A/N: First of all, thank you so much for all the wonderful feedback! It is definitely a motivator to keep going (so keep it coming).

Now, I was going to do the trial all in one chapter, but it was getting really long, so instead I'm splitting it up. So here you have, The Trial: Part I. As I am not a lawyer, and in fact know nothing more about the criminal justice system than what I've seen on the Practice (and that it's seriously screwed up), most of The Trial is not going to be the actual trial. Real trials are boring. Also, it may be that Kate would have multiple trials for all her different crimes; for the sake of the story, I am just combining them into one super trial. And I have no idea how long it would take, so I'm just making that up. With that incredibly long disclaimer…

Mr. DeWitt, Kate's lawyer, brought her new clothes for the trial. They didn't want the jury to get the impression she was a criminal. Her dress for opening arguments was dark blue, calf-length. He brought her beige heels to go with it - not too high, they didn't want her to look too sexy. The skirt flared softly around her legs. He brought her make-up too, and arranged for her to have fifteen minutes with a real mirror, while a male guard stood over her shoulder watching to make sure she didn't try to break it, and two more stood by the door. It was the first real mirror she'd seen in years. On the island, there were a couple compacts floating around, but Kate had never sought one out. Sitting in a waiting room in the county courthouse, Kate had quite a shock. She was old. Going on thirty-seven, and every year showed. A winter inside had destroyed her tan, but the other effects of sun remained: lines around her eyes, a weathered look to her skin. She wasn't the girl she had been, not even on the outside, where it mattered. The make-up was like foreign technology, she fumbled and gave up on eyeliner, settled for a light coat of lipstick, some blush, undereye concealer to make it look as if she had slept the night before.

When they took the mirror away they left her alone with Mr. DeWitt. He was from New York, and made everyone in Iowa nervous - mostly because he seemed to have an uncanny ability to make them do whatever he wanted, even if it was the opposite of their own desires, not to mention their job descriptions. Jack said that Hurley was a millionaire, which Kate didn't quite believe; but someone had hired one of the best defense attorneys in the country, so maybe it was true. What had they really known about anyone on the island, in the end?

There was a knock, and Jack came in. He was wearing a dark suit, very neat, very cleanshaven. Kate looked the other way. Jack and DeWitt conversed in low tones, and then Jack came and sat across the table from her. She studied her nails.

"You look nice," he said. Kate didn't look up. "I brought you something - it's from the kids actually."

Her head jerked up at that. He slid a rectangle across the table - a mobile video device. She met his eyes for a second, and he nodded, and then she picked it up and turned it on.

The kids appeared, on the front step of a large adobe house. Emma was wearing a T-shirt that said, "I Heart My Mommy." "Hi!" they shouted in unison, waving excitedly at the camera. None of them were wearing shoes.

"We're at Grandma Shephard's house," Will said, shushing the other two. "It's in Los Angeles, which is where Dad grew up. Right, Dad?"

"Right," Jack's voice came from off-camera.

"We wanted to make you a video, to show you that we're okay, and that we're sorry we're not there."

"But Dad says when your trial is done you can come here!" Matt shouted, jumping up and down. Emma caught on and started jumping too. "Mommy's coming! Mommy's coming!"

"No, Dad says we can go wherever you want," Will corrected. There was a pause and then all three shouted at the same time, "But not Iowa!" "Please Mommy, anywhere but I-O-UUUH." "Don't make us go back there!" "Please! Anywhere else!"

Kate smiled, despite herself. And then she choked. She put a hand over her mouth, glad she had not put on eyeliner or mascara.

Will gained control again. "It's too cold there," he said, with an air of finality. "It's better here. We went to the beach yesterday!"

"Yeah, it was just like home," Matt put in. Will elbowed him. "I mean, the island."

"And Grandma Shephard says we swim really good! 'Specially me," Emma said proudly.

"She did not say 'specially you," Will sneered.

"Yeah, she did! She said for my age, I'm really good. She just said you were good."

"Hey, a little focus please?" Jack's voice intervened.

"Oh, sorry!" They all turned back to the camera. "So, we just wanted to say that we're okay here. It's a really big house, and Grandma Shephard is really nice, and we're eating vegetables, and we miss you, and-"

"Ask her!"

"-Oh, and Emma wants to know if when we get our own house, we can get a pool, and a treehouse. But I think we should build a treehouse, that would be even better," Will concluded.

"I think we should build it too," Matt agreed hurriedly.

Emma stuck out her tongue at her brothers.

