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stefanie_beanTitle: Surfing the Bardo
Chapter Title: Chapter 5: Unmailed Letters (Part 2)
Genre: Angst with a happy ending; Friendship/Romance
Characters: Hugo Reyes, Claire Littleton, Kate Austen, Aaron Littleton, James "Sawyer" Ford
Relationships: Slow burn Hurley/Claire, past Jack/Kate, eventual Sawyer/Kate
Rating: M
Length: 3038 words
Status: WIP
Notes: TW for canon trauma, mental health issues, suicidal thoughts.
Summary: After Kate and Claire return from the Island, Claire starts to rebuild her relationship with Aaron, while she and Hugo explore their growing feelings for each other. Meanwhile, Kate has to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. And while things start out rough, they eventually do get better.
Chapter 5: Unmailed Letters (Part 2)
9/22/2007, Somewhere over the Pacific
Dear Kate,
You probably don't remember when I told you how my father was an excellent raconteur, the best of storytellers. When I was young, he regaled me with tales for endless hours, as I squirmed with discomfort and boredom while the wood paneling of his library walls hemmed me in like the sides of a coffin. In retrospect, the purpose was to toughen me up, give me a taste of what real problems were like. To make sure I'd develop “what it takes.”
These stories inevitably began, “Somewhere in Northern Africa,” or France, or Belgium, or “On an island in the Pacific.” They were all about wars, you see, and the men who fought them. My father explained that the soldiers and sailors started their letters that way because their missives could have been intercepted by enemy troops. As he put it, “Information is funny, son. It can mean both life and death at the same time. Very few things we experience are that way.” Thus the men in arms were never to reveal where they were.
He never said precisely what I supposed to do even if I did achieve “What it took.” From childhood on, I thought that meant becoming a doctor like him, right up until the day I killed him.
No, Kate, not how you killed Wayne; nothing that forthright. I planted on my father's cheek the kiss of righteousness and deprived him of the only thing which gave his life meaning: his ability to work as a surgeon.
You are probably asking what I'm doing here, gazing out upon a vast ocean unmarred by land or cloud, and believe me, you aren't the only one. Since I killed him, Kate, I've seen him — twice — no doubt hallucinating just as Hurley does. My father is the reason I took all that clonazepem, which led to my banishment from your bed and your life.
I don't even have to see my father, however, to know that he has never left me. He's there in the faintest rustle of a curtain, a creak at the window. It's why on this day I took my Oceanic golden pass to the LAX ticket window and got on this plane for Sydney, somehow certain that he couldn't follow me here. That hasn't stopped me from going to and from the john half a dozen times, just to make sure he's not on the plane.
Of course he isn't. Because that would be insane.
Do you know what day it is, Kate? It's not just a number on a calendar. Three years ago today we were strangers on a plane, just as we are strangers now. Worse than strangers, though, because strangers don't share our burden of memory. I scribble on paper cadged from one of the flight attendants, my heart racing with the notion that on this third anniversary of the crash, it might happen again. That's not a nice thought, is it? But as you said during our last phone conversation right before you hung up on me, I'm not a nice person.
When the plane shakes, my heart races the way it used to when you lay under me, your perfect chin lifted in pure anticipation. Every ding of the warning lights, every crackle of the pilot's loudspeaker take me back to that afternoon when the wind sucked one screaming person after another into the blue void. There, it happened again. Just an air pocket, of course.
It's down there, Kate, I know it. It tracks every plane that crosses its path, sweeping the sky like the volcanic red eye of Sauron. Had I that golden ring in my pocket at this instant, I would slip it on and let Sauron take me and everyone else on board. It wants me, Kate, wants me to return, calls to me from that vast blue field of battle below, as it searches for me with its jewel of a red eye set in a brooch of emerald green.
When I doze off, Claire is there too, nestled against that red circle, so small that she casts no shadow against that searchlight of blood. Claire, my sister, who would have been your sister too, had I not spared you from the horror that festers inside of me. Now Claire is nothing more than a speck in some deep-red gem worn on the breast of a monster.
The plane sails along smoothly towards Sydney, propelled towards something I swore I had left behind forever, the air flawless as the beautiful skin at the small of your back. The air shakes with only the faintest of tremors, in the same way that I stroked that soft hollow as you slept so deeply after love.
