Protection

Dan was already half asleep in the sand under their tarp-tent lean-to.

He didn't stir when Charlotte shuffled up, took off her shoes and placed them aside to sit beside his near the sputtering torch. When she sat on her knees beside his prostrate form, Daniel shifted slightly and turned toward her sound. His eyes didn't open.

Her eyes flashed over her shoulder. Jin and Sun stood together in their own orange torchlight, he holding her hands in both of his, running a thumb over her knuckles back and forth, over and again. Jin looked up to catch Charlotte watching him, and she was quick to look away. If ever there was a man to follow through on a threat, Charlotte knew somewhere dark in her heart that it was Jin. Behind the warmth of his eyes and soft and careful voice there was something deadly and sharp--a concealed blade ready to fly from a sleeve at any given moment.

Charlotte had always considered herself a strong woman. Independent, hot-headed, self-fulfilling woman willing to do what she needed for advancement and to do what it is that she loved. She would fight off blonds and brunettes who got in the way of what she had to do--from behind with the butt of a pistol or face-to-face with her hands. She would protect what was hers.

She settled into the sand beside Dan, and he took in a long breathy sigh, but his eyes didn't open.

Charlotte was a strong woman, but the steel of Jin's eyes, the knife of his threat, twisted somewhere in that hard part of her. Somehow, her lip wobbled once--the lip she swore she'd never loose to wobble in the first place. Weak woman, falling to tears like you're in some God-awful soap opera.

Her fingers gripped tight onto Daniel's as his hand lay across his side. Her lip between her teeth didn't wobble. Daniel's eyes blinked open hazily and he started awake at the contact.

"Char?" His voice was still asleep.

"Dan," she began, but her voice wasn't as strong as she liked it. She stared over and ignored the wobble in her throat. "I like your fingers, Dan."

He hadn't turned to find her in his eyes and she was half glad. He hadn't retrieved his fingers, either.

"Thank you," he replied, his own voice low and unsure. She smiled sadly, losing control of her lower lip, glad that he hadn't turned to see her lose it. "I like your fingers too, I guess."

Her laugh was too shaky and she cursed inside her head in four languages for it. She cut herself off before it could go on too long. When Dan turned, his eyes were blurred by the water stubbornly rising in hers.

"Charlotte? Hey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she assured him, shaking her head and squeezing at his fingers with her own. "I've got your back, Dan. You got that?"

He nodded after another probing pause.

Sleep came all too easy afterward, she clutched to his back, her fingers intertwined with his. She would do what she had to in order to protect what was hers.