i. essence reverts to a single moment

Juliet dies on a Sunday afternoon.

            Blood is all the more crimson in the rain, dripping down his arms and soaking into the pores of Jack’s dirty palms. His hands shake around her broken limbs, searching for a beat, a pulse, a life. Nothing. Blonde hair splays out across the wet dirty forest floor, angelic in memory but harrowing in reality, and Sawyer’s grief moves from his shadowed eyes to the tips of the bloated trees.

They flashed the Friday beforehand and when he came to in 2007, every bone in her body was broken and all he could hear was the blood pounding in his ears and Kate crying and Sawyer yelling, God damnit Doc, just do something!

He tried for two days while none of them slept but it probably wouldn’t have mattered much because on Sunday afternoon she dies anyway.            

Her cold limp hands slips from Sawyers grasp into the dark mud and his anguished moans are enough to tell Jack that he made a mistake. We weren’t meant to come back.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Kate grasps for him as the doctor slips away, red staining his skin, and there is so much blood, too much blood. And it’s just like all other 47 times when somebody died on his clock only this time there is no operating room or sterility or grief emitting from strangers. None of them are strangers.

She follows him into the caves and he lets her catch the cool fresh water in her small palms and dote over every stain of blood etched into his skin. He is numb, in part from the icy rain and in part because the image of Juliet’s glassy blue eyes staring back at him right as she slipped out of consciousness has burned a hole deep into the center of his mind.

Kate kisses his hand – once, twice. She lays her lips against his ear and tells him to count to five but he’s too weary and too drained to tell her that he already did. The rain hits the top of the caves and he immediately flashes to the image of Sawyer crouched over Juliet’s dead body, the drops beating down upon his strained back.

You should sleep, she whispers, placing her hand on his chest. His heart beats against her palm and he’s having the most difficult time trying to distinguish between the tears and rain on her cheeks. 

Her tongue is warm and soft against his own when he finally chooses to place his lips across hers. Is it okay? he asks, fingering the hem of her t-shirt. All she can do is nod as he backs her against the cool smooth stone of the cave rocks.

I can’t lose you, is the last thing he says before he enters her. It’s been only three weeks but feels like a lifetime, and somehow she seems so much smaller in his arms than ever before.

ii. tangled in your quiet pores

It’s never rained this much in Los Angeles before. Kate calls it bad luck but Jack calls it karma.

They return to the mainland empty-handed and broken-hearted, one of them sealed forever in a crude black body bag. Sawyer drinks $5 cocktails the whole flight back. Jack comes home to an eager hospital but can no longer bear the sight of blood. Kate arrives to the news that on August 23^rd, 2007, Carole Littleton drove her car off the San Fernando Valley Bridge. According to police reports, Aaron Austen was found safely asleep in her hotel room.

It is early September and the humidity pools on every surface of the house. They are drained and drowsy and Jack moves back in without her even having to ask. The suitcases sit in the hallway, unpacked and snagging on the edges of the carpeting. He passes by them daily and thinks of getaways and hideaways and vacations with just the two of them to anywhere but a tropical island

I’m worried about Sawyer, she whispers sometimes late at night, and he tightens his grip on her waist, not because he’s jealous, but because he’s worried too. Jack has traded bourbon and whiskey for quiet and comforting afternoons tangled under the linens with Kate, but Sawyer spends his days and nights at the end of a shabby bar with a perspiring glass of rum trained between his rough hands.

There was no destiny and there was no Claire and Kate still has nightmares of somebody trying to snatch Aaron in the night. He is their son now, officially and permanently, and nowadays the tantrums and toys and messiness all come as a relief. Jack never knew he would conform to domesticity so well.

Kate wraps herself around him, hair fanning out across his chest, and everything is so much more unspoken than it used to be. In later years they’ll tell stories to their children about how daddy once almost blew up an island because he thought mommy didn’t love him anymore. But in the desperate, heated nights, all they can remember is blonde hair splayed out across the wet dirty forest floor, angelic in memory but harrowing in reality. All they can remember is Sawyer’s grief and his anguished moans. All they can remember is cool smooth stone of the cave rocks and soft whispers of I can’t lose you. All they can remember is the rain.