I guess, spoilers for the S6 finale… Written on a whim. Just an idea how it could have turned out. After they got on that plane together.
Dedicated to those who felt the finale was a letdown.
Also for Jakarta – ugly, unlovable disaster, unfit for living. And its people; undeniably, heartbreakingly beautiful. Seemingly made for these two flawed characters. About finding some kind of closure, redemption…call it what you wish.
Disclaimer: Not mine, none of it.
…
This could be beautiful
…
She looks over to where he's sitting, alone across the aisle, looking older. Grayer all of a sudden, staring out the window. His knuckles white as he grips the armrests. Once they are up in the air, she squeezes by and sits down next to him. He looks up at her, eyes tired, dark circles underneath. Nerves tense and hard, jaw stiff. She must look a mess herself but she can't even think about that.
"You okay Kate? " Not Freckles. Not that kind of moment.
"Not really…" she says because she's not. Really. She can't think of it. Not now.
And that's all they say. Sitting there, silently, eyes fixed forward, staring ahead. Claire sleeps across the aisle and they hit an air pocket, which has her feeling quietly resigned instead of scared.
It wouldn't be so bad, she thinks, if it ended here.
That's when she feels his large warm hand sliding over hers, covering it entirely. Dirty, cuts and dried blood on them. Drawing her breath in sharply. It wasn't supposed to be like this. But it is.
He's here. So is she.
"We'll be fine…" he says in a way that makes her think they won't.
…
They land on a remote island, somewhere in the Indonesian archipelago. Frank and Miles have every intention of finding their way to the capital, get help from the Embassy. To go home.
There is no home waiting for her. She has violated her parole. Can't go back. Talks Claire into going with James, Frank and Miles. Can't do it, can't go with. Claire is scared, she knows that, but she also knows this is something Claire has to do. It's her son.
Not Kate's. It never was.
James. Doesn't talk. Says nothing of his plans. Shrugs when Miles asks, pretends he hasn't heard when Frank tries to discuss it. Kate doesn't ask at all.
They arrive in Jakarta late on a Monday evening. The traffic is horrendous. A thick porridge of pollution, vehicles and people. A strange mixture of high-rise buildings and slums.
She waits outside the highly guarded compound of the U.S. Embassy as the others go inside to arrange with their passports, transfer of funds and the trip home. She sits at a little food stall at the side of the trafficked road, sweat streaming down her back as she waits for them. Only the goodbyes remaining. She won't go back. Has nothing to go back to.
She has nothing.
Nothing. But she doesn't care, doesn't worry. She's beyond that. Besides she is used to having nothing. She knows she'll survive.
They spend a few nights in a sleazy low budget hotel, smelling overwhelmingly of mould and mothballs. The sheets almost soggy from the humidity. She shares with Claire, tries to give her courage to face the return home - to face motherhood. Vaguely remembering the panic of finding herself suddenly in charge of Aaron. Last time. Claire will have to do this alone. Kate can't go with her, can't help her with this. Motherhood – it's not for her. Was never meant for her.
James is invisible, comes and goes. She hardly sees him these days of waiting, their lives suspended in the air. Just waiting.
…
A week later she waits again outside as the rest of them pick up their passports. Drinks ice tea from a glass bottle, watching them exit the high security gates. Hardly able to breathe when she thinks that this is it. Soon it will be over and she'll be alone in this strange city, it's air so hot and humid it trembles in the midday sun.
She goes with them to the airport. A quiet tension in the cab as they snake their way through the dense traffic. Doesn't think she can do it. Wants to open the door and throw herself out. She can't take another goodbye. He sits next to her; they are all crammed into the same cab, a minivan of sorts with three rows of seats. He says nothing, doesn't look at her. As if he's already left.
Doesn't think she can survive this. Loosing him too.
She watches as they all get their tickets and documents out to go through the security check. She can't come with. Feeling forlorn and abandoned. Never more alone than this.
He comes to stand next to her. Her shoulder against his upper arm. Silent. As if he's waiting for her to do all the work, to say the 'goodbye' that he can't muster. She hugs Claire, Frank and Miles one last time. Trying not to cry at the sight of the lithe blonde girl walking away. Him – there. Just waiting.
"Just go…" she says abruptly. Doesn't want any hugs from him. She doesn't think her heart could take it. Wants him to walk away as fast as possible, so that she won't feel anything. Won't feel the loss. Just rip off the band-aid. Any which way, it'll hurt.
"I ain't going," he says and that is that. She pretends she isn't surprised when he takes her hand leading her out in the blasting heat to wave down another taxi. His hand clammy and hot against hers, holding on so hard it almost hurts.
