For those of you who enjoyed "Trust", this is a follow up (set about three months later), to bring it back into line with what we've seen in canon. I should warn you that it's a little angsty and depressing, but as bad as Jack's behaviour was at the end of Something Nice Back Home, I still feel like there has to be more to it for Kate to react to him the way she did in Through the Looking Glass. So here's one idea I had... ;)
REGRET
Of all the things Jack had done that he was ashamed of, this was the one he regretted the most.
He meant to be with Kate at her appointment when she found out they were having a son of their own. All he had to do was remember to get into the lift.
He meant to make it up to her by getting home early enough to eat dinner with her for a change; to show her what a good father he could be by reading to Aaron like he used to. Instead he found himself in Santa Rosa again, nursing the bottle of scotch he kept in his glove compartment while he waited for a sign that he wasn't making the biggest mistake of his life.
He meant to do a lot of things, but somehow he could never seem to be the man he knew she expected. The man he'd been on the island.
It was after midnight by the time he pulled into the drive, too late to do any of the things he'd intended. Kate would have tucked Aaron into bed hours earlier; with mixed relief and guilt he realised that she had probably followed shortly after, after giving up on him and scraping the uneaten portion of whatever she'd cooked into the trash.
He knew the fact that he didn't want to have to face her made him a coward, but he couldn't stand to see the disappointment in her eyes when she discovered that he'd violated their agreement.
All of the upstairs lights were off when he stumbled up the walk. He tried to be as silent as possible letting himself in the front door, freezing on the first step when he caught a slight movement out of the corner of his eye.
"Where were you?" a voice demanded, and shifting his attention to the living room, he spotted Kate in one of the overstuffed armchairs, watching him with her arms crossed over the rise in her abdomen. There was a pile of bedding folded on the chair beside her but she didn't look like she had any intention of sleeping before she got what she wanted from him.
The last thing he wanted was for her to find out that he'd been drinking. "What d'you mean, Kate?" he asked her, forcing himself to stand upright to mask how drunk he really was. "I was working."
He could see that she wasn't fooled when the disapproving frown she was wearing turned into a scowl. "When you missed dinner again I was worried," she confessed, and his heart sunk when he realised where she was going with this. She knew he was lying. She'd already checked up on him. "I called the hospital and they said you left hours ago.
"Where were you, Jack?" she repeated, her tone sharp, dangerous.
"I went to see Hurley," he told her, because this was as close to the truth as he was willing to allow.
Not close enough.
Jumping to her feet, she seized first the pillow then the comforter off the chair and flung them at him.
"What's this?" he asked as one by one they hit him in the chest and slid to the floor.
"You're the surgeon – you figure it out," she retorted, stalking past him.
She was banishing him to the couch, he thought as he stared down at them in disbelief. "Kate—" he began, not even sure how he was going to explain his behaviour to her, but she rounded on him, cutting him off.
"No. You promised me you weren't gonna do this again," she insisted, pausing at the foot of the stairs, her eyes brimming with tears. "You said you wanted this." Her hand flew to her midsection. "I can't trust you, Jack, and I can't have you around my kids. If you aren't out of here by morning…"
She shook her head angrily, leaving the rest of the threat hanging as she continued up the stairs.
"Kate, wait," he called, racing after her. "Kate, listen to me." He wasn't going to let her leave him. He wasn't going to let her take his family from him. "No, you don't just get to walk away from me!"
"Get away from me, Jack!"
When she refused to stop, ignoring the fact that he'd spoken, he snatched hold of her wrist, pulling on it harder than he'd intended.
After that, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
He saw her eyes widen in panic; she cried out as her foot slid from the step, landing on air, and before he could control his reflexes enough to catch her, she fell, hitting the heavy wood and tumbling back down to the landing with an audible thud.
It took a moment for his brain to catch up, to realise what he'd done, and then with a slow sense of dread all he could think was that she wasn't moving.
He forced himself to shake this thought off when she moaned, snapping into action as he hurried down to where she was lying. "Kate? Can you hear me?" he checked, sick with guilt as he knelt at her side. "Kate? I need you to tell me where it hurts..."
The colour had drained from her face, leaving it a deathly white. He could see a bruise forming on one temple, but when he reached out to inspect it, to make sure it was only superficial, she recoiled from his touch, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms protectively around her stomach.
"The baby… Kate, is he moving?" he asked her, swallowing hard.
She shook head, fat tears spilling over onto her cheeks, and he knew he would never forget the way she looked at him: angry, hurt and horrified at the same time.
"Hey, it's okay," he told her, wishing that she would just let him get close enough examine her; to comfort her. That he had just let her go. "It's gonna be okay. I'm gonna get Veronica to stay with Aaron and then I'm gonna call an ambulance. We'll get you to the hospital… I'm gonna fix this."
But he didn't.
He couldn't.
As he sat on the hard plastic chair in the waiting area, trying to come to terms with this news, he could hear Hurley's "message" echoing inside his head:
"You're not supposed to raise him, Jack."
If he'd known then how prophetic those words were…
He wasn't supposed to raise Aaron. He wasn't supposed to raise anyone.
There was a bar on the corner where he'd stopped on the way home after a hard day at work; the part of him that was an addict longed to drown it out, to drink himself into a peaceful oblivion where he didn't feel like such a failure, but he needed to be there for Kate.
If he'd only resisted before like he promised then she wouldn't be here.
And their son still would.
He wasn't sure how much time passed before he was allowed to go through. It felt like hours but it could have been minutes for all that he was aware of it.
The room was dark except for a small light over the bed when he entered; she was lying on side with her back to the door, but everything about her was so rigid and still that he knew she wasn't asleep.
"I'm sorry, Kate," he murmured, perching on the space at the edge of the mattress. He took her hand, the one that wasn't covered in a cast where she'd fractured her wrist trying to protect the baby, but it went limp in his. "I'm so, so sorry."
She didn't speak for a moment, and he wasn't sure that she'd heard him, until she turned over to face him.
"Get out," she ordered, her voice flat and dull, her expression unreadable. Her eyes were red and he could see that she'd been crying.
When he just stared at her bewildered, sure that he couldn't have heard her right, she insisted, "I mean it, Jack – I want you out of my house by the time I get home. I never wanna see you again." To show him how serious she was, she reached for the call button.
Once he saw that she had every intention of pressing it, he slipped back into the hall to avoid the humiliation of being ejected, but as he stood outside the door, he realised that he had nowhere to go. His whole life, his home, was behind him in that room.
Without her, he had nothing.
He was nothing.
Without stopping to consider what he was about to do, he let his feet guide him towards the nearest storeroom. He needed something to take the edge off, to numb him, to make him forget that it was all gone: Kate, their son, everything he'd ever wanted.
His perfect life.
Gone.
Inside, he pried the lid of a vial with shaking hands and choked back the first thing he was sure would do the trick, sliding to the floor and letting his anguish consume him while he waited for the pills to take hold.
Of all the things he'd done that he was ashamed of, this was definitely the one that he regretted the most.