![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alliecat8Title: There's No Place Like Home
Characters: Sawyer (not James) (includes memories of Juliet)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1586
Spoilers: Through "The Substitute" (6.04)
A/N: I'm posting these two stories together because they read like two scenes in the same episode, but they're very different from each other. I hope you'll like them both, regardless.
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
Title: The Hand of Man
Character: Kate (no triangle involved!!!)
Rating: R for violence
Word Count: 1286
Spoilers: Through Sundown (6.06)
A/N: This is a radical change but it ties into the story above, so I've posted them together. Also, I know my Katred is legendary, but I can be fair when fairness is called for.
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
There’s No Place Like Home
He can’t remember the color of the house. That bothers him now, now that he’s happy. Now he wants to be able to remember those first 8 years, and he can’t. He wants to remember his room, and what his bed looked like, and did he have a desk with a globe on it like he’s seen in magazines? What toys did he have? Did he have friends? And what color was his house? Because something in him tells him it was a little, happy house (just like the cozy yellow house he lives in now), until that terrible thing happened. He feels like he is almost ready to remember, and he wants to know all about it now that he feels safe.
Juliet tells him not to dwell on it; he’s made his decision about going back (he didn’t go) and that should tell him that he really wants to put it behind him. And he does – the bad parts. He just wants to remember all the happy years before that. Christmas. Birthdays. Did he have a pet, and what happened to it if he had?
Juliet works long days at the motor pool and comes home dirty and sweaty, and she tries to shower and have supper on the stove by the time James comes home. His job is more flexible, though, so he tries to beat her home and throw something together – he’s been cooking for himself since he was 16 and he can make a mean macaroni and cheese, and a salad. Add some Dharma wine and it’s a feast. Well, okay, it’s a lame feast, but Juliet always acts like it’s the best thing ever, to come home and sit down with James and just relax. James likes to give that to her. He has so little to give, here in their tiny make-believe village. So he makes do.
He will remember these happy times always, and he’ll never let them go.
********
“You were wrong!” His voice is hoarse and guttural as he watches Jack fall into the pit, Sawyer’s bootprint on his face. “This ain’t LAX!”
Sawyer’s ears are ringing but he can see Jack trying to apologize, saying he’s sorry. If they’d flashed back to when the plane crashed he’d never have thought that Jack-o would tell Sawyer he was sorry for anything, but Sawyer can see how much the son-of-a-bitch means it now. Something in him – some place inside that Juliet had opened – wants to pity him. All of the rest of Sawyer wants to kill him.
After he’s been down in the hole, after they’ve pulled her body out, as he is burying her, he’s surprised to realize that he isn’t James anymore. He’s Sawyer again. He has buried James in the same grave they put Juliet in.
********
He goes along with the others because he’s still in shock, but once he gets to the temple he knows that’s not where he belongs. He has to shoot a few of them to get out, but then it’s an easy trek back to his house.
When he was 8 they took him out of his house (he can remember under the bed and the blood, that’s his very first memory), and he never saw it again. That’s why he forgot everything. This time will be different. This time he knows how to get back to his house; there are no social workers or foster parents in his way, and he is going to go back and remember this house and everything that ever happened here.
The booze helps. He lives in a haze and eats macaroni and cheese and he remembers every little detail. And then he drinks some more and remembers again. He relives every conversation, every argument, every time she said “James” in that stern voice and he realized he was about to do something stupid, and she stopped him just in time. Juliet was smart in a different way than he was, and that was part of what made them so good together. He remembers the way she stared moodily out the window sometimes, or played seventies songs and cried for no reason, and how he could always charm her out of it with a joke, a hug, and a flower that he tucked behind her ear. He remembers every touch in the night. That is the hardest part to remember, but he’ll be damned if he’ll forget that closeness they’d shared.
He remembers the ring only after he’s drunk so much that his brain isn’t thinking happy thoughts anymore; it’s switched to an alcohol-fueled rage. It’s in that rage that he shoves back the dresser, pries up the floorboards, and retrieves the ring that’s been there for 30 years but for him was only last week. The ring he’d had Horace bring back from the mainland on the sub. It wasn’t much because they don’t have much there in Dharmaville; who needs it? But Juliet would wear it like it was the Hope Diamond, just the way she treated his clumsy meals like they were banquets. He hid it good because she liked to snoop. He wanted to wait for just the right moment…and he’d know it when it came.
Jack never gave it a chance to come.
