Lost fic: Juliet and the Merman
Jan. 11th, 2009 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alliecat8Title: Juliet and the Merman
Characters: Sawyer/Juliet
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,583
Spoilers: Through the S4 finale
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
Juliet and the Merman
“Do you know why I wanted to become a fertility doctor?”
Juliet asked the question in their dark bedroom, in the stillness that came after sex. She liked to talk afterward, and though Sawyer would rather have smoked a Dharma cigarette and drifted off to sleep, he listened to her because he cared about her.
“Why’s that, Tinkerbell?”
She propped herself up on one elbow. “I think it’s funny that you call me silly nicknames,” she said. “Back when I was a kid they used to call me Morticia. You know, as in Morticia Addams. And when I was in high school they called me Dr. Death.”
“What were you, some kind of a ghoul?” Sawyer meant it teasingly because he didn’t believe it for a minute. Juliet cared more about life than anyone he’d ever met.
“Maybe I was,” she mused. “I used to like to look at dead things. I’d see a baby bird fallen from its nest and I’d stare and stare. Then when we started dissecting frogs and fetal pigs in biology class, I’d always keep the eyes.”
Sawyer wished harder for that cigarette. “Now you’re startin’ to freak me out,” he said, unconsciously scooting away from her a little bit. He’d always been a bit phobic about missing eyes.
“When Rachel and I were little our parents made us go to this evangelical church, and all the preacher ever talked about was how if you’re good enough you get to go to heaven, but if you’re not you have to spend eternity in hell. Then he made it sound like hardly anybody was ever good enough.”
“People who teach shit like that to kids oughtta be shot,” Sawyer muttered, and squeezed her hip in a gesture of comfort.
“Yeah, well, Rachel and I used to talk about it, and since our parents were always punishing us we figured we’d never be good enough, but we couldn’t accept the idea of going to hell forever and ever. I mean, that’s enough to make anybody insane.”
Sawyer remembered a very insane man named Mr. Sawyer who believed he was already in hell, and silently agreed. Then he thought about how he’d gone his whole life trying not to think about his parents – good people who’d made some pretty horrible mistakes – being in hell. He shifted back into the comfort of Juliet’s body.
“So, rather than accept the inevitability of hell, we rejected the concept of heaven. But then what did that leave us with?”
Sawyer shrugged. “When you’re dead, you’re dead. Over. Kaput.” No more pain, he thought. Pain was for the living.
“Right,” she agreed, and Sawyer was a little bit surprised.
“I thought you were the optimist,” he said. “I’m the pessimist. You’re the one who never stops hopin’.”
“Well, that’s why I used to look into the eyes of dead things. I always hoped I’d see something, some spark or shadow or something that’d tell me I was wrong. I wanted to know that they saw something after they died, something that gave them hope.” She shrugged, then sighed. “I never did, though. That’s why I went into the research field when I got my medical degree, because I didn’t want to look into the eyes of the dead anymore.” She laughed without any amusement. “Ironic, isn’t it, that when I got to this island I found out that they’d given me a job where all of my patients died.”
“Reason number seven-thousand-six-hundred-forty-nine to hate Ben and co.,” Sawyer said bitterly.
Restlessly Juliet got up and donned a silk bathrobe. She sat on the edge of the bed. “When Rachel got cancer, she said, ‘Now I’ll never have children. There goes my only chance to live on after I die.’ That was when I decided to focus all of my research on creating life. So I could give people hope for a future that goes on past their own.”
He saw her smile a little in the purple nighttime shadows, and she reached out to lightly stroke his hair. “Get some sleep,” she told him. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
She liked to go out onto the porch at night and sit in the moonlight, especially after sex. He’d heard that the moon had something to do with a woman’s cycles so maybe she thought it’d help. Sawyer knew she’d been trying to get pregnant for as long as they’d been sleeping together, though she hadn’t come right out and said so. Things had been different since Ben had disappeared and the rest of the Others had vanished into the hills and valleys of the island. Nobody died from childbirth anymore, and Juliet speculated that the deaths might’ve been one of the side effects of a purge that had taken place before she or the survivors of Flight 815 had arrived. Whatever the reason, though, she seemed happier now, in their little yellow house with Rose and Bernard as their next-door neighbors and Vincent asleep at the foot of their bed. She even seemed content with Sawyer.
