fic, Lost: I've Been Everywhere 9/14 (Sawyer, Jack, Ana Lucia), Pg13

Feb 10, 2009 13:01

Title: I've Been Everywhere 9/14
Rating: PG-13 (there's pretty heavy cursing here), will reach NC17 overall
Characters for this part: Sawyer, Jack, Ana Lucia.
Word counting: 2757 this part, 50000 ca overall.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine and all the folk songs used here are not mine. The places really exist and I've never been there.
Summary: Sawyer is a rambling musician during the Dust Bowl, Jack a former L.A. doctor traveling with him.
Thanks to: elliotsmelliot for the great beta job for which I can't be grateful enough and to fosfomifira for the title. I'd still be searching for one otherwise.
A/N: the song referenced in the chapter title is Vigilante Man by Woody Guthrie.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV


8. Have You Seen That Vigilante Man?

“Doc, you got an idea of where we are?”

“Negative. I mean, we’re in New Mexico. And I figure we’re pretty close to the border. That’d be it. You want to go to Mexico?”

“Like hell, it’s not like I can fucking sing in Spanish.”

Sawyer figures that something worse can happen than getting lost in New Mexico; at least it’s warm and the sun is high in the sky and they dismissed their coats for now. Doesn’t take away the fact that he really doesn’t like getting lost, especially if they’re close to the border and especially when everything he sees around is a road that goes straight through a desert, the monotony of the landscape broken only by a few trees and bushes here and there. Why the hell did he decide to go to Lordsburg on feet from Las Cruces when he didn’t know the road? At least Jack doesn’t seem to mind much, but he still doesn’t like being near the border. Near the border means police and the less he has to do with police, the better.

“So what now?” Jack asks.

“The hell if I know. Guess we walk until we find someplace and ask for directions. Hopin’ we don’t end in Mexico ‘cause I sure wouldn’t want to explain that to the custom’s officers.”

“Yeah, guess you’re right. Well, then let’s go. At worse, if we get out of the country and they don’t notice, we get back in the same way.”

“You hope. Ain’t exactly easy at nighttime but anyway, I just won’t consider the chance.”

“Seems like a good plan.”

Sawyer really, really hates walking without a direction; but looks like there isn’t much choice. Fine, for once they can pay, if they get to a place where there’s some place to sleep provided. But at least it’s warm.

Sunset has already come when they see a bunch of houses not so far away; white houses, no more than twenty or thirty, not exactly the pueblo Sawyer had been expecting.

“This looks too much like Mexico.”

“Well, might as well figure that out, right?”

Jack steps ahead and Sawyer follows him, shaking his head; he just doesn’t like the way things are going, even if he can’t quite put a finger on what’s actually wrong.

There’s still light when they get in, but there isn’t much movement around and it takes five minutes for Jack to find a woman that doesn’t ignore him when he asks for information. He goes back to Sawyer, who had been waiting, leaning on the wall of the town’s first house from the side they came from.

“So?”

“This place is called La Mesa. Don’t worry, we aren’t in Mexico yet. There’s another place about twelve miles from here which is kind of on the border.”

“Great. Does she know the way to Lordsburg?”

“Yeah, but she says it’s not safe to travel at night and tomorrow there’s someone who’s going there for some market. I asked whether there were any places to sleep but she said no.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time I slept on a road anyway. You got problems?”

“Not really. I mean, it’s warm here, right?”

“Guess it is. I guess we should just find ourselves a hidden place. This town looks too small to me to have vigilantes around, but we’re pretty close to the border. Ain’t a good thing if they find you sleepin’ on the road.”

It’s dark already when they settle for a small group of trees not exactly on the side of the road but not too far either; there isn’t much space by any means, but it looks comfortable and he thinks that between the bushes and the dark they should pass relatively unobserved. It doesn’t change the fact he still doesn’t like it. He hasn’t made an effort out of trying not to sleep in the open, but sometimes you just have to. The problem is that he has had so much luck until now, on that front, that he can’t shake the feeling that it can’t last much if at all, but it’s not like he has much choice. He lies on the ground after placing the guitar safely next to him, then drags his coat up to his chin, casts a glance over Jack doing the same thing and then tries to sleep.

And for a while, it all goes fine.

--

Then it isn’t fine anymore as he wakes up because someone wearing an extremely heavy boot kicks him right in the stomach and his first instinct is to throw up; he coughs blood instead as he rolls over and that same someone kicks him in the back again and he can’t even see the motherfucker.

