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Thanks for the Reviews: Gosh, I love you guys. You bring tears of joy to my eyes.

A/N: Okay, I am officially done with the rambling, mostly because I am getting into I-Want-To-Get-This-Done-As-Soon-As-Possible Mode. Seriously. Not that I'm tired of writing, but I'm tired of pooping around with this story- I want to get this thing out, ya'll, and I want to blow yo mind! So here goes, the seventh chapter of "The Pilgrimage"!

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The hot, monstrous sun beat down on the four sullen travelers like some unmerciful enemy, just daring them to move further into the shadowy depths of the jungle. They hadn't said a word to each other since they had left their camp, preferring to let their misery do all the talking. Endless sweat rolled in thick, wet beads down their faces, bathing them with this awful, dirty feeling of hot wretchedness that just wouldn't go away. By the time the sun had reached it's peak in the blue sky, they had greedily emptied their canteens and water rations, leaving nothing left to comfort them except the odd desire to find whatever they were looking for.

Claire personally didn't care what Jack and Locke were looking for...whether it be the Others or an answer to this mysterious island. To her it meant nothing. Charlie meant everything.

As she trudged on miserably through the deeply-rooted undergrowth, swatting away the branches, she could find no other motivation for continuing than the thought of seeing him once again. It was funny, how this terrible sort of pilgrimage had made her fall in love. Truthfully, she had started on this journey to rid herself of the guilt- the all-encompassing guilt that came to her whenever she thought of the responsibility she held over Charlie's disappearance. She had turned him away, and oh how he ran.

But now, this was something different. Perhaps it was the dreams, showing her flashes of the man, leaving her to wake up wanting nothing more than him in her arms. Or maybe it was the trek itself; dragging herself through the jungle for a man of whom she had briefly hated. But deep down, she knew full well what had turned this journey into a mad plight of love.

It was the memories. Of Charlie, holding Aaron, grinning up at her with this unified look of utter joy. The feeling of her lips on his cheek, so quick but so intimate. It had actually frightened her, how intimate that innocent kiss had seemed. It made her feel like a prude, getting so flustered over a bloody kiss on the cheek. But it was what she had felt, and the shielded look on his eyes when she had pulled away hinted that he felt the same, and was afraid to show it, just like her.

With pain, she closed her eyes and wished for him. Wished with all the hope she could muster that she would be able to see him once again, be it only for a moment. That in itself would be enough- enough to strive for. Enough to fight for. This realization made the grueling march seem like a breeze. Claire smiled to herself.

Then the strangest thing happened.

"Claire?"

When she raised her blonde head to meet the person who spoke her name so softly into the still of the jungle, she was stunned to see the figure of Charlie Pace standing some fifty odd feet away, his eyes wide, with a finger lifted to his lips in a signal of silence.

"Shhhhh."

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Charlie decided right then and there that he hated the sun.

He felt like some wretched, filthy beast, heaving himself forward with every single step as the unmerciful sun pounded down on him like a heat wave. He could remember no pain in his life worse than this. The way the sun beat down on him, practically baking him alive. Not to mention the fact that wonderful Mr. Friendly had already emptied the contents of the group's sole canteen, and there was no more water to be had. Wistfully, Charlie swallowed and grimaced at the slow and painful descent of saliva in his throat. How he longed for water.

Come to think of it, he longed for many things. He longed for shade, first of all. He longed for food, for rest, for sleep; for an escape to this endless nightmare...so many things.

He longed for her.

But even as he accepted the fact that he wanted her so badly, he knew how bloody useless that was. How utterly pitiful it was to long for someone who would never long for you- not for a million years. Yet, acknowledging this did not drive away the thoughts. They just made them more shameful, and harder to shy away from.

But how impossible it was to stop! He missed everything about her. Her shiny blonde hair, with touches of the slightest curls strewn all about. Her soft, pink lips. The shielded look in her eyes whenever they shared special moments- the look that made him think that maybe, just maybe, she felt the way he did about her, which was complete, raging affection. But the odds of that were just too slim for him to feel good about. Angrily, he wondered if wanting her was yet another of his many unhealthy addictions.

"Ay, Charlie," the man's gruff voice broke the heavy silence like a knife. Even as he spoke, his voice seemed a million miles away, floating in and out of coherence like some form of broken English. "You alright there?"

It took a moment for the question to register with Charlie, and when it did, the first thing he wondered was why the hell Zeke felt the need to ask him. He was walking, wasn't he? And essentially, that was all he was good for. "I'm fine, mate. Bloody fine." At this he grinned inwardly, stomping harder on the mossy ground. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Suddenly, Charlie felt his legs disappear from underneath him, bathed in numbness. "Oy," he muttered absently as he started to swagger, hands thrown out in confusion. His vision started to leave him, making everything look scary and warped and unfamiliar.

