For Queen lenina20, a reunion fic
Title: Thieves
Rating: PG
Characters: Kate, Ben, Sawyer/Juliet
Summary: Kate returns to the Island, and some things have changed.
Disclaimer: I can't seem to write Lost fic that isn't depressing. Also, I don't own the show.
Author's Note: For Queen lenina20 with many apologies for being a day late, but this ended up being longer than I planned, and apparently being behind is kinda my style. I hope you'll enjoy it! :)
On the way back, Kate becomes obsessed with remembering what day it is. If she knows that it's a Wednesday, a Friday, and keeps hold of those dull normal names for time, she won't get completely lost to the place again.
Or anyway she won't admit too late that she's been lost to it since she left.
She's not going back alone, but she's left Aaron behind. The thought still makes her whole body thrill with panic from minute to minute, but he's safer there, under the care of Sun and in the company of Ji Yeon. Asking Sun to do her the tremendous favor of coming to America to look after Aaron was a stark reminder of Kate's otherwise friendless existence, of the fact that Aaron is her only family -- stolen, too, like an unlocked car she took on her way out of town -- and that Jack, well. He was not an option. Can't even take care of himself.
Her traveling companion, instead of Aaron, Jack, even Sun, is Ben Linus. He flies the planes, drives the cars, and speaks three languages to airport security and rental clerks on their way back to the Island. Kate sits or leans beside him, mostly catatonic, the day of the week playing like a mantra in her mind.
"We're about an hour away," he mutters at one point, and she twitches awake. The ocean is a faceless sheet of blue below them. The noise of the helicopter is almost enough to blank out his words, but she can feel the Island drawing closer, doesn't need a warning. It's not so different from the dread she experienced before seeing her mother in the hospital, and then in the courthouse. This place is another thing she doesn't want to be connected to, but here she is, coming back. Willingly.
She stares at Ben and waits for the catch, has been waiting since he offered to let her join him. He looks at her with his chin lifted and eyelids heavy, like he always does, as if to say, You fool.
*
They land very conspicuously a few hours after sunrise, and Ben sits in place for a moment, waiting to see what Kate will do. She's a kind of science experiment, a side dish. Panicky and breathless but pretending to be calm, as ever.
"I suppose they all know we're here," Ben says. "We've made quite an entrance."
"Should have come in a submarine," she says. He's not sure if that's supposed to be a joke. She's staring out at the jungle, awaiting an ambush.
"I'm the one they'll want to kill."
"What?" She glares at him. He would have preferred the company of one of the more interesting evacuees -- Jarrah would have been useful, even Sun -- but he's got a bit of a history with both, and they've soured on him.
"You look nervous," he says, trying to enjoy her discomfort. She's almost as predictable as Jack, and less entertaining.
Kate doesn't respond, just unfastens her seatbelt and climbs out of the helicopter. He watches, waiting to see if she's bold enough to wander off on her own. She puts her hands on her hips, stands in place.
"Expecting him to come to you?" he calls. Her shoulders go tense. He's not above reminding her of a certain half hour of security camera footage that he once had the displeasure of viewing. She mumbled some things about closure, back in America. He knows why she's really here. She might even know why he's come. She's not particularly intelligent or even perceptive, but they've got something in common and she might just smell it on him.
*
Kate fluctuates between feeling as if she's making her way to the front of a classroom to give a presentation and as if she's on a death march, heading toward her own execution. Sometimes the death march feeling is more appealing; less would be expected of her. It has occurred to her that she might not return from this place again. She's shattered by the thought, but only for Aaron, and it's no accident that she left him with Sun, who probably should have raised him, would have if not for the lie.
Someone cocks a gun, invisible in the jungle, and the sound is sickly familiar. She stops walking, feels at once like nothing and everything is at stake here. This is a dream, and the only reality she can fully experience anymore.
"Who's there?" Ben shouts. His weapon is already drawn, his eyes wide. If Richard has found them first, Ben is as good as dead. Kate isn't sure what her fate would be in that scenario. She might be collateral, or Richard and his people might just walk away, disinterested, leave her in the thick and the green with the bugs keening around her. She is no longer in a position to make trouble.
"Well, well, well."
Kate recognizes the voice with a feeling like a stick snapping in the pit of her stomach, the first sign of danger. She straightens, goes alert like a perched bird.
"Look what we have here."
Sawyer is not exactly smiling, but he's trying pretty hard to seem like he is. Juliet comes out of the jungle like an afterthought, a pinched frown on her face as if nothing has changed, like it was yesterday that she watched Kate leave with the others and she's still pretty pissed off.
