Lost fic: Found [Sawyer/Juliet, 4000 words]
Summary: What happens next? (After the vending machine scene in the final episode.)
Found
by eponine119
March 13, 2022
Juliet doesn’t want to let go of him, now that they’ve found each other again. The idea hurts too much. Even when their kisses end, she puts her face against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him, memorizing the way he feels against her, holding her tight.
But her thoughts are whirling in her head. The two of them are still standing in the break room, so she takes a step backward, away. He releases her easily, watching as she raises her hands to wipe the tears from her eyes. He looks as though he can’t take his eyes off her, doesn’t want to.
“Juliet --” He starts to say something and then stops. There’s too much.
“We have a lot to talk about,” she says, and takes a deep breath, pulling herself together.
He gestures for her to go ahead.
She pulls her eyes away from him to look around them, at the vending machines and the coffeemaker, the tables and chairs. “My house is a couple blocks away.”
“I’ll drive.”
They walk out of the hospital together, so close that her shoulder keeps bumping his. She looks at the faces of the people she knows, who she works with every day. She’s looking for something, and she isn’t really sure what. Her eyes go to the ceiling and the floor, asking herself: is this real? Is any of this real? Maybe this is a nervous breakdown, she’s finally cracked under the pressure, imagining a whole other life and a connection with this guy --
But it’s James. Right here, beside her. Shifting the gears as he drives, following the directions to her house, which she looks at now through different eyes. Pulling into her driveway.
They look at each other, sitting in the front seat with the car turned off. It feels so strange, she has to laugh. He chuckles, too, and it puts her at ease. She wonders what he must be thinking.
He follows her inside, standing close behind her as she unlocks the front door. She takes stock, as she always does when she walks in. Living with a teenager, she can never be sure what will greet her.
Shoes and backpacks tangle in the entryway, but she knows David is at the concert, and then Jack has him tonight. Juliet glances at Sawyer, and sees him looking down at the shoes that obviously aren’t all hers. David’s at that puppy stage right now, where his feet are full grown and he just has to grow into them, so they must look to Sawyer like a man’s shoes.
Jack flashes into her mind. Memories of Jack on the island, and of Jack in this life. She shakes her head to stop it. There is literally too much to think about.
“You married?” Sawyer asks, and he’s frowning, standing a little bit at a distance from her now.
“I was,” she replies, and sees him look at her ringless fingers. Like he’s not sure whether to believe her.
What he doesn’t know is that she’s never worn a ring, not even when she was married, not even when she was married in that other life. Her work made it seem impractical, so the ring stayed in her jewelry box. Jack always wore his, because that was Jack. Loyal, and in need of symbols. So he put it on and off all day every day in the hospital, until he finally lost it. Then he tried to hide it from her, that it was lost. His lying about that was how she started to realize it was over between them.
All her memories of this life are flooding over her, almost like the memories of her other life did. Her real life, and she doesn’t know what this is. It makes her feel afraid, so she looks at Sawyer again.
Sawyer who is solid and real and hers. She knows exactly who he is. He is her constant, when the whole world has changed.
“We gonna be interrupted?” he asks, with a familiar rise of his eyebrows.
She shakes her head. She has to bite back a little smile, knowing what he wants to do. What he is going to do - what they are going to do. Because she knows him so well, this stranger she’s just met.
He stands there looking at her, like he can’t get enough of looking at her. Like he doesn’t even know where to begin. “We’ll talk after,” he declares.
She takes his hand, because she knew from his first touch this was what would happen. She wants him. They go into her bedroom and stand there for a moment, quietly. They just breathe, living with what this is.
His fingers move against hers as he takes it all in. Her bedroom: the ruffles and lace on the bed, the walls she painted herself, the clothes tossed over a chair. She can’t stop looking at him, studying the lines of his face that she loves so well. He’s looking at the large painting hung over the bed. She had been drawn to the shades of turquoise in it, water and sky contrasting with pale sand and trees. It looks like the island.
The revelation feels like a punch rather than a tap on the shoulder. The island has always been there, signs of it, threaded through her entire life. Not just the island, but before. The memories start to wash painfully over her again.
He kisses her hard, like he knows. Like it’s happening to him too, and he wants to shut it out. His hands move over her body like he doesn’t know where to touch her first.
Their passion builds fast and intense, with a desperation and longing to it that almost frightens her. Sawyer pulls back and she takes a deep breath, pulling air into her lungs to steady herself.
