The Deputy hadn't spoken a word to Jacob in hours but she didn't sleep either. She just stayed in her place on the bed, ignoring him completely. It wasn't that she was trying to give him the silent treatment, she was just trying to figure out what was wrong with her. The panic attack shook her, she hadn't had one for months and was actually starting to think she'd gotten past them. But that afternoon was a stark reminder to her that she wasn't ok.

    The feeling of being trapped somewhere so isolated just struck a nerve. Sure she'd been kidnapped before by both John and Jacob, but then she wasn't alone. Here she was alone, save for when Jacob was around, and alone she didn't have the strength (or the luck) to survive for very long. She really didn't want to stay another night in the cabin but she wasn't sure she would be able to make it now, not in the condition she was in.

     Her hands stopped shaking pretty quickly, but not quick enough for Jacob not to notice them. He of course saw how she looked when he first got back to the cabin, her face red and eyes all puffy. He saw how pale she was, and how quick she was to anger. Any person with two eyes and a brain could tell that she was not alright, but after she told him she always kept her word she didn't say a damn thing to him.

     Not that he wasn't curious about it but he assumed she wouldn't be as forthcoming with this as she was about Klaus. He spent the silent hours studying her from afar. He decided one way to pass time was taking apart and cleaning his gun, which he did in his chair again. She didn't take her eyes off the fireplace, but she wasn't looking at the fire.

     It got dark outside and the even warmth from the fire couldn't keep back the chilled tension in the cabin. It wasn't that Jacob didn't like silence, it's just that with the Deputy he learned to equate her silence with her being upset. He stole glances at her, but her spot never changed. She started biting the nail on her thumb absentmindedly.

     "You shouldn't do that, it's a bad habit." Jacob said, breaking their silent record.

     The Deputy, a little shocked that Jacob said anything at all, snapped out of whatever daze she was in and looked over at him. She didn't respond and only folded her arms over her chest. She didn't realize she'd even moved her arms, she wasn't paying attention. When she zoned out she started thinking about Klaus, she tried to think about everything he did to her and why it was making her react like this. She tried to understand, and she wanted to understand, just why he had so much hold over her mental health even after she'd run away.

     "What are you just not going to say anything until we get off this mountain?" Jacob asked her and the Deputy glanced at him, returning to looking back at the fire.

     "I thought you liked the peace and quiet." She said with an edge in her voice.

     Jacob set down the barrel of his gun, leaning forward on his knees. "Look, I'm fine with the quiet, but why don't you just tell me what happened?" He asked and the Deputy shook her head.

     "It's nothing, just forget about it." She pulled the covers up closer to her face and Jacob gave his head a shake.

      "You're so selfish." Jacob remarked, seeing if egging her on would make her talk.

     The Deputy whipped her head to look at him. "I'm selfish? It was just a damn panic attack it wasn't like I-" she realized that she'd spilled what happened and stopped talking. Jacob got what he wanted but he didn't have a grin on his face or anything that made him look victorious.

     The Deputy took a deep breath and tried to ignore Jacob again. "So, it was a panic attack?" His tone was soft but the Deputy didn't look at him.

     "I'm fine, just please go back to ignoring me."

     "I never ignored you, you ignored me." Jacob said, again trying to stir some kind of reaction but the Deputy was locked down.

     "Lucky you." The Deputy said as a final statement and went back to staring at the fire.

     A few minutes passed and the Deputy got lost in the fire again. Jacob had moved onto the clip of his gun, cleaning it thoroughly. This time the Deputy didn't try to think about Klaus, it was too painful. Instead she tried to think about her and Jacob the night before.

     The Deputy had never expected Jacob to be as gentle as he was with her. It had taken her by surprise the fact that he went so slow, always taking moments to check and see if she was alright, occasionally pausing when she needed a break. She was sure it was part of his mind games, it had to be. There was no way the real Jacob Seed was so careful.

