Chapter Two

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Supernatural or Lost.

Sam kicked as hard as he could, his lungs burning with the desperate urge to breathe as small bursts of dizziness settled into his head. He could hear the dulled down sounds of chaos at the water's surface and used that as his compass to swim towards. The only coherent thought that was keeping him conscious was how ironic it was that after an entire life of handling salt, it was the exact same element in the water, burning his eyes that almost made him feel sorry for demons.

Just as he began to consider succumbing to the water surrounding him, he felt his hand break through the surface, almost laughing out loud as the rest of him followed. He sucked in air like it was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted, ignoring the rest of the pain in his body as his lungs held a welcome home party in his chest.

That's when he finally noticed the screaming. All around him. His eyes darted around, wide with panic as he took in the scene before him all the while trying to stay above the waves that were crashing into him.

There was wreckage everywhere, some of the larger pieces supporting a person while they screamed and clung for dear life. Those were the lucky people, he surmised, taking note of the several bodies floating face down around him as a larger wave pulled him back under the water.

"Son of a bitch," he yelled as he resurfaced, hacking up the new water that had invaded his airways. "Land, there's gotta be land," he muttered, turning back and forth in the water, smiling at the beach that was less than a quarter of a mile before him.

He propelled himself forward, avoiding the debris and bodies as he worked against his aching body to make it to the shore. It took longer than it should have, but he almost laughed with joy as his long legs touched down on land, the water still at his chest. He walked the few more steps until he was out of the water his knees hitting the sand before he collapsed forward.

After spending the last several months with speed racer in the Impala, I actually end up a statistic, he thought as he rolled onto his back, squinting his eyes as harsh sunlight invaded his vision. He lifted his head slightly, looking back out towards the water as the tail end of the plane sank fully. Wait, we weren't sitting in the tail end.

"Oh god," he muttered, pushing himself up. His eyes scanned the beach as best as he could with the dizziness that was assaulting his skull. "Dean!" Sam yelled, stepping forward on shaky legs.

He forced himself to ignore the screaming as his breathing became even worse than it had been during his near drowning experience. A panic attack. He was having a freaking panic attack after surviving a plane crash with his brother nowhere in sight. "He has to be here," Sam muttered to himself sinking back down to his knees and placing a hand on his aching chest as he tried to even out his breathing. The screaming continued, intensifying the pain in his head as he fought the urge to just bludgeon himself with the nearest rock.

"Dad wants us to pick up where he left off," Sam heard his brother's voice in his head. "Saving people, hunting things…the family business."

"There's nothing to hunt, damnit," Sam hissed to himself, rubbing at his temples.

"Then just worry about the saving people part, bitch" his inner Dean chastised him. Sam looked back up at the water, watching in awe as a well built black man swam into the currents, shouldered a body and brought it back to the beach…repeatedly. He had been trained to help people his entire life and during a literal crisis, he was forgetting everything.

"Help!" Sam's head shot up as a man ran from the jungle, frantically motioning behind him. "Hey…I need some help. There's someone in the jungle…he's alive."

He jumped back up on his legs, pushing his own pain to the back of his mind as he ran forward, trailing off in a dead sprint behind the man and another woman. The further he got into the jungle, the more he could hear the anguished cries coming from somebody until he stopped right next to the man and woman, his gaze following theirs up into the trees as his eyes widened.

There, in one of the tall trees, was a row of dislodged airline seats, one of them housing the man that he had given up his bathroom spot for on the plane. He sat as rigidly as he could, gripping the armrests as he put forth as much effort as possible not to move against the few stray branches that held the seats up. "Maybe it's a good thing you gave up that bathroom spot," the woman next to him muttered. Sam tore his shocked gaze away from the trees and looked down at her, just now realizing he had followed the woman he had struck up a conversation with on the plane into the jungle.

"We should climb up there," the man next to them said, not looking away from the trees. "I'll hold him steady while you pull him…"

"No, you'll kill him and yourself," Sam interrupted him, knowing it was a miracle that the trees were still supporting the weight of the occupied seats.

"He's right," the woman agreed as she stepped away from them. "What's your name?" She yelled up at him.

"Uh…uh…B-B-Bernard," the man in the trees stuttered out.

"You're gonna be alright, Bernard," the woman yelled up at him, shrugging at the dubious look Sam was throwing her. "I need you to unbuckle your seatbelt and grab the branch next to you," she yelled up at him.

"Is he dead?" Bernard asked, ignoring the instructions she had given him while he focused his attention on the body laying in the seat with him. "I think he's dead."

