Fic, Lost: Wedding Day (Sarah, Kate, Jack/Juliet), PG13, for lostfichallenge
So I went for the Great Mix Up of the century, in the end. Thanks to lenina20 who made me realize that it was actually possible to mix both of my ideas up ;) now I hope it's not too off.
Title: Wedding Day
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairing: Sarah, Kate, Jack/Juliet
Word counting: 3736
Disclaimer: knowing Darlton, this will never happen.
Spoilers: For Eggtown, the Sarah episodes and general S4.
Summary: They look so happy and pleased with each other that Kate can’t refrain from thinking about her own wedding and a sudden feeling of sadness rushes all over her. Because she knows that if she had caught the ball when it was in her court, it may have been her on that aisle.
A/N: for lostfichallenge #69, beginnings and endings; also for 10_shakespeare, "How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!". I seriously hope that I've not jumped the shark and that I've done a decent thing with Kate & Sarah, who are definitely not my favorite characters to date. Heavily inspired by Bon Jovi's Wedding Day since I had the idea listening to it; it's a demo from ten years ago or such but it's nonetheless an awesome song, IMHO. Oh, and the courthouse really exists and the number is the real one with two numbers changed. I googled it ;)
The invitation is delivered one morning while she’s ironing her husband’s new shirt.
When the doorbell rings, Sarah doesn’t move; she knows the maid will be getting the door. Sure, she could also do the ironing, but Sarah has to stay at home these days, she’s got another child due in three months; she has found out that she actually likes ironing. It keeps her mind relaxed, it’s something useful to do, she doesn’t mind standing up once in a while since she doesn’t stand up too much, these days.
The maid arrives a couple of minutes later, a white envelope in her hands; Sarah recognizes it on the spot. It’s an invitation for a wedding, she knows because it was exactly the same when she got married for the second time. She had written and chosen the art paper herself; she knows how an invitation looks like.
“It’s an invitation, Maggie?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Strange. I don’t know anyone getting married, these days. Who is it from? You can open it. Read it.”
The maid nods and carefully opens the envelope, taking out the card, while Sarah keeps on ironing the shirt.
“Jack Shephard and Juliet Burke request the joy of your presence at their wedding celebration, Friday the twenty-second of May, two thousand and nine, at half past eleven in the morning, at the LAX Courthouse, 11701 La Cienega Blvd., 6th floor. We look forward to celebrating with you. Please reply by Friday 6th, 2009 at (310) 727-6232.”
Sarah’s hand halts suddenly and she looks at the maid in utter disbelief.
“What? Who you said it was from?”
“Jack Shephard and Juliet Burke.”
Sarah leaves the ironing table and snatches the card from her hands, reading it all over again.
Jack Shephard and Juliet Burke request the joy of your presence at their wedding celebration.
She can’t believe it. Last time she saw Jack, he was borderline crazy to say the best and she didn’t even know why he’d keep her on his emergency contacts list. He was a shell of a man and maybe even that definition was too good to describe him.
Jack Shephard and Juliet Burke.
She doesn’t even know who Juliet Burke is.
Jack Shephard.
Jack is getting married again.
Sarah can’t really wrap her head around the concept, but more than that, she can’t see why he’d have invited her. She really doesn’t know.
Then she turns and sees that she had left the iron turned on.
She lifts it up, but the shirt is definitely ruined, a black triangular shape smelling of burnt cloth imprinted in the soft white cotton.
--
That afternoon, when she’s alone again, she googles Juliet Burke.
Sarah hasn’t read any news since a while, especially since Jack’s accident. She had figured that if he died, she’d have gotten the invitation to his funeral. These days, a funeral invitation was the most she could have expected receiving from Jack. Surely not a wedding one.
She skims through the pages and finds out that he had actually returned to the Pacific, along with another two of the Oceanic Six and a seemingly wealthy English girl. Sayid Jarrah and Hugo Reyes were the Oceanic Six, the girl was named Penny Widmore. Sarah doesn’t remember ever hearing their names, so she skims and finds out that they came back on the main land about a year ago along with some other people. Then the news halted and she had to search more carefully, trying to find something else; the best she comes across is a small article in an English newspaper published in the Fijis where there are also the names of the people that had come with them.
James Ford, Juliet Burke, Desmond Hume, Jin Soo-Kwon, Daniel Faraday, Frank Lapidus, Charlotte Lewis, Danielle and Alex Rosseau, Rose and Bernard Nadler.
Not a single one of these means a thing to her. She googles Juliet Burke and finds out that she was a fertility researcher, very well known in her field, who suddenly disappeared some time in 2001. Sarah doesn’t have an idea of how they could know each other. She doesn’t find anything else after and she shrugs, figuring it was as much as she was going to get.
