Fic: One (1/1)
Title: One
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sawyer/Juliet, Sawyer/Kate
Word Count: 2,780
Summary: If it helps at all, he’s sorry. For the 50scenes Prompt #28 - Apologize. Sequel to Both Sides Now, but can be read alone. Spoilers through 5.09 - Namaste.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Story title courtesy of U2.
Author’s Notes: Second in a three-story arc, based on the official reintroduction of everyone’s least/most favorite love quadrilateral as of “Namaste.” Kind of angsty, though less so than the last one - though it’s definitely got some wishful thinking on my part, I tried my best to make it line up with emotion implied by the clip of dialogue they gave us in the preview for “He's Our You.” U2’s ‘One’ played an instrumental role in shaping the tone of this fic as I wrote it, so if you can, have a listen whilst you read.
One
The jungle, he’s come to recognize, doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t care what you need, what you want, what you fear; doesn’t mind who you’re with or why. It’s impartial - and only the whispers on the breeze in the dead of night indicate when it’s restless.
Needless to say, the jungle doesn’t give a shit that he’s near the south perimeter, the stars bright against the midnight sky and the dry lengths of vine on the ground crackling beneath his shoes, his eyes trailing the shape of her shoulder blades as she breathes.
“Figured you’d be up.”
She doesn’t turn, doesn’t flinch when he speaks, his own voice a whisper, but loud as a scream against the still; she only hugs her arms against her breasts, forcing the vague outline of her spine against the cotton of her shirt, her palms running soft, sensual circles over the cream of her biceps, inviting him; making one last plea. He swallows hard, and he can taste her, the phantom of her flavor against his tongue, and it makes him stomach churn, how sweet it is.
“You know me too well.”
Her voice is light, guarded - it’s not how he wants to remember her, but he knows he doesn’t have a choice; he can’t have it both ways, and he knows in the back of his mind, - the tug in his chest - that he doesn’t want both anyway. Seeing her again, it didn’t take him long to figure that out, to know for sure.
“What are you doing out here?” The question is unnecessary, and feels forced even if it doesn’t sound like it. He’s grasping at straws, the normally fresh and sea-salted breeze suddenly heavy with moisture, the tang in the air more like tears than the surf as it condenses on his lips, making it that much harder to speak, to watch her refuse to so much as look at him.
“Just thinking,” she replies noncommittally, those perfect shoulders shrugging, her elbows brushing her sides and pulling the hem of her tee up past the curve of her stomach, her jeans slipping with the pull of her skin and teasing him with a peek of her hips.
“S’good for that, inn’t it?” He’s watching the sky when she finally dignifies him with a glance; he feels only slightly cheated, her gaze leaden, strong enough that he can feel it without having to see it himself as she runs hungry, angry, heartbroken eyes - that already knew everything he had come her to tell her - down from his chest to his thighs, taking in what she already knew well enough as if she were seeing him for the very first time, as if sizing him up for the kill.
“Yeah.” They don’t have to elaborate - they both know the Island, and it almost answers for them.
He heaves a sigh, taking one step, and then another, running a hand across his scalp before stuffing his fingers awkwardly into his pockets, pausing as his toes level with hers, parallel against the fallen leaves. If he didn’t have just one thing he needed her to know, he wouldn’t have known what to say. “If it helps at all,” he murmurs, “I’m sorry.”
Her head dips towards him as her eyes cut to the side, her eyebrows shooting to her hairline as she the color drains from her face, making her skin look almost monochromatic in the moonlight, aside from her eyes. “Are you?”
If there’s sarcasm in her tone - which he suspects that there is, at least a little - he doesn’t notice; or maybe, he just ignores it. “For wanting to be with her?” he asks, his voice little more than the exhalation of his breath. “No.” She tenses next to him, the truth of the single syllable resonant and finite; a constant, a mathematical certainty. “But for hurtin’ you, yeah,” he whispers, watching as her muscles stay tight, as she refuses to move, to acknowledge what this means. “I’m sorry.”
He is sorry, she knows that, but she isn’t sure that she knows how to live in a world where what he’s telling her, what he’s implying isn’t a lie; she has to hate him right now, for as much as it’s killing her to love him.
“I love her.” The world disintegrates around her, the trees disappearing, the rolling hills with the valleys pinned beneath them all falling level in a wave of oblivion - this is not how it was supposed to be.
She shocks herself when she answers without malice or anger, just for a moment devoid of everything as the vestiges keeping her from emptiness spill helplessly from her lips in a choked sort of sob: “I know.”
