Author's Note: This is something that emerged from the chaos in my head fully formed. It's a little captivity, a little Kate and has sides of Jack/Kate. It's weird and eerie and AU and canon, both at the same time.
It's safe to say that this can be blamed on weird promo pic of Kate in a dress that looked very evening-gownish to me (I know it's a sundress but it didn't look like a sundress to me in the promos) and then my imagination ran wild.
Thank you so much Laura for beta-ing this!
Disclaimer: I neither own Lost and it's characters nor do I own the lyrics taken from the song "The Girl in the Other Room" by Diana Krall. But it's amazing and you all should check it out.
The Girl in the Other Room
The girl in the other room
She knows by now
There's something in all of her fears
She has struggle to come free from the arms of sleep, to shake off the cocoon of drowsiness that is keeping her in a tight-locked embrace. When Kate reaches the surface and opens her eyes there is only darkness around her.
Her breath comes quickly and shallow and the feeling in her chest grows and expands when she realizes she does not know where she is. There is a short moment when she deliberates to let herself fall back into the abyss but then she chokes back the salty tears and she commands herself to stay calm, to think.
Where is she? And most importantly, how did she get here? Her heartbeat quickening, she tries to remember what the last thing was that she did but it feels as if her head is filled with some kind of dense fog. The further she tries to dig into her memory, the more she seems to lose herself. She thinks about her next steps and then she gets up from the bunk bed and tries to feel around in the darkness. Finally, her eyes adjust to the lack of light and she realizes she is in an enclosed room, four walls, a metal door, a bunk bed and a sanitary unit. There is some indirect, diffuse light outlining the contours of the cell but nothing clear, nothing certain.
Kate feels as if she is underwater and she starts to cry when the realization hits that there is an ocean inside her, too, filling her up like a stranger.
There is a name on her lips, but she cannot remember and it will not come out, the memory an unconscious one. It won't come out and so her prayer remains unsaid.
She has gotten used to the man now. He comes in every day to bring her food and a change of clothes. He is the only one she sees but she knows there are others; she can hear their voices, can hear them whisper at night.
She hears murmurs low
The paper is peeling
Her eyes staring straight at the ceiling
He asks her to call him Benjamin and he touches her cheek but something about his friendliness makes Kate's stomach churn. Something about his sly smile and his watery grey eyes makes her want to scream the name out loud. The name she can not remember.
She asks him where she is, asks him to let her go, asks him what he is doing to her. But he only shakes his head and then he smiles and all she wants to do is curl up on that bed and cry but she doesn't, because she's Kate.
She has no idea what has happened. Maybe the Feds caught her after all? Is she still in Australia? She can remember Sydney but she does not know the answer to the questions swarming in her head. And they won't give them to her.
Deep down inside, Kate knows that Benjamin and his people are not the Feds or cops. Deep down inside she knows they are something worse.
On the 12th day, Henry tells her to choose. He does not answer her question as to what he means or what she should choose between, he just repeats his request.
He is not smiling this time. And she knows that this is not just about what he will get her for dinner next time.
On the 13th day, she wakes up in a different room.
One of the walls is made of glass, a window into another cell, the mirror image of her own. When Kate gets off the bed and starts walking towards the glass front, she freezes in her steps.
There is a girl in the other room.
The girl in the other room
She knows by now
There's something in all of her fears
She is barely visible, huddled into the corner on the far side, her face his hidden. She is naked.
Kate tries screaming and pounding against the glass to get her attention but the frail figure stays immobile. Kate keeps trying. This woman is like her, held hostage, a prisoner. Being on the other side of that wall and not able to communicate with her is worse than loneliness. So Kate keeps trying until her nails have dug half moons into her palms and her fists are raw and bruised.
Now she wears this thread bare
She sits on the floor
The glass pressed tight to the wall
"She can't hear you." Benjamin says and he looks bemused when he puts the trey down. The new room has a chair and a table and yet she sits on the floor, like a cornered animal.
"Why are you doing this?" Kate chokes out a sob and his smile grows wider and she jumps up and tries punch him but she is too exhausted and too slow. He catches her fist and the smile never leaves his face as he twists her arm backwards until she can hear the clicking sound of the joint. She hisses and then whimpers and through the pain she can only think about how much she wants to wipe that smirk off his face.
"Just make your choice and everything will be ok."
He pats her head like that of a petulant child and lets go of her; then he's gone and for the second time in her life Kate tastes the bitter tang of hatred on her tongue.
