James "Sawyer" Ford

The toilet paper and magazines Sawyer had received last month were finally all stuffed away where they couldn't be harmed by sudden downpours of rain. It had all taken him longer than initially expected, though Sawyer knew that was more his own fault than anyone else's, not having the attention span to cope with the simple action of stuffing rolls of paper around his hut, in places strategic enough not to blow up a cloud of dust and lint whenever he felt frustrated enough to do something stupid. Like bury the toe of his boot in a pallet of tissue.

But with the deed finally done after days of dawdling and focusing instead on classes and patrol, Sawyer finally felt free enough to escape the clutches of his hut at last, a pistol— noticeably, not the one he'd tossed around shortly after Kate's departure— shoved under his belt. He sauntered around the island, taking his damn time, winding around on a more complex patrol than he normally bothered with. When he so happened to wander by Jamie's place, he wondered if it was his subconscious that brought him there, or if clouded thoughts and dumb luck had really just pulled him so far from his own place.

Either way, he'd stopped fighting happenstance a long time ago. Instead of knocking, he lingered about with a cheery whistled tune, curious to see if it was enough to tug the guy out.

Sawyer had seen his fair share of snow over the years. Although Southern by birth, his work had taken him in any number of directions, traveling north, east, west, as far as it took him to enter a new place without drawing too much attention to himself or leaving threat of recognition. Being a jack of all trades made it far easier to lie his way around; being able to pull out a set of tire chains made it believable that a man with an accent as strong as his had lived up north for a while. Having a full tank of antifreeze could convince others that the Florida license plate on his car really was just left there out of laziness.

But it was one thing to deal with snow in the passing night, and another entirely to remain in a city, without work, while snow piled all around him for a whole month.

That day, Sawyer felt absolutely no desire to cope with the foul weather outside, having picked up any number of cured meats and freshly baked bread on the way to the Compound, then parking himself right next to the bookshelf with a beer in hand. Splayed open on his lap was a copy of "Waiting for Godot," his third attempt to grasp it of the day, and Sawyer found himself just about ready to give up on the script.

"Some things ain't meant to be seen anywhere but the stage," he concluded, craning his neck back to shove it back on the shelf, looking for better options.

[ continued from here ]

See, there's the thing right there in the way Sawyer doesn't even bother to hide how pissed off it makes him. He cares too. Cares a lot more than he wants to, no matter how many times he tries to say he doesn't. Right there, she knows it was a good decision to tell him. They're not good people, even if they're trying to be better ones, and it takes walking the dark side to understand how it works.

"Already dropped the IPD a tip about it, and McGarrett--" Who's gonna tell Five-O, for sure. "About it. Declan, Magnus and Will know." So does Tesla, but he's his own sort of problem. Not the homicidal kind, and she's pretty sure Nikola will help her in the long run because homicidal mania connected to Tesla will cast suspicion on him. Cons hate that kind of attention.

She pops the pretzel in half between her fourth finger and her pinky and watches the pieces fall to the counter. "I've been warning the women who are his type. He knows I'm watching him and he knows what I can do, and he has his own reasons for wanting to toe the line. But even if the parasite's gone, Huck--" She glances up at him, pure honesty in her eyes for once because he knows. "You can't be that for as long as he was without it changing you."


"I know," Sawyer breathes. Because maybe that's just the bitch of it. He might not have had a parasite eating away at him— although in some ways, Sawyer thinks that point's debatable all on its own— but Sawyer knows what it's like to realize just how much the spill of blood changes a person. He knows what it's like to have his whole world colored first by rage and a thirst for vengeance, only to have it all fall down in a haze of regret. He knows how, once gone, it becomes that much easier to be gone again. God, he knows.

He knows all too well. And that means that he can't trust this guy. Maybe he could, in time. It isn't like he holds a grudge against all folks out there who've killed. Might not have liked Ana Lucia much on the whole, but it wasn't for how much she killed, and he certainly didn't resent her sense of purpose. She wasn't a danger to anyone as much as she was herself, in the end, all that rage isolating her, separating her from the pack. But until he meets this guy, Sawyer can't assume that he'll be the exception to the rule.

No, he just can't.

"So what's his type of chick? And what does the guy look like?" Sawyer asks, turning to glance at her again.

When James Ford woke up that morning in an unfamiliar building, in a bed larger than the one in his house and a room so bare that it almost reminded him of the hospital, he didn't panic. Most things seemed unfamiliar to him, those days. Places that had once been familiar, like his grandparents' house, like the classrooms in his school, or even the pews of his church, never seemed the same anymore. The world had wrapped itself in velvet, almost, something dark, heavy, and against which James couldn't push very far, keeping him from feeling much of anything of the outside word. Keeping him trapped in his own thoughts. Wherever he was, it didn't matter— he was sure that someone had put him there for a reason, and that someone would find and whisk him away again before long— and so James simply slid his legs off the side of the bed and dropped to the floor.

Whoever had dressed him for bed hadn't done a very good job. The t-shirt that he wore was several sizes too large, and his underpants were just about falling off. Tugging them up as well as he could, James quickly stumbled over to the large dresser in the room, pulling every drawer open until he spotted a few plain t-shirts that looked like they'd only be slightly too big, and a pair of jeans that could be held up well enough with the aid of a belt. Wordlessly dressing himself, James peeked around the rest of the room, a faint voice in the back of his mind reminding him that today was the funeral date.

(And the thought alone brought tears to his eyes, but he shook his head vigorously; mama wouldn't have wanted him to cry.)

