Summary: Jack had been starting to think about his future and what was in store with his life with Kate, but on one day he was spiraled headfirst into the present. Jack/Kate set post-Exodus. Part one of the Back to Reality series.
Disclaimer: all people, places, and things you recognize don't belong to me. I wish they did, but I don't want crazed copyright people coming after me. Credit instead goes to those geniuses down at ABC, Damon and JJ. Credit for the song used belongs to Howie Day, and it's called "End of our Days."
Author's note: The spoilers for this story are up to Do No Harm. The same as These Final Hours. Aaron's name will remain Evan, the whole thing with the raft/Walt/the Others/Sawyer being shot never happened in TFH- a huge storm destroyed the raft, killing Jin. Rose is dead as well. Spoilers for Season 2, mainly Ana Lucia and the tail section of the plane and the coming female death are not in this story as well. My sincere apologies to Shiggity Shwa, for things in this fic may seem slightly similar to certain parts of Pangs of Guilt. I tried not to copy her amazing story, and I hope I didn't.
Author's note 2: This story is the first part in what will be known as the Back to Reality series. TFH is the third part, and I've still got to write the second and fourth.
Rating for mature situations and dialogue.
There's No Escape
Here, where they can't find usI dare them to call me out
Or tell you
We met here on purpose
I bet they can't wait to wake us up
Jack had been on the receiving end of plenty of bad news in his life; so much that it seemed to be a normal occurrence for him. Sarah and the legal battle that was their divorce, his father dying alone in Australia, the plane crash, Boone, Jin… the list went on.
He tried to ignore it, oh yes he did, but sometimes the news got to him. It took control of him, refusing to let go until he had to learn to cope with it and move on.
There was the night that started it all, Jack recollected. The night that started the worst news he had yet to be on the receiving end of.
It had been a quiet night, the one that changed it all; a seldom occasion in the chaos of island life. They had "celebrated" their one-year anniversary of the crash of Oceanic flight 815 only weeks before. Locke kneeled fireside, engaged in a fierce backgammon game with Walt. Sawyer sat alone outside his tent, revisiting A Wrinkle in Time for the umpteenth time. Hurley managed to find a 24-pack of batteries for his CD player within the wreckage, and listened to his beloved music every night before he went to bed. Tokeep some vestige of life off the island, dude, he told Jack one night. Sayid and Shannon cuddled next to the fire at the beach, his arms enveloping her burgeoning belly. Claire rocked her son Evan to sleep, Charlie singing 'Catch a Falling Star' and strumming on his guitar by her side.
Kate and Jack had withdrawn themselves, as they did many nights. The tarp was drawn across the opening of their cave, an unspoken indication that they desired some privacy.
Jack rolled off Kate, still drenched with sweat. He crushed his mouth against hers, still lost in her. Tongues mingling, they slid back to their previous position. Kate screamed Jack's name in ecstasy as he re-entered her. As they broke apart awhile later, Kate buried her face into his chest. "Do you think this is right, Jack? Should we still be doing this?" she whispered.
"Of course this is right," he answered, stroking her hair. "I love you, and you love me. I know that we ran out of condoms awhile ago, and that the possibility of you becoming pregnant is quite high, but this is us, and this is right."
"It's just that I don't think I'm fit to be a mother. I look at how Claire is with Evan, how she takes such good care of him, and I think that I'm not going to be able to be like that. Especially if we get off of the island; I'll most likely have to go to prison. I can't have my child being raised without a mother, without someone to run to if they've got a cut or just need to talk. I know that you'd be there, or whoever the father is, but it wouldn't be the same. I'd need to be there, too. I'm afraid that I won't be able to do that."
"Don't worry, hon. We'll be fine. Don't think of the future and whatever it holds, just focus on now and what we have together."
As Jack looked back on this conversation two weeks later, he had to laugh.
He had been woken up by Kate dashing out of the cave to throw up whatever she had in her stomach for the last three mornings. Come time for dinner, she suddenly developed an inexplicable craving for sauerkraut and brownie sundaes. He couldn't perform a proper exam on her, not with the limited supplies they had on the island, but she had the telltale signs of a pregnancy.
Ah, what a card the fates had dealt them.
