Author's note: I apologize to those of you who sent me a private message and haven't gotten a reply yet. I've had a crazy busy week and wanted to put whatever time I had into writing this.

As always, thank you SO much for all of the fabulous reviews! I have to say, this story was originally supposed to be some little three or four chapter thing that didn't really go anywhere particularly special. I just liked the idea of Kate volunteering for this and being Jack's patient for a while.

You guys and your enthusiasm made me want to turn it into something more substantial, and it's been a great little ride. I debated about whether to continue this here or start the rest of what I have planned as a sequel, and I've decided on a sequel. I think it's just more fitting that way, given the decision Jack and Kate make at the end of this chapter.

So this is the end of Test Subject, but keep an eye out for what I've got tentatively titled 'Consequential Encounters'. It shouldn't be too long before I get started on that, and I'm rather excited about it, so I hope you'll all give it a chance. This last chapter of this story almost functions as a prologue for the sequel, in some ways.

Without teasing too much (I hope!) I'll just say that I've gotten intrigued by the fact that consequential comes from 'consequences' and means both 'significant' and 'resulting'… meaning that every significant encounter has its consequences, good or bad… and one incident usually results in another, somewhere along the line… and so on and so forth…

I have plans for Jack and Kate to have various encounters with… well… each other, and the Others, and some people we've met but they haven't, and some substances they'll wish they never encountered at all… and someone else I can't quite mention yet.

One other thing – I realize Kate has said she's a vegetarian, but we've also seen her eat bacon, and many vegetarians do eat fish, so… I don't think it's out of character for her to eat fish.

As always, these characters are not mine, and I would so, so very much appreciate any and all feedback.

Test Subject

Chapter Seven

Kate Austen was not a woman who had a lot of dating experience.

In fact, she had almost none at all.

She'd be in love, she'd been married, she'd had a few different sexual partners… and yet somehow, dating had never really been a part of her life.

She'd fallen for her childhood best friend as soon as she was old enough to know what love was. She'd married him, divorced him and soon after began living as a fugitive from justice.

Typical Friday night dinner-and-a-movie experiences with a potential new boyfriend had just never happened for her.

Dating was a foreign concept.

And yet here she was, in an underground bunker on a bizarre deserted island, prepared for what could only be called a date with a man who less than twenty-four hours ago had learned all of her most closely held secrets.

Given all of that, while she was anticipating the evening and eagerly waiting for Jack to return from checking on Claire, she also felt just the slightest bit nervous. She told herself she didn't, but the nerves were there.

It was all so new, and she and Jack had such a history of destroying anything good between them before it had a chance to grow.

She wasn't kidding herself. She fully expected to screw it up sooner or later. The capacity to destroy was something that lived in her DNA, and even if that hadn't been true, she hadn't been kidding when she told Jack she couldn't 'dig in'.

'Forever' just wasn't something she was good at, even when she wanted to be.

But for however long she could make this last, she was damn well going to enjoy it.

She hadn't dressed up or done anything particularly special with her hair, and she wore no makeup, as per usual. Doing anything beyond showering and pulling on clean clothes and brushing her hair just would have felt strange to them both. They were cooking fish over an open fire on the beach, after all, not going to an opera.

And truth be told, Kate had never been one to enjoy dressing up, anyway.

Resting on the couch in the main living area of the hatch, she let her mind wander, wondering where it would all go from here, wondering what being together in this crazy place would mean… and wondering what Jack was like in bed, and when she'd get to find out.

She doubted it would be long before they crossed that line. It had been so long for them both, and the emotional intimacy was there now.

She was mildly concerned by the fact that he likely had a very limited number of condoms in this place, but it was a bridge they'd cross if they came to it.

There was no way she'd risk propagating Wayne's DNA.

Kate was lost in thoughts of just how long it would take to build a more private shelter than either of them had when Jack finally arrived out of nowhere.

She stood up quickly, smiled, and prayed she wasn't blushing.

"Hey."

"Hey."

