Lost -- You Fell Down Like Concrete Angels
May. 4th, 2008 04:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anythingbutgrey(how are you all doing at 430 AM EST? i love caffeine. and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deadduck008, but you knew that. we spent 3.5 hours on skype. WIN. almost like having her on my floor again. only less love because if she's in the computer i can't hug her. tragedy. green sticker!)
lost fic.
You Fell Down Like Concrete Angels. Kate; Jack/Kate, Kate/Sawyer (Lost). Spoilers from s4.
She used to have a monopoly on repressed feelings and a penchant for lighting the things she didn’t like on fire.
thanks towinterwaltz for the beta! title from david ford's 'and so you fell'
It doesn’t take long for Aaron to ask when Jack will be back.
Nine hours, six minutes, thirty-two seconds since he left, and Kate can’t stop counting.
-
She used to have a monopoly on repressed feelings and a penchant for lighting the things she didn’t like on fire. Love made her feel like flames instead, everywhere down to her fingertips. She wants to write him thank you letters for that, like the ones her mother used to make her write after her Sweet Sixteen or other birthdays, useless gifts littering the floor, bags of wrapping paper polluting the trash.
Instead, she writes him letters beginning with Dear (crossed out) and ending with Jack (crossed out).
All those feelings inside of her won’t float away, though. She burns the unfinished letters in the fireplace, but even that reminds her of him. The whole house does, remnants of a lawsuit she finds ironic to say they won.
-
She doesn’t know why she didn’t fail immediately at being a mother. Maybe because it was Claire’s child, maybe because it was Sawyer who handed Aaron to her with a soft and sad smile, whispering, “Keep him close.”
It was the last thing they said to each other. She hid her tears from Jack as they stepped onto the helicopter, but she knows he saw.
She does know that she has always acted on instinct. Her favorite is fight or flight (we all know which one she is more prone too), but her maternal ones haven’t been that bad either.
This is one of many reasons why with Sawyer it was playing house, and with Jack it was living at home.
-
Jack calls.
She can almost smell alcohol wafting through the voicemail.
-
She thinks she sees Jack staggering down a side street one day and almost stops, slows just slightly to check if it’s him and speeds up again before she can be sure.
He looks different.
-
From the backseat, Aaron asks when Jack is coming back.
She used to wonder how Daddy would sound floating out of Aaron’s small mouth.
My son has always sounded comfortable in hers.
-
She used to dream about Sawyer laughing in the dark of the forest, how she knew him best.
She wanted to tell him, but with Jack words were always hard, the way they kept so many emotions like bottled notes inside of them. And Sawyer’s not a safe topic, his hands on her flesh and the image burned into Jack’s skin.
Kate has never been religious, but she took to praying her past mistakes away. She said I love you and meant it. The nightmares began to fade.
It was enough for her. It wasn’t for him. She left her demons in his hands to throw away. He got rid of hers for her, but forgot to toss his own nightmares into the river alongside hers. They’re both afraid of oceans now. It makes her sad to know she will never be able to see her son play in the sea. She has too many nightmares about water.
The nanny takes him to the beach, though. He shouldn’t be deprived because of Kate’s failures.
-
She changes his ringtone so she doesn’t have to look at the caller ID.
She listens to his voicemails over scotch, thinking of him in too many ways.
-
She keeps the ring in a matchbox in the top drawer of the dresser on his side of the bed, waiting for him to shape up, come home, put it back on her finger and whisper, “I’m so sorry.”
Forgiving him would be easy, because since he left breathing has been so hard.
-
The newscaster proclaims, “Oceanic Six survivor Jack Shepard saved a woman from a car wreck today –”
She drops Aaron’s dinner on the floor. The plate shatters, a quiet, far away sound.
It’s just that it took her by surprise. She has to steel herself to hear his name, now.
-
“I need to see you,” he begs through the phone line.
She can only whisper, Okay.”
-
His rate of decay astounds her, the beard that makes her think of bad movies and his eyes glazed over in a daze she barely recognizes. She can’t say his name at first.
A sad grin slides over his face, and her stomach tries to claw its way out. She swallows to push the pain down.
