He finishes the bottle and thinks about another one. Wets his lips. “Did Jack tell you how weird the island was?”
“I don't give a shit about the island, James. Cut the crap and tell me the real story.”
“We fell in love in 1974.”
“1974.”
“Time travel. I told you the island was --”
“Weird, got it.”
“She loved me more than I deserved. And she died, Rachel. I'm sorry. She died, and it was my fault.” Even though every word is true, he's pretending this is a con. It's the only way he can get through it. By pretending.
“Bullshit,” Rachel says, in the year 2007. “It was her decision. I knew her for her entire life. I held her on the day she was born. I listened to her cry herself to sleep every night for a year when our parents split. Not even exaggerating. She was a genius, and she made the worst decisions in the world because she was terrified of falling in love.”
“She loved me.”
“I believe you. Because she's not here and you are.” Rachel holds his gaze. “And so am I.”
“She saved me,” Sawyer says, and Rachel blinks at him slow, like a cat, like Juliet used to. “Not my life. My soul. And I miss her. I'll miss her every day until I die.” He's rarely been so honest in his life. Could count the number of times on one hand, and all of them happened on the island, too.
“When did this happen?” Rachel asked. “Don't say 1974.”
“Couple weeks ago.”
Rachel nods, thinking. Deciding. “I want you to meet Julian.” She picks up the beer bottles and takes them into the kitchen. He rubs his eyes and contemplates running for the door, but then she's back. “C'mon.” She slips on her shoes at the front door and opens it, waiting for him to go out in front of her. “It's only three blocks.”
“What is?”
“School.” It's warm outside, and humid. They walk down the sidewalk, through the neighborhood. They get to the school just as it's letting out. A little blond boy about six notices them, and leaves his friends to come over. He has blue eyes. James wishes that Juliet was here. He can practically feel her hand holding his. They almost made it.
He thinks about how much she wanted to meet her nephew.
He stays for a few more days. Rachel tells him a lot of stories, and he tells her a few in return. “There's some boxes in the garage,” she offers up hesitantly, when he's starting to think he's outlasted his welcome. “Old stuff, from when we were kids. She didn't have anywhere to store it when she left, so...”
Oh.
She shows him the stack of plastic totes in the garage, neatly shuffled up on shelves. She puts her hand on his shoulder, then goes back into the house, leaving him alone with them. He takes a deep breath, and hardens his heart, and opens the first of them.
It's full of notebooks. Journals? Diaries. His face feels hot. He can't - shouldn't - and yet. She kept them. And Rachel brought him here.
So he pulls out the first one. It's small and written erratically in pencil. He flips through the pages and stops on the one labeled July 3, 1977.
It's hot in the garage and he's sweating. For a second, in his head, he's back on the island, and he swears he can smell it, the ozone of the jungle.
He's not sure how much of it he's really processed. Losing her. He had to put it out of his head to survive, and then coming back here, to the real world again. He could keep it out of his mind so easily.
Except she comes to him every night. When he is lying still and alone in the air conditioning. Haunting him, he realizes.
He doesn't need to read the diaries.
But he does.
I don't want to fall in love, she wrote after getting her heart broken for the first time.
Maybe now he understands what he didn't before.
He runs his fingers over the spines of the books and then hefts the box back on to its shelf. Goes back inside feeling wrung out. Rachel pours him something stronger than their usual beer, and holds something out to him.
“I think maybe you need this.”
He takes it. It's a book, like the ones out in the garage. It has a soft, ocean blue cover. He tries to hand it back but she won't take it. He flicks the pages with his thumb and sees it's blank inside.
“I know you won't go talk to someone, so... write it down,” Rachel counsels.
“Thank you.” It's hard to find the words. “I should get going.” He doesn't mean just for the day. He recognizes this is goodbye.
Rachel walks him to the door. “We're expecting you for Thanksgiving,” she says, and means it.
He thinks about Thanksgiving. And Christmas. Dharma wasn't big on secular holidays, but he and Juliet were starting to have their own traditions. Three Thanksgivings together. Three Christmases. Three New Years kisses at midnight.
“No excuses.” Rachel can see right through him. “Juliet loved you. You're family now.”
He thinks about how he hasn't had a family since the 70s. When he was eight years old. And then with her. She was his family, for a little while. Something in him breaks.
After he leaves, he sits in the car for a long time, pretending to fiddle with the radio as the air conditioning blasts the sweat from his hair. When his eyes are finally free of tears, he puts it into gear.
He's got a long drive ahead.
He pulls in to Albequerque a little after midnight a couple days later and turns in at the Motel Six. It's been a couple thousand miles of listening to the tires singing on the interstate and bad country on the radio. He still hasn't figured out what he's going to say.
