Author's Notes: This is a pretty random one-shot inspired by the idea of Cubism, oddly. Cubism is the art form of using abstract shapes to represent varying perspectives of an object. That intrigued me enough to write a title...but I was still kind of missing the point of a potential story, so I consulted a few good ol' Twilight Zone episodes. This story is thus loosely based on the TZ episode King Nine Will Not Return. It's a pretty trippy episode, check it out. This story essentially explores an AU endgame theory for Lost...and attempts to squish surreal and shippy elements into it's weak plotline. Enjoy. And no, I don't get paid for this, thank you very much. :P

MY FACE IS ON THIS SIDE OF THE BOX

By Osiris-Ra

Juliet had come to him, coughing and grabbing at her chest. He tried to save her, but she had gone septic, and started to spit up blood. That was all.

Hugo, Charlotte and Desmond went into the jungle and never came back.

Something pushed Miles off a cliff one day.

Jin had a close encounter with a shark. The gore had been dreadful. Sun grew fatally ill out of her distress and that was all.

Nobody knew what had happened to John. Wherever'd he disappeared to, he had taken his crutches with him.

Daniel finally lost the only screw he had left and that was all.

Sawyer got torn apart by a polar bear and that was all.

Now Jack is sitting alone on the beach holding Kate's suicide letter.

"Dear Jack...I don't know what to say. It's really cowardly of me...but I guess that's something you're used to by now. I'm sorry I'm not here to say good-bye...but I know you'd try to stop me...and probably succeed...I can't do it anymore, Jack. Not after what happened to Sawyer...to Hurley and Sun and everyone. The only thing keeping me from doing this is knowing that you won't be far behind...and when I see you then, I'll be able look you in the eye and tell you I love you, Jack. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone in my life.

Will be seeing you,

Kate"

Rising quietly from the sand, Jack put the letter down and looked towards the ocean. The water was vivid, like it had been painted or maybe had dye poured into it. The caustic waves battered the shore, leaving an icky white scum as they fell back only to recoil and again hammer the innocent shore. A flock of gulls suddenly cut through the sky, keeling. Jack looked up. The air was making him sick. He turned, fell to his knees and hands and was sick in the sand.

"Fuck." he said, wiping his mouth. And the word was not said with anger , but rather as if it was a surprising fact. An uninteresting item of notice. "Fuck." without emotion or regard for the ugliness of the word. "Fuck." It had lost it's meaning. Jack stood up, his hands caked with sand. He turned and walked towards the water. His bare feet felt the cold shock of the bluer than blue water, and he kept walking. He continued past the soft sinking sand of the shore until the water went past his ankles.

For no reason, he found himself humming. As he walked further in and further out into the water, he was still humming, and wondering if somewhere, at some time, he had heard the song he was humming on the radio.

"In a crowd of a million people, I'll find my valentine, then I'll climb to the highest steeple, and tell the world she's mine."

The water was waist level now.

"Jack!" A distant voice shouted beyond the waves. "Jack! Jack!!" He turned and looked back at the beach. A figure was running out of the jungle, waving it's arms at him. He stood in the water awhile, wondering who it could be. Everyone he knew had either disappeared, been killed or killed themselves. So who was this unfamiliar speck shouting at him? Maybe he was going berserk like Daniel had...babbling about seeing people and planes and things. It would make sense that he was finally losing his mind...men like Jack tended to lose their minds extremely late in the game. They may have been the last to hold the trump card in their hands...but all the good it would do them...say, that person did look awfully familiar though. And the voice...that urgent and yet kind of teenage voice...and was she wearing a black tank top? ...Wasn't Ana Lucia dead?

"Jack!" She ran up to the shore. It was definitely her. Her hair was pulled away from her face, and her dark eyes were startled and angry.

"What are you doing, Jack?"

He just stared at her. Feeling sick again, he turned around. Something in his head randomly said, "Goddamn, he puked all over the sheet...he's seizing...tie him down...and administer another 5 cc's of clonazepam."

"Look at me, Jack." her voice had softened. She sounded worried. "You don't know what you're doing."

He looked over his shoulder at Ana. She started walking into the water towards him.

"...and maybe put in another order of anti-psychotics...Dr. Drake knows which ones..."

The water swished around them. He felt the warmth of Ana's hand taking his beneath the water. She was pulling him with her towards the safety of the shore. He followed stiffly, his legs cold, hard and frigid.

"...and bring some blankets...he's shaking the whole..."

He stopped abruptly, and taking advantage of her slippery grip, snatched his hand away. Ana Lucia looked back at him, surprised.

"No." he said. "I know what I'm doing. I know who I am. I know who you are...and you're dead!" He spat the word at her. "Dead! Dead! Dead! You're all dead!!"

Like a bolt, he took off running, and heard the splash of Ana taking chase. Absurd as it was, he was being pursued by a ghost—a ghost who could run damn fast, but if he could just get to the beach...

...a man sped across the lion-colored sand, his eyes wild and nostrils flaring. Jack Shephard ran alone.

"...respiratory rate is spiking...administer the clonazepam..."

