TITLE: Foot Soldiers
AUTHOR: Mari
EMAIL: PG-13
PAIRINGS: Sawyer/Ana Lucia, ultimately, with dollops of Jack/Kate and Jack/Ana until they get there.
SPOILERS: Takes place immediately after 'The Hunting Party'.
SUMMARY: Everyone has their part to play.
"How long would it take to train an army?"
Jack's eyes were flat and cold as he asked, his entire body trembling with a drive barely held in check. It presented Ana Lucia with a man that she hardly recognized. She liked it. She was scared of it. She didn't know.
Ana Lucia realized that her mouth had fallen open. Jack fixed her with a quick, sideways look from beneath his lashes before he turned back towards the sea. "They're going to keep coming," he said. Ana Lucia wondered if he was reciting this to himself for the first time, because it sounded like revelation. "They're just going to keep on hunting us until we don't have anyone else left unless we do something, and I…" Jack trailed off for a moment, still looking out at the ocean rather than at her. The small amount of his expression that she was able to see in profile softened. For all that she had gotten a strange and sudden thrill from his anger moments before, she found that she was just as glad to see its exit now. Ana Lucia knew from leaders and she knew from power, and she had seen the way that the people on this side of the island looked at Jack. His was not a power borne of fear. It would not do to taint it now. "These are the things that we have to do if we're going to survive." Jack sounded almost hesitant now, as if he was already having doubts about a plan that essentially amounted to open warfare and was now looking for someone to talk him out of it.
He had come to the wrong person. "You're right," Ana Lucia said simply, breaking the last portion of mango in two and popping one of the pieces into her mouth. That dog-homeless now, she guessed-came back, wagging his tail in companionable circles. Ana Lucia held out the last bit of mango into the center of her palm, and the dog chuffed in enjoyment before he took it. Her arm received a grateful slobbering in thanks.
Ana Lucia grimaced and rubbed the slime off on the leg of her jeans before looking back up and realizing that Jack was staring at her. His expression was surprised, a little wary. She didn't guess that was the answer that he expected, knew that it wasn't the one that he had wanted. Well, it wasn't a solution that she liked any better now than she had fifty days ago, but that didn't make it any less true.
"Look," Ana Lucia said, staring down at her hands rather than meeting that…that look that Jack had, like he was seeing an idealized version of Ana Lucia alongside the real one and was giving himself one bitch of a headache trying to reconcile the two. She wished that she could give him a hand with that particular brainteaser, she really did. "My guess is, you've had one person after another telling you to slow down, chill out, don't do anything rash." Jack made a snorting noise that Ana Lucia decided to take as agreement. "And at the same time, they still want you to be the leader. Do something, make everything better, all of that fun shit." Another snort. Ana Lucia picked at a loose cuticle, noticing all over again how much living on the island had ravaged her hands. "So, the answer is simple. You can't be both of those people. You have to choose one of them."
Jack sighed before he rubbed his hand across his eyes. He needed a shave, and he looked very tired. "It's not that simple."
The dog came back, snuffling about hopefully for anything that she had missed. He had to have been pretty hard up to go around eating fruit in the first place. Ana Lucia was sorry for a moment that she had to part her hands and show him that she had nothing. "Sure it is," she said in response to Jack's question. "There's the first option, which feels nice, and then there's the second one, which will keep people safe."
"Great." If anything, Jack looked even more tired. The resolve was still there, though, burning low and bright and not flickering for so much as an instant. "So we can be civilized, or we can survive."
"No," Ana Lucia corrected. "You can be sheep or you can be soldiers." She reached out and, placing her hand on Jack's knee, squeezed lightly. The corners of Jack's lips turned up for a moment as he looked at her. "You ever read any presidential biographies, generals' memoirs, shit like that? You don't run into a lot of leaders who skip to work singing campfire tales." And that was about as close to some very personal territory as Ana Lucia was willing to go at the moment. She snapped her mouth closed and waited uneasily to see if Jack was going to pursue.
He instead put his hand over hers where it still rested on his knee. It was warm and callused like Ana Lucia's own. "Something I already realized, but thanks." He exhaled the air in his lungs on a long sigh, the determination building itself back up before her eyes until it was a full flame again. Yes, she could see why people would follow this man. If he could come to see it himself, then maybe they would have a force that the Others would be afraid of.
