Lifeline
Sinking815
May 27th, 2007

A/N: WARNING: Contains MAJOR spoilers for S3!!! I kinda have to admit that I like this new scenario I've been given to play with, even though my heart still breaks for Jack and Kate. Reviews greatly appreciated.

"There was this woman, and there was this man,
And there was this moment they had a chance
To hold on to what they had.
How could they be so in love and still never see?
Now nothing could be sadder than
This woman, this woman, and this man." - Clay Walker

It was moments like this when she wondered why she ever came at all. Rolling over and ignoring the phone would have been so much easier, so much smarter. Two more rings and the answering machine would have silenced it. But she had gotten up, run down the hall, and answered, even when she saw the name flashing insistently on caller ID. As much as Kate didn't want to admit it, she knew exactly why she came. She needed to see him just as badly as he needed to see her.

The cry that escaped her lips sounded loud and strangled inside the claustrophobic walls of her compact care, the roar of the engine doing little to drown out her anguish or his insane yelling. Street lights reflected glaringly and blurred before her watery vision. With a sickening impact, her palm connected violently with the steering wheel, the stabs of a million tiny needles in her wrist the first physical presence of her pain. And it wasn't like she didn't know this would happen. Misery was inevitable, because their story was a tragedy despite the fairy tale beginning.

Never one to believe in fate, Kate had once thought she could spare him from becoming another victim on her list. She remembered telling him that she would ruin him, that while he thought she was the one in need of protection, she had really been protecting him. And not just from infections, or exhaustion, or monsters, or the Others. The one thing Jack was in danger of was the woman he had fallen in love with. Was the woman he was still in love with. She supposed that was why the return "I love you" had never made it past the scarily spontaneous thought in her head and had instead become her signature sad smile.

Now she couldn't ever offer him that, Kate mused, quiet tears streaking mascara down her cheeks and wetting the soft curls across her shoulders. She had done exactly what she had promised herself she wouldn't do. The broken man who had begged her for five minutes of her life was pleading for a second chance, a tabula rasa of his own. What hurt her most was the disgust she had regarded him with was not because of his unshaven wild look or even the faint reek of alcohol on his breath. He had given her a second, and third, and so many more chances she had lost count and couldn't even allow him one.

At the first traffic light, Kate risked a glance back and watched, captivated, as a 747 rocketed directly over his jeep and eventually appeared directly overhead, framed in her sunroof. It seemed to be retracing the invisible connection Oceanic 815 had drawn only 15 months before. Even though she could only see his black featureless silhouette, her mind was absorbed by the haunted hazel eyes she had desperately tried to avoid. The intersecting light changed and in the brief second before her light flashed from red to green, she thought about going back.

But for what? Her moment of weakness angered her and the tires squealed at her foot's enraged demand. Only to build him up so she could tear him back down? Kate knew that with each successive fall, his bumps and bruises became a little more permanent, that his gaping wounds would eventually become serrated flesh no amount of black thread could rejoin. She had once been shocked when, in a torrent of fury and rain, he had accused her of murder, but now, she felt only shame. He had been right; slowly and surely, she was killing him.

The buildings of downtown Los Angeles whipped past her at sixty miles per hour, as she sped for the safety of the suburbs. Every time Kate checked her rearview mirror, she half-expected to see the red and blue flashers of police in pursuit. All her mind would let her see was that jeep, that plane, and Jack. No, not Jack, she grimaced. The man she had turned Jack Shephard into.

The tires screeched again when her headlights finally glinted off the shiny side door of an LAPD patrol cruiser. Her ragged breath added an eerie echo to her repeated "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." It was ironic, she thought, keeping a wary eye on the stationary car. Once upon a time, they both would have come after her. Now there was nothing but black road stretching behind her into oblivion.

When she realized that she had been hoping to see him there, she swiped at her tears furiously. She wanted to believe, needed to believe that he really hadn't given up on her, on them, on life. Seeing him on the news the other night hadn't been exciting like she thought it could have been. The only thought that had crossed her mind was how thankful she was that car had careened into who knows what at that awful hour of the night. That had been the mistake she hadn't been willing to make again tonight. Kate knew all too well what Jack had been doing on that bridge. He had called her, desperate for somewhere to turn, and she had hung up.

So when she asked herself, why she continued to play this game he asked of her, she knew. There was a lifeline connecting them, one that fate had drawn the day their plane crashed on that godforsaken island. It had strengthened in their shared existence to the point of permanent solidity.

Jack had struggled to make her understand that they needed to go back; Kate had struggled to make him understand that with each phone call she answered, that was exactly what she was doing.

Finis