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As soon as Lapidus lands the the plane, they’re accosted by people. The press, asking questions about Ajira 316 at a rapid-fire pace, pause as soon as they see Kate’s well-known face. She was on the flight manifest, of course—a violation of her deal with the DA, promising not to leave California.
Lapidus had to use the Ajira plane’s radio to make contact as soon as they were in radius, which was how everyone already knew where’s they’d be landing. Australia. Claire’s request. Her mother wouldn’t have stayed in a ratty motel with Aaron, waiting for news. She’d wait at home.
Only Kate and Lapidus were on the original flight. Sawyer and Claire were on Oceanic 815. Miles and Richard weren’t on any flight.
They came up with an explanation, in the plane, a lot of time to kill. Another lie. A lot of lies.
There’s a press conference. There’s law enforcement, Kate’s legal status once again up in the air. Sawyer, apparently, was banned from Australia, but the ban is lifted, considering everything. There’s two more settlements from Oceanic.
And, finally, there is a reunion.
Kate and Claire go to Claire’s old childhood home, and Claire’s mother opens the door. She’d been in a coma before, Claire told her. She’s completely fine now, staring at Claire with disbelief and shock.
Then the spell breaks, and they both hurry to collide as fast as they can, crying and shaking and apologizing.
Aaron is in the living room, playing with toys. Kate watches him fondly. His entire face lights up as soon as he notices her, and he comes running with a cry of Mommy!
Claire is crying.
It makes Aaron frown and disentangle from Kate. Aaron toddles over to Claire, and puts out his chubby baby hands. Kate watches this, feeling like her heart is too big for her body. This is what she came back for. This is what made it all—even Jack—worth it. The love in Claire’s eyes as she opens her arms to her son, and he lets her pick him up. And then she’s laughing softly, holding Aaron’s body close to her.
“It’s okay,” Aaron says, patting her hair. “Shh.”
Claire laughs, the shaky kind after crying, but it still makes her entire face light up.
Aaron looks up with big blue eyes and a smile, impish and cute. “All better?”
“All better,” Claire says, hugging him close.
“Are you Mommy’s friend?” Aaron asks her.
“Actually, Aaron,” Kate says, giving him her widest smile, “Claire is your mother.”
Kate was never supposed to raise him, and she knows that, but something inside her still feels like it’s breaking.
“We’re, uh, we’re both your mum,” Claire says, the smile on her face a fragile thing. “You can have two.”
Kate glances at her, and she wonders if this is something just to minimize Aaron’s confusion, or if Claire actually means it.
*
After Aaron lightens the mood in a way only a three-year-old can by calling them both stinky, after they take showers and wash off the grime and the dirt and the sweat of the island, after tea and dinner and a night she spends in the guest room, there is another day. And another one after that, and another.
Aaron adjusts easily to Claire’s prescence, the way that kids do, enjoying her company and attention. And then there is Kate.
Still playing the part of a mother, because that’s what Aaron expects, and because she loves him. But Claire’s mother still looks at Kate like she’s an imposter. Claire herself is harder to read. It didn’t used to be that way, back in the old days, but the three years alone have done a number on her. The familiar guilt churns, deep inside.
It's been only a few days, and they're cooking dinner, when Claire asks, "How are you doing this?"
Her hair is glossy and vibrant. Her skin is clean. She looks nothing like the shell of a woman who tried to kill Kate, but the spark in her eyes is gone. There are scars Kate doesn't know the origin of, her frame lither than Kate remembers.
"How are you fine with being back here the same as always?” Claire presses.
“I’m not,” Kate says, shaking her head. It’s true what they say about hindsight. “You know, I spent three years thinking about everything but the island; thinking that I could pretend none of it ever happened.”
Claire doesn’t flinch at the reminder of the time Kate spent with Aaron. She just looks at her, eyes blue like the island’s ocean, listening. The knife she uses to cut the vegetables is shiny and bright.
"But it did happen, and we'll carry it with us forever," Kate says, goes to the sink, runs her hands briefly under the tap, dries them on the dishtowel. The dishtowel is white with red stripes. The reminder of the ordinary stings sometimes. Makes the island feel far away, like a bad dream.
(It was not all misery.)
"But, honey, that doesn’t mean we can’t move on.”
