[for Layla] Item Post

[howmanylives]

They say our youth has become desensitized to violence. That the media, in its infinite wisdom, has blown the door on death wide open. By the time a child has reached their eighteenth birthday, he or she will have witnessed, on television alone, over 200,000 acts of violence, of which 40,000 murders are included. It's a big number. The kind of big that would send the Mrs. Lovejoys of the world into cries of hysteria... 'Think of the children!'

But the reality of death is not as clean as the idiot box would have you believe... There remains a difference between seeing a stunt guy fall to his 'death' accompanied by a Wilhelm scream and stumbling across the corpse of someone you know. Death -- real death -- carries a weight that's not so easily dismissed as hitting your remote's off switch. And I should know. Before the island, I made one of my livings working in a coroner's office. Gallows humor is the only thing that gets you through the day when a reminder of your own mortality is laying naked on a slab, cut wide open for anyone happening by to see. But cracking wise is just a stopgap. A coping mechanism. Because death isn't something you just get used to, even in that line of business. It hits you every time. The stench of decomposition. The lifeless stare. The simple, instinctive impulse to run away.

I've both killed and been killed. And believe me when I tell you that it doesn't matter how many times you've seen too-bright blood seep out of an actor's squib-ridden head. No amount of exposure to media violence will ever prepare you for the real thing... Even when the real thing's something you've seen before.

Looking back, Jamie'd consider himself lucky that this was the first time the force that ran this place had really sought to mess with him. Over the course of two years, his troubles on the Island had been largely self-manufactured -- personal drama born of ill-advised romantic entanglements, the sharp loss suffered by Moira and Brodie's disappearances, his prolonged flirtation with suicide. The few days he'd lost his voice hadn't been a picnic, but on the whole, he'd been in charge of his own destiny, here, the reminders of his colorful past brought up by his own doing. This, though, was different.

It was Richards who spotted it first: a shrunken hand clad in a blue glove, sticking out of the water. The dog pulled at the leash, leaving Jamie with little choice but to follow, but already he could feel dread settle in the pit of his stomach, the reluctance in his every step, born not by the proximity to a place he'd once tried to drown himself in in the past, but what potentially awaited him in the present. His reluctance was earned as he got in closer, Richards barking all the while as Jamie dropped down to one knee on the slippery rocks, the leash slipping from his grasp as he hauled the hand -- and the body necessarily attached to it -- out of the water.

The smell alone was like something out of a nightmare, sending Richards scampering off back through the trees, but Jamie barely registered it, too focused was he on the pale, wasted face of his deceased self. Shifting until he was seated gracelessly at the water's edge, he cradled the body -- his body -- in his arms, a dry sob tearing itself from his throat as he brushed back strands of stringy, too-long hair away from the dupe's forehead, his thumb catching on the thin strap of the cowl. For a man infamous for seeing every possibility, every permutation, his gaze was remarkably narrowed, fixed entirely on the corpse in front of him, his mind blank from thought as shock took over, and an eternity could pass in a second.

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[howmanylives]

Getting the body out of the water was only the first step, but Jamie hadn't thought much beyond it, stopping when they were clear from the rocks and on the grass, though he didn't move to put down the dupe just yet. While a part of him wanted to bury the dupe and be done with it, he knew the protocol for this sort of thing, and maybe it was out of some loyalty to his government roots that he wanted to see everything through to the letter.

Or maybe focusing on something as trivial as protocol is the only thing that's keeping me on solid ground. Funny what the mind turns to in a crisis.

"We need to get him to the lab," he said.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

Well, that was forward thinking.

"Okay," Layla said. She watched him carefully, and not just because it was easier than looking at the body they'd just dragged from the water.

"Do you need a minute?" she asked.

[howmanylives]

"I need a lifetime," he choked out, looking at her as though he was only just seeing her for the first time. His expression was pitiful, but he tried to rein it in, forcing his features smooth -- or, at least, as smooth as they would go. Despite his best effort, there was something fragile about his face, like it could break at any moment, fracture, and that it probably would.

"But that's not an option."

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

"Jamie," Layla said, "there's no rush here. It's okay. The lab isn't going anywhere. The... we're not going anywhere."

She went around the dupe's leg to kneel beside Jamie.

"I'm sorry."

[howmanylives]

"For what?"

The question was sharper than he necessarily intended, though it wasn't directed towards her, so much as it was towards the whole damned situation. Though the rational part of him knew that apologies were simply what was offered in times of distress, it frustrated him that she should have to take the role of the guilty party even as a gesture; this was the island's fault, or rather, whoever was in charge of the island. The jury was still out on a lot of things, but Jamie preferred not to buy into the idea of a sentient landmass that dropped bodies out of the sky. This reminder was deliberate, premeditated.

"It's not like you put this-- Him here."

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

"I'm still sorry for it," she said.

"I'm sorry he died, I'm sorry you have to live this over again. Of course I'm sorry for it, because I care. It's not really a matter of blame."

[howmanylives]

"Someone should be blamed for this," he said, anger bleeding the shock, and he stood up in a rush, pressing his hands against both sides of his head, fingers curling in his hair. "This should never happened the first time, but at least there'd been a purpose, then. What's... What's the point of this? A cautionary tale? Some kind of warning?"

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

"Why are we stuck here? Why don't our powers work? Asking whys in this place will do little else but drive you insane." She hadn't moved from where she knelt by the body. She went still for a moment, looking at the dupe's face, and almost without realizing, stretched out a hand to touch her fingertips to his forehead. A few strands of his hair touched her knuckles. He was cold, not just from having been in the water, and she thought Why don't our powers work?

Then she felt horrifically, deeply guilty and pulled her hand back, fingers curled into a fist, and tucked it against her stomach.

[howmanylives]

"Like I'm not insane already," he shot back, which in itself was an argument for his sanity, but he was too wound up to care. His dead body was keeping his girlfriend company; he was hardly about to start making a case for how balanced he was under the circumstances.

[butterflyfactor.livejournal.com]

"Then ask away," she said, "just stop expecting answers." She stood up and went to the dupe's other side, then tilted her face up to look at Jamie.

"Are you ready?"

[howmanylives]

It wasn't in his nature to stop asking; there were things he realized he was better off not knowing, but there'd always be some part of him willing to dig deeper, to push the boundaries of whatever situation he'd found himself in, and in that moment, that part of him was screaming. The desire to know why this was happening was overwhelming, but it was the same old song and dance he'd always gone through Layla; he asked a question and she couldn't give him an answer.

The only difference was that this time she legitimately didn't know.

He waited a few seconds in tense silence, then positioned himself on the dupe's other side, hoisting the dead weight to take the brunt of it off Layla.

"As I'll ever be."