walkswithheroes | (no subject)

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in game,
sawyer

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Fred was starting to think she had this place almost figured out. Yes, it was another dimension, but at least this time, she wasn't alone there. She had Lorne, and Angel too. And even though he was an Angel from another dimension, he was still very much the same handsome and kinda broody champion she'd known back home. He was just a little younger and a little less with the knowing who she was.

Either way, friends were one thing she hadn't had while she was in Pylea. The other was a bookshelf full of books that constantly changed. Maybe she wouldn't get it right away, but eventually, it was bound to give her a book she needed. Statistically, it was really only a matter of time before she got the right book with the right incantation to take her back to the right dimension.

Of course, after that, there was the matter of getting the calculations right to find an inter-dimensional hot spot, but she wasn't thinking that far ahead yet. First, there were books. This was how she found herself in the rec room again, on the floor surrounded by all manner of books. She'd mostly just grabbed anything that looked helpful, and now was going about sorting the potentially useful ones from the ones she couldn't use at all.

She frowned, setting aside a large book written in some language she didn't think she had ever even seen before.

This was going to take a while.

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Despite having been on the island for a few weeks, Sawyer had yet to decide how he truly felt about the place. There were times when he was as convinced as ever that the island was a place of judgment, when all men and women were forced into a place that gave them no freedoms other than that of thought, of a peace so prevalent that it was almost suffocating. It didn't really matter what he did. Sometimes, he hiked up mountains, and other times, he sought out abandoned huts to add to his slowly growing collection of goods a little ways into dinosaur territory— hoarding because, after all, one could never really count on the good to last, and it didn't hurt to have a cash cow available at all times.

It also didn't hurt to do a bit of groveling, as it turned out, to the clothes box. Having survived for months with only a few shirts to cycle and no laundromat to clean them up, Sawyer's greatest concern had never been finding something to pull over his head and protect himself from the sun's unrelenting rays. Instead, what Sawyer wanted from the island were distractions, those that came perfectly in the form of books from a bookshelf that restocked itself time and time again. Books that he needed glasses to read, as it turned out.

The clothes box had helped with that. While Sawyer remained convinced that the pair it coughed up belonged to Rita Skeeter once upon a time, they served their purpose and maybe he didn't give all that much of a damn if people laughed at him in the process. Foolish though he might have looked, at least he kept himself well-read, and far better educated than the average middle school dropout was.

He was just on his way to return the latest batch of books, the complete works of one Edgar Allen Poe, when he noticed a waifish little brunette curled up by the foot of the bookcase, hauling a rather large book onto her lap. Sauntering around her to start shoving his own collection back onto the shelf, he raised an eyebrow at the girl.

"Anyone 'round here read ancient Sumerian?" Sawyer joked with a small chuckle.

Fred looked up from her book, which she could barely decipher, much less read, anyway. She thought some of the symbols looked familiar, but truth be told, she was having trouble reading much of anything without holding the book almost right up to her face, since whatever portal or island thing had brought her there hadn't seen fit to send her glasses along for the ride.

By now, Fred had gotten pretty good at tuning out a lot of the noise in the rec room. There were always people coming and going and the jukebox always popped on at really inappropriate times-- someone had told Fred that it had a mind of its own, but she really suspected there was some kinda spell at work-- but at the words 'ancient Sumerian', Fred looked up.

"Archaic, classic, neo or post-Sumerian?" She asked, though she was pretty rusty at all of them. Languages had really been more Wesley's thing.

He'd meant it as a joke, a fact which suggested either that this girl was particularly good at playing along— one would have been hard-pressed to feign an expression as earnest as hers was in that moment— or that she had taken the inquiry seriously. Either way, Sawyer's brow raised sharply as he stared down at the girl, eyes wide like a doe caught in headlights. To Sawyer's discerning eye, she was quite pretty, almost in a conventional way, if her face hadn't been just slightly too thin and her clothes anything but fashionable for the time.

Smirking at her noticeable accent, Sawyer turned back to the bookshelf to slowly slide the books in place, then judiciously turning his gaze away, in case the object was one of those types that preferred to do its work without too many snoops watching. The sooner the books were taken away, the sooner Sawyer would have something else to read, and hopefully nothing half as depressing.