"You cut your hair," Kate says to Sawyer, weirdly frantic, like she's making this observation in the midst of being choked. Sawyer looks back toward Juliet.
"Am I hallucinating, or are you on this channel, too?" he asks her. She hasn't taken her eyes off Ben.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she asks, as if Ben has just stepped into her living room unannounced. They're both holding guns at their sides, ready for a firefight. Kate flexes her fists uselessly; Ben has not provided her with a gun, and she certainly wasn't going to risk trying to obtain one before leaving. She was granted permission to leave the state just two months ago. Ben showed up with his proposal on the day her probation was lifted.
"We've got a helicopter," Kate blurts, because she doesn't like the way Sawyer is looking at her, like he's amused, like he's watching this from afar and isn't terribly interested in becoming involved.
"A helicopter," Sawyer repeats. She wishes he would at least glance down at her breasts, something. She doesn't have the nerve to break eye contact. It would be like admitting something. Defeat. Surrender.
"We both know it ain't as easy as having a helicopter, Freckles."
She wants to walk forward but stays perfectly still. Juliet and Ben are fighting in some parallel universe, their voices muffled by Kate's heartbeat, which she's pretty sure everyone present can hear.
*
Ben is only dully surprised to find that he hates Juliet, but maybe he already knew that. It doesn't make him want her any less, and in fact he's proud of the feeling, a more profound kind of love, as if he came to the end of that emotion, wore it out and made it new. And even hate isn't the right word. This is a thing he's always had trouble putting words to.
One outburst in particular haunts him. You're mine. The most graceless moment of his life.
"You've got no idea what's been going on here," Juliet says, further exasperated by his silence.
"True enough," Ben admits. He glances at the other two. He expected more dumb exuberance, but they're just staring at each other.
"It's been -- I've lost track." Juliet looks like she might faint.
"Lost track of what?"
"The years. Time. How long it's been."
He nods, doesn't bother to try and orient her.
"So what the hell is this?" James asks, throwing out his hands. "A rescue mission? Or is that just how you talked her into coming?" he asks Ben, gesturing to Kate. Ben blinks at him.
"It's a reunion, James."
He enjoys the idea that everyone here assumes he has an ulterior motive.
*
"So how's the Doc?"
They're sitting on the beach, and Kate is holding a soda can with the Dharma logo on it. She feels the logo burn into her palm, recognizing something in her, reclaiming her.
"Jack's fine," Kate tells Sawyer, because anything else would be a kind of betrayal. She looks at him, cautious with the light going orange around them, the sun just beginning to sink.
She takes the short hair as a personal insult, wants to ask him how he could do this to her. She thought everything here would stay the same, that it would wait for her.
"How about Aaron?" he asks, and she hears him swallow hard, a click like something pushed down. He's looking at her like everyone does, like she's a thief.
"He's great. Sawyer, listen --"
"Listen to what? What are you doing here? And with him?"
They turn to look at Ben, who is speaking to Juliet. She's ignoring him, staring at Sawyer.
"He said he would take me back." Kate's voice is a shipwreck, but why is she trying to play this cool, anyway? She keeps trying to figure out why it feels like she and Sawyer parted on bad terms.
"You believe a word out of his mouth? I'm surprised he hasn't killed you already."
Kate shakes her head, though she's surprised, too.
"Locke is dead," she says, as if this follows somehow. Sawyer scoffs.
"'Bout time. Who took him out?"
"I don't know. Natural causes. I don't know."
She wants to ask him how he's been, but what a ridiculous question. She feels like she's being watched, and turns to see Juliet still staring.
*
"Did you even consider what it might mean for us, you coming back here?" Juliet is distracted but still arguing, as if she's saved up a lot of things she wanted to say and they're coming automatically.
"I'm sorry?"
"You're putting us all in danger. Richard -- he --"
"You don't seem to understand that I've come here to take you back." Ben tries to make his face sincere. He's forgotten how to do that, if he ever knew, and actually he's not yet sure if he means what he's saying. She sniffs in disbelief. He wants to tell her sometimes, because he thinks it would bother her tremendously, that he crumpled her life into his fist just because she reminds him of someone much kinder and long dead.
"I don't ever want to be in a position where I owe you anything," she says. "Not ever again."
"You keep looking at them."
She snaps her eyes away from James and Kate when he points this out.
"Are you afraid they'll run off and leave you here with me?"
