Last time on Fallen From Grace:

"What's you're name?" He asked her.

The little girl titled her head to once side and smiled at him.

"Kate." She said, watching as the mouths of all six men dropped.

Chapter 2: Look At The Stars

The others came up behind Jack with amazed looks on their faces. All of them crouched alongside him, forming a circle around the girl but Kate only seemed intimidated by them all and moved closer to Jack. Her hand was still holding his, and Jack had folded his over her little one, and she turned so that her back was between his crouched legs. To Locke, who was directly opposite Jack, he could see the protective stance the pair had formed.

"So that girl, is Kate?" Charlie asked wonderously.

"Kate, what is your last name?" Locke asked her, she didn't answer. She just stared at him blankly, almost frightened. Locke nodded to Jack, notioning for him to try.

"Do you know your last name, Kate?" Jack asked in a friendly whisper. Kate looked at him and nodded silently. "Can you tell me what it is?" He asked again. She nodded.

"Austen."

"Kate Austen." Jack confirmed. He looked and saw a big scrape on her arm which was bleeding slowly. "Did you hurt yourself Kate?" She nodded, and he touched her arm to look at it. She winced a little. "Don't worry, I'll fix that up for you."

"How the hell could something like this happen?" Charlie asked. "We all saw her leave for the beach like, half an hour ago, and she was, well, normal then!"

"It must have been the island." Locke said.

"Here we go with that island crap again." Sawyer said, standing up and taking a few steps back. "It's always 'the island wants something' or 'the island told me to do it'."

"I'm simply saying what's right infront of us, Sawyer." Locke said, also standing up.

"Why don't you just take a leaf out of our books and just admit that you don't have a goddamn clue what's happening on this goddamn island?" Sawyer said, raising his voice considerable.

Kate backed further into Jack and turned into him, hiding against him to block out the loud voices around her. Jack tried intervening. "Guys-"

He was cut off instantly by Sawyer yelling again. Him and Locke got into a heated arguement which Sayid, Charlie and Hurley tried to break it up. Things quickly escalated, and Jack stood up, lifing Kate with him, and shouted out: "Guys will you stop already! You're scaring her!"

They all froze and turned to see Jack standing with the minature Kate in his arms. Kate had her legs wrapped around his waist, and her arms around his neck, turning her head to the side so that both her and Jack were looking in the same direction. All the while, her head rested beneath his chin, and tickled it ever so slightly with her curly hair. Her face was withdrawn as though she had been forced to watch a horror movie by an older sibling.

Now that everyone had calmed down, Jack tried again. "Let's go back to camp."

Sawyer pointed at Kate. "What about her?"

"She's coming with us." Jack said, and without another word, he walked with Kate hanging on to him back along the path that they came from.


Back at the camp, Jack walked through to his area of the caves where his medical equipment was so that he could clean the graze on her arm before it became infected. He ignored the stares and questions of people who asked him about the girl in his arms. How could he explain when he didn't know himself? He guessed that with Sawyer and Locke the way they were as well as Hurley's inability to keep his mouth closed for ten seconds, that it would be all around the camp by the time that he had sorted Kate out.

He couldn't deny that the idea was farfetched and absurd. Was it just a coincidence that this girls name was Kate Austen? Was it all a marvellous chance that she had the same eyes, hair, and skin tone? Was it more than just a strange feeling that she was wearing smaller versions of Kate's clothes, down to a smaller version of the seashell necklace around her neck that she had made on the beach?

He sat Kate down, finally able to pry her from his arms, on a rock that was the right shape to be used as a chair. She didn't fidget as most children would, she just sat silently and watched him as he collected a bottle of peroxide, and strip of gauze. Her arm was only small, and wouldn't use much up, and knowing that kids ran around a lot, he had a sinking suspicion that if he didn't cover it, she would only come to him with dirt or a peice of twig irritating it. He crouched back down before her, and she gave him her arm.

"Jack-Jack mad at me?" She asked in a quiet, almost fearful, tone.

There was the Jack-Jack again. He wondered why she was using that, but shrugged it off. "Why would I be mad at you?" He asked her.

"I went off the path." She said, like she was admitting to spilling a drink on an expensive carpet. "I'm not supposed to do that."

Jack looked at her long and hard, if she remembered going off the path, than she must have some link with - with whatever she left behind. "I'm not mad at you, Kate." He said with a smile, and she smiled back. He held her arm carefully, and got the peroxide soaked cloth ready, before thinking twice, and looking back up at her. "Now, Kate, this is going to sting a bit, Ok?" She nodded, and Jack applied the cloth. She barely even flinched except for her eyes screwing up. He could see that it hurt her though, so he cleaned it quickly and covered it with the gauze. It was only then that she opened her eyes again. "You're a very brave girl, aren't you?" He mused aloud. She nodded again. "How old are you, Kate?"