Honey takes them both by surprise. Kate used to call Claire honey when she was comforting her. Before. Their relationship will always be divided into before and after, and they both know it.
“Being adaptable and going with the flow, eh? That’s so gemini,” Claire says in a blasé tone of voice.
Startled laughter. “Well, I’ve never been one for astrology.”
Claire rolls her eyes. She’s smiling.
*
They go back to the states, for the trial and for the funeral. They go from Sydney to Los Angeles. They’re probably crazy.
Kate’s new trial is first, during which her lawyer finally gets what he wanted at the first trial. All charges dropped.
It’s easier, to be in the courtroom. Kate doesn’t like to spend much time in churches—she’s a sinner. Nonetheless she watches the service arranged by Jack’s mother, holds hands with Jack’s sister, and wonder at an alternate universe where she could have stayed Jack’s lover.
There’s a casket, but there is no body. Eerily reminiscient of the funeral after they came back the first time. They—but out of all of them, all the Oceanic Six who went back to the island, Kate is the only one who made it out.
Everyone else from the final flight is at the funeral, save for Richard (no one knows where he went off to). Lapidus, Miles. Sawyer.
There are the usual platitudes that come with a funeral, and there are also the usual Sawyer-isms. After, he smiles at her, but it’s a grown-up kind of smile this time, the kind that says it’s my fault, I made her stay, some people are just meant to be alone while crying on a dock together.
(Not really together. He cried in front of her, and then he walked away, and it was only after that she allowed herself to break down.)
“Look at us, Freckles,” he says, and it’s soft and it’s that smile-that-isn’t-really, and she can’t stand it.
Look at them. They could have been together, but they chose other people, and now those other people are both dead.
“Come back to Sydney with us,” Kate says impulsively. “Let Aaron meet you.”
So many people whom she loves are gone, and all she’s left with is an urge to hoard whoever’s still here.
A little muscle in his jaw twitches, and she just knows that he’s going to say no. That he’s going to stay and be alone, because that’s what Kate herself would have done if not for Aaron, and they’ve always been ridiculously alike.
It’s always been part of the reason why being with him terrified her. Why she fought her feelings for him at every step and every turn. She hated herself, and he was like her, so she had to hate him. Tried to, and failed.
“Well, why not?” he says, and Kate startles because his smile suddenly reaches his eyes. "Sounds swell."
*
He stays in Sydney.
Claire and Kate take care of Aaron together. Claire never asks Kate to leave, and Kate never asks if she wants her to. Sawyer finds a reason to appear on their doorstep, nearly every day.
Once over the threshold, he reveals, with a flourish, that he’s holding a bag of groceries, or a stack of new books for Aaron, or a bouquet of flowers behind his back, once, for Claire. He reads to Aaron, the way that he used to back on the beach, when Aaron was only a newborn and Sawyer’s southern drawl was the only thing that got him to stop crying. Aaron still loves it, and being read to in it delights him.
It, unfortunately, brings back painful memories.
The cadence of Jack’s voice when he lulled Aaron to sleep. Watching him from the doorway, the slant of his eyes, the concentrated furrow of his brow. Love swelling inside her, for him, for the man everyone could always count on. But he couldn’t count on himself, could he?
His fatal flaw—a desire to fix things—and a disappeared island, with many of his people still on it. She’d call it no wonder that he turned to drink and addiction, but Kate had been dealing with the same thing, and she’d managed. She’d had a son to think of. A cycle to break.
She remembers, intimately, what if feels like, to smell alcohol on her step-father’s (but-not-really) breath, to be the one taking care of him, to have to choose which look in his eyes she hates the least: the faraway, glazed one; or the one filled with lust.
It didn’t matter how much she loved Jack. It didn’t matter how much he had done for her. When he couldn’t, wouldn’t, turn it around, she had to leave him. Break the cycle, or god forbid, Aaron would end up like her, resenting his DNA, brimming with self-hatred.
(You’re not even related to him!)
She dreams, again, of an alternate universe. Everyone is alive. A campfire by the beach, happy couples everywhere. Sayid and Shannon, Claire and Charlie, Jin and Sun, Sawyer and Juliet. They eat roasted boar under the shadows of the setting sun, and listen to Jack telling stories to their children. The ocean isn’t quiet but it's a welcome background noise. The air smells of cooked meat.
