fic, Lost: Torment And Delight of My Heart (Juliet, Jack/Juliet et others), PG13
So, do you remember the last time yours truly decided to take advantage of the fact they sometimes use opera as a soundtrack in Lost? Well, it happened again and I didn't even use the actual piece in the show because it was too depressing. Sue me. Except that last time it was something I was way more familiar with but hey, after all La Traviata is the only opera that makes me cry. Figure it out. And I still don't know what to think of this one, but it's been sitting there for three days and I figured I should just post it.
Title: Torment And Delight of My Heart
Characters/Pairing: Juliet, Jack/Juliet, some Goodwin/Juliet references
Rating: PG13 I guess?
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine, La Traviata belongs to Verdi's nephews I guess. Surely not mine anyway.
Word count: around 4000
Spoilers: until the S4 finale? Deliberately ignores any spoiler around from then, including stuff we know for certain.
Summary: Looking at Goodwin for a second as he passes in front of her house, heading to his, while Juliet is trying to find the exact balance in mixing the ingredients for the muffins she’s about to bake, is all it takes to make her realize how much this place has changed her.
A/N: for lenina20 as the first of my Christmas things (I just wish I could have written you something I actually knew what to think of) and using also for lostfichallenge #84, a different point of view (hey, I wrote Juliet once or something). Blame half of this on whoever chooses the soundtrack who had her listening to La Traviata with Goodwin in One of Us. All the italics (plus the title) are from the opera. And no, it doesn't end like that, I am already masochistic enough.
Violetta: In the world, everything is folly if it’s not pleasure, so let’s enjoy what love brings us for it’s a flower that blossoms and dies, and then can be enjoyed no more.
--
Looking at Goodwin for a second as he passes in front of her house, heading to his, while Juliet is trying to find the exact balance in mixing the ingredients for the muffins she’s about to bake, is all it takes to make her realize how much this place has changed her.
Just a look is enough.
There was another life, where she was the one who got cheated, not the one with whom someone cheats. In this other life, cheating would have been something she wouldn’t have ever forgiven. If anything because it had hurt enough when it put an end to a marriage she never truly felt happy in if not at the beginning.
And now, look at her: she’s mixing chocolate in a small bowl, not really thinking about the fact that she’s overdosing it, thinking about Goodwin’s tongue slowly trailing along the back of her spine the evening before. Perfectly aware that he’s doing it while married to her therapist, of everyone, who hasn’t said anything up to now; but it doesn’t really matter. It’s not the point.
The point is that she doesn’t feel guilty for it, not really, or maybe she does but she just doesn’t care enough; she puts the muffins in the oven and then sits on her couch, a hand in her hair, fidgeting nervously with a perfectly straight blond lock.
She has learned that in this place, either you hang on to anything that brings you some sort of happiness or you spend every single second feeling miserable. She’s aware that she isn’t in love with Goodwin, not really, as he probably isn’t in love with her, but she can say she loves him enough to keep their business going. She knows it’s bound to end sooner or later and if it wasn’t the only thing bringing her some sort of pleasure maybe it would be over.
But it is and she knows it won’t end soon. Not really.
She picks up her copy of Carrie, opening up a random page.
And Tommy was, of course, Popular. As someone who had been Popular all her life, it had seemed written that Sue would meet and fall in love with someone as Popular as she.
True sorrow is as rare as true love is the last thing she reads before a burning smell fills the room; she runs to the kitchen. Trying to salvage the muffins is useless; failed attempt at baking number fifteen, she thinks; then throws the burnt buns away, figuring she’s going to try some time else and that for the anniversary of her third year in this prison she’ll get Goodwin to bake a cake or something. He’s quite better at cooking than she and Harper put together will ever be, or so she has figured out after three years of monthly barbecues at Ben’s house.
--
Alfredo: You should take care of your self-being.
Violetta: Could I?
Alfredo: Oh, if you were mine, I’d be the watchful guardian of your dear life.
--
She gives up on trying to sleep when she realizes that Goodwin’s lifeless traits are the only thing she sees as soon as she closes her eyes.
Juliet sits on the bed, looking straight at the closed door of her room, which has been safely locked since she flew here in tears that afternoon; now she isn’t even crying anymore but feels just drained, hollow. Her hands linger on the other side of the bed, as cold and empty as it has been since that godforsaken plane crashed, seemingly saving Ben’s life (or giving him a chance anyway) and ending Goodwin’s. Or so she figured out.
For a second she remembers talking with her sister once about their ideal man; she can’t recall everything from their conversation, but she remembers it enough.
He should have cared about her enough to make her feel special.
He should have been one to look out for her.
He should have been one of which she could say proudly I belong to him and he would have said I belong to her just as proudly.
Edmund wasn’t any of these, Goodwin had been maybe a bland version of one and two, Ben is a very twisted version of three.
She remembers her sister’s answer.
You realize that you’ll be lucky if you find one who fits one point only, don’t you? And it would already be too much.
