7/20/2005

He was sitting up, drinking slowly and staring off at the water. A part of him was scared of it now. The part that had learned how helpless you were when you were trapped in it. When it surrounded you and it was all you could see, and you knew that it was below you…just itching to take you down into it's depths. He planted his feet more firmly into the sand, grateful to have it's steady presence there.

It was like he felt her before he saw her. Sawyer turned around as much as his fragile frame would allow him to, looking at Kate intently. She stared down at him, eyebrows raised and a happy smile on her face.

"Wow, I leave for half an hour and you're up all by yourself? Maybe I shouldn't stick around so much?"

"Well, then, Freckles…what in the world would I have to wake up for?"

She sat down next to him, and from the things around her he could tell she had been there for a while. It looked like she had brought him one of his books, and marked one of the pages of her own. Sawyer was having trouble understanding why she stayed by him. He drank some more water, looking at her and grinning.

Her face became solemn. "Sawyer, what happened out there?"

He set his bottle down, sighed a little bit. "How many times are you all planning on asking me that? I told you what I know. A boat came up to us, asked us for Walt. We did what we could, but they got the jump on me-" He stopped, got a pissed off look on his face. "Got the jump on us. And they took him, and I got shot. The-frickin-end." Sawyer glared at her, clearly angry just rethinking about what had happened.

"None of the other people on the raft have returned since you have. We've been sending people far down the beach, hoping they'll wash up." She swallowed. "Everyone is just hoping you can tell us something to give us a clue. Where to look, what to look for-"

His face was cold when he sharply interrupted her. "Look, I ain't holdin out on you here. If I had something to tell, I'd tell it. But I ain't got a photographic memory, and I ain't a miracle worker. So if you're here to play detective, you can go now."

Her mouth dropped open a little bit, shocked at his attitude. She narrowed her eyes at him, instantly getting upset. "You think I was here to squeeze you for information? You think someone else couldn't just as easily of asked? I'm here because I wanted to know if you were-" She stopped, shaking her head. "I guess I don't know why I'm here."

She started to stand up, and he leaned forward and touched her arm. "Alright, alright," he said. "Sit down, I didn't mean to get you all teary eyed."

"I am not teary eyed." She announced, sitting again. She looked him over. "How are you feeling?"

He held out his arms, "Fit as a fiddle. Wanna wrestle?"

She rolled her eyes again, but this time she was smiling. Kate looked down at the ground. "I should have said good bye when the raft left. I let you go."

"No, I left. Hell, I ain't worried about it so why are you?"

"You seem to be forgetting that you almost died, Sawyer. Jack said it, you almost did a few times. And the last time we saw each other-" She didn't finish was she was saying. He was there, he knew what had happened.

He put both legs over one side, so that he was completely facing her. "I'm lookin at it this way. Neither of us was at our best the day before that raft left. But both of us were miles away from our worst, sweetheart. And that's telling me we don't have to worry with 'I'm sorrys'." He leaned back again. "I ain't very good at them anyways."

"They weren't from the plane, were they?" Kate hoped he knew what she was talking about. She knew he had just said he didn't want to talk about it, but it was hard not to think about.

"No." He suddenly craved a cigarette, even though he hadn't had one in a good long time. "They certainly weren't. Which means the Iraqi was right. We ain't alone here. And whoever these other people are, they ain't friendly."

He hated to think what they were doing to that boy. Sawyer figured if they wanted to kill him they would have just gone right ahead and done so. So they must of had some other purpose for him. He tried not to think of what that purpose might have been. His jaw set hard, his thoughts turning from Walt to Mike and Jin. Nobody knew if they were alive. And if as much time had gone by as he figured the news wasn't that good. Sawyer figured that he would never hear much about Michael or-

Charlie almost fell over his own two feet as he stumbled into the tent. His eyes were wide, "Jin! It's Jin, he's here. He's alive."

Kate leapt to her feet, "Where?"

Charlie forked a thumb backwards, "He was walkin on the beach, comin' from the West. He's real banged up."

Sawyer started to stand, ready to go make sure that his 'shipmate' was alright. Kate put a hand gently on his chest. "You can't go anywhere. You are far from ready."

"You gotta be kiddin me, I'm going to see if he's okay."

"You're not going anywhere. Now, I'm going to go and as soon as I know what's going on I'm going to come back here." She looked him deep in the eyes. "Just trust me, this is the right thing to do."

Sawyer was about to protest. He deserved to know what was wrong with Jin. He knew she was right, though. The pain was already flaring up, he wasn't anywhere near recovered. He sighed, "Well, hurry back with news then. I'll just sit here like a damned kid." He grumbled a little, pretending to ignore the sympathetic look that Kate cast at him before she ran off with Charlie.