Offstage Lines Pt. Two
Disclaimers and the previous part can be found here.
Part Two
Sawyer had one thought as the first bullet ripped through his shoulder: irony had been waiting for a very long time to deliver this kind of bitchslap onto him. His thought as a second opened up a line of fire along his ribs on the opposite side: if he had to pick his poison, he would take being stabbed over being shot any day. That, at least, had not felt as if kerosene had been poured over his skin and a match held close to the flesh.
Sawyer’s body was spun to the side by the impact of the first bullet, thrown backwards by the second. He felt nothing at all after, until cold water struck his back, closed over his head. Sawyer gasped instinctively and got a throat full of salt water before he remembered to close his mouth. The water was frigid at this time of night, but it did nothing whatsoever to stop the burning that rolled out from his wounds. Sawyer thrashed, trying to find the surface with no sunlight to guide him, and felt the water around his shoulder and abdomen start to grow warmer. Losing blood and losing it fast, in other words, as if the dragging, dazed buzz in his head wasn’t enough to tell him that.
Okay. He had never done anything on anyone else’s terms before, and he would be damned if this ocean was going to take him one second before he was ready. Sawyer stopped struggling for a moment and let himself drift, trying to tell from the change in pressure which way was up and which was down. Concentration drove the buzzing out of Sawyer’s brain for the moment. As plans went, he thought that it was not half bad for one that he had come up with while losing copious amounts of blood. It might even have worked, had he not felt a hand closing around his ankle with a sudden, clammy strength, dragging him in a direction that was definitely downwards. He knew more than ever that this was not a place he wanted to go.
Sawyer could not stop the yell of shock that traveled out of his throat, costing him more air than he could afford to lose and sending even more water down into his lungs. No more could he control the spasm of his leg that jerked him away from that hand. Sawyer gathered up every scrap of self-control that he had left and twisted in the water so that he could see the hand’s owner.
Joanna’s face was swollen and bloated, like something straight out of the horror movies that he had used to sneak into as a kid when he was short on money and even shorter on places to be. If it were not for her characteristic smoky red hair, a shade so dark that it bypassed auburn altogether and came closer to black, Sawyer was not sure that he even would have recognized her. As it was, he wasn’t sure that he still wanted to. Joanna had been wearing a bikini rather than her usual practical racing suit on the day that she had died, and all of that bare skin gave Sawyer plenty of room to see the business that the fish and the crabs had been doing on her abdomen, her legs. Her hair floated back from her face and let Sawyer see that her eyes had been eaten away.
Some deep part of Sawyer’s brain, the place where instincts were stored, told him that if he gave in to the urge to hyperventilate now it would be the last time that he would ever do so. He used the last scraps of oxygen in his lungs to whirl away from Joanna as she reached for him again and swam as fast as he was able in the opposite direction. There might come a time when he would be able to tell himself that what he had seen was nothing more than a hallucination brought on by stress and pain and maybe even be able to believe it, but in the moment itself she was as real to Sawyer as his own two hands. Never mind that he was reeling so hard that he could scarcely even tell left from right any longer, let alone which way led to the surface, and never mind that he was running so low on oxygen and blood and in his state only a few steps away from outright panic did not know how he was going to get more of either in time to save his life. Sawyer did not even know where the gun had fallen, or otherwise he would have thrown a few wild shots back in the thing’s direction and hoped that one of them hit something important. His priorities had in the past several seconds contracted to include one thing and one thing only: if he was going to die here, then oh please let it be before that Joanna thing touched him again.
Sawyer bit the inside of his own cheek until he tasted blood on his tongue when a pair of arms reached out from behind and wrapped themselves around him, so that he did not waste any further oxygen on a gasp or a yell that would go nowhere. He twisted like a cat in the water in order to get away from the owner of those arms as they dragged him inexorably upwards. He was fighting so fiercely that he did not notice that the hands were warm with the force of blood rushing through them, that the skin was not sliding about on the bones like a pair of ill-fitting gloves.
Sawyer wrenched free at last, so hard that he was certain he was leaving patches on his own skin behind in the thing’s grasp. He balled his hand into a fist and lashed out as hard as he was able.
