A/N: This has probably been done before. I don't read much fic, so I apologize for now having (unintentionally) written the two fics everyone has written: the rescue/trial fic, and the pregnancy fic. I think (hope) it is still worth reading.

This takes place post-season 3 hiatus (and deals with the cliffhanger) so there are spoilers through "I Do."

Sensitive materials warning: This story deals very heavily with abortion. Read at your own moral/political/emotional discretion.

Feedback is very much appreciated.

Givers of Life and Takers Away

There are things that should never be said, between certain people. Things you will go to any lengths not to have to say, because… because they can't be taken back, because the silence that comes after you do say them is unbearable. This is what Kate is thinking when she tells Jack that she is pregnant, and she needs his help to not be pregnant anymore. This is not something she should ever say, not to him. This is all kinds of wrong.

In the week before Kate tells him this, they have spoken only in logistics. They have nodded at each other in passing. They have discussed food, briefly, exchanging information on where the picking is still good. One afternoon they exchanged a smile at something Hurley said, a brief look between them as of old. After which, Jack went back to being Jack, and Kate went back to being Sawyer's lover.

Lover is a strange word, but she can't think of anything else that fits. Girlfriend? The thought makes her laugh. A girlfriend is something that exists in civilization, someone that brings soup when you're sick and nags about wearing the same dirty shirt two days in a row. Partner? No, definitely not that.

This is a typical week for Kate and Jack. They don't talk much since they came back. Or rather, since Kate and Sawyer came back, and Jack appeared three weeks later, angry and tired but triumphant, in his own strange way, alive. In the first stunned, happy moments when she realized she had not left him to die, Kate had asked him, breathless, how he got away. "Ben kept his promise," he said, "he got me off that island." Later he explained, to the gathered group, how he had been tricked too, but the important thing was that they were safe. All of them were safe. He looked at Kate then, and Sawyer sitting beside her with his hand on her thigh. She tried to be relieved, because they were safe, all of them, and she had not done such a bad thing running, after all. But there was some kind of wall, still - Sawyer, maybe, or her own remaining guilt - and they did not talk much after that. They grew used to not talking.

Now they are talking. Or she is talking to him. She has followed him off the beach, down a twisted path into the jungle. She thinks he is looking for food, or solitude. She startles him, emerging from the greenery. He asks, What the hell was she doing, following him? and she says, Yes. And then she says what she has to say.

The silence is just as she imagined it. She looks at the fraying hem of his shirt, looks very hard for the individual threads. Her fingers are leaving bruises on her hip; she imagines they are his, and wonders if he does too, how much he wants to shake her now, to grab her with both hands and shake her. Maybe that will do the trick. She has tried excessive physical activity already though, with no luck. Something more potent is needed; thus, her words.

He turns and walks away. She follows.

"Jack."

"No. No!" He shouts, swinging back around. She is confronted, suddenly, with his face, with his furious eyes. "You do not get to ask me that!"

"Is there another doctor here?" she asks, harshly. Maybe she should cajole, plead, cry, but she only knows how to do this as a demand. Anything else hurts too much.

He shakes his head, turns, and she has to grab his arm. She is vaguely hoping he will shake her off, hard, push her down, but he stops, turns back. "Does Sawyer know?" he demands.

She shakes her head mutely. Stupid question, Jack. What do you take me for, a human being?

He laughs. He laughs. "This is insane! What the hell is wrong with you?! I am not going to be dragged into your—"

"Yes, there is something wrong with me, okay?" Kate cries. Yes, yes, she is a horrible person. She thought he already knew that. "All the more reason you should help me. Think of it as doing a service for humanity."

"I am a doctor. I save lives, I do not kill innocent—"

"What? Babies? This is not a baby, Jack!" She knows her voice is hysterical, but she has said it so many times inside her own mind that it is almost a relief to hear the words propelled into the air. "It can't live on its own! It doesn't even have a brain yet. It's just a mass of cells, growing, it's… it's a parasite. It's living off of me, contributing nothing, and you have a duty to help me get rid of it, the way you would get rid of any parasite—"

"You are unbelievable! A parasite?" His face is contorted with rage and disbelief. Yes, hate me, hate me, hurt me, she thinks. Just do it.

