Title: Quantum Leap: The “Lost” Episode
Author: Diandra Hollman
E-Mail: diandrahollman@gmail.com
Website: http://diandrahollman.tripod.com
LJ: http://diandrahollman.livejournal.com
Date Finished: One minute before midnight on 1/7/10. Ha!
Rating: PG-13. Possibly an R depending on how well you can 
   handle vague talk about sex.
Keywords: crossover, indirect Jack/Sawyer, inadvertent 
   Sam/Sawyer, slash
Spoilers: For Lost: “The Variable” through “The Incident”.
Disclaimer: Sam and Al belong(ed) to Donald Bellisario. The 
   first couple paragraphs of the story are directly 
   transcribed from the introduction to each episode of 
   “Quantum Leap”. Everyone else belongs to Darlton and JJ 
   Abrams, as do any events or dialogue that mirror “Lost” 
   cannon. I’m just having some harmless, nonprofit fun 
   playing with them.
Archive: Just ask. 
Summary: Sam Becket leaps into Jack Shephard in 1970s 
   Dharmaville. It proves to be his most confusing leap 
   yet.
Dedication: To the creators – and fans – of two of the best 
   damn sci-fi shows on television.
Author's Notes: This is what happens when you try to write  
   “Lost” fanfiction while re-watching all five seasons of 
   “Quantum Leap”, apparently. You don’t need to have 
   watched “Quantum Leap” to understand what’s going on 
   here, though *some* knowledge of the show might make it 
   more fun to read. 

   PS – I know I changed the translation on Jack’s tattoo. 
   I think the actual translation of Matthew’s tattoo is 
   just as appropriate as the fake one in this context. 



Quantum Leap: The “Lost” Episode 
By Diandra Hollman

Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, 
Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and 
vanished. 

He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror 
images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to 
change history for the better. His only guide on this journey 
is Al, an Observer from his own time who appears in the form of 
a hologram that only Sam can see and hear.

And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, 
striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each 
time that his next leap will be the leap home…

******

A certain degree of disorientation always accompanied Sam 
Beckett’s leaps through other people’s lives. This time, when 
the world stopped wobbling crazily and his surroundings came 
into focus he was relieved to find himself alone. At least he 
would have time to try to figure out who, where and when he was 
before he had to confront anyone or anything.

The who was easy. According to his generic brown jumpsuit 
pocket his name was Jack and his job title was “work man” 
which, judging by the mop in his hands, meant he was a janitor. 
“Great,” he mumbled, dumping the mop into the nearby bucket.

The where and when proved more difficult. He was in an 
elementary school classroom, that much was obvious from the 
artwork on the walls. It was a small room with one door and a 
small window, both of which led outside, so he figured he was 
either in a satellite building or some rural one-room 
schoolhouse. Judging by the jungle foliage he could see outside 
he thought it just might be the latter.

There were no calendars, datebooks, newspapers or even clocks 
in the room. His only other clue was the repeated appearance of 
an octagonal logo with the word “Dharma” in the center.

‘Well, so far it *sounds* like the 70s,’ he thought helplessly. 
Until Al showed up he would just have to wing it. ‘As if 
reliving the 70s isn’t bad enough.’ 

He was just reaching for one of the drawers in the teacher’s 
desk – intent on searching for some sort of clue – when a voice 
outside called “Jack?”

Before Sam could answer a portly man with long, curly hair came 
around the door frame, took one look at him and stopped. “Oh, 
uh...sorry. You must be new. Listen, uh...if you see Jack 
around, could you tell him LaFleur wants to see him?”

Sam blinked slowly at the man as the meaning of his words sunk 
in. So much for knowing the who. “Oh boy...” He recovered 
quickly. If there was one thing he’d learned leaping through 
time it was the art of rolling with unexpected punches. “Uh, 
sure. What’s your name again?”

The man stepped closer and held out his hand, which Sam 
tentatively shook. “Just call me Hurley.” Hurley’s friendly 
smile faltered suddenly as his eyes fell on the pocket of Sam’s 
jumpsuit. “Why are you wearing Jack’s clothes?”

Sam’s momentary relief at not being expected to produce his own 
name gave way to more disorientation. “Uh...I spilled some 
grease on my uniform, so Jack let me borrow this one while mine 
is being cleaned.” He hoped this explanation would be plausible 
enough to placate Hurley. He also hoped whoever he’d leaped 
into hadn’t killed this Jack person and stolen his clothes.

‘Best not to let him think about it,’ Sam thought. “Well, I 
should get back to work. I’ll give Jack the message when I see 
him.” ‘*If* I see him,’ he thought morbidly. He abandoned the 
desk to pick up the mop and resume wiping down the already 
surgically clean looking floor.

“Okay.” Hurley shrugged and shuffled back out the door.

Sam breathed a sigh of relief and reached for the desk drawer 
again. It was locked. As was every other drawer in the desk. 
“Damnit!”

“Well, well,” a new voice drawled from the doorway, nearly 
making Sam jump right out of the chair he was sitting in. “If 
it ain’t good ole’ Jack Shephard sittin’ on the job.”

Sam glanced at the name sewn in his jumpsuit again and decided 
he just wasn’t meant to get his footing on this leap. “Sorry. I 
was just...” He looked up at the smiling man now standing 
before him and quickly read the name emblazoned on his jumpsuit 
pocket. LaFleur. “Oh...did you...talk to Hurley?”

“I ain’t seen ‘im since I sent him out lookin’ for you. Why?”

Sam frowned. If he *was* Jack and Hurley thought he was someone 
else...he shook his head. Best not to make any assumptions yet. 
“Nothing. Never mind.”

LaFleur’s charming, dimpled smile faltered a little and he 
cocked his head at Sam. “You okay there, Doc? You’re lookin’ 
kinda pale.”

‘Doc? Strange nickname for a janitor...’ “I’m fine, it’s 
just...” Sam fished for a response, then remembered the jungle 
outside. “It’s kinda hot in here. I needed to sit down for a 
minute.”

LaFleur’s smile fell entirely, replaced by a look of worry. 
“You okay? You ain’t sick, are you?”

“No. I...” Sam was surprised when the Southerner marched around 
the desk and grabbed him by the chin, forcing their eyes to 
meet. Sam was struck by the gentle firmness of his touch and 
the depth of concern in his clear green eyes. “I’m fine,” he 
finished weakly.

LaFleur grunted. “That your official diagnosis, Doc?”

“I’m a doctor,” Sam mumbled, getting more confused by the 
second.

LaFleur’s eyes widened and he held up three fingers. “How many 
fingers am I holdin’ up?”

Sam decided he’d just have to throw caution to the wind for the 
time being. “I don’t have a concussion, LaFleur, it’s just mild 
heat stress. That happens sometimes when you work in the middle 
of a jungle in a building that doesn’t have air conditioning.”

LaFleur frowned. “Never saw you complainin’ when we were livin’ 
in tents. And you were workin’ a helluva lot harder back then – 
runnin’ around playin’ God. And why’re you callin’ me LaFleur?”

Sam blinked at the man and scrambled to both make sense of that 
confusing bit of information and come up with a reply that 
wouldn’t send up any more red flags. ‘Where are you when I need 
you, Al?’ “What should I call you?”

The charming smirk slowly melted back onto LaFleur’s lips. 
“Well, round the Dharma folk you can call me Jim, but 
otherwise...” he leaned down until his lips practically touched 
Sam’s ear. “I’m kinda partial to ‘Sawyer’ now. ‘specially when 
I’ve heard how you can say it,” he murmured.

Sam stiffened and fought the urge to shove the man away and run 
for the door. He had been pretty sure Jack – or whoever he was 
supposed to be – was a man, but now he wasn’t so sure of 
anything. Was Jack short for Jackie? No, even without a mirror 
he could see that the shoes he was wearing were definitely 
men’s shoes. So was this man Jack’s lover or was he just 
playing some sort of game? “Hu...Hurley said you wanted to see 
me, sir? Uh, Sawyer?”

Sawyer chuckled and brushed his lips against Sam’s neck. “Sir. 
Now there’s somethin’ I never thought I’d hear comin’ from you. 
I think I might like bein’ your boss for a change.”

Sam’s eyes widened as Sawyer’s hand landed on his knee and 
started creeping steadily up the inside of his thigh, removing 
any further questions as to both Jack’s gender and his 
sexuality.

“I was just hopin’ I could talk you into a little afternoon 
delight,” Sawyer said in a deep, rumbling bedroom voice. 
“Whaddya say, darlin’?”

Sam jumped from the chair with, he was pretty sure, a highly 
undignified squeak and took two clumsy steps away from Sawyer 
before stumbling into a filing cabinet. He had just enough time 
to regain his balance before Sawyer was at his side, one arm 
around his waist, steadying him.

“Jesus...you really are sick.”

Sam opened his mouth to reply, then hesitated when he saw the 
concern in Sawyer’s eyes again. “I...I’ll be fine. I just need 
a cool place to lie down for a while.”

Sawyer looked skeptical and Sam worried that his heat stress 
excuse might cause Sawyer to fret over him like a mother hen. 
“You sure?”

Sam managed what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I’m 
sure.”

Sawyer looked into his eyes for several moments, like he was 
searching for some sort of clue. Finally, he nodded. “Okay. 
I’ll see if I can find someone to cover you. Let’s get you back 
to the cabin.”

Sam nodded, his shoulder muscles relaxing in relief, and let 
Sawyer guide him from the small building with a hand under his 
elbow. He felt bad now for worrying Sawyer. It was clear the 
man loved Jack. Sam suddenly remembered Al once telling him 
that any friendship involves a certain degree of love, but as 
far as his leap-damaged memory could recall he had never 
actually been *in love* with a man before. Though having to 
dress in skin-tight skirts and ward off groping men he would 
never even consider friends had a way of throwing one’s 
sexuality into question.

‘My sexuality doesn’t matter,’ Sam berated himself. ‘As long as 
I’m here I am *Jack*, and Jack...is apparently a gay man.’ As 
long as Sawyer stayed above the belt during that time he could 
handle it. Man or woman, he was never comfortable with the more 
intimate parts of his hosts lives. It felt too much like 
adultery.

His thoughts scattered as Sawyer guided him through a small 
compound that appeared to have been built in the middle of 
nowhere, surrounded on all sides by thick jungle vegetation. 
The style and colors of the simple cookie cutter houses – and 
the shiny new VW buses parked at the edges of the compound – 
told him he was, in fact, somewhere in the 70s. It looked like 
they were somewhere in the south Pacific, but it was impossible 
to tell where, exactly. His best guess was Hawaii since so far, 
everyone he’d met had spoken with American accents. Wherever 
this place was, it was certainly isolated from the outside 
world.

‘Great,’ he thought bitterly. ‘I’m probably in some sort of 
cult.’

Sawyer guided Sam into one of the houses and right into a 
sparsely furnished bedroom. Sam dropped onto the bed gratefully 
and massaged his throbbing temples.

Sawyer knelt in front of him, ducking his head to try to meet 
Sam’s eyes. “You sure you’re okay? You need anythin’?”

Sam managed a reassuring smile. “I’m fine. I just need to rest 
a while.”

Sawyer didn’t look entirely convinced, but he obviously trusted 
Jack to know better in such matters. “Okay, well...I’ll send 
Freckles by later to check on you anyway.”

‘Freckles?’ “Yeah, okay. Thanks.” Sam hoped he’d have a better 
grip on the situation by then.

Sawyer leaned forward suddenly, cradling Sam’s face between his 
hands and kissing him briefly but with unmistakable passion. 
“I’ll see you tonight?”

Sam tried to think of an excuse to get out of whatever Sawyer 
had planned but came up blank. He nodded reluctantly, his lips 
firmly sealed.

Sawyer smiled, looking relieved, and stood up, kissing him on 
the forehead before finally leaving the cabin.

Sam breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the front door 
shut, then groaned. ‘Great. I’m a gay man in the 70s, living 
with what looks like a hippie cult in the middle of God-knows-
where. He shot an exasperated glance at the ceiling. “I guess 
just being a gay man in the 70s wasn’t challenging enough?”

Sam sighed and unzipped his uncomfortable jumpsuit before 
setting to work at gathering more clues about his identity 
while he waited for Al to show up and give him some idea of 
what he was here to do.

He unearthed a wallet from a pair of pants buried in the 
bedroom closet. Inside, he found a California driver’s license 
and an ID badge from St. Sebastian’s hospital in Los Angeles. 
From these, he learned his host’s name (Jack Shephard), his 
apparently former job title (surgeon), his hair and eye color, 
height, weight and date of birth. Sam stared at this last bit 
of information as yet another one of the facts he thought he’d 
gleaned so far slipped away. “July 14, 1966.” Sam searched for 
a mirror and stood in front of it, looking back and forth 
between the license and the dark haired man in his reflection. 
“Definitely not the 70s,” he muttered.

He looked at the license again. “Issued February 2005.” He 
groaned. “I’m in the future. Great.” On the one hand, his 
sexuality was unlikely to be a big issue. On the other...how 
could he be here to fix something in these people’s lives if 
none of this had technically happened yet? He tossed the wallet 
and ID cards aside and leaned in closer to his reflection. The 
man in the mirror looked just as lost and confused as he felt. 
He caught sight of some sort of mark on his arm and 
instinctively looked down, remembering only belatedly that it 
wasn’t *his* arm he should be looking at. He looked back at the 
mirror and turned to get a better look at Jack’s left shoulder. 
Brightly colored tattoos ran up and down both the inside and 
outside of his bicep.

“I’m a doctor,” Sam asked his equally skeptical reflection. He 
squinted at a string of characters centered beneath a large 
number 5 and carefully traced them backward. “Eagle high long 
space.” He blinked as long forgotten words tumbled into his 
mind. “Eagles high up cleaving the space. Who masters fates 
rise and descent?” He cocked his head at the cryptic, yet 
apparently famous line as a new realization about his own past 
settled in his mind. “I can read Chinese.” The rest of the 
tattoo was a maze of images that made little sense to Sam and 
were probably not supposed to. One thing was certain – Jack was 
the most hard core doctor Sam had ever seen. He flexed his arms 
and watched Jack’s substantial muscles bulge and ripple in the 
mirror. “When does a doctor find this much time to work out,” 
he murmured.

Not finding any more useful clues in his reflection, Sam spent 
the better part of the next hour searching the cabin. He found 
nothing useful, other than that – judging by the underwear in 
the cabin’s second bedroom – his roommate was a woman. The 
cabin itself was so generically bland with no personal items 
anywhere than Sam could only conclude that Jack and this 
mysterious woman had either just moved in or were the most 
boring people in the world. Possibly both.

He was trying to work out why all the appliances in the kitchen 
looked horribly antiquated for 2005 when the front door opened.

“Jack,” a female voice called.

Sam held back a groan as his hope of having a better grasp on 
the situation before dealing with anyone else was dashed. He’d 
just have to keep winging it. “In here.”

A beautiful woman in a grease stained jumper similar to 
everyone else’s came around the corner and paused in the 
doorway, eyebrows raised. “Why are you in your underwear?”

Sam looked down at the boxers and undershirt he was wearing. 
“Uh...the overalls were uncomfortable. Sorry.” He sheepishly 
crossed his arms in front of his hips.

The woman rolled her eyes. “What are you apologizing for? It’s 
not like I’ve never seen you naked before.”

Sam spluttered. “Um...right. I forgot.” He let his arms fall at 
his sides uncomfortably.

His response didn’t reassure her. “You forgot?”

“I mean...I just...force of habit, I guess,” he choked out.

She frowned and stepped closer, reaching up to feel his 
forehead like a mother checking for fever. “Sawyer said you 
were acting strange...”

Her new proximity gave Sam a close view of the smattering of 
freckles dotting her nose and cheeks and he remembered what 
Sawyer had said before he left. ‘Must be her nickname.’ “I’m 
fine, Freckles,” he reassured her.

She froze, staring at him. “When did you start using Sawyer’s 
nicknames?”

‘Damnit.’ “I mean...” he glanced at her jumpsuit pocket. 
“Kate.”

Kate pressed her palms to either side of his face and forced 
him to look her in the eye. “What happened?”

“Nothing...”

“Something’s wrong.”

“No! Nothing’s wrong, I just...” Sam closed his eyes and cursed 
under his breath. He’d been a black man in the pre-civil rights 
south, a pregnant teenager and even a chimp, but somehow he 
sensed this leap was going to prove his most trying yet.

