Lost Fic: Find a Map and Draw a Straight Line (1/4) (Juliet)
*Alright guys, here’s the deal: as I was reading over the fic of doom today I realized it very naturally split into three parts. This is the first one. I’m still editing the second one so it should be up tomorrow, the third will hopefully be finished and posted by Monday. A big thank you to my amazing flist for all of your awesome advice, I don’t know what I would do without you guys. Hopefully no one’s going to flip about the unnamed pairings. Surprises are good, right?
Title: Find a Map and Draw a Straight Line (1/4)
Characters: Juliet, Desmond; ensemble (Multiple Pairings, ultimately Juliet/Sawyer)
Rating: R (Sex, Language)
Words: 5,865
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers through “LA X”. This fic features multiple pairings for both Juliet and Desmond, so read at your own discretion.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Title from “Set the Fire to the Third Bar” by Snow Patrol.
Summary: Juliet always thought be careful what you wish for was nothing more than a stupid cliché. Turns out she was wrong.
A/N: I have to tip my hat first to aurilly who probably doesn’t know she inspired this plot bunny, but totally did with her mention of the Desmond and Juliet parallels and secondly to Miles and the folks who work in the Lost sound effects department for spawning the world’s most cracktastic theory. And to Juliet who I can’t seem to let go of.
My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
at the same time.
--- Bob Hicok
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
--- J.M. Barrie
Sometimes we see the end at the beginning.
Juliet did.
Standing on the other side of the fence staring into the flickering heart of a monster she saw herself die. It didn’t make sense; it lacked the sort of context that would lead to understanding. But she saw it and she knew. She always knew.
She tried to forget, tried to believe that it was a trick, a lie. But then Jack showed up talking about setting off bombs and changing the past and she heard a whisper in the back of her mind, this is how it happens.
But there was still something else to come, another piece of an ever expanding puzzle. Another glimpse at something she couldn’t quite understand.
It’s true that sometimes we see the end at the beginning, but so is the inverse.
Sometimes we see the beginning at the end.
Juliet did.
***
She dies. This is undisputable. She feels the life leaving her limbs, her eyes growing heavy and she knows it’s not just sleep tugging at her mind, telling her to let go.
He wants her to stay, she can see it. She’s not so far gone that it doesn’t break her heart.
There’s a flicker, a flash and she’s somewhere else. A street corner, a sunny day and he’s in front of her.
“Let’s get coffee sometime…we can go dutch.”
She doesn’t hear his response. She’s back and he’s shaking. She smiles. That’s supposed to be her job.
He kisses her and it happens again.
She’s still kissing him, but it’s not here at the bottom of this well with the taste of blood on their lips. She can smell the ocean, hear the roar of something behind her, a mechanical sound, loud and constant an almost reassuring thrum.
If she had the strength she would laugh.
“I have something really important to tell you.”
Then she’s gone.
***
She wakes up.
It takes a moment to process this.
She’s on a sidewalk; sun beating down from above, the light is almost too much. She blinks and she can feel tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Someone touches her arm.
“Jules? Are you okay?”
She turns and it’s Rachel standing next to her with a blond haired little boy balanced on her hip.
“Jules?” she asks again. Her eyes are wide and concerned and her grip tightens on Juliet’s arm. Juliet smiles tentatively at first, but then her smile turns into a grin and her grin into a laugh.
“I’m fine,” she manages to choke out.
Rachel shakes her head and gives her sister an affectionate shove.
“You’re insane.”
Juliet nods, still laughing. “Maybe.”
***
She doesn’t remember everything at first. It comes back in bursts, a job offer, an island, a man---until she sees the entirety of a life she never lived in her head. But it’s strange, that life feels more real than the one she’s in somehow.
This life is good, it’s stable. Her sister is alive and well, cancer-free for nearly two years. Julian is learning how to write his name in pre-school. Edmund is still dead. Hit by a bus. Juliet thinks maybe it was a coincidence after all.
And her life?
She’s the head of fertility research at Miami Central University. It’s Edmund’s old job (he would have hated that.) Her wall is covered with awards, accomplishments; she’s the best in the field. She isn’t meek or timid, there’s no trace of the shy woman she remembers from before (she tells herself that’s because before never happened.)
