A/N: This is my first ever Lost story! I'm pretty excited about it, so I hope you like it. It has some mild spoilers for the season four finale...so, fair warning. Special super duper thanks to my beta, mugglecastlover33. Love it or hate it, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
The characters and everything to do with Lost does not belong to me, I'm simply borrowing them. ;
Go Back
When things went wrong on the island it didn't matter whether or not he had caused the problem. He was the de facto leader. He was supposed to guide his people and keep them safe. When he failed to do his duty, when people got hurt, eyes turned to him for answers. It was happening now and they weren't even on the island anymore.
That was the problem.
Things had not gone well since they'd left and the responsibility fell on him.
This time, however, it was unquestionably his fault.
"You all have to go back."
Wasn't he the one, they would say, that said they had to get off the island? Wasn't he the one that promised them that everything would be okay?
They would say he had failed the people that looked to him for guidance.
He would have to agree.
Look at Hurley; in a mental facility, he for sure had been better off on the island.
Sayid had dropped off the proverbial map; rumored to be handling someone else's dirty work.
Sun would never forgive him for Jin's death.
Aaron would never know his real mother, never even be able to know she'd existed.
The people he'd left behind on the island were suffering for his choices, so Locke informed him.
And then there was Kate. There were no words to describe how badly things had turned out with Kate. She hated him now, despised him. He was weak and pathetic in her eyes, no longer the strong, fearless doctor.
It was all his fault; he had made the wrong choice. Now he was doing the only thing he could do; listening to what Benjamin Linus had to say.
"You all have to go back."
He was positive none of the other five "survivors" would listen to him. His charming spell over them had been broken by his mistakes. He was no longer the leader, doctor, or protector in their eyes. No, to them he was Jack Shepard, failure and false hope, never to be forgiven.
But somewhere deep inside his cloudy mind, he knew his former self was still there. His island self: strong, commanding and ready to take action to protect his friends. He needed to find that part of his personality again, because in the times to come there would be no space for weakness, no space for self pity.
He was Doctor Jack Shepard; people respected him and looked up to him.
"Where do we start?"
This time he wasn't going to screw that up.