Sarah takes the card again, turning it in her hands over and over, trying to figure out what this means.
Jack is getting married.
It shouldn’t actually take over her mind as it’s doing. It was over between them. Over. Kaputt. Sarah doesn’t know why she actually is caring. She should just throw the card away, it’s not like she is ever going to attend, but she can’t.
It’s not much about Jack getting married. She got married herself, it’s only fair that he can. It’s not even about how could someone want to get married to him, Sarah can get it. She had wanted it once, right? Even if the Jack she had known was... well, saying different from the one she saw last time would have been an euphemism, indeed.
It’s about Jack inviting her. Sarah doesn’t get why he would. Right, he was missing when she got married, but she can admit without any problem that she wouldn’t have even thought about inviting him to her wedding. Not in a million years, especially since what happened last time she saw him before the wedding.
Is it his way to tell her that he has buried the axe? Is it to shove in her face that what she could do, he can, too?
She wonders if he’s really happy with this Juliet girl or if he’s marrying her just because he thinks he can fix something in her.
Sarah doesn’t really regret anything, come to think about it; she and Jack, they never had been happy together, not after the honeymoon was over and she knows she wasn’t the one who could ever make him happy. Likewise in his regards. She still thinks she was right in not giving him that ride home.
But there’s a little voice in the back of her mind that is telling her that she’s disappointed with this. She doesn’t think that Jack, after last time, was in condition to fix anything. It means that this Juliet has to have fixed him someway. It means that someone has succeeded where Sarah has failed.
She shakes her head. It’s nonsense. She can’t do much more than wishing Jack to be more lucky than he was at the first round and she’s way past caring right now. She stands up and goes near the trash bin, ready to throw the card away.
But then she doesn’t.
Suddenly she wants to see it with her own eyes. She wants to see who this Juliet is, what happened, how is it possible. She wants to see who won where she failed.
Even if it’s the most insane idea she could ever have.
She picks up the phone and calls the number in the lower right corner of the card. When some employee of the courthouse answers, Sarah says she’s going to attend the wedding.
--
Kate stands at the corner of the road, wearing a scarf around her head and dark glasses to cover her eyes.
She is here, but she said she wouldn’t attend when the invitation arrived and no one knows she’s come, in the end.
She hadn’t heard from Jack since that day at the airport until they came back from the island.
Sayid had called her a couple of months later telling her what they were up to and she had said no. She couldn’t leave, not right then. It was suicide and she had Aaron to take care of; there really wasn’t the need for questioning, there.
She had expected not to hear from them ever again. Surely she hadn’t expected Hurley calling her six months later telling her that they had found them and that they were coming back to Los Angeles shortly. He had given her a day and a time.
She had gone.
She didn’t bring Aaron, then; she left him with his nanny, figuring it’d have been too confusing. Now he’s at school. Good, because she wouldn’t have brought him anyway.
Claire wasn’t going to be there and she knew it. No hard feelings.
She remembers it all.
Jack didn’t have that beard anymore but he was worn out, thinner than she remembered, pale where his skin wasn’t sun-burnt; Juliet had been near him, unruly blonde hair looking dull and dry, her clothes way larger than they should have looked on her.
Daniel and Charlotte seemed fairly okay, but they stuck suspiciously together and Dan glanced in Desmond’s direction way too often to be a coincidence; Desmond himself couldn’t shake an amazed look out of his eyes whoever and whatever he laid his stare upon. She had turned her eyes when she saw that he was holding hands with a pretty blonde woman. It hurt, she didn’t know why but it hurt.
Sayid was in their proximities and for the two seconds their eyes met, Kate felt almost ashamed. Sayid had told her what he had been up to during that only phone call and now she guessed that he caught his occasion for partially making up for it. She didn’t catch it, but she didn’t regret it. She still didn’t.
Sun had thrown herself in Jin’s arms and that was a given; hell, she had thought he was dead for three years. That was the minimum, right? She had come from Korea as soon as Hurley gave her the news, even if she hadn’t her baby girl with her; but Kate could guess why she left her at home.
Hurley was trying to show Danielle and Alex around, along with Rose and Bernard; but it wasn’t until Kate’s eyes had met Sawyer’s that she started regretting she hadn’t gone.
He was wearing new clothes, he had washed his hair, he looked cleaner than she ever saw him; for a second he had looked at her and his eyes were clouded in something that was halfway between regret, contempt and resignation; he had shaken his head before she could speak and turned his back, going in Sayid’s direction. She hadn’t heard from him, since.
