A/N: A little idea I've been thinking about. This is AU but I'll try to keep everyone in character as much as possible.

Kate never killed Wayne and never went to Australia. This is everything you need to know now, everything else will be revealed later :)

Hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you think :)

Disclaimer: I do not own 'Lost', even though I wish I had :)

Starting Over

Evenings in California were beautiful. Kate fell in love with sunsets and she could swear it was her favourite time of the day. She'd only been here for a few weeks and she spent most of her evenings watching the sun. Tonight, however, she had to attend a ball at the hospital that Jason worked at. She hated events like that. It's not like she attended many of them before but she'd definitely been to enough of them to decide she didn't enjoy them.

"Kate, honey, are you ready? We don't wanna be late?" she heard her husbands voice.

She looked down at her dress and smoothed it. She would never be ready. Kate knew how it's going to end. Every time was exactly the same but she had no other choice. She had to go there, smile and shake everyone's hands. It's going to be the last one, she thought.

"Yeah, I'm ready, we can go," she said, taking one last look at the sun who was slowly going down.

"Finally," Jason said, looking at her. She was wearing a simple little black dress and high stiletto heels. Her hair were up in a bun, a few strands of her curly hair, framing her face.

"You look nice," he said. Jason, himself, was looking good too. White shirt and black suit complimented his tanned face. She looked at his strong jaw, she used to love it. She looked into his brown, cold eyes and saw his approval. He was happy with how she looked.

"Thank you," she replied shortly, breaking the eye contact. Kate grabbed her purse and headed to the door. It was going to be a long night, she could feel it.

Jack was standing in a crowded ball room, filled with fancy dressed people, fake smiles and drunk individuals. The ball started two hours ago and the only thing he'd done was shaking hands of people whose names he wouldn't remember in the morning.

"Jack, this is Jason MacAddams, the new surgeon I told you about, and this is his beautiful wife, Kate," Jack heard his best friend, Marc, saying. He turned around and saw the most beautiful woman, standing right in front of him. He was speechless.

"It's a pleasure to meet. I've heard so much about you," the man in front of him said.

Jack turned his eyes to him.

"Same here," he said, not really paying attention. "How do you find working at our hospital?"

"Oh, it's great..." Jack wasn't really paying attention to whatever that man was saying. He was mesmerized by the woman standing right next to him. She was smiling quietly but her smile never reached her eyes. He could tell she wasn't paying attention, her mind was away. Far away.

Evening was going slow, way to slow for Jack's liking. He was tired of all the talking to people. It's not like he didn't enjoy it, it was just, all the politeness seemed really fake. All the conversations were forced. He needed some time alone, time to breath before he could go back to the crowd. One more hour and he would be able to call it a night. Just one more hour, Jack was thinking on his way to the balcony. He opened the glass door slowly, hoping for some time alone. It was unlikely, he probably would find there a couple, the one that was too busy to find their way home.

He was taken out of his thoughts when he heard a silent "Oh," coming from a woman standing in front of him. She was deep in her thoughts and him opening the door startled her.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," Jack apologized. He recognized that woman instantly, even though she was standing with her back to him.

"No, it's ok," she said and turned to him, quickly wiping her cheeks. She hoped, he wouldn't notice that she was crying. She breathed with relief, luckily it wasn't Jason, he probably was too occupied with the blond woman, she saw him with earlier.

He knew she was crying, but decided to not ask. He didn't even know her, why it bothered him. He felt like he wanted to embrace her, to protect her from whatever made her cry. He didn't even know her... Jack shook his head and said.

"Way too crowded over there, needed to escape."

She smiled at him, "Yeah, I'm not a fan of these things, either." she said and took a sip from the glass she was holding in her hand.

Jack was watching her carefully, her figure was thin, yet muscular, black dress was hugging her in all the right places, her hair, perfectly done an hour ago, when he first met her, now a bit messy, random strands of her curly hair were out of her bun. He noticed her freckles, shining in the moonlight.

"So, how do you like California?" he asked, trying to keep up the conversation.

"It's nice," Kate said and smiled, "I love the sunsets" this time, her smiled reached her eyes. It was a random thing to say, she could've said anything but to be honest she hadn't seen much of California yet. They moved from Iowa a couple weeks before but she spent most of her time at home, Jason was getting used to the new hospital, he was working at, therefore he was working long hours. Kate didn't mind, she enjoyed spending her time alone. Especially now, when her and Jason were barely talking to each other.

"Yes, they can be beautiful," Jack replied. Their conversation was awkward. He would know what to say if she was single. He was attracted to her but he knew she had a husband and probably a happy life. Yet, he wasn't so sure, she didn't seem happy in his company. But what did he know, he saw them together for 5 minutes, he scolded himself.

"So what kind of a surgeon are you?" Kate asked not looking at him. She turned her back to him, and was facing the beautiful view that was in front of them. That gave Jack a chance to take another look. Her strapless dress allowed him to see freckles on her upper back. Her tiny waist... Focus Jack, he scolded himself again.

"I'm a spinal surgeon," he said simply.

"Oh, fancy," she said, smile on her lips. Kate found herself enjoying that small talk she had with a handsome stranger. It was nice to talk to someone else than her husband. It was nice to talk to someone else without Jason standing by her.

"And what do you do?" he found himself asking.

"Me? You know... I've got a very responsible job, a full time housewife,"she said with a bitter smile. "And occasionally I'm doing some translations, but it's more like a hobby than a real job," she added. Kate hated staying at home, not being able to go to work everyday.

"Oh, that's interesting," he meant it. Jack could never learn a language. He still had nightmares with all the Latin names of diseases he had to learn while at his med school. "What language do you speak then?" he was interested.

"I speak Polish. Not a big market of translations though. Just a few now and then, just something to do in my free time," she replied. It wasn't her full time job. Jason would never allow her to work and she finished her education after high school. Language was something her grandmother taught her before she died, so she used it to get extra cash now and then, Jason didn't need to know that.

"And I thought Spanish was difficult," he replied with a smile.

"Here you are, I've been looking for you everywhere," they heard the door open and a drunk man approached them. Kate closed her eyes slowly, her night had just ended.

Jack noticed the change in her behaviour but said nothing. He looked at Jason but he didn't look at him once, his eyes focused on Kate, his voice sweet but anger visible in his eyes.

"Time to go home, sweetheart," he said and Kate nodded. "It was nice to meet you," she said quietly to Jack and joined her husband. Jack watched them leaving. There was something weird about these two. He thought, slowly sipping his drink that he seemed to forgot about while talking to Kate.

TBC...

Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think :) Shall I continue?

And a word of explanation, this is obviously alternate universe but like I said before, I'm going and try not to change a lot. But, Kate needs some skills here and as we know she never went to college. I assumed, speaking a foreign language could be her skill. I was wondering what language I should choose, I needed a rare language but a language that she could learn without going to college. I decided that it would be possible for her to learn the language from her grandparents, as we know nothing about them. Then, I thought, she doesn't really look very exotic, so I needed to come up with a language that she could learn but wouldn't really influence her facial features. So, according to that, it had to be a language spoken in North America or Europe. That is how I came up with Polish. You'll understand why I needed this in later chapters :) So it's not me being all cheese and picking my own language, it's just, for the sake of the story, I couldn't really make her speak German or French as those languages are too widely spoken :)