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She grips the steel bars and presses her face against them to look at him, but all he sees are the bruises circling her wrists and in that moment, an all-consuming need to get her out of here coils in his chest, tightening his heart as it begins to hammer in his chest.
In that moment he swears revenge.
“You wanna talk about it?” He says after a moment, after she has stopped chewing on the bits of fish biscuits he tossed her.
Oh, she has got to be starving,
he thinks. They taste like stale tuna, and reek of cat food, but she chewed down half of that thing.
Her hollow eyes flick up to his again. He does his best to keep a smile on his lips, in an unpracticed attempt to be comforting, but even he can tell that it’s weak and unconvincing.
Technically, he knows she won’t want to tell him what
they
did to her. She’s a lot like him in that regard. But he asks anyway. He has to, because he’s stuck in this cage and unable to do anything else.
The fact that he’s locked up in this dirty old bear cage, not even ten feet away from where she’s standing in her equally grimy one, unable to do anything for her, makes his fists squeeze the bars in anger. He can’t think too hard about how useless he’s being, or he’ll start shaking with rage and it’ll be even harder to convince her that they aren’t
fucked
.
Her lips struggle to speak as she shakes her head, but all she manages is, “You got any more where this came from?”
For a fleeting moment, her eyes stay on his, but she can’t fight it any longer. He knows she’s going to cry, he can see it on her face in the way her lips drag down and predictably, she turns her face away from him to let her unkempt hair hide what he already knows. She can’t stop her tears.
The sorry excuse of a smile he was trying to wear falls from his lips, and he leans his dirty forehead against the cold metal bars of his own cage.
“
Kate
.” Her name sounds so weak on his tongue that he doubts she hears him.
Her palm wipes across her cheek one more time before she tips her head back, laughing a humorlessly little chuckle. “It’s okay, Sawyer. I’m just..” She glances at him briefly, not quite catching his eyes. “Tired.”
The remainder of the fish biscuit drops from her hand and lands in the mud at her feet before she turns away from him and climbs the concrete slab inside her cage. It’s thigh high and barely wide enough for her, but she curls up on top of it anyway, leaving him with the sight of her back.
The concrete surface beneath her is cold and abrasive, but she almost welcomes its discomfort as hopeless frustration courses through her aching body. Lying on her side is agonizing, but the alternative – turning onto her back – would expose her face, and Sawyer would see the tears she’s trying so hard to hide.
Being vulnerable in front of anyone has always cost her something, and so she never learned how to do it.
It’s better that way
, she thinks.
She examines the place the cuffs cut into her wrists.
Parts of her skin are broken and blood keeps rising to the surface while the spots surrounding the knuckles of her wrists are already starting to turn violet and blue. Images of her life before the crash flash before her eyes. She remembers the way it felt when they fist put police handcuffs on her. The way that Mars also kept them extra tight. The way the steel cut into her flesh, rubbing it red.
The memory makes her body jerk with an inaudible sob before she knows it, and she sinks her teeth down into her fist to keep quiet while tears keep streaming down her cheeks freely.
She cries like that until the exhaustion and pain blur together, pulling her into a hazy state somewhere between sleep and waking.
Sawyer doesn’t make a sound in his cage, and when darkness falls and no one comes to bring food or water, so she quietly assumes he must have fallen asleep as well.
She is rudely awakened by the sound of Sawyer activating the mechanic feeder as obnoxious carnival music blares from the aged speakers in his cage and kibble rattles from the machine.
She jerks awake, and recognizing where she is, sits up immediately. “Nice alarm clock.”
Her eyes are a little bleary, but she spots Sawyer immediately, walking back and forth behind the bars of his cage, like a wild-caught tiger in a zoo.
“I’ve woken up to worse.” He says, sounding much like his old self. Yesterday’s compassion is gone from his voice. “Want half a fish biscuit?” He offers as a few of
them
appear between the trees, walking towards their cages.
She can’t believe she’s just woken up, and already they are here. The sun stands so high it must be almost ten in the morning. Her shoulder and hip feel stiff from sleeping solid concrete all night, but she doesn’t reach out to massage the sore spots. The last thing she wants is for them to see weakness in her.
Familiar faces greet them. There’s the guy who made her shower and put on the dress she’s still wearing. The fabric is already starting to cling to her skin from the sand and sweat of the jungle, but it’s nothing she hasn’t gotten used to these last few weeks.
They open Sawyer’s cage first and he greets them with a bold grin, like he’s been waiting for them. Then, a woman comes to open hers and soon they are being led down a path with a pair of guns pointed at their chests.
Sawyer steals a glance at her eyes before one of
them
forces the barrel of a gun between her ribs, and pushes her to move.
They’re being told all about the rules, and the dos and don’ts of this little chain gang operation, and then Kate almost does him proud by refusing to work, if it wasn’t for the fact that her protest is once again all about the Doc.
