(no subject)
Title: I Just Want You To Know Who I Am
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Kate, Jack.
Word Count: 601
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: Tabula Rasa through House Of The Rising Sun
Prompt: Day 6: An uncharacteristic urge to confide for
lostsquee (late).
Summary: Kate has spent the bulk of her life lying.
She doesn’t understand it.
Kate has spent the bulk of her life lying. First about little things, so she didn’t get in trouble. About doing homework. About where exactly her and Tom had wandered off to. Then it was the big things. Like blowing up Wayne. Like the reasons why she did what she did.
She’s always had trust issues, all the way back to when she was five and Sam, her father (because that’s who he is to her; blood ties be damned), up and left her. She was too young to understand the whys. She might still be. All she knew was he was gone, and there was her mother with this man who beat her, and Kate didn’t - doesn’t - understand how you can stay with someone like that. She didn’t understand why her mother didn’t just up and leave.
Then again, Kate’s come to realize that she and her mother are two very different people, in just about every way possible.
Sometimes she wishes that she made more of an effort to get to know her mother. Maybe then she would understand. Maybe then she could have a reason, a real reason, why she stayed with Wayne, why she turned Kate in. Her mother always called it love. It’s one of the reasons Kate refuses to let herself love, to be loved. It makes you do stupid things. It’s not worth it. Not if it turns out like that.
If she’d gotten to know her mother then maybe her mother would’ve gotten to know her.
Maybe then they would’ve understood each other.
Maybe their possibly last goodbye wouldn’t have ended in her mother yelling for help as Kate fled down the hospital corridor.
No one understands Kate, because she’s never really bothered to let anybody in. She’d been too young, or she hadn’t felt comfortable with it, hadn’t felt a sense of trust. She hadn’t felt safe.
She sits by the shore, on this island, this island that has shown itself as dangerous, as the anti-paradise, and with Jack next to her she realizes she hasn’t felt this safe since Tom.
The words roll off her lips like the waves that roll into the shore, “I want to tell you what I did - why he was after me.”
This is it.
If it were television she’s fairly sure this is where the dramatic music comes in, something deep and instrumental. Here it’s the sound of the sea, the chatter of the survivors further up the beach.
She waits for a reaction, waits for a nod, her own cue to go on.
She doesn’t get it.
“I don’t want to know.”
There were a lot of ways she could’ve seen this conversation going. That wasn’t one of them.
“It doesn’t matter, Kate, who we were - what we did before this, before the crash. It doesn’t really -“ he pauses, finding words, the right words. Perfection. “Three days ago we all died. We should all be able to start over.”
It’s the opportunity she’s wanted all her life. Until now. You can’t start over until you’ve let go of the past. She’s still holding on to every last detail.
But she nods, tells him “okay”, because she’s over thinking it now. Thinking maybe it’s better that he doesn’t know.
And they’re fine. For now.
Days later and he’s asking what made her this way. Now he wants to hear it. Now he wants to understand. On his terms.
She can’t do that.
“You had your chance to know.”
He really did.
He’ll never know how good he almost had it.
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Kate, Jack.
Word Count: 601
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: Tabula Rasa through House Of The Rising Sun
Prompt: Day 6: An uncharacteristic urge to confide for
lostsquee (late).
Summary: Kate has spent the bulk of her life lying.
She doesn’t understand it.
Kate has spent the bulk of her life lying. First about little things, so she didn’t get in trouble. About doing homework. About where exactly her and Tom had wandered off to. Then it was the big things. Like blowing up Wayne. Like the reasons why she did what she did.
She’s always had trust issues, all the way back to when she was five and Sam, her father (because that’s who he is to her; blood ties be damned), up and left her. She was too young to understand the whys. She might still be. All she knew was he was gone, and there was her mother with this man who beat her, and Kate didn’t - doesn’t - understand how you can stay with someone like that. She didn’t understand why her mother didn’t just up and leave.
Then again, Kate’s come to realize that she and her mother are two very different people, in just about every way possible.
Sometimes she wishes that she made more of an effort to get to know her mother. Maybe then she would understand. Maybe then she could have a reason, a real reason, why she stayed with Wayne, why she turned Kate in. Her mother always called it love. It’s one of the reasons Kate refuses to let herself love, to be loved. It makes you do stupid things. It’s not worth it. Not if it turns out like that.
If she’d gotten to know her mother then maybe her mother would’ve gotten to know her.
Maybe then they would’ve understood each other.
Maybe their possibly last goodbye wouldn’t have ended in her mother yelling for help as Kate fled down the hospital corridor.
No one understands Kate, because she’s never really bothered to let anybody in. She’d been too young, or she hadn’t felt comfortable with it, hadn’t felt a sense of trust. She hadn’t felt safe.
She sits by the shore, on this island, this island that has shown itself as dangerous, as the anti-paradise, and with Jack next to her she realizes she hasn’t felt this safe since Tom.
The words roll off her lips like the waves that roll into the shore, “I want to tell you what I did - why he was after me.”
This is it.
If it were television she’s fairly sure this is where the dramatic music comes in, something deep and instrumental. Here it’s the sound of the sea, the chatter of the survivors further up the beach.
She waits for a reaction, waits for a nod, her own cue to go on.
She doesn’t get it.
“I don’t want to know.”
There were a lot of ways she could’ve seen this conversation going. That wasn’t one of them.
“It doesn’t matter, Kate, who we were - what we did before this, before the crash. It doesn’t really -“ he pauses, finding words, the right words. Perfection. “Three days ago we all died. We should all be able to start over.”
It’s the opportunity she’s wanted all her life. Until now. You can’t start over until you’ve let go of the past. She’s still holding on to every last detail.
But she nods, tells him “okay”, because she’s over thinking it now. Thinking maybe it’s better that he doesn’t know.
And they’re fine. For now.
Days later and he’s asking what made her this way. Now he wants to hear it. Now he wants to understand. On his terms.
She can’t do that.
“You had your chance to know.”
He really did.
He’ll never know how good he almost had it.