Part Twenty-Five

Part of Sawyer clung to his place in the caves with all of his might, and the other part of him drifted wherever it wanted. He visited dark caverns where there were bodies that had yet to be discovered, he visited huddles of Others terrified-'They should be, Sawyer thought grimly, in a voice that echoed from without almost as much as from within-now that their cross and host against the vampire had been taken away. He drifted to the tops of the trees and down into the very core of the volcano from which the island had been born, and always the lady was there. She was angry and spiteful now that her cajoling mask had been ripped away, but she never drew close enough to him to attack again. Scared of the little man, maybe, who had power the likes of which Sawyer doubted she had ever seen before. Scared that if she killed all of them she would be left here by her lonesome to stew in her own juices until the next plane fell out of the sky. Sawyer had read a book once about gods who quietly faded away once all of their worshippers had disappeared. Would that the bitch would take that same hint.

"You can't kill me," she said to sawyer as he bent to examine a cluster of blood-red orchids. Beneath them was a grave, over two centuries old. Sawyer was sure that the orchids were a coincidence. Right. "I am the island. We can't exist without each other. Kill me, and you kill yourselves, too."

"Baby," Sawyer said, barely bothering to glance at her, "that is exactly what the human race is good at." He paused long enough to give her a razor-diamond smile. "But don't you worry your pretty little head. That won't be something worth thinking about until we all set foot on that rescue boat."

She wrinkled her lips back form her teeth and growled at him like a dog, but disappeared without staying to issue any further threats, some of which she was good enough to make sound like love letters. The little man must be coming to visit. His presence was different now, glowing with some sort of inner power that he had not learned how to harness before. If Sawyer could feel it even in the depths of unconsciousness, then he imagined that it must be close to bursting the wannabe goddess's eardrums.

Sawyer shifted and drifted awake again some time later as he felt hands moving over his abdomen, steady and sure, hands that he had not had the chance to get acquainted with outside of their professional capacities nearly as much as he would like. "Hey, Doc," Sawyer sighed, opening his eyes. His head felt fuzzy and thick. Lord only knew what Sun was pouring down his throat to keep him quiet. "Am I getting a conjugal?"

"You're not in prison, Sawyer." Jack paused in fussing the dressings that bound Sawyer's ribs. "You maybe ought to be for your own good, but you're not." Jack even looked different. Sawyer thought at first glance that he looked older, but that wasn't quite right. He looked sharper, fitter, closer to the actual images of King Arthur now, rather than someone who was desperately trying to cram himself into the mold. It was time for Sun to cut back on her dream juice, Sawyer decided, because he had come very close to saying that last part out loud.

"Sure I am," Sawyer grumbled instead, for a few seconds realizing that he was unable to look Jack in the eye. "Can't go nowhere, crappy food, mean warden. Hell, if I was in prison, at least I'd probably be getting laid."

Jack rolled his eyes, his annoyance shot through with an affection that Sawyer was not used to seeing there, that even scared him a little bit when he paused to think about it. Jack leaned over and, cupping Sawyer's jaw, gave him one of the deepest and most thorough kisses of his life. He wasn't the only one more than just a touch nervous about wandering around in brand new territory, Sawyer realized, but he didn't see anyone trying to beat strides to the door. He arced his head further into Jack as Jack's tongue pushed into his mouth, as he realized that he had Jack's specific taste memorized by heart and that furthermore he liked it.

"Think you're developing a fetish for this infirmary," Sawyer said when they parted for a moment, their foreheads resting against one another. "Unless it's something you brought with you that you've just been waiting to share with the class."

"Hate to break it to you, Sawyer," Jack said, not sounding nearly regretful enough, "but you're not getting laid today." He grinned when he saw Sawyer's outraged look. "No. Not after all I did to put you back together, I'm not going to let you go and get broken again." The thread of fear, faint but unmistakable, was back in Jack's voice. Sawyer wondered how many bedside vigils he had missed while he was completing his unconscious wanderings of the lady's stomping grounds.

Sawyer gave Jack another glare. "I hate you."

"No, you don't. I'm not sure what you 'do' me-" Jack kissed Sawyer again to cut off the sound of his snicker. "But you don't hate me."

"Give me more motivation like this and I'll bet that I can work my way up to it."

Jack snorted before he kissed Sawyer again, long and slow. "You idiot," he whispered against Sawyer's mouth, "why couldn't you have told me?"

