A Different Way to Be: (Chapter 10) Part 1
Title: A Different Way to Be
Author: Zippy88
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: Kate/Juliet
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own anything
Spoilers: A little from season 3
Chapter 10: Forever’s Not So Long
Part 1.
It’s more than just the touch of relief that you feel when you witness the young brunette padding out from the bathroom with bare feet and adorned in the new clean clothes you provided her with. You feel the edge of guilt tip your way off the weighing scales for already assuming the worst of her. No wonder her attitude is always nastily bitter towards you. You give her no reason to change it.
The wafting air scoops up the pillar of steaming vapour that escapes from bathroom door, and the distant smell of your shampoo clings to it thickly, too thickly. You frown lightly at the noticeable perfumed scents that are slowly but firmly filling the air. How much did she use? You watch her as she comes to stand in the kitchen, her damp hair rich with a vivid darkness and a coy smirk rolling on the edges of her lips with a knowing mischief about it.
She’s leaning against the kitchen counter with her hands holding onto the edge of it loosely, her slender arms bent at her elbows in the sleeveless grey top you’ve chosen for her to wear. You quickly notice the absent bandages from her wrists and instead your eyes are immediately drawn to the ugly scarlet colouring that marks her skin there. “Do they hurt?” you ask pointing towards her wrists. She drops her head to follow where you’re pointing, before pushing herself way from the counter and holding her right hand to inspect it herself.
She just shrugs at you pushing her bottom lip out a little briefly. You want to laugh at her obvious show of playing the tough one, but no sound eventually takes hold of your mouth. She stalks around the kitchen slowly while her eyes are watching carefully and measuring your reaction to her sudden movements. She pulls open the white door to your fridge, her eyes challenging you to stop her, but when you don’t move towards her she turns to the contents of the fridge. She’s hungry again. The sedative is probably working its magic on her want for food and water again.
“You have chicken?” she remarks glancing back at you in surprise. You just smile back, knowing that there isn’t any way for you to explain that she would believe. She apparently doesn’t see anything in the fridge that she fancies, as she shuts the door without taking anything. Instead she turns back to you, her teeth gripping at the edges of her upper lip and toying with a thoughtful gaze. “You gonna to tell me why I’m here?” she asks finally.
Her voice is much softer than before. There isn’t that initial raging brutality about the way she says her words. It isn’t that she’s lost her driven determination, she’s still demanding that you answer her questions after all, but she’s realised that her bolshie attitude wasn’t getting her anywhere fast. You’re quite relieved that she isn’t as belligerent as before that way you hope to keep the black pistol tucked into your waist band.
“I already told you,” you explain, “to keep you out of the way of Ben.” You’re not entirely sure whether she’ll accept that as an answer but it’s the only one you have for her at the moment. You’re afraid that if you tell her the real reason right now she’ll resort back to the angry fraction of herself that you had the misfortune of seeing only half an hour ago. She needs a little more from you before she will trust you and believe your real story.
You watch her sigh softly, dropping her lip from her teeth and instead rolling her tongue around the inside of her cheek with the same thoughtful expression drowning out her features. “And what, this is Ben’s plan, I suppose?” she asks with a little hint of sarcasm. You choose not to answer her. You don’t want to lie anymore, yet you’re not willing to part with the truth either, not just yet anyway.
“You always do what he says?” she nods her head once briefly with a brash smile, blatantly wanting to irritate you. Again you don’t answer her. You think it’s wise not to get her rattled up into a similar state as before, yet you know you can’t go on not speaking to her and you can’t resist but giving her a taste of her own sarcastic mocking, “you always do what Jack says?”
Her mood falters drastically as her smile fades instantly and the normal scowl you’re used to seeing is fast approaching the most inner core of her eyes. She scoffs at you as if she’s trying to laugh. She understands now that you’re not quite like them. She’s scanning you now from head to toe, sizing you up before you’ve had a chance to tell her anything decent about yourself. Would she even want to know? Probably not, you assume, to her you’re still one of them regardless if there is something in you that tells her differently.
“How long am I gonna be here for?” comes her next impatient question. You raise your eyebrows thoughtfully at a question you can answer truthfully. You lick at your bottom lip casually, before replying flatly, “just for tonight.” She seems surprised at first to hear that you’ve given her somewhat of response, but then you see the bewilderment set into the whites of her eyes, reflecting her desire to know more. “That’s an awful lot of effort for just one night,” she remarks. You have to agree with her there, it is a lot of effort for just one night, but you honestly believe it’ll be worth it once she hears your story.
“So what?” she breaks your train of thinking, “you’re just assuming that I’ll be a good girl and do as I’m told? What’s to stop me from escaping?” You snap your eyes back to focus on her in mild panic. The strength that harbours her voice is so threatening that you can’t help but wonder if she’s serious. Of course she’s serious. “You won’t run Kate,” you conclude confidently, “because you value the lives of Sawyer and Jack.” You witness her eyes grow wide at the subtle warning that you are placing at her feet. Blackmail again. It seems Ben has taught you really well. But you understand that this works with Kate. It’s the only thing that will work with Kate.
