Lost: Why do you always weep and frown?
Title: Why do you always weep and frown?
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Juliet Burke, James Ford, Rachel Carlson, Juliet/James
Rating: PG
Words: 2,289
Summary: It's 1977, and Juliet & James exist in two places at once.
Notes: Why do I keep writing James/Juliet pre-island fic? It's a sickness! (An awesome sickness.) For the first time in forever (well, a week) I'm posting something I wrote for the hell of it, and not for fandom stocking. Aww, yeah. Title from Vada's poem at the end of My Girl. Thank-yous and chocolate to ozqueen for the beta!!
Why do you always weep and frown?
They pass a standard welcome sign at the town's edge, and Mom's too-cheery "nearly there, girls!" falls flat. There's a frosty silence in the back seat, the result of too many territorial arguments over whose elbow is on whose side. Later that night, Rachel and Juliet will take turns repeating "Welcome to Jasper, Alabama!" in exaggerated accents, giggling into their pillows. But for now, the drive is long and tempers are short.
Juliet kicks the seat. She's tired and irritable, and her back aches from the hours spent in the car. (At this same moment, oceans away, her back aches from hours bent over a stubborn engine. She's always been susceptible to others' verbal quirks, and when she kicks the jeep she calls it 'sonofabitch'.)
---
The holidays are quiet at the Carlson house this year. The Christmas things went missing in their last move, so they have to make do trimming a small tree with dime-store candy canes. Juliet doesn't believe in Santa, but she's young enough to throw herself into the game of pretending she does. Christmas morning brings full stockings and a plate scattered with cookie crumbs. She rides out the excitement and the sugar high for as long as she can; in a little over a week, she'll be starting her third new school in two and a half years.
She really, really doesn't want to think about it.
---
When the first day rolls around, it's exactly what she expects: a well-meaning teacher who makes her introduce herself in front of everyone, blushing and stammering; a room of kids who stare at her like she's some kind of zoo animal; and classwork that's a mix of embarrassingly easy and things that her other schools hadn't taught yet. The first day is always stressful and horrible. She keeps her head down and barely says a word to anybody.
During lunch, she finds a dry place under a tree to sit and read. She's sick of struggling for a place in these worlds of pinkie swears and best-friend necklaces only to be ripped back out again. No matter how comfortable she gets here, she'll just have to start all over somewhere else. So, for the first time, she doesn't even try to make friends. She'd rather be cold and alone.
(While the girl learns to cut herself off, the woman hasn't broken the habit. They're minutes away from leaving the house, off to have lunch with Horace and Amy.
"Do you ever think this is pointless?" she asks.
"Think what's pointless?"
"This. Lunch. The Dharma Initiative. These people are all going to be murdered, James, why are we getting close? Why put ourselves through this?"
He sighs. "Thanks for that, Pollyanna.")
She spends the whole of lunchtime under the tree, biting off her right mitten when she's ready to turn a page.
---
The oven in this house is unreliable. Or, at least, Mom always mutters something to that effect.
"How was your first day?" she asks, checking the temperature.
Juliet shrugs, peeling the plastic from the second-last candy cane.
"Did you make any friends?"
She likes to eat them curved-end first, much to Rachel's disdain. She breathes out slowly, pretending it's a snorkel.
"Juliet?"
She sighs, and takes it out of her mouth. "Sort of," she lies.
---
She's not the only one who keeps to herself. Another kid spends lunchtimes alone, sitting under a willow tree, doing absolutely nothing. She reads, but he just stares into space, or watches the others. Always with an air of hostile detachment. (The echoes of this look haven't completely gone away. The difference is that she's learnt to read it; she can distinguish between the times he wants to be alone, and the times he's craving company.) She's doing too good a job of isolating herself to hear what the others say about him, so he remains a mystery.
It doesn't take long for the other kids to misinterpret her social reluctance. By the end of the first week, she's branded as snotty. If she ever wants to change her mind about making friends, it'll soon be too late.