"Please, Jack." She responds to his contempt with her own. "Don't tell me you're pro-life. In the real world, I'm sure you're a good liberal, women can do what they want with their bodies, right? As long as your hands don't get dirty." She takes his silence for corroboration.

"What makes you think I can even help you?" Jack asks. "I can't perform surgery, with no anesthesia, no sterile room, no tools. You'd get an infection and die."

"There must be a plant, something – I'm not very far along, only a month, there has to be some way—" She sees the flicker in his eyes and knows that she is right, that he can help her. But then his hand comes up, cutting off her words with a sharp movement.

"No! I won't. I can't help you." He turns again, but she cannot let him go. She knows what desperation is; this is beyond that.

"Why not? Jack, you know that I cannot do this. You know that I can't have a baby, and Sawyer can't have a baby, we would be the most hopeless, horrible parents, anywhere, but here, especially here, this is no place for a baby, and it can be stopped now, but I need your help—" He is almost running, and she hurries after, hoping that some word will penetrate his anger, that he will see how right she is, that it is the best way, the only way.

"No!" He pushes her off, but she follows anyway, not watching where they are going, stumbling blind after him. She hates needing, but she needs him for this, so much.

"If we were ever friends, Jack, if I mean anything to you, please—" Her voice breaks and he doesn't even bother to respond. She is hot and her throat is closing. She wants to clasp her arms around his legs like a bad movie and beg. "Why not?"

He halts, abruptly, and she runs into his back, a physical thud. His hands grab her shoulders, his fingers are making bruises and she thinks, shake it out of me, but he doesn't shake her, he just holds her still and tight, his face inches away.

"Because I want to," he says. His eyes frighten her, they are too close, too dark and bright. "If it were anyone else's baby, god, maybe even if it were mine, I could do it — but not his. Because it makes me sick that he touches you, it makes me sick that he has left a part of himself inside of you, and I want to destroy it. I want to obliterate any evidence that he has ever touched you. And if I do it, it won't be as a doctor. It won't be as a friend. I won't be helping you with a medical problem. I will be killing your baby. I will be a murderer. And I won't do that."

He lets her go, and turns to walk away again. She doesn't follow this time. She sits on the damp earth and shakes, but he never looks back to notice.

On the beach, Sawyer asks where she's been. She has fruit to show him, spoils of her adventure. He has been reading, and is still wearing his ridiculous glasses.

"Have you always been a big reader, or are you just really bored around here?" Kate asks, unpacking her goodies. Even she is sometimes amazed at how good a liar she is. He suspects nothing, despite her disappearances, and changeable moods.

He scoffs. "Just passin' the time, Freckles. I don't read." He throws aside his book, for emphasis. She grins, and takes off his glasses, folding them carefully and putting them aside.

"You are. You like to read."

"I do not!"

"You're a book nerd, Sawyer. I never would have guessed it." She leans in, savoring the look of annoyance on his face. Poor Sawyer, hates to be found out being worthy in any way. Abruptly his look changes, a smug smile crossing his lips as if he has planned the whole conversation, just to make her want to kiss him. Maybe he has. She still wants to kiss him.

"We all got our secrets, I guess," he drawls.

Yes. The smile drops off her face, but he is already leaning forward to meet her and doesn't notice. She thinks their kiss tastes of unsaid things, but she rearranges her expression by the time it breaks off, and he is none the wiser. He reaches out and grabs her around the waist, turns her about and settles her against him, back to chest. She doesn't resist, settling in between his legs.

With her face to the ocean she can have any expression she wants, as long as she stays still and he rests his chin against her hair. She imagines telling him. She is not sure what she fears more: that he would try to help her do what she is doing, or that he wouldn't. She thinks she knows him well enough to know his revulsion, his fear, his relief that she wants it no more than he does; but she wonders, still. Sometimes he surprises her. And if he wants to have a baby? Would she be any less determined not to?

