A/N: And it just keeps getting longer and longer... I like to call this chapter "When Kate Takes the Stand" (cue Chicago music).

The night before Kate took the stand, she told Wayne she was sorry. She sat on her cot, head bent, and made all her apologies, one by one. Jack. Her children. Sawyer. Edward Mars. Kevin. Tom. Her mother. And finally, Wayne. "I hate you," she whispered into the shadowed dark of her cell, "But I shouldn't have killed you."

He didn't answer. None of them did.

DeWitt softened the jury up with character testimony. Jack took the stand, and told the story of the marshal's death. "Kate offered to tell me what she was wanted for, right away," he testified. "She didn't try to hide anything, she just wanted a chance to start over. I was suspicious, for a long time, but in that kind of situation, you see a person's true colors. You can't hide on an island with forty people, where we're all depending on each other, every day, for survival. Under that kind of stress, Kate proved that she was no more a murderer than I am. In these unbelievable circumstances, she was kind, always looking out for other people; she was calm, when everyone else was out of their minds with fear or anger; she was, right from the beginning, one of those people everyone looked to, and she never let them down."

Kate wondered if he really believed all of this. She was not a saint, and Jack had always been quick to see her faults as well as her strengths. Was he just speaking as the man who loved her, and wanted her to come home, or did they all see her this way? She had tried, she had tried to do better, to be better, but she often felt that she failed.

"That's lovely, but does it really mean she didn't kill her stepfather? After all, as we've heard, he was not exactly worthy of her consideration," DeWitt pointed out, undercutting the prosecution.

Jack looked over at Kate, who stared steadily back, trying to believe that she was all the things he said. "That wouldn't matter. Kate never distinguished between people who were worthy and people who weren't." She broke their gaze, looked down at the table, thinking of Sawyer. She had not heard from him, and she didn't want to ask Jack. He turned back to DeWitt and finished, "I know Kate better than anyone. Whatever happened before – and after all this time, I truly believe that I would know if she had been lying to me – she's a changed woman. When we saw the ship, she knew that she would be arrested again, but she made the decision to face these charges and come to trial. Why would she do that if she was guilty?"

"Objection, speculation."

"Sustained. Strike that."

"So your wife actually told you she wanted to face these charges?" DeWitt asked.

"Not in those words," Jack admitted. "But yes, she told me she was ready."

Kate had always lied. It began when she was a child, after her father left. She would lie to Wayne when he asked where things were in the house, just for the pleasure of confusing or annoying him. And then she would lie to her mother when confronted by her lies. She lied about eating her broccoli (she didn't) and climbing trees in her Sunday dresses (she did). When she hit puberty the lies became more numerous than truths: she lied about her friends, her grades, her after school activities. She lied about wearing make-up, and sneaking out at night, and kissing Tom. It was like her whole lifetime was practice for her years as a fugitive. By the time she was on the run, she didn't even know what truth felt like anymore. Other names were as good as her own, other pasts were better. She was out of practice now. The last few years on the island had involved few lies, of any kind. There was no point anymore, nothing to lie about. And now, when she needed to lie with mastery, and finesse, she was afraid the power was gone. Her throat was dry and tight, and she kept seeing Wayne, and her children, and she thought she might get on the stand and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

"Can you state your full name for the court please?"

"Katherine Eleanor Shephard."

"Your legal name."

"Sorry — it's Katherine Eleanor Austen." She paused, glancing at the judge, and then the jury. "I was married on the island, by a Catholic priest who was on the plane, but we haven't had time to get a legal marriage license since we – since we were rescued. Maybe the judge can marry us." She smiled, a little, and a few members of the jury chuckled. The judge arched his eyebrows, but nodded to get on with it.

"Thank you. Please sit down."

Kate sat. From the witness stand she could see the audience: no reporters allowed, but the place was still packed. Some people she recognized, people from her town. Many faces were strange. Her eyes lighted on Hurley, sitting in the back row. Hurley was there. He smiled and waved.

"Mrs. Shephard — is it alright if I address the defendant as Mrs. Shephard?" Mr. DeWitt asked.

"Go ahead," the judge said, "Please make a note."

"Mrs. Shephard, we've heard a lot of testimony about your relationship with your biological father, Wayne Jansen. Can you tell us, in your own words, what that relationship was like?"

