Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt

There's always a siren singing you to shipwreck - jack/juliet fic.mix

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:06:21 GMT

This is a much, much shorter fic.mix, closer to what a real fic.mix should be, I guess. (thanks to navras_rheya for the pics)

There's always a siren singing you to shipwreck
jack/juliet fic.mix; 1000 words; PG-13
At 3 am, after a vivid dream of her, he googled her name, just out of idle curiosity.
for jacket_whoweare's hiatus challenge #1, there, there, by radiohead; also for au100's #95, new year.

There’s always a siren singing you to shipwreck
jack/juliet fic.mix

---

there, there - radiohead

there's always a siren
singing you to shipwreck
(don't reach out, don't reach out
don't reach out, don't reach out)

---

At 3 am, after a vivid dream of her, he googled her name, just out of idle curiosity. He found a husband, Edmund, prizes and magazines of science and some pictures, clumsy evening dresses and rebellious frizzled curls; a shy uncomfortable smile upon the stage, nothing like he remembered. So young. It stopped at 2001, the date she died, three years before he met her. It was 2008, and only he remembered her.

---

building a mystery - sarah mclachlan

you're a beautiful
a beautiful fucked up man
you're setting up your
razor wire shrine

---

Afterwards he always dreamed of her younger, shyer self. [The island has the power to change everything and everyone, turn a saint into a bitch]. One night her hands shook on his thighs and she giggled between his legs. He believed he was awake, because he hadn't slept in a week. He had built up a tolerance to the pills and he wanted exercise, pain, the final fall into numbness and oblivion.

---

from here you can almost see the sea - david gray

if you would hold still
could make a clean incision
we could sit back
and watch the demolition

---

He missed her so much, her timid laugh and the blush of her cheeks, the frizzled hair, the weakness, Julie, the soft sweet Julie smiling at him from the screen of his computer. Holding the prize in his hand, Edmund had said, wouldn't have made it without my lovely wife, Julie. She is the genius. Meanwhile his Juliet had been looking away from the photographers, her teeth cute on her bottom lip.

---

into dust - mazzy star

I could possibly be fading
or have something more to gain
I could feel myself growing colder
I could feel myself under your fate
under your fate

---

He was toeing the line. The line between sanity and a completely diseased mind. The line that would coil around his ankles and pull him back in time. Like a flashback, back to who we were, and all that doesn't matter at all. The long, endless flat line of his heart, a beep that wouldn't ever end. It was insomnia, making him think crazy, is she real or is she not, extending her hand to him from the outer cyberspace.

---

I remember - damien rice

come all ye reborn
blow off my horn
I'm driving real hard
this isn't love, this is porn
god will forgive me
but I, I whip myself with scorn, scorn

---

He always liked the see-through screen between them, worlds kept apart, unreal. He always liked her far-away, detached smile much better than her freezing, inert touch. The island has them and Stockholm syndrome lets him hard and throbbing in the wee hours, his eyed fixed on her pixeled face, his hand tight on his lap.

---

easily - muse

easily forgotten love
easily forgotten love
easily the best I ever had
easily the best I ever had

---

The phone used to rang once or twice a week, but the line was dead, at the other side nothing more than her eyes, the color of cold water. If he didn't hang up, after a while there were whispers and crying. The last time he had seen her she had been crying, and he hadn't asked her to come because he had known she would make sure he came off that beach as a hero. Her hero. Who we are. She trusted so much in who he was that she didn't want him to bleed to death, die without having had the chance to save her.

---

hope for the hopeless - a fine frenzy

stitch in your knitted brow
and you don't know how
you're gonna get it out
crushed under heavy chest
trying to catch your breath
but it always beats you by a step,
all right now

---

Prestigious doctor and researcher, Edmund Burke, died in tragic circumstances after he was run down by a bus, two weeks before his ex-wife and colleague fell off the face of earth. Closest family member, recovered cancer patient Rachel Carlson, who is expecting her first child, refused to make any comments. Dr. Burke's assistant, a young woman by the name of Sherry, has announced Miss Rachel Carlson as the new case study in a new brilliant research project by Miami Central University Medical Research Laboratory.

---

passage - vienna teng

my lover hears the open wind
and crawls blinking into the sun
my mother leafs through photographs
and thinks "yes she was a lovely one"
my sister can't decide her truth
asks aloud what I might do

---

The only way to make a truth out of a lie is believing it yourself, so Jack never stepped out of his car and his sunglasses, only watching her and her son from across the street. He hid. He hated Miami, too hot and too humid and too familiar for his taste. She was blonde and beautiful but nothing else in her resembled her sister. Her smile was wide and true and honest, without holding any barriers. Her son was even blonder and more beautiful, but Jack didn't look at him at all. He was sick and tired of cute blond children that looked too much like ghosts.

---

it's okay to think about ending - earlimart

it's okay, to stay here forever
and it's okay to read in the dark
put it away, wait 'til tomorrow
put it away, and take care of your heart
of your whore heart

just for a while, I'd seen you smile

---

He only wanted to see, check she was real and not one more product of his world of fantasy. A real person, with roots and loved ones in the real world, and not just a rag doll in the island's arms, where he had left her to wither away. If the island was still there across the sea. If she was alive somewhere, somewhere beyond a folder full of old articles and pictures, buried in the depths of his hard drive.

---

unfinished sympathy - massive attack

Like a soul without a mind
In a body without a heart
I'm missing every part

---

It was 2009 - it had been only for a couple of minutes - and at least he knew then that not only he remembered her. The TV was off, he only knew midnight was gone because of the noises in the street, the noises of love, friends and neighbors, family hugs and lovers' kisses. He felt a kind of weird peace running through his veins - drugs and cheap champagne - when he clicked on her nose, smiling at her, sending in his mind an anonymous message that no one would ever read. Happy New Year, Julie.

---
.end

Damaged - Lost/House crossover - Jack/Cameron

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:11:49 GMT

Remember the four-parted crossover I was planning? I decided to write four one shots instead. This is the first one.

Title: Damaged
Pairing: Jack Shephard/Allison Cameron (implied Jack/Kate and House/Cameron)
Rating: R
Word Count: 2300
Summary: Lost/House crossover. Late winter, 2008, au. It's here and now every couple of months and it makes him feel free; it makes him feel like the island can't see him when he is with her.
Note: for 4seasonal's #04, winter/night.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine.

Damaged

-

You live under the delusion that you can fix everything that isn’t perfect. That’s why you married a man who was dying of cancer. You don’t love, you need. And now that your husband is dead, you’re looking for your new charity case. That’s why you’re going out with me. I’m twice your age, I’m not great looking, I’m not charming, I’m not even nice. What I am is what you need. I’m damaged.

[House - Love hurts]

-

The next time he sees her - almost four months later - she isn't a blonde anymore. She is all brown curls and green eyes and a childlike innocence that wasn't there at all when her hair was bright and yellow. Jack always liked blonde women better and there is a reason why he picked the phone and called her, after all. His stomach lurches and tightens painfully when he sees her and the words tilt over the tip of his tongue - I don't think this is working, Allison.

He almost tells her - because green eyes and brown locks are killing him.

But Jack doesn't lie.

Jack is terrified of lies - he dreams lies smother him while he sleeps. Protect themselves. Protect the others. Protect the island. He almost wants to laugh now.

The thing with Allison works and he won't lie about that - not to her, not to himself. It works better than he would have ever imagined when she came to that conference and didn't ask any questions after he invited her to dinner, already so drunk that she had to follow his directions to his apartment. She didn’t know him then, the brilliant surgeon turned into a lecturer because his hands shook a little too much, a little too often.

It started like that, with a note and a scrawled phone number, and six months later the weather isn’t so hot anymore, but things are working between them. It is really working, the on and off thing they have, God knows why. Maybe because she still hasn't asked any questions. Maybe because she lives two thousand miles away.

It suits them both - the distance and the company and the occasional sex - and he isn't ready to sacrifice that yet. Not when she fits so well inside his newly cleaned apartment (only when she comes). Not when only her soft tiny body and her sweet, oh so sweet smile can make him forget about the maps crumpled up inside his closet and the ring tucked away at the bottom of the nightstand drawer, that it's been six months and she didn't even send a Christmas card.

Fuck her.

