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stefanie_beanTitle: Surfing the Bardo
Chapter Title: Chapter 7: King of Coins
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, Sawyer/Kate (later)
Rating: T
Length: 3440 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 7: King of Coins
A week had passed since Claire had given the blue journal to Kate. She kept wanting to ask her if she'd written anything in it, but something about Kate's closed, withdrawn face made her think it wouldn't be a good idea. What made it worse was how she couldn't stop thinking that maybe she hadn't given Kate an empty journal at all. Damn these meds, messing with her short-term memory the way they did.
Now, on this bright morning Aaron frolicked outside with Mum, rolling around on the grass like a puppy. Kate passed through the kitchen and gave Claire a brief nod. She peeked at Aaron through the wide glass sliding door, poured herself some coffee, then headed back to her room without saying anything else to Claire.
Claire darted to her own room, and rummaged through a stack of notebooks, some well-worn and full of writing, others with half-starts that got laid aside. She flipped through one after another, fighting down panic over having given Kate the wrong book. So much poison from deep inside got poured into those pages. Sometimes she'd let Dr. Stillman read a passage, but any of it bothered him, he never showed it. Kate, though... what if Claire had screwed up, and the contagion inside Claire spread to Kate, and even to Aaron?
This was her own stupid fault, wasn't it? The notebooks in the shop had been all laid out on the display by colors: red, black, yellow, even a shiny gold one that she had rested her fingers on for a few seconds before pulling back, as if the gleaming color had burned her. It seemed almost a sacrilege to buy something so nice for herself, if all she would fill it with was writing black as smoke. So she had left with a box of the blue notebooks instead.
Claire knew that words had power – she had learned that the hard way, in her three years a prisoner on the Island. Enough was enough. She couldn't let that happen.
She had given Kate an empty one, right? Probably.
But maybe not, something answered back.
I could go ask her, she argued.
You could. But then you'd have to admit that you didn't remember. That you weren't careful. That you're still fogged up. Not right in the head. And if you're that fogged, that careless, that mental, can you even be trusted around a child—
“Oh, bugger right off,” she told herself out loud, then clapped her hand over her mouth. That's all she needed, for someone else to hear.
She crept up to Kate's door. The crack beneath was unlit, so maybe she'd gone back to bed. Torn with indecision, Claire stood perfectly still, her muscles still trained from years of solitary jungle life. She had learned to crouch behind bushes in complete silence as she watched the grey forbidding face of the Temple for a glimpse of a little blond child, a glimpse that never came.
Claire couldn't bring herself to bother Kate. She was already such a nuisance, such a bother to everyone. Had to be driven to therapy or the chemist's because she had no California license, and these crazy Yank roads were all backwards anyway. Aaron's sweet “Mommy Claire” rang in her ears, but “Mommy” was still reserved for Kate alone, and probably always would be. Mum did her best to help run things, but Claire could see the fatigue in her face when she thought no one was looking.
Well, it would just make it worse if Kate caught her lurking in the corridor. She wandered back towards the front of the house, when a bright silvery gleam from the foyer caught her eye. The sunlight pouring through the glass of the front door lit up something metallic and glittering, that rested on top of a small bookshelf. It shone like a tiny star, pulling Claire forward as she went to investigate.
It was a quarter. She picked it up, glad that she had found it before Aaron, as he was still a bit young to be entirely trusted around coins. While Mum had been keeping care of him during Kate's return to the Island, Aaron had one time put a penny in his mouth, wanting to see if it tasted like cinnamon candy.
The coin was warm as blood in her hand, but that should be no surprise, bathed as it was in morning sunlight. During his last visit, Hurley had done some coin tricks for Aaron, deftly turning the coin this way and that with his big, surprisingly graceful fingers. He had answered Aaron's laughter with boyish smiles that turned shy when he looked over at her. They hadn't sat on the couch together for very long, but even in that short interval the fear and anxiety receded for a little, like low tide at the beach.
Like the tide, the anxiety returned after he'd gone. Even so, with the coin nestled in her hand, she felt it recede a little. Ebb, flow, ebb, moving as the moon did in the great wheel of its journey round the earth.
Hurley must have left it there on his way out the door.
Back in her room, Claire set the coin on the one bare spot on her messy desk. When she slid open the long floor-to-ceiling window, cool morning air ruffled the gauze curtains and stirred up some loose papers on the floor.
