Part Fourteen

The cave erupted into pandemonium. Sawyer lifted his gaze away from Jin's face and onto Locke's, seeing an expression there that he would not realize had been recognition until much later. 'You're as much a part of this as I am, you old bastard,' Sawyer thought. He wasn't sure if he spoke it out loud; with the way that the caves held sound and then made it echo and everyone speaking at once, he couldn't make himself heard with anything less than a shout.

The purple and yellow swirls were coming back with a wicked vengeance, taking the world and making it tilt like a snow globe in the hands of a child. Half-digested boar rose into Sawyer's throat and his knees began to buckle. Jack appeared from nowhere and caught him before he could fall. He had to have begun moving the second that he heard Sawyer's voice in order to reach him that fast.

"Are you crazy?" Though Jack was speaking in a normal voice, the noise in the caves was loud enough that he had to press his lips tightly against Sawyer's ear in order to be heard. Sawyer made a faint sound from the back of his throat. One itch, not properly sated, that was coming back stronger than ever for having been indulged in the first place. He and Jack might have themselves a problem, here.

Sawyer leaned back so that he could look Jack in the face and saw that it was as pale as if Jack, rather than he, were the one who had just run into something that he probably wouldn't find in Scientific American. Two points of color glowed high up on Jack's cheeks, but his eyes were flat and dark. It was the angriest that Sawyer had ever seen him, a pretty big accomplishment when he remembered how good he was at pissing Jack off. For a few seconds Sawyer thought that Jack was furious with him for mentioning the monster's other lair. He then felt Jack's free hand running over his shoulder and side, checking for fresh blood, and realized that that had not been the case at all.

"Not a good question to be asking me right now, Doc," Sawyer answered finally.

Jack pulled back and studied Sawyer's face for a moment, as if he was looking for some definable stamp of madness that he could diagnose and treat as he would a broken bone. Finding none, Sawyer thought that Jack's expression grew even angrier. "You need to be lying down." Jack tugged at Sawyer's elbow as if he meant to bodily pull him back to his pallet, since Sawyer had clearly lost the good sense that would have taken him there on his own.

'Move your ass.' Yeah, but Sawyer didn't think that this was quite the direction that she had had in mind. He dug in his heels, a movement that was admittedly not as formidable as it could have been given that it was everything that he could do to stay on his feet, and brought them both to a halt.

"Not yet, Jack," Sawyer said. Jack threw him that stubborn, protective look that he got, the one that said the only thing that kept him from moving the world was the absence of a lever and a really good place to stand. Being seen as the one in need of protection rather than the one needing to be fought was so new that Sawyer staggered and nearly let himself be led away again. "Not until I've said my piece."

Sawyer pulled back and felt Jack's fingers tighten around his elbow in response. Even when they were at peace, they fought. "Don't go thinking that one good roll means you're going to start controlling me, Jack," Sawyer said, pitching his voice low to keep the conversation private. His intention was to shock or anger Jack into releasing him, but no dice. Apparently Jack was onto his game, for while he leaned back, he did not let go. Something flitted by in the corner of his vision, and Sawyer felt his lips turn up into a mirthless smile. "Besides, I need to move my ass."

"What?" The anger dissolved into confusion. Jack loosened his grip, only to tighten it again when Sawyer began to sway. "Sawyer, I'm not joking, you're not thinking straight. You don't need to be on your feet."

"Neither am I." When Jack raised his eyebrows, Sawyer clarified, "Joking. Jury's still out on the other one."

The flicker of blue happened again. Sawyer looked up. Boone was leaning against the stone wall only a few feet behind Locke, examining his mutilated finger again. He waved at Sawyer when he saw that he had been noticed.

"But maybe I could stand to sit for a spell," Sawyer allowed.

"The man sees reason," Jack said beneath his breath, just loudly enough to be sure that Sawyer would hear him. "Well, he's halfway there, anyway." He led Sawyer over to Sun and directed him to sit down with his back against the stone. "Do not let him get up."

"I love these little chance to make adult decisions, don't you?" Sawyer asked Sun, ignoring Jack's snort. Sun stared back at him with wide eyes, so Sawyer turned his attention back towards Jin. "Hi!" he said brightly. "It was fun sharing a secret with you while it lasted, but those days look like they're numbered." Jin tilted his head to one side and replied as Sun began translating, but Sawyer was no longer paying attention.