It was a wild, weak blow that Sawyer was not actually expecting to connect with anything at all. When your back was against the wall, he had discovered years ago, it was the fact that you continued to fight at all that usually counted for the most. For once, though, the universe was smiling at him, and Sawyer got lucky. His fist connected with something warm and hard that snapped back under the force of impact. Sawyer was dizzily congratulating himself on being able to give a little of his own back, at least, when another fist collided with his own jaw in answer. Sawyer’s head rocked back hard enough to make his neck creak, felt his lips fall open far enough to let one final cold, gagging gulp of salt water slide down his throat. All right, then. That was it.
The owner of the arms closed them around Sawyer from behind again, pinning his arms back down to his sides before once again dragging them both grimly upwards. Sawyer kicked and squirmed, but he was done and they both knew it. When Joanna’s compatriot slid his arm down to press against the burning furrow in Sawyer’s side, he nearly passed out.
Sawyer did not realize what had really happened until his head broke the surface of the water and he heard a voice begin yelling at him angrily in Korean. He paused between sucking in deep, grateful gulps of air to wheeze out a laugh. Attacking his own rescuer, just like any other animal in a trap. If he kept this up, it was officially going to become a habit.
“Okay,” Sawyer said, reaching back to pat at Jin’s arm and let him know that he wasn’t going to fight him any longer. “Okay, I get it.”
Whatever it was that Jin was calling him-and Sawyer thought that he had a pretty good idea-he began to slow down. Sawyer leaned over Jin’s arm to retch up the gallons of salt water that had begun to rebel on him. Jin slid his arm back down on Sawyer’s side to steady him, putting pressure on the bullet wound, and Sawyer nearly blacked out again then and there.
“Oh, no,” Sawyer groaned. “Oh, no, don’t go doing that.” He moved his hand, trying to push Jin’s arm back into a position that wouldn’t make Sawyer feel as if his own ribs had turned into vengeful knives bent on making him pay for some long-forgotten slight. Jin, not understanding and thinking that Sawyer was trying to fight him off again, tightened his grip. Sawyer sucked in his breath so hard that it made his teeth ache. “Oh, Jesus. Jin, buddy, I owe you in a huge way, believe me, I know this. But if you do not stop that right now I’m going to pull your arm off and add the rescue to my tab.”
Maybe Michael’s English lessons had been more extensive than Sawyer had realized or maybe Jin was only picking up on the whine of pain in Sawyer’s voice, but he brought his arm up until it nestled against Sawyer’s chest and far away from nerves that were now glad for the chance to dial down into an angry sulk. “Thank you,” Sawyer sighed. Jin said something to him that involved a lot of consonants, and Sawyer patted at his arm. “Whatever you say, Kemosabe.”
Sawyer turned his head until he was able to locate the raft, a burning conflagration floating an impossible distance from the place where he and Jin were treading water. It was a small wonder that his lungs continued to ache and burn and he had to pause every few minutes to spit out a new mouthful of salt water. “We are well and truly fucked, aren’t we?”
Jin muttered something in a tone of commiseration that made Sawyer wonder if maybe ol’ Charlie knew a hell of a lot more English than he let on and tugged Sawyer’s shirt aside so that he could see the wound in his shoulder. His next words were not pronounced in nearly so cheerful a tone.
“Yeah, I know. It’s bad.” If Luck really was a lady, then Sawyer figured that he owed that bitch a smack to the mouth. He let his head fall backwards until it was resting on Jin’s shoulder and focused on breathing.
*
After Sawyer finally went passive and quiet, Jin twisted around in the water and used his free arm to begin pulling them both back towards the raft in long, strong strokes. He was again the fisherman’s son who had been scrambling in and out of rivers unsupervised since the age of four, and he was far more in his element here than he was in a world of propriety and threats hidden carefully in the pauses between words. It was a small measure of comfort, and in the shifting waves Jin thought that he could feel the last of that false person falling away.
Sawyer shifted and muttered something liquid as Jin’s arm once again drifted too close to the wound in his abdomen, the bad one. Jin had peered at the entry wound in the flesh above Sawyer’s shoulder and seen that it was accompanied by an exit wound on the other side. Clean, orderly. It was not the case on Sawyer’s side, where Jin had felt the hard knot wedged into the ribs before Sawyer had pushed him away and begun yelling. Jin did not need Jack’s education to understand the implications of that hard little knot.
The raft was still burning sullenly when Jin reached it with his charge in tow, the remaining bamboo being eaten up by flames one log at a time. It was hardly hampered in the slightest by the waves that lapped against the remaining logs and rolled them back and forth. The weeks of work would all be gone within moments.
