Chapter Ten

Jack's fingers caressed the shot glass that contained the amber liquid. He brought it shakily to his mouth and sipped it in one, long motion. Exhaling slowly, he returned the glass to the table. "I don't think anyone is prepared to accept your apology, Michael."

"I know," said the man, slumping still deeper into the corner booth, his face masked in the shadows of the dimly lit bar. "You were the only one who would even meet with me."

"You shot two of us. You betrayed us all. You believed a lie, and then you left us bound and blindfolded and kneeling on the dock." Jack spat out the words, but then he shrugged. "Now we're all the same, aren't we? We're all living the same lie."

Michael leaned forward into the light. "I can't live it anymore."

Jack raised his eyes to meet Michael's desperate expression. Here sat a man who had once been a builder, who had assisted the community with pipelines and water. Now he was broken, and childless, and drowning himself in remorse instead of liquor. Jack thought the loss of Walt probably would have been a less bitter pill to swallow if the boy hadn't desired his fate, if he hadn't chosen to be chosen.

Jack had seen Michael's face when the boy had called Charles Widmore "Dad." He had seen the last of Michael's spirit broken. Jack felt for Michael. Just because Walt's mother had been one of a hundred pregnant women upon whom Widmore's scientists had once secretly experimented, just because their mad machinations had produced the boy's special gifts – that didn't make Widmore Walt's father. Yet Widmore understood Walt's giftedness in a way Michael never could.

Michael, Jack new, had been offered an opportunity to join Widmore, an opportunity to leave this doomed Earth. It was a concession the businessman had made on Walt's behalf. Yet Michael, torn with guilt for his own betrayal of the survivors, and his heart ruptured by the disloyalty of his son, had declined. He now lived under an assumed name, so that, he told Jack, Walt would not attempt to track him down and persuade him to join Widmore's project. He was afraid he would not have the strength to resist the invitation a second time.

Thus Michael was, of his own free will, resigning himself to the same fate as his one time compatriots. It was a useless penance, but it was one Jack would have assigned himself. Jack understood Michael's regret, even if his own fatal choices had been made with purer intentions. If only he had not called that boat, Jack thought again, they would all still be on the island; they would, perhaps, have learned the truth while they could still do something about it.

"You can't say anything," replied Jack. "You know that. Who would believe us? And if it began to look like we might be believed….Widmore…Michael, that island," he stabbed a finger on the table, "that island holds the power to destroy the entire world, and Widmore holds the island." Jack shook his head. "If he needs to, he'll just leave early and push the button. "

"We have to get back there," insisted Michael, but weakly, without the assertiveness his voice had housed, in those early days, when he had vowed to find his kidnapped son.

Jack let out a broken, almost maniacal laugh. He ran a hand over his growing beard. "How? And do what?"

"Gain control, disable it somehow…." Michael leaned back again against the booth, his shoulders slumped in defeat. "Save the world," he ended sarcastically.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Save the world."

As impossible, as ridiculous, as asinine as that idea seemed, there was a small part of Jack's still-breathing soul that was stirred by the words. Hadn't the improbable task, once tackled, worked a miracle before? Yet surgery was nothing compared to finding an island that was nearly impossible to find, and then locating and destroying the equipment that could ignite a blast large enough to destroy the world, and doing it all without the notice of Widmore or any of the people that had been created to protect the place.

Dharma had found the island once, and so had Penelope….Yet every last member of Dharma, save Ben, had been eradicated by the manipulations of that ageless, manufactured being Richard who had sprung from the womb of Widmore Labs. Penelope had located the island with devices that were now no doubt denied to her and that would never be accessible to Jack.

Charles Widmore had played the absent god too long; his little island had spiraled out of control. The beings his father's scientists had manufactured and programmed to protect the place had created a society of their own, a religion of their own. Widmore had not known of their attempts to reproduce, or that they had recruited real human beings to live among them and aid them. Yet Widmore would play the absent god no longer. There was no chance, now, of finding him and wresting from him the unholy power that he wielded. There was no chance of any of the survivors doing anything but pressing mechanically through life, building futures they had no hope would last, or, still worse, not building them.

Jack rose from the booth. He staggered and braced himself, his palms flat against the table. "It's not that I haven't thought of what you've said. I keep flying…I keep trying to get back there. I have absolutely no hope of accomplishing anything. But if I could at least die trying…"

If I could at least die. Period, he thought. Then the nothing he had become would be swept into the nothing that was the universe. He had led, he had healed, he had freed, and for what? For nothing. For a few more years of meaningless life. For a few individuals who were relegated to living in a world that had become a stranger to them. For a woman who had rejected his love because she could never accept herself. For a profession that had disowned him.

"I need another drink," he muttered as he stumbled toward the bar.