miniature disasters (1/2) {jack/sawyer/claire; richard/alex; sawyer/charlotte}
Title: Miniature Disasters (1/2)
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Sawyer/Claire, Alex/Richard, Sawyer/Charlotte (in this part)
Word Count: 5,869
Rating: PG-13/light R
Author's Note: This is long overdue. For superduperkc. Italics denote flashbacks.
Summary: All it takes is one moment, one tiny second, to destroy years of work.
The car jolts beneath her, sending her body just a little farther to the left, her head slipping off the seat’s headrest until her cheek hits soft cotton and hard muscle. She straightens then, pulling herself back against the seat and blinking until her eyes focus properly.
“Sorry,” Jack says from next to her, voice tired but steady, hands gripped tight against the steering wheel. The sun is just beginning to rise, casting an eerie glow on the road stretched before them, and her eyes flick over to the window just in time to catch sight of the worn black ‘Welcome to Oregon’ sign nestled in a field of dry grass beside the road. Last time she’d looked they’d been somewhere along the California coast.
Claire fights the urge to look behind her, to look for a third passenger, but she forces herself to keep her eyes straight ahead. Just the two of them. Right now. Maybe for good.
She doesn’t ask how long he’s been driving or where they’re going or when they’re stopping. They’ll stop when Jack’s decided they’re far enough away, that it’s okay to stop. As for where they’re going, it doesn’t really matter now does it?
“You want me to take over?” She asks, already knowing the answer. He shakes his head. God forbid he lose control, even of something so small.
With that out of the way, she curls onto her side as best she can in a car, pulling her legs up, facing the window, her hand slipping down into the pocket of her jeans, fumbling for the small cell phone tucked inside, not daring to take it out, to even let him know she had it, but wishing for nothing more than to wake up to the feel of it vibrating.
---
Alex takes the concrete steps that lead out of the main building of her college campus two at a time. It’s a Friday and she has plans tonight and brunch with friends on Sunday morning and it all smells of promise, even with the crunch of the leaves underneath her feet, the chill that creeps underneath her jacket.
She finds her car, throwing her book bag in the back, pulling her keys out of her pocket and sticking them in the ignition. When she goes to back out however, she finds she can’t. Behind her a sleek black car has decided to park perpendicular to her own car, blocking her in. It certainly wasn’t there a moment ago. With a sigh, determined not to let this ruin her day, she rolls down her window, sticking her head out as she yells to the unseen driver, “Hey, can you please move. I have somewhere I need to be.”
Granted that somewhere is only the drugstore but she wants time to get back to her dorm so she can shower and change before she has to meet up with her friends and she really doesn’t feel like waiting for this person.
When there isn’t any answer, she cranes her neck more, trying to get a better view of the car, see if there’s anyone even inside or if she’s just talking to herself. The windows are tinted far too dark for her to really tell but if she squints against the sun’s glare she can see a silhouette in the driver’s side. With a sigh she opens the door and gets out, walking over to the aforementioned car and tapping on the window.
There’s a mechanical whir as the window rolls down and it only gets halfway there before she realizes exactly who she’s looking at. Her chest tightens. “What are you doing here?”
Richard’s face is stony, unmoving except for his lips. “Get in.”
She reacts exactly like the well trained animal they wanted her to be. That her father wanted her to be. She does exactly as she’s told, and she doesn’t ask questions.
Seconds later he’s driving out of the parking lot and she watches her plans fade out of sight.
---
The knocking on the door is what finally gets her out of bed on a day where noon still felt too early to be doing anything that took thought. Or movement.
She tugs on an oversized shirt over what little she is wearing already and walks to the door, leaning heavily on it when she twists the knob and cracks it open, enough to get a good look at her caller.
Charlotte relaxes somewhat when she sees who it is. “Weren’t you just here a few hours ago?”
