Window [Jack/Juliet, Charlotte/Daniel, Miles, Claire] [PG-13]
Title: Window
Characters: Jack, Juliet, Charlotte, Daniel, Miles, Claire + Everyone's Favorite Surprise Guest
Pairing: Jack/Juliet, Charlotte/Daniel
Rating: PG-13 (language and sexytimes)
Spoilers: Season 5 AU (Jack jumps, Charlotte lives, Juliet gets pregnant, they eventually decide to leave the island during the 1970s)
Summary: After some difficulties in their respective relationships, Charlotte and Juliet decide to host a drinking contest. Meanwhile, Miles deals with a request from a particularly persistent ghost.
A/N: AHHH! I'm so excited about this fic, which is partly thanks to valhalla37 , who suggested that I go back in time and narrate the Dharma drinking contest (involving Juliet and Charlotte) mentioned in Straight Line. This is another part of the "Jack jumps" series for nighttiming1022 (I <3 you and I will finish this eventually I SWEAR). I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did writing. As usual all suggestions solicited and welcomed!
~~
“I don’t really think that this is the best idea, Charlotte.”
“The research team challenged us. I never back down from a challenge, Daniel.”
“But I’m leaving tomorrow. I was kind of hoping-”
“Why is it, again, that you’re leaving tomorrow? You never made that quite clear.”
“Because the researchers at the base said this is the best time. The tide-there’s a window. It only lasts for a few days-”
“Which means you could be leaving next week. Daniel, you’re practically the leader of that team: you’ve become so important to them that if you told them you weren’t going until Monday, they’d have to wait for you-”
“But then we’d just be doing this on Sunday instead of today. It’d only give us a few extra days.”
“Right. A few days, which are totally insignificant in the larger scheme of things. So why bother with anything? If you think on a large enough scale, our whole relationship is just a speck of dust in the wind,” she says, brushing her hands together as if to rid herself of the troublesome particle.
“Charlotte,” he tries, but he’s still not very good at this. Everything between them is too new, too unstable, and he knows that even on his best days, his strength has never been making people understand.
“What’s the difference?” she waves to Juliet, who is making her way across the lawn, “Whatever happened, happened, right? I still don't know exactly what that means, but I reckon it means you’re not going to be able to talk me out of it.”
~~
They’re a few sheets to the wind-Charlotte isn’t sure how many, because she lost count at least ten minutes ago-when Juliet tries to start a conversation. People around them are cheering and shouting, and at first, Charlotte isn’t even sure where the noise is coming from: she’s too busy focusing on Alice Mason at the table across from them, because she has decided, quite arbitrarily, that the window is utterly and completely Alice Mason’s fault. But then Juliet leans in closer (and Charlotte experiences the disorienting feeling of not knowing whether the alcohol-saturated breath is hers or Juliet’s) and then the sound is unmistakable.
“Jack asked me to marry him.” Juliet slurs the words a little, but her command of the English language at this stage is still impressive.
“What?”
“This morning: before he went out to Hydra Island, he proposed.”
Charlotte's face crinkles up-she can’t really control her reactions at this point.
“Don’t tell me that’s why you’re doing this? I thought you wanted to beat Ali-the research team.” She scowls before her curiosity gets the better of her, “So you said ‘no’? Is that why he left?”
“I didn’t say ‘no’. I just told him I needed a little time,” Juliet slams back a shot.
“You what?”
“He said he would wait.”
“Jack said he would wait,” Charlotte repeats as if she’s trying to get a handle on the concept. Then she takes another shot, thinking it might help her ability to understand.
“Well he didn’t say he was going to enjoy it.”
“So what exactly is it you’re waiting for? A sign?”
“Charlotte, when I mentioned to you that we were sleeping together, you told me there was no need to rush things.” Juliet’s clearly not drunk enough, still at the stage where she can recognize blatant contradictions. Charlotte’s at the point where everything is starting to look a little less blatant.