"He --"
"What? Wouldn't? Has Mr. Ford become especially charming, now that he's the last man on earth? I suppose he is your type."
Her eyes fill, and she shakes her head. He knows what she's remembering, Goodwin, another ineffectual posturer who unsuccessfully pretended otherwise, and that pitiful scene she forced him to make, just before he lost his temper.
"I'm never going to get away from you, am I?" Finally she stops glancing across the beach at James, keeps her eyes on his.
"Not if I can help it."
*
Juliet comes storming across the beach, trying to pretend she's not crying. The wind is strong from the ocean and it's easy to brush tears off as salt spray. Kate remembers that well enough.
"Please," Juliet says, and Sawyer stands up.
"What the hell's going on?" he asks her.
"I don't know." She looks at Kate, and Sawyer follows her gaze.
"He told me --" she starts to say.
"And you trusted him?" The tone of Juliet's accusation and the dark shine of her eyes as the light disappears are like two sharp punches in the stomach. Kate waits for Sawyer to defend her.
"Should have left well enough alone, Freckles," he says sadly. She glares at him.
"Quit calling me that if you don't really mean it." She feels like a child, has the sick inclination to go running back to Ben, who is standing across the beach with his shoulders slumped like he just got ditched by his prom date. Sometimes, when she can't see his maniac eyes clearly, it seems insane that they ever feared him. She's beginning to suspect he hasn't really got a plan, which makes her even more terrified to find out what her role in all of this is.
"I thought you would be -- " Kate stops herself there, sufficiently humiliated. Happy to see me.
"It's not that simple," Juliet says for him. Sawyer stares at her with pity and stale fondness, as if she's a ghost, as if it's too late to save her.
"Maybe we should take our chances," Sawyer mutters low. Juliet frowns at him. "He brought Kate here unharmed." He glances at her again to make sure this is true.
"He brought her to try and gain your trust!" Juliet says in a shrieked sort of whisper. "Because he knew you'd talk me into getting on a helicopter with him if --"
"Okay, okay! Pipe down, he's coming."
Ben stares at them for a moment before speaking. The sun is almost entirely gone.
"I have an errand to run," he says. "I don't plan on staying long. There are people here who want me dead."
"Imagine that," Sawyer says.
"No shit," Juliet mutters at the same time, and the two of them look at each other. The thing that passes between them shakes the ground. Kate looks at Ben, begins to understand why he brought her here.
"I'll be back in three hours," he announces before turning to walk across the beach and into the jungle.
Kate feels vulnerable without him, but that doesn't make any sense.
*
Ben follows Jacob's voice through the jungle toward Alex's grave. He doesn't respond to any of his questions. Nor does he acknowledge his threats.
It's fully dark by the time he reaches the place where he buried his daughter, and he recognizes the smooth white stone he marked it with, though it's overgrown with vines. It glows under the moonlight through the trees, and he clears it clumsily, clawing at the thick vegetation and letting it cut his hands.
"Alright," he says when it's done. He's on his knees.
If Jacob would allow it she would be here, a pale specter, she would curse him and give him her perfect look of betrayal, the face she made when he forbade her relationship with that boy, and again, later, under different circumstances. He would be glad to hear her derision, wants to be judged for the crime of ever thinking he could protect her, but only by her, in holy hindsight, a sainted teenager.
"Alex," he says, because the name is a comfort. "I wanted to tell you something. I think you'll actually hear me, now. But maybe you already know." He's sweating, and he wipes his forehead.
"I killed the man who did this to you, but he was nothing. Charles Widmore was truly responsible, and I spent three years searching for his daughter. For revenge. It was only fair. I found her in Italy, with her husband, maybe you met him when he was here. They own a vineyard outside of Rome, they've changed their names, they don't really make any money. I followed her into the city one day when she was alone. She went to an art gallery. It was a Wednesday afternoon. The gallery was mostly deserted, and I followed her into a room containing a visiting Impressionist exhibit. You know, they light the pictures -- well, you don't know, I never took you -- they light the pictures individually, and she was standing in this sort of -- glow, and it was -- Monet, Les Dindons. That's French for turkey, "the turkeys." And she was just, staring at this picture, of these white -- white turkeys, and I think she was smiling but I couldn't see her face."
Jacob has gone quiet. Ben winces.
"I didn't kill her," he says in a rush. "I'm sorry."
*
"I can't, I'm sorry, I can't."
Juliet seems to have lost the ability to say anything else, and she's chanting this like a password she's trying not to forget. Ben has been gone for longer than three hours, and Kate is afraid he's dead, that she'll be left here again, and not in the state she half-hoped she would be. Sawyer is pacing and Juliet just keeps chanting.