“Let me in,” Sawyer orders, and she just raises an eyebrow, as if to remind him that she is not his servant or his girlfriend or his anything for that matter. And she doesn’t take orders. Instead of the please she’s looking for he shoves a piece of lined paper her way, a message scribbled in nearly unreadable handwriting. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t wait’ is all it says.
“No, this is not my problem.” She tells him, going to push the door shut, in no mood to sort out his issues or deal with his complicated living situation. He slides a hand between the doorjamb and the door so that she can’t close it without injuring him, and while she resents the fact that he’s coming to her with this she isn’t that mean. “Fine,” she says, pulling the door open all the way open this time and letting him in. “So what does that mean exactly?”
“It means they left.” He replies, taking on a tone that implies it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It means I get there and they’ve packed up their shit and took the car.”
“Why?” She grabs the piece of paper out of his hands, the worn creases an indicator that he hasn’t stopped folding and unfolding it probably since he found it.
“You know as much as I do, sweetheart.” The last word is acid tipped and she has to resist the urge to ball up the paper in her hand.
Instead she says, “I’m sure that’s not true.” Charlotte can’t possibly know as much as he does about this. She isn’t the one fucking the both of them, in what has got to be the most thoroughly messed up threesome she’s ever seen. “What do you want me to do about it anyways? Unless you’ve implanted tracking devices in them there isn’t very much anyone can do until they try to get in contact with you.”
Which isn’t what he wants to hear if the half-groan he gives is any indication, but he wouldn’t have come here for her to sugarcoat things. And if he did then they’re both in the wrong place.
---
Jack had been out getting the mail that lay forgotten in its box. It was late but visions of bills that change colors and ‘3rd and final notice’ were enough to get him going.
The stack three envelopes thick, one he’d already written off as junk mail, was reassuring. The presence of his neighbor, an older man, probably in his 50s, with the tendency to stare yet hardly say a word, was not.
He says “hey” because it’s the polite thing to do, and Jack’s always been about the polite thing, the right thing, for as long as he can remember, and he isn’t about to stop now just because he doesn’t like the way some guy he sees maybe once every two weeks is looking at him. The other man remains wordless. Jack just nods, holds the envelopes a little closer, and keeps walking to the door.
Then, “I’ve seen her somewhere.”
His feet stick in place, and he frowns. “Excuse me?”
“The blonde. I’ve seen her somewhere before.” Jack swallows hard, fights to keep his face neutral. He adds, “On TV maybe.”
It’s not like he didn’t think that one day he’d get asked this question. But it’s the way this man is looking at him, like he’s testing him and he already knows the answer. He lies anyways, “I don’t think so.”
The man doesn’t answer, just looks at him, unwavering gaze.
“Have a good night,” Jack says, trying not to speed through his words. His steps towards the door are faster this time around.
Twenty minutes later they’re both packing.
---
It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon when the call came.
“Richard.” The voice - Ben’s voice - had sounded eerily calm as it came over the line, something like thinly veiled suspicion present.
“Ben.” Richard replies, in like, not entirely sure what this was about. Ben did not make phone calls. Ben showed up when he wanted or needed something. Unannounced. And that wasn’t often, mostly because the other man hadn’t exactly been staying in one place since he’d been off the island. It was hard to keep track of someone like that and truth be told Richard didn’t really care to.
“I’ve just come across some rather interesting information and I was wondering if you have any idea what I’m talking about.” There’s a threat in his voice.
Something in Richard stirs, this growing concern that he knows exactly what Ben is talking about. The last thing he needs to do is get caught in a lie. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
There’s a pause, Ben weighing his words, trying to decipher just how much truth they held, maybe even testing him to see if he would give up any more information, simply in reaction to the silence. Richard just waits. He knows this game; he understands Ben better than the other man thinks he does. Finally, “It seems my daughter is alive and well.”