"Alright, maybe you guys should give Mom a tour of the house," Jack suggested. All else forgotten, the children walked her through Jack's mother's house, showing off every sink ("And the water just comes out! Hot or cold!"), the television, the spiral staircase, the light switches, the dining room chairs, all the appliances, one at a time (Jack had to intervene to stop Emma from climbing inside the dryer), and finally, their bedrooms. The boys were sleeping in Jack's old room, it looked like; there was still a Nirvana poster on the wall, and medical textbooks stacked up in a corner. Amazing that his mother had kept it all those years; but then, she'd lost her husband and son at the same time, that must have been hard. Unbearable, Kate amended, glancing up at Jack. He was watching her intently, seriously.

"We have to wrap this up, guys," Jack said on the video.

There was a chorus of protests, but Jack told them to say goodbye, just for this time. "Bye Mom!" Will said. Matt looked straight out of the screen at her and said, "I love you, Mom. I miss you." Emma blew kisses at her. "I can't wait until you come back! I love you so much." Kate stifled a noise, and rubbed under her eyes. Jack handed her a tissue, from somewhere. The video froze, on all of them waving, and Emma's arms throwing the kisses toward her, and they were not there. Kate had to close her eyes, and put the video player down, very carefully on the table.

"Did you put them up to that?" she asked, hoping her voice sounded somewhat normal.

"No, actually, Matt suggested it. My mom is — out of her mind excited to have them there, and she bought one of these things so that she can film everything they do. I even caught her filming them asleep one night—" Jack sounded incredulous, but Kate thought, yes, I would do that. "Anyway, she finally showed them what it did, how it you could play it all back. And about fifteen minutes later Matt came up to me and asked if they could make a video for you."

It hurt her chest, to think of her sweet and shy little boy, who had said the least of all of them when the camera was on, but had made it all happen.

"This is a recording device too," Jack went on. "They were hoping you would record something for me to take back. There's a special request for you to sing 'Hush, Little Baby,' actually. Emma's been having some trouble getting to sleep."

Oh god. Kate looked around, at DeWitt. He was studiously ignoring them, going over his notes. Jack was watching her, hopefully. He had done this, he had taken them to the other side of the county. But then she heard them again, yelling "Not Iowa!" And he was here, still, at least for now.

"How do I use it?" Kate asked.

Jack fidgeted with it for a minute, pulling out a little disk and inserting another. "So it won't erase the other one," he explained. He held it up, the now-dark screen pointing at her, and nodded. "Okay, go ahead."

Kate paused, staring at the rectangle. That was not her children. She couldn't talk – sing – to that. But Jack was looking at her with such faith. And Emma was having trouble sleeping. She forced a smile. "Hi," she said. "Thanks for the tour, it was really great. It looks like a beautiful house. I'm okay. My trial's starting today. Which means that soon, we'll… soon we'll know more about what's going to happen. But for now you guys just behave for your grandmother. And don't waste too much water with all that turning on and off of the sinks! You know, Los Angeles is really a desert. I… I love you, all, very much." She had to stop, so she didn't cry again, and smile, smile. "And I miss you."

Sucking in a breath she said, "Okay, I guess I'll sing. You all know I'm not very good at this, so I don't know why you want me to, but if it's a special request…" She looked past the screen, at Jack. His eyes were enormous and dark, and she hated him for doing this to her, for making her a mother, for making her love someone else so much. She opened her mouth and sang, softly, her voice husky with tears and the strangeness of singing a lullaby in a court waiting room, in the middle of the morning. Hush little baby, don't cry a word, papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird, and if that mockingbird won't sing, papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring. It was the only lullaby she could remember, when Will was born, and it sort of just stuck, as her song, that she would sing when they were fretful or sad or scared. You'll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

There was a knock on the door. "I have to go!" Kate said, too quickly. "I love you, very, very much. I'll see you soon. Bye! Bye." Jack hit a button, put the machine down. Kate shuddered, bending her head into her hands. She had always had trouble imagining herself as a mother, even after she became one. She didn't think she was the type. But now there was just this hole in her—

The bailiff opened the door. "We're ready for her," he said. Kate felt Jack's hand on her shoulder, and then clasping her hand to help her up. She turned her head to see him, and he said, "It's going to be okay," as if he really meant it, as if he really knew it. Gently but without hesitation, he slid his hand up to the back of her neck, and she let him. She needed him to. Their fights were all fear and bluster, which didn't make it easier, didn't make it hurt less. But in the end, it didn't mean anything. He did what he thought he had to, and so did she, and here they were.

He bent his head, their foreheads brushing, and she wanted so much to collapse into him, to let the tears come fast and heated and listen to him tell her it would be okay until she actually believed it. But they were waiting for her. She tilted her head up, their noses bumping, and kissed him quickly, a desperate, shallow brush of lips, and then she nodded, body shuddering, and he let her go, and she turned to face the bailiff. It was time.

