Straight Line [2/3] [PG-13] [Jack, Claire]

[squeakyboots]

Title: Straight Line [2 of 3]
Characters: Jack, Claire
Pairing: Jack/Juliet implied
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Season 5 AU (Jack jumps, Charlotte lives, Juliet gets pregnant, they decide to leave the island during the 1970s)
A/N: Claire and Jack hash it out.

~~

Comments

[nighttiming1022]

I love this so much!

I love how Claire recognizes that her behavior made her seem crazy to everyone. That moment where her anger peeks out is so great! I love how she saw Jack's guilt was really Christian's guilt, too.

And this...
I’m not going to let you sacrifice Aaron the way your father sacrificed me,” she spits, “and if that’s what family means to you-then I don’t want to be your family, Jack.”
FANTASTIC!

[squeakyboots]

RLY!? Oh, yay! I'm seriously thrilled that you enjoyed it, because it was such slow going writing this and I wasn't sure at all how well I was managing with Claire.

I kept watching the Claire + Christian flashback fight in "Par Avion" on YouTube to try to get the tone right, and that "guilt and hope" line of Christian's really stuck out at me, especially when he says "believe me, I know the difference." Damn, I really wish the show had followed up on all that stuff!

[valhalla37]

Oh gosh, I just love this. You give Claire so much power and strength here -- sure, she's broken and hurt and a little desperate, but she's also capable enough to call a spade a spade and not pull any punches with Jack. I especially liked the part when she pulls Christian into the mix and when she accuses Jack of using her to save his "real" family. I love how raw and true the whole thing feels -- it would have been so great to have seen a confrontation like this in canon.

I seriously can't wait to see where else you take this story. :D

[squeakyboots]

Squee! Thank you so much for such amazing feedback: I'm so glad you liked it and I'm also extremely excited about where it's going to go (the fic I'm going to write for your kink meme will be strongly linked to this one).

And yeah--I agree that it would have been so much fun to see something like this happen on screen (I tried to visualize it like that when I was writing). It's funny, because of the two times I've written Jack and Claire, both scenes turned into arguments/contests between them. It's probably because I've always thought that this was a key element missing on the show: They just didn't know what to do with Claire, and I think making her an antagonist to Jack, and one with a totally legit, rational position to counter his, would have been so much better than "totally crazy Claire" who often bordered on caricature.