Ghosts
Sinking815
February 5th, 2007
A/N: Two days left!! I always wanted to do a one-shot with Tom and Kate, but somehow I'd always expected it to lead into a moment between Jack and Kate. This one decided it wanted to go a different direction, so I let it. Slight S3 spoilers.
She loved the red sunsets best. The salmons and crimsons seemed to light Mr. Brennan's cornfields on fire, the growing stalks deepening their spring green to an almost black-navy, the first ears of corn dancing with violent oranges and glistening golds. What she loved most was the way the fading light caught the auburn in Tom's light brown hair and the russets in his hazel eyes. But she'd never admit it to herself, letting her fleeting feelings of young love be carried away by the soft midwestern winds before they could be anything more than that.
Kate had lost count how many times she had watched the sun set over the Iowa plains, one hand clutching an ice cream cone, the other only inches from Tom's. They'd known each other since before they could walk, but she still felt the butterflies tickle her stomach whenever she was with him. Ten-year-old Tom had made the world seem right when she was sure it was spinning out of control. Eighteen-year-old Tom almost made her want to sit still.
He also always insisted on paying for her ice cream, Kate mused with a sleepy smile, as she chanced a glance at her friend. Tom licked his soft-serve swirl and she looked away, bashful, when he caught her eye and grinned. Even though he drove her to the Tastee-Freeze four miles in town, he always beat her to the cash register, laughing as he handed the clerk a handful of change and seeing Kate's look of annoyance.
"But Tom, you drove!" she'd protest.
"But you're my shot-gun girl!" he'd tease right back and race off to the cab of his beat-up brown Ford.
Leaning back into the crooked branches of the huge oak, Kate sighed as she let the tranquil early summer twilight envelope her. Cows in a nearby field lowed in contentment breaking into the first lyrics of newcomer Tim McGraw's "Don't Take The Girl" leaking from the windows of the pick-up underneath her. She shifted slightly, her barefeet scraping some bark from the tree's trunk and watched the pieces fall slowly to the ground. Tom's laugh made her look up, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
"I think that's the closest I've ever seen you come to wearing pink," he said.
Kate looked down at her white tank-top softened to a mellow apricot in the sun's dying light. She scrunched her nose, in mock disgust, and replied, "It's orange Tom."
He shrugged that infuriating indifferent gesture that made her want to laugh and yell at him at the same time. She never knew why she always got defensive about those sorts of things. So pink was pink, why should she care if she wore it or not? But pink was a fluffy color for prissy girls who wanted to dress-up and paint their fingers. Kate looked to her own clipped toes, followed her faded blue jeans to her hands, narrowing her eyes at the thought of nail polish and make-up, barely surpressing a shudder. She was definitely not one of those girls.
"Let's play a game," Tom said, after a moment, interrupting her internal indignation.
Kate licked her cone and muttered around a mouthful of ice cream, "Like what?"
"Ever play 'Rumor Has It'?" he asked, something like mischief putting a boyish grin on his face.
"I don't know how to play it," she replied, crossing her arms over her chest and blushing slightly at the way his eyes darkened momentarily before he glanced away. She wondered if he ever got tired of her playing hard-to-get.
"Well," he said, his tone overtly flirtatious, "then I'll teach you."
She licked the chocolate from the corners of her mouth and fixed him with her most skeptical stare. His enthusiasm was bursting from his lanky frame and Kate almost lost her straight face to his downright goofiness.
"For example, I'd say 'Rumor has it…'" Tom explained. "And then I'd finish the sentence. Like…"
He let his voice drift off, looking off into the horizon for an idea. Kate studied him, her eyes roaming his silhouette with more than just curiosity and locking with his when he turned back to her. "Rumor has it that girls can't eat chocolate dip cones without dripping on their pink clothes."
Kate narrowed her eyes in mock annoyance and took large defiant lick of her cone, beaming sweetly at him when no dessert fell to her shirt. He raised his eyebrows at her skeptical, "That's it?"
"That's it," he said, the excitement catching in his voice. She just stared, clearly not sold in the idea yet.
"C'mon Katie."
She giggled at his pathetic puppy-dog eyes, forgetting her game of coyness. "All right." Her mind tumbled over itself for a witty comeback to his teasing dig at her gender.
"Rumor has it," she said, eyeing him casually, "that guys only start games like this when they can't think of anything to talk about."
"Ouch, Austen." He frowned before losing his composure and shooting her a foolish grin.
Kate shrugged, mimicking him from only seconds before, and smiled innocently. "Your turn."
"Rumor has it that you are going to prom."
"Rumor has it that you'll never catch me dead in a dress," she shot back, feeling that indignation flare again.
"Awww, Katie."
"That's not part of the game Tom," she half-teased.
He regarded her silently, his head tilted slightly right, his long bangs not quite falling in his eyes. She squirmed under his scrutiny and knew he was seeing the real her again. Tom always knew how to do that. But he changed tactics on her.
"Rumor has it that you have to wear a dress at your wedding."
"Not if I'm marrying you," she retorted, smiling shamelessly and crunched her cone innocently.
"That's not part of the game Kate," Tom said, using her words against her.
"Rumor has it that I don't have to if I marrying you," she corrected herself, feeling pleased at her answer.
"Well rumor has it that you won't," he teased.
But Kate missed the light-hearted tone and sat up a little, taken aback. "What?"
