Chapter Text
Kate slid into the seat next to Sawyer's.
"We should have made Jack come with us," she said.
The thought had been giving her a pounding headache since they took off. Claire had calmed down enough, now, that she felt all right getting up to tell him so.
"Jesus, girl...don't you dare ..." Sawyer said. "You're the one who described what Jack disintegrated into after he left the first time. Do you not get what a mess he'd be if we'd dragged him along with us, kicking and fighting? Even if he could have survived the jump with that cut in his side...."
"Desmond would have managed the problem with the island," Kate wasn't letting go. "We'll probably land in, what? Four hours? We could have gotten him help..."
Sawyer flipped his seat back and did his best to convey that the conversation was over. Kate left him, pacing.
~*~
"I can't do it..." Claire said.
They were three hours in the air, by then.
"Sweetie.... you don't have to deal with everything that's ahead all at once," Kate offered, taking her hand. "You don't have to deal with anything at all right now. Okay?"
"He'll never forgive me," Claire said. "For leaving him. He knew I didn't want him before he was born and... now...."
"Don't do this to yourself....." Kate pulled her in and let Claire have a cry on her shoulder. "I know you don't have a lot of reason to believe me, but.... it'll be all right. It will."
It had to be. Or her going back? It had all been for nothing.
She didn't tell Claire that, of course.
~*~
"Tell them to get up here, so we can put our heads together and talk," Frank told Miles. "I gotta know where we're landing this thing...and that everyone is on the same page. There are risks no matter where we choose."
Miles brought Kate and Sawyer up front to confer - and they chose Nauru.
~*~
They'd worked together very efficiently on their escape plan; like a well-oiled team. But later, there was one thing none of them could agree on - and that was when Richard Alpert had disappeared.
Kate remembered him running in front of her and to her right as they headed toward the tree line parallel to the runway. Claire said no; the last they’d seen Richard he was standing in front of the plane. She remembered a glimpse of him holding several armed guards at bay with nothing more than an upraised hand and a few words in a language she didn’t recognize. She remembered wondering as she ran how many languages he knew.
Miles and Sawyer agreed later that, to them, it was as if Richard had disappeared right off of the plane - as illogical as that sounded. They both noticed how he didn’t leave his seat when it taxied to a stop, how he sat with his hands folded, fingertips under his chin looking determined and maybe a little angry. Sawyer said it seemed like Richard had made up his mind about something he had to do next, something he hadn’t shared with them and wasn’t very happy about at all.
They'd agreed Sawyer and Miles would wait a beat, while Kate, Claire, Richard and Frank threw the handmade ladder that had been crafted on the island over the side of the plane, climbed down and distracted any security that might show up. Then, Sawyer and Miles would do their best to slip off unseen and head for the one place no one would expect them to run: Straight to the airport terminal and the money, clothing and supplies inside that might help them all get away and on their way home.
Only two flights land each week at the Nauru Airport. Odds were that an unannounced, unexpected jumbo jet setting down on the lone asphalt strip at INU would raise not only a fair amount of attention but maybe a little panic, too. They could only hope that by waiting, and landing late at night they might manage to evade whoever came out to confront them. In the best scenario they could come up with, no one would emerge in time to challenge them and they’d all make a clean escape. At worst, security might catch every one of them. Then the questions would start: Where was the plane during the days since it had disappeared off radar on its way from LAX to Guam? How did people never on the original flight list end up on board? Where were the other passengers, the luggage?
Complicating matters was one simple fact: Most of them had no I.D. on them, and very good reasons not to want to answer questions about who they were and how they came to be on board Ajira 316.
~*~
"Nice and easy, girl," Sawyer helped Claire get her bearings and start down the foot ladder. "There you go. Good job, take her slow...."
"Good luck, James," Kate said as she got into position to follow Claire down.
"You too... see you soon. We're almost home, remember that."
For a few seconds after they’d popped the door open and started climbing down, they felt only a heavy, humid silence and saw a moon so bright the runway glowed faintly. But then they heard voices headed their way.
Kate and Claire barely made the tree line in time. Sawyer and Miles were spotted, chased and tackled, and had to fight their way clear. They abandoned their plan to raid the airport gift shop and offices for supplies, and ran instead for the residential neighborhood near the airport in search of Kate and Claire.
And as for when it was that Richard had disappeared? Well, Frank Lapidus was the most confused of them all. He was sure Richard had been right with him all the way, talking down the guards, agreeing to explain how they’d come here and who they were, walking with him to the airport door— Richard was right there up until the moment when he was gone. And on top of it all, the guards expressed no surprise at all, never looked for or asked about Richard. It was like they’d never seen him. They simply sat Frank down in the lobby, posted a guard and left him waiting for whatever was coming next.
Most people would have felt a hollow chill from their scalp to their shoes to be left to fend for themselves that abruptly, to have gone from six of them in it together to being alone with so much to explain. But Frank could only shake his head in amazement at how surprised he was not at that moment.
~*~
Their escape sent them in very different directions. But one hundred and eight days after the plane touched down, Kate, Claire, Sawyer, Miles and Frank all had one thing in common: Every one of them wanted to find Richard Alpert - for different reasons.
And for one of them, it would become a matter of life or death.