Unbroken (Sawyer/Juliet fic)
Title: Unbroken
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Juliet, James with mentions of Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid
Category: One-shot
Rating: R
Summary: Juliet’s POV with regard to her relationship with James.
Spoilers: For episodes 5x08 and 5x09, La Fleur and Namaste. This is basically missing scene, post-episodic fic.
Author’s Notes: Written for the lovely abvj on the occasion of her birthday. It was inspired by a fic she wrote from Kate’s POV HERE. The title comes from a Tim McGraw song of the same name. If you’d like to listen to the song in its entirety, you can download it HERE.
Additional Author's Notes: I'm a Kate/Sawyer Shipper originally, but I really enjoy Jack/Juliet and now apparently Sawyer/Juliet. So to say this is the only way I interpret this storyline is not true. It's just how this particular piece went. I might change my mind next week, you can't count on me! :D
No one ever left me out in the rain
Cold words still remain unspoken
And I never got lost, spent years in the dark
You're here, now my heart's unbroken
~from Unbroken by Tim McGraw
Juliet Burke learned the 1970s weren’t such a bad decade the second time around. Her first time through she’d been a child, first alone in the world, and then the big sister of a beautiful, wonderful girl whom she had protected as much as possible from the dysfunction of their parents.
Her second venture through this decade has brought her peace and happiness of a sort she’s never before experienced during a life that had stretched out over the 1980s, the 1990s and ended with a failed marriage in the early part of the 21st century. Within a group of peace-loving, experiment-wielding fanatics, she has made an unlikely home, with an even unlikelier candidate as her partner.
James Ford had become her friend first, and her lover second, without them even realizing that was where they were headed. Something that had begun as a Sawyer Con had developed into the most real relationship she’d ever had. But it is only on days like today when an emergency tested the mettle of them all that she sees a glimpse of just what they have become together.
Holding him in her arms, enjoying the warmth and sweetness of his kisses, feeling the urgency of his rising passion, Juliet smoothes her hands over his shoulders and pulls her mouth from his so that she can whisper, “Take me to bed.” He makes a sound deep in his throat that signals his approval of this idea, and the smile that stretches her face etches itself deeper into her heart.
She is happy. Her life here, with James, is nothing that should add up to happiness, yet there was no other word to describe it. Or rather, whatever would adequately express the emotion in her chest as he playfully tosses her onto their bed-his dimples flashing with his own cocky smile-is not available to her in any of the languages in which she is fluent; not English, certainly, and not Spanish, and not even Latin, the original language of love.
“Dinner’s not gonna burn up or anything, is it, baby?” James asks as he throws his shirt aside and joins her on the bed.
Juliet locks her fingers together behind his neck, tugging him close. “No,” she murmurs. “And, we can heat it back up easily too.”
His smile grows into a full-fledged grin, the sensual grace of arousal dancing in his gaze. “That’s the second best news I heard all day.” Juliet feels sudden moisture in her eyes as she remembers the moment she said aloud for an audience of two that they were fine. Amy and her baby boy were the picture of health, and she had had a hand in it. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her-Dr. Burke-it would have been a different ending.
Their lips meet softly, and then he angles his head just slightly, the brushing teases of his tongue against her bottom lip a familiar introduction to the deep kiss that she receives with equal fervor a moment later. One of his hands moves to her stomach, his fingers undoing her pants button and zipper fluidly before his palm dives straight beneath her panties, cupping her and rubbing her just the way he knows she likes from months and years of this same activity.
Moaning and arching under his caresses, Juliet gasps his name as his fingers find her most tender spot. He releases her mouth to press his lips against her ear. He whispers how beautiful she is, and how much he wants her, while expertly driving her crazy, but all that is just one of the many things she loves about James Ford and her second journey through the 1970s.
*
The first time they had made love it had been here, but then here had been only Juliet’s bedroom. They had decided to share a house for appearance’s sake, but they’d lived as roommates for almost a year. Neither of them had been ready for the other, though looking back, Juliet knows they had both wanted it for a long time before it finally happened. Eventually it had become their bedroom.
They hadn’t talked much about it after that first time, and while James had had to deal with an unreasonable guilt that Juliet had understood perfectly, she had found that the only thing she had to cope with was the idea that she was falling in love with Sawyer. Except that she’d never really known Sawyer-and she had been falling in love with James from the minute he asked her to give him two weeks.