She had been asking, though. Mostly it was Hurley who told her all the news. She knows that Sawyer had been visiting someone in Albuquerque and that after a year he was practically commuting and staying there in the weekends. Before the invitation came, she didn’t understand why didn’t he go there altogether or why didn’t he stay in Los Angeles altogether; after it came, she had understood.
Hurley told her that Juliet didn’t go back to Miami and that she has moved in with Jack. Kate had shrugged at that. She had seen Jack before he left the island, before he left for the island, when he arrived after the Oceanic Six rescue and when he was in his downward spyral; at one point between the third and the fourth he had relented and he had come to her house. He had seen Aaron, indeed.
What they had, it didn’t last because his guilt issues eventually tore them apart; Kate was surprised enough that Juliet forgave him for leaving in the first place, but she hadn’t expected for her to stay in Los Angeles, even less with him.
She had thought Juliet was just giving in to her Florence Nightgale instincts and that she was going to admit defeat, sooner or later; to Kate, Jack was too far gone and for how much he could have improved when they were all back from the island, there was no way he was going to be the man she had fallen in love with the first time.
Kate admits it without any problems; she had been in love with Jack. She probably still was, someway; but with the Jack she had known just after the crash. She realized that at the time he had seemed everything she had wanted to be, everything she had wanted a man to be; but it wasn’t enough because in the end, Jack was a human being like she was and surely he had his number of flaws, like she did.
They didn’t work together, they couldn’t work together, not with everything that happened standing between them; she’s absolutely aware of it, too.
She stands on the corner and waits for the door to open.
She knows that there they didn’t invite many people. Everyone from the island, sure; that friend of Jack’s, Mark; probably Jack’s mother and Juliet’s sister. She doesn’t think that anyone else is there.
Hurley told her that Mark and Sawyer were witnesses for Jack while for Juliet there was her sister; he told her that Jack said he’d have loved to have her there, was she really sure she couldn’t make it?
No, I can’t, she had answered making up some lie about something Aaron had in school.
Hurley had also told her that Sawyer had helped Juliet getting Jack back on track and while Kate found it hard to believe at first, understanding that it was the main reason he hadn’t definitely moved to Albuquerque, but now, while she waits, it really doesn’t look so unlikely.
Kate waits and tries to imagine what’s going on inside. She can picture Juliet in a silk white gown, Jack with a dark gray tux (gray looked good on him, she thinks), exchanging vows and rings. It makes her sick. She pictures Sawyer in a suit next to Jack, signing the marriage contract. It makes her even sicker.
The door of the building opens and she was completely wrong.
All the people she thought would be there are there, no more, no less. But it’s much more informal than she’d have thought. Everyone is dressed in t-shirts and jeans, or with something just a bit more pretentious. Jack’s mother is probably the only person actually wearing gold earrings.
Jack is wearing dark new jeans and a cotton burgundy shirt, no ties, no suit, no jacket; his hair is slightly longer than last time she saw him, he isn’t so thin anymore, his skin is not so pale, he looks like health embodied when he smiles in that way of his, ducking his head on his right, his eyes shining with happiness when he looks at Juliet.
Juliet, she doesn’t have a gown or a veil nor anything so pretentious; she’s wearing silk trousers. Their color is delicate and warm, something close to the lighter orange shade of the sun at dusk; her shirt is of the same color, always silk, slightly open on her chest. She’s less thin than she remembered, too, but the weight she put on is all healthy. Her hair is always long and curly but it's not dull or dry and it seems to glow, almost. It’s a warm day and the sun is shining, after all. The only jewel she’s wearing is the silver band on her left anular; between her hands, she holds a bouquet of white roses.
When they descend the last steps out of the door, she throws the bouquet behind her shoulders; then Jack takes her cheeks in his hands and kisses her, fully, without hesitation. Juliet leans in, her fingers brushing across his shoulders. They look so happy and pleased with each other that Kate can’t refrain from thinking about her own wedding and a sudden feeling of sadness rushes all over her. Because she knows that if she had caught the ball when it was in her court, it may have been her on that aisle.
For how much the thought terrifies her, she can’t help it. Then she sees who caught Juliet’s bouquet and she stops dead in her tracks.
It’s a little girl, maybe eight years old, or seven; surely not more than nine. She isn’t really dressed like a bridesmaid, though, since she wears jeans and sneakers and a short sleeved clear blue shirt. She’s blonde and when she smiles in delight at having caught the flowers, dimples show in her cheeks. Kate shivers.
It can’t be, she thinks, but it is.
