The idea of Kate shooting Jack is too good not to build on, so I decided to write a mini angst fic about it. At the moment it's only two or three chapters but I might add a few more depending on interest. Just a cool little fact: I walked along that trail last year on the Lost tour. It's the same place where they filmed scenes from Exodus and Live Together, Die Alone. It's actually in the botanical gardens behind the cemetery where they filmed Jae Lee's funeral in The Glass Ballerina. ;)

OLD HABITS

Chapter 1.

"Jack?" Kate cried, confused, when she spotted him on the path above her, lowering the arm that held her pistol.

Then she saw it.

In what seemed like slow motion, his hand drifted up to the place where crimson bloomed across the navy of his shirt; when he looked up again, he was frowning, as if he couldn't quite believe what had happened either. She barely registered Hurley's presence beside him as she stood frozen in horror, watching Jack stumble backwards before his legs finally gave out, causing him to crumple into the dirt.

"Jack!" This couldn't be real. It was worse than any nightmare her mind could come up with.

She let the gun slide harmlessly from her fingers, into the stream, and raced up the bank, falling to her knees at his side.

"Hey," he murmured, his eyes finding hers as she hovered over him, pulling his head into her lap; he tried to smile at her, but it looked more like a grimace when he gritted his teeth, sucking in a laboured breath.

"I shot you," she pointed out, wondering how he could still be so happy to see her under the circumstances. Somehow that made what she'd done to him seem worse.

He responded with a pained chuckle that turned into a groan, though she wasn't sure how he could find any of this funny. "I noticed," he agreed, craning his neck to examine the wound that had opened in his stomach. If she were him, she would know how bad it was, whether he'd escaped significant organ damage, but to her, it was terrifyingly deep and bloody. He probed it with trembling fingers, fishing around for the bullet, crying out when it became too much and he almost blacked out.

Tears streamed from his eyes and she wanted to cry too. "What were you doing out here?" she asked him, caressing his face to soothe him, leaving a smear of blood across his cheek. She felt a sudden burst of fury at him for sneaking up on her without any regard for his own safety. She was alone in the jungle where people had tried to kill them countless times: who wouldn't be a little jumpy? "I thought you were gonna stay at the temple?"

For one devastating moment, she was sure that he must have been looking for her. She knew exactly how it would have played out: Jin would have returned without her and given his account of how she'd taken out both of their captors and gone rogue and Jack, refusing to believe that she would do so without a good reason, would have charged off into the jungle after her before the Others caught up with her. At least that was what the old Jack – her Jack – would have done. She could never tell how this new one was going to react.

"Jacob," was all he could manage before his eyes closed; it was all she needed to hear to understand. This was never about her. He was just as surprised by their encounter as she was.

"Jack," she whispered, repeating his name louder and with increasing desperation when he didn't respond. "Jack, stay with me, okay?" There was so much blood. It was everywhere: on their hands, staining their clothes… She didn't know how he could still have any left, and yet by some miracle he kept on bleeding, with no sign of running out any time soon. She pressed down on the wound with both hands but it continued to seep through her fingers.

There had to be a way to stop it.

"We have to get him back to the temple," she announced when all of a sudden it hit her, lifting her gaze to Hurley's for the first time. If the Others could fix Sayid… She forced herself not to think about Juliet, who now lay buried in a shallow grave a few miles from the cemetery. He was going to be okay. She was going to make sure of it.

"But we were supposed to…" Hurley stammered, staring down at Jack in disbelief. "Jacob—"

"Needs him alive," she finished, fighting back bitter tears. What use was he to anyone like this? "Please, Hurley. Please help me." There was no way she would be able to carry him there on her own.

As she glanced down at Jack again, so pale and still that he could be dead already if it wasn't for the subtle rise and fall of his chest, she began to cry in earnest, violent, wrenching sobs at the hopelessness of the situation. She'd known when they came back that one – or even both – of them might not make it, but never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that she would be the one to do it. He was a leader, a hero: his death was supposed to mean something. An iciness crept into her heart as she wondered if Sawyer would be glad. He wanted him to suffer.

She stopped crying when she felt a hand on her shoulder, looking up from Jack tearfully to see that Hurley had come over to join them, watching the scene before him with sad eyes. "What do you need me to do?" he asked.

Next chapter: Kate and Hurley take Jack back to the temple... ;)