So he pries it up, holds it for a moment while the rage dissipates and the memories come – memories of something that never happened except in his head, of him putting this ring on her finger and her quietness, because for Juliet love was something too big for words. She would have met his eyes and smiled, and that would have been enough. It would have been everything.
He probably would’ve shot any intruder but Kate. Why did it have to be her? At the most awkward time ever – so typical of Kate. She follows him to the dock so instead of quietly remembering he tells her the story of his destroyed plans, and ends it by throwing the ring into the water that brought Juliet here, first as a prisoner, and then as a happy woman who loved and was loved in return. That is the important part, the love. He forgets about Kate completely, and goes back to his house. He will stay there for as long as he can, until all the food he can scrounge and alcohol he can drink is gone. By then, he’ll have everything committed to memory. That’s his plan.
His plan is derailed by a man he doesn’t know.
“This isn’t your house, James,” he says.
“The hell it ain't... “
“No. You just lived here for awhile. This was never your house.”
Sawyer thinks about that, and he realizes that this Locke-imposter is right. This isn’t his house. Suddenly, maybe it's because of this man, something happens to Sawyer’s mind and he remembers everything. His house had been a brown house with wood floors and his room had had a red bedspread covered with soccer balls and in-line hockey skates, because back then he had been a team player; he loved all sports. He really did have a desk with a globe. He’d had a dog named Hero, and his sudden pangs of missing him come 30 years too late. As clear as day he remembers his home, the one they took him away from almost three decades ago. Every other house he’d lived in since then had just been a place to stay until he moved on. When Juliet had been here, this house had been a home. But it isn’t his home, it was theirs. Not his now, with her gone.
So what the hell. He follows the man because he’s curious – he wants to know who he is and what the hell he’s up to. The ladder makes him laugh to himself – Jacob’s island, Jacob’s ladder – but instead of going up to the sky it goes down to that cold deadly water he’d thought was going to be his eternal hell after he jumped from the chopper. Yeah, everything is upside down here and God is dead. He follows not-Locke down the rickety thing, and is surprised at how hard he struggles to live as it gives way beneath him.
Not-Locke pulls him into some kind of cave in the cliff and shows him names chalked on the rock walls, hundreds of names, all crossed out except for seven... #23 Shephard. #8 Reyes. #108 Austen. #42 Kwon. #16 Jarrah. #15 Ford. #4 Locke. He knows these numbers. He’s fucking tired of wondering what they mean. What he does wonder, though, is why all the other names are crossed off.
As he watches, the man crosses Locke’s name off, too. That leaves six of them. He wonders if Jacob – not-Locke had told him that Jacob had written these names as possible “candidates” – is down to just the six of them or if he’ll write more names as more people come to the island. It can get pretty crowded at times. He almost laughs as he wonders if he should be honored to be on this wall, but he has no intention of being crossed off. Not if it means dying like Rousseau or Steve Jenkins, both dead and buried. He has no intention of being “selected” for whatever bullshit Jacob might want him for, either.
So when not-Locke offers him the chance to get off this godforsaken island, he grabs it. He just wants to go home.
The Hand of Man
Kate picks up the rifle almost reverently, because she already knows what she’ll do with it. She looks around at the Temple of the Dead and realizes that she has no choices. She has to follow Locke, and she has to do what she needs to do. Claire and Sayid both have the same calm, purposeful look on their faces. Kate joins them warily, and earns a curious look from Locke. Still, she has nowhere else to go, nowhere to run.
They walk in darkness, sometimes tripping, sometimes having to keep one another from falling. This group are strangers to her, except for Claire and Sayid, who don’t speak. Claire seems strangely removed from the news that Aaron is safe with Claire’s mother…her entire attitude about Aaron is, though desperate, almost feral. Kate wonders if she’s gone crazy like Danielle did after she lost Alex. Their situations are so similar; Kate’s sympathy blooms and suddenly she feels deeply protective of Claire.
She knows where they’re going, and when they arrive she is almost relieved to see that all of the houses appear deserted. Something about Sawyer’s house looked forlorn, as if it had deflated when it lost the spirits inside. The straggly group follows Locke’s instructions without question, and chooses houses at random for the rest of the night. Kate and Claire choose Sawyer’s house. He isn’t there, as she’d known, but there is no indication that he isn’t coming back. He even left his music playing, for God’s sake, and the needle skips round and round the little circle at the end of the album. Kate gently lifts the arm and places it in its holder, and turns the machine off. When she makes her way to the second bedroom, she finds Claire fast asleep on one of the twin beds. She lies down in the other. If Sawyer comes back tonight, he won’t find Kate in his bed.
