Chapter 15 - Don't Let Me Go
9-10/1/6

The water's cool, the slight shiver of the sun through it, a current. It is like diving into purity, clear unadulterated purity, washing away all the sins and the blood and the memories that haunt me, from near and far. I dive into the icy liquid, and for those thirty, forty seconds that I can hold my breath; there is no other world than this one underwater, my body a torpedo, a fish, a thing belonging here. Under the surface, encased in nothing more than the present cleansing moment.

Then the tightness begins; so slight at first, an imagining, a dream. One by one each cell calls out for oxygen, a want then a need then a desperation. I float calmly to the surface, to the world I don't to want to be in, slowly unwrapping myself from the cocoon of coolness. I break the surface violently, shattering the rippling water, dragging breath from the air.

And it's then I know this is nothing but a dream. The water is clear, azure; the trees green, your eyes that infinite enveloping velvet brown. But I tread water and stare at my real form, at the caves, balancing awkwardly on wreckage and blankets and loaded with immobility, frustration, the threat of infection. I watch as I wake, disorientated and groggy, as you patiently feed me meagre amounts of water and crushed up fruit and fish. I watch for minutes or hours; days maybe. I stir and call out names you won't know. You press a cool compress to my forehead, make me swallow antibiotics in my groggy bouts of consciousness, whisper to me all the time. You're telling jokes. I smile at the thought of it; it has taken all this to make you truly smile.

You eat beside me, change beside me, read beside me. You kiss my forehead whenever you leave for even a second. You make sure I am kept fresh and clean and fed and hydrated. You sleep beside me at night. I've wanted to curl up in your arms, sleep in your protective hold, for so long…

I open my mouth to call to you, to tell you all these things, to tell you how I thought I'd fallen in love with you already but you're making me fall all over again, everyday.

But no sound comes, because this isn't really me… the real me half sedated, half unconscious, beside you. I wonder who I am, then, or what part of me… I sit in the sun, and plead with myself to wake up properly.

The real me, the part of me that lies unmoving; it's always your name I call out first.

Jack surveyed the three little pills in the coconut shell. Two 25mg of amoxicillin, and one fairly strong sedative he had added to the concoction for the past two days while the antibiotics did their work. He couldn't stand to think of Kate in pain. Couldn't bear the thought of her waking again like just after the surgery… that precious split second of relief at seeing the other safe and well, before the sheer sickness and slick of cold had ran through her as the pain flooded in. Kate, who had been through maybe more than he would ever know, suffered endless scrapes and knocks that anyone else, male or female, would have been immediately to him complaining about; Kate, who he had witnessed second by second as her face crumpled into twisted torment as the throb from the wreckage of the gunshot wound began.

And he couldn't stand it. Kate showing fear, or pain, or grief, without any shame or mask appearing; as much as he had witnessed it previously, he knew it was like he doing the same. So rare, and only when things grew too massive to instinctively suppress; so when she had woken, and literally clamped her hands to the blankets with the ferocity of the uninhibited insult her body had taken, Jack had screamed for the medicine cabinet. Morphine intramuscularly, and two of those little white pills; and somehow through her anguish, Kate had found his eyes, trust exchanged in tears, sedatives swallowed.

He had held her quaking form as the chemicals took effect… whispered his heart's deepest secrets and fears, as slowly but surely her iron grip on his forearm loosened, and peace took her mind someplace else while her body slowly healed.

He hesitated now, smooth stone in hand ready to crush up the pills to dissolve into water. Jack placed the makeshift mortar and pestle to the side, stroked a stray hair from her face, watched as eyes screwed up in untold dreams. He wanted to dive in there with her, let her take his hand and lead him through fragmented realities. He wanted to sit with her someplace no-one else could find, and exchange life stories.

The stitches looked good; at least, as good as lime green stitches could look in what was going to be a fairly uneven heal. By some miracle, the amoxicillin was working; what two days ago had been an ugly, bloody gash, a crevice virtually inviting infection, was slowly becoming a angry red line, angry but not infected. Flaps of skin were welding together, the leg was not solid with internal bleeding, and according to tendon taps he had done to Kate's ankle, she still had good motor function down the leg. Jack knew it was time. He had ached for it and dreaded it all at once; time to let her wake up. The longer she was stationary after such a bloody procedure, the greater the chance of developing a blood clot embolus. If that travelled to her lungs, or heart, or brain…. A shiver ran down Jack's spine. There would be nothing he could do. A silent killer. And though the pain she might experience would be bad, the morphine all gone and used up; it was far better than the thought of swathing her fragile body in cloth, lowering her to the imperfect ground and whispering to the wind the things he meant to tell her all along.

