Lost Fic: Drowning.... Kate/Juliet Chapters 5&6
Title : Drowning is not so pitiful ... (as the attempt to rise)
Author: Carly Carter
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: Kate/Juliet (& some unfortunate implications of Jate & Jacket)
Rating: PG ish (Some swearing)
Disclaimer: Don't own anything
AN: I totally lost the plot with this fic but it was driving me crazy having it unfinished so I was forced to continue...
AN2: For f3iv3lin3 who completely rocks, with my love and thanks <3
AN3: Love and thanks to xixlovexgreenx for the icon <3
AN3 : Love and thanks to zippy88 for just everything <3
Drowning is not so pitiful....
….As the attempt to rise
(Emily Dickinson)
"What we share...may be a lot like a traffic accident.
But we do share it.
We are survivors.
Of each other.
We have been shark to one another,
but also lifeboat,"
Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
Chapter 1 carlyisnot.livejournal.com/28940.html
Chapter 2 carlyisnot.livejournal.com/29414.html
Chapter 3 carlyisnot.livejournal.com/30204.html
Chapter 4 carlyisnot.livejournal.com/30232.html
Chapter 5
Kate feels trapped as she struggles against Jack and his unwelcome arms around her. She feels exposed as she remembers the fact that Juliet and Jack know every last thing about her. She feels herself disintegrating right in front of their eyes.
Above all, she feels condemned.
She catches a glimpse of Juliet out of the corner of her eye. That blonde hair shimmering in the moonlight. Visibility is poor, Kate can't really make out the features on Juliet's face. And yet somehow she still sees that Juliet looks stricken. Juliet looks like the perfect picture of innocence. Of a victim. It makes Kate sick to her stomach.
Kate can't see Jack's eyes, but she knows anyway that his eyes are glued to Juliet. She knows also what he sees when he looks at the other woman. He sees goodness. Innocence. Worth. All the things Kate wished he saw in her. The things she wished someone saw in her.
Jack is shaking her, asking her what-the-hell has got into her, asking it again and again as if any explanation would satisfy him in the first place.
But she makes no answer. There are no words.
What she desperately wants in that moment, is the thing that she has always wanted. To be free. To be away from him, from Juliet, from every last person who made her feel like dirt. Fleetingly it occurs to her right there on that beach, that the person she most wants to escape from, the person she has really been running from for all these years, is herself.
His hold is tight, angry, as she struggles against him. He is talking to her as if she were crazy. As if she were a monster. And, perhaps, he is right. Both of them appear so willing to lay the blame at her feet. And, perhaps, they are justified.
She stops in that moment, stops fighting him and kicking him. She grows limp in his arms, falling against him. Slowly he releases his grip on her as sounds of her soft crying reach his ears. And still, for some reason, her pain gets to him. He lets her go and she sinks to her knees in the sand. He steps back, looking down at her.
She won't look up into his eyes, but she feels him staring at her. Staring in pity this time, and not condemnation. He no longer sees her as a threat. Just a mess. A complete fucked up mess.
“Kate?” He calls her name. He crouches down beside her, hand hovering over her back as she sits sobbing in the sand. It is as if he wants to touch her, but he is afraid. His voice is soft, not threatening. Kind. And she asks herself if this is what she wanted all along, him to care about her?
But it's not like it used to be, not back in the beginning, when he first knew her. Before he found out she had killed a man. He had never looked at her in the same way since then.
She thinks she feels an awkward kind of compassion emanating from him. But it is drowning in so much pity that it isn't possible for her to find any comfort in it, in him. She preferred him when he was screaming at her, condemning her. It occurs to her that she is never happy. That he can never please her, and she will never be satisfied with anything he offers her. There is no way back, for her and Jack, for her and anyone. Did they all know every last detail about her life? Her crimes? Every living soul on this island? Did they all despise her, fear her, pity her?
She has managed to lift his gun from him, and he still hasn't noticed. It was part of her plan to distract him. Part of her pathetic crying performance. And yet, to her own horror, she finds the tears are genuine as she sits there, rocking back and forth. She finds that it takes her a minute to pull herself together.