Jack made note of the sun's location in the sky, already beginning a downward path towards the western horizon, and then turned to look over his shoulder at the camp behind them. In spite of the news that had spread through the camp like wildfire about the meeting with the Others and about how close the four of them had come to being killed, everyone was still moving around and completing their chores as if it was business as usual. Only the sight of Eko and Libby, trying to play along but still watching the jungle, helped to convince her that not everyone was insane.
"We'll start tomorrow," Jack said at last. "We'll give them one more night."
That was one more night in which they were only hoping that the wolves would not descend upon the flock, but Ana Lucia bit these words back and only nodded instead. "That'll work."
--
Ana Lucia knew when Jack mentioned that he had learned about her past as a police officer that he must have also spoken to Sayid about his plans for the formation of a rough army. She did not know that Jack had also meant for Sayid to train the army along with her.
"Good morning," Sayid greeted her with stiff formality. He wasn't bothering with even the pretense of friendliness. Ana Lucia liked that about Sayid. Under different circumstances, she thought that she might even have liked him.
"Morning," Ana Lucia answered back simply. If Sayid was not going to play games, then the very least that she could offer him in return was the courtesy of not playing them herself. She turned instead to look out across the gathered crowd of those people who were tired of being sheep.
The numbers were greater than Ana Lucia had expected; maybe she had even underestimated these guys. It looked like most of Jack's people were there, and all of Ana's. Eko stood to one side, his arms folded over his chest as he watched everyone with a grave expression. Ana Lucia doubted that he was there for the instruction-priest or not, doubted that he needed the instruction-and was comforted to know that someone had her back. She twitched her lips into a small smile, and he lifted his chin in acknowledgement before she moved on to survey the rest.
That Libby and Bernard should also be there didn't surprise Ana Lucia in the slightest, as they had been on the other side and knew what it was like to be terrified on a level that Jack's people could not even fathom. Bernard's wife gave her pause, but, hey, all right. Everyone could be taught the basics, at the very least. Same deal with the big guy. Most of the other men were in pretty good shape from doing the majority of the heavy lifting over the past two months. That Kate woman was also there, and she had muscle and moved like she had kicked more than a few asses in her time. Ana Lucia made a mental note to ask a few more questions later about the eerie division of labor that she had seen since her arrival. Quite apart from the fact that it was creeping her out, it also wasn't doing any of the women any favors.
Ana Lucia felt herself pause again when a knot of ice descended into her belly, as she realized that the blonde woman, Chelsea or Connie or whatever her name was, was also standing in the crowd and waiting for them to begin. Like hell she was. Chelsea/Connie wasn't going to be taught a damned thing except for the very, very most basic defensive stuff and nothing at all that would put her on an actual battlefield, not until that baby was done nursing. Ana Lucia would fight Jack on that if she had to.
'Jesus wept,' she thought bitterly, 'the way that these people still act, you would think that they could pop down to the 7-11 on the corner if something happened to Mom.'
Ana Lucia paused one final time as she finished her assessment of what they had to work with, this time feeling a scowl moving across her face rather than the expression of fear that she was afraid might have shown up when she saw the blonde girl. "Oh, hell no," she said flatly. "And if you're trying for a secret masochist thing, you might want to try a little harder at the secret part."
Sawyer grinned at her, dimples and eyes working in tandem for one devastating effect, and Ana Lucia was sure that a great many women over the years could pinpoint that as the exact moment that they had been undone. She put her hands onto her hips and glared.
"Easy there, cupcake," Sawyer said, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Ana Lucia thought that if she sponsored a bet on the sincerity of either the gesture or the smile she wouldn't get many takers. She noticed that he still winced when he tried to lift his left arm too high. "Mamacita and I are just here to watch the show. Damn thing ain't gonna fall off just by watching, is it?"
