Lost Fic: These Things Never Happened (Juliet)
Title: These Things Never Happened
Character/Pairing: Juliet, ensemble. (Juliet/Esau, Juliet/Jack, and Juliet/Sawyer.)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2,460
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Warnings: Spoilers for everything. Character death.
Summary: Six things that never happened to Juliet Burke.
A/N: Written for angela_weber who gave me Juliet for the five things meme. There’s six because I can’t make choices.
i. Here I am thinking that free will still actually exists on this...
He came to her when she was at her lowest point, her head bent by her sister’s bed, the smell of death already creeping into the room.
I can make her better.
Juliet is not a believer, but in that moment she wanted to believe. Jacob keeps his promise, but it comes at a cost.
She has been on the island for a century.
A plane crashed. Ships came. People died and lived and everything has changed except Juliet. She is Jacob’s liaison, a messenger and nothing more.
Her life is unending, stretching out before her into nothing. She believes there is no point to any of it.
(Everything matters, Juliet, Jacob insists.)
Esau tries to tempt her, succeeds sometimes.
She fucks him in the jungle, her back pressed against a tree, she always comes away scratched and bloody.
Sometimes he looks like himself, other times like Jack or James, men from the plane, the ones that promised to save her as if that wasn’t an impossible thing, sometimes he looks like someone else entirely, someone she doesn’t even know.
It doesn’t matter.
The immortal and the monster, it would make her laugh if it wasn’t so horrible.
Esau wants her to join him, always promises escape. A better world, a better life.
Juliet says no.
Rachel is long gone by now, dead and buried, her grave crumbling with age, but Juliet gave Jacob her word and her word is all she has left.
But her loyalty is not without limits.
She tries not to question Jacob, to ask why he brings so many people here knowing they’re all going to die, to ask why he never intercedes, why he won’t let her go.
But sometimes when she’s kneeling next to another body, bloody and broken, she asks.
Jacob answers only once.
He tells her of a light at the heart of the island that must never go out. He tells her it’s the source of all things, that man can not contain it or know it, that they will only corrupt and destroy. Juliet listens, all the while biting her tongue to keep herself from calling him a fool.
She was right all along. Nothing matters.
Later she slips away to the cave, climbs down the rickety ladder without fear and marks her own name off the wall.
ii. I've been trying to get off of this island for more than three years, and now I've got my chance. I'm going to leave.
He pushed her out of the way.
Two weeks later and she can’t stop replaying the scene over in her head, can’t stop seeing his face as he fell or hearing his voice, his last thoughts, It worked like some distant echo taunting her.
It didn’t work. He died for nothing (he died for her.)
She’s still on the island and they’re all watching her as if she’s going to snap at any moment. She thinks she might. There’s this rage inside her, this anger building with nowhere to go.
It’s her fault.
She should have believed in him enough to trust him, she should have stopped Jack. James should be here with her. They should be going home together.
That’s why he hit the bomb, so she could have a second chance.
Her hands shake as she tinkers with the loose wires of the plane’s engine. She can feel Miles hovering beside her so she forces herself to give him a tight smile.
“You can fix it?” he asks.
Juliet nods, reassuring herself as much as him.
“I can fix it.”
She wraps the duct tape around the mess of wires and wills it to hold.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she says.
As the plane lifts off she closes her eyes and imagines Rachel’s face in her head and tries her best to forget why the seat beside her is so damn empty.
iii. If I told you everything I know, they'd kill me.
She runs and the arrow pierces her arm.
The pain is searing, worse than anything she’s ever known. She blacks out.
She wakes up on a hard, concrete floor to find three men and one angry woman hovering around her. One of them (Jack, he says) apologizes as he pulls the arrow out. She doesn’t bother to try not to scream.
She wonders if she made a mistake volunteering to come in Ben’s place. She never thought he would agree, but maybe he’s finally growing tired of her. She hopes he is.
She knows this is her last chance, the first real one she’s had in a very long time.
She can deliver the doctor to Ben and he’ll let her go.
Or she can work with these people and fuck Ben over once and for all.