“But if 'whatever happened, happened,' Charlotte asks confusedly, “is it even possible to rush things?”
“I don’t know if that’s exactly how ‘whatever happened, happened,' works.” Sarcasm. Right. And normally she would respond in kind, but at this point, sarcasm is a little beyond her, so she opts for sincerity instead.
“He loves you.”
“I don’t know-” she looks a little doubtful, “he says-”
“He loves you, Juliet. Trust me.”
“But it’s only been a little more than a year since we got together. With my ex-husband, I- How can he be sure it’s going to last?”
“He can’t: Isn’t that the whole point? He has to take his shot while he has it, not knowing-and so do you. It’s like-a window,” She begins eloquently, holding onto the table, “A metaphorical-” Then Alice Mason collapses across the bar, and Charlotte loses her train of thought. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” She takes a small bow, holding her hand against her heaving stomach even after she straightens up, “I think I’m headed for mine.”
~~
“Jesus Christ, are you still here?” Miles folds his arms over his eyes, ready at any moment to start rocking back and forth.
“Son, I died from alcohol poisoning. Trying to drink me away may not be the smartest idea you've ever had.”
“Who says I’m trying to drink you away? Maybe I need all this vodka just to put up with you. I think I’m finally starting to understand Jack’s alcoholic tendencies.”
“Sticks and stones, Miles-sticks and stones.”
“Yeah. I tried those already, remember? What are you still doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you be haunting your real son?”
“Jack doesn’t see me anymore. He doesn’t want to: he doesn’t believe I'm real. It doesn’t matter how close I stand, how loudly I speak-”
“What, and lecturing your kid about all the ways he’s failed in life just doesn’t have the same appeal if he can’t hear you?”
“If you’d just tell him what I’ve been saying…”
“Uh uh,” Miles puts his hands out in front of him as if the idea is an object that he can push away, “No way. If I tell him that I can see you all the time, I’ll have both of you haunting me. And that is not something that I am prepared to handle.” He sighs. “Can’t you just be a normal dead father for a few days? Just like, I don’t know, show some concern for your son’s interests, follow him around a little? He’s a doctor like you were, right? So why don’t you go watch him bandage people up?”
“I don’t have time to sit around and watch him, Miles, because I have to make sure what needs to get done gets done.”
“And you can’t figure out how to get Jack to do it? You’re a ghost: you’re supposed to be good at manipulating people. Why don’t you go find him and-”
“Jack can’t do it: he’s not on the island.”
“No, he’s on Hydra Island. It’s really pretty easy to get to: if you want, I can even point you in the right direction.”
“That’s across the water.”
“Yeah, like I said, it’s an IS-LAND. And that shouldn’t be a problem for you: can’t you just ‘poof’ your way over there?”
“For somebody who talks to the dead, you have a lot to learn about the afterlife.” Christian crosses his arms and shakes his head, “No, what I want right now, as I said, is not something that Jack can do for me. It has to be you: you’re in the right place. The right time and the right place: it can’t be anyone else.”
“Does this-” he swallows suddenly, his eyes going wide, “Does this have something to do with Claire?”
The ghost tilts his head.
“That depends: are you going to listen to me this time, when I tell you what to do?”
“Hang on,” Miles grimaces, holding up one finger, “I think I need one more of these.” He takes another swig from the bottle, “Okay: hit me.”
~~
“Juliet? Hey. Are you okay? Are you-?”
“Mmm,” she murmurs, naked arms reaching out from beneath the comforter to curl around the back of his neck as he leans down over her, “Hmm…you smell good.”
“Juliet, I’ve been treating injuries all night: I haven’t showered since yesterday afternoon.” He looks around at the broken bottles and half empty cups surrounding them, the jacket hanging off the ceiling fan, “But in comparison to everything else around here, I probably don't smell half bad. Did you know that Cindy’s on the front lawn?”
“What-815 Cindy?” Juliet sighs and shakes her head. “The Others crashed the party? Well, I guess this proves once and for all who has the better booze.”