She’s a leader. Not a mess.
Her hair is cut short, it falls just to her shoulders and somehow this is the thing that throws her the most. Every time she catches a glimpse of her reflection it surprises her. It shouldn’t. She remembers getting it cut, Rachel sitting in the chair next to her laughing because Juliet’s fingers were clinching the arm rest of the beautician’s chair.
“Relax sis, it’s just hair,” Rachel had said.
And she had been right of course. She likes the way her new cut curls at the bottom, the way it frames her face. It looks professional. Grown-up.
Still something isn’t right. Even though she remembers the day, she has this distinct feeling that she wasn’t really there.
She doesn’t tell this to Kevin when he runs his hand through her hair wraps a curl around his finger and calls her Goldilocks.
Oh, that’s right. She forgot to mention that part.
There’s also a man.
***
They met when someone broke into Rachel’s apartment. He answered the call and came strolling in all confidence and reassuring smiles in a uniform that fit in all of the right places and Juliet felt her breath catch.
It had been awhile since Edmund, since anyone really, but she wanted to know Kevin the moment she met him.
So they had coffee. And then there was a movie date, something bad and forgettable that they made fun of in hushed voices. And then dinner at her place where she nearly burned the roast. And then…well then there was sex. Amazing, sweet sex that left her feeling warm and cuddly afterwards.
That was a year ago (before, she thinks but she can’t quite grasp what that means).
The point is they share an apartment together now---a life.
She thinks maybe she loves him. Some version of her most certainly did. And it’s not hard to see why. Kevin is good. That doesn’t sound like much, but the truth is he’s better than any man she’s ever known. He loves her. She’s sure of this.
Which is why she hates herself for this truth: everyday for the past month she has made it a point to drive two blocks out of her way to pass a coffee shop she’s never been inside of in hopes of running into a man who she has for all intents and purposes never met.
***
She types “Jack Shepherd, spinal surgeon, Los Angeles” into a search engine on a slow Wednesday afternoon. She half hopes that nothing comes up. That he doesn’t exist, that she really is just a tiny bit crazy.
But he does. He’s even more accomplished than she is, and it turns out his father died a little over a month ago in Sydney, Australia. There’s a throwaway note at the bottom of the article, an interesting aside. His father’s body was misplaced by the airline. As of the writing of the article it still hadn’t been found.
Juliet closes her eyes.
“Brave new world,” she mutters.
Her fingers hover over the keys and she begins to type again.
J-A-M…
She stops and hits the backspace key with more force than is required before snapping her laptop shut.
This is what they wanted, right?
***
Three months pass and she goes on with her life as best she can. She pushes the rest of it away, the island and him. She lets it drift to the back of her mind, pretends there’s nothing nagging at her, nothing whispering, this isn’t right.
And then it happens.
Street corner. Coffee shop. An angry, southerner bumps into her and then stops, turns and smiles, dimples so deep it’s almost absurd.
“Pardon me, Blondie. Guess I should watch where I’m going.”
She would answer if her heart wasn’t trying to beat its way out of her chest. She licks her lips, tries to remember how to breathe.
“That’s okay, no harm done.”
He watches her for a moment, looks back over his shoulder as if there’s somewhere he’s supposed to be. She can almost see his mind working, weighing his options.
“I got time to make it up to you. Let me buy you a drink.”
There’s a lilt to his voice, something that’s not familiar. Like a predator catching scent of prey. Inwardly, she groans. She imagines herself from his point of view and sees a damn good mark.
Still this is James (she hopes) and standing this close to him after three months of not seeing him at all and saying no is not an option.
“I have a meeting to get to, but we could get coffee sometime…we can go dutch. Let me just get my card.”
She fishes around in her purse until she finds a crisp, white business card. He takes it and their hands brush; she forces herself not to flinch. She watches as he reads her name, waits for a flicker of recognition. He just smirks.
“Alright, Juliet. We got ourselves a date.”
He winks, pockets the card.
“I’m Sawyer, by the way.”
