Thanks to everyone that read A Bridge To You and asked for this sequel!
Summary: Directly follows A Bridge To You, a reset story in which James and Juliet remember both timelines. In this sequel, they are on their way from Miami to Los Angeles to meet Clementine for the first time. This story will continue to explore the James/Juliet relationship, their struggle with their dual pasts, as well as throwing James into a situation where he's surrounded by all the important women in his life. It's his own fault for being into such strong women with attitudes and baggage, hehe...
The Women In His Life
It was James' turn to drive again. They were on an interstate in Arizona, somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix, and they'd spent the last half hour in comfortable silence, watching the dotted white lines of the otherwise empty road go by. James couldn't wait to get to the next motel, since Juliet made her stance on front-seat sexual favors very clear the first time he'd asked. He'd also been working up the courage to ask her something very important, and he'd decided that a long speech and explanation wouldn't suit either of them. For this, short and simple was the way to go.
"So." said James. "Blondie."
"Yes, James?" Juliet answered him wryly.
"...You wanna get married?"
Juliet turned to him with a curious smile. He kept his eyes on the road, and she let the silence grow. She did it to make him sweat, since she knew that confident smirk of his was hiding an anxious hope. He turned only his eyes in her direction, eyebrows raised as if to say...You gonna make me beg, or what?
"You know..." she said slowly and matter of factly. "I kinda do."
Juliet was rewarded for her answer with a wide grin. He turned, and saw her looking at him with a genuine smile, the one not many got to see.
"Well alright." James said in celebration. He pressed his foot on the gas pedal a little harder. Now he really couldn't wait to get to the motel.
* * *
The green signs with white lettering were few and far between, and the next one they encountered told them how far away they were from Las Vegas. Juliet was driving now, and James found the scenery outside the car nowhere near as beautiful as the woman behind the wheel. He leaned back, slouching between the edge of his seat and the passenger door, gazing at her while she smirked and pretended to ignore him.
"We could stop in Vegas on the way." said James.
"On the way?" Juliet repeated, skeptical. "That would add another day to the trip."
"Yeah, just one day. I figure Elvis is the reverend of choice for a couple of time travelers like us."
James saw Juliet's chuckle, but she kept her eyes on the road.
"You're just stalling." Juliet teased.
She tried to make it sound innocent, just a little joke, but James could decipher the hidden meaning behind her words. She was afraid it really would be just a distraction, something to keep them occupied while James avoided facing his past. James realized, a little late, that the fact that he just couldn't wait to be married to Juliet might seem to her like he was rushing to get it over with, or that she wasn't worth careful planning. In reality it was a desperate need to claim her, to have one more way to prove that they were together forever. James had analyzed her seemingly flippant reaction in a matter of seconds, and he was already planning a reply that would erase all her worries and leave her without a doubt as to how big a deal it was for him, but she spoke up again before he got the chance.
"Maybe on the way back." Juliet conceded, a convenient non-decision that left all their options open. Knowing Juliet, James had to admit that was good enough for now.
* * *
"We should find Hurley and get you a managing position at Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack." Juliet said, deadpan.
"Settin' our sights high, are we?" James responded, throwing a smirk her way before turning back to the road since he was back behind the wheel.
"It's all about who you know." said Juliet, breaking out a smile. The current topic was finding James a job in the real world, and James thought it was about time to turn the tables on Juliet.
"So I'm gonna supervise a team of greasy, teenage fry cooks. What about you? I assume you don't want to open a Volkswagen garage."
Juliet laughed. "No, but at least I have something to fall back on."
"You gonna go back to the fertility thing?"
At the mention of that particular f-word, Juliet's laughter and smile slowly faded into something less comfortable. It was a subject she'd been avoiding ever since returning home, distracting herself with Rachel and Julian instead. The crises and nightmares she'd faced in both timelines still haunted her. Upon returning home, she'd only gone to the doctor at Rachel's behest. The mere thought of a medical office now made her sick to her stomach. There were things she hadn't told Rachel, things that she hadn't told James about yet. She tried not to think about them at all, and she wasn't sure how to go about putting them into words when she could hardly bear them as thoughts.
"I don't think I could go back to medical research." she said. "Not after all I've seen."
"What about a clinic?" James asked, trying to be supportive. Juliet smiled, and shook her head. "Come on," James said, verbally nudging her. "I can vouch for your bedside manner. And you're good with patients, too."
Juliet chuckled. "No, it's..." she started, and stopped soon after. "Some...things happened, on the island. When you weren't there."
James stopped smiling, humor gone. What would Juliet keep from him? Things that would upset him, that's what. "Did someone hurt you?" James asked her, an edge creeping into his voice.
"No." Juliet answered definitively. "I mean, of course, I got hurt, but you know all of that."
"Then what? Don't keep me in suspense, Blondie. You got me ready to kick someone's ass."
"I'm sorry, it's hard to talk about."
James glanced at her as she turned away, hiding her serious, beautiful face from him. Juliet turned to look out her window, to watch vast expanses of what looked like nothing rush past. She realized she knew exactly how that felt, to be filled with a great big scary nothing. It was how she'd felt before James came along. Then Juliet realized that James was there with her, there for her, and if there was anyone that would listen, anyone that could understand, it would be him.
"One of Ben's people," said Juliet. "One of the women, became pregnant. And she asked me to perform an abortion."
Silence. James knew how Juliet felt about not being able to help those women carry to term, how she felt responsible for every one of their lives no matter how many times he told her it wasn't her fault. It wasn't his burden to lift, he knew that, but he'd always at least tried to reassure her. This was something entirely different. He waited for Juliet to continue.
"I refused to do it, but she kept begging me, please. It was awful. We both knew I wouldn't be able to save her otherwise, but I couldn't bring myself to do it, to say yes. And then, I had one of those days when I was so angry at Ben I was ready to lash out any way I could. And getting rid of that baby started to seem like a way to get revenge on him and I just-" Juliet stopped. She turned her face away from James, twisting her neck as far as it would go, trying to get away from his gaze and from her own thoughts. She pressed her lips together, trying to make the lump in her throat vanish through sheer force of will. It didn't work. When Juliet's voice returned, it came out as a sad whisper. James strained to hear her over the sound of the car's engine and the wind whistling past. "I didn't blame her for asking. But, when you spend so much time, years, trying to create life, the idea of taking it away...I mean, they were both going to die if I did nothing, but..."
James held his breath, hoping and praying that Juliet's story wouldn't have an ending as tragic as he was imagining.
"I didn't do it." she said aloud, wiping at the tears that had defied her will and escaped their ducts. "She lost the baby that night. A miscarriage. So, not only did I get to find out that I would actually consider doing that to a patient, but another baby was lost anyway."
"Jules-"
"I know what you're going to say, James. And I appreciate it, I really do. But I feel the way I feel, and I know you understand that, so can we just leave it at that for now?"
"You want me to pull over?" James asked her gently.
"No, just keep driving. This trip isn't about me, remember?"
"Juliet, when it comes to the two of us, it's always gonna be about you. You remember that."
Juliet smiled through her tears, turning back to James like she always did. She leaned over the gear shift to give him a hug and a big kiss on the cheek, leaning back before he even knew what hit him.
"Hey, no fair." James chuckled, grabbing another kiss before she returned to her seat. The topic of discussion was changed, and James had Juliet smiling again. The next sign they passed had directions for Los Angeles.