The sun is streaming through her window, warming her face. She lays there without moving, feeling lazy, and far too comfortable to get up just yet. It's going to be a nice day. Pity she has to leave so soon, she likes it here. Still, she's been here too long already; she wasn't going to stay here at all, it's too isolated, but she needed the money.
With that thought in her head, she gets up, unable to lay still when she's supposed to be getting ready to leave. Except, she can't get up, every part of her body is aching and sore, and her arms throb with every tiny movement. She opens her eyes, but it isn't the warm sunshine beaming through her window that greets her, but a harsh glaring light that makes her squint.
"Where am I?" she forces the words out in a hoarse croak, her throat is desperately dry. The words aren't directed at anyone in particular, but there is only one man nearby, so she looks at him expectantly.
The man doesn't look at her, his eyes are cast out across the beach. She wonders whether or not he heard her, so she forces herself to sit up, surprised by the effort it takes. Metal scrapes at her wrists and blood oozes down her arms. She cries out, not because the pain is unbearable, but because she wasn't expecting it.
At this, the man does turn around, regarding her with eyes that seem to see through her. A fallen angel here to guide her through hell, his body everything that beauty is meant to be, but his eyes filled with hatred and his voice dripping with disdain, "Don't worry Freckles, the hero's on his way." As if his cryptic words mean anything at all, he turns his eyes away from her again, dismissing her.
It strikes her as incredibly fitting that even after she's died, she's still trapped in handcuffs. She'll never be able to get away from what she's done. Still, it's not all that bad for hell, there's far less fire than she was expecting, although she can smell smoke in the air.
Weaving into view is a man who doesn't fit into this bizarre hell at all. Of all things, he's wearing a suit. She remembers what the fallen angel had said, that the hero was coming. "Hero?"
Jack glances at the man who had said his name was Sawyer. All he receives in reply is a sarcastic smile. Trying to ignore him, Jack concentrates on the girl in front of him. He'd been hoping that the rescue would come by the time she woke up. She's dressed smartly, is attractive even, but she's clearly none of those things. They'd found the marshal who was transporting her, he was in a bad shape, but Jack thought that with any luck he might pull through. You don't get a US marshal for an escort unless you've done something pretty bad.
Still, he's a doctor, and he will help her. The first thing he notices is the trails of blood down her arms. It wasn't serious enough to distract him from those in worse conditions when he'd first seen her, but it was bad enough now to make him swallow. He's only been able to find a tiny amount of alcohol, and there are others that need it more than her, others that are more deserving. But that thought hits his conscience, he doesn't even know what she did, if it was justified. He can't damn her just because she's got a pair of handcuffs. Not that his damnation is going to have much effect on her, he can pour as much alcohol as he likes on her wrists, but unless the handcuffs come off, it won't help her, they'll get infected anyway. "I'm Jack, I'm a doctor," he tells her as he approaches her.
She regards him curiously. He's a doctor? So she's not dead? Where is she then? "I'm Kate," she murmurs softly, very unsure of herself.
"Kate," Jack smiles reassuringly at her as he picks up her wrists gently. He doesn't miss the way she flinches away from his touch, even though she tries to hide it. "Do you know where the keys to these are?"
She wants to shrink back into herself, for him to go away, to stop questioning her. Her crimes are there for everyone to see, bleeding out of her wrists, and he can't take his eyes off them. She pulls her hands back from him, wanting to hide them but finding that there isn't anywhere. "Edward has them, in his jacket."
"Edward is the marshal?" She nods, but she knows that it won't help him, Edward won't let her out of these, not with the effort it took for him to get her in them. Three years of his life wasted on chasing a little girl around the world. It didn't matter if they were killing her, he wouldn't let her go.
"Ok. I'll be back to check on you in the while. Sawyer will keep an eye on you until then." Sawyer, that's not even a real name. Even she made up better names than that. She watches as Jack whispers to Sawyer, she doesn't think that Sawyer is even listening. Hatred pours from him in waves.
Then Jack is gone, and it's just her and Sawyer. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette. With that resting between his lips he seems to relax. Rustling through the bag at his feet, he pulls out a bottle of water. "Doc says you need some water." He throws the bottle towards her, it land in the sand in front of her, and she greedily grabs at it.
She drinks half the bottle quickly, but instincts make her stop there and keep the rest for later. Instead she finds that he is coming towards her. He takes the bottle from her hands, she lets him only because she's in no position to fight back. He undoes the cap, and ever so carefully trickles some over her wrists. Having got the worst of the sand out of the cuts and having cleaned some of the dried blood off her lower arms, he places the cap back on the bottle and gives it back to her. Then he leaves her sat in the sand, and returns to the piece of metal he was perched on.
"Thank you," there is sincerity in her voice, and he finds himself embarrassed by it. If it had come from a con, he wouldn't have thought anything of it. But he wasn't conning her, he'd helped her because she needed his help. Sure, Jack had asked him to take care of her, but Jack was an idiot, and he'd done it because no one else was going to help her. They all sent scared looks down to this end of the beach, having heard that there was a criminal down there, and none of them came anywhere near. Which was why he was down here, but still he'd helped her just because she needed it.
He tries to say that it doesn't matter, but it comes out as some sort of unintelligible grunt, and he's grateful that she doesn't pursue it anymore. He lights his cigarette, and casts his eyes back down to the beach, to the destruction sprawled out before his eyes.