She tries to smile, but her stomach drops at the sound of the name. He doesn’t notice, just gives her a cocky wave before disappearing around the corner. Then he’s gone. Again (not again, she tells herself, there was no other time.)
She wishes lying to herself was as easy as lying to everyone else.
***
Later her cell phone rings and she excuses herself from the dinner table to answer it. Kevin waves her away and continues eating his mash potatoes, not a care in the world.
“Tomorrow at 1:00 is fine,” she whispers.
On the other end she can hear him laugh, low and throaty and so familiar it makes her ache.
“Alright, Blondie. I’ll see ya then.”
She hangs up and goes back to the table placing a kiss on Kevin’s head as she passes, guilt already twisting her stomach into a knot.
“Work stuff?” Kevin asks.
Juliet nods and reaches for the rolls.
“The new intern accidently released all of the lab rats.”
Kevin chuckles and Juliet wishes that sounded as familiar as it should.
***
He’s already there when she arrives, sitting in a corner booth a dog-eared paperback copy of Of Mice and Men open in his hands.
“You trying to impress me already?” she teases.
He looks up and then casually leans back in his chair, his fingers working to turn down the page, marking his place.
“Nah, just killing time. I was starting to think I’d been stood up.”
She had thought about it, she almost tells him about the twenty minutes she spent waffling outside the door, but then thinks better of it---this isn’t her James she reminds herself, it’s best not to get too friendly. Not yet anyway.
“I’m sorry about that. Work stuff.”
He’s watching her so intensely it’s starting to make her nervous. He leans forward suddenly, too long hair falling in his face. He looks so serious she thinks maybe he knows. God, she hopes he knows.
“What are we doing here, Blondie?”
She laughs, toys with a pink packet of sweet and low.
“I thought we were having coffee.”
“Uh-huh. You always ask strange men you bump into on the street to have coffee? That seems like a damn good way to get yourself eaten by the big bad wolf.”
She shrugs, leans away from him and crosses her arms defensively.
“Do you always say yes when strange women you bump into on the street ask you for coffee?”
“Depends on what they look like.”
She rolls her eyes. It’s good to know some things haven’t changed.
“Do you want to order or what?” she asks.
He holds up a hand and waves over the nearest waitress.
“A coffee--- two creams, one sugar. Blondie?”
“What do you think?”
He laughs again, shakes his head as if she’s becoming a handful, but she thinks he likes it. Hell, she knows he does.
“Get the lady an espresso. Double-shot. Don’t want you falling asleep on me.”
The waitress nods and leaves to get their drinks. Sawyer props his elbows on the table and rests his head in his hands. He looks a little lost for a moment. She reaches out, places a hand on his arm.
“You still with me?”
He considers her for a second and that smirk comes creeping across his lips again.
“I’m not going anywhere. This is just starting to get interesting.”
***
He tells her a variety of things that are most certainly not true.
He is not a business man, his father did not name him after a character in a Mark Twain novel, he did not grow up in Mississippi, and he hates vodka.
But she smiles, nods when she should, lets him think he can con her, pretends she can’t see all of his tells.
Then he pulls out his wallet and proudly shows her a picture of a smiling little girl with dimples that he calls Clem. And she shivers because she knows this is true, but there’s too much ease in the way he displays the picture, not a trace of guilt.
“Are you married?” she asks.
“No, me and her mama weren’t the marrying type. But I see her every couple of months. She’s a hell of a kid.”
It’s at this exact moment that Juliet begins to wonder if she’s being conned at all.
“What did you say you do again?”
Sawyer quirks an eyebrow. “I sell insurance. It’s not that hard to believe is it, sweetheart?”
“You don’t look the type,” she says faintly.
“I get that a lot.”
He takes a long draw of his coffee; Juliet grips the edge of the table until her knuckles turn white. She wonders if she can read him after all. Either he’s lying and she’s falling for it or it’s true and something went very differently in his life this time around.
“What’s your last name?”
“Ford,” he says lightly reaching over to unclench her hand. “You prepping for an earthquake?”
She shakes her head, unable to look away from his hand covering hers. She realizes it doesn’t matter if it’s a con (it never did), her decision has already been made for her.
“Can we get out of here?”
His grip tightens suddenly almost possessively.