They looked at each other for a brief, awkward moment, smiling little smiles they couldn't quite subdue, and then he took another step closer to her and leaned in for a quick greeting kiss.

It was new and different and exciting, these little moments they'd shared all day.

And so damn precious, after all of this time.

They said nothing for a long moment, and then Kate remembered where he had been.

"How's Claire?"

"She's good," Jack told her, looking pleased. "Thanks to you, she's really good. That third drug of yours is doing the trick."

Kate nodded and smiled a thin smile, allowing herself a moment to feel good about that.

"You hungry?" Jack asked casually, flinging his backpack down onto the couch.

"Starved! I've barely eaten anything today."

"You're not still feeling sick, are you?" He asked quickly, looking her over.

Kate shook her head, once again unable to completely hide a little smile, loving the way his eyes narrowed when he was concerned… loving that she knew the way his eyes narrowed when he was concerned.

"Just wanted to be hungry for dinner."

"Oh." He nodded, satisfied with that, and then glanced at his watch. "I've got Jin catching us dinner, gave him a pile of mangoes in exchange. Give me two minutes to shower and change," he told her, heading for the bathroom.

"You can shower and change in two minutes?" Kate asked doubtfully, and Jack turned and gave her a teasing grin.

"I'm a man, Kate. Watch me."

Jack took three steps before what he'd just said hit him, and then froze and turned back.

Kate had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at the expression on his face.

"I, uh… that wasn't really an invitation," Jack clarified unnecessarily.

"Clear on that, Jack," Kate told him with a quick nod, and he turned and walked off down the hall.

Kate sat back down on the couch to wait, vaguely aware that it had been a long time since she'd done this much smiling, vaguely amused that Jack had traded mangoes for a fish dinner.

Funny how even here, somehow the man ended up 'paying' for the meal.

Kate made a mental note not to let him make a habit of that.

…

Maybe it was the comfortably warm evening, maybe it was the gentle wind against her face, maybe it was the company…

But Kate had never tasted fish so good.

They'd met up with Jin just long enough to take two large fish from him and offer him their thanks, and then made their way down the beach, around a bend, near the rest of their camp but secluded enough to be alone for a while.

It hadn't taken long to get a fire going or get their fish cleaned and cooked, and now he watched, amused, as she wasted no time in eating her share.

"You have a hollow leg I don't know about?" he kidded her, and watched as she blushed even as she continued chewing.

"I told you I was hungry," she pointed out after a moment, and then added, "And I don't do delicate little lady."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," he replied, rather softly, and she smiled down at the fish for a moment, and then almost shyly raised her eyes to meet his.

They were across from each other, reclined in the sand, a few feet from their fire.

It was just about dusk, and they couldn't have asked for anything more from nature than the bright pink sky above.

"I've been thinking about Rousseau and her traps," he said suddenly, and Kate looked at him quizzically, wondering why he was bringing that up right now.

"And…?" she prompted, curious.

"Well," he started, a smile in his eyes even as he tried to keep a straight face. "I've been thinking I need to find her, talk to her about dismantling them. Might mean a day or two trekking into the jungle. And you know, it just wouldn't be smart to go alone. And I could really use a decent tracker." He stopped, and grinned, and added: "And you're a hell of a lot prettier than Locke is."

This time their locked gaze held as she smiled an appreciative but slightly embarrassed little smile, and he smiled widely, nearly laughing at his own little joke.

"You can count me in," she told him a second later, and he nodded.

He'd expected nothing else.

He'd already started looking forward to it.

They were quiet for a long while after that, hearing only indistinct voices and murmurs from down the beach, appreciating the peacefulness of it like they hadn't ever really bothered to before, because it had never been like this before.

When she'd finished with her food she got up to get the bottle of water she had left on the other side of the fire, and she had to walk by him on her way back to where she'd been sitting.

He caught her hand as she went by, and looked at her with a subtle, distant request in his eyes.