“I been waiting such a long time to see you again,” he murmurs, and his dimples flash. Even now he can’t stop looking at her, or touching her, as they finish undressing.
In one part of her brain, it’s only been an instant, like only one second has gone by. They were lying together in their little yellow house last night, before the events of that terrible last day. At the same time, she’s been missing him for all the years she’s been on this earth, in this life. He’s the missing piece, the one she didn’t even know was gone.
She thought she was lonely because she was alone, not because she missed him.
His body is the same, but different. His skin is still tan in contrast with the white sheets in her bed. His body is slimmer, sculpted in a gym rather than in a jungle. There’s a deep, ugly scar on his shoulder. She lowers her head to kiss it, running her tongue over the healed rips and ridges in his skin. “What happened?”
“Got shot,” he says casually. “Kidnapping case. Not my usual thing, on vice, but they thought this one might involve trafficking, so they pulled me in. Damn thing got infected. I almost died.”
The hand stroking her hair goes still, and she can feel the tension in him. He’s remembering something else, about that kidnapping, something that lines up between that old life and this one.
He blinks it away, like he wants the memories out of his head, and he refocuses on her. He rolls her over so she’s underneath him, a move so familiar it makes her want to cry. His weight settles against her, the heat of his body pressing her into the softness of the bed.
Then he rises up to kiss his way down her chest, starting with her collarbone. She closes her eyes. Her body’s different, too, she realizes. But he doesn’t ask, just traces the silvery-faded stretch marks on her belly with his tongue. His fingers dig into her thighs, and she knows this too, what’s coming next, as he pushes them apart and lowers his head.
She threads her fingers through his hair and tries to surrender to it. He knows everything she likes, but there’s a newness to it, too. It’s the first time and the hundredth, simultaneously. She remembers, fleetingly, that other first time between them, but the is making it impossible for her to think about much of anything.
Then he’s inside her and it’s like that first electric spark of remembering again. She cries out, and she knows by the way he’s murmuring her name that he’s feeling it too. It’s too intense to last for long.
Afterward, they lie together. He cuddles her close, enveloping her in his heat and scent and touch. His eyes close while she’s watching him, the way she always used to. She brushes his hair back from his forehead and he opens his eyes again and smiles, looking at her. She smiles back.
“How long?” she asks simply, stroking his hair again, tracing the curve of his ear.
“Long. Years. So many years.”
“Do you remember it?” She thinks about falling. She remembers it so vividly, the friction burn on the skin of her arm where he tried to hold on to her and couldn’t. The way it felt like she fell for ever, for years, but it was just an instant, really, the laws of gravity and physics taking her. Even standing in the hospital break room, it hurt all the way down into her bones and she could taste the blood in her mouth again. She could close her eyes and she would be there again, broken inside, lying in a puddle.
She wants to know if it’s like that for him. What it was like for him. Because he’s the only person she knows who also remembers. And because she loves him.
“I was an ornery old man,” he declares, and she knows he isn’t going to give her more. He had a whole long life without her. After her. She’s surprised by how much it hurts. She’s jealous. “I missed you every damn day.”
“I wish I’d been there.” If she had been there, would they be here, now? There’s still so much she doesn’t understand, and it’s hard for her to think about.
“I wish you had, too, Blondie.” He snuggles in closer to her, like he’s never going to let her go. His lips settle a kiss on her hairline. But he knows her; he knows her so well. He sighs. “If we’re gonna talk, we better get dressed.”
She nods, and they stay there for another long moment, just holding each other. She kisses him, and then rolls over to get up. Her hands run through her hair to try to untangle it, and she puts on soft, worn jeans and a loose shirt. He bends to pick up his leather jacket from where it ended up on the floor, and adds it to the pile of clothes on her chair. She likes the way it looks there. He catches her watching him and she gives him a little smile.
“I’ll make some coffee,” she offers, because they’re going to need it. He doesn’t follow her into the kitchen, where she performs the familiar motions by force of habit - pouring the water, placing the filter, measuring the grounds. The machine beeps as she presses the Brew button.
In here, alone, she has the time and space to think. She could stand and wait for the coffee. But she doesn’t want to. She wants to be near him.
Sawyer stands in her living room, examining the collection of photos on the fireplace mantel. She looks at his broad shoulders, wondering what he’s thinking. A little flutter of nervousness dances in her stomach. She’s been rejected by men before, men who weren’t worth knowing, who rejected her for having a son. For being a single mom.
