Connecting Flight (Part 1)

Jack was his name. As he takes the woman's hand in his, he remembers her own. Katherine Anne, good Kate, sweet Kate. She carries her name as he did his, an item of clothing to be discarded when the time comes.

They are the last to file out of the church pew and into the most beautiful light he has ever seen. Earlier, as they sat together in the pew, he saw it only as a reflection in her eyes. Now he looks at it full on. Light without heat surrounds him, light the color of an overcast midday sky, as sun fills the clouds full of glowing milk.

He can keep the name of Jack if he likes, the light seems to say, but there is no rush. Up ahead, the others before them have vanished into the white. Her hand still fills his, even if the rest of her smears like someone caught in motion in a photograph. She had always moved too swiftly, hadn't she? Too fast for him to keep up with. Too quick of movement, which made her blur. Yet her fingers still remain in his, all warm, substantial, real.

He strains through the brightness for a glimpse of his father, but only bright rolling clouds unfold before him. Wind ruffles his hair, as Kate's flutters like a brown banner of victory across the marble arch of her shoulders.

Up ahead, his father leads their little band through. "Not leaving," he had said. "Moving on." A picture forms in Jack's mind of the first time he ever flew on an airplane. His mother explained to his five-year-old self that no, clouds weren't springy like cotton, and if you tried to walk on them, you would fall tens of thousands of feet to the hard earth below. His childhood hands gripped the armrests tightly, suddenly aware of all the empty air beneath his seat.

Now he sails through clouds without effort, propelled only by his body, steered only by Kate's confident hand. No childish dream this, but waking. No illusion, but reality.

The white splits, rolled aside by a flash of silver-dark lightning. Kate squeezes his hand hard, and he can't blame her, because all at once they're in an airport. The large main terminal of Los Angeles International Airport, to be exact.

The old part of Jack lets out a sigh of disappointed resignation. Here he is again, a gerbil spinning to nowhere, a painted pony on a carousel. The unturning axis is always found in this place, the center around which everything pivots.

The ground hits Jack's feet with a sharp shock, like getting off a ski-lift. In the midst of the busy terminal, he almost collides with his father.

Christian gives him a warm, sympathetic look. "Back on the wheel," he announces as casually as if reporting the weather. "That's okay, son. You picked well." He adds to Kate, "You too."

Picked what? Jack has no time to ask, because Kate gives his arm another strong tug. The terminal throngs with people, some in the long single ticket queue, some sitting in clusters as they talk, laugh, cry. The automatic doors slide open to welcome a few latecomers.

"Look," Kate says. "No security. No TSA scanners."

Christian's eyes crinkle in a smile. "No need, dear."

One by one, familiar faces sort themselves out of the crowd. His mother. Grandma Jeanne and Grandpa Ray, their arms around each other. His old friend Mark.

Kate whispers, "Daddy," and points to a tall, greying man in full-dress uniform.

Jack touches her arm lightly. "Take as long as you need."

As Kate weaves her way through the crowd, Christian says, "Don't forget to pick up your ticket, kiddo."

"Ticket?"

Christian chuckles. "Well, you are in an airport. Come on, it's this way."

All along the main concourse are set up cafe tables, instead of security lines. Carole Littleton sits at one with his own mother, both of them deep in conversation, their faces washed with happiness. As Christian and Jack pass by, they spring to their feet. After Jack kisses Margo, she and Carole sit down again with Christian.

Jack looks around for the ticket line. There's only see one airline company in the entire terminal, with only one agent, and Jack would have known him anywhere.

Hugo's long, curly hair tumbles over meaty shoulders made even broader by an Oceanic Airlines suit jacket. As he hands out one ticket after another, he makes "Have an awesome flight" sound like he genuinely means it.

Someone pokes Jack from behind, right in the ribs. "You rusty old sawbones. Never thought I'd see you again."

"Frank," Jack breaths out. "Didn't recognize you in civvies."