Make a point and ignore themCome on let's wait this out
They'll find out
We never stop turning
And sometimes it's tough
To change direction
The first months of the pregnancy flew by relatively uneventful. Jack made sure that Kate wasn't too active, and told her she had to stay in the shade as much as possible. Seeing as there wasn't much to do while pregnant on an island in the middle of the Pacific, she and Shannon gathered laundry together, and went off to a secluded cove (near the forest, of course. You never know when a pregnant women's going to have to do her business) to wash them.
Claire got wrangled in one day when Evan was particularly energetic and had gotten away from her. She chased him down the beach, until she came across her son giggling in Shannon's arms. From that point on it was the two pregnant women and the mother, her son allowed to go as far as they could see.
It soon became their daily routine. While laundering the clothes of themselves and their men, they shared what Shannon liked to call 'hot island gossip.' Kate and Claire found out the 'juiciest' rumors from the beach, one of which was that Steve was supposedly shacking up with another one of the survivors. There wasn't really anything that interesting at the caves, and therefore she and Claire had to resort to telling Shannon tidbits of their pre-island lives.
Kate learned that Shannon was a closet Trekkie. It seemed that her father took her to a convention with him when she was nine, and from that point on she was hooked. When her father died, Shannon said, she kept up their tradition, and went to the same convention every year. Claire, Kate was shocked to learn, had once attempted to dye her hair bright green, just to see what it would look like. It had ended up turning her hair a color close to mud, and it took a month to wash out.
Kate, of course, reported all of this to Jack at the end of the day. A few laughs once in awhile couldn't hurt, right?
Sun was invited to join them, but she politely turned down their offer. She and Jin had tried innumerable times to conceive once their love was rekindled, but they never succeeded in doing so. Whenever she saw the mothers-to-be, Kate told Jack one day, she remembered Jin, and that he was gone forever, the only one that didn't come home from the fated raft. A fierce storm destroyed the raft, and he was the only one that didn't survive the swim back to shore.
The group of three soon became fed up with their monotonous days of clothes washing. Kate asked Jack if he'd let her and Claire venture out into the woods a few feet to gather fruit. Jack eventually agreed, on account of a lot of nagging from Kate, but only on the condition that they were extremely careful. Shannon ultimately declined, offering to stay behind and keep an eye on Evan "so we can at least get some of this friggin' laundry done." Jack knew that the real reason she stayed back was that Sayid had ordered her to rest. She was about 6 months pregnant at the time, and they couldn't risk anything.
It was just any normal day, Jack remembered. Kate was about 10 weeks pregnant, her stomach starting to protrude slightly. They had decided to keep the pregnancy a secret from many of the survivors until it was necessary. When Kate protested, saying that they should be able to join in on their bliss, Jack countered by saying that he didn't want chaos when she went into labor.
Jack had the baby on his mind that day, he recalled. He wondered what it would be like to hold his own child, his flesh and blood, that he had a hand in creating. He thought about the expression on Kate's face when she was able to hold their child for the first time.
But on that day, Jack had to stop fantasizing about the future, and was spiraled headfirst into the present.
I know it's a little bit strangeIt's all a little bit strange
Charlie suddenly came busting through the tarp of the 'hospital cave.' "Jack, Hurry! You've got to come quick!" Jack whipped around. "What's wrong?" he inquired as he hurried to gather his 'doctor's bag.'
"Something happened to Kate," Charlie panted. "Claire just showed up with Kate unconscious in her arms. She told me to go get you."
"Where are they?" Jack demanded, his heart thumping out of his chest.
"They're outside. Jack… I think something bad's happened."
"Yeah… Oh God, oh God…" Jack moaned. What if something bad really did happen? What if the baby was injured?
What if he couldn't do anything?
He sprinted outside, only to meet mass chaos. It seemed that there were people residing at the beach present. They probably heard Claire and Kate, and must have come to see what the uproar was. Some were huddled in a circle, probably looking at Kate, while others hung to the side, curious, but obviously wishing to not be underfoot.
Jack sprinted towards the mass of people, Charlie at his heels. In the middle, as he expected, were Claire and Kate. Kate was pretty messed up, Jack had to come to terms with. Her abdomen looked like one big black-and-blue blob, there were so many bruises. "Claire, what the hell happened?"
