Lost belongs to JJ Abrams and crew. I'm just borrowing for some non-profit fun. After Sawyer and the others return to the island, he finds Kate has finally chosen Jack. Post Exodus II. (The events that lead up to previously posted stories –Incarceration, Interim, Ineffable) Enjoy!
Lost – Infected
By Mystic
July 2005
Jack took a shot.
Kate smiled for them in the courtroom, giving them a little wave. The lawyers did their thing and an old tape was played and Kate told her story. He'd never heard it from beginning to end. He'd only heard snippets. Her father hurt her. Her father taught her. Her father scarred her. Her father loved her. Her father fucked her. Kate told him what he needed to know, only what he needed to know. Then she told him what she needed to do.
She held it together during their visits as best she could. He watched her lose weight. He watched her lose hope. Jack watched her lose blood and words and hate. She lost everything except him because he loved her and she knew it. He made sure she knew it. He'd watched her with her children. Watched her kiss Maggie. Watched her cuddle Jamie. Watched the little boy he loved so much that wasn't his with the woman who'd pushed the pain of his conception to the farthest reaches of her head.
They played a tape. It was old and still had dirt and sweat covering its case and she cried. Jack heard Tom's voice for the first time. Kate told him about Tom a long time ago. Before the island, he was the only man she ever loved. Jack listened intently and he heard Kate.
"You're always running, Katie."
"You know why," she'd responded.
Jack listened to two children talk big dreams and then they stopped the tape and Kate sniffled loudly. She asked them to play some more. Kate talked about wanting to kill her father at the age of eleven and they cried together. The tape crackled and switched to a song. Something Jack didn't think he'd ever heard before. Something from Kate's childhood. She smiled through a memory.
Jack took a shot.
He'd left them alone in the hotel room. Shannon had gone back to her new life with Hurley – she didn't owe him anything. Maggie was big enough to take care of her brother, she'd done it several times before. She knew how to change his diaper and mix his formula and sing him lullubies that she'd learned as an infant. Maggie knew how to pick his clothes and put them on carefully. She was a smart girl.
Jack knew it was wrong, but his body ached without Kate. The young man behind the counter filled another glass as Jack put out his credit card. He'd had to have them reinstated once they figured out he wasn't dead. It meant getting his job back. He wasn't sure he could do it, but he performed his first surgery just two hours before. His hands had touched so much blood on the island and so many had died that he shook when it was over. Jack never thought he'd be afraid of surgery, but he gripped the sink and sobbed, watching his fingers turn white against the steel basin.
Maggie told him she was proud of him. He wondered if she knew what she was saying. She'd heard the words from her mother, but could a five year old comprehend pride? Jack held the shot glass in his hand and looked at the brown liquid. He wanted to wash it all away. Jack wanted to forget he had Kate, forget Maggie and James and forget the island. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Slamming the glass down, he pulled back his card and placed a twenty on the table, nodding to the young man.
Jack took a shot at something different.