Part Twenty

Sawyer paused and watched as the doc ran ahead of him in the dark. That was not the way that he was meant to go. Sawyer did not know where this information came from, except that it pissed him off, and he was obeying it, and that pissed him off more. It was just long enough to get this mess done, Sawyer promised himself, just long enough to 'give one back', whatever the hell that meant. Sawyer could pretend to play by the rules when it suited him. More than fifteen years of his life was wrapped up in acting like he wasn't angling for a peek at the cards of everyone else at the poker table, after all.

But the real beauty of that, the kicker of that, was that he made it his business know the hands of everyone else even before they did. And even if Sawyer was in an in-between place now where he didn't know which ground was safe to step on, the skill set remained. It wouldn't take a whole hell of a lot to make the ends justify the means.

'Mark my words, bitch,' Sawyer thought, not so much choosing to stop as it was that his ribs ordered him to. He didn't know if Dream Date would hear him as he had been able to hear her back at the caves, frankly at this point did not care. Let her stew over it. If there was one thing that she ought to know about him, since she knew so damn-fired much else, it ought to be that he kept his promises. 'You just wait until we get this turned around and I wind up on top again.'

Jack did not realize that Sawyer was not behind him any longer and raced off into the darkness, hell-bent on being the hero and saving the day. The funny thing about Jack was that the more Sawyer learned about him, the more he realized that Jack would more often than not make it work.

Sawyer doubled over as soon as Jack was gone from his sight, bracing his good arm across his knees to keep himself from falling over completely and putting his hand against his side as his ribs screamed and the wound burned. The smell of motor oil, of moss and the sharp ozone smell of coming rain was thick in his nose. The buzzing sound was louder than ever, but with the thick clouds obscuring the moon Sawyer could not see which way it was coming from. He crouched low to the ground and felt his lips drawing back in a primitive warding-off gesture.

"Hope you got a plan, Dream Date," Sawyer growled to the air. "Sure can't finish your little mission if I'm in Kibbles and Bits." Always let them think that they were in control. Yeah, he knew how to play this game. It would help more if he knew how he expected Dream Date to actually interfere on his behalf, but he would take what he could get at this point.

The sky that had been issuing sullen threats all afternoon finally made good on its promise, opening up between one second and the next and dropping down a heavy curtain of rain. It was thick enough to count as a physical blow, and it was glorious. The buzzing sound changed pitch, becoming high-pitched, almost frantic. The smell of motor oil began to dissipate, replaced instead by the smell of living.

Sawyer flicked his hair back from his forehead and shivered, already soaked to the skin even though the rain had begun less than ten seconds before. "Okay," he allowed as the sound of the monster began to dwindle away. "Don't know how you pulled that one off, but I ain't going to complain about it." He straightened, waited until his broken ribs had finished consulting among themselves and decided that carrying him a little farther was not such a bad idea before he moved forward. Man with a mission, that was him. Sawyer turned away, rain running into his eyes so heavily that it was a wonder that he could see even six inches in front of his face, let alone far enough to warn him of any approaching threat.

Which made the fact that he could see her all the more startling.

One second, the air before his eyes was clear, and in the next a pair of eyes vividly, olively green were staring back at him. "You're not mine," the woman who happened to be attached to those eyes said coldly, which suited Sawyer just fine. He didn't want to be this lady's one and only, not with the way that the air crackled and trembled just by being within a six foot range of her. She made Dream Date look like a house cat batting at a tiger's nose, Sawyer thought in the endless second before he moved and it all went to hell, and he wondered who would ever be crazy enough to sign on the dotted line and make themselves this queen's knight when he was still questioning his sanity for the small amount that he had committed to so far.

"Damn right, sugar," Sawyer said, taking a small step backwards. Just call him Haley Joel, because he was talking to ghosts all over the place. Wasn't atonement just the best roller coaster ride ever. "And you'd best turn right around if you want to go applying the strong arm tactics, because I only have one good one at the moment and someone else is wrenching pretty hard at it as is."

Passion's Lady curled her lip for a second at the mention, however oblique, of Dream Date before she flashed him a bright grin. Sawyer really wished that she would put those teeth away. Sharp as they were, they were making him think that the Big Bad Wolf had gone and gotten himself a sex change operation and a pretty pair of contacts.

"You're not mine," the green-eyed woman repeated, sounding more like she was musing to herself than actually talking to him. "But you'll do." She reached out and caressed Sawyer's cheek.

