Kate wiped away a tear as the plane flew overhead. She knew what he meant, about wanting to get back to the Island. God, that was all she wanted, too, at times. But it was past, that time was past, and she had new responsibilities now. Besides, there was no way to get back. Planes had circled over the area for months after they'd been rescued, and every few years another group tried to go back. It wasn't there anymore, and that was all there was to it.
Her phone rang again. Before she'd even touched it she knew it was him again. She didn't want to pick it up. Her hands began trembling on the wheel just thinking about it. He wanted too much out of her, he demanded things she couldn't give him. He wanted her to fix him, and she just couldn't do it. She didn't fix people. That's what Jack was supposed to be doing.
So she ignored the phone, let the ringing be drowned out by Patty Cline. She firmed her hands around the wheel, knuckles turning white. Another plane flew by, and she wondered who was on it.
She'd hoped that Jack was getting better, that he was recovering a little of who he used to be. When she'd seen the news, seen that he was playing the hero again, she'd thought that maybe, just maybe. . .but then Claire had shot that thought down, staring at the television.
"What was Jack doing on that bridge at two am?" She'd asked. Kate hadn't an answer.
Her phone rang again. Oh, God, she thought, why had he been on that bridge? And now the funeral. . .what if he really needed her this time, what if she could actually help?
She didn't want to pick up the phone, but she did anyway. "Jack, please," she said, and was disgusted with the way her voice sounded on the point of breaking. Disgusted, mostly, because that was how she felt on the inside, too. Why couldn't her life be easy, ever? What did it say, that some of the best times of her life had been on an island, running from polar bears and mad scientists, unsure if she would even be alive from day to day?
"Kate, who's watching him?" he asked, and there was a new urgency to his voice now. Not just despair, and that made her glad.
"Charlie," she said. "Well, Claire's probably home by now, too. We left at the same time, and she didn't have to make a detour. . ." she stopped herself from babbling, bit her lip. She'd almost missed her exit.
"Kate. . ." Jack paused for a moment. A hint of static came through, and Kate wondered whether the connection would hold. But when he spoke again his voice was strong and firm, and sounded as though he were right next to her. "How did Charlie get here? He wasn't with us when the helicopters came. Kate, how did he get off the island?"
She could feel the tremors taking over again, and she pulled to the side of the road. They'd been over this argument before, but never with Charlie. How had they gotten off the island. . .she remembered the helicopters coming, remembered seeing them in the air. And she seemed to remember the doors opening, and something coming out, someone, but then it was fuzzy and confused until she woke up in a hospital bed and the men from Oceanic were standing there, apologizing and handing out Golden Passes. But they'd gotten off, wasn't that all that really mattered?
"Maybe they went back for him," Kate mumbled. And then, grasping at the explanation they'd been offered, "Jack, maybe he wasn't even on the island. Maybe he was one of the hallucinations."
"There weren't any hallucinations," Jack said darkly. Kate was glad she wasn't driving. This was the point that Jack wouldn't give up, couldn't give up. Oceanic had explained about the noxious gases found on the island, explained how they could have made them see things, dream things that weren't real. Polar bears, for example, or a black horse wandering around. Maybe even people, Oceanic had suggested. They might even have met people who weren't real. It was a scarier thought, but easier to accept than the other. That everyone had been real, that they'd escaped, those of them at the radio tower, and that they'd left the others behind.
"Kate, you came back pregnant," he said harshly. "That wasn't a hallucination."
"But maybe—"
"Jin and Bernard. . .they weren't hallucinations."
"Not everyone survived the crash, Jack. . ."
"Kate," and now he was struggling to say something. "My father was dead before the crash. He was dead, Kate, I was bringing his body home, that's why I was on the plane, and now I'm working with him. Kate, he's alive, and drunk as ever, and still working. Something happened on that Island, Kate, or something didn't happen that should have."
"Jack, I'm not discussing this with you," she said, sharply, and a thought came to her head, absent and disconnected. From the island, then, all of her memories of the island were disjointed more so everyday. You run, I con. Tiger don't change its stripes. But she wasn't running, she wasn't. She was accepting her life, the way it was now. She wasn't running.
