Thanks for the encouraging reviews. They made me feel a lot more confident about what I'm doing, which is perhaps why this is the longest chapter to date, setting up some important sub-plots. I can't take all the credit for the monster noise by the way – I adapted it from the pilot script because I thought it was cool… ;)
Chapter 30. Burning Bridges
"What do you mean she's gone?" Jack pressed, shifting his gaze from Charlie, who didn't seem to know much more than they did, to Ana, and finally, Kevin. "Did anyone actually see her get taken?"
He had that look again, the one from the radio tower; placing her hand between his shoulder blades, Kate rubbed his back distractedly, trying to soothe him, but he didn't so much as glance in her direction, his eyes locked on Kevin's.
"No," Ana spat, seeming to view this as a challenge, "But it was Them," but Jack ignored her too, apparently determined to pin the blame on Kevin, and Kevin alone.
"Jack…" Kate began, but Kevin held up a hand to silence her, staring him down with the same unforgiving look.
Great, Kate thought, and Ana rolled her eyes. Another macho pissing contest.
"We think it happened this morning," Kevin told him, remorseful, but unwilling to apologise. "She went into the jungle a couple of hours ago – she's been doing that a lot, I guess to go to the bathroom – and no one's seen her since. A guy named Ethan, and one called Goodwin, are missing too – they weren't travelling with anyone on the plane, and no one seems to know them, so we think they were moles. How else do They keep finding us?"
Sayid was nodding along in agreement, but Jack's jaw was set stubbornly in indignation. "You let her go into the jungle alone?" he repeated accusingly, drawing himself up to his full height.
"She may be young, but she's not a little kid," Kevin snapped, nostrils flaring, and for the first time, Kate realised that he was actually taller than Jack. "What was I supposed to do, follow her? Hold her hand while she peed? The girl deserves some privacy."
"You could've sent someone else to go with her," Jack argued, and Kevin let out a harsh laugh, shaking his head in disbelief.
"I've been a cop for ten years – you don't think I thought of that? I tried the first ten or twelves times, but she was embarrassed. She didn't want to put anyone out. There're almost sixty other people on this beach – there's no way I could keep tabs on her every second of the day, not if she didn't want me to." He scowled, shaking his head again, this time with disgust. "Not everyone is as perfect as you."
Throughout this exchange, Kate had tried to keep silent, to let them work out their issues on their own, but that was it, the last straw. It had to end.
"Stop it!" she cried, startling them, and they both turned to look at her, cowed. "Claire's missing, and all you can think about is yourselves! This," she gestured angrily at both of them, and they lost their defensive postures, ashamed, "is not gonna solve anything. We need to start organising a search party."
Red-faced and out of breath, she stopped, fixing each of them with a hard look, before turning to Sayid. "You and Charlie take northeast, Jack and I'll go north, and Ana and Kevin can cover the northwest. We'll meet back here when it gets dark."
Charlie gave her a grateful smile as Sayid nodded, relieved that he wasn't being excluded from the plan, and even Ana looked impressed, offering her a feeble grimace.
"What the hell was that?" she asked when the group broke, dragging a surly-looking Jack back into the jungle as she searched the ground for tracks.
"What the hell was what?" he returned, showing a less than attractive side of himself that she wouldn't have expected from him.
"You. Kevin. The two of you acting like a pair of testosterone crazed teenagers," she reminded him, knowing that he knew full well what she was talking about.
"He's still in love with you," he pointed out, surprising her; while she knew that his issues went beyond Kevin's failure to protect Claire, these weren't the words she'd been anticipating.
"That's what this is about?" she checked, shaking her head when he didn't answer, staring straight ahead. "How many times do I have to tell you it's over before you believe me? I slept with you. I told you I loved you. What more do you want?"
"I want him to leave you alone," he told her seriously, the melodrama falling from his tone as he met her eyes, searching them for reassurance. "I want him to stop watching you with that hopeful look, like he thinks you're gonna change your mind and go back to him. I wanna know that you're not going to, because I can't go through that again – wondering if I'll ever be enough to make you happy."
"I'm not gonna leave you like Sarah," she assured him, kissing him softly, feeling like she understood his comments a little better now that she knew why he was so afraid of committing. "I don't know what's gonna happen with us, but I promise you that. I care about you too much."
"You left Kevin," he reminded her, sounding so vulnerable and sad that it broke her heart a little to hear it.
"I know," she agreed, wondering if it would be hypocritical to say that that was different, even if it was. "But he told me it was what he wanted. I had no idea it was just his anger making him say that."
He didn't push the point, but the way he turned to her with his mouth slightly open, before thinking better of it, she could tell that he wanted to ask if she'd known, would she have chosen to work things out with her husband instead, and the truth was, she didn't know.
Her relationship with Kevin was safe, solid, predictable; it might not have been the stuff fairytales were made of, but with him, she knew she could have had a comfortable life. He would have made a good husband, and an even better father, but there was no spark; at least not on her side.
She'd never been much of a romantic when it came to love; never believed in soul mates, or chemistry, not until she met Jack, and realised how making that connection was supposed to feel. It was supposed to be dangerous, intense, like falling, but at the same time, she was terrified of getting burnt. Maybe safe and comfortable really was the better option, even if it wasn't ideal.
Not that she knew how to explain any of this to Jack.
It rained before it began to get dark, the sky opening up without warning, slicking their clothes to their skin, drenching them to the bone.