Shivering a little, she thought of searching through her notebooks again, but the compulsion was gone. Instead, she opened a tin of paints and began to dab green and brown watercolors onto a page, roughly outlining the branches outside her window.
By the time she finished the painting, most of the worry had leached out of her. So what if the book wasn't empty? she asked herself. Kate had her own sorrows, missing Jack the way she did. For Claire, it wasn't so simple. Even though Jack had known she was his sister, he had left her at John's camp. It was Claire who faced down Sawyer to let her come with them, Kate who had brought Kate home. Not Jack.
Could she blame him, really? She wouldn't want herself for a sister, either. Not now. As for Kate, Jack would be far more on her mind than any scribbling of Claire's. And if worst came to worst, she could just apologize for not giving Kate a new book. It would be all right.
“It'll be all right,” Claire repeated to herself.
A footstep creaked in the hallway, and through the half-open bedroom door Kate said, “Claire, you in there? Thought I heard something.”
Feeling caught, Claire flung her brush into the water-jar. “What? Oh, hey.” When Kate didn't answer, she added, “Come on in.”
Kate stood as she had since she'd returned a week ago from Margo's, her haunted thoughts far away. She hadn't said much more about Jack's letters, and Claire hadn't asked. Three of Jack's Pacific Ocean maps were tacked to Claire's wall, though, and Claire marked Kate's gaze at it traveled over them.
Finally Kate spoke. “Well... I was just headed to my room. Taking advantage of a few free moments.”
“I'll get him settled when he comes in. He'll be fine.”
Something hung in the air between them. If anything was going to come out, it would be now. The moment passed as Kate's face relaxed. “Thanks.” She glanced over to the open window. “Kind of chilly in here, isn't it?”
“I like the fresh air. Want Mum and I to call you for lunch, at least?”
“That'd be great.”
Claire sat back in her desk chair, gazing at the spot in the doorway where Kate no longer was. She thought of pulling on a sweater, but instead let the coolness flow over and through her. On her desk the silver quarter glittered, even in shadow. Slowly she reached her hand towards it, then hesitated. It was as if everything depended on her hand moving that one last fraction of distance. A thread of anticipation stitched its way through her as she pushed her hand a bit forward, and seized the coin.
It still glowed against her skin, and the warmth comforted her like afternoon sunshine.
During her first year alone in the jungle, Claire had learned how to test plants to see if they were safe to eat. First she would lick an unbroken leaf. If her tongue tingled or burned, she would set the leaf aside. If nothing happened, she would break it and try again, then eat a tiny bit, and so on. Sometimes it made her terribly sick, but most times it worked. Test everything; that was the lesson to learn if you wanted to stay alive.
She could put the coin in the refrigerator and come back an hour later to see if it was still warm. Or she could call Kate in, have her feel it as well. Or she could accept that she was mad as a March hare.
No, she told herself. Maybe none of these paths were the correct one. She didn't need to test anything; that wasn't the point. Maybe the coin would cool; maybe it wouldn't. Nor was she mad. Hurt, wounded, yes. Scarred for sure. But as she placed the small bit of metal up against her cheek, a tiny point of brightness glimmered out to sea like a lighthouse's lamp. Maybe some of her old self was left after all, and if she was lucky, she might even get a fraction of it back.
* * * * * * * *
Settled in her own room, Kate looked through the window at Aaron and Carole playing ring-toss. A surge of grateful emotion made her eyes sting. Maybe it was time to let Claire step in more. In the past few weeks, Claire seemed to be gathering her forces, growing in strength while she herself shook under the burden of Jack's letters.
Kate shut the door and sat before her own bare desk, the blue notebook in front of her. Every day of the past week she had almost touched her pen to its unmarked pages, then put the pen down. If she opened the dam's sluice gate to let out the flow of words, when or how would it ever stop?
Maybe it was time to find out.
*:*:*
Jack, you bastard,
Look, I get why you stayed on the island. I don't have to like it. I don't have to understand it. But I get it. What I don't get, and what I maybe can't even forgive, is why you never told me any of this.
Were you afraid to say it to my face? Sure, I got angry. Sure, I called you crazy, because all of this was crazy from the very beginning. Sure, I didn't want to hear any of it.
Here I am, blaming you for something I never wanted to hear in the first place.
But we were on that island for two weeks. We sat on opposite sides of the same cafeteria table one morning after another. Later, we slept in the jungle with a campfire in between us, and you never said a word. Not one! It was like everything that we had between us had never happened. All that was left was silence.
