"Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes-
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown."
The Rolling Stones

Chapter Twenty-Two

Heather is later led to the caves, along with the rest of them. She is not as worried as some, and seems not necessarily lifeless, but distant. Somehow, leaning back against the side of the caves, she finds something soothing in the endless drone of nearby voices of all the people brought up from the beach, and nods off to sleep. A few men and women watch her warily (even if they don't know that she's the one that cured Walt, they've seen her around Sawyer, and that grants them a good deal of curiosity); without warning, her countenance changes. From a resting complicity, an ominous near-terror passes over her features, and then continues into the land of horror.

Almost immediately the woman sits up, screaming.

Charlie is near by, and starts yelling for help. Three other men (all substantially larger than him) come over, and at first they don't know what she is screaming, but after a while, they can hear names in it.

"Walt!" She screeches, and everyone in the caves quickly becomes silent, a terrible quiet like ice spreading through each of them—capitalizing on the chaos and panic of the entire day. "WaltWaltWaltWalt!"

And then, breaking from that: "JAMES!"

Charlie looks at the other men, and moves to try to calm her, if not so that she doesn't hurt herself, then so that she doesn't upset everyone else—even though her screams (unnatural as cougar shrieks) have already gone beyond that. Somehow, she isn't just screaming, but all the terror inside of her is seeping out, piercing through them.

"WALT!JAMES!WALT!"

"Who's James?" Charlie asks the man next to him, and is met with a hasty shrug. "Know any James?" Then, kneeling down to her, her puts his hand over her arm. "Heather, calm down now, cam down-"

And then, her attention does turn to him, and even though she still screaming about Walt and some James character, he hears her plainly in his head: Let go of me, you fucking strung out junkie piece of shit! In shock, his jaw drops and he does let go of her, and she stands.

Sayid and Shannon return, and Shannon can hear someone screaming Walt—without thinking, runs to Heather. Heather, as if sensing something on the woman, stops screaming, goes to her.

"I saw him."

"Where?" And then, without hesitation, Heather takes Shannon's shoulders, and looks for herself. She sees the scene in the jungle, Walt dripping wet and-

And the message. She can see that Shannon didn't hear it right, but Heather does.

Don't press the button.

Sayid pries Heather away from Shannon, whose eyes have gone wide and blank. Sorry, Heather manages to grit out, before she loses contact.

"What the fuck is going on! I said what the fuck is going on!" Charlie shouts, trying to corner Heather, while Sayid holds her firm. Heather, while still frantic and practically foaming at the mouth in her craze, has gotten a better grip on herself, and does not hurt Sayid like she hurt Charlie. However, panicking as she is, she is not far from lashing out at all of them. "Who the hell do you think you are!"

"The raft is gone." Though she is not shouting, all those in her immediate area silence themselves.

"What?" Sayid asks, but behind the incredulity, she can hear fear.

"They weren't looking for us. They wanted Walt."

"Who? Who wanted Walt?" Though he is level, maintains some control, she can tell that his heart is beating faster.

"Who fucking else? The Others."

"Who's James, Heather?" This time it's Charlie's turn to interrogate her, but when she looks at him, her eyes are blank.

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't act stupid, who the bloody hell is James? You were only screaming his name!" There is a short pause, and her jaw sets hard. Her body is shivering all over.

"Sayid. Let go of me."

"Heather, I believe that-"

"Or I will hurt you." More silence, Sayid doesn't now how to react to this, partly because he believes her. She can't overpower him, he knows this, but he also knows that Heather has abilities that go beyond the physical realm. He does not, however, release her. "You have three seconds-"

"Look—they're back!" Someone shouts, and as Sayid looks over his shoulder, Heather wrenches herself free of him, though she has a feeling that he's really just letting her go. She makes her way towards the group, and the people part for her, afraid to touch her.

"They aren't coming," Heather says as soon as she is close enough to Jack for him to hear her without her yelling.

"What?" He asks, caught off guard.

"Give your speech, whatever, but the Others aren't coming. They took Walt."

"…What?" By now Jack is tense, and so is Kate. Locke is in the distance still, and Heather hopes that he'll stay there.

"Listen to what I'm fucking saying!" Her voice rises, and it echoes around the caves. "They took Walt off the raft! They shot Sawyer-"

"Who?" Kate asks, and Heather's hands twitch, wanting to choke all of them for their incompetence. She knows that she is starting in the middle when she should start from the beginning, but she feels pressed for time, unbearably rushed.

"The Others, God damn it! LISTEN. I'm going to go through this once." She hates the way they're watching her like she's a child. "They turned on the radar, and there was a blip. They fired the flare. And… and the Others showed up, on a shitty little boat. They took Walt, shot Sawyer, and blew up the raft."

"How do you know?" Heather's jaw hangs open, at a loss for words. Why does matter how she knows, if she does? Have they not been listening? "It's been a very stressful day, maybe-"

"FUCK YOU!" Jack recoils from the intensity of her shout. "Just because you don't want to hear it-"

"Calm down Heather."

