Title: Break a Promise, Make a Vow
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Up to I Do
Notes: Stand-alone, written for Challenge #57: Seven Deadly Sins at lostfichallenge. The sin featured is wrath. A very different way I Do could have gone. This is actually a story I've wanted to write for some time, but it took this particular challenge to motivate me to get it out of my head and onto the computer screen. Also for un_love_you #27: Author's Choice: You'll pay for this.



categories: AU Fic, Fic That Made Me Cry the Hardest

You can also read this fic with the DVD commentary turned on.



They've left her virtually alone, for what must have been hours. The rain had stopped long ago, and when the sun first came out there had been steam rising from the saturated ground. Now the air is still again, and her clothes have dried stiffly on her body.

She feels none of it – not the heat, not the rough fabric, not the bars of the cage pressing into her back.

He'd told her to turn around, to close her eyes, not to watch, but she'd only done so after he'd fallen. She hadn't wanted to watch them carry him away – or maybe they'd dragged him. Like he was nothing. She doesn't know; she'd stopped listening, stopped hearing. Now she uses her feet against the ground to press herself harder into the metal bars, hoping to feel something.

She can still see the look of surprise on his face. She squeezes her eyes shut but it's imprinted on the insides of her lids. She wonders if he'd actually believed Pickett would spare him, that her desperate pleas and declaration of love would be enough to save his life.

Maybe Sawyer had been more of a romantic than she'd thought.

Or maybe people always looked surprised in the last moments before death. She wouldn't know. She hadn't exactly stuck around to photograph Wayne's reaction.

She shuffles her body around then, seized with the need to see again the place he'd fallen. To her shock and mild horror, he's still there. They've left him, just as he'd crumpled, legs folded under him at an odd angle. Before she can stop it, the thought occurs to her that he must be in pain.

But of course, he's not. Not anymore. The blood has dried on his temple, turning an ugly tint of brown in the dead heat, and it almost looks like he's reached up with a muddy hand to wipe his brow. Almost.

Now she feels, and at first it's that her face is wet, which she thinks is odd, given that the rain stopped long ago. She opens her mouth to speak, and her voice creaks out, as if she hasn't used it in far too long. “Sawyer.”

When he doesn't move, she frowns and repeats it, louder, stronger this time. “Sawyer! Damn it, Sawyer! Get up!” Intellectually, she knows he's not hearing her, that he'll never respond. The knowledge doesn't stop her from trying again. “God damn you, Sawyer, stand up!”

She hears footsteps then and falls silent, half expecting to see him coming around the corner. Whatcha yammerin' about, Freckles? But instead she sees Pickett approaching, and with a sick churning in her stomach, she realizes she'll never be Freckles again.

After Tom, she'd vowed to never again have a reason to kill.

Now, she stands up, ignoring the tingling in her legs that tells her she's been sitting in one position for too long. She grips the bars of the cage until her knuckles turn white and looks directly into Pickett's eyes.

“You'll pay for this. All of you. You will pay.”