Well, I finally update. This one's a little bit longer this time but still only part one. Thanks for your lovely reviews Chickies, I 'preciate them lots. You're the ones keepign me writing. Hope you enjoy and lemme know what you reckon. And you get another flashback i this one. We've had little Ana ones before so now I've treated you to a little Sawyer one.
Disclaimer: I still own none of it!
Chapter 17 (part 1).
The noise was almost animalistic, pounding down the dim white corridor. Reverberating from wall to ceiling. Ricocheting about the stretch of gloom and dimmed lights like a gunshot announcing that the person who'd been caught in the weapon's crosshairs was dead or dying. A warning.
But he couldn't make out what it was. So loud that his eardrums ached and throbbed in protest of the onslaught. Was it an animal like he had first thought? Was it some poor soul being tortured beyond the threshold of all conceivable notions of pain? Or, like the security system, was it all merely mechanical? Was it digital? Was it synthetic noise with the purpose of terrifying them?
It was impossible to tell as they stood there at the entry to the Hawk, the door pushed back on it's hinges by the Other woman, allowing the sound to come crashing out to meet them like breakers thrashing against the seashore during a storm.
Beside him, to his right, and the furthest that the man could get away from their guide who was considering them through a vacant yet gleeful grin, Michael flinched at the noise, eyebrows drawing together into a frown similar to the one that Sawyer felt creasing his own brow.
It came in ebbs and waves. Cresting in crescendo before easing away into almost nothing, like breath was being taken to fill screaming lungs. A lull in the onslaught before it resumed it's prior heights once more. Relentless.
"What the hell is it!" Sawyer yelled to be heard over the din unsuccessfully but he received his answer anyway as they collectively stepped through the doorway, leaving Nora to close it behind them.
The sound changed suddenly, it curled and twisted through the air, becoming something more than it's indistinguishable nature and indiscernible creator. Suddenly it all became clear and Michael's pace beside him quickened from a careful, tentative walk to a flat out sprint. The sound became words. One word. The noise became voices. One voice in particular that spurred them all forwards faster and faster until they were gaining upon the distraught father pelting out a run along the corridor towards the voice's place of origination. The door at the very end of the passage. The door that stared at them from the gloominess.
"Dad!" it was screaming in a tone almost unrecognisable. "Dad! Dad!"
"Walt!" Mike bellowed in reply, hands flying out before him as he slammed full force into the door, unable to stop himself in time from the sheer momentum that his dash had built up. He hammered against the thick metal of the door again, futilely, pounding into it with fists and shoulders and feet until he had exhausted himself and Sawyer and the others had reached his side.
"Open the damn door!" he barked at Nora's figure, sauntering towards them where they had collected. Taking her time with a lazy, superior smile upon her thin lips.
Very slowly she moved her bound hands up to her throat, tugging a chain there, half hidden beneath her ragged collar, to produce a single dogtag looped together with a key.
"Here," she said, voice humming through the stale air and ducking her head out from the chain's captivity. "Someone needs to put the key in the lock and turn it at the exact same moment as the code is typed into the door's security panel." She tossed them through the air as she spoke, towards them all, not caring who caught it or if it fell to the ground with a clatter and Sawyer snatched the curious necklace out of the air, setting about removing the key immediately. "The code is imprinted upon the dogtag." Nora added, almost as an after thought and the blonde southerner passed it onto Sayid who had already made swift work of discovering the digital door panel in the wall.
It was perhaps the only time that the pair had ever worked together without complaint or sarcastic remark and perhaps it would be the only time that their clashing tempers and personalities would allow them to do so. Either way they moved in tandem, barely needing to look up and see when the other was about to turn the key or input the code number. A team and a damn good one at that.
The door hissed, like a snake releasing a long held breath of warning, in protest or being unlocked by them and, as Michael pushed forwards and past them roughly in his desperation, throwing the door back in on itself, the hinges squealed and groaned at such heavy-handedness.
The room was lit by the same bare light bulbs that had frequented the passage ways that they had travelled, but it was all the light that they needed to see him, so small and young and lonely, sat upon the side of a medical bed, kicking his legs back and forth as he waited patiently for them to step in. A complete contrast to his screams a scant few moments previously though tears did taint his face and his breathing came in gasps, shuddering his small frame.
"Walt…" Michael's voice choked noticeably to Sawyer's ears, filled with held back tears and emotions so strong that the entire group could feel them careering around the small, stark, box-like room.