Kate nodded, and looked down at her hands for a moment. The best lies came from truth. "It was not good," she said. "He was – well, I thought he was my stepfather for most of my life. He moved in with my mom and I when I was almost six. Right after my dad moved out. I knew right away that I didn't like him. He didn't like me being around, he wanted my mother to himself. And my mother started 'hurting herself.' She would have these bruises. I was eight or nine when I first saw him actually hit her. He was drunk, which he was a lot of the time."

"Did he ever hit you?"

"No. I stayed out of his way. And I think he knew better than to try." She heard how that sounded, and added, not hurriedly, but as if it was part of the same thought, "My mom would put up with a lot, but I think – I mean, I hope that would have been too much, even for her." There, a lie. Nothing to it.

"Did he ever touch you, or attempt to touch you, sexually?"

"No. No… When I was a teenager, he liked to make comments. He was always saying things to me, about how pretty I'd turned out. It was weird, but he never tried anything."

"Did you ever tell anyone that you wished Mr. Jansen would die?"

"Probably. I mean, I was a teenager. I regularly expressed the hope that my gym teacher would die." Smiles from the jury. She had them. She started to relax a little, feel the story coming through her.

"When did you find out that Wayne was your real father?"

"When I was twenty. I was making a scrap book for my dad's birthday, and I wrote to some of his army buddies – which was when I figured out that he'd been in Korea when I was conceived. I didn't know it was Wayne, but I knew that he and my mom had dated before she married my dad, so it made sense."

"How did you feel then?"

How did she feel? Kate pressed her lips together, looking down at her lap. "I was scared," she said finally. "I didn't want to be related to Wayne, because I thought that meant that I would be like him, that that's all I could be."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing."

"You didn't confront your mother?"

"No. I thought if I pretended I didn't know, it wouldn't be true. I just wanted it not to be true."

"Did it change how you felt about Mr. Jansen?"

"I guess… I guess I tried to look for more good in him." She smiled bittersweetly. "Like I could prove that I had a chance to be a good person, if there was something good about him."

"Tell us about the night Mr. Jansen died, Mrs. Shephard."

"I was with my friend Tom."

"Tom Brendon?"

"Yes."

"What were you doing?"

"Just sitting in his room, talking. He was home from med school, just for the summer. His parents thought I was a bad influence, so I climbed in through the window, and we were just hanging out. I was planning to leave town the next day."

"Really, the next day? That's quite a coincidence."

"I'm not sure I believe in coincidences," Kate said. "Maybe it was. Maybe it was fate. Surviving a plane crash changed my perspective on that, somewhat."

"Okay, so what did you do after you said goodbye to Tom?"

"I went to the diner my mom worked out. I wanted to tell her that I was leaving."

"What did you talk about?"

"I told her I'd taken out all my savings, and I was going to Florida. I'd never seen the ocean before."

"What did she say?"

"She thought I'd done something, that's why I was leaving. She never had a very high opinion of me. She kept asking me what I'd done: Katherine, what did you do?" This was what the witness from the diner had testified as well. Kate was giving the jury an excuse, to believe her.

Those were the last words her mother had said to her – to her, and not yelling to a guard. Katherine, what did you do? Kate swallowed, and looked down at the railing in front of her.

"Why do you think your mother went to the police after she found out Wayne was dead?" DeWitt asked gently.

Kate shook her head, real tears welling, genuine tears. She had not thought of that, in her brilliant plan. "I was always telling her that he was bad for her," she said. "I wanted her to leave him. I said things – that I wouldn't let him hurt her anymore. I guess she thought that meant that I… like I said, she didn't think much of me."

"What happened next?"

"Well, I left, like I was planning. I tried to leave. The police arrested me at the bus station. I didn't even know what for."

"But you never made it back to the police station."

"One of the men who arrested me, Edward Mars, was driving me back. There was a horse, who had gotten loose, and ran in front of the car. Mars swerved off the road, and lost control, and I – panicked. I didn't know what was going on, or what was going to happen. I stole his keys, and pushed him out of the car, and drove away."

"Kate, if you didn't do anything, why didn't you just go back with him?"

Moment of truth. Funny, since it was The Lie, the big one, the final, all important lie. Kate did not hesitate. "I was scared. Mars told me what they were arresting me for, and he told me a whole story, about why and how I had done it. It sounded plausible. I doubted myself; Wayne was somewhere inside of me, after all. I was scared of myself, and I thought, why would anyone believe me? My own mother thought I'd killed someone. Why would anyone else believe that I was innocent?"

