A/N: So this scene depends on that last chapter happening, so please pretend it did. No, I haven't figured out how Lynn not being murdered affects all of canon forever. Please review if you read, even if it's short!

Non-explicit kismesissitude here between Amanda and Hoffman.


A Cunning Plan - The First Time - Lost

Amanda walked swiftly down through the labyrinth of hallways. She couldn't run. She needed to be calm, sedate, logical. John was his own greatest subject, and they all knew one day someone would fail their game to his cost. The mask, the cloak and dagger, the legacy, accepted this long ago. But the woman who had felt him kiss the blood bind on her arm, who had seen his eyes shining with pride for her, who knew that he had sent her away so she would not betray him, wanted to run hard into the walls, beating her fists and her head until she blinded herself with blood.

So she walked in circles and let the gaping truth freeze her blood and swallow her whole. She walked blindly down staircases and through doors, caring only slightly not to walk through doors she knew were rigged and dangerous. You'll never see him again, she said over and over, he's counting on you. You won't let him down. You can't let him down. She crouched against a wall and yanked her hair until her scalp ached and burned. His blood is your blood. Part of you died, but part of him lived.

Only now that she stepped through the splintered door over fragments of bullet-riddled glass did she realize where she had led herself. She locked eyes with the man on the seesaw, covered in fragments of his partner's flesh and blood, and shook her head. Survive him.

There were two bodies bleeding from gunshot wounds on the floor. One was still moving, a young and lean-muscled cop she'd seen on the news, whom Hoffman was looking at stonily, holding his gaze as the man bled out. Amanda's brow creased. She nudged the man's chisled shoulder with her boot. He writhed as he turned his head to get her in view. She drew her gun and trained it on his head.

"Say please," she told him quietly, as his dark face turned ashen. As the man groaned, her eyes swiveled to Hoffman. She emptied her gun into Rigg's head. Survive him, survive him, she echoed as she looked at the passionless face she hated. Then she tightened the loose strap around Hoffman's left arm, and swung herself across his knees.

Amanda, you were with Cecil the night Jill lost Gideon. You killed their child. You know it, and I know it, so do exactly as I say. Kill Lynn Denlon, or I will tell John what you did.

She read his note out loud, and held it in front of his eyes. She struck a match, set the paper ablaze, and let it crumble to ash in her hand. She blew the cinders into his face. Then she ripped the gag out of his mouth. She saw patches rubbed red around his lips, and she smiled mechanically. They would match, if she had not survived worse.

"Tell him whatever you want, Detective."

His tongue darted to the raw corners of his mouth, "So it was just you."

"We were all supposed to die," she said in a deadly whisper.

"But there were a few loose ends." his voice was so low it could barely be distinguished from the whirring of the fan. The air was thick with fresh blood. Every hunters' instinct in both of them was sharpened.

"Best laid plans." she was still kneeling on him, balanced precariously on his legs.

"You know how to tie off loose ends, Amanda," he said, after a pause. The menace in his voice was as tangible as the blood in the air. A charge seemed to surge through her as her hands clamped on his arms. He was leaning forward, straining against the straps, and she could not evade without falling backward. "Are you out of bullets?"

She did not stand to take aim. When the second passed, he would be safe, for now. When it did, he took the neck of her flimsy shirt in his teeth and drew it down over her shoulder, scraping along her skin, over the sheen of sweat from the terror of the last few hours. "Take this off," she looked at the strap on his arm, back into his eyes glinting with challenge and mockery.

Her grief was still fresh, her fear and defiance, her victory... She had always been wary of him, distrustful, jealous, afraid, aroused. He set her nerves on edge. But when she thought of him before, John had been with her. Guiding her. Protecting her.

She had not dreamed it would come down to them. But just now, she wasn't going to kill him. She loosened the belt two notches, and then left him to work himself free. She unfolded herself off him, stood, and watched him struggle with forced equanimity. Survive him... survive him...
That would have been the moment to be afraid, while he was pulling himself carefully out of his restraints. His eyes weren't on her. She got her back against a wall and forced herself to breathe slow, to think of John, to center and distill her thoughts. His blood was hers. The work would continue, and this man could not scare her away. She wasn't going anywhere.

Hoffman stood up from the wheelchair, rolled his wrists, kicked the brake and stepped down off the balance. With the shift in weight, the ragged severed neck of Eric Matthews slipped out of the chain, and he toppled off his block of ice with a sickening crunch. A week ago she would have flinched, and she knew he was waiting, watching. Stand your ground. Don't challenge. Know. He moved deliberately toward her, and she stood deliberately still, her arms determinedly loose at her sides, her chin level. Her face wasn't yet John's, all instilling silence and dispassionate perception. But his eyes would never be John's, all the life in them was gone, and all the blood in the world would not restore it. He saw her as frail, weak, what had died in him conquered what had died in her. But now they stood eye to eye, and so horribly and painfully alive, and her rouge arrogance was being harnessed and channelled, a spark and not a fracture in her brown eyes.

Amanda was beginning to judge. Hoffman was beginning to fear.

He was right in front of her. Neither of them leaned, moved their arms, opened their bodies yet. She hadn't replaced her sleeve.

"What happens now?"

He scoffed. She rolled her eyes. Amanda reemerged through the façade. Then both her hands and his went for her belt, and she slapped his away. Instead he found places on her neck, her shoulders, her face to dig his fingers into as she fumbled and he watched, making her curse, and hiss, and scratch his arms with jagged nails. Then she groped at him with the kind of open ferocity that had made him sure she would fail. He had been so sure he would be able to reach his hands into that weakness and tear her in half. He buried his fingers in her cunt and felt bone encircling his hand, felt her muscles protest, and then her lips were at his ear, mocking him "Are you out of bullets?" and he hit her hard across the mouth. She stumbled, but as she sank to the floor she began to laugh.

Then she twisted her scratched, calloused and powder-grit hand into his shirt and tore him down. Buttons ripped as he slammed her against the floor and pinned her there, his hands like a vice around her ribs. If they could forget will, he could crush her. But will was too complicated, and it was the reason their work must continue. He had threatened, and she had brought a challenge. He had to meet it.

You think you will walk away untested...

"You tell me what happens now," he growled against her, pressing his mouth to her throat.

She dragged him off her neck by his hair and sparks met sparks. She dug her nails into his face, and he forced inside her, not giving up hope that he could make her scream.

Survive him
.

Amanda leaned forward and slowly kissed her enemy with surprising gentleness. They would kill each other in the end, and she made her opening move. She nuzzled her jaw against his face, and breathed one word.

"War."