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“Hey. Hey. Hey, big bro, wake up!”
Sawyer wakes to a persistent and pointy finger jabbing him in the ribs and he smacks the hand away, opening his eyes to find Miles barely an inch from his nose. It’s a startling sight and he grabs the rifle; Miles sensibly backs up.
“Woah, it’s just me.”
“Yeah, don’t think that’ll stop me…” Sawyer breaks off on realising that their party is two short. “Where’s Claire and Aaron?”
Miles rolls his eyes. “Why do you think I woke you up, dumbass? She just wandered off into the jungle with some grey-haired dude who was holding Aaron. She looked kinda… spaced out.”
Sawyer’s completely confused now, because the only grey-haired guy he can think of is Bernard, who has no reason to come and spirit Claire away in the middle of the night. Unless it’s one of the Others, but they’ve been kinda quiet lately since Hurley ran a couple of them over.
“She called him Dad,” Miles says helpfully, and Sawyer decides to stop being confused and just find Claire in the hope that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. He jumps up and drags Miles to his feet.
“Easy, easy!”
“Which way did they go?” Sawyer growls, not letting go of Miles’ collar. The other man nods through the trees to their left.
“I’d have followed them, but you know, restraining order and all that.”
Sawyer narrows his eyes and shoves past Miles along the path that Claire and her mysterious, never-before-seen father took. They can’t have that much of a head start, and Sawyer begins to run.
“Claire! Claire! Claire, where are you?”
“Seriously, you think that running through the jungle yelling when there are a bunch of mercenaries out to kill us all is a good idea?” Miles hisses, but Sawyer’s past caring at this point because of all the people he can’t lose, sweet, innocent Claire and her baby who never did anything to anyone are top of the list.
“Claire!”
“Sawyer?”
And just like that, they find her, and the guy holding Aaron is that guy from the bar in Sydney who turned out to be Jack’s father? Jack’s dead father? Who’s also apparently Claire’s father? Who’s still dead and should not be wandering about in the jungle and really shouldn’t be holding Aaron?
“Claire, what are you doing? Where are you going? Who is this guy? You can’t just wander off on your own like that, it’s not safe!”
He’s aware of how much like Jack the ever-concerned leader he’s sounding right now, but as much as he hates it, he really, really wants to keep Claire safe and this man-who-can’t-be-Jack’s-father is setting off about seventeen different alarm bells in Sawyer’s head right now.
“I’m not on my own. I’m with him.”
God, she’s really spaced out. On the surface she looks totally lucid but she’s not Claire, not really. That head injury she got in New Otherton must have been worse than they thought.
“Claire, snap out of it! He’s got Aaron! Who even is he?”
“It’s ok. He’s my father.”
“Claire, he’s dead!” Sawyer exclaims. “His coffin was on our freaking plane!”
“If I’m dead, James, how am I here now?” Jack-and-Claire’s dad says, so horribly calmly, and there’s something about his utter stillness and aloofness that makes Sawyer just want to knock Claire upside the head and grab her and Aaron and run for it.
“Considering what I’ve seen on this damn island, nothing would surprise me,” he growls. “Claire, please, come with us back to the beach.”
“It’s fine,” Claire says, and she has a hazy, almost dreamlike quality to her voice. “I’ll be fine, Sawyer.”
“Sorry, Mamacita, but I ain’t buying it. What’s his name?” Jack’s father was Christian, right? Christian Shephard.
“Does that matter?” Claire asks.
“You’re letting a guy whose name you don’t even know hold your kid!” Sawyer explodes. “And you say he’s your father but you don’t know his name!”
“We need to go now, Claire,” Christian says. “The others will be at the cabin soon.”
“What others!” Sawyer exclaims, but Christian cuts him off, speaking to Claire.
“Why don’t we give Aaron to James and Miles, they’ll look after him for you for a while.”
Claire’s completely passive as Christian hands Aaron over to Sawyer.
“No.” Sawyer shakes his head. “No way. Claire! Claire! Can you hear me in there? Claire!”
“Bye, Sawyer.”
She turns to leave, to follow Christian through the trees, and Sawyer curses before shoving Aaron at Miles, who squawks in protest, and running after them, smacking Claire upside the head with the rifle. He winces at the crack of it and catches her as she slumps back against him. He’ll gladly take whatever she might throw at him when she wakes up if it gets her away from Christian and back safely with Aaron.