Kate barreled on. “Sawyer said you were having some sort of 
heat stroke?”

Sam groaned. “Heat stress or mild, early heat exhaustion. If I 
had heat stroke I would be unconscious and permanently brain 
damaged by now.”

This reassurance seemed to work. Kate relaxed her hands, 
letting them fall to rest on his shoulders. “What are you doing 
wandering around then? Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“I was...I just needed some water.”

“Oh.” She turned and opened a cabinet, pulling out a glass. Sam 
was so glad he didn’t have to search blindly for it and make 
himself look even more like an idiot that he could have kissed 
her.

“Thanks,” he said sincerely, taking the glass and filling it in 
the sink.

Kate rubbed his arm kindly and said “I should get back to work 
before Juliet starts to worry. Will you be okay here until 
Sawyer gets back?”

Sam’s hope that he could avoid the sweet talking southerner for 
a while longer disappeared. The thought of waiting in this 
mysterious place for the man to come back and feel him up some 
more was less than appealing but until he knew why he was there 
he didn’t have much choice. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.” He smiled at 
Kate in a way he hoped was reassuring.

She smiled back and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Get 
some more rest.”

Sam nodded dumbly and watched as she slipped out the door. ‘Who 
the hell are these people?’ He drank a little more water, threw 
the rest down the sink and went back to investigating.

After another hour, he was no closer to understanding when or 
where he was. He thought he had something for a moment when he 
went to find some aspirin for his growing headache and 
discovered a prescription bottle of painkillers, but aside from 
telling him that Jack had been prescribed clonozipam in April 
of 2007 they didn’t prove a useful source of information. 
“2007,” Sam muttered. “How far in the future am I?”

After a while Sam gave up and laid down on the bed in the hopes 
that a couple minutes of rest would make everything somehow 
clearer. He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until the bed 
shifted under the weight of another body. He snapped awake, his 
body tensing, instinctively readying him to react to any 
possible threat, and then relaxed when he found a still 
concerned looking Sawyer sitting beside him.

“Feelin’ better?”

Sam looked to the bedroom window where the sunlight pouring 
through had grown dimmer. “What time is it?”

“It’s quittin’ time,” Sawyer answered unhelpfully. “You 
hungry?”

Sam opened his mouth to refuse, but his stomach grumbled in 
protest. “A little,” he admitted reluctantly.

Sawyer patted his leg and stood up. “Well, c’mon then!”

********

“Wanna hear somethin’ funny,” Sawyer asked around a mouthful of 
cheeseburger. “Hugo says he saw one of the new guys cleanin’ 
out the schoolhouse wearin’ your clothes.”

Sam swallowed heavily. He had almost forgotten about the man 
he’d met earlier in the day. “Really? Did he say who it was?”

“Didn’t recognize him. Says he ain’t seen ‘im around before. I 
told him to forget about it – prob’ly just the heat gettin’ to 
‘im. Seems to be a lot of that goin’ around lately.”

Sam smiled weakly. “Has he been seeing things a lot?”

Sawyer shrugged. “You’re the one’t checked him outta the funny 
farm. You seemed to think he was fine then.”

Sam groaned inwardly. Just what he was afraid of. Hurley could 
probably see him, which meant he would also see Al if and when 
the man decided to show up. Sam would have to be especially 
careful.

When they finished eating Sam offered to wash the dishes, 
needing to feel like he was doing something useful. He hoped 
there wasn’t something going on in some other cabin that he was 
supposed to be dealing with and he missed it because he was 
afraid to make anyone else in this backward community 
suspicious. But if that were the case, he figured Al would have 
appeared shouting frantically about whatever it was by now. At 
least he hoped so.

He forced himself to relax as Sawyer’s arms came around his 
waist from behind. “You know,” the man drawled in his ear. 
“There’s these new-fangled machines called dishwashers. Maybe 
you’ve heard of ‘em?”

Sam chuckled nervously. “Yeah, well...I like doing it this way. 
Gives me time to think.”

Sawyer huffed. “You think too damn much already.” He rubbed his 
nose gently against Sam’s hair. “But you’re cute when you get 
all domestic.”

Sam leaned away and twisted his head around to shoot Sawyer an 
annoyed look. “Are you gonna help me or are you just gonna 
stand there?”

Sawyer smiled. “Well, long’s you asked so nicely.”

“Please,” Sam added with a touch of sarcasm as Sawyer reached 
for the dishtowel to start drying. “Thank you.”

The front door slammed and moments later Kate appeared in the 
entry to the kitchen, a bit more mussed and dirty than the 
first time Sam had seen her.

“Feeling better,” she asked.

Sam smiled at her. “Yeah, thanks.”

“You hungry, Freckles,” Sawyer offered as she started to walk 
away. 

“Uh, no, thanks. I already ate. I just wanna take a shower and 
crawl in bed right now.”

Sawyer huffed. “Jules is runnin’ you ragged?”

She smiled playfully. “Just tryin’ to fit in, James.”

“Don’t use up all the hot water,” Sawyer called after her 
retreating back. “Who’m I kiddin’,” he added in a low grumble. 
“Woman takes fifteen minute showers. We might have ta shower 
together t’ make up for it.” He leered at Sam suggestively.

“That’s okay. I can wait until morning,” Sam said quickly.

Sawyer didn’t seem to notice the brush off. He just kept 
talking. “You know these hippies are all about conservin’ 
things. Maybe we could invent the low-flow toilet and make some 
money outta this crazy trip.”

Most of what Sawyer was saying baffled Sam, but then he was 
getting used to that happening on this leap. He finished the 
last piece of silverware and dried his hands. “I’m uh...just 
gonna go to bed. I’m still kind of tired.”

“Yeah, I’ll meet you there,” Sawyer replied absently as Sam 
headed for the door.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Sam muttered under his breath.

********

Sam lay on the bed theorizing what he could possibly be doing 
in this place in this strange future time, listening to the 
water running in the shower one room over.

Something Sawyer had said earlier kept rattling around in his 
brain. “Maybe we could invent the low flush toilet.” If this 
was 2007 or even 2005 those had already been patented, but 
considering the appliances and furniture in this house...had 
these people found some sort of strange civilized culture that 
somehow hadn’t progressed further than the 70s?

Sam didn’t realize the water had stopped running until Sawyer 
was right outside the bedroom door. He closed his eyes quickly 
and feigned sleep as Sawyer crawled into bed beside him.

“You asleep, baby?”

Sam breathed deeply and evenly, not moving a muscle.

Sawyer sighed and shifted closer until he was plastered to 
Sam’s back. Sam stayed stubbornly still as a muscled arm 
wrapped around his waist and Sawyer’s bare chest pressed to his 
back.

“You better be okay, Doc,” Sawyer muttered to himself, pressing 
a gentle kiss to Sam’s shoulder. “I ain’t about to lose you 
again.”

Sam felt a sharp ache in his chest as Sawyer settled and slowly 
drifted to sleep. It was becoming obvious that Sawyer really 
did love Jack and was worried about him. Avoiding him was just 
going to make him worry more and possibly even hurt him. ‘I 
can’t be here to break them up,’ he thought. ‘I can’t destroy 
their relationship just because it makes me uncomfortable. Part 
of Jack must still be in me. That part must want to love Sawyer 
and keep him happy. As long as it doesn’t go too far...I can 
handle that.’

Sam rested his hand on Sawyer’s forearm. “You won’t lose me,” 
he whispered.

Sawyer grunted softly, already mostly asleep. Sam relaxed into 
his grip and followed him.

*******

He was awoken from a light sleep by a familiar whooshing noise.

“Okay Gushie, I’ve got ‘im,” Al announced in a slightly nasal 
voice.

Sam’s eyes snapped open in time to see the lighted door of the 
imaging chamber slam shut, leaving his holographic friend 
standing in the middle of the dark bedroom. “Al!”

Al waved a warning hand at him. “Quiet! You don’t want to wake 
sleeping beauty over there.”

Sam carefully disengaged Sawyer’s arms from around him, 
dropping his voice to a whisper-yell. “What took you so long?”

“Are you kidding? Ziggy damn near blew a circuit trying to 
locate you! The first time we thought we had a fix I wound up 
face to face with a shark. I don’t know which of us was more 
startled, me or him.”

Sam cast a critical eye at Al as he slipped from the bed. Even 
in the dark bedroom, Al’s red pantsuit and mirrored shirt 
buttons were blinding. “That depends. Were you wearing that?”

Al glowered. “Very funny. C’mon, we need to talk. I’ll meet you 
in the living room.” He punched a few buttons on his blinking 
hand set and disappeared from the room, reappearing almost 
instantly in the room down the hall. 

Sam rushed after him. He stopped short as he got a good look at 
the bandage covering Al’s nose, which was accompanied by a 
couple minor bruises and what looked like a painful split in 
his lip. He looked like he’d been in a bar fight. “What 
happened to your face?”

Al winced. “Eh, let’s just say the guy in the waiting room 
wasn’t very happy to see me.”

“Jack did that?”

“Yeah, right before he started ranting about something called 
the Dharma Initiative and demanding to see lover boy in there.” 
Al waved in the general direction of the bedroom and tapped at 
his handset again. “Now, let’s see...your name is Jack 
Shephard...”

“I know,” Sam interrupted, the scientist in him coming fully 
awake, a giddy feeling of excitement coming over him at the 
prospect of this assignment. “I’m a doctor in Los Angeles and 
Al...I’m in the future!”

Al made a face. “Uh...no, you’re not.”

Sam faltered. On some level he had known that but he couldn’t 
think of an alternative explanation that made sense. “I’m not?”

“No, it’s July 10, 1977 and you’re on an island somewhere in 
the Pacific.”

“Al. I found Jack’s driver’s license and it said he...*I* was 
born in 1966.” He waved a hand at his face. “Do I look eleven 
years old?”

“No,” Al agreed hesitantly. “You’re forty.”

“I don’t understand! These people are talking about things that 
didn’t happen until the 90s. How is that possible if this is 
1977?”

Al rubbed his forehead and sighed heavily. “You may wanna sit 
down.”

Sam wanted to argue but caught the weary, pleading look in Al’s 
eyes and caved, sitting on the uncomfortable sofa obediently.

Al paced a few steps, seemingly searching for a way to begin. 
“The reason we couldn’t find you is because we had the who and 
the when but we didn’t have the where, which turned out to be 
the most important detail. Along with the when.” 

“Al, you’re not making any sense.”

“Welcome to my world,” Al sighed. He stopped pacing and bent 
over in front of Sam until their faces were inches – give or 
take a couple decades – apart. “As far as anyone can tell this 
island doesn’t exist. In fact, after 1977 this place will be 
practically deserted until Jack and a whole plane full of 
people crash here in 2004.”

“2004...”

“I’m not finished. Now, once Jack decided to start cooperating 
he told us that he and a small group of people left the island 
in December of that year and spent three years living back in 
civilization before trying to come back for the people they 
left behind. Only problem was, he said the island was almost 
impossible to find again because it had moved. Through time.”

Sam stared at Al as the implications whirled through his mind. 
“How did they find it?”

Al chuckled and straightened up, waving his arms exaggeratedly 
as he said “there’s the kicker! Jack says the mother of some 
brilliant Oxford physicist told them to recreate all the events 
leading up to their first crash in 2004, get on a specific 
airplane with some Indian airline nobody’s ever heard of and 
hope lightning would strike twice. Somehow it worked. He said 
there was a bright flash of light and bingo bango bongo they 
ended up here. On this island. In 1977.”

“They time traveled,” Sam murmured as pieces of the puzzle 
began locking into place in his mind.

“I know. Crazy, huh?” Al took a puff of his ever-present cigar 
and flicked the ashes to the floor, where they disappeared. Sam 
sometimes felt sorry for whoever had to clean the imaging 
chamber.

“Actually, it makes sense. How many of these people are from 
the future?”

“Uh...” Al jabbed at his handlink and it emitted a series of 
beeps and squawks. “Six. No...seven. Plus a couple that didn’t 
make the jump back and a few who never left the island in the 
first place. We’re still counting.” Al’s eyes rolled skyward. 
“Boy, you sure know how to pick ‘em.”

“Is Sawyer one of them,” Sam pressed.

“Sawyer who?”

“The man in the bedroom.”

Al didn’t seem to hear him, his head turned, listening to 
something or somebody nearby in his own time. “What? Oh...” He 
tapped a few more buttons. “You mean James Ford.” He looked 
confused. “Is he one of what?”

Sam forced himself to keep his voice low. “Is he from the 
future?”

“Oh! Well, yes and no. He crashed here in 2004, but when the 
island moved back in time, he went with it.”

Sam breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t know if he could have 
faced having to separate the two men so that Jack could go back 
to his own time. “What do we know about Hurley?”

Al looked flustered. “Who now?” He glanced back at whoever was 
talking to him. “Does everybody here have at least two aliases? 
Geez...What do you need to know?”

“When I leaped here he was the first person I saw. Al...he saw 
me!”

Al raised an eyebrow at him and puffed his cigar. “Jack’s a 
time traveler, Sam, he’s not the Invisible Man.”

Sam threw his hands up. “No! He didn’t see *Jack*. He saw 
*me*!”

“Oh.” Al’s eyes widened. “Oh! Well, that’s not...that shouldn’t 
be possible unless he’s five years old or...” he twirled a 
finger beside his ear and whistled in cuckoo fashion. Then his 
eyes went wide and he spun around, seeming to address the 
nearby dresser. “What do you mean he was in a mental 
institution?!”

Sam groaned. Just as he’d thought.

“And when were you planning on telling me this?” Al continued. 

“Al,” Sam called, redirecting his friend’s attention back into 
his time. “Who are you talking to?”

Al seemed momentarily startled by Sam’s voice and cleared his 
throat, turning back toward him. “Uh, Jack’s in the control 
room.”

Sam’s eyes bulged. “*Jack* is in the *control room*?”

Al became defensive. “Hey, the data we had was patchy at best. 
This place doesn’t exist, remember? We’re working blind here. 
Besides, his past is our future, so...” Al’s hand gestures 
became confused as his arms crossed over each other one too 
many times. “When Ziggy tried to cross-reference the data she 
had with what Jack was telling us she started predicting a 99% 
chance that the Earth would implode and form a black hole. It 
took hours for Dr. Beeks to convince her it wasn’t her fault 
the data was inconsistent. Anyway, Jack’s been feeding Ziggy 
data to fill in some of the gaps.” His handlink beeped and he 
squinted at it. “Apparently Hugo Reyes checked himself into a 
mental hospital in 2005 and claims he can see dead people.” Al 
rolled his eyes. “Great. So he’s either crazy or he’s some sort 
of psychic. Either way, you should try to avoid him as much as 
possible.”

“Jack?”

Sam jumped at the sudden intrusion and turned to find Kate 
standing in the doorway wearing only an oversize t-shirt. He 
shot to his feet, only to stand awkwardly shifting his weight 
back and forth. “Kate! What are you doing up?”

Al predictably gravitated toward her like a moth to a flame, 
whistling appreciatively.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Kate said. “I thought 
I heard you talking.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Al muttered. “You gave up *this* for 
*that* guy?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the 
bedroom.

Sam strained to focus only on Kate. “I was just thinking out 
loud.”

She looked a little unsure yet, but she smiled. “Couldn’t sleep 
either, huh?”

“Oh, would you relax,” Al shouted back at his invisible 
observer. “What could I possibly do? I’m a hologram! She can’t 
even see me!”

“No, not really,” Sam replied at almost the same time.

“It’s hard to believe we’re really back here.”

Sam smiled tentatively. “Yeah.”

“Oh, *I’m* a dog? From what I’ve heard, you’re getting more 
tail here than anybody!”

Kate folded her arms and leaned against the door frame. “Do you 
wanna talk about what happened today?”

“When?”

“Sawyer said the time jumping could affect your mind, but you 
were fine until today.”

“Oh, that. It was just the heat. Really. I’m fine now. Don’t 
worry.”

“Hey, you leave my mother out of it,” Al snapped.

Sam cleared his throat and Al whirled back on him. 

“What?! Oh...” His attention refocused on his handlink. “Jack 
was engaged to Kate for a while but the relationship fell apart 
before they came back here,” he explained. “Guess we know why. 
Jack says they’re still good friends.”