Ana Lucia thought that the chances of Sawyer staying on the sidelines were about as high as Sawyer choosing not to run his mouth, but what the hell. Until the Others showed up, at least, it was still a free island over here. Ana Lucia gave a dismissive shrug and looked back over her shoulder at Sayid. "Good crowd. So, how do you want to do this?" Jack, she noticed, was watching from the sidelines, his arms folded across his chest. Staying out the situation when it wasn't his area of expertise. She could expect no help from that quarter.
Sayid's lips moved up into a tight, unhealthy smile that was more of a spasm than it was anything else. "I thought that we could start with a practical demonstration before we moved on to the one-on-one instruction."
Of course they would. Ana Lucia felt her eyebrows quirk up and her spin stiffen as one movement. She had been wondering when this day would come. "All right," she said cautiously, sensing Jack and Eko tensing up from their respective places on either side of the rough circle that had formed, ready to intervene if necessary. Ana Lucia and Sayid both lifted their hands towards their respective champions/handlers to let them know that everything was going to be all right. "All right, I'll say it again. How do you want to do this?"
Sayid's punch caught her square across the chin, one great holy shit sunburst of pain that made her entire face go numb a few seconds later. Probably a good thing, as Ana Lucia heard her teeth come together with an audible clacking sound, so hard that it was a wonder she didn't take off the tip of her own tongue. She staggered backwards a few steps, putting her hand out behind her just in case she did fall. Ana Lucia narrowed her eyes at Sayid once the world had stopped pitching and decided that it wanted to stay still for a little while longer, which wasn't difficult considering how badly they were watering with the pain. If Sayid had remembered that this was supposed to be a demonstration and pulled his punch, then he hadn't done it by much.
Well, shit. If they were going to have this out, then better they get it out of the way now. The way Ana Lucia figured it, if Jack was determined to build an army, then she and Sayid were the closest thing to lieutenants that he had. If they were never going to be able to move past a place of wanting to beat the living hell out of each other, then best that they figured it out now rather than when they had lives depending on them.
Ana Lucia dragged her hand across her mouth and saw that there was blood there. She must have bitten her lip after Sayid clocked her one. "Great," Ana Lucia said. "So let's get on with it." And she lunged at him.
Sayid was not joking around when he said that he had been in the army: he was good. He ducked Ana Lucia's punch with ease and grabbed at her arm as she blew past. She knew as soon as he had her, one hand at her forearm and the other at her elbow, that he meant to flip her over his shoulder if she rolled with the force and maybe even break her arm if she fought him. Ana Lucia wasn't even sure which one he was hoping for, but she wasn't going to give him the chance. She went limp instead, letting Sayid flip her through the air in a move that probably looked cool as all hell but made every muscle in her back yell in unison, and landed hard and flat-footed on the sand. Sayid was expecting her to go straight down on her ass, she could tell, and he didn't expect it when she drove her elbow straight back into his abdomen. There was a sharp whoof of air, and then she was free. Ana Lucia only spun away a few feet before she doubled back, catching Sayid a hard punch to the mouth to match the one that he had given her.
Ana Lucia retreated further, rubbing at her elbow she that she would not give in to the urge to rub at her face. Her back twinged and promised to ache later, but damned if she would coddle that hurt, either. Sayid hadn't gone for her throat, either literally or metaphorically, which was better than she had expected. She hadn't given in to the urge while in close proximity to another human being and under attack to freak right the fuck out, which was better than she had expected from herself.
"You're good," Ana Lucia said once the urge to pant away her adrenaline and near-panic had passed. She sounded less breathless than she had hoped for. Sayid tipped his head in acknowledgement. "You want to go again?"
There was a long, long moment of limbo where Ana Lucia was sure that Sayid was going to say yes, and then they would fight this out until one or both of them were either dead or too hurt and exhausted to continue. Ana Lucia wouldn't begrudge him that, couldn't begrudge him that, not being so intimately acquainted with rough justice as she was. She was very aware of the ring of eyes all around her, wary and even disapproving, but not willing to intervene. They understood, too.
The moment broke when Sayid at long last shook his head, flexing the arm that had flipped her through the air. There was no affection in Sayid's eyes, nor anything that Ana Lucia could on a good day call respect, but there was tolerance. They could stay in one another's presence for training and maybe even on an actual battlefield long enough to avoid putting a knife in one another's back. That was all that Ana Lucia needed.
