Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sawyer/Ana-Lucia with a very tiny weeny hint at Jana and Skate every so often...but merely for dramatic purposes.
Summary: Things have changed for them both over the past months since she almost died. Lots of things. But they're not over. How will Ana cope when something precious is stolen from her? How will Sawyer cope when he realises he should've been there for her since the beginning?
Warnings: Violence possibly in later chapters but I will give full warning when and if it happens. Drama? Angst? Peril? Yup.
Status of Fic: WIP
Author's Notes: Thank you all so much for your reviews. I promise that I will reply to you all seperately when I have a little more time.
For now it's just a fleeting visit to update with a far too long awaited chapter 2
Hope it's worth it...but I think I rushed it a bit at the end. i may go back and change it.
Disclaimer: Me no owny. Sad? Isn't it?
Chapter 2: Suspicious Minds.Flashback
At first she had brushed it off merely as the stress caused by the whole episode with Michael and the prisoner formerly known as Henry Gale. She could even still feel the icy fear that had settled and clenched in her chest like a hard, unrelenting, frigid fist as Michael had looked down at her and she up the barrel of the gun that had once been hers…and Sawyer's before that.
Yes, she had told herself, after that moment, that split second when Michael had held her life in his hands and had almost sentenced her to death, her body was bound to be a little out of sync with her usual like-clockwork cycle. That was all it came down to and she even believed it herself for a time…until the second month came and went much the same as the first had, setting warning bells flaring in her mind.
Either something was very, very wrong with her…or, juxtaposed to that, everything was working exactly as nature had intended it to.
She hadn't been quite sure which of those two notions had scared her the most.
Ana-Lucia shielded her eyes against the harsh glare of the early morning sunlight as she scoured the beach, turning her head first one way and then the other, checking that everywhere was clear, that everyone was either busy or still sleeping in that premature hour, before she began her way across the slowly heating sands and to a certain shelter. One that she'd never entered…not even allowed herself to pass too close by for fear or hope that the owner would pop his tousled blonde head out between those blue tarps of his doorway and lure her in with a silver tongue and honeyed, serpentine words. Smooth as silk and warm as the sun currently heating her back.
The small rounded windows of the piece of plane wreckage that had been used to give his home at least one sturdy wall, winked at her, reflecting the burning fire of the sunrise racing up the sky above the seascape behind her. The heat of the fierce orange and red colours there, in the remains of the glass porthole-like casements momentarily blinded her. And so she turned her gaze to the safety of her feet, eating up the sand as if the Devil himself were on her tail. Bright flashes and blurs, the hot reminder of the sunlight that had been scorched into her retina dancing across the scuffed toes of her brown leather boots, beaten up by far too much walking and hiking and running when they'd only been purchased back in the real world because Danny had told her, when she'd forced him out with her on one of her few and far between shopping excursions, that they 'looked cute with her jeans'.
Shaking her sudden and unexpected thoughts of Danny from her head, Ana looked up once more, finding herself standing in the shade of her destination a little sooner than she had expected. A little sooner than she felt comfortable with. She didn't particularly relish the thought of going in there. Not because of the shelter's owner or what had happened between them all of…what was it now? Two months ago? Two months of practically ignoring each other, save for the burning, almost undressing her, glances that he would shoot across to her when she was in his line of sight. He'd tried to speak to her a number of times. Joking banter at first and then, as time wore on and nothing changed between them, he became more serious in his persistent inquiries. But every time he opened his mouth, she'd cut him off halfway through and make excuses as she shied away from him like a skittish pony spooked by something sensed and not seen.
Then he had stopped trying altogether, settling for attempting to communicate with his eyes instead. Sea blue and so deep and full of…something, God only knew what it was, lurking behind the bright surface that she could not begin to understand…nor allow herself to try to.
It didn't work like that. Not in her life. It wasn't meant to. People weren't meant to get so close to her. She wasn't meant to let them. They only ended up getting hurt that way, she knew from experience…too many experiences. But she had to ponder that. What was it that really scared her so much about letting people near to her, letting them know her more personally? Was it her past clawing at her memory, scratching at the back of her mind? A constant reminder of the things that she had done wrong before? Was it his past, Sawyer's past, that concerned her really or her lack of knowledge about it? Was it the unknown and her lack of control over the whole situation as it spiralled out of control, over and over like a brightly coloured child's spinning top. Faster and faster, making her feel dizzy. And lately, nauseous, though she had her own theories about the sudden urge to retch that had begun plaguing her.