“Absolutely.”
***
In retrospect, it was already a mistake.
They check into a motel in a seedy part of town. It’s the middle of the afternoon, but the sun can barely penetrate the heavy curtains of the room. It’s dark and dusty and smells faintly of soured water.
“I’ve seen worse,” he mutters. He closes the door and leans against it carelessly. “Come here.”
She does. He wraps his arms around her and she starts to shake. It’s him. He smells the same, feels the same, but it’s not right somehow. He holds her closer, runs a warm hand over the goose bumps forming on her arm. She misses the calluses.
“You alright?” he whispers.
She nods and kisses him before she can talk herself out of it. She’s too rough, her fingers wrapping in his hair, holding him against her, her tongue pressing urgently against his. He tastes wrong, like stale tobacco and coffee but she ignores it and starts walking backwards towards the bed pulling him right along with her.
They fall back and the mattress squeaks with the sudden impact of their bodies. He unbuttons her blouse slowly, taking his sweet time, but she can’t stand the wait. She pushes his hand away and slips out of her shirt quickly tossing it to the floor and then she reaches for the hem of his and tugs it over his head.
He makes a sound low like a growl, and she’s heard it hundreds of times before. It never fails to turn her on. “Damn, Blondie. You got a plane to catch?”
She reaches for his belt buckle, tries to force herself to stop looking for scars that aren’t there.
“Something like that.”
“Well we better get a move on then.”
He wiggles out of his jeans while she unzips her skirt.
The rest goes quickly until there’s nothing between them anymore. He hovers above her for a moment before easing down until his face is just inches from hers.
“Is this what you were hoping would happen today?”
His breath is warm against her face; she reaches up and tucks his hair behind his ears so that she can see his eyes. She doesn’t recognize the man looking back at her. Not really. She kisses him anyway, trying to prove to herself that this isn’t wrong. That she hasn’t done something horrible and irreversible, that she didn’t change the world so irrevocably that she can’t fucking kiss the man she loves and feel something other than her heart breaking.
“Yes,” she murmurs finally.
He slips inside of her and she waits for a sense of relief to wash over her. She’s not surprised when she feels nothing at all.
He falls asleep afterwards, his arm draped over her waist. She removes it gently, and dresses as quietly as possible. She leaves without saying goodbye.
Outside it’s already growing dark. She imagines Kevin coming home to an empty apartment. The thought should make her sad or guilty, but it doesn’t.
She’s having a hard time feeling anything at all these days.
***
It’s on the drive home that the panic sets in. And it’s the word home that does it. She remembers so much; Julian’s first birthday party, the time Kevin took her fishing at the pier; the day Rachel told her the cancer was gone. She remembers long nights at the office and being invited to a symposium in Oxford where she pretended to like escargot. She remembers rainy Sunday afternoons where she did nothing but sit on the couch in her pajamas doing the crossword puzzle.
But she also remembers shooting a man named Danny and watching him fall dead at her feet. She remembers saying goodbye to Rachel. She remembers sitting on a dock and promising two weeks. She remembers three years spent with a man she never expected to fall in love with. She remembers her best friend and she remembers losing him.
And she remembers dying. She remembers the look in his eyes right before she let go.
She shouldn’t have to. This only works if she doesn’t.
It’s two different lives. Two different Juliet’s all jumbled up inside one person. Only one of them is just a set of memories, like pictures in an album. The other feels real, it feels lived.
And she laughs then, sitting on the side of the road trying to force her hands to stop trembling enough to let her drive again because the terrible irony of this situation is that the horrible, bloody, painful life she left is the one she would give anything to have back.
***
Kevin’s sitting at his desk filling out bills when she gets in. He looks up and flashes her an easy lop-sided grin.
“Hey darlin, long day?”
She tries to answer, her mind reaching for something normal to say, something that won’t hurt this man who doesn’t deserve to be hurt. But somewhere between the motel and here something inside of her snapped.
She opens her mouth and the absolute wrong thing tumbles out.
“I want to break up.”
Kevin pauses, his pen stopped in mid-sentence.
“What?”
She can’t go back now, so she figures she might as well go forward.
“I want us to break up. I can’t do this anymore.”