She hadn’t really wanted to think about Rachel. But she is thinking about her now and next thing she knows is that she’s crying again and that she will have to deal with Ben tomorrow, wanting it or not.
Fine, she thinks, I will.
When she comes out of her room, every trace of tears has disappeared, her make-up is perfectly applied, her hair carefully brushed and her shirt neatly buttoned up. The only target firm in her mind is that she’ll do anything to get off and see Rachel again. It’s not like the only reason she managed to cope somewhat is still living, anyway, not to mention that she desperately wants to prove Ben wrong. She doesn’t belong to anyone; let him think whatever he wants.
--
Violetta: Would real love be misfortune for me? What do you think, troubled soul of mine? Oh, there wasn’t ever a man lightening you up, oh joy, I never knew, to love while being loved! And should I ignore it for the my life of sterile pleasure? […] Oh, nonsense! What should I hope? What should I do? Always free I must flutter from pleasure to pleasure, I want my life to flow across the paths of joy; and either the day is dawning or dying, I gladly turn to new delights that make my spirit soar.
--
Then Jack Shephard falls from a plane crash into her life and everything changes.
It starts when she does her job and plays the role Ben has written for her to perfection; it doesn’t last one day.
Right, maybe it lasts one day; until she tells him about his wife.
And then it happens: she looks at him in the eyes and recognizes the feeling behind them; Jack has just had enough. Well, doesn’t she know how that feels like.
She tries to get him on her side first, then realizes that Jack has had more than enough after the whole watching-in-the-cages business (and no, Juliet doesn’t really think it was necessary. That was pretty sick but hey, who is that we’re talking about here?), then ends up trusting Ben right when she shouldn’t have.
Two months from here she will think about how stupid she was then; since when Ben had kept a single promise he made anyway?
Then Jack stays with them because he seemingly had the same not so smart idea, but he has it in order to save her life and guess what, everything changes again.
As his fingers lightly caress her lower back while he cleans her brand, she closes her eyes. It’s not like he can see her face. She takes air in in small and fast breaths; his hands are so gentle against her skin, care just radiates from him and it isn’t like Goodwin. Or like Edmund. Or like anyone else. Then she realizes what she’s thinking and just, no. Juliet isn’t so stupid that she won’t realize it will only get them both in danger. And she has learned what getting attached means, here.
No. No. She can’t allow this. She won’t. She will enjoy it for what it is as long as it lasts and then it’ll end and she won’t feel anything. She has to assure her own happiness and that’s the safest way. After Goodwin she won’t allow any other slip.
--
Then a week passes and she might have mastered the art of deceiving after three years with Ben, but she isn’t too far gone to realize when she’s fooling herself.
Because it looks like Jack cares about her and she feels special when she’s around him, because he looked out for her and that’s why she’s still here right now, because if she just dares imagine about their... well, let’s say tentative friendship develop into something more her heart beats faster, she feels something inside her flutter and no, just no, but she’s falling right into the pit and she’s even too aware of it.
--
Two months from now, she’ll think about how stupid she was to go along with Ben’s plan twice; maybe if she hadn’t from the beginning something would have changed. Maybe. She doesn’t know.
--
Anyway, nothing changes the fact that she couldn’t betray Jack, in the end. Nothing changes the fact that the brief feeling of his lips against hers felt good enough to justify betraying Ben instead of him and throwing away her chance (for all she knows) even if she had started and ended that kiss on her own.
--
Violetta: And we’ll be happy, because you love me, don’t you?
--
Juliet is shaking as he kisses her (he kisses her, he kisses her, and there’s a sentence saying he kissed me that just won’t leave her head); maybe she should sense something wrong. Maybe she should feel surprised that even her first kiss ever had been less chaste than this one.
She isn’t because it feels right. And while she knows that Jack couldn’t have not said what the hero of the story always says, she allows herself to believe it; and why shouldn’t she, since he’s holding her close and his bare presence is enough to make her feel intoxicated to the core of her heart?
Happy endings never were for her and there’s Ben out there and she can’t be sure that Jack doesn’t feel anything for Kate. That’d be asking too much. But this just feels enough, so much more than enough, and so why not? There’ll be time to come crashing back to earth and right now she feels like she’s soaring someplace way higher than the hard ground she’s sure she will hit sooner or later.
--
Violetta: Let him know of the sacrifice I made of the love that will be his till I draw my last breath.
Germont: Your sacrifice shall be rewarded, and in days to come you’ll be proud of so great a love.
--
And then she’s stupid enough to throw everything out of the window herself.
Right. Jack was in self-denial (as usual) and pretending that Kate wasn’t there doesn’t exactly work half of the time (well, that’d be wonderful if it did), but still. She spent three years fooling herself and everyone around her (not Ben, probably, but that’s not the point), why not fooling herself into something good?