“Leave her.” Juliet tells him. And he obeys. At hearing the blond woman speak, Jack loses all interest in Kate. Kate hears his footsteps retreating as he makes his way over to Juliet. Kate can imagine the way he is cradling Juliet's face in his hands. And Juliet, loving every minute of the attention he is lavishing upon her.
Kate can't stop herself from shaking. And it takes concerted effort to stand to her feet. There is only one thing on her mind- run. She doesn't stop to consider the fact that there is simply no where to run to anymore.
She stands to her feet as silently as she is able, which is not silently enough as it turns out. She was counting on Jack to be too captivated by Juliet to notice her quiet escape. She had been right on that count. It is Juliet whose head snaps around. Juliet who jumps to her feet quicker than lightening, calling for Kate to “Wait!” Juliet who had just told Jack to 'Leave her.' It was only two words. Juliet was like that. But the underlying meaning had been clear. 'Leave her Jack, leave her here to die, she isn't worth your time or trouble. You have me now, you don't need her'
And yet now here was Juliet, running towards her, reaching her hand forward and taking Kate by the wrist.
“Wait.” Juliet says again.
Kate turns and looks at Juliet, more out of surprise, out of curiosity, than out of obedience to her command to wait.
Yet, Kate is waiting. Just for a second. Waiting and wondering just what the hell Juliet is playing at. Juliet just stands, expectantly, looking at her. While Jack, standing off in the distance, shakes his head wearily.
It's not that they are hurting her, Juliet is barely even touching her. But Kate feels threatened. She feels cornered.
Maybe she could still turn and run? There are two of them, sure, but she is fast.
But Kate knows that it's all gone too far . She can't stand another word from either of them. She can't stand Juliet's hand gently resting on her arm, she can't stand the way they are looking at her. And there is nowhere to run.
Kate wriggles free from Juliet's grasp and takes a step back. She reaches for the gun she had taken from Jack and aims it straight towards Juliet.
And Juliet doesn't even blink.
Chapter 6
“We're not done here, Kate.” Juliet tells her, as if she couldn't even see that shiny gun pointed right in her face. “You have my things and I want them back.”
“I believe I'm the one holding the gun, Juliet” Kate tells her.
“You're gonna shoot me?” Juliet asks, incredulously.
“Don't Juliet, just shut up.” Jack whispers harshly.
“Why not?” Kate shrugs in answer to Juliet's question. “That's what I do. Kill people. You said it yourself, just minutes ago. Isn't that what you think about me?”
Jack is shaking. Sweat forming on his brow. “Kate” He begins feebly. He steps towards her, but not in front of Juliet. Some hero he turned out to be. “No one thinks that, Kate.” He is stammering over the words. Hardly able to get them out. Because he doesn't mean them. He is so transparent. Lying through his teeth. They all know it. It makes him look pathetic. It makes her tighten her grip on that gun.
Kate stops for a moment, trying to find that place of satisfaction in seeing Jack's weakness, in seeing him trembling before her. She is in complete control. All the cards are in her hands. Yet she derives no pleasure from this hollow victory.
Jack trembling before her doesn't touch her. It's Juliet who disturbs her. Juliet who only minutes ago had called her a murderer.
Juliet is just standing there, unshakable.
“We both know you're not going to pull that trigger.” Juliet announces calmly, softly.
Kate is confused for a moment, by the “both”. Did Juliet mean she and Jack or she and Kate?
“Is that so?” Kate manages to ask in return.
“You need a reason.” Juliet tells her. “A good reason to pull that trigger.”
“You think I don't have a reason to want you dead?” Kate almost laughs. How she despised that woman.
“What is it about me being one of them that you find so unbearable? That makes you hate me so much that you want to shoot me? I really don't understand it. I'm not a threat to you. I haven't done anything to you. And you're going to shoot me? Here and now in the heat of the moment? For no good reason? No, Kate. I don't think so. You're just not that unstable.”
“Yes. She. Is” Jack whispers harshly in Juliet's ear, pulling at her to take a step back. His frightened eyes pleading with her to shut up and stop provoking Kate.