"I think we should head back to the beach," Kate yelled over the downpour, but he didn't seem to hear her, focused as he was on finding Claire. "The trail's gone," she pointed out, taking hold of one of his shoulders, forcing him to look at her, noticing, for the first time, the anguish in his expression. "It has been for hours."
She thought it would help him to learn that the odds were against them even before they set out, but he shook his head stubbornly, hunching his shoulders as he waded deeper into the sodden jungle. "No. What're we gonna tell Charlie when we come back without her? That we gave up because of a little water?"
"Maybe they found her," she called after him, but the words sounded hollow, even to her.
He gave her a look that was difficult to interpret, pushing on silently in spite of the rising mud.
"Jack, this is crazy!" she protested, struggling to keep her balance as she tried not to lose him. "There's nothing we can do. We have to go back!"
"We should never've gone to the radio tower," he said, his expression one of pure misery when he turned to her again. "She was counting on me and I let her down."
"You didn't know this was gonna happen anymore than you knew They were blocking the signal," she told him gently, holding him steady as she tried to make him see reason. "You can't blame yourself for everything that goes wrong – there were sixty people in that campsite this morning and no one saw anything. What could you do?"
"I could've been there," he said brokenly, his shoulders slumping as he stopped trying to fight her.
"You did the best you could," she assured him, sliding her arm around his waist as they started the walk back to the beach.
"What if it'd been you?" he argued softly, still trying to convince her that it was his fault. "Would you still think my best was good enough?"
"It wasn't, but even if it was, I wouldn't blame you," she told him, with a slight shudder at the idea, letting him lean against her as they struggled back through the mud. "And I'm sure Claire doesn't either. We'll get her back," she assured him with a smile that was more confident than she felt.
He didn't look like he believed her, but he let her guide him back to the beach, and into dry clothes, once they'd met up with a similarly frustrated Ana and Kevin, Charlie and Sayid.
She changed her own t-shirt and jeans, and they sat in his tent until the rain, and his anger, began to subside, then went to join the others at the campfire, relieved not to have to go through the motions of small talk. Jack didn't seem to want to let her in on whatever else was going on inside his head, and Kate didn't have the strength to make him.
She couldn't look at Charlie, sitting alone in the dark, but she didn't know what to say to him, how to convince him that it was all going to be okay, so she decided to leave him to his thoughts. Tomorrow, she'd go to him, but for now, it was probably better to let him have his space.
When Libby perched on a piece of wreckage beside her a while later, Kate was relieved for the distraction from all the misery around her, until her friend met her eyes with an uncharacteristically timid smile. "Now's probably not the best time, with Claire and everything, but there's something I wanted to talk to you about," she said, glancing over at Kevin, where she'd left him brooding by his tent, and Kate felt her heart sink as it occurred to her that her suspicions about them might not be entirely unfounded.
"Sure," she said with forced enthusiasm, excusing herself from an almost catatonic Jack. "Shoot."
Libby gave her another nervous smile as they sat down by the water, staring out at the ocean as she began, "Remember when you said you were going to find a way to repay me for helping you with Jack?"
Kate nodded, not liking her thoughts as to where this was headed. "Yeah," she agreed.
"Well, I found one," Libby continued, and for a moment, Kate thought she was asking her to return the favour.
"You want me to give you advice?" she asked dubiously, wondering what she could possibly tell the psychologist that she hadn't thought of already, unless it was something specifically about Kevin, but Libby shook her head.
"Actually, I wanted your blessing," she confessed, her eyes travelling back to Kevin, and Kate felt a little queasy at the implication.
It was hypocritical, she knew, but she didn't want him to move on until she sure that she would never want to go back. The idea of him with someone else made the separation seem final, forcing her to accept the fact that they would no longer be a significant part of each others lives. She would never kiss him again, or hear him tell her he loved her, or meet the children he'd wanted so desperately to have with her. Their marriage would really be over, before they knew whether or not it could have worked.
"I really like him, Kate," Libby was saying when she tuned back in, her eyes shining with a happiness Kate had never seen her express. "He's a great guy – sweet, smart, funny. He reminds me of someone I used to know." A shadow passed over her face at these words, her expression turning wistful, and Kate guessed that she was talking about someone she'd loved, but she knew better than to ask.
"He is pretty special," she agreed, realising that she had to say something, or else Libby would know that it was bothering her, and start on her about what jealousy, if you could call it that, meant. "He deserves to be with someone like you – someone who'll take care of him," she added with a smile, albeit a weak one.
Libby didn't seem to notice, flashing her a genuine grin as she relaxed. "I'm glad you're okay with it," she said, looking relieved that this was out of the way. "I know it sounds like a cliché, but I consider you one of the few real friends I have on this island, so if you'd said it made you uncomfortable, I would've accepted it."
Now that she knew what it felt like to be Kevin, Kate was beginning to wish that she had, but she couldn't do that to them, or to Jack, not after what he'd confided in her in the jungle. This was exactly what he'd been hoping for: for Kevin to relinquish the hold he had on her and move on. "Just don't hurt him, okay?" she told her sadly, feeling like the worst kind of hypocrite, because she knew that no matter what anyone else did to him, no one would ever wound him as badly as she had.
Next chapter(s): Jack and Kate each receive some life-altering news that will affect how they view Claire's disappearance… ;)