What Kate said on the way to LAX

They were barely on the way to the airport when it started raining. Kate flipped on the windshield wipers and thought, "One out, one in…. what next?"

She was dropping Sawyer off at LAX to catch a flight to Albuquerque to meet his daughter Clementine. The interpersonal negotiations between he and Cassidy had been difficult to this point, and he knew the trip wouldn't be happening at all if Cassidy and Kate hadn't become friends.

Once she dropped him off at departures, Kate had one more job: Pick up Carole Littleton at arrivals. She and Aaron were on a plane right now, on their way back to L.A to reunite with Claire. They would stay with her while everyone adjusted to their new roles and figured out where life would take them next. She wondered how long it would take Aaron to go from thinking of her as mom to seeing her as Auntie Kate, and whether he might instinctively understand Claire was his real mother. Or would it be a much bumpier ride than that? Claire had come a long way since leaving the island. "But," Kate thought, "she still has so far to go…"

For a moment she remembered her life when she was on the run and responsible for no one but herself. She'd had the same thought a few times since they got back to L.A. thirteen weeks ago. It hit her again how much she never ever wanted to be back there again.

"There's something I have to tell you," Sawyer's voice jolted her out of her reverie. "I'm not coming back after this trip. Once I visit Clementine, I'm moving on."

There was a short silence while Kate digested this.

"Sawyer, we agreed we could all use your help here for awhile, until, well, until we all feel relatively safe. And if you don't come back and stay with us…" She tried to think of a tactful way to ask it but couldn't. "What are you going to do for a living?"

There was a small pause while the wipers slapped and the rain fell and neither of them said anything.

"I thought I'd go work with Miles…" Sawyer wasn't done, but Kate cut him off.

"Dammit, Sawyer, what are you thinking? You can't go back to grifting."

He could feel how upset she was, and that kept him from denying it or snapping back at her.

"You know Miles is barely making a living as a PI on his own. He won't be able to take on a second for months, or years maybe. So you're going to, what? Go back to conning people? Really? Aren't you a little past that?"'

The next pause was a longer before Sawyer responded.

"What don't you get about the fact that I'm not cut out to be the supportive best friend, the man of the family, however you want to put it. It's bad enough I've been living in your basement for three months, but now- you and me and Claire and her mom and little Aaron all hanging around your house? I pretty much want to kill myself just thinking about it."

"What about all that growing up you supposedly did these past three years?"

As soon as she said it, Kate was sorry she had. Her words conjured up the ghost of Juliet, which always sent him into a bitter silence. Though he was sitting still she felt him mentally squirming in the passenger seat, his jaw moving silently.

"Why do you need me to come back, anyway?" He finally managed to ask. "You have a home, money, Claire and Aaron… and the worst is over. So what the hell do you need me moping around for?"

"Because I'm pregnant. And something's wrong, like "pregnant women on the island all die" wrong. And by the way, no one is over what we all went through, not even you if you're willing to admit it. I'm still sleeping with a gun under my mattress and Claire jumps halfway through the ceiling every time the phone rings or someone drops something. I need help from someone who understands all that."

The light turned red and they stopped. She had rattled it off so matter-of-factly that she couldn't believe she'd been afraid to say it out loud, even to him.

"Son of a…" Sawyer said.

"Yeah," Kate said.

"…bitch."

"That was pretty much my reaction when I realized it was true. But it's my own fault. I went out of my way to try to get pregnant and damn it if I didn't succeed."

"I thought you two were barely talking," Sawyer's face showed clear confusion. "Why would you do that?"

"Because we were going back to the island. I wanted to get Claire home but I knew I might fail and maybe we'd get stranded on the island again. Women who conceived off the island generally survived and those who conceived on-island all died. And if I was going to spend the rest of my life there… it seemed like the right idea at the time."

"Well, if you got pregnant off the island shouldn't you be in the clear then?"

"No. I didn't count on a couple of things. I didn't know we'd be pulled back to 1977, or that I'd be standing right over the Swan station when the bomb went off. Seems pretty obvious to me that the Incident had to have something to do with all those pregnant women dying suddenly after 1977. Don't you think?"

The light changed but neither of them noticed until the driver behind them beeped. Kate eased on the gas.

"I was around that hatch for days and days, right after I conceived. I didn't even think about it at all at first. I was happy when we got home, and I found out. Then I started having symptoms."

"Like what?"