Jack kisses Allison's naked shoulder and smiles.

There is a recent, newborn routine.

After he calls her he shaves clean and lowers the dose and waits for her to come and knock on his door one day later, after he's had time to sober up. She always comes and he never goes. He never flies east, clinging to his man of science's superstition like it was a red hot iron scalding his skin. She says I'll be there over the phone and doesn't ask any questions.

That's why he likes her so much.

-

"Doesn't your boyfriend mind, when you fly off the state not telling him a word about where you're going?"

She rolls to her stomach and smiles up at him. She has a boyfriend, a prestigious surgeon, the reason she was at that conference, and Jack couldn't care less about his existence.

That he might find ironic, if he could be bothered to think about that.

"I do tell him where I'm going," she says. "I tell him I'm going to see my mum. Right now he thinks I'm taking a vacation in small-town Minnesota."

Lies, lies, lies. He snorts.

She smiles and he cannot help kissing her right then. Winter is really cold in Minnesota but in Los Angeles they can lie naked and have the window open and the sun will come up soon, spring is right around the corner. She kisses him back and he relaxes against her mouth, soft and warm and so welcome to his dry, thirsty tongue.

He doesn't know who she is beyond a few superficial facts and he doesn't care to know beyond the here and now and right in this bed. That is how it's always been and that is how it will remain. It's here and now every couple of months and it makes him feel free; it makes him feel like the island can't see him when he is with her.

She knows who he is and doesn't care at all - plane crashes and deserted islands and torturers, millionaires, murderers, widows or orphans are the same to her. She doesn't care about that. Maybe she doesn't care about him at all, and that makes him want to hug her and breathe in the vanilla scent of her naked skin and forget about everything and everyone but her.

Like right now.

He feels more carefree and weightless than he remembers being in such a long time, and it's been already ten hours since he swallowed the last pill. She feels like magic. She feels like forgetting. Even if there are still some remnants of the old Jack inside him, scolding him angry and making him ask questions he doesn't want to see answered.

"Why do you lie to him, Allison? Why do you come to be with me if-"

She cuts him off by leaning softly on his chest, a tender smile still playing on her lips. She is so beautiful and she looks so fragile that at some other life Jack would have broken her into tiny little pieces just so he could glue her back together afterwards.

"Because I don't love him, Jack. I actually like you better than him."

It's the sense of adventure, he immediately thinks. Sleeping with a messed-up celebrity once in a while and then going back to her perfect life and her perfect boyfriend and her perfect job. (Jack used to have the perfect job too, and the perfect life and the perfect girlfriend, only his perfect life had been haunted by ghosts and real monsters and dead lovers that never really died).

She rolls to her back and he celebrates the exposure of her skin. He moves closer, hugging her to him, needing her warmth to forget the thoughts that threaten to come back. She buries herself in his chest and sighs. "He knows I don't love him, anyway."

That one song he already knows by heart.

"You love someone else."

It's not a question because that is one very easy equation Jack has finally learned for good. One plus one tends to equal two. Sometimes it equals three. Then you are screwed.

So much for the man of science.

"Some kind of impossible love, right?"

There is a hint of playful sarcasm in his voice and he laughs then out loud, when she smiles at him (she is always smiling, one way or another) and corroborates his suspicions. It is one big story and they are damned to live in it forever, trapped. Fate has them caught by the balls and isn’t letting them go anytime soon.

"He says I don't love him. He says I need him because I need to fix him."

His eyes widen and this time he really laughs, Christian's voice ringing in his head, I told you, son.

He liked her better when she was a blonde but he'll be damned if this isn't destiny or some fucked-up version of that new-age, alternative shit. John would be proud, he thinks, feeling thirsty all of a sudden.

He sits up and pours himself a glassful of bourbon, downing it in one gulp. Again she doesn't ask and she doesn't seem to care at all that he sleeps with a bottle of liquor besides his pillow and now he believes he knows why. She doesn't need fixing, it seems, she needs to fix things.

So fucking funny, really. So funny he cannot stop laughing as he swallows the alcohol, feeling it ruthlessly burning the back of his throat.

She ignores that too.

"Anyway," she sits up next to him and leans against the headboard, "he can't love me back, or need me, or whatever. He is simply not able to love anyone, not even himself." She smiles, this time with sadness and nostalgia glittering in her green eyes. "He especially doesn't love himself. I gave up on trying to make him love me a long time ago."

It all sounds excessively familiar, except the giving up part. He still doesn't stop laughing, genuinely amused and slightly drunk on expensive wine, great sex and even more expensive bourbon. He was an idiot for believing for a second the island wasn't behind this, behind her. The island is everywhere.

"Don't we all?" he asks, the question not really directed at her,

He doesn't know what he means himself, but their reactions are stuck on default and therefore she smiles and nods like she knows indeed what he means. She can't know. There are so many things he will never tell her.

She surely reads the newspapers and probably she knows there was a moving love story once, magical, come out of a fairy tale. There were troubles and tribulations and surviving fate. There was going to be a wedding of fantasy too - two of the most famous and rich and beautiful and admired people in the whole country, finally together, forever. It was the work of destiny for sure.

Jack isn't laughing anymore.

Now Allison lies in bed with the ravages of the fairy tale she read in the papers: alcohol, pain pills, delusions and heavy, serious depression, with the kicks for self-destruction, even.

She is a doctor, just like him; probably much better a doctor than he is today. She surely can tell the symptoms. She is famous after all, well-known across the world. Not like he is famous - she is prestigiously famous. She worked for him and everybody knows him and he would bet his oxycodone stash and not lose it, that it's him the one she needs to fix so badly. As far as the medical gossip tells, Dr. House seems to be in serious need for some good, old-fashioned fixing after all.

Still she is screwing him - fucked- up, formerly-talented spinal surgeon Jack Shephard - maybe wishing she can fix him instead.

Suddenly Jack feels like laughing again. He hears John now - Christian has shut up. The island was trying to tell you Jack. The island was trying to tell you all along. Why didn't you listen?

She obviously knows more about his condition than she lets on and apparently she doesn't care that much. He could wonder why, follow his usual train of thought - where her damage lies and what are her real reasons for being here now, with what remains of the once-prestigious surgeon, once-heroic plane-crash survivor. But he doesn't wonder.

He is done fixing. He is done saving. Christian was right. John was right. The island was right.

His hand moves again to the nearby bottle but she stops him this time. Slowly she straddles him - sensuously and deliberately - and then he smiles, appreciating her effort to distract him in some other way this time. It feels good but not enough and she must sense it, because she takes the bottle in her hand and puts it to his lips. He drinks hungrily, only later realizing that this is the first time he sleeps with a doctor. The realization should be more surprising than it is, after so many years and so many colleagues, but for a second he gets caught up in the memory of Juliet's dry lips. He couldn't even open his mouth to her, grab a taste.

That is nothing in the lists of this regrets, now. And luckily for him, there is nothing dry about Allison, nothing to regret in a couple of hours turned into forever.

He coughs, when the bitterness of the liquor weights too much in his stomach, where it mixes with the bile until he cannot stand the pain. He grabs her hips and starts lowering her on him, harder and faster. He starts feeling better slowly, the memories blurring progressively under her warmth. They fade with the guilt and the regrets, right when his eyes catch her smile, open and honest and right there, ready for him to move closer and kiss it off her lips.

Jack likes Allison.

He really likes her - brown locks, green eyes and everything. Blond curls and green eyes was a more powerful mix, a better mix in his taste, but still now she looks fragile and delicate and still stronger than any other woman Jack has ever known. Like an unbreakable porcelain figure. It hurts and puzzles him and yet it feels strangely comforting, that he can push as hard as he wants, knowing that she won't shatter, that she won't ever expect him to fix her.

Jack is done fixing. The island was right.

Maybe if she comes back the next time he calls her he might try to convince her too. You can't fix broken things that were never whole to begin with. Things like themselves, he thinks amused, coming inside her as she cries out his name.

Jack.

He is a drug addict and she tastes just as good as his next fix. She knows that, and they both smile at each other, his back against the headboard and their sweaty foreheads pressed together with all the gentleness they have left.

---

.end.

Flaming Battle (Kate/Sawyer)

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:09:42 GMT

This bunny wouldn't leave, I promise that I tried. I'm sorry.