He gets up slowly, his eyes wary. She can tell that he’s hoping this is some sort of joke, that she’s suddenly developed a cruel sense of humor.
“This isn’t funny Juliet.”
She giggles before she can stop herself and it sounds crazy, raw, but it is funny. It’s absurd in fact.
“Really? I think it is a little. I’m not…I’m not who you think I am, Kevin. I’m not your Juliet. This isn’t my life. And I’m sorry, I thought I could pretend but I can’t. It’s just…it’s wrong. It’s not fair to you or me and I won’t…I can’t do it anymore.”
It takes her a minute to realize she’s crying and she hates herself for not staying calm. He’s looking at her with too much concern now like maybe she’s just having a spectacularly bad day; his face is soft when it should be angry.
“You’re not who I think you are? What the hell are you talking about?” he asks gently.
He crosses over to her and places his hands on either side of her face, rubs a tear away with his thumb. It’s so sweet that she feels some of her resolve crumbling. She wanted this to be easy.
“Juliet, what’s going on? You can talk to me. There is nothing that you can’t tell me, you know that. We’ll figure whatever it is out together.”
Nothing is ever easy in her life (in any of them, she thinks wryly.)
“I slept with someone else.”
His hands drop. She takes a deep breath and then continues.
“I slept with another man in a motel room this afternoon.”
It would have been more humane to smack him.
He turns his back to her and she tries not to imagine the expression on his face. When he speaks his voice is low and dark.
“Why are you doing this Juliet?”
She’s heard that question before. Different man, different world. The answer’s still the same.
“Because we’re not supposed to be together.”
***
She leaves and to his credit Kevin tries to stop her. Even when she’s standing in front of him telling him she slept with another man for no good reason at all, he still wants her to stay. But she can’t. She gets back in her car and drives towards nowhere in particular, her only direction is away.
She ends up at Rachel’s and she knows Kevin must have called her because she’s waiting for her on the front step, elbows resting on her knees, her eyes trained on the parking lot. When she spots Juliet she gets to her feet, her expression a mixture of worry and exasperation.
“What the fuck is going on, sis?”
Juliet shrugs helplessly and bites back tears. She’s had enough crying for one day. Rachel sighs and wraps an arm around her little sister’s shoulder and steers her towards the door.
“Come on. I’ve got a bottle of Jack stashed back for emergencies.”
Juliet snorts. “Do I look that bad?”
Rachel bumps her hip playfully against Juliet’s. “You look like hell.”
***
“So you think you’re from another world?” Rachel asks slowly.
Juliet tries to spell her name in the pool of condensation from her glass slowly seeping across the table. She knows Rachel’s about two minutes away from calling a psychiatrist and having her hauled out of here in a straight jacket. And it’s understandable. She’s been carrying this story around in her head for three months and in there it sounded rational.
Out loud it sounds suspiciously like a nervous breakdown.
“Jules?” she prompts.
“I think I created another world when I hit the bomb, but something went wrong. I remember everything and if I remember it then maybe it’s still there.”
Rachel sighs and pushes her chair away from the table and walks over to the sink. She’s quiet for a moment and Juliet turns and stares at her sister expectantly.
“Fuck, Juliet. This is insane, you know that right? If you said this to anyone else they would have you locked up.”
Juliet nods. “I know. That’s why I haven’t told anyone else. But Rachel, you know me. You know me better than anyone on this earth. Do you really believe I’m making this up?”
“I believe that you believe it.”
“What about Sawyer? How could I have known that I would meet him on that street corner? How could I know who he was if I hadn’t met him before?”
Rachel shakes her head wearily.
“Maybe you saw him somewhere---“
Juliet can feel anger growing in the pit of her stomach. She feels like she’s coming out of her own skin, sitting here in this kitchen with its cheery yellow wallpaper and trying to convince her sister that she’s not a raving lunatic is causing her head to ache.
“I knew his name. His birthday. I know he has a birthmark on the inside of his right thigh. But before today? I had never met him. Not this version of him. Listen to me Rachel, I wish I could just ignore this. That I could be happy here with you and Julian and Kevin. It’s a damn good life. But it’s not mine. I just…I just want to go home.”
