It was the middle of the night, and sleep had descended over the beach. Well, except for a small circle of light that still burned in the centre of a gathering of females. Most of the castaways had retired to their shelters for the night, except for Kate, Claire and Sun, who were huddled around the small campfire talking.
They had a perfectly good reason for talking so late at night. Kate was having a dilemma. A big one. Of course, it probably didn't help the dilemma that Jack was walking towards them. None of the girls could see him approaching because they could barely see outside of the light that the fire cast, but he could clearly hear every word they said.
"And I just don't know what to do!" Kate announced, finishing telling them about her problem, and waiting for the advice she had counted on.
Instead of advice, however, she was greeted with awkward stares.
"Well, I'm not sure I'm the best one to dish out advice on this, Kate." Claire started relucatantly.
"Me neither." Sun agreed.
Kate looked at them desperately. "Are you kidding? You're the best!" She pointed out.
"Kate, I'm on an island in the middle of nowhere, raising a baby alone, and his father is off thinking that I gave the baby up for adoption." Claire pointed out, jabbing her thumb towards her shelter where Aaron was sleeping beside Charlie.
Sun nodded in agreement. "I'm married to my baby's father, but it's still complicated between us."
Kate bit her lip nervously. "Well...I'm kinda in the middle of that." She explained.
Jack finally stepped up behind Kate, and Claire and Sun instantly saw him, but Kate was clueless to his presence.
"Umm...Kate..." Sun started, but Claire spoke over her, not adknowledging Jack and continuing on.
"How so?" She asked Kate.
Kate groaned. "Let's just say that the baby's father is around, but I'm not exactly wit him, per say, and it's very complicated, and because of that, he definately doesn't know."
"Who is the father?" Sun asked, realising that Claire definately didn't want Kate to know that Jack was there, so Jack just stood silently behind Kate.
"Uh..." Kate started.
"It's not Sawyer, is it?" Claire asked worriedly.
"Oh God no!" Kate insisted.
"Phew!" Claire said, relieved, and caught Jack's look of relief out of the corner of her eye.
"It's Jack, isn't it?" Sun realised.
Kate looked away from the girls, down into the sand before her. She looked back up and nodded at them. "Yeah, yeah it's Jack's."
Standing behind her silently was becoming harder and harder for Jack, especially when he had pieced things together.
"Umm...Kate..." Sun said, trying to tell her that Jack was there again, but Jack shook his arms, signalling for her to stay quiet.
"Oh wow! That's so brilliant!" Claire said, covering up what Sun had attempted to say.
"No, it's not brilliant." Kate insisted in a loud whisper, warning them to keep their voices down.
"Of course it is!" Claire pointed out.
"No, it's not." She countered.
At Kate's insistance that this was clearly a bad thing, Jack sat down on the sand behind her, with Kate still to distressed to realise that he was there.
"Why isn't it?" Sun asked. "Kate, a baby is a blessing, not a curse."
Kate shook her head. "I just don't think I can do this." She admitted, ashamed.
"Do what?"
"Everything." She sighed.
"You mean, raising a child, or telling Jack?" Claire asked.
"Telling Jack."
Claire sighed. "You've got to tell him, Kate."
"I know..." Kate groaned. "It's just...complicated."
"How is it complicated?" Sun asked.
"It was kinda of a fling." Kate explained. "When the others had us...they had these plans for me to give them a child, but I kept fighting them off telling them that I wasn't going to be their doner mother. They kept making these threats that they'd be watching me, and whenever I had a child, they were going to take it away from me."
"Oh my god!" Claire said, covering her hands over her mouth.
"That's terrible!" Sun exclaimed, horrified.
Kate nodded. "So, they let me go back to my cell, but it wasn't my cell, it was Jack's. I was so scared that I just fell into his arms, and he made me feel so safe. For the first time in years I actually felt like nothing could happen to me, as long as I was with him, and one thing led to another. The nexy day, they let us go. Now I know why."
"They knew what you did together." Sun realised.
"For a while, I was just hoping that I could forget about it," Kate said. "Forget about everything they said to me, but it didn't work. I couldn't stop thinking about it, about him, and about everything. Then I missed my period...and...and...yeah." She finished.
Claire turned to Sun. "I think for complication wise, she's got us beaten." Sun nodded.
"I'm just so scared of what's going to happen." Kate said, drawing her knees up to her chest.
Claire sighed. "Um...Kate?"
"Yeah?"
