By Sinking815
August 14th, 2006
A/N: Here's that gigantic post… over two-thousand words and almost six pages and I can no longer keep my eyes open to continue. Consider this part one that leaves you with a nasty cliffhanger (sorry that's what happens when the caffeine no longer works) just like they do on Lost when it breaks over the holidays, except without that evilly long wait! I'm sure that's exactly what you all wanted to hear, err read. Anyways, here it is… Enjoy!
Chapter 16: Interrogation
So this was why they had to hurry, Kate thought bitterly. Just so she could be dragged back to her hut, tied up again, and then could listen to the four of them talk over her head as if she weren't right there, alive and breathing, in front of them. Every once in a while, Alex glanced warily over at her when comments passed between Bea and Tom or Tom and Pickett and she wanted to growl her impatience to anyone. Whatever they wanted to do with her, they may as well just do it. She was tired of this waiting.
Waiting, sitting still, doing nothing let her mind wander to places she'd rather not visit. Or at least, she wanted to control when she let it off its short leash. But this was like Chinese water torture. Drip by drip, her nightmares, her memories, everything she wanted to forget was slowly being repainted in her mind. And Kate knew from experience, no matter what she tried, distracting herself never worked—and she had tried a lot of things.
Just when her mind was starting to replay the conversation between the Marshal and the Australian security guard at the Sydney airport, the gentle murmuring stopped. That got her attention, although when she looked up to see another person in her life she wished she could just forget.
Henry smiled a particularly condescending grin down at her and Kate felt something like hatred settle in her stomach. Something cold and estranged from her normal self that had emerged only one time before in her life, leaving its deadly mark on everything in its path.
"Good morning, Katherine."
She glared a silent greeting in return.
"Not talkative today, are we?" he asked, after a tense moment of nothing but an angry green stare. He chuckled to himself. "Well, that's unfortunate because we wanted to talk to you today."
Then go ahead and talk, Kate thought. I'm a good listener.
"Jack was most helpful to us yesterday," Henry said, nodding as he spoke. "We learned a lot about him and hopefully we'll learn more in the next few days, but right now, we want to learn about you."
Kate glanced surreptitiously around at the five faces before her, trying to gauge a reaction. Tom and Pickett looked overly eager. Alex looked anxious and uncomfortable. Bea looked bored. And Henry stared at her with those cold blue eyes that seemed to bore right through her.
"We'll start off with some questions," Henry said, kneeling to try to hold her gaze.
If it was intimidation he was going for, he was going to have to try a lot harder than just staring. She had learned the easy way to win stare-downs long ago. Stop participating. Suddenly, the dirt in front of her knees was very interesting.
"How old are you?"
Like she was going to answer that.
"No? We'll come back to that one. Why were you travelling with a Marshal, Kate?"
Like she was going to answer that either.
She heard his movement as he stood back up and the silence after told her he was inhaling slowly to hold his patience in check. The Marshal had done that a lot with her.
"Kate, do not make this difficult. You know what we did yesterday and you know we're willing to do it again."
She could hear the anger he was trying and failing to suppress in the slight tremor in his voice. Maybe if she played this right, she could tease that out of him and then he'd be too frustrated to deal with her anymore. She had done that a lot with the Marshal.
"So beat me then," she snarled. "Do what you want with me. I won't talk."
As soon as she said it, she knew she had miscalculated somewhere. The tension in his face faded away into something bordering on surprise and amusement. That was never a good sign. And then he laughed and another evaluation of the faces around her further cemented her mistake in her mind. Tom and Pickett looked even more eager. Alex's anxiety bordered now on blatant fear and uneasiness. Even Bea looked somewhat entertained.
"Oh believe me, Kate," he snickered. "We know the more we mess with you, the more you'll clam up inside yourself and the harder our job will be. But we still have two of your friends just across the way and please don't make us drag them into this too."
As he talked, he walked towards her, leaning his face close enough Kate could see the pink scars from cuts he had sustained from his stay with them. She didn't flinch at his proximity even though her stomach was rolling with waves of nausea.
"How old are you?" he asked again.
She bit her lip and narrowed her eyes defiantly. Nope, still not talking.
"Pickett," Henry commanded, never dropping her gaze. "Get him."
Kate followed him out with her eyes and caught Alex staring at her, a sad expression on her face. For a split second, Kate felt her heart skip a beat, unnerved and worried, and a chill shivered its way down her spine. Kate had seen that look before three years ago, on a sergeant in a recruiting office. The look that alienated her from him. The look that told her he didn't know who she was anymore.
That look always ended in her shaking hands with an emotion that had been her constant companion ever since, and she couldn't help but feel it now.
Regret had just entered the hut.