Ten seconds or so later, Cassidy comes out of the courthouse and kneels next to the girl, telling her something; then Kate sees him and it’s a stab to her heart.
Sawyer wears light jeans and a black t-shirt with Bob Marley’s face in the middle of everything; Kate wonders for a second who the hell would attend a wedding dressed like that, but she guesses that the orders were to stay casual and that he has followed them to the letter.
He cut his hair a bit, even if is still is long; he exchanges a look with Cassidy, then smiles at her and Kate can see that while it’s not the kind of smile that two people in love exchange, because it isn’t, it’s the kind that two people on fairly good terms and probably close to friendship exchange.
So he was the one, she thinks distractedly while he picks the little girl in his arms, looking at the happy couple down there who is still kissing. Rose and Bernard are there giving support (Kate thinks that she heard Rose screaming something like go girl at Juliet, but she can’t be sure of it); she glances at Sun and Jin for a second, at Hurley who is sort of crying (why else would he fussle with a tissue?), at Sayid who’s watching everything while he leans on the doorstep, exchanging a few words with Desmond and Penny. Kate gets nearer, they still didn’t recognize her and she decides to take the risk; she was right, they have a band around their left anulars, too.
Someone says something about moving and get everyone’s sorry ass back at Hurley’s so that they can have lunch (seems like he was the wedding refreshment’s host) and everyone leaves; in two minutes, the road is just as empty as it was before.
Kate takes the scarf and the glasses down; she didn’t realize she had started crying.
Because what hurts most right now is that she could’ve been at least part of this and now she regrets missing it.
She doesn’t know what hurts most, that Sawyer has seemingly found what he was searching for without her (but she left him behind, wasn’t it fair?) or that Jack married Juliet.
She didn’t think that someone could make it, that someone could help him pick up the pieces, because he was way past it; but someone did and it wasn’t her. If Juliet had done it, she could have, too. But she hadn’t and while she didn’t regret her course of actions until now, she can’t help feeling regret stabbing her again.
For not helping Jack, sure, but also for leaving Sawyer behind. She sees now that they shouldn’t have done it; when their eyes had met on that deck a year ago, Kate had understood that he had been hoping for her to come back.
She hadn’t and that’s where she had lost every chance with him. On the island, she was sure they’d have never worked but she couldn’t avoid giving in to that burning attraction she had always felt towards Sawyer, whether she wanted it or not; now both of them have moved on. Kate guesses she has to move on, too.
A second later, a blonde pregnant woman, probably in her last term, leaves the palace. Kate has never seen her, but she guesses she was at the ceremony. And she catches the occasion.
“Sorry, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, go ahead. Nothing too long though, I really need to go home.”
“Yeah, sure. You were at the wedding?”
“I was. I still don’t know why I went, truth to be told. Why are you interested?”
“I was... friends with the groom, but couldn’t make it.”
“Small world. I was his ex-wife.”
So this is Sarah, Kate thinks.
“Really? You must have been in good terms.”
“Well, not really. I don’t know why he invited me, if I have to tell you. But I wanted to see it with my own eyes and well.. I had thought he was a lost cause. I think I was wrong. Maybe that girl is better for him than I could ever have been.”
“Was it a nice ceremony?”
“Well, yes. It was very laid back and uninformal and the second witness, that guy with the concert shirt, surely made a peculiar speech when it was his turn, but it was nice, yes. They weren’t too long on the vows, but I thought they were effective. It was a bit of a crazy atmosphere, but worth going to, I guess. I’d have never thought he was going to get married, of everything. Well, I think I’ll go now, my cab’s waiting.”
“Oh, sure. Have a good ride.”
Sarah nodded and left, going towards the cab on the corner; Kate guesses that this is the end.
It’s the end to whatever she and Jack had once; if they meet again, they won’t be strangers, not that, but they won’t be as close as they were once, either.
It’s the end to whatever could have been between her and Sawyer; he’s alright now, really alright, and Kate won’t try to mess with it. It isn’t her place, though it’s really ironic to see who was the father of Cassidy’s girl.
For both of them, a new chapter had begun; Kate guesses she can’t be a vital part of it, not right now.
She takes her cellphone out, then dials Jack’s number. She already knows it’s turned off.
This is Jack Shephard’s voice mail. Please leave a message, I’ll call you back as soon as possible.
“Jack, this is me. I just... I just wanted to tell you that I’m...”
She feels her voice crack. She tries to keep it steady, even if the more she speaks, the easier it is. In the end, she almost feels relieved. Maybe it’s good to close this chapter for her, too, and starting another one.
