[fic] don’t know where we’re going [but we know where we’re at]; lost, claire/jack; r
title; rating: don’t know where we’re going [but we know where we’re at]; r
fandom; pairing; count: lost; claire/jack [mentions of christian, sarah, margo, marc, claire/marc]; 5417
notes: AU; no island; written for angela_weber and we_will_be_gods who requested the shephards
Jack is thirty years old when he learns that he has a baby sister.
Christian sits in the waiting room with this blond-haired blue-eyed teenage girl and Jack wonders for a moment how sick she is. It doesn't even occur to him to assume that she's a family member of a patient, or a volunteer, or just a chatty teenager who's come to the hospital for birth control, or any number of innocuous conclusions.
It's the red rings around her eyes that make him assume. He diagnoses her based on his father's body language, the way he speaks in hushed tones so that Jack can't listen to their conversation from his spot just outside the doorway, a coffee in hand. She's terminal. Stage four. Metastatic. Even as they speak the cancer moves to another internal organ, quietly breaking down her tiny body.
She looks like she could have been a dancer.
It would bother him, if he let it, but he doesn't do that anymore.
"Dad," he says, loud enough to get Christian's attention. The girl looks startled at his voice, and her eyes seem to swell at the sight of him.
"Dr. Shephard," he says this time. "We scrub in in five." He points to his watch.
Christian says his goodbyes and hugs the girl before he joins Jack in the hall. Jack doesn't remember him ever doing that with any patient before. He can hear his father speak her name. "Claire," he says, and then something Jack can't hear. "We'll talk again soon."
Christian takes the chart from Jack as they walk, scrutinizes it as if it's the first time he's seen it, as if they haven't been preparing for this surgery all day. Jack knows it's the girl that's distracting him.
"How long does she have?" he asks his father.
Christian has never been great with timing.
"She's your sister, Jack," Christian tells him, looks away as soon as Jack meets his eyes. "It's a long story. We'll talk after surgery." His voice is too casual for the words that it carries, like this is just a familiar a conversation they've had many times before, like it's no big deal.
Jack wasn't wrong about the tumor. Hers is just of a different kind. Hers is the cancer of the Shephard family blood. It's the shame of being an illegitimate child, an afterthought, a secret. Her curse is perhaps even more debilitating. It may not kill her in the end, but there will never be a remission from that truth.
--
He'll see Claire only once more until his wedding to Sarah, a woman he has yet to meet.
There's an uncomfortable dinner held at his parent's home a few days after seeing Claire in that waiting room.
Claire is sweet and shy and hugs him when they officially meet. She feels so small in his arms and it gives away some vulnerability that all little sisters must exude. Jack can almost tell himself that he's going to be a good brother to her, that he'll be there when she needs him. But in the moments that follow, the truth is that he doesn't see it. She'll go back to Australia and she'll melt into the background of their lives and pretty soon she'll be nothing but a dim memory.
The food is overcooked and Christian awkwardly carries the conversation, asking Claire all sorts of questions, saying things like "Tell Claire about that time you broke your wrist," to Jack, who obliges, regaling her with stories of his childhood, a sugarcoating of their dysfunctional lives before they were tainted with the knowledge of Christian's infidelity and her own illegitimacy. Margo is stone cold, barely speaks at all, and after the meal she drops a dish that shatters against the tiles. [And then she drops another for good measure.]
"Oops," Jack can hear her say sarcastically from the kitchen.
Later, when Claire feels she's outworn her welcome, and maybe even a good while after that, Jack drives her back to the room where she and her mother are staying for the week. He sees a silhouette behind the drapes, but doesn't ask to meet the woman that had an affair with his father. Neither does he offer to let them stay at his place. It doesn't feel like he has a right to do either of those things, despite wanting to.
"Thanks," Claire tells him when he walks her to the steps leading to the second floor of the motel. And he can hear the uncertainty in her voice, a vague suspicion that he’s as eager for her to go as Margo was.
"It was really nice to meet you," Jack says. "In case I don't see you before you go."
He won't, he knows. But he says it anyway.
To comfort her.
To let her know he cares, despite it all.
That's what brothers do.
--
Claire is legitimately shocked when she receives the invitation to Jack's wedding. She's coming home from visiting her mother on a Saturday afternoon, flipping through the junk mail and the bills as she walks through the door when she spots the thick cream-colored envelope with her brother's return address.
She figures right away it must be the fiancee that put him up to it. Sarah is her name, or so says the card. She imagines them sitting next to each other at a dining room table, surrounded by lists and envelopes and seating charts. Sarah will be blonde and perky, and Jack will be rumpled and tired from a long day of surgeries.
"We have to invite your sister," imaginary Sarah will tell Jack.
Jack will shrug. "Half-sister," he'll say. "And we're not really all that close. I barely know her."
Imaginary Sarah will simply ignore him and write the name Claire at the bottom of the list in front of her. "She's your family," she'll remind him. "She's coming."
"Margo will love that," Jack will say. And then he'll laugh as Sarah elbows him gently in the ribs.
Claire imagines that they're happy.
She's already decided that she and Sarah will get along just fine.
--
The flight to LA seems impossibly longer than she remembers.
She arrives two weeks before the wedding. It was Jack's idea. It'll give them some time to get re-acquainted, he says. Claire wants to correct him when he tells her this over the phone, wants to tell him that acquainted would be the more appropriate term. But since he's footing the bill and seems sincere enough, she doesn't argue.
She finds him in the baggage claim area and he hugs her like she's an old friend. He's still just as tall as she remembers, but she rises up to meet him a little more than she did the first time they met. His embrace is almost desperate, like he hasn't hugged an actual human in years -- or maybe his entire life.
Claire is surprised.
The truth is that they haven't spoken at length more than a half a dozen times or so in the past six years. Claire can't say she hasn't always hoped for more from him. That in the moment she heard him call Christian "Dad" in that waiting room six years ago that she didn't imagine them becoming the best of pals, that she didn't imagine summer trips to the states and him coming to stay with them in Australia for a couple of weeks a year. She would show him where she grew up; get advice from him about school or boys, or her mother going into a coma.
Of course, none of that ever happens.
"Jack," she says when he finally lets her breathe again. "You alright?" she jokes, her hand at his forehead.
"It's just really good to see you," he says and smiles, almost sheepishly. "Let's get your bags."
