Claire was the first to speak. "That wasn't..."
"Yeah it was." Jack answered.
"But he's dead!" Charlie said in hushed tones. "How many people do you know who can survive 4 bullets in the chest on an island with limited medical supplies - none of which were used to help him?"
Jack looked from Charlie to the door which Ethan had just walked through, and back again. "One." He said simply.
"You guys ready?"
Sawyer looked over at the large wooden garden table where all the kids were. Aaron, Ashley, Evelyn and Evan sat along the back, with Amy settled in Evelyn's arms, looking out towards the fireworks. Boone, Jasmine and Taylor sat on the edge with their legs dangling infront of them impatiently.
"Yes!" The younger three called out. Amy picked up on the excitement and clapped her hands together with a squeal of delight.
Sawyer lit the first firework up, and ran over to the others to watch it. He had spent ten minutes wiring several together so they all went off from the same fuse, which meant that they could watch a stunning display of three rockets, a catherine wheel, and few fountains going off at the same time. Amy loved the fountains, while the rest looked constantly with their necks craned upwards. Aaron leaned so far back that he had to catch himself before he fell off the table. The others didn't see this luckily, and he pretended nothing had happened.
They spent a good hour watching the display, and when they trudged back indoors, they could still see coloured lines before their eyes, which within a few minutes had faded. Sawyer had definately got his money's worth with that box of fireworks. None of the neightbours even came close to matching theirs, and he had a sneaking suspicion that a few of them shouted out of their windows to keep the noise down, only it was too loud to hear.
Once indoors, the kids complained they were hungry. Sawyer, for once, actually attempted domestic ideals and tried to cook something, but soon he had Evelyn and Ashley in the kitchen with him correcting him on everything he did.
"Sawyer, you don't use that! Use a knife!"
"Carrots? What are you trying to do? Kill us?"
"Mom was saving that for dinner tomorrow!"
"Not that milk! Thats Amy's formula!"
"You put it in the microwave? That's going to melt all over it!"
"The heats too high, no wonder it's burnt!"
Half an hour later, Sawyer threw his hands in the air. "Ok, I give up!" He exclaimed. "Ladies, take it away." He walked out of the kitchen and checked on the others, who were all watching a games console being played by Aaron and Evan, and with the blue glare from the screen they all looked like transfixed zombies.
Ten minutes later, the girls came back from the kitchen with lots of bags of crisps, excessive amounts of chocolate biscuits, and cans of soda. Sawyer took one look at it and knew that the kids were going to be bouncing off the walls within minutes.
Having left parents night later than expected, the six stood in the car park awkwardly. They were all thinking the same thing, about Ethan - how to get rid of him in the most inconspicious way. When Charlie pointed out that they had missed the movie, they decided to simply head back home instead, to talk about what had happened once the kids had gone to sleep. In the car on the way back, Kate was silent until they were about halfway home, then she turned her head to Jack, who was driving.
"Why now, Jack?" She asked. "Why has he come back now?"
Jack took his eyes off the empty road for a second to look at her, and picked up her loose hand in one of his. "I don't know." He answered honestly. "But I do know that he isn't anywhere near our children." He added with such determination that usually only came out in Jack's professional side.
"But the twins are friends with his daughter." Kate reasoned. "How-"
"You know how, Kate." Jack told her, and she felt the inside of her hand being caressed lightly by his thumb.
She sighed. "We have to tell them that he's back." She said grimly. The twins, Aaron and Ashley were the only ones who knew the truth about what happened on the island, as the rest were too young to understand. They were the only ones who knew about Ethan, and about Danielle, and the Others, and the monster. None of their parents liked the fact that their children knew certain things, but it was something that they needed to understand, especially when there were pictures around from the reunions and newspaper articles stashed away at Jack's mother's house. It was because of Margo Shephard that they knew in the first place. They had left the twins and Jasmine with them while they went to Kate's scan when she was expecting Amy, and Margo had accidently mentioned about the island. Of course, the kids were all ears about that.
Kate turned her head from looking out the window and looked at Jack. "He's back for them isn't he?" She asked. "For the twins."
Jack turned to look at her as they stopped at traffic lights. "What?"
"Aaron was born on the island, but the Evie and Evan were conceived there." Kate reminded him. "What if that means something?"
"Don't worry, they'll be fine." He assured her.
"Jack, if he takes them..." She started, but Jack was quick on the mark.
"Kate, Ethan is not going to take our children away from us." He promised her.
