Still Light Follows the Same Rules I Do
By: AliLamba
Thanks to: AB, and Jacks. I couldn't live without either of you. I AM SERIOUS NEVER DIE.
Notes: This is a story that's been rattling around my head for awhile. It's not very…sophisticated, which is maybe why I chose to keep processing the original idea. Actually, the original idea has changed so many times that I have like three alternate timelines here. And no, I don't think this fic works best with Jack and Kate, just like my last fic. But for some reason I still feel like writing them, so there you go.

CHAPTER ONE

There are times when the water feels like slow suffocation. It's those moments when you feel like 100 tons of pressure are pressing against you on every conceivable inch of skin, and liquid is begging to rush past your lips, seep up your nose…anything to fill the empty containers of your lungs and move, move, move, move, move. You never realize how frightening drowning is until you've almost done it once. And then twice.

But most of the time…

Dipping your toes past the cool, serene surface…submerging your head and watching your hair fan around the corners of your eyes…and slipping through the planes of water like you're part of its current…

It feels like breathing.

It feels like fresh air.

Kate is nervous, which is frustrating, because she's never nervous. She's looking everywhere, her eyes darting over every face in one of those vain attempts to recognize your surroundings. One clammy fist contains the schedule she had promised herself not to mess up, so when she looks at it later it will be slightly wet and mostly illegible. But she's holding on to her backpack straps like she wants to blend in, and mostly…she does.

Except for the fact that she wades alone in a sea of blue and red uniforms.

Their plaid, pleated skirts don't hide her old jeans, and their crisp blue blazers make her loose green t-shirt seem stained and faded. What makes it worse is that no one seems to be looking at her, not even the cruel sizing up of the "new girl". No one giggles behind her back, or tries to knock her stuff out of her hands.

The air's mostly cold, mostly wet, and she runs the back of her hand against her nose while she sniffles loudly.

Though she's trying to ignore the feeling, it seems like it's going to be one of those days.

Kate had packed a lunch that morning, but it took her until she was driving down highway I-80 West that she remembered leaving it on the kitchen counter.

"Shit!" she swore, more of frayed nerves than actual frustration.

It took her a few moments to remember that she should never be nervous, and that this was but one of almost twenty 'first days' she'd had in the last seven years. But why did she feel so jumpy? Why couldn't she find a comfortable position, getting distracted by the people standing on the corner or crossing the street?

Kate pulled her fingertips away from her closed lips, and used her free hand to smack the radio on. Forty-year-old country music started sifting through the speakers, and Kate forced the underside of her knuckles to pound out the beat against the steering wheel.

Green light.

Kate furrowed her brow, trying to force the music into her brain. She bobbed her head a little to the music, trying to move her shoulders to the rhythm when the car naturally dipped and curved over San Francisco's imperfect streets. By the time she pulled into the parking lot she had almost convinced her mind it was preoccupied by something harmless.

There were only a few cars filling the small lot (Did no one drive? Maybe no one drives here. Maybe I should be taking the bus), so she took an extra minute to pull out her headphones and portable CD player. The curved plastic was deftly familiar; familiar buttons and shape leading to familiar music.

…There you go.

Finally she felt at ease. Numb was probably a better word. Sam had sworn to her that this time she'd stick, but Kate knew that he couldn't make that promise. It was time to treat Sacred Heart College Preparatory School the same as she had anything else, which would probably last no more than three months.

There were the usual blinders. She kept her chin down, her head full of noise. Familiarity with any school layout led her to the head office, and she was at the front desk before the first song had ended.

She looked up, and saw no one there. Cautiously she pulled the headphones down around her neck, and searched the back wall for a clock. All she seemed to see were the fake spider webs and ceramic cats wearing witch's hats.

Kate heard someone smile.

"First day?"

She hadn't even seen her. To her immediate left was a tall blonde woman in a lab coat. Her hair was dull and natural, and though Kate could only see half of it, she could tell this woman had one of those faces that made a person realize how imperfect their own was. The woman was softly smiling, while scratching a pen over some papers attached to a clipboard. Her body was leaned against the counter, and it was no stretch of the imagination to realize she was the school nurse.

"Uh," Kate stammered, and her voice was hoarse and unused. "Yeah. How could you tell?"

The woman's smile deepened.

"You're forty minutes early, for one."

