"Hey, Ana." Claire's sunny smile cut through the dullness pervading her suddenly so empty shelter. "Can I sit with you in here for a bit?"
Ana glanced up at the young mother and forced a smile in response, though the Australian blonde had already moved inside without invitation and was settling herself comfortably on the ground, infant son clutched to her chest.
"Sure." Ana replied, shoving Sawyer's clothes out of the way, that he had obviously emptied out of his backpack that morning and had left strewn across the sandy floor for her to happen upon. Typical guy.
She knew that she was fisting her hands into the garments a little tighter than necessary. That she was throwing his shirts and pants into the corner with a little more force than was needed, making thudding sounds against the bamboo wall opposite. She could even sense Claire's curious gaze, studying her actions intently, scrutinizing her like Libby usually did. Perhaps the young mother had taken it upon herself to come and sit with her just to see whether the gossip was true. Had Ana-Lucia and Sawyer been fighting? Had he left her? Had she ignored him, not even said goodbye?
"I'm hiding..." Claire spoke suddenly, as if she had guessed Ana's thoughts and breaking the silence. She always seemed to know. To understand the emotions that Ana tried to hide from the other survivors so badly. It was very swiftly becoming an unnervingly common occurrence, but Claire simply grinned girlishly over at her, hushing Aaron when he whimpered and continued speaking as if she had not noticed Ana's wary glance. "…From Charlie."
"You're hiding? From Charlie?" Ana repeated, quashing her misgivings and replacing them with mild interest.
Claire was possibly the only other woman who she was on speaking terms with, besides Libby of course, though Ana found the blonde therapist's constant psychoanalysis somewhat grating. Claire's cheery nature, however, was a welcome change, even if she was beginning to show the traits of a psychologist ingrained into her by so much time spent in Libby's company.
"Yeah…" Claire replied, almost sheepishly, as if guilt made it hard for her to swallow suddenly or she was having second thoughts about ditching the Brit. "Charlie's nice, and all, but he kinda likes to take over, if you know what I mean…with Aaron."
The bluntness of her admission and the tiredness that all of a sudden dimmed her usually luminous eyes told Ana that the petite young woman had come not to satisfy the wagging tongues of the masses with whatever scandal she gleaned during her stay in the shelter, or to intrude upon her privacy. No. She had come for someone to talk to about her own problems. For some sort of support and though Ana-Lucia was puzzled as to why Claire had chosen her to talk to over the likes of Shannon and Sun and Libby, she was appreciative for the distraction from her own confusing predicament. Her own life that, at present, was left with a great emptiness in it.
"Have you tried talking to him about it?" Ana queried, her voice smooth and deep as she rested her folded arms upon drawn up knees, and Claire nodded her head. Shushing the baby in the crook of her arms when he continued to fuss.
"Sure. Tons of times. He just never gets the hint." she was fighting to keep frustration from her usually bright voice, that much Ana could tell from the way her lips tightened into a thin, compressed line. It was obviously bothering her, enough to make her so unlike her normal, bubbly self. Enough to cause her to seek out advice from a woman that she had known for less than a few weeks. A woman who had shot and almost killed one of her other companions.
"Shannon thinks that I should just tell him to go away. That I don't want him helping out anymore, but I don't want to hurt his feelings. He's one of the few friends I've got here." Claire sighed, partly from her situation and partially due to Aaron's continuing wails.
"If he's bothering you, just tell him to leave off and if he's any sort of true friend then he'll do it." Ana responded with a shrug. "If not, you're better off without him."
Claire's blue eyes searched across Ana's face intently, eyebrows quirked in concern.
"You really think?" she murmured and Ana nodded, offering her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "I guess he just feels responsible for me and Aaron. He thinks it was his fault just because he was there when we got taken."
Taken. Taken. The word triggered alarm bells in Ana's mind and she turned to Claire abruptly.
"Taken?"
"By this guy called Ethan." Claire illuminated and her effervescent gaze clouded once more. "He wasn't on the plane. No one knows where he came from, but he must've been here on the island all along." a shudder made the small woman's form shake with distaste and repressed emotions and as if he could sense his mother's distress, Aaron's cries became louder. More frantic, even as she rocked him back and forth. "I don't remember what happened to me, or how I escaped…but I do remember him…Ethan…"
She had been taken and yet she had survived to be telling the tale right now? Was it possible that more people could have survived them then? The Other's?
"How come you don't remember?" Ana queried, attempting to sound merely conversational when in fact she wanted to demand that the blonde tell her everything, every detail. That was the 'cop' still in her blood.
Claire shrugged as much as she was able to with Aaron screaming and flailing his small fists at her and Ana noted the desperate look flit through her blue eyes. Charlie had obviously been so intent on trying to help out with the new born baby, so desperate to show that he was useful and to pay penance for the situation that he perceived as his fault, that Claire had not been given the chance yet to come to terms with motherhood fully. She was floundering, where other young mothers back in civilization would have learnt enough by then to be enjoying their baby. Not that her struggle made her any less of a good mother. On the contrary, it was clear to see the love that shone in Claire's eyes every time that she beheld the little life, that she had created, in her arms and it caused emotion's so strong and so long buried within Ana-Lucia to rise up and choke her. Made her feel as if her heart had fallen down into her stomach, past her feet, through the ground and left her with a feeling of weightlessness. It made her long once more for the future that had been stolen from her by one single man.