DeWitt's opening remarks told a very simple story: Kate was young, when her stepfather died. She panicked, after her mother accused her of murder, and she ran. And the longer and further she ran, the more scared she became, the more convinced that she could never come back. She didn't kill Wayne, but she didn't trust that anyone would believe that, and so she ran, and things got out of control. But she's older now. She spent ten years in a small, tight knit community on an island far from civilization, a place where she could have had free rein to do whatever she liked; and what she had done was help other people, what she had done was start a family – all the things she would have done at home if not for her fear. When they were rescued, she faced her fear, she stopped running, and was sitting there in that court room waiting to be judged. She had run from youth and inexperience and fear, not, as the prosecution would try to make the jury believe, because she was guilty. And that was really all the prosecution had to go on. Wayne died of a gas leak. Kate's mother made an accusation based on an emotional response, and Kate, frightened and alone, ran. Yes, along the way she had made some unfortunate choices. But never out of malice. Never out of an intent to harm. And at the core, she was innocent.

Kate had not told DeWitt to say this. She had not told him one way or another. He had reviewed the prosecution's evidence, and suggested this approach. "They have nothing to go on," he said breezily before the trial. "Their chief witness is dead. Officer Mars, luckily, was not great at writing stuff down, he liked to keep it all in his head, so a lot of the what went on while you were a fugitive is undocumented. Your behavior is the only real strike against you. You acted like a guilty person. But that doesn't mean you were, or are."

The prosecution, led by a man named Trevor Daniels, told a different story. He talked about the insurance policy, he talked about her troubled relationship with Wayne, what kind of a man he was, why she would want to kill him, and he talked about her three years as a fugitive, and how she destroyed anything and anyone in her way, lying and cheating and stealing at every turn. Kate thought his story sounded more plausible.

That first day no one called any witnesses. That started later, a parade of witnesses for the prosecution: a forensic expert who testified that it was likely there was tampering to make the house explode the way it did (DeWitt made him admit that, while unlikely, it was possible that it was just an accident); a woman who used to work with her mother who testified that Wayne was abusive to Kate's mother; a man who had been at the diner the night Wayne died, and saw Kate come in and speak to her mother; a few other people from town, who had seen Wayne hit on Kate, or abuse her mother, or both; a high school friend who Kate hadn't seen in fifteen years, a girl named Jessica Allen, who had gained a lot of weight, who testified that Kate hated Wayne, and used to talk about how she wished he would die. The picture all came together very nicely, just the way Mars had painted it in that car years ago. Kate was waiting for her horse to come walking in the courthouse door, but he never did.

Her father came to see her the morning he was called to testify. He looked about the same, he was even wearing his uniform. "Hi Katie," he said, looking almost shy.

"Hi Daddy."

Sam nodded at Jack; they had spoken over the phone, because the police would release information to Sam at the beginning, but not to Jack. He was still her legal next of kin. "You must be Jack."

"It's good to meet you, Mr. Austen… sorry, Sergeant." Jack stood up, extending a hand. Sam shook it, man to man. Kate stood up too, smoothing herself out, and waited while Jack introduced DeWitt.

"We've met," DeWitt said briefly. "I deposed Sergeant Austen. Good to see you again, sir."

"You too." Finally, he turned to Kate. She tilted her head a little, unsure what they did at this juncture, and then he held out his arms. She stepped into them, closing her eyes, and breathed in his old, familiar scent. Her definition of home had changed a lot, a lot of times, but part of it was still him, was still being her daddy's little girl.

After a minute she pulled away, and he held her at arm's length, looking at her. "Look at you," he murmured, "All grown up."

She smiled ruefully at that. She could kill someone, and he still saw her as a child; but put on some wrinkle lines and a formal murder charge, and she was suddenly an adult. No, not suddenly. "Want to see your grandkids?" she asked.

He looked startled, even though he knew about the kids. Maybe he thought, because she wasn't his – she looked at Jack, who reached for his wallet and produced some snapshots of the kids in L.A. "They're beautiful," Sam said. "Look a lot like you, at that age. Hard to believe though, Katie."

"Tell me about it."

He offered the photos back to Jack who said, "I have other copies, if you want to keep those."

Sam looked at the pictures in his hand for a moment, and then said, "Thank you." Kate cast a grateful look at Jack, who had been, so far, a rock. Despite everything.

"So what are they going to ask you about?" Kate asked, trying to sound casual.