Eko and Sayid remained outside at a nod from Sawyer to keep their eyes upon Nora who whistled tunelessly and stared at the brown ceiling absently.
The young boy thudded against his father's chest, tears spilling from his own eyes as he wrapped slim, small arms about Mike's neck, hefted into a strong embrace. Finally they were reunited again, after so long apart and Sawyer felt a smile cracking his own lips. Had he been in Mike's shoes, had he had a son or daughter taken by the Others…had Ana been taken by them, he would have fought to the bitter end to get them back. Just like Mike had done. And he would have succeeded too, again just like his friend had.
Slowly, as Michael and Walt clung to each other like only a father and son reunited after so long could, Sawyer found himself contemplating his previous thoughts further. What if Ana had been taken? What if she had been one of those unfortunates who had been taken that first night after the tail section had crashed down to earth on he other side of Hell Island? Where would he be now if she had never been there when he washed up on shore? Dead quite probably. What if she'd never hit him and started the whole crazy thing off? The truth was that she had fascinated him back then. Her ferocity, her survival instincts…and her barefaced cheek. No woman had dared punch him straight in the jaw like she had. Sure, Kate had beat him up a few times, but there had never been the same force behind it, the same conviction and utter belief that she was doing the right thing behind it like there had been behind Ana's. To put it bluntly, Kate's attacks had been half hearted at best. And so his Momma had been right all those years ago…
-Flashback-
The car was silent as he sat in the back passenger seat and glared sullenly out of the window at the passing scenery, and it wasn't a good silence. No, it made his tummy squirm like a whole bag of wiggly worms and it made him chew nervously on his thumb nail. He was so for it now.
Eventually, in front of him, his Momma sighed tiredly, tapping her index fingers against the steering wheel, as they pulled up to a red light, and she adjusted her rear-view mirror, staring at him through the reflection.
"You wanna tell me what happened today, Hun?" her voice queried through the heat and muzzy air inside the beat up vehicle, but he refused to meet her eyes, even if they were only the replica of them in the mirror surface. "Why I got a call from your principal and had to leave work an hour and a half early to come pick you up?" she cleared her throat and continued, smoothing blonde hair from her gaze and pulling the little car away when the traffic lights turned to green.
He shrugged and continued to bite his nails. "Didn't Mrs Taylor tell you 'bout it?" he mumbled from behind a knuckle, devoutly studying the dirt that had once again ingrained itself onto the knees of his jeans.
His momma sighed again, though this time it was more out of frustration.
"Yeah, Mrs Taylor did tell me 'bout it," she replied, voice a little firmer than before. He was definitely in deep trouble now. "But I wanna hear it from you."
He stared back out of the window at the passing houses and weighed up his options. He could continue being stubborn, keep his pride and remain tight lipped about the whole "incident" that had gotten him detention for a week and sent home early from school…and quite possibly would earn him a tanned hide for being cheeky to his Momma. Or he could get it over and done with now, while they were in the car where his behind was safely protected.
"…'Cause I hit Laney Baxtor." He mumbled after a moment of longer consideration, though the latter of the two options had most definitely been a no-brainer.
His Momma sucked in her breath between her teeth as if it were the first time she'd heard the news and then she became very quiet and very still, almost like a statue sat in the driver seat of the chugging car. Things were going from bad to worse faster than he could count to three.
"She said mean things to me Momma!" he continued, eyes filling with tears of panic. Damn, he'd miscalculated her reaction! No way he was getting out of a hiding now. "She said I-"
"I thought I brought you up better than that." she stated in a clipped, sharp tone, cutting off any and all of his protestation that he had been provoked and he gave up the fight entirely, slumping in the spongy backseat. "No matter what she said or did to you, I brought you up a gentleman and taught you never, NEVER to hit a lady!" she flipped the indicator with her forefinger and hefted the steering wheel so that they turned down the right hand side road. The home stretch. "Are you listening to me, Young Man?"
He glowered down at his clasped hands in his lap, resigned to his fate now and sulking about it. He shrugged defiantly and once more his Momma's sigh was tired more than angry.
"Just you wait, James Ford," she muttered through gritted teeth, pulling the car up to park outside their house. "One of these days you're gonna find yourself fallin' for a pretty girl who's got herself a right hook that's meaner 'an yours. An' she's gonna teach you one hell of a lesson, Boy!"
