Don't own 'em, don't sue me. Feedback appreciated. More to follow (I think). Rated R for potty mouth and gore. Enjoy!

A Meeting of Equals, or, Haven't I Suffered Enough? By mb1017

He could hear Kyle dying, gasping into the dusty twilight, but he was most aware of his shoulder, as the pain rebounded on him and slammed down like a pile driver. He could hear Parker cursing colorfully as she got to her feet, but he momentarily could not see as he adjusted to the increased level of pain, with all his might willing his brain not to shut down. He had sunken to the ground, leaning back against rotting wood which splintered off into his shirt and into his back as he dragged himself along without seeing, into the shadows where he could not be seen.
He had rounded the bend, cursing the pain in his side and his hand and his shoulder when suddenly he was confronted with a new thing to curse.
A pair of shapely legs ending in a pair of black lizard pumps too shiny to have been in this accursed desert for long blocked his path. In the future he would have no idea why these details stuck so vividly in his mind, but he had a notion he would never recover from the shock of this turn of events. Momentarily and very literally struck dumb, he stared through a haze of pain up at the owner of the pumps and legs.
A tall, dark woman smiled rather sheepishly down on him. Either he was shrinking or she was just about as tall as Parker, he thought inanely. Already tall woman wearing heels. Damned emasculating. He mentally slapped himself and attempted to focus, but it was really no good. His field of vision was shrinking, and he felt the hard earth of the desert, hot even in the evening, spinning under him. His eyes painfully sought her face, some sign of her intentions.
"You must be Mr. Lyle," came her voice, absurdly conversational, the last thing he heard before slipping mercifully into unconsciousness.

He was a fucking mess. Barely recognizable as the well-groomed and vaguely squirrelly-looking Centre employee in the photos she had been given. She sighed as she lifted him up, her arms under his shoulders, as she tried valiantly to ignore the smell and keep his blood off of her black leather trench coat, which was new after all. Pulling him along was surprisingly easy to do; he appeared to have lost weight, and his eyes, now closed, had the hollow and bruised look of someone who has lost too much weight in too short a time.
She could hear Jarod's sobs as Kyle doubtless succumbed to his wounds. She clacked her tongue in annoyance. They both had always been such prima donnas. Goody Two-Shoes Jarod always trying to help people and Mr. Hot Shot "I Decide Who Lives Or Dies." Lah-dee-fucking-dah.
She opened the back door of the dark sedan in which she had arrived in this one-horse town and grunted as she hoisted Lyle's inert form inside, trying not to jostle him too badly. She leaned down over his shoulder, close, her dark hair brushing his face, which consequently is why she jumped up and yelped so loudly when his eyes opened suddenly.
His right hand shot up from his side and grabbed her throat. His grip was machine-like, his grey eyes cold and desperate.
"Who....what do you....who do you work for?" he finally got out, his voice strangled and hushed. Staring down into his bloodshot eyes, which she supposed had once been beautiful, she would almost have felt pity if he hadn't been crushing her larynx. And assuming she could feel pity at all. As it was, she could only stare at him, seemingly frozen even as she clawed at his arm with both her hands. His hand seemed superhuman; adrenaline, thought a detached portion of her mind. Goddamn. So this is how it's going to end. Ahh, this looks bad.
None of this showed in her face. Lyle could see only dark eyes locked on his, no emotion, no compromise. She could feel his grip begin to loosen, his momentary burst of strength beginning to cost him. His eyes broke from hers and closed, his arm dropping away from her throat. She coughed in an affronted sort of way, massaging her neck, and backed away from the car cautiously, not entirely convinced he was unconscious.
After what she deemed an appropriate interval with no sign of life from Lyle, she went to the front seat, skirting the area around Lyle as one might walk around the back of a skittish horse. She reached into a black doctor's bag for a syringe and two ampoules, one of a sedative, one of an analgesic, which she administered to Lyle quickly and efficiently.
Reassured of her safety, she again leaned over his shoulder. Through the mess of blood and loose skin, she could ascertain that the cannon had only grazed his shoulder. This she deduced from the fact that Lyle still had a shoulder. As bad as it was, it could have been much worse. Kyle's marksmanship had always been shit under pressure.
Lyle was, however, losing a fair amount of blood, which she assessed in a calculating fashion as she absently drew a sterile bandage from her bag and ripped its plastic packaging open with her teeth. She quickly applied a temporary tourniquet above the wound and mopped up some of the extra blood with gauze. Her eyes and her mind had already moved on to his hand, which was giving off a rather unmistakable smell.
She gingerly peeled off the filthy bandage, wrinkling her nose as she did so. Gangrene. Fuck. As she looked more closely, she could see that it had claimed most of what was left of his thumb, the brief, raw stump which concealed the bone. The rest of his hand still seemed untouched, which she took as a good sign. She swiftly re-bandaged his hand, made sure his head was clear of the car door, and slammed it shut. Her heels crunched gravel as she made her way around the front of the car. Ah, impromptu surgery. What Saturday night would be complete without it, her mind drawled snidely. One fine day Raines was going to pay for all of this. Schlepping herself out into this godforsaken desert, almost getting strangled by a desperate, smelly psychotic, fucking everything. Including the coat, she noted in dismay as she looked down at herself. Blood everywhere. Fucking expensive coat. New, too. Nothing gets blood out. Fucking Raines.
Lyle moaned, a pathetic sound, barely recognizable as coming from a grown human. She glanced back at him. The moonlight filtered through the window and across his face, where sweat was beading, the analgesic apparently not enough to allow him to escape his pain. She could see his eyes darting back and forth under his closed lids. No peace, awake or otherwise. She sighed. No rest for the wicked, it would appear. Not for him, and definitely not for her.
She forced herself to stop with the self pity, to start the car and get it in gear, and mostly, to tear her eyes away from Lyle's face. He was, she had to admit, rather handsome, in that aforementioned squirrelly way. Boyish. Almost, and she laughed at the very thought, innocent. Don't be fooled by his pathetic exterior, Raines had half wheezed, half croaked at her, his blue eyes sharp and clear in his withering body. He can be disarming. But make no mistake about what you are dealing with. And she had smiled and turned on her heel and left the Centre. Don't you worry about me.
Of course, there was the fact that he was a sociopath.
Labels, she mused to herself as she pulled the car onto the barely paved, dusty road back to civilization. Always hated 'em. She and Lyle had been identified as and categorized under many of the same labels, by many of the same people. Thief. Rat. Con artist. Sociopath. She grinned. She was rather looking forward to Lyle regaining consciousness. This was going to be fun.