"They found my service records, showing I was in Korea, when—"

"Oh." Kate nodded, glanced at DeWitt. She'd told DeWitt that part, figuring it might come up. She'd told him most of the truth, so he could construct a better argument. She had never offered, and he had never asked for, the fundamental truth. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"I don't think so. Daniels is going to suggest that finding out Wayne was your biological father pushed you over the edge – he's already set up that Wayne made sexual advances towards you, and he'll suggest maybe he did more than that, which, along with his abuse towards your mother, provides a motive. But as you told me, and will testify, Wayne never actually touched you. The jury won't want to believe that you would knowingly kill your real father without an actual rape involved – that's going to be a selling point for us in the end. I wouldn't worry about it."

The jury wouldn't want to believe that she would have killed her own biological father, because what kind of person would do that? Kate looked up at her father – her stepfather – but he was avoiding her eyes. He knew the truth about her. What had he said to her? He didn't have murder in his heart. And Kate did, or had anyway. She was exactly the person the jury would not want to believe existed.

DeWitt kept talking. He was so confident, it set Kate's teeth on edge. She could see him imbuing Jack with confidence too, and now her father. They all thought it would be okay. But none of them were looking at life in prison. None of them were looking at her; they were all too busy conferring, and planning, and saving her.

They called a lot of people Kate had met in one guise or another: they called Jason, her sometime-lover-cum-duped-bank-robber. DeWitt took him apart during cross examination (Jason was currently in jail for assault with a deadly weapon, and hoping to get a few years knocked off for his cooperation; also, he admitted that Kate had intervened when he was going to shoot someone, which didn't make him come across as the wronged party). Jack glowered a lot that day, and they didn't speak the next morning, sitting silently in the waiting room while Kate counted off her misdeeds, all the reasons he could pick to hate her. Kevin was on the witness list, but the prosecution decided against putting him on the stand; according to DeWitt, he spent the entire deposition insisting that the only thing she'd done to him was break his heart. Kate cried in her cell at night over that one. And wondered, in the incomplete silence of the jail, if she would do better, given a second chance. She left Kevin voluntarily, after all. She could have tried harder, stayed longer. She left because she was going crazy there, because she couldn't be that person, live that life. If she made it out of this, somehow, and let Jack buy her a house with a pool and a tree big enough to hold a treehouse, would she do better this time?

On the weekends Jack went back to L.A. It took a month for it to sink into Kate's head that he was flying twice a week. On her helicopter ride back to civilization, they had had to drug her, because she had a panic attack just being in the air; ten years later, she could still hear the sound the back of the plane made when it broke off, and every tremor made her scream and shake. But Jack boarded an airplane every Friday and Sunday, so he could be with her, and also do what he thought was best for the kids. That was Jack, right there. Always doing the right thing. Always giving of himself. He was too good for her, like Tom, and Kevin. The only difference was, she had never had a chance to run away from him, or she had never been able to.

When he came in that Monday, Kate asked DeWitt to give them a minute. Jack looked at her, concerned, asked if she was okay.

"I just want to give you something," she said. "They were holding it at the jail, but I got DeWitt to have them release it to him, after they checked it of course. I just…" She picked up the little model airplane from the table, and held it out to him. She'd held it so many times in the last ten years all the color had rubbed off. "It hasn't exactly been a good luck charm in the past," she said, looking down, "But I want you to have it, anyway. For when you fly."

"Kate…"

"Take it."

He did, gently, and she had to close her eyes because she was going to cry, seeing him standing there holding Tom's airplane. She was not strong enough for this, she was not good enough for this. "Thank you," he said quietly.

She opened her eyes and ran a hand over her forehead, into her hair. He reached up and took the hand, and then the arm, and then her whole body, drawing her into him. He smelled different now, cleaner, less sweat, and a faint hint of aftershave. But still, fundamentally, Jack. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm doing the best I can."

"I know. I'm sorry too. I just… miss them so much." She tucked her head against his chest, and thought of how they held Will between them, his infant body curled in both their arms at once.

"I know. And whatever happens here, it'll be different after the trial. No matter what, you will not lose them, I promise."

Promises, promises. "I have trust issues," she whispered. She knew that he smiled, even though she couldn't see it.

"I promise," he repeated. He drew away enough to tilt her head up, and make her meet his eyes. He was so earnest, transparent. She drew his face down; it had been so long since they had really kissed, since anything but pain and fear and anger and basic support had passed between them. They melted into one another, familiar movements that never grew old, never failed to send her heart racing.

Whatever happens here. There was a knock on the door. "Sorry to interrupt," DeWitt said, peeking in, "but we have a trial going here?" They parted, reluctantly. The prosecution was wrapping up their case, and then it would be her turn, to justify her actions. Jack squeezed her hand with his right; in his left, he lifted the airplane, up up up into the sky.