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Am I half the man I used to be?
I doubt it, forget about it, whatever, it's all the same, anyways.
He’s on the plane, and Kate is holding his hand.
He’s on the plane, and Kate’s crying, and she’s holding his hand, and it feels wrong.
It all feels wrong.
James shouldn’t be on the plane, shouldn’t be letting Kate’s fingers tangle with his. She shouldn’t be touching him at all. Desperate, white-knuckled, like he’s her tether to the real world (which he might be, but she’s not his, his tether is gone and dead and far away).
She shouldn’t be clutching him like he’s supposed to be the one holding her. He’s held her in his arms through so many instances (lifetimes ago, it seems), let her cry into his shirt until she soaked it through.
But his body has long since moulded to conform to someone else, and his shape doesn’t recognize hers anymore. An old armchair with someone else’s ass-print in it is never as welcoming. A foreign body – hers – is nestled sharply beside his ribcage. A thorn in a tiger’s paw, a stone in a shoe, a pea under a mattress.
It doesn’t sit right. He can’t sit right.
He looks back at where they came from, almost hoping that he’ll see a tiny blonde speck, waving her arms frantically, begging them to notice her. Begging them to come back for her.
He thinks about diving into the water, about the last time he was on an aircraft with Kate, headed towards the promise of returning home. It was worth the jump the last time – it brought him to her , but there is no more her anymore. There is nothing worth swimming to.
There is nothing left for him there. There is nothing left for him anywhere.
He can’t stomach it, stares at his feet. “I’m sorry,” he breathes, thankful for the roar of the plane through the airspace. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry.” No one can hear him.
(No one living, that is.)
But he’s not talking to anyone who’s living, is he?
The first thing James does when he gets off the airplane is pass out.
His heavy frame tumbles off the final steps, a masterclass in dead-weight ragdoll physics, crumpling onto asphalt. Everyone’s sure it’s from finally being here, finally making it off the island, finally coming home. Look how relieved he is to be home!
(He doesn’t tell them that he’s never been so homesick in his life.)
They don’t know that there’s no such thing as home for him here. They don’t know that he left his home behind. They don’t know that home is dead and buried in sand.
He wonders if he’s dying, before he hits the ground.
He hopes he’s dying, as the world spins and he collapses.
If you die in a dream do you die in real life? Maybe the island was a dream. Maybe he died with her. A part of him did. Maybe all of him did. Maybe the island forgot to claim him. Wait. Get back here, it’s saying, all in her gentle, musical voice. There’s nothing for you out there.
He would answer back. Yes. Please. I know.
He wants to go home.
There’s a man in a suit asking him questions. All the survivors are sitting in chairs that look comfortable but aren’t. The survivors are all trying to look comfortable. But aren’t.
James doesn’t even know if he qualifies as a survivor. He feels more like a casualty than anything else. He feels like he hasn’t survived. He feels like he won’t survive.
He can’t be James Ford, can’t be Sawyer. Both wanted men, though neither are wanted here.
He’s Jim Burke, boat captain. A variation on a character he’s honed over the past three years. A character that feels more like him than he ever did.
“Any family, Jim?” The man in the suit asks in practiced, portioned patience.
“Rachel Carlson.” He replies. The name comes hoarsely out of his mouth, like it feels wrong to be speaking at all.
“Rachel Carson,” the suit repeats, writing it down.
“Carlson. With an ‘l’.” He corrects.
The suit raises an eyebrow like he doesn’t care in the slightest, just ticking off boxes. This is just a j-o-b to him. Recovering the broken pieces of Jim Burke’s life is just a j-o-b. He can go home to his wife and kids after this, uncover a set-aside dinner plate that’s been wrapped in plastic and refrigerated, won’t give a second thought to the sorrowful faces lined up in front of him now.
“Relation?” The next box to tick.
“Sister-in-law.” James lies. He barely notes the confused twitch of Kate’s head.
“Address?” Suit doesn’t know that he’s lying, probably wouldn’t care if he did. Counting down the minutes until his shift is over.
He can envision all the letters she addressed to Rachel but never got the chance to send. Written by hand in that barely-legible script. Doctor handwriting. “Been gone six years, dunno where she lives now.” One thing that isn’t true, one thing that is. “Can give you her last known, though,” he offers.
The suit nods, hands him the clipboard and paper. James’ printed scrawl is neat, easy to read. It looks wrong, written down like that. Looks wrong written down in not-her-writing.
He barely pays attention to the rest of the conversation, peppers in prompted yeah s and uh-huh s and sorry s. He’s shell-shocked, they think. He’ll readjust soon enough, integrate back into society. He’ll come around.
I wish I could tell them about you, he thinks. He feels guilty for lying by omission, for not telling them about the beautiful doctor whose body lies grey and rotting a million miles away. They wouldn’t believe him. Too many questions, too many answers he doesn’t have.
He’s old now. Lies, like hangovers, ache more.
They keep him there for days.
They keep them all there for days as they sort out visas, identities, embassies.
Kate tries to talk to him. Begs him to come back with her.
Back? To what?
She has money and means, she has a modest little property she paid for in lump sum cash. We could live there, she suggests, you and me, and he wonders if she thinks it would be like old times. Sawyer and Freckles, always two steps away from ripping each other apart.
He can barely look at Kate now.
Some people just aren’t meant to be together, and he knows those blue eyes would twinkle in the glory of being right, ever the know-it-all. But it’s him and Kate that aren’t meant to be together.
He can’t go with her to play house, can’t play trauma-bonded boyfriend, can’t even play as just a friend to her. Even if he wanted to, even if he knew how, he couldn’t. It’s disrespectful to the memory of the woman he loves, to turn around now and run into the arms of the girl he told her had no claim to him.
