Chapter 5: Jack and Kate struggle through their break-up as they strive to reconcile their lingering feelings with what's best for them as individuals. My goal with this story was always to have it make sense within the canon, and this is the first chapter where I really present that, as a large piece of it examines their encounter in the episode '316'.
"You're not even related to him!"
The words echoed over and over in his head as he drove to nowhere, just away from there. What had he done? He wanted it to be as simple as it had in the beginning, when he could merely walk back up to the door and wipe the slate clean. But that was when she still believed in him, and if she hadn't already stopped, tonight certainly closed the door.
There was no recovering from this. They had hurt each other on the island, but this was something more. This wasn't just a fracture, it was a clean break. Two halves coming irreparably apart. He drove to the abandoned parking lot at the end of the runway and sat there alone, weeping and going over every moment, as if in mourning, regretting and rethinking every decision of their relationship. If this or that had happened differently, would they still be happy? Would they be already married? But as the wee hours wore on, Jack became increasingly pessimistic until he finally convinced himself that no matter what, it would have ended this way. It was simply his nature to sabotage the things that made him happy. He could not thrive with a balanced life.
As dawn began breaking, Kate sat in the corner of Aaron's bedroom having not slept at all. Luckily he was too young to understand what Jack had said, but her tears had frightened him and it took at least an hour to calm herself down enough to steady the little boy into sleep.
Kate had spent the last several hours mulling over the night's events. She had gone out in the late afternoon to finally send Clementine the check. It frustrated her now that something so trivial to her, something that was meant to have been done ages ago, was now responsible for the total collapse of what she had come to call her day-to-day life.
Normally she would have let her anger take over and blame the entire fiasco on Jack, but she knew that was pointless. This was as much the fault of her insecurity as it was his. She tried to beg him to understand, but there was no way he could. It was a secret he had been fearing since the moment they got off the island. She would never earn his trust again.
It was around 7 o'clock in the morning. The sun was new over the horizon and Kate had given up all hope of sleeping for at least the next several days. Suddenly, the doorbell rang. She felt the air leave her lungs, praying it was Jack come to take her in his arms, tell her to forget it ever happened, and move on toward repair. She bounded down the stairs, half out of hope, half out of fear.
Kate opened the door to find Jack standing before her, his eyes red from crying and lack of sleep. He was still wearing his clothes from the night before.
"I just came by to get my things." he said, his voice emotionless.
"Please, come in Jack." Kate said, opening the door to let him in on the hope they would have a chance to talk and she could persuade him to stay. He marched almost zombie-like toward the stairs. Kate watched him dejectedly; he was a shell of himself. After a moment she followed him and found him in the bedroom collecting clothes from the closet and stuffing them into a duffle bag he had kept there.
"Jack we can still talk about this."
"No, Kate. It's over."
"We had a fight, Jack. We said some things we didn't mean."
"I said some things, you mean. You didn't say a word. I begged you to and you wouldn't say a single word. You know you can tell me anything but for some reason you never do. I'm always in the dark with you. I have never been sure of anything." Jack's voice was surging with pain and anger. Kate felt herself begin to cry.
"Jack please don't do this, I can explain…"
"Can you? Jesus, Kate I've given you every opportunity to 'explain' and you never. do."
Kate did not respond to this. He was right. She watched as he trudged out of the room, duffle bag in hand, making his way downstairs and out onto the front steps, prepared to leave. Kate stood in the doorway. They faced each other.
"Is this the part where I tell you to count to five and you kiss me?" Kate asked pathetically, understanding her joke wasn't funny.
"It's too late for that, Kate." Jack said, not wanting to drudge up all their memories. It hurt too much.
"It doesn't have to be."
"But it's always been. Don't you see that? It's always been too late." Jack's voice lowered and calmed. "This wasn't what was supposed to happen." He looked into Kate's eyes with disarming honesty, "We were supposed to fix each other."
