Nailed - Part Two
Series: Nailed
Title: Patch Job
Part: 2/3
Pairing: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Season 3 generalities
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Previous Part: 1
Sawyer sees him standing at the edge of the tree line and he can’t help but think back to the island. But instead of sand meeting palm trees, here, overturned dirt meets rustic pines. The sky is still beautiful blue, but a light powder shade, not the deep cerulean hue of the sky above the Pacific. The heat that surrounds him and stifles him now is humid and heavy, so unlike the dry heat that cradled him so gently there. The sun is beating down violently and even with his shirt off and his hair pulled back, he can’t seem to cool down. It never used to bother him so much before.
But that was then.
This is now.
Then, when he watched Jack from afar, it was with a mixture of resentment and admiration.
Now all Sawyer feels is confusion.
On the island, Jack was always flanked by someone needing his help or simply wanting to talk to him, but now, he is the very definition of alone. Sawyer never sees him say more than is necessary to his co-workers, always operating on the outer fringes of everything. At this moment, the whole group of them is out front eating lunch and Jack is back here, gazing into the forest like he’s one step away from walking into it and never coming back.
Sawyer stops lining up the next row of shingles and watches Jack take a long drag from his cigarette and blow the smoke out into the air. There is not a single breeze to carry it away so the smoke just hangs there, heavy, until it dissipates.
The back of Jack’s gray t-shirt is sweat-stained between his sharp shoulder blades and his tool belt hangs low over his hips, his free hand resting on the head of his hammer. His body is tighter, tauter than Sawyer remembers it being and if he hadn’t seen the haunted, tired look in Jack’s eyes the other night, Sawyer could have easily believed Jack to be ten years younger than he actually is.
But Jack’s eyes speak volumes. His lifeless gaze is still vivid in Sawyer’s memory. No matter what had happened to Jack on the island, his eyes had always been so expressive, full of rage or sadness or passion or happiness, but never devoid of emotion. Now he’s a blank slate, an empty vessel.
Sawyer feels someone behind him and he shakes himself from his reverie, glancing over his shoulder and finding Nate. Nate, who had followed Sawyer’s gaze toward Jack, quickly and almost guiltily looks away.
“You want lunch, boss?” Nate asks. He turns his head to cough, averting his eyes from the object of Sawyer’s obvious concentration.
“You boys go on. I ain’t hungry,” Sawyer mumbles, bending down and focusing back on his work.
“You want us to bring you back something?”
“Naw. Just don’t take forever, okay?” Sawyer glances up at him as he reaches for another shingle, carefully prying it apart from the stack. It’s so damn hot they are all beginning to stick together. He lays it down, lining it up and then punching four nails across the middle line expertly with the nail gun - pop pop pop pop. He stands up, clutching the heavy tool in his left hand and brushing strands of hair from his sweaty forehead. “Town’s only half an hour at the rate you speed - I don’t want you boys gone all afternoon, got it?”
“Got it.” Nate salutes. “Jeff! Let’s go!” He turns to head for the ladder and his boots gouge the shingles, which are soft and pliable in the incredible heat. Sawyer groans at him and gestures downward with a frown.
“Would you watch it? You’re markin’ ‘em up. Now I gotta pull that one up,” he says grumpily and then looks to Jeff as he comes tromping over from the back side of the roof they had finished yesterday. He had retreated there to cut cap for the hip after he had gotten in Sawyer’s way a few too many times.
“Be careful, man,” Nate warns him, beating Sawyer to it. “Your sneakers are gonna ruin the shingles.” Jeff slows down and walks with a lighter step, nodding his head. Nate pats Sawyer on the shoulder almost like he’s trying to comfort him or reassure him. “You sure you don’t want something to eat, boss?”
“I’m sure,” Sawyer grunts, reminding himself that the kid’s just trying to be nice. Nate has been acting like this ever since he had picked him up from the bar three nights ago - pats on the back and understanding smiles and offers to hang out with him and Jeff and their girls, like he thinks Sawyer is desperate for friends or that he shouldn’t be left alone. Sawyer wants to tell him to fuck off and at another point in his life, probably would have, but now he can’t seem to muster up the requisite anger. He hates being pitied but he’s beginning to learn the difference between pity and genuine concern. Nate isn’t on a high horse looking down at him. If anything he’s still looking up, so Sawyer keeps his trap shut and reminds himself that Nate means well.
