App for babylonwood
“Light a candle for the wanderer who never meant to roam;
Only stepped into the storm to find she could not make it home.”
The Player
User Name/Nick: Chris
User LJ: kawaiispinel
AIM/IM: KawaiiSpinel42
E-mail: whatineverhad [at] gmail.com
Other Characters: Gabriel/The Trickster, Desmond Descant, Sokka
The Character
Character Name: Juliet Burke, nee Carlson
Character Journal: neverinportland
Canon: LOST
Age: 36
From When?: 5X17: The Incident Part 2, right before she gets dragged into the hatch and detonates the hydrogen bomb.
Abilities/Powers: While a fertility researcher by occupation (meaning she knows a lot about how to deal with pregnancies, deliver babies, etc.), Juliet has enough basic medical know-how from her residency to assist in surgical procedures and even perform one on her own with limited resources.
She has unarmed combat training and was capable of holding her own against Charlotte Lewis and Kate Austen in a fight- more than that, she actually owned Kate’s ass. She’s quick on her feet and doesn’t let her anger get the best of her, making her a excellent defensive fighter. She also has proficiency with handguns, as well as rifles, both of which she uses with a casual sort of indifference that suggests that using them has become second nature to her.
She also speaks Latin fluently.
Power Limitations: N/A
Inventory
♥ One dark pink blouse, covered in dirt and blood.
♥ One pair of blue jeans, also covered in dirt and blood.
♥ One pair of comfortable shoes.
♥ One length of tangled chain.
♥ A lot of trauma
Personality: Juliet started out as a timid, shy little thing, constantly bullied and pushed around and pretty much allowing herself to be a doormat. Her older sister Rachel was the assertive one in the family and Juliet was merely the one who went along with everything that was asked of her. This extended to her adult life, as well. All through college, she was the mousy, studious one, the one who was wary of dating, the one who wouldn’t go to parties, etc. Although, she tried to break out of that shell in her Sophmore year, leading to a downward spiral of debauchery that caused her grades to suffer until she pulled herself out of it. She went back to being the shy, mousy girl, but that period of wickedness where she wasn’t “the good girl” would later make it easier to fall back into that lifestyle when she arrives on the island.
To her husband Edmund Burke, she was the quiet trophy wife, up until he found someone younger and insisted on divorcing her. Like the good doormat that she was, Juliet agreed and never put up a fuss when Edmund insisted on flaunting his new younger girlfriends around her. He kept her firmly under his thumb until the moment of his death, which Juliet blamed herself for, because she’d practically wished it on him. Even hating him, she couldn’t bring herself to do anything with that hatred and the thought that she might have inadvertently done something pained her greatly.
And then the island happened. At first, Juliet stayed her doormat self, until three years embittered her and she became a harder, colder person. She slept around with a married man and while she was determined to keep it a secret and felt some shame for it, she didn’t stop. She learned how to become manipulative, how to hide her emotions with the best of them, and even when the stress of living among the Others got too much for her, she still pretended like she was one of them, even though she never felt like she truly belonged there.
At her core, Juliet is an emotional woman, even though she’s tried to hide this side of herself, to avoid falling back into the easily manipulated woman she once was and seems to idle along on “emotionally neutral”- often choosing to walk away when she starts to actively get emotional about something where people can see it and only showing emotion in extreme situations. Every patient she has, she becomes close to- essentially the polar opposite of Jack. While she can be blunt and to the point, she cares deeply about what happens to people under her care and will not hesitate to be tactless or forceful when it comes to their own safety. She loves strongly and passionately, but has a cynical outlook on romance, due to her parents’ divorce and her own failed marriage- as well as her failed relationship with Jack. Her happiness with Sawyer for their period of time in the island’s past was the first time she felt truly happy and comfortable with her life and when that got taken away from her, she began to get increasingly paranoid that Sawyer no longer cared now that Kate was back in the picture and they weren’t “playing house” anymore.