Until then, he leaned his weight against the furniture, eying the girl with interest.

"Do I really look like I know the difference?" he chuckled, tossing a few errant strands of blond hair out of his face. "Was a joke, Belle. Ain't got no use for ancient Sumerian on an island where hardly anyone don't know their basic English and ABCs."

Edited 2010-10-12 23:04 (UTC)

"Oh." Fred replied, a little disappointed that he hadn't been serious, but kinda glad at the same time. "I-- I guess that's a good thing. I'm pretty rusty on all of them, really."

Rusty, horrible, almost completely clueless...they were close to the same thing anyway. She had to admit, she'd been kind of hoping that she'd come across someone who could at least recognize ancient Sumerian; maybe it would mean that they could read some of the other languages she'd come across.

It wasn't like she even knew where to start here: af first she'd started looking for books in Pylean, but that didn't make any sense at all. She wasn't in Pylea and really doubted anyone from there had the ability or the desire to send her to some kind of tropical island in another dimension.

It was almost like watching a flower wilt in the way that they did on television, quick and with a sigh of its own, endearing enough that it pulled a chuckle from deep in Sawyer's throat. He couldn't quite tell what it was in her eyes, something tremulous and unsure. Perhaps she was a late bloomer, perhaps she didn't really know how to speak with people— one could get easily lost in language, in all the tiresome and pointless rules to grammar, in trying to figure out a perfect translation for emotions or thoughts that were never meant for words in the first place. But it seemed equally likely, with the group of people that seemed to crop up on the island, for her to be someone with a history that was a bit larger than life.

Breathing a deep sigh and taking liberties, Sawyer plopped himself down on the ground and peered closely at that disappointed look of hers and the modesty that she wore a little too well.

"Well 'course you are, if you gotta squint like that to read somethin' less than three feet away from you. Done read yourself into nearsightedness, I'm guessin'," Sawyer remarked with a tilt of his head. "And what you've got in your lap doesn't look like light readin' anyway. Whatcha lookin' for that the bookshelf don't wanna give ya?"

"Well, it wouldn't be a problem if whatever backwards dimension this is had sent my glasses along too," She replied, annoyed. At least last time, she'd had her glasses with her. Even if she was only writing on a cave wall, she'd been able to make out the numbers and words without almost putting nose to rock.

"And I was hopin' the bookshelf would give me something so I can open a portal and get back to my own dimension. Only I can't even read most of these. Not because of the glasses thing, because I don't even know what this language is." She pointed to the next book on her stack and frowned at it. It looked like something she'd once seen that Wesley said referenced a Lurite demon. Or maybe it had been the Murite subspecies. She couldn't remember and it was more than a little frustrating.

He took one look at her unfocused gaze and another at the large book she had been perusing, before snorting to himself and shaking his head lightly. "Please tell me you ain't Harry and Hermione's love child, shipped off to the States as a kid," he joked with a smirk, sending a curious glance off over in the direction of the bookshelf before he reached into his shirt pocket, pulling out a pair of acid green plastic frames, sparkling with rhinestones, holding them out lightly. "But anyway, s'worth lookin' around in the clothes box. You never know what you'll find in the pockets. I'd lend these to you, but I doubt they'd match your prescription."

Tugging the book over slightly and flipping through the pages, Sawyer gave it all a bemused glance before he shook his head helplessly in the girl's direction. "Well, you're not gettin' any help with this book outta me. Gotta say, though, if it was so easy to escape this place, people'd be turnin' to this bookcase a lot more often," Sawyer pointed out with a gentle smile. "Tell me you've at least kicked back for a couple of days since arrivin', enjoyed the sun and the beach. It'll be pretty to you for at least that long."

"Oh. No-- no, I can't." Fred said, burying her face in another nearby book so that she didn't have to talk about it. Besides, there wasn't much reason for her to go outside anyway. At least, not until she found the right spell in the right book and calculated where an inter-dimensional hot spot would show up. Then it was just a simple matter of finding a map, going out to that spot and just like that, she'd be back home. But until then, she was just fine where she was.

