By Sinking815
August 20, 2006
A/N: Let me start off saying that I've been dying to write this chapter for since I posted Chapter 9 which seems like forever ago, and I have a feeling that this might be the chapter some people have been looking forward to for a while. Having said that, I am going to try to keep this as true to LOST as possible, so do not expect anything that does not happen on LOST (if you think about that, I think you'll catch my drift…) For those of you who reviewed and expressed concern about Kate's choice… this would be the reason. As always, please read and review.
Chapter 20: Moment of Truth
She had not expected to be forced to make that choice. Ever. Not so suddenly and so consciously anyway. Like most events in her life, she'd never planned really. Her nature was much more comfortable living in the moment, reacting to things as they were thrown at her. She'd never been a big fan of sitting still long enough to write out lists, whether it was things to do, or groceries to buy, or her wedding plans. Maybe that was one of the reasons her marriage had been so punctuated.
Kate shook her overloaded mind away from slipping into another memory she'd rather leave boxed and stacked in the section of her brain she liked to think was marked as "Off Limits" and slammed that door roughly behind her. She'd relived enough of that mess for one day.
But she had deliberated and deliberated that choice until she began to see their faces mixing and meshing, the blood pounding in her ears and throbbing in the tips of her fingers and toes. She'd known what her heart was screaming then, what it was still screaming now. It was like she had put each man on different sides of a scale and stepped back to see which one she'd valued more. Then, she'd picked the other.
Kate didn't dare raise her eyes until she knew that they were no longer in her hut. The momentary look of shock she had seen plastered across Henry's face had now dissolved into one of contemplative calculation, as if she were an equation that refused to balance. In her heart, she felt a bottled satisfaction at his confusion and she smirked inwardly at her small victory.
She didn't hear the nasal voice whine off some excuse to leave her alone again. She didn't really notice Bea following in his footsteps; the same bewilderment, if she felt anything, not showing in her composure at all. She slowly, calmly walked out of the hut, letting the door creak shut behind her as she went.
Only then did Kate allow herself a covert look at Alex and saw that the girl was beaming at her although her mouth was still fixed firmly in a straight expressionless line. They shared a moment together, absorbing the acknowledgment of their newly found alliance, before Alex turned on her heel to rekick up the dust that had just settled from Bea's exit.
"Alex," Kate called out.
The teenager stopped, turned, stared and replied in an almost whisper, "You're welcome."
"No Alex, wait!" Kate kept her voice low for fear of being overheard, but the urgency in her tone made the other girl pause again, her blue eyes laced with a hint of perplexity.
"I need to…" Kate began, softly, feeling suddenly shy and slightly foolish at her change of heart. "I need to ask a favor."
Alex blinked, but that was the only betrayal of her surprise. "Umm…" She glanced at the door. "Okay."
"I need to see him before he goes."
Alex stared.
"It doesn't have to be for very long, I just…" Kate paused, the meaning of what she was about to admit weighing heavily on her for the first time. Her eyebrows lowered in that pained look she always got whenever she held Tom's plane between her fingers, twirling its toy body in slow spins and dives. "I just have to make him understand." She looked up, her eyes begging. "Please."
"Kate, I…" Alex started. "I can't. I…"
"You got Claire out, didn't you?" Kate asked.
"That was different," Alex protested. "I…" Her voice faltered, knowing how futile her excuse would be.
"Please Alex," she said. "I can't do this in front of Sawyer."
For a long moment, Alex just stared, her mouth opening and closing, trying to find words, eventually closing for good when she came up short. Kate never let up on her for a second. Her perserverance was rewarded with a defeated nod.
"Okay, I'll try."
"Well, that was unexpected," Tom said, hurrying to catch up with Henry's short but purposeful strides across the compound. "I figured after the way she caved in when we brought Jack…"
"Shephard," Henry interrupted, stopping swiftly so Tom had to skid to avoid running directly into him. "Do not make this personal."
