A/N Hello everybody! Here's my attempt at a multi-perspective story with an OFC (who will be introduced in the next chapter) starting with Season 1 and the Tailies. It will be firmly planted within canon but with some twists to spice it all up. Trust me, I promise you no blatant Mary-Sues and I'll do my best to keep the canon characters more or less intact. I'm just an aspiring writer with Polish as her first language. I want to improve and in order to do so I need your help. Please, R&R. Share your thoughts, give me hints or just drool over Sawyer's bare chest ^^

All the thanks in the world to an amazingly skilled writer TomBeaumont (.net/u/387710/) who beta-reads for me. Thank you, Tom. I know that it's a bumpy ride with me but be patient :D

Sorry for a long a/n. Just enjoy the story.

CHAPTER 1

The moment the sea water crashed into her lungs, whatever stores of oxygen Ana had left vanished, along with any traces of logical thinking. Her basic survival instincts kicked in as she found herself unable to avoid swallowing a stomachful of salt water. She struggled against her rising terror to find a way among the blur of objects that seemed to claw at her preventing her from getting to the light. Her lungs erupted with a fresh wave of pain and small dots danced behind her eyes as she forced herself toward the surface, which seemed more and more distant the harder she tried to reach it. She could practically hear the clock ticking down on the remaining seconds of her life. Her already exhausted body was ready to betray her will with every stroke.

Just as panic and fatigue threatened to engulf her completely, she broke through the surface with a desperate cry. Her throat was set aflame with that first gulp of fresh air but she couldn't have cared less, as her body immediately started taking greedy involuntary lungfuls. Then her eyes focused through the waves and took in the utter chaos that spread out before her. It could have been the opening sequence of some overblown Hollywood movie, but this time, she was in the middle of the action.

She looked around, her head still throbbing from the underwater pressure. For the first time in her adult life, she couldn't fully comprehend the enormity of what had happened. Never in her career as a policewoman had anybody mentioned what to do when your air plane decides to land a little early – and for the lack of a better place, chooses the ocean.

She bobbed for a moment to take some calming breaths and try to orient herself with the situation. Golden sand seeped out of the dark jaws of a jungle, forming a beach that wasn't far away. Baggage was strewn across the water, riding the surface. And then, her ears caught screams of horror that were muffled by the sounds of rushing water still present in her head.

There were people around her, she thought. Other survivors. Not all of them were able to scream for help. This was what snapped her out of the stupor. People to save. She started to swim for the shore.

Once at the beach, she escaped the pointlessness of trying to save everybody. Her mind switched to autopilot, blocking out everything besides right here and right now. It was basic police emergency situation training. Scan your surroundings. Make a swift evaluation and quick triage judgements. One deep breath. Ready. Steady. Go.

The first twenty minutes flew by as Ana zig-zagged across the beach, working to calm the terrorized, stabilize the injured and cover the dead. After she finished performing CPR on a young girl who was now coughing up seawater and finally starting to take full, deep breaths, Ana saw a middle-aged man in dark slacks, flat on his back, waking from his shock to let out a heart-ripping scream. "Hey! Can you help me?" Ana cried to a blonde woman she passed as she dashed to the man's aid.

Without a word, the blonde joined her. "I'm Libby," the woman replied.

"Libby. Ana Lucia," she replied.

When the duo reached him, Ana felt a pang of surprise as Libby immediately took over and started to expose the victim's injured leg. There was so much bruising. And blood. Bone could be seen protruding underneath the skin surface. Ana swallowed the lump forming in her throat,forcing her suddenly nauseous stomach into obedience.

"Sir," Ana said, fixing her gaze on his eyes in the hope it would keep him still. "You need to stay calm."

"My leg, oh God, my leg! It – oh God – it hurts!" the man cried, face reddened in anguish. "Please do something, please!"

"Just lay still and take some deep breaths." Ana said.

"Okay," he groaned through tears.

Ana looked over to where Libby had parked herself, half-expecting her to be passed out or frozen in fear. But she wasn't. Libby was studying the injury, cool as a cucumber. She caught Ana's eye and offered a gentle smile, then turned her attention back to the man.

"In all this excitement, I didn't catch your name," Libby said.

"Donald," he said.

"Donald, I'm Libby. That's Ana. Nice to meet you," she said. "Wish it wasn't like this, but still..."

"Yeah," Donald interrupted impatiently. He took another deep breath. "My leg's bad, right?" he asked.

"No, it's not that bad. I broke my leg skiing up at Stowe in Vermont," Libby replied. "Ever been there?"

"No," Donald said.

"I liked it. It's isolated. And the winter winds were pretty bitter. But it's beautiful country – and the slopes are amazing," she said. At that, she was off, launching into a windy tale about finding the perfect powder-and-packed-powder mountainside to test out the skis that her husband had given her two Christmases before.

Ana studied Libby as she spoke, interested, but uneasy. The other woman was spinning a tale with so many details, so much energy. It sounded like an elaborate fantasy, but there was something real in it, buried in the centre. Or perhaps it was all true and only sounded like a fever dream. Only Libby knew.

But it was spellbinding, Ana had admit as she listened to the story along with Donald. It was as she was trying to figure out the point of the whole thing when Libby – with one fluid motion - jerked and twisted the broken leg back into place. Donald screamed and passed out.