He wasn’t her type. Just because he’d read every book she had ever even thought about reading, he still had the worst grammar of just about anyone in association with the Dharma Initiative (including Jin) and she knew, because of his extensive literary list, he knew better. They were ill-matched on various levels, and when she was tempted to compare him to Jack, she realized that obvious compatibility did not spell success either. Her marriage had certainly proved that, and so did those few weeks she’d spent with Jack Shephard, watching him as he fought to reconcile his feelings for Kate. Funny, that she’d had to go through that with James too, except that she felt confident that she’d reached the end of it with him.
Then there were those quiet moments-after they started having sex on a regular basis-where he told her more in depth about his life and the death of Sawyer-both figurative and literal-and Juliet had made a personal discovery.
She had fought for three years to find a way off the island and get away from Ben Linus because the island had held no magic for her. There had been a boon here and there in Goodwin, and some of the other friends she had made, but nothing held her there or drove her ambitions the way it did for Ben.
Not until she spent a year and half there without him. Magic grew between her and James, grew until she knew she would never leave, not unless he would come with her. Not because she couldn’t exist without him, but because she didn’t want to. She’d found independence within the ties that bind.
She’d found that everything else that had happened to lead to this hadn’t done anything except make this that much more wonderful.
She loved, and was loved, and it had been most unexpected. Thoroughly welcomed, yes, but completely unexpected.
In the lazy aftermath of orgasm, James loves to run his hand up and down her back. Having told her many times that her back was the most gorgeous piece of anatomy he’d ever seen, Juliet had gotten into the habit of sliding off of him (or out from under him) and laying on her stomach for the enjoyment it gave both of them. His fingers ran upwards and then drifted back down, the rhythm and finesse of it something that often lulled her into sleep, though today she fights against it because they haven’t eaten dinner yet, and she still wants to run over and check on Amy and the baby.
His voice comes to her ears, all soft drawl and rough edges because of the intensity of his own completion. “Baby, you did great today.” He’d already said as much earlier, but the resurrection of the conversation warms Juliet from the inside out.
Sighing contentedly, she agrees. “It felt amazing, James. Amazing to hold a newborn baby in my hands and know that I had somehow helped him get here. Amazing,” she repeated because there was no other word for it.
He murmurs her name, and then she feels the soft tickle of his breath against her skin as he places his mouth between her shoulder blades. Kissing his way upward, he sweeps her hair aside to lay his face against the back of her neck. “I was thinkin’…” he says, but he doesn’t finish, and Juliet opens her eyes, though there is nothing to see. The bedroom has grown dark the longer they’ve been there because they hadn’t thought to turn on a light in their earlier haste and the sun has set outside, casting the house into shadows.
“About what?” she asks when he doesn’t continue.
“Babies,” he says, the gentleness of the word showing its foreign nature on his tongue.
Juliet tries not to tense up, because she has no idea where he’s going with this, but the initial idea that pops into her head makes her muscles want to react. “What about babies?” she says, forcing her voice to sound faintly lethargic, even though she is totally alert now, not floating in that dreamy space between wakefulness and sleep.
“Have you ever wanted to have one?” he asks, the words pressing against her skin.
Unable to bear it another moment, Juliet moves, sitting up and forcing him to get off of her at the same time. Reaching for the bedside lamp, she turns over to face him after she floods the room with light.
He looks like a child himself, his expression a mixture of sheepishness and chagrin, and he presses his lips into a line, which causes his dimples to appear without the slightest hint of a smile. Before Juliet can say anything, he raises his hands defensively. “We don’t have to get into this, if you’re not comfortable.”
Juliet feels, for just a short moment, like slapping him. She knows about Clementine, and she knows about how relieved he was when Kate confirmed she was not pregnant. She also knows both of those things happened a long time ago, to a different man, almost, but it’s still ludicrous. The natural destination of this line of questioning is abhorrent to her.
“You want to bring a child into this world-this crazy world we live in that cannot last because eventually we will have to go back to where we came from. We know it won’t last forever, James, and you want to bring a child into the mix? What happened today was amazing, yes, but it didn’t render me brain dead.” She reaches for a pillow to hold against her chest as they both sit up on the bed.
“I didn’t say anything about that!” he almost shouts. “I just asked if you ever wanted a baby! I ain’t ever heard you say anything about it, one way or another.” He takes a deep breath and finishes in a quieter voice, “I just wondered.”
Narrowing her eyes, she gazes at him silently until his eyes shift away from hers uneasily. “You aren’t just curious,” she concludes. “At least, you aren’t just curious about if I ever wanted a baby. You’re also curious about us making a baby. Tell the truth.”
His eyes-so potent with emotion at times Juliet had been known to go from zero to sex in two point two seconds-slice her with longing she hadn’t known either of them could feel about such an abstract idea. “It ain’t so strange, is it?” he questions softly.
