Lost Fic: A Bird on a Wire (Sawyer)
Title: A Bird on a Wire
Character: Sawyer (Sawyer/Juliet, past Kate/Sawyer)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1,785
Warning: Massive “Recon” spoilers.
Disclaimer: Sawyer’s certainly not mine. And the title belongs to one Mr. Leonard Cohen.
Summary: He tells the woman his name is Sawyer and it feels dirty on his tongue.
A/N: So why is this fic here instead of one the fifty WIP’s I should be working on? Blame Sawyer. He apparently doesn’t respond well to fangirls being angry at him these days because after “Recon” he held my muse hostage and refused to give her back until we worked things out. This fic owes a great debt to Doc Jensen and to angela_weber who graciously lets me rant about Sawyer vs. James in her journal. I’m not saying Sawyer and I are on speaking terms just yet, but we’re getting there. However if he does anything stupid next week all bets are off.
Like a baby stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out to me.
But I swear by this song
And all that I have done wrong
I will make it up to thee.
---Leonard Cohen, “Like a Bird on a Wire.”
It’s only been three days.
His hands are still blistered from digging her grave, a constant pain made worse when he picks up a hot kettle without thinking.
He doesn’t mind. He needs to remember every second of every minute of every day if he has any hopes of making this work.
This is going to be his last con.
(This one’s for you, Blondie.)
***
A dead man and a con man walk into a cave.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Not-Locke made one crucial mistake. He walked into James’s house and said it wasn’t his. Said it was just where he lived for awhile.
(Really you son of a bitch?
That why I got a bottle in my hand? Let me give you the tour:
Over there is where I beat her at poker and watched her eyes narrow when she tried to act like she didn’t care, and right there is where we fucked against the wall that time when we couldn’t wait three more steps to get to the bed, and there by the window is where I pissed her off so much she called me Sawyer just to see me flinch, and there and there…
Not my home? Only home I ever had.)
He held his tongue, followed the fucking white rabbit down its hole, found his name on a wall, found hers too but it was scratched out.
They were playing a game, this thing and Jacob whoever the hell that’s supposed to be, and apparently they ain’t finished just yet.
There’s a name missing from the wall, he notices that too, notices and feels his chest tighten.
He’s only ever cared about two people and these bastards are fucking with both of them.
(Shouldn’t try to con a con man, Blondie.
Why’s that?
He knows when to call your bluff.)
***
Kate enters the camp wary and slow like a sleepwalker moving without purpose, just going because she doesn’t know how to stop or maybe just doesn’t want to stop, isn’t sure how she would get up again.
He can see this, all of this, in her eyes, in her cautious smile---it’s not so different from the one on his own face he’s sure.
That’s the way of them, always has been. Kindred spirits him and her, always knew what the other one was thinking.
But he’s not sure she’s reading him now, she couldn’t be and that’s a good thing.
This con’s got miles to go yet, miles and miles.
He thinks he can feel Juliet at his side, a whisper in his ear (she’s always whispering now.)
Be careful. Don’t get too cocky.
Not much hope of that happening, he would have replied.
That would have made her smile.
***
Not-Locke makes it easier. Puts him on a boat and ships him off to sea, recon mission he calls it.
“You’re the best liar I’ve ever met,” he says, those dead eyes trying to stare straight through him.
It’s a test. Where do your loyalties lie son? That’s the question. And if they don’t lie with me, maybe you’ll get your sorry ass killed over there.
That’s the subtext.
He’s gotten good at reading between the lines.
He shoves off like a good little soldier.
Liar, liar.
(Quiet, Blondie.)
***
He set foot on Hydra Island a grand total of six times in three years.
He ain’t saying he was avoiding it.
But he was.
He finds the cage, finds the dress that Kate never would have worn if they had given her a choice. It was too soft, too delicate. Didn’t suit her.
Except that it did, it hugged her in all the right places, tugged at his mind like he was a sixteen year old love struck school boy.
And he was. In love that is.
If it started anywhere, it started here in this cage with her.
It was the first step.
If he had never met Kate he never would have loved her. And if he never loved Kate then he never would have screwed her. And if he had never screwed her he never would have put that first nail in Sawyer’s coffin, never would have jumped from a helicopter, never would have swam out of that ocean and saw Juliet Burke on that shore, never would have…
Well you get the picture.
He holds that dress and feels grateful. She put him on a path. He owes her something (maybe everything).
She didn’t love him back though and he’s grateful for that too.
(What would you say if I asked you to marry me?
I’d say it’s 1976 James, and we’re stuck on an island.
That’s not an answer.
You didn’t really ask.)
