Ooo! the next part of chapter 18, Darlings! I hope you enjoy it and I hope you're all ready for the plot twist! Finally, you're all going to find out what it is!

There's going to be another part of chapter 18 too, part 3, coz this is a hella long chapter to write out all at once. Phew!

Oh and p.s. Go back and check out chapter 2, it's been altered and rewritten to get Ana more in character...I was young and naive back then and I wasn't very good at getting her in character I hope the new chapter 2 is better than the old version

Chapter 18 (part 2).

"What…what's that about Ana?" Sawyer could hear his own voice, deceptively calm in that moment, working it's way from his strangled throat. He could feel his own lips moving, as if of their own accord, to speak the query. His mind was else where, however, consumed by the fear that had resumed it's attack upon his stomach and had suddenly lodged itself, more ferociously than ever before in their arduous mission, in his chest. Right behind his heart.

He managed to swallow, clenching his jaw and attempting desperately to keep himself upright, when all his knees seemed to want to do was buckle beneath him and send him crashing to the ground. His ears buzzed, rang, chimed with the threat of passing out, the fear was that strong, making him sway slightly. The guilt that was just starting to pool deep down next to that fear, keeping it company…even if he did not know how truthful Nora Hewmot was being. Perhaps she was just intent upon panicking them. Him in particular. Why else would she mention Ana?

"What about Ana!" he demanded again, a little strength returning to his voice, though he did not know where he was finding it in that terrible heartbeat of misgiving.

Sawyer clenched his jaw a second time, teeth working against each other until the bone against bone squealed in his head. A frown darkened his brow so heavily that he felt pain explode behind one eye and yet, Nora remained silent and still, her annoying, amused, smug grin plastered over his face to the point where he wanted to slap her again, like he had back in the jungle the previous night, and wipe it from her features.

He opened his mouth, drawing breath and prepare to repeat his command a third time but her giggle stopped him short, causing him to snap his mouth shut once more.

"Did you not know, James?" her voice was that of feigned shock mixed together with pity. Her eyes, however, showed nothing but blackness. Dead to humanity. Her eyes were not human anymore. And they laughed at him. Mocked him in his moment of desperation. "Did Ana-Lucia not tell you yet?"

"Tell me what?" he growled with a sweeping shake if his blonde haired head. Reluctant to ask the question and give her what she wanted, and yet, too frantic to know the answer to care that Nora was having the time of her life torturing him so.

And Nora raised her chin, brazenly, as if she were the captor and not the prisoner, challenging him with her narrowed eyes of coal.

"Perhaps she's not as attached to you as you'd like to believe she is, James." She shrugged and shook her head almost sadly. "Perhaps she's not as attached to you as you so obviously are to her, hmmm?" there was laughter in her tone that time as she raised her eyebrows at him, smiling thinly, and Sawyer had to use all of his self control to keep from surging forwards and strangling her right then. His muscles tensed and coiled beneath his clothes and skin. Fists clenched at his side until his knuckles felt fit to pop.

"Keep talking." He managed to grind out from between his teeth. "'Fore I do something that you'll be regrettin' later…like when you ain't breathin'." He jabbed a finger in her direction with as much venom as if he were stabbing her with a knife.

Nora sighed, shifter her legs until they stretched before her and she was comfortable again, hands clasped in her lap once more.

"Three years ago, James, Ana-Lucia Cortez was shot. Four times, actually. Four times spanning her below the ribs, her upper leg, hip and pelvic bone. A miracle she survived and so on and so forth and it was that final shot, the one that caught her just to the left hand side of her pelvis, which killed her unborn embryo and, in turn, caused a cyst to form upon her left ovary." She paused, flashing a triumphant glance around at the other occupants of the room, before returning her heavy gaze to Sawyer's deadly still form, still leaning against the wall though more for support to keep himself upright now than comfort.

"The cyst came later, though," she continued. "A good few months after her accident. Eight, I think it was." She mused, raising her secured together hands to drum fingertips against her lower lip in contemplation, as if she were trying to remember the details to her story exactly. "Yes, it was definitely eight months." She nodded, pleased with herself. "The doctors, in order to save Ana-Lucia's life a second time, were forced to operate and remove the entire ovary, therefore reducing her fertility dramatically and thus her chances of becoming pregnant once more. Oh yes," she hastened to add, eyebrows raised as she nodded in small, jerking movements. "She still has one working ovary remaining. She still suffers from monthly menstruation. She even welcomes it like most women, myself included, do not. Have you ever noted that she never complains during that time?" she spoke to them all again, silently demanding that they each ask themselves that question and draw their own conclusions from their answers. "She never becomes moody or volatile. On the contrary," she flashed a smile back towards Sawyer, her main focus throughout her oration. "Whilst she is ovulating, Ana-Lucia becomes more companionable if anything, doesn't she, James? You should know. You are her current romantic entanglement? Aren't you?"

Sawyer spun on his heel, turning his back upon the woman questioning him and who apparently knew his life so well. They'd been watching then. Always they had been watching. Everything. From Ana's first conversation with him following their safe return to their companions from her side of the island, to her fight with Kate, to them combining their shelters into one and living together. They'd probably even been watching two days ago when he'd pressed her naked up against that tree on their way to the caves to hear Michael's plan for rescuing Walt…They'd seen everything and that very notion, the thought that They had planned and schemed and woven their depraved plans around his life and Ana's life and their interactions, made him feel sick to the stomach. Made him feel like he wanted to kill something…someone!