‘That explains a couple things but doesn’t help much.’ “I’m 
just gonna get some water and go back to bed, I think,” Sam 
announced, brushing past Kate on his way to the kitchen, 
shooting Al a significant look when she couldn’t see it. “Do 
you want anything?”

“No, I’m fine.” Kate hesitated a minute, hovering in the 
hallway while Sam dug through the cupboard for a glass. “I 
should probably get back to bed too.”

Sam nodded absently, shoving the glass under the tap. “I’ll see 
you in the morning.”

Kate slowly backed from the door, eyeing Sam with lingering 
worry and finally deciding there was nothing else she could do. 
She turned and headed back down the hall.

Sam listened for her bedroom door to shut and put the glass 
down on the counter, spinning on Al. “Why am I here?”

Al plucked the cigar from his mouth and jabbed a few buttons, 
the handlink beeping and whistling in time with his movements. 
“We’re not really sure. We’re still trying to work with very 
little information here, but Ziggy says there’s a 96% chance 
you’re here to stop the atom.” He frowned and thumped the side 
of the device with his palm, eliciting a plaintive squeal. 
“Atomic bomb,” he finished. His eyes went wide as the words 
fully registered, his face turning pale.

“Atomic bomb,” Sam repeated, barely remembering to keep his 
voice low.

Al punched a couple buttons. “Apparently in a couple 
days...this whole island is gonna become a...giant mushroom 
cloud.”

Sam felt the wind go out of him suddenly and reached back to 
steady himself on the counter. “How?”

“What do you mean ‘how’?” Al mimed a sound like an explosion 
and made accompanying hand gestures. “Bomb. Or did your swiss-
cheese memory forget what those are?”

“I mean *how*. An explosion like that doesn’t just happen by 
itself!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. From what Jack’s told us about this 
place...” Al looked around nervously and shivered. “Let’s just 
say it isn’t exactly paradise island.”

“Yes, I know,” Sam snapped. “It has polar bears and pirate 
ships and it’s guarded by a giant column of black smoke.” He 
blinked. “Wait, how do I know that?”

Al looked just as surprised. “I don’t know. Your mind must be 
merging with Jack’s. It happens sometimes. You have some of his 
memories. Anyway, Ziggy doesn’t know how the bomb goes off. All 
we know is that in the original history there were reports of 
some sort of blast and a strong electromagnetic pulse coming 
from this very spot in the ocean.”

Sam swallowed a groan and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Al. 
How am I supposed to stop a bomb from going off if I don’t know 
where it is or who is going to set it off?”

“Uh...we’re working on that. For now, just...keep an eye out 
and see if you can get any more information.” He tapped a 
couple buttons and the door to the imaging chamber sprung open 
behind him. Al stepped through and stood for a moment with one 
finger poised over his keypad. “And uh...try to keep a low 
profile.” He tapped a button and the door snapped shut, leaving 
Sam alone and reeling in this strange place.

‘The bomb doesn’t go off for a couple days,’ he reassured 
himself. ‘The best thing I can do right now is get some rest so 
I can think clearly in the morning.’

Sawyer shifted and blinked up at him as he sat on the edge of 
the bed. “What’s wrong,” he asked sleepily.

Sam swallowed, feeling a knot of dread slowly forming in his 
gut. He’d been afraid his mission might somehow affect Jack’s 
relationship with Sawyer. Knowing what the mission was now did 
little to assuage that fear. If he couldn’t figure out how to 
stop this bomb, both Jack and Sawyer could die. “Nothing,” he 
lied.

“Then come over here.”

Sam looked back at Sawyer’s open, inviting arms and soft, 
loving smile and the part of him that remained Jack wanted to 
reach out and draw the man into his arms. He wasn’t sure if 
that stemmed more from a need to comfort one or both of them in 
the face of the violence sure to come or a simple desire for 
human contact. Whatever the reason, he gave in and let Sawyer 
draw him into his embrace.

*******

Sam woke the next morning to Sawyer shaking him gently.

“C’mon baby, I can only cover for ya so long. You don’t want 
the good ole’ Dharma folk thinkin’ ‘bout firin’ you.”

Sam groaned. He felt like he’d run a mile uphill. His whole 
body was sore in places he was sure he’d never felt sore 
before. ‘What the hell happened to me?’ He shifted and started 
to sit up, then froze when he realized two things. The first 
was that he was naked. The second was that his skin felt 
decidedly sticky. He couldn’t remember how either of these 
things had come to be but judging by the smile on Sawyer’s face 
he was pretty sure he could take a guess.

He was too stunned by this revelation to react as Sawyer 
brushed a chaste kiss over his lips. “I made breakfast. I’ll 
see you tonight.”

“Um...yeah,” Sam spluttered as Sawyer got up to leave, fingers 
trailing down Sam’s arm as if he was reluctant to go. “Thanks.”

Seconds after the front door closed Sam was in the shower 
scrubbing himself thoroughly and wondering if the images 
tumbling through his head were just dreams or fragments of 
memories Jack had left him with to explain the condition he’d 
been left in. They were just brief flashes – him writhing under 
and over Sawyer – yet he saw them as if he had been a detached 
observer and not a prisoner in his own body. 

He got dressed and stumbled down the hall to the kitchen where 
Sawyer had left some eggs, a half a mango and a pot of coffee 
sitting out for him.

“You may wanna eat that quick.”

Sam jumped as Al appeared from behind him, now wearing a 
mustard yellow suit with a black checkered shirt and shiny 
yellow tie. The outfit, combined with the knowing smirk on his 
face, made the word “canary” jump to mind. Though maybe “bumble 
bee” was more accurate.

“Al, I think I had sex last night.”

“No, technically Jack had sex last night.”

“This isn’t funny, Al,” Sam hissed. “I feel like I’ve been 
violated!”

Al stopped chuckling. “Relax. As far as we can tell, *you* 
spent most of the time in the waiting room reciting formulas 
and explaining string theory in your sleep.” He waved at the 
food. “Are you gonna eat or what?”

Sam sat carefully on a kitchen chair and reached for the fork, 
jamming a bite of now-cooled eggs into his mouth. “What 
happened,” he asked as he chewed. 

“From what we can tell, your mind merged with Jack’s and 
he...sort of...took over somehow. When he fell asleep, you 
switched back. He says he wanted to ‘say goodbye’ just in case 
this thing doesn’t work.” Al shrugged.

Sam swallowed his bite of mango. “And you let him?”

“Let him? We didn’t even know he was doing it! We never thought 
he’d try something like that. You should see this guy – he’s 
almost as big a boy scout as you! Of course, he’s also got a 
stubborn streak like you wouldn’t believe. He kind of reminds 
me of my third...” Al frowned and squinted, searching his 
memory. “Fourth? No, fifth. My fifth wife.” He shrugged. 
“Anyway, considering the current state of the guy in the 
waiting room I guess I can’t really blame him for doing what he 
did.”

Sam snorted. “You wouldn’t.”

Al held up his hands defensively. “Well, that blond hick 
wouldn’t be my first choice, but I’m just saying. These guys 
seem to have a lot more than just lust between them. Although 
from what I hear, the Earth may have moved last night.”

Sam groaned.

“Check your pocket.” Al pointed to the pocket with the Dharma 
patch on his jumpsuit.

Sam reached into it and pulled out a slip of paper, unfolding 
it warily.

“I love you,” it said simply in what he assumed was Sawyer’s 
handwriting.

“He put that in there before he left,” Al explained 
unnecessarily.

The simple sweetness of the gesture and the implications behind 
it made Sam feel like an ass for faulting Jack’s behavior. He 
couldn’t fail this mission. He couldn’t let Jack’s hijacking of 
his body be the couple’s last goodbye.

“Help me find that bomb, Al.”

“Oh, we found it.”

Sam choked on a mouthful of food. “You found it?”

“Yeah, well...sort of. Apparently with all the time traveling 
going on on this island somebody from the future went back to 
1954 and told the original inhabitants to bury the bomb they 
had for...” he tapped his hand control and shrugged. “Some 
reason. He said it was leaking and they should bury it in 
concrete to be safe. All you have to do is figure out why 
somebody would want to dig it back up and set it off.”

“And I have until tomorrow to do that.”

Al nodded. “Tomorrow afternoon, yes.”

Sam finished his coffee and tossed all the dishes in the sink 
to be dealt with later. “Let’s get started.”

*******

After spending the morning talking to various people and 
supplementing the information he gathered with whatever data Al 
could get from Ziggy and Jack, Sam decided that these people 
were living out one big soap opera. Jack had a recently 
discovered half sister somewhere who may or may not be dead – 
nobody seemed to know where or when she was – and a nephew who 
called Kate “mommy”. Jack had been married, cheated on, and 
divorced within a year. Then he’d been engaged to Kate briefly 
before he accused Kate of cheating too and started drinking and 
doing drugs. The woman Kate worked with – Juliet – had once, in 
the future, worked for a man Jack would only describe as an 
“evil bastard”, though he assured Al she had done so against 
her will and was currently on their side. And all of them were 
now infiltrating a group called the Dharma Initiative for 
reasons that were unclear. What was clear was that the Dharma 
Initiative didn’t take kindly to outsiders. One of their group 
hadn’t been successfully infiltrated and had been taken 
prisoner, though no one seemed too concerned about him, partly 
because he had already escaped sometime recently and, as a 
former Iraqi soldier, was perfectly capable of defending 
himself.

By the time everyone broke for lunch, Sam’s head was spinning. 
That’s when he found out that Hurley – the man he’d been trying 
to avoid – worked in the Dharma cafeteria. Thankfully, the man 
didn’t try to approach him. He just watched warily from across 
the room while Sam talked with a smart alecky kid named Miles, 
who was unsettled by Al’s presence even though he couldn’t see 
him.

Sam waited until everyone had finished eating and started to 
scatter. “Stay close,” he muttered to Al before approaching 
Hurley. “We need to talk. Is there someplace more private we 
can go?”

Hurley looked like he wanted to scream and run in the other 
direction, but he just nodded, turned to what must have been 
his supervisor and excused himself.

Sam followed him wordlessly out of the building, across the 
main courtyard and into what looked like a storage shed, 
stepping into the room first. Al was already there, standing 
next to a pool table and punching buttons in his console. When 
Hurley saw him he froze, hovering in the half-open door.

“Who is he?”

“Just a figment of your imagination, kid,” Al muttered around 
his cigar.

“Al,” Sam snapped.

Al shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

“Who are *you*,” Hurley continued, getting increasingly 
anxious. “Why does everyone think you’re Jack? What did you do 
to him?”

“Hurley, I can explain everything,” Sam said gently. “Just come 
inside.”

“I’m not going anywhere ‘til you tell me where Jack is,” Hurley 
argued stubbornly.

“He’s safe. He’s...” Sam hesitated a moment. “He’s in the 
future.”

Hurley stared at Sam blankly. “The future.”

“Careful, Sam,” Al warned.

“Sam,” Hurley repeated, a slight questioning tone in his voice. 

Sam stepped closer to Hurley, slowly, as if approaching a 
skittish colt, and placed a gentle hand on his arm. “Please, 
Hurley. We’re not going to hurt you – or Jack. Just come inside 
and let me explain.” 

Hurley debated for a minute, looking around the room and 
glancing outside as if expecting someone to jump from somewhere 
and prove he was walking into an ambush. Then he stepped inside 
and let the door shut behind him. “Five minutes.” He pulled a 
chair from the corner into the middle of the floor – a safe 
distance from the door – and sat, arms crossed in front of his 
chest.

Sam blew out a breath and pulled a second chair in front of 
Hurley, sitting on the edge of it. He debated how best to begin 
his explanation and finally decided to just go with the direct 
approach. “We’re from the future. You see...I tried to create a 
sort of time machine with the idea that it was possible to leap 
back to any point in time during a person’s life. Except it 
didn’t quite work the way I planned and I’ve been leaping into 
*other* people’s lives to fix whatever went wrong ever since.” 
He stopped, watching Hurley’s face carefully for a reaction.

“If you’re from the future, then who’s the president,” Hurley 
finally asked skeptically.

Sam – whose swiss-cheesed memory could barely recall who had 
been president when he’d been born – looked to Al for 
assistance.

Al, who had been watching the exchange warily, puffing on his 
cigar, snapped to attention. “Bill Clinton.”

“Ha!” Hurley crowed triumphantly. “He hasn’t been president for 
eight years!”

Al rolled his eyes. “He didn’t say he was from *your* future, 
kid.”

Hurley looked confused. “So...when are you from?”

This, Sam remembered. “1999.”

“November 30th,” Al added. “Which means we’ve got a little over 
a month before Ziggy goes caphooey.” 

“Dude, are you talking about Y2K? Uh, that...didn’t happen.”

Al and Sam blinked at each other. 

“So, wait...how did you get here and why can’t anybody see 
you?”

Al smirked. “’cause I’m not really here. I’m in 1999.”

“Al is a hologram,” Sam explained. “He helps me figure out why 
I end up in certain people’s lives at certain times. He’s tuned 
into my brain waves so that only I can see him, but sometimes 
kids and animals and...people who are sensitive can see him 
too.”

Hurley’s mood deflated. “You mean crazy people.”

“No,” Sam blurted. “No, see...the reason everyone else sees 
Jack is because they see his aura surrounding me. It takes a 
certain ability for a person over the age of five to see past 
that aura. Your brain is just...wired differently somehow.”

Hurley considered this for a minute. “So Jack is in the 
future.”

Sam nodded. “In 1999.”

“Prove it. Let me see him.”

“No can do, kid,” Al said.

“If you want me to believe you, I have to know Jack is okay,” 
Hurley argued.

“It’s okay,” Sam interrupted, nodding to Al. “You’ve already 
let him in the control room. It can’t hurt.”

Al gaped at Sam, frustrated. “Even if that wasn’t *completely* 
against the rules, it would take time and enough power to light 
St. Louis. You know that.”

“Not if we don’t need to hear him,” Sam argued. “As long as 
you’re touching him we’ll be able to see him, right?”

Al opened his mouth to argue, then snapped it shut again. He 
thought for a moment, then nodded and muttered “yeah, okay. But 
when this all goes caca remember: I told you so.” He turned to 
shout at the empty space behind him. “Gushie! Have someone get 
Jack from the waiting room.” He tapped a couple buttons on his 
handlink and paused. “Whaddya mean he’s here?” He sighed and 
pushed another button. The lighted door sprung open several 
steps behind him. “Well, send him in.” He rolled his eyes. 
“Just do it, Gushie.”

“Who’s Gushie,” Hurley asked Sam, looking increasingly wary.

“He’s our computer programmer.”

“Oh.” Hurley nodded as if this made perfect sense. Sam smiled.

“Good,” Al declared, pushing a button to snap the door shut 
again. “Now come over here,” he said, seemingly to the far 
wall. He held his arm out. “I know the room is empty,” he said 
after a long moment. “Just come over here and grab my arm.”

Several silent moments later the man from Sam’s reflection 
appeared suddenly at Al’s side, gripping the Admiral’s forearm 
and looking very startled by the sudden shift in his 
surroundings.

Hurley smiled, relieved. “Jack!” He jumped out of his chair and 
ran to grab Jack’s arm, his hand passing straight through 
Jack’s body.

“He’s a hologram too, kid,” Al explained.

Hurley waved an experimental hand through Al as well and 
frowned. “Then how do I know he’s real?”

Jack’s mouth moved silently.

“They can’t hear you,” Al reminded him.

Jack looked frustrated for a moment, then he said something 
that made Al frown. 

“Horse?”

Jack gestured, letting go of Al’s arm for a moment and popping 
out of existence. Al grabbed for his wrist, restabilizing his 
image.

“I know what Horse is,” he grumbled. “Don’t let go again.” He 
turned to address Hurley, gentling his voice. “He says you owe 
him a rematch.”

Hurley’s face broke into a grin. “Dude, I was getting worried! 
Are you okay?”

Jack nodded, a friendly smile spreading across his face. “I’m 
fine, Hurley,” his lips said clearly.

Hurley looked back and forth between Sam and Jack. “Dude, this 
is like...The Matrix or something.”

Sam frowned. “The Matrix?”

“It’s a movie, Sam,” Al explained. “Came out a few months ago. 
It’s pretty good.” He shrugged.

“Yeah, do yourself a favor and skip the sequels,” Hurley 
muttered.

Al blinked at him, confused.