"I-I d-don't know!" she sobbed. "S-she was f-fine, l-laughing and j-joking around, and the n-n-next m-moment-"
"Claire. Calm down and tell me what happened."
After a few deep breaths, it seemed that Claire was able to talk once more. "We were picking fruit, like we always do now," she began. "Kate saw a bush full of fruit, further back then we'd ever been. I kept telling her to stay back, that we didn't know what the beaten path she found would be like, but she wouldn't listen!" Charlie ran over to her to console her, his arms around her shoulder and rubbing her back. Claire hiccupped, then continued. "She eventually managed to drag me along with her towards the trail. We were fine, until suddenly I looked ahead and Kate was lying facedown on the ground!" Charlie resumed rubbing her back as the tears returned.
"Do you know how she fell? What part of her body she fell on?" Jack questioned.
"Well... after I managed to move her I saw she fell into a ditch. It looked like she fell on her side." Jack's face turned ashen.
"What went wrong, Jack? Why is falling on her side so bad?"
Jack couldn't speak. It didn't seem possible. The probability that she'd fall where it was most crucial to keep unharmed, let alone that she'd fall at all…
Kate slept in their tent, Jack closely monitoring her. Her slumber was nowhere near peaceful; she threw the thin blanket entirely off of her body in one fit. He was the only one still awake; Charlie and Claire had stayed up, but Claire had a toddler to take care of, and she drifted off around ten o'clock. Charlie stayed up awhile longer, but he too eventually went to sleep.
It was about one o'clock in the morning, Jack estimated, when Kate finally woke up. "Jack what happened?" she groggily asked. She tried to sit up, but winced in pain when she felt the bruises of the previous day's adventure. Jack quickly ran to her side, gingerly pushing her back on their makeshift bed. "Be careful; don't exert a whole lot of pressure."
"What happened yesterday? I remember going out to pick fruit with Claire, but then it all goes black."
Jack swallowed. He knew it would come down to this. He couldn't be totally positive about the outcome of the fall, not until it hadn't kicked for a few weeks. It was probable, though, that the worst had transpired. He asked Kate if she had cramps, and she said yes. Jack listed all the symptoms, without telling her why; he tried anything, everything that he could do on an island, to give them some sliver of hope.
He wanted the hope so badly that it was now overwhelming him.
"Jack, tell me what happened!" Kate demanded. "I need to know! It's my body, damn it, and I don't care that you're the doctor! You need to tell me!"
He gulped. He'd known all along that he'd have to break it to her in the near future. Better now than later, he told himself. I've got to tell her now, so we can try to deal with it and move on. "I don't know how to tell you, Kate… It's probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do…"
"What the hell happened!" she yelled. "Tell me, damn it!"
"Kate… when you fell, you landed on your pelvis. The fall… it made-"
"Jack," she whispered. "What happened to my baby?"
At the end of a dayWell I'm gonna say what I mean
Well I'm
At the end of a day
Well I'm gonna say what I mean
He found her at the beach. After he told her about the miscarriage, she refused to listen to him, and took off.
She sat with her arms around her knees, staring out at the vast expanse of ocean. It was dawn, the sky a myriad of blues, pinks, and purples. The inhabitants of the beach were still sleeping; they'd be up in a few hours.
Jack came up behind her silently, hands in his pockets. "Hey," he whispered.
Kate jumped. "Oh… it's just you," she said, and turned around. Jack was met with a gaunt, tear-streaked face and puffy, bloodshot eyes. "Jack, why'd it have to be us? What did I do wrong?"
He moved over to her, sitting on the sand beside her. "I don't know what you did wrong," he stated while stroking her hair, "and I'm not sure why it happened to us."
"But Jack, I was ready!" Kate wailed. "I can be a good mother! Claire let Shannon and me watch over Evan one day when she had to run back to the caves, and I did fine! I felt a connection with him, and I want to know a deeper one, when the baby's mine!
"I want to know how Claire feels when she holds her own flesh and blood in her hands, something that she helped to bring into this world. I want to be able to feel that bond that anybody who isn't a mother can even begin to comprehend! But no! I guess I just wasn't supposed to be a mother!" Kate let out a strangled cry and buried her face into Jack's waiting chest.