If this plane does break apart as Oceanic 815 did three years ago, I will grip the armrests and ride the rocket all the way down, holding before me the memory of your face; the last thing I will ever see.
It wants me, Kate. It wants me and it will never rest until my head is wedged firmly between its jaws.
Regards,
Jack
*:*:*:*:*:*:*
11/09/2007
Dear Kate,
I'm at the office. It's late, and I almost called you to say that I wouldn't be back till after 11, before I remembered that there was no need; that you wouldn't care, and wouldn't answer.
John Locke's X-ray hangs on the light board, staring at me like an indictment.
A week ago, he showed up on the neuro floor, admitted through the ER. He's lucky that he was discharged, because were he still here, I'd wrap my hands around his throat; not just for what happened when he appeared; not just because of the X-ray, but because he foisted himself on you as well.
You threw him out, he said. Good, even though praise from me is probably the last thing you want. I suppose he told you the same outrageous story: “We have to go back;” “The island needs us,” and “It's our destiny.”
I sent John to radiology, because the triage nurse noted on intake that he'd had a compound fracture less than a month ago. Kate, that wasn't possible. The bones had mostly knit; the muscles had the same integrity as if he'd had months of physical therapy. Six months ago I'd believe, and while neurological complications from compound fractures can persist for years, he had none.
A few days later, I brought up the discrepancy at the department's morbidity and mortality review meeting. The acting chair gave me a dry look before reminding me that patients routinely lie, and that I myself had noted in the chart that the patient showed signs of being delusional.
Hating Locke is nothing compared to the loathing I feel for myself. If he got out, then why couldn't Claire as well? Yet he didn't mention her, and I didn't ask. Why didn't I make him tell me, Kate? I had him right there on the floor, in a hospital bed, but all I could think of was getting him out of there as quickly as possible.
Now I sit at my desk, kicking myself for not asking how he got off the island in the first place. I'm useless, worthless; can't do anything for you, for Claire or Aaron, for Hurley, for my mother who still hasn't forgiven me for my dead father. All of you looked to me to solve everything, to fix everything, but I can't anymore
[this letter ended with several light-brown stains, and was hastily wadded into its envelope.]
*:*:*:*:*:*:*
12/02/2007
Dear Kate, sweet Kate, I must be going mad.
Oceanic 523 hums along in mid-flight over the Pacific, en route from Sydney to LA. The flight was overbooked, but they bumped someone else to give me a seat, a center one in the back of a 777 overloaded with tourists who stink of sunscreen and sour beer.
Didn't some philosopher say that those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad? Let me tell you what happened, and you be the judge.
Before my father's memorial service, my mother and I went through his things, and in his bureau dresser I found a crumpled cocktail napkin with an address scrawled on it. Because it would have caused my mother pain, I shoved it into my jacket pocket, yet couldn't bear to get rid of it. It remained in my desk until a few days ago, when I booked this flight to Sydney. Once more I jammed it into my pocket, like a talisman.
On the western outskirts of Sydney, the taxi driver counted out the wad of cash I'd given him to wait. We sat in front of a squat, one-story house that had once been white, but was now light-grey from age and the blistering summer sun. The dust-dry lawn was littered with bright plastic toys of television characters, the kind you would never buy for Aaron, and a knocked-over tricycle.
In the side yard, a young blonde woman pushed a girl about Aaron's age on a swing. The woman was visibly pregnant, and I did a double-take because she looked just like Claire, down to her high-top sneakers. She saw me, then called out something I couldn't distinguish.
A heavy-set Aboriginal man built like a linebacker appeared from behind the house, and fell into position beside her. Through the shimmer of heat and the drinks I'd had on the plane, they looked for a few seconds like Claire and Hurley, transposed somehow into this dry suburban desert. Under their hard stares, I saw myself as they did: a police detective, maybe, a bail bondsman, a lawyer, a truant officer. Nothing good, in other words.
The mother sent the child into the house, and the big man protectively put his arm around her, as I explained that I was looking for Carole Littleton. The woman wanted to know if she was in trouble and I said no, I just wanted to talk to her. If I was going to play the role, I might as well deliver the lines.