At one point (see voice Goodwin on her own encyclopedia of her permanence on the island) she had been selfish; now she finds out she just can’t be selfish this once and Juliet doesn’t think that she’s too wrong if she blames it on Jack, too. See, if she still was like before that plane fell making Jack fall consequently on the island and into her life, now dealing with this wouldn’t be such a problem. Pity that she’s pretty much herself now. Rachel would say always so selfless and now it sounds like selfless means unhappy.
Well, she still tells Kate the truth and she knows he’s awake and she doesn’t even know what his silence means.
It makes no difference anyway. She leaves the tent as something inside her aches and she figures that all they say about the ones you love hurting you most is true.
She wonders if one day he’ll understand what this has cost her.
--
Violetta: Life is just pleasure.
Alfredo: But if one just waits for love...
Violetta: I know nothing about that, don’t tell me..
Alfredo: But there lies my fate.
--
There are two rounds of what she calls (in her head, of course) ‘the week in which both her and Sawyer go somewhere and stay drunk out of their minds’.
Week number one is after the island moves and they stay drunk out of their minds because why, they (Jack and Kate) are dead for what they know and why, they have both died leaving them heartbroken and she loves Jack anyway and Sawyer loves Kate anyway.
Week number two is when some time later (she’d like to know when and where exactly since it’s not like they knew where they are or when they are, for that matter) Richard graciously informs them that everyone who left is alive after all and Juliet knows Richard enough to be sure that he isn’t lying and that he probably checked himself. How, now that’d be a mystery since she figures he didn’t use a submarine, but no news, since it’s Richard. Also, Ben is not around, another reason to believe him. And well, doesn’t drinking do wonders to celebrate?
Right, maybe there’s this small fact that it looks like they (always Jack and Kate, of course) got together at some point, but what’s it in the great scheme of things if they’re alive? And so they get drunk again.
Also, Juliet should know better than to have any kind of conversation when she’s drunk. Sawyer should probably know better, too. They talk anyway. Bad idea.
He asks her whether she’s happy and sure, she’s fucking happy. She asks him whether he’s excited and fuck, he can’t wait. Are they going to lash out at the both of them? Sure they will (and she perfectly knows they won’t even if she’s drunk, but that’s another point). And anyway, are they even still interested? Sure, he says, they’re comin’ back, ain’t they? and Juliet wants to believe it so much that she ends up drinking some more and pretending to buy it.
For a split second she wonders what would happen if she turned on her side and kissed him. He’s there as miserable as she is and it doesn’t take much to notice it, they’re both as drunk as they’ll ever get so they even have an excuse after all, and then she just lets it go. She’d be using him and he’d be using her and she did read his file after all; she figures he’ll be thoroughly sick of it by now, and she’s thoroughly sick of it, too. So instead she asks him if he likes Stephen King and he answers of course not with the face of one who thinks that King is nowhere near refined but reads his books anyway.
Realizing she’s still good at defending Carrie even if she can’t see straight is strangely refreshing, though.
--
Alfredo: Oh my remorse, oh disgrace! And I lived so mistaken! But the truth, like a flash, has broken my dream!
--
Once she had asked Sawyer what he expected when they came back; Sawyer said he just hoped Kate had made up her mind.
Then he had asked Juliet in return and she had answered, I hope he feels at least ashamed.
Who would have said that Sawyer could be, after all, way nicer or more forgiving than her? But she feels like Jack owes her that at least.
And then Locke disappears, the sky turns white again (surely the two things are related) and after a while they’re back and she figures that it isn’t right that when you don’t ask for much you get disillusioned. Because fine, it looks like Kate has made up her mind, but in two days she’s gone to find Claire along with everyone else except Jack and Sayid and when Sawyer just shrugs and says he’ll wait, Juliet thinks that he really doesn’t deserve waiting again.
But at least she gets what she asked for.
Jack looked good when she first saw him, his shoulders straight, his features relieved, the reluctant leader look in his eyes that she remembered; but as soon as he saw her, she noticed his shoulders crumple like they were crashed by heavy weight, his eyes downcast, his teeth tormenting the frail skin over his lower lip. The two seconds their eyes met, she could see that he was ashamed, to a depth she wasn’t prepared to deal with.
They didn’t talk; he didn’t ask for forgiveness and she hadn’t given it on her own. She had seen Sawyer and Kate embracing somewhere near and for that second she really, really envied him. But she couldn’t let Jack off the hook, not just then.
She had realized she had wanted him to suffer, but after all, wasn’t that just fair?
--
Violetta: Oh, what joy!
Alfredo: Oh, my Violetta! Oh, what joy! How much to blame I am, but now, dearest, I know everything!
--
Two days is all it takes to realize that she can't stay angry at him. Not when he's two tents away and when it physically aches not to walk that handful of feet dividing them. The point is that she feels angry and she should stay angry at him but she just wants to do the contrary and it's stupid. Because she has already been burned too many times already and see what happened last time she tried (with Jack, look what a coincidence) while Ben was still around (and he is around now; he might not be here, but he’s on the island and that’s enough).