She has a plan, and it keeps her awake all night. She has everything she needs; she’d found it all at the temple. Why it was there, she can’t imagine. But to carry it out…what will be the consequences?
Because if there’s one thing Kate Austen has learned, it’s that there are consequences for what she’s about to do.
At sunrise the group gathers and shares what they’ve managed to scrounge from the houses for breakfast. All Kate can find is whiskey, so she comes empty-handed. Ravaged and shell-shocked, the group looks to Locke for guidance.
“We’ll go to the beach camp today,” he tells them. “There will be food there, and shelter. Then we’ll get a better idea of whether or not there’s anyone else alive on this island.”
Kate shivers at the thought of being alone in this crowd of people. They all seem to naively believe in Locke, revere him somehow. Why? Don’t they know?
Locke is strapping on his backpack, almost ready to go to the beach camp. She can’t let that happen. It’s now or never.
The Hand of Man. Ben had told her this at the temple, before he disappeared. It can be done only by the hand of man, and then he’d told her the rest. Kate knows what she’s up against. She also knows that she has a formidable enemy in Sayid. She thinks of Claire as her friend, but sometimes she’ll turn her head suddenly and catch a stare that looks like hate. Right now she thinks they trust her but in a minute…half a minute…one second, Kate raises her rifle, aims directly at Locke’s bowed bald head, and fires. He falls, dead.
Now the group is shocked into immobility, although a few of them are already looking to her to tell them what to do next and one or two of the more resilient ones have gone to Locke’s side. Sayid and Claire act simultaneously, restraining her. Damn! It won’t work if Locke’s body isn’t moved to the place she’s prepared for it. She cries to the gathered crowd:
“He has to be burned. Terrible things will happen if he isn’t. Jacob told me so! He told me what to do.” Invoking the name of Jacob has an immediate effect; everyone is looking at her now with the same respect they’d shown Locke. “I’ve rigged that house with dynamite.” She can’t point so she nods toward Sawyer’s little yellow house. “All we need is someone to take the body inside and light the fuse – it’s in the doorway. And hurry!”
One of the group, a young man, steps forward. They have seen enough to begin to understand, to believe her. “This man,” he says, “is he the cause of the smoke that killed the ones who wouldn’t leave?”
Kate answers truthfully, “I think he IS the smoke, in the form of a man. And he was not the man we knew.” She looks right and left, at Claire and Sayid holding her back. Their expressions don’t change. “Burn him,” she says urgently to the young man, thinking of the Locke they knew and the monster he had become. Her resolve falters, then erupts in an almost inhuman cry. “Burn him to ashes!”
The man goes to Locke’s body quickly and throws it over his shoulders; he is strong and quick and heedless of all the blood. Before Sayid and Claire make up their minds to release Kate and deal with this man, he has dumped Locke’s body inside and lit the fuse.
Sayid and Claire run toward the house, their goal, Kate knows, is to extinguish the fuse before it lights the dynamite. But Kate is good at this, and it’s a short fuse, though she has placed dynamite through the house so that the first explosion will ignite the others. It will work, if she can stop the two running toward the house.
She inhales deeply to steady herself and gathers all her resolve, takes aim and shoots Sayid in the back of the knee. He falls to the ground and gives her a look that isn’t Sayid at all, it is pure evil. Then she calls, as loudly as she can, “Claire, if you do this you will never see Aaron again. He’ll be mine forever.” She has no idea if she is telling the truth, but it works. Claire stops, and Kate runs toward her and grabs her, pulling her away from the house. An instant later it explodes, one discharge after another as the little house is destroyed. She thinks of Sawyer, peacefully reading a book as she'd gazed through his front window. Happy, content, for the first time. She hopes that his glasses hadn’t been inside, and then she wants to cry for the destruction of something precious, a home that Sawyer and Juliet had loved, and had loved each other in. She feels as if it is a repeat of Juliet’s demise, and a horrible betrayal of Sawyer once again.
But she has other things to worry about. Sayid. He is incapacitated for now, but will she have to do more than make him lame? He isn’t Sayid anymore, that’s clear, and he bears watching carefully. So does Claire, who Kate suspects is adept at jungle warfare by now. She is dangerous, but how dangerous Kate doesn’t know. Someone bandaged Sayid’s wound and let him lean on them, and the group, including Claire, has gathered around her. Is she their leader now? If so, then she will lead. She raises her hand for quiet so that she can speak.