He looked back towards the place where Boone was still leaning against the wall behind Locke. How Boone had even gotten there on that leg of his Sawyer did not know, and he told himself that he was not going to worry about it, either. The point at which he began wondering about the locomotion practices of either ghosts or his brain's own crazy-paste, whatever it turned out to be, that would be the moment when he knew that he was too far gone to be pulled back from the brink.

It occurred to Sawyer that he had already pushed that particular boundary back several times already to convince himself that he was still sane. He tried to alleviate the situation by lifting his head and fixing Boone with the most poisonous glare that he could come up with. Absent the ability to make Boone corporeal long enough for Sawyer to throw rocks at him-not going to think about it, not going to think about it, not going to think about it-it was the best that Sawyer could do.

Boone realized that Sawyer was glaring at him and finally stopped playing with his broken finger long enough to look up. Thank God for that, because watching him do that was beginning to make Sawyer feel a little sick. "You took one, man," Boone said, holding his hand up to the light as if by trying hard enough he would be able to see through it. Sawyer was of half a mind to tell him that he would have more luck trying that with his own chest. "Now you owe one. I didn't make the rules."

Sawyer dipped his head. "Okay, Dream Date," he said in a fierce tone, ignoring the startled look that Sun gave him. "You already got my attention with the auditory hallucinations. Unless you're planning on putting in some work on prettying up your lap dog a touch, then I don't need the visuals, too." When he looked up again, Boone was gone. Locke, however, was staring right at him.

The crowd began to quiet by that point, until the proverbial needle could have been dropped if needles had not been in such short supply that they could not risk losing theirs. Sawyer thought for a moment that Locke had made some move to quiet them, though he could not see how, until he saw that Jack was standing in the center of the cavern without speaking and with his hands raised. Like water flowing downhill, people realized one by one that he was asking for their silence and cut the chatter. Jack had not needed to speak a word throughout the entire process, and he even looked a little surprised to see that it was working. Sawyer tilted himself back onto his elbows and thought that Jack shouldn't have been. He had a way about him, where if you placed him in one corner of a room for long enough, before long every eye in the place would be lingering on him.

"All right," Jack said when he had everyone's attention. He lowered his hands back to his sides. There were still two points of color blazing in an otherwise entirely pale face, and the glance that he flicked Sawyer's way was not pleased. Sawyer lifted his chin and did not look away. "It looks like an alternative may have been handed to us." He nodded towards Sawyer and said, his tone clapped, "You were saying, Sawyer?"

Sawyer raised his eyebrows. Jack's look was all but daring Sawyer to kick up a fuss. Well, Sawyer had never been one to avoid the occasional bout of contrariness, and he still had the power of that shriek echoing through his ears. 'Okay, Dream Date,' he thought to the bitch with the blank china-doll face, wherever she might be lurking. He was of no doubt that she was listening, since she didn't seem like the kind of lady to waste a lot of her energy worrying about whether or not she was crossing any kind of personal boundaries. 'You got me on board, for now. Better make it good.'

Sawyer leaned back further onto his elbows and eschewed all of his normal instincts towards making it good, making it a story. He explained what he and Jin had seen in the woods on the way back in simple, economical language, even aborting his normal expressive hand gestures as his shoulder began to tell him that enough was enough. Sawyer had barely gotten more than a few lines into the story that he realized that it was all for the better, as he had the crowd's rapt attention without any effort at all. To use his normal embellishments would have only cheapened the tale.

Except for one collective gasp when the nature of the creature that had kept all of them running scared since the first day, no one in the caves made a sound. Sawyer discovered that he was barely speaking above a whisper by the time that he wound down, because there was no need to speak any louder. He reached for a bottle of water and drank deeply before he lifted his eyes to scan the sea of faces staring back at him. All of them, he was glad to see, were those that still had pulses attached to them.

