Beach Rat Won't Share - Lou

[Mavrick]

To count the days on the Island, was like trying to count the stars in the sky. For Emma at least, everything just seemed to blur together into one continuous irritable experience. And things had only been getting worse as of late. Like a bad game of see-saw with her on one end and Jack and Sawyer fighting (unknowingly) for the other spot, the teenager had jumped from one to the other in varying degrees of ‘intimacy’ more times than she’d like to admit. Jack had gotten through the ‘Iron Bitch’, then Sawyer had pried his way in, then Jack had been in the right place at the right time, only to bail out. That, had not sat well with Emma to say the least, and while the two avoided one another as much as posisble, it was in the last few days that the obvious strain between them was becoming obvious.

And it all started when she found her luggage. She had stared up in the giant tree for at least fifteen minutes, wondering whether the long, surf board bag was really there, or the forest was playing tricks on her. Deciding there was only one way to find out, she spent the next half an hour climbing the tree, trying to get as close to the branch the bag seemed to be hanging off of to shake it free. She shook it free alright, at the price of her own ass going down with it. She had stashed the bag and all the goodies she knew it contained and limped back to the beach to grudgingly report a twisted ankle and shoulder just about dislocated.

Despite being told not to wander off, she went back to her bag the next morning like a child waking up early to rush down to the Christmas tree. The bag, which had been tossed under a overhanging cliff face around the side of the lagoon, took thick brush to get too, but got enough sun on the other side to have let grass grow under the cover of the rock above, and a nice mango tree near by for food and bird songs, It meant she was dry if it rained, and didn’t have to sit her ass on rocks all day or go hungry. Soon Locke reported that she had gone down into the Hatch and asked for some thread, a sewing needle and a candle. Locke was happy to comply, but when he asked what she wanted with them, the shrug made him tell Jack. It took another twelve hours before she was within sight to be yelled at. Demanding to know if she had found things, and why she was away from the camp so often, Jack was met with Emma’s best known attitude: Aussie slang and rated R language.

She thought she was going to be good, but once again she found her sorry self in need of medical attention. When she arrived in camp in a short, button up denim skirt no one had ever seen her in before along with an unworn t-shirt, she was once again berrated by the Doc as he gave her a spanish inquisition as to why her right arm and leg look like they’d been under a cheese grater. She didn’t bother with a reply as he patched up what looked like some kind of strange road rash. Even the side of her face hadn’t been spared, and several jagged scratches lined the right side of her forehead and a couple at her chin. Jack’s demands to know what had happened were met with mute replies until he then moved the topic over to the new clothes she’d gotten, demanding to know where she’d stashed these new things she’d obviously found. Her hair, still wet (though from where Jack didn’t even want to ask) only half hid the smirk on her face, to which she recived an argument for the facial guesture. She only paid attention to about the first three seconds of it. Something about them being a group, needing to share supplies and that whatever she had, needed to be handed in. But Emma refused to let what she had found to be abused by the rest of them.

“Not a chance Doc,” she said, standing prematurly, leaving him with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a bloddied rag in his hands. “Finders keepers. Besides, there’s nothing I have that anyone here would want anyway.” She recieved a skeptical look, most likely in reference to a half finished bottle of Johnny Blue that he had left at the ‘scene of the crime’. Laughing, Emma shrugged the loose fitting shirt into place. “I finished that ages ago.” She was starting to get looks now from the other survivors, curiosity and a few looks of ‘not again’ splattered across their faces. His protests fell on deaf ears until she finally told him where he could stick his ‘good intentions’ and left Emma to turn on her heel and head for the tree line, back into the forest. But there was a road block, an unfriendly one at that, almost as unfriendly as Jack. But then again... and Jack was still watching.

She stopped in front of Sawyer, glancing over her shoulder at Jack before she looked back at the Southerner. “When was the last time you had a stiff drink?” she asked curiously, looking up at him rather casually, as if what had happened between them not long ago had never happened. That all their arguing and back and forth had never taken place, or that she was smart enough to put it aside in order to vent some frustrations and add some to others while she was at it.