He keeps working until he hears Nate and Jeff barrel down the driveway, tires squealing unnecessarily as Nate’s car roars away. Sawyer sighs and looks up toward the ridge of the roof, estimating that he’s gonna need at least six more rows to reach the top, maybe seven. He should’ve had the boys snap a line before they left. He pulls out his tape measure and his chalk line and cradles one item in each hand, weighing his options. It’s definitely possible to do it on his own but it’s gonna be a pain.
Sawyer sets the heavy duty tape measure down on the exposed black felt above his last row of shingles and pushes the opening of his chalk line down, tapping the side and peering in to see how much chalk dust he has inside. A faint shower of blue powder dusts down over his boots. He probably doesn’t need to refill it but it doesn’t stop him from sticking the tear drop shaped container back into his tool belt and walking down to the ladder, deciding to go down to his truck anyway.
It’s just another excuse in a long line of excuses that he’s been making all week, pointless reasons for him to abandon high ground and return to earth just so he can walk past Jack when he’s getting a drink from the cooler or when he is at the open frame of a window. Jack never pays him any mind - doesn’t so much as look at him - but Sawyer keeps passing by whenever he can. Sawyer doesn’t know why he does it or what he’s expecting, but he can’t help it.
Now he pauses at the base of the ladder and looks toward Jack once more, still standing by the pine trees with his back toward the house. There is no one else around. Just him and Jack. Like so many times before, Sawyer finds himself walking toward him, finally finding the courage to speak to him because they are alone.
He’s only ever been able to speak freely with Jack when the world was narrowed down to just the two of them; in the deep of the jungle, the privacy of his tent, the silence of the hatch…As Sawyer stops beside Jack, his feet uneven on the heaping mound of overturned dirt left by the digging of the foundation, he knows that fact hasn’t changed.
“Hey,” Sawyer says softly, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking at Jack out of the corner of his eye. Jack doesn’t respond and he doesn’t turn to face him, but the line of his jaw tightens and Sawyer knows he heard him. Sawyer feels vulnerable and for a moment he wishes he had bothered to put his shirt on before climbing down off the roof so at least he physically wouldn’t feel so naked. Sawyer shifts his stance wider and takes a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. He looks at Jack more obviously, pointedly angling his gaze toward the cigarette that is slowly burning down between Jack’s fingers. “You shouldn’t smoke.”
Jack looks down at his hand and a small sardonic smile twists his lips. He shakes his head with a light chuckle and then lifts the cigarette to his mouth, taking a long inhalation.
“You’re a doctor, you should know better,” Sawyer comments as Jack exhales. Jack runs the tip of his thumb along the edge of his bottom lip, his stare still focused out in front of him toward the forest. “But then, I guess, you ain’t a doctor no more, are you.”
Jack tilts his head downward and digs at the dirt with the tip of his heavy work boot, tapping ash from the end of his cigarette to the ground.
“Yeah…” Sawyer sighs, shifting again, mimicking Jack’s movement and pushing dirt around with his own foot as well. “You gave all that up to come work on houses up here. Makes a whole lotta sense to me…spinal surgeon buildin’ houses.”
Jack remains silent.
“You really ain’t gonna talk to me, Doc?” Sawyer asks, frustrated. He rubs the back of his neck and looks away, back toward the house. Jack has given him the silent treatment before - it’s his preferred method of handling conflict, shutting down and shutting people out. But Sawyer hates this more because it feels different. He’s done nothing to deserve it, not that he knows of, and the simmering anger and contempt that used to underlie all of his and Jack’s arguments prior to this is glaringly absent.
Jack isn’t being quiet because he wants Sawyer to feel bad; he’s being quiet because he doesn’t give a god damn how Sawyer feels at all.
“So this is really how you’re going to be, Jack? This is what you are, what you do?” Sawyer grips Jack’s arm, trying to force Jack to turn and face him. And Jack lets himself be turned, not fighting it in the slightest. He stares back at Sawyer blankly, unaffected by Sawyer’s indignation. “Workin’ construction even though you’re one of the best surgeons in the country, like you’re just some regular joe? Livin’ here like nothin’ matters, getting blow jobs from some random kid in a parking lot where any god damn person could see you?”