It isn’t news to Richard. He’s known for quiet a while, unbeknownst to Alex and certainly unbeknownst to Ben. The secret to finding things out before everyone else is keeping quiet once you do, and acting on the information only when you must. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Neither do I. Apparently someone has pulled the wool over my eyes, and I intend to find out who and how.” Richard has those answers too. “And then I intend to bring her home.”
But that right there - he doesn’t have an answer to that.
---
Sawyer had no intentions of ever running into her again. They’d been at odds on the island; getting off of it had done much to reconcile that. But there she was in the bar one day, red hair making her hard to miss in the sea of blondes that populated even the dirtiest bars in Los Angeles.
“Now I know this isn’t your part of town.” He asks, perching himself in the seat next to hers. She glances at him, looking him up and down, before deciding she’s more interested in her drink.
“How would you know that exactly?” Charlotte replies, after a moment, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. His eyes follow.
A slow grin spreads across his lips, as he reminds her of what she probably already knows. “’Cause this is my part of town. Think I would’ve seen you.”
Her eyes rise to meet his once more. “You’re seeing me now.”
Charlotte’s timing was both fortunate and unfortunate. Because this was one of those nights where he’d followed the muffled sounds of sex straight into Jack’s bedroom, only to find Claire’s legs wrapped around him as he pressed her into the bed, her eyes closing as his lips found her neck. They were without him, which seemed to be happening more and more frequently - the bond there becoming stronger, and that left him on the outside. It’s what had driven Sawyer to this bar and, later, it would be what drove him into Charlotte’s bed.
She pins him to the side of her car, not very much later, his back hitting with a thud and her fingers digging into his arms, his shoulders. He doesn’t even think to bother telling her no. He can sleep with whoever he wants; they never called it anything close to exclusive.
“Get in the car,” she hisses into his ear, her breast cupped in his hands as his fingers swirl over her nipple. He reaches behind him, pulls the release and feels the door pop open, because he never had the good sense to know that things like pseudo-cheating usually only made things worse.
---
The coffee burns Claire’s throat but she’s not drinking it for the taste; she’s drinking it to wake up. She feels like all she’s done is sleep for the past day. There are sleeping pills in the glove compartment that Jack thinks she doesn’t know about, and she’s fairly sure it’s as good an explanation as any.
Her cell phone sits in her pocket, still and silent.
“I think it’s a good idea.” Jack says, continuing a train of thought he’d left back in the car and was now suddenly resurrecting in a diner off of some exit. They’re still in Oregon; still headed to Washington.
Claire turns her attention to the cars on the other side of the window, frowning into the foggy remnants of the morning. If it’s even morning. She doesn’t even know what day it is. “Seattle,” she says, trying to get used to the word, the city, the idea. It’s not like she’s been spending much time in one place in the past few years; she should be used to this. Moving around on a whim, without much choice.
“There isn’t as much media attention here. No more hiding.” He’s trying to sell her something she’s already pretty much bought, but she lets him do it anyways for a number of reasons. His voice, his words, are soothing to her. They’ll be okay, is the underlying note.
“That would be nice,” she replies. Los Angeles had been full of risks for them, for her and Sawyer in particular, people who weren’t supposed to exist anymore. Now it was just her. “Do you think he’ll find us?” Jack’s eyes flick over to hers quickly, and she amends her question, “Sawyer.”
“Maybe.” He answers, noncommittally. She doesn’t think he believes it. She thinks he knows a little more about Sawyer than she does, that something’s going on behind the scenes, but she won’t get an answer so she never asks. She stops looking at him again, and he must notice, because he adds, “We’ll try contacting him after awhile.”
It’ll have to be good enough. For now.
---
“Why did you come here?” Alex restates her question from earlier, as he drives, to where she doesn’t know. She isn’t worried about that, not now.
