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sawyer

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Things were bad.

Lily was aware of that much and little else as she stumbled away from the party. It was that thought alone, over and over, cycling through her mind as she walked into the trees. The boardwalk would be somewhere ahead. Somewhere. And things were bad.

Eames was gone, which had been hard enough, though she thought she dealt with it as best she could. Nina had been worse. Losing Nina felt like losing a part of herself and Lily couldn't make sense of it, couldn't understand the extent to which Nina had gotten under her skin. But the truth -- and the truth seemed so clear right in that moment, almost tangible -- was that Nina had disappeared and Lily had shut down. Not in any discernable way, she'd hidden it well, but it had occurred all the same. She'd taken the drugs for a reason she couldn't remember anymore. To wake up again or to drop further down, she didn't know.

Didn't matter anyway. It was done and things were bad.

Still, Lily's lips were turned up into a faint, confused smile as she walked. Around her, the jungle rippled and shifted. Her arms stretched out in front of her looked strange, like there was something moving under her skin and her smile slipped, just for a moment. And something was moving out there, too, through the trees. There was a soft rustle, more like feathers than leaves, and Lily turned, expecting to see Nina standing there.

There was no one. Just the dark and the trees, the moonlight expanding and contracting, almost as if it was breathing.

She couldn't remember how she'd gotten here or why the light looked like it was changing. It shifted toward her and Lily took a step away, her hands covering her mouth before she turned again. She didn't know where she was anymore, where the party was, if there had been a party at all.

"God," she said on an exhale, the word broken.

Things were bad. She remembered that. Things were very bad.

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Lily was quiet at first, taking the time to drink from the gourd, not entirely certain she wanted to think about the implications of how she felt now. It wasn't like her to have a bad trip and she had plenty of experience with partying, cutting loose and letting herself go, but something was different this time. Even now, in the relative safety of her hut, the drugs beginning to wear off, she felt strange. Disconnected from the wrong parts and all too connected to the things that were still making her feel terrible.

"I guess if anyone has that right, it's you," she said finally, smiling at him even though she didn't feel like smiling at all. "No one else has carried me home before."

Pausing long enough to take a second drink, she then rested it against her leg and looked down at the gourd for a moment. "You have anywhere that you have to be?" she asked, lifting her gaze again, that same pained smile still curving her lips.

"Yeah, well. Guessing you ain't ever needed someone to carry you home before. Kinda get the sense that it isn't like people wouldn't jump at the opportunity," Sawyer remarked lightly, his words quiet, trying for somewhere between considerate and lighthearted, but not quite managing what he pictured in his mind. Jokes didn't come to him with as much frequency these days. Loss was part of it. A sheer lack of aim or purpose, another.

Not that he'd ever had a healthy purpose in life, but hell, anger could be quite the anchor when it chose to be.

Staring carefully at the look on her face, Sawyer shook his head just a touch. "Lil, you ain't gotta smile if you don't feel like it," he said. It was something which should have been obvious, he thought, but sometimes people tried anyway, hoping that it was true that a smile could lift one's spirits just through the muscle memory.

Sawyer had never found that to be the case.

At his words, Lily's smile faded and she was surprised to find it felt a little better, not having to worry about it. Although she'd never really been much of one for masks or faking it, sometimes it was what people wanted, even if it was never actually any easier. Sometimes she thought it was what she wanted, but having him say that was almost like being given permission to no longer care.

"That's not an answer to my question," she pointed out, setting the water aside carefully, making sure not to spill any. If he had to leave, she'd get by, but she didn't want him to go. Even so, she was almost unwilling to admit that, even to herself, even in this state and so she pressed her lips together, then looked from the water to Sawyer.

For someone who was gone on drugs and alcohol and whatever else there'd been at the party, it was a surprise to Sawyer to see Lily come back to the question she'd asked, demanding a straighter answer. And perhaps more so than even that, there was discomfort that wormed its way into his stomach. He wanted to point out that anywhere he had to be was completely unreachable with the two of them on the island, that of course there were places he wished he could go, but... she wasn't the right person to receive that particular sharp-tongued speech.

Frankly, Sawyer wasn't sure who was. Jack, perhaps. But that was like setting a spark and starting a fire.

"I ain't got nowhere I've gotta be. Else I wouldn't still be in this hut," Sawyer pointed out, and for all that his words felt tired, they were as honest as they could be. There wasn't anywhere else he wanted to be on the island. And there was no desire to leave Lily's side in particular.

Instead of answering, Lily only nodded, then shifted over on the bed to make room for Sawyer, a clear invitation. Lying down fully clothed, she pillowed her head on her arm and stretched out on her side, eyes closing. For a moment, it felt like the room was spinning and for that same moment, she wondered if this wasn't all her own doing. Nina disappearing, the drugs, the party, lying here wanting things she couldn't even fully articulate. All of it. Maybe, somehow, she was the root of it all.

Then she opened her eyes again and the thoughts disappeared slowly, like they were draining away. If she was responsible, then she was. There was nothing to be done about it, nothing that could change any of it. She couldn't bring a person back and she couldn't change the past. It was done.

