Chapter 6

"I understand the circumstances of this meeting may not be ideal, but I have to tell you what's going through my mind right now," Juliet said an hour later.

"I'm kind of afraid to ask," Addison said carefully.

"Who among the five of us could Sloan tell the most embarrassing story about?"

That definitely relieved the small but still undeniable tension that the five doctors were feeling at this moment. "Well, I'm pretty sure we have more embarrassing stories about him than you do," Sam said with a smile.

Jack looked at Addison. "You didn't tell him about how he ended up with a broken –"

He didn't have to finish before Sam winced and Naomi got an absolutely delighted look on her face. "Addison! You never shared."

In a look that truly didn't suit her, Addison was blushing. "I didn't do it."

"So when Derek found out about you, he didn't decide to –"

"There are some codes 'bros' don't break," Jack said, smiling. "Though given what I've seen of Sloan, it would be a case of the punishment more than fitting the crime."

"I am truly terrified to ask what ended up happening," Sam said. "Please tell me it wasn't a permanent condition."

"Even if it had been, Mark would have found a way around it," Juliet said playfully. "Medical science can do amazing things."

Sam and Naomi resumed their business-like appearance – which to be fair, hadn't quite been that business like. Jack had been through this enough the first year after coming back to know the gaze of fan worship, even from studied professionals.

"I know you and your friends have been very generous as to what you've told my colleagues and friends at Seattle Grace about what really happened to you after your plane crash," Addison said carefully.

"And you have been, if anything, far too generous when it comes to respecting our privacy," Jack returned the compliment.

"So you don't mind telling me and my friends what really happened?"

Jack and Juliet exchanged glances. "That's actually not the issue," Jack said slowly. "The problem has been that, as Addison is well aware of this isn't a short story. Hell, it's not even an epic novel. It's a series of interconnected stories that, not only when it was happening to us but even years after the fact, we're not sure we have the full picture."

That got Naomi to ask the next obvious question. "And that connection is much greater than the fact that Juliet is married to one of you."

Juliet looked Naomi dead in the eye. "From what Addison tells me, you know better."

"I thought they was something odd about your history," Naomi didn't blink. "And when that man from Mittelos came to see me, warning bells went off."

For the first time since Jack had known her, Juliet blinked. "I wasn't in a particularly good state of mind when I agreed to join them. I have a feeling that they knew that and exploited it."

"Nae told me as much after the meeting. She got a creepy vibe from the recruiter," Sam said.

"Too cagey?" Jack asked.

Naomi shook her head. "Too nice. No one is that happy when it comes to recruiting someone for scientific research. And no one offers so much freedom with so few strings attached."

"That was what encouraged me," Juliet said sadly.

Naomi's tone softened. "I met your ex-husband a couple of times. To quote Stephen King, he was the definition of an officious little prick."

Juliet smiled. "I guess you liked The Shining more than Carrie."

"Great book; deeply flawed movie," Naomi said.

Jack gave a small smile of his own. "I think the two of you are more than ready to meet the rest of the group."

They started walking towards the back of Hurley's house. "So we passed the test?" Sam asked

"Oh, you passed before you arrived," Juliet assured them. "We trust Mark and Derek as much we trust Addison, and since the two of you are old friends with all of them, that's one step. The fact that Naomi was clearly smarter about Mittelos than I was means that you're smarter than me."

"All right, we both figured out by now, that somehow you have had to have had some connection to the plane crash," Naomi said. "But neither of us can figure out what it is exactly."

"What's your best theory?" Jack asked.

Naomi and Sam exchanged one of those looks that the Oceanics had done so many times over the years – usually when they were about to share a secret. "Our best theory is that the plane didn't crash on a deserted island," Sam said slowly. "The island was actually part of a scientific experiment."

Jack and Juliet momentarily froze. "What kind of experiments?" Jack tried to ask casually.

"We're not sure about that part," Naomi said. "But based on the fact that both Juliet and I were asked to join Mittelos, it clearly must have something to do with fertility and birth. Beyond that, our speculations get far wilder, since given that overpopulation is one of the biggest problems our globe is facing, why any one institution would be dealing more with creating life rather than trying to regulate it is hard to fathom. We can't imagine any government sanctioning it, nor any legitimate scientific organization that we've heard of following it. The only thing we can think of that makes sense is that whoever was leading it was using this research for immoral purposes."

