I'm back! Well, I haven't been anywhere, I just haven't updated. I want to get this story finished soon, so there should be more updates more frequently than usual. This is for Emma, who bugged me and bugged me to update this. I told her I would do it when she went home...which was July, so I thought I'd do it now...in October. See, great time-keeping I've got. A lot of people have asked me whether there is any romance in this story. NO there isn't. It's simply Sawyer and his daughter, and his friendships developing with the other castaways because of Ella and what his role to her brings out in him.

Sawyer had resisted the temptation to march off into the jungle after the people who had mistreated his daughter. Temptation was still there though, every time he looked at Ella, which was a lot.

Now, he was glad for the fact that Ella was sleeping in his lap, worn out from a long morning of running circles around her father, and it didn't help that Kate had started to spur her on either, planting ideas into her head. The two were conspiring against him, and it was the classic scenario of being ganged up on by two girls.

If Ella hadn't been sleeping, he probably would have marched off into the jungle. But instead, he was sat on the top end of the beach, in the shade to keep cool from the midday sun, photograph in his hand. Sometimes, he wished that this photograph he held was of Brianna, so that in some way, he knew that she was there. However, it was taken on Ella's first birthday.

Ella was clapping her hands together with happiness as she looked over a cake, with pink icing and a lone pink candle in the shape of a '1'. Sawyer was crouched beside her, looking equally happy. Some people told him that it was the happiest they had seen him since Brianna had died. He couldn't even remember who had taken the photo, because they had mailed it to him shortly after getting the film developed. He might have been doing okay as a single dad, but he still forgot the camera on Ella's first birthday.

It took him back to a day, not long before they had boarded the Oceanic flight together. A day, where the question he had been putting off for as long as possible, had surfaced.

"Daddy, where's my Mommy?"

He thought he had misheard it at first. Maybe it was something he had heard through the television? No, they wouldn't say that on the evening news he was sure. In fact, he wasn't even sure the television was on. No, Ella was colouring at the kitchen table, and the television was in the other room.

"What?" He asked, making sure that he wasn't hearing what he thought he was hearing.

"In the story, Sleeping Beauty hads a mommy and a daddy." She explained, showing her father the illustration in the book he had brought her that morning. "Have I got a mommy too?"

He sighed heavily, rubbing his forehead with his hand. He hadn't wanted this day to come so soon. He still wasn't over losing Brianna, and the pain was still there everyday.

"Ella, come here." He said softly, and the little girl jumped down off her chair and came over to him. He lifted her into his lap, where he had sat down on the opposite side of the table eating the dinner she had long since finished. "Ella, baby, you've got a mommy." He started.

"Where is she?" Ella always asked questions, and he knew that now she would ask more than ever.

"She...she can't be with us, darlin'." He said, skirting around the issue of death.

"Why?" Okay, maybe he couldn't skirt around it.

"When you were born," He told her, "Mommy got sick, so the angels came to take her away."

"Somewhere nice?"

"Somewhere very nice." He hoped.

"Is she in Heaven, like Larry?" Ella asked.

Sawyer nodded, still wondering why she had named her goldfish Larry. "Yeah, the angels took her to heaven."

"Does she like it?"

"I sure hope so." He said, smoothing her hair behind her ears. "It's somewhere she can be happy all the time, and she can watch us."

"So, she can see us?"

"Yeah," Sawyer confirmed. "She makes sure that nothing bad happens to us."

"Oh." She said simply. Nothing else, just 'oh'. He wasn't sure whether that was good or bad. He could see her thinking, and sure enough, she had found something else to ask. "Does she love me like you do?"

Sawyer nodded firmly, more sure of that than anything he had just told her. "She loves you more than anything in the world." He told her, certain that wherever Brianna was, she loved their daughter unconditionally.

Again, Ella thought about this for a moment, and nodded to herself. She kneeled up on Sawyer's lap, and gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. "I don't think I mind not having a mommy." She told him. "I've got a great daddy."

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Claire's greeting broke through his thoughts, and Sawyer looked up as the young mother sat down beside him, smiling with her baby in her arms.

"That all they're worth these days?" He smirked at her.

She laughed slightly. "You looked like you were thinking about something serious." She observed.

"Yeah, I guess I was." Sawyer nodded, slipping the photograph into his back pocket without Claire seeing what was on it. She was curious about it though. She had always wondered what he kept that he always looked at with a far-off gaze. "So, mamacita, what can I do you for?" He asked her. "Or are we part of a mother and toddler group?"

"I hear you're going out there again." Claire said bluntly. "Back to where she was kept."

Sawyer simply looked at her. "I see you got the morning news then."

"What if something bad happens out there?"

"The only bad thing that's gonna happen is that I'm gonna have one heck of a bloodshed on my hands." He said simply, no remorse for what he was planning to do.

"And what if something goes wrong?" Claire asked, paying no attention to the fact that he was intending to kill several men. "Who will be here for Ella if you don't come back?"

He looked down at his daughter. Claire had a point, though he wouldn't admit that. If something went wrong, there would be no one here to look after his daughter. Sure, they'd feed her and stuff, but they weren't her parents. He was. He was her father, and he was supposed to do that.

But as her father, he was also supposed to protect her.

"I lost her once, I can't risk it again." He said quietly.

Claire looked at him desperately. "Sawyer, I went charging into the jungle to look for a cure for Aaron that I never found." She reminded him. "The whole time, I kept wondering what would have happened to Aaron if I hadn't come back."

"Well, that don't matter, 'cause you came back, and so will I." He said lightly.

"I know you need to protect her." She adknowledged. "But is this really the right way?"

Sawyer looked at her for a moment, taking in the concerned lines that covered her forehead, and the pleading look in her eyes. "You worried about me, Mama bear?" He teased her.

She gave him a gentle smile, and got to her feet. "Just don't get hurt out there, okay?"

He smirked. "Talk about taking the fun out of life."

She knew he was joking, but she still looked back at him as she started to walk away. "I'm serious, Sawyer." She told him. "Be careful."

Sawyer watched her walk away, and then realised one very important flaw in his plan of marching off into the jungle.

"Claire!" She turned around. "Listen, um...when we're gone, I was thinking...could you...you know?" He asked, nodding down at Ella.

"Are you asking me to babysit?" She asked him.

He sighed. "Yeah."

Claire thought for a moment. "On the condition that you come back alive and that I can have more toothpaste, yeah, I'll babysit."

She went off again, and Sawyer looked down at his daughter again. They were leaving that night, and he was suddenly terrified that he might never see his daughter again.