"Swill your mouth out." he stated, thrusting his water bottle at her as she sat in the back of his shelter, to which he had dragged her, claiming 'like hell he was going to leave her alone to choke on her own blood and die in her sleep'. According to him, she could do that just as well in his tent.
She glared up at him but he ignored her dark glances and shoved the bottle into her hands, forcefully.
"Swill it out!" he demanded again and begrudgingly, with furious, jerking movements, Ana took a mouthful of the cooling liquid, swishing it around her teeth and cheeks to get rid of the sickening, copper taste of her own blood that was beginning to turn her stomach.
He knelt before her, watching her closely until he was certain that she had made a decent job of cleaning her mouth out.
"Now spit." he held a plastic cup, one that she hazily recognised from on the airplane, up to her mouth and she pinned him with a withering glare. She'd been punched in the face, she wasn't a child or completely incompetent! She could look after herself. She'd been on the police force for god's sake! If she hadn't had her mouth full at that moment, she would have laid into him. "Spit!"
Grudgingly though, she spat the water, now warm and tainted red, into the cup he held for her and he turned, opening the tarps covering the entrance to his tent and chucked the contents of the cup out onto the hard packed, trodden earth.
"I can take care of myself!" she hissed, wanting nothing more than to escape from his diligent custody. She felt like a prisoner. Like an inmate. Now she knew how it had felt for all of those men and woman and youths that she had caught during her career. She hated every minute of it. Every second!
Adrenalin still buzzed through her body, though she could feel it draining, being replaced by fatigue and the first dull throbs of pain. She knew that she'd be in agony once her body came down from 'fight-mode' and she'd suffer more the next day when the pounding headache started and the sun's heat intensified.
"I know you can, Rocky." Sawyer replied, his tone gruff as he turned his concentration to rummaging through his many bags, searching for something. Clicks and clacks of plastic, glass and metal objects ricocheting off each other sounded out around the cramped shelter until he turned back, a brown medicine bottle of iodine in his hand.
"Where d'you get that?" Ana demanded, blood still pouring down her face and making her splutter. "I though Jack had all the medical supplies?"
Sawyer gave a snort of brief amusement as he reach for one of his older shirts.
"Thought it would be handy for me to have my own supplies," he responded with a nonchalant shrug. "Seeing as how I ain't the most popular of people 'round this neighbourhood. Look's like it's payin' off now though, huh?" his blue eyes glanced up to meet hers but Ana turned away, frown darkening her gaze and she shifted as more blood trickled from her fractured nose.
"Hold still, Chica." he stated, reaching forwards to clean the wet crimson stains from her face but she batted his hands away ferociously.
"I can do it myself!" she snarled as he tried once more and again she fended him off. "I don't need your help!"
Sawyer's own eyebrows drew down into a frown and he grabbed her blood-slicked chin in his hand, turning her face back towards him a little less gently than he had intended, making her wince.
"I know you don't need my help." he replied through gritted teeth as she made to bite out another bitter comment and slap his hand away a third time. "I need to do it…just let me."
Perhaps it was the look in his eyes, pleading deep in the usually cocky shimmering blue. Perhaps it was the determination in the tone of his southern accent or perhaps it was the way he moved his hand, covered in her blood, up to caress her cheek. The first time that he had ever made such a gesture to her and the first time that she had allowed it. Whichever it was, it made Ana's fury cool somewhat, made her cast her eyes down and nod in accordance.
"Alright then." Sawyer sighed in relief, shifting on his knees in front of her and lifting her chin upwards so that she looked at him squarely once more and was in a better position for him to begin cleaning up her bloody face.
"You pulled some pretty slick moves back there." he mused, eyes intent on his task and he was suddenly aware of why it was that Jack found it so much easier to question someone when he was tending to their wounds. He had an excuse not to look her in the eyes, had an excuse to keep from glancing up at her and seeing whatever emotions must be flashing across her features. He didn't want to read hate deep in her dark irises, and that surprised him somewhat. When had he started to care if Ana-Lucia Cortez liked him or not? When had he started to want her to?
"Told you she had it coming." Ana mumbled from behind his ministrations. She felt like she was six again, sitting on her kitchen table and having her Mama clean up her face after she got into a fight with the local bully when she had told him to stop pulling on a cat's tail. "Still got my nose busted to sht though, huh?" she tried to snort in amusement sending pain blaring from her sinuses and a spray of fresh blood droplets forth across Sawyer's blue T-shirt clad chest. She swore thickly in Spanish, reaching up a hand to tentatively touch her face, but it was Sawyer's turn to bat her hand out of the way, drawing a scowl down across her face.
"Believe me, Chica, there ain't nothin' wrong with takin' a blow from Freckles there." he soothed, brushing hair back from her face where it clung in the sticky, drying mess, so that he could continue his task unhindered. "She beat up on me a coupla times. Be thankful that she never nutted you one!"
Ana reached her hand up again and clasped his wrist, staying his attention and drawing his eyes to hers immediately.
"She hit you!" she demanded incredulously, but before Sawyer could reply with a satirical remark about how he was flattered by her concern for him, Ana began talking again, cutting him off dead. "Fcking hypocrite!" she snarled, making to stand and storm back down to the caves. "Btch! I'll kill her!" she roared, but Sawyer was faster than she was, had more energy left than she did and caught her by her belt, dragging her back down to the ground.
