A/N: Basically takes place when Jack is all bearded out. Also, I watched the s4 finale today so this was kinda inspired but that.
Punishment
She knows Jack and she knows guilt. She knows that if you combine the two, it can be disastrous. She knows that he takes to punishing himself too much of the time. And she hates it.
Even when they met, he was punishing himself. Off to side with no one around (with no one to help) with a bleeding back. He couldn't have known that she would walk out of those bushes to stitch him up. She wonders if he was punishing himself, as if he didn't deserve help even though she can just picture him running through the wreckage helping every single person he can find.
But this...this is different. This isn't just walking away to bleed out, this isn't trekking through the jungle with a wound just to save them all. This is changing into a complete different person because the overwhelming guilt is just too much. This is something she has never experienced before (this shouldn't surprise her though. She has experienced so many things she hadn't before thanks to him).
When she sees him with a beard and reeking of alcohol, it feels like her stomach drops ten feet. Her hero, her saviour, her Jack, is a man she barely recognizes (at least he still has a little bit of the hero aspect in him).
After they barely talk idle chit-chat (about Jeremy Bentham), he breaks her heart even more and she feels like she's going to vomit. This isn't her Jack; this is some fucked-up monster pretending to be him. And it kills her.
She wants to tell him that it isn't his fault; he wasn't the one that made the Island disappear, he wasn't the one who set the bomb off (once upon a time all he needed was her words and he'd be okay). She wants him to just stop punishing himself and come home with her. She wants him to be Jack again.