The next day, he doesn't call first. Just shows up at the address Kate gave him before he left for Miami. Rings the bell, feeling afraid.
“What the hell are you doing here, Sawyer,” Cassidy says when she opens the door. She's angry but not surprised. Kate must have told her to expect him.
“I'm here to see her.” There's only one reason he would be here, face Cassidy again. He's scared, inside.
Cassidy steps outside and pulls the front door of her house closed behind her. Making it clear he is not invited inside. “It'll be a cold day in hell.” She crosses her arms.
“She's my kid. I'm trying to do the right thing here for once.” What the hell did Kate say to her?
“She's not yours, Sawyer. I lied. That's what we did together, remember?”
“I've changed,” he insists, with his eyes wide and intense.
“Stay away from me and my daughter,” Cassidy says. “I'm serious.” Her eyes flick to his car at the curb. “Get lost.”
After she goes back inside and slams the door, he stands there for another minute, his hands open. Speechless. He thinks about kicking in the door, but then he remembers the raised voices in his own house when he was a kid and he can't. His hands curl into fists and he stomps back to the car.
“Son of a bitch!” He smacks the steering wheel.
He finds a dim, dingy bar and drinks most of the afternoon, and what he decides is that he's not giving up that easily. With clumsy fingers on his fancy new phone, he finds the school closest to Cassidy's address. The next afternoon, he sits in his car at the curb like a creep, watching the little girls walking home.
He doesn't know what she looks like, but he knows that he doesn't see her.
When the street is empty of kids again, he puts the car in gear. Then he notices the sign on the building next to the school - Library. On a hunch he pulls in to the lot and goes inside the building.
He sees her immediately. She's got long, gold hair and a thick stack of books. She's talking to the librarian in the children's area and as she smiles he sees the deep grooves in her cheeks on each side.
Not my kid, yeah right, he murmurs to himself.
But then he remembers what he used to call Cassidy, back in the day. She's got those dimples too. Not quite like his, but she's got them.
Maybe she's not lying this time.
Maybe she is.
DNA tests will still exist ten years from now. He wants to make this right, but he can wait. Off the island, he has all the time in the world.
He wants more than anything to go talk to her. Which is why he goes back outside, gets in the car, and drives away.
Halfway back to Los Angeles, he still hasn't decided what to do next, let alone what to do with his life. But he knows he's going to need papers to do it. James Ford is dead. Oceanic and Widmore saw to that. Right now that makes him no one.
He calls Kate, wishing he didn't have to.
“Did you see her?” Kate asks eagerly.
“Her mama sure was mad,” he says. “Wondered what you been telling her.”
“Did you see her?” Kate demands.
“Yeah. I saw her.” He remembers her glancing in his direction. “She saw me too.”
Kate's breathlessly waiting for more, but there isn't going to be any.
“Listen, I hate to do this, but I need money.”
“Of course,” Kate says. “How much?”
“Figure five thousand'll do it. A loan.”
“Where are you? I'll send it Western Union.”
He gives her the address. “Make sure you don't send more than five or it'll alert the feds.” Because he knows she can't help herself.
“Right,” she says.
He can hear her thinking, so he pre-emptively says, “Thanks,” and hangs up the phone.
Once he's got cash in hand, he buys himself a good set of papers. ID, Social Security, birth certificate. He talks himself into a security guard job. Rents a little apartment overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
He's bored.
He works nights, alone.
Nothing ever happens at his job so he re-reads Steinbeck.
Remembers Ben quoting at him that if a man gets too lonely he gets sick.
But he deserves to be alone.
After sixteen weeks of not answering his phone and not calling her back, Kate shows up. She pounds on his door right after he's gone to bed. He expected her about twelve weeks ago. Standing there in his shorts, he pulls open the door. “Come to collect?” he asks.
“What the hell, Sawyer,” she says, then glares at him. “Put on a shirt.”
“Oh-kay,” he says, rubbing his hand over his stomach. He turns his back to slip a tee over his head. He noticed she didn't say nothing about putting on pants, but he pulls on a pair of jeans. Then he shakes his hair out of his eyes and stands there barefoot, facing her.
Her hair is shiny and almost straight. “I missed you,” she says, giving him a brief hug. He squeezes back harder than he meant to, then releases her like she's fire. “What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Got a job. Like a productive member of society. Working on paying you back.”
“I don't care about the money, Sawyer,” she snaps. “I care about you.”
“I know,” he says, and looks away. At the stack of paperbacks he's amassed and read, stacked neatly on the windowsill.
“I gave Miles your number. He call you yet?”
“No.”
“Would you answer if he did?”
“Maybe.”
“Idiots. Both of you.”