Her hand went right through the skin, and oh, if that was not enough to drive Sawyer right out of his mind then and there then he figured that he was bulletproof. It was I hot /I , hot like an iron being applied to his skin. Sawyer yelled in shock and pain as he leapt backwards, wondering when the literature had gotten it so very wrong and why he had to be stuck on an island where he couldn't call up the supposed experts in the field and let them know that ghosts didn't have to be cold if they didn't want to. That the new player on their already crowded chessboard might not be a ghost at all, but something new entirely, was not a comforting thought. Sawyer pushed it away as soon as it formed.

His ribs were yelping again as he jumped back and out the reach of the new thing, so loudly that Sawyer did not notice at first that the ground was not stopping him as it ought to have when he landed. Only for a few seconds, though, and then the sensation of falling became unmistakable. Sawyer yelled as he tumbled down a brand new rabbit hole, before he struck ground hard enough to send his ribs from merely yelping and into a brand new ream of agony. Had they been literally rather than only figuratively able to scream, it would have been of a pitch audible only to dogs. One great starburst of pure and brilliant white exploded behind Sawyer's eyes before he tumbled forward into a grateful blackness.

Sawyer didn't know exactly how long he was unconscious, but it could not have been for longer than a few minutes. He came to with the sensation of fresh blood running down his side from the stitches that had been pulled right out of the flesh that Jack had so painstakingly sewed them into only a day before, with his entire torso vibrating with pain, and with two people struggling to lift him up between them by his shoulders. As one of his shoulders didn't particularly like being shifted, Sawyer had just a few problems with that. His yelp of pain echoed and reechoed around walls that his eyes had not yet adjusted enough to let him see.

"Shut up!" the one-man boy band hissed at him frantically. Until their positions were reversed and Charlie knew exactly what kind of fresh hell that his movements were causing to a shoulder that had only a few days before had a bullet pass through it, thanks so much, Sawyer thought that Charlie could take his orders and shove them into any creative and uncomfortable place of his choosing. He struggled to stay as quiet as he was able, anyway, breathing hard through his nose. Call it a personal favor or call it the survival instincts that he could not quite seem to turn off, telling him that now was not the time to go announcing his presence in his usual energetic fashion.

"Then you might want to turn me loose, Elton, or at least work on your bedside manner." He could keep his tone down by concentrating very hard, Sawyer noted, but he could not quite keep the whine of pain from his voice. Charlie adjusted his grip until the screaming agony descended into a dull roar. Sawyer sighed, and his knees would have given out from under him if they had been capable of supporting weight at the moment in the first place.

"What happened?" Sawyer asked a few minutes later, when the act of simply breathing was no longer making him want to cry. He surreptitiously tried out his legs again and scowled when they told him, nope, not yet.

Michael, supporting him on his other side, used his free arm to point towards a ceiling several feet above them. By craning his neck upwards to the place that Michael was indicating, Sawyer could see a large hole punched through earth. For the moment, at least, the rain had ceased, but ominous rumblings of thunder from the outside said that the show was not quite over yet. Yellowing strands of grass hung down, waving in the night breeze that traveled down the hallway and ruffled at their hair.

"Whoever built this place dug their tunnel right out of the dirt, then used a kind of thatch to build the roof back," Michael said. He pointed towards the same aging grass that Sawyer had noticed seconds before. "But they haven't been taking care of it. See? It's rotten. All it was looking for was one good rain and just the right about of pressure to bring it down."

"So glad I could be useful," Sawyer growled. That rain might have had a different purpose than just letting him break the dirt with his back, considering how the monster had fled at the first hint of water, but until Sawyer knew who had issued that order he didn't think that he needed to share that information with the rest of the class.

Yeah. As if he needed anyone else trying to get him to march off into battle for them.

Sawyer blinked until his eyes adjusted to the gloom and asked, "Where's Jack?"

"Don't know," Charlie said. "He might still be up there with…that thing. Kate and Locke are missing, too."

"Oh." The monster might not be the issue that Michael and Charlie thought it was, but that didn't mean that there still weren't worse things running around and waiting to take its place. Sawyer took a deep breath and wondered if this was worry, or if he was just upset that Captain America wasn't there to wave the flag and be the hero for him. If his track record so far was anything to go by, then it wasn't a job that Sawyer was particularly suited for.

Sawyer blinked for several more minutes, but the shadows were not growing any smaller. "Don't suppose that either of you boys have a flashlight on you?" he asked.

