The Barracks

Thursday Morning

Three days after the end of the war

Hurley and Kate sat at the last of the picnic tables near the battered and tilting gazebo, watching the recruits work. Some were busy hauling away remains of the destroyed buildings while others sawed and hammered the beginnings of new bungalows together.

The DI spies had, happily, left the storage and dining rooms alone. A few of the houses were in good shape, too. Hurley had given one to Desmond and Penny, and Kate was staying in their spare room. Another one went to Ben and Annie as an engagement present and a third was open for anyone who needed an occasional break from sleeping the beach.

"What are you going to do with him?" Kate asked Hurley, referring to Dori Goodspeed. Some of Hurley's recruits had shipped him to Hydra Island the night the Searcher returned. He had plenty of food but no boats, effectively creating his own Alcatraz. It had been three days now.

"Doctor Scharff wants to question him more," Hurley said. "But we know the D.I.'s done now, so I think that's just kind of wrong… it's 'mean because we can be,' you know? I'm gonna do the same thing I'm doing with the guys we hauled to Guam."

Kate nodded, thinking what an ingenious plan Hurley had come up with. He sent Richard to go help Frank fly them each to remote places around the world, leaving them with a hundred dollars in their pockets. It was enough to not starve, but not so much that they'd get anywhere very fast. The ones who'd done the least harm would go to beautiful places: Micronesia, the Galapagos.

"Where will you send Dori?" Kate asked.

"Irkutsk," Hurley said, shrugged when she looked confused. "It's just a little northwest of the middle of southeast nowhere, Siberia.

"Sweet," Kate smiled.

Annie had been walking their way from the Staff. Now she was strolling up to them, setting a folder with exam results on the table. Hurley's backside left the seat as hers hit it.

"I'll go check in with Ben," he said. "And Kate, the speed I'm going away at: It's related to how much you don't want me in the room when you have the baby."

"No worries, Hurley," she stayed sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. "I'm not so sure I want to be there myself."

Annie sat looking at Kate, peering into her eyes, her own eyes squinting.

"You okay, Kate?"

"You tell me," she started to joke, but saw Annie wasn't having that. "I've been too busy to think about anything," Kate said. "And now I do have time and it hit me I'm having a baby in about fourteen weeks. So now… I'm scared."

"Well, this is probably only going to make that worse," Annie said, held up a hand when she saw the look of fear crossing Kate's face. "Everything's fine – baby's great, you're great, but it's not going to be anywhere close to that long."

"What?" Kate sat up straight. They'd all speculated that things looked to be going faster than normal, but hearing it coming out of Annie's mouth was still a shock.

"You've only gained twelve pounds," Annie said, "And six of it is baby. And he's starting to turn. And with everything else I'm seeing…. I'm guessing he might want out by a week from this weekend."

It was Thursday.

Kate didn't move for so long that Annie put an arm on hers and shook her a little.

"How do you feel about that?" she asked.

"Excited. Terrified," Kate said. "And wishing I didn't have to go through it alone."

"You're not alone," Annie said, "All of us are here for you."

"You know what I mean," Kate said.

A new group of recruits appeared, walking from the general direction of the Staff. They were circled around someone they were leading to the last of the empty bungalows. Kate's eyes picked out Sawyer, and though she didn't move, her stare made Annie glance back and then forward again.

"He's better, he doesn't need to be in the Staff anymore," Annie said. "They're going to hold him in one of the houses until Hurley…."

Kate nodded.

"Anything else I need to know?" she asked, and Annie shook her head, got up to go.

"Just take some time to do nothing, chill out, sleep a lot…." She peered at Kate again like she was trying to read her mind and make an impression at the same time. "And promise me you won't do anything crazy?"

"Like?" Kate asked, but she was smiling.

"You know what I mean," Annie headed back in the direction of the staff.

Kate sat in silence for a minute, and then a flurry of sound and motion altered her to look right. Bernard and Rose, Walt and his charges were headed for their cabin.

"Promise me," Kate said, getting up and falling into step with them, "This is just for a week or so. Right?"

"Absolutely," Rose said, watching Walt run, Vincent ahead of him and Joop just behind him. "Living space is at a premium, and we have a cabin. Might as well use it. And besides, Walt deserves a week to be a kid and hang out and play in the woods, doesn't he?"

"Yeah," Kate said, "I guess it's just stressing me out to see anyone walking away."

