Challenge fic
Title: Riven.
Fandom: Lost.
Pairings: Charlie/Jack, Charlie/Locke.
Rating: PG-13ish.
Summary: A Triangle has 3 sides.
Warning: Angst with a capital A (possibly for anguish)
fanfic100 prompt #34 - Not enough.
Feedback: is my drug of choice.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Never will.
Notes: Written for cult_ships challenge #10 Triangles. Huge amounts of love and thanks to my wife to be, the gorgeous and talented lillyjk for the fastest beta ever. Ten points to the first person who spots the Nirvana reference.
Riven
They’re arguing again, Jack and Locke, he can hear them as they exchange tense, heated words. Spoken low, but just loud enough to drift over to where he sits hidden and alone.
Jack’s voice is harsh, raw sounding, emotion blanketing his every phrase as, try as he might, he fails to get his point across. Emotion always wins out over sense with Jack, makes his words sound like they hold less power than they do.
Locke’s voice is smoother, heavier somehow, but yet his words carry no more weight than Jack’s when they fall on ears deafened to what they say. A self-righteous tone and eyes sparkling bright with laughter make it hard to believe in the truth of what is being said.
Locke believes he is right and that one day all will see the workings of the world as he does. But then Locke believes in a lot of things and only some of them are true. Jack is more hesitant in his belief, more prone to question, to search for the truth rather than grasp at the first thing he sees. But that makes him no less sure that his way is right and damn anyone else’s point of view.
He listens in, focuses on their voices and hears his name spoken, urgent, fierce like a totem, or a prize to be won. They’re arguing over him, over the right to have him and keep him as their own. Two wolves, he thinks, fighting over the fallen body of a deer. Territorial pissings over who gets to finish the kill. He laughs to himself, hollow and weak, as he imagines strong hands twisting around his neck, snapping the chord that holds him together and then dropping him to the floor. But that’s not fair on them, they want to heal him not kill him, that last thing is for him to do. Two doctors, then. One of the body and one of the soul. Arguing over the treatment of a patient they share, because share him they do and they know that now. They know that he lies with them both, lies to them both, too. He knows that he should care that they do, he should feel something... fear, shame, the need to decide...
But he feels none of these things, just empty and worthless, broken like the statue that lies shattered at his feet.
He wonders what he will do if they force him to decide. Will he pick one and not the other or, will he tell them the truth. That neither of them can give him what he needs, that they only think they can but can’t do.
Jack wants to heal him. Wants to piece back together the shards of his life and make him whole again. So he lets Jack have his dream, lets him soothe and anoint, lets him paper over the cracks with soft touches and whispered words. Lets Jack think that there are enough pieces left to make his whole. But there aren’t, not really, not in this lifetime and not in the next. He’s too far gone for Jack’s brand of medicine to reach.
Locke wants to teach him. Shows him with power and strength how his life could be, if he had the will to let it. There’s nothing gentle about the way Locke touches him, about the way he pushes him to his knees, but, he doesn’t mind giving up control for the time he is with Locke. It makes the cravings easier to bear when he hands his thoughts to another. Takes away the visions that come swirling into his mind when he is free to think on his own. But no matter how hard Locke pushes him, how well he pulls him apart and then builds him anew, the lesson never quite sinks in.
"He's manipulating you, Jack."
He smiles again, lips curling around the emotion until it turns into a sneer. There’s truth to those words that echo across the dark of the jungle, but not in the way that Locke thinks. He is playing a game with them, telling half-truths and misremembered secrets to them both. But it’s not for his gain, it’s for theirs. He does it so that they won’t see the truth that lingers in the shadows of his eyes. He lets Jack try to heal him and Locke try to shape him into someone new. Lets them feel like they can be the one to save him from himself and, maybe, save themselves in the process. But it’s just a distraction, just a way for him to delay the inevitable for the briefest of times. And so he does and so they do. Until now. Until this moment of truth, when his secrets are spilling from their lips, as surely as the one thing that can make him whole is spilling from a shattered idol on the ground.
The sound of their argument rages on but he can’t hear them now. All he can hear is the blood pounding in his veins as desire and desperation begins to take hold. His focus has shifted, spiralled down so that all he sees is the tiny package in his hand. He doesn’t remember bending to pick it up but he must have done, or else, how could it be here? He rolls it in his hand, feels the weight of it, the softness and the way that it moulds to the shape of his palm. He can sense a heat to it, the one that will soon be flowing inside of him transferred from his memory to the plastic that he holds. There’s a part of him that wants to run to the voices, beg them to forgive him and make him need only them. Not this thing that he was once a slave to and will soon be again. But he doesn’t and he can’t. He listens to them shout as he breaks open the bag and then he listens no more.
