Following, Part Twenty-Four [R] [Jack/Juliet] [WIP]

[squeakyboots]

 

As Jack pressed forward into the long, dark stretch of land on the other half of the island, he felt the silence shift suddenly into a kind of presence around him. It had snuffed out the sound of the fire behind him long ago, but now it filled his ears until he grew almost disoriented with it: he had to glance back at the dark wreaths of smoke behind him not only to assure himself that the fire was still there, but that the island was.

If Charlotte’s company in the jungle had done one thing for him, it had kept him awake. Now that she was gone, he felt like he had half-slipped back into the dream out which she had drawn him. It felt dreamlike, what he was doing now, moving through the darkness toward a place which he knew didn’t yet exist, able to feel but not to see Juliet in his arms, so that it was as if he was holding onto an invisible weight.

And then there was the other dreamlike sensation which he had picked up, somewhere between the jungle and the clearing-one that he had been unsuccessfully trying to swallow, press down, squeeze out of existence ever since-the feeling that someone was following him.

The worst part of it was that he hadn’t actually seen anything-when he had turned toward the trees, his eyes catching on the sharp, black branches in between, there had been nothing but shadows melting softly behind them.

The worst part was that somehow, he just knew.

Logically, he knew that he should be worried about the Others. The fact that Ben hadn’t executed Juliet had to mean that one of them was still useful to him in some capacity. It would have been easy, after the flash, for Ben to have sent one of the his people through the fire to find Jack and Charlotte, and easier still for whomever Ben had sent to continue following Jack now, slow as he was moving.

Yet none of that logic, no matter how many times he recited it to himself, could change the fact that when he looked down at his own shadow and saw it stretch just a little too far in front of him, all he could think of was his father.

He kept walking, growing tenser, becoming almost angry with himself for the cold sweat that ran down his sides, the hot, filmy feeling that settled in his stomach. His arms locked around Juliet, and it seemed as if even her body was growing tense against him.

That was when he looked down and saw her dark hand curling up into a fist.

~~

Before he knew what was happening, her body had jackknifed in his arms, and then he was falling through the dark, trying desperately to hold onto her as he came down flat on his back in the grass. He could actually hear the air as it rushed out of him, the sharp, choked wheezing sound he made as his fingers gave out and Juliet fell against his torso.

At first, he couldn’t move or speak, staring up at the stars, all his efforts concentrated on sucking in one long, deep breath.

“Jack?” he heard her gasp. A second later, she was leaning over him, her face so dark that for a moment, it seemed like her bright blue eyes were floating above him in midair. But then he felt her hand against his shoulder, dispelling the illusion instantly. “Are you okay?” she blinked down at him worriedly, looking almost as shocked as he felt.

He nodded up at her as soon as he was able, trying to regain his composure, and watched her dark face fill with sympathy, tinged almost imperceptibly with a soft kind of amusement. One of her grey hands was covering her mouth, and it was almost impossible to tell whether it was hiding her surprise or a smile. As soon as she recovered, she bent toward him, rubbing her cheek against his, her hand sliding down over his side caressingly.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured sheepishly, “I thought-I thought you were one of the Others.”

“You-” he answered hoarsely, one of his hands easing up into her smoky hair as he tried to clear his throat, “You couldn’t have opened your eyes to check? You know, before you knocked me down?”

“I didn’t want to give up the element of surprise,” she returned, and this time, he could hear the smile in her voice without needing to see.

“I don’t think there’s any danger of that,” he muttered under his breath, still trying consciously to slow his heart.

She didn’t laugh aloud, but he could feel her body start to shake against his, and he couldn’t help smiling to himself until she let out a sharp gasp of pain, drawing away from him.

“Ouch,” she complained, pulling her hand from his side to touch her own.

“Are you okay?” he sat up instantly, reaching for her shoulder. Her reaction had reminded him suddenly of her condition before she had knocked him down, and he bent close to her to try to see how dilated her pupils were, to check whether she had a concussion. Yet almost as soon as he looked into her eyes, he forgot what he was doing.

“You were-” he took her face in his hands, “You were unconscious,” he said, as if he needed to remind himself as well as her, “When we found you-Juliet, you were passed out on the jungle floor; your ankle’s broken. What happened up there? After they took you, I-I thought-”

“So did I,” she froze, her smile wavering, and for a second, he felt like they were back in the cell, looking at each other through the bars.

Impulsively, he bent toward her, bringing his mouth nearer to hers, pausing to look at her when their faces were close enough to touch. It had been three days since he’d last kissed her, he realized suddenly: that was longer than they had been together in the first place.

“Jack,” she breathed against his cheek almost nervously, her fingers gripping the collar of his t-shirt, just before he turned slightly to brush his mouth against hers.

Her lips tasted like blood and smoke, but he didn’t care: he kissed her until he got past them and then it was as if he had found her again, her tongue and teeth and the soft inside of her mouth, and his hand moved to the back of her neck to pull her even closer as if it was impossible to be near enough.

When she started to breathe with difficulty, he broke away, nearly breathless himself.

“Sorry-You okay?” he asked, feeling flushed, reaching out gently to push some of her dark hair behind her ear, a little embarrassed by his own urgency.

“Yeah,” she smiled up at him shyly, moving closer to put her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder. He rested his hands over her back, trying not to hold her too tightly while she caught her breath.