"We're not walking away," Rose said, "We're taking a vacation. Besides, there's nothing saying you can't come see us and hang out too. Might do you good."

"You're right," Kate stopped, headed back to the barracks with a little wave. "It might. I'll come by in a day or two."

She dodged the work crews and headed to the bungalow where they were holding Sawyer. All the way there she was working up an argument in her mind about why they should let her in to see him, but when she got there the guys posted at the front door just stepped to either side.

Then she remembered she was a candidate and she could go wherever she wanted.

"Want one of us to go with you?" a guard asked, seeing her confusion.

"No, that's okay, thanks."

It took her eyes a second to adjust to the inside light, and then she saw Sawyer stretched out on his couch, the back of his head to her and a paperback in his hands. He'd heard the door, but didn't move beyond tilting his head back slightly to see that it was her walking in.

Two overstuffed chairs sat at slight angles to the couch, and Kate walked around to face him, dropped into one of them, sitting back.

Sawyer looked at her silently for a few seconds, then spread the book out on his chest and stared up at the ceiling. She heard him sigh lightly.

"If you are here to lecture me save your energy. I don't want to hear…"

"We might not see each other again," Kate said. "And I have three questions for you. I don't want to go around wondering about them the rest of my life. "

"I did what I did for all of us," he said it with less of an edge in his voice, but she cut him off with a wave, up out of her chair and half hanging over him.

"You did not do this for us," Kate spat it out, sitting slowly back down, crossing her feet underneath her. "Or you would have told us. If you were doing it for us, you'd have told us so."

He flipped the book on the floor, eyes back on the ceiling and arms at his sides.

"Fine. Get on with it."

"When did you start planning this?"

"A few minutes after we took off from the island. Before we landed in Nauru."

"So all that time you lived in my house, and you seemed so down and I thought I was helping you…"

"I was arranging to get half the freaks who messed with my life to destroy the rest of the freaks who screwed with us. And spring Hurley from this miserable chunk of granite. And, hey, also make 16 million bucks in the process, which I'm pretty sure we could all use. And that," Sawyer said, "Counts for question number two. You get one more."

He kept his eyes up, the tips of the fingers of one of his hands on the bridge of his nose like he was getting a headache. He didn't see Kate turning slowly red and then pale as she went past angry to sad, then to numb.

"That's okay," she said eventually. "I only have one more I really needed to ask, anyway. How did you think you were going to do it?"

"Do what?" This time he was the one spitting it out, glaring sideways at her.

"How did you think you were going to live the rest of your life without us?"

She saw his face fall before he lay back again.

"I'll do fine."

"No," Kate said, "You won't. You may think so, but when the shock of everything that's happened the last seven months starts to wear off and you have no one, absolutely no one who knows what it's been like…. Damn, Sawyer, as pissed off and self-destructive as you already are, what kind of shape are you going to be in then?"

"I think your nesting instincts are taking hold of you," he said "You're getting all warm and fuzzy and worrywart. I seem to remember you doing a fine job playing people, getting them to do whatever you wanted them to do right then. That was what, five, six months ago?"

"I've done what I've done," Kate stood, took a couple of steps toward the door. "But I've never sold us out. You need to get that, and you need to fix what you broke. So when Hurley gives you your choice of punishments I really hope you'll take the one that keeps you with us. Please think about it. If you do, then someday maybe we can get to a point where this'll all be just be a vague memory of a bad bump in the road."

"My choice," Sawyer sat up, "of punishments? You can't freaking make someone pick their poison."

"Maybe," Kate said, "But you can tell them the options and warn them what they'll get if they don't," she said, "And that's making you pick. Honestly, Hurley's going hard-ass on you as far as I'm concerned. I'm surprised at him."

For the first time Sawyer looked worried, and she realized it was hitting him that his life was about to be not in his control again.

She walked the rest of the way to the door and looked back. She could see a confused look spreading over his face as he analyzed her expression, and then the confusion turned to disgust.

"You are not still expecting an apology, are you?"

"I hoped maybe," she said, "'Sorry' would be a place to start."

"Can't say it," he shook his head. "Because I'm not."

"Goodbye, Sawyer," she turned the knob.

"Not goodbye, see you later. And what's this 'I'm never going to see you again' shit?"

"Too complicated to explain right now," she said. "You'll know eventually. So just in case- if this is it, good luck to you."

