Jack found himself wandering around often after he moved to Seattle.
He'd only been there a handful of times, either for medical conferences or to visit one of his cousins, and he'd made it his goal to get to know the city he would call home for the foreseeable future.
The divorce had been hard on him — and abrupt, with the news of Sarah's affair. Moving had been a radical choice on his part, but he needed a fresh start, away from her, away from the home they'd built together, and away from his father, who he still couldn't be sure hadn't been the mystery man she'd cheated on him with.
His life was an overwhelming mess, his mind constantly buzzing with memories and feelings he couldn't control or sort through, though the walking had been helpful with that.
Jack wasn't sure how he'd found himself in a graveyard. He'd been to the church at the front of the lot before, on one of the days when he'd felt so desperately hopeless he appealed to some higher power, despite not truly believing there was one.
The light was going down, the crisp fall air getting foggy around him, but he carried on walking, needing to clear his head. Graveyards had never scared him, after all, he'd never believed in the supernatural, but he couldn't deny the eerie energy of such places, where death weighed on the axis of the Earth.
Sarah would've hated the idea of stepping into a graveyard of her own volition. She'd always been very dedicated to her religion. Jack laughed to himself at the irony — she hadn't been devout enough to remember cheating was seen as a sin.
He tripped suddenly and braced for impact, trying to roll over a bit so his weight wouldn't completely crush his shoulder.
He hadn't even noticed how tightly he'd shut his eyes until he started to assess the level of pain he was experiencing and had to open them again to check on a wound on his leg. It wasn't a deep gash, luckily enough, just a shallow cut since, thankfully, the denim he was sporting took most of the damage.
As he sat up, he noticed a headstone he'd narrowly avoided, surrounded by the evergrowing roots of the nearest tree — the cause of his tripping — and covered in vines that obscured the name of the person beneath it.
He pushed away at the vines, hearing a few of them crack and wincing as they made small cuts on his fingers. But soon he discovered Samuel S. Austen, U.S. Army, loving father.
The man had died only a year earlier but hadn't been taken care of upon his death. He looked around again, paying more attention to his surroundings, only to see that very few of the headstones had any vines on them.
Jack couldn't help but feel sorry for the man. Someone who'd been of service to their country, who clearly had a child Jack assumed was alive, since there were no other Austens in his immediate vicinity, had no one to miss him.
As soon as that crossed his mind, the similarities hit him. He had no one. He wasn't talking to his family, his wife had divorced him. He didn't even have a child to try and bond with, at least to a better extent than his father had with him. And if he kept his workaholism up, he'd end up no different than Mr. Austen, there. With no one to mourn him enough to sweep the vines away.
He pushed at the vines more, ripping them as hard as he could with his bare hands, despite the damage it was causing. This man, whoever he was, deserved to be seen.
Jack looked him up when he got home. Information on the internet was limited, but Sergeant Major Sam Austen had been a decorated veteran who'd fought in various wars for their country while deployed. He had a daughter, whose name wasn't mentioned in any of the articles he'd read about him. He wondered what their relationship was like. If Sam had been as good a dad as he'd been an Army man, on paper.
He pondered whether or not he should try to find her, but wasn't sure what even for. He couldn't confront a stranger about why she wasn't visiting her father's grave. It was none of his business; if it'd been him in her place, he would've hated being bothered by someone for something like this. He wouldn't object to loving father being added to Christian's headstone someday, but that wouldn't mean it was true.
The following week, he showed up at the graveyard again, this time with some supplies. He'd walked straight to Sam's headstone, after getting permission from the priest in the church in charge of the lot, and knelt on the dirt right in front of it. "I'll take care of you, Sam."
He could hear his father's voice in his head, telling him that it wasn't his job, that he was a doctor, that he had better things to do than this. But he pushed it aside and reached into the bucket he'd brought, pulling out shears. He cut through the vines, carefully freeing Sam's headstone from them for good. He placed them in a plastic bag to throw them out later and reached into the bucket again to pull out a brush and some cleaning products.
Walking back towards the church, he made good use of a hose normally used for the gardens closest to the building, but that he'd been told he could use. Once the bucket was half full, he went back to Sam's grave and proceeded to scrub away any grime that he could see.
He felt accomplished by the end of the day, almost like he'd given life to Sam again, somehow.
