I'm posting fic! yay!
For my au100 table, and for![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
aboutbunnies, with all my love.
Title: Flowers blooming in the snow
Pairing: Kate/Sun
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2450
Summary: There are palm trees in Los Angeles. There is a glaring sun that makes her feel like coming home.
Notes: for![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
au100's #85, missing; also for lostfichallenge's#71, unfinished business.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine.
Flowers blooming in the snow
A sharp gaping loneliness creeps into her expensive house, into her untouched body, into the ruined remains of her life. It eats her soul and drums inside her ears – words forever left unsaid -- until she can't hear her baby crying in the night.
She can only hear him. The sound of his smile, muffled down by the roar of the crashing waves against the shore. Their bodies rolling and hugging and squirming inside their tent, her moans and giggles stifled against his soft lips. They needed to keep quiet – the group was sleeping only a few feet away.
Now her sobs resound on her pillow and she can't hear her – her baby, who just woke up crying, alone in their big lonely house. Her daughter. She wanted to raise her at home, she said, but that is not reason enough to stay in Seoul anymore. Where everybody knows her and she knows nobody – when he isn’t there with her anymore.
She can’t stay.
She won't find him at the other end of the ocean, she knows, but trying to live with his ghost in the city where she met him and fell in love with him and married him and betrayed him is not making it easier to breathe.
And she promised. She has to keep breathing.
She doesn't want to see them again. Ever.
She took another plane and flew in the opposite direction and that is that, she didn’t want to see them again. She only wanted to mourn her loss, alone, and forget the rest of it ever happened. No one could have understood. She made the right decision.
But one year later and nothing has changed – except Hurley’s visit. That helped, but not much.
She still wakes up in the morning, alone, remembering the sand under her feet and the smell of the palm trees. She remembers having breakfast with Kate and taking long walks with Claire and helping Hurley fish. She remembers everything else and everyone – the only friends she ever had. Her family.
She remembers the sense of belonging. There. With them.
That’s why she didn’t want to see them again. That is what won't let her move on – the memories, the haunting loneliness of their absence.
She is one of the Oceanic Six and everybody knows that, in Korea and a million miles away. No one will dare to tell her it's not advisable to fly over the Pacific carrying a baby in her arms. As Sun Kwon walks along the airport everyone looks down and mumbles after she’s passed. No one dares to speak.
Ji-yeon sleeps through the whole flight and Sun watches two stupid movies she has to pay for, repeating the dialogue under her breath. It's been a while since she practiced her English out loud. It feels clumsy and unfamiliar.
There is no turbulence. No shaking. No plane breaking apart in two and falling across the sky to slide softly over the jungle trees. There is a crazy wish, but no chance of finding him in the infinity of blue that runs quietly bellow her.
There are palm trees in Los Angeles.
There is a glaring sun that makes her feel like coming home.
She chooses Kate because she misses her the most and because she saw her on the news and because they were friends, real friends. She chooses Kate because their friendship was born from an entanglement of lies and mistrusts and deceptions and that is what Sun needs. Lies. Guilt. The weight of someone else's sins, of someone else's loss upon her shoulders. Someone who will remind her of what they did; someone who won’t let her forget.
Her fancy flat in Seoul feels like a rusty hut in comparison with Kate's house and she finds it reassuring, how wrong it feels when Kate appears behind the opening door. She looks like a woman Sun has never seen before.
"Sun."
There is not a trace of emotion in the sound of her name, coming from Kate’s lips. She isn't happy to see Sun and Sun isn't happy to see her, not right now. But somehow, that makes it feel right. It makes them even. Kate is not even surprised, as if she didn’t care if it is Sun or an ordinary salesman who shows up at her doorstep.
"Kate." Sun’s voice flows equally neutral, steady, drained of feeling.
"Is everything okay?" Kate’s eyes drop to the baby girl in Sun's arms and only then does Sun look down too, to the little child that's holding himself up against Kate's leg, smiling and hiding his chubby face from the unknown visitor with an amused squeak.