At least he can’t dwell on it for too long, because one of the goons shocks him good right after. Sending a wave of electricity through his veins and muscles that almost makes him regret being a smartass all day.
Regrettably, that’s all it takes for them to shut her up.
A pity, really.
But he knows she isn’t going to try anything so soon now. He can see it in the way that her guilt-filled eyes take him in as he kneels in the sand, brought down by the shock-waves.
They work for what feels like a ten hour shift, and Kate endures it well, despite the heat, and the dress, and the lack of food in their stomachs. But every time her pickaxe comes down on the rock, he’s reminded of the way he felt yesterday when they brought her back to him from god-knows-where.
She’s a sight for sore eyes even when breaking rocks, sure, but he can’t help but glance at the way the bruises on her wrists are now blooming in red and blue.
One of them, his
favorite
, the one who shocked him earlier keeps a close eye on him at all times and whenever Sawyer’s eyes linger on her a beat too long, he clicks his damned tongue reproachfully, tapping the shocker with his fingers as a warning. His name is Danny, if he remembers correctly. He can’t be bothered to learn all the goons’ names.
But this one clearly thinks he’s a tough one. It almost does enough to distract Sawyer from the fact that the rest of them don’t seem to have a clue how to do their job properly. They remind him of kids from the city, holding a gun for the first time.
Finally, toward the end of their second shift, he’s got enough.
Kate grunts a few feet away from him, drawing his eyes up.
The sun has been drenching their little digging site in heat all day, and sweat and sand are discoloring her skin as she tries to fight the physical exhaustion in order to swing the pickaxe up another time. The handle slips from her dog-tired hands, and she leans against it, cherishing even that miniscule amount of rest and he can’t take it anymore.
To hell with it. She shouldn’t be out here in the gleaming sun, imprisoned by them, smashing rocks like a common criminal in the wild wild west while they watch. Hell, she should be as far away from this island as humanly possible,
he thinks as he takes her in.
Locke would say something about beating two flies with one stone.
The sight of her makes him delirious on just about any day, but seeing her like this, beaten and hopeless, he can’t take it. He has to change something. Has to claw a smile out of her one way or another. And it just so happens, that even the two of them talking is enough to piss the Others off. So he might as well do enough to tickle a proper fight out of them. To see what they’re really made of.
Carelessly, he pushes the wheelbarrow aside, tipping it over so the rocks tumble out while he stalks toward her, determined and without hesitation.
The noise of the falling rocks snaps her attention in his direction, confusion flickering in her eyes just as his hand seizes her jaw, firm and unrelenting, holding her in place. Then, without warning, his lips claim hers.
At the touch of their mouths, she begins to arch into him, her nose pressing against his face as their lips come together. The heat radiating off her skin ghosts across his chest, and he holds her a little tighter, yearning for more contact between them.
She drops the pickaxe between them, but her arms stay limp as her tongue teases the swell of his lips, and he almost loses the sense of his surroundings that he’s going to need so badly in a few seconds.
Around them, loud shouting is already ringing, and he breaks them apart to see her face before the fight breaks out.
His lips leave hers, and the raw tenderness he sees when he looks at her face is the single best thing that has happened to him since they crashed in this godforsaken place.
His chest fills with something indescribable, and the next thing he feels is the stock of a gun smashing into the back of his head. The blow carries enough force to knock him down, but it’s not like he didn’t expect it.
Worth it
, he thinks while going down.
He carries himself well in the struggle that follows, fueled by knowledge that she was the one who leaned closer when he kissed her, but what he doesn’t anticipate is the safety lock on the shocker and the fact that they already drew a gun on Kate.
“James!” Juliet calls his name sharply through the mess of people trying to get their hands on him and the rifle he stole.
She stands with one hand around Kate’s arm, and the other pointing a gun at her.
“Put the gun down, right now.” Her voice is calm. Almost soft and nice. It’s irritating.
Kate’s face is drowning in guilt once more. They send another wave of electricity right into his stomach, and if he had to guess, he’d say that the goon turned the dial up a quarter. Probably revenge for the fact that he surely knocked one of his teeth loose.
They bring them back to their cages after dark.
Sawyer gets tossed into his cage like a misbehaving dog, and his head only barely misses the water trough. It makes her flinch.
He lies on the ground coughing while they leave and she knows that it must be bad for him when he doesn’t get back up right away.
“You okay?” She asks carefully, with her face pressed against the bars.
“Never better.” He says in his usual manner, but his voice sounds strained. He keeps on his hands and knees, and she swallows.
She sinks down to his level, looking through her cage into his. “What the hell were you thinking?”
He is already turning around, his lips raised into a stupidly amused grin.
“I couldn’t help myself.” He chuckles, but his eyes seem heavy. He swallows. “You just looked so damn cute swinging that pickaxe.”
His words are followed by a laugh that makes her roll her eyes. And as if that wasn’t bad enough he goes on to say, “Chain gang looks good on you, Freckles.”