“... I’ve been told that it was a nice ceremony and well, good luck for everything. If you and Juliet ever want to visit, just call me, alright? And... I’m sorry I missed your wedding day.”
End.
Title: Wedding Day
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairing: Sarah, Kate, Jack/Juliet
Word counting: 3736
Disclaimer: knowing Darlton, this will never happen.
Spoilers: For Eggtown, the Sarah episodes and general S4.
Summary: They look so happy and pleased with each other that Kate can’t refrain from thinking about her own wedding and a sudden feeling of sadness rushes all over her. Because she knows that if she had caught the ball when it was in her court, it may have been her on that aisle.
A/N: for lostfichallenge #69, beginnings and endings; also for 10_shakespeare, "How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!". I seriously hope that I've not jumped the shark and that I've done a decent thing with Kate & Sarah, who are definitely not my favorite characters to date. Heavily inspired by Bon Jovi's Wedding Day since I had the idea listening to it; it's a demo from ten years ago or such but it's nonetheless an awesome song, IMHO. Oh, and the courthouse really exists and the number is the real one with two numbers changed. I googled it ;)
The invitation is delivered one morning while she’s ironing her husband’s new shirt.
When the doorbell rings, Sarah doesn’t move; she knows the maid will be getting the door. Sure, she could also do the ironing, but Sarah has to stay at home these days, she’s got another child due in three months; she has found out that she actually likes ironing. It keeps her mind relaxed, it’s something useful to do, she doesn’t mind standing up once in a while since she doesn’t stand up too much, these days.
The maid arrives a couple of minutes later, a white envelope in her hands; Sarah recognizes it on the spot. It’s an invitation for a wedding, she knows because it was exactly the same when she got married for the second time. She had written and chosen the art paper herself; she knows how an invitation looks like.
“It’s an invitation, Maggie?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Strange. I don’t know anyone getting married, these days. Who is it from? You can open it. Read it.”
The maid nods and carefully opens the envelope, taking out the card, while Sarah keeps on ironing the shirt.
“Jack Shephard and Juliet Burke request the joy of your presence at their wedding celebration, Friday the twenty-second of May, two thousand and nine, at half past eleven in the morning, at the LAX Courthouse, 11701 La Cienega Blvd., 6th floor. We look forward to celebrating with you. Please reply by Friday 6th, 2009 at (310) 727-6232.”
Sarah’s hand halts suddenly and she looks at the maid in utter disbelief.
“What? Who you said it was from?”
“Jack Shephard and Juliet Burke.”
Sarah leaves the ironing table and snatches the card from her hands, reading it all over again.
Jack Shephard and Juliet Burke request the joy of your presence at their wedding celebration.
She can’t believe it. Last time she saw Jack, he was borderline crazy to say the best and she didn’t even know why he’d keep her on his emergency contacts list. He was a shell of a man and maybe even that definition was too good to describe him.
Jack Shephard and Juliet Burke.
She doesn’t even know who Juliet Burke is.
Jack Shephard.
Jack is getting married again.
Sarah can’t really wrap her head around the concept, but more than that, she can’t see why he’d have invited her. She really doesn’t know.
Then she turns and sees that she had left the iron turned on.
She lifts it up, but the shirt is definitely ruined, a black triangular shape smelling of burnt cloth imprinted in the soft white cotton.
--
That afternoon, when she’s alone again, she googles Juliet Burke.
Sarah hasn’t read any news since a while, especially since Jack’s accident. She had figured that if he died, she’d have gotten the invitation to his funeral. These days, a funeral invitation was the most she could have expected receiving from Jack. Surely not a wedding one.
She skims through the pages and finds out that he had actually returned to the Pacific, along with another two of the Oceanic Six and a seemingly wealthy English girl. Sayid Jarrah and Hugo Reyes were the Oceanic Six, the girl was named Penny Widmore. Sarah doesn’t remember ever hearing their names, so she skims and finds out that they came back on the main land about a year ago along with some other people. Then the news halted and she had to search more carefully, trying to find something else; the best she comes across is a small article in an English newspaper published in the Fijis where there are also the names of the people that had come with them.
James Ford, Juliet Burke, Desmond Hume, Jin Soo-Kwon, Daniel Faraday, Frank Lapidus, Charlotte Lewis, Danielle and Alex Rosseau, Rose and Bernard Nadler.
Not a single one of these means a thing to her. She googles Juliet Burke and finds out that she was a fertility researcher, very well known in her field, who suddenly disappeared some time in 2001. Sarah doesn’t have an idea of how they could know each other. She doesn’t find anything else after and she shrugs, figuring it was as much as she was going to get.
