"How are my two favorite crew members doing?" Penny dropped onto the deck chair next to Desmond's, enjoying the hum of The Searcher's engines and the cool salt breeze. Charlie sat on Desmond's lap, flipping through a picture book full of animals.
"We're just lovely," Desmond leaned back to let the sun better hit his face. "Can the guys spare you for a bit?"
"Oh yes," Penny was sitting with her knees close to her, her feet on the chair. "We're well on our way. We'll be in Hawaii in three days."
She aimlessly played with Charlie's curls as he announced the various animals in his book in almost recognizable words, pointing at them for emphasis.
"Beer," Charlie said, laughing out loud, practically punching the book with his finger.
"Did he just say beer?"
"No, that was 'bear,'" Desmond looked down at the picture of the polar bear Charlie was still giggling over. He looked worried. "Of all the animals in the damn book, he would have to like the polar bear best."
"Come on now," Penny moved her hand from Charlie's curls to squeeze Desmond's shoulder. "He's only been on the island a few weeks, do you think he picked up the vibes of polar-bears-past by osmosis?"
"I know," Desmond said. "I know. I guess I'm thinking I wish we could stay in Oahu, and let the rest take our new visitors back with them."
"Sure," Penny said, "You're just going to step away and let Hurley deal with whatever is coming? Not likely. And besides, what if he's right, what if we get past this and have, say, decades of nothing but peace on the island? Beats commuting and paying taxes and pollution and tiresome neighbors, doesn't it?"
"When you put it that way…" Desmond said. "And Claire got pounced on right in the driveway of a nice neighborhood in California. Who knows what's next for any of us?"
"I've been thinking we should discuss something related to just that," Penny said. "We should agree, if anything does happen to one of us, or two of us – there won't be any self-flagellation like Sawyer put himself through after Juliet died. I think we'll both be more able to handle the stress of whatever is coming if we agree that if the worst happens, we grieve and move on."
"Oh God," Desmond put his head back in partially-mock misery, "Our son is obsessed with polar bears and you're talking the worst. It was such a good trip until just now, wasn't it, Charlie?"
They both laughed dryly, but Penny leaned toward him, kissed his mouth, sat back and locked eyes with him.
"Just promise," she said and he nodded.
"Okay," Desmond said it so soft it was almost a whisper. "I promise." There was no more laughing for a moment, and the simple depth of feeling with which he said it made her eyes sting and her throat tighten. "Now remind me," he said, to break the mood, "Who is it we are going to pick up, anyway? I was a little busy helping the guys when Hurley and Ben were giving you our instructions."
"A couple of 'gists' first," Penny said, "As in a psychologist and a cosmologist. They're both Others, and the cosmologist has been to the island before. Apparently he helped build this hatch that Richard and Ben and Hurley won't tell us much about."
"Do you really want to know much about it?" Desmond asked. "I think the less we are in on that piece of the puzzle, the better."
"And then we go to Guam," Penny went on, "and we pick up several electrical and IT engineers from Richard and Frank. Did I hear they're going to rebuild the Swan hatch?"
"No," Desmond said. "They're going to raze that site, no sense having a dangerous, tangled mass of metal and concrete lying there forever. The engineers are going to add some functionality to the Weather Vane, so it can become a tracking station along with whatever Richard and Walt are up to with it. Hurley doesn't want anyone going to the Looking Glass station anymore. He feels it's Charlie's resting place, it should be left alone."
"A wise decision," Penny said, and they were both quiet for a moment.
"I do have to admit," she said, "As much as I'm set on staying the course it is very weird to live in a place that's currently badly in need of a cosmologist on staff, isn't it?"
"My point exactly," Desmond grinned, handed her Charlie, flipped his chair back for a nap. "We should be back on the island in about ten days, love. And there'll be plenty of mysterious threads to pull at. Let's enjoy this little break from it while we can."
If you were a bird and you flew very high over The Searcher, you'd see nothing but blue sea for mile after mile, nothing between it and Hawaii, seemingly. If you were on a passenger plane, you'd be a little to high to pick it out on the water, and about an hour and a half later you'd also be too high up to see another ship: One that was slightly larger than The Searcher, slightly better equipped and manned, and headed in its general direction with one task: To find the way back to the island.
Walt, Hurley, Kate and Hurley's parents were sitting around the picnic tables having dinner, just a few yards from the gazebo at the barracks when David Reyes started clapping and Carmen gave a little cheer. The rest looked up and saw Rose and Bernard walking their way, Bernard leaning on Rose's arm and smiling, waving them off as if to say 'no big deal'.
