EverAfter

EverAfter -- SPOILERS GALORE

2008-01-24T04:28:46Z

A/N: I'm doing a strange thing here. I want to prove to myself -- and to you -- that this novel exists and will be finished, because it has a beginning and an end and everything in between. In a way I've done what Lost did in the S3 finale -- I've shown what happens, but I haven't told HOW it happened. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED FOR EVERAFTER, DON'T READ. But if you want to be...well, should I say "teased" or "tantalized"? this excerpt will do it.

As you'll see, it's a rough draft. There's no attempt at continuity of tenses, or any other writers' rules. This post is a rule-breaker in every sense of the word. A glimpse of how this writer's unkempt mind works. Some things have changed since these plans were drawn up, such as Sawyer and Kate getting married before Jack and Juliet. Other things might change in the finishing stages. I'm simply posting this as a leap of faith -- that there will be finishing stages. I love Jack and Sawyer together, and I never want to let them go.

Promises and Traditions

Juliet watched his hands. They told her so much, and yet she still didn’t know what the questions were. Sawyer’s hands had always been perfect, a source of pride, a statement that no amount of chaos, confusion, pain, or hardship would make him neglect what he was proudest of…and Sawyer’s hands were always pristine.

They were until now. Now they stayed wrapped around his gun, so tightly they could’ve been fused with it, and they were the picture of neglect. The nails were torn, ragged, and filthy. Dirt was rubbed into the creases and rough patches of skin until it almost looked like he was tattooed with it. Sawyer’s hands told a story of what he’d been through in the last day. Juliet just wished she could understand what language they spoke.

He’d thought he was safe. He thought he’d gotten away clean; he wasn’t like Kate, didn’t have to hide or run. Nobody knew that he’d killed in cold blood before he crashed onto hellhole island. But now he knew he was wrong.

The Others had a file on him. They were his enemies, and they had all the information they needed to have him put away forever. Not only that, but Locke had seen him kill again; he’d manipulated him again just like Hibbs had done the first time Sawyer had killed. And his own people, his friends, had watched as he coldly shot Zeke. “Dude, he surrendered,” Hurley said, shocked, and Sawyer wondered if they’d still be his friends now, after what they’d seen. He’d tried to follow his conscience, he’d told Locke that he wasn’t going to kill again, he wouldn’t, but he did, and it wasn’t a trick or a con or an accident. He did it because he meant to do it. Because he had to. He was a murderer now; did it matter anymore how many lives he took?

But that was here, on the island. Here where war and death had become a way of life. He stared out at the ocean and waited for the first sign of the boat Jack had jubilantly summoned, waited for the rescue he’d once craved. He’d told Walt that he was going back to kill the real Mr. Sawyer. Turned out he didn’t have to go back for that at all. Now going back meant he’d be exposed as the criminal that he was. Just like Kate. What did they have to go back for? Prison life? How could the island be worse than that?

But Kate won’t stay. “I’m coming with you,” she told Jack, just like she always did. Juliet can’t protect her, but she can protect Sawyer. “No one who’s ever had access to that file is leaving the island,” she told him. “And the other killings…’what happened on the island stays on the island.’ We’ve all done things that would make us criminals back in the world. Even me. Even Jack. Nobody’s going to rat you out, and maybe the crash, everything she’s gone through, the baby, will be enough to keep Kate free, too. Are you going to stay with her when we get back?”

Sawyer glowered at her. She had it all fixed in her head how Sawyer had to go back, whether he wanted to or not. “She’s got my kid in her. No way I’m lettin’ her run off like she always does, and take my kid.” He made a decision then and there. He’d be a new person. He’d be who he needed to be. “I’m gonna marry her,” he said.

Juliet’s eyebrows shot almost to her hairline. “Marry? Really, James? You’re ready to settle down with a wife, a family?”

“Yeah, I am,” Sawyer answered defiantly. “That asshole I was before we got rescued, I’m leaving him on the island. Jack said the island was a fresh start, but it wasn’t. Mine starts now. I’m not gonna screw everything up this time. Not like my parents did, either. Neither will she; ‘cause I won’t let her. So yeah, I’m ready. Gotta be.”