--
Claire stays at Jack's place in the nine days before they leave for Hawaii. Jack takes some time off work, spends a lot of it doing last minute things for the wedding, but most of it with her. He asks her about her mother, stuck in a coma and eight-thousand miles away. Claire would prefer to keep her there, as far away from her thoughts as she literally is right now. So she just shrugs and tells him that there is no change, that there's never any change, that she sees her every Saturday and sometimes more, but that Carole hasn't actually been there for a long time.
Jack nods, offers her a drink, and Claire knows he won't bring it up again.
In those first few mornings, Jack cooks her breakfast. Sometimes Christian stops by, but things between them don't seem to be as easy as it is with Jack. She meets Jack's eyes from across the table and knows that he, too, doesn't have the best relationship with this man who's DNA they share. Just one more thing they have in common. And one more thing they won't bring up later.
He takes her on a day trip along the famed Pacific Coast Highway. Claire is impressed and giddy and she spends the day taking photographs at every turn. Some are of the scenery, some of her and Jack. It's the closest thing she'll probably ever get to a family road trip. Jack seems to relax more the further away from LA they get, the further from his life they get. His laugh is lighter, his muscles less tense.
At the end of the day, the sun dipping below the horizon, when it's time to turn for the road home, he jokes. "Maybe we should just keep going," he says.
"Why not?" Claire says, reaches over to push playfully against his t-shirt clad shoulder. "We could go anywhere."
"Anywhere," Jack repeats slowly, heavily, thick with the impossibility of it all.
He turns the car around.
--
A few miles from the house, Claire reaches over to him, runs her fingers along the side of his face, traces the shape of his features, trying to find similarities between them.
"What?" Jack says, lighthearted, glances at her quickly before returning his eyes to the road.
"Nothing," Claire says, feels like she may be blushing. "Nothing at all."
--
On the fifth day, Claire begins to notice that he hasn't talked about Sarah much, and she doesn't even meet her until two days before their flight. She's sweet and almost exactly like Claire imagined her to be, but she looks at Jack like a woman in love who knows she isn't loved back, not quite. Claire's sitting across from the two of them at the dinner table and Jack is talking about their plans and Sarah is watching him, intent, with a smile on her face. But every so often the smile fades into something like heartbreak, just slightly, just enough.
Most people wouldn't notice this.
It's only a fraction of a second.
But Claire notices.
Marc joins the trio after dinner that night and Claire immediately likes him. He's funny and laid back and the truth is she always had a thing for a ginger boy. They drink and have dessert and he tells stories about Jack as a kid, as a teenager, he talks about Jack's hero complex, about a day on the playground. With each story, her brother turns a deeper shade of red until he can only rebuff him by returning the favor, recalling stories about Marc that even Marc doesn't remember. They sit out in the back yard until the sun goes down and the stars shine.
After Sarah and Jack disappear into the house, Claire walks Marc to his car, kisses him once on the lips before he has a chance to make a move of his own.
"I'll see you at the wedding," she says with a smile.
Marc offers her a hug. "You're so young," he whispers into her ear.
"I'm not that young," she tells him.
Marc kisses her again.
--
Hawaii is all alohas and wedding chaos. Jack barely has a chance to breathe between that and greeting all the out-of-town guests, let alone to pay much attention when Claire and Marc slip into some back room somewhere for the first time. After that, he sees them emerge, mussed and grinning, from one storage closet after another, once even Jack's own suite. They play the role of the proverbial wedding hook-up well.
Jack would never say it, but he envies them. He envies them more than he can say.
Sarah gets nervous in those last few days, tells him she'll relax once it's all over. He kisses her soft, gentle, coaxes her back to her room, but she won't let him come in, tells him he won't regret it. Jack doesn't tell her that maybe he still needs convincing. That maybe he just needs one last shot to know for sure if this is what he really wants.
He can barely even tell himself.
After, he finds Claire in the bar sipping some pinkish fruity drink with a large slice of pineapple hanging over the edge.
"Looks like you've been having a good time," he tells her. "And Marc, too." He adds.
Claire laughs, shrugs. "You know," she says. "Might as well."
"He's a lot older than you," he says, in point of fact.
Claire reaches out and puts her hand on his cheek. "Look at you, all protective-older-brother now. Can't say I ever expected that."
It's Jack's turn to shrug. "You're my sister," he says. "I can't worry?"
"You're worried about Marc?" she laughs.
He laughs too because she's right. Marc's a good guy. And even if he wasn't this is obviously just a fling. Nobody's getting hurt.
Their laughter subsides and a silence falls in the empty bar.
After a moment, Claire leans over, bumping her shoulder against his.
Jack bumps hers back.
They laugh again.
--
After the bachelor party, and after a misguided heart-to-heart with his father by the pool, Jack walks into his dark suite and flicks on the light.
Claire sits indian-style at the edge of the bed in a pair of polka-dotted pajama shorts and a white t-shirt. She holds a large wrapped box in her lap. "I brought presents!" She sing-songs. And then, looking down, "Present!" She corrects.
"You're obviously way too drunk for this," she tells him as he sits next to her and unwraps the package.
"The game of life," Jack says, reading the label on the box.
Claire claps. "We shall play," she declares, pulling out the instructions. And then, seriously, "I've come to prepare you for the real thing."
--
Claire wins the game, she thinks, and after they clean up all the pieces she lays next to Jack on the bed, a triumphant grin, her arms behind her head victoriously, legs crossed at the ankle.
"I heard you were having trouble writing your vows," she says after a few moments.
Jack looks at her, curious as to how she knows.
"A little birdie told me," she tells him.
"Marc," he grunts and she doesn't have to tell him he's right. He knows. She knows that he knows. Claire is getting used to this, to the way they are together, to having a brother. She's starting to recognize his moods, to be able to read his thoughts. There's a connection between them that is almost metaphysical. She never really believed in that sort of thing. At one time or another, she's believed in a lot of things, but an unspoken connection between siblings, between family? No. That was never in the cards for her.
Until now.
She asks him about Sarah, and it comes across as far more obvious than she intends. He shoots her a look and there's no point in delaying after that. She tells him she suspects that he has doubts. “I’ve wondered for a while now,” she tells him, cites moments when he’d given the truth away.