“If you do -“ she starts intimidating you now, but you hurriedly cut her off, telling her that no harm will come to them as long as she tows the line. Is that too much to ask? Probably it is, but you can’t help what isn’t in your control. You watch her for a moment as she stares back at you with cursing glare, and now you feel that the right opportunity has presented itself to settle apart of your growing curiosity, “if you wanted to escape so badly why didn’t you ask me to free you?”
She breathes in roughly from the perfumed air around her, slamming her back against the kitchen counter as she does. She shrugs her shoulders lazily and looks away from you with a sparkle of boredom tugging at her face. You realise she’s in no mood to answer you. You won’t get to cure your curiosity this time.
The drumming sound of the thrashing rain against the brittle glass windows has dulled itself to a low hum in the distant background and you notice that the heavy darkness is slowly lifting. It comes as a welcomed gift because you know that it’ll be easier to trace her tracks if she does decide to go against your plans. You just don’t understand why she didn’t ask to be let go in the first place, it would have saved all these pointless escape plans of hers.
You move towards the fridge and it startles you to see her flinch at your sudden movement. You watch her attentively, “are you hungry?” you ask her and once again she shrugs her shoulders at you. A tiny smirk shapes the left side of your mouth, as you cut parallels to her and a typical sulky teenager. She would definitely give Alex, Ben’s teenage daughter, a run for her money.
“I believe you said you wanted red wine,” you remind her of what she asked for back at the cages. She frowns at you in confusion, and you just gesture your head towards the far corner of the counter where a lone bottle of red wine stands. She gasps quietly before she moves closer towards it to inspect its label. “But I have to confess,” you continue, “I have no idea if it’s expensive or not, or whether it’s any good to be honest.”
You watch as she childishly turns the dark bottle over in her small hands, as if she hasn’t seen it before. There’s a little bit of jealousy that webs itself inside your mind because you know she hasn’t had the creature comforts you’ve been lucky enough to have all this time. She’s been out in the wilderness of the jungle for so many days that the young brunette has probably forgotten what her favourite foods taste like.
“How do you get all of this stuff?” she finally turns to you with a refreshing air of fascination. Now it’s your turn to do the shrugging of shoulders because for once that’s the only truthful reply you can think of. You don’t know. You’ve never known. It’s as if this stuff magically appears in your fridge when you’re back is turned. You’ve never had to question where it’s come from before. You never really wanted to know, you’re afraid the answer would depress you again.
She huffs against the air startling you into looking across at her. She’s moving slowly and aimlessly around the kitchen space, appearing lost within her surroundings. You blink your eyes gradually with a little grin dancing across your lips. “Why don’t you go and sit down?” you ask her nicely for a change, and you’re just as genuinely shocked as she is to hear the visible change in your voice. “I can help,” she surprises you further with her pleasant reply, and she’s already rubbing her hands together while looking across the kitchen counters for some task to undertake. “It’s okay really,” you emphasise causing her to dip her eyebrows into a guarded frown. “I’m not completely useless,” she informs you strongly, her voice has lost a touch of its softness that you’ve just witnessed, and you find your cursing yourself mentally for chasing away the only politeness in her voice.
She clicks her tongue at you as if she’s just realised something, “I get it,” she adds in a defeated tone, “you don’t want me near the knives.” Well she has a point, you conclude. It would certainly be a risk of some sort to allow her to have such a sharp object. It wouldn’t matter if you have the gun or not if you allowed her a knife, you assume that she’d already know a colourful and smart way of killing you before you even had a chance to remove the pistol from inside your jeans. No she’s right, you can’t give her that. “How about you set the table?” you offer in exchange for the knife idea. You want to laugh out loud at how ridiculous it sounds to invite your prisoner to set the table, which you’ll both sit down and enjoy a decent meal together. What kind of prison guard are you? It’s probably a good job that you didn’t choose this as your profession; you doubt you would have lasted long.
Oddly enough she doesn’t say anything about the ludicrous request; you suppose that she’s just happy to have something to do. You’re pretty sure she hasn’t given up on the idea of trying to escape. “You’re more trusting than Ben is,” she comments as she starts laying out the table and while you’re finally starting to get the food out of the fridge ready to heat up. You’re quite pleased that it’s already been cooked and that you only have to heat it up. It saves you from engrossing all your concentration into the task and forgetting about a certain brunette that is still unpredictable in some of her ways. “I’m not Ben,” you simply state, not even turning to look at her.