They’re on the island in this fantasy. Staying there forever would be a price she’d gladly pay if it meant everyone got to live. But they didn’t, and they’re not on the island.
Instead, she’s standing in the doorway to Aaron’s new bedroom, watching the uneven plaster of the dark star wallpaper, the scratches in the paint of the windowsill. Listening to Sawyer’s southern drawl, lulling Aaron to sleep.
*
With a choked scream, Kate sits up on the mattress, breathing heavily. As her heart calms, she remembers she’s at Claire’s old home in Australia. Far away from the flames gnawing through her mother’s house, far away from the cage on Hydra, far away from that fateful helicopter ride.
She turns on the lamp next to her bed, illuminating the small and impersonal guest room. There’s a wooden bookshelf, and her eyes catches on a book as she reads the title.
She reads poetry until there’s a knock on the door, minutes later. It creaks as it opens and reveals Claire.
“I was getting warm milk with honey,” she says, a little hesitantly. An explanation for why she’s not in bed, but not for why she’s in this room. The guest room, not Kate's room, she still feels like an imposter, a thief, a bad girl Katie something rotten inside you just like me. “May I join you?”
“Of course,” Kate says. “I mean—go ahead.”
She traces the words on the page, before she puts the book back on the shelf with the white wood.
The way a crow shook down on me
The dust of snow from a hemlock tree
Has given my heart a change of mood
And saved some part of a day I had rued
Claire closes the door behind her, and then joins her on the bed, crawling under the old, worn blanket, but it's warm. Pink tulips sewn onto a faded white background. They lie there, each resting on a hip, turned to face each other.
Claire doesn’t say anything, and Kate doesn’t ask. Claire’s face is illuminated by the soft yellow light from the nightstand. She’s always been the most beautiful of them all, Kate thinks. Beautiful blonde hair, wide blue eyes. Claire's smile would get anyone’s pulse racing.
They’re just lying next to each other. It’s nothing.
(It’s everything.)
*
Claire mentions Charlie to Aaron all the time. It’s because, she says, she wants Aaron to know how much Charlie loved him. How he would’ve done anything to keep his little Turnip-Head safe.
Kate doesn’t mention Jack.
“I could,” she says during dinner at Sawyer’s little apartment. “I could tell him about all the amazing things he did for us. The way that he took care of us and kept hope alive. He’ll always be with us, even after his death.”
“So why don’t you?” His eyes are a different kind of blue. Caught in this light, they look like the sky above the island.
There’s a metaphor there, if she wants to look for it. Out of reach works. So does a plane splitting in half mid-air.
“I guess it’s just too painful,” she says honestly. She hasn’t been kissed in a long time. Her mouth is tingling with it, the want.
So she eats cold pizza, drinks cheap beer, and she kisses him. It doesn’t feel the same as it used to, too many old ghosts between them, but they’ve both always been so very good at pretending.
They linger, and then they pull away. Neither of them tries to do anything else. They’re good at pretending, but it wouldn’t be right to.
She remembers the way that it felt to plead for his life, wishing that he would stand and fight instead of telling her to close her eyes, rain pouring down on them both. She remembers the taste of fish biscuits. She remembers his young daughter, a little girl who looks so much like Sawyer that in the beginning it hurt to even catch a glimpse of her.
“I guess it’s just too painful,” he echoes with a wry twist of his mouth, but he’s talking about something else.
*
By some turn of irony, or maybe because of his first months on this Earth, Aaron loves the beach. They go as often as they can, and Kate and Claire try not to get caught up in memories of a different beach. Try to, and and fail.
Aaron is at school when Claire asks if they can go to the beach, just the two of them, for the first time. “If you want,” she tacks on, a little self-conciously. She’s wearing teardrop earrings.
How special and beautiful it is that they exist, here, in this corner of the world, together. Being here, despite everything, it’s rare. Jack taught her that. “Okay.”
There are people on the beach, but not too many. Figures, since it’s the middle of a week day. Kate kicks her heels off on the pier and walks on her bare feet in the sand. The shoes’ll probably get stolen, but she doesn’t really care. Heels, and make-up, pretty clothing, and perfume; vanity was one of the first things to go on the island. She's never really been one for it anyway, even before the plane crash.
