Lost fic: Driven [Jack/Kate/Sawyer]
Disclaimer: Lost isn't mine.
Summary: They were united in their quest, no matter how much they hated each other. They were going to find her. Jack/Kate/Sawyer, post-island. Rated R.
Author's notes: Written for psych_30 #10, Approach-Avoidance and fanfic100 #66, Rain. Mildly inspired by Kentucky Rain
Driven
by eponine119
March 20, 2006
It ended much like it had begun, with a phone call. The phone on the wall was old, rotary dial and half gone to static. It didn't ring often, but when it did, it made Sawyer shiver. The sound was distinctive enough to slam him back to his childhood, and if he closed his eyes he could smell his uncle's cigarettes mixing with the smell of sweat.
Six months ago it rang in the middle of a stormy night. The sky was an eerie shade of green as he lifted the receiver to his ear. "Yeah." He expected it to be a bill collector, somebody who wanted his money. Anybody but her.
"It's me," she said, her breathy voice mixed with the static that rattled along with the thunder. "My car broke down. Can you come get me?"
He hesitated. The silence stretched between them. Another moment and she might have given up on him, hung up. He never did have the sense to turn away from trouble. "Where are you?" he asked, and ten minutes later he was pulling into the parking lot of a rundown diner, eyes searching the darkness for her.
She was huddled against the building, drenched from the rain. It poured down her face in rivers, the way it used to on the island. "You always liked the rain," he said, his voice low in the darkness. He was soaked now, too, in the time it took to walk from the car to where she was standing.
She shook her head. "They kicked me out of the diner. No money."
Stupid, Sawyer thought, because he knew how to get money. But Kate had different skills; she could get everything for nothing, just on the strength of her smile. Hell, she got him here. "Get in," he said, and pulled open the door of the truck for her.
The windshield wipers fought to keep pace with the rain, and lost. He couldn't see where they were going, but he kept right on driving. "Where you been," he said finally. She'd disappeared after the rescue. He'd been expecting that. He'd never expected to see her again.
"Around," she said, with a harsh flatness to her voice that made him glance at her. Her chin trembled with the effort it took for her not to shake, and he knew it wasn't all from the cold. Life on the run wasn't all it cracked up to be.
"How'd you find me?" he asked.
"I have ways," she said. Stubborn and angry, just the way she used to be on the island. Usually she followed it up with a slap or a punch to get her point across, but she wasn't in any position to hit him now. He wondered how she liked it. It made him feel powerful.
"Why," he continued, and she just shrugged, pulling her arms closer around her and fixing her gaze on the window, cloudy on the inside from the heat of their bodies, their breath.
They pulled in the drive just as the storm hit its peak, lightning and thunder crashing almost simultaneously. He hit the light switch when they got inside, but nothing happened. "Power's out."
She was shaking now, hard. Not just from the cold. It was fear, and the look in her eyes made him wonder if it was him she was afraid of after all this time. "Let's get you warmed up," he said, herding her into the bathroom without touching her. He reached past her to get the hot water running.
A strike of lightning lit the scene, seconds passing, while the look in Kate's eyes changed from vulnerable to hungry. Sawyer waited for the thunder, counting in his head slow. "Storm's passing," he said, with a tilt of his head, waiting to see what she was going to do.
But she didn't do anything, just stood there shivering with her big eyes watching him. So he put his hands on her and she pressed into him like she yearned for his heat and his strength. "What took you so long," she whispered against his mouth before her tongue slid over his, taking possession of him the same way she had, back on the island.
…
The phone rarely rang, and if it did, Kate never reached for it. So when he whispered "Let it ring," and she pulled away from him, he knew. He'd been waiting for it to be over since it began. This was longer than he'd ever hoped he'd get, but still it wasn't enough.
He hauled the blankets across his thighs and strained to listen. She kept her voice too soft for him to hear. It would have faded into nothingness if he'd done the thing he wanted to, if he strode across the room and wrenched the phone out of her hand and hung it up. But he couldn't make her stay with him, any more than he could tell her why he wanted her to.
She wouldn't meet his eyes when she came back into the bedroom. She tried, but didn't make it past his toes, curling out from underneath the blanket. "I have to go," she said, pulling her white shirt across her shoulders.
He drew in a deep breath. Held it inside for as long as he could, with the words and the anger and the fear.
"Where're you going?" he asked finally.