It always annoys you to draw any kind of comparison between you and Ben. There is no common ground on which the both of you stand on, yet that isn’t what people from the outside of your circle seem to think. You despise the man and his incredibly cruel ways. You hate the way people seem to think that you’re painted with the same brush as him. “So what’s the deal with you and him anyway?” you hear her say. You’ve been waiting for this moment for days, for weeks, ever since these people crash landed onto the island, you’ve been waiting for this opportunity to ask them to save you from a life you don’t even recognise as your own anymore. But now it’s upon you there’s a fear you won’t be believed. So you choose to stay quiet. Maybe when she’s had a glass of red wine she’ll be calmer to try to explain to, and who knows she might even believe you then.
“He your boss?” she probes further and it hits you nastily in the face. You turn your body fully around, leaning against the counter with your right hand, the other placed casually on your hip. “It doesn’t work like that,” you inform her firmly. Her hand pauses over the plate that she’s placing on the opposite side of the table, her eyes widening for a moment before she resumes her task. “How does it -“ you interrupt her next question, which you already know is coming from the first few syllables. You don’t mean to snap at her, it isn’t her fault, it’s only natural for her to be interested in Ben and the life you have here with the ‘Others’. But you’re tired of speaking about him, you’re tired of letting your whole life revolve around that one man, and you’re certainly tired of trying to put meaning to his madness. She looks taken back by your sudden abruptness when you ask her if you can talk about something else. But you’re thankful that she doesn’t go against what you ask of her this time. She simply leaves the conversation to grow stale and cold. Back to the way you can control it.
The vibrant smells of cooking food start to evaporate into the air, swirling magically with the poignant perfumes that still linger in the background. You have no idea how this will taste, whether it will be edible at all. You don’t think it will matter to Kate though. She’s probably used to eating from a make-shift bonfire out on the sandy shores in the island’s majestically teasing evening sun. The kettle’s whistling to its favourite tune as it clicks triumphantly when it finally reaches its boiling point. There’s only the gravy to make now. You feel as if you’re cheating making it the easy way, but you’ve never been one for taking cooking to your heart.
You’re just placing the kettle back onto its electric seat on the counter after filling up the measuring jug in front of you, but you’ve lost your concentration along the way. Your mind is elsewhere, thinking of Kate and whether all this will be enough to make her trust you. You knock the jug with your right elbow with such force that you feel the scolding liquid rip into your skin through your top before you see it. You can’t help but yelp while stumbling backwards, the boiling heat running down your front with a blinding speed.
She’s there before you can properly see how much of a mess you’ve created with your lack of attention. She’s already grabbing some kitchen towels from the counter and mopping up the chaos that spills out from the knocked over jug and cascading down the front of the cupboards. You don’t have time to wonder why she’s in such a rush to mop up after you, because the stinging pain you feel all the way down your chest reminds you that you need to change your top.
You’re already walking towards the bathroom to grab a towel to wipe away the hot sticky liquid, but you falter your step with a sudden bout of anxiety. Glancing behind you, you realise you’ll be leaving her alone without your watchful eye on her. It doesn’t matter what threats you make against her friends, you’re pretty certain she’ll still try to escape if she’s given half the chance, and this would be the perfect opportunity for her to make a break for the front door. She won’t get far of course, but you’ll still have the hassle of trying to get her back.
“Stand in the hallway please,” you command her into the space where you know you’ll be able to see her from the bathroom. She’s looking at you as if you’ve completely and finally lost your mind, before she shakes her head with disbelief. “And where else would I go?” she asks mockingly while she does as she’s told for once. You’re inwardly surprised that it hasn’t taken longer to make her do what you want.
The strength of the perfumed air hits you with such a force that you find yourself squeezing your eyes together before it has a chance to sting them. Familiar scents of fruitful peaches and other sweet aromas fill your nostrils instantly. Seriously how much of your shampoo did she use? You step closer into the bathroom towards the sink and suddenly you discover the answer discarded casually and determinedly inside its white bowl. The empty bottles of shampoo, shower gel and other various cosmetics that Ben allows you to have, are littered inside the sink like a piece of modern art. The remaining contents of the bottles line the edge of the sink with a reflective glisten.
You look over your shoulder to where Kate’s stood outside the door looking rather sheepishly pleased with herself. She’s twisting her body lightly and rocking against one of her legs, while she nibbles at one of her fingernails trying desperately to hide her smug smirk. Turning back to face the mess that adorns your bathroom sink, you sigh miserably, already forgetting the biting scolds of the boiling water from before. Grabbing one of the blue hand towels from its small metal ring attached to the wall, you roughly rub down your chest with a deepening frustration. Well the file on her got something right at least, she enjoys making a mess of things for certain, you think to yourself.
“You only needed say if you didn’t like my choice in shampoo,” you tell her flatly, a subtle dig at her childish behaviour. She just shrugs her shoulders at you. What more do you expect from her? She’s spent so many days without basic supplies that she’s learnt to survive without them. This is just to wind you up. It’s to frustrate you to the point where you’ll finally give in to her. You won’t of course. You need her to get back at Ben.