Hurley switched gears and kept right on going. “So, why is Sam 
here and Jack is in the future?”

“We don’t know,” Sam piped up. “Maybe you can help us with 
that.”

Hurley turned back to Sam. “What do you need me to do?”

Al and Jack both made frantic, one handed gestures behind 
Hurley’s back, both clearly begging Sam to not tell Hurley 
about the bomb.

“Well, you can start by telling me how many of your group are 
from the future. Jack told us that some of you went back to the 
50s?”

Al and Jack breathed sighs of relief and Al flashed Sam a 
thumbs up.

Hurley glanced back at Jack. “Oh, yeah. Sawyer said after we 
left, the island jumped around in time for a while.”

“We knew about Sawyer,” Al interrupted. “Who went with him?”

Jack frowned, probably trying to recall the names himself and 
failing because the leap had left him with holes where parts of 
his memory used to be.

“Juliet, Jin, Miles and that creepy professor guy...Daniel? 
Yeah, that’s it.”

Al frowned and tapped a few keys. “Daniel...oh, he’s the guy I 
told you about, Sam. His mother helped you get back to the 
island.”

“Can you think of any reason any of them might want to hurt 
us,” Sam asked Hurley.

Hurley cast a worried look back at Jack. “No...why?”

“Just eliminating possibilities,” Sam said with, he hoped, a 
reassuring smile. No sense getting the kid worked up about 
something they knew next to nothing about yet.

The conversation was interrupted when the door to the shed 
opened suddenly and Sawyer leaned inside. “There y’are. Floyd’s 
lookin’ for you, Hugo.”

Two feet from him, Jack’s holographic image reached a hand 
toward Sawyer’s face. He hesitated inches from his target as he 
remembered he couldn’t be heard, much less felt. He dropped his 
hand, dejected, and gripped Al’s arm tighter in frustration.

“Okay, I’ll be right there,” Hurley answered.

Before Sawyer could back out the door or say anything else, Sam 
– suddenly and without a word – got up from his chair, walked 
across the room and kissed him passionately. Sawyer returned 
the kiss easily, cradling the back of Sam’s head with one hand.

“What’s he doing,” Hurley whispered to Al. He wasn’t sure what 
was weirder – the fact that this stranger was making out with 
Sawyer or the way Jack was just standing there, watching 
blankly.

Al waved his cigar-wielding hand in front of Jack’s face to no 
avail. “I don’t know, but I think their minds may have merged 
again. It happens sometimes. Uh, Sam?” He cleared his throat 
loudly.

Sam stiffened in Sawyer’s arms. He had no idea how he had ended 
up there. One minute he’d been sitting on the other side of the 
room and the next a longing so powerful it had made him want to 
scream had surged through him and he’d started moving without 
being fully aware of where he was going or why. All he knew was 
that he had to so *something* to make the aching feeling go 
away. ‘Damnit, Jack!’

Sawyer pulled back and smiled at him. “Well, that was nice. Any 
particular reason?”

“No,” Sam practically squeaked.

Sawyer ran a thumb over his bottom lip. “I don’t know what’s 
gotten into you lately, but I like it. Just try to save it for 
when there aren’t any pryin’ eyes around.” He jerked his head 
backward gently to indicate the Dharma Initiative in general.

“Right.” Sam twisted free of Sawyer’s arms and shot Jack a 
glare. Jack just blinked at him, looking confused.

“I gotta get back,” Sawyer continued. “You should too, before 
they start wonderin’.”

“Be right there,” Sam said absently, barely looking at Sawyer 
as the man left the cabin. He spun on Al. “What just happened?”

Al was busy punching keys already. “Ziggy thinks Jack had some 
sort of emotional overload when he saw Romeo out there and some 
of it...” he made aborted gestures. “Sort of...transferred to 
you.”

“Woah,” Hurley mumbled to himself.

Sam shook his head. “Okay, I’m going to keep trying to get 
information. Hurley? Stay close. We may need your help. And 
from now on, call me Jack.”

Hurley nodded and started for the door.

“Wait,” Sam blurted as his curiosity nagged at him. “You said 
Clinton hasn’t been president for eight years. Who is?”

“Well, it *was* George Bush...”

Sam frowned. “Didn’t he come *before* Clinton?”

“I think he means George *W* Bush,” Al supplied. “His son.”

Hurley waved a hand at Al. “Yeah, that’s it. But it’s an 
election year, so by the time we get back it should be someone 
else. My money is on the black guy. What’s his name...Obama! 
That’s it. Barak Obama.”

At the word “black”, Sam felt his legs go weak. He dropped into 
his chair as an entirely different wave of emotion washed over 
him, bringing tears to his eyes. All of those leaps he’d spent 
living as black men – and one woman. All of that time spent 
fighting for equality from both sides of the line. He 
remembered the shock and outrage when he – Jesse Tyler – had 
dared merely sit at the counter of a diner. He remembered 
standing on a truck bed with a noose around his neck next to 
Nathaniel Simpson – a man condemned to death simply for being a 
black man in the South – feeling the truck’s engine rumble and 
waiting for the Klan member at the wheel to put it into gear. 
Waiting to die. It had all felt so futile, trying to change 
people who just couldn’t – or wouldn’t - be changed. Knowing 
now that all that time, somewhere in America there had been a 
little boy who would one day grow up to be the first black 
president of the United States...it helped make all or those 
struggles seem more worthwhile. 

“What happened,” Hurley asked, looking alarmed by Sam’s 
outburst. He turned to Al, who was supporting an equally 
emotional Jack and smiling proudly.

“You’re talking to one of the great unknown heroes of the civil 
rights movement,” Al said.

“Oh.” Hurley looked apologetic. “Well, I could be wrong. It 
could also be Hillary Clinton.”

A sharp, emotional burst of laughter came from Sam as his 
memory shifted to playing Margaret Sanders and being pushed 
around and treated like a particularly stupid, unruly child for 
daring question a woman’s place in society.

“And the women’s lib movement,” Al added.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I think you just made his year.”

Hurley looked at Sam, laughing and crying and then at Jack, who 
was catching Sam’s emotional overflow and reacting similarly to 
Hurley’s revelation without really understanding why. “Okay, 
uh...I should go see what Floyd wants.” 

Al nodded. “We’ll call you if we need you, kid.”

Hurley nodded and backed out of the room in a daze.

“Okay, Sam, I’m gonna let Jack go before Ziggy blows a fuse.

“Wait,” Sam protested, pulling himself together and slowly 
standing to face the holographic pair. “I need to talk to him.” 
He stood in front of Jack, who had already composed himself 
again. “I need your word that what happened last night won’t 
happen again.” Jack opened his mouth to reply but Sam barreled 
on. “I want to help these people. I want to find this bomb and 
stop it from going off, but I can’t do that if I have to worry 
about you taking over my body every time Sawyer comes near.”

Jack’s mouth moved silently.

“He says he doesn’t know how to,” Al relayed. “He’s not sure 
how he’s been doing it so far.”

“Try...try detaching yourself. You’re not here anymore. You’re 
twenty years in the future. Just...let go and trust me to do 
what I’m here to do.”

Jack seemed to debate a moment. Then his mouth moved again.

“He says he’ll try but he wants you to promise you’ll watch 
Sawyer’s back.”

Sam nodded. “I promise,” he vowed sincerely.

Jack hesitated a moment longer, then nodded to Al. Al patted 
his arm kindly and punched in the sequence that would open the 
door to the imaging chamber.

“Gushie, I’m sending Jack out.”

When the door opened, Jack turned toward it, disappearing once 
he let go of Al’s arm.

“Keep running scenarios,” Sam continued. “I need to know who 
could possibly want to set that bomb off.”

Al nodded. “Okay. You keep gathering information.” He stepped 
through the still-open doorway, tapped a couple buttons and 
disappeared.

*******

That night, Sam sat on the couch in Sawyer’s cabin writing down 
every piece of information he had gleaned so far on 
construction paper he’d stolen from the schoolhouse. It wasn’t 
much, but he was beginning to get a clearer picture of these 
people’s lives and how they intertwined. He even had a crude 
timeline of events stretching from 1954 to 2008 and lists of 
who belonged in which time period. He was glad they’d brought 
Hurley in on this – he had proved to be a useful source of 
information. The only thing Sam didn’t have was a suspect. None 
of these people seemed to have any reason to want to detonate 
an atomic bomb. He had to be missing something but he wasn’t 
sure what.

“You’re workin’ too hard,” Sawyer observed from where he lay 
with his head in Sam’s lap, engrossed in a well-worn paperback. 
“You gonna tell me what that’s all about?”

Sam paused to take a sip of the Dharma brand boxed wine Sawyer 
had insisted on serving him. “It’s not important.”

“I shoulda known givin’ you moppin’ duty wouldn’t keep you 
outta trouble long,” Sawyer muttered.

“Is that why you gave me this job? To keep me out of trouble?”

Sawyer grumbled. “No. I gave you your job ‘cause it was all I 
had on short notice, but I figured it had to be easier than 
runnin’ around savin’ people all day.” He reached for his own 
nearly empty wine glass on the coffee table and finished it in 
two sips. He set the glass back down and rested his head back 
in Sam’s lap, closing his eyes. “Didn’t wanna give you a reason 
to go runnin’ around tryin’ to fix everything and give yourself 
a heart attack.”

Sam wasn’t sure if Jack would find that admission sweet or 
annoying, so he just tucked his data into his makeshift folder 
and combed his fingers absently through Sawyer’s hair while he 
finished his glass of wine. “So you did it for my health?”

Sawyer smirked. “Nope. Mine. I didn’t wanna be worryin’ about 
you all the damn time.” He reached up to run his fingers along 
Sam’s arm, tracing – he assumed – one of Jack’s tattoos. 
“Though I can’t say I haven’t gotten a little kick outta 
bossin’ you around for a change.”

Sam smiled. Definitely sweet, though hiding under an annoying 
front. “More wine?”

Sawyer snorted. “Nah. It ain’t that good.”

Sam carefully slipped Sawyer’s head from his lap and reached 
for his glass. “Then I’ll just take these to the kitchen.”

Sawyer groaned. “That’s what I mean, Doc. It’s my *house*. You 
don’t gotta clean it too.”

“It’s just a couple glasses, Sawyer.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer grumbled. “Just a couple glasses. Next you’ll be 
goin’ in all the corners with a feather duster.”

Sam just smiled at him and backed toward the conjoined kitchen, 
nearly colliding with Juliet as she came down the hall. 
“Uh...after you,” he said, gesturing with a wineglass.

She smiled and stepped into the kitchen ahead of him. “You 
never did tell me your secret,” she said as she set about 
getting herself a glass of water.

Sam blinked at her. “My secret?”

She pointed toward his abdomen. “Your scar is almost completely 
faded. Even if I’d had better operating conditions, there’s no 
way my stitching was that good.”

Sam glanced down stupidly as he rinsed the glasses. He hadn’t 
seen a scar, but then he hadn’t taken his shirt of when looking 
in a mirror. “Maybe you’re better than you thought.”

The front doorbell rang. “I’ve got it,” Sawyer called.

“You were walking around the minute the anesthesia wore off,” 
Juliet continued. “Hiking through the jungle and falling out of 
a helicopter. You must have torn a few stitches.”

Sam shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.” He turned nervously to 
face her. She had one eyebrow raised skeptically, a faint smile 
playing at the corners of her lips.

“You’re different. Since you came back. I know it’s been three 
years, but...it’s almost like you’re a completely different 
person.”

‘You have no idea,’ Sam thought. At least she didn’t seem to 
have sensed a major difference in him in the last day, just a 
more general personality shift which, from what he’d heard so 
far about Jack’s temperamental, extremely A-type behavior was 
probably an improvement. “Is that a bad thing?”

She opened her mouth to reply and froze, her attention turning 
toward the front door, where Sawyer was letting a man Sam only 
vaguely recognized as one of the original Dharma crew in. 

“Did you talk to Horace,” Sawyer was asking as he closed the 
door. Sam recognized this name as the man who was the closest 
thing the Dharma Initiative had to a leader.

“Not yet,” the man answered. “I figured after three years of 
working together, I’d give you the benefit of doubt...”

Sam saw Sawyer’s fist draw back and instinctively moved to stop 
him. “Sawyer, wait!”

But he was too late. Sawyer’s fist connected with a meaty 
smack, sending the man sprawling to the floor.

Sawyer looked up. “Get some rope.”

Juliet ran off to do so without question.

“What did you do,” Sam spluttered.

“He knows I helped Kate take Ben out to the hostiles.”

“Ben...” Sam’s photographic memory supplied the information 
connected with that name in his file. Ben was the “evil 
bastard” Jack had referred to – a man who had kidnapped Jack in 
the future and forced him to perform surgery to remove a tumor. 
He had also inexplicably been a driving force in getting this 
group of time travelers back here to 1977.

Sawyer reached for something that had been dropped in the 
scuffle and tossed it at Sam. “He’s got it on tape.”

Sam looked at the tape stupidly. It was an old model not 
intended for use in a personal VCR – not that the cabin had one 
of those – so he couldn’t play it to get more information if 
he’d wanted to. “You could have lied...come up with 
something...this isn’t the answer!”

“Yeah, well, it’s too late now,” Sawyer grumbled. Juliet 
returned with a length of rope and handed it to him. “Can’t 
exactly say *this* was an accident. ‘sides, you just blew my 
cover.”

Sam rewound the events of the last few minutes in his head. 
He’d said Sawyer’s name. He groaned. 

“Forget it. Was bound to happen eventually.” Sawyer tightened 
the knot around the man’s wrists. “Help me get ‘im in the 
closet n’ then we can figure out what to do.”

*****

Sam paced the floor of the living area restlessly, eyeing the 
gun Sawyer had left on the kitchen counter. The sun had just 
come up an hour earlier. Soon somebody was bound to figure out 
this Phil guy was gone and they hadn’t come up with any good 
ideas for how to deal with that yet. They had just agreed to 
take shifts guarding Phil until morning when Sawyer had decided 
they should gather the rest of their group and talk strategy 
together. A bomb was going to go off in seven hours or so and 
now Sam suspected he was watching the situation that would lead 
to that point develop.

The imaging chamber opened suddenly and Al, in an almost 
unusually subdued red shirt and brown slacks, stepped through. 
“Okay, Sam, I think we might have something...”

“Al, where have you been?” Sam hissed.

Al looked startled. “What? What happened?”

“Oh, not much,” Sam said, voice dripping sarcasm. “It’s just 
that we’ve got this guy tied up in the closet because he 
suspects we’re not really with the Dharma Initiative.”

Al blinked. “What guy?”

Sam threw up his hands. “Does it matter?”

“Well, no, not unless his name is Daniel Faraday because Ziggy 
says there’s an 86% chance *he’s* the guy who’s gonna blow up 
the island.”

Sam reeled. “Daniel? The scientist?”

“Yeah, get this: he’s a quantum physicist who’s been conducting 
experiments on *time travel*.”

“Time travel,” Sam repeated dumbly.

“Yeah. Only he hasn’t figured out a way to get the experiments 
to work without scrambling the subject’s brain and uh...killing 
them.”

“Obviously his mother figured it out.”

“Yeah, well, you can talk to him about it yourself. He’s headed 
this way.”

“What?”

The doorbell rang before Al could reply. Sam gaped at it, 
trying to get his mind caught up to this abrupt turn of events.

Al gestured emphatically toward the door. “Go! Before anybody 
wakes up!”

Sam stumbled toward the door and opened it to find a somewhat 
disheveled looking, bearded man on the porch.

“How did you do it, Jack? How did you get back here,” he 
demanded, pushing past Sam into the house.

Sam stared at Miles, who crept in behind Daniel. 

“Don’t look at me,” Miles said defensively. “I just drove him 
here.”

Sam closed the door behind them. “Keep your voices down. Sawyer 
and Juliet are still sleeping.”

“How did you get here,” Daniel repeated insistently.

Sam tried to recall the sequence of events Jack and Hurley had 
described – a difficult task as he was more concerned at the 
moment with the other occupants of the cabin. “Um...we got on a 
plane...”

Understanding flashed on Daniel’s face immediately. “Who told 
you to get on a plane?”

“Go ahead, tell him,” Al urged.

“As a matter of fact, it was your mother, Daniel.”

Daniel seemed to deflate a little. “Let me guess. She told you 
this was your destiny.”