"It's better if you don't know," she said, and when he laughed bitterly she finally looked at him. It really was the perfect excuse. She'd always keep running. That's who she was. She couldn't change any more than he could.
"Did this mean anything to you, Kate?" he asked, getting out of bed slowly. Watching the way her eyes widened when he called her by her name, watching the step she took backing away from him. He went to the dresser and pulled out the small roll of bills he kept there. She shrank back from him when he reached for her hand, but he trapped her and he was stronger than she was, so it didn't take much to grab her wrist and force her fingers around the money.
"No," she protested. But she didn't struggle or try to pull away. This was had probably been the plan all along.
"Take it," he said, and released her. "Don't go crawling to someone else the way you did to me."
"I loved you, Sawyer." She spat the words at him. Past tense. Over now. He steeled himself against them, against the way she put the money in her pocket like she'd earned it. The door banged closed behind her and he leaned against the wall. Only time a woman ever left him with more money than she had when she walked in.
…
The next time the phone rang, it was Jack. "I have to find her," he said. "You have to help." And Sawyer knew she'd gotten to him, too.
…
She just appeared one night. Jack was sitting at his desk, buried under paperwork and budgets and requisitions and medical journals, all the tools of a chief of staff's trade. He wasn't a doctor anymore so much as a businessman in a white coat. He accepted it because he had to; there wasn't much use for a doctor who was afraid to wield a scalpel.
He knew she was there a split second before he raised his head and saw her. Something about the scent of rain, the familiar intake of her breath, the way she made the air electric. "Hey, Jack," she said quietly.
"Kate," he said, his voice uncertain. The floor tilted and he half-stumbled, scraping his chair back to get to her. Taking her face in his hands, trailing his fingers against her cheek, convincing himself that she was real. "You shouldn't be here," he realized.
"No, it's safe," she murmured, then backtracked. "For a little while, it's safe. I had to see you. I couldn't stay away." She turned her face up against his hand.
"Why after all this time -- why now --?"
"I had to wait till it was safe." She said the words carefully, forcefully. Same old stubborn Kate, Jack thought. He rubbed his fingers through her hair and she went up on tiptoe to catch his mouth with hers. The kiss was both familiar and new.
"They're still looking for you." He let his hands fall away from her face. The truth coming down like a wall between them. The wall that had always been there, impenetrable.
She nodded once, like it was hard for her, then met his eyes. "You're right. I'll -- " Her eyes crinkled with tears as she moved toward the door.
He knew he should let her go, but he couldn't. He'd wanted her too badly for too long, had too many regrets. "Kate," he said, and caught her wrist with his hand. "I don't care." She looked at him doubtfully. "I want you. I don't care about the rest."
She hesitated. He could feel her thready pulse through her skin, feel the skittish energy coiled within her, just ready to bolt. He could feel her make herself stay, put the tentative smile on her lips, wrap her other hand around his. "Okay," she said.
"Okay," he echoed, and picked up his coat, leaving the folders and budgets and paperwork strewn across the desk behind him.
…
"I want to tell you what I did," she said. Her pale skin glowed in the firelight, almost translucent, like marble as it warmed to his touch. A curl tumbled down against her shoulder and when he reached to brush it back, she put her head down and pressed her lips against his hand. "I know I should have told you…before."
"No, Kate," he said. There was still a part of him that wanted to know, the part of him that wanted to know everything about her. But it didn't matter. He loved her no matter what she was running from.
She looked at him with green eyes squeezing against tears, and he wondered if it had ever been this way for her before. If she'd ever been able to be safe and loved just for herself, not for who she was pretending to be. That was why she'd come to him, he thought. Because it was what she needed, not pity or protection or scorn. He didn't ask anything from her. He just gave her what he had.
…
It was another long night at the hospital followed by him falling into bed beside her after dawn, long after she'd already slept and awakened. He reached for her, wrapping his arms around her tight even though he was mostly asleep already, his pants pulled off but his shirt only half-unbuttoned and his socks still on. It happened this way a lot these days. He never worried anymore that she wouldn't be there when he got home. He never feared that he'd wake up and she'd be gone.
So when Jack woke up alone, it hit him hard. His mouth was dry and sour and his ears burned with the words she'd whispered to him in his sleep. A full confession, the whole truth. The thing he'd never longed for because he knew he couldn’t stand it, because the truth about Kate wasn't something he could fix. Even if she stopped running, she would never be free.
