He knew how to hunt.
The mechanics were simple really. Make your smell fit into the environment. Train each step to roll smoothly from toe to heel to minimize your sound. Make your eyes look for the thing that doesn't belong, the curves and angles that say something is more than a rock or tree or a mere patch of shadows. Force yourself to ignore the passage of time, the discomfort of sweat and insect bites; the endless background chatter of the mind. Never stare directly at prey or turn your back to a predator. And always, always, once you started, finish a kill.
Simple. Proven.
And, seeing her, utter and completely artificial.
He knew how to hunt. She was the hunt.
His vision darkened and sparkled at the edges and realized he had been holding his breath. Carefully, slowly, he eased it out, waited, and then drew it back in again. The muscles in his thighs began to clench warningly, but he didn't dare shift even the slightest to relieve them for fear even the smallest motion would draw her suspicion.
And the deadly point of her rifle.
The hot, damp air stirred the jungle fitfully around them and she paused, ever the wild thing, eyes fiercely intense as they studied the shifting darkness beneath the canopy. Her long tangled hair was sticking against the sweat and filth of her sharply planed face and fell in mats. The ragged remains of her sweater had slid down again, baring one smooth shoulder, and he wondered curiously why she bothered to keep it. The dark tank clung to her breasts, soaked with the island's humidity and her own efforts. Her worn and painstakingly repaired cargos were stained and wet from the heavy undergrowth's foliage, their pockets, he knew from grimly amusing past experience, held several handfuls of cartridges. Her old kukri machete was belted at her hip and she held the rifle at the ready, half-way between an instinctual cradle and battle-stance, its sling with its slotted cartridges over her shoulder.
The air stirred again and then died away.
And very slowly, her eyes narrowed. Her nail torn fingers gripped the rifle tighter.
"Qui etes-vous?"
He held utterly still.
"Speak!" She demanded, scanning the foliage, the trees, the shadows, searching relentlessly. Her chin lifted defiantly. "I know you are there!" Sole-worn, patched boots shifted into readiness to attack.
As beautiful as the island. And as deadly when provoked.
He smiled and slowly stood, raising his hands to show his intent.
Instantly, her rifle point swung and centered on him.
Her eyes narrowed even further. "You! I know you—Monsieur Locke!"
He inclined his head. "You remembered."
She hissed angrily. "Why were you watching me? What do you want?"
"Mind if we sit down and talk?"
Her eyes glittered distrustfully. "Yes."
"I just want to talk."
Her mouth hardened bitterly. "You lie."
"Maybe. Maybe not."
"Je ne suis aucun jouet." Her eyes became slits. "What game are you playing?"
"No game."
"I do not believe you."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes!" But her head tilted in a mannerism he had seen before and she shifted uncertainly, gripping the rifle tighter.
"What if we do something else?"
She stilled. "Something . . . else?"
He nodded at her rifle. "We could go hunting together."
"Hunting?"
"Yes."
Her dark scrutiny was deeply suspicious. And, to his pleasure he saw, also faintly . . . curious. "And what will we hunt? The bears? Boar?"
"The Others?" he asked, deliberately.
She bristled and edged away from him, her eyes wide and staring at him in horror. She hissed French at him before snapping: "Run from them, yes, hide from them, yes, but to deliberately draw their attention is—is madness! You do not hunt the Others!"
"But you do."
She snarled suddenly at him. "What do you know of what I do?"
He smiled and shrugged. "Then I guess that brings us back to talking, doesn't it?"
She scowled at him darkly.
He arched an eyebrow back. "Or picking flowers."
Her brow wrinkled. "Fleurs?"
He smiled. "For your hair."
Unconsciously, she touched a tangled mat with calloused fingertips. Then her eyes refocused and her face hardened. "You are mocking me." Her trigger finger tensed.
He sobered and met her eyes unflinchingly. "Never," he said quietly.
Unexpectedly, she flushed and looked away. Her head lowered. "What do you want to know, Monsieur Locke?" She looked suddenly tired. "More food sources for your people?" Her gaze met his and sharpened angrily. "More of my supplies you want to waste for some new foolhardy scheme?"
"How about your favorite color?"
She stared at him a long moment and then shook her head. "And they I am insane." She turned and began moving back into the jungle.
It took all of his hunter's control to stand there, waiting.
She stopped beside a tree and began to trace the labyrinthine twisting of the vines that clung chokingly around it with light caresses. "Why?"
He walked slowly to join her and leaned against the tree. He smiled softly. "That's not a color."