The point is that maybe two years ago she'd have shut up and stayed in her tent, but now she's restless and it's all Jack's fault. Or merit. Or whatever.
She steps out of her tent, unsure of what she should do; she doesn't feel that surprised when she sees Sawyer coming out of his.
"Where are you going?"
He shrugs and looks at Sayid's tent.
"He looks like he's gonna shoot himself in the head if he doesn't have a talk with someone."
"And so you're providing?"
"Yeah, guess I will. You're wonderin' whether you should let go of your righteous anger?"
She can't help cracking a smile at that.
"Maybe."
"Well, if he ain't sorry, I dunno who else is."
"You two spoke?"
"Why, sure. He looked like he could use a talk, too."
Sawyer then leaves and gets into Sayid's tent without even bothering to ask first; she's left there, in the slightly chilly night, trying to figure out what she should do. Great sensation when you know you should to something but you want to do the contrary. A great familiar feeling.
She breathes in and out for a while; she wonders if this fact that she hasn’t still decided means that her feelings were not as strong as she had thought or if she’s doing the same thing Jack did when she kissed her. Maybe she doesn’t go because she wants to convince herself that he doesn’t matter as much as he once mattered.
If he ain’t sorry I dunno who else is.
Oh, she thinks as she stands still on the outside and some kind of turmoil is ripping her apart on the inside, damn Sawyer too. If they hadn’t left they probably wouldn’t have grown close and she wouldn’t have to admit that if there’s someone she trusts on this island right now it’s him.
Damn him, too. Him and Ben and Jack and Richard and everyone else that had to go into her life and making it the mess it is, even if mess doesn’t even begin to cover one tenth of it.
Juliet takes a couple of tentative steps forward, the white sand she’s come to hate shifting gently under her bare feet; she isn’t surprised when Jack gets out of the tent himself and she stops, thankful for the fact that he stands with his back to her and hasn’t presumably noticed her presence. He lets out a sigh that sounds like a cry in the utter silence; it doesn’t break until some unintelligible spare chattering starts to come out from Sayid’s tent. She jumps for the surprise and Jack does too; he turns and he sees her. She nods, acknowledging his presence; but then she finds out that staying like that is just unbearable.
“Hi,” she mutters, entirely realizing how lame it sounds.
“... hi yourself.” Jack brings his hand to the back of his head, looks up at her and God, he really is sorry. He might have surprised her a couple of times, but he’s never been good at hiding how he’s feeling. “I guess that saying I’m sorry doesn’t cover it, does it?”
No, it really doesn’t, she thinks, and then in the second she opens her mouth it isn’t that sentence coming out, but instead “Well, it doesn’t but might be a start.”
What the hell is she thinking? Surely not of giving the chance for a strange sparkle to pass over his eyes before it’s gone and he looks as he did before. He opens his mouth, then closes it. She doesn’t know if she wants to know what he was going to say.
“I know,” she says then. Might as well save him the embarrassment, if it’s what he’s trying to say.
“You know?”
“About you and Kate.”
Jack just nods, coming slightly closer.
“Yeah, well, I did it for myself, too. Not that I realized it then. I realized it after.”
“And now?”
“Now... I guess that saying that I am sorry and that I was a jerk wouldn’t come closer to cover it.”
“Maybe,” she answers, and she still doesn’t get why is she doing this. She knows she’s going to say no at one point, she just can’t allow it again, and then why is she being so cruel and not telling him straight?
He nods briefly, his eyes still downcast and now she’s just getting confused. He looks more like the Jack who made her feel like Carrie as she headed into the prom with her velvet dress and a Popular arm around her waist, not like the Jack that for a split second as he left camp had made her feel like Carrie as she wrote Bob Dylan lyrics on her diary without anyone noticing the meaning.
Well, after all Jack is the Popular kind of guy after all, even if he’s also the kind that doesn’t like it.
She doesn’t know how her wrist ended up between Jack's fingers, which are holding it as it’s made of glass; that’s just what she didn’t need and then she doesn’t know how she ended up in his arms again.
It’s exactly like last time only that this time he’s crushing her hard against him and she finds out that she can’t even breathe.
Most worryingly, that she doesn’t give a damn if she can’t.
Maybe she really was just pretending he didn’t matter; the next thing she knows is that she’s holding him back and it’s so good to feel him against her. Why, maybe now she understands why Sawyer isn’t complaining of having to wait again. If it felt like this for him, too, well, she understands.
“It’s all my fault.”
She doesn’t answer, realizing that if she was sincere she should tell him yes, it really was, but she just can’t now and it’s not like he needs someone to confirm it.
“God, I’m s...”
“Oh, shut up. I know it.”
