underneath and unexplored, islands and cities I have looked

[hightail]

It isn't until turbulence hits, both unexpected and not, that Kate finally allows herself herself to believe. Jack, despite all insistence to the contrary, was sold from the start. Even if he himself didn't know, she could tell. She saw what it did to him; what it did to them. He's always been a man of greater faith than he ever imagined he could

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[hightail]

After enough time spent on the island, one develops a healthy, nearly essential ability to suspend disbelief. Polar bears in the jungle, a button that needs pushing every one-hundred-and-eight minutes, an enormous mass of killer black smoke. Belief becomes essential to survival, but this doesn't mean that Kate is comfortable with it. She accepts because she must that one runs in the face of the black smoke - staying still gets you dead, and that she knows because she's seen it happen. But it doesn't compel her to believe that the island ever wanted her - her - back, not anymore than she can believe she's really talking to a girl who was killed three years ago.

But much like everything else on the island, no amount of disbelief can negate what she with her own two eyes can see, and that is Alex, alive and well and breathing.

"What - what do you mean?" With both hands firmly beneath her, Kate pushes herself up and into a sitting position, wiping damp strands of hair from her face before looking back up. "The other island," she figures, ignoring the dread building in her gut because she knows that's not what Alex means. It's never as easy as that.

[sallyslingshot]

"I wish," said Alex dryly, because God, wouldn't that have been nice, to be just offshore from the place that always would be her home. It would never have been possible, though. Back there she was a corpse, dead and probably buried, with a bullet in her head. That was what hurt, more than anything - knowing that, while others disappeared and presumably got to go home, this was her last chance, the only thing she would have left. And given that this, so far, was pretty awful, it was sometimes hard to be as grateful as she knew she should be.

Having someone else from home, though, that helped, and it was probably a good thing that she'd gotten here first. Better that she explain than someone who didn't know about the island they'd come from, who would probably have only made it that much more confusing, and would have required giving a hell of a lot of details on Kate's part. At least it was always easy to see a bright side here. The bright side was that she was here.

Sighing, she shook her head, reaching the edge of the water so she could hold out a hand to help Kate to her feet, in case she needed it, but mostly as a formality. If anyone was physically capable, it was Kate Austen. "A different island. Not... Not one of ours. I wish I could tell you how you got here, but no one knows. It's complicated."

[hightail]

What it is, in Kate's opinion, is absolutely fucked up. She harbors a (she would say) healthy amount of disdain for the island, and it isn't out of her own experience alone. It has to do with after, too; with watching Jack deteriorate before her eyes and hearing that Hurley checked himself back into the hospital, with knowing that Sun will never stop missing Jin (while Ji Yeon will never get the chance) and reading Jeremy Bentham's obituary in the paper. Although they managed to escape the island, the island never released its' hold on them, and they could never move on because of it. (Perhaps it's enough to say that she was probably the happiest and most stable of the six, something Kate herself could never have anticipated.)

Finding herself herself stranded once more, not where she intended but on another island altogether, she can't help wondering whose twisted idea of a joke this is. They are being toyed with, that much is painfully obvious; she hesitates to assume Ben is behind this, if only because his daughter is standing right before her, and the last time she saw him, he was certain she was dead. But rather than offer any relief, that realization only further troubles Kate, now forced to wonder just who (or what) could possibly surpass Ben's madness.

"What about the plane?" She asks, simultaneously hopeful and defeated, knowing Alex's answer won't be what she needs it to be. "Did you see the plane crash? Jack, Sun, Hurley, Sayid - are they okay?"

[sallyslingshot]

Frowning, Alex glanced at her feet, shifting her weight, not quite realizing that that was probably answer enough. The Others had always been big on knowledge, on having information that others didn't, or that they could use at the last minute to gain some advantage. Here, she had nothing. She'd been filled in slightly, sure, on what had happened after her death, but none of that was of any use here. She hadn't so much as heard of another plane crash; while it crossed her mind for a moment that Kate might have meant the first one, it was a possibility she ruled out immediately. They'd been strangers then, for one, and beyond that, Kate had recognized her. As it turned out, she wasn't the only one with a lot of explaining to do after all.

"I don't know anything about a plane," she said, glancing up from the ground almost questioningly at Kate, unsure of how this would go over. "It didn't crash here. Believe me, I know how crazy it sounds, but... People just show up like this. Out of nowhere, from all different times, and all different places. You just happened to be... What, coming back?" With the last question, her tone changed considerably, more incredulous than anything else. Just because she wanted to go home didn't mean she would have expected any of the survivors of flight 815 to want to. For that matter, she wasn't even sure if she knew they had left.

[hightail]

"Yeah," answers Kate, the word colored with a small and equally incredulous laugh. Standing, now, at the base of a waterfall with her clothes soaked through to the skin, it seems even harder to believe that she ever actually agreed to come back here. Or go back there, if Alex is to be trusted, and considering the number of times the girl has had Kate's back, there is no reason she wouldn't be.

"We left three years ago," she tells Alex, "right after you… after you came here, I guess. But, apparently, the island wasn't 'done' with us. Jack, Hurley, they were all convinced that we never should have left. I wouldn't have considered coming, but… Claire went missing right before we were rescued, and I had to go back for her. Is - she's not here, is she? This isn't where she ended up, somehow?" It's a stretch, she knows, but it would at least explain Claire's disappearance. It would offer her an alternative to that other explanation; the one she refused to face, the worst case scenario.

[sallyslingshot]

It wasn't the first time Alex had thought about Claire since showing up here, having always felt strangely protective towards the woman and her baby, but this was the first she'd heard of this news, and it was too surprising for her to be able to hide it. Back home, back on her island, she might have been able to do something about it, would probably have been more effective than those who'd only spent a handful of months there could have been. Here, though, it was useless, and knowing that hurt, a feeling that never sat well with her.

"No," she said after a moment, shaking her head, frowning as she tried to think of some possible but not upsetting explanation for what could have happened. "No, she's not here. What about - What happened to Aaron? Is he okay, or is he..." Just what she meant to say, she didn't know, but there was enough implication that she thought Kate would be able to answer. She still wanted to know more about the rest of it, but for now, this had to take precedence. Here, where so little happened, there would be plenty of time to hear about the apparent three years that had passed, what had gotten them to leave and how they'd returned.

[hightail]

The question isn't one Kate is expecting, and having explicitly demanded that Jack never ask it of her, she is just as unprepared when it comes first from Alex. Even worse is that she can't blame Alex, can't hold it against her - she doesn't know, couldn't know, but she deserves to. Even worse, in the end, is that Kate has to answer the question, and she hasn't the slightest idea where to begin.

She looks away, crouching toward the creek with her head in her hands and knees. Reaching down, she splashes some water on her face, feeling hot and uncomfortable for reasons entirely unrelated to the weather. (And if the water dripping down her face disguises the tears that are sure to come, even better.)

"He's okay." But Kate sounds neither certain nor reassuring, as if she's trying to convince herself just as much as she is Alex. The miserable fact is that it's very close to the truth.

"I took him off the island," she says, her focus still trained intently on the ground below. "He's living with Claire's mom, now."