She looked at him. And then ever so slightly, her battle-worn face gentled. He found the effect unbelievably stirring.
"Yellow."
His eyebrows lifted. "A symbolically conflicted color throughout history."
A shadow fell across her eyes and a darkly bitter amusement slowly turned the corner of her mouth. "Yes."
"And yet, you still choose it."
She withdrew her hand from the vine. "Philosophy."
"Observation."
She tilted her head, studying him from behind the tangle of her hair as she would a place she intended to build one of her traps. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "You want something of me."
"I do."
Suspicion returned to her face. "What?"
He shrugged and pushed off from the tree and began walking slowly through the moisture laden undergrowth. "Patience is a virtue."
"Peut-etre la vertu est surestimee." She scowled and followed him warily. "Are you encouraging me to shoot you, Monsieur Locke?"
"It's a sign of intelligence, you know."
She arched an eyebrow dryly. "Accuracy?"
He snorted and glanced back to watch the way she moved through the jungle; almost animal-like, and dangerously mesmerizing with its natural ease. "Curiosity."
She made a disapproving noise. "I would have thought the island had already taught you better."
He chuckled. "I'm a slow learner."
"We will see."
They walked silently together through the island, slowly falling into a gradual rhythm of mutual stalking that was half dance and half battle readiness in one endless movement. He found himself becoming more aware of the jungle, of himself, of her, than he ever had before, and with it, an easing.
And for the first time, he didn't remember how to hunt.
He simply hunted.
And the island ever so slightly, ever so quietly, changed. The heavy overhead canopy which before he had always found vaguely oppressing, took on a surreal quality, curtaining their world in random shafts of shifting shadows and momentary brilliant shafts of sunlight that played with the eye. Great twisting vines crawled serpentine up massive trees that looked so unlike anything he had once known as to make the hidden corners of his mind shiver and seem to remember darker, more primordial times. And everywhere there was layer upon layer of greens, so many, in fact, that he almost forgot that there were other colors in existence. The wind stirred and the island responded, the rhythmic sway of branches, leaves, and thick grasses both soothed and caught the attention. His skin and clothes grew damp and heavy and every breath he took seemed to fill him with a damp rich decay that smelled of earth and some exotic scent he found intimately familiar and curiously alien all at the same time. His ears caught all the minute sounds, the leafy sighing of the canopy above, the rustling around them of insects and animal life . . . the teasing, shivering edge of whispers that brushed across the mind in one instant and were gone the next.
He began to watch her.
She moved like a wraith, slipping like a living shadow through the jungle with animal ease, fluidly shifting shoulders or hips to slide past the thick vegetation without disturbing even the most delicate of developing leaves, the echo of her passage almost entirely unseen to all save the most experienced eyes. Her restless gaze swept over everything in smooth arcs, from the deepest shadows of the canopy above to the black wells hiding amongst the twisted roots, and she cradled her rifle easily.
His eyes took in her sweat slick filthy skin, her ragged and worn clothes, the impossible tangle of her thick chestnut hair, the look of intense being on her sharp featured face, and he suddenly smiled as all the hidden hours of watching her, of tracking her, of studying her, all unfolded abruptly in his mind in perfect, beautiful clarity. He stopped.
"You belong to the island."
She turned sharply then, her blue eyes flaring in anger and in a moment's breath, she was standing so close to him, he could feel the heat of her skin.
"The island has caged me, tormented me, threatened to kill me, but, Monsieur Locke, it will never own me."
"Is that denial?"
"It is defiance."
"Even they can see your connection with the island."
A sudden fear flickered in her eyes.
"You are a part of the island."
Her shoulders eased but she studied him with wary intent eyes. "Yes," she said absently, "I am a part of the island." Very slowly she tilted her head and calloused fingers absently stroked the rifle. "Tell me, Monsieur Locke," she said softly, "what part do you think I am?"
He resisted the urge to edge back and instead crossed his arms and deliberately leaned against the nearest tree. And smiled casually. "You said you were a scientist."
She inclined her head very slowly. "I was."
"On your way to Tahiti."
"When we heard the transmission and altered course to investigate."
"And became shipwrecked on the island."
"Yes."
"Where your team became sick. And you killed them."
Her eyes became agonized. "Yes."
"And after your child, Alex, was born, the Others came and took her."
She closed her eyes. "Yes."
"And you've survived since, here, on the island."
"Yes." She said softly.
He studied her quietly a long time then shook his head. "I think it is you, Madame Rousseau, who is lying."
