Chapter 17: Exile

Sawyer ran, long past the point when exhaustion set in. He silently dared the men behind him to keep up, and he knew somehow they would, even though they couldn't possibly need to get where they were going as much as he did.

He continued straight down the path, bypassing the fork that would take them back toward the attacker's body. Later, if they insisted, he supposed he'd have to point them in the right direction, but he'd much rather let the body sit out there and rot. Serve the bastard right. Abducting an innocent woman, attacking both him and Kate twice, trying to kill them both...letting the animals pick him apart was nothing more than what he deserved.

The noises seemed to be coming from somewhere to his right. Maybe it was the body, he thought. Maybe whatever the hell that thing was, it had found the attacker's body and was currently ripping it to shreds. He felt a dark gleam of pleasure at the thought.

He stumbled to an abrupt halt, right in the middle of the path. They were gone. Kate and the woman both had disappeared. He muttered a violent curse, something akin to terror taking root deep in his chest. Not now. Not when there was an end in sight, he thought. "They're not here," he said needlessly.

"Are you sure this is the right path?" Jack asked from behind him. "Maybe you got turned around in the jungle—"

"It's not the wrong path, Jackass," Sawyer muttered, spinning around and fixing Jack with a furious glare. "You see all that?" he asked, pointing to the end of the path where the rain had obscured, but not yet obliterated, the trampled ground in front of the large tree. The thin branches the woman had been tied with were scattered across the ground, but there was no sign of either her or Kate.

It wasn't until he ran up to the tree that he saw the drag marks.

Kate huddled in the bushes, pressing the shirt against the woman's wound, her eyes glued ahead of her. She clutched the knife in her free hand, prepared to strike out at anything that came near her. She ignored the corner of her mind that wondered how in the hell she was supposed to fight something so big, something she couldn't even see. It didn't matter that no one had ever seen it; she knew something was out there. She knew something had mangled the pilot's body, and she was prepared to use any means necessary to defend herself and the innocent woman.

She squinted against the slash of the rain, listening tensely as it moved closer, then further away, then closer again. It was searching for something, she realized.

Just go away, she pleaded silently, hating the weakness that seeped through her, hating that she was close to tears. She was supposed to be strong. She was supposed to be able to hold it together. Through all her months on the run she'd never once let herself cry. But the island was wreaking havoc with her senses, her emotions. Since the crash, she hadn't been able to control her feelings, and she hated it.

Suddenly branches snapped and broke only a few feet from her. She whirled around, a scream escaping her lips. She swung the knife wildly in front of her as something crashed to the ground. And then it was quiet, eerily so, the slashing rain lightening to a heavy mist. No creatures moved, no voices called out.

She wondered if she'd ever felt so alone.

She turned back to Christine, lifting the shirt and checking her shoulder. It was still bleeding sluggishly. Cursing under her breath, wondering just how much blood she'd lost, Kate wrapped the shirt around her shoulder as tight as she could, tucking the ends in to secure them, and jumped back to her feet. She had to know. The crash she'd heard moments ago, before everything had gone silent. Something had hit the ground, and she had to know what it was. That same nagging corner of her mind warned her that she wasn't going to like it, but she couldn't make herself stop.

She stepped cautiously beyond the safety of her shelter, the darkness swallowing everything around her. Clouds completely obscured the moon and stars, the rain adding to the confusion. She moved slowly, by feel, and was suddenly terrified that she would lose Christine. She had only moved a few feet at most, but when she turned back she could barely see the outline of the bushes she'd been hiding under. Taking a deep, resolute breath, she turned back and took another cautious step. She had to know.

A few steps later she fell flat on her face. Suddenly, without warning, she was on the ground. She spat dirt out of her mouth, groaning as the impact added a whole other round of aches to her already battered body. Dread pooled in her stomach. Slowly, carefully, she got to her knees, her hands probing the ground to find what had tripped her.

Her hand encountered something soft. Nausea welled up, but she forced it back, her fingers hesitantly moving over beard stubble until they came to a furrow in the skin, sticky with blood. She withdrew her hand in a flash, a low, animal sound of fear escaping her. She reached up with a shaking hand and felt short hair. A rush of relief filled her at the surety it wasn't Sawyer's body, followed quickly by shame. Sawyer might not be lying dead on the ground, but somebody was. That thing had killed someone and discarded the body only feet from her. She couldn't escape the feeling that this, too, was somehow her fault.

Weakly, she crawled back to Christine. If she cried, nobody would notice, the salty tears being washed away by the rain. If she was weak, nobody had to know. She could say her exhaustion was caused by the fight with the attacker, by the fight to keep Christine alive.

She had just sat down beside Christine when something big started rustling in the brush near her. Her grip on the knife tightened. She crouched on the balls of her feet, waiting, ready. Nobody was going to hurt this woman again. Not unless they killed Kate first. She was not going to be responsible for any more pain.

The branches directly in front of her parted, and she didn't hesitate. A cry on her lips, she sprang to her feet and lunged, the knife arcing high.

Something—or someone—caught her wrist before the knife made contact, and only when she heard her name being shouted did she realize that it was Sawyer who'd come through the brush.

"Freckles! Calm the hell down," he said, ruthlessly seeking her gaze and holding it, and she realized that somehow he'd known that eye contact was the only way to calm her down. The connection between them penetrated through her mind, clearing the fog that she'd been trapped in.

She held his gaze for the space of several heartbeats, then jerked her wrist out of his grip and punched him in the shoulder. "Don't ever sneak up on me again!"

He rubbed his shoulder, though she knew she hadn't hurt him. "Found the doc."

She looked up and saw Jack and Sayid emerging from the trees. With a huge sigh of relief, she turned back to Christine. "I don't know how much blood she's lost," she said as Jack knelt down beside her. "I couldn't tell in the dark."

He spared her a quick glance as he felt for the woman's pulse. "Has she been conscious?"

"She woke up for a minute when I moved her, but she didn't say anything."

Jack gingerly unwrapped the makeshift bandage and examined the wound in the beam of light from the flashlight Sayid held. Kate hung back, watching quietly as Jack dug into a small backpack for supplies and went to work. She felt Sawyer behind her but ignored him. She felt dangerously close to falling apart, and she was afraid of what would happen if she spoke, if she moved.

Jack worked grimly, occasionally wiping rain out of his eyes with the back of his arm. No one spoke except for a couple of occasions when Jack asked someone to retrieve something from his pack. Christine moaned, and Kate bit her lip to keep from moaning in return. She'd been here before. She'd watched helplessly as someone she knew slid toward death. Not that she knew Christine, but in a way she did. She was connected to the other woman by these extraordinary circumstances, and the responsibility she felt was the same as before.

And she hated it.

Glancing up at Sawyer, seeing that he was solemnly watching Jack work, she started to back away. Just a step, then she stopped. Then another step, another stop. Each tiny step she took, she looked back up at Sawyer, making sure his attention remained on the grim scene before him.

When she was far enough back that he couldn't reach her if he lunged, she turned and slipped into the trees. And when she was completely out of sight, the sound of her footfalls swallowed by the jungle, she ran.