Jack plucked the third pill from the shell, returning it to the bottle. He sat alongside Kate's silent form as her grinded up the two antibiotics into a fine powder… watched her chest rise and fall, up to the heavens and then back down to earth. Sawyer wandered past, pretending to be heading down a trail towards the garden so he could check on how she was doing. Shuffling past, he stole a quick glance, looked back again. Jack waited until the other man was a few steps away before he called out.

"She'll wake up later."

Sawyer stopped, turned on the spot. Jack could still feel the debt he felt like he owed this man, this man who he had somehow never found common ground with… until Kate went missing. Until he dragged Jack up, made him see sense, organised search parties in a way neither of them would have imagined Sawyer was capable of.

Sawyer cleared his throat, somehow caught off guard. He watched as even in conversation, Jack turned almost imperceptibly to check on Kate. It was automatic, unconscious; a heart checking on its reason for beating.

"I'll be sure to pop by tomorrow then. If the good doctor thinks she'll be up for visitors of course." Jack read between the lines; he'd gotten used to doing this with Sawyer, now. That was Sawyer talk for respecting boundaries and leaving Jack to have Kate to himself tonight; and checking it was okay with Jack as the man who loved Kate, not her doctor, that it was okay to come by tomorrow to say hey.

Jack smiled, nodded. "She'll be pleased to see you." Sawyer could see the relief etched like stone in the other man's features. He nodded, took a last glance at the sleeping figure, and turned once more to the path.

Jack called after him, the thing neither could say in conversation.

"Thanks, Sawyer." For helping me find her, for caring about her, for dragging your tired body through the jungle after mine long after the sun had gone down. For knowing I couldn't give up, for not being able to either.

Sawyer's pace slowed. He wanted to turn around, to look Jack in the eye when he said this. He wanted to say how scared he had been holding her shoulders, the blood pouring from her, the fear spilling from him into silent pockets of air as Jack had calmly made incisions and repairs. But somehow, he couldn't make himself turn. Couldn't let the guard down that much. Sawyer stopped walking but kept facing the other way.

"You too." For finding her. For saving her.

He swallowed, shoved hands into pockets. Kept walking.

The usual suspects filtered in throughout the day; Charlie and Claire with Aaron, an awkward but caring Hurley, Rose offering help or just to sit with Kate while Jack had a rest. Sun, of course, with her delicate smiles and clean blankets, fresh clothes and a wash cloth; the only time Jack left Kate's side, while Sun gently gave her a quick sponge bath and changed her into a fresh top. Jack pottered around with supplies while Sun did this, respecting Kate's privacy; he grinned at her chattering away to Kate, who was at best extremely groggy, completely incoherent and in a lot of pain. Useless facts about the garden, baby Aaron, whispered comments about Jack when she knew he was listening. It was exactly what Kate needed, conscious or not. Some semblance of peace, of normality.

The sun was hitting the peaks as Jack wandered over to the waterfall, took a handful of the cleansing liquid, ran it over his face and basked in the sheer icy coolness of it. It felt like a life force, trickling down his throat, an elixir. It was a matter of minutes or hours maybe now, until she woke; how he longed to hear her voice, see those deep pools of eyes open without glaze or disorientation. How he longed to wrap her frail form in his own, close their eyes against the day, feel the curl of her fingertips as their digits intertwined. How he longed to lie with her whispering those things he swore he'd never tell another; hearing all her anecdotes and memories until they melded into one another so much to be indistinguishable as two separate bodies.

"Jack!" Sun's clipped call broke his reverie, delved into his fragmented reality and pulled the first piece out. "I think she's waking up."

"Jack…" He heard his name again as he sprinted the few metres to where Sun stood over Kate's writhing form. But this time in a different voice. Her voice.

"Kate…" He fell automatically beside her, felt her pulse, stroked her hair with the frantic kind of love that flooded him as her eyes flitted, opened, closed, sparkled. "Sshhh, I'm here, I'm here…"

Sun stepped back, gave Jack a smile as she went to busy herself with things already done and things that could wait, just as Jack had been doing seconds earlier. "Let me know if you need anything." She murmured quietly.

