Disclaimer: Yay! I finally own Lost! No wait sorry, that was just the DVD Box set…
Chapter 2 : Failsafe
Jack was sure that this was just a nightmare. A sick deluded nightmare. Any moment now, he was going to wake up and realise it was just his leftover guilt ganging up on him. All it would take was one count to five, and he would realise that the woman shivering on the floor in front of him wasn't Kate. It couldn't be. It was just his fears playing on him, exploiting the cracks in his battered armour. Counting to five was his failsafe. It always worked. Always.
Yet as he opened his eyes and the image didn't fade, his worst fears were confirmed. It really was Kate, backed into this corner like a wounded animal.
"Kate? Kate, can you hear me?" There was no response. She just stared defiantly ahead of her. Jack ignored the hurt the fact that she ignored him brought, and slipped back into doctor mode. He had hid behind his 'doctor' status for years. It was as if his degree and scrubs were a shield against anything that had the remote chance of hurting him. But looking at the nearly broken woman in front of him, he knew that there was some sense in the idea that doctors don't treat family.
" Kate?" Jack took one nervous step towards the trembling woman. She showed no sign of hearing him. Pushing his feelings to the back of his mind, he ploughed on, his brain on auto-pilot. He carried on doing exactly what his med-school-trained brain told him to do. All he wanted to do was to scoop her up into his arms and tell her that everything was going to be alright. But his brain told his heart that that was one of the worst things he could do right now. He didn't have the power to tell her that everything would be alright. He never had.
" Kate, listen to me, okay?" He knelt down to her level. "It's Jack, okay? You're safe here. No one can hurt you while you're here."
She was soaking wet from the rain outside, and her matted air was plastered to her face. She was still shaking, and Jack knew that whatever she had been through, she had to find some dry clothes quickly. She needed to be examined by a nurse - she could still be seriously injured. But she seemed unaware of all of this. She didn't seem to know what was happening. Or maybe she didn't care. She could be beyond caring.
" Kate, you need to find some dry clothes - you must be freezing." Jack shuffled slightly closer to her, but still kept a respectable distance away.
" Kate, please-" Kate pulled something from her pocket,. It was the toy aeroplane. That damned little plane always seemed to appear at Kate's worst times. When they opened the case, at all the funerals, now. It was like a talisman. It was her failsafe.
" Kate, please, I'll leave, just do something, anything." What he hated was this indifference. All he wanted was a reaction from her, a chance to hear her voice, to know that Kate was still there, that somewhere inside that shell, was Kate. His Kate.
" Kate..." He reached out...
Kate flinched as his hand collided with her arm. Jack pulled away as if he had been burnt. Stupid idiot...
It had brought Kate out of her trance. Eyes glinting with unshed tears, she turned to face Jack. Her voice, when she finally found it was laden with emotion.
" Don't touch me." The words broke the barriers, and Kate finally broke down in tears.
Knowing she wouldn't let him comfort her, and that she would not like him to see her like that, Jack turned and fled. When outside, he was horrified to find tears flooding his own eyes as he kicked the door in anger. Who could do this to her? Who could have hurt Kate so much that she ended up like that?
All Jack knew now was that if he knew, he would break the bastardsneck.
Hello again! Fancy seeing you here!
Anyway, I hope you like this! Only one or two more chapters and you will get the promised fluff! Please be as kind as you were last time with the reviews - that was the most amount of reviews I've gotten for any one chapter! Yay! Hope this lives up to your expectations!
( Constructive Critisism would be good! Just don't be too mean!)
From SkinnyJeans xxx