"Packs got left up on the top," Michael answered, "and you missed the light show. Sawyer craned his neck so that he could meet Michael's eyes and give him a curious look. "Oh, yeah. Those Others have all kinds of creature comforts."

Surprises abounded. Sawyer was pausing to consider this when a tremendous sound, like a sonic boom spiraled out of control, echoed down the hallway and made the walls and ceiling tremble. They all cringed as dirt fell down on their hair from above, wondering if the admittedly rotten ceiling was going to take that moment to just give up and collapse. It didn't, but a moment later Sawyer though that it might have, that he might have been hit on the head without realizing it and was having himself one hell of a hallucination.

Silly him, hallucinations kept being the first explanation that he turned to, rather than accepting that the world he was involved in was really just that strange and inexplicable. Barely thirty seconds after the sound there was a tremendous pulsing and pushing in the air, as if it had come alive between one second and the next and was now struggling to throw them off. Sawyer swore as his vision changed for a few dangerous moments, letting him view the hallway through brilliant tones of green, and the place on his cheek where Passion's Lady had caressed him burned as if a torch had been applied to the skin. Curiously, Charlie's hands were they were touching Sawyer's bared skin felt every bit as hot. They both yelled and jerked away from each other.

Sawyer shivered as his vision returned to normal. The burning feeling in his flesh disappeared a few seconds later. Still gasping, Sawyer reached up and touched the skin of his cheek. He could not believe it when he met cool and unblemished skin. 'What the hell is happening to me?'

Michael had retreated a few steps and was now staring at both Sawyer and Charlie as if they had not only grown a second head apiece, but the heads were now having an energetic conversation with each other. "What the hell?" he finally managed.

Sawyer took several deep gulps of air and struggled to bring his panting back under control before he wound up hyperventilating. Even so, his breath still sounded like a train whistle in his ears. "Did you see it?" Sawyer demanded of Michael. A note of hysteria was rising in his voice. He didn't care. Sawyer needed answers and he needed them now, for the sake of his own mind if nothing else.

Michael shook his head and continued to look at Sawyer blankly. "The air did something strange for a minute, but…" He shook his head again, his eyes already going distant as he realized that the conversation wasn't going to bear any fruit in getting his son back. "Nothing."

Sawyer spun towards Charlie instead, who was examining his palm intently. "Did you?" It was delivered in an interrogatory tone only by default; Sawyer already knew the answer.

Charlie looked back up at him slowly, his eyes clear and calm. "I think that you're starting to run a fever," he said after a long pause. "You burned me. But I didn't see anything." Charlie shook his head. "What was there to see?"

Michael was telling the truth. Sawyer knew from liars, had lived among them for more than half of his life and had even trained a few of the more talented ones, and while Mr. Charlie Pace might fit that category at some point, he wasn't there yet. Sawyer stared at him, unsure if what he was feeling was anger or relief. Of all the times for the little shit to go spinning his games…but Sawyer was not the only one. Praise God and maybe even tip a nod of thanks towards anyone else who might be listening, but if he really was going crazy then he wasn't doing it alone.

Michael made an impatient sound and put his shoulder back beneath Sawyer's again as he began to sway. "Come on," he said. "We're wasting time. If this is the Others' place, then what do you want to bet that that they have my boy around here somewhere?" With another ominous roll of thunder, the rain started up again, pouring down through the gaping hole in the floor to splatter against what Sawyer now realized was a much-abused wooden floor. A few clods of dirt fell with wet smacking sounds.

That was a shaky line of reasoning if Sawyer had ever heard one, but until his legs were capable moving him forward on his own again he didn't' see that there was a lot that he could do about it. He had made a promise and he aimed to keep it, even if it was the only noble thing that he could claim in his entire life. The two bitches vying for his attention might as well have not been there at all.

Those were mighty big words, but as soon as Sawyer took a step he knew that it was going to be a lot easier said than done. He grit his teeth and focused on putting one foot in front of the other instead, trying not to slow Michael down too much as he tugged them forward. Even if they didn't find Walt here, the light going out, the air going squirrelly, and the complete lack of any Others so far in their supposed stronghold was making Sawyer feel more than a little twitchy.

They had not gone far when the sound of a single set of footsteps could be heard echoing towards them, running hard and gaining speed. All three of them froze, but there were none of the clever little hidey-holes that Sawyer had glimpsed earlier were within sight. They were trapped, adrenaline rushing so fast that Sawyer could swear he smelled it on the air.

