Chapter 1: Desolation

Floating.

He was drifting on a hazy cloud of pain and confusion, no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there. In his mind's eye he saw a strange jumble of fleeting images he couldn't grasp for more than a second. A raft. A radar screen. A fishing trawler. Evil eyes. A gun. Water.

Sawyer surfaced with a gasp. He went under again immediately, choking on a mouthful of ocean water. He spread his arms to propel himself back to the surface, and fire burst on his shoulder and radiated out. He stopped immediately, waves of dizziness and nausea cascading over him. Even though it was already pitch black, he felt blackness obscuring his vision. His consciousness faded.

No.

Using his good arm, he stroked toward the surface. He pumped his legs, fighting to rise an inch at a time. His injured arm floated limp at his side. His lungs burned. How far down had he fallen? How much further did he have to rise?

And then his head broke the surface.

He immediately went into a coughing fit, his lungs doing their best to expel the unwelcome water. He gasped, choked, fought to get a decent breath while keeping his head above water. He pumped his legs and stroked with his good arm.

The coughing fit died down as his lungs expelled the last of the water. His throat was raw, and his head pounded worse than he ever remembered. And above all, he was tired. But he fought it, because those bastards were not going to kill him. He was not going to die on their terms. They could shoot him and leave him in the middle of the ocean, but damned if he would make it easy on them and let himself go.

He became aware of an unnatural brightness, a strange light coming from somewhere behind him. It was all coming back to him. The floating images were finally coming together, but he wasn't liking what he saw. They'd been on the raft and had spotted something on the radar screen. But it hadn't been help, it hadn't been rescue. It had been their destruction.

He turned his head, and his vision was assaulted by the sight of the raft on fire. Shit. His mind rebelling at what he saw, he took a deep breath—as deep as he could manage—and started stroking awkwardly toward it. There had to be something they could salvage. This could not all be for nothing.

The heat of the fire washed over him. He turned his face away from it, squinting as the heat tried to burn his eyes. They weren't going to be able to save anything from that. Not only could they not get close enough, but even if they could, it would all be burned by the time they got there. There was no way anything could survive that heat. He turned away, desolation warring with a deep, abiding anger. Those sons of bitches had taken Walt. They'd shot him, burned the raft, then sped off to God knew where. Well, they weren't going to get away with it, he thought fiercely.

It might be the only good thing he did in his life, but he was going to get that kid back.

He heard a voice, a plaintive cry for help come from somewhere nearby. He looked around, but all he saw in the fire-lightened sky was chaos.

"Hey!" he shouted, trying to be heard over the din of the flames. "Michael! Ji—"

His head dipped below the water again, sending him into another coughing fit when he resurfaced. "Son of a bitch," he muttered. "Jin! Michael!"

He listened, and this time he knew he heard a voice. After a moment it came a little closer, and he recognized the voice as Jin's. Couldn't understand a word the man was saying, but at least he was alive.

He looked to his right and saw the Korean man clinging to a chunk of the raft that must have broken off. It wasn't big enough for them to sit on, but it was floating. Better than nothing, he thought, a burst of adrenaline combatting fatigue as he paddled his way toward the other man.

What seemed like an eternity later, he reached the jagged remnants of one corner of the raft. He swung his good arm across it and gave it his weight, shuddering as he finally fell still. He closed his eyes. He was so tired. Distantly he knew it must be because he was losing blood, but it was hard to care.

Jin said something to him. Sawyer sensed the urgency in his tone, but the words escaped him. "Don't understand you," he muttered.

The Korean man pointed to his shoulder and spoke quickly. "Yeah. Sucks, don't it? Bastard got his shot off first." His head dipped low, then jerked back up again.

Jin shook him, and Sawyer somehow knew the man was urging him to stay awake. He nodded dumbly. Jin tugged on his shirt, causing Sawyer to look over and frown. "I don't think you want my shirt. It's got a hole in it." When it dawned on him that maybe Jin wanted him to take his shirt off, he added, "Sorry, man. Don't swing that way."

Jin shook his head and said something else, and when he was still misunderstood, he pressed his hand against Sawyer's shoulder. "Agh! Damn it!" Sawyer shouted, the intense flash of pain chasing away his exhaustion. "What the hell are you doing?"

Jin pointed to Sawyer's shirt, then again motioned as if to press his hand to his shoulder. And it hit him. He wants to bandage the wound. "Yeah, all right." Holding his injured shoulder close to his side, he reached up and unbuttoned his shirt. Awkwardly, gritting his teeth as he was forced to use his injured arm to keep himself above water, he worked the shirt off.

