AN: My second Lost oneshot. Please review and tell me what you think. :)
Disclaimer: Lost, as well as Jack and Kate, do not belong to me.
The monsoon season on the island brought with it more than just water. The day after the rains came, Jack looked up at the steel gray mass of the horizon and found a column of wavering black smoke floating up into the sky.
The people on the beach and in the caves were almost too tired and worn to take any notice of the smoke at all. Wet and aching and covered in sand that wore their toes and hands raw, everyone wanted nothing more than to keep to themselves.
Charlie swept Claire and Aaron into a corner of the rocks, using his guitar to pick out haunting melodies that floated quietly throughout the caves and faded into the falling rain. Sawyer slung another tarp over the top of his tent to keep out the water. Kate, barely visible through the rain, sat on the beach, staring out at the sky.
Jack slung a suitcase over his shoulder and carried it further into the caves in a futile attempt to keep it dry. Hurley came running towards Jack, panting slightly.
"Dude, Jack, what are we doing?"
Jack looked up at Hurley, slightly surprised. He was the first person that Jack had seen showing any signs of emotion other than bleak despair since the rain had started. The rest of the camp opted for sleepy, dreamy acquiescence. "What are you talking about, Hurley?"
Hurley paused for half a moment. "The smoke, man! What is everyone doing just sitting around?"
Jack started walking back to the fire to retrieve another suitcase, and Hurley followed. "What do you want us to do, Hurley? We've got no control over these people."
"Not you, too. What's everyone doing, giving up like this?"
"You have to know when it's past hope, Hurley," Jack said.
"What's happened to you?" Hurley asked. "Jack, you poured your own blood into a dying man. You gave everyone here hope for survival."
"It's too late for that," Jack said.
Hope is a very dangerous thing to lose.
Jack woke suddenly, drenched in rainwater and cold sweat. He sat up, shivering, and looking around the camp. He could see Sun and Jin, huddled up against one wall of the cave, and Hurley, lying a few yards from the waterfall.
Jack stood and stretched his legs. On his way to get water, he heard voices, and paused. Rounding a wall of rock, Jack found Claire and Charlie, propped up against the wall, talking.
"Hey, guys, I think I'm gonna go down to the beach for a second," Jack said.
Charlie looked down at his hands and Claire stared at Jack for a moment, unwavering behind her cool, blue eyes. "Okay, Jack."
Jack walked through the warm greens and smoldering browns of the forest, not caring that he was getting wet, that his shoes were getting muddy. The paths that he and the others had worn through the forest were little more than sludge.
The beach showed more life than the caves had. A group of four people sat around a fire beneath a broken piece of the fuselage. Jack scanned their faces; Rose, her husband, Eko, and Steve. (Or was it Scott?) Jack waved to them and moved on.
Sawyer was leaning back in his tent in one of the airplane seats, reading some magazine on home decorating. He looked up when Jack opened the flap in the doorway.
"Interesting reading material there, Sawyer," Jack commented.
Sawyer gazed at Jack a moment before looking back to his magazine. "Well, Doc, I figured I could spruce up the place."
"You seen Kate?" Jack asked.
Sawyer looked up at Jack again before lowering the magazine to his knees and sitting up. "Doc, I know I probably ain't the best person to tell ya this, but the way I figure it, I'm the only one who will." He paused. "Kate's gone."
"What do you mean, 'gone'?" Jack asked, ducking inside the tent to get out of the rain. "Where'd she go?"
"Jack, I told you yesterday, and I told you the day before. None of us have seen sight of those freckles for a week."
Jack tilted his head at Sawyer, as though having difficulty understanding why Sawyer was putting on an act. "Sawyer, cut the bullshit. I saw Kate yesterday."
Sawyer closed his eyes and sort of grimaced, searching for patience. "Let me guess. Yesterday. The day with the smoke."
"Everyone saw it, Sawyer. What are you getting at?"
