Chapter 7: Life after Jack.
Three years had passed since she had said goodbye to the island and Jack. Nothing felt real here anymore. It was as if a world without him in it couldn't possibly exist. He had always been her anchor, her 'constant' as Desmond would say. She had no reference to reality anymore because she couldn't believe that he was gone. It was surreal at first, and agonizing. Beyond the loss of Jack, she had to repeatedly explain to Aaron that he wasn't her son and she wasn't his mother. The look on Claire's face when Aaron ran to Kate's arms before hers upon their return would forever be burned into her memory. But transitions were being made, and Kate was doing all she could to stay a part of his life, even if from a greater distance.
To help with the immediate rush of loneliness and disillusion, she and Sawyer decided to be the company to the other's misery. But it was short-lived. They cared deeply about each other, but there was too much history between and behind them. They finally withdrew the white flag when one night in bed, as they attempted to pick up the pieces in the only way they knew how, Kate, with her eyes closed, breathed Jack's name. Sawyer didn't get angry, how could he? It wouldn't be fair, not when he saw Juliet every time he looked at her. But they knew then that they couldn't carry on like this.
It had been almost a year since they had last seen each other. In the meantime, they had both gone on much-needed soul searches. Sawyer sought out Juliet's friends and family as well as Cassidy and Clementine, Kate reconnected with friends from her childhood, revisiting the places she had been with Tom, one by one healing old wounds. But she was slowly beginning to accept that some wounds could never be healed.
She and Sawyer had made plans to meet up at a bar in New Mexico, where they had discovered their paths would cross some weeks before. She was looking forward to it, eager to see a familiar face. He felt the same.
When she walked in, he was already sitting at the bar. He saw her approach and stood up to greet her. They shared a friendly embrace before taking seats at a nearby table. Kate ordered herself a beer.
"So how ya been, freckles?"
She smiled at the nickname.
"Not bad…not great, either. It's strange, going back through your life place by place. You pick up on things you couldn't see the first time. Things you wish you'd done differently."
"I know what you mean. I've been on a bit of a mission myself, trying to find the people I've conned, make amends."
"Is that so? How's that going for you?" she said teasingly.
"Mmm, another twenty years and I'll be almost through."
They laughed and sipped their drinks. As she lifted the cold glass, Sawyer noticed the impressive diamond ring on her left hand. He nearly spit.
"Damn freckles! You didn't tell me you was getting hitched! Who's the lucky stud?"
Kate fell silent. She didn't know how to explain it without sounding or feeling like a lunatic. But then she remembered, this was Sawyer, if anyone was going to understand it would be him.
"Actually it's from Jack."
"Hold on…"
"Before we came back, in the three years we were off the island and you were living with Juliet, Jack and I were engaged. But it didn't work out. I couldn't tell him about what you asked me to do, I couldn't betray your trust. He thought there was still something between you and me and I got scared…"
She trailed off, on the verge of tears, the pain refreshed and the regret hitting her hard. She collected herself and continued.
"I took the ring off and I thought I'd lost it. But a few months ago I finally found it in a drawer with all the pictures I'd had of us as a family. When we got back, I…I couldn't look at them."
"So why put the ring back on?"
Kate looked to Sawyer with desperation in her eyes.
"Because after all this time, after learning everything I've learned about myself these past few years…I don't want to move on, James. I don't want to find someone else. He was the love of my life and I let him die without ever knowing that."
"Kate…"
"It's true. If he had known, if he had really known, he would have come with us. He would have believed in the two of us more than the island. That's how it should have been, but I was always too scared to make him sure."
Kate was crying now. Over the course of these three years, she had managed to fill her head with an overpowering sense of regret. Not just for the people she wronged prior to the island, but most importantly for what she had (or more to the point, hadn't) said to Jack during all their time together. She couldn't help but wonder that if she had been honest about her feelings for Jack and her duty to Sawyer and Clementine, maybe he wouldn't be gone. Or at the very least, they could have spent those last months together and happy, even if it would inevitably end the same way. She couldn't think of a single "what if" scenario that would have entailed anywhere near the pain they actually went through. It was all for nothing.
"Kate…there's something I never told you." Sawyer said. She looked up at him. His eyes were sincere.