"I can't, I just can't."
"Alright!" Sawyer finally hisses, and Kate enjoys his irritation, though this, too, betrays an intimacy that is long gone between he and Kate.
"James," Juliet says, looking up at him, and the use of his real name rips Kate in half. She feels him feeling sorry for her, and it's like a fire going out, last embers doused. He sighs.
"What?"
"If you want to leave, you should."
"I'm not leaving you here alone," he says, trying to keep his voice low, out of respect, possibly, for Kate's embarrassment. She's already suggested three times that she find somewhere else to sit while they discuss this, but he won't let her wander off alone and Juliet keeps telling her stop it, don't be crazy.
As if there is something on this island that could hurt her more this listening to this.
"I wouldn't be alone," Juliet says. "I've got Bernard and Rose and --"
He gives her a look that says clear enough, you know what I mean. They all know exactly what's going on. It's an alien feeling, in this place.
"If he tries anything I could --" Sawyer starts to say. Juliet gives him a dark look.
"What?" he says. "You don't think I could take him? You think he'd outsmart me, turn me sideways 'fore I knew what was happening?"
"Don't you?" she asks dryly. He almost grins for a moment, and Kate stands.
"I think I should look for Ben," she says. Juliet groans.
"Kate," she says. "Don't be crazy."
"Maybe we should just take the chopper before he gets back," Sawyer says wildly. He shrugs when he hears himself.
"I can't go," Juliet says. "I can't have anything to do with this."
"You don't have to come," Kate says, and Sawyer turns, knows she's talking to him.
"What?" he asks weakly.
"I just wanted to know that you were alright." And this, somehow, is not a lie anymore.
He stares at her, and for a moment things are back to normal, the two of them communicating effortlessly, everything already said.
*
Ben climbs into the pilot's seat while the others have their tearful goodbye at dawn. He considered using the gun to inspire Juliet to board the helicopter, but he must be getting old. It felt too heavy in his hand when he began to lift it from his pocket, and his relief matched his disappointment when he let it go.
Juliet walks forward while James and Kate linger in a long embrace at the edge of the clearing. Ben turns to look at her with something like feigned boredom. She sees through him. She's colder and maybe even not as pretty as Annie, but she sees through him, and he's almost glad for that. He's held two too many people he loved limp and cold in his arms, and the only thing he had the energy to wish for when he did was that they'd both known from the start not to trust him.
"Jealous?" he asks before she can speak. She's in love with James Ford; he knew that before he came. No one has the power to surprise him anymore, not since he failed to kill Penelope Widmore, the great surprise of his life.
"Of what?" she asks, and he nods toward Kate and James. She's got her hands on his face, and he's still holding her waist.
"What are you doing?" she asks, avoiding the question.
"How do you mean?"
She laughs in exasperation, throws out her hands.
"Ever, what are you ever doing?"
"Hardly ever what I intend."
She shakes her head and walks away, and it's a far more tender goodbye than he anticipated.
*
Kate cries into her hand when they're over the ocean, the sound of the helicopter's blades a welcome mercy.
"You know, I thought James would join us," Ben shouts.
"Shut up," Kate whispers. She wipes her face. She realized just before she got on the helicopter, resigned enough to get one foot in but not yet the other, that Juliet's hair was shorter, too.
When she gets home, she'll go to Jack and scrape him off the floor and try again and again and again, until this works as well as it ever will.
He was always better at forgiving her.
*
Ben doesn't speak again until Phuket, driving through a dusty street toward a tiny airport. Kate is mostly asleep, blinking against the passenger side window.
"You know, we have something in common," he says. She shuts her eyes.
He decides to let her draw her own conclusions about what he thinks that is. Something about losing the loves of their lives to the sin of convenience on a desert island, which is almost funny, but he's lost his sense of humor when it comes to his own mistakes.
He was referring to their children, their borrowed bits of salvation. They took what they could get from people who didn't know any better but to love them. Of course, her stolen son is still alive.
"Maybe not," he says.
She groans. "What?"
He whistles out the window, doesn't really want to say it out loud. She's going home to her son who might as well be, learned a lesson early that someone taught him too late. There's no point in stealing what you can't afford to keep. He spent almost a million dollars to stand over Alex's grave and tell her that he couldn't manage take another daughter.
"You never actually thought she would want to be with you," Kate says suddenly, and he turns.
He doesn't want to admit that yes, actually, he did. But he suspects that they're talking about different things.
