fire (kate/ana) r
Title: Fire
Fandom: Lost
Prompt: 15:00 / unpredictable, 22:00 / heartbeat, 21:00 / mourned, for Around the Clock
Pairing/Characters: Kate/Ana-Lucia
Rating: R
Word Count: 143 + 250 + 168 = 561
Summary: It was the absence of authenticity that made up their relationship. Kate and Ana's relationship, beginning to end.
15:00 / unpredictable
It isn’t the fact that Ana is unpredictable that bothers her; you don’t survive being on the run from the law for two years being surprised all the time. No, it’s the confidence with which she makes even bad decisions, the steady stance of her feet as the world crumbles around her. Because a woman with nothing to lose is more dangerous than anything else.
This is the thought that occurs to her as Ana’s lips are leaving her own, her hips rocking forward as Ana steps back, yet not so far that Kate can’t still feel her breath hot on her face.
“Why…?”
“Why not?” Ana replies with a smirk, evaporating into the depths of the jungle and the swaying palm fronds are the only evidence that she was ever there to begin with.
Kate sighs.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
22:00 / heartbeat
98 beats per minute.
The camp’s fire twitches at Kate’s feet as Ana catches her eye.
102 beats per minute.
Kate rises slowly, not wanting to draw attention, though consciously she’s convinced there’s nothing to hide.
“What do you want? Got someone else in mind you want to gun down?”
126 beats per minute.
She’s dragged to the outskirts of camp by a hand gripping her forearm and the blood pooling there.
“What the fuck are you doing? Let go of me.”
The tarp of Ana’s tent rustles around her and then she’s falling knees first onto the sand and an airline blanket and a car magazine she probably stole from Sawyer.
142 beats.
“Shut. Up.”
There’s lips demanding attention and teeth tugging and hands kneading her hips and a piece of clothing rips. There’s confusion buzzing in her head, but it’s been a long time since skin pressing against her own has made her feel anything other than dead.
167 beats.
She digs her fingernails into Ana’s shoulder and she responds in kind, causing Kate to yelp in pain. The sound is lost on Ana’s tongue, the vibrations only spurring her on.
178 beats.
Her thigh pushes up between Kate’s legs and she bears down on it instinctively.
190 beats.
She comes in a rush, like timber tumbling in a cinder forest, and she barely lets out a breath before Ana retreats with a scuff of sand and a hand through her hair.
136 beats per minute.
And falling.
21:00 / mourned
It’s difficult to grieve something you can’t define, can’t put into parameters of reality and truth and life and words. It was the absence of authenticity that made up their relationship, Kate decides, as she watches Eko carry her body into the armory.
She feels awkward somehow, seeing her like this, open and bare and dead. It was only this body that Kate knew, the shell of flesh and bone that represented her to the world, and now that’s all that’s left. She can’t say it isn’t poetic somehow, placing her corpse into a shallow grave, as Hurley grieves openly for Libby and Kate buries the electric spark of pain hiding like a live wire in her chest.
Yet as she glances around at the survivors at the funeral, Kate realizes that no one really knew her. But, as the first shovel-full of dirt lands with sickening finality onto of the fabric bundle concealing its morbid contents, Kate knows that Ana wouldn’t have had it any other way.