complexguy | ★ but I'm going to be okay as long as you're beside me along the way

He glances over at her briefly before focusing on the path ahead, getting their jeep through the jungle safely.

"You know damn near everything about me, don't ya," he muses softly, not sure how he feels about it all.

"I'm sorry that I do. It wasn't my choice, James."

She has no idea if she's earned his trust yet--she must have, on some level--but maybe this just brings it all back up. She was an Other, she helped keep him locked up. She tased him, for Christ's sake.

"But I do know why you were in Australia."

There. That's a cat out of the bag.

It would be easy for her to assume, more than likely, that he didn't even hear her; a prolonged silence drags out between them, with the only sound being the rattle of the jeep against the rugged jungle floor. He doesn't look at her, doesn't say anything, just clenches his jaw tightly now and again.

"How 'bout this; why don't you tell me what you don't know about me."

He can't bring himself to directly talk about that time right now, but at least he's still willing to talk.

Juliet looks away from him, out at the passing jungle around them. It's different, being in a vehicle after so long, and she's quiet as long as he was. She doesn't know why he wanted her to stay. She doesn't know what makes her the one between Miles and Jin that he doesn't want to lose.

Those things stay tucked away, and finally, she takes a breath and looks over at him again.

"I don't know what makes you happy. Really happy, I mean."

She knows all of the things that have kept him angry, calloused, and sad, but she doesn't know yet what happiness looks like on him.

Immediately, he has a few sharp-tongued responses to that, filled with snark. But he glances briefly over at her face, and the look in her eyes softens him, as seems to be happening so much more often when he's with her. He can't come back sounding like a jackass when she asks such a genuinely thoughtful question. He never would have cared so much before, and he's not even sure why he does now, except that Juliet's just so damn good, she deserves better than any of the shit he's ever pulled. She deserves his honesty, at the very least.

But it's gonna take him a minute to get there.

"Why do you wanna know that?"

What he's asking without asking is, Why do you care?

"Why did you want me to stay?"

A question for a question. And they both mean the same thing. Her face is blank, purposefully unreadable because she doesn't know yet what to expect from him.

She's got him there. He doesn't know what to make of her sometimes; he knows he lets his own emotions play out on his face easily, especially when he's upset, but she doesn't. Not easily, anyway. She's a mystery on an island that's already damn mysterious on its own.

The truth is that he didn't want to be alone, he couldn't be, and despite everything, he enjoys being around her more than anyone else. He asked her to stay, so he owes her a genuine answer.

Going quiet again for a long stretch, he swings back around to the other question first.

"Tell ya the truth, Blondie, I don't remember the last time I was real damn happy. Can't even figure out what would get me there."

"Guess we have something in common."

She turns her head to look at him, a barely-there smile touching her lips. Maybe he asked her to stay because for a moment, at some point, she made him happy. As the pylons come into view and they have to wait for a DHARMA security member to turn it off, she shifts to look at James fully.

"You came back for me on the beach. You saved my life that night." The night of the flaming arrows and her desperate attempt to put people out. "I didn't even know you trusted me enough to care."

"Did you think I'd leave ya behind? Hell, I'm a lotta things, Juliet, but I got a heart." He pauses for a moment. "Somewhere in here. I think." He smirks a little, just for a moment. "We're all we've got now, so. No, you ain't gettin' left behind."

"After what I did to you and your friends, I wouldn't have blamed you."

It's no secret they didn't start off well. And she doesn't think she'll ever forget the way he looked at her when she walked into the beach camp for the first time.

What the hell is she doing here?

She didn't--and doesn't--blame him for it. When she looks at him again as they're given the all-clear to drive through, she hesitates, then speaks.

"I'm sorry for the things that happened to you and Kate."

James drives through, again giving her words time to really sink in, and not responding right away. When he finally does, he drives a little slower as they get close to the barracks.

"Why are you sorry? What happened between us, wasn't nothin' to do with you, Juliet." When he finally stops and parks, he breathes out, "Her and I, we were never gonna belong together."

"For what it's worth, neither were Jack and I."

For a beat, Juliet looks at James, some kind of sadness in her eyes, buried by a mask. Then, she breaks eye contact and climbs out of the jeep, handing over her rifle as soon as it's asked for.

They go eat, spend the rest of the day hanging around, and that night, Juliet sits with a bottle of DHARMA rum on the steps of their porch. It's late, sometime around midnight, and she's already halfway into the bottle when she hears the door open behind her. It doesn't matter who it is, she just puts the bottle out beside her on the step in invitation.