There is this flash then-only within Juliet’s mind-that strongly reflects the time jumps they had once been tortured by. Only she sees them, in an uncertain future, with a blonde-haired child who lights them both up so entirely she feels blinded by it.
*
Later that evening, after dinner has been eaten, and James has talked with Horace while Juliet checked on Amy, she settles into bed beside him. He’s reading-something he does every evening as he waits for her to go through her nightly routine of face washing and teeth brushing and flossing. As she curls into the pillow on the left side of the bed, she watches his eyes as he finishes up the chapter he’s on. He shuts the book a few moments later and sets it on the floor on his side of the bed before turning to face her. He scoots down until they lay in mirrored positions, staring into each other’s eyes.
Juliet begins the conversation. “If we decide to do it, we will have to leave here. Are you prepared to do that?” She knows he has been waiting, ever faithful, for John Locke to return, just as he promised. It’s no longer about them getting back to the right time, it’s only about his belief in his friend, in someone he knows would not willingly let him down.
Though she doesn’t doubt that part of him still wants the rest of them to come back too-Kate as well-because while they have moved on, part of them will forever be on hold, unable to make steps into a future that negates their whole existence.
See, that’s what a child means, here. A child between Juliet and James would mean letting all the other go, once and for all, and while the prospect is at once terrifying, it is also something Juliet had no idea she wanted. It’s a full commitment between them. It’s the last string left undone.
“I think I am,” he says. “It was your face, when you came out and told us about Amy and the baby. Maybe it is time to stop looking, Jules. Maybe it’s just time to accept our lives for what they are. The 70s weren’t all that great for me the first time around, you know. But this time-they’ve been pretty okay.”
She smiles, only because some things never had to be said aloud between them to be shared. “We could take the sub out in a week or two,” he continues. “And go back to the States, and just live.” He reaches a hand up, smoothing it over her cheek gently. His eyes darken, and she sees the idea of making a baby-though impossible at this point because of oral contraceptives-is still enough to invite another sort of tension between them. “We could even, you know, be old fashioned, and get married.”
Unable to help herself, she laughs and a smile flashes over his face as he lowers his mouth to hers. “I guess we’ll have to talk to Horace soon so he can find replacements for us, right?” she says just before his lips brush hers.
After a swift, deep kiss, James lifts his head. “Yeah. I’ll tell ‘im, him and Amy inspired us. He’ll be touched.” The faint sarcasm on his last word cause more giggles to bubble up in Juliet’s throat. James smiles, too. “He don’t have to know it was a literal inspiration,” he says sexily, nudging her with the part of his body that is inspired.
Wrapping a hand around his neck, she pulls his mouth back to hers. “I love you,” she announces, laughter punctuating the declaration.
One of his hands slides down her back, pulling her firmly against him. “I know,” he replies cockily.
*
The ringing phone startles her from a sound sleep, and James rushing from the room in an inexplicable hurry unsettles her for the entire morning. When she sees him running across the courtyard towards their house on the television monitors, she doesn't even glance at Miles again as she hightails back up the stairs.
Ten minutes later, her legs feel watery, and her only choice is to sit down on their bed, his announcement stealing her strength. When he joins her, the bed depresses under his weight and she quells the urge to sob. All their plans, the things they had discussed only 12 hours before, seem like pipe dreams that she should never have allowed herself to even consider.
She suddenly realizes that losing this-losing James-would break her like nothing before ever has, not her divorce from Edmund, not almost losing Rachel to cancer, not even being unable to know her nephew, the child she had basically created with her own skill and unbelievable luck.
The only thing she knows in that moment is that she must support James one hundred percent in his efforts to conceal Hurley and Jack and Kate. If for any reason one of them is hurt, she knows he will see it as a personal failure. So she tells him about the incoming sub, and they make a plan, together.
He hugs her tightly before he rushes out the door again, but she makes a note that he does not kiss her.
*
When she finds Amy sleeping, she thinks it's better so she can take the submarine manifest and not have to say anything, but of course it doesn't go her way there either. It's all she can do not to burst into tears, first because she realizes she is holding the baby who grows into a man who was her friend, and the idea that she delivered Ethan Rom, and that Ethan Rom had in turn helped to bring her to the island is almost more than she can process, until Amy asks about her and Jim having a baby.
She walks away briskly, trying to ignore the fear pulsing just under her skin. She has spent three years with James; James is the one who brought up having children, and James is the one who said just the night before that moving on is what they should do. Just because Hurley and Jack and Kate are all here now doesn't mean everything has to change.
It just means that it will; it doesn't have to, but it will. Instinctively Juliet knows the day she's feared all along has arrived, just as they were about to escape from it. Just as they were willingly going to walk away from it.