"Extreme fatigue. Not just normal pregnant-tired, more like I couldn't move sometimes, I was so exhausted. Then shortness of breath, too. I started seeing a doctor and hoped it was all in my head, but she told me my white blood count was way low. And when we tested again it was worse. That's one of the main symptoms. Sorry, Sawyer, to bring her up… but that's what Juliet told Sun and me was the main symptom of all the pregnant women who died there. So I need to find Richard Alpert. I have to ask him about that vaccine Ethan was giving Claire before she had Aaron. It might have been what kept her alive."

"You mean the vaccine she made." Sawyer referred to Juliet with a degree of detachment Kate hadn't heard since they'd gotten home. "I hate to disappoint you, but she'd be the first to tell you they weren't really sure what they were doing or if that vaccine was helping. And even if you find Richard, what odds do you think there are even one single dose of it exists anymore, let alone somewhere you can actually get to it? Do you think there's a branch of 'Island Pharmaceuticals' near the mall?"

"Sawyer, I think we'd both be amazed at what these people have access to. Think about it, how fast Eloise was able to get us on our way home to L.A, and how some of the Others like Richard and Tom were always running errands off-island. And Ben: He told Miles he could get him 3.2 million dollars in no time, and that he had access to a whole network of people."

Sawyer hadn't considered this, and it was dawning on him that their entanglement with that world may not be as over as he'd assumed. Kate could see it all washing over his face.

"I'm guessing," she said, "We're going to find out their network is every bit as big as Widmore Industries and probably way bigger. And considering what I did to Eloise to make her get us home, she's not going to help me now. I think the only hope I have is finding Richard Alpert. And …maybe he knows what happened on the island after we left."

"Is that what this is all really about? Are you imagining-up a life or death crisis so you can find out for sure what happened to the doc?"

It was his turn to be sorry he'd asked as he watched Kate fold microscopically in the driver's seat.

"No, I'm not imagining anything. And I don't need to be told. I know Jack is dead."

"How?"

"I don't know. The same way Rose knew Bernard was alive, I guess. I just know."

"Dammit, Kate, pull over. Find a store where I can get us some coffee and park it, okay?"

"Why?"

"Because I need to ask you one more thing that's really likely to piss you off, and I don't want you still driving when I ask it," he said, "And because I need three minutes to get my head together and figure out what the hell to do next."

The rain stopped as they pulled into the parking lot. Kate turned off the ignition and Sawyer held his hand out for the keys.

"I'm gonna drive when I come back. You've had enough stress lately, as I'm learning." She didn't even fight him taking the keys, which scared him more than anything that had happened to them before.

"Now, I have to ask… you do realize you're not on an uncharted island anymore, right? If your current situation is threatening your life, have you considered changing your current situation?"

He wasn't quite finished the question when she turned an angry glare on him, shaking her head.

"Kate, why? If you can't be sure of making it through this alive without their help and we don't even know how to find them, then why risk it? Who's going to help Claire exit the Crazy Train and take care of Aaron if you die?"

He expected her to get furious with him or break down, and he was surprised when she went entirely calm.

"Sawyer, for years before the crash, I was pretty much on my own. Even when I tried I couldn't connect with anyone, even the man I married. It never mattered how many people were in the room, I was alone. Then suddenly, as awful and crazy as the crash and the island were, I had a life for awhile. Then it was all gone. I lost Jack, I lost you. Claire, God-willing will go home to Australia someday and take Aaron with her…"

She looked him in the eyes and he felt the heart he thought was buried under concrete and steel beams break a little bit more.

"I need this. And based on everything…. I think I have about a week to figure it out before I'm in huge trouble. So are you going to help me find Richard Alpert or not?"

"Of course," he said and opened the car door. "And so ends the question and answer session for this trip to the airport. Close your eyes, take a breather, and when I come back I promise I'll have at least a half-baked genius idea for what to do next."

While Sawyer was in the store, Kate locked the doors, flipped back the passenger's seat and closed her eyes. She immediately went back in her mind to the hours after they'd landed in Nauru. She thought if she just went over it again, she'd come up with some clue as to how and why Richard had disappeared and left them to fend for themselves.

They knew there was a chance there'd be enough security around even on that sleepy island to make a clean break difficult. That's just what they'd found. Kate remembered the landing, Frank taxiing the plane as far from the small customs building as possible. Everyone got ready to bolt down the chain ladder and head for cover. Richard had sensed, or heard others coming first. She remembered him telling them all to run, remembered taking off with Claire toward the tree line while Miles and Sawyer ran the other way.

Their splitting up may have been the reason that only Frank Lapidus was stopped and taken in by security. But where did Richard go? It was the question they'd all asked once they met back up.