Jack looked at Juliet. "That does describe what he was doing pretty well, doesn't it?" he couldn't help but say.

"He might actually be honored by the comparison," Juliet admitted sourly.

"Wait a minute," Sam said. "You mean we're right?"

Juliet turned around. "About part of it. But when it came to where we were all were, the best you could ever hope for was to have a partial understanding of what was going on."

Jack looked at them. "Congratulations. You're about to go down the rabbit hole."

The three other doctors exchanged glances. "How frightened should we be?" Addison asked.

"This is your last chance to take the blue pill," Jack pointed out.

To their credit, all three hesitated for a moment. Addison finally sighed. "Please tell me Keanu Reeves will show up to make sense of all this when we're finished."

"We should all have been so lucky," Juliet said with a sigh.

LGLGLGLG

"I'm not sure how we're supposed to feel about this particular approach," Naomi told them half an hour later.

"It's not the most efficient way, I grant you," Kate agreed. "But all things considered, it may be the best way."

Before Sam and Naomi had shown up, the group had tried to figure out what the easiest way to do this was. They all agreed that Addison could handle more than the newcomers, but how much more and in what way was a subject of some discussion. It wasn't until Hurley had mentioned almost casually that maybe they should handle things like they did on the island that it finally clicked.

Jack, Kate, Locke, Sayid, and James were going to talk to Sam and Naomi about what happened after the crash and the oddities that they had discovered in the initial days afterwards. No one could fault the logic – on the island James had referred to the first four, sometimes derivatively, as the 'A-Team'. Almost every crisis that they had faced over the three months they had been stranded had involved at least one and usually some combination of the four of them. No one ever considered the balance of power even – Jack had been the unelected leader, and he had disregarded the advice of Kate and Locke far more often than he had taken it on – but everyone had been confident in a situation where at least one of them was involved.

James had been reluctant to be considered part of this group – no one, especially not him, would have considered him a team player, and every time he had been part of any mission, no one else trusted his motives. Perhaps not unexpectedly Kate had pointed out how many times he had put his life on the line to help them, starting with joining the mission to see if the transceiver worked and ended with him going back to rescue Sayid, Jin, and Bernard when the Others had gained the upper hand on the beach just prior to their being rescued.

"Hugo was more of the hero in that case than me," he'd reminded them. "And if we're talking about the power behind the throne, you gotta remember how many times he was helping us without even the Doc having to ask."

"We offered," Locke said. "You heard his reasons."

Juliet, because of her prior relationship to Addison and the island, had decided it was her job to help guide her through what had happened. The rest of the group had been more than willing to give their version of it, with every angle they could cover. No one could argue the reasoning with Claire given how she'd helped talk Addison into seeking help in the first place. Sun and Jin had been more in the background then they would have liked, but on their own and together, they had provided invaluable support. And Michael and Walt could provide details that no one else on the island could.

Still, all of them – even Callie - had been a little surprised that Hurley had wanted to help Addison more than the newcomers.

"I mean, helping people has kind of been your jam since the minute to started handing out food to people after we are all looking disturbed," Claire pointed out. "In that way, Sam and Naomi are at that point."

"I mean, by this point I think I know most of the story by heart," Callie added. "I might even be able to fill in blanks you don't know."

"I get what you're saying, I do but…" He trailed off. "It like when I finally tracked down Rousseau after finding those numbers on her maps. She was going to tell me to get lost, and I got pissed because I was tired of being left in the dark about everything."

"To be fair, you didn't exactly open up to what those numbers may have meant the next time you saw them," Jack pointed out.

"And the time after that," Locke reminded him.

"I tried to tell you," Hurley reminded him. "You kind of showed how poor your bedside manner was."

"Fair enough," Jack acknowledged.

"The point is, I have a feeling that right now, Addison is like I was back then. She wants some frigging answers," Hurley told them. "And since I understand better than most of you what it means to be on admitting the craziness…"

No one was going to argue that particular point.