Kate threatens his relationship with her.
He bursts into tears. He wishes he could think her name without bursting into tears.
“My sister’s dead.” The strained voice on the other end of the phone doesn’t believe him when he says that he knows her – knew her.
He chews nervously on the inside of his cheek – a habit he picked up from her. “Yeah.”
Every second of silence weighs down on his lungs. “How?” She sounds as exhausted as he feels.
“Wouldn’t believe me if I told ya.”
“You’re right.” Another protracted pause, another breath held. “Fine. I’ll come get you.”
“Want you to have these,” Miles pries open James’ stubborn, clenched fingers, despite the low growl he emits. He narrows his eyes as cool, sharp objects press into his skin.
He stares at the small handful of brilliant, gleaming diamonds with dull eyes. Nikki and Paulo’s diamonds come back to haunt him. He’s more interested in the soft grains of sand that came with them; he’ll happily let the clear chunks of carbon fall through his fingers if it means he could keep the grit, the only gemstones of any value to him.
These microscopic pieces of the island are the last thing he has that she touched, their granular brothers and sisters cradled her body as he lay her down into the bed he made for her. It felt so wrong to make up a resting place for her that wasn’t for him.
He’d dug a queen-sized grave, as big as the bed they’d shared for years.
(He doesn’t know whether it was out of habit or out of consideration that he might lie with her too.)
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he sniffles, all congestion and mucous and wet noise.
“Don’t want ‘em,” he mutters, looking at Miles through cried-out green eyes, reaching out with a flat palm. Take them back, he doesn’t say.
Miles shakes his head, stares back with that piercing dark stare. There’s a flicker of sympathy, of shared grief, shielded by the exhaustion at the forefront of his gaze. Tears brimming, muscles in his eyes twitching to prevent them from falling. “Would’ve split them between the four of us, but…” he chokes out with a sob.
James closes his fist around the diamonds in resigned gratitude. How quickly four of us became two, two who didn’t deserve to be the last two standing. The two of them who died should be the two here right now, heading back with and to their families.
James and Miles have nothing to go back to, and they both know it.
At least this way they can be more comfortable.
He’s shuffled from government official to government official, each one asking him to explain his story. Shipwrecked my boat, did what I had to do to survive, y’all ain’t talk to each other, huh?
They all smile at him with that same vacant patience, that same piety or pity, like he’s out on the streets begging for change and they’ve handed him a small black coffee and remnants of a gift card.
They think they’re helping. It’s not their fault. They don’t know how.
The face at the airport isn’t as friendly as he’d hoped. Brown eyes narrowed in reserved suspicion, straight brown hair pulled back tightly into a low ponytail. Barely a family resemblance. He wouldn’t recognize her if not for the grainy photo tucked into the frame of the mirror in their old bedroom.
She looks older. Her hair’s streaked with wiry silver hairs.
Part of him was hoping she’d have blue eyes. Part of him is glad she doesn’t.
“Who are you?” She asks when he folds himself into the passenger seat of her tiny rental car. “How do you know… her ?” Her tone is forked, fierce, fearful.
Neither of them can say her name, it seems.
“I loved her.” The words eke lifelessly out of him, limp like a dead and bloody hand he refuses to let go of. “I loved her so much.”
I'll be bedridden, I'll let the pain metastasize.
He’s been put up in some fancy hotel room, equal parts ostentatious and sterile. No one offers to bring his baggage to his room – they can’t see it. To them, it’s not real. So he hoists it all on his hunched shoulders, cumbersome and corrosive, carries it all the way up the stairs.
He barely has the wherewithal to close the door behind him before he sinks to his knees. He cries a good, solid cry, for the first time since the day she died, wailing, strangled sobs.
God, he misses her.
God, he’s sorry.
God doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t answer. No one answers.
“I’m so fuckin' sorry,” and there’s no one there to answer him.
He thinks about killing himself but he can’t because she’d be so fucking mad.
Baby, we’re not going there. She’d say. He can almost hear her voice, and in it the determination to keep him alive.
He’s not going to think about killing himself anymore.
He’s not going to go there.
He pawns the diamonds, gets a pretty chunk of change for them. Uses a fraction of the money for first and last on a studio apartment in the same neighbourhood as Rachel, the same neighbourhood she used to live in. Splurges on a mattress that’s too wide for him, forgets to buy a boxspring.
She always wanted to move back to Miami, show him all her favourite places. The coffee shops that knew her regular order, the little bookstore run by an old man who only took cash and wrote receipts on scraps of notepaper, the gallery by her old workplace where she’d go to just sit and think quietly.
He moves to her old haunt. He’s the ghost now.
He sits in Rachel’s living room, holding a cup of coffee he never had the intention of drinking. She hasn’t touched hers either, it’s long gone cold.
They have the same thirst but no desire to drink, same hunger but neither willing to touch the small plate of stale pastries, fruit that’s begun to pucker from being left on the counter too long.
“Is that Julian?” He points to the photograph on the foyer table of a grinning kid sporting a proud gap where his left incisor should be. Professional, posed, a slight anxiety behind his wide brown eyes. Must be his first school picture day.
Her eyes narrow. “How do you know about him?” A fair question for a mother to ask about her child to a man who’s never met them.
He swallows hard, his eyes tighten like he might start crying. There are no tears left.
Rachel, smartly, doesn’t take his silence for an answer. She glares at him. There are no tears left in her, either, but hers have been gone for years already.
“How long?” – has she been dead? Apprehension coats her question like fresh tar, the stink of skepticism and dread filling the air. Waiting for the answer she’s prepared for for years.