She and Jack make a good team, protecting Kate and Sawyer – Jack because he loves them, and Juliet because she loves Jack. Jack realizes at the wedding that there’s really no hope, and the island has taught him to accept helplessness; he can’t do anything to change this, to fix it. All he can do is make a fulfilling life for himself, so right there, right in the church where Kate and Sawyer promised their lives to each other, he proposed to Juliet. Smiling – a genuine smile, for once – she said yes.

And he wondered, forever after, if he’d done it just so he could be around Sawyer and Kate; friends who got together for dinner and family vacations, each one of them half of a couple.

Jack and Juliet made a good team. They worked well together. They had chemistry; they fit together physically. It didn’t take long before they could both call it love. Normal, healthy love in a normal, healthy life.

They were still at the church when Sawyer turned to Kate and said, “You only did this because you can’t have him.”

The look that filled her deep, wide eyes wasn’t guilt, as he’d expected. As he’d seen on the island when he’d said almost the same thing. It was pity. “James, why can’t you just believe that I chose you? You’re the father of my child, the man I learned how to love on the island. Jack isn’t in this anymore, from now on it’s just us.”

Then the infection strikes Kate. Even off the island, even with every state-of-the-art instrument at her fingertips, Juliet can’t save the baby. A boy, she told them. Born at 5 ½ months, he never even took his first breath. They named him Samuel, after Kate’s father. Sawyer didn’t cry until he’d been drunk for three days. It was Jack who stayed with him, who held him together then as best he could. Juliet nurtured Kate because her own husband couldn’t face her. Neither of their husbands could. She’d failed them all.

Both women blame themselves. Both need comfort; they simply need to talk to someone else who understands. Juliet worries that the inoculation doesn’t work off the island, that pregnant women can still be carriers in the real world. She monitors Sawyer and Jack carefully.

********

Jack always has to be the one to make the “tough call.” The one to make the decision, whether it turns out right or wrong. “This is going to kill us.” He grabbed Sawyer by the shoulders and slammed him up against the door. “It is killing us.”

“No. We’re together. Long as we’ve got that –“

“We won’t! Can’t you see it? That’s what we’re killing! You’ve got to choose, go – forever – or stay. For real. No more playing at being together, Sawyer; we either are or we aren’t.”

The last time this had happened – exactly the same way – Sawyer had chosen to go. He’d turned his back and walked out. He’d nearly killed them both…but he’d never killed this. Not even close. Nothing would; it was immortal. But he and Jack were not.

Fast, so fast that Jack didn’t even have time to react, Sawyer put his hands on either side of Jack’s face and kissed him, hard. There was so much force in the kiss that it propelled Jack backward, and still further backward, until they landed back on the bed. (The sex will tell it all.)

********

“I can’t walk away from this. I’ll die. I was dying. What you said…you were right, Jack. This is forever.”

The words eased the deep fears inside of Jack, the ones that envisioned a life without this, of being emotionally dead. That wouldn’t happen, but now a new fear was taking hold. Sawyer was looking at him with relief and, God, trust in his eyes, and Jack thought about the island. They’d wanted him to know what to do. They couldn’t accept it when he didn’t, and they blamed him when it didn’t work out. Now Sawyer was looking at him the same way they had. And he had no idea where to go from here.

********

His vows. The vows he’d always wanted to take. “In sickness and in health,” he whispered again and again, but it didn’t help. He’d never been allowed to take vows, just as he’d never be allowed back on the island. He could love Sawyer with all his heart but he couldn’t save him, and he couldn’t watch him die. “Forgive me,” he said to the part of Sawyer that was always with him, the part that he carried inside himself. Then he stepped toward the precipice.