She shifted in the sand and considered the doorway once more. She needed to be practical about things…and yet, still disinclination to enter tugged at her stomach. Still reluctant to venture into that tent. Simply because of what exactly it was that she was going in there to find. What she was going in there to steal. The mere notion that she needed the thing she was searching for just made her predicament, if her body was displaying the right signs, seem more real when in fact a part of her still believed it to be anything but.
It couldn't really be happening to her again. Not now of all times. Could it?
How did she end up in these crazy situations? Was someone sitting up above and planning them out for her just to see how well she coped with the trials and tribulations that the "Island" had been throwing at her since the plane crashed down?
Shaking her head clear of the endless questions undulating and pounding behind the skin of her temples, she flicked her eyes around one last time, making sure that the near vicinity was still clear before finally ducking through and into the shady relief that was Sawyer's home. After all, she had to be quick if she wanted to find what she was looking for before he came back from his early morning, daily ritual of 'fruit picking' and caught her in the act red handed.
What she found surprised her. So much so that she froze, half in, half out of the entrance for a moment. Simply taking it all in with a sweeping brown-eyed gaze. Slow enough to note the details before her.
Hazy beams of light slanted down from the windows. Warm and smoky golden columns glittering and sparkling with a shower of dust and grains of sand, that had been kicked up by her arrival, swirled and floated amid the dimness that was still hot with breath and sleep and Sawyer's not long departed presence.
Two blue Oceanic Air blankets spread neatly across the sand in the far right hand corner, running along the metallic wall that had once been the aircraft ferrying them all to their destination of L.A. deep in it's doomed belly. A stack of books wedged against the other wall tightly, with a fist sized rock at either end as makeshift bookends keeping them where he had deigned to put them.
It was bizarre actually, how neat and tidy the small living space was, considering that the owner himself always looked scruffy and unkempt. His jaw-line always peppered with the shadows of an almost beard. His hair always tousled as if he had just been pulled through a bush backwards. His clothes crumpled and slouched and half buttoned, leaving his smooth, hairless, tanned chest on display or a glimpse of toned stomach muscles and the small of his back as he stretched or lounged or leaned casually against a palm tree, as if he had been too lazy to finish dressing that morning…as if he had slept in his clothes. And perhaps he had. Ana herself had but a scant few items of clothing to change into and when the temperature stooped and dropped as it sometimes did on those long nights, she needed every garment that she could pull on hastily to keep the chill away.
And so, as she had always thought that his tent would be in the same state as his appearance she was mildly shocked to find the place looking not just a little more inviting than her own shelter.
She slipped further inside, shuffling, head bent beneath the low ceiling until she reached the other side in a few strides and knelt down there, beside what she was looking for. His backpack. The one that he had carried with him on that muggy, bleary, muddled afternoon that she had followed him deep into the surrounding jungle in an attempt to get his gun.
And boy, did she.
But she shook those memories from her head and unzipped the bag, the sense of urgency for her to be swift with her little 'robbery' resuming it's place in the pit of her stomach. Turning it upside down she emptied it all onto the sand before her and scoured the contents. Searching, searching…Where the hell were the medical supplies? She had overheard Sun saying that Sawyer had them all stashed away in his shelter…
"Sawyer?" sand crunched outside, snapping Ana-Lucia's head in the direction of the sound mingling together with the voice calling out for the tent's owner. "Sawyer? I need - What the hell are you doing?!"
The tarps swished sideways, shifting out of her way as she ducked in, much as Ana-Lucia herself had moments before but she stopped dead in her tracks. The two women staring at each other in silence and motionlessness. The startled green eyes glared into those of brown, widening in the shock of seeing her, Ana, in the last place on earth that anyone would have thought she'd be. The brunette's mouth opened and closed a few times as if she was trying to force out some sort of accusation but her mind had suddenly gone blank. Eventually though, she blinked a few times and shifted her gaze from Ana's face down to the spread of belongings spilled out onto the sand before her and the words started flowing again and tumbled out without much need for forcing them or thought.
"You're stealing from Sawyer?!" she accused incredulously, answering her own previous question, curling a wavy brown lock of hair behind her ear.
