fic: the predatory nature of the sky (lost)
the predatory nature of the sky
lost. the island watches; juliet never left; they all came tumbling back. juliet, jack/juliet, juliet/james. rated pg. 1127 words. spoilers through season five.
notes: for torigates! her prompt was "zoo," and i don't think i really stuck to that? *laughs* and i honestly have no idea where the majority of this came from, but, um, general season five spoilers?
there's the weapon you hold
there’s the thing you hold it to
and the thing you hold dear.
(for the pier (and dead shimmering), sunset rubdown)
1.
The jungle is human.
Juliet has always known this.
The jungle sees and the jungle hears and the jungle breathes with every twisted emotion she has ever felt.
It watches them. The jungle watches them. And as such, she knows they are watching too.
“It’s not that easy,” she had told James, had told Horace. She told the men with their surveillance equipment and their man-made devices erected in the name of protection.
They handed her a jumpsuit and her knuckles stained with grease. She stayed.
They would know if she had left.
-
2.
Juliet does not care for flowers.
She does not care for them but she accepts them with grace and manners and will fill a vase with water and set a place for them at her table.
Juliet does not care for flowers.
She does not ever tell James this.
-
3.
“You didn’t think this could last - did you?” Jack asks her. His mouth catches loose strands of her hair and she watches the ends disappear between his lips.
She turns her head and he bites her neck, and maybe she moans, just a sound not a name, but he doesn’t need to know.
Jack doesn’t need to know that the answer is yes, that the answer has always been yes.
“We’re happy here,” she told James that morning.
The heel of her palm catches on the edge of the countertop and Jack’s mouth tastes like chamomile and heat.
“We’ve been happy here,” she said.
Jack hurts inside of her, but he doesn’t need to know that either. She beats her fists against his shoulders and all five of his fingers brush against the bare side of her hip.
She does not dare look over her shoulder.
She knows they watch.
-
4.
Kate is different here.
Juliet can’t decide if it’s a good thing or not. Maybe that’s what returning does to a person. Maybe that’s what Los Angeles does. The city streets that stretch flat under tire treads and air conditioners that hum late into the night. There, she is sure, sweat doesn’t stick unless you go looking for it.
Jack is different here too.
Jack and Kate are different here and Juliet has always excelled at reading people.
She wonders how much of those three years they spent together. She wonders if they fell further in love, if they’re the sort of people that do that, but then that starts a line of thought she usually chooses to ignore.
“Let me introduce you to the neighborhood,” she told them with a closed-mouth smile.
They followed her.
-
5.
Juliet looks at Jack and she remembers the width of his palm and the span of his fingers against her skin.
She looks at Jack and she thinks of bars and she thinks of cages; she thinks three years ago.
(This island is a cage, this island is a prison, and he left it, he left, she didn’t, the bars still remain, the lock’s still here, he left it all and she didn’t and he should never have come back, he never should have stepped back inside, they’ll never escape, not now, not this time, he came back, this place is a prison, they’re watching them, they’re always watching outside the bars).
At the time it made her ache.
Now it just makes her tilt her head and say: how nice.
But time is cruel like that - shells on the beach caught in the onslaught of the tide, it erodes.
-
6.
In her dreams she talks to Richard.
She wants to laugh when she wakes, but mostly she just stumbles for breath and chokes.
“Get ready,” he always tells her.
Her lab coat is white and her name is stitched over her breast. There is always a wall of syringes behind Richard’s head and Juliet does not remember that from the future.
Richard will lean forward and Juliet will lean back.
“These things don’t last,” he’ll say and shrug.
“Get ready.”
When she wakes her knuckles clench and her chest is tight.
-
7.
They watch for them.
They’re watching through the windows.
They’re always watching through the windows.
-
8.
She boils water. Juliet boils the water and Jack stares at the walls and the miscellaneous collection of photographs that hang on nails buried deep into the drywall. All the pictures are nondescript, here when Juliet and Jim (Jim, James, Sawyer, some days she can’t keep up, some days she can’t see straight, some days she forgets his name) moved in and decided to call it home. Jack looks at them like maybe they are hers, like maybe he can remember who she was and who she became after three years by studying a poor watercolor of unidentifiable, probably made-up flowers. They almost look like lilies.
“Here,” she says when she hands him his tea. He grimaces when he swallows but does not ask her for sugar or milk or honey, and Juliet thinks he has made his decision regarding her already.
She blames the almost lilies and takes a sip of her tea too. It is weak. She does not add anything to it either.
Neither of them moves to sit. Jack’s eyes wander back to the wall of framed pictures and there is one of a sailboat and another of a beach unlike theirs.
“I’m sorry,” he says, but his eyes settle on the framed photograph of the Dharma Initiative, 1970. Juliet isn’t in that picture; neither is James. They weren’t here yet. Jack looks at it as though he thinks they were.
“No you’re not,” she says.
He looks at her. His lips are parted and his eyes are dark, and he looks at her.
“Okay,” he says, and he takes another sip of tea.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” she says after a minute.
And that’s when he kisses her.
-
9.
After the first year she had started to forget.
She was Juliet Burke. She worked the motorpool. She lived with Jim LaFleur. She was happy.
That was easy.
“This is my son Ben,” Roger had said to her one day, and her throat went dry.
She remembered. Of course she remembered everything.
There is no way out, she had thought that night.
History is a loop; time, a noose.
There is no way out.
-
10.
“Get ready,” Richard says.
Juliet can’t breathe.
The gun is shot, the child bleeds.