The last two people on earth, she tells herself. The very fact that they are together, on this beach, proves that. If she had not run, if she had done the right thing, chosen the right man, been a better person…if she was someone who could have a baby, she would be someone else, somewhere else. Sawyer would not be leaning down to brush her ear with his lips. She would not love him, not him.

She tries again, that night. She is running out of time, and options. She thinks, again, about asking Sun; but Sun is having a difficult pregnancy, seven months in, and that is something even more unsayable. Save your baby, but help me kill mine? No.

Jack is sitting by his own small fire, alone. She walks up and stands there, not looking at him, and says, "It's not about you," and then she walks away. She knows this is unfair, but she is used to using people, when she has to.

She wonders what will happen if Jack does not come around. She tries to picture herself growing large and awkward, earthbound. This is difficult, but possible. A baby is harder; would it have Sawyer's eyes? Would Sawyer be there to see? She wonders just how much he loves her, just how much she loves him, if it comes down to that. Will he change diapers? Will he stay up nights? Which one of them will break first, and smother the baby with a tarp? What will happen when it grows up, and turns out to be just like them, treacherous and broken? She imagines that she will love it, because mothers seem to love their children, and that is the most frightening piece of all. Involuntary love of something that is undeserving. Like loving Wayne, or Sawyer, or herself.
Three days later Jack comes up to her while she is enlarging the shelter she and Sawyer have de facto come to share. He holds out a bunch of green leaves and says, "Brew this in a tea. Two leaves at a time. You have to drink it every two hours, until bleeding starts."

"What does it do, exactly?" Kate asks, though she is fairly certain she doesn't want to know.

"It relaxes the uterine walls." He is using his clinical voice, which is better. But then his face twitches, and his voice changes. "Sun showed me when Claire was getting close to her due date. It's supposed to help with labor, if you're full term, or with menstrual cramps. But, at this point, it should be enough to… upset things."

How delicately he put it. Upset things. As if she is carrying a house of cards inside of her, and a breath of air will knock it all down. "How long will it take?" she asks.

"I'm not sure... a few days. If it doesn't work within five days, it probably isn't going to. This is not... a science." He pauses and then warns, "But you should be sure, before you start taking it."

"I'm sure."

"Come tell me, immediately, if you feel sick, if there's pain, or an unusual amount of blood. This is dangerous, Kate. It's not to be undertaken lightly."

"Neither is having a baby on an island with Others and polar bears and monsters made of smoke."

He almost smiles, at that. "Okay." He hesitates, as if he wants to offer her an ear, or a shoulder. Finally he says, "You could do this, Kate. I know you don't think so, but you could. We would - all - help. Even Sawyer, I'm sure, if you told him." She finds it amazing how easily he offers other people, how convinced he is that because he is determined to Do the Right Thing, everyone else must be too. Oh, he's probably right. People would help her the way they helped Claire, the way they help Sun. Maybe even Sawyer. But Jack could have just said, I would help. Maybe that would be a lie. Maybe he would not help. It is, after all, part Sawyer. He wants to obliterate it, that's what he said.

If she focuses on his contradictions she can ignore his meaning. He is offering her a choice.

Catching her eyes, he says, "What you said, about being the worst person... that's not true. You could be a good mother, if you wanted to."

"I don't."

A second, and then he nods. He's done his duty, he can assuage his conscience. She takes the leaves from him, and he lets her, turns to go. She doesn't know if she should thank him or not, so she stays silent. She thinks instead she should apologize, but she doesn't do that either. What would be the point, now?

Sawyer asks her about the tea on the second day. "Sun gave it to me," she says, sipping the hot liquid. It is bitter, but she's afraid to sweeten it with anything, for fear of counteracting its properties. "It's supposed to make my hair shiny."

Sawyer scoffs. "What?" she asks innocently, batting her lashes at him. "I thought you'd want me to be pretty for you!"

