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Chapter 20.
A smile that was part joy, part relief broke over Christian's features as he shifted Claire's head from his lap and climbed off the cot.
"I never thought I'd see you again," he told Jack, rushing towards him, holding him at arm's length for a moment to look at him before pulling him into the warmest embrace that he'd ever received from him. "Your or your mother."
"How is this even possible?" Jack asked, struggling to regain control of his emotions as he released him. His clothes weren't the same ones that he'd buried him in, but somehow he knew that this was his father: alive and unafflicted by whatever had cut his life short in Australia. "I went to the morgue – I saw your body." It was the second time that he'd seen a corpse rise from the dead since returning to the island and part of him still questioned his sanity.
"I don't know," his father agreed. "The last thing I remember is being in a bar in Sydney, then I woke up here, in this cabin."
Jack was still trying to make sense of his father's story when Claire – a picture of innocence now compared to the monster that had haunted Kate's dreams – stirred, blinking her brilliant blue eyes at them with a drowsy expression that reminded him of Aaron after his nap. "Jack?"
She started upright as his presence seemed to trigger a memory that lay dormant in the back of her mind. "Oh my God – Aaron!" she cried, an edge of hysteria in her tone as she confessed, "I left him in the jungle."
She didn't seem to have any idea how much time had passed since that night, looking like she might burst into tears as the magnitude of what she'd done began to sink in. "We have to find him!" she insisted, scrambling to her feet.
"It's okay, Claire – he's safe," Jack assured her, deciding against burdening her with this information just yet. He wanted her – and Kate – as far away as possible before she melted down. "He's with Sawyer, on the boat."
She relaxed on receiving confirmation that her actions hadn't caused any lasting damage, even giving Jack a tiny, grateful smile, and he couldn't help feeling guilty for keeping the truth from her, but now was definitely not the time to get into it.
"You two know each other?" his father – their father – asked, looking wary and more than a little incredulous as he watched this exchange.
"We were on the same plane," Jack agreed. He shot him a meaningful look so that he would know the significance hadn't been lost on him. "How's that for a coincidence?"
Claire's brows knitted together in confusion, still waking up, as she glanced from one to the other. "What's going on?" she insisted, fixing their father with an expectant frown as she waited for someone to give her an explanation. "Dad?"
While he'd had almost three years to get used to the idea, it still rattled Jack to hear someone else – especially her – call him that.
Their father let out an almost imperceptible sigh. "Jack is my son – the one I told you about," he confessed.
Claire's eyes widened in astonishment as she turned to stare at him like she hadn't seen him hundreds of times before. "You're that Jack?" she repeated. A dark shadow passed over her features, as though she couldn't decide whether she wanted to be happy at being reintroduced to her brother, or resentful of the man who had stolen her father away from her.
He wasn't sure how to react to her either; Jacob saved him from having to come up with a response when he appeared in the doorway behind them. "I hate to break up this touching family reunion," he said in a voice that oozed insincerity, ignoring the others as he spoke directly to Jack, "but it's time you and I got started."
It was the moment that he'd been dreading, the moment when he stopped being Jack Shephard and became… something else. He nodded, swallowing hard. "Can I have a minute?"
He could see that Jacob wasn't happy about it, but he relented, though his expression remained unmoved. "If that's what you need to put them behind you," he agreed.
Jack wasn't about to give him the chance to change his mind; leaving his father and Claire, he headed back into the other room where Kate had composed herself, and was wearing a path in the floorboards while she waited to for someone to fill her in on what was happening.
"Hey," he said, not sure where to begin as he walked over to her.
She stopped at the sound of his voice, and when she turned to look at him, her eyes were red and swollen, doing nothing to mask the pain bubbling beneath the surface. "Don't do this," she pleaded.
It broke his heart to know that despite all of his promises – to her, and himself – he was doing exactly what he'd sworn never to do again.
He was hurting her, and this time, he wouldn't be able to fix it.
"I have to," he told her, letting his palm fall against her belly in the way that had become almost second nature to him over the past few days. The baby gave a slight jolt and was still again, and with a pang, he wondered if he would ever get to experience a full-blown kick. How could he ache this much for someone that he'd never met? Someone whose existence he hadn't even been aware of a week ago? "I can't let you die."
She glanced down at his hand, her jaw trembling as she whispered, "I can't do this alone."
He tilted her chin up with his thumb to get her to look at him. "You've done it before," he reminded her. "And you won't be alone this time – you'll have Sawyer, and Juliet… and Claire."