This is James, and he loves her, but at the same time… he’s holding the photo of her wedding. Her wedding to Jack.
She thinks of all the history between them, him and Jack. She sees him in the jungle, bloody from a fistfight with Jack, and she can’t imagine what he must be thinking right now.
“I still can’t figure out what this place is,” she says, looking at the walls of her house as though they are going to dissolve any minute.
“Purgatory,” he says, gruff and definitive. He puts the photo back down in its spot.
Except they’re made of flesh and blood and bone. She knows this, as a doctor. She sees it every day. Babies born into this world… It’s so confusing to her. The joy she just felt, physical and emotional, is just as real as the life she remembers. As everything they lived before. “It’s a life. We’re alive,” she says, watching his chest rise and fall with his breath, feeling the heat radiating from his skin. She puts her hand on his arm, as though to prove it.
The coffeemaker has gone quiet. They walk into the kitchen and Sawyer lingers near her as she pours out two cups, fixing his just the way he likes it. They sit down on opposite sides of her breakfast table.
“I had this recurring dream when I was little,” she says, and he meets her eyes, interested. “It’s actually my first memory, waking up from a nap and laying in my crib, having just dreamed of this beautiful, soft, lush, green jungle.”
“The island,” he says.
She nods once. “I remember telling my mother, years later, and she didn’t believe me. Rachel said I must have been remembering my past life. She went through a big spiritual phase.” Juliet looks at Sawyer. “I think this is sort of like reincarnation?”
“Except it’s the same life,” he points out. “Same life but different.”
“No one knows how it works. Reincarnation,” she points out. “Maybe they were close?”
“We don’t know how it works,” he points out.
“But we do,” she says. “We know we’re waiting. Waiting for everyone to be ready.”
“So much for enlightenment,” he says, flippant, the way he always used to be when he was scared, to try to hide that fear so no one would see. Juliet always saw.
“When Rachel was into reincarnation, she read all these books, about how your soul would choose your next life, to help you learn the lessons you missed in your previous life.”
He scowls. “So we chose this?” he demands. For a second, she thinks he’s angry at her, but he says, “I chose that same shit again, my mom gettin’ killed and my daddy blowing his own head off in front of me? Cause I ain’t learned that lesson well enough the first time around?”
“But you did,” she says, quiet and calm, and she believes it. “You proved it. You’re not a con man in this life. You’re the opposite. You became --”
“Well, if this is all some cosmic do-over, I still blew it, sweetheart,” he says.
She steels herself for what’s going to come next, and so help her, she thinks about Kate. Expects her name to be the next thing that’s going to come out of his mouth.
“I killed somebody. In Australia. Last week.”
Juliet waits for the rest.
“I thought it was him. Anthony Cooper. Sawyer.” He spits out the name, with loathing and disgust. “I been hunting him down here, wrote the letter, swore revenge, same as… same as last time.” He meets her eyes and then looks away again, down at his coffee and then out the window. “Anyway. I had some info that he was this guy in Australia, name of Frank Duckett. I shot him, and I started readin’ him that letter the way I always dreamed about, and he had no idea what I was talking about.” He sighs. “Guess that’s what happens when you get your intel from crooks.” He meets her eyes again. “I got conned. Same as before.”
“Does anyone know?” she asks.
He shakes his head and then pushes his hair back. “Don’t think so. Miles knows I went to Australia - god, Miles.” He looks like it’s too much to process. Another thought crosses his mind. “How’s your sister?”
Juliet nods, and smiles thinking about Rachel. “Good, she’s good. The cancer is in remission. Her little boy is two.”
Sawyer smiles at her, a big smile. A happy smile. He knows how much it meant to her, before. It’s funny for her to think about now, because this is just her life. There is no desperate longing and no regret, just Rachel who lives on the other side of the country, who she talks to on the phone and visits at Christmas.
“What about Clementine?” Juliet asks. If Sawyer’s not a con man here… this is the part that’s hard for her to comprehend. Are there people who just don’t exist there? Why don’t they? And how does that tie in with her son, who is here but not in her old life?
Sawyer moves his head and kind of rolls his eyes like he’s embarrassed. “I picked Cassidy up in a bar, couple years ago,” he says, and he can tell he’s thinking about it too, along the same line as her thoughts. “It was just a one-night thing, never heard from her again. But I reckon it must’ve took and she never told me. So she’s out there somewhere. Clementine. I’m just destined not to know her, I guess.”