Besides, it was safe there. She was pretty sure of that, anyway. If there was anywhere that was safe at all.

"And I have this theory that it's not that people can't leave at all, they just don't know how to. Either that, or no one's found the right spell yet."

"Sure you can," Sawyer countered, brows knitting in confusion. He knew that a fair number of people clung to any hint of magic that they found on this island, anything unpredictable enough that it could feasibly yield answers in time, especially so soon after arrival. For someone like Sawyer, however, the prospect of returning home was no better than staying on the island. All he had waiting back there was a daughter who would probably be better off without his direct influence on her life. But even if there were people, presumably like this girl, who had a better environment to go back to, that didn't mean staying on the island without rest would do her any good, and that was what Sawyer sought to nudge her into realizing. "All work and no play makes everyone... well, for a tired girl who's gonna burn out or work herself into a migraine without glasses."

Sighing, Sawyer shook his head, peering on over toward the entrance of the rec room. "People can leave. People do leave, but no one's figured out how, like you said, and it's been like that for years. Ain't a spell that anyone's managed. Ain't any genius, not even Tony freakin' Stark, who's made any head way. Least you can do, Hermione, is go to the clothes box and hope it gives you a right good pair of glasses before you ruin those pretty eyes of yours."

"It's Fred. Not Hermione," Fred replied, intent on flipping through the large book on her lap instead of looking up at him again. She wasn't stupid; she knew that people had probably tried to find a way home and had failed. Like Angel, for instance. Fred was sure there was no way he'd still be there if finding a way home was that easy. There were still people to help in Los Angeles, even if it was a few years earlier in his dimension. "And just because something's not easy, doesn't make it impossible."

Fred was sure some people were from dimensions where spells didn't exist, and even if they did, maybe they didn't know about them. "No, no. This is wrong. This is all wrong. That subspecies doesn't even have a mouth to recite incantations," She said, of the book on her lap as she moved on to the next one.

Maybe there was something in his flippant tone that had the girl— Fred, she'd introduced herself as— ignoring everything that Sawyer was trying to say. And really, it shouldn't have mattered. Plenty of people did, ignored him all the time, because he was nothing more than a redneck who stick his nose all up in business that wasn't his. But somehow, it did. The way that she was thumbing through the books without pause, it was off, somehow. Sawyer didn't mind this girl, Fred, and if anything, she seemed like a sweet girl who didn't really deserve to get marooned on an inescapable island as the rest of them were. But it was like someone had pulled her apart and barely managed to tug the seams back together, not tying off threads or securing every last stitch.

"I ain't tryin' to say that it's impossible," he breathed, no laugh in his voice, no smile gracing his lips. "I'm just sayin' that what you're doin', that takes time, and maybe the time just ain't worth it if you ain't hardly ever gonna leave this room. What're you so eager to make your way back to, anyway?"

"Friends...family. The apocalypse," Fred replied, not sure which sounded weirder: that she had said the world was ending back home or that she was eager to get back to it. It wasn't really that she was eager to get back to it. She wasn't looking forward to it or anything, but they needed her. She needed to be back in Los Angeles, helping and fighting and not sitting on some beach somewhere drinking delicious fruit drinks.

Done with the book in her lap she shut it and finally looked up at him. "You mean you don't want to go home?"

The first two were usual suspects, although the mention of an apocalypse caused Sawyer's brows to raise significantly. Not that he doubted that Fred believed she had something of that sort to get back to at first opportunity, but most of the people he'd met on the island who talked about coming from worlds that were spiraling toward their end came from some series or media that he could recognize. Buffy Summers, for instance. A hell of a lot of Marvel characters. It happened with enough frequency that Sawyer was beginning to wonder if Fred was simply another of their number, or if all the people on the island were fictional in some world, himself included.

How very meta.

"You're assumin' that I have a home, Dorothy," Sawyer pointed out, even if he knew that she more meant their home worlds. For him, the island. Or the constant run of a con man across the country. "But I guess, this place or that, I'll take it or leave it. So long as wherever I go, I can still kick back with the occasional beer. But I ain't the heroic type."