"Charlie! What the hell?"

"Zeke, I'm alright," he said quietly, knowing sufficiently well that no one could hear him, other than himself. His own words rang endlessly in his dazed mind, bouncing up and down, nauseatingly. "I'm...alright." Through the ground, he could feel Zeke running towards him, his heavy footsteps vibrated through his body.

Charlie collapsed as all the air expelled itself from his lungs, leaving him gasping on the jungle floor. Charlie felt hands on him; strong, meaty hands, and he shooed them away. "Leave me be," he groaned. "Leave me alone, you bloody baby-killler!"

"Charlie, what are you trying to pull?" Zeke asked, his voice piercingly high in fright and worry. He ran his hands over Charlie, trying to get him up again. He needed the boy, more than he would ever know. They were nearly there, for Chrissake! With labor, he got Charlie face upwards on the grass, and a bolt of disturbance hit him as he gazed upon the boy's sickly chilling smile.

"What am I trying to pull?" Charlie croaked, giggles rushing over him without control. "I'm bloody dying here!"

Zeke's bearded face swam in and out of vision; the gray of his beard contracting and expanding and slowly going black.

"Shut up with that talk! Dammit, get up, boy!"

"Charlie? Are you okay, baby? CHARLIE!"

With a rush of satisfaction, Charlie could hear Bette's piercing shrieks of fear as she stood alone in hysterics, gazing down at his slowly fading mortality.

Zeke's hands on him was all he could feel- all that was keeping him in the world of the living. That was one of the last things. But not the last.

His eyes started to close.

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"Charlie?"

Jack was shaken from his miserable death-march as Claire spoke out into the haze, her voice solid and worried. Oddly, he stared at her back, which was facing him. He wondered how she had gotten to leading the pack, but shrugged off the thought and addressed the newer, more startling one. Why was Claire talking to the bushes?

Locke and Freddy were apparently wondering this, too, as their heads shot up in unison to stare at her, their faces slated with sudden alertness and confusion. Jack paused.

"Um...Claire?"

Suddenly, the woman stopped and cocked her head to the side, as if she were focusing on something in the distance. Jack looked over her shoulder and wasn't surprised to see absolutely nothing.

Locke spoke next. "What is it, Claire?"

"Do you see something?" Freddy asked, befuddlement all over his face. "A boar?"

She didn't respond.

"Claire," Jack approached her slowly, his footsteps crunching on the baking leaves. "Are you with us?" He laid a firm hand down on her pink, flaking-with-sunburn shoulder. She visibly jerked.

But she was roused from her trance nonetheless. "He's this way," she said, voice hurried in excitement. "Charlie! He's this way!" And like a bolt, she darted through the undergrowth in the total opposite direction; a flash of blonde.

"Claire!" The three men ran behind the woman's whipping blonde hair, somewhat taken aback by her sudden sense of impeccable direction. It was like madness. "This isn't the way!"

She turned back to them, but not slowing down in the least as she did. "Says who?"

"Freddy, that's who," Locke responded, quickly growing out of breath. "He said it was that way!" The old man pointed in the opposite direction.

"It is!" Freddy shouted, as if in an afterthought, holding his leg and wincing as he followed behind. "Can we slow down, please?"

Claire ignored him, continuing to run like a madwoman into the endless green of the jungle.

"Claire!" Jack shouted frustratingly into the distance at her shrinking form. She was going too fast. As if she wasn't even affected by the relentless, scorching sun. "Slow down!"

"NO! WE'RE ALMOST TOO LATE!"

Jack stumbled momentarily over a humongous jutting tree root, swearing in confusion and frustration as he picked himself up. This was ridiculous. "Too late for what!"

Jack was less than surprised when she made no effort to respond, and, mustering all the strength that this endless trek had left him with, he ran like wildfire, hoping with all hope that he wasn't following this girl into the sinister pits of hell.

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Claire had never ran so fast in her life. But this was a special occasion.

She could never recall having hallucinations- in fact she liked to think that she was mentally fit in every way. But now she had been driven to insanity, or so she thought, because she had never in her short and somewhat privileged life seen or heard something that wasn't real. And this...this just couldn't be real.

The moment she saw him standing in the distance, she knew it wasn't him. Yet some part of her truly did not care; being able to see him made the fact that he was a hallucination almost excusable. True, this was not what she wanted- what she wanted was to have him in her arms, real and whole. But being able to see him once more, not having to rely on fuzzy memories, was enough to make her at least hope that he was real. It was enough to make her chase him when he turned on his heel and ran.

She didn't even bother shouting out to him; the way that he ran made the possibility of him slowing down look slim anyway. In fact, the speed at which he ran made it even more clear that this was not Charlie. No one she had ever seen in her life ran this fast, and she doubted that a man who had been exposed to the elements for almost a week now would find the energy to sprint at such a hellish pace. But she followed.