“It’s beautiful out here,” Claire says, watching the ocean, which is nearly the same color as the sky. Gulls cry overhead. “It’s the one thing I never really minded, back there.” And here she pauses, lightning-quick question in her eyes, all clear?
Kate nods. She’s not the one who was stuck on that island for three years. Alone. “I missed the ocean while I was away,” she admits, and she gives her own all clear? question.
“I’m glad Aaron enjoys it so much," Claire answers.
Kate grins, an instinctive response. “Yeah.”
“I want to leave.”
She blinks. “What?”
Claire bends down to grab a pretty seashell. Her fingers trace the edges before she pockets it.
“It feels wrong to stay here,” she says, meeting Kate’s eyes. In the reflected sunlight, her pupils seem very small. “This is where we departed from, on the day that our lives changed forever. I don’t want to be stuck in time, thinking about how different everything could have been.”
“What about your mom?”
“I’ll visit her,” Claire says simply.
You’ll have to go by plane, Kate doesn’t say. You’ll have to do it often.
“Are you sure?” she asks instead.
“If not for the plane crash, I wouldn’t have raised Aaron, you know. And I ended up missing the first three years of his life anyway. And now we’re living in the place where I grew up, but it’s not…it’s not right,” Claire says helplessly.
Sunlight catches behind her hair, haloing it, a yellow glow. Kate reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind Claire’s ear, accidentally touching the teardrop earring.
“Where will we go?”
A twinkle in Claire’s eyes. Vibrant hair, clean skin. She looks just like before, no trace of the woman who was bitter and alone.
She looks happy.
“Where else?”
*
Kate still owns a house in Los Angeles, easily paid for with a big chunk from her Oceanic settlement. It’s where she raised Aaron, and Aaron is delighted to see it again.
“We’re home!” he says, clapping his hands with a toothy grin, and Kate grins back at him, before chancing a glance at Claire. But Claire doesn’t look bitter or envious. That empty look in her eyes is gone, the one Kate feared would be there forever.
“We’re home,” Claire agrees, soft and subdued, but a smile tugs at her lips.
"Nice place you got here," Sawyer says, and Aaron excitedly tugs at his hand, wanting to show Uncle James his room, so off they go.
(Kate and Claire never call him Sawyer around Aaron. Some people will always, will only, know him as Sawyer—I became the man I was hunting. But Aaron will only ever know him as James.)
“It’s a beautiful house,” Claire says. “It’s…perfect.”
“Claire?” It’s a question, because Kate isn’t sure what to do or say or think.
“The kind of house I always imagined my baby would go to once I gave it away,” Claire says, her voice absolutely hushed, just in case. “Back when that was what I wanted. Thought I wanted. I just… I couldn’t do it alone.”
Kate moves toward her, grabs her hands and squeezes them. “You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone again.”
(Claire, about to give birth, don’t leave me. Kate, looking at her like it’s the last thing she’ll ever do, oh, no, no, honey, I won’t.)
*
Instead of repeating their arrangement from Australia, Sawyer stays with them, and Claire lets him. Kate is glad, the part of her that wants to hoard people she cares about, the part of her that loves him. He shouldn’t be alone.
Kate starts mentioning Jack to Aaron, as nothing more than what he actually was, not what he could have been. Claire’s brother, Aaron’s uncle, someone who used to read him stories. Once upon a time.
Miles shows up out of the blue sometimes, bringing gifts for Aaron. The first time he does, it’s with a quip about irony and restraining orders that Kate doesn’t get—but it gets an eyeroll out of Claire and a grin from Sawyer.
Miles and Sawyer go out and do stuff sometimes, and this is one of those evenings. Aaron is already in bed, and so Claire and Kate are having a ladies night, movies and caramel popcorn.
Their taste in movies is a little different, to say the least, which is how Kate ends up watching chick flick after chick flick. Female friendship is a big theme in them, girls supporting girls, and her minds wanders to her own friendships. Juliet. Sun. Claire.
Kate has to pick up the remote and pause, which is something they don’t do outside of bathroom breaks. She stares at Reese Witherspoon’s frozen face and says, “I never apologized to you.”