“Recruiting.” Richard answers, simply. That wasn’t the first time she’d heard that. Every time he disappeared for a while, on a submarine bound for lands she’d only dreamed about, he always said he was ‘recruiting’ or trying to ‘help their cause’. That’s where Juliet had come from, one of those faraway lands. Florida she later learned, which was absolutely nothing like she’d imagined, and nothing like those lands described in those stories she’d read as a child.
She nods, knowing that asking anything about this so-called recruiting process will get her nowhere. “I guess it’s pointless to ask how you found out I didn’t die.”
“Fairly.” Another one word answer. All his focus is on the road in front of him.
“I didn’t have a choice, you know.” She feels the need to defend herself, despite his almost nonchalance on the topic. “They didn’t give me a lot of choice.”
There’s a certain way things went down. Deals that were made, things that are far bigger than her. Charles Widmore. Keamy. The island. She just took the hand that was dealt to her.
“Does my father know?” She can’t believe she hadn’t thought to ask that before.
Alex watches his face, carefully, as he answers, “No.” When it doesn’t change she waits for the ‘but he will’ or the ‘not yet’ but it never comes, and she relaxes ever so slightly. She can deal with Richard; there’s enough history there to reassure her that this will be okay.
“Do you know where you’re going?” She asks, after he doesn’t say anything more and she literally runs out of things to ask him, or at least things she thinks he will give answers to.
“Yes.”
“Any chance you’ll be more talkative once we get there?” Alex asks, and he spares her a glance, just barely, at that comment. She figures being nice really isn’t going to get her very far. Mostly she doesn’t think it’s going to matter much.
This time he doesn’t answer at all, so she sits back against the seat, and tries not to let the smooth movement of the car lull her to sleep.
---
The next time Charlotte wakes up it’s to another empty bed and to a silent house. But she isn’t alone.
She finds Sawyer in the living room, having snatched her computer and, apparently, having struggled with it, judging by the frown on his face, the bags under his eyes from lack of sleep and stress. It only reemphasized just how important these two were to him; caring, love even, looked strange on him, something far too unexpected. “What are you looking for?”
“A map.” He mutters, typing something, unseen to her. With a sigh, she perches on the arm of the couch, looking over his shoulder to see just what he was getting a map of, considering actually asking him questions was like pulling teeth. Displayed on the screen was a fairly bad copy of a map of the West Coast, detailing interstates and cities and not much else. Nothing that told him more than what he probably already knew.
“Give me the laptop.” She says, not asks, and when he doesn’t give it up she takes it. He doesn’t put up much of a fight, which is both new and rare. A couple of key strokes and she had something much better. “What are you planning on doing with this exactly?” Charlotte questioned, handing it back to him so he could see what she’d found.
“I’m going to find them.” He tells her, like it’s exactly that simple.
It’s her that frowns now, waiting for an elaboration, a plan, something that makes sense, but he gives none, and so she replies, “You realize that you’re playing a giant game of hide and seek throughout the entire West Coast. If they even went that way.”
“They did.” To say that he sounds irrationally unsure of himself would be an understatement.
“How can you be so sure?” Certainty, in the face of what they’ve all been through, is nothing more than a dream that can never be attained. Like safety. Like happiness. “I’m fairly sure we were reading the same note and I saw nothing on there about direction.”
“Because I know okay?” He sounds irritated, which is frankly better than this overconfidence. At least it’s him reacting, instead of just dismissing absolutely everything she says. “He’d go north. Some city somewhere. So I’m going north and I’m damn well going to find them.”
There are a lot of cities on the West Coast. A lot. But somehow she doesn’t imagine that bears repeating to him, so she only asks, “When?”
“However long it takes me to go home and pack and then come back here.” Sawyer replies, printing off the map she’s pulled up and turning off her computer before the ink is even dry. He closes the laptop, sets it down next to him, and gets to his feet, prompting her to follow, noting his words.
“And you’re coming back here why?” Charlotte asks. His clothes are the same as yesterdays and the night before; she wonders how long she should be expecting a houseguest, another day, another night.
“You’re coming with me.”
