I've been trying to figure out how to incorporate Desmond into a Jate flashsideways story ever since I saw 'Happily Ever After' and it finally came to me over the weekend, hence this two-shot. I'm almost finished the second part so if people are interested I will try to get that up tomorrow or Tuesday/Wednesday (depending on which timezone you're in). Then unless this week's episode really inspires me I promise I will go back to writing my regular fics. ;)

Special thanks to northcaroline for helping me choose a title and for suggesting memories. :)

Chapter 1. Kate

"Congratulations, Austen. You're free to go," Detective Ford announced, producing a set of keys fro the pocket of his pants as he approached the dingy metal cage where Kate was being held. "Somebody posted your bail."

Her first thought was that he was playing with her. No one knew where she was. She hadn't asked to contact anyone since he and Detective Chang brought her in, not even her lawyer. There was no one left for her to call. "Who?"

"Didn't you ever hear that expression about looking a gift horse in the mouth?"

Deciding that he was right, that this might be the miracle she'd spent the last hour praying for, she took the yellow envelope he handed her containing the meagre collection of personal belongings she'd had on her at the time of her arrest – including the broken pen she'd used to escape the marshal at the airport, a small wad of cash and Claire's credit card – and followed him back out to the lobby, where a brown-haired man she didn't recognise was waiting on one of the benches.

He stood when he saw them. "It's nice to see you again, Kate," he said in a thick Scottish lilt, smiling at her as if they were old friends. He held out his hand and she shook it slowly, staring at him as she tried to figure out how he'd found her.

"She's all yours," Detective Ford told him, releasing her into his custody before turning on his heel and heading back to his desk.

While she was sceptical of the mysterious Scotsman's intentions, it was either go with him or stay in the holding cell until they transferred her to a women's prison so she walked out of the station and into the LA sunshine with him, to the parking lot where opened the passenger's side door of a silver sedan for her.

A little voice in the back of her mind told her that now was the time to run, but he hadn't given her any reason not to trust him so she allowed her curiosity to get the better of her. "Do we know each other?" she asked him when he climbed into the driver's seat beside her.

He looked amused by the question. "Well that depends."

"On what?"

"On what you remember."

His fervid belief that they had some kind of shared history was beginning to make her uncomfortable. Just what was it that he wanted from her? "I don't know what you think I should be remembering, but I've never seen you before in my life," she told him curtly.

This didn't seem to faze him. "Are you sure about that?"

He was clearly more delusion that she thought. "Who are you?" she demanded.

"My name is Desmond. Desmond Hume."

There was something vaguely familiar about it, but she couldn't place when and where she'd heard it before. "Not that I'm not grateful, but is there some reason you decided to bail me out?" she asked him.

"I bailed you out, Kate, because I need you to come with me," he told her, turning the key in the ignition to wake the engine up. "There's something I have to show you."

He pulled out onto the street and they spent the next few minutes driving in silence. Kate tried to guess where they were going but she gave up after they passed several well-known landmarks without getting out.

He slowed down to follow the signs directing them to St Sebastian's Hospital, but rather than turn into the drive, he shot right by it. "I'm very sorry about this, but you'll thank me for it later," he told her cryptically, pressing down on the accelerator.

"Sorry about what?" she insisted. When she glanced away from him, back out the windshield, she saw that they were headed straight for the mouth of an alley, and beyond that, a brick wall. "Are you crazy? Do you wanna get us both killed?" She tried to take control of the wheel, pulling it towards her, but he reefed it back to the left, sending them into a tailspin.

After that, there was nothing either of them could do. She watched with a growing sense of horror as the car veered off the road and up onto the sidewalk where it ploughed head on into a telephone pole. The impact pitched Kate forward and her forehead slammed into the dash, hard enough to cause her black out.

As she slipped into unconsciousness, she watched her flash before her eyes, only it wasn't her life: at least not the version of it that she knew.

*

One…

"I can't leave without you."

"Yes, you are. Go!"

"Jack, I can't!"

"Kate, damnit! RUN!"

*

Two…

"I asked you not to come back here for me and I wish… I wish that you hadn't. But I will come back here for you."

*

Three…

"Why're you sticking up for Sawyer? He'd never do it for you."

"Because I love you."

*

Four…

"Do you really think that I'm good at this?"

"Yeah. You're good at this."

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes. Of course I will! Yes!"

*

Five…

"If we can do what Faraday said, our plane never crashes. Flight 815 lands in Los Angeles and everyone we lost since we got here… They'd all be alive."

"And what about us? We just go on living our life because we've never met?"

"All of the misery that we've been through… We could just wipe it clean. Never happened."

"It was not all misery."

*

The good, the bad, the bittersweet… The whole wonderful, terrible story came flooding back to her, and at the centre of it all: him.

The man from the plane. The man she couldn't take her eyes off outside the airport; who occupied her thoughts more than any stranger she'd ever met.

And she knew then that it was because she loved him. She just hadn't been able to remember it until now.

That was what Desmond wanted to show her, she realised. He was like some kind of guardian angel, pointing people towards their fate.

When she opened her eyes, his face filled her vision and she thought it was another memory until the room came into focus and it hit her that he was really there, hovering over her, shining a light on her pupils. "Jack?"

Next chapter: Jack's POV as Kate tries to help him remember. ;)