[Sawyer]

Con-artists were a spectacular brand of human being. From an early age they had managed to adapt to their surroundings like a chameleon. Many masks were fitted easily to the contours of their face to better suit their situation and to influence the opinions, thoughts and actions of others. Because they had this special ability to manipulate themselves therefore, it was extremely easy for them to recognise others engaging in the same venture. Oh yes, while con-artists might have been the masters of deception, it only stood to reason that they were also the masters of reading people.

As he sat by his own camp fire under his own make-shift porch guarding his own meagre possessions, Sawyer liked to watch. He watched the way Jin and Sun interacted, now that their relationship was on shaky ground. He watched the way ? cared for baby Aaron and Claire’s gratefulness in return. He even watched Hurley sneaking extra food when no one was supposedly watching. But perhaps most of all, Sawyer had been watching Emma and Jack.

He didn’t like the way Jack’s eyes lingered on Emma. He recognised that patronising, Holier-Than-Thou glare and it irritated the sultry Southerner no end. If the kid wanted to run off into the jungle it was no one’s business. If she wanted to continuously get herself skinned up on rocks or whatever, again: her business. And frankly if everyone would just stay the hell out of everyone else’s damn business Sawyer thought the whole camp would get along famously. As it was that seemed almost impossible and he for one was getting sick of it.

When Emma and Jack had their latest spat, he had been lazing in a hammock slung low between two palm trees on the edge of the forest. Between reading his cheesy romance novel (desperate times called for desperate measures and the only other reading material available was ‘Cross-stitch Monthly. At least in Fire and Ice there were people doing it) and watching his fellow camp-mates Sawyer was effectively keeping one eye on the unpredictable jungle. When Emma stormed away from Jack and wandered over to him, Sawyer didn’t even bother to look up from his reading, such as his ego was still stinging from their last encounter.

“Probably about the same time you took your last Zanex.” He carefully marked his page and looked up at her through his battered (but still handy) sunglasses. “Why?”

[Mavrick]

“You’ve got five seconds to either take the offer, or keep reading that cheap smut Sawyer,” she replied, her tone level (for once) and one hand on her skirt clad hip. The grazes down her leg and arm were free of fresh blood and she moved her limbs like the scratches didn’t bother her, or that she was used to it. Which, would be unsure to anyone but the Australian.

How Emma had gotten the injury, would only be known should Sawyer get off his ass and put two and two together once they got into the forest. She had things to pick up and if he was smart enough, he’d figure things out then. But then again, he did presume to know so much about her already as it was. He got under her skin so effectively he may as well been some paracitic being sucking the life from her.

“And for your information, Zanex is taken by people who have fears of things like flying or heights. What I need is Vallium, some decend weed, or in this case, a good drink.”

[Loutopia]

“Red bikini in a knot?” he asked with a smirk, leaving his book on the hammock as he pushed himself to a standing position. Even though Emma was tall for a kid he was taller, and he looked down at her with – was that curiosity in his eyes? Here he had the opportunity to find out where she went, what she did there and more importantly what she had there. There was no way in hell he was going to pass up such a valuable opportunity to get good blackmail material. With a nod that clearly showed he was willing and able (no pun intended), he lifted one arm in a gesture of ‘ladies first’.

“Show the way, gumnut.”

The forest was suprisingly cool today. The clouds scudding low overhead had managed to act as a barrier for the heat, but unfortunately it was still as humid as a sumo sauna under the leafy green canopgy of the jungle. As they began trudging in silence, Sawyer couldn't help but let his nosy side win out. "Where the hell are we headed, anyway?"

[Mavrick]

Emma let his comment about her bikini slide, but muttered under her breath as he called her ‘gumnut’ while she passed him and slipped into the jungle, its green embrace swallowing her whole. They walked in silence for almost a minute before Sawyer piped up. The girl’s bare feed continued to pad softly on the undergrowth and she pulled her shirt over her head as she continued to walk, revealing a bright orange surf shirt, still wet and sporting ‘Surf Zone’ across the front and back of it.