He closes the door before she can protest and way before she can process.
---
part one continued
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Sawyer/Claire, Alex/Richard, Sawyer/Charlotte (in this part)
Word Count: 5,869
Rating: PG-13/light R
Author's Note: This is long overdue. For superduperkc. Italics denote flashbacks.
Summary: All it takes is one moment, one tiny second, to destroy years of work.
The car jolts beneath her, sending her body just a little farther to the left, her head slipping off the seat’s headrest until her cheek hits soft cotton and hard muscle. She straightens then, pulling herself back against the seat and blinking until her eyes focus properly.
“Sorry,” Jack says from next to her, voice tired but steady, hands gripped tight against the steering wheel. The sun is just beginning to rise, casting an eerie glow on the road stretched before them, and her eyes flick over to the window just in time to catch sight of the worn black ‘Welcome to Oregon’ sign nestled in a field of dry grass beside the road. Last time she’d looked they’d been somewhere along the California coast.
Claire fights the urge to look behind her, to look for a third passenger, but she forces herself to keep her eyes straight ahead. Just the two of them. Right now. Maybe for good.
She doesn’t ask how long he’s been driving or where they’re going or when they’re stopping. They’ll stop when Jack’s decided they’re far enough away, that it’s okay to stop. As for where they’re going, it doesn’t really matter now does it?
“You want me to take over?” She asks, already knowing the answer. He shakes his head. God forbid he lose control, even of something so small.
With that out of the way, she curls onto her side as best she can in a car, pulling her legs up, facing the window, her hand slipping down into the pocket of her jeans, fumbling for the small cell phone tucked inside, not daring to take it out, to even let him know she had it, but wishing for nothing more than to wake up to the feel of it vibrating.
---
Alex takes the concrete steps that lead out of the main building of her college campus two at a time. It’s a Friday and she has plans tonight and brunch with friends on Sunday morning and it all smells of promise, even with the crunch of the leaves underneath her feet, the chill that creeps underneath her jacket.
She finds her car, throwing her book bag in the back, pulling her keys out of her pocket and sticking them in the ignition. When she goes to back out however, she finds she can’t. Behind her a sleek black car has decided to park perpendicular to her own car, blocking her in. It certainly wasn’t there a moment ago. With a sigh, determined not to let this ruin her day, she rolls down her window, sticking her head out as she yells to the unseen driver, “Hey, can you please move. I have somewhere I need to be.”
Granted that somewhere is only the drugstore but she wants time to get back to her dorm so she can shower and change before she has to meet up with her friends and she really doesn’t feel like waiting for this person.
When there isn’t any answer, she cranes her neck more, trying to get a better view of the car, see if there’s anyone even inside or if she’s just talking to herself. The windows are tinted far too dark for her to really tell but if she squints against the sun’s glare she can see a silhouette in the driver’s side. With a sigh she opens the door and gets out, walking over to the aforementioned car and tapping on the window.
There’s a mechanical whir as the window rolls down and it only gets halfway there before she realizes exactly who she’s looking at. Her chest tightens. “What are you doing here?”
Richard’s face is stony, unmoving except for his lips. “Get in.”
She reacts exactly like the well trained animal they wanted her to be. That her father wanted her to be. She does exactly as she’s told, and she doesn’t ask questions.
Seconds later he’s driving out of the parking lot and she watches her plans fade out of sight.
---
The knocking on the door is what finally gets her out of bed on a day where noon still felt too early to be doing anything that took thought. Or movement.
She tugs on an oversized shirt over what little she is wearing already and walks to the door, leaning heavily on it when she twists the knob and cracks it open, enough to get a good look at her caller.
Charlotte relaxes somewhat when she sees who it is. “Weren’t you just here a few hours ago?”
