Rebellion (Lies) (2/4)
Title: Rebellion (Lies) (2/4)
Characters/Pairings: Juliet; Jack, Claire, Charlotte, Daniel, implied Juliet/Jack, Charlotte/Daniel, others in later parts
Rating: PG (this part)
Summary: They'd both been doctors, before the world started to fall apart; before the human race suddenly had its own expiration date staring it in the face. Crossover with Children of Men (mostly the film, a few minor details from the book).
Spoilers/Warnings: Vague spoilers for throughout the series; spoilers for Children of Men, but nothing beyond the general concept in this section.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for the lostsquee Luau and the combined requests of mollivanders, who wanted rebellion, and missy_useless, who wanted crossovers. Somehow that became a four-part Lost/Children of Men series (though I'm using crossover in the loosest terms -- basically it's Lost characters plunked down in the CoM world and takes extreme liberties with both canons). Title from Arcade Fire.
----
It's already close to midnight when they exit off the back road they'd been following two hours out of the city and pull the jeep in where it's hidden by brush, camp along the dried-up creek bed of some smaller canyon and pitch tents near the trickling water running through cracked mud. The cavern walls are high enough Charlotte figures they can chance a fire, so all of them sit huddled with the flames licking at their shins, sharing the cold meat and bread and cheese Dan pulls out from a cooler pack once they've settled into the blankets Charlotte hands out, the quiet hum of nighttime chirps enfolding around them.
"So do you have, uh, a name yet?"
Dan asks it conversationally, smiling through the smoke sifting off the campfire, watching Claire with gentle eyes; it's funny, it strikes Juliet, that they're so willing to accept -- doctors and scientists and they're clinging to the miraculous -- that the facts, the truths, of their world have been turned upside down and still professional curiousity's losing out to pure relief. Not that it's any different for her; bumping down the last dirt road before stopping at the canyon and then unfolding tarps and it was like her memory would reset every time she'd spot Claire's rounded profile, like a new swell of joy she still couldn't quite believe.
"Um, no," Claire hesitates, returns a clumsy grin. "Not yet. Do you -- do you have any children?"
(Before -- before -- it was the kind of question ingrained into the fabric of casual conversation, along with where do you live? or what do you do?, so much that it drove Juliet nuts, the inevitable looks of confused disappointment and questioning when she'd brightly answer nope, no kids, like she had to be defective or crazy not to have them, not to want them -- and she tenses on instinct while she waits for Dan's reply, feels a pang of sympathy for Claire and her flushed embarrassment just after the fact.)
Instead, Dan's gaze gets even softer than before and he shifts, pulling a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, flattening out the creases before he hands it to Claire; Juliet's surprised to see it's a picture, of a dark-haired, blue-eyed little girl -- only three or four, maybe -- grinning at some long-past photographer, frozen in the filmy lines of the photograph. All of a sudden Charlotte's rising to her feet, almost getting tangled in her knapsack as she stands, features hard-edged like stone -- I'm going to get some more wood, she tosses over her shoulder before she marches off.
He gestures back to the picture, sort of a halfway motion that falters and falls as he watches his wife's quick exit, and her name was Ellie, Dan says, doesn't need to add our daughter; nobody misses the past tense. "It was the, uh, the influenza pandemic, seven, eight years back. After that -- well, joining the Initiative made even more sense."
Claire's still holding the photograph, runs one fingertip along the worn edges, and Jack's just watching the flames, the fragile crack and pop as the wood shifts and splinters into dust and white-hot fire, meets Juliet's eyes and she feels like there's a thousand messages running between them, in the flicker of his brow and the tug at his lips, and it's like a foreign language to her, now, like the Latin she was always so bad at in school (it wasn't always). It's too much, him being there, that moment, can still hear Charlotte's heavy steps through the trees near them so she rises from the warmth of the campfire and follows her trail, slipping a flashlight out of the bag Charlotte had abandoned on the way.
Her steps are careful, moving along the path winding parallel with the stream, curses when her foot angles against a rock the wrong way and almost tumbles to the ground. Then there's the crunch of boots on brush, branches giving way and Charlotte appears with an armload of wood, smirks at her; careful love, wouldn't want a broken ankle on our hands.
There's something in the smugness of her look, her words, that pisses Juliet off (not like she asked to be on a furtive getaway with her ex and his unexplainably pregnant sister, stuck in the California desert; not like she left much behind but a water-stained apartment and a job that'll replace her by Monday) but she also catches the glimmer of hurt in Charlotte's gaze, wavering underneath the stiff clench of her jaw (itching for a fight but at least there's some left in her, Juliet thinks, feels a flush of envy). So instead she smiles in reply, tries to keep exhaustion out of the gesture -- "I used to be a doctor. I'm sure we'll be fine."