"So it's been a few hours. We're all dealing with the fact that we survived a plane crash. We're settling down and trying to sleep." Jack paused and told them what they had all witnessed the first night.

Jack and Kate had then told them about their trip into the heart of the island with Charlie the next morning. They told them about their search of the wreckage, their discovery that the captain was still alive and that the search team was looking for them in the wrong place. Then they filled in the rest of it.

"All right," James asked. "We know you ain't shrinks, but how certifiable do you think we are yet?"

The newcomers paused. "Well, I do get why you created a cover story," Sam finally said. "I'm used to seeing weird things in private practice, and I'm not sure I buy it."

"Everybody saw it," Naomi asked.

"Or heard it," Sayid said. "Over time, some of us got a closer look than others."

"I actually got two very close looks at it when I was on the island," Locke told them. "And even then, I'm not entirely sure if either version was the same thing everybody else was seeing. But all of us heard the noises it made and the wreckage it was caused in the distance that first night. There might be a case for mass delusion, but we're all agreed on that part of it."

"What was it?" Sam asked.

Everyone deferred to Locke, who gave one of those mystic smiles he was fond of on the island. "I could tell you exactly what it was, but you'd never believe me if I did right now," he said simply. "There's no skipping to the end of the book in this particular story, because then you don't understand the meaning of the ending. Even those of us who lived through the experience can't say we fully comprehend what happened."

"This isn't exactly the most encouraging beginning," Naomi said.

"You came here because you wanted to learn what happened to us," Sayid reminded them. "We have every intention of keeping our word. We can tell you what happened. Explaining it – that's another story."

"All right, what happened when you got back to camp with the transceiver?" Sam asked.

There was a pause. "Somebody found out the secret I'd been keeping," Kate said slowly. "From the only other person who knew it."

LGLGLGL

"Maybe I should have gone with Jack's side first," Addison said slowly. "I have a feeling whatever he and my friends might have told me would be easier to accept than this."

Everybody snickered at this, even Hurley. "Seriously?" he said, chuckling. "If we'd met her on day one, we might have been a lot less scared about what happened going forward."

Juliet was having a hard time keeping a straight face. "You really believe that Hurley?"

Claire looked at her. "You wanted to leave the island before we even got there. All the crap you put everybody through you did because you wanted to leave. I have a feeling that's the reason you weren't sent to infiltrate us. You'd have been on every trip Kate went on."

"And she had a better reason to stay then you did, remember?" Sun said. "Oh wait, you read her file. Of course you knew."

Addison didn't think she could get even more baffled. So she turned back to her friend and tried to focus on reality. "So you ended up on the island when Mittelos recruited you because pregnant women could not come to term."

Juliet grew sober. "After three women died, I told Ben that there was nothing I could do to solve the problem and that I wanted to go back to my sister. He shows me a report telling me that Rachel's cancer has recurred, and if I stay on the island, he'll make sure its fixed."

"Stop again." Addison said. "You've been seeing women die from fertility issues but you believe him when he says the island can cure cancer."

"He said that there was no cancer on the island. I would later learn that was complete horseshit," Juliet spoke frankly. "If I'd had any sense at all, I would have looked closer at the X-rays he'd showed me and made sure that they were viable. Rachel told me when I got back that she'd been cancer free since I left for the island."

"But you heard the word cancer and Rachel and you panicked," Addison said simply. "I get it. No matter how good our training, when we hear of a disease in connection to a loved one, our mental synapses don't work properly. That said, why were you so sure that Ben could keep his word?"

"I didn't believe it for a second," Juliet hesitated. "I never believed in the existence of God. Too much had happened in my life already for me to have faith – my parents' divorcing when I was ten, my marriage to Edmund and the fact his influence remained on me well after our divorce, Rachel getting cancer. When I came to the island everyone went out of their way to tell me what a special place it was, and how much I was going to like being here. I didn't know I'd joined a cult."

"And Ben was Manson," Michael filled in.

"That may be the closest equivalent. It was a strange business, all of us were working towards a common good, but none of us had real respect for the leadership." Juliet said. "I didn't learn until two months after I got there that we were all working to the purpose of a 'magnificent man known only as Jacob." A man who nobody except Ben ever saw and talked too. And who, supposedly, could heal my sister's cancer."