Back to the disgusting little hotel with it's seventies style interior and its soiled linen. And in a strange unpredicted kind of agreement, they sink down on the bed together. Exhausted though it's barely past noon. The old air condition whirring, making a high pitch nerve-wrecking noise. Hands that find their way under clothes, fabrics peeled off at a frightening speed. A desperation and a longing that has to be quenched. His lips on her throat, on her skin, everywhere. And she doesn't ask why, just takes what he gives. Him holding her hard against himself afterwards, arms locked around her back, not allowing her to pull away. As if he's scared she'll go up in smoke. A slight tone of shame over it all. How they can do this now. How easily they give in to this.
The needing each other.
No ifs or buts. It just is. Her skin against his.
…
He has a little neat sum of money from one of his last cons. Buys them both fake documents, sets up a contact with immigration and arranges for some falsified diplomas and certifications. It's laughable how it all works out and they are both in a dizzy kind of disbelief. He, a man who hasn't even gone to college, now teaches English literature at a local university. They pay isn't great, but it's enough, they make do. She, a high school dropout, tutors kids in English, it's beyond ridiculous.
But that's how it is. Her and him together, they will always be an abnormality.
They rent a little house in a 'kampung', a neighborhood teetering on the brink of being a slum. Saved only by the residents' resilience, the tireless fight against the poverty around them. Their quiet rebellion, refusing to let it take over.
The way the women are up at dawn sweeping the miserable, pot-holed pavements clean of debris and garbage. Grandmothers scrubbing the doorsteps squeaky clean. The way people just resolutely move upstairs during the rainy season, waiting out the monsoon as the street below them floods, stinking brown water seeping in, inundating their rickety little houses. The way the husbands burn the household trash in small pyres at night. The smell of burning paper, food and plastic a strangely pleasant sensation. Little girls cleaning up the ashes in the morning. The way the parents walk through the obvious dearth around them. Children meticulously and lovingly tended to, school uniform ironed, hair water combed. Rubber sandals on their feet, spotless white socks and treasured black shoes carried in hands to keep them clean on the way to school.
A spirit of survival, a generosity in spite of the meager surroundings, a resistance to all things squalid that is comforting. How they find themselves fitting into this tight-knitted little community. Neighbors embracing these strangers. Undeservedly too it might seem. They are unwillingly, reluctantly drawn in. Unable to escape the warmth, the friendliness of the people living around them. And the two of them, two people that have never really had a family, finds themselves included in a kindness that is so overwhelming it makes them consider moving somewhere else.
But they stay. And slowly, all that was new, frightening and daunting and foreign becomes familiar.
Becomes home.
…
They get an unwanted crash-course in intimacy that they both flunk miserably. Their fights, heated, childish, silent wars that can go on for days, never ending in an adult conversation, never in a resolution, because there is none. Instead, the fiery making up, making love. Frenzied and tender and so, so vulnerable. That's all they know.
That's what they do.
Never speaking the words. Never saying what they both most fear, that they are the substitutes. For a greater love, for someone else. Only once does he ask. She's sitting on the bed drinking her morning coffee. Her guilty pleasure. He swoops by on his way to the shower, jeans low on his hips, dipping down quick as a flash. A hand lifting her hair, sniffing, warm lips on her neck.
"We're okay ain't we?"
"What?" taken completely off guard. Mug resting against her crossed legs on the bed. Slightly distracted by the feeling of his fingers at the nape of her neck, and his breath still behind her ear.
"This ain't too bad You and me… here," he says and it isn't a question. A simple statement.
She smiles at him as he saunters on towards the bathroom. A self conscious kind of shuffle. He knows she's looking at him. Biting back the words. What they both know.
But what can't be said.
…
Until that evening, running down the flooded alley to their little rental house, brown smelly water, trash floating in it, splashing against their legs as they run. The rain beating down on them, as the call for Azhan, the evening prayer goes out from the neighborhood mosque. The tragic beauty of the prayer call echoing around them, enough to make the hair stand up on her neck. That's when she catches his wrist, to slow him down and she doesn't even know she's saying it before the words are out. Irreversibly out.
"I love you…"
He doesn't look at her, doesn't answer and she thinks it's all a big mistake while he fumbles with the lock on their door, its ugly veneer peeling off. But then, a hand on the small of her back, shoving her inside.
And there inside, their little ugly house, he doesn't loose a second. Is all over her. His answer. Because that's what they do. That's how they communicate. Lips and tongue and yearning. Rain pounding on their tin roof. Her legs around his hips. Him, uncharacteristically tender and cautious. Hands that smoothen out the kinks, caress away the uncertainty. Careful not to hurt her rounded belly. Sweat and rain and muddy feet. They don't care.
It's monumental.
