Hey again, everyone! Thanks for your kind comments - it's nice to see some old faces, and some new ones. The best thing about writing this fic is that it gives me an excuse to reminisce about my favourite Jate moments and it looks like you're all enjoying that too.

Chapter 15

Jack listened in silence while Kate spoke, interrupting only when he felt a particular point needed clarifying.
"That's it?" he asked once she arrived at his reappearance in Tunisia. "That's the whole story?"
"That's it," she agreed, watching his expression for some clue as to his reaction.

He tried to come up with an intelligible response, but in the end, all he could manage was, "Wow."

Kate chewed her lip as she waited for him to say something else. "You think I'm crazy now."

Did he? He wasn't sure if it was a memory, or his own mind filling in the gaps of what Kate had told him, but he had a brief glimpse of himself sitting beside Aaron's bed, reading to him from the book in his lap.

"Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as siximpossible things before breakfast."

What Kate was asking him to believe was impossible, but then again, stranger things had happened to him of late. Like waking up in the desert with no memory – and no injury – when he was supposed to be dead.

"I don't know what I think."

She cupped his jaw in her palm to force him to look at her, so that he would see how serious she was. "It's a lot to take in, I know, but I swear to you, Jack – every word of it is true."

Her eyes were pleading, begging him to trust her.

"Okay."

She released him with a frown. "Okay?" she repeated, looking taken aback that he wasn't going to try to argue with her. "You're really just gonna sit there and pretend that none of what I just said bothers you?"

"It's a pretty incredible story, I'll give you that," he allowed, "but you promised you were gonna tell me the truth, so if you say that's it..." He shrugged.

She continued to stare at him in astonishment, as though he were the one who'd just said something crazy. "It's just… The old you wouldn't've been so open-minded."
"No offense, Kate, but the old me sounds like kind of a tight-ass," he joked, flashing her a self-deprecating grin.

When she didn't seem to know how to reply to that, he worried that he had offended her, but then she burst into peals of laughter, and he found himself laughing with her.

"He had a lot of good qualities too," she assured him when they were quiet again, caressing her belly, almost as if she wanted to be sure their son was listening. "He was brave, and kind, and he loved me – more than I probably deserved."

She was silent for a moment as she let him digest this.

"I know it doesn't make any sense, but sometimes when I'm with you, I feel like I'm betraying his memory somehow," she confessed, shifting her gaze back to the horizon. "Like I should still be mourning him or something."

She was right, it didn't make sense, but neither did the envy he felt whenever she shared intimate details of their life together.

"From everything you've told me about him, it seems like he'd want you to be happy," he reminded her. "I know I do." Whether or not that was with him.

She turned to him with a beatific smile. "That's exactly what he would say."

Jack felt his heart lift as it occurred to him that maybe there was still hope for them, hope that the man that she'd loved was still buried somewhere inside of him.

He stood and brushed himself off, offering her his hands to help her up. "I don't know about you, but I'm starving. Why don't we check out that diner we passed on the way in?"

"You know, this place kind of reminds me of where my mom used to work," Kate said, taking in the kitschy Americana that lined the walls around their booth as they waited for their meals to arrive.

"Your mom was a waitress?" It was hard to believe that even after all the time he'd spent with her, getting reacquainted with her, there was still so much he didn't know about her.

"That doesn't bother you, does it?" she asked, fidgeting with the ketchup bottle. "That I didn't grow up in your world?"

He wondered if it had before. It hadn't stopped him from wanting to marry her. "I'm not even sure it's my world anymore."

It was obvious from her expression that this wasn't the answer she was expecting. "Your mom told me what you did – how you saved that kid in Tunisia. Do you think you'll ever go back to being a doctor?"

He'd be lying if he said he didn't miss the rush he got from saving people, but it was clear from her story that it hadn't always been good for him. "I don't know. I'd probably have to re-sit my boards before they gave me my license back."

"I'm not worried about that. Once you set your mind to something…"

There it was again: that unwavering faith in him, the unabashed pride that told him he had once been her hero, even if she hated him for it sometimes.

"You keep saying I changed," he reminded her, thankful that whatever had him reaching for narcotics – instead of her – in times of trouble, seemed to have disappeared along with the rest of his memories. That was one part of himself he had no desire to recover. "That I was different, even before the amnesia."

"The DHARMA people had you mopping floors," she explained, smiling at the memory, "which should've driven you crazy, but I think you actually kind of liked it – not being responsible for everyone all the time."

"So I don't even know if that's is who I am anymore. Maybe I'm a janitor. Or something else."

Money wasn't really an issue – not when they'd received generous settlements from both airlines – so there was no pressure for him to decide right away. Let someone else save the world for a change.

"Right now, I just wanna be there for you and our son."

It should have made her happy, but for some reason, it didn't. "Aren't you afraid we'll get sick of each other?"

"I could never get sick of you."