Then he’s with his face down in the dirt, that boot pressing over his lower back; he hears a noise that sounds too much like someone is pulling a trigger guard off. Shit. He had to know that. He opens his mouth but seemingly his attacker sees it because now he feels the gun against his nape and that isn’t exactly the way he wants to die. He hopes it’s a thief. He really hopes it. Usually, they’re happy with the money and they are hungry enough not to lose any other time.

“You try to move and you’re dead.”

What the hell? , he thinks as he hears a voice that’s definitely a woman’s. Oh, fuck.

“Now, you do what I say. I say don’t talk, you don’t talk. I say you talk, you talk. I say you move, you move. I say you don’t, you don’t. Now, what if I say jump?”

“I say you first, bitch.”

He realizes he has probably signed his death warrant, but fuck, he did have his meetings with vigilantes and his meetings with thieves and he can swear that no one was as fucked up as this bitch is. Which is saying a lot.

She doesn’t do anything close to killing him, but he gets kicked in his hip again and even more forcefully; he automatically turns on his back, finally facing her. She’s obviously from the surroundings, it’s not like her accent doesn’t show it; he can only see long black hair in the dim moonlight along with her uniform. A vigilante uniform. Damn. He hasn’t never even seen a vigilante woman, for all that mattered. He wonders what happened to Jack. She has to have noticed him, but he hasn’t heard a thing since now, she blocks his field of vision and he hasn’t heard a noise still. He hopes she just knocked him out and decided he was a better subject to lash out on.

“What do you say now?”

“Fine. Understood.”

“Well, you and your friend there shouldn’t be sleepin’ here,” she says, and she delivers the line with another kick where she landed the first one. He spits blood again, wishing he could spit it in her face.

“Well, I’m sorry but it ain’t like you have a motherfucking five-star residence in that La Mesa hole down there. If there was d’you really think I’d sleep in the open?”

“You ain’t the one asking questions, here.”

He doesn’t even try to avoid her boot as it clashes against his shoulder.

“And I’m sayin’ that this really ain’t the reason.”

Sawyer doesn’t say anything. He could do without her boots colliding against his frame and anyway, if she got an idea, she probably won’t change her mind because he says so.

That’s why he hates vigilantes, but at least the other times a couple of dollars were enough for them to let him run.

“I’m sayin’ that you an’ your friend there are tryin’ to get into Mexico without authorization, that you ain’t got the money to pay even for a cellar and that you’re in big trouble. What d’you say?”

“If I say that I can show you the money, that we got it, that we even worked our ass off to get it and that we were going to Lordsburg and that I don’t even speak Spanish and neither does he it’d be useless, I guess.”

“Damn right, I wouldn’t believe you.”

Sawyer knows that at this point if he tells her what he’s about to tell her they’ll have more than one problem, if they get out of this alive, but the bitch could kill them first and find out after; there is something to lose, alright.

“Fine. Get where he is. Open his bag. There’s a small leather purse in. There’s the money. Do whatever the fuck you want.”

He wonders for a second if he should tell her not to take Jack’s tools, they’d be thoroughly fucked then, but keeps his mouth shut. Maybe she wouldn’t even notice them if he didn’t bring them to her attention.

She still keeps the gun aimed on him as she steps back and takes the bag out from under Jack’s head abruptly; from what Sawyer can see, he’s out cold but still breathing.

She opens the bag, takes out the leather purse and takes a peek inside it, all with the hand not holding the gun; Sawyer admires her practice with it for a second, then shakes his head. What the hell.

“Now, that’s a whole lot of money to go around with.”

“I don’t trust banks.”

“Sure you don’t.”

She takes the whole purse altogether and it disappears somewhere, maybe another bag she might have with her (it’s dark, he can barely see her face and the gun’s barrel and by this point his vision became a bit blurry). Sawyer had known it, peace, they’ll find some money elsewhere; but then she doesn’t lower the gun and he doesn’t even have the time to try to escape; he hears the gun firing once and then his left shoulder is on fire and he can’t even think. He can’t even hear her as she leaves without saying a thing; he brings his hand on his shoulder on reflex and he can feel it getting soaked in blood. His fingers start to tremble and he bites on his tongue for two seconds. He manages not to scream and to regain enough clarity to think, even if the pain is so sharp and just all over him, not only in the shoulder that if he could he’d just scream until tomorrow.