Jack drops his cigarette to the ground and crushes it underneath his boot. He fixes Sawyer with a look so cold that it almost scares him; so much so that he lets go of Jack’s arm. Then Jack walks away, never having spoken a word at all.
“Jack,” Sawyer starts plaintively but doesn’t bother to continue, knowing it won’t do any good. He stands there as Jack disappears into the house, walking up the back steps onto the porch and then going inside. Sawyer curses under his breath and stomps his foot in the dirt angrily. “Fuck you,” he mutters, staring down at the crumpled cigarette Jack had left behind. He steps on it himself, twisting the heel of his boot down onto it and grinding it to a pulp.
“Fuck you!” He turns and yells at the house, at Jack. He must look and sound like a crazy person but he doesn’t care. One of the other builders appears at one of the back windows of the house and gives Sawyer a questioning look. Apparently they had finished up their lunch break and had returned to work just in time to hear Sawyer’s bitter and angry shout. Sawyer ignores him and heads toward the front, toward his truck.
He sits in the driver’s seat for awhile and tries to regain control of himself but he can’t get his pulse to slow down or the sweat to stop dripping from his brow. The rough cover over his seats scratches against his bare back and he leans forward to stop the annoying sensation, gripping the steering wheel as he peers out his windshield at the house. He used to think it was beautiful and full of promise but now it just looks like empty, parts of it finished and parts left undone, caught somewhere in limbo. He detests it.
It takes him about five minutes to locate the cell phone that he has stowed in the cab of his truck for emergencies and another few to remember how to turn the fucking thing on. Since the island his need to use the modern conveniences of technology pretty much began and stopped with indoor plumbing and electricity. He doesn’t even own a computer. Once the screen of his phone flickers to life he rings one of the grand total of two numbers he has stored.
“Boss?” Nate answers the phone with a note of surprise in his voice, Sawyer’s cell number popping up only once in a blue moon.
“Yeah. Hey. Listen. I’m callin’ it a day. Too damn hot up there to get anything done, shingles are like putty, can’t walk on ‘em without tearin’ ‘em up. So you boys can just head home.”
“Okay,” Nate replies, not about to argue. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Yeah, tell Jeff.”
“Will do, he’s sittin’ right here,” Nate says.
“Kay. Good. Well…” Sawyer hesitates before asking what he really needs to ask. “Any chance you could help me with something later?”
“You got an estimate?”
“No. It’s..it’s kinda personal. I need a computer and someone who knows how to use it.”
“Boss, if you want me to hook you up with some porn-“ Nate starts to tease and Sawyer cuts him off.
“Never mind. I’ll just go to the library next town over.”
“No, hey, Boss, I can help. Come ‘round after dinner and we can do whatever you need to do.”
“Thanks, I’ll see ya later.” Sawyer hangs up before Nate can ask him anymore questions regarding what he needs a computer for. He holds the small black phone in his palm for a moment and stares at it, wondering if he made the right call. He doesn’t want to explain this to Nate and isn’t sure what he’ll actually say. He’d never told anyone around here that he was in the crash. It was three years ago now and their fifteen minutes had been more than enough for him. If anyone recognized him or cared about his story in this remote corner of Maine, he didn’t know about it. And he liked it that way. He had no need to bring back any sense of notoriety.
But Nate would have to know if Sawyer wanted his help with this. He’d have to know everything, from their crash to their captivity to their rescue and everything after. He’d have to know why Sawyer cared and Sawyer would have to tell him about him and Jack. Or more to the point, how there had never been a him and Jack at all.
It would be much safer to request help from a stranger, ask a librarian to help him collect every piece of data to be found about Jack, or to hire a private investigator whose job it was to keep secrets. As Sawyer puts the phone into his glove compartment, he has to wonder if he called Nate because he wants someone to know.
He has suddenly become very sick of secrets.
Sawyer closes up the truck and walks back toward the house, ready to wrap up what he’s doing and get the hell out of there. Enough for one day. He’s hot and he’s tired and he’s aching both inside and out. He stops at the foot of the ladder and looks up. The climb seems longer than it used to. He starts it wearily, counting the steps to the top.
Halfway up he makes the mistake of looking into one of the empty windows and he finds Jack at the other end of his gaze, boxing out one of the bedrooms. Sawyer stops and watches Jack pound a nail into place with three precise, strong but careful swings. Immediately his hand delves back into the pouch of his tool belt for another and one two three that’s in place as well. Just like everything else he does, Jack is apparently quite good at this too.
