This is for Erica, the Jack to my Kate, my better half. Happy birthday, babe! Hope you enjoy it this. It might make you cry but Cinzia's advice was to go with a tragic fic, so it is her fault really.
Soulmates / You Remain a Promise Unfulfilled Until Today
She lies on her back, long blades of grass tickling her arms and cheeks, watching clouds shape shift between fluffy candy and strange animals. She giggles when she notices one that looks like an elephant jumping rope. Tom by her side is silent. She enjoys the calm silence between them, something she longs for, a far, drastic change from what she gets at home. He nudges her shoulder softly and asks, do you believe in soulmates? She snaps out of her reverie and mumbles, huh? He tries again, already sensing her pragmatic, rational walls start to build at his question, you know, soulmates? Like two people being made for each other? Two halves of a whole? Your one true love? Kate shrugs. Love, now there was something she did not believe in to begin with. Her father loved her mother and he left. Her father loved her and she has not heard from him in years. Her mother loves Wayne and he beats her up every night. No, love doesn't exist. And even if it did, it sucked anyway. She doesn't say that to Tom, though, not with his bright eyed view of the world and his hope to someday get married, have half a dozen babies and live in a house with a white picket fence and tire swings dangling from huge oak trees. So she just shrugs and whispers, I don't know.
Kevin says he loves her and wraps his arm tighter around her waist. He falls asleep quickly and she lies in the hotel bed silently, stiff, as she watches the midnight wind play with the white curtains of the windows over looking the city. The curtains swing right and left, opening enough for her to see the full moon, big, round and white, watching her, judging her, following her from city to city, town to town. She frowns at it, wants to yell back and argue. You have no idea what I've been through! I deserve this chance to be happy! But she doesn't, she just watches the moon and hears it smirking at her, smirking at the woman who cannot say the words back to the man who had just proposed. She turns around, gives her back to the moon and instead stares at the ring on her finger. She closes her eyes and hopes she can get some sleep. She tries to forget the words he used as he proposed, propped up on one knee, You are the one, Monica, I know you are, we're soulmates.
When I was a little girl I believed that once I found the man I loved I would be happy... forever, Sun speaks into the cool evening wind. Kate by her side nods, Yeah, me too, she whispers. A half lie, but Sun does not need to know that, she decides. Jack had figured out the scheme the Korean woman had hatched and he will keep her secret. Jack is good at keeping secrets, Kate had said. For over a month he had known her secret and had kept it close to his heart, respecting her and her right to privacy and to a past. It is not something Kate is used to and it scares her. Sun gets up, brushes the sand off her jeans and bids Kate farewell with a solemn smile. Kate scans the beach. She is an outcast now and everyone keeps their distance. She finds Sawyer, the man too similar to her, his instinct to survive and protect himself a mirror image of her own, the one she honed during her years on the run. He did not hesitate for one second to reveal her secret, to use what he knows against her even if he did not believe she was guilty. She thinks of that time he conned everyone just to kiss her. She hated him then, hated how low the man would go, risking a girl's life for a kiss. She thinks back to the kiss itself; passionate, breathtaking, volatile, despite the circumstances. That is what she and Sawyer would be; wild, dangerous, exciting, explosive. There would be lust but no love. They would either explode, ruining each other, or they would fizzle out before they had the chance to shine. Soulmate, she thinks, are supposed to be two pieces that make each other whole, not two that are as similar as she and Sawyer are.