For my Kate/Sawyer Table, and well, I'm done. I can't believe I've finished this table. I feel like crying.

Title: Flaming Battle
Pairing: Kate/Sawyer
Rating: hard R, I believe.
Word Count: 800
Summary: I think this qualifies as mild pwp; au post The Long Con. They've been here before, but this time it is a different kind of uncomfortable position.
Note: for un_love_you's #16, I want to break you; finished table can be found here.
Disclaimer: Lost isn't mine.

Flaming Battle

---

She whirls on top of him, his fingers wrapped painfully tight around her wrists, his knees trapping her hips firm against his.

They've been here before, but this time it is a different kind of uncomfortable position. He can tell by the way she grinds her hips without wanting to, by the heat and the anger radiating from her eyes, burning into his.

This time she isn't trying to pull away.

This isn't what he intended but it feels a lot better, with his blood throbbing and aching underneath her crotch. He welcomes her weight when he lets go of one of her hands and she falls against his chest, her other arm still pulled up, drawing an awkward angle that must hurt her in some way. He doesn't care. His fingers quickly undo her jeans, sliding past her underwear and slipping into her, hard.

For a second she doesn't move at all, and he feels her hatred sharper, hotter, as her desire grows around his fingers. When the second is gone and she opens her eyes he pulls away, just as quickly, his hand moving to her ass to pull her even closer. The fury dazzling in her eyes grows rawer and he shudders with delight, smug and a little too pleased with himself.

She sits up then, her hips falling hard against his, the message clear in her expression. She can play too. She can even win.

It is their battle, a fight of the fiercest kind.

She pulls her shirt over her head and he takes off his own, too, his eyes fixed on her skin, shadowed by the firelight that is still burning, scattered around the beach outside. She opens his pants just enough and he tears off her jeans, taking her panties with them in one swift pull. Her nails scratch his shoulders until his skin burns and aches and he bites her neck. He doesn't want to look into her eyes and come inside her hand.

"You're wrong," she pants, when he turns them over, parting her legs with his hands. "I hate you."

He smiles against her mouth. I hate you harder, he thinks, slamming into her.

-

The guns are sleeping right underneath her body. Maybe she can feel them, hard metal digging into the small of her back every time he sinks into her. Maybe that stokes up her fire. Maybe it reminds her of the outrage, the lecture she was planning on giving him when she crawled inside his tent, right before he hushed her with his tongue.

Maybe she had been expecting that – wanting it.

The thought makes him move faster, harder; only the feeling of her body, so tight and hot around him, can counteract the self-disgust, weighting so heavy in the pit of his stomach, sinking lower with every thrust. You don't hate me, you don't hate me, you don't hate me.

Her hands grab his cheeks and her eyes lock with his. For an instant he believes she can hear his thoughts, because she is softly shaking her head. No. He holds her gaze and then her whole body is shaking beneath him and he is kissing her again, hard and desperate, biting and sucking and stroking, muffling her grunting noises against the root of his mouth.

He has won the battle but it doesn't feel like victory when she finally wraps her legs around him, pulling him closer, deeper still, trapping him inside her. It feels like falling.

He grinds his teeth and tries to stop it, delay it for one second longer, or forever maybe. He can't. Her lips are pressed to his and her fingers are curled around the back of his neck, and hers is the softest caress he has ever felt.

Afterwards she kisses his temple, gently stroking his sweat-dripping hair. This time it hurts him when he pulls away, realizing he hasn’t won at all. He has fallen. He can only wish now she doesn't turn him loose; wish he was wrong about tigers after all.

His jaw clenches, remembering, and his guts lurch painfully. He makes a move to sit up, but her arm wraps around his chest and her head falls on his shoulder, pulling him down.

"Relax, Sawyer," she sighs. "Just... relax."

It will last for only an instant, but for that instant he obeys. His hand on her hip and his mouth on her forehead, he concentrates on how good she feels, naked and pressed against him, ignoring the voice in his head that tells him that if she can hear his thoughts and feel his heart, beating weak underneath his skin, she might already know how he feels about her.

Turns out Gordy had been wrong all along, but that doesn’t comfort him, not until she moves against him and casually drops a kiss on his chest. He looks down and frowns, only half smiling, surprised to find her eyes already closed.

---

.end

Epitaph (Michael/Sun)

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:28:52 GMT

for my au100 table.

Title: Epitaph
Pairing: Michael/Sun (implied Jin/Sun)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1400
Summary: She cannot stay faithful. Not even to a ghost.
Note 1: for lostfichallenge's #74, pictures, and au100's #12, grey.
Note 2: won't make much sense if you haven't seen the Michael/Sun Mobisode; and if you understand Korean I deeply apologize.
Spoilers: Up to the end of S4.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine.

inspired by:

---

Epitaph

---

Usually Sun dreams of Jin.

She never remembers the dreams when she wakes but that is okay—she doesn't want to see the fire, see him explode and vanish before her eyes, flying away. The image fades to nothing in an instant and Sun is glad, relieved.

-

On the nightstand stands a framed picture of their wedding day. It makes Sun smile and give thanks.

She didn't deserve that much.

-

The milky pink light of sunrise comes through the cracks of the thick velvet curtains. She can almost feel him for a second, before she steps out of bed with nothing to do, round and heavy, missing morning sickness if only for the feeling of his hands holding up her hair. There is nothing, no one around.

There is only a little void in her chest, tiny, an uncomfortable pang right above her very pregnant belly. It is there every morning, always comes after a dream. It grows even smaller with the movement of the sun—as the hours go by, it closes slowly, each day with more ease and less ache. Some days she can't even feel it after lunchtime.

It is barely there, disappearing completely when the sun goes hiding and it's time to dream again.

-

She falls asleep with a tentative smile, hoping that he'll be with her in her dreams.

(Sun is very good at not falling apart).

---

Sometimes Sun dreams of Michael.

She always remembers the dreams when she wakes up in the morning.

She doesn't turn her head to the framed picture of her wedding day, standing on the nightstand. She doesn't smile and she doesn't give thanks.

The sunrise light is less pink and greyer, stuffier and dirtier, heavier in her throat. There is no little void in her chest, no uncomfortable pang, no nothing.

She feels dizzy and slightly sick, once again. She doesn't miss morning sickness or the feeling of Jin's hands holding up her hair.

The image doesn't fade. The dreams are variations on a theme, too subtle to be noticeable under the dim, grayish break of dawn. The image is sharp and clear before her eyes, swollen with sleep and unshed tears.

They are standing on the deck of the freighter and again she tells him. I'm pregnant. He smiles the exact same way, genuinely happy for her and utterly heartbroken because that was the new Michael that had come back to them, every piece powdered to tiny fragments of glass.

She smiles back at him and ignores the bitter itching in her belly that reminds her of how much she had missed him—her first friend here, the keeper of her deepest secret. She trembles when he leaves the wheelbarrow standing alone on the deck and starts walking towards her. She moves closer to him too, Aaron clutched in her arms, acting on foreign instinct and unrepressed longing.

There is no one around. The deck is empty except for them.

-

She feels his hand on her elbow before looking up at him. Then his other hand on her cheek, his thumb softly tracing the curve of her nose.

They stand like that, immobile and barely touching, until the bomb explodes under their feet.

-

Everybody dies but them.

They fly back.

-

Everything is white for just one second before they are standing in the jungle, not deep, only a few feet away from the crowded beach. She doesn't have Aaron anymore, but nothing else is different—except that the others are still alive because they, or maybe the island, have moved back in time. But his thumb is still on her nose. His hand still grabs her elbow and keeps her close.

They are still alone, but there are green trees that hide them when his arms circle her waist and she hides her face in his chest, crying softly on his sweaty t-shirt—they are all dead, she thinks, because she is still thinking future.

She pulls away after a while and laughs shyly between sobs when he wipes away her tears, finally moving his thumb from her nose, down to her cheeks. He caresses her skin and her whole body tingles with fear and desire.

-

He is not the man I fell in love with has become an empty tattered excuse on her tongue, but still convenient enough when he leans closer and she doesn't pull away, stepping on her toes instead.

She wakes up right after she feels the warm brush of his gnarled lips.

-

That is her tragedy, her punishment.

She cannot stay faithful. Not even to a ghost.

