Fic: Away we go (Lost; Sawyer/Juliet)
Title: Away We Go
Pairing: Sawyer/Juliet
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They don’t hardly ever talk about the baby, and when she asks him about names, he just shrugs like he couldn’t possibly care less and says, “Anything but James.”
Author’s Note: This is so self-indulgent. I probably should have just titled this: Sawyer and Juliet move to Tahiti and have a baby and no one dies after setting off a hydrogen bomb. I AM SO SORRY. Written for dharmadays challenge #1: AU.
**
Sawyer’s spent the whole damn day out searching the island and he’s really fucking tired.
He and Jin and Miles have covered a grid of dense jungle today-looking for Locke, looking for anyone-and they’ve come up empty. Again. It’s been over a year and these damn searches are starting to feel like a waste of time.
When he walks through the door of his and Juliet’s little Dharma house, she’s just sitting in the table in the dark, still dressed in her motor pool jumpsuit. She barely looks at him when he steps into the room and he gets a weird feeling in his stomach.
“Hey,” he says, walking over to her and pressing a kiss against the top of her head. “You okay?” She doesn’t respond right away, and he sits next to her, starting to get legitimately worried.
“I’m pregnant,” she says eventually. She looks directly at him when she says it, and her voice is totally calm.
He’s got no idea how to react to that and, just. Fuck. He rubs a hand across his face and she just sits there, looking calmly at him, like it’s no big thing that it’s 1975 and they’re in the fucking Dharma Initiative and they've managed to screw up everything they’ve got going for them.
“You sure?” he finally asks because, hell, maybe she made a mistake.
Juliet shakes her head and laughs a little, but there ain’t a whole lot of humor in it. “Yes, James,” she says. “I am sure.”
Son of a bitch. He just-how is he supposed to respond to this? He’s got no idea what she even wants from him, and she’s still just sitting there, cool as can be.
He’s still trying to think of something to say when she looks down at the table and says, “I’m leaving the island.”
“What?” he says, and it’s like his whole world is just falling apart around him.
“There’s a sub leaving in three days,” she says calmly, looking up to stare intently at a spot somewhere over his left shoulder. “I’m going to be on it.”
His stomach drops, and he desperately wonders if he can ask her to give him two more weeks again, but he can tell by the tone of her voice, by the set of her shoulders, that there ain’t no way that’s gonna fly this time.
“I’d like for you to come with me,” she finally says, in a voice like it’s difficult for her to admit. “But I’ll understand if you don’t. I know there are…things that you don’t want to leave behind.”
And, shit, he just doesn't know what to say. So he just sits there as she gets to her feet. “Let me know what you decide,” she says, trailing her fingers across his shoulders as she walks to the back of the house.
Sawyer sits there in the dark, staring after her, and he ain’t got one clue what he’s going to do.
**
He ends up going with her, of course. What the hell else is he going to do? They’re stuck in the goddamn ‘70s and probably no one is ever coming back for them and he’ll be damned if he’s going to stay on this island without her.
They get on the sub and whole ride to Tahiti, Juliet keeps biting her lip and holding a hand against her still-flat stomach and Sawyer knows she’s worried it’s already too late.
**
Tahiti ain’t so bad, it turns out. It’s a lot like the island, except for all the people and the buildings and the not constantly bein’ in fear for their lives. They’ve got a little money saved up from their stint in Dharma and they end up living in a cheap bungalow on the beach, spending most of their days outside, laying on the sand and staring out at the sea.
A week after they move in, he sits down at the crappy desk in their bedroom and writes a letter to Miles. He tells him where he and Juliet are living, says that if Locke or anyone else comes back, to come for them straight away.
He doesn’t tell Juliet about the letter; he ain’t quite sure why. Convinces himself it’s not something she’d want to know, anyhow.
**
There ain’t a lot to do in Tahiti in 1976, so Sawyer mostly just drinks and reads and watches as Juliet’s belly gets bigger and bigger.
They don’t hardly ever talk about the baby, and when she asks about names he just shrugs like he couldn’t possibly care less and says, “Anything but James.”
He’s taken to running on the beach whenever he’s bored or feeling antsy. Every morning, every night. He knows there probably isn’t much point to it, but he likes the way his feet sound crunching against the sand, the smell of the ocean, the heat of the sun.
