standardblack | Entries tagged with eclectic muses

Freedom...that’s worth dying for.

I know...very BRAVEHEART of me, but freedom is a valuable thing. I know what it’s like to be a prisoner in your own skin, and I know that I’ve seen freedom taken from even those who appear to be the jailers...the ones who appear to hold freedom in the palm of their hands.

Look at us...the survivors of Oceanic flight 815. We’re prisoners of this godforsaken island, and all we want is to be free. A lot of us have died in the name of rescue, our only avenue to freedom...from the island, from the Others...we’ve all sacrificed. And if you believe John Locke, we’re meant to do more than that, we *are* sacrifices.

Locke...just another bar on our cell door. I don’t know what goes through that man’s head, and sometimes I’m not sure I want to know. Truthfully, I find some of his ideas a little frightening. His total willingness to sublimate his will to some higher power, and the island no less. It’s taken so much from us, and he wants to give it everything.

I’ve seen things on this island...things that aren’t possible, things that can’t be real. But I know they are...and still, I refuse to ascribe to Locke’s mindset.

Total submission to a higher power, even to God, is just another form of imprisonment. I’ve seen something similar in Eko...and yet it’s not the same. Eko may have been a priest, but he never submitted to anything, not completely. He made choices, he acted in the name of free will. He didn’t give himself over to God, he simply offered what he had.

I sometimes wonder if he died for just that reason. I’ve heard Charlie’s story, that he stood up to the monster once...I wonder if maybe that ultimately killed him.

It’s an awful thing to say, but the only thing I can say...if Eko had to die? I hope that’s the reason.

I hope he died free.

Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 340

Current Mood: drained

There's never gonna be
A moment of truth for you
While the world is watching
All you need is
The thing you've forgotten
And that's to learn to live
With what you are

[locked from all castaways]

I didn’t trust her worth a damn...not until she came back to our camp. It was different then...it didn’t change anything, and yet it changed everything. Nothing was different about what she’d done or why...but the beach was private. It was beyond Them...and we really met for the first time.

There was no cameras...no Others. No one watching to see what our next move was going to be.

At least...that’s what I thought. I honestly hadn’t considered the possibility that they would mistrust me that much, even if I was protecting Juliet. I thought her help with Claire had changed things. Granted, I didn’t expect a warm welcome on her behalf, but that element of danger she presented...

I didn’t think they would be watching us...the way that They watched us.

I took every precaution to make sure everyone would feel safe. I asked her not to go off alone, and she agreed. We stuck close, so everyone could see I was watching her. I thought they would trust me enough to be comfortable, knowing I had her under control.

And in that time...I discovered something remarkable. I discovered Juliet.

She smiled more readily and was quick to laugh. She made more jokes...her sense of humor was dry, but a little bawdy at the same time. She was clever, easygoing, sweet...I got to learn that she was a good woman, in spite of everything.

And in getting to know her...I trusted her. A little, at any rate. And for that trust, she gave it right back. She came to me and told me just what Ben was making her do...she chose us over Them. She did just what I probably would have done in her situation.

It’s probably the scariest part of this whole thing...knowing just how much I have in common with one of Them.

Knowing it...and being perfectly at peace with it.

[/locked]

Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 325

Current Mood: blank

"You can only be young once. But you can always be immature". -Dave Barry

He knew that her presence at their camp couldn’t be good...it might even be dangerous...but it was also oddly freeing for him. Juliet was a refreshing presence...she was good for Jack, he’d come to realize that much.

And if the rest of the camp chose to keep their distance...for once it was fine by him.

Arzt had once accused them all of being in high school...on second thought, he’d actually accused them of it multiple times. But maybe he was right in some capacity or another...there were cliques all around them, juvenile as it sounded. All of the castaways had found their own places, seperate or with others. Women and men were obvious...but there were also groups like Hurley, Charlie, Jin and Desmond as well. Nikki and Paolo had been in one, Kate and Sun were their own little duo...

Then there was Kate and Sawyer, who had forged a clique of their own...

And yes, the notion hurt. But if Kate had what she wanted...then all the better for her. The only thing Jack had ever truly wanted for her was for her to be happy...to find a reason to stop running. If Sawyer was what she truly needed, if he gave her all of that, Jack truly and honestly wished them both well.

Juliet understood what he’d been through...what it was to be used and manipulated to serve another man’s warped goals. She made him smile like he hadn’t in ages. She had a delicate beauty and an endless inner strength that appealed to him.

And if spending more time with her meant abandoning the “In” crowd...then so be it.

Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 283

Current Mood: calm

[locked from Kate and Sawyer]

I guess you might think that giving up on Kate was the hardest decision I ever made, right? Well...it wasn’t.

Maybe that’s part of what bothers me so much...seeing them together, knowing she’s with him. Making that decision to let go...I’m not good at letting go. I never have been, and I probably never really will be. And it’s made me realize...I never really had her to begin with.

So yes, I’ve done worse...made harder choices with regard to things and people who were actually there all along. In the real world, my divorce...granting Sara the divorce was hard, damn hard. Never knowing the truth...the goddamn *name*...letting her go in spite of that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.

