Red Rover - Chapter 2: No Place To Go - Cooper (Lost/OC) - pg
Prompt: Fire for occhallenge
Characters: Cooper Mackenzie/Sawyer/Sayid/Juliet
Fandom: Lost
Rated: PG (medical scenario)
Summary: Sawyer wants to know why Cooper was so desperate to leave Other-ville.
Disclaimer: I only own Cooper; I do not own the rights to Lost or to Rachel Weisz.
Comments: Are welcome and muchly loved.
No Place To Go
Cooper’s first days at the Oceanic survivors’ camp were stressful to say the least. Sawyer and Kate returning had definitely been uplifting for them; but they saw Cooper immediately as an enemy. She couldn’t blame them; she knew what her people had done to their people and she knew how they felt about them. The Others.
One person who did align himself with her rather quickly was Sayid Jarrah; a man Cooper knew had been a soldier in the Republican Guard and was very astute when it came to torture techniques. She assumed he was sussing her out; testing her motives. He watched her cautiously as she set up a tent for herself on the outskirts of their little shanty beach town. He was trying to intimidate her, that much was clear, but he was very subtle about it.
It was only when Cooper had trouble securing down a piece of tarp that kept flapping away in the evening breeze that he approached her.
“You need a tighter knot.” He said. “This close to the beach; the wind picks up quite suddenly.”
“Are you offering help or just criticism?” She quipped, a mild attempt at humour.
Sayid gave only the smallest hint of a smile; but he took the ropes from her hands and looped them around the tree trunk before fastening them so tightly to the tree Cooper was sure she’d never be able to undo it. She was also sure that he made her see how rough he pulled the ropes together; threatening her. “That should hold.”
“Thank you.” Cooper smiled as he left her alone. It was a small step forward; but a step nonetheless. Considering most of the survivors preferred to just give her dirty looks or ignore her completely; she was taking whatever she could get.
After settling in to her new tent; Cooper gathered up some twigs and dry leaves and set about starting a fire. She cursed herself for not picking up a lighter or some matches from The Barracks before she’d left. She also wished she’d brought more food, more clothes, more books, more everything; but she’d had so little time to clear out of there it was a grab-what-you-can scenario.
“Need a light?” A slick, Southern drawl called out to her.
Looking up, Cooper saw Sawyer standing beside her tent silhouetted slightly as the sun set behind him. He was holding a lighter in his hands. “Yes, actually, I do.” She held out her hand for the lighter; but he didn’t pass it over.
“You want it; you gotta answer me something first.”
Sighing, Cooper rested her hands on her knees. “What?”
“Why’d you want outta Crazy Town so bad?”
“You didn’t seem to care when I was breaking you out of that cage.” Cooper pointed out as she added more leaves to her fire pit.
“Saw a chance to escape and I took it.” Sawyer shrugged as he slouched down into the sand beside her. “Since that’s what I wanted I didn’t wanna give you cause to change your mind.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter much now, does it?” Cooper pulled her knees up under her chin.
“They had to have done something to make you wanna leave,” Sawyer asked. “And you up and ditched your own people without even a look back. That to me says you were running from something.” His eyes glanced upon the scar up her arm. “Someone...”
“Perhaps I was running to something, James.” Cooper said curtly, holding her hand out to him for the lighter. “I saw a chance to escape, and I took it,” She echoed his words. “You were there for what a couple of days, I was there for five years.”
“Didn’t seem like you were in a cage, English.”
“That doesn’t mean I wasn’t stuck.” She said, snatching the lighter from his hand. He didn’t say anything else; just waited for her to light her fire and then took his lighter back. Cooper couldn’t decipher if he left because he’d gotten what he wanted from her, or because he was put off... probably both.
Alone for awhile, Cooper took out her book and began to read; but she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind was racing; and more than once she thought about stepping out that fire and disappearing into the jungle back to her camp; to Juliet. She was in no condition to be in a situation like this, her pregnancy would be threatened enough on this island as it was without the added stress of all these new people. Granted, the whole reason she’d left with Sawyer and Kate was for her unborn child’s safety... yet right now she couldn’t have felt less safe...
Worried tears in her eyes, Cooper curled up in her new tent, amid the whispers of her name around the campsite, and tried to get some sleep.
xxx
Three Months Ago
Cooper impatiently chewed on her right thumbnail, her left hand currently having blood drawn from it, as Juliet tried to keep her relaxed. “Coop; take a breath,” She said soothingly. “You get like this every time.”
“Maybe I am infertile,” Cooper muttered. “How many times have we done this, a hundred?”
“Twelve.” Juliet corrected her. “Twelve times.”
Cooper sighed and dropped her hand to her lap. They had been at this for almost two years now. Cooper didn’t mind being a guinea pig, she was desperate for answers as much as Juliet was. Why weren’t women able to give birth on this island? What was it that killed both them, and their unborn child, before they reached their third trimester? That’s what Juliet was brought to the island to solve, and that’s what Cooper was helping her with.
It had been Cooper’s idea, to test Juliet’s vaccines on her. It went against Ben’s orders, so they conducted their experiments at night in secret. They came to The Staff medical hatch two or three nights a week, depending on where Cooper was in the stage of her experiment. Right now; she was at the end of a four week trial of Juliet’s latest vaccine. The main issue in the past had been that Juliet’s vaccine’s prevented Cooper from becoming pregnant; and Cooper worried it would have lasting effects that would cause her to be infertile. Juliet; however, was optimistic.
“Ok, done,” Juliet took the blood filled syringe from Cooper’s arm and slid her wheeled-chair over to the testing table. “Won’t be long.”
Cooper untied the rubber band from around her upper arm and slid her sleeve down over that awful scar. She couldn’t help but feel disheartened; she wanted to be pregnant so much, to get started on the second phase of their tests, to deliver the first healthy child born and conceived on his island since God knew when. But, with eleven negative tests behind her, Cooper’s hopes were most definitely down.
“It’s clearly an environmental thing,” Cooper was saying. “Maybe we should go to another one of the hatches for the next trial?”
“Stop talking like that, Cooper,” Juliet scolded her as she conducted the test. “Staying positive is just as important.”
“I’m sorry, Jules, I am but you have to admit this has not been a success.” Cooper said as she took a sip of the orange juice Juliet had brought for her.
“Coop.”
“I know, positive.”
“Exactly.” Juliet looked up from the test at her, wide-eyed.
“What?”
“It’s positive,” Juliet smiled. “You’re pregnant... it worked.”
Cooper was at Juliet’s side in a minute looking at the test herself. “Are you sure? It can’t... it worked?!” Cooper was so shocked.
“It worked!” Juliet flung her arms around Cooper’s neck. “Oh, God, it worked! We’re going to have a baby!”
Cooper laughed elatedly and squeezed her friend. “You did it!” She said as happy tears sprang to her eyes.
Juliet chuckled happily, she was crying, too. “Ok,” She sniffled. “Ok, this is phase one. We’re in phase one right now.” She laughed; her hands were shaking with excitement. “Now we have to keep you healthy, next few weeks are going to be very important, ok?”
Cooper could only nod as Juliet started rattling off dates and made notes on a calendar; all she could think of was her baby. She could see him (or her) already. Brown hair, just like her own, same eyes... her baby, the most precious thing she would ever be a part of; but this was just the beginning. Cooper had bore witness to too many deaths of pregnant women on this island; but she had faith in Juliet, faith in their research and her vaccines. The mind that had healed her cancer-ridden sister and achieved a pregnancy with her as well, Juliet was key to all of this. Cooper wouldn’t be able to do it without her.
xxx