Jack exhales deeply, and though it takes him some time, he confides in her. He tells her things that he couldn’t even tell their father a couple of hours earlier. But the truth is that in all of this confessing, he wishes and he washes and says everything and nothing. No definitive answers. No conclusions drawn. And after all of this tiptoeing around, Claire sits up, her shoulders back, an answer brimming on her lips, the wisdom of her twenty-one years far more acute than his thirty-six.
"This isn't about your vows," she says. "If you don't love her, Jack? If you're not sure? Don't marry her."
"It isn't that simple, Claire," he says.
"It is," she counters. "Do you love her? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with her? Don't think. Just answer."
"No," the word escapes from Jack's lips as though it's been waiting for this question for a long time. "No," he says again, this time slowly, more assuredly.
Of course Claire had known the answer already, but she hadn't expected him to say it so quickly, so definitively, so it takes her a few moments to react. She watches Jack, who closes his eyes, covers his face in the crook of his elbow, probably trying to think up a way to take back what he's said.
But he doesn’t.
He can’t.
The damage is done.
“Then don't marry her, Jack," she says. "Don't get up in front of your family, and God, and her, and whoever else and say that you'll be with her forever if you can't truly promise that you will."
Claire lets him sit with that thought for a moment while she stands up to find her slippers.
"And if you do? I won't watch you do it," she says. "I can't."
--
One thing is for certain.
Claire is true to her word.
She's nowhere to be seen at the ceremony. And no one but Jack seems to notice. Maybe Christian, maybe Marc. But if they do they don't say anything about the empty chair in the back row. They don't even look around for her because it would never occur to either of them that she wouldn't be there. Jack doesn't see her until the reception. She's dancing with Marc, kisses him openly. She looks happy. And when she dances, she dances just as Jack had always imagined she would.
Later, Jack corners her by the fruit platters.
"You didn't come," he says. There's guilt in his voice, he knows. Probably shame too.
"Jack," she says his name. There is sadness in the word, in her eyes, and it kills him to think of what she must be thinking of him right now. Fucking coward, he tells himself, lowers his head. She squeezes his hand and tells him that she understands. She thinks he's made a mistake, but she understands. They hug and Claire holds onto him a little too long, kisses the corner of his mouth.
"Maybe it just takes time," she says. "Promise me you'll bring her to Australia?"
"Promise," Jack tells her.
He's sure it doesn't mean much, not coming from him today. Not after empty vows and hollow professions.
But he says it anyway.
It’s what brothers do.
--
Later, after they are both too tired to even think of anything but sleep, Jack drifts off in Sarah's arms; She still in her wedding dress, he still in his tux, the wedding suite remaining unspoiled at least for another few hours.
He dreams.
He's in the dark, but he can hear Claire's voice. She's laughing at first. And then her voice lowers to a whisper, and then a moan. Soon, she comes into view and she's half clothed, one sleeve pulled down revealing a taut nipple, her dress hiked up around her waist, her head leaning back, Marc's lips on her neck. He stands between her legs where she sits on a counter top, and Claire pushes his slacks over his ass, pulls him closer to her. She gasps when he bucks into her, her mouth open, calling his name.
Jack watches them from the dark, feeling none of the shame he should expect to feel at seeing such a sight. He listens to the sound of their lovemaking, heavy breathing, animalistic grunts, and the sound of something crashing to the floor as Claire reaches for balance. Jack closes his eyes, thinking that if he does, the image will disappear, but the sounds persist. They grow louder, even.
He hears Claire cry out another name.
His name.
Jack's eyes snap open and finds himself in Marc's place, hovering over her, her warmth surrounding his cock where he’s buried deep inside her. She covers his mouth with hers, a moan stifled in their kiss. Whether it's his or hers, he doesn't know. He thrusts into her once more, twice, all of his control lost with the dream, unable to stop.
He sees black.
He sees white.
Jack wakes with a start, to the sound of the shower running. He can feel his erection, hard and pressed against his slacks, his breathing is uneven, a sheen of sweat across his forehead, his wedding band weighing heavy against his finger.
He gasps for air, whispers her name, closes his eyes, and sees Claire's face.
--
Jack’s been married two months and is already sick of being asked what it's like. It took him two weeks after the honeymoon to realize just how right Claire was, but it's not like he can say that. It's not like he can do anything but try to make himself feel differently.
He's in his car, driving up the Pacific Coast Highway, thinking of Claire, when she calls the first time.
He tries not to be turned on by the sound of her voice, the way she laughs. He tries not to count in his head how many times he’s had that same dream. He manages alright that first time.
They make it a habit, something Jack looks forward to every few days, sometimes more. Claire tells him about a new job she's got, reads him his horoscope from the paper, tells him she's going to send him some good Australian sweets.
She never does.
["I'm dreadful about mailing stuff," she'll apologize later.]
When she calls, they don't talk about Sarah or the mess of his marriage. They barely talk about work or their father. It’s all news headlines or a new tea that Claire's tried or why Jack should get a puppy.
[He assures her the dog would end up starving to death because no one would remember to feed it. “No one,” meaning himself and the unspoken Sarah.]
Claire always says I love you at the end of the call, always promises to talk with him soon. And Jack finds he looks more forward to these conversations than he does anything else. He finds himself finding a private place to conduct them, where he's sure to be left alone for at least an hour with no interruptions. He finds himself lying to Sarah, to his father, to Marc, for no reason, about the calls.
He assures himself that this is not out of shame.
He only wants to keep her for himself.
He only wants to keep something for himself.
--
Claire sometimes forgets what it was like before she had a brother, before they were so close.
"Have you talked to Dad?" she asks him during the times when Jack seems worried. She comforts him when his marriage falls apart - and doesn’t ask the questions that she’s dying to ask. Though, she does ask him if he wants her to buy a plane ticket.
He tells her no.
He tells her that he'll be fine.
Claire waits a while before telling him about Thomas, but when she does Jack seems skeptical. He tells her that maybe she can do better.
She shrugs, tells him she’s not sure. But she knows he’s probably right.
[She’ll break up with Thomas that week.]
Sometimes she dreams of Jack's voice.
It's the part of him she knows better than anything else. She dreams of his voice at first, innocent enough, and sometimes she dreams of his hands upon her, a chill going through her as his fingers trace down the length of her torso, gasping when they move inside her.
She doesn't tell this to Jack, of course, but she does ask him if he ever has any weird dreams. And she says the word weird so that Jack is sure to read into it enough to know she means sex dreams.
