Authors Note: So, this is kind of my version of Ana Lucia's backstory...I can't wait to see how wrong it is when the episode airs. :-P Anyway, I was bored, that's the true reason for this fic. OK? So - at the risk of sounding harsh - if anything does not make sense, or is convoluted or illogical, ok? Whatever, I laboured over this thing, ok? Contradictions and all, so enjoy it, goshdarnit:-P

Characters: Ana Lucia, Danny, Capt. Cortez...

Rating: PG...some language...very light

Spoilers: ...Collision sorta?

Everyone Runs

By Osiris Ra

She stared at the small silver shield. Usually, she kept it clipped in her wallet or belt buckle without a thought for it, unless she needed it. Now she held it in the palm of her hand and stared at it wistfully, contemplating it's meaning, her purpose. Her designation in life was to protect people. The general public. She enjoyed it. People needed to be protected. There were so many cretins in the world, isn't that what she and her kind were there for? To protect the little defenseless people from all the cretins in the world?
Her baby certainly was defenseless. But she hadn't been able to protect it.
She pocketed her badge. Then looked on at the crumpled figure lying next to his car.
Just one less.
Walking home, she went over the events of the night in her head. She pictured his blasé, crass face as he faced her in the shadows. What had he felt, she wondered, when she'd told him she'd been pregnant? Did it matter to him? Did he feel sorry? Did he feel fear? In the few minutes she'd given him to absorb the news, did he feel anything?

What mattered was he felt what she'd felt. Two hot bullets in the belly.

As she arrived at the door to her house, the satisfaction had begun to wear off. It was a bittersweet victory. In retrospect, the guy wasn't worth it. His death wouldn't bring her child back. She knew that. That was finite. She entered her house and closed the door.

Danny was sitting on the couch in the living room, flipping through the television channels. Neither seemed to notice the other anymore, even when they were in close proximity. Many a day and a night went by since she'd been shot, that they'd walk past each other without a look or a word.

Tonight, Danny sensed a change about the woman about to pad upstairs. She looked different, walked different. Her confident manner seemed starkly subdued. She seemed guilty about something.
"What'd you do? Kill somebody?"
Ana was at the foot of the stairwell when his subtly derisive comment hit her eardrums. She stared at him then continued upstairs without a word. Danny watched her go, smirking slightly.

The next morning, life went on. Ana got up for an early – silent – breakfast with Danny. All during breakfast she could feel him staring at her. She finally turned on the small kitchen television for some diversion. It worked. Danny watched the news program intently for awhile. And chagrined though she was, so did Ana.

"The body of Jason McCormik was found last night near a local bar. LAPD sources say the victim was recently brought in on suspicion of shooting an LAPD officer. He was acquitted of the charges and released. There are no suspects in the murder, which seems to be a product of gang violence, or according to officials..."

Danny looked at Ana. She was quiet. She returned his gaze with a slow frown.
"Where were you last night, Ana?"
She straightened her posture, then leaned on the table, clasping her hands.
"Out. Why?"
"You tell me. Is it a coincidence or what that the guy who's brought in for your shooting ends up dead in an alley last night?"
"Maybe he got in trouble."
Danny exhaled. Looking more disturbed by the second.
"What, what are you saying, you think I did it?" Her voice rose. "I'm the one who let the guy go! He wasn't the shooter!"
"Is that right Ana? Is that right?" His voice was accusing. He now stared at her with a hard glare.
"Yeah. That's right Daniel." She blinked.
His face had gone rather white. He stared at the television set with a far away glare, then turned to her suddenly.
"I know you Ana. You do things you live to regret later. Now you tell me the truth, I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you did not let that guy go just so you could get your revenge on him."
Ana looked at him coolly. An icy feeling rose in the pit of her stomach. Danny may have been an idiot, but he wasn't stupid. She ran her tongue over her teeth and stared. Danny didn't need a verbal answer. She'd given it to him. He rose and stormed out.

Ana was in the passenger side of the squad car at a red light, staring at a huge roadside advertisement. It read in bold blue and black letters:

"Oceanic Airlines: Taking You Places You Never Imagined!"

She made a face. Just the thought of flight made her feel sick.

"You're quiet today, AL" Big Mike glanced at her from the drivers side. The car lurched to movement as the street light went green.
"You know, they found that guy who they thought shot ya." Big Mike started conversationally. "He's dead. Shot 3 times. Weird, huh?"
Ana looked out the window. "Yeah."
"You OK, kiddo?"
"Yeah, fine. Got some stuff on my mind."
The radio crackled to life. Ana didn't hear the message. She couldn't hear anything. She had tuned everything out and now only heard Danny's voice, considerably softer than his disposition had been.