He is pissed at her, livid, when he find her in the jungle, but when he sees her distress all he wants to do is comfort her, take her in his arms, wrap his arms around her and let her drown in his embrace. It feels good to be held in Jack's arms, safe, and that scares Kate even more. She does not deserve this, not after what she had done. With every step she takes backwards, Jack takes two forward, with every brick she throws into the wall that guards her, Jack manages to take down two. And he is not even trying. He just does it, like it is instinctual for him to unravel the mystery that is Kate Austen. He comforts her, his hands on her shoulders, and for a moment she forgets. She forgets that he is too perfect for her, that he is too good. She forgets that she is the criminal and he is the doctor, that she does not deserve what he silently promises to offer. She kisses him then. A sweet, tender kiss, just like she imagined kissing Jack Shephard would be. But it is not just like she imagined it. She imagined the warmth, the tenderness, the way his hands would roam her skin, gentle, soft, but she did not imagine how whole it would make her feel. She did not imagine how one simple kiss can fill every whole and crevice and crack of her soul. Hers was a shattered soul, an irredeemable soul. It was not supposed to fit any other. She pulls back and as if on cue, her feet start running. She runs quickly, her feet burning s trail through the heavy foliage, the wind brushing through her hair and she tries to put as much distance between her and Jack, between her and what could be if she tries to give in to whatever that was. Soulmates don't exist, she repeats to herself in a mantra, true love doesn't exist. She heads back to the hatch eventually. She heads back to the hatch to where Sawyer is. She heads back to the hatch where it is safe, where she knows who she is and where she belongs.
Jack tells her he loves her and for a moment she cannot breathe. He says the words simply, they roll off his tongue as though he has been saying them for years. I love you too, she wishes she could say but she is not sure she has the right to say those words. She does not deserve to say them, not after being with Sawyer. She spends half the night in Sawyer's tent and Sawyer says those words she always pretends to be asleep. She smiles at Jack, watches as he walks away and thinks that maybe he is only saying that to make her feel better. Jack was good at that; making people feel better. She thinks that maybe he only said those words because of all that they had been through, the trauma, the stress was finally getting to him. She watches him walk away and swallows a sob. Just keep your distance, she tells herself, give him space to realize he deserves better, give him space so that it would not be too awkward when he realizes you are not good enough for him.
Juliet kicks her out the tent and she leaves, helped out by Bernard, the tears fall freely down her face. She wastes no effort to wipe them off because she deserves to cry, deserves this pain. Jack lies a few feet away, unconscious, on his back, his side is open, with Juliet's hand inside of him, trying to save his life. He had looked at her, pleaded with her for something, anything. He needed her there, and she wanted nothing more than to be by his side, to hold his hand, look his the eyes and distract him from the excruciating pain. But instead of that, she sits outside, hearing words spoken behind the tarp, medical terms she does not understand, and all she can do is pray, something she had not done in years. Jack...I... I... had been her words just before Juliet forced her out, just before Bernard knocked Jack out. Jack I love you, she needed two more syllables to finish her sentence but she couldn't. Another sob escapes her throat. Maybe true love does exist, but she sure as hell does not deserve it.
I have always been with you, she says, watching as his warm brown eyes widen, and she smiles, bringing the infant closer to her chest. She leaves him on the deck and heads downstairs. Leaves him in the state of awe and wonder. I have always been with you, her voice plays over and over in his mind and he knows it is as close as Kate Austen would come to a true confession of her feelings. She spends the first night watching Aaron sleep on the bed across the cabin from her, tucked securely within an array of pillows and blankets. She sits against the wall, watching him sleep but unable to sleep herself. The second night starts off the same. She tucks Aaron in and sits on her bed. This night however, she lets herself cry. She cries for herself, for those they lost, for those they left behind. She cries for the small child. She cries for what they will have to do. She doesn't stop crying when the door to her cabin opens. Jack walks in silently; a grey t-shirt and black boxers, he walks towards her without a word. His cabin is separated from hers by a thin wall, and he was on his feet with the first tear that he knew was rolling down her face. He sits next to her on the small bed and before long, his arms are around her, her face buried in his shoulder and she cries. The fall asleep wrapped in each others arms. They fall asleep, really fall asleep, something that has not happened to either of them in years. And Kate wakes up with a smile.