"No," Sayid said, shaking his head again. "I believe we have one another's measure now." Truer words were never spoken, and there wasn't a single person in the crowd who did not know this. Sayid shifted his gaze to survey them all. "And how would you like to begin?"
It wasn't a courtesy. She was being tested, Ana Lucia knew, pushed to see if her own ideas could match up to the ones in Sayid's head. Well, hell, Ana Lucia figured. She had always been better at the practical exams than the written ones.
"We split them into two groups by gender," Ana Lucia said, after doing a quick head count to be sure that the groups were more of less even. "I'll teach the women if you take the men." Sayid's eyebrows went up. "In case you haven't noticed, you are not a small woman." Sayid's eyebrows went up even further, and Ana Lucia grinned for a moment before she spread her arms. "I am. I can teach them how to fight back against people who are taller, heavier, and stronger than they are."
He liked that suggestion, even though he probably did not like that he liked it. Ana Lucia could see it in his face and knew that he was probably thinking of how she had controlled her flip so as to land on her feet again rather than straight on her ass. Okay, so she wouldn't tell him that that part had been mostly luck. Sayid nodded again. Even if they spent the entire day communicating only in gestures in grunts, it would be better than she had hoped for. "Then let us begin," Sayid said.
Ana Lucia dipped her head in acknowledgement and walked over to the women, who had already taken the initiative and begun sorting themselves into one large group, rubbing surreptitiously at her back as she went. Jack caught her eye for a moment as he went to help Sayid and gave her a small, approving smile. Ana Lucia felt her own lips twitch back in response before she began the arduous task of turning sheep into soldiers.
--
It was hard, gritty, sweaty work, and by the time that she and Sayid decided through some unspoken mental agreement to quit as the sun was sinking low on the ocean, the strained muscles in her back were already telling her how very ashamed of her they were. Her forearms ached from blocking punch after poorly executed punch, her muscles burned from wrist to shoulder from showing them the correct way to do it instead, and she could already feel a bruise forming just beneath her eye to match the one that had already risen, ugly and purple, on her chin from Sayid's shot. The new one could be credited to Kate, who had risen to all of Ana Lucia's earlier expectations of her and then some. Ana Lucia was already wondering if she split the training into three sessions with Kate heading the new one, so that everyone could have more one on one time. If there was one thing that the past several hours had taught her, it was that they had a great deal of work left to do.
Ana Lucia lifted her hair off of her neck with one hand so that the sea breeze could tease at the sweat gathered there, tugging at her tank top with the other so that she could dislodge the sand that had been driven under the hem the one other time that she had been flipped. Kate again, of course. Ana Lucia had the feeling that she had seen her before, though she could not say where.
Ana Lucia scowled for the first time in hours and tugged harder at her shirt, trying to coax a few more grains down that had gathered in the sweat beading up and down her spine. What she really needed, more than anything else, was a bath. Even if the shower in the hatch was probably booked up tight for the next three weeks, she could take a dip in the ocean, rinse the dirt and sweat away.
If she wanted to wander off far away so as not to be seen when she stripped down, anyway, maybe far enough that she could not be helped if the Others decided that it was a good time to take out the person who had killed one of her own. Ana Lucia briefly wondered if Libby wouldn't mind coming along and watching her back while she rinsed off and tried to beat some of the dirt out of her clothes-it turned out that Libby was a dirty fighter as well as a smart one-before she remembered that Libby had had no problem collecting her own wardrobe of borrowed and abandoned clothes shortly after arrival. She had no need of an 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine' arrangement.
She probably could have chosen her words more carefully than that. Ana Lucia squirmed as the sand opened an itch along her shoulder blades, right where she could not easily scratch at it. Fuck it, she was going to bathe, and let the Others come after her if they were determined to. Much more of this and she was going to be irritable enough to take them all on, too.
"You're a six, right?"
Ana Lucia did not jump, but it was a near thing. She turned far enough to see Kate regarding her with her arms folded over her chest and wearing a neutral expression. Kate's lower lip was puffy and there was a split down the middle of it that was still oozing blood, payback for the sock to the eye that she had given Ana Lucia.