Sarah takes the card again, turning it in her hands over and over, trying to figure out what this means.
Jack is getting married.
It shouldn’t actually take over her mind as it’s doing. It was over between them. Over. Kaputt. Sarah doesn’t know why she actually is caring. She should just throw the card away, it’s not like she is ever going to attend, but she can’t.
It’s not much about Jack getting married. She got married herself, it’s only fair that he can. It’s not even about how could someone want to get married to him, Sarah can get it. She had wanted it once, right? Even if the Jack she had known was... well, saying different from the one she saw last time would have been an euphemism, indeed.
It’s about Jack inviting her. Sarah doesn’t get why he would. Right, he was missing when she got married, but she can admit without any problem that she wouldn’t have even thought about inviting him to her wedding. Not in a million years, especially since what happened last time she saw him before the wedding.
Is it his way to tell her that he has buried the axe? Is it to shove in her face that what she could do, he can, too?
She wonders if he’s really happy with this Juliet girl or if he’s marrying her just because he thinks he can fix something in her.
Sarah doesn’t really regret anything, come to think about it; she and Jack, they never had been happy together, not after the honeymoon was over and she knows she wasn’t the one who could ever make him happy. Likewise in his regards. She still thinks she was right in not giving him that ride home.
But there’s a little voice in the back of her mind that is telling her that she’s disappointed with this. She doesn’t think that Jack, after last time, was in condition to fix anything. It means that this Juliet has to have fixed him someway. It means that someone has succeeded where Sarah has failed.
She shakes her head. It’s nonsense. She can’t do much more than wishing Jack to be more lucky than he was at the first round and she’s way past caring right now. She stands up and goes near the trash bin, ready to throw the card away.
But then she doesn’t.
Suddenly she wants to see it with her own eyes. She wants to see who this Juliet is, what happened, how is it possible. She wants to see who won where she failed.
Even if it’s the most insane idea she could ever have.
She picks up the phone and calls the number in the lower right corner of the card. When some employee of the courthouse answers, Sarah says she’s going to attend the wedding.
--
Kate stands at the corner of the road, wearing a scarf around her head and dark glasses to cover her eyes.
She is here, but she said she wouldn’t attend when the invitation arrived and no one knows she’s come, in the end.
She hadn’t heard from Jack since that day at the airport until they came back from the island.
Sayid had called her a couple of months later telling her what they were up to and she had said no. She couldn’t leave, not right then. It was suicide and she had Aaron to take care of; there really wasn’t the need for questioning, there.
She had expected not to hear from them ever again. Surely she hadn’t expected Hurley calling her six months later telling her that they had found them and that they were coming back to Los Angeles shortly. He had given her a day and a time.
She had gone.
She didn’t bring Aaron, then; she left him with his nanny, figuring it’d have been too confusing. Now he’s at school. Good, because she wouldn’t have brought him anyway.
Claire wasn’t going to be there and she knew it. No hard feelings.
She remembers it all.
Jack didn’t have that beard anymore but he was worn out, thinner than she remembered, pale where his skin wasn’t sun-burnt; Juliet had been near him, unruly blonde hair looking dull and dry, her clothes way larger than they should have looked on her.
Daniel and Charlotte seemed fairly okay, but they stuck suspiciously together and Dan glanced in Desmond’s direction way too often to be a coincidence; Desmond himself couldn’t shake an amazed look out of his eyes whoever and whatever he laid his stare upon. She had turned her eyes when she saw that he was holding hands with a pretty blonde woman. It hurt, she didn’t know why but it hurt.
Sayid was in their proximities and for the two seconds their eyes met, Kate felt almost ashamed. Sayid had told her what he had been up to during that only phone call and now she guessed that he caught his occasion for partially making up for it. She didn’t catch it, but she didn’t regret it. She still didn’t.
Sun had thrown herself in Jin’s arms and that was a given; hell, she had thought he was dead for three years. That was the minimum, right? She had come from Korea as soon as Hurley gave her the news, even if she hadn’t her baby girl with her; but Kate could guess why she left her at home.
Hurley was trying to show Danielle and Alex around, along with Rose and Bernard; but it wasn’t until Kate’s eyes had met Sawyer’s that she started regretting she hadn’t gone.
He was wearing new clothes, he had washed his hair, he looked cleaner than she ever saw him; for a second he had looked at her and his eyes were clouded in something that was halfway between regret, contempt and resignation; he had shaken his head before she could speak and turned his back, going in Sayid’s direction. She hadn’t heard from him, since.