Tom smiled mischievously and leaned back, clearly comfortable with yanking her chain like he was. "Rumor has it that you're going to marry a doctor…"
Kate relaxed, realizing he had set her up, bringing up that dream from a few years before when they had pledged themselves to a tape recorder and buried it beneath where she sat now. She cocked her head at him as he continued.
"…no wait, a surgeon…"
"Geez, don't get too carried away there, hotshot."
"…with a real simple name."
"Yeah, like Tom," Kate said, watching the last bit of cone disappear into his mouth. He shook his head, as he chewed, his eyes dancing.
"No, no, no," he said, sitting up and sliding towards her. "I was thinking more like Jim or Joe…"
"Joe?!" Kate exclaimed.
"No, you're right. Not Joe," Tom agreed. "More like…" He pretended to think and she pretended to be enraptured with his fortune-telling.
"Jack."
There was a moment of silly quiet as each of them tried to maintain a somewhat serious air. It lasted only ten seconds before they burst out laughing.
"You're ridiculous!" Kate giggled, tears forming in her eyes.
"No, I'm dead serious, Katie." But his smile was the give-away.
"Right." She nodded, taking another lick of her cone.
A drop of chocolate ice cream fell from the melting mess in her hand and found its way to her tank-top. It stained her shirt almost immediately and Kate watched in mild horror as it spread out right over her heart. She looked up at Tom, her mouth agape, and noticed his own eyes wide. Then he clapped a hand over his mouth and tried without success to muffle his hysterics.
The sunset before her now could have passed for the same one she had seen those ten years ago had it not been for the fact that the scarlets and magentas here had probably never seen corn or oaks. That was back during a time when she couldn't stop time even though she wanted to, when she wanted to stop running from a life she couldn't control. Now it seemed time had picked exactly the wrong moment of her life to frame for eternity. Now she wanted nothing more than for it to speed recklessly through her days of misery. Regret had been her companion for so long, it may as well have been her twin. But this feeling of betrayal was still a painful acquaintance.
"More like… Jack."
It was cruel that Tom's voice haunted her with his name. With her teeth gritted in anger, she swiped a rebellious tear as it made its slow descent down her cheek. Why was time playing with her like this?
Her eyes were red and puffy from staring blindly into the spectacle that would have taken anyone else's breath away, but she wasn't seeing it. Seated in the deep warm sand, her body was here, keeping up the façade that a person actually resided somewhere within its petite frame. She should have felt the cool night air tease her bareskin, should have felt its sharp nip against the sides of her face. Kate needed her mind for that and she wasn't sure it had ever left the other island.
The shadow she was expecting eventually came to her right the way it always did. It grew slowly, quietly, as if trying to make its presence known without spooking her. Kate let her eyes slip to the side to confirm its owner and wondered briefly what he was going to try to talk to her about this time. She wondered if it even mattered; they always seemed to end up at the same spot, on the same person. She knew he worried about her, knew her isolation was unsettling to the others, but Kate had stopped caring long ago.
"Ain't gonna be there just like that last time you looked," he said softly, his voice rough against the previous quiet.
She swallowed, her eyes staring off into the horizon. It wasn't the cold shoulder. She just hadn't expected this directness and found herself stumbling to regain her balance. He'd caught her off guard.
"I'm not looking for it," she answered, her voice sounding stronger than the weak lie that it was.
Folding his long legs awkwardly underneath him, he sat and waited. Kate could feel his blue eyes boring into her, the intense scrutiny making her flush with shame. She hated they could both do that to her.
They sat for what must have been minutes in tense silence when Kate found herself comparing them. These moments between Sawyer and her were not unpleasant, they just weren't comfortable. Two like-minded companions seemed to fuel an undercurrent of electricity that needed an outlet. Eventually that circuit would fry.
Her mind drifted, taking itself away from the present and setting her down in a moment like this two months ago. The situations were similar, taut and uneasy, but the man had been different, had handled it differently. There had been a mutual understanding, a gentle give-and-take acceptance that if he pushed this far, she'd reveal this much. Most of the time, they'd found some way to say what they needed to without words.
"So what are you lookin' for?" he asked, interrupting her reverie and the ghost of her memory evaporating from her left.
"A rescue boat," she replied, sarcastically.
He huffed a breath of frustration and she could feel his anger merging with her own, the first flashes of a storm crashing somewhere in the space between them. He retreated a little and she knew he was regrouping, working out a different tactic to bombard her defensive shell. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him glance out to the horizon, his face crunched with a brooding concentration. He was quiet for longer than she had expected and for a second, Kate thought he wasn't going to try again. But she had let her impatience get the best of her.
"Can I ask you something Freckles?"
It was only then that she looked at him, let him see her without her securities, let him see the mess she was barely managing to hold together. It wounded him. She saw the slight flinch in the way confusion flickered across his face. Raw emotion hurt them both and he knew whatever he wanted to ask was treading in deep water.
"Why didn't you tell him…" He hesitated, and she wished he wouldn't do that. Wouldn't let the words grate against her as he tried to tiptoe around the name.
"Why didn't you tell him we had no where to run to?"
She regarded him suspiciously, searching for the trap she felt like she was walking in to. But his eyes were clean, clear, genuine. He just wanted an answer, something he could take away from this conversation, grapple with, and then come back when he needed the next clue. The sincerity didn't surprise her; she'd always seen that in him, known it was there beneath his pain. What stole the words from her mouth was exactly that answer he was looking for.
She glanced back into her lap, watching her fingers twist about themselves, and breathed heavily. But there was no way to escape the truth, this was the only answer she had.
"For the same reason you wouldn't tell me, Sawyer," she whispered.
Finis