Chapter 9
Despite everything that had happened the day of Carole's surgery, the next few days had been among the best ones that Jack had gone through for quite some time.
Admittedly, there had been some painful moments. Glazebrook, the DA who apparently seemed determined to make her career off Kate Austen the same way that Marshal Edward Mars had been quick to have her indicted less than two days after she was brought back into custody. Jack would've thought the last year would've been long enough for her to put together a case against her, but the ADA seemed determined to drag it out even longer.
That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, though. Hugo had been more than willing to make sure that Kate had the best attorney available, even willing to put down a half-million dollar retainer. The attorney, a man known for dealing with far more extreme criminal cases, was named Alan Shore. With a relative bluntness that Hurley preferred, he had told Kate not to fight being tried in LA, where far more guilty defendants had been acquitted, nor to fight being denied bail. "You've already proven that you're the definition of a flight risk," he told her. "Best way you can prove you're ready to fight this is to stand still. Voir dire is going to take awhile anyway. The prosecution's going to have a fair amount of trouble of finding twelve impartial jurors anyway."
Despite his arguments that the case was winnable, he told Kate flatly that she might have to end up taking a plea. "Glazebrook is going to try and bury you with the number of charges," Shore had told her. "The evidence is anywhere from two to five years old, most of the witnesses are going to be hard to find, and you never confessed to anything. Her case is almost entirely circumstantial, and most prosecutors with a circumstantial case plead out. " Shore had then looked at her. "Honestly, if you'd just stayed still after she announced she was planning to file, you might not be in jail right now."
Kate had managed to keep her poker face at this. "You've read my file," she told him. "You know what kind of bastard my father was."
"I do indeed, Miss Austen," Shore sounded sympathetic. "And that's definitely going to be an option when it comes to our defense. But Glazebrook is going to argue that you ran because you were guilty. And that you kept running all the way to Australia. In the narrow glance of a DA, flight always means guilt. There are no extenuating circumstances. Which is why your best option is to stay put. Your friends may be willing to pay any reasonable and even some unreasonable sum to keep you out of jail. But the best thing for your case is to stay where you are. Show you want your day in court. And get this horrible mess behind you."
Jack had never tried to make this argument before Kate had gone on the run last year, mainly because he was too emotional about the subject. However, he decided at this point, recriminations weren't going to make things any better, and he was done trying to blame Kate for everything. She went back to LA, with promises from everybody that they would do everything in their power to make sure that she didn't stay in jail any longer than she had to.
On a somewhat brighter note, Jack told the others that Claire was his half-sister. All of them had been very supportive, and had been more than willing to stand by him when he told his mother three days later. His mother had taken it fairly well, but Margo Shephard had always been a resilient woman. (Jack had never told his mother that his grandfather had always objected to his marriage; his father had managed to go to his grave without telling her, and he intended to do the same.) No doubt some of this had been better because she actually had a grandchild now, and she had been gratified by Claire's news that, at least for the immediate future, she and her mother would be staying in America. Part of this was a necessity brought on by her mother's need to recuperate, but most of it had to do with getting to be with her friends and new family.
And things had been looking better for Miss Littleton. Her recovery had been fairly remarkable, even though it was probably going to be a month before she would be a hundred percent. Even more remarkably, no one seemed to care that much that Jack was related to the star patient's daughter. In all honesty, he wasn't that surprised. Considering how self-involved most of the residents were, they'd barely even been that excited to know that their hospital had been the location for the end of a massive manhunt. The fact that their resident Oceanic survivor was related to another one seemed to go through them just like sands through an hourglass.
Admittedly, Derek had been more concerned about how this would affect the well-being of his patient, and had been a little more than amazed that this had been another link between him and the man almost shared his last name. But he treated Miss Littleton the same way he did before he learned that - like any other patient. Jack couldn't help but think that this was another thing that his father had tried to teach him about bedside manner. However, the only doctors who seemed to be willing to be understanding were George, Lexie Grey and Izzie Stevens, who by this point was beginning to consider spinal surgery as a specialty.
Things had been going so well, in fact, that Jack had expected another shoe to drop. When it did, he was a little surprised where it came from, and how. Hurley called the group of them together (sans Desmond, for some reason) and told them one of his other projects for the last few months.
"You hired a PI to find Walt and Mike nearly a year ago, and he's only come with information now?" Sawyer asked.
