The real ending of Bedside Manners should be up in a couple of days, but in the mean time, here is the first chapter of my new fic. I wrote it before I saw the new trailer, so the similarities between Kate's exchanges with Aaron are completely coincedental and therefore not spoilers. Just a disclaimer. ;)
Since there's so much going on in the show mythology-wise at the moment, and no way of guessing what the writers have planned, I'm not even going to try to address all of it, just a few things that I thought would be fun: specifically Kate's dream and Jack's vision and what they could mean... ;)
Chapter 1.
"Give me back my son!" Kate cried, brandishing the sleek 9mm pistol that she kept hidden in the back of her closest.
She had flung open the door to the nursery, like she did every night now, to find the same ghostly form hovering at Aaron's bedside, but this time, her fear was for the tiny blue bundle cradled in her arms.
"Your son?" Claire repeated, tearing her eyes from the baby, her tone dripping with a kind of malice that Kate couldn't reconcile with the young mother that she'd known on the island. "What makes you think that he's yours?"
"I was the one who carried him, who nurtured him with my body. He came from me," she insisted through gritted teeth as a fierce wave of maternal possessiveness swept through her, not realising what she'd said until it was too late.
The corners of Claire's lips twisted into a cruel smile. "But that doesn't matter, does it, Kate? Not to you."
The baby began to wail then, flailing his miniature fists free of the blanket, and glancing from him to her adopted son, asleep in his bed, searching for an answer that wouldn't sound like a choice, she felt like she was being split in two.
She loved Aaron, more than she'd ever thought possible, but this was different, this was her son…
"You don't get to keep both of them," Claire reminded her, sensing her helplessness as she stood there, tongue-tied, her gun hand trembling, unable to take action with her child still between them.
Claire shifted her attention back to the baby. "Shh, Mummy's here now," she whispered, gazing down at him with a loving smile as she lifted a hand to stroke his cheek.
"It's too bad. He really is beautiful. He looks just like his father," she said, turning away from her, her smile devoid of any warmth, growing fainter around the edges until Kate could see the outline of the window where her heart should have been.
"No!" she screamed, lunging for the baby as he began to fade along with her, the gun clattering to the carpet at her feet. "Come back! NO!"
She woke with a start, jerking upright, her hands flying to the slight bump protruding above the waistband of her pyjamas, relieved when she felt the familiar stirring low in her belly.
"Hey," she murmured, glancing down at it with a watery smile, brushing the tears from her eyes with the heel of her palm as an anguished sob escaped her lips.
It wasn't the first time that she'd had that particular dream, but it was getting worse. She didn't know how much longer she would be able to handle it, especially now that Aaron's birth mother – the woman that she'd once considered a friend – was doing more than taunt her.
She wanted something, and Kate was pretty sure that she knew what.
Just then, she heard movement down the hall; throwing back the covers, she scrambled to her feet, her heart pounding as she raced to Aaron's room, just like she had in her dream.
When she opened the door, she expected to see Claire sitting there, waiting for her, like always, but he was alone, still tucked up where she'd left him, playing with the stuffed killer whale that Jack had given him the first time that he came to visit.
"Hi, bud," she greeted him, forcing herself to sound normal now that she knew that he was safe. There was no sense is scaring him too. "You ready to get up?"
"Uh huh," he agreed, following her with his eyes as she moved over to open the curtains, to let the daylight in… and the nightmare out.
"Let's get you dressed, okay?" she told him, taking a t-shirt and a pair of shorts out of the dresser and sitting down on the edge of his mattress with him.
He stood up for her, gripping her shoulders as she tugged his pants off and set them aside, leaving him in his pull ups, and seeing how helpless he was, how much he trusted her to take care of him, she felt fresh tears slide down her cheeks.
He had no idea what she was about to do to him, what she was already doing to him.
"Why you crying, Mommy?" he asked, wiping them away with his little fingers.
She couldn't tell him the truth, even if she'd wanted to. It was all so far beyond his two and a half year old understanding. "M… Mommy's just sad because you're getting so big," she lied, choking on the word, not sure that she still deserved to call herself his mother.
He didn't seem to notice as he wrapped his pudgy arms around her neck, hugging her in the way that always melted her heart. "I won't get any bigger, I promise," he insisted, pulling back with a sweet smile, and she nodded, swallowing hard as she forced a smile in return, not trusting herself to speak.