And then she kisses him again and suddenly he’s kissing her turning the cards over the table and while it really isn’t a good omen that it took them three times to kiss properly, his tongue slightly running over her lips, then seeking access as they part and let him, it’s perfect and even if she won’t tell him anytime soon, she has to admit to herself that she has forgiven him. Figures that she would have ended up forgiving him in the end (even though she isn’t going to tell him straight anytime soon), but this is the first time in her life when surrendering feels the right thing to do. Has to mean something, right?
End.
Title: Torment And Delight of My Heart
Characters/Pairing: Juliet, Jack/Juliet, some Goodwin/Juliet references
Rating: PG13 I guess?
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine, La Traviata belongs to Verdi's nephews I guess. Surely not mine anyway.
Word count: around 4000
Spoilers: until the S4 finale? Deliberately ignores any spoiler around from then, including stuff we know for certain.
Summary: Looking at Goodwin for a second as he passes in front of her house, heading to his, while Juliet is trying to find the exact balance in mixing the ingredients for the muffins she’s about to bake, is all it takes to make her realize how much this place has changed her.
A/N: for lenina20 as the first of my Christmas things (I just wish I could have written you something I actually knew what to think of) and using also for lostfichallenge #84, a different point of view (hey, I wrote Juliet once or something). Blame half of this on whoever chooses the soundtrack who had her listening to La Traviata with Goodwin in One of Us. All the italics (plus the title) are from the opera. And no, it doesn't end like that, I am already masochistic enough.
Violetta: In the world, everything is folly if it’s not pleasure, so let’s enjoy what love brings us for it’s a flower that blossoms and dies, and then can be enjoyed no more.
--
Looking at Goodwin for a second as he passes in front of her house, heading to his, while Juliet is trying to find the exact balance in mixing the ingredients for the muffins she’s about to bake, is all it takes to make her realize how much this place has changed her.
Just a look is enough.
There was another life, where she was the one who got cheated, not the one with whom someone cheats. In this other life, cheating would have been something she wouldn’t have ever forgiven. If anything because it had hurt enough when it put an end to a marriage she never truly felt happy in if not at the beginning.
And now, look at her: she’s mixing chocolate in a small bowl, not really thinking about the fact that she’s overdosing it, thinking about Goodwin’s tongue slowly trailing along the back of her spine the evening before. Perfectly aware that he’s doing it while married to her therapist, of everyone, who hasn’t said anything up to now; but it doesn’t really matter. It’s not the point.
The point is that she doesn’t feel guilty for it, not really, or maybe she does but she just doesn’t care enough; she puts the muffins in the oven and then sits on her couch, a hand in her hair, fidgeting nervously with a perfectly straight blond lock.
She has learned that in this place, either you hang on to anything that brings you some sort of happiness or you spend every single second feeling miserable. She’s aware that she isn’t in love with Goodwin, not really, as he probably isn’t in love with her, but she can say she loves him enough to keep their business going. She knows it’s bound to end sooner or later and if it wasn’t the only thing bringing her some sort of pleasure maybe it would be over.
But it is and she knows it won’t end soon. Not really.
She picks up her copy of Carrie, opening up a random page.
And Tommy was, of course, Popular. As someone who had been Popular all her life, it had seemed written that Sue would meet and fall in love with someone as Popular as she.
True sorrow is as rare as true love is the last thing she reads before a burning smell fills the room; she runs to the kitchen. Trying to salvage the muffins is useless; failed attempt at baking number fifteen, she thinks; then throws the burnt buns away, figuring she’s going to try some time else and that for the anniversary of her third year in this prison she’ll get Goodwin to bake a cake or something. He’s quite better at cooking than she and Harper put together will ever be, or so she has figured out after three years of monthly barbecues at Ben’s house.
--
Alfredo: You should take care of your self-being.
Violetta: Could I?
Alfredo: Oh, if you were mine, I’d be the watchful guardian of your dear life.
--
She gives up on trying to sleep when she realizes that Goodwin’s lifeless traits are the only thing she sees as soon as she closes her eyes.
Juliet sits on the bed, looking straight at the closed door of her room, which has been safely locked since she flew here in tears that afternoon; now she isn’t even crying anymore but feels just drained, hollow. Her hands linger on the other side of the bed, as cold and empty as it has been since that godforsaken plane crashed, seemingly saving Ben’s life (or giving him a chance anyway) and ending Goodwin’s. Or so she figured out.
For a second she remembers talking with her sister once about their ideal man; she can’t recall everything from their conversation, but she remembers it enough.
He should have cared about her enough to make her feel special.
He should have been one to look out for her.
He should have been one of which she could say proudly I belong to him and he would have said I belong to her just as proudly.
Edmund wasn’t any of these, Goodwin had been maybe a bland version of one and two, Ben is a very twisted version of three.
She remembers her sister’s answer.
You realize that you’ll be lucky if you find one who fits one point only, don’t you? And it would already be too much.
She hadn’t really wanted to think about Rachel. But she is thinking about her now and next thing she knows is that she’s crying again and that she will have to deal with Ben tomorrow, wanting it or not.
Fine, she thinks, I will.