Jin let a series of several obscenities slide past his lips and heard Sawyer grunt. His tone sounded like agreement. Given the right circumstances, a universal language was not all that hard to arrive at, after all.
“Michael!” Jin yelled when he was close enough to be sure that he would not be wasting his voice and his energy. The boat that had taken Walt was nowhere within sight, and even if Jin’s voice was still within carrying distance he would not imagine that any of the people on board would be moved to care. They had taken what they wanted; though Jin’s eyes strained among the waves for a small head perched atop a yellow lifejacket, he saw no one and heard no voice answering his calls. No answer from Walt and also none from Michael, and Jin could not help but think of the gunshots that had knocked Sawyer into the water and sent Jin diving in after him. Jin had only heard two shots before the water closed over his head, but that still left the people on the boat with at least four or five bullets to them. Michael was larger and more dangerous than Walt, Michael had a father’s desperation to propel him forward long after most people would quit, Michael was not valuable to them in the way that Walt obviously was. Jin swore again, low and miserable.
Jin only let himself float in the water and mourn his loss for a moment before he forced himself to focus once again on surviving. Their chances on a fully operational raft might have been so small as to make a gambling man shake his head and walk away. Jin was under no delusions as to how much worse the odds became without one. He kicked his way over to a bamboo log that had broken free in time to avoid the flames and wrapped his free arm around it, keeping Sawyer hugged tightly to his chest with the other.
Even though he had by this point retreated into a sludgy semi-consciousness, Sawyer was still floating well enough to keep his head above water with a little guidance on Jin’s part. Jin was glad of it. They had a very long way to travel, and already an insidious ache was beginning to travel from his wrist to his shoulder. Jin murmured a prayer in the direction that he had last seen Michael, glanced up at the clear, cruel sky in order to mark his position among the stars, and used the bamboo log to keep both himself and Sawyer afloat as he kicked them painfully back towards land.
The same cloudlessness that let him mark his position among the stars allowed him to see the predators approaching some hours later. Moonlight gleamed against the gray flesh as it rose above the surface and disappeared only a few seconds later. Jin did not know if this meant that he should take back his earlier comment calling the sky cruel or curse her for her deceit, as he was not sure which he preferred: to watch his death coming, or to allow it to creep up behind him without any warning whatsoever. While either way seemed destined to be quick, Jin doubted very much that it would be painless.
Jin spun around, watching the first fin drift beneath the water as a second rose to take up its place a moment later. It cut through the water in a lazy arc and then dropped back beneath the surface, leaving scarcely a rippled to mark its place. Whether it was the same shark taking an opportunity to play with its prey or two working in tandem Jin could not tell, but he knew exactly what they were after.
Sawyer had made a small sound of protest when Jin had spun them both around in the water without rising back to full consciousness. The movement had jarred open the wound in his shoulder, which had only stopped bleeding an hour before. Jin could see ribbons of crimson threading their way across the water, only to be carried away seconds later by the waves.
Though Jin was ashamed of the thought and dismissed it as soon as it occurred to him, as Sawyer winced and squirmed against his chest to find a more comfortable position Jin wondered if maybe the sharks would be leaving him alone now if he had just given Sawyer up as a lost cause when the other man had been fighting him so hard hours before. It was a mean and unworthy thought, and Jin threw it out almost before it had the chance to become fully articulated. He tightened the grip he was maintaining across Sawyer’s chest in atonement, and Sawyer made another irritated noise before finally coming back to full consciousness. Jin did not need to see Sawyer’s face. He knew from the fierce intake of breath that Sawyer was watching the same scene that Jin was.
A graceful gray fin cut though the water like a blade, coming even closer than the previous ones had. The rest of the body followed a second later. A small and beady black eye fixed Jin with a promise. When it fell back beneath the surface, Jin thought that its mouth might have already been open.
Sawyer spit out a word that Jin did not need a fluent understanding of English to understand the basic gist of. He had certainly heard the other castaways saying it often enough.
Sawyer jerked back hard against Jin’s body. His leg spasmed, and he said the word again in a voice that could not hide the fear riding behind it. A moment later, Jin said a few quivering words of his own as he understood why. Something brushed against the sole of Jin’s shoe, drifted away, and came back to do it again a few seconds later. It nearly tore the shoe from his foot.