James sighs shakily. “Almost a month ago.” He can’t believe it’s been that long or that short. He can’t believe the earth’s been spinning without her for a whole month. He can’t believe he’s only been without her for a month. “Before we…” he frowns. “Left.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Mittelos?” He nods because he’s not sure what else to do.
“Yeah.”
“What’d you do there?”
“Security.”
They stare in silence for what feels like forever, neither one wanting to relinquish their precious memories of the woman who brought them here, together, sitting on opposite sides of Rachel’s living room. They both are desperate to keep what is sacred.
Her voice wavers. “Was she happy?”
His cheeks crack as his lips curve into a small for the first time in a month. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” He aches to tell Rachel about all the times they stayed up too late talking, about the life they built in that little yellow house, about all the plans they made for when they made it off the island and how all those plans started the same way: we have to visit Rachel. “She missed you.”
Tears race each other down her cheeks. “I missed her too.”
He declines the call from Kate as he sits on the bare floor with his head in his hands. Broad shoulders shaking, eyes wet and weary, facial hair grown out all uneven.
New information has ripped off the slow-starting scabs of his scars. Everything hurts.
The Others wiped all traces of her off the face of the earth, scrubbed her name from her research, medical patents, even her engagement announcement to that fucking asshole has been plucked right from the follicle. It’s like she never existed.
They never intended to let her go home, did they?
Benjamin Linus was hoarding her, a snarling dragon coiled over a mountain of gold. He’d ensured that she wouldn’t have anything to return to. If she’d been alleyway graffiti, he wouldn’t have painted over her – he would have bulldozed the whole fucking building down and had contractors draw up a new one in its place.
They were doomed from the start.
All their dreams of returning home would have disintegrated either way.
Linus had ensured that there was nothing waiting for both of them. Rachel thought she was dead. No one would ever consider looking for James. There would be no soft glow of a lit porch light welcoming them back. No one knew where (or when) they were.
Another call from Kate. She hasn’t seen him since they parted ways at the airport.
(He doesn’t want her to.)
He reaches for the carton of Marlboros that’s been staring him down for the last three hours. He considers stepping onto the balcony to light up – and considers considering throwing himself off it.
(He’s not going to do that. He promised her he wouldn’t.)
Fuck it, he’ll smoke inside.
He doesn’t have any matches anyway, much less a lighter.
He groans as he stands – joints, muscles, heart all aching. He flicks the pilot light on on the stove, leans down with the cigarette placed between his lips. It lights, and he inhales.
Haze fills his lungs. He knows she’d be mad. Smoking kills. Good.
He promised he wouldn’t kill himself, nothing rash or dramatic or quick.
He’ll try to do it slowly.
“Hey.” The pinkish-orange streetlight glow seeps past his tall frame through Rachel’s front doorway. His shadow stretches through into the foyer in front of him for the first time in two weeks. “Sorry it’s so late.”
It might not be that late, but his internal clock is all smashed to pieces. He doesn’t sleep. The backs of his eyelids are imprinted with the sight of dirt and blood, the sounds of night traffic drowned out by the roar of creaking metal and screaming and I love you James. I love you so much.
“Julian’s asleep.” She says quietly, arms folded, hair tied up messily. She’s reluctant to invite him in.
“Oh. Right.” Because it’s fucking stupid to come here and be with her. Stupid that being with Rachel is the closest thing he has to being with her. It’s not her fault that he can’t handle his fucking feelings.
He turns away, is halfway down the stairs when she summons him back with a: “Fine. Come in. Just for a minute. And keep your voice down.” Which is easy these days. He doesn’t know if he even wants to talk.
He follows her to the kitchen, sits at the table, squints under the harsh pendant light.
“How’ve you been?” Rachel asks, tightening the sash of her robe in a way that reminds him of her sister. He mumbles something in response, lost in thought about the mannerisms the Carlson girls share. The slight squint in their eyes as they listen, the twisty half-smile, the small tip of their chin when they’re trying not to cry. Rachel’s fussing, boiling water for tea, and that reminds him of her too, of how he’d trudge in after an extra-long shift and she’d have a hot cup of chamomile waiting for him.
He might not have ever liked chamomile, but he liked that it was her way of looking after him.
The two of them sit there, sipping tea silently. It would be comforting, if anything was anymore.
Minutes pass through their strained reticence, circadian second hands seem to move slower. Helios’ carriage drawn by snails instead of stallions. Night falls faithfully, while the two of them remain frozen in cool quiescence.
“No one remembers her.” He swirls the dregs of his tea around in the basin of the cup. “No one remembers that she exists. It’s like… well, y’know, I guess.”
“Yeah.” She murmurs. “Look, Jim…” A weary sigh. “You can’t come over anymore.” His heart sinks into his stomach. “I’ve put a lot of work into dealing with grieving Juliet.” It’s been so long since he heard her name, and he swallows the sound into the pit of his gut. “And you… I’m sorry, I can’t support you. I don’t know you.” She avoids looking at him, her tone emphatic and empathetic. “I have a kid that I’m trying to raise.” Her words make his windpipe feels like it’s going to cave in, but he doesn’t tell her why. “I can’t give you what you’re looking for.”
He nods sadly, clears his throat. “Sure, ‘m’sorry.” And he knows she can’t give him what he’s looking for – what he’s looking for is her he wants her he wants her back. He wants to be able to say her name and summon her from whichever realm she’s trapped in.
He wants her to be sitting at the kitchen table with them, drinking chamomile tea and kicking him under the table when he makes a bad joke.
He slips out into the night, and he knows Rachel can’t give him what he’s looking for.
No one can.