Claire blinks. “For what?”
“For getting on that chopper,” she says. “I didn’t know the island was going to be moved, but that’s no excuse. I never should have left without knowing you were okay.”
Claire’s wrapped in a blanket, holding a cooling mug of cocoa with little marshmallows that Kate made for her between 10 Things I Hate About You and Legally Blonde.
“Kate,” Claire says, and she loves the way Claire’s accent wraps around her name, always has. “I know that I—I was angry, and—but—you said it yourself, you didn’t know the island would disappear. I know you would have come looking for me if it had been there. I know it.”
“It doesn’t make it okay,” Kate says, gesturing wildly. “You were right to blame me, and now you’re sitting here, drinking cocoa and watching movies and pretending like I didn’t screw you over—”
“Kate—“
“—because I’m not a good person, I never have been, and you of all people should see that I’m—“
“Kate.”
Claire has reached out and grabbed her hand. It’s warm and soft and it fits perfectly.
"I forgive you," Claire tells her softly. "Okay? I forgive you."
Kate’s eyes are wet with tears, because Jack is gone and it feels like she’s replacing him with Claire, somehow; because part of her burns with desire when Claire is too close; because too many people are dead and Kate’s still here.
“You shouldn’t,” she says, blurry vision.
Claire reaches out with her other hand and brushes her knuckles along Kate’s jaw, then lays her hand over Kate’s cheek. It renders her speechless.
“Tough,” Claire says, her lips curled slightly upward in a wry sort of way, her eyes a little twinkly, and Kate thinks: I love you. She squeezes Claire’s hand.
*
Almost a year after he has come to live with them, Sawyer says, “I want to see Clementine.”
It happens like this:
Claire is picking Aaron up from school. Kate and Sawyer are in the kitchen. The song on the radio changes. A love song; cheesy. He holds his hand out to her.
“You’re not serious,” she says, laughing.
“Oh, I’m dead serious.” He’s teasing her.
She pauses before taking his hand, and they dance. For a moment, she feels free. Free to still exist, and somehow keep singing along to songs to the radio, when so many people have died.
The song fades as it ends, and their swaying slows to a stop.
“I want to see her.” It makes sense, being around Aaron all the time, that he’d think about her.
“Yeah?” she prompts, gentle, coaxing. It works; the dam breaks.
"It's selfish of me, ain't it? She's living her own life, ignorant, and here I am." He shakes his head. "Probably not even an issue anyway; I ain't got no doubt Cassidy won’t slam the door in my face as soon as she sees me, let alone…” Clementine. Worried what she’ll think of her absent dad.
“You should at least give her the chance,” Kate says gently. “Give her the choice of wether or not she wants you in her life.”
At Cassidy’s house, by the front door, he almost chickens out. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea, after all,” but Kate grabs his arm and gives him a look, and he rings the bell.
Cassidy isn’t thrilled, to say the least.
But she doesn’t slam the door in his face.
Clementine is oblivious at first, happy to see Aunt Kate and wondering if Aunt Kate’s friend wants to see her dollhouse. The two leave to go to her room, where he'll explain their connection, but Clementine doesn't know that yet. Cassidy watches them go, frowning. Kate is glad for the opportunity to catch up.
“So let’s see if I got this right,” Cassidy says once Kate finishes speaking, “You’re in love with the mother of the kid you’ve been raising for the past three years, but change is scary and so is loss, so you won’t do anything about it.”
Cassidy is as shrewd as always. Kate hadn’t said any of those things.
“I’m not in love with her,” she says weakly. “I’m just…” …in love with her.
Cassidy doesn’t even bother responding to her denial. “Look, let’s say your worst case scenario comes true, and she dies. You’ll still love her, wether you were with her or not. You’ll still lose her.”
“I’m sick of losing people,” Kate snaps.
“It’s out of your control, Kate,” Cassidy says, unfazed. Sympathetic. Something unreadable in her eyes. “You know what they say. Better to have loved and lost.”
Whoever said that didn’t know what it feels like to lose people, over and over. At some point, the idea of never knowing anyone, never loving anyone, never losing anyone, sounds more appealing.
Except no. Except eyes like the ocean and hair in the sunlight and a smile that makes Kate's pulse race.