Rating: PG
Characters: Kate, Ben, Sawyer/Juliet
Summary: Kate returns to the Island, and some things have changed.
Disclaimer: I can't seem to write Lost fic that isn't depressing. Also, I don't own the show.
Author's Note: For Queen lenina20 with many apologies for being a day late, but this ended up being longer than I planned, and apparently being behind is kinda my style. I hope you'll enjoy it! :)
On the way back, Kate becomes obsessed with remembering what day it is. If she knows that it's a Wednesday, a Friday, and keeps hold of those dull normal names for time, she won't get completely lost to the place again.
Or anyway she won't admit too late that she's been lost to it since she left.
She's not going back alone, but she's left Aaron behind. The thought still makes her whole body thrill with panic from minute to minute, but he's safer there, under the care of Sun and in the company of Ji Yeon. Asking Sun to do her the tremendous favor of coming to America to look after Aaron was a stark reminder of Kate's otherwise friendless existence, of the fact that Aaron is her only family -- stolen, too, like an unlocked car she took on her way out of town -- and that Jack, well. He was not an option. Can't even take care of himself.
Her traveling companion, instead of Aaron, Jack, even Sun, is Ben Linus. He flies the planes, drives the cars, and speaks three languages to airport security and rental clerks on their way back to the Island. Kate sits or leans beside him, mostly catatonic, the day of the week playing like a mantra in her mind.
"We're about an hour away," he mutters at one point, and she twitches awake. The ocean is a faceless sheet of blue below them. The noise of the helicopter is almost enough to blank out his words, but she can feel the Island drawing closer, doesn't need a warning. It's not so different from the dread she experienced before seeing her mother in the hospital, and then in the courthouse. This place is another thing she doesn't want to be connected to, but here she is, coming back. Willingly.
She stares at Ben and waits for the catch, has been waiting since he offered to let her join him. He looks at her with his chin lifted and eyelids heavy, like he always does, as if to say, You fool.
*
They land very conspicuously a few hours after sunrise, and Ben sits in place for a moment, waiting to see what Kate will do. She's a kind of science experiment, a side dish. Panicky and breathless but pretending to be calm, as ever.
"I suppose they all know we're here," Ben says. "We've made quite an entrance."
"Should have come in a submarine," she says. He's not sure if that's supposed to be a joke. She's staring out at the jungle, awaiting an ambush.
"I'm the one they'll want to kill."
"What?" She glares at him. He would have preferred the company of one of the more interesting evacuees -- Jarrah would have been useful, even Sun -- but he's got a bit of a history with both, and they've soured on him.
"You look nervous," he says, trying to enjoy her discomfort. She's almost as predictable as Jack, and less entertaining.
Kate doesn't respond, just unfastens her seatbelt and climbs out of the helicopter. He watches, waiting to see if she's bold enough to wander off on her own. She puts her hands on her hips, stands in place.
"Expecting him to come to you?" he calls. Her shoulders go tense. He's not above reminding her of a certain half hour of security camera footage that he once had the displeasure of viewing. She mumbled some things about closure, back in America. He knows why she's really here. She might even know why he's come. She's not particularly intelligent or even perceptive, but they've got something in common and she might just smell it on him.
*
Kate fluctuates between feeling as if she's making her way to the front of a classroom to give a presentation and as if she's on a death march, heading toward her own execution. Sometimes the death march feeling is more appealing; less would be expected of her. It has occurred to her that she might not return from this place again. She's shattered by the thought, but only for Aaron, and it's no accident that she left him with Sun, who probably should have raised him, would have if not for the lie.
Someone cocks a gun, invisible in the jungle, and the sound is sickly familiar. She stops walking, feels at once like nothing and everything is at stake here. This is a dream, and the only reality she can fully experience anymore.
"Who's there?" Ben shouts. His weapon is already drawn, his eyes wide. If Richard has found them first, Ben is as good as dead. Kate isn't sure what her fate would be in that scenario. She might be collateral, or Richard and his people might just walk away, disinterested, leave her in the thick and the green with the bugs keening around her. She is no longer in a position to make trouble.
"Well, well, well."
Kate recognizes the voice with a feeling like a stick snapping in the pit of her stomach, the first sign of danger. She straightens, goes alert like a perched bird.
"Look what we have here."
Sawyer is not exactly smiling, but he's trying pretty hard to seem like he is. Juliet comes out of the jungle like an afterthought, a pinched frown on her face as if nothing has changed, like it was yesterday that she watched Kate leave with the others and she's still pretty pissed off.
