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Chapter 11.

She stuffed her belongings into her bag with so much force that the material almost tore apart in protest. She didn't care that her clothes would wrinkle and crease. Nor that only days prior she had cobbled together her shelter next to the caves, only to be tearing it back down at that moment. She didn't care. It hadn't taken her too much effort to throw it together to protect her from the pouring rain and cool nights. Besides, she would rebuild it, make a better one, stronger, built to last…at the beach.

She had never been one to stay where she wasn't wanted and it wasn't only her dislike of Kate and her irritation at Jack's unwavering support of the other woman that made her feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.

Sawyer had not returned from his previous night's soul-searching. She was left in limbo. A state of weightlessness. She knew neither whether he hated her or accepted her and the longer his absence went on, the less reassured she felt.

She was sick of waiting on the line. Waiting for him to collect himself and decide where she stood in his view. Whether she held sway in his life or whether that place had only been a mirage, a teasing fantasy that would never have worked out.

She waited for no man, not even Sawyer. If he couldn't make up his mind, she would remove herself from the equation. Move on and protect herself from being hurt when their paths finally did cross again. She would make up his mind for him.

She paused in her movements for a second, fingertips flying up to brush over her lips once more as they had been all morning.

He had been about to kiss her. That single thought consumed her mind, flashing around and around tauntingly, showing Ana what could have possibly been if she had just kept her mouth firmly shut. But she hadn't. Hadn't wanted to run the risk of getting found out days, weeks, months even, down the line. If she was perfectly truthful, she had wanted to safeguard herself. She'd been hurt too many times, by too many people.

"Idiota!" she hissed to herself beneath her breath, stooping to retrieve more of her scant few belongings from the ground and rolling them up into her blanket. "Stupido!" she cursed herself. It was all because of her inability to 'go with the flow' as one of her colleagues had put it so eloquently what seemed a lifetime ago…before she'd lost her job. Before she's wasted her life and ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere.

The deep throated chuckle from behind her took her by surprise, making her start and spin about, dropping her things back to the ground forgotten.

"Butter-fingers." Sawyer grinned, though it was neither overly happy or as teasing as usual. Sorrow and pain glimmered behind his blue eyes, just lurking behind his smile. A similar pain to her own, that grew and thrived inside her. She knew that his childhood had been destroyed as hers had. By the very same man. He haunted them both. He had for years as he was trying to do at the moment. His memory, his mere mention had torn them apart spectacularly before they had even come together.

Sawyer considered her cautiously, watching her closely and trying to gauge her reaction to his sudden, unexplained reappearance and he had the good grace to look nervous, shuffling and dragging a hand back through his lengthening blonde hair.

"Sorry 'bout leavin' you so long on your own, Sugar." he said suddenly, splitting open the stunned silence like lightening through a thunderous sky. His words so similar, reminiscent of those he had said to her that first day that they had embarked upon their friendship. "Had some thinkin' to do after you dropped that little bombshell on me." His eyes left her face briefly as remembrance, perhaps of where he had been and what he had done the previous night, flashed across his face and he coughed. Shuffled awkwardly again as he took in her half packed bag and semi-dismantled tent. "You goin' somewhere?" he questioned, stepping further inside suddenly and reducing the space dramatically, something akin to alarm tainting the sapphire of his gaze as it returned to meet with hers. "Little holiday maybe?"

Ana stepped backwards from him, brushing stray curls behind her ear before thrusting her hands into the back pockets of her jean-shorts. Her shoulders bobbed up and down in a fleeting shrug, deep brown eyes seeking out the well-trodden dirt floor at their feet.

"Thought it might be best for me to move down to the beach for a while. Y'know…keep outta everyone's way. I don't think I could look at Kate again without swinging for her." she hesitated, brushing at her dark hair coming loose once more and Sawyer chuckled.

"Sure, Chica. Instead of locking horns with Freckles and Jackie-Boy, makes perfect sense to go and have a try at Mohammed and Sticks, the girl you shot in the chest!" amusement thrummed in his deep tone once more, but Ana failed to see the humour. She was still very much plagued by her almost killing of the tall blonde girl, Shannon, and though she had swallowed her pride and asked their forgiveness, the pair still considered her warily whenever they chanced upon her.

"Yeah," Ana spat sarcastically. "Lets see if I can ruin anyone else's lives, huh!" her eyes narrowed, though she still avoided his gaze, scuffing the toe of her boot into the soil.

