Chapter 3, yay and it's getting longer again! Hope you like this one. More Ana-thoughts and a confrontation between Sawyer and Jack.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything Lost relater or the Waterhship Down quote that I have used in theis chapter.

Chapter 3.

Sawyer sat upon the cold stone ledge at the rear of the cave which was currently doubling as an examination table. He resisted the sarcastic urge to ask the doctor inspecting his arm if he would get a lollipop after it was all over for being a 'good boy'.

"So, Sawyer…." Jack stated, preventing the blonde haired man from making his satirical comment, as he cleaned the wound, eyes trained devoutly upon his task. "I see that you and Ana-Lucia are getting along pretty well all of a sudden. From what Michael told me about your time with them in the jungle, it sounded as if you and her were at loggerheads."

Sawyer grinned broadly, watching Jack's seemingly concentration filled face with something akin to smugness upon his own.

"What can I say? We hit it off." he chuckled at his own joke, drawing a fleeting glance from Jack's cool eyes. "Getting' jealous, Doc?" his laughter increased at the other man's expense until Jack pressed a little too hard upon his injury, making Sawyer stop abruptly with a wince and hiss of pain. "Guess I'll take that little tickle as a 'yes' then, huh?"

Jack remained silent and stoic, unwilling to reveal anymore discomfort than he already had to his patient, moving away to retrieve a fresh bandage from where he kept them in a spare suitcase.

"Just curious." he responded to Sawyer at length, though his back was turned. "I met her before we got on the plane. We had a drink together."

Sawyer's grin grew wider, though irritation tingled behind it dangerously, his eye boring holes into the back of the doctor's dark haired head.

"How nice for you, Skipper." Sawyer snorted as the other man continued to hunt through his medical supplies, no doubt stalling, not wanting to turn around and face his opponent. "And I met her in the wild." Sawyer's emphasis upon his final word served it's purpose in drawing Jack's glance from over his shoulder suddenly. "People are different in the real world, Doc. All false and covered up by tryin' to fit in with everyone else. You don't know what a person's really all about until you take society outta the equation." his eyes flashed sapphire warning at Jack, locking them together in conflict yet again and it was a long moment of stunned silence before Jack stood and drew breath to reply.

Sawyer beat him to it, however, cutting him off before he could utter a single syllable. Eyes narrowing. Voice growling with threat.

"You helped Kate make her choice a long time ago, Chief. I'm just about to help Ana make hers…You can't take this one away from me, Doctor. You can't have 'em both!"

Jack's jaw clenched behind compressed lips and it was at that moment, before he could pound out a defensive response, before Sawyer could return to making sly comments, that Kate entered the cave with the bottles of water Jack had requested and their curious exchange of words became a tension-filled silence.

-oOo-
Ana-Lucia shifted, uncomfortable with her sudden direction of thoughts and glanced about Sawyer's cobbled together shelter, desperate for some sort of distraction.

Since her most recent excursion to Sydney, she had sworn to herself that she would no longer dwell upon her memories. Her past needed to stay where it belonged. In the past, and why her mind was suddenly so intent on rehashing it all, she had no idea.

She reached out when a pile of books in the corner caught her eye as a suitable distraction, fingertips brushing lightly against the spines of them as she studied their titles and author's intently searching for one in particular.

Sawyer had horded a couple of modern titles that Ana was vaguely familiar with, even though she made a point of avoiding the chick-lit that swarmed the market now-a-days. A few kiddies novels covered in glitter and bright pictures of dragons and princesses and a pristine copy of 'Pride and Prejudice' that he obviously hadn't read yet.

Her hand wavered there for and extended heartbeat, sorely tempted to pocket the book for herself as Sawyer didn't seem particularly fond of it.

It was only when her gaze moved lower, did she notice what she had been searching for. A battered and creased orange and brown spine sporting the title in murky white lettering and she smiled, tugging it from it's place at the bottom of the stack.

"Watership Down." she murmured, flipping through the pages with a smile of remembrance firmly upon her features. She thumbed through to the place that Sawyer had book-marked with a tattered envelope. It was fairly early on in the story, still in the second of the four parts. Chapter 21. 'For El'ahrairah to Cry'.

The chapter must have meant something, must have had some significance for Sawyer to keep it book marked. The copy was battered to say the least. He had obviously read it numerous times over and yet on that first page of chapter 21, he had circled a quote making it stand out from the other above it. It leaped out from the page, demanding to be read.

"Acts of injustice done,
Between the setting and the rising sun
In history lie like bones, each one."

Her finger followed the words as she read them, her lips moved minutely, silently speaking as her brain registered what she was reading. A cold stab of steel emotion, sadness, struck deep in her chest as the very memories that she had been intent on repressing seeped into her mind. She remembered that quote…she remembered it's significance to her own past…

-Flashback-

She crouched upon the very top brown-carpeted stair, breath stilling in her chest as she strained to hear the words of her mother and aunt downstairs in the small, dingy living room. Her stuffed toy rabbit wedged beneath her arm, cuddled to her for comfort. Ana pressed her forehead into the gap between the banister spindles, her little white-knuckled fists clasping onto them as if they were her prison bars.

