notfaking_it | (no subject)

"Or learning how to adapt," Lily answered. Although she'd done well enough in school, she'd never given it much thought beyond the required time and energy. From the time she'd started ballet, she had known what she was going to be doing when school was done and so she'd learned the system, too.

"Half the time it didn't even matter what you knew, as long as you regurgitated the information the teachers wanted to hear," she said with a roll of her eyes, though she was smiling as she said it. Even though that was how she'd gotten through most of school, she hadn't minded or resented it. Everyone had their job and she knew that even the teachers had their rules to follow.

"I think shortcuts just make it easier on everyone."

"Cram in time to spill it all on a test, then forget it the next day," Sawyer agreed, nodding lightly at the thought of how often he'd resorted to that while in school, or the few times he'd managed to weasel another student into sneaking through the teacher's private papers, including answer keys, scantrons, and the like. "Then again, don't know that there's much of a better way to teach a bunch of kids. Ain't like any of us knew why we were learnin' about... I dunno, the revolutionary war, electrons, long division, whatever the hell else they made us learn. It was probably more 'bout keeping us quiet than anything else. That's my theory."

Pushing aside some stretching branches with a wave of his arm, Sawyer continued to clear the path in front of them. "Then again, there's a whole lotta that in the real world too, ain't there? Bunch of meaningless crap you gotta learn to earn everyone's respect. Throw it away the next day, after you sign the contract. And so on."

"Unless you end up on an island where money is meaningless and jobs are held by volunteers," Lily answered, although she agreed with him otherwise. It was a little bit easier in the world she'd picked, but not much. Even in the companies she'd belonged to, there was a certain respect attached to having an indepth, technical knowledge of what you were doing, especially when it came to certain teachers or artistic directors.

And then there had been others, too. Those who had appreciated the art more than the technique.

"You don't remind me of being someone who's easy to keep quiet," she said a moment later, looking over at Sawyer with a smile. Keeping quiet had never been something that interested Lily all that much, though she knew it worked for some people.

"I've got a whole lotta layers, sweetheart," he laughed, cheekily so, raising his chin confidently in the process. "Just 'cause you've seen one side of me don't mean that's all there is." And he left it at that, smile widening as he turned to face the path again, shaking his head as he thought back to her first statement. In some ways, it was surprising that the island still managed to run as well as it did, with no guarantee that the right type of people with the right sort of skills would show up to keep everyone afloat, especially when there was little outside incentive to get them working in the first place.

But they'd even managed to get Sawyer to hold a couple of steady jobs. Somehow, the overall feel of the island was communal. Close. United, Sawyer supposed, against an uncertain threat, in the same way that the hodgepodge group of Oceanic passengers had been.

"Then I guess I'll just have to wait around for a little bit more," she answered with a grin, because she wasn't one to dig around, to force people to show more than they were comfortable with. They usually did, eventually, and she was patient. She could be endlessly patient when it was required and she liked to know as much about the people in her life as she could. It just might take some time.

"But help me out a little," she continued. "Tell me one situation in which you've wanted to speak up, but haven't." Next time, maybe, she'd ask him why he walked just a little bit ahead of her, why he wanted to be the one who was out front.

"Well, I may just allow that to happen," he conceded, the crooked grin on his face demonstrating that it wasn't truly any problem at all, as far as Sawyer was concerned. Having light banter and witty repartee had proven itself one of the more pleasant parts of his days as of late, and the fact that she hadn't taken off in the opposite direction made Sawyer suspect, at least, that on an island as relatively clear and free of long-standing conflicts as theirs, that he was indeed still somewhat amusing to be around. More of an encouragement than an irritation.

It was very possible that keeping things light was the key that he'd been searching unsuccessfully for all his life. He'd tried before, in his own way. But the weight of a crime didn't wash away easily. Even on the island, it still weighed on him from time to time, more often than not, but it was... tolerable.

His own problem to grit through as best he could.

"It happens most when people're being idiots," he replied first to her question, raising a brow as they continued down the path. "The kind of idiot you don't know how to say no to. There was a... a doc, where I was before I got here. Always tried to save everyone, never freakin' owning up to the fact that if he wore himself to death, hell, we'd be in a bad way, worse'n if he toned it down a little. But he was the guy everyone loved, no one knew how to say no to, and hell if anyone ever expected him to actually listen. I held my tongue more'n enough around him."

"And there's at least one part of a layer," Lily said, smiling over at Sawyer as she tried to imagine him holding his tongue around this doctor. There was a lot about his life before the island that she didn't know about, where he'd come from or what had happened to him before he arrived, but she was learning. Slowly, maybe, but that only meant she had more of a reason to be patient.