The worst part was that it wasn't a cold, empty silence. You always looked like you were listening to something I couldn't hear, no matter how much I strained or tried. Sometimes I would watch you in the early morning fog, when you thought I was asleep. You sat with your hands folded on your knees, and I wondered if you had even slept at all, as you stared out into the jungle.
On the last day of your life you stood knee-deep in that river, farther away than ever. If you had only heard whispers before, by then you must have been tuned in to a whole symphony.
At that moment I hated the island, hated what you were listening to, and while it hurts so much to write this, I hated you. When Sawyer came up and started joking about Moses and burning bushes, I wanted to blow you both out of the river right then and there. Hurley, too, when later he made some snide remark about how I was being “too sweet.”
All of you let me down: the people I had been closest to except for Claire, and she tried to kill me! All of you left me, in one way or another, and I was expected to just absorb it. Take it like a good girl, because that's what all you big strong men wanted.
Howitzer, hell. If I could have set off Jughead myself and sent the whole damn place straight to the bottom of the ocean, I would have done it in a heartbeat.
Oh you cowardly, beautiful bastard, you couldn't even tell me what you knew all along – that you were never coming back. Because you were 100% right not to tell me. If I had known that the choice would have been between Claire and you, would I have done the right thing?
Hell no, I wouldn't have. I thought we were both going back to the island to get Claire, to bring her back to be with Aaron. That we could get her some therapy, let her live with us, that maybe I wouldn't have to give up Aaron for good after all.
For a week in Locke's camp, every night I lay rolled up in a filthy blanket, Sawyer on the other side of the fire snoring so loud that it kept me awake. That was a joke, because he was supposed to be my watchdog, keeping me safe from Claire, who he thought was going to try and stab me again.
So while Sawyer snored, I was the one lying awake, staring up at the stars winking through the treetops, telling myself happy stories how you and I were going to get back to Los Angeles and make all those dreams come true.
But the one thing the island asked of me – would I have done it, had it been up to me?
I almost scratched this out because it's so easy to fall into the same crazy-talk trap. What the island asked? God, I'm starting to sound like John Locke. Or Hurley, when you told me about him yelling that “it” wanted us to go back.
Or you.
There's no way I could have done it on my own. But I did, didn't I? What choice did you give me?
“Get Claire on that plane.” “No,” I should have screamed. “You want her on that plane, you drag her yourself.” The same way you said that Ben wanted to drag me onto Ajira 316.
But maybe you knew this already, knew you had to stay on the island, knew that it had to be me. Because after that one outburst, Claire followed me like a lamb everywhere. Anyone else: Frank, Richard, Sawyer – especially Sawyer – she would have fought like a trapped wildcat.
As I read this over, I hate that I wrote it. Claire hasn't fought anyone since we got separated from her on that submarine dock, where she gave us enough cover to get away. She bottles up her terrors inside, where they burst out once in awhile in nightmares. Or she saves it up for Dr. Stillman. I can't miss her red eyes and flushed cheeks when Carole drives her back from therapy.
After we moved into the safe house, we put her bed directly on the floor because otherwise she would sleep under it.
You should see her with Aaron now. We were all so worried at first: her mom, yours, me, even Dr. Stillman from Santa Rosa had his doubts. No, he doesn't call her “Mom.” Mostly she's like a beloved preschool teacher or a favorite fun aunt, while I am still doing most of the work.
That sounds ungrateful and sullen, I know. She cries alone in her room at night because no one knows how to tell Aaron that she's really his mother, or whether we even should.
This is what you left me with, Jack. The walls of this house close in around us, squeezing us under all these stifled feelings, choking us in an air of upset and sensitivity, waiting for one bomb or another to go off.
I'm so tired from all of this, so exhausted at having to clean up the emotional messes that you left. And yes, some of that was me. I will admit that, hard as it is.
We're going to move to another safe house soon, this one up in the mountains above the Malibu coast. An old ranch or summer camp, so Hurley said. I don't know how just changing our address will help any of this. Yet I went along with it, and I still don't know why.
What did you do to Hurley, Jack? I barely recognize him. Three years ago he couldn't introduce himself to me without babbling like a middle school kid. Six months ago I couldn't even visit him because he was in a locked psych ward. Now he acts like you did in those few days before you got yourself killed, like he's always listening to some kind of music, or voices in the air.
