And Then I Stopped Counting

Words: 1,990

Character: Sawyer (some Sawyer/Kate, more implied Sawyer/Juliet)

Summary: Post-S6 finale (The End); a glimpse at Sawyer's life after the island. Companion piece to I Used to Think These Days Weren't Numbered, but you need not read it first or at all.

He thinks maybe the plane will crash, and he wonders if he would even care. There's an empty seat beside him that was supposed to be hers. He'd promised so many times that he would get her off the island, until they settled into a life that they both tricked themselves into believing could last. Days into weeks into months into years, and suddenly he didn't know how long he'd been there, only that he was happy. It was almost normal.

Miles eases into the seat beside him. He has some kind of goofy grin that he's trying to hide because he realizes that leaving the island isn't such a triumph to everyone, but still, Sawyer had struggled to get here, to get on the plane.

"We're going home, man," Miles says, but Sawyer (or is he still James? He thinks he isn't, not anymore. He was James to her and she isn't here) isn't sure if it's true. He doesn't know what home is. He grunts a reply and tries to show Miles that he's not looking for anyone to chat with, but Miles stays seated. "What are you going to do?"

Sawyer turns to face him and narrows his eyes. "Do when?"

"When we get home?"

Sawyer chooses not to answer. He lets the question hang in the air until it, like Miles, leaves him to his thoughts, and when the wheels hit the tarmac, he thinks he feels her next to him. But it, like most things, is just hope, just a dream.

They stand on the tarmac like sheep without a shepherd. They walk this way and that, coming back to shake hands, to hug, to pretend to make plans, to pretend they'll see each other again, to pretend they didn't leave anyone behind. Richard takes off almost as soon as his feet hit the ground.

Kate looks up and him though a piece of hair that's fallen into her face. He thinks she's almost afraid of him, but maybe she's just afraid of everything. She's got Claire two steps behind her, and now Kate's going to have to deal with giving her child to its mother. Or whatever she's going to do.

Kate wraps her arms around his neck. "We'll keep in touch," she says in his ear.

He feigns a smile. "We will," he says, but he's not sure if it's a statement or a question.

He stays in LA for a while. There's really nothing else to do. He's got enough money in his own bank account that he'll be okay, and he's pulled so many strings to keep it hidden that he doesn't have to worry about it being gone. No one has missed him. He doesn't have to worry about that.

He rents a crappy apartment and spends the first month of his being back living off Chinese take-out and rarely seeing the sun.

He dreams about being back on the island. He dreams of her hair, of her, of her screams. Don't you let go. And when he wakes up, it's all still there for a moment until it fades around the edges and is torn away.

It's been one month and 4 days.

He goes to the beach at sunset, stands there and lets the water move back and forth over his feet. When he closes his eyes, he's almost back there.

He lights a cigarette and draws in a breath of menthol and smoke and salt and pretends none of it ever happened. If I never have to meet you…

He walks away when he feels tears in his eyes, rubs a hand through the beard that's grown across his face, and he knows it's over.

It's been two months and 8 days.

He spends hours in the library browsing the internet, looking for Rachel Carlson, but he's not sure what he's going to say to her when he finally finds her. I knew your sister once, I knew your sister in another time, but she's gone now, just wanted you to know.

But he searches anyway. It's like therapy for him.

He goes through the white pages in Miami and all the surrounding area before he broadens his search, and he finds her obituary. Rachel Carlson died in 2003 of cancer. Ben lied.

She's been dead four years. Juliet has been dead for four months.

"Hello?"

She hadn't changed her cell number.

"You picked up."

"I haven't heard from you in years, and you had your little girlfriend come and feed me some Lifetime movie about how you jumped out of a helicopter for her, and then you call me and expect me not to pick up?"

He's speechless.

"You think if you give her money from your cons that I'm going to let you see her. You think you can go and live somewhere for three years and expect me to think you're different?"

She hangs up on him before he can say anything. All the words stick in his throat and he realizes he hasn't thought this through at all. He can't be a father. He can't be anything to anyone.

It's been four months and 15 days.

He meets Kate for lunch one day. He's already found an apartment in Albuquerque, packed up his sparse belongings and rented a U-Haul, and tomorrow he's moving there in hopes that Cassidy will let him see Clementine. It's what Juliet wanted, when they still talked about getting off the island, before they stopped numbering their days by sub visits. Just two weeks.