Sam glanced at Al, who nodded. “Uh, yeah. She did.”

“Well, I’ve got bad news for you, Jack. She was wrong. You’re 
not supposed to be here at all.”

Daniel brushed past Sam on his way back out the door without 
another word, Miles trailing after him.

“Wait, what do you mean?” Sam followed them outside, where they 
climbed into a waiting Jeep. “What do you mean we’re not 
supposed to be here?”

“I’ll be right back, I just have to run an errand,” Daniel 
called absently while Miles started the truck.

The pair drove off, leaving Sam standing by the dirt path.

“Jack.”

Sam spun to find a worried-looking Sawyer standing in the 
doorway, silently demanding an explanation.

“Daniel Faraday’s back.”

Sawyer blinked, looking after the now-vanished Jeep and then 
back at Sam. “What’d he want?”

Sam rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know.” He glanced at Al from 
the corner of his eye. His friend looked just as at a loss as 
he was. “Follow him, Al,” he muttered under his breath.

“Huh? Oh, sure...” Al fired up his handlink with a beep. 
“Gushie, center me on Daniel!” A moment later, he disappeared.

Sam went back up the porch steps and past Sawyer into the 
house. “We need to do something about Phil before somebody 
notices he’s missing.”

Sawyer closed the door and caught Sam’s wrist in one smooth 
movement, spinning him around. “Hey, settle down.” He cupped 
Sam’s chin in his other hand and forced their eyes to meet. 
“Let me handle it.”

Sam’s eyes darted to the hallway as Juliet – obviously just 
woken up by all the noise – poked her head around the corner. 
“Fine,” he agreed.

Sawyer relaxed a little and rubbed Sam’s cheek with his thumb. 
“Good. Now, you go get Kate ‘fore she goes to work. Jules and 
I’ll round up Hugo and Jin. We’ll meet you back here.”

Sam nodded. He would have preferred to follow Daniel, but as 
long as Al was keeping an eye on him he could focus on one 
crisis at a time. If Ziggy was right, the bomb wouldn’t go off 
for another few hours. “Okay.”

*****

Daniel was alone, riding some sort of crude looking elevator to 
an underground cave when Al appeared beside him. 

“Good, you’re nowhere near the bomb yet,” the Admiral said 
aloud to no one. “Now we just have to figure out why you’d want 
to set it off and then we can figure out how to end this crazy 
leap.”

Daniel snapped the notebook of formulas and equations he’d been 
studying shut as the elevator stopped. He stepped out into a 
working construction site. Sparks flew from machinery near the 
far wall and workers with hard hats milled around everywhere. 
One appeared to be having a heated discussion with an Asian man 
in a lab coat a few yards away. 

“You’re going to do nothing,” the Asian man snapped. “If you 
drill even a centimeter further, you risk releasing that 
energy. If that were to happen...then God help us all.”

“Uh oh,” Al muttered. 

A passing worker snapped at Daniel to put a hat on and he 
grabbed one from a nearby shelf before making his way across 
the narrow bridge toward the arguing pair. Al followed, 
floating next to the bridge over a sharp drop. They both 
hesitated as a man was carried past on a stretcher, unconscious 
and with blood covering the lower half of his face.

“Did you hear that,” the worker the lab coat had been talking 
to asked Daniel. “Time travel. How stupid does that guy think 
we are?”

Al gaped at the man. “Time...” He almost missed Daniel darting 
off after the man in the lab coat. Al punched a couple buttons 
in his hand link and zipped over beside them instantly.

“I just came in on the sub with the Swan team,” Daniel was 
saying. “We actually met three years ago. I’m Daniel Faraday.”

“Yes, yes, you arrived with LaFleur,” the doctor said 
impatiently. “I remember. What can I do for you?”

“You can have his head checked,” Al grumbled. “It might save us 
some time.”

“I need you to order the evacuation of every man, woman and 
child on this island,” Daniel replied.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because,” Daniel said grimly. “That man is on a stretcher as a 
consequence of the electromagnetic activity that your drilling 
unleashed down here.”

The doctor looked unsettled and moved toward the elevator. 
“Which is now contained.”

Daniel followed the man and Al, bewildered by this development, 
called to the project programmer “Keep me centered on Daniel, 
Gushie!” His surroundings shifted abruptly and he found himself 
inside the elevator, practically on top of – or rather through 
– the two men in the tiny space.

“It’s contained down *here*,” Daniel argued. “But in about six 
hours, the same thing is gonna happen at the site of the Swan 
station, only the energy there is about 30,000 times more 
powerful, sir. And the accident...it’s gonna be catastrophic.”

Al gaped at Daniel as the full import of his words sunk in. Six 
hours was roughly the amount of time Ziggy had figured they had 
left until the bomb went off. “You’re not going to set off a 
bomb. You’re trying to stop it...”

“That is utterly absurd,” the doctor scoffed. “What could 
possibly qualify you to make that kind of prediction?”

“It was you,” Al muttered as another thought occurred to him. 
“You told those people to bury the bomb.”

“I’m from the future,” Daniel said slowly, cautiously.

“Electromagnetic...” Al shook himself. “Gushie! Center me on 
Sam!”

Al’s surroundings shifted abruptly and he found himself back in 
Sawyer and Juliet’s cabin. This time, the rest of their group 
of infiltrators were seated in the living room.

“This is our home,” Sawyer was saying. “Last thing I wanna do 
is leave. But we ain’t got no choice.”

“Don’t look at me,” Al snapped at Hurley, who was gaping at him 
curiously. “I’m not here!”

Hurley looked away quickly, focusing on some spot on the living 
room rug.

“How much time do we have before someone realizes he’s gone,” 
Kate asked.

Sawyer shook his head. “Not enough.”

“Sam, we need to talk. I think we might have been wrong about 
Daniel.”

Sam glanced at Al helplessly. He couldn’t just excuse himself 
from this conversation without being conspicuous. He cleared 
his throat. “So what are our options?”

“We can either commandeer the sub, get the hell off this island 
‘fore anyone knows we’re gone,” Sawyer answered. “Or we can 
head back in the jungle n’ start from square one.”

“You’ve gotta stay close to Daniel,” Al answered at almost the 
same time. “Whatever you do. I just heard him talking to this 
guy about a very powerful electromagnetic ‘incident’.” He made 
surreptitious explosion gestures while Hurley was distracted 
talking to Sawyer. “Now Ziggy thinks you’re here to help him 
stop it.”

“Right,” Sawyer was saying. “That’s two votes for square one. 
Anybody else...”

A knock at the door brought the discussion to an abrupt halt. 
Sawyer grabbed his gun and went to answer it. 

Hurley leaned across the arm of the sofa to whisper to Sam. 
“What’s going on?”

“It’s okay, it’s Daniel,” Al said.

“I’m not sure,” Sam replied, realizing that Hurley was not 
actually asking about their current visitors.

“Jack.”

Sam looked up to see Daniel standing in the living room 
entryway.

“I’m sorry if I was rude before, but what I came to do is of 
critical importance to everyone in this room. Does anyone know 
where I can find the hostiles?”

“Why do you need to know that, Daniel,” Juliet asked while 
everyone was still processing the question.

“Because one of them is my mother. And she is the only person 
on this island who can get us back to where we belong.”

Sam gaped at Al, who looked just as surprised by this 
information.

“You mean back...to the future, right,” Hurley asked.

Daniel nodded. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Your mother...is an Other,” Sawyer reiterated slowly.

“You met her actually. When the island was skipping? Back in 
1954.”

“He’s right,” Al added, consulting Ziggy. “Her name’s Eloise 
and technically...she hasn’t given birth to him yet.” He 
scratched his head, frustrated.

“You still haven’t told us why you need to find her,” Juliet 
pressed.

“I just need to talk to her.”

“I thought you said we were supposed to lay low,” Sawyer added. 
“Whatever happened happened.”

“Please, just tell me where they are, I’ll –“

“I’m not tellin’ you anything and you ain’t goin’ nowhere 
unless you wanna share with us what the hell it is you’re 
doin’.”

“Sawyer...he said he could get us back where we belong. Whether 
we get on a sub or go into the jungle we’re still here in 
1977,” Sam interrupted quietly.

“Sam, what are you doing,” Al cautioned.

Sam gave Al a warning look. ‘I know what I’m doing. I think.’ 
“He’s right, we don’t belong here.” He turned to Kate. “You 
took Ben out to the hostiles. Can you get us back out there?”

Sawyer sputtered. “No, wait a second. You don’t really think 
helpin’ HG Wells here talk to his mommy’s gonna help us get 
back where we belong?”

“Do you have any better ideas,” Sam snapped.

Sawyer opened his mouth but never got a chance to reply. 

“The code for the fence is 141717,” Juliet blurted, a 
determined look on her face. “You should take Daniel. It’s over 
here for us anyway.”

Sawyer gave her a withering look. 

Kate looked back and forth between Sawyer and Juliet and 
nodded, a similar look of determination coming over her 
features. “Okay. Let’s go.”

*******

“It’s just a couple miles in,” Kate directed after disarming 
the sonic fence surrounding the Dharma compound.

Daniel nodded and brushed past her, heading in the direction 
she had pointed.

“You think he knows what he’s doing,” she asked Sam in a low 
voice.

“I hope so,” he muttered.

She set her jaw and plodded along behind Daniel, her pistol at 
ready by her hip.

“I know I told you to stay close to Daniel, but this isn’t 
exactly what I meant,” Al muttered, appearing suddenly at Sam’s 
side.

“What’s Ziggy saying?”

“Well, now that we know this island is sitting on a giant 
pocket of electromagnetic energy she’s pretty sure *that* was 
the source of the explosion in the original history, not a 
bomb.”

“And it’s still going to go off?”

Al consulted his hand link and sighed. “The odds went up to 
93%.”

“Up? How can the odds have gone up? I thought Daniel knew how 
to stop it!”

Al glowered. “Well, did you ask him how he was going to do 
that?”

Sam grunted. “No.”

Al tapped his temple in a gesture Sam always took as a comment 
on his wisdom. “Maybe he never intended to stop it. Did you 
think about that? He told that doctor with the Dharma 
Initiative to evacuate everyone off the island.”

“So why are we going to find his mother?”

Al shrugged. “She’s not with the Dharma Initiative. Maybe he 
needs to convince her and the other ‘hostiles’ to leave 
himself.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he need to convince 
her? If she hasn’t given birth to him yet she obviously got 
away somehow.”

Al’s steps faltered as he thought about that one. “That’s 
true.”

They stopped by a stream and Daniel checked the pistol Kate had 
given him. 

“You need a gun to go talk to your mother,” Kate asked 
skeptically.

“You don’t know my mother,” Daniel grumbled.

“So are you going to tell me what we’re doing here,” Sam tried. 
“Why don’t we belong here?”

Daniel sighed heavily and sat on a rock. Sam glanced back at Al 
and slowly did the same.

“In a little over four hours, the Dharma folks at the Swan work 
site,” he began. “They’re gonna drill into the ground and 
accidentally tap into a massive pocket of energy. The result of 
the release of this energy will be catastrophic.”

Sam looked to Al.

“We already ran it by Ziggy,” Al said grimly. “Even if you 
tried to stop them, it wouldn’t work.”

“So in order to contain it,” Daniel continued. “They’re gonna 
have to cement the entire area in – like Chernobyl. And this 
containment, the place they built over it, you called it the 
hatch. The Swan hatch.”

Kate looked at Sam, her eyes alight with wary recognition.

“Because of this one accident these people are gonna spend the 
next twenty years keeping that energy at bay by pressing a 
button. A button that your friend Desmond will one day fail to 
push. And that will cause your plane – Oceanic 815 – to crash 
on this island. And because your plane crashed, a freighter 
will be sent to this island – the freighter that I was on and 
Charlotte was on and so forth. This entire chain of events, 
it’s gonna start happening this afternoon. But we can change 
that. I’ve studied relativistic physics my entire life and one 
thing emerged over and over. You can’t change the past.”

“Wanna bet,” Al grumbled.

“But then, I finally realized, I had been spending so much time 
focused on the constants I forgot about the variables. And do 
you know what the variables in this equation are, Jack?”

“Us,” Sam said quietly.

Daniel looked surprised by his answer. Probably because Jack 
was a spinal surgeon, not a physicist, but he seemed 
invigorated by this response. “That’s right. People. We think, 
we reason, we make choices. We have free will. We can change 
our destiny. I think I can negate that energy. Under the Swan. 
I think I can destroy it. If I can then that hatch will never 
be built and your plane...your plane will land, just like it’s 
supposed to, in Los Angeles.”

“And just how exactly do you plan on destroying this energy,” 
Kate asked after a moment of stunned silence.

“I’m going to detonate a hydrogen bomb.”

Kate’s eyes went wide.

“Sam, the odds just went up to 95%.” The handlink squawked and 
Al’s voice became increasingly panicked. “97%...”

“That’s why I need to talk to my mother,” Daniel admitted. “I 
told her to bury it in 1954. She knows where it is.”

“Won’t that kill everyone,” Kate asked, alarmed.

“Not if we can convince Dr. Chang to evacuate the island,” 
Daniel said matter of factly. He looked at his watch. “We don’t 
have much time. We should go.”

Sam nodded and stood, Kate warily following him.

“Sam, what are you doing,” Al demanded. “Sam!”

Sam walked away from Al without so much as a glance backward, 
following Daniel through the jungle.

“Oh, this is not good,” Al muttered to himself. He chased after 
Sam, falling into step beside him. “Sam, your mind must be 
merging with Jack’s again.”

Sam’s steps faltered as he turned his head to look directly at 
Al. “No, it isn’t.”

“What,” Kate asked from behind him.

Sam turned to her. “Uh...just thinking out loud.”

Al spluttered. “Then why the hell are you going along with this 
yahoo’s crazy plan?”

“Trust me,” Sam mouthed as Kate quickened her pace to come up 
alongside him. 

“This is insane,” she said. “He wants to erase everything 
that’s happened to us.”

Al gestured toward her. “Thank you! Listen to the woman, Sam.”

“Where were you in 1977,” Sam asked.

Kate blinked. “Iowa. I was two years old.”

“Okay, well, that hasn’t changed. You’re still in Iowa and I’m 
still in Los Angeles. And one day we’re both going to get on a 
plane and end up here. We’re caught in a time loop. What 
if...what if we weren’t supposed to come here? If Daniel is 
right, we could break that time loop and it will be like this 
whole thing never happened.”

Kate went silent. Al fumed.

“And what if you’re both wrong? Huh? If you die here, Jack’s 
gonna be stuck in 1999 living the rest of his life as Sam 
Beckett.”

“The Dharma Initiative are onto us and I don’t know about you 
but I don’t think they’re above killing traitors,” Sam argued, 
still turned toward Kate but addressing Al as well. “We can try 
to wait for them to come after us...or we can take a chance 
that Daniel is right. This may be our only chance to set things 
right. This may be what sends us home. What do we have to 
lose?”

“Sends you...” Al’s eyes widened. “You think this is gonna get 
you to leap home.”

Sam’s eyes slid toward him and he nodded subtly. 

“But you...” Al hesitated. “And...” He groaned and massaged his 
forehead. “I have to go run some things past Ziggy. Just don’t 
do anything until I get back.” He punched a couple buttons and 
disappeared.

********

Sam, Kate and Daniel arrived at the edge of a campsite a couple 
minutes later.

“Wish me luck,” Daniel said and went ahead down the hill toward 
the nearest tent without another word, his pistol held loosely 
by his side.

“Wait,” Sam whispered, moving to grab him. He was already too 
far away.

“No, let him go,” Kate whispered, grabbing for Sam’s arm.

Sam clenched his jaw and squatted beside Kate, gun drawn, 
watching warily as Daniel crept toward the “hostiles” camp. He 
didn’t like standing by and doing nothing. He knew there had to 
be something he could do, but without more information he 
wasn’t sure what. 

“Jack, you realize he’s crazy,” Kate murmured.

Sam sighed. “He’s not crazy. Suicidal, maybe...but what if he’s 
right? What if this is what I’m...what *we’re* here to do? What 
if this is our chance to put things right?”

Before Kate could say anything two gunshots ripped through the 
air, making them both jump.

Sam looked down the hill to see Daniel crumple to the ground. 
“No,” he moaned. He moved to get up, but Kate grabbed him, 
tugging him back away from the campsite. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“They shot him...”