Sharks had skin so rough that they could tear open human flesh and make it bleed without ever needing to resort to their teeth. Sun had told him that, Jin remembered, after reading it in one of her many books. She had glowed with knowledge, with the fact that it was now hers, in that magpie way she had of collecting new information.
Jin realized that the odds of his ever seeing that glowing and quietly self-satisfied look again were very small. He also realized that this was not acceptable. He drove his foot down viciously the next time that the shark drew close, not caring where he hit the monster so long as it was somewhere that would make it hurt. The luck that they had been sharing over the past several hours lifted for a second, as Jin felt his foot come down hard on something that gave way beneath the force of his kick. The shark darted away. The eye, Jin remembered. The one place where they might be called vulnerable. He tried to drag up any other facts that Sun might have told him, but he was afraid that even then he had not been paying attention.
This was also unacceptable.
Jin let go of Sawyer, who only sputtered once or twice before righting himself and managing to float on his own. He gave Jin a dirty look before he went back to watching the water for the next fin to break the waves. Jin ignored him, pulling the bamboo log closer to him and realizing how ridiculous the plan forming in his mind actually was. Slender though the log was, it was still much thicker than the fishing spears that he had been experimenting with back on the island, and Jin had no place to brace his legs and gain leverage. Not to mention the fact that he was dealing with a much larger fish. Jin took a deep breath through his nose and blew it out, wondering how much time he would be able to buy with this fool’s errand.
Jin paused for a moment to study the log, which was roughly three feet long and jagged at the end, as if it had been broken away from a much larger whole. It was the closest thing to a weapon that they had, and it would have to do. Jin lifted the log above his head and struggled to tread water with his legs alone, praying that the moonlight would be enough for him to see, praying that he would be able to throw hard enough with nothing to brace his legs against and that the sharks would not grow bored with games and come in for the killing blow. Prayed for the world, it felt like, since what he was asking for was essentially a series of miracles.
A dark shape circled in the water directly beneath Jin’s legs, darker than sin and barely discernible from the surrounding blackness. ‘This is not the first time that you have caught a fish,’ Jin thought. He almost gave way to panicky laughter as he realized his own understatement. He forced the jagged end of the bamboo down beneath the surface of the water, to where a monster waited…
…and watched as the shark whirled away from it at the last possible second, sending the log glancing harmlessly off of the animal’s side before it wrenched out of Jin’s hands and bobbed back up to the surface. Jin set his teeth together as he watched their best-their only, slim though it might have been-chance float several yards away and then rest there, kicked gently to and fro by the current. The shark, realizing that its prey’s teeth were marginal, spun around for another try. Sawyer spit out that word again and moved back towards Jin as a second fin joined the first. Jin held his breath and waited to feel rows upon rows of serrated teeth biting first into his leg, then is abdomen.
The outlines convulsed suddenly and sped away without warning. Jin expected, irrationally, that he would feel electricity running through the water a second later. Surely there was nothing else that could have frightened sharks away from the scent of fresh blood. He looked towards Sawyer, who only shook his head, his whole body speaking of the need to sag against something in relief. Jin noticed that there were dark circles spreading beneath Sawyer’s eyes and that the shoulder of his shirt was once again dark with blood. He bade Sawyer in Korean to stay where he was, using gestures to make sure that the message made it through, and swam slowly in the direction of the log. Sawyer had given up on treading water by the time that Jin returned and was floating on his back instead, kicking out with his legs or his good arm whenever he began to sink. Jin gathered Sawyer’s unresisting form to his chest and turned them once more towards shore.
Sharks did not lose interest without warning when they scented fresh blood in the water. Likewise, if a drowning man fought his rescuer it was a clinging, panicky attempt to climb on top and use the rescuer for buoyancy, not a struggle to get away. Jin did not know where either of these thoughts would lead him if he were to follow them to their ultimate conclusion, and he told himself that he did not need to know more. All that he needed to know was which way land lie and how quickly he could reach it.
They used the log to keep them afloat as they swam, Sawyer clinging to it with his good arm when he was conscious and Jin holding him to his chest when he was not. Jin kept a constant eye on the horizon, watching for the return of fins that never arrived. When the island came back into sight in the predawn horrors, Jin nearly wept, and he did weep when he felt sand shifting beneath his feet again as the midmorning sun beat down on his head. Jin dragged Sawyer and himself up past the tidal line, laid his burden down on the sand, and, collapsing beside him, slept.
