Almost Lovers, Never Again//Lost//Kate&Kevin//PG
Title: Almost Lovers, Never Again
Fandom: Lost
Rating: PG
Pairing: Kate/Kevin, implied Kate/Jack
Warning: Season 4 and thereafter speculation.
Summary: Kevin Callis has unfinished business with his "wife".
A/N: Written for lostfichallenge's prompt Unfinished Business.
"What if I told you...I was a fugitive?"
Every day has been the same for Kevin Callis since she left. Wake up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Occasionally, there's the bar hopping with friends. He doesn't like to drink. But he likes getting drunk enough to be unable to remember her. The memories aren't so bad then, just fuzzy little decibels dodging back and forth in the back of his mind. Time does pass, but nothing changes.
"What if I told you that I was on the run for blowing up my father, and that it was only a matter of time until you found out?"
He sits in front of the television set and stares at it. A rerun of M.A.S.H. is on; he’s seen it a hundred times. The electronic box is simply that: a box with moving pictures in it. He looks without seeing. He listens without hearing. He eats his little TV dinner but he doesn’t taste it. There’s just the emptiness where she used to be. A little hole in his heart that can’t be replaced by anything--no sight, no sound, no feeling.
“This isn’t funny--”
“It’s not a joke.”
Numb. That’s what he is now. And when he realizes it, when he sees how far he’s fallen away from the man he once was...the man she once loved (or whom he thought she’d loved), he hates himself. And he hates her. But mostly he hates the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘if onlys’ of that single moment in time that replays again and again in his head like a broken record. Sometimes it gets so bad that he thinks about screaming.
Sometimes he does scream.
“I almost had a baby, Kev. Me. A baby. I can’t do this!”
But the screams are met with silence. The silence is met with more pain. The pain is met with loneliness. And the loneliness torments him in the bitter watches of the night--when there is nothing and no one to combat his thoughts. There is just him, lying in their bed. It wasn’t just his bed, it was hers too. It would always be hers. Just like the lamp she’d bought for the bedroom (“It‘s always so dark in here,” she’d said), or for the rug in the living room (he‘d always thought it was ugly but he‘d never told her so), or for the withered wreath that remained on the door (he’d hadn’t the heart to take it down...not even after all this time).
This house--it wasn’t just his house. It was her home. And without her here with him, he felt like a stranger in it.
“Taco night?! I don’t do taco night!”
“Okay, calm down, Monica...”
“My name’s not Monica!”
He’s flipping channels now. Nothing holds his interest. Why should it? Everything in this little box are just lies made up by rich and powerful people, told in a pleasing way to meet the expectations of the viewers...There’s never any substance. There used to be. He used to love watching TV...with her. Now all he could ever find were sitcoms in which boy meets girl and they fall in love and live happily ever after. There are troubles aplenty in between but everything ends up getting resolved anyway.
He used to wish that real life was more like that; now he doesn’t wish at all.
What use are wishes when you’ve stopped believing that they can come true?
“I love you...But I can’t stay.”
But the funny thing is that sometimes, Life decides to grant your wish even if you haven’t made it.
His world has suddenly turned upside down. He stares at the television set with unblinking eyes. For the first time in too long, he sees her. And he hears her voice. And he feels. God, he feels! And just like that, she’s back in his life...almost as if she’s never left it.
He starts to laugh. He laughs for a long time at the absurdity of the whole thing. But then he’s crying. He’s crying and laughing and thanking God because this is an answer to the prayer he never prayed.
She’s there. On the television set. His wife. The love of his life. Monica--no, she said that wasn’t her name. The broadcaster is calling her Kate. Kate Austen. The name is beautiful...But he thinks it would be more beautiful if it were Kate Callis instead.
He needed to see her.
It didn’t matter how. Or if she would let him see her.
He would.
He had to.
It’s late at night, close to midnight, but it doesn’t matter. He grabs his coat and his keys and gets into his police car. He doesn’t bother locking the door on his way out, such is his rush. He turns on the siren. It’s a breach of protocol but he’s not thinking about his job or protocol. He’s thinking about her and how he needs to get to her. Now.
So he drives to the airport and hops onto the first plane headed to California. It's only by pure luck that he's able to get a seat on the flight...or maybe it's Fate. He isn't sure anymore which one exists, or if they both coexist to bring both fortune and misery to people.
The whole thing is idiotic. But he's done stupider things in his life--like, say, falling in love and marrying a fugitive.
The moment he takes the step off the plane, he feels like he's taken a step into a larger world. A world no longer confined to his living room, route to work, work, and bedroom. But most importantly, he felt as if he was closer to her. In the end, that was all that mattered to him now.
