By Any Other Name
Title: By Any Other Name
Character: Kate, underlying Jack/Kate
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up to 3.22/23 “Through the Looking Glass”
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Dedication: For lostsquee Luau Queen mysticxf. This isn't quite what you wanted, but it's about Kate, so I hope you'll like it!
Katherine
Only her mother called her Katherine. She thought it sounded elegant and feminine, regal.
Despite the scraped knees, the rumpled ponytails and the muddy clothes, she still thought her daughter would one day live up to her name.
When she never did, when she became something worse, the name became an admonishment, three syllables of disappointment and pain.
Katie
Her father called her Katie. He liked the scraped knees and the rumpled ponytails, even the muddy clothes. She could always hear how much he loved her when he said it, even in the times when she made him sad or angry. He called her Katie even after he found out she wasn’t his, even after she became a criminal instead of his daughter.
Tom called her Katie too, from the day he first messed up that ponytail and pushed her in the mud, to the day she finally put on that shiny dress, had her hair done up in a French twist and let him take her to the prom.
He told her she looked pretty but he giggled at her high heels and she knew he preferred her just the way she always was. The night before she lost him forever, he told her he pulled out their prom photograph whenever he needed to remember her with a smile.
Kate
Wayne called her Kate, when he didn’t call her Beautiful.
It was short and abrupt and it made her feel like what she was.
Whatever other name she pretended to have - Monica, Joan, Maggie, Annie - she never stopped feeling like Kate.
She never much liked her name until she met him and suddenly, no matter if he said it in anger or disappointment or concern, it became the most powerful sound in the world.
Broken and afraid, happy and amused, it didn’t matter. Kate falling from his lips made her feel less like the person she’d become and more like the person she wanted to be.
Michelle
They gave her a new name, a new identity. It was real and binding, sanctioned by government agencies and backed by new IDs, new bank accounts, a new life.
This new woman straightened her hair and wore perfect makeup, fitted shirts and drove a fancy car. She feels nothing like herself, but she supposes that's the whole point.
All she had ever wanted was this. She’d pretended so many times to be someone else. She’d tried so hard to escape.
Now that she has it all, all she wants is to go back.
When he calls her, he still calls her Kate.
She’ll always be Kate for him.