“Let me in,” Sawyer orders, and she just raises an eyebrow, as if to remind him that she is not his servant or his girlfriend or his anything for that matter. And she doesn’t take orders. Instead of the please she’s looking for he shoves a piece of lined paper her way, a message scribbled in nearly unreadable handwriting. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t wait’ is all it says.
“No, this is not my problem.” She tells him, going to push the door shut, in no mood to sort out his issues or deal with his complicated living situation. He slides a hand between the doorjamb and the door so that she can’t close it without injuring him, and while she resents the fact that he’s coming to her with this she isn’t that mean. “Fine,” she says, pulling the door open all the way open this time and letting him in. “So what does that mean exactly?”
“It means they left.” He replies, taking on a tone that implies it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It means I get there and they’ve packed up their shit and took the car.”
“Why?” She grabs the piece of paper out of his hands, the worn creases an indicator that he hasn’t stopped folding and unfolding it probably since he found it.
“You know as much as I do, sweetheart.” The last word is acid tipped and she has to resist the urge to ball up the paper in her hand.
Instead she says, “I’m sure that’s not true.” Charlotte can’t possibly know as much as he does about this. She isn’t the one fucking the both of them, in what has got to be the most thoroughly messed up threesome she’s ever seen. “What do you want me to do about it anyways? Unless you’ve implanted tracking devices in them there isn’t very much anyone can do until they try to get in contact with you.”
Which isn’t what he wants to hear if the half-groan he gives is any indication, but he wouldn’t have come here for her to sugarcoat things. And if he did then they’re both in the wrong place.
---
Jack had been out getting the mail that lay forgotten in its box. It was late but visions of bills that change colors and ‘3rd and final notice’ were enough to get him going.
The stack three envelopes thick, one he’d already written off as junk mail, was reassuring. The presence of his neighbor, an older man, probably in his 50s, with the tendency to stare yet hardly say a word, was not.
He says “hey” because it’s the polite thing to do, and Jack’s always been about the polite thing, the right thing, for as long as he can remember, and he isn’t about to stop now just because he doesn’t like the way some guy he sees maybe once every two weeks is looking at him. The other man remains wordless. Jack just nods, holds the envelopes a little closer, and keeps walking to the door.
Then, “I’ve seen her somewhere.”
His feet stick in place, and he frowns. “Excuse me?”
“The blonde. I’ve seen her somewhere before.” Jack swallows hard, fights to keep his face neutral. He adds, “On TV maybe.”
It’s not like he didn’t think that one day he’d get asked this question. But it’s the way this man is looking at him, like he’s testing him and he already knows the answer. He lies anyways, “I don’t think so.”
The man doesn’t answer, just looks at him, unwavering gaze.
“Have a good night,” Jack says, trying not to speed through his words. His steps towards the door are faster this time around.
Twenty minutes later they’re both packing.
---
It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon when the call came.
“Richard.” The voice - Ben’s voice - had sounded eerily calm as it came over the line, something like thinly veiled suspicion present.
“Ben.” Richard replies, in like, not entirely sure what this was about. Ben did not make phone calls. Ben showed up when he wanted or needed something. Unannounced. And that wasn’t often, mostly because the other man hadn’t exactly been staying in one place since he’d been off the island. It was hard to keep track of someone like that and truth be told Richard didn’t really care to.
“I’ve just come across some rather interesting information and I was wondering if you have any idea what I’m talking about.” There’s a threat in his voice.
Something in Richard stirs, this growing concern that he knows exactly what Ben is talking about. The last thing he needs to do is get caught in a lie. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
There’s a pause, Ben weighing his words, trying to decipher just how much truth they held, maybe even testing him to see if he would give up any more information, simply in reaction to the silence. Richard just waits. He knows this game; he understands Ben better than the other man thinks he does. Finally, “It seems my daughter is alive and well.”
It isn’t news to Richard. He’s known for quiet a while, unbeknownst to Alex and certainly unbeknownst to Ben. The secret to finding things out before everyone else is keeping quiet once you do, and acting on the information only when you must. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Neither do I. Apparently someone has pulled the wool over my eyes, and I intend to find out who and how.” Richard has those answers too. “And then I intend to bring her home.”
