Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from "Lost" or anything else I reference below.

Author's Note: To anyone who has read my previous endevor, "Prisons"- Thanks so much for your patience. The finale unfortunately pretty much derailed my plot, so I am taking a break to tackle this instead.

Hesitation

Claire had been waiting in the airport for one hour.

She hadn't had to bother with check in- the few things that still fit her barely filled out her travel bag, and anyway, she could shop in Los Angeles. The security guard had taken half a glance at her and let her through the metal detector without issue or comment- in fact, he had hardly seemed to see her at all. The waiting area for flight 815 turned out to be practically on top of the Gates entrance, and even though she was quite early, the only seat left unclaimed by bags or windbreakers was the one closest to the ticket desk.

And so, hardly fifteen minutes after she had waddled out of the taxi that zoomed off before she could pay, Claire was settling into the unexpectedly soft waiting area chair and mentally imploring her flight to take off early. She ached with impatience, desperate for distraction from the diaphanous sense of foreboding that tickled her neck like the promise of a kiss.

So when the quick of her nails started to bleed from her nervous biting, she reached for the tattered Reader's Digest lying discarded on the seat beside her.

The featured article was called "Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Adoption."

Claire's throat went dry.

"It's a coincidence," she thought blankly. "Nothing else. Nothing at all."

After Thomas left, many magical things had turned into hard coincidence...

"Coincidence?" echoed her mother's voice inside her head. "I'm afraid not, dear. And I wouldn't let my guard down just yet if I were you..."

Claire blinked, but somehow she couldn't muster the energy for surprise.

"W-what? Mother, you... you're a fine person to lecture me about fate!"

"Don't be naïve, Claire, you know quite well it's going too smoothly. At the least they should have asked if you've been seen by a doctor. For heaven's sake, it's almost as though they've been expecting you!"

"Don't be... ridiculous..." she thought, and she gripped the armrests as it hit her just how many times she herself had been scolded in kind. She brushed a trembling palm against her forehead, slicking away sudden trickles of sweat.

"What are you going to do?"

Do...

"What am I going to do?" she whispered aloud, but none of the passengers now bustling around her seemed to have time to offer her an answer.

What was she going to do?

Everything happens for a reason, Claire.

There is no such thing as coincidence, Claire.

It has to be this flight. Only this flight...

"SECTIONS EIGHT TO TWENTY-THREE NOW BOARDING. SECTIONS EIGHT TO TWENTY-THREE NOW BOARDING FLIGHT EIGHT-ONE-FIVE TO LOS ANGELES."

And all of a sudden, it wasn't her choice to make. The stewardess was prodding her shoulder and telling her that it would be wise to board now miss, and she was walking down the shuddering ramp and pushing through to her seat and lifting into the air as her ears popped and her eyes ran and...

And the only thing she wanted was for Mother to hold her.

Thunder and lightening and blossoming fire.

The deafening crash of nature turning on it's own machinations.

Metal, groaning and stirring, melting in the scorching inferno.

Freedom.

"Claire? Claire, what's the matter, what's wrong?"

That was Charlie's voice, eager and anxious as always, trying to pry his way through her protective fog.

"You're freezing, Claire! Where's Jack? Somebody get Jack, Claire needs Jack!"

Her skin was cold, she mused distantly. She could scarcely feel her arms wrapped so tightly around the soft swaddled bundle. Odd, the Island always seemed so terribly hot...

"I'll take the baby, Charlie, you help Claire. Get her to lie down, cover her with a blanket and..."

Something shifted in her arms, something warm and pure was being eased out of her death grip-

Aaron.

No, no, they couldn't have Aaron. They wouldn't take him, not again, no no-

"No!" The cry tore from her lips and Claire lurched to her feet. Her senses tore back to her with searing clarity, Charlie, Aaron, the heat, the cave... the fear...

Her Hell.

She stared about her, swiveling like a hunted animal. Everything was familiar, normal. Nothing seemed to have changed, except that Charlie was approaching her with relief and confusion etched in his face and Sun wore the guardedly calm expression that meant she had been reacting again.

"What..." She tried to speak through lips suddenly cracked and bleeding, tried to moisten them with her parched tounge. "Didn't you, didn't you feel that... at all?"

"Claire, what's going on? Nothing's happened, everything's all right..."

"No," she saw with horrifying insight. "Everything's changed. It won't ever be all right again. But... how..."

BOOM.

Heat, fear, pain, broken like pus from a fetid blister.

And Claire Littleton, shivering under Charlie's protective grip, had her answer.

Sorry for the cliffhanger! More to follow...