“They’re gonna shoot you too! We have to go!”

“She’s right, Sam.”

Sam jumped as Al appeared suddenly, looking haggard. “I’m 
sorry, Sam. We didn’t see it coming,” he admitted. 

“Now!” Kate dragged him back and they staggered out onto a dirt 
path running beside the treeline.

Before they could get any further two men appeared on 
horseback, riding straight for them. Sam was still gaping at 
them stupidly, wondering if this island could get any more 
bizarre, when one of the riders rounded on him and slammed the 
butt of a rifle into his face. The second, younger rider jumped 
from his horse and waved his rifle in Kate’s face before she 
could go to him, snarling “don’t move!”

Sam rolled to his hands and knees, shaking his head to ward off 
dizziness. 

“Sam, look out,” Al barked as the first rider dismounted and 
headed straight for him.

Sam pushed himself up onto his knees and arched his back, 
narrowly avoiding the kick the man aimed at his ribs. He spun 
away from the kick, jumping to his feet and kicking the man’s 
other leg out from under him in one smooth movement. He landed 
in a fighting stance, hands raised in front of him. The man 
responded by pulling a pistol out from somewhere in a move so 
fast Sam couldn’t quite follow it. Sam clenched his jaw and 
slowly raised his hands in defeat, easing into an upright 
position while the man scrambled to stand up. 

“Who the bloody hell are you,” the man snarled angrily.

“Don’t tell them anything, Sam,” Al warned.

The second man wrenched Sam’s arms behind him, tying his wrists 
together roughly. Sam glanced at Kate, whose hands were already 
tied and who was looking at him with a confused expression. He 
shook his head subtly.

The man with the pistol slammed the butt of it into Sam’s 
temple.

“Hey,” Al yelped even though nobody but Sam could hear it.

“We should take them back. See if Richard recognizes them,” the 
second man said.

The first man grunted and spun Sam around, jamming the pistol 
in his back and prodding him down the dirt path. “Move.”

“Ziggy says this guy is Charles Widmore. Jack says he faked a 
plane crash in the future so nobody would come looking for 
survivors and find this place.” 

“Where did you learn to fight like that,” Kate asked as she was 
pushed into step beside Sam.

Sam ripped his attention from Al. “Huh? Oh...boy scouts.”

She looked even more confused. “You never told me you were a 
boy scout.”

Sam pursed his lips and remained silent as they were pushed 
into the camp, a couple yards away from Daniel’s body. Widmore 
broke away to go talk to the man and woman standing over 
Daniel.

“Is that Richard,” Sam asked absently, nodding to the exotic 
looking man.

“Yes,” Al and Kate both answered automatically. “And the woman 
is Daniel’s mother,” Al added.

The woman’s eyes locked on Sam. “Did you come here with this 
man,” she called.

Sam looked at Kate, who looked stunned, and nodded. “Yes.”

“Put them in my tent,” Eloise told the thuggish man behind 
them, who shoved them into said tent without question, pushing 
a little too roughly.

Sam felt a jolt go through his knees as he hit the ground. Kate 
let out a distressed yelp as she was dropped none too gently a 
few feet away.

“Hey, take it easy,” Sam protested. 

The man spun, his boot crashing into Sam’s face before he had 
time to duck. “Don’t talk,” he growled.

“You nozzle,” Al snarled directly into the man’s face.

Completely unaware of the bolts of fire Al was shooting at him, 
the man turned and left the tent.

“Are you okay,” Kate asked.

Sam spat a mouthful of blood on the ground, making Al wince. 
“Yeah.”

“Sam, Ziggy says the odds of the bomb going off just dropped to 
practically zero, but...” he sighed. “The EMP is still going to 
go off, which will amount to practically the same thing.”

“And I’m still here, which means I can’t have come here to stop 
the bomb,” Sam hissed.

“What,” Kate called from the other side of the tent.

“The EMP is going to go off no matter what I do,” Sam 
continued, ignoring her. “The incident Daniel was talking about 
– it happened. It is going to happen. What if I’m not supposed 
to *stop* him from detonating the bomb? What if I’m supposed to 
make sure it goes off?”

“Jack, who are you talking to,” Kate asked, becoming alarmed.

Sam turned to her, sitting carefully on a low stool on his side 
of the tent. “How many people have died since we crashed here?”

From the flicker of pained sadness in her eyes he guessed the 
answer was more than a couple.

“If we do what Daniel said, our plane will never crash and 
they’ll still be alive. We could change our past. Wipe it 
clean.”

“And what about us? We all just go on living our lives because 
we’ve never met,” Kate argued.

“She has a point, Sam.”

Sam opened his mouth – not entirely sure what he was going to 
say to that – but Eloise chose that moment to come into the 
tent. 

“The man I shot,” she began, addressing Sam. “What did he need 
the bomb for?”

Sam blinked at her, his mouth snapping firmly shut. He wasn’t 
about to tell her anything until he knew where she stood.

She looked at the diary in her hand – the same one Daniel had 
been carrying earlier – and flipped through the pages absently. 
“I need you to tell me why he needed the bomb,” she said almost 
numbly.

“I don’t think you’d believe me,” Sam said finally.

Eloise squatted beside him. “When I was 17 years old, I took a 
young man to the bomb. He proceeded to tell me that if we 
buried it underground then things would work out splendidly. 
When I asked him how he could be so sure he said that he was 
from the future. And then he disappeared. Right in front of my 
bloody eyes.” Her voice broke as tears formed in her eyes. “Ten 
minutes ago, I shot that man in the back. And before he...died, 
he told me that he...” She blinked. “He said he was my son. 
Explain to me, and you have my word I will believe you.” She 
waved the open diary in front of Sam’s face. “How is this my 
handwriting if I don’t remember writing it?”

Sam looked down at the page Eloise was showing him. In an 
elegant script, it said “no matter what, remember than I will 
always love you. Mother.”

“Uh, Sam,” Al said somberly, consulting his device. “Judging by 
Daniel’s birthdate...she’s two months pregnant.”

Sam looked at the woman who had just unknowingly killed the son 
she had yet to give birth to and felt a pang of sympathy. 
“Because you haven’t written it yet. Look, I know this might be 
difficult to understand right now, but what just happened...it 
was an accident. And I think there’s a way we can fix it.”

“Jack,” Kate cut in.

“Sam,” Al said warningly at the same moment.

Eloise held up a hand without looking back at Kate, silencing 
her. “What?”

“Your son came back here because he’d found a way to fix 
everything. He doesn’t have to be dead – you don’t have to have 
killed him. He wrote his plan in that journal. If we follow it, 
none of this will have happened.”

Eloise, looking stunned and somewhat alarmed, finally turned to 
address Kate. “Does he know what he’s talking about?”

Kate stared at the far wall of the tent. “He thinks he does,” 
she murmured, her voice flat, resigned.

Eloise looked back and forth between the two captives, then 
down at the journal filled with scientific formulas in her 
future son’s messy scrawl. She nodded. “All right then. I’ll 
take you to the bomb.”

*******
(2 1/2 hours later)

“Is that a bomb,” Miles yelped, looking at the hydrogen core 
poking from Sayid’s open backpack.

Sam was too busy trying to keep Sayid from bleeding out all 
over the back of the stolen Dharma van to answer him. Kate had 
abandoned him long ago, after accusing him of going completely 
insane and trying to kill them all. Al had disappeared shortly 
thereafter. Sayid had wandered out of the jungle shortly after 
that – looking better than a man who had spent at least a day 
wandering the jungle had any right to look – and volunteered 
his help with Sam’s mission. “If this works, you might just 
save us all,” he’d said. “And if it doesn’t, at least you will 
put us out of our misery.”

They had almost made it out of the cave and through the Dharma 
compound that, much to everyone’s dismay, had been built over 
the cave before being recognized. Sayid’s warning that he was 
carrying a nuclear device had not dissuaded an armed Dharma 
Initiative employee from shooting him.

“What’s going on back there?” Hurley craned his head around 
from the driver’s seat.

“Just keep your eyes on the damned road,” Miles barked at him.

“I don’t know where we’re going!”

Sam recalled the name of the place Daniel had said the EMP 
would originate from. “The Swan site!”

Hurley frowned at him in the rear view mirror and Sam vaguely 
wondered if he could still see through the aura or if – like 
Sam – he saw Jack’s face in the reflection. “Why do you wanna 
go there? Sayid’s been shot...”

Sam met his eyes. “If you wanna save Sayid, then take us to the 
Swan site.”

“So, what, this bomb is supposed to blow us back in time,” 
Miles asked.

Sam rolled his eyes inwardly. He was getting tired of 
explaining how time travel worked. “No, we’re not going back in 
time, we’re just changing the time stream.”

Miles blinked. “Okay...sure.”

Sam looked back down to find Sayid looking up at him calmly, 
his expression almost serene. “You can’t stop the bleeding,” he 
said. “I need to modify the bomb. I can make it so it detonates 
on impact. Jack, we need to be there at the moment of the 
incident or all of this will be for nothing.”

Before Sam could reply, the van lurched to a sudden stop. “Why 
are we stopping?”

Hurley, still gripping the wheel, wide-eyed, pointed silently 
through the windshield. Kate had returned, but this time she 
had reinforcements. Sawyer and Juliet stood beside her, each 
looking like they’d been in a fistfight recently. The three of 
them blocked the narrow dirt path. 

Sam grabbed Sayid’s hand and pressed it over the wad of 
clothing covering his abdominal wound. “Keep pressure on that.” 
Then he scrambled to open the van door. 

Sawyer met him before he was all the way out of the vehicle and 
grabbed him by the arm, dragging him toward the tree line. “We 
gotta talk,” he growled.

“Sawyer, we don’t have time to...”

“Five minutes,” Sawyer snapped. He yanked Sam into a clearing a 
safe distance from the van and whirled on him. “What the 
hell’re you tryin’ to do?”

Sam winced as he got a closer look at Sawyer’s wounds. “What 
happened to your face?” He reached toward Sawyer, who bat his 
hand away angrily.

“Damnit, Jack, don’t you start playin’ doctor now.”

“I *am* a doctor.”

“Yeah, well, you sure as hell coulda fooled me. Didn’t realize 
that oath you doctors have to take covered blowin’ up a whole 
damned island.”

“I can explain...”

“Don’t bother. Kate already told me. Said you think comin’ here 
was a mistake and you wanna fix it so we never crashed on this 
rock.” He ran his hands through his hair, his face twisted in 
disbelief and frustration. “What the hell did you screw up so 
bad the first time around you’re willin’ to blow up a damned 
nuke just for a second chance?”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“Well, what is it about then?”

Sam hesitated. Honestly, he wasn’t sure. Whenever Ziggy 
couldn’t give him clear right or wrong choices he usually just 
followed his gut. “Because it’s why I’m here. It’s what I’m 
supposed to do.”

Sawyer stared at him with an unreadable expression. “So, what, 
it’s fate that brought you back here? This’s your destiny?”

Sam nodded uncertainly. “Something like that.”

Sawyer grabbed him by the upper arms suddenly and pushed him 
back against the nearest tree. “I don’t speak destiny,” he said 
in a low growl, his face close enough for Sam to feel his 
breath. “What I *do* understand is a man does what he does 
‘cause he wants somethin’ for himself. What do you want, Jack?”

Sam blinked at him in stunned silence and wondered if maybe he 
was right. Was Sam really trying to fix whatever had gone wrong 
in Jack’s life or had he lost the ability to remain objective 
when he saw a possible way to get home?

Sawyer’s tone changed suddenly and his left hand came up to 
cradle Sam’s cheek. “If what you’re doin’ even works...you and 
me’ll be strangers. Is that what you want?”

Kate had said as much before but this time Sam had an answer 
ready. “You won’t remember, but J...*I* will.”

Sawyer’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “How can you be so sure?”

“I can’t explain how I know, you just have to trust me. I 
*will* remember this. I will remember you. And I will find 
you.”

When the people Sam leapt into went back to their own time they 
always had some memory of the leap. Usually they assumed it was 
just a dream or, sometimes, an alien abduction. But Jack was 
different – he was fully aware of where and when he’d gone. Sam 
had no doubt he would remember Sawyer. And from what he knew of 
his host’s personality, he felt confident Jack would not give 
up until he got Sawyer back, no matter where they ended up.

“Whatever was meant to be *will* happen. And this...” Sam 
pressed a hand to Sawyer’s chest. “I know this was meant to 
be.”

Sawyer stared at him silently, his nostrils flaring a little 
with his deep, ragged breaths. “I guess I can’t say nothin’ 
that’s gonna change your mind, huh?”

Sam shook his head firmly. “No.”

Sawyer’s posture relaxed a little in defeat and he nodded. 
“Okay then,” he said slowly. Then he kissed Sam, holding his 
head firmly between his hands. 

Sam tried instinctively to pull away, hearing muffled noises of 
distress spilling from his lips, which he could feel bruising 
already with the force of the kiss. He brought his hands up to 
push Sawyer back, but they ended up tangled in the man’s hair 
instead and he found himself kissing back. He had a moment’s 
alarm as he realized his body was acting independently of his 
mind’s command. Then he understood. 

Jack.

The world rotated for a moment and Sawyer seemed to disappear. 
Sam stumbled, thrown off balance by the shift, and blinked at 
his new surroundings. He gasped as he recognized the waiting 
room’s stark white walls and sparse furnishings. It couldn’t 
really be that simple, could it? He was pretty sure he hadn’t 
leapt.

He looked down at his body and cursed, only slightly startled 
by the unfamiliar voice that reached his ears. ‘Not *my* ears,’ 
he mentally corrected. ‘Jack’s’.

He pushed up the sleeve on his white turtleneck to find the 
brightly colored tattoo he had spied in the mirror his first 
night. 

“Oh boy,” he moaned. “This can’t be good.” Unsure of the exact 
location of the door, he looked up and shouted at the nearest 
wall. “Al!”

*********

Jack panted as Sawyer broke the kiss, leaning his head back so 
their eyes met.

“I just got you back,” Sawyer murmured absently, his thumb 
brushing Jack’s bottom lip.

“I know,” Jack said softly, ignoring the odd tone of the voice 
that reached his ears. He knew Sawyer wouldn’t hear it. He also 
knew Sam would be pissed when he found out Jack had hijacked 
his body again, but Jack didn’t care. Sam would forgive him. 

He pulled Sawyer into a hug, their arms wrapping so tightly 
around each other they barely had room for breath. “I’ll find 
you,” he vowed firmly. “No matter what it takes. You won’t lose 
me again.”

Sawyer just grunted and buried his face in Jack’s neck, 
inhaling deeply.

“Hey.” Jack twined his fingers in Sawyer’s hair and pulled his 
head up until their eyes met. “Trust me. This is going to work. 
And when our plane lands in Los Angeles I will find you. I’ll 
follow you all the way to Tennessee if I have to.”

“Y’know I won’t remember. I didn’t even *like* you when we 
first met.”

“I didn’t like you either. But it took us three years to get 
here.” He tucked a lock of hair behind Sawyer’s ear and smiled 
sadly. “I don’t care if it takes three more. I’ll wait.”

Sawyer hesitated a moment, then kissed Jack again. Jack leaned 
into it this time, kissing back just as harshly, as if he could 
imprint this intimate moment on his mind so indelibly it would 
be impossible for him to forget – no matter what happened on 
the journey back through time. Besides, he didn’t know when he 
would ever get a chance to touch Sawyer like this again.

After minutes that felt entirely too short, Sawyer pulled away 
and stared at Jack, tracing his lower lip with one thumb. He 
seemed to debate with himself for a moment, then nodded firmly.

“I trust you.”

********

After a few moments of disorientation, Jack found his way to 
the worksite that would one day be the Swan Station. He 
crouched behind a tree and toyed briefly with the idea of 
setting the bomb off himself. 

No, he decided. Sam knew what he was doing. And if what Al said 
was right, this mission would fix everything. All of them – 
*including* Sam – would go back to their own time where they 
rightfully belonged. He couldn’t take that away from Sam. 
Besides, he had no idea what would happen if the bomb went off 
and his mind was stuck in Sam’s body in 1977.

He watched the Dharma Initiative employees – some familiar, 
some less so – milling around the site and almost jumped out of 
his skin when Kate appeared suddenly beside him.

“Hey,” she whispered, her expression guarded. Jack wondered if 
she knew, on some level, that a stranger had taken over his 
body in the last couple days.