"What?" Ana asked, not immediately sure that she had heard correctly. While the looks being cast her way were friendlier now than they had been before as people began wandering off to do the evening chores, but no one was exactly stopping to chat.
"A size six," Kate said, dropping her arms. "That'll fit you, right?"
"Close enough," Ana Lucia said.
"I have a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts that you could borrow while you get your own stuff washed, then," Kate said. "The first couple of days before we got our suitcases sorted out pretty much sucked."
"Yeah." Ana Lucia was well aware of how she must look, having lived in her clothes for nearly two months with only a few furtive opportunities to wash the grit out. "Thanks."
"No problem." Kate gave her a nod before she headed off to her tent. Ana Lucia hung behind for a moment, wondering what had just happened and if it might even have been called respect. She had given up on expecting that over on this side of the island from the second that the gun had lurched in her hand.
"Like the first day of kindergarten, isn't it?" Ana Lucia would know that drawl anywhere. She rolled her eyes before she turned to flash him a malicious grin. Sawyer had been markedly well-behaved over the past several hours, for what little she had seen of him on his own turf. Several times she had caught him leaning forward with his arms braced over the tops of his knees, watching every move that was demonstrated with an intensity which suggested that he was going to memorize them all in an afternoon through will alone. Seemed like Ana Lucia was not the only one who had some scores to settle with the Others.
"I even learned how to share my toys," Ana Lucia replied, tilting her head to one side and dialing up the smile until she thought that her face would crack. Well, the bruises and sore muscles were going to be shared equally by everyone. With a little luck, the end results would also be as equilateral. "And if I'm a very good girl, then tomorrow I'll get the best seat at story time!"
Sawyer's smile took on a faint suggestion of a leer when Ana Lucia said 'good girl'. "I've always had a preference for the bad ones," he said before strolling away.
If they had any phones or…solid walls, Ana Lucia was pretty sure that she would have gotten a phone number and an invitation to go home with him. She blinked and turned to face Kate, who had come out of her tent with a pair of jeans and an orange top in her hand. Ana Lucia wasn't sure how much of the conversation that Kate had heard, or how much Ana Lucia for that matter wanted her to have heard, until Kate solved the problem for her by rolling her eyes good-naturedly and shaking her head.
"He does that to everything with curves," Kate said, handing Ana Lucia the clothes. "You can whop him on the nose with a newspaper if he bothers you." The humor in her tone sounded flat, forced, and it didn't come anywhere near to reaching her eyes.
She was trying, though, and that was a hell of a lot more credit than Ana Lucia was willing to give most people. She accepted the clothes from Kate and said, "Past history there's not so great." Kate's eyebrows came together. Huh. Ana Lucia figured that Sawyer would have told the whole island about their power struggle on the other side as soon as he got back and was lucid enough. "Never mind. Thanks for the loaners, though."
"No problem." Kate's attempt at a friendly expression faded as Jack walked past them, already deep in conversation with a Sayid who looked about as exhausted as Ana Lucia felt. Jack had a dark patch of sweat on the back of his shirt from his own participation in the fight training, and he barely glanced at either one of them. Something in Kate's face tightened and would have fallen in she had not gathered herself at the last second and taken a deep breath. "Just get them back whenever, okay?"
"Yeah. Sure." Ana Lucia watched as Late turned and disappeared into her tent without another word. She tucked the clothes beneath her arm and, shrugging, headed towards the water and the setting sun.
--
Much later, Ana Lucia sat by one of the communal fires, hearing her hair crackle and sizzle as it dried and feeling the warmth from the flames easing out all the little knots of tension that her muscles had accumulated throughout the day. Kate was taller than she was, making the jeans bunch up around her ankles, but the sensation of being in clean clothes again was so new and wonderful that Ana Lucia couldn't really bring herself to care. She tugged her fingers through her hair to tease out the tangles and stared into the fire, already working out her ideas for the next day.
Basic defense was great, but from the way that Jack was talking, he meant for them to actually go on the offensive against the Others before too much longer. The very thought of it made Ana Lucia's stomach clench. It seemed to be a popular idea among the rest of Jack's people, though, so the least that she could do was make sure that they were ready. Ana Lucia drew an absent-minded doodle in the sand and wondered if she and Sayid should have a talk with that Locke guy about firearms practice, see how much they could get away with before the noise began to attract too much attention.
