Title: Where There's Smoke
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sun stands in the middle of road with Sawyer, holding his hand so tightly it feels like there’s a vice grip crushing his fingers together.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: For Lost Riffs at lostsquee: Day Three: Smoke. Also used for au100, prompt #52: fire. This fic is a prequel to another fic of mine, Ramble On. I suppose it's not exactly necessary to read that first, but it might help a bit.



Sun stands in the middle of road with Sawyer, holding his hand so tightly it feels like there’s a vice grip crushing his fingers together. They watch the smoke erupt underneath the upturned, crushed car in at the side of the road. There are two bodies inside, bloodied, and – thankfully – mostly hidden from view.

It’s macabre to be watching them the way that they are, but Sawyer can’t help but feel like they’re going to go Terminator and regenerate, come out from underneath the rubble and back for another go at them. Sun, it seems, is frozen with fear.

“We should go,” Sawyer tells her, tugging her back toward their truck. She’s nothing but dead weight, but so small that Sawyer can still pull her along. She’s still staring at the wreckage even as he hoists her into the car, runs around to his side, and hits the gas as fast as he possibly can.

They’re swiftly carried away by the road, moving farther and farther away from the crash by the second. Sun’s eyes don’t leave the mangled car until it’s disappeared over the horizon. She turns back around and stares out at the open road. Her whole body is shaking.

“Damn, we got lucky.” The words escape Sawyer softly, like breath, almost like a prayer, if Sawyer believed in that sort of thing. Sun doesn’t reply, only stares forward with eyes as wide as saucers. “Sunshine, you in there?” Nothing.

Sawyer grips the steering wheel hard with one hand – making sure to keep them going straight and fast – and with the other, he reaches out and touches her face.

“They tried to kill us,” she marvels. Sawyer would have chuckled then, but he doesn’t. Her voice is so quiet, almost disbelieving. There’s no disputing it, though; she’s right. Those two guys, laying dead inside that twisted car, had been trying to kill them. The only reason they were alive now, in fact, was the fact that Sawyer had tried to kill them right back, ran them off the side of the road, where they’d promptly flipped over and been crushed under the weight of that big fucking SUV.

Two less employees of the good old Dharma Initiative; Sawyer can’t really feel bad about that.

“Yeah, they did,” Sawyer answers, reaching for his box of cigarettes. If ever there was a time. He pops it open, and there’s only one left, the one he’d turned upside down, a superstitious good luck charm that he remembers his Granddad talking about back…well, a hell of a long time ago.

“What do we do now?” Sun asks, finally looking over at Sawyer as he lights his cigarette, eyes forward on the road.

“Keep right on runnin’,” Sawyer replies, like it’s that simple. Maybe to him, it is. He’s been doing it a lot longer than Sun has. She unbuckles her belt and slides across the seat of the old truck next to Sawyer. She plucks the cigarette straight out of his mouth and pops it into hers. The taste of smoke is bitter in her mouth, but she doesn’t cough.

She leans against Sawyer’s shoulder, and closes her eyes, exhaling a sigh as the smoke curls above their heads.