Jack makes a noise in his throat like he’s going to choke. He tells her he doesn’t remember his dreams. He tells her it’s a shame.
Claire doesn’t believe him.
She tells him so.
Jack just laughs.
--
Carole dies.
It's not something that just happens. It's more of a decision, really. Claire's aunt has finally given up and Claire decides that she has too.
Jack wants to be there, but he just can't get away.
Instead, Christian, who seems pretty broken up about the whole thing, boards an Oceanic jetliner to Sydney.
He'll go.
He'll take care of her.
--
A week later, Jack gets a phone call in the middle of the night.
"Dad's dead," Claire's voice is thick with grief, or maybe it's just exhaustion.
Jack wants to know how, when, what happened? He finishes his barrage of questions with, "should I come?" But Claire can't really muster the strength to tell him anything.
"No, no," she says. "Don't. I just found out ten minutes ago," she says. "I'll call you tomorrow. I'll know more then."
Jack recalls a conversation in a sterile hallway. She's your sister, Jack, his father had said. It's a long story. We'll talk after surgery.
"Okay," Jack tells her. "Okay."
It isn’t until after he’s hung up the phone that he realizes that his father is dead.
--
Claire brings Christian's body back home to LA for the funeral.
She meets Jack in a familiar baggage claim, and this time their embrace lasts for minutes, both of them quietly in tears.
In the two years since Jack’s wedding, they’ve become the only family that either of them can depend on.
--
At the funeral, when all of his friends and family stand up to say what a wonderful person Christian Shephard had been, what he meant to them, Claire doesn't speak.
Before, during the ride to the cemetery, Claire tells Jack that she feels it wouldn't be right. "He was my father," she says, her voice a distant whisper. "I did care about him. I just didn't know him."
It never rains in Los Angeles, but today it rains. Jack and Claire huddle under the same umbrella, their black folding chairs pushed as close together as possible. They sit like that, arms linked, shoes soaking, the shelter of the umbrella allowing the cold rain to soak the edges of them, until all of the mourners have left - Marc, Sarah, even Margo. They sit like that until the coffin is buried beneath six muddy feet of dirt and sod.
Claire holds Jack's hand, listens to him muttering under his breath, the words "son of a bitch" and "bastard" coming out clearly with rising frequency.
Eventually, she squeezes his hand tight, rises to her feet and urges him to follow her.
"It's time to go, Jack," she tells him. "It's time to let go."
--
On the ride back to his place, Jack tells Claire it’s the darkest day he’s ever seen.
“Me too,” she says, no affect to her voice, no emotion.
Jack looks at her and he can see the mark across Claire’s eyes. It’s the same that he’s carried with him all his life - the dark cloud of the Shephard name, of a man that neither of them ever really knew. He watches the windshield wipers furiously moving back and forth and thinks what a perfect day it is to bury Christian Shephard.
Their shoes squeak as they enter the foyer, and Claire stops to kick hers off. Jack does the same, peeling off wet socks, leaving his shoes there in the hall beside hers.
He follows Claire to the laundry room where she’s left her bags.
“You know,” Claire says slowly, as she kneels to unzip her suitcase, rifling through to find something dry to wear. “I really - I really kind of hated him.” The words come out of her mouth as though someone is standing behind them and shoving them through. “I never,” she says, closes her eyes tight. “I never could forgive him.”
Jack kneels at her back, wraps his arms around her from behind.
Claire shakes as she sobs.
“I know,” Jack tells her. “Me too.”
He doesn’t tell her that Christian was doing her a favor by not being in her life. He doesn’t tell her what a shitty father he was. What he does do is tell her that it’s okay, pulls her wet hair to the side, kisses the back of her neck.
Claire stops shaking then, her body going stock still. Jack lifts his lips from her skin slowly when he feels her hands grip his arms at her side, her slow breathing suddenly noticeable.
She turns.
Claire meets his lips with hers, pulls him closer, her hands twisting in the wet material at his back. Jack opens his lips, feels her tongue trace along the roof of his mouth, makes a low guttural noise when it does.
“Claire,” he breathes when they disconnect, both of them finding a better balance on the ground.
Jack moves to get up but Claire reaches for his belt, tells him to stay. “Stay,” she says over and over, her hand dipping below his trousers, her fingers connecting with skin, dragging the wet garment down just enough.
Jack grabs her face, kisses her again, as they both collapse against the cold, wet tile.
His lips trace along her neck and throat and he pulls the material of her dress down, sucking one nipple into his mouth. He can hear her gasp his name and it sounds just like it did in his dreams. Claire hikes her skirt up far enough to pull her panties down and off her legs.
“Please,” she whispers into his ear, reaches down to guide him into her.
They both let out a cry.
Jack is still for a moment, his lips finding hers in a messy, grief-drunken kiss. Claire slides her leg up and urges him to move inside of her. He thrusts once, twice, fucking his little sister on the floor of his laundry room, his palm cradling the back of her head, her hands on his ass.
He kisses the corners of her eyes, can taste her tears and his all at once.
Their pain is the same.
Their pain.
Their curse.
Their comfort.
Their coupling.
--
Claire is an orphan.
She’s too old to be an orphan, but she sure feels like one. Mother and father both dead within a week, an aunt who never cared for her.
She can hear Jack in the shower and closes her eyes, remembers his hands on her, remembers feeling at home for the first time that she can remember.
--
Claire stays with him for another few weeks.
Jack goes back to work, coming home late hours, every night fucking Claire in his bed, in the bathroom, on the couch.
They spent so much time talking over the past two years, Jack’s voice on the phone as clear as her own voice in her head. Now, they have nothing to say. The pieces of themselves that were once missing are finally found when they are wrapped around each other, all limbs and flesh and blood and bone.
Claire watches Jack when he gets dressed in the mornings, watches him transform into the person he used to be. He doesn’t smile, his posture becomes hard, uninviting.
She remembers a day along the coast, remembers how he seemed to transform as each kilometer went by.
One night she lies naked next to him, runs a hand through his hair.
“Come to Australia with me,” she says. It’s a request, a plea.
Nobody knows you there, she doesn’t say. You’ll be at home there.
“We always need good doctors.”
Jack’s eyes light up, considering it.
Claire worries that he’ll say no.