"We should climb up there…" the man next to them suggested again.

"No," she snapped back at him, refocusing her attention back on Bernard. "I need you to focus, Bernard. Unbuckle your seatbelt." She watched with a relieved smile as he unbuckled his seatbelt, panicking slightly at the loss of restraints as he grabbed at the armrests to steady himself.

"Oh god, he's gonna make himself fall," Sam muttered.

"Glass half full please," the woman sing-songed over her shoulder. "Now grab the branch next to you," she yelled up at him. All three of them watched with baited breath as Bernard eyed the thick branch closest to him. "I don't think I can do that."

"Bernard, man, those seats are gonna fall," Sam shouted up at him, stepping forward so he was side by side with the woman. "This sugar coating crap isn't gonna light a fire under his ass," Sam told her at her questioning look. He smiled down at her as they watched Bernard slowly lean forward over the dead body, his fingers brushing over the branch.

"Come on, Bernard. You can do this," she yelled up at him, ignoring the smug look Sam was sporting. She let out a short gasp as the seats started rocking from the branches. "Bernard!" They all watched in horrified shock as the seats plummeted from the trees, crashing loudly on the ground before them.

"Silver lining, ladies and gentlemen," Sam chuckled, pointing up at Bernard as he clung to the branch, his eyes wide with fear.

"Arlight, hold on tight, ok? I'm coming up to get you," the woman yelled up, smiling back at Sam and the man with them as she headed up to bring him down.

Sam sat down on the warm sand, stretching his aching limbs against the wet fabric of his clothes. He'd left the woman and man in the jungle to get Bernard down, knowing he could probably be of help somewhere else. Sure enough, when he emerged from the trees, the same man from before had still been bringing bodies in, and he looked as exhausted as Sam felt. Sure, he'd only managed to save a few people that had still been clinging to wreckage, but at least nobody had been left behind and Eko, as he'd remembered to ask his name, had gotten some help.

As if his muscles didn't hurt enough, the pain in his head was coming back at full force. Obviously it was the adrenaline keeping me from doing a pole dance for an ibuprofen, Sam thought, bummed that his body was coming down and revealing all of its kinks. He couldn't remember if he'd been hit in the head with anything and there were no bumps that he could feel, but something was nagging at him other than his brother being missing. What the hell am I forgetting?

"So, clearly this plane crash is keeping you from your lucrative career as a motivational speaker," the same woman from before said, taking a seat next to Sam. She looked back out towards the water, noticing that there were no more bodies floating around, only wreckage. "Did that guy get everyone?"

"Almost," Sam told her with small smile. "I helped him with the last few people, but he did most of it while we were all in the jungle."

"We got Bernard down, by the way," she told him, smiling at his satisfied nod. "Trust me when I say that it took me just as long to get him out of the tree than it did to get him out of the seats." She shook her head in disbelief to go with her shaking head. "To think, that could have been you up there," she voiced, a cheeky smile crossing her features.

Sam matched her smile as he rolled his eyes, pointing back at the treeline. "If I had been the lucky one to get stuck in a row of seats being held up by a rickety tree, I assure you, you'd never have known about it. I'd have managed to get myself down."

"You seem pretty sure about that."

Sam chuckled as he realized she was teasing him. He nodded his head in the direction she had just come, watching in amusement as the man that had been in the jungle with them kept trying to start a fire by rubbing a stick against another one. "Case in point. You think someone should tell Boy Scout Ken Doll that the only result of his actions will be calloused hands?"

She followed his gaze to Goodwin, watching as he continued with the sticks, stopping only once to inspect his hands with a wince. "Care to elaborate?"

Sam let out a deep breath of air, pointing back at him. "First off, he didn't manage to gather any kindling, so even if he were able to make a spark, the sand won't hold it. Not that it matters, because there's no way he'll get a spark, because the wood he's using as a drill isn't dry."

She looked back in his direction, shocked that she hadn't noticed before that the wood had a slightly darker color to it from being wet. "Huh, look at that. You, my friend, could be a detective, hands down."

She didn't comment when Sam snorted in mock offense at her, just kept staring back at the man trying unsuccessfully to start the fire. "You know, Goodwin," she began motioning back to the fire starter. "He told me he was in the Peace Corps."

Sam's face scrunched up as he looked back at her, deliberating this new information in his head. "I didn't even know the Peace Corps taught survival skills," Sam honestly told her. "My dad was an ex-marine, so you tend to forget about the more pacifist side of government volunteer programs when you're running 13 miles every morning."

