Thanks for the reviews, although four out of 140?! Don't make me beg -- it demeans us all!
I know Kevin asked for an annulment, but if you remember, he apologised for being so harsh afterwards, and implied that he wasn't entirely sure he meant it. Regardless of his feelings for Kate, he still loves "Monica"... :)
Chapter 23. Power Struggles
To Kate's relief, Jack dropped his arm once they approached the circle, waiting until she was seated on a piece of wreckage before joining her. As much as she enjoyed sharing that physical closeness with him, she was afraid of what the other survivors would think of her when, unaware of her fugitive status, they drew the conclusion that she'd left her husband for him. It was none of their business, but even so, she hated the idea of being stigmatised like that.
Sayid was feeding dry branches into the signal fire, but he stopped when he saw that Jack had arrived, taking his own seat across from them, adjacent to Ana and Charlie. Retrieving a small, towel-wrapped bundle from the ground near where he'd been standing, he passed it to Jack, waiting until he pulled out what appeared to be a complicated walkie-talkie to explain:
"We found the transceiver in the cockpit just like you seemed to think we would. I was able to replace some of the parts, but when a group of us took it into the mountains to try to boost the signal, we encountered a problem."
He gave Jack a meaningful look, glancing between Kate and Ana, as if unsure that he should go on, until Jack nodded, gesturing for him to continue as he handed back the transceiver.
"The signal was jammed by another transmission – one made by a French woman over sixteen years ago," he finished, and Kate saw Jack's eyes widen as they both began to question why no one had ever thought to turn it off.
"You couldn't unblock it?" Jack checked, looking hopeful.
"Not without identifying the source," Sayid explained, and Kate felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach when she realised that the reason they were all still there was because he hadn't been able to send out a distress call. "There must be a radio tower somewhere on this island, but without a map..."
Jack nodded, staring into the fire as he considered the implications of these words. "There's still a chance we could get rescued," he said finally, unwilling to give up on the idea just yet, but before he could start talking about search grids, and black boxes, Charlie piped up:
"No one knows where we are! The pilot said we were a thousand miles off course when we crashed!"
Looking to Sayid for confirmation of this, Jack opened his mouth to speak, but Kate got there first. "You found the pilot?" she asked, her heart sinking a little more when she saw, by Sayid's nod, that this wasn't another one of volatile Charlie's outbursts. "Where is he?" Glancing up towards the tree line, she scanned the beach for a man in the familiar blue uniform, wondering why no one had invited him into the discussion.
"He's dead," Sayid told them, matter of fact, his expression hardly changing from the neutral one he'd worn while discussing the transceiver.
"How?" Ana asked, all eyes turning on her, as if everyone had forgotten that she was there.
To Kate's left, Charlie shuddered.
"Sayid, this is Ana Lucia Cortez, of the L.A.P.D," Jack explained when Sayid surveyed her with a mixture of mild curiosity and amusement. "She's been taking care of the tail survivors." Once he'd finished making his introduction, he settled back with a sidelong look at Kate, as if unsure of how she would react. She didn't like the admiration in his tone, but she gave him a tiny smile to show him that she wasn't upset, at least not while they were all in a group situation.
"Formerly of the L.A.P.D," Ana corrected him with a sardonic smile, meeting the Iraqi's eyes with the same challenging look. "And you are?"
"Sayid Jarrah. I was in the Republican Guard," he told her baldly, and her smile faltered, no longer looking so smug when she realised that she wasn't faced with another doctor or dentist.
"So what happened to the pilot?" Kate pressed, eager to get back to subject at hand once she recovered from her amusement at seeing Ana taken down a few pegs. With any luck, Jack would no longer need her tactical advice now that Sayid was back in the picture.
"He got eaten, by that thing," Charlie explained, his eyes wide with fear, giving off the illusion of an overgrown child.
Ana scoffed at these words, but Kate felt her stomach tighten as she glanced over at Jack, seeing that he was thinking the same thing.
"We heard it, in the jungle," she told Charlie, her eyes travelling from him to Sayid. "Did you see what it looked like?"
Both men shook their heads.
"It took the pilot straight out of the cockpit," Sayid said, apprehensive, but not as spooked as Charlie, not seeming to share his conviction that it was a monster. "We found his body in a tree, crushed, as if by a machine."
Remembering how close she and Jack had come to being its next victims, Kate shivered, feeling suddenly cold, relaxing when Jack put a reassuring hand on her back.
"While it's great that you all still believe in the bogeyman, we've got bigger problems that that," Ana said, cutting into the tension with characteristic sarcasm.
"And what problems are those?" Sayid asked, his contempt for her clear.
"Them – the other people on this island," she told him, as if this somehow explained everything. When he stared back at her, confused, she added, "Our first night on the island, we were attacked. Two of our people were dragged into the jungle. They never came out."
She glanced over at Kate with what might have been an apologetic look, though she still didn't seem all that remorseful about tackling a wanted criminal, or holding her at knifepoint. "When we heard you out in the jungle, we thought you were them – coming back."
Listening to Ana's story, Kate remembered hearing Kevin say something similar by the stream, something about trouble with the natives, but when she turned to Jack, he didn't seem surprised, as if he'd known what Ana was going to say for a while.
That must be what they were talking, she realised, though she wasn't sure if this made her feel better or worse about the time he'd been spending with Ana. She couldn't help wishing that he'd trusted her enough to let her in on what was happening, especially after the guilt trip he'd given her about honesty.
"I think we should set up a watch as a precaution, rotating in three hour blocks," Sayid said to Jack when Ana had finished with her explanation, and Jack nodded. "I'll take the first shift."
"I'll take the second," Ana announced, looking miffed that she'd been forced out of her position, both as leader of her own group, and Jack's second-in-command.
Sayid surveyed her slight frame critically, but didn't comment as Jack agreed without hesitation.
Not wanting to be outdone, Kate volunteered to go next, but Jack overruled her. "I'll take the last three hours," he told Sayid, his tone firm, making it clear that he wasn't going to enter into a discussion.
But as sweet as it was that Jack wanted to protect her (and she hoped that that was all that it was), Kate wasn't going to let him win, at least not in the way that he would've preferred. "I'm helping, Jack – if you won't give me my own shift, you're just gonna have to put up with me sharing yours," she told him, crossing her arms, giving him a defiant look that reminded him that while he might be their leader, she, at least, had a different kind of power.
Boring exposition chapter, I know, but I had to get it out of the way. I decided to leave most stuff the same, since the only real difference is that Jack and Kate went to look for the Tailies instead of the cockpit.
Next chapter: Keeping a "vigilant" eye out for the Others... ;)