Title: Who We Are
Rating: PG-13
Summary: There is always a watchful eye on her; whether it be Jin’s or her father’s depends on the attention she has warranted by either at that particular time. They keep her caged in a very small world, with the same places, the same people. Everything is the same, and always.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Thanks to that_evening, who suggested this idea when I was asking for inspiration regarding AUs for Sun. Used for au100, prompt #89: she.



There is always a watchful eye on her; whether it be Jin’s or her father’s depends on the attention she has warranted by either at that particular time. They keep her caged in a very small world, with the same places, the same people. Everything is the same, and always. It’s monotonous to the point of madness, but she has grown fairly adept at hiding it, at pretending that she is happy with her life, with the people in it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but no one needs to know that. Or...few people did.

There is one week that came every month, however, when both men, who monitored her life as if she were their prisoner, were drawn away by their nefarious work for long stretches of time. They were too distracted to watch her, to busy to send others to do the job; others that they thought she did not notice, but in reality knew by sight and name. It was in those weeks that she was able to slip away, unnoticed and unmissed.

In the center of town, there is a hotel - far enough from where her husband and her father conducted their business that discovery was an outside possibility. They meet there, and in a few other places nearby, during those weeks. Flights in and out are easy to come by, especially when Sun was paying and paying for first class. There is also desperation there, on both sides. Those calls are always desperately waiting to be made, and to be received. They never see each other otherwise.

It is that week now, the beginning, a Monday. Jin has been in a meeting with her father and his associates all morning, and will very likely still be there well into the evening. There was no one watching her leave the home she shared with her husband - the home that her father had given them, paid for, had built himself - and there was no one watching her as she drove to a small, but elegant hotel near downtown Seoul. And there is, likewise, no one watching her as she collects her key-card from the desk clerk in the main lobby, as she rides the elevator up to the floor that houses the penthouse suites.

Her heart thunders in her chest, beats against her skin so rapidly, with such power, that she finds herself short of breath. Save for this one week a month, she never feels like this. Not when she is mired in the everyday, in the routine set out for her life by so many outside forces who don’t care what she wants, how she feels. She feels free now, and there is power in that freedom, power like she hadn’t know before this had begun, power she feels no other time but now.

Pulling the small, white card from her pocket, she takes a deep breath and releases it with a content sigh. These weeks, she thinks, go by far to quickly, and take so much time to come again. She savors them, however, every touch, every kiss, every moment when her laugh and her smile and her love are given and received genuinely.

The time will pass to quickly, she knows. It always does. But it doesn’t matter, because she has every intention of grabbing happiness with both hands and holding onto it for as long as she possibly can. There are so precious few moments of that left for her, happiness.

*

The bed is enormous. The view is breathtaking. There is so much space, so much room to move, that Kate almost doesn’t know what to do with herself. It certainly isn’t something she is used to. She spends most of her time in cramped buses, or old, run-down cars, sleeps in motels with dirty sheets, surrounded by the stench of cigarette smoke that has long since seeped into the walls and the carpet. She never stays in places like this, excepts for when Sun calls her, pays her way, brings her here. She could never afford it on her own.

The suite she sits in now is ritzy, classy, four-stars. Just like Sun. It makes her feel guilty, more often than not, accepting the things that Sun’s money has bought - the plane tickets, the clothes, the expensive suites in swanky hotels. They never really feel like her, like where she belongs, but she has to admit that it’s nice, for once, having someone in her life that wants to take care of her.

Sun is the only solid, stable force in her life, the only one who’s presence could keep her grounded. She has run from every relationship that she has ever had, picked up and moved on before she could get settled, because she could start to really care - or worse yet, love. But she has never run from Sun, never wanted to. It scares her sometimes, that thought. Not only has she never run from Sun, but Sun was the only one she ever comes back to, the only one she could ever stand still for.

Her eyes pop open when she hears the door of the suite opens, when high heels click against cold, marble tiles. A smile spreads across her face and she sits up on the bedroom’s king-sized bed. With a deep breath, she settles back among it’s numerous pillows and waits to be discovered.