It’s still annoying you even after you’ve managed to clean up the whirlwind of chaos that you’ve created by knocking over one simple jug of boiling water, that Kate finds it in herself to act out against everything she touches. The food sitting in front of you has long since gone cold. You don’t have an appetite anymore. Your brain is too busy mulling over the brunette who’s currently shovelling fork rations down her neck at an incredible speed. You’d assume that she hadn’t eaten anything in days.
You don’t understand her, you’ve come to decide. You thought you could understand some of her at least for the familiarities that you both share. You understand how it feels to hear the word cancer in connection with someone close to you, you understand how it feels to be rejected by anything that touches you, and you even understand what it means to want to be free, but that doesn’t bring reason to her. You don’t really understand her. You want to. You’ve wanted to for a long time, probably ever since you got handed her file, if you’re truthful to yourself for a moment. But something’s telling you that that is forbidden to you. It’s something that was neglectfully forgotten in her file pages. She won’t allow anyone to understand her. You don’t think she knows how to let someone understand her. Still you’ll give it a try, whether it’s forbidden or not, you want to know now. You’ve had enough of waiting for her to provide you with subtle answers to your burning questions that are shot with curiosity.
“Why didn’t you ask me to let you go?” She only pauses for a moment, her slender fingers are curled tightly around the metal fork and she doesn’t appear to want to give up her food anytime soon. It’s a delay tactic though; you know this because you use it yourself. “I know that’s what you really want,” you add carefully, trying to ease her into talking to you. It works. “You don’t know what I want,” she snarls through gritted teeth, and it’s apparent to you that you’ve hit a raw nerve somewhere deep underneath the shadows of her hidden self. “I know you’ve tried to escape at least twice now,” you tell her, crossing your arms and letting your forearms rest neatly on the table in front of your unfinished plate, “I’d say that’s a pretty good indication of what you want.”
You want to wince at your abruptly cynical voice that is hardened with that familiar frostiness you favour so much. It’s probably what she expects from you now anyway so why break a habit? “Why would I want to leave?” she raises her voice a little louder than before with a sharp, scornful sting inside her words, “I have a roof over my head, I don’t have to sleep on the beach, the food’s miles better, and the company, well,” she pauses, looking up and down at you, “I couldn’t ask for more.” The thickness of her contemptuous sneer is enough to suffocate yourself into believing that you’ll never get a chance to understand the scars that mark her deep within. She’s not even preparing to share with you at all. Who would blame her? You’re virtually a stranger to her anyway.
“Okay so what is it you want then?” you ask her out straight. You’ve stumped her now. She’s placed her fork on the side of her plate. Her eyes are wider than they’ve ever been, so wide that you can see the tiny details of her darkened irises. It finally dawns on you that she doesn’t even know what she wants. “So you can exploit it if I don’t do as you say?” she throws back eventually, her eyes narrowing in defence. Touché it would seem, but you don’t give up that easily since you’ve had years of practise. “I have plenty of material to exploit if I wanted to,” you inform her bluntly, “but to be honest with you, it doesn’t really bother me what you want, you’re not likely to get it anytime soon.”
She regards you with great suspicion, probably trying to call your bluff. You remain in your precisely placed mask that has sealed up around your true facial expressions. She won’t be able to see past it you’re sure of it because no one has ever gotten close enough to try. You casually drink from the small wine glass, tasting the familiar sweetness that harbours the red wine that you persuaded Ben to get for you. You want to laugh at the ridiculous setting you’ve created, knowing that Ben is missing it all. You’re having dinner complete with wine with supposedly one of the most dangerous prisoners there is on the island. It’s amazed you at how relatively easy it has been for you to convince her into coming this far into your warped plan.
“Could have fooled me,” she replies softly after a while, as she goes back to shovelling mouthfuls of food into her mouth, “I’m drinking red wine, aren’t I?” She picks up her wine glass and takes a sip from its deeply reddened contents while her eyes raise themselves slightly at you with a particularly smug colour brandishing them. You’re surprised that she’s prepared to give you everything back, what you’re willing to deal out.
You’ve never had this before. No one has ever really thrown back their snide comments in retaliation to your own. There’s only Ben, but you know how to deal with him. You’ve had three years of solid hard working practice to know how to deal with him. But Kate is different. You’ve only had a couple of days to deal with her and you simply aren’t prepared to take on her determined might. “I think I get more of what I want than you do,” she adds the final sting.
Your eyes flicker unnaturally at her statement. The brazen and uninvited truth resonates loudly inside your head, scratching the fragile skins of your ear drums. Maybe this is what you’re so jealous of. It unnerves you now to come to realise that this is what you’re envious about, but it suddenly mixes with a nasty flavour of resentment when you understand that she’s known about this before you have. “I do fine thank you,” you resort to bitterness to prove your worth. Why do you even have to prove your worth to anyone, let alone Kate?