********

Walt couldn’t be found if he didn’t want to be found. Michael had been Jack’s last hope; his only hope, and now Michael was dead. He’d run out of options, so he did the only thing he could do – he resigned from the hospital and spent his days and nights with Sawyer, trying to absorb the pain with his own body. Trying to love the agony out of him. He realized that he could watch him die, he had to; Sawyer wouldn’t die alone. Jack gave him too many drugs, too powerful doses, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to let Sawyer die in pain or in fear. He was going to hold him and comfort him and let him die in peace. “Never let you go,” he murmured brokenly into Sawyer’s tangled hair, and he held on as he tried not to think about what a short time they had left to keep that promise.

In the darkness, deep in the night, he felt a change in the air. This was it, then, he’d just felt Sawyer’s soul slip away. Agony wrung a moan from deep in is gut, and that’s when he heard it. Two sets of breathing, Sawyer’s ragged and unsteady, and another, frightened one. “I can’t be here, Doctor Shephard,” Walt said. “If they find out, they’ll take me away. They already found out that I tried it once, and they killed my dad for it.”

Jack sat up and quickly turned on the light, with a feeling he’d forgotten existed surging through his body. Hope. But he knew why the kid was so scared. “’They’ were Widmore and Dharma. ‘Taking him away’ meant another box, another round of mind control, another attempt to break him. If they’d killed Michael – and Jack believed Walt completely – it was an almost unfathomable act of bravery that he was here at all. “They won’t find out,” he said, desperately. He’d do anything, lie, manipulate, even risk this boy’s life, to save Sawyer’s. “Look at Sawyer. Look at what’s happening here. He’s a good man. He has people who love him. I love him. I need him. Please, you can’t just let him suffer. He’s dying. The island can save him. We have to get him back, Walt, please.”

“I know how,” he said, his voice shaky but brave. Jack remembered something he’d heard somewhere, that a hero wasn’t someone who went into danger unafraid, but someone who was afraid but did it anyway. Walt was stepping up to be a hero. He went on, “If we’re gonna go, though, we have to go right now. While they don’t know I’m gone. We don’t have time to get anybody else, not Kate…or her baby.”

Jack had to make a decision then for Sawyer. He could stay, and live out his last two days, three at the most. He’d never see his child grow up. Or he could go back to the island, where he had a chance. He could be healed. He could live. He might not ever be able to leave, but he’d be alive in this world for his son. Someday his child might find his way to him. At least this way they had a chance. “Take us,” Jack said, and the pathetic desperation in his voice didn’t even cause him to cringe. He was truly that desperate. “But you have to take us together. If I let go of him, he won’t make it.”

“You know what to say. Say it, Doctor Shephard. Say it to him, and just keep saying it. Close your eyes, and just keep saying your words.”

Jack half-expected him to tell him to click his heels together three times and say, “There’s no place like home.” He would’ve. He would’ve done anything if there was even the barest chance of it working. As he murmured the words, their mantra, their vow, “never let you go,” he felt himself drifting into a strange state of half-consciousness. He fought it, because he had to be there if Sawyer needed him. “Just let go of this world, Doctor Shephard,” Walt said. “Just trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

Jack didn’t know how long he’d been out of it, but he knew it’d been too long. His mouth was drier than the desert, his skin stinging from the sun. Holy God, he was back on the island. He’d made it back…but Sawyer wasn’t with him. He jumped to his feet, and as his body started to spiral out of his control as the dehydration and fear hit him, and he began to yell. He yelled until the dizziness was too much and he had to sink to his knees. He buried his face in his hands, sobbing the word “No.” He’d done everything he could do. Everything he knew how to do. He’d taken every chance in the world, and still he’d failed.

Cool fingers touched his shoulder. Long, affectionate fingers that filled him with a profound sense of peace. Yet Jack was afraid to look up, too afraid he was wrong, but then there was the voice he hadn’t heard in so long. “I brought you some water, Doc. Gotta get you to the caves, it’s better there. Couldn’t carry you, though. I can’t hardly get there myself.”

Jack looked up and around sharply and there he was, Sawyer, looking emaciated and colorless and swaying, fighting to stay upright, but he was on his feet. He was standing. He was walking. That was the instant when Jack knew that everything was going to be okay. The island had worked its miracle, again. Sawyer sank to his knees and gripped Jack’s hand. “Never let go, Doc. We gotta save each other.”

