Chapter Two: To fall down or inward suddenly; cave in

I don't want to be the one
The battles always choose
'Cause inside I realize
That I'm the one confused

Breaking the Habit, Linkin Park

The tear tracks stuck to Kate's cheeks, trapping loose strands of hair. Her sobbing had ceased, but her body was still racked with the spent emotion, the aftermath as intense as the event itself. She could not look at him anymore, her eyes fixed on the ground, looking but not seeing. She had done it; she had caved in, she had undug her toes from the sand. She had revealed her feelings, irrevocably, and it was a relief, it was, but now there were so many possibilities, so many dead ends and dark alleyways, and the road was so hard to see clearly. Did she really want to take the journey, that one-way street to Sawyer, leaving Jack behind, leaving Tom behind? Because she knew that if she allowed herself to fall deeper and deeper in love with Sawyer then it would consume her, as it was consuming him, and what happened when there was nothing left to consume?

Would she be enough for him? He seemed so sure, so confident of what he felt, whilst insecurity and fear ran rampant in her mind. He was used to one night stands, a thousand different women, and how was she better, what made her different? Sure, there were less options on this island, but that would make it all the harder when he moved on. It was already hard, after Ana, and she hadn't given herself to Sawyer, not completely, not yet. She loved him, but oh how she hated him, hated how he made her feel.

"Speak to me, Kate."

Sawyer had stayed next to her, waiting for some kind of a sign. She had stopped crying, but now she was thinking, and what if she was thinking "no"? She'd admitted she couldn't turn away from this, and Sawyer swelled with hope and love, but fear deflated his happiness, fear that even after this she would turn away, run back to the safety of the beach, of space, of distance. He wouldn't let her, he decided; he wouldn't, not after this, not after the only chance for love he'd ever known had crept tantalisingly closer.

"I kissed Jack."

Her voice was small, her fists were clenched, and finally, finally she looked up.

Sawyer wondered who had made the phrase punched in the gut so popular, because whoever it was deserved a damn medal for their accuracy. A strangled sound came out of his throat as he tried to digest the information, but it went down like bile.

All that he could force out was a whisper.

"When?"

It wasn't the question he meant to ask, or maybe it was, he wasn't sure. He wanted to ask "why", or "how", or maybe even a sharp "what?" because the bottom was dropping out of his world, she was falling from his reach again, and maybe if he knew the answers he could make some sense out of this. But he knew. Deep down, he knew.

Kate's eyelashes fluttered down, lightly brushing the moist skin below her eyes. Her voice was low, thick with guilt and shame.

"When you came back, I was so confused, Sawyer. I couldn't bear to be apart from you not even for a second, and I didn't understand it. I don't understand. I couldn't, I couldn't deal with it. But I stayed, Sawyer, I stayed."

Her uncertainty and need for justification made her hard to follow but the last sentence rang out clear as day. Sawyer had blurred memories of his convalescence, stolen moments of Kate's voice, her touch, in his mental captivity it had kept him going, had stirred feelings in him that he thought he had purged from his system.

"I seem to remember bein' pushed onto the floor and you running off, Freckles."

Kate grabbed her wrist with her other hand, and twisted her arms around, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. Her words were jumbled and nonsensical, mirroring her thoughts.

"You weren't – Wayne, he – he started – I can't explain this."

Kate threw her hands up in the air in a surrender pose.

"Try," growled Sawyer, his eyebrows drawn tightly together, his eyes exuding raw pain. She had kissed him, kissed the one man that would hurt him that bit more. He needed to know, a perverse need that would bring nothing but pain and truth. Kate swallowed, reflecting his pain with hers.

"I didn't mean it, you know. To kiss him, I mean." Her voice was still small, quiet, upset, and she took a deep breath before continuing. "I was talking to you, muttering, useless stuff." She smiled wryly. "I don't think I'm cut out to be a nurse. I fed you, held you, was the only one who could get the meds down you. I tried, Sawyer. I really did. I just - you were writhing in pain, and I couldn't stop it and I didn't know what to do!"