“You look horrible,” she says, trying to not sound broken, knowing even she couldn’t save him from this.
He hands her a newspaper clipping of the dead and she sighs with something like anger inside of her. Some things are impossible to forget.
-
The nightmares have shifted since their relationship ended. Now, she dreams not of the island, but of them with happy smiles and the day he arrived at her doorstep with a shy “Hello.” But the dreams turn to ugly nightmares quickly, his smiling face melting away to that night in the living room, the lies piling on her, his rage spilling out and open and leaving stains on the carpet, the remnants of a party gone bad.
-
“I wanted to crash, Kate,” he says with broken tones, and the way he says her name still throws her. “I don’t care about anybody else on board. Every little bump we hit, or turbulence… I actually close my eyes and pray that I can get back.”
The tears spill over and she’s crying for too much – for them, for Jack, for herself. She wants to pull him up out of the dark and hold him close and convince him it will be okay. She can’t look at him this way, crashing to the ground like antique porcelain. It shatters her, too.
“This is not going to change,” she pleads, because she’s not going back and they’re not going back, they are standing with firm feet on the mainland without ocean views and they are going to stay that way.
He sputters, “No. No, I am tired of lying.”
She can’t help but flinch.
“He’ll be wondering where I am,” she says, quiet, remembering a time when Aaron should have been not hers, but theirs.
He moves quicker than he should be able to in his state when he grabs her by the elbow, pulls her close. He smells of old alcohol and too few showers but still like Jack, the remnants of the reality she knows lurking under his skin. She wants save him the way she used to be able to save him on an island that wanted to swallow them both. Her throat constricts being this close to him. She forgot how that felt.
(That's a lie.)
“We weren’t supposed to leave,” he begs again, but, no, no.
“Yes,” she says with blurry eyes. “We were.”
Breaking away, she moves quickly toward the dark of her car, hidden from the light of the streetlamp.
She says, “Goodbye, Jack,” and the sound of his name in her mouth makes both of them flinch. The car door slams with a hollow sound that makes her shiver and the engine roars over the sound of her sighs.
“We have to go back,” he screams, and she wishes she could stop loving him for just an instant in time.
*
feedback?
deadduck008, but you knew that. we spent 3.5 hours on skype. WIN. almost like having her on my floor again. only less love because if she's in the computer i can't hug her. tragedy. green sticker!)lost fic.
You Fell Down Like Concrete Angels. Kate; Jack/Kate, Kate/Sawyer (Lost). Spoilers from s4.
She used to have a monopoly on repressed feelings and a penchant for lighting the things she didn’t like on fire.
thanks to
winterwaltz for the beta! title from david ford's 'and so you fell'It doesn’t take long for Aaron to ask when Jack will be back.
Nine hours, six minutes, thirty-two seconds since he left, and Kate can’t stop counting.
-
She used to have a monopoly on repressed feelings and a penchant for lighting the things she didn’t like on fire. Love made her feel like flames instead, everywhere down to her fingertips. She wants to write him thank you letters for that, like the ones her mother used to make her write after her Sweet Sixteen or other birthdays, useless gifts littering the floor, bags of wrapping paper polluting the trash.
Instead, she writes him letters beginning with Dear (crossed out) and ending with Jack (crossed out).
All those feelings inside of her won’t float away, though. She burns the unfinished letters in the fireplace, but even that reminds her of him. The whole house does, remnants of a lawsuit she finds ironic to say they won.
-
She doesn’t know why she didn’t fail immediately at being a mother. Maybe because it was Claire’s child, maybe because it was Sawyer who handed Aaron to her with a soft and sad smile, whispering, “Keep him close.”
It was the last thing they said to each other. She hid her tears from Jack as they stepped onto the helicopter, but she knows he saw.
She does know that she has always acted on instinct. Her favorite is fight or flight (we all know which one she is more prone too), but her maternal ones haven’t been that bad either.
This is one of many reasons why with Sawyer it was playing house, and with Jack it was living at home.
-
Jack calls.
She can almost smell alcohol wafting through the voicemail.
-
She thinks she sees Jack staggering down a side street one day and almost stops, slows just slightly to check if it’s him and speeds up again before she can be sure.