---

Years later she finds him.

-

He stands before Jin's grave (she goes there often, when she wants to talk to her husband) and she knows enough to act unsurprised. Nothing has changed and nothing is different, except that now he is here. She clutches the lilacs she took from the vase, a little hard. The gesture goes unnoticed by the morning, thick and grey.

The sun hasn't completely come out yet, so there is no one to see. She is there because she couldn't rest in bed after a long dreamless night—there was nothing to cling to when she woke up.

Here there is something and it makes her feel almost grateful.

-

A misty heavy grey falls gently over the deserted graveyard. He stands out, wearing black clothes in the middle of the dirty, deadly white that envelops the cracked gravestones. Why and how and when shatter to pieces in the empty space between them. She walks to him as if in a dream and he doesn't turn to her. His eyes are fixed on an epitaph he cannot possibly understand.

She stops by his side.

-

"I'm sorry."

His voice sounds real and tangible, too much. She suddenly remembers how much she liked his accent, so hard and musical at the same time. Driven by impulse she grabs his hand in hers, needing to feel his skin against hers. Afterwards she doesn't regret it.

Immediately he turns to her and for a second she feels crazy enough to believe he is really there—him of all people, years later in Seoul, standing in front of Jin's grave. It isn't possible, but her heart flutters a little too hard for her to be asleep.

His fingers twine with hers, his other hand moving slowly to her cheek. She leans into it, feeling his rough caress, so warm against her cheek. They don't move to get any closer, only stand there, staring at each other with sad timid smiles forming across their lips.

The fog is thick in the back of her throat, where salty tears are beginning to gather. There is still a gleam of rationality, quickly fading away. She thinks he can't be real but she tightens her grip around his fingers to prove herself wrong. The rest of her body doesn't move.

-

Her husband is dead and swallowed in the ocean and Michael is here, flesh and bone before Jin's grave. His hand is sliding down to her neck, his fingers running deliberate over her cleavage and curling around her throat.

The fog there gets thicker inside the hold of his fingers. She cannot swallow her tears anymore. She starts crying softly, silently.

"I'm so sorry, Sun."

She shakes her head. She is too weak to resist—she was going to leave her husband and she was punished accordingly to her crime. She was punished with the unwanted desire, the eternal reminder of her sins.

-

Michael's touch is too rough and too warm, but his lips are soft and cold against the corner of her mouth.

They are standing only a few feet away from the gravestone.

The grey mist around the graves thickens in one second, becomes almost solid, pushes them closer together. The wind is suddenly too cold and she draws a breath. It feels nothing like her dreams.

Her mouth opens under his, seeking warmth, and she crazily wishes the fog is thick enough to hide them from the eyes of the epitaph.

-

권진수
사랑하는 친구, 아들, 남편 및 아버지.
당신은 단지 이제까지 당신이 있을 때까지 상실된다

---

.end

Nuetron Star (Daniel/Charlotte)

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:45:09 GMT

unusual. for my au100 table.

Title: Neutron Star
Pairing: Daniel/Charlotte
Rating: PG
Word Count: 350
Summary: A red supernova compacted into a bright crimson neutron star, dead and fallen upon your head.
Note: for au100's #11, red.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine.

Neutron Star

---

Daniel likes Charlotte because she is his Ultra Parallel. Destined to wander infinity, towards and from, and backwards and forwards again, never touching, not even at the limits of space. Physics, the Law of the Universe.

The formula comforts him for a while, until their planes collide.

When her fingers brush his, he feels the swift in the trajectory, dizzy, tangential. When she leans closer, his heart tumbles and his hands shake, scared of the collision. Their energies intersect—but they shouldn't, the scientist protest—, like concentric circles, suddenly misaligned, expanding centripetally, faster, faster, faster, velocity exponential—he smiles one second before the supernova, because he never thought he’d see one—and then, boom.

Ineffable emotions burst in his chest, the noisy blast of the fire, the catastrophic result of cosmic miscomputation. It makes him uneasy and his teeth bite her bottom lip, clumsy. She smiles against his face, grabbing his head steady with her hands until she’s done kissing him.

He opens his eyes then, the red of her hair dazzling over the purple of the setting sun, about to combust in nanoseconds.

“It imploded.”

His voice trembles and he wishes formulas and figures were for once not piling up in his head, chaotic and wild. A red supernova compacted into a bright crimson neutron star, dead and fallen upon your head.

He wishes his words were as fast, as smooth as his disordered thoughts. Formulation into words is tricky, he fears, ideas lose sense. We kissed and we killed a star, he wants to say.

“Your hair,” he says, with a timid indication of his finger, “umm… is red.”

She smiles widely and nods, taking his hand in hers. The blue luminosity radiating from her eyes pulls him further under her gravity, closer to the fusion of their cores. He smiles back, thinking of how much he likes her, wanting her to kiss him again and flip the switch. He yearns for the gravitational collapse, their final collimation in one bipolar flux.

Daniel stops the current of thought with a flicker of his eyelids. He smiles, proud, unstuck in space, and squeezes Charlotte’s hand, his anchor to infinity.

---

.end

Is Your Love In Vain? - a Kate/Sawyer fic.mix

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:03:19 GMT

Finally. This is probably the worst fic.mix in History (especially the graphics) but it's been two weeks of work. I wrote it to relax while studying for finals and it made me feel better. I guess that makes it worth it, right? For my Kate/Sawyer Table.

Is Your Love In Vain? - a Kate/Sawyer fic.mix
Afterwards she lets herself remember how much she has missed him. Remembrance often hurts. (R)
For un_love_you's #30, author's choice: I've missed you.
post finale. not mine.

Is your love in vain? - a Kate/Sawyer fic.mix

---

---

Accidental babies - Damien Rice

our minds pressed and guarded
while our flesh disregarded
the lack of space for the light-hearted
in the boom that beats our drum

---

She has imagined this before. Thousands of times. Every time he looked at her in a certain way, every time his fingers brushed hers, never unintentionally because that is who they are. Since the first time she saw him completely naked and dripping wet and yet steaming up, the heat oozing off his skin in waves—since before, even. How it would be, if he finally, when he finally.

His mouth is wet and hot against her stomach, his fingers nailed in her hips, keeping her there, with him, not letting her fly away and leave him.

She loses the track of her thoughts.

God.

She moans quietly, her teeth tearing the brittle skin of her bottom lip. She tastes blood. God.

She pushes all her weight against his shoulders and arches her back—the ground is hard and rugged against the skin of her back, but somehow softer and warmer than the bars were minutes ago. His hands move to the small of her back, cushioning every thrust of his body into hers, gaining speed. God.

There is an instant of clarity in which she thinks that it's nothing like she imagined, the feeling of him inside her. It's warm and fast and tender and it doesn't hurt at all, despite the time and the place and the feeling of jumping off a cliff and flying down into the abyss. Time and place and falling don't matter. It all disappears, this is wrong and I will regret it and they could come and they're going to kill him and everything but the feeling of his hands shaping every inch of her body. Only that exists. Everything else vanishes in the broken whimper that tilts and threatens to fall over her half-open lips.

Sawyer.

He shudders inside her and she clenches around him, her nails digging his shoulders and her teeth piercing his neck until the taste of his blood mingles with the taste of her blood. She clutches him to her chest and prays for time to stop, for the morning to never come. She prays that they can stay like that forever. For the first time in her life forever doesn't scare her. She doesn't want to sleep. She doesn't want to lose the feeling of him inside her and then wake up to the barrel of a gun, pointed at the back of his neck, the furious beating of his heart nothing more than a fainting memory.

His blood throbs against hers. He is still panting in her ear, their sweaty skins burning under the red setting sun. She softly kisses his forehead but doesn't move at all. She can't move. Not yet.

---

King George - Dover

you don't have to believe no more
only got four hours
to learn your manners
never felt so close to you before

---

I gave you a reason to fight and goodbye crash and vanish in the road between her thoughts and her lips and the only thing that comes out is please, please, I'll do anything. Please.
It sounds like nothing because it means nothing. It's too late and she should have said those things before, while lying against his warm, alive chest, when words mattered and the distance between truths and lies had vanished for the tiniest of moments. I love you, no second guessing if it was true or not because that was irrelevant. Because the only things that mattered were his heart beating and her skin tingling.