He hisses as the bourbon scorches his gums. The loud thrum of the bass echoes in his skull – thankfully muting the frantic Don’t you leave me! You hold on! and the discordant metallic screeching.
He’s come out to the dive bar for the noise; silence doesn’t comfort him like it used to.
They used to sit on the sofa together, she’d throw her legs over his lap and lean back on the arm. They’d read together like this for hours, so close and so quiet. He’d run a hand over one of her legs, squeeze her calf gently, and she’d reply with a small hmm, and they’d go right back to silence.
The silence now fills him with a creeping itch that he can’t soothe with aloe or calamine lotion. Silence now fills him with a hollow ache that he can’t fill.
“Hey,” an unfamiliar voice, an unfamiliar touch on his shoulder. He flinches, shaking the someone-else’s hand off of him. A brown-haired girl who he once might’ve looked twice at is standing behind him, pearly smile and feathery eyelashes. “Buy me a drink?” Her breath is hot on the shell of his ear as she leans in close for her proposition.
He frowns, angles his body away from hers, puts some much-needed distance between them. “I’m married.” Shuts her down quickly.
Her eyes widen and flick down towards his hand, wrapped around the glass tumbler. “Oh, ‘cause you don’t have a ring. I thought–”
“I’m married.” He insists, grabbing some change out of his pocket and sliding it towards the bartender in the same movement as he stands. He leaves the brunette standing there, doesn’t look back to see the expression on her face, doesn’t care.
He shoulders the door open, heads out into the balmy night.
He feels guilty – he doesn’t know if she ever actually wanted to marry him. He doesn’t know if she would have said yes in the first place.
He knows he promised her that he wouldn’t come over anymore, but he stands on the front step and knocks at the door with all the courage he can muster (which isn’t much at all).
But she deserves to know. All he can think is that she deserves to know.
Rachel answers the door with a glare. “Jim, I thought I–”
“She was pregnant.” Spurts out of him, equal parts once-brilliant excitement with what should have been happy news shared by both of them, the other part devastated, gouged out and unstable.
Rachel’s face falls. “What?”
Don’t make me say it again, he begs internally, but the rug-pulled-out-from-under-her look on her face urges him to. “She was pregnant,” he repeats, the words catch and snag on his mourned-raw throat, tiny barbs, sharp little puppy teeth. “When she died, she was… we were gonna…”
He’s overcome with loud, strangled sobs. Stands on her front step crying his heart out from a reserve he didn’t know he had. How can it still be so easy to cry?
He avoids meeting her eyes, looking up at the sky.
(Maybe in hopes he’d see her smiling down at him.)
“Get out.” Her voice is low, threatening, cracking with her own emotion. “I want you to leave.” She shudders with conviction. “Please leave.”
James nods in understanding, turns on his heel and lopes down the stairs. He looks behind him at the sound of quick footsteps behind him, as Julian bounds into the doorway. Watches James walk away, arms around his mother’s waist, cheek resting on her hip. Brown hair, brown eyes – he’s the spitting image of Rachel.
Part of him wishes Julian was blond, blue-eyed.
Part of him is glad that he isn’t.
There will never be anyone else who looks like her.
He always wakes up with the sound of her curdled death rattle in his ears.
He always wakes up feeling hot and sticky and sobbing. Turns his shitty IKEA light on to make sure that the dampness on his sheets is sweat, not blood, inspects his fingers for raw blisters and half-moons of rich, black dirt under the nails.
The clean-ness of his new apartment is eerier than any crater.
Miles stands in the open doorway with his hands in his pockets.
“Hey, man, how’re you doin’?” He asks, as if he’s surprised James even buzzed him up to the apartment in the first place. His eyes rake around the apartment, as if he’s surprised James hasn’t spent money furnishing it.
(As if James can do anything other than grieve.)
“We haven’t seen you in a while.” Miles murmurs, stepping into the barren, empty, dirty space. “Not returning anyone’s calls.” Because Kate, Claire, and Miles have all been trying to get in touch with him. It’s not his fault they all live in California. It’s not his fault none of them moved to Miami.
If they want to see him, they can come fucking see him, then. Check up on him like he’s a terminal patient at a hospice (he might as well be). Ogle him in his depressed squalor like he’s some sort of fucking zoo animal (he might as well be).
“Don’t wanna talk to anyone.” James mutters, closing the door behind Miles.
“You reek.” Miles says with a small scrunch of his nose. James grunts in a deflective response. “You look like death.” Fitting – death is all he can feel, lately. “You comfortable?”
Comfortable in the same way someone dying of hypothermia is comfortable in a snowbank. Same way a hoarder is comfortable sleeping amidst broken furniture, stacks of newspapers, rat corpses. Same way a sliver of the moon is comfortable hanging in a blue afternoon sky.
He’s comfortable here, but he’s not supposed to be. Comfortable in a temporary sense. This will do for now. But it's not where he's supposed to be. It's not healthy, not safe. But it's fine, it's comfortable for now.
“Can you hear her?” His voice is hoarse from only using it to cry himself to sleep and wake up screaming. Miles frowns.
“What?”
“Does she say anything to you?” He’s desperate. There has to be more than it worked. Those couldn’t have been her final words to him. There has to be more. She wouldn’t have left him with just that. She wouldn’t have.
Miles shakes his head. “No, man.” He shrugs. “No.”
He calls Rachel.
He knows she said not to come over, but he calls her. He’s not coming over, he’s just calling her. He just wants to talk to someone who understands. He just wants to talk to someone who knew her.
He gets the machine.
He doesn’t have the guts to leave a message. He wouldn’t know what to say anyway. Maybe she didn’t hear the phone ring. Maybe he should give her another chance to. Maybe she’ll pick up.
