04: Sun / Kate

(Set in "Pilot, Part 2")

Sayid and Jack have been arguing all afternoon about the phone device from the plane's cockpit. When Sayid demands to know if anyone has seen Kate, as he wants her opinion on the matter, Sun decides to find Kate herself. She's watched how Kate breaks these impasses; how Sayid listens to her.

Before she sets off, Sun slips on a mask as ornate as any in Korean traditional theater. Her own, though, is both invisible and renders her the same. Safe behind it, she moves like a wandering ghost among the survivors. They think she can't understand them, but they would be shocked to know how many of their secrets she's learned in such a short time. Whenever she passes by, they avert their eyes.

Except for Kate.

Sun has a good idea where to find her. At the end of the beach's curve, a spit of rock juts forth into the ocean and forms a small lagoon. A ring of stones screens the tidal pool from prying eyes, and there Kate stands, gazing out to sea.

There's no sound except for the cries of the gulls and the distant slap of waves further down the beach. Kate twists her long hair into a knot, and Sun wishes she had pins to offer her, or her own hands. When Kate raises her shirt, the strong muscles in her back tense and relax, tighten and loosen again as she bathes her shoulders and arms.

Sun has been in hiding for so long, over months which have stretched into years. She's faded so deeply into nothingness that if she happens to touch her own hand, she sometimes starts at the feel of flesh stretched over bone. Sometimes she stares at herself in the mirror for long minutes, barely recognizing her own face beneath the mask.

She tells herself that this beautiful woman who stands so free in the sun has probably had to run and hide. She can't imagine Kate hating and fearing her own father as Sun does, or keeping secrets from a husband or lover. And Kate has probably never looked at another woman the way Sun gazes at her now, wanting so desperately to run her hands alongside curved hips, or bury her face in fragrant, luxuriant hair.

When a gull shrieks, Kate turns around. The mask slips, and Sun almost speaks to her in English. She catches herself in time to fix her disguise back onto to a face all aflame, and not from the sun.

"Excuse me," she say in Korean. "Sayid has sent me to find you."

Kate's warm half-smile is the only answer Sun needs.