Walt flew around a bend in the hallway instead of the monster that they had all been expecting. He took one look at all of them and then made straight for his father, and Michael wasted even less time in turning Sawyer loose and rushing towards his son. Sawyer staggered hard against Charlie, who barely managed to catch him before they both fell. Sawyer had the feeling that Charlie was about as happy about the situation as Sawyer was, but neither of them was willing to let the other go quite yet. Sawyer's palms tingled where he gripped Charlie's bare arm. 'You're a lying little shit,' he thought again. 'But if you think that you can deal with the dragon-either of them-then you're welcome to her. I've already had my fill.' Walt was carrying a flashlight with him, and as he opened his arms to receive Michael's hug the beam played across Charlie's face for a moment. He turned away as the light dazzled him, but not before Sawyer saw how dark the scab on his forehead had grown. He was still strangely relieved to discover that he was not alone any longer, no matter how ill-prepared the other person might be.

"My boy, my boy, my boy," Michael whispered over and over again as he held Walt tightly to him. He sounded as if he was on the verge of tears. Sawyer thought that it was a good thing, then, that Michael was not in a position to see the deep puncture wounds that had been carved out of his arms or the smears of blood that he was as a result leaving across Michael's shirt was he hugged him back.

There were two figures standing in the shadows beyond Walt, their features for the moment obscured by darkness. Sawyer feared the worst until they stepped forward, revealing none other than Sayid and Shannon. So this was what had come out of that search party that he had been hearing about. Walt was there, at least, so it looked as they had succeeded. Both of them also looked as if they had been in a battle or two. Shannon's lower lip was split and had trickled blood down her chin, while one of the fingers on her left hand was cocked at an odd angle and was already black and swollen. Meanwhile, Sayid had a gash over his cheek that had spilled blood across his neck and shirt. He was listing slightly from side to side, and Sawyer saw that someone had put a lump the size of a goose egg onto Sayid's temple. Must have knocked the soldier clear on his ass when it was delivered.

That was all well and good, and Sawyer was all for the happy scenes when they had time for them. The fact of the matter, though, was that they didn't. The power shortage was finally coming to be investigated and, just their luck, from the sounds of things they must be standing right near the fuse box. Sawyer tilted his head to one side as he heard footsteps coming, a lot of them.

Still leaning heavily on Charlie, Sawyer twisted around so that he could look at the stretch of corridor that they had just left behind them. "Guys," Sawyer said, waiting until he had their attention before he added, "think we could save the touching reunion for when we make it back topside?"

Michael was still hugging Walt as if he was afraid that the boy was going to vanish the second that he was released. No help there. He didn't trust Charlie much farther than he could throw him-much farther than he could throw him I now /I , let alone while he was healthy-and while Shannon looked resolved, she was also clearly terrified. If salvation was going to come for them, it was going to have to be with Sayid.

He looked down in the same direction that Sawyer indicated, his eyes narrowing to slits. Sawyer had the feeling that there were a few Others who were about to pay deeply for their working over of him.

"Let's go," Sayid said instead, coming to take Sawyer from Charlie and put his arm around his own shoulders. Sawyer twisted to look at him in shock.

"Would have figured a strapping guy like yourself to go for the route that would let you do the most ass-kicking," Sawyer muttered. "Sudden fits of pacifism don't really seem like your type of thing."

With all of the blood running down his face, Sayid's expression appeared even more formidable. "Looks like you already received enough for both of us," he answered. "The boy is more important."

"Can we just save the ambiguous repartee for later?" Shannon asked, her face tight and pinched. She went to Walt and, gently prying him apart from Michael, took one of Walt's hands in her own uninjured one. Michael wasted no time in seizing up the other. Walt looked both older and younger than he should have, and he was still wearing a deer-stunned look in his eyes.

Michael noticed the blood and the wounds on his son's arms for the first time. His expression hardening even further, he said to Sayid in a low voice, "I hope you know that I'm going to come back here and burn this place to the ground as soon as Walt is safe."

"I do not think that you'll have any shortage of company." If Sayid's voice was calm, then it was only because Sawyer figured that Ali had to have nerves of absolute steel at this point. The hands on his arms tightened for a moment.

Sawyer was glad that Sayid's injuries at least seemed superficial in spite of their ugliness, because he knew as soon as he took the first step forward that he was just about done. He could sense the alarmed, concerned looks that Sayid was throwing him without needing to turn his head as his knees wobbled beneath him. "Just let me push through this," he said in a voice that scarcely rose above a whisper; any louder than that and Sayid would surely hear how much he just wanted to lie down in the center of the hallway and let it be finished. "Don't count me out yet."

