Title: The Season's Change
Rating: PG
Summary: She feels adrift in a sea of possibilities, treading water, going nowhere.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Used for philosophy_20, prompt #2: loss.



It’s difficult to explain what it feels like to lose something that was never yours to begin with. It’s a deflation, as best she can explain it; like air slowly leaking from a punctured tire. Disappointment follows shortly there after and brings a blunt, dull pain in the center of her chest along with it.

Then, resentment. Kate feels overshadowed, young. She feels adrift in a sea of possibilities, treading water, going nowhere. But Juliet knows where she’s going, what she wants, and she takes it. What she wants is Jack. No second-guesses, no fear of rejection, of abandonment. Nothing.

Kate doesn’t know what she wants, who she wants, and watching Jack watch Juliet walking away only makes it more clear how things are going to end for her.

Jack will move on. Sawyer will move on. And she’ll be alone again.

Because Jack isn’t waiting for her anymore, because Sawyer will eventually grow tired of holding on, and she’ll be left only with memories of chances she used to have, of the things that have passed her by because she was too afraid to grab hold of them.

They’ve both left her behind, in their own ways – Jack and Sawyer. Jack has let his heart, his attention, move on her greener pastures. Sawyer has shut her out completely with no intention of letting her back in. She can’t help but feel – she can’t help but realize – that she has been kidding herself this whole time.

It was always going to end this way. It was always going to end.