The simple sound, even the sight of a crying baby lodged the bitter lump harder into Ana's throat as she fought against it desperately, trying to quash it. She was barely succeeding at keeping the remembrance of her father at bay, with the absence of Sawyer on top of that. It was not likely to be long before her fervent façade crumbled beneath the added strain if she allowed more of her past to come crashing back to her at that moment.
"He sounds like he's tired." Ana offered, coughing the sudden resurgence of painful memories away and trying to cover it from Claire's ever perceptive watch. Luckily, it seemed, she was too busy trying to sooth her son to acknowledge Ana's hastily brushed away grief.
"Yeah, he gets cranky when he's overly sleepy. It's just too hot out there for him to sleep properly." Claire managed to respond over the increasing noise and her own anxiousness. Her head whipped around the shelter, sending sun-bleached locks shimmering about her shoulders as she searched for something. "Erm…Could you hold him? Just for a sec while I run and get his bag? I think he needs a nappy-change and if Charlie sees me with him crying, he'll throw a proper fit and I probably won't get him back until this afternoon." she faced Ana with a pleading smile, even as Ana opened her mouth to respond that she didn't think it was such a good idea. Even as she felt the strange tingle of emotion begin again, starting in her fingertips and working it's way back up her arms until it buzzed through her entire body and made her feel slightly light headed. "I'm supposed to be hiding from him remember?"
"I'm not so sure if I'm the right person to-" she began, but Claire was already passing the bundle of screaming child across the small distance between them, cupping his soft, downy head with one hand while supporting the rest of his squirming body with her other arm.
"Just watch his head and you'll be fine. Rock him a bit and he might calm down. He just likes to show-off his 'wind-pipes' for new people." Claire slipped her hands from between Ana's careful, cradling arms and Aaron's wriggling form before sitting back on her heels and watching the other woman adjust to having a baby in her hold. "I'll be two shakes of a lambs tail!" she reassured, running her hand one last time over an angry, flushed red cheek of her baby before grinning at Ana as she shuffled back out of the shelter's entrance, disappearing into the sun. "Thanks so much!"
"No problem…" Ana called after her with a growl of sarcasm, turning her eyes down to the tiny, scrunched up face, all gums and mouth and pink skin.
He was a comforting warmth, embraced close to her for fear that she may drop him if he continued to squirm and shriek. His meagre weight, pressing down onto her chest where she cradled him in the crook of her arms. It took her breath away, snatched it from her throat and left her sitting, mouth agape, simply staring at him in the throws of his tantrum.
Tiny, shaking fingers curled and uncurled as he struck out at her, desperate for something to fist his little hands into. Something to reassure him and make him feel safe. His mouth a small, quivering 'oh' shape, tiny pink tongue curled around the sound of the deafening cries that wailed forth from him like a siren.
Ana swallowed hard, once more pushing memories and 'what if's' as far from her mind as she could. They were damaging thoughts to have and for too long in her previous life she had devoted her time and energy to wondering things that only served to keep her there, in the bowels of hurt and pain and misery.
"Hey." her voice sounded strange coming from her own throat as she soothed the child in her embrace. It sounded softer than she had allowed it to in many a year, preferring to hide that side of her, protect it from further injury, by raising a stoic front. A smokescreen of toughness and attitude that stopped anyone getting past her defences and breaking her down once more. Once bitten, Ana-Lucia was most definitely twice shy.
But then along had come Sawyer, all bravado and sarcasm and southern charm. A swagger in his stride and a smirk on his face. And all of her plans had gone to hell, just because of one single letter, addressed to one single man. It was hard to keep out the man that had suffered the same ruined childhood that she had. It was hard to fight the connection felt from a common hatred and shared goal. It was hard to turn away a kindred spirit.
There was, however, still a lot that Sawyer did not yet know about her and she would have preferred to keep it that way. She had less chance of being hurt again, the less he knew…
-Flashback-
She felt his hand press palm down, flat against the small of her back, seeking a way beneath the clinging material of her vest top. Rough fingertips met her skin there, when he succeeded in his small mission, making electricity jolt up her spine from where they touched.
Lips pressed in open-mouthed kisses against her throat, distracting her from the fact that they were out in the open, still in front of their newly built shelter. Still in view of the other survivors gathered about the large blazing fire somewhere down the beach.
"Ain't no time like the present." he had retorted to her sly question of whether or not he intended to finish what he had started that morning, and he had done so with pretended nonchalance. His eyes, though, had told her that he was not nearly as blasé about what was going to occur between them as he pretended to be and that made her grin all the wider, standing abruptly and showering him with a drift of sand.
"Shut up!" she had countered with a mock-growl as he brushed grit from his hair and squinted up at her. A grin of realisation flickered across his lips at the words that he knew she was going to say next. That he could tell that she was going to say, merely from the look in her dark eyes. "When I tell you to do something, you do it…I say move, you move…I say stop, you stop. I say get your damn ass in that shelter, you say?" she raised her eyebrows, prompting him for a response and Sawyer had never moved so fast in the entire time that she had known him.