---
Rachel drops an absurdly thick handful of cards on the pile. "Eleven queens."
"That's dumb!" Juliet glares. "You can't have eleven queens!"
"So call me a cheat. That's how the game works, stupid."
"No! You're not playing right!"
"Wrong. I'm a genius. You'll never call me a cheat if I'm really obvious about it, so I'm gonna win. Easy!"
Juliet throws her cards down. "I'm not playing anymore."
"Fine with me." Rachel stands up. "Doesn't work with two people, anyway."
---
A knot of girls from her class stand a safe distance away from his tree, whispering to each other and blatantly staring. Juliet hates them for it; she feels more solidarity with this other loner than with anyone else in the whole stupid school, and she wishes they'd give him a break. She's halfway through On the Banks of Plum Creek, but she can't keep her mind on it. She's never been so aware of the wide berth the other kids give the willow tree, and the curious glances they shoot in its direction.
Two more girls sidle over and join the group. Eventually, he catches their collective eye and they turn away, pretending they were chatting animatedly about nothing the entire time.
---
(That night, neither Juliet can sleep. While her second-grade self stares at the ceiling, worrying about being picked last for teams and finding a buddy for field trips, she desperately tries to shut off her brain. Some nights, the worst of her memories play in her mind as though on a movie screen, vivid as real life, and she can't make them stop. She's wide awake, flinching, imagining razor-sharp machetes cutting off her hands...
James is out cold, lying on his back. He doesn't wake up when she places a hand on his chest, feeling it rise and fall, matching her breathing to his inhale, exhale, breathe in, breathe out, thinks of nothing at all but air and lungs and breathing, in and out, lather rinse repeat, heart rates lowering and steady breath, calm and slow, cool breezes fluttering the curtains and heavy heavy breathing...)
(When she wakes the next morning, her arm is still resting across his chest.)
---
Tuesday morning brings the first actual snowfall since they moved here. There's about a half-inch on the ground with grass visibly poking through, and her classmates are a little crazy this morning. Some of these kids seem nice enough, but she sticks to her decision. She knows she'll be grateful for it when they move again. She puts a lot of effort into not paying attention to them, probably more than she should; she doesn't meet anyone's eye, and she blocks out the background noise of their rowdy conversation.
Maybe, if she hadn't, she'd have heard the plan. She might've caught wind of what was coming.
But she didn't hear a word, and the barrage of snowballs takes her completely by surprise. She gasps at the cold stings of hard-packed snow and dirt on her arms, her chest, her face, inhales mouthfuls and coughs and splutters. It all comes to an abrupt end with shouts and thuds, and she can't see what's going on. Hands shaking, she wipes snow and tears from her eyes to see the willow tree kid flaying a dark-haired boy who, judging from a vague understanding of her classroom's social structure, had probably led the attack.
He punches the ringleader hard, over and over, and there's a vitriol in his aggression that you don't usually see in eight-year-old boys. By the time teachers rush to the scene, there's blood in the snow and a crowd of fascinated onlookers. One teacher yanks the willow tree kid away by his arm, pulling him through the crowd and snapping admonishments, while the other helps the dark-haired boy to his feet. The attacker-turned-victim is carefully helped across the yard while a line of kids trails after him, anxiously asking if he's okay.
In all the drama of bloodied noses and knuckles, the girl in the middle of it is overlooked. She shivers through the rest of the lunch hour, soaking wet, book ruined.
---
"Who was it?"
Juliet walks as fast as she can, face flushed with embarrassment. "No-one."
She can't believe Rachel actually heard what happened. Word had spread about the willow tree kid, and whatever version Rachel had been told had unexpectedly included the snowball attack.
"It wasn't no-one. Tell me!"
"I don't know his name. I don't know anyone's name."
"Find out, I don't want to kill the wrong person."
She whips around, and Rachel nearly crashes into her.
"Tell me you won't do anything," she pleads.
"Why should I?"
"Promise me."