Author: Zippy88
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: Kate/Juliet
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own anything
Spoilers: A little from season 3
Chapter 10: Forever’s Not So Long
Part 1.
It’s more than just the touch of relief that you feel when you witness the young brunette padding out from the bathroom with bare feet and adorned in the new clean clothes you provided her with. You feel the edge of guilt tip your way off the weighing scales for already assuming the worst of her. No wonder her attitude is always nastily bitter towards you. You give her no reason to change it.
The wafting air scoops up the pillar of steaming vapour that escapes from bathroom door, and the distant smell of your shampoo clings to it thickly, too thickly. You frown lightly at the noticeable perfumed scents that are slowly but firmly filling the air. How much did she use? You watch her as she comes to stand in the kitchen, her damp hair rich with a vivid darkness and a coy smirk rolling on the edges of her lips with a knowing mischief about it.
She’s leaning against the kitchen counter with her hands holding onto the edge of it loosely, her slender arms bent at her elbows in the sleeveless grey top you’ve chosen for her to wear. You quickly notice the absent bandages from her wrists and instead your eyes are immediately drawn to the ugly scarlet colouring that marks her skin there. “Do they hurt?” you ask pointing towards her wrists. She drops her head to follow where you’re pointing, before pushing herself way from the counter and holding her right hand to inspect it herself.
She just shrugs at you pushing her bottom lip out a little briefly. You want to laugh at her obvious show of playing the tough one, but no sound eventually takes hold of your mouth. She stalks around the kitchen slowly while her eyes are watching carefully and measuring your reaction to her sudden movements. She pulls open the white door to your fridge, her eyes challenging you to stop her, but when you don’t move towards her she turns to the contents of the fridge. She’s hungry again. The sedative is probably working its magic on her want for food and water again.
“You have chicken?” she remarks glancing back at you in surprise. You just smile back, knowing that there isn’t any way for you to explain that she would believe. She apparently doesn’t see anything in the fridge that she fancies, as she shuts the door without taking anything. Instead she turns back to you, her teeth gripping at the edges of her upper lip and toying with a thoughtful gaze. “You gonna to tell me why I’m here?” she asks finally.
Her voice is much softer than before. There isn’t that initial raging brutality about the way she says her words. It isn’t that she’s lost her driven determination, she’s still demanding that you answer her questions after all, but she’s realised that her bolshie attitude wasn’t getting her anywhere fast. You’re quite relieved that she isn’t as belligerent as before that way you hope to keep the black pistol tucked into your waist band.
“I already told you,” you explain, “to keep you out of the way of Ben.” You’re not entirely sure whether she’ll accept that as an answer but it’s the only one you have for her at the moment. You’re afraid that if you tell her the real reason right now she’ll resort back to the angry fraction of herself that you had the misfortune of seeing only half an hour ago. She needs a little more from you before she will trust you and believe your real story.
You watch her sigh softly, dropping her lip from her teeth and instead rolling her tongue around the inside of her cheek with the same thoughtful expression drowning out her features. “And what, this is Ben’s plan, I suppose?” she asks with a little hint of sarcasm. You choose not to answer her. You don’t want to lie anymore, yet you’re not willing to part with the truth either, not just yet anyway.
“You always do what he says?” she nods her head once briefly with a brash smile, blatantly wanting to irritate you. Again you don’t answer her. You think it’s wise not to get her rattled up into a similar state as before, yet you know you can’t go on not speaking to her and you can’t resist but giving her a taste of her own sarcastic mocking, “you always do what Jack says?”
Her mood falters drastically as her smile fades instantly and the normal scowl you’re used to seeing is fast approaching the most inner core of her eyes. She scoffs at you as if she’s trying to laugh. She understands now that you’re not quite like them. She’s scanning you now from head to toe, sizing you up before you’ve had a chance to tell her anything decent about yourself. Would she even want to know? Probably not, you assume, to her you’re still one of them regardless if there is something in you that tells her differently.
“How long am I gonna be here for?” comes her next impatient question. You raise your eyebrows thoughtfully at a question you can answer truthfully. You lick at your bottom lip casually, before replying flatly, “just for tonight.” She seems surprised at first to hear that you’ve given her somewhat of response, but then you see the bewilderment set into the whites of her eyes, reflecting her desire to know more. “That’s an awful lot of effort for just one night,” she remarks. You have to agree with her there, it is a lot of effort for just one night, but you honestly believe it’ll be worth it once she hears your story.
“So what?” she breaks your train of thinking, “you’re just assuming that I’ll be a good girl and do as I’m told? What’s to stop me from escaping?” You snap your eyes back to focus on her in mild panic. The strength that harbours her voice is so threatening that you can’t help but wonder if she’s serious. Of course she’s serious. “You won’t run Kate,” you conclude confidently, “because you value the lives of Sawyer and Jack.” You witness her eyes grow wide at the subtle warning that you are placing at her feet. Blackmail again. It seems Ben has taught you really well. But you understand that this works with Kate. It’s the only thing that will work with Kate.