He feels like he’s run at least a thousand miles in the six months they’ve been here, but he always ends up in the same place.
**
Their son is born on July 15, 1976, in a run-down hospital only a mile down the road from the sad strip of beach where they’ve been living these past few months.
Juliet names the baby Joseph. Sawyer’s got no clue why and when he asks her, she shrugs and brushes her fingers across the soft downy hair on the kid’s head, says, “I just like the way it sounds.”
Right now, somewhere in Alabama, there’s an eight-year-old version of Sawyer standing in the hot summer sun, watching as his parents get lowered into the ground.
**
Juliet’s madly in love with the baby from day one, but Sawyer ain’t quite sure how he feels. The kid looks a lot like him, is the thing, and he hates to think about what that means. That he’s supposed to take care of this tiny, fragile thing, figure out a way not to fuck him up when fucking things up is the only thing he’s ever been good at for most of his life.
Sawyer spends most of the first few weeks feeling vaguely terrified and on edge. It’s a weird feeling-something he hasn’t felt since he was a scared little kid hiding under a bed. But the baby’s just so small, all soft edges and fragile bird-bones, that he’s afraid if he gets too close he’ll break him, destroy the one good thing he’s ever managed to make in his whole damn life.
On top of that, he’s worried about even touching Juliet, she seems different somehow since the baby, and he just-he doesn’t have one fucking clue what he’s supposed to be anymore. At night they lay on opposites sides of the bed, not touching at all, and Sawyer dreams of rain and smoke and the jungle at night.
He kind of helps out as best he can, heating up bottles and running errands and washing spit-up-stained baby clothes in the kitchen sink, but he never quite feels like any of it matters. When the baby cries, he just stands there feeling clumsy and rough and out of place, while Juliet picks him up and whispers soothingly in his ear, rubbing circles on his back.
Sawyer’s never felt so useless in his life.
**
After a month or so, Juliet forces his hand. Apparently, they’re running out of money and she’s the only one with marketable skills. At the beginning of September she manages to land a job in an auto-repair shop in town. The pay’s crap but it’s better than nothing, so.
The first day he’s supposed to be home alone with the baby, Sawyer spends the morning running on the beach. He leaves the house before dawn, when everyone else is asleep and the place is blissfully quiet for a change. When he gets back a few hours later, the sun’s up and Juliet’s rushing around the kitchen, and the baby is crying in his crib and Sawyer just wants to get the hell out there.
Juliet spares him a glance as she grabs her keys off the counter. “Joseph’s bottle’s in the fridge,” she says, and he can tell she’s pissed. Ain’t much he can do about it, though, so he just nods at her and she walks out the door.
She kind of slams the door on her way out and Joseph starts screaming even louder. Sawyer rubs a hand across his face and walks over to the crib, stares down at the baby-at his red, tear-streaked face and his wriggling little body-and forces himself not to just walk away. He reaches down and kind of brushes his hand against the baby’s head, barely touching the fine blond hair. He’s got no idea what he’s doing.
“Hey,” he says, kind of desperate. “It’s okay, kid.”
The baby just cries harder and, shit. It’s making a lot of noise for something so small. Finally, after a few more minutes of crying and screaming, Sawyer reaches down and picks him up.
“It’s okay, Joseph,” he kind of mumbles, patting him on the back and feeling like an idiot. The baby’s hot against him, but he stops crying so hard as soon as Sawyer presses him against his chest.
Sawyer walks around the room and bounces him up and down a little, real gentle, and he quiets down a little more, the tears tapering off until he’s just kind of hiccupping and sniffling a little.
“Hey, Joe,” he says, holding him up so they’re nose to nose. He’s pretty sure the kid’s smiling at him, dimples creasing his fat little cheeks.
Sawyer grins back, feeling kind of moronically happy, and has a brief flash of hope that this is gonna work out okay.
**
By the time Juliet gets home that night, Sawyer’s managed to get dinner in the oven and feed the baby and now Joe’s asleep in his crib.
Juliet walks into the kitchen, dressed in a pair of coveralls and covered in engine grease. She looks so much like she used to, back before all of this happened, and Sawyer gets this happy, warm feeling right in his chest.