"Wasn't sure I wasn't just going out of my mind," Sawyer whispered back. He bit at Jack's lower lip. "Still not, but I like it." He thought that Jack looked tired again, worried. Heavy was the head. "Shh, don't you go worrying about her, Jack. She's gonna lick her wounds for a while first. Must be embarrassing, backing down to a kid two hours after finally being set free."

"I worry," Jack said, which had to be the biggest understatement in the world, "that she's still going to come after you."

"Nah," Sawyer said, settling further back into the bedding as his short stores of energy told him that that was that. "Now while you're all ready to gallop into battle for my honor." Oh, he was definitely going to have that talk with Sun. "You're here now. She'll keep her distance." Sawyer didn't hear a trace of doubt in his voice as his eyes slipped shut again, conviction that he hadn't felt since he was a little boy peeking into hymnals.

The lady didn't come anywhere near him as he continued to dream.

---

They didn't come to the beach often any longer, except to add wood to and stand watch over the signal fire, to fire and to collect salt for their experiments in preserving meat. They buried their dead on the same hill where they had buried Boone and Scott, so that the fallen would be the first to see the rescue ship that would someday slip over the horizon. They kept their cemetery carefully tended. Beyond that, the beach had quickly returned to its original state of wildness over the course of the two weeks since they had abandoned it. There was a force out there that must be very happy to take her territory back, Jack imagined, but he preferred not to think about that too much.

He liked to think about other things here, though. It was quiet.

Jack sat on the sand just a few yards beyond the reach of the waves, his arms folded over the tops of his knees as he watched them roll in. Footsteps shuffled through the sand behind him. "Tell me that you didn't walk all the way down here by yourself."

There was an annoyed huff of air, and then Sawyer was settling himself gingerly down on the sand beside Jack, obviously wanting to flop but still leery of moving too quickly. Jack put his hand out to steady him and got an irritated face in return. Given that Jack counted himself lucky every day that Sawyer had not rebroken his ribs badly enough to puncture a lung during their adventures on the night that Walt was rescued, he could just deal with that.

Sawyer braced himself on his elbows and stared out at the sea in a perfect mimicry of the way that Jack had been doing only a few moments before. "Easy there, cowboy," he drawled, picking up a handful of sand and letting it trickle back through his fingers. "I have a chaperone." Sawyer jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

Jack turned his head and saw a female figure standing among the trees, staying far enough back so that they could have privacy. At this distance Jack could not tell if it was Sun, who had all but turned into a ghost herself and was frequently seen with her hands splayed across the width of her belly, or Kate.

Sawyer jostled against Jack's shoulder with his own to draw his attention back and received a glare in return. "You still shouldn't have come this far. Not yet." Sawyer was still pale and thinner than he had been before being shot, and the stubble on his cheeks and chin stood out sharply against the stubble there. Jack threw some sand Sawyer's way, interrupting the pile that Sawyer had been playing with.

Sawyer snorted and leaned back even further onto his elbows so that he could catch the last rays of the setting sun on his face. "Hell, Jack, I ain't worn out," he said, leering. "You want to do something about that, step right up."

That right there was an invitation if Jack had ever heard one. He fisted his hand in the front of Sawyer's shirt and dragged him over, quickly enough to draw a startled noise from Sawyer's mouth. Jack cut it off quickly by kissing Sawyer hard enough to make their teeth clack against each other, hard enough to hurt, and neither one of them even thought about pulling away. There hadn't been nearly enough time for this, not nearly enough. Jack didn't ever want to think about ghosts, or psychic children, or deals made in the dark corners of the island ever again. Let someone else take that mantle of leadership and do with it whatever they liked; all Jack wanted was this. One night stand-right.

"C'mere," Jack muttered into Sawyer's mouth, cupping both sides of his face so that he could not even thinking about moving back. As if Sawyer was even trying, rather than climbing half on top of him and making small sounds from the back of his throat suggesting that he would climb down inside Jack if he could manage it. "C'mere, c'mere, c'mere, not ready to let you go yet."

"I'm not running, am I?" Sawyer muttered back. His hand moved down to the front of Jack's jeans, palming small circles that left Jack hissing through his teeth before Sawyer even drew the zipper down. He came minutes later beneath Sawyer's ministrations, and Sawyer was laughing quietly, soft and breathy. Jack already loved that sound.

He loved even more the short huffing noise that Sawyer made when Jack caught his breath again and moved downward, hovering over the zipper of Sawyer's jeans. Sawyer made a strained sound from between his teeth as Jack took him in his mouth, gripping the back of Jack's neck and muttering his name over and over again, like a prayer. Jack took that to mean that he was doing something right. He massaged Sawyer's thigh when Sawyer eventually came and lifted his head.