Rachel drops to her knees in front of Juliet and takes her sister’s hands in her own. She forces Juliet to look at her before she speaks.
“You are home, Jules.”
Juliet leans down and presses her forehead against her sister’s.
“I wish that was true,” she whispers.
***
She stays with Rachel for the night and they sleep curled against each other in the same bed just like when they were kids.
Juliet dreams she’s sitting on a shore, a bottle of rum clinched in her hand, her eyes trained on the ocean. She can see someone swimming in the distance and she feels her heartbeat quicken.
As the person gets closer, she can see that it’s him. Finally, he makes it to the shore and comes crawling out of the ocean dripping wet. He falls in front of her and she reaches out instinctively and pushes his wet hair out of his eyes. She knows this man. She always has.
“James,” she says softly.
“Nice day for a swim.”
He grins takes her hand in his and turns it over so that he can press a kiss to her palm.
“You gotta go through, Blondie. Not around.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”
He takes the bottle from the sand and takes a long drink, wipes a hand across his mouth and points towards the black smoke billowing into the sky.
“This ain’t really my area of expertise, but it seems to me you want to get back somewhere, you’ve got to remember where somewhere is.”
He gets up then and tries to brush the sand from the front of his jeans before he starts walking towards the jungle. Juliet scrambles to her feet.
“James, wait, don’t leave me,” she pleads.
She’s suddenly sure if he disappears into that jungle she’ll never see him again.
He turns and there’s blood dripping from his nose. Unconcerned, he wipes it away with the back of his hand.
“I’m not the one that left,” he says grimly.
She tries to move towards him but a blinding white light falls over everything, drowning out every sight and sound until there’s nothing but blankness and a hum that worms its way inside her head, forcing her to her knees.
It stops as suddenly as it began and she gets up unsteadily and runs towards the jungle. James is nowhere in sight, but there is someone there. A man with shaggy brown hair is crouched in the sand muttering to himself. She leans down and touches his arm and he shrugs away from her, but not before she catches a glimpse of his face.
“Desmond?” she asks.
He turns and looks at her, his eyes wide and desperate.
“Can you see me, sister?”
Then she wakes up.
***
She pretends it’s a normal morning. She gets up, showers, puts on yesterday’s clothes and then makes Julian pancakes shaped like animals that mostly just look like cats. They’re sitting on the couch, eating them together and watching cartoons when Rachel wakes up.
“Good morning,” Juliet calls over her shoulder.
She can hear Rachel pouring herself a cup of coffee. “There’re pancakes by the stove,” she adds.
She’s going for nonchalant, casual, the opposite of I got up early this morning and booked a plane to England to find a man who I talked to in a dream last night. And I’m leaving tomorrow.
“I made animal shapes like Mom used to,” she continues.
Rachel walks over to the couch, plate in hand and tousles Julian’s hair before flopping down next to Juliet. Juliet keeps her eyes trained on the talking purple backpack currently occupying the screen, if there’s one thing she’s certain of it’s that her sister can smell bullshit in any world.
Rachel keeps her voice as light as possible to keep from alarming Julian.
“First of all, these are not at all like Mom’s. They’re good, but they’re all shaped like cats. Secondly, you’re up to something. You never get up this early on a non-work day voluntarily. Eat your sad pancakes and then we’re going to have a talk.”
Juliet smiles and nods and tries to think of a non-crazy explanation for her sudden need to travel.
***
“No,” Rachel says flatly.
“I’m going. I need answers and I think Desmond is the only one who can give them to me.”
Rachel places a hand on each of Juliet’s shoulders as if she can make her listen to reason through sheer force of will.
“This man can not give you answers. This man probably doesn’t exist---“
“He does. I checked. He works with the Royal Shakespeare Company in London,” Juliet says. Rachel’s eyes widen for a moment but she quickly hides her shock.
“Juliet,” Rachel tries again, but Juliet shakes her head.
“If I go and he says I’m insane we’ll call it a majority and I will come back here and see a whole fleet of psychiatrists. But if I’m right and he’s going through the same thing I am, then I need to talk to him. Maybe we can help each other, I don’t know. But I have to try.”
