Author's Notes: I assure you, it's just a coincidence that this chapter's named after one of my LJ friends...(Nathalie, if you happen by this, dude, you're totally famous right now :P)

Previously, on LOST: Sawyer, the willing-ish hostage of Rambina Coalition Acolytes, discovered that Locke has been participating in dealings with shippers! Oddly enough, the Rambina Operatives weren't Operatives at all, they were Anayid affiliated C.O.O.K.I.E.S agents! MOAR shipper insurgents? Zounds, the tapioca thickens! P.S. I know this fic has Skaters peering in, so expect some Skate coming up. Also, PB&J and some Daire might be around the corner...

Officer, Shoot These People

CHAPTER 21: Imaginary Lives

Locke stuck out a hand to help Sawyer up, but Sawyer smacked it away and got up on his own. He dusted himself off and proceeded to do precisely the thing he'd wanted to to since the whole ordeal had begun. Scream.

"Are you freakin' kidding me?!? You're involved with this? I trusted you, baldie! Yeah—sure, I knew you were a little cuckoo, but working with the Others?! Are you out of your tiny little mind?! I can't believe this! All this time—actin' like some kinda shiny headed peon of revolution when all you are is a backstabbin' wanna be Crocodile Dundee! What you gotta say for yourself?"

Locke stood staring and blinked calmly.

"Are you done James?"

"No I ain't done!! I am so far from done, Kojak!" Sawyer stood fuming and breathless. "I mean...I don't even know who the hell you are anymore!"

Locke chuckled. "James, you never knew who I was. To you, I'm just some crazy guy who makes it on his own in his own crazy way, right? Look James, you gotta understand—"

"James don't gotta understand diddly! I understand clear enough. You've been workin' with the Others all this time, ain't that right. The shippers, yeah? Psycho Cupid?? But you know what, there is something you can explain. Why? Why'd you do it?"

"James, we came to this place—"

"--for a reason, yea yea, save the recruitment speech, Man vs Wild. Just answer. The damn. Question. Why?"

"Fine." Locke folded his arms. "Here's the bottom line. I'm a selfish superstitious bastard who does whatever he can to find out the answer to his true destiny."

Sawyer frowned, momentarily confused. Locke leaned his head to one side quizzically.

"That's what you wanna hear, right? Or how 'bout this. I was so sick of lying around camp waiting for the Great Lord Above to give me a sign that I decided to jump the fence, play for the other team and raise a little hell. How's that?"

"I'm not laughing, Eagle Eye."

Locke, however, was.

"I love you James. You're a real screwball!"

Locke shuffled towards a bunch of crates stacked in a corner, kicked the top off of one of them, revealing a considerable weapons cache.

Sawyer watched him, stunned, bewildered, agog, dumbfounded, speechless...well, maybe not speechless, but agog...

"I don't freakin' believe this! Do you realize my sort-of friends are trapped in god knows where with god knows what probably happening to them? Because of YOU!?"

"This has all been in motion for a very long time, Sawyer. It has nothing to do with me. I'm just an agent. Nothing that happens to any of you is either my fault or responsibility. It goes where it goes. And I..."

Locke strapped a rifle around his shoulders. "...well I just go where the wind blows."

"Well don't let the wind blow you in the butt on the way out." Sawyer sneered, and strode over, shoved Locke aside and grabbed a handgun from the crate.

"Where you "blowin'" anyway?"

"Didn't you hear? I'm leaving the island."

"What?"

"A few days ago...I kidnapped a man and brought him to a group of...shippers—just bear with me James—who called themselves Rambina Coalition Operatives. The man was Sayid."

Sawyer was agog. "You kidnapped Sayid? You sonofa—"

"—I brought him to them because they had promised me that they would release you, Jack, Kate and Ana Lucia. Obviously they lied, they had no intention of releasing anybody because they are apparently a part of some rogue shipper group called Anayid which seems to be bent on romantically pairing Ana Lucia and, uhm, Sayid—" Locke cleared his throat loudly in a badly veiled attempt not to laugh, "together. Haha!"

