You're All I Have

Chapter 1: Jack is Dead
15 August, 2037

Summary: After leaving the Island, both Sawyer and Kate are left to find a place in a world in which they feel they no longer belong. This is the story of how they coped, told in the form of several sporadic vignettes.

The first thing Kate had noticed was that it had not been huge. In fact, it had been rather modest; quite commonplace. She had never given much thought to Jack's long-term intentions, but on the rare happenstance that she had, she had always pictured it as being huge. It had not been like he could not have afforded huge, given his settlement with Oceanic and the handsome salary he brought home from the hospital. But for reasons probably only Kate would ever understand, it had been much smaller than she had admittedly expected.

When he had first shown it to her, it had not been the question itself or the earnest look in his eyes which had garnered her affection; it had been this little gem of predictability and safety responsible for luring her in. She had not been disappointed—quite far from it. She knew as soon as she saw it that this was exactly who he was, and she had actually appreciated the honesty. Perhaps that had been why she had said "yes" to begin with.

Jack Shephard had been the hero; the "knight in shining armor;" the man who had never asked for his fate—but who accepted it with both serenity and valor. All of these things had been true of him, Kate knew, but to her, he had been simultaneously something much less and something much more. His engagement ring had been a manifestation of this dichotomy; had forever endeared him to her—though she had ultimately given it back and had not seen it since. His need to prove that he had what it took—but also his initial reluctance to accept it when he found that he did—had been what had made him the man he was; the man who had been loved by everyone who had met him. Kate had been no different in that respect.

"Heya, Freckles," came James's voice softly from behind her as she sat in her favorite armchair by the bay window pondering a man long-since gone from her life. "You alright?"

She felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder, and she covered it fondly with her own. "Yeah. Just thinking."

"You're always thinkin' about somethin'," he mumbled, now squeezing her shoulders. He was silent for a few moments, both presumably now lost in their own respective worlds. "Got the kids to bed."

"All of them?"

"Yep." He eased himself onto the window ledge across from her, folding his arms across his chest.

"Very impressive. I think you might have beaten your own record." She smiled, but could not force herself to meet his eyes.

"Practice makes perfect, sweetheart. Two kids and four grandkids, you'd think a man would get it right sometime." Kate hated it when they did this; pretending the conversation that they were having on the surface had any amount of importance when both knew something more was going on underneath.

"Do you ever think about them?" Kate knew her tone was enough to suggest she was not speaking about their children.

"Kate—" His face fell, and he shook his head sympathetically.

"Sawyer, I've not been 'Kate' for at least thirty years…"

In his younger days, he might have argued with her, but the crinkled-eyed man in front of her only was silent in response. "'Course I do." She might not have heard him if he had not been so close to her. He did not meet her eyes, and she knew where his mind was. She had, in the course of the decades of their marriage, developed the ability to read his thoughts just from his facial expressions. "What'd Hugo have to say to you?"

"It's not important, James."

He nodded, glancing up at her from over the top of the ovular spectacles perched at the end of his nose. "It was about him." It was not a question, but a statement. Kate did not know why he was bringing this up to her now, when he should already know the answer—when so many years had passed since it had happened. "Well, what did he have to say? Four-eyes givin' him a hard time?" He smiled, and Kate could see a bit of his old self in his lined face.

She sighed. "He said that he couldn't talk about Jack. He said … he couldn't talk about him to me." It was the first time she had ever spoken Jack's name to James since they had left. Likewise, he had never as much as mentioned Juliet to her. The three years they had shared together were little more than a mystery to Kate. But what had happened, happened, and bringing it up to one another seemed to have been silently agreed to be fruitless and painful for both parties.

"That all he said?"

She tilted her head to one side. "Why are you asking me about Hugo now? It's been years, and you never so much as acknowledged that you saw him."

"Because you chose now to bring them up. You broke the contract."

"There was a contract?" she half-laughed.

"Yeah, damn it, there was a contract. You don't talk about it, I don't talk about it. That's the way things have always worked." His brow furrowed, and she could easily sense that he was getting upset with the conversation at hand. He sighed and ran a hand through the short, grayed hair to which she had been forced to become accustomed. When he looked back up at her, he seemed much older than she remembered. "What did he say to you, Kate?"

She could feel tears beginning to sting her eyes, so she dropped them from his intense gaze toward her lap. "He said… he said that we would see them all again."

"You mean him and Bug-eyes and the rest?"

"No, James. All of them. Everyone." She paused long enough to swipe at her eyes. "What did he say to you?"

His face hardened again. "Ain't none of your damn business."

"James—"

"No, that's what he said."

It was clear to her that James did not at all have it in his mind to tell her what had transpired between Hugo and himself some three decades ago. It seemed unfair that she would divulge the last of her secrets to him, and he was so unwilling to reciprocate. But if there had ever been one thing that she had been good at, it had been getting James Ford to do what she wanted him to do.

"James," she started delicately, lovingly, "please. I deserve to know."

"Damn it, Freckles." She could hear his determination breaking as his eyes darted from hers to his lap. "It's for your own good."

"I'm a big girl; I think I can handle myself." She laughed softly.

She was almost surprised to see that the look on his face was one of defeat, of sorrow. It made her uncomfortable, and she nearly regretted forcing it out of him. "Come here." When she did not move, he looked up at her seriously. "If you want to know, come here." He patted his knee.

Confused, especially considering how he complained of his knees hurting him more and more these days, she slowly lifted herself from her chair and settled into his lap. He ran a hand through her hair with one hand, the other wrapped protectively around her waist. She could not remember when the last time had been that they had simply sat this way—and sat that way they did for several minutes before James seemed to work up the nerve to tell her what she wanted to know.

"You ain't ever known me to be the one to beat around the bush or nothin' like that, so I'm just gonna tell you. Are you ready?" She nodded, and he looked terribly tortured. "Sweetheart, Jack is dead. Been dead since the day we left."

When Kate thought about Jack, she always tried to picture the time that they had spent together off-island with Aaron; of the time they had stolen. She tried to remember the way the little boy had told Jack he loved him every night before bed. She tried to imagine what it would have been like if that time had been allowed to continue; if the three of them had continued playing house. She knew that they would be married, that Aaron would call him "Daddy" and maybe there would be other children, too. Maybe James would have met and married Juliet, had the Island not intervened. Maybe they would have all been happy. She tried not to think this way too often, and in recent years she had managed to do well on that front.

Her life with James was wonderful—surreal, in a way. But they were both well aware that they were but second choices. The Island had stolen their gold medals and in the aftermath, they had found in one another a reason to keep living. James was caring and understanding, and they knew one another inside and out—they were made of the same stuff. But James was no Jack, and she knew that in the back of his mind, she would never compare to Juliet Burke. Maybe the ring James had planned to give to her had spoken of his character in the same way Jack's had spoken of his. But the ring he had given to Kate was only what it was supposed to have been: beautiful, expensive, and huge.

But in the instant that she knew Jack was dead, that maybe Hugo was wrong, that she would probably never see him again—James's ring was the only ring that had ever made a real impact on her life. She always thought that if he had died, she would somehow just know—that their love was so deep she would feel his death inside of her. But after thirty years of silently hoping that they would be reunited someday, in some unlikely way, Kate gave up on ever seeing Jack or his ring ever again.

AN: So this is my very first Lost fanfiction. At least, the first one I've ever posted. I'm kind of nervous about how I did (I know how tough Losties—quite rightfully—can be on their writers, haha), so it would be great if you could let me know. :-)