There’s pain in his eyes, and she thinks he must not have gotten to know Clementine in their old life, either. She puts her hand over his, and he gives her a sad kind of smile. He’s not finished with regret.
“We gotta talk about that other thing,” he says.
She knows he’s right, but it makes her heart start to boom in her chest. She doesn’t even know how to think about David, except to wish she could put her arms around him and hug him tight. He’s hers, but he doesn’t belong here.
“Why’d you pick this life, Juliet?” he asks, and it seems raw.
“I think…” She feels tears burning in her eyes and she doesn’t know why. She thinks about her parents and their divorce. Her old-life marriage to Ed and how unhappy she was, how he made her feel so small and worthless. She looks at Sawyer and remembers that fight, their last fight, right before she died, when she was so scared and so wrong about his not loving her. She blinks the tears away, thinking about Jack and how he always made her feel safe in this life, even when they broke up, even after.
“I think the lesson I needed, that I chose to learn, was how to have a good ending.” She stayed friends with Jack. She loved him, though she didn’t always like him or want to be around him. Thinking about it now, she realizes something else. “I think David was Jack’s lesson. His choice.”
“He was,” Sawyer says, and it’s like he knows it for a fact.
Juliet waits for him to tell her the rest.
“This might hurt you, baby,” he says. “Or maybe it’s just a test of everything you think this life was supposed to teach you.” His eyes are shiny when he looks at her. He’s struggling to tell her, because he doesn’t want to hurt her. “I recognized your kid, in those pictures out there.”
“What?” It’s a shock and a relief to know that David is real. He isn’t some made-up, mystical construct. He existed, he lived in that real world. She just never met him.
“David was Jack’s kid,” Sawyer says and stops again.
She didn’t know it until he said it, but now that he has, it feels right. It feels like she knew it all the time. But Jack didn’t have a son in that world.
That he knew of.
“You know Jack died on the island, right?”
Juliet nods. It’s one of the things she somehow knows now, that she remembered when Sawyer touched her at the hospital. Another thing that she had in common with Jack, that he didn’t make it.
“You know him’n Kate were an item, off the island. Well, long story short, bout nine months after we got off that island the second time, the last time, she had herself a bouncing baby boy. Jack’s.”
Juliet crosses her arms, like she has to hold herself together. David was Kate’s. Of course. She would laugh if she didn’t feel so bitter about it, looking at the man she loves, who seems to know plenty about Kate, as usual. Maybe neither of them learned their lessons in this life.
“Why did he pick me?” she asks. Why, if they choose their lives, wouldn’t Jack and Kate have their happy little family together and leave her out of it?
“Kate’s in jail,” Sawyer says flatly. “Same as before. She picked that life again. And Jack… maybe he wanted to be the father he never had.”
There’s a little crack in his voice, because he never had a father either.
It makes her tears start, and once they do, she can’t stop them. Maybe this was all David’s choice. Maybe he picked her to be his mom. If so, she’s honored.
Juliet can’t hold back the sobs, because this is too much. It’s overwhelming. She covers her face with her hands, and then puts her head down on the table. She never asked to know any of this.
Sawyer strokes her hair, tentatively at first. His touch soothes her. Maybe she didn’t want to know all of this, but if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have him again. She picks up her head and sniffles, and wipes her eyes with her hands, smiling at him.
The smile he returns is tender, and her heart surges with love for him. “What do we do now?”
“We could go to the church.” She knows it’s there, open for them. It’s not waiting, because where it exists is outside of time. When they arrive, it will be exactly the right time. Everyone else will be there. It will only be a minute before everyone is ready, and they can all move on together. Even if they go now, or in the morning, or next week, or a hundred years from now.
“Is that what you want?” he asks, watching her carefully.
“We only had three years, James. I wanted so much more.”
“Me too,” he says. “I missed you for a damn long time, Juliet. I want at least that many years with you.”
They’ll have forever, she thinks. But it’s still behind those closed doors, the mystery of what comes next. There’s no reason to rush.
“What about everything else we know?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Lots of people believe in reincarnation, God, heaven… maybe this is how it is for them. Knowin’ there’s something more than this.”
Neither of them have ever been spiritual people. Juliet considers herself a happy realist. “This isn’t real.”
“It’s real if we say it’s real,” he tells her. He takes her hand, and threads his fingers through hers, holding on tight. He means it. “The only thing we didn’t have was time.”
