The cramped dingy scuffs to a stop on the sand, and Kate can't scramble out onto the beach fast enough. The waves lap at her ankles as she staggers up the shore beside Jack and the others; cold, wet fingers twining around her, trying to pull her back in. We're not done with you yet, the sea whispers as, miles away, the same ocean claims inches of the island beach that had become Kate's true home.
"We did it," Jack exalts breathlessly, "I can't believe we finally made it." But as Kate stumbles up the sand, carrying another woman's baby in her arms, she can't help but think that they didn't all make it. The murmur of the ocean calls to her, Don't leave, we can take you back to him, and it's all she can do to resist; it's all she can do to keep walking while her mind whispers Run! The waves swallow the footprints she leaves on the shore.
The camera flashes are too bright, dark spots float behind her eyes, obscuring the faces of the clamouring reporters. One asks a prying question about what it was like to give birth on the island and Kate's hand freezes where it's stroking Aaron's hair. Jack glances over and the look in his eyes is so clear that she can almost hear his voice, You don't have to answer anything you don't want to. But if there's anything Kate's learned it's how to lie, so she puts up battlements around her tattered self and says what's expected.
"It was terrifying." And so the siege begins.
The reporters keep calling them the Oceanic Six, over and over again; like anyone's forgotten. It's all Kate can do to keep up her façade and refrain from bolting from the room or spilling the truth about the people they've left behind. When Jack reaches over to take her hand in a gesture meant to be comforting, Kate forces herself not to shift away and plays her part, letting his fingers intertwine with hers. When the conference is finally over and Jack smiles down at her she has to swallow thought of the man with the dimples who should be standing in his place.
Sun's going to have the baby. Not soon, but in a few months, which suddenly seems too soon considering they'd both prepared themselves for the fact that she'd most likely never have the chance. On the island Kate had been Sun's confidant, the first person she'd come to when she thought she was pregnant. Ever since then they've been going through it together; learning how to be mothers together.
Kate goes with Sun to her scans in the early days, when they're all still staying in hotel suites in L.A. while the inquest and conferences continue. After the first few appointments Kate leaves Aaron at hotel with Hurley, unable to stomach the receptionists, other patients and even the obstetrician telling her how adorable her son is. When she looks into Aaron's eyes for too long all she can see is Claire staring resentfully out at her. You stole me, I don't belong to you, the twin blue oceans of his irises whisper.
As Sun stares at the image of her baby on the monitor her expression is every inch that of an excited mother, but then, that is what's expected of her. Kate watches as Sun sits in front of the obstetrician's desk, smiling and asking the usual questions while Kate fidgets by her side, feeling as though she's sharing her chair with Jin's ghost.
Sun books another appointment on her way out, both of them pretending they don't hear the whispers of the women in the waiting room behind them. She's one of the Oceanic Six. Her husband died in the crash; so sad, I know. Like Kate, Sun's mask never slips.
Once the sun sets and Kate and Sun are alone both of their masks begin to crumble. They're both strong and independent, now destined to go it alone; but there are still things they should never have been fated for – hushed whispers, subtle interrogations, sideways glances and hastily hidden tears. Kate watches as Sun lies alone on the second bed, curled against an invisible figure with her shaking hand resting low on her stomach and her dead, dead eyes ever open as sleep refuses them both. She watches Sun, an island in the middle of the sea of her empty bed and Kate can't help but ask her if this is really what she wants.
"Of course, this is all I have left of him. I couldn't give it up - give her up," she replies. "Our little Ji Yeon…"
Kate almost believes her, and all of the press do. But once, in the early hours of the morning, she'd found Sun in the bathroom with an array of pillboxes lined up like soldiers on the sink's edge, trying to choose which one she wanted to be her executioner. After that Kate had flushed all the pills down the toilet, even the vitamins. Sometimes Kate thinks Sun lies almost as well as she does.
Sun will be a good mother to Ji Yeon, even if she should not have been fated to do it alone; even if maybe she should have been destined for a life of golden beaches, turbulent seas and occasionally turbulent love, just as Kate should have been.
The tide never comes in, the waves curling endlessly into each other rather than rolling eagerly forward, and although the wind whispers through the palm trees the branches are forever frozen. The rest of their camp and the other tents are gone, only the one blue-tarp shelter remains where they sit together, basking in the midday sun that shares the sky with a retinue of stars. Sawyer laughs and somehow the bleach-white glare of the sand seems to pale in comparison.