James had fallen asleep on the couch about an hour ago, but he doesn't sleep long. Noticing the porch light on, he gets up, rubbing a hand over his face as he steps outside and silently takes the bottle from her. Wearing just his boxers and a green undershirt-not really caring how he's dressed at this time of night-he settles beside Juliet and takes a long pull from the bottle.

"Just figured it out. You and me, we're the rejects, Blondie. The leftovers."

She's a little drunk, and when she looks at him, it's with half-lidded eyes.

"What? The leftover what?" Juliet shifts so that her back is against the post and reaches for the bottle again greedily.

"Forget I said it," he says quietly, trying to dismiss it. Maybe she's just drunk enough not to try and push. But the thing is, Juliet pushes him just enough (gently) that he wants to talk.

He does pass the bottle back to her, though, after one more sip.

Edited 2019-10-01 18:28 (UTC)

"I wanna know," she says after taking another sip. "Tell me. I stayed on this island just so you and I could get shit faced and philosophical, so. Out with it."

The bottle rests between them again, and she watches him in the yellow light of the porch.

That earns a soft chuckle as he shakes his head a little.

"You had Jack for a while, I had Kate. Neither one of us was who they really wanted. We were just the scraps, the leftovers. You get me?" He says darkly, letting out a breath as he stares out into the night sky.

He doesn't know why it's so damn easy to talk to her, even about shit he never thought he'd say to anyone. Maybe it's because she listens so good and she doesn't make him feel tense about every damn thing. Maybe it's because when she looks at him, he feels known and seen and understood.

"Oh," she says somewhat dumbly, before adding:

"That's what I've always been." She understands the feeling and because she's a little drunk, her thoughts are unguarded.

"I was having an affair with--" Juliet pauses.

"Ever meet Goodwin?"

"Never had the pleasure." He draws his knees up a bit, resting his arms across them. The fact that she had an affair is certainly something he won't judge her on.

"So," she decides to tell him, filling him in on the Other gossip.

"I was sad. Lonely. And he was very convincing when he promised his marriage was over. I--" Juliet barks out a laugh like she's just realized the punchline to a joke. "I became the other woman. After a marriage filled with anger and hurt I came here and did the same thing to another woman."

She closes her eyes and rests her head against the beam behind her.

"And then he died. After infiltrating the Tail section, posing as a survivor. And it was my fault."

Juliet never talks this much, but it's him, and the alcohol, and things pour out of her.

As he listens, he brings his legs down, stretching them out in front of him. Then he folds his hands together, but as he does so, his shoulder bumps up lightly against hers. It's purposeful, just a way for him to silently communicate that she's not alone.

"You thought you had somethin' good but he was never really yours. Sounds familiar," he murmurs darkly, sighing. She already knows so much of his life that he's not telling her anything new, but there's something about what she tells him about herself that really strikes a chord with him.

"Ain't a thing I'm proud to have in common with you, but I know what it's like to become the thing you hated." She knows his story, so she'll know what he's talking about. He hated the man who destroyed his family, and then he became the monster he wanted to kill.

"My husband wasn't. Goodwin wasn't, Jack wasn't." Hers, she means.

At what he says next, Juliet opens her eyes again and studies him. No, they shouldn't have that in common, but they have more in common than she thought, once.

"Maybe some people don't get that life. You know the one I mean?" The perfect, easy life, with a house and 2.5 kids. "Maybe for the leftovers it goes a different way."

Which is a depressing thought, so she reaches for the rum again, taking a few swallows.

He lets her take a few pulls, but then he steals it back for some sips of his own. "I don't want the life everyone's got. Ain't for me anyway."

He's not even sure of what he wants, really. All he's ever thought about or cared about is surviving. Making it from one day to the next. In all of that, there was never any time to worry about being happy or loved.

"What if you meet a DHARMA hippie and fall in love?" she asks, letting a warm laugh fall from her lips even though their conversation really isn't that humorous. It's better than crying.

"What kind of life, then, James? Blank slate, we're stuck in the 70s. What's next for you, LaFleur?"

She likes calling him that, likes the name. Creole, he'd said, and she thinks it just sounds pretty.

"Ain't likely," he rolls his eyes a little. He can't imagine meeting anyone here and trusting them enough, but he also knows Juliet wasn't being serious.

The next question is harder, though. "Hell if I know. Only thing I do know is I'm not goin' back to my old ways."

It's a scary thought in the sense that he wasn't good at anything else but being a con man, but too much has happened here, and he just can't do it anymore.

"What about you? You gonna settle in Colorado, and then what?"

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