Either way, if she plays this game well she can win.
The one who found her is the first to ask.
“Who are you?”
His dark, brown eyes seem to be looking through her.
Juliet takes deep, gulping breaths of air, tries to remember the lie through the pain.
“Emily Gale,” she mutters. “My name is Emily Gale.”
iv.It was nice. But it wasn't for me. It was for him. I'm pretty sure he was trying to prove something.
Jack tells her he loves her one year after (and three decades before) his plane crashed.
They’re curled against each other, the early morning light filtering through their window signaling another work day is about to begin.
He mutters the words against her neck and he sounds almost sheepish.
Two years later after the others have returned, just as everything is falling apart, she finally believes him.
He climbs into bed beside her, his hand coming to rest on the ever growing swell of her stomach. She’s pretending she’s asleep.
She’s been watching him watching Kate all day. She knows Sawyer was doing the same, she could see the wounds there. He must have lost Kate somehow; he’s probably spent the last three years thinking he wasn’t enough. She knows because she’s been thinking the same thing about Jack.
It makes her angry more than it makes her sad. She could have left this island, but she stayed for Jack because she thought Jack had stayed for her.
“I know you’re not asleep,” he says.
Juliet winces and opens her eyes.
“How’d your talk with Sawyer go?”
Jack laughs, shakes his head.
“Badly. Three years didn’t mellow Sawyer any. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
She feels the baby doing somersaults inside of her and she silently curses herself for letting this happen.
She should have known better, this was always going to end. But she wants this baby. She wants to see it smile and laugh and grow. She wants to know if it will have Jack’s eyes or her nose.
Even now when she can feel everything else slipping away, she still wants this.
Jack sighs and rests his head against her stomach. Despite herself, she runs her fingers through his hair. She loves him. Always has.
“We’re going to be okay,” he says, his voice suddenly serious. “Me, you, and David. No matter what else happens, I’m going to take care of us. Maybe I’ll even finally get you home.”
Jack scoots up until they’re face to face and Juliet runs a finger down the bridge of his nose, trails it over his lips. She can feel the doubt that’s been gnawing at her for so long finally falling away.
She knows Jack. She knows he’s stubborn, arrogant, and loyal to a fault. She knows he tells horrible jokes and that the corners of his eyes crinkle when he laughs. She knows he loved Kate Austen once upon a time.
And right now she knows he loves her and this strange little life they’ve built for themselves. She knows he’s just as afraid of losing it as she is.
Juliet lets out a shaky breath.
“David, huh?”
Jack grins.
“Yeah,” he says.
“How can you be so sure?”
Jack shrugs, wraps an arm around her waist.
“I just am.”
v.What lies in the shadow of the statue?
She listens carefully to Daniel’s plan, all the while watching Jack’s face. This room is full of desperate people, she knows because she’s desperate herself. She doesn’t want to lose anything else, she’s not sure if she can take it if she does.
But desperation makes people stupid. It makes them do things that will only end badly.
So she waits until Daniel’s speech is over, until she’s heard every last, insane detail and then she stands up.
“We’re not doing this, Daniel.”
“It’ll work,” he insists. “I’ve done the math; this is…all I’ve done for three years. I can fix everything.”
“Daniel,” Juliet says softly. “You can’t. No matter what you do, you can’t bring Charlotte back. Whatever happens at the Swan site always happens. That’s what you told us, remember? That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Jack clears his throat.
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be,” he says.
Juliet glances at James and she doesn’t have to say a word, she knows he understands. Jack won’t listen to reason; they both know him well enough to realize that.
James raises the rifle by his side and points it at Jack.
“Sorry Doc, there’s no such thing as do-overs.”
Jack laughs in disbelief.
“Sawyer,” Kate warns, but he cuts her off with a shake of his head.
“You going to shoot me, Sawyer?”
James looks grim.
“Only if you make me.”
The room seems so quiet suddenly. Juliet hopes she hasn’t made a mistake, knows it’s too late to worry about that now. James turns to Juliet and smiles reassuringly. It makes her heart ache; she might lose him, she knows that, but she won’t ever regret loving this man.
