Lost and its characters belong to JJ Abrams, Bad Robot and all those people, you know who they are. I'm just borrowing to destroy my flist with angst.

Lost – Learned Behavior
By Mystic
February 15th 2006
Kate learned to lie from her mother. She watched her in the grocery store as she shook her blonde hair and laughed that throaty laugh and told the cashier that she just bumped her head while doing laundry because she was clumsy. Kate heard her mother explain to her teacher during a conference that she'd just bruised her cheek falling off an unstable chair. Kate listened as she told her she'd broken her ankle slipping in a pile of grease at work.

After a while, the lies seemed right. Kate nodded her head, she even played along. She went into details because the details were important. When she'd notice someone giving her mom a look, implying she wasn't telling the truth, Kate would step up. She'd let them know the Yankees had just lost on tv to give it a time frame. She'd tell them what color the toys were that she left lying in the hall. Kate would spin a tale with a bob of her waves and people would see the honest eyes of a child.

Lying was easy because it made life easier. Kate used to tell her friends she had to go to their place because her step father was working on the yard, or the car, or the house, working on something so he couldn't watch them. She never told them he was a drunk, or that he yelled and cursed, or that he threw his shoes at her when got angry. She never told them her mother worked double shifts, or that she sometimes slept through weekends, or that she cried in the bathroom when no one was listening.

She lied to herself. Kate went to Tom's house and built a model rocket. She spent afternoons with Beth singing at the top of her lungs and trying on bright pink tank tops. Kate told herself life was good, life was normal, life was worth living.

If she hopped off her bicycle and the truck wasn't there, she took in a breath and she let herself believe he was off playing cards with the guys. Told herself he was just taking a drive to relax after a day. If she rode up and the truck was there, she convinced herself that he was inside sleeping, that he couldn't hear her, and she'd tip toe through the back door and sneak up the stairs.

Kate kept lying because she had to. It was the trick about lying: once you started, you really couldn't stop because if someone caught you in a lie, if you messed up the details, it all came down like a deck of cards in a strong autumn wind. So when she looked Jack in the eyes and told him he didn't matter to her, she believed it. She told herself it was true because it needed to be true.

Her feet stayed planted solid and her body was confident. Liars twitched. They faltered. They gave themselves away. But she was telling the truth. Or at least the lie disguised so well as the truth that no machine could tell them apart. But Jack wasn't like her teachers. Wasn't like her schoolmates or her doctor or the cashiers and the waitresses at the diner.

Jack stared at her, his face as blank as hers and he shook his head. He opened his mouth slowly, and shut it and tiled his head back slightly, his eyes coming closed in contemplation as she waited.

"Did you hear me?" She repeated. Her voice was cold and even, her eyes narrowed slightly, her pulse steady in her veins.

He laughed at her then, his head coming forward, his chin almost touching his chest and then he looked up at her and there was surprise in his eyes. "Kate, come on."

Shifting her eyes away from his, she ducked her head just a bit, swinging it away from him as though in total disagreement and disgust. Her bottom lip thrust out gently before tucking back in and she managed to look at him sideways. "I'm done with this," she threw her hands up at her sides and she walked out of the caves, into the mid-afternoon heat.

"Why do you do this?" He asked calmly, remaining where he stood, his hands now planted on his waist, pressing in tightly.

Kate stopped, she took a slow breath and stared at the ground, feeling his eyes on her back. She didn't have a lie good enough. Quick enough. She turned slightly to look at him, see the sudden distress play across his face as though maybe he believed her, maybe he fell for it, and she left him, walking off into the jungle.

It occurred to her moments later that she should have felt something. She should have broken down and cried, or turned and gone back, or at least considered going back, but she'd gotten so good at lying. Her heart felt nothing for Jack because she told it to, because lying to herself was easier than the truth.

Finis