Kate returned his meaningful gaze and collected herself. She could feel her heart break. It wasn't until now that she understood just how high Jack's expectations were of their relationship, of her. Suddenly, an old familiar feeling began to swell inside her and she knew at this moment that it was time to run again.
"I'm sorry Jack. I can't take that responsibility anymore." And with that, the white flag was drawn and defeat admitted.
"Tell Aaron…I don't know, whatever you have to tell him." Jack said, knowing that that would be the truth, ultimately.
"I'm sorry, Jack." It was all that was left to say.
"Me too. Goodbye, Kate."
She didn't respond – she couldn't. Goodbye was too final a word, and she knew this wasn't really the end. It didn't feel like it, and she knew what that moment would feel like. She watched as Jack walked to his truck, got inside, and drove off without a glance back.
When she closed the door, she turned only to find Aaron standing before her in his pajamas, just woken up.
"Mommy, where's Uncle Jack?"
And suddenly Kate realized the pain was only just beginning.
A month passed. Neither of them knew how to handle the break up. Jack would call regularly, usually late at night and often either drunk or desperately depressed. Sometimes both. Kate didn't know why she kept answering, she supposed that a part of her was hoping he would be calling to tell her he wanted to work things out. That he was sorry and he couldn't be without her. But as time wore on, she answered because she hoped he was calling to say goodbye and let her attempt to continue on with her life. Finally, one night around one o'clock, Kate had at last reached the end of her rope with him. She answered, knowing who it was.
"How are you?" he asked.
"I'm fine, Jack." her patience with him was already almost out.
"And Aaron? How's he doing? You know I found some toys of his around my apartment, I was thinking I could come by and…"
"Jack. Stop it. We're not doing this anymore. You either want to be a part of our lives or you don't. In case you forgot, YOU are the one who walked out. YOU are the one who didn't think we could work things out, so you don't get to call me up at all hours of the night and ask me how I am. You told me it was too late. That it was always too late. I'm tired of this, Jack. You need to figure things out on your own because I don't know how much more I can take. So before you call back here again, please just ask yourself, for both our sakes, do you want me to want you back?"
Minutes passed in silence. Soon, Kate heard a faint whimper on the other end and realized that Jack was softly crying. She opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn't find the words. Hearing him like this, she had to fight every urge within her to go to him and hold him and tell him he would be all right.
"It's just that…I ruined everything, didn't I?" he sobbed into the phone. Kate felt her eyes brim with tears.
"Jack…" but she knew if she continued speaking, they would only end up in an even worse situation. She had to do what was best for Aaron, and that meant forcing Jack to face his problems on his own. He couldn't be Kate's priority over the child, as much as it broke her heart to have to keep turning him away, but to not do this would only hurt them even more. She had to let him go.
"Jack, I'm hanging up now. Remember what I said. Don't call back here unless you have something new to say."
"Okay. I'm sorry to have bothered you." Jack said almost monotone. It made Kate nervous.
"And good luck."
"Yeah…thanks."
They hung up knowing it would be the last time they'd speak to each other for a very long while. Even though it killed them, they knew it was for the best.
But then, after months of silence, Kate found her and Jack's lives once again connecting, though perhaps not in the way she would have hoped as it was driven by Jack's new determination to find a way back to the island.
As she drove away from Aaron and his grandmother, perhaps never to see them again, she began questioning whether she had made the right choice. Was returning to the island really going to solve any of their problems? Or was it simply a means for her to run away yet again, this time from herself. She had never felt so unsure in her life. Aaron was gone now, she had lost the key that connected her to this reality, a reality in which she was not a criminal, but a single mother taking the best care of her child that she could, being the best provider she could be. All of that was gone now, too. She needed something to latch on to, something to remind her of who she was really. Something safe. The solution came to her almost immediately, yet from somewhere deep within. She tried to resist it, but it was so desperately what she needed that there was no use in denying it.