Ana bit down her own scream of shock, then turned to Libby, trying not to show the other woman her agitation. "You a doctor?" she asked.

"A year of med school before I dropped out. I'm a clinical psychologist," Libby answered, her face flushed. She searched Ana's expression. "You saved that girl's life – you a doctor?" she continued.

"No," started Ana, but she wassuddenly cut off by another scream for help.

She immediately turned in the direction of the shout and her eyes caught sight of an auburn-haired man speeding out of the jungle. His untucked shirttail flapped its light blue cloth against him as he ran.

"I need some help! There's somebody in the jungle! He's alive," he yelled.

For a split-second, Ana felt a twinge of discomfort about this one. Something was just...off. But there was no time for her to pay attention to that. She disregarded it and instead ran after him into the jungle. No more victims, she thought while running. Shit. No more.

The sound of a terrified male scream sharpened her senses and quickened her movements. The blue-shirtted man she'd been following had a good second-and-a-half lead on her, but she caught up to him in relatively short order as he rounded a corner, then slowed to an eventual stop. She found herself next to him as he was bending over, putting his hands on his knees and gasping for breath. He glanced over at her and used his head to gesture toward a nearby tree.

Ana's eyes found an older man sitting in a row of seats suspended from the highest limbs, his seatbelt still buckled. His eyes were wide, his body was rigid, as if he was trying to will himself weightless. When he saw the duo below him, he let out a tired, fearful cry for help.

She assessed the height and the way he was situated. There wasn't enough time to climb the tree, she realized. The odds were better that he'd end up on the ground with a snapped neck before she even managed to make it halfway up.

"We should climb up there - I'll hold him steady, you pull him..." suggested the stranger. A very bad idea but she didn't have the time to explain it. Her own heartbeat already slowed to a crawl. To an inexperienced eye she seemed confused. In reality she was almost painfully focused.

"What's your name?" she yelled to the man trapped on the tree. The clock was against her, but in order for her rapidly-formed rescue plan to have a chance to work, she desperately needed his trust.

"Bernard," he answered, after a moment of hesitation.

Already started to panic, she noted, then forced her voice into the calm-yet-firm tone she used on both victims and criminals.

"You're gonna be alright, Bernard." God, just let him be alright "I need you to unbuckle your seatbelt and grab the branch next to you," she said, stressing every word to make sure that he understood.

Bernard's head and neck seemed locked in place, but he seemed to catch on to Ana's instruction. It took a great deal of effort for him to swivel his head mere centimetres to see the branch. As his pale, sweat-drenched face turned, his eyes spotted the ashen corpse fastened snugly to the seat next to him.

His breaths became rapid."Is he dead? I - I think he's dead," he stammered.

"We should climb..." Blue-shirt said. Ana could tell both men were agitated; it was getting harder for her to control the situation.

"No!" she snapped. Fuck, just focus on the task and let me save him! she thought.

She took a little breath before she spoke to the man in the tree. "I need you to focus, Bernard," she said. Good.Use his name, grab his attention. She then decided that he needed simple orders to follow, directions that were logical. That plus the illusion that she was in charge of the situation was probably the only hope either of them had, she thought. From this point on, his life depended on her instructions and his willingness to follow them."Unbuckle your seatbelt," she pronounced.

Bernard closed his eyes as he took his own deep breath.

One step at a time, Ana thought, trying to will him into movement and knowing that she'd put the ball squarely in his court. Nice and smooth.

Then, with hands trembling, he did exactly what she asked him to do. The plastic and metal connector end of the seatbelt clacked against the side of the seat.

Good boy. Now the hard part. "Now grab the branch next to you," she instructed, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

"I don't think I can do that," he replied.

She forgot how annoying victims can be, how irritatingly illogical in the face of danger. Her impulse was to fight, to survive, to at least struggle. And theirs was to wait for somebody to do the job for them. What did he want her to do? Grow wings, take him off the tree and cradle him like a baby?

"Bernard, those seats are going to fall," she barked, not feeling the least bit bad about it. Taking your time is gonna get you dead real quick, pal, so do what I tell you to do.

This seemed to convince him, because he finally seemed to suck up all of his spare courage and reach for the branch with his quaking hands. Now it was fully up to him.

"Come on, you can do it, Bernard!" she called to him. Hurry up, I don't need more dead bodies! The seat shifted suddenly beneath him, becoming even more precarious now.

Bernard, now realizing the danger, still didn't have a firm grip on the branch, so he gritted his teeth and shifted his weight. It looked to Ana that he was trying to spring away from the seat, in an attempt to make one last desperate grab. As he reached out, a sudden and horrible crack split the air.

"Bernard!" she screamed as the seats fell from the sky and slammed into the ground with an awful bang and crash. Her heart skipped a beat as she imagined Bernard's head smashed on the ground. But he wasn't in the wreckage.

Ana looked up again to see a still-frightened Bernard clinging to the sturdy branch she had steered him toward. She exchanged relieved looks with Mr. Blue-shirt, who was shaking his head in disbelief.

She had never wanted a drink more in her life.

A/N How did you like it?