Letting Boone go was another. He wanted it...he made his choice, but I was so close...take the leg, save his life...he would have had a chance at least. Maybe I couldn’t have stopped the inevitable, but maybe I could have held it off long enough for Shannon to say goodbye to her own brother.

The hardest decision that I’ve ever had to make, though...maybe the hardest of my life...was the day I made the choice to trust Juliet.

Why? Because I know that I *can’t* trust her. Not at all...not ever. And it’s not because she’s one of Them...she’s not. A lot of the people I met in their camp aren’t bad or evil...and a lot of them are nothing like Ben.

Juliet is not one of those people. She and Ben are the same in one very important way: they will sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve their goals.

The only difference between them, the only reason I trust her at all...I think Juliet deserves what she wants. I can understand it.

So I’ll trust her...for now. Because I know she’d sell me out in a heartbeat if it meant she had a chance to go home.

Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 344

Current Mood: bored

I deal in the concrete, the tangible. It’s my stock in trade as a physician, so to a degree I suppose the unknown frightens me more than anything. At the same time, though...it appeals to me. Unexplored territories, uncharted vistas...pioneering new and unseen terrain, discovering and learning things beyond what I know. It excites me...I guess that’s part of being a doctor, too...being a scientist: fearing the unknown, and embracing the unrealized.

There are other things I fear, though...things I couldn’t fear until I got to this island. Back in the real world, I feared the things everyone is scared of...rejection, losing those I loved, crossing the street and getting hit by a bus...I feared the normal world and all its ever present dangers, personal and physical.

Then I got here...and fear took on a whole new meaning.

It wasn’t just what I had to fear, either...jungle monsters, polar bears, Others who were ready and willing to kill and kidnap us for whatever purpose drives them. The more that time passes here, the more I lose...the more we all lose. This isn’t the real world, position and possessions don’t matter. Physical dangers are easier to see and recognize...food and water are precious commodities. Bodies hone down to muscle and sinew, perspectives shift to put survival at the top of your list of priorities rather than bills and job performance.

This place has stripped us all down to the core...it’s robbed us of everything and shattered our illusions of what we try so hard to be, and taken us down to who we really are. And me? I’ve lost so much that once mattered to me...and the more I lose, the less I fear.

It’s gotten to the point where I feel like nothing scares me anymore.

And that’s the one thing that frightens me most of all.

Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 317

Current Mood: distressed

"If the sky were to suddenly open up, there would be no law, there would be no rule. There would only be you and your memories." - Donnie Darko

The rain came down in sheets as the sound of flesh and bone colliding with flesh and bone rang out again over the roar of the storm, smacking and slick from the downpour. He was cold, inside and out...filled with a rage that he hadn’t known in years, perhaps a rage he’d never truly known. It was a primal drive to lash out and wrend, maim, maybe even kill...because this man had hurt one of his people.

An expectant mother. Claire...pretty, sweet Claire, so vulnerable she incited a protective sort of affection, but at the same time was far stronger than she appeared. Someone Jack liked...someone Jack promised to protect.

Her voice filled his head as he bent to grab the front of Ethan’s shirt again, delivering another devastating blow. Achara...she told him he was a great man when she’d branded it into his skin.

He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us.

He didn’t feel like one of them as he beat the man before him bloody...but he didn’t feel like a great man, either.

He felt like a leader, though...a king or an emperor vested in his subjects and riddled with a power so heavy, so cumbersome that it nearly bowed his spine with its weight. It was a burden he didn’t want...a curse that gave him this relentless, icy anger to drive him forward.

It made him care. It made him hurt. It made him want to be a great man so that he might be worthy of that terrible gift.

So he wasn’t one of them...instead, he was something more. He was the one that beat Ethan half out of his head...he, not Sawyer and his feral fury, or Sayid with his cold, calculating precision...not even John, with a hunter’s mind to guide him.

Jack told them what to do...just like they’d all wanted.

They were his people...and here under the open sky, he wasn’t telling them what to do. There was no due process, no court to hold as lord and master of this domain. There was only what he knew.

He was a leader...a great man.

And like any great leader, he gave no ground to his enemies. None.

Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 382

Current Mood: angry

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not." -Andre Gide

I’m not a good man...everyone thinks I’m a good man, but it’s not true. And every day, it eats at me...what they don’t know. What none of them will ever know. I can only pray that they never get to see that face...the one that can kill. The one that *has* killed.

It’s a constant struggle to fight the things I feel...this ugly black monolith that lives in my head and heart. People think evil is cold, that it feels nothing...they’re wrong. They’re so wrong...darkness is hot and alive and, oddly enough, so bright it hurts.

It’s all about feeling...too much and too hard and too furious. And I don’t know how to stop. Love, hate, anger, grief...I have to be careful with them all. I’ve loved and mourned myself into places I hope I never go again, but I’ve also been pulled out of the blackest holes by these things inside me...flames that never seem to burn themselves out.

The world calls it virtue. I call it pain.

