Blondie part 3

*




"Don't even think about it, Sullivan."



Watching her, very closely, he says this. The girl had escaped four times from police custody, half of those while under federal suveillance. Right now she was a restless pair of eyes, restricted to the confines of a commerical air liner, miles above and away from dry land.



But she was thinking about it. He knew by the way her eyes were narrowing, as if drawing some sort of conclusion of escape.



"Even if you do escape," he says, eyeing slowly, "you wont go far for the next 8 hours we're over ocean. I hope you can swim."



"Don't worry," she says, turning to him. "I can fly."



There's something strange about the way she says it, and it's like







that







when a strange pull in his stomach drops as the plane does.



"Just turbulence." He says, fastening his fugitive's seat belt.



But it happens again. And again. The plane a rattle in the sky.Passengers scramble in their seats, rearranged like marbles rolling into impossible holes.



It's when he feels the plane fall forward does he pull himself out of his seat to make his way to the cockpit. "Don't move!" He yells over the panic, at her, and its the flash of golden hair he last sees before he's pushed further down the aisle.



There's a mangled line of bodies between him and the cockpit, and he helps them one by one back into their seats, waving his police badge at them to shut up. He tells every blabbering face to stay calm, but its like throwing dirt into the wind. He punches the last guy in the jaw to keep him quiet.



Finally, he reaches the small latched door, surprised when there's no resistance to open it. He flips the hairs from his eyes, peering inside the cockpit once the door is dragged open.







It's empty.





"Sonnofa--" His voice drawls, pulling himself inside. There's two empty pilot seats, staring at a horizontal window.



"You gotta be kiddin' me!" He lunges forward, eyes darting to every thinkable crevase in the cockpit, looking for any explanation.



But there isn't one. Just the beeping of the controls, intruments spiraling in chaos.



"Sh*t." Realization dawns on him. He cracks his knuckles, falling into the chair behind the control panel. He grabs onto the forked shaped handle, squeezing, hands white.

He pulls up, the anger of the plane responding. It shudders, worse than before, pissed off that someone was interfering with its suicidal dive.



Violent, white fists pound at the glass, clouds so thick that it seems like their falling into a eternity of abyss.



There's a loud sound from the back of the plane, and then it pops. The vessel is lighter, spiraling now, and he feels his body yanked up towards the roof, grabbing hold of the controls until the plane ping pongs him from one side to the other.



Its when he crawls to his knees that he sees.



The clouds break away.



Water.



"Sonnofab*tch!"

　









*







He was flying.



Down.



He was flying down. Feet first.



A hollow pit in his stomach as he fell, the dark water eager to greet with a cold, hard sting.



But he wasn't anticipating that.



No, he was anticipating the regret.



"Why are you telling me this?" She had asked wearily, eyes so full of hope that it made every relived moment so much more painful.



His rough hands cradled her face, calloused thumbs tracing the splatter of dark flecks against her skin. It was the last moment before he whispered... and kissed her, goodbye.



And then he jumped.



A free fall from the heliocopter to the ocean below.



He did it to save them, because no one else was brave enough to make the



sacrifce... No, that was a lie.



He did it because he was a coward.





"Sawyer!"





It stung worse to hear her say that name one last time. Her voice following behind him as he plunged through the rushing of wind, his eyes closing before he hit.



The cold slap of the water stung the sense back into him, the surface breaking with an explosion, his long body plummeting down. And as he dropped through the water, it was like entering a different world. Like waking up from a dream, or stepping out of a long hot shower that coaxed the last wound up muscle in your body. His head bobbed up, gasping for air, wading out.



He could still hear her. The chopper flying free.



He smiled, knowing he had done something right in his life. Something less selfish than good, for once. And now they were free. Saved.



Going home.



It was only a speck inthe horizon now, the metal bird gliding furtherout of reach.



Sawyer turned, and started swimming back withthe current. The inevitable force that pulled him back to the island.



The swim was long, his shoulders sore and worn when he reached the shore. But he felt oddly alive, revived. Like he had shed a trodden skin back in the water.



He shed his name.



He wasn't Sawyer anymore.