Rage is boiling inside Kate as she watches the two of them. Juliet saw herself as so innocent. As if spilling all Kate's secrets to Jack mean nothing. As if giving her plane to Jack to crush under his feet meant nothing. Perhaps it did mean nothing. Perhaps she meant nothing. Not to Jack, not to Juliet, not to anyone. There was no point anymore hurtling accusations at Juliet. Juliet had been deemed perfect. The innocent victim in all of this. And Kate, the bad guy. It was never going to be any different.
“I think you could have killed us already if that was what you wanted.” Juliet continued, confidently.
Kate acknowledges, to her extreme irritation, that this fact is true. What she wants is to get away. She wants the earth to swallow her whole and take her away, any place but here. Killing Jack and Juliet solves nothing. It wont make it any easier to live with herself, to live on this island.
Kate can't decide which one of them she hates more in that moment. Jack for his pathetic pity, for his trembling fear, his crushing judgements, for standing there believing that she has it in her to kill him. Or Juliet for her calmness, her mocking tone, for seeing right through her and believing that somehow she was just not capable of pulling that trigger.
And Kate wants to pull that trigger. Badly. Just to show Juliet Burke that she didn't know the first damn thing about anything. Just to wipe that condescending look off her face. But she can not. She will not. Not now. It's not the answer. Her hand is shaking. Juliet takes a step towards her.
“Give me the gun.” Juliet says it softly, nicely, as if she were talking to a child.
But giving Juliet the gun is not the answer, either. Kate has too much pride to give in to what Juliet asks her to do. Besides, giving up the gun means giving up control, and there was no way in hell that was going to happen.
And so, once again, Kate is trapped with no way out.
Without thinking, without even realising she had done it, Kate finds she has lifted that gun to her own head. She holds her hand steady, alarmingly at peace with the idea of pulling that trigger, of ending everything once and for all.
And Jack is just standing there.
Kate thinks she sees relief on his face. He must figure it was better her than him or Juliet. He makes no sound, he makes no move.
Juliet takes another step towards her. Kate is staring into her eyes defiantly. Almost daring her to come closer. Almost begging Juliet to push her over the edge.
But Juliet stops, and reaches down, picking up the broken pieces of toy plane from the sand. Kate's eyes are trailing her.
“I don't think you're going to do that, either.” Juliet tells her.
“Maybe I'll do it just to prove you wrong.” Kate answers defiantly.
“You don't have it in you.” Juliet announces confidently.
“Don't have what in me?” Kate wants to know. “Murder? Insanity?”
“Giving up.” Juliet utters softly. Juliet opens her hands, offering Kate the broken pieces of that toy plane.
Juliet tells herself that she has to do this, she has to stop Kate. Because Kate has Rachel's things. And she wont ever see them again if the silly girl shoots herself in the head. Juliet tells herself that over and over again. Because her heart is racing. Her chest is tightening and she feels like she can't breathe. She is afraid, even more so than when Kate had that gun pointed in her direction. And Juliet tells herself to get a grip. Tells herself that she doesn't care about Kate. That it doesn't matter one way or the other if Kate pulls that trigger. At the end of the day, Rachel's things are just things. And none of this matters. Kate doesn't matter.
Juliet keeps telling herself that, until she feels like she can breathe again. Because what she wants more than anything, is to close her eyes. She can't stand to see Kate standing there, fiery determination in her gaze, gun aimed at her own head. She can't stand to imagine Kate pulling that trigger.
Kate reaches for the plane with her free hand, but Juliet pulls it away from her slowly, just out of her grasp.
“Give me the gun, Kate.” Juliet demands. And suddenly it takes such a huge amount of effort to remove the panic from her voice, to make her words sound cold and confident as they always did.
As Kate stares at that little plane, in pieces, in Juliet's hand as Juliet carefully brushes the sand away, she realises with horror that Juliet is right. She doesn't have it in her. No matter how much she wants it all over, how much she longs to be far away, she just can't bring herself to let go. She can't help but cling to some sort of hope, to life. She is fighter, a survivor. It's the way it has always been. No matter if she wants it, no matter if she deserves it. She can't let that go.
And that wretched, broken useless plane in Juliet's hands still means more to her in that moment, than living, than dying, more than anything Jack or Juliet could ever do to her.
She isn't foolish enough to hand a loaded weapon to Juliet. With shaking hands she removes the ammunition, safely tucking it away in her pocket, and hands the now useless weapon to Juliet in exchange for her prize possession.