The couple didn't know anything, as they had only moved in a year ago, and the house was a rental.
Before leaving Sydney, I called the lawyer who had helped arrange things after Dad's death, but he came up dry. Carole had vanished, Kate, and there was now no one to tell about the crash, or how we had lost Claire, how her grandchild was alive. How we couldn't return for Claire as Hurley wanted, because that damned freighter had blown up with everyone on it. How we never did enough, not ever. How I had hoped that Sawyer had somehow survived and reached the island, impossible as that seemed, and that he'd managed to do what I never could.
Oh, the price we paid, Kate; so high was the cost of our silence, how expensive was our time together, such as it was. The price: that we would never speak of Claire, or Sawyer, or of how Hurley cried during our hospital visits as he told us that it was a mortal sin to tell all those lies.
Since I've gone mad, Kate, I can tell you about those sleepless nights when I promised to lay all of this down at Carole Littleton's feet, how I would beg her forgiveness for not finding her daughter (my sister,) share with her my fond hopeful fantasy that Sawyer had found her, that he was caring for her, even.
But since Carole was gone, I got back onto yet another plane, and drank until the flight attendant cut me off. She handed me the LA Times instead, using the same technique you used to apply to distract Aaron when he got into something he wasn't supposed to. I was too tired to argue.
[This section of the letter was smudged and more scrawled than usual.]
Locke’s dead, Kate. He came into the hospital last month with that insane story, but how insane was it, really? What if everything he said was true, that there was a way after all to return, and that we had to? What if Hurley hasn't just been showing signs of clinical deterioration, but possesses a truth which none of us realize?
Locke has failed, but I've failed everyone too. Claire is gone, as is her family. You are gone. There's nothing left for me, because sometimes in the mornings my hands have started to shake, and if that keeps up, soon I won't be able to work, either. I can see your face right now, set in that stalwart, iron-jawed expression of judgment, and believe me, Kate, no one can condemn me to the lower depths as effectively as I condemn myself.
Even my mother stares at me behind my back, eyes blackened with accusation. I know you're blocking my calls, but would you relent? I know you don't like her, that she makes you uncomfortable. But I beg you, as a last wish, can you find a place in your heart and in your life for her when I can't be there? When I'm gone? Because, Kate, I am already gone.
Even the island is gone. For the first time in all those trans-Pacific flights, I no longer felt it beneath me as we sped through that black sky, over that sunless sea. Now nothing stares back at me through the window save a hypocritical failure of a face, the mask worn by a man who already haunts his own life as a pale and insubstantial ghost.
Visit Hurley for me, would you? Tell him I wish I had been a better friend.
Kiss Aaron for me, and if you haven't already finished reading Through the Looking Glass to him, he would like that. It wasn't “too old” for him, after all.
Last of all, but never least, good-bye, Kate. Of all the people caught in the filthy rain of disappointment that showers down wherever I go, you weigh the worst upon me. Aaron will remember me only as a vague dream, if he does at all. Hurley will never escape from the nightmare of his own mind.
As for you, I've wrecked your life in so many ways stupid, careless, or brutal; when I didn't listen or wasn't there; “for all things done and left undone.”
Good-bye, Kate. I'm sorry.
Jack
*:*:*:*:*:*:*
A light knock at the door brought Kate back to the present.
“Kate?” came Claire's voice. “You okay?”
Kate thought about sweeping the letters away, but there was no point. “Come on in.”
With clenched fingers, Claire clutched a moleskin journal to her chest. A new one, it looked like. “It's just that it's past midnight. I saw your light was still on, and Mum was worried.” Her gaze kept drifting back to the letters.
“I'm fine.” No, I'm not, Kate said to herself. Something inside her broke loose and drifted free, along with a small, humorless laugh.
Claire's expression changed to alarm. “Do I have to call Dr. Stillman?”
“I'm not going to do anything, if that's what you mean.” Before Claire could voice the question in her eyes, Kate waved towards the pile. “They're from Jack. Margo found them in his things.” She hated the tears which stung her eyes, hated her weakness. “They're... hard to read. Brutal.”
“I'm sure they are,” said Claire. She waited, silent, for Kate to say more.