And so she made a quick turn and headed back toward his apartment building. Once there, she discovered that he wasn't home, but she remembered that she had never gotten rid of the spare key he had given her, it still rattled alongside the others on her chain. As Kate looked down at it she laughed lightly in spite of herself. Maybe she hadn't let go as much as she thought she had. As she unlocked the door and went inside, she was instantly overcome with nostalgia. The nights she had spent all that time ago with him, just the two of them curled up on the sofa, chatting well into the evening or sometimes not talking at all, just taking the other in. So much of their connection was unspoken.
Kate meandered through the space, going room to room, seeing flashbacks of every moment that had occurred in them. Finally she came to the bedroom, and upon sight of it, she felt herself begin to cry. It was completely inexplicable. Now that Aaron was gone, she was feeling so disconnected to everything, and here she was in a space to which she felt more connected than almost anything. It was the place where he slept, where he once slept beside her. Almost involuntarily, she walked over to her side of the bed and laid down on the covers, pretending it was another time.
After several minutes, she heard him enter but she didn't dare move. As she adjusted herself on the bed, she accidentally knocked something over on the nightstand. She heard Jack stop his movement and slowly, second by second, quietly pad into the room. He was clearly surprised to see her, but by now her mind was almost entirely numb, filled only with a determination to return to the island and see if it couldn't right everything that had gone wrong. She asked him if he was still going, he was. He asked about Aaron, but that was the last thing she wanted to talk about. It was still too fresh a wound.
"If you want me to go with you, you will never ask me that question again. You will never ask me about Aaron, do you understand, Jack?" she didn't have energy to feel guilty about her threatening tone. Every part of her was simply exhausted. Jack could see this, and agreed sincerely to her terms.
But there was something more to it. He said "yes" in such a way that reminded her of the man Jack used to be, ages ago, on the island. This was not the man who wanted to know where she was or what she was doing, this was the man she had first fallen in love with, who didn't care what crime she had committed, who she had harmed. That didn't matter – it wasn't who she was, and he understood it now just as he had in the first days they knew each other. Realizing this, a surge of emotion rose up within Kate, and wordlessly – as words were pointless now – she leaned up and kissed him hungrily. He responded in kind, and she became overwhelmed with a sudden need for him. She needed him to make her feel safe again, to make her feel like she was making the right choice. And as they began removing each other's clothing more aggressively with each item, she realized he felt this need just as much as she did.
Later, they lay wrapped together, holding each other so tightly it was as if they feared the other would be stolen away in the night. Kate's head rested against his chest, she paced her breath in rhythm with his, forcing herself to connect with him on as many levels as she could. She wanted to regain that feeling they once had, that they were two halves of a whole, something worth completion.
"Jack…"
"No. Don't say anything. Just let me pretend this is real." He whispered, keeping her from finishing her sentence. In fairness she didn't know what she was going to say anyway, she just wanted to make sure she wasn't dreaming. But his statement had in a certain sense jarred her awake. What was this supposed to mean? She couldn't say she had seen this night as a complete rejuvenation of their relationship, it was simply something they needed to happen to make themselves feel right again. She hoped Jack understood this, and she was confident he did given his use of the word 'pretend.' It made her sad that this was indeed the truth, but it still didn't change the fact that she never stopped feeling something for Jack. She didn't think feelings like that ever could change, and they certainly hadn't for her. In her mind, she was still very much devoted to him, as she knew he was to her.
All she could do now was rest until morning, when perhaps fate would bring them yet another clean slate on the island that had become more of a home to them than any of them cared to admit.
A/N: Sorry for the delay again. Fun fact, the use of the phrase "she was still very much devoted to him" is actually my own paraphrasing of a quote by Evangeline Lilly about the state of Jack and Kate's relationship in season 6. She says in this interview that "Kate is still very much married to Jack." I always liked how she said that, and I've been waiting for the opportunity to use that sentiment. So...there ya go lol. The next chapter is basically going to be the finale but examined with the plot of this story in mind. Then the epilogue. As Jacob would say "We're very close to the end."
Anyhoo, thanks for reading!
