CowboyswithDimples thank you for the review, 'tis my job as the writer to hopefully change your opinion on the AL front. I think she will be an effective tool in the SKATE development bear with me and you'll see where I am going with this I hope.

Chapter 7

Kate woke up first thing that morning, the discomfort of sleeping on the hatch floor causing her muscles to protest stiffly at the treatment she'd subjected them to. She turned around and looked over to the sleeping man above her. She couldn't help but smile at the way his long form hung off the end of the couch, one leg resting on the floor while the other was propped against the arm rest. He also had one arm flung above his head while the other hung limply on the floor. It always came as a surprise to her that he didn't snore, in fact he slept so quietly and peacefully she had to strain to hear him breathing and if it had not been for the consistent rise and fall of his chest she would have been worried.

She frowned at herself as she remembered yesterday, as a whole she had been far too forward, practically begging him with her body to take her into his arms and give her what they both wanted. It was something that had started on that very first trek into the jungle when she pretended not to know how to dismantle the gun she'd taken from him.

Kate sat up and observed his sleeping form a little longer. 'I'm just checking for signs of new bruising or previously undiscovered injuries from yesterday.' She told herself unconvincingly, Kate did not want to think that she actually enjoyed the freedom watching him when no one else was around, gave her.

"Morning." Croaked Jack as he shuffled into the room, with a mug of coffee in his hand, the surgeon had a limp and his face was a mélange of yellow, green, blue, and purple. 'Jesus, he looks worse than he did yesterday.' Kate thought to herself.

"Watching him sleep? I'm the one who got my face rearranged Kate." Jack joked half-heartedly. Kate suppressed the guilty feeling she felt at that remark. Shaking her head she got up and faced Jack, "You're surprisingly chipper for someone who is allegedly more deserving of my attention than Sawyer." She smiled tentatively at Jack as she walked up to him in order to examine his face. "Does it hurt much?"

"Depends what you would define as much. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would say it's at a steady 25. Tell you what we should have done, should have sent him to fight Ethan that first time when he kicked my ass." Kate shook her head at Jack's good spirits, slightly confused as to why the surgeon was joking about Sawyer like they were friends or something.

"We'll, hell Doc' if I'd known all it took was an ass whuppin' to dislodge that stick up your ass I woulda done it sooner." James quipped as he sat up with a grunt. Jack smiled at James sarcastically, "My nurse overdosed me on painkillers this morning and I am not my usual self this morning."

"Ah so, stick's still in place, huh, well, as long as you're still in pain, I'm happy." James stood up shaking his hair out of his eyes. "You sure she wasn't tryin' to put ya out of your misery permanently, you look worse than you did yesterday. 'Sides sympathy ain't Rambina's strong point, interferes with the sneer." Kate's breath hissed out and she frowned at James with annoyance. "Sawyer, enough."

James gave her a once over with his customary accompanying smirk, "Mornin' to ya too Florence, if you didn't wanna sleep on the floor you coulda hopped onto the couch with me." Kate gave him a look of genuine disgust, "Then maybe ya wouldn't be so testy this mornin'…unless you're holdin' onto Jackie boy's stick for him." He finished off this sentence with a reciprocal disgusted look at Kate before he sauntered to the bathroom.

Kate turned to Jack rolling her eyes, to her surprise Jack was actually smiling in reaction to what Sawyer had said. "He's funny, I'll give him that." Kate sighed, "Why don't you sit down on the couch Jack, you're practically high." Jack allowed himself to be led to the couch. Locke and Ana-Lucia strolled into the room both bearing mugs of coffee. "Morning Sleepyhead." Ana-Lucia said to Kate, although she sounded innocent enough, there was a challenge in her voice that Kate recognized.

"Morning Hotlips, you overdosed Jack, were you being thorough again?" Kate asked the other woman sweetly. She had to suppress a bubble of laughter when Ana-Lucia choked on her coffee and tried to cough discreetly into her mug. Locke reached over to thump her on the back, and Kate let a little giggle out as she walked past the two of them to get herself some coffee.

In the kitchen she realized she hadn't brushed her teeth yet nor washed her face, picking up her backpack she headed to the bathroom. She nearly collided with James as he pulled the door open when she reached for the handle. "Sonofa-…Damn it Freckles I got a broken rib here!"