Not the hand of man. The hand of woman.
End
Characters: Sawyer (not James) (includes memories of Juliet)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1586
Spoilers: Through "The Substitute" (6.04)
A/N: I'm posting these two stories together because they read like two scenes in the same episode, but they're very different from each other. I hope you'll like them both, regardless.
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
Title: The Hand of Man
Character: Kate (no triangle involved!!!)
Rating: R for violence
Word Count: 1286
Spoilers: Through Sundown (6.06)
A/N: This is a radical change but it ties into the story above, so I've posted them together. Also, I know my Katred is legendary, but I can be fair when fairness is called for.
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
There’s No Place Like Home
He can’t remember the color of the house. That bothers him now, now that he’s happy. Now he wants to be able to remember those first 8 years, and he can’t. He wants to remember his room, and what his bed looked like, and did he have a desk with a globe on it like he’s seen in magazines? What toys did he have? Did he have friends? And what color was his house? Because something in him tells him it was a little, happy house (just like the cozy yellow house he lives in now), until that terrible thing happened. He feels like he is almost ready to remember, and he wants to know all about it now that he feels safe.
Juliet tells him not to dwell on it; he’s made his decision about going back (he didn’t go) and that should tell him that he really wants to put it behind him. And he does – the bad parts. He just wants to remember all the happy years before that. Christmas. Birthdays. Did he have a pet, and what happened to it if he had?
Juliet works long days at the motor pool and comes home dirty and sweaty, and she tries to shower and have supper on the stove by the time James comes home. His job is more flexible, though, so he tries to beat her home and throw something together – he’s been cooking for himself since he was 16 and he can make a mean macaroni and cheese, and a salad. Add some Dharma wine and it’s a feast. Well, okay, it’s a lame feast, but Juliet always acts like it’s the best thing ever, to come home and sit down with James and just relax. James likes to give that to her. He has so little to give, here in their tiny make-believe village. So he makes do.
He will remember these happy times always, and he’ll never let them go.
********
“You were wrong!” His voice is hoarse and guttural as he watches Jack fall into the pit, Sawyer’s bootprint on his face. “This ain’t LAX!”
Sawyer’s ears are ringing but he can see Jack trying to apologize, saying he’s sorry. If they’d flashed back to when the plane crashed he’d never have thought that Jack-o would tell Sawyer he was sorry for anything, but Sawyer can see how much the son-of-a-bitch means it now. Something in him – some place inside that Juliet had opened – wants to pity him. All of the rest of Sawyer wants to kill him.
After he’s been down in the hole, after they’ve pulled her body out, as he is burying her, he’s surprised to realize that he isn’t James anymore. He’s Sawyer again. He has buried James in the same grave they put Juliet in.
********
He goes along with the others because he’s still in shock, but once he gets to the temple he knows that’s not where he belongs. He has to shoot a few of them to get out, but then it’s an easy trek back to his house.
When he was 8 they took him out of his house (he can remember under the bed and the blood, that’s his very first memory), and he never saw it again. That’s why he forgot everything. This time will be different. This time he knows how to get back to his house; there are no social workers or foster parents in his way, and he is going to go back and remember this house and everything that ever happened here.
The booze helps. He lives in a haze and eats macaroni and cheese and he remembers every little detail. And then he drinks some more and remembers again. He relives every conversation, every argument, every time she said “James” in that stern voice and he realized he was about to do something stupid, and she stopped him just in time. Juliet was smart in a different way than he was, and that was part of what made them so good together. He remembers the way she stared moodily out the window sometimes, or played seventies songs and cried for no reason, and how he could always charm her out of it with a joke, a hug, and a flower that he tucked behind her ear. He remembers every touch in the night. That is the hardest part to remember, but he’ll be damned if he’ll forget that closeness they’d shared.
He remembers the ring only after he’s drunk so much that his brain isn’t thinking happy thoughts anymore; it’s switched to an alcohol-fueled rage. It’s in that rage that he shoves back the dresser, pries up the floorboards, and retrieves the ring that’s been there for 30 years but for him was only last week. The ring he’d had Horace bring back from the mainland on the sub. It wasn’t much because they don’t have much there in Dharmaville; who needs it? But Juliet would wear it like it was the Hope Diamond, just the way she treated his clumsy meals like they were banquets. He hid it good because she liked to snoop. He wanted to wait for just the right moment…and he’d know it when it came.
Jack never gave it a chance to come.