Their reunion started when Claire and Kate found a maintenance building with a locker room along the tree line. Kate took a rock to the padlocks, and after some searching they found some locally-appropriate clothing that nearly fit, a little cash, two cell phones: Not enough to get them home, but enough to get a step closer, Kate thought.

Claire was getting panicky, and didn't like Kate's instructions that she go outside alone and track down Miles and Sawyer.

"Claire, you have to do this. If you don't we're going to all start running in circles, and we're never going to all get home together. I'm sure they stayed close by… and if you could hide from the Others and track them around the island for three years then you can do this no sweat. Go find them, and bring them back here."

"Bring them here and what?" Claire asked, "We have no passports, not much money. How are we going to get out of here undetected?"

She poked Kate's shoulder, as Kate stared transfixed at one of the cellphones, a look of stunned surprise on her face.

"I know how to get us home. Daniel Faraday's mother will do it."

"Didn't he die on the island? Didn't his mother actually physically shoot and kill him?" Claire was nearly yelling.

"Yes, but I'm going to use this phone to find her. Eloise Hawking is in L.A. There's a Dharma station at a church there. Jack's mom will know the number, he told her a story that he was going on a trip to do volunteer surgery on a kid and he'd be in the middle of a jungle. He told her Eloise "worked" there, and could get a message to him while he was gone. I guess he hoped… if he never came home Eloise would have the heart to tell his mom why or at least make up a story."

"What makes you think they'll even admit she's there?" Claire asked.

"Because I'm going to tell them I have news about her son. I'll tell her that Daniel survived, that he escaped the island and she never shot him so she should send passports for all of us. You can bet she'll get us home fast."

Claire was looking at Kate with a mixture of admiration and horror, one hand over her mouth. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

"What will she do to us when she finds out you were lying? I'm afraid to even think of it."

"After what she and the Others put us through to save their precious island, I don't care how mad she gets. In fact I can't wait to see her face when I tell her I lied and he's really dead."

And that was it. In less than three days, they were home. It made Kate's head spin how fast help arrived once she got hold of Eloise. Claire had found the guys and they were barely back at the maintenance shed when a man showed up and told them to follow him. Half a mile on foot later, they got in a car that took them to a boat that took them to a cargo ship. On board they were handed cash along with passports with their pictures and strange names that proved perfectly acceptable at customs and security. The men on the ship hadn't even noticed they'd handed over one more passport than needed. Kate guessed it was because they were hired-guns, several steps back from the people who'd contracted to get them all home.

The implications of it all were totally lost on Sawyer at the time. It showed Kate how truly drained he was. If the Others could get to them that fast on a tiny island in the South Pacific, what did that say for their odds of ever really escaping them forever?

No wonder Richard had disappeared, Kate thought. He was a pretty high-level Other all those years. He had bigger fish to fry than them. He probably saw a power vacuum waiting to be filled somewhere, and a way to start a new life somewhere in the operation, whatever is left of it.

The tapping of keys on the window woke Kate up. Sawyer stood there, two cups of coffee in his hands.

"Scoot over," He told her when she rolled down the window. "I need you to drive after all."

"Why?" She took one of the cups from him as he got in and she slid back to the driver's seat.

"It's decaf," He said, and Kate rolled her eyes. "What? Well, I don't know, are you supposed to have caffeine right now? Anyway, drive, I don't want to miss my plane. But I have some calls to make on the way. I'm pretty sure I know how to find Richard…. or at least someone who can help us, if not Dorian Gray himself."

"How?"

"Well, let's assume good triumphed over evil on that wretched rock, at least for the moment. Since we are all alive and breathing, I think that's pretty safe to say. So whoever survived back there… they've got to build the place back up, gird their loins in a 21st Century kind of way, right? Because you know evil isn't giving up just because Smokey died. That means they're going to need to get back and forth from the island."

Kate wasn't sure whether to be relieved to see glimpses of the old Sawyer or concerned about where he was going with this.

"Getting around Ajira-316 style is too labor-intensive, and it's probably not necessary anymore now that Smokey and Jacob and their little game with all those rules are gone," Sawyer went on. "What they need is a new submarine or a new boat or both. But definitely they need a sub at least, 'cause it'll get them around a whole lot faster and less visibly."

"How does that help us, exactly?"

"Because, Kate, tons of people make planes and trains and automobiles but the list of people who make submarines for anyone other than the military is pretty short. I'm going to find the one that's working on a very special order right now, and we'll be there when someone shows up to pick up the keys."