"I didn't have a lot of information to go on," Hurley had told them. "Most of what Walt told me was about his mom, and Michael didn't know him til they got on the plane. I'm lucky they found him at all." He picked up a file. "He hasn't exactly had an easy ride ever since he got back to civilization. Three months ago, he checked into Bellevue under the name Isaac Philips. Apparently, he had a massive panic attack in the middle of school." Hurley sounded immensely sympathetic. "The doctors haven't been able to find anything wrong with him, but he refuses to leave. The only visitor he has is his grandmother."
"Considering the trauma he went through, I'm amazed he held it together as long as he did," Sayid told him. "Have you made any effort to contact him?"
"That's kind of why we're talking now," Hurley was clearly nervous; being in any kind of position of leadership always made him jumpy. "With, like, maybe the exception of Locke, I was closest to him of like anybody on the island. That's the main reason I wanted to find him. Considering where he is right now, I figure I can talk to him a lot easier, maybe even get him out of that place. But when I do that..."
They all got it about the same time, but Sun got it to words first. "Then the world's going to wonder where he's been, and why we've been saying he and his father are dead."
This had been one of the things that had been hanging over them since the group had returned to civilization. Everybody knew that Michael and Walt could've blown the whistle on the great lie that the survivors of Oceanic 815 had been telling. None of them had thought they would do it, given the horrible circumstances of Michael's betrayal and escape. But as the weeks and months had gone by, it had seemed less and less likely for it to be an issue. Except for Hurley, who had more of a reason than any of them not to let this go.
"Did you find Michael?" None of them were surprised that Jin had raised the issue; the two of them had become friends before Michael had done what he'd done.
"That took a bit longer, but yes. " Hugo told them. "I was shocked considering that everything he did was to save Walt, but Michael apparently left him with his grandmother a few weeks after they got back to the states. He's been a mess ever since then. He hasn't been able to hold down a job, he drinks too much." He took a deep breath. "And according to my guy, he's tried to kill himself at least three times in the last year."
It had been a long time since Jack had felt anything other than contempt for Michael. Now, considering the mess he had been the first few months after getting back, he thought he could actually manage a level of sympathy. He could tell that most of the others did as well, especially Jin and Sawyer. However, one of them seemed to be struggling with it a bit more, and considering what was involved, it was surprising.
"Let's say that you know where to find him," Claire told him. "What exactly do we do next?"
"I've been wondering about that ever since I sent my guy to find him," Hugo looked unusually solemn. "And I need to know whether we should do anything, or just let..."
There was a long silence, though no one could tell it was because of what Hugo seemed to be implying or that he was considering it in the first place. No one on the entire island had ever had a problem with Hurley, and he didn't have a problem with anybody. But Michael had shot Libby in cold blood, and just stayed around as she died to make sure she didn't rat him out. Then he had sold them all down the river to get off the island with his son.
"I've known some pretty bad guys in my time, Hoss," Sawyer said slowly. "But even I don't think they'd have the balls to just let this kind of thing happen."
"Well, what are we supposed to do?" Hurley sounded a little short. "He killed two people. And there is no way any law enforcement agency in the world can punish him for it. The only ones who can do it are us." Then he looked at Sayid.
"I can understand why you'd want him to suffer," Sayid said slowly. "What Michael did was contemptible. But we all did things on the island that we've tried to put behind us. He deserves to be punished but we tried having our own code, and most of the time, it was a disaster."
"If he'd killed two people anywhere else-"
"No one's saying that he shouldn't have to pay," Sun told them, "but if we let this sort of thing happen, without even trying to understand his side of the story, we're no better than the ones who forced him to do this."
Suddenly Hurley looked at Juliet hard. "That's kind of why I asked her to be here, I figured she might have an idea as to why he did what he did."
And for the first time since Jack had gotten to know Juliet, she looked ashamed. Small wonder. In all the time that they had known each other, Jack had never pushed Juliet to find out what she had done when she had been with the Others. He knew that she had done some horrible things - she admitted as much about a week before they had left - but he had never gone after her the way the rest of the survivors had wanted. Now, it was looking like she was beginning to wish that she had.
Sawyer seemed to be getting that as well. Not for the first time, he was beginning to wonder what the two of them had talked about when they had begun the relationship - Juliet admitted that the first time they had met, she had held a gun on them. "Think it's time you spilled some of the secrets you've been keeping, Blondie," he said gently.