[aside] Question from the writer

2007-11-16T19:25:27Z

An aside...for my lovely readers who know so much more about LJ layout than I do. Is there any way to make the pages you see under the cut look all pretty and scripty and floaty like they do on each chapter's opening page? In your journals you see the teaser for each chapter as it'd appear in your journal, then when you ckick cut it takes you to the plain black-and-white default my system uses under that cut. Wouldn't it be nice to see it all flowing and pretty, moody and free...does anybody know how to make such a change? How to get rid of the black-and-white boxer paraqraphs and susbtitute the more scripted ones? Chap. 3 is all about teh pretty sex so it really needs a moody setting. :)

Chapter One

2007-11-12T21:39:01Z

Some of this is really hard for me to write. I'm writing about stuff I thought I never would...but "never say never," I guess. Here goes....

Jack Shephard married Juliet Burke on a sunny afternoon in May, five months after their homecoming. It was a small, intimate affair, held outdoors on the lawn of a sparkling white bungalow surrounded by pastel-hued gardens. The warm breeze carried the scent of flowers and sea-salt, and it caressed the bride’s face like a lover. In the distance was the soothing sound of ocean waves, and if there was the occasional drone of an airplane in the crystal-blue sky, if the air brought with it the faint musky tang of engine exhaust, well, that was only to be expected here, in the big city, and no one was offended. The couple’s vows were touching without being sentimental, the bride and groom poised and serene. It was the perfect setting for the marriage of two successful, divorced doctors; tasteful without being elaborate, luxurious without being ostentatious, festive yet still appropriately subdued, for everyone in attendance knew how and where the two had met.

As the happy couple said “I do” and shared a quick but warm kiss, one of the attendees whispered to another, “We should do that.”

“Do what, baby?” Sawyer was doing his best to stay casual, relaxed. So far he thought he’d managed it admirably, under the circumstances. But his companion’s reply wiped the easygoing smile right off his face.

“Get married,” she hissed. “Everybody else is doing it.”

Amidst a smattering of happy laughter and applause for the newlyweds, Sawyer slowly turned his head and stared at Kate. “Is that supposed to be funny?” he asked, at this point more puzzled than annoyed. Kate’s behavior had been baffling in the two-and-a-half months since Jack and Juliet had announced their engagement. Be patient with her, he reminded himself. Hormones make women crazy.

Kate’s hand went to her middle, where the baby-bump that had just started to show when she and Sawyer parted ways in February now looked more like a baby-basketball. Kate’s gesture was protective, soothing. It reminded him of her nurturing ways on the island, whenever one of the survivors was wounded or threatened or upset. A mama-bear, Sawyer thought as she half-scowled, half-smiled up at him.

“I’m serious!” she said. “Why not? We’re in this together, aren’t we?”

For a fleeting instant Sawyer wondered if she was talking about her pregnancy, or the jealousy that she must be feeling as she watched Jack pledge his love to Juliet. Envy, he corrected himself. Envy, not jealousy. “What, all of a sudden you’re in the mood for an SUV, a dog, two-point-five kids and a picket fence?”

“They seem to be really happy with it,” Kate observed, nodding at Jack and Juliet as the pair all but floated down the petal-strewn aisle between the guests’ white folding garden chairs. Vincent the dog, with a powder-blue bow around his neck and a wicker basket overflowing with rosebuds in his mouth, trotted obediently behind them as they made their way slowly through the smiling well-wishers toward the reception tables that had been set up on the deck next to a clear blue infinity pool. In compliance with city laws, the pool was surrounded on its three landward sides by a fence, and the fence was, indeed, picket.

“They don’t have an SUV,” Sawyer pointed out, sounding smug, as if his observation settled a vexing problem. He turned his attention back to the wedding party, where three-year-old Julian was lurching down the aisle as he tried to simultaneously pull Vincent’s tail and walk upright in his stiff new shoes and unfamiliar dress suit. Right on his heels was the young redheaded woman whom Juliet had introduced earlier that day as the baby-nanny. The girl held one hand out to hover over Julian, lest he fall and need to be scooped up, while her other arm was wrapped securely around the waist of a drooling and cooing blond infant dressed in a miniature version of Julian’s pale-gray suit.