"You cut your hair," Kate says to Sawyer, weirdly frantic, like she's making this observation in the midst of being choked. Sawyer looks back toward Juliet.
"Am I hallucinating, or are you on this channel, too?" he asks her. She hasn't taken her eyes off Ben.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she asks, as if Ben has just stepped into her living room unannounced. They're both holding guns at their sides, ready for a firefight. Kate flexes her fists uselessly; Ben has not provided her with a gun, and she certainly wasn't going to risk trying to obtain one before leaving. She was granted permission to leave the state just two months ago. Ben showed up with his proposal on the day her probation was lifted.
"We've got a helicopter," Kate blurts, because she doesn't like the way Sawyer is looking at her, like he's amused, like he's watching this from afar and isn't terribly interested in becoming involved.
"A helicopter," Sawyer repeats. She wishes he would at least glance down at her breasts, something. She doesn't have the nerve to break eye contact. It would be like admitting something. Defeat. Surrender.
"We both know it ain't as easy as having a helicopter, Freckles."
She wants to walk forward but stays perfectly still. Juliet and Ben are fighting in some parallel universe, their voices muffled by Kate's heartbeat, which she's pretty sure everyone present can hear.
*
Ben is only dully surprised to find that he hates Juliet, but maybe he already knew that. It doesn't make him want her any less, and in fact he's proud of the feeling, a more profound kind of love, as if he came to the end of that emotion, wore it out and made it new. And even hate isn't the right word. This is a thing he's always had trouble putting words to.
One outburst in particular haunts him. You're mine. The most graceless moment of his life.
"You've got no idea what's been going on here," Juliet says, further exasperated by his silence.
"True enough," Ben admits. He glances at the other two. He expected more dumb exuberance, but they're just staring at each other.
"It's been -- I've lost track." Juliet looks like she might faint.
"Lost track of what?"
"The years. Time. How long it's been."
He nods, doesn't bother to try and orient her.
"So what the hell is this?" James asks, throwing out his hands. "A rescue mission? Or is that just how you talked her into coming?" he asks Ben, gesturing to Kate. Ben blinks at him.
"It's a reunion, James."
He enjoys the idea that everyone here assumes he has an ulterior motive.
*
"So how's the Doc?"
They're sitting on the beach, and Kate is holding a soda can with the Dharma logo on it. She feels the logo burn into her palm, recognizing something in her, reclaiming her.
"Jack's fine," Kate tells Sawyer, because anything else would be a kind of betrayal. She looks at him, cautious with the light going orange around them, the sun just beginning to sink.
She takes the short hair as a personal insult, wants to ask him how he could do this to her. She thought everything here would stay the same, that it would wait for her.
"How about Aaron?" he asks, and she hears him swallow hard, a click like something pushed down. He's looking at her like everyone does, like she's a thief.
"He's great. Sawyer, listen --"
"Listen to what? What are you doing here? And with him?"
They turn to look at Ben, who is speaking to Juliet. She's ignoring him, staring at Sawyer.
"He said he would take me back." Kate's voice is a shipwreck, but why is she trying to play this cool, anyway? She keeps trying to figure out why it feels like she and Sawyer parted on bad terms.
"You believe a word out of his mouth? I'm surprised he hasn't killed you already."
Kate shakes her head, though she's surprised, too.
"Locke is dead," she says, as if this follows somehow. Sawyer scoffs.
"'Bout time. Who took him out?"
"I don't know. Natural causes. I don't know."
She wants to ask him how he's been, but what a ridiculous question. She feels like she's being watched, and turns to see Juliet still staring.
*
"Did you even consider what it might mean for us, you coming back here?" Juliet is distracted but still arguing, as if she's saved up a lot of things she wanted to say and they're coming automatically.
"I'm sorry?"
"You're putting us all in danger. Richard -- he --"
"You don't seem to understand that I've come here to take you back." Ben tries to make his face sincere. He's forgotten how to do that, if he ever knew, and actually he's not yet sure if he means what he's saying. She sniffs in disbelief. He wants to tell her sometimes, because he thinks it would bother her tremendously, that he crumpled her life into his fist just because she reminds him of someone much kinder and long dead.
"I don't ever want to be in a position where I owe you anything," she says. "Not ever again."
"You keep looking at them."
She snaps her eyes away from James and Kate when he points this out.
"Are you afraid they'll run off and leave you here with me?"
"He --"
"What? Wouldn't? Has Mr. Ford become especially charming, now that he's the last man on earth? I suppose he is your type."
