Kate landed at the Falcolo airport just after the sun rose. It sent a pale gleam over the morning and the feeling of it washed through her. Kate was resolved, confident in what she was about to do. She was good at beginnings and here she was ironically, at the beginning of going back.
This wasn't the first time she had done this. Before she had gone for Claire, and ultimately for Aaron, even though that seemed to be such a difficult, tangled, back handed way of helping her little boy. Not hers, not hers, she had to remind herself over and over again, because that was the reality now. Aaron was Claire's little boy, it was a thing that had been broken with Claire's disappearance and Aaron and Kate's sudden and nearly accidental departure from the island. It was a thing that was now fixed, the cracks and fissures would take time to heal and they would leave a scar but the repair remained.. Claire was back, Claire was a mother again. Kate was not. It was hard to get her mind around those facts, no, not her mind. It was hard to get her heart around them. Kate was determined to do so. She would relinquish Aaron to Claire, it was right but it was hard like most right things.
The last time she had come back, it hadn't just been for Aaron, it hadn't just been for Claire, Kate knew deep down that it had been for Jack. With her landing in Samoa, Kate was able to draw back the bar on the door that had kept her from thinking of him. She could release her thoughts because now she was going back for him. She always went back for him.
She remembered the night she went to him. When she left Aaron with Carol, her body brought her to Jack's. It wasn't as if there was a decision involved, it was the only thing. It was an instinctual migration, as biological as a bird in a southward flight before winter. When someone is in pain, they want to go home. Kate went home and home was Jack. She remembered lying upon his bed and letting the comfort of his scent surround her. She wept at the loss of Aaron, she knew even then that he was irretrievable.
Then she heard his footsteps as he made his way through his darkened apartment. As he neared the bedroom his footsteps became softened. It was as if he knew that his approach to her had to be tentative, gradual, the way you approach any animal in pain. Then she heard her name. "Kate." She had waited so long to hear him say it again; it was what she came here for. At the sound of her name on his lips, she felt somehow solidified, more real, like she mattered. She couldn't tell Jack what had happened; if she did, it would be her undoing. If she told him about Aaron, her loss would be made as real as Jack made her by just uttering her name. Aaron's departure would enter the world of solid things and for Kate it needed to stay back in the shadows, a realm where hope could exist. The only place for hope of reunion with Aaron was in the darkness, not in the light of day. Reality was a rock hard thing, it shone bright and brittle and allowed for no false hope, it made room for responsibility, duty and certainty. Reality and the light of day is where Jack always led her. He was the solid ground and she needed it under her feet right then,
Kate had real difficulty processing her feelings for Jack. They weren't anything that she was familiar with; she had never known that kind of need. She had not experienced the need for the presence of another person, the pressing desire she felt with every thought of him. When Jack said her name in the darkened room her need became overwhelming. She responded to it by reeling forward and opening her mouth to his. His lips were so soft and her need was so great. She kissed him fiercely and his response was immediate. He had needed her too. There was no time for words, or even for small gestures of tenderness. Their bodies breached the chasm of all the misunderstandings between them. The breach had been long, it was formed of jealousy and stubbornness and pride, cross purposes and fear. But that night they flew across that divide as they consummated their love.
What was Jack doing now, what was he thinking, feeling? Was he alive? She knew that he had to be, he couldn't…..Kate would not finish that sentence. She let the thought of Jack in with a great rush. It was as if a building fully intact, the façade that contained her thoughts, burned and collapsed with the flick of a tiny match. With this return to the island, her mind bent to single thought, to a single syllable. Jack.