"I don't know if I've ever known anyone like that," she admitted, considering her past. For the most part, she'd spent her life around teachers, other dancers and artistic directors. There were all sorts of personality types in the world of ballet, but she'd never had much of a problem speaking up and saying no when she felt it was necessary. It had gotten her into trouble more than once, but the trouble never lasted for long and she was confident she'd never held her career back any by being a little more vocal than some of the girls. She'd been the one to end up in New York, after all, and they had stayed behind in California.

"The artistic director in New York might have been that way," she said, though she expected Thomas might respond well to a challenge. "Not because he wouldn't want to hear it, but because people were intimidated by him, I think."

"Heh," he laughed, shaking his head. It figured that the first instance of him showing anything different about himself, contrary to what people saw, would be with respect to the doc. And in a way, there was a part of Sawyer that almost wished he could thank Jack for it all, for all the ways that he'd somehow managed to grow, expand, move out of that hollowed shell he'd been upon arrival on the island. Hell, he even missed the guy. Sawyer was pretty sure that having Jack on the island would irritate him to high hell, yet still, he missed the guy. More than he liked to admit.

"Well, I wasn't intimidated. Just didn't wanna waste my breath if he wasn't gonna listen," he shrugged, lips curved thoughtfully, too deliberately easy. "The other island was... hell, I'd say it was almost crazier than this one. We've got time travel in the bag. Crazy prophetic dreams. Polar bears, though thankfully no Jurassic Park. We didn't have any Peter Parker, Clark Kent, no superheroes, so hell, maybe we can all understand why Jack felt like he had to alpha male us all. Apparently, I just don't sit well with alpha dogs." He quirked an eyebrow, playful, listening to the wind pass through reeds and branches, birds chirping in the distance.

Wasn't often that he had the opportunity to reminisce.

"Do you miss it?" she asked, intrigued by the idea that there might be another island out there, one crazier than this one. Unlike many of the people on the island, Lily didn't spend much of her time trying to figure out the whys of what went on or how to escape this place, but the information was still something she wanted. If someone discovered a reason, she would want to know it. If someone found a way to get home, Lily wasn't sure she'd take the opportunity, but she would want to know about it.

"I mean, if it's more insane than this place, I guess you might not, but..." She trailed off, leaving the statement open for him to finish if he wanted to. The place itself might not be what he missed, but there had been people there with him and not all of them were here on this island. Sometimes, though, it was easy to miss a place without missing the people that came along with it.

The smile faded quickly, Sawyer doing his best to try and turn up an honest answer. There were times when he wanted nothing more than to return to the other island, didn't even matter who or what he would leave behind on Tabula Rasa to get there. Something about this place, insidious in a way that no one seemed willing to acknowledge, grated roughly against Sawyer's nerves. At least on the other island, everyone knew that it wasn't a place to be trusted, and that the people most adjusted to the place were the sort to be held at a distance.

Perhaps what he missed wasn't the island itself, but instead the confidence that came with it.

"I'd go back, if I could," he shrugged, lips pursing as he thought of a couple of people who probably wouldn't have been all too happy with his assessment. Wincing, he amended his statement. "Probably. Couple of folks on the island that I might... I dunno. Ain't the same thing as missing that island, though. Just knew it longer than this one."

Lily watched him as he spoke, taking in the way his smile disappeared, the shrug of his shoulders, the way he avoided saying he might miss anyone. Carefully, she nodded as she let her gaze drift back to the path, the Compound coming into view. As she walked, she considered her own question. Did she miss New York? Would she go back?

There were certainly things she missed. A real audience topped that list, other dancers, an artistic director with an idea for something fresh and new. But she and Nina might yet find an audience on the island.

"I don't know if I'd go back," she admitted, looking back to Sawyer. "I think I'd want to go someplace new, if the opportunity arose. Somewhere I haven't been yet." Going back was never as much fun as going forward and if the island could bring her here, she didn't see why it couldn't send her somewhere else.

"That'd be quite the gamble. Regular lil' Alice in Wonderland, aren't ya?" he remarked, slightly surprised by the statement. He knew that there were some people on the island who liked the idea of heading some place new, to another one of the many worlds that they heard about from their friends and peers on Tabula Rasa. Hell, it'd even come up during elections. But to Sawyer, the expectation that they might be able to break to a new world entirely, and the added burden of somehow controlling where that portal opened up, it was too much. He was incapable of holding himself to that level of hope. Even if they managed to find another world, he didn't suspect that it'd be any better than the first.

Sometimes, he thought, the devils one knew were far easier to deal with than any other.

