A/N: Here it is everybody. Hope I don't disappoint anybody! Anyway, happy reading.
She signs the last letter with a flourish, an angry one, but a flourish all the same. Because for once, she would have liked to get what she wanted.
Oh well.
So if she's so "done" if that was so final, why does she keep coming back to the stash of letters (she's got them hidden in a shoe box in a closet, on an upper shelf inside the hatch)?
The third time she returns she stops just outside the door because someone's in there. She cautiously sticks her head in only to jerk it back out, mortified to see Jack standing there looking at something. She knows without checking what that something will be. There's no question that the way her luck runs, he's reading her letters. She can feel her face getting hotter by the second, and can only imagine how red she must be.
Kate sticks her head back through the door, taking care to keep quiet. She studies the look on his face. It's serious, with the tip of his tongue sticking out of one corner of his mouth. She would laugh if this wasn't so mortifying. Having her stupidly romantic dreams stomped on by the object of her affections wasn't what she'd had in mind for the day. In fact, she'd been going to go pick some fruit, but whatever.
Just then, he looks up. Unable to draw her head back in time, instead she tries to look like she's just walking in and hasn't been trying to see what he's doing for the past few minutes.
"Hey." It comes out a little strangled, but almost better than she expected.
"Uh, hey." He looks terrified. She could laugh that she scares him that much, if she weren't so terrified herself.
"So…A little light reading huh?" It comes out overly sarcastic, because she's doing her best to sound nonchalant about it. He turns red, and fumbles around for something to say.
"I never knew you were such a poet Kate." Is what comes out. She stares at him. She'd expected a denial, or at least an apology. He could at least apologize for reading her private papers!
Then she realized they were technically addressed to him - he probably hadn't realized until it was to late that they were never meant to be delivered.
He was still waiting for her to say something. She didn't have anything to say. He seemed to take it as anger, or at the very least stony silence, because his fingers fumbled and shook so much that he dropped the box with her letters in it. The last one came up on top, with the words, "I'm giving up on you" seemingly blaring at Kate. She almost groaned out loud. How much worse could it get? You finally decide to stop writing pointless letters to a guy you met thanks to a luckless plane crash, and he finds all your romantic writings - and reads them!
"Look, sorry you saw all that, alright? But you can just pretend it never happened, you know? I mean, you can just pretend that the creepy ex-convict never wrote you a bunch of letters, and get on with your happy normal life." It came out sounding perhaps a little - well, okay, a lot - more bitter than she'd intended.
He blanches even further, and she sighs. It's not his fault she's head-over-heels for him. She shouldn't be making this worse.
"I'm sorry." She breathes, bending down to pick up all the letters.
"No, hey, hang on." Jack bends down as well, their heads bumping in a classic romantic comedy fashion. She would be thinking it was clichéd - if her head weren't throbbing and Jack wasn't quite so close to her. "I'm sorry too. Why are you sorry? I shouldn't have read your stuff." The apology is genuine. Both of them are carefully avoiding the topic of the letters themselves, and more importantly, what they were about.
When they've all been placed back in the shoebox, she stands up to leave. It's Jack's button shift. She's almost out the door, but she pauses, and at the moment, he calls her back. "Kate?"
He looks troubled, uncertain, and very red. But he's also clearly got something to say.
She almost stops him, before they dig themselves deeper into a hole they can't climb back out of, but she opens her mouth to late as his first words float out into the air.
"I'm so sorry -"
"It's okay, you've apologized already, it wasn't your fault -" Still trying to stop him because she really hopes now that she can prevent some kind of catastrophe.
"- for not doing something."
He continues on as though she never said a thing, his eyes cast down to his worn shoes. "I should have said something to you, but I guess we were both…I mean, we were…I don't know." His voice peters out and he kicks the shoebox, scattering the letters all around the room. He groans out loud because this is clearly going from bad to worse.
"Oh God I'm sorry. I'll pick them up, hang on."
"Pick them up?" She laughs mirthlessly, cynic that she is. "Why would you do that?"
"I liked them." He says simply. She can tell he's very embarrassed, but she's to busy trying to process what he's just said to take in the fact that he'd probably like to be sinking into a hole in the ground right now.
He liked them?
He liked them.
A grin begins to creep along her mouth, spreading wider and wider along her face and she can't stop it. She thinks maybe something's wrong with her cheek bones. It doesn't matter.
He liked them.
Her stomach revolts against this quick mood change by fluttering uncontrollably, she is woefully embarrassed, and she feels a headache coming on, but none of it really matters.
His face is instantly readable to her in a way it's never been before. It's like an open book, and she can see everything she needs to see right there. He does care. He does.
Really, what else does she need to know?
Later, they will have to worry about their respective "significant others", and about he hubbub this will cause among the survivors. Later they will have to worry about Sawyer and Ana Lucia, the con man and the policewoman. But personally she suspects they'll wind up together eventually. And now is not the moment to worry about it.
It's a beautiful sunset, an example of that fairytale love she referred to hesitantly, almost scornfully, in her first letter to him. The beach is quiet and still, and the only sound is the waves on the shore. Its almost scarily perfect and she wonders if she'll wake up in a minute and find that it's Sawyer she's leaning up against and not Jack.
But she knows that it is Jack because he's just so Jack, solidly and dependably, wonderfully, awkwardly, perfectly Jack.
Her head just fits so perfectly on his shoulder that there doesn't seem to be a point in worrying about anything but, well, anything. His arm is protectively settled around her waist and they don't even have to look at each other to know that things will eventually be alright.
It seems to be a perfect moment, and she carefully files it away in her head, so that she can pull it out again and replay it over and over again.
She knows she's being hopelessly sentimental and mushy. Thoughtlessly irrational. Ridiculously romantic. She's never been one for things like this, she never thought perfect moments existed.
You learn something new every day.
She also knows such a perfect moment will not require a kiss. It does not need one to be perfect. But she also knows that she's going to kiss him anyway.
Fin
A/N: Fluff galore, hopefully tempered with Kate's personality. I tried to be a little cynical somewhere in there...I think. Anyway, that's the end! Please let me know what you thought of it - good? bad? so-so? a great way to escape doing homework? whatever it was, I want to hear all about it :P
Thanks so much to...
forever-lost-12, xo-Mess-xo, EternalConfusion, knocking-on-heavens-door, Dee Lee, CindyCurl, LostBeth, Orlando-crazy, shamelessOne, flight815survivor, gothicelf9, FanOfLost, jes-d, IHeartLost11, Bucci, Love Mistook, Antatobo, lolohannah, LostWithoutJate, KateLilly, Gilmore-Girls&Lost-Fan, Laura.Amy.Leigh, and ObsessedwithLOST
... for reviewing. If I've missed anyone my apologies I am really sorry. I hear we're not allowed to do individual reviewer thank you's anymore so I'll just say this: you guys have been really awesome, and you kept me turning out these letters. I really hope you liked the "live action" epilogue. Thanks again everybody and please review!