…
Jack's eyes were dark and bruised and haunted. Sawyer would have recognized him anywhere. He wondered how long ago Kate had left Jack; which one of them she'd come to first. It pulled the corners of his mouth into the smile Jack would have recognized anywhere. "She was here," Jack said.
Sawyer nodded easily. "Last fall. You?"
"Two nights ago. No, three." Jack blinked rapidly. He hadn't slept since. He was driven. He had to find her.
It hurt more than Sawyer thought it would. She'd come to him first, but she'd left him for Jack. And then there was the missing time in between. Who else had she gone to, who else had she played? Where was she going now?
"We'll never find her."
"You never even looked," Jack sneered, and it was true. If Sawyer had tried to find her, he would have known to go to Jack. Maybe not called him on the telephone, but snuck around, spied on him. He would have found her, too. That was where she'd been.
"That's right, doc, because I'm not as stupid as you."
Jack looked at him, brown eyes clear. "You love her." Sawyer could only turn his face away in answer. It was true; so what? He wasn't gonna say it. It just made Jack more determined. Sawyer had seen that look a million times on the island. "We'll find her."
They got into the car. Sawyer driving, hands resting easy on the steering wheel. Jack edgy and tense in the passenger seat. "We just gonna drive around till she shows up?" Sawyer asked, his tone flat and irritated.
"What was the last thing she said to you?" Jack asked. "Before she left."
"Goodbye," Sawyer replied, hurt and sarcastic. But he swung his eyes to Jack, asking what he couldn't put into words.
"She didn't say goodbye to me," Jack said. "She just left."
"She ever say she loved you?" Sawyer asked. She'd said it to him, hollow words she didn't mean. But there was still hope in his voice.
"She didn't have to," Jack replied.
"That what you think this is?" Sawyer demanded, voice low and threatening. "You think you can find her and make her choose? Seems to me she already made her choice."
"No," Jack said, and Sawyer didn't know what it was he was denying. So he just drove.
They drove all day and half the night. When they stopped, they slept in the car, Jack sprawled in the back and Sawyer sitting up in the front. They washed in the sinks of rest areas and drank convenience store coffee. The yellow stripe down the middle of the highway just kept going, and so did they.
"She ever talk to you?" Jack asked, and Sawyer chuckled. "About the past, about herself?"
"Bits'n pieces," Sawyer drawled, but when he considered it, he didn't know much about her at all. The things he'd put together, the things he'd figured out, and not much more than that. He widened his eyes and glared at Jack. "You?" he demanded.
"She told me what she did."
"Oh, really," Sawyer said. "What'd she up and do a thing like that for?"
"Because I didn't ask," Jack replied fervently.
"I never asked," Sawyer grumbled, but he knew it wasn't the same. She told him she loved him; she told Jack her crime. It was all part of her game. It didn't mean anything. "What'd she do?"
"Killed someone," Jack said. Sawyer started to speak, but the look in Jack's eyes kept him silent. "Someone who needed killing."
Sawyer just nodded and let his foot fall heavier against the accelerator. Every mile bringing them that much closer to her.
"You know where she is," Sawyer said, as they stood near the car in the moonlight.
"I have a good idea," Jack agreed.
"What do you need me for?" Sawyer asked.
"You want to go home? Go home," Jack said, and Sawyer didn't move a muscle.
…
The stillness of the car woke him. Sawyer raised his head. Driver's seat was empty. Jack was gone. They were in the middle of nowhere, not a rest area or a 7-11 in sight. But through the raindrops on the windshield, he could see Jack outside.
Sawyer got out of the car. The wind blew stinging raindrops into his eyes. It was coming down hard, saturating his clothes and staining Jack's face.
"This is where it happened," Jack said, eyes turned upward to the spreading branches of the tree above them.
"She here?" Sawyer asked roughly.
"She was," Jack said, and in a flash of lightning, Sawyer could see the evidence. Tracks left in the mud, a second set of tire prints. "We'll find her," Jack said, more determined than ever.
"You really think you can make her choose?" Sawyer asked.
"I think she's already made her choice," Jack said. "I just hope I'm wrong."
Sawyer wondered who it was Jack thought Kate had chosen. If he was resigned because he thought it was Sawyer, or if he was determined because he thought it was himself. Sawyer knew better. Kate's choice was not to choose. It always had been. That's why she had left them both.