“We can be happy,” she said, and it begins.
-
fin.
lost. the island watches; juliet never left; they all came tumbling back. juliet, jack/juliet, juliet/james. rated pg. 1127 words. spoilers through season five.
notes: for torigates! her prompt was "zoo," and i don't think i really stuck to that? *laughs* and i honestly have no idea where the majority of this came from, but, um, general season five spoilers?
there's the weapon you hold
there’s the thing you hold it to
and the thing you hold dear.
(for the pier (and dead shimmering), sunset rubdown)
1.
The jungle is human.
Juliet has always known this.
The jungle sees and the jungle hears and the jungle breathes with every twisted emotion she has ever felt.
It watches them. The jungle watches them. And as such, she knows they are watching too.
“It’s not that easy,” she had told James, had told Horace. She told the men with their surveillance equipment and their man-made devices erected in the name of protection.
They handed her a jumpsuit and her knuckles stained with grease. She stayed.
They would know if she had left.
-
2.
Juliet does not care for flowers.
She does not care for them but she accepts them with grace and manners and will fill a vase with water and set a place for them at her table.
Juliet does not care for flowers.
She does not ever tell James this.
-
3.
“You didn’t think this could last - did you?” Jack asks her. His mouth catches loose strands of her hair and she watches the ends disappear between his lips.
She turns her head and he bites her neck, and maybe she moans, just a sound not a name, but he doesn’t need to know.
Jack doesn’t need to know that the answer is yes, that the answer has always been yes.
“We’re happy here,” she told James that morning.
The heel of her palm catches on the edge of the countertop and Jack’s mouth tastes like chamomile and heat.
“We’ve been happy here,” she said.
Jack hurts inside of her, but he doesn’t need to know that either. She beats her fists against his shoulders and all five of his fingers brush against the bare side of her hip.
She does not dare look over her shoulder.
She knows they watch.
-
4.
Kate is different here.
Juliet can’t decide if it’s a good thing or not. Maybe that’s what returning does to a person. Maybe that’s what Los Angeles does. The city streets that stretch flat under tire treads and air conditioners that hum late into the night. There, she is sure, sweat doesn’t stick unless you go looking for it.
Jack is different here too.
Jack and Kate are different here and Juliet has always excelled at reading people.
She wonders how much of those three years they spent together. She wonders if they fell further in love, if they’re the sort of people that do that, but then that starts a line of thought she usually chooses to ignore.
“Let me introduce you to the neighborhood,” she told them with a closed-mouth smile.
They followed her.
-
5.
Juliet looks at Jack and she remembers the width of his palm and the span of his fingers against her skin.
She looks at Jack and she thinks of bars and she thinks of cages; she thinks three years ago.
(This island is a cage, this island is a prison, and he left it, he left, she didn’t, the bars still remain, the lock’s still here, he left it all and she didn’t and he should never have come back, he never should have stepped back inside, they’ll never escape, not now, not this time, he came back, this place is a prison, they’re watching them, they’re always watching outside the bars).
At the time it made her ache.
Now it just makes her tilt her head and say: how nice.
But time is cruel like that - shells on the beach caught in the onslaught of the tide, it erodes.
-
6.
In her dreams she talks to Richard.
She wants to laugh when she wakes, but mostly she just stumbles for breath and chokes.
“Get ready,” he always tells her.
Her lab coat is white and her name is stitched over her breast. There is always a wall of syringes behind Richard’s head and Juliet does not remember that from the future.
Richard will lean forward and Juliet will lean back.
“These things don’t last,” he’ll say and shrug.
“Get ready.”
When she wakes her knuckles clench and her chest is tight.
-
7.
They watch for them.
They’re watching through the windows.
They’re always watching through the windows.
-
8.
She boils water. Juliet boils the water and Jack stares at the walls and the miscellaneous collection of photographs that hang on nails buried deep into the drywall. All the pictures are nondescript, here when Juliet and Jim (Jim, James, Sawyer, some days she can’t keep up, some days she can’t see straight, some days she forgets his name) moved in and decided to call it home. Jack looks at them like maybe they are hers, like maybe he can remember who she was and who she became after three years by studying a poor watercolor of unidentifiable, probably made-up flowers. They almost look like lilies.
“Here,” she says when she hands him his tea. He grimaces when he swallows but does not ask her for sugar or milk or honey, and Juliet thinks he has made his decision regarding her already.
She blames the almost lilies and takes a sip of her tea too. It is weak. She does not add anything to it either.
Neither of them moves to sit. Jack’s eyes wander back to the wall of framed pictures and there is one of a sailboat and another of a beach unlike theirs.
“I’m sorry,” he says, but his eyes settle on the framed photograph of the Dharma Initiative, 1970. Juliet isn’t in that picture; neither is James. They weren’t here yet. Jack looks at it as though he thinks they were.
“No you’re not,” she says.
He looks at her. His lips are parted and his eyes are dark, and he looks at her.
“Okay,” he says, and he takes another sip of tea.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” she says after a minute.
And that’s when he kisses her.
-
9.
After the first year she had started to forget.
She was Juliet Burke. She worked the motorpool. She lived with Jim LaFleur. She was happy.
That was easy.
“This is my son Ben,” Roger had said to her one day, and her throat went dry.
She remembered. Of course she remembered everything.
There is no way out, she had thought that night.
History is a loop; time, a noose.
There is no way out.
-
10.
“Get ready,” Richard says.
Juliet can’t breathe.
The gun is shot, the child bleeds.
“We can be happy,” she said, and it begins.
-
fin.