Part of Loving is Letting Go
Title: Part of Loving is Letting Go
Characters: Juliet.
Rating: G
Warnings: Spoilers up to The Incident only.
Summary: For ozmissage who requested Lost Ladies at lostsquee Summer Luau. Juliet's thoughts when she begins to realise her life in the DHARMA community is over.
Juliet looked around the room, looked at her friends, looked at James, and knew this was the moment when she would have to say goodbye to the life she had known.
It was not the first time she had been forced to say goodbye to the life she had been leading, yet the end of her DHARMA days was the one that she knew would hurt the most. DHARMA had been the first place where Juliet had felt accepted, in a way that she never had in Miami where she had been forced to watch Edmund parading his women in front of her whilst knowing that her co-workers were all talking behind her back about how she just stood there and took it.
She’d never felt accepted in the Others’ community either, knowing that people had started by
hero-worshipping her after Ben had built her up into this wonderful fertility specialist that Juliet knew she was never going to be, then gradually begun to mistrust her as it slowly became clear that she was going to be unable to deliver what Ben had promised. (Or at least was going to be unable to deliver as long as Ben refused to allow her to take a mother off the island.)
But in DHARMA, people accepted her for herself. It had ceased to matter that she and her people were living a lie, unable to tell anyone where, or when, they really came from. What her DHARMA friends saw was what they got, and that was good enough for them all. And even with the people she had come with, it had taken time for her to be fully accepted by them too, memories of her time with the Others being fresh in people’s mind still.
The hardest thing about adjusting to life in 1974 had been the knowledge that Juliet was never likely to see Rachel again. James had been right; the life Juliet had always longed to return to just wouldn’t have been there if Juliet had returned on the sub when she had the chance. But the day Ben had told her that Rachel’s cancer had returned, and could only be cured by Jacob if Juliet remained on the island, she’d felt forced to begin the painful process of letting go of her sister. It was what Juliet had to do, because she loved Rachel, and it mattered more that she was healthy than that Juliet returned to her.
She’d known that the life she had built for herself here was doomed as soon as Jack and Kate returned, although she had tried her best to pretend it wasn’t happening. Maybe there was some way it didn’t have to end; James had certainly appeared to think so at the time, as they’d stood at the window watching Jack and Kate cross the courtyard and she’d said it was over for them. At the time, though, it had been Sayid who had worried her, in case he told everyone who they really were. (She needn’t have worried on that score, as it turned out; Horace had repeated to her that Sayid had admitted to being from the future and from what he’d said, that hadn’t been believed.)
Then as they’d been talking about whether or not Daniel should go to the Hostile camp and try and speak to the woman called Ellie, James had said it. Helping H. G. Wells here talk to his mommy ain’t got nothing to do with it. Come with us, Freckles.
Freckles, again. The name he’d always called her before she left the island. And as Juliet watched the way he’d looked at Kate, she realised that now they were all back, it wasn’t just going to be the DHARMA community she would be losing.
Juliet had thought she wouldn’t ever be able to come to terms with losing Rachel, but it had been with James’s help that she had learned to accept the loss, to realise that she was stronger than she had always believed. But was she strong enough to deal with the loss of James, of her life among her DHARMA friends, of the only time she had ever felt that she belonged anywhere?
If Jack’s plan worked, she’d never have to find out. But if it didn’t, she’d have to let go of her old life and start again as best she could, just as she always had before. She was beginning to accept that part of loving was always going to be letting go.
Characters: Juliet.
Rating: G
Warnings: Spoilers up to The Incident only.
Summary: For ozmissage who requested Lost Ladies at lostsquee Summer Luau. Juliet's thoughts when she begins to realise her life in the DHARMA community is over.
Juliet looked around the room, looked at her friends, looked at James, and knew this was the moment when she would have to say goodbye to the life she had known.
It was not the first time she had been forced to say goodbye to the life she had been leading, yet the end of her DHARMA days was the one that she knew would hurt the most. DHARMA had been the first place where Juliet had felt accepted, in a way that she never had in Miami where she had been forced to watch Edmund parading his women in front of her whilst knowing that her co-workers were all talking behind her back about how she just stood there and took it.
She’d never felt accepted in the Others’ community either, knowing that people had started by
hero-worshipping her after Ben had built her up into this wonderful fertility specialist that Juliet knew she was never going to be, then gradually begun to mistrust her as it slowly became clear that she was going to be unable to deliver what Ben had promised. (Or at least was going to be unable to deliver as long as Ben refused to allow her to take a mother off the island.)
But in DHARMA, people accepted her for herself. It had ceased to matter that she and her people were living a lie, unable to tell anyone where, or when, they really came from. What her DHARMA friends saw was what they got, and that was good enough for them all. And even with the people she had come with, it had taken time for her to be fully accepted by them too, memories of her time with the Others being fresh in people’s mind still.
The hardest thing about adjusting to life in 1974 had been the knowledge that Juliet was never likely to see Rachel again. James had been right; the life Juliet had always longed to return to just wouldn’t have been there if Juliet had returned on the sub when she had the chance. But the day Ben had told her that Rachel’s cancer had returned, and could only be cured by Jacob if Juliet remained on the island, she’d felt forced to begin the painful process of letting go of her sister. It was what Juliet had to do, because she loved Rachel, and it mattered more that she was healthy than that Juliet returned to her.
She’d known that the life she had built for herself here was doomed as soon as Jack and Kate returned, although she had tried her best to pretend it wasn’t happening. Maybe there was some way it didn’t have to end; James had certainly appeared to think so at the time, as they’d stood at the window watching Jack and Kate cross the courtyard and she’d said it was over for them. At the time, though, it had been Sayid who had worried her, in case he told everyone who they really were. (She needn’t have worried on that score, as it turned out; Horace had repeated to her that Sayid had admitted to being from the future and from what he’d said, that hadn’t been believed.)
Then as they’d been talking about whether or not Daniel should go to the Hostile camp and try and speak to the woman called Ellie, James had said it. Helping H. G. Wells here talk to his mommy ain’t got nothing to do with it. Come with us, Freckles.
Freckles, again. The name he’d always called her before she left the island. And as Juliet watched the way he’d looked at Kate, she realised that now they were all back, it wasn’t just going to be the DHARMA community she would be losing.
Juliet had thought she wouldn’t ever be able to come to terms with losing Rachel, but it had been with James’s help that she had learned to accept the loss, to realise that she was stronger than she had always believed. But was she strong enough to deal with the loss of James, of her life among her DHARMA friends, of the only time she had ever felt that she belonged anywhere?
If Jack’s plan worked, she’d never have to find out. But if it didn’t, she’d have to let go of her old life and start again as best she could, just as she always had before. She was beginning to accept that part of loving was always going to be letting go.