“If you do -“ she starts intimidating you now, but you hurriedly cut her off, telling her that no harm will come to them as long as she tows the line. Is that too much to ask? Probably it is, but you can’t help what isn’t in your control. You watch her for a moment as she stares back at you with cursing glare, and now you feel that the right opportunity has presented itself to settle apart of your growing curiosity, “if you wanted to escape so badly why didn’t you ask me to free you?”
She breathes in roughly from the perfumed air around her, slamming her back against the kitchen counter as she does. She shrugs her shoulders lazily and looks away from you with a sparkle of boredom tugging at her face. You realise she’s in no mood to answer you. You won’t get to cure your curiosity this time.
The drumming sound of the thrashing rain against the brittle glass windows has dulled itself to a low hum in the distant background and you notice that the heavy darkness is slowly lifting. It comes as a welcomed gift because you know that it’ll be easier to trace her tracks if she does decide to go against your plans. You just don’t understand why she didn’t ask to be let go in the first place, it would have saved all these pointless escape plans of hers.
You move towards the fridge and it startles you to see her flinch at your sudden movement. You watch her attentively, “are you hungry?” you ask her and once again she shrugs her shoulders at you. A tiny smirk shapes the left side of your mouth, as you cut parallels to her and a typical sulky teenager. She would definitely give Alex, Ben’s teenage daughter, a run for her money.
“I believe you said you wanted red wine,” you remind her of what she asked for back at the cages. She frowns at you in confusion, and you just gesture your head towards the far corner of the counter where a lone bottle of red wine stands. She gasps quietly before she moves closer towards it to inspect its label. “But I have to confess,” you continue, “I have no idea if it’s expensive or not, or whether it’s any good to be honest.”
You watch as she childishly turns the dark bottle over in her small hands, as if she hasn’t seen it before. There’s a little bit of jealousy that webs itself inside your mind because you know she hasn’t had the creature comforts you’ve been lucky enough to have all this time. She’s been out in the wilderness of the jungle for so many days that the young brunette has probably forgotten what her favourite foods taste like.
“How do you get all of this stuff?” she finally turns to you with a refreshing air of fascination. Now it’s your turn to do the shrugging of shoulders because for once that’s the only truthful reply you can think of. You don’t know. You’ve never known. It’s as if this stuff magically appears in your fridge when you’re back is turned. You’ve never had to question where it’s come from before. You never really wanted to know, you’re afraid the answer would depress you again.
She huffs against the air startling you into looking across at her. She’s moving slowly and aimlessly around the kitchen space, appearing lost within her surroundings. You blink your eyes gradually with a little grin dancing across your lips. “Why don’t you go and sit down?” you ask her nicely for a change, and you’re just as genuinely shocked as she is to hear the visible change in your voice. “I can help,” she surprises you further with her pleasant reply, and she’s already rubbing her hands together while looking across the kitchen counters for some task to undertake. “It’s okay really,” you emphasise causing her to dip her eyebrows into a guarded frown. “I’m not completely useless,” she informs you strongly, her voice has lost a touch of its softness that you’ve just witnessed, and you find your cursing yourself mentally for chasing away the only politeness in her voice.
She clicks her tongue at you as if she’s just realised something, “I get it,” she adds in a defeated tone, “you don’t want me near the knives.” Well she has a point, you conclude. It would certainly be a risk of some sort to allow her to have such a sharp object. It wouldn’t matter if you have the gun or not if you allowed her a knife, you assume that she’d already know a colourful and smart way of killing you before you even had a chance to remove the pistol from inside your jeans. No she’s right, you can’t give her that. “How about you set the table?” you offer in exchange for the knife idea. You want to laugh out loud at how ridiculous it sounds to invite your prisoner to set the table, which you’ll both sit down and enjoy a decent meal together. What kind of prison guard are you? It’s probably a good job that you didn’t choose this as your profession; you doubt you would have lasted long.
Oddly enough she doesn’t say anything about the ludicrous request; you suppose that she’s just happy to have something to do. You’re pretty sure she hasn’t given up on the idea of trying to escape. “You’re more trusting than Ben is,” she comments as she starts laying out the table and while you’re finally starting to get the food out of the fridge ready to heat up. You’re quite pleased that it’s already been cooked and that you only have to heat it up. It saves you from engrossing all your concentration into the task and forgetting about a certain brunette that is still unpredictable in some of her ways. “I’m not Ben,” you simply state, not even turning to look at her.