You want to know what I did when he told me you had died? I was the perfect little girl in your mother's living room, hands folded in my lap while I was screaming inside. I drank the tea she served us, choked down a few biscotti, and when Hurley got up to leave, I followed him to his car.
Around back of your mother's beautiful house, I started hitting him. Not slapping him like a girl does when she wants a man to pay attention to her, but throwing real punches, one after another at his chest and arms. It was horrible because while you know all I've done in my time, I've never done something like that, and to Hurley of all people.
That's not the worst of it. With each punch I yelled, “It should have been you. It should have been you.” I could see Margo and Claire both crying their eyes out as they stared at us through the kitchen's rear window.
In between punches I thought how glad I was that I'd left Aaron at home with Veronica, because I couldn't have lived if he'd seen me like that.
Hurley just stood there and took it, silent and tearful. Finally my arms fell to my sides from exhaustion. I was so ashamed, I wanted to sink right down into the cracks between the paving stones.
He sat down on a stone bench. Didn't say he understood, or how it was all going to be okay, or how sorry he was for me. When I rushed over to him to apologize he put up his hand and said, “No, Kate.” I felt sick because I thought he was going to tell me to go to hell, that he'd drive away and never come back. That he'd hate me forever.
“No, Kate,” he said again. “If you touch me, it might go away. I don't really know how it works yet.”
“What might go away?” But as I said it, I knew. “It” – all that anger and pain because you, Jack, had left me in the worst, most public and embarrassing way possible, in front of Ben, Hurley, Sawyer, God and everybody.
“I don't care,” I said. The only thing that mattered was that I hadn't broken anything else, like I'd wrecked so much before.
When he stood up and took me in his arms, it was like being smothered in pillows. I was still mad as a hornet's nest, still full of hatred and resentment. But the shame was gone. For a minute there I turned into Aaron when he had one of those tantrums. Do you remember how badly they scared us at first? Hurley was the mother full of patience, and I was the toddler who had collapsed into exhaustion.
I still hated Hurley, still hated you for leaving me, most of all hated the island for sinking its claws into all of us. But something loosened up inside, and at least I could breathe.
Like I'm breathing now. But I still haven't forgiven you for leaving.
—Kate
(continued)
Chapter Title: Chapter 7: King of Coins
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, Sawyer/Kate (later)
Rating: T
Length: 3440 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 7: King of Coins
A week had passed since Claire had given the blue journal to Kate. She kept wanting to ask her if she'd written anything in it, but something about Kate's closed, withdrawn face made her think it wouldn't be a good idea. What made it worse was how she couldn't stop thinking that maybe she hadn't given Kate an empty journal at all. Damn these meds, messing with her short-term memory the way they did.
Now, on this bright morning Aaron frolicked outside with Mum, rolling around on the grass like a puppy. Kate passed through the kitchen and gave Claire a brief nod. She peeked at Aaron through the wide glass sliding door, poured herself some coffee, then headed back to her room without saying anything else to Claire.
Claire darted to her own room, and rummaged through a stack of notebooks, some well-worn and full of writing, others with half-starts that got laid aside. She flipped through one after another, fighting down panic over having given Kate the wrong book. So much poison from deep inside got poured into those pages. Sometimes she'd let Dr. Stillman read a passage, but any of it bothered him, he never showed it. Kate, though... what if Claire had screwed up, and the contagion inside Claire spread to Kate, and even to Aaron?
This was her own stupid fault, wasn't it? The notebooks in the shop had been all laid out on the display by colors: red, black, yellow, even a shiny gold one that she had rested her fingers on for a few seconds before pulling back, as if the gleaming color had burned her. It seemed almost a sacrilege to buy something so nice for herself, if all she would fill it with was writing black as smoke. So she had left with a box of the blue notebooks instead.
Claire knew that words had power – she had learned that the hard way, in her three years a prisoner on the Island. Enough was enough. She couldn't let that happen.
She had given Kate an empty one, right? Probably.
But maybe not, something answered back.
I could go ask her, she argued.
You could. But then you'd have to admit that you didn't remember. That you weren't careful. That you're still fogged up. Not right in the head. And if you're that fogged, that careless, that mental, can you even be trusted around a child—
“Oh, bugger right off,” she told herself out loud, then clapped her hand over her mouth. That's all she needed, for someone else to hear.