It should bring her some comfort to hear his favorite little nickname for her, but the fact is that he’s lying in the dirt, with two sets of shock marks in his skin, locked away by the same people that have been terrorizing them ever since they have landed on this island.
And he has the nerve to make jokes. It makes her want to hit him.
“Sawyer!” She stops him, shooting him a serious glance.
He nods and sighs, finally raising to his feet. He gives her the rundown of the Other’s lack of fighting ability, and she listens with a slight smile, glad that they have something to talk about that gives the two of them some hope.
“Did you see the look on their faces when you got a hold of that rifle?” She asks him, and he looks at her as if she just started flirting with him.
He chuckles, leaning further into the bars of his cage. “I’m guessing most of these boys have never seen any real action.”
His eyes are gleaming, and she swallows the fact that she can’t deny how attractive he looks despite all the dirt clinging to his face and the bare stretch of skin revealed by his unbuttoned shirt.
“But that blonde, who had a gun pointed at you.. She would have shot you, no problem.” He says, and most of the warmth she had just felt runs cold again.
The reminder of what her gun felt like through the fabric of her dress brings forth the memory of another little detail, and Kate’s face grows hard as she asks, “Why did she call you James?”
He looks away as guilty as a boy in trouble and a deep, overly long sigh is followed by the words, “Cause that’s my name.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she goes through every day they spent on the island since the crash, and everything they did together, and thinks about how during all this he never once thought of mentioning his real name. She knows what it means to wear a fake-name, knows what it feels like to give that name to people, knows what it feels like to hear people say it, and she can’t help but wonder if it’s the same for him.
He draws her attention back to him with a soft snort.
“I noticed something else too.”
She looks at him, and he’s smirking with shining eyes.
“You taste like strawberries.”
The compliment is so lame and so corny that she can’t stop smiling. Partly because no matter how lame and corny he would get, a reminder of their kiss would always make her smile.
She would never let him know it, but she could still feel and smell and taste him too. The strength his hold on her had, the smell of heat, sweat, the ocean and him coming off his warm skin, and the taste of his lips on the tip of her tongue. Thinking about it made her want to be back in their camp, maybe at that spring with the waterfall where they found Mars’ suitcase; just any place where they could be alone.
But she would never let him know it.
“You taste like fish biscuits.” She says instead, laughing.
He tips his head back, chuckling, but when their eyes meet again, she feels like both of them are thinking the same. Thinking about what it would feel like to kiss again.
As always, she doesn’t allow herself to indulge in the tension between them for as long as he does.
“So, what do we do now?” Kate asks.
Sawyer sighs, “Well, Shortcake, now we wait for these bastards to make a mistake. Sooner or later they’re gonna let their guard down. And when they do, we’re gonna be there to put them in their place.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Ready for another shift in the sandbox?” Danny’s fat grin flashes through Kate’s cage bars.
There’s something revolting in his stare, but she holds it steadily, not willing to give him the satisfaction of flinching away from his eyes.
“Hey, Oddjob,” Sawyer calls from his cage, trying to get Danny’s attention. It’s only successful to a degree, because his eyes twitch, but he never takes them off of her. “How’re your molars doin’?” Sawyer taunts with flashing teeth.
Danny’s jaw clenches angrily before his gaze slides off Kate to look at Sawyer, and only then does she allow herself to do the same. He is leaning against the bars of his cage, staring right at Danny despite the fact that his door has already been unlocked by two Others.
Aggressively, Danny motions for the woman and the man standing by Sawyer’s cage to grab him. “What are you waiting for?”
The woman is easily half of Sawyer's size and Kate would bet two days' food on the fact that even she could easily take her, but the man carries the same kind of rifle that Sawyer took from them yesterday, and this time, they’ll see it coming. She’s sure of it.
“Hands.” The woman says as she stands before Sawyer, unfolding a string of rope, undoubtedly meant to bind his wrists like a pair of cuffs.
“Where do you want ‘em?” Sawyer asks, suggestively cocking one eyebrow. But even from all the way over here, Kate can see the tightness and disgust in his face. She rolls her eyes anyway, wondering where he finds this bullshit in himself. She brushes off the mild irritation, and steals a quick glance at Danny, whose eyes are full of animosity toward Sawyer.
He looks at him like he wants to kill him.
“Shut up.” The woman says, but it lacks any real bite.
“Do what she says.” The guy raises the gun behind her, warning Sawyer.
Begrudgingly, he puts his wrists together in front of himself and watches as she ties them.
“If I was you,” The man says. “I would keep my mouth shut.”
“Or what?” Sawyer growls, narrowing his eyes.
“Or!” Danny says loudly, still standing by Kate’s cage, grabbing everyone’s attention.
He grins at Sawyer, waiting to continue for longer than necessary. “Or, I’ll find out what she looks like writhing under this thing.” He nods his head toward Kate without looking at her.