They found each other again. They get the time that eluded them before. Juliet squeezes his hand. She can’t wait to see what happens.
(end)
Found
by eponine119
March 13, 2022
Juliet doesn’t want to let go of him, now that they’ve found each other again. The idea hurts too much. Even when their kisses end, she puts her face against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him, memorizing the way he feels against her, holding her tight.
But her thoughts are whirling in her head. The two of them are still standing in the break room, so she takes a step backward, away. He releases her easily, watching as she raises her hands to wipe the tears from her eyes. He looks as though he can’t take his eyes off her, doesn’t want to.
“Juliet --” He starts to say something and then stops. There’s too much.
“We have a lot to talk about,” she says, and takes a deep breath, pulling herself together.
He gestures for her to go ahead.
She pulls her eyes away from him to look around them, at the vending machines and the coffeemaker, the tables and chairs. “My house is a couple blocks away.”
“I’ll drive.”
They walk out of the hospital together, so close that her shoulder keeps bumping his. She looks at the faces of the people she knows, who she works with every day. She’s looking for something, and she isn’t really sure what. Her eyes go to the ceiling and the floor, asking herself: is this real? Is any of this real? Maybe this is a nervous breakdown, she’s finally cracked under the pressure, imagining a whole other life and a connection with this guy --
But it’s James. Right here, beside her. Shifting the gears as he drives, following the directions to her house, which she looks at now through different eyes. Pulling into her driveway.
They look at each other, sitting in the front seat with the car turned off. It feels so strange, she has to laugh. He chuckles, too, and it puts her at ease. She wonders what he must be thinking.
He follows her inside, standing close behind her as she unlocks the front door. She takes stock, as she always does when she walks in. Living with a teenager, she can never be sure what will greet her.
Shoes and backpacks tangle in the entryway, but she knows David is at the concert, and then Jack has him tonight. Juliet glances at Sawyer, and sees him looking down at the shoes that obviously aren’t all hers. David’s at that puppy stage right now, where his feet are full grown and he just has to grow into them, so they must look to Sawyer like a man’s shoes.
Jack flashes into her mind. Memories of Jack on the island, and of Jack in this life. She shakes her head to stop it. There is literally too much to think about.
“You married?” Sawyer asks, and he’s frowning, standing a little bit at a distance from her now.
“I was,” she replies, and sees him look at her ringless fingers. Like he’s not sure whether to believe her.
What he doesn’t know is that she’s never worn a ring, not even when she was married, not even when she was married in that other life. Her work made it seem impractical, so the ring stayed in her jewelry box. Jack always wore his, because that was Jack. Loyal, and in need of symbols. So he put it on and off all day every day in the hospital, until he finally lost it. Then he tried to hide it from her, that it was lost. His lying about that was how she started to realize it was over between them.
All her memories of this life are flooding over her, almost like the memories of her other life did. Her real life, and she doesn’t know what this is. It makes her feel afraid, so she looks at Sawyer again.
Sawyer who is solid and real and hers. She knows exactly who he is. He is her constant, when the whole world has changed.
“We gonna be interrupted?” he asks, with a familiar rise of his eyebrows.
She shakes her head. She has to bite back a little smile, knowing what he wants to do. What he is going to do - what they are going to do. Because she knows him so well, this stranger she’s just met.
He stands there looking at her, like he can’t get enough of looking at her. Like he doesn’t even know where to begin. “We’ll talk after,” he declares.
She takes his hand, because she knew from his first touch this was what would happen. She wants him. They go into her bedroom and stand there for a moment, quietly. They just breathe, living with what this is.
His fingers move against hers as he takes it all in. Her bedroom: the ruffles and lace on the bed, the walls she painted herself, the clothes tossed over a chair. She can’t stop looking at him, studying the lines of his face that she loves so well. He’s looking at the large painting hung over the bed. She had been drawn to the shades of turquoise in it, water and sky contrasting with pale sand and trees. It looks like the island.
The revelation feels like a punch rather than a tap on the shoulder. The island has always been there, signs of it, threaded through her entire life. Not just the island, but before. The memories start to wash painfully over her again.
He kisses her hard, like he knows. Like it’s happening to him too, and he wants to shut it out. His hands move over her body like he doesn’t know where to touch her first.
Their passion builds fast and intense, with a desperation and longing to it that almost frightens her. Sawyer pulls back and she takes a deep breath, pulling air into her lungs to steady herself.
