Title: To Have and To Hold
Rating: PG
Summary: Kate had no idea what it meant to be someone’s wife.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Used for philosophy_20, prompt #10: time.



Kate had no idea what it meant to be someone’s wife. What it meant to have a husband. But she knew what she felt, she knew love, and, despite her fears and her misgivings, she still believed in that.

But secrets crippled that quickly. Everything that Kate couldn’t do, couldn’t say, couldn’t give, weighed on their marriage without Kevin ever even knowing about it. Another addition to the list of things that she could never say.

Once, they had watched children play in the park, and Kevin had told her that he wanted to have a family someday. She had smiled and squeezed his hand because it was what she wanted too. Kate wanted a family. A real family. She wanted people in her life who would love her, always, no matter what.

Kevin wanted to have a family with her, without ever knowing who she really was. He wanted to have a family with Monica, the perfect, loving woman that he had married. But she was Kate Austen. And Kevin had no idea who Kate Austen was.

Fear was what held her back, beat her down, made her feel trapped and cornered, and had renewed in her the long-suppressed desire to run.

She loved Kevin. But she had married him because he loved her. She had married him so that she would never have to let go of how it felt to be loved by someone.

But there were things he wanted that she couldn’t give. Important things. Things he deserved to have. So she had placed his mother’s necklace back in his hands with the hope that, if he ever did give it to someone else, she would be able to give him all of the things that he deserved. All of the things that he would never have been able to get from her. From Kate.

She loved Kevin, but she knew herself – she knew what she could give and what she couldn’t, who she was and who she wasn’t. She knew that he deserved more, better, and she knew that she loved him enough to let him go so that he could have it.