Because it’s obvious. Because she can see that he thinks that she hung the fucking moon, and that she never had a chance in hell of changing his mind. She should never have presumed...
“What does she have that I don’t?” It’s out before she can think about it, but she knows that if she’d stopped, if she’d thought, it wouldn’t have mattered. She would still have asked.
His expression doesn’t change as he processes the question; his lips pursed, his tongue working gently, subtly behind his teeth as he tries to sidestep her, tries to avoid her - tries to lessen the blow and that more than anything is what breaks her, what tries her patience and makes her demand that he deliver the final stroke. “Tell me, James.”
“She woulda never asked me somethin’ like that.” At first, she thinks it’s an observation, just another grain of salt in the wound that makes her inadequate, that makes her the lesser choice, but the intensity in his eyes as he watches her from the corners of them, catching her in his peripheral vision like she’s only blurry, unessential; she knows from the drop in the pit of her stomach, the way the ground falls from beneath her, that this is his answer. “If I went an’ told her that I wanted you instead,” he clarifies, but she only hears the harsh sounds of consonants without their vowels; there’s no sense left in the world. “She’d never ask that.”
She snorts, smirking even though it isn’t funny; she knows how to act just as well as he does, and she can prove it; prove that she can fucking grimace, at the very least, even though he’s ripping her apart. “You give her too much credit.”
His eyes narrow just a tad, and she can tell, even beneath the calm he exudes, the assurance, that she’s hit a nerve; it’s satisfying, and her smile grows just a little more genuine. Now he knows what it feels like. “You give ‘er too little,” he growls, voice rough, eyes on the ground, and she takes the opening, knowing this may well be her last chance.
“You give me too little,” she hisses, turning in an instant, her hands folding against the back of his neck as she crushes them together - it feels wrong from the beginning, but she doesn’t stop - this isn’t them anymore, and she as much as she wants to believe that nothing has changed, the truth is like crystal, carving the back of her eyes; if she’d ever even had him to begin with, it didn’t matter anymore. Her tongue delves past his teeth, and she savors him, her hands sliding across his arms, down his back; she smiles against his lips as she feels him respond, a moment of pure bliss as his body overrides his conscience, overtakes his heart and he moves into her, his tongue sliding along the underside of hers as his neck tilts backwards, his hips arching into her. It’s a moment, though, and only just; it’s gone before her heart can beat, even though it’s racing, and his palms are harsh and angry against her shoulders as he pushes her away; there is no trace of tenderness, no respect for their history, no gentleness hidden underneath the abrasive gesture of brushing her aside. All she can see is the way his chest heaves, more winded than he should be, for reasons other than their stolen kiss.
“Jesus,” he gasps, and when he looks at her, his gaze is piercing through the curtain of his hair, anguish and betrayal and barely-contained rage etched across his features, clouded by the dusting of reluctant, regretful lust. “Why’d you come back?” It’s just a question, but it shatters her - on the surface, it’s innocent, it’s valid, but she can tell that it’s more; the iceberg beneath the surface is wondering why in the hell she’s here, why she bothered.
“I don’t know why everyone else came back,” she confesses, wondering if maybe, maybe she can turn this around, make him see that he’s making a mistake - make him believe that the woman he’s tossing her aside for could ever be considered a mistake at all. “I just know why I did.”
He doesn’t miss a beat, doesn’t even let the sincerity of her confession sink in, she means so little to him now. “You’re kiddin’ yourself, Freckles,” he laughs, and this is the man she knows, the caustic side of him that had been so dampened since she laid eyes on him again, strangled beneath the khaki jumpsuit and shorn off with his hair, his beard. This is James untamed, unfettered; that underlying reservoir of cynicism finally breaking ground again after what she suspected was far too long; it makes the blood pump hot through her veins, the thrill of watching his happily-ever-after fracture under the weight of her presence, her power; the threat that she poses. “You ran for the same reasons we always run,” his eyes gleam almost dangerously, but it makes her uneasy to see the resistance to it that shimmers underneath, the softest implication that this - this calculated, manipulative attack on her - might be more an act than anything else, now; “‘Cause you’d already lost everything worth losin’.”
Act or no, though, he hits the bull’s-eye, and she cannot restrain herself as the images, the memories filter through her mind, proving him right as she fights back tears. “Don’t you dare,” she hisses through clenched teeth, swallowing down the sobs as she bites her tongue for perspective, for control, using the pain as a centering point. “Don’t you talk about it like you know, because you have no fucking clue.”