Funny how being with Jack was almost like being with her again. She was right there with them, between them, every step of the way.
End.
Summary: They were united in their quest, no matter how much they hated each other. They were going to find her. Jack/Kate/Sawyer, post-island. Rated R.
Author's notes: Written for psych_30 #10, Approach-Avoidance and fanfic100 #66, Rain. Mildly inspired by Kentucky Rain
Driven
by eponine119
March 20, 2006
It ended much like it had begun, with a phone call. The phone on the wall was old, rotary dial and half gone to static. It didn't ring often, but when it did, it made Sawyer shiver. The sound was distinctive enough to slam him back to his childhood, and if he closed his eyes he could smell his uncle's cigarettes mixing with the smell of sweat.
Six months ago it rang in the middle of a stormy night. The sky was an eerie shade of green as he lifted the receiver to his ear. "Yeah." He expected it to be a bill collector, somebody who wanted his money. Anybody but her.
"It's me," she said, her breathy voice mixed with the static that rattled along with the thunder. "My car broke down. Can you come get me?"
He hesitated. The silence stretched between them. Another moment and she might have given up on him, hung up. He never did have the sense to turn away from trouble. "Where are you?" he asked, and ten minutes later he was pulling into the parking lot of a rundown diner, eyes searching the darkness for her.
She was huddled against the building, drenched from the rain. It poured down her face in rivers, the way it used to on the island. "You always liked the rain," he said, his voice low in the darkness. He was soaked now, too, in the time it took to walk from the car to where she was standing.
She shook her head. "They kicked me out of the diner. No money."
Stupid, Sawyer thought, because he knew how to get money. But Kate had different skills; she could get everything for nothing, just on the strength of her smile. Hell, she got him here. "Get in," he said, and pulled open the door of the truck for her.
The windshield wipers fought to keep pace with the rain, and lost. He couldn't see where they were going, but he kept right on driving. "Where you been," he said finally. She'd disappeared after the rescue. He'd been expecting that. He'd never expected to see her again.
"Around," she said, with a harsh flatness to her voice that made him glance at her. Her chin trembled with the effort it took for her not to shake, and he knew it wasn't all from the cold. Life on the run wasn't all it cracked up to be.
"How'd you find me?" he asked.
"I have ways," she said. Stubborn and angry, just the way she used to be on the island. Usually she followed it up with a slap or a punch to get her point across, but she wasn't in any position to hit him now. He wondered how she liked it. It made him feel powerful.
"Why," he continued, and she just shrugged, pulling her arms closer around her and fixing her gaze on the window, cloudy on the inside from the heat of their bodies, their breath.
They pulled in the drive just as the storm hit its peak, lightning and thunder crashing almost simultaneously. He hit the light switch when they got inside, but nothing happened. "Power's out."
She was shaking now, hard. Not just from the cold. It was fear, and the look in her eyes made him wonder if it was him she was afraid of after all this time. "Let's get you warmed up," he said, herding her into the bathroom without touching her. He reached past her to get the hot water running.
A strike of lightning lit the scene, seconds passing, while the look in Kate's eyes changed from vulnerable to hungry. Sawyer waited for the thunder, counting in his head slow. "Storm's passing," he said, with a tilt of his head, waiting to see what she was going to do.
But she didn't do anything, just stood there shivering with her big eyes watching him. So he put his hands on her and she pressed into him like she yearned for his heat and his strength. "What took you so long," she whispered against his mouth before her tongue slid over his, taking possession of him the same way she had, back on the island.
…
The phone rarely rang, and if it did, Kate never reached for it. So when he whispered "Let it ring," and she pulled away from him, he knew. He'd been waiting for it to be over since it began. This was longer than he'd ever hoped he'd get, but still it wasn't enough.
He hauled the blankets across his thighs and strained to listen. She kept her voice too soft for him to hear. It would have faded into nothingness if he'd done the thing he wanted to, if he strode across the room and wrenched the phone out of her hand and hung it up. But he couldn't make her stay with him, any more than he could tell her why he wanted her to.
She wouldn't meet his eyes when she came back into the bedroom. She tried, but didn't make it past his toes, curling out from underneath the blanket. "I have to go," she said, pulling her white shirt across her shoulders.
He drew in a deep breath. Held it inside for as long as he could, with the words and the anger and the fear.
"Where're you going?" he asked finally.