"Juliet -"
"And don't tell Mom and Dad. Come on, Rachel, please?"
They face each other on the sidewalk, completely still. It's snowing, very lightly; tiny snowflakes waft on the breeze and land gently in their hair.
"Come to my playground tomorrow. Sit with me."
"I can't, I've already tried. I just got sent back to mine."
Rachel avoids her sister's gaze. She doesn't say anything.
"It's not a big deal. Really."
It's freezing outside, and Juliet begins to shiver. She never completely dried out after lunch.
"Okay," Rachel sighs. "But if anything else happens, he's dead meat."
(This is the day she learns that Amy's pregnant.
Grief is something that's never completely gone. Its sting lessens with time, and the burden gradually lightens, but it never vanishes. Juliet lost a sister. She lost a sister and she lost a nephew, and Amy's bright-eyed excitement is a trigger she never saw coming.
It's 1977, and that is Juliet's one source of comfort. As soon as she's home, she locks herself in the bathroom and whispers it, over and over and over. It's 1977. It's 1977 and she's home. She's home with her family. No matter what's going on, she knows for sure that, at this second, Rachel isn't grieving for her too.)
---
The upside of it all is that, the next morning, Juliet wakes up with a bad cold. She spends the rest of the week at home with crocheted blankets, bowls of soup and daytime TV. Her lungs ache from relentless coughing, and her head throbs painfully, but it's absolutely worth it.
She does her best to dry her book, and she sort of manages to rescue it. The pages are buckled and discolored, but at least it's legible. She finishes it on Saturday morning and hides it under her bed; it was a Christmas present, and she doesn't want to get in trouble for wrecking it before January's even finished.
She can't enjoy the weekend. She won't be able to milk this cold any longer, so Saturday and Sunday are full of nervous stomachaches and too much awareness of how quickly the time can slip by.
---
Monday comes, and she tries her best to make herself invisible. When the lunch bell rings and everyone surges outside, she hesitates by the side doors. She doesn't know what to do; her tree is no longer a comfortable sanctuary, and she doesn't want to make herself vulnerable. But where else is there to go?
She feels stupid just standing there, so she hugs her book to her chest and wanders. (She walks at a steady pace. The gazebo is about a minute's walk from the motor pool, much more convenient for her than for him.) She skirts around the edges of the activity, never stays in one place for too long.
She ends up a few feet from the willow tree.
She isn't aware of it, but it's his first day back on the playground too. While she was getting over her cold, he was chair-kicking his way through a string of lunchtime detentions. She inches closer. He can probably see her, somewhere in the edges of his vision. But he doesn't look at her. ("About time, Blondie. I'm nearly finished!")
She should ask. (She stares. "How did you beat me here?") She can't just sit down, it doesn't work that way. You have to say something like "can I sit here?" and then wait for an answer. Yes or no. Sit down or move along, find somewhere else. ("Took the concorde. Only way to travel.") Some unspoken playground rules are extremely black-and-white.
But she's never even heard him speak. What if he didn't say anything at all? What would she do then? ("Seriously. How did you beat me? My lunch break starts before yours. And I'm closer.") A long silence and then an awkward walk-away would be even worse than a no. Or, well, maybe not. A no is pretty bad.
"Just sit."
She startles, nearly slipping over. He still hasn't looked at her. "Are you sure?" She hugs her book closer.
("Got off early. We need to time this better, I'm sick of our Monday-lunch-gazebo-thing getting cut short.")
"I don't care. Sit or don't."
(She hides a grin; not everyone can pull off this kind of gruff-plus-sweet cocktail.) It's not the warmest invitation, but it's something. It's better than silence, at any rate. She cautiously picks a spot among the snake-like tree roots, far away enough to give him space, but close enough to feel somewhat safe. Close enough to feel protected; everyone else is too scared of him to try something on her again.
In the months that pass, they sit under the tree and don't share another word. They don't speak again until Hey! and an electric shock that pitches him into jolts and spasms.
She doesn't know it yet, but she'll only be in this place for another seven months.