Reason whispers that if anyone had a clue, it would be him; she just chooses not to listen.
“Game don’t change, sweetheart,” he drawls, as if the accent was as affected as the persona, drawn out in full just for this occasion, this one-night-only return of his infamous former self; “just the players.”
She cringes as a single drop falls from her lashes, something about the word ‘game’ bringing the precious blonde head of her most painful loss back into focus. She refuses to acknowledge the daydream it brings along with it; that with those eyes, and that hair, he could have been James’. “You’re a bastard.”
“That ain’t news.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and tilts her hips with the kind of attitude that used to drive him mad; nonetheless, he can’t help himself as he gives in to the residual reaction to her, can’t help that his lips curl just a tad at the sight. “You talk like this to your little girlfriend?”
Suddenly, he can help himself.
“Fuck you, Kate.” His eyes blaze as he sneers, his face cast in violent shadow, making him look just a little bit frightening; enough to give her pause, to make her think. “Just ‘cause you can’t figure out what the hell you want don’t mean the rest of us got that much trouble making up our goddamn minds.”
There’s something heavy in his words, something that settles over her and makes her feel weak, lightheaded; makes her envious and sorry and feels distinctly like loss as it sinks into her bones, gathers in her chest. It all makes sense, now.
“You really do love her.” She doesn’t expect him to answer, really, and he doesn’t disappoint, but he surprises her when his eyes glaze just a tad, his lips curving upwards with gentle longing, nearly whimsical - it would have been slightly less painful if he’d flat out told her that he was head over heels for the woman, instead of staring past her like that, as if she doesn’t even exist.
“You’re not the man I thought you were.” Her tone is bitter, condescending, but she should know better than to try to fool him, try to bait him - he knows her better than she knows herself, sometimes, knows what people like them try to hide; sharp corners beneath rough edges, and he sees it all plain as day.
“Good.”
If it wasn’t clear before, it is now, there in the subtle line of hard and undeniable finality coloring the sheer satisfaction beneath that one word: she’d fallen for a man named Sawyer, and that man was as good as dead. What people like her, and people like he used to be, have always been inclined to conceal are things he’s somehow managed to square with in ways she’ll never know, and the realization's a blow to the gut, knocking the wind right out of her.
“If it hadn’t been so long?” she asks, her pride shrinking into nothing as she gives up on everything, gives up on trying to keep up appearances and putting up a fight - she’s not strong enough to win, and she doesn’t have anything left with which to try. “If it hadn’t taken three years?”
“S’no use speculatin’,” he shakes his head, and she wants to fall of a fucking cliff as she hears herself choke back a wayward sob, tears making their way down her cheeks unchecked. “Whatever happened, happened, Kate,” he breathes, keeping his distance despite the echoing gravity of his words. “What’s done is done.”
And that’s that. She can’t for the life of her think of anything more she can do, anything more she can give. She’s lost, and she doesn’t so much accept defeat as she allows it to swallow her whole.
“So...” she forces herself to speak, because the silence is so deafening that it hurts. “You and Juliet?”
“Mmhmm.” Regardless of everything, thinking about her brings a smile to his face, one Kate has never seen him wear before. It’s disconcerting, for all the wonder in it, the brilliance of it.
“How long?”
He shifts his weight, seeming to consider the question. “Long enough.” And as unsatisfying an answer as it is, it tells her everything she needs to know. She nods, trying to accept it, but the emotion gathering at the back of her throat, tightening so that it’s hard for her to breathe, has other plans.
“I thought...” she gasps, and she doesn’t know how to finish because she had thought so many things, every single day; because he understands what she means, even if he doesn’t know the details - that much, she can tell, hasn’t changed.
“I know,” he soothes, but doesn’t come any closer. “And that’s why I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t care to hear his apology, because it can’t come close how sorry she feels; it can’t even begin to compare.
“It’s gettin’ late,” he continues, looking off to an imaginary dawn bristling on the horizon, as if there’s some tangible reason for him to walk away held in the distant promise of the sun. “You should catch some shuteye.”
“Yeah,” Kate agrees, studying the soles of her boots. “You should get home.” Unspoken, but lingering in the air, is the accusation of ’home to her’ that they both ignore.
She hopes for a touch, a hug; maybe a kiss on the cheek if she’s lucky, but he barely even takes a step towards her before turning on his heels, his voice low and rough, sticking harsh against his throat as he mutters, the sounds broken and faint in the night, whispering endlessly long after he’s gone:
“Goodnight, Kate.”