“Is that what this is supposed to be?” he gestures at the piece of spaghetti sauce stuck to the wall. “A party?”
“No, Jack: it was the National Assembly. Things did get a little out of hand this year, I’ll admit.”
“I go away for one night-and you decide to throw a party?”
“This had nothing to do with you. It was-the research team. They issued us a challenge- I couldn’t let the security team back down-it was a matter of honor.”
“Those two people in our bathtub-they’re the research team?”
She nods.
“Yeah,” he begins, rubbing at the back of his neck, “they looked pretty honorable, sleeping in their own-” Before he can finish the sentence, she tugs him onto the bed, knocking him off balance. She presses against him through the comforter, and before he knows it, she’s kissing him, opening her mouth under his.
“Juliet,” he complains, “Hold on.” She blinks back at him slowly as he looks into her eyes, “I want to ask you something, okay?”
“Hmm?”
“Am I keeping you from-Is this what you’d be doing every night, if we weren’t together?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she crosses her arms, looking at him with a perfectly straight face, “I’d want to switch it up with hard drugs once in a while, if only for variety’s sake.”
“I’m serious,” he frowns in exasperation, “Am I too boring? Is that why you-?”
“Jack, I told you-this party had nothing to do with-” then she sighs, “Well, maybe it had a little to do with- Come here.” She lifts the covers for him, helping him underneath.
He looks instantly down. “Are you naked?”
“I had to take a shower,” she explains, as if it all makes perfect sense, and then smiles, “I knew you’d be coming back late.” While she speaks, she wraps her arms around him, then kisses him slowly behind his ear. “I was going to wait up for you.”
“You were?” he parrots after about thirty seconds when he’s finally managed to process the information.
“Yeah,” she whispers, sliding underneath him, grinning as she fits his body perfectly against hers. Before he knows it, he’s aching: he can’t stop the shudder that wracks through him as she takes his earlobe carefully between her teeth. “I had something important to tell you.”
“You did?” he says lightly, lulled into a teasing response, almost forgetting the chaos around them.
“Yes,” she smiles, drawing away to look at him, and her eyes are dark and glassy and beautiful, and he gets lost in them for a second, almost frozen with how good this feels, just being with her like this, and he wishes suddenly that he wasn’t wearing so much clothing.
“What-what was it?” he stutters, his brain ceasing to function as she wraps her legs around him, tugs ineffectively at his collar.
“That was it right there,” she touches his face, “Yes.” Even then, it takes him awhile to get it, looking back and forth between her eyes, but then she leans in and murmurs “Yes,” again and again, and then there’s no way of not understanding, because her eyes are a little teary, and she’s kissing him so hard that he can barely breathe.
“Then why did you-” he gasps when she releases him, unable to keep from touching her, his hands moving over her body, caressing. “If you were going to say ‘yes’- ”
“I was a little bit-conflicted,” she admits, pressing her cheek against his throat, “After Edmund, I never thought I’d get married again-I never thought I’d be able to trust that anyone would stay-that anyone would want to-” she shakes her head at him, “It was never that you were boring, Jack: it was that you might not be boring enough.”
“And drinking half a bottle of vodka in my absence somehow convinced you otherwise?”
“No: it was Charlotte”
“Charlotte?”
“Yeah: she convinced me. I don’t know how to explain it, but she-talked about a window-”
“A window?”
“It was a metaphor-”
“You said Charlotte?” he tries to confirm, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah, she-”Juliet begins, but stops abruptly, her eyes focused on the wall behind him. And then someone whom Jack did not know was there suddenly clears his throat.
Jack turns abruptly to find Miles standing at the foot of their bed holding a hand to his head as though he’s nursing a hangover of his own. He holds himself awkwardly, clearly as uncomfortable about being in the room as they are about his being there.
“Miles? What are you doing here-?” Jack asks, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice.