It always annoys you to draw any kind of comparison between you and Ben. There is no common ground on which the both of you stand on, yet that isn’t what people from the outside of your circle seem to think. You despise the man and his incredibly cruel ways. You hate the way people seem to think that you’re painted with the same brush as him. “So what’s the deal with you and him anyway?” you hear her say. You’ve been waiting for this moment for days, for weeks, ever since these people crash landed onto the island, you’ve been waiting for this opportunity to ask them to save you from a life you don’t even recognise as your own anymore. But now it’s upon you there’s a fear you won’t be believed. So you choose to stay quiet. Maybe when she’s had a glass of red wine she’ll be calmer to try to explain to, and who knows she might even believe you then.
“He your boss?” she probes further and it hits you nastily in the face. You turn your body fully around, leaning against the counter with your right hand, the other placed casually on your hip. “It doesn’t work like that,” you inform her firmly. Her hand pauses over the plate that she’s placing on the opposite side of the table, her eyes widening for a moment before she resumes her task. “How does it -“ you interrupt her next question, which you already know is coming from the first few syllables. You don’t mean to snap at her, it isn’t her fault, it’s only natural for her to be interested in Ben and the life you have here with the ‘Others’. But you’re tired of speaking about him, you’re tired of letting your whole life revolve around that one man, and you’re certainly tired of trying to put meaning to his madness. She looks taken back by your sudden abruptness when you ask her if you can talk about something else. But you’re thankful that she doesn’t go against what you ask of her this time. She simply leaves the conversation to grow stale and cold. Back to the way you can control it.
The vibrant smells of cooking food start to evaporate into the air, swirling magically with the poignant perfumes that still linger in the background. You have no idea how this will taste, whether it will be edible at all. You don’t think it will matter to Kate though. She’s probably used to eating from a make-shift bonfire out on the sandy shores in the island’s majestically teasing evening sun. The kettle’s whistling to its favourite tune as it clicks triumphantly when it finally reaches its boiling point. There’s only the gravy to make now. You feel as if you’re cheating making it the easy way, but you’ve never been one for taking cooking to your heart.
You’re just placing the kettle back onto its electric seat on the counter after filling up the measuring jug in front of you, but you’ve lost your concentration along the way. Your mind is elsewhere, thinking of Kate and whether all this will be enough to make her trust you. You knock the jug with your right elbow with such force that you feel the scolding liquid rip into your skin through your top before you see it. You can’t help but yelp while stumbling backwards, the boiling heat running down your front with a blinding speed.
She’s there before you can properly see how much of a mess you’ve created with your lack of attention. She’s already grabbing some kitchen towels from the counter and mopping up the chaos that spills out from the knocked over jug and cascading down the front of the cupboards. You don’t have time to wonder why she’s in such a rush to mop up after you, because the stinging pain you feel all the way down your chest reminds you that you need to change your top.
You’re already walking towards the bathroom to grab a towel to wipe away the hot sticky liquid, but you falter your step with a sudden bout of anxiety. Glancing behind you, you realise you’ll be leaving her alone without your watchful eye on her. It doesn’t matter what threats you make against her friends, you’re pretty certain she’ll still try to escape if she’s given half the chance, and this would be the perfect opportunity for her to make a break for the front door. She won’t get far of course, but you’ll still have the hassle of trying to get her back.
“Stand in the hallway please,” you command her into the space where you know you’ll be able to see her from the bathroom. She’s looking at you as if you’ve completely and finally lost your mind, before she shakes her head with disbelief. “And where else would I go?” she asks mockingly while she does as she’s told for once. You’re inwardly surprised that it hasn’t taken longer to make her do what you want.
The strength of the perfumed air hits you with such a force that you find yourself squeezing your eyes together before it has a chance to sting them. Familiar scents of fruitful peaches and other sweet aromas fill your nostrils instantly. Seriously how much of your shampoo did she use? You step closer into the bathroom towards the sink and suddenly you discover the answer discarded casually and determinedly inside its white bowl. The empty bottles of shampoo, shower gel and other various cosmetics that Ben allows you to have, are littered inside the sink like a piece of modern art. The remaining contents of the bottles line the edge of the sink with a reflective glisten.
You look over your shoulder to where Kate’s stood outside the door looking rather sheepishly pleased with herself. She’s twisting her body lightly and rocking against one of her legs, while she nibbles at one of her fingernails trying desperately to hide her smug smirk. Turning back to face the mess that adorns your bathroom sink, you sigh miserably, already forgetting the biting scolds of the boiling water from before. Grabbing one of the blue hand towels from its small metal ring attached to the wall, you roughly rub down your chest with a deepening frustration. Well the file on her got something right at least, she enjoys making a mess of things for certain, you think to yourself.
“You only needed say if you didn’t like my choice in shampoo,” you tell her flatly, a subtle dig at her childish behaviour. She just shrugs her shoulders at you. What more do you expect from her? She’s spent so many days without basic supplies that she’s learnt to survive without them. This is just to wind you up. It’s to frustrate you to the point where you’ll finally give in to her. You won’t of course. You need her to get back at Ben.