Now he has given up and maybe it's her fault, after all. Now, now, now. Now that she will die if she hears the gunshot, if she sees him fall to ground, lifeless and heavy and defeated.

Every drop of rain feels like a needle, sharp and painful, tearing her skin open with slow deliberate cuts. She is too cold to feel the fear. There is only raw physical pain burning under her skin, inside her chest, narrowing with every second that brings them closer to the end.

"Close your eyes, Freckles."

Instinctively she obeys, closing her eyes only for half a second. It's enough for a stream of vivid images to flow behind her eyelids. Every second she has spent with him, every look, every touch, every kiss. Her eyes are open again before she notices a second has gone by.

"Stand up!"

She screams and pleads and cries and—

"Close your eyes!"

He answers and she feels better for an instant, because if he can hear her maybe he will listen, maybe he will understand that he cannot give up, that he cannot let them kill him now, that there is no way she is going to forgive him if he dares to leave her alone now.

"Don't you give up!"

This time is a threat. Don't you dare give up. Don't you dare do this to me. He looks down and the rain starts falling harder and she suddenly understands that there is nothing she can do to stop it. He is going to die and she is going to see him fall and his body, broken and dead and bleeding out on the muddy ground between his cage and her cage is the last memory she is going to have of him, the one that is going to be with her for the rest of her life.

This is the end and the only thing she can say now is no, no, no, no—she knows he isn't listening anymore.

---

What I've done - Linkin Park

put to rest
what you thought of me.
while I clean this slate
with the hands of uncertainty.

---

She sits with her back pressed to his warmth, which lingers still on the metallic wall of the helicopter. She looks down to the waves, her eyes fixed on the sea. She is flying in the opposite direction. She is flying away from him. A thousand memories burn behind her tears because she cannot believe the time has finally come, now when a million realizations are crowding all at once inside her heart. She can only look down and wonder. She is not afraid of how much the crash against the water would hurt. She is not afraid of drowning if something goes wrong and a traitorous current grabs her and pulls her down. She is not afraid of getting lost in the infinity of blue and never finding her way to the shore.

Jack grabs her hand in a comforting gesture, makes promises she knows he will forget before he has time to regret it, because he will need to forget them to keep on going. He squeezes her hand and she forces a smile that comes out as a glare. Jack nods, reassuring. Contrary to what it may seem, he is not holding on to her to keep her from jumping. That would be crazy.

She looks down again. She remembers the rocks, the waterfall, his wet hand pressed to the back of her thigh, the crass against the water when she jumped, how he dove in right afterwards to catch her and tickle her under the surface. She smiles without wanting to. It wouldn't feel any different now, she thinks, jumping into the waves and swimming down, until she finds him at the bottom of the ocean.

---

You could be happy - Snow Patrol

most of what I remember makes me sure
I should have stopped you from walking out the door
you could be happy, I hope you are
you made me happier than I'd been by far

---

It tests negative and she sighs, relieved, crying only a little and for all the wrong reasons. There's no way she could have explained that to the press so it's good she isn't pregnant. For the sake of their safety, Jack says and she nods, holding Aaron to her chest and remembering their last conversation, it would have been the worst thing in the world and what would we have done with a baby? Little matters now. He is dead and she isn't pregnant and it's all for the best, because turns out she does have a baby after all. A different baby. Aaron.

Aaron is very cute and he smells really good, but he cries all the time and she doesn't know what to do with him at the beginning, because that is not how you become a mother, with a week of building up lies and learning how to change nappies. But then he gets used to her and, when she rocks him softly, humming in his ear, he calms down immediately, no matter how hard he was crying before.

The irony of the situation is not completely lost on her.

Aaron learns to say ma...ma...ma sooner than expected. Jack beams and she smiles proud—he's such a clever little boy—, forgetting for a moment that they're also lying about his age.

He also starts walking very soon and this time it's his nanny who grins and squeaks, proud of her little boy, because Kate isn't there to see his son's first steps.

Kate is out, running some errands, where she always is. Looking for his daughter, while someone else takes care of her son.

When she gets back and the nanny tells her, Kate bursts into tears. She feels like the worst mother in the world and, when the nanny leaves, she makes a promise to forget about her promise, to never leave her son again. Because he is dead and it doesn't matter, a vow she took without wanting to. Aaron is already asleep and she is determined to never miss another day of his life, but only until she goes into his room and sits by the bed, watching him sleep, so small and beautiful and blond. She remembers then that she has to do what he asked her, because she is his daughter and she owes him that.

She owes him a child.

---

Warning Sign - Coldplay

a warning sign
you came back to haunt me and I realized
that you were an island and I passed you by
when you were an island to discover

---

Of all the things she left behind, she often thinks of an old tape - stolen. That had made her laugh but then was a different life in a different world and she was a different Kate, who even used to go by a different name. She never got to listen to it—and the darkness inside you can make you feel so small. But she knows those are sad songs. They always make her turn the radio off.

She plays a different song instead, when she feels like not forgetting the island—I go out walkin' after midnight, out in the moonlight, just like we used to do. I'm always walkin' after midnight, searchin' for you.

Kate loves Patsy Cline. It hurts and burns but that song always makes her smile, proud of herself and her new life. She has done such a damn well job at rebuilding her wreckage, out of a slate rinsed clean and nice. She is free now. She is happy. She doesn't need any sad songs to bring her down—I see your true colors and that's why I love you.

She turns the radio off again and hums around the house, singing to herself. I go out walkin' after midnight...

---

Better than me - Hinder

the bed I'm lying in is getting colder
wish I never would've said it's over
and I can't pretend
I won't think about you when I'm older

---

There are a lot of dark afternoons and bleak long evenings spent with an empty bed. She fills it with stories and memories and private jokes, thrown with a laugh at the pillows lying at the other side, inches away from her solitude. The bedroom bursts with silent do you remember when's and intimate smiles, stories of tracking boars and jumping off waterfalls and haircuts and reading stupid magazines for teenage girls. She is always awake, when Jack returns from the hospital, a few hours away from the break of dawn. She is awake and happy and somewhere else and not alone.

Jack crawls up to her side of the bed and kisses her softly on the cheek. She turns her head and there is no guilt and no regret on her lips when she kisses him back. Jack smiles and she smiles and she says goodbye with a quiet, private whisper. See you tomorrow.

One single tear rolls down her cheek after Jack has fallen asleep. But it's okay. If she thinks hard enough about it, she never really loved him.

---

Creep - Damien Rice (Radiohead cover)

I want you to notice
when I'm not around
you're so very special
I wish I was special

---

Kate calls her again and then again and then again. Despite the risk and the necessary lies and the painful burning in her chest, every time she sees the girl. She looks so much like him that the ache is raw and real in her heart, almost unbearable.

There is always bitter coffee and also false knowing smiles and how is life treating you these days? Kate always nods and smiles again, wishing she could stay there, observing Cassidy and her daughter - his daughter - not saying a word. She can't, of course, because the first thing Cassidy notices is the ring, shining bright and white around her finger. Then she says it's romantic, crashing on an island and finding there the love of your life.

Their children play together on the carpet, her beautiful blond little boy and his beautiful blonde little girl.

"It's almost a miracle," Cassidy adds.

Immediately Kate's fingers start playing with the ring, so beautiful and ancient and expensive that it burns her skin. She doesn't say anything. She's done this before and that makes it even worse, but she is used to it by now. It is one dangerous game she is playing, betting on how long it will take Cassidy to catch her lies. Luckily for her, Cassidy likes to play along.

Neither of them believes in The Love Of Your Life and that is their tragedy after all. Their paper smiles won't stand for much longer but they need to keep trying for as long as they can. Kate is tempted to answer, though. Crash landing into the love of your live—the wording is so ironic that it makes her want to cringe and laugh and cry—is indeed more romantic that being conned into it. But she doesn’t speak. Because that would mean something else, one of those things that are between him and her and that she cannot ever tell Cassidy.

She takes off the ring and leaves it on the coffee table.

"Too loose," she says. "I might lose it."

Cassidy nods pretending she doesn't know better—the game is almost fun, after a while. Romance is not for them after all. Anonymous confessions of past crimes and past loves, bourbon shots shared with a stranger in a random bar—that felt right and meant to be but so are the twists and turns of life. Kate doesn't wonder how or why they ended up here, two illegitimate friends lying to themselves and to each other about loving a ghost, a shared memory that is condemned to remain a secret.