He dragged himself from the waist deepshore, eyes lighting up when he spotted a woman, drinking on the beach.



She was blonde.



"Where did you come from?"she said once he was close enough, her eyes sad and molten.



He spat ocean water between his teeth, reaching for the charming smile he always wore. "Decided to take a little dip.." He said, excusing his exhaustion.



The blonde smiled, a sad type, bringing the bottle to her lips. He noticed it said 'rum' in one of those funny, bland labels he'd grown bored of.



"Whatcha celebrating?" He said, collasping on the sand beside her. He was dead tired, but never felt more satisfied in his life. Everyone was going home, that was plenty enough to be happy.



"Not celebrating."



He frowned, turning around towards the shore, the horizon, the column ofblack smoke wafing in the wind. "That our ship?"



The blonde laughed sadly, taking another swig. "Well, it was."



And then he felt it, delayed regret. He blinked over and over at that horizon, his conscious eventually accepting that everyone on that heliocopter, everyone who ever mattered was...



No one would have survived that crash. They were all dead.



"Don't worry, James"



The name stuck him in the side like a knife and he looked up, pieces of damp hair stuck to the sides of his beard.



She smiled at him, passing the bottle. "I'm sure they made it."



He tried smiling, but it ended up more of a grimace as the alcohol burned all the way down. When he looked to the side, he found her watching him, her eyes blue and soft as if she had known her words were as empty at the bottle between them.



In the distance the smoke rose higher and higher until the last piece of wreckage had sunken below the water.





*









No one would have survived the crash. It wasn't possible.



But here he was, alive. The pain from his head confirming it. When he wakes completely, he's suspended, floating. In a cloud of mucky dark water tinted red. Blood.



He closes his eyes, feeling his limbs weak and breath running low. He swallows more water. Maybe this too was dream, and this time, he doesn't want to wake up.



He shuts his eyes, waiting for the drift of sleep to seep in, but a warm sensation stirred him, a ticklish curiosity dragging open his eye lids.



There’s warm light around him, and slowly, it dissipates, a woman appearing, golden hair floating around them like a floating halo. Her small hand cups his cheek, the other against his chest. The cold metal of her handcuff shocking him awake. Wide awake.



He shakes his head as he comes to, fianlly realizing that he's underwater. There's aisles of seats on the roof, and they're empty. All of them.



Either the plane was upside down or he was, wading through the junk that floats into him. He's expecting to find bodies, but he doesn't. It's just him and her.



And she's making her escape, through the galley and towards the hatch.



He follows her, kicking his feet vigorously to catch up, dragging himself past the aisle with his arms to reach her.



She doesn't get far, struggling with opening the exit hatch. It's jammed.



He reaches her, pushing her aside. He kicks at the lever over and over, the water resistance frustrating and deadly.



Air bubbles escape his lips and hers. They were losing air.



There's a broken piece of metal being shoved into his hands, she's handing it to him.

It's long, and skinny, shaped like a crow bar. He looks at her before he shoves it inbetween the groves of the hatch, prying it open.



There's a pop, and the door flies away.



Her body goes through the opening first, him following after. He can see the sun shine through the surface, rippled and glowing against the layers of dark water that surrounded them. Chloe's swimming infront, her hair reflecting the light back down to him. Him, he's chasing after it.



He takes his eyes off of her for a second, looking back down at the wreckage at the bottom. He could barely see it now, the light not filtering down that far.



His legs kick harder, propelling him faster towards the light and then, it breaks.



He gasps over and over. Coughing, and gagging up water that was swallowed.



He looks around the horizon, but he doesn't see her.





"Chloe!"





He turns around and around in the water, searching. Finally, he sees her, way off in the distance.



"Hey!" He starts that way, "Hey, stop!"



He watches her turn around, her shorter legs kicking furiously away.



So she was trying to escape.



He kicked after her, more irritated that she would run now after all that.



It’s only a few meters before he catches up with her. She isn’t a strong swimmer. His long arms reaches out grabs her by the waist as she struggles.



"Just let me go!"



"Calm down!" He tries to sooth her but ends up with a elbow to the gut. It hurts, but he wouldn’t admit it. "I'm not here to hurt you!"