“I been waiting such a long time to see you again,” he murmurs, and his dimples flash. Even now he can’t stop looking at her, or touching her, as they finish undressing.
In one part of her brain, it’s only been an instant, like only one second has gone by. They were lying together in their little yellow house last night, before the events of that terrible last day. At the same time, she’s been missing him for all the years she’s been on this earth, in this life. He’s the missing piece, the one she didn’t even know was gone.
She thought she was lonely because she was alone, not because she missed him.
His body is the same, but different. His skin is still tan in contrast with the white sheets in her bed. His body is slimmer, sculpted in a gym rather than in a jungle. There’s a deep, ugly scar on his shoulder. She lowers her head to kiss it, running her tongue over the healed rips and ridges in his skin. “What happened?”
“Got shot,” he says casually. “Kidnapping case. Not my usual thing, on vice, but they thought this one might involve trafficking, so they pulled me in. Damn thing got infected. I almost died.”
The hand stroking her hair goes still, and she can feel the tension in him. He’s remembering something else, about that kidnapping, something that lines up between that old life and this one.
He blinks it away, like he wants the memories out of his head, and he refocuses on her. He rolls her over so she’s underneath him, a move so familiar it makes her want to cry. His weight settles against her, the heat of his body pressing her into the softness of the bed.
Then he rises up to kiss his way down her chest, starting with her collarbone. She closes her eyes. Her body’s different, too, she realizes. But he doesn’t ask, just traces the silvery-faded stretch marks on her belly with his tongue. His fingers dig into her thighs, and she knows this too, what’s coming next, as he pushes them apart and lowers his head.
She threads her fingers through his hair and tries to surrender to it. He knows everything she likes, but there’s a newness to it, too. It’s the first time and the hundredth, simultaneously. She remembers, fleetingly, that other first time between them, but the is making it impossible for her to think about much of anything.
Then he’s inside her and it’s like that first electric spark of remembering again. She cries out, and she knows by the way he’s murmuring her name that he’s feeling it too. It’s too intense to last for long.
Afterward, they lie together. He cuddles her close, enveloping her in his heat and scent and touch. His eyes close while she’s watching him, the way she always used to. She brushes his hair back from his forehead and he opens his eyes again and smiles, looking at her. She smiles back.
“How long?” she asks simply, stroking his hair again, tracing the curve of his ear.
“Long. Years. So many years.”
“Do you remember it?” She thinks about falling. She remembers it so vividly, the friction burn on the skin of her arm where he tried to hold on to her and couldn’t. The way it felt like she fell for ever, for years, but it was just an instant, really, the laws of gravity and physics taking her. Even standing in the hospital break room, it hurt all the way down into her bones and she could taste the blood in her mouth again. She could close her eyes and she would be there again, broken inside, lying in a puddle.
She wants to know if it’s like that for him. What it was like for him. Because he’s the only person she knows who also remembers. And because she loves him.
“I was an ornery old man,” he declares, and she knows he isn’t going to give her more. He had a whole long life without her. After her. She’s surprised by how much it hurts. She’s jealous. “I missed you every damn day.”
“I wish I’d been there.” If she had been there, would they be here, now? There’s still so much she doesn’t understand, and it’s hard for her to think about.
“I wish you had, too, Blondie.” He snuggles in closer to her, like he’s never going to let her go. His lips settle a kiss on her hairline. But he knows her; he knows her so well. He sighs. “If we’re gonna talk, we better get dressed.”
She nods, and they stay there for another long moment, just holding each other. She kisses him, and then rolls over to get up. Her hands run through her hair to try to untangle it, and she puts on soft, worn jeans and a loose shirt. He bends to pick up his leather jacket from where it ended up on the floor, and adds it to the pile of clothes on her chair. She likes the way it looks there. He catches her watching him and she gives him a little smile.
“I’ll make some coffee,” she offers, because they’re going to need it. He doesn’t follow her into the kitchen, where she performs the familiar motions by force of habit - pouring the water, placing the filter, measuring the grounds. The machine beeps as she presses the Brew button.
In here, alone, she has the time and space to think. She could stand and wait for the coffee. But she doesn’t want to. She wants to be near him.
Sawyer stands in her living room, examining the collection of photos on the fireplace mantel. She looks at his broad shoulders, wondering what he’s thinking. A little flutter of nervousness dances in her stomach. She’s been rejected by men before, men who weren’t worth knowing, who rejected her for having a son. For being a single mom.
This is James, and he loves her, but at the same time… he’s holding the photo of her wedding. Her wedding to Jack.