Now Addison was looking at Juliet crookedly. "And you believed Ben when he told you this?"

"By that point I knew well enough that Ben was calling the shots," Juliet said. "I also knew well enough that he got what he wanted. For the first and only time in my three years on the island, I chose to drink the Kool-Aid. If it had happened some other point, I might have asked the question again, but at that point I got distracted."

Addison had a sinking feeling about this. "What was his name?"

"Goodwin," Jin said softly.

Juliet's eyes had begun to mist. "I did you one better," she said slowly. "I had an affair with a married man. To be clear, his marriage had been a sham for a while. And having met his wife first, I could understand why."

"Who was she?"

"Her name was Harper Stanhope. She was the therapist for our people. The prime example of 'those who can't, teach.'" Juliet said dourly. "She was there for psychological warfare, not treatment. She may have been the only person on that island less popular than Ben."

"Which says a lot about her," Claire pointed out.

"How long did the affair last?" Addison asked.

"More than a year and a half," Juliet hesitated. "I don't know when exactly Harper found out about it, but six months before the plane crash she told me she knew the truth and that I had to end – or there would be consequences that I couldn't fathom. Edmund had cheated on me repeatedly throughout our marriage, and I was appalled to realize just what it felt like to be on the other side of it. It did not, however, stop the affair. Hell, I was back in his bed that night."

Addison actually seemed sympathetic. "These things can be like a fever," she told them. "And even knowing what you did was wrong never stops you from doing it."

"But the only thing your affair did was destroy your marriage," Juliet was looking like she might cry.

Two separate thoughts were coming together. The spies that had been sent and the fact that Jin had known who Juliet was having an affair with. How could they have met?

Jin looked at Addison. "I saw his body, impaled on a stake," he said softly. "He'd been dead for weeks."

A very unpleasant image was forming in Addison's head but given how much stress this was clearly causing Juliet she decided now was not the time to press her friend. "I can understand what it means to be alone," she said comfortingly.

"But you had options I didn't," Juliet said. "And at least then, work could be an escape. By the time of the plane crash, I considered the island a prison."

"So why'd you keep going along with the lie?" Michael asked. "No offense, you were under as much duress as I was because of that man but you seemed just as willing to go along with them when we met."

"Why do you think I visited that you that night?" Juliet said, looking him in the eye. "For better or worse you were committed. You weren't going to listen to anything of us had to say."

"You told me he was a great man," Michael said.

"I also told you his real name," Juliet finally looked away. "This was my first open act of rebellion. I thought, given your psychological state – which I more than understood – you might slip up when you came back to see your friends."

Walt looked angry for the first time. "Were you trying to get them to know what they'd done to my dad?"

"I wasn't thinking much at all," Juliet admitted. "The worst thing I thought might happen is that your father would make a mistake. Your friends did a number on your prisoner just thinking he was one of us. If you'd known he was our leader." She took a deep breath. "He'd told me that he hadn't pulled Goodwin out, and that ended up getting him killed. I thought maybe what goes around should come around."

Juliet had said a lot of brutally honest things to them since they'd met her. This simple admission was so blunt it made Ben Linus look warm-hearted. Even Hurley looked shocked.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Sun was the first to offer acceptance. "Who knows what we would do to keep the people we love safe?" she said sadly. "And what happens when we lose them?"

Claire reached the next obvious conclusion. "Did you really think Jack would break his oath?"

Juliet shook her head. "Not for a moment. I thought it far more likely he'd do what he actually did initially."

"Would someone like to share with the rest of the class?" Addison asked.

"About a week before the plane crash, Ben started complaining about back pain," Juliet said. "I had them do some x-rays. And wouldn't you know, there was a tumor on his spine. On an island where there was supposedly no cancer, the man who was our fearless leader had the kind of tumor that even under the best case scenario will kill you in a matter of months."

"How'd he try to backpedal out of it?" Addison asked, again focusing on the medical part.