“What have you been up to, Freckles?” he asks with that old edge in his voice.
“Claire's in Santa Rosa,” she says. “She has a lot of work to do. To try to recover. Aaron's with his grandmother.”
“So you're alone.”
“So are you.”
“But it's what I want,” he says.
“No one wants to be alone, Sawyer.” She's giving him that look. The one that makes the bed in this tiny studio apartment seem so big and so near.
“You're a pretty girl, Freckles. I'm sure you can find someone to keep you warm at night.” He hates himself like this. Hates that she brings him right back there, so fast, to the man he used to be.
That's why he's saying no.
She knows it too.
“You know, one of those authors used to write while he was working the night shift on security,” Kate says, glancing over at his book stack on the windowsill. Letting him know she's been checking up on him. She never could resist.
She places her hand on his chest and leans into him, on tiptoe, to press a kiss to his cheek. “Bye, Sawyer.”
…
He's halfway through filling the ocean-blue book that Rachel gave him when Miles finally calls. They go out for beers and Miles tells him Kate's found herself a new man.
Sawyer says he's happy for her. He's a little surprised he's not lying.
“When are you going to find someone?” Miles asks.
“When are you?”
“I'm here, aren't I?”
Sawyer laughs, and Miles joins him. They start going out for beers on a regular basis on Sawyer's night off. Miles usually finds someone to take home. Sawyer goes home alone.
“You're really not getting over her?” Miles asks him. It's about three spiral notebooks later, all filled with his left-handed scrawl.
“Who'd ever have believed I'd turn out to be a one-woman man.”
“She was the love of your life.”
“Guess so.” He sighs. “You want to come to Santa Rosa with me tomorrow?”
“Hey, I don't think it's that bad,” Miles says.
“To see Claire.”
“Claire's out. Kate didn't tell you?”
“Kate and I don't talk.”
“Aw, am I your best friend?” Miles is so sarcastic.
“I fuckin' love you, man,” Sawyer says, and he means it.
“Yeah, we can go see Claire any time you want. Including tomorrow.”
So they go, and all the while Sawyer's noticing how familiar Miles seems with this route. When they hit traffic, Miles knows where to turn to go around it. He knows where things are at the house and falls into easy conversation with Aaron. It makes Sawyer's eyebrows draw together in a frown.
But that fades when he hears Claire's delighted laugh when she sees him, and he leans down to let her hug him. She's put on some weight, but who is he to judge when he spends all his time sitting on his ass with the button on his jeans undone. “You finally came!” she cries.
“Missed you,” he says into her hair.
When he lets her go, she and Miles share a look that says they plotted this. And the look says a lot more than that, besides. Miles shoots him a look that's a little scared, like the old island Sawyer might reappear and punch him in the nose. But Miles just gets treated to some dimples, and on their way in to the dining room for peanut butter sandwiches, Sawyer says to him, “I'm happy for you.”
That night, in his room, looking out at the ocean, he asks himself how long he's going to wait. But then Juliet's on his mind his whole shift. It makes it harder to string the words together. It still feels like it was yesterday. So he keeps writing.
Miles gives him a computer for his birthday. Sawyer hates it, but he learns how to use it. With two fingers, he types in the contents of the notebooks that have been accumulating in a stack next to his paperbacks.
When it's finally done, he calls Kate. “I want you to read it.”
“What?”
“This thing I wrote.” The words are strange. Even though the first half of his life was driven by something else he wrote, childish words on notebook paper.
When they meet for him to give her the stack of pages, she's got an emerald ring on her finger. It makes him clutch the manuscript a little tighter. She's not alone anymore, and all he's got is this.
They meet again a week later in a coffee shop and she gives it back to him.
“Well?” He's been dying for a week, waiting.
“It could be dangerous,” she says.
“Widmore's dead. I checked.”
“But they're still out there.” So she still thinks about Jack too.
“No one is ever gonna believe this is based on a true story, Freckles.”
She nods, her teeth worrying at her lip. “I'm sorry.”
“For what?”
“Everything,” she says. “I don't think I realized until I read that --”
“It's fiction,” he growls, like she's poked him in a sensitive spot.
She rolls her eyes at him and then holds his gaze. “I don't think I realized how much you loved her. How much you will always love her.”
“Yeah, well.” He blows out a loud sigh.
“It's good,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“Really good.”
“Okay then.” He shakes the hair out of his eyes just for something to do.
“Have you showed it to Miles yet?”
“He knows about it.”
“He's got connections. He can help you. If you want.” She slides out of her chair, leaving already.
“Hey. Kate,” he calls her back.
Her eyes are blazing at him in response to his using her name. The pit in his stomach won't let him say what he wanted to say. “Thanks.”