“They didn’t take me anywhere,” she explained  against his ear after a moment, as if he had just asked the question, “I mean, it was just an empty cell, like the one we were in before. I didn’t know what they were going to do to me. I heard some of them speaking in Latin, and I understood-I mean, I understood the words, but what they were saying didn’t make any sense-” she trailed off as if she was still going over the information in her head.

“And that’s the only thing that happened to you before-the flash?” He felt her nod against the crook of his neck as he moved his hands over her back. “So if the Others didn’t do anything to you, how did you get hurt?”

“Remember when Daniel warned us about staying on ground floors, in case we flashed?”

“Yeah. You were-Oh-You fell?”

“Luckily I had a flaming tree to break my fall,” she smiled, pulling away slightly to look at him. Then she sighed, her expression growing puzzled. “What I still can’t figure out is why Ben never expected  this to happen--for the Temple to disappear. I mean-he acted like it was secure, like it was the one safe place to be during the flashes. Do you think it’s possible-do you think he doesn't actually know when it was built-?” She looked around them for a moment before turning back to him curiously, “When are we anyway?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted, looking briefly up at the stars as if they might give him the answers, “All I know is that there’s a huge fire covering the whole area where the Temple used to be. We heard-There were some explosions before in the jungle that might’ve caused it. Charlotte said something about gunpowder, but I wasn’t really-”

“Charlotte?” Juliet perked up suddenly, “You saw her? Did she get away from the Others? Is she okay?”

“Yeah: she-she didn’t look like Ben had done her any favors, but she was still walking around when I last saw her. She woke me up after the flash: She helped me find you.”

“Where is she now?”

“She went back to the caves, to look for Daniel. She wants to help him do the-uh, the reading. She said they’d try to meet us here when they finished.”

“Here?” She raised her eyebrows, looking over his shoulder at the dark, nondescript landscape around them, “Where’s here?”

He raised one hand to rub the back of his neck, turning to follow Juliet’s gaze.

“It’s your camp-I mean, the Others’ camp-or it’s going to be, eventually, anyway.” His eyes followed the slope of jungle to the place where it met broad, level ground and then he tilted his head in the same direction, “See? Just over there-that was where the playground was, right?”

She looked at the clearing as if she was seeing it for the first time.

“Yeah,” she breathed, forgetting to close her mouth as she finished, and it seemed as though she was staring at stars or something else that was immeasurably far away, “I can't believe I didn’t recognize it. I-I’ve lived here for so long: it seems impossible that there was a time when-when those yellow houses weren’t there.” He could feel her shiver slightly as she turned toward him, her eyes only half focused on him, as if she was seeing through him. “Jack, do you-Do you think this island was ever just an island? I mean, a time when there was nobody here-nobody being kept  here-” Her face was working with an emotion that it was difficult for him to identify.

“I-” he began without knowing how he was going to finish, but it didn’t matter: Before he could even finish the word, a figure emerged audibly from the trees.

At first, Jack felt almost paralyzed with fear, the image of his father flashing on him like a dark spot in his vision. Then he heard Juliet’s voice, drawing him back to himself.

“Richard?” she sounded astonished, as though she couldn’t quite believe it herself, but as the man moved toward them slowly into the light, Jack’s vision seemed to clear, and he could see that she had been right. The figure’s identity was unmistakable, and yet, there was something different about him that made him almost unrecognizable as the man they knew. He had been blackened by the smoke so that it was difficult to see him, but the difference was more than that: underneath the smoke, he was moving differently, stiltedly, as though he was not at home on the island, as though he didn’t know where he was.

"¿qu-quién-?"

Even if Jack hadn’t been able understood the word, he couldn’t have failed to understand its meaning: Richard’s eyes had opened wider than Jack had ever seen anyone's eyes open, shuttling back and forth between him and Juliet as if he was seeing something he had never seen before. His whole body seemed to shake, to tremble in the darkness so that when he reached behind his back, the motion was nearly unnoticeable. Jack didn’t see the pistol until it was in the air, pointed toward him and Juliet.

“Richard, it’s us!” Juliet breathed in shock, “It’s me: Juliet. Don’t you remember-”

“Juliet, he doesn’t-” Jack reached across her quickly, trying to keep her behind him, but as soon as he moved his hand, Richard cried out as though he had been struck. When Jack looked up at the sound, he could see what had caused the reaction-Richard was staring at the handcuff dangling from Jack’s wrist, his face convulsed with terror.

Everything began to move slowly as their eyes met. Instead of moving forward purposefully, Richard seemed to be as surprised by the sound of the gunshot as any of them, as if the trigger had pulled shut of its own accord. The sky lit up for an instant and then Richard was stumbling backward, landing on the ground as the black smoke from the shot bloomed around him and then disappeared.

Jack barely had time to comprehend the fact that Richard’s shot must have missed before the sky opened, filling suddenly with light. Jack barely got a last glimpse of him sitting on the ground, staring at them, open-mouthed, before the swing set seemed to grow up in the man’s place, the Others' camp appearing a moment later behind it.

When he had recovered enough to move, Jack turned toward Juliet, whose expression was a mirror of his own. She seemed as incapable of speech as he was, and they just watched each other for a minute in the faint, growing glow of dawn, trying to catch their breath.

When Jack finally looked back toward the trees, he had to admit to himself that he found the sight of the yellow houses comforting.

~~
Part Twenty-Five