She and Sayid were going to have to have actual conversations. Jesus Christ.
Ana Lucia stabbed her finger into the sand one final time before she leaned back on her elbows, enjoying the sensation of people milling to and fro as they figured out where they were going to settle down for the evening meal. So she wasn't being included in a whole lot of conversations, but it still beat the hell out of the wide berth that she had been given before, as if she had brought leprosy among them. Words had never really been her thing, anyway.
Ana Lucia flipped her drying hair over her shoulders, glanced over the fire, and for once found that she was glad that she was not a sparkling conversationalist. She would not have known what to say even if she had been.
Jack and Kate were having an intense, whispered conversation some twenty yards away, their bodies alternately leaning towards and then away from each other, as if they still did not know whether or not they were fighting. Jack's face was taut. Kate grabbed for his hand, tugged him closer. He only resisted for a moment before he bent back towards Kate like the flowing of water. As Ana Lucia watched, Kate led Jack away beyond the immediate circles of light thrown down by the fires.
"Ain't that just the cutest thing."
Ana Lucia closed her eyes. "Are you my bad penny?" she asked.
"Only if you're mine." Sawyer settled down on the sand next to her, wincing and sighing when he was able to take his weight off of his bad hand. He stared off in the direction that Kate and Jack had disappeared in until Ana Lucia was not even sure that he realized she was still there. "Hate to break it to you, Tequila Rose," he said at long last, looking her up and down, "but if you want to pry those two apart, good luck. You wouldn't be the first." He cast his eyes over her again. "Though I'm not saying that you don't wear her look well."
Ana Lucia picked at the hem of Kate's shirt, suddenly wishing that someone else, anyone else, had offered to loan her a set of clothing. The fire jumped up, showing Ana Lucia that Sawyer's face was flushed, and not just with heat. "You sound like more than just a novice there."
When Sawyer laughed, it was a warm, throaty sound that made the air vibrate. Ana Lucia didn't think that it was real, not any more than her earlier smile had been. "Island's big," he said, but it ain't that big. Got to do something to make the time pass. Fuck," Sawyer said, the levity dropping out of his voice and leaving it bitter, bitter. "I don't' know about you, but these aren't thoughts for sober minds." He gestured towards a makeshift gourd cup that he had brought along with him. By craning her neck, Ana Lucia could see that he was not the only one. She wasn't sure that he should be calling her 'Tequila Rose'. "Have some wine. One hundred and twenty proof."
"Wine doesn't come in one hundred and twenty proof," Ana Lucia said automatically, but she took the cup that Sawyer offered to her. She tossed back a quick gulp of it, expecting…she didn't know what. Some of the alcohol that everyone on this side of the island always bitched about but never seemed to actually run out of. Even real wine, maybe.
Instead, someone had done something vile and immoral to innocent fruit and then had put it into a cup so that they could hand it out to unsuspecting bystanders. Something warm and sweet and burning, something that had probably been mangos in another life but had long since died and rotted. One startled gulp went down Ana Lucia's throat before she sputtered and gagged, starting to cough and nearly upending the cup into the sand. That probably would have been for the best.
She could hear Sawyer laughing as he rescued the cup from her, that deep rumbling sound. Ana Lucia had no doubt that he knew exactly what kind of picture he made like that, laughing and backlit by firelight. Probably why he ran his damned mouth all the time, purely as a compensation tool.
"It does if it's moonshine," Ana Lucia could hear Sawyer saying as she shook her head back and forth. That sludge could either come back up or go on down, but if remained lodged in her throat like that they were going to have words. "Steve and Larry are quite the mad scientists, turns out. Name you one fruit on this island and they've probably tried to make booze out of it over the past month. This is actually the most palatable one."
Down it was. Ana Lucia resisted the urge to spit the last few drops of "wine"-she was feeling generous enough to grant it that much-from her mouth as it settled into her stomach and began to work. That might even make the taste worth it.
"Oh, God, that's foul," Ana Lucia managed after she had gotten her breath back. She thrust out her hand. "Give me some more."