"You better hope you don't end up somewhere as crazy as my island. As much as I'm sure we'd love to have you," he joked, lips quirking.

"Well, I was thinking something more like France, but I guess you can't always pick and choose," Lily returned with a smirk. There was just something endlessly appealing in being able to find a new place, discover where she fit in there instead of in New York or on the island, though she knew not everyone felt that way and on the off chance she found herself in some kind of world without dancing, she was sure she'd want to take it all back.

"I mean, I'm not looking to leave here any time soon," she continued. "But I guess I wouldn't say no if the opportunity arose." And she honestly wasn't sure if anyone would be upset with her for leaving. Nina might be, but she would recover, Lily believed that. There were other friends she'd made, of course, people she cared about, but she didn't fool herself into thinking that she was that important to any of them. People always lost those they cared about and they always recovered. It would be no different than that.

He snorted at the suggestion, glancing over at her with a faint shade of incredulity, rubbing at the stubble of his chin. France had never much been on his own list of places to see, struck him as too romantic, somehow, for someone as roughly cut as him. But the thought that Lily might have actually wanted to go to such a place took him by surprise too, if only because it seemed so typical. France, the Eiffel Tower, croissants and cafés, like the sort of thing one would have expected any woman to want.

It was good, though, that she could find a healthy balance of the tried and the adventures, that she could trust the experiences of the many while striking out for more still. Something he could admire, past the initial disbelieving laugh.

"France, huh. Would've pegged you for, I dunno, Madagascar or somethin' more exotic. But France. Guess I'll just have to trust the mademoiselle's taste there," he replied, sauntering through the last of the thick. "Overall, I've only ever been to Austalia. And a tiny little island somewhere along the way."

"Oh, come on, I said France, not Paris," Lily answered with a laugh, aiming her elbow at his ribs. "Did you know that France has territory in Anarctica? I'm not sure that I'll be the first person hopping that boat, but there's more to France than the stereotypes. And that would be just to start."

There was a number of places she wanted to go, places she knew she might never see now. Even if she'd remained in New York, she would have had to wait until her career was over to really travel the way she wanted. Unless she joined another company, she would have been in New York until she retired.

"What was Australia like?" she asked. "I'd like to go there, too." Even now, she was talking about it like she would have the chance, like she'd one day leave this place and be able to go where she wanted, but Lily wasn't completely sure that was true.

"Maybe," agreed Sawyer hesitantly, his nose wrinkling as he shook his head. "Maybe there's a whole lot more to France than the stereotypes, but hell, stereotypes still exist for a reason, don't they?" It was a question innocently posed; for all that Sawyer knew people had a tendency to think of him as somehow bigoted, racist, and everything else in between, the fact of the matter was that after the other island, he never knew what to expect from people anymore. His world, which had up until then been so narrow, had been widened, his view proven wrong— or at the least, not always applicable. And the same seemed to hold true on Tabula Rasa.

"I mean, Australia was... dry. Lots of land, real open. Lots of kangaroos, too, so they weren't exaggeratin' about that," Sawyer added with a shrug. "Though I was there for work, so I didn't get to go on one of them outback tours for the full effect."

"The only French stereotype I'll allow myself is eating baguettes," she said, grinning. As far as food was concerned, stereotypical or not, she would be happy with it and as far as she knew -- although maybe that was a stereotype, too -- the French certainly knew how to eat. Another one of the reasons she wanted to at least visit for a time. "No berets and no... I don't know, moonlit visits to the Eiffel Tower."

For a moment she fell silent, thinking of Australia, of how big and open it had always seemed. Like someone could get lost out there in all that expanse and no one would ever be able to find them, especially if they didn't want to be found. There was something dangerously appealing in that. Disappearing without a trace, leaving no clues.

"What sort of work?" she asked after a moment, a faint smile turning her mouth up at the thought of being able to get lost there.

"See, I know that there's more'n one kinda French bread, but I couldn't tell you what's what to save my life," Sawyer admitted, shaking his head. "There's croissants, and then there's the really long kinda French bread, and I used to call those all baguettes, until one day I went into a French bakery— not in Paris or anything, just by Jackson— and they kept on insistin' that once it gets to be a certain width, you actually call it bastard bread or somethin' or other. Naturally, that was the only thing I remembered from their explanation."

Rubbing his chin, he noticed the building finally peeking out in the distance, and hoped that he'd be able to turn the topic of conversation away from his career, soon enough. "And it was detective work. Huntin' down a criminal," he explained. "Pretty notorious thief runnin' around, rumor said he'd hopped a jet to Australia, so there I went. Wasn't there, though."