"Sorry, I wasn't thinking." She apologized sincerely. James hadn't missed the smile on her face that had disappeared somewhere between his opening the door and their near collision a split second later. "You get your daily fix of Jacko? Is that why you're all smiles an' head in the clouds?" James couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice as he asked her this.

The unreadable mask came up like an invisible curtain on Kate's face, "Just get out of my way Sawyer, I don't have all day." Kate surprised herself at the brusqueness of her tone. 'Whatever, he goes around insulting all and sundry 24/7, so why should I feel guilty?' Although despite herself she did, 'Well he'd insulted her and Jack in almost the same breath, and flirted with Ana-Lucia… enough said.' Kate closed the door in his face with excessive force.

James walked back towards the kitchen, he poured himself a cup of coffee, took a sip, then spewed the coffee all over the sink as the hot liquid made contact with his stitches. 'Sonofabitch! This was all her fault. She blows hot and cold so much I think I'll be dead from over-exposure before she ever decides between the two of us!' James had a feeling that despite everything his fight with Jack had finally elevated him to at least a fighting chance for the fugitive's affections. He wondered if she even realized herself that she was seeing him in a less negative light. 'Probably not, selfish bitch still thinks the sun rises and sets with Jack.' James poured the remainder of the coffee down the sink in despair, his lip was throbbing and so was his rib and trying to decipher Kate's mixed signals was starting to make his headache.

When Kate went back into the computer room, she found herself alone with Jack. "Where is everybody?"

"Locke will be back in ten minutes he went to get something from outside, Sawyer and Ana-Lucia have gone back to the beach. Two of them were chattering in Spanish, did you know Sawyer spoke Spanish?" Jack shook his head then groaned in pain as the action rattled his hard-earned oasis of less pain.

"Not until last night I didn't." Kate said shortly. She'd come out of the shower intending to apologize to Sawyer and he'd bailed with Officer Sneer. 'I don't care if they flirt, I've been dying for Sawyer to focus his Southern charms on someone willing.' Even as she thought it, the hollow echo of untruth reverberated in her head.

Jack was lying back on the sofa his eyes closed, "Kate are you jealous of Ana-Lucia getting close to Sawyer?" Kate's nostrils flared at the mention of the former cop's name. "Of course not, can't think of two people better matched." She congratulated herself on how normal she'd sounded as she said this. She glanced down at Jack who seemed to have fallen asleep. She shrugged and went to sit at the computer, in an unconscious mimic of James' pose the day before she put her feet up and picked up Moll Flanders.

On the beach

James was glad to be back on the beach in the open, and more importantly out of that blasted hatch. Ana-Lucia walked up to him from the water's edge, and he gritted his teeth in frustration. The woman was relentless, grilling him all the way from the hatch to the beach with questions to test his fluency in Spanish. And when she'd realized he spoke the language better than she did, she'd began interrogating him on how he'd come to spend so much time in Latin America in order to learn to speak like that.

And now it was late afternoon and she was back to pester him about his past. 'Damn it James you and your big mouth, look at this mess now. Girl's smart she just might figure it out in time.'

"When you said you've lived in Guatemala and Panama I asked myself what would a man like Sawyer be doing there in the mid to late eighties and early nineties. Then I figured it out, Sawyer wouldn't be doing anything there but James Ford would." Ana-Lucia smiled with self-satisfaction as James kept his face studiously blank. "Drugs or prostitution I haven't narrowed it down yet." James breathed a sigh of relief, she was way off base. Ana-Lucia smiled at him, as she waved and abruptly walked away.

"Think I scared her away?" Kate asked hopefully, as she stopped in front of James. He looked down at her and braced himself for some more of her special brand of vitriol that she sometimes used on him. His rib hurt more than normal because he had gone for what he'd hoped would be a fortifying swim in the ocean. And his lip was starting to throb as the salt from the water did its job keeping the wound disinfected. He was still smarting from her hostility this morning and after a morning of harassment from Ana-Lucia he simply wasn't in the mood.

"Whatcha want, Kate?" Her eyes widened at the use of her actual name, she had really fallen out of favor with him since Lady Sneeralot had started putting the moves on her Southerner. "I just came to check on your injuries, Sawyer." Kate inwardly cringed, she hadn't meant to sound so brisk.