“There’s something you need to see,” he says, and the words are so plain, so painfully bare, that Jack knows almost instantly that it's something serious.
“Can’t it wait?” he begins, but he’s already sitting up, knowing somehow, already, what the answer is going to be.
~~
The sun seems to pulse along with the blood in Charlotte’s head as she makes her way to the docks where Daniel is standing alone next to the submarine, looking at the instruments on deck a little disconsolately.
“I thought you were supposed to be gone by now,” Charlotte says breathlessly, “I came down here to- I didn’t think I was going to make it.” But by the time she gets to the shore, she can tell that something is wrong. “What happened to the crew?”
“I told them to take the day off,” Daniel fiddles absently with his tie, not meeting her eyes, “It turns out that the window might be-uh, a little bigger than I originally thought. We can leave tomorrow instead: we might even be able to leave safely as late as the end of the week.” He sighs before looking up at her, “Besides, half the research team still hasn’t shown up for work yet, and I thought-they might need a couple of days to recover from their-hangovers.”
“That might-” she stutters on the words, because they’re still hard to say, even to Daniel, “That might be my fault. I-Dan,” she sighs, “I’m sorry. I wanted to apologize for snapping at you-for everything really. I know you’re just trying to do what you think is safest for the team and for you, and I-I want you to be safe.” She cringes a little in embarrassment, “I can’t even figure out if I’m supposed to feel better or worse about the fact that this has all apparently happened before.”
“I don’t care how many times you did it, Charlotte: I’ll always-” he finally looks up to her, an uncertain light in his eyes, “I’ll always forgive you.”
“Daniel,” she takes his hands but tilts her head at him too, her brow creasing as if she’s troubled by how easily he says it, as if she wants to chide him for being too soft on her.
“I’m sorry too,” he offers, as if the former declaration isn’t enough, “Sometimes I get so caught up in thinking about the big stuff-about thinking that time is only one dimension-that I forget that it’s-uh, that it’s a pretty important one. When I remember that I’m not going to see you for another three months-”
“Dan,” she cuts him off, squeezing his hands, and lets go of one of them, slides her fingers to the back of his neck.
“Hmm?” he asks, swallowing a little, his eyes focusing on her gradually, as if she is slowly pulling him back into the world.
“We really don’t have time for this,” she says gently, before sealing her mouth over his.
~~
She looks up into the sky as it changes, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Her ankle throbs painfully from the fall and from the half-dozen attempts she’s made to get back onto her feet. After she hears the snapping of her bones, she doesn’t try to get back up again.
At first it’s cold, a little clammy, but she likes it this way, can almost forget where she is when she looks up at the stars: she likes watching them, has always liked watching them, and she doesn’t think that will ever change. But as soon as the sun comes out, she begins to sweat, begins to think about her baby left in the clearing in front of the cave.
He knows about being quiet: he knows about all of the predators in the jungle, because she has told him about them every night, has told him how to be quiet, how to avoid the smoke, even when it seems to know your name.
She had planned to move him after she finished hunting this evening, but now she knows he is on his own: she is not coming back. She has known it was a possibility from the very beginning: it happens to all animals eventually-the others leave them and they have to learn to survive on their own. It will happen to him just as surely as it happened to her. She had just hoped to have a little longer with him, a little more time-
But then a branch snaps, and there are footsteps-more than she expected-and voices, loud and annoyed.
“You going to tell us what this is, or are we just going to walk through the jungle all day?”
“Jack-” There’s a pause. “Miles, if you would just tell us what we’re-”
“It’s here.”
“What, in that hole? Did you dig that-”
“Jesus, Miles, what the hell did you-”
Three figures suddenly eclipse the sky above her, and she blinks for a moment, almost blinded by the sudden change in light. They’re hard to recognize at first, but the features of some of them seem familiar, like the faces that she sometimes dreams about, those dreams about the fire and the crash.
One of the figures, the tallest one, bends down toward her suddenly, calls her by that sound she remembers from the dreams.
“Claire?” he asks.