Her voice suddenly became higher, accusatory, and Sawyer felt that maybe, just maybe, she did feel the same intensity as he did. The same panic, the same gasp for air when it's too late, you're already drowning. If he was drowning, she was too, and they'd go down together.

"I opened up to you. I didn't know if you could hear or not, but it was nice just to be able to talk for once, you know, with no one judging you, or looking at you funny. After I told Jack, about Tom, he never looked at me the same way again, and I couldn't handle seeing that same look on your face. I didn't want to see the pity in your eyes, because I don't deserve it, I don't want it, but I needed you to know, one way or another."

A lone tear carved a shiny path down her face, and Kate looked in Sawyer's eyes, completely miserable and desolate. He turned and rested his back against the tree trunk next to her. He picked up her hand, and idly played with her fingers. He didn't want to cause her so much pain, he didn't, but he needed to know, and they were so close, so close, to everything he had ever wanted, beyond that even. They could be so much more together, they could love each other so much, but not with masked truths. It wasn't even about secrets, he was confident that she would tell him her pre-island secrets in her own time, and trusted she'd allow him the same. But this was different, this was a very real threat, and Sawyer wanted to go and punch the living daylights out of Jack, one, two, three, hurt him until he could feel a fraction of the pain Sawyer felt, pour all the hurt and anger out into an easy target. But he restrained himself, for her, and listened.

She became silent, offering no more.

"Tell me the rest," he prompted her.

"You woke up, and you were Wayne," she stated simply, her voice dropping back into a whisper. "He was asking me why I killed him, and then it escalated, and I didn't know what was happening, who you were, and then he started strangling me…"

"I started strangling you." Sawyer's thirst for truth was flooded with this revelation, and he turned his head away in horror. He abruptly moved his hand from Kate's and stood up, pacing back and forth.

"Those bruises – the ones on your neck – you told me that was that guy in the hatch, but it was me. I did that." He hit a nearby tree, sickened by his actions. The blow broke the skin, and Sawyer hissed at the pain. Kate jumped up, and covered his hand with hers, and she was close, so close, not close enough.

Her voice was steely, and this was more like the Kate everyone knew, the determined glint in her eye, the firm grip on her speech. "It was not you Sawyer, because I know that you would never physically hurt me, never."

The conviction in her voice was so strong Sawyer wanted to believe it, badly, and his eyes widened as he looked into hers and saw nothing but truth.

But how could he know that was truth, when she had kept this secret from him for so long? He spun away, leaving Kate in confusion. She had known within a day of his and Ana's affair, yes, it was an affair because his heart was already bound to Kate's, but he hadn't had a clue about this. What else had she been hiding, what other lies had she told by masking the truth?

"Carry on with the story." His voice was gruff, his eyes stony, and Kate couldn't fathom the sudden change. She took a shaky breath, nursing her discarded hand as if she had been dealt a physical blow.

"I – I ran off, I just left you lying on the ground – do you know how many times I've gone over that in my head, how badly I feel about it? What if something had happened to you? I'd never have forgiven myself Sawyer. I ran, ran for God knows how long. When I stopped running, I kept walking. I couldn't get a straight thought out of my head. I bumped into Charlie, I saw that horse – and when I finally stopped, Jack came, shouting at me for leaving you. I shouted at him, but then he grabbed me, and I felt so claustrophobic, so trapped, and I tried to pull away, but he just held on tighter. I gave in, but I couldn't make sense of it, I just wanted my head – I wanted it quiet. I couldn't think properly, and I just wanted a second of peace. So I kissed him –"

"Wait, you kissed him?"

"I just wanted it to stop, just for a moment. But it didn't help. If anything, it made things worse. So I ran, ran away like I always do." Her voice became bitter, self-deprecating, she hated reliving this to Sawyer, hated that she brought things up. "I felt like I was going insane."