"Shouldn't you be checkin' up on the Doc? He needs your help more than I do." With a nod of dismissal in her direction he headed for the flap of his tent, Kate followed him inside. She didn't want to part on a bad note and his dismissal of her hurt.

"If it's all the same I'd rather take a look." James turned around in surprise and smirked, "To be thorough?" Kate nodded, recognizing the dig for what it was. He was telling her he was well aware that the comment and the context it was initially made in had bothered her more than she would care to admit.

As she leaned in to look at his lip in the fast fading light he couldn't help but notice the sun's rays crowning her head with gold. 'Great all I need is symbolism, like this damn Island isn't symbolic enough. Shakespeare would look like a charlatan in comparison to this place.'

The smell of shampoo and ocean and Kate all mingled to form an intoxicating perfume and James had to restrain himself from smelling her hair. 'Damn…here we go again.' Suddenly he felt a burning anger towards her and the more he thought about it the brighter it burned.

Kate leaned into him, bending her knees slightly as she reached forward in order to unravel the bandage Ana-Lucia had tied the night before. James grabbed her hand tightly, forcing her to stop and look at him.

"Why are you really here? Is this another trick, huh? Don't even think about lyin' to me Kate." She looked into his eyes glowing with red hot coals of anger and something else. Kate felt a thrill rushing through her blood at the affirmation his question gave her that she could still affect him in that way.

They stared at each other, James could see the internal debate going through her mind as she decided how to answer. Finally, when he was just about ready to throw her out, she replied, "I wanted to apologize for the way I treated you this morning." That was one of the reasons she was here, so technically she wasn't lying.

"Liar."

"I am not lying, Sawyer."

The use of his alias made the anger burn hotter than ever, "I don't believe you, if you really wanna apologize to me, why dontcha tell me the truth for a change? Otherwise get the hell outta ma tent and stop wastin' ma goddamn time." His grip on her wrist hadn't relaxed and Kate felt her pulse racing at the proximity between them and the thrill the blaze in his eyes gave her.

"Fine you don't believe me, ask me something else, and I'll tell you the truth. Anything you want to ask me, ask me."

James didn't even pause for a second, "What was the dream about yesterday, the one that had me strugglin' not to slap you 'cause I'd run out ideas on how to wake you?" Without flinching or blinking, Kate responded in a deadly calm voice, "It wasn't a dream it was a memory."

"Memory of what?" Kate didn't answer she simply stared at him, he slid his hand up her arm and shook it, "Memory of what Freckles?" He'd called her Freckles again! Kate was sickened by the relief she felt. She chose not to analyze this and taking a deep breath, plunged head on into the unknown territory of sharing her past.

"When I was eight years old, my stepfather built a steel cage on our farm for the dogs he wanted to keep. It was behind the barn, exposed to the elements, but hidden from view. One night he was drunk and he locked me in it and forgot about it for 3 days. My mother was away and I was trapped in it for 3 days and 4 nights. The morning of the 4th day he unlocked the cage, I was starving, dehydrated and unable to walk, luckily for me it had poured with rain the second and third day. He made me promise not tell anyone otherwise he'd put me back in the cage. When I was older it was either I let him lock me in there at night or he'd beat my Mom. That's what the nightmare was about."

The shock, horror and outrage mingled on his face surprised Kate, she'd always thought if she ever told anyone they'd say she was lying or crazy. Nothing could have prepared her for what James did next. "C'mere." He whispered, his voice husky with emotion as he pulled her into his arms and held her tight.

Like it was the most natural thing in the world, Kate melted into the embrace burying her face into his chest. She inhaled his scent and felt comforted and safe. How could someone just holding you make you feel safe? She wasn't going to analyze it she was just going to let herself be… like any other normal female in the arms of a handsome man would.

James was in shock as he tried to assimilate this horrible snapshot that was a part of Kate's life. A multitude of questions swirled angrily in his head and after he'd calmed himself down enough to control his anger at the kind of man that would do that to a little girl, he asked the one thing he needed to know. "Was this sorry excuse for a human being, Wayne?"

Kate stiffened in his arms at the mention of that name, before nodding silently into his shoulder. James nodded, then, he asked her a second question that he regretted as the words tumbled out of his mouth.

"This is the guy I remind you of?"

Kate grudgingly pulled out of his embrace, searching his face, she was shocked to see disappointment prevalent. Opening her mouth, she willed herself to say something… anything… but there were no words and both of them knew it.