I can't tell her, not now, Kate thought. Jack's words of despair seemed to burn through the page, as well as through her heart. Still, she tried to sound lighter than she felt. “It's all so pointless, because it's not like I can answer him back, or anything.”
Claire bit her lip, pondering before speaking. “You can, you know.”
It was almost the last straw. Kate whirled around, face blazing. “I really don't want to hear any of that new-age nonsense—“
“That's not what I meant. You can write him, the same way Dr. Stillman is having me write to... him. You know, the one that you shot. Who you and Jack killed.” At Kate's silent shock, Claire lifted the notebook. “I've been telling him what I think of him, how mad I am at what he did to me. How I wished I'd have shot him myself.”
“Does it help?” Kate whispered. Anything to breach this terrible chasm, with herself on one side and Jack drifting on the other, silent and unreachable.
Claire nodded, full of sympathy. “It really does. Look, I haven't written anything yet in this one, so go ahead and take it.”
“I really couldn't...” Even so, Kate's hands reached for the pretty book with its dark blue cover.
“It's no problem. I have more.” Claire stood in the doorway, once more giving Kate the chance to open up.
Face still flushed, guts still full of ice, Kate offered up a crumb. “Last December, Jack went to Sydney to find your mom. It sounded like he was going to tell her everything about the Island, you, even Aaron. But your mom was gone.”
“Not surprising. After my dad's funeral, Mum moved back to the family farm in Wollondilly.”
“Jack couldn't find any of your relatives.”
“My uncle runs the farm, and it's in his name. Anyway, don't you think you should get some sleep?”
“I can't. There are two to go, and maybe they'll explain why Jack never sent them.”
“Well, if you're going to stay up, let me bring you a tray, all right?”
When Claire returned, Kate's stomach growled at the sight of warmed-up casserole, a glass of milk, and some apple slices. The fruit reminded her of a child's supper, served by the nanny in the nursery.
As Claire ducked out, she said, “Just leave the door ajar, would you?”
“Sure.” Finally alone, she pressed the third letter to her breast and let the tears flow like rain. Finally she knew why Jack had been standing on an overpass, on that night when all the news stations called him a hero. Not that there was much comfort in the knowledge.
(continued)
Chapter Title: Chapter 5: Unmailed Letters (Part 2)
Genre: Angst with a happy ending; Friendship/Romance
Characters: Hugo Reyes, Claire Littleton, Kate Austen, Aaron Littleton, James "Sawyer" Ford
Relationships: Slow burn Hurley/Claire, past Jack/Kate, eventual Sawyer/Kate
Rating: M
Length: 3038 words
Status: WIP
Notes: TW for canon trauma, mental health issues, suicidal thoughts.
Summary: After Kate and Claire return from the Island, Claire starts to rebuild her relationship with Aaron, while she and Hugo explore their growing feelings for each other. Meanwhile, Kate has to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. And while things start out rough, they eventually do get better.
Chapter 5: Unmailed Letters (Part 2)
9/22/2007, Somewhere over the Pacific
Dear Kate,
You probably don't remember when I told you how my father was an excellent raconteur, the best of storytellers. When I was young, he regaled me with tales for endless hours, as I squirmed with discomfort and boredom while the wood paneling of his library walls hemmed me in like the sides of a coffin. In retrospect, the purpose was to toughen me up, give me a taste of what real problems were like. To make sure I'd develop “what it takes.”
These stories inevitably began, “Somewhere in Northern Africa,” or France, or Belgium, or “On an island in the Pacific.” They were all about wars, you see, and the men who fought them. My father explained that the soldiers and sailors started their letters that way because their missives could have been intercepted by enemy troops. As he put it, “Information is funny, son. It can mean both life and death at the same time. Very few things we experience are that way.” Thus the men in arms were never to reveal where they were.
He never said precisely what I supposed to do even if I did achieve “What it took.” From childhood on, I thought that meant becoming a doctor like him, right up until the day I killed him.
No, Kate, not how you killed Wayne; nothing that forthright. I planted on my father's cheek the kiss of righteousness and deprived him of the only thing which gave his life meaning: his ability to work as a surgeon.