"Wow, and I thought working for my mother was bad," she commented with a chuckle. They sat back as a comfortable silence settled over them, content to take a few moments and watch the sun as it fell into the water. "I'm Ana Lucia, by the way."

Sam looked back over at her, smiling even though her gaze was still directed on the sunset. "Sam."

It was when the sun was finally rising that Sam stood with several of the other survivors, staring down at the dead bodies they had laid out on the beach. They had all been sitting around the fire Sam had shown Goodwin how to start the previous night when the sounds entered their campsite. Someone was grunting as if struggling with something, breaking them all out of their reverie as they scrambled towards it.

By the time the three of them had arrived where the noises should have been, they were too late. Eko had been covered in blood, wild eyed and holding a rock in his hand.

Ana Lucia knelt in between the two bodies, checking through their plain clothing as she shook her head in frustration. "No wallets. No cell phone. No keys, nothing," she observed as she stood back up, dusting her hands off on her jeans.

Sam barely listened to her, instead watching Mr. Eko as he removed his blood stained shirt, the guilt apparent on his features. He knew how guilty he still felt over Jessica's death and that had been months ago. "Hey," he asked in his direction, waiting until Eko notched his head in his direction. "Are you ok?" He's a priest that just killed two people, of course he's not ok, he thought, not taking any offense as his question was met with silence.

"Hey, look," Nathan, one of the other survivors yelled as he came running out of the jungle. Sam watched as Ana Lucia turned towards him, glad she was fine with taking over as leader of the group. "Three other people are missing…the blonde guy, the curly haired guy and the German who was helping us with the injured."

Sam closed his eyes, shaking his head in disbelief as he listened to their conversation and questions regarding the dead people in front of them. "Who are these people?" he heard Nathan ask.

"I don't know," Ana Lucia answered him truthfully. "They're out here in the jungle with no shoes, nothing in their pockets, no labels on their clothes."

"Ana Lucia, these people were here before us," Sam said over his shoulder, finally putting the pieces together.

He turned back around, watching as the features on Ana Lucia's face slacked in disbelief. "We need to get off the beach. We need to find a safer place."

Sam rolled his eyes, knowing that if they left it would be more difficult for them to be found. He looked towards the jungle, knowing his brother could be on this same island somewhere looking for him or he could be hurt.

"We've got kids and people who are seriously hurt," Nathan pointed out. "Where are we gonna go, hm? How are we gonna move them? And what about the signal fire? How are we gonna get rescued if we're off the beach?"

"Nathan's right," Goodwin pointed out.

Sam watched the exchange, his head beginning to hurt again. There was something he was supposed to remember, something important, but he was still drawing a blank. If only Dean were here, he'd be able to figure this all out. He'd be able to protect all of them from whatever was hiding in the jungle and picking them off one by one.

"They have satellites…the black box. We don't need a fire for them to find us," Ana Lucia argued, her tone indicating that she was getting more and more desperate to change their location.

"Yes, we do," Cindy interjected. Sam turned towards the woman that had been taking care of the children the night before, his interest piqued. "Before the crash, the pilot said we'd lost communication...we were turning back. We were flying for two hours in the wrong direction," Sam panicked as he realized what this meant. "They don't know where to look."

Oh, that's just great, Sam thought, turning back to the signal fire. His head started hammering as he rubbed at his temples, his attention fixated on the flames. He jerked his head as felt a drop on his forehead and then another one before his heart seized up.

In the middle of the fire, he could see her. He could see Jessica. Her eyes were glazed over and there was a large gash in her stomach as the fire seemed to grow around her.

No, Jessica. No!

"Are you there?" Sam heard someone ask. He looked down at Ana Lucia's concerned face and back up at the fire, noticing that it was back to normal. It all came back to him. The plane getting caught up in turbulence. His concern for his brother as he watched him just bobbing his head to the CDs he had made him. The man smiling over at him, as if he knew him before his eyes turned yellow.

"You were right, Ana Lucia. We need to find a safer place."

Dean leaned back in the sand, half listening to the circle of people around him as they discussed the growling from the night before. It was taking all of his mental capacity to try to figure out if it matched anything he'd ever come across during any hunt. For every monster and bump in the night he put an "X" next to in his mind, his panic for his brother went up a notch.

It's not like it matters if I figure this thing out or not, he thought. My guns and knives are M.I.A, the only salt I have is in the ocean and Sammy had Dad's journal packed with him. Dean breathed in deeply through his nose, trying to stop the burning sensation forming in the back of his throat at the thought of his brother. He sat up and brushed off the sand on his arms as he refocused his attention on the group he was sitting with, surprised to find the guy that had been passing out airline meals the previous night kneeling with them and talking.