She is free. She is free and she is a mother. She is free, she is a mother and Jack's car is parked next to hers in the garage. Kate won't admit it, not to anyone, not to herself eve, but maybe true love does exist. She still walks around on egg shells because she still does not believe she deserves any of it. She is always waiting for the other shoe to drop because Her father loved her mother and he left. Her father loved her and she watch him call the cops on her. Her mother loved Wayne and he beat her up every night. Jack is not Sam, he is not Wayne and she is not her mother. But love is still love. She does not trust love. And soulmates only exist in fairytales, stories in colorful books that sit on Aaron's bookshelf. But then Jack wakes her up one night, nervous, anxious, his voice trembling, and he proposes to her. He does not go down on one knee and she is in her night clothes, her eyes puffy with sleep and the baby monitor blinks on the dresser. He does not take her to a fancy restaurant and hide the ring in her dessert. He sits on the bed, voice cracking, tie loose and almost forgets to reach for the ring in his pocket. And it is more magnificent than she could have ever imagined. Perfect, she thinks. Not perfect like in fairytales and romantic movies, perfect because it is real, clumsy, not planned, not rehearsed, sudden, spontaneous. Perfect. Her words escape her lips laced with a happy sob, a disbelieving sob. When they go to sleep, she does not glare at the disapproving moon in anger. She smiles at it, the ring on her finger shining brighter, This is right, she thinks, but the moon turns its back to her.
She finally understands her mother, after all those years of hating her, of being mad at her. She finally understands her mother when she tried to tell her that she loved Wayne. Jack's breath wreaks of alcohol and she knows his pockets are full of pills. She wants to hate, to push him and tell him to stay away from her. But when he pulls her to him, and breathes so close to her cheek, she does not smell the alcohol, she does not see the tired, red eyes of a man who almost jumped off a bridge a few days ago. She sees him, Jack, warm brown eyes that can make all her worries disappear, that look at her like she is the most valuable, beautiful woman to walk the earth. His breath is warm, sending a shiver down her spine. Even in the shape he is now, being next to him fills a void that has been eating at her for months. And she still loves him. Love hurts more often than it heals. Soulmates don't makes us whole when we are with them, they tear us into shreds when they leave us, she wishes she could tell thirteen year old Tom now. They were naive, both of them.
The mountains crack and crumble defying all laws of science, the island collapses onto itself in a scene from the wildest of apocalyptic blockbusters. Kate presses a wet, shaking hand on the gun shot wound on her shoulder, her left shoulder, inches above where she can feel her faint heartbeat. Jack walks towards her, a steady hand pressing into the wound below his ribs. And in that moment, in the moment it takes for him to take two steps towards her, she flashes back to every moment they shared together on the island, to the day on the beach when she vehemently told him she did not want to be Eve, when in reality all she wanted was for him to ask her. Eve. Adam and Eve. Eve was born from Adam's rib, wasn't she? She thinks to herself. If this was not the end then she would have chuckled at the situation. She sewed a wound under his rib years ago, and now there it was again, and injury below his rib. And he was dying. That much she knew. Her heart was aching, and not because of the gun shot. He is dying. His Even being ripped away from him. And when they kiss, one last kiss, for the briefest moment, they are whole again, for just that moment. I love you. I love you. This, Kate believes is what she deserves; to believe in love only to be punished by it.
She stands anxiously, watching the door she prays will be walking out of soon. She glances around her, watches the blissful state her friends are in. Love. That is what surrounds her now, and even though she recognizes it, it is unlike anything she has ever experienced. She watches them, Sayid and Shannon, Claire and Charlie, Desmond and Penny, James and Juliet and she finally understands. Soulmates do exist. But they exist to be together here. Now. Where it all matters, when it all matters. Where and when it is forever. Her gaze goes back to the door, and even though it has only been minutes, it feels like hours. She waits, and waits, but it is nothing compared to the time she had to wait before. She waits and hopes that when he steps out, he will recognize her. And when he does, she holds her breath, watching him go from one person to another, greeting them like friend and brother, and when he releases Sawyer from their embrace, his eyes fall on her. And she lets go of the breath she had been holding. When he looks at her and smiles, soft, small, innocent and gentle, she takes another breath.
His hand wrapped around hers, side by side on the bench, no space for even the wind to pass between them, they are engulfed by the warm light. Soulmates. Together, forever, and Kate is finally whole.
You Remain a Promise Unfulfilled Until Today
END.
Well, there is it. Hope you enjoyed it! Happy birthday again, Erica! *MUAH*