Lost Fic: It's Okay to Have Scars (They Will Make You Who You Are) Jack/Kate
Happy Birthday angela_weber! I’m not entirely sure this fic is a worthy birthday present, you write such beautiful Jack/Kate fics and I’ve never tried my hand at the pairing at all, but I hope it’s not too dreadful. Either way I hope you have an amazing day!
Title: It’s Okay to Have Scars (They Will Make You Who You Are)
Pairing: Jack/Kate
Rating: PG-13
Words: 936
Warnings: Angsty.
Spoilers: Through “The Incident”.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Title from the song “Christmas TV” by Slow Club.
Summary: Kate fixed him once.
A/N: This was written for the wonderful angela_weber’s birthday.
The first time Jack saw Kate he was bleeding. She came stumbling out of the jungle, one hand absently rubbing her wrists. Later when he found himself staring down at a grainy mugshot, he realized that must have been when she had taken off the cuffs. But at that moment she was just a girl, a beautiful girl with two good hands that he needed her to use to fix him because as always he could fix everyone but himself.
He asked her if she had ever sewn anything before. She told him a story about curtains. Sometimes he wonders if this was a lie. He’ll never bother to ask.
***
Her hands shook while she was stitching him up. He felt every plunge of the needle, every tug of the thread. The sensation made him nauseous. He talked to distract himself as much as to distract her. He’s never quite sure why he told her about the girl on the operating table. That’s never been a story he liked to tell. It was too vivid, too raw; it tore at him every time he told it. But she was scared and so was he and he was already bleeding so he figured it wouldn’t hurt to open one more wound.
It worked. She pushed through the fear and sewed him up. Fifteen stitches, standard black.
Later he’ll ask her to repeat the story to him over a walkie talkie, a sign that she’s safe and free and on her way home. She’ll sob through the words.
He wasn’t bleeding that time, not anywhere you could see.
***
He remembers examining her work afterwards. It was sloppy and uneven, he knew it would scar. That didn’t bother him. He would have remembered that day anyway, but there was something almost comforting about having a tangible reminder. Not so much of the day, but of the moment, of her.
He’ll look at that scar a hundred times in three years and every time he’ll think of Kate. After they ended, after he started drinking himself towards a sweet oblivion he began to feel the ghost of her fingers against his side. Sometimes he swore he could feel the phantom sting of metal knitting his flesh back together again. He would rub a hand over the mark and pour himself another drink and pray to forget about the island, about her, about everything he gave up.
He didn’t.
He couldn’t.
***
When they were together in between the bouts of being apart, he loved that scar and so did she. They would lie in bed together, and she would trace the white line with her fingertips and smile. They didn’t have to acknowledge what it meant, no one would bring up the day, it was just something unspoken between them, something private.
It was her mark. It bound them together. It would always be there and she would always be with him. Even when she wasn’t.
***
He has another scar. Kate always avoided that one, her fingers moving past it with barely a touch. It was someone else’s mark and it meant something else entirely. He tried not to look at it too much himself. It wasn’t that he wanted to forget the one who made it. He didn’t (or maybe he did.)
It was something else. That scar was a reminder that he had built his house on sand, that it wasn’t going to last. That it couldn’t. They were lying to themselves, their life was no more real than one of Aaron’s games of make believe.
It was always going to end and every time he looked at that scar; every time he thought about the woman who gave it to him, it became a little harder to pretend.
Until one day he couldn’t pretend anymore so he walked away.
But he never stopped looking back.
***
He’ll always love her. He always has. It doesn’t make any sense. She’s hurt him, she’s left him, she’s broken him and he’s given as good as he’s got. Maybe more. But she fixed him once upon time when it was just the two of them, bloody and bruised, kneeling in the hot sand on an island a thousand miles from anywhere.
She put him back together. She made him whole again. He never thought anyone would do that, but Kate did and he can’t help but love her for it.
***
The bomb went off and for a moment everything stopped. It was just a split second, just long enough for Jack to know with absolute certainty that he had made a terrible mistake.
But it was too late to stop it. She was already gone.
***
The first time Jack saw Kate he was standing in an airport. She was flanked on either side by two guards, another man walked in front of her, a cocky, satisfied grin on his face. She was in handcuffs.
Later he’ll see her on the news. The caption below her picture will read Kate Austen. It won’t mean anything to him.
But at that moment she’s just a girl. Just a beautiful girl, with a sad face and he can’t imagine that she could have done anything so wrong that it would require her to be led out of LAX with three armed guards.
He’ll feel a pain in his side then, a dull ache. He’ll ignore it, brush it off, he has to get his father to the funeral home, but the feeling will stay with him for the rest of the day.
Even if he can’t remember, he won’t be able to forget.