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

[complexguy]

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[dharmalady]

Her elbows rest on her knees, and she presses her hands to her forehead as she thinks.

"I don't know. Guess I'll figure it out." She's about to ask him the same thing when the door opens and Miles and Jin fill the porch.

That's their cue to go, and one Jeep and two rifles later, they drive out to the beach. It's a hell of a lot better than walking and they split up--Miles and Jin, Juliet and James. As they walk in opposite directions of the beach, Juliet falls into step beside James easily, eyes scanning the beach for any signs of wreckage.

"Why did you decide to leave the island? Before you jumped out of the helicopter, I mean." She looks over at him. She's read his file, she knows he'd just finished killing a man and had nearly nothing.

"What were you going back to?" she asks him curiously.

[complexguy]

He's scanning the beach carefully, too, hoping for some glimpse of her...of them. Any of them. But it's just miles and miles of untouched sand.

"Ever been to Tennessee? Dolly Parton-you know her- she built a hell of a theme park, I hear. Dollywood. All the years I spent in and outta that state, can you believe I never got there? Someone told me once they've got this cinnamon bread there you gotta try once before you croak. So. I kept thinkin' about it you know. That whole time we're on the run from people tryin' to kill us. Just couldn't get it outta my mind, that cinnamon bread and the ferris wheel." He shrugs a little, with a grin on his face. "Can you blame a guy?"

[dharmalady]

She has no idea if he's being serious or not, but he does make her smile as she looks up, tossing him a smile.

"Well. You might have to wait until the 80s for that one. And no, I've never been to Tennessee. Until the island, I'd never even left Florida."

Hell of a first trip.

[complexguy]

"Well, if I'd made it on that chopper, I coulda been chokin' down cinnamon bread right now, thirty years in the future." He smirks a little. "Was there ever any place you wanted to go?"

[dharmalady]

"Colorado," she says without having to think much about it. "It was always hot and I'd never seen snow. Still haven't. I don't think I've ever been in cold weather, period."

She could go there, maybe, away from oceans and beaches and jungles.

"And maybe you'll get lucky with the bread. For all you know, someone here is an incredible baker." Juliet's curious, though.

[complexguy]

"Ain't never been there myself. Or seen snow," he agrees. "So that's where you'll be, huh? Somewhere out in Colorado, 1974."

It's a hell of a thing, still, to wrap his mind around. Right now, he's just six years old and his mama's still alive. The thought makes his heart ache for a moment, but then he turns his attention back to Juliet.

"You gonna bake somethin' for me, Blondie?"

[dharmalady]

"Guess we'll see," she says to his first point. And as for the second, she laughs, loudly.

"Well, I could. But you run the risk of me burning down our guest house. I wasn't talking about me; unless its pasta, I'm a pretty impossible cook. The day your plane crashed, I burned an entire batch of muffins."

[complexguy]

"S'pose Jin's got a secret talent we don't know about?" He laughs softly. "Guess we're all stuck relyin' on the mess hall, 'cause I can't cook either."

[dharmalady]

"He was surprisingly good at cooking fish," she says hopefully, remembering from her brief stint at the beach camp.

Looking down, something shiny catches her eye. "Stop," she says when he gets a few paces ahead of her, and she kneels down, digging into the sand. She pulls out a large chunk of glass, turning it over in her hands.

"Must have been a storm, lightning hit the beach. Or maybe it's from the flashes." Handing it over to James, she digs a little more, revealing even more glass, spread out around them.

"Time travel souvenir. Cooler than anything you'll get at Dollywood."

[complexguy]

He kneels down with her, digging out another large hunk that he turns over in his hand. Holding it up to the sun, he smiles a little. It's a simple thing, really, but beautiful.

"Well, how 'bout that. Knew I stuck around for a reason."

[dharmalady]

She smiles a little, then looks at him.

"No people though." Her features grow serious and she stands up again, looking out at the water.

"Three things could have happened," she begins, thinking it out. "The helicopter crashed out in the ocean and sank immediately. The helicopter crashed after the island disappeared and didn't come with it, or..."

She looks back at him. "Or it didn't crash at all. But there's nothing on the beach, James. At least not this one."

[complexguy]

His eyes close tightly for a moment as he lets out a breath, looking out at the beach and the water before glancing back to Juliet. "Then we'll keep lookin'." For now, at least, he can't give up on any of them. He has to keep trying.

If they're out there somewhere, if they're hurt, they need help. And he can't handle the thought of Kate being with them, possibly injured.

[dharmalady]

She agrees with him, she won't stop looking or coming out here with him. It's why she stayed.