“Anytime, Sawyer.”
Turns out, Miles once ousted a ghost from the house of a big shot literary agent. Who puts the manuscript up for auction. Once Sawyer hears the words “bidding war,” it all gets a little unreal.
He has no trouble paying Kate back the five grand he borrowed.
Or quitting the security gig.
Stephen King writes a glowing review in Entertainment Weekly. Yeah, that Stephen King.
Miles and Claire bring around champagne. “We've got to find you a better place now,” Miles says, looking at the cracks in the plaster that radiate out from the window. Not seeing the view of the ocean beyond it. He lives here for that view.
That night, when they're gone, Sawyer raises another glass of champagne and it's for her. Thinking about how Carrie was her favorite book. Wishing she could read this one.
His second book is about a smoke monster that lives under a little boy's bed.
He's not the kind of man to be alone for long. He meets someone in his writer's group. Claire introduces him to the mom of one of Aaron's friends. Kate's boyfriend's sister's roommate dates him for awhile. It's fine. He's fine. He's not going to fall again, but he's got a life. He's okay.
They turn his first book into a TV show. He doesn't watch it.
Rachel and Julian start to come for the survivor's Thanksgivings, though only he calls them that and only in his head.
Despite all protests that he is much too old to be a dad, Miles turns out to be one of the greatest.
Rachel's cancer comes back, and she dies. Julian is grown by then. He gets married. Aaron gets married.
Kate doesn't, but she seems happy.
It's not until Clementine turns thirty that she comes around. It's awkward between them, but he tells her that he loves her, and he thinks that she believes him. It feels like so much lost time.
He gets old.
Hurley and Jack never come back. He never stops looking for them.
On an ordinary day, he dies.
It's that simple.
And it's like he fell asleep and woke up in the middle of a dream, or maybe in a book he doesn't remember writing. He's young, and he's inexplicably a police detective, and there was never any island.
He meets a pretty blond doctor and when he touches her hand, remembers that they were meant to be together.
He finally sees her again. Finally gets to hold her in his arms again. Juliet.
He's been waiting for so long.
(end)
Notes: Post-series. Character death, mostly canonical (Given the way canon ended...)
It's the end of the story, it's what happens next
- PM Dawn, “If You Never Say Goodbye” from Songs in the Key of X
If You Never Say Goodbye
by eponine119
February 27-29, 2020
He lies his ass off for about three days after the Ajira plane lands, and then they start to leave him alone.
Kate offers him half her settlement. For about thirty seconds he thinks about taking her up on it. But he says no.
She also tries to get with him, but he knows she's still in shock about leaving Jack on the island. It's not really him that she wants; and it's not really her that he wants; and he doesn't do that anymore.
He has some other things to do anyway. And Kate and Claire have a lot to work out.
His throat is dry as the phone rings on the other end, waiting to connect.
“Hello?
“Miss Carlson?” Those old Southern manners drilled into him so long ago come out at the oddest times.
“This is Rachel,” she says.
Suddenly there's tears in his eyes and his throat is closed and even though he rehearsed this twenty times in his head, the words are gone.
“Hello?” She's about to hang up.
“Wait,” he says. “This is about your sister. Can we meet up and talk about Juliet?” It's shocking how much it hurts him to say her name.
There's a long pause. “Are you one of those conspiracy types?”
“No.”
“How much eyeliner are you wearing?”
He laughs, for real. So she's met Richard. That's going to make this all easier to explain.
His laugh buys him entrance. He doesn't even have to answer the question. “Come to the house tomorrow, around ten.”
That night, in the hotel, he dreams about Juliet. It's so real that he's shaking when he jolts awake. He can almost still feel her in his arms. He closes his eyes and lets the tears run for a minute, then squeezes his eyes closed to make them stop.
The next day, Rachel gives him a long look when she opens the door. Measuring him. He looks down and away, then meets her eyes. She doesn't look like Juliet at all, but then she nods to let him inside, and he can see it.
The living room is comfortable - cozy - and she has tea set up on the coffee table. “I'm Rachel,” she says. Sawyer is still trying to figure out what to say. Where to start. “And you're -?” she says after a moment.
“Oh, god,” he says, realizing he hasn't said, and is additionally acting like an idiot. “James. Jim. Sawyer. Um, Ford.” Her eyebrow rises with every name he says. “James.”
“James,” she says. “So what have you come to tell me about my sister?”
He scrubs his hands against his thighs. “It's weird, but --”
“I know about the island,” Rachel says. “You guys keep coming here to talk to me. Though it's been awhile since the last one. He was... different.”
“Our friend with the eyeliner?”