I envy Sawyer that...the freedom of being what he is. I know he’s not as bad as he’d like people to think with his forced misanthropy and his sarcasm...but he doesn’t have to hide the darkness in him. He’s hated, and honestly...but he’s also loved the same for the good in him he insists on locking away.

Kind of ironic, I guess...this weird sort of jealousy. Because at the end of the day...of all the people in the world, I envy a con man for his honest living.

Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 269 (w/o quote)

Current Mood: crappy

He wasn’t angry at her. Not in the least.

Jack stood there, watching Kate sink into Sawyer’s arms...a blurred, black and white mass of humanity and bare, tangled limbs on the floor of a cage outside the facility somewhere, coming through the surveillance monitor embedded in the wall before him. He watched as their lips met...slow and soft, as she shifted in his arms just a little, just enough to get closer.

For a moment, an image was superimposed over the two of them in his mind’s eye...features with a beauty that was more handsome than extraordinary, that came together as beauty should and not in bits and pieces of what should have been a very plain, very ordinary looking woman.

Kate shouldn’t have been as lovely as she was...but somehow the curly brown hair, the freckles, the simple green eyes...they came together in an image that haunted his dreams. Sara was beautiful as a woman ought to be.

The man in Jack’s mind had no face...he never would.

Once she’d been fixed he’d left her, all without ever straying from his home or the arms of the woman he’d married. He’d been so quick to have her...and now he wasn’t. He wasn’t overly eager, and he was cautious with the new, shining thing he’d found with the dangerous, wounded enigma calling herself Kate Austen.

This time he’d been too cautious...the one time he’d held back, he realized that he hadn’t held on hard enough. Not like he’d held onto Sara.

He wasn’t angry at Kate. He wasn’t really even angry at himself. And though the old hurts rose, threatened to choke him...he didn’t mourn, didn’t grieve the loss right in front of his face.

He was drowning in his mistakes, but he was done fighting them. He let them choke, stopped swimming and breathed in the dark water, allowing it to fill his lungs and let him sink. There was a measure of comfort to be had...a shred of warmth and life, knowing that she had somebody. He had a fairly confident bead on Sawyer...it was ultimately how he knew he’d get the heroin from him.

They really did share a connection...and Sawyer wouldn’t hurt her if he could help it.

Jack only prayed that Sawyer’s notion of what he could and couldn’t help fell in line with his.

Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 401

Current Mood: aggravated

We’re all answerable to someone...a boss, a spouse, a parent or guardian. At the end of the day, we’re all held accountable for our actions.

But above all else, when all is said and done we’re answerable to ourselves for what we do. That’s free will...doing something and knowing that, if nothing else, you’ll do what you do knowing that no one is to blame but yourself for the outcome. You can’t share your victories, and you can’t shirk your failures. It’s all on you.

It’s one of the reasons I’m not a religious man..God and Fate, I don’t believe in either one...not insomuch as entities outside myself. If you’ve ever read a book called STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, you know what I mean. The theme and ultimate credo of that novel... “Thou art God”...it’s the ultimate statement of personal responsibility and the ultimate subservience to a higher power than yourself.

It’s like the book says, even God can’t escape His own will...and neither can we. At the end of the day, we have to answer for the choices we make. Thou art God.

There’s no arrogance to it...it’s a frightening and painful notion to consider, that there is no omnipotent power that can save our souls. Yes, I believe in souls, I believe in the potential for something more...but I don’t believe we’ll get there by surrendering our will to an invisible all-powerful being.

We are who we are because we choose to be that way...and our lives will be richer or poorer for the choices we make. It’s a terrible burden, and it’s also a precious gift...that realization of your own power.

Me? I’ve yet to learn how to master mine...but I’m working on it.

And knowing what I do? Suffice to say, relinquishing my free will isn’t something I’ll do easily.

Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 315

Current Mood: determined

Profile

Dr. Jack Sheppard

December 2007

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

[EcM] AUGUST - What's worth dying for?
[EcM] JULY - Ben Folds Lyric
[EcM] JUNE - Dave Barry Quote
[EcM] MAY - What's the hardest decision you've ever had to make?
[EcM] APRIL - Everyone is scared of something. What is your greatest fear?
[EcM] MARCH - Quote
[EcM] FEB Quote
[EcM] JAN: "Waste not fresh tears on old griefs." -Euripides
[EcM] DEC: Misc. Topic: Free will

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 09:39 pm

"I saw your mugshot, Kate..."

"...I am not a murderer."

Entries tagged with eclectic muses

[EcM] AUGUST - What's worth dying for?

[EcM] JULY - Ben Folds Lyric

[EcM] JUNE - Dave Barry Quote

[EcM] MAY - What's the hardest decision you've ever had to make?

[EcM] APRIL - Everyone is scared of something. What is your greatest fear?

[EcM] MARCH - Quote

[EcM] FEB Quote

[EcM] JAN: "Waste not fresh tears on old griefs." -Euripides

[EcM] DEC: Misc. Topic: Free will

Profile

December 2007

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

"...I am *not* a murderer."

Entries tagged with eclectic muses

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

"...I am not a murderer."