She crept up to Kate's door. The crack beneath was unlit, so maybe she'd gone back to bed. Torn with indecision, Claire stood perfectly still, her muscles still trained from years of solitary jungle life. She had learned to crouch behind bushes in complete silence as she watched the grey forbidding face of the Temple for a glimpse of a little blond child, a glimpse that never came.
Claire couldn't bring herself to bother Kate. She was already such a nuisance, such a bother to everyone. Had to be driven to therapy or the chemist's because she had no California license, and these crazy Yank roads were all backwards anyway. Aaron's sweet “Mommy Claire” rang in her ears, but “Mommy” was still reserved for Kate alone, and probably always would be. Mum did her best to help run things, but Claire could see the fatigue in her face when she thought no one was looking.
Well, it would just make it worse if Kate caught her lurking in the corridor. She wandered back towards the front of the house, when a bright silvery gleam from the foyer caught her eye. The sunlight pouring through the glass of the front door lit up something metallic and glittering, that rested on top of a small bookshelf. It shone like a tiny star, pulling Claire forward as she went to investigate.
It was a quarter. She picked it up, glad that she had found it before Aaron, as he was still a bit young to be entirely trusted around coins. While Mum had been keeping care of him during Kate's return to the Island, Aaron had one time put a penny in his mouth, wanting to see if it tasted like cinnamon candy.
The coin was warm as blood in her hand, but that should be no surprise, bathed as it was in morning sunlight. During his last visit, Hurley had done some coin tricks for Aaron, deftly turning the coin this way and that with his big, surprisingly graceful fingers. He had answered Aaron's laughter with boyish smiles that turned shy when he looked over at her. They hadn't sat on the couch together for very long, but even in that short interval the fear and anxiety receded for a little, like low tide at the beach.
Like the tide, the anxiety returned after he'd gone. Even so, with the coin nestled in her hand, she felt it recede a little. Ebb, flow, ebb, moving as the moon did in the great wheel of its journey round the earth.
Hurley must have left it there on his way out the door.
Back in her room, Claire set the coin on the one bare spot on her messy desk. When she slid open the long floor-to-ceiling window, cool morning air ruffled the gauze curtains and stirred up some loose papers on the floor.
Shivering a little, she thought of searching through her notebooks again, but the compulsion was gone. Instead, she opened a tin of paints and began to dab green and brown watercolors onto a page, roughly outlining the branches outside her window.
By the time she finished the painting, most of the worry had leached out of her. So what if the book wasn't empty? she asked herself. Kate had her own sorrows, missing Jack the way she did. For Claire, it wasn't so simple. Even though Jack had known she was his sister, he had left her at John's camp. It was Claire who faced down Sawyer to let her come with them, Kate who had brought Kate home. Not Jack.
Could she blame him, really? She wouldn't want herself for a sister, either. Not now. As for Kate, Jack would be far more on her mind than any scribbling of Claire's. And if worst came to worst, she could just apologize for not giving Kate a new book. It would be all right.
“It'll be all right,” Claire repeated to herself.
A footstep creaked in the hallway, and through the half-open bedroom door Kate said, “Claire, you in there? Thought I heard something.”
Feeling caught, Claire flung her brush into the water-jar. “What? Oh, hey.” When Kate didn't answer, she added, “Come on in.”
Kate stood as she had since she'd returned a week ago from Margo's, her haunted thoughts far away. She hadn't said much more about Jack's letters, and Claire hadn't asked. Three of Jack's Pacific Ocean maps were tacked to Claire's wall, though, and Claire marked Kate's gaze at it traveled over them.
Finally Kate spoke. “Well... I was just headed to my room. Taking advantage of a few free moments.”
“I'll get him settled when he comes in. He'll be fine.”
Something hung in the air between them. If anything was going to come out, it would be now. The moment passed as Kate's face relaxed. “Thanks.” She glanced over to the open window. “Kind of chilly in here, isn't it?”
“I like the fresh air. Want Mum and I to call you for lunch, at least?”
“That'd be great.”
Claire sat back in her desk chair, gazing at the spot in the doorway where Kate no longer was. She thought of pulling on a sweater, but instead let the coolness flow over and through her. On her desk the silver quarter glittered, even in shadow. Slowly she reached her hand towards it, then hesitated. It was as if everything depended on her hand moving that one last fraction of distance. A thread of anticipation stitched its way through her as she pushed her hand a bit forward, and seized the coin.