Jack cleared his throat and then winced slightly, as even that small sound came across as a blasphemy in the silence. "Can he verify this?" he asked Sun, indicating Jin as he stood by her side. Sun had been translating to Jin in a low tone all the while that Sawyer had been speaking, her voice a low, musical background note like the running of distant water. Jin tilted his head down to listen as Sun translated this final part, then nodded. Jack did not look nearly as happy as Sawyer expected him to be after receiving such a victory.

"Guess we don't need to go down the hatch after all," Jack said. He inclined his head in Sawyer's direction. "After that explosion, the whole island has to know that something is wrong there. They won't be expecting us at this other entrance."

Locke nodded, but his eyes were all for Sawyer. "Did you tell anyone about this before now?" he asked.

Sawyer shook his head. "Not a word." He didn't so much as glance in Jack's direction, though he knew that Jack was looking back at him. That was just fine. Let Jack be the noble one, so long as Sawyer could be the one who still knew how to work a room. It didn't take a con artist, even one who could probably add 'ex' to their title, to read the tension that was filling up the room now. He glanced towards Jin, who mostly had his head inclined towards Sun as she finished up her translating, but every now and again would look up to meet Sawyer's eyes. "I haven't really been in a position to pause for a leisurely chat with anyone. Seems like I have a lot to get caught up on."

Sawyer looked back towards Jack as he finished, half afraid that Jack was going to blurt out something exposing his knowledge of the monster and its lair, knowledge that he apparently had not seen fit to share with the rest of the rank and file. Sawyer realized a second later that he needn't have worried. Jack's eyes were dark and blazing, and Sawyer had no doubt that Jack did have a few things he would have liked to say right at that moment. It was pretty much their way. Even Jack had picked up on how little it would take to cause an explosion, though, tense as everyone was. He kept his silence.

Sawyer wondered for a second when it had become like this, this endless cross-hatching of alliances and enemies. It took him only a second to realize that it had been like this since the beginning, and they were only now having round table discussions rather than just smacking each other. That made it civilized.

He kind of wished that they would go back to smacking each other, actually. Civility, hell, but it was honest.

"I realize that we haven't gotten around to having that vote yet," Jack said. Sawyer tilted his head to one side. What? "But if you'll put up with the informal system for a little bit longer, then we can organize a party to get our people back. All of our people back," Jack added, and winced as if he was realizing how long a list that was becoming. Even while addressing the entire crowd at once, Jack scarcely had to raise his voice above its normal pitch at all. The caves took his words and hurled them back and forth as if even the rock was considering what he had to say, and not a single voice rose in protest while he was still saying it. Even Locke was silent and Sphinx-like. Sawyer stared down at his fingers were they lay interlocked in his lap and contemplated his next move.

"What makes you think that this try will go any better than the last one, Jack?" Kate asked. Her eyes were clear and dark, and Sawyer couldn't hear any challenge in her voice. As she always did when she was being faced with a situation that she didn't know quite how to deal with, Kate had retreated back into inscrutability. The best actor in the world would not have been able to read what was going on in her head. She did not meet Jack's eyes as she spoke, or Sawyer's when he looked her way. "If we just track the way that Sayid's group went…" Kate trailed off and lifted her shoulders into a shrug. "Definition of insanity."

"By going straight to the source: we're going to the other opening that we know of." Jack looked up as a ripple ran through the crowd even though not a single one of them said a word. "It's time to start changing the way that we do things, figure out what works and what doesn't."

"Throw out the sick," Locke said. Jack's shoulders hunched defensively, a reaction Sawyer didn't think that Jack could control any longer even if Locke had suggested that they give out free puppies instead, but Locke's tone was approving. "That's not the way that a doctor thinks, Jack." Locke paused for a moment before he nodded to himself and continued in a voice that if anything sounded even more pleased than before, "But it is the way that a leader thinks."

"I'm so glad that you approve," Jack said dryly. He clapped his hands together, making several of the more flighty members of his audience jump. The fear and the need to do something, do anything, was so thick that it was almost making the air waver like a physical thing. "We'll take a group of…six?" He glanced towards Locke as he said it, including him in the decision as a matter of course, and they both looked surprised when they realized what he was doing.