Charlotte seems to relax a little at that, drops the hesitating anger and keeps adding to the collection of wood and sticks stacked against a nearby tree trunk while Juliet joins in, scouring the brush for more campfire fuel. Eventually: "I used to be an anthropologist; what the hell kind of good is that going to do in a couple decades?"
A gasping sort of laugh gets caught in Juliet's throat just then, as she picks up her water bottle from the ground -- I was a fertility specialist; I never wanted kids, though -- and it's funny, right? That this is her ideal world, or at least some version -- no one to raise their eyebrows, give that polite look of condescension, purse their lips at childfree -- and then Jack's sister appears like some sort of second coming of Eve and Juliet still wouldn't have kids, even now, but it's a sort of ache of longing that sets in when the impossibility becomes tangible, in the terse lines of Charlotte's silhouette, in Dan's subtle, quiet grief, that we end here and this is what we have to show for it.
"So you and Jack." Charlotte lets the rest linger in the air, raises a brow in question. "Kate mentioned he was married."
"Divorced; we're divorced, a few months ago." Juliet pauses and uncaps her water bottle, takes a slug -- it's lukewarm, tastes like dirt -- and only grimaces a little, tries to remember why they'd split up in the first place; it was everything, she thinks, it was nothing at all. "I'm sorry about your daughter."
Another armload of branches gets dropped to the ground and Charlotte stops, rests against a boulder, wipes grimy hands against the front of her khaki shorts, the I don't want to talk about it crystallized in her gaze and they must be almost the same, Juliet figures as they bundle the wood together and head back towards camp, both worn raw from the pain; all nerve endings and emotions exposed, nothing left between them and the world.
--
She's never been a good sleeper, not really, and the near-silent lull of the desert -- away from the familiar white noise of the city -- doesn't do much to help her rest, the smallest, slightest sound and her hand clenches Charlotte's loaned gun, hidden underneath the cool fabric of her pillow. When Juliet finally gives up on the restless back-and-forth, only snatches of dreams that all seem grey-tinged, she rolls over, blinks her eyes open against the low rumble of voices filtering in through the tent's nylon walls (Jack pressed into the other corner); it's Daniel and Charlotte, a few meters away in their shelter, Claire already asleep like a log in her own nearby.
There's heat to Charlotte's words though she can't quite make out the conversation and then the mellow rhythm of Dan's voice as he replies, over and over until brief silence, then something else, something Juliet recognizes (shifting against the mattress, fabric on fabric, a stifled moan), and she feels her cheeks burn, more from the intimacy of it than any sort of embarrassment, remembers a time when that would have been her and Jack (his stubble catches against the curve of her throat and he kisses her like he wants to drown in it, drown in them, hands slipping past the hems and waistbands of scrubs), when they were young and stupid and full of the fiercest kind of passion, like nothing would ever change. Like they would never change, and now. Now they're older and greyer but still not a hell of a lot smarter, she thinks.
Once everything lapses into silence again Juliet rolls over, props herself up on one elbow. "This is crazy."
Even in the thick darkness she can tell Jack's awake, staring up at the canopy of their tent, where the plastic's starting to sag a little; "I know," he replies, doesn't say anything else.
"What are we even doing here? We should be getting Claire to a doctor, or --"
"We're both doctors." He almost sounds amused, still watching the shifting blue material of their shelter, and she wants to smack him for it.
"You're a spinal surgeon, Jack. And I used to be a fertility researcher. I haven't done prenatal care since my residency."
Sighing, he turns to face her, his question more weary than anything else, makes her wish again she could read the lines of his face like she used to, decipher those unspoken words; "what do you want me to do, Juliet?" His fists clench and release, palms upwards like he's offering something (anything) to her, and my sister's the first pregnancy across the world in the last ten years, he shrugs, supplicating, it's not like I've got a rulebook on this.
Her smile cracks before his, both sharing a second to breath.
"You never supported the Initiative before," she counters, cautious, hoping the moment won't crumble and crack and disappear, a nostalgia she can't quite name gripping her insides tight. "Why now?"
"I know they're trying to do good work, work to help everyone," Jack explains after a pause. "Not like the government. And if it keeps Claire and her baby safe ..."
"Do you think they can?"
He's quiet again, for too long -- "I don't know."
"That's a lot not to be sure about," she adds next, wants to ask what the hell have you gotten me into? but it's not anger, frustration, that's carved out a place in her chest but relief (more than Claire and the sight of her hands rounded around her stomach) but just that's something given, not a light at the end of the tunnel but more than floating through her limbo of existence, wondering when it might end.
Juliet almost jerks away when Jack's fingers close around hers, stretched out across the tent's dusty floor, her own hand twitching and then twining into his.
"I'm glad you're here," he whispers in a voice that's already growing thick and drowsy, and she doesn't reply, but smiles instead into the darkness as she finally drifts to sleep.