“She wants to see me again,” Sawyer tells her later, on their way back to their house. “She wants to take it slow. Play with dolls.” He laughs a little, disbelief written on his features.
Kate is grinning. Sounds like Clementine.
“She should come by sometime,” she says, watching the road zip past through the window. “Aaron’ll like that.”
This is contentment: thinking about her son, thinking about her honorary niece, thinking about something that makes a man she loves happy.
She thinks about what would make her happy.
“Do you think,” she starts. Pauses. “Me and Claire, would that be… I don’t know. Weird?”
For a moment, he’s quiet, and he looks suprised that she brought it up, but not at the prospect of her and Claire. Then he gives her a look, exasperated and longsuffering.
“Freckles, we seen polar bears in the tropics, disappearin’ islands, and literal time travel. The two of you getting together would be just about the most ordinary thing that could happen.”
She laughs. He’s always been good at that—making her laugh, even in the worst situations. It stings, still, the idea that he’s moved on from her, with Juliet. Despite everything, it stings. “You think so?”
“Take a page from what’s apparently Clementine’s favorite movie. Kiss the girl.”
“Mermaids, huh?” Kate says, grinning. “It was pirates, last time I saw her.”
She gets the satisfaction of seeing one of James’ genuine smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners and sparking with delight.
*
Aaron playing with some of the other kids on the beach, all watched indulgently by various parents from their blankets. The blanket Kate and Claire are watching from is laid out close by the water line, close to the loud crash of the waves.
They’re watching Aaron, and then Kate is watching Claire watch Aaron; upturned lips and undescribable fondness, dress fluttering in the breeze. This is what she went back for, Kate is reminded again. This is why—Claire and Aaron. They were always meant to be together.
“I love you,” Kate whispers, nearly soft enough to be drowned out by the wind and the waves and the seagulls crying out overhead.
For a moment, Claire doesn’t react, and then she startles. “What?”
“I love you,” Kate repeats.
“I love you, too,” Claire says, easily, with her blue, blue eyes. What were those song lyrics again, translated by Shannon?
Kate tangles her fingers in Claire’s hair and thinks of a seashell from a different beach, that Claire brought to LA with them. A different ocean. And another one, before that.
She remembers. Blue infinity.
It’s a natural thing when their lips meet. It’s soft and sweet and all the things Kate’s never allowed to have for very long. The waves are singing.
*
Things don’t change all that much between them. They laugh and co-parent and enjoy each other’s company, but in addition to that, they go out for dinner, hold hands, share goodnight kisses. It feels novel and it feels good.
Aaron is growing fast, picking up and discarding interests while he does, but one thing that remains constant is his love for the beach. That, and his stuffed orca, worn with age. He likes to help Claire press flowers—vivid yellow sunflowers, pale pink roses, deep blue hydrangeas. He wants Kate to sing catch a falling star every night without fail, and the song feels old and fragile every time.
Often Kate and Claire will share a meal on the beach, or sunbathe on a mild day, or, when they’re feeling particularly introspectic, stargaze.
“Look over there,” Claire says, her voice soft and magnetic, sure as can be, “That’s Cassiopeia.”
Her hand reaches up to trace the constellation with her fingers.
“I don’t see it,” Kate says, amused and self-effacing.
“You just have to get used to the shapes and the patterns, and then you’ll be able to see them, too,” Claire whispers. “There’s Orion.”
Kate props her head on Claire’s shoulder and lets Claire’s voice soothe her, washing away everything else.
*
It’s been years since Kate was last on a ship.
Mostly, when they need to, they go by plane—Claire most often of all, when she visits Sydney—and nothing ever happens. No crash, no island, no unimaginable loss. But there’s something nerve-wracking about it every time, especially if they’re travelling with Aaron.
The trip is an adventure, but the visit to Seoul is a mournful affair. Empty graves and a young orphan. Ji Yeon and Aaron play together, mindless of their language barrier, but the adults are stuck in time. Memories of Jin and Sun press down everywhere at once, heavy.
But time’s supposed to heal all wounds, right? And they’ve got time. So much of it, sometimes she feels like it’s drowning her. If it weren’t for her tethers to the world, if it weren’t for Aaron and Claire and Sawyer…
Kate lets her fingers trail along the wooden railing of the ship. Sawyer and Aaron are on the deck as well, playing a board game, Sawyer trying to teach him how to cheat. They’re both laughing. She thinks, sometimes, about the fact that he’s still here. She never thought he’d stay for this long. She never thought he’d stay at all.