"The day that Jack dropped the bomb, he and I had a conversation just the two of us. I needed to know why he wanted to do what he was gonna do. First he said it was because of destiny, that fate had pre-ordained it to be so. I told him he was full of it." Kate smiled, "So I asked him the real reason because I knew as well as anyone that no one makes a decision like that unless it's personal. And you know what he said?"
Kate shook her head, waiting.
"He said, 'I had her and I lost her.' So I asked him why that meant he had to completely rewrite history, how was that gonna help anything? You would be strangers. And he just said 'if it's meant to be, it's meant to be.'"
Kate couldn't compute.
"Don't you see, Kate? Everything that man did on that island, no matter how much it was for the 'greater good' or 'destiny' or any of that crap, when it came down to it, it was for you. It was always for you. You think he would have done that if he believed you'd never loved him? You want to know if he was sure? He thought blowing up a damn nuclear bomb still wouldn't be enough to stop you two from finding each other and starting over. He knew you loved him, Kate. I know he did."
Kate stared intently at the table, lost in her own thoughts.
"Jack dropped that bomb because he thought it was too late. And by the time I finally told him it wasn't…it really was." Kate's voice was hollow. She had spent too much time convincing herself of this conclusion that nothing Sawyer said could change her mind.
"So what do you want to do about it, Kate?" Sawyer retorted, almost frustrated. It bothered him that she seemed so content to spend the rest of her life beating herself up over something so far beyond her control. It wasn't her fault Jack was dead. She looked up at him, as if this was the question she had been waiting for.
"I want to have a funeral. Even if I don't want to move on, I have to say goodbye."
"But Kate, his mom had a memorial with a tombstone and everything almost right after we got back. Sure, none of us went, but - what difference is having a funeral going to make…?"
"I have to decide once and for all that he's dead." Kate said, cutting Sawyer off. He looked at her, confused, disturbed.
"I ain't followin, freckles."
"For the last three years I've been trying to convince myself that he's really gone, but there's a part of me that wonders if he survived whatever it was he had to do. That thinks maybe he's still on that island somewhere, or if he's out in the world trying to find his way back."
Sawyer stared at her, feeling her heartbreak but totally unable to help. It was too deep. The only thing he knew was that he couldn't say no.
"All right. We'll have a funeral."
Sawyer took her hand in understanding. She smiled gratefully at him, her eyes brimming with tears.
"Thank you."
One month later, when they were all back in Los Angeles, Kate, Sawyer, Claire, and Aaron gathered to say a final goodbye to Jack. The group stood around Jack's burial place beside his father. They knew that beneath them lay an empty coffin.
It was a chilly afternoon in late September, a few days after the anniversary of the first plane crash. Aaron was a young boy now. Claire stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. Sawyer stood farther off, thinking to himself. Kate changed the flowers beside the tombstone. She stepped back and took in the words before her. Just his name and dates. No "loving husband and father" or anything like that. He never had the chance to live that life. The life he should have had with her.
"Should we all say something?" Claire asked. Kate nodded absent-mindedly. Her thoughts were miles away.
Claire stepped forward as if to speak directly to the tombstone.
"Hi Jack." She let out a single light chuckle in spite of herself. "I suppose I didn't really get to see you that much after you came back or…or before you died. But I remember one of the last times we spoke to each other. When I finally had the chance to call you my brother. That was one of the proudest moments of my life. We spent all that time in the same place together but I never realized that we'd never have the chance to properly get to know each other. There's so much of my life that I wanted to share with you, the way a sister should. But I promise we'll catch up some day. You have my word."
Claire stepped back toward Aaron. She hugged him close and Kate heard him say "I love you, mom" into her shoulder. She knew it shouldn't have, but it crushed her. Claire and Kate looked to Sawyer.
"My turn?" he asked, approaching the stone, clearly uncomfortable with the situation. Emotions never were his strong suit.
"Well, Doc, I guess I'm supposed to pretend it's just you and me here, mono a mono…"
"James." Kate said sternly. He bowed his head, taking the reprimand.
"Sorry."
Sawyer approached Jack's grave and knelt slightly. He didn't speak for several minutes, staring at the ground beneath him. When he looked up, his eyes were glistening ever so slightly.
