Kate woke up without a word about the previous night, but when moving around the camp that morning, she kept glancing suspiciously at the trees, and stayed well away from them. In her mind, she had figured out that if she stayed away from them, then there was no way she could hear the whispers, so instead, she stayed close to Jack, and when she wasn't with Jack, she was with Shannon or Claire.

Sawyer was beginning to regret his decision to take Kate as well as Aaron. Aaron could be easily occupied with a story, or a little game, but Kate grew restless quickly, or at least, the old Kate did, and he didn't know whether he was prepared to deal with the same old Kate in a smaller body and quicker mobility - especially when she now had the whole camp on her side in their disputes. He was starting to think that introducing Kate to a game of blindfolds and rope was also a bad idea, and he had visions of himself blind and immobile, whilst being pelted with rocks. No, that was just his imagination getting the better of him. She was only four-years-old. What could she possibly do?

Kate sat on the ground, playing with the little beetle she had picked off of a log. She had put it on the ground before her, and everytime it tried to scatter away, she was blocking it with her hands, so it had to try another way, and she blocked that. Soon, Aaron came and sat down with her, having wandered away from Claire, and blocked off the other means of escape. They chattered to themselves in a strange language that no one else could decipher, but apparently both children knew fluently.

Claire came over to Jack, who was just putting away the gauze that he hadn't needed for patching up someone's arm.

"Hey, Claire, anything I can help you with?" Jack said, continuing to put away the peroxide, and putting a few peices of cloth into a pile that Sun was taking down to wash later on.

"No, but I want to show you something." She said, and he looked up at her. "Come on." She said, as if she was talking to Aaron, and walked out of the cave. Jack sighed, now she was a mother to Aaron, she felt like she was mother to everyone, despite being the youngest adult there, and Jack knew better than to argue with her when she spoke like that.

He followed her out of the cave, his attempts at cleaning up abandoned, and into the centre of the camp, and then off to the side of it, right into a secluded corner beneath an overhang on rock from the caves. By now, Jack could hear childish giggling, and when they crouched down beside some bushes, the pair could see Aaron and Kate, still playing with the bug, and laughing happily at it, beneath the overhang, which shielded them from all the others.

"See." Claire said. "I told you you'd like it." She added with an air of triumph, but then started to smile sweetly at her son. Jack didn't even think to tell her that she hadn't said that last part, because he was too busy watching Kate, smiling, laughing, not a care in the world other than that bug at her mercy.

"I can tell you'll be a good Dad." Claire said.

Jack smirked, it was always Claire who brought up that subject. "How'd you figure that?" He asked her, knowing that she was going to tell him whether he asked her or not.

"Because you've got that look on your face." She stated, not taking her eyes off of Aaron to even give his face a glance.

Jack looked confused from her to Kate. "What look?" He said.

"That look." She said, finally peeling her eyes off of her son and nodding at him.

"What look?" He asked again with a defensive laugh.

"The same look that Charlie has when he watches Aaron." Claire explained. "He knows that he's not Aaron's real father, but when Aaron calls him Dad, there's a light in his eyes, and you can see from his face that there's nowhere else he'd rather be, nothing else he'd rather be doing. You can tell that he'd face the world before he lets anything happen to him. That look."

Jack smiled, and turned back to Kate, just in time to see her pick the bug up and swallow it. In the few seconds before it disappeared down her throat while Aaron squealed with delight, Jack and Claire both rushed over. "NO!" But it was too late.

Jack checked inside her mouth, but the bug was already gone. He grimaced as she grinned and turned to Claire. "How long was it before Aaron brought his bug back up?" He asked Claire, knowing that one way or another, Kate's body would get rid of the beetle.

"I'll put money on just when you've sat down this evening." She smiled cheekily. She picked Aaron up and took him back to the main camp, and Jack sighed at Kate, who looked very proud with herself.

"What am I going to do with you?" He said to himself, before following Claire's example and taking Kate back to camp.