"I have to go home. He'll be waiting for me, and Charlie and Claire will be wanting to go to bed. . ."
"Kate, you know who his father is," Jack said, and she wondered if that was more painful for her to hear, or him to say. "Was he a hallucination?"
"Good-bye, Jack," she said, and managed to keep from crying until the phone was hung up. He wouldn't call again that night, probably not for a week. They never talked after he was brought up—too painful for the both of them, and though Jack was self-destructive himself, he still hated bringing pain to other people.
It took a moment for her to gather herself. She wished she kept Kleenex in the car, but knew she'd forget to grab a box from the apartment. She took deep breaths, counted to five. Jack had taught her that, she remembered. Sad that he couldn't seem to remember it himself.
The car pulled smoothly back onto the highway. Kate kept breathing slowly, in and out, glad that traffic on the highway was late. The Paces lived close to the airport—that was a blessing at least. She pulled into their driveway about ten minutes after hanging up with Jack. It was a small house, cute, with well-tended flowers and curtains that billowed when summer breezes blew. The flowers and the curtains, those were Claire's touches, but the large British flag flying just outside the front door was all Charlie.
The door was opened before she'd even raised a hand to knock, Claire's worried face appearing. "How is she?" she asked quietly as she ushered Kate into the room. "Is it a bad day for him?"
"The funeral," Kate explained. Claire bit her lip and nodded her head.
"Charlie thought about going," she said. "I had to talk him out of it. I think he just wanted to make sure the bastard was really dead this time."
Kate shrugged, not wanting to talk about it. That was their last tie to the island, the last tie they'd been unwilling or unable to break, at least. She'd hoped that his death would mean they could finally begin on their new lives without backwards glances, but Jack at least, seemed even more determined to return to the past. She glanced past Claire's shoulder to the living room, where she could see bright lights playing on the far wall, and hear the sound of explosions.
"James was great," Claire said hurriedly. "You know that Charlie loves when the other kids come over. They had a blast."
"And now they're watching an overly violent film, I suppose," Kate said wryly. Claire smiled guiltily.
"Aaron's been dying to watch it for days, but of course he couldn't when Tian was here. The minute Sun picked her up, though he was at the remote. I hope you don't mind."
"It's fine," Kate said, shrugging. There were worse things her son could see than fake people being blown up. Besides, she was hardly the person to lecture him about violence. "I just hope he's not too devastated when I make him leave."
The two women walked into the room, greeted by the sight of the two young boys sitting on he couch, staring slack-jawed at Bruce Willis attacking a gang of aliens. Sitting beside them was an equally absorbed Charlie.
"Good movie," Kate said. Charlie jumped about a foot in the air, and James turned to her, a serious look in his green eyes and said "Shhhh" louder than she had said anything. Smiling, Kate waved off Charlie's protestations of innocence ("Aaron made me do it. He's almost bigger than me now, I was afraid the bloke might do me in!") and sat down beside her son. She ruffled his blond hair, earning an agonized "MOM!" and settled in to watch the movie. That was just what she needed, she thought. Plenty of carnage to get her mind off what Jack had said. Still, her eyes drifted over to Charlie where he sat. It didn't matter how he'd gotten home, she reminded herself sternly. What mattered was that he had.
0000000000000
Sawyer was getting bored, and that was putting it lightly. He paced back and forth, poking irritably at the ground with a large stick. Hurley watched the pacing as though it were an Olympic sport, his gaze following the conman back and forth. Sayid, meanwhile, had taken the practical job of moving the bodies into a pile. Bernard and Jin continued to sit on the sand, watching the sea peacefully.
"This is ridiculous!" Sawyer burst out, the second time in a half hour. "Jackass said they were calling help, that they'd be here in an hour. What the hell is taking so long?"
"Jack told us to wait," Sayid said patiently. "He would have radioed us if there had been a change."
"Yeah, well, what if something happened?" Sawyer snarled. "Did you think of that, Rambo? What if they didn't have time to radio?"
