confidenceman | weary memories i can always see

Entry tags:

darrow,
kara thrace

weary memories i can always see

Even though there's an apartment waiting for him a few blocks down, secure and safe and sound, Sawyer never spends very long in the space. After months of living on an island with the open air constantly above and around him, an apartment feels too enclosed, traps him in a way that he only ever associates with danger these days, so he leaves as often as he can, sparing only a few hours each evening to recharge with fitful, restless sleep.

He avoids practically every one of them at first, the individuals who happened across him at the site of the plane crash, their eyes too knowing and tones too soft to be a coincidence. A new city isn't terribly much to take in, but trying to find the line between friend and enemy is too much of a task when Sawyer sometimes feels like he's never been a good enough judge of character in the first place. Eventually, however, the questions gnaw at him, unwilling to leave as he tosses and turns in his sheets, and unless he wants to gradually let himself drain of all energy, it needs to be addressed.

Which his why he shrugs on a jacket, stalks into the street. He's done some odd jobs here and there, but nothing requiring regular hours, so instead he walks by some of the major living establishments, trying to find her. Kara Thrace, callsign Starbuck.

Something about the way she had approached him felt safe.

With enough nosing around, he managed to lock on a likely residence, and having a free day on his hands, Sawyer sat himself down near the entrance of Chelsea Cloisters with a book in his hands to ward off any suspicion.

Hopefully she was around.

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She notices him out the window long before she ever comes down.

He's still there when she emerges from the building, and Kara raises a brow, fingers tugging the sleeves of her jacket down. There are weeks between her and the hospital, but it still feels like people are staring, attention snagged by phantom bracelets around her wrists. Stamping the paranoia down as firmly as she can, Kara folds her arms.

"Who are you waiting for?" she asks, stopping in front of him and his book. "Or are you just creeping."

Maybe it's just him, but the sound of her voice sounds far too familiar for one he's only heard once, however long the conversation. Sawyer's shoulders stiffen briefly as he turns a page on his book, pausing in the middle of demons and fire, a child's laughter and a trickster's malice. Mythology felt like an appropriate pick for the day.

He glances her way, gaze falling on the tight cross of her arms over her chest. Different than how he remembers her from the beach, but he doesn't push just yet.

"Not waiting anymore," he says with a faint, nervous smile, nodding down at the open space next to him on the stairs, an offer for her to join him if she'd like. He won't push her if she isn't in the mood.

Kara looks down at the spot. She's plopped down in the narrow space against the wall herself before, usually waiting for Tommy to come home, the confines of the apartment still a bit too large after so much time in the barracks.

"I was going to the bar," she says. "The quiet one on O'Connell. Wanna come?"

"Been hopping from bar to bar, but can't say I've found any quiet ones yet," Sawyer remarks, nodding slightly and taking a breath before he gets to his feet, holding out a hand to help Kara in turn. It'd be preferable to this; he just didn't want to overstep boundaries.

The book gets tucked into his back pocket. He has no way of knowing whether or not he'll be the person to leave the bar first.

"You ever look out after my drunk ass before?" he asks curiously.

Kara touches her shoulder, feeling the phantom weight of a heavy arm around it. She smiles a little before a darker shadow skims past her vision. A dark hut, a gun. The lamp she'd thrown.

"Yeah, pretty sure," she says, letting him help her up. "You're an awful patient. But I think you looked out for mine, too."

There's a constant familiarity to her smile, though Sawyer has trouble determining whether or not the familiarity is on her end or his. But the greater question is how she's still smiling, her expression soft in spite of all of the uncertainty. Sawyer already feels like he's about to shake out of his skin, needing to know more and having no access to it. But she takes it all in stride.

"Am I gonna have to look out for yours tonight?" he asks, raising a brow. "I don't even know what you're goin' home to every night."

"A boyfriend built like a grizzly bear," replies Kara, falling into step. "You can see his fights on TV. I get drunk enough, call Tommy. But I don't plan on it." Looking over at Sawyer, Kara raises a brow. "Seems like a sipping on the good stuff kind of night, to me."

