And then there was the whole thing about his sister being shot on top of all that. He wanted to be with Shannon right now but Sayid wasn't leaving her side and he felt kind of like he was intruding when he sat with them so he was sat through on the sofa, trying to get some peace and quiet.
Michael and Jin had taken the tail end survivors back to camp and Michael had taken on the task of attempting to explain to Jin what had happened to Sun. Not that any of them really knew but that only made it harder. How do you answer something that you don't have the answer to? And in another language. Boone didn't envy that job.
So Sayid was sat with Shannon and Kate was sat with Sawyer and Jack was still in the shower. Boone felt like he'd been in the shower forever and he had a feeling he was avoiding him. Which he so should be because what the hell was all that stuff with Ana-Lucia? She wasn't even pretty, not like Kate. She was all scowly and rugged. And what was with the warrior-on-a-budget getup?
Jack entered the room, now wearing clean clothes, and sat down next to him without a word. He looked exhausted but restless and he looked kind of sad which made Boone just want to wrap him up in his arms. Which kind of annoyed him because he was supposed to be mad at Jack.
"Have you checked Shannon?" he asked.
Jack nodded. "She looks okay," he replied. "I'll have to keep a close eye on her for a couple of days but I think she'll pull through fine."
"How do you know Ana-Lucia?" Boone asked.
Jack looked at him. He seemed unsure if he wanted to get into it. "I met her in the airport bar before we boarded," he explained. "We were about to have a drink together when she got a phone call so we said we'd meet up on the plane. We never got around to it though I guess."
"So you liked her," Boone said. Jack just looked at him. "You were gonna have a drink with her you must have liked her."
"I guess," Jack replied vaguely.
"She shot my sister," Boone stated.
"Yeah, she did," Jack agreed.
"Do you still like her?" Boone asked.
"I don't know the full story," Jack replied.
"The full story is that she shot my sister," Boone said.
"I'm pretty sure it was an accident," Jack told him.
"Look at the way you are with Locke," Boone said. "You and Shannon. What happened to me wasn't his fault. But this was her fault, Jack, she shot my sister."
"Boone, you need to calm down," Jack warned.
"I'm not even yelling, Jack," Boone replied. "I'm calm."
"Maybe we should just drop the subject until we know more about what happened," Jack suggested.
"Fine," Boone said reluctantly. "I'm just worried about Shannon."
"She's gonna be okay, Boone," Jack assured him. "I'm gonna make sure she's okay."
Boone nodded and tried to think of something else that they could talk about. "The others are real," he offered.
Jack looked at him. "How do you know that?" he asked.
"The tail end people have seen them," Boone explained. "Apparently a bunch of them got taken by them. There were twenty-three of them originally, now there's four."
"The others took nineteen of them?" Jack asked.
"That's the story," Boone replied.
Jack looked down. "That's, erm..." He shook his head, unable to find the words. "That's a lot," he finally said. He looked back up at Boone. "They didn't take any of us. Don't you think that's odd?"
"They took Claire," Boone reminded him. "For a while."
"Ethan took Claire," Jack corrected. "We don't know that he was one of the others."
"They took Walt," Boone offered.
"Walt?" Jack asked.
"Oh, right, you missed story time," Boone said. "They were only actually on the raft for one day. That night some people came on a boat. They took Walt and blew up the raft."
Jack shook his head. "Do you think this is ever going to ease up?"
"What?" Boone asked.
"Everything," Jack replied. "People dying, people being taken, everything in this place is so dangerous." He looked at Boone. "Do you think it's ever gonna stop?"
"While we're on this stupid island?" Boone asked. "Probably not."
"We have to work out a way to get out of here," Jack said.
"Right, like that hadn't occurred to the rest of us, Jack," Boone replied.
"No, I mean it, we've all been distracted lately with finding out the secrets of this island, finding out the secrets of the hatch," Jack explained. "We don't need to understand this place we just need to get off it. That's where our energy needs to be."
