Author's Note: I got the urge to write this Dharmaville one-shot.. it was just stuck in my head..

Broken:

Be sure about your feelings because if you

crack that shell and you change your mind,

she'll die of loneliness before she'll ever

trust anyone ever again.

-Camile Saroyan(Bones)

Sawyer sat on the front porch of the house he'd been sharing alone with Juliet for a few months now. They'd been here for a total of a year. In that year they'd both been more open with each other then he thought he could ever be with another person. He openly told her about things she'd already known and read about in his file. She had reciprocated, telling him about things such as her bad taste and judgment with men.

He felt bad. Learning about high school guys who flirted just for a tutor in science or math. The idiot who took her to prom just to deflower her, (which she admitted he'd succeeded in, and then she'd never seen him again.) Down to the man who had married her for her brain, who emotionally abused her and made her feel she could get nothing better then him, a skirt-chasing bastard. Not to mention Ben, who had tried to stake a claim of possession over her, sending the married man Goodwin, whom she'd had an affair with, to his death. Lastly to Jack, who had used her to prove unsuccessfully that he didn't love Kate.

He had learned that those carefully erected walls she had built around herself here in the past year, she had built them on well-established reasoning. He wasn't entirely sure why stories such as her failure to find any man truly interested in her and only her, made her more endearing to him. Perhaps it was because after the freighter went down and things finally sunk in that she was on this island for good, he saw something resembling feelings, humanity and fear.

Yet for every day she told him something new, brief periods of time would fly by where those walls grew bigger and tougher and she would hide herself away from him. It was almost as though she feared he would withdraw himself from her after learning whatever she happened to tell him. Then after a while, he would seek her out and tell her something else. She would give him one of those curious eyebrow lifts, because what he told her, she already knew. Then she would once again reciprocate with another story, either that day, or in the next 24-72 hours.

Something about the way her protectiveness over her heart was so adept made him think they could be more then just friends, because they both just wanted to protect their hearts. But then the rationale that she'd had enough bad men in her life would sink in and he would file the thought away. One day he'd admitted to her that he'd lost his virginity to a common prostitute.. she hadn't even hesitated, but she hadn't looked at him either, when she admitted she'd only slept with a total of three people. He knew who those people were. No-named prom-date, her ex-husband, and the married man.

He knew she'd seemed embarrassed by her lack of sexual adventures, yet he found it to be one of her more endearing qualities. And though he wondered briefly and pondered asking her why she'd never slept with Jack, he found he didn't care to know. Her first encounter had been about high-school pressure and her wanting to be accepted by a popular guy when she was, in fact, a nobody. Her second and probably much more, had been with a man she loved and had thought loved her back for quite a number of years. And her last had been a married man; he could only assume it was her way of distancing herself from trying another real relationship.

What struck him as upsetting was the fact that she could be so gorgeous and find herself worthless and in a sense, unbeautiful. Attractive wasn't even a word he could associate with her because she was beyond being attractive. The golden hair was like a halo and when he looked on the inside he could see that despite the icy and rough exterior she displayed, she was actually more vulnerable then any other woman, even the women he'd conned nearly his entire life.

It almost scared him to realize that he'd been so wrong about her before all of this. To realize that she had been one of the nicest people in the world before she'd allowed this island and past experiences to change her. Before she'd adapted a survival instinct of fight or flight, kill or be killed. And deep down inside he found that she had trapped her innocence to preserve her life, her sanity, her heart.

For the longest time he had wondered why he could find someone so cold-hearted so damned endearing. He wondered how the hell she'd managed to crawl her way under his skin and make him feel something for her that he'd never actually felt before.

He wondered why the hell he ever thought he knew what love was before this, why he thought he had loved Kate. Because he was realizing now that Kate wasn't real love, she was just a certain kind of love. The kind that passed you by once you found the real thing. And he knew that this real love came to him in the form of long blonde hair, gut-wrenchingly honest opinions and a heart of pure steel.

But what if it wasn't? What if what he thought was love, was really just his heart trying to prove that what he had with Kate wasn't real? What if he actually managed to chisel away at the ice around her heart, tear down those walls she'd built for protection and got her to love him too? What if he did that and realized he didn't honestly love her?

Taking it back would make her lose her faith again, possibly for the last time. Every relationship she'd had already she'd been used for someone else's own well-being.

"The only person who wanted me for me, was Ben.." she had admitted to him, then choked out a half-laugh and half-sob. "Look around.. someone told me once that he liked me because I 'looked just like her', well.. Ben grew up here in the 70's, you know who I look like don't you? I look like me.. go figure."

When she had broken down and said that to him, that was when he'd realized his feelings for her had grown to be something he couldn't explain. And he realized that when you couldn't explain why your heart flipped every time a certain someone gave you one of those small smiles or shit-eating grins reserved only for you.. Every time that certain someone laughed so hard at something you said or did, and even though that laugh was obnoxious and insane, you found it exhilarating and cute and undeniably contagious, that was when you knew you were in love.

Suddenly his reverie was broken by her gentle, quiet, curious-yet-guarded voice.

"Are you alright?" she asked him, uncertain whether she should interrupt him from whatever he'd been thinking so greatly about.

He glanced up to see a slight worry and caution in those brilliant blue eyes and he knew that he wasn't Jack. He didn't want to love her to prove that he didn't love Kate, he did love her, and that love had nothing to do with Kate and everything to do with her. "Perfect," was his reply as he stood up. He watched her lift her eyebrows in uncertainty before she nodded slightly and headed past him, and he allowed himself to place his hand on the small of her back to guide her through the door.

Each time he did that gesture he felt the strange bumpiness there on her skin. He felt the outlines of some kind of scar that he didn't ask about and she had never opened up to tell him about. He could tell she knew that he knew something was there and he could tell she wasn't yet feeling privy to tell him about it. And he decided that one day he would tell her about his feelings. He would tell her when she felt comfortable enough to tell him about that scar on her back, because he had seen it a few times when her shirt would lift up slightly.

Yes.. love was about compromise. And he couldn't bear to tell her how he felt until he was certain she trusted him fully with herself. Where was a relationship without complete honesty? That would be yet another relationship like the one he had with Kate. This time though, he had no doubt she would one day feel completely comfortable sharing herself with him. Or perhaps he just hoped..

I think we both know her hyper-rationale is

really just a cover for a very.. vulnerable

and sensitive core. So if you breech those

defenses and it turns out you don't really

love her..

-Lance Sweets(Bones)

()()END()()

So.. that was a lot more detailed then I thought it was going to be. And don't worry to everyone reading All Over Again or Beware of Jacob. My internet company is sending someone to replace my modem in the morning. So I'll have my internet again to update both those stories! I just needed to get this one up, and my internet is having a brief moment of.. dun dun dun.. actual service!