Bile rises at the back of her throat.
He holds up the electric shocker, his thumb caressing the safety lock. Then, he slowly turns his head to once again look at her with that wide, offensive grin on his lips. A cold sensation washes over her, but she does her best not to reveal it to him – keeping her disgust to herself as best as she can.
“If you touch her.” Sawyer’s voice sounds next to her, but it feels muted in her ears, drowned out by the sudden increase in her heartbeat.
It’s the one thing that really bothers her down to the marrow of her bones. How quickly they figured it out.
She hates that they know that they can use them against each other like that. Hates that Sawyer will sit like a dog to spare her every little ounce of pain. Hates that she’ll fold like a house of cards so they won’t rough him up too much. But lastly, she hates that these outsiders already know what neither of them is willing to admit to the other.
Danny arches his eyebrows knowingly, satisfiedly and finally glances away from her.
Reality closes in on her and she hears the way they drag Sawyer from his cage, struggling and cursing under his breath and she looks at him.
Danny moves to open her cage, holding the shocker in one hand, ready to use it on her. “Shall we, Kate?”
She hates the way he says her name. Like an overbearing teacher. A little like Mars used to whenever he got a hold of her.
She forces herself to move, to walk out of the cage for him, and catches Sawyer’s eyes once they’re both standing between the cages – a gun held to his spine, the shocker aimed at the bare skin of her arms.
He looks as pissed off as she feels, when Danny dangles the rope in front of her. “You too, Kate.”
She intentionally keeps her hands close to her torso to force Danny to step closer in order to tie her hands, and when he does, she knees him hard between his legs. Danny grunts, dropping the rope in order to grab himself where she crushed her leg between his.
There’s a gun pointed at her before she has the chance to make anything out of the situation, but the rush of satisfaction that courses through her is good enough. At least until Danny manages to straighten again and grabs her by the hair in the nape of her neck.
A healthy amount of pain shoots from her roots all the way down her spine and she has to grit her teeth to stop from crying out loud in agony. Her pulse is rushing in her ears, but somewhere to her right she can hear Sawyer hauling an insult at Danny.
“You little
bitch
.” Danny’s menacing face hovers right above hers. Red, and pulsing and so incredibly angry.
Her throat is dry like sandpaper, and she can already feel a headache coming on from the harsh way his stubby fingers dig into her scalp, but she manages to spit at his ugly face anyway, barely missing his left eye.
He staggers back once more with one eye closed, voicing his disgust in a string of indistinct noises. Yet his grip on Kate's hair remains ironclad, yanking her along with him. His free hand swipes angrily at the spit smeared across his face, and just when he manages to get his bearings and seems to want to lunge out for her, a voice cuts through the struggle.
“What in the damned hell is going on here?”
Tom, the guy who made her shower on her first day here, stands a few feet away, frowning at the scene in front of them.
“She spat at me.” Danny explains angrily, fist clenched by his side, barely under control.
His voice is full of rage but Kate can’t help but think he sounds pathetic.
She takes a brief pause from glaring at Danny despite the pain to look for Sawyer, and finds him down on his knees, a gun pressed to his neck. In all the chaos, she hadn’t even noticed what happened over at his side of the cages.
His chest is heaving unsteadily like he’s catching his breath from a fight while he looks at her from beneath his brows. His jaw clenched so firmly that it appears to be as hard as stone.
At that moment, he looks like he has killed a man. Sometimes, it scares her how capable of murder he looks, despite the fact that she knows he’d never do anything to hurt her.
Tom comes over to her and her eyes snap back to the Others, before Tom’s proximity forces Danny to relinquish his hold on her. She gasps when he lets go, reaching up one hand to rub the spot where he was pulling on her hair.
“You okay, Kate?” Tom asks in that big voice of his. It has the same ring to it as that of a Mall-Santa Claus. It has a way of making her feel sick.
“Fine.” She says, keeping it short.
Tom bends down in front of her to pick up the rope while Danny’s hateful eyes stare at her from behind him. She’d almost be afraid of him if she didn’t know that she could easily take him in a fair fight.
Tom then proceeds to tie her up, and nods at Danny. “You can take them now.”
“Dig site is that way.” Danny pushes her forward down the same path they walked on yesterday and once they make it around the first corner, he tells her, “You can forget lunch today.”
“Same rules apply.” Danny tells them sternly once they arrive at the dig site. “But if you pull a stunt like yesterday…” and then he adds under his breath, “...or today, for that matter, I’ll make sure to find other work for one of you.”
Somehow, Sawyer doesn’t think he means it.
How many forced labor camps can one island have?
The wheelbarrow stands where he left it, and one of the goons comes over, carrying Kate’s pickaxe. Her face turns hard with dismay at the sight of it, and without a second thought Sawyer reaches for it.
“Why don’t I get my turn with the rocks today?” He asks.
But before he can reach it, Danny grabs it. “Not a chance.”