“Well Blondie, what’s our next move?”
“We disappear. We can go to the beach or maybe hijack a boat, take it to Hydra Island. Whatever we do, we need to put as much distance between us and the Swan as possible. Whatever happens there…I know it’s not good.”
James looks at the group.
“That work for the rest of you?”
Miles is the first to speak, already strapping his pack on.
“Sure Boss, anything that doesn’t end in us exploding sounds awesome to me.”
Daniel is staring at Juliet, his shoulders slumped in defeat.
“This might be my only chance to make things right,” he says quietly.
Juliet crosses the room and cups the side of Daniel’s face in her hand.
“Trust me, Daniel. Detonating a hydrogen bomb is only going to make things worse. Sometimes…sometimes we just have to let go.”
Daniel nods reluctantly.
“Alright then,” James says. “Let’s get moving.”
They’re halfway to the beach when the ground begins to shake and Juliet feels an old familiar pressure building in her head.
“Son of a…”
James’s voice is swallowed up along with the rest of the world in a blinding white light.
Juliet wakes up face down in the sand; she sits up slowly and finds herself staring at a fully grown, blood splattered Ben. He blinks in confusion.
“Juliet?” he asks.
Juliet carefully pushes herself to her feet and looks around, James is right beside her looking every bit as baffled as she is, Kate and Daniel and the rest are nearby and then she spots Jack lying next to the statue, his body shrouded in shadows.
They were miles from this place.
“How did we get here?” she asks.
James shrugs and takes her hand, eyeing Ben warily.
“Don’t know, but it sure don’t look like home sweet home, does it?”
vi.You still got my back?/Absolutely.
The moment the plane shudders and breaks, Juliet thinks, Rachel’s going to be waiting at the airport.
It’s such a stupid thought. She’s going to die, but she’s worried about her sister wasting a drive to the airport. Or maybe she’s worried about how long she would have to wait before someone told her the plane went down and her little sister was dead.
Juliet doesn’t have time to sort it out before the plane smashes to earth.
She blinks slowly and then grimaces. There’s blood dripping down her forehead and the man next to her, the mouthy, southerner who had spent the better part of the flight flirting with her, is pressed painfully against her side.
Juliet coughs and covers her mouth against the smoke, tries her best to drown out the screams around her. She has to get out of this plane.
The man feels like dead weight against her, she closes her eyes for a moment and silently prays he still has a pulse. She presses her fingers against his neck and feels the steady flutter of his heart. He’s just unconscious.
She reaches down and unfastens her seat belt and then reaches across the man’s lap and unbuckles his as well. He groans and blinks up at her bleary-eyed.
“Getting kind of handsy for a first date, Blondie,” he mutters.
Juliet arches an eyebrow at her seat mate and stands up shakily, cursing herself for wearing heels. She reaches out a hand and pulls him to his feet; he rests his weight against her begrudgingly.
“I can walk just fine,” he snarls.
Juliet resists the urge to roll her eyes.
“Just shut up and let me help you out of here, okay?”
“Bossy, I like it.”
Juliet ignores him and tries not to think about how many of the passengers around them won’t ever be leaving their seats.
The two of them stumble out of the wreckage into the chaos outside. The light is blinding, they seem to be on an island. Juliet wonders if it’s too much to hope for that it’s one with a healthy population.
A scream, louder and more desperate than the others cuts through the air and Juliet turns to find the source is a pregnant woman, kneeling in the sand a few feet away. Juliet glances from the man leaning against her to the girl and knows what she has to do.
“I have to go, are you going to be okay?” Juliet asks.
The man pulls away from her, he looks a little wobbly, but he’s standing on his own.
“Just peachy, Blondie.”
“Okay…I’ll find you later…” she trails off. Figures, hours of flirting and he hadn’t bothered giving her his name.
“Sawyer,” he says.
She nods quickly, already stumbling through the sand towards the pregnant girl.
“Hey, you got a name?” he calls after her.
Even with the world coming apart around her, Juliet can’t help but laugh.
