Title: A Place for Me
Rating: PG
Summary: He smiles the same old smile that he used to, as if he’s ignoring where they are, the last three years, and everything that he knows about her; as if none of it matters.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Used for philosophy_20, prompt #15: infinity. Follow up to More Than I Deserve.



The second time Kevin comes to visit her, Kate is almost as shocked as she had been the first time. She had believed that she was an itch he’d needed to scratch, that he had needed to see her a last time so that he could move on. She had written off his declaration that he still loved her as Kevin’s attempt to comfort her, to leave her with something when he was gone.

When she sits down across from him, separated by a wall of glass, yet again, she doesn’t know quite what to say. He smiles the same old smile that he used to, as if he’s ignoring where they are, the last three years, and everything that he knows about her; as if none of it matters.

Kate doesn’t know how to take that. Day after day spent examining her flaws, her mistakes, her whole miserable life have left her vision colored so that they’re all she can see. Until she had sat across from Kevin, she would have been sure that everyone else saw her exactly the way that she saw herself. But Kevin looks at her now exactly as he had then, as he had when he thought she was Monica. When she was Monica; sweet, perfect, clean Monica.

“Hi,” Kevin says, because she isn’t saying anything. Kate still doesn’t quite know what to say, rejects about ten things before she settles on the least pathetic, stupid thing to say: the truth.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she tells him. And God bless him, he chuckles a bit. Kate remembers that too. She’s surprised by how much she remembers about this man, but, she shouldn’t be surprised. There was a time, once, when there was nothing she wanted more than to be with Kevin. She had been so deeply in love with him, and the more she’s around him, the more she’s reminded of why.

Kevin is one of the best men she has ever known. He’s a good man, who treats her like she always wished someone would. And he loved her. And he loves her. Still.

“You don’t seem to have that much faith in me,” he replies, but there’s no judgment there. Kate can only shake her head.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” she answers, shaking her head and running a hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face. “It was never you, Kevin. I just…it got so hard, keeping things from you, hiding who I really was. I wasn’t strong enough to be the kind of person that you deserve.”

“I don’t care what I deserve, Mon…Kate. I only ever wanted you.”

“You didn’t know me, Kevin.”

“Well, I know you now,” he tells her. “I didn’t fall in love with your name, Kate. You can change that. And you can pretend you’re someone you’re not, but underneath, there’s still you.”

“I killed someone, Kevin,” she says, flatly, as if he doesn’t already know.

“I know that.”

“Do you?” she challenges.

“Of course I do.”

“Then how can you still…” Her voice is too loud and she has to take a deep breath to force the volume back down. “After everything that I did, what I did to you, how can you still…why would you still want to see me?”

“You think I was lying, don’t you?”

She says nothing. Because maybe he’s right. Maybe, deep down, she doesn’t believe him. Maybe she doesn’t want to believe him only to have him change his mind, pick up, and leave again. No one who’s supposed to stay ever does. No one who’s supposed to love her no matter what ever does. Kate leaves because she’s left. Abandoned. And if she lets Kevin back in, it’ll only be a matter of time before he’s gone again, too.

“I love you.”

Her eyes close. Kevin used to say he loved her all the time. She’d get this smile on her face, hide the sadness behind it, and say, “Yeah? Why’s that?”. He’d just smile and say, “Just ‘cause.”. There was never desperation in it, like there is now. Just a simple statement of fact. Nothing like now. Now, she’s convinced that Kevin is trying to convince himself.

“You don’t,” she tells him. Maybe he thinks he does. Maybe he still loves Monica, she doesn’t know. What she does know is that whoever Kevin does love, it isn’t her.

“Hey,” Kevin says. “Hey, will you look at me, please?” Slowly, her eyes open again. She doesn’t want to, doesn’t even know why she does. She still doesn’t understand how Kevin can look at her the way he is, after all that they’ve been through and all that he knows. But she knows that look, remembers that look, and it finally makes her consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, Kevin does know her. Maybe, just maybe, he does love her.

“A while back, I convinced myself I was over you,” he tells her. “And then I saw you on the news and you looked…you looked just the same way I remembered you and I realized I’d never forgotten. Not for a second. And I don’t care if you believe me or not, it’s true. I do love you. I loved you then, I still love you now.”

Kate is quiet for the longest time, but when she speaks, her voice is weak, almost, but not quite a whisper. “Why?”

He shrugs, manages to smile in spite of the situation. “Just ‘cause.”

Something inside of her breaks, then. Something that she can’t put back together. She falls forward and cries against the back of her arm. The phone in her hand falls a bit, so her sobs are muffled. Kevin can’t do anything for her, but put his hand on the glass in front of her head. Without looking, she reaches up and places her hand directly across from his, covers it.

“I just want you to know,” he tells her, knowing she can’t stop crying but can still hear him. “When you get out of here, if you need somewhere…there’s a place for you.”

“I don’t…” she finally lifts her head. Her eyes are red and puffy. She wipes her nose on the back of her hand. “I don’t know if I can.”

Kevin nods. “I know,” he replies. “But the offer stands. I get the feeling you haven’t had a home in a while, but I wanted you to know you always had one with me. And you still do.”

“It could be a while,” she tells him, and whether she’s speaking about her sentence or the time it will take to actually get used to the idea of sitting still, of having a place to call home, even she doesn’t know.

But Kevin had obviously expected that answer as well, because he keeps smiling, and shrugs. “You’re worth the wait,” he tells her. When Kate’s eyes close this time, there’s a smile on her face. She savors the word like she hasn’t heard it in such a long time (because she really hasn’t): worth.

“Will you come back and see me again next month?” Kate asks. Her voice is quiet, almost desperate. She wants, needs his answer to be ‘yes’.

“It’s a date,” he answers. And maybe, just maybe, she begins to fall in love with him all over again.