Sawyer frowns, demanding through gritted teeth, “Why not?”
“Because I say so.” Danny replies, the veins in his neck already straining.
“Sawyer.” Kate’s voice sounds defeatedly beside him. “It’s not worth it.”
She’s probably right, but he keeps glaring at Danny nonetheless, wishing he could lunge at the side of his face he neglected to punch yesterday.
“Listen to your lady.” Danny snarls, thrusting the pickaxe out to her.
Kate takes it reluctantly, her face looking almost as miserable as the day they brought her to her cage for the first time. He remembers it well. Thinks it might be burned into his eyes forever.
Anger is boiling under his skin, rapidly filling his muscles with the strength to knock the light out of Danny’s eyes once and for all, but Kate’s voice forces him to snap out of it.
“Sawyer..”
He looks at her. She’s looking at him from the corner of her eyes.
“Come on.” She says, offering him the faint lie of a smile.
Oh, he’s going to kill them. One by one. Starting with Danny.
It’s that thought that almost gets him through today. Nearly ten hours of carrying rocks in the blistering heat and blinding sunlight.
By the end of it, his shirt is soaked with sweat.
A shrill metallic alarm bell ends their shift. Four men and Danny appear behind them almost immediately, broad shouldered and ready to take them back to the cages, and Sawyer sighs, glancing back to the rocks where Kate is standing.
She doesn’t look good. The lack of food and water is becoming obvious in the unsteadiness of her movements. She tosses the pickaxe down and for a split second she sways shakily as if she can’t hold her balance anymore before she catches herself and turns toward him.
The look on her face lets him know that she caught him seeing her, and she shakes her head warningly. Silently telling him to leave it be.
“Are we going to have to get the ropes, or do you two think you can behave for once?” Danny asks as Kate arrives beside Sawyer.
Sawyer glares at him. He itches to retort with another one of his jokes, but Kate can’t use the trouble, and so he keeps his mouth shut. “Let’s just get it over with.”
“Great.” Danny scowls, nudging his gun towards their way home.
Kate has to walk first, followed by two of their men. Behind Sawyer, Danny is pressing a gun into his back, walking with a goon on each side.
They’re halfway there, when Sawyer notices the way Kate’s feet begin to falter, and before he can say anything, one of her feet gets caught on a piece of jungle root and she trips and falls.
“What’s going on over there?” Danny shouts, half growling and Sawyer has to fight the urge to push the Others aside and crouch by her side. His heart is hammering all the way up to his throat.
She rolls over limply, and remains completely unmoving. The men walking behind her grab her arms and face and neck, checking for a pulse, listening for her breath. All he can think about is breaking their arms.
Not very helpful.
“She fainted.” One of them finally calls out.
“Grab her.” Danny orders.
“No.” Sawyer hisses.
Danny grabs his arm, pulling him closer. He makes a point of pressing the head of the gun right into Sawyer’s side. “You want me to leave her here? Is that what you want?”
Sawyer holds his eyes, fueled by anger.
“Turn around and walk, or I swear I will leave her out here in the dirt.”
The pressure of the gun in his flank is starting to actually hurt, and no matter how tightly he clenches his jaw, the pain doesn’t grow any fainter. Slowly, reluctantly, and full of bitterness, he raises his hands, taking the first step forward.
One of the goons gathers Kate in his arms, letting her head hang without any support.
They walk all the way back to the cages without another word, but he can’t take his eyes off her, afraid that if he so much as blinks, something bad will happen to her.
“Lay her down here.” Danny demands once they arrive.
The guy lowers her gently enough, and Danny takes his gun off Sawyer just long enough to take off his backpack.
“She’s gonna need water, and proper food.” Sawyer cuts in, but Danny ignores him. “Hey, are you listening to me?”
He wants to push forward and confront Danny, but the two men next to him grab his arms, forcing him to stay put.
“Shut up.” Danny tells him instead.
“You can’t leave her like that.” Sawyer raises his voice.
“Shut the hell up.” Danny snaps around, forcing the barrel of the gun right under Sawyer’s chin. The cold metal meets his overheated skin sharply, pressing against his jawline painfully hard. Sawyer struggles against the hands of the two goons on his arms, and Danny narrows his eyes.
“Give me a reason to put a bullet through your skull, I can’t wait to find out how she does without you.”
The air is damp and cold when her eyes flutter open. Above her, the night sky twinkles behind the thick metal columns of her cage bars.
She never noticed how far apart the ones above her are. From where she’s lying in the dirt, they seem far enough for her to fit through.
The thought of freedom almost makes her wonder if she’s dreaming.
Her head is pounding faintly, and when she moves her arms to touch her cold fingertips to her temples, something restraints them. At first, it feels like her hands have just fallen asleep, but then she pulls again, and cold metal bites into her skin, rattling quietly.
Handcuffs.