“It’s been too long,” Sun says, when Kate was in her arms, lounging drowsily, when her limbs were heavy and sated. But she feels energized and awake, alive in a way that hasn’t felt since about this time a month ago.

Kate’s head fits into her neck perfectly, her breath warm and steady. Her body is so much small than Jin’s, so much lighter and softer. When Jin sleeps to close to her, Sun feels as though she’s being encircled, like she’s been placed inside a furnace. Jin gives off so much heat, so much intensity, even in his sleep, she feels suffocated by him even then. But Kate’s warmth is nothing like that; it’s comforting and grounding, relaxing in a way that sharing a bed with Jin has not been in quite a long time. It feels right, being here, with Kate.

“Have you ever thought about running away, about leaving all of this behind and starting over?” Kate asks. Her brown hair brushes against Sun’s cheek as she lifts her head. It tickles, and Sun reaches up, brushing it away and behind Kate’s ear. Kate smiles, affectionately, and rests her head on Sun’s chest, on top of her own hands that lay there, absently.

Sun smiles a faint, far-away smile. “Ever day,” she answers, softly, her voice full of bittersweet longing. She has never meant anything more. She fantasizes, daily, about a different life, far away, in the States. She has a home there, and a life of her own, with space, with freedom like she hasn’t known for any lasting time. And with Kate.

But there-in lay the biggest problem of all. Sun is not, by any means, a stupid woman. She knows that her fantasy is just that, that it is a live she can never have, will never know. Because not only does she know the men that surround her like prison guards, but she knows Kate. She knows that they only thing that keeps Kate coming back to her is the fact that they are together to sporadically, that they are the most important and meaningful - possibly the only important and meaningful - people in each other’s lives only for that one week. It is all that Kate can handle, whether she knows it or not, so it is all that Sun takes from her.

It is true, that Sun wants a life away from her family, a better life with a person that she loves. But whether she realizes it or not, Kate is at constant war with her nature. Kate runs, from things, from people, even if they love her (especially if they love her), and Sun knows that she more than likely always will. She has never run from Sun because she has never been given a reason to, has never felt caged by her, boxed in. But that is what that fantasy, that dream of Sun’s will do. It will box Kate in, make her run. And Sun can not do that.

But more than that, Sun can’t run. Not from her family, or from her life. It wasn’t in who she is, and she can’t make an exception for the person that she loves if she would lose her in the end.

It is a nice idea, but Sun saw further ahead than that, too far ahead to let it be anything more than a nice idea.

*

Sun comes back every day that week, sometimes earlier than others. She comes whenever she can get away, and for those hours, they have a normal life together. They eat meals at the kitchen table, watched television on the couch. They kiss and make love and savor the time they have together, because they both know that soon, it will be ending.

Kate packs her bag on Friday, when Sun says getting away for the weekend will be impossible, when their time together is ended prematurely and their forced back to their old lives too soon. Their kiss goodbye seems to last for hours. They stand in the suite’s entry way, holding onto each other tightly. Kate wonders about the life Sun will go back to, the cage her family has made for her. She sees in that kind of life the force that keeps her feet moving. The price Sun pays for having a family, for refusing to leave them and fearing to contest their control, was a life regimented, planned to the last detail. Kate wonders of she could live with that just to have someone to call her family. She doesn’t think she could.

“I’ll call you,” Sun tells her, like she always does, and Kate nods, like she always does. She will be on the move, she will have to be, once she returns to the States, but Sun always manages to find her. Those calls are the only things that can stop her in her tracks, make her pull out one of her numerous passports and claim her first-class plane ticket to Korea.

“I’ll miss you,” Kate replies, squeezing Sun’s hand and watching her leave. She wanders about the suite, brushing her hand over a lamp here and a table there. She wishes she felt comfortable here, in a life, in a routine. She wishes that she was the kind of person that could settle down, have a home. But Sun was comfortable, and Sun was home. Only Sun. A house, a life...they could never have that together. They both know that. But they had these places, these times, and even if, one day, that wasn’t enough, it was honest.

Reaching for something better just wasn’t in them. It wasn’t who they were.