Three years together should be a tighter bond than 108 days, but she remembers the intensity of her own feelings for Jack, and she knows that time matters to a certain extent, but it is not the only factor. What binds James to Hurley and Jack, and especially Kate, is something that Juliet herself was not a part of. She came to the game late, and she may still suffer the consequences of that uncontrollable fact.
All she has is her love for him, and her belief that he will do whatever he needs to do to preserve their life together. He said he would, and for all that Sawyer may have conned the entire world, he's never lied to her.
*
That night, she’s already in bed before he comes in. He’s been in the living room reading for a long time. Jack left more than two hours before, but Juliet cannot sleep. Her back is to him as he comes in though, and she closes her eyes because she’s not sure she wants to talk.
Of course, James has always just woken her up if he felt the urge. The need to keep up some sort of pretense feels like the beginning of the end, and it churns in her stomach, causing an actual physical pain.
When he slides in beside her, he reaches over and tugs her into the curve of his body. Wrapping himself around her entirely, he buries his face in the hair laying over her neck and he whispers her name, as though he doesn’t want to wake her if she really is asleep.
“What?” she says lowly in response.
“I love you,” he breathes, and she starts to sob only because she finally relaxes. The tears run from her eyes like a levee breaking on a dam. “Shhhhh,” he says, his arms tightening severely. “It’s gonna be okay. You’ll see. I’ll figure something out.”
Once her tears drain away, she wipes at her face and then wraps her fingers around his arm, holding it tighter across her chest. “I believe you,” she whispers, because that’s always been what held them together. No deceptions, no games. “I believe in you,” she clarifies. “It’s just…” but she can’t articulate just what it is exactly. It was the events of three years ago-and Jack’s arms embracing her tightly, almost as snugly as her lover holds her now-and it was the news that John Locke was dead, and the truth Juliet had known that day so long ago when she sat on the pier looking at the submarine that had chartered her into hell. She had tried to tell James then, Locke had saved them from bleeding to death from a brain hemorrhage, and that was as good as it got.
“Believe me, I know,” he murmurs, the agitation and confusion evident in his voice. “We’re gonna have to watch each other’s backs like crazy now. You know Jack, and you know Kate. They’re only gonna do what I tell them for so long. Then for sure, whatever thing will happen and Jack will go off half-cocked. Who knows what the hell Kate’s gonna do. Something not good, is all I can figure.”
Turning over so she can see his face, Juliet places her hand against his cheek. “You can’t take responsibility for that, James. You got them this far, now it’s up to them to trust you. If they can’t-or just won’t-do that, then let Horace do whatever he wants to them.”
His eyes search hers, and she can see he understands what she means. “I just don’t want them dragging Hugo into it,” he finally says, and Juliet brushes her fingers over his jaw caressingly.
“Hugo has to make his own choices too,” she says. “We have to decide right now what our priorities are. Are they each other, or are they with Jack and Kate…and Hugo.” She knows the way she tacked on Hurley’s given name at the end indicates what she is really concerned about, but at this point, she doesn’t care. James is right. It’s only a matter of time before Jack and Kate do whatever the hell they want.
“I gotta figure out someway to get Sayid outta jail,” he adds, and she wonders if that’s his way of not answering her first question until he sighs heavily and then leans his forehead into hers. “I think he’ll trust me. And I think Hugo will do what I say. Jack and Kate-maybe if they see that Jin and Miles have followed my lead all this time, then…”
“And me. I’ve followed you, too,” she reminds him.
“Aw, bullshit,” he scoffs, lifting his head up again. “You know it’s the other way around.”
Juliet is actually stunned by this pronouncement-that he even thinks it, much less acknowledges it. “We’ve been in this together, James, from the beginning. Following you is following me.”
He just stares at her, and his expressive eyes tell her everything he’d never feel comfortable saying aloud. Their lips meet, a soft kiss that reconfirms their unspoken commitment. “Maybe if the Doc knows you’re backing me up, he’ll keep cool.” She recognizes this as his way of asking her to talk to Jack. “There’s really no point in saying anything to Kate. Either she will or she won’t, and none of us will know until she does or don’t.”
“It’s worth mentioning, to both of them, I suspect,” Juliet says evenly.
His dimples flash in a brief smile. “Once things settle down, we’ll still catch that sub. I promise.”
He pulls her in close again, and she presses her face against his throat. She’s not sure she believes that part anymore, but she still believes in what it means. She’s sure they can’t be broken, not in the sense that matters. Not in the long term.
Not by outside forces.
And as long as they keep on believing in each other, Juliet has hope that their paths will lead them to what they want most.