His face. God, how she loved his face. It hovered over her like a dream come true… like reaching from another reality, Kate lifted a shaking hand up, pressed clammy fingers against his stubble, over eyebrows, down scars from the plane crash. Her thumb traced a single tear from its origin, etching its path into his cheek, coming to rest on his bottom lip. Quivering, Jack pressed a small kiss to her fingertip, watching her eyes as she seemed to absorb him, suck in the image of him. For long seconds each held the other's eyes, basking in being able to sink in colour they thought long lost.

"Are you in pain?" Jack whispered, eyes flitting to her leg. Kate remembered, then, that horrific pain searing through her from the limb; Jack's face a picture of torment as he demanded pain killers. She shook her head.

"Not as much as before anyway…" Her voice cracked, her tongue thick and pasty in a mouth now so used to silence. Jack grabbed a bottle from the cave floor, sat behind her and propped Kate's head up against his abdomen with such delicacy. Gently he held the bottle to her lips, allowed a slow trickle of liquid to flow.

"Better?"

She nodded, swallowing the cool fluid. The haze was still clearing from the sedatives; gently, Kate reached to touch the fresh material bandage wrapped around her thigh. She could remember that cave, that woman, endless dreams of Jack and then finally him appearing, and then…

"Is that where she shot me?" Kate tilted her head back to met Jack's eyes. He nodded soberly. "And you carried me all the way back here?" Another nod.

A cry escaped her throat, and from his awkward position Jack wrapped her arms around her decimated form, encircling her shoulders. Kate, shaking with weakness, held on to him; felt the warmth all around her like a blanket against the world. The sobs taking over, she gripped Jack's arms with all she had; curled her upper body into a curve to fit within his, as he gently rocked back and forth and pressed kisses and his own tears into her hair.

"You're safe now. I've got you."

Kate sniffed, thought of the likely miles he had carried her bleeding and battered, to the hours of operating he would have put himself through, to the days she knew he had sat here beside her.

"Don't let me go."

It was much later when the two woke again; Kate first and as she shifted position, Jack stirred also. Sun had left a simple meal of fruit and fish in a large coconut bowl at the end of Kate's bed. Kate smiled at the flower, sitting in a small amount of water in an empty pill bottle beside the food. A couple of candles, she thought, and we'd have the makings of a first date.

"Are you okay?" Jack supported Kate's frame as he got up, stretched, her well being always his first concern. She winced as she moved her leg.

"Not exactly a hundred percent, but getting there." Kate met his eyes. There was so much to say. So many endless thank you's and questions and revelations and histories.

"Jack… I don't know how to thank-"

"Sshhh." He knelt before her, taking her hands, entwining fingertips. "You're here. You're alive. That's all I need." Jack reached up, brushing the beginnings of a scar on Kate's forehead. "You're all I need."

She looked down, gripping his hands, investigating all the tiny bumps and imperfections, welded into his skin from a life lived. She wanted to ask about each of them in turn, all the stories hidden and forgotten. "Jack, I want to tell you." Kate whispered, meeting his eyes again. "I want to tell you all about what happened. Before…" She looked around her, at the waterfall and caves and pieces of luggage dragged from the beach. "Before here."

Jack nodded. "I want to hear all about that, Katie…" He stopped, realised that despite calling her Katie a thousand times while she had been unconscious, he had never used the familiarity to her face.

Kate smiled. "Tom used to call me that." She didn't say who Tom was. She could see Jack placing the pieces of the puzzle together. "I heard you call me it, right before I blacked out… back there…" She shivered. "It sounds right when you say it, Jack. I feel like me again when you say it." She glanced down to their hands again, hesitating. "I haven't felt like me in a long, long time."

Jack grinned, leaned in, pressed a kiss to her hand. He could feel himself falling all over again Kate blushed, trying to remind herself she did deserve this, no matter how much she didn't believe it.

"I need you to try and stand for me, Kate." He broke the news gently.

Kate glanced from Jack, to her leg, and back again. "You're kidding, right?"

He gave a small smile. "'Fraid not. Gotta get you back on your feet as soon as possible, or else deep vein thrombosis can develop and…"

"The thing you get on planes?"

Jack nodded.

Kate looked about them wryly, the plane wreckage and mass of personal shrapnel each survivor had scattered around. "Anyone ever tells me about that being one of the main dangers of flying again…"

Jack grinned, filled with hope, pressed a sudden, fierce kiss to her forehead. She was back.

It took a good half hour of gentle manouevring, a lot of grimacing on both parts, until Kate was finally sitting on the edge of her makeshift platform. She looked up at Jack doubtfully, her injured leg dangling useless over the edge.