"Buona sera signorina, buona sera...it is time to say goodnight to Napoli..."

Jack ran until it hurt to breathe. He staggered to a breathless stop and collapsed. He lay there, his chest heaving, his throat struggling to take in air but not succeeding. It felt like someone was beating his chest with their fist, but it was only his oxygen deprived heart pounding. His tired head rolled to the side, and his eyes saw, directly before them, two crude wooden crosses sticking out of the sand.

"I know who I am." Jack whispered between cracked lips. Dizzily, he got to his feet and staggered towards the crosses. Two long bumps in the sand indicated grave sites. He knew what he would do, to prove to the mind he was losing that he would be justified...(he fell to his knees and began to toss sand aside) ...in walking into the ocean...(handful by handful, a crater was dug)...and that it would be alright if he died...(his fingernails were caked with dirt and blood)...because nobody really died here...(more sand, more dirt, more blood)...not on this plane of reality...(his arms throbbed, his chest was on fire, his head spun dizzily, crazily)...on this abject, ambiguous shallow space of existence...(dizzily, crazily)...ending was impossible. You did not exist. Thus you did not die.

Jack Shephard, once a brilliant spinal surgeon, once the second in an epic love tryst, once a savior, once a leader, stood laughing with bloodshot eyes and black, grimy hands in Ana Lucia's empty grave.

"How did you meet my son?" Christian asked.

"At the airport." Ana Lucia replied with a grin. She shifted uncomfortably in her skirt-suit and white heels. "He was, uh...very entertaining in the ticket line."

Christian smiled. "I can't imagine."

Ana was looking at him strangely.

"What?"

"I just...I'm sorry. It's really weird to see you here."

"Why?" he looked amused.

"Well...you're the dad of the guy I was stranded with on an island for 4 years."

Christian nodded. "I guess that would be a little weird. Mysterious ways, right? Look, I...I want to thank you for what you did...for watching out for my son. ..and of course..."

She nodded with him, silently remembering the ironic past.

"So I guess you want to see him now."

The room was like a can, dim and pressurized. The air tasted and smelled stale. The window shades had been pulled down and shut, so that light beamed in rims across the room, barely cutting through the submerged, aquatic darkness. Music was playing softly from a radio; 1950ies happy pill tunes that crooned with a saccharine sort of pleasantness. The still form of a man lay on the hospital bed in front of the window. His arms and legs were strapped and a bit of blood trickled from his clenched hands.

Slowly, as though approaching a dam that was about due to burst, Ana crossed the room.

Jack's eyes were open. He was breathing very slowly. Beads of sweat dotted his brow. As Ana Lucia approached, his head turned, watching her with an interest that was starkly devoid of recognition.

"Has he been struggling?" Ana asked, looking at Jack's bleeding fists. Christian drew an appraising but concerned look over his son's body.

"He has...his hallucinations have been worsening...he's seized quite a few times, so we had to up his clonazepam. Helps with the seizures and aggression. ...Sometimes he says things."

"What kind of things?"

"Well, today he said something like, 'I know who I am', 'They're all dead.' He might be having flashbacks...maybe to the island?"

Ana regarded him darkly. Jack's eyes were set on her, and intermittently, he blinked so slowly that she thought he might be falling asleep. His mouth opened slightly, and his lips moved. She started to lean in to hear what he was saying.

"Be careful," Christian warned, "He's bitten before."

Ana glanced at Christian and made a sharp breathless noise similar to a stunned laugh. This was, of course, not the Jack she knew, this staring, hallucinating, biting husk lying dying on this death bed. This was not Jack at all.

"Please tell..." Jack's voice was a hoarse whisper, "please tell Kate...I'm sorry...that I didn't...come."

His hand unclenched and outspread, reaching for hers. Ana vaguely heard Christian warning her in the background, but a thunder had started to surge in her ears, and her eyes felt hot. Unreasonably, she was crying.

"Tell her I'm sorry...that I didn't come." Jack repeated, his clammy hand tightly gripping Ana's. Slowly she nodded and tried to smile.

"I'll tell her, Jack."

She took her hand away and stroked his head once. She didn't like treating him as though he were a child. To see his glazed eyes lost away in some other paradox where horrors repeated themselves, it was too depressing. Selfishly, Ana was glad she hadn't ended up like that...but neither would have Jack maybe...if Kate hadn't left, and if the others had kept in touch...and hell, would it have killed her to pick up the phone once? He had been there for her when she was alone...why didn't any of them see it coming? Why hadn't they thought he was capable of cracking?

Ana walked away from the heavy air around the bed. She stopped when she came to Christian who stood with his hands clasped in front of him, clutching a clipboard. Several minutes ago, she had realized she had no more words left to say, but she forced herself to issue a halting, "Take care of him", to which Christian nodded, not looking at her. He stayed stolidly in one place, watching the prone body on the bed, and half-listening to the music as the departing sound of Ana's heels softly clicked across the floor. The sudden sensation of fluid new air movement being sucked to an abrupt stop barely bothered him as the door closed.

Lyric credits: Connie Francis - Where The Boys Are
Louis Prima - Buona Sera