Title:  “A Call to Prayer 1 - Alone”
Author:  uberaeryn
Fandom:  Lost
Mild Spoilers for S1
For All Audiences - Adults Only Later On
Summary: Hell, I don’t really know, I have no idea where this is going. Part one of a series of vignettes, some connected and some standing alone. I think.

Sawyer was standing in the surf, watching absently as the sea slid in and out to its own ancient and powerful rhythm, circling and foaming and flowing over and around his feet and ankles like a caress before receding, only to return again, to touch him, to keep him grounded, reminding him that he was still alive, if alone.

He sighed and tried to work some of the soreness out of his left shoulder. It was healing rapidly but the pain of it still sometimes made it difficult to sleep or to move a certain way.

And he tried not to think of what was going on up at the caves. He didn’t want to think about it, because it was something he’d seen before and he knew it would not end well, he just knew that it would end, and that it would hurt, and he could not imagine the hole that would be left when it was finally over.

Or rather he could imagine it. And so he tried not to, but the more he tried to hide from it, at least for now and for as long as he could, the tighter the grip of it became and suddenly he was imagining every bit of it, from beginning to end and what would happen after.

Worse ways to go, he thought, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and staring out at the sun which always seemed to move so quickly the closer it came to the horizon. You had to watch carefully or you’d blink and it’d be gone and, around here, you could never be sure if it would ever come up again, he thought.

Sawyer always watched closely as the sun sank below the horizon, watched as the flash of that last final, bright red crescent of it slid away to sleep beneath the ocean, and he imagined it cooled and soothed by the touch of the water, sleeping the sleep of fires banked and he would make the silent wish that it would rise again in the morning. At first he had felt foolish doing it, but by now it felt like it was something necessary to keep his soul, his body, from flying apart.

A call to prayer.

Prayers, here, went for the most part unanswered. Except this one. Every night he prayed that the sun would rise again, and it always did, and in the mornings he imagined it waking with a blinding flare of light, bursting out of the ocean with startling and vivid and boundless joy, its warm touch bringing the world alive again.

For a long time it had been the only thing he could count on, the sun rising.

And then things had changed, changed so drastically that it had taken his breath away, frightened him, made him run hard and fast and build up walls and tear down bridges that were being built and shove away the hands that were reaching for him, and he fought, snarling, with his body and with his words and yet still he was chased, doggedly, unceasingly, endlessly.

It had indeed been a pursuit and he had ran as far as he could run but in the end he’d fallen, been caught, and still he had struggled but then, before he stop it, and God, how he’d wanted to stop it, he’d found himself helpless in the face of what was there in front of him and he had fallen.

He had pitched forward into waiting and welcoming arms, he had been caught and held safe and, for tangled reasons he still had yet to unravel, there had been no more fear and no further need to run and suddenly there were two calls to prayer he answered every evening and two things he could count on, without question, as long as he offered up those prayers, one to the sky and the other to whoever had given him the gift of that which touched him, held him, soothed him, kept him safe.

During his lifetime, Sawyer had made it a point to trust only himself.

And now, although he felt sure he didn’t deserve them and most certainly at some point would lose them, there were two things Sawyer trusted, needed, wanted, depended upon.

One of them was up at the caves, fighting a losing battle and the idea of that hurt, so much, made him ache all over, made his heart rise in his throat and made it difficult to breathe.

And the other, as long as he answered that call to prayer every night, was the sun rising.

And tomorrow, he thought, as he watched the sun disappear and whispered that prayer yet again, it would rise on an island with one less person on it.

Same number of bodies, just one less person.

He sighed and scrubbed at his eyes and then thrust his hands into his hair and shoved it out his face and held it there, tilting his head up toward the darkening sky, breathing deeply and watching as the stars appeared and still thinking of what was happening a few yards away, as death came to one hidden away in the dark and the dank, away from the brutal black and silver beauty of the night sky.

Yeah, there were worse ways to go than what was happening up at the caves, he thought again. That was actually pretty easy, in fact, even if it had been unnecessary.

Relatively painless by now, Sawyer thought, at least for the one whose breath was now slowing to the point where it would finally stop. Not so bad, certainly more painful ways to die. No, Sawyer thought, the pain of it was left to those still alive.

It was the ones that were left behind that had to pay, pay with the hurt and the grief and the anger.

He shook his head and told himself he was getting awfully philosophical in his old age.

He sighed, he watched the sky, and he felt compelled to answer that second call to prayer the same as he did every evening, although this was the first time he’d ever done it alone.

He lowered himself to sit in the surf and waited.

Alone.

***

End