A/N: Thank you all for the generous reviews. They make me warm and fuzzy!
This chapter is one long scene...please R & R!
Thesurvivors had grown restless.
"What happened?"
"Is the baby alive?"
"Did you see it?"
"Kate. I—We need to know what you saw. If it endangers the others we need to know. You can trust me. You're going to make it through this."
That last one was Jack. But you knew that.
She didn't speak. Not even to him. She couldn't. The pressure was building inside her and she relieved a little of it every night in her old way. There were five fresh cuts in her right side; just one more would make them identical to the old six on the left. Except these new scratches were red and blistered, the old smooth and pale against her alabaster skin. She was sitting on the beach in this way when she felt the familiar body plop down beside her.
This time, no one spoke.
"You know," said Sawyer, breaking the silence, "some of us wait patiently for our turn to get stabbed." He gestured pointedly to the white bandage on his right bicep.
At that, she got up and started to leave, but he grabbed her forearm and pulled her back down.
"Didn't mean to scare you off, Freckles," he amended, using the old moniker she hadn't heard in weeks. "Just let me take a look—" he stopped short as he pulled up the edge of her tank top and swore. "Holy shit, Freckles! What the hell are you lettin' them get infected for?" She shushed him. The noise he was making could wake the dead. "I've got a first aid kit in my tent. Come on," he offered.
"I don't need your help, Sawyer."
"Sweetness, I beg to differ." When she wouldn't budge, he lifted her into a fireman's carry and took her up the beach. She was too tired to fight back.
"Alrighty," he declared, dropping her unceremoniously into a beaten-up airline seat, but taking care to avoid her slashed hip. Taking out a small white box with the Red Cross painted across the lid, he asked, "So how long has it been since you slept?"
"You sound like Jack."
"Well I damned well do feel like him," he said jauntily, snapping on a pair of disposable latex gloves.
"Are those really necessary? It's not like you're giving me a colonoscopy," she warily inquired.
"I'm just having a little fun, Sweet cheeks. Humor me. I'm the doctor now." He smiled that disarming smile, but she wasn't swayed. Claire's baby's killer could probably smile just as innocently without a qualm.
She sighed. "Six days."
"What's six days?" he asked.
"I'm answering your question, Doctor," she answered sarcastically. "Six days since I last slept."
"Well that's a dandy. Why ain't you sleeping like a baby?" Her eyes widened and he realized his mistake. "Oh…That was awful rude of me, wasn't it, Sweetness?"
"It's okay."
"What happened out there? What did you see?" he prodded.
"You wouldn't want to know, Sawyer."
"Then how come you ain't talkin' to anybody but me?"
Good question. Just another one she didn't have an answer to. Something about him made her want to trust him, to unload on him. Contrary to all basic instincts about his character. "Okay, Sawyer. You win. What do you want?"
"I do love how you ask that question." This garnered a dirty look from Kate. "Okay, right. Not now, right, Freckles?" She nodded and he went on. "I want to know what happened to the baby."
He waited in silence.
"Oh, God…she's dead. He—he took the hatchet…" She sighed and choked back a sob. "God, Sawyer, why are you making me remember this?"
"Seems to me you're already rememberin', too much," he said, gesturing towards the side of her hip. He was patching it up now, running feather-light fingers over her skin. "So," he said, resuming the inquisition, "you're talkin' about a he. Someone from the crash?"
"No—at least I've never seen him before. The baby's unconscious. The clearing, when I had just wandered up, he took the hatchet, and then she was dead…" She stuttered here, and clasped a desperate handful of Sawyer's shirt as he leaned over to tape the gauze. He dropped the tape, his eyes locked on hers. "I ran. I could've stopped him, but I…It was so gruesome. The sound that hatchet made when he brought it down—" Tears were flowing hotly down her face now. The look of her, it almost made his armor crack. He let his guard down for one second, and he had a blubbering woman in his arms, her own thrust around his neck. She buried her face in his shoulder as he awkwardly patted her back. He wasn't so good at the comforting thing.
"You know, Sweetness, it's gettin' harder for me to be Saint Sawyer. Unless you're planning on spendin' the night, if I were you I'd get out now, while you can still resist me."
Ugh. She just wanted to punch him in the jaw. How did she ever think she could talk to him. She would never live this one down, not tough-girl Kate.
"I actually thought you were human under all that. I also thought I could stop that horrible…thing from hurting the baby. Well, as long as I'm oh for two, I think I'll try to intercept that killer and make him pay." She fingered the knife in its sheath and turned to storm off.
Sawyer laughed, making her spin to face him. "Sweetness. It's been two weeks. What makes you think he's hangin' around out there, waitin' patiently for you to come kick his ass?"
She gritted her teeth. "I see him. All the time, just through the trees there."
This really cracked him up. "Six days, Freckles. You give me six sleepless nights and I'll see whatever you want me to. You're hallucinating. Without shuteye for that long, anyone would start seein' things," he scoffed.
"Maybe. But maybe I'm crazy enough to believe myself when I see him.
"And also," she added, turning and walking briskly towards the ocean, forcing him to follow her out of sight of the rest of the survivors, "Has it ever crossed your mind that if that man wasn't on the plane when it crashed, he got here some other way? The same way he's going to get off it. And I'll be damned, Sawyer, if I'm passing up a chance to get off this island with him."
She stared up into his hard eyes. "I think I'll tag along on this little field trip of yours, Freckles. Hell, it sounds like fun."
"Um—" Her protest was silenced with his calloused thumb against her lips.
"Uh-uh-uh! Not advisable, Sweetness. Unless you want Jack to find out about these," he sneered, his hand moving to grab her right hip. She winced at the contact as the gauze pulled at her cuts. "Or those." He peeled up the left corner of her shirt and smirked. "Cute past, haven't you? Can't wait to hear all about it," he whispered, his mouth bumping her ear. She shivered at his touch. He laughed and walked back to his camp to pack.
What was it about him, she wondered, biting her lip where his hand had been moments before, that made her feel so stupid, but so alive? More alive than she was used to.