She had been asking, though. Mostly it was Hurley who told her all the news. She knows that Sawyer had been visiting someone in Albuquerque and that after a year he was practically commuting and staying there in the weekends. Before the invitation came, she didn’t understand why didn’t he go there altogether or why didn’t he stay in Los Angeles altogether; after it came, she had understood.
Hurley told her that Juliet didn’t go back to Miami and that she has moved in with Jack. Kate had shrugged at that. She had seen Jack before he left the island, before he left for the island, when he arrived after the Oceanic Six rescue and when he was in his downward spyral; at one point between the third and the fourth he had relented and he had come to her house. He had seen Aaron, indeed.
What they had, it didn’t last because his guilt issues eventually tore them apart; Kate was surprised enough that Juliet forgave him for leaving in the first place, but she hadn’t expected for her to stay in Los Angeles, even less with him.
She had thought Juliet was just giving in to her Florence Nightgale instincts and that she was going to admit defeat, sooner or later; to Kate, Jack was too far gone and for how much he could have improved when they were all back from the island, there was no way he was going to be the man she had fallen in love with the first time.
Kate admits it without any problems; she had been in love with Jack. She probably still was, someway; but with the Jack she had known just after the crash. She realized that at the time he had seemed everything she had wanted to be, everything she had wanted a man to be; but it wasn’t enough because in the end, Jack was a human being like she was and surely he had his number of flaws, like she did.
They didn’t work together, they couldn’t work together, not with everything that happened standing between them; she’s absolutely aware of it, too.
She stands on the corner and waits for the door to open.
She knows that there they didn’t invite many people. Everyone from the island, sure; that friend of Jack’s, Mark; probably Jack’s mother and Juliet’s sister. She doesn’t think that anyone else is there.
Hurley told her that Mark and Sawyer were witnesses for Jack while for Juliet there was her sister; he told her that Jack said he’d have loved to have her there, was she really sure she couldn’t make it?
No, I can’t, she had answered making up some lie about something Aaron had in school.
Hurley had also told her that Sawyer had helped Juliet getting Jack back on track and while Kate found it hard to believe at first, understanding that it was the main reason he hadn’t definitely moved to Albuquerque, but now, while she waits, it really doesn’t look so unlikely.
Kate waits and tries to imagine what’s going on inside. She can picture Juliet in a silk white gown, Jack with a dark gray tux (gray looked good on him, she thinks), exchanging vows and rings. It makes her sick. She pictures Sawyer in a suit next to Jack, signing the marriage contract. It makes her even sicker.
The door of the building opens and she was completely wrong.
All the people she thought would be there are there, no more, no less. But it’s much more informal than she’d have thought. Everyone is dressed in t-shirts and jeans, or with something just a bit more pretentious. Jack’s mother is probably the only person actually wearing gold earrings.
Jack is wearing dark new jeans and a cotton burgundy shirt, no ties, no suit, no jacket; his hair is slightly longer than last time she saw him, he isn’t so thin anymore, his skin is not so pale, he looks like health embodied when he smiles in that way of his, ducking his head on his right, his eyes shining with happiness when he looks at Juliet.
Juliet, she doesn’t have a gown or a veil nor anything so pretentious; she’s wearing silk trousers. Their color is delicate and warm, something close to the lighter orange shade of the sun at dusk; her shirt is of the same color, always silk, slightly open on her chest. She’s less thin than she remembered, too, but the weight she put on is all healthy. Her hair is always long and curly but it's not dull or dry and it seems to glow, almost. It’s a warm day and the sun is shining, after all. The only jewel she’s wearing is the silver band on her left anular; between her hands, she holds a bouquet of white roses.
When they descend the last steps out of the door, she throws the bouquet behind her shoulders; then Jack takes her cheeks in his hands and kisses her, fully, without hesitation. Juliet leans in, her fingers brushing across his shoulders. They look so happy and pleased with each other that Kate can’t refrain from thinking about her own wedding and a sudden feeling of sadness rushes all over her. Because she knows that if she had caught the ball when it was in her court, it may have been her on that aisle.
For how much the thought terrifies her, she can’t help it. Then she sees who caught Juliet’s bouquet and she stops dead in her tracks.
It’s a little girl, maybe eight years old, or seven; surely not more than nine. She isn’t really dressed like a bridesmaid, though, since she wears jeans and sneakers and a short sleeved clear blue shirt. She’s blonde and when she smiles in delight at having caught the flowers, dimples show in her cheeks. Kate shivers.
It can’t be, she thinks, but it is.
Ten seconds or so later, Cassidy comes out of the courthouse and kneels next to the girl, telling her something; then Kate sees him and it’s a stab to her heart.