     It shook the Deputy to her core, being treated with so much care. Klaus had never once been that kind to her, but she didn't have enough experience to know that the way he treated her was wrong. Klaus always hated her scars, he thought they were ugly even though he'd made them himself. He never once took responsibility for beating her, every time he'd blame her or get mad at her for making him so mad. It's strange, even after she told herself not to think about him, he still edged his way into her mind.

     Jacob's voice shook the Deputy out of her thoughts. "Thinking about him won't help." He said and set his clip on the table. She knew he couldn't read her mind, he was just making a guess. It was a damn good guess, but still a guess.

     She didn't want to talk, she knew that if she tried to talk to him then she'd snowball into a worse place. The last time she'd opened up about Klaus they wound up having sex and it forced her to stay here another night. This time was different, she couldn't let herself get so vulnerable again.

     She wanted to be defiant and not give Jacob the satisfaction of getting her to talk about her ex and sleeping is a way of doing that, right? She assumed yes and decided to slide down into the bed, turning her back to Jacob sitting in his chair. She didn't fall right to sleep but she hoped it was enough to trick Jacob into saying something to himself, maybe about how annoying she was. She thought it would help her to distinguish between the mystery man she'd been talking to and Jacob Seed.

     It didn't.

     He could tell that she didn't actually fall asleep for quite some time, and in that time he got his gun all put back together and hung back on the wall. He went back to his chair and tried to get some sleep, it wasn't hard, Jacob was used to getting little sleep in pretty uncomfortable places. He stayed alert, even when sleeping, just in case anything happened.

     He knew he was prone to having nightmares too, which is one reason why he rejected the idea of sleeping in a bed with the Deputy. Jacob has had nightmares so terrible that when he woke up his whole room was destroyed. And because of that he doesn't keep anything glass near his bed, he only keeps his knife under his pillow just in case. One of the first times he'd had a bad nightmare was when Joseph and John brought him back to John's apartment. Of course he'd had nightmares before that when he was homeless but those were fewer between and more docile.

     It had been three days since Joseph and John had brought Jacob off of the streets. It was strange, John lived so different from either Jacob or Joseph. His apartment was like something from a movie, it was large and spacious with walls adorned by art. It seemed like someone else's apartment, and it was. It was John Duncan's apartment, not John Seed's.

     It took him a couple days to begin to relax, even just a little bit. Joseph listened to his stories, from war and juvie, to being homeless and begging for food. Joseph told Jacob about his wife, and about his daughter. He told Jacob about what the Voice had said to him and why he tried to look for him. He'd been trying for years now, but only after finding John did he make any headway. John didn't spend a lot of time at the apartment but rather at his law firm's building. When he was at the apartment he spent most of his time on the phone, smooth talking people into selling them a space or finding someone to replace him.

     It was a world that Jacob had never known, the world of the rich and powerful. John put him in a guest bedroom that was bigger than the tent he slept in in Iraq. The first night he spent in that room he woke up on the floor to his bleeding hands gripping a broken lamp. And that was from a mild nightmare.

     What scared him was losing control. When he was brainwashing people and training them to be strong he was in control. He had the music box. He played the tapes. He watched the trials. When he slept he lost that control. The control over his words, his thoughts, his hands. It was too convenient for his nightmares to reach him, like he couldn't run away from them fast enough.

It was something he hid well, besides, in his book having a fear was a weakness and there was no room for weakness. If he let the Deputy see that side of him, the scared side, he would never be able to gain back that respect he'd created, or the fear. But after today Jacob doubted the Deputy wouldn't try to leave first thing in the morning when she woke up so he just had to sleep on that chair for one more night.

He tried to figure out what he would tell his men after he got down. If he said that he was in a cabin with the Deputy for four days they'd wonder why he didn't have her in tow. And he'd have to tell Joseph why he didn't. And John would definitely find out they had sex, he was just too good at getting secrets out of people. If he doesn't tell anybody then he wouldn't have to worry about any questions, all he had to do was convince the Deputy not to tell anybody either.

(Authors note: Sorry for the shorter chapter, these last few days have been pretty busy!)