Chapter 5.

He studied his feet as he walked, dodging undergrowth and rocks and tree roots alike, protruding from the floor, intent on tripping him up and sending him sprawling. Head over heels.

The hike was a tough one, but he'd remembered that from his very first excursion away from the beach, on which he had shot and killed a polar bear of all things. He half expected another to come charging out from the long grass at any minute, attempting to exact revenge upon him for murdering it's mate or sibling or simply just it's fellow bear.

"Hey Sawyer?" her voice broke through and into his thoughts as she slowed her pace to match his, falling into step beside him. "D'you remember that time you shot-"

"A polar bear?" he interrupted, flashing a sideways glance at the petite woman suddenly beside him.

He felt uncomfortable being so close to her after all he had shared with Ana, even if he was currently in her 'bad books'. The heat he felt radiated from her closeness, the way her shoulder knocked into his as they continued on their way, several steps behind the leaders of the group, it all somehow felt like he was betraying Ana's trust. He felt as if simply walking and talking with Kate, as he was, suddenly became the worst sin that he could ever commit. As if he was cheating upon the woman that he had left behind at the beach in some way and he widened the distance between them, drawing an uncomfortable glance from Kate's emerald eyes as she swallowed hard, searching for words to make things between them right again.

"I mean, s'not somethin' you forget easily, now is it, Freckles?" Sawyer continued suddenly, breaking the heavy silence with a sarcasm laced tone that was more biting than his usual joviality.

No longer did they banter back and forth, finding comfort in each other's company. No longer did they feel a connection, a bond of camaraderie. Two outlaws against the world. And it had all begun, their relationship had gone into decline, since Kate's spat with Ana-Lucia and Sawyer's discovery that Kate had, in actual fact, lied to him in order to put pains to his blossoming dalliance with the ferocious Hispanic woman.

Before he had left upon Michael's raft, before he had encountered Ana-Lucia Cortez, Kate had no doubt at all that Sawyer would have loved the thought of two women getting into a fight, even as remotely over him as theirs had been. The thought of her, especially, pulling such an underhanded and dirty trick to vie for his attention as she had, would have left him grinning his wide, dimpled smile from ear to ear. But something had happened to him. Something within him had changed all of that. Had made him furious about Kate's wronging of Ana and had severed any remote friendship that they had rekindled following his return.

Ana-Lucia Cortez, it seemed, had changed him. Even in the few weeks that they had known each other, she had been able to reach inside of him, despite all of her bravado and tough exterior and harshness, and light a spark within him that had long been extinguished. One that Kate, herself, had never been aware of, let alone been able to relight like Ana had.

"You come to say sorry, Kate?" he spoke gruffly, mimicking words of her own from what seemed so long ago, drawing her green eyes up, away from where they watched her feet eating up the rising ground they were covering.

He never called her by her name. Never once had he done so before and though she remembered complaining to Sun and some of the others about his constant nicknames, the way he spoke her name then, the way it curled from his lips with ire, made her long for his dubious pet-names once more.

"Sorry doesn't suit me…" she replied, following his example and repeating words that he had once used, her voice almost as quiet as a whisper. Ana-Lucia had come looking for her those fourteen days ago. She had come looking for a fight and she had found one, and now Sawyer wanted her to apologise for it? "But, if it means anything, I am…" she paused once more, swallowing again at the lump of bitter pride that threatened to rise and compromise her apology. "…I am sorry."

Sawyer nodded his head slowly, as if considering the truthfulness behind her stilted words. He didn't do more than that. He didn't thank her, or tell her that she was forgiven, or even let her know whether he had accepted her remorse or not. He simply continued walking, blue eyes intent upon the backs of Locke and Sayid a hundred or so yards ahead of them.

"Ain't me that can forgive you, Freckles." He murmured finally, sensing her disappointment at finding neither closure, nor forgiveness. "You gotta speak to my Chica 'bout that one."