After a while Kate puts on the ring again. Curiosity killed the cat but they are both way past that.

---

Whispers in the dark - Skillet

no, you'll never be alone
when darkness comes you know I'm never far
hear the whispers in the dark
whispers in the dark

---

She tells Aaron about guardian angels because he is afraid of the silence. It's not the dark—she is afraid of the dark, of the shadows in the dark—it's the silence that scares him. She remembers the waves and the whistling of the wind bending down the palm tress, and she tells him comforting bedtime stories. There are guarding angels watching over us, she says. A beautiful and strong woman takes care of you from Heaven. She loves you very much, Aaron. She is with a man, with a good man that loves us too and protects her and sits with her while she watches over us. In the night. In the dark. In the silence.

We are not alone, Aaron.

One night he comes, her guardian angel, and when she opens her eyes he is already gone. There is only darkness and silence and the memory of his fingertips upon her forehead. She gets up and checks on Aaron, like every time a dream of the island wakes her up. He sleeps soundly, unaware.

Inside the kitchen cabinet there is an old bottle of bourbon—Jack's. She intentionally forgot to throw it away when he moved out and she is grateful now. Normally she doesn't drink, but tonight she doesn't think for a moment that it is wrong, playing drinking games with herself and getting drunk with the leftovers of Jack's liquor while her son sleeps upstairs. Guarding angles are taking care of him.

She takes the bottle to her mouth and starts swallowing, one long gulp with every lie.

I never dreamed of you.

I never prayed that you came back.

I never missed the feeling of your hands on my skin.

I never wished I hadn't met you.

I never wished you were dead.

I never loved you.

She cries and drinks and falls asleep right after her last sip, sprawled out on the couch, coughing up the bitter liquor every few minutes, drunk and heavy and alone, waiting fruitlessly for a guardian angel that never comes.

---

Where do we draw the line? - Poets of the fall

the weight of loneliness stands on your feet
the cage already there around the bird
so why don't we join the masquerade
before it falls apart, before our love become insatiate

---

"Did you do it? Did you finish what you were doing... for him?"

She closes the door in his face, thinking it's too late.

She keeps a box—well hidden—where she put everything she found of him, pictures and photocopies of legal documents, piled up over a fake death certificate (because there was a body and there was a plane once, at the bottom of the sea).

She lied—for a memorial book of sorts, she said—and then she clutched the picture Cassidy gave her inside her hand because it ached inside her chest. She smoothed it down carefully afterwards, putting it in the box, on top of the remnants of his lonely, sorry life.

Jack knocks again on the door. He is sober and it's bright daytime. He has a plan, he says. They have to go back.

We have to go back. We have to go back. We have to go back.

She nods, fighting the tears inside. She's taking the picture with her.

---

Guilty - The Rasmus

so don't you leave and say goodbye
cause you have changed but so have I
(I never thought that the time and the distance
between us made you so much colder)

---

He shakes his head and turns around, disappearing into the jungle as if he hadn't seen her, as if he didn't believe she was real.

She follows him, unafraid. Because she has traveled long and she has traveled far. She has lived away from him and she has finally learned her lesson—or so she tells herself.

-

"You are a coward."

He looks down and she walks closer. "Tell her I'm sorry?" The bitterness in her voice is sharper than the slap she's straining to control, crushed inside her clenched fist. "You are a fucking coward."

She walks closer still—and then even closer. So close than her nails are piercing the flesh of his arms and her tears are pouring over his neck. She sobs and fights his embrace, mumbling why, why, why, again and again until he finally kisses her, I'm sorry trembling between their lips.

---

Pieces - Red

I find everything I thought I lost before
You call my name
I come to you in pieces
So you can make me whole

---

Afterwards she lets him hug her without resisting. When everyone is gone and they are alone and they both need reassurance that she is really there and she is not going to leave him again.

Afterwards she lets herself remember how much she has missed him. How much she needed his body crashing into hers, his arms squeezing her waist, pressing her impossibly close to his chest. His heart beating against hers. His breathing in her neck. His blood throbbing in his throat, pressed to her cheek.

Afterwards they let themselves forget about the rest of them, about the years apart, about the pain they've caused each other. Afterwards and for a brief instant, when he hugs her and she lets him hug her, everything vanishes but this second chance together.

Only the moment matters, his heart and her heart and their skins touching again.

---

Is your love in vain? - Bob Dylan.

do you know my world, do you know my kind
or must I explain?
will you let me be myself
or is your love in vain?

---

When the night falls, he is sitting on the beach, hiding inside the mingled shadows drawn by the fires. There is an almost-empty bottle of rum standing drunkenly by his feet and her thoughts drift back to the empty space of time that is pending between them now. How much alcohol was poured in vain? How much heartache?

She sits besides him and his hand travels immediately to her knee, as if he still needs proof that she is really there, with him again. She extends her hand to him with a timid smile.

"Can I?"

He smiles and shakes his head, looking at her with an almost sad expression. "Well Freckles, you know how it goes. If you wanna drink, you gotta play."

Remembrance often hurts. The hurt is sharper, fiercer, now that his voice doesn't sing anymore. She doesn't feel like playing.

"I've never played drinking games," she says, her hand quickly fisted around the bottleneck. This is not the time for making eyes and taking turns.

She drinks and drinks and by the time she starts coughing up, the bottle is already empty. She hands it back to him, smiling mutely at his raised eyebrows. He has a playful carefree expression all of a sudden, one she never believed she'd see again.

"I wanted to play, too."

Her smile fades when her hand moves to her back pocket and she takes out the photograph. She feels brave enough, with the bittersweet taste of the rum on her tongue. She gives it to him without throwing at it one second look—the image of the blonde little girl is already branded in her brain, forever. She could draw her in detail, every freckle on her face, if she had any kind of artistic talent.

She is afraid of his reaction, but when his lips curl upwards slightly, for a second everything she went through to get that picture is worth it.

"You did it."

She nods. "Yeah."

He then moves his hand to his back pocket, like she just did, and she frowns, worried. Her heart tightens suddenly when she remembers the letter. The hint of his smile vanishes and her hands shake and then her breathing starts shaking as well, as he lays out his open hand. A tiny toy plane she had almost forgotten lies there, small and dirty and with a broken wing.

"I found it in your tent."

He found it and put it in his pocket and carried it around for years, the new tangible reminder of his new fresh baggage, his new letter. She doesn't need to ask him to know that he hasn't been carrying his old letter for a long time now. Time goes by and life changes, and so do its tragedies.

Her hand cups his fingers, closing them softly over her toy. It's yours. She nods and he nods back, putting it back in his pocket when she pulls away. His arm sets then around her shoulders and she buries her head in his chest. He kisses her forehead and she starts crying, softly and silently, tiny tears sliding placidly down her cheeks. He presses her closer and doesn't say anything.

---

Romancing the cage - Michael Giacchino

instrumental

---

His tent is still exactly like she remembers it, dark and soft and homey despite the fact that is made with pieces of plane wreckage. His body on top of hers is exactly like she remembers it. Oh God—she remembers it well.

"Slow down, sweetheart," he groans, when her hips thrust upwards against his, impatient. "There's no rush."

He holds her waist, pinning her to the blankets, and kisses her chin softly, taking his time. He is right—there is no rush, they have all the time in the world. This time is not the last time; it's not the last night, their last chance. There is no race against the rising sun, coming higher and closer to them with every pant that comes out of their locked lips. For the first time she isn't afraid of what's to come with the morning light.

Slowly, deliberately, her hand slides down his chest, and lower still, unzipping his jeans and slipping inside. She traces his jaw with her tongue and she feels his teeth gritting in her ear.

"Kate..."

They were supposed to take things slowly but before they know it their bodies are speeding up without their consent, shedding clothes and coiling and jerking and coming together at last, following their own well-known path into each other. Suddenly he is inside her and she has crushed his lips with her teeth to stop herself from crying out.

She hasn't missed this more than she has missed the cadence of his voice or the dimples of his smile, but it hasn't feel this real before. They have hugged and kissed and talked and she has cried inside his chest; he has twined his fingers with hers and he has run his hand down her arm and up her back and still, it hasn't feel real before, not like this.