He smiles, kisses her. “Yeah,” he tells her, nods. “I think I will.”
-fin
fandom; pairing; count: lost; claire/jack [mentions of christian, sarah, margo, marc, claire/marc]; 5417
notes: AU; no island; written for angela_weber and we_will_be_gods who requested the shephards
Jack is thirty years old when he learns that he has a baby sister.
Christian sits in the waiting room with this blond-haired blue-eyed teenage girl and Jack wonders for a moment how sick she is. It doesn't even occur to him to assume that she's a family member of a patient, or a volunteer, or just a chatty teenager who's come to the hospital for birth control, or any number of innocuous conclusions.
It's the red rings around her eyes that make him assume. He diagnoses her based on his father's body language, the way he speaks in hushed tones so that Jack can't listen to their conversation from his spot just outside the doorway, a coffee in hand. She's terminal. Stage four. Metastatic. Even as they speak the cancer moves to another internal organ, quietly breaking down her tiny body.
She looks like she could have been a dancer.
It would bother him, if he let it, but he doesn't do that anymore.
"Dad," he says, loud enough to get Christian's attention. The girl looks startled at his voice, and her eyes seem to swell at the sight of him.
"Dr. Shephard," he says this time. "We scrub in in five." He points to his watch.
Christian says his goodbyes and hugs the girl before he joins Jack in the hall. Jack doesn't remember him ever doing that with any patient before. He can hear his father speak her name. "Claire," he says, and then something Jack can't hear. "We'll talk again soon."
Christian takes the chart from Jack as they walk, scrutinizes it as if it's the first time he's seen it, as if they haven't been preparing for this surgery all day. Jack knows it's the girl that's distracting him.
"How long does she have?" he asks his father.
Christian has never been great with timing.
"She's your sister, Jack," Christian tells him, looks away as soon as Jack meets his eyes. "It's a long story. We'll talk after surgery." His voice is too casual for the words that it carries, like this is just a familiar a conversation they've had many times before, like it's no big deal.
Jack wasn't wrong about the tumor. Hers is just of a different kind. Hers is the cancer of the Shephard family blood. It's the shame of being an illegitimate child, an afterthought, a secret. Her curse is perhaps even more debilitating. It may not kill her in the end, but there will never be a remission from that truth.
--
He'll see Claire only once more until his wedding to Sarah, a woman he has yet to meet.
There's an uncomfortable dinner held at his parent's home a few days after seeing Claire in that waiting room.
Claire is sweet and shy and hugs him when they officially meet. She feels so small in his arms and it gives away some vulnerability that all little sisters must exude. Jack can almost tell himself that he's going to be a good brother to her, that he'll be there when she needs him. But in the moments that follow, the truth is that he doesn't see it. She'll go back to Australia and she'll melt into the background of their lives and pretty soon she'll be nothing but a dim memory.
The food is overcooked and Christian awkwardly carries the conversation, asking Claire all sorts of questions, saying things like "Tell Claire about that time you broke your wrist," to Jack, who obliges, regaling her with stories of his childhood, a sugarcoating of their dysfunctional lives before they were tainted with the knowledge of Christian's infidelity and her own illegitimacy. Margo is stone cold, barely speaks at all, and after the meal she drops a dish that shatters against the tiles. [And then she drops another for good measure.]
"Oops," Jack can hear her say sarcastically from the kitchen.
Later, when Claire feels she's outworn her welcome, and maybe even a good while after that, Jack drives her back to the room where she and her mother are staying for the week. He sees a silhouette behind the drapes, but doesn't ask to meet the woman that had an affair with his father. Neither does he offer to let them stay at his place. It doesn't feel like he has a right to do either of those things, despite wanting to.
"Thanks," Claire tells him when he walks her to the steps leading to the second floor of the motel. And he can hear the uncertainty in her voice, a vague suspicion that he’s as eager for her to go as Margo was.
"It was really nice to meet you," Jack says. "In case I don't see you before you go."
He won't, he knows. But he says it anyway.
To comfort her.
To let her know he cares, despite it all.
That's what brothers do.
--
Claire is legitimately shocked when she receives the invitation to Jack's wedding. She's coming home from visiting her mother on a Saturday afternoon, flipping through the junk mail and the bills as she walks through the door when she spots the thick cream-colored envelope with her brother's return address.
She figures right away it must be the fiancee that put him up to it. Sarah is her name, or so says the card. She imagines them sitting next to each other at a dining room table, surrounded by lists and envelopes and seating charts. Sarah will be blonde and perky, and Jack will be rumpled and tired from a long day of surgeries.
"We have to invite your sister," imaginary Sarah will tell Jack.
Jack will shrug. "Half-sister," he'll say. "And we're not really all that close. I barely know her."
Imaginary Sarah will simply ignore him and write the name Claire at the bottom of the list in front of her. "She's your family," she'll remind him. "She's coming."
"Margo will love that," Jack will say. And then he'll laugh as Sarah elbows him gently in the ribs.
Claire imagines that they're happy.
She's already decided that she and Sarah will get along just fine.
--
The flight to LA seems impossibly longer than she remembers.
She arrives two weeks before the wedding. It was Jack's idea. It'll give them some time to get re-acquainted, he says. Claire wants to correct him when he tells her this over the phone, wants to tell him that acquainted would be the more appropriate term. But since he's footing the bill and seems sincere enough, she doesn't argue.
She finds him in the baggage claim area and he hugs her like she's an old friend. He's still just as tall as she remembers, but she rises up to meet him a little more than she did the first time they met. His embrace is almost desperate, like he hasn't hugged an actual human in years -- or maybe his entire life.
Claire is surprised.
The truth is that they haven't spoken at length more than a half a dozen times or so in the past six years. Claire can't say she hasn't always hoped for more from him. That in the moment she heard him call Christian "Dad" in that waiting room six years ago that she didn't imagine them becoming the best of pals, that she didn't imagine summer trips to the states and him coming to stay with them in Australia for a couple of weeks a year. She would show him where she grew up; get advice from him about school or boys, or her mother going into a coma.
Of course, none of that ever happens.
"Jack," she says when he finally lets her breathe again. "You alright?" she jokes, her hand at his forehead.
"It's just really good to see you," he says and smiles, almost sheepishly. "Let's get your bags."
