DISCLAIMER: Not mine.
"I don't know who I am anymore," Jack whispers, staring at the sea, half-counting the waves that wash up on the shore.
Kate selects a small shell and throws it towards the ocean. It lands in the shallows and is gone. "And it scares you," she says softly, turning her head to offer him that captivating sort-of smile.
Jack nods, and wonders if he'd find himself again if he touched her skin and kissed her lips and pressed her body into the sand and felt her breathing under him.
Ten months. Ten months and three days and he's no longer the Jack Sheppard he once thought he knew. He lives in a strange world, built on and ordered by isolation and terror and he doesn't know where home is any more. He has no doubt that almost everyone he cares about knows Jack Sheppard is dead, dead like Kate Austin, like Shannon Rutherford, like Charlie Pace.
Death is a funny idea, a shifting concept, a strange range of meanings and thoughts and ideas.
Death means so many things now.
Kate's hand comes slowly towards him. Jack watches as it slides into his and squeezes, and only then does he feel the warmth of her skin. "Kate," he says, and squeezes back, connecting.
"You haven't lost yourself," she says, and her thumb brushes over the back of his hand. "You're changing. You told me just after the crash that we all died, we all got a chance to start over."
"Maybe I didn't want to start over," Jack says, and blinks, as the sea starts to blur.
"But you have. Maybe you're more Jack Sheppard now than you ever were before."
"Maybe," Jack whispers, and he looks sideways again. Kate's got her head propped up on her knees, her face turned towards him, her spare arm wrapped tightly around her legs. "When did you turn into a self-help manual?"
"When I was in a plane that crashed and landed on an unknown island in the Pacific," she says lightly, but Jack can see the meaning behind her eyes. Ten months and three days since that plane crashed, and in that time it's been Kate who provided his connection to sanity, to humanity, to himself. Sometimes he's not sure whether he loves her or hates her for her side of that bizarre bond, the one he never wanted, never asked for. Sometimes he's not sure whether he loves himself or hates himself for his part in it.
He closes the distance between them and rests his head on her shoulder. He feels her arms wrap around him and pull him close in a way no-one's held him since he was a child. Jack feels her head against his, and her curls against his cheek.
He says her name again, and when he can't help feeling grateful for the crash he feels like a traitor.
THE END