It is awkward and unwelcome; the guilt in Kate's green eyes overshadows every other emotion she may feel at the sight of her old friend. All those times they didn’t pick up the phone to call each other. It makes Sun shiver – a warm rush of blood flooding her veins.
This is what she was looking for.
It happens only an hour later, after bitter tea and uncomfortable pleasantries about beautiful babies and I missed you, I missed you too, do you know how everyone else is doing? Kate’s arms close around Sun's body and they sink into each other's warmth, succumbing to the unavoidable.
"Can I stay?"
It's only a whisper and it gets lost inside their embrace. Kate nods and hugs her tighter.
For the first time in what feels like forever, it feels like a beginning.
Kate cannot understand Sun's emptiness. She cannot understand the depth of her loss. She cannot understand what it meant for her, losing her husband, leaving him in that place. She cannot understand what it means today, seeing him in her daughter every time she looks at her. No, Kate cannot understand, but she can keep Sun warm in the night, pressing her body to hers and breathing against the back of her neck. Sharing a bed and sharing their loneliness and a life that was never supposed to turn up this way.
Kate can sleep next to Sun and Sun doesn’t have to sleep alone anymore. Kate can make her feel a little less alone if only for the briefest of seconds, when her hand crawls under Sun’s pajama's top, resting softly on her stomach. And they both fall asleep and neither mutters a word and slowly, day by day, they grow used to each other’s presence and quiet company.
It’s a summer humid night and Sun has troubles catching her sleep. Kate breathes unevenly at her side and maybe Sun only wants to see her, when she rolls to her side and leans on her elbow, facing Kate's open eyes, which are looking intently at her. The black sky is slowly fading into shades of milky pink and bright orange and still their eyelids won’t close.
"Do you think they are alright?" It comes out of nowhere, out of her shaky state of half-consciousness right before sunrise. She has let her guard fall – it is the first time it happens.
The smile falls slowly, delicately, from Kate's lips. Her hand rises to Sun's cheek and she feels her body clenching when her neck bends down lightly towards Kate’s face. Only one instant before their lips touch does Sun understand that Kate's answer to her question, her lips parting softly under hers, is the only possible answer. The only answer that won't hurt; the only answer they can bear tonight.
Days go by and the slow pace of time picks up speed as the seasons change. Or so they say. Weeks fade into months soon enough but the sky is always blue and the weather always warm. It mocks Sun, the unforgiving and irreversible passage of time. It feels immutable, but it’s there, continuous and endless. Her baby girl grows fast and strong and healthy and Aaron's ceaseless babbling is a powerful stream of giggles all day long. When memories start fading away only a dry but elusive pain remains. A pain she feels inside her chest, but that she often cannot place; a pain she cannot link anymore with the memory of his taste or his smell. His face slowly fades into nothing and the void inside her grows wider.
During the days Kate drifts away, taking Aaron and disappearing until nightfall. Long walks and busy errands and random trips to the park or the grocery shop keep her away from Sun from sunrise to sunset and it's all for the best, she thinks. Some things cannot be acknowledged under the glowing sunshine, when regret and guilt and loneliness shine brightly in their empty lifeless eyes.
Some things cannot be concealed under the yellow daylight and it is better that way.
During the nights though, when their hands fumble and their bodies rock and push, enveloped in the thick darkness of their bedroom, there is only one unspoken rule: never talk about them; never say their names. It doesn't matter how good or how bad if feels, their bodies wrestling and merging together; thinking of them would put an immediate stop to it and that is something they can’t allow to happen. They can’t stop.
Kate's hands grip her flesh roughly, her nails digging Sun’s white brittle skin, and it's such a nice, pleasurable contrast to the delicacy of the touch of her own hands, shy and insecure when she wakes up alone in the morning, after Kate has already left the house.