"How are we supposed to do that, Jack?" Boone asked. "We don't have any way to communicate with the outside world and, even if we did, the chances of someone actually hearing it are practically zero judging by the French distress call and the whole raft idea was a bust so what do you suggest?"
"Thanks, Boone, way to put things in perspective," Jack replied dryly.
"Well, I'm just saying..." Boone replied.
"Yeah," Jack said. "But I have never wanted to get off this island more than I do right now."
Boone looked at him. "Why's that?"
"Because I am sick of playing doctor," Jack replied. "I just want to be a regular person. I want to be off duty."
"So what would you be doing right now if you weren't the doctor?" Boone asked.
"It's not right now that I don't want to be a doctor, Boone, it's when someone's dying," Jack told him.
"Well no one's dying now," Boone pointed out. "You can be regular guy."
"Boone, I have two patients in critical condition in the other room. Hell, you're a patient," Jack replied. "And any second now someone else could come through that door and I'd just have to switch it all back on again and save another person. God, do you know how much pressure that is?"
"You know that you don't have to do it on your own, right?" Boone told him.
"Yes, I do," Jack replied. "I do have to do it on my own because nobody else can do it. I mean, seriously, how are you going to help? You can barely move." He sighed. "And you should really have that leg elevated."
Boone was going to say something but he thought it was probably easier for both of them if he just went with it. Jack grabbed a cushion and put it on the coffee table before gently helping Boone move his leg onto it.
"That okay?" Jack asked.
Boone nodded a little. "Thanks," he said quietly.
Jack looked at him. "I know you're more than a patient, Boone," he told him. "It's just that you are a patient and it's kind of stressful. I worry about regular patients enough, worrying about you is exhausting."
"Don't worry about me, worry about Shannon and Sawyer," Boone replied.
Jack nodded. "Oh, I worry about them too, believe me," he said.
"Okay," Boone said. "But if you could, can you worry about Shannon a little more?"
Jack gave him a smile. "I'll see what I can do."
Boone smiled back. "See, you can smile."
"I can, yes," Jack agreed. "But only when someone gives me reason to and lately reasons have been sparse."
Boone nodded. "Okay, well, I'm gonna take it on as my job to make you smile," he told Jack.
Jack smiled again. "It's been a while since someone's cared if I smile or not."
"I care," Boone assured him.
Jack nodded but didn't say anything. He shifted closer to Boone on the sofa and put an arm around him.
"Was that a move?" Boone asked him.
"When it's a move, you'll know," Jack replied.
Boone snuggled into Jack's arm but found that he wasn't feeling quite as secure as he usually did. He couldn't stop thinking about Ana-Lucia, mainly because he thought Jack was thinking about Ana-Lucia. Okay, so, obviously Jack was allowed to talk to people before he met Boone, not even Boone was that possessive, but Jack had pretty much admitted that he'd thought about her since the crash too and Boone wondered if these thoughts came before or after they got together. He also wondered if Jack wishes he wasn't in a relationship now that he knew Ana-Lucia was alive. He wondered if Jack wanted to be with her instead of him.
"You know when you were married," Boone began.
"Yeah," Jack replied, somehow conveying a huge amount of suspicion in that one word.
"You said she divorced you, right?" Boone asked.
"Uh-huh," Jack agreed.
"Before that, were you happy?" Boone asked. "I mean, were you still in love with her and still wanted to be with her and still saw it going somewhere and all that?"
"No," Jack replied. "None of the above really."
Boone nodded. So Jack was the sort of person who would stay in an unhappy relationship rather than go after what he wanted. So Boone probably wouldn't lose Jack but he guessed losing him would be preferable to holding him against his will. He only wanted Jack to be with him as long as he actually wanted to be with him. He wanted to be wanted and he didn't want to stand in the way of Jack's happiness, even if it meant losing his own. That was the way he'd been his whole life and he wasn't sure if that made him a good person or an idiot.