Title: Say Goodbye
Rating: PG
Summery: Mostly, if not completely AU, a sequel to One Hour: This will be the last time. Her mind is made up. She urges herself to remain strong. She knows that when she sees him she will want to change her mind. But this is the way that it has to be.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost or any of its characters. At all.
Author's Note: I never expected to do this, but I did. This is a sequel to One Hour, which tied for Best Het Fic at lost_fic_awards. It was also nominated for 'Best Gen Fic' at lost_fic_awards for the month of August. Thank you very much to my beta southernbeauty5.



This will be the last time. Her mind is made up. She urges herself to remain strong. She knows that when she sees him she will want to change her mind. But this is the way that it has to be.

She repeats this to her reflection, reaffirming her strength, her power over the situation. Little by little she has been losing it, giving it over to Sawyer against her better judgment. It can’t be that way anymore.

Unable to hold her own gaze any longer, she looks away. She is in the lobby of yet another expensive hotel. It had been Sawyer’s idea never to meet in the same place twice. It was a smart plan. If Jin was becoming suspicious (which she suspected he was), changing the place that they met would make her more difficult to find. Difficult, she feared, but not impossible.

Jin had withdrawn from her long ago, pushing her away in favor of the work that he did for her father – or possibly because of it. She had seen what he was capable of and it turned her stomach.



It was late. Sun had been lying in bed, awake, for hours. Long after the sun had set, the door opened and Jin walked inside.

She turned on the light immediately and he flinched, as if burned.

“Where have you been?” she asked, angry, hurt that he did not call. He didn’t answer and that was when she sees the blood.

She left the bed, going to his side, taking his arm in her hand. “Are you alright?” she asked. He did not flinch or pull away, only stared at her with hollow, empty eyes.

Her hand left him and she backed away. “What have you done?” Again, he did not answer. She repeated the question, this time shouting loudly.

“What your father tells me to do,” he replied, coldly. His voice, like his eyes, showed no emotion. He left her, shocked into silence, standing in the bedroom. He went into the bathroom, presumably to clean himself up.

When the door had closed behind him, Sun left. She ran from their bedroom, from their house, in only her nightgown. She had no idea where she was going as she pulls the car from the driveway. She didn’t care. She just drove.



She doesn’t know how she came to be in the bar. She doesn’t remember walking there. She doesn’t remember starting to stare at the endless bottles of liquor that line the wall behind it. But she is very aware that she is staring at them now.

The bartender approaches her and asks her what she’ll have.

She sits, surrendering to her impulse. “Whisky,” she replies, realizing only after she has ordered that she had only done so because it was Sawyer’s drink. No matter how much he tried to cover it up with toothpaste and mouthwash, he always tasted like whiskey. Whiskey and cigarettes. She suddenly had an unrelenting craving for a cigarette.

She was pulling a pack form her purse when her drink arrived, a soft brown liquid in a pristine crystal glass. She frowned. She wished it were a shot glass.



“Come on Sunshine,” Sawyer teased her. “You chicken or something?”

“I can’t hold my liquor Sawyer,” she replied, laughing. She had to. She wondered if Sawyer thought he was corrupting the innocent rich girl by introducing her to hard liquor for the first time.

The truth was, Sun knew very well that she could not hold her liquor because she had spent an entire night in a bathroom at the age of fifteen, a party for business associates and close friends of her father going on just outside the door, throwing up every ounce that she’d had to drink that night; which, according to a friend of hers, had been too many to count.

“I’ll go easy on you then,” he said, placing a large bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two shot glasses between them. He smirked at her and she had to smile back. “Cross my heart,” he added for good measure.

She leaned forward in her chair, his shirt hanging loosely over her body and studied him, with no shirt on at all. Making herself comfortable, in the chair, in his shirt, she picked up a shot glass and caught the light with it. She smirked back at him.

“How does it work?” she asked.

He let out a low laugh and unscrewed the bottle. Plucking the shot glass from her hand, he filled them both quickly. He picked up his and slid hers back toward her.

“I’ll start,” he offered. She nodded, inviting him to go on. “I never…”



Drinking alone, she finds, is much less fun. There is no one to laugh with, to joke with, or even to talk to. It is terribly depressing, actually.

With a sigh, she returned her attention to getting a cigarette and quick. The plan his a snag, however, when she found herself unable to locate her lighter. She sword quietly and began to dig through her purse, emptying it out onto the bar. She swore again, not finding it under her wallet or in any of the pockets. If ever I needed one, she thought, frustrated.

“Need a light Sunshine?”

She turned and smiled. “Thank you,” she replies, putting the cigarette to her lips and letting him light it. He sits at the bar next to her, stealing a cigarette from her back for himself.

“You been here long?”

“Half an hour.”

“Sorry. Got held up.”

She smiles softly. “It doesn’t matter,” she says.

He doesn’t ask if there’s something on her mind. He never does. That’s not what they’re about. They’re about making her forget the things that are always on her mind. It saddens her deeply that she’ll never have that again.

This is the way it has to be.

“We waitin’ for something in particular?” he asks. For the first time since his arrival, she looks him the eyes. She can tell he sees something there that he hadn’t expected to see because, for half a second, he frowns. It’s a very slight change in his otherwise confident demeanor that would be unnoticeable to anyone else, but that is agonizingly obvious to her.

She finds herself unable to speak. She has felt more in the past six months with Sawyer then in the previous year with Jin. Jin, who turns from her in bed. Jin, who fears her judgment and disappointment so much that he chooses to spent all of his days and most of his nights doing her father’s bidding. She hates what he has become, what perverted version of himself he has allowed her father to turn him into. But most of all she hates that she has driven her to push away a man who treats her right, who makes her feel, a man who pulled her back into the sun after so much time spent in the darkness.