End Part Two
Part Two
Sawyer had one thought as the first bullet ripped through his shoulder: irony had been waiting for a very long time to deliver this kind of bitchslap onto him. His thought as a second opened up a line of fire along his ribs on the opposite side: if he had to pick his poison, he would take being stabbed over being shot any day. That, at least, had not felt as if kerosene had been poured over his skin and a match held close to the flesh.
Sawyer’s body was spun to the side by the impact of the first bullet, thrown backwards by the second. He felt nothing at all after, until cold water struck his back, closed over his head. Sawyer gasped instinctively and got a throat full of salt water before he remembered to close his mouth. The water was frigid at this time of night, but it did nothing whatsoever to stop the burning that rolled out from his wounds. Sawyer thrashed, trying to find the surface with no sunlight to guide him, and felt the water around his shoulder and abdomen start to grow warmer. Losing blood and losing it fast, in other words, as if the dragging, dazed buzz in his head wasn’t enough to tell him that.
Okay. He had never done anything on anyone else’s terms before, and he would be damned if this ocean was going to take him one second before he was ready. Sawyer stopped struggling for a moment and let himself drift, trying to tell from the change in pressure which way was up and which was down. Concentration drove the buzzing out of Sawyer’s brain for the moment. As plans went, he thought that it was not half bad for one that he had come up with while losing copious amounts of blood. It might even have worked, had he not felt a hand closing around his ankle with a sudden, clammy strength, dragging him in a direction that was definitely downwards. He knew more than ever that this was not a place he wanted to go.
Sawyer could not stop the yell of shock that traveled out of his throat, costing him more air than he could afford to lose and sending even more water down into his lungs. No more could he control the spasm of his leg that jerked him away from that hand. Sawyer gathered up every scrap of self-control that he had left and twisted in the water so that he could see the hand’s owner.
Joanna’s face was swollen and bloated, like something straight out of the horror movies that he had used to sneak into as a kid when he was short on money and even shorter on places to be. If it were not for her characteristic smoky red hair, a shade so dark that it bypassed auburn altogether and came closer to black, Sawyer was not sure that he even would have recognized her. As it was, he wasn’t sure that he still wanted to. Joanna had been wearing a bikini rather than her usual practical racing suit on the day that she had died, and all of that bare skin gave Sawyer plenty of room to see the business that the fish and the crabs had been doing on her abdomen, her legs. Her hair floated back from her face and let Sawyer see that her eyes had been eaten away.
Some deep part of Sawyer’s brain, the place where instincts were stored, told him that if he gave in to the urge to hyperventilate now it would be the last time that he would ever do so. He used the last scraps of oxygen in his lungs to whirl away from Joanna as she reached for him again and swam as fast as he was able in the opposite direction. There might come a time when he would be able to tell himself that what he had seen was nothing more than a hallucination brought on by stress and pain and maybe even be able to believe it, but in the moment itself she was as real to Sawyer as his own two hands. Never mind that he was reeling so hard that he could scarcely even tell left from right any longer, let alone which way led to the surface, and never mind that he was running so low on oxygen and blood and in his state only a few steps away from outright panic did not know how he was going to get more of either in time to save his life. Sawyer did not even know where the gun had fallen, or otherwise he would have thrown a few wild shots back in the thing’s direction and hoped that one of them hit something important. His priorities had in the past several seconds contracted to include one thing and one thing only: if he was going to die here, then oh please let it be before that Joanna thing touched him again.
Sawyer bit the inside of his own cheek until he tasted blood on his tongue when a pair of arms reached out from behind and wrapped themselves around him, so that he did not waste any further oxygen on a gasp or a yell that would go nowhere. He twisted like a cat in the water in order to get away from the owner of those arms as they dragged him inexorably upwards. He was fighting so fiercely that he did not notice that the hands were warm with the force of blood rushing through them, that the skin was not sliding about on the bones like a pair of ill-fitting gloves.
Sawyer wrenched free at last, so hard that he was certain he was leaving patches on his own skin behind in the thing’s grasp. He balled his hand into a fist and lashed out as hard as he was able.