"This might not be a good time to tell you, but Jack's here."
Kate's eyes instantly raised to Claire's. "What?"
"He's here, he's sitting right behind you."
Kate looked over her shoulder, part of her hoping that this was a joke, but sure enough, Jack was only inches behind her. She turned her head, smaking her forehead against her palm, and went to stand up.
Jack, however, had other ideas, and grabbed her waist. "Oh no, you're not going anywhere." He pulled her back down, and she fell into his arms, relaxing against him when she realised that she wasn't getting away from him. Part of her panicked, because the last time she was in his arms, they ended up creating the child she was carrying.
Claire and Sun got to their feet. "We'll leave you two to talk." They said, before disappearing off to their shelters and the men that waited for them.
"Was that true?" Jack asked her.
Kate nodded. "Yeah."
"All of it?"
"Yeah, all of it." She confirmed.
"Kate..." He started, but she cut him off.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you." She said in a tiny voice.
"Why not?" He asked her.
"Because of what it would mean." She told him. "Everything would change."
He nodded. "Yeah, it would."
"Not just with us, but everything...I mean, what if they come back for it? Like they told me?"
Jack tightened his arms around her. "Kate, I told you that night that I was never going to let them come anywhere near you or any children that you had. You know what's changed since that night?"
"No." She whispered.
"Nothing."
Kate allowed herself to bury further into his embrace. "Jack, I can't do this." She admitted.
"Yes, you can." He whispered to her.
"No, I can't."
"Why not?"
"Don't you see?" She asked him. "This is what they wanted! This was their plan all along."
"How could they have planned this, Kate?"
"They would have known." She said. "They would have known that I wouldn't give in to them, and they would have knwon that if there was anyone I was going to go to, it would be you."
"How could they know that?"
Kate laughed hollowly. "According to the rest of the beach it's blindingly obvious that I'm in love with you."
"And are you?"
His question was so abrupt that she had to bite her lip before answering. "Yeah." She said simply.
"That's good." Jack said. "Because they're right when they say that I'm in love with you as well."
Kate looked over her shoulder at him, her new movement causing her to lie sideways in his arms. "Really?"
He nodded. "Yeah, really. So, I suppose, the big question is, do you want this baby, Kate?"
She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. They're only going to take it away."
"No, they're not." Jack said, with a determination she almost expected of him.
"Jack, I can't afford to fall in love with this baby if all they're going to do is take it out of my arms. It would kill me. I can't have that happen."
"Kate, it's not going to happen."
"How can you say that, Jack?"
He looked at her, seeming slightly upset at her question. "Do you really think that I'm going to let them take you or our baby away from me?" Kate was silent, looking away from him. "I love you, Kate. I'm not going to let them within a mile of you. I'm never going to let anything hurt you as long as I have an ounce of strength in my body."
Kate leaned her head back on his shoulder. "Do you really think we can do this?"
"That depends on what your answer to the question was. Do you want this baby, or not?"
Kate nodded. "Yeah, I want it."
"Then yeah, I know we can do this."
He lowered his lips to her, meeting her lips in a gentle, reassuring kiss. There was no desperate seeking tongues clashing, nothing but tenderness and softness. He held her when they parted.
"You shouldn't be afraid to tell me something like this, Kate." He scolded her lightly.
"I was scared that you'd reject it. That you wouldn't want it." She admitted.
"Oh, Kate, don't be so silly.This is a baby. Our baby. Babies are...brilliant, I mean, look at Aaron, he's adorable."
"Yeah, he is." Kate nodded, and then remembered something. "He smiled for the first time the other day."
"Really?" Jack asked, her contagious smile spreading to his own lips.
She nodded, smiling proudly. "Yeah, me and Claire were talking, and I was holding him. We were talking about when we were kids, and the old TV shows we remember. We started singing the theme tune to Happy Days, and he just started smiling up at me and laughing." She explained.
"Wow...Happy Days." Jack mused, his own childhood rushing back to him.
"He just kept laughing and laughing, so we carried on with it." She remembered. "It was great, you know."
Jack laughed lightly, and placed a kiss on her temple. "Listen to you," He smiled. "You already sound like a mother."
She smirked. "In case you haven't noticed, I am a Mom now."
Jack brought his hand to her stomach, slipping it beneath her t-shirt and caressing the revealed skin, where beneath it lay their unborn child, a product of their passion and love. "Yeah, I've noticed." He smiled.