Kate blanched. Her pale green eyes opened wide, and immediately snapped to the hanging wall clock she hadn't been able to find before.

7:15 it proclaimed, cheering "Go Hearts!" from its frame.

Kate wanted to double-check the room number, but didn't want to be as conspicuous as to pull out her schedule again. She'd been stuck with all the usual classes befitting of a 17-year-old girl: English, pre-calc, American history, chemistry, ethics and culture, French and good ol' physical education. She'd eschewed all the advanced courses, and no one really knew how to predict what she'd be able to handle anyway. In the end she'd decided not to say anything, and let them try and fit her where there was space. If it meant taking general chemistry – again – for the few weeks she was here, that was fine.

A bell rang in the corridors, and Kate threw herself through the doorway and into the classroom. Everyone was talking loudly, ignoring her. But when door accidentally slammed shut behind her, suddenly all eyes were sizing her up.

"Miss Austen," a voice mocked from the front of the room, and Kate now had a face to go with the name Dr. Arzt. "So glad you could be so ethical as to join our class on time."

Sacred Heart was an all-girls school. She'd done only one of those before, when she was twelve-years-old. Sam had picked her up in tears during lunchtime, and she remembered how his military uniform had never been less comforting.

She was trying not to notice, but everyone at Sacred Heart seemed gorgeous. Not in the obvious way, necessarily, but in the way that meant they had the time and gene pool to take care of themselves effectively. As Kate drifted from one class to another, she couldn't help but notice that a few were using designer handbags instead of backpacks.

During lunchtime she wandered the grounds, trying to familiarize herself. They had a basketball court and swimming pool - an indoor swimming pool. Everything seemed done up in dark blue and deep red, though someone or some people had hung construction-paper signs announcing some sort of dance with a school called St. Ignatius. She assumed it was the male-counterpart.

She had to admit that the pool excited her. Swimming had probably been the most consistent thing about her nomadic life. There wasn't much decorating the walls in her new room back home, but there were a few second-place ribbons hidden at the bottom of her jewelry case. She poked around for someone to talk about joining maybe an intramural team, trying to ignore her grumbling stomach.

It wasn't until she was trying to find her last class of the day (she felt like she'd passed by the same hall few times already), that she realized how…completely unfocused the day had been. It felt like she'd been wandering through some sort of fog, and every surface seemed blurry. It wasn't that she felt sick, but rather…there was a sickness in going through the motions yet another time. She'd spent the last six hours dwelling. Dwelling on the fact that all classrooms seemed to stock the same linoleum tiles, and that all school bathrooms needed to involve exposed concrete. Teachers even looked the same; like they'd all picked their wardrobe from the same mail-in catalog.

Kate couldn't imagine a worse choice for last class of the day than chemistry. A subject that demanded attention and concentration was no good when you were already dreaming of freedom.

She probably should've already known that her teacher was the school nurse. Her schedule had only read Burke.

"Welcome back from your laps of luxury!" Ms. Burke cried, amicably. "I trust you all had time to go over the reading while you were hiding from the rain."

"Eff that," someone snorted from the front of the room. "Try Cabo." A few girls giggled.

"Mexico, wow," Kate's teacher drawled, humorlessly. "So I expect you'll have a lot of input on the pop quiz I've decided to entertain you with today."

There were a few groans, giving Kate the impression that the class was generally laid back. It gave her a sense of ease. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, having to repeat the same material she'd spent a few cumulative years on. It was also reassuring to be able to whiz through the quiz on recalled knowledge.

Ms. Burke put on a twenty-minute video while she graded the quizzes, and then spent the rest of the fifty allotted minutes going over their mistakes. When the final bell rang, there were slumped shoulders aplenty, but no one really looked pissed off.

"Miss Austen!" the cool voice called from the front of the room. Kate turned, and saw Ms. Burke motioning towards her. A quick glance around proved that no one cared about the new girl, so Kate proceeded, standing anxiously as her new teacher fished Kate's pop quiz from the stack on her desk.

"So exactly how many times have you taken chemistry, Miss Austen?" The voice was like raw silk, but there was a knot of accusation in her tones, and when Ms. Burke caught Kate's gaze, her eyes were unyielding.

Kate swallowed. The general impression of her teachers that day had seemed more keen on integrating her by ignoring her, and she hadn't had to say much besides "thank you" for the dumped-upon-her syllabi and text books.