"Why did you come to Los Angeles?"
Kate only asks after the immigration papers have been filled and signed, along with medical insurance and the application for a nearby daycare center. Kate only asks after she realizes that Sun is there to stay and it's just idle curiosity which motivates her question. After months of hurried, whispered confessions in the wee hours of the morning – spent and sleepy and barely conscious, only one step away from numbness – Sun knows that any other day of any other life, nothing could have stopped Kate from leaving the house, the city, the continent, with nothing much of a look back and a shrug of her shoulders.
"I was alone in Korea," she whispers, unwilling to disturb the melodic rhythm of the rain clacking against the window pane.
It's not like she isn't alone here, now. She is. She will always be alone without him. Kate's hand is lazily drawing circles on her stomach but that doesn't mean that she is really there, with Sun. Nothing more than Kate's darkened silhouette keeps her company in the night. The real Kate is far away, as far away as she can be with her body nailed to the mattress and pressed close to Sun, keeping her warm as the rain pounds violent on the tiled roof. It's not Sun's place to wonder where Kate goes, in the stillness of the night, but she knows Kate does not stay there, with her.
"I'm glad you came." Kate's silhouette smiles and Sun smiles back.
She is glad too and she lets Kate know by sliding her hand under her pants and tracing with her tongue the long curve of her throat.
Kate's hold grows firmer as she moans softly, her head buried in Sun's neck. Their bodies move together in well-rehearsed sync and it's delicate and peaceful and familiar. Kate giggles when Sun tickles the inside of her thigh and Sun groans softly as Kate's mouth slips down her stomach. She has come to depend of the white thought, when Kate's fingers curl inside her and they both sigh, comforted by the soothing rush of life that spreads through their entangled limbs.
One year after leaving Seoul she wakes up and finds a white delicate flower lying lonely on Kate's pillow. Kate has already left and her gift brings tears to Sun’s eyes. For one instant, she is tempted to pack her bags, grab her daughter and fly away. Back home. Back to confront the pain, the loss she ran from when she left her city.
It's been a year since she gave up on her promise of staying home and today she can't ignore the stab of pain at Kate's absence (this is the first time she has been given a flower since she abandoned her husband, there.)
It would be so easy – grabbing the few things she owns and taking a taxi to the airport. Getting on a plane that will take her back to his ghost, to the lonely mourning of her loss. After all, if there is something she has learned from Kate's intermittent presence – she is always coming and going, drizzling from one place to another; only stays still in bed, the few hours she does sleep – is that leaving and running away is the only way to get rid of the memory of words that will forever remain unsaid; the only way to get rid of their persistent wounding echo. That's what Kate says and sometimes Sun thinks she is encouraging her to leave, to do what she longs to do. Leave. Move. Run as fast as she can, until the memories fall exhausted to the ground, unable to catch up with the pull of her legs.
It would be so easy, packing up and disappearing just like she appeared one day a year ago, without a word of warning. Kate wouldn't hold it against her. If she could, Kate would have already left herself. Kate does leave in her own way, every morning, and Sun doesn't judge it, doesn't presume to understand. Everyone has the right to their own way of mourning.
But she has come to depend on the white thought, when Kate's fingers curl against her skin; even if it doesn't mean she is any less empty. She'll never be any less empty, but the feeling of Kate’s long curls, falling heavily around her body, makes her blood run faster, alive.
She lies down on the mattress and takes the frail white flower to her lips. It feels soft and it smells like the rain, like the palm trees. Like Kate.
Maybe she will leave any other day. Maybe she will go back to the ghost, to his memory, to their home; but not today. Today Sun closes her eyes and concentrates on a different memory, the memory of Kate’s body around her, only a few hours ago. Kate is warm, and soft and comforting; she makes it easier to breathe.
She inhales the perfume of the flower with a deep breath, remembering. Slowly, quietly, Sun falls back to sleep again.
