Title: Different Names For the Same Thing - Prologue
Rating: PG
Summary: Kate Austen’s life is one big mess.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: This is the start of my New Jate Epic. I have a feeling this one is going to take as long (if not longer) to finish as the first one. Used for philosophy_20, prompt #14: parallel.



An outdated map crumpled in my pocket
But I didn't care where I was going
'Cause they're all different names for the same place.
"Different Names for the Same Thing" - Death Cab for Cutie

Jack’s presence is, by and large, ignored in Phuket. That’s why he’s stayed for so long. He speaks enough of the language to get him by, and he’s picked up more than he’d expected prior to when he’d arrived. His days are unstructured, never spent the same way twice. It’s a freedom that he hasn’t had since he was a child; it’s a freedom he’s come to be addicted to.

He wakes up in the morning and watches the tide roll in and out through the kitchen window on the side of the small, beach-front bungalow he’s renting. This is the one thing that he does every day. He marvels at the fact that, even though he was born and raised in California, he can’t remember ever stopping long enough to just watch the ocean. It was just…there.

But now, now he’s mesmerized by it; by the clear blue of the sky, by the brilliant sapphire of the ocean, by the gritty brown of the beach. It's the atmosphere and natural beauty that draw him in, that hold onto his attention until he is ready to start another day.

It sounds corny, hokey, trite, but it’s true. It’s how he really feels. Now that he’s really on his own, he can finally stop to appreciate the corny things in life.

He breathes in deep. The air is crisp and clean, and it makes him feel calmer, more centered than he has in years. After so much chaos and upheaval, he’s finally finding his way back to peace.

*

Kate Austen’s life is one big mess. It always has been, but it’s been messier of late. It’s a mess of her own making, one that has forced her all this way, away from home. She feels like she's been living her whole life on the run, but now that is quite literally the case.

She looks over her shoulder constantly. She thinks, sometimes, that he’ll be around the next corner – the Marshall. She thinks that he’ll be waiting for her, that he’ll always be waiting for her. He hangs over her head, like an ever-present specter. He haunts her even though she knows he’s an ocean away from her, back in the States, probably as mad as hell that he had lost her.

He’ll come for her, she knows, because she’s angry and relentless. But he can’t search the whole world and he has no idea where she is. She has time, and even though she can never truly relax, she feels as though she can stop and breathe. At least, for now.

She walks up the length of the beach, barefoot, and stares out at the ocean. She sighs at the rising sun and thinks that it really is beautiful here. She tells herself not to get used to it, that a time will come when she’ll have to leave it all behind. But that time isn’t now, so she breathes the fresh air in deep and enjoys the early morning peace of the deserted beach.

Part One