By Sinking815
September 9th, 2006
A/N: Real short note, 'cuz then I gotta call it a night. School tomorrow. Bright and early. This chapter took a while to get up partly because of my crazy schedule and partly because I really needed to be in the mood to start it. Hopefully, it was worth the wait! As always, please read and review!
Chapter 26: Insomnia
It was one of those moments where the world stops spinning and everyone is powerless to the lapse of time that keeps ticking steadily and evenly through the bewilderment she saw reflected on the three other faces around her. Where for a second everyone inhaled sharply and held their breath, as if in a contest to see who could out do who, to see who would be the first to melt out of that frozen trance.
He was the one to thaw the fastest and before Kate could play mediator again, his gun was pulled, the safety clicked off, his even and strangled accent ordering the other girl to put her hands up where he could see them, warning her not to challenge his aim by reaching for the rifle strapped across her back. Sayid had decided to take control of the situation and she was too stunned to argue back. They all were.
Alex did as she was told, her eyes switching back and forth between Kate and Sayid, back and forth between pleas for help and wide-eyed fear. The unprofessional reaction was Kate's final piece of evidence that her first instincts about Rousseau's daughter had been right. This girl was merely a pawn in the Other's game and chances were that she was being played just as they were themselves.
"Sawyer," Sayid's tense voice whispered, the urgency slicing through the fog lifting slowly from everyone's minds. "Get the gun."
The southerner moved forward, for once taking a command on the first order instead of questioning or commenting some snide remark. Alex started to hand it over, clearly wanting to avoid any more confrontation that hadn't been necessary until this point, but the flash of moonlight of the metal of the 9-millimeter in the soldier's hands made her stop.
"Do. Not. Move."
She swallowed and nodded her understanding, slowly raising her hands, palms out and open, adopting her defensive and vulnerable stance from before. Only her eyes shifted to Sawyer's hands, gently, shakingly, lifting the strap from her chest and pulling it over the shorter girl's head. He backed away slowly, twisting the extra strap around his right arm, his own hands finding their grip on the long narrow barrel and the wooden shoulder support.
Kate watched, swallowing past a breath stuck between her vocal cords, and something inside her knew that Sawyer wouldn't add to the threatening situation. He knew, just as well as she did, that the teenager before them was probably the biggest ally they'd have tonight if they were going to make this rescue attempt successful.
"You will tell us…" Sayid's harsh tone broke throught the stillness once again. It was like he was refusing to the void to grow too large, as if its immensity might somehow betray them all. As he spoke, Kate felt the tension winding tighter and tighter, the consequences creeping closer from the shadows around them and knew they were on the verge of pushing their luck. Any moment, someone could walk across the yard, to check on their missing comrade, to check the prisoners, to do whatever. All it would take was one glance and then their advantage would be lost to the night forever.
"Sayid," Kate cut in, her voice firm and soothing for the wired soldier and nervous girl's sakes. She turned her attention Alex when the Iraqi lowered his gun to a less intimidating height. Instead of pointing straight towards the girl's head, it was closer to her upper legs, still capable of lethal danger but not so noticeable as to command all her attention.
"Alex," she said evenly, her green eyes only finding the girl's after her name had been voiced. "Please don't try to stop us. We don't want any trouble."
"I… I…" Alex stammered. She looked to Kate like that black horse she had seen a few weeks before in the jungle. Watchful, knowing, but nervous and ready to bolt the second came too close. So Kate approached her steadily, her hands outstretched, her footsteps quiet, as she tried to work her bewildered mind around the moment.
"Alex," Kate said again, trying to focus her inattention. "We know Jack never left. Where is he?"
"I was…" Alex glanced warily back at Sayid, captivated by the newcomer's presence, before turning completely back to Kate. "I was just coming to get you. I found him in the stockhut when Henry sent me for…"
Her voice trailed off and she flinched when Kate gently touched her shoulder even though she had watched her approach. Then panic glazed her blue eyes, reflecting brightly in the moonlight, and Kate swore she heard the girl's heart beating in rapid cadence.
"I had no clue he was still here," she stammered, stumbling over her words in the rush to clear her name. "Henry and Bea must have…"
"Henry." Sayid repeated the name with a distaste that made Kate's own stomach twist with uneasiness. Surely revenge was not something they taught excessively in the Republican Guard. She chanced a look over to him and sighed slightly when she took stock that his stance had not changed.
"Hey Tootsie Roll," Sawyer whispered fiercely. "We ain't gonna hurt ya, so just cool your heels…"
"Sawyer," Kate warned, the tone pleading with him for cooperation. He tossed his hair away from his face, holding his chin at angle that told her he wasn't happy about being reprimanded but he understood.
"Can you take us there?" she said to Alex, giving her shoulder an easy squeeze.
Alex nodded violently, and spun out of Kate's grasp. She headed toward the far end of the compound, the edge closest to the jungle and surprisingly the river, her stride barely controlled to what could still be considered a walk. The irony hit Kate as she followed the teenager, hearing the other's footsteps fall in sync behind her. She'd been closer to Jack earlier that afternoon when her eyes were desperately staring into the dense jungle, her mind irrationally hoping and wishing for a chance of his silhouette to be standing just past the vines and tangle of foliage. As if he were still waiting for her, watching over her. Instead, she'd walked by him. Just as she had done many times before.
"Are we going to let her know we still have him?"
Tom looked inquisitively at Henry and then shifted his gaze to Bea when he didn't receive an answer right away. The woman just barely shrugged to show her own lack of knowledge, the only betrayal of her interest in his question. For a brief moment of unreasonable jealousy, Tom wished he had her control. He couldn't remember a time when her tongue had gotten the better of her and earned the evil eye from the Boss. She always knew just what to say and just how to handle every situation thrown at them. And she did it all with a grace he knew he'd never have.