Stay with me, Freckles.
Kate wakes to the feeble morning sun crawling across her face as it slithers through a gap in the blinds.
There are many things that should have been and should not have been and Kate finds herself silently listing them as she gives Aaron his nightly bath. His little wet hands flail as he joyfully splashes in the water and he leaves handprints that soak through her t-shirt and warm her skin. Kate wills herself to let go and give in to the comfort of the routine, wills herself not to run out of the bathroom, run away. But there are many things that should and should not have been; and then there are the things that are, and Kate likes those least of all.
More often than not, Kate's dreams are of the playful arguments they shared, rather than the kisses or sex. A sly smile here, a witty retort there that do inevitably lead to them both moaning as quietly as they can in the dusk of Sawyer's tent while sand gets into places it really shouldn't. Kate dreams of what was and what might have been and soon she can hardly remember which of her dreams are memory and which are merely fantasy.
She expects to forget his face, she hears that's what happens when you loose someone. Kate never forgets. She remembers everything to perfection: the lilt of his voice, the enticing quirk of his lips, the way his too long hair got in her eyes and tickled her nose when they kissed and, most of all, she remembers the way he could see through her and into her like no one else could.
Some nights their dream-selves never leave the tent and the hours Kate spends asleep translate into snatches of seconds spent tracing the contours of Sawyer's spine with her tongue, pressing her lips to the dip of his collarbone, lying panting and exhausted as sweat cools on their slick skin. Dream-Kate never makes excuses or slips out during the night as Sawyer sleeps, benign dreams smoothing the frown-lines from his brow. Dream-Kate just lets herself get swept up in the way just one look from Sawyer can send lightning through her, racing from her fingertips to pool low in her stomach. Dream-Kate forgets to be quiet so Jack and the others won't hear and lets the invisible tide carry her away.
Kate dreams and she never forgets that it isn't real, but still she wakes forever-aching for that feeling, having to remind herself that it will never be. She wakes and the silk threads of her dream are ever harder to chase as they drift away on the morning breeze. The perfect memories come back during the day to viciously stab her when she's least expecting it; knives sharpened by a full night's devotion.
There is a difference between knowing and hoping and Kate wonders why she must have both. Why she must be waiting for something that she can't even describe and, yet, will never have.
"Don't you wonder what it'd be like," Sawyer had whispered to her once, as they'd stood watching Jin and Sun lying in the shade where the sand met grass; Jin's hand resting low on Sun's stomach.
"You've got to be kidding," Kate had replied, scathingly, unthinkingly. She'd only realised he'd been serious when she'd turned and caught a glimpse of disappointment on his face before he'd smoothed it over with his usual humour.
"Yeah, imagine us as parents," he'd jested, turning away. "I'd make a bloody terrible dad." Kate had tried to pretend she'd imagined the tinge of melancholy to his voice.
Now something breaks inside her whenever she feels the twinge of oncoming period cramps and, despite never having been a squeamish person, she has to fight the urge to be sick at the sight of the blood. It just seems so unfair that before long Sun will have a baby, her blood and Jin's; and all Kate will ever have is her own blood and tears.
Kate decides to move in with Jack and she adopts a life that she would never have imagined for herself. She cleans, goes grocery shopping, greets Jack when he gets home in the evenings, presenting him with cookies she and Aaron have made during the day. Her life is the picture of perfection and giving in to Jack, sleeping with him in a way that, after a few weeks of living together, involves more than just sleeping, seems like the icing on the cake. But most nights she lies awake beside Jack in bed, feeling as lost as she had when she was sleeping alone; and she soon realises that it's like finding out the chocolate chips in the biscuits are actually raisins after you've already taken a bite.
Just one more time, Kate had promised herself, every night she'd spent by Sawyer's side. Just one more night and then I'll stop. But the nights had seemed to be both endless and to last only minutes so she'd never been able to decide what really counted as one time. She remembers every night with Jack and finds she would trade them all for that one last time, however short the reality of it may be.
The days of tropical beaches and humid jungle have gone and Kate finds she can only remember them through a haze of fog as if they had been decades ago and not merely a year. Kate remembers freedom as if she is now a prisoner and finds her marriage more confining than the shores of the island ever were. She wants to run free again.