"Not until you die."

If Sawyer squinted right, he thought that maybe that could be counted as a compliment. He also though that Sayid was going to be really pissed off when he got his wish, because the pace that they were setting wasn't really blistering the ground beneath them. Sawyer could hear the Others coming closer, knew from the taut, tense way that Sayid was carrying himself that he knew it, too, even if the rest of their group seemed oblivious, and they had no weapons.

It would be the noble thing to suggest that he be left behind, Sawyer knew. He was the badly injured one, he was the one that was slowing them all down and keeping them from finding that elusive exit that had to be around here somewhere.

The noble thing. Yeah, Sawyer knew the definition of those words. He set his mouth into a hard line. But he knew how to be a fighter so much better. Fuck if he was going to rewrite all of his strengths at this stage of the game.

"Come on now, boys and girls," Sawyer panted as the echoes grew loud enough that even Charlie, Michael, and Shannon were beginning to look concerned. Walt still looked disturbingly blank and stoic, a pint-sized soldier before his time. Sawyer was fooling no one, not even himself, but it was the effort that mattered. "Give me something that tests me here."

It would have been better if he had not stumbled as he said that, if he could not sense every eye lingering on him and every person wondering how much farther he would be able to go on. It also would have been better if Walt had not stopped in from of an unremarkable door like any of the others that they had already passed by without comment or curiosity. The flashlight that he was still holding in his hand began to tremble in wide circles.

"Walt?" Shannon asked softly. "Are you all right?" She winced as soon as she said it, as if she realized immediately how foolish a question it actually was.

"The lights went out," Walt said softly, "and everything turned off. So I pulled free and ran." He reached out and pushed the door open so that he could disappear into the even deeper darkness beyond. Given that he was taking the light with him, they had no choice but to follow.

The room should have been unremarkable, rough earth walls and a filthy wooden floor like the ones that they had already been walking on for the last several minutes. For one short second in time, Sawyer ran his eyes over the walls and thought that he was right. Then he saw the chair in the center of the room, looking enough like something straight out of a dentist's office to make them all uneasy even though it was not for the hypodermics that dangled, empty and useless, from long wires at several points on the chair. Their ends still glittered with blood. Sawyer sucked in his breath sharply and glanced towards the barely clotted wounds on Walt's arms, knew that everyone else in the room was doing the same. Walt stood and stared at the chair without speaking, his hand shaking and making the light quiver.

"I'm glad that you showed me this, Walt," Michael said in a voice that was far, far calmer than it should have been for a man who had just seen the place where his son had been turned into a science experiment. Sawyer had heard that tone once before from a different man, and he stiffened. Before he could say a word, Michael walked over to the chair and, crouching for a moment to examine screws that had probably been bright and rust-free whenever this thing had been installed however many decades before, flipped it over with a mighty crashing sound. Even though he was as exhausted as any of them and probably still dehydrated from his earlier jaunt through the jungle, Michael wasted no time in lifting the chair back up again and hurling it against the wall. It fell back to the floor with a second, even louder crashing sound, one arm cracking off and hanging crazily by the wires attached to those damned needles.

In the ringing silence that followed, Sawyer finally found his voice. "Mike, if I could, I would give you a high five right now."

Shannon drifted over to a series of filing cabinets painted the hideous green color of pea soup and various bodily functions normally found in babies that always seemed to pop up in hospitals and research facilities. She tugged one open. Shannon peered curiously inside for a moment before pulling out a thick sheaf of files and, wincing, pinned them to her chest with the forearm of her bad hand as she went back for more.

"Good work," Sayid said. "Now, we must move quickly before we squander any more time." He pulled Sawyer back to his side and turned towards the door. Though he made a face when he realized that it was his fate to be handed from person to person like an over-loved doll until this was over, there wasn't a whole lot that Sawyer could do about it. He let Sayid half-carry him to the door, and then snorted through his nose.

"Oh, Muhammad," he said softly, barely registering Sayid's glare as the nickname resurfaced. "You had to go and jinx it, didn't you?"

