Title: Different Names For the Same Thing - Part One
Rating: PG
Summary: She doesn’t let anyone close for a reason, but she feels closer to Jack now than she has to anyone in a very long time. And she doesn’t even know him, or anything about him.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Used for philosophy_20, prompt #11: extrinsic.
Previous Parts: Prologue



And I have no words to share it with anyone
The boundaries of language I quietly cursed
Different Names for the Same Thing – Death Cab for Cutie

Kate doesn’t walk far before stopping. She makes a seat for herself in the sand and sits, hugging her legs to her chest. The rising sun does little to distract her as her mind wanders over her life as of late, over the things she has done and the path that has lead her to this place, to this moment.

She rarely lets her thoughts linger over Wayne, over her mother. She wishes she could block the Marshall out as she does them, but his obsession with her has proved to create an obsession with him in her; an obsession with never seeing his face again, as long as she lives.

She doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to hide, how far she’ll have to run, or even if she should ever move again. Maybe she should stay here. Maybe she should stay in her tiny rented room (just a bed and a table, a chair, a toilet, and a sink, it’s all she can really afford) and sit on this beach, and never leave. Will that keep her safe? Can she manage to go unnoticed as yet another tourist among tourists? Will moving on only expose her further, give evidence of a trail? And if so, can she really stay put in one place for that long? For forever?

When she feels the weight of someone’s hand landing on her shoulder, she screams and jumps up as fast as she possibly can. When she turns around and backs away, like a startled, wild animal, she turns to face a man who’s holding his hands in front of him, his gaze nothing but startled and apologetic.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hastily, and Kate still finds herself shaken; emotionally and literally. She struggles to regain her composure, breathing in and out slowly. The man drops his hands. “I thought you would have heard me coming up, but…I guess not.”

She manages a breathless chuckle. “You’d guess right,” she answers, with a deep breath.

“I’m Jack,” he introduces himself, holding out his hand. It takes Kate a second, but she shakes it and tries her hand at smiling back.

“Kate,” she answers. Normally, she would lie. She’s used so many fake names, but she doesn’t figure that they’re a necessity here. They’re so far from anyone that her real name would matter to. “I assume there was a reason you scared the living hell out of me.”

“Yeah,” he replies, holding up the towel Kate hadn’t noticed in his hand until he was showing it to her. “You looked cold.”

Kate tilts her head to the side and looks down at herself, at the way she’s holding her arms crossed her chest. She thinks back to her earlier posture, the way she had held her legs against herself, the way the breeze had whipped around her. Jack wraps the blanket around her shoulders while she’s thinking, and it’s only when she looks back up, takes the corners of the towel in her hands, that their eyes finally meet.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice so soft, so…she doesn’t know how to describe it. She can’t remember the last time in her life that anyone had ever offered her anything, cared enough about her – as someone who was a complete stranger – to do anything for her. She doesn’t let anyone close for a reason, but she feels closer to Jack now than she has to anyone in a very long time. And she doesn’t even know him, or anything about him.

Jack just shrugs, like it’s nothing, and Kate doesn’t think it’s for show. She has a good sense about those kinds of things, and this doesn’t seem like a put-on, like a show meant to get her attention and draw her in so that he can make a move. Jack is being genuine. Jack had given her the towel for no other reason than because he had seen her and thought she’d looked cold. It was…startling. And yet refreshing at the same time.

Kate could count on one hand the honest men she’d met – sadly enough. And they’re the only ones really worth remembering.

“I’m making breakfast,” he nods back to the beach-side bungalow up the beach just a little. “Would you like some?”

Kate wants to turn him down, knows that she should, but everything inside of her chest is screaming at her to say ‘yes’. She’s been so alone, so lonely. She needs some human contact, and being in a strange world, one in which she does not speak the language, has been hard on her.

So she smiles and says, “Sure.”

Because it’s just breakfast. And a towel. And that certainly isn’t enough to get close to a person. She just needs someone to sit with, to talk to. Then, they can go their separate ways. No muss, no fuss, not attachments.

Just breakfast.

*

The usual questions (“So, where are you from?”, “What do you do for a living?” “How many brothers/sisters do you have?” “When are you heading home?”) are never asked. Kate guesses that’s because Jack doesn’t want to have to answer the same. She’s grateful for that. She doesn’t want to talk about herself, her past, and Jack doesn’t seem to either.

Instead they talk about how long they’ve been in Phuket (not very) and what they do daily (anything they want). They talk about superficial things (the weather, the beach, the freedom of unstructured days), nothing about themselves apart from their names. And they aren’t awkwardly dancing around it, either. Because Jack still smiles as he eats his toast and eggs and Kate still smiles back as she sips on her hot coffee, Jack’s towel still wrapped around her shoulders.