She looked past DeWitt. Jack was sitting in the first row, watching her lie, perfectly, easily, convincingly.

In the third trimester of her first pregnancy, she told Jack the truth, the whole truth. She had a nightmare that her baby had Wayne's eyes, and she smashed its head on the ground to make them disappear. When she woke up, crying and gasping, Jack was there, and she had to tell him, there was nowhere left to hide.

"I thought if I took all the bad in me, and used it, I could get rid of him, and it, at the same time. I could be free. But it didn't work like that. Killing him made me like him."

"Kate, you're not—"

"It made me just like him," she insisted, her voice full of tears and rage. "And now I will never get rid of him. I will never be anything but a murderer, the daughter of a drunk abusive—"

"Shh. That's not true, and you know it—"

"And what about our baby?" It was still dark inside their shelter, and Kate could just make out the curve of her own stomach, enormous now. She ran a hand over it, felt him stir inside. "The baby of a killer. How can he possibly be good?"

"Because he is innocent. Kate, we do not have to pay for what our fathers did," Jack insisted. She turned her head to see the blurred outline of his face. He had told her a bit, about his own father, and she knew he needed to believe that, but she couldn't, still. Jack, after all, had reason to believe he could be better than his father. Kate had reason to believe she could be worse. "And he – or she – will not have to pay for what either of us have done. He gets to start completely from scratch, and so do we. Maybe we'll screw it up, but if we do, it's in the future. It starts now, not before. And we can make that choice. We can be better parents than we had."

"I'll hurt him," Kate cried, a terrified whimper catching in her throat. She could feel him moving inside her, even as she said it, sensing her distress. He was a real, new person, and she could destroy him, just by being his mother. "I'll hurt him."

"No, you won't." He picked her up, her frail arms and enormous middle, and lifted her into the cradle of his body, rocking her as she cried. "We'll be better," he promised. "We'll be better."

In that moment, there were no lies, no misunderstandings, no barriers of any kind. She was open, she was raw and clean. He knew, and he held her anyway. He saw her, and he still believed she could be something good.

And now, watching her lie, did he still believe it?

"Tell us about Tom Brendon," DeWitt said.

"He was my oldest friend. We were – we dated, for a while. But it was more than just a teenage romance, we were very close. He got away, he went to med school, and we grew apart, a little, but we were still… something."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"I came back home, about two years after Wayne died. I found out my mother had cancer, she was dying. I wanted to see her, to say goodbye."

"Even though you knew it was dangerous? And she accused you of murder?"

"She was my mother."

"What happened?"

She told them all of it. On the island, she'd lived ten years beside people and never said a word, but here she told them everything. She ripped her heart out and held it out to them. This was a fight, after all, for survival. If they would let her go back to her children because they could see how much it hurt her to have caused Tom's death, then she would let them see. She cried, and DeWitt offered her Kleenex.

"And yet after all the harm it caused, you kept running?"

"I didn't know what else to do. I thought it was too late to start over. I was guilty, just not of what they accused me of. The only thing I knew how to do was run, so yes, I kept running. I went to Australia, tried to get as far away from people as possible. I thought, if I wasn't near anyone, I couldn't hurt them. But then Marshall Mars caught me, and he was bringing me back when the plane crashed."

"And you did get a chance to start over then, didn't you?"

"Yes." Her voice was thick with everything inside that word. "Yes, I did get a chance."

"Why did you stop running, Kate?"

"I know now that I can live a good life," she lied. "Before, it was running or – nothing. I had nothing to stay still for, and I was afraid of what I would do if I tried to start a family, or be happy. But now I have a family, and I know that I can do it. I have every reason in the world to settle down and be happy." That was the truth. She looked at Jack, longingly. "To do that, I have to take responsibility for the choices I made, which were stupid, and harmful, but not… malicious."

"Thank you. Those are all my questions."

The DA stood up. Trevor Daniels was a country attorney, he'd never tried a murder case before, but he wasn't stupid. He stood in front of the witness box and asked, "You say you don't believe in coincidence?"

"I don't know," Kate replied, uneasily.

Daniels nodded, smiled slightly. "See, I find that funny, because your entire case rests on… coincidence."