You are probably asking what I'm doing here, gazing out upon a vast ocean unmarred by land or cloud, and believe me, you aren't the only one. Since I killed him, Kate, I've seen him — twice — no doubt hallucinating just as Hurley does. My father is the reason I took all that clonazepem, which led to my banishment from your bed and your life.
I don't even have to see my father, however, to know that he has never left me. He's there in the faintest rustle of a curtain, a creak at the window. It's why on this day I took my Oceanic golden pass to the LAX ticket window and got on this plane for Sydney, somehow certain that he couldn't follow me here. That hasn't stopped me from going to and from the john half a dozen times, just to make sure he's not on the plane.
Of course he isn't. Because that would be insane.
Do you know what day it is, Kate? It's not just a number on a calendar. Three years ago today we were strangers on a plane, just as we are strangers now. Worse than strangers, though, because strangers don't share our burden of memory. I scribble on paper cadged from one of the flight attendants, my heart racing with the notion that on this third anniversary of the crash, it might happen again. That's not a nice thought, is it? But as you said during our last phone conversation right before you hung up on me, I'm not a nice person.
When the plane shakes, my heart races the way it used to when you lay under me, your perfect chin lifted in pure anticipation. Every ding of the warning lights, every crackle of the pilot's loudspeaker take me back to that afternoon when the wind sucked one screaming person after another into the blue void. There, it happened again. Just an air pocket, of course.
It's down there, Kate, I know it. It tracks every plane that crosses its path, sweeping the sky like the volcanic red eye of Sauron. Had I that golden ring in my pocket at this instant, I would slip it on and let Sauron take me and everyone else on board. It wants me, Kate, wants me to return, calls to me from that vast blue field of battle below, as it searches for me with its jewel of a red eye set in a brooch of emerald green.
When I doze off, Claire is there too, nestled against that red circle, so small that she casts no shadow against that searchlight of blood. Claire, my sister, who would have been your sister too, had I not spared you from the horror that festers inside of me. Now Claire is nothing more than a speck in some deep-red gem worn on the breast of a monster.
The plane sails along smoothly towards Sydney, propelled towards something I swore I had left behind forever, the air flawless as the beautiful skin at the small of your back. The air shakes with only the faintest of tremors, in the same way that I stroked that soft hollow as you slept so deeply after love.
If this plane does break apart as Oceanic 815 did three years ago, I will grip the armrests and ride the rocket all the way down, holding before me the memory of your face; the last thing I will ever see.
It wants me, Kate. It wants me and it will never rest until my head is wedged firmly between its jaws.
Regards,
Jack
11/09/2007
Dear Kate,
I'm at the office. It's late, and I almost called you to say that I wouldn't be back till after 11, before I remembered that there was no need; that you wouldn't care, and wouldn't answer.
John Locke's X-ray hangs on the light board, staring at me like an indictment.
A week ago, he showed up on the neuro floor, admitted through the ER. He's lucky that he was discharged, because were he still here, I'd wrap my hands around his throat; not just for what happened when he appeared; not just because of the X-ray, but because he foisted himself on you as well.
You threw him out, he said. Good, even though praise from me is probably the last thing you want. I suppose he told you the same outrageous story: “We have to go back;” “The island needs us,” and “It's our destiny.”
I sent John to radiology, because the triage nurse noted on intake that he'd had a compound fracture less than a month ago. Kate, that wasn't possible. The bones had mostly knit; the muscles had the same integrity as if he'd had months of physical therapy. Six months ago I'd believe, and while neurological complications from compound fractures can persist for years, he had none.
A few days later, I brought up the discrepancy at the department's morbidity and mortality review meeting. The acting chair gave me a dry look before reminding me that patients routinely lie, and that I myself had noted in the chart that the patient showed signs of being delusional.
Hating Locke is nothing compared to the loathing I feel for myself. If he got out, then why couldn't Claire as well? Yet he didn't mention her, and I didn't ask. Why didn't I make him tell me, Kate? I had him right there on the floor, in a hospital bed, but all I could think of was getting him out of there as quickly as possible.
Now I sit at my desk, kicking myself for not asking how he got off the island in the first place. I'm useless, worthless; can't do anything for you, for Claire or Aaron, for Hurley, for my mother who still hasn't forgiven me for my dead father. All of you looked to me to solve everything, to fix everything, but I can't anymore
[this letter ended with several light-brown stains, and was hastily wadded into its envelope.]
