Chapter 5: THE WEAPON
The Marshal screamed through the night.
His voice carried from the medical tent in ragged waves—demands for Kate, curses at invisible enemies, the wet gurgle of a man drowning in his own blood. The shrapnel had done something to his insides that Jack couldn't fix without proper equipment, and all his surgery could accomplish was extending the agony.
I didn't sleep. Few people did.
Dawn found me cleaning the gun on a flat rock near the water's edge. I'd stripped it to components, checked each piece for sand or corrosion, reassembled it with hands that knew the process better than my mind did. Sawyer's muscle memory worked while my brain cataloged the survivors moving through morning routines.
Hurley distributed fruit—mangoes, papayas, things he'd found in the jungle with surprising competence. Jin fished at the waterline, ignoring everyone, his silence a wall against questions. Claire sat in the shade, hands on her belly, watching Charlie pretend not to watch her.
And Kate stood at the medical tent's entrance, staring at nothing.
I finished the gun, loaded it, tucked it into my waistband.
"Sawyer."
Jack's voice. I turned to find the doctor walking toward me, his posture aggressive, his face tight with exhaustion and moral certainty.
"Doc."
"The gun. Where did you get it?"
"We covered this."
"Edward Mars is dying." Jack stopped three feet away, hands at his sides, that righteous energy radiating off him in waves. "That's his weapon. His gun. And you're sitting here cleaning it like you own the thing."
"Possession is nine-tenths, ain't it?"
"He needs to know where it is. He keeps asking—"
"Asking for Kate." I stood, brushed sand from my jeans. "He's not worried about the gun. He's worried about losing the only thing that made his miserable life worthwhile."
Jack's jaw tightened. "Give me the gun."
"Why?"
"Because we don't need more weapons floating around this camp. Because people are scared enough without some—some con man waving a pistol at every shadow."
"And if something else attacks? Something worse than a polar bear?"
"We'll handle it."
"How?" I stepped closer, invaded his space just enough to make him uncomfortable. "With your surgical training? Your inspiring speeches? This Island already took one man from a cockpit window, Doc. It's got more where that came from."
Jack's composure cracked. He wanted to argue—I could see the rebuttal forming—but the pilot's death was too fresh. The Monster's roar still echoed in everyone's nightmares.
"Fine." I pulled the gun from my waistband, held it out grip-first. "Take it."
He blinked. "What?"
"Take the gun. But I'm teaching people to shoot first."
---
Boone learned fastest.
I'd gathered four volunteers on the beach: Kate, Sayid, Boone, and—surprisingly—Rose. The older woman had lost her husband in the tail section but carried herself with the steady calm of someone who'd faced worse. She struggled with the gun's weight but understood the mechanics immediately.
"Grip here." I adjusted Boone's hands on the pistol. "Squeeze, don't pull. Breathe out, then fire."
He did. The empty click echoed across the sand.
We were dry-firing—four bullets left, none to waste—but the motions mattered. Stance, aim, trigger discipline. The basics that might save a life when things went worse.
Kate needed no instruction. Her shots would have been clean if we'd had ammunition; I could see it in her body language, the way she tracked targets without hesitation. She'd learned somewhere. I didn't ask where.
Sayid watched from the sidelines, arms crossed, expression neutral. He already knew everything I was teaching, but his presence added legitimacy. If the camp's designated soldier endorsed the training, others would follow.
"You're preparing for war."
Jack again. Standing at the edge of our makeshift range, medical bag over one shoulder, that worried crease between his eyebrows.
"I'm preparing for survival."
"We just crashed. We'll be rescued in days, maybe hours. And you're—"
"Training people to defend themselves against polar bears and whatever else lives on this island." I handed the gun to Sayid, gestured for him to continue the lesson. "You want to wait for rescue, that's your call. But if something comes out of that jungle again, I'd rather have people who can shoot back."
"Something's already come out of that jungle." Jack lowered his voice. "Something that can't be shot."
The Monster. He'd heard it, same as everyone. That mechanical thunder, the grinding roar of smoke made solid.
"Then we're screwed anyway." I met his eyes. "But maybe the next thing that charges out of the trees will be made of meat and bone. And maybe, just maybe, having trained shooters will mean fewer people die."
Jack stood there for a long moment. I could see him wrestling with it—the doctor's instinct to preserve life at all costs fighting the leader's instinct to protect his people.
"The Marshal's dying," he said finally. "There's nothing I can do for him."
"I know."
"He's in agony. Every breath is—" Jack stopped, swallowed. "Someone has to do something."
"You've got the gun now, Doc."
The weight of that statement hit him like a physical blow. I watched it land—the realization that Sawyer wasn't going to save him from this choice, that the moral calculus had shifted in ways he hadn't anticipated.
"I'm not a killer," he said.
"Neither am I."
He looked at me strangely then. Like he was seeing something new, something that didn't fit the file he'd built in his head.
"Kate stays away from the medical tent," he said. "She's... she has a history with Mars. It's complicated."
"Everything's complicated with her." I retrieved the gun from Sayid, checked the safety, handed it to Jack grip-first again. "Go do what you have to do. I'll keep training the others."
Jack took the weapon and walked toward the fuselage without another word.
---
The Marshal died at sunset.
Not quickly. Not cleanly. Jack had tried—I'd give him that much—but his hands weren't steady enough for mercy. Two shots, and Edward Mars still breathed for another hour.
I heard the screaming from the beach. Everyone did.
Kate sat at the waterline, knees drawn to her chest, watching the waves. She didn't cry. Didn't speak. Just sat there while the man who'd hunted her across continents died badly in a tent full of strangers.
I considered going to her. Offering comfort. Playing the role that Sawyer would eventually grow into—the romance, the vulnerability, the love triangle that would define half the show's emotional core.
Instead, I stayed where I was. Let her have her moment without interference.
Not everything needs to follow the script.
Boone approached as the last light faded. He'd taken to the gun training better than anyone, his hands remembering Little League accuracy and trust-fund hunting trips. Wealthy background, useful skills. The math worked out.
"Thanks," he said. "For earlier. With the bear."
"Just reacted."
"Shannon said you saved her life."
"Shannon likes drama."
He laughed, surprised by the response. "Yeah, she does. But she's also right." He hesitated. "I know you've got a reputation. Sawyer, the con man, the asshole. But what you did today? Teaching people to defend themselves? That wasn't selfish."
No. It was strategic. And you can't see the difference because you're not supposed to.
"Don't spread it around," I said. "Ruins the mystique."
Boone laughed again and walked off toward Shannon's fire.
I watched him go—this man who should die in six weeks, saving a plane from a cliff. Six weeks of life that my presence might extend or shorten depending on choices I couldn't predict.
The pilot died anyway. Some deaths are fixed.
But not all of them.
The stars emerged over the Pacific. Somewhere in the jungle, the Monster patrolled its boundaries. Somewhere beneath the earth, a station waited with buttons that needed pressing.
And somewhere in this camp, the Others were already watching.
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