Chapter 1: Wonder

DHARMA Initiative: Motor Pool, July 1975

"I'm pretty sure it's the engine. It's been giving me trouble for the past week and a half. There's this odd ticking sound," Phil jerked his index-finger back and forth, "that just won't let up."

"Uhu."

"I'm pretty sure I saw some smoke in my rear-view the other day as well."

"Uhu."

"And the backlight is busted."

"Uhu."

"Look, I would have brought it in sooner, but you know how LaFleur gets."

Danny snorted.

"I do, do I?"

"He's been up my ass all week about clocking in late. I told him, 'listen, I can't help it, sleep paralysis is a real thing, you know?' But he's just not been in a very sympathetic mood, lately."

"Uhu."

Danny stepped around back and unlocked the latch on the blue VW T2. He groaned, scratched the back of his head, reaching for a non-existing itch that was easier to define than the inside of this particular engine. That was a lie. He understood perfectly well. Trouble was, he didn't care to understand. Good American vans were easy to come by nowadays. In fact, just the other day he heard Mitchell talk about the latest Chevrolets, how they're taking the market by storm, and yet folks here imported German vans. German. Vans. It was irritating, not up to par, and he should have objected to this detail when they first assigned it to him. After all, his skill lay in engineering, not fixing Nazi cars.

He closed the latch and sighed; Phil was still babbling away in his left ear, something about sleep apnoea and narcolepsy. Where did the Initiative find this guy, anyway?

"I'll have Juliet take a look at it."

"Juliet?"

Phil's thick brows shot up, not quite disappearing beneath his thinning hairline.

"She's s'posed to start her shift at one."

"Juliet Carlson?"

"Uhu."

"You hiring women these days?"

Danny shrugged.

"Many of them emancipated ones want to grease up, try out some real jobs; I ain't complaining, the view's been much improved since she started tinkering away," he winked and motioned for Phil to step closer. "Nimble fingers, that one's got," Phil's eyes widened and Danny playfully punched him in the arm.

"You and her?"

"Ha! I wish. Pretty sure she's got a thing for your boss."

"LaFleur?!" Phil frowned. "How'd you figure that?"

"He comes 'round here lookin' for them blonde locks more often than Linus beats up his kid in a drunken frenzy."

"Danny!" Phil exclaimed, then dropped his voice to a low whisper. "We don't talk about that."

"We ain't talkin' 'bout lotsa things that's goin' on 'round here. Don't mean it don't happen, Phil."

"It's none of our business."

"Yeah? You gone say that to his kid if ever he come knockin' on ya door for help? 'Ain't none of my business, kid. Scram?' Or what about them recruits we buried last week? I ain't seen a single letter went out to them families. We also just gone pretend that ain't our business?"

The truth of the matter was, Danny wasn't wrong, he knew he wasn't; too many things were happening on the island that consistently and conveniently escaped members' attention. Just the other day, after he'd caught Linus beating the shit out of his sad puppy of a kid again, it occurred to him that he just couldn't be the only one who'd ever been witness to such a plain show of domestic abuse. How could he be? What a farce! The D.I. endlessly prattled on about life and death, war and peace, love and hate; they talked about everything that went above and beyond mere mortal comprehension; yet, when it really came down to it – whenever, Roger would turn up drunk for his shift again, or Ben showed up to class with a black eye and busted glasses – well, if anyone'd ask him, he'd say the DHARMA folk just didn't want to see. 'Them things that truly need fixin', them things that matter in the here and now; them such things don't matter to the DHARMA fuckin' Initiative.'

"It ain't! - I mean, it isn't!" Phil nervously pulled at his sleeves.

"Uhu," Danny sniffed. "Guess it ain't, then."

"Hi boys!"

Phil jumped, unprepared for the sudden intrusion. Danny jerked around, a genuine 100-watt smile gracing his face. At least the island provided him with some distractions; them nice blue eyes surely gave him palpitations from time to time.

"Well, well, if it ain't Jules. You early, doll. Your shift don't start 'til one."

"Hi Phil."

"Juliet," Phil gave her a curt nod, his eyes darting off to the side.

"I left early yesterday, figured I'd make up for the time today."

"Well, you're in luck. Phil here says his van needs some lovin'; told him you're just the gal he's lookin' for."

She grinned and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"Suppose she's not your type, eh?"

"Nah, you know how I like 'em, big and busty. None of that angular, wide eyed crap" he winked.

Juliet shook her head, unable to hide the amusement that tugged at the corners of her lips.

She should be more outraged by such sexual innuendos, but this was Danny, and Danny was about as threatening as a baby hippopotamus. Ever since she'd signed up for the motor pool detail she'd expected backlash, ridicule, jokes about her inability to hold a screwdriver the right way up. But instead of huffing and puffing about her true place being in the kitchen, Danny had surprised her. His open-mindedness about her abilities made her feel welcome, and as a result she embraced his testing and teasing with a smile rather than a grimace. Also, she was capable of making some pretty sharp remarks of her own keeping Danny on his toes plenty.

