Since you're gone my empty arms have nothing left to hold

2007

We must never be apart.

The tape plays in his car and Jack doesn’t lower the volume or raise the window. He knows he’s probably making someone angry, he never was one to like it when cars blasting music passed past him in another life, but he doesn’t care less. Fun, that it took him almost forty years to do something like this. Then again, he can’t picture himself driving his dad’s car with music blasting as soon as he got his license. Back then he hadn’t even considered it. Things have changed. Indeed.

We must never be apart.

Just pretty much fucking fitting. He doesn’t shut it off because he needs to hear it. He needs to hear it because he needs a constant reminder. He needs a constant reminder of her. Of what happened. Of the fact that she loved him and he left her behind and he pretty much fucked it up because he understood too late that, as his tape eloquently screams, she’s the one he adored. Pity that he hadn’t known it back then. He remembers a green light surrounding him as he stops in front of a red one. He remembers how it was back then. Maybe it’s confused, maybe he remembers right. He can’t really say.

1986

There has been, in Jack’s life, a very, very short time when he had considered going into psychiatry instead of neurology.

It was the closest he ever came to step away from a path already set in front of him since years; it also would have made his dad way more upset than anything else, and Jack had cradled such an idea, caressed it, nurtured it. Psychiatry was fascinating, intriguing; and sincerely, Jack at that point in his life had been way more interested in learning how to fix someone’s head by understanding how it works than in materially fixing it, as in putting nerves back where they belonged.

It didn’t last. Because of a lot of things, because of his dad, because of his lack of courage maybe, but most of all, because Jack always tried to be honest with himself and he knew that to be a psychiatrist you need to have some kind of talent to understand people and bedside manners is somewhat necessary. And Jack never was the greatest reader of people and bedside manners never were his strong suit. It wasn’t what he was cut for. And so he never went for it.

2007

Thinking about Juliet hurts; thinking about her hair, long and blond and soft and about that ghost of a kiss that never went farther than that, hurts. Hurts like hell because that was his chance and he had missed it. He wonders what she’d say if she saw him swallowing a pill and then starting the car again from the parking lot. Fun, that remembering Juliet is pretty much the only thing that will really feel painful for him these days. Her, and Sawyer, to a lesser degree though. For the rest? He’s learned how to numb the feeling down (why does he take pills?) or to drown it in music (there’s a reason for which his tapes’ labels don’t read Frank Sinatra).

2004

Jack knows what the Stockholm Syndrome is; well enough to realize he needs to be careful, well enough to realize he’s fucked, not enough to understand how peculiar this situation is.

--

It’s all very simple, just saying it straight; Juliet is the captor, he’s the captive, her superior is the captor, too, they have leverage on him. He should hate them both, but while he hates Linus, he can’t hate her.

It becomes complicated because of that and because of other reasons; maybe because she’s a captive herself someway, and it doesn’t matter because she’s probably fucking with his head as much as Benjamin Linus is, because he’s fucking started to care about what she does even if he has every reason not to, because he doesn’t know what to make of her, because he wishes someone was straight with him.

(Well, Sawyer had been, some days ago. Pity that Jack hadn’t known how to react.)

Clearly no one is. He wonders if she cares (she probably doesn’t). He’s sure as hell Linus doesn’t. He wonders if Stockholm Syndrome can go both ways.

(If he had taken psychiatry, he’d know it does and that it even has a name, Lyma Syndrome, but it’s not as famous and Jack is no psychiatrist.)

He hates this fact that he could never read people; but even if he could, he can’t relate most times. The problem is that he feels like he can relate to her, purely on instinct, and it confuses him further because Jack doesn’t want to rely on instinct, and anyway he can’t understand her to begin with. And then she asks him to kill Ben, and here lies the other big problem.

For someone who says she’s not adjusted to death, she doesn’t have many quibbles asking him to break the same oath she has taken. He wonders if it’s all part of the game, how far the Stockholm Syndrome goes and what’s her place. Captor or fellow captive? He doesn’t know. And see, it’s not easy at all.

2007

He walks in front of a bookstore as he gets back to the car from the funeral parlor; the complete plays of Shakespeare are exposed. He smirks for a second, pushing his sunglasses over his eyes; Jack is not really much of a reader.

(Sawyer is. Was. He doesn’t know.)

It’s not like he doesn’t read. But most times it always was more of a chore (medical journals, medical textbooks), when he was younger it was a distraction but not one he took for more than that, then there was lack of time and interest. He doesn’t care much for made-up stories or worlds or for irrational romance. He does read, sure. Nothing to say. He’s just not a reader.

Side note, Jack hasn’t much of a gift for humor.

(Sawyer has. Here we are again.)