Author: Carly Carter
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: Kate/Juliet (& some unfortunate implications of Jate & Jacket)
Rating: PG ish (Some swearing)
Disclaimer: Don't own anything
AN: I totally lost the plot with this fic but it was driving me crazy having it unfinished so I was forced to continue...
AN2: For f3iv3lin3 who completely rocks, with my love and thanks <3
AN3: Love and thanks to xixlovexgreenx for the icon <3
AN3 : Love and thanks to zippy88 for just everything <3
Drowning is not so pitiful....
….As the attempt to rise
(Emily Dickinson)
"What we share...may be a lot like a traffic accident.
But we do share it.
We are survivors.
Of each other.
We have been shark to one another,
but also lifeboat,"
Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
Chapter 1 carlyisnot.livejournal.com/28940.html
Chapter 2 carlyisnot.livejournal.com/29414.html
Chapter 3 carlyisnot.livejournal.com/30204.html
Chapter 4 carlyisnot.livejournal.com/30232.html
Chapter 5
Kate feels trapped as she struggles against Jack and his unwelcome arms around her. She feels exposed as she remembers the fact that Juliet and Jack know every last thing about her. She feels herself disintegrating right in front of their eyes.
Above all, she feels condemned.
She catches a glimpse of Juliet out of the corner of her eye. That blonde hair shimmering in the moonlight. Visibility is poor, Kate can't really make out the features on Juliet's face. And yet somehow she still sees that Juliet looks stricken. Juliet looks like the perfect picture of innocence. Of a victim. It makes Kate sick to her stomach.
Kate can't see Jack's eyes, but she knows anyway that his eyes are glued to Juliet. She knows also what he sees when he looks at the other woman. He sees goodness. Innocence. Worth. All the things Kate wished he saw in her. The things she wished someone saw in her.
Jack is shaking her, asking her what-the-hell has got into her, asking it again and again as if any explanation would satisfy him in the first place.
But she makes no answer. There are no words.
What she desperately wants in that moment, is the thing that she has always wanted. To be free. To be away from him, from Juliet, from every last person who made her feel like dirt. Fleetingly it occurs to her right there on that beach, that the person she most wants to escape from, the person she has really been running from for all these years, is herself.
His hold is tight, angry, as she struggles against him. He is talking to her as if she were crazy. As if she were a monster. And, perhaps, he is right. Both of them appear so willing to lay the blame at her feet. And, perhaps, they are justified.
She stops in that moment, stops fighting him and kicking him. She grows limp in his arms, falling against him. Slowly he releases his grip on her as sounds of her soft crying reach his ears. And still, for some reason, her pain gets to him. He lets her go and she sinks to her knees in the sand. He steps back, looking down at her.
She won't look up into his eyes, but she feels him staring at her. Staring in pity this time, and not condemnation. He no longer sees her as a threat. Just a mess. A complete fucked up mess.
“Kate?” He calls her name. He crouches down beside her, hand hovering over her back as she sits sobbing in the sand. It is as if he wants to touch her, but he is afraid. His voice is soft, not threatening. Kind. And she asks herself if this is what she wanted all along, him to care about her?
But it's not like it used to be, not back in the beginning, when he first knew her. Before he found out she had killed a man. He had never looked at her in the same way since then.
She thinks she feels an awkward kind of compassion emanating from him. But it is drowning in so much pity that it isn't possible for her to find any comfort in it, in him. She preferred him when he was screaming at her, condemning her. It occurs to her that she is never happy. That he can never please her, and she will never be satisfied with anything he offers her. There is no way back, for her and Jack, for her and anyone. Did they all know every last detail about her life? Her crimes? Every living soul on this island? Did they all despise her, fear her, pity her?
She has managed to lift his gun from him, and he still hasn't noticed. It was part of her plan to distract him. Part of her pathetic crying performance. And yet, to her own horror, she finds the tears are genuine as she sits there, rocking back and forth. She finds that it takes her a minute to pull herself together.
“Leave her.” Juliet tells him. And he obeys. At hearing the blond woman speak, Jack loses all interest in Kate. Kate hears his footsteps retreating as he makes his way over to Juliet. Kate can imagine the way he is cradling Juliet's face in his hands. And Juliet, loving every minute of the attention he is lavishing upon her.
