Chapter 1-Part 2

If looks could kill, Hurley remembered the old cliché, as he watched his good friend Elle emerge from the hole in the earth, stare straight through Kate, and land her clouded, angry eyes, on Jack. Jack, relieved that Elle was alive, couldn't control his mouth as it spread into a small smile, but soon receded into a thin line, as he heard the hatred in Elle's voice. He stumbled down the hill towards her, his voice shaken, his hands trembling, as he reached for her.

"Elle, I'm so sorry," he managed to get out, but not before she went to lunge for him. Hurley quickened his steps, amazed that she was indeed alive, and stepped in-between a feral Elle and a submissive Jack.

He threw his arms around her, breaking the tension, and lifted her into a massive bear hug, whispering into her ear,

"Dude, you're okay," Elle could feel his smile on her cheek but kept her limbs limp at her sides, "I knew you'd be," Hurley set her down and looked at her, trying to find his friend hiding behind those eyes of the woman in front of him, "Jacob's a tool."

Hurley's cheerful expression soon turned dismal, for Elle began to cough violently, blood sputtering from her lips, landing on the front of Hurley's face and chest. He blanched as he wiped the blood from his face and mumbled, "Dude, not again."

Elle faltered and reached for Sawyer, who just happened to be too far from her reach, she cursed him silently, swayed, and fell into Hurley's outstretched arms. He tried to steady her with one hand, as she continued to cough up blood. Hurley and Sawyer simultaneously called out for assistance, each calling for the one person Elle didn't want near her.

"Doc!"

"Jack!"

She could feel her body begin to give up on itself, the air becoming too thick to inhale, the blood, even thicker, beginning to fill in her lungs. She was going to drown. After all she had been through on this ill-fated Island, she was going to drown in her own blood. Sawyer, fluidly handed Juliet's body over to a surprised Miles, and ran to Elle's side. He didn't bother to push Hurley out of the way, instead he cradled her into his body, trying his best to comfort her, to get her comfortable, with Hurley's arms around her as well.

Sawyer pulled at Elle's eyelids, trying to get her to come around, tension and worry in his voice,

"Let me see you," he slapped her face gently, willing her to come back to him. When her eyes closed again and a slow rattle erupted from her throat, Sawyer's head shot back and he stared up to the sky, growling,

"Damn you!"

Threatening a God he once thanked for his babies, thunder rumbled in the sky, dark clouds rolled in, smothering the light from the sun, a lightening bolt split the sky into shattered pieces, hitting a tree not too far off in the distance. Hurley looked at Sawyer and mumbled,

"Uh, I wouldn't do that, Dude," to which Sawyer shot daggers from his eyes,

"Shut it, Hugo."

Kate watched as Jack rushed to Elle's side and reached for her. Sawyer recoiled from his hands. Jack persuaded him with one look and Sawyer allowed him to lay Elle onto the ground. Jack leaned over her, placed his ear on her chest, and silently counted to himself. He could hear a faint flapping coming from her chest as he examined her. Her lips once red, were now, pale blue, her breathing had slowed tremendously.

"It's her lung," Jack speaks directly to Sawyer, "it's collapsed."

"Then fix it," Sawyer growls and winces as Jack falters before he speaks.

"I…can't…," Jack looks around the blasting site, and turns his pockets inside out, "I need something sharp, a needle, a pen," he searches the eyes of the others and they all stare back speechless, knowing they don't have anything to save their friend. Jack's mind flashes quickly back to the first day on the Island and how, to his chagrin, Boone returned on an asinine adventure with a handful of ballpoint pens. Jack shakes the memory with a quick, shake of his head, side to side.

Sawyer grabs Jack by the collar of the shirt and pulls him so close their noses are touching. Jack can feel the heat from Sawyer's words before he even speaks. Jack, wanting to close his eyes, refrains, as Sawyer's voice erupts into a slow, angry, growl,

"What do you mean, 'you can't'?"

"I mean just that, I can't, Sawyer." Jack swallows and the words begin to flow from his mouth like verbal diarrhea.

"I don't have the necessary tools, I can't even begin to estimate how long she's been like this, she's rarely conscious," Jack reaches for a pulse and Sawyer swats his hand away.

"Don't."

"Can you get her to the van?" Hurley asks and Sawyer blinks back tears as he focuses on his friend's face.

"What for?" the southerner asks him wondering why Hurley has even suggested the van.

"I can help her," Hurley points up the ridge, "and Sayid."

Kate and the others stare blankly at Hurley who is standing with his feet planted firmly in the ground, his expression stern. Hurley senses their disbelief and he shouts at Jack,

"Can you save her, Jack?"

Jack shakes his head and murmurs, "No."

"Then back off and let me do this," Hurley points up towards Jin,

"We have to get her to the van," he looks upward and notices the sky has begun to lighten, the impending dawn is upon them.