"Did your friend ever find you?" she asked, thinking of him suddenly. "He must have. He had a gun and I don't think he trusted me."

Sawyer glanced up in surprise at the question, eyes narrowing. The idea of Jack and Lily crossing paths had never occurred to Sawyer before, even if it seemed now like something that was only inevitable. Although he had no concrete proof that it was the case, everything in Sawyer's life seemed to have a tendency to intersect at the most impossible of points. That the man who resulted in his parents' death would only show up later on the island as the father of another Oceanic 815 passenger. That Jack's father would have come across him in a random bar. He had no reason to find it so fitting, and yet it was, that somehow Lily and Jack would have come across each other. It made complete sense.

And it also grated on him terribly that Jack would have raised his gun in any way at Lily.

"Oh, the doc found me, alright," he muttered, crossing the room and sitting down at the foot of the bed. "Didn't realize he felt like waving that gun around ‘til he did, though. Christ, Lily, I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Things ain't... they ain't in a great place, where we're from."

"I'm a big girl," she answered. "He didn't shoot me." Having the gun pointed at her hadn't been especially enjoyable, but she'd felt fairly confident that he wasn't going to shoot her, especially after he mentioned knowing Sawyer. No matter how bad things might have been, she hadn't given him any reason to use the gun on her and she expected he probably wasn't the type of man to shoot someone without reason.

Rolling over onto her back, she nudged Sawyer gently with her toes, then paused to look at her feet. Somewhere between the party and the bed she'd taken off her sandals, though if they were still on the beach, somewhere in the jungle or lying on her floor, she couldn't remember. It didn't matter, not when she had plenty of others to choose from, but the fact that she couldn't remember bothered her.

"How not great a place?" she asked. "No, that's a stupid question. He pointed a gun at me. I guess the answer is obviously pretty bad."

"He won't shoot anyone if he can help it," said Sawyer, raising his brow in something between amusement and exasperation. Truth was, there were plenty of times in their past when Jack could have stood being a little less insistent on 'do no harm.' But there were probably just as many times, if not more, when Sawyer was too eager to leap to conclusions. Gradually over the months they spent together, the two learned from one another.

But it was far from perfect.

He exhaled heavily through his teeth at Lily's question, not sure just how detailed he wanted to go. Truth be told, he didn't see the point in telling people too much about that island. The two places weren't the same, and whatever warnings Sawyer could give didn't seem to apply. And telling the tale, besides, only further knotted his stomach.

"But he had a good reason for carrying the gun," Sawyer concluded. "Lots of trigger-happy people on the other island, and not everyone I knew survived by the last time I was there."

"I'm glad he found you at least. He was upset, didn't believe me that you were here, but I never got the feeling he was actually going to use the gun," she said, looking up toward the ceiling, her gaze following the lines in the wood, the imperfections in the grain. There was something soothing about it, something that settled her and she found herself paying particular attention to her heartbeat as she looked at the wood. It began to slow, finally, and the strange feeling of being watched that had followed her all night began to dissipate.

"Are you going to lie down or are you just going to sit at the foot of the bed all night?" she asked, lifting her head slightly to look at Sawyer. Although she didn't want to admit it, she knew it would make her feel better, even if only for the moment. He couldn't really promise that he would stay and she understood that, especially now as her head began to clear. But it would be enough for that night.

"Well, if he thought he was on the same damned island as we were on back home, that makes sense," Sawyer muttered to himself, rubbing his thumbnail along his forehead and sighing in exasperation more than anything else. No matter how often he tried to find reason in the experiences that he shared with the Oceanic survivors, there really wasn't any. One had to be there to understand. One also had to have the ability to believe in ideas as farfetched as time travel.

And Sawyer admittedly didn't know how Lily would necessarily feel about that.

Blinking at her next question, Sawyer snorted to himself, shaking out of his reverie as he stepped on closer. The fact that Lily was able to give him orders— or, well, friendly suggestions, really— made him pretty darned hopeful that she was quickly getting over the influence of whatever it was she'd taken.

"Gettin' impatient with me now, are ya?" he asked, expression faintly amused.

"Pretty much," Lily answered, reaching up with one hand to sweep her hair back, tangled and knotted as it was. There was sand in it, salt from the ocean, and although she didn't remember going for a swim, it was entirely possible. At one point she'd been dancing with Nathan, drinking from his bottle, but she didn't even remember much of that. Where she'd gone beyond that point, who she might have seen or spoken to. She wasn't looking forward to having to piece the night together after the fact. It was too much like what had happened on Valentine's Day, but this time she was the only one to blame.

"You can tell the story just as well from beside me," she said, lying back against her pillow again, working her hands through her tangled hair. "Because there's a story." There always was, but she was especially sure of it in the way he was speaking of the other island, of the things that had happened to cause Jack to draw his gun. There was a story there and maybe he wouldn't want to tell her any of it, but she would give him the option.

It was a good time, she thought. It was a good time for her to listen.