"The night that you launched your raft off the island," Juliet said slowly. "Ben told us that some of you were attempting to leave. He got Tom to take the boat and rendezvous with you when you were on your closest approach to Hydra Island."
"How did you know that we were leaving in the first place?" Sayid demanded. "Ethan was killed before we started real work on the raft."
Now Juliet was beginning to look embarrassed. "During the time I was on the island," she said, "Ben seemed to be the official leader of the Others, but he always claiming to be taking his marching orders from someone named Jacob. Someone who only he talked to, who nobody else ever saw, and who he claimed made all the rules."
"And you really believed that horseshit?" Jack asked incredulously.
"I never did," Juliet insisted. "But the rest of them, they all took it like it was gospel. Trust me when I tell you that most of Ben's people liked him even less than you guys did. The only reason no one bothered to take him down before was because he was Jacob's mouthpiece."
"Then how did you really find out what we were doing?" Now Sayid was beginning to sound just a bit like his old self.
"The Dharma Initiative had surveillance stations all over the islands. My guess is Ben was monitoring you. He waited until you were about the leave, and then gave the coordinates to Tom."
"That explains how you found him. Why did you take Walt?" Sun asked.
It was odd seeing the usually self-assured Juliet seem so unsettled. "We'd gotten reports from Ethan before - he was killed that there was something unusual about Walt. Something that was critical to the island." She looked at Hurley. "Normally, I'd have been inclined to dismiss this as more of Ben's bullshit, but the three weeks we had him, there was a lot of strange shit going on."
"Stranger than getting attacked by a pillar of smoke?" Sawyer wasn't nearly as sarcastic as he usually was.
Strangely enough, Juliet didn't answer. "The week before she was... killed," Sayid said slowly. "Shannon said that she had seen Walt several times, soaking wet, and speaking gibberish. I thought she was being hysterical. Then, right before she died, I saw Walt too. Because of everything that happened during the next weeks, I basically pushed it aside as a hallucination. Now... I'm not sure what to think honestly."
Hurley seemed a lot less angry than he had earlier. "Are you saying, like, Walt teleported himself?" he asked Juliet.
"I don't know. But a couple of the people Ben trusted thought he might have that capability." Juliet said. "Whatever it was he has, Ben's people were not prepared for it. A lot of us became very afraid. Then Ben went on his trip to see you." She looked at Jack. "Before he left, he told Danny Pickett to use the computer from the Pearl to trick Michael into thinking that Walt was communicating with him. The plan was to try and use Michael to try and explain what Walt was." She shook her head. "Apparently, all the information Ben had on him didn't include the fact that Michael hadn't had any contact with his son since a few months after he was born."
"Why did Ben let himself be captured?" Sayid demanded.
"He wanted to find Jack's weakness and exploit it so he could save his own skin." Now Juliet was speaking with certainty. "I don't know why he went through all that bullshit as Henry Gale - he never explained half the shit he did - but before he did he left clear instructions that under no circumstances was anybody to allow any deals to be made. No one leaves the island. Gospel according to Benjamin Linus."
"But they did agree to negotiate," Claire said.
'Things got notably worse after Ben left, and even he admitted that we got more than we bargained for with Walt," Juliet paused. "Mind you, most of this is secondhand information. I didn't want anything to do with Ben by this point. The only time I even spoke to Michael was the night before we sent him back to you people with his mission. Even then I wasn't sure I wanted him to be rescued."
"So you didn't tell them to save Ben by any means necessary?" Hurley asked. For all the revelations that they were getting, this seemed to be the most important point.
Juliet shook her head. 'We didn't even know if he was capable of shooting anyone, much less murdering two people in cold blood," she told them. "And honestly, considering how capable some of you were of violence, I thought that if it came down to it, Michael was far more likely to end up dead."
Now more all of them seemed more than a little ashamed. They'd all been responsible, with the exception of Claire, for taking a life when they'd been on the island. Could this whole mess have been resolved if they'd been far more willing to just talk to each other? Even given the space of a year, Jack wasn't sure he knew or even if he wanted to know the answer.
Sayid, who'd had far longer to reflect on his sins then the rest of them, finally looked at Hurley. "I told Jack after Michael returned that a father might do anything to save his son. But even then, I believed that he would have to be punished at some point. I just thought that we'd be the ones to do it."
"Well, we're here, dude," Hurley said. "But here's the thing. Much as I want Michael to pay, I don't want Walt to have to suffer any more. He's already gone through so much, and he isn't even fourteen yet. That's what I keep coming back to. He's already lost his mom; I don't want him to have to be an orphan."