She thinks of all the history between them, him and Jack. She sees him in the jungle, bloody from a fistfight with Jack, and she can’t imagine what he must be thinking right now.
“I still can’t figure out what this place is,” she says, looking at the walls of her house as though they are going to dissolve any minute.
“Purgatory,” he says, gruff and definitive. He puts the photo back down in its spot.
Except they’re made of flesh and blood and bone. She knows this, as a doctor. She sees it every day. Babies born into this world… It’s so confusing to her. The joy she just felt, physical and emotional, is just as real as the life she remembers. As everything they lived before. “It’s a life. We’re alive,” she says, watching his chest rise and fall with his breath, feeling the heat radiating from his skin. She puts her hand on his arm, as though to prove it.
The coffeemaker has gone quiet. They walk into the kitchen and Sawyer lingers near her as she pours out two cups, fixing his just the way he likes it. They sit down on opposite sides of her breakfast table.
“I had this recurring dream when I was little,” she says, and he meets her eyes, interested. “It’s actually my first memory, waking up from a nap and laying in my crib, having just dreamed of this beautiful, soft, lush, green jungle.”
“The island,” he says.
She nods once. “I remember telling my mother, years later, and she didn’t believe me. Rachel said I must have been remembering my past life. She went through a big spiritual phase.” Juliet looks at Sawyer. “I think this is sort of like reincarnation?”
“Except it’s the same life,” he points out. “Same life but different.”
“No one knows how it works. Reincarnation,” she points out. “Maybe they were close?”
“We don’t know how it works,” he points out.
“But we do,” she says. “We know we’re waiting. Waiting for everyone to be ready.”
“So much for enlightenment,” he says, flippant, the way he always used to be when he was scared, to try to hide that fear so no one would see. Juliet always saw.
“When Rachel was into reincarnation, she read all these books, about how your soul would choose your next life, to help you learn the lessons you missed in your previous life.”
He scowls. “So we chose this?” he demands. For a second, she thinks he’s angry at her, but he says, “I chose that same shit again, my mom gettin’ killed and my daddy blowing his own head off in front of me? Cause I ain’t learned that lesson well enough the first time around?”
“But you did,” she says, quiet and calm, and she believes it. “You proved it. You’re not a con man in this life. You’re the opposite. You became --”
“Well, if this is all some cosmic do-over, I still blew it, sweetheart,” he says.
She steels herself for what’s going to come next, and so help her, she thinks about Kate. Expects her name to be the next thing that’s going to come out of his mouth.
“I killed somebody. In Australia. Last week.”
Juliet waits for the rest.
“I thought it was him. Anthony Cooper. Sawyer.” He spits out the name, with loathing and disgust. “I been hunting him down here, wrote the letter, swore revenge, same as… same as last time.” He meets her eyes and then looks away again, down at his coffee and then out the window. “Anyway. I had some info that he was this guy in Australia, name of Frank Duckett. I shot him, and I started readin’ him that letter the way I always dreamed about, and he had no idea what I was talking about.” He sighs. “Guess that’s what happens when you get your intel from crooks.” He meets her eyes again. “I got conned. Same as before.”
“Does anyone know?” she asks.
He shakes his head and then pushes his hair back. “Don’t think so. Miles knows I went to Australia - god, Miles.” He looks like it’s too much to process. Another thought crosses his mind. “How’s your sister?”
Juliet nods, and smiles thinking about Rachel. “Good, she’s good. The cancer is in remission. Her little boy is two.”
Sawyer smiles at her, a big smile. A happy smile. He knows how much it meant to her, before. It’s funny for her to think about now, because this is just her life. There is no desperate longing and no regret, just Rachel who lives on the other side of the country, who she talks to on the phone and visits at Christmas.
“What about Clementine?” Juliet asks. If Sawyer’s not a con man here… this is the part that’s hard for her to comprehend. Are there people who just don’t exist there? Why don’t they? And how does that tie in with her son, who is here but not in her old life?
Sawyer moves his head and kind of rolls his eyes like he’s embarrassed. “I picked Cassidy up in a bar, couple years ago,” he says, and he can tell he’s thinking about it too, along the same line as her thoughts. “It was just a one-night thing, never heard from her again. But I reckon it must’ve took and she never told me. So she’s out there somewhere. Clementine. I’m just destined not to know her, I guess.”