“Hi,” she says, looking around the kitchen, which is mostly clean except for some formula that somehow managed to end up on the wall above the sink. She seems a little confused.
“Hey,” he says, grinning at her. He just-he really missed her today, is all. He walks up to her and kisses her gently, smiling against her mouth. After a second she wraps her arms around his neck, kisses him back.
After a few minutes she pulls away. “Where’s Joseph?” she asks, looking around like maybe he stashed the kid in a cabinet or something.
“Takin’ a nap,” he shrugs, moving forward to kiss her again.
“James,” she says, putting a hand on his chest to stop any forward progress, and sounding kind of annoyed. “He’s never going to sleep tonight if you let him nap all day.”
He rolls his eyes at her. “I ain’t lettin’ him nap all day, Blondie,” he says, leaning down and pressing kisses against her jaw. “Just for the next hour or so.”
She laughs softly. “Is that right?”
He doesn’t say anything, just kisses her in reply, pulls her down the hall to their bedroom.
They have sex on their bed in the fading evening light, being extra quiet so they don’t wake the baby. Afterwards, they lie together listening to the quiet of the house, and Juliet rolls over so that she’s laying half on top of him, the sun painting her pale skin gold and bright. “I love you,” she whispers against his mouth and he smiles at her and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear.
Their dinner burns and they end up ordering take-out from a run-down little restaurant down the beach and they sit together on the living room floor, sharing crappy Polynesian food out of take-out containers. Juliet balances Joe in her lap, both of them staring at Sawyer with their bright blue eyes and, in the background, the TV’s showing a rerun of I Love Lucy, fuzzy with static and dubbed in French, and the whole night, Sawyer can’t seem to stop smiling.
**
Turns out, he’s kinda suited for a life of quiet domesticity, falling into an easy daily routine before too long. Juliet gets up early to work at the auto-shop and Sawyer stays home with the kid, doing laundry and learning to cook and being the best damn housewife he can be.
Every few weeks, Juliet comes home with a stack of crappy old paperbacks that one of her mechanic buddies lets her borrow and Sawyer spends a couple of hours every day sitting on their porch with Joe, reading aloud to him and looking out at the beach.
Juliet tells him he should get out of the house more-take Joe for walks around town or the beach or something-but the kid’s getting kind of heavy and the thought of pushing around a stroller makes him feel vaguely uncomfortable for some reason.
One day, when Joe’s almost four months old, she hands him a backpack-looking thing along with the books and after that, Sawyer spends hours everyday walking around town with the kid strapped to his back. There’s a marina a mile or so from their house and Joe really likes to watch the boats, so they usually go down there a couple of times a week, whenever the weather’s nice and not too overbearingly hot.
He learns a little French and makes friends with the old man who runs the market on the corner. After a few weeks, the guy starts ordering English-language books for him, which is good since he’s down to just a few Harlequin bodice-rippers from Juliet’s work friend and he ain’t sure he’d be comfortable reading those to the kid.
Once Joe’s old enough to start crawling, Sawyer spends most of his days chasing him around the house, making sure he doesn’t stick his fingers in the electrical sockets or pull the TV down on his head or something.
They watch rugby and crappy ‘70s sitcoms on TV when it rains, and take naps together on the couch, the kid limp and comforting against him.
**
He gets letters from Miles every few weeks for the first few months, short notes filled with hey man and things are cool here and bitching about the damn Dharma-hippies. The letters always make him smile a little, but he doesn’t ever write back. Partly because he ain’t got a lot of time to sit around and write letters these days-keeping a six-month-old entertained is way fucking harder than it sounds-and partly because it all just seems so far away now-the island and the smoke and the constant threat of death and disaster.
By the time 1977 rolls around, the letters slowly taper off until they stop coming altogether, but Sawyer hardly notices at all.
**
A week before Joe’s first birthday, Daniel Faraday shows up at their house.
Sawyer’s folding clothes and Joe’s in his playpen taking a nap, when there’s a loud knock on the door. The baby starts crying and who the fuck is banging on his door in the middle of the afternoon? “Son of a bitch,” he mutters, and wrenches open the door and Daniel Faraday’s there, dressed in a grey Dharma jumpsuit, looking just as shifty and twitchy as when he left the island almost three years ago.
Sawyer stands there for a minute, a sick feeling in his stomach like the island’s finally won, and the baby’s just crying and crying behind him.