He calls her again.
And again.
And again.
He dials Claire’s number for the first time. Miles left it for him, scribbled on a note taped to the refrigerator. Hey man, you should call her. She’s worried about you.
He doesn’t know how to tell Miles that he doesn’t want to think about Claire, doesn’t want to think about her little blue-eyed toddler. Doesn’t want to think about how Baby Aaron’s head smelled – sweet, fresh, clean. Doesn’t want to think about how James had raced through the jungle with that delicate little figure in his arms. Doesn’t want to think about how much he liked it.
She picks up. “Hello?”
“Hey.” He gulps.
“Oh, hi.” She sounds surprised, because of course she is. Faint white noise buzzes through the phone as he listens to the sound of her breathe in and out. Neither of them speak. Neither of them know what to say to each other anymore.
“How’re you doing?” He starts. He wonders what the adjustment must be like for her – finally being reunited with her constant, the only thing that kept her sane, the only thing that could bring her back from feral insanity.
He wonders what the adjustment must be like for Aaron – losing one mother, gaining another.
“We’re okay.” He can hear the hesitation in her voice.
“Good. Great.” Because it might be one of those. He doesn’t know what else to say. She was usually the one to get him talking, all those years and miles and traumas ago. It doesn’t sound like she wants to anymore. “Well, I’ll talk to you later, then.”
“Sure. Call me anytime.”
I'm untethering from the parts of me you'd recognize, from charming to alarming in seconds.
He groans in overwhelm at the intense fluorescence around him, raising a hand to shield his eyes.
Beeps, bustling, bright lights. The puzzle pieces click together: hospital.
He remembers now.
He remembers stumbling out of a bar after too many gin and tonics – her drink, not his, but she always made one for him if she was having one, and he just wanted to be close to her again.
He remembers bumping into someone in the smoke pit on his way to hail a cab.
He remembers a push, a shove, a slurred apology. heading in a new direction.
He remembers the squeal of tires on wet asphalt and the blare of a horn.
“Doctor says you cracked a couple ribs.” Rachel’s sitting stiffly in the chair next to the bed. “But you should be fine.” She frowns. “You listed me as your next of kin.”
He nods dumbly through the thick brain fog.
She sighs. “I don’t want you to contact us anymore.” She places a hand gingerly on his wrist. “Look, Jim. I get that Juliet was important to you, but I can’t do this. I can’t help you. I don’t know you. ” She stands, purse gripped tightly in front of her. “This is the last time you’ll see me.”
Against his better judgement – which he’s been without for months now – he calls Kate. He sits in the corner of his balcony, ass on the cement floor, bare chest exposed to the Miami humidity. Empty soup can next to him, full of ash and cigarette butts. One on its way there is propped between two fingers.
The two of them quickly graduate from courtesy hi, how are yas to nothing. Both of them unable to cope with the loss of their person, both of them trying to deal with it in different ways.
Kate grieves by running. Splits her time between Cassidy’s, Claire’s, her condo in Los Angeles, always hopping a red-eye. She fills the long hours to the brim with activity, so that she doesn’t have to stop and sit and remember.
James’ grief is slow-sinking sand, thick swamp silt, a lump in his throat he can’t swallow. Never-ending and nauseating. He can’t peel himself off the floor, his bones and head and heart are all too heavy. He’s lost all fight in him, a mouse stuck in a glue-trap. He refuses to gnaw his leg off, refuses to forget her. All he can do is sit and remember.
“Was she real?” His voice cracks.
He hears a dry chuckle on the other end. “Yeah. Yeah she was. They all were.”
“Do you think about them?” Because he does, all the time. He says their names to himself every night, imagines them standing all around him. All so disappointed. All resenting him for not saving them.
“All the time.” A pause. “I miss you.” He doesn’t say anything to that, blows the cigarette’s last few puffs of smoke into the air. “Sawyer?” He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t answer to that name anymore. “Look, I was wondering if you wanted to meet up sometime. For old times’ sake.”
He hangs up, tosses the phone down. It skids across the floor.
He lights another cigarette. For old times’ sake.
The bright purple string lights and the sickly saccharine stench of frankincense are already giving him a splitting headache. Madam Cassandra sits in front of him, a teeny tiny woman with tightly-coiled strawberry-blonde hair. Her eyes are eerily light in colour, glowing spookily in the glow from the candles on the table.
“Six hundred.” She says firmly, hand open. He pulls the envelope out of his jacket pocket, slaps it unceremoniously on the vintage tablecloth. An aforementioned agreed-upon amount. She counts it in front of him.
He eyes the crystal ball, the jars of animals in formaldehyde, dried herbs hung from the ceiling. A very pretty show she’s putting on for any poor sap who trudges in here. She’s obviously conning him, but he snaps at the bait. He hopes there’s some truth to her promise that she can contact people on the other side.
She pulls tarot cards for him, reads his palm, gazes into her crystal ball, tsks in that melodramatic little voice of hers. She tells him he has a long and deep life line. She tells him what drawing the hanged man means. She tells him he’ll meet a lovely woman.
Her eyes roll back into her head and she shudders dramatically as she grasps both his hands. “Someone’s here to see you,” she murmurs.
And he can almost see the form behind her, tall and blonde and skeptical, as if to say really, James? This is what you’ve resorted to?
“Can you just tell her I love her?” He blurts out.
Madam Cassandra raises an eyebrow, looks at him sort of sadly. “She knows.”
And he knows the fortune-teller’s just lying, just telling him what he wants to hear – he led her there, after all, played into her hands like fucking clay.
He knows it’s not real. The tears come anyway.