Kate leans against the rail. Claire joins her, eyes bright, lips curved, and together they watch dolphins dance around the prow of the boat.
*
They’re in the kitchen, Kate and Sawyer. Aaron is doing a puzzle on the couch, tongue poked out in concentration. The running of the sink, the clanging noises of handling the cutlery and the plates, toweling them off with the dishtowel.
“You need a haircut,” Kate says.
Sawyer raises his brows and turns his head a little. “Do I?”
A smile plays at her lips. “Yeah, unless you want to walk around as a homeless hobo.”
“That hurts,” he tells her, spark in his eyes.
“I’m sure,” she says, amused. “Well, come on. We’re done anyway. I’ll get the scissors.”
“Oh, you’ll get the scissors? Here I was thinking one of the perks of being in the real world was gettin' to go to a professional.”
A little laugh of disbelief, defending, “I gave you a haircut before, it looked fine.”
“I’ll be sure to leave you five stars on Yelp,” he tells her, then starts a fight with soap-suds, making Aaron shriek with delight.
After they get cleaned up (after she wins), she gets the scissors. Standing behind him from where he sits on the couch next to Aaron, she carefully starts cutting away at the blonde locks.
“Hold still,” she admonishes.
“I’m holding still,” he protests indulgently.
“No, you’re moving your head to talk to me,” she says, laughing a little, moving his head back so that it faces forward again.
“Demanding,” he complains teasingly.
“Mommy is always right,” Aaron advises, impish, eyes still trained on the unfinished shark.
“Oh, I know,” Sawyer says, and she’s sure that he’s grinning.
“Do you?” She can’t stop smiling, either, and for a moment, there is no bad and there is no good. It’s just them, sunlight streaming through the window, quiet and uplifting. The moment passes, and everything and everyone streams back into her head. Claire, Juliet, Jack. As always.
“Well, maybe I just want a good look at your face,” he says. “I don’t see it that often anymore.”
“We literally live together, James,” she says, but her heart isn’t really in it. Things have changed, since she started being with Claire. She doesn’t spend as much time with him as she used to. “Keep holding still.”
Locks of hair end up on the floor until she’s satisfied.
“Uncle James, look!” Aaron says eagerly, turning the full radiance of his grin on Sawyer. The puzzle is finished, depicting a great white shark, underwater, light filtering down from the surface, surrounded by colorful plants and fish.
Kate watches them, her heart pounding for some reason.
*
On stay-at-home date nights they hustle Sawyer out of the house, and he’ll play up the dramatics of acting hurt before giving a suggestive grin and leaving to see Miles.
It’s Saturday and Claire makes a night of it, dinner and candles and wine. They go to the bedroom, and afterwards, when Kate is drowsing, Claire says, “I think we should talk about Sawyer.”
“What about him?” Kate mumbles into her hair.
“You know, when we started being together, it didn’t mean you had to break up with him.”
“Break up with—“ She’s awake now, sitting up with alarm. “We’re not dating. We—look, he still loves Juliet.”
“And you still love Jack,” Claire counters. “I still love Charlie, and I always will. But they’re gone, and we’re not. We have to live our lives, Kate, and take every bit of happiness we can find. We have to hold onto it.” Catch a falling star and put in in your pocket...never let it fade away.
“But…” Her mind is blank. Something is thrumming beneath her veins, like panic, like being caught with a secret. It’s ridiculous. Yes, she loves him, and she can admit that now, easily, but they… It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
It always comes back to that. They weren’t supposed to lose so many people.
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Claire says lightly. “I just mean, you don’t have to change or end your relationship with Sawyer—whatever kind of relationship that is—just because we’re dating.”
Kate lies back down, and only thinks about breathing for a while. Wonders if she’ll always have to feel guilty for loving him. When they were just getting to know each other, the ugliest parts of them both, and then suddenly, it was more, but she couldn’t love herself, let alone him. After he jumped from the chopper, after asking her to take care of his daughter, after she carved out a new life for herself with someone she didn’t have to feel guilty about loving, but the guilt was still there, for a different reason. Being with Claire, undeniably in love, but with the ocean and the sky both.