She held up a hand with her thumb tucked it, showing four fingers in the air. "Four."

Four years old.

Jack set the peroxide and cloth down and picked Kate back up, moving her so that she was no longer sitting on the rock, but on the plane seats they used for beds instead. She sat with her legs crossed while Jack continued to sit in front of him. Before he could speak again, Sayid came into the cave. Jack stood up and went over to him.

"Jack," He began. "The survivors are questioning."

"I know." Jack said, and looked back to Kate, who was playing with her fingers and humming to herself as if they weren't there.

"What do you suggest we tell them?" Sayid asked.

Jack sighed. "I was hoping to ask you the same thing." They were silent for a moment, and then Jack caught Sayid's questioning stare at Kate. "I'm going to talk to her, see if I can figure out what happened." He informed and Sayid nodded.

"Good idea. It would appear from her behaviour in the jungle that she doesn't remember anyone besides you." Sayid said, turning to leave, but Jack's comment stopped him momentarily.

"That's what worries me."


It wasn't long before the sun started going down. Kate grew hungry, and Jack took her out to where several campfires were burning outside the caves. At once, he was flagged over by the nearest group, consisting of Charlie, Claire, Aaron, Shannon, and Sayid. He went over and sat down, and no sooner had he got comfortable had Kate crawled into his lap and huddled into a ball there. Sayid passed him some of the guava portions and he gave a small section to Kate to eat. She didn't eat it at first, just staring at it and wondering what it was. When she looked around and saw everyone else eating it, she took a wary bite, but was soon eating hungrily.

"Any luck?" Sayid asked.

Jack shook his head. Attempts at trying to figure out what had happened had been useless. "Last thing she remembers is looking back at the path and hearing us, so she ran into the bushes to play hide and seek. But she knows that she wasn't supposed to go off the path."

"Thats something at least." Charlie pointed out.

"So, this is Kate?" Shannon said, leaning in a little to get a closer look.

"Apparently so." Jack said.

"How did something like this happen?" Claire asked. "How can a fully grown woman turn into a four-year-old girl?"

"During times of trauma, some people go back to a time in their childhood where they felt safe, a way of coping with the trauma. This is only in their minds though, nothing like this can be explained by medical science." Jack explained.

"Maybe Locke was right." Charlie suggested. "Maybe it is something to with this island."

"Maybe." Jack agreed.

Shannon suddenly had a brainwave. "Hold on, there's got to be ways of seeing if it really is Kate." She said, and moved so that she was sitting before Jack, facing Kate, who had now finished eating. "You see, I remember Kate telling me that she was ticklish right about here..." She extended her hand, and tickled gently beneath her chin, and sure enough, the little girl laughed and tried to move away from the tickling.

Jack grinned. "I know where she's really ticklish," He said, and with a yelp of protest from Kate, he put his arms around her stomach and tickled her on her belly, which made her squeal with laughter, a fun laughter that they rarely heard from Kate.

"Jack-Jack stop!" She said through laughing. Eventually, Jack left her to stop laughing and she waited for a few moments, until she was sure that he was unprepared, and then leaned forward to tickle his feet, where Jack was equally ticklish, and he fidgeted around underneath her, before eventually lifting her off him altogether and dangling her in the air infront of him.

"Shall I let you down now?" He asked her.

"Yes!" She said, laughing again.

"Are you going to tickle me?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." She surrendered, and Jack put her back into his lap. It was a lot darker and she yawned, curling up right into Jack's lap and getting in a comfortable position to sleep. Claire and Shannon both went "awww".

"Do you want to go to bed?" Jack said, dipping his head so that he didn't need to talk to loudly.

Kate shook her head. "No. Stay with Jack-Jack."

Within a few minutes, she began to drift off into sleep, and was soon fast asleep. Jack smiled at her, but Claire caught him off guard.

"Why do you worry, Jack?" She asked.

"What?" He asked.

"The baby, why do you worry about being a good father?" She repeated.

Jack thought for a moment. With all the rucass of Kate seemingly becoming a four-year-old, he had very nearly forgotten about Kate being pregnant in the first place. "I just don't want to become my father." Jack said quietly.

"Jack, look at yourself. Look at her." Claire said. "You're not like your father."

Jack smiled at her, and Claire stood with a sleeping Aaron in her arms to go to bed herself. It wasn't long before Charlie followed, and soon Shannon and Sayid disappeared to their beds. For a while, Jack stayed before the fire, watching it die down lower and lower before he felt Kate shiver in his arms and he carried her into the cave.