**
Faraday comes inside and waits on the couch, fidgeting while Sawyer picks up Joe and starts walking around the room with him. “How the hell did you find us?” Sawyer asks, talking kind of loud to be heard over the kid’s crying.
“Miles told me,” Faraday says and Sawyer curses himself for ever sending that damn letter. “And now that everyone else is back-now that Jack and Kate and Hurley and Sayid have managed to appear on the island in 1977-you’re going to have to go back, too.”
“They’re back?” Sawyer asks, feeling like the floor is falling out from under him. “How the hell did they get back?”
“None of that matters,” Daniel says, desperately. “What matters is that you have to go back.”
“Go back?” Sawyer repeats. “Go back where?”
“To the island, James.” Dan gets up from the couch and starts pacing around the room. “I think I’ve discovered a way to fix things. To turn everything back to how it was, before you traveled back in time, before you even came to the island. But for that to happen, you need to come with me.”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you,” Sawyer says, rubbing gentle circles on Joe’s back, getting him to calm down.
“You have to go back,” Faraday tells him desperately, running a hand through his hair. “It’s the only way. I don’t have time to explain all of this. All you need to know is that you need to be on that sub tomorrow morning.”
“Well, you best start tryin’ to explain it if you expect me to go back to that damn island with you,” Sawyer says, carrying Joe into the kitchen and grabbing a bottle from the fridge.
Once Sawyer gets Joe settled back in the playpen with his bottle, Faraday starts filling him in. Pacing around the room and talking about hydrogen bombs and pockets of electromagnetic energy and how it’ll only work if everyone from the crash is back on the island.
Faraday sounds so desperate and brilliant and so fucking sure of himself that Sawyer has to clench his fists around the back of one of the kitchen chairs to stop from punching the bastard in the face.
The baby starts wailing again, his face red and streaked with tears and snot, and Dan looks at Sawyer with something like pity. “I’m sorry,” Faraday says, watching as Joe works himself into a full-blown tantrum. “But none of this was ever supposed to happen.”
Sawyer picks up Joe and holds him against his chest, inhaling his milky-sweet baby smell and bouncing him a little until he starts to calm down. The creepy little scientist ain’t got any idea what is and isn’t supposed to happen, but Dan’s still staring at him expectantly. Like he’s just gonna throw the baby on the floor and follow him back to hell. Well, fuck that.
He ends up just kind of pushing Dan out the door, promises he’ll talk to Juliet and they’ll be packed and ready to go first thing tomorrow morning. The twitchy little bastard agrees and as soon as Sawyer shuts the door behind him, he puts the baby in the playpen and starts rushing around the house, packing everything he can into the one suitcase they have. What a fucking disaster.
**
Sawyer’s in the baby’s room, throwing clothes into the almost-full suitcase, when Juliet comes home, covered in grease and smelling like motor oil.
“James,” she says when she sees him, an edge of panic to her voice. “What’s going on?”
“Faraday came back,” he says, throwing a handful of socks into the suitcase. “Everyone’s back. They went back, Juliet." She tilts her head at him and he rushes to continue. "Jack. Hurley. Sayid,” he says. “Kate.”
Juliet looks at him like she’s not understanding a word he’s saying, so he tries to explain. “He says we gotta go back, too. That he’s got a plan to fix things, to make it like it was before.” And, fuck, he’s running out of room in the suitcase. How can such a small person have so much shit?
“Before?” she repeats, apparently oblivious to his packing crisis. “Before what?”
“Before our plane crashed,” he says, throwing more clothes into the old suitcase. He shuts the now-empty drawer and opens the next one. It’s filled with all these tiny shirts and, shit, he should probably sort through these things-half of this stuff is way too small now for Joe now, anyway-but there just ain’t a lot of time, is the thing. He throws it all in and hopes like hell he’s actually going to be able to get the damn bag closed.
Juliet doesn’t say anything in response and when he turns around, she’s just kind of standing there, looking dumbstruck. Joe’s crawling around on the floor near her feet. He reaches up and pats a chubby hand against her leg and she doesn’t even look down. Just keeps staring at Sawyer like she’s in shock or something.
“Juliet?” he says, pausing with a fistful of baby clothes clenched in his hand. “Did you hear what I just said?”