Sometime during this mad chase, she remembered that there were three other men screaming at her. Until this moment, she had been practically deaf to their shouts of protest. But now she heard them clearer than she would have liked, and they sounded pretty pissed.

"Claire!"

Angrily she whipped her head around to look at Jack, who followed some twenty feet behind, running like the devil was on his heels to follow her.

"Claire, I'm stopping!"

She didn't feel up to answer him, and decided that it was best not to. Come to think of it, she really didn't care. This fake Charlie didn't just appear for no good reason...it was leading her somewhere. She was sure of it. And she would follow him as far as he would take her, no matter who said she should do otherwise, including Jack, Locke, or Freddy.

Claire turned head away from Jack, expecting to see Charlie not too far ahead, and was hit with a wave of absolute panic when he was no where to be found. Her heart started to race, more so than it was before.

"Charlie?" She shouted, slowing down to a jog. With fear shining in her eyes, she scanned the jungle. And then she saw him, crouched in a mass of crazy green bushes, with a finger raised to his lips. She approached him, one hand reached out in a sign of caution. "Charlie, what's going on?"

She nearly cried at the sight of him, merely inches away from her. How she had longed to see those kind, blue eyes looking straight at her, making her feel as though she had already accomplished everything she had set out for. It made her forget that he wasn't real.

In answer, the hallucination reached out with both hands and made a clearing between two wild bushes, showing her what was on the other side.

Claire clapped both hands to her mouth in an effort to suppress her horror at what lay behind the bushes. She turned once more to look at 'Charlie', but found nothing more than upturned leaves.

He was gone. But now the real one was closer than she thought.

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"Claire!" Jack shouted, out of breath, slowing down to a leisurely jog. "Claire, I'm stopping!"

That's when he lost sight of her completely. His heart throbbed in exhaustion, and with sudden fear he shot his head around in all directions, relief washing over him as Locke and Freddy ran up behind him in the distance. At least he hadn't lost them. But as for Claire...

"Jack! Shhhhh!"

The doctor's heart nearly skipped a beat as he heard her all-too-familiar voice merely feet away, spoken in a soft, barely audible whisper.

"Claire? Where are you-"

"Shhh! Over here."

Frantically he scanned the jungle and was more than relieved to see a flash of blonde, huddled down between a mass of thick, crazy bushes. She had a finger raised to her lips, her blue eyes bulbous in warning. Jack signaled with his hand to Locke and Freddy, who were dawdling some twenty feet behind, to the cluster of bushes where Claire sat hunched like a tiger, ready to pounce. To pounce at what, Jack had no idea. But he approached her nonetheless, as stealthily as a snake.

He inched next to her slowly, trying his very hardest to read the plethora of emotions that was written all over the young mother's face. It didn't take Jack very long to figure out that that was impossible. "Claire," he whispered, eyes narrowed in significance, "What is it?"

And with an utter look of joy mixed with terrible fright, she turned to face him, one hand reached out between the green to make a small clearing within the bushes. "Look."

He did, and what he saw nearly made him scream in sheer triumph. There they were, walking...nearly six of them, all dressed in rags and filth just like an Other should. Except something had stopped them. "Why have they stopped?" He asked in confusion.

Claire shrugged and addressed the question that seemed much more dire. "Who is that in the front?"

Jack strained his eyes at the dirty mass of a man that had been leading the pack. He could see from the sides of his face a wild gray beard, fraying out madly in the light breeze. "That's Zeke. But wait...who's in front of him?"

"In front of who?" Claire asked, squinting into the distance.

"In front of Zeke! Somebody's fallen it looks like."

The woman looked deeply troubled. "I don't see anything..."

Jack remained quiet as she scoped the scene, eyes strained to their limit. Silently she waited for her to see it, and knew without a doubt that she did when she let out a shrieking little moan of horror. A black, loose sneaker, attached to the foot of whoever lay fallen in a heap in front of Zeke. His sneaker.

"Charlie?"

Jack nodded, quietly drawing out his gun and cocking it. He motioned for her to do the same, and when Locke and Freddy finally came tumbling next to them, he said what he had been dying to say for what seemed like an eternity now. He clutched his gun fervently. "Let's get 'em."

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Next Time: Who's gonna get capped? Who's gonna die? And what other odd happenstances may occur in the crossfire? Find out in the next installment of "The Pilgrimage"!

A/N: Yes my friends, the poopy is about to hit the fan. The show is about to get on the road. So don't bail out on me now! A.K.A, Review me please! They make my day. Also, to change the subject from my groveling, who's seen the newest X-Men movie? I loved it, for real, especially the dude with the angel wings. HOT.

Anyway, R and R pals!

-Counterspark