Kate remembers sweat and sun and sweet sarcasm and now there is nothing but the chill of starched sheets. She remembers the call of adventure and of mystery, but now there is only duty. Kate tries to be a mother to Aaron and a wife to Jack but, no matter how many times Aaron calls her mummy, the spark of pure warmth inside her is always smothered by guilt before it can catch alight. And no matter how close she lies to Jack at night, huddled against his side, she always falls asleep shivering.
She'd been so sure that leaving the island was the right path to take that she hadn't taken the chance to consider any of the other possible paths, trailing away to a distant point she could now never hope to fathom. Despite the dangers of the island she'd thought they were invincible, never to be separated; and so the idea that one of them might not make it had never been conceivable. But the sea had swallowed Sawyer, along with any other paths they might have taken and she knows that it doesn't matter how long she can tread water, here there is no ocean for her to scour until she finds him.
The city sun shines down so blearily that Kate finds she can no longer remember what endless summer feels like. Memories of Sawyer mocking her discomfort as sunburnt skin peeled painfully from her shoulders dwindle in the recesses of her mind along with the treasured memory of the lust in his eyes when her burn had turned to a golden freckled tan. Summer in the city feels like a poor imitation bordering on a parody; even the rainstorms have a thin, metallic taint so unlike the island's warm, earthy squalls. The shopping centres with their air-conditioning, windowless walls and pallid lighting seem frigid and confining, and Kate finds herself shuddering in long sleeve shirts and jeans, longing to race outside into the open, while people around her cavort in singlets and shorts.
Kate's at the shops one day with Aaron, carrying a two litre container of milk from the fridges down the aisle to where Aaron's sitting in the trolley admiring the different coloured shampoo bottles. Suddenly she blanks on Sawyer's face. She doesn't remember stopping but she finds herself standing frozen in the middle of the aisle, Aaron's worried whimpers muffled by the rushing of an ocean of blood in her ears. There's a splitting crash and Kate's standing in a puddle of milk, the container having slipped from her hand. Aaron starts to wail and a woman comes running from further down the aisle. Kate can't hear what the woman's saying because the sea is too loud and she tries to tell the woman but she can't see the stranger's face because her vision's misting over. Kate reaches up to rub her eyes and is surprised when her fingers come away wet. The moisture is salty; it tastes like the sea.
She had forgotten, up until then, that none of this is real; that it's the island that's real. She will not forget again.
You run, I con. But now Kate is the one doing the conning and she can't remember the last time she truly considered running away. She could go on the run again any day she chose and escape the conflict of her repetitive daily life and the ever awaiting trial that loomed on the horizon. But she's tethered by her unspoken promise to Claire that she renews every night as she sobs at Aaron's bedside. Kate feels almost as though she's betraying Sawyer by not staying true to herself, even though, by not doing what's best for her, the only one she's really betraying is herself. But each time she packs her bags in the invincible twilight hours just before dawn she can never resist slipping into Aaron's room to say goodbye; and every time the blonde little boy stirs and she drowns all over again in his eyes.
Tiger don't change his stripes. But by now it's been almost two years and she feels like the person she used to be has been replaced, her true nature covered up, the same way she straightens her curls and powders over her freckles.
Kate dreams of words that had meaning once, she dreams of stubble under her fingertips and the question Sawyer had asked after they'd kissed in the cages, What was that for? If only she could take back her uncertainty. If only she could erase her whispered I don't know and force her past-self to reply It's because I love you. But she knows her past-self would never be able to say those words and she wonders if she would even be able to now. The most important words of all, the ones he'd so desperately needed to hear, she'd left unsaid.
Kate wakes and it is dark outside. Kate wakes again and it is dark outside. Kate wakes. It is dark.
Jack goes to work at the hospital in his pristine scrubs, a smiling ID card; but Kate's tried on the headphones he sometimes wears at night when he can't sleep and she's found he listens to white noise. White noise like the sound of the ocean. She brings it up one evening over dinner and on her way to bed and that night she finds the headphones in the bin in their room. That's when she knows that rather than trying to remember, he's trying to forget. Kate won't give up so easily, it's been over two years but she can't bring herself to let go.