But she isn’t sure how to answer.
~~
END
Characters: Jack, Juliet, Charlotte, Daniel, Miles, Claire + Everyone's Favorite Surprise Guest
Pairing: Jack/Juliet, Charlotte/Daniel
Rating: PG-13 (language and sexytimes)
Spoilers: Season 5 AU (Jack jumps, Charlotte lives, Juliet gets pregnant, they eventually decide to leave the island during the 1970s)
Summary: After some difficulties in their respective relationships, Charlotte and Juliet decide to host a drinking contest. Meanwhile, Miles deals with a request from a particularly persistent ghost.
A/N: AHHH! I'm so excited about this fic, which is partly thanks to valhalla37 , who suggested that I go back in time and narrate the Dharma drinking contest (involving Juliet and Charlotte) mentioned in Straight Line. This is another part of the "Jack jumps" series for nighttiming1022 (I <3 you and I will finish this eventually I SWEAR). I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did writing. As usual all suggestions solicited and welcomed!
~~
“I don’t really think that this is the best idea, Charlotte.”
“The research team challenged us. I never back down from a challenge, Daniel.”
“But I’m leaving tomorrow. I was kind of hoping-”
“Why is it, again, that you’re leaving tomorrow? You never made that quite clear.”
“Because the researchers at the base said this is the best time. The tide-there’s a window. It only lasts for a few days-”
“Which means you could be leaving next week. Daniel, you’re practically the leader of that team: you’ve become so important to them that if you told them you weren’t going until Monday, they’d have to wait for you-”
“But then we’d just be doing this on Sunday instead of today. It’d only give us a few extra days.”
“Right. A few days, which are totally insignificant in the larger scheme of things. So why bother with anything? If you think on a large enough scale, our whole relationship is just a speck of dust in the wind,” she says, brushing her hands together as if to rid herself of the troublesome particle.
“Charlotte,” he tries, but he’s still not very good at this. Everything between them is too new, too unstable, and he knows that even on his best days, his strength has never been making people understand.
“What’s the difference?” she waves to Juliet, who is making her way across the lawn, “Whatever happened, happened, right? I still don't know exactly what that means, but I reckon it means you’re not going to be able to talk me out of it.”
~~
They’re a few sheets to the wind-Charlotte isn’t sure how many, because she lost count at least ten minutes ago-when Juliet tries to start a conversation. People around them are cheering and shouting, and at first, Charlotte isn’t even sure where the noise is coming from: she’s too busy focusing on Alice Mason at the table across from them, because she has decided, quite arbitrarily, that the window is utterly and completely Alice Mason’s fault. But then Juliet leans in closer (and Charlotte experiences the disorienting feeling of not knowing whether the alcohol-saturated breath is hers or Juliet’s) and then the sound is unmistakable.
“Jack asked me to marry him.” Juliet slurs the words a little, but her command of the English language at this stage is still impressive.
“What?”
“This morning: before he went out to Hydra Island, he proposed.”
Charlotte's face crinkles up-she can’t really control her reactions at this point.
“Don’t tell me that’s why you’re doing this? I thought you wanted to beat Ali-the research team.” She scowls before her curiosity gets the better of her, “So you said ‘no’? Is that why he left?”
“I didn’t say ‘no’. I just told him I needed a little time,” Juliet slams back a shot.
“You what?”
“He said he would wait.”
“Jack said he would wait,” Charlotte repeats as if she’s trying to get a handle on the concept. Then she takes another shot, thinking it might help her ability to understand.
“Well he didn’t say he was going to enjoy it.”
“So what exactly is it you’re waiting for? A sign?”
“Charlotte, when I mentioned to you that we were sleeping together, you told me there was no need to rush things.” Juliet’s clearly not drunk enough, still at the stage where she can recognize blatant contradictions. Charlotte’s at the point where everything is starting to look a little less blatant.
“But if 'whatever happened, happened,' Charlotte asks confusedly, “is it even possible to rush things?”