"Yes, Ma'am!"
That had been the beginning. There had been no stopping after that remark, even if they had wanted to.
His fingers were currently smoothing across the skin showing between where her shirt ended and the top of her denim shorts began. Barely grazing the flesh that was exposed there as they moved in tandem towards the cover and privacy of their tent. Her taking blind steps backwards, him pressing forwards.
His chest was hot against hers despite the fact there were clothes in the way, separating them. Millimetres of worn, weather and work stained cotton. That was it. All that was keeping them apart and it seemed that Sawyer was intent on rectifying that terrible injustice tugging her top up and over her head.
Blue tarps swished above as they stumbled their way inside and he deposited the garment with a toss over his shoulder.
"You sure 'bout this, Chica?" he pulled away long enough to breathe and she could feel the smile curling his lips upwards, a mere hair's-breadth from her own.
"Are you?" she retorted, answering his question with one of her own and Sawyer laughed, deep in his throat, the vibrations rumbling through his chest until she silenced him, leaning up to catch his mouth with hers.
Arms curled about his neck, drawing him down and closer towards her until they could no longer stand hunched over beneath the low plastic ceiling and continue their exploration.
Sawyer pulled away enough to lock his gaze together with hers, changed from sapphire to dark, night blue with desire. A smirk somehow still managed to curl at the corner of his lips even if his breathing was harder than usual, even if he did have to pause his speech to keep it steady.
"Hold that…thought, Hot-lips."
And Ana rolled her eyes making herself comfortable upon their neatly laid out blankets as he moved to kneel before one of his many suitcases.
"Hurry up!" she growled in impatience, lying back so that she stared up at their makeshift ceiling as she listened to him rummaging through his scavenged belongings. "What are you doing?"
She heard him chuckle to himself almost and raised her head to glance over at him.
"Just takin' the necessary precautions, Sugar." he replied, concentration filling his voice and making his tone deepen to a low thrum in the air. "Although, dunno what we're gonna do when we run out..."
He finished his hunting and tossed a box towards her, putting her reflexes to the test and she just managed to catch it, wrapping her palm about it and plucking it from it's flight path through the air and twisting the blue box to read the label.
Condoms.
Ana felt her mouth run dry as Sawyer continued to mutter about how many were left and wondering aloud what they would do when they ran out. Apparently he wasn't up for 'no vow of chastity' but neither did he want to be the first new daddy on the island.
"I ain't what you'd call 'daddy-material', seeing as I never really had one myself to learn from." he laughed but Ana cut him off, tossing the box back into his waiting hands.
"Don't worry about it." she stated flippantly, pulling herself to sit upright as he settled beside her, resting on one elbow and turning to face her. She sensed his curious stare scoring into the side of her face as she busied herself with removing her boots, slowly.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked quietly, all joking and flirtation aside but Ana shrugged his question away, tugging her hair from where she had gathered it into a band at the nape of her neck.
Perhaps he knew that she was hiding something from him. That there was something that she was not quite comfortable with revealing to him just yet, but he allowed it to drop for the moment. He lt it go, relinquishing his scrutiny of her when she told him once more not to concern himself and shifted over so that she straddled his waist, grin turning wicked once more.
"Now..." she mused, voice low and alluring. "Where were we?"
-End Flashback-
"Hey, hey." she spoke again, clearing her mind of such thoughts and focusing solely upon the howling infant. "No grita el pequeño. Está bien. Su Mama estará detrás muy pronto. Tanto divulgue de un pequeño muchacho tan dulce."
The instant that the Spanish slipped from her lips, Aaron's noise eased, his tiny chin trembling as he looked up at her with wide eyes, a darker blue than his mother's, though no less stunning and Ana offered him her forefinger to keep his hands from grasping at the air desperately.
"Allí. Ése es más como él." she smiled as his hands clasped fiercely about her finger, so large in comparison to his tiny, perfectly formed digits. "So strong for such a little guy, huh?"
A chuckle from the entrance of the shelter drew Ana's smiling gaze from Aaron's suddenly contented face, eyes drooping as sleep began to wash over him and Claire grinned, bending down to watch the other woman caring for her son.
"Hey, you're a natural." she whispered, smile bright as she carefully and quietly pushed her bag, filled with the babies necessities, into the tent. "Just like Sawy-" Claire's eye widened in shock at what she had almost let slip from her mouth and she flushed furiously, settling on her knees further inside. "Oh, God, Ana. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...you know, bring him up after what happened last-"
"Forget it." Ana responded swiftly, cutting her off though doing so with a reassuring smile, even if it was slightly strained at the almost mention of the southerner's name. "So...have you decided what you're going to do about Kid Rock yet?" she changed the subject almost a swiftly as she had cut Claire off to begin with. She'd become an expert at subject shifts in awkward situations. A dab hand at it. A real pro.
"S'cuse me...who?"
She smirked, moving slowly and carefully to place the now sleeping Aaron back into the arms of his mother.
"Charlie."
-oOo-