Panic sends her into motion and within a second Kate manages to scramble to her feet, trying once again to jerk her hands free.
“Easy there.” Sawyer’s voice comes through the darkness, but the feeling of fear is so disoriented that she can’t make out its direction, can’t spot him in the dark.
The metal chafes against her wrists and irrationally, she grabs onto the cuffs and pulls with all her strength. They are fixed to something, but she can’t make out to what, hindered by the darkness, the pain and the fear.
“Kate, what are you doing?” Sawyer whispers sharply from his cage.
“Take them off.” She pants, pulling against the restraints until the bruises on her wrists radiate a sharp pain through both her arms and she falls forward, her hands landing against the bars of her cage.
The metal chain between her hands clangs against the thick cage bars, and she realizes that that’s what she’s tied to. Still, her heart hammers in a frenzy. She’s back in handcuffs, and she doesn’t know why. Doesn’t remember who put them on her, or when. In fact, all she remembers is the dig site and Sawyer.
Sawyer.
“Sawyer?” She calls out uncertainty, like she’s afraid he vanished between the last time she heard him speak and the time she struggled against her cuffs.
“Right here, Freckles.” He says somewhere to her right, the warmth of his voice immediately calming her frantic nerves. She presses her forehead against the bars, slowly opening her eyes to the sound of his voice.
The darkness is thick – it always is in the jungle – but there’s just enough moonlight to make out the edges of his cage. She thinks she sees a blurry silhouette of Sawyer’s face pressed between the bars of his cage, facing her.
“Why am I in handcuffs?” She asks him slowly, trying to keep her voice steady as she begins to calm down.
“That bastard Danny put them on you.” He explains, his voice sounding strained like he doesn’t want to let the anger of his words carry through.
She frowns, confused by what he says, but then she remembers how she struck him below the belt, and slowly it all comes back to her. Sawyer on his knees, the shocker held at her side, the dig site, and how she collapsed on their way back. She still remembers the way everything turned black, stars twinkling behind her eyes the same way they’re shining in the night sky now.
Sawyer breaks the silence by saying, “They’re sending the doctor in the morning.”
“Doctor? Jack’s coming?” Kate asks, fully turning her head toward Sawyer to look at his face, but all she can see is the tip of his nose and the deeply creased line of his brows.
“Snap out of your daydream.” Sawyer scoffs. “
Their
doc. The blonde chick.” His face seems to retreat into the darkness. “Now go to sleep. We ain’t getting the damn cuffs off ‘till morning.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Kate is sitting in the damp jungle dirt, when Juilet arrives at the cages. Her face is leaning against the bars of her cage while her hands are folded on her leg so the cuffs don’t chafe the skin more than they already have.
“Morning, Quack.” Sawyer greets her with a nasty grin and his arms folded against the bars of his cage.
She ignores him and walks straight past his cage, without even granting him a single glance.
Kate straightens when Juilet comes closer, resisting the urge to wince as the cuffs scrape against her wrists.
“How are you doing, Kate?” Juliet asks as she meets Kate through the bars of her cage, standing right in front of her. She’s only a few inches taller than Kate, but standing in the mud basically barefoot forces Kate to glance up at her.
“I’ve done better.” Kate admits, though warily.
Juliet nods understandingly. “Give me your hand.”
Kate hesitates, examining Juliet closely before she follows her order. Despite all the soft, free-flowing blonde hair, her sympathetic mouth and the slight smile in her eyes, Kate doesn’t trust her.
“I’m not gonna bite.” She promises, suppressing a clever smirk.
Part of her wants to look at Sawyer, and see what he thinks, but she can’t let Juliet out of her sight. The rest of her thinks that this might be her only way to get out of her handcuffs.
Juliet isn’t wearing any kind of weapon, nothing to fight with or defend herself, at least not that Kate can see.
Slowly, she extends her hand through the bars of her cage.
“Very good.” Juliet says calmly, reassuringly. In perfect doctor manner.
She proceeds to take Kate’s hand into her own, taking a hold of her fingertips. She presses her thumb down onto one of Kate’s nails until she hisses sharply, almost retracting her hand. “Sorry.” Juliet concedes.
“It’s nothing.” Kate glances away. Sometimes, she begins to feel like an animal that belongs in a cage. The time behind bars seems to make her more feral every day.
Sawyer is hanging on the bars of his enclosure, watching them with wary eyes.
“Look at me please.” Juliet says, and Kate glances back. “Good. Look up.”
Kate frowns in mild confusion, but she complies slowly.
“Mhm.” Juliet hums. “Now open your mouth.”
“Why?” Kate asks irritatedly.
“Just do as I ask.” Juliet smiles.
Kate scoffs. But she does. She opens her mouth, rolling her eyes.
“Very good.” Juliet says again. “You can close it now.”
She flips Kate’s hand, and lays two fingers over her pulse. The spot on her wrist hurts to the touch, but Kate does her best to swallow the pain. Juliet’s expression is vague at best and Kate has a hard time trying to discern if what she’s feeling is positive or negative.