Maybe he understood it a little better now, after what she’d just told him. The night after the freighter explosion she’d kissed him and he, still in shock from the afternoon’s events, had wanted to know why.
“I don’t know what you were doing in the water when you swam up to me on the beach, but when you walked up out of the waves, do you know what my first thought was? Don’t laugh.”
Sawyer was silent because the last thing in the world he felt like doing was laughing.
“I thought you looked like a merman.”
“A what?”
“You know.” She smiled. “A male version of a mermaid. You had this look about you – a glow, and this heartbreaking, hopeful expression on your face. You looked like you’d walked right out of somewhere magical, and I hated it that I had to tell you about the freighter and take that away from you. Then…do you remember what I said later? After we saw the light?”
“You were drunk,” Sawyer said. “You weren’t making any sense.”
“I was drunk, that’s true. I remember what I said, though.” She’d taken hold of his hand then, and looked into his eyes. “I said, ‘rebirth.’ See, I used to wonder what babies think about while they’re getting born. For nine months the only world they know is the one inside their mothers’ wombs. It’s dark in there and they can’t see a thing. Suddenly they’re getting squeezed out and they don’t know where they’re going. They must be so frightened. Then they see this bright light. It’s the first thing they ever see. And instead of dying or finding themselves somewhere terrible, what they find inside that light is their mother’s love. It must seem magical to them. When I saw you come up out of the water it looked like you were bringing all of these new possibilities with you, and then when we saw that light, well…I thought that just maybe everything would be okay, after all.”
Now Sawyer lay alone in the dark and thought about the four times he’d been re-born. The first time he’d been a child, and he’d been “delivered” from a world of innocence into one of bewilderment, pain, and anger. His mother had saved his life that time, for what it was worth. The second time he’d been a teenager and he’d thought he was taking charge of that life, deciding to own his anger and give it a new name, “Sawyer.” He’d paid off the people he owed, and saved his own skin. The third time he’d been delivered from death he’d found himself on this island. “Three days ago we all died,” Jack had said then. “We should all be able to start over.” But it had taken Sawyer a long, long time to get that fresh start Jack had talked about so glibly.
The fourth time, Sawyer had walked out of the ocean feeling like a man who’d just been baptized. His soul had been saved; he’d been redeemed. He’d risked his own life for the lives of people he’d come to love. He’d risked his rescue to give them a chance to be rescued. Finally, he knew he’d done something for someone else without first asking, “What’s in it for me?”
He’d heard it said that no good deed goes unpunished. He’d felt his hope and his pride in himself crumble when Juliet had pointed at the horizon and he’d seen the black smoke that was all that was left of their rescue boat. If the helicopter had made it to the freighter, then he’d left his friends just before they went to their deaths. If it hadn’t made it, then it must’ve ditched in the water. No survivors had ever turned up on the island, so either way, they were probably all dead.
He’d thought then that he’d never do another selfless act. He’d been wrong. When Juliet had looked into the light and said the word “rebirth” so hopefully, Sawyer couldn’t bring himself to destroy her hope the way that his had been destroyed. He hadn’t shared his burden and told her that Jack and the others were dead. He’d only told her that Ben had given them a plane and they’d left the island, looking for salvation.
Sometimes, he thought, hope wasn’t God’s cruel joke. Sometimes, it was the only thing that could save you.
End
Characters: Sawyer/Juliet
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,583
Spoilers: Through the S4 finale
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
Juliet and the Merman
“Do you know why I wanted to become a fertility doctor?”
Juliet asked the question in their dark bedroom, in the stillness that came after sex. She liked to talk afterward, and though Sawyer would rather have smoked a Dharma cigarette and drifted off to sleep, he listened to her because he cared about her.
“Why’s that, Tinkerbell?”
She propped herself up on one elbow. “I think it’s funny that you call me silly nicknames,” she said. “Back when I was a kid they used to call me Morticia. You know, as in Morticia Addams. And when I was in high school they called me Dr. Death.”
“What were you, some kind of a ghoul?” Sawyer meant it teasingly because he didn’t believe it for a minute. Juliet cared more about life than anyone he’d ever met.