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Juliet, James with mentions of Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid
Category: One-shot
Rating: R
Summary: Juliet’s POV with regard to her relationship with James.
Spoilers: For episodes 5x08 and 5x09, La Fleur and Namaste. This is basically missing scene, post-episodic fic.
Author’s Notes: Written for the lovely abvj on the occasion of her birthday. It was inspired by a fic she wrote from Kate’s POV HERE. The title comes from a Tim McGraw song of the same name. If you’d like to listen to the song in its entirety, you can download it HERE.
Additional Author's Notes: I'm a Kate/Sawyer Shipper originally, but I really enjoy Jack/Juliet and now apparently Sawyer/Juliet. So to say this is the only way I interpret this storyline is not true. It's just how this particular piece went. I might change my mind next week, you can't count on me! :D
No one ever left me out in the rain
Cold words still remain unspoken
And I never got lost, spent years in the dark
You're here, now my heart's unbroken
~from Unbroken by Tim McGraw
Juliet Burke learned the 1970s weren’t such a bad decade the second time around. Her first time through she’d been a child, first alone in the world, and then the big sister of a beautiful, wonderful girl whom she had protected as much as possible from the dysfunction of their parents.
Her second venture through this decade has brought her peace and happiness of a sort she’s never before experienced during a life that had stretched out over the 1980s, the 1990s and ended with a failed marriage in the early part of the 21st century. Within a group of peace-loving, experiment-wielding fanatics, she has made an unlikely home, with an even unlikelier candidate as her partner.
James Ford had become her friend first, and her lover second, without them even realizing that was where they were headed. Something that had begun as a Sawyer Con had developed into the most real relationship she’d ever had. But it is only on days like today when an emergency tested the mettle of them all that she sees a glimpse of just what they have become together.
Holding him in her arms, enjoying the warmth and sweetness of his kisses, feeling the urgency of his rising passion, Juliet smoothes her hands over his shoulders and pulls her mouth from his so that she can whisper, “Take me to bed.” He makes a sound deep in his throat that signals his approval of this idea, and the smile that stretches her face etches itself deeper into her heart.
She is happy. Her life here, with James, is nothing that should add up to happiness, yet there was no other word to describe it. Or rather, whatever would adequately express the emotion in her chest as he playfully tosses her onto their bed-his dimples flashing with his own cocky smile-is not available to her in any of the languages in which she is fluent; not English, certainly, and not Spanish, and not even Latin, the original language of love.
“Dinner’s not gonna burn up or anything, is it, baby?” James asks as he throws his shirt aside and joins her on the bed.
Juliet locks her fingers together behind his neck, tugging him close. “No,” she murmurs. “And, we can heat it back up easily too.”
His smile grows into a full-fledged grin, the sensual grace of arousal dancing in his gaze. “That’s the second best news I heard all day.” Juliet feels sudden moisture in her eyes as she remembers the moment she said aloud for an audience of two that they were fine. Amy and her baby boy were the picture of health, and she had had a hand in it. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her-Dr. Burke-it would have been a different ending.
Their lips meet softly, and then he angles his head just slightly, the brushing teases of his tongue against her bottom lip a familiar introduction to the deep kiss that she receives with equal fervor a moment later. One of his hands moves to her stomach, his fingers undoing her pants button and zipper fluidly before his palm dives straight beneath her panties, cupping her and rubbing her just the way he knows she likes from months and years of this same activity.
Moaning and arching under his caresses, Juliet gasps his name as his fingers find her most tender spot. He releases her mouth to press his lips against her ear. He whispers how beautiful she is, and how much he wants her, while expertly driving her crazy, but all that is just one of the many things she loves about James Ford and her second journey through the 1970s.
*
The first time they had made love it had been here, but then here had been only Juliet’s bedroom. They had decided to share a house for appearance’s sake, but they’d lived as roommates for almost a year. Neither of them had been ready for the other, though looking back, Juliet knows they had both wanted it for a long time before it finally happened. Eventually it had become their bedroom.
They hadn’t talked much about it after that first time, and while James had had to deal with an unreasonable guilt that Juliet had understood perfectly, she had found that the only thing she had to cope with was the idea that she was falling in love with Sawyer. Except that she’d never really known Sawyer-and she had been falling in love with James from the minute he asked her to give him two weeks.
He wasn’t her type. Just because he’d read every book she had ever even thought about reading, he still had the worst grammar of just about anyone in association with the Dharma Initiative (including Jin) and she knew, because of his extensive literary list, he knew better. They were ill-matched on various levels, and when she was tempted to compare him to Jack, she realized that obvious compatibility did not spell success either. Her marriage had certainly proved that, and so did those few weeks she’d spent with Jack Shephard, watching him as he fought to reconcile his feelings for Kate. Funny, that she’d had to go through that with James too, except that she felt confident that she’d reached the end of it with him.
