A little one-shot, a sequel to 'To Have You', set during 'The End', after the scene when Jack tells Kate, Sawyer and Hurley what Jacob told him about 'the Heart of the Island'. This takes place after Sawyer goes off to fetch Desmond.
Jack, Kate and Hurley sat silently in the tiny circle of their camp, contemplation written in the features of Hurley's face, while Kate held her eyes to the ground, her expression blank, but overwhelmed hidden on the inside. She was so unbelievably overwhelmed. Sawyer had just disappeared from sight, looking to rescue Desmond from that well, so that this could all be over, but Jack knew that it wouldn't over, not until Locke, or the thing that thought of itself as Locke, was dead. All of this was just progress. The end was approaching.
Hurley breathed deeply, shallow breaths cut through the silence of their circle. "I've got a bad feeling about this." Jack looked up to see his eyes bugged to their limits. He was mumbling, looking at nothing in particular, in a daze almost, a paralyzing, debilitating daze. He was scared, his face suddenly pale, ghostly. Jack stood and walked over to him in an attempt to comfort him.
"Hurley?" He asked, watching as his eyes never moved from the phantom spot in the distance, not even to look at him. "You okay?" Of course he wasn't, but he still felt the need to ask, to get something out of him. Beats of silence persisted.
"No." Hurley finally blurted out, a huge weight being lifted from his chest with the admission. He tried to be so brave up until this point. Lying to Richard about Jacob speaking to him, telling the entire group that they needed to talk to Locke, trying to take charge of a situation that even Jack was willing to just let happen, but it didn't matter. Now, he was just scared, completely terrified and he had no idea what they were going to do once they arrived to whatever Jacob told Jack that he needed to protect. The Heart of the Island, he recalled.
"I just…everything is getting so intense." He still wasn't looking at Jack, his eyes stuck in that form, welling with tears. He wasn't interested in connecting; he could barely breathe with the burden of what he knew now. "We find out that Jacob dude intentionally brought us all here because our lives sucked, then he disappears, you take his place and now we're gonna die."
Jack noticed the vacancy in Hurley's eyes, and it reminded him of that moment he went to him during his stay in Santa Rosa, how positively daunting it was to even share the same space with him. He remembered not being able to get through to him, because he was certain that their reality was doomed, that everything that rang true and real was false. Jack had never once been startled by anything Hurley has ever said. His ramblings about the numbers being bad were amusing if not off-putting, but that night, in his room, watching the man he knew fading away into his psychosis, he was petrified that what Hurley was saying was actually true. It couldn't be this time. He would get who was left off of this Island if it took his last breathe.
Jack's voice was low, calming. He didn't want Hurley to be upset, but most of all, he didn't want him upsetting Kate, who was already on the emotional edge.
"Hurley, just calm do—"
"We're up against the Smoke Monster, Jack." Hurley interrupted, now looking Jack square in the eyes, saying it quickly, immediately, just as his fear started to fester and burn. In any other situation, Jack's encouragement would have been enough, but this was different.
"He killed Sayid, Jin and S—", he couldn't finish his thought for the emotions that overtook him were stronger than he thought possible at this point. He felt numb, but he still felt so much. Tears fell in his eyes then, and Jack bowed his head, fighting back his own tears. They all took Jin, Sun and Sayid's deaths hard, but Hurley, if it were possible, took it even harder. He could still hear his outpouring of sobs as he ran back to the water, too proud and devastated to cry with an audience.
"They're never gonna see their little girl again." That was a truth that Jack couldn't rectify for his friend. Oh how he wished he could. "Locke lied about wanting to help us leave and I actually believed that he would. He's trying to kill us and he will."
"No, he won't." Jack said, shaking his head. "I won't let that happen, Hurley." But Hurley wasn't comforted by that, he just stared off into space again, lost, disconnected.