“Sunshine?” he questions. She stares at the bar top. She stares at the cigarette in her hand, the drink to her left, at anything but him. If she looks at him, she won’t be able to do it.

“Sun?”

“I can’t do this anymore,” she says it quickly. It almost runs together, like one long word, a word that seems to mean “over”.

“Ain’t we been through this before?” He seems to gain some of his confidence back. He isn’t wrong. She’s said it before, and she’d meant it then too. But this time is different. Then she had been consumed by how wrong what she was doing was. What her mind knew and what her body wanted had fought a long battle, during which she had said many times that their relationship was over. But her body and the part of her that craved to feel loved again had always won out.

This time is different. This time it isn’t about her. It isn’t about the moral dilemma that she had laid to rest long ago. It is about Sawyer. It is about what is best for him. It is about keeping him safe. And what is safest for him was to be far away from Jin and her father, and therefore far away from her.

“Yes,” she agrees, with a sigh. “This is different.”

“How?” he challenges. “We get caught yet?”

“No. And I intend to keep it that way.”

“Good. Then we both want the same thing.”

She nods and laughs bitterly. “Yes,” she says. “We do.”

“Then you wanna explain to me what the hell we’re still doin’ in the bar?”

“It isn’t about what I want anymore. It’s about what is safe.”

“For who?”

“For you!” she snaps. A couple a few feet away turn at her outburst, though they have no idea what she is saying or why is warrants a raised voice. She composes herself and lowers her voice. “Don’t you see? I’m trying to keep you safe.”

He looks confused, and then, all of the sudden, angry. He grits his teeth and his eyes harden, darken. He says, “I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t care,” she replies stubbornly.

“Sunshine-”

“Don’t. You aren’t going to change my mind. Not anymore.”

He stares at her for a long while and she stares back. She feels strong, even though every moment that drags on makes her heart break a little bit more.

She knows the kiss is coming and she doesn’t stop it. She indulges one last completely selfish moment before she loses this forever. She memorizes how his hand feels on her neck, how his hair feels between her fingers, how he kisses her in a way that makes her yearn and hurt and miss him even though he isn’t gone yet.

And then she pulls away, because she has to, because she’s going to cry soon and she doesn’t want him to see her when she does it.

“At any other time, that could have worked,” she whispers. “But not today.” His hands leave her face and hers leave his. She already feels colder, emptier.

She pulls over an ashtray and puts out her cigarette. She swallows the rest of her drink, not tasting it anymore and not feeling it as it burns down her throat.

“I know you don’t want this,” she says as she stands. “An I don’t either. But I also believe you understand that this is the way it has to be.” She picks up her purse and smiles at him, but her heart isn’t it in. “I love you.”

She kisses him again, something that she has never done. She always allowed him to instigate everything. At first she had felt as though it had absolved her of some responsibility in some slight way. But as time had gone on they had sunk into the comfortable rhythm. Now everything is disconnected and she just doesn’t care anymore.

She leaves him there, not stopping to read the emotions in his eyes and not really wanting to. She has to take comfort in the fact that she is hurting herself to protect him. If she confirms that she has hurt him, she won’t be able to live with herself.

A cab comes quickly and she climbs inside. She only allows herself to look back at the hotel as it pulls away, and when it disappears from sight around a corner, then she cries.



The walk up the drive and in the door is surprisingly effortless. She usually spends minutes on end working up the courage to enter her house. But she finds that leaving the world outside behind is no longer agonizing, because now it feels no different then the world inside those doors. No matter where she goes, she is alone.

She doesn’t hear the door as it opens or closes. She throws her purse onto the couch with no emotion at all. She feels disconnected even as she reaches the bar in the living room and removes a large bottle of liquor from it.

“You’re home.”

She sets the glass on the surface and it lands with a dull thud. The bottle follows it and suddenly she is grapping the bar’s surface in her hands, turning her knuckles white. She picks the glass back up and fills it halfway before turning around.

Jin is standing in the doorway of their bedroom in a suit, staring at her as if he’s been waiting for her to come home for hours. She puts the glass to her lips and swallows about half of what she poured. She still doesn’t feel it. She doesn’t feel much of anything except the rage that is beginning to build in the pit of her stomach.

“So are you,” she replies. She’s never spoken to him like this before, like he doesn’t matter to her, like he is a stranger. She can’t tell if he notices because the same stoic look remains on his face, even as he watches her finish her drink and start to pour herself more.

He crosses the room halfway, sitting on the edge of the sofa and staring at her. The weight of his constant gaze makes her hand shake as she pours. She turns to him and asks, “Are you happy now?”

“I do not understand.”

She wants to hit something, anything, him. She’s so angry, so filled with sorrow and rage and loneliness that it is all she can do to stand. She doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to talk to him, look at him, be in the same room with him.

“You’ve taken everything from me now,” she says.

“I see,” he nods. “You’ve left him then?”

Her drink stops a fraction of an inch from her lips. She can’t move, can’t think. And then she’s throwing her glass against the wall. It explodes into shards, spreading glass and alcohol all over the carpet. Jin jumps from the couch, shielding his face, and gapes at her.

“You’ve known?!” she screams at him.

“For a very long time, yes,” He replies, though his voice shakes. He seems afraid of her. She hopes that he is.

“I don’t believe this.” She shakes her head, willing the pounding to subside. “You’ve known, all this time…and done nothing, said nothing.”

“Yes.”

She feels as though she has been punched in the chest. The pain spreads and she sinks to her knees. The tears fall more freely then they ever have before. She has lost everything she has cared for, and for no reason at all. Her head falls into her hands as she sobs.

And Jin leaves her there, as he has always done. He retreats from her, leaving their house echoing with the sounds of her cries.