Then there were those quiet moments-after they started having sex on a regular basis-where he told her more in depth about his life and the death of Sawyer-both figurative and literal-and Juliet had made a personal discovery.
She had fought for three years to find a way off the island and get away from Ben Linus because the island had held no magic for her. There had been a boon here and there in Goodwin, and some of the other friends she had made, but nothing held her there or drove her ambitions the way it did for Ben.
Not until she spent a year and half there without him. Magic grew between her and James, grew until she knew she would never leave, not unless he would come with her. Not because she couldn’t exist without him, but because she didn’t want to. She’d found independence within the ties that bind.
She’d found that everything else that had happened to lead to this hadn’t done anything except make this that much more wonderful.
She loved, and was loved, and it had been most unexpected. Thoroughly welcomed, yes, but completely unexpected.
In the lazy aftermath of orgasm, James loves to run his hand up and down her back. Having told her many times that her back was the most gorgeous piece of anatomy he’d ever seen, Juliet had gotten into the habit of sliding off of him (or out from under him) and laying on her stomach for the enjoyment it gave both of them. His fingers ran upwards and then drifted back down, the rhythm and finesse of it something that often lulled her into sleep, though today she fights against it because they haven’t eaten dinner yet, and she still wants to run over and check on Amy and the baby.
His voice comes to her ears, all soft drawl and rough edges because of the intensity of his own completion. “Baby, you did great today.” He’d already said as much earlier, but the resurrection of the conversation warms Juliet from the inside out.
Sighing contentedly, she agrees. “It felt amazing, James. Amazing to hold a newborn baby in my hands and know that I had somehow helped him get here. Amazing,” she repeated because there was no other word for it.
He murmurs her name, and then she feels the soft tickle of his breath against her skin as he places his mouth between her shoulder blades. Kissing his way upward, he sweeps her hair aside to lay his face against the back of her neck. “I was thinkin’…” he says, but he doesn’t finish, and Juliet opens her eyes, though there is nothing to see. The bedroom has grown dark the longer they’ve been there because they hadn’t thought to turn on a light in their earlier haste and the sun has set outside, casting the house into shadows.
“About what?” she asks when he doesn’t continue.
“Babies,” he says, the gentleness of the word showing its foreign nature on his tongue.
Juliet tries not to tense up, because she has no idea where he’s going with this, but the initial idea that pops into her head makes her muscles want to react. “What about babies?” she says, forcing her voice to sound faintly lethargic, even though she is totally alert now, not floating in that dreamy space between wakefulness and sleep.
“Have you ever wanted to have one?” he asks, the words pressing against her skin.
Unable to bear it another moment, Juliet moves, sitting up and forcing him to get off of her at the same time. Reaching for the bedside lamp, she turns over to face him after she floods the room with light.
He looks like a child himself, his expression a mixture of sheepishness and chagrin, and he presses his lips into a line, which causes his dimples to appear without the slightest hint of a smile. Before Juliet can say anything, he raises his hands defensively. “We don’t have to get into this, if you’re not comfortable.”
Juliet feels, for just a short moment, like slapping him. She knows about Clementine, and she knows about how relieved he was when Kate confirmed she was not pregnant. She also knows both of those things happened a long time ago, to a different man, almost, but it’s still ludicrous. The natural destination of this line of questioning is abhorrent to her.
“You want to bring a child into this world-this crazy world we live in that cannot last because eventually we will have to go back to where we came from. We know it won’t last forever, James, and you want to bring a child into the mix? What happened today was amazing, yes, but it didn’t render me brain dead.” She reaches for a pillow to hold against her chest as they both sit up on the bed.
“I didn’t say anything about that!” he almost shouts. “I just asked if you ever wanted a baby! I ain’t ever heard you say anything about it, one way or another.” He takes a deep breath and finishes in a quieter voice, “I just wondered.”
Narrowing her eyes, she gazes at him silently until his eyes shift away from hers uneasily. “You aren’t just curious,” she concludes. “At least, you aren’t just curious about if I ever wanted a baby. You’re also curious about us making a baby. Tell the truth.”
His eyes-so potent with emotion at times Juliet had been known to go from zero to sex in two point two seconds-slice her with longing she hadn’t known either of them could feel about such an abstract idea. “It ain’t so strange, is it?” he questions softly.