It works; he forgets the question, hurrying to mock her mocking eyes. Later that night, in their tent, he traces her jaw with a finger and says softly, "You are the prettiest damn thing I ever saw." She falls asleep there, his arm cradling her head, and dreams of blood.

The cramps come first: light but unmistakable, on the third day. She puts down the wood she's been hauling, and leans against a tree. Things coil and tighten in her pelvis. Across the sand, Jack turns to look at her. She picks up the wood again, hurries on.

Then blood, on the fourth. A light shading, followed by a heavy rush. She tells Sawyer she is crampy, and would be better left alone. He doesn't argue, having experienced the sharp side of her tongue recently. She gathers extra rags, and limps down the beach, one hand pressed against the skin just below her belt, as if she can hold it in, as if she can goad it out.

It is night, warm still. She doesn't build a fire, preferring not to be reminded of her own limbs. Pain comes and goes like the waves, but with more force.

She is free, she tells herself, she is washed clean of responsibility. She sits with her bare feet in the water and cries, enormous gasping sobs shuddering through her. She has killed Tom again; she has killed her mother. She has killed any chance she had of being something more than what she is. She is washed free, she thinks, of being a person who gives life instead of taking it.

"Are you dizzy?" Jack crouches beside her, all doctorly concern, and she thinks maybe she is dizzy, because she didn't see him walking up. He can't see her face, turned away; he must think she was just sitting there, shaking. "Light-headed?"

It is only the crying, that has made her head swim. She takes a deep breath. "What are you doing here?"

"You could lose a lot of blood," he says. "You shouldn't be alone."

She is alone, now; everything else is draining out of her. She looks back at the water, and he takes that as permission to sit. She scrapes her hair back from her face. "I'm sorry," she says: for choosing him, for running, for making you a murderer, even if it's only in your head. Pick your own apology, Jack, there's plenty of options.

She wonders how things managed to get so complicated so quickly. They were just friends, once, or maybe she's imagining that, selective memory. She's not sure if she knew, before his outburst in the jungle, exactly how he felt about her and Sawyer. He played things close to the chest, after all. If he had told her, earlier, how he felt, would it have made a difference? Probably not. She never feels the need to apologize to Sawyer; except maybe now, for being here, for asking Jack for help and asking Sawyer for nothing.

"Do you love him?" he asks after a while.

"I think so. Yes."

She thinks if he asked the other question, the answer would be the same, with a caveat: Yes, I think I love you, but you ask too much of me. He doesn't ask.

"You've been avoiding me."

She glances at him sharply. "You told me I was making you a murderer."

"No, before that. After I came back."

"You were avoiding me," she says. "I ran."

"I told you to."

"Doesn't matter."

"We made it out alive because you ran, Kate. Sometimes running is the right thing to do."

Like now? she wants to ask, but she doesn't want an answer. "So we've been avoiding each other," she says instead.

"I guess so."

"We don't have to do that, if you don't want to." She thinks, if her relationship with Sawyer makes him that sick, how can he stand to look at her? But apparently he can stand it, because he does look at her.

"Friends, then?"

She nods, sort of. Friends. Her gut hurts, a demanding, deep ache. She clasps her hands around her knees and looks straight ahead, not at him. "Did you mean it, that you think I could – that I would have been an okay – or were you just saying that to try and get me to change my mind?"

"I meant it."

This is the flip side of him asking too much; he believes too much, he thinks she is more than she is. A wave covers her toes, and sweeps up over her body, drowning her. She is good, she is bad, she is empty, empty, empty.

"Are you okay?" he asks. She shakes her head. The fact that this was necessary, and right, does not make it easier, and she was not prepared for Jack to sit beside her and be kind.

He touches her back, lightly, and she crumples. All the little pieces come apart, leaving her broken open, crying again. He gathers her in, her arms and face and shoulders and chest, and she draws her feet out of the ocean, leaving the cool water to curl into his warmth. They are both murderers now, givers of life and takers away.

She does not think too much of the implications. She cries without ceasing, until the blood all drains away.