"You're up!" Walt ran to them, helped Rose help Bernard the last bit of the way to the table. She went to make him up a dinner plate and Kate reached across the table, took Bernard's hand.
"Good to see you out of the Staff," she said.
"Yes, well, I'm finally feeling like I might make it," Bernard shrugged, "And with our doctor gone, not much sense lying in the hospital, is there?"
No one said anything about how long it had taken Bernard to recover even with the healing power of the island, or what that suggested about how badly he'd been hurt. Most of them were thinking it, though.
"And how are you doing, Kate?"
"I'm good," she squeezed his hand, let go, put her arm around her waist. "I'm so good, it scares me."
"What do you mean, dear?" Rose set Bernard's meal in front of him, and sat down next to Kate.
"Well, I'm not really even showing yet," Kate said, and Rose smiled, nodded.
"Yes you are, honey, you look like you swallowed a grapefruit."
Kate laughed, looked down and shrugged.
"Okay, so I'm just starting to show, but this morning, I swear I felt the baby move. That's about six weeks too early, isn't it?"
"I'm no expert," Rose said, "But I think you're right, it's at least several weeks too early. Sure you weren't imagining it?"
"Oh, I'm sure," Kate said. "I know it's going to sound crazy, but I have this instinctive feeling it's not going to take this baby 40 full weeks to arrive. And I'm worried- what if it comes right when we're under attack and we need every set of hands?"
"To be blunt," Bernard said, picking at his food, his appetite not really back yet. "Even if the baby arrives twice as fast as it should, that'd still be a little more than three months from now. We'll be really lucky if we have that long until they get here."
"Bernard!" Rose said it a little sharply, concerned with adding to everyone's worries.
"No, Rose, we might as well all be open about this and start facing it. Someone's coming, and probably sooner than later. Kate, my advice would be to start thinking about where you can go to protect yourself if the worst happens, and we lose."
Rose made a shocked sound of disapproval, but Kate nodded, straight-faced, looking over at where Walt and Vincent were playing a few yards away.
"Believe me, Bernard, I'm on it. I'm on it for all of us."
They dropped the topic then, and got on with dinner. Their little reunion helped them all forget it was just the seven of them on the island for now, made everyone feel far less alone. Hurley hit the storage room and dug out some bottles of wine and pomegranate juice for Kate and Walt. They sat and talked about nothing important the rest of the evening until long after the sun was down and four tiki torches were all that lit the yard.
In Ann Arbor, Sawyer was sitting in a rental car outside Annie's mother's house. She was inside trying to get her to spill whatever she knew about the Dharma Initiative, and the attack on Claire and Sawyer. Miles and Evan were getting groceries and setting things up at their new house for what they all figured would be at least a few days' stay.
No one thought making her mom crack, making her share whatever she knew about the Dharma Initiative at the turn of the 21st Century would be easy. But they all felt the pressure, knowing whatever they did or didn't find out could determine the fate of their friends and might lead to all they would ever know about what happened to Claire.
Sawyer had asked Annie a few questions after they dropped the guys off at a store. Why didn't her parents go by their real names on the island, why did they hide under assumed names, fake jobs?
She said they'd found that being famous for founding the DI got in the way of their main objective: Their research. And so they worked quietly, took turns splitting their time between the island and Ann Arbor. It wasn't much of a life for them or for her.
"That's why I related to Ben right away," Annie said, smiling sadly, looking to the right out her window as Sawyer drove. "We were both sort of orphaned, not literally but in practice. We were both pretty much on our own."
Sawyer looked at her, back at the road, didn't say anything.
He had wanted to go in with her, but Annie urged him not to: Save the new faces and the big threats in case she won't cooperate, she argued. So he waited as a half hour turned into three quarters of an hour. He was just thinking about getting out of the car to stretch when she came out.
Annie was half running from the house, tears on her face. Sawyer saw her mother standing in the open door behind her, frowning so hard it was really a glower. She had long blonde hair on the verge of turning white. For some illogical reason Sawyer expected her to be wearing a lab coat, but of course she wasn't, she was dressed in a sweater and slacks, looking like your average aging suburban mom. She watched Annie until she got to the car, and then she shut the door.
"Time for Plan B?" Sawyer asked, and Annie made a sound somewhere between a sob and a sardonic laugh. Sawyer had his hand on the car key, but waited to start it, giving her a minute to calm down. "And what is Plan B, by the way?" he asked.
"In just a second, you're going to think I'm out of my mind," Annie said. "But please remember, I'm not."
"Oookay," Saywer said, starting the car.
"We have to go kidnap an Orangutan." Annie said.