She can be manipulative, she can lie, and she can pretend her loyalties don’t lie with anyone but herself, and feel almost no shame in it. She’s been manhandled emotionally and she’s gotten to a point where she won’t stand for it. While she hides this attitude from Ben and pretends to be his partner and lapdog, much like she did with Edmund, she wound up doing to him everything that she never got to do to her ex-husband- shoving him so far back in his place that she eventually severs her ties with him so completely that he never comes looking for her. Since integrating herself fully within the ranks of the survivors of Oceanic 815 and earned their trust, she hasn’t had to lie or manipulate as much, which pleases her, because while she can do it and not care, that doesn’t mean she likes doing it.
She can be caustic and snarky and has a dry, deadpan sense of humor that not everyone can appreciate. While it’s hard to believe, considering some of her past actions, she is a noble and kind-hearted woman and would do anything for the people she cares about. Although, she isn’t the sort to go running after people who insist on being stupid- she expects people to listen to her and if they don’t, then they’ve clearly got to learn from their own mistakes and she’ll just sit back and worry herself to death over them. For a fertility doctor, she doesn’t have much of a maternal streak- it’s more of an older sister complex. She also won’t hesitate to call someone’s bluffs or bullshit and because people have acted suspiciously of her in the past, she has a low tolerance for allowing suspicious behavior to go unchecked.
History: As a child, Juliet and her family moved around a lot, possibly due to her father’s work, which put a strain on her parents’ relationship, eventually leading to their divorce when Juliet was only ten. This affected Juliet greatly and while her mother raised her and her older sister Rachel as best she could, Juliet’s outlook on relationships suffered gravely from the ordeal and she became closer to her sister, because of this.
She received her medical degree, specializing in obstetrics and fertility and went on to become a fertility researcher in Miami, Florida, working under her husband Edmund Burke (who, even after their divorce, continued to control her), primarily looking for a way to cure infertility, particularly in cancer patients. She administered her experimental drugs to her cancer-stricken sister Rachel in secret, and was pleasantly surprised when she found her experiments were actually successful. When Edmund caught wind of this, he wanted to exploit her research for profit. This event coincided with Juliet being offered a job at Mittelos Bioscience, which she refused because she couldn't just leave Edmund unless he were "hit by a bus."
Which was precisely what happened.
After Edmund's death, Juliet took up the offer, only to find that Mittelos wasn't at all what she was told. For starters, it wasn't in Portland nor was it even an actual institute. It was a front company for an island out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that was nearly impossible to get to. She was brought there to help figure out why pregnant women on the island die, and she believed she would only be there for a few months. A few months, however, turned into a few years, and she quickly grew embittered with her life on the island and especially with Ben, the leader of the group, who continued to keep her there at all costs due to his intense obsession with her, even going as far as to have the man she loved killed to further drive home the point that she was “his.”
The crash of Oceanic Flight 815 changed everything for her. Knowing Ben was dying of a tumor in his back and now aware that the flight had a spinal surgeon on it, she devised a plan to be rid of Ben once and for all- when Ben had the aforementioned spinal surgeon (Jack Shepard) and two of his friends kidnapped, she attempted to befriend Jack with the intention of using him to kill Ben during Ben’s surgery. The plan nearly worked until Ben woke up during the surgery and, realizing what was about to happen, attempted to bribe Juliet with the one thing she wanted most- her freedom- provided, of course, that she convinced Jack to let him live. Ben actually made good on this promise, but John Locke blew up the sub before Juliet could leave, leaving her trapped on the island again.
Eventually, she would come to return to the survivors’ camp with Jack, although she was met with much distrust due to her time with the Others. As it turned out, she was sent to be a spy for Ben, but she played the double agent angle to her advantage, eventually exposing Ben’s entire plan to the survivors and helping them take down Ben’s group when they attempted to raid the camp. After that, she became fully integrated into their camp and became a valued member of the group.
