Title: You're Missing
Rating: PG
Summary: Kate has to stay to escape imprisonment; Sun has to go to escape death.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Written for the Lost Femmeslash Fic Battle @ lost_femmeslash. Used for au100, prompt #6: hours. Vague spoilers for up to 'Eggtown'.



“I’m glad you came,” Kate says. She’s standing in the doorway of the kitchen, nervously wringing her hands together.

“I can’t stay,” Sun replies, from the living room, where she sits on the couch, hands folded in her lap. Her voice is heavy and exhausted. There’s a deeper meaning behind her words that Kate fights very hard to ignore.

She walks across the room, sitting down in the chair adjacent to the couch. “I know,” she replies, sadly. “Jin.”

Sun shakes her head and sighs. “It’s more than that,” she says. Kate knows that, but she doesn’t want to think about it – talk about it. “If I stay here, I will die.”

The words cut about as deep as Kate expected them too, and she closes her eyes, tightly. She doesn’t want to talk about this. It amazes Kate, sometimes, how Sun can say things like that, things that must be terrifying to even think about. Her fear seems to have so little control over her.

“If I leave, I’ll go to prison,” Kate replies. Because, about that, Sawyer was right. If they were rescued – which they surely would have been, because, despite circumstances, she does have faith in Jack – she would be arrested. She would go to prison.

Sun nods in reply and Kate sighs. They both know all this. They’ve both always known all of this. But, there it is now, laid out between the two of them like a chasm, keeping them apart. Kate has to stay to escape imprisonment; Sun has to go to escape death.

“So that’s it?” Kate asks. It feels like it. It feels like over. Kate doesn’t know what it is between her and Sun – she’s never asked, and neither has Sun – but when Sun walks out the door and back down to the beach (whenever that may be), Kate knows whatever it is will be over.

Sun doesn’t nod, but she doesn’t shake her head either. “I can stay for a few more hours,” is what she says. Kate looks at the clock on the wall. Time usually doesn’t matter here – no places to go, things to do, no reason to need to know the time of day. It matters now; the next few hours matter. Because they’re the last.