Her eyes fill, and she shakes her head. He knows what she's remembering, Goodwin, another ineffectual posturer who unsuccessfully pretended otherwise, and that pitiful scene she forced him to make, just before he lost his temper.
"I'm never going to get away from you, am I?" Finally she stops glancing across the beach at James, keeps her eyes on his.
"Not if I can help it."
*
Juliet comes storming across the beach, trying to pretend she's not crying. The wind is strong from the ocean and it's easy to brush tears off as salt spray. Kate remembers that well enough.
"Please," Juliet says, and Sawyer stands up.
"What the hell's going on?" he asks her.
"I don't know." She looks at Kate, and Sawyer follows her gaze.
"He told me --" she starts to say.
"And you trusted him?" The tone of Juliet's accusation and the dark shine of her eyes as the light disappears are like two sharp punches in the stomach. Kate waits for Sawyer to defend her.
"Should have left well enough alone, Freckles," he says sadly. She glares at him.
"Quit calling me that if you don't really mean it." She feels like a child, has the sick inclination to go running back to Ben, who is standing across the beach with his shoulders slumped like he just got ditched by his prom date. Sometimes, when she can't see his maniac eyes clearly, it seems insane that they ever feared him. She's beginning to suspect he hasn't really got a plan, which makes her even more terrified to find out what her role in all of this is.
"I thought you would be -- " Kate stops herself there, sufficiently humiliated. Happy to see me.
"It's not that simple," Juliet says for him. Sawyer stares at her with pity and stale fondness, as if she's a ghost, as if it's too late to save her.
"Maybe we should take our chances," Sawyer mutters low. Juliet frowns at him. "He brought Kate here unharmed." He glances at her again to make sure this is true.
"He brought her to try and gain your trust!" Juliet says in a shrieked sort of whisper. "Because he knew you'd talk me into getting on a helicopter with him if --"
"Okay, okay! Pipe down, he's coming."
Ben stares at them for a moment before speaking. The sun is almost entirely gone.
"I have an errand to run," he says. "I don't plan on staying long. There are people here who want me dead."
"Imagine that," Sawyer says.
"No shit," Juliet mutters at the same time, and the two of them look at each other. The thing that passes between them shakes the ground. Kate looks at Ben, begins to understand why he brought her here.
"I'll be back in three hours," he announces before turning to walk across the beach and into the jungle.
Kate feels vulnerable without him, but that doesn't make any sense.
*
Ben follows Jacob's voice through the jungle toward Alex's grave. He doesn't respond to any of his questions. Nor does he acknowledge his threats.
It's fully dark by the time he reaches the place where he buried his daughter, and he recognizes the smooth white stone he marked it with, though it's overgrown with vines. It glows under the moonlight through the trees, and he clears it clumsily, clawing at the thick vegetation and letting it cut his hands.
"Alright," he says when it's done. He's on his knees.
If Jacob would allow it she would be here, a pale specter, she would curse him and give him her perfect look of betrayal, the face she made when he forbade her relationship with that boy, and again, later, under different circumstances. He would be glad to hear her derision, wants to be judged for the crime of ever thinking he could protect her, but only by her, in holy hindsight, a sainted teenager.
"Alex," he says, because the name is a comfort. "I wanted to tell you something. I think you'll actually hear me, now. But maybe you already know." He's sweating, and he wipes his forehead.
"I killed the man who did this to you, but he was nothing. Charles Widmore was truly responsible, and I spent three years searching for his daughter. For revenge. It was only fair. I found her in Italy, with her husband, maybe you met him when he was here. They own a vineyard outside of Rome, they've changed their names, they don't really make any money. I followed her into the city one day when she was alone. She went to an art gallery. It was a Wednesday afternoon. The gallery was mostly deserted, and I followed her into a room containing a visiting Impressionist exhibit. You know, they light the pictures -- well, you don't know, I never took you -- they light the pictures individually, and she was standing in this sort of -- glow, and it was -- Monet, Les Dindons. That's French for turkey, "the turkeys." And she was just, staring at this picture, of these white -- white turkeys, and I think she was smiling but I couldn't see her face."
Jacob has gone quiet. Ben winces.
"I didn't kill her," he says in a rush. "I'm sorry."
*
"I can't, I'm sorry, I can't."
Juliet seems to have lost the ability to say anything else, and she's chanting this like a password she's trying not to forget. Ben has been gone for longer than three hours, and Kate is afraid he's dead, that she'll be left here again, and not in the state she half-hoped she would be. Sawyer is pacing and Juliet just keeps chanting.