She was more than willing to let him pull her down next to him, but surprised when he instead pulled her right into his lap.

They'd never been that close before, but she had no desire to pull away.

In fact, at that moment, all she wanted in the world was to get closer.

They both knew only too well that there were forty-some people chattering away just around the bend.

But that didn't mean he couldn't kiss her, he reasoned to himself.

And it didn't stop them from deepening the kiss, either. Nor did it stop her from teasing his tongue with her own, or stop him from tangling his fingers in her hair.

There was a lot of that kind of thing for a short while, and it wasn't until his hands began a slow journey up under her shirt that she forced herself to pull back from him, and still his hands with her own.

"Jack…" she drew in an uneven breath, gave him a regretful look.

He sighed, closed his eyes, nodded.

They were still for just a moment, and then she moved herself off of him, and onto the sand next to him instead, leaving a few inches of space between them because she knew that to sit any closer would be playing with fire.

Neither of them said anything for a few long moments, until finally he sighed audibly again.

"I need a better tent," he muttered, and she almost laughed at the frustration that underlined his otherwise matter-of-fact tone.

She leaned toward him, risked just a kiss.

"Soon," she promised, her eyes studying his, knowing that they'd never been nearly this open with each other before, and yet entirely comfortable with what she was saying now.

He nodded in agreement.

"Soon."

They went silent again for a long while, both of them fighting with themselves in an attempt to get back to a mental place that let them just relax together.

A distraction was in order, and he'd been meaning to ask her anyway…

"Are we done with the drugs, Kate?"

She turned to face him, startled by the abrupt question, and thought it over for a moment.

"There weren't many left, were there?" she asked

"Three," he answered her. "All of them intravenous."

She turned her eyes out toward the waves, looking unsure.

"We've got painkillers now," she said quietly.

"Painkillers, sedatives, local anesthetic… even a kind of truth serum if we ever get the chance to use it on one of them," Jack listed.

There was something rather hopeful in both of their voices, and they could hear it in each other.

"I'm willing to keep going, if you want to," Kate said, even quieter than before, hating the thought of it, but hating the thought of caving to fear even more.

"I think we're done, Kate," Jack told her meaningfully, and then let another moment pass in silence. "Let's just be done."

She looked back from the waves to his face and found him looking over at her.

She nodded almost imperceptibly, and suddenly he looked as relieved as she felt.

They didn't say it out loud, but the sentiment behind the decision hung in the air between them, so real that it could have been written in the sand.

There was just too much to lose now.

She shifted over closer to him in the sand, now that the mood had changed so completely, and leaned back against him as she'd done a few days ago by the group bonfire. This time he wrapped his arms around her tightly from behind, pulling her to him, silently relishing the fact that there was no reason not to do things like that now.

The group bonfire was going on now, by the sound of it. Laughter traveled over from down the beach every now and then, and Hurley's booming, animated voice suddenly became distinguishable over all others.

And though Jack didn't really feel like moving, he felt he had to make an offer, because Kate never looked more relaxed and at peace than when she was lying by the fire listening to everyone laugh at Hurley's stories.

"You want to go over there?"

He could feel Kate sigh, and then shake her head.

"Not yet."

He was content with that, and they sat there together for a long time, until the sky was black rather than pink, and their fire was burning low.

It was crazy, to think back at what had brought them here.

He'd betrayed his father.

She'd killed hers.

It had landed them both in Australia, and then aboard a doomed flight.

And they'd met, that day in the jungle, as if by fate.

And maybe it was all fate, because it all seemed to be coincidences from there on in.

If Ethan hadn't taken Claire, if Boone and Locke hadn't been searching for her and found the hatch, if Rousseau's traps hadn't injured Claire, if Sayid hadn't been down there to recognize the truth drug…

Maybe they wouldn't have made it here. At least not so soon.

The chain of events reached way back, one encounter leading to another.

There was no telling where it would all go, what consequences awaited them now that they were united in this crazy place.

But here they were.

Together.

And it was right.

So very, very right.