They’re the cruelest words she’s ever heard.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sawyer/Juliet, Sawyer/Kate
Word Count: 2,780
Summary: If it helps at all, he’s sorry. For the 50scenes Prompt #28 - Apologize. Sequel to Both Sides Now, but can be read alone. Spoilers through 5.09 - Namaste.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Story title courtesy of U2.
Author’s Notes: Second in a three-story arc, based on the official reintroduction of everyone’s least/most favorite love quadrilateral as of “Namaste.” Kind of angsty, though less so than the last one - though it’s definitely got some wishful thinking on my part, I tried my best to make it line up with emotion implied by the clip of dialogue they gave us in the preview for “He's Our You.” U2’s ‘One’ played an instrumental role in shaping the tone of this fic as I wrote it, so if you can, have a listen whilst you read.
One
The jungle, he’s come to recognize, doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t care what you need, what you want, what you fear; doesn’t mind who you’re with or why. It’s impartial - and only the whispers on the breeze in the dead of night indicate when it’s restless.
Needless to say, the jungle doesn’t give a shit that he’s near the south perimeter, the stars bright against the midnight sky and the dry lengths of vine on the ground crackling beneath his shoes, his eyes trailing the shape of her shoulder blades as she breathes.
“Figured you’d be up.”
She doesn’t turn, doesn’t flinch when he speaks, his own voice a whisper, but loud as a scream against the still; she only hugs her arms against her breasts, forcing the vague outline of her spine against the cotton of her shirt, her palms running soft, sensual circles over the cream of her biceps, inviting him; making one last plea. He swallows hard, and he can taste her, the phantom of her flavor against his tongue, and it makes him stomach churn, how sweet it is.
“You know me too well.”
Her voice is light, guarded - it’s not how he wants to remember her, but he knows he doesn’t have a choice; he can’t have it both ways, and he knows in the back of his mind, - the tug in his chest - that he doesn’t want both anyway. Seeing her again, it didn’t take him long to figure that out, to know for sure.
“What are you doing out here?” The question is unnecessary, and feels forced even if it doesn’t sound like it. He’s grasping at straws, the normally fresh and sea-salted breeze suddenly heavy with moisture, the tang in the air more like tears than the surf as it condenses on his lips, making it that much harder to speak, to watch her refuse to so much as look at him.
“Just thinking,” she replies noncommittally, those perfect shoulders shrugging, her elbows brushing her sides and pulling the hem of her tee up past the curve of her stomach, her jeans slipping with the pull of her skin and teasing him with a peek of her hips.
“S’good for that, inn’t it?” He’s watching the sky when she finally dignifies him with a glance; he feels only slightly cheated, her gaze leaden, strong enough that he can feel it without having to see it himself as she runs hungry, angry, heartbroken eyes - that already knew everything he had come her to tell her - down from his chest to his thighs, taking in what she already knew well enough as if she were seeing him for the very first time, as if sizing him up for the kill.
“Yeah.” They don’t have to elaborate - they both know the Island, and it almost answers for them.
He heaves a sigh, taking one step, and then another, running a hand across his scalp before stuffing his fingers awkwardly into his pockets, pausing as his toes level with hers, parallel against the fallen leaves. If he didn’t have just one thing he needed her to know, he wouldn’t have known what to say. “If it helps at all,” he murmurs, “I’m sorry.”
Her head dips towards him as her eyes cut to the side, her eyebrows shooting to her hairline as she the color drains from her face, making her skin look almost monochromatic in the moonlight, aside from her eyes. “Are you?”
If there’s sarcasm in her tone - which he suspects that there is, at least a little - he doesn’t notice; or maybe, he just ignores it. “For wanting to be with her?” he asks, his voice little more than the exhalation of his breath. “No.” She tenses next to him, the truth of the single syllable resonant and finite; a constant, a mathematical certainty. “But for hurtin’ you, yeah,” he whispers, watching as her muscles stay tight, as she refuses to move, to acknowledge what this means. “I’m sorry.”
He is sorry, she knows that, but she isn’t sure that she knows how to live in a world where what he’s telling her, what he’s implying isn’t a lie; she has to hate him right now, for as much as it’s killing her to love him.
“I love her.” The world disintegrates around her, the trees disappearing, the rolling hills with the valleys pinned beneath them all falling level in a wave of oblivion - this is not how it was supposed to be.
She shocks herself when she answers without malice or anger, just for a moment devoid of everything as the vestiges keeping her from emptiness spill helplessly from her lips in a choked sort of sob: “I know.”