"I'm mighty touched that you wanna go do the whole knight-in-shining-armour thing and defend my honour and all," he chuckled as she glared up at him. "But it happened a weeks ago, months even. All in the past, Princess. Time to let go."
"Get over yourself, Sawyer!" Ana snapped back, eyes narrowed bitterly. "She told me to stay away from you because I hit you. She lectured me 'bout how wrong I was. Told me that you didn't need my sht and that I should back off if I couldn't show you some sympathy!"
For a long, extended moment Sawyer's jaw hung open in disbelief. He had always known that Kate was a liar, adept at manipulating anyone and everyone, especially Jack and himself, as long as it benefited her, but he had never considered that her little 'chat' with him that evening, that her revelation of Ana's apparent betrayal of his trust, was simply her playing god once more. He had known what Kate was like and yet he had believed her every word. Again! He had lapped it up.
"Sht…" he let out a long, hissing breath, sitting back on his heels, arms dropping into his lap.
"Now will you let me go knock her out properly!" Ana queried, only half jokingly and Sawyer considered for a long time letting her go and do it. Allowing her to go pound Kate some more and about going and watching her do it!
He didn't, however, and simply sighed, turning back to cleaning his face to help him resist the temptation.
"You didn't read my letter then." he stated rather than asked, eyes once again avoiding hers and Ana-Lucia laughed loud.
"Is the correct answer! Give the man a prize!" she grinned, more amusement filtering back into her face until Sawyer dabbed the split running across the bridge of her nose, where the broken bone had breached the skin, with iodine on the shirt he was using to clean her up. "Jesus Christ!" she yelled, trying to smack his hands away as she had before but he held her firmly, cupping the back of her head to keep her still. "Don't touch it!"
She struggled against him until fatigue made her limbs too heavy to move and he continued dabbing gently at her nose until the blood flow staunched and the swelling reduced slightly. Black bruises already ringed her eyes from Kate's blow but they weren't as bad as some of the shiners that he had received in his time. Her nose was the main concern. He knew she'd feel like she'd been hit by a freight train the next morning and he hoped that Jack would give up some of his precious asprin willingly, without him having to resort to the same violence that had consumed Ana-Lucia and Kate.
"All done, Fight-Club." he announced, tossing his stained shirt into the corner and using her chin once more to twist her head from one side to the other so that he could admire his handiwork. "No one will ever notice the difference."
Ana's lips quirked up, curling at the corners into a weary smile at that.
"I owe you one, Cowboy." she grinned and Sawyer chuckled, his hand moving to smooth back her hair once more.
He knew that he should say it. Knew that she deserved an apology from him, but she shook her head as if she had read his thoughts deep within his eyes.
"You don't have to say it." she stated and for once her gaze was free from anger or teasing or scorn. "You don't want my pity. I don't want yours."
He smile at her words mirroring his own from their earlier argument.
"Fair enough, Chica." he replied with a nod and for a long moment he considered leaning forwards, moving in to catch her lips with his and show her his apology in actions instead of words. He hovered there before her, hand curled around to cup the back of her head again, lips barely a breath away from hers and she allowed it. She didn't fight him away, didn't yell at him or call him some obscene name. She simply remained still, perhaps waiting to see how far he would chance to take it. Would he take the next leap and turn their curious relationship into something more?
Time seemed to freeze around them. The sounds of night outside melting away entirely as Sawyer paused on the brink of decision.
"My Papi," Ana said suddenly, murmuring, and he could almost feel her lips grazing his, a mere centimetre of air keeping them apart. "Left my Mama when I was seven. Three years later she died of an overdose. Something as stupid as headache tablets. I went to live with my Aunt, my Tia Lila while I grew up and when I finished school, I joined the police force."
Sawyer sat back slightly, trying to keep the disappointment from showing on his features.
"My Papi killed my Mama too. Maybe not as directly as yours did." she turned away, studying the pile of books in the far corner of his tent, on one in particular that had a battered brown and orange cover and had a worn, grubby white envelope for a bookmark. "I searched for him for years. I wanted to look the man who had abandoned us and sent my Mama to an early grave, in the eyes. I wanted to kill him!"
Sawyer rubbed the back of his neck slowly, giving a weary sigh. Did she think that she needed to tell him about her past just because he had told her about his unintentionally? He had thought that she'd read his letter, that she had already known about it before he told her.
"Why are you telling me this, Sugar?" he queried, confusion quirking his eyebrows downwards and her gaze snapped back to his, suddenly bright with emotions too numerous for him to name.
"Why were you in Sydney, Sawyer?" she demanded and before he could reply she continued, answering her own question before he had even drawn breath. "You were looking for him, weren't you? Sawyer, the real one?"
"How d'you figure-"
"Because I was too!" she spat finally and Sawyer looked at her in open-mouthed shock. "My Papi's name was Roberto Miguel Cortez. He changed it when he left my Mama for that rich blonde btch in L.A." she took a deep breath and Sawyer staggered to his feet, his head swimming with what he knew she was about to say and he headed for the entrance of his shelter. "He changed his name to Robert Sawyer!"
-oOo-