There was a story, of course. Every person had a story. If there was anything that Sawyer had learned as a survivor of the Oceanic 815 crash, it was just that. Even the quietest of individuals had some type of tale to share, if only people listened. But having a story wasn't enough of an excuse to share it, and for that, Sawyer glanced Lily's way too, wondering if he wanted to tell her all of the things that he'd hidden from the general island populace for so long. She was closer to him than most people, but in some respects, she was still an outsider.

And it wasn't that Sawyer didn't want to have people close to him. Instead, it was just that there was something about their story, something about that island, that refused to let people leave once they stepped on the island's sandy shores. And that wasn't a fate that Sawyer wished on even his worst enemy. There was little in his life that had proven more terrifying than that island.

Sometimes, he thought that Tabula Rasa wasn't even half as bad.

"Lil, I just dragged you back from a party," Sawyer said, voice soft. "I've got a story, but I don't know if now's the best time for it. It ain't a bedtime story. It ain't polished. Hell, sometimes I think it ain't finished."

With the knots worked free, Lily began to braid her hair, pulling it back from her face and working it over her shoulder until it lay down the centre of her back. There was something about the simple act of pulling it off her face that made her feel more human almost immediately. She was still weary, still strangely sad and she could still hear unfamiliar noises every so often, but she was beginning to really feel like herself again despite it all.

"No one's story is finished," she answered, reaching for an elastic by her bedside to secure her hair. Stories would always continue, even when people died. Death didn't always have to mean the end.

"You don't have to tell me," she continued. "But if you want to one day, I can listen. Maybe I'll have a story to tell you in return. Until then, you don't have to do anything. Just lie down with me."

Carefully, Sawyer's eyes followed the movement of Lily's hands. The way that her fingers deftly wove through her hair, the way that the strands varied somewhat in color, but not in a way that altered the overall look. Nothing that he would have qualified as dirty, in the way he did his own blonde locks. No, there was an elegance in the way that Lily carried herself, even falling apart as she was right then.

"You don't think anyone's story is finished?" Sawyer asked, lips twitching in what was almost a smile. He probably would have disagreed with that particular statement. Some people's stories finished. Some people's stories finished, or came to their conclusion, years before death. Sawyer's wasn't even close.

And he was none too proud of what had brought him to that very spot.

Shifting, Sawyer hesitated for a moment before following Lily's command, the fight in him having drained long ago. Not against her, really. Against his own better judgment. Sliding up and over the bed, Sawyer waited until he was within arm's reach of her, laying on his side behind Lily. The easiest position from which to reach out, he supposed.

Not that he was quite yet.

"No, I don't," Lily answered after thinking about it for a moment. Behind her, she could feel Sawyer's weight dip the mattress slightly, the warmth from his body near hers. She lay back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling again, her gaze following the grain of the wood as she tried to catch her train of thought, but it kept floating free, slipping out of her grasp.

"I think..." she said, then paused, frowning. "I think the stories we live tend to be far more complicated than we know. And I think... I think I'm still far too stoned to be trying to figure this out," she said with a soft but genuine laugh.

Turning toward him, Lily propped her head up on her hand. "I think I probably owe you big time for bringing me back here," she said. "God knows where I would have ended up if I was still wandering around out there."

"I'm glad I found you, then," Sawyer replied, expression sobering even through Lily's laugh, because her words cut to the quick. She was right. Their lives were a lot more complex and tangled than any one of them would be able to express or recount, and in part, that was why it was never possible to look very far down the track. His eyes growing lidded, Sawyer reached out to press his hand to her shoulder, sliding it steadily down her arm in what he hoped was a comforting gesture, ignoring the way that his stomach turned at the brush.

"And if you're still stoned, sounds like a good excuse to sleep it off." He grinned faintly. "Promise I'll make sure nothin' happens to you, Pavlova."

"I know you will," Lily answered, reaching up to brush a few remaining strands of hair off her face before she turned toward Sawyer on the bed. That wasn't the truth, no one could keep any one person safe, not for any length of time, but for the night, she trusted that he would make sure nothing happened. Not that she thought she was in any real danger, not anymore, not with the sounds fading and her mind settling. But it was comforting all the same, having him there.

"Thank you," she said, then leaned toward him, brushing a kiss over his mouth, lingering for a moment with her fingers pressed lightly against his chest. He was warm and solid, something real. The sound of the feathers, the glimpse of things out of the corner of her eye, there were all gone for now and for that she really was grateful.

He froze abruptly when he felt her lips on his own, something that he hadn't expected to feel again, something that he hadn't allowed himself to imagine. For ideas were easy enough to block out of Sawyer's mind, most of the time, so long as they were tackled before they truly took root. Lily was, while not a fleeting notion, certainly a woman Sawyer didn't let himself get too hung over. And he figured that she wasn't terribly caught on him either, being the free spirit that she was. So the kiss was a surprise.

What wasn't was the fact that a part of him, buried deep down, reacted positively, just a portion of that wall falling down.

Of course, he tried immediately to build it back up.

Sawyer did manage to return the kiss, a soft nudge of his lips and a hand brushing over the one she pressed to his chest. But it was barely beyond chaste, for he wasn't sure if either of them could really, truly stand still underneath the weight of a tryst started right then. With her grieving. With him locked away.

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