"Doc, it's been a week since we saw that smoke. And a week since anyone's seen Kate."
Jack stumbled through the woods, unaware of direction, unaware of the tree limbs that tore at his hands and his cheeks.
Jack, the wind whispered.
Jack stumbled in the mud and fell into a tree, panting. The rain was so thick, he could hardly see; the trees beyond his fingertips faded away into the rain and the sky.
The wind whistled, long and low. Jack.
Jack turned and saw a flash of orange and a flurry of dark, curly hair. "Kate!" he called, lunging through the trees, reaching out for her. He found only soft, damp leaves. "Kate," he whispered.
Jack arrived back in the caves, where most everyone was now awake, talking in low voices around campfires, the quiet orange flames dancing in their eyes as they watched Jack go by.
Jack stumbled to the waterfall and rinsed his face, hoping for some clarity. He wiped the water from his eyes and sat back on his heels, dangling his fingertips in the water.
"You okay, man?" Hurley asked, sitting a few yards from the water.
Jack rose and went to sit down beside Hurley. "What happened to her?"
"Taken by the Others, as best we can figure."
"And me?" Jack asked.
"It's the same every day," Hurley said, looking over at the people who were whispering by the fire. "You wake up, Jack, and it's like you don't know. You go looking for her. And you always find her; asleep in the waterfall, running through the forest, hiding in the waves. But it's just you, Jack. No Kate."
The next morning, Jack went down to the beach to sit in the sand. Michael and Eko watched him with their firelight eyes as he passed, and they fell silent.
The rain had let up somewhat since the day before, and there were tiny patches of white in the sky. Jack sat, staring at the wet sand on his fingernails, or at the white crests of the waves.
Why hadn't he brought Kate back to the caves with him, he wondered. How had he left her alone on the beach, in the rain?
Wake up, Jack, the wind howled. Come back.
"I'm here!" Jack cried out into the sky, clenching his fists against the sand. "I need you to come back, Kate!" The wind shifted and the waves crashed and the rain poured down around him. "I need you," he whispered.
Jack closed his eyes and sat still for a long while, listening for the sound of Kate's voice on the wind. There was coughing from Sawyer's tent, crying from the baby. Jack opened his eyes, confused, and started to turn his eyes back towards the forest. Something in the water caught his eye; dark hair, floating in the waves.
Jack drew his breath in quickly and then couldn't breathe. The rain stilled and the waves slowed and that brown hair floated in the gray, glorious wave of flowing ice, and Jack was lost in the salt and the sand.
Jack breathed again, and the stillness shattered and the rainwater pounded down against the ocean. Jack flew to his feet and dove into the water. "Kate!" he called.
The brown hair and the orange shirt floated away from Jack and he tore farther away into the ocean, fighting the helplessness and the salt in his mouth and the seaweed, the seaweed that he kept finding in place of Kate and her smile.
He saw it again—Kate's hair, floating a few yards off—and he kicked towards it and closed his fingers on nothing but cold, crashing waves, and whimpered, howling into the wind as the others looked on with fire in their eyes, as Jack let go of the wave that was the one he loved, let go of his agony and sank beneath the waves.
Hope is a very dangerous thing to lose.
"Please, Jack," Kate sobbed. "Wake up."
"Kate?" Jack whispered into the darkness.
And then Jack felt arms around his neck, blissfully warm arms in his world of cold, black waves and howling wind. "Please be alright," Kate whispered, her breath warm on his ear.
Jack opened his eyes to find Kate's brown curls on his chest as she hugged him, driving away the cool wind that blew and howled inside the caves. "Kate?" he asked, and she looked up at him and smiled with tears in her eyes, like dark clouds of a storm and mists of gray.
"I knew you'd make it all along, Jack," Kate said, hugging him again, careful to avoid the bandage on his chest. "You saved us all."
"No," he whispered, closing his eyes again and sinking back onto the wave. "You saved me."