All About Her.
Last chance UK ppls. Spoilers ahead.
A/N: This whole fic came to me when the UK-based, usually angelically spoiler-free me was looking at the boards on lost-forums yesterday and saw the words Sawyer-Juliet under canon ships.
I was literally :o. And so I thought I'd write something alone the lines of Sawyer trying to move on and this is what happened.
So I managed to write all but the last 3 paragraphs (yes I'm counting the last line as a paragraph lol) without spoiling myself. See I live on a slippery slope. As soon as I hear something big is about to happen, I'm glued to youtube. So I'm actually quite impressed I made it as long as I did without watching the clips.
It's not too long, and the he in this is Sawyer, in case you couldn't guess that. I tried to write it so that the She varies depending on who the major influence is in his life at that particular point and time.
It's been two years. Two long years with neither a sight nor a sound, of her. The only reason that he thinks that she's alive is because Daniel Faraday says so, and despite everything he and his freighter people did, he trusts him.
It's been two years for him and God knows how many for her, but nonetheless he still thinks of her. And he hates himself for it, because every moment, every fleeting thought that he gives her is another flood of pain. There is no remembering fondly in his world, there are only regrets. He should have told her he loved her more often; he shouldn't have jumped from that accursed helicopter; he shouldn't have fallen for her in the first place.
He wonders if he even gets a look in in her new life. If she's keeping her promises to him, or if she'd forgotten him the moment she stepped onto that freighter. He wonders if she was sent to prison, or worse, if she'd been executed for her crimes. He never really knew what it was that she did, but he suspected that it was something along the lines of murder in the heat of the moment. She wasn't the sort to kill lightly, and he hoped that the judge, whoever he was would be able to see that.
She is his first waking thought and the only thing on his mind as he heads to bed alone each and every night. He often wonders if she is as alone as he is, but he doubts it. Jack would never desert her; he would instead distract her from the bad memories. They're probably together now, wrapped up in each other and nothing else.
Except he isn't entirely sure when now is. Sometime in the seventies Juliet informs him, but really she doesn't seem to sure on the details herself. The jumps had stopped after Locke turned the wheel and they'd been left alone for two years since. He had given up hope of any of them returning ever again. Locke had clearly failed, or given up. Not that he could blame him. If he had been the one to go, he doubted he would have the strength to return to this life after experiencing normalcy once more. And he could never have asked her to go back, no matter whose life she would be saving. He knows that if he lives long enough, he can join the Others and go into the jungle to look out for her after Oceanic Flight 815 crashes. He hasn't yet decided if that will be a good idea, if he will possess the strength to look but not touch. But there's no rush. He has about three decades to decide.
Occasionally he wonders briefly if he will still love her, after all that time and he supposes he will never really know until it happens. A Pre-crash Sawyer would have laughed at the very idea of still being devoted to one girl after thirty years, but quite honestly he can see it. What he feels for her is beyond passion and desire. But sometimes he catches himself looking at other women. Not in a particularly lustful way, but still he watches from time to time and he's always surprised when he can easily picture himself with them. Kissing them, screwing them and ultimately living with them.
Juliet is the most common object of these fantasies if you could even call them that. He sees an injured soul in her that is much akin to his own. Someone who understands him, and who sometimes resents Kate as much as he can so easily resent Jack. Someone who was always second best. But they would be no good for each other. A relationship could only survive so much longing and self pity and they both had it in bucket loads. Even if they didn't let it show too often.
Yet as time passes, it becomes less about Kate and more about her. Not that he loves her, but he certainly cares. He'd often believed that Kate had fixed him. Fixed his heart, made him open up, gave him the ability to love, but he realises now that Kate broke him too. He will never love anyone like he loved the Canadian criminal from flight 815. Not with such passion and intensity. Maybe he will never love again at all.
And then it begins one night when he sits alone and realises just how tired he is of loving Kate. The next morning he falls into a strange sort of dance with Juliet. One that resembled two high-schoolers flirting with one another, yet pulling away before anything got too serious. Eventually, he finds himself kissing her, screwing her, living with her and it is indeed exactly how he imagined it. It feels good; it feels right; and when he tells her he loves her too, it doesn't feel false. But that in itself is odd for him. With his twenty-twenty hindsight, he's pretty sure Kate never loved him. At least not as much as he loved her. In fact, when Juliet first said the three words to him he didn't quite believe her. Now he does though, and he's almost certain he feels it back.
One day, the phone call comes but he doesn't quite believe his ears. Why now, after three years? It isn't fair of Locke to suddenly succeed now; it isn't fair on Juliet for Jack to arrive back on the scene. It isn't fair on him to bring back Kate. But he drives out regardless, without so much of a word to Juliet and when he sees her, he almost feels like crying like he's cried over her so many times before.
Because in that instant, he realises its still all about her.