There’s so much he’s never going to get to do now, so much he should have done, but he can’t stand the idea that he could have missed it all.
He puts the dress down, thinks of Kate back at the camp scared, pissed off, confused and of Juliet, dead and gone (not really, not ever.)
He can only get one of them home.
It’s better than none.
***
He tells the woman his name is Sawyer and it feels dirty on his tongue.
Ain’t that man anymore, never was, never will be again.
He could be, he could go back home, go back to conning, to not giving a damn about anyone, back to every man for himself and a tiger don’t change its stripes and every other line of bullshit he use to hide behind.
But he won’t.
She called him James, so that’s who he’ll be.
Don’t make me your conscious.
(He forgets sometimes that she could be just as hard as him. Forgets that she could lie and fight and kill. She wasn’t perfect and she hated when he tried to pretend that she was.)
Too late for that, baby.
***
He’s losing his touch; it’s been awhile since he pulled a long con.
La Fleur? That stopped being a con and started being a life the minute he talked her out of getting on that sub.
This is different, this is plotting and planning and staying one step ahead of everyone around him. He forgot how exhausting his line of work could be.
(What do you want to be when you grow up?
Very funny, Blondie.
I wanted to be a ballerina, then I took two lessons and decided I wanted to be a doctor.
You don’t strike me as the ballerina type.
Exactly my point.
I wanted to be a cop.
I could see that.)
“Zoey” sees right through him.
That’s okay, he sees right through her too.
“Take me to your leader,” he says.
She complies. Dumbass.
Takes him down into the belly of a sub, he tries not to think about his last sub trip, tells himself if wishes were horses we’d all have something to ride.
And low and behold there’s Charles Widmore, Mr. Freighter of Death himself.
This is going to get complicated, pitting monster against Daddy Warbucks and hoping they’re too busy watching each other to worry about him, but he can’t think about how hard it’s going to be, he’s just going to have to do it.
He’s going to take this sub, round up Kate, Jin, Sun, Hugo, and Miles and then they’re all going to get the hell out of dodge.
And Jack, she whispers.
He hasn’t made his mind up about that one yet.
***
Sawyer would have had a death wish.
Would have let the hurt and the pain swallow him whole, would have never stopped wallowing, would have found someone to blame and then would have spent every ounce of energy looking for a way to rip them apart.
He wanted to do that too, it was his first instinct---tiger don’t change his stripes, not without a hell of a lot of work anyway.
But that’s not what she would have done.
This is what she would do:
Keep moving, keep living even though it hurts worse than any gunshot or stab wound or broken bone ever could. She would get as many of them off this damn rock as she could, would die trying (did just that.)
My name is James Ford.
He thinks it over and over in his head until it becomes a mantra matching each stroke of his paddle carrying him back to Frankenlocke and Kate and all the rest of them.
James Ford.
He can’t forget that.
(You won’t.
Promise?
Absolutely.)
***
He finds Kate by the fire. He wonders what these past three years were like for her. Wonders what she looked like with a kid on her hip, what happened between her and the doc, if she ever thought of him, what exactly she thought of when she did.
Wonders, but doesn’t ask.
He didn’t travel that road, never will.
“Me and you are getting off this rock, Freckles.”
Old habits die hard, slip of the tongue, or maybe he’s just feeling nostalgic with all of these ghosts of Sawyers past swimming through his mind.
It’s just a name.
She ain’t Freckles any more than he’s Sawyer. But it makes them smile, makes them forget for a moment until he reaches for a stick to stoke the fire and his hand begins to throb.
“I’m doing this for her,” he whispers. “She wanted to get me off this island, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Kate nods and he knows she understands (kindreds, twins, too much alike, never would have worked out anyhow.)
They’re quiet for a moment, lost in their own worlds, until he breaks the silence.
“Too bad we don’t have any liquor; we could play another round of I never.”
(You ever been in love?
Ask me again, ask me again and I’ll drink the whole damn bottle.)
“We’re too old for drinking games,” she says.
She’s right, they’re too old and it’s too late.
He says good night, finds an empty spot of ground and settles in, tilts his face towards the stars.
Another memory, another ghost comes drifting across his mind:
(Why’d she call you James?
Cause that’s my name.)
James Ford. Three years and he’s still not sure what that means exactly but he knows what it doesn’t.
Can’t be a liar unless it’s for a good cause, can’t go back, can’t quit living, can’t give up, can’t pretend he never met her, can’t, can’t, can’t.
Maybe that’s what she meant by “it worked”.
Made him a real boy when he wasn’t even looking, she was sneaky like that.
I won’t forget who I am, Blondie.
Promises, promises.
This one he aims to keep.