When the freighter arrived, Juliet was suspicious of the motives of the new arrivals and spent a great deal of time and energy trying to expose Daniel Faraday and Charlotte Lewis’s true reasons for coming to the island, even after finding out everything they knew, she still suspected foul play and urged Jack not to go to the freighter and leave the island. Despite their tender moment episodes before, Jack was quick to leave her and the rest of the survivors, while he, Kate, Hurley, Sun, Desmond, and Sayid escaped from the island. From that point, Juliet became close friends with Sawyer as they and the remaining survivors became the de facto leaders of their group Unfortunately, thanks to Ben moving the island (no really), the island began to experience weird time shifts, until Locke eventually fixed it and trapped Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Daniel, and Jin in the seventies during the time the DHARMA Initiative was on the island. Juliet was quick to try to leave the island, even though she wouldn’t be able to return to her sister while stuck in this time period, but Sawyer encouraged her to stay and she wound up staying for three years, starting a relationship with Sawyer in the process and getting an idyllic life on the island.
And then the people who left the island came back, destroying the cover that Sawyer and Juliet and the others had made for themselves and causing a rift between Juliet and Sawyer. Jack became determined to set off a hydrogen bomb in the Swan station, hoping it would prevent them from ever crashing on the island- it makes sense, I swear- and after some flip-flopping, Juliet finally decided to go with Jack’s idea. After a violent confrontation, the Incident (a severe electromagnetic event in the island’s history) occurred and the hydrogen bomb failed to go off. Juliet wound up tangled in a length of chain and dragged into the hatch and after trying desperately to climb back up, found herself unable to free herself. She and Sawyer shared a tearful goodbye, confessing their love, and Juliet plunged to her doom.
And woke up in the Wood.
First Person Sample: Stop. I don’t want hear that. I don’t want to hear that she doesn’t deserve our help because she’s one of them. Maybe they’d be less hostile if people like you didn’t act like every one of them is a threat. She can’t do anything to us right now in her condition and if you think I’m going to stand here and let you leave an injured girl to die, no matter what she is, you’re wrong.
I’ve shot people for a lot less than this. Now please step away from her, so I can help her or I’ll have to waste time that could be spent getting her stable to make sure you don’t bleed to death.
Prose Sample: She's still alive.
Barely.
Her eyes flutter open, consciousness returned before awareness, but the latter hits her with painful clarity as she tries to sit up and finds herself paralyzed, the chains wrapped around her holding tight to the pocket of electromagnetic energy, crushing her legs and rendering them useless. She makes the attempt to move and cries out in anguish, although half of it is just frustration that the fall didn't kill her.
Doctors make the worst patients. She can already tick off a number of ways she'll die slowly down here- God help her, she was always such a cynic.
She turns her head just slightly, trying to take advantage of what little mobility she has and sees a sight that makes her eyes widen in shock- the bomb, just sitting there as innocuous as anything in a pile of sludge that must have dampened the impact and kept it from going off. She's not sure if it's the most beautiful sight she's ever seen or the most horrific. She's never believed in destiny or fate. It always seemed like nonsense to her and maybe falling down here and seeing that bomb just means that Miles was right and that they're just making sure everything keeps going the way it always has- an endless loop and they're the cause of it all.
But she thinks of James and her fingers slipping through his and her last glimpse of him as she fell. She thinks of every bit of machinery crumpling around them in the wake of the electromagnetic energy pouring out of this pocket and how all of her friends up there could easily be killed- how James could easily be killed. She thinks that if there's one chance to save them, this might be it. There really isn't a right choice, in the end. If Jack was wrong, they all die. If Miles was right, then they all die and history repeats itself and their lives will be nothing more than pawns in an endless chess game that plays the same iterations over and over again.
But if Jack was right, then this all just goes away.
Her fingers lace around a nearby rock as she scoots as far as she can go, lashing out to hit the bomb as hard as she can, tears streaming down her face, as she grits her teeth and begs the damn thing to just go off already. If she's going to die, she'll die for a reason. She'll let destiny make of her what it wants- either she's a hero or she's damned them all.
She's been caught between the two ever since she met them, really.
The rock makes contact one last time, blinding white light sears her eyes.
If the world ends, it ends with a whimper.
Special Notes: Nope.