"What do you mean you saw him?" Jack asked, trying to keep his voice low and wincing from the effort. Overnight, the sharp stabs of pain along his ribs had dulled to a constant ache, the spasms only returning if jarred or irritated by movement. Talking was considered movement apparently.
"I told ya," Sawyer whispered back. "I was zippin' up the denims and looked up and saw Muhammed with dirt all over his face like he was playin' Cowboys and Indians."
"Are you sure?"
"Now why in the hell would I make that up, Doc?" Sawyer asked, irritated and instantly on the defensive. "I made a point of getting' myself kicked out during storytime in school."
"All right, all right." Jack would have held up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender if they had not been secured behind his back. He sighed and let his head fall back to lean against the pole, ignoring the burn in his chest as he breathed in and out slowly, contemplating their next move.
"So what's next?" Sawyer voiced the question as if he had read it right out of Jack's mind.
Jack never got the chance to answer. A large shadow passed over the patch of light he had been focusing on and the space in the hut darkened ominously. The question hung in the air, forgotten.
The door swung open and Pickett strode through, circling behind Jack and bent to untie his captive. He hauled him roughly to his feet and Sawyer heard the sharp intake of breath as Jack struggled against what he could only guess was something bordering on agony. Sawyer had been in enough bar fights to know he had cracked a few ribs.
"Let's go," Pickett growled, pushing the doctor towards the still swinging door.
Jack caught Sawyer's confused stare as he stumbled past and knew the same expression was reflected back at the southerner. It was too early for another refreshment break; they couldn't have been let out more than half an hour ago.
What the hell was going on?
As Sawyer watched the door swing behind them, he muttered the one thing he always did when he didn't know what to say.
"Sonofa…"
The moment Pickett walked through the door, Kate felt all eyes turn to her, waiting for the reaction they knew would come. Pickett shoved him hard and he fell to his hands and knees, grimacing at the impact that visibly shook him. When he looked up, Kate felt her heart break cleanly in two. What had been emotional pain that she had been staring at less than twenty-four hours ago was replaced with a haunting agony she had never seen in his eyes. Not even when he had dislocated his shoulder.
Then she felt the rage and whipped her head to find Henry watching her with that same amused look on his face.
"You son of a bitch!" she yelled. "You promised Michael you wouldn't hurt us!"
Henry shook his head as if he were about to explain something complex and intricate to a three-year-old. "I did Kate. I promised that, but I assure you, I had nothing to do with this."
"Like hell you didn't!"
Her eyes darted between Henry's astonishment at her change in behavior and Jack, still braced against his fall. Her heart was racing and the familiar urge to run was making her fidget at her restraints. What had they done to him?
She watched helplessly as Pickett forced him up on his knees and it was only then Kate got a good look at exactly what had been done. His left eye was completely swollen shut, the skin around it a sickening shade of dark purple. Dried blood left a dark trail from a long gash over his right eye, eventually merging with the blood that had leaked from his split lip. The front of his shirt was speckled with drops of blood and the right side of his shirt was caked with dirt. Angry bruises glared back at her eyes from patches along his arms, making a contest out of the bruises her mother used to sport after one of Wayne's drunken rages.
"Red in the morning…"Kate bit her lip and didn't dare look him in the eye. She'd lose all control if she did that.
"When I was on your side of the island, one of your friends left me in a similar condition after I failed to answer his questions. When I came back," Henry said, pausing to make sure he had a captive audience. "Some of people weren't too happy with my treatment and decided to extract revenge when they felt it necessary. You know that saying, 'An eye for an eye', don't you Kate?"
She swallowed hard, past the anger and the hurt and the panic. She could feel herself withdrawing from the situation, trying to hide within herself as if that would make this nightmare disappear.
"Sailors take warning…"
"So about those questions, Kate…" Henry continued. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-seven," she replied, the words coming out awkward and strangled, her eyes never leaving Jack.
"Red in the morning,
Sailors take warning…"
"And why were you travelling with a Marshal, Kate?"
She saw Jack glance up and he stared incredulously at her across the room. For a second, she faltered, realizing that this interrogation was about to become more revealing than perhaps even they suspected. How long had she hid behind her past? How long had it been since he last asked her a question so similar to the one before her now?
"Red in the morning,""Why were you travelling with a marshal, Katherine?"
"Sailors take warning…"She was in a daze, feeling like her life was condensing around to this moment and she froze, uncertain and exposed. She heard Henry repeat the question, heard Tom reciting that sailor's rhyme, heard her heart pounding in her head, heard a dull thud as a boot found its mark, heard the grunt of his distress, heard the impatience in Henry's voice as he asked her again, heard the impact of the rifle against bone, heard the groan of agony ripped from his throat…
"STOP!"
And suddenly the world was still again, and they were all watching the first tears roll down her cheeks as she opened her mouth to answer.