_
.end
For my au100 table, and for
aboutbunnies, with all my love.Title: Flowers blooming in the snow
Pairing: Kate/Sun
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2450
Summary: There are palm trees in Los Angeles. There is a glaring sun that makes her feel like coming home.
Notes: for
au100's #85, missing; also for lostfichallenge's#71, unfinished business.Disclaimer: Lost is not mine.
Flowers blooming in the snow
A sharp gaping loneliness creeps into her expensive house, into her untouched body, into the ruined remains of her life. It eats her soul and drums inside her ears – words forever left unsaid -- until she can't hear her baby crying in the night.
She can only hear him. The sound of his smile, muffled down by the roar of the crashing waves against the shore. Their bodies rolling and hugging and squirming inside their tent, her moans and giggles stifled against his soft lips. They needed to keep quiet – the group was sleeping only a few feet away.
Now her sobs resound on her pillow and she can't hear her – her baby, who just woke up crying, alone in their big lonely house. Her daughter. She wanted to raise her at home, she said, but that is not reason enough to stay in Seoul anymore. Where everybody knows her and she knows nobody – when he isn’t there with her anymore.
She can’t stay.
She won't find him at the other end of the ocean, she knows, but trying to live with his ghost in the city where she met him and fell in love with him and married him and betrayed him is not making it easier to breathe.
And she promised. She has to keep breathing.
*
She doesn't want to see them again. Ever.
She took another plane and flew in the opposite direction and that is that, she didn’t want to see them again. She only wanted to mourn her loss, alone, and forget the rest of it ever happened. No one could have understood. She made the right decision.
But one year later and nothing has changed – except Hurley’s visit. That helped, but not much.
She still wakes up in the morning, alone, remembering the sand under her feet and the smell of the palm trees. She remembers having breakfast with Kate and taking long walks with Claire and helping Hurley fish. She remembers everything else and everyone – the only friends she ever had. Her family.
She remembers the sense of belonging. There. With them.
That’s why she didn’t want to see them again. That is what won't let her move on – the memories, the haunting loneliness of their absence.
*
She is one of the Oceanic Six and everybody knows that, in Korea and a million miles away. No one will dare to tell her it's not advisable to fly over the Pacific carrying a baby in her arms. As Sun Kwon walks along the airport everyone looks down and mumbles after she’s passed. No one dares to speak.
Ji-yeon sleeps through the whole flight and Sun watches two stupid movies she has to pay for, repeating the dialogue under her breath. It's been a while since she practiced her English out loud. It feels clumsy and unfamiliar.
There is no turbulence. No shaking. No plane breaking apart in two and falling across the sky to slide softly over the jungle trees. There is a crazy wish, but no chance of finding him in the infinity of blue that runs quietly bellow her.
*
There are palm trees in Los Angeles.
There is a glaring sun that makes her feel like coming home.
*
She chooses Kate because she misses her the most and because she saw her on the news and because they were friends, real friends. She chooses Kate because their friendship was born from an entanglement of lies and mistrusts and deceptions and that is what Sun needs. Lies. Guilt. The weight of someone else's sins, of someone else's loss upon her shoulders. Someone who will remind her of what they did; someone who won’t let her forget.
Her fancy flat in Seoul feels like a rusty hut in comparison with Kate's house and she finds it reassuring, how wrong it feels when Kate appears behind the opening door. She looks like a woman Sun has never seen before.
"Sun."
There is not a trace of emotion in the sound of her name, coming from Kate’s lips. She isn't happy to see Sun and Sun isn't happy to see her, not right now. But somehow, that makes it feel right. It makes them even. Kate is not even surprised, as if she didn’t care if it is Sun or an ordinary salesman who shows up at her doorstep.
"Kate." Sun’s voice flows equally neutral, steady, drained of feeling.
"Is everything okay?" Kate’s eyes drop to the baby girl in Sun's arms and only then does Sun look down too, to the little child that's holding himself up against Kate's leg, smiling and hiding his chubby face from the unknown visitor with an amused squeak.