"No I won't!" James piped from his place, momentarily forgetting that he was supposed to be being good to try and escape his punishment. "I hate girls!"
And his Momma laughed, "Yeah and I wonder how long that's gonna last for?" she chuckled stepping out of the car and causing relief flow through him as he peered out of the window at her…until her frown returned and she tugged his door open. "Now get outta the car."
-End Flashback-
Yes, his Momma had been right and he'd fallen for the challenge. A longer con than he had ever pulled before. In his life…except it had never truly been a con, as much as he'd tried to tell himself otherwise. He was in far too deep for that and he had been ever since that first time she'd been dropped into that pit at her feet and she'd pulled her own con on him, reeling him in like a fish on a hook. Hook, line and sinker too, didn't the saying go? Perhaps he had been ensnared by the big, dark eyes watching him with feigned fear as she recounted her semi-false story to them. She sure knew how to set a guy up. Leaving hair loose and long to curl about her face in ebony waves and portray the damsel in distress and the tone of voice, just enough terror, just enough sadness and just enough fight.
Finally Sawyer shook his head and tried to focus back upon the matter at hand rather than the sickly feeling that was plaguing him deep down in his gut at the mere notion of what could have been if he and Ana had never crossed paths. But the feeling continued even as he noticed that Walt was talking at him from the safety of his father's arms.
"Come again, Short Stack?" he queried, noting the grave looks worn on all faces as he glanced around at them each in turn.
And Walt was crying. Shaking his head and crying.
"You shouldn't have come here," he sobbed, his voice high and staggered with emotion and fear. He shook his head and buried his face in Michael's shoulder. "You shouldn't have come here for me!"
"Hey," Mike soothed, smiling through his relief at having his son with him again. "It's gonna be okay now, Walt. I'm here now and I'll never let anyone take you away from me ever. I promise!"
Walt struggled to pull back from his father's crushing embrace just enough to look him in the eye as he shook his head, small hands fisted into the shoulder's of his red t-shirt.
"I know all that, Dad." He countered with an uneasy breath induced by his tears. "I know we're gonna be okay…it's the other guys, back at the beach, It'd Jack and Kate and Shannon and Ana and everyone else back-"
Sawyer's eyebrows drew down into a confused frown, blood thundering in his ears. Perhaps he was hearing things now as well after his little trip down memory lane and the "coulda been's" and "what if's" whirling through his mind.
"How'd you know Ana?"
Walt turned to him again, large, dark eyes fearful and shimmering with fresh, unshed tears.
"Alex told me about her." He responded quietly and that spurred Sayid, across the room over by the door, out of his silence.
"Alex?" he demanded. "Alex Rousseaux?" and the little boy nodded, dislodging more tears as he bit his lower lip, worrying it with his teeth.
"And Emma and Zack, but Alex-"
"They're here? Emma and Zack? The other children!" Eko injected, breaking into the room and the conversation as abruptly as Sayid just had, but Walt didn't flinch. He merely nodded, with the patience of a saint and pointed out of the door with only slight annoyance at being interrupted showing upon his young face.
"They're in the next rooms along and they'll be so happy to see you, Mr. Eko." He offered the swarthy Nigerian and Eko took off out of the room, snatching the key and dogtag from Sayid as he hustled past and away to release the other children.
"Anyway…" Walt continued with a sniff. "Alex was the one who told us to send the visions of Sawyer to Ana-Lucia."
Sawyer felt his knees threatening to give way beneath his own body weight from the sheer shock of what the boy had just told them.
"Visions…of, of…me?"
"Yeah," Walt nodded in confirmation. "See, I tried sending them to Shannon, but I wasn't strong enough on my own so they kept coming out all backwardsy and stuff."
"I remember," Sayid interrupting again, eliciting a brief nod of acceptance from a calmer Walt. "I saw you once too."
"Then Alex said one day that They were going to let me meet with some other kids like me and that if I wanted to stop what was going to happen, then we should use our minds together." He paused to wipe his nose clean on the sleeve of his shirt and to curl his other arm tighter about Michael's neck, though whether it was to comfort himself or his father more, Sawyer didn't know. "It was Alex's idea to use Ana-Lucia. She said that she was the best choice, 'cause Shannon still wasn't properly better from the accident. And 'cause Emma and Zack knew her so well. It was so easy with three of us 'cause when it was just me, I could never get the speaking to come out right, but with Emma doing the finding of Ana and me doing what Sawyer looked like, Zack could do the speaking real good."