“Maybe I was,” she mused. “I used to like to look at dead things. I’d see a baby bird fallen from its nest and I’d stare and stare. Then when we started dissecting frogs and fetal pigs in biology class, I’d always keep the eyes.”
Sawyer wished harder for that cigarette. “Now you’re startin’ to freak me out,” he said, unconsciously scooting away from her a little bit. He’d always been a bit phobic about missing eyes.
“When Rachel and I were little our parents made us go to this evangelical church, and all the preacher ever talked about was how if you’re good enough you get to go to heaven, but if you’re not you have to spend eternity in hell. Then he made it sound like hardly anybody was ever good enough.”
“People who teach shit like that to kids oughtta be shot,” Sawyer muttered, and squeezed her hip in a gesture of comfort.
“Yeah, well, Rachel and I used to talk about it, and since our parents were always punishing us we figured we’d never be good enough, but we couldn’t accept the idea of going to hell forever and ever. I mean, that’s enough to make anybody insane.”
Sawyer remembered a very insane man named Mr. Sawyer who believed he was already in hell, and silently agreed. Then he thought about how he’d gone his whole life trying not to think about his parents – good people who’d made some pretty horrible mistakes – being in hell. He shifted back into the comfort of Juliet’s body.
“So, rather than accept the inevitability of hell, we rejected the concept of heaven. But then what did that leave us with?”
Sawyer shrugged. “When you’re dead, you’re dead. Over. Kaput.” No more pain, he thought. Pain was for the living.
“Right,” she agreed, and Sawyer was a little bit surprised.
“I thought you were the optimist,” he said. “I’m the pessimist. You’re the one who never stops hopin’.”
“Well, that’s why I used to look into the eyes of dead things. I always hoped I’d see something, some spark or shadow or something that’d tell me I was wrong. I wanted to know that they saw something after they died, something that gave them hope.” She shrugged, then sighed. “I never did, though. That’s why I went into the research field when I got my medical degree, because I didn’t want to look into the eyes of the dead anymore.” She laughed without any amusement. “Ironic, isn’t it, that when I got to this island I found out that they’d given me a job where all of my patients died.”
“Reason number seven-thousand-six-hundred-forty-nine to hate Ben and co.,” Sawyer said bitterly.
Restlessly Juliet got up and donned a silk bathrobe. She sat on the edge of the bed. “When Rachel got cancer, she said, ‘Now I’ll never have children. There goes my only chance to live on after I die.’ That was when I decided to focus all of my research on creating life. So I could give people hope for a future that goes on past their own.”
He saw her smile a little in the purple nighttime shadows, and she reached out to lightly stroke his hair. “Get some sleep,” she told him. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
She liked to go out onto the porch at night and sit in the moonlight, especially after sex. He’d heard that the moon had something to do with a woman’s cycles so maybe she thought it’d help. Sawyer knew she’d been trying to get pregnant for as long as they’d been sleeping together, though she hadn’t come right out and said so. Things had been different since Ben had disappeared and the rest of the Others had vanished into the hills and valleys of the island. Nobody died from childbirth anymore, and Juliet speculated that the deaths might’ve been one of the side effects of a purge that had taken place before she or the survivors of Flight 815 had arrived. Whatever the reason, though, she seemed happier now, in their little yellow house with Rose and Bernard as their next-door neighbors and Vincent asleep at the foot of their bed. She even seemed content with Sawyer.
Maybe he understood it a little better now, after what she’d just told him. The night after the freighter explosion she’d kissed him and he, still in shock from the afternoon’s events, had wanted to know why.
“I don’t know what you were doing in the water when you swam up to me on the beach, but when you walked up out of the waves, do you know what my first thought was? Don’t laugh.”
Sawyer was silent because the last thing in the world he felt like doing was laughing.
“I thought you looked like a merman.”
“A what?”
“You know.” She smiled. “A male version of a mermaid. You had this look about you – a glow, and this heartbreaking, hopeful expression on your face. You looked like you’d walked right out of somewhere magical, and I hated it that I had to tell you about the freighter and take that away from you. Then…do you remember what I said later? After we saw the light?”