“No, he was the first. He recruited her for that gig.” She takes a deep breath. “So tell, me, James. Is my little sister ever coming back?”
“I'm --” He looks at the ceiling and shakes his head, then looks at her, hard. “I'm sorry.”
She nods again and it's a knife in his chest. “For us, she's been gone since she got on the plane to go. I guess I kind of knew. You were in love with her.”
“She died in my arms.” He didn't mean to do this this way. “I loved her,” he confirms.
“You're her type,” Rachel says. “That other guy who came, the Oceanic Six guy... not so much.”
“Jack was here?” He feels hot all over at this revelation, like he's been caught in a lie.
“Yeah. He told me there were still survivors on the magic island, and that she was one of them. They lied to protect the ones who were left. From... the eyeliner guy, I guess. And the others. The little one with the bug eyes.” She shrugs. “They lie about their names. But they saved my life. My son's life.” She glances toward the collection of photos on the mantel. “I wouldn't have had him, without her. Wouldn't still be here. I had cancer... really, really bad.” She looks at Sawyer again now. “It was supposed to be me.”
“All she wanted was to come home,” Sawyer says.
“All she ever wanted was to save other people,” Rachel says, and he realizes it's true. “I think I want you to tell me the whole story. The true story.” And suddenly he wants to. “But I can tell you want to go look at the pictures first. Are you hungry?” She doesn't wait for an answer, going into the kitchen.
He stands up slowly, and sways when he reaches his feet. Then he goes to the mantel, thick with framed photos. A lot of them are of Juliet's nephew. He knows he should be trying to figure out how to tell the story, how to spin it, what not to say. What he wants. But he reaches for the frames in the back instead.
Teenage Juliet, so awkward and so beautiful. Looking goofy with her sister at Disney World in the 70s - the first time through the 70s. How many stories about herself did she not tell him before they ran out of time?
Rachel comes back in, starts setting things down on the coffee table. Sandwiches and beer. He likes her already.
“We're gonna have to make a trade,” he says.
“Oh?”
“Story for story.”
“You're on,” Rachel says. She pops the tops off two bottles of beer, and hands one to him. He holds it out to clink, and she does, and they drink.
He gives her a long look over the table. “She told me,” he says. “About you.”
“Can't imagine what she said.”
“She loved you,” he says.
“God, we used to fight. You have brothers? Sisters?” Rachel asks, and he shakes his head. “Then you don't know. But even when I was being mean to her, and she was yelling at me and crying - because, god, she cried all the time when we were kids - I knew she'd do anything for me.”
“She always had my back.”
“Yeah, like that.” She pulls herself out of the past.
He finishes the bottle and thinks about another one. Wets his lips. “Did Jack tell you how weird the island was?”
“I don't give a shit about the island, James. Cut the crap and tell me the real story.”
“We fell in love in 1974.”
“1974.”
“Time travel. I told you the island was --”
“Weird, got it.”
“She loved me more than I deserved. And she died, Rachel. I'm sorry. She died, and it was my fault.” Even though every word is true, he's pretending this is a con. It's the only way he can get through it. By pretending.
“Bullshit,” Rachel says, in the year 2007. “It was her decision. I knew her for her entire life. I held her on the day she was born. I listened to her cry herself to sleep every night for a year when our parents split. Not even exaggerating. She was a genius, and she made the worst decisions in the world because she was terrified of falling in love.”
“She loved me.”
“I believe you. Because she's not here and you are.” Rachel holds his gaze. “And so am I.”
“She saved me,” Sawyer says, and Rachel blinks at him slow, like a cat, like Juliet used to. “Not my life. My soul. And I miss her. I'll miss her every day until I die.” He's rarely been so honest in his life. Could count the number of times on one hand, and all of them happened on the island, too.
“When did this happen?” Rachel asked. “Don't say 1974.”
“Couple weeks ago.”
Rachel nods, thinking. Deciding. “I want you to meet Julian.” She picks up the beer bottles and takes them into the kitchen. He rubs his eyes and contemplates running for the door, but then she's back. “C'mon.” She slips on her shoes at the front door and opens it, waiting for him to go out in front of her. “It's only three blocks.”
“What is?”
“School.” It's warm outside, and humid. They walk down the sidewalk, through the neighborhood. They get to the school just as it's letting out. A little blond boy about six notices them, and leaves his friends to come over. He has blue eyes. James wishes that Juliet was here. He can practically feel her hand holding his. They almost made it.
He thinks about how much she wanted to meet her nephew.
He stays for a few more days. Rachel tells him a lot of stories, and he tells her a few in return. “There's some boxes in the garage,” she offers up hesitantly, when he's starting to think he's outlasted his welcome. “Old stuff, from when we were kids. She didn't have anywhere to store it when she left, so...”
