A/N: I'M ALIVE, EVERYBODY RELAX! XD And I now have a new chapter, which is full of a bunch of awesome angst and makeout! I hope you'll like it!

5: What The Heart Wants

One of the worst memories Kate has of her mother is when she told her that you can't help who you love.

She didn't understand it back then. Back then, before the true love had actually burned her with its uncontrollable, detestable fire. She thought she had it all figured out. You fell in love with someone who treated you well, and when you did, you stayed together as long as both parties wished to do so, and if either one of them betrayed the other, you went separate ways. Simple as that.

She really tried to turn love into simple as that.

Because how else would she keep her control. The control was so important.

That's why the current situation is even more frightening.

Or, not really frightening. She just doesn't understand it. For the first time since she came back for Sawyer, she feels like he's the one with the upper hand. Before, she could've set the house on fire or forced him to have sex with her and he probably wouldn't be present enough to even register that she did it, but now it's him that can do anything.

And god knows how much she can say no to at this point.

Kate sits up in bed the next morning. She barely remembers that he carried her to bed afterwards. She even has a vague memory of him waking her up in the middle of the night and made love to her again, with her tired and inactive and him, for the first time with her, gentle. It's vague, but it's there. They're actually back together now.

Kate doesn't look at Sawyer when she gets up and out to the kitchen. Back together. Or however you're supposed to see it. She's with Sawyer again, but who's he with? And what will he do when he realizes that the one he's with isn't necessarily the one he wants?

And what will Kate do when she's forced to live without him?

In lack of answers, Kate starts making coffee. The Dharma Initiative-coffee isn't that bad. And either way, she's so nervous right now that she'd eat the coffee straight from the jar if they didn't have any water. Anything that's normal, anything that feels right. If she can't have a normal relationship or fall in love with the right guy, she's damn sure going to get her morning coffee. She sits down by the kitchen table as the coffee boiler sputters softly on the stove, and sees Sawyer's feet tangled in the sheets through the kitchen door opening.

She could've had the right guy. But as it is, leaving him when he was perfectly sane and stable wasn't half as hard as even thinking about leaving this one when he's lost his mind.

The right guy. The wrong guy. Since when does the heart care about that?

Mom, Kate thinks when Sawyer's feet start moving and she hears his soft groaning as he's slowly waking up. No matter what you felt about me, I think you wished better than this for me… I don't think you wanted to love Wayne, and I don't think you'd want me to love a guy who's gone insane with grief. You'd probably want me to be smarter than this, but… I'm not. I thought I was, but I'm not. I don't think I'll ever be. I'm sorry.

Sawyer comes through the kitchen door and smiles sleepily at her, seeing her without his gaze really being there, and Kate knows, at that very moment, that if there's any way she can keep Sawyer in oblivion about what's really happened to Juliet forever, she will.

xxxxxxxxx

The following couple of days are like a dream.

Not an oh-this-is-so-perfect dream. More like an I-still-can't-believe-this-is-happening-dream. Kate keeps trying to make sense of it, she even tries to think that this is probably what she expected to happen when she came here in the first place, but then Sawyer pulls her to him again and she's once again forced to the realization that she's never expected this, she's still not expecting it, and she damn sure doesn't know what to do with it.

But once again, the heart doesn't care about that. The heart makes her do stupid things. Bit by bit, she feels herself behaving more and more like Juliet. Adjusting her voice, changing her posture, makes less eye contact just so he won't notice the difference in the way they look at him, notice that Juliet's soft, loving eyes have turned to Kate's concerned and vivid. The heart wants to keep fooling Sawyer, no matter how many times Kate thinks that she has to put an end to this soon. The heart makes her want to be Juliet, too.

And every time he pulls her to him, she thinks that this time, she's going to say no. Because how fulfilling can it be when he doesn't even see her for her, when he's whispering Juliet's name in her ear and she's still in love, yes, she's in love, so it hurts as much every time?

There's no way to tell if he'd still be with her if he actually got who she was. And he seems to slip further away every night, his eyes get glazed, distant. The burning intensity that was once there is gone. The almost frightening passion she knows he once felt for her is replaced with a plastic impression, and someone else's name on his lips.

He's insane. But as long as there's any Sawyer left in him, she won't get herself to leave him.

One night, they're sitting on the couch again. Kate has obligingly put her head on Sawyer's chest, partly because he wants her to, and partly because she doesn't want him to see her face. If she can keep him from seeing that, she might be able to keep him in oblivion a little longer.

She actually wants him to stay fooled.

When she fully realizes this for the first time, she feels so horrible that she has to ask.

"Sawyer?" she asks, still with her head on his chest. "How do you feel about… Kate?"

The question lands softly between them. Sawyer's quiet for so long, she at first doesn't think that he's heard her. But then he sighs, rakes his hand through his hair and says:

"She's the first woman I've ever loved. I ain't never felt anything as strong as what I felt for her. She managed to make the world an okay place… And when she left, I…"

She's never heard him talk like this. Ever. And she's not the least bit happy about it.

"But you managed to get her completely out of my mind, babe," Sawyer then says and runs his fingers through her hair, instead. "You're everything she wasn't. She never managed to… Complete me. I was still broken when I was with her. We were two messed up people trying to share something… But you're normal. You make me normal. You make me… whole."

She swallows. It burns.

"And Kate didn't do that?"

"No," Sawyer smiles into her forehead. "Why? You jealous?"

Then he jerks her head upwards, her lips into his. She agrees to his actions because she doesn't want it to seem suspicious, she lets him slip off her dress and place himself between her parted legs because she has to, because he has to keep believing that she's Juliet, since apparently, Kate isn't good enough.

She has to keep pretending. Even though her heart is slowly ripped to pieces every time he whispers her name.

Kate lets Sawyer make love to her to make everything seem it's okay. She kisses him back and digs her nails into his back, she climaxes obligingly when his tongue works magic. And when they're done, she listens to his weak snores and cries silently until the sun paints a thin bright line over the horizon.