He looks different.
-
From the backseat, Aaron asks when Jack is coming back.
She used to wonder how Daddy would sound floating out of Aaron’s small mouth.
My son has always sounded comfortable in hers.
-
She used to dream about Sawyer laughing in the dark of the forest, how she knew him best.
She wanted to tell him, but with Jack words were always hard, the way they kept so many emotions like bottled notes inside of them. And Sawyer’s not a safe topic, his hands on her flesh and the image burned into Jack’s skin.
Kate has never been religious, but she took to praying her past mistakes away. She said I love you and meant it. The nightmares began to fade.
It was enough for her. It wasn’t for him. She left her demons in his hands to throw away. He got rid of hers for her, but forgot to toss his own nightmares into the river alongside hers. They’re both afraid of oceans now. It makes her sad to know she will never be able to see her son play in the sea. She has too many nightmares about water.
The nanny takes him to the beach, though. He shouldn’t be deprived because of Kate’s failures.
-
She changes his ringtone so she doesn’t have to look at the caller ID.
She listens to his voicemails over scotch, thinking of him in too many ways.
-
She keeps the ring in a matchbox in the top drawer of the dresser on his side of the bed, waiting for him to shape up, come home, put it back on her finger and whisper, “I’m so sorry.”
Forgiving him would be easy, because since he left breathing has been so hard.
-
The newscaster proclaims, “Oceanic Six survivor Jack Shepard saved a woman from a car wreck today –”
She drops Aaron’s dinner on the floor. The plate shatters, a quiet, far away sound.
It’s just that it took her by surprise. She has to steel herself to hear his name, now.
-
“I need to see you,” he begs through the phone line.
She can only whisper, Okay.”
-
His rate of decay astounds her, the beard that makes her think of bad movies and his eyes glazed over in a daze she barely recognizes. She can’t say his name at first.
A sad grin slides over his face, and her stomach tries to claw its way out. She swallows to push the pain down.
“You look horrible,” she says, trying to not sound broken, knowing even she couldn’t save him from this.
He hands her a newspaper clipping of the dead and she sighs with something like anger inside of her. Some things are impossible to forget.
-
The nightmares have shifted since their relationship ended. Now, she dreams not of the island, but of them with happy smiles and the day he arrived at her doorstep with a shy “Hello.” But the dreams turn to ugly nightmares quickly, his smiling face melting away to that night in the living room, the lies piling on her, his rage spilling out and open and leaving stains on the carpet, the remnants of a party gone bad.
-
“I wanted to crash, Kate,” he says with broken tones, and the way he says her name still throws her. “I don’t care about anybody else on board. Every little bump we hit, or turbulence… I actually close my eyes and pray that I can get back.”
The tears spill over and she’s crying for too much – for them, for Jack, for herself. She wants to pull him up out of the dark and hold him close and convince him it will be okay. She can’t look at him this way, crashing to the ground like antique porcelain. It shatters her, too.
“This is not going to change,” she pleads, because she’s not going back and they’re not going back, they are standing with firm feet on the mainland without ocean views and they are going to stay that way.
He sputters, “No. No, I am tired of lying.”
She can’t help but flinch.
“He’ll be wondering where I am,” she says, quiet, remembering a time when Aaron should have been not hers, but theirs.
He moves quicker than he should be able to in his state when he grabs her by the elbow, pulls her close. He smells of old alcohol and too few showers but still like Jack, the remnants of the reality she knows lurking under his skin. She wants save him the way she used to be able to save him on an island that wanted to swallow them both. Her throat constricts being this close to him. She forgot how that felt.
(That's a lie.)
“We weren’t supposed to leave,” he begs again, but, no, no.
“Yes,” she says with blurry eyes. “We were.”
Breaking away, she moves quickly toward the dark of her car, hidden from the light of the streetlamp.
She says, “Goodbye, Jack,” and the sound of his name in her mouth makes both of them flinch. The car door slams with a hollow sound that makes her shiver and the engine roars over the sound of her sighs.
“We have to go back,” he screams, and she wishes she could stop loving him for just an instant in time.
*
feedback?