Sawyer doesn’t move, hoping that Jack will finally notice him and look up, look over, do something. Jack doesn’t pay him any mind, but Sawyer doesn’t keep going. He continues to stand there, staring into the house, waiting Jack out. Jack could either leave, keep working with Sawyer standing there, or he could acknowledge Sawyer’s presence. Two of those three options would give Sawyer some sense of satisfaction, some sense that he’s getting through to him; only Jack continuing on like Sawyer isn’t there could hurt him.
Surprisingly, Jack doesn’t, or can’t, go that route. Sawyer almost breathes a sigh of relief when he sees Jack’s shoulders slump, so slightly that someone who hadn’t been paying close attention probably wouldn’t have noticed. Jack sets his hammer down on a two-by-four and sets his hand beside it, gripping the wood tightly as if to steady himself, keep himself up. Jack then breathes out deeply and lets go, turning toward Sawyer and walking toward him slowly. He wipes his arm across his forehead and then pulls off his gloves one at a time. When he stops in front of Sawyer at the window, Sawyer is surprised to find that he no longer smells of smoke but instead strongly of sawdust, one scent overpowering and sublimating the other.
Jack fixes his eyes on Sawyer’s face and Sawyer thinks he sees a glimmer of confusion and desperation there. Jack opens his mouth to say something and then stops, and for a moment Sawyer sees him there plainly, the old Jack. His Jack.
“What is it that you want from me, Sawyer?” Jack asks and for the first time his voice sounds like his own, warm and wavering and unsure. Sawyer swallows hard and he wishes he weren’t on this ladder, that he could somehow bridge the distance between them, that they weren’t separated by air and space and metal and wood.
“I don’t want anything from you, Jack, except for you to be you again,” Sawyer states and watches as his hopes are dashed. Jack’s face turns cold once more, shutting down stiffly and his gaze casting down toward the floor. When he looks back up his brown eyes are again dark and empty.
“I am what I am.” He pushes back from the window and Sawyer tries to reach for him, nearly tumbling off the ladder.
“Jack. Jack, come on, don’t do this.” Sawyer pleads with Jack like some negotiator quickly losing their connection with a hostage taker, clinging and grasping at straws as the person turns away to go hurt someone else, determined not to listen anymore. Jack crosses the room and bends down, digging through a small black duffel bag. “Somethin’ ain’t right and maybe if ya tell me what it is, I can help you out. You can’t keep ignorin’ me like I’m nothin.”
Jack walks back to him and holds out a small white bottle for Sawyer, who looks at him, puzzled, and takes it.
“What the hell’s this.” Sawyer taps the plastic bottle of sunscreen, annoyed.
“You should really put a shirt on, Sawyer.”
“Why, it botherin' you all of a sudden?” Sawyer snorts. Jack doesn’t appreciate Sawyer’s reply and opts to respond as clinically as possible.
“No. You should put your shirt on because skin cancer is prevalent amongst people in your profession,” Jack tells him calmly, detached but resolute. If they had been in a doctor’s office, Sawyer expects Jack would have delivered this line without even looking at the patient, instead writing something in their chart or studying some lab result. Sawyer screws up his face and looks from the bottle to Jack, annoyed.
“Prevalent amongst people in my profession?” Sawyer repeats and throws the bottle back at Jack angrily. Here he is trying to be the nice guy and Jack decides that now is the best time to slip back into the role of doctor.
“I was only trying to help,” Jack replies like he was the one being nice and Sawyer the one being unreasonable. Sawyer glares at him.
“Did I ask for your help, Doc?” Sawyer snipes and Jack crosses his arms over his chest, shooting Sawyer a look right back. Sawyer immediately knows what Jack is going to say before he says it; he walked right into it.
“Did I ask for yours?” Jack retorts. Sawyer frowns but can’t think of an adequate reply. “If I had wanted to see you, if I wanted your help, I would have found you. So quit trying to act like it matters. It doesn’t matter.”
“How can you say it don’t matter?” Sawyer asks, irked. “After all we been through-“
“What we went through is over, Sawyer.” Jack puts the bottle of sunscreen back in Sawyer’s hand and turns away. “I gotta get back to work.”