Sawyer snorted but complied. "Growing on you, is it?"
Ana Lucia took a second drink and had to fight just as hard to control her gag reflex as she had on the first. The glow, though, she thought she would keep. "If I felt like paying it a compliment I would have called it turpentine," she said after another ritual of sputtering and gasping had been completed. "But you were right about one thing: this is not a night to be sober."
Ana Lucia did not need to glance at Sawyer's face to know that he was also staring off in the direction that Jack and Kate had disappeared. "Ah, yes, the lovers' tryst." The sand beside Ana Lucia shifted as Sawyer settled back, grumbling and swearing when he put too much weight onto his bad arm. Outside of reaching out to steady him once, Ana Lucia watched without intervention or comment.
"Give it up, girl," Sawyer said once he had gotten into a comfortable position. He had clearly had more than a gulp or two of the homemade witch's brew, and in the firelight his eyes were glossy. "I already told you once, it ain't gonna happen. They have the whole star-crossed, Romeo and Juliet, bad date movie thing going. All little old workaday soldiers like you and me are going to do if we get in the middle is catch an ass full of shrapnel when it blows up in our faces." Sawyer kicked a branch that had been falling free from the fire back into the flames, his expression black.
Ana Lucia settled further back on her elbows and looked up at the stars so that she would not spend her entire night staring into the shadows just beyond the fires. "So then what are a couple of lowly soldiers supposed to do?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.
"Make do the best that we can, I expect," came Sawyer's soft reply before a warm body rolled over and half on top of hers, and a warm mouth came down on hers.
Ana Lucia was too shocked to pull back in the first second and then didn't want to by the next, as Sawyer braced himself on the elbow of his good arm and used the hand of his bad one to trace patterns through her hair and over the side of her face. He was good at this.
Ana Lucia made a soft sound from the back of her throat and fisted her hand in the front of Sawyer's shirt, going from passive receiver to active participant and kissing him back every bit as hard as he was kissing her. He was not unappreciative. One long kiss flowed into the other, fierce, until Ana Lucia's head was spinning and she thought that if they didn't break to breathe soon she was going to end the battle of wills that started whenever they were within proximity to one another simply by passing out. If this as making do, then it wasn't half bad.
"Shit," Ana Lucia said, pushing Sawyer away so that she could breathe. "Shit, shit, shit."
"What?" Sawyer's voice didn't know whether it wanted to be irritated or concerned.
It was on the tip of Ana Lucia's tongue to say "Nothing" and pull Sawyer back down on top of her. She probably would have, too, if she hadn't been buzzed and Sawyer well on his way to outright drunk, if she had not been looking and probably even smelling like her rival at that point. There was making do and then there was being a stand-in, and Ana Lucia had to draw her lines in the sand somewhere.
She pushed a little harder at Sawyer's shoulder, so that he rolled entirely off of her and back into his position by her side. "Not going to happen tonight, cowboy."
Sawyer swore and scrubbed his hand over his eyes. "Did you listen to a word I just said?"
"Your cheesy pick-up? Yeah, I heard." Ana Lucia leaned over so that she was the one on top this time and surprised them both by kissing the scowl from his face. His stubble tickled her palms as she gripped his jaw to hold him still. "Said not tonight. Didn't say never."
Sawyer made a huffing noise and scowled at her again when she released him. "There's a reason they call them the blues, Ana."
It was the first time that she could remember him calling her by her name, at least to her face. Ana Lucia had the feeling that he called her a whole lot of other things besides in private. "You still want to fight?" She barely waited for Sawyer's nod before she continued. "Then you heal up and we both sober up, and I'll teach you how to be a soldier. See if we don't both bet a little making do in then."
Sawyer's scowl broke away into a grin as he grabbed Ana Lucia's thighs and pulled her up so that she was straddling him, and never mind that they were not exactly alone on the beach. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am," he whispered up to her. Ana Lucia's hair fell down over both of their voices, creating an illusion of privacy.
It was the most difficult thing that Ana Lucia had done all day to roll away and back onto her own ground, but did it she did. She could feel Sawyer's body close beside her on the sand, warm and sure, and thought that if this was what making do was like then it wasn't so terrible.
End