Wow, I'm apparently a lot subtler than I think I am! I thought more of you would guess what's going on here. This chapter, I will finally reveal what's going on between Kevin and Ana, and don't worry, Kevin's no saint – I'm sure he'll be plenty jealous when he discovers just how honest Kate's been with Jack…

Chapter 13. How Long Have You Known?

"What did you just call me?" Kate asked, stunned, her mouth falling open in shock; for a moment, she wasn't sure that she'd heard Kevin right, until she replayed his words in her head, filtering each one carefully.

It's not a line, Kate.

Kate.

He knew who she was, who she really was; after months of deception, it was a relief to finally hear him say it, or it would have been, if it weren't for the sickening realisation that if he knew who she was, then he must know what she'd done.

"Kate – Kate Austen, short for Katherine, right? Monica's just an alias you've been using to cover up the fact that you're wanted in at least two states," he went on bitterly, his eyes flashing with anger when she continued to stare at him mutely like a deer caught under the headlights. "I know you've been lying to me since the beginning, so you can stop pretending that you don't know what I'm talking about."

She wasn't sure how to respond, torn between her desire to smooth it out with another lie and her need to know how he'd discovered the truth. He seemed certain of it now as he fixed her with an expectant look, something in her behaviour confirming what he'd only suspected until that moment, so in the end, she decided that she had no choice but to let the latter win out. "How… how long have you known?" she stammered, terrified of his answer, that their whole relationship had been a sham, that while she'd been playing him, he'd been playing her too, leading her into some kind of sick trap. That he really was too good too be true. "Did you know when we got married? When we met?"

"No," he assured her without hesitation, speaking in a low, unhappy murmur as he ran a hand over his eyes. "I had no idea until Ana told me at the airport in Sydney. I was waiting for you to finish up in the bathroom when this woman I'd never met came over and told me she recognised my wife from an APB some marshal called Edward Mars put out. She thought I knew, that I was an accomplice or something. When I told her I was a cop, she laughed, insisted I couldn't be a very good one if I didn't know who you were."

"Ana Lucia? She told you?" Kate repeated, bewildered, her eyes filling up with tears at the look of horror and disgust her gave her. He wanted a denial so that they could go back to the way things were, and she couldn't give him one.

"Yeah," he agreed with a humourless laugh, dropping his head into his hands as he lowered himself onto a tree stump. "Turns out she's a cop too, with the L.A.P.D, or she was, until a couple of months ago."

On hearing this, Kate flashed back on the woman's earlier comments, and suddenly, they began to make sense:

I don't have to ask who you are… Does she know about the airport, Kev? Or should I tell her? You'd better, 'cause we might be here a while, and your wife is one too many things for me to deal with.

Until that moment, she'd attributed Ana's open hostility towards her to that of the jilted other woman, but now that Kevin had helped her put it into context, she recognised it as a more blatant, less sarcastic form of the marshal's. She didn't hate Kate because of Kevin; she hated Kevin because of Kate, because he'd let himself get sucked in.

"When she told me you murdered someone, I tried to laugh it off," Kevin continued when she sank to the ground in front of him, his voice breaking slightly, "I kept telling her that it was impossible, that you'd never even been to the Midwest, but then she explained about the robbery."

"You know about that too?" she whispered, her cheeks colouring with shame, staring down at the jungle floor as she tried to hold back her tears. If Ana had told him that she was on the run, then he had to know about Wayne: that on its own was enough to make him hate her, but her second felony was much harder to justify to anyone but Jack.

"Do I know that you helped a bunch of low life criminals hold up a bank in New Mexico, before shooting them, and walking out with nothing but a toy plane?" he asked, answering her question.

"I guess so," she said, biting her lip.

"When I heard about the plane, I knew it was true," he continued, choking on his words as he lifted his glazed eyes to meet hers. "You think because I never asked, I never saw it, but I did, right before I proposed the first time. I was looking for something to help me resize the ring, but I found this little silver plane instead. I thought it was an odd thing for a grown woman to hold onto, but you didn't seem to want to talk about it, so I figured you were entitled to your secrets."

His voice broke as he added, "Maybe I should've said something, but it seems like you would've just lied anyway. I wish you'd trusted me enough to tell me. We could've figured something out."

"So what does this mean for us?" she asked softly, noting his use of past tense, as if he'd already decided that their marriage was beyond saving. "Are you going to turn me in?"

While a part of her knew that she deserved whatever punishment he was willing to dish out, she couldn't help breathing a sigh of relief when he shook his head sadly. "Ana wanted to. She asked me to help her, offered to give me most of the credit, but when I refused to have any part in it, she told me she was going to do it on her own, as soon as she got back to L.A.

"That's why I went to talk to her on the plane, to convince her to let it go. She said there was a twenty three thousand dollar reward for your capture – I think she saw you as her ticket back onto the force, and into her captain's good books."

Kate would've liked to hate Ana for what she was planning, but she couldn't, not when, like the marshal, she was just doing her job. As noble as he was being right now, she knew that if they'd met under different circumstances, before his feelings got in the way, Kevin wouldn't have hesitated to help Ana bring her in.

"What are we gonna do, Kev?" she whispered, her heart going out to him in spite of the pain she could feel in her own. He looked so sad, so broken; in trying to protect him from the truth, all she'd done was make it worse for him when it eventually came to light.

"I've had a lot of time to think about it while we've been stuck here," he began, his voice wavering as he fought back tears of his own, "too much time, and I swear I'll do everything in my power to stop her – that much hasn't changed. But when we get home, ifwe ever get home, and this marriage is legal, I think I want an annulment."

She tried to nod, to tell him that she understood, but she couldn't seem to conceal her heartbreak when she realised how badly she'd screwed everything up, even before Jack came into the picture.

"I'm sorry," Kevin said, still holding himself together, miraculously, but when she looked at him closely, she could see the damp patches under his eyes as he cried silent tears of his own, "I love you, and I'm glad you're okay, but I don't know you, and I'm not sure I want to."

I know, no Jack in this chapter, but I'll make up for it next time with his reaction to Kate having more than one name, and some jealousy on both their parts. I'm going to start introducing the rest of the Tailies in the next few chapters too, so let me know if you have any requests. ;)