Oh.
She shows him the stack of plastic totes in the garage, neatly shuffled up on shelves. She puts her hand on his shoulder, then goes back into the house, leaving him alone with them. He takes a deep breath, and hardens his heart, and opens the first of them.
It's full of notebooks. Journals? Diaries. His face feels hot. He can't - shouldn't - and yet. She kept them. And Rachel brought him here.
So he pulls out the first one. It's small and written erratically in pencil. He flips through the pages and stops on the one labeled July 3, 1977.
It's hot in the garage and he's sweating. For a second, in his head, he's back on the island, and he swears he can smell it, the ozone of the jungle.
He's not sure how much of it he's really processed. Losing her. He had to put it out of his head to survive, and then coming back here, to the real world again. He could keep it out of his mind so easily.
Except she comes to him every night. When he is lying still and alone in the air conditioning. Haunting him, he realizes.
He doesn't need to read the diaries.
But he does.
I don't want to fall in love, she wrote after getting her heart broken for the first time.
Maybe now he understands what he didn't before.
He runs his fingers over the spines of the books and then hefts the box back on to its shelf. Goes back inside feeling wrung out. Rachel pours him something stronger than their usual beer, and holds something out to him.
“I think maybe you need this.”
He takes it. It's a book, like the ones out in the garage. It has a soft, ocean blue cover. He tries to hand it back but she won't take it. He flicks the pages with his thumb and sees it's blank inside.
“I know you won't go talk to someone, so... write it down,” Rachel counsels.
“Thank you.” It's hard to find the words. “I should get going.” He doesn't mean just for the day. He recognizes this is goodbye.
Rachel walks him to the door. “We're expecting you for Thanksgiving,” she says, and means it.
He thinks about Thanksgiving. And Christmas. Dharma wasn't big on secular holidays, but he and Juliet were starting to have their own traditions. Three Thanksgivings together. Three Christmases. Three New Years kisses at midnight.
“No excuses.” Rachel can see right through him. “Juliet loved you. You're family now.”
He thinks about how he hasn't had a family since the 70s. When he was eight years old. And then with her. She was his family, for a little while. Something in him breaks.
After he leaves, he sits in the car for a long time, pretending to fiddle with the radio as the air conditioning blasts the sweat from his hair. When his eyes are finally free of tears, he puts it into gear.
He's got a long drive ahead.
He pulls in to Albequerque a little after midnight a couple days later and turns in at the Motel Six. It's been a couple thousand miles of listening to the tires singing on the interstate and bad country on the radio. He still hasn't figured out what he's going to say.
The next day, he doesn't call first. Just shows up at the address Kate gave him before he left for Miami. Rings the bell, feeling afraid.
“What the hell are you doing here, Sawyer,” Cassidy says when she opens the door. She's angry but not surprised. Kate must have told her to expect him.
“I'm here to see her.” There's only one reason he would be here, face Cassidy again. He's scared, inside.
Cassidy steps outside and pulls the front door of her house closed behind her. Making it clear he is not invited inside. “It'll be a cold day in hell.” She crosses her arms.
“She's my kid. I'm trying to do the right thing here for once.” What the hell did Kate say to her?
“She's not yours, Sawyer. I lied. That's what we did together, remember?”
“I've changed,” he insists, with his eyes wide and intense.
“Stay away from me and my daughter,” Cassidy says. “I'm serious.” Her eyes flick to his car at the curb. “Get lost.”
After she goes back inside and slams the door, he stands there for another minute, his hands open. Speechless. He thinks about kicking in the door, but then he remembers the raised voices in his own house when he was a kid and he can't. His hands curl into fists and he stomps back to the car.
“Son of a bitch!” He smacks the steering wheel.
He finds a dim, dingy bar and drinks most of the afternoon, and what he decides is that he's not giving up that easily. With clumsy fingers on his fancy new phone, he finds the school closest to Cassidy's address. The next afternoon, he sits in his car at the curb like a creep, watching the little girls walking home.
He doesn't know what she looks like, but he knows that he doesn't see her.
When the street is empty of kids again, he puts the car in gear. Then he notices the sign on the building next to the school - Library. On a hunch he pulls in to the lot and goes inside the building.
He sees her immediately. She's got long, gold hair and a thick stack of books. She's talking to the librarian in the children's area and as she smiles he sees the deep grooves in her cheeks on each side.
Not my kid, yeah right, he murmurs to himself.
But then he remembers what he used to call Cassidy, back in the day. She's got those dimples too. Not quite like his, but she's got them.
Maybe she's not lying this time.
Maybe she is.
DNA tests will still exist ten years from now. He wants to make this right, but he can wait. Off the island, he has all the time in the world.