But that right there - he doesn’t have an answer to that.
---
Sawyer had no intentions of ever running into her again. They’d been at odds on the island; getting off of it had done much to reconcile that. But there she was in the bar one day, red hair making her hard to miss in the sea of blondes that populated even the dirtiest bars in Los Angeles.
“Now I know this isn’t your part of town.” He asks, perching himself in the seat next to hers. She glances at him, looking him up and down, before deciding she’s more interested in her drink.
“How would you know that exactly?” Charlotte replies, after a moment, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. His eyes follow.
A slow grin spreads across his lips, as he reminds her of what she probably already knows. “’Cause this is my part of town. Think I would’ve seen you.”
Her eyes rise to meet his once more. “You’re seeing me now.”
Charlotte’s timing was both fortunate and unfortunate. Because this was one of those nights where he’d followed the muffled sounds of sex straight into Jack’s bedroom, only to find Claire’s legs wrapped around him as he pressed her into the bed, her eyes closing as his lips found her neck. They were without him, which seemed to be happening more and more frequently - the bond there becoming stronger, and that left him on the outside. It’s what had driven Sawyer to this bar and, later, it would be what drove him into Charlotte’s bed.
She pins him to the side of her car, not very much later, his back hitting with a thud and her fingers digging into his arms, his shoulders. He doesn’t even think to bother telling her no. He can sleep with whoever he wants; they never called it anything close to exclusive.
“Get in the car,” she hisses into his ear, her breast cupped in his hands as his fingers swirl over her nipple. He reaches behind him, pulls the release and feels the door pop open, because he never had the good sense to know that things like pseudo-cheating usually only made things worse.
---
The coffee burns Claire’s throat but she’s not drinking it for the taste; she’s drinking it to wake up. She feels like all she’s done is sleep for the past day. There are sleeping pills in the glove compartment that Jack thinks she doesn’t know about, and she’s fairly sure it’s as good an explanation as any.
Her cell phone sits in her pocket, still and silent.
“I think it’s a good idea.” Jack says, continuing a train of thought he’d left back in the car and was now suddenly resurrecting in a diner off of some exit. They’re still in Oregon; still headed to Washington.
Claire turns her attention to the cars on the other side of the window, frowning into the foggy remnants of the morning. If it’s even morning. She doesn’t even know what day it is. “Seattle,” she says, trying to get used to the word, the city, the idea. It’s not like she’s been spending much time in one place in the past few years; she should be used to this. Moving around on a whim, without much choice.
“There isn’t as much media attention here. No more hiding.” He’s trying to sell her something she’s already pretty much bought, but she lets him do it anyways for a number of reasons. His voice, his words, are soothing to her. They’ll be okay, is the underlying note.
“That would be nice,” she replies. Los Angeles had been full of risks for them, for her and Sawyer in particular, people who weren’t supposed to exist anymore. Now it was just her. “Do you think he’ll find us?” Jack’s eyes flick over to hers quickly, and she amends her question, “Sawyer.”
“Maybe.” He answers, noncommittally. She doesn’t think he believes it. She thinks he knows a little more about Sawyer than she does, that something’s going on behind the scenes, but she won’t get an answer so she never asks. She stops looking at him again, and he must notice, because he adds, “We’ll try contacting him after awhile.”
It’ll have to be good enough. For now.
---
“Why did you come here?” Alex restates her question from earlier, as he drives, to where she doesn’t know. She isn’t worried about that, not now.
“Recruiting.” Richard answers, simply. That wasn’t the first time she’d heard that. Every time he disappeared for a while, on a submarine bound for lands she’d only dreamed about, he always said he was ‘recruiting’ or trying to ‘help their cause’. That’s where Juliet had come from, one of those faraway lands. Florida she later learned, which was absolutely nothing like she’d imagined, and nothing like those lands described in those stories she’d read as a child.