It was a wild, weak blow that Sawyer was not actually expecting to connect with anything at all. When your back was against the wall, he had discovered years ago, it was the fact that you continued to fight at all that usually counted for the most. For once, though, the universe was smiling at him, and Sawyer got lucky. His fist connected with something warm and hard that snapped back under the force of impact. Sawyer was dizzily congratulating himself on being able to give a little of his own back, at least, when another fist collided with his own jaw in answer. Sawyer’s head rocked back hard enough to make his neck creak, felt his lips fall open far enough to let one final cold, gagging gulp of salt water slide down his throat. All right, then. That was it.
The owner of the arms closed them around Sawyer from behind again, pinning his arms back down to his sides before once again dragging them both grimly upwards. Sawyer kicked and squirmed, but he was done and they both knew it. When Joanna’s compatriot slid his arm down to press against the burning furrow in Sawyer’s side, he nearly passed out.
Sawyer did not realize what had really happened until his head broke the surface of the water and he heard a voice begin yelling at him angrily in Korean. He paused between sucking in deep, grateful gulps of air to wheeze out a laugh. Attacking his own rescuer, just like any other animal in a trap. If he kept this up, it was officially going to become a habit.
“Okay,” Sawyer said, reaching back to pat at Jin’s arm and let him know that he wasn’t going to fight him any longer. “Okay, I get it.”
Whatever it was that Jin was calling him-and Sawyer thought that he had a pretty good idea-he began to slow down. Sawyer leaned over Jin’s arm to retch up the gallons of salt water that had begun to rebel on him. Jin slid his arm back down on Sawyer’s side to steady him, putting pressure on the bullet wound, and Sawyer nearly blacked out again then and there.
“Oh, no,” Sawyer groaned. “Oh, no, don’t go doing that.” He moved his hand, trying to push Jin’s arm back into a position that wouldn’t make Sawyer feel as if his own ribs had turned into vengeful knives bent on making him pay for some long-forgotten slight. Jin, not understanding and thinking that Sawyer was trying to fight him off again, tightened his grip. Sawyer sucked in his breath so hard that it made his teeth ache. “Oh, Jesus. Jin, buddy, I owe you in a huge way, believe me, I know this. But if you do not stop that right now I’m going to pull your arm off and add the rescue to my tab.”
Maybe Michael’s English lessons had been more extensive than Sawyer had realized or maybe Jin was only picking up on the whine of pain in Sawyer’s voice, but he brought his arm up until it nestled against Sawyer’s chest and far away from nerves that were now glad for the chance to dial down into an angry sulk. “Thank you,” Sawyer sighed. Jin said something to him that involved a lot of consonants, and Sawyer patted at his arm. “Whatever you say, Kemosabe.”
Sawyer turned his head until he was able to locate the raft, a burning conflagration floating an impossible distance from the place where he and Jin were treading water. It was a small wonder that his lungs continued to ache and burn and he had to pause every few minutes to spit out a new mouthful of salt water. “We are well and truly fucked, aren’t we?”
Jin muttered something in a tone of commiseration that made Sawyer wonder if maybe ol’ Charlie knew a hell of a lot more English than he let on and tugged Sawyer’s shirt aside so that he could see the wound in his shoulder. His next words were not pronounced in nearly so cheerful a tone.
“Yeah, I know. It’s bad.” If Luck really was a lady, then Sawyer figured that he owed that bitch a smack to the mouth. He let his head fall backwards until it was resting on Jin’s shoulder and focused on breathing.
*
After Sawyer finally went passive and quiet, Jin twisted around in the water and used his free arm to begin pulling them both back towards the raft in long, strong strokes. He was again the fisherman’s son who had been scrambling in and out of rivers unsupervised since the age of four, and he was far more in his element here than he was in a world of propriety and threats hidden carefully in the pauses between words. It was a small measure of comfort, and in the shifting waves Jin thought that he could feel the last of that false person falling away.
Sawyer shifted and muttered something liquid as Jin’s arm once again drifted too close to the wound in his abdomen, the bad one. Jin had peered at the entry wound in the flesh above Sawyer’s shoulder and seen that it was accompanied by an exit wound on the other side. Clean, orderly. It was not the case on Sawyer’s side, where Jin had felt the hard knot wedged into the ribs before Sawyer had pushed him away and begun yelling. Jin did not need Jack’s education to understand the implications of that hard little knot.
The raft was still burning sullenly when Jin reached it with his charge in tow, the remaining bamboo being eaten up by flames one log at a time. It was hardly hampered in the slightest by the waves that lapped against the remaining logs and rolled them back and forth. The weeks of work would all be gone within moments.