"I didn't give him a chance. I told him he'd been lying to me all these years and that my sister was actually dead. I demanded he let me leave. He refused. Actually had the nerve to say he couldn't. Then two days later, a spinal surgeon falls out of the sky. That probably proved to him that the island was on his side."

"That's not an opinion held by the residents of Seattle Grace," Callie interjected. "Myself included."

"I imagine he had doubts but decided to bury them," Juliet shook his head and turned to Claire. "I'm kind of amazed you're still able to be so forgiving of him given everything that he put you through especially."

Addison was about to ask what the hell she was talking about. Then she remembered Claire's condition before she'd come to the island. "Who'd they send to grab you?" she asked.

"His name was Ethan," Claire answered. "And while I can't speak for how Goodwin was at his job; Ethan was not nearly as subtle. Then again, there were multiple factors working against him that he could not have been aware of."

"Such as?" Addison asked.

"This is a story that Jack might be telling your friends as we speak," Sun said slowly. "Mainly because most of them had far more interactions with her than any of us, save Hurley."

"What are they talking about?" Addison asked Hurley.

"There was another person on the island before we got there that I'm not a hundred percent sure even Juliet knew about at the time," Hurley said slowly. "The whole reason we called all of Juliet's people The Others is because one of us managed to meet her first. And even then, we never knew how much of what she said we could trust."

Addison knew she had to know the answer. "Why?"

Claire made it simple. "Because not long after she ended up on the island, it drove her mad."

LGLGLG

"I know I'm a rational person, and I know Naomi is," Sam said slowly. "And I do understand the reasoning that if I was seeing my dead father walking around a tropical island very much alive, I would keep it to myself."

"Your father's still alive, but I agree with the brunt of that," Naomi told them. "I would be inclined to dismiss is as a hallucination, too. And if I did, and I'd been more or less up for six days straight, I would lie down and take a nap. I would certainly not abandon my fellow survivors without any explanation. Nor would I follow said hallucination into the jungle so far that I would follow it off a cliff."

"All right, I admit that wasn't my finest hour," Jack acknowledged.

"You're not exactly off the hook yourself, John," Naomi followed. "Jack tells you he was chasing something, that he was hallucinating, and you don't even bother to ask what it was?"

James, of all people, looked sheepish. "To be fair, that wasn't exactly a sin of Jack or John's alone. They were the biggest offenders to be sure, but none of us were willing to share anything."

"You mean all the strange shit that was going on around you and you didn't think your fellow survivors needed to know it," Sam was casting a look in the direction of Kate and Sayid as well.

"Not just that," Kate was looking away. "See, even stranded on a desert island where the past didn't have any relevance to our situation, none of us felt inclined to share anything that happened to us before we got on the plane."

"I can understand why you wouldn't want to share you were a fugitive," Naomi said.

"Jack knew that when the marshal died. No one found out the crimes I committed until we were rescued." Kate was looking down now.

"And you showed up on America's Most Wanted," James said humorously.

Sam and Naomi now looked at them as if the conversations about the monster and the polar bear were normal. "Was this the general method that all of you took the three months you were stranded?" Naomi was suddenly very quiet.

"There were people on the island who knew all our secrets," Locke said. "But it wasn't because we told any of them."

"So, let me get this straight: you are isolated on an island for three months and at absolutely no point during this time do you reveal anything more about your lives then your names and your job before you came to the island?" Sam sounded as incredulous as his ex-wife.

"No, in some cases we didn't even tell them what we did for a living," James said cheerfully.

Now Naomi and Sam were giving them a look as if they didn't know who they were talking too.

"That's the look I've been waiting for all this time for your friends," James said, almost delighted.

"You're not helping," Kate mumbled.

"How are you not all dead?" Sam asked simply. "I get the whole struggling to survive bit taking up a lot of your time and I think we're starting get that this island was even stranger we dared to think."

"Oh, we haven't even gotten started," Jack said, but like so many times on the island people were talking over him.

"But seriously? What were you doing the rest of your time that you didn't bother to talk to each other about anything? Were there just like forty or fifty individual camp sites, everybody catching their own food and going to sleep with no interaction whatsoever?" Sam asked.