“Do you mind if I…” Juliet starts, lifting her hand toward Kate’s face.
“What?” Kate pulls back like a stray cat, ignoring the way the metal of her cuffs slide against her sore skin.
“I’m just trying to take your temperature.” Juliet explains, smiling that smile again. There’s nothing particular about her smile, and still, it unsettles Kate down to the marrow of her bones.
“Why?” Kate asks, her irritation only increasing every time she has to speak up.
“You fainted, Kate.” Juliet lectures her.
As if she doesn’t know that.
Reluctantly, she leans closer again, allowing the other woman to touch her face with the back of her hand. First, she presses it against Kate’s forehead, then her cheek and then under her chin, raising her face slightly. Kate avoids her eyes. They’re too blue anyway.
“Alright.” She concludes, drawing back.
Kate looks at her, waiting for more information about what all this touching and probing and letting her see inside her mouth yielded, but Juliet doesn’t say anything. Immediately, frustration bubbles inside of her.
“What? That’s all you’re gonna say?” Kate hisses with narrowed eyes.
Juliet considers her briefly before giving in.
“Your body isn’t coping too well with the lack of water.” She states, her smile widening humorlessly. “We obviously underestimated how good you had it down by the beach with your people.”
Kate glares at her sharp-tongued tone.
“But don’t worry.” Juliet continues. “You’re of no use to us when you’re dead. I’ll make sure they’ll bring you more drinking water.”
She turns to leave, but Kate speaks before she’s fully turned her back on her.
“What about him?” She motions for Sawyer.
Juliet looks at Kate before her eyes slide over to Sawyer, taking him in briefly. “He looks fine to me.”
“Bet I do.” Sawyer snarls and Juliet almost smiles with actual humor playing across her lips, as if amused.
Kate resists the urge to roll her eyes, before demanding, “Okay, but what about my handcuffs?”
Juliet’s eyes land on Kate’s hands. “What about them, Kate?”
There’s a challenge in her eyes, but Kate can’t quite place it yet. She thinks about reasoning with Juliet, reminding her that keeping her cuffed to metal bars might not be the best plan of recovery, but the idea of snapping at her seems all wrong. Somehow, she doubts that Juliet will let herself be pressured.
No, looking into Juliet’s obnoxiously kind face makes her realize that she wants something else from Kate. She wants her to ask
nicely
.
Juliet raises her eyebrows questioningly, waiting for Kate to answer.
Kate can’t bring herself to do it. To give her the satisfaction of asking, but at the same time, she absolutely can’t keep being chained to this cage either.
Everything inside of her strains with the effort as she grits her teeth and speaks, “They hurt.” She says curtly.
“Come again?” Juliet asks, drawing closer to Kate. “I didn’t quite catch that.”
Kate can’t believe her. Rolling her eyes, she gathers the will to repeat herself.
“They hurt.” She says again, more clearly this time. Her stomach constricts with the feeling of resentment. “The handcuffs hurt.”
Juliet comes closer to her once more, carefully scanning Kate’s wrists and Kate holds her breath of relief.
“Would you like me to take them off?” Juliet asks, looking Kate in the eyes.
Kate swallows, unclenching her jaw.
‘Yes, please’ is still better than ‘Please take my handcuffs off’
, and so she concedes.
“Yes, please.”
Juliet’s smile widens incrementally, her eyes shining apologetically before she tells Kate, “I don’t own the key.”
Slowly, disbelievingly, Kate’s face begins to fall and she releases the breath she’s been holding with a gnarled sound of dismay emanating from her throat. When she catches herself and forces herself to look back up, Juliet has turned her back on her and is already walking away.
She casts her eyes on Sawyer and finds his gaze burning into her with unbearable sympathy.
If only she could escape his perception by turning away and retreating onto her concrete slab, but here she is, tied to the cage bars facing him. So she drives him away the only way she knows how.
“Don’t you have a Fishbiscuit-Puzzle to solve,
James?
”
His face grows grim when she says his name.
Uncalled for.
But it’s his own damn fault for extending a hand.
He doesn’t take it personally. Knows that she’s as exhausted as he is. So he does her the favor of turning around, begrudgingly retreating to the spot where he sleeps.
They don’t speak for hours after that, and the first thing he hears around noon is a low whistle sounding from outside the cages.
He looks up.
Walking toward them are Danny and his merry band of henchmen.
“You make a pretty picture like that.” Danny calls out to Kate, who sits on the ground, her cuffed hands in her lap.
The savage rage he feels for Danny returns as if it never left, increasing his pulse immediately.
What he would give to punch that man to a pulp
.
“Leave her alone.” Sawyer says threateningly while standing up.
Danny only smirks in response, his gaze fixed on Sawyer as he casually tosses a plastic water bottle into Kate’s cage, watching it splatter into the mud.
