This is my first and i think only fanfic, sorry if it sucks... This has 2 chapters i think, maybe 3 but i'm not sure.
Ship: Jack/Kate with some Jack/Ana
Genre: Angsty-ish.
Warning: Takes place after The Long Con
Summary: They can't find the way to fix their relationship.
Rating: T because of some language
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost or anything that has to do with it, just borrowing for fun, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Borrowing the title from Dave Matthews Band.
The Space Between
"So this is how a heartbreak feels" she thinks. Tom never broke her heart, she shattered his, that was for sure, but what she felt when he left him, what she feels after his death is quite different from a heartbreak. A sick mixture of love and guilt, a sad feeling of something that was never meant to last.
This is different. So different she's been crying her eyes out for the past hour hidden in the jungle. This isn't her, this isn't her at all, and she ponders the idea that she, in fact, is changing. Maybe a tiger can change its stripes after all. And now again she's playing the scene in her head: following Jack into the jungle, watching every single step so he doesn't hear her, Ana Lucia waiting next to a small waterfall, him taking off his clothes after stripping her down, the kissing, the playing in the water. And she can't take it anymore so she runs, she runs and she falls, and after watching the gash in her arm bleed for what it feels an eternity, she finally breaks down. Now here she sits, all covered in dirt, blood and tears, tired of feeling this way, eyes dried and emptied out.
But then, she hears something, footsteps coming her way, and before she can get up to hide he sees her.
"What happened to you Kate?" He says, kneeling down in front of her grabing her arm examining her wound. "Nothing" she replies, hastily and harsh, moving away from his grasp, so he looks up to her eyes with an expression of not understanding why she's so angry. She wouldn't have answered that way one day ago, before witnessing his encounter with Ana, instead she would have been happy that he again was speaking to her, that he seemed at least a little worried about her - like old times, like before the kiss. Before she ran and escaped to Sawyer, before Sawyer had played them all - played her – and before this past two weeks, when he stopped avoiding her and seemed to be forgiving her.
Before she got her hopes up again. Before she realized her mistake and the fact that she couldn't run away from this feeling anymore, that she didn't want to run anymore.
Now she's hating him for being with that other woman, for leading her on, making her think he had forgiven her, that things were going to be ok between them again. Jack's calling her name and getting exasperated, but she just gets up and turns away. This time he doesn't let her go, but is not a warm treatment she's getting, instead, he just grabs her by her good arm and tells her, with a hint of contempt, that she has to get her arm fixed, that the infection will probably kill her in this island and, wheter she likes it or not, he won't take her childish behaviour and will just get the job done.
She just gives him the most vicious looks he's ever gotten and tells him she'll ask Sun for help, walking away as fast as she can. "She's right", Jack thinks, "Sun can help her too." So he just follows her, for a while that is, until her quick pace is too quick for him to keep. Well, he actually doesn't want to do the effort so after a while, when she's almost out of his sight, he just turns around and heads to the caves, pretty sure the beach is near enough for her to be safe.
The caves are almost empty, most of the survivors off, doing whatever they do to kill the time. He's relieved they won't bother him with some silly question, or worst, that they'll give him that look that tells him they still have in mind his position on the island had been undermined by that fucking redneck.
But then he sees her, waiting for him in the makeshift infirmary, and he feels sick to his stomach, because he can't believe he's this kind of guy, the guy that fucks a girl just for escaping his feelings, his pain. So he turns around, and is pretty sure she saw him leaving the caves, but for the moment he can't deal with her. "How the hell am i going to tell her?"
She flirted with him since the moment they met at that airport bar and he had taken it lightly, it didn't hurt at the moment. And when he re-met her on the island her friendship had helped him cope with his problems with Kate. It felt good to have someone with all her attention on him, it felt good not having to worry if the woman he wanted was going to run to some other man, she was easy to be with, a kind of person so blunt he got that feeling of "what you see is what you get". He felt she had his back from the first moment, and she did, supporting him through his Army idea, helping him search for the gun stash, keeping the secret that they had found the goddamn guns, relocated them and were waiting for the right moment to set the island order again and give Sawyer and Locke a lesson.
She was an ally and he was thankful for that, and that's the reason he couldn't turn her down when she kissed him that afternoon. She had this satisfied look, and he realized Ana Lucia was one of those women who got what she wanted, and she had made clear she wanted Jack from day one. He doubted at first, but Kate's face kept coming to his mind, reminding him he couldn't have her now, that she wasn't the person he thought she was, or maybe she actually was the person he feared she was. So he indulged his self-destructive side and kept this game with Ana. A game that turned way too serious that day and led him to the realization that he didn't wanted to be with her at all.
He had done some fucked up things in his life before, but he never intended of hurting her. He's used to fight his dark instincts all the time and it'd been a while since that part of him came out, but he was always aware how and when that happened, so it surprised him to see that the gray was slowly creeping through his soul, that he was becoming the person his father taught him not to be.
So he braces himself and heads back to the caves, determined to do this before things might get worse. He doesn't have to go all the way back to the caves, he finds Ana in the well-worn path to the beach, and for her look it seems she knows exactly what he's gonna tell her. He tries to apologize but before he can elaborate she cuts him with a "Don't worry, I knew from the beggining how this thing was going to end". He looks at her incredulous and feels like shit, but again she tells him not to worry, she enjoyed what they had and she knows he's one of the good guys, a complicated and totally confused guy, maybe too fucked up for her, and she assures him she knows he never meant to use her. "Not on purpose" she ends, giving him a pat on the shoulder and a rehearsed smile, going back to the beach.
And he's left there, wondering what to do next and actually thanking the universe or whatever for the easy way out he got. He's sorry, of course he is, that's another guilt he'll have to carry now but is not like he wasn't carrying one before, it just changed its form and it's actually less heavy now; he just wonders how is he going to look at her face again without feeling completely ashamed.
Kate's sinking. Sun just finished dressing her arm and she felt the urge to go and do the one thing that made her feel better, even for the slightest moment.
He called her childish, and even if Jack stopped and tried to help her she could feel he didn't wanted to be there with her, "So why for the past two weeks he was behaving like that?" "I guess it was just an act, no, Jack wouldn't do that." And then it hits her, "He wasn't so angry because he was moving on, moving on with Ana". She doesn't understand all the things that are going through her mind, through her heart. One thing she knows is that she should have never let this happen, anything, and while trying to convince herself she regrets having met Jack she sees Ana Lucia come out of the bushes with a strange look on her face... "Defeat" Kate concludes. A small smile creeping through her lips, she hides it inmediately, not because she doesn't want to hurt Ana's feelings but because she doesn't want to expose her own. They glare eachother and it shows the reason they'll never be friends, they want the same man.