"We're losing time, we have to get them to the Temple."

"What Temple?" Sawyer exasperates.

"I know where it is!" Jin hollers down, his hands forming a horn around his mouth.

"We must hurry!"

Sawyer begins to gather Elle in his arms so they can begin to carry her towards the van. Her eyes flutter open and she struggles to breathe. Sawyer sighs as she reaches for his face, and allows his head to fall into her hand. She strokes his face with her thumb, her breath is shallow.

"Swear…to…me…," she begs him, he closes his eyes and kisses her hand,

"Anything," his lips raise bumps on her skin; he always had that effect on her.

"You find…our…family."

Sawyer begins to sob uncontrollably, his body quakes, Jack reaches for him, but Sawyer shakes him off. Elle's struggling to breathe and when he doesn't answer her, she forces herself to raise her voice,

"Swear…James."

"I swear," he kisses her tenderly on the mouth, his saline tears coat the kiss, and she welcomes them into her mouth, and then she allows the darkness to envelope her. He can feel she is gone; her body lays limply in his arms.

"James," Jack reaches for Elle's body, "let us have her."

"Like Hell, Doc," Sawyer growls and Kate rests a hand on his shoulder,

"James," she says his name and his heart splits open.

"Don't call me James, Freckles." Kate swallows and nods,

"Sawyer, she'll be okay," Kate offers her hands palms up, "please, just give her to us."

"I'm goin' with her," Sawyer grumbles and Kate shakes her head, remembering Juliet's body.

"What about Juliet?"

Sawyer turns and looks at their deceased friend and silently sobs, "I promised her I'd bury her," he regrets the promise immediately. He wants to be at Elle's side. He doesn't want to leave her. He refuses to leave her even if she had already left him once before.

"Then bury her," Kate whispers, "we'll leave a trail for you."

"Yeah, Boss," Miles offers his assistance as he hefts Juliet's body into his own arms, "I'll stick with you and Juliet, then we'll meet them at the Temple."

Sawyer rocks Elle's lifeless body in his arms, cradling her, so he can kiss her eyelids, her cheeks, her ear, her neck, he can't seem to feel anything when he detracts his salty lips from her cool skin. She's turned a frightening shade of blue and he can't feel her breath as he places one last kiss on her lips.

"She's gone." He fortifies himself and hands her to Jack. He eyes the man with ferocity and Kate assists. She turns to Sawyer and raises an eyebrow,

"She's not gone," she reassures him, but it's as if he's already come to terms with her death, before she's even gone.

"She will be if we don't leave, like, now," Hurley interrupts.

Sawyer stays behind with Miles, who is holding Juliet's body, quite awkwardly. He watches the trio climb slowly to the top, holding Elle's body firmly, as comfortably as possible. A slow song begins to form in Sawyer's mind as he flashes to a memory, a funeral, of his parents. The death march plays in his head and the tears fall silently down his dirty face.

His eyes are swollen from crying, their once green and illustrious shimmer, has dulled to an almost gray, the whites of his eyes now bloodshot, the tiny vessels like track marks on an addict's arm. He is sitting with one knee bent, his back against a tree. His arm is slung lifelessly over the raised knee. Miles shuffles nearby.

"Boss?" his voice cracks.

"Ain't your Boss, no more," Sawyer mumbles.

"Right, sure," he heaves Juliet so she fits better in his arms, "let's bury her, it's what Elle wants."

"Wanted Enos," Sawyer growled through clenched teeth.

Miles doesn't reply. He knows there isn't any use arguing with Sawyer, not like this. He watches as his leader, his boss, his one time partner, clambers to his feet, his fists curled, his eyes focused on the heavens. He backs away, giving Sawyer space. He watches as he walks to the opening in the ground, where she had been rescued, and begins to shout.

"Why her, you bastard," he points a bronzed finger towards the dark sky, "why her too?"

What did he expect? A large, Zeus like hand to come down from the skies, lift him up and coddle him like the child he felt he was? It was replaying in his head; the day he had lost his parents. All he wanted was someone, anyone, to come and rescue him, to tell him it would be okay, but no one came. No one came while he was immersed in the thick, crimson, syrup that dripped onto his wooden floor; no one came when he tried to wake his mama up. Not one goddamned soul. He was alone. However, she had changed that.

And now she had left him; again. Their children; gone. Elle; gone. What else was he to do, but to get 'gone' himself?

Miles let him yell, beat his fists into the trees until his knuckles were bloodied and torn. He waited throughout the silence too that followed and then Miles spoke.

"What about Juliet?"

"What about her?" Sawyer snarled and turned on his heel, pointed a finger at Miles and ordered him, "Git goin' Miyagi, ain't nothin' here for you to see."

"But…," Miles protested and reeled as Sawyer charged at him, shoving him hard.

