To tell you the end of the tale would be cheating.
Title: To tell you the end of the tale would be cheating.
Author: Phelipa
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sawyer/Juliet
Wordcount: 2,272
Summary/AN: A slightly AU fic about what would have happened had Sawyer and Juliet gotten on the submarine (minus Kate). Written for both isis2015 (I do admit this was started before your Luau prompt but it gave me the kick in the butt to finish it and it fits your queenly requests ;)) and philosophy_20 (Prompt: Loss).
The first few months are easy, enjoyable even. They move into a quaint little home with a ridiculously low rent (comparative to the hundreds of thousands spent in 2004) on the west side of Ann Arbour and spend the days renovating the tiny building between her shifts at St. Andrew’s Hospital and his at the local construction site.
They don’t buy much furniture, a double bed with plain sheets and a lone couch accompanied by a made-for-two kitchen table, but it feels like home all the same. They’ve grown accustomed to the lack of television and radio entertainment on the island so they don’t bother with many electronics - the stove is sufficient.
One afternoon he comes home to find her ankle deep in a sea of multi coloured paint cans, rollers and painting drapes. Her tightly curled hair is fastened in a loose bun at the nape of her neck, a tiny brush skewered through the bundle, and there’s a large swipe of light blue paint decorating her jean clad bottom. She jumps a little when his hands settle on her hips and his lips brush against the smooth curve of her throat,
“Evenin’.”
She brushes a stray strand of hair from her eyes and leans back in his embrace, frowning at the colour speckled wall and gesturing with the brush in hand,
“I can’t decide between Antiguan Sky and Pear Green.”
“Darlin’,” He murmurs into her neck, “I couldn’t care less.”
A smile plays at her lips as she shoves him away, squirming out of his embrace,
“Fine, get lost. There’s dinner on the table - I ate earlier.”
He saunters from the room and she calls out after him,
“I expect you to come back and help me once I’ve decided.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He mutters with an flippant wave of his hand.
She smiles and turns back to the wall, scrutinizing the smears of paint decorating the wall, one hundred percent certain that he will indeed return to help her once she’s ready. After all, he always does.
*
There isn’t much room in their bed and Juliet’s sure that James did it on purpose when he picked it out. She readjusts herself on her belly, taking another spoonful of vanilla ice cream and lazily flipping the pages of her book. Sawyer glances up from his own paperback and chuckles when he finds her cradling The Scarlet Letter in her hands,
“I don’t understand how you can read that book time and time again, between that one an’ Carrie I don’t know how you get any other books read.”
“It’s good.” She defends weakly, tilting her head awkwardly to keep the large mouthful of melting ice cream inside.
“Sexy.” He remarks with a raised eyebrow, dipping his own spoon into the sweating, melting carton between the two of them.
She rolls over on her back so that her head is nearly hanging over the edge of the bed and her bare feet are propped up against the wall, just next to Sawyer’s head, grinning as she shoots,
“You love it.”
“Move your damn feet, Jules.” He says, giving her bare legs a little shove until she draws her feet back away from him.
The fact that he hates feet is a never ending source of amusement for her and when she’s in a particularly vindictive mood she’ll fall back on that sure fire annoyance to torment him. She takes another spoonful of ice cream and props herself up on her elbows, frowning,
“I’m bored.”
“Read your book.” He says, burying his nose in his own book and shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“C’mon,” She pleads, her voice borderline whiny as she pushes herself up and crawls into place next to him, “Do something with me.”
His attention wanes for the briefest moment and she notices it with a satisfied smirk, moving closer to him and pressing kisses to his neck. He jumps when she moves swiftly, a hand darting out to cup his crotch,
“Juliet, what the hell are you doin’?”
“C’mon.” She urges huskily, her nose inches form his as she plucks the book from his hand and straddles his waist, “Kiss me.”
He complies with a moment’s hesitation, enough to make her wriggle her hips in annoyance, before pressing his lips to hers. There’s an amused smile on his lips when he pulls away and says,
“Jules, you’ve got paint all over your top lip.”
*
Saturdays are her favourite.
Neither of them work so they spend the morning in bed, wandering between the kitchen and the bedroom when their stomachs start to rumble eagerly. It’s also the day when he helps her around the house, pay off for the morning activities, and they spend this weekend painting the living room that Juliet has decided to paint Pear Green.
He brushes a trickle of sweat out of his eyes and stretches, bathing the top of the wall in dusky green paint. She steps out of the kitchen with a platter of iced lemonade and scrutinizes the wall,
“Nice job.”
“Thanks.” He grunts brusquely, reaching for a sweating glass and taking a long sip.
They settle on the couch together and she immediately squirms away from him, sighing,
“James, you got paint all over the bottom of my shirt.”
“Just markin’ what’s mine, sweetheart.”
She smirks as he unbuttons her top and traces a painted ‘x’ just above her belly button before pressing a kiss to the milky skin of her belly,
“This is mine.”
He smoothes another ‘x’ over her breasts, “And these.”
He lets his fingers graze the soft mounds of her breasts and travel up her shoulder, preparing to mark the soft skin of her neck when she suddenly draws her hand to her nose, pulling it away dark with blood. She curls forward, cupping her hand under her nose as she scrambles off the couch and into the bathroom. He follows hesitantly, hovering in the doorway as she leans over the sink, dark blood spattering against the white porcelain sink.
“You ok?” He asks, voice dripping nerves.