He rubbed Kate's back as her whole body shook. "Shh hon… we're going to be okay. It's going to be tough, but we're going to make it."
"You know," Jack began, "this is hard for me, too. This baby was a little piece of you and a little piece of me, remember? I was beginning to dream, too. About my son, who I'd teach how to play catch, or my daughter, who I'd protect from Evan or any other boy brought into being here until she was twenty." Jack could've sworn he'd heard a giggle come from Kate, but he wasn't positive. It might have just been a sniffle.
"We're going to make it through this," Jack stated. "Tonight we can cry, and for the next few days too, but we have to move on. It's going to be hard sometimes, and a little weird when you stop waking up every morning having to throw up-" Jack distinctively heard a chuckle come from Kate this time "-but we're going to be fine."
"Jack, just shut up and let me go to sleep," Kate said as she stifled a yawn. He wrapped his arms around Kate's shoulders and drew her in close. After a few minutes, Jack heard Kate's gentle snoring.
He, however, stayed awake. Tears began to fall from his eyes when he thought of Kate's words. He saw Charlie with Evan; even though the young boy wasn't Charlie's by blood, that father-child bond was still present. He wanted to have that deep connection, of how he wanted it.
With Sarah, the topic of children only came a handful of times in their whole relationship; the first was on their third date, and the last time it was ever mentioned was when Sarah had her miscarriage. When she lost the baby, her uterus was in such bad condition that she needed to have a hysterectomy. He had asked her if they could look into adoption, but she refused to do so. Any child I have will come out of me, not out of some lady that didn't want it, she had said. It was one of their many differences that fueled their divorce.
He wanted this child with Kate so bad; he secretly wanted to prove to Sarah that he could do it. She had said that he wouldn't have been a good father anyway. He had learned much later that Sarah was planning on giving the baby up for adoption after it was born. He was too much into his job, she said, and wouldn't be able to care for a baby. She'd have raise the baby pretty much all by herself, and of course she couldn't be doing that, Jack retorted when they were arguing on that very topic.
He was going to be different with the baby he and Kate made. There was no job at the hospital with long hours on the island; only a few people came to him each day. He could devote more time to taking care of this child, and could be a better parent then Sarah would ever be.
It was about three-thirty, Jack estimated, when sleep began to overtake him. He didn't want to attempt to traverse the trail back to the caves with Kate in his arms, not with the mysterious jungle monster leaking about. He didn't want to impose upon Shannon and Sayid, not when she needed her rest. There was only one person Jack knew on the beach that wouldn't think twice about letting Kate spend the night. The only problem was that Jack needed to stay there, too.
Five minutes later Jack found himself standing in front of Sawyer's tent, trying to wake him up without disturbing Kate and the rest of the people sleeping.
After his seventh try, Jack could finally hear a murmur of "alright, God damn it!" coming from inside the tent. Ten seconds later Jack came face-to-face with a sleepy-faced Sawyer. "Some of us value our sleep, didn't you know that, Jackass?" he spat. "What are you doing in this neck of the woods so late, Doc?"
"I need you to let Kate and me spend the night in your tent."
"Had a little late-night outing with Freckles, did you?"
"You could say that," Jack replied. "Can we stay here or not?"
"Yeah, sure. Come on in."
Jack hoisted Kate back into his arms and made to go into the tent. Sawyer however, stood in the opening. "What happened to Freckles?" he asked, gesturing towards Kate's stomach. "Why's she so bruised and swollen?"
Jack made a face. "She fell. She's 'swollen' because… well… she was pregnant."
"Sweetcheeks here got herself knocked up? Who's the lucky man?"
"Don't talk about it like that, you ass!" Jack yelled. "When she fell, the result of it was that she had a miscarriage," he said as he lowered his voice as he spoke.
"Why have you got so much interest in this, eh Doc?" Sawyer smirked. Jack's face dropped when he remembered that many survivors of the crash didn't even know that Jack and Kate were together, let alone that they made a baby.
"Because it was my baby, too," Jack whispered, and took Kate inside.