She stopped at this point. Sawyer was staring at her, his eyes flooding with emotion, the likes of which she had never seen before. The intensity unnerved her, the raw pain and betrayal she saw in his eyes was the same as he must have seen in hers earlier, when he had been the one in the wrong. Kate narrowed her eyes, because she had almost forgotten the reason they were here in the first place, the reason why she felt like screaming and pulling out her own heart just to stop it hurting. She spat her next words out as if they burned just to feel them on her lips, and they did, they did, her feelings were burning her, and he was adding fuel to the fire, making her feel guilty when his crime had been ten times worse.

"You think that hurts? Huh? Well maybe you feel one tenth of what I feel." Her eyes were watering again, and Kate angrily swept a hand across them, her eyes red and raw, much like her heart.

It felt like they were scraping away the layers of their hearts, one at time, the pain almost too much to bear, but not as awful as the pain of not doing it, of walking away. It had come to this; they would have to rip each other to pieces before they could rebuild themselves.

There was silence, except for the distant hiss of the shore. The air was humid, and their clothes stuck to their skin. The air was suffocating, they were suffocating themselves through their secrets and mistakes, and now the truth was suffocating them in one last attempt.

"Why him? Why not Charlie, you said you saw Charlie, you could have –"

"I was confused, confused about what had just happened, but also confused about what I really wanted. Who I really wanted. Deep down, I knew I wanted you, but my mind was telling me I should love Jack. I was disorientated, and he was there. It only took one kiss, and I knew. Knew that there was only one person I truly wanted."

"I'm so sorry I'm not Saint Jack," Sawyer spat angrily. "You can't have both worlds you know. I can't be him. I'll never be him. But I love you, and I think you love me too, and that should be enough."

"Is it? Is it enough?"

Sawyer paused, unable to come up with an answer. Instead he asked her a question that had been burning the roof of his mouth and the tip of his tongue since they'd crashed.

"Why do you want Jack so much?"

"Why? Why shouldn't I want someone rational, someone easy to love, someone dependable, someone who loves me back?"

"If you wanted that you'd get a dog. And if Saint Jack is so easy to love, why do you keep coming back to me? You call me an asshole for having sex with Rambina, I call you a hypocrite for stringing me along whilst you go running back to Jack every time your conscience thinks you should. A dog is for life, not just for Christmas, and it's the same for people. You want Jack because he sees an ideal version of you, but you love me because I see you. And doesn't that scare you to death?"

In a moment of self-realisation Kate looked at him.

"It's because it scares me so much that I run to Jack."

"You can run all you like, but you can't hide. Not from me."

Kate came closer to him, her hair dishevelled, her eyes bright, her forehead creased. Her voice was hoarse from all the talking, yet Sawyer could hear the effort in it, the passion.

"I love you. I love you, and I hate you for it. This will never be easy, never-"

She pushed at him with her fists, and Sawyer enveloped them in his hands, drawing her closer, keeping her close, as he guided Kate against the tree they had been leaning against. He cupped her face with one hand, could feel her shaky breath warm on his skin. He leant his forehead against hers, and smiled gently. Her last words had given him a renewed hope. "This will never", that suggested what he thought it did, right?

"I've tried to be strong, for so long," she started, her voice wavering with the strain the words had on her. "I thought I could survive without this, but ever since I met you I knew it was only a matter of time. I thought I could overcome it, I never wanted to depend on anyone, never believed I could love someone like this, never believed I could be loved like this-"

Sawyer pressed his lips against hers, firmly, persistently.

"But you are, Kate, God knows, you are."

A suppressed sob made its way out of Kate's mouth and she planted open mouth kisses on his cheek, his neck, the hollow where his neck and torso met, before grabbing his head and pulling him into her embrace.

"I can't forgive you for Ana, Sawyer," she sobbed. "I tried, I'm trying, but I can't."

Sawyer gripped onto her tighter, afraid she'd slip away.

"Do you love me? Could you stay with me despite that?"

Kate was still, then slowly nodded into his arms, ragged sobs shaking her entire body.

"Then for now, that's enough. I ain't exactly sure I can forgive you for kissing Jackass either, not straight away. Promise me you'll try, and I'll promise right back. Let me love you, baby, let me try."

Kate's legs finally gave way, and they sank together, to the ground, a bundle of limbs and heartache and love and hope amongst the deep green of the jungle around them.