Sawyer, perhaps not surprisingly, spoke up next. "Based on what you're telling us, kids already halfway there. Way I see it, kid loses any chance of staying whole if he learns his Dad's gone."
Jin and Sun, who each in their own way had been close to Michael on the island, and who were now parents, both felt pretty much the same. And Claire who had just realized in the past few days the importance of family seemed more incline to agree. In addition, she had another perspective. "There's a fairly good possibility that Kate's going to spend some time in prison, and if we didn't know her, we might be more inclined to lock her up. Shouldn't we be willing to extend the same benefit of the doubt to Michael?"
They then all looked at Sayid, who had, in his former life, been trusted in a similar position regarding justice. Furthermore, in his way, he was guilty of far more sins than Michael had ever committed. "When we tried to impose due process on the island, more and more often, we turned into a mob. Admittedly, in a way, we're all Michael's peers. I realize that Walt is suffering, and it would hurt if he were to lose his father. But is it any better for him to go on, like the rest of us, knowing how fatally flawed his father is, and watching the world do nothing about it?"
"World can't do anything about it, Sayid; kinda think that's the point we've been driving at," Sawyer pointed out. "Besides, from what Kong's been telling us, he's been doing a pretty good job of punishing himself. Don't you think he's suffered enough?"
"'Some people are just born to suffer," Jack spoke up for the first time in awhile, not even fully aware he was saying it.
They all looked at him strangely, Sawyer with more than a twinge. For the first time in a long while, Jack remembered what he had told him the day he had gotten on the raft about meeting Christian. Had his father mentioned his famous saying when he had gone on the bender that had ultimately landed him in the morgue? Given why he had probably been in Sydney in the first place, he was not inclined to rule it out.
"Something to share with the rest of the class?" Juliet had a strange look on her face as well. Just how detailed had his file been?
"All of us suffered a lot before we came to the island," he reminded them. "Michael did more than his fair share when we got there, and it sounds like coming home hasn't done much to change things. I think that a time comes when you just have to say enough is enough. We've been trying to help each other ever since we got back to civilization. I don't see why he shouldn't be any different."
Jack knew, even though he had ceded his role of leadership when they had been rescued, and despite the fact that the majority of the survivors seemed to want to save Michael regardless, that, just like on the island, everyone seemed to be looking to him. He didn't know whether trying to save Michael's soul was the right thing to do, but they'd all been granted a new life since coming back, why not him?
"But if we're going to do this, we should prioritize." he said slowly. "And right now, I think that means we have to help Walt."
There seemed to be a more general agreement to this than there had been to the idea of helping Michael. Even if Walt really was psychic, and given the evidence of Juliet and Sayid, who Jack would've figured would be the more rational people he knew, there was a real possibility that he was, the fact remained that he was still a thirteen-year old boy who had gone through a lot of trauma, and really needed their help.
"And how exactly do we do that?" Juliet asked.
"Let me deal with that," Hurley told him. "My guy found out where he is,. And I think know the best way to get him out."
"Sure you're comfortable flying again, Hugo?" Sawyer asked. "I gotta tell ya, just going cross country wasn't exactly a picnic."
"I figured some of you would come with me." Hurley said slowly.
They thought about this for several minutes. For obvious reasons, Claire and Jack couldn't be the ones to go. Juliet hadn't known Walt that well, and given their prior association, she didn't want to think what would happen if he saw her. Sayid considered going, but he'd never had much of a relationship with Walt on the island, and he wasn't certain if he was comfortable seeing Michael yet. Both Sun and Jin wanted to go, but because neither of them was entirely comfortable leaving Ji Yeon alone at the moment, they agreed that Jin would take the trip. By now, Jin had learned enough English that he figured he could get by without his wife having to translate for him.
Finally after a few more moments, Sawyer decided that would go as well. "Might as well get the band back together," he said, with some of his old swagger.
There was a certain amount of logic to this - Sawyer and Jin had gone along with Michael and Walt on their expedition to leave the island, and he had gotten a lot closer to Hurley during the last month or so there - but Juliet seemed a little puzzled. "You sure that you want to do this, James?" she asked.
"I ain't going on this trek to get some kind of revenge," he told them. "Hell, if you want you can come along, if you feel its a risk."
"I don't have a personal stake in this," Juliet reminded him.
