Title: Captivity
Pairing: Jack/Kate - ish
Rating: PG
Summary: Post "Live Together, Die Alone". Jack POV of being held captive. Angst.
Spoilers: up till season 2 finale
Disclaimer: Pretty sure it's not mine.
Captivity
Chapter 1
His consciousness returned to him like an electric shock rupturing through his body, his breath escaping his throat with a jerk.
As his mind and body took to adjust to his surroundings, his senses twitched back.
A flood of memories, a confusing film reel of deception, guilt and anxiety. Michael's betrayal. Hurley's release. Their capture. Him. Sawyer. Kate. Kate. That look they shared. Fear. Trust. Blame. Confidence. Regret. Forgiveness. Something more. Something else. The emerald green gaze forever burnt in his mind, engraved inside him somewhere, deep down.
His eyes winced as the dull, piercing light of a swinging light bulb above him penetrated his dilated pupils. Painfully, things around him started to take form and shade. A room, he figured out first, a cell. Stone walls with peeled off, antiquated paint, that could have been white at some point in time, has now taken a dirty beige color instead, a rusty metal door to his right locked from the outside with a decaying chain and lock, he assumed, a dirty leaky ceiling, painted lazily one hot afternoon by a reluctant volunteer, patches of dirty colors, a cracked window high up on the wall facing him, mold growing freely around the leaky frame, a spider living comfortably on its sill. A window impossibly high to look out through, tragically too small to escape from.
Solitude.
Numbness in his fingers excruciated his sense of touch back into him. Throbbing pain pinching at his leg. Burning stings wrapping his wrists. Slashing whips of anguish slithering along his spine. Tied to a creaking, wooden chair, one leg shorter than the rest.
His sense of smell stung his throat as an agonizing odor penetrated his nostrils. Banefully the indistinct odors started to wreak familiar through his mind. Rust, mold, humidity, sweat and blood.
His own blood. He realized as its taste flooded his mouth, copper and pain. His mouth dry and gagged, with the nauseating taste of pain, fear, anger and guilt screeching down to his gut.
His hearing came back last with the faint sound of barefoot struts on a worn out concrete floor outside his door. Three distinct strides. One of a man whose rough, callused hand once held an out-dated gun to Kate's terrified neck, a man whose words and size too large for his name. One of a woman, who seems to walk among and above men, more mysterious than the men themselves, with an articulation that trickles with poise and malice. In front of them, the stride of a man whose small frame is compensated by the confidence in his voice, the diablerie in his eyes, and the conspiracy in his every move. A man who knows too much, says too little and manipulates with every breath.
Three rusty hinges squeak as a termite-infested door is flung open. The three pair of feet now stride on softer ground. Muffled voices dripping with cruelty soak through the decaying walls separating him from them.
A wicked laugh; as a new irate voice joins the disdainful three. Unlike theirs, he hears her voice clearly.
"Where's Jack?"
"What did you do to him?"
"You've been telling me the same lies for the past three days!"
"I want to see him!"
Three days? He's been out for three days? His mind struggles to comprehend.
'Kate!', he tries to call out to her, his voice betraying him. 'KATE!', he strains again. His own words stabbing at his throat, failing to escape his lips.
Anger in her voice, straining to hide the fear behind the bravado of confidence and contempt.
He can see her. Standing full of confidence, matching Henry glare for glare. Shoulders straight, arms crossed, keeping her guard up against all intrusions and intruders. She bites her lower lip when Henry is not looking, clenches her jaw tight when he is. Her tears glaze her eyes, too stubborn and determined to reveal themselves to her captors. Armed by her stubbornness, rage and concern, she stands up against the evil she knows too little about.
The fifth voice is all too familiar yet surprisingly different. The southern brawl of a man who can be his worst enemy or his best friend. He hears him grunt his discontent and spit a scornful of fury at at a man he had once told that it was not over yet between them. His voice drenched with hatred and sincerity, and a faint sense of genuine concern.
Their voices tell him they have not been harmed, physically at least. Yet her silent sobs, and the occasional hushed cracks in his sputter, tell him there are wounds there too deep and too numerous to heal, not even with time.
Another snerk, and the door slams shut. The struts of three mysteries faint away.
He hears her shoulders drop, tears still refusing to fall from their fortress. He sees him walk up to her. Tired hands to weakened shoulders. A small, grateful smile and she shrugs him off, walks away. His head shakes. Strands of dirty, blonde hair wave hopelessly along a fatigued frown.
He hears her throw herself down, something softer, a matress, old, dirty and worn-out. She does not care. He sees her face fall in her hands, and tears, once obstinate, give in and flood down her face, stained and wet. He hears her quiet sobs, shoulders shaking slightly, knees up against her chest.
She gives herself a minute, a minute of unguarded vulnerability, before she pulls herself together, wipes her face, pulls a tendril of disheveled hair behind her ear. Smiles, embarassed, at the man who had been watching from a distance.
He returns the smile, regretful and sympathetic. Asks her absurdly if she is fine, she nods, lies that she is and looks away. He lets his mind wonder if she would have cried had it been him, if she would have yelled at the others like she did for Jack. He shakes off the thought, scorns himself for it, knows himself the fool to even consider, knows he will never be Jack, especially not for Kate.
Jack's head drops, wrists and ankles pull at their restraints, blood seeping through mud-stained ropes. Tries once more to call for her, but not before consciousness escapes him, again.