“I don’t know if that’s exactly how ‘whatever happened, happened,' works.” Sarcasm. Right. And normally she would respond in kind, but at this point, sarcasm is a little beyond her, so she opts for sincerity instead.
“He loves you.”
“I don’t know-” she looks a little doubtful, “he says-”
“He loves you, Juliet. Trust me.”
“But it’s only been a little more than a year since we got together. With my ex-husband, I- How can he be sure it’s going to last?”
“He can’t: Isn’t that the whole point? He has to take his shot while he has it, not knowing-and so do you. It’s like-a window,” She begins eloquently, holding onto the table, “A metaphorical-” Then Alice Mason collapses across the bar, and Charlotte loses her train of thought. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” She takes a small bow, holding her hand against her heaving stomach even after she straightens up, “I think I’m headed for mine.”
~~
“Jesus Christ, are you still here?” Miles folds his arms over his eyes, ready at any moment to start rocking back and forth.
“Son, I died from alcohol poisoning. Trying to drink me away may not be the smartest idea you've ever had.”
“Who says I’m trying to drink you away? Maybe I need all this vodka just to put up with you. I think I’m finally starting to understand Jack’s alcoholic tendencies.”
“Sticks and stones, Miles-sticks and stones.”
“Yeah. I tried those already, remember? What are you still doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you be haunting your real son?”
“Jack doesn’t see me anymore. He doesn’t want to: he doesn’t believe I'm real. It doesn’t matter how close I stand, how loudly I speak-”
“What, and lecturing your kid about all the ways he’s failed in life just doesn’t have the same appeal if he can’t hear you?”
“If you’d just tell him what I’ve been saying…”
“Uh uh,” Miles puts his hands out in front of him as if the idea is an object that he can push away, “No way. If I tell him that I can see you all the time, I’ll have both of you haunting me. And that is not something that I am prepared to handle.” He sighs. “Can’t you just be a normal dead father for a few days? Just like, I don’t know, show some concern for your son’s interests, follow him around a little? He’s a doctor like you were, right? So why don’t you go watch him bandage people up?”
“I don’t have time to sit around and watch him, Miles, because I have to make sure what needs to get done gets done.”
“And you can’t figure out how to get Jack to do it? You’re a ghost: you’re supposed to be good at manipulating people. Why don’t you go find him and-”
“Jack can’t do it: he’s not on the island.”
“No, he’s on Hydra Island. It’s really pretty easy to get to: if you want, I can even point you in the right direction.”
“That’s across the water.”
“Yeah, like I said, it’s an IS-LAND. And that shouldn’t be a problem for you: can’t you just ‘poof’ your way over there?”
“For somebody who talks to the dead, you have a lot to learn about the afterlife.” Christian crosses his arms and shakes his head, “No, what I want right now, as I said, is not something that Jack can do for me. It has to be you: you’re in the right place. The right time and the right place: it can’t be anyone else.”
“Does this-” he swallows suddenly, his eyes going wide, “Does this have something to do with Claire?”
The ghost tilts his head.
“That depends: are you going to listen to me this time, when I tell you what to do?”
“Hang on,” Miles grimaces, holding up one finger, “I think I need one more of these.” He takes another swig from the bottle, “Okay: hit me.”
~~
“Juliet? Hey. Are you okay? Are you-?”
“Mmm,” she murmurs, naked arms reaching out from beneath the comforter to curl around the back of his neck as he leans down over her, “Hmm…you smell good.”
“Juliet, I’ve been treating injuries all night: I haven’t showered since yesterday afternoon.” He looks around at the broken bottles and half empty cups surrounding them, the jacket hanging off the ceiling fan, “But in comparison to everything else around here, I probably don't smell half bad. Did you know that Cindy’s on the front lawn?”
“What-815 Cindy?” Juliet sighs and shakes her head. “The Others crashed the party? Well, I guess this proves once and for all who has the better booze.”