All Jack could do was settle a comforting hand over Hurley's shoulder. He couldn't promise to protect him, because every time he made a promise like that, it had blown up in his face, but it didn't stop him from trying, from hoping. The one person he would die for had been shot for God's sake. He would never get the image of Kate falling to the docks, her blood coming quick and fast from the wound, out of his mind. How many times had he promised himself that harm would never come to her? That he would keep her safe no matter what? Hurley needed this, he thought. He needed the reassurance, was begging for it with every hiccup of air he breathed. He was suffering because there was no bright side that he could see. Darkness left him weak and uncompromising.
Hurley looked away, ashamed, his eyes wild and loud again. "This is all my fault." He said through clinched teeth, his voice cracking with emotion.
"What?" Jack asked, shocked, unsure of how any of this was his doing.
"If I hadn't lied about Jacob telling me that we had to go talk to Locke, then we wouldn't have all been together and Locke wouldn't have tried to hurt us. Sayid, Jin and Sun would still be alive. I led us right into his trap."
"Hurley." Jack said his name forcefully, encouraging his friend to look him in the eyes. "Hey. This is not your fault. You did what you thought was best." He placed his other hand on Hurley's other shoulder, holding him in place now, so that he couldn't turn away.
"There are so many bad calls I made in the name of wanting to protect each and every one of us, but at the end of the day, I couldn't predict the outcome, all I could do was hope that we'd make it." Jack took a deep breath, his emotions getting the best of him, because he blamed himself too, and could relate to what Hurley was saying more than he wanted his friend to know. He promised Sun that he would get her off of this Island, that she had a life with her daughter and her husband, but he swam away, he didn't even try to help save her. With Sawyer unconscious in his arms and the submarine sinking the depths at an alarming rate, he didn't have time. There was never enough time.
He reined in those feelings of guilt and shame. No one could know that they were there, not if they were to survive this. "Locke was gonna find a way to get us all together and he was gonna do whatever he had to to get off this Island. That's not on you.. This is not your fault, man." Hurley was unresponsive, his face suddenly void, a slate that had been wiped clean of the emotion he showed seconds before.
"Hurley?" Jack asked, shaking his friend's shoulders. Hurley broke from his trance, blinking incessantly.
"Yeah," he responded, "I just need a moment…to throw up." Jack let go of a breathy laugh, out of relief and amusement. There was a glimmer of the Hurley he knew. He patted him on the shoulder as he turned toward the adjoining jungle.
"Don't go too far, we'll head out when you get back."
He watched Hurley disappear, then turned towards their camp site and watched Kate as she stared off in the distance, somehow oblivious to Hurley's meltdown, or having one of her own, a silent one that she wouldn't share. She sat slightly slumped over in the dirt, her back leaning into the wood log behind her, her blood browning into her once perfect grey top, her hair having dried through the night, frizzy and tangled. They hadn't said much to each other at all, not since he held her in his arms as she fell asleep the night before and while he sewed her up the next morning, their mutual desire to kill the Monster bonding them. He could still hear her last words in a sleepy grumble before she was silent, soft and unyielding.
'I can't. Not without you.'
He remembered her saying it, but he was unsure of whether or not she did. She was so tired and so emotionally wrought in that moment, he was pretty sure she hadn't thought much more about it. He took on the responsibility of protecting the Island, for as long as he could, which meant, he couldn't leave, which meant she wouldn't get her way. He stepped forward, but hesitated, almost opting to leave her alone, but he couldn't. He had to check on that wound, he had to check on her, he had to hear her and see her and feel her in front of him. What had he done? He was so resolute with the decision that he had to send her back on that plane, but now, he was unsure of if he could actually go through with it when the time came. He loved her so much he physically ached with it, but he knew that he had done the right thing for them both.
"Mind if I check?" She heard the familiar, warm voice ask, but it felt in the distance, on the periphery. She was spacing out again, thoughts running through her head. What were they doing? Why had this happened? She looked over to meet equally warm eyes, his stiff, burly brows shadowing them from sunlight. She was so lost in her thoughts she hadn't even noticed all six-foot-two-inches of him on a solitary bended knee at her side.
"Huh?" Kate mumbled, looking straight through him, but right at him, seeping into the attention that he was paying her.