“Sorry Claire, but you’ll thank me in the long run.”
Christian’s face has changed from calm and unperturbed to a twisted, ugly mass of fury, and in the distance, Sawyer hears that awful tickatickaticka. He doesn’t know what he’s unleashed here, and he’s beginning to think he’s made a terrible mistake. He scoops Claire up, thank the stars she’s so tiny, and runs hell for leather. Glancing back over his shoulder, he sees that Christian has vanished and the plume of black smoke is rushing after them.
“RUN!” he yells to Miles, and despite their burdens, the two of them charge through the jungle until Sawyer realises that he can’t hear it following them any longer.
“Has it gone?” Miles pants. Sawyer’s too winded to speak and he lays Claire down on the ground. If it sneaks up on them now, they’re done for. But nothing happens. It does seem to have left them alone. Whatever it wanted Claire for, it can’t have wanted her that badly. It probably needs to get back to that cabin that these mysterious Other Others are waiting in. Nonetheless, he and Miles stay there on guard until Claire comes round.
“What happened?” she asks groggily. “Did we get attacked again?”
Sawyer and Miles exchange a look.
“Sort of,” Sawyer says. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Going to sleep.” Claire looks around herself. “Where are we? Where’s Aaron?”
“He’s here. He’s fine. Slept right through the whole thing.” Miles hands over the baby, looking quite relieved to be free of it, and Claire holds him close. Miles and Sawyer exchange another look. Claire obviously has no recollection of her close encounter with something that might or might not have been the human form of the smoke monster wearing her dead father’s face, and neither of them are going to tell her.
“We need to keep moving,” Sawyer says. Miles agrees without protest; this experience has rattled him as much as it’s rattled Sawyer and Claire, unsteady on her feet, nods. It’s slow progress in the dark, but Sawyer feels infinitely better knowing that they’re all conscious. Next time they stop to rest, they do guard duty, Miles and Sawyer taking it in turns to sleep. This incident has scared both of them, not that they’ll admit it, and they’ve put aside their differences by mutual and silent consent, just until Claire’s safely back with the rest of the camp.
They reach the beach in the early hours of the morning, and are immediately met with a barrage of incessant questioning. It’s only once Claire is safely off down the beach with Sun treating her newest injury and Rose taking care of Aaron that Sawyer can relax and finally respond to Kate’s interrogation about what the hell happened and why the hell Claire’s poor head has taken such a beating.
He tells her the whole story, sparing no details, and by the end of it, Kate’s just as shaken as he is.
“Kate,” he says presently.
“Yes, James?”
“Don’t tell Claire what happened. Not the me knocking her out part, I can handle the fallout from that. But the part where she nearly left Aaron behind. She wasn’t thinking straight. She wasn’t really Claire.”
Kate nods her understanding. “No, I won’t tell her.”
Sawyer wings up a prayer to a god he doesn’t believe in that nothing else is going to happen to them.
X
Getting on the Zodiac and getting out to the freighter is all a bit of a blur in Claire's mind. Her head is killing her from the attack during the night that Sawyer and Miles seem so cagey about, and she rests her forehead on Sun's shoulder, the other woman's surprisingly strong arm around her keeping her safe and steady as she clutches Aaron close. It seems to be her lot in life that things will happen to her and she won’t remember anything about them. She really just wants to sleep, but Hurley had told her not to sleep because of concussion and now that she's got even more bumps on the head, she probably should heed his advice. And since the last time she fell asleep, she ended up injured again, she really doesn't want to add a third bang or her head will be more bruise than anything else. Getting up the ladder to the freighter is difficult with Aaron tucked in against her chest and only one hand free; Jin climbs up right behind her to keep her steady when she has to move up a rung, but then a pair of large hands are reaching down and she's looking up at Desmond's smiling face.
"Give the bairn here, Claire, I've got him."
She lets Desmond take him gratefully, and clambers up the ladder to allow the others to get up. The sound of the Zodiac zooming away to get the next load of passengers rushes in her ears and her head pounds afresh. There's so much activity and hustle and bustle, and Claire just wants some peace and quiet and aspirin. She takes Aaron back from Desmond and tucks herself away in a little corner behind a container, soothing her son when he starts to complain vocally about all the upheaval.
"Are you all right?" Sun is back beside her, fussing over her head, and Claire heaves a sigh and shakes her head with alarming honesty. She's too tired to put a brave face on it.