Tom stood there, staring at his superior sheepishly as if to amend for his error. Henry turned away, realizing his irritability and closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe through the anger he felt coursing through him. No, that answer was not what he had expected. And now that made the next stage of their assignment that much more difficult—and less promising.
He started to walk away again, when Tom voiced that same thought to the air.
"I guess this takes Phase Two out of the question then huh?"
Henry felt the last wisps of patience sliding through his fingers, just as Kate had allowed Jack to slip through before. But he knew that a breakdown was not what Tom needed to see, or what the higher-ups expected from him.
"No, we're continuing on. Just as we planned."
Tom's brow wrinkled heavily, the lack of understanding written all over his bearded face.
"But I thought you said that Jack and Kate were best…"
"Shephard and Austen," Henry corrected.
"Right, Shephard and Austen," Tom repeated, berating himself for his second screw-up. "I thought that you wanted them for Phase Two."
"I did," Henry said. Tom looked expectantly at him, waiting for an answer that Henry wasn't willing to give this man just yet. "I did," he repeated, and stalked away, leaving his comrade to stare dumbfounded in his dust.
The crickets in the jungle seemed unusually loud to her that night. But she bet it was more from her increased paranoia and what she was about to attempt that made their chirping seem defeaning to her ears, as she snuck between the shadows of the hut, watching for passersby with held breath, allowing herself to breathe a sigh of relief when the yard before her was empty. It was times like this when she wished she had taken Tom's advice long ago and didn't make herself a part of their larger plan. The plan she was not privy to even now, she thought bitterly.
Counting down in her head, Alex bolted across the path seperating the two sides of camp, slipping stealthily into the shadows of the target hut. She waited and listened, her back pressed against the thatching as if she were trying to mold her body into one of its side walls. There was nothing but the sounds of the nightlife penetrating the air.
As she slipped in the hut, she felt the adrenaline kick up another notch, the idea that she might just be able to pull this stunt off starting to cement itself in her mind.
Both men jumped at her unexpected entrance and shouted some form of their surprise and Alex winced, expecting the entire plan to collapse around her. But they had been left muffled, probably more to Tom and Pickett's laziness, she thought, rather than for any beneficial purpose. Still, she raised a finger to her lips, showing them that she was on their side and that they had no reason to panic.
She worked quickly at Jack's restraints, whispering explanations of her intentions to both of them, allowing the tone of her voice to suggest the urgency of the situation.
Keeping an eye on Jack standing and stretching his arms, she looked to Sawyer and apologized, saying that if she ungagged him, they'd know she'd defected once again. The southerner simply nodded his understanding and even in the dim light from the moon, she saw him shoot Jack a pointed look across the room.
Then they made their exit.
Kate sat cross-legged, her back leaning against the pole, her whole body slumped in weariness. If she hadn't been waiting so anxiously for Alex's return, she might have fallen asleep then and there, now that she could arrange herself somewhat comfortably. But she knew if she slept for even a few minutes tonight, she'd consider herself lucky.
This waiting was wearing on her and she resisted to get up and pace the perimeter of her hut, knowing that would only agitate her nerves even more so. Instead, she expended the energy on rubbing her wrists to restore the circulation to her numb fingers.
She didn't know how long she sat there, waiting for a moment that seemed to never want to come, when she heard the sound of feet approaching. Standing up, she heard a hushed whisper say "You have a few minutes" and then time seemed to stop its never-ending march and suddenly she was staring at him. Her mouth opened awkwardly, closing against her will as if refusing on its accord to break the silence.
He shifted his weight, a sign she had learned long ago meant he was apprehensive, unsure as to what he should be doing and what was expected from him in a moment he didn't understand. She smiled, recognizing that something so familiar and feeling more comfortable than she had felt in the last thirty-six hours. He had always had the ability to make her feel that way.
She took a step towards him, the movement allowing her a better angle to study his face in the moonlight leaking through the spaces between where the roof and wall met with a bamboo crossbar. The large bruise around his eye was a harsh reminder of the decision she had made only a few hours before. Tentatively, she reached out her hand, letting her fingers whisper the greeting across his puffy skin and watched him flinch slightly at her touch.
