I looked over at Tommy steadily—noting the creases in the furrows between his brows as if he were worried about something—as if something were eating away at his soul. It made the ice in my stomach grow harder.

"Why don't we just quit dancing around the issue, Jude?" He asked softly as I looked back down the stone pathway at the waterfall. It's clear roaring noise drowned out the groan that escaped from my throat as he approached me from behind. I backed away from him without thinking—too afraid of the feelings that suddenly rushed along my skin—too afraid of letting him close again when he still seemed so confused himself. One of us needed to not be confused. One of us needed to be the practical one.

"What rules would you have be broken?" Tommy asked me again in a low whisper—backing me up against the stone embankment as if he were a predator stalking its prey. I didn't even look at him as I grabbed at the stone—letting the cool, hard feel of it erase the fear of having him know he still meant something to me.

"The only way that would matter, Tom, is if you were one of those people who believed that the rules were made to be broken. You are not one of those people. You never have been. Or maybe you were once and circumstance changed that, but I am not here for you to guess with. I am not here for you to use as this sounding board—for you to decide one minute that its worth breaking the rules and then the next deciding that it isn't." I stated frankly as he just peered over at me a moment before pushing away from the wall. I could see him shaking his head, and I knew he was fighting the feelings again—turning away from that major decision to take that final step. I'll be damned if I was letting him walk away from me again so I turned to walk away from him instead—shoving at a curtain of vines as Tommy grabbed me suddenly by the arm. I pulled away hard only to feel my bare toes slipping off the edge of a precipice, and I screamed as I felt Tommy slip too. The roar of the waterfall drowned out our cries as we fell, and the next thing I knew there was only darkness—cold darkness. What the hell?

Tommy…

Tommy kept his eyes closed against the ache that now spread throughout his head afraid to open his eyes—afraid that it would hurt worse. What the hell had happened? He stretched his hands outward away from his body—feeling the space to ensure that it was sound. He felt stone and grains of sand before his fingers landed on something else entirely. This object was warm—it was human. Jude. His eyes flew open as he sat up in the dim interior of what appeared to be a small cave. Shit! He leaned over Jude's prone figure—watching with relief as she opened her eyes slowly. Dear God, it was just like the two of them to end up in this kind of predicament. He groaned. Now, they just had to figure a way out.

"Wake up, Jude. Come on now, I need you to get up." He murmured as she sat up slowly next to him—allowing his arm to rest against her back for support. He sighed. He needed to go to hell for the way he felt for her sometimes—the way he treated her because of it. He shifted his attention to possible injuries instead—running his hands along her body to feel for any scrapes or wounds. She groaned.

"If you keep doing that Tommy, we're never going to get out of here." She hissed as he laughed at her wary expression. He drew back—sitting back on his heels as she managed to get herself into a sitting position.

"I always knew you'd take me to the bottom of the world and back again, Quincy. I just didn't think it would be literally." Jude stated jokingly—trying to break the tension that now filled the space. They seemed to have this knack for getting locked into places together or stuck if you're hunting for a simpler word. Remembering the day of Jude's seventeenth birthday, Tommy grinned.

"We could have least managed to get stuck somewhere with a couch." He said quietly as Jude gave him a scathing look. Oh yeah, this was going to be a long long day—at least he hoped it would only be a day. He had no intentions of ending up the extra on that show Lost. No intentions at all.