--
Claire stays at Jack's place in the nine days before they leave for Hawaii. Jack takes some time off work, spends a lot of it doing last minute things for the wedding, but most of it with her. He asks her about her mother, stuck in a coma and eight-thousand miles away. Claire would prefer to keep her there, as far away from her thoughts as she literally is right now. So she just shrugs and tells him that there is no change, that there's never any change, that she sees her every Saturday and sometimes more, but that Carole hasn't actually been there for a long time.
Jack nods, offers her a drink, and Claire knows he won't bring it up again.
In those first few mornings, Jack cooks her breakfast. Sometimes Christian stops by, but things between them don't seem to be as easy as it is with Jack. She meets Jack's eyes from across the table and knows that he, too, doesn't have the best relationship with this man who's DNA they share. Just one more thing they have in common. And one more thing they won't bring up later.
He takes her on a day trip along the famed Pacific Coast Highway. Claire is impressed and giddy and she spends the day taking photographs at every turn. Some are of the scenery, some of her and Jack. It's the closest thing she'll probably ever get to a family road trip. Jack seems to relax more the further away from LA they get, the further from his life they get. His laugh is lighter, his muscles less tense.
At the end of the day, the sun dipping below the horizon, when it's time to turn for the road home, he jokes. "Maybe we should just keep going," he says.
"Why not?" Claire says, reaches over to push playfully against his t-shirt clad shoulder. "We could go anywhere."
"Anywhere," Jack repeats slowly, heavily, thick with the impossibility of it all.
He turns the car around.
--
A few miles from the house, Claire reaches over to him, runs her fingers along the side of his face, traces the shape of his features, trying to find similarities between them.
"What?" Jack says, lighthearted, glances at her quickly before returning his eyes to the road.
"Nothing," Claire says, feels like she may be blushing. "Nothing at all."
--
On the fifth day, Claire begins to notice that he hasn't talked about Sarah much, and she doesn't even meet her until two days before their flight. She's sweet and almost exactly like Claire imagined her to be, but she looks at Jack like a woman in love who knows she isn't loved back, not quite. Claire's sitting across from the two of them at the dinner table and Jack is talking about their plans and Sarah is watching him, intent, with a smile on her face. But every so often the smile fades into something like heartbreak, just slightly, just enough.
Most people wouldn't notice this.
It's only a fraction of a second.
But Claire notices.
Marc joins the trio after dinner that night and Claire immediately likes him. He's funny and laid back and the truth is she always had a thing for a ginger boy. They drink and have dessert and he tells stories about Jack as a kid, as a teenager, he talks about Jack's hero complex, about a day on the playground. With each story, her brother turns a deeper shade of red until he can only rebuff him by returning the favor, recalling stories about Marc that even Marc doesn't remember. They sit out in the back yard until the sun goes down and the stars shine.
After Sarah and Jack disappear into the house, Claire walks Marc to his car, kisses him once on the lips before he has a chance to make a move of his own.
"I'll see you at the wedding," she says with a smile.
Marc offers her a hug. "You're so young," he whispers into her ear.
"I'm not that young," she tells him.
Marc kisses her again.
--
Hawaii is all alohas and wedding chaos. Jack barely has a chance to breathe between that and greeting all the out-of-town guests, let alone to pay much attention when Claire and Marc slip into some back room somewhere for the first time. After that, he sees them emerge, mussed and grinning, from one storage closet after another, once even Jack's own suite. They play the role of the proverbial wedding hook-up well.
Jack would never say it, but he envies them. He envies them more than he can say.
Sarah gets nervous in those last few days, tells him she'll relax once it's all over. He kisses her soft, gentle, coaxes her back to her room, but she won't let him come in, tells him he won't regret it. Jack doesn't tell her that maybe he still needs convincing. That maybe he just needs one last shot to know for sure if this is what he really wants.
He can barely even tell himself.
After, he finds Claire in the bar sipping some pinkish fruity drink with a large slice of pineapple hanging over the edge.
"Looks like you've been having a good time," he tells her. "And Marc, too." He adds.
Claire laughs, shrugs. "You know," she says. "Might as well."
"He's a lot older than you," he says, in point of fact.
Claire reaches out and puts her hand on his cheek. "Look at you, all protective-older-brother now. Can't say I ever expected that."
It's Jack's turn to shrug. "You're my sister," he says. "I can't worry?"
"You're worried about Marc?" she laughs.
He laughs too because she's right. Marc's a good guy. And even if he wasn't this is obviously just a fling. Nobody's getting hurt.
Their laughter subsides and a silence falls in the empty bar.
After a moment, Claire leans over, bumping her shoulder against his.
Jack bumps hers back.
They laugh again.
--
After the bachelor party, and after a misguided heart-to-heart with his father by the pool, Jack walks into his dark suite and flicks on the light.
Claire sits indian-style at the edge of the bed in a pair of polka-dotted pajama shorts and a white t-shirt. She holds a large wrapped box in her lap. "I brought presents!" She sing-songs. And then, looking down, "Present!" She corrects.
"You're obviously way too drunk for this," she tells him as he sits next to her and unwraps the package.
"The game of life," Jack says, reading the label on the box.
Claire claps. "We shall play," she declares, pulling out the instructions. And then, seriously, "I've come to prepare you for the real thing."
--
Claire wins the game, she thinks, and after they clean up all the pieces she lays next to Jack on the bed, a triumphant grin, her arms behind her head victoriously, legs crossed at the ankle.
"I heard you were having trouble writing your vows," she says after a few moments.
Jack looks at her, curious as to how she knows.
"A little birdie told me," she tells him.
"Marc," he grunts and she doesn't have to tell him he's right. He knows. She knows that he knows. Claire is getting used to this, to the way they are together, to having a brother. She's starting to recognize his moods, to be able to read his thoughts. There's a connection between them that is almost metaphysical. She never really believed in that sort of thing. At one time or another, she's believed in a lot of things, but an unspoken connection between siblings, between family? No. That was never in the cards for her.
Until now.
She asks him about Sarah, and it comes across as far more obvious than she intends. He shoots her a look and there's no point in delaying after that. She tells him she suspects that he has doubts. “I’ve wondered for a while now,” she tells him, cites moments when he’d given the truth away.