(So will she.)
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Juliet Burke, James Ford, Rachel Carlson, Juliet/James
Rating: PG
Words: 2,289
Summary: It's 1977, and Juliet & James exist in two places at once.
Notes: Why do I keep writing James/Juliet pre-island fic? It's a sickness! (An awesome sickness.) For the first time in forever (well, a week) I'm posting something I wrote for the hell of it, and not for fandom stocking. Aww, yeah. Title from Vada's poem at the end of My Girl. Thank-yous and chocolate to ozqueen for the beta!!
Why do you always weep and frown?
They pass a standard welcome sign at the town's edge, and Mom's too-cheery "nearly there, girls!" falls flat. There's a frosty silence in the back seat, the result of too many territorial arguments over whose elbow is on whose side. Later that night, Rachel and Juliet will take turns repeating "Welcome to Jasper, Alabama!" in exaggerated accents, giggling into their pillows. But for now, the drive is long and tempers are short.
Juliet kicks the seat. She's tired and irritable, and her back aches from the hours spent in the car. (At this same moment, oceans away, her back aches from hours bent over a stubborn engine. She's always been susceptible to others' verbal quirks, and when she kicks the jeep she calls it 'sonofabitch'.)
---
The holidays are quiet at the Carlson house this year. The Christmas things went missing in their last move, so they have to make do trimming a small tree with dime-store candy canes. Juliet doesn't believe in Santa, but she's young enough to throw herself into the game of pretending she does. Christmas morning brings full stockings and a plate scattered with cookie crumbs. She rides out the excitement and the sugar high for as long as she can; in a little over a week, she'll be starting her third new school in two and a half years.
She really, really doesn't want to think about it.
---
When the first day rolls around, it's exactly what she expects: a well-meaning teacher who makes her introduce herself in front of everyone, blushing and stammering; a room of kids who stare at her like she's some kind of zoo animal; and classwork that's a mix of embarrassingly easy and things that her other schools hadn't taught yet. The first day is always stressful and horrible. She keeps her head down and barely says a word to anybody.
During lunch, she finds a dry place under a tree to sit and read. She's sick of struggling for a place in these worlds of pinkie swears and best-friend necklaces only to be ripped back out again. No matter how comfortable she gets here, she'll just have to start all over somewhere else. So, for the first time, she doesn't even try to make friends. She'd rather be cold and alone.
(While the girl learns to cut herself off, the woman hasn't broken the habit. They're minutes away from leaving the house, off to have lunch with Horace and Amy.
"Do you ever think this is pointless?" she asks.
"Think what's pointless?"
"This. Lunch. The Dharma Initiative. These people are all going to be murdered, James, why are we getting close? Why put ourselves through this?"
He sighs. "Thanks for that, Pollyanna.")
She spends the whole of lunchtime under the tree, biting off her right mitten when she's ready to turn a page.
---
The oven in this house is unreliable. Or, at least, Mom always mutters something to that effect.
"How was your first day?" she asks, checking the temperature.
Juliet shrugs, peeling the plastic from the second-last candy cane.
"Did you make any friends?"
She likes to eat them curved-end first, much to Rachel's disdain. She breathes out slowly, pretending it's a snorkel.
"Juliet?"
She sighs, and takes it out of her mouth. "Sort of," she lies.
---
She's not the only one who keeps to herself. Another kid spends lunchtimes alone, sitting under a willow tree, doing absolutely nothing. She reads, but he just stares into space, or watches the others. Always with an air of hostile detachment. (The echoes of this look haven't completely gone away. The difference is that she's learnt to read it; she can distinguish between the times he wants to be alone, and the times he's craving company.) She's doing too good a job of isolating herself to hear what the others say about him, so he remains a mystery.
It doesn't take long for the other kids to misinterpret her social reluctance. By the end of the first week, she's branded as snotty. If she ever wants to change her mind about making friends, it'll soon be too late.
---
Rachel drops an absurdly thick handful of cards on the pile. "Eleven queens."