"Anything larger than that won't be able to move quickly," Locke allowed, his eyebrows drawing together as he retreated into an internal world. "Kate and I can track sign." Kate shrugged and made a nonchalant gesture, accepting her inclusion on the mission without fuss. There were still lines of tension set into the flesh around her mouth and tightening the muscles of her shoulders. She would only look towards Sawyer or Jack in quick, flickering glances. He imagined that there were a sight many less awkward ways that that triangle of theirs could have worked itself out, and he wished that he had some way of pulling her to the side and trying in some form or fashion to make things right with her.

Sawyer unlaced his fingers, placed them on his thighs, and drummed out an impatient pattern. 'Move your ass.' Well, he was trying, wasn't he?

"I'm guessing that you'll be coming along, too," Locke said, coming out of whatever place he had retreated into so that he could raise his eyebrows at Jack.

The corner of Jack's mouth quirked upwards. Sawyer had to give them both credit for being fine actors. Were he not able to claim that title himself, he would say that there was a hatchet being buried here, rather than merely hidden behind a pair of backs until it was expedient to bring it out again. "Uh-huh," Jack said. "Do you think that's a doctor's decision, or a leader's?"

"Little of both," Locke said. He folded his arms over his chest. "That makes three."

"Four," Charlie said. The blood had drained away from his face, leaving the scabbed-over burn standing out starkly. His eyes were calm. "I want to help." Jack and Locke both hesitated, and Charlie set his jaw as he realized this.

"We could use the extra hands," Jack said at last, and even Charlie blinked as if that was not the outcome that he had expected. "Okay, four. We'll need Jin to take us to the opening and Sun to translate. That rounds out the six."

"Then I hope that you really meant you were taking seven," Michael said from the edge of the crowd, where he had been watching the goings-on without commentary. He stood with his legs braced far apart, arms folded over his chest, in a posture that imitated Locke's to a degree that was almost eerie. Unlike Locke, however, only Michael's posture was serene. His eyes burned with a dark, powerful fire that made Sawyer frankly glad that he was not the one that had taken Walt. He seen men like Michael before, had given their wives a toss or two, and had usually gotten out of town with a storm on his heels. Men in that kind of mood weren't content to get the thing that they had lost back: they wanted to go after the thief and make sure through one creative measure or another that his stealing days were done.

Sawyer cut his eyes in Jack's direction, wondering if Jack was noticing all of this and afraid that Jack would see only the trails of salt that still glittered if Michael turned his head just right, the cracks in his lips where it looked like he had been chewing at them. Jack hesitated long enough to let Sawyer know that he had underestimated him before he said carefully, "Seven won't travel any more slowly than six. Michael, do you think that you'll be able to keep your…"

Here Jack trailed off, as if he knew what he needed to say but was afraid of how it would sound once it was riding the open air. Not for the first time, Sawyer wondered what Jack had been like when he had to deliver news of a failed operation to waiting family members back in the real world, if Jack had been stamped all over the with the same kind of painful sincerity then. Somehow, Sawyer figured that he probably was.

"My temper?" Michael finished for Jack. His smile was glittering and knife-like. "Man, don't worry about my temper. I'll be just fine until we get there."

"And then?" Locke asked.

That smile positively gleamed. Sawyer wished that Michael would put it away. "That part's not in my hands," Michael said. For once, Jack and Locke shared an expression, that of pure worry.

Sawyer forced himself to stop drumming his fingers against his legs and looked up. "Thin you boys are missing out on something," he said. The crowd was drifting away in small bunches as the core group drew even closer together, and they no longer had to raise their voices in order to be heard. Sawyer flicked a few strands of hair back from his face and looked at them all. For once, he wasn't getting quite the thrill that he was used to out of having an audience. "Numbers ain't your big problem here, are they?" The corner of Sawyer's mouth quirked up. "I mean, any way that you slice it, what you're talking about doing here is redefining 'long shot' so much that most bookies would laugh their asses off if you tried to make a bet on it."

Jack sighed. If the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the gray hollows marking his cheeks were any indicator, one good night of post-coital rest was just a drop in the bucket of what he needed. Sawyer dragged a hand first over his eyes, then through his hair, and told himself that if he was going to have to resign himself to giving a damn about such things now then surely he could wait to do until his own situation was not so infinitely worse.