It's not difficult to find her since she's now a celebrity. They call her one of the "Oceanic Six" in reference to being one of six survivors to be rescued from a horrific plane crash. No one knows how they survived when all other passengers perished. Everyone asks questions. No one gets any answers that make sense. The whole thing is one giant mystery...But that doesn't surprise him. She was always an enigma; it was fitting that her life was such now, too.
When he finally manages to get to where she is, she's surrounded by the paparazzi and the press, both of which are vultures circling their prey, prepared to go for her throat at any chance they get. It's loud and he hears questions being shouted from all sides as he pushes through the crowd to get to her; she replies but he can't hear what she's saying. In the back of his mind, he thinks that if he can just get to her...Everything will be okay.
He's just about past the paparazzi when she enters a car, disappears from his view. His breath catches as the car begins to pull away. He can hear himself shouting but the sound is lost amongst the cacophonous roar of the crowd. He'd been so close. So close. Just a few more steps more and he would have been close enough to reach out and touch her, to touch his past regrets and all his hopes for the future.
Kevin doesn't sleep that night. He stays in a run-down motel as all the nicer hotels have been booked up...not that he could afford them on his police man's salary anyway. There's suppose to be a press meeting with the Oceanic Six at one of the plaza's downtown tomorrow...He intends to be there.
But he knows it's not the right moment to approach her when she's sitting up there in front of everyone. He restrains himself, waits for his moment. It will come. It has to. He'll make sure it does...After all, he hasn't traveled this far to go home empty-handed.
And then the moment finally comes.
She's managed to sneak away from everyone...everyone but him.
"Kate," he says, the name sounding foreign on his tongue.
Kate turns and sees him. For a moment, he wonders if maybe she's forgotten him. But when her eyes begin to tear up, he knows she hasn't. And he wants to separate the distance between them, to hold her in his arms like he used to, to kiss the tears away from her cheeks and tell her everything's going to be all right. But he doesn't. He just stands there, staring at her.
"Kevin," she breathes.
He smiles, feeling tears well up in his own eyes. He knows he should say something, anything, but no words come to him.
"What are you doing here?"
He could lie, say he was in the neighborhood and decided to come see the famed Oceanic Six. But he knows she'd see through his lie; she was always good at deducing the truth. And besides, he doubts that that would be what she wants to hear anyway.
So he tells her the truth.
"I came to see you."
"Why?"
"Why?" he repeats, the confusion evident on both of their faces.
She's fighting back the tears and trying to keep her facade strong, he knows. He just doesn't understand why she feels the need to pretend around him now. Maybe more has changed than he thought.
"You shouldn't be here, Kev," she says. "I'm not the woman you married...You don't know me."
He knew quite a deal more than he did when he married her thanks to the news reports.
"It doesn't matter," he says and means it.
She blinks back tears and gives a half-strangled laugh. "How can you say that it doesn't matter? Do you even know what I did?"
"Yes."
"And you don't think it matt--"
"I love you, Kate."
The words come out before he can even hope to stop them. But he doesn't regret having said them. Not one bit.
Several emotions flit across her pretty face: indecision, hurt, relief, sadness. He remains as stiff as stone, waiting for what she will say. Whether she'll break his heart for a second time.
She opens her mouth to say something but then a man rounds the corner. Kevin recognizes him as another of the Oceanic Six--the doctor.
"Kate, is everything alright?" he asks, eying him suspiciously.
She's startled by his sudden appearance but nods, furiously wiping away any vestiges of the tears on her face. "Yeah, yeah. Everything's fine, Jack."
Kevin recognizes the look on the man's face, and the return look on hers. It's the look of love. And his heart sinks into the pit of his stomach. Because he knows. He knows what's changed. In the time that he's been apart from Moni--Kate, she's moved on. When he hasn't been able to. Maybe that was why she had been so complementary to him...Because she triumphed in the places where he failed.
But that was all over now.
"Who's this?" he asks, referring to Kevin.
Kate looks from Jack to Kevin. "Just an old friend."
"Oh, well, nice to meet you," Jack says in an attempt to be polite. His attention is obviously focused on Kate. "Everyone's wondering where you are."
"I just needed a little air, I'm fine." Kate touches his arm, an intimate contact that is not lost on Kevin. "We should probably get back then."
He nods and prepares to escort her back to the press conference. Kate turns to leave but gives him one last look that lingers in his mind, burns into his memory. It tells him everything and nothing at the same time. It leaves him with a feeling of closure even though he knows he's lost. He's lost her for good this time. But it doesn't hurt nearly so much. Because he realizes something.