Jack gestured towards her left shoulder with a faint grimace. "The stitches. Do you mind if I take a look?"
"Oh." She realized. Her wound. She shook her head, laughed at herself a little. "Um, no, I don't mind." The small gesture gave her hope, hope that burgeoned instantaneously, from the moment she noticed he was next to her. She was going to confront him, but couldn't find the strength, hiding away in the bushes at his back, watching him welcome his new home, and saddened beyond belief that she wasn't a part of it.
Gently, Jack brushed her hair away from her shoulder and neck and pulled her shirt down over her pale, freckled flesh, exposing the fresh dressings that Sawyer had just placed over her stitches. He moved in closer to gingerly pull the medical tape from her skin, his forehead resting against her cheek for the slightest moment, before he retreated. The black thread was holding up pretty well, but he could tell there was some inflammation, some puffy reddening that didn't look threatening, but worried him nonetheless. She watched his face as he studied her scar. He squinted, his bottom lip caught between his teeth as he concentrated, a light bang of his tea-length dark hair tickled the folding creases of his forehead.
Then, there were his eyes. The intensity never really dimmed there, she realized. He was always thinking about something, or in her experience with knowing him and grappling with this ability to read his complexity, beating himself up about everything, but there was a difference here. He knew more than ever that it hadn't been for nothing. There was a clear enemy and a proper goal, to save the Island.
Despite the assurance he had displayed to Hurley, she could see in his eyes that he was struggling, that with all the comfort he gave, he needed to be comforted too. He was always left to take care of everyone else, who was going to take care of him, here, on this Island, for however long he was to protect it? Who would protect him? It was just one more question she asked herself, that worried her tremendously. Would he ever take himself into account the way she always had?
"Sawyer did a good job." Jack finally said, cutting through her thoughts. He moved her shirt back over her shoulder, his fingertips lingering there longer than necessary. "You're gonna be fine." She continued to stare at him like she hadn't heard what he said, sadness blending with concern. There was something she wanted to say. She brought a hand to his forearm that lay over the mantle of his bent leg, squeezing it lightly. She cocked her head to the side, staring.
"It's not your fault, either, Jack."
The sincerity in her eyes and the lightness of her touch were damaging. The weight of her words crashed into him and he had to remember to breathe in that moment. She heard, but worst of all, she knew, Jack thought as he bowed his head, pursed his lips together, his brows turned down into a crease, nodding curtly as a wordless reply, pushing back tears. This was what he understood about them. She would always know, which made having to let her go so damn hard. She just, understood him, not this situation, not how things were playing out now, but him, what drove him, what made him tick, and he knew and understood the same of her. Why she came back, why she hadn't told him, and what it meant to her to make it happen.
Kate maneuvered herself upright, sitting up a little straighter while Jack brought his other leg down, both knees bent underneath him now. "The Smoke Monster lured us onto that submarine to kill us. He tried to prevent us from ever knowing why we were all brought here, in hopes that we wouldn't figure out what Jacob wanted from us. But, since you're the one who protects the Island now..."
"He's gonna want to kill me most of all." He admitted quickly, catching her off guard. She looked petrified then, the rosiness of her cheeks draining from her face. Jack clocked her worried gaze, realizing how cold and detached he sounded about his own potential demise, and how it must have sounded for her to hear.
"Not if I kill him first." He corrected himself. "I still don't know how or if that's possible."
"So, this 'Heart of the Island', it's just a light?" Her voice rose at the end of her question, signaling her incredulity and disappointment. She sounded as if what the Island was actually important for should have been something more elaborate with how Jacob was so adamant about someone stepping up to protect it. Jack knew it all sounded so ridiculous to her, but he had no reason not to believe, not after all he'd experienced, not after watching John Locke's physical presence stalk around in an attempt to kill them. The realm of possibility had been ripped open and he could no longer deny that.
He nodded wordlessly. "That's it. Jacob said it's out past the bamboo forest where I woke up after the crash. And once I find it and protect it from Locke, once I kill him, it can finally end."