So he pries it up, holds it for a moment while the rage dissipates and the memories come – memories of something that never happened except in his head, of him putting this ring on her finger and her quietness, because for Juliet love was something too big for words. She would have met his eyes and smiled, and that would have been enough. It would have been everything.
He probably would’ve shot any intruder but Kate. Why did it have to be her? At the most awkward time ever – so typical of Kate. She follows him to the dock so instead of quietly remembering he tells her the story of his destroyed plans, and ends it by throwing the ring into the water that brought Juliet here, first as a prisoner, and then as a happy woman who loved and was loved in return. That is the important part, the love. He forgets about Kate completely, and goes back to his house. He will stay there for as long as he can, until all the food he can scrounge and alcohol he can drink is gone. By then, he’ll have everything committed to memory. That’s his plan.
His plan is derailed by a man he doesn’t know.
“This isn’t your house, James,” he says.
“The hell it ain't... “
“No. You just lived here for awhile. This was never your house.”
Sawyer thinks about that, and he realizes that this Locke-imposter is right. This isn’t his house. Suddenly, maybe it's because of this man, something happens to Sawyer’s mind and he remembers everything. His house had been a brown house with wood floors and his room had had a red bedspread covered with soccer balls and in-line hockey skates, because back then he had been a team player; he loved all sports. He really did have a desk with a globe. He’d had a dog named Hero, and his sudden pangs of missing him come 30 years too late. As clear as day he remembers his home, the one they took him away from almost three decades ago. Every other house he’d lived in since then had just been a place to stay until he moved on. When Juliet had been here, this house had been a home. But it isn’t his home, it was theirs. Not his now, with her gone.
So what the hell. He follows the man because he’s curious – he wants to know who he is and what the hell he’s up to. The ladder makes him laugh to himself – Jacob’s island, Jacob’s ladder – but instead of going up to the sky it goes down to that cold deadly water he’d thought was going to be his eternal hell after he jumped from the chopper. Yeah, everything is upside down here and God is dead. He follows not-Locke down the rickety thing, and is surprised at how hard he struggles to live as it gives way beneath him.
Not-Locke pulls him into some kind of cave in the cliff and shows him names chalked on the rock walls, hundreds of names, all crossed out except for seven... #23 Shephard. #8 Reyes. #108 Austen. #42 Kwon. #16 Jarrah. #15 Ford. #4 Locke. He knows these numbers. He’s fucking tired of wondering what they mean. What he does wonder, though, is why all the other names are crossed off.
As he watches, the man crosses Locke’s name off, too. That leaves six of them. He wonders if Jacob – not-Locke had told him that Jacob had written these names as possible “candidates” – is down to just the six of them or if he’ll write more names as more people come to the island. It can get pretty crowded at times. He almost laughs as he wonders if he should be honored to be on this wall, but he has no intention of being crossed off. Not if it means dying like Rousseau or Steve Jenkins, both dead and buried. He has no intention of being “selected” for whatever bullshit Jacob might want him for, either.
So when not-Locke offers him the chance to get off this godforsaken island, he grabs it. He just wants to go home.
The Hand of Man
Kate picks up the rifle almost reverently, because she already knows what she’ll do with it. She looks around at the Temple of the Dead and realizes that she has no choices. She has to follow Locke, and she has to do what she needs to do. Claire and Sayid both have the same calm, purposeful look on their faces. Kate joins them warily, and earns a curious look from Locke. Still, she has nowhere else to go, nowhere to run.
They walk in darkness, sometimes tripping, sometimes having to keep one another from falling. This group are strangers to her, except for Claire and Sayid, who don’t speak. Claire seems strangely removed from the news that Aaron is safe with Claire’s mother…her entire attitude about Aaron is, though desperate, almost feral. Kate wonders if she’s gone crazy like Danielle did after she lost Alex. Their situations are so similar; Kate’s sympathy blooms and suddenly she feels deeply protective of Claire.
She knows where they’re going, and when they arrive she is almost relieved to see that all of the houses appear deserted. Something about Sawyer’s house looked forlorn, as if it had deflated when it lost the spirits inside. The straggly group follows Locke’s instructions without question, and chooses houses at random for the rest of the night. Kate and Claire choose Sawyer’s house. He isn’t there, as she’d known, but there is no indication that he isn’t coming back. He even left his music playing, for God’s sake, and the needle skips round and round the little circle at the end of the album. Kate gently lifts the arm and places it in its holder, and turns the machine off. When she makes her way to the second bedroom, she finds Claire fast asleep on one of the twin beds. She lies down in the other. If Sawyer comes back tonight, he won’t find Kate in his bed.