"I'm looking for something." Ana replied evenly, turning her attention back to the scattered objects. Several colourful plastic lighters, long since burned dry by use. A broken walkman that had a missing 'play' button. A multitude of batteries, all more than likely as dead as dodos, their energy spent by usage, or lack there of. CDs, pens and chewed-ended pencils, coins from a wide variety of different countries…but nothing even remotely to do with what she was looking for. What she had risked stepping inside that tent for.
Suddenly, Kate's voice rang out through the hot air again, reminding Ana that she was still there and stirring more of the tension that was already between them as she folded her arms across her chest and quirked an eyebrow and the ebony haired woman's crouched down form.
"I thought you were a police officer?" she murmured with an almost snort, sand shuffling as she shifted. "Aren't they supposed to stop crimes from happening?"
"That's my business…" Ana responded absently, hands still flying over the spilt contents of the bag as if doing so was suddenly and magically turn one of the objects into what she wanted.
They fell silent again for a long moment. But Ana knew Kate well enough by now to know that she wasn't likely to let the subject drop any time soon. She was burning to know what had brought Ana into Sawyer's domain, rummaging through his stash so intently. She could feel it almost as strongly as she could feel Kate's eyes scorching into her back, watching her every movement.
"What are you looking for?" the query was spoken lightly, in possibly an attempt at disinterest but Ana wasn't fooled by a long shot.
"Nothing." she stated carefully, scooping up the mess that she had just created and stuffing the belongings that weren't actually Sawyer's but more than likely stolen from the other survivors, alive and dead, back into the maroon backpack. She zipped it closed and replaced it in it's previous position, hoping beyond all hope that somehow her presence, her rifling and searching would go unnoticed by the con man's all seeing eyes when he eventually returned home.
"C'mon, Ana. You just said that -" Kate persisted with a slightly impatient huff but Ana-Lucia cut her off abruptly, tiring of her interrogation. No doubt any and all information gleaned from her by Kate was obviously intending on repeating to Sawyer when she next saw him. Perhaps she wanted to win herself some 'brownie points'…maybe she wanted a pat on the head and a 'good girl'.
Ana smirked to herself.
"Just some Aspirin, alright? I've got a migraine coming on…" she lied, eyes dancing around, scrutinizing the area for any signs of a hidden stash but her attention was snatched away from her task again. This time by a chuckle…at her expense it seemed.
"Good luck finding any in here." Kate giggled, brushing hair from her emerald eyes again and re-wrapping her arms about herself, perhaps in protection, keeping a barrier between them as Ana turned slowly, eyebrows drawn together in a confused frown, and stood to her full height, though her head still dipped slightly beneath the low ceiling.
"What's that supposed to mean?" her eyes fixed onto Kate's for the second time since she had discovered her there going through another's private belongings and this time, the green irises lanced sideways, almost reluctant to hold Ana's gaze. Definitely uncomfortable beneath the sudden scrutiny upon her. She was a good little actress though, Ana had to admit. Even if she didn't feel confident in herself, she damn well made it look like she did and a flash of remembrance made Kate's face brighten slightly. A joke that Ana wasn't privy to apparently and the slim, shorter woman rubbed at her forehead and grinned wider still, shaking her head at the past events.
"Jack beat Sawyer in a poker game a couple of months ago now. He won all the medical supplied off of him. They're with Jack in the hatch now." she seemed to be ecstatic that she had known something that Ana hadn't. She took pleasure in the look of confusion on the other woman's face.
And Ana merely nodded in response before sidestepping the smiling brunette and slipping back out into the sunlight from the shade of Sawyer's shelter.
"Thanks for the heads up."
"You must have a pretty bad migraine to go to all this trouble just for a couple of Aspirin…" Kate spun, following Ana with her eyes again, curious. It's was clear to see on her face that she didn't believe the story about having a migraine.
But Ana was beyond caring. She had more important things to worry about than Kate tattling to Sawyer that Ana had been going through his things. More important than the gossip that would soon be tearing around the community. More important than the superior smirk twisting Kate's lips up that gave Ana the worrying and distinct impression that she knew something. Something about Ana's predicament.
She shrugged, barely stopping to glance back over her shoulder and reply to Kate's sly words with her own that thrummed beneath with a warning that Kate should keep her nose out from where it didn't belong.
"Yeah…you've got no idea."
End Flashback.
-oOo-
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