If he is the island’s sky and she is the island’s ocean, then Kate must be the jungle, green as her eyes are, and there’s a metaphor, too. Lawless. No rules.
“You’d really be okay with that?” Kate asks, brimming with vulnerability.
“We’re already living together, the three of us. It’s okay if that’s what you want. I’m okay with it, I mean.” Claire smiles wryly. “And of course there’s the added bonus of him not giving that kicked puppy look anymore every time you and I so much as glance at each other.”
Kate startles. She hasn’t noticed that. Well, sometimes, she has, but she always chalked it up to thinking about Juliet. Thinking about how he didn’t get to be with her. And maybe that was it, but maybe it was a combination of that and something else. Maybe…
“You’re pretty awesome, you know that?” Kate murmurs, mouth twitching.
Eyes rolling up, Claire smiles coquettishly, “I know.” But a pretty flush rises to her cheeks at the compliment. Kate leans in and kisses her.
*
It’s a Sunday evening in September, the clouds are high, the birds haven’t migrated yet. It’s cold outside, and the leaves are turning, red and yellow and brown.
Clementine sits in the back seat, with her two best dolls, an empty picnic basket next to her, save for the tupperware. Sawyer drives, Kate sits beside him, watching autumn’s start through the window. They drop Clementine off at Cassidy’s before turning to go back home, Claire and Aaron already there, waiting.
Kate has thought about Claire’s words. She’s thought about it a lot. But every time she thinks she might do something about it, she thinks about Juliet and chickens out. It’s hypocritcal of her and she knows it. After all, her heart still pangs every once in a while when she’s with Claire or Sawyer, thinking about Jack.
She chances it.
It’s innocuous. Easily mistaken as a platonic gesture, if needed. It’s her hand, covering his, on the stick shift.
His eyes dart to her, hold her gaze, return to the road. They welcome the island’s ghost.
“Stop by the beach,” she says softly.
Another quick glance, making her lips curl slightly upward. His eyebrows rise. “Alrighty then,” he says, with a flourish, “As the lady commands.”
At this hour and this season, the beach is almost competely abandoned. They get out of the car, hearing twice the slam of the doors.
The thin grass beyond the shore sways in the breeze. They walk along the coast, the clouds shining brightly orange, revealing a light blue sky between the gap on one side, and a darker blue on the other.
“Any particular reason you wanted to go here?”
Kate smiles. “The beach is nice.”
“Thinking about another one?”
“Always,” she says. “You?”
“It crosses my mind sometimes,” Sawyer says lightly. A light drizzle starts to pour from the sky, making the smell of earth fill the air. She thinks he’s going to add something light-hearted, make her laugh, but he says, “I think about Hugo over there.”
“Yeah,” she says, sobering. “Me too. It’s gotta be lonely.”
They can talk about Hurley. Mention his name often, keeping him with them. Hurley’s still alive.
Juliet’s name, on the other hand, often goes unspoken. Except, sometimes, to Clementine or Aaron. It’s resulted in a bit of hero worship for a woman they never even met. It’s pretty amazing.
They continue to walk. He sings a Bob Marley song under his breath. The sky opens up further.
“Let me guess, you wanna stay out here in the rain like a mad woman.” He grins at her knowingly.
“I like the rain,” she says, smiling because he remembers. “And you’re here with me, so what does that make you?”
“Cold,” he says.
She laughs, and reaches for his hand, entwining hers with it. The drops of rain are cold but his hand is pleasantly warm. With every minute that passes, the clouds grow a darker orange, until they start to look red.
“Claire said something interesting to me.”
Kate's heart speeds up, but she keeps her voice even. “Yeah?”
Sawyer stops walking.
Their hands are wet with rain, except for where they’re touching.
“She said you have two hands.” His tone is wry.
She presses her lips together briefly. “She’s right, I do,” she says dryly.
They look at each other, and they don’t say anything. They don’t have to say anything.
He puts his hand on her arm, pulls her against him, his mouth on hers. Both of them shaking, on the thin grass, covered in rainwater. Listening to the crash of the ocean’s waves and the sound of the rain falling.