He wants more than anything to go talk to her. Which is why he goes back outside, gets in the car, and drives away.
Halfway back to Los Angeles, he still hasn't decided what to do next, let alone what to do with his life. But he knows he's going to need papers to do it. James Ford is dead. Oceanic and Widmore saw to that. Right now that makes him no one.
He calls Kate, wishing he didn't have to.
“Did you see her?” Kate asks eagerly.
“Her mama sure was mad,” he says. “Wondered what you been telling her.”
“Did you see her?” Kate demands.
“Yeah. I saw her.” He remembers her glancing in his direction. “She saw me too.”
Kate's breathlessly waiting for more, but there isn't going to be any.
“Listen, I hate to do this, but I need money.”
“Of course,” Kate says. “How much?”
“Figure five thousand'll do it. A loan.”
“Where are you? I'll send it Western Union.”
He gives her the address. “Make sure you don't send more than five or it'll alert the feds.” Because he knows she can't help herself.
“Right,” she says.
He can hear her thinking, so he pre-emptively says, “Thanks,” and hangs up the phone.
Once he's got cash in hand, he buys himself a good set of papers. ID, Social Security, birth certificate. He talks himself into a security guard job. Rents a little apartment overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
He's bored.
He works nights, alone.
Nothing ever happens at his job so he re-reads Steinbeck.
Remembers Ben quoting at him that if a man gets too lonely he gets sick.
But he deserves to be alone.
After sixteen weeks of not answering his phone and not calling her back, Kate shows up. She pounds on his door right after he's gone to bed. He expected her about twelve weeks ago. Standing there in his shorts, he pulls open the door. “Come to collect?” he asks.
“What the hell, Sawyer,” she says, then glares at him. “Put on a shirt.”
“Oh-kay,” he says, rubbing his hand over his stomach. He turns his back to slip a tee over his head. He noticed she didn't say nothing about putting on pants, but he pulls on a pair of jeans. Then he shakes his hair out of his eyes and stands there barefoot, facing her.
Her hair is shiny and almost straight. “I missed you,” she says, giving him a brief hug. He squeezes back harder than he meant to, then releases her like she's fire. “What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Got a job. Like a productive member of society. Working on paying you back.”
“I don't care about the money, Sawyer,” she snaps. “I care about you.”
“I know,” he says, and looks away. At the stack of paperbacks he's amassed and read, stacked neatly on the windowsill.
“I gave Miles your number. He call you yet?”
“No.”
“Would you answer if he did?”
“Maybe.”
“Idiots. Both of you.”
“What have you been up to, Freckles?” he asks with that old edge in his voice.
“Claire's in Santa Rosa,” she says. “She has a lot of work to do. To try to recover. Aaron's with his grandmother.”
“So you're alone.”
“So are you.”
“But it's what I want,” he says.
“No one wants to be alone, Sawyer.” She's giving him that look. The one that makes the bed in this tiny studio apartment seem so big and so near.
“You're a pretty girl, Freckles. I'm sure you can find someone to keep you warm at night.” He hates himself like this. Hates that she brings him right back there, so fast, to the man he used to be.
That's why he's saying no.
She knows it too.
“You know, one of those authors used to write while he was working the night shift on security,” Kate says, glancing over at his book stack on the windowsill. Letting him know she's been checking up on him. She never could resist.
She places her hand on his chest and leans into him, on tiptoe, to press a kiss to his cheek. “Bye, Sawyer.”
…
He's halfway through filling the ocean-blue book that Rachel gave him when Miles finally calls. They go out for beers and Miles tells him Kate's found herself a new man.
Sawyer says he's happy for her. He's a little surprised he's not lying.
“When are you going to find someone?” Miles asks.
“When are you?”
“I'm here, aren't I?”
Sawyer laughs, and Miles joins him. They start going out for beers on a regular basis on Sawyer's night off. Miles usually finds someone to take home. Sawyer goes home alone.
“You're really not getting over her?” Miles asks him. It's about three spiral notebooks later, all filled with his left-handed scrawl.
“Who'd ever have believed I'd turn out to be a one-woman man.”
“She was the love of your life.”
“Guess so.” He sighs. “You want to come to Santa Rosa with me tomorrow?”
“Hey, I don't think it's that bad,” Miles says.
“To see Claire.”
“Claire's out. Kate didn't tell you?”
“Kate and I don't talk.”
“Aw, am I your best friend?” Miles is so sarcastic.
“I fuckin' love you, man,” Sawyer says, and he means it.
“Yeah, we can go see Claire any time you want. Including tomorrow.”