"Why her, Sawyer?" she breathed finally, unable to contain the question that she was aching to know the answer to and he turned to glance over at her, eyebrows raised perhaps thinking that she was asking why she had to apologise to Ana. Perhaps in disbelief of her brusqueness, her blunt query, or maybe in irritation, before he snorted and kicked at a rock in his path, sending it skittering ahead of them, over the brush and scrubs. "What is it about her?"

"What is it about her that got me all weak in the loins, right?" he demanded. "Sweetheart, are you intendin' on throwin' all my own lines back at me? What, you can't think of none of your own?" his laugh, while less than amused, wasn't as cold or hard as his tone had been before and she felt relief course through her veins at that notion.

"No. What is it about her that makes you so…" she began speaking only to pause almost immediately, searching for the words to describe Sawyer's sudden transformation, but none came to her. She couldn't put into words how much he had changed nor how she felt knowing that her actions had perhaps driven him towards Ana-Lucia more swiftly. "You told me once that it was because she didn't pity you. She didn't judge you or walk on eggshells when she was around you…There's gotta be something more to it than that."

She knew that she sounded jealous, and if she was truthful with herself somewhere deep down inside her private self she still was, but Sawyer didn't mention it or make a joke out of it as she had feared he would. She had never mocked him about his feud with Jack concerning her and it seemed that, while there was certainly no longer any love lost between them at that moment in time, he had a certain respect for her and wanted to return her favour from their previous, reversed situation.

"I been at rock-bottom for a long time, Freckles. Long time before this craziness and the crash an' all." He paused to shoulder his pack a little higher into his back before turning to look her in the eyes fully for the first time since the events that had transpired two weeks previously. "She ain't changed me none, like you seem to think. I ain't no different from the man that sat down on that plane or the man that told everyone exactly who you were just to keep his spot on that raft." He shook his head slowly, kicking the rock that he had toed before, again. "She ain't done nothin' to make me a new man or some bullshit like that…but she makes me wanna be." Conviction, total belief in his words, what he was saying made his eyes shine fierce azure at her. Made Kate herself take a step away from the sheer force behind them and made her turn her head away, as if she should not have been witness to such ardent emotions that he obviously held for Ana-Lucia Cortez. "She makes me want to change just so's I can feel again. Whether that's me feelin' anger or regret or hope or-"

"Love?" she interrupted unexpectedly, matching bright jade eyes of her own to his gaze and slowly, warily, as if he was just coming into the realisation himself, he nodded.

"Somethin' like that…" he mumbled, his voice growling to make up for what he had just admitted to the slight brunette. "I just ain't been able to feel nothin' for a long time…"

"That's why you didn't want her to come." She murmured, realisation dawning upon her as his words swam about inside her head. "You don't want anything to happen to her, but I'm disposable, right?" she brushed curling brown locks from her face, peering across the distance between them once more as they walked in tandem and even thought Sawyer shrugged at her assumption, even though he nodded his head slightly and told her 'Yeah', what she had said about hit the nail on the head, she didn't feel the anger that she had expected to feel thundering through her like the hooves of a pounding racehorse. Instead, her mind wandered to Jack. To how he had begged her not to go on the rescue venture. To the feelings, as fervent as the look in Sawyer's eyes had been for Ana, that had traversed his face completely.

She opened her mouth, drawing breath to respond to him after an extended heartbeat, but before the words could form upon the tip of her tongue, before she could let them fall from her lips and inform Sawyer that she had found her closure after all, Locke's voice called down to them from where he and Sayid stood at the crest of the rise that they were scaling.

"Kate, could I get another tracker's opinion on this map?" he queried, eyebrows raised in expectation. Small, all-knowing smile curling his lips, and though Sawyer noted the torn look flash through Kate's eyes, her frustration at being disturbed when she had been so close to making things right by him, she nodded her acceptance at Locke's request and jogged forwards to where he and the Iraqi stood, the pieces of yellowing paper in question stretched between their hands like a miniature hammock.

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