He pushed past the curtains of the room, unseeing. Pushed into another room, where a projector was playing cartoons in the background, where a bookshelf was piled high with books. Spotting a pen and pad on a nearby table, James looked carefully around before sliding them off with quiet hands and tucking the pad under his arm. He passed through a kitchen filled with sights, sounds, smells, but it didn't matter— he wasn't hungry. Standing in an empty hall, James looked down both ends, before turning left, to the doors marked as an exit, quietly pushing one just a fraction before he stood under the brilliance of the sun, a porch and steps in front of him.

Peeking around again, James pressed his lips together, walked forward to sit himself on the top step, and laid the pad across his knees. Now that he was alone, he could do this.

Dear Mr. Sawyer, his pen scrawled in uneven writing.


[ Eight-year-old Sawyer, after a night spent in the dorms for easier access to the showers, is now sitting on the front steps of the Compound and writing his famous letter. ST/LT more than welcome, no limit on threads. Replies will come from giveyouthis. ]

Christmas was in two weeks. Funny, how Christmas still stood out to Sawyer year after year, even though he didn't care much for the holiday, either in concept or in practice. He'd never been much of a religious kind of guy; the thought that there was someone sentient up in the world who gave all the crap the world went through His stamp of approval just rankled Sawyer. There was, he couldn't help but think, a reason why 'God complex' had a negative connotation, which was that it didn't matter who was in the position of power, to believe that one could completely affect a chain of events, or even that one had a right to try, was dangerous. Even condescending. And maybe a part of him also wanted to think that there was no one up there pulling on puppetstrings, because it was terrifying to think that far from being just another person in the world unable to swim against the current, that there was a force which could render all of his efforts completely useless.

Futility, it stung like a bitch.

From the religious connotations of Christmas to the commercial aspect of it all, Sawyer wasn't a fan of the holiday, but he suspected that he'd recently come into the company of a great number of people who did. So that morning, he was sitting in the kitchen with a few books laid out side by side, mostly do-it-yourself manuals with ideas for gifts he could feasibly make on the island.

Even a seven-year-old can tell that there's something not right about this situation. Five times now, he's heard the same conversation between his parents, the same ring of a gunshot echoing in their tiny hall, before footsteps approach the spot that he's taken under the bed, curled so that his knees meet his chest. It's always shouting and yelling, then silence, and every time James swears that it must be the last, because he used to think that he was a lucky kid but doesn't anymore. But he doesn't even manage to hold his breath for half a minute before it starts again, the yelling and pleading and James almost swears that it's like hope is tainting the tip of his tongue with a bitter flavor. He knows it's bad to make wishes, but he figures that he doesn't have to wish for much, just that things won't fall to silence again.

Because he can't stand being alone.

Five times then, and now six, he's heard the same conversation between his parents, and now he's finally giving way to the tears that have been brimming for a while, hiccuping under the bed and feeling awful for it, because maybe it means pa will hear, and then next time, pa won't decide to come back at all.

They're fighting again.

My momma and my pa, they fight a lot these days. Usually pa comes home late from work, and his breath smells kind of spicy on the way home, the kind of spicy that gets to his head real quick and makes him wobble around the house like his legs ain't so good anymore. And momma, sometimes she just gets this sorry look on her face, the kind that she has when I've been bad and left my homework 'til too late. That just makes my pa angrier.

Today, pa comes back with his face all red and his eyes shining like someone lit them on fire, and he comes up the stairs in a way that makes me wonder if I'd done something wrong again, or if he's gonna spank me. Maybe he'll even hit momma, I think to myself, even if he never hit momma before and says that the worst thing a man can do is hit a woman. He told me that. That's why I don't never hit girls. 'Cause then I might grow up into a bad man.

Even momma can tell that something was real wrong, so she grabs me by my arms and takes me to her room, telling me to stay quiet and to get under the bed. I don't know if it was such a good idea, but I listen anyway. Even though under the bed is where all the monsters sleep at night.

Sand was overrated. Like many things which received too much credit from the eyes of loving couples venturing on their first honeymoons, it was picturesque, bleached white by the sun as it stretched on along the shore. It looked inviting, and there were still some days when Sawyer could almost find himself fooled by the handfuls of tiny pebbles, fooled into toeing off his sandals to walk barefoot in the stuff. He always regretted it, of course. The sand was somehow capable of sticking to every square inch of his body, from blowing into his hair with a strong breeze to getting caught between his toes, and it was damned annoying. Sand was overrated, only yearned for by those either born and bred on Californian beaches or those who had never stepped in the stuff, and yet Sawyer found himself venturing on over to the sandy beaches anyway, his newest reading venture in hand as he plopped his ass down a few feet away from where the surf met land, right on top of the large t-shirt that the clothes box had offered him in lieu of an actual towel. Large was actually an understatement; the thing could probably fit two of Hugo in its billowing one-hundred percent cotton fabric.

He looked left, then right, before pulling out the only passable pair of glasses he'd managed to find yet on the island, acid green and dotted with rhinestones though they were and sliding them on. They were the reason why Sawyer didn't do the reasonable thing and find a large, cushy recliner in the rec room. Sure, he was confident in his masculinity, but there were only so many times one could listen to passing snickers before it just got to be distracting, and one didn't want to get distracted when reading fine literature.

(There was also the fact that he was reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, because it was all the damn bookcase would give him. To its credit, though, Sawyer had never realized that the original was actually about a hooker. That earned it a few points, in his mind.)

Leaning against the relatively smooth and wide surface of the palm tree, Sawyer cracked open the cover of the book, licking his thumb to pull himself to the first page, and began to read.