“Thought it was Blondie,” she shouts over her shoulder.
Character/Pairing: Juliet, ensemble. (Juliet/Esau, Juliet/Jack, and Juliet/Sawyer.)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2,460
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Warnings: Spoilers for everything. Character death.
Summary: Six things that never happened to Juliet Burke.
A/N: Written for angela_weber who gave me Juliet for the five things meme. There’s six because I can’t make choices.
i. Here I am thinking that free will still actually exists on this...
He came to her when she was at her lowest point, her head bent by her sister’s bed, the smell of death already creeping into the room.
I can make her better.
Juliet is not a believer, but in that moment she wanted to believe. Jacob keeps his promise, but it comes at a cost.
She has been on the island for a century.
A plane crashed. Ships came. People died and lived and everything has changed except Juliet. She is Jacob’s liaison, a messenger and nothing more.
Her life is unending, stretching out before her into nothing. She believes there is no point to any of it.
(Everything matters, Juliet, Jacob insists.)
Esau tries to tempt her, succeeds sometimes.
She fucks him in the jungle, her back pressed against a tree, she always comes away scratched and bloody.
Sometimes he looks like himself, other times like Jack or James, men from the plane, the ones that promised to save her as if that wasn’t an impossible thing, sometimes he looks like someone else entirely, someone she doesn’t even know.
It doesn’t matter.
The immortal and the monster, it would make her laugh if it wasn’t so horrible.
Esau wants her to join him, always promises escape. A better world, a better life.
Juliet says no.
Rachel is long gone by now, dead and buried, her grave crumbling with age, but Juliet gave Jacob her word and her word is all she has left.
But her loyalty is not without limits.
She tries not to question Jacob, to ask why he brings so many people here knowing they’re all going to die, to ask why he never intercedes, why he won’t let her go.
But sometimes when she’s kneeling next to another body, bloody and broken, she asks.
Jacob answers only once.
He tells her of a light at the heart of the island that must never go out. He tells her it’s the source of all things, that man can not contain it or know it, that they will only corrupt and destroy. Juliet listens, all the while biting her tongue to keep herself from calling him a fool.
She was right all along. Nothing matters.
Later she slips away to the cave, climbs down the rickety ladder without fear and marks her own name off the wall.
ii. I've been trying to get off of this island for more than three years, and now I've got my chance. I'm going to leave.
He pushed her out of the way.
Two weeks later and she can’t stop replaying the scene over in her head, can’t stop seeing his face as he fell or hearing his voice, his last thoughts, It worked like some distant echo taunting her.
It didn’t work. He died for nothing (he died for her.)
She’s still on the island and they’re all watching her as if she’s going to snap at any moment. She thinks she might. There’s this rage inside her, this anger building with nowhere to go.
It’s her fault.
She should have believed in him enough to trust him, she should have stopped Jack. James should be here with her. They should be going home together.
That’s why he hit the bomb, so she could have a second chance.
Her hands shake as she tinkers with the loose wires of the plane’s engine. She can feel Miles hovering beside her so she forces herself to give him a tight smile.
“You can fix it?” he asks.
Juliet nods, reassuring herself as much as him.
“I can fix it.”
She wraps the duct tape around the mess of wires and wills it to hold.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she says.
As the plane lifts off she closes her eyes and imagines Rachel’s face in her head and tries her best to forget why the seat beside her is so damn empty.
iii. If I told you everything I know, they'd kill me.
She runs and the arrow pierces her arm.
The pain is searing, worse than anything she’s ever known. She blacks out.
She wakes up on a hard, concrete floor to find three men and one angry woman hovering around her. One of them (Jack, he says) apologizes as he pulls the arrow out. She doesn’t bother to try not to scream.
She wonders if she made a mistake volunteering to come in Ben’s place. She never thought he would agree, but maybe he’s finally growing tired of her. She hopes he is.
She knows this is her last chance, the first real one she’s had in a very long time.
She can deliver the doctor to Ben and he’ll let her go.
Or she can work with these people and fuck Ben over once and for all.
Either way, if she plays this game well she can win.