"You're a police officer. Matters like this get can taken care of differently. But you still can't take the chance they find out it was you, Ana. Your reputation will be shot. Your life'll be ruined. You can't stay here, you know. Not if you want a life. Our life. Do you still want this to work, Ana? Do you?"

Big Mike's voice faded back in.
"AL? Ana?"
"What?"
"I said this oughtta to cheer you up."

Ana found herself sneaking across the backside of a trailer house in the middle of a woodsy LA burg. Several officers were already on the scene, loose in formation and tensed up,waiting for the bad guy to show his face. When he did, all hell erupted. Gunshots went off like firecrackers. For the first time,the steely copfound herself seriously startled. The head officer barked:
"Go! Go! Go!"
Big Mike kicked down the door to the trailer house and a squad of cops stormed in, shouting and waving guns at anything that moved. A Doberman leaped at Big Mike. It took Ana and another officer to pry the beast off his leg. Big Mike was bleeding, two of the suspects were being roughly apprehended, and the third was on the run. Ana quickly asked Mike if he was ok, he nodded painfully and ordered her to go after the runner. Ana sprinted out of the trailer house, another officer at her heels and her gun at the ready.

The woods were cluttered with weeds, litter and filled with unevenly spaced twigs of trees. There was the constant threat of tripping over vines and rocks and the collections of scattered trash, but Ana ran swiftly, leaping over the obstacles, never letting the runner leave her sight. Suddenly, there were shots fired. Ana whirled around to see that her comrade was down. The runner was far gone by now, even she couldn't catch up with him, but something in her had to try.

"Officer down! I've got an officer down, see that he gets attention!" She barked into her radio.
She went on in her hot pursuit of the runner.

Ana came to a breathless stop in an alley. Looked both ways.
No one was there.
Gun tightly fingered, she went ahead left, scanning the area furiously. She'd come to a dead end.
Where the hell was the perp?
She exhaled and holstered up.

Dammit...

She was about to reach for her radio when a voice sounded behind her.
"Don't move."
She froze. Something clicked. She knew that voice.
"Turn around."
She did so.
The perp stood behind her, his face covered in a green ski mask. He pulled it off.
It was Danny.
She stared, stupefied.
"What the hell are you doing, Danny?"
"Saving your life."
Ana frowned. "What?"
Danny stuffed his mask in his pocket, evading an answer. Ana pressed on:
"How did you get a gun - what the hell does this have to do with –"
"There's a car waiting for us with plane tickets and a change of clothes."
He walked up to her and spoke close in her face.
"Are you still with me on this?"
She swallowed. She'd never have foreseen Danny doing something this crazy. For her, of all people.
"Why are you doing this?"
"I care about you. What, you thought I didn't? You're stupid, now are you in or are you out?"
She stared at him for a while. Through all his bad moods, questionable love and sincerity, he was a decent person. She couldn't say she liked him, but she did love him. She nodded slowly.
He smiled again. "Awesome."

Danny had briefed her quickly and with much enthusiasm on the details of the trip. He'd lost her after describing her "mysterious disappearance during the aftermath of a drug bust." Ana was staring out the window again. Fresh in civilian garments, she knew this was the end of the line.
Her old life was behind her now.
She couldn't come back.
A sense of cowardly-ness washed over her. Even if she ran away from what she'd done, run away from the looks and the reaction she might get if she was found out...was it worth it?
Danny relaxed into his seat and said with an Aussie accent:
"In a couple of hours, we should be in the realm of the kangaroos, mate." He grinned, an air of accomplishment and self satisfaction around him.
"Why Australia?" Ana queried.
"I've got some friends there. We can crash there till we get everything in order."
"These friends...you trust them?"
"Yeah." He replied with a sincere eyebrow raise. "Hey." He was studying her face. "How's you?"
Ana shrugged. "I don't know. It's all kind of surreal. I never..."
She paused. There were quite a few ways to finish a sentence starting with "I never." She rubbed her hands over her face.
"Que sera sera, huh?" She said with a dismissive smile.
"Indeed. Hey don't worry. I'll take care of you."
She grinned. "Sure."
"Everybody runs."
There was that face again. Sneering crassly at her from within the darkness. Bullet holes fresh in his body, illuminated by some unseen light source, especially for her eyes to see.
"Everybody runs, Ana Lucia."
Then there was a shot.