He pulls her around to face him. Her hair is soaked, clotted around her cheeks. She brings her hands up to wipe a strand away from her eyes, but she can't. They're cuffed together.



He brushes them away for her. "Look, you'll drown out here alone like that." He fists the metal links. "Now, where's everyone else? We have to find the rest of the passengers--"



"There isn't anyone else!" She screams, water spitting from her mouth.



He stares at her, hand over her wrist. "What are you talking about?"



"When I woke up, I was still in my seat." Her eyes shut, droplets of water, or maybe tears falling there. "And there wasn't anyone else on that plane. Just me," she looked at him skeptically, " and you."



He blinked, not wanting to believe her, but then again, when he had opened the cockpit, there were no pilots, nothing. Like they'd disappeared.



"That's not possible. There has to be others, they can't just disappear!"



"Can’t you see?" her head bobbed down, water coming to her chin. "It’s all just another one of their experiments!"



"What?" He's coughing up water. "What are you talking about!"



"They’ve been following me-- testing my abilities!" She stops struggling, her hands grabbing onto his shirt collar to steady herself. She looks directly at him."They knew I would survive the crash." And this she says to his lips, "And they knew I wouldn’t let you die."



His eyes look at hers and then down to the swollen bridge of her lips. "What in the hell are you talking about? Who are they?"



"The Dharma Initiative."



Heliocopters.



They both heard them.



"Oh god," she trembled, body backing away, "it's them."



"No," he grabbed her shirt, keeping her with him, "it's the rescue team. We're saved."



"No!" she struggled, kicking away with her heel against his chest. "No, it's the same people who put us on that plane only to crash it and see if we would survive!"

He stared at her, at her desperation. "Listen, no one forced you onto that plane, I watched you watch onto it."



Her eyes changed. "Tell me why you followed me? Explain to me why you waited until we were both on that plane to arrest me, huh?"



His eyes flickered.



The heliocopters were closer, almost upon them now.



"They told you to wait, didn't they?" she was wading towards him again, closer to the truth, "it was part of the experiment."



He shook his head, his memory sifting through the long narratives he had read in her criminal history. She was supposedly hospitalized for long amounts of time in her childhood, and admitted in a psych ward before she had even turned eighteen. She was a crazy. He was sure of it. He had read all about her theories and escapades in her earlier life, all of them surrounding around a certain theory... Well, a theory that he wasn't exactly clear on. Most of her files had been blacked out. And nearly all of her medical history.



"I knew it," she said, right infront of him now, "I knew you couldn't be real, not even from the start."



The choppers are closer, he turns --



"Listen to me," she turned his cheek back to hers, "it's safer if you let me go. Once they find us together, they'll kill you."



He slitted his eyes.



"It's always part of the experiment. They kill everyone to see if I will bring them back. It's part of the game."



He watches her eyes water, and then shut, pushing them away.



"Just let me go," she pulls her face up to his, her lips whispering against his stubble. "James, please."



It's the way she cries his name. A pain, a gut reaction that makes his hands reach out and cradle her face.



And then, she kisses him.



It's quietly affectionate, unexpected when her linked hands cup the bottom of his jaw, angling his mouth just right over hers. This wasn't a just any kiss, but one that was meant for goodbyes. He kissed her back without knowing why, only the feeling that he had somehow known her enough to say something so potent like this. In this way...



His hand loosens on her wrist, not knowing where to go now, hovering over the water as her eyes reopen, brighter again, and focused. He had said to her that they shared the same eyes, but only now did he believe it. There's a well of emotion in them that he could barely describe, but he feels it, like his own. It scares him, lost, any direction from here foreign and strange.



Infact, the only thing that feels familiar was... her.



The sound of the heliocopter approaching feels familiar, a dreaded dejavu waxing through his body. There's a remembrance of being in this moment before, of saying goodbye in the prescence of a black bird in the sky.



He looks up and sees it in the close distance, and for some reason unknown to him, he gets the feeling that she's right.



They can't let the heliocopter find them. For some reason he knows, that if they were discovered, he would die.





　



*



part four