"Not yet," Henry said. He was staring at three charts on an illuminated board, his eyes intense with engrossed focus, searching the multitude of figures as if the answer to his dilemma was somewhere written on the pages of reports. As if all he had to do was recognize the pieces to be fit into the puzzle's borders and then his solution would just appear.
But he knew it was never that easy and he couldn't help the feeling that he was backed between a rock and a hard place for the first time in his career here. The next step in this experiment if one wanted to call it that, was very tricky and very crucial to the success of the whole design. He knew that one wrong move on his part, or anyone's for that matter, one push that shoved a little too hard, one word that went over the wrong way, one instance of carelessness that left too many doors open to be peeked through, could and would destroy everything they had worked so hard to achieve.
And what he couldn't find a way to accept was that the bottom line rested on her shoulders. What she decided would either make or break their whole plan; on one side of her, he could see the pen in her hand that was willing to sign herself and one other into contract with them, the other held the paper shredder that would grind the contract into little flakes that would uselessly across the floor. He couldn't force her to make the choice again he desperately wanted to reconsider, but he could at least give her that second chance.
The realization how to "guide" her to her final decision had barely taken shape in his mind, when Henry finally turned away from the charts and reports that had been the only power in the room impressive enough to hold his attention. The grin he knew was breaking across his face made Bea's dark eyes brighten with curiousity and Tom's mouth turn from a hesistant frown to a hopeless smile of anxiety.
"It's simple," Henry said, reveling in his realization and drawing out its revelation with a dramatic pause. "We're going to reward her."
Tom's frown returned. Bea's eyes didn't change.
"What for, Boss?" Tom asked. "I thought she didn't cooperate today."
"Oh no, she didn't cooperate at all." The vague answer left the other man even more confused and unnerved at his lack of understanding.
"Let's see if she can say no to her heart one more time."
"Jack."
He knew that voice. He'd have known it anywhere. Even in situations far worse than the one he found himself in now. But the soft almost breathless tone of her voice as she whispered his name was something he had only ever heard in his dreams. The ones that eventually became nightmares and left him awake in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat. Nights that he spent trying to calm his restless heart by staring vacantly for hours on end into the glowing embers of a dying fire. Nights that he thought up excuses for the drowsiness he knew she'd be the first to pick up on and worry about the next morning when he made his rounds.
Yet he'd never found the nerve to tell her that she was the reason he didn't sleep well. Yes, he was always concerned for everyone's welfare and harbored differing degrees of unease for them all, but she was the one that introduced him to insomnia. Even after the sixty-days they've been stranded on this island, she was still the reason he wasn't asleep now.
Her hands were cool and soothing against his face, her thumbs pressing softly against his warm cheeks and hooking under the blindfold, lifting it slowly over his head so as not to aggravate his bruise or cut. When his eyes locked with hers, he noticed the glaze that glistened off the green in the moonlight leaking through the thatched roof and watched captivated as a tear escaped the corner of her eye, rushing down the crease by her nose, over her barely visible freckles.
He tried to say her name, but choked to silence on the gag still cutting into the edges of his mouth, a pain she quickly rid him of as she tossed the blindfold and dirty cloth to the side, her fingers working the gag from his mouth.
"Kate," he tried again, his voice raspy and harsh against the seemingly serenity of the night.
A relieved smile broke across her face, an embarrassed laugh escaping from her throat. Then her lower lip quivered, her brow knitting with that same sad look he was so familiar with, and she leaned into him, wrapping her arms around him in a desperately fierce embrace. He tried to be gentle, working his arms from between her frame and his own, but they were free, he was holding her to him so strongly, the pressure from his bruised and battered ribs battled for attention with some emotion he hadn't felt in a while. That didn't make him ease up any.
Her body shuddered from the violence of the exhaustive cathartic rush that had blind-sided her and that he knew was about to hit him any second. When he felt its powerful force crash against him, he turned his face into her neck, letting his tears dampen her unruly waves, feeling her own wetting the worn fabric of his shirt. She pulled back when someone cleared their throat awkwardly and only then did it sink in that they weren't alone.
His eyes found that smile again, her fingers running lightly along his jawline covered in a five o'clock shadow. She rocked back on the balls of her feet and looked up and away from him and Jack followed her gaze to see three faces, one he expected, one he would have eventually guessed, and one he probably should have known would have been involved.
"Can you walk?" Sayid asked. "We can not stay here much longer if we are going to get you out."
"I can distract them for a little bit," Alex offered.
"Nice to see ya again, Doc. Was awful quiet over there all by my lonesome," Sawyer teased.
Jack didn't bother answering, just slowly gathered his feet under him and rose slowly, shakily.
"Go slow," she whispered, her hands finding his middle to steady him, letting up only when she was sure his knees wouldn't suddenly buckle underneath him. "We've got a little bit of a hike ahead of us."
Taking a tentative step forward, he nodded, the motion causing the world to spin slightly around him. He squeezed his eyes tight in an attempt to ward off the dizziness that he knew by now was part of the after-effects of whatever tranquilizer they had hit him with. The soft contact that slipped into his hand startled him momentarily and he glanced at his fingers, watching her small hand interlock their fingers. He looked up, uncertainty pasted on his face, and returned the easy smile she flashed at him.
Jack caught Sayid's gaze, noticing the way it held both of them with a curious stare, not intrusive just observant. He felt something stir with what was almost pride when the Iraqi nodded his own understanding and turned to the exit with a final command.
"Let's go."