He needs to try and wake Jack up. After all, the guy’s a doctor, right? He’s suddenly thankful that the first person he has traveled with in years isn’t something else really. He manages to crawl up to where Jack is, but shivers when he sees that the bitch hit him pretty hard; there’s a small line of blood dropping down from his temple, even though it doesn’t look serious. Damn.

He tries to shake him awake, but there’s no business. The guy is really out cold, fuck that bitch.

There’s just one thing he knows, that he has to get the bullet out as soon as possible. He could try to use something from Jack’s bag but he couldn’t distinguish that stuff even trying and he’s not in the right state of mind anyway. He has to get that thing out and he only has his hands to do it; great, exactly the right way to avoid infection. But he can’t wait for Jack to wake up.

Oh, that’s really some irony, having a skilled doctor traveling with you and not being able to help.

He sits against a tree, gets his shirt off his arm, wipes the blood away with his hand. The bullet isn’t too deep, or at least so it feels. He hopes like hell he isn’t wrong. Then he takes a breath as his shoulder already throbs and as his fingers dig into the bleeding flesh he can’t help letting out a scream that makes his own stomach clench. He didn’t know he had it in himself to scream like this.

It doesn’t really take much, even though it hurts and the pain is so blinding that it seems like a fucking lifetime; he hasn’t stopped screaming when he throws the bullet out, his fingers dripping in thick, dark blood that looks almost black in the moonlight. And then he faintly hears some mumbling and he turns his head, seeing Jack move through a blurry vision (fuck, he had lost the point where he started fucking crying), then bring a hand to his head and then looking horrified at what’s at his side.

Jack is all over him a couple of seconds later, not minding his own injury; it takes some effort to pay attention to what he’s saying though, since it gets to him just after the third try when Jack has his head between his hands forcing Sawyer to look straight at him.

“What the fuck happened?”

“There was this... God. This bitch vigilante girl or whatever the fuck it was. Had a gun. Knocked you out cold first, then gave me a nice dressing. Said she was sure me ‘n you were trying to get into Mexico and didn’t believe we had a dime. I figured that if I told her where the money was... she’d leave. And she left, but left me this present first. Fuck. Sorry for the money.”

“Shut up. I need to get the bullet out now, don’t...”

“Already done that.”

“What?”

“Got it out myself. There’s a thing called hands.”

“Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?”

“Tried to.”

“Oh, fuck.”

Jack brings his bag closer, then has a better look at the wound.

“Damn, I’ve never even heard of such a thing. Well, guess you’ll have to explain me how the hell you did it one day. But it’ll be a miracle if it doesn’t get infected now. Fuck. And don’t you dare fall asleep on me before I’m through. You’d better just not dare.”

Sawyer nods weakly, too tired to do anything else really; he doesn’t even feel the need to protest when Jack takes some disinfectant and cleans the wound. In comparison to what he has just felt, this is barely stinging.

It takes a while before his shoulder is thoroughly patched up, the white of the bandages is almost blinding in the moonlight. He tries not to notice the light pink stain appearing on it a few seconds after Jack finished applying the gauze.

“So, doc? Any diagnosis?”

“Better than it looked like. If... well, if the dirt on your fingers doesn’t cause infection you should be fine. The bullet didn’t hit any important place and didn’t go too deep. But well, it’ll be at least a week before you can use that guitar. Maybe even two.”

“Oh, fuck. Damnit. We’re even out of money. Oh, that bitch. If I ever meet her again, I swear I’m gonna kill her and make her suffer.”

“Well, you don’t look that bad.”

“And why would that be?”

“You’re still being angry at her. Guess you can’t be that sick if you are, right?”

“Oh, fuck off. You got any idea of what we should do now?”

“Do you feel like going back to the village? Maybe we’ll find someone that can spare you a bed. Then tomorrow we go to Lordsburg and well... guess we’ll see. We’ll find some money some way.”

“Guess I ain’t got a better plan. Fine. Let’s go. Oh, fuck that bitch.”

He ignores Jack smiling slightly as he drapes Sawyer’s good arm over his shoulder.

He fucking hates vigilantes.

End.

fic: ensemble, character: ana lucia cortez, nanowrimo, fanfiction:lost, character: james sawyer ford, character: jack shephard, pairing: jack/sawyer

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