There was a beat before Kate spoke again. "You already knew, didn't you?" She asked.
Confusion was written all over Jack's face. "Knew what?"
Her eyes wandered nearby, breaking their impenetrable contact. She was suddenly embarrassed and uncomfortable. "That I came back for Claire," she looked at him then, "you knew before I ever told you."
Jack slouched into her slightly, his head tilted. "I had my suspicions. That night that I found you in my apartment, I knew something huge had happened. You were so angry with me the last time I saw you, I didn't think I'd see you again before I left, and there you were. You wanted to come back with me and you didn't want to tell me why." Shards of gloom bled through his eyes. As close as they were that night, in his bed, there was still distance. She held back her motivations. The trust they worked so hard to build wasn't there for her anymore, and while it hurt him, he deserved it.
"And as relieved as I was that you'd changed your mind, I wondered why you would suddenly give Aaron to Carole after trying so hard to keep him, but I let it go."
"Why?" She asked, barely above a whisper.
Jack sighed, his broad shoulders shuffling up and then down. "Because I could tell that you needed me to and I was waiting on you to be ready to confide in me again. To trust me again." That was what he needed the most.
Kate's eyes shimmered with tears, her body slouched back down where it had been before. "I'm not his mother, Jack, and talking myself into thinking that I was, calling him my son for God's sake," she sighed as she wiped at her cheeks, "it was never gonna be true." Her voice slipped into a clipped sob.
The urge to wrap her up in his arms and never let go surged through him, but he resisted the temptation on a shaky breath. If he let himself, he would promise to give her the world even though he couldn't. He wouldn't be able to let her go.
She sniffled, getting a hold of her wandering emotions. "If anything, I was upset at you for being right."
He shook his head. "No, Kate. I was wrong." He looked down at the ground, his brows knitted and his head shaking. He licked his lips before looking back up at her. "I was wrong about everything."
Time practically slowed at his words. Jack gauged her reaction while Kate did the same, her eyes squinting in confusion. They were both frozen in place, sinking where they sat. She finally understood why he kept pushing her away. Old wounds hadn't healed. They hadn't given them time to, and now they were running out of time. Something always came up, something was always more important than getting this right. How could they have let this happen?
Kate attempted to rise again, her breathing heavy, her eyes wide and pressing, brewing for a confrontation. "Ja—"
Before she could speak his name fully, Hurley came stomping out from the near bushes noisily, but somehow composed, but he still looked translucent. He looked over at Jack and Kate, who were closer in proximity than they were when he left, literally nose-to-nose now, staring into each other's depths. He could feel the tension between the two of them from where he was standing. He sighed, wondering if it was really too late for those two to get it together, but now was far from the right time for this.
"Dudes, we better get goin'." Hurley said as he stepped back into their camp, interrupting the private moment.
Without asking if she needed it, Jack wrapped his large hand around Kate's right elbow and helped her rise, keeping her balanced and secure. Once they were both on their feet, somehow, they were indiscriminately closer, torsos brushed against each other, breaths mingled, stalled for more once they realized how near they truly were. Kate seemed comfortable there, content, silently reeling for more to be said, for more to happen than the looks that melted between them. Jack was more hesitant than comfortable, stepping back with a relieved breath, his eyes still locked with hers, making sure that she was steady before he let go, his hand lingering longer than he anticipated and his eyes blinking away the heat that still radiated.
Kate felt dejected again; a small, but drastically meaningful moment where they were so close to something significant turned on its head once again by Jack's inability to notice that she still wanted him, and always would. She needed answers, and she planned on dragging them out of him before they arrived to their destination, because at that point, once they were there, Jack would shut down on her again, he would be impossible to reach. She had to reach him and bring him back.
Jack looked over to Hurley, who still looked scared shitless, but nonetheless, ready to go and face the music. He nodded at him. 'Are you okay?' was spoken through the gesture. Hurley nodded back.
Jack rolled his shoulders back, then forth, standing between both Hurley and Kate, ready for battle.
"Okay. Lets do this."