"Didn't say you had one. Thought maybe you'd want to see Radio City." he told her with a grin. "'Sides, no one said you had to be there when we got to him."
"All right," Juliet told him. "But how exactly do you plan to get him to leave without getting his grandmother's permission?"
"That's the tricky part, " Hurley admitted. "Basically, it depends on how much Walt has told her. "
"Can't have told her much," Sawyer said. "Otherwise, she'd have started screaming bloody murder when we returned to civilization. "
"She's got to have some idea," Jack pointed out. "Even if her son and grandson didn't tell her anything, she knew what flight they were on. She knew we were lying the first press conference we ever gave."
"I'm a little surprised nobody's tried to track her down since then," Sayid thought out loud. He shook his head. "Leaving that aside, how exactly will you convince her?"
"By telling her the truth, or at least some of it. " Hurley pointed out. Everybody shot him the same look. "Dude, family can be more understanding then you think. I told my Ma two weeks after I got home. "
Jack realized he shouldn't have been that surprised. Hurley had always been the most honest of them, and the few times he had tried to keep a secret, he had been terrible at it. And hadn't they given him his blessing on the freighter?
"And she believed you?" Claire asked.
"She said she didn't understand me, but that she believed me," Hurley admitted. "I gotta tell you, having her support has been a lot of help. I mean, don't get me wrong, you guys are awesome, but it's been a big boost."
They all looked a little sheepish at this. Apparently, with the exception of Sayid telling Nadia, none of them had bothered to share with anyone outside the circle. Jack had to wonder whether things might have been easier had he told his own mother about some of the things that had happened on the island. Well, there was still time.
"So let's say you tell her, and you fudge over some of the more weird details, which I figured you'd probably do anyway," Sawyer said, "how does that convince her to let us help her grandson?"
"For starters, I'm going to pay off the debt I owe him," Hurley said. Everybody looked a little blank. "Walt won about a hundred thousand dollars off me playing backgammon. Always promised him I'd pay up."
"You got schooled by a twelve-year old, Hugo?" Sawyer said slyly. "Clearly, I chose the wrong game to play you at."
"It's your own fault for playing against a telepath," Juliet added.
Hurley considered this for a few moments. "He did always seem to get the score he needed to beat me when..." He shook his head. "Money's not the point, or at least not all of it. You gotta figure the medical bills for being in a place like Bellevue have gotta be pretty high by now. I'm going to tell her the truth, and offer to help her family. Which brings us to the next step. " He looked at Jack. "I know that this place is like top-notch when it comes to handling surgery, but what's it like when it comes to handling psychiatric patients?"
Jack had not really considered this section of the hospital before. This wasn't unique among his fellow surgeons - most of the residents were amazed that places outside the surgical ward existed - but it did bring about a couple of problems. "We're fairly well endorsed by some of the psych centers in the country," he said slowly. "But if you're honestly asking me to transfer Walt here, there are going to be a lot of questions."
"Yes, like how long it will be until someone from the press figures out who Walt is," Sayid reminded them.
"Someone's going to figure it out eventually." Hurley countered. "At least this way, we get a chance to, you know, control the story. But right now, that's actually lower on my concerns than making sure we can do something to help Walt. And he'll stand much a better chance of getting better if he has the support of his friends."
Jack thought about this. "You should probably remember that I used a lot of my chits with Weber in getting Miss Littleton having surgery here. And as an added bonus, his hospital was the site of a major arrest."
"You're honestly telling me that Seattle Grace hasn't handled a lot of bad publicity before?" Juliet countered.
It was a valid argument, considering that what had happened to Denny Duquette almost a year ago should have ended with Seattle Grace being shut down by the organ donor watchlist, and had half the residents suspended, if not in prison. In this case, the publicity would have more to do with the patient than it did with the hospital, but he didn't know that Dr. Weber would see it that way. "This may take a little more effort on my part," he argued. "I'll have to find a way to do it a lot more subtly than we did her."
"That's what we do when we have to handle Walt," Sun said slowly. "But it still doesn't answer what happens to Michael. And we don't know what he'll do when he finds out his son is gone again.."
Everybody remained silent for a couple of moments. For all the discussion and debate, no one was sure how they were going to persuade the man who had fucked them over.
Fittingly, it was Hurley who had the final word on the subject. "We're going to save him from himself," he said with a seriousness that almost no one had known he was capable of. "And once we have, we're going to find a way for him to face justice."