Sawyer swayed where he stood, taking a step back so that he felt the cold, hard wall pressing up behind him. He raised a hand to his brow, scrubbed at his eyes as if to make them see more clearly instead of the dream that he found himself in. A disbelieving chuckle passed his lips, bubbling out almost hysterically.
"Someone pinch me," he demanded with a snort and another shake of his head. "I gone fallen into the damn Twilight Zone!" he laughed again, to the ceiling, until Locke's hand on his shoulder drew his gaze down to meet the other man's.
"Calm down, James." Locke said smoothly, apparently unfazed by the bizarre notion of visions being sent back to different people. Sayid too seemed far too calm and comfortable for the current turn of events, standing in the doorway, arms folded. He was a soldier for Christ's sakes! Surely he was too grounded, too sensible to believe what they were being told by a ten year old boy who suffered the trauma of a kidnapping. "Let's allow Walt to finish speaking." And before Sawyer could respond with further disbelief, Locke turned and crouched down beside Michael and Walt so that their eyes were level. "Why did you have to send these…visions back at all, Walt?"
The boy sighed deeply through his nose and wriggled free from his Dad's grasp so that he could stretch out stiff limbs and then sit himself back upon the medical bed, legs dangling over the edge.
"To stop what was going to happen. What They were doing." He responded as if it were as simple as counting to three.
"What was happening? What were They doing?" the older, bald mad persisted and Walt replied with a glance that was almost severe.
"I said not to open the hatch, Mr Locke, but you didn't listen. No one ever listens to me anyway, so I don't know why I-"
"We are listening to you now, Walt." Sayid gently cut in, breaking into the little boy's rant of childish temper from the doorway and, though he still frowned slightly, though he rolled his eyes and muttered a strangled exclamation of 'God' beneath his breath and through clenched teeth, Walt did, eventually, continue.
"Because," he drew the word out, highlighting his annoyance still. "They needed to be warned somehow! It was the only chance that there was to save them and from what Emma and Zack and Alex told me, Ana is the best chance that they have of surviving now." He grinned a little and sniffed again. "Did you know she use to be a cop?" his enthused, conversation topic traversing suddenly. "That's so cool! Like those TV shows I use to watch back in Sydney with Mom and Brian."
Confusion drew Sawyer's eyebrows down into yet another headache inducing frown and he ran a hand back through bedraggled blonde hair until it rested at the nape of his neck heavily. Wearily. He was tired and confused and worried now.
"You're talkin' in riddles , Yoda." He growled lightly, annoyed mainly by his own inability to think straight. "Why d'they need warnin' at all? And why's Ana gonna have to save 'em?"
And again Walt rolled his eyes as if he thought Sawyer to be entirely incompetent. And perhaps he was but he was beyond caring.
"Because, I'm the decoy." He stated and after a long moment of terrible, stunned silence, he went on, thinking that the adults didn't understand. "You know? Like in Star Wars? Episode 1? The Phantom Menace?" he raised his eyebrows expectantly. "When the Queen pretended to be a handmaiden so that the bad guys didn't know who she really was?" he blinked wide, hopeful eyes around at them all slowly before huffing again in impatience and irritation. "You know the one with Darth Maul in!"
"He's telling you no word of a lie." The soft, amused, spiteful voice of their long forgotten captive wound through the silence between them as she stood on her tiptoes to peer over Sayid's powerful shoulder. "He really is the decoy." And laughter, wild and unbridled, rang out from her throat like the tolling of a funeral bell. "Did you really believe that I would lead you here, to him, Walt, if we had any further need for him at all?" she giggled, shaking her head. "No. Why and how do you think that Cindy escaped?" she raised her eyebrows as Walt had moments previously, pushing her way past the stoic Iraqi to stand in the centre of the dull little room. "Why do you think that I mentioned that I was so glad to see Kate had joined you on your little expedition?" she watched intently as the light of understanding began to dawn in their eyes. Realisation. Sudden horrific comprehension that they had been used and they had all played right into the Other's hands.
"You wanted them both to go back?" Locke hazarded tentatively, voice merely an aghast whisper as he stood to his full height once more and turned to face her squarely. "You wanted them both to go back to the beach!"
She clapped her hands together, still bound at the wrists, mockingly. "Very clever, John." She chuckled, sarcasm lacing her tone. "Really? And you figured that out all by yourself? Very clever."
-oOo-