Too frightening to deal with.
…
As her stomach grows, he pulls back. Finds him watching her from the corner of his eyes. A suspicious, distrustful look about him that makes her fear. Fears waking up alone one morning. Fears coming home to their simple rental house, finding him and his things gone. Fears his insecurity getting the better of him. And however much she wishes she could; she can't reach out. Can't bridge the gap.
The creature in her belly. Like an enemy amongst them. He hardly touches her anymore, and when he does, it's always with a sense of loosing control, of falling into something. Something he doesn't want. As if she'd betrayed him.
…
She gives birth alone.
She knows there is no other way. But he's not even there, outside on the little porch serving as a waiting room for all the nervous fathers to be that have passed through this little district clinic.
A frightening abyss opening up in front of her as she takes the red, wrinkly little thing from the midwife. Realizing for the first time that as a mother, you are always alone. Especially she. She's alone with this.
The midwife is brisk, all business. There is nothing sentimental about this. This is what women do. What she was born to do. Frowns at the frivolity of it when Kate cries too loud during the prolonged labor. It doesn't do to whine and cry. It's nothing special to give birth. What women do here everyday, with far less help than she has. She should be glad her daughter is born alive and apparently in good health.
She gets to rest until evening falls. The midwife clearly anxious to get her out of there. It's not as if she can afford the bed another night.
Prepares to get out of bed and pack, gather up her things and her clothes, soreness in every muscle and most of all down there. Angry and scared and abandoned. Would weep if it weren't for the stern look she gets from the midwife.
And then suddenly he's there. Standing outside the midwife's door. A blanket across his arm. A blue baby blanket. A dull, stupid expression on his face.
"Came to get you home…" He says home as if that's what it is. As if it were normal for them.
"Okay," she whispers, wanting to cry for the emotions welling over her, the hormones crashing. The fear. Her breasts already aching, the milk coming in quickly.
"It's blue," he says dumbly, handing her the blanket.
"It doesn't matter," she says, afraid her voice will break.
She carries her child. Hers. Only hers. Not his. Pressed to her chest, a feeling of trepidation so great she's never before experienced it. Not even on the brink of death. Not even with the metal of a gun pressed against her temple. Never like this. A feeling of protectiveness that she can't really explain except, perhaps this is what it's like to be a mother. Watchful of him, walking in front of her down the alley with her things. Stepping carefully, trying to keep up in spite of the soreness between her legs, the way all her muscles ache. Her heart.
He waits up for her. An impatient, clumsy kind of thoughtfulness. He's made the bed for her. Cleaned the sheets and tucked them in, perfectly. Bundles her in there with the baby and disappears. Leaves her alone as she tries to feed her. Struggling with this alien concept, with her own ignorance, her own inexperience with this new overwhelming task. The responsibility of a human being. Heavy like a stone around her neck and she can hardly breathe.
This, she'd though this would come naturally, but it doesn't and it makes her feel like a big failure. Worthless. The tears, she can't hold them back any longer. As her baby cries inconsolably, unable to take the breast, struggling, fighting her. Not finding the right angle or the right position. Hell, she can't do this.
He comes back in. Jaw tense and his eyes that avoid hers. Sets down a little tray with hot tea and a sandwich next to the bed. Almost drops it there, spoon falling to the floor with a clang as he slumps down on the bed next to her. Her, wiping at her face. Doesn't want him to see her like this. This is all her fault. That one night of weakness, before they'd left for the island. She'd dropped by Jack's house, unable to face the silence of her own home. The house that would never be a home again, not after she'd left Aaron in that hotel room.
Unanticipated.
And the more startling for it. His kindness. Tugging her near, arms around her in an awkward hug, baby squealing in between them. His lips against her ear and that smell of him, warm – like a cup of cocoa.
"You can do this Freckles."
Never calls her Freckles after this. It's always Kate. 'Kate', but in a million different ways. Sneered, hissed, spitted out in a fight, whispered against her lips, licked against her belly, caressed over her hair, grunted during sex. Always 'Kate' but in so many ways.
…
Wonders when he'll leave. The pain of seeing her face every day, knowing that she belongs to another. But the days pass and he's there. Doesn't budge. Stubbornly standing by her and though it isn't perfect, far from it. What they have; more resilient than she'd ever though. Much like the place they live in. Ugly, stained and soiled. But pulsating under the surface.
Something real, something just out of reach – something almost - beautiful.
She doesn't look like any one of them. As if sprung from some unknown gene pool. There are no freckles. Certainly no dimples as there shouldn't be. Her hair is reddish, her eyes an odd golden brown. She could be anyone's. But she is hers. Only hers now. He seems disinterested, distant, stays out of her way. But she sometimes catches him watching her nurse. An expression she doesn't recognize, quickly hidden behind a leer and a nod towards her swollen breasts.
