Very short oneshot. This takes place during the season 5 episode "Whatever Happened, Happened." Accordingly, there are some spoliers, so if you haven't seen that far, you've been warned. This will waver between canon and AU.
Amber: I hope this sheds some light on Juliet and makes you not hate her so much, because she's my favorite character and I want you to see why.
Drew: I love you, this is for you for agreeing with me about Jack/Juliet and Sawyer/Kate.
She smells him before he steps out of the shower, a husky smell that nearly breaks her resolve, but she's already broken, broken into a thousand tiny pieces, shattered and scattered and sososharp, sharp like the biting wind, like the razor rocks, like the sea. And it's all because of Jack--Jack has broken her.
She wonders if this is what Kate must feel like, because she knows that Kate does not love Jack. She may have, at one point, but Jack isn't Sawyer, and it goes both ways. Sawyerisn'tJackisn'tSawyer. She makes love to James because she has to, because the void needs to be filled and although it's a paltry impersonation of love and lust at best, James is all she has. And she knows that, in the dark and the coolness of the night, James is wishing it was his Freckles lying beside him, her naked, creamy body pressed against his stiff cock, but it isn't, and it hasn't been for over three years now. Juliet will do, because she has the same demons and the same past and they are both severed in the same way.
They know this. They never talk about it, never even dare to think it around each other, but Juliet will never stop loving and needing and wishing for Jack, and Sawyer will never find another person, male or female, that has changed him like Kate has.
As he steps out of the shower and their eyes meet, they look long and hard at each other for a solid minute before either of them say anything. It's like they're lost in their own little world, misty and smelling of Dharma shampoo, and Juliet can't breathe.
She needs an explanation, an explanation for everything. She wonders why he didn't come back sooner, come back for her, and she knows the answer. Because away from the island he is the old Jack again, a doctor, a savior, in love with Kate Austen. She feels anger at Kate, the woman who has pissed away two men she did not deserve in the first place, but she knows she's really mad at herself because all she wanted was Jack to rescue her.
"I needed you," She says accusingly, and she isn't just talking about earlier, when Ben was bleeding and dying on her table, but she figures it's a good place to start. "That kid was bleeding out. You're a surgeon."
She isn't sure what he really says, because all she is hearing is the sound and tone of his voice, the voice that, for so long, has only existed in her dreams and memories and sometimes in her nightmares. Though this isn't the first time she's seen him or talked to him or smelled him or even touched him, the shock that he's really here, that he's back, is still settling in and every time she sees his rugged face it's like the first.
He tells her he's back to save her, to save them all. This makes her even angrier. "You came back for you, Jack." Because it's true. If he had really come back for her, for them, it wouldn't have taken him three fucking years to do it. "We didn't need saving, we've been fine for three years!" It's a lie, but it's all she has. Juliet is used to living a lie, she knows what they feel like and taste like and how much it stings and burns.
"I came back because I was supposed to."
She leaves because she can't take it anymore. She can't look at him and know what could've been, she can't be in the same room with him and remember the nights he held her and fucked her in the hot sand, their rushed kisses, and how he once promised that he'd fight Ben for her.
Walking back to her and James' house she knows it's far from over, knows that really, this is just the beginning. She doesn't know how strong she is, because the island has exhausted her and living this way has exhausted her, and truth be told she doesn't want to fight this. And she wonders how long James and and Kate will be able to fight it, because really James belongs with Kate, in the same way she always believed she belonged with Jack.
It comes down, really, to what she knows, and all she knows is that her heart is broken and butchered and bleeding, and still she needs him, wants him. There are some things you can't change, and loving Jack Shephard is one of them.