"We will wait an hour," Sayid said. "If we still have no news within an hour, we will head after them."
"I ain't waiting no hour," Sawyer said. He poked at the walkie talkie, which lay on the ground now, shattered after he'd thrown it angrily at a rock "They didn't answer last time we called, and if you ask me, that means bad news."
"You are worried about Kate," Sayid said. "That is understandable. But Jack—"
"I don't care what the doc said! He was gonna let them die, remember that, Apu? He was gonna let Zeke kill them, and it was luck that he didn't. He don't care what happens to us!"
"But you do care," Sayid said softly. "Not just what happens to us, but what happens to them, as well." He seemed to consider this revelation for a moment, as Sawyer shifted anxiously. He poked the ground again with the stick. He didn't want to go off on his own, but if that was what it came to. . .
"Very well," Sayid said finally. "We will all go."
"More trekking?" Hurley asked wearily. Sawyer grinned, tight and hard.
"What would make you say that?" he asked, gesturing over his shoulder. "Why would we trek when we got Herbie over there, ready to take us up the mountain?"
Hurley smiled at that, a genuine smile, and rushed over to grab Bernard and Jin. Sayid sighed.
"I will tell Juliet," he said, "though I doubt she wants to hear much from me."
Sawyer ground his teeth in frustration as Sayid walked toward the jungle. Juliet had disappeared moments after the fighting at ended. She'd stared at Brian and Tom, lying lifeless, and just taken off. In a moment, he followed after the Iraqi. The two didn't exchange any words, they just walked until they came to the graveyard. Juliet stood at the fringes, arms crossed, blue eyes dull and lifeless.
"They weren't bad people," she said finally. "Brian, maybe, Brian was hard, but Tom. . .Tom was good. He followed Ben too loyally, but he was good."
"I am sorry for your loss," Sayid said solemnly. Sawyer shrugged. He'd never been good at good-byes, or at comforting people, and right now his mind was stuck with the people at the radio tower.
"We're goin back," he said gruffly. "To Jack and Kate and the rest. Make sure nothing's gone wrong."
"It has been a while," Juliet agreed. She sighed, and stared at the graveyard again. "Did we do all of this?" she asked.
"No," Sawyer said. "Most of that was us." Sayid took Juliet's arm, and gently guided her back to the beach. Hurley and the others were already in the van, ready to go, and they clambered into the backseat.
Amazingly, the truck was able to make it all the way to the radio tower, though there was one scary moment overtopping cliffs. Still, it had taken less than a third of the time walking would have. Though when the red radio tower came into view, Sawyer wasn't so sure that they'd wanted to move so fast after all.
"Where is everyone?" He asked. He stared around the area. Jin bent down, and mumbled something in quick Korean. "What the hell did he say?"
Jin sighed, and stood up. "They was here," he said, slowly and with great difficulty.
"That don't do us no good," Sawyer said impatiently. "Where are they now?" Jin shrugged his shoulders.
"James!" Juliet said, sharply. She was standing beside a small, brown house, adjacent to the tower. Sayid moved out in the opposite direction, presumably looking for people, while Hurley, Bernard, and Jin remained in a huddle around the bus. He walked over to her.
"I think I found them," she said, and nodded toward the building. As he moved toward it, she placed a gentle hand on his arm. "I'm so sorry."
He looked at her for a moment. What the hell was she talking about? Still, in his stomach he felt a sinking sensation, he felt like he was going to vomit, and he suddenly didn't want to look in the hut anymore. But Juliet's eyes were there behind him, and dammit it, he had to know.
The bodies were piled in one corner, arms and legs all in a tangle. He swallowed hard. Why were his lips so salty? Why did his throat hurt? He took a step forward, and he couldn't see clearly anymore, everything was a jumble of blonde hair, and brown, man and woman, all colors and shapes and. . .
He put one hand to his throat, choked, took a deep breath. He wiped at his eyes, and that made it a little better. And then, there it was, beneath a heavy arm. Curly brown hair, freckles. . .
He fell to his knees and cried.