AU. Very slight language. This is set a while after the 6 have left the island.
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us when we live." -Norman Cousins
When she closes her eyes she can feel the sun hot on her face, even though she can't remember the last time she went outside.
When she closes her eyes she can feel his hands--calloused, a bit too rough to belong to a doctor--but then he was never a usual doctor. (his tattoos and his crooked, would-be warm smile come before her eyes and she doesn't know whether to open them or not, because when her eyes are open it is so painfully obvious he is not here, he is not anywhere)
When she closes her eyes she thinks maybe she should pray, but it's been years (it feels more like lifetimes) since she's prayed, and besides, she thinks (with malice and anger and a little--just a little--regret) there isn't a God to pray to. As Ben once said to John, "God doesn't know how long we've been here. He can't see this island any better than the rest of the world can."
When she closes her eyes, she hates. But she doesn't know who she hates--Ben or Jack or Kate or herself, or maybe it's the actual island, because if it had never existed she wouldn't be here, she would home with Rachel and her nephew and--but she stops, because if the island had never existed then she wouldn't have met Jack, and Jack is everything.
Sometimes the island is a desert, and she can feel her skin baking in the too-hot sun, can smell the dead junipers and hear the cawing of crows and she thinks that they are telling her that she is dead (but never more is a raven and she always hated Poe anyway).
Sometimes the island is a snow capped mountain, and she freezes as she looks into swirling clouds and the the mist is icy white around her.
Sometimes she sees Jack, and it is painful and wonderful and she thinks that the closest she will get, that she was ever meant to get, to happiness is bittersweetbittersweet.
---
Ben comes back to the island. He talks to Richard, of course, and then he comes to Juliet's house. James has been sleeping on her couch, and he is there when Ben storms into the house like he owned it, like he owned her.
"Where is he?" Juliet asks, furious because she already knows the answer.
Ben's eyes graze over her like she is his property, like she is his slave, and he doesn't appreciate her speaking to him in such a tone. "If by 'he' you mean Jack,"
"Fucking yes that's who I mean!" Juliet screams, and she is so sick of it all, of Ben and his mind games and his ideas and how he never plays fair and is always the victor. She grabs a knife from the counter, (she is amazed at her own strength and her own anger, and Edmund always said she had anger management issues) and presses the tip against Ben's temple.
"Shit, blondie." James is awake now, and he looks at Ben and Ben looks at him, and despite the fact that Juliet could kill him in seconds, Ben looks like a kid on Christmas morning.
He slowly reaches into his pocket and takes out a crumpled newspaper clipping, and tosses it onto the floor. Juliet drops the knife and scrambles for it.
"Does that answer your question?" Ben asks, and his voice is full of that quiet madness that is so unique to him, and Juliet looks up at James in horror (her heart feels like it has stopped and her blood is running cold and doesn't Kate just look so beautiful in white?).
It is the wedding picture of the newly proclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Jack Shephard, and Juliet turns her head to throw up on the kitchen floor, and the knife is floating in her sick and Ben is smirking, because he's won, just like he always knew he would, and he has effectively strained any last dregs of hope from Juliet, and from Sawyer, and it's almost as if he can hear the sounds of their hearts breaking and cracking further.
"Get out." James says, his drawl deadly, and after Ben leaves he wants to say something to Juliet, but there's nothing to say because they are broken people and the only ones who made them whole are entwined in a sickeningly happy world of matrimony.
Juliet only moves from the floor when the vomit starts to stick to her hair, and she reaches for the picture that Ben left on the counter, covering Kate with her hand and staring only at Jack, because Jack was everything that was real to her, but now reality is a wedding band that isn't on her finger and a smile that isn't (and it kills her every time, because Jack Shephard will always choose Kate Austen over Juliet Burke) meant for her.