"That's dumb!" Juliet glares. "You can't have eleven queens!"
"So call me a cheat. That's how the game works, stupid."
"No! You're not playing right!"
"Wrong. I'm a genius. You'll never call me a cheat if I'm really obvious about it, so I'm gonna win. Easy!"
Juliet throws her cards down. "I'm not playing anymore."
"Fine with me." Rachel stands up. "Doesn't work with two people, anyway."
---
A knot of girls from her class stand a safe distance away from his tree, whispering to each other and blatantly staring. Juliet hates them for it; she feels more solidarity with this other loner than with anyone else in the whole stupid school, and she wishes they'd give him a break. She's halfway through On the Banks of Plum Creek, but she can't keep her mind on it. She's never been so aware of the wide berth the other kids give the willow tree, and the curious glances they shoot in its direction.
Two more girls sidle over and join the group. Eventually, he catches their collective eye and they turn away, pretending they were chatting animatedly about nothing the entire time.
---
(That night, neither Juliet can sleep. While her second-grade self stares at the ceiling, worrying about being picked last for teams and finding a buddy for field trips, she desperately tries to shut off her brain. Some nights, the worst of her memories play in her mind as though on a movie screen, vivid as real life, and she can't make them stop. She's wide awake, flinching, imagining razor-sharp machetes cutting off her hands...
James is out cold, lying on his back. He doesn't wake up when she places a hand on his chest, feeling it rise and fall, matching her breathing to his inhale, exhale, breathe in, breathe out, thinks of nothing at all but air and lungs and breathing, in and out, lather rinse repeat, heart rates lowering and steady breath, calm and slow, cool breezes fluttering the curtains and heavy heavy breathing...)
(When she wakes the next morning, her arm is still resting across his chest.)
---
Tuesday morning brings the first actual snowfall since they moved here. There's about a half-inch on the ground with grass visibly poking through, and her classmates are a little crazy this morning. Some of these kids seem nice enough, but she sticks to her decision. She knows she'll be grateful for it when they move again. She puts a lot of effort into not paying attention to them, probably more than she should; she doesn't meet anyone's eye, and she blocks out the background noise of their rowdy conversation.
Maybe, if she hadn't, she'd have heard the plan. She might've caught wind of what was coming.
But she didn't hear a word, and the barrage of snowballs takes her completely by surprise. She gasps at the cold stings of hard-packed snow and dirt on her arms, her chest, her face, inhales mouthfuls and coughs and splutters. It all comes to an abrupt end with shouts and thuds, and she can't see what's going on. Hands shaking, she wipes snow and tears from her eyes to see the willow tree kid flaying a dark-haired boy who, judging from a vague understanding of her classroom's social structure, had probably led the attack.
He punches the ringleader hard, over and over, and there's a vitriol in his aggression that you don't usually see in eight-year-old boys. By the time teachers rush to the scene, there's blood in the snow and a crowd of fascinated onlookers. One teacher yanks the willow tree kid away by his arm, pulling him through the crowd and snapping admonishments, while the other helps the dark-haired boy to his feet. The attacker-turned-victim is carefully helped across the yard while a line of kids trails after him, anxiously asking if he's okay.
In all the drama of bloodied noses and knuckles, the girl in the middle of it is overlooked. She shivers through the rest of the lunch hour, soaking wet, book ruined.
---
"Who was it?"
Juliet walks as fast as she can, face flushed with embarrassment. "No-one."
She can't believe Rachel actually heard what happened. Word had spread about the willow tree kid, and whatever version Rachel had been told had unexpectedly included the snowball attack.
"It wasn't no-one. Tell me!"
"I don't know his name. I don't know anyone's name."
"Find out, I don't want to kill the wrong person."
She whips around, and Rachel nearly crashes into her.
"Tell me you won't do anything," she pleads.
"Why should I?"
"Promise me."
"Juliet -"
"And don't tell Mom and Dad. Come on, Rachel, please?"