Kate can't stop herself from shaking. And it takes concerted effort to stand to her feet. There is only one thing on her mind- run. She doesn't stop to consider the fact that there is simply no where to run to anymore.
She stands to her feet as silently as she is able, which is not silently enough as it turns out. She was counting on Jack to be too captivated by Juliet to notice her quiet escape. She had been right on that count. It is Juliet whose head snaps around. Juliet who jumps to her feet quicker than lightening, calling for Kate to “Wait!” Juliet who had just told Jack to 'Leave her.' It was only two words. Juliet was like that. But the underlying meaning had been clear. 'Leave her Jack, leave her here to die, she isn't worth your time or trouble. You have me now, you don't need her'
And yet now here was Juliet, running towards her, reaching her hand forward and taking Kate by the wrist.
“Wait.” Juliet says again.
Kate turns and looks at Juliet, more out of surprise, out of curiosity, than out of obedience to her command to wait.
Yet, Kate is waiting. Just for a second. Waiting and wondering just what the hell Juliet is playing at. Juliet just stands, expectantly, looking at her. While Jack, standing off in the distance, shakes his head wearily.
It's not that they are hurting her, Juliet is barely even touching her. But Kate feels threatened. She feels cornered.
Maybe she could still turn and run? There are two of them, sure, but she is fast.
But Kate knows that it's all gone too far . She can't stand another word from either of them. She can't stand Juliet's hand gently resting on her arm, she can't stand the way they are looking at her. And there is nowhere to run.
Kate wriggles free from Juliet's grasp and takes a step back. She reaches for the gun she had taken from Jack and aims it straight towards Juliet.
And Juliet doesn't even blink.
Chapter 6
“We're not done here, Kate.” Juliet tells her, as if she couldn't even see that shiny gun pointed right in her face. “You have my things and I want them back.”
“I believe I'm the one holding the gun, Juliet” Kate tells her.
“You're gonna shoot me?” Juliet asks, incredulously.
“Don't Juliet, just shut up.” Jack whispers harshly.
“Why not?” Kate shrugs in answer to Juliet's question. “That's what I do. Kill people. You said it yourself, just minutes ago. Isn't that what you think about me?”
Jack is shaking. Sweat forming on his brow. “Kate” He begins feebly. He steps towards her, but not in front of Juliet. Some hero he turned out to be. “No one thinks that, Kate.” He is stammering over the words. Hardly able to get them out. Because he doesn't mean them. He is so transparent. Lying through his teeth. They all know it. It makes him look pathetic. It makes her tighten her grip on that gun.
Kate stops for a moment, trying to find that place of satisfaction in seeing Jack's weakness, in seeing him trembling before her. She is in complete control. All the cards are in her hands. Yet she derives no pleasure from this hollow victory.
Jack trembling before her doesn't touch her. It's Juliet who disturbs her. Juliet who only minutes ago had called her a murderer.
Juliet is just standing there, unshakable.
“We both know you're not going to pull that trigger.” Juliet announces calmly, softly.
Kate is confused for a moment, by the “both”. Did Juliet mean she and Jack or she and Kate?
“Is that so?” Kate manages to ask in return.
“You need a reason.” Juliet tells her. “A good reason to pull that trigger.”
“You think I don't have a reason to want you dead?” Kate almost laughs. How she despised that woman.
“What is it about me being one of them that you find so unbearable? That makes you hate me so much that you want to shoot me? I really don't understand it. I'm not a threat to you. I haven't done anything to you. And you're going to shoot me? Here and now in the heat of the moment? For no good reason? No, Kate. I don't think so. You're just not that unstable.”
“Yes. She. Is” Jack whispers harshly in Juliet's ear, pulling at her to take a step back. His frightened eyes pleading with her to shut up and stop provoking Kate.
Rage is boiling inside Kate as she watches the two of them. Juliet saw herself as so innocent. As if spilling all Kate's secrets to Jack mean nothing. As if giving her plane to Jack to crush under his feet meant nothing. Perhaps it did mean nothing. Perhaps she meant nothing. Not to Jack, not to Juliet, not to anyone. There was no point anymore hurtling accusations at Juliet. Juliet had been deemed perfect. The innocent victim in all of this. And Kate, the bad guy. It was never going to be any different.