"Then we'll keep looking. They still could have landed in the jungle," she offers, not wanting to give him a reason to give up.

"Come on. I'm not in a rush and we have time before we need to turn back. We can keep going, be sure." She knows how important this is to him, no matter how convinced she is that they're gone.

[complexguy]

"Thanks. For gettin' my back again," he smiles over at her. She's here, she won't leave him, at least not yet. And that means more than he knows how to express.

"So you stayed your whole life in Florida, you said?"

[dharmalady]

For just a beat, she looks at him, something that she wants to say right there on the tip of her tongue. But she doesn't say it, even if it lives in her eyes.

She has his back, and a part of her already knows wherever he goes, she will, too. It just feels like what she's supposed to do.

At his question, she nods. "Almost left once, for college. But I applied to the University of Miami last minute and got in, so I stayed. Then I went to med school, got married. Never left."

[complexguy]

"Where were you gonna go?" Maybe he's asking too many questions, maybe he should stop, but she's still such a mystery to him. He feels like he knows her a hell of a lot better now, he knows what she's capable of, what she'll do for others, and for him, but he doesn't know a whole lot about her just yet. "Before you got in to Miami."

[dharmalady]

The truth is, she hasn't anyone to talk to like this. When Ben talked to her it felt smarmy, like a violation of her space and time. But James is curious, he remembers things about her because they come up again in conversation, and for the first time in a long, long time, she feels safe giving parts of herself away.

"University of Michigan." But she didn't go and so, she looks up at him as they walk.

"My mom got sick my that summer, and it was...fast. So I stayed," she explains succinctly.

[complexguy]

It's a strange feeling in some ways, just knowing this woman knows so damn much about him, about his past. It feels like there's nothing left to say, in some ways; that he doesn't need to tell her anything else about himself because she already knows. The past isn't the most pleasant thing to talk about either, for reasons she also knows.

"You really wanted to check out that snow, huh?" He questions softly, then softens even more at the mention of her mother. "I'm sure your ma was real glad. To have you. I mean, not that it was - hell. You get me, right?"

He's fumbling, trying to express his condolences in a way that isn't just a cliche in some way.

[dharmalady]

"I get you," she assures him, a small smile touching her lips. She knows so much about him and she realizes he knows it, so she doesn't want to offend him by pretending. But she wants to know him. It's just a matter of not hurting him in the process.

They walk in silence for a while before she speaks.

"I'm sorry. About your future not going the way you thought it would." With Kate, she means.

[complexguy]

Taking a long pull of some water, James waits to respond. He knows what she's referring to, the name unspoken but understood. He had no real idea of how life would play out for him and Kate, he just hoped they might be able to figure something out. It was never gonna be normal, but the both of them would at least have each other. He doesn't know, though, what kind of life he really thinks they could have had. On the run all the time, never settling down. Would she have been happy with him, stayed with him? Or would Jack have always been on her mind?

Would he have just been second best?

"Worked out the way it was s'posed to, didn't it?" He muses quietly.

[dharmalady]

"Did it?"

Juliet stops walking, taking a water break as well.

"'Whatever happened, happened' that's what Daniel said. So by that logic, you and I aren't meant to leave this island." Is that the way it's supposed to work out for her? That she never gets to go?

"Locke would have loved this conversation."

[complexguy]

He scoffs under his breath, kneeling down for a moment. Idly, he scoops some sand up into his palm, letting it fall between his fingers.

"Hell, maybe we aren't." He's not being entirely serious, but with everything that's happened, it's hard to believe otherwise, too. "I don't know. There's not much I'm sure of these days, Blondie."

[dharmalady]

She watches him, then looks out at the ocean.

"How long do you think it takes? To be declared legally dead? How long do you think someone looks for a missing person?"

Juliet's wondered these questions over and over again over the last three years, but she's never voiced them aloud. She isn't even sure if she meant to now, but it's out there, and she steps closer to the water so that her back is to him.

[complexguy]

He turns his head sharply to look at her, eyes narrowing a little as he studies her face.

"I think... think as long as there's someone to miss ya, they never give up." He doesn't know what that could even feel like, to be missed by anyone. "If your sister's still out there, she ain't gonna stop. I know it's all so damn complicated now, bein' back in time, but she's never gonna let you go."

[dharmalady]

She's so good at wearing a mask, at keeping her emotions carefully in check. But she has tells; the right corner of her lip twitches upward and she looks down, wrapping her arms around herself.

"Ben told me if I stayed with him here, he'd cure her cancer. He'd make sure she never got sick again."

So. She'd stayed.