Jin let a series of several obscenities slide past his lips and heard Sawyer grunt. His tone sounded like agreement. Given the right circumstances, a universal language was not all that hard to arrive at, after all.
“Michael!” Jin yelled when he was close enough to be sure that he would not be wasting his voice and his energy. The boat that had taken Walt was nowhere within sight, and even if Jin’s voice was still within carrying distance he would not imagine that any of the people on board would be moved to care. They had taken what they wanted; though Jin’s eyes strained among the waves for a small head perched atop a yellow lifejacket, he saw no one and heard no voice answering his calls. No answer from Walt and also none from Michael, and Jin could not help but think of the gunshots that had knocked Sawyer into the water and sent Jin diving in after him. Jin had only heard two shots before the water closed over his head, but that still left the people on the boat with at least four or five bullets to them. Michael was larger and more dangerous than Walt, Michael had a father’s desperation to propel him forward long after most people would quit, Michael was not valuable to them in the way that Walt obviously was. Jin swore again, low and miserable.
Jin only let himself float in the water and mourn his loss for a moment before he forced himself to focus once again on surviving. Their chances on a fully operational raft might have been so small as to make a gambling man shake his head and walk away. Jin was under no delusions as to how much worse the odds became without one. He kicked his way over to a bamboo log that had broken free in time to avoid the flames and wrapped his free arm around it, keeping Sawyer hugged tightly to his chest with the other.
Even though he had by this point retreated into a sludgy semi-consciousness, Sawyer was still floating well enough to keep his head above water with a little guidance on Jin’s part. Jin was glad of it. They had a very long way to travel, and already an insidious ache was beginning to travel from his wrist to his shoulder. Jin murmured a prayer in the direction that he had last seen Michael, glanced up at the clear, cruel sky in order to mark his position among the stars, and used the bamboo log to keep both himself and Sawyer afloat as he kicked them painfully back towards land.
The same cloudlessness that let him mark his position among the stars allowed him to see the predators approaching some hours later. Moonlight gleamed against the gray flesh as it rose above the surface and disappeared only a few seconds later. Jin did not know if this meant that he should take back his earlier comment calling the sky cruel or curse her for her deceit, as he was not sure which he preferred: to watch his death coming, or to allow it to creep up behind him without any warning whatsoever. While either way seemed destined to be quick, Jin doubted very much that it would be painless.
Jin spun around, watching the first fin drift beneath the water as a second rose to take up its place a moment later. It cut through the water in a lazy arc and then dropped back beneath the surface, leaving scarcely a rippled to mark its place. Whether it was the same shark taking an opportunity to play with its prey or two working in tandem Jin could not tell, but he knew exactly what they were after.
Sawyer had made a small sound of protest when Jin had spun them both around in the water without rising back to full consciousness. The movement had jarred open the wound in his shoulder, which had only stopped bleeding an hour before. Jin could see ribbons of crimson threading their way across the water, only to be carried away seconds later by the waves.
Though Jin was ashamed of the thought and dismissed it as soon as it occurred to him, as Sawyer winced and squirmed against his chest to find a more comfortable position Jin wondered if maybe the sharks would be leaving him alone now if he had just given Sawyer up as a lost cause when the other man had been fighting him so hard hours before. It was a mean and unworthy thought, and Jin threw it out almost before it had the chance to become fully articulated. He tightened the grip he was maintaining across Sawyer’s chest in atonement, and Sawyer made another irritated noise before finally coming back to full consciousness. Jin did not need to see Sawyer’s face. He knew from the fierce intake of breath that Sawyer was watching the same scene that Jin was.
A graceful gray fin cut though the water like a blade, coming even closer than the previous ones had. The rest of the body followed a second later. A small and beady black eye fixed Jin with a promise. When it fell back beneath the surface, Jin thought that its mouth might have already been open.
Sawyer spit out a word that Jin did not need a fluent understanding of English to understand the basic gist of. He had certainly heard the other castaways saying it often enough.
Sawyer jerked back hard against Jin’s body. His leg spasmed, and he said the word again in a voice that could not hide the fear riding behind it. A moment later, Jin said a few quivering words of his own as he understood why. Something brushed against the sole of Jin’s shoe, drifted away, and came back to do it again a few seconds later. It nearly tore the shoe from his foot.