The one who found her is the first to ask.
“Who are you?”
His dark, brown eyes seem to be looking through her.
Juliet takes deep, gulping breaths of air, tries to remember the lie through the pain.
“Emily Gale,” she mutters. “My name is Emily Gale.”
iv.It was nice. But it wasn't for me. It was for him. I'm pretty sure he was trying to prove something.
Jack tells her he loves her one year after (and three decades before) his plane crashed.
They’re curled against each other, the early morning light filtering through their window signaling another work day is about to begin.
He mutters the words against her neck and he sounds almost sheepish.
Two years later after the others have returned, just as everything is falling apart, she finally believes him.
He climbs into bed beside her, his hand coming to rest on the ever growing swell of her stomach. She’s pretending she’s asleep.
She’s been watching him watching Kate all day. She knows Sawyer was doing the same, she could see the wounds there. He must have lost Kate somehow; he’s probably spent the last three years thinking he wasn’t enough. She knows because she’s been thinking the same thing about Jack.
It makes her angry more than it makes her sad. She could have left this island, but she stayed for Jack because she thought Jack had stayed for her.
“I know you’re not asleep,” he says.
Juliet winces and opens her eyes.
“How’d your talk with Sawyer go?”
Jack laughs, shakes his head.
“Badly. Three years didn’t mellow Sawyer any. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
She feels the baby doing somersaults inside of her and she silently curses herself for letting this happen.
She should have known better, this was always going to end. But she wants this baby. She wants to see it smile and laugh and grow. She wants to know if it will have Jack’s eyes or her nose.
Even now when she can feel everything else slipping away, she still wants this.
Jack sighs and rests his head against her stomach. Despite herself, she runs her fingers through his hair. She loves him. Always has.
“We’re going to be okay,” he says, his voice suddenly serious. “Me, you, and David. No matter what else happens, I’m going to take care of us. Maybe I’ll even finally get you home.”
Jack scoots up until they’re face to face and Juliet runs a finger down the bridge of his nose, trails it over his lips. She can feel the doubt that’s been gnawing at her for so long finally falling away.
She knows Jack. She knows he’s stubborn, arrogant, and loyal to a fault. She knows he tells horrible jokes and that the corners of his eyes crinkle when he laughs. She knows he loved Kate Austen once upon a time.
And right now she knows he loves her and this strange little life they’ve built for themselves. She knows he’s just as afraid of losing it as she is.
Juliet lets out a shaky breath.
“David, huh?”
Jack grins.
“Yeah,” he says.
“How can you be so sure?”
Jack shrugs, wraps an arm around her waist.
“I just am.”
v.What lies in the shadow of the statue?
She listens carefully to Daniel’s plan, all the while watching Jack’s face. This room is full of desperate people, she knows because she’s desperate herself. She doesn’t want to lose anything else, she’s not sure if she can take it if she does.
But desperation makes people stupid. It makes them do things that will only end badly.
So she waits until Daniel’s speech is over, until she’s heard every last, insane detail and then she stands up.
“We’re not doing this, Daniel.”
“It’ll work,” he insists. “I’ve done the math; this is…all I’ve done for three years. I can fix everything.”
“Daniel,” Juliet says softly. “You can’t. No matter what you do, you can’t bring Charlotte back. Whatever happens at the Swan site always happens. That’s what you told us, remember? That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Jack clears his throat.
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be,” he says.
Juliet glances at James and she doesn’t have to say a word, she knows he understands. Jack won’t listen to reason; they both know him well enough to realize that.
James raises the rifle by his side and points it at Jack.
“Sorry Doc, there’s no such thing as do-overs.”
Jack laughs in disbelief.
“Sawyer,” Kate warns, but he cuts her off with a shake of his head.
“You going to shoot me, Sawyer?”
James looks grim.
“Only if you make me.”
The room seems so quiet suddenly. Juliet hopes she hasn’t made a mistake, knows it’s too late to worry about that now. James turns to Juliet and smiles reassuringly. It makes her heart ache; she might lose him, she knows that, but she won’t ever regret loving this man.