Ana started awake in a cold sweat. The room was equally dark. Danny was sleeping beside her and coming to. Ana sat up, pulling away the covers. She'd had bad dreams before, but they had never featured the punk shooter before.
"Ana...what's happening?" Danny mumbled groggily. He turned over. "Ana?"
Ana lay back down. "I'm fine. Sorry. Go back to sleep."
"What happened?" He repeated, his eyes half open.
"Nothing." Ana tried to go back to sleep.

Ana and Danny had moved into his friends ranch style house square in the middle of a vast savannah, where a long road was the only connection to roads leading to the bigger towns and cities. Even though she was miles away from her home and her crime, Ana never felt quite as free or relaxed as she figured she should be.

Danny stared at her incredulously when she asked him if he thought she should have turned herself in.
"No! Why would you do that? What kinda stupid are you?" He asked with a most honest glare. Ana didn't respond. Just stared ahead and adjusted her sunglasses.
"Look, I know cops do things differently, ok? I know, I know you protect each other. But what if they hadn't huh? What if even coppy camaraderie wasn't enough to save you? What then? The evidence'd be against you, they'd see the connection, and they'd fry you."
"I deserve it, don't I?"
Danny was flabbergasted at Ana Lucia's self crucifixtion.
"No. You don't. He deserved it."
Ana was silent.
"What if you'd lost your badge again? The force was your life!"
"I'd manage."
"Your rep would be shot! Think about your mom."
Ana looked down. He was probably right. It would have hurt her mom to know, if she didn't already suspect. She was hurting her now, making her think she was possibly dead and gone.
"Hey, look." He started slowly and rather reluctantly, "If you're worried... your mom...you can give her a call. She won't know where we are, we can hide our number. But Ana...I don't want you to turn yourself in, ok? This is our chance to start over, isn't it? It's kinda...kinda god sent, don't you think? We could create a new life for us." He paused, looking down. He was thinking about his lost child.
Ana looked at him. She knew what his thoughts were on. It was all she'd thought about for a long time. She didn't think she was ready for that whole kid stuff againquite yet. It still hurt too much. A phone call would hurt too, but she owed it to her mom to give her that, at the very least.

Static came over the line, then the sound of someone noisily picking up the receiver. There were voices in the background. Familiar sounds of her precinct.
"...Captain Cortez." A rushed female voice answered.
Ana paused for a while. How should she answer? How does a dead person say hello?
"Hello?" The voice said sharply. Ana knew she'd probably hang up soon.
"Hi mom."
There was silence over the other line. After while, Ana thought she heard a female voice tell someone to close the door. The background noise filtered out. Someone picked the receiver back up.
"Who is this?" The voice was stern.
"It's me mom. It's Ana."
There was another pause. The next words were rather angry and concerned.
"Where are you?"
"I can't say, mom."
"Is Danny with you?"
"Yeah."
"I see."
"You don't sound very surprised, mom."
"Frankly, I'm not. You didn't think that shooting would go over my head, did you?"
"Not really."
"Tell me something, what the hell were you thinking?"
"Mom, I was –"
"Did you have even a second thought for the consequences? Did you THINK what this would do to you? To me? To Danny? Did you give a damn?"
"Mom, let me talk."
"Fine, talk."
"I was..." Ana swallowed. Nothing sounded right. She was reduced back to an 11 year old, struggling to make up an excuse for being in dad's gun locker.
"It was a bad time, mom."
"You think I don't know that?"
"Look, I can't excuse what I did! It was stupid, I know, I know, but...you know what. You wouldn't understand."
There was a long pause before either spoke again.
"So what are you going to do now?" Mom asked.
"Stay here, I guess."
"Change your name?"
"...maybe."
She heard her mom breathe a laugh.
"Get Danny on, I want to talk to Danny."
Ana handed the phone to Danny. With the same chagrined expression she'd borne a few days back, he meekly answered what sounded to be the usual tough Q&A from Mom. After a while of finger twiddling, Ana got the phone back.
"Yeah ma?"
"You be careful, understand?"
"Yeah ma."
"Don't let Danny push you around. If he pushes you around, you push him back, understand?"
"Yeah."
"Write me or call me, whatever suits you better."
"Yeah."
"I love you."
"I love you too, mom."
The receiver hung up. Unsteadily, Ana put the phone down. Danny rested a hand on her back.
"You ok?"
Ana stood up, exhaling heavily. "No."
There was a simple enough reason not to go back. Fear. Fear of the eyes, the judging eyes that set verdict and carried out punishment. Fear of abasement and admonishment. Fear of the ghost of Jason McCormik. He lurked everywhere. Dead as he was, he was still alive in her eyes. But there was fear of another thing. Something more frightening, in retrospect.
The child.
Who was gone. Never held, never stroked, never smiled upon. But there it hung, in the ether like a voice waiting to speak. Looking upon her with stern yet loving eyes.

