Thanks for the reviews. Since the general consensus seems to be that most of you like this one better, but still want resolution to Hide and Seek, I'm going to keep working on both, though the updates on this one might be a bit faster. I have to get it finished before season four starts and it all gets debunked!
Oh, and yes. Those of you who said Jack Junior would be correct...;)
Chapter 2. One Night
The crib was empty when Kate woke up; terrified that someone had seen her and Jack together and snatched their son as punishment, her heart almost stopped, but she relaxed when she found him sitting at the table with Sam as her father fed him stewed apples from a jar.
A moment later, her relief was replaced with indignation as it struck her that something was wrong with this picture. "You know, I am capable of getting my own child up in the morning," she told him, slamming a mug onto the counter as she made herself a cup of coffee, still annoyed at him for interfering in her life the night before. "And giving him breakfast."
"I just thought you could do with the extra sleep, since you were off gallivanting around the city until all hours," he replied, never changing his tone from one of pleasant conversation as he urged his grandson to open his mouth.
"You're never gonna let that go, are you?" she asked him with a sigh, leaning back against the sink, nursing her cup, as she watched him do what was supposed to be her job. She felt helpless, like she had no control anymore, over herself, or her child. She wasn't even allowed to take care of him.
"Not until you tell me you only went to say goodbye," he agreed, his eyes still on J.J., and she wondered if he felt the slightest trace of guilt for keeping her son from his father, or Jack from his family. If he did, he kept it well hidden.
"You're not in the army anymore, Dad – you can't give orders and expect me to follow them," she told him, dumping the contents of her mug into the sink, and heading for the stairs.
"Where're you going?" he asked, thrown by her sudden departure, and she felt a stab of satisfaction as his confidence wavered. It was good to know that he didn't have all the answers, like he seemed to think he did.
"To get dressed," she called back, grateful that there was at least one part of her life that was out of his jurisdiction. "I'm already late for class."
She'd meant to use it as an escape, from her father; her life; but as she sat in the lecture hall, doodling in the margins of her notebook, trying not to think about Jack, she found herself missing J.J., like she always did when the longing became too much and she needed something more than memories to cling to, something solid and real: his soft, floppy body, his pudgy hands, his gummy smile and warm brown eyes, eyes that she could remember getting lost in, back when everything made sense.
He was her last link to the man she loved; the one piece of him that they hadn't succeeded in taking from her, though she still lived in fear that they would, especially now that she'd betrayed their agreement by going to see him.
For those reasons, along with residual fear from the island, she could never bring herself to leave him for long, and then, not by choice; there was a crèche on campus where she could keep checking in on him, but she could never convince her father to let her take him there now that he was retired, and had nothing better to do than dote on his only grandchild.
After an hour of sitting in the front row, staring at the projections on the wall without absorbing a single word, she decided to ask someone for a copy of their notes, slipping out the side door, and driving home.
J.J. was sitting on his play mat, sucking on a bath toy when she found them in the living room, dropping it, and squealing with delight when he saw her; scooping him up into her arms, she fussed over him, peppering his little face with kisses, drawing a surprised look from Sam, who was watching a documentary on TV.
"I hate being away from him," she offered by way of explanation, still cuddling her son, in no hurry to put him back down, but what she didn't tell him was that he wasn't the only him she'd missed.
She spent the rest of the day feeding J.J., bathing him, lying on the floor playing with him, ignoring her father's input, but as much as she loved him, he could never fill the empty space in her heart, the one Jack had left.
She needed to see him, to know that he wasn't as far gone as he looked, that the old Jack; the one she'd fallen in love with; was still in there somewhere, so, after tucking J.J. into his crib, she waited for Sam to go to bed, then crept out to her car, praying that her son wouldn't wake up again and alert him to her absence.
She hated fighting with him, but she couldn't seem to make him understand how impossible it was for her to let go, when none of it had been her choice.
Even though she'd never been there, she knew that Jack had an apartment downtown; pulling into the visitor's space next to his beat up old truck, she took the stairs two at a time, part of her hoping that he wouldn't be home.
She was about to turn away, relief and disappointment battling inside her, when he answered the door, his pale blue shirt open over a pair of faded suit pants and a greying wife beater.