But since he isn’t completely oblivious to irony and he does read, there’s only one Shakespeare play he remembers reading as he stops in front of the shop, Romeo and Juliet. Not original, but Jack doesn’t have original literary tastes. And the irony isn’t lost on him.

Jack is no Romeo and Juliet is (was?) nothing short than the most twisted Juliet that could ever be, except that maybe she wasn’t and at heart she was a romantic, too. It was clear it couldn’t have ended well. Or maybe it could have, if only because they were no Romeo and no Juliet, they weren’t that naïve and they were at least ten years too old for such a thing. It could have. It hasn’t and Jack isn’t sure that there will be another act for him to fix things.

Kate probably doesn’t share his opinion, or at least she didn’t back then, when they were all captive. He still wishes he knew who is that she wants. He had thought he knew then (Sawyer), he had thought he knew when they were rescued (him), now he doesn’t and she won’t answer him and he’s too tired and doesn’t have it in him to keep on playing a game that got old since before the cages. It doesn’t look like he’ll get an answer any time soon though.

He buys the complete plays (damn, it’s heavy) and gains a strange look from the shop assistant; whatever. He doesn’t care. He throws it in the back of his car and turns the radio on again.

See, this is one of the times when he wishes he had been a psychiatrist, along with the cages. He wishes he had some kind of deep knowledge of how the human mind works, and maybe he could have learned something from Sawyer there, too. If he had said something back then.

2004

Kate and Sawyer go and Jack stays and he wonders if they understood what this meant for him. If they did, they won’t come back.

(A week or so later, it won’t surprise him that Sawyer was the one who did understand it.)

For now he just wants to leave. Juliet wants out, too. And that’s when it happens and he gets closer and he’s probably making a mistake. Wonderful, he thinks at night, look at how fucked you are. Stockholm Syndrome indeed and it’s ironic that in the moment when he cracked for good he was in a cage (Sawyer’s cage, how neat) treating her wounds and she was outside it, being treated. Not to mention that he had just saved her life.

These are the times when he’s glad he doesn’t know much of how the human mind can work. He’s sure he wouldn’t like any conclusion he’d draw.

--

Juliet becomes metaphorically a lover in his bed and literally a gun to his head.

She’s a gun to his head because he cares and she knows and they all know and so much for trying to stay detached and clear of weak points. And she’s a lover in his bed but isn’t at the same time because sure as hell they never even kissed and if he thinks about Kate it still hurts all over. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t like Juliet. Or that sometimes he doesn’t wish to touch her or to feel her hair under his fingers, maybe pulling it slightly. Or that sometimes he wonders how would it feel to have her in his bed and if she would still smile that way as he made her come.

This never was his kind of fantasy. He doesn’t try to stop it and plays along, football and everything else. She’s the only one of them he might trust, might being the key word; and he accepts it even knowing it can’t mean anything good.

2007

Thing is, he thinks as he raises the volume, he had once thought that Kate was like him; she isn’t. He had thought that Juliet wasn’t like him; she is, or was. Three years ago, she might have been lying her way out of the island and she might have killed for it, but after all it wasn’t much different from him. He had cheated Sawyer and Kate’s way out as he tried to cheat his own way out. Juliet might have conned him into caring for her and he had conned their way out, not to mention that he had almost broken his oath. The same one she had swore to, by the way. The right question isn’t who conned who, but rather, what did he need? Someone like him or someone who was totally different? It’s true that Jack never was too fond of the way he was even if he never exactly could change, but it’s also true that by know he knows what it means to deal with it.

He knows the answer now. Pity that it was too late.

We must never be apart.

Shit, he thinks as he speeds up and passes the funeral home again (he surely isn’t going back there). How, how, how wrong he was.

2004

Juliet is right when she says that he kissed her because he was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t in love with Kate; but not exactly right. See, she gets him because she’s like him except not completely. She doesn’t know that there was another reason.

Because kissing Kate that once had been almost terrifying and it had lasted maybe five seconds and she had fled leaving him even more confused than he was before; it had felt good but strange and weird and a lot of other things he can’t bring himself to distinguish.

Kissing Juliet… it had been barely more than lips touching lips, but it hadn’t felt just good. It had felt right. Right because she was the right one; that kiss had made him feel whole, important, almost hungry for more, so much that he had been on the verge of making it way less chaste than it ended up being, that fantasy of his barely flashing through his mind for a second.

And then he didn’t because it was too scary. It didn’t feel as right with Sarah, not with Kate, not with anyone else, and Jack isn’t accustomed to right. Right means there’s nothing to fix. He isn’t sure he can deal with it. Which says a lot, but maybe this is one of those other times when for his sake it’s better that he can’t understand on a rational level what goes through his head.