Nora was talking again, at his back, he could feel her stare, heated and sharp, boring through his shoulder blades, as if she could look through into his very thoughts.

"It is because she considers it as hope. Hope that perhaps one day she may be a mother, even thought the doctors have all warned her that it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that she will ever bare a child."

Her voice was mocking now, trying to provoke him with slights against the woman he cared for and it was working. Oh God, was it working. But his mind instead turned back to his first night with Ana-Lucia. To the words that she had spoken to him, to how she had not felt ready to tell him all this that another woman was now relaying to him.

-Flashback-

"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 let 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-

If only she had told him then. If only he had thought more of her and her well-being and less of his own physical needs…

-Flashback-

Thumbs hooked into her belt loops. Fingertips danced across the rim of her jeans, flirting with the nakedness there…until he felt it. Something different. Her perfect skin marred by something the size of his thumbnail. A little smaller maybe. So similar in size and shape to the very thing that marked his shoulder…

"What the h-?" he tried to sit up but she pushed him back with a palm forcefully against his chest, slapping his hands away from her waistband with the other.

"Don't." she warned in response, voice taut as she fended his hands away from their inspection a second time. "Just leave it, Sawyer."

"Now hang on, Chica!" he replied firmly, stubbornly, voice rising to match hers and he persisted in scrutinizing her, finding another similar mark higher on her left side. "These are damn bulle-"

She dismounted him before he could finish his sentence, pulling away from his invasive hands and searching for where he had tossed her top in the heat of the moment, settling for the nearest item of clothing, one of his plaid shirts, when she failed in her task.

"Hold on, Sugar." he soothed, reaching towards her but she shrugged him away. "Is this why you said it don't matter 'bout running outta-"

"I said 'leave it', Sawyer." she replied curtly, avoiding his gaze, and he suddenly felt as if he had been doused with a bucket of ice water. All of the heat, the fire between them waning like a flame guttering in the wind. "Maybe this was a bad idea…"

"I'm only curious, Chica." he defended hastily as she yanked the shirt over her head, raising her arms one at a time to do so and inadvertently revealing another scar to his stare. "How'd you get them?"

"Please!" she stopped mid-dress, turning to face him finally with one arm rightly inside the armhole and one still out. "Don't!"

And the look that was on her face was one that he had never before seen upon the features of Ana-Lucia. Pleading. So desperate was she for him to drop the subject that he moved towards her and nodded his head in solemn accordance.

"Alright, Chica. Easy now. I'll shut up if you want me to that bad."

-End Flashback-

He should have made her tell him. He should have persisted even if she had changed her mind about having sex with him that first time. Even if she had left him alone that night and many more in succession after that. He should have been there for her. He should have helped her to shoulder that burden that she had been carrying alone for three years. He should have fixed it for her, protected her against the sorrow like no one had protected him as a child when his Momma had been shot by his Daddy. He should have fixed it for her…

Sawyer shook his head, heavy with his racing thoughts, not even bothering to fight against the torrent of emotions coursing through him like a tempest at that time. Sorrow, anger, regret, hate, desperation…love? He didn't mind saying it now, even if it was only to himself. He loved her and he almost kicked himself for taking so long to realise it, for not telling Ana sooner. He loved her.

Perhaps that was why she had refused to tell him of her predicament. Had she thought he'd up and leave her if he knew she couldn't bear children? Well not couldn't. It was highly improbable, not impossible. Had she even thought they were that serious back then? Did she even now? Probably not after all the things that he had done to her, to keep her from this expedition and out of harms way, though that didn't change the fact that he'd loved her back then as well. He'd just been too blind and stubborn to see it. His chauvinistic side, his egotistical desire to keep her safe may well have very well put her even further into danger than if she had accompanied him. He should have trusted her and her abilities. He should have gone back with Cindy when the Island had told him to, but he hadn't, and if she died now because of him…he'd never forgive himself.

The breath choked in his gullet and if Sayid or Michael or Locke heard it, they covered their own emotions well enough and kept their features in the visage of light confusion. It really wasn't their place to comment, they knew that, and he silently thanked them for their understanding.

Nora, however, was not so honourable and descending into a fit of snorts and giggles at his reaction that made Sawyer turn to look over his shoulder like lightening and fix her with a piercing stare of incredulity.

"Ana-Lucia is not worth the time and effort it would take for us to test her and ascertain whether or not impregnation of her is plausible." She cackled as if she's just been told a joke for the first time and found it hilarious. "She would merely be a waste, especially when there are other woman, like Claire and Cindy, who are already proven to be fertile…" her eyes took on a strange light as she looked up into his face as he turned it over his shoulder, glaring at her from the corner of his blue eyes. She lowered her voice to almost nothing and yet, the words that she spoke thudded through Sawyer as if thunder had cracked out in the sky above them. "Ana-Lucia is useless to us and quite soon she shall be dead!"

-oOo-
So, what d'ay think of that then?Part 3 should be coming soon.