She nods, knowing that asking anything about this so-called recruiting process will get her nowhere. “I guess it’s pointless to ask how you found out I didn’t die.”
“Fairly.” Another one word answer. All his focus is on the road in front of him.
“I didn’t have a choice, you know.” She feels the need to defend herself, despite his almost nonchalance on the topic. “They didn’t give me a lot of choice.”
There’s a certain way things went down. Deals that were made, things that are far bigger than her. Charles Widmore. Keamy. The island. She just took the hand that was dealt to her.
“Does my father know?” She can’t believe she hadn’t thought to ask that before.
Alex watches his face, carefully, as he answers, “No.” When it doesn’t change she waits for the ‘but he will’ or the ‘not yet’ but it never comes, and she relaxes ever so slightly. She can deal with Richard; there’s enough history there to reassure her that this will be okay.
“Do you know where you’re going?” She asks, after he doesn’t say anything more and she literally runs out of things to ask him, or at least things she thinks he will give answers to.
“Yes.”
“Any chance you’ll be more talkative once we get there?” Alex asks, and he spares her a glance, just barely, at that comment. She figures being nice really isn’t going to get her very far. Mostly she doesn’t think it’s going to matter much.
This time he doesn’t answer at all, so she sits back against the seat, and tries not to let the smooth movement of the car lull her to sleep.
---
The next time Charlotte wakes up it’s to another empty bed and to a silent house. But she isn’t alone.
She finds Sawyer in the living room, having snatched her computer and, apparently, having struggled with it, judging by the frown on his face, the bags under his eyes from lack of sleep and stress. It only reemphasized just how important these two were to him; caring, love even, looked strange on him, something far too unexpected. “What are you looking for?”
“A map.” He mutters, typing something, unseen to her. With a sigh, she perches on the arm of the couch, looking over his shoulder to see just what he was getting a map of, considering actually asking him questions was like pulling teeth. Displayed on the screen was a fairly bad copy of a map of the West Coast, detailing interstates and cities and not much else. Nothing that told him more than what he probably already knew.
“Give me the laptop.” She says, not asks, and when he doesn’t give it up she takes it. He doesn’t put up much of a fight, which is both new and rare. A couple of key strokes and she had something much better. “What are you planning on doing with this exactly?” Charlotte questioned, handing it back to him so he could see what she’d found.
“I’m going to find them.” He tells her, like it’s exactly that simple.
It’s her that frowns now, waiting for an elaboration, a plan, something that makes sense, but he gives none, and so she replies, “You realize that you’re playing a giant game of hide and seek throughout the entire West Coast. If they even went that way.”
“They did.” To say that he sounds irrationally unsure of himself would be an understatement.
“How can you be so sure?” Certainty, in the face of what they’ve all been through, is nothing more than a dream that can never be attained. Like safety. Like happiness. “I’m fairly sure we were reading the same note and I saw nothing on there about direction.”
“Because I know okay?” He sounds irritated, which is frankly better than this overconfidence. At least it’s him reacting, instead of just dismissing absolutely everything she says. “He’d go north. Some city somewhere. So I’m going north and I’m damn well going to find them.”
There are a lot of cities on the West Coast. A lot. But somehow she doesn’t imagine that bears repeating to him, so she only asks, “When?”
“However long it takes me to go home and pack and then come back here.” Sawyer replies, printing off the map she’s pulled up and turning off her computer before the ink is even dry. He closes the laptop, sets it down next to him, and gets to his feet, prompting her to follow, noting his words.
“And you’re coming back here why?” Charlotte asks. His clothes are the same as yesterdays and the night before; she wonders how long she should be expecting a houseguest, another day, another night.
“You’re coming with me.”
He closes the door before she can protest and way before she can process.
---
part one continued