"It's Fred." She adamantly reminded him, though with how much effort she'd been putting into finding the right spell in the right book to make the right portal to take her back to her dimension. Fred supposed a twister was kind of like a portal, in a rudimentary sort of way, seeing as they both sucked you up, and could likely kill you in the process. Only Fred was pretty sure there'd never been a twister that turned up only to have some kind of other-dimensional monster try and kill you, pull you through or both.

Though something he said did stick out amongst everything else.

"You really don't have a home? Anywhere?" Somehow, that seemed almost sadder than her being in a dimension she didn't want to be in. If she was stuck there and didn't have a home to go back to...

The idea of it was just awful.

"It's Fred on your school records, and it's Dorothy to me; why's it gotta be such a big deal?" Sawyer first asked, just managing to keep from rolling his eyes. This girl wasn't the first to complain at the names that Sawyer so unceremoniously gifted people with, and she probably wouldn't be the last, but this time what he'd picked out for lost little four-eyes wasn't even offensive in the least bit, so far as he could tell, so he was going to stick by it until she started hitting him around the head or something. Which seemed unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Especially with the way that her voice made it sound like she was suddenly pitying poor little James Ford and his homeless ass. God, it was sweet enough to make him sick.

"Anyway, depends on your definition of a 'home,'" Sawyer went on to say, shrugging to emphasize the fact that it didn't really bother him, not anymore, not to have a place that he could solidly say was his or where he was anchored at the end of the day. "Born in Alabama, but been just about everywhere in the States, never stayed anywhere for long. A place to sleep in ain't the same thing as a home, and I don't count the whole home's where the heart is crap."

Fred's mouth twisted into a frown as she moved on to the next book. It didn't seem fair; she'd had two places she'd considered home-- Texas and the hotel-- and he didn't have one at all.

"I'm sorry," she said. Maybe the island was good for something after all. Sure, there were people like her who didn't want to be pulled to another dimension, but just maybe for others, it could be home. "I probably shouldn't have assumed."

She was feeling sorry for him. Sawyer wasn't sure if he would have called it pity, that strange turn in her voice, but she felt sorry for him and was apologizing for an assumption that, hell, anyone would have or could have made. It wasn't even one that he could push away entirely; Sawyer had a number of places that one could argue had been home to him once. And at least he never had to feel chained and anchored to a place he hated. He could have made all of those arguments and part of him wanted to, but there was something so earnest and honest in her apology that he just found himself speechless instead. Anyone who got to know him for more than five minutes, they didn't exactly treat him kindly.

This Fred girl, she was either extremely naive, or just too nice for her own good. Possibly both.

"Hey, I ain't takin' offense," he finally managed after a pause, grinning and raising both hands, hoping to lighten the mood. "And I ain't exactly a bleedin' heart over it. I'm just sayin' that I've spent enough of my life on the road that I don't exactly got a return address, see what I mean? And that's why I ain't terribly keen on leavin'."

"Guess I didn't think about the fact that this place could be home for some people," Fred replied. She'd been so focused on trying to find a way back that it had barely occurred to her that there were probably people who didn't want a way back at all. The idea of it just seemed so foreign to her; she would have given just about anything to not be where she was right then.

"Well, that's all good and fine for you, but some of us do have return addresses and home addresses and the end of the world to stop."

"Sure," Sawyer nodded, indulging her because he just wasn't in the mood to tear all of her hopes asunder, certainly not so shortly after she'd arrived. Some people, they didn't get hope back. Once it started to dwindle and fade away, that was it. And on the off chance that this girl was one of them, he wanted her to be happy— or at the last, optimistic— for as long as the island would allow her, hoping that whenever she began to accept the finality of being on the island, that it wouldn't be too jarring of a revelation. He rested an elbow on his knee, tilting his head at her.

"Sure, I guess I can see that," he repeated. "End of the world, wouldn't want t'keep you from savin' humanity from that, though I gotta say. I still stick by the fact that you need to breathe now and again. Don't drive yourself insane with this kind of goal, y'hear?"

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