Title:  “Two to Go”
Author:  uberaeryn
Fandom:  ‘Lost’
Pairing:  Jack/Kate/Sawyer
Future Fic
No Spoilers
Rating:  PG-13
Note: I told my husband last night I wanted the show to end on a note similar to this. Don’t ask me why.

Jack and Sawyer flung themselves on to the sand of the unfamiliar beach, exhausted, malnourished and dehydrated but still frantic, digging with shaking hands in their packs.

“Are you sure about this, Sawyer? Can you do this?” Jack asked, still breathless from the seemingly endless pursuit of them through jungle and over rock and across surging rivers. He eyed the tree line, waiting for the inevitable.

“Don’t see as we have any choice,” Sawyer mumbled, head drooping and face pallid despite the deepness of his tan. Jack reached out, one hand gripping Sawyer’s shoulder firmly.

“This is it,” Jack said firmly. “And you know who it’s going to be, Sawyer, don’t listen, don’t believe anything you hear or see, okay? Nothing, it’s all lies, all of it.”

Sawyer’s lips thinned and his jaw clenched and he nodded. “I know. I know.”

Jack hauled himself to his feet and pulled an unsteady Sawyer along with him and they waited.

They didn’t have to wait long.

She emerged from the trees smiling and vibrant, looking happier than Jack had ever seen her, the baby on her hip blonde-haired and blue-eyed and Jack cursed as he heard a strangled noise from Sawyer and felt him start to pull away.

“Lies, Sawyer,” he hissed, pulling Sawyer close. “That is not Kate and that is not your daughter.”

But, Jack thought even as he said it, it was Kate. What was left of her after the island had taken her and the baby, anyway, and he found himself staring at them both, drawn to them just as strongly as Sawyer was, and he wondered what he would be feeling now if things had happened in just a slightly different fashion, a different night and a different combination of the three of them, of himself and Kate and Sawyer, and he wondered how he would feel if he knew that the child Kate was carrying was his.

He hurt, both for himself and for Sawyer and for Kate, and for what they'd had so briefly and lost much too soon.

Jack’s grip on Sawyer’s arm tightened as Kate started to speak, her voice light and musical and making promises, offering reassurances, so convincing that Jack almost released Sawyer and moved toward her and the baby himself, but then as he watched something shifted, as if the colorful image of Kate and the child were superimposed over something darker and much uglier which showed its face only briefly before Kate returned, still smiling, still talking, still seducing.

Jack pulled Sawyer tight against him.

“Sawyer,” he whispered as Sawyer began to weep. “It’s too late, they’re gone, both of them, and I’ll be damned if I let you go, too.”

Sawyer’s head whipped up. “Then we’d better do this thing, Doc,” he said, voice breaking and tears making streaks in the grime on his face. “Cause I ain’t gonna last much longer, can’t hear this, can’t see it, fuckin’ hurts . . .” He faltered, unable to finish, and then placed the barrel of his gun firmly underneath Jack’s chin.

Jack sighed. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

He placed the barrel of his own gun under Sawyer’s jaw and then stared at Sawyer for a moment, suddenly realizing that this would be the last time he would ever see him.

“I love you, Sawyer,” he said softly, weeping silently himself now and doing his best to ignore Kate’s siren song to both of them. Sawyer nodded, a quick jerk of his head, still unable to say it back even after all this time.

“On three?” Sawyer asked, eyes locked on Jack’s now, determined.

“On three,” Jack agreed, and his hand knotted in the hair on the back of Sawyer’s head as his finger tightened on the trigger, and then Jack was surprised when Sawyer smiled suddenly and brightly, causing Jack’s heart to lighten somewhat, it had been so long since he had seen that smile, and Jack found himself smiling back.

And then he started counting.

***

End