It still glowed against her skin, and the warmth comforted her like afternoon sunshine.
During her first year alone in the jungle, Claire had learned how to test plants to see if they were safe to eat. First she would lick an unbroken leaf. If her tongue tingled or burned, she would set the leaf aside. If nothing happened, she would break it and try again, then eat a tiny bit, and so on. Sometimes it made her terribly sick, but most times it worked. Test everything; that was the lesson to learn if you wanted to stay alive.
She could put the coin in the refrigerator and come back an hour later to see if it was still warm. Or she could call Kate in, have her feel it as well. Or she could accept that she was mad as a March hare.
No, she told herself. Maybe none of these paths were the correct one. She didn't need to test anything; that wasn't the point. Maybe the coin would cool; maybe it wouldn't. Nor was she mad. Hurt, wounded, yes. Scarred for sure. But as she placed the small bit of metal up against her cheek, a tiny point of brightness glimmered out to sea like a lighthouse's lamp. Maybe some of her old self was left after all, and if she was lucky, she might even get a fraction of it back.
Settled in her own room, Kate looked through the window at Aaron and Carole playing ring-toss. A surge of grateful emotion made her eyes sting. Maybe it was time to let Claire step in more. In the past few weeks, Claire seemed to be gathering her forces, growing in strength while she herself shook under the burden of Jack's letters.
Kate shut the door and sat before her own bare desk, the blue notebook in front of her. Every day of the past week she had almost touched her pen to its unmarked pages, then put the pen down. If she opened the dam's sluice gate to let out the flow of words, when or how would it ever stop?
Maybe it was time to find out.
Jack, you bastard,
Look, I get why you stayed on the island. I don't have to like it. I don't have to understand it. But I get it. What I don't get, and what I maybe can't even forgive, is why you never told me any of this.
Were you afraid to say it to my face? Sure, I got angry. Sure, I called you crazy, because all of this was crazy from the very beginning. Sure, I didn't want to hear any of it.
Here I am, blaming you for something I never wanted to hear in the first place.
But we were on that island for two weeks. We sat on opposite sides of the same cafeteria table one morning after another. Later, we slept in the jungle with a campfire in between us, and you never said a word. Not one! It was like everything that we had between us had never happened. All that was left was silence.
The worst part was that it wasn't a cold, empty silence. You always looked like you were listening to something I couldn't hear, no matter how much I strained or tried. Sometimes I would watch you in the early morning fog, when you thought I was asleep. You sat with your hands folded on your knees, and I wondered if you had even slept at all, as you stared out into the jungle.
On the last day of your life you stood knee-deep in that river, farther away than ever. If you had only heard whispers before, by then you must have been tuned in to a whole symphony.
At that moment I hated the island, hated what you were listening to, and while it hurts so much to write this, I hated you. When Sawyer came up and started joking about Moses and burning bushes, I wanted to blow you both out of the river right then and there. Hurley, too, when later he made some snide remark about how I was being “too sweet.”
All of you let me down: the people I had been closest to except for Claire, and she tried to kill me! All of you left me, in one way or another, and I was expected to just absorb it. Take it like a good girl, because that's what all you big strong men wanted.
Howitzer, hell. If I could have set off Jughead myself and sent the whole damn place straight to the bottom of the ocean, I would have done it in a heartbeat.
Oh you cowardly, beautiful bastard, you couldn't even tell me what you knew all along – that you were never coming back. Because you were 100% right not to tell me. If I had known that the choice would have been between Claire and you, would I have done the right thing?
Hell no, I wouldn't have. I thought we were both going back to the island to get Claire, to bring her back to be with Aaron. That we could get her some therapy, let her live with us, that maybe I wouldn't have to give up Aaron for good after all.
For a week in Locke's camp, every night I lay rolled up in a filthy blanket, Sawyer on the other side of the fire snoring so loud that it kept me awake. That was a joke, because he was supposed to be my watchdog, keeping me safe from Claire, who he thought was going to try and stab me again.
So while Sawyer snored, I was the one lying awake, staring up at the stars winking through the treetops, telling myself happy stories how you and I were going to get back to Los Angeles and make all those dreams come true.
But the one thing the island asked of me – would I have done it, had it been up to me?
I almost scratched this out because it's so easy to fall into the same crazy-talk trap. What the island asked? God, I'm starting to sound like John Locke. Or Hurley, when you told me about him yelling that “it” wanted us to go back.