She helped him change his shirt while he fidgeted, chattering about what he wanted for breakfast, but beyond his original thought of Cheerios, she didn't try to keep up, her mind still on the dream.
Even when she was awake, she could still feel Claire's presence all around them, casting a black cloud over her once peaceful life.
Sometimes she wondered if Aaron could feel it too, if she came to him in the once place that she couldn't protect him.
"Is Ronnie coming over to play with me?" he asked when Kate released him, picking the toy back up. He'd chosen the nickname himself, back when he was too small to get his mouth around 'Veronica', and somehow it had stuck.
He was so attached; she contemplated stopping by the nanny's place on the way to the airport so that they could say goodbye, but he wouldn't understand what was happening, and neither would she.
"No, it's just you and me today, sweetpea," she told him. "We're gonna go on a little vacation."
He eyed her with an uncertain look, clutching the whale tighter so that he was almost hidden behind it, and for a moment, she considered calling the whole thing off. He was happy here, in his own environment, where he felt safe. How could she even be thinking of taking him out of it? Of taking him back there, where anything could happen?
"Can Jack come too?" he checked, peeking out at her, and she cringed, like she always did, when she heard his name.
Of course he would be there. It was his idea to make the journey in the first place.
She'd tried to get him to stop calling the toy that after he'd walked out on them, when it had stopped being cute and become a daily knife in the heart, but by then it was too late for him to change it.
"Of course he can," she assured him, scruffing his hair to cover her misery. "You can bring whoever you want." She wasn't sure how she was going to fit it all into their suitcase, which was standing packed and ready to go next to her closet, but she figured that she owed him that much.
"Okay," he agreed with a serious nod, as though that was all he needed to hear.
She watched him select the whale, a koala and an emu, arranging them in a pile with a handful of action figures, crayons and two of his favourite storybooks, wishing that she hadn't felt guilty enough to buy him all of those Australian animals.
She hated them now.
She hated the whole Godforsaken country, which was ironic considering where they were headed.
When he was finished, she put them into his backpack for him and dragged their luggage downstairs so that it would be there when their cab arrived.
They had everything that they needed, but as he shovelled the last of his cereal into his mouth, she couldn't suppress the urge to slip back up to her room.
It was still there, buried at the bottom of the drawer, where she'd tried to forget its existence; she dug around under the old pictures and artwork that Aaron had made for her, until her fingers closed over the small, velvet box, taking it out and staring at it for a long moment before she could bring herself to open it.
Out on the street, a horn blasted.
There was no longer any reason for her to wear it, but she couldn't leave it behind, not when she might not be back; unclasping the chain around her neck, she slipped it on, tucking it inside her shirt as she went down to meet their ride.
"Mommy? Are we gonna go on a plane?" Aaron asked, tugging on her sleeve when their cab pulled up in front of the airport.
"Yeah, baby," she agreed, giving him a distracted smile as she pulled out a couple of bills. "Won't that be fun?"
She paid the driver and collected their luggage, ushering him into the terminal for check in.
He kept talking as they sat in the lounge, watching the planes take off through the window, but she couldn't listen, his innocent excitement filling her with self-loathing, because Claire was right: she'd made her choice, and it wasn't him.
She'd held out for as long as she could, but in the end, she wasn't strong enough.
More than anything, she just wanted it to be over – for the nightmares to stop – and this was the only way that she could think of.
To protect one child, she was going to have to give up the other.
He was okay for the first hour after the boarded the plane, amusing himself with the things that he'd brought in his backpack, and the cartoons that she put on for him, but then he began to get restless, bouncing around the cabin. Every so often she would have to get up out of her own seat to chase him before he wandered off into first class, or somewhere else that he wasn't supposed to be, apologising profusely to the flight attendants as she steered him back into their row.
She was exhausted herself, so it was a relief when he finally wore himself out. Seven hours into the flight and he was asleep with his head in her lap, drifting in and out through the night until they landed in Sydney.
It hadn't been an easy decision for her to go there, despite Jack's insistence, and more often than not, she wondered if she was doing the right thing by bringing Aaron along.
After months of her hanging up on him whenever he asked her, Jack still didn't seem to understand why she'd changed her mind.
Next chapter: Kate and Aaron meet up with Ben and the rest of the Oceanic 6, including Jack... ;)