She pinches the bridge of her nose, spits in the sink and its tinged pink. She doesn’t say anything. It takes twenty minutes for the flow to stem and by then her cheeks are the colour of thin milk and there’s a single drop of blood running over her lips, down her neck. He grabs a glass from the kitchen and fills it with water, offering it to her as she slips into bed and rubs at her temples.
“What is it?”
She offers a weakly reassuring smile, “Just a headache. It’s probably from the paint fumes.”
He nods and gently touches her crown,
“I’ll go an’ close up the cans.”
When he comes back, ten minutes later, she’s sound asleep and her cheeks are flushed bright pink.
*
It takes a week of worsening nosebleeds and crippling headaches to drive them to the doctor’s office where they draw blood and send her home with a prescription for migraines. He itches to call Dan but he’s only month old, useless, and he curses Eloise.
He takes a call a couple days later, while Juliet’s sprawled out on the couch with a handful of Kleenex clutched to her nose, informing them that her platelets are alarmingly low and her hematocrit isn’t faring so well either. They return and more blood is drawn, an MRI and CT scan are ordered, they start looking for cancer in her blood and bones. Their suspicion climbs when her white count comes back elevated, but there’s not even a hint of cancer on the scans.
He wakes up one morning with her curled up against him, trembling so hard that her teeth are chattering. He presses his palm to her forehead and yanks it back in alarm, her skin is searing. He wakes her roughly but she’s groggy and disoriented, confused, and she doesn’t understand when he turns the shower on and tugs her in, holding her tight to his chest as the freezing water tumbles over both of them. They go to the ER when he takes her temperature and it’s 103.6.
He starts to call the others when their trips to the hospital or clinic come weekly, twice weekly, daily, but none of them have any advice and only offer weak platitudes. Jin and Miles are most empathetic, they offer to visit and see if there’s anything they can do but there isn’t and James declines.
Juliet starts to lose weight, she’s down to nearly one hundred and ten pounds and she looks thin and ghostly, awful. He pretends he doesn’t think about leaving, but he does. Every single day. Sometimes he dreams of it, fantasizes about taking her to the hospital and simply slipping out the door while they set up her IV and draw even more life from her. Still, he brings her to and from the hospital, prepares her shoddily made dinners and wearily pulls himself out of bed to help her when she starts bleeding.
Between weight loss, bleeding, fevers and headaches, he begins to notice subtle changes in her. They go for a walk around the block one evening, when the ache in her temples is reduced to a dull throb and the bleeding stops for a little while, and she stops halfway around the corner and glances around dazedly, she has no idea where they are. Sometimes in the morning, it takes more than a split second for her to remember who he is as he shuffles her to the bathroom, holding a towel under her nose. The doctor diagnoses her with early onset Alzheimer’s and after two weeks she can’t even get around the house on her own anymore.
She starts having flashbacks of sorts and will suddenly start talking to him as if he were Ben or Jack or even Ethan. It completely freaks him out; it’s Charlotte all over again but with a longer illness time. She wakes one evening and rubs at her eyes, he thinks for the briefest moment that she’s crying, but then she turns and there are dark trails of blood coursing down the sharp curves of her cheek.
They admit her to the hospital that afternoon.
*
She wakes to the feel of cool rain on her skin, sticking to her thin clothing and making her shiver ever so slightly. She shifts and instead of wracking pain and burning stiffness, a warmth floods her body and she’s able to sit up without assistance. She blinks in storm and frowns, confused.
The ground is crumbling sand beneath her and when lightning flashes it lights on the expanse of water lapping at the shoreline. She scrambles to her feet and whips around, letting out a startled squeak as she finds a group of people standing behind her, just at the edge of the trees.
Claire and an unfamiliar blonde woman smile softly, motioning for her to come closer, while Shannon rolls her eyes and plucks at a damp strand of hair,
“I hate the new ones, why do we always have to take the new ones?”
Boone gives her a sharp jab in the ribs and a quick condescending look,
“Shut up, Shan.”
“Whatever.” She says, turning and disappearing into the glade of trees.
Juliet takes a couple steps closer and a familiar figure emerges from the crowd. Her knees weaken and she would cry if she could, sinking into his comforting embrace and whispering,
“Goodwin?”
He presses cold lips to her damp forehead and she shivers, clinging to him as his hands weave around her impossibly thin waist. She shifts in his embrace after a moment and pulls away, glancing confusedly around the shoreline,
“Where’s James?”
*
He wakes in their bed thirty six days after she dies and wanders through the house to the kitchen. He turns away from the unfinished living room and puts on a pot of coffee, leaning against the cupboard as he waits for the coffee to perk.
The house is eerily quiet and he kicks at the kitchen cupboard, just to hear the ringing bang echo through the hallway. If he tilts his head the right way and looks out the window he can see the ‘For Sale’ sign on the front lawn, there’s a buyer coming in this afternoon for a tour. He wasn’t meant to be here, never was, and he longs to get in the car and drive as far away from this place as possible.
The coffee begins to bubble and he tugs a cracked mug out from above the sink and impatiently waits for the pot to fill. He has yet to change the setting from two cups to one and the remaining cup always sits in the pot until the late afternoon, when he dumps it out and watches it swirl down the drain.
There’s an old (new) episode of Happy Days playing on the TV, something he picked up the day after she died to fill the silence, as he stretches out on the couch, taking a long sip of black coffee and wincing a little at the taste. He was never that great at making coffee. He’s almost falling asleep again when the episode turns to another and the theme song starts up again. His nose itches so he lifts a hand to scratch it, blinking in surprise as his fingers come away bloody.
He grabs for the phone and dials the number Miles left him just over a month ago.
After twenty three rings, he gives up. There’s no one home.