the fool or the fool who follows him (Ben/Kate, PG-13)
Title: the fool or the fool who follows him
Fandom: LOST
Characters: Ben/Kate
Rating: PG-13 (character death)
Word Count: 399
Summary: He's heard this joke before. (wrote this for weatheredlaw a while back and never posted it here. Playing With Matches verse.)
"Funny," she says, and laughs. "Mama always said I'd die young."
Ben doesn't see the joke, but he should have guessed the punch line. Kate's not getting any younger. Her house is spotless, scrubbed clean of all signs of life.
But she doesn't look sick. She doesn't act sick. There's barely a trace of silver in the hair he yanks on. She pushes back just as hard, harder, air knocked from his lungs and teeth marks left along his jaw.
He insists the tests are wrong, that she'll get better, that he'll make her better. This is nothing but a prank call, a practical joke gone too far (hello, this is destiny, is your heart running?).
Kate's ready to pack her bags and tell him to have a nice life. Ben breaks plates, spills coffee on her carpet to show someone still lives here. She rolls her eyes. "What am I going to do with you?"
"What am I going to do without you?" he sneers. She throws the rag into the laundry with a snicker. He scowls. It wasn't a rhetorical question.
Ben digs desperate fingers into her unwrinkled skin. Between breathless groans she chides him for his tantrum. "Not all of us get to live forever."
He knows, and she knows he knows, she's not talking about herself. To Kate, falling apart means relief and freedom and escape. Having no one left to lose means she can run away now. They both know who not all of us are, and his hand twitches, curling the sheets into an imaginary weapon.
Cruelty will get her everywhere.
"What about me?" he chokes, and her kisses along his chest sound like bullets popping. "You've still got me."
Kate says "What about you?" because he can never have anything nice. He's heard this joke before, it goes: what do you get when you cross Ben Linus with a loaded gun?
He still doesn't think it's funny, not when her hair tickles his elbow and not when her laughter leaves pinpricks of blood across the pillow.
Ben will spend years staring at toy airplanes and silly music boxes before realizing two things. One, there's a never-ending pattern in his life, a running gag - he'll never really love a woman until after she's gone (liar, liar, heart's on fire).
Two, every beat stabbing against his ribs sounds just like her.
(funny. funny. funny)
Fandom: LOST
Characters: Ben/Kate
Rating: PG-13 (character death)
Word Count: 399
Summary: He's heard this joke before. (wrote this for weatheredlaw a while back and never posted it here. Playing With Matches verse.)
"Funny," she says, and laughs. "Mama always said I'd die young."
Ben doesn't see the joke, but he should have guessed the punch line. Kate's not getting any younger. Her house is spotless, scrubbed clean of all signs of life.
But she doesn't look sick. She doesn't act sick. There's barely a trace of silver in the hair he yanks on. She pushes back just as hard, harder, air knocked from his lungs and teeth marks left along his jaw.
He insists the tests are wrong, that she'll get better, that he'll make her better. This is nothing but a prank call, a practical joke gone too far (hello, this is destiny, is your heart running?).
Kate's ready to pack her bags and tell him to have a nice life. Ben breaks plates, spills coffee on her carpet to show someone still lives here. She rolls her eyes. "What am I going to do with you?"
"What am I going to do without you?" he sneers. She throws the rag into the laundry with a snicker. He scowls. It wasn't a rhetorical question.
Ben digs desperate fingers into her unwrinkled skin. Between breathless groans she chides him for his tantrum. "Not all of us get to live forever."
He knows, and she knows he knows, she's not talking about herself. To Kate, falling apart means relief and freedom and escape. Having no one left to lose means she can run away now. They both know who not all of us are, and his hand twitches, curling the sheets into an imaginary weapon.
Cruelty will get her everywhere.
"What about me?" he chokes, and her kisses along his chest sound like bullets popping. "You've still got me."
Kate says "What about you?" because he can never have anything nice. He's heard this joke before, it goes: what do you get when you cross Ben Linus with a loaded gun?
He still doesn't think it's funny, not when her hair tickles his elbow and not when her laughter leaves pinpricks of blood across the pillow.
Ben will spend years staring at toy airplanes and silly music boxes before realizing two things. One, there's a never-ending pattern in his life, a running gag - he'll never really love a woman until after she's gone (liar, liar, heart's on fire).
Two, every beat stabbing against his ribs sounds just like her.
(funny. funny. funny)