Sure enough, the kids went wild, or at least, the younger ones did. Amy had fallen asleep on Sawyer's shoulder and the older boys were playing a game while the two older girls were reading magazines, clearly not effected by the sugar rush that had overtaken the others. Sawyer turned his back for less than a minute while he laid Amy in her playpen for a moment to sort the others out, and when he turned back around, even he was astounded.
"Boone, get your finger out of the socket! Jasmine, get off the table! Taylor, don't you dare put that in your mouth!" Sawyer shook his head, he was starting sound like Jack. But then again, he had to do something. He would have six people ready to kill him if they came back to find one child electrocuted, one with a broken neck, and one choking. He'd probably be in real big trouble.
He dragged Boone along the carpet about two feet to get him away from the carpet, but he went straight back over as soon as Sawyer moved to lift Jasmine down from the table. Taylor had dropped whatever it was he was trying to eat that clearly wasn't edible, and was playing with one of Kate's picture frames instead. After a lot of chasing round, Sawyer finally got the three sitting together on the couch, and he looked at them long and hard.
"Right, now you're going to sit still, Ok?"
They nodded, and watched the television again, soon interested in cheering their brothers on and Boone cheering alongside Jasmine on Evan, who was beating Aaron by six races now. Sawyer went back over to the playpen and lifted the now grimbling Amy from the playpen and settled on the vacant chair across from where the kids were sitting.
"Alright, kiddo, don't you start screaming on me." He said to the baby, and warming to his voice, Amy settled down and went back to sleep.
Sawyer had only been sitting down comfortably for ten minutes however, when he heard the key in the lock and Jack and Kate walked in, followed by Sayid, Charlie, Claire and Shannon. The little Mommy's boy Boone ran over and hugged his mother, while Jasmine bounded over to Jack and Kate. Taylor, bless him, was too transfixed by the television to even notice his parents were in the room.
"What's the matter with you, you look like someone got hit by a bus." Sawyer joked. "Was parents night really that bad?"
The older four kids looked at each other nervously. Shannon shook her head. "Parent's night was fine." She said, and the children started to breathe again, knowing that the worst was behind them.
"Ok, kids, time for bed." Kate said, and the older kids looked at her like she was insane.
"Mom, it's nine o'clock." Evan argued.
"Evan, please." Kate said in a tired tone, and Evan and Evelyn walked towards the stairs. Claire and Shannon made to follow, and the others looked at their mothers.
"Come on." Claire said to them, and the note was taken that the kids were sleeping over at that house tonight.
All of the kids went off to bed. Kate left Amy with Sawyer and went upstairs with the other mothers and children. "Mom, please, it's early." Aaron said.
They settled Jasmine, Boone and Taylor in Jasmine's room, and then set up beds on the floor in Evelyn and Evan's rooms for Aaron and Ashely. Outside in the hall between the rooms, the kids looked at their mothers unfairly. Again Aaron looked at Claire and Kate unfairly. "Mom...Aunt Kate..."
Kate and Claire looked at each other with raised eyebrows. "Aaron, we brought you into this world, we can take you out of it." It was their usual gang up on him, and it always worked.
The others all looked at their Mothers with the puppy dog eyes that they had originally taught them to be used on their fathers only. With the boys, it wasn't that much of a backdrop, but the girls had mastered it to an art. Kate surrendered, too tired and stressed to argue with them.
"All right, you can watch a movie first, then straight to bed afterwards."
Before any of them could change their minds, the kids disappeared into the two bedrooms, and Kate mimed banging her head against the wall. The other two laughed and they went back downstairs.
When they got back downstairs, Kate took sleeping Amy from Sawyer, but rather than taking her upstairs to bed or putting her down to sleep in the playpen, she simply held her in her arms as the girl snuggled up to her mother. Kate placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head, and went to sit down on the couch, with Jack sitting down on the arm of the chair beside her.
"You gonna tell me what's goin' on now?" Sawyer asked, looking restless.
"Ethan's back." Jack told him.
Sawyer laughed for a moment, and then the others looked at him strangely. "Oh..." He said, stopping his laughter. "You can't be serious! He's dead!"
"Apparently not." Sayid informed him.
Sawyer gestured to Charlie. "But Daddy-O here shot him! Four times in the chest if I remember rightly."
"It doesn't matter what happened on the island, Sawyer." Kate said, avoiding everyone's gaze as she focused all her attention on her baby. "What matters is that he stays the hell away from the kids."
"We'll explain it to them tomorrow." Jack planned. "We all need to sleep on it tonight."
"That will be a fun conversation." Claire announced in her thick Aussie accent. "Especially after yesterday."
"Claire.." Charlie began, but Kate asked anyway.
"What happened yesterday?"
"Thomas rang." She said. "He tracked us down and he wants to see Aaron."