She slid out and shut the door before she could hear anything more out of him, never even noticed the guards as she walked past them. Then she headed straight for her room, feeling heavy, feeling like she wanted to sleep for a year.

The Barracks

Thursday Night

Sawyer put his dinner dishes in the sink and walked to the living room, started flipping through a stack of record albums on the shelf along the far wall. He stopped when he heard a knock at the door and turned to stare at it.

"Why are you knocking?" He yelled, just asking, not angry. "This is a jail cell not an apartment. Come in."

"You decent?" Hurley popped his head in, then himself, and Sawyer saw he was carrying a six-pack of beer. "Got a bottle opener?"

"Sure," Sawyer walked back to the kitchen, joined Hurley in the living room, sitting opposite him in one of the chairs. Hurley opened them each one, then tossed a folder on the coffee table. "Read that," he said."

"What the hell is this? 'Island iteration five of five,'" he flipped the folder open started reading. "This about those other islands you all have been monkeying with?"

"Richard and Walt did some warp speed studies on them," Hurley said, pausing for a sip. "Well, all except two of five, that was one fugly place and we cut it loose fast. This one – their Sawyer died in Australia, so he was never on our plane. And well… keep reading."

Hurley sat back, peeling at the label on his beer, glancing at Sawyer as he read and he watched his face change every few seconds as he did. Then he saw him flinch, his eyes narrowing, and he sat back in the chair looking down at the floor, the folder still in his hands. Hurley hadn't seen him this upset since the days after the incident, and it was all he could do to stay impassive, not look away and not fold.

"Just let me go, Hurley," Sawyer finally said, his voice strained. "Put me on the sub or have Frank fly me to Los Angeles and I swear you'll never hear from me again if that's what you want."

"Can't," Hurley said. "You screwed us over and I don't know what you'll do if I let you go. There's probably no way in hell you're going to believe this right now, but I'm thinking of you, too."

"So, what? I can go to this place where Ben let her leave and she's living in Portland, and what guarantee is there I'll ever make it there, too?"

"Really great odds, actually," Hurley said. "Read it again after I go, everything's in there about how they get away and you'll have the whole playbook. But if you do go there, you have to know I'm cutting that place loose just like two of five – that's it, forever. You'll never see any of us again."

"And if I don't go there?"

"You go here for a month," Hurley tossed one more folder on the table but Sawyer never moved an inch toward it. "Three of five. It's empty: Just the heart of the island and a bunch of birds, bugs, frogs and boar. You'll have food drops, better shelter than we had the first time around, and we'll have Richard and Walt come check in with you. A month of quiet, to think, and then you come live with us and help us rebuild and teach Miles how to be better at his job. We get your help and you get better. Everybody wins."

"For how long?" Sawyer asked.

"Until I say so," Hurley said. "Until you're really with us again, then you can go. And you won't fool me- I'll know when it's time."

"Ben come up with this?" Sawyer asked, sounding drained.

"Nope. All mine," Hurley got up, taking his beer and leaving the rest. "I'm giving you a night and a day and a night, and then if you won't pick I will. You've been going around like nothing matters to you but revenge," he headed for the door. "I'm hoping you'll find out otherwise. 'Night Sawyer."

The Barracks

Friday Morning

Sawyer was sitting on the couch reading through the folders Hurley had left when he heard a tap on the door and it opened.

"Hello?"

"Over here, BAMFie," he turned a page as Annie walked in. "Coffee's on if you want some."

He said it straight-faced, his voice a blank too, never looked up or over.

"For someone who's about to be banished from the kingdom, I have an awful lot of visitors. You sure you all won't miss me more than I'll miss you?"

Annie walked over and sat next to him, pulling the folders away and setting them down, taking his nearest hand in hers. He flung her away, and she picked his hand back up and he flung her away again.

"Stop it," she said, took his hand again. "I'm here to listen. You're never going to figure this out if you don't have someone to talk through it with. I care but not like they do, it's got almost nothing to do with me. And I won't tell anyone anything you say."

"Shouldn't you be somewhere making little pop-eyed babies?" Sawyer asked. "Neither of you is getting any younger, you know?"

"So quick," Annie said, her voice hard but a smile in her eyes. "So glib and quick. You've got more cement over your heart than they poured on Chernobyl."

She sat back, shoulder to shoulder with him and directed her gaze away, cutting the confrontation and settling in whether he liked it or not.

"Start talking, James," she said.

There was a pause, a few seconds of silence, and then to her surprise- he did.