“I love you...But I can’t stay.”
She was never his to have in the first place.
Fandom: Lost
Rating: PG
Pairing: Kate/Kevin, implied Kate/Jack
Warning: Season 4 and thereafter speculation.
Summary: Kevin Callis has unfinished business with his "wife".
A/N: Written for lostfichallenge's prompt Unfinished Business.
"What if I told you...I was a fugitive?"
Every day has been the same for Kevin Callis since she left. Wake up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Occasionally, there's the bar hopping with friends. He doesn't like to drink. But he likes getting drunk enough to be unable to remember her. The memories aren't so bad then, just fuzzy little decibels dodging back and forth in the back of his mind. Time does pass, but nothing changes.
"What if I told you that I was on the run for blowing up my father, and that it was only a matter of time until you found out?"
He sits in front of the television set and stares at it. A rerun of M.A.S.H. is on; he’s seen it a hundred times. The electronic box is simply that: a box with moving pictures in it. He looks without seeing. He listens without hearing. He eats his little TV dinner but he doesn’t taste it. There’s just the emptiness where she used to be. A little hole in his heart that can’t be replaced by anything--no sight, no sound, no feeling.
“This isn’t funny--”
“It’s not a joke.”
Numb. That’s what he is now. And when he realizes it, when he sees how far he’s fallen away from the man he once was...the man she once loved (or whom he thought she’d loved), he hates himself. And he hates her. But mostly he hates the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘if onlys’ of that single moment in time that replays again and again in his head like a broken record. Sometimes it gets so bad that he thinks about screaming.
Sometimes he does scream.
“I almost had a baby, Kev. Me. A baby. I can’t do this!”
But the screams are met with silence. The silence is met with more pain. The pain is met with loneliness. And the loneliness torments him in the bitter watches of the night--when there is nothing and no one to combat his thoughts. There is just him, lying in their bed. It wasn’t just his bed, it was hers too. It would always be hers. Just like the lamp she’d bought for the bedroom (“It‘s always so dark in here,” she’d said), or for the rug in the living room (he‘d always thought it was ugly but he‘d never told her so), or for the withered wreath that remained on the door (he’d hadn’t the heart to take it down...not even after all this time).
This house--it wasn’t just his house. It was her home. And without her here with him, he felt like a stranger in it.
“Taco night?! I don’t do taco night!”
“Okay, calm down, Monica...”
“My name’s not Monica!”
He’s flipping channels now. Nothing holds his interest. Why should it? Everything in this little box are just lies made up by rich and powerful people, told in a pleasing way to meet the expectations of the viewers...There’s never any substance. There used to be. He used to love watching TV...with her. Now all he could ever find were sitcoms in which boy meets girl and they fall in love and live happily ever after. There are troubles aplenty in between but everything ends up getting resolved anyway.
He used to wish that real life was more like that; now he doesn’t wish at all.
What use are wishes when you’ve stopped believing that they can come true?
“I love you...But I can’t stay.”
But the funny thing is that sometimes, Life decides to grant your wish even if you haven’t made it.
His world has suddenly turned upside down. He stares at the television set with unblinking eyes. For the first time in too long, he sees her. And he hears her voice. And he feels. God, he feels! And just like that, she’s back in his life...almost as if she’s never left it.
He starts to laugh. He laughs for a long time at the absurdity of the whole thing. But then he’s crying. He’s crying and laughing and thanking God because this is an answer to the prayer he never prayed.
She’s there. On the television set. His wife. The love of his life. Monica--no, she said that wasn’t her name. The broadcaster is calling her Kate. Kate Austen. The name is beautiful...But he thinks it would be more beautiful if it were Kate Callis instead.
He needed to see her.
It didn’t matter how. Or if she would let him see her.
He would.
He had to.
It’s late at night, close to midnight, but it doesn’t matter. He grabs his coat and his keys and gets into his police car. He doesn’t bother locking the door on his way out, such is his rush. He turns on the siren. It’s a breach of protocol but he’s not thinking about his job or protocol. He’s thinking about her and how he needs to get to her. Now.
So he drives to the airport and hops onto the first plane headed to California. It's only by pure luck that he's able to get a seat on the flight...or maybe it's Fate. He isn't sure anymore which one exists, or if they both coexist to bring both fortune and misery to people.
The whole thing is idiotic. But he's done stupider things in his life--like, say, falling in love and marrying a fugitive.
The moment he takes the step off the plane, he feels like he's taken a step into a larger world. A world no longer confined to his living room, route to work, work, and bedroom. But most importantly, he felt as if he was closer to her. In the end, that was all that mattered to him now.