There is this flash then-only within Juliet’s mind-that strongly reflects the time jumps they had once been tortured by. Only she sees them, in an uncertain future, with a blonde-haired child who lights them both up so entirely she feels blinded by it.
*
Later that evening, after dinner has been eaten, and James has talked with Horace while Juliet checked on Amy, she settles into bed beside him. He’s reading-something he does every evening as he waits for her to go through her nightly routine of face washing and teeth brushing and flossing. As she curls into the pillow on the left side of the bed, she watches his eyes as he finishes up the chapter he’s on. He shuts the book a few moments later and sets it on the floor on his side of the bed before turning to face her. He scoots down until they lay in mirrored positions, staring into each other’s eyes.
Juliet begins the conversation. “If we decide to do it, we will have to leave here. Are you prepared to do that?” She knows he has been waiting, ever faithful, for John Locke to return, just as he promised. It’s no longer about them getting back to the right time, it’s only about his belief in his friend, in someone he knows would not willingly let him down.
Though she doesn’t doubt that part of him still wants the rest of them to come back too-Kate as well-because while they have moved on, part of them will forever be on hold, unable to make steps into a future that negates their whole existence.
See, that’s what a child means, here. A child between Juliet and James would mean letting all the other go, once and for all, and while the prospect is at once terrifying, it is also something Juliet had no idea she wanted. It’s a full commitment between them. It’s the last string left undone.
“I think I am,” he says. “It was your face, when you came out and told us about Amy and the baby. Maybe it is time to stop looking, Jules. Maybe it’s just time to accept our lives for what they are. The 70s weren’t all that great for me the first time around, you know. But this time-they’ve been pretty okay.”
She smiles, only because some things never had to be said aloud between them to be shared. “We could take the sub out in a week or two,” he continues. “And go back to the States, and just live.” He reaches a hand up, smoothing it over her cheek gently. His eyes darken, and she sees the idea of making a baby-though impossible at this point because of oral contraceptives-is still enough to invite another sort of tension between them. “We could even, you know, be old fashioned, and get married.”
Unable to help herself, she laughs and a smile flashes over his face as he lowers his mouth to hers. “I guess we’ll have to talk to Horace soon so he can find replacements for us, right?” she says just before his lips brush hers.
After a swift, deep kiss, James lifts his head. “Yeah. I’ll tell ‘im, him and Amy inspired us. He’ll be touched.” The faint sarcasm on his last word cause more giggles to bubble up in Juliet’s throat. James smiles, too. “He don’t have to know it was a literal inspiration,” he says sexily, nudging her with the part of his body that is inspired.
Wrapping a hand around his neck, she pulls his mouth back to hers. “I love you,” she announces, laughter punctuating the declaration.
One of his hands slides down her back, pulling her firmly against him. “I know,” he replies cockily.
*
The ringing phone startles her from a sound sleep, and James rushing from the room in an inexplicable hurry unsettles her for the entire morning. When she sees him running across the courtyard towards their house on the television monitors, she doesn't even glance at Miles again as she hightails back up the stairs.
Ten minutes later, her legs feel watery, and her only choice is to sit down on their bed, his announcement stealing her strength. When he joins her, the bed depresses under his weight and she quells the urge to sob. All their plans, the things they had discussed only 12 hours before, seem like pipe dreams that she should never have allowed herself to even consider.
She suddenly realizes that losing this-losing James-would break her like nothing before ever has, not her divorce from Edmund, not almost losing Rachel to cancer, not even being unable to know her nephew, the child she had basically created with her own skill and unbelievable luck.
The only thing she knows in that moment is that she must support James one hundred percent in his efforts to conceal Hurley and Jack and Kate. If for any reason one of them is hurt, she knows he will see it as a personal failure. So she tells him about the incoming sub, and they make a plan, together.
He hugs her tightly before he rushes out the door again, but she makes a note that he does not kiss her.
*
When she finds Amy sleeping, she thinks it's better so she can take the submarine manifest and not have to say anything, but of course it doesn't go her way there either. It's all she can do not to burst into tears, first because she realizes she is holding the baby who grows into a man who was her friend, and the idea that she delivered Ethan Rom, and that Ethan Rom had in turn helped to bring her to the island is almost more than she can process, until Amy asks about her and Jim having a baby.
She walks away briskly, trying to ignore the fear pulsing just under her skin. She has spent three years with James; James is the one who brought up having children, and James is the one who said just the night before that moving on is what they should do. Just because Hurley and Jack and Kate are all here now doesn't mean everything has to change.
It just means that it will; it doesn't have to, but it will. Instinctively Juliet knows the day she's feared all along has arrived, just as they were about to escape from it. Just as they were willingly going to walk away from it.