And only two kids, Sawyer added silently, though he didn’t voice this thought for fear of sounding like he was protesting too much. It was just that…well, Jack and Juliet didn’t have the perfect American family that Kate seemed to believe they did. The children had come to them as the result of tragedy, after each of them lost a sister shortly after their homecoming. Juliet’s sister Rachel had succumbed to cancer almost immediately, as if she’d been willing herself to live until her much-loved sister could take care of Rachel’s son, Julian. Jack had only learned that he had a sister after post-island tests had revealed their DNA connection, one that they were still trying to sort out the particulars of when Claire suddenly had a relapse of the mysterious illness she’d suffered from in her last days on the island. She’d been comatose for almost four months, though when Jack brought her son Aaron to visit her in the nursing home, she smiled.

The double-handful of wedding guests began making their way toward the reception area, and Sawyer let himself get carried along in their cheerful wake. He knew that Kate would follow him, drawn toward Jack like a magnet. Some things never changed.

The sun glinted off the white house, the pool water, the ocean, and Sawyer rubbed his eyes as he tried to ward off a headache. Had Kate just proposed to him? His first instinct was suspicion; was she looking for a way to make Jack jealous? It seemed a little late for that now, with the new ring all shiny on Jack’s finger and the new bride all shiny on his arm. Kate wasn’t a quitter, though. Sawyer told himself firmly that he was done with letting Kate use him, but the thought still bounced around painfully in his brain.

Marriage. Huh. He knew that babies did strange things to a woman’s mind. He’d already witnessed Kate-the-runner’s decision to buy a house in Tallahassee, where she could be near her stepfather. She’d bought furniture, sewed curtains. It had freaked him out so much he’d decided to research the phenomenon, and at the library he found a book called What to Expect When You’re Expecting. He read it cover to cover. He learned that Kate’s urge to settle down was called a “nesting instinct,” something that happened to women who were about to become mothers. But Sawyer didn’t have any urge to nest. Especially not in Tallahassee, God help him; the Florida town was becoming a monument to his libidinous screw-ups. First he’d got the clap from a hooker while he was there on business, now his knocked-up ex-girlfriend was there as well. If he thought about it too much his head started to pound and he couldn’t suck in enough air. Antibiotics couldn’t fix a pregnancy like they could the clap.

Blissfully unaware of his thoughts, Kate fairly glowed as she approached the newlyweds and kissed them both on the cheek. She clung to Juliet’s hand a little too long, and that was another thing that confounded him. The two women had hated each other on the island, he could’ve sworn it. Now they were thicker than thieves as Juliet carefully monitored Kate’s progress each time that Kate paid one of her frequent visits to Miami. She was well into the second trimester now and she seemed healthy as a horse, no trace of the island curse that destroyed mothers and their unborn infants before the babies could take their first squawking breath. Maybe they’d really shaken the island off their heels, he thought with a rare flash of optimism…and a strange sense of loss.

He managed to muster up his old charming grin as he shook Jack’s hand and gave Juliet a chaste, friendly kiss on the mouth. Fact was, he didn’t want his kid to die. Didn’t want the island to take away anything else that belonged to him. He was glad that Juliet had turned out to be a loyal friend. Kate needed that, with Sawyer’s loyalty on shaky ground. Now Jack seemed to sense his shakiness, too, as he clapped Sawyer on the back and said, “I didn’t think you’d make it.”

“Couldn’t miss it,” he said, and then he leaned in close and whispered to Jack, “Couldn’t miss seein’ your pussy-whipped ass get caught in a sling.”