Sawyer wasn't laughing.

"Waitaminutewaitaminutewaitaminute, hold on, hold the phone, back up. Ana and Sayid..." Sawyer thought for a second, racking his brain to remember all the absurd things Alex had been telling him back at her cabin. He remembered something she had said about the Sana Faction doing some funky hypno-jumbo with Ana LuLu's brain so that she would come to her senses, kill Kate and solidify Sana as the major ship on the island. But if there were people shipping Ana and Sayid within the Sana shipper faction...why...that'd be a pretty damn big hole to bust in the Sana bubble. Plus, it meant that not only couldn't he trust anyone who was an agent of any shipping faction, he most likely couldn't even trust his hoodied teenage savior Alex!

But what side could Hoodie have taken to? She seemed to loath the reality of the entire thing...plus she'd just sent him on this big convoluted mission to save his friends...but what if it wasn't really about that at all? What if she was an insurgent for some shipper group and was secretly sending him into some kind of shipper trap? "Well hell!" Sawyer exclaimed aloud. Couldn't you trust ANYONE around this place?!

It occurred to Sawyer that the surreal little war he was caught in between was bigger than he'd thought.

"Anyway.." Locke went on, "so, here we are and here I am. I don't have Kate, Jack or Ana but I do have you. And you have a choice Sawyer. You can either leave the island with me, or stay here with the crazy people. It's your choice. Knowing you...you'll probably opt to save your own butt, am I right?"

Sawyer stared at Locke. In his minds eye, Locke suddenly appeared to be wearing a large flaming red T-Shirt with the words "DON'T TRUST A WORD I SAY" emblazoned in a neon pink text that looked like something a Bratz doll threw up. But then the vision faded and it was just Locke in his same old dingy Fruit of the Loom.

"Well guess you don't know me so well 'neither..." Sawyer said curtly and dramatically, "Seems this's where we part ways, John."

Locke looked surprised at Sawyer's sudden solemn attitude. He nodded back slowly and equally as dramatic. "Seems so." The dramatic pause lasted another moment. "You surprised me, James.

With that, Locke shrugged his gear over his shoulders and turned to leave, saying as he went, "Take care...'Sawyer'".

"Wait a minute!"

Locke turned. "Yes, James?"

"I've been told there's some kinda station underneath the Arrow. Tell me how to get to it."

"Check the fireplace." Locke replied pedantically. He turned to go. A stray beam of sunlight bounced off of Locke's shiny head, briefly blinding Sawyer, and when his sight was restored, Locke was gone.

Sawyer rummaged through the weapons cache, and as he did, he found himself thinking about two girls that were on a lot of people's minds at that very same moment. I wonder if I'll ever see them again, he thought, and imagined their faces as he loaded a pair of handguns with clips. Ana's face smirked and shook her head cynically at him, doubtlessly predicting that he would fail miserably in his quest and Kate's face looked worried and tired, probably thinking about how desperately she wanted a shower and some handsome, reluctantly love-lorn Southern man with hands like Apollo to lather soap all over her gorgeous body...

*POP *. Jack's imaginary finger popped the Kate bubble.

"Hey!" Sawyer said out loud.

Imaginary Jack glared and dissolved into the ether.

Sawyer flipped Jack an imaginary bird, snapped a holster full of guns around his waist and went to the fireplace. A suspiciously shiny lever was sticking out of the ground. Thinking the better of it, Sawyer twisted the lever. The back of the fireplace creaked, groaned and slide aside, rumbling noisily. When the wall had stopped moving, a tunnel was revealed that sloped downwards, and contained a ladder which led underground.

"More stories for the grandkids." Sawyer mused aloud. He took a deep breath, let it out, and began the dark and treacherous climb into the underworld.

TO BE CONTINUED...