"She plays soccer," he tells Kate, something that Cassidy had told him on the last time they'd spoken. She had finally stopped hanging up on him, and had told him more about his daughter, but was still less than thrilled about letting him see her. She'd ended their last conversation with a snappy, "Well if you want to see her that bad, do something about it." Cassidy didn't expect him to follow through with it. "Like a real pro," he says. "She's not into that cheerleading stuff."

He told Kate that Cassidy had agreed to let him see her, even though that wasn't exactly true, but Kate was used to his cons.

"She wanted me to find her, if I ever got off the island," he finds himself saying. "She wanted me to find Clementine." He doesn't mention Juliet's name, but he knows Kate knows who he's talking about. Kate never mentions Jack either, maybe because she thinks Jack is still alive (Sawyer has his doubts), and it's like a jinx if she says his name.

"She would be proud," Kate says, and he hopes she would be.

He feels like Kate is distant. She's right here, but she isn't. There's some kind of wall that separates them, something that wasn't there before.

"Do you think you'll ever stop?" Her face reveals that she hadn't thought the question through.

"Stop what?"

She takes a breath. "Loving her."

He feels his heart leap into his throat, but the answer is as clear as her face in his mind. "No."

It's been five months and 16 days.

Cassidy doesn't slam the door in his face, but she doesn't let him in either.

"What are you doing here?"

"You told me to do something about it, and so I am."

She pinches the bridge of her nose between two fingers and sighs.

It's been five months and 23 days.

She doesn't call him Dad or Daddy. She doesn't call him anything for a long time. But he goes to her soccer matches and visits her at home, and Cassidy lets him take her out for ice cream and earn her love. She asks about him when he's not around. She's got blue eyes and blonde hair, just like the last person who managed to put him back together.

He gets a job as a security guard at the local mall and tries to live off that money instead of all the sins he's committed.

It's been eight months.

Miles shows up at his door one day with his luggage and asks to move in. The apartment is made for two people, but Sawyer has hardly considered a roommate. Especially Miles, who he'd only talked to three times since they'd gotten back.

"No way, Hoss," Sawyer says.

Miles rolls his eyes and pushes by him, but Sawyer grabs him by the arm and demands, "What are you doing here?"

He looks at Sawyer for a long time before answering. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

It's been nine months and 4 days.

Sawyer tries to get Miles a job at the mall, but they're not hiring. Miles laughs at that idea anyway, to which Sawyer replies, "You're staying with me because you refuse to talk to dead people, you milked your bank account dry, and you're not paying rent, you'll get whatever job I get you."

Two weeks later, Miles is working as a cook at some Chinese restaurant in town, and he comes home with pamphlets for a police program, saying even he wasn't Asian enough for that job. He enrolls and takes night classes, makes minimum wage during the day, and keeps the fridge stocked with rice, noodles, and General Tso's chicken.

Kate comes to visit. There's something worn down about her. She melds to the couch and lives out of her duffle bag and talks about how she may stay forever. Sawyer feels like he has to tread lightly around her, like something in her might break. He knows she's still waiting.

She slips into his bedroom one night and straddles him, pulls his shirt over his head before he knows what's happening. He can't reject her, and she knows this. Her lips crash into his and it's desperate. He pushes her back so he can speak, but she presses her hand to his lips. "Don't," she says, and there are tears in her eyes.

When he wakes up, the bed is as empty as it always is, and Kate is on the couch, and when she wakes up for breakfast that day, she never says anything.

She leaves that night.

It's been a year.

He sits at Clementine's soccer game with Miles on one side and Cassidy in the row in front of them, trying not to act too friendly, but chatting over her shoulder with them. Clementine is running across the field with her blond hair flying. She's dodging past the others and stealing the ball, and Sawyer just sits there smiling because he can't help how proud he feels. When the other team calls a time out, Clem gathers with her team on the side of the field, but not before flashing a smile to her parents.

After they win the game, she plops down beside Cass and leans back into Sawyer's knees and looks up at him. "Am I staying with you and Uncle Miles tonight, Dad?"

He ruffles her hair out of her ponytail and she scowls at him. "Sure thing, kiddo."

Clem grabs her back and hugs her mother, and the three of them walk across the gravel parking lot to Sawyer's truck, and he thinks about what she'd say if she were here, if she'd be here too, or if she'd be with Julian, wherever he was now, or maybe they'd be one big family. He thinks it would've all worked out.

But it works with what he has. A best friend who can get him out of speeding tickets as long as he doesn't complain about all the lady friends he brings in, a ghost of a friend who flits in from LA sometimes, and a daughter who's the star of the soccer team.

He doesn't know how long it's been anymore, but he still misses her.

Kiss me, James.

You got it, Blondie.