It is awkward and unwelcome; the guilt in Kate's green eyes overshadows every other emotion she may feel at the sight of her old friend. All those times they didn’t pick up the phone to call each other. It makes Sun shiver – a warm rush of blood flooding her veins.
This is what she was looking for.
*
It happens only an hour later, after bitter tea and uncomfortable pleasantries about beautiful babies and I missed you, I missed you too, do you know how everyone else is doing? Kate’s arms close around Sun's body and they sink into each other's warmth, succumbing to the unavoidable.
"Can I stay?"
It's only a whisper and it gets lost inside their embrace. Kate nods and hugs her tighter.
For the first time in what feels like forever, it feels like a beginning.
*
Kate cannot understand Sun's emptiness. She cannot understand the depth of her loss. She cannot understand what it meant for her, losing her husband, leaving him in that place. She cannot understand what it means today, seeing him in her daughter every time she looks at her. No, Kate cannot understand, but she can keep Sun warm in the night, pressing her body to hers and breathing against the back of her neck. Sharing a bed and sharing their loneliness and a life that was never supposed to turn up this way.
Kate can sleep next to Sun and Sun doesn’t have to sleep alone anymore. Kate can make her feel a little less alone if only for the briefest of seconds, when her hand crawls under Sun’s pajama's top, resting softly on her stomach. And they both fall asleep and neither mutters a word and slowly, day by day, they grow used to each other’s presence and quiet company.
*
It’s a summer humid night and Sun has troubles catching her sleep. Kate breathes unevenly at her side and maybe Sun only wants to see her, when she rolls to her side and leans on her elbow, facing Kate's open eyes, which are looking intently at her. The black sky is slowly fading into shades of milky pink and bright orange and still their eyelids won’t close.
"Do you think they are alright?" It comes out of nowhere, out of her shaky state of half-consciousness right before sunrise. She has let her guard fall – it is the first time it happens.
The smile falls slowly, delicately, from Kate's lips. Her hand rises to Sun's cheek and she feels her body clenching when her neck bends down lightly towards Kate’s face. Only one instant before their lips touch does Sun understand that Kate's answer to her question, her lips parting softly under hers, is the only possible answer. The only answer that won't hurt; the only answer they can bear tonight.
*
Days go by and the slow pace of time picks up speed as the seasons change. Or so they say. Weeks fade into months soon enough but the sky is always blue and the weather always warm. It mocks Sun, the unforgiving and irreversible passage of time. It feels immutable, but it’s there, continuous and endless. Her baby girl grows fast and strong and healthy and Aaron's ceaseless babbling is a powerful stream of giggles all day long. When memories start fading away only a dry but elusive pain remains. A pain she feels inside her chest, but that she often cannot place; a pain she cannot link anymore with the memory of his taste or his smell. His face slowly fades into nothing and the void inside her grows wider.
During the days Kate drifts away, taking Aaron and disappearing until nightfall. Long walks and busy errands and random trips to the park or the grocery shop keep her away from Sun from sunrise to sunset and it's all for the best, she thinks. Some things cannot be acknowledged under the glowing sunshine, when regret and guilt and loneliness shine brightly in their empty lifeless eyes.
Some things cannot be concealed under the yellow daylight and it is better that way.
During the nights though, when their hands fumble and their bodies rock and push, enveloped in the thick darkness of their bedroom, there is only one unspoken rule: never talk about them; never say their names. It doesn't matter how good or how bad if feels, their bodies wrestling and merging together; thinking of them would put an immediate stop to it and that is something they can’t allow to happen. They can’t stop.
Kate's hands grip her flesh roughly, her nails digging Sun’s white brittle skin, and it's such a nice, pleasurable contrast to the delicacy of the touch of her own hands, shy and insecure when she wakes up alone in the morning, after Kate has already left the house.
*
"Why did you come to Los Angeles?"
