Title: We Do What We Have to Do
Rating: PG
Summary: Sun looks at Ji and sees Jin. And Kate looks at Aaron and sees Claire.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Used for au100, prompt #28: children. Spoilers up to 'Ji Yeon'.



Sun watches her daughter nap and can’t help but think, as she always does, how much she looks like her father, when he used to sleep. He was always curled on his side, or around her, drawn into himself, into her, holding onto her in his sleep as if he thought she would run away.

“She’s beautiful,” Kate comments. Sun turns around to find her friend in the doorway, smiling softly. Sun returns it as best she can.

“Thank you,” Sun replies. She crosses her arms over her chest, squeezes her arms, because she suddenly feels very cold. That happens from time to time, mostly when she thinks of Jin. It’s involuntary, of course, and takes a bit of time to fade away. The memory of him, even simple, little things – his smile, his eyes – are enough to send a cold tremor up her spine.

“We had to do what we did,” Kate says, and Sun closes her eyes. She repeats those words to herself, every day, and they sound no more true coming out of Kate’s mouth than they do in her mind. “We didn’t have a choice,” she assures. She’s trying to offer Sun some kind of peace in assurence, but Sun doesn’t need it, want it. You can’t be saved by a lie.

She turns to face Kate and replies, “There is always a choice.” Her voice is even, her eyes hollow. She lives, exists, day to day without the man that she loves. She holds their daughter in her arms, holds a constant reminder of the man she left behind, so far, far away from her.

Jin had said she had to. Kate says the same now. Now, as she holds and loves and raises someone else’s baby as her own, someone who was – is – their friend.

Sun has learned that she and Kate are very much alike. They lie to themselves, and others, to get by. Because lies are easier than the truth. It is easy to think in absolutes, to say that they had to do the things that they did, that it was right to do them.

But Sun looks at Ji and sees Jin. And Kate looks at Aaron and sees Claire.

It makes them doubt. It makes them hurt. It makes them lie. They have to in order to survive, for their children.