Her head snapped up and her eyes narrowed instantly. "Is that so?"
He nodded. "Yes."
Her grip on the rifle tightened until her knuckles were bone white. "The others of your crash-"
"Most of them think you're simply insane."
Her blue eyes grew pained.
"A few of us . . . suspect . . . other."
Her dark lashes widened in surprise and she stared at him intently. "You . . . you do not think I am insane?"
"At first I did. Then, after the hatch, after what happened on the raft, what happened to Walt, I began rethinking a few things."
An unease moved across her face and her eyes narrowed. "What things?"
He held up fingers. "Three, shall we say, discrepancies in your story."
"What three?" she asked quietly, eyes glinting dangerously.
"One, you and Robert were mentioned in the orientation I watched in the hatch."
She inhaled. "It . . . it was not destroyed?"
"Two, the transmission."
Confusion marked her forehead. "The transmission?"
"You said you had to kill the other members of your team because they had gotten sick."
She nodded slowly.
"You said you had no choice, because you couldn't risk them getting off the island."
Again she nodded, though even more slowly.
"Yet the transmission you sent pleaded for rescue."
She stared at him.
He lifted an eyebrow.
She swallowed and looked away. "What . . . what is the third?"
"Sayid."
She blinked and looked back at him, confused again. "What of him?"
"I followed the wire from the beach."
Her face stilled. "And?"
"I found the carcass of the boar hanging in the trap Sayid triggered, the place where he lost consciousness."
"And?"
"There is some distance between that place and what is left of your dug bunker."
Her eyes narrowed. "So?"
He let his eyes study her openly. "You are a strong woman, Madame Rousseau." His gaze locked with hers suddenly. "Maybe as strong as Ethan was?"
She paled then flushed furiously. She flung herself back, swinging her rifle up in the same violent motion, and aimed.
He hadn't so much as moved a muscle and merely smiled at the business end of the weapon.
She hesitated, staring at him in open disbelief. "Why do you not run?"
He shrugged. "Why should I? You aren't going to kill me."
Her eyes became deadly slits. "Why not?"
"Because I haven't told anyone what I told you."
Caught off-guard, her eyes widened. "You . . . ." the rifle wavered, "you have not told them these things?"
He shook his head.
She lowered the rifle entirely, confused. "But . . . but why?"
"Because as much as I've found the discrepancies, I still don't have the rest."
"The . . . rest?"
"All the truths. All the secrets." He looked at her steadily, challengingly. "I believe you know them."
She stared at him, trembling so hard that she could barely hold her rifle or stand upright. Horror, fear, guilt and relief all warred across her face. Great tears filled her tormented eyes and fell unchecked over her dirt-smeared skin. "No," she whispered, shaking the matted tangles of her dark hair, "you do not know what you ask!"
"I want to know the truth."
A terrible bitter amusement crossed her mouth and her lips twisted. "La curiosite a tue le chat, Monsieur Locke." Then remembered agony flared
again in her eyes and she sagged, collapsing in on her self until she huddled on the jungle floor, clutching her rifle in a death grip. Her eyes unfocused and she stared into empty space in utter grief. Her filthy hair fell forward, covering her face. "Some truths . . . some truths we are not meant to know." She whispered.
He wanted to rage. To lash out, to make her tell him. His fists clenched and every muscle in his entire body seemed about to convulse with barely restrained fury. His breathing grew harsh and sweat stood out across his skin.
Then the island wind stirred softly, caressing her tangled hair, and everything simply fell away.
He touched her, hesitantly, ever so gently, and when she flinched and looked up, as startled and suddenly fearfully wary as a wild thing, he smiled soothingly and made calming murmurs until ever so slowly, he eased her into his arms. He stroked her hair and sighed.
"I am sorry, Pandora." He looked sadly at the suddenly terrible beauty of the island around them. "It wasn't supposed to be like this, I think."
"No," she whispered, leaning heavily against him, "it was not."
He looked down at her and smiled teasingly. "I'm going to carve you a comb."
She blinked, stared up at him, and then, unexpectedly, laughed. It was such a pure delighted sound; that it instantly made him laugh right back.
And then kiss her.
When they pulled back, breathing harder, she smiled shyly. "Pink," she said softly.
Puzzled, he tilted his head.
She looked down, fiddling nervously with her rifle. "Before . . . before the island . . . my favorite color was pink."
He caught her sharp chin and lifted it, so he could see her impossibly expressive eyes. He stroked the dirty skin of her face ever so lightly with his thumb and smiled.