Jack exhales deeply, and though it takes him some time, he confides in her. He tells her things that he couldn’t even tell their father a couple of hours earlier. But the truth is that in all of this confessing, he wishes and he washes and says everything and nothing. No definitive answers. No conclusions drawn. And after all of this tiptoeing around, Claire sits up, her shoulders back, an answer brimming on her lips, the wisdom of her twenty-one years far more acute than his thirty-six.
"This isn't about your vows," she says. "If you don't love her, Jack? If you're not sure? Don't marry her."
"It isn't that simple, Claire," he says.
"It is," she counters. "Do you love her? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with her? Don't think. Just answer."
"No," the word escapes from Jack's lips as though it's been waiting for this question for a long time. "No," he says again, this time slowly, more assuredly.
Of course Claire had known the answer already, but she hadn't expected him to say it so quickly, so definitively, so it takes her a few moments to react. She watches Jack, who closes his eyes, covers his face in the crook of his elbow, probably trying to think up a way to take back what he's said.
But he doesn’t.
He can’t.
The damage is done.
“Then don't marry her, Jack," she says. "Don't get up in front of your family, and God, and her, and whoever else and say that you'll be with her forever if you can't truly promise that you will."
Claire lets him sit with that thought for a moment while she stands up to find her slippers.
"And if you do? I won't watch you do it," she says. "I can't."
--
One thing is for certain.
Claire is true to her word.
She's nowhere to be seen at the ceremony. And no one but Jack seems to notice. Maybe Christian, maybe Marc. But if they do they don't say anything about the empty chair in the back row. They don't even look around for her because it would never occur to either of them that she wouldn't be there. Jack doesn't see her until the reception. She's dancing with Marc, kisses him openly. She looks happy. And when she dances, she dances just as Jack had always imagined she would.
Later, Jack corners her by the fruit platters.
"You didn't come," he says. There's guilt in his voice, he knows. Probably shame too.
"Jack," she says his name. There is sadness in the word, in her eyes, and it kills him to think of what she must be thinking of him right now. Fucking coward, he tells himself, lowers his head. She squeezes his hand and tells him that she understands. She thinks he's made a mistake, but she understands. They hug and Claire holds onto him a little too long, kisses the corner of his mouth.
"Maybe it just takes time," she says. "Promise me you'll bring her to Australia?"
"Promise," Jack tells her.
He's sure it doesn't mean much, not coming from him today. Not after empty vows and hollow professions.
But he says it anyway.
It’s what brothers do.
--
Later, after they are both too tired to even think of anything but sleep, Jack drifts off in Sarah's arms; She still in her wedding dress, he still in his tux, the wedding suite remaining unspoiled at least for another few hours.
He dreams.
He's in the dark, but he can hear Claire's voice. She's laughing at first. And then her voice lowers to a whisper, and then a moan. Soon, she comes into view and she's half clothed, one sleeve pulled down revealing a taut nipple, her dress hiked up around her waist, her head leaning back, Marc's lips on her neck. He stands between her legs where she sits on a counter top, and Claire pushes his slacks over his ass, pulls him closer to her. She gasps when he bucks into her, her mouth open, calling his name.
Jack watches them from the dark, feeling none of the shame he should expect to feel at seeing such a sight. He listens to the sound of their lovemaking, heavy breathing, animalistic grunts, and the sound of something crashing to the floor as Claire reaches for balance. Jack closes his eyes, thinking that if he does, the image will disappear, but the sounds persist. They grow louder, even.
He hears Claire cry out another name.
His name.
Jack's eyes snap open and finds himself in Marc's place, hovering over her, her warmth surrounding his cock where he’s buried deep inside her. She covers his mouth with hers, a moan stifled in their kiss. Whether it's his or hers, he doesn't know. He thrusts into her once more, twice, all of his control lost with the dream, unable to stop.
He sees black.
He sees white.
Jack wakes with a start, to the sound of the shower running. He can feel his erection, hard and pressed against his slacks, his breathing is uneven, a sheen of sweat across his forehead, his wedding band weighing heavy against his finger.
He gasps for air, whispers her name, closes his eyes, and sees Claire's face.
--
Jack’s been married two months and is already sick of being asked what it's like. It took him two weeks after the honeymoon to realize just how right Claire was, but it's not like he can say that. It's not like he can do anything but try to make himself feel differently.
He's in his car, driving up the Pacific Coast Highway, thinking of Claire, when she calls the first time.
He tries not to be turned on by the sound of her voice, the way she laughs. He tries not to count in his head how many times he’s had that same dream. He manages alright that first time.
They make it a habit, something Jack looks forward to every few days, sometimes more. Claire tells him about a new job she's got, reads him his horoscope from the paper, tells him she's going to send him some good Australian sweets.
She never does.
["I'm dreadful about mailing stuff," she'll apologize later.]
When she calls, they don't talk about Sarah or the mess of his marriage. They barely talk about work or their father. It’s all news headlines or a new tea that Claire's tried or why Jack should get a puppy.
[He assures her the dog would end up starving to death because no one would remember to feed it. “No one,” meaning himself and the unspoken Sarah.]
Claire always says I love you at the end of the call, always promises to talk with him soon. And Jack finds he looks more forward to these conversations than he does anything else. He finds himself finding a private place to conduct them, where he's sure to be left alone for at least an hour with no interruptions. He finds himself lying to Sarah, to his father, to Marc, for no reason, about the calls.
He assures himself that this is not out of shame.
He only wants to keep her for himself.
He only wants to keep something for himself.
--
Claire sometimes forgets what it was like before she had a brother, before they were so close.
"Have you talked to Dad?" she asks him during the times when Jack seems worried. She comforts him when his marriage falls apart - and doesn’t ask the questions that she’s dying to ask. Though, she does ask him if he wants her to buy a plane ticket.
He tells her no.
He tells her that he'll be fine.
Claire waits a while before telling him about Thomas, but when she does Jack seems skeptical. He tells her that maybe she can do better.
She shrugs, tells him she’s not sure. But she knows he’s probably right.
[She’ll break up with Thomas that week.]
Sometimes she dreams of Jack's voice.
It's the part of him she knows better than anything else. She dreams of his voice at first, innocent enough, and sometimes she dreams of his hands upon her, a chill going through her as his fingers trace down the length of her torso, gasping when they move inside her.
She doesn't tell this to Jack, of course, but she does ask him if he ever has any weird dreams. And she says the word weird so that Jack is sure to read into it enough to know she means sex dreams.
