Lost and its characters belong to JJ Abrams and crew. I'm just borrowing for fun. Jack and Kate share their last moments together. Enjoy! (Written for Challenge #7 lostfichallenge)

Lost – End of it All
By Mystic
September 2nd 2005

It was getting harder to breathe and she could feel her insides going cold. Kate sat, slumped against a tree. It had stopped raining. Her hair clung to her skin and her shirt felt heavy against her. She felt the last of the water drip off her eyelashes and chin, watched the sun begin to make its way through the trees, casting misty beams along the ground beyond her feet. Blinking, she took a short, labored breath and then leaned her head back, feeling the bark of the tree dig through and scratch her scalp. She welcomed the different pain. Kate would welcome death if it came a little sooner. She cursed it for taking so long.

She still held her bloody knife tightly in her right hand and her left curled around a mound of leaves it'd found when she hit the ground. Somehow, in her mind, she never saw it ending this way. Not when things started going into a downward spiral, not when he turned to the other side. She never thought she'd be sitting against a tree in the middle of the jungle watching the blood seep out of a hole in her chest while waiting to die.

"All's fair," he muttered from a tree a few feet away. Kate raised her eyes and watched Jack smile. He had blood crusting his lips and he sat on the ground like herself. He leaned his head back, letting it bounce off the trunk a few times lightly before letting it rest there. She watched the wrinkles that formed at the corners of his eyes. He'd gotten old in the last year. Kate watched a droplet of blood make its way over his bottom lip and begin a very slow journey down his chin. It only made it halfway before it dried.

Kate managed a grin. "Yeah," she muttered, something inside her twisting painfully. Was it what was left of her heart? What he hadn't destroyed? She didn't know, but it made her wince visibly and she lifted the knife up slighting, digging it into the ground.

"Wasn't supposed to be this way," he told her, shaking his head.

She watched the way his smile faded and he frowned, looking at her with red eyes. She sniffled and nodded. "But, it had to be." She thought back to better days. Days when they'd spend hours just walking through the jungle talking. He'd tell her about surgeries and she'd tell him about running. He told her everything he wanted to accomplish in life; she told him everything she wished she could. It didn't matter now, she knew. Before nightfall, they'd both be dead.

Her eyes fell upon the stab wound she'd inflicted on his chest. She missed his heart, not because she intended to, she just couldn't do it. Even as she felt the cold steel slide into her abdomen, she shifted her knife and nicked his left lung. It almost seemed romantic, being so close after so long. Kate could feel his hot breath on her forehead as she registered the pain, started feeling the blood soak her shirt. It had been raining then. Pouring like it always did. He'd brushed his free hand through her hair as she put hers on his right breast and they both sobbed.

It was inevitable. He thought she was infected; she thought he was infected.

There was no one left to tell them otherwise.

So they kept to their sides of the beach and they slept with one eye open at night. He used up all of the bullets trying to shoot her and she used up all of his medical supplies on the few wounds he managed to make. Jack didn't have particularly good aim; Kate was good at dodging bullets. She shook her head and watched him touch his chest, hissing in pain and coughing up blood.

"I'm sorry," she told him honestly. He nodded his head, looking amused.

Kate closed her eyes and felt a pang of heat travel through her. "Won't be long," he told her.

"You got my heart." She took a breath. "Should be dead already."

"Maybe I missed," he shrugged and his eyes slammed shut as he coughed again. "You didn't."

"I did," she responded, trying to shift herself higher. Kate didn't want him to suffer. She'd promised herself when she set out to find him that she'd cut open his heart, it would be the quickest death. She didn't count on him having a knife. On him being so quick. He was having difficulty breathing and started coughing every few seconds as she began to lose feeling in her legs. He'd more likely punctured her stomach than cut her heart. She would bleed internally while he choked on his blood.

She knew he would die first. It scared her in a way she'd never been scared before. It made her heart pound. Even when she thought he was her enemy, he was there. She was sure she wouldn't have been able to carry through with her plan to kill him if it hadn't been for the fact that he lunged at her. They'd stared one another down in the jungle. Both soaked, mud stained and tired. She told him she loved him; he told her she lied.

Kate loved him, it was no lie.

Listened as he took his last breath, she felt her eyes water and her chest jerk with a sob, but it hurt too much to cry. It hurt too much to even breathe now. She let the knife fall from her hand and she looked at him. Watched the way his head hung. His chin touched his chest now and the blood dripped down onto his chest mingling with the blood already there. Kate frowned, her lower lip trembling slightly as her vision blurred. Her heart slowed in her chest and she felt herself starting to lose consciousness.

"All's fair," she sighed to no one.

Finis