Kate was tired. It seemed Kate was always tired these days. But this time it was different. This time is wasn't her bones and muscles that ached. It was something outside that. It was life she was exhausted of. It was Jack's heroic resolve. It was the Other's mysterious danger. It was this godforsaken island. It was Sawyer.
It was that feeling that she had been robbed of something that had never really been hers in the first place. But the comfort lay in knowing that it could have been. And now she had lost even that.
I know you did it because you thought I was dead man. So don't beat yourself because the Doc's left behind, Sawyer's words cut Kate's thoughts to pieces as if she'd just heard them. She knew it was her fault. She should have denied it, reassured Sawyer. It seemed reassurance was what he needed more than anything. Like a child that had never been loved enough, and therefore never learned how to love. But Sawyer knew just what to say to enrage her and force her to second-guess her actions. So maybe Kate had known that letting his comment hang between them, with the same heaviness as the air on the island right before a rainstorm, would destroy what they might have had. But maybe, right then, she didn't care.
She cared now.
She cared because now she was apart from the one person on this island of nightmares that actually got her. And she knew that even after she got back from her expedition to rescue Jack, she would still be apart from him.
Kate wondered if this cycle between them would ever end. They knew just what to say to break each other. She wondered if love would always heal these wounds. If she had the strength to fight Sawyer's masochism. Or her own fear.
Sayid voice broke Kate's reverie, "Do you want to stop and eat?"
Kate thought of fishbiscuits. She decided she did have the strength.