slybrunette

Title: Listen To Me While I Talk To The Wall
Fandom: Lost.
Characters: Kate, Jack.
Prompt: #50 - Hopeful for

100moods
Word Count: 1,466
Rating: PG-13
Progress: 17/100
Summary: Post "I Do". After Jack, Kate, and Sawyer escape the Others and return to camp, Kate tries to figure out why Jack has been avoiding her.

The beach was blanketed in starlit darkness, and Kate was thankful that she knew her way around camp well enough that she almost didn’t need light. It was second nature to her. She knew where the sandy beach dipped and rose; she knew its imperfections. To walk on solid ground again would seem odd to her she was sure.

Brushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear she had to stop herself from glancing around in the dark. She could feel eyes on her, knew that someone was watching her late night travels. Who she couldn’t tell. It made her insides bubble, as she tried to push the thought from her mind.

She was standing outside of his tent in no time, the walk a familiar one. It was the fifth time in a week that she’d found herself lingering just outside, afraid of going on. Afraid of what might happen should she choose to go in. She’d been working up the guts to walk in all day, telling herself that it was pointless to delay the inevitable. Now, faced with the actual reality of the situation, she reminded herself that the outcome didn’t necessarily have to be a bad one. After all, it couldn’t get much worse than it was. Her trying to get him alone to talk; him finding some reason to be gone. It had been this way ever since they’d come back from captivity.

One long, drawn out breath later and she pushed forward and into his tent, letting the flap close with a gently slap that sounded louder than it actually was against the backdrop of the utterly silent beach. She could just make out his form, laid out on his side, body far too tense for sleep. His eyes were closed though, and it was her first tip that he was feigning sleep. Trying to avoid her.

“Jack?” She asked quietly, timidly. He remained quiet, not making a single move, and she only raised her voice further. “Jack, I know you’re not asleep so just give it up.”

A few more seconds and he sensed she wasn’t giving up on this, sighing heavily and rolling onto his back so he could look up at her. He wasn’t really looking at her, so much as just above her and to her left. “How did you know I was awake?”

“You never sleep,” she said, a smile threatening to spread across her lips.

“Not unless someone drugs me,” he replied and her face fell instantly at the bitter tone in his voice. He was mad at her lately, and she couldn’t figure out why. She hated not knowing. She hated the guilt she felt over sleeping with Sawyer, the feeling almost like betrayal. It was why she was here, to sort things out once and for all. “It’s late Kate, can’t whatever you want wait until morning?”

“Why are you pushing me away Jack,” she began, almost before he’d even finished his sentence. She’d already finished it for him in her head. It was the same thing he always said. ‘Can’t it wait until later’ or ‘not now so and so needs me’. He was the equivalent to the guy who never called back no matter how many messages you left on his machine. “I mean, what did I do that made you so angry with me?”

He sat up, because now he knew for sure she wasn’t leaving anytime in the near future. She was going straight to the point. “You knew they had cameras on everything else, I don’t know why you didn’t think they’d have them focused on your cages too.”

She looked at him in confusion, not quite getting his point at first. When she finally did, she felt her stomach turn. Looking away and pressing her lips together tight, bleeding the color from them, she nodded. “You saw.”

“Yeah, I saw.” He sounded disaffected, like he’d had more than enough time to compartmentalize whatever feelings this particular indiscretion had caused in him and toss them aside. That was never good for her. She’d had a hard enough time breaking down the walls he put up around himself the first few times she had screwed up, and those weren’t nearly as bad as this was. “Look, you made your choice. That’s fine with me. But stop following me around like you can still play us both. I don’t deserve that. Sawyer doesn’t deserve that.”

“Jack, I—” she stammered, unable to find the words she wanted. “I’m not trying to play you both. You don’t even know what happened out there.”

He gave a sick laugh. “It’s not that hard to figure out. You had sex with him. You made a choice and you acted on it. There’s not much else to say.”

“You’re wrong.” She refuted, “There’s a lot more to say.”

“Yeah?” He raised an eyebrow, eyes filled with doubt. “And what’s that?”

“You don’t know what happened—”

He cut her off. “Yeah, I do. Don’t try to reason this out—”

“You don’t know what happened and you’re not going to unless you just shut up and listen to me.” She continued on, talking right over him. She had something to say and she was going to say it whether or not he wanted to hear it. Luckily for her, that seemed to do the trick and silence him. “First of all you weren’t there. It’s not called a choice when there’s only one option.”

She could swear she saw him roll his eyes as he looked away. It made her want to just give up and march the hell out of there. It would be so much easier to just stick with Sawyer and just forget about Jack altogether. But easy seemed to rarely be the right thing to do. So she pressed on.

“He was going to die. I thought they were going to kill him and if you hadn’t of made that call when you did he would’ve. I couldn’t just—I had to know if he was what I wanted. I can’t go through life wondering what if all the time.” She found it was too hard to keep her eyes on him so she switched her gaze to the tarp that served as the walls, talking to that instead of him. It was a good metaphor really. At times she felt like she was talking to a wall. “I don’t regret it. I just had to know if he was what I wanted.”

It was silent for a long pause, while she tried to figure out what to say next. Somewhere in her little monologue, he’d started looking at her again and she felt his burning into her as he asked, “And he was.”

Kate took a deep breath, before shaking her head. “No, he wasn’t.” It was the question she’d been asking herself most of her life. Which path do you go down? Good or bad. Hard or easy. Up until now she’d always chosen the easy one, the bad one. “And it’s not that you are either. It’s just that he wasn’t and you…could be.”

He tensed and she wondered if she had said too much. They sat in the uncomfortable quiet while he seemed to work something out in his mind. Finally, “No, it doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to take a test drive and decide you want to trade in. Then what’s to say you won’t change your mind in a month or two, decide you liked the first one best.” She felt a lump grow in her throat. “It’s not fair.”

Her mouth opened and closed a few times before the words finally made it out. “Why are you acting like this?”

Jack put a hand up to silence her. “Just go, Kate. I’m not doing this tonight.”

She had a few hundred scenarios played out in her mind prior to walking in. Never had she thought this would be the one that actually played out. She hadn’t let herself believe it. With no other choice but to leave, her piece said, she made her way to the exit, pausing just before going through. “I never meant to hurt you.” She stood there for a moment, watching for a reaction, but when he didn’t give any she prepared to leave with all hopes shot.

His voice stopped her. “Just give me some time here okay.” She looked back at him. “I need to figure out some things for myself. Can you do that?”

Kate nodded. She could give him whatever time he needed. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Alright.” He laid back out on his bed, and she took that as her cue to leave, slipping out quietly into the night.