"You deaf?" Sawyer shouted in his face, "I said git!"

Sawyer watched as a defeated Miles retreated from him and inhaled the stale air. He counted five deep breaths and closed his eyes, recalling Elle's face, the way she laughed at Sammy's first steps, the way her nose crinkled when Charlee called her 'One', the way she looked when Aidan tugged on her hand and called her "Mama." He'd do this for her, but then he was keeping his promise to himself. He'd help bury Juliet but then he planned to disappear. Ain't no use survivin' if she wasn't with him to do so.

He absentmindedly searches his pockets for the nicotine filters he quit years ago. Mumbling incoherent curses, he raises himself and rocks on his haunches, hearing the van's engine fading in the distance, heading for a Temple he had never seen, while campusing the grids looking for the others. The air around him begins to stir, raising miniscule bumps on his arms, the tiny hairs on his neck, too began to rise, and he hears them, whispers, circling the trees that surround him. Sawyer slowly stands and cranes his neck to the left, but quickly pans his eyes toward the right, where the whispers incoherently wrap themselves around him.

"Miles!" Sawyer's gravel like voice rises just above a shout, but his pal is nowhere in sight.

Sawyer walks cautiously toward the sounds that continue to fade in and out, a stir of echoes, their jumbled words, swarm around him, like a cloud of yellow jackets. He strains his ear to catch the words and as he registers them, the southerner's natural bronzed skin blanches. The words bleed into one another, and Sawyer concentrates on each syllable, the first word stretches toward his ear,

"Fiiiiiiind."

Sawyer brings his hands up to his face and cups his ears, his hands trembling, while he hollers,

"Find what, damn it?"

The whispers answer him instantaneously, "Find your family."

He repeats the words, and shudders as he remembers Elle's final words about finding their children.

"Elle!" Sawyer races through the trees, stumbling over exposed roots, swatting vines and branches from his face, screaming for Elle.

"Jim?"

His abbreviated nickname, rarely used by Elle, lures him towards a secluded area, someone just beyond the foliage, turns toward the sound of Sawyer's heavy footsteps approaching. Sawyer pushes through the remaining overgrowth, catching his foot in an overexposed root, which lurches him halfway over, and mostly through the bushes, smacking his jaw on the jungle floor. Massaging his chin in one hand, he spits blood into the dirt, and sees a pair of boots and a hand reaching out toward him, the person speaks,

"Boss, you okay?"

"Miles?" Sawyer voice chokes on the frustration and the disappointment that suffocate his thoughts.

Miles offers a hand to assist Sawyer up, but Sawyer catches Miles' shirt and he throws him into a nearby tree, his face dangerously close, so close, that he spits onto Miles' face, as he growls,

"You think you're being funny, Enos," his eyes are narrow slits, his brow in furrowed into thin parallel lines of worry and anger.

"Jim," Miles gasps for air, "take it easy," he attempts to pull Sawyer's hands from his throat, but to no avail.

"Who do you think you are, playing these games?" Sawyer leans his forearm into Miles' neck, watching his friend's face, turn a sickening red.

A tear falls from Miles' eye and hits Sawyer's exposed arm. Sawyer teeters for a moment, losing his grip on Miles who takes advantage of this, grateful to be free of Sawyer's strangling.

"Have you lost your freakin' mind, man?" Miles throws daggers toward Sawyer whose hands are balled into fists at his sides.

"You heard her!" Sawyer accuses Miles, "You heard them!"

"What are you talking about!" Miles stumbles backward as Sawyer approaches him, and trips over the shovel, near the shallow grave for Juliet.

"Find my goddamn family," he manages to spit out.

"I didn't do a damn thing, Jim," Miles raised both hands, palm side up, a sign for placidity.

"But I'll do whatever it is you want, I'll help you find them, Jim," he tries to smile, but the pain beneath his adam's apple, smarts.

"Just ask without the brutality," he taps Sawyer on the shoulder and senses the man tremble beneath his hand.

"I," Sawyer manages to shake the fear off his body like a wet dog shakes itself dry after a bath, "I don't know what I'm doing, Miles." He admits with desperation.

Sawyer looks down at the grave that Miles had started to dig for Juliet. Seeing her, those empty blue sockets, that once smiled with laughter, Sawyer garners all his strength, the fermenting rage in the pit of his stomach, inhales the aromatic scents of the goddamned Island, and lets out one single, elongated breath. He runs his hands through his hair, kneels to Juliet, and closes her eyelids with one gentle stroke of his palm. Whispering only for the dead to hear, Saywer's lips begin to move,

"See you on the other side, Blondie."

Sawyer stands tall, shame laced in his eyes, as he tries to ignore Miles' annoying gaze, but to no avail, he smarts,

"She ain't gonna bury herself," and he proffers a hand towards the shovel, which Miles' relinquishes without a word.