“Well Blondie, what’s our next move?”
“We disappear. We can go to the beach or maybe hijack a boat, take it to Hydra Island. Whatever we do, we need to put as much distance between us and the Swan as possible. Whatever happens there…I know it’s not good.”
James looks at the group.
“That work for the rest of you?”
Miles is the first to speak, already strapping his pack on.
“Sure Boss, anything that doesn’t end in us exploding sounds awesome to me.”
Daniel is staring at Juliet, his shoulders slumped in defeat.
“This might be my only chance to make things right,” he says quietly.
Juliet crosses the room and cups the side of Daniel’s face in her hand.
“Trust me, Daniel. Detonating a hydrogen bomb is only going to make things worse. Sometimes…sometimes we just have to let go.”
Daniel nods reluctantly.
“Alright then,” James says. “Let’s get moving.”
They’re halfway to the beach when the ground begins to shake and Juliet feels an old familiar pressure building in her head.
“Son of a…”
James’s voice is swallowed up along with the rest of the world in a blinding white light.
Juliet wakes up face down in the sand; she sits up slowly and finds herself staring at a fully grown, blood splattered Ben. He blinks in confusion.
“Juliet?” he asks.
Juliet carefully pushes herself to her feet and looks around, James is right beside her looking every bit as baffled as she is, Kate and Daniel and the rest are nearby and then she spots Jack lying next to the statue, his body shrouded in shadows.
They were miles from this place.
“How did we get here?” she asks.
James shrugs and takes her hand, eyeing Ben warily.
“Don’t know, but it sure don’t look like home sweet home, does it?”
vi.You still got my back?/Absolutely.
The moment the plane shudders and breaks, Juliet thinks, Rachel’s going to be waiting at the airport.
It’s such a stupid thought. She’s going to die, but she’s worried about her sister wasting a drive to the airport. Or maybe she’s worried about how long she would have to wait before someone told her the plane went down and her little sister was dead.
Juliet doesn’t have time to sort it out before the plane smashes to earth.
She blinks slowly and then grimaces. There’s blood dripping down her forehead and the man next to her, the mouthy, southerner who had spent the better part of the flight flirting with her, is pressed painfully against her side.
Juliet coughs and covers her mouth against the smoke, tries her best to drown out the screams around her. She has to get out of this plane.
The man feels like dead weight against her, she closes her eyes for a moment and silently prays he still has a pulse. She presses her fingers against his neck and feels the steady flutter of his heart. He’s just unconscious.
She reaches down and unfastens her seat belt and then reaches across the man’s lap and unbuckles his as well. He groans and blinks up at her bleary-eyed.
“Getting kind of handsy for a first date, Blondie,” he mutters.
Juliet arches an eyebrow at her seat mate and stands up shakily, cursing herself for wearing heels. She reaches out a hand and pulls him to his feet; he rests his weight against her begrudgingly.
“I can walk just fine,” he snarls.
Juliet resists the urge to roll her eyes.
“Just shut up and let me help you out of here, okay?”
“Bossy, I like it.”
Juliet ignores him and tries not to think about how many of the passengers around them won’t ever be leaving their seats.
The two of them stumble out of the wreckage into the chaos outside. The light is blinding, they seem to be on an island. Juliet wonders if it’s too much to hope for that it’s one with a healthy population.
A scream, louder and more desperate than the others cuts through the air and Juliet turns to find the source is a pregnant woman, kneeling in the sand a few feet away. Juliet glances from the man leaning against her to the girl and knows what she has to do.
“I have to go, are you going to be okay?” Juliet asks.
The man pulls away from her, he looks a little wobbly, but he’s standing on his own.
“Just peachy, Blondie.”
“Okay…I’ll find you later…” she trails off. Figures, hours of flirting and he hadn’t bothered giving her his name.
“Sawyer,” he says.
She nods quickly, already stumbling through the sand towards the pregnant girl.
“Hey, you got a name?” he calls after her.
Even with the world coming apart around her, Juliet can’t help but laugh.
“Thought it was Blondie,” she shouts over her shoulder.