Fandom: Lost.
Pairings: Charlie/Jack, Charlie/Locke.
Rating: PG-13ish.
Summary: A Triangle has 3 sides.
Warning: Angst with a capital A (possibly for anguish)
fanfic100 prompt #34 - Not enough.
Feedback: is my drug of choice.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Never will.
Notes: Written for cult_ships challenge #10 Triangles. Huge amounts of love and thanks to my wife to be, the gorgeous and talented lillyjk for the fastest beta ever. Ten points to the first person who spots the Nirvana reference.
Riven
They’re arguing again, Jack and Locke, he can hear them as they exchange tense, heated words. Spoken low, but just loud enough to drift over to where he sits hidden and alone.
Jack’s voice is harsh, raw sounding, emotion blanketing his every phrase as, try as he might, he fails to get his point across. Emotion always wins out over sense with Jack, makes his words sound like they hold less power than they do.
Locke’s voice is smoother, heavier somehow, but yet his words carry no more weight than Jack’s when they fall on ears deafened to what they say. A self-righteous tone and eyes sparkling bright with laughter make it hard to believe in the truth of what is being said.
Locke believes he is right and that one day all will see the workings of the world as he does. But then Locke believes in a lot of things and only some of them are true. Jack is more hesitant in his belief, more prone to question, to search for the truth rather than grasp at the first thing he sees. But that makes him no less sure that his way is right and damn anyone else’s point of view.
He listens in, focuses on their voices and hears his name spoken, urgent, fierce like a totem, or a prize to be won. They’re arguing over him, over the right to have him and keep him as their own. Two wolves, he thinks, fighting over the fallen body of a deer. Territorial pissings over who gets to finish the kill. He laughs to himself, hollow and weak, as he imagines strong hands twisting around his neck, snapping the chord that holds him together and then dropping him to the floor. But that’s not fair on them, they want to heal him not kill him, that last thing is for him to do. Two doctors, then. One of the body and one of the soul. Arguing over the treatment of a patient they share, because share him they do and they know that now. They know that he lies with them both, lies to them both, too. He knows that he should care that they do, he should feel something... fear, shame, the need to decide...
But he feels none of these things, just empty and worthless, broken like the statue that lies shattered at his feet.
He wonders what he will do if they force him to decide. Will he pick one and not the other or, will he tell them the truth. That neither of them can give him what he needs, that they only think they can but can’t do.
Jack wants to heal him. Wants to piece back together the shards of his life and make him whole again. So he lets Jack have his dream, lets him soothe and anoint, lets him paper over the cracks with soft touches and whispered words. Lets Jack think that there are enough pieces left to make his whole. But there aren’t, not really, not in this lifetime and not in the next. He’s too far gone for Jack’s brand of medicine to reach.
Locke wants to teach him. Shows him with power and strength how his life could be, if he had the will to let it. There’s nothing gentle about the way Locke touches him, about the way he pushes him to his knees, but, he doesn’t mind giving up control for the time he is with Locke. It makes the cravings easier to bear when he hands his thoughts to another. Takes away the visions that come swirling into his mind when he is free to think on his own. But no matter how hard Locke pushes him, how well he pulls him apart and then builds him anew, the lesson never quite sinks in.
"He's manipulating you, Jack."
He smiles again, lips curling around the emotion until it turns into a sneer. There’s truth to those words that echo across the dark of the jungle, but not in the way that Locke thinks. He is playing a game with them, telling half-truths and misremembered secrets to them both. But it’s not for his gain, it’s for theirs. He does it so that they won’t see the truth that lingers in the shadows of his eyes. He lets Jack try to heal him and Locke try to shape him into someone new. Lets them feel like they can be the one to save him from himself and, maybe, save themselves in the process. But it’s just a distraction, just a way for him to delay the inevitable for the briefest of times. And so he does and so they do. Until now. Until this moment of truth, when his secrets are spilling from their lips, as surely as the one thing that can make him whole is spilling from a shattered idol on the ground.
The sound of their argument rages on but he can’t hear them now. All he can hear is the blood pounding in his veins as desire and desperation begins to take hold. His focus has shifted, spiralled down so that all he sees is the tiny package in his hand. He doesn’t remember bending to pick it up but he must have done, or else, how could it be here? He rolls it in his hand, feels the weight of it, the softness and the way that it moulds to the shape of his palm. He can sense a heat to it, the one that will soon be flowing inside of him transferred from his memory to the plastic that he holds. There’s a part of him that wants to run to the voices, beg them to forgive him and make him need only them. Not this thing that he was once a slave to and will soon be again. But he doesn’t and he can’t. He listens to them shout as he breaks open the bag and then he listens no more.