Then he turns again to leer at Kate. “I heard you want out of those cuffs.”
She just glares at him.
“Drink up your water, and I’ll take them off.” Danny says, slowly leaning down to Kate, his hands on his knees.
She sharpens her glare, but reaches for the muddy bottle anyway, unscrewing its cap. Sawyer watches with a clenched jaw as she takes a sip, and immediately, Danny starts clicking his tongue. “No stopping. Drink up. All of it.”
Kate scoffs indignantly, but Danny’s face stays grim as he says, “Doctor’s orders.”
Somehow, Sawyer doubts that Juliet sent him here to force Kate to down a bottle of water, but there ain’t much he can do from his position.
“Got one for me, Waterboy?” He calls, but Danny ignores him, steadily holding Kate’s angrily eyes.
Her handcuffs rattle as she raises the bottle and begins to chug the water down, her chest rising every time her throat constricts. Halfway through she closes her eyes with the effort, and Danny chuckles. Sawyer lets his head drop for a brief moment, wishing he could kick his cage door down and grab Danny to make him stop.
By the time he looks back up, she’s almost done, but drops of water are spilling from the corners of her mouth, dripping onto the strained fabric of her white dress. It’d almost be a nice picture, if it wasn’t so awful and the urge to free her reignites in his heart, burning unbearably hot.
Gasping for breath, she crumbles the plastic between her hands, tossing it at Danny’s feet. “Happy?”
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” He replies, crouching closer to the bars of her cage. His hands are fishing for the key in his jeans pockets.
She wants to tell him to go fuck himself. Sawyer can see it in her eyes, but all she does is glare.
Probably smarter anyhow
.
Danny grabs her wrists, pulling her hands through the bars and Sawyer watches her fight the compulsion to wince from the pain. His teeth press together so hard that they begin to ache.
Kate’s handcuffs come apart and finally, Danny straightens, taking his hands off of her. Some of the tension inside Sawyer’s muscles ebbs away, and his jaw relaxes.
“Now to you.” Danny calls out, making his way over to him. Sawyer can’t wait for what’s coming next.
He ignores him for a moment longer, watching Kate rub her sore wrists before she glances up at him. Her eyes are alert now that Danny has addressed him. Sawyer flashes her a small smile in another weak attempt to be reassuring, but she keeps watching his cage with worried eyes.
“I’m gonna need you to have a sip too.” Danny grunts. “We can’t have another fainting spell.”
Sawyer narrows his eyes. “So where’s my bottle then, Mr. Nurse?”
“Sorry, pal. You’re gonna have to use the watering hole like the rest of the bears.” Danny says with a smirk, pointing at the pipe that pours water whenever the feeding machine gets activated.
Sawyer scowls, slowly retreating from the bars of his cage. “No way Jose.”
He settles on a rock in his cage, throwing his feet onto the water basin provokingly. Leisurely crossing his hands behind his head.
Danny’s brows furrow deeply, the angry lines of his face deepening considerably as he waves over two of his goons. They unlock the cage and all three make their way into his cage, Danny first, followed by the two men with raised weapons.
“Get up.”
“Make me.” Sawyer growls.
Danny unhooks the electric shocker from his belt, and reaches for Sawyer, angrily grabbing him by the scruff of his neck before he forces him onto his knees in front of the water basin.
“Sawyer.”
Kate calls his name worriedly from her side of the cages.
Sawyer struggles, but lets himself be dragged, his face now pressed against cold stone. “Don’t forget to press the paddle, Tough Guy.”
Danny grunts. “Activate the damn thing.” He presses the shocker right into Sawyer’s throat where his pulse throbs heaviest.
The goons do their job well enough and soon the rattling of the pipes sounds in his ears as water begins to be pumped up. That’s when he grabs Danny by the back of his own neck, forcing his head down while Sawyer’s own head comes up to smash right into Danny’s face, aiming for his nose.
The two of them groan, but Danny stumbles away unsteadied, clutching his face. Sawyer manages to knock the shocker out of his hand and makes use of his disoriented state by grabbing him by his collar and lunging for him to finally take care of the other side of his face – the one he neglected during the last fight they had at the dig site.
The blow from his fist is so hard that Danny goes down, splattering into the mud with Sawyer on top of him, his fist coming up again to paint his face red, when suddenly a sharp cracking sound splices the air.
The gunshot rings in his ears like church bells, and he stills, recognizing it for what it is. A warning. Several hands grab him, dragging him off of Danny, who lies coughing and grunting in the dirt.
“You will pay for this.” He swears, clutching his nose, blood spilling through his fingers. “Do you hear me, Ford?”
Sawyer is being held down by two sets of hands, forcing him against the back of the cage while he pants like a wild animal and when his vision clears, he spots Kate staring at him with wet eyes, her forehead pressed against the bars of her enclosure.
The next thing he feels is the stock of a gun against his temple before everything goes black.