When Lyle woke up, the first thing he noticed was that he no longer smelled as though he had died several weeks ago.
Am I dead? he wondered, only half concerned with the answer. He tried to open his eyes but could not – it felt impossible, as though he were trying to keep his eyes open underwater, something he had never learned to do, had never liked the feeling of.
He listened instead, and he felt. He had been taught long ago: use all your senses if you want to survive. Do not rely on only one. They can take anything away from you. And they will.
Lyle could feel cool air on his face – a window was open somewhere. He tried to move his right arm. His fingers twitched, but his hand stayed put. I'm drugged, he thought. Body not working. Shit.
Beyond that, he was not particularly aware of pain. His entire body throbbed with an indefinable, not quite pleasant sensation, unmistakably drug-induced. He could not feel anything at all from his left shoulder down. And he panicked. He wanted to scream; he tried to scream. He could not. His voice was just as useless as the rest of his body, trapped in his throat like a frightened animal. His body was immobile, so his mind raced, faster than it possibly could have had he been fully awake. He was drugged. Where am I? How did I get here? Who drugged me?
Oh yeah.
Black pumps. Nice legs. Very tall. Dark hair, dark eyes, very pale, freckled skin. Not Parker, though. Who, then? Never seen her before. Makes no sense. Can't feel my arm at all. Shit. You're not careful, you could lose the whole hand. Fucking smug Jarod. Pretty sure Jarod doesn't own pumps. Almost strangled her. Probably didn't endear myself to her doing that. Fuck. Who the fuck is she? What does she want? Who does she work for? The Centre? Maybe. Probably. Really though. Fuck.
"Summertime, and the living is easy..."
Lyle's mind froze mid-thought. Soft, high voice, a woman's. Ever so slightly off key. This is too strange, even for my dreams. Besides, I hate Gershwin.
"Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high..."
No fucking way. And I definitely don't know all the words to this song.
"Oh, your daddy's rich and your mama's good lookin' so hush little baby now don't you cry..."
Lyle channeled Sydney and tried to discern a meaning. None was forthcoming.
"One of these mornin's you're gonna rise up singin'...All right, you're set for now."
No. No. Definitely hearing things. Drugged. But aware. Lyle vaguely recalled a Dateline special about patients who underwent surgery in horrible pain but under just enough anesthesia to be unable to call out to the doctors to stop them. Fuck. Panic. Fuck.
           "Then you'll spread your wings and take to the sky... well that was awfully fucking messy, Mr. Lyle. Coulda lost that hand."
Coulda. Meaning, didn't?
"But til that mornin' ain't nothin' can harm you with your daddy and your mammy standin' by... Well, Mr. Lyle, unfortunately for you that isn't true. For any of us, really. Quite a crock of shit, actually. Pretty, though. I love Gershwin. And he didn't write the words."
Oh. God. What kind of sick fuck would sing Gershwin while operating? I am in the clutches of a bona fide fucking psychopath. And I can't move. Fuck fuck fuck.