“Is that what this is supposed to be?” he gestures at the piece of spaghetti sauce stuck to the wall. “A party?”
“No, Jack: it was the National Assembly. Things did get a little out of hand this year, I’ll admit.”
“I go away for one night-and you decide to throw a party?”
“This had nothing to do with you. It was-the research team. They issued us a challenge- I couldn’t let the security team back down-it was a matter of honor.”
“Those two people in our bathtub-they’re the research team?”
She nods.
“Yeah,” he begins, rubbing at the back of his neck, “they looked pretty honorable, sleeping in their own-” Before he can finish the sentence, she tugs him onto the bed, knocking him off balance. She presses against him through the comforter, and before he knows it, she’s kissing him, opening her mouth under his.
“Juliet,” he complains, “Hold on.” She blinks back at him slowly as he looks into her eyes, “I want to ask you something, okay?”
“Hmm?”
“Am I keeping you from-Is this what you’d be doing every night, if we weren’t together?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she crosses her arms, looking at him with a perfectly straight face, “I’d want to switch it up with hard drugs once in a while, if only for variety’s sake.”
“I’m serious,” he frowns in exasperation, “Am I too boring? Is that why you-?”
“Jack, I told you-this party had nothing to do with-” then she sighs, “Well, maybe it had a little to do with- Come here.” She lifts the covers for him, helping him underneath.
He looks instantly down. “Are you naked?”
“I had to take a shower,” she explains, as if it all makes perfect sense, and then smiles, “I knew you’d be coming back late.” While she speaks, she wraps her arms around him, then kisses him slowly behind his ear. “I was going to wait up for you.”
“You were?” he parrots after about thirty seconds when he’s finally managed to process the information.
“Yeah,” she whispers, sliding underneath him, grinning as she fits his body perfectly against hers. Before he knows it, he’s aching: he can’t stop the shudder that wracks through him as she takes his earlobe carefully between her teeth. “I had something important to tell you.”
“You did?” he says lightly, lulled into a teasing response, almost forgetting the chaos around them.
“Yes,” she smiles, drawing away to look at him, and her eyes are dark and glassy and beautiful, and he gets lost in them for a second, almost frozen with how good this feels, just being with her like this, and he wishes suddenly that he wasn’t wearing so much clothing.
“What-what was it?” he stutters, his brain ceasing to function as she wraps her legs around him, tugs ineffectively at his collar.
“That was it right there,” she touches his face, “Yes.” Even then, it takes him awhile to get it, looking back and forth between her eyes, but then she leans in and murmurs “Yes,” again and again, and then there’s no way of not understanding, because her eyes are a little teary, and she’s kissing him so hard that he can barely breathe.
“Then why did you-” he gasps when she releases him, unable to keep from touching her, his hands moving over her body, caressing. “If you were going to say ‘yes’- ”
“I was a little bit-conflicted,” she admits, pressing her cheek against his throat, “After Edmund, I never thought I’d get married again-I never thought I’d be able to trust that anyone would stay-that anyone would want to-” she shakes her head at him, “It was never that you were boring, Jack: it was that you might not be boring enough.”
“And drinking half a bottle of vodka in my absence somehow convinced you otherwise?”
“No: it was Charlotte”
“Charlotte?”
“Yeah: she convinced me. I don’t know how to explain it, but she-talked about a window-”
“A window?”
“It was a metaphor-”
“You said Charlotte?” he tries to confirm, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah, she-”Juliet begins, but stops abruptly, her eyes focused on the wall behind him. And then someone whom Jack did not know was there suddenly clears his throat.
Jack turns abruptly to find Miles standing at the foot of their bed holding a hand to his head as though he’s nursing a hangover of his own. He holds himself awkwardly, clearly as uncomfortable about being in the room as they are about his being there.
“Miles? What are you doing here-?” Jack asks, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice.
“There’s something you need to see,” he says, and the words are so plain, so painfully bare, that Jack knows almost instantly that it's something serious.