"That's not what I meant, Sugar, and you know it." he replied calmingly but before he could reply, Ana turned on her heel, retrieving her bag from the floor and resuming her furious packing of her belongings deep inside it.

"What do you want, Sawyer?" she snapped, crouched down and again he sighed, running a hand across his stubbly jaw, steeling himself for what he was about to say.

"Everyone keeps on tellin' me that we all get to start a new life on this island. Crocodile Dundee, Chief Rabbit and Freckles, Captain Falafel and Sticks…" he paused and Ana stilled her motions listening to him intently, though remaining on her knees, back turned to him. "I was hopin' we could forget about all that sht in our pasts. My daddy. Your daddy. Everything." he halted his speech again and she heard him crouching down behind her, his nearness, the heat radiating from his body making the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and stand on end. "I was hopin' we could…pick up where we left off last night. See if that 'new life' crap that they keep goin' on about is true."

She remained so quiet, so still that he thought she hadn't heard him, or was trying to ignore him. He had just moved to reach out his hand, to place it upon her shoulder and spin her around to face him when she did so of her own accord, shuffling on her knees in a way that would have been amusing had the situation not hung on what she was about to say next.

She looked at him straight, square in his face for the first time since he had entered her shelter and though he was certain that hope shone bright in his eyes, he could read nothing in hers. Not a glimpse of what she was thinking, what ran through her thoughts at his proposition.

"I dunno." she replied at length, voice smooth and slow and deep, and Sawyer nodded, pretending that that had been the answer he had expected all along, fighting the urge to kick himself for not returning to her sooner. "But we could try it."

He looked stunned at her response, as if he had not truly believed what she had just said and Ana laughed, tossing her ebony haired head and sitting back onto her heels. The sound of her amusement, it seemed, drew him out of his stupor and he replaced his blatant shock with a cocky, lop-sided smirk, bravado returning even as relief flowed through him like a current of electricity.

"Go on then, Trailer-Park." Ana demanded finally once she realised that Sawyer was too stunned to talk…or to act upon his initiative. Her smirk matched his, wide and delighted and it only grew when he quirked an eyebrow questioningly. "Thought you said you wanted to pick up where we left off? You gonna finish what you started? You got the balls to?"

Sawyer's confusion melted immediately, replaced by a deep laugh and teasing in his dancing stare.

"Hell, Girl-Fight. Didn't know you were that desperate." he snorted at her rolled eyes and muttered Spanish retort that he had no clue of the meaning. "Sure you want to get into this here? Now?" He sent his eyes scanning around her shelter, as if he thought someone was liable to leap in with a camera pointed their way at any second and Ana's smile turned wicked as she fisted her hands into the front of his crumpled blue T-shirt, drawing him closer to her with a sharp tug.

"Ain't no time like the present." she gave a blasé shrug but the remainder of her mocking remark was cut off.

Sawyer's lips descended upon hers, capturing them in a searing kiss. The kiss that they had been waiting for, albeit subconsciously for the most part, since the very first moment that they had clapped eyes upon each other, what seemed so long ago. It was very different than Ana had imagined. Hard and rough, while in the same instant smooth and hot. Unlike any kiss that she had received in her entire life and completely the opposite of the kiss that he had almost given to her last night. She didn't care, however. Her mind fell away from itself and her thoughts became insignificant, incoherent, when his tongue curled itself against the seam of her lips, coaxing them apart until all she could think about was him, mouth all fiery heat and hardness. It made her tingle all over. Made her body feel like it was trying to turn itself inside-out through her navel. It felt so good that her teeth began to ache.

Sawyer's hands fisted into the back of her vest-top, resting at the base of her spine and pulling her towards him so that they came together. Closer than they had ever been before, bodies pressed flush against each other until Ana drew back like lightening, like she'd been stung, ripping her mouth from his with a hiss of pain, half swallowed by his own lips.

He couldn't breathe enough to string together a query, instead simply raising his eyebrows in enquiry and Ana, similarly breathless, tugged up the hem of her shirt enough to reveal the foot-sized bruise, blossoming purple and blue and dark, angry crimson, emblazoning her ribs. It was where Kate had kicked her and Sawyer nodded in understanding, his pupils still large and dark with a desire that was also pooling in the pit of her own stomach.

