The pain was his lifeline when reality started to set in.
He couldn't save her.
It kept him detatched, dejected, uninvolved as he worked on her.
When he finally lost her.
"Fear's a funny thing.."
But it kept him alive.
It kept him sane when he pulled back oceanic airline blanket they covered her with and stared at her, really looked at her for the first time since it happened. Since she was brought to him. Dead, dying. Too far gone this time.
He began to see her as more than broken bones and bruised, torn flesh oozing blood. Began to see her for who she was - for what she meant to him.
She was Kate.
But he couldn't let himself do that. Because putting a name to the lifeless body was to final. It meant she wasn't coming back, he hadn't saved her. He failed, and she died.
It meant she was gone.
So he focused on his pain.
But he couldn't block it all out.
Lifeless, bloodied body. Dead.
Glazed, hollow eyes.
Hair tangeled, and matted with her own blood.
Dead.
He tried to forget but he couldn't. It broke him down. It started to eat him away, and peice by peice he fell apart. Crumbled.
And he was crazy.
"But crazy people don't know they're crazy".
That's what Locke told him, anyway.
Locke.
He had listened to Locke.
Now he knew he must be crazy.
The pain, the grief - it kept him human, but it couldn't keep him sane - not for long.
He was the one to save people. He was the one that came back to save them all. To fix them all. He was the one that convinced her to leave her life in California, to become the second mother to abandon little Aaron. He told her they were doing the right thing. He told her to do it for Aaron.
But it wasn't for Aaron at all, no. It was for him.
They put bullets in her. But he killed her.
He killed her. She was gone. There was no other lifeline