“Baby, I miss you.” He whispers to the stuccoed ceiling. He imagines that she’s there, head on the pillow next to him, hand sleepily drifting across his chest, sliding up to cup his jaw. He can imagine the ball of her thumb delicately stroking his cheek.
He raises his own hand to rest against his own cheek. Swipes his thumb over the strong bones. It doesn’t feel the same. His hand is too big, too clumsy, too calloused. A rough rub rather than a tender touch.
His hands aren’t built for being gentle. They’re built for gripping a bamboo-tree shovel, digging graves, heaving bodies into holes.
(His hands had been so gentle when he laid her in her grave. He had always tried to be extra-gentle with her.)
It’s her birthday. She’d be thirty-six.
He’d still gone to a bookstore to pick something out for her. Blaze, the newest Stephen King. He hopes she likes it. (It doesn’t matter, she’ll never read it.)
He paid to get it gift-wrapped, reflexively nodding when the cashier offered. It sits in a bag on the counter. (She’ll never unwrap it.)
He’ll probably keep it until the ribbon disintegrates into dust.
He’ll probably throw it out when he can’t stand to look at the tufts of tissue paper anymore.
His tongue runs along the edge of the thin rolling paper, expertly sprinkles the grody green grime in the groove. He rolls it tightly between deft fingers, grips it between cracked lips as he fishes for his lighter.
Inhale, hold, exhale.
Mind-numbing smoke curls out of his mouth, the familiar tingle rests in the tips of his fingers.
He doesn’t forget her when he’s high, but it makes the remembering hurt less.
He dials a familiar number, it goes straight to voicemail. “Hey, Rachel, it’s me.” He clears his throat. “It’s uh… it’s her birthday. Which, well, y’know that.” He takes another pull of the joint. “And I miss her. Figured you do too. Anyway, if ya wanna, y’know, talk about her. Ya know where to find me.”
Juliet. He can now let himself say her name in his head, but can’t speak it aloud.
He’s worried that if her name slips out of his mouth it’ll never find its way back in.
“We should go back to the island. To be with them.” As if he can’t believe that no one’s come up with this yet. It makes sense, right? Him and Kate, going back to be with their loved ones. And who knows, maybe the island has resurrected both Jack and Juliet. Maybe they’re standing on the beach waiting for them.
And even if they’re not, even if they’re decaying and rotting away there, there’s no better place that James can imagine to decay and rot away than right beside her.
Kate says that’s a stupid idea. She says that she’s trying to move past it, move on with her life. Bullshit. Bull fucking shit.
“What’re you running away from?” He scoffs, because he can’t conceptualize not wanting to be reunited with the love of his life. Doesn’t she feel the same? “Didn’t you love him?”
There’s a second of silence before the line disconnects. He wonders if he hallucinated the gasping sob he heard on the other end of the phone.
"Son, are you a danger to yourself?"
Rachel’s voice mailbox is full, so he takes the bus to her house.
James heads out in the pouring rain without a proper jacket, earning side glances from the other passengers – ranging from bemused to concerned. A little girl with box braids is turned around in the seat in front of him, staring at him with big dark eyes. He tries to smile but it comes off as more of a grimace, and she turns back around. Rests her head on her mother’s shoulder.
It feeds into that familiar and monstrous melancholy that lives in his gut, reminding him what he’s missing out on, reminding him that he wasn’t good enough to earn it.
God said no, this is not for you.
There’s no porch light on when he gets to Rachel’s, so he knocks. There’s no answer, but their car’s in the driveway. They must have walked to the library or something. Or maybe Rachel’s picking up the kiddo from school. He doesn’t even know if it’s a school day.
He settles for plopping himself down on the steps, barely registering that the ass of his jeans soak through in a second. He lets drops drip from the split ends of his hair. They roll down his cheeks like cold tears.
A small thump behind him forces him to turn. Julian is pressed against the glass of the front window, nose and palms all pale and squished against the pane. Watching James curiously. Mommy, who’s the sad wet man on our porch?
In another life, kid, I’m your uncle, James would respond, if there was any point.
Rachel appears, pulls her son back from the window. James can barely see her, but still notices the steely glare tearing into him from inside the house.
He waits for her to answer the door, but she doesn’t. It’s okay, he has nowhere to be. She’s probably just setting Julian in front of the television, maybe convincing him to play with some action figures. She’ll come out and talk eventually.
He’ll wait.
He waits.
A police car shows up unceremoniously, no sirens or flashing lights. A single policeman gets out, thumbs in his vest, strides over to where James is sitting on the steps. James frowns, looks back over his shoulder. The curtains in the window are drawn shut.
Fuck. Rachel called them.
“Sir, is there a problem here?” Gruff, apathetic, sounding almost bored. As if this is the millionth non-emergency call he’s gotten today. As if he's hoping James would book it over the nearest fence, engage him in an adrenaline-filled chase.
He’ll get no such satisfaction. James’ days of running are over.
“She’s my sister-in-law,” he explains.
Policeman shakes his head. “No, sir, I don’t think she is.”
He’s talking with Kate on the phone again. Usually it goes like this: they exchange hellos, they let their minutes run low, they politely part ways.
This time, she has many things to say. You should move. You should get out of there. You should find a job. You should join a support group. You should exercize more. He waves all those ideas away.
“You could come meet Clementine,” she suggests. He’s about to argue when she continues: “Cassidy said she’d be okay with it. I asked her.”
He can’t explain to her that he can’t look at a child that doesn’t look like Juliet.
Clementine’s not his daughter, anyway. Kate’s been more father to her than he ever has. He wouldn’t have chosen Clementine, just like she likely wouldn’t choose him. He has nothing to offer her.