Her Mama was crying, sobbing and Ana could hear all to clearly, despite the fact that it was muffled as her aunt hugged her Mama desperately.

"She's got a rich husband. Lives up in L.A, I think." her aunt was saying. "That bastard was always money-grubbing." she spat, venom lacing her tone. "Apparently they were going to con her husband out of all his money and then leave for Sydney, Australia. Lie low, spend their money on a permanent vacation."

Ana-Lucia slipped silently down a few stairs in an attempt to hear her mother's reply, but it was murmured. Barely more than a whisper.

"Don't make excuses for him, Aniela! He's a bastard! Es un imbécil de tomo y lomo! He left you with four children! His children, to fend for yourself and all for a leggy blonde with fake tits and a bit of money. He deserves to rot in hell, Aniela!" her aunt's voice was furious, chopping and changing between English and Spanish. She was livid and though Ana couldn't see them from her spot on the stairs, she could picture the glare upon her Tia Lila's face. She'd had that irate stare focused upon her many times in her seven years and she shuddered, squeezing her eyes tight shut against that image. Her Papi must have done something very bad for her Tia Lila to be talking about him in such a way. She didn't even know how her aunt had gotten her information. Possibly it was because she had been dating Ana's Papi's best friend. A tall thin man who gave little Ana-Lucia the creeps and insisted that she call him 'Uncle Carlos'.

Her mother's soft voice mumbled something that Ana again couldn't make out and in response her aunt Lila sighed, her voice loosing it's harshness immediately.

"I know you loved him…no one can choose who they fall in love with, Aniela."

There was a long pause in which Ana wriggled and squirmed on the hard stair, attempting to get comfortable but also to no make any sound and alert the two women below to her presence.

"He's changed his name. Says 'Cortez' doesn't sound impressive enough…Don't waste anymore tears on him. He's not worth your time."

-End Flashback-

Ana gritted her teeth against her second less than happy memory, eyes stinging with held back tears and she glanced down at her hands, at the crumpled envelope still marking chapter 21 and the quotation that had triggered it all.

The postal stamp said Tennessee and she hazily found herself thinking that she had never been there, for a second wondering, allowing herself to mull over what it was possibly like there.

Carefully, so as not to tear the fragile letter inside, she opened it, teasing the folded paper out and straightening it upon her lap.

She knew that she shouldn't have been reading it. She knew that it belonged to Sawyer and that she was betraying both his trust and his privacy by studying the spidery blue child's writing. But it was a distraction for her. It drew her away from her tortured past. It was a way for her to escape from the torment returning to her in flashes of upset.

It did not go as planned, however. Ana-Lucia's gaze never made it past the first line. Past the first sentence and neither did she elude the reminiscences that she so desperately wanted to.

"Dear Mr. Sawyer…"

Movement directly outside the shelter startled her out of her stupor and she hurriedly stuffed the letter back inside the tattered book and tossed it back a top the pile of books.

"Sorry to keep you waitin' so long on your own, Sugar." Sawyer drawled, ducking through and into his cramped home. His ice blue eyes flitted around taking stock of his belongings before focusing upon Ana-Lucia's face. Their cool depths intent upon hers narrowed.

He remained silent and unmoving for a long, drawn out moment in which Ana's heart was in her mouth, fearing that perhaps he knew that she'd seen his letter, but years on the polive force had given her thick skin and a hard faced attitude. So, instead of sheepishly making her excuses and escaping from her current situation beneath his questioning stare, Ana tossed her ebony curls back over her shoulder and raised her face towards him. Challenging Sawyer, daring him to accuse her of her crimes.

"Doesn't it hurt, standing like that?" she queried, using his previous words, breaking the silence and also the think tension that clouded around them suddenly.

She studied him intently, waiting for his reaction. The ball was in Sawyer's court now. He could either tell her to get out, address the problem head-on, as Jack or Kate probably would and destroy their sudden camaraderie, or he could ignore what she had done and continue whatever it was that they had begun earlier that day.

He snorted finally, kicking out with the toe of a muddy boot, catching her in the thick sole of her own footwear, sending jolt running up her leg and jarring into her lower spine.

"Move over then, Fat-ass." he grinned, dimples emblazoning his cheeks as he too through her own words back at her, as she had with his. "Before I change my mind."

Ana returned his smile, more out of relief than anything, before shifting slightly to one side and slowing Sawyer his seat beside her.

For the moment, it seemed, he had decided to ignore her curiousness, but she had no doubt that it would resurface later. Which one of them would bring it up was debateable and whether they would be willing to talk about it was a different matter altogether.

-oOo-