Kate wakes up with a gasp and tears in her eyes. She stands up carefully and goes outside to sob on the beach with her head buried in her hands to muffle the noise. She only cries for a little while so by the time that Juliet sits in the sand next to her she is composed.
"Are you all right?" Juliet asks and Kate ignores her while stifling a desire to hit the older women because of course she's not all right and Juliet's using that tone that is oh so soothing and all of Kate fights against soothing.
"Kate," Juliet says and places a hand on her back. Kate jerks away from the hand and takes a breath that shudders on the edges.
"I…had a nightmare," she mutters dragging her fingers through sand in front of her.
"You want to talk about it?"
"No." And Kate goes back into the tent leaving Juliet to trace her own fingers through the trails Kate left behind.
It happens the next night. The nightmare and the hand on the back and the flinching away. All of it.
And the night after that too, on and on for a week and half and this time Juliet wakes up a little early maybe by habit and so when she goes outside Kate is still wiping the tears off her cheeks and this time when Juliet touches her back she doesn't flinch away quite so fast and so Juliet tries again, "You want to talk about it?"
Kate scoots a little further away, out of arms reach and sighs and says "I'm here on the island somewhere, I don't know where, but in the jungle. And I'm running, I'm always running. But sometimes…sometimes it's away from…something, the, you know, the monster. And it's chasing me and I'm running but I know I can't outrun it and I keep trying to think of a way to stop it or something but there isn't one. But sometimes in the dream I'm running to something, the beach usually and I have to get there because there's a boat and we're rescued but I was out and they don't remember that I was out and they're gonna leave. And so I hafta run as fast as I can but no matter how fast I run they, they, they leave…without me. They leave me here all all all alone and they forgot me and they forgot me," and she's sobbing now like a small child her whole body shaking and her hands over her mouth to stifle the sounds.
Juliet wants to cry herself because while the younger woman has been nothing but hostile up to this point she looks like a little girl sobbing there. Juliet moves closer and slides an arm around her shoulders and Kate buries her face in Juliet's shoulder.
She cries and Juliet hears the words they forgot me they forgot me they forgot me through her cries. And she kisses the top of Kate's head very lightly because she knows what it feels like to be forgotten.