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

[complexguy]

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[dharmalady]

"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.

[complexguy]

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.

[dharmalady]

"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?"

[complexguy]

"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.

[dharmalady]

"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.

[complexguy]

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.

[dharmalady]

"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.

[complexguy]

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.

[dharmalady]

"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.

[complexguy]

"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?"

[dharmalady]

That question is why she's out here, and she holds her breath for a second before exhaling.

"I don't know. I don't know because you were right. Me and what money are going to Colorado?"

Juliet presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. "I have no idea what happens when Horace kicks us out in two weeks, but it's still going to be better than anything that happened here in three years."

[complexguy]

"So let's figure it out, right? Maybe you don't wanna be a doctor no more but you gotta be good at other stuff right?" Maybe talking it out will relax her a little.

[dharmalady]

She looks at him a little doubtfully. It can't be that simple. They don't exist. Well, she does, but she's a toddler.

"Sure. Shooting people. Tracking them. Doing double-agent type things, speaking Latin."

[complexguy]

He doesn't miss a beat, though. "Well, alright then," he smirks a little. "Now we gotta pick a place. Far from the States, right? Canada; little cabin out in the middle of nowhere. You get your snow, no one bothers us. We make money as mercenaries, the four of us. Sound like a plan?"

[dharmalady]

She laughs, an exhale through her nose.

"Mercenaries. Maybe." Juliet tilts her head and looks at him.

"We need to teach Jin more English, first."

[complexguy]

"Think we can do it in two weeks?" He looks over at her, letting his shoulder bump against hers again.

[dharmalady]

This time when his shoulder bumps hers, she bumps his back and then leans against him a little, letting out a breath.

"He's a smart guy. He already knows more now than he did the first time we met."

Juliet's quiet for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the jungle that surround the neighborhood.

"You want me to stick with you even off the island?"

She's been trying to find a way to ask that for a little while now.

[complexguy]

He tries to imagine leaving this island, and then parting ways with her, and for some reason, he just can't handle that thought for long. He's also not sure he ever wants to leave the island, but he hesitates saying that because he knows she does.

"Told ya, Blondie. We're all we've got."

[dharmalady]

She doesn't know what to think of how that comment warms her, or how him liking her well enough to want her around makes her feel.

Somewhere along the line she'd just accepted she would always be the Other, but James is treating her as everything but.

"I came out here to get drunk because maybe for the first time in three years, the idea of leaving this island is more depressing than staying."

[complexguy]

He knows she's pretty buzzed right now, but she's coherent enough that he hopes these words sink in. "Whatever happens, I got your back."

[dharmalady]

Juliet's quiet for so long, and her eyes are closed as she leans against him, so it'd be easy to assume she fell asleep. But she didn't and she finally speaks again.

"You'd be the first."

[complexguy]

"There ain't much I've ever done I'm proud of. Ain't a good person. But I'm tryin', you know. To be better. And when I say you got me, I mean it," he says firmly, making a promise to himself to never let her down.

[dharmalady]

Her chin involuntarily trembles, and she tightens her face into a mask, she hopes. Hopes he can't even really see her features.

"We've come a long way from an attempted interrogation over a medical kit."

[complexguy]

She may try to hide it, but he doesn't miss the way her face transforms, the way she tries to hide. He gets it, how vulnerable it can be to show that side of yourself. It's why he can understand, and why he won't ever push her. He's hidden his own self for so damn long. Even with Kate, he never felt free to just be. He always had to hide some parts of himself, and he always had to worry he'd be second best.

He doesn't know everything Juliet's been through, but she's told him enough. He knows she hasn't really been able to live her own life in so long. She's been trapped here, she's been manipulated. When was the last time she got to just make her own damn choices? And here he was, talking her in to staying behind, and taking away her choice again.

He knows what he has to do, but that'll wait until she's sobered up tomorrow. For now, he softly asks, "Tell me somethin'. Tell me the last moment you were really happy."

[dharmalady]

Really happy? She can go ahead and forget about the last three years. She knows what it is immediately but doesn't say anything for a long time. She draws back from James and wraps her arms around herself. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

"The day my sister told me she was pregnant. She was barren, from the chemo. I'd been working on a fertility drug and it worked to get a male field mouse pregnant. Caught the attention of a Mr. Alpert. But the week before I came here, Rachel told me she was pregnant, and I don't think I've been happy since that day."

Her voice fades and she looks down, picking at her fingernails as she blinks back tears. And then she puts her face in her hands and cries.