“You’re not the only one around here with a good stash,” she replied crypticly before she began undoing the buttons to her skirt. She ignored Sawyer the whole time, this being what she was going to do whether he was following her or not. With a quick whip of the denim, her blue and white flower pattern bikini bottoms came into view, completing what appeared to be a surfind outfit. The full scale of her scrapes became evident, the curve of her hip sporting a few to add to her leg and arm. With a sharp turn they reached a large tree and an equally bright orange surf board, which Emma slotted under her right arm easily.

She turned to look at Sawyer at this point, giving him a half smirk. “Any other questions?” she asked mockingly, knowing he would have had about a thousand by now. Not waiting for him to respond, she set off again in a completely different direction than before, which threw off her trail and made it obvious she knew this jungle better than she’d let on previously. Emma had a lot of explaining to do, but she didn’t intend to reveal much until she had her grog and Sawyer in a comfortable position in relation to her person.

[Loutopia]

Sawyer liked a good mystery. Hell, he had recently read a damn Agatha Christie novel while sunbathing on this God-forsaken beach. But one thing he didn’t like was being lead into a trap by some uppity teenage girl who didn’t know trouble from a rat’s ass. He narrowed his green eyes at her when she asked him if he had any questions, lifting a hand to absently scratch at the stubbled peppering his jaw. Deciding that for he time being the best thing to do would be keep his mouth shut, he refused to take her bait. Instead, he offered her what he hoped was a blank expression and merely followed along like a little lamb.

Snort.

He crashed through the jungle after her, not bothering to step lightly to keep the noise down nor avoid the bigger bushes to keep from being tracked. Emma might have liked to think she was the Queen of the Wild, but for all thoughts and purposes he wanted to have a distinguishable route back to camp. As he moved behind her, curious as to where she had gotten not only the outfit but also the surfboard, a terrible idea began to form in Sawyer’s mind. What if the Others caught them out here, so far away from the camp? Concerned, he stepped a little bit quieter. Just a very little.

[Mavrick]

Sawyer could stomp all he wanted, but Emma was taking him the long way around, so that the waterfall would never come into view, nor be heard. All in all he would know where he was, but not in relation to the rest of the forest he knew. Her surfboard under her arm, she paused when the wind whipped through the forest, blowing her slow drying hair back and howling in a frightening manner at the two. While she was used to it, she still didn’t like it, and she cast a glance over her shoulder at Sawyer to see what he was doing, and to see what he thought about what had just happened.

The glance was brief and she continued on, rounding trees, dipping under fallen logs and climbing over some rather ragged rocks until they reached a stretch of thick bamboo that covered the entrance to the rocks where her stash was hidden. The waterfall, while near, could not be heard and she had taken (in her mind) the best route to make sure he didn’t know they were near it. Stopping in front of the durable plant she pushed her surfboard through and turned it to the side, slicing the bamboo apart to open up the glimpse of green and rock face, and the looming mango tree which she ate from. She looked to Sawyer at this point and simply nodded her head towards the narrow gap in the bamboo. The thick, strong stems took force to hold apart and if he didn’t hurry up he’d be thwapped by a hundred pounds of bamboo.

“Come on, I’m not a bloody body builder,” she ushered him, shifting her weight as the plant pushed back against her. She was a surfer, she had muscle, but not enough for him to stand about for ten minutes admiring the view.

[Loutopia]

The forest howling around them was hardly anything new to Sawyer. With a look on his face that clearly denoted that he was losing his patience (and quickly), the man carefully pushed through the bamboo on either side of the board and deliberately didn’t bother to hold it back for Emma to make her way through. Her attitude made his teeth itch and any little thing he could do to even the score seemed perfectly justifiable in his mind. As he waited for the girl to rejoin him, his eyes scanned his new surroundings.