Sharks had skin so rough that they could tear open human flesh and make it bleed without ever needing to resort to their teeth. Sun had told him that, Jin remembered, after reading it in one of her many books. She had glowed with knowledge, with the fact that it was now hers, in that magpie way she had of collecting new information.
Jin realized that the odds of his ever seeing that glowing and quietly self-satisfied look again were very small. He also realized that this was not acceptable. He drove his foot down viciously the next time that the shark drew close, not caring where he hit the monster so long as it was somewhere that would make it hurt. The luck that they had been sharing over the past several hours lifted for a second, as Jin felt his foot come down hard on something that gave way beneath the force of his kick. The shark darted away. The eye, Jin remembered. The one place where they might be called vulnerable. He tried to drag up any other facts that Sun might have told him, but he was afraid that even then he had not been paying attention.
This was also unacceptable.
Jin let go of Sawyer, who only sputtered once or twice before righting himself and managing to float on his own. He gave Jin a dirty look before he went back to watching the water for the next fin to break the waves. Jin ignored him, pulling the bamboo log closer to him and realizing how ridiculous the plan forming in his mind actually was. Slender though the log was, it was still much thicker than the fishing spears that he had been experimenting with back on the island, and Jin had no place to brace his legs and gain leverage. Not to mention the fact that he was dealing with a much larger fish. Jin took a deep breath through his nose and blew it out, wondering how much time he would be able to buy with this fool’s errand.
Jin paused for a moment to study the log, which was roughly three feet long and jagged at the end, as if it had been broken away from a much larger whole. It was the closest thing to a weapon that they had, and it would have to do. Jin lifted the log above his head and struggled to tread water with his legs alone, praying that the moonlight would be enough for him to see, praying that he would be able to throw hard enough with nothing to brace his legs against and that the sharks would not grow bored with games and come in for the killing blow. Prayed for the world, it felt like, since what he was asking for was essentially a series of miracles.
A dark shape circled in the water directly beneath Jin’s legs, darker than sin and barely discernible from the surrounding blackness. ‘This is not the first time that you have caught a fish,’ Jin thought. He almost gave way to panicky laughter as he realized his own understatement. He forced the jagged end of the bamboo down beneath the surface of the water, to where a monster waited…
…and watched as the shark whirled away from it at the last possible second, sending the log glancing harmlessly off of the animal’s side before it wrenched out of Jin’s hands and bobbed back up to the surface. Jin set his teeth together as he watched their best-their only, slim though it might have been-chance float several yards away and then rest there, kicked gently to and fro by the current. The shark, realizing that its prey’s teeth were marginal, spun around for another try. Sawyer spit out that word again and moved back towards Jin as a second fin joined the first. Jin held his breath and waited to feel rows upon rows of serrated teeth biting first into his leg, then is abdomen.
The outlines convulsed suddenly and sped away without warning. Jin expected, irrationally, that he would feel electricity running through the water a second later. Surely there was nothing else that could have frightened sharks away from the scent of fresh blood. He looked towards Sawyer, who only shook his head, his whole body speaking of the need to sag against something in relief. Jin noticed that there were dark circles spreading beneath Sawyer’s eyes and that the shoulder of his shirt was once again dark with blood. He bade Sawyer in Korean to stay where he was, using gestures to make sure that the message made it through, and swam slowly in the direction of the log. Sawyer had given up on treading water by the time that Jin returned and was floating on his back instead, kicking out with his legs or his good arm whenever he began to sink. Jin gathered Sawyer’s unresisting form to his chest and turned them once more towards shore.
Sharks did not lose interest without warning when they scented fresh blood in the water. Likewise, if a drowning man fought his rescuer it was a clinging, panicky attempt to climb on top and use the rescuer for buoyancy, not a struggle to get away. Jin did not know where either of these thoughts would lead him if he were to follow them to their ultimate conclusion, and he told himself that he did not need to know more. All that he needed to know was which way land lie and how quickly he could reach it.
They used the log to keep them afloat as they swam, Sawyer clinging to it with his good arm when he was conscious and Jin holding him to his chest when he was not. Jin kept a constant eye on the horizon, watching for the return of fins that never arrived. When the island came back into sight in the predawn horrors, Jin nearly wept, and he did weep when he felt sand shifting beneath his feet again as the midmorning sun beat down on his head. Jin dragged Sawyer and himself up past the tidal line, laid his burden down on the sand, and, collapsing beside him, slept.
End Part Two