"Jack," she said softly.
"It's not that bad," he replied. His hand closed around hers and pulled it away from his face, returning it to her side and looked away, his bruise and his pain disappearing into the shadows. She studied him, watching the way his eyes kept finding hers and glancing away the second they did, their silence settling between them. Then, they were fixed on something behind her, and she frowned, twisting to see what had caught his attention.
The bucket of water she had used a few hours before was still sitting in its spot, the towel hanging half in the water and half out over the edge. She walked towards it, reaching for the rag and dunking into the cool water. She could feel his eyes on her as she twisted the excess water from it, the drops falling to the wet the ground as she walked.
"This might be cold," she warned, folding it over his eye, trying as hard as she could to not apply more pressure than necessary. He let her hold it there and she flipped it over to renew the cooling effect twice more before she found the courage to speak.
He beat her to it.
"Kate," he said, his voice just above a whisper. "I'm… I had no idea…"
"Jack, don't." She cut him off, afraid to hear the words that meant he had heard everything she had wanted to keep buried. "Please."
He nodded, but she knew sooner or later he was going to say what he had wanted. Until she would hear it from him, he would lock it up some place safe and wait for her to tell him she was ready to talk about it.
"I wanted to tell you why I made the choice I did."
He looked at her, startled and wary.
"Alex told me they were going to let one of you go, and that I was to decide who that would be," she said. "And I knew… I knew that if I kept you here, they would keep using you against me, they'd keep hurting you because of me."
She swallowed and flipped the rag.
"Jack, I couldn't," she started, forcing herself to control the dangerous emotion bubbling up through her throat. She knew he had caught wind of it because his eyes softened and she lost her train of thought completely, letting it to die unfinished in the air.
"Sawyer saw Sayid," he said, attempting to cut into the pause.
Her eyebrows raised in astonishment and she pulled the damp compress away from his skin, momentarily forgetting what she had been doing. "He did? Where?"
"A few yards from the river," he replied, ignoring the cold against the throbbing under his eye. "I'm going to meet up with him when they let me go."
"That's good," Kate said, nodding her approval and not knowing what else to say.
"I'll wait a few hours and come back…"
"No, Jack!" she whispered fiercely, remembering to keep her voice in check. "Don't come back for us. It's too dangerous."
He cocked his head slightly at her, amused and asked, "Are you lecturing me on danger?"
She blushed and thanked the skies above that it was dark so he couldn't see her acting like a school-girl. A movement at the door made them both turn and Alex popped her head through.
"You've got a few more seconds," she whispered, disappearing again to resume her post.
Kate turned back to find Jack staring at her intently, that same look she had seen in his eyes when she had gagged and bound him. The one that made her nervous to continue staring, yet was powerless to look away. She felt her stomach flip and her skin quiver slightly with goosebumps, her heart pounding away in her chest, knocking against her ribcage. She tried to break out of it, but found herself on the verge of yet one more confession he needed to hear.
Tossing the rag to the ground, she felt herself in motion before she had really decided she was going to do it. Her arms wrapped themselves tightly around his shoulders, pulling him flush against her and feeling him wince at the sudden pressure against his ribs. She buried her face in the warm skin of his neck, the first spurt of tears rushing their way past her eyes and wetting her skin and his. His arms found their way around her and she trembled in the equal fierceness of his embrace.
She clung to him desperately, as if that alone would suspend them together in the night air, as if that alone would keep him with her. She hoped that he could feel that the name she had said today was not the one she had wanted to, that he could finally understand that she'd been distancing herself from him and lying through her teeth because what he made her feel right now, was something she didn't know how to deal with.
She heard Alex clear her throat and knew it was time for him to go. This might be her last chance.
"Jack, I…" she started, pulling away.
"I know, Kate," he whispered back, cutting her off. "I know."
And then he was gone.