A/N: Just a quick note to say thank you to Hannah, this chapter just wasn't working before you gave me your comments on it. I don't know what I'd do without you!

I hear rain as he lays me down gently on the ground. I am surprised by how much he seems to care; it is completely unlike him. Despite the way he would hold me in the cell when my nightmares became too much, he always kept his distance emotionally, never showing any signs of affection. The fact he carried me at all was unexpected, though I guess it was so we could escape together.

My eyes are heavy, weighted, as I lift them to him. I catch a glimpse of relief in his, before the effort of keeping them open becomes too much and I give in to the darkness that offers so much comfort.

Xxxxx

I regain consciousness to a pounding headache, thoughts and questions spinning around in my mind.

Why didn't it work? It should have killed me, released me, as I intended. I never believed in Fate before, but now I begin to wonder. All the things that have been going on in this place can't be coincidence.

Oh God, he knows. He must have been awake to catch me so quickly, which means that he heard me. He knows.

Why did he stay? He could easily have escaped alone, undetected. But with two of us…why?

I gasp as a searing pain shoots through my stomach. He is by me in a second, taking my hand, asking me what's wrong. My throat is dry, so I gesture instead to where it hurts. He rests his hand on my belly, rubbing circles, easing my pain. As it subsides, I try to sit up, and he shifts, pulling me into his lap.

Leaning into him, I begin to wonder what reasons I had for giving up. Now we were out, it all seemed so trivial. Death never frightened me when I was little. I always used to wonder what made people so afraid of it.

It strikes me how quiet he is being. Have I really scared him so much that he feels he can't talk to me?

I swallow, trying to relieve my parched throat, before attempting to talk.

'Sawyer?' No response. 'Sawyer. Talk to me.' I tilt my head, and he's looking into the distance, his beautiful eyes fixated on something invisible to me.

'Why, Kate?' For the first time I hear pain in his voice. 'Why did you do it?'

I am silent. I don't know how I can answer such an honest question. There is no point skirting around the question. For once I have no choice but to stay and face the consequences of my actions. What can I tell him? That I wanted to give up? We have never told each other the truth before, why should we start now? If I tell him the real reason, the honest to God truth, he'll lose whatever respect he had for me in the first place. How can I tell him that I couldn't take it any more, that not even he could prolong my will to live? If I tell him the truth he has a weapon against me, should anything happen. I would be breaking my number one rule of survival: don't trust, don't tell, not anyone. They can only use it to hurt you.

'I…I don't…know.'

His head whips round, and there is fire burning in his eyes as he speaks.

'Kate, you tell me why you did it, why you were gonna end it. You don't do somethin' like that and just brush it off, pretend it don't matter. You know damn well why you were gonna do it, and you're gonna tell me.'

I have a wrenching feeling in my gut as he says this, guilt flowing freely through me. He does care. After all he has said and done, after the insults and the fights, he cares. For me. I turn away, the pain of truth too much to bear. He doesn't want me to die, but he's doing a damn good job of trying to kill me.

What are you doing? The voice in my head is telling me to accept it, that this is what I want, what I've wanted for so long: for him to show an interest in me as more than just a female presence to play with. And it scares me.

You can't run forever, Katie.

Why do you always want to run away?

I want to scream, to run, to hide. I see Tom, the only person who truly loved me, dead and bleeding in the car seat, and feel the resolution inside me once more to never again let a man into my heart.

And then I see him. Sawyer. He knows what it is to never trust another, to always live an alibi. He understands. For the first time in over a decade, I let down my guard.

'It was just too much, Sawyer. I couldn't take it any more. You were always so strong in there, and I was so weak.'

'Honey, that ain't no reason to go drinking poisons.'

His voice is dangerous, and I know from past experience that he's not one to play fair in a fight. I don't reply, and he knows that this isn't the whole truth. But he also knows that I'm not one to share easily, and so he drops it. For now. We sit in silence for a while, trying to pretend we're not lost on an island with nothing but each other.

'How did you get that stuff anyway?'

I smile. Suddenly all he's interested in is how I'm a thief. Figures.

'You remember the store cupboard we always passed on the way to the bathroom?'

'Yeah.'

I wonder how he will take what I'm going to say next. This should be interesting…

'And you know The Other who always took us to and from the bathroom? The young one with dark hair?'

'Mm…' I can see his eyes shifting, seeing where this is headed.

'Well let's just say I exchanged a favour for a favour…anything I wanted from the storeroom.'

'In exchange for…?'

Laughing, I hit him playfully, 'I'm not telling you. Use your imagination.'

I smirk at him as his eyes darken.

'What, you're not…jealous, are you, Sawyer?'

'No, course not. Just…I don't think you should be giving out 'favours' in return for bottles of poison, s'all.'

His eyes have narrowed, and his jaw is set. I also notice how his arm has tightened its grip on my waist possessively, and I am surprised by how comfortable I am in this position.

'You are!'

'Well, what if I am jealous, sweetcheeks? You gonna do somethin' about it?'

I am sorely tempted to take him up on that offer, but my stomach isn't feeling too good, and the sun is slowly rising in the sky.

'It's getting hot, Sawyer, we should find someplace shadier.'

The spark in his eyes is gone as I move from his lap and we stand up, brushing ourselves off. I hand him the bag of what I can only assume is supplies.

'You okay to walk, Freckles?'

'Yeah, I think so. For now at least.'

We begin to trek through the jungle, stopping every so often for rests. At a small stream, we refill the one bottle of water we have between us, and continue on our way, a comfortable silence settling between us, with the occasional comment about the weather, the scenery. It feels almost…normal. There is still so much unspoken between us, but for now he seems happy to let it slide.

Sawyer is a few paces ahead of me when I lose my footing on some mud, and slip down the hill. I have no breath to shout for him as I lose control of my thoughts. The trees flash past my eyes, and I am falling, with no sense of direction, beginning or end. There is one word stuck in my head as I fall, repeating over and over, Sawyer. Sawyer. Sawyer, his face painted in my mind. It suddenly strikes me that he is all I have left here, and as I try to comprehend this and what it means, I feel a sharp pain against my head, and the world stops spinning.

The last thing I hear before darkness claims me is the ominous whispering of the jungle, as the rain once more begins to fall.