12/02/2007
Dear Kate, sweet Kate, I must be going mad.
Oceanic 523 hums along in mid-flight over the Pacific, en route from Sydney to LA. The flight was overbooked, but they bumped someone else to give me a seat, a center one in the back of a 777 overloaded with tourists who stink of sunscreen and sour beer.
Didn't some philosopher say that those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad? Let me tell you what happened, and you be the judge.
Before my father's memorial service, my mother and I went through his things, and in his bureau dresser I found a crumpled cocktail napkin with an address scrawled on it. Because it would have caused my mother pain, I shoved it into my jacket pocket, yet couldn't bear to get rid of it. It remained in my desk until a few days ago, when I booked this flight to Sydney. Once more I jammed it into my pocket, like a talisman.
On the western outskirts of Sydney, the taxi driver counted out the wad of cash I'd given him to wait. We sat in front of a squat, one-story house that had once been white, but was now light-grey from age and the blistering summer sun. The dust-dry lawn was littered with bright plastic toys of television characters, the kind you would never buy for Aaron, and a knocked-over tricycle.
In the side yard, a young blonde woman pushed a girl about Aaron's age on a swing. The woman was visibly pregnant, and I did a double-take because she looked just like Claire, down to her high-top sneakers. She saw me, then called out something I couldn't distinguish.
A heavy-set Aboriginal man built like a linebacker appeared from behind the house, and fell into position beside her. Through the shimmer of heat and the drinks I'd had on the plane, they looked for a few seconds like Claire and Hurley, transposed somehow into this dry suburban desert. Under their hard stares, I saw myself as they did: a police detective, maybe, a bail bondsman, a lawyer, a truant officer. Nothing good, in other words.
The mother sent the child into the house, and the big man protectively put his arm around her, as I explained that I was looking for Carole Littleton. The woman wanted to know if she was in trouble and I said no, I just wanted to talk to her. If I was going to play the role, I might as well deliver the lines.
The couple didn't know anything, as they had only moved in a year ago, and the house was a rental.
Before leaving Sydney, I called the lawyer who had helped arrange things after Dad's death, but he came up dry. Carole had vanished, Kate, and there was now no one to tell about the crash, or how we had lost Claire, how her grandchild was alive. How we couldn't return for Claire as Hurley wanted, because that damned freighter had blown up with everyone on it. How we never did enough, not ever. How I had hoped that Sawyer had somehow survived and reached the island, impossible as that seemed, and that he'd managed to do what I never could.
Oh, the price we paid, Kate; so high was the cost of our silence, how expensive was our time together, such as it was. The price: that we would never speak of Claire, or Sawyer, or of how Hurley cried during our hospital visits as he told us that it was a mortal sin to tell all those lies.
Since I've gone mad, Kate, I can tell you about those sleepless nights when I promised to lay all of this down at Carole Littleton's feet, how I would beg her forgiveness for not finding her daughter (my sister,) share with her my fond hopeful fantasy that Sawyer had found her, that he was caring for her, even.
But since Carole was gone, I got back onto yet another plane, and drank until the flight attendant cut me off. She handed me the LA Times instead, using the same technique you used to apply to distract Aaron when he got into something he wasn't supposed to. I was too tired to argue.
[This section of the letter was smudged and more scrawled than usual.]
Locke’s dead, Kate. He came into the hospital last month with that insane story, but how insane was it, really? What if everything he said was true, that there was a way after all to return, and that we had to? What if Hurley hasn't just been showing signs of clinical deterioration, but possesses a truth which none of us realize?
Locke has failed, but I've failed everyone too. Claire is gone, as is her family. You are gone. There's nothing left for me, because sometimes in the mornings my hands have started to shake, and if that keeps up, soon I won't be able to work, either. I can see your face right now, set in that stalwart, iron-jawed expression of judgment, and believe me, Kate, no one can condemn me to the lower depths as effectively as I condemn myself.
Even my mother stares at me behind my back, eyes blackened with accusation. I know you're blocking my calls, but would you relent? I know you don't like her, that she makes you uncomfortable. But I beg you, as a last wish, can you find a place in your heart and in your life for her when I can't be there? When I'm gone? Because, Kate, I am already gone.