Characters/Pairings: Juliet; Jack, Claire, Charlotte, Daniel, implied Juliet/Jack, Charlotte/Daniel, others in later parts
Rating: PG (this part)
Summary: They'd both been doctors, before the world started to fall apart; before the human race suddenly had its own expiration date staring it in the face. Crossover with Children of Men (mostly the film, a few minor details from the book).
Spoilers/Warnings: Vague spoilers for throughout the series; spoilers for Children of Men, but nothing beyond the general concept in this section.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for the lostsquee Luau and the combined requests of mollivanders, who wanted rebellion, and missy_useless, who wanted crossovers. Somehow that became a four-part Lost/Children of Men series (though I'm using crossover in the loosest terms -- basically it's Lost characters plunked down in the CoM world and takes extreme liberties with both canons). Title from Arcade Fire.
----
It's already close to midnight when they exit off the back road they'd been following two hours out of the city and pull the jeep in where it's hidden by brush, camp along the dried-up creek bed of some smaller canyon and pitch tents near the trickling water running through cracked mud. The cavern walls are high enough Charlotte figures they can chance a fire, so all of them sit huddled with the flames licking at their shins, sharing the cold meat and bread and cheese Dan pulls out from a cooler pack once they've settled into the blankets Charlotte hands out, the quiet hum of nighttime chirps enfolding around them.
"So do you have, uh, a name yet?"
Dan asks it conversationally, smiling through the smoke sifting off the campfire, watching Claire with gentle eyes; it's funny, it strikes Juliet, that they're so willing to accept -- doctors and scientists and they're clinging to the miraculous -- that the facts, the truths, of their world have been turned upside down and still professional curiousity's losing out to pure relief. Not that it's any different for her; bumping down the last dirt road before stopping at the canyon and then unfolding tarps and it was like her memory would reset every time she'd spot Claire's rounded profile, like a new swell of joy she still couldn't quite believe.
"Um, no," Claire hesitates, returns a clumsy grin. "Not yet. Do you -- do you have any children?"
(Before -- before -- it was the kind of question ingrained into the fabric of casual conversation, along with where do you live? or what do you do?, so much that it drove Juliet nuts, the inevitable looks of confused disappointment and questioning when she'd brightly answer nope, no kids, like she had to be defective or crazy not to have them, not to want them -- and she tenses on instinct while she waits for Dan's reply, feels a pang of sympathy for Claire and her flushed embarrassment just after the fact.)
Instead, Dan's gaze gets even softer than before and he shifts, pulling a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, flattening out the creases before he hands it to Claire; Juliet's surprised to see it's a picture, of a dark-haired, blue-eyed little girl -- only three or four, maybe -- grinning at some long-past photographer, frozen in the filmy lines of the photograph. All of a sudden Charlotte's rising to her feet, almost getting tangled in her knapsack as she stands, features hard-edged like stone -- I'm going to get some more wood, she tosses over her shoulder before she marches off.
He gestures back to the picture, sort of a halfway motion that falters and falls as he watches his wife's quick exit, and her name was Ellie, Dan says, doesn't need to add our daughter; nobody misses the past tense. "It was the, uh, the influenza pandemic, seven, eight years back. After that -- well, joining the Initiative made even more sense."
Claire's still holding the photograph, runs one fingertip along the worn edges, and Jack's just watching the flames, the fragile crack and pop as the wood shifts and splinters into dust and white-hot fire, meets Juliet's eyes and she feels like there's a thousand messages running between them, in the flicker of his brow and the tug at his lips, and it's like a foreign language to her, now, like the Latin she was always so bad at in school (it wasn't always). It's too much, him being there, that moment, can still hear Charlotte's heavy steps through the trees near them so she rises from the warmth of the campfire and follows her trail, slipping a flashlight out of the bag Charlotte had abandoned on the way.
Her steps are careful, moving along the path winding parallel with the stream, curses when her foot angles against a rock the wrong way and almost tumbles to the ground. Then there's the crunch of boots on brush, branches giving way and Charlotte appears with an armload of wood, smirks at her; careful love, wouldn't want a broken ankle on our hands.
There's something in the smugness of her look, her words, that pisses Juliet off (not like she asked to be on a furtive getaway with her ex and his unexplainably pregnant sister, stuck in the California desert; not like she left much behind but a water-stained apartment and a job that'll replace her by Monday) but she also catches the glimmer of hurt in Charlotte's gaze, wavering underneath the stiff clench of her jaw (itching for a fight but at least there's some left in her, Juliet thinks, feels a flush of envy). So instead she smiles in reply, tries to keep exhaustion out of the gesture -- "I used to be a doctor. I'm sure we'll be fine."