It's gonna get worse before it gets better.

She stared out at the flat plains ahead plaintively.
Was it really.
Danny stood leaning against the frame of the doorway. He looked solemn.
"What's up?" Ana asked pensivly.
He entered and sat down. She sensed trouble.
"What? What is it?"
Danny spoke slowly and carefully.
"Your mom's been shot."
Ana's face fell. "What?"
"There was a robbery, bank robbery, she was on the scene and uh...someone started firing."
Mom shot? At first it didn't compute. Ana hesitated, then asked:
"How did you find this out?"
"I called her precinct. I was, I was going to ask her if she could...help us out with, you know, getting out of here."
Ana frowned. Her question hadn't been entirely sincere as she was still stuck on "Mom" and "Shot". Her mother was shot, possibly fatal, and her daughter wasn't there with her.
Wasn't there to protect her.
"Ana?"
She looked at him with a far off gaze then asked halfheartedly:
"Get out – where?"
"I wasn't planning to stay here, you know. This is temporary. Sooner the better, you know."
Ana nodded slowly. Danny moved in fast with his next words.
"I know what you're thinking, Ana. And I'm sorry about your mom, I really am. But you can't... go back."
She stared sharply. He had a ready retort.
"They'll ask too many questions. It's too risky." He pronounced his words sharply. A halfhearted command."You cannot go to see your mother."
Ana shifted her feet and crossed her arms but made no outwardly visible expression of objection. Danny himself was having trouble reading her face, but he knew what she was thinking. He said softly:
"You have a chance at a new life. If you go back, you could be throwing it all away. Your mom's a strong woman. She can get through this."
"And supposing she doesn't?"
Danny fiddled with one of the rings on his finger. Looking down, he said slowly, "If I come home...and you're gone...I'm gone too."

She was good at giving ultimatums, but didn't like have to take them. If she chose Danny, what would become of her mom? She could die while Ana was out living her life and there would be so much not said. There'd be no proper goodbye. As much as she cared about Danny, she couldn't leave things like that. Danny was her boyfriend. Her mother was her blood.

Staring at the large airport television which was displaying the weather for various travel destinations, Ana thought rather ironically this was what 'you can't go home again' felt like.There was still time togo back to Danny... but her mom was more important. She had to see her.
Had to have a chance to say goodbye.

Over the din of the comings and goings of the Sydney Airport, she heard a man talking in a loud tone to someone. Looking over she saw a tall man at the ticket counter, hair close shaven and well dressed, a distraught demeanor about him, talking at the lady manning the counter. Something about his father's coffin not clearing customs. It slightly cheered her up that someone was having a worse day than she was, but it was a bittersweet comfort. They were both living in the same moment and the same time. For all she knew, life could get very easy for him and very hard for her hours from then, or vice versa, or, more pessimistically, it could suck really bad for them both.

A few hours later, she'd managed to bump into the guy, who seemed nice, if not more distraught than she'd expected. A phone call had interrupted their conversation, breaking up the chat with halfhearted promises of drinks later on the plane .

"Hey."
"Hey." His voice was quiet over the phone, perhaps a little hurt. "How's things?"
"Slow."
"Sorry. Did you get your ticket and everything ok?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Just wanted to make sure."
"Mm hmm."
"I won't waste your time, I know you've got a plane to catch...uh...I understand. And I...I don't really blame you. You just need to know that there are things happening which none of us can control. And what I told you before...about seeing your mom...was for you. I'm sorry if it sounded harsh but..."
"I don't follow you, Danny."
A voice from the P.A called for Flight 815 boarding. Ana looked up to see the line forming. Danny was going on:
"Just..." There was a pause. "Keep the faith." He laughed softly. So did she.
"I'll do that. Bye Danny. I love you."
"Love you too. Bye."

The sun gleamed on the stark white hull of Flight 815 Oceanic as the metal behemoth rose from the runway. The legs lifted and clamped into place under the giant bird's belly. As the plane flew away from the sun tanned land of Australia, over the Pacific and towards it's Los Angeles destination, more than a few contemplative faces stared out of the windows. Maybe it is true what they say. You can't go home again. You can't start over and you can't go back.
The Beginning of the End...?