It’s still annoying you even after you’ve managed to clean up the whirlwind of chaos that you’ve created by knocking over one simple jug of boiling water, that Kate finds it in herself to act out against everything she touches. The food sitting in front of you has long since gone cold. You don’t have an appetite anymore. Your brain is too busy mulling over the brunette who’s currently shovelling fork rations down her neck at an incredible speed. You’d assume that she hadn’t eaten anything in days.
You don’t understand her, you’ve come to decide. You thought you could understand some of her at least for the familiarities that you both share. You understand how it feels to hear the word cancer in connection with someone close to you, you understand how it feels to be rejected by anything that touches you, and you even understand what it means to want to be free, but that doesn’t bring reason to her. You don’t really understand her. You want to. You’ve wanted to for a long time, probably ever since you got handed her file, if you’re truthful to yourself for a moment. But something’s telling you that that is forbidden to you. It’s something that was neglectfully forgotten in her file pages. She won’t allow anyone to understand her. You don’t think she knows how to let someone understand her. Still you’ll give it a try, whether it’s forbidden or not, you want to know now. You’ve had enough of waiting for her to provide you with subtle answers to your burning questions that are shot with curiosity.
“Why didn’t you ask me to let you go?” She only pauses for a moment, her slender fingers are curled tightly around the metal fork and she doesn’t appear to want to give up her food anytime soon. It’s a delay tactic though; you know this because you use it yourself. “I know that’s what you really want,” you add carefully, trying to ease her into talking to you. It works. “You don’t know what I want,” she snarls through gritted teeth, and it’s apparent to you that you’ve hit a raw nerve somewhere deep underneath the shadows of her hidden self. “I know you’ve tried to escape at least twice now,” you tell her, crossing your arms and letting your forearms rest neatly on the table in front of your unfinished plate, “I’d say that’s a pretty good indication of what you want.”
You want to wince at your abruptly cynical voice that is hardened with that familiar frostiness you favour so much. It’s probably what she expects from you now anyway so why break a habit? “Why would I want to leave?” she raises her voice a little louder than before with a sharp, scornful sting inside her words, “I have a roof over my head, I don’t have to sleep on the beach, the food’s miles better, and the company, well,” she pauses, looking up and down at you, “I couldn’t ask for more.” The thickness of her contemptuous sneer is enough to suffocate yourself into believing that you’ll never get a chance to understand the scars that mark her deep within. She’s not even preparing to share with you at all. Who would blame her? You’re virtually a stranger to her anyway.
“Okay so what is it you want then?” you ask her out straight. You’ve stumped her now. She’s placed her fork on the side of her plate. Her eyes are wider than they’ve ever been, so wide that you can see the tiny details of her darkened irises. It finally dawns on you that she doesn’t even know what she wants. “So you can exploit it if I don’t do as you say?” she throws back eventually, her eyes narrowing in defence. Touché it would seem, but you don’t give up that easily since you’ve had years of practise. “I have plenty of material to exploit if I wanted to,” you inform her bluntly, “but to be honest with you, it doesn’t really bother me what you want, you’re not likely to get it anytime soon.”
She regards you with great suspicion, probably trying to call your bluff. You remain in your precisely placed mask that has sealed up around your true facial expressions. She won’t be able to see past it you’re sure of it because no one has ever gotten close enough to try. You casually drink from the small wine glass, tasting the familiar sweetness that harbours the red wine that you persuaded Ben to get for you. You want to laugh at the ridiculous setting you’ve created, knowing that Ben is missing it all. You’re having dinner complete with wine with supposedly one of the most dangerous prisoners there is on the island. It’s amazed you at how relatively easy it has been for you to convince her into coming this far into your warped plan.
“Could have fooled me,” she replies softly after a while, as she goes back to shovelling mouthfuls of food into her mouth, “I’m drinking red wine, aren’t I?” She picks up her wine glass and takes a sip from its deeply reddened contents while her eyes raise themselves slightly at you with a particularly smug colour brandishing them. You’re surprised that she’s prepared to give you everything back, what you’re willing to deal out.
You’ve never had this before. No one has ever really thrown back their snide comments in retaliation to your own. There’s only Ben, but you know how to deal with him. You’ve had three years of solid hard working practice to know how to deal with him. But Kate is different. You’ve only had a couple of days to deal with her and you simply aren’t prepared to take on her determined might. “I think I get more of what I want than you do,” she adds the final sting.
Your eyes flicker unnaturally at her statement. The brazen and uninvited truth resonates loudly inside your head, scratching the fragile skins of your ear drums. Maybe this is what you’re so jealous of. It unnerves you now to come to realise that this is what you’re envious about, but it suddenly mixes with a nasty flavour of resentment when you understand that she’s known about this before you have. “I do fine thank you,” you resort to bitterness to prove your worth. Why do you even have to prove your worth to anyone, let alone Kate?