Frank Lapidus glances down at his bright blue Hawaiian shirt. "I don't have to pilot this one." After a beat he adds, "Thank God."

Before Jack can ask what Frank means, Frank points to the down escalator. "Well, looky. Here comes the crew now."

Desmond Hume glides down, surrounded by three flight attendants, each one more graceful and elegant than the next. Wearing a small and distant smile, he gazes out over the women's sleekly-coiffed heads as they descend.

"Nice work if you can get it," Jack remarks.

Frank laughs from deep down. "Penny always dead-heads on these flights. She's probably already on board."

The line moves along at a normal clip, even though the line is long and Hugo is working alone. In the meantime, Jack studies the stranger in front of him, a middle-aged Asian man with a face wide and open as Hugo's own, his cheeks criss-crossed from smile lines and long days in the sun. With him waits a young woman in her twenties.

When the man and young woman start speaking, Jack recognizes the Korean, and can even pick out a few words like, "Grandpa," "It won't be long," and finally, "Ji Yeon."

Ji Yeon. The name stabs him with sweetness and pain.

"They have a little girl," Kate once said. The little girl has grown now, a beautiful woman in a pink linen sheath, her up-swept hair graced with a coral comb. That couldn't be Sun's father with her, though. Jack remembered the squat, scowling man at the Honolulu air force base when the Oceanic Six returned. This wasn't him.

He gazes back at the snaking line. A few dozen places behind him, Jin and Sun hold hands, and at once Jack knows that he stands behind Jin's father. Over by a waiting area Kate talks energetically with her parents. No more wheelchair for Kate's mother, and no oxygen cannula fixed to her nose. Now Diane stands hale and straight-backed, her arm linked in her daughter's, their faces close.

Kate will get in line when she's ready, Jack tells himself. There's all the time in the world.

Only a dozen people separate him from the counter, and he's close enough to see how those who come away clutch their tickets as if it's their most precious possession. Not only is there no security, no one has any luggage, not even a purse or carry-on bag. Jack remembers earlier ticket windows, tapping his foot impatiently, hating the delays, the wasted time, quailing inside as he recalls quarreling with harried airline workers over seating, bumped flights, Oceanic losing his father's body. In this line, though, Jack's impatience is gone.

Up ahead Claire takes her turn, without an infant in arms. As Hugo leans in to speak with her, he draws a curtain of intimacy around them even in the midst of the throng. The wheezing old printer clunks away at Claire's ticket, while she and Hugo continue to talk, their heads almost touching, Eventually Hugo slides her ticket into a sleeve of green paper, and hands it to her with a smile pink and warm as sunrise.

After Ji Yeon and her grandfather move aside, it's Jack's turn to step up.

Hugo types away on a 1980s-vintage keyboard, and his tie is studded with tiny suns, each bearing a set of feathered wings. "Hang on a second, there." A few more taps, and he looks up from the screen. "Awesome, just like I thought. This is your lucky day, Jack, 'cause I'm gonna offer you an upgrade."

"An upgrade? What, to first class?"

"I'm kinda pranking you, dude. I just always wanted to say that. Every seat on this plane's first-class."

For a second Jack balks, full of stubborn resistance laced with a thread of fear. "What is all this anyway, Hurley? What are we even doing here?"

Hugo gives a low chuckle. "You believed in me once, remember? Believe in me now. This is one flight you won't regret."

Jack takes a deep breath. "Okay, then. Just give me the ticket."

When the printer finishes clacking and whirring, Hugo places Jack's ticket in a sleeve riotous with embellished vegetation: ferns, vines, long-leafed cycads, palm fronds. Again the memory of a pounding heart hits him, the sudden dry mouth, how the stomach can tighten in excitement and anticipation. "What now?" he says. "Where do I go?"

Hugo gestures towards an enormous set of frosted-glass sliding doors. "When Jenna calls for boarding, head right through there."