Sawyer wears light jeans and a black t-shirt with Bob Marley’s face in the middle of everything; Kate wonders for a second who the hell would attend a wedding dressed like that, but she guesses that the orders were to stay casual and that he has followed them to the letter.
He cut his hair a bit, even if is still is long; he exchanges a look with Cassidy, then smiles at her and Kate can see that while it’s not the kind of smile that two people in love exchange, because it isn’t, it’s the kind that two people on fairly good terms and probably close to friendship exchange.
So he was the one, she thinks distractedly while he picks the little girl in his arms, looking at the happy couple down there who is still kissing. Rose and Bernard are there giving support (Kate thinks that she heard Rose screaming something like go girl at Juliet, but she can’t be sure of it); she glances at Sun and Jin for a second, at Hurley who is sort of crying (why else would he fussle with a tissue?), at Sayid who’s watching everything while he leans on the doorstep, exchanging a few words with Desmond and Penny. Kate gets nearer, they still didn’t recognize her and she decides to take the risk; she was right, they have a band around their left anulars, too.
Someone says something about moving and get everyone’s sorry ass back at Hurley’s so that they can have lunch (seems like he was the wedding refreshment’s host) and everyone leaves; in two minutes, the road is just as empty as it was before.
Kate takes the scarf and the glasses down; she didn’t realize she had started crying.
Because what hurts most right now is that she could’ve been at least part of this and now she regrets missing it.
She doesn’t know what hurts most, that Sawyer has seemingly found what he was searching for without her (but she left him behind, wasn’t it fair?) or that Jack married Juliet.
She didn’t think that someone could make it, that someone could help him pick up the pieces, because he was way past it; but someone did and it wasn’t her. If Juliet had done it, she could have, too. But she hadn’t and while she didn’t regret her course of actions until now, she can’t help feeling regret stabbing her again.
For not helping Jack, sure, but also for leaving Sawyer behind. She sees now that they shouldn’t have done it; when their eyes had met on that deck a year ago, Kate had understood that he had been hoping for her to come back.
She hadn’t and that’s where she had lost every chance with him. On the island, she was sure they’d have never worked but she couldn’t avoid giving in to that burning attraction she had always felt towards Sawyer, whether she wanted it or not; now both of them have moved on. Kate guesses she has to move on, too.
A second later, a blonde pregnant woman, probably in her last term, leaves the palace. Kate has never seen her, but she guesses she was at the ceremony. And she catches the occasion.
“Sorry, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, go ahead. Nothing too long though, I really need to go home.”
“Yeah, sure. You were at the wedding?”
“I was. I still don’t know why I went, truth to be told. Why are you interested?”
“I was... friends with the groom, but couldn’t make it.”
“Small world. I was his ex-wife.”
So this is Sarah, Kate thinks.
“Really? You must have been in good terms.”
“Well, not really. I don’t know why he invited me, if I have to tell you. But I wanted to see it with my own eyes and well.. I had thought he was a lost cause. I think I was wrong. Maybe that girl is better for him than I could ever have been.”
“Was it a nice ceremony?”
“Well, yes. It was very laid back and uninformal and the second witness, that guy with the concert shirt, surely made a peculiar speech when it was his turn, but it was nice, yes. They weren’t too long on the vows, but I thought they were effective. It was a bit of a crazy atmosphere, but worth going to, I guess. I’d have never thought he was going to get married, of everything. Well, I think I’ll go now, my cab’s waiting.”
“Oh, sure. Have a good ride.”
Sarah nodded and left, going towards the cab on the corner; Kate guesses that this is the end.
It’s the end to whatever she and Jack had once; if they meet again, they won’t be strangers, not that, but they won’t be as close as they were once, either.
It’s the end to whatever could have been between her and Sawyer; he’s alright now, really alright, and Kate won’t try to mess with it. It isn’t her place, though it’s really ironic to see who was the father of Cassidy’s girl.
For both of them, a new chapter had begun; Kate guesses she can’t be a vital part of it, not right now.
She takes her cellphone out, then dials Jack’s number. She already knows it’s turned off.
This is Jack Shephard’s voice mail. Please leave a message, I’ll call you back as soon as possible.
“Jack, this is me. I just... I just wanted to tell you that I’m...”
She feels her voice crack. She tries to keep it steady, even if the more she speaks, the easier it is. In the end, she almost feels relieved. Maybe it’s good to close this chapter for her, too, and starting another one.
“... I’ve been told that it was a nice ceremony and well, good luck for everything. If you and Juliet ever want to visit, just call me, alright? And... I’m sorry I missed your wedding day.”
End.