Sawyer closed the door in the dark to his tiny, cramped and dirty apartment and slouched to the nearest chair, collapsing into it. He jumped up when he felt something hard crack beneath him.
The room was still dark so he reached over and felt for the light switch. Turning on the light his jaw dropped.
Everything in his apartment had been destroyed, everything had been completely trashed and broken. The one sofa he had was torn to shreds, foam everywhere. His television was smashed to pieces and the mirror above his single dresser lay in shards on the floor. His bed, his only bed, was torn and the blankets shredded. All the pillows had been ripped apart with feathers everywhere. Both windows were open and the room felt below thirty.
Slowly, Sawyer stepped over the trashed remnants of his kitchen. He'd only moved into this apartment a month ago and now it was gone.
He spotted the black permanent marker on the wall reflected in what was left of the mirror. Carefully he turned.
"You ruined my life, so I thought I'd ruin yours."
Lying on the floor below this message was the dead landlord.
Sawyer looked around and he could hear things hitting the ground in loud thumps all around him in the jungle. He could hear screaming, and people shouting but it was all blurry. Fire was everywhere, burning in small clumps. The fire nearest him was tall, climbing a nearby tree and licking at the branches around it.
Turning over, Sawyer groaned at the pain in his leg and side. He'd hit the ground hard and hit several trees as he landed. Looking around, he suddenly remembered.
"Satine?" he scanned all around him. "Walt?"
Where were they? He could have sworn he'd thrown them as hard as he could directly ahead of him. They had to be nearby, he hadn't gone much farther.
He moaned as he got to his feet, leaning heavily against a tree. Looking down he saw what looked like a shard of metal sticking out of his outer thigh. He tried not to think about the fact that it was the same leg he'd been shot in as he wrenched it out.
Grinding his teeth so hard he saw stars, Sawyer opened his eyes wide to look around.
Trees were on fire around him and there were people running a distance from him. The grass was tall here and the brush thick. He went from tree to tree, leaning on them, scanning the ground for any signs of Satine.
"Walt!" someone screamed behind him.
Turning, Sawyer saw Michael racing towards him. For a moment Sawyer expected Michael to grab Sawyer and demand for his son. But Michael dropped to his knees a few yards away, picking up an unconscious Walt from the ground.
Sawyer limped as fast as he could towards Michael who was crying.
"Walt! Walt!" Michael kept repeating, clutching his limp son to his chest. "Please! Please!"
"Is he?" Sawyer got painfully to his knees and took hold of one of Walt's wrists. For a moment he didn't move and then he looked slowly up at Michael.
"Jack? Jack?"
Snapping awake, Jack felt the pain before he saw Charlie kneeling over him, his face bloody and covered in dirt.
"You're alive!" Charlie said, sounding relieved. He pulled Jack up to a sitting position.
"Charlie what…" Jack said quietly, feeling confused. He'd hit his head on something, although he didn't think it had been bad. Looking around he saw fire and got quickly to his feet, too quickly. He stumbled slightly.
"A bomb! Or…something! All I saw was Sawyer and…"
"Oh my god," Jack had stepped forward back out into the small opening where just moments before the two groups had been standing facing each other. Now it was scattered with large chunks of trees and bits of the ground. A huge gaping hole sat smoking in the middle were several large chunks of metal sat. The trees around it were burning and the sun was blocked out by the enormous amounts of smoke rising. And all around people were screaming, as they lay injured, hurt and terrified. People from both sides of the island although now they weren't distinguishable through the dirt and flames.
"Charlie, I need you to run back to the hatch and grab all the medical supplies you can. Bring all the women. We're going to need as much help as we can get," Jack said urgently, looking hard at Charlie. "And get Kate."
"But Jack…"
"JUST GO!" Jack ordered.
Charlie nodded and ran off. Around him, Jack saw several people struggling to stand. He saw Hurley walking through the trees looking confused, a large gash on his forehead.
"Hurley!" Jack sprinted over to him. "Are you okay? Say something."
"Dude…what happened?" asked Hurley, looking worriedly at Jack. "Something exploded."
"I need you to help me find people. They're going to be covered in brush and stuff. Come on!"