“You don’t gotta do anything,” Sawyer says and then smiles sarcastically. “Look who I’m talking to. All you ever do is what you have to do. Dudley Do-Right, never anything outta line. Nothing but responsibility.” Sawyer glances up the ladder toward the roof, knowing he should leave before he says something he’ll regret. “Guess a couple of blow jobs can’t change who you really are, Doc.”
“Yeah, Sawyer, you’re right,” Jack sighs, nearly rolling his eyes. “I’ve seen the light. How about you come over for some beer and a barbecue later, we can sit and reminiscence about all the ways I used to annoy the hell out of you, how I failed you and everyone else, maybe relive every moment of my life I’ve been trying to forget for the past three years?” Jack stands in the center of the room, his voice growing louder. Sawyer doesn’t reply to Jack’s harsh words. “Come on, Sawyer, it’ll be fun.” Jack smirks at Sawyer’s silence, knowing he’s won this round and that Sawyer has nothing left to say. He walks back over to the window, his eyes wide in anger and his jaw tight. “What. You don’t want to?”
Sawyer meets Jack’s stare just to prove that he can, not wanting to back down. He doesn’t know how to reply so he just says the only thing he can think of. For once in his life, it happens to be the truth.
“The only time you’ve ever failed me is right now, Jack.”
Jack blinks once, twice, and he swallows hard, momentarily letting emotion crack through his façade. Sawyer fights the urge to reach out and touch his face, to try and coax the side of Jack he’s seeing now to stay. Instead he grips the side of the ladder harder, waiting for the inevitable switch back. It comes only a moment later when Jack looks away.
“Yeah, well, get used to it,” he mutters. He doesn’t move and Sawyer wonders if he is expecting, or even wanting him to respond, to protest, to tell him that he won’t accept it, won’t get used to it. Sawyer considers it for a moment and then shakes his head slightly before continuing his climb up to the roof. A fight is what Jack wants.
He doesn’t know why Jack is behaving as he is and pushing him away so adamantly, but it’s clear that among the many things that have changed, Jack is no less stubborn. But Sawyer has changed as well and while he’s just as stubborn as Jack is, he is no longer willing to rail against things blindly out of anger and confusion. Now he can take a step back and realize that any effort would be futile. Trying to get through to Jack in this situation is an impossibility and he will get nowhere. He has to take a time out and regroup, figure out what the hell is going on and how to deal with it.
As Sawyer steps up onto the roof deck, he can’t help but wonder if Jack had been hurt when he looked back to the window and discovered that he had left. He has to admit he hopes that it did hurt. He hopes that Jack felt regret but Sawyer knows that hope and reality are different matters. In reality, Jack probably was relieved or worse, indifferent. He probably went back to work as if nothing had happened at all.
Sawyer finishes what needs to be done on the roof as quickly as he can and climbs back down without looking into the house, purposely keeping his head down until he reaches his truck. The next time he faces Jack Shephard, he won’t be unprepared. Next time, Jack won’t be able to shut him out.
*******
“Sawyer…that’s you.”
Nate’s mouth falls open as he looks back and forth between the computer screen and Sawyer, who is sitting next to him at the desk. Sawyer merely nods in an attempt to downplay the big reveal.
“You were one of those guys? One of those plane crash survivors?” Nate leans closer to the computer, staring at the image that popped up when Sawyer had mysteriously asked him to Google the name Dr. Jack Shephard and he had clicked on the first listed link. He points to Sawyer’s face in the large group photo taken the day before they all left to go back to their respective lives.
It seems so strange to Sawyer now, suddenly looking at all the faces of people who had become his family so suddenly and then so easily had slipped away upon their return. Everyone looks tired but happy, including Jack, who is standing beside him in the picture. He remembers the moment vividly. He and Jack had never been the same after their return from captivity but occasionally they had still had moments, even stronger than before, when Sawyer found himself thinking of Jack as the closest person to him in his whole life. Jack stepped beside him when they were lining up to take the picture and they had exchanged a look, brief but meaningful.
Sawyer hadn’t known that would be the last time they’d see each other until now. He hadn’t counted on that and he hadn’t meant for it to happen. It just did.
Nate is reading the article that accompanies the picture, murmuring the words aloud softly underneath his breath. When finished, he looks to Sawyer again, amazed.