Clem, this is daddy. He’s depressed. He’s an alcoholic. He’s trying reeeally hard to not kill himself!
It all reminds him that he was going to be a father to a different sweet little baby.
He lost the two loves of his life at once.
James has lost his whole family. Mother, dead. Father, dead. Wife, dead. Child, dead. All dead but him. He wonders if they’re all together, somewhere. He wonders if Mary greeted Juliet and the baby at the pearly gates with a warm smile and a hi, I’m Jamie’s mama.
He chokes on his next inhale, tobacco smoke caught in his windpipe. He’s smoking a pack a day now, sometimes more. Usually more. Almost always more.
Maybe he should go see Clementine, do his due daddy diligence. No.
He doesn’t want to fuck a kid up like that. Doesn’t want to involve an(other) innocent life in this downward fucking spiral he’s been in. Doesn’t want to break someone else’s heart when he fades away.
Juliet would convince him to go, to do the right thing, to pussy up and be the best damn father to that little girl. Mary would convince him to go, too, saying Jamie Ford, you better get your keister over there right now, or else!
He can’t wait to see them.
The only reason he’s calling her is to learn more about Juliet. He wants to talk to someone who knew her as intimately as he did. He wants stories of her as a girl. He wants to know all about her highschool boyfriends. He wants to know any embarrassing secrets. He wants to be close to her again.
“You have to stop calling me. Please.” She hangs up on him.
The holding cell is unforgiving cement, iron, steel. Loud clanks and caterwauling from the other losers and burnouts awaiting their fates.
There was a blonde woman sitting near him at a bar. Pretty, tall, gentle laugh. A man approached her, small guy, round glasses, tidy button-up shirt and khakis.
James pounced on him before either of them knew what was going on. He was too drunk to stop himself. He was too high to care.
The police told him that the guy with the now-broken nose was her boyfriend. And so now he sits huddled on a cold, piss-stained bench. Waiting.
“I just wanna call her.” He insists. “I just wanna call Juliet.”
I gave your name as my emergency phone call, honey, it rang and rang,
even the cops thought you were wrong for hanging up.
Rachel bails him out the next morning, and he’s sure she’s doing it for her sister. She’s doing it for Juliet, not for him. She doesn’t care about him.
“I can’t see you again. You have to leave me alone.”
Without thinking, he closes the distance between them, grabs her by the shoulders and kisses her fiercely. Maybe just in hopes that he’ll finally fucking feel closer to Juliet.
She draws away quickly, hand flying across his face in a furious slap.
“Go to hell, asshole.”
Her slap stings worse than her words.
Go to hell? Sweetheart, he’s already there.
“I’m sorry, Jules.” He blubbers, curled up in his apartment, elbows on his knees, head hung in his hands. Fully sober for the first time in weeks, months, who knows how long.
“Baby, I didn’t mean it. Y’know I didn’t mean it.” He can barely speak through the snivelling. His cheek still pink and irritated from Rachel’s warranted attack. He’d been asking for it. He almost wishes she’d hit him harder. He almost wishes she hadn’t stopped there.
“I miss you.” As if that’s any excuse for kissing her fucking sister. Her sister, who didn’t even really remind him of her. Who didn’t want anything to do with him. Who’d asked him to leave her and her son alone.
The whir of the air conditioning through the vents is the only sound, but if he strains he swears he can hear a disapproving hmm from the far corner of the room.
“Why’d you have to go?”
“Why’d you have to do that?” –following Jack out of spite, standing motionless like a sitting duck as machinery crunched in on itself and flew towards the gaping excavation site, letting go of his hand, dying and leaving him here all alone?
“Why didn’t you believe me?” –when I said that I loved you more than anything? When I said I wasn’t looking at her that way, when I said she meant nothing to me anymore.
She doesn’t answer. She never does.
He doesn’t even have a gravestone to visit. Nowhere to lay flowers at, nowhere to walk to every day.
No special place they’d been together to remind him of her. No family trips to the Grand Canyon, no first date spots, nothing. He shuffles along the beach, thinking about the flowers back at the barracks, how he'd pick them for her every day after work, and she'd always have a vase and fresh water ready.
There's nowhere he can go to remember her. There's no one he can talk to about her.
No one who knew her like he did. No one he could share memories of her with, except Miles, but he doesn’t call anymore. Not that James blames him – he wasn’t picking up the calls anyway.
No photographs, no videos. Not a fucking scrap of a polaroid in a locket.
He worries he’ll forget her, that she’ll fade just like everything does.
She hoped she’d never have to lose him. And she didn’t, right? She didn’t lose him.
She just never thought he’d be the one losing her.
He buys a plane ticket to Australia, throws up in the tiny airplane bathroom. He’s fucking wasted.
He oozes into his seat, orders a double vodka, downs it like medicine.
“We’re gonna crash,” he promises the guy next to him. “Over the ocean. Don’t worry, ‘s’okay. I know a place.” The fellow next to him flags down the stewardess.
“Is there a problem here, sir?”
No problem, not here. It’s just that they’re going to crash. They’re going back to the island. They can all come see his house. He can show them her grave. They can meet Hugo.
Or maybe they’ll crash in the middle of the sea, sink down and down and down. Full fathom five, his new home address. Maybe she’ll be down there. Maybe she’ll find him.
They kick him off the plane.
“No I hafta go!” He insists. “I hafta see her!”
He takes a little white pill lies down in his bed and knows she’d be furious with him.
It almost feels like she’s holding him as he curls up to sleep.
“I miss ya, baby. Baby, I love you. I miss you so bad.”
I'm remembering I promised to forget you now, but it's raining, and I'm calling drunk
and my medicine is drowning your perspective out, so I ain't taking any fault.