Charlotte seems to relax a little at that, drops the hesitating anger and keeps adding to the collection of wood and sticks stacked against a nearby tree trunk while Juliet joins in, scouring the brush for more campfire fuel. Eventually: "I used to be an anthropologist; what the hell kind of good is that going to do in a couple decades?"
A gasping sort of laugh gets caught in Juliet's throat just then, as she picks up her water bottle from the ground -- I was a fertility specialist; I never wanted kids, though -- and it's funny, right? That this is her ideal world, or at least some version -- no one to raise their eyebrows, give that polite look of condescension, purse their lips at childfree -- and then Jack's sister appears like some sort of second coming of Eve and Juliet still wouldn't have kids, even now, but it's a sort of ache of longing that sets in when the impossibility becomes tangible, in the terse lines of Charlotte's silhouette, in Dan's subtle, quiet grief, that we end here and this is what we have to show for it.
"So you and Jack." Charlotte lets the rest linger in the air, raises a brow in question. "Kate mentioned he was married."
"Divorced; we're divorced, a few months ago." Juliet pauses and uncaps her water bottle, takes a slug -- it's lukewarm, tastes like dirt -- and only grimaces a little, tries to remember why they'd split up in the first place; it was everything, she thinks, it was nothing at all. "I'm sorry about your daughter."
Another armload of branches gets dropped to the ground and Charlotte stops, rests against a boulder, wipes grimy hands against the front of her khaki shorts, the I don't want to talk about it crystallized in her gaze and they must be almost the same, Juliet figures as they bundle the wood together and head back towards camp, both worn raw from the pain; all nerve endings and emotions exposed, nothing left between them and the world.
--
She's never been a good sleeper, not really, and the near-silent lull of the desert -- away from the familiar white noise of the city -- doesn't do much to help her rest, the smallest, slightest sound and her hand clenches Charlotte's loaned gun, hidden underneath the cool fabric of her pillow. When Juliet finally gives up on the restless back-and-forth, only snatches of dreams that all seem grey-tinged, she rolls over, blinks her eyes open against the low rumble of voices filtering in through the tent's nylon walls (Jack pressed into the other corner); it's Daniel and Charlotte, a few meters away in their shelter, Claire already asleep like a log in her own nearby.
There's heat to Charlotte's words though she can't quite make out the conversation and then the mellow rhythm of Dan's voice as he replies, over and over until brief silence, then something else, something Juliet recognizes (shifting against the mattress, fabric on fabric, a stifled moan), and she feels her cheeks burn, more from the intimacy of it than any sort of embarrassment, remembers a time when that would have been her and Jack (his stubble catches against the curve of her throat and he kisses her like he wants to drown in it, drown in them, hands slipping past the hems and waistbands of scrubs), when they were young and stupid and full of the fiercest kind of passion, like nothing would ever change. Like they would never change, and now. Now they're older and greyer but still not a hell of a lot smarter, she thinks.
Once everything lapses into silence again Juliet rolls over, props herself up on one elbow. "This is crazy."
Even in the thick darkness she can tell Jack's awake, staring up at the canopy of their tent, where the plastic's starting to sag a little; "I know," he replies, doesn't say anything else.
"What are we even doing here? We should be getting Claire to a doctor, or --"
"We're both doctors." He almost sounds amused, still watching the shifting blue material of their shelter, and she wants to smack him for it.
"You're a spinal surgeon, Jack. And I used to be a fertility researcher. I haven't done prenatal care since my residency."
Sighing, he turns to face her, his question more weary than anything else, makes her wish again she could read the lines of his face like she used to, decipher those unspoken words; "what do you want me to do, Juliet?" His fists clench and release, palms upwards like he's offering something (anything) to her, and my sister's the first pregnancy across the world in the last ten years, he shrugs, supplicating, it's not like I've got a rulebook on this.
Her smile cracks before his, both sharing a second to breath.
"You never supported the Initiative before," she counters, cautious, hoping the moment won't crumble and crack and disappear, a nostalgia she can't quite name gripping her insides tight. "Why now?"
"I know they're trying to do good work, work to help everyone," Jack explains after a pause. "Not like the government. And if it keeps Claire and her baby safe ..."
"Do you think they can?"
He's quiet again, for too long -- "I don't know."
"That's a lot not to be sure about," she adds next, wants to ask what the hell have you gotten me into? but it's not anger, frustration, that's carved out a place in her chest but relief (more than Claire and the sight of her hands rounded around her stomach) but just that's something given, not a light at the end of the tunnel but more than floating through her limbo of existence, wondering when it might end.
Juliet almost jerks away when Jack's fingers close around hers, stretched out across the tent's dusty floor, her own hand twitching and then twining into his.
"I'm glad you're here," he whispers in a voice that's already growing thick and drowsy, and she doesn't reply, but smiles instead into the darkness as she finally drifts to sleep.