Kate only asks after the immigration papers have been filled and signed, along with medical insurance and the application for a nearby daycare center. Kate only asks after she realizes that Sun is there to stay and it's just idle curiosity which motivates her question. After months of hurried, whispered confessions in the wee hours of the morning – spent and sleepy and barely conscious, only one step away from numbness – Sun knows that any other day of any other life, nothing could have stopped Kate from leaving the house, the city, the continent, with nothing much of a look back and a shrug of her shoulders.
"I was alone in Korea," she whispers, unwilling to disturb the melodic rhythm of the rain clacking against the window pane.
It's not like she isn't alone here, now. She is. She will always be alone without him. Kate's hand is lazily drawing circles on her stomach but that doesn't mean that she is really there, with Sun. Nothing more than Kate's darkened silhouette keeps her company in the night. The real Kate is far away, as far away as she can be with her body nailed to the mattress and pressed close to Sun, keeping her warm as the rain pounds violent on the tiled roof. It's not Sun's place to wonder where Kate goes, in the stillness of the night, but she knows Kate does not stay there, with her.
"I'm glad you came." Kate's silhouette smiles and Sun smiles back.
She is glad too and she lets Kate know by sliding her hand under her pants and tracing with her tongue the long curve of her throat.
Kate's hold grows firmer as she moans softly, her head buried in Sun's neck. Their bodies move together in well-rehearsed sync and it's delicate and peaceful and familiar. Kate giggles when Sun tickles the inside of her thigh and Sun groans softly as Kate's mouth slips down her stomach. She has come to depend of the white thought, when Kate's fingers curl inside her and they both sigh, comforted by the soothing rush of life that spreads through their entangled limbs.
*
One year after leaving Seoul she wakes up and finds a white delicate flower lying lonely on Kate's pillow. Kate has already left and her gift brings tears to Sun’s eyes. For one instant, she is tempted to pack her bags, grab her daughter and fly away. Back home. Back to confront the pain, the loss she ran from when she left her city.
It's been a year since she gave up on her promise of staying home and today she can't ignore the stab of pain at Kate's absence (this is the first time she has been given a flower since she abandoned her husband, there.)
It would be so easy – grabbing the few things she owns and taking a taxi to the airport. Getting on a plane that will take her back to his ghost, to the lonely mourning of her loss. After all, if there is something she has learned from Kate's intermittent presence – she is always coming and going, drizzling from one place to another; only stays still in bed, the few hours she does sleep – is that leaving and running away is the only way to get rid of the memory of words that will forever remain unsaid; the only way to get rid of their persistent wounding echo. That's what Kate says and sometimes Sun thinks she is encouraging her to leave, to do what she longs to do. Leave. Move. Run as fast as she can, until the memories fall exhausted to the ground, unable to catch up with the pull of her legs.
It would be so easy, packing up and disappearing just like she appeared one day a year ago, without a word of warning. Kate wouldn't hold it against her. If she could, Kate would have already left herself. Kate does leave in her own way, every morning, and Sun doesn't judge it, doesn't presume to understand. Everyone has the right to their own way of mourning.
But she has come to depend on the white thought, when Kate's fingers curl against her skin; even if it doesn't mean she is any less empty. She'll never be any less empty, but the feeling of Kate’s long curls, falling heavily around her body, makes her blood run faster, alive.
She lies down on the mattress and takes the frail white flower to her lips. It feels soft and it smells like the rain, like the palm trees. Like Kate.
Maybe she will leave any other day. Maybe she will go back to the ghost, to his memory, to their home; but not today. Today Sun closes her eyes and concentrates on a different memory, the memory of Kate’s body around her, only a few hours ago. Kate is warm, and soft and comforting; she makes it easier to breathe.
She inhales the perfume of the flower with a deep breath, remembering. Slowly, quietly, Sun falls back to sleep again.
_
.end
Current Mood: 
rushed
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