“You were drunk,” Sawyer said. “You weren’t making any sense.”
“I was drunk, that’s true. I remember what I said, though.” She’d taken hold of his hand then, and looked into his eyes. “I said, ‘rebirth.’ See, I used to wonder what babies think about while they’re getting born. For nine months the only world they know is the one inside their mothers’ wombs. It’s dark in there and they can’t see a thing. Suddenly they’re getting squeezed out and they don’t know where they’re going. They must be so frightened. Then they see this bright light. It’s the first thing they ever see. And instead of dying or finding themselves somewhere terrible, what they find inside that light is their mother’s love. It must seem magical to them. When I saw you come up out of the water it looked like you were bringing all of these new possibilities with you, and then when we saw that light, well…I thought that just maybe everything would be okay, after all.”
Now Sawyer lay alone in the dark and thought about the four times he’d been re-born. The first time he’d been a child, and he’d been “delivered” from a world of innocence into one of bewilderment, pain, and anger. His mother had saved his life that time, for what it was worth. The second time he’d been a teenager and he’d thought he was taking charge of that life, deciding to own his anger and give it a new name, “Sawyer.” He’d paid off the people he owed, and saved his own skin. The third time he’d been delivered from death he’d found himself on this island. “Three days ago we all died,” Jack had said then. “We should all be able to start over.” But it had taken Sawyer a long, long time to get that fresh start Jack had talked about so glibly.
The fourth time, Sawyer had walked out of the ocean feeling like a man who’d just been baptized. His soul had been saved; he’d been redeemed. He’d risked his own life for the lives of people he’d come to love. He’d risked his rescue to give them a chance to be rescued. Finally, he knew he’d done something for someone else without first asking, “What’s in it for me?”
He’d heard it said that no good deed goes unpunished. He’d felt his hope and his pride in himself crumble when Juliet had pointed at the horizon and he’d seen the black smoke that was all that was left of their rescue boat. If the helicopter had made it to the freighter, then he’d left his friends just before they went to their deaths. If it hadn’t made it, then it must’ve ditched in the water. No survivors had ever turned up on the island, so either way, they were probably all dead.
He’d thought then that he’d never do another selfless act. He’d been wrong. When Juliet had looked into the light and said the word “rebirth” so hopefully, Sawyer couldn’t bring himself to destroy her hope the way that his had been destroyed. He hadn’t shared his burden and told her that Jack and the others were dead. He’d only told her that Ben had given them a plane and they’d left the island, looking for salvation.
Sometimes, he thought, hope wasn’t God’s cruel joke. Sometimes, it was the only thing that could save you.
End
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 02:31 am (UTC)I kinda wonder whether fallout from the purge made the Others' women unable to bear children (and maybe it's responsible for the super-sperm as well?). If that's the case then newbies to the island wouldn't be affected. I'm glad you thought that made sense! Thank you. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 04:39 am (UTC)I love the insight on Sawyer, too, how he thinks of his parents as good people who made terrible mistakes, all the times he's been reborn.
I hope Juliet and Sawyer can find some comfort in the island. Hope is such a wonderful gift for Sawyer to give, something so unexpected, such a sign of how he's changed.
Loved it!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 06:45 pm (UTC)I think Sawyer has changed -- though I hope he won't be *all* good; I'd hate to lose our snarky anti-hero -- but he's starting to put other people's feelings ahead of his own. I hope you're right; after all they've been through on that island I hope they can find some comfort there.
Thank you so much for reading! ♥
no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 11:09 pm (UTC)I liked everything about: the life they're sharing now, their behaviour towards each other, the reason for Juliet becoming a fertility doctor, the whole 'eye'-story, Juliet trying to get pregnant, the rebirth of Sawyer, Juliet's hopefulness ...
(Oh, and I really have to mention it: Sawyer calling her Tinkerbell is just awesome. ;))
I enjoyed this very much, thanks for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 09:57 am (UTC)This was lovely.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 07:11 pm (UTC)I'm so glad you liked this. Thank you for reading! ♥
no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 11:29 pm (UTC)Also, thank you for using that icon. *stares*
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Date: 2009-01-15 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-16 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-19 08:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-19 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 11:45 pm (UTC)