"It's pretty grim in there. Do you think we should do something about the …" Hurley paused, glancing sideways at Walt as he looked to be working something out in his head. "B-O-D-Y-S."

Dean tilted his head, sharing a look with Charlie as he silently spelled the word out. "What are you spelling, man? Bodies?" Michael asked.

"B-O-D-I-E-S." Walt corrected him. Dean looked over at the father and son and back at Hurley, his face scrunched in confusion.

"Hang on a second, chicken or fish. What are you talking about here?" Dean asked.

"The fuselage," Sayid informed him, turning back to Hurley at Dean's nod of understanding. "That sounds like a good idea."

"No," Shannon scoffed. "They'll deal with it when they get here."

"When they get here?" Dean repeated incredulously as he leaned towards Shannon. "Sweetheart, we don't know when that is." He shook his head in disbelief as Shannon rolled her eyes before turning his attention to the more rational people he was sitting with. "Look, I'm not sure anyone else here has smelled a dead body, but times that by the several more inside the cooking hot fuselage can and this beach will be unbearable by tomorrow morning. Worst case scenario is that it attracts whatever made those noises last night."

Shannon snorted as she began to examine her nails, opting not to further the argument. "So then, that would mean…" Hurley began.

"It means you had one hell of an idea," Dean told him, throwing a winning grin in his direction. "Let me know if you end up needing any help."

"Me, as well," Sayid threw in, keeping a curious eye on Dean.

"I'm gonna go out and look for the cockpit," Jack interrupted them as he knelt down next to Shannon. "See if we can find a transceiver to send a distress signal…help the rescue team." Shannon shot a triumphant smirk in Dean's direction as Dean rolled his eyes, biting his tongue from reminding her that helping the rescue team was a lot different than getting rescued.

He looked back towards the jungle, blocking out Jack and Boone's conversation as he drifted back to his thoughts. The cockpit couldn't be too far from the tail section, could it? He turned back towards his group, watching as Charlie stood up with Jack, his face carrying what Dean was beginning to realize was his usual nonchalant expression. "I'll come with," he brushed off his hands with a smile as if to prove his point. "I wanna help."

Jack put up his hand and shook his head, trying to hold him off. "I don't need any more help."

"No, it's cool. I don't really feel like standing still so…" Charlie began, watching as Jack seemed to be weighing the option of insisting that he not come. Charlie smiled wide as Jack nodded his head before turning around and leaving.

"Excellent," he said as he jogged to catch up with him. Dean smiled as he watched Charlie leave, his attention once more turning to the jungle.

"Wait a second," he muttered to himself, snapping his gaze back to Charlie's retreating form. "Charlie! Hey man, wait up," Dean yelled, jumping up from the sand and running to catch him. He smiled as Charlie turned back around and waited as Dean jogged the distance between them.

"What's up?" Charlie asked.

"Hey, is there any chance I can ask a favor of you?" Dean inquired.

Charlie smiled wide as he shrugged innocently. "Well, if you're asking me to pick up a bottle of gin and make sure I re-stock the toilet paper supply…"

Dean chuckled at his response, shaking his head at the humor that he could relate to. "Nah man, nothing like that, but I appreciate the thought. Look, I know you guys are looking specifically for the cockpit, but if you come across any other debris, mainly the tail end of the plane, could you let me know when you guys get back?" Dean asked.

Charlie nodded around a shrug, still smiling up at him. "I actually happen to be an expert at looking around and noticing stuff. Is there something in particular you're looking for?" Charlie asked.

"More like a someone," Dean told him, nodding over at Jack and Kate as they waited for Charlie. He lowered himself down to Charlie's level and handed him a full bottle of water. "Look, don't ask me why, but if you manage to get caught up with the thing from last night, throw a little bit of this at it."

"Sure man, thanks." He squinted at the murky substance in the bottle before looking back up at Dean. "What is it?"

Dean looked down at him with a smile before motioning towards the ocean. "It's salt water," he told him, smiling at his look of confusion. "It's just an experiment I've been dying to try."

Author's Note: My computer's all fixed! YAY! I have to say I'm very glad that I didn't start writing this story until now because we've gotten a few answers out of the LOST final season that is totally playing up the muse part right now. Also, can I just give out a digital high five to all the people that reviewed the first chapter? ELEVEN REVIEWS! I frickin love you people!