I Used to Think These Days Weren't Numbered
Characters: Kate, Aaron, Claire (implied Jate)
Summary: Post-S6 finale (The End); a glimpse at Kate's life after the island.
She thinks about Aaron and she thinks about Claire, and she worries about them both; Claire who sits beside her, clutching her hand and staring blankly up the rows where Richard Alpert sits, his head down. The plane's cabin is quiet except for Miles, who is speaking in a low voice to Sawyer—or it's James now, isn't it?—who isn't answering him, but God love his heart, Miles is trying anyway. Kate worried about Sawyer, too, and what he's going to do when they get back to the US, and how she knows that no one there has missed James Ford. He wouldn't even have to explain where he's been. Neither will Miles, or even Richard, who will likely remain identity-less for the rest of his life (though at the rate he's going, that won't be very long).
Claire is different. She has a family. The only good thing is that Kate's already explained where Claire has been to her mother, but with Aaron it's going to be a different story. This, like many other things, is something that Kate tries not to think about.
She wakes up when the wheels hit the runway, and only then does she realize she's been asleep. Frank says something witty over the PA system, which has somehow remained intact, and Kate moves from her seat like she's fighting a way through some sort of fog (or smoke, maybe), but she realizes that Claire still clutching her hand.
"Let's go, Claire." She wants to say We're home, but is this really home anymore?
"I'm scared," Claire says.
Me too, Kate thinks, but she doesn't stay it. She puts on her best smile and tugs Claire's hand. "You'll be fine." She hopes she's not lying.
She hugs Sawyer (James), Miles, and Frank, and shakes hands with Richard. It's hard to look him in the eyes. His face is already etched with lines, but out of them all, he's the only one who looks remotely happy. He walks away from the runway and Kate never sees him again (she thinks none of them do, but she never asks).
"We'll keep in touch," she tells Sawyer, and he smiles at her.
"We will."
She's not sure if it's a statement or a question.
She tries not to think of Jack. She spends all her time trying to think of other things and not everything she's losing. Her son, too.
She spent years trying not to let herself think of Aaron as hers, but she can't help it. And it felt like a sin, not that she's religious, but she thought she owed Aaron, somehow, to bring his mother home to him, because his mother – she wasn't it, and she could never be (because he was being taken from her). She tried to be his mother when he needed it, when Claire had gone and she was all he had left (or maybe he was all she had left).
She tries not to think that someday Claire won't need her. She tries to think that somehow Jack will find a way off the island (she tries to think that maybe he wants to leave).
She takes Claire back to her house (somehow she thinks it shouldn't still be there, like maybe it never existed, and maybe she never left the island and lived here…with him, with both of them, like a family).
Claire washes up in the downstairs bathroom and comes to Kate with a brush and asks her to do something with her hair. Kate smiles and runs the brush through the knots and tangles and finally tells Claire she needs a haircut. Claire laughs until she cries, or cries until she laughs, Kate really can't tell.
"I'm afraid I don't know how to be a mother anymore."
I'm afraid I never did. She took him anyway, because he needed a mother. He needed someone. And maybe she always knew she would come back for Claire. Maybe she always knew Aaron would get his mother back.
"You'll do fine."
"Do you think he remembers me?
"I don't know," she says honestly, "I hope he does."
They go see Aaron that night. He clings to Kate's legs and only moves to go back and forth between her and his grandmother, and looks up at Claire from behind his too-long hair. Claire and her mother embrace, crying, and Aaron holds on to Kate's hand (the same hand that his mother had clung to earlier).
"Who is she?" Aaron says to Kate when Claire squats to his level.
Kate bites her lip and it's Claire's mother who finally answers, and for some reason, Aaron cries until Kate wraps her arms around him. His cries subside to hiccups and Kate whispers is his ear, tells him she'll always be around, tells him she loves him, tells him she'll never leave him again (she hopes she's telling the truth).
Claire and Aaron move into Kate's house (or does Claire move into Aaron and Kate's house? She doesn't know anymore), and Aaron calls Kate Mommy and Claire by her first name. Kate gets a job at a diner because it's the only place that will hire her. Her trial was too public to get a job somewhere else. Claire stays at home, and Claire's mother moves to Los Angeles and makes sure Claire and Aaron are provided for.
It takes a few months before Aaron calls Claire Mommy, and when he does, he looks sheepishly at Kate, but she only smiles at him. She cries herself to sleep that night.
Sometimes she thinks Aaron looks like Jack, but he doesn't, he looks like Claire, and Claire looks nothing like Jack. But it's something about the way he smiles at her, it's almost like Jack is smiling at her.