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

All at once the delay presses on Jack like a weight. He wanders over to a coffee shop where Sawyer and Juliet sit at a cafe table, close enough to almost fit in each others' laps. Their bent foreheads touch, and every few sentences are punctuated with light kisses.

As Jack turns away, desolation at the prospect of another airplane flight opens inside him. With shame he remembers the ones in the month before his death; winces at the one prayer in his heart and mind. As if the only way to return was through destruction.

Well, the joke's on him, isn't it? A vision spreads out before him: six feet of sandy soil which conceals the body laid in a borrowed grave, the one dug by Ben Linus for his own use.

You can see it anytime, something just outside himself seems to say. All you have to do is turn around and walk right out of this airport, before it's too late. Because once you board, that's it.

No thanks, he answers back. At that instant, Kate walks into the coffee shop, glowing from sunshine, love, or both. Jack's last band of resistance snaps.

She slides her arm into his, presses against his side as if she's never left it, and her voice carries a laugh. "Look, they have white chocolate mochacchino. Now I know I'm in heaven."

Reaching for his wallet to pay for the drinks, he finds his back pocket empty. All he has are her smiling at his side, and the green ticket.

"Just sign here, sir," the barista says. "Any mark will do."

He finds himself drawing the small winged sun from Hugo's tie.

Skirting past faces known, familiar, or those of smiling strangers, they snag a table of their own. Even though the cafe is crowded, there's none of the usual airport rush and bustle.

"Hey, Jack, look over there." Kate nods towards a table where two young men in their twenties watch the crowds, pointing out people to one another with either surprise or delight. The taller, dark-haired one lightly jostles the shorter, thicker blond one, as if they share a secret joke.

Kate takes a long sip of her drink before setting it down. "Recognize them?"

"Aaron. But his friend, I don't—"

Kate laughs. "'Friend?' Look harder."

Jack's jaw drops. "It can't be. But Locke said..." His voice trails off, not denying the evidence of his eyes, yet not sure he can allow himself to believe it.

"Locke said what?" Whatever Locke thought about it clearly doesn't impress her.

"He said I didn't have a son."

"Oh, did he?"

Memories flood him of one night, the last one he ever spent in her arms. One look at her face, and he knows that she remembers, too.

She leans in close, her voice like breath in his ear. "Even if I forgot everything else... If I had to pick just one memory to take with me forever, it would be that."

He has never loved her more than at this instant, but before he can tell her, the two young men weave their way through the crowd to join them.

Jack stands up, not sure whether to shake their hands, hug them, or break down in tears, because David is no longer the boy of thirteen who ran off to his audition alone. All Jack can sputter is, "You're real."

"Dad, of course I'm real." David makes the decision for Jack as he wraps Jack in his arms, while Aaron looks on, beaming. "We may be dead, but we know what's what." Aaron sweeps his arm around the entire terminal. "No one gets to this point unless they do."

"But... how?" Jack stops short, because one look at Kate's face tells him everything he needs to know. A vague shame flickers through him, then flutters away. "I'm so sorry, Kate. I wasn't there for either of them. Or for you."

"You did what you had to." At that instant she seems lion-like, almost fierce. "After I helped Claire at the concert, I saw you on the lawn and it all came back. Hurley told me all of it: why you did it, what was at stake."

Jack tries to speak, but she brushes a finger lightly across his lips. Taking the young men's hands into hers, she says, "You weren't gone. You were there in both of them."

It's almost too big, too beautiful to believe. "So you... do you both have tickets, too?"

"We're just here to see you off. Mom, too." At Jack's stricken face David adds, "Don't worry, Dad. Flights leave from here all the time."

"This isn't good-bye forever, Uncle Jack," Aaron says. "Nothing here ever is."

David gives his cousin a small, friendly shove. "He always was the mystic."

All at once, a woman's crisp Australian accent crackles over the airport's speakers. It's time to board.

(continued)