She is finally back.

They don't move. They lay frozen, their bodes entwined, overcome by emotions, not daring to believe that she is back for good, underneath his body, warm and wild and alive around him. His bangs fall over his shadowed eyes and she brushes them aside, over his sweaty forehead. Her eyes lock with his and she thinks that he is the most beautiful man she has ever seen. Her hand curls around his cheek, his stubble softly scratching her palm and she pulls him down to her, kissing him slowly and deeply, urging him to start moving without words.

He obliges and she wraps her legs around his waist, pressing him closer against her hips. Suddenly everything but them in that moment stops mattering. It doesn't matter that she ever left him or that she spent three years trying to forget this feeling, his scent on her skin, his mouth hot and wet on her throat, his hands tight around her parted thighs, taking control over her every move.

She sighs when he moans inside her mouth. Outside, the beach listens in silence, imperturbably lulled by the crashing of the waves. Slowly, the sun awakens around them—it's already a new day when afterwards she lies tangled up in him, refusing to let go. The light seeping from underneath the tarp is bright and white. It's a new day, she thinks, a lazy smile drawing on her lips.

He kisses her temple and hugs her closer to him. "You should sleep."

His whisper is low and still husky and her body tingles in response. She nods and closes her eyes, letting exhaustion and weakness wash over her body. Finally there is no restlessness. They aren't safe and the battle isn't over, but for the first time she isn't afraid of tomorrow coming closer. It is already tomorrow and she is okay with that.

She doesn't move. She lies completely still in his arms, heavy and relaxed against his chest. That is the only way she knows how to reassure him that she won't ever leave him again. No matter what.

---

Passing afternoon - Iron & Wine

there are names across the sea, only now I do believe
sometimes, with the windows closed, she'll sit and think of me
but she'll mend his tattered clothes and they'll kiss as if they know
a baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone

---

"I thought you couldn't sleep if you weren't in your tent."

She slowly wakes up, his hand on her stomach and his whisper in her ear. Sunlight seeps through the small windows of the slice of plane he managed to save from the wreckage, a lifetime ago. She smiles, not quite believing she is actually there, between his body and the old blankets they used to sleep in, the same old rough blankets.

"I haven't had a tent in a long time." It makes her sad that he remembers every excuse she ever used to find her way out and away from him, but she is used to the backfiring even if it's been a long time since she felt the weight of a gun tucked in her waist. "I don't want to go outside."

Outside there is a child who will need a late breakfast and attention and answers and that is okay, if only she can put it off for a minute or two. She needs answers too.

"Do you ever think about what would have happened if you hadn't jumped?"

"We all would have fallen to the sea."

"Sawyer..."

He shakes his head and chuckles, shrugging one shoulder and sitting up. "I think 'bout what would have happened if you hadn't come back."

She sits up too, her lips crashing against his a little more forcefully than she indented. He has questions too, but she doesn't have any more answers than I'm sorry and I am here now, and she has said that a million times already. She knows apologies and justifications won't do for much longer, but it's far too soon to start thinking about filling their years apart with irrelevant truths and painful confessions of things that never happened after all.

He kisses her back and she smiles against his lips, still getting used to the old feeling. Maybe soon, she thinks. Maybe soon she'll tell him everything. Maybe a new drinking game is not such a bad idea.

---

Follow the leader - Matthew Ryan

so maybe it gets quiet
and maybe it gets numb
at least then there's still something
to share with someone

---

The island is nothing like she remembers—but her memories are selective. It smells of mud and dried blood and too much death. The air has a metallic taste that makes her want to be sick, and she doesn’t remember that from before. But the chase is still the same. They chase and she runs and tries to hide and that feels exactly like old times.

The gun is too heavy in her hands, as if she didn't remember how to use it, the simple mechanism of pointing and pulling the trigger with a firm grip and a steady hand. He is standing by her side, the gun a natural extension of his arm, and he doesn't say anything but she still hears him inside her head. You've changed, Freckles.

Her hands shake but she doesn't hesitate to pull the trigger, when the time comes, because the island hasn't changed and she hasn't either. Because a tiger don't change its stripes and some things simply need to be done. She never was one to hesitate and second guess—not when it came to that that.

The gunshot breaks with a shudder the stillness of the jungle, red blood pouring out of an anonymous body, dense and bright. They stand there for a second, watching and trembling slightly under the furious rain, falling harder upon them with every passing second. Then they start running again and she feels her heart beating harder, faster.

Some things don't change.

Later his fingers will twine with hers and still he won't say anything. He will kiss her forehead softly and she will nod in his chest, warm and wet against her cheek. I didn't want to come back, she will say. And the truths will slowly start growing out of her lies.

---

November rain - Guns 'n' roses.

I know that you can love me
when there's no one left to blame
so never mind the darkness
we still can find a way

---

It hasn't stopped raining in hours and she can feel the cold spreading outwards from her bones into her skin. Inside the small cave that hides them the rocks are wet and freezing cold, too hard against her back.

The gun still burns in her hand and she doesn't dare to breathe, she doesn't dare to make a sound. The metallic taste of gunpowder is stuck on her tongue and it is hot but it can't keep her warm. She shivers, pressed between his heat and the cold rocky walls of the cave.

"He is safe," he whispers in her ear, his hand resting wet and hot on her trembling knee. "Don't worry. They won't let anything happen to him."

She nods but starts shaking harder, smothering the sobs inside her chest, struggling to keep them in. The jungle roars outside under the violent rainfall. The column of black smoke rises right before the mouth of the cave and she presses herself closer to him. She feels the fear, real and tangible, freezing her heart and aching in her stomach. Tears are falling down her cheeks, from cold and terror, and she can't look him in the eye when he wipes them away, with a gentleness that feels strange and foreign in his fingertips.

Her fingers tighten around the gun and her whole body clenches, not loosening her grip around the gun and around his wrist until she feels his arm around her shoulders. He is trying to keep her warm and safe and she is shattering to pieces against him.

"He is okay," he murmurs. "I promise you he is safe. Trust me, Freckles. Aaron is okay."

She nods and he hugs her tighter, until she is not shivering anymore. They sit there immobile until the smoke clears out, sunlight shyly coming up over the jungle and seeping into the cave. The yellow rays squander around their ankles, slowly climbing up over their bodies, warm and tingly on their skin.

When it isn't cold anymore, he doesn't let go of her.

---

Strangelove - Depeche Mode

will you take the pain
I will give to you
again and again?
and will you return it?

---

She could make up excuses—I did it because of Aaron; it was the best for him—, or she could lie—I thought you were dead—, or she could confess the truth and pray for an absolution—I loved him and I wanted you to be dead.

His knuckles dig into the back of her neck, almost painfully, but he nods almost comfortingly at her. "I haven't asked, have I?"

Don't ask, don't tell. After all, she doesn't want to know either.

"You never found Claire."

It's not a question so he doesn't answer at all. He only looks down, his frown deepening further now than before, while she was playing with her ring finger, as if used to a wedding band that had never been there but almost was.

Claire is the last thing she wants to talk about but she needs confirmation, she needs to know he understands. He doesn't move and she trembles slightly, afraid that he will be angry, guilty, too heartbroken for her to deal with his loss. It's not your fault, she wants to say. It's not my fault either. She almost speaks, but his hand suddenly curls around her cheek and his lips curve slightly, an unfamiliar note of melancholy shining in his eyes.

The waterfall roars behind them when she kisses him, a soft chaste kiss laid upon his lips with all the care she can manage. It doesn't make it all clear between them, but he takes her hand in his and leads her through the jungle, back to the beach, without letting her go for an instant.

---

Eric's song - Vienna Teng

strange how I fit into you
there's a distance erased with the greatest of ease
strange how you fit into me
a gentle warmth filling the deepest of needs

---

Aaron loves the jungle and maybe it's her fault—not genetics, but something else—when he, barely four years old, starts climbing up trees and pushing himself down along the bunk like it was a regular common slide, like the ones the other kids have in the real world to play in.

She runs after him and scolds him because even if she isn't really angry, she is genuinely worried. It is useless every time. He smiles up at her, too cute for his own good, and shows her a muddy mango he found on the ground and she melts down, her hands on her hips in an empty gesture.

