Pretty much just a random AU. Set when the Six get off the island. Warnings are language.
Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear for the future.
-Fulton Oursler
He's a liar, and always has been. It's taken him years to perfect this art; growing up with a drunk for a dad gives you time to practice. He'd spin wonderful tales of heroism for his friends, all revolving around his dad, that master surgeon. He'd tell them all at recess, while cramming half-melted chocolate bars hidden in his pockets, into his mouth, that his dad will be there when he gets home, they'll go hit a few buckets of balls or maybe they'll catch a Sox game on TV.
The reality is quite different.
Always different.
He's lucky if he can say more than a sentence to his dad before he's too drunk to utter a few mumbled words back in his general direction.
It doesn't matter, though. Jack never liked the Red Sox anyway and he thinks golfing is the most useless waste of time on the planet.
It comes as no shock to him when, twenty years later, he finds himself two whiskey shots past loaded and is swinging a club at a bucket of balls mindlessly at dawn on a deserted course, a sweaty Sox cap shielding his tear-streaked face from the world.
oooo
He could never look at Kate the way he looked at Juliet. He didn't love either of them the way they needed him to, but in the darkness, with the cool sheets of civilization covering their bodies and a little boy that neither of them have claim to sleeps soundly down the hall, Jack pretends that Kate's tangle of curls are smooth blonde rivers down her bare, ashen shoulders. Her lips are full and somewhat uneven, and they taste like limes and her laugh is infectious and that smile, the one that lets him know really, everything is going to be okay, is there, taking his breath away like it always used to.
The reality is quite different.
Always different.
He's lucky if he can say more than a sentence to Kate before he's too drunk to utter a few mumbled words in her general direction.
He's so thirsty when he's here, here around her and the blond boy that looks so much like Claire...he can't remember ever missing the burn of liquor on his tongue when he was sitting in the sand with Juliet, when they shared the same look and the same wants, and she was a doctor too, and they never had a choice about it. It was something they were simply born to do, like animals caught in the endless circle of killing or being killed.
He has yet to say which he is. But he knew from the first time he saw Juliet that she was too...not good, and certainly not innocent, but perhaps too tired, to be the killer. She was eaten alive by Ben and his Others, and it's another handful of salt in his gaping wound because Jack didn't save her. He never had a choice about that, you see.
Kate, though, is made of choices. It's one of the reasons Jack resents her so much, because she had hundreds of chances to change things. To change herself. How many more opportunities could Fate give her? And she squandered them all, drowned everything she ever could have been and everything she ever could have done in a river of selfish lies and and easy outs.
Jack wonders what he hates more; that he's become one of these easy outs for Kate Austin, or that Fate never had different plans for them.
oooo
Juliet was a deceiving person. Not in a bad way, just in a sort of catch-you-off-guard way. She could be anything she needed to be, but Jack knows it was an act. As far as who Juliet wanted to be...well, she was no more capable of doing that than he was at not becoming his father.
It's funny (but not ha-ha funny Like Hurley's jokes or Sawyer's nicknames, the funny that makes you want to shoot tequila until you can't see how fucked up the world you live in really is) that the one thing he swore to himself would never happen, did. Oh, he tried to fight it, tired to be the good guy. He'd been superhusband once, and he and Sarah were going to have lots of kids and Jack would never miss a moment, and there really would be family game night and he'd help his son with his Algebra, and there would never be liquor in the house.
The reality is quite different.
Always different.
His marriage crumbled down around him before he even knew something was wrong, before he saw a single crack in its foundation. Sarah was gone, left him for real happiness, the hero-colored glasses she always seemed to wear when it came to him ripped off and left in their mostly empty apartment, scattered among worthless trinkets from their honeymoon and empty beer bottles, meaningless pictures with feigned smiles (his smile anyway).
Then it was Juliet. He was going to save her, and maybe he did, a little. But it wasn't enough (never, never enough, and he knows, and Christian knows and the world knows, that at the end of the day, he just doesn't have what it takes) and Jack is always coming up short. He promised to get her off the island, that they'd do it together. They would make Ben Linus fulfill his promises, and two against the world and isn't it such a pretty dream?
The reality is quite different.
Always different.
In the end, Jack had to settle. He had to settle for Kate and everything she wasn't, and the memory of everything Juliet was hangs over his long-since dead heart like a suffocating shadow. But Juliet was better off without him. He was a hindrance, and she was always so much stronger when she didn't have an attachment to anything on the damn island. Her heart is in Miami but that's where it should be.
She'll get there someday, because unlike him, Juliet has what it takes. She never gives up and she is unwavering in her strength, though at times it seems like she's the most vulnerable person in the world.
It's all a part of her act, Jack likes to think, because the only thing scarier than not being with her, is that she needs him.
oooo
It's all about what he's too scared to do. He should listen to Locke, because Locke was the only one who ever truly believed in the island. Jack can feel it inside of him, like a shard of glass stuck in his vein, that it's true. They have to go back.
He knows he won't, though. Jack couldn't face Juliet now, not the way he is. He's so broken and alone, and no longer the leader, but a follower in a world he detests.
So he'll agree with Kate-John Locke, or Jeremy Bentham, or whoever the hell he is or was or will be, is wrong. They got off the island for a fucking reason, and they will not go back.
He sighs into Kate's hair, his Bacardi breath on the back of her neck.
He likes J's better than K's. But he won't tell her that. Lying is what he's best at. His own personal hell is also his own personal salvation, but that's what being Jack Shephard is all about.
As ever, feedback is appreciated. Juliet came off weaker in this one than I really think she is, but there's no helping that.