After the first night, sense had begun to creep back into Sawyer. After running around the beach in a hurry, searching for antibiotics and bottled water, he had returned to find her in the same state as before he left, and he couldn't really believe it. He'd expected her to be dead, had felt so very guilty, and yet there she was, still breathing, still alive. He'd managed to get some water and two pills into her, although he'd been surprised at how difficult that was. Upending the bottle of water into her mouth didn't do nearly as well as he thought it would, spilling water all over her face and soaking his trousers as he sat underneath her. Muttering fervent apologies and attempting to wipe the moisture off her face firstly with his fingers, and then with the ends of her hair, figuring she wouldn't know and that it was better than moving her whilst he searched for something clean to dry her face with.
With a little more caution, he trickled some water into her mouth, encouraging her to swallow it, and surprised when he got a response. He tried to convince himself that it meant nothing, but the fact that she actually managed to swallow water was such a momentous occasion for him that he felt his despair lift slightly. Her swallowing water was the most interaction she'd given him since he'd pulled the bullet out, the first proof that maybe he wasn't going to have to spend eternity alone on a haunted island.
From there, he'd allowed himself to leave her again, to search for more water, some food and some wood. After spending the night staring into the darkness, unsure of whether she was alive except for the soft breaths that punctuated the cold air far too infrequently, he'd forced himself to light a fire, to not have to go through that again. He wanted to be able to see her, to know that she was still alive without having to suffer the agony of the eternity between her breaths.
Two days later he had found himself forced to leave her to cut more wood. Apparently Jackass and his do-good brigade didn't think that it was necessary to chop wood, and had just been living off the supply Sawyer had left them. To leave her alone in his tent for more than few minutes seemed like a horrible to thing to do, but he actually revelled in being out in the air, being able to clear his mind with some hard labour. Instead of his mind flashing the same rotation of images in front of his eyes again and again, he concentrated on lifting the axe, bringing it down, hitting the wood with a satisfying clatter, and bringing it back up again. The marshal on top of Kate, Sawyer pummelling into him, the marshal shooting her, pulling out the bullet, sewing her up, a pair of feet blocking him in, over and over again. Hitting the wood was the only thing that banished those images, shattering them and spreading them with the splinters that went flying from his axe.
By the time he had got enough wood for the next couple of days, he was dripping in sweat. It had been too close to midday for chopping wood to be a good idea, which was precisely why Sawyer had chosen to do it then. The harder it was, the more it would hurt, and the less chance he would have to think. He wouldn't have thought that he would have missed doing this, an arduous, tiring task, but it was therapeutic in a way he had never realised before, settling him into a routine, setting his mind at ease, if only for a little while. By the time he had finished he had thoroughly managed to wear himself out, chopping far more wood than was needed, but enough to keep his mind skipping off into paranoia.
Stepping back and stretching a little, his muscles sore from the exertion, he picked up his water bottle and took a mouthful, the water warmed from the sunlight, but refreshing nonetheless. Hot, and uncomfortable in his pants, he stripped them off, and with a surreptitious glace up and down the beach, which didn't really make sense to him as he knew that no one was going to be about, and he wouldn't have really cared even if they were, he pulled his boxers off and stepped into the water. It was far more refreshing than the water in the bottle, cooling him and relaxing his body. The swell of the waves slapped at his chest gently, the sun glistening on the water around him and warming his hair.
Somewhat reluctantly, he got out of the water far earlier than he would have liked. Having washed some of the dirt off and cooled himself down, his mind became uncomfortably aware of the fact that Kate was alone in the tent, and had been for hours. He needed to hear her breathe, needed to watch the gentle rise and fall of her chest, needed to believe that she was alive, and that he wasn't here alone. Drying himself roughly in the shirt he had brought with him but not worn, he pulled his clothes back on. His steady footsteps down the beach quickly turned into a run, sand flying behind his wet footprints. He needed to know.