"Is this really it?" she asks. "Are we really leaving?"
Sun smiles. "Yes, we are."
"Stay with me?" Claire reaches out and grabs Sun's hand with her free one. "Please... After everything that's happened these last couple of days, I don't want to be alone."
"Of course, sweetheart." Sun curls up beside her and Claire nestles her head on the older woman's shoulder again, a nice comfortable pillow. Jin comes over and they talk in quiet, urgent Korean for a while, but Sun is as good as her word and stays with Claire and Aaron as Jin goes back down into the bowels of the freighter. It all turns into a haze, the ocean wind whipping at her face. Claire doesn't even really register when all hell breaks loose and Desmond starts screaming about a bomb on the freighter, and Sun is on her feet in a moment going to find Jin. Claire just screws her eyes up and listens to the roar of the helicopter, and cuddles Aaron so close that he squeaks. Then a warm hand is on her shoulder and she can barely hear herself think, but she looks up, pulls herself back into the nightmare that's going on around her. It's Hurley hovering above.
"Come on Claire, we have to get off the boat, it's gonna blow."
That gets movement back into her limbs and Hurley pulls her to her feet, ushering her towards the chopper. Sun is already in there, screaming for Jin, and Jack and Kate are arguing by the door into the freighter, and Sayid has just pushed past them saying he has some experience with explosives, and soon enough the helicopter is taking off with only six passengers and a baby and a limited amount of fuel.
The freighter blowing up is so loud and so hot that it makes Claire's head feel like it's about to explode as well. Aaron is screaming, Sun is screaming, everyone else is screaming at Sun to sit down before she rocks the chopper out of the sky, that Jin's gone, Sayid's gone, and all Claire can do is cry, because they were so close and yet so far, and now they have to go back to that hateful island...
There's a white flash on the horizon, unrelated to the freighter, and suddenly the island has gone. Silence abounds in the chopper for a single blessed minute, and then everything else goes to hell, because the thing can't stay in the air forever and there is absolutely nowhere it can land. Forget what she said about the island being hateful; right now Claire would give anything to see it again.
They ditch in the water and Claire is terrified, as how is Aaron supposed to survive this? He can't swim! She can't swim whilst she's holding him! She just treads water, trying to keep his head above, and as long as he's screaming, she knows he's all right. Then she sees the life raft and Hurley is paddling along with her, propelling her towards their salvation and keeping Aaron's head up. Once they're in the raft, she collapses into his side gratefully, but she barely dares to breathe until they're all in the little boat. Eight of them, including Aaron. Of all of them, only eight have managed to get away. Aaron's sobbing subsides but he's so incredibly cold and wet and shivery, and in the end Claire takes her top off so that she can clutch him skin to skin and try to warm him up. The sun soon dries them, but then the sun begins to go down, and they're floating along in the middle of bloody nowhere, with no food, no water, nothing but each other. Aaron's hungry but Claire's dehydrated and she's got barely any milk. Sun is quiet now, staring straight ahead in shock, and no-one even tries to keep morale up. They're doomed, and they know it, until Desmond and Jack spot a light and everything gets loud again as they holler for help. Considering their luck, Claire thinks bitterly, they're probably going out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Except, for the first time, luck is on their side. Of all the boats in all the world that could have entered this patch of the pacific at this specific time, it is Penny's boat. Desmond's girlfriend whom he time-travelled to see. She's here, and now they're all on her boat, and she has food and water and blankets and everything they need. Including, much to Claire's relief, painkillers.
She spends the rest of the night sitting on a little sheltered bench on the deck with Aaron, sipping water, feeding him, drying him off and thanking whatever's out there that they're together and they're off the island. Kate stays beside her, the shoulder for her aching head that she can no longer expect Sun to be. Tomorrow, Claire will truly take in everything that's happened and she will grieve those they left behind on the island, Sawyer and Miles and Juliet, and she'll grieve those they lost on the freighter, Jin and Sayid and Michael. The pain in her head finally subsides although she still doesn't want to sleep, for fear that she'll wake up back on that island, in the middle of something she doesn't understand and can't quite remember.
At length though, sheer exhaustion takes over and she feels herself nodding off, and she feels Kate take Aaron from her arms and lay her down on the bench, head in Kate’s lap, covering her with a blanket.
"I've got him, Claire," she says softly. "We'll be right here when you wake up."
And against all the odds, they are.