When she comes out of her room, every trace of tears has disappeared, her make-up is perfectly applied, her hair carefully brushed and her shirt neatly buttoned up. The only target firm in her mind is that she’ll do anything to get off and see Rachel again. It’s not like the only reason she managed to cope somewhat is still living, anyway, not to mention that she desperately wants to prove Ben wrong. She doesn’t belong to anyone; let him think whatever he wants.
--
Violetta: Would real love be misfortune for me? What do you think, troubled soul of mine? Oh, there wasn’t ever a man lightening you up, oh joy, I never knew, to love while being loved! And should I ignore it for the my life of sterile pleasure? […] Oh, nonsense! What should I hope? What should I do? Always free I must flutter from pleasure to pleasure, I want my life to flow across the paths of joy; and either the day is dawning or dying, I gladly turn to new delights that make my spirit soar.
--
Then Jack Shephard falls from a plane crash into her life and everything changes.
It starts when she does her job and plays the role Ben has written for her to perfection; it doesn’t last one day.
Right, maybe it lasts one day; until she tells him about his wife.
And then it happens: she looks at him in the eyes and recognizes the feeling behind them; Jack has just had enough. Well, doesn’t she know how that feels like.
She tries to get him on her side first, then realizes that Jack has had more than enough after the whole watching-in-the-cages business (and no, Juliet doesn’t really think it was necessary. That was pretty sick but hey, who is that we’re talking about here?), then ends up trusting Ben right when she shouldn’t have.
Two months from here she will think about how stupid she was then; since when Ben had kept a single promise he made anyway?
Then Jack stays with them because he seemingly had the same not so smart idea, but he has it in order to save her life and guess what, everything changes again.
As his fingers lightly caress her lower back while he cleans her brand, she closes her eyes. It’s not like he can see her face. She takes air in in small and fast breaths; his hands are so gentle against her skin, care just radiates from him and it isn’t like Goodwin. Or like Edmund. Or like anyone else. Then she realizes what she’s thinking and just, no. Juliet isn’t so stupid that she won’t realize it will only get them both in danger. And she has learned what getting attached means, here.
No. No. She can’t allow this. She won’t. She will enjoy it for what it is as long as it lasts and then it’ll end and she won’t feel anything. She has to assure her own happiness and that’s the safest way. After Goodwin she won’t allow any other slip.
--
Then a week passes and she might have mastered the art of deceiving after three years with Ben, but she isn’t too far gone to realize when she’s fooling herself.
Because it looks like Jack cares about her and she feels special when she’s around him, because he looked out for her and that’s why she’s still here right now, because if she just dares imagine about their... well, let’s say tentative friendship develop into something more her heart beats faster, she feels something inside her flutter and no, just no, but she’s falling right into the pit and she’s even too aware of it.
--
Two months from now, she’ll think about how stupid she was to go along with Ben’s plan twice; maybe if she hadn’t from the beginning something would have changed. Maybe. She doesn’t know.
--
Anyway, nothing changes the fact that she couldn’t betray Jack, in the end. Nothing changes the fact that the brief feeling of his lips against hers felt good enough to justify betraying Ben instead of him and throwing away her chance (for all she knows) even if she had started and ended that kiss on her own.
--
Violetta: And we’ll be happy, because you love me, don’t you?
--
Juliet is shaking as he kisses her (he kisses her, he kisses her, and there’s a sentence saying he kissed me that just won’t leave her head); maybe she should sense something wrong. Maybe she should feel surprised that even her first kiss ever had been less chaste than this one.
She isn’t because it feels right. And while she knows that Jack couldn’t have not said what the hero of the story always says, she allows herself to believe it; and why shouldn’t she, since he’s holding her close and his bare presence is enough to make her feel intoxicated to the core of her heart?
Happy endings never were for her and there’s Ben out there and she can’t be sure that Jack doesn’t feel anything for Kate. That’d be asking too much. But this just feels enough, so much more than enough, and so why not? There’ll be time to come crashing back to earth and right now she feels like she’s soaring someplace way higher than the hard ground she’s sure she will hit sooner or later.
--
Violetta: Let him know of the sacrifice I made of the love that will be his till I draw my last breath.
Germont: Your sacrifice shall be rewarded, and in days to come you’ll be proud of so great a love.
--
And then she’s stupid enough to throw everything out of the window herself.
Right. Jack was in self-denial (as usual) and pretending that Kate wasn’t there doesn’t exactly work half of the time (well, that’d be wonderful if it did), but still. She spent three years fooling herself and everyone around her (not Ben, probably, but that’s not the point), why not fooling herself into something good?
At one point (see voice Goodwin on her own encyclopedia of her permanence on the island) she had been selfish; now she finds out she just can’t be selfish this once and Juliet doesn’t think that she’s too wrong if she blames it on Jack, too. See, if she still was like before that plane fell making Jack fall consequently on the island and into her life, now dealing with this wouldn’t be such a problem. Pity that she’s pretty much herself now. Rachel would say always so selfless and now it sounds like selfless means unhappy.
