It had been a business trip to Los Angeles that had brought her here, brought her straight into the mess that was the lives of the rest of the Oceanic Six, minus Sayid who was as good as gone.

Hurley was the first one she saw, returning the favor she’d said to herself but never to him because the man who spent his days playing chess with Mr. Eko and talking to Charlie, the man who made death and it’s victims his best friend, bore very little resemblance to the good natured, smiling man who had visited her in Korea so long ago.

Kate was next. Ideally she would’ve been last.

Her sometime close friend had met her at the door with a warm smile and eyes that shined with what might have been the beginnings of tears and Sun had embraced her, feeling Kate hold on tighter than ever before, like someone holding on to a lifesaver, trying to keep themselves afloat.

They’d exchanged the greetings, the small talk about their lives and their kids and then Kate had choked back a sob when Sun told her that Ji-Yeon was finally sleeping through the night.

“Aaron won’t, not without a fight,” she had said, never looking Sun in the eye and never letting the tears fall. “He keeps asking for Jack. He thinks Jack’s his dad, and he won’t hear otherwise.”

Sun had put a comforting hand on her friend’s back, for once relieved that Ji-Yeon still hadn’t quite realized, or at least verbalized, the absence of her own father. At least Aaron had some memory of having known one. Her own daughter never would.

It had made Sun angry, for reasons completely irrational because really this was not her battle, but she blames him, partly, for her husband’s death, and that only served as a primer. It had also made her curious. Curious enough that after she bid her friend goodnight, sometime after nine, she’d gotten in her car and started driving.

It’s how she ends up here, in front of his third floor apartment, thinking that if she stared at the number nailed to the door in fancy gold lettering any longer it might wind up permanently burned into her retinas.

When the door opens, she enjoys the five second period in which she can realistically entertain the idea that she got the wrong apartment.

“Jack,” she says, both a greeting and one last confirmation.

The man with the full, dark beard and the slightly shaking hands, who smells vaguely of vodka, only nods his head, and it makes her anger dissolve. It is hard for her to be angry at him in the sorry state that he’s found himself in and so she’s left only with her curiosity.

He lets her in and she walks carefully into his apartment, spying the pills on the counter, next to a half empty bottle and she shakes her head and tries not to feel sick.

Quite a fallen hero, she thinks, wondering when his halo went crashing down to the ground. If maybe all the pressure they put on him, making him the leader, looking to him to save them, is part of what led to this. They didn’t bother with the man underneath the facade, not really, at least not at first.

She’d heard he was a mess but hearing and seeing for herself are two different things. The dark circles under his eyes stand out against rapidly paling skin and the beard only makes him look more severe. His eyes don’t really focus and she isn’t sure if that has more to do with his lack of sobriety or her. They don’t exactly have a relationship. She’s angry at him, has been for the past three years, and he knows that and so hasn’t made the effort past the first five ‘i’m sorry’s’, and she’s having some trouble not faulting him for that too.

“Why are you here?” He finally manages, his voice unsteady, unsure. Her eyes drift back to the bottles on the counter and he steps in front of them, to block her view.

“I am in town on business.” She’s having trouble remembering what she was going to say once she got here; whatever she had planned once she’d gotten into her car seems to have fallen away. “Kate told me about the flights. About how you want to go back.”

He ducks his head, a hand running back over his head, through his hair, a nervous habit she recognizes from years ago.

“I have to ask why you would want to go back to a place that represents nothing but pain for all of us.” Some more so than others she thinks but does not say.

“Did she tell you about Locke?” He asks, more confidence in his voice, punctuating the man’s name as if to say ‘i’m not crazy, there is a reason for all of this’. She remembers a day when Jack pointed a gun at Locke’s head and pulled the trigger and wonders when Locke became a pillar of truth.

“She did.” She doesn’t add that Kate only seemed to think that just made his desire to go back to the island more unfounded, more ridiculous. It was Locke. They’d lost trust in him a long time ago. Gradually withdrawing, shaking heads and whispering aside, much in the same way they’ve pulled from Jack and she thinks maybe he should’ve taken note of this.

“Did she tell you he’s dead too? That he killed himself? Did she tell you that?” More force, more fire, and he’s pacing, wearing the soles of his shoes thin far quicker than he will the wooden floor under his feet.

She fights the urge to step in front of him, to stop him, and take his hands in hers and make him look at her, make him focus, but she just isn’t ready for that, she just can’t find that strength yet. There’s too much history buried under the surface and it’s lifting, falling away with every nervous tick of his, every orange bottle she can count on the counter, and every crack in his voice. Time, she thinks, she needs time. “It doesn’t matter Jack.”

What she’s not saying is that she may not have heard the ‘we have to go back’ speech from Locke but she’s heard it from Ben. Ben who gives reasons that aren’t ‘because bad things happened’. But his reasons and words are too fresh and she doesn’t know if she believes him or not, so she doesn’t divulge the information, for fear of giving him the confirmation he needs, the evidence that there may be something to this idea. It’s better if he thinks he’s a fool, it’s better for everyone if it will keep him off bridges because he can’t find a way to go back.

“It doesn’t matter,” she repeats again, for the moment forgetting that she’d ever said it in the first place, too wrapped up in her own thoughts.

“How can you say that?” His voice is harsh against the silence of the room. She thought there would be more noise, someone stomping around in the apartment above, doors opening and closing, the hum of the air conditioner. There’s nothing but emptiness.

“What do you think you are going to be able to accomplish if you go back? What is done is done.” The words sting as they pass through her lips. What’s done is done, and that includes all the bodies that were never buried and the people they will never see again. “Why not just let them rest. Let this rest.”

“You wanted to go back.” And even as he says the words he looks like he regrets them, but he presses on. “For him. You wanted to go back. And I wouldn’t let you.”

She can’t hide the expression on her face. She doesn’t even try. There’s anger in her eyes and he shies away from it, but she can’t bring herself to force nonchalance and neutrality. He knows already; expects it even. “My husband is dead. And I will never get used to that. But I would rather try than pray that I am wrong. It will only be worse when I find out that I am right.”

“And you blame me?”

Sun thinks the truth might just drive him further into despair. And she knows that if it did, if something did happen, then knowing that she was a part of it would always be on her conscious. She also knows that if she truly hated this man, truly blamed him for it all, then she wouldn’t care if her words hurt. She would want him to hurt even, she would want him to hear how her child will grow up without a father and she will live out her days alone. She would want him to know how happy they were, finally, just before it was ripped away.

She cares. She cares and so she must not hate him. She must not blame him.

“I did.” There’s freedom in the past tense. “I did, and I thought I still did.”

He hasn’t stopped moving; she doesn’t even know if he hears her and she isn’t going to say this, to have it said, for nothing. This is for a greater cause, she thinks, whether or not she trusts or believes her own words. That’s for her to deal with, later, when this is over. Her feet move across the floor until she’s standing there, in his path, and her fingers loop around his wrists, pulling him to face her, and she waits for his eyes. Brown and glassy and tired. “I did blame you, Jack. And I did hate you.” She takes a breath. “But I forgive you.”

And it doesn’t magically snap him out of this, make everything perfectly fine, but there’s some spark in his eyes – one that she would not choose to describe as crazed for once – some sign that her words make sense to him, and hold meaning. It’s more than she’s seen since she arrived here and she has it on good authority that it’s also more than what Kate’s seen in years and that’s, inevitably, what matters.

It’s because of this that she can try to forgive him. She can try to forgive him for blue skies filled with planes that crash, people that die and dreams never realized.

For his sake. Maybe, someday, for her own.