Sinking815
January 20th, 2007
A/N: Just a little mindless fluff/angst on Jack and Kate's inevitable reunion. No real major spoilers, although the context may be somewhat revealing if you haven't seen Season Three yet. As always, reviews appreciated!
She had heard Charlie clearly enough. It just wasn't the news she was expecting and it had floored her. When the pressure in her chest grew to unbearable intensity, she remembered how to expand her tummy and pull in air; she remembered how to breathe. The salty tang of ocean felt raw in her nose and cold in her lungs, but it was worth feeling something. She thought she'd been living her life these past few months stuck somewhere between life and death, numb to the world around her. But Charlie had just redefined the meaning of that existence.
Kate stood slowly, not feeling the cool wind as it blew unruly hair in face, not caring that it even did. She barely noticed Sawyer's flinch when the knife she was gripping in her left hand fell to the sand, burying its blade too close to her foot for his comfort. She doubted that if it had hit her, she would have felt the agony it would bring. That kind of pain was the reality of her everyday since she'd been back. Wide and shell-shocked, her green eyes were staring over Charlie's shoulder, transfixed on the growing cluster of castaways back at camp. She was seeing, but she wasn't comprehending. She heard the muffled voice she thought was Sawyer speaking to her, but she couldn't make herself listen. All she knew were the three words running on a loop in her stalled mind.
"Jack… Jack's back."
It wasn't until she saw his familiar dark head between a break in the masses of bodies surrounding him that the rubberband holding her in place snapped with a sudden crack. Something not in her control pulled her feet from the wet sand, breaking the slow progression of her sinking beneath the surface. She stumbled, like a newborn filly on untested wobbly knees, caught herself and shook off the hand clamping around her upper arm offering a steady place to lean. Then she bolted.
It felt good to stretch her legs, to feel her hair flying back in submission to the wind, to feel like she had a purpose. Yet, she was always running with a sense of urgency, a desperate need to get away. Kate ran away from her problems, her past, her present. She ran from her mother, Tom, the cops. So when it realized the force driving her forward was no longer its own commanding voice and that she was running towards someone, her mind panicked. For the first time in a long time, Kate was listening to her heart.
The shouts and laughter died the second she found herself inside the camp's border. Her legs seemed to slow on their own volition, the rapid motion carrying her across the shores abandoning her with a familiar void. She glanced blankly from face to face, the eyes of her friends like those of strangers, watching her nervously. They moved away as she walked forward, her attention searching the next person in her way when the others fell out of sight. The last face she turned to paralyzed her, his name dying on the whisper that never made it past her lips.
His eyes still had that same serious and haunted look and she breathed a sigh of relief when she realized he was still open to her. Night after night of sitting isolated on a beach gave her too long to consider his reaction to seeing her again. Too often, the breeze whistling in her ears became his voice, begging her to stay away. He had said it was for her own safety, but she had heard through the static and pops of white noise the slight waver in his tone. Jack knew. After that, Kate could only expect the angry Jack who protected himself by giving her the cold shoulder. It was what he had done before, back when her betrayal was something much less than a sordid affair.
Yet the hazel eyes staring at her now were full of an emotion that she wasn't sure she deserved, but wasn't willing to push away so soon. It was like relief, uncertainty, and love had finally found their places in the color spectrum. His face carried that look of exhaustion she'd seen many times before and Kate fought against the overwhelming sensation that flooded her whole being. She wanted to laugh for sheer joy of having him back, to yell obscenities at his stubbornness that kept her worried, but all she could give in to were the tears sliding past her eyelashes.
The breath she'd been holding escaped with a strangled cry and she watched his nose scrunch and his mouth tighten as he swallowed past his own feelings. He lost after another minute and forced himself to look away, bringing a hand to run over his close-cropped hair, trying to shield his weakness from her. Kate watched with sympathetic understanding, seeing her own nights of solitude and despair in the way his shoulders sagged and shook with the tension he carried there.
They were only separated by ten feet, but suddenly Kate found herself wishing it was ten inches. She ran, throwing herself into his solid form with a force that made him stumble a step back. His own arms crushed her to him and she half-smiled, half-sobbed when she felt his tremble match her own. He choked her name in her ear, pressing his cheek into her hair. She turned to bury her face into the warmth of his neck, inhaling deeply and letting the smell of sweat, tears and something intrinsically Jack wash over her.
"No, don't be," she heard him whisper, and for a moment Kate wondered to whom he was replying. But then another voice could be made out from the head-spinning rush of blood pounding in her ears, a voice she struggled to recognize as her own, wailing apology after apology. But she couldn't stop.
"I'm sorry, Jack," she cried into his shoulder. "I'm sorry."
He pushed her away, and Kate was oddly relieved to feel the distance between them fill again with tension. This sort of refusal was more along the lines of what she had been expecting, more what she had prepared herself to deal with. His hands came to cradle her head, forcing her to look at him, his thumbs wiping her tears from her cheeks with a gentle touch. She noticed how red his eyes were and felt her lip quivering with the shame rushing through her body.
"Kate," he said, shaking his head back and forth. "Kate, stop."
"Jack," she whispered, starting another string of apologies but he pulled her towards him again, silencing her with a kiss.
Kate had never believed in those moments when the world supposedly stopped its perpetual spinning and time halted its incessant march to suspend two people in a gravity-defying moment. Until him. Until now.
She felt Jack twist her hair in his fingers as his hand crept its way up her back and behind her head. When he broke the contact, her hands pulled his face back to her and she shivered against him, feeling him smile against her mouth. She didn't care that everyone was watching them. She didn't care that the seconds were turning into minutes. Kate was afraid that if she ever let him go, he'd disappear from her forever.
With a gentle hand, he stopped her fervent kisses and she reluctantly relinquished her desperate hold on his shirt. It was only when she had opened her eyes to see him staring at her that she heard the catcalls and noticed the giddy smiles on everyone's faces. She turned in Jack's embrace, biting her lip to face Sawyer, unsure about what to say after that shameless display of truth.
The southerner regarded her with a smirk, a gentle tease lighting a spark in his blue eyes. He held her gaze for just a moment, the almost imperceptible nod letting her know he wasn't upset. She opened her mouth to explain, but he beat her to it.
"Don't sweat it, Freckles," he said. "I always knew."
She nodded her understanding and watched him shake his head, his loose hair falling lightly around his face. He eyed Jack and Kate felt him stiffen behind her, his arms pulling her close. It wasn't an awkward moment; it just was weighted with a tension she was afraid to break. This push-pull between them was inevitable and nothing would make it disappear. After a moment, she felt both men relax, Jack's hold easing slightly, losing its possessive grip, Sawyer's gaze falling to rest back on her.
"A tiger don't change its stripes, remember?"
Finis