He made a habit of it.
Of walking through the graveyard, of talking to Sam whenever his mind felt full, of cleaning up his headstone whenever things started to grow on it again.
Sometimes, he'd leave him flowers. One of the priests, an older man he'd seen only a handful of times, on weekends, had praised him for the good deed, but he felt like Sam did more for him than the other way around.
It'd been six months since his frequent visits to Sam had begun when he saw a woman standing by his grave.
Jack couldn't have missed her if he'd tried. Her unruly, voluminous dark curls cascaded down her back and her pale skin glistened in the sun, the peppering of freckles on her nose and cheeks more visible as he approached. "Excuse me, can I help you?"
He hadn't expected his voice to sound so shaky, but he hadn't talked to a woman in a non-professional setting in a while, unless the polite good-evenings and thank-yous at the grocery shops and restaurants counted. A bashful shade of pink covered his cheeks as she turned to focus on him, her striking green eyes in harsh contrast with the redness around them.
"No, thank you." She said softly, a contradiction to her defensive posture.
She turned away from him and started to walk away, but stopped in her tracks when he called out. "Are you his daughter?" She turned back around slowly, answering him with a simple, barely noticeable nod.
"I'm Kate."
"Hi, Kate. I'm Jack. Jack Shephard."
"Did you know my dad?"
Her voice broke as she asked and, as he looked closely, he could see she was tearing up again. It struck him as odd to see her care after painting this image of her in her head as someone who didn't, but, at the same time, it was a pleasant surprise to know that she did.
"No. But I've been taking care of his grave." He rubbed the back of his head, trying to distract himself from how awkward he felt. It wasn't just her presence that was intimidating, but he'd never had to explain why he did it to anyone before and he was suddenly made aware of how weird it sounded.
She nodded, scrunching up her face in a way that made him feel judged. But then she took a good look at him, analytical, and gave him a small smile. "Very like my dad to take care of lost causes, even from beyond the grave." There was a playful tone to it, though it still sounded like she meant it. Her smile grew when he returned it. "Thank you."
"It's not a problem."
They stood there in awkward silence for a moment, but, as she made a move to try and leave again, he stopped her. "Can I ask you why I've never seen you around here? Why you don't visit?"
It was an invasive question, he knew. But he wasn't sure when he would get another chance, if ever, and his curiosity had gotten the best of him. He wasn't proud of it, but he believed knowing would put him at ease and maybe, if he let people into his life again, he wouldn't make the same mistakes Sam had made and he'd have people who cared.
"When he got sick, I tried to make him a scrapbook. A scrapbook of the highlights of his life. He was proud of his career, so I was going to add some of that, mixed in with moments we had together because he'd always said I was his best assignment."
It was sweet, the way she talked about him. It reinforced the idea Jack had that Sam had been a good man. He was oddly proud of his assessment of the man. But as she continued, her voice started to break, a gloomy cloud twinkling in her eyes.
"I called one of his COs to get some pictures of him in uniform. The pictures he sent me had dates on the back, photos of him in Korea up to four months before I was born. He'd been deployed for two years. He was never really my father, and I felt betrayed. It took me a long time to realize that that didn't matter, that he'd been my dad, always, but it was too late."
Tears spilled from her eyes and he felt guilt rising in his chest for asking such an intrusive question. He felt the urge to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but he contained himself, not wanting to invade her personal space as he had her personal life. "I'm so sorry.", he muttered, mostly to himself, but she seemed to pick up on it, telling him it was okay, that it didn't matter now.
He wasn't sure what to tell her. To him, life ended at death. Sharing that thought was no comfort to anyone. He would like to believe that there was something beyond, but that didn't mean that the dead should be forgotten. Quite the contrary, they should be remembered, celebrated, so long as they'd left good things behind.
His silence spoke louder than anything and soon he found himself watching her walk away, throwing a small wave his way. She quickly vanished in the distance and he was left with just the grassy knoll, the trees, and the headstones.
The graveyard had become a place of comfort for him and he saw the little twist in the overused wishes for the dead to rest in peace. It was peaceful there, a small haven of nature in the middle of a chaotic city. It was then that it hit him how far he'd come since leaving Los Angeles and his life behind to start fresh.
Maybe in life, there was room for resting in peace too.