"I mean, I never thought that such utter lack of curiosity about one's surroundings or companions could exist in a place with no cell service," Naomi said. "Maybe I should apologize to Maya. Apparently not having an iPhone is no guarantee that you'll be more social."

"I mean, we were trying to get rescued," James said calmly, looking at Locke. "Some of us."

Locke looked at James. "For a while.", he countered just as serenely.

Both newcomers had clearly heard this last exchange but couldn't process it right now: the last realization was clearly causing mental overload. To be fair, this was the part that most of the people they'd told the story to in the last year and a half had the greatest problem wrapping their minds around. Even the socially challenged residents and attendings of Seattle Grace couldn't comprehend how Jack had only learned Claire was his sister months after they'd been rescued.

"How do we know more of you didn't survive because you didn't notice?" Naomi was now accusatory. "Maybe ten or twelve more of you actually did survive the crash, but they wandered off and starved to death or tripped and broke their necks in the woods or drowned in a river and none of you noticed because you hadn't bothered to talk to them or you were busy covering up your petty secrets that you didn't notice they'd told they were going out on their own."

Oddly enough, a sense of guilt was beginning to fill all of them for different reasons. Locke was feeling it perhaps the most strongly because after becoming the island's disciple he had basically isolated himself from the rest of the group. And it wasn't like that Naomi and Sam weren't entirely off base here. For all their talk of leadership, most of that behavior had amounted to letting their information not go beyond a certain number of people, all of whom were here today. Kate remembered that just before his explosive demise, Arzt had been whining to Hurley about being left out of the process and even days after the fact, they hadn't even bothered to hold a memorial for him.

And it wasn't like some of them hadn't had any good ideas. Bernard had suggested not long after the pallet drop that they should construct a giant S.O.S. sign in the sand because a plane might see it. But when Rose mentioned that they should maybe talk it over with Jack first, the group had almost immediately dissolved. Had any of the group even considered this a possibility? Everybody in the circle had basically just shrugged, then gone back to the hatch to interrogate Henry for lying to them, then trying to use him to get Walt. Where in the grand scheme of things had that gotten any of them?

Now that he thought about, these two strangers had almost asked the right question. It wasn't "How are you all still alive?" but rather "How are you here at all?" Because with the possible exception of James, who had no doubt helped built the raft more to get off the island than to help anybody else, what had any of them done, during most of their experience, to help get people rescued?

Sayid had spent a lot of time trying to get the transceiver working, then trying to map the island, getting seriously injured each time for his troubles. He had been willing to more than most of them to make sure the venture with the raft had been a success. He had sensed the dangers the hatch might merit before Jack and Locke did. And he spent a lot more effort trying to get them saved than anyone else.

After that, there were diminishing returns. Locke, of course, had never been interested in rescue and had spent most of his time working against it. K ate had tried hard in the initial stages. But if there had been a person who had done the least to help get them rescued almost all the while they were on the island, it was Jack Shephard.

His speech that had inspired many had been to prepare to dig in. When he'd tried to get people to move to the caves, Sayid and Kate had leaned against him hard. When the raft had been about to leave, he had put the protection of 'his people' above rescue, even though that meant leading the people who came with him to certain death. When the hatch was finally open, he'd put all his effort first into taking in over, then on his war with the Others. When Desmond had shown up on the boat, he had cared more to see how to use to rescue Walt then to try and get them rescued, and they'd lost the boat. He'd put his faith to Ben Linus into getting off the island, but the idea that he'd be able to save everybody when he got back to civilization was a crapshoot at best. Hell when Naomi had shown up, she'd had to persuade everybody else to be rescued, and even then he could barely be moved from his plan for vengeance against the Others. Sayid had basically yelled at him about that before the mission to the Looking Glass and he'd still essentially brushed him off. If Karl hadn't shown up while they were setting up, who knows how long he would have stalled the effort? He might have blamed Locke for keeping them island, but how much had he really done to get them off it?

A very basic question came to his head, one so obvious he really wondered why he hadn't asked it until now. He was facing his wife, but he was really asking all of them. "Why did you listen to me?"

It was not a question any of them were expecting. "We weren't all following you," Locke said gently.