((Ugh, sorry it’s so short))

[Mavrick]

Muttering ‘ass hole’ as he pushed pass her and left her with her usual dilemma of jumping through and getting her board out before the bamboo kicked her ass or spat her and her board back out (both of which had happened in previous attempts). With a quick jump and yank of her board which made the grazes on her arm hurt all the more she managed it and the bamboo flung back together like a green wall.

She pushed pass Sawyer deliberately, if he wanted to be an ass she was sure as hell willing to play. The fins on her board smacking into his arm as she moved by into the small clearing of grass. There was only about six paces for a man Sawyer’s height before the shadow of the mango tree reached him and the overhanging cliff face came right into view. Emma needed more steps to get there, but she moved under the rock that jutted out above her head maybe three feet or so above her and leant her board up against the rocky wall at the end of her little ‘room’. At the other end was a dead end, and within the nooks and crannies of this rock face was her stash.

She pulled out a bundle of towels and sorted them out. Two had been sown together to form the bottom of a makeshift bed and the other to fold over either for extra padding or for a blanket. She then tossed down a towel that had been sown into a pillow, filled with all her ‘lost’ clothes, void of buttons, zippers and anything else that dug in. She wasn’t purposely ignoring Sawyer, she was more than aware her half covered ass was not far from him, but she wanted to get changed and get comfy before he interrogated, insulted or used some fucked up nickname on her, which she suspected would begin any minute now as she wrapped a towel around her waist and grabbed a pair of cut off shorts from her bag, shimmied her bikini bottoms off and slid the shorts on. Her back to Sawyer and her caring what he saw at this point the least of her worries she then peeled the surf shirt off her, hesitating a couple of times as her harsh scratches got in the way. She tossed that into a ‘pocket’ of the rock face and put on the matching bikini top to what she had just taken off her ass.

Now satisfactory with being dry she rubbed the towel over her hair as she grabbed what she had actually promised was there, a bottle, with a blue and gold rimmed label at least three quarters full with the name Johnny Walker written on it. She held it up in the air as she grabbed her bag out of the rocks and dropped it down on her ‘bed’. Surf magazines spilled out, and while Emma continued to dig for something else, the glossy magazines skidded across each other until one in particular stood out from the rest. Worn, like it had been read a thousand times, and there was a picture half hanging out of it, like a bookmark. Upon closer inspection one would find that Emma was on the cover, an action shot of her in the same top and on the same board half way through a tube wave. The cover read ‘Surf churns up young teen’. The picture, which was of Emma with all her friends on a beach, half of them with surfboards, most of them guys, one of which holding Emma almost upside down while she laughed. She looked younger, her legs skinnier, her ‘assets’ not yet worth mentioning. On it were dozens of signatures, and well wishes, but one stood out, written right above where Emma was being held up by a over tanned surfer. “Don’t forget us Beach Rat”.

The page the picture marked held an article with the same title as the cover. On it was another picture of Emma surfing, the other picture was her mug shot. Black marker had scrubbed out quite a lot of the article, but key phrases remained.
“The youth of Bondi can’t surf safe when the older locals lure them in with false promises.”
“Emma Karlsnig was found and arrested in a drug raid on a house near Bondi, she was found in the bed with a man possibly twice her age.”
“Ecstasy, methenfedimines and marijuana were found in her system.”
“The court chose to send Emma to rehab instead of jail after she entered a plea of guilty.”
“The man she was found with was charged and convicted of Stachatory Rape.”
“An upcoming talent, having entered and won several local tournaments, will spend the next eight months in rehab.”
“It’s clear that she is not the only victim on Bondi’s white sandy beaches. It is not the surf Sydney’s youth needs to fear.”