She is pretty damn sure that nothing will ever be ok again.
On the 14th day, Kate wakes up to find that the girl has moved around the room and is now on the lower bunk bed. Her head is leant back against the wall, her face hidden by the shadow. All Kate can make out is the whites of her eyes as she stares straight at the ceiling and the long, dark locks flowing over her pale shoulders. It nearly breaks her heart.
The girl's hand is dangling over the rail running around the bunk bed in an elegant arch, her long, gracious fingers stained crimson. It looks like blood in the harsh light of the single bulb but then she sees the smears on the walls and the ruined lipstick on the floor. She tries to read what's scrawled on the bleak concrete covered with peeling wall paper but then she realizes it's some sort of calendar. How long has this woman been in here?
At night, she dreams about him. And in her sleep she can remember his name but when she wakes, the memory is gone and the taste of it has faded on her tongue.
On the 15th day, the girl had moved again. Kate only realizes this after a few minutes of watching her from where she sits in her own cell, because she is still in the exact same position as last night when the light went out.
But the woman had to have moved around the room. There is more writing on the wall, the scarlet of the lipstick twisting into words, into spirals, like blood spurts.
Maybe they're there
Or maybe it's nothing at all
As she draws lipstick smears on the wall
She has written a single name over and over again. It is the name from Kate's dreams and the name on her tongue and the name in her silent prayers.
Kate presses her cheek against the cool glass and cries and watches her moist breath condensate and blur it, just like her own memory.
On the 16th day, there is something new in the other room and it immediately catches her eye. It is a battered suitcase, its contents spilling onto the floor. She can see the airline tag around the handle but she can not read the destination. It sits there on the floor like lost baggage no one is going to claim and Kate wishes she could crawl into it. She has long given up on reaching out to someone, anyone.
It seems the girl in the other room is resigned, too.
Then the woman suddenly moves, her shoulders jerking and something gleams in the shadow. Kate is stunned.
The girl in the other room is wearing a sequined gown.
The girl in the other room
She stifles a yawn
Adjusting the strap of her gown
That night, Kate awakes and for a little moment, she is as lost and disoriented as she was on her first night here.
Then she sees the moonlight filtering through the roof window bathing her own and the other room in a silvery light. The woman in the other room is moving. She is smoothing her hair over her thin shoulders, the long dark tresses spilling over like a shady waterfall, running down her chest. Her gown seems to glow of its own accord, thousands of little beads and sequins lighting up with every move, she looks like a fish underwater. It is the most beautiful thing Kate has ever seen.
The girl in the other room
She powders her face
And stares hard into her reflection
She turns towards where the door should be that is hidden from Kate's view. Her broad mouth is coloured crimson and it pulls into a grand smile, her teeth glistening in the twilight.
A man comes into view and the girl in the other room, she embraces him, wraps herself around his sturdy, muscular figure. His skin gleams like ebony in the half dark, something animalistic and primal about him. He pulls down the strap of her gown and kisses her shoulder in the most gentle manner possible, but then it turns raw and desperate and her body moves into his and they lose themselves in a dance older than time.
She tosses her tresses
Her lover undresses
Turning the last lamp light down
Kate has to bite on her fist in order to keep herself from screaming but she can not turn away from that woman and her lover in the other room and she wishes it was her on the other side, she wishes it was her breast his large fingers would enclose, wishes it was her body moving against him, around him like a twisting rope, wishes it was her that could paint his mouth crimson with her lips.
She closes her eyes and hot tears run down her cheeks and she can taste the salt of it on her lips. She thinks how the perfume scented smear of the lipstick would taste mingling with that man's on her tongue. And then she cries a little more and she cries out his name.
What's that voice we're hearing?
We should be sleeping
Could that be someone who's weeping?
When Kate awakes her limbs are stiff and they hurt from lying there on the cold concrete floor, in front of the glass wall. Awkwardly, she stands up and she blinks like a tired cat, trying to adjust to the brightness around her.
Kate stands and stares and then she sees the girl in the other room turning away from the mirror and walking up to the glass wall. And then they look each other in the eye.
Maybe she's there
Maybe there's nothing to see
Just a trace of what used to be
And Kate realizes that maybe it is not so much about choosing him but choosing someone for herself.
She watches herself on the other side of that wall and she knows even if she will not be ok, maybe the other Kate will.
She brings a hand up to the glass and so does the other girl. She swears she can feel her warmth and love and life through the thick, cold material.
It is like a goodbye.
The girl in the other room
She seems to look familiar
fin