Title: Good Night
Characters: Jack/Kate
Rating: PG13
Summary: After the Incident, 815 lands safely in LA, but it's not the end of their misery.
Note: Based on Muse's "Guiding Light". Dark, angst, like, very very angsty and dark and depressing. You've been warned. This is not a happy fic. But read anyway, yes? :)
I'm lost, crushed, cold and confused
With no guiding light left inside
………………………………..
The taste of alcohol turns his stomach as the last sip burns its path through his body.
He reaches awkwardly into his pocket, the pill bottle rattling seductively against his trembling fingers, and he pulls out the newspaper clipping. It's torn and crumpled, the ink is smudged with tearstains and beer spills.
He stares at it, repulsed, and signals to the bartender for another drink.
………………………………..
She wakes up shaking. Her whole body trembles. She puts a hand to her temple to wipe the cold sweat before she can dare to open her eyes.
The air is course and unnerving. She whispers his name in the dark and says a hopeless silent prayer. She begs for him to wrap his arms around her and pull her close against his warm chest like he had done so many nights before.
She reaches hesitantly for him, her fingers treading fearfully against the bed sheet. The bed is cold and unwelcoming.
She jumps back and lets out a strangled sob when her fingers land against the cold tiled prison wall.
………………………………..
He visited her every day after 815 landed in LA. She was startled the first evening to hear the guard yell hoarsely "Austen! Visitor!!"
For all she knew her mother was dead, Tom was dead and Sam could not care less about seeing her.
She sat behind the glass partition, listening to the rain hammering outside while she waited for her mystery visitor. She didn't know why but she felt her skin shudder uneasily when she heard the woman next to her discuss the weather with her guest, "is this normal? The end of the world type weather?"
…………………………………
He walked in cautiously, not completely sure of what he is doing there to begin with. The guard had looked him over suspiciously when he came in asking for "the prisoner woman brought in this morning from the flight from Sydney".
He had spent the past two hours following his father's funeral driving around aimlessly. He knew he had to be somewhere just not certain of where that is. All he was certain of was the image of a brunette rubbing her raw wrists. Her face was everywhere he looked. He knew he had to see her. Her eyes bore into his soul and begged him to find her, find her, hold her, wipe her tears and tell her he was sorry.
The questions started pouring the minute their eyes met as he walked into the visitation room. The words escaped her lips before she had the chance to think about them. "I'm sorry about your father."
She shook her head in confusion, trying to understand why she'd say that to a man she was seeing for the first time, but he nods appreciatively and whispers, yeah, me too.
…………………………………
Two weeks and fifteen visits later, she asked him not to come back anymore. She returned all his letters sixteen days after that with one note attached, "you said it was all misery, or at least enough of it was."
It took him a couple of days to understand what her note meant. He wrote himself his first forged prescription that night.
It took four sleeping pills and eight glasses of scotch before he could finally go to sleep; before he could feel numb enough to ignore the tearful sobs haunting the silence that he was drowning in, please Jack, you can't do this, you have problems, I can't have you like this around my son.
…………………………………
He bought the ring eight days before her trial.
The defense had nothing. This time, she was not a hero who saved four other people. She was not a mother who gave birth on a stranded island.
Her own mother took the stand vengefully. Her daughter's tears did nothing to soften her bitterness as she spat at her "you cannot help who you love, Katherine."
She was found guilty and the judge took s recess to decide on the sentencing. She turned to looks at him and met his shattered eyes. Her voice fragile and defeated as she whispered, "I can't hurt you anymore."
…………………………………
He had visited twenty three hours before the last day of her trial. It was their first meeting since she's asked him to stop visiting her.
They sat awkwardly facing each other with no glass partition for the first time.
His voice cracked and weak as he begged her to let him help her, let him hire another attorney. His hand brushed hers and she jerked away.
It was suddenly painfully cold in the middle of May.
He got up to leave without another word. She watched his slumped shoulders as he shuffled out of the room. She dropped her head and reached over to pick up the ring he'd left on the table. Will you marry me? Of course I will. Yes.
…………………………………
He did not come back in after the recess to hear the verdict. She did not expect him to.
She twirled the ring around her finger as she sat waiting for the judge to return.
She was told to stand up to hear the verdict and suddenly she could not feel her legs holding her anymore. She could not move.
She heard the words and she could not breathe. It was dark and strange and violent. Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing except the ring she kept twirling around her finger. Her lifeline.
…………………………………
He read about the verdict in the paper the next morning, or the one after, he was not sure. Time no longer made sense when every day was a night and every night a living hell. He drank to remain sane, to forget, to remember, to feel and feel numb.
…………………………………
He kept the article with him at all times, pulling it out every time the alcohol started to clear his system. His fingertips became alive at the burning sensation the piece of paper sent through his body.
"Death Penalty"
…………………………………
The taste of alcohol turns his stomach as the last sip burns its path through his body.
He reaches awkwardly into his pocket, the pill bottle rattling seductively against his trembling fingers, and he pulls out the newspaper clipping. It's torn and crumpled, the ink is smudged with tearstains and beer spills.
He stares at it, repulsed, and signals to the bartender for another drink.
………………………………..
It's 2am and he is driving across LA, sober for the first time in weeks. He needs to be sober for this.
He pulls over on a bridge and pulls out the paper clipping. He does not read it anymore. He cannot read it.
And he knows the article by heart now anyway.
He folds it back into his pocket and stares at the unfamiliar bearded figure staring back at him judgingly through the rear view mirror. I bought you a razor.
………………………………..
She wakes up shaking. Her whole body trembles. She puts a hand to her temple to wipe the cold sweat before she can dare to open her eyes.
The air is course and unnerving. She whispers his name in the dark and says a hopeless silent prayer. She begs for him to wrap his arms around her and pull her close against his warm chest like he had done so many nights before.
She reaches hesitantly for him, her fingers treading fearfully against the bed sheet. The bed is cold and unwelcoming.
She jumps back and lets out a strangled sob when her fingers land against the cold tiled prison wall.
………………………………..
She does not go back to sleep. She curls up in the corner of her bed, hugging the apathetic pillow and staring at the ring wrapping loosely around her frail finger. She hears the warden walking over a little before 6am, and she is crying before he is at her cell with a letter addressed to her in a familiar handwriting. Felt like a goose just walked over my grave. Something my dad used to say. When he got the feeling something bad just happened.
………………………………..
Standing on the edge of the bridge, looking down, feels menacingly familiar and he sees the car crash into the truck, he hears the little boy crying for his mom, before it actually happens. He shuts his eyes, trapping the tears inside, and whispers "forgive me."
………………………………..
Pure hearts stumble,
In my hands, they crumble,
Fragile and stripped to the core,
I can't hurt you anymore
END.
Ok, here it is. My most depressing thing ever. Never again! But for the record, the way I see it, "the landing in LA"-verse is just there to prove how things should not be because their real destiny is on the island.