They face each other on the sidewalk, completely still. It's snowing, very lightly; tiny snowflakes waft on the breeze and land gently in their hair.
"Come to my playground tomorrow. Sit with me."
"I can't, I've already tried. I just got sent back to mine."
Rachel avoids her sister's gaze. She doesn't say anything.
"It's not a big deal. Really."
It's freezing outside, and Juliet begins to shiver. She never completely dried out after lunch.
"Okay," Rachel sighs. "But if anything else happens, he's dead meat."
(This is the day she learns that Amy's pregnant.
Grief is something that's never completely gone. Its sting lessens with time, and the burden gradually lightens, but it never vanishes. Juliet lost a sister. She lost a sister and she lost a nephew, and Amy's bright-eyed excitement is a trigger she never saw coming.
It's 1977, and that is Juliet's one source of comfort. As soon as she's home, she locks herself in the bathroom and whispers it, over and over and over. It's 1977. It's 1977 and she's home. She's home with her family. No matter what's going on, she knows for sure that, at this second, Rachel isn't grieving for her too.)
---
The upside of it all is that, the next morning, Juliet wakes up with a bad cold. She spends the rest of the week at home with crocheted blankets, bowls of soup and daytime TV. Her lungs ache from relentless coughing, and her head throbs painfully, but it's absolutely worth it.
She does her best to dry her book, and she sort of manages to rescue it. The pages are buckled and discolored, but at least it's legible. She finishes it on Saturday morning and hides it under her bed; it was a Christmas present, and she doesn't want to get in trouble for wrecking it before January's even finished.
She can't enjoy the weekend. She won't be able to milk this cold any longer, so Saturday and Sunday are full of nervous stomachaches and too much awareness of how quickly the time can slip by.
---
Monday comes, and she tries her best to make herself invisible. When the lunch bell rings and everyone surges outside, she hesitates by the side doors. She doesn't know what to do; her tree is no longer a comfortable sanctuary, and she doesn't want to make herself vulnerable. But where else is there to go?
She feels stupid just standing there, so she hugs her book to her chest and wanders. (She walks at a steady pace. The gazebo is about a minute's walk from the motor pool, much more convenient for her than for him.) She skirts around the edges of the activity, never stays in one place for too long.
She ends up a few feet from the willow tree.
She isn't aware of it, but it's his first day back on the playground too. While she was getting over her cold, he was chair-kicking his way through a string of lunchtime detentions. She inches closer. He can probably see her, somewhere in the edges of his vision. But he doesn't look at her. ("About time, Blondie. I'm nearly finished!")
She should ask. (She stares. "How did you beat me here?") She can't just sit down, it doesn't work that way. You have to say something like "can I sit here?" and then wait for an answer. Yes or no. Sit down or move along, find somewhere else. ("Took the concorde. Only way to travel.") Some unspoken playground rules are extremely black-and-white.
But she's never even heard him speak. What if he didn't say anything at all? What would she do then? ("Seriously. How did you beat me? My lunch break starts before yours. And I'm closer.") A long silence and then an awkward walk-away would be even worse than a no. Or, well, maybe not. A no is pretty bad.
"Just sit."
She startles, nearly slipping over. He still hasn't looked at her. "Are you sure?" She hugs her book closer.
("Got off early. We need to time this better, I'm sick of our Monday-lunch-gazebo-thing getting cut short.")
"I don't care. Sit or don't."
(She hides a grin; not everyone can pull off this kind of gruff-plus-sweet cocktail.) It's not the warmest invitation, but it's something. It's better than silence, at any rate. She cautiously picks a spot among the snake-like tree roots, far away enough to give him space, but close enough to feel somewhat safe. Close enough to feel protected; everyone else is too scared of him to try something on her again.
In the months that pass, they sit under the tree and don't share another word. They don't speak again until Hey! and an electric shock that pitches him into jolts and spasms.
She doesn't know it yet, but she'll only be in this place for another seven months.
(So will she.)