Slipping all awayIt's slipping all away
It's slipping all away, now
And so island life went on.
Sayid eventually let the signal fire burn out, being the last one to give up hope that they'd be rescued. Hurley's golf course was finished, and the first complete Island Open was held. Michael helped everyone build huts, so they could at last have some remnant of life off the island.
A few months after the miscarriage, Shannon had her baby, a beautiful girl she and Sayid named Nadia.
Evan seemed to be growing up to be quite a lively young boy. He was forever running off into the jungle, and Charlie had to go out and bring him back. Claire thought of Charlie as Evan's real father, whether Thomas was there or not.
One day, Kate came running into the hut she shared with Jack with good news: Sayid got up the courage to finally ask Shannon to marry him. Jack, of course, had already known this; Sayid had confided in him the fact that he wanted to propose. Jack was the one that gave him the final push. A few weeks later, an impromptu wedding ceremony took place; Locke was the 'justice of the peace,' while Jack and Kate were the best man and maid of honor.
Kate, Claire, and Shannon kept up their tradition of daily clothes washing. The only difference now was that Sun now came with them. When she saw Kate, Jack was told one night, she believed that if Kate was strong enough to be around a baby in such a short amount of time, then she could most certainly do so as well. It was about being able to move on, Sun had said.
Kate never ventured towards that fateful path again after the miscarriage.
As well as new lives that began on the island, lives were lost there as well.
Rose traveled out into the woods one day, and never returned. Jack supposed that she had probably gone off to search for her husband. Even after a year on the island with no signs of other human life besides The Others and Rousseau, she was as adamant as ever that Bernard was still alive and on the island.
About six weeks after they lost the baby, Jack had to face the harsh side of reality once more: the monster had finally claimed it's first human meal.
That meal was Sawyer.
Seeing as there was no body to bury in their cemetery, a memorial service was held in his honor instead. The night after the ceremony, Jack and Kate held in each other in their arms and mourned privately.
Jack knew that Kate was thinking of the nicer side of Sawyer, the side that was there to make someone chortle when they were down, even if he wasn't trying to be funny. He knew that she thought of the Sawyer she knew, the one who called her ridiculous things like Freckles and Sweetcheeks.
Jack personally thought of the man who could've been one of his best friends on the island. Even though Sawyer had constantly been on Jack's nerves, he was still devastated at the other man's death. Through all of their numerous disagreements and fighting over Kate in the beginning, they were still friends.
Once again, Jack and Kate had to learn how to cope and move on.
At the end of our daysWe'll escape
We'll escape
They had been living on the island for a little less than two years when something happened that would rock the world of the survivors of Oceanic flight 15 forever.
Jack was still asleep that morning, under the blankets with Kate cuddled up to his chest, when he woke to sunlight streaming in from where the tarp should have hung.
He quickly sat up, and came face-to-face with Walt.
"Jack!" he panted, who seemed to have sprinted up from the beach. "You'd never believe what we saw! We saw one!"
"Saw one what?" Jack asked groggily.
"We saw a ship!"
Oh, there's no escapeWe'll escape
…To be continued…
Final author's note: I started writing this one-shot towards the end of the school year, and I finished it on the weekend before band camp starts, which is the last two weeks of summer vacation. I can't believe it took me this long.
Thanks to Rory, Shelly, Peri, and anyone else who had to suffer through reading rough copies of this fic while my muse was broken. Super-snaps to Shelly, seeing as you don't even watch the show. Rory and I will make a Lostaway out of you, just wait and see…After said muse was fixed, my apologies to them still, especially best friend Rory, for having to sit through endless phone conversations (except Peri), documenting my struggle to come up with the right words to end a section, etc. Invisi-cookies to Rory for helping me decide whether to use this song for part one or two, and for trying to help me plane out the rest of the songs used.
Next up in the Back to Reality series: Now that the survivors of flight 815 seem to have been rescued, you'd think that they're problems would be over, right? Wrong. Join Jack and Kate as they still struggle while off of the island in the second part of the Back to Reality Series, 'Not the Same.' (That's NOT the official summary, just something I thought up to hold you over.)
Until the next fic is posted (which will probably be quite a long time),
Britty