Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own Lost. But my birthday is in January if you were looking for gift ideas!


"In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost."

-Anne Sophie Swetchine


Jules…

Light...

Juliet in the light? That's ain't it…

Explosion. Jughead. Eloise. Falling, pulling, grasping, slipping… Daniel dead? Yes… but no…

Where was Juliet?

He was sitting, he was aware of that much, sitting against a cool brick wall. A jail cell? Maybe he back in Dharmaville. How had Horace found him? Or was it Radzinski that arrested him? And why couldn't he open his damned eyes? Where were the others? It was silent around him, though farther away, he could hear the bustle of… something… Had the new recruits come in? Where the hell was he?

I'm a complex guy sweetheart. Jackass. Freckles. Juliet.

She must be at the garage… or with Amy… who had a baby, Ethan… who took Claire… who had a baby…

Guess what? I just shot a polar bear… shot Duckett… shot an Other… shot a Hostile…

Jughead. Explosion. Reset the timeline. 815. Never happened… Jackass. What the hell is going on? Miles. Hurley. Sayid. Freckles. Kate. Jules. Chewy. Sticks. Claire. Aaron. Names, names, so many names, so many dead and missing. Jesus stick. Diamonds. Iron. Construction. Jughead. Juliet. Jughead and Juliet?

"Wake up you son of a bitch, you're being deported today," an Australian accent snapped.

Deported off Craphole Island? That sounds like a damn fine option…

Options. Choices. Variables. The incident. The chain. Juliet pulled away, down, down, down into the pit. Juliet dead. Jughead, explosions…

James's eyes snapped open. He'd been deported before. He remembered that- was absolutely certain of that fact, if nothing else. It was the reason why he was on Oceanic Flight 815 when it crashed.

But it hadn't crashed. Because he was back in the jail cell. In Australia. Where he'd been deported from.

Christ, this is just going in circles… I couldn't have dreamed that… could I? He pulled the collar of his shirt away from his skin, glancing down at his shoulder. There was still a scar where that bearded guy had shot him on a raft, nearly three years before.

He hadn't dreamed it.

His eyes darted around the jail cell, taking everything in. Gray cinder blocks stacked high with concrete between them formed the wall leading to an iron barred door. Outside, he could see officers at their desks, filing papers, eating doughnuts, making reports. Everything as it had been three years before. Or thirty years later. It all depended on the timeline one chose.

Why was he back here? Why was he living this again?

They were they variables. That's what Daniel had told Jack. That's what sent Jack into a psychotic tizzy, making him seek out a damned nuclear warhead.

That son of a bitch had brought them back. Everyone was alive. No one had boarded the plane. They'd changed the past to change their futures. Hit the reset button on the big video game of life.

So why did he remember Jack? Why could he picture his face, remember punching him in that face? Why was he still mourning for Juliet? He shouldn't remember…

But he did.

Questions spun through his mind. Why had they been allowed to keep their memories of the island? Why hadn't the three years they'd lived and experienced gone back to being a blank slate, unlived and unknown?

The answers didn't matter, because either way Jules was dead. The grasp of her sweaty palm, clinging to him for dear life as the magnetized iron chain was drawn into the depths of the debris-filled pit was seared in his memory. His Juliet, his sanity, his partner, the one person who had his back, the woman he loved, was gone.

Or was she?

What if she hadn't died in the fall? It was unlikely, so incredibly unlikely, that Juliet survived. Yet against all logic (because, really, that was the doctor's realm, not his), part of him hoped and prayed that the unlikely was reality. That she'd survived, just as she'd always somehow survived, long enough for the timeline to readjust.

But then what? he thought, as the gate to the cell opened and the officer entered, snapping the handcuffs around his wrists.

If Juliet had survived, it was only to be trapped on the island again, a virtual prisoner to Ben Linus. Who would have her back, now that he was here? He'd promised her. He loved her. And it wasn't fair that because the dumbass doctor wanted to make his own three miserable years disappear, he and Juliet would have to live knowing that unless by some miracle flight 815 crashed onto the island again, they would never be reunited.

James hated to admit it, but the idea of living the rest of his life, knowing exactly where Juliet was but being unable to find her was absolute torture. And he was sure she would feel the same.

Unless he was the only one who remembered…

What if he was the only one that retained memories of their island life? To live alone with these memories seemed like torture as well. There was no winning, was there?

"Let's move it, Ford. You have a flight to catch," the police officer snarled, pushing him through the station.

"Oh yeah, what flight?"

"Oceanic 815. Direct to LA."

"Lucky me," he quipped sarcastically, though he really did feel lucky. There was hope. Maybe they would crash again. Maybe he could find Juliet.

They exited the station onto a busy street corner in Sydney, where a police car waited for his arrival. The police officer opened the door, pushed his head down, and shoved him into the car. "Thanks for visiting Australia. Hope you enjoyed it, because you're not welcome to come back again."

"I wouldn't want to come back, boy," he countered with a smirk.

And it was true.

Okay, so this fic is something really different for me. While on vacation I started thinking about how Jack was so certain that when they reset the timeline they would forget everything that happened on the island. And that bothered me. How could he know for certain? This story was the brain child of that idea, jumping off the idea that Jack was wrong, and that resetting the timeline did not erase their memories, and what would really happen as a result of them leaving the island. Did they escape, or did the island allow them to leave for its own personal reasons?

This story will have a focus on Sawyer, for the most part, but the next few chapters will be looking at how the reset affected some of the other characters.

Please leave a review and let me know what you think! I really do love constructive criticism!