"I can't, I just can't."
"Alright!" Sawyer finally hisses, and Kate enjoys his irritation, though this, too, betrays an intimacy that is long gone between he and Kate.
"James," Juliet says, looking up at him, and the use of his real name rips Kate in half. She feels him feeling sorry for her, and it's like a fire going out, last embers doused. He sighs.
"What?"
"If you want to leave, you should."
"I'm not leaving you here alone," he says, trying to keep his voice low, out of respect, possibly, for Kate's embarrassment. She's already suggested three times that she find somewhere else to sit while they discuss this, but he won't let her wander off alone and Juliet keeps telling her stop it, don't be crazy.
As if there is something on this island that could hurt her more this listening to this.
"I wouldn't be alone," Juliet says. "I've got Bernard and Rose and --"
He gives her a look that says clear enough, you know what I mean. They all know exactly what's going on. It's an alien feeling, in this place.
"If he tries anything I could --" Sawyer starts to say. Juliet gives him a dark look.
"What?" he says. "You don't think I could take him? You think he'd outsmart me, turn me sideways 'fore I knew what was happening?"
"Don't you?" she asks dryly. He almost grins for a moment, and Kate stands.
"I think I should look for Ben," she says. Juliet groans.
"Kate," she says. "Don't be crazy."
"Maybe we should just take the chopper before he gets back," Sawyer says wildly. He shrugs when he hears himself.
"I can't go," Juliet says. "I can't have anything to do with this."
"You don't have to come," Kate says, and Sawyer turns, knows she's talking to him.
"What?" he asks weakly.
"I just wanted to know that you were alright." And this, somehow, is not a lie anymore.
He stares at her, and for a moment things are back to normal, the two of them communicating effortlessly, everything already said.
*
Ben climbs into the pilot's seat while the others have their tearful goodbye at dawn. He considered using the gun to inspire Juliet to board the helicopter, but he must be getting old. It felt too heavy in his hand when he began to lift it from his pocket, and his relief matched his disappointment when he let it go.
Juliet walks forward while James and Kate linger in a long embrace at the edge of the clearing. Ben turns to look at her with something like feigned boredom. She sees through him. She's colder and maybe even not as pretty as Annie, but she sees through him, and he's almost glad for that. He's held two too many people he loved limp and cold in his arms, and the only thing he had the energy to wish for when he did was that they'd both known from the start not to trust him.
"Jealous?" he asks before she can speak. She's in love with James Ford; he knew that before he came. No one has the power to surprise him anymore, not since he failed to kill Penelope Widmore, the great surprise of his life.
"Of what?" she asks, and he nods toward Kate and James. She's got her hands on his face, and he's still holding her waist.
"What are you doing?" she asks, avoiding the question.
"How do you mean?"
She laughs in exasperation, throws out her hands.
"Ever, what are you ever doing?"
"Hardly ever what I intend."
She shakes her head and walks away, and it's a far more tender goodbye than he anticipated.
*
Kate cries into her hand when they're over the ocean, the sound of the helicopter's blades a welcome mercy.
"You know, I thought James would join us," Ben shouts.
"Shut up," Kate whispers. She wipes her face. She realized just before she got on the helicopter, resigned enough to get one foot in but not yet the other, that Juliet's hair was shorter, too.
When she gets home, she'll go to Jack and scrape him off the floor and try again and again and again, until this works as well as it ever will.
He was always better at forgiving her.
*
Ben doesn't speak again until Phuket, driving through a dusty street toward a tiny airport. Kate is mostly asleep, blinking against the passenger side window.
"You know, we have something in common," he says. She shuts her eyes.
He decides to let her draw her own conclusions about what he thinks that is. Something about losing the loves of their lives to the sin of convenience on a desert island, which is almost funny, but he's lost his sense of humor when it comes to his own mistakes.
He was referring to their children, their borrowed bits of salvation. They took what they could get from people who didn't know any better but to love them. Of course, her stolen son is still alive.
"Maybe not," he says.
She groans. "What?"
He whistles out the window, doesn't really want to say it out loud. She's going home to her son who might as well be, learned a lesson early that someone taught him too late. There's no point in stealing what you can't afford to keep. He spent almost a million dollars to stand over Alex's grave and tell her that he couldn't manage take another daughter.
"You never actually thought she would want to be with you," Kate says suddenly, and he turns.
He doesn't want to admit that yes, actually, he did. But he suspects that they're talking about different things.