"I'm sorry, Jack," he said, barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry for blaming you for what happened to Juliet. I know it wasn't your fault…truth is…you were one of the best friends I ever had. And I'll be damned if I don't miss you every once in a while." He stood and moved away, separating himself from the group so they wouldn't see him getting emotional.
"Can I say something?" came the unexpected request of Aaron. He looked to Kate and Claire for permission. Once they got over their surprise, both nodded. Aaron stepped away from Claire's embrace and knelt just as Sawyer had, in front of the headstone.
"I wish you hadn't gone away. You didn't even say goodbye. Aunt Kate got so sad when you left. I got sad, too. Even though you were my Uncle Jack, I always thought you were like my dad…Everything is so different now and I'm afraid I'll forget you…I wish you were still here."
He didn't say any more. Kate was quietly sobbing. Aaron had spoken her greatest fear as well as his own: that she would begin to forget Jack.
"Kate? Do you want to say anything?" Claire asked.
She had no idea how to answer that question. She could think of endless things to say, but none of them were coming to fruition on her tongue. After several moments of thought, she shook her head. Claire was troubled.
"If it's all right with you I think I'm just going to stay here for a while. I'm sorry, I just…I need to do this by myself." Kate explained.
Claire understood. She smiled reassuringly at Kate and nodded, taking Aaron's small hand and guiding him away. He looked back at Kate briefly, understanding her pain possibly better than anyone. He knew what Jack leaving had done to her, but he was too young to process this kind of grief.
Sawyer saw Claire and Aaron leaving and assumed this meant he ought to as well. He approached Kate and placed a friendly hand on her back.
"You gonna be all right, freckles?" he asked.
"Yeah. I think I…"
"Just need to be alone." Sawyer finished for her. She looked up at him, grateful for his compassion. He squeezed her shoulder in comfort and walked on. She watched him for a few minutes before turning back to Jack's empty resting place. She sighed, truly feeling that it was just her and Jack now. Her mind traveled back to all those nights on the beach, the two of them sitting by their own private fire, alone, silently enjoying the other's company.
"I'm sure you would have hated this. You never liked funerals. And you never believed in this sort of thing, did you?" she chuckled. "But you changed, I know. You started to have faith in things, just the wrong things. You thought the Island could save you, Jack when it actually killed you. And I know you had no trouble accepting that fate but…damnit I can't."
She could feel her temper rising as angry tears started streaming down her cheeks.
"Why, Jack? Why did you just give up on us? Why was that the one thing you didn't think you could fix? I know it wasn't all your fault. I was so angry at you for Aaron. And then you wanted me to go back to that place, and that just made me angrier because you still couldn't see that the island was what kept you from the things you wanted in the first place…We always had to complicate everything didn't we? And after all of that, what we went through, all we had to do was remind ourselves that we loved each other. That was it. I'm so sorry it took me so long. If I had known this is where I would be right now, I would have told you every day…But by the time I figured it out you were going off to die, to save something that I still don't think needed saving. And now I'm here, Jack, and you're not." she trailed off, a new swell of tears emerging. She spoke barely above a whisper, "For the first time I actually want you to save me and you're not here."
Kate looked down at the ring on her finger.
"I would have spent the rest of my life with you, Jack. I've never meant anything as much as what I said that night. I doubt I'll ever mean anything that much again." Finally she allowed herself to break down. "I miss you so much…I'm so scared, Jack. I'm so scared of letting you go. I don't know what to do."
Suddenly, the solution came to her. The solution to this seemingly permanent emptiness that Jack's absence had created. It was something so simple that she had to laugh at the fact it had never occurred to her before this very moment. She smiled as a few stray tears rolled down her cheeks and breathed in as if about to dive into water.
"One…two…three…four…five." she said, closing her eyes and hearing him recite the numbers along with her. When she finished, it felt as if a weight had been lifted off of her. She was ready for whatever this new future held, even if that didn't include him.
Kate stood alone in the cemetery as a cool breeze blew past her face, the sun beginning to set in the distance. She looked down at Jack's grave and smiled, content in the knowledge that she would continue to wait for him for the rest of her life. No longer out of any desperate hope or unfillable void, but because she knew deep within her that somewhere, in this life or the next, he was waiting for her.