"Objection, testifying," DeWitt said quickly.

"Sustained."

"I'm sorry," Daniels said. He was playing up the Midwest accent, the befuddled down-home, good boy image. "I'm just confused."

"Ask a question," the judge instructed.

"I'm getting there. Mrs. Shephard… when did you get married?"

Kate wasn't expecting that one. "Excuse me?"

"It's a simple question."

"I… right before we were rescued," Kate said, glancing at Jack. She knew this would come across badly, but he had obviously gotten the information from somewhere, and she couldn't be caught in a lie.

"In fact, the day the ship arrived, isn't that right?"

"Yes, it was the day the ship came."

"Well, that's quite a coincidence, isn't it? Oh, sorry. You don't believe in coincidence."

"Objection."

"Sustained."

"Mrs. Shephard, why did you get married that day, after living together for all those years, having children together… why then?"

"It was… it had to do with civilization, coming back to a place where marriage meant something," Kate explained, only half a lie. "It's hard to explain, but on the island, we all knew where we stood. A ceremony didn't mean anything. There wasn't even a piece of paper to get. No… taxes, no next of kin, nothing like that. We were already all the things a husband and wife are, but there was no need to make it official there. There was no official. But when we saw the ship, we realized that was going to change. Marriage does mean something here. I mean, without being officially married, Jack almost couldn't come see me, they wouldn't even tell him where I was. Without being married, his parental rights are called into question, all kinds of things. It matters here, but it didn't there. So when we saw the ship, we thought we should make it official."

"I see. It didn't have anything to do with putting a wholesome spin on your life to impress the jury, then?"

"Objection!"

"Mr. Daniels, please stick to asking questions, and not answering them."

"Exhibit A, may it please the court." Daniels picked up a small blue rectangle from the table. The passport. Kate winced, imperceptibly.

"Exhibit A is entered into the court log."

"Mrs. Shephard, could you tell the court what this is, please?" He handed it to her, and she turned it over in her hands, without looking down.

"It's a passport," Kate said.

"What's the name inside it?"

She opened it, glanced down at the stranger's face looking up at her. "Anne Costell."

"Do you know anyone by that name?"

"No, I don't."

"Could you describe Anne Costell for us, please?"

"What do you mean?"

"Age, race, hair color…"

"She was… would be about thirty two. White. Brown hair."

"I see. Let it be noted that this passport was found on the defendant's person when she was taken into custody, coming off the island."

"So noted."

"Can you tell us why you had another woman's passport in your pocket that day, Mrs. Shephard?"

Jack didn't know about the passport. She tried not to look at him, at the fury in his face, to focus on the DA, and what she had to say here. She and DeWitt had talked about this. "In the early years, there was a lot of stuff floating around, from luggage, carry-ons. At some point, I took the passport, thinking that maybe when we were rescued, I would use it to try and run again. But by the time we were rescued, I knew I couldn't keep running. I needed to face whatever happened. When I was packing up my things I found it, and I put it in my pocket. I guess I thought I'd give it back to her family, or something."

"You were going to give a stolen passport back to a dead woman's family?"

"I didn't really think about it. There was a lot going on."

"When the crew of the ship landed, you said your name was Kate Shephard. Why didn't you give your real name?"

"Kate Shephard is my real name."

"But you had just gotten married. You knew that a passenger list would have your maiden name on it. Why didn't you give the name they would recognize you by?"

"I had just gotten married. It was my first chance to give my new name. It was exciting, being a wife." That was a bad excuse, it fell lame at her feet.

"You weren't trying to buy yourself some time to make a run for it, using this stolen passport?"

"No." Kate's voice was sharp, too sharp. She paused for a moment, didn't look at Jack. He would be angry, about the passport. He would think she had been lying to him; after all, he saw how good she was at it. She should never have told him the truth, now he had something to compare her to. Focus. When she started again, she was subdued. "Maybe I did want some time. This was all very sudden, for my children, and I wanted to be able to say goodbye to what had become my home, and to get them on board where they would be safe, and ease the transition. Maybe subconsciously, I was playing for time. But I wasn't going to use it to run. I never tried to run."

"No, you just got married so the jury would feel sorry for you."

"Objection."

"Sustained."

"That's okay. I'm done," Daniels said. He smiled up at her, all good natured Midwest earnest charm. "I have no further questions."