There are whispers by the press that Aaron isn't hers and, for once, they are not disregarded as idle gossip by those in high places. Nowadays when the phone rings Kate lets the call go to muted voicemail as she eyes it warily from across the room. She starts and flinches towards Aaron every time someone knocks at the door, and she stops taking him out to the park because she can't stand the way the other parents side-eye her, like they know what she's trying to hide. She wants nothing more than to run away from it all, but instead she finds she's almost too afraid to leave her home.
On one of their increasingly infrequent outings Kate takes Aaron to visit an old friend. Her memories of Cassidy are tinged with fondness, though now the knowledge of what she and Sawyer had, what they still have, causes her vision to cloud with jealousy. She swallows her pride and follows Sawyer's last request, surprising herself when she barely baulks as a little girl with Cassidy's eyes and Sawyer's dimples opens the front door. Then again, she'd been expecting it.
Aaron and Clementine spend hours playing happily together as Kate talks with Cassidy, telling her more about her relationship with Sawyer than she's ever told anyone. It feels so liberating to finally be able to talk about him, when at home, with Jack, the topic of the island and the people they left behind is practically taboo. The walls have ears, he insists; but Kate knows that isn't the real reason behind his objection.
When Kate's on her way out, mind filled with resurfaced images of Sawyer's smile called back Clementine's painfully-familiar dimples, Cassidy asks whether Aaron is his. For a moment, as she stares down with unbridled jealousy at Clementine, filled with mindless hatred for those dimples, Kate can't help but with it were true.
There are words that she dreams, and there are those seared so deeply into her memory that she need not:
I love you too, Sawyer had said even though she'd never actually had the courage to say I love you in the first place.
The first time Jack shouts at her is when he gets suspicious about what she's been doing while he's at work. Kate tries to convince him not to pursue it, that it's not about him, because really it isn't; but he wears her down and before she knows what's happening she's confessing. She stands frozen, feeling unbearably guilty as Jack yells at her; the single lamp casting his face into shadow so that, for an instant, she sees her father standing there, her real father, and her blood turns to ice in her veins. Then Aaron comes padding in, bleary-eyed, clutching his whale, and as Kate scoops him into her arms all her fear turns to rage. Her blood thaws and is soon pounding in her ears, the endless drumming marking out her steps as she marches determinedly from the room.
Upstairs she puts Aaron back to bed, trying to ignore the way her hands are shaking, trembling so violently that she almost drops the blanket as she tucks him in. All burrowed down with just his fine blonde hair sticking out from under the blanket Kate can't see his features, so reminiscent of Claire; she can't see his eyes just waiting to drown her. She thinks back to what Cassidy had asked that very first time she'd gone to visit and she finds herself imagining that this is her and Sawyer's son, her delusion captivating and all-consuming. She forgets about Jack raving and probably drinking downstairs. Kate doesn't remember until far later that a child is something she and Sawyer almost had.
Lying in bed Kate thinks of Sawyer's face and all she can see is the wide ocean, all she can remember is the ever-shrinking form of his body as he fell; all she knows is that the days of the con man and the fugitive are over. Kate thinks of Sawyer and all she can think is that surely she never could have, and never will be, a proper mother when all she can do is lie there sobbing like a child herself. Her tears seem infinite, as though she has the whole sea curbed inside her leaking out slowly at every available opportunity.
Hiding her head under her pillow the black, sightlessness is a blessing. Kate allows everything else fade away, lets herself feel numb, lets her tears dry chalky on her cheeks as tangles her fingers in Sawyer's too-long hair, and dreams of what was supposed to be.
Kate is a mother and a wife, but she's never felt as though she fit either part. She's learned, now, that being a mother is guilt rather than warmth and that being a wife is duty rather than pleasure, and that it is impossible to run from the reality of either. But most of all she's learnt that she doesn't want to be a mother or a wife. She's content with being undefined, unknown.
She is Katherine Anne Austen and now she truly knows of love as well as guilt and duty. Now she knows that dreams are her only constant while everything else is as changeable as the sea breeze. Kate has lost something of herself and she knows she will never again be as she once was, will never be Freckles. Kate has lost something of herself and now she will never be anything greater than who she had been, on the island with Sawyer.
It's been three years and her dreams are all that sustain her.
Sometimes Kate finds she can't even remember what running feels like.