[Loutopia]

The smug selfishness was quickly wiped from his face as the board fins carved into his skin. Luckily the buffer of Emma’s lacking weight meant they didn’t break his skin, but it was easy to see how people could get cut up like chop-suey in the surf. Being from a place that was mostly cattle farms and desert, Sawyer had never really put much stock in the ocean. He could swim, and he liked to eat fish (or at least he had before he had been forced to live off of it) and that was about as far as his love for the ocean extended. He didn’t trust its unpredictability one damn bit, and he made a point of taking heed of a statement he had heard somewhere or other: never turn your back on the sea. His eyes, greener as they reflected the lushness of the bamboo, took in the queer scene around him.

It was clear now that Emma hadn’t just stumbled on this part of the island. She had really turned it into her home away from home. Sawyer begrudgingly admitted to himself that he was impressed. Instead of whining like Shannon or causing drama like Claire, Emma seemed content to get on with her deal and leave the rest to call or fold. He took mental stock of her stash, admiring some things, recognizing a few (dammit!) and completely astonished at others. He turned away, facing the bamboo when she began to get changed. It was a curious gesture considering Sawyer’s nature, but something had changed. She was no longer to him that feisty little piece of ass he had thought nice to look at; a way to pass the hours as she strode back and forth across the beach like she owned the sand.

Emma seemed embroiled in confusion, and Sawyer hated confusion. She liked him. He knew it. She knew it. But she also liked the Doc, whether or not either of them cared to admit it, and playing second fiddle to anyone wasn’t high on Sawyer’s list of priorities. He kept his eyes to himself and only turned around when he heard the familiar scrape of a glass bottle against rock. When he spied the Johnny Blue he was more than a little excited – Christ! He hadn’t had a decent drink in longer than the time he had been on this hell-hole island! He made to reach out for the bottle and his gaze was caught by the glossy magazines flung carelessly onto her makeshift bed. As the girl was busy towelling her hair, he picked up the one with her on the cover, shocked and intrigued.

He let out a low whistle as he read the unblotted lines of the article. It definitely seemed like there was more to this little Beach Rat than met the eye.

[Mavrick]

Emma turned not long after his low whistle echoed in the low ceiling rock ‘room’ of hers. She had finally found the packet of smokes she’d been searching for and turned with them in one hand and the Johnny in the other, stopping dead in her tracks as she saw what he was holding. How could she have been so careless? Her eyes widened, but not with fear or shame, but anger. Now he knew everything about her, and he could strut back to camp and say whatever he wanted about her just to make her feel whatever he wanted her too. Not only that, but the memories of the time flooded back into her mind and stung just as much as the coral rash down her side. There was a long pause, which seemed an eternity to her before she snapped.

“Fuck!” she shouted, throwing the packet of smokes at him as hard as she could, and he was lucky she didn’t pick the Johnny to throw. “You can’t help it can you?” her tone now completely the opposite of what it had been moments before. “The one person on this spit of land with as much shit to hide as me and now you know everything, and I only have speculation.” She sank down, bending her knees, pulled to her chest as her butt rested on her pillow. She dropped the Johnny, and it dropped the inch to the towel covered grown and gently fell over.

Looking at the ground she spotted the photo, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to hold back the tears. She hadn’t seen that photo in years, someone must have snuck it into her magazines before she was forced onto the plane. “I should have never brought you here,” she murmured, more to herself than Sawyer as it was clearly too late for turning back. Jack had confused her, that was for damn sure, but she almost had felt herself around Sawyer, being a smart ass and being teased back in a way that was almost a way of showing affection. That was how her beach gang had worked, they’d annoyed and teased the shit out of eachother, but would have taken the fall for anything if they could have. That was how it had started between her and Jay, and the guy who was holding her with a grin in the photo had written from jail not long before she had left, saying he never regretted a thing.

It was being reminded of him that attracted her to Sawyer the most. Their personalities were almost exactly the same, proud, cocky to the point of wanting to smack them but cunning and smart, able to get what they wanted or needed using their wits alone. Jay had gotten Emma like that, and she had loved the whole thing, and she had loved him.

Sawyer had no idea just how confused Emma was, even if he now knew her wrap sheet.