"Lets…go get…you…to the, Doc."

-oOo-

Jack glanced up from his task at the sound of voices and footsteps echoing through the caves and into his own, designated for a makeshift hospital.

Ana-Lucia appeared around the corner, nose and face a mass of angry red, of purple and blue, swollen from the blow that had been lain upon her in yesterdays brawl. Two black eyes ringing her sockets and yet she smiled, wider than he had seen her smile since the tail-end survivors had merged together with the rest of them. Happier than she had ever been and a small part of him was regretful that he had not been the one to bring her such cheer.

She laughed, oblivious to his watch, though the man beside her, with his arm hooked around her neck loosely, was not as unaware. The man that had obviously put the smile upon her lips in such ways that Jack preferred not to contemplate.

Sawyer's blue eyes flashed at him, half warningly as they swaggered their way in tandem into the medical cave and towards Jack where he stood, hands paused halfway through rummaging in his suitcase.

"Mornin' Doc." he announced, voice loud and overly joyful. "Kept my promise, see?"

Jack didn't reply, instead turning to Ana and motioning for her to take a seat atop the same stone ledge that Sawyer had sat upon to have his arm inspected.

"How are you feeling?" he asked her immediately, touching the bridge of her nose once she had settled and she winced, jerking back from his cold fingers slightly, dark eyes flickering to Sawyer who stood silent, leaning against the cave wall, looking on intently. He offered no mocking, taunting, annoying remarks and Jack was puzzled by that.

"Like I've been hit by a truck." Ana replied, good humoured sarcasm tinting her words and Jack felt himself smiling, trying to ignore Sawyer's implicit scrutiny.

"I'm not surprised." he chuckled before continuing to examine her face. "It feels like it was a clean break. Your bones are still straight." he murmured. "I won't have to realign them and they should heal pretty much the same way they were. No knocks or bumps, hopefully."

"That's good." she responded lightly and he could sense from her voice, from the look in her eyes that her thoughts were else where. She no longer focused upon him when she was talking to him like she use to. Instead the dark depths of her irises travelled once again to the blonde man smirking as he glared into the back of Jack's head.

Jack cleared his throat, fighting back irritation at both Ana's distant attitude and Sawyer's hawk-like stare, and reached for a roll of surgical tape, biting off a strip and laying it carefully across the bridge of Ana's nose bone. She grimaced again at the pain, hissing slightly but she remained still until he had smoothed the edges down fully and pulled away.

"So…are you going to tell me what yesterday was all about? Why I'm treating you for a broken nose and bruised ribs?" he queried as he motioned for Ana to remove her shirt and she did so, lifting it over her head unabashedly, sitting in merely her black bra and she frowned, gritting her teeth.

"Maybe you should ask your girlfriend." she replied, looking up, her eyes meeting his and clashing, telling him silently that she wasn't going to talk to him about it any time soon and that she wanted him to hurry up and check her over. Apparently she had a better place to be, with more…pressing matters.

"Does that hurt?" Jack sighed in defeat, changed the subject abruptly and pressing against her ribs on either side before moving, sliding his cool hands gently over the warm, bruised skin in the centre of her torso when she replied with a negative. "Well, your ribs aren't broken. That's something at least."

"Good. Is that it?" she demanded, raising her chin and catching his gaze once more and Jack could only nod.

Sawyer had been right. He had helped Kate make her decision weeks ago and Sawyer, true to his word, had obviously aided Ana making hers. That much was blatantly obvious from the way her attention wavered, turning instead to the southerner. And though Jack felt a deep regret for what could have been between him and Ana-Lucia had Sawyer and Kate not been in the picture, she was evidently happy with her choice and he knew that he should respect that, even if it pained him to do so. Even if he knew that it would most likely end in tears for her, knowing Sawyer.

Ana tugged her shirt back over her head and hopped off the stone ledge, crossing the cave floor to the man waiting for her in a matter of heartbeats, with only a hastily muttered 'thanks' tossed back over her shoulder.

And Jack watched them go. Sawyer looping his arm back across her shoulders as she curled her own about his waist and they left, striding away without a second glance for the doctor that they left in their wake, emotions too numerous and conflicting to name careering around his chest.

He really needed to sort his head out. To understand his own feelings and what it was exactly that he wanted.

He needed to talk to Kate.

-oOo-