“I think you could have killed us already if that was what you wanted.” Juliet continued, confidently.
Kate acknowledges, to her extreme irritation, that this fact is true. What she wants is to get away. She wants the earth to swallow her whole and take her away, any place but here. Killing Jack and Juliet solves nothing. It wont make it any easier to live with herself, to live on this island.
Kate can't decide which one of them she hates more in that moment. Jack for his pathetic pity, for his trembling fear, his crushing judgements, for standing there believing that she has it in her to kill him. Or Juliet for her calmness, her mocking tone, for seeing right through her and believing that somehow she was just not capable of pulling that trigger.
And Kate wants to pull that trigger. Badly. Just to show Juliet Burke that she didn't know the first damn thing about anything. Just to wipe that condescending look off her face. But she can not. She will not. Not now. It's not the answer. Her hand is shaking. Juliet takes a step towards her.
“Give me the gun.” Juliet says it softly, nicely, as if she were talking to a child.
But giving Juliet the gun is not the answer, either. Kate has too much pride to give in to what Juliet asks her to do. Besides, giving up the gun means giving up control, and there was no way in hell that was going to happen.
And so, once again, Kate is trapped with no way out.
Without thinking, without even realising she had done it, Kate finds she has lifted that gun to her own head. She holds her hand steady, alarmingly at peace with the idea of pulling that trigger, of ending everything once and for all.
And Jack is just standing there.
Kate thinks she sees relief on his face. He must figure it was better her than him or Juliet. He makes no sound, he makes no move.
Juliet takes another step towards her. Kate is staring into her eyes defiantly. Almost daring her to come closer. Almost begging Juliet to push her over the edge.
But Juliet stops, and reaches down, picking up the broken pieces of toy plane from the sand. Kate's eyes are trailing her.
“I don't think you're going to do that, either.” Juliet tells her.
“Maybe I'll do it just to prove you wrong.” Kate answers defiantly.
“You don't have it in you.” Juliet announces confidently.
“Don't have what in me?” Kate wants to know. “Murder? Insanity?”
“Giving up.” Juliet utters softly. Juliet opens her hands, offering Kate the broken pieces of that toy plane.
Juliet tells herself that she has to do this, she has to stop Kate. Because Kate has Rachel's things. And she wont ever see them again if the silly girl shoots herself in the head. Juliet tells herself that over and over again. Because her heart is racing. Her chest is tightening and she feels like she can't breathe. She is afraid, even more so than when Kate had that gun pointed in her direction. And Juliet tells herself to get a grip. Tells herself that she doesn't care about Kate. That it doesn't matter one way or the other if Kate pulls that trigger. At the end of the day, Rachel's things are just things. And none of this matters. Kate doesn't matter.
Juliet keeps telling herself that, until she feels like she can breathe again. Because what she wants more than anything, is to close her eyes. She can't stand to see Kate standing there, fiery determination in her gaze, gun aimed at her own head. She can't stand to imagine Kate pulling that trigger.
Kate reaches for the plane with her free hand, but Juliet pulls it away from her slowly, just out of her grasp.
“Give me the gun, Kate.” Juliet demands. And suddenly it takes such a huge amount of effort to remove the panic from her voice, to make her words sound cold and confident as they always did.
As Kate stares at that little plane, in pieces, in Juliet's hand as Juliet carefully brushes the sand away, she realises with horror that Juliet is right. She doesn't have it in her. No matter how much she wants it all over, how much she longs to be far away, she just can't bring herself to let go. She can't help but cling to some sort of hope, to life. She is fighter, a survivor. It's the way it has always been. No matter if she wants it, no matter if she deserves it. She can't let that go.
And that wretched, broken useless plane in Juliet's hands still means more to her in that moment, than living, than dying, more than anything Jack or Juliet could ever do to her.
She isn't foolish enough to hand a loaded weapon to Juliet. With shaking hands she removes the ammunition, safely tucking it away in her pocket, and hands the now useless weapon to Juliet in exchange for her prize possession.