She was really rather pleased, considering the circumstances. Lyle was resting comfortably, his breath even and steady, his left arm bandaged and in a sling. She hummed "I Loves You Porgy" under her breath as she tidied her make-shift operating room, smiling slightly as she was wont to do, more out of habit than of intention. Satisfied, she sat in a straight- backed wooden chair beside the bed, one leg tucked under her, surveying her work.
Lyle was now shirtless, and she noted several other scars than the ones she had just helped to create. She had stitched the knife wound Kyle had left in his side, but she noticed other scars, faded white and sinister, on his chest and stomach, his arms, his back.
She touched his ribs gently – she could count them. His torso was not muscular, just thin; his strength appeared to be in his arms. And his hands, she mused ruefully, rubbing her neck self-consciously. That'll leave a bruise. Fucking Lyle.
His body was not the body of someone who worked out for aesthetic purposes, or to impress anyone. His body was a testament to survival, only that, and nothing extra. She had to admit that she found that beautiful. She found him beautiful, in a way she uniquely understood, a survivor herself. Not as a necessarily emotional or sexual object, but beautiful as art is beautiful – a creation, an improbability brought forth by a singular intellect. She beheld him, a fellow artist appreciating an equal talent.
As she watched, he began to wake, slowly, as a child wakes, in fits and starts. His eyes were open, and they were watching her. She could not read his expression.
She waited, keeping a respectful distance, mindful of the fact that she had not restrained him in anyway. She had not expected the effects of the sedative and his exhaustion to wear off so soon.
"Who are you?" he asked softly, to his credit only slurring the words slightly.
"I've come to bring you back," she said simply. His eyes closed briefly, then returned to her face, appraising, calculating even as the drugs still held him.
"Are you in any pain?" she asked, her face not changing, never changing expression, always the same slight smile. He watched her a moment, then shook his head slowly.
"Who sent you?" Her smile deepened, her lips parting to reveal slightly uneven teeth. Like fangs, she always liked to think.
"Quite a few people, actually. But I'm here on my own behalf now." She paused, gauging his reaction. She got none. "We'll talk when you're feeling better. I spent the better part of four hours cleaning you up, and I'm going to bed. I will see you in the morning." She rose from the chair and pulled the covers up a bit further, to the middle of his chest, immediately a little embarrassed by the mindless, maternal gesture. He was close enough to grab her again; in fact he was eyeing her neck intently, but again she could not read his expression.
"You're not going to cuff me?" he asked abruptly.
"That's a little pathetic, don't you think?" she smirked at him, glancing at his bandaged arm but already reaching for the cuffs from behind her back. She thought she saw the hint of a smile before she clapped one cuff down on his right ankle, one to the foot of the bed. His eyes never left her; she began to fancy that he was a little afraid of her. Her smile remained in place; that was one part of the job she would never tire of. Satisfied that to escape would require more strength than he had, and considering that he was in no danger until the morning, she felt his body begin to relax as her hand lingered on his ankle, saw his head lean into the pillow.
"Good night, Mr. Lyle," she said softly.
"Good night," he echoed, even more softly, his eyes on hers, an injured, cornered predator eyeing its healthy rival. She nodded slightly before turning her back on him and leaving the room. She was aware of a rather silly grin spreading, unstoppable, over her face.
This was even better than Raines had suggested. He was more complicated, and perhaps more dangerous, than those who had sent her to find him believed or imagined. This would be the beginning of a partnership, a meeting of equals. Now, all she had to do was tell Lyle.