She has a plan, and it keeps her awake all night. She has everything she needs; she’d found it all at the temple. Why it was there, she can’t imagine. But to carry it out…what will be the consequences?
Because if there’s one thing Kate Austen has learned, it’s that there are consequences for what she’s about to do.
At sunrise the group gathers and shares what they’ve managed to scrounge from the houses for breakfast. All Kate can find is whiskey, so she comes empty-handed. Ravaged and shell-shocked, the group looks to Locke for guidance.
“We’ll go to the beach camp today,” he tells them. “There will be food there, and shelter. Then we’ll get a better idea of whether or not there’s anyone else alive on this island.”
Kate shivers at the thought of being alone in this crowd of people. They all seem to naively believe in Locke, revere him somehow. Why? Don’t they know?
Locke is strapping on his backpack, almost ready to go to the beach camp. She can’t let that happen. It’s now or never.
The Hand of Man. Ben had told her this at the temple, before he disappeared. It can be done only by the hand of man, and then he’d told her the rest. Kate knows what she’s up against. She also knows that she has a formidable enemy in Sayid. She thinks of Claire as her friend, but sometimes she’ll turn her head suddenly and catch a stare that looks like hate. Right now she thinks they trust her but in a minute…half a minute…one second, Kate raises her rifle, aims directly at Locke’s bowed bald head, and fires. He falls, dead.
Now the group is shocked into immobility, although a few of them are already looking to her to tell them what to do next and one or two of the more resilient ones have gone to Locke’s side. Sayid and Claire act simultaneously, restraining her. Damn! It won’t work if Locke’s body isn’t moved to the place she’s prepared for it. She cries to the gathered crowd:
“He has to be burned. Terrible things will happen if he isn’t. Jacob told me so! He told me what to do.” Invoking the name of Jacob has an immediate effect; everyone is looking at her now with the same respect they’d shown Locke. “I’ve rigged that house with dynamite.” She can’t point so she nods toward Sawyer’s little yellow house. “All we need is someone to take the body inside and light the fuse – it’s in the doorway. And hurry!”
One of the group, a young man, steps forward. They have seen enough to begin to understand, to believe her. “This man,” he says, “is he the cause of the smoke that killed the ones who wouldn’t leave?”
Kate answers truthfully, “I think he IS the smoke, in the form of a man. And he was not the man we knew.” She looks right and left, at Claire and Sayid holding her back. Their expressions don’t change. “Burn him,” she says urgently to the young man, thinking of the Locke they knew and the monster he had become. Her resolve falters, then erupts in an almost inhuman cry. “Burn him to ashes!”
The man goes to Locke’s body quickly and throws it over his shoulders; he is strong and quick and heedless of all the blood. Before Sayid and Claire make up their minds to release Kate and deal with this man, he has dumped Locke’s body inside and lit the fuse.
Sayid and Claire run toward the house, their goal, Kate knows, is to extinguish the fuse before it lights the dynamite. But Kate is good at this, and it’s a short fuse, though she has placed dynamite through the house so that the first explosion will ignite the others. It will work, if she can stop the two running toward the house.
She inhales deeply to steady herself and gathers all her resolve, takes aim and shoots Sayid in the back of the knee. He falls to the ground and gives her a look that isn’t Sayid at all, it is pure evil. Then she calls, as loudly as she can, “Claire, if you do this you will never see Aaron again. He’ll be mine forever.” She has no idea if she is telling the truth, but it works. Claire stops, and Kate runs toward her and grabs her, pulling her away from the house. An instant later it explodes, one discharge after another as the little house is destroyed. She thinks of Sawyer, peacefully reading a book as she'd gazed through his front window. Happy, content, for the first time. She hopes that his glasses hadn’t been inside, and then she wants to cry for the destruction of something precious, a home that Sawyer and Juliet had loved, and had loved each other in. She feels as if it is a repeat of Juliet’s demise, and a horrible betrayal of Sawyer once again.
But she has other things to worry about. Sayid. He is incapacitated for now, but will she have to do more than make him lame? He isn’t Sayid anymore, that’s clear, and he bears watching carefully. So does Claire, who Kate suspects is adept at jungle warfare by now. She is dangerous, but how dangerous Kate doesn’t know. Someone bandaged Sayid’s wound and let him lean on them, and the group, including Claire, has gathered around her. Is she their leader now? If so, then she will lead. She raises her hand for quiet so that she can speak.
Not the hand of man. The hand of woman.
End