“Shit, man! How could you not tell me? How does everybody is this stupid town not know that you’re a fucking celebrity?” He whacks Sawyer hard on the arm, gaping in disbelief.
“I ain’t no celebrity,” Sawyer replies. “We were famous for like, a millisecond three years ago, man. For surviving a plane crash. People forgot all about us and it ain’t no big deal.”
“Surviving a plane crash and being marooned on some freakin’ island for months and months!” Nate exclaims. “I remember all that! It was this huge deal! I mean, everyone was talking about it. Man, wait until I tell my mom. She always swore she knew you from somewhere.”
“Nate, I kinda like my life here the way it is, please don’t go blabbin’ all over creation about this, okay?” Nate doesn’t look like he plans on doing as Sawyer asks, shooting him a look that says so. “Please. I asked you for help because I thought I could trust you. Don’t make me a fool.” Nate sighs.
“Okay…fine. Mum’s the word.” Nate looks at the picture again. “God dammit, boss, you gotta be kiddin’ me. I just can’t believe it…all this time…” He stops, leaning closer and pointing at Jack standing beside Sawyer in the photo. “Hey. Ain’t that the guy workin’ on the house? The guy you said you didn’t know?” Nate’s stare is accusatory this time. Sawyer doesn’t look at him, knowing he’s been caught in yet another lie, this time a blatant one instead of a sin of omission.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Anything else you want to tell me, Sawyer? Jesus Christ!” Nate pushes back from the desk and his rolling chair squeaks backward. He puts his hands behind his head and stares at Sawyer, dumbfounded and pissed. “You think you know a guy.”
“Look, the crash…it just ain’t anythin’ I ever want to talk about, all right? It’s…it’s horrible shit and I don’t exactly like relivin’ it with everyone I meet. It weren’t nothin’ personal. You don’t have to get pissed over it. I haven’t told anyone else since I moved here, you’re the first one to know.”
“Really?” Nate seems hopeful, flattered.
“Yeah, really,” Sawyer grunts. “Now quit actin’ like a girl and help me out here.”
“I’m not acting like a girl,” Nate punches Sawyer in the shoulder as he wheels back toward the desk, taking control of the mouse again. “So, this Jack Shephard guy. If you were on that island with him, and now he’s here, why are we lookin’ him up online?”
“Because a lot happened between that picture and now, kid, and I don’t know what. And he ain’t talkin’.”
“So we’re digging for dirt…merely out of curiosity?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
“Are we looking for anything in particular?”
“Anything that seems like it could make a man hurt real bad,” Sawyer says quietly and Nate lets his words sink in for a moment, ceasing his scrolling and clicking.
“Okay. Well…I figure something like that should jump out at us, don’t you think?” Nate clicks on a link and once again is taken to an article about the crash. After a few pages of links, crash-related articles start to disappear and different Jack Shephards, as well as other Jacks and Shephards start popping up. The search is grabbing at specific words and no longer the pairing together. “Or maybe not. Other than the crash and a few medical sites, this guy isn’t showing up.”
“Try one of the medical ones, that journal there,” Sawyer taps the screen and Nate dutifully clicks the mouse. Sawyer scans the screen quickly, skimming over the details of an exceptionally difficult and practically impossible surgery that was a surprise success in Jack’s hands.
Sarah. Jack’s ex-wife.
Another aspect of Jack’s life he knew nothing about save for a few cobbled together details and secondhand accounts he had gotten from Desmond and Sun. They seemed to know more about it than others did, for some strange reason.
A little more searching turns up Jack’s father’s obituary, complete with a picture of Christian in healthier, happier times and glowing words of memorial for an important, world class surgeon and a beloved father and husband. Death always makes people lie. No one writes overbearing, demanding alcoholic asshole as an epitaph.
When people say one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, Sawyer can only think that if the dead merited criticism, they should get it. If they wanted to be remembered fondly, they should have lived better lives. Everyone dies. No one is special in that, he doesn’t see why kicking it earns someone a free pass.
He says as much to Nate, painting a not-so-rosy picture of Christian Shephard just so the kid doesn’t get the wrong idea about Jack’s dad from all his glowing post-mortem reviews. He doesn’t gloss over his own part in Christian’s untimely demise either. Hypocrisy never was his style.
“So, you booze it with his dad, than wind up on the same plane as him, with his dead dad in baggage?” Nate asks crudely, point blank, and Sawyer treasures his blunt question.