"Hi," she said, the rush on conflicting emotions intensifying at the sight of him: disgust and guilt, pity and shame, sorrow and fear, and love. She wanted to throw herself at him, to remember what it was like to touch him, but instead, she wrapped her arms around herself, unsure of what else to do with them.
"Hi," he repeated, looking stunned to see her standing on his doorstep.
He glanced over her shoulder, checking the hall, before pulling her inside, closing the door behind her.
It had been so long since she'd had any physical contact with him; she never wanted him to let go of her arm, and she could see that he didn't either, but he released it to run a hand over his eyes, and she wondered if he'd woken him up, or if he was just drunk, or high, or a little of both.
"This place is disgusting," she told him, for something to break the tension, as she took in the stack of dishes in the sink, the maps and atlases on the floor, the pizza boxes and take out cartons. It wasn't so much a bachelor pad as a dump; trying to imagine how someone could live in such squalor, she was struck by the urge to clean it for him.
"I didn't know I was gonna have company," he said, kicking aside a stack of papers to give them room to stand, but it came out as more of an accusation than the quip she was pretty sure he'd intended.
Another uncomfortable silence fell over them, until he broke it, by saying, with a strange mixture of irritation and tenderness that reminded her of the night she'd tried to rescue him from the Others, "You shouldn't be here."
"I know," she agreed, still staring at him; while she knew that she should leave, she couldn't seem to get her legs to co-operate.
"So why are you?"
It was a good question; one with so many answers that she didn't know which one to start with. "Because I couldn't leave things like that," she told him, deciding to go to for the simplest. Bringing up their son would only hurt him, and complicate things.
"You did before," he reminded her, the sorrow in his eyes reminding her so much of J.J. when she left him that she bit her lip, fighting back tears.
She wasn't going to cry. Not over him. Not anymore. She'd cried long enough. "I know, and I'm sorry – you have no idea how much wish it didn't have to be like this," she told him, realising that he never could, not without knowing what she'd been through, her words sparking something inside of him.
"So why does it?" he asked, taking a step towards her, his breath hot and inviting as he backed her into the wall, and even though it reeked of whatever he'd been drinking before she arrived, she wanted to press herself to him and crush his lips with her own.
"You know why. You remember what they said," she insisted, trying to put a safer distance between them, like she had at the airport, but he closed the gap, his hands on either side of her, trapping her.
"No talking about what happened, no contact with anyone who was there… what they didn't tell us is what would happen if we decided we didn't wanna play their little game," he said, and even though his voice and posture were forceful, his eyes were pleading, begging her not to leave him again.
"That's exactly why we have to listen to them," she argued, the agitation she'd felt since leaving the airport convincing her that maybe her father was right, that it was the right thing to do. She couldn't take that risk with their son. She'd been so afraid of someone finding out the first time that the closest she'd come to acknowledging Jack on the birth certificate was giving him his name, and even that had been careless. She just hoped it looked like she was having trouble moving on. "They could come after us – they could come after our families."
"So let them come," he murmured, softening his tone, bowing his forehead against hers, and for a moment, she felt like they'd stepped back into the past. Underneath it all, he was still the same. Still Jack. "Just don't go. Please, Kate. One night."
Her rational mind screamed that she should follow her instincts, for their son, but it wasn't her mind that was in control; before she could stop to think about what she was doing, she was letting him press her back into the plaster, returning his kiss with all of the frustration and the longing that had built up inside her during the year they'd been apart.
"We can't do this," she whispered when he broke from her to discard his shirt, but she knew she didn't mean it, and so did he. She wanted this; it was just a token effort to convince him to take the choice out of her hands.
He did, but not in the way she was hoping. "Yes, we can," he assured her as he lifted her t-shirt up over her head, casting it to the floor beside his.
"We shouldn't," she agreed, right before he brought his lips back to hers, but she offered no more resistance than this, wrapping herself around him, helping him to pick her up off the ground.
The bedroom was the cleanest room of the apartment, she noticed with a sense of relief, as he shoved a pile of the ubiquitous maps to the floor, and set her down on his bed, his beard coarse and scratchy as he nuzzled the sensitive skin of her throat.
She knew it was a bad idea, that her father would have a coronary if he knew where she was, and what she was doing, but it felt so right, so real, so much like before, that she couldn't find it in herself at that moment to care.
Next chapter: Jack and Kate talk about what happened, and what they should do about it... and a certain gross beard meets its maker... ;)