2007

It could have been perfect, then; now, if it ever will be, it won’t be perfect. Not by far. Because he is the one who is going to need fixing and a lot of it, and because of a lot of other things.

Once he had tasted in Juliet something that he never tasted in anyone else, once he counted stars in her as that damned song he should really stop listening to says, and now he’ll probably end up literally crashing the car if he keeps on thinking about her instead of looking at the road.

Doesn’t matter; maybe he’d wake up there, if he did crash.

Wishful thinking.

He parks and shuts the engine off and he doesn’t care if he doesn’t walk straight as he gets into his apartment. He doesn’t. He bites his tongue and tastes blood; it’s disgusting but he doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t even feel that much pain anymore, he’s past it. He doesn’t know why he ends up calling Kate; maybe he’s too drunk, or maybe she’s still the closest one he can call.

(Not the closest thing to a friend; he and Kate will never be just friends and he still owes Sawyer an apology, if he’s still alive. Funny that he didn’t listen to Locke the only time he should have.)

It’s not like it ends up well anyway; of course she says no.

--

The irony isn’t lost on him when he ends up stuck with Ben; he should have suspected it since the beginning.

1974

Well, he figures, he’s still the closest thing Sawyer has to a friend since they never were proper friends and they still aren’t (even if Jack hopes he can work in that direction) except that now Sawyer (who isn’t Sawyer anymore or so he hears) and Juliet are friends altogether; not that Jack has a problem with it or anything. Hell, he wouldn’t have had a problem with it even if they had been more than friends; he might not be the greatest person to understand people, but he’d have understood it. Then again, it’s not like she flies into his arms; he’s a realist, after all.

They meet again and pretend not to know each other and he lives with Kate and Juliet with Sawyer (or James, or Jim, or whatever) because they’re newcomers after all and living with Kate was a dream once and a nightmare now. His bed is empty and cold even if they’re on a tropical island and he feels a gun pointed to his head even while he sleeps.

Then he locks himself in his room as soon as the withdrawal symptoms hit. He tells Kate to lie and say he’s running a fever, she does and she’s the only person he sees for three days, ten minutes each time, when she brings him some water. Not food and he doesn’t surely need any.

The third day his mouth tastes disgusting even if he brushes his teeth every two hours or so, the spasms aren’t that bad but they’re still there, he feels cold, he breaks in a sweat most times and just wishes Juliet pulled that imaginary trigger. He also wonders how much time passes before someone comes to check on him and sees that this is no ordinary fever, even if he’s running a light one.

Juliet knocks on his door at midnight on the third day; he opens and lets her in. She says that Kate told her the truth and he just shrugs and doesn’t even try to hide how ashamed he feels.

She sits next to him on the floor, her blue Dharma jumpsuit looking way too strange on her; he’s wearing only a pair of pajama trousers and nothing else. He hasn’t even shaved; he can’t bring himself to. Not that he doesn’t want to, but in the last three days he had worse problems to take care of and he wasn’t going to let Kate help him on principle.

Juliet says he looks horrible; he answers that he knows and well, he’s sorry, but he figures it’s not enough. It shouldn’t be, she agrees, but Jack isn’t that far gone not to notice that she says shouldn’t and not isn’t and how can she stand to kiss him after, when he’s sure he can’t taste anywhere near good he doesn’t know but he relents and lets her and her tongue is insisting against his lips and he parts them. While this time he doesn’t have the initiative, he isn’t anyone’s hero, she’s the one with the upper hand and there aren’t any reasons for which this should feel right, it still does. It’s still right, much more than that kiss with Kate the night before they left was and he wishes he knew where it came from. He forgets about it for now. It lasts, it’s long (she’s definitely taking her revenge; after all, he chose not to push once and she’s pushing now). All fair; and right because another problem is that he needs someone who knows when to take the initiative and she obviously does. And she knows. She’s like him, after all.

We must never be apart, he thinks. She’s a gun to his head again now, in the most literal sense of the word, because he knows he took his decision as his hand grasps behind her neck and pulls her to him and his decision means that now there’s no going back. He shivers without restrain as soon as he realizes this is the time when she’ll become a lover in his bed for good, or maybe it’ll be the next. It doesn’t matter. He still can’t see any happy ending laying in front of them but as her tongue traces his lips, her teeth bite on his lips and her nails dig into his back, he knows he doesn’t give a damn. He moans into her mouth, we must never be apart what he’d say if he could. She feels perfect as his hands reach her waist and as she still kisses him, she feels perfect as they end up on his bed whose sheets are rumpled and messy; it feels as perfect as that other kiss felt then. He figures it’s the definitive proof of what he had known all along.

End.