Well, she still tells Kate the truth and she knows he’s awake and she doesn’t even know what his silence means.
It makes no difference anyway. She leaves the tent as something inside her aches and she figures that all they say about the ones you love hurting you most is true.
She wonders if one day he’ll understand what this has cost her.
--
Violetta: Life is just pleasure.
Alfredo: But if one just waits for love...
Violetta: I know nothing about that, don’t tell me..
Alfredo: But there lies my fate.
--
There are two rounds of what she calls (in her head, of course) ‘the week in which both her and Sawyer go somewhere and stay drunk out of their minds’.
Week number one is after the island moves and they stay drunk out of their minds because why, they (Jack and Kate) are dead for what they know and why, they have both died leaving them heartbroken and she loves Jack anyway and Sawyer loves Kate anyway.
Week number two is when some time later (she’d like to know when and where exactly since it’s not like they knew where they are or when they are, for that matter) Richard graciously informs them that everyone who left is alive after all and Juliet knows Richard enough to be sure that he isn’t lying and that he probably checked himself. How, now that’d be a mystery since she figures he didn’t use a submarine, but no news, since it’s Richard. Also, Ben is not around, another reason to believe him. And well, doesn’t drinking do wonders to celebrate?
Right, maybe there’s this small fact that it looks like they (always Jack and Kate, of course) got together at some point, but what’s it in the great scheme of things if they’re alive? And so they get drunk again.
Also, Juliet should know better than to have any kind of conversation when she’s drunk. Sawyer should probably know better, too. They talk anyway. Bad idea.
He asks her whether she’s happy and sure, she’s fucking happy. She asks him whether he’s excited and fuck, he can’t wait. Are they going to lash out at the both of them? Sure they will (and she perfectly knows they won’t even if she’s drunk, but that’s another point). And anyway, are they even still interested? Sure, he says, they’re comin’ back, ain’t they? and Juliet wants to believe it so much that she ends up drinking some more and pretending to buy it.
For a split second she wonders what would happen if she turned on her side and kissed him. He’s there as miserable as she is and it doesn’t take much to notice it, they’re both as drunk as they’ll ever get so they even have an excuse after all, and then she just lets it go. She’d be using him and he’d be using her and she did read his file after all; she figures he’ll be thoroughly sick of it by now, and she’s thoroughly sick of it, too. So instead she asks him if he likes Stephen King and he answers of course not with the face of one who thinks that King is nowhere near refined but reads his books anyway.
Realizing she’s still good at defending Carrie even if she can’t see straight is strangely refreshing, though.
--
Alfredo: Oh my remorse, oh disgrace! And I lived so mistaken! But the truth, like a flash, has broken my dream!
--
Once she had asked Sawyer what he expected when they came back; Sawyer said he just hoped Kate had made up her mind.
Then he had asked Juliet in return and she had answered, I hope he feels at least ashamed.
Who would have said that Sawyer could be, after all, way nicer or more forgiving than her? But she feels like Jack owes her that at least.
And then Locke disappears, the sky turns white again (surely the two things are related) and after a while they’re back and she figures that it isn’t right that when you don’t ask for much you get disillusioned. Because fine, it looks like Kate has made up her mind, but in two days she’s gone to find Claire along with everyone else except Jack and Sayid and when Sawyer just shrugs and says he’ll wait, Juliet thinks that he really doesn’t deserve waiting again.
But at least she gets what she asked for.
Jack looked good when she first saw him, his shoulders straight, his features relieved, the reluctant leader look in his eyes that she remembered; but as soon as he saw her, she noticed his shoulders crumple like they were crashed by heavy weight, his eyes downcast, his teeth tormenting the frail skin over his lower lip. The two seconds their eyes met, she could see that he was ashamed, to a depth she wasn’t prepared to deal with.
They didn’t talk; he didn’t ask for forgiveness and she hadn’t given it on her own. She had seen Sawyer and Kate embracing somewhere near and for that second she really, really envied him. But she couldn’t let Jack off the hook, not just then.
She had realized she had wanted him to suffer, but after all, wasn’t that just fair?
--
Violetta: Oh, what joy!
Alfredo: Oh, my Violetta! Oh, what joy! How much to blame I am, but now, dearest, I know everything!
--
Two days is all it takes to realize that she can't stay angry at him. Not when he's two tents away and when it physically aches not to walk that handful of feet dividing them. The point is that she feels angry and she should stay angry at him but she just wants to do the contrary and it's stupid. Because she has already been burned too many times already and see what happened last time she tried (with Jack, look what a coincidence) while Ben was still around (and he is around now; he might not be here, but he’s on the island and that’s enough).
The point is that maybe two years ago she'd have shut up and stayed in her tent, but now she's restless and it's all Jack's fault. Or merit. Or whatever.
She steps out of her tent, unsure of what she should do; she doesn't feel that surprised when she sees Sawyer coming out of his.
