Resting Place
Title: Resting Place
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Juliet
Rating: PG
Summary: She almost laughs -- nothing's an accident here -- but the deep, heavy lines etched across Jack's face (he tries for stoic and falls way short) stops her. This is responsibility, in its worst and most tangible form. A midnight encounter.
Spoilers/Warnings: Vague S3, I think; references to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for thequillstation's Spooky Lost Fic Battle; prompt Jack/Juliet, graveyard. Originally posted here.
----
The crosses slice thin shadows across the jungle floor, air hanging thick with misplaced calm and tranquility, evidence of a score of battlefield wounds -- dead and buried -- where there shouldn't be any at all.
Movements slow and careful, Juliet kneels beside one grave marker, fingers the prayer beads twisted and hanging twined around its frame; she lifts her hand to let them drop, rocking back against the rough bark and twine.
"Who?"
Her question rings out silent and she doesn't need to turn to know he's there, know he followed her quiet, ambling walk and sudden discovery of their makeshift graveyard.
"Shannon. She was shot. It was an accident."
She almost laughs -- nothing's an accident here -- but the deep, heavy lines etched across Jack's face (he tries for stoic and falls way short) stops her. This is responsibility, in its worst and most tangible form. She gets it, understands (Goodwin is almost grey and green and washed-out, mottled skin by the time she finds him, when Ben takes her there; lips ragged and chapped and unmoving, eyes closed fast) more than she'll ever be able to tell him.
He steps closer and it's almost enough to feel the whisper of air, of movement, prickle the back of her neck; squats down next to her and slings arms across knees. (Juliet swallows; it sounds much too loud, even in her own ears.) Eyes to the ground, he runs through the litany of markers dotting the sanded clearing -- Libby and Paolo and Ana Lucia and Boone (he chokes on that name, a little more than the others) -- and it's like a recitation, a Hail Mary of his failures and frustrations and disappointments.
"Why? Why do this?" Juliet shifts and the toe of her shoe scuffs up dirt, someone's final resting place (worm food, she thinks, absently, flinching at her own disregard).
Jack meets her eyes, finally. "So we don't forget."
A nod in reply, and he wants to feel haunted, she realizes; wants the ghosts of old mistakes clinging to his every move, filling the shadows around him. Rachel and Ben and Edmund and -- she gets it; she really does. "Okay."
She stands back up and he follows suit, wiping sand from the creases of his jeans. A brush of his hand against the plane of her back -- a moment of touch, warmth between her shoulder blades; I'm glad you understand -- and then he steps ahead, cuts a trail across the beach and back towards that night's campfire, leaving the makeshift crosses undisturbed and silent in their wake.
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Juliet
Rating: PG
Summary: She almost laughs -- nothing's an accident here -- but the deep, heavy lines etched across Jack's face (he tries for stoic and falls way short) stops her. This is responsibility, in its worst and most tangible form. A midnight encounter.
Spoilers/Warnings: Vague S3, I think; references to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for thequillstation's Spooky Lost Fic Battle; prompt Jack/Juliet, graveyard. Originally posted here.
----
The crosses slice thin shadows across the jungle floor, air hanging thick with misplaced calm and tranquility, evidence of a score of battlefield wounds -- dead and buried -- where there shouldn't be any at all.
Movements slow and careful, Juliet kneels beside one grave marker, fingers the prayer beads twisted and hanging twined around its frame; she lifts her hand to let them drop, rocking back against the rough bark and twine.
"Who?"
Her question rings out silent and she doesn't need to turn to know he's there, know he followed her quiet, ambling walk and sudden discovery of their makeshift graveyard.
"Shannon. She was shot. It was an accident."
She almost laughs -- nothing's an accident here -- but the deep, heavy lines etched across Jack's face (he tries for stoic and falls way short) stops her. This is responsibility, in its worst and most tangible form. She gets it, understands (Goodwin is almost grey and green and washed-out, mottled skin by the time she finds him, when Ben takes her there; lips ragged and chapped and unmoving, eyes closed fast) more than she'll ever be able to tell him.
He steps closer and it's almost enough to feel the whisper of air, of movement, prickle the back of her neck; squats down next to her and slings arms across knees. (Juliet swallows; it sounds much too loud, even in her own ears.) Eyes to the ground, he runs through the litany of markers dotting the sanded clearing -- Libby and Paolo and Ana Lucia and Boone (he chokes on that name, a little more than the others) -- and it's like a recitation, a Hail Mary of his failures and frustrations and disappointments.
"Why? Why do this?" Juliet shifts and the toe of her shoe scuffs up dirt, someone's final resting place (worm food, she thinks, absently, flinching at her own disregard).
Jack meets her eyes, finally. "So we don't forget."
A nod in reply, and he wants to feel haunted, she realizes; wants the ghosts of old mistakes clinging to his every move, filling the shadows around him. Rachel and Ben and Edmund and -- she gets it; she really does. "Okay."
She stands back up and he follows suit, wiping sand from the creases of his jeans. A brush of his hand against the plane of her back -- a moment of touch, warmth between her shoulder blades; I'm glad you understand -- and then he steps ahead, cuts a trail across the beach and back towards that night's campfire, leaving the makeshift crosses undisturbed and silent in their wake.