So they go, and all the while Sawyer's noticing how familiar Miles seems with this route. When they hit traffic, Miles knows where to turn to go around it. He knows where things are at the house and falls into easy conversation with Aaron. It makes Sawyer's eyebrows draw together in a frown.
But that fades when he hears Claire's delighted laugh when she sees him, and he leans down to let her hug him. She's put on some weight, but who is he to judge when he spends all his time sitting on his ass with the button on his jeans undone. “You finally came!” she cries.
“Missed you,” he says into her hair.
When he lets her go, she and Miles share a look that says they plotted this. And the look says a lot more than that, besides. Miles shoots him a look that's a little scared, like the old island Sawyer might reappear and punch him in the nose. But Miles just gets treated to some dimples, and on their way in to the dining room for peanut butter sandwiches, Sawyer says to him, “I'm happy for you.”
That night, in his room, looking out at the ocean, he asks himself how long he's going to wait. But then Juliet's on his mind his whole shift. It makes it harder to string the words together. It still feels like it was yesterday. So he keeps writing.
Miles gives him a computer for his birthday. Sawyer hates it, but he learns how to use it. With two fingers, he types in the contents of the notebooks that have been accumulating in a stack next to his paperbacks.
When it's finally done, he calls Kate. “I want you to read it.”
“What?”
“This thing I wrote.” The words are strange. Even though the first half of his life was driven by something else he wrote, childish words on notebook paper.
When they meet for him to give her the stack of pages, she's got an emerald ring on her finger. It makes him clutch the manuscript a little tighter. She's not alone anymore, and all he's got is this.
They meet again a week later in a coffee shop and she gives it back to him.
“Well?” He's been dying for a week, waiting.
“It could be dangerous,” she says.
“Widmore's dead. I checked.”
“But they're still out there.” So she still thinks about Jack too.
“No one is ever gonna believe this is based on a true story, Freckles.”
She nods, her teeth worrying at her lip. “I'm sorry.”
“For what?”
“Everything,” she says. “I don't think I realized until I read that --”
“It's fiction,” he growls, like she's poked him in a sensitive spot.
She rolls her eyes at him and then holds his gaze. “I don't think I realized how much you loved her. How much you will always love her.”
“Yeah, well.” He blows out a loud sigh.
“It's good,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“Really good.”
“Okay then.” He shakes the hair out of his eyes just for something to do.
“Have you showed it to Miles yet?”
“He knows about it.”
“He's got connections. He can help you. If you want.” She slides out of her chair, leaving already.
“Hey. Kate,” he calls her back.
Her eyes are blazing at him in response to his using her name. The pit in his stomach won't let him say what he wanted to say. “Thanks.”
“Anytime, Sawyer.”
Turns out, Miles once ousted a ghost from the house of a big shot literary agent. Who puts the manuscript up for auction. Once Sawyer hears the words “bidding war,” it all gets a little unreal.
He has no trouble paying Kate back the five grand he borrowed.
Or quitting the security gig.
Stephen King writes a glowing review in Entertainment Weekly. Yeah, that Stephen King.
Miles and Claire bring around champagne. “We've got to find you a better place now,” Miles says, looking at the cracks in the plaster that radiate out from the window. Not seeing the view of the ocean beyond it. He lives here for that view.
That night, when they're gone, Sawyer raises another glass of champagne and it's for her. Thinking about how Carrie was her favorite book. Wishing she could read this one.
His second book is about a smoke monster that lives under a little boy's bed.
He's not the kind of man to be alone for long. He meets someone in his writer's group. Claire introduces him to the mom of one of Aaron's friends. Kate's boyfriend's sister's roommate dates him for awhile. It's fine. He's fine. He's not going to fall again, but he's got a life. He's okay.
They turn his first book into a TV show. He doesn't watch it.
Rachel and Julian start to come for the survivor's Thanksgivings, though only he calls them that and only in his head.
Despite all protests that he is much too old to be a dad, Miles turns out to be one of the greatest.
Rachel's cancer comes back, and she dies. Julian is grown by then. He gets married. Aaron gets married.
Kate doesn't, but she seems happy.
It's not until Clementine turns thirty that she comes around. It's awkward between them, but he tells her that he loves her, and he thinks that she believes him. It feels like so much lost time.
He gets old.
Hurley and Jack never come back. He never stops looking for them.
On an ordinary day, he dies.
It's that simple.
And it's like he fell asleep and woke up in the middle of a dream, or maybe in a book he doesn't remember writing. He's young, and he's inexplicably a police detective, and there was never any island.
He meets a pretty blond doctor and when he touches her hand, remembers that they were meant to be together.
He finally sees her again. Finally gets to hold her in his arms again. Juliet.
He's been waiting for so long.
(end)