"They're bigger now."
"Just shut up James…" But she feels a door opening. Something changing, grudgingly and unwillingly, but changing nonetheless.
"Just an observation," he says smugly and shrugs.
Wonders if he wishes she were his. The way he slides by her, pretending to have an errand in the kitchen as she unbuttons her shirt to nurse. A swift almost brusque hand that sweeps by her cheek, fingertips barely brushing by the baby's delicate skull. An awkward caress and he moves on saying nothing.
…
Comes upon them one morning, hearing the baby crying, knowing he won't pick her up, he never does. The girl is all hers. Not his business.
Coming through the door, toothbrush in her mouth. Stops there, breathless, watching them hidden behind the doorpost. His gruff, almost pissy tone of voice. But she knows him. Can hear the uncomfortable warmth beyond the put-on, fake voice. Watches as he sticks his hand in between the bars of the crib. His hair falling forward as he leans his head down. Letting her grab on to his fingers. Angry red-faced wailing slowing down surprisingly quick to a hiccupy kind of sniveling.
"Yeah, I ain't blaming you for crying. Your father was an ugly sod as well. But don't you worry your little bald head, old Sawyer here will see you right. There are wigs if that hair never grows… an' I'll teach you a trick or two and you'll have all those Jakarta boys eating out of your little hand in no time.
That Southern accent, the one that feels like comfort food. Warms her belly and make her feel. Satisfied. Thinking, it'll be alright. They will be alright.
They change after that. Slowly, hardly noticeable, minute little steps in a new direction. Quieter, calmer, gentler. A restlessness that gives way to acceptance. A metamorphosis from where they were. Fights that don't require days of brooding, can be stilled, can be pacified with a kiss and mumbled apology. The passion that burns slower, steadier. It all changes. The unfamiliar sensation of feeling safe. With him.
Doesn't know when it starts but somewhere along the line, he claims her. The child of the other man.
He'll strut proudly through the narrow alleys of the neighborhood, pass by its dilapidated sheds and shacks, the streets teeming with life, with the little girl on his arm. Will glare at anyone who dares say she looks funny, her hair now fire engine red on top, a tuft of it only, the rest worn off in a stripe around the round skull. Her skin almost translucently white. Will stop to talk to the men at the tobacco kiosk, will grin and noticeably stretch his back as they ask him how old she is.
That peacock swagger, stopping as the grannies sitting on their bench outside their little food-stall coo and chatter, all wanting to pinch the baby's pale cheeks. Smirking at them, an easy happy smile as the old ladies exclaim how incredibly ugly the child is. An odd kind of courtesy, to help them ward off the evil spirits, to make so that no creature will be tempted to snatch her away in the middle of the night because of her beauty. Their superstitious logic, everything too loved, too adored, too desired - will be lost. And somehow, they know this is the truth.
When she starts walking, getting into everything, impossible to lift your eyes off her for two seconds, he scolds her.
"Yeah, your father was the same, getting his nose into everybody's business too."
Always talks of the other man as 'father'. A formality that for her, and perhaps only to her, signifies respect. Bestowing a kind of honor onto the other man.
He says it gently and his patience exceeds hers by far. The way he'll curtly remove the child's hands from whatever business she's trying to get them into. Draws the chubby little fingers down, away only to see them reach straight back again. The cycle repeated a thousand times. Never loosing his patience with her. A tender kind of love that he does his best to hide behind that grouchy exterior.
The glee in thinking up insulting nicknames for her. None of them flattering, making Kate seethe with maternal defensiveness. The tirade of offensive monikers. There is no end to his cruel inventiveness. But she can't do anything about it. Can't help smiling as he calls her to him, watching her wobbly robot-like stumble across the floor. The way he touches her carroty hair when he thinks no one's watching.
And she watches them, no longer with her heart in her throat. No longer wondering when he will leave. Sometimes, he'll catch her eyes across the room. Will flash her a grin above the child's head. A smile that still makes her heat up, still sets her pulse in motion.
A strange kind of peacefulness in their house. In their little shabby home. Everything about it ugly, and they, the two of them; imperfect, ugly, petty, but just like the city; bubbling, fizzing, swarming with life. The strange contradiction of loving your rival's child. The perfect balance of loving someone belonging to another. The perfection of it.
This can be home. This can be beautiful.
…
I normally shy away from stories with babies and pregnancies, A) because they inevitably turn out disgustingly soppy and B) yeah, well I don't really dare to go there. But this, it just had to be in it so I hope it wasn't completely smarmy.
Hope you liked it. Please leave a review if you did.