“Hey.” A question he’d been meaning to ask her before sprang to 
the forefront of his mind suddenly and he realized if he didn’t 
ask her now he might never get another chance. “Why did you 
make me promise not to ask about Aaron?”

She was visibly thrown by the question, as she had every right 
to be. But, he figured, Aaron *was* his nephew, or, at least, 
his half-nephew. He had a right to know why Kate had suddenly 
given up custody. She blinked back tears and looked away for a 
moment. “Because,” she finally choked. “I was...*so* angry with 
you for making me come back here.”

It sounded like a weak excuse, but...well, Jack *had* pretty 
much dragged her down this road with him ever since he started 
calling her in a stoned out haze and yammering about going back 
to the island. “Is he why you came back?”

“I came back so he can be where he belongs,” she said firmly, 
the rationale well-practiced in her mind. “With his mother.”

Jack turned toward her with renewed purpose. “If this works, 
Claire will never come to the island and they will be together 
just the way they were meant to be,” he said pointedly.

Kate shook her head, her eyes hardening. “She was gonna give 
him up for adoption...”

“You don’t know what she would do,” Jack interrupted. “And 
whatever it is, it would be *her* choice. If you want to save 
Claire, this is the only way to do it. And nothing - *nothing* 
- in my life has ever felt so right.” He swallowed, trying to 
reign in the emotion coloring his voice. “This is going to 
work, Kate. I need you to believe that.” 

When Jack had first heard about Daniel’s plan and Sam’s 
intentions he had nearly taken Al’s head off. But he had come 
to see the logic in it. This was the only option left that made 
sense. Everything that had happened since they chose to come 
back had led them toward this one endgame. It was the only way 
out – the only way to put right everything that had gone wrong.

A shout brought their attention back to the Dharma employees 
down the hill. Smoke was billowing from the drill site and 
people were running back and forth shouting commands.

“It’s about to happen,” Jack murmured. He scrambled upright and 
grabbed Kate by the arms, ducking slightly to meet her wide-
eyed gaze. “Are you with me on this?”

Kate hesitated. Then her lips pursed together and she nodded 
firmly. “Yes.”

*******

They returned to the clearing where the rest of their group 
huddled around the stolen Dharma van. Jack suppressed the 
instinctive panic he felt at the sight of Sayid slumped against 
the vehicle, pale and slowly bleeding out. There was nothing he 
could do about it, he reminded himself. If the plan worked, 
Sayid would never have to put himself in the path of the bullet 
in the first place. If it didn’t...well, they would all be dead 
soon anyway.

He knelt beside Sayid, eyeing the bulging backpack beside him, 
guessing it must hold the bomb. “We were just on a ridge where 
we could look down into the Swan site. Something just happened. 
They hit something. It’s time for me to go.”

Sayid nodded weakly and looked at the backpack. “It’s all set 
to go. Remember: be careful. It’s rigged to explode on impact. 
According to Faraday’s plan, you must get the bomb as close as 
you can to the source of electromagnetism.”

Jack nodded, hoping his half-scrambled brain could hold that 
information long enough through the time shift to relay it to 
Al. “Sayid, this is gonna work. And it’ll save you.”

Sayid looked him in the eyes, his expression one of 
resignation. “Nothing can save me,” he said flatly.

Jack brushed the comment off. He was wrong. It would save them 
all. He stood and let Kate help him slide the heavy pack onto 
his shoulders, taking the gun Hurley proffered and, with a deep 
breath and what he hoped was a reassuring smile at Kate, 
setting off toward the Swan site.

He ran into Sawyer just outside the clearing. Juliet was at his 
side, a supportive hand on his back. Both looked wary and 
somber – like inmates awaiting execution.

Jack reached for Sawyer, catching his forearm and giving a 
quick squeeze. “I’ll see you in Los Angeles,” he vowed.

Sawyer swallowed heavily and nodded.

The world seemed to tilt suddenly and Jack found himself back 
in the stark white room he’d inhabited for the last two days. 
Al stood in front of him, a baffled look on his face.

“Tell Sam I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I just wanted to say 
goodbye.”

*********

Al found Sam pacing like a caged animal in a small clearing.

“Sam, you’ve got less than a half an hour before the incident. 
It looks like Jack got everybody to agree on your plan, which 
surprised the hell outta us, but...”

“What if we’ve been wrong all along, Al,” Sam interrupted, 
coming to a stop in front of Al with his hands on his hips. 
“What if what I’m doing *causes* the incident I’m supposed to 
prevent?”

“Ah, no. Ziggy says in the original history what looked like a 
bomb was the electromagnetic blast Daniel was talking about. 
The Dharma Initiative buried the area in concrete and built a 
station over it with a switch so the energy could be released 
every hour and a half.” He shrugged. “The button didn’t get 
pushed in time and the electromagnetism ripped Jack’s plane 
right out of the sky. Daniel was right.”

Sam scrubbed his palms over his face. He had been so sure he 
was doing the right thing, but...since when did detonating a 
hydrogen bomb qualify as the “right thing”? “Okay, but why me? 
I mean, if Jack is willing to set the bomb off himself, why am 
I here? He knows more than I do about these people...this 
place. What can I do here that he can’t?”

Al opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “I don’t 
know.”

Sam groaned. “I should have stopped them from drilling. Then 
there wouldn’t even *be* an incident to prevent.”

“If that was the reason you were here, wouldn’t you have leapt 
into one of the Dharma scientists?” Al tapped his temple 
pointedly. “If a scientist from the future can’t stop them, 
what makes you think they’d listen to a surgeon from the future 
posing as a janitor?”

Sam sighed heavily. “It would be worth a try.”

“Yeah, well, it’s too late for that now. Whatever it is you’re 
here to do – it hasn’t happened yet, or you woulda leaped 
already.”

Sam started to argue, even though he knew it was futile – Al 
was right, he never leapt into people at random. Whatever he 
was here to do, it was something he had to do as *Jack*. Al cut 
him off.

“You’ve gotta move fast, Sam. You’ve only got about fifteen 
minutes left.”

Sam nodded stiffly and retrieved the handgun from the pocket of 
his jumpsuit. “Stay with me, Al.”

Al nodded soberly. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right here until this 
is all over.”

Sam nodded and started across the clearing. Two steps later, he 
stopped. “Which way am I going?”

********

Five minutes later, Sam crouched behind equipment and 
vegetation on the edge of the worksite, creeping cautiously 
closer. “Al, how many of them are there?”

“Uh...” Al’s eyes roved over the group of Dharma employees 
crawling over the site. “Too many. And most of them are armed.”

Sam groaned. “How close do I have to get?”

“According to the Iraqi back there who rewired it? You have to 
drop it down that hole where the drill is.”

“Great,” Sam muttered. “What does Ziggy say the odds are of me 
doing that *before* they shoot me?”

Al shrugged helplessly.

Sam peaked carefully around the machinery concealing him from 
view. “Okay. Maybe if I just...”

Before he could finish formulating a strategy for making his 
way to the drill before anyone noticed, Phil – freed from 
Sawyer’s closet and looking angrier than ever – shouted and 
fired a shot from his rifle in Sam’s direction.

Sam ducked back down, his heart pounding as several more shots 
flew overhead. “Help me, Al,” he hissed.

Al winced as bullets tore through his holographic body to imbed 
harmlessly in the trees. “One o’ clock, two bogies,” he barked.

Sam sprang upright and fired four shots in the direction Al 
indicated, barely taking time to aim properly. He didn’t wait 
to see if the bullets had hit their mark before ducking back 
for cover.

“Good, you got one of ‘em,” Al said.

“Al, this isn’t going to work!” 

Al didn’t seem to hear him – his attention focused on the tree 
line, where the low rumbling of a motor was approaching. The 
stolen Dharma van burst from the jungle a moment later and Al 
instinctively jumped aside to avoid it even though it couldn’t 
hit him. As it arced around Sam he had just enough time to 
register Kate leaning out of the passenger window with a pistol 
and Juliet firing a rifle from the open back door. 

The vehicle lurched to a stop and the two women, plus Miles and 
Sawyer, darted out, all of them armed and covering each other 
as they pushed their way closer to the drill, clearing a path 
for Sam.

Sam looked to Al, wide-eyed.

“Go!” Al prompted, waving toward the drill wildly.

Sam ducked his head and darted toward the drill, trusting Al 
and Jack’s friends to keep him safe from the rapidly dwindling 
gunfire.

The rain of bullets stopped suddenly and Sam heard Sawyer’s 
voice rise above the noise of the idling machinery. “All right, 
you can come out now, Doc.”

“It’s okay, Sam,” Al confirmed.

Sam glanced at Al, standing next to the still-working drill, 
and slowly stood up. His eyes caught Sawyer’s and he was 
momentarily stunned by the steely determination he saw in the 
Southerner’s expression. He wondered how, exactly, Jack had 
convinced him of this plan.

“Hurry up and do it,” Sawyer barked at him before turning to 
the man who could only be Dr. Chang. “Turn that damn thing 
off!”

Dr. Chang eagerly reached for the panel of buttons on the side 
of the drill, but his efforts to turn it off only seemed to 
produce an ungodly screech of metal.

“What’s the matter,” Sawyer demanded.

A small shower of sparks erupted from the machinery, making Dr. 
Chang shrink back momentarily. “It won’t shut down!”

“They hit the pocket,” one of the loudmouth Dharma workers Sam 
hadn’t gotten the chance to know groaned.

“This is it, Sam,” Al said nervously. Even though everything 
that had happened seemed to have led to this moment, the 
finality of setting off an explosion of such magnitude 
unsettled him. What if they were wrong about the effect it 
would have on Sam? On Jack and his people?

Sam set the backpack down on the ledge built around the drill, 
setting his gun beside it. He unzipped the pack silently and 
carefully extracted the hydrogen core, concentrating on keeping 
his hands steady while the rest of him trembled at the thought 
of what he had to do next. He held the core out over the gaping 
abyss and closed his eyes. “Please let this work,” he murmured 
to whatever deity had seen fit to send him on this crazy 
mission.

“Hurry up, Doc,” Sawyer snapped. “What’re you waiting for? Drop 
it!”

Sam let the bomb fall from his hands and closed his eyes as it 
tumbled into the darkness below, bracing himself for the impact 
and praying he would leap before he felt it.

“Uh...Sam?” Al said after several long seconds.

Sam opened his eyes slowly, half expecting to find himself in 
the waiting room even though he hadn’t felt the tingling and 
dizziness that usually accompanied a leap.

“This don’t look like LAX,” he heard Sawyer mutter.

Sam’s eyes flicked over his unchanged surroundings, his mind 
racing. “Al, what happened,” he whispered.

Al looked just as baffled by this turn of events as Sam felt.

The drill and scaffolding surrounding the drill site groaned 
and shuddered and Sam took a step back to avoid a burst of 
steam. The gun he’d left on the ledge trembled and slipped off 
the ledge down the tunnel below as if pulled by an invisible 
hand. It was followed immediately by a toolbox someone had left 
near the drill site.

“Sam, get back!”

Sam scrambled backward as the entire scaffolding around the 
drill twisted and collapsed in on itself, being drawn downward. 
Sam watched, wide-eyed, as every metal object around the well 
was sucked in, including a full-sized wheelbarrow. Daniel 
obviously hadn’t been kidding about the power of the 
electromagnetic energy at this site. And it was only getting 
stronger.

“Sam, look out!”

Sam ducked instinctively at Al’s warning and saw a thick metal 
toolbox sail over his head toward the hole.

“Jack,” Kate yelped.

“Get back, Kate,” Sam shouted back, scrambling in the direction 
of her voice.

“Get away from here,” Sam heard Miles chime in from somewhere 
nearby. “Get as far away from here as you can!”

“Over here, Sam,” Al called from somewhere beyond the perimeter 
of the dig site.

Sam started to follow him and nearly ran into Juliet, who was 
standing far too close to the gaping hole for comfort. 

“Run,” he shouted, giving her a push in the direction Al’s 
voice had come from.

She nodded absently, already running in a half crouch in the 
direction he’d indicated, obviously accustomed to following 
orders quickly and without question.

Sam started to follow her but something heavy slammed into his 
stomach, knocking him to the ground. Before he had a chance to 
figure out what had happened, he felt the object tighten around 
him and start to drag him backward, toward the well.

“Al,” he shouted, clawing futilely at the ground.

“Jack!” Kate appeared suddenly, throwing herself on the ground 
beside Sam and grabbing a thick metal chain, tugging with all 
her strength. A moment later, Juliet had returned and grabbed 
onto the chain as well. Sam realized frantically that the other 
end of the chain must be wrapped around his waist and the 
magnetic pull on it was dragging him toward the seemingly 
bottomless pit.

He barely had time to understand what was happening before the 
ground disappeared beneath him. He lashed out, grabbing a metal 
bar from the still-collapsing framework around the well, 
straining to pull himself back up to stable ground. He screamed 
as the chains seemed to tighten even further, pulling him down 
hard.

Al’s face appeared in the opening above him, eyes wide with 
fear. “Sam! Hold on!”

“I can’t,” Sam yelped frantically. The pull of the magnetic 
energy was too strong. He strained to hang on, but he knew it 
was useless. He could feel his hands starting to slip, the 
chains pulling him down.

For a moment he was in freefall. Then a hand shot out and 
grabbed his, stopping him abruptly.

“Where the hell do you think you’re goin’,” Sawyer growled.

Sam blinked up at him. Sawyer’s face was already reddening with 
the effort of holding Sam up, the muscles in his arm quivering. 
He wouldn’t be able to hold on for long.

Al appeared suddenly beside Sam, hovering over the void. “Right 
here, Sam!” He pointed frantically at a spot on the chain near 
Sam’s right hip. “Grab the end of the chain! Try to loosen it!”

“Help me get the chains off,” Sawyer yelled as Sam fumbled, 
one-handed, for the spot Al had indicated. “Hold on,” he called 
to Sam.

Kate dangled over the lip of the hole suddenly, Juliet’s arms 
wrapped around her waist to anchor her, her hands stretching 
toward the chains. But she was too far away. Her hands clawed 
uselessly through the air somewhere in the vicinity of Sam’s 
shoulders.

“I can’t get it off,” Sam shouted, abandoning his equally 
unproductive efforts to remove the chains to grip Sawyer with 
both hands.

“I’ve got you,” Sawyer vowed, his eyes locked on Sam with 
determined intensity.

“Sam, what are you doing?” Al shouted. “You can’t give up! Grab 
the chain and pull!”

Sam yelped as the chain cinched just a little tighter. He 
couldn’t feel his legs anymore and wondered if the last tug had 
broken his spine. 

“Augh! I can’t reach,” Kate shouted.

The collapsing metal framework gave a small downward lurch and 
Sawyer yelled wildly as the movement made Sam slip just a 
little further into the void, their tenuous connection 
threatening to break.

“You hold on,” Sawyer ordered stubbornly. “I got you!”

“Sam, you have to hurry before this whole place goes!”

Sam looked at one of the metal beams nearest his head. It was 
broken almost completely in half by the force of the magnetic 
pull. He thought suddenly of how a force like this probably 
ripped the wings right off of Jack’s plane just before it 
crashed. And then he understood. This was only the *beginning* 
of the incident they were trying to prevent. They hadn’t been 
able to stop it from happening at all but it wasn’t over yet. 
The only thing that could stop it now was at the bottom of the 
well Sam was dangling over. *This* was why he’d had to take 
Jack’s place. In order to set things right for all of them, he 
needed to sacrifice himself.

Sam’s eyes met with Sawyer’s, his face relaxing as he accepted 
what had to happen next. “It’s okay,” he said calmly.

Sawyer’s eyes were already dampening and his voice broke as he 
begged “don’t you leave me!”

“Sam, what are you doing?” Al’s voice climbed two octaves in 
his increasing panic. 

Sam ignored his long time friend. For the next minute, he 
needed to be Jack Shephard. He focused on Sawyer’s face, 
letting everything else fall away. “I love you.”

“No, don’t you let go!” Sawyer’s voice was so desperate...so 
mournful that Sam felt his heart break in sympathy for his 
loss.

“I’ll always love you,” he choked.

Sawyer began screaming frantically, straining to hold on as Sam 
started slipping from his vice grip. “No! No, don’t let go!”