"You'll be fine."

"Hmm."

She grinned at him despite herself. Jack took a couple of small shuffles back, leaving just enough room so he could still grip Kate's hands and help her stand. "So…" Kate shifted, grimaced. "If I want you, I've got to come get you? Is that the deal?"

Jack grinned. "What can I say, I like to play hard to get."

Kate lowered her good left leg to the ground, the right one still dangling like a thing foreign to the rest of her body. Even standing was going to feel strange after what amounted to over a week of lying down, either at the cave or after the operation. She hopped up, biting her bottom lip in pain; gripped Jack's hands sharply as her right foot came into contact with the ground.

"Try putting weight on it." Jack encouraged.

Slowly, allowing the dizziness of becoming vertical to clear, Kate shifted more of her weight to the bandaged leg; lowered her whole foot to the ground and gently transferred her balance to over two lower limbs. All the while, Jack's hand gripped hers, a sure lifeline and crutch.

He watched her, the pain he knew she must be experiencing, the courage in her eyes. He watched her and almost choked with the pride and emotion filling him, the love that overwhelmed him as her face screwed up in determination. Slowly Jack let go, making sure Kate was steady. He stood ever so slightly off to one side, as she transferred the weight back to her left leg, extended her right, took a tiny step forward. A rapid hop and the weight was back on the left, then the right again…

"Kate."

"Mmm?" She murmured, lost in the motion of the jerky movement.

"What's your favourite colour?" The question he'd somehow tortured himself with in fantasy dreams where she'd been back. The question he'd realised early on that despite knowing this woman, despite loving her more than he'd realised he could love anyone; he somehow didn't know her at all.

Kate stopped, looked at him quizzically.

"Purple… Why?" She lost her footing, stumbled with her concentration elsewhere. Jack flew forward, caught her in his arms.

Jack smiled, gently held her in his arms, supported her weight and his own. "It's one less thing I don't know about you. While you were missing…" A lump rose in his throat even thinking of those few torturous days. "While you were missing, I thought a lot about how little we really know. Or how little we know about just normal things. Like how you take your coffee, or your middle name, or how many kids you want to have…"

Kate caught him off guard, curled in his arms, watching him speak about everything and nothing. "Milk no sugar. Don't have one… three, two girls and a boy."

And then suddenly her lips were suddenly on his, somehow different from their first kiss… still delicate but less so, her tongue probing its way into his mouth, tasting him. Gently she pulled on his bottom lip with her teeth, reached up and traced his closed eyelids with the pad of her thumb. Jack pulled her to him, careful of her leg, twirled that loose strand of hair in his fingers; cradled her like the most precious thing in the world. It was a kiss of need, a need to show the other how much they had missed, how much they loved, how much fear had flowed along nerves since their lips had first met. The terror of the first kiss also being the last.

It was Kate who eventually broke the contact, needing to say what was flooding her before all the distant fears and shattered self worth caught up with her again. "Jack…" She caught his eyes. He nodded for her to go on, eyes burning.

"Remember in the cave… right after I was shot…"

Oh, how he remembered. The noise, the torch beam, the terror and scarlet sheen of fresh blood. Jack squeezed Kate's hand, yes.

"I wanted to tell you… and you wouldn't let me. You said I had to tell you once I was better."

Jack grinned. The grin spread, grew, until he knew he'd never stop smiling again. "Because I knew you'd get better. You're too much of a fighter Kate."

Her smile matched his own.

"I…" Kate swallowed. She'd said these words to only one other person. And he was dead, because of her. Dead. She met Jack's eyes, those chocolate spheres she'd longed for for so long, had filled her dreams, day and night. She thought of Jack sitting beside her in the car in those fantasy realities, how she didn't know him yet but yet felt she had known him forever. She thought of him falling with her as she descended into pain… of her own relief, months ago now, as he walked from that cave in alive and unscathed, and how she had needed to hold him, just to feel he was real and whole and unhurt.

"I love you, Jack." Somehow the words flowed freely. She didn't trip on them, fall as she'd so expected. The heavens didn't cave in and whisk him away from her.

She looked at him through blurry eyes, felt the soft pads of his fingertips trace the contours of hr face.

A whisper came, that whisper she had heard so many times in her dreams and knew now was not just her imagination at all.

"I love you too, Katie."

The two moved together, tears mixing as they just held one another; thought how of all the places in all the world, each other was somehow here to fall in love with.

The two bodies melded, merged, until it was unclear when one person stopped and the other began.