"I picked it," he says.

He runs then to the beach and into Sawyer's tent, excited to show him the mango too. She doesn't need to peek inside to see Sawyer putting aside his book and picking him up, sitting the child on his lap.

"You picked that?"

Aaron nods and giggles and Kate starts walking down the beach, away from his tent, waiting an hour or two before going back to find them, dinner time ringing on her tongue. Like dinner time was still a private, family issue, a quiet ritual between her and her son, in their home, and not a shared communal experience, everyone sitting together on the beach, just after the first fires have been lighted.

She sits next to Sawyer and watches Aaron, only a few feet away, playing with Ji-yeon on the sand, the mango still clasped in one of his little hands.

"Your kid won't let me finish the damn book."

Everybody is having their own private conversations and no one notices theirs. She smiles at him, holding his eyes and swallowing down before speaking. "I'll let you read tonight. I'll stay in my tent."

He laughs, not bothering to hide the suggestive playfulness in his tone. "I can't read during the night and you know that, darlin'. Bad eyes get worse as I get older."

She shrugs and shakes her head with a half laugh. Then she smiles secretly, when she feels his hand on the small of her back, creeping subtly underneath her shirt.

--------

.fin

Playing With Fire (Kate/Sawyer)

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:57:54 GMT

For my Kate/Sawyer Table.

Title: Playing With Fire
Characters: Kate (Sawyer/Kate)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 900
Summary: Confidence Man fic. She feels his hate hot and wet against her skin. Like his tongue. She can touch it, taste it.
Spoilers: up to 4x14.
Note: for un_love_you's #24, I want you to hate me.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine.

Playing with fire

---

It’s been hours and she still feels him, the salty taste of dirt and blood on her tongue, sliding down her throat and clutching her guts into a painful knot.

---

Months later she will tell him fishbiscuits, when he will finally kiss her again. They will both smile because the joke will appease their fear for the tiniest of seconds, gently flying over the muddy yard between their cages.

But she can’t know that yet. Now she can only taste hurt and blood on his tongue.

It makes her feel sad and turned on and terrified, one second before she pulls away.

It hurts when she does. It hurts in her heart but she welcomes the pain. Her pain hurts her less than his pain.

---

The hurt is raw and bright. It glistens in his green eyes and she shivers despite the heat oozing off the setting sun. You want to be hated and Get the hell out! and an unvoiced I’m sorry tilting in her mouth, even if he has used her and played with the life and the pain of a sick girl, beating up her worrisome brother in his way to the back of her mouth. She is sorry, she feels sorry, and he only hates her harder for it.

She feels his hate hot and wet against her skin. Like his tongue. She can touch it, taste it.

She shrinks away from the fury and the terror on his face. He needs her to hate him back, hate him back with a passion, hot and wet, and it scares her that she can’t.

He has told her his story and her heart hasn’t broken. She knows better than to be impressed by the tale of an unhappy childhood and turning out wrong once you get older and wiser and violent, because they broke you when you were little and you need to find something or someone to break yourself.

Such is life and well, she burned a man alive once.

But she is changing now, even if she isn’t.

She doesn’t want them to hate her, the others, like he wants them to hate him.

He believes hate is better than pity and better than caring but he is wrong, wrong, wrong. Whether he is looking for punishment or playing a silly macabre game out of boredom or even if the only thing he wanted was one little kiss, one kiss that would make the torture bearable. There is nothing worse than being hated, nothing worse than being despised and rejected and alone and he also should know that by now.

Yet he so desperately asks to be hated, with such hurt spitting out of his words, that she is tempted to oblige and hate him with every fiber of her being, hate him back, hot and wet and passionate.

She wishes.

She wishes she hadn’t spent hours reading his letter, the nausea creeping up her throat as she learned it by heart, hours watching him sleep and recover after losing so much blood.

Her eyes were fixed on his when he opened them. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

He could have died.

What else I got to live for?

They kissed and one second later he was bleeding out in front of her eyes. She can still hear the pounding of her heart if she closes her eyes and concentrates hard enough. Life was spilling out of him, hot and wet and bright red.

She barely knows him but she knows enough to know it should be easy, hating him as much as he needs to be hated, punishing him as hard as he wants to be punished.

It should be easier than it is, with his taste lingering in her, thick and indelible under her skin. She can’t hate him, with the feeling of his blood, dense and red and hot, sliding to the ground while she was remembering its taste, salty and dry, mingled with the bitter taste of her fear, both stuck to the back of her throat.

He was dying and she couldn’t breathe.

We already made out, what else I got to live for?

She barely knows him, but she wishes she could hate him.

---

Years later she will start missing him, really missing him, and she will find it cruel, how many times he could have died right after, as if claiming every time, what else I got to live for?, every time the tide of her terror pulling her back again and again.

She will start regretting then.

He could have died right after they kissed for the first time; right after she admitted to herself how deeply she cared; right after they made love; right after they flew off into the sky, together and away.

He could have died but years later he still will be alive and she will remember how easy it should have been, hating him as much as he hated himself, and how stubbornly her heart had refused to. She will wish she had listened harder to his plea, every time he had begged her to hate him before it was too late, before he changed his mind and stopped hating her, only to start painfully loving her, hot and wet and passionate, desperately needing her to love him back.

He begged and pled, but she didn’t listen.

Then it was too late.

Then it was already years later, when she will miss him and she will wish she had tried harder, to hate him or love him or at least erase the salty taste of his blood from her mouth, before it was too late, before that taste, hot and thick and hatefully undying, became the only thing she had left.

---
.end

Ghosts in flesh and blood (Jack/Claire)

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:15:06 GMT

Yes, I do post too much fic. This is for my au100 table, and also for superduperkc, as a thank-you note for her kind words and encouragement.

Title: Ghosts in flesh and blood
Pairing: Jack/Claire
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500
Summary: He doesn’t recognize her until five seconds too late.
Note: for au100's #55, spirit.
Warning: References to incest.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine.

Ghosts in flesh and blood

---

She pushes him against the wall.

He doesn’t see her—only a weak blue spark and a mass of wild blond curls.

Her body leans against his, pinning him between her flesh and the wall; her small hand burns against his naked chest, so hard that he believes she will leave her mark on his skin, red and hot and painful. [God – how he wishes].

“I know what you are trying to do.”

Blond hair, blue eyes and warm skin—nothing more than that. Memories always blur after a bottle of bourbon and a few too many pills and it’s not his fault if he doesn’t remember her voice at all. He doesn’t recognize her until five seconds too late, when his body is already hard and tingling drunkenly against hers, his mouth only inches away from hers. Claire.

“Don’t even think about it, Jack. You are not coming back.” Her breath brushes his lips gently while her words scratch his throat hard, furious. His desire rises and sharpens against her stomach and he doesn’t try to stop it. She is warm and alive and right here. “You are not bringing him back, Jack.”

His thoughts drift back to reality for a second and she turns around and away from him. The warmth of her hand lingers on his chest for a second afterwards; it reminds him of her touch, of her heart beating alive inside her chest, pumping out the same red blood that creeps through his veins, thick and heavy and drugged-up.

He stands there immobile—her figure fades away before his eyes.

“No…”

He grabs her wrist and pulls her to his chest, grabbing her hips with one hand. She is real again. His fingers dig into the flesh of her inner arm and his beard caresses her neck. He has never been this close to her before and it feels wrong and right and real, much more real than it should, her flesh against his flesh, her back against his chest, her ass against his crotch.

“He is your son… your blood.”

The word hangs between his tongue and her skin and she smiles mysteriously, pressing herself closer to him for an instant before turning around and facing him again.

“He is your blood too.”

She is still smiling when her lips land softly upon his, so softly that he can barely feel them. His tongue darts out to grab her mouth but she pulls away, teasing. She is not real, he thinks. He is going to wake up any minute now, lying in a pool of vomit on the carpet.

“Don’t come back, Jack.”

Her tone is softer now, sweeter. She looks like a little girl again, the delicate pregnant girl he met a lifetime ago, the little girl he remembers, his little sister.

His whole body burns and aches for her. He leans on again to kiss her mouth but when his cracked lips catch her shadow she has already vanished into the dirty, loaded air of his living room.

---
.end