Rachel sighs and crosses her arms. She looks exhausted and Juliet can’t help but feel responsible.
“For the sake of argument, let’s say everything you’ve told me is true and all of this is happening to this Desmond guy too, then what happens next?”
Juliet can’t quite meet her sister’s glare.
“Then we figure out a way to go home,” she says.
“Then you leave and never look back, is that what you’re saying? I never see you again? Julian never sees you again? And for what, this Sawyer guy you screwed yesterday? Are you even hearing yourself?”
“I know this is hard to understand. But before three months ago I hadn’t seen you in three years. I had never met Julian. This isn’t just about getting back to James, it’s about getting back to you---“
Rachel laughs angrily. “I’m right here, Jules. Right in front of you.”
Juliet closes her eyes. She can see her sister on a fuzzy monitor pushing Julian in a swing. She’s imagined what it would be like to see her again a thousand times. She never imagined she would stand in front of her sister and tell her she was going to leave and never come back.
“I know it’s not fair. And I know I’m being selfish. But I can’t stay. I’m sorry, but this is not where I’m supposed to be.”
***
The drive back to her apartment feels twice as long as normal. She knows Kevin is waiting for her, that she’s going to have to relay the whole ugly story all over again and she’s almost too tired to face him. She had toyed with the idea of leaving without telling him, of taking the easy way out, but she knew that wasn’t really an option.
She owes him the truth.
She opens the door to the apartment and cautiously calls out, “Kevin?”
The place is quiet. She sighs and heads upstairs to pack, part of her hoping this is him letting her off the hook.
***
It’s mid-afternoon when she hears the door open. Her bag has been packed for hours and she’s been sitting on the couch trying to read while she waited for him to come home.
He looks like she feels, disheveled and uncertain. His left eye is drooping a bit the way it does when he hasn’t slept and there’s stubble dotting his chin. Seeing him like this makes her feel even worse, he would be having a perfectly normal day if only she had been able to keep her mouth shut. He seems shocked to see her there.
“Hey,” she offers.
Kevin doesn’t move from the door.
“You’re back?” he asks and she can hear the tinge of hope in his voice.
She shakes her head and pats the seat next to her.
“I just came to say goodbye.”
He crosses over and sits on the very edge of the cushion as if he’s afraid to touch her. He leans forward and rubs his hands across his face wearily. When he talks he doesn’t look up from the floor.
“Rachel called me last night, told me you were going on about bombs and getting back to some other world.”
“She shouldn’t have told you that.”
Kevin turns to her, eyebrow arched. “Was it true?”
Juliet hesitates for a second and picks at a loose string on the couch to buy herself some time.
“Yes,” she says finally.
“Then I think she made the right call. Juliet, this is fucking insane and it ain’t you darlin. Now you ran out of here last night after dropping a hell of a lot of crazy on me, I think you owe me the truth. Do you really believe everything you told your sister?”
Juliet looks up and makes sure she holds his gaze when she says, “Yes.”
Kevin falls back against the couch and turns his face towards the ceiling and laughs sadly. After a moment he leans forward again and reaches for Juliet’s hand.
“Then we’re going to get you some help.”
Juliet’s on her feet before she knows what’s happening. She’s tired. More than that, she’s angry. At her sister and Kevin for making her explain herself, for not believing her and at herself for creating this awful situation in the first place, for not stopping Jack when she had the chance.
“I am not crazy, Kevin. I am perfectly sane, I promise you that. I know I’m hurting you and I am so sorry. I am so sorry that I can’t be the woman you knew, I’m sorry that I made her go away. But that’s what happened. She’s gone. Now, I’m going to London to find Desmond Hume and if that doesn’t work I’ll find Jack or God help me, Benjamin Linus; I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this because the only thing I am one hundred percent sure about right now is that I can not live this life. Now are you going to let me go or am I going to have to fight you on this?”
Kevin stands and his jaw is clenched. If she’s pissed, then he is about two seconds away from losing it. It scares her a tiny bit because she has never seen this look on his face before. He shakes his head and brushes by her as he heads towards their bedroom without a word.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
He pauses at the door, his hand on the handle.
“To fucking London apparently.”