Even the island is gone. For the first time in all those trans-Pacific flights, I no longer felt it beneath me as we sped through that black sky, over that sunless sea. Now nothing stares back at me through the window save a hypocritical failure of a face, the mask worn by a man who already haunts his own life as a pale and insubstantial ghost.
Visit Hurley for me, would you? Tell him I wish I had been a better friend.
Kiss Aaron for me, and if you haven't already finished reading Through the Looking Glass to him, he would like that. It wasn't “too old” for him, after all.
Last of all, but never least, good-bye, Kate. Of all the people caught in the filthy rain of disappointment that showers down wherever I go, you weigh the worst upon me. Aaron will remember me only as a vague dream, if he does at all. Hurley will never escape from the nightmare of his own mind.
As for you, I've wrecked your life in so many ways stupid, careless, or brutal; when I didn't listen or wasn't there; “for all things done and left undone.”
Good-bye, Kate. I'm sorry.
Jack
A light knock at the door brought Kate back to the present.
“Kate?” came Claire's voice. “You okay?”
Kate thought about sweeping the letters away, but there was no point. “Come on in.”
With clenched fingers, Claire clutched a moleskin journal to her chest. A new one, it looked like. “It's just that it's past midnight. I saw your light was still on, and Mum was worried.” Her gaze kept drifting back to the letters.
“I'm fine.” No, I'm not, Kate said to herself. Something inside her broke loose and drifted free, along with a small, humorless laugh.
Claire's expression changed to alarm. “Do I have to call Dr. Stillman?”
“I'm not going to do anything, if that's what you mean.” Before Claire could voice the question in her eyes, Kate waved towards the pile. “They're from Jack. Margo found them in his things.” She hated the tears which stung her eyes, hated her weakness. “They're... hard to read. Brutal.”
“I'm sure they are,” said Claire. She waited, silent, for Kate to say more.
I can't tell her, not now, Kate thought. Jack's words of despair seemed to burn through the page, as well as through her heart. Still, she tried to sound lighter than she felt. “It's all so pointless, because it's not like I can answer him back, or anything.”
Claire bit her lip, pondering before speaking. “You can, you know.”
It was almost the last straw. Kate whirled around, face blazing. “I really don't want to hear any of that new-age nonsense—“
“That's not what I meant. You can write him, the same way Dr. Stillman is having me write to... him. You know, the one that you shot. Who you and Jack killed.” At Kate's silent shock, Claire lifted the notebook. “I've been telling him what I think of him, how mad I am at what he did to me. How I wished I'd have shot him myself.”
“Does it help?” Kate whispered. Anything to breach this terrible chasm, with herself on one side and Jack drifting on the other, silent and unreachable.
Claire nodded, full of sympathy. “It really does. Look, I haven't written anything yet in this one, so go ahead and take it.”
“I really couldn't...” Even so, Kate's hands reached for the pretty book with its dark blue cover.
“It's no problem. I have more.” Claire stood in the doorway, once more giving Kate the chance to open up.
Face still flushed, guts still full of ice, Kate offered up a crumb. “Last December, Jack went to Sydney to find your mom. It sounded like he was going to tell her everything about the Island, you, even Aaron. But your mom was gone.”
“Not surprising. After my dad's funeral, Mum moved back to the family farm in Wollondilly.”
“Jack couldn't find any of your relatives.”
“My uncle runs the farm, and it's in his name. Anyway, don't you think you should get some sleep?”
“I can't. There are two to go, and maybe they'll explain why Jack never sent them.”
“Well, if you're going to stay up, let me bring you a tray, all right?”
When Claire returned, Kate's stomach growled at the sight of warmed-up casserole, a glass of milk, and some apple slices. The fruit reminded her of a child's supper, served by the nanny in the nursery.
As Claire ducked out, she said, “Just leave the door ajar, would you?”
“Sure.” Finally alone, she pressed the third letter to her breast and let the tears flow like rain. Finally she knew why Jack had been standing on an overpass, on that night when all the news stations called him a hero. Not that there was much comfort in the knowledge.
(continued)