"It's better if you don't know," she said, and when he laughed bitterly she finally looked at him. It really was the perfect excuse. She'd always keep running. That's who she was. She couldn't change any more than he could.
"Did this mean anything to you, Kate?" he asked, getting out of bed slowly. Watching the way her eyes widened when he called her by her name, watching the step she took backing away from him. He went to the dresser and pulled out the small roll of bills he kept there. She shrank back from him when he reached for her hand, but he trapped her and he was stronger than she was, so it didn't take much to grab her wrist and force her fingers around the money.
"No," she protested. But she didn't struggle or try to pull away. This was had probably been the plan all along.
"Take it," he said, and released her. "Don't go crawling to someone else the way you did to me."
"I loved you, Sawyer." She spat the words at him. Past tense. Over now. He steeled himself against them, against the way she put the money in her pocket like she'd earned it. The door banged closed behind her and he leaned against the wall. Only time a woman ever left him with more money than she had when she walked in.
…
The next time the phone rang, it was Jack. "I have to find her," he said. "You have to help." And Sawyer knew she'd gotten to him, too.
…
She just appeared one night. Jack was sitting at his desk, buried under paperwork and budgets and requisitions and medical journals, all the tools of a chief of staff's trade. He wasn't a doctor anymore so much as a businessman in a white coat. He accepted it because he had to; there wasn't much use for a doctor who was afraid to wield a scalpel.
He knew she was there a split second before he raised his head and saw her. Something about the scent of rain, the familiar intake of her breath, the way she made the air electric. "Hey, Jack," she said quietly.
"Kate," he said, his voice uncertain. The floor tilted and he half-stumbled, scraping his chair back to get to her. Taking her face in his hands, trailing his fingers against her cheek, convincing himself that she was real. "You shouldn't be here," he realized.
"No, it's safe," she murmured, then backtracked. "For a little while, it's safe. I had to see you. I couldn't stay away." She turned her face up against his hand.
"Why after all this time -- why now --?"
"I had to wait till it was safe." She said the words carefully, forcefully. Same old stubborn Kate, Jack thought. He rubbed his fingers through her hair and she went up on tiptoe to catch his mouth with hers. The kiss was both familiar and new.
"They're still looking for you." He let his hands fall away from her face. The truth coming down like a wall between them. The wall that had always been there, impenetrable.
She nodded once, like it was hard for her, then met his eyes. "You're right. I'll -- " Her eyes crinkled with tears as she moved toward the door.
He knew he should let her go, but he couldn't. He'd wanted her too badly for too long, had too many regrets. "Kate," he said, and caught her wrist with his hand. "I don't care." She looked at him doubtfully. "I want you. I don't care about the rest."
She hesitated. He could feel her thready pulse through her skin, feel the skittish energy coiled within her, just ready to bolt. He could feel her make herself stay, put the tentative smile on her lips, wrap her other hand around his. "Okay," she said.
"Okay," he echoed, and picked up his coat, leaving the folders and budgets and paperwork strewn across the desk behind him.
…
"I want to tell you what I did," she said. Her pale skin glowed in the firelight, almost translucent, like marble as it warmed to his touch. A curl tumbled down against her shoulder and when he reached to brush it back, she put her head down and pressed her lips against his hand. "I know I should have told you…before."
"No, Kate," he said. There was still a part of him that wanted to know, the part of him that wanted to know everything about her. But it didn't matter. He loved her no matter what she was running from.
She looked at him with green eyes squeezing against tears, and he wondered if it had ever been this way for her before. If she'd ever been able to be safe and loved just for herself, not for who she was pretending to be. That was why she'd come to him, he thought. Because it was what she needed, not pity or protection or scorn. He didn't ask anything from her. He just gave her what he had.
…
It was another long night at the hospital followed by him falling into bed beside her after dawn, long after she'd already slept and awakened. He reached for her, wrapping his arms around her tight even though he was mostly asleep already, his pants pulled off but his shirt only half-unbuttoned and his socks still on. It happened this way a lot these days. He never worried anymore that she wouldn't be there when he got home. He never feared that he'd wake up and she'd be gone.
So when Jack woke up alone, it hit him hard. His mouth was dry and sour and his ears burned with the words she'd whispered to him in his sleep. A full confession, the whole truth. The thing he'd never longed for because he knew he couldn’t stand it, because the truth about Kate wasn't something he could fix. Even if she stopped running, she would never be free.
