A/N: Hey hey, guess who has another chapter? I wanted this one to be real long, since the last one was so short, but you know… The heart wants what the heart wants, and it's the same with writing. This story seems to want short chapters. XD But I hope you'll like it anyway!

1: Why She Comes Back

It's safe with Jack. It's fun.

Kate was heartbroken when Sawyer stayed on the island. A part of her was left behind, and she missed it horribly. The first weeks after they got back, she was inconsolable. Oceanic Airlines called her at least twice a day, probably to remind her about all the new amazing offers they had for her to cover up the fact that their stupidity took more lives than she could count and forever changed the ones that they didn't take away. She didn't want to hear about any of it, pressed the pillow over her head to block out the ringing.

That goddamn ringing.

If the phone stopped ringing, Sawyer would come back, she was sure of that. The mist that the shrill, annoying sound of the phone left over her apartment was what kept him out, and now he couldn't come back to her, because of that goddamn ringing.

Of course, if she'd told Oceanic that she felt like that, they'd probably hire a shrink for her, too.

Needless to say, she didn't even talk to Jack for that entire time. He tried everything, called her even more often than Oceanic and showed up at her apartment a lot of times, too. But she hated him for those weeks, slammed the door in his face and took the battery out of the phone. Then he called her cell phone. She threw it into a wall, and it split open like an Easter egg.

Jack was a reminder. He stood there with his polite grin and was everything that Sawyer wasn't, stood there and wanted to comfort her, and whether he wanted it or not, said nothing but: Look what you got instead!

She didn't want Jack. The part of herself that she left with Sawyer was the dirtiest, angriest, bitterest and most repressed part of her, but it was a part of her, and Jack couldn't replace that. He'd probably try if she asked him, but she didn't want it. He felt disposable, and more importantly, he felt like what broke her and Sawyer up.

But that was then. Time has passed. Kate loves Jack now. He can be annoyingly Practical Piggy-like, and he's still never be able to be what Sawyer was for her. But she loves him. He's good for her. And since he isn't anything like Sawyer, it's also safe with him. It's easy and fun.

So why? Why is she walking through the jungle on this God-forgotten island for someone she's promised herself wasn't the reason she came back?

Kate has tried to answer that question for her entire walk. She is yet to come up with anything.

Sawyer will always be so important to her. He's one of the few people that have gotten her to open up about the thing she's been running from her entire life. Her love for him was like nothing she'd felt for anyone else before, a mixture of the anger she feels just by thinking about Wayne and what she did, and also the overwhelming relief she feels by talking about it, the gratitude she feels that someone is listening.

He means so incredibly much to her that she hasn't thought about him unless she's absolutely had to during all this time. He means so much that she almost hopes he'll be dead by the time she reaches him.

Kate stops when she reaches the little community. It's still downright astonishing to her how hard they've worked to make this seem like this island isn't the cruelest place on Earth. If they are in fact on Earth.

The tiny suburban houses. The matching colors on everything.

In a way, that's the most revealing thing about the island she's seen this far.

Kate straightens her backpack and walks past the houses she doesn't know. They do all look the same, but she stops outside the one she knows for sure that Sawyer is in. She could've picked it out of a line of a million yellow little houses.

How could she ever forget that night? It was one of the last nights ever she really felt close to him. All the kisses they shared after that, or just moments where their eyes locked, were all stained with a weird knowledge that she got from somewhere, that they wouldn't be together for much longer.

Kate draws her hand over her cheek. Not crying, just wanting to.

She really wishes she could've made that last night a better one.

She takes a deep breath and walks up on the porch. She's not sure what to expect when she opens the door, but she knows it's not going to be pretty, so it really shouldn't surprise her when a cloud of old alcohol and dirt hits her in the face and she has to turn around.

Another deep breath. Then she walks inside.

Most of the rooms are empty. The only thing that witnesses of his presence is the destruction and the self-loathing.

The dirty handprints on the fridge, there are places where it looks like he's slammed a Whiskey bottle into a wall just to have something to do. And Kate's heart retracts in sympathetic pain when she sees clawing marks on a doorpost, bloody streaks to numb the pain.

She walks into the bedroom. The bed they slept in that night doesn't look the same when he's sitting next to it, his hair sticking to his head, the sweat and booze reeking from him.

Sawyer's eyes are dead, there's no better way to put it. The stubble doesn't cover the fact that his cheeks are sunken, his lips are pale. He doesn't look like he's stood up in a while, let alone slept, but the bed is still unmade for some reason.

The pain. And the hatred to cover up.

Kate knows it. She knows how to handle it.

So she puts her backpack down, looks at him firmly. Sawyer barely seems to see her. Doesn't say anything, for almost a minute.

Kate is about to walk away to clean up in the kitchen when Sawyer lifts the Whiskey bottle. Mumbles something before it hits his lips and drinks out of him.

"You came."

She turns around. Sawyer's eyes aren't dead anymore, they're on her, feeling nothing, expressing nothing, but seeing, which makes them more alive than they've been in days, and Kate knows that.

"Yeah," she says. "I did."

Look at the chapter title… Why did you think Kate came back? ;) I'll leave that to the imagination, but I love to make obvious innuendos.