Sawyer feels something almost like relief when he hears that Kara has a boyfriend. Something about the way that she talks, about the way that she looks at him, it feels like there's more to the story than mere friendship — but what he would do with that right now? He can't even seem to get himself situated in this city, much less think about a separate life before it.

"Don't watch much TV. Haven't in a while," Sawyer murmurs, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Sure he won't mind you headin' out to drink with an unsettled stranger?"

"He knows I can more than look out for myself," Kara smirks, amused at the thought of Tommy trying to pull the overprotective bullshit she's had to field from the few dumbfraks who didn't know any better.

"No TV on the island," she guesses. "Either of them. Though we did have one, but all it played was reality shows from a place called Canada."

"That's right," Sawyer says, brows knitting and eyes widening in slight amusement. "You're from so far that you ain't ever even heard of Canada. Jesus." It's such a tiny little thing compared to everything else, but a solid reminder nonetheless of their different backgrounds. He wonders what else there might be about Kara's world that's plainly different than its own.

And wonders, more importantly, how they managed to be similar in mindset in spite of it. Maybe humanity just doesn't change much no matter where it goes.

"Well, you ain't missing out on much, save for maple syrup. That, we gotta get our hands on for you. And pancakes. We got the better pancakes in the United States of America, though — don't let 'em full you. The International House of Pancakes was founded in the US for a reason."

Kara snorts. "Never heard anybody go on about pancakes before," she says. "I'm more of a bacon and hashbrowns girl. Throw in coffee with a little hair of the dog in it, and I'm happy."

She pauses, thoughts turning back to the island. "There were a lot of Canada people. Canadians. A lot of them looked the same." Kara sucks in a short breath. "Some of those looked like Calliope's father."

"Mmm, could definitely do with some bacon. And beer," breathes Sawyer, shaking his head. If there's one thing to be glad for in the city, it's the range of food and conveniences that they have, no need to scrounge around the foliage just to get by every day.

When Starbuck continues, Sawyer keeps his eyes closely trained on her expression — she's got one of those faces. Conflict reads easily. It's the resolution that he can't make out.

"Wait, Canadians got a look? You don't mean like The Mounties, right?" Sawyer asks, flummoxed.

"No, I mean, they all had the same face. There were at least six of them." Kara rolls her eyes - nothing about any of that has gotten less absurd with time. "But they were different men. What makes it even weirder, is Leoben really was a clone. Just not theirs, however much he looked like them."

"Alright, I gotta admit, I ain't followin' that one all too well," admits Sawyer, shaking his head. "People who look exactly the same comin' from different worlds? Maybe it's something like alternate versions of ourselves bouncin' around the tears in space and time? 'Cause I saw a woman here too, looked exactly like someone I knew from the Island. Not, not your island, the one I was on until I got here."

He wonders if there are any people around that share his face and what kind of lives they've lived.

Hopefully nothing like his own.

"I can't explain it," says Kara, yanking open the door to the bar when they reach it. "Just another way to frak with us seems the most likely explanation. We used to get things from home, too, just to frak us up."

"What do you mean by things from home?" Sawyer asks, eyes narrowing as he hovers outside the entrance for a few seconds, then reluctantly steps inside, assuming that the soft, constant noise of the venue will keep anyone from overhearing. The bar's relatively free, but Sawyer directs them towards a booth in the back.

"Does one person showin' up make it more likely that others will?" he adds, looking up with sharp interest.

"Sometimes," Kara allows. "On the island, there'd be periods where lots would come at once from the same place." It'd been like that for her, in the early days, but the island had seen fit to bring as many enemies as it had friends.

"But sometimes only one would ever come. You could lose your mind, trying to make sense of it." Kara slides into the booth. "You were there, when I got something from home."

"Whiskey," he tells the server before he has a chance to leave, lips faintly quirking at the server's annoyance as the man starts to walk away. "And a drink for the lady. I don't know what she's in the mood for tonight."

He only relaxes after both of their orders have been haphazardly taken down, folding his hands on top of the table.