Or you.
There's no way I could have done it on my own. But I did, didn't I? What choice did you give me?
“Get Claire on that plane.” “No,” I should have screamed. “You want her on that plane, you drag her yourself.” The same way you said that Ben wanted to drag me onto Ajira 316.
But maybe you knew this already, knew you had to stay on the island, knew that it had to be me. Because after that one outburst, Claire followed me like a lamb everywhere. Anyone else: Frank, Richard, Sawyer – especially Sawyer – she would have fought like a trapped wildcat.
As I read this over, I hate that I wrote it. Claire hasn't fought anyone since we got separated from her on that submarine dock, where she gave us enough cover to get away. She bottles up her terrors inside, where they burst out once in awhile in nightmares. Or she saves it up for Dr. Stillman. I can't miss her red eyes and flushed cheeks when Carole drives her back from therapy.
After we moved into the safe house, we put her bed directly on the floor because otherwise she would sleep under it.
You should see her with Aaron now. We were all so worried at first: her mom, yours, me, even Dr. Stillman from Santa Rosa had his doubts. No, he doesn't call her “Mom.” Mostly she's like a beloved preschool teacher or a favorite fun aunt, while I am still doing most of the work.
That sounds ungrateful and sullen, I know. She cries alone in her room at night because no one knows how to tell Aaron that she's really his mother, or whether we even should.
This is what you left me with, Jack. The walls of this house close in around us, squeezing us under all these stifled feelings, choking us in an air of upset and sensitivity, waiting for one bomb or another to go off.
I'm so tired from all of this, so exhausted at having to clean up the emotional messes that you left. And yes, some of that was me. I will admit that, hard as it is.
We're going to move to another safe house soon, this one up in the mountains above the Malibu coast. An old ranch or summer camp, so Hurley said. I don't know how just changing our address will help any of this. Yet I went along with it, and I still don't know why.
What did you do to Hurley, Jack? I barely recognize him. Three years ago he couldn't introduce himself to me without babbling like a middle school kid. Six months ago I couldn't even visit him because he was in a locked psych ward. Now he acts like you did in those few days before you got yourself killed, like he's always listening to some kind of music, or voices in the air.
You want to know what I did when he told me you had died? I was the perfect little girl in your mother's living room, hands folded in my lap while I was screaming inside. I drank the tea she served us, choked down a few biscotti, and when Hurley got up to leave, I followed him to his car.
Around back of your mother's beautiful house, I started hitting him. Not slapping him like a girl does when she wants a man to pay attention to her, but throwing real punches, one after another at his chest and arms. It was horrible because while you know all I've done in my time, I've never done something like that, and to Hurley of all people.
That's not the worst of it. With each punch I yelled, “It should have been you. It should have been you.” I could see Margo and Claire both crying their eyes out as they stared at us through the kitchen's rear window.
In between punches I thought how glad I was that I'd left Aaron at home with Veronica, because I couldn't have lived if he'd seen me like that.
Hurley just stood there and took it, silent and tearful. Finally my arms fell to my sides from exhaustion. I was so ashamed, I wanted to sink right down into the cracks between the paving stones.
He sat down on a stone bench. Didn't say he understood, or how it was all going to be okay, or how sorry he was for me. When I rushed over to him to apologize he put up his hand and said, “No, Kate.” I felt sick because I thought he was going to tell me to go to hell, that he'd drive away and never come back. That he'd hate me forever.
“No, Kate,” he said again. “If you touch me, it might go away. I don't really know how it works yet.”
“What might go away?” But as I said it, I knew. “It” – all that anger and pain because you, Jack, had left me in the worst, most public and embarrassing way possible, in front of Ben, Hurley, Sawyer, God and everybody.
“I don't care,” I said. The only thing that mattered was that I hadn't broken anything else, like I'd wrecked so much before.
When he stood up and took me in his arms, it was like being smothered in pillows. I was still mad as a hornet's nest, still full of hatred and resentment. But the shame was gone. For a minute there I turned into Aaron when he had one of those tantrums. Do you remember how badly they scared us at first? Hurley was the mother full of patience, and I was the toddler who had collapsed into exhaustion.
I still hated Hurley, still hated you for leaving me, most of all hated the island for sinking its claws into all of us. But something loosened up inside, and at least I could breathe.
Like I'm breathing now. But I still haven't forgiven you for leaving.
—Kate
(continued)