…
Jack's eyes were dark and bruised and haunted. Sawyer would have recognized him anywhere. He wondered how long ago Kate had left Jack; which one of them she'd come to first. It pulled the corners of his mouth into the smile Jack would have recognized anywhere. "She was here," Jack said.
Sawyer nodded easily. "Last fall. You?"
"Two nights ago. No, three." Jack blinked rapidly. He hadn't slept since. He was driven. He had to find her.
It hurt more than Sawyer thought it would. She'd come to him first, but she'd left him for Jack. And then there was the missing time in between. Who else had she gone to, who else had she played? Where was she going now?
"We'll never find her."
"You never even looked," Jack sneered, and it was true. If Sawyer had tried to find her, he would have known to go to Jack. Maybe not called him on the telephone, but snuck around, spied on him. He would have found her, too. That was where she'd been.
"That's right, doc, because I'm not as stupid as you."
Jack looked at him, brown eyes clear. "You love her." Sawyer could only turn his face away in answer. It was true; so what? He wasn't gonna say it. It just made Jack more determined. Sawyer had seen that look a million times on the island. "We'll find her."
They got into the car. Sawyer driving, hands resting easy on the steering wheel. Jack edgy and tense in the passenger seat. "We just gonna drive around till she shows up?" Sawyer asked, his tone flat and irritated.
"What was the last thing she said to you?" Jack asked. "Before she left."
"Goodbye," Sawyer replied, hurt and sarcastic. But he swung his eyes to Jack, asking what he couldn't put into words.
"She didn't say goodbye to me," Jack said. "She just left."
"She ever say she loved you?" Sawyer asked. She'd said it to him, hollow words she didn't mean. But there was still hope in his voice.
"She didn't have to," Jack replied.
"That what you think this is?" Sawyer demanded, voice low and threatening. "You think you can find her and make her choose? Seems to me she already made her choice."
"No," Jack said, and Sawyer didn't know what it was he was denying. So he just drove.
They drove all day and half the night. When they stopped, they slept in the car, Jack sprawled in the back and Sawyer sitting up in the front. They washed in the sinks of rest areas and drank convenience store coffee. The yellow stripe down the middle of the highway just kept going, and so did they.
"She ever talk to you?" Jack asked, and Sawyer chuckled. "About the past, about herself?"
"Bits'n pieces," Sawyer drawled, but when he considered it, he didn't know much about her at all. The things he'd put together, the things he'd figured out, and not much more than that. He widened his eyes and glared at Jack. "You?" he demanded.
"She told me what she did."
"Oh, really," Sawyer said. "What'd she up and do a thing like that for?"
"Because I didn't ask," Jack replied fervently.
"I never asked," Sawyer grumbled, but he knew it wasn't the same. She told him she loved him; she told Jack her crime. It was all part of her game. It didn't mean anything. "What'd she do?"
"Killed someone," Jack said. Sawyer started to speak, but the look in Jack's eyes kept him silent. "Someone who needed killing."
Sawyer just nodded and let his foot fall heavier against the accelerator. Every mile bringing them that much closer to her.
"You know where she is," Sawyer said, as they stood near the car in the moonlight.
"I have a good idea," Jack agreed.
"What do you need me for?" Sawyer asked.
"You want to go home? Go home," Jack said, and Sawyer didn't move a muscle.
…
The stillness of the car woke him. Sawyer raised his head. Driver's seat was empty. Jack was gone. They were in the middle of nowhere, not a rest area or a 7-11 in sight. But through the raindrops on the windshield, he could see Jack outside.
Sawyer got out of the car. The wind blew stinging raindrops into his eyes. It was coming down hard, saturating his clothes and staining Jack's face.
"This is where it happened," Jack said, eyes turned upward to the spreading branches of the tree above them.
"She here?" Sawyer asked roughly.
"She was," Jack said, and in a flash of lightning, Sawyer could see the evidence. Tracks left in the mud, a second set of tire prints. "We'll find her," Jack said, more determined than ever.
"You really think you can make her choose?" Sawyer asked.
"I think she's already made her choice," Jack said. "I just hope I'm wrong."
Sawyer wondered who it was Jack thought Kate had chosen. If he was resigned because he thought it was Sawyer, or if he was determined because he thought it was himself. Sawyer knew better. Kate's choice was not to choose. It always had been. That's why she had left them both.
Funny how being with Jack was almost like being with her again. She was right there with them, between them, every step of the way.
End.