The hallway had been dark when they entered the room after Walt, only lit with the shuddering beam of the flashlights, and empty as the evacuated tombs that Sawyer was willing to bet this island had more than its share of. There were only one or two lights added to the mix now, but it sure wasn't empty any longer. All of the Yosemite Sam rejects and their cousins that they had not brought upon the boat with them had filled the hallway between one moment and the next, without a sound to mark their arrival. Like ghosts. All of the hair on the back of Sawyer's neck rose up and he swore that he could actually feel all of the blood in his veins turning to ice before he realized that these people were solid and breathing and warm, these people were alive. Sawyer exhaled all of the air in his lungs on a shaky sigh and felt Sayid looking at him.

They were alive for now, but that sure didn't mean that they were guaranteed to stay that way. At the head of the group was the same son of a bitch who had shot Sawyer in the first place, looking even filthier than he had that night on the boat and about as old and weather-beaten as if he had been the first one to ever shout out, "There's gold in them thar hills!" Would that he looked as frail, though.

Sawyer pulled his lips back from his teeth in remembrance of how Yosemite's little presents had felt cutting through his flesh. Sayid himself stiffened, his face turning into a hard, cold mask that Sawyer had seen only once. That explained the mystery of who had worked him and Shannon over, then. A few feet away, the low level vibrating that Michael had been doing ever since Walt had been taken as he looked from something to do spun itself into an even higher register. Sawyer was willing to bet that Michael knew exactly what to do now.

"I didn't tell you that you could go, boy," Yosemite said to Walt, ignoring all the rest of them as if they did not even warrant appearing on his radar. The hair on the back of Sawyer's neck stood up even further at the tone in Yosemite's voice, until it would surely be able to pierce the flesh of anyone who tried to touch it, and his lip curled to an even more extreme degree. "You got a job that you ain't finished doing." Only for a moment, and to so slight a degree that anyone who did not make it their business to read every thought going through a mark's head would not have been able to notice it, Yosemite's voice shook. For all of their bluster and numbers, not a one of his people advanced.

'He's afraid,' Sawyer realized. 'Afraid of what?' Probably a stupid question, since Sawyer could think of two hell-spawned ladies right off the top of his head that it wouldn't be a good idea to cross paths with in a dark alley, but that still didn't explain why he wasn't advancing on their battered little group of wannabe warriors. 'Shit, is he afraid of Walt?'

It seemed like a damned stupid fear from someone who claimed to be such an all-fired badass, until Sawyer caught himself glancing Walt's way. The half-pint was still shaking, more haggard than any kid his age should actually look and still clearly scared, but the blank and weary look had been altogether erased from his eyes. The look that he was fixing onto Yosemite was not the sullen glare of a child being ordered to go and clean their room, but a sharp hatred, and adult hatred. Sawyer had a painful moment of recognition as he looked at it.

Okay, so when Walt could make promises with his eyes like that, maybe Sawyer could understand why Yosemite would be afraid.

"I don't want to," Walt said, thrusting out his chin and tilting his head at a defiant angle. The child might be gone from his eyes, but there were still traces of him left in Walt's voice and stance. Thank God for small favors.

Yosemite took a small step forward, leading Michael to take a larger one that put his body even further in front of Walt's as a shield. Still, their favorite trigger-happy hillperson took no more notice of Michael than he would an interesting fern that happened to be blocking his path. "Boy, you do not understand what will happen-"

"You deserve it," Walt interrupted in a cold voice. So much for the theory that some parts of his personality had been able to maintain a child's demeanor, that look said. "You deserve everything that she does to you."

Sawyer's blood ran to ice again, this time deciding that it wanted to stay there for a while. Yosemite hid it quickly, but Sawyer could see in his eyes that he was feeling the same thing. Gosh, and wasn't that just fabulous company to find himself stacked in.

"Yes." The green-eyed lady was there between one second and the next, taking all of Sawyer's senses and gleefully fucking with them so that she appeared to be everywhere, nowhere, nestled down in his bones and standing right beside him to whisper in his ear, "Yes. They do." She shrank down into herself to become one woman again, one body rather than an overarching network of pulse. She parted her lips, showing row after row of gleaming, glistening, sharp teeth, and reached for Walt with her arms outstretched at the same time that Yosemite did the same.

So far as Sawyer could see, neither of those was a great option. His own promise ringing in his ears, he jerked away from Sayid and lunged forward, biting the inside of his cheek to the point of blood to stay in control of the pain, so that he could reach Walt first. His hand closed around Walt's arm in order to jerk him to safety at the same time that Charlie did the same from the other side, and Passion's Lady closed her hand around Sawyer's forearm instead.

Sawyer saw ozone and tasted green, and fell to the ground with his heart resting still in his chest.

'I gave one back. That's all that I can do.'

End Part Twenty