She squeezed her eyes shut, as though each word caused her physical pain. "Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"That," she insisted. "I know you're trying to do the right thing, and that's one of the things I've always loved about you, but there are other ways to handle this."

She was talking about co-parenting, he realised with dismay. Was that really what she wanted, or did she think she was being noble by letting him off the hook?

"I'm not trying to do anything, Kate. I may not remember everything that happened between us before, but that doesn't mean my feelings for you aren't real."

What he felt for her went beyond simple attraction, beyond the sense of duty that came from knowing that he was the father of her child. There was something else about her, some inexplicable quality that kept him coming back even when he knew it might be kinder in the long run to let her go.

"You have feelings for me?" she repeated, whatever argument she'd been about to put forward dying on her lips.

She looked so stunned that he almost laughed. "You said it yourself – I was in love with you once. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. Is it really so hard to believe that I could feel that way again?"

Her expression softened, her green eyes glistening as she fought back the tide of her emotions. "No, I guess not."

Despite what he'd confessed at the diner, Kate was surprised when Jack reached for her hand as they walked back to the beach house as though it were still something they did every day.

She snuck a sidelong glance at him, her stomach fluttering in a way that had nothing to do with the baby on catching him smiling such a warm, Jack-like smile.

"I still have so many questions," he told her.

"About what?" she asked, forcing her voice to sound normal. The last thing she wanted was to scare him off with the depth of her own feelings.

"About all of it – you, me, the island…"

It felt good to be able to talk about it with him again. Better than she'd thought it would. "What else do you wanna know?"

The furrow in his brow deepened as he tried to distil his thoughts. "After we got rescued, why didn't we send someone back for Claire and the others?"

"We wanted to," she assured him, before he could start down the path of self-flagellation again, "but who would've believed us? Besides, we didn't even know where to look. It's not like we had a map."

"Okay," he agreed, seeming to decide that this made sense. "I get why I wanted to go back, but if the island was such a terrible place, why did I volunteer to protect it?"

"Because you're you," she reminded him with a wry smile. "You wanted to make sure Claire and I would be safe. This guy too, I guess," she added, gesturing to her belly, "although we didn't know it at the time."

He stopped walking then, turning to face her. "Last one. Why did it take us two years to admit we were in love with each other?"

She resisted the urge to laugh at how absurd it sounded when he laid it out like that. "I wish I could tell you I had an answer that makes sense, but the truth is, we both made a lot of mistakes."

"Mistakes like James?" he probed.

Even though she'd tried to be brief when describing her relationship with Sawyer, she should have known that his mind would get stuck on this detail. "This is why I didn't want to tell you. I knew you'd be jealous."

"Should I be?"

She squeezed his hand, giving him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, in case he was still under the mistaken belief that she'd picked up with Sawyer again after his 'death'. "No. That was over a long time ago – long before you and I ever got together."

To her relief, he seemed satisfied with this answer. "I know it wasn't until after we got off the island, but how did we get together?"

"You wanna know what finally convinced us to give it a shot?"

He nodded.

"It was Aaron, actually," she explained, warming to the subject. Even after everything that had happened, it was still one of her favourite memories.

"I thought you said I didn't want anything to do with him?"

She couldn't blame him for being surprised. She wasn't sure he would ever come around either. But lucky for both of them, he had.

"When he was a toddler, he used to get these ear infections. He was on and off antibiotics, but he couldn't shake them, so after a few months of this, the paediatrician referred us to a specialist. The only problem was, he had this huge waiting list.

"We hadn't seen each other since my trial ended, but I knew you worked with him, so I called you to see if you could pull some strings. I was so nervous, I almost hung up on you, but you were great about it. I don't know what you said to him, but he managed to fit us in the next day.

"He told me the only way to stop it was to take his adenoids out. I was so worried about him having surgery – he was still so little, you know? Somehow you must have known that, because you came down and you sat with me, and you held my hand, and you were just so calm, so sure that everything was gonna be fine, that I fell in love with you all over again.

"You followed us home afterwards – to keep an eye on him, you said – but that day turned into a week, and before either of us knew what was happening, you'd basically moved in. So you packed up your stuff, and you did."

"So much for sweeping you off your feet," he said and she wondered if he was disappointed.

"Who says you didn't?" she challenged him. "It wasn't a fairy tale, but it was real, and that's all I ever wanted – just you and me, living our lives together."

"Do you still want that?" he asked, watching her with such intensity that the butterflies in her stomach began to multiply.

On impulse, she raised herself onto her toes and pressed a lingering kiss to his mouth, encouraged when she felt him lean into it.

He smiled at her when she pulled back. "Not that I'm complaining, but what was that for?"

"The Jack Shephard I met on the island was always so focused and intense when he thought he was right about something. After you left, I couldn't understand why you never felt that way about me — why you wouldn't fight for us. I'm glad you are now."

Next chapter: Jack remembers something else as he and Kate get closer...

And coming soon: How did Jack survive? And why was he in Tunisia? (Free free to speculate in your reviews.)