“This place is beautiful,” she says, looking around Jack’s living space. It’s so much better than her place, she much cleaner and nicer. And the view from the windows is, if possible, the most beautiful thing she has ever seen; a beautiful beach of the sand, of the sea, of the sky, is provided and it all but takes her breath away.

“I think so,” Jack replies, looking out the window as well. “You’re the first person I’ve met here that’s a tourist too.”

Kate shrugs. “Me too,” she answers. “It’s nice,” she adds, almost sadly, “having someone to talk to.”

“It has been a while,” Jack says, his voice in something akin to contemplation, like he’s talking to himself rather than her. “I came here looking for…some kind of peace. Solitude. A break from the chaos. A place where it was just me. And I found it. But sometimes…something it’s really lonely.”

Kate nods. “Yeah,” she replies. She doesn’t know Jack’s reasons for wanting an escape, but she can very much relate to the desire to be all alone turning into an aching feeling of isolation in the center of your chest. She had wanted a reprieve from being chased, and she’d gotten it. And now…now all she really wanted, needed, was someone to talk to.

And she hadn’t realized that until just the moment she’d found it. Or rather, the moment it had found her. Until Jack had found her.

“So, Kate,” Jack says, coffee in-between his hands, his attention focused completely on her. “What did you come here for?”

She feels exposed on a few different levels, but it’s easy enough to hide. She’s become quite good at it over the years. She gives a small shrug, careful to keep her reaction minimal, but not cold, not unfriendly, just…blasé. “A change of scenery,” she says, and she supposes, in a round-about way, it’s the truth. Jack just nods, and believes her.

On some level, she probably always knew he would believe anything she said. A half an hour of knowing him, and she can still tell that he’s the trusting kind – the blindly trusting kind. The kind that’s easy to lie to, and the guilt stabs even harder just for that fact alone.

“Everybody needs that sometimes,” Jack replies.

“Yeah,” Kate answers. “So, I know why I’m here, but, what about you Jack? Why Puhket?”

He gets a strange look on his face then, and chuckles a bit. He takes a sip of his coffee and then says, “Because it was the farthest place from home that I could think of.”

Kate actually laughs at that, because, well, that’s the reason she’s here too. Because it’s as far away from Diane and the Marshall as she can possibly be. She’d have to go to New Zealand to be in a more remote place. She wonders what Jack is running from? What drove him to be sitting here with her, eating breakfast in a bungalow on the beach? He looks so normal, so composed. He looks like he has his head on straight, and yet he’s hear, hiding from his life. Like she is.

There are so many questions she wants to ask, but she bites them back. If she asks, she will have to be prepared to answer, and that is something that she just won’t be able to do. Superficial conversation, vague answers, are a lot safer. For her, and, she guesses, Jack too. There has to be a reason he isn’t asking her about herself, about her life. Maybe he doesn’t want to know; maybe he isn’t prepared to answer the same questions either.

When the toast, the eggs, the coffee are gone, Kate finds herself unprepared to go back to her tiny rented room, or even to wander the streets alone. Now that she’s had companionship, she finds she is reluctant to give it up, to return to solitude. Even if it’s safer. She wonders how it’s possible to feel close to someone she’s known for less than an hour.

Absurd as the feeling is, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s there.

“Thank you for the breakfast, Jack,” she says, and he nods, with a smile.

“I, uh,” he says, after a moment or two. “I know this may sound a little strange, so, feel free to say no, but…I’d like to see you again.” He pauses, obviously trying to get a read on her. Her emotions are so jumbled, but she doesn’t want to say anything, doesn’t want to betray her eagerness. “Would that be alright?”

So, she tries to play it cool, smiles easily, and nods slowly. “Sure,” she answers, in an even tone of voice that, frankly, shocks her, given the way that her heart is currently hammering in her chest. “I’d like that,” she adds, for good measure. Jack smiles, and picks up the plates, cups, and carries them to the sink.

Scooping up the towel, sure Jack won’t notice, she heads toward the door, smiling as she backs up. “I’ll bring breakfast tomorrow morning,” she promises. “That way we’re even.”

Jack nods. “Sounds good,” he replies. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye Jack,” she says.

“Bye Kate,” he replies.

And she’s out the door. She wraps Jack’s towel over her shoulders and thinks she’ll “forget” it back at her place. Just so, after breakfast tomorrow, she’ll have an excuse to come back. To return the towel. That she took by accident.

It feels dangerous, even as she’s doing it, even as she had been lifting the towel from the back of Jack’s chair. But she can’t help herself. She really can’t. And she can’t deny that, as she walks the streets back to her room, she pulls the towel tighter around her arms, and smiles.

TBC...