There’s pain in his eyes, and she thinks he must not have gotten to know Clementine in their old life, either. She puts her hand over his, and he gives her a sad kind of smile. He’s not finished with regret.
“We gotta talk about that other thing,” he says.
She knows he’s right, but it makes her heart start to boom in her chest. She doesn’t even know how to think about David, except to wish she could put her arms around him and hug him tight. He’s hers, but he doesn’t belong here.
“Why’d you pick this life, Juliet?” he asks, and it seems raw.
“I think…” She feels tears burning in her eyes and she doesn’t know why. She thinks about her parents and their divorce. Her old-life marriage to Ed and how unhappy she was, how he made her feel so small and worthless. She looks at Sawyer and remembers that fight, their last fight, right before she died, when she was so scared and so wrong about his not loving her. She blinks the tears away, thinking about Jack and how he always made her feel safe in this life, even when they broke up, even after.
“I think the lesson I needed, that I chose to learn, was how to have a good ending.” She stayed friends with Jack. She loved him, though she didn’t always like him or want to be around him. Thinking about it now, she realizes something else. “I think David was Jack’s lesson. His choice.”
“He was,” Sawyer says, and it’s like he knows it for a fact.
Juliet waits for him to tell her the rest.
“This might hurt you, baby,” he says. “Or maybe it’s just a test of everything you think this life was supposed to teach you.” His eyes are shiny when he looks at her. He’s struggling to tell her, because he doesn’t want to hurt her. “I recognized your kid, in those pictures out there.”
“What?” It’s a shock and a relief to know that David is real. He isn’t some made-up, mystical construct. He existed, he lived in that real world. She just never met him.
“David was Jack’s kid,” Sawyer says and stops again.
She didn’t know it until he said it, but now that he has, it feels right. It feels like she knew it all the time. But Jack didn’t have a son in that world.
That he knew of.
“You know Jack died on the island, right?”
Juliet nods. It’s one of the things she somehow knows now, that she remembered when Sawyer touched her at the hospital. Another thing that she had in common with Jack, that he didn’t make it.
“You know him’n Kate were an item, off the island. Well, long story short, bout nine months after we got off that island the second time, the last time, she had herself a bouncing baby boy. Jack’s.”
Juliet crosses her arms, like she has to hold herself together. David was Kate’s. Of course. She would laugh if she didn’t feel so bitter about it, looking at the man she loves, who seems to know plenty about Kate, as usual. Maybe neither of them learned their lessons in this life.
“Why did he pick me?” she asks. Why, if they choose their lives, wouldn’t Jack and Kate have their happy little family together and leave her out of it?
“Kate’s in jail,” Sawyer says flatly. “Same as before. She picked that life again. And Jack… maybe he wanted to be the father he never had.”
There’s a little crack in his voice, because he never had a father either.
It makes her tears start, and once they do, she can’t stop them. Maybe this was all David’s choice. Maybe he picked her to be his mom. If so, she’s honored.
Juliet can’t hold back the sobs, because this is too much. It’s overwhelming. She covers her face with her hands, and then puts her head down on the table. She never asked to know any of this.
Sawyer strokes her hair, tentatively at first. His touch soothes her. Maybe she didn’t want to know all of this, but if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have him again. She picks up her head and sniffles, and wipes her eyes with her hands, smiling at him.
The smile he returns is tender, and her heart surges with love for him. “What do we do now?”
“We could go to the church.” She knows it’s there, open for them. It’s not waiting, because where it exists is outside of time. When they arrive, it will be exactly the right time. Everyone else will be there. It will only be a minute before everyone is ready, and they can all move on together. Even if they go now, or in the morning, or next week, or a hundred years from now.
“Is that what you want?” he asks, watching her carefully.
“We only had three years, James. I wanted so much more.”
“Me too,” he says. “I missed you for a damn long time, Juliet. I want at least that many years with you.”
They’ll have forever, she thinks. But it’s still behind those closed doors, the mystery of what comes next. There’s no reason to rush.
“What about everything else we know?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Lots of people believe in reincarnation, God, heaven… maybe this is how it is for them. Knowin’ there’s something more than this.”
Neither of them have ever been spiritual people. Juliet considers herself a happy realist. “This isn’t real.”
“It’s real if we say it’s real,” he tells her. He takes her hand, and threads his fingers through hers, holding on tight. He means it. “The only thing we didn’t have was time.”
They found each other again. They get the time that eluded them before. Juliet squeezes his hand. She can’t wait to see what happens.
(end)