Jack waved that off. "I'm not asking that. Why were you listening to me? I make this great speech about what we have to do to survive, fine. But what did I actually do to make that a reality?"

"All of us kept secrets about what we saw when we were on the island," Sayid reminded them.

"And as Sam and Naomi have just told us, that got a lot of us killed," Jack said bluntly. "I didn't want to be the leader but I took the job and once I had it, I couldn't let anyone else do it. I know I wasn't that kind of person. But not even John was willing to go so far as to call me on it."

Locke considered this. "I was on my own path, more than anything. And the one time I tried to call you on it, I was speaking from a position so hypocritical, I'm kind of shocked you never truly called me on it."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we stopped listening to each other after that," Jack admitted with a little bit of humor.

"You actually have a larger point," Sayid had actually turned back to Sam and Addison. "I think fundamentally we spent so much time keep secrets about everything that we are fortunate that more of us didn't die. We started splitting into subgroups and other alliances when we should have been sharing information far more often than we did. I was no less guilty than any of us."

"You probably would've been a better leader, all things considered," James pointed out. "Hell, it's not like you weren't a little ahead of the curve then the rest of us."

"Tell me the truth. How much of the same prejudices were there on the island?" Naomi asked. "Sayid starts calling for people to organize and he barely gets listened too. Jack says the exact same thing two days later, and everybody snaps to attention."

"It was pretty bad," James admitted. "I was the biggest offender, no question – I may never have used the n-word, but I didn't exactly express the most enlightened points of view – but let's face it, a lot of it was implied."

There was a moment when it looked like some of them might disagree, but then they all began reluctantly nodded. "I'm kind of amazed Sun and Jin are willing to talk to us as much as they are," Kate admitted. "We spent the first few weeks basically treating them like the ultimate outsiders, even though Jin was going out of his way to catch fish for us practically every day the first few weeks."

"Well, that's understandable," Sam said. "It's not like you crash landed with an interpreter."

They exchanged glances, this time with a little more lightness. "Actually, we did." Kate said with a small smile. "What do you think, one last story before we break things up for the day?"

"I'm not sure how many more secrets we can handle," Naomi said.

"Actually, this is one I'm pretty sure that the two of you can appreciate and maybe even understand," Jack said.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

The last season I watched Grey's Lexie had an encounter with Sloane which left him in a truly painful position. (I don't think I'll do more than imply more.) Somehow I think that's one Juliet might find more amusing than Jack.

Yes, Sam and Naomi are now part of the Lost fan base. And pretty good ones. One of the first theories about the island was that it was some kind of scientific experiment and for much of the series, it was a realistic one.

The division of who told who was based more on how most of the missions on Lost ended up being handled most of the series. (A-Team mission actually has a link on the Lostipedia website.) The breakdown fits how most all the missions during the first half of the series ended up being handled, as well as most of the leadership roles to that point. At this point, everyone is willing to acknowledge that for most of the series Hurley was actually the power behind the throne. (Even before the final season, there were quite a few fans who thought Hurley was the best leader.) Hurley's position as to staying in the background fits in with how he sees himself, and why he thinks he can explain things to Addison.

Addison of all people can relate to what it means to be caught up in an affair and how that can destroy a marriage. She could certainly sympathize with Juliet on that.

Naomi and Sam are asking questions that many Lost fans must have by the middle of Season 2 at the very least: why did none of the survivors reveal any of their secrets to anybody, even when that information had to do with keeping people alive? This was one of the flaws in Jack's leadership: that he constantly was selective about what he chose to share with anyone. As to the fact that after awhile no one was making a conscious effort to be rescued, you don't have to look any further than how immediately after the pallet drop, the A Team dealt with it for all of two seconds and started to work on finding out what 'Henry' actually knew. (Naomi – Lost's not this one - actually asked this very question in 'The Man Behind the Curtain' and got no real answer.) Locke may have blown up everything that might get people rescued, but between the hatch getting opened and the arrival of the Looking Glass, no major character ever seemed to give a damn about actually getting off the island.

I'll be going back to Seattle Grace in the next chapter and there will be a slight delay before the Losties show up again. Time we have a chat with the newest Kate Austin again.

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