PASCHENDAELE, 1917

The cigarette smoke felt good in her lungs as she inhaled it. The dense grey cloud that swept down her throat blocked out everything around her – the dampness of the air, the sounds of pain and despair, and the metallic tang of blood in her mouth.

All around her, people ran, yelling and shouting for help, passing around bleeding men on carts. She had been helping one of them not too long ago. He hadn't made it.

Everyone was dying, but all she really needed was a smoke. That was how she could pretend it wasn't happening. This was just another problem that she could run away from.

Not that she was a stranger to dying men. Tom, her boyfriend, her fiancée, her friend since childhood – he was gone too, just because she wasn't able to let go. Just because she had to keep running away.

Kate took another drag of the cigarette. She had no idea how she'd ended up here, surrounded by death. Maybe it was because she felt like the soldiers were running too. Everyone who went to war was running from something.

She didn't feel alone anymore. Not when she was surrounded by hundreds of people just as fucked up as she was.

Or maybe it was because this was the only way she could get out of jail time. Yeah, I used to sew drapes. Can you sew people? Sure. So instead of being placed in a cell, she was placed in a camp worse than anything imaginable.

An explosion rocked the ground near them. Thrown off balance, she fell into the canvas of the tent and nearly ripped through it. But the tent was strong and it held. Kate took another calming inhale of smoke.

A nurse came running out of the tent, her eyes wide and frantic. Nurse Austin! Kate couldn't hear her, but she could see her lips moving. The sound of the explosion echoed in her ears.

We need your help! Kate read that simply enough. She tossed down her cigarette and crushed it under her heel. The other nurses had berated her – smoking wasn't ladylike. But war wasn't ladylike either.

She followed the other nurse into the tent. What is it, Juliet? She couldn't even hear her own words as she said them.

Slowly, her sound came back. "There's a man over there who needs you to sew him up," said Juliet frantically. Kate didn't know her last name. She didn't care.

She nodded and straightened her white hat before rushing to the supplies tray. There were needles and thread. Sewing people was a lot different than sewing drapes, but she had adjusted. Now they relied on her quick skill for the sewing cases while they saved men from more drastic injuries.

When she thought about it, she wasn't very useful. But the court didn't need to know that.

The man with the wound in his side was lying on a stretcher, grunting in pain. He looked up when he saw her. Kate nearly dropped her needle.

He looked familiar, with trusting brown eyes and short-cut brown hair. There was hair on his chest, but that hardly mattered when she noticed the blood dripping down his side. The whole scenario felt vaguely familiar, but she brushed it off.

"Hold still," she instructed him. "It won't work if you don't."

He chuckled and laid his head back on the stretcher.

"What's so funny?" she asked him curiously, attaching the thread to the needle and preparing to press it through his skin.

"I'm a doctor," he told her. "I've had to stitch up more people than I can count. I just feel so powerless not being able to help myself."

Even though he was making a joke, there was something about him that told Kate that this man didn't like to be powerless. At all. She pierced his skin with the needle and felt him flinch.

"I said to hold still," she reminded him as she began to stitch him up. "So if you're a doctor, why are you fighting?"

"My dad's a doctor too," he wheezed, as if that explained everything. "I guess I just wanted to do something to make him proud of me. Like fight for our country. Fight for Canada."

Kate looked up and met his gaze. His eyes searched hers solemnly. Was he running away from his old life too? She shrugged. It wasn't any of her business. "Okay."

"I want to prove myself," continued the soldier, forcing out another half-laugh. Kate didn't respond; she just concentrated on finishing her sewing.

"Why are you in the army?" he asked. Kate, finishing the suture, looked up at him and frowned.

"Does it matter to you?" she asked guardedly, stepping back a little from him.

"Everyone has a story, Kate," he said softly, gazing so deeply into her eyes that she felt forced to take a step back. Her heart was racing. Who was this soldier?

"How do you know my name?" she whispered.

The doctor frowned. "It's on your name tag. But if you want to be fair, I'm Jack. Jack Shephard."

"What do you believe in, Jack?" Kate asked, perching herself on the stretcher beside him. It wasn't like Juliet was calling her back to stitch up someone else. "If everyone has a story, why are we all here? Is there a reason for it?"

His eyes grew dark and he looked away. "There's no such thing as a bigger reason or destiny, Kate. We're all here since we chose to be."

"Maybe some of us didn't really get a choice," she said, recalling her own: jail or nurse duty. "Maybe some of us are just trying to run away."

Jack chuckled again. "This is a bad place to run away too," he commented.

Kate was about to agree when Juliet walked over to them. "I have another one here for you, Nurse Austin," she said. "If he's good, you can send him back to the trenches."

"Sure. One moment," said Kate. Juliet nodded and walked off to go help someone else. They probably didn't even have a chance.

"You good to go?" she asked Jack. He nodded and sat up. Though the soldier grunted in pain, he seemed fine and ready to go back to the war.

As he was getting up and about to leave, Kate grabbed his arm. She tingled at the contact and as she turned to him, he looked as though he'd been electrified.

"Will I ever see you again?" she asked, not sure why she cared. Maybe it was just good to find someone else who understood how the world worked.

Jack shook his head. "We're just two people," he whispered in a low voice. "But I wish we were more."

Kate let go of his arm and watched him walk away, head held him. She grabbed her needles and went to stitch the next soldier up.

Her fingers itched for the comforting texture of a cigarette.