It's not difficult to find her since she's now a celebrity. They call her one of the "Oceanic Six" in reference to being one of six survivors to be rescued from a horrific plane crash. No one knows how they survived when all other passengers perished. Everyone asks questions. No one gets any answers that make sense. The whole thing is one giant mystery...But that doesn't surprise him. She was always an enigma; it was fitting that her life was such now, too.
When he finally manages to get to where she is, she's surrounded by the paparazzi and the press, both of which are vultures circling their prey, prepared to go for her throat at any chance they get. It's loud and he hears questions being shouted from all sides as he pushes through the crowd to get to her; she replies but he can't hear what she's saying. In the back of his mind, he thinks that if he can just get to her...Everything will be okay.
He's just about past the paparazzi when she enters a car, disappears from his view. His breath catches as the car begins to pull away. He can hear himself shouting but the sound is lost amongst the cacophonous roar of the crowd. He'd been so close. So close. Just a few more steps more and he would have been close enough to reach out and touch her, to touch his past regrets and all his hopes for the future.
Kevin doesn't sleep that night. He stays in a run-down motel as all the nicer hotels have been booked up...not that he could afford them on his police man's salary anyway. There's suppose to be a press meeting with the Oceanic Six at one of the plaza's downtown tomorrow...He intends to be there.
But he knows it's not the right moment to approach her when she's sitting up there in front of everyone. He restrains himself, waits for his moment. It will come. It has to. He'll make sure it does...After all, he hasn't traveled this far to go home empty-handed.
And then the moment finally comes.
She's managed to sneak away from everyone...everyone but him.
"Kate," he says, the name sounding foreign on his tongue.
Kate turns and sees him. For a moment, he wonders if maybe she's forgotten him. But when her eyes begin to tear up, he knows she hasn't. And he wants to separate the distance between them, to hold her in his arms like he used to, to kiss the tears away from her cheeks and tell her everything's going to be all right. But he doesn't. He just stands there, staring at her.
"Kevin," she breathes.
He smiles, feeling tears well up in his own eyes. He knows he should say something, anything, but no words come to him.
"What are you doing here?"
He could lie, say he was in the neighborhood and decided to come see the famed Oceanic Six. But he knows she'd see through his lie; she was always good at deducing the truth. And besides, he doubts that that would be what she wants to hear anyway.
So he tells her the truth.
"I came to see you."
"Why?"
"Why?" he repeats, the confusion evident on both of their faces.
She's fighting back the tears and trying to keep her facade strong, he knows. He just doesn't understand why she feels the need to pretend around him now. Maybe more has changed than he thought.
"You shouldn't be here, Kev," she says. "I'm not the woman you married...You don't know me."
He knew quite a deal more than he did when he married her thanks to the news reports.
"It doesn't matter," he says and means it.
She blinks back tears and gives a half-strangled laugh. "How can you say that it doesn't matter? Do you even know what I did?"
"Yes."
"And you don't think it matt--"
"I love you, Kate."
The words come out before he can even hope to stop them. But he doesn't regret having said them. Not one bit.
Several emotions flit across her pretty face: indecision, hurt, relief, sadness. He remains as stiff as stone, waiting for what she will say. Whether she'll break his heart for a second time.
She opens her mouth to say something but then a man rounds the corner. Kevin recognizes him as another of the Oceanic Six--the doctor.
"Kate, is everything alright?" he asks, eying him suspiciously.
She's startled by his sudden appearance but nods, furiously wiping away any vestiges of the tears on her face. "Yeah, yeah. Everything's fine, Jack."
Kevin recognizes the look on the man's face, and the return look on hers. It's the look of love. And his heart sinks into the pit of his stomach. Because he knows. He knows what's changed. In the time that he's been apart from Moni--Kate, she's moved on. When he hasn't been able to. Maybe that was why she had been so complementary to him...Because she triumphed in the places where he failed.
But that was all over now.
"Who's this?" he asks, referring to Kevin.
Kate looks from Jack to Kevin. "Just an old friend."
"Oh, well, nice to meet you," Jack says in an attempt to be polite. His attention is obviously focused on Kate. "Everyone's wondering where you are."
"I just needed a little air, I'm fine." Kate touches his arm, an intimate contact that is not lost on Kevin. "We should probably get back then."
He nods and prepares to escort her back to the press conference. Kate turns to leave but gives him one last look that lingers in his mind, burns into his memory. It tells him everything and nothing at the same time. It leaves him with a feeling of closure even though he knows he's lost. He's lost her for good this time. But it doesn't hurt nearly so much. Because he realizes something.
“I love you...But I can’t stay.”
She was never his to have in the first place.