Sawyer looked vaguely dazed. "Huh," he said. The dazed look grew even deeper when Jack darted his tongue out and licked at his lower lip. "Okay, so I'm guessing that we don't have to worry about the infirmary fetish, then."

"Not yet," Jack said. "But we'll get around to it." He felt like grinning, even with the oppressive crush of green at his back. He felt like fighting. Jack raised himself up on his arms and crawled up Sawyer's length, pausing to kiss him hard. Sawyer groaned as he thrust his tongue into Jack's mouth, tasted himself there. That dazed look wasn't going to be going away anytime soon.

"You promised me that you would tell me everything," Jack said at last, pulling away.

Sawyer made an annoyed sound and blew out his cheeks, shaking his hair out of his eyes. Jack took a deep breath and reminded himself to stay the course. "You're a real hit with the ladies, aren't you? Bet they eat that banter right up."

"Sawyer," Jack said. Something in his voice made Sawyer look up quickly. He held Jack's gaze for a long moment, searching for something and then measuring it when he found it.

"You know as much as I do at this point, Jack," Sawyer said. He made no move to get out from under Jack, but tension coiled through his farm all the same.

"I…" Jack had been going through the notes from the boat and the ones that Shannon had brought back from the Others' tunnels, watching as they had shifted from neat experimental records into a catalogue of madness, and he didn't like anything that he saw there. "Just tell me that I'm not nuts."

Sawyer snorted out a faint laugh. "Been there, done that. If you are, then you're in good company." He paused for a long moment. "I was born in Tennessee," he finally said in a low voice, "but I spent a few years in Louisiana when I was a teenager." He cut his eyes towards Jack, almost as if he was daring him to push. Jack remained silent. "There are a few places there where you can still find voodoo, or at least the people who believe in it, but most of that shit's fake, for the tourists." Sawyer paused and reached out to fiddle with the sand again. "But my Grams, though, she was the real deal. Talked about ha'ants, covering mirrors during a storm, smearing olive oil over all the doors and windows in a new house. All of it." Sawyer looked up into Jack's face again. "I'm only telling you this so that you know that I'm not taking anything for granted now, but nobody's talking to me any longer."

"Because you gave one back." It was the first mention, oblique or otherwise, that Jack had given to indicate that he knew.

For a moment, Sawyer looked almost green. "Yeah," he said cautiously. "Guess I did."

"Good." Jack squeezed at Sawyer's shoulder for a moment and rolled to the side as Sawyer put himself away. "You didn't come all the way out there because you were horny." Sawyer's grin almost got sand thrown at him again.

"Sure I did," Sawyer said, his lips lifting. The darkness was not quite so swift to leave his eyes, but it, too, eventually began to make its exit. "Got what I wanted, didn't I?" Jack looked at him. "Actually, I came to tell you that you're going to miss the vote if you stay out here too much longer. The fact that you got horny, too, was just a bonus." Sawyer paused and added, "I think Hurley might take it from you."

"Think I might let him."

"Charlie doesn't have a chance in hell."

Jack hesitated for a moment before he said heavily, "Good." The scab on Charlie's forehead had healed into a bright pink weal of scar tissue, like a third eye, and he spent almost as much time alone as Walt did. Few people wanted to be around him for long. Sawyer had taken one look at Charlie's head after Sun had begun to scale back the strength of her teas, announced that "the bitch" had him, and refused to say any more on the subject.

Sawyer was right; they need to get back and do their part in getting this fledgling democracy off of the ground. Maybe Jack would be the leader when it was all said and done and maybe Hurley would, but either way there would still be work to do. More and more of the new sentries had reported seeing young people in groups of two or three, watching the camp. If it was Paul and he meant peace, then they would deal with that. If they meant otherwise…they would deal with that, too. Whether he did so as a leader or as an advisor to Hurley, there needed to be a system in place.

For now, though, all that he needed was the sunset.

---

There was a new knight now, as there must be. He understood this, as he understood now why the lady had so little time for him. As he had sought to understand before, so he sought to understand now, more like science than Jack would ever admit. Understand the island, so rich and alive that he didn't think that the lady herself realized what she was connected to. He could roam for ages, for eternities, and still not see everything that there was to see. At long last, he had found a way to understand.

Even now, John Locke was not a spiritual man.

End