Jin took the shirt, and over the din of the waves and flames from the still-burning raft, he heard the shirt rip. He watched as Jin tore it into strips. One of the strips he bunched up and pressed against the front of Sawyer's shoulder, indicating he should hold it there. Gritting his teeth, he did it. When he felt something press against the back of his shoulder pain shot through him again, and he wondered how he'd managed to stay conscious this long.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was maybe thirty seconds, Jin began wrapping the remnants of the shirt around him as a makeshift bandage.

In the back of his mind, Sawyer wondered if all of the Korean man's efforts were going to be for nothing. He'd lost a lot of blood, and with the raft blown to hell, they had no way to get back to the beach. Nor did they know where the hell the beach was. They were fifteen miles out to sea with no boat and no navigation equipment.

When Jin finished the bandage he muttered, "Thanks, man," and closed his eyes.

Suddenly he was back on the beach, moments before the launching of the raft. Everybody had gathered around, anxious, excited, hopeful. Many of them believed that the raft was a sure thing, that they were guaranteed rescue. Sawyer was more cautious, but that didn't mean he was giving up his spot on the raft. Because it might not have been a sure thing, but it was a chance.

The hardest part had been those last few moments, watching everyone say their goodbyes. Strangers and near strangers, everyone hugging and kissing and fighting off tears. He'd been in the middle of it all, loading the raft. Alone. Nobody had wanted to say goodbye to him. Not that he'd cared. He hadn't. And yet...he'd found himself glancing back toward his empty shelter and the one nearby. Glancing back toward the tree line, a part of him he'd never acknowledge hoping that she would appear.

She would have said goodbye; at least he thought so. After what he'd done—what he'd been forced to do—on the beach the day before, he couldn't be positive though. But she hadn't been there.

As the cool ocean water lapped at his now-bare skin, he remembered hearing that a small group had left with the crazy French chick to find dynamite at the black rock, whatever the hell that was. He was surprised they'd trusted the old bat to lead them anywhere.

He wondered if they'd found this black rock and gotten everyone into the hatch. He sure as hell hoped so, because their chance of rescue was going up in flames.

He opened his eyes again. He didn't want to think about the scene on the beach, or what anyone left on the island was doing. He didn't want to think about Kate. All he wanted to think about was surviving the night so that come morning they could try to get the hell back to land. Then he'd worry about the rest of it.

Jin shouted something, and he turned his head and followed Jin's extended hand. For a moment he saw nothing except bobbing waves and floating debris. But then Michael materialized, clinging to a heavy piece of bamboo that had broken away. Jin shouted at him, but for several moments he didn't respond, didn't move. Sawyer began to wonder if he was dead, until he lifted his head and looked toward them.

Jin waved his arm, and after a moment Michael began to slowly stroke toward them. A few minutes later he made it to them, and even in the dark Sawyer recognized the haunted, helpless look in his eyes.

"They took my boy," Michael murmured, more to himself than anything else. "They took my boy."

"We'll figure it out in the morning," Sawyer said, not really knowing what to say. He knew nothing about comforting others. For as long as he could remember, he'd specialized in the opposite. Maybe it was the desperate nature of their situation, maybe it was all the blood he'd lost, but it just seemed like he should say something, anything, if only to pass time until the sun came up.

Michael slowly lifted his head. "Yeah? How do you plan to do that? We've got no raft, and no way to find the beach again."

Sawyer's eyes felt heavy, his mind sluggish. He hoped the bleeding stopped soon. "Think positive man," he said, and if he hadn't been so tired he would have laughed at his own foolishness.

"That's easy for you to say," Michael said. "Those...freaks...didn't just take your boy."

"And they didn't just put a hole in your shoulder," Sawyer shot back.

Michael stopped and looked at Sawyer's shoulder, at the makeshift bandage. "They shot you?" he asked dumbly.

"I was still raising my gun when they shot theirs. Hope I don't turn us into shark bait," he muttered.

They lapsed into silence as the fire died down. The only sounds were the soft lapping of waves and the occasional sigh or groan. Sawyer thought that he must have slept for a time, because every so often he startled awake with nightmarish images floating through his mind. Maybe he was getting a fever. Maybe this was how it was finally going to end. In the middle of the damn ocean, a hole in his shoulder. Never having a chance to make anything right.

It couldn't end like this. On the raft, before everything had gone wrong, Michael had accused him of wanting to die. And maybe a part of him did. A part, but not all. There were things he had to do before everything could end.

As his heavy eyes fell closed again, he hoped distantly that it wasn't for the last time.