If this offended Jack, he didn’t show it. Instead he smirked at Sawyer. He looked downright smug as his left arm encircled Juliet’s waist. “I’ve got it all,” that smirk seemed to say. “I’m all civilized, remember, and we’re not in the wild anymore.” A shot of rage did nothing to help Sawyer’s headache as he moved on toward the party tables loaded with hors d’oeuvres and a towering white cake, presents wrapped in bright sparkly paper and merrily curling ribbons, and framed photos of Jack and Juliet in their months since the island laughing together, either by themselves or with the kids. The shadows of sadness in their eyes only added to the poignancy of the tableau. Sawyer felt his rage rise another notch. Jack was happy, and he’d put the island behind him like a bad dream. New memories were erasing the old, while Sawyer knew that he himself would never, ever forget. For him the past wasn’t past, it stayed with him, a monster breathing cold fire at his back. It followed him wherever he went.

“Let’s go, Freckles,” he snapped, tugging her elbow in the direction of the parked cars. “I’m feelin’ like shit.”

Kate shook him off impatiently and said, “If you need a doctor you’re in the right place.”

Sawyer did not need a doctor; a doctor was the very last thing he needed right now. All he needed was to get the hell away from this scene of happily-ever-after. Abandoning Kate, he headed out, and he couldn’t keep himself from making his tires squeal as he peeled away from the curb. Just to let Jack know he was gone. This time, he told himself, he was gone for good.

********

Prologue

2007-11-09T05:15:26Z

Just a quiet little start, to see if I still remember how to do this.

EverAfter : Prologue

They sit on the beach, shoulder-to-shoulder as they wait for the rescue they’ve battled for, together. Further down the beach the other survivors are gathering, packing, de-camping, as Jack and Sawyer sit silent sentry in the wake of their victory, hard-fought and hard-won. It’s taken this and all that came before it for the two of them to find themselves on the same side, but here they are at the end of things, comrades. And if leaving the island is an ending of sorts, it will be the beginning of something else. They are going home together.

Sawyer scans the horizon with eyes that reflect its hues, blue and green and gray and forever shifting, changing. His hair shines in the sun and ruffles in the wind. His chin rests on his drawn-up knees, his long arms wrapped around them as if he’s hugging himself, and for the first time Jack notices how boyishly Sawyer is made. Lanky, loose-jointed, tousled and dimpled, as if he’d been created to throw back his head and laugh, to play, to hope. To dream. Jack isn’t seeing the Sawyer who is, he knows, but the Sawyer who might have been if life had allowed it. For a moment he lets himself grieve for a spirit that had never been born…but which now hovers around the man like an aura, ethereal and bright. For a moment he lets himself reach out for it – to bring it to life, maybe, with his doctor’s touch – but he touches instead the man who is, and he feels Sawyer tense and reflexively pull away.

There are no words, here at the end of things, when the new beginning hasn’t yet begun. Jack’s never been good with words, anyway. He lets his hands speak for him as he pushes away the ragged collar of Sawyer’s shirt, exposing his bullet scar. His fingers glide over its ridges and hollows. Then they travel down, over damp, salt-stiffened fabric to the hem of his sleeve and he pulls it up and away so he can trace the scar on Sawyer’s bicep as well. Where his fingers once probed, now they stroke. The time for examining and mending his wounds is over; now is the time to recognize what those wounds have produced. Scar tissue, imperfect but beautiful; a symbol of survival, of healing. A victory that he and Sawyer have won, together.

Jack reaches lower still to touch Sawyer’s hand – his left hand, his dominant hand – the one part of his body that Sawyer has managed to keep unscathed. Perfect. When Sawyer finally turns his gaze away from the distant horizon, when his turbulent eyes finally rest on Jack, Jack tightens his fingers around Sawyer’s and he lifts that perfect hand to the hollow of his throat. He wants Sawyer to feel the pulse that beats there, the proof that Jack has a heart and he’s through with hiding it from Sawyer. He wants to make Sawyer understand, now, here at the end of things.

Sawyer has never touched Jack in the ways that Jack has touched him; he’s never hit him, never healed him. Now, here at the beginning of things, Jack wants Sawyer’s touch. But just at that moment, in that fleeting instant of possibility and hope, there’s a shout from down the beach and, on the horizon, their rescue appears. It’s time to go.

Time to begin again.