"Where are you going?"
He shrugs and looks at Sayid's tent.
"He looks like he's gonna shoot himself in the head if he doesn't have a talk with someone."
"And so you're providing?"
"Yeah, guess I will. You're wonderin' whether you should let go of your righteous anger?"
She can't help cracking a smile at that.
"Maybe."
"Well, if he ain't sorry, I dunno who else is."
"You two spoke?"
"Why, sure. He looked like he could use a talk, too."
Sawyer then leaves and gets into Sayid's tent without even bothering to ask first; she's left there, in the slightly chilly night, trying to figure out what she should do. Great sensation when you know you should to something but you want to do the contrary. A great familiar feeling.
She breathes in and out for a while; she wonders if this fact that she hasn’t still decided means that her feelings were not as strong as she had thought or if she’s doing the same thing Jack did when she kissed her. Maybe she doesn’t go because she wants to convince herself that he doesn’t matter as much as he once mattered.
If he ain’t sorry I dunno who else is.
Oh, she thinks as she stands still on the outside and some kind of turmoil is ripping her apart on the inside, damn Sawyer too. If they hadn’t left they probably wouldn’t have grown close and she wouldn’t have to admit that if there’s someone she trusts on this island right now it’s him.
Damn him, too. Him and Ben and Jack and Richard and everyone else that had to go into her life and making it the mess it is, even if mess doesn’t even begin to cover one tenth of it.
Juliet takes a couple of tentative steps forward, the white sand she’s come to hate shifting gently under her bare feet; she isn’t surprised when Jack gets out of the tent himself and she stops, thankful for the fact that he stands with his back to her and hasn’t presumably noticed her presence. He lets out a sigh that sounds like a cry in the utter silence; it doesn’t break until some unintelligible spare chattering starts to come out from Sayid’s tent. She jumps for the surprise and Jack does too; he turns and he sees her. She nods, acknowledging his presence; but then she finds out that staying like that is just unbearable.
“Hi,” she mutters, entirely realizing how lame it sounds.
“... hi yourself.” Jack brings his hand to the back of his head, looks up at her and God, he really is sorry. He might have surprised her a couple of times, but he’s never been good at hiding how he’s feeling. “I guess that saying I’m sorry doesn’t cover it, does it?”
No, it really doesn’t, she thinks, and then in the second she opens her mouth it isn’t that sentence coming out, but instead “Well, it doesn’t but might be a start.”
What the hell is she thinking? Surely not of giving the chance for a strange sparkle to pass over his eyes before it’s gone and he looks as he did before. He opens his mouth, then closes it. She doesn’t know if she wants to know what he was going to say.
“I know,” she says then. Might as well save him the embarrassment, if it’s what he’s trying to say.
“You know?”
“About you and Kate.”
Jack just nods, coming slightly closer.
“Yeah, well, I did it for myself, too. Not that I realized it then. I realized it after.”
“And now?”
“Now... I guess that saying that I am sorry and that I was a jerk wouldn’t come closer to cover it.”
“Maybe,” she answers, and she still doesn’t get why is she doing this. She knows she’s going to say no at one point, she just can’t allow it again, and then why is she being so cruel and not telling him straight?
He nods briefly, his eyes still downcast and now she’s just getting confused. He looks more like the Jack who made her feel like Carrie as she headed into the prom with her velvet dress and a Popular arm around her waist, not like the Jack that for a split second as he left camp had made her feel like Carrie as she wrote Bob Dylan lyrics on her diary without anyone noticing the meaning.
Well, after all Jack is the Popular kind of guy after all, even if he’s also the kind that doesn’t like it.
She doesn’t know how her wrist ended up between Jack's fingers, which are holding it as it’s made of glass; that’s just what she didn’t need and then she doesn’t know how she ended up in his arms again.
It’s exactly like last time only that this time he’s crushing her hard against him and she finds out that she can’t even breathe.
Most worryingly, that she doesn’t give a damn if she can’t.
Maybe she really was just pretending he didn’t matter; the next thing she knows is that she’s holding him back and it’s so good to feel him against her. Why, maybe now she understands why Sawyer isn’t complaining of having to wait again. If it felt like this for him, too, well, she understands.
“It’s all my fault.”
She doesn’t answer, realizing that if she was sincere she should tell him yes, it really was, but she just can’t now and it’s not like he needs someone to confirm it.
“God, I’m s...”
“Oh, shut up. I know it.”
And then she kisses him again and suddenly he’s kissing her turning the cards over the table and while it really isn’t a good omen that it took them three times to kiss properly, his tongue slightly running over her lips, then seeking access as they part and let him, it’s perfect and even if she won’t tell him anytime soon, she has to admit to herself that she has forgiven him. Figures that she would have ended up forgiving him in the end (even though she isn’t going to tell him straight anytime soon), but this is the first time in her life when surrendering feels the right thing to do. Has to mean something, right?
End.