With a laugh, Lily shook her head, trying to imagine herself in a French bakery, trying to explain to the bakers that she didn't care what it was called as long as it tasted good. The bread, though, was far less interesting than what Sawyer said next and her laugh died slowly as her smile gently relaxed into a faintly curious expression.

"Detective work?" she asked. She knew he was on the IPD, but she also knew there were plenty of people on the island who weren't continuing on with the same type of work they'd done before their arrival. "Did you get him eventually? Somewhere other than Australia?"

As she waited to see what he might say -- waited to see, really, if he'd tell her more or change the subject -- she studied him, trying to imagine him as a detective. In truth, she knew very little about police work, but that didn't stop her from using her imagination.

"Nearby island," confirmed Sawyer, and if his throat felt tight, it didn't reflect too noticeably in his voice, the shrug of his shoulders still easy as he kept on the path. He'd answered those questions countless times whenever stopped on a bus, stopped on a plane, and somehow people always trusted him in this, that there was a man that he had to find. Wished him luck in finding the sonuvabitch.

(Except, he thought, for his colleagues. They hadn't wished him luck; they'd shoved him right in the direction of the fire.)

"Took a while, but yeah, found 'im on that nearby island."

"Hm," Lily said softly, watching as the Compound grew closer, as they neared the front doors. There were other questions she could ask, things she was sure he wouldn't tell her unless she did -- and maybe wouldn't tell her even then -- and for a moment she considered pushing. Asking more. Prying, even.

But that almost never worked. There were people who could be pushed into talking more, but Lily didn't know many of them and she liked it better when people volunteered information.

"Well, add Australia to my list of places I'll go if I ever leave here," she said instead of asking more. "Though I doubt I'll be doing any sort of detective work while I'm there."

"So that means if I wanna find you once we hop offa this island, I should head on over to Australia and look for a girl with ink on her back who's tryin' to follow whatever piss poor amount of tourin' advice I can give?" asked Sawyer, nodding his head slowly, as though in deep thought. Chances were, they weren't from the same world. He considered asking for a moment if she'd heard of the Oceanic flight that went missing, if she knew more about how the six had fared since they were rescued, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to deal with finding out, once and for all, that their worlds were disparate. Or, possibly worse yet, to have her grow too curious about the plane crash, and how it was that six of their number managed to make their escape while the others were left behind.

"Place is big enough that I'd probably end up havin' to do twice as much detective work for the both of us."

"If you wanted to find me, yeah," Lily replied with a grin, her gaze drifting up toward him again. "I would say that I'd stay in one place, make myself easier to find, but I'd never be able to do that for very long." She wasn't the type of person to stay in one place for long, not without a reason. At the moment, the fact that she couldn't go anywhere else was reason enough to stay, but there were other things about the island that she liked, reasons she didn't want to go anywhere just yet.

That they didn't come from the same world crossed her mind as well, the reminder that there were people here from space, from worlds she knew to be fictional, worlds she'd never even heard of. The chances of them being from the same one seemed slim and yet she found herself unwilling to accept that there was no chance. There was always a chance.

"You could show me all the kangaroos," she said, still grinning. "If you found me, I mean."

"Oh, don't worry, Carmen, I'd be able to find you no matter where you go, if I wanted to. And if it wouldn't make you cry uncle," Sawyer asserted, allowing himself a slight huff of pride. Truth be told, his tracking skills weren't all that great, as Kate liked to point out repeatedly whenever the two of them were trying to trail after someone on the island, but what Sawyer lacked in the ability to spot trails himself, he made up for in being able to get other people to find them for him. "Ain't like you'd be able to stay away from dancing for long, and unless you plan on turtleneckin' it the whole way, I think you're pretty easy to spot."

He brushed the pad of his thumb briefly against the bottom of his nose, ridding himself of an itch.

"Especially when I'm tryin' to find you to take ya to the kangaroos. It'd be a crime to miss 'em."

The name got another laugh out of Lily, but she knew he was right. It wasn't something she thought about very often, but if she allowed herself to imagine life after the island, even just a little, she knew she wouldn't last very long without some kind of company or studio to use at least every other day. And there weren't many dancers with tattoos like hers, he was right about that. Someone would know exactly who she was if he asked around at all.

It wasn't like her to think about what ifs or possibilities, but the idea of him finding her in some dance studio in Australia one day was something she allowed herself to consider for a moment. Such a thing wouldn't be so bad, she thought.

"And since you're the one who's given me all this Australian tourist advice, I wouldn't want anyone else to show me," she teased with a grin. "Those kangaroos are all yours."