"HOW CAN I CALM DOWN? HOW? THEY TOOK WALT!" She has drawn a crowd, and Jack is shifting his weight, uneasy. Even if what she's saying is true, this is not the way to handle it—it's upsetting everyone more than they need, and it's destroying their hope.

"Heather, we can only handle one thing at a time, and with the hatch-" She looks up, and for a moment she doesn't look furious, but rather perplexed, thinking. Jack's voice falters.

"He said something Jack. Walt told Shannon something, and it may have something to do with the hatch. In fact, I'm sure it does." Heather doesn't notice as Locke comes closer in the group. "He said don't-"

"Don't what, Heather?" At the sound of Locke's voice, her vision goes red, and it feels like… like something is trying to get into her brain and remove the message, blot over that part of the memory.

"Stop it!" She screeches at him, clapping her hands over her ears. "Get out, get out!" Locke looks genuinely surprised, but Jack and the rest of them are now watching him with suspicion. Heather doesn't know if Locke means what he's doing (and he doesn't), but something about him is trying to stop her from telling Jack what she needs to. Maybe the island has just chosen him as its representative—God knows he's willing enough. Was that it? The island had instilled him with… what? Some kind of thought scrambler? Oh, come on, enough with the sci-fi shit. But there was no other way she could think of putting it. There had been a concrete thought in her head before Locke had come over, and just seeing him was making her thoughts fuzzy and out-of-place.

In a small flurry of motion, Heather spins, twists the gun out of Jack's fingers, levels the barrel at Locke's chest. There are short gasps and screams from those watching (and everyone is).

"Heather, drop the gun!" Sayid's voice is firm, forceful.

"I'm not your god damn girlfriend, Sayid. If I want to shoot him, I'll shoot the son of a bitch." There is a cold clarity to her words, and they understand that she's telling the truth—if one of them tries to be a hero, someone is going to end up shot. "How many more, Locke?" Her question is little more than a growl.

"Heather, I don't know what-" He is trying to remain calm, which is something he's fairly good at. She however, shakes the handgun, lets him know that a wrong answer is not going to be tolerated.

"How many more sacrifices until you realize your precious island isn't what you think! First Boone, and then who next? Walt will not be one of them, Locke." Her voice wavers, but her grip doesn't. "If Sawyer dies, you pathetic cripple," And she doesn't know exactly why she says this, because obviously he isn't a cripple, but it has a desired effect—suddenly, Locke is off guard, looks scared. "Then they'll be able to send the biggest piece of what's left of you home in a fucking shoebox. Do you understand me?"

His eyes are wide, and he nods, slightly.

"And I won't just be you. I'll burn this island to the ground, and it will be all your fault. Just so much more smoke, you fucker." With this, she tosses the gun to the ground, and brushes past him. The others are too stunned for a moment to move, and then Jack is there, as she's packing in a rush.

"I won't have you threatening people," He says, mustering all the sternness he can. She doesn't even bother to look up.

"It wasn't a threat, Doc." She laughs, but it's dark and terrible, and Jack is frightened not just for her, but of her. How far would she go if she thought she had to? It doesn't help that she uses Sawyer's familiar nickname for him. "It was a promise."

Maybe they had been wrong about which one of them was the more dangerous of the couple.

Sun approaches, kneels nearby Heather, who is busy stuffing a backpack full of clothes—taking shirts lying nearby: even though they do not belong to her, no one stops her.

"I want to go with you. For Jin." Heather looks up, licks her lips. The other woman is holding a pair of pants and a shirt that must have been her husband's.

"No." She takes the clothes from her, packs them tight, and then stands. "You're needed here. Jack's going to end up in that hatch whether he likes it or not, and you're the only other one that has any kind medical knowledge." Besides, Heather thinks, and she can see that Sun knows it as well, you'll slow me down. Despite this, Sun doesn't look ready to give up so easily. Heather softens for a moment, puts a hand on the woman's shoulder. "I'll do everything I can to bring them all back whole. I promise."

Sun nods, and with that, Heather is leaving the camp, and her legs set into the familiar motion of running. Irony's a bitch, She thinks, and then moves her thoughts to a less conscious arena, 'searching' out Michael, Jin, and Sawyer.

- - -

"You know anyone named James, Kate?" Charlie asks Kate, before she heads out to the hatch. The woman pauses for a moment, thinking, and then shakes her head.

"No, why?"

"Heather, that's what she woke up screaming. She kept screaming Walt and James." The color washes out of Kate's face, but Charlie doesn't see this in the dim light. She had hoped that Heather had just been, like Jack said, too pressured, had had a nightmare of some kind. "Then she didn't even know who the bloke was when I asked. Weird, eh?"

"Yeah."

Sawyer was James. There was no one else it could be.

And if Heather woke up screaming that, then there was no question to it—something had happened.