"Uh." Her mind tried to catch up with her, tried to tally the number of months she'd been in a chemistry class, the number of extra hours she'd studied to keep up. "Maybe…twice?"

"Have you taken physics, biology? Environmental science?" Kate knew she looked panicked, as she slowly nodded to each one.

Ms. Burke's face turned sad, almost pitying, and she sighed. "I can't say that I think I'd appreciate you being in my class, Miss Austen, and I say that in the kindest possible way. Have none of your other teachers voiced objections?"

No one else's thrown pop quizzes on the first day after a four-day weekend, Kate wanted to say, but she bit her tongue and shook her head.

"I'm going to insist you apply yourself to an advanced science. You'll have to check with the front desk to see what's available."

Being back at the front desk annoyed her, especially when she had to pass her sweaty and crumpled schedule back to the round-cheeked secretary.

"Did you have a good first day?" she asked, her voice sugar sweet. Kate smiled tightly and nodded.

"Ms. Burke called ahead, and I've looked into it for you. Unfortunately, the only thing available is an AP Biology class. I don't mean to sound abrupt, but it's considered by the students to be one the hardest class on offer here."

"Uhm," Kate tried, sensing a pause for her own benefit, in which to decide.

"You know I'm sure it's okay. And if not you'll probably be moving on soon anyway."

As the red-haired secretary went back to her computer, presumably to change Kate's schedule, Kate had the impression that she didn't know how badly her words had stung. She checked the wall clock – Sam wouldn't be home until seven. Her life would be dull and lifeless until then, and even more so after.

"Do you know who does the swimming team here?" she shouted, almost too suddenly. The secretary didn't miss a beat.

"I'm assuming you mean the student coach? And you know her already. Talk to Ms. Burke any time and I'm sure she could find some room for you."

Kate felt a little empowered. On a whim she transferred to an AP history class as well.

As Kate leapt into the front seat of her truck, she was distracted by the sounds of giggling girls by the corner. Through the windshield she squinted to get a better look. Four girls were huddled together amidst a small group of guys, and they were striking for the fact that they could have all been Abercrombie models. They were tall, most of them, and lean, the blondes with that sort of tint they tried to sell you as from California sunshine. They looked…flawlessly casual.

When she hit the ignition and reversed, she didn't see the biker who was trying to escape the same parking lot.

The brakes squealed beneath the hood.

Kate's breath stopped in her chest, her heart beating a million times in the middle of her throat. Not a second had passed.

There was the unmistakable smack of a hand hitting the side of her truck. The cyclist was pissed, but fine, and proved this by peddling ahead of her, ignoring her completely as he turned onto the busy San Francisco street.

It took her a moment to regain her composure.

"So how was your first day?" Sam drawled, an arm casually draped over the refrigerator door, perusing the four items on the shelves inside.

"Well," Kate started, "I don't have a set schedule, I almost ran over a guy on a bike, and as yet I have no friends."

Sam didn't say anything. Kate had been hoping for a laugh, and the silence was so much worse. There was a dig of despair when he didn't step away from the fridge, but kept it open, avoiding her eye contact.

"Dad…"

He didn't look up.

"Dad…how long are we going to be staying here?" The question lacked confidence, and came out as a whisper. He didn't look up. He didn't look away from the fridge. And she knew that that was bad.

Claire was dancing around her room in her underwear. This was her favorite song. It was loud and obnoxious and fucking angry as hell.

A brrrring! came from her computer, and she plopped into the chair to read her new message.

"Agggh," she groaned, reading what Bassman97s had to say.

Will you listen to my song now?

Her fingers angrily punched the keys.

"Hey loser," she said out loud. "Don't think I don't remember who you are. And you're starting to REALLY piss me off. How many times – no really! How many – must I say that I will NOT go out with you, ever."

She slammed her computer shut and reached for the flask sitting next to her laptop, swallowing three gulps of her father's expensive Scotch. There was a knock at the door.

"Claire honey?"

"WHAT. MOM." she yelled, flinging herself on her bed, monotone black hair fanning out around her. The door creaked open.

"I was just letting you know that we're going to bed. Don't forget to turn off your music tonight, okay honey? I love you."

Claire was silent as her mother paused in the door, then retreated. Claire rolled over and grabbed the remote control, cranking up the volume of her obnoxious ballad.

Life was such shit.