Because it’s obvious. Because she can see that he thinks that she hung the fucking moon, and that she never had a chance in hell of changing his mind. She should never have presumed...
“What does she have that I don’t?” It’s out before she can think about it, but she knows that if she’d stopped, if she’d thought, it wouldn’t have mattered. She would still have asked.
His expression doesn’t change as he processes the question; his lips pursed, his tongue working gently, subtly behind his teeth as he tries to sidestep her, tries to avoid her - tries to lessen the blow and that more than anything is what breaks her, what tries her patience and makes her demand that he deliver the final stroke. “Tell me, James.”
“She woulda never asked me somethin’ like that.” At first, she thinks it’s an observation, just another grain of salt in the wound that makes her inadequate, that makes her the lesser choice, but the intensity in his eyes as he watches her from the corners of them, catching her in his peripheral vision like she’s only blurry, unessential; she knows from the drop in the pit of her stomach, the way the ground falls from beneath her, that this is his answer. “If I went an’ told her that I wanted you instead,” he clarifies, but she only hears the harsh sounds of consonants without their vowels; there’s no sense left in the world. “She’d never ask that.”
She snorts, smirking even though it isn’t funny; she knows how to act just as well as he does, and she can prove it; prove that she can fucking grimace, at the very least, even though he’s ripping her apart. “You give her too much credit.”
His eyes narrow just a tad, and she can tell, even beneath the calm he exudes, the assurance, that she’s hit a nerve; it’s satisfying, and her smile grows just a little more genuine. Now he knows what it feels like. “You give ‘er too little,” he growls, voice rough, eyes on the ground, and she takes the opening, knowing this may well be her last chance.
“You give me too little,” she hisses, turning in an instant, her hands folding against the back of his neck as she crushes them together - it feels wrong from the beginning, but she doesn’t stop - this isn’t them anymore, and she as much as she wants to believe that nothing has changed, the truth is like crystal, carving the back of her eyes; if she’d ever even had him to begin with, it didn’t matter anymore. Her tongue delves past his teeth, and she savors him, her hands sliding across his arms, down his back; she smiles against his lips as she feels him respond, a moment of pure bliss as his body overrides his conscience, overtakes his heart and he moves into her, his tongue sliding along the underside of hers as his neck tilts backwards, his hips arching into her. It’s a moment, though, and only just; it’s gone before her heart can beat, even though it’s racing, and his palms are harsh and angry against her shoulders as he pushes her away; there is no trace of tenderness, no respect for their history, no gentleness hidden underneath the abrasive gesture of brushing her aside. All she can see is the way his chest heaves, more winded than he should be, for reasons other than their stolen kiss.
“Jesus,” he gasps, and when he looks at her, his gaze is piercing through the curtain of his hair, anguish and betrayal and barely-contained rage etched across his features, clouded by the dusting of reluctant, regretful lust. “Why’d you come back?” It’s just a question, but it shatters her - on the surface, it’s innocent, it’s valid, but she can tell that it’s more; the iceberg beneath the surface is wondering why in the hell she’s here, why she bothered.
“I don’t know why everyone else came back,” she confesses, wondering if maybe, maybe she can turn this around, make him see that he’s making a mistake - make him believe that the woman he’s tossing her aside for could ever be considered a mistake at all. “I just know why I did.”
He doesn’t miss a beat, doesn’t even let the sincerity of her confession sink in, she means so little to him now. “You’re kiddin’ yourself, Freckles,” he laughs, and this is the man she knows, the caustic side of him that had been so dampened since she laid eyes on him again, strangled beneath the khaki jumpsuit and shorn off with his hair, his beard. This is James untamed, unfettered; that underlying reservoir of cynicism finally breaking ground again after what she suspected was far too long; it makes the blood pump hot through her veins, the thrill of watching his happily-ever-after fracture under the weight of her presence, her power; the threat that she poses. “You ran for the same reasons we always run,” his eyes gleam almost dangerously, but it makes her uneasy to see the resistance to it that shimmers underneath, the softest implication that this - this calculated, manipulative attack on her - might be more an act than anything else, now; “‘Cause you’d already lost everything worth losin’.”
Act or no, though, he hits the bull’s-eye, and she cannot restrain herself as the images, the memories filter through her mind, proving him right as she fights back tears. “Don’t you dare,” she hisses through clenched teeth, swallowing down the sobs as she bites her tongue for perspective, for control, using the pain as a centering point. “Don’t you talk about it like you know, because you have no fucking clue.”