Sam vaguely heard Al screaming frantically in his ear, but he 
paid no attention. He kept his eyes locked with Sawyer’s as he 
let his numb fingers go slack, letting the pull of the chain 
rip him from Sawyer’s grasp.

Sawyer’s terrified voice screaming Jack’s name rang in his ears 
as he tumbled into the abyss. 

There was a moment of blinding pain and then everything went 
black.

*******

“Sam...Sam!”

Sam groaned softly as he tried to force his eyes open. He 
blinked at the odd shadows in front of him, trying to remember 
where he was and what had happened.

“You did it,” Al continued, his voice thick. “Ziggy says if you 
hadn’t done what you did, Juliet would be down here. She thinks 
in the original history Juliet died instantly, the bomb never 
went off, and everything else Daniel said...”

Sam’s eyes flew open wide as he came fully awake, the events of 
the past few hours flooding back to him. Pain screamed through 
every inch of his body. He cried out, his hands clenching into 
fists. A tiny splash and a general feeling of wetness told him 
he was lying in a shallow pool. He blinked at the small circle 
of light far above him and wondered how he could possibly be 
alive. As the shadows just above him came into focus he 
realized he had only been temporarily spared. Twisted metal 
criss-crossed the tunnel over his head, suspended somehow a 
couple feet over him. If...when it gave way, it would crush 
him.

He gasped and choked, fighting to breathe through the nearly 
overwhelming pain. “Al!”

“I’m right here, Sam.”

One of the shadows in the small space shifted and Al’s face 
came into focus, hovering over Sam.

Sam barely registered the gut-wrenching sadness clouding Al’s 
eyes before his own blurred with pained tears. “Don’t leave me, 
Al,” he pleaded. His attempt at speech made him cough and the 
resulting pain nearly forced him back into unconsciousness. He 
felt blood well up into his mouth and gagged on the coppery 
taste, twisting his head agonizingly to one side to spit it 
out.

The warble of emotion was unmistakable in Al’s voice now. He 
had always known he may have to face seeing his dear friend die 
in the course of a dangerous mission. The reality of it was 
just as awful as he’d feared. “I’m not going to leave you, 
buddy. Just stay with me a little longer. There’s just one more 
thing you have to do.”

Sam groaned weakly and spat another mouthful of blood, crying 
out as fire erupted in his chest and abdomen. ‘Internal 
bleeding...possible collapsed lung,’ a voice in the back of his 
head diagnosed grimly. “No more,” he moaned. 

“Listen to me, Sam.” Al’s voice took on a note of urgency. “You 
don’t have much time. You have to set off the bomb.”

“I can’t...”

“Yes, you can, Sam,” Al interrupted in his best Admiral’s 
voice, broaching any further argument. “You have to do it or 
you’re gonna die down here.”

Sam moaned brokenly.

Al took a deep breath and steeled himself for his next order. 
“Now...the bomb is right in front of you. Can you see it?”

Sam blinked blearily at the shape Al indicated and coughed. 
“Yeah...”

“There’s a rock right next to your hand, Sam. I need you to 
pick it up and give the bomb a couple good whacks right here.” 
He pointed to a spot near one end of the hydrogen core.

Sam felt blindly along the water-logged ground until he found 
the rock. His fingers closed over it and he took as deep a 
breath as his battered body would allow, rallying whatever 
strength he had left.

“Hey,” Al called.

Sam blinked up at him blearily and wondered if it was a trick 
of the light or if the Admiral’s eyes were really filling with 
tears.

“I’ll see you on the other side, kid.”

Sam smiled – pain making the gesture look more like a grimace - 
and nodded. Then he hefted the rock into the air and brought it 
down on the hydrogen core, letting out an incoherent yell as 
his entire body screamed in protest of the sudden movement. 

Nothing happened. Sam gritted his teeth and brought the rock 
down on the core again and again. 

After the third blow, he felt a familiar tingle start up in his 
fingers, spreading down his arms. And as his arm arced toward 
the bomb for the fourth – and final – time, Dr. Sam Beckett 
leaped.


***********
Epilogue


Jack awoke with a start, gasping for breath as the last of an 
all-too-real dream shook him.

“Easy,” a voice said beside him and a gentle hand touched his 
arm.

He jumped, his head turning toward the voice, his eyes slowly 
focusing on his surroundings. He was still on Oceanic flight 
815. The man sitting beside him had boarded the plane in Sydney 
and Jack had thought at the time that he looked familiar 
somehow. Now, as he took in the man’s kind face and grey-
streaked brown hair images from his dream tumbled through his 
mind, including the unnerving memory of the man’s face looking 
back at him from a reflecting pool. “Sam,” he blurted.

The man smiled with relief. “I was afraid you’d never 
remember.”

Jack’s eyes snapped to the window, horrific memories of twisted 
metal and burned wreckage playing just behind his eyes. But he 
only saw fluffy white clouds and peaceful blue-green ocean 
below. “It was...it was all real?”

“Yes. 1977, The Dharma Initiative, the bomb...it all happened.”

Jack’s eyes snapped back to Sam and he reached out to touch the 
man’s arm, as if trying to confirm his reality too.

Sam caught his hand and clasped it tightly. “It’s nice to 
finally really meet you, Jack.”

A laugh burst from Jack’s lips. He was still processing the 
images flooding his mind of a past he’d technically never had, 
even though the experiences felt very real. “It worked.”

“It worked.” Sam smiled. “All of it. The island is still there 
somewhere...most of it. But this plane will land in Los 
Angeles.”

“And you? You’re really here?”

Sam nodded. “I woke up in my own body back in 1999. Well,” he 
added hastily. “Technically it was well into 2000 by the time I 
recovered.”

Jack flinched, remembering the ominous silence that had fallen 
on the control room, broken by Al frantically screaming orders 
and rough hands manhandling him back to the waiting room. The 
last thing he remembered was mind-numbing pain washing over him 
and then...nothing. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Sam gripped his hand firmly. “You helped me get 
home. I can never repay you for that.”

Jack’s smile faltered suddenly and he craned his neck around, 
scanning the faces of the passengers all around him. Rose and 
Bernard were still across the aisle, too absorbed in each other 
to notice Jack’s attention. Sun and Jin were a couple rows 
back. And Locke met his gaze over Sam’s shoulder and gave him a 
small, friendly smile.

Sam knew exactly who Jack was really looking for. “He’s here. 
He’s on the other side of the plane.”

Jack thought he caught a glimpse of Sawyer’s dirty-blond hair 
and started to undo his seatbelt. 

Sam’s hand on his arm stopped him. “I need to talk to you 
before you see him.”

Jack frowned. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“No,” Sam assured him quickly. “I just need to explain what 
happened after I...after *we* leaped out of 1977.”

Jack eased back into his seat reluctantly.

“Once I recovered, I went back to work on the project. The 
problem was always in the retrieval code – instead of bringing 
me back to my time after a leap, it bounced me to the next 
random leap like a CD player stuck on shuffle. I thought if I 
could fix it I could not only come home between leaps – 
provided I didn’t stay too long – I could choose where I wanted 
to go. Within certain parameters, of course. Once I was 
reasonably certain I had fixed the problem, I knew I needed to 
run a test leap. I thought about you and your friends and how I 
might be able to repay you for bringing me home and I leaped 
into Sawyer’s uncle in 1976. I thought maybe I could save his 
parents.” Sam winced at the memory. “I couldn’t. But I *was* 
able to help little James Ford another way.” Sam smiled. “He’s 
a cop now.”

Jack gave a startled laugh. “A cop?”

“He’s still looking for Mr. Sawyer, but now he’s on the right 
side of the law. So is Kate, which is why she’s not on this 
plane. Hurley is, but he no longer thinks he’s crazy or 
unlucky, which was hard to convince him of because he can still 
see me no matter who I leap into. And Juliet is in Florida 
somewhere with her sister.” Sam trailed off and then hesitated. 
“Do you remember that night about three weeks ago when your 
father showed up at your apartment?

Jack’s smile cracked. “That...that was you?”

“No, this wasn’t a leap. I was out in the car. You told Al your 
father had died in Australia, but you never said *how* he died. 
It turns out I couldn’t save him either, but I knew I could at 
least give you both closure. So I joined his AA group a few 
months ago and became his sponsor. I convinced him that it 
wasn’t too late to save your relationship.”

Jack shook his head, tears pooling in his eyes. 

“I told him to tell you what he’d already told me. That he was 
proud of you and he loved you.”

Jack’s breath came in tiny gasps as a tear broke free and 
spilled down his cheek. “He said he forgave me for getting him 
fired,” he said, his voice breaking.

Sam reached over to pat his back kindly.

“And he said he had something he needed to show me, but he 
needed to go to Australia...” He choked back a sob as a memory 
from the original timeline popped into his head. “Claire. He 
wanted to tell me about my sister.”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“He convinced her to come to Los Angeles. I helped him buy her 
the plane ticket. And I convinced her after he died to get on 
the plane anyway. I told her I would introduce her to you 
myself when we got to Los Angeles. She doesn’t know you’re 
already on the plane.”

“Is she still...” Jack made a vague gesture toward his abdomen.

“About eight months pregnant, yes. She was planning to give the 
baby up for adoption, but the couple who were going to adopt it 
backed out. I was kind of hoping Kate and Sayid would be 
willing to help her, but...”

Jack reeled. “Sayid? He’s...he’s okay?”

Sam smiled. “Yeah. Apparently he met Kate’s father in the 
military. I introduced him to Kate on one of my leaps. They’re 
engaged now.”

Jack laughed, surprised. “Kate and Sayid?”

“It turned out the best way to fix the things that went wrong 
with their lives was to bring them together.” Sam shrugged. 
“They hit it off almost immediately. They make a good couple.”

Once Jack’s giddy laughter died down he started scanning the 
plane again. “I should talk to Claire...”

“No, Claire will be waiting for you when the plane lands. Right 
now I’m more concerned about Sawyer. I could have figured out a 
way to get you two to cross paths earlier, but I figured this 
plane brought you together once, it could do it again.”

“How?” Jack looked skeptical, but hopeful.

“I’m going to go switch seats with him. All you have to do is 
talk to him.”

Jack frowned. “What am I supposed to say?”

“You told Al you were willing to start over – to rebuild your 
relationship with Sawyer.”

“Yes, of course...”

“Most relationships begin with an introduction.” Sam patted 
Jack’s arm and moved to stand. 

“But what if he’s not interested,” Jack blurted, cringing 
inwardly at the insecurity in his voice.

Sam smiled. “Trust me – he will be.”

Jack started to ask Sam how he could be so sure of that but Sam 
was already making his way down the aisle of the plane. Jack 
cringed again as he noted the slight limp to Sam’s gait. He was 
pretty sure the man hadn’t had that problem before. 

He leaned back in his seat and took a deep breath, trying to 
ignore the instinct to bolt. 

He sorted through his memories, trying to separate the ones 
that belonged to the original timestream from the new ones. Al 
had warned him he might have trouble distinguishing the two at 
first, but that over time the memories from the original 
timeline would fade. Jack thought about the first time he’d 
kissed Sawyer, the first time they’d slept together, the way 
Sawyer could send a thrill up his spine with one hooded gaze or 
sensual touch and hoped Al was wrong. Then he thought of all 
the fights they’d had in the beginning and how rocky their 
relationship had been at times – those times when he’d wondered 
if they could make it work at all. He knew it was absurd to 
think that he could recreate the good parts of their 
relationship without *any* of the bad. But he’d been given a 
second chance – an opportunity to start over and create new 
memories.

His breath caught in his throat as he felt Sawyer slip into the 
seat Sam had just vacated. For a moment he feared he couldn’t 
go through with it. What if their relationship had only worked 
because the island had forced them into each other’s lives? 
Without the island, they didn’t really have anything in common. 
How could their relationship possibly work?

Then he remembered his promise to Sawyer and Sam’s conviction 
that they were *meant* to be together, regardless of the 
circumstances. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and 
looked at the man beside him, feeling his stomach flutter a 
little. God, he was beautiful.

Sawyer looked up from his well-worn novel when he felt Jack’s 
eyes on him and smiled, flashing the barest hint of dimples. 
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” Jack answered quickly.

Sawyer held out his hand. “James Ford.”

Jack shook his hand, hoping Sawyer couldn’t feel him trembling. 
“Jack Shephard.”

Sawyer...James, Jack corrected himself...cocked his head, his 
eyes narrowing slightly. “We met before?”

“Uh...no...I don’t think so,” Jack spluttered. He would 
remember something like that, wouldn’t he?

“I never arrested you, did I?”

“No.” Jack *knew* he would have remembered that.

“Huh.” James let go of his hand and shrugged. “Name sounded 
familiar.”

“Maybe you’ve heard of me before,” Jack offered hopefully. 
“Have you ever been to St. Sebastian hospital?”

James frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe...you a doctor?”

“Spinal surgeon.”

James shook his head. “I don’t...” then something clicked into 
place in his mind and he let out a laugh so abrupt that Rose 
shot him a startled look.

“What,” Jack asked, dazed.

“When I was a kid, my uncle gave me a pocket watch. Really nice 
one too. He put this piece of paper inside it and made me 
promise I’d never lose it. Said it was real important.” He 
raised his right hand in the air as if taking an oath. “Hand to 
God, it said when I was older I’d meet a surgeon named Jack 
Shephard. Said he was my soulmate.”

//I leaped into Sawyer’s uncle...//

Jack understood suddenly why Sam had had so much confidence 
about this meeting. He turned his head, scanning the faces of 
the passengers on the other side of the plane until he found 
Sam, chatting with Hurley across the aisle. Hurley caught his 
eye and flashed him a thumbs up. Sam turned, following Hurley’s 
gaze and smiled at Jack. 

Jack was momentarily distracted when Locke stood up, 
unintentionally obstructing his view. He watched, baffled, as 
the older man stepped into the aisle, stretched his legs and 
walked toward the bathrooms in the back of the plane. ‘Didn’t 
he say he was paralyzed before the crash?’ Jack shook his head. 
No, that must have been one of those false memories Al had 
warned him about.

“I figured he was goin’ crazy,” James continued, oblivious, re-
directing Jack’s attention back to him. “Seein’ as he died of a 
brain tumor. He said he didn’t even remember writin’ the note. 
But I just couldn’t make myself throw it away.” He glanced down 
at Jack’s hands and winced. “Shit. Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend 
you or anythin’.”

Jack looked down at his hands, puzzled, and was surprised to 
see a wedding ring on his finger. He searched his memory 
frantically but all he could come up with were images of an 
Italian woman crying in his arms, a lawyer showing up at his 
office with papers for him to sign and a woman...no, a 
man...no...both...possibly in different universes... sprawled 
across a bed in Thailand. “Oh,” he said. “No, I’m divorced.” 
‘Sarah left me in every universe,’ he added silently. But while 
he was pretty sure he had still been licking his wounds when 
he’d gotten on the plane to Australia, now he realized that it 
didn’t matter. She had already moved on. There was no reason he 
couldn’t do the same. 

He slipped the ring from his finger, stared at it for a couple 
moments longer, and then reached over to drop it in the seat 
pocket in front of him.

James smirked, amused. “You sure ‘bout that?”

Jack smiled, feeling like a weight had finally been lifted from 
his shoulders. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

James searched his eyes for a minute and nodded appreciatively. 
“Tell you what...” 

He set his book down on the seat between them and reached into 
his back pocket, retrieving his wallet. Jack glanced down at 
the cover of the book and suppressed the urge to laugh out 
loud. ‘Lord of the Flies’. 

James fished a business card from his wallet and held it out to 
Jack. “Here’s my card. You ever need anythin’, you give me a 
call.”

Jack felt his eyebrows creep upward. “Anything?”

James shrugged. “Well...long’s it don’t involve breakin’ the 
law. Might have to arrest you after all.” There was a hint of 
playful suggestion in his voice and Jack felt his skin tingle 
as the idea of putting Sawyer’s handcuffs to new use sprang 
into his mind.

Jack glanced down at the card. ‘Detective James Ford,’ it read. 
‘Los Angeles Police Department, 42nd precinct.’ “Are you 
hitting on me, Detective,” he asked, trying to keep his tone 
light and teasing and not sound desperate.

James smiled charmingly. “Yeah, I guess I am. So...can I buy 
you a drink sometime, Doc?”

Jack smiled back, feeling his body relax for the first time 
since he’d woken up. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d like that.”


THE END