She blinks at him and her eyes kinda regain their focus and she looks down, to where the baby’s trying to pull himself up against her leg. She smiles softly at him and reaches down to pick him up.
She settles Joe on her hip and hugs him to her, probably a little too tight judging by the kid’s squawk of protest. “Careful there, muscles,” Sawyer says uneasily, glancing at her sidelong as she readjusts the baby, being as gentle as she usually is. He giggles a little and pats at her face and Sawyer turns his full attention back to the task at hand.
“You want to go back,” she says eventually, her voice dull and tired. She slumps against the wall and presses her cheek against the top of Joe’s head.
“What?” he says, dropping the rest of the clothes in the bag and kneeling on it to zip it closed. What the hell is she talking about? “No, I don’t wanna go back. But we gotta get moving if we want to be gone by the time Dan comes back.”
“You don’t want to go with him?” she asks, like she doesn’t quite believe him. The kid grabs a chunk of her hair in shoves it in his mouth. Sawyer hopes she doesn’t mind a head full of baby spit because there ain’t time for her to wash it out.
“Why the hell would I want to go with him?” he asks. He shakes his head and picks up the suitcase. He reaches out with his other hand and pulls her towards the door. “Come on, Blondie,” he says. “We gotta go.”
**
He spends most of the ride to the airport explaining Faraday’s plan to her. When he gets to the part about the Jughead-about blowing up a fucking hydrogen bomb to try and reset time-she rubs a hand across her forehead like she can’t quite believe what he’s telling her. Still, though, she doesn’t say anything, just stares out the window at the city as Sawyer fills her in on the mad scientist’s plan.
**
When they get out of the cab at the airport, Juliet holds Joe while Sawyer wrangles their suitcase out of the trunk and onto the pavement. She’s still dressed in her work clothes, looking dazed and upset, the baby cradled against her chest.
“Where are we going to go?” she asks, sounding worried. She keeps looking over her shoulder every few seconds, like Faraday’s going to pop out from behind one of the ticket counters and try to force them to go back to the island or something.
“Anywhere you want, Blondie.” He smiles at her and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear.
She doesn’t smile back, just looks up at the flight board. “Are you sure about this, James?”
“I ain’t never been more sure about anything in my life,” he says and he really, really means it. He wants to get as far away from Faraday and that fucking island as possible.
**
They end up deciding to go Sydney, which would be kind of funny if it this whole situation weren’t so fucked up. But it’s close and the tickets are cheap and pretty much everyone speaks English there, so. It’s the best they’ve got.
Sawyer doubts Dan’s going to follow them. Either way-even if he does eventually figure out where they went and manages to track them down one day-all that matters right now is that he get Juliet and Joe on the plane and way the hell away from here.
**
“What if it works?” Juliet says, once they’re on the plane. People are still filing down the aisle to find their seats and the baby is a warm, solid weight in his lap.
“What if what works?” he asks distractedly, trying to keep Joe from sticking the seatbelt in his mouth.
“Faraday’s plan,” she says. “What if he manages to reset time, to make it so your plane never crashed on the island, so that all of this never happens?”
“It don’t work like that, Blondie. You can’t just reset time with a damn H-bomb.” He shakes his head. “Besides, Dan’s been feedin’ us all that whatever happened, happened mumbo-jumbo since the first flash and I ain’t about to start believin’ otherwise.”
“Still,” she says, reaching out and brushing a hand over Joe’s head. “What’s going to happen to us if it does work?”
“It won’t,” he says firmly as the baby reaches out and wraps one chubby hand around Juliet’s finger. “We’re gonna be fine.”
She makes a face like she doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t say anything else. They wait while everyone finds their seats and the stewardesses start going over the emergency plans in case the plane starts to crash. He almost laughs when they calmly explain the crash procedures, only stops when he looks over at Juliet and she’s staring anxiously at Joe and biting hard on her lower lip.
He reaches over and slips his hand inside hers. He gives her a reassuring smile and he hopes like hell he’s right, that this is the one thing in his life that’s going to work out okay.
Joe falls asleep in his lap and Juliet rests her head against his shoulder. “We’re gonna be fine,” Sawyer promises again, as the plane takes off, and he wills himself-just this once-to be telling her the truth.
****
end