Title: Kinetic
Rating: PG
Summary: Kate thrives on possibility. In the moment, she clings to the person most likely to leave her.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: For philosophy_20, prompt #4: inertia.



Kate thrives on possibility. In the moment, she clings to the person most likely to leave her. She can’t explain it. It’s just the way she’s always been.

It’s what pulled her to her dying mother’s bedside, even though she knew exactly what the outcome would be. It’s what pulled her into Sawyer’s arms, even though she knew that neither of them had what it took to make it last beyond the moment. It was what had kept her clinging to Jack’s hands after he had made it clear he was, within the hour, leaving the island – and her.

Kate didn’t know how to let go. She clung to Tom’s memory like the man himself. She returned to her mother, time after time, hoping against hope that she would find her mind changed. And then there’s Jack and Sawyer…

She isn’t naïve enough to think she does any of them any good. All she has to do is remember Jack’s cold exterior back in that hallway, at the Other’s strange compound, or Sawyer’s angry, hurt stare in the jungle after they had finally escaped. She didn’t know how to have them both, to keep them both. She knew she couldn’t. And she had thought, once, that never choosing was a happy medium.

There was nothing happy about any of it. Not for her, but especially for the two of them. And there will be no happy ending, either. She won’t walk into the sunset, holding hands with one of them, have children and grow old. When the time comes, they’ll all part ways, go in different directions, and when that day comes, Kate knows that she will never see either of them again, because she won’t be able to bear it.

But that day, it seems, is a long way off. So she doesn’t fight her nature, and she clings, unable to let go, but waiting until she has to.