“How about that for coincidence.”
“And then you crash, get rescued, and then now, wind up in the same place again?”
“Yeah.”
“That sounds a lot like fate, man. Maybe you guys are supposed to help each other out or something.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Sawyer remarks, trying to focus Nate’s attention back to the search. “Can’t we dig up anything else?”
“Look, between the crash and this guy’s medical miracles…that’s kind of it, man. People don’t turn up on the web unless they do shit and that’s the stuff he did. Nothing else has happened since you’ve been back.”
“Try all the other survivors and see if anything comes up.” Sawyer suggests flatly. “See who you can track down.” He’ll call them all if he has to. He may not have kept in touch, but maybe Jack did. Maybe someone would know what had happened.
Sawyer sits back and waits as Nate scours the net for each of them, peering over Nate’s shoulder to jot down locations and phone numbers when they can find them. Nate starts to ask more questions when he starts looking for Kate and her mug shots, which had been put in every magazine article about their story, pop up on screen. Sawyer purposely ignores his questions and tells him to skip over Kate, that she is none of his business.
He should start with Kate, really. It would make the most sense. In the end, despite everything that had happened, she and Jack were still the closest of them all, connected by something unspoken but strong. When rescue came, Kate had clung to Jack’s hand as long as she could. Not his. That was just the way of it. She and Jack had never been together, ever, but for a brief moment before Kate faced her fate, she also faced the truth.
It didn’t matter to Sawyer because he had faced it long before. They were only together on borrowed time anyway and their attraction had slowly devolved into a kinship of sorts. Sometimes Sawyer thought the only reason they didn’t admit it was because Jack was with Juliet. There was no point in “breaking up” because they had no one to turn to except each other.
Still, even though there were no hard feelings, Sawyer’s not ready to call her out of the blue. Conversing with Kate while she is in prison isn’t something he’s sure he’s equipped to do, especially after a three year long period of silence.
Nate breaks Sawyer’s reverie by scrawling a last name and location on the piece of paper in front of him and shoving it at him. He tosses his pen down onto the desk with a sigh.
“I can find locations for most of these people, boss, but it’s pretty tough tracking down numbers. I can keep working on it but you might want to ask someone who actually knows what they’re doing. Google and whitepages only can do so much, man.”
Sawyer stares at the list that Nate has given him, a strange mixture of emotions welling within him. Sayid, Claire, Charlie, Locke, Hurley…these people had meant so much, and then were gone. He wonders if he’s the only one who went his own way. He hasn’t gotten in touch with anyone but they certainly haven’t tried to find him. Maybe they’ve all been having monthly get togethers and have each other on speed dial. Maybe he’s been left out, excised, exiled. Maybe they all hate him as much as Jack does.
After all, he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this treatment from Jack. They could all be thinking the same way and he wouldn’t have had a clue.
Sawyer is gripped with fear at the thought of picking up the phone and calling them. People he used to push away with all of his might because he didn’t want to need them. He let them in and let them matter and then it was all over; he’s not sure he can risk it again.
“Try Benjamin Linus,” Sawyer suddenly mutters to Nate. Nate raises an eyebrow. “Just do it.” Nate dutifully does so and they are met with almost nothing, and certainly not anything about the Benjamin Linus he knew. Sawyer frowns. Tracking down the one person he could easily face without any qualms about giving a damn would be hard this way.
He didn’t really expect to find a trace of him anyway. Ben said that one day he would go to the mainland but Sawyer knows he’ll probably never leave that island. The island was his home. He’d been there his whole life.
But Juliet hadn’t.
Not bothering to explain to Nate, he types in the name himself and hits search. The bottom of the page fills with links to Shakespeare, the name inevitably leading in that direction, but the first few entries are about undoubtedly about her.
But not just about her.
And then everything makes sense.
“Shit.”
“What?” Nate asks, alarmed not by Sawyer’s curse but by how the color is draining from his face as he pushes back from the desk. Sawyer rubs one hand over his chin and then repeats himself.
“Shit.” He stands up, looks around like he’s searching for something but he’s not sure what, and then grabs his truck keys from the edge of the table. “I gotta go.”
Sawyer leaves Nate without so much as a goodbye, much less an explanation. He has other things on his mind then social graces.
*******
-------> THIS PART CONTINUED...