As Jack made rounds, Sawyer had begun looking for Satine again. He scanned the ground and walked around the fires. His heart was pounding in his throat and his leg bleeding painfully. He had reached the clearing where the initial explosion had gone off and he saw Jack racing across towards the opposite tree with Hurley behind him. Sawyer looked around and tried not to look at the remnants of the other group.
"Satine!" he shouted, his breath coming in short gasps. He was so scared, so completely terrified he didn't know how to handle it. He felt almost dizzy as he remained on the side he'd been searching and scanned the trees. He'd only walked a few feet away from the large hole in the ground when he saw her.
She lay motionless in the grass, a large piece of timber lying across her legs. Sawyer had never moved so fast as he sprinted, the pain in his leg turning into adrenaline as he fell to the ground beside her and lifted the timber away.
Pale and sickly, she didn't look alive. Could it have possibly killed her, he wondered? His heart seemed to pound so hard it hurt as he felt her arms and put an ear to her chest. She wasn't breathing.
Jack had finished tying a piece of his shirt around a wounded man's leg and was working on stopping the bleeding from one of the other's arms when he heard Hurley shout.
"JACK! Oh my god! Jack!"
Turning, Jack couldn't see what Hurley was pointing at. Then he saw.
Kate lay motionless on the ground just off the path, her face in clear view in a small ray of sun coming through the smoke and canopy. As Jack slowly rose, the entire world collapsing around him, he felt his heart shatter.
"She was supposed to stay," he muttered to Hurley as he dropped down beside her and looked her over. A large bullet wound was on her hip, seeming to have gone right through, the blood flowing out onto the dirt.
"Where's Charlie? I need my bag," Jack said desperately to Hurley, who was wiping his eyes. "HURLEY! FIND CHARLIE!"
Nodding and slightly scared, Hurley took off. Jack looked back at Kate and tried to wake her.
"Come on, Kate. Please. Just say something for me, tell me you're okay," he pleaded with her. He could see a large bruise forming on her head. She didn't move, her face pale yet beautiful. He couldn't stop looking at it as he held his hands over the wound, blood flowing through his fingers. He tried to keep control, trying so hard to concentrate on just stopping the bleeding but he felt his throat tighten. Jack didn't bother hiding that he was crying as he held the wound shut, praying with all his dear life that she would survive.
"Dude!" Hurley was hurtling through the jungle, Charlie on his heels clutching the leather bag. "Here!"
Jack ripped it from Charlie's hands and pulled out the gauze and peroxide. He worked as hard as he could.
"Put your hand here," Jack ordered Charlie, seizing his hand and pressing it hard on the exit wound. "Do not move it. Hurley, you hold this one."
"Where are you going?" Charlie asked worriedly, blood soaking through the gauze quickly.
"I need to find help," he said, running.
Sawyer was never a lifeguard and he was never a doctor. He had only once saved a baby chick from dying when it had fallen from its nest. He had found it a week later chewed up by a fox. He had never been the life saver Jack was, and he knew it.
But as he performed CPR on Satine, he knew that watching Jack and listening as he had worked would benefit him now and in the future. He remembered seeing Jack perform it on several people, one woman after she'd drowned and had seen it on several television shows also. But as he did it now, it was different. It wasn't heroic and manly, blowing breaths into a fragile, sick body. It was painful, horrifying and completely sickening. He couldn't look at her face as he did it, preferring to close his eyes. His heart hurt so badly he wanted it to stop. He knew she was probably gone yet he didn't stop.
After ten minutes Sawyer felt dizzy from blowing the air, and his arms ached and his leg throbbed. Around him people were wandering aimlessly, and even when he shouted out to them to get Jack, no one listened. Finally, after several moments, Sawyer stopped.
Looking down at her, he knew it was over. He could see the horribly infected wound on her side and could see the terribly painful twine that had been sewn into it. He looked at her face and knew he knew it, he'd seen it before. She had trashed his apartment and killed his landlord. She had been the little girl in the back of the car, the person who had haunted his dreams. Sawyer was the reason this girl's life was so messed up.
Putting his head down, he covered it with his hands. And for the first time since the night his parents died, Sawyer cried.
"Sometimes things happen for a reason," said the pastor quietly to Sawyer as he sat in the holding room of the police station. The priest was used as a kind of guilt-ridder, so those convicts didn't go into jail to kill themselves. "And perhaps this will help you in the future."