She wonders if he would be here, if he'd come back with them. She wonders if they'd have been able to make it together, if they had a second chance.
She wonders a lot of things, none of them matter.
She meets Sawyer—James—for lunch one day, the day before he moves to Albuquerque to live nearer to Clementine. They'd spoken on the phone throughout the months, but never anything of significance.
"She plays soccer," he tells her, "Like a real pro. She's not into that cheerleading stuff."
Cassidy had agreed to let Sawyer see Clementine, but nothing more. She still didn't trust him enough to let her daughter come visit, so Sawyer had finally decided to move to Albuquerque.
"She wanted me to find her, if I ever got off the island. She wanted me to find Clementine." He talks about Juliet often, but he never mentions her name. She almost never mentions Jack. Maybe it's different, because Juliet is dead and Sawyer knows it, she's not coming back, and he's not waiting. Jack isn't dead (she hopes, she wishes, she believes) and maybe he is coming back, and maybe he and Sawyer could be friends now (that would never happen).
"She would be proud," Kate says. She still thinks she has Juliet's blood on her hands, even if Sawyer seems to have forgiven her.
Sawyer nods. Sometimes he seems so far away now, though they're just as similar as they used to be. They've both loved and lost, they've both settled down (Kate tries to tell herself she's not still searching, searching for a place to belong), they're both parents (or something similar).
"Do you ever think you'll stop?" She asks the question before she knows what she's doing.
His eyebrows knit together. "Stop what?"
"Loving her."
He seems to think about this for a while, but when he answers he looks her straight in the eyes. "No."
Every month on the 23rd she thinks maybe he'll show up, like maybe it would be poetic. As if he has a plane on the island, or his new Jacob-powers can make him appear at her door, and he'd grin at her and tell her it was part of the plan all along, and she knows she'd forgive him for making her wait.
They've been back almost a year before Claire and Aaron move out of her house. Not far, just one neighborhood over. Claire hugs Kate tightly and tells her how much they've appreciated everything. After they leave, the house is so empty and her heart is too.
She flinches every time someone knocks on her door, but it's never anyone important.
She finds herself hoping that Claire can't make it on her own, but she doesn't linger on this though, it's too selfish (but then again, Kate can't get used to watching out for someone other than herself, because they're all gone too soon).
She hopes Aaron isn't worse for the wear. He still cries and holds on to her when she leaves, but when he comes to spend the night with her, he does the same for Claire. He starts to call her Aunt Kate and when he says it, he means it. He never understands where his mother was the majority of the first three years of life, only that she was gone, but that she always wanted to come back to him. Kate thinks he knows, he knows how much he means to both of them.
And maybe he's better off. After all, he has two mothers now.
She visits Sawyer in Albuquerque. Miles has been staying there for a few months by that point, and he's working his way through a police program in the area. Sawyer's been working as a mall security guard, which Miles gets a real kick out of. Miles also seems to be trying to date every woman in the Albuquerque area.
She crashes on the couch and for a while, she thinks about staying there too, because at least Sawyer there, and that's more than she has in LA. But he's got Miles and Clementine. She doesn't stay, of course, she can't, because she's just now gotten to the point that she can stay in one place, because she can't ever leave Aaron now (she told him she'd never leave him, and she's broken too many promises to break this one). She tries not to think about it, but she thinks if she leaves, Jack won't be able to find her.
She knows he's not coming back. He didn't even lie to her when she asked, but she keeps waiting.
Almost three years after they get back, Aaron breaks his leg on the trampoline Claire's boyfriend (nice guy, a member of a band, British accent; Kate sees that he's basically Charlie, but she doesn't say anything, she doesn't have to) bought him.
Claire calls Kate crying, and Kate meets them at the ER.
She stands in the middle of the hallway and watches the white coats, and to her, they're all Jack. She braces herself and holds Aaron's hand, and he calls her Mommy again.
She sits on Claire's front porch drinking tea and watching Aaron dribble a basketball in the driveway, his leg healed now. It seems so mundane, sitting here with a woman who has become her best friend (but at the same time, has taken everything from her). She's gotten used to pretending that her heart doesn't leap into her throat every time she has to leave Aaron. She's gotten used to pretending that Claire and Aaron don't both hold a piece of Jack, like they aren't both Jack's kin and she's really nothing to him.
She's gotten used to the fact that he's not coming back. She hopes he's on the island with Hurley and Ben and Desmond and maybe they're all sitting on the front porch of one of the Dharma houses, drinking tea together. She has this image in her head and she can't ever let it go.
She pretends she isn't still waiting for him.
I've missed you so much. I know you don't understand, but if you come with me, you will.