Three years together should be a tighter bond than 108 days, but she remembers the intensity of her own feelings for Jack, and she knows that time matters to a certain extent, but it is not the only factor. What binds James to Hurley and Jack, and especially Kate, is something that Juliet herself was not a part of. She came to the game late, and she may still suffer the consequences of that uncontrollable fact.
All she has is her love for him, and her belief that he will do whatever he needs to do to preserve their life together. He said he would, and for all that Sawyer may have conned the entire world, he's never lied to her.
*
That night, she’s already in bed before he comes in. He’s been in the living room reading for a long time. Jack left more than two hours before, but Juliet cannot sleep. Her back is to him as he comes in though, and she closes her eyes because she’s not sure she wants to talk.
Of course, James has always just woken her up if he felt the urge. The need to keep up some sort of pretense feels like the beginning of the end, and it churns in her stomach, causing an actual physical pain.
When he slides in beside her, he reaches over and tugs her into the curve of his body. Wrapping himself around her entirely, he buries his face in the hair laying over her neck and he whispers her name, as though he doesn’t want to wake her if she really is asleep.
“What?” she says lowly in response.
“I love you,” he breathes, and she starts to sob only because she finally relaxes. The tears run from her eyes like a levee breaking on a dam. “Shhhhh,” he says, his arms tightening severely. “It’s gonna be okay. You’ll see. I’ll figure something out.”
Once her tears drain away, she wipes at her face and then wraps her fingers around his arm, holding it tighter across her chest. “I believe you,” she whispers, because that’s always been what held them together. No deceptions, no games. “I believe in you,” she clarifies. “It’s just…” but she can’t articulate just what it is exactly. It was the events of three years ago-and Jack’s arms embracing her tightly, almost as snugly as her lover holds her now-and it was the news that John Locke was dead, and the truth Juliet had known that day so long ago when she sat on the pier looking at the submarine that had chartered her into hell. She had tried to tell James then, Locke had saved them from bleeding to death from a brain hemorrhage, and that was as good as it got.
“Believe me, I know,” he murmurs, the agitation and confusion evident in his voice. “We’re gonna have to watch each other’s backs like crazy now. You know Jack, and you know Kate. They’re only gonna do what I tell them for so long. Then for sure, whatever thing will happen and Jack will go off half-cocked. Who knows what the hell Kate’s gonna do. Something not good, is all I can figure.”
Turning over so she can see his face, Juliet places her hand against his cheek. “You can’t take responsibility for that, James. You got them this far, now it’s up to them to trust you. If they can’t-or just won’t-do that, then let Horace do whatever he wants to them.”
His eyes search hers, and she can see he understands what she means. “I just don’t want them dragging Hugo into it,” he finally says, and Juliet brushes her fingers over his jaw caressingly.
“Hugo has to make his own choices too,” she says. “We have to decide right now what our priorities are. Are they each other, or are they with Jack and Kate…and Hugo.” She knows the way she tacked on Hurley’s given name at the end indicates what she is really concerned about, but at this point, she doesn’t care. James is right. It’s only a matter of time before Jack and Kate do whatever the hell they want.
“I gotta figure out someway to get Sayid outta jail,” he adds, and she wonders if that’s his way of not answering her first question until he sighs heavily and then leans his forehead into hers. “I think he’ll trust me. And I think Hugo will do what I say. Jack and Kate-maybe if they see that Jin and Miles have followed my lead all this time, then…”
“And me. I’ve followed you, too,” she reminds him.
“Aw, bullshit,” he scoffs, lifting his head up again. “You know it’s the other way around.”
Juliet is actually stunned by this pronouncement-that he even thinks it, much less acknowledges it. “We’ve been in this together, James, from the beginning. Following you is following me.”
He just stares at her, and his expressive eyes tell her everything he’d never feel comfortable saying aloud. Their lips meet, a soft kiss that reconfirms their unspoken commitment. “Maybe if the Doc knows you’re backing me up, he’ll keep cool.” She recognizes this as his way of asking her to talk to Jack. “There’s really no point in saying anything to Kate. Either she will or she won’t, and none of us will know until she does or don’t.”
“It’s worth mentioning, to both of them, I suspect,” Juliet says evenly.
His dimples flash in a brief smile. “Once things settle down, we’ll still catch that sub. I promise.”
He pulls her in close again, and she presses her face against his throat. She’s not sure she believes that part anymore, but she still believes in what it means. She’s sure they can’t be broken, not in the sense that matters. Not in the long term.
Not by outside forces.
And as long as they keep on believing in each other, Juliet has hope that their paths will lead them to what they want most.