She shook her head. "I don't want to," she insisted, squeezing her eyes shut as her expression crumpled. "Not without you."
"This isn't forever," he told her, his own voice wobbling as he tried to sound confident of this fact. "As soon as I can, I'll find you."
Her mouth moved, but she couldn't speak, so he pulled her into his arms and she clung to him with such force that he could feel the curve of her belly pushing into his.
He kissed her hair, resting his cheek against it, struggling to hold back his own tears as she sobbed into his shoulder. "Take care of him, okay?" he murmured, cupping her face in his hands and placing a lingering kiss against her lips as he added, "I love you."
He forced himself to let go of her, drinking her in one last time: the soft waves of her hair – hair that he'd spent countless hours running his fingers through while they lay on the couch or in bed – the adorable way her nose turned up at the end, the exact shade of her eyes… before turning to see if the others were ready.
At some point during their goodbye, his father and Claire had come out to join them. "It was good to see you again, Dad," he told him, putting on a brave face as he held out his hand.
His father looked surprised as he accepted; he didn't shake it, letting it hang limply with his in the space between them as he asked, "You're not leaving with us?"
"Jack and I have an arrangement," Jacob announced, coming over to them, and Jack's stomach clenched with apprehension as he realised that his time was up. He wasn't going to wait any longer. "He works for me now."
His father's expression was unreadable as he shifted his piercing blue eyes from Jacob, back to Jack, staring at him for so long that it made him uncomfortable.
"There's something you ought to know about my son, because you seem to have gotten the wrong impression about him," he said finally, tearing them from Jack so that he could give Jacob his full attention. "He's not the man you think he is – in fact, from the day he was born, Jack has been nothing but a source of constant disappointment to me."
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Kate tense with indignation on his behalf, but as the smile slid from his face, he couldn't bring himself to feel anything but a kind of sickening resignation at hearing his deepest fear voiced aloud.
As far as his father was concerned, he was a failure: as a son, as a doctor, and as a man; this knowledge alone was enough to cripple him, but he wasn't about to leave it there.
"I tried to raise him to be strong," his father continued, and if his mind wasn't reeling, Jack would have demanded to know what he was doing, making Jacob doubt him like this, "but he is sloppy and emotional and incapable of making the kind of hard decisions that men like you and I understand are for the greater good. He will fight you at every turn, and, if you give him the chance, he will betray you, like he betrayed me."
So that was it. He still hadn't forgive him.
"He betrayed you?" Jacob repeated, studying Jack with a frown that told him he still wasn't convinced.
"I made a mistake and he crucified me for it," his father confirmed, twisting the knife deeper still, and Jack flinched at how callous it sounded, like it had been easy for him to rat him out to the board, knowing that it would come at such a high personal cost. Their relationship had never been the same after that, but he thought now that his father's "death" had put things it into perspective, he might at least be able to let all that go. "Because of him, I will never work as a surgeon again. He took everything from me – my reputation, my career, and eventually, even my life."
He glanced over at Jack, and Jack shuddered at how withering his expression had become, staring down at the floorboards to avoid making eye contact with him.
Until that moment, he'd never really believed that his father could actually hate him.
"Now tell me, are those really the kind of hands you want to put your empire into?" he finished, disgust evident in his tone, and Jack couldn't have felt worse than if he'd sucker punched him: in fact, he would have preferred it.
He couldn't look at Kate, or Claire, afraid of seeing their confusion, and discovering that some small part of them had begun to question their choice of leader too. He hadn't been able to handle it, had he? Kate knew that better than anyone, because she was there when it all fell apart.
Jacob cocked his head to the side as he considered this. "No, I guess not," he agreed. "So what do you suggest?"
When Jack snuck a glanced at his father, he thought he saw a hint of a smile, but it was gone the moment it appeared, and he wondered if he'd imagined it. "My life back home is ruined, but here… I can start over, be anybody I want to be," he said. "Let me take his place and you'll see that you made the right choice."
Throughout Jack's life, his father had made it clear that no matter what he achieved, he'd done it first, and better, so he wasn't at all surprised that he would nominate himself as his replacement. Why send a boy to do a man's job? That had always been his motto.
"Okay," Jacob conceded with a vigorous nod, as though realising the wisdom behind this proposition.
This time when he spoke to Jack, it was without any of the respect of their previous conversation. "As for you, you're free to go – now get out before I change my mind."
Next chapter: Jack reminds Jacob of his promise to fix Kate, and he, Kate and Claire begin the trek back to the beach...