Maybe they aren't supposed to be together.
She'd certainly heard it enough, growing up, from mother and father both: sometimes, no matter how much two people love each other, they can't have a life together. In the instant she saw him look at Kate, she thought she finally understood what they meant.
He would stay. She knew. He would stay with her. But she didn't want to be his second choice, the woman he settled for after the one that got away. She didn't want to fool herself that it was love if it was really just a misplaced sense of decency. She didn't want to be there to see his face the first morning he woke with regret in his eyes. She didn't want to be the one on the other side of that long-ago conversation, explaining to their kids why mommy and daddy couldn't live in the same house anymore.
If Jack was right, if they could stop the incident, forestall everything that had led to the construction of the Swan as a safety valve, keep that plane from crashing—she had to give James his chance. His chance to live a life without regrets. She would never meet him, but you could never lose what you never had. And besides, neither of them would know what they had missed.
They all stood around the shaft, their cringing near reverential, and.... No explosion. She felt a strange relief, even as the electromagnetic surge began pulling every metal object in sight.
In the seconds just before the chain wrapped itself around her waist, she remembered her childhood response to her parents. She hadn't wanted to understand. She hadn't wanted to understand how two people who chose to make a promise couldn't choose to keep it.
It didn't matter who James looked at. He had made his choice.
As she felt herself nearly torn in two by the force pulling the chain downwards, she looked into his eyes and saw that he would choose death over letting her go. So she let go for him, expecting that his anguish would be the last thing she ever heard. The thought flashed across her mind that she wasn't the one who had needed to be worried about losing him, that if things had gone according to plan it would have been he who was spared the pain of surviving a separation.
She comes to her senses at the bottom of the shaft, in agony greater than she would have ever dreamed possible; sees the bomb, lying there within reach; and suddenly believes all of that talk about destiny. Maybe this is what she was meant to do. With James' heartbroken eyes before her, she smashes the stone against the bomb casing with everything she has.
Maybe they aren't supposed to be together. But maybe, just maybe, this incident is a variable, and they are a constant.
She hopes to see him on the other side.