Reason whispers that if anyone had a clue, it would be him; she just chooses not to listen.
“Game don’t change, sweetheart,” he drawls, as if the accent was as affected as the persona, drawn out in full just for this occasion, this one-night-only return of his infamous former self; “just the players.”
She cringes as a single drop falls from her lashes, something about the word ‘game’ bringing the precious blonde head of her most painful loss back into focus. She refuses to acknowledge the daydream it brings along with it; that with those eyes, and that hair, he could have been James’. “You’re a bastard.”
“That ain’t news.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and tilts her hips with the kind of attitude that used to drive him mad; nonetheless, he can’t help himself as he gives in to the residual reaction to her, can’t help that his lips curl just a tad at the sight. “You talk like this to your little girlfriend?”
Suddenly, he can help himself.
“Fuck you, Kate.” His eyes blaze as he sneers, his face cast in violent shadow, making him look just a little bit frightening; enough to give her pause, to make her think. “Just ‘cause you can’t figure out what the hell you want don’t mean the rest of us got that much trouble making up our goddamn minds.”
There’s something heavy in his words, something that settles over her and makes her feel weak, lightheaded; makes her envious and sorry and feels distinctly like loss as it sinks into her bones, gathers in her chest. It all makes sense, now.
“You really do love her.” She doesn’t expect him to answer, really, and he doesn’t disappoint, but he surprises her when his eyes glaze just a tad, his lips curving upwards with gentle longing, nearly whimsical - it would have been slightly less painful if he’d flat out told her that he was head over heels for the woman, instead of staring past her like that, as if she doesn’t even exist.
“You’re not the man I thought you were.” Her tone is bitter, condescending, but she should know better than to try to fool him, try to bait him - he knows her better than she knows herself, sometimes, knows what people like them try to hide; sharp corners beneath rough edges, and he sees it all plain as day.
“Good.”
If it wasn’t clear before, it is now, there in the subtle line of hard and undeniable finality coloring the sheer satisfaction beneath that one word: she’d fallen for a man named Sawyer, and that man was as good as dead. What people like her, and people like he used to be, have always been inclined to conceal are things he’s somehow managed to square with in ways she’ll never know, and the realization's a blow to the gut, knocking the wind right out of her.
“If it hadn’t been so long?” she asks, her pride shrinking into nothing as she gives up on everything, gives up on trying to keep up appearances and putting up a fight - she’s not strong enough to win, and she doesn’t have anything left with which to try. “If it hadn’t taken three years?”
“S’no use speculatin’,” he shakes his head, and she wants to fall of a fucking cliff as she hears herself choke back a wayward sob, tears making their way down her cheeks unchecked. “Whatever happened, happened, Kate,” he breathes, keeping his distance despite the echoing gravity of his words. “What’s done is done.”
And that’s that. She can’t for the life of her think of anything more she can do, anything more she can give. She’s lost, and she doesn’t so much accept defeat as she allows it to swallow her whole.
“So...” she forces herself to speak, because the silence is so deafening that it hurts. “You and Juliet?”
“Mmhmm.” Regardless of everything, thinking about her brings a smile to his face, one Kate has never seen him wear before. It’s disconcerting, for all the wonder in it, the brilliance of it.
“How long?”
He shifts his weight, seeming to consider the question. “Long enough.” And as unsatisfying an answer as it is, it tells her everything she needs to know. She nods, trying to accept it, but the emotion gathering at the back of her throat, tightening so that it’s hard for her to breathe, has other plans.
“I thought...” she gasps, and she doesn’t know how to finish because she had thought so many things, every single day; because he understands what she means, even if he doesn’t know the details - that much, she can tell, hasn’t changed.
“I know,” he soothes, but doesn’t come any closer. “And that’s why I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t care to hear his apology, because it can’t come close how sorry she feels; it can’t even begin to compare.
“It’s gettin’ late,” he continues, looking off to an imaginary dawn bristling on the horizon, as if there’s some tangible reason for him to walk away held in the distant promise of the sun. “You should catch some shuteye.”
“Yeah,” Kate agrees, studying the soles of her boots. “You should get home.” Unspoken, but lingering in the air, is the accusation of ’home to her’ that they both ignore.
She hopes for a touch, a hug; maybe a kiss on the cheek if she’s lucky, but he barely even takes a step towards her before turning on his heels, his voice low and rough, sticking harsh against his throat as he mutters, the sounds broken and faint in the night, whispering endlessly long after he’s gone:
“Goodnight, Kate.”
They’re the cruelest words she’s ever heard.