"Sawyer," Jack said, "you can rest easy knowing that you've contributed to chaos, all right?" Sawyer narrowed his eyes and tilted himself further back onto his elbows. He could already feel a belligerent expression moving across his face. "Now please be quiet so if that's all that you were planning on bringing to the table."

If Sawyer narrowed his eyes any further, he was not going to be able to see. Their first lover's spat. Golly, and wasn't it just the cutest thing, too. Sawyer knew now why he didn't make a practice of sticking around long enough for it to get this far. "Votes haven't been cast yet, Captain America," he snarled, putting a special, malicious stress into the nickname. Jack's eyes darkened and twin points of color began to rise in his cheeks. "'Til that bit becomes official, the way I see it, this is still a round table discussion." Sawyer spread his hands as much as he was able without upsetting his shoulder. He winced as it issued a warning, anyway. Something moved in Jack's face. "Don't want to go pissing off all of your constituents before the election day." 'Don't clench you teeth so hard, Jackie-boy. You're about to break them off.'

"Fine," Jack said. "Say your piece and make it good."

Sawyer had to give Jack credit. He was almost able to make Sawyer believe that he didn't give a damn. "Jin and I are the only two that can get you to that second opening," Sawyer said at last, speaking in a clipped, efficient tone that scarcely sounded like him. "But, whoops, Jin here don't understand English. You want to take him along, you have to take the missus, too." Jack made a hurry-up gesture with his hand and Sawyer split his lips into a smile that sounded more like a baring of teeth. "I'm getting there. It's a big picture issue, takes a little time to warm up to. Somehow, with you determined to go on this mission at the same time, I'm not thinking that this is a great plan." Jack's eyes darkened further, so Sawyer went on before he could be cut off. "You ask me? Of me and Jin, which one is less likely to get a whole bunch of other people hurt?"

"No," Jack said. His voice was flat and eerie, similar enough to Dream Date's to put a chill up Sawyer's spine. "You're not going." Kate took a small step closer to Jack, adding her agreement without saying a word. When her eyes met Sawyer's at last, the corner of her mouth lifted in a small smile.

Oh, no, they weren't going to gang up on him like that. Sawyer set his jaw and pushed himself back up to his feet. The world obliged him by only tilting around the edges a little bit. "It makes sense, Jack," he said. "At least one person with medical experience needs to stay behind, so it's you or Sun."

Jack blinked whenever Sawyer used his actual name, as if he had to pause and rewind to make sure that he had heard correctly, but the tension did not go out of his jaw. "Know what really makes sense? One of you has a sunburn. The other one has two bullet holes!" His voice rose enough on the final three words to lift the eyebrows of everyone within their circle and turn the heads of those who were still lingering nearby and pretending not to listen.

Sawyer smiled at Jack and Kate in turn. "I'm going," he said. "I can go with you as part of the group or I can trail along after you, but unless you plan on tying me down I ain't staying behind." Sawyer shrugged his shoulders without thinking and then poured every ounce of energy that he had into preventing the ensuing sunburst occurring behind his eyes from showing across his face. Somehow he didn't think that was going to help his case. "All cards on the table."

"You ever notice that you've been kind of accident-prone since you landed on this island, Sawyer?" Jack asked. He had lowered his voice, though he could still be heard clearly by everyone within their semicircle, and Sawyer got the feeling that he was listening to a message meant for him and him alone. There was a note of something there that was almost pleading. Sawyer wished for a moment that he could pause and listen to it some more.

He sucked in his breath. Right, and these were not the kinds of thoughts that he needed to be entertaining right now.

"You ever notice how few of those were actually accidents, Jack?" Sawyer snapped back, and took no pleasure at the way that Jack's entire face seemed to tighten.

"Keep up," Jack snarled at long last, "and don't do anything else to yourself. Your insurance is about to run out." He turned to go. Sawyer stared at his retreating back.

"Moving my ass," he muttered beneath his breath as everyone around him dispersed to collect their gear. "Right. Ball's in your court, Dream Date, and you'd better have something good up that cold, dead sleeve of yours." Sawyer's adam's apple worked up and down as he swallowed.

"I'm getting pissed."

End Part Fourteen