“Can’t it wait?” he begins, but he’s already sitting up, knowing somehow, already, what the answer is going to be.
~~
The sun seems to pulse along with the blood in Charlotte’s head as she makes her way to the docks where Daniel is standing alone next to the submarine, looking at the instruments on deck a little disconsolately.
“I thought you were supposed to be gone by now,” Charlotte says breathlessly, “I came down here to- I didn’t think I was going to make it.” But by the time she gets to the shore, she can tell that something is wrong. “What happened to the crew?”
“I told them to take the day off,” Daniel fiddles absently with his tie, not meeting her eyes, “It turns out that the window might be-uh, a little bigger than I originally thought. We can leave tomorrow instead: we might even be able to leave safely as late as the end of the week.” He sighs before looking up at her, “Besides, half the research team still hasn’t shown up for work yet, and I thought-they might need a couple of days to recover from their-hangovers.”
“That might-” she stutters on the words, because they’re still hard to say, even to Daniel, “That might be my fault. I-Dan,” she sighs, “I’m sorry. I wanted to apologize for snapping at you-for everything really. I know you’re just trying to do what you think is safest for the team and for you, and I-I want you to be safe.” She cringes a little in embarrassment, “I can’t even figure out if I’m supposed to feel better or worse about the fact that this has all apparently happened before.”
“I don’t care how many times you did it, Charlotte: I’ll always-” he finally looks up to her, an uncertain light in his eyes, “I’ll always forgive you.”
“Daniel,” she takes his hands but tilts her head at him too, her brow creasing as if she’s troubled by how easily he says it, as if she wants to chide him for being too soft on her.
“I’m sorry too,” he offers, as if the former declaration isn’t enough, “Sometimes I get so caught up in thinking about the big stuff-about thinking that time is only one dimension-that I forget that it’s-uh, that it’s a pretty important one. When I remember that I’m not going to see you for another three months-”
“Dan,” she cuts him off, squeezing his hands, and lets go of one of them, slides her fingers to the back of his neck.
“Hmm?” he asks, swallowing a little, his eyes focusing on her gradually, as if she is slowly pulling him back into the world.
“We really don’t have time for this,” she says gently, before sealing her mouth over his.
~~
She looks up into the sky as it changes, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Her ankle throbs painfully from the fall and from the half-dozen attempts she’s made to get back onto her feet. After she hears the snapping of her bones, she doesn’t try to get back up again.
At first it’s cold, a little clammy, but she likes it this way, can almost forget where she is when she looks up at the stars: she likes watching them, has always liked watching them, and she doesn’t think that will ever change. But as soon as the sun comes out, she begins to sweat, begins to think about her baby left in the clearing in front of the cave.
He knows about being quiet: he knows about all of the predators in the jungle, because she has told him about them every night, has told him how to be quiet, how to avoid the smoke, even when it seems to know your name.
She had planned to move him after she finished hunting this evening, but now she knows he is on his own: she is not coming back. She has known it was a possibility from the very beginning: it happens to all animals eventually-the others leave them and they have to learn to survive on their own. It will happen to him just as surely as it happened to her. She had just hoped to have a little longer with him, a little more time-
But then a branch snaps, and there are footsteps-more than she expected-and voices, loud and annoyed.
“You going to tell us what this is, or are we just going to walk through the jungle all day?”
“Jack-” There’s a pause. “Miles, if you would just tell us what we’re-”
“It’s here.”
“What, in that hole? Did you dig that-”
“Jesus, Miles, what the hell did you-”
Three figures suddenly eclipse the sky above her, and she blinks for a moment, almost blinded by the sudden change in light. They’re hard to recognize at first, but the features of some of them seem familiar, like the faces that she sometimes dreams about, those dreams about the fire and the crash.
One of the figures, the tallest one, bends down toward her suddenly, calls her by that sound she remembers from the dreams.
“Claire?” he asks.
But she isn’t sure how to answer.
~~
END