Jack makes a noise in his throat like he’s going to choke. He tells her he doesn’t remember his dreams. He tells her it’s a shame.
Claire doesn’t believe him.
She tells him so.
Jack just laughs.
--
Carole dies.
It's not something that just happens. It's more of a decision, really. Claire's aunt has finally given up and Claire decides that she has too.
Jack wants to be there, but he just can't get away.
Instead, Christian, who seems pretty broken up about the whole thing, boards an Oceanic jetliner to Sydney.
He'll go.
He'll take care of her.
--
A week later, Jack gets a phone call in the middle of the night.
"Dad's dead," Claire's voice is thick with grief, or maybe it's just exhaustion.
Jack wants to know how, when, what happened? He finishes his barrage of questions with, "should I come?" But Claire can't really muster the strength to tell him anything.
"No, no," she says. "Don't. I just found out ten minutes ago," she says. "I'll call you tomorrow. I'll know more then."
Jack recalls a conversation in a sterile hallway. She's your sister, Jack, his father had said. It's a long story. We'll talk after surgery.
"Okay," Jack tells her. "Okay."
It isn’t until after he’s hung up the phone that he realizes that his father is dead.
--
Claire brings Christian's body back home to LA for the funeral.
She meets Jack in a familiar baggage claim, and this time their embrace lasts for minutes, both of them quietly in tears.
In the two years since Jack’s wedding, they’ve become the only family that either of them can depend on.
--
At the funeral, when all of his friends and family stand up to say what a wonderful person Christian Shephard had been, what he meant to them, Claire doesn't speak.
Before, during the ride to the cemetery, Claire tells Jack that she feels it wouldn't be right. "He was my father," she says, her voice a distant whisper. "I did care about him. I just didn't know him."
It never rains in Los Angeles, but today it rains. Jack and Claire huddle under the same umbrella, their black folding chairs pushed as close together as possible. They sit like that, arms linked, shoes soaking, the shelter of the umbrella allowing the cold rain to soak the edges of them, until all of the mourners have left - Marc, Sarah, even Margo. They sit like that until the coffin is buried beneath six muddy feet of dirt and sod.
Claire holds Jack's hand, listens to him muttering under his breath, the words "son of a bitch" and "bastard" coming out clearly with rising frequency.
Eventually, she squeezes his hand tight, rises to her feet and urges him to follow her.
"It's time to go, Jack," she tells him. "It's time to let go."
--
On the ride back to his place, Jack tells Claire it’s the darkest day he’s ever seen.
“Me too,” she says, no affect to her voice, no emotion.
Jack looks at her and he can see the mark across Claire’s eyes. It’s the same that he’s carried with him all his life - the dark cloud of the Shephard name, of a man that neither of them ever really knew. He watches the windshield wipers furiously moving back and forth and thinks what a perfect day it is to bury Christian Shephard.
Their shoes squeak as they enter the foyer, and Claire stops to kick hers off. Jack does the same, peeling off wet socks, leaving his shoes there in the hall beside hers.
He follows Claire to the laundry room where she’s left her bags.
“You know,” Claire says slowly, as she kneels to unzip her suitcase, rifling through to find something dry to wear. “I really - I really kind of hated him.” The words come out of her mouth as though someone is standing behind them and shoving them through. “I never,” she says, closes her eyes tight. “I never could forgive him.”
Jack kneels at her back, wraps his arms around her from behind.
Claire shakes as she sobs.
“I know,” Jack tells her. “Me too.”
He doesn’t tell her that Christian was doing her a favor by not being in her life. He doesn’t tell her what a shitty father he was. What he does do is tell her that it’s okay, pulls her wet hair to the side, kisses the back of her neck.
Claire stops shaking then, her body going stock still. Jack lifts his lips from her skin slowly when he feels her hands grip his arms at her side, her slow breathing suddenly noticeable.
She turns.
Claire meets his lips with hers, pulls him closer, her hands twisting in the wet material at his back. Jack opens his lips, feels her tongue trace along the roof of his mouth, makes a low guttural noise when it does.
“Claire,” he breathes when they disconnect, both of them finding a better balance on the ground.
Jack moves to get up but Claire reaches for his belt, tells him to stay. “Stay,” she says over and over, her hand dipping below his trousers, her fingers connecting with skin, dragging the wet garment down just enough.
Jack grabs her face, kisses her again, as they both collapse against the cold, wet tile.
His lips trace along her neck and throat and he pulls the material of her dress down, sucking one nipple into his mouth. He can hear her gasp his name and it sounds just like it did in his dreams. Claire hikes her skirt up far enough to pull her panties down and off her legs.
“Please,” she whispers into his ear, reaches down to guide him into her.
They both let out a cry.
Jack is still for a moment, his lips finding hers in a messy, grief-drunken kiss. Claire slides her leg up and urges him to move inside of her. He thrusts once, twice, fucking his little sister on the floor of his laundry room, his palm cradling the back of her head, her hands on his ass.
He kisses the corners of her eyes, can taste her tears and his all at once.
Their pain is the same.
Their pain.
Their curse.
Their comfort.
Their coupling.
--
Claire is an orphan.
She’s too old to be an orphan, but she sure feels like one. Mother and father both dead within a week, an aunt who never cared for her.
She can hear Jack in the shower and closes her eyes, remembers his hands on her, remembers feeling at home for the first time that she can remember.
--
Claire stays with him for another few weeks.
Jack goes back to work, coming home late hours, every night fucking Claire in his bed, in the bathroom, on the couch.
They spent so much time talking over the past two years, Jack’s voice on the phone as clear as her own voice in her head. Now, they have nothing to say. The pieces of themselves that were once missing are finally found when they are wrapped around each other, all limbs and flesh and blood and bone.
Claire watches Jack when he gets dressed in the mornings, watches him transform into the person he used to be. He doesn’t smile, his posture becomes hard, uninviting.
She remembers a day along the coast, remembers how he seemed to transform as each kilometer went by.
One night she lies naked next to him, runs a hand through his hair.
“Come to Australia with me,” she says. It’s a request, a plea.
Nobody knows you there, she doesn’t say. You’ll be at home there.
“We always need good doctors.”
Jack’s eyes light up, considering it.
Claire worries that he’ll say no.
He smiles, kisses her. “Yeah,” he tells her, nods. “I think I will.”
-fin