Disclaimer: Don't own Lost. Don't Sue.
Spoilers: Up to I Do just to be safe.
A/N: I haven't written Lost in forever. This is a weird fic that was written mostly on the insides of my notebook and on the backs of other stories and well, finished on cough syrup. Anyway, it's a future fic involving the infamous Lost triangle. Kate PoV, J/K, S/K, OC. Read, review, let me know what you think.
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He is born almost two months to the day since they were rescued.
Seven pounds, four ounces, twenty inches long—her body throbs in the wake of his departure and Jack squeezes her hand and laughs in disbelief when the doctors ask him to cut the cord.
Her vision is close to useless through her tears, the heel of her palms rubbing vigorously so she might see her son clearly. Her arms shake as they go around the solid weight of him, surreal now that it rest in her arms instead of in her belly. He flails and kicks and cries, ear piercing wails that cut through the commotion of the delivery room and all she can do is cry, little pearl tears that escalate until she's sobbing into his little chest, Jack's hand firm and steady on the back of her neck.
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She knew only knew she was pregnant during her last four months on the island.
It was the nausea that did it.
If Sun hadn't pointed it out, she's not sure she would have noticed at all. But then she did know, beyond a doubt.
The world tilted then, and she threw up because it was what pregnant women did and, and to hell with it all, she was pregnant, then she slept for three days.
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She woke up to the sight of Jack on the second day and he held her hair while she coughed into the sand, after a failed attempt to talk.
She drifted off for another stolen handful of hours and when she woke up Jack was there.
Another lapse in consciousness and Jack was still there when she woke up on the third day, weary faced and haggard, looking a million times older than he ever had before.
"Sun told me." He said evenly, as though the words didn't cost him every thing inside him, and she could barely nod.
She almost said I'm sorry then, but she didn't because she wasn't sure what she was apologizing for. "It's going to be alright, Kate, I promise."
She couldn't hold it together then, not when Jack looked as though he was barely holding himself together, so she cried and blamed it on the hormones.
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She named picked the name Finn eight weeks before the rescue boat showed up.
"What if it's a girl?" Claire asked, watching as Aaron slapped the retreating surf with a stick.
"It won't be a girl." Kate replied. She'd never been sure of anything in her life, but she was sure of that.
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Jack asked her to marry him fifteen days before Finn was born (by chance, if nothing else).
He slid the ring across the tabletop and asked without preamble. The baby moved and her back ached a little bit more than it had a moment before, and the sight of the silver band inside the black box made her stomach drop.
And as she was so much more likely to do in those days, she cried, shoulders shaking, back aching, mouth gasping for air, she cried and laughed until Jack was holding on to her arms in order to steady her.
She vaguely remembered kissing Kevin when he'd asked Monica, the long string of hurried yesyesyesyesyesohgodyes broken while their mouths met.
She didn't kiss Jack. But she let him slipped the ring unto her finger.
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Sawyer asked her once if she ever thought of having kids.
"What? On the island?" He'd smirked at that, chin jutting out in the direction of Charlie and Aaron who were collecting firewood on the jungle edge. "It seems to be working out for the local Brady Bunch."
She scoffed at that, biting her tongue before informing him that Claire and Charlie were more of an exception that an example. "Fine then Freckles, what about off this frickin' isle? Never thought about ankle biters then?"
"Never."
And looked like he wanted to tell her something, mouth hanging open momentarily, eyes flashing with something that might have been pain if she'd ever stopped to consider it, but he didn't. He just kissed the corner of her mouth until it turned up in a lazy half smile and looked away.
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It was odd, in retrospect, how the others never questioned them. Not when they appeared out of the jungle, out of breath and defeated and missing one, not when they slept for nearly two days in his old shelter. Not when his hand would find its way into her tangled hair while they sat by the fireside or the small of her back whenever they walked.
No one made mention how her eyes would flood whenever someone asked what happened.
It was almost as though they had been waiting for it to happen along. Almost as though there was nothing to question at all.
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They take Finn to the beach on his first birthday and he wails almost in time with the waves. She takes a picture of Jack holding him on the shore; face bright despite the overcast, Finn's own face a blotchy red contortion peaking out from beneath his hat and over the collar of his jacket.
It is his eyes that get the most attention, even when they are watery and irritated after an afternoon of crying: shining blue and as disquieting as the water.
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They make a good family, the three of them.
There are weekly trips to the neighborhood park and bedtime stories and dinners at five o'clock. She does the laundry and Jack washes the dishes and they take turns when it comes to checking on Finn when the baby monitor cracks and whines in the middle of the night.
Things, however, are not perfect—Jack and Kate fight from time to time— because real life is still complicated even with the absence of monsters and the Others and rising tides.
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Jack talks about the future.
He tells her about moving away from the city once Finn is older, buying a house in the middle of nowhere where they wouldn't have to worry about showing up in grocery store rag spreads under headlines like "Island Fairytale Come True".
Kate likes to listen when he talks like that, because Jack is an idealist if nothing else, and in the future he paints, they aren't any shadows or ghost, and the past is practically forgotten.
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Sometimes, when her mood is dark and she particularly cynical, the old Kate shifts and stirs beneath the stretch marks and clean clothes. She peaks her head out at the life she lives and raises an eyebrow at her surroundings.
"You won't stay." The old Kate whispers even as Jack walks through the front door, groceries in one hand, a tottering Finn steadied by the other, "This isn't really your life."
And sometimes, when her heart is particularly heavy and the island feels as though it were more yesterday than yesteryear, she can't help but agree. Because after everything, Kate knows lies cannot last forever.
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She hopes to forgive him one day.
If Kate wants one thing more than anything in the world, it is to forgive Sawyer. She wishes to wake one morning and look down at Finn and let go.
She loved him—more than she should have. She loved Sawyer in a way she can only compare to loving to her son, all consuming and overwhelming. Devastating is the only word she can use to describe that sort of love with. Sometimes—if the melancholy is thick in her throat and the rain smells more of car exhaust then vegetation—tragic works too.
Because she can remember telling him she was pregnant and feeling like the entire world had decided to implode safely within the recess of her chest (and while time passes and the feeling lessens, it never entirely goes away).
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She loves Jack.
It isn't a question. And in a cruel way that makes something in her heart twist in guiltshameremorse—it never has been.
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It has never been a question of whether or not they would ever tell Finn so much as a matter of when.
It isn't a truth that frightens her, not only more. Not since the day Finn was born and Jack squeezed her hand and called him their son (and after everything that had been or would be, it is as much a truth as anything else).
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End
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