"I ain't the type to try and make sense of things that are too confusing," he admits, before tilting his head in interest. "What'd you get from home?"

"Statues, the first time," says Kara, wishing that she had them now. She swallows, pausing to bark, "Whiskey, double," at the retreating server. She turns back to Sawyer, her face too blank to be concealing anything but pain.

"Something truly awful the second time. The third..." Kara points to the tattoo spanning most of her upper arm. "My wedding band."

It's not an expression that Sawyer enjoys seeing on Kara's face. Someone who's been gentle, and strong, and together in ways that he's hardly seen before, now with her nerves exposed and raw. She looks like she's seen... well, something about the haunted look of it all makes Sawyer suspect that it's more than he's known, at any rate.

He doesn't know what to say at first, gaze quickly dropping onto her tattoo, and without asking first, he reaches out as though to trace it. But he maintains that slight gap of distance, not wanting to overstep.

"The thing I was there for..." he says, frowning, and he feels echoes of her voice filtering through his head. "It was a game."

"In the snow," says Kara, describing the memories as they coalesce, rising up through her consciousness like shadows made movement and light. She doesn't shift away from his reaching hand. "The Pyramid court. You called me Cleo. I thought you were a dick."

She grins. "But in that, I kind of want to frak this dick way."

"After Cleopatra," breathes Sawyer, his shoulders feeling suddenly heavy as he chases after that faint memory, remembering her voice loud and clear as she tried to explain the thing to him. Frak. She's said it in the city, but only now does Sawyer feel like he can just about hear the word falling from her lips.

"We did, didn't we?" he asks, eyes narrowing, though he doesn't remember any of it just yet. But it ain't hard to make the assumption. "I mean, unless I was fool, we did, right?"

"In a games closet," says Kara, smirking across the table at him. "It was fantastic, I'm hurt that you don't remember. Probably would've gotten together, but you blew it."

Her smile softens, just enough to make it clear that she's kidding.

He stares across the table at her, and though there's no distinct memory coming to mind yet, there's a buzz that quickly spreads over his skin. And he really, really wishes that he could figure all this shit out, not even because he wants to relive the memory (though... well), but instead because he can't parse that expression on her face fully out.

Or why it makes his chest twist.

"Wouldn't be the first time I did that," he admits, jaw tensing briefly. "Though by the sound of it, you're doin' a whole lot better now."

"About as well as a person like me can," Kara allows, accepting the drink that finally arrives.

"I'm not the same person I was on the island. I remember more of my life at home now, like when I left the island for here, I went back home somehow, lived more of my life there. It took a really long time to untangle in my head."

Kara grips her glass. "I'm not sure I'll ever remember everything."

"You're preachin' to the choir," he murmured, eyes still fixed on her with all the curiosity of a cat, eyeing the subtle tension in her features, the unease and resignation alike. There was something about her which constantly spoke to Sawyer, the feeling of someone who knew too much, and had been driven down by it. And no matter how much good they wanted to do, at the heart of it all, there was still this stubborn darkness.

Pervasive and oppressive.

"Do you... even wanna remember everything?"

"I need to," says Kara, and she doesn't shift under his gaze, exactly, but his attention is a fixed, intense thing. She's never liked feeling vulnerable, but Sawyer's seen her soft places before. That makes it easier.

"I think it'll make me feel less unhinged, and not just the island stuff," she continues. "The things that happened to me back home, they don't make much more sense. There was some purpose I was serving, and I don't understand it. I don't think I'll feel right until I do."

His situation is different, Sawyer immediately realizes as Kara starts to talk about some type of purpose, some type of destiny. He doesn't have any similar sense of having fulfilled some type of fate, or having been instrumental in something happening. Maybe he should — he certainly feels that Hurley and Jack played their roles on that island, and he believes that it's being protected as they talk. And who Jack and Hurley were at that time was undoubtedly influenced by every single person who was with them, including himself.

But it just doesn't feel... like he was necessary.

"You don't think the purpose you've got here is enough?" he asks, not unkindly. "What happens if you figure out that your purpose back home isn't done. Think you'll want to leave here?"

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weary memories i can always see

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