"Yeah, okay," Sawyer snapped. "I've already said I didn't do it. I don't have any sins to admit!"
"You did not kill Mr. Harrison?" asked the priest quietly, sitting across the table from Sawyer. In the harsh light the priest looked ancient and Sawyer was getting a headache.
"No," growled Sawyer.
"Who did?"
Not answering Sawyer looked away.
"I'll tell ya who," Sawyer looked hard at the priest. "But you ain't gonna find her."
"Perhaps she is not meant to be found. Maybe you are doing her penance to save her life. You would be a hero," the priest offered kindly.
"I never asked to be a hero! I don't want to be one," he snapped. "I ruined her life…she's just getting back at me."
"How did you ruin her life?"
"I was friends with another guy named James. But I had a hitman after me but the guys after me ended up killing the wrong James," Sawyer looked down. "They killed the guy and after that his family was robbed of all their money by the same guys who had killed him, to clean up the job and make it look like it was the right one. This…girl got stuck with a poor mother who was James's sister, and…it just messed up her life."
"So you are saying if this James had lived, this girl you speak of would have a better life?" asked the priest gently. Sawyer's temples were throbbing and he wished this was over.
"Yes," Sawyer nodded. "Then her mother wouldn't have had to marry such an asshole and get herself all broke."
"And you've been keeping tabs on this girl?" the old man looked hard at Sawyer. "You know what she looks like?"
"No. I haven't seen her since she was five but I've heard about what happened to her folks. People who were rich and suddenly go broke don't just drop off the map. People keep tabs on them to make sure they don't come into new cash. Basically she lived with her mom who married twice and the second time she got lucky and struck it rich but spent it all on herself. Now they're piss poor and going through a divorce…" Sawyer suddenly realized he sounded like he cared. "But it's just my job to keep track of people like that. I don't really care."
"It seems, Mr. Ford, you do care," the pastor nodded, sighing deeply. "If you did not care you would not be telling me all about this girl's life. You would not be telling me how you ruined her life. It would be the last thing on your mind."
"She set me up for murder! I can care about that!" Sawyer shouted angrily.
"You care more about this girl and about the circumstances you've created for her, than the fact you are being tried for murder," the priest stood and nodded at Sawyer. "I will be sure to testify for you."
"Don't bother."
The priest looked back surprisingly on his way to the door. Sawyer sat with his hands on the table.
"I'd rather go to jail," Sawyer eyed the priest and then looked away, his hands folded tightly.
The priest left the questioning room and came face to face with an officer.
"He did not kill that landlord. If you do proper testing you will see it is true," said the priest firmly. "Let the man go. He is in enough pain."
Jack felt so sick he had to stop several times and retch. He thought he was going to faint as he went from person to person, helping everyone but only caring about Kate. He could see Charlie and Hurley still holding her wounds closed, and all he cared about was finding Locke or Sayid to help him move Kate back to the hatch. Women had begun to arrive and were helping to find people thrown by the blast. Several were using the bandages and others just signaled when they found someone alive.
Sayid appeared at Jack's side as he worked on one of the other's, a young woman with long hair down to her waist. She was filthy and she had a bad burn on her arm and part of her face. Jack did his best to clean them but knew when she finally woke up she would be in agony.
"We need to do something," Sayid said hurriedly to Jack. Sayid looked okay although he was shaking. "People are dead, parts of bodies everywhere. We need to get the injured away from here and the living too. Then we need to put out these fires."
"If you can find enough people, you can start moving everyone to the hatch. Get some people to help clear out the entire living section so we have room to lie everyone down. Tell Ana-Lucia to find me, I need her help," Jack ordered. Sayid didn't say anything and Jack looked up at him. "What?"
"I found Ana-Lucia," Sayid said quietly, looking down. "She's dead."
Closing his eyes for a moment, Jack fought off a wave of sickness and then reopened his eyes.
"We need to get Kate out of here. She'd bleeding badly," Jack stood and started towards where Kate was and stopped when he heard crying.
Turning slowly, he saw Satine lying motionless and pale in the grass. Beside her was Sawyer, his face in his hands. Jack walked over to them and bent beside Satine.
"Sawyer," Jack said gently. "I'm so sorr…"
But Jack stopped talking and Sawyer noticed, raising his head to look at the doctor's shocked face.