He waits outside Rachel’s house. There’s no car in the driveway, until there is. She gets out, eyes flashing in anger, in horror at the sight of him. She looks ready to kill him.
(He half-hopes she will.)
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m so fuckin' sorry. Dunno what happened.” He apologizes.
She keeps her distance, hands on her hips. Furious. “Stay the fuck away from me.” There’s a shake in her voice, whether it’s fury or fear, he can’t tell the difference anymore. “I’m calling the police.”
He leaves before she can.
He thinks about killing himself again. She’d be mad. She’d be so fucking mad at him.
Are you fucking kidding me, James? Baby, you have so much to live for. Don’t do this. Don’t give up just yet. Don’t do anything fucking stupid. Don’t worry about me, I’ll see you soon. I love you.
He doesn’t know if it’s worth it to live without her anymore.
She’d be so mad at him for wasting the rest of his life.
What rest of his life?
He’s sitting in the back of a cop car, watches the glowing shapes of the red and blue lights swirling around overhead. Parked, put away, waiting for them to take the other guy’s statement.
He’d seen someone who looked like Locke and took a swing at him. But it was just another bald guy. Not James’ fault he couldn’t see his face. Just another bald man with broad shoulders.
That bald fuck took his family away from him. Like father, like son.
James couldn’t explain to the police that Anthony Cooper had conned his family, driven his father to kill his mother. He couldn’t explain to the police that John Locke had conned his friends into coming back to the island, thereby ruined his life, and gotten his not-yet-wife and not-yet-child killed.
“Anyone else we can call for ya?” One of the officers leans down to ask. James frowns. “No answer at that number.” Looking at him like they’re all pitying him.
He shrugs. If Rachel won’t answer, then he gives up. The person he really wants them to call won’t answer. She can’t. She’s dead.
Kate, Miles, Claire all show up to post his bail. Maybe they got a fucking Groupon or something. He pushes past them out of the courthouse after a short and insincere thanks. Miles is the one who catches him, grabs his arm roughly, yanks him around towards them.
“We’re worried about you.” Kate speaks for the group. Kate always speaks for the group. Miles and Claire flank her, stern nods and concerned stares.
“Who gives a fuck about me but her?” He sneers. “Which one of you ever gave a fuck about me?”
(They all have, at one point or another, but it’s so easy for him to forget that.)
Claire sighs, light eyes raking worriedly over him. “You look tired.”
He sighs too. “I am.”
I ain't proud of all the punches that I've thrown, in the name of someone I no longer know.
She glares at him through hot tears, face flushed, jaw set. “Don’t say that.” A low growl, her shoulders are all tense like she’s a jaguar about to pounce. Fucking let her. Let her rip him to shreds with crooked, capable claws. Let her sharpen them on a whetstone first so it hurts less, ends sooner. Let her file them down so it hurts more, lasts longer.
“I’m glad Jack’s fuckin’ dead.” The words snarl out of the gash of his mouth. “He killed her.”
He’s tired of closing his eyes and seeing Jack’s face stuck permanently in that gentle realization of consequences. Looking down from that high fucking high horse and seeing James carrying the weight of grief and two bodies through the dirt.
“Don’t say that.” Kate says through tears. He hopes the tears are burning hot. He hopes they sting her eyes. Fuck her for crying for Jack.
“I’ll fuckin’ say it. It’s the fuckin’ truth.”
“Get out.”
And he does, refusing to meet Miles’ eyes, refusing to look at Claire’s shocked face, refusing to look back at Kate. He follows the sharp line of her finger out the hotel room door.
He doesn’t hear from them anymore. Maybe they’re done trying.
He understands. He’s done trying too.
Maybe he gets better, maybe he doesn’t.
Maybe he collects all his regrets and resentments, appears like a beggar on his friends’ doorsteps, apologizing to each one of them. Maybe he never sees them again.
Maybe he goes to court-mandated anger management training. Maybe he skips his court date altogether, misses the next, winds up in prison for something not totally unrelated.
Maybe he goes to grief counselling, meets a nice woman with black hair, maybe he doesn’t.
Maybe he ends up painted across somebody’s windshield; maybe he’s the one driving.
The person who lives the rest of his life for him is different. He’s sitting in the backseat, occasionally making eye contact in the rearview mirror. A cab driver that looks just like him sits in the front seat, keeps the meter running, stops for all the red lights, runs the yellows. Doesn’t ask him where he’s going, just drives.
If he doesn’t think hard enough, he can imagine he’s still with her.
(Or rather, that she’s with him.)
He’ll live two lives until his heart stops, until he crumples to the floor for good, bone and muscle and slow-coagulating blood.
In one lifetime, she exists only in spirit, her name stuffed hamster-cheeked in his mouth, chewed, wet with his own saliva. This is the only place she’s safe. Whether or not people ask him about her, he’ll tell them. Whether they want to know. Whether they care. But at the end of the day he'll pile the memories of her and their baby and all the rest back in his mouth. This is the only place everything is safe.
In the other, she’s still here, smiling up at him with the same eagerness of crashing waves on a shore. He’s still planning picnics and judging her reading choices, making her breakfast and loving her tenderly.
In that lifetime, she brushes his hair out of his face, a brilliant diamond engagement ring scratches against his cheek.
In that lifetime, he places a palm on the glowing swell of her belly, already enamoured with the little life growing inside of her. In that lifetime, she covers his hand with hers.
I love you James, I love you so much.
In that lifetime, he’s a good husband and a better father.
In that lifetime, she kisses him, and she kisses him again, and she never lets go of his hand.
Let's wait, I swear she'll call me back.