"What seems to be the problem?"

She stepped closer to the van, and turned her attention back to Phil. He gave her an odd look and a quick once over before spewing forth an incomprehensible string off words.

"I – uh," a twitch tugged at his eye.

"I – eh," he scraped his throat.

"The engine is ticking and – uh– I."

He pulled at his collar.

"Uh, backlight –."

Danny sniggered, and put an arm around Phil's shoulder.

"The engine is givin' 'im some hiccups, and you're gonna wanna replace the backlight," he said.

"Right," Phil nodded. "That."

"Okay, no problem. I'll see what I can do," she moved towards the work station and slipped her gloves on. "Check back in at the end of the afternoon."

Phil gave her another curt nod.

"Anything else?"

"No," he said, his eyes sliding up and down her jumpsuit once more, then he turned to Danny, pursed his lips and said:

"See you later, Dan."

"later, Phil."

Juliet tilted her head to the side as she watched Phil stalk off in the direction of the barracks.

"What's with Phil?"

"What ain't with Phil?" he snorted.

She laughed.

" 'S got his panties all tied up in a knot when he heard his boss and you are sweet on each other."

She froze; the look in Danny's eyes imparting far more than she was willing to acknowledge. How in the hell did that rumor spread about?

"Where'd you hear that?" she asked, leaping back into movement. She opened the van's front latch, and propped the hood up.

"You ain't foolin' anyone, doll. He's up here more often than he's out 'n 'bout checkin' perimeters. Always somethin' "broke" on his VW. Uhu," he winked.

"It's not like that, Danny. You know that."

"I'm just tellin' 'em how I see 'em, doll. And I sure seen lotsa ogling happenin' 'round these parts lately."

"I'm telling you, you're seeing it wrong."

"I am, am I?"

He tapped his nose, then shrugged and slammed his hand against the side of the van.

"Don't forget to freshen the oil, doll," He turned away. "I'll be in my office. Say hi to LaFleur when he stops by."

He walked away.

"Shit," she whispered under her breath.

He wasn't wrong, James had been stopping by a lot, lately. In fact, his van would randomly break down at least twice a week, and whenever he wasn't able to make it to the motor pool he'd find some way to lure her out into the jungle. Not Mitchell, not Tom, not Danny; he always requested her. Stolen moments between noon and night time, where the undergrowth, vines and muddy soil created noisy friction and impossibly to wash out stains. To think that they were getting away with it, she snorted. So much for keeping the "un" out of the "complicated".

"Shit, shit, shit," she pulled off her gloves, and threw them back onto the work station.

"What ya cursin' at the world for, Blondie?"

And there he was, just like Danny said he would be; a dimpled smirk plastered onto the side of his face. She felt a flutter pull at her insides as he leaned against Phil's van and crossed his arms in front of his chest. There was a slight spark in his eyes today, burning holes into carefully constructed resolutions; just by looking at him she was already breaking promises that she'd only just made.

Fuck.

"What are you doing here?" she snapped.

"Thought you might wa–… you in some kind of trouble, or somethin'?"

She huffed.

"Danny thinks he's got us all figured out," she motioned between them.

"Oh…"

"Yeah, oh."

She shook her head and turned away from the station, but before she could brush by him he caught her arm in mid-stride. Another wave of flutters raced through her body, tripling her heartbeat; a thousand tiny wings flapping in the darkness, tying her to the present. This was crazy. What they'd been doing was crazy. There was a time, not too long ago, that these exact same eyes had looked at her with disgust. When he'd banded together with Sayid, had watched her from the corners of narrowed eyes. Nothing would have pleased him more than to have put a bullet through her head when she'd walked away with Claire's medicine, having revealed more about his life than she should have been able to know. But now? His hand pulled her back searing dark marks of desire into her skin. Now, he wanted her.

"It don't have to matter," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"We don't have to keep hidin'. Maybe, we should just try the whole out-in-the-open thing."

"The out-in-the-open thing?" she rolled her eyes.

"You know what I mean."

"No, I don't actually. What do you mean, James?"

He smirked, his eyes sparkling with unleashed mischief; a second later he'd turned her to him and pushed her back against the side of the van, knocking the wind clean out of her.

She gasped, within seconds he had two, three, four buttons undone on her jumpsuit.

"You startin' to comprehend, doctor Burke?" he whispered into her ear as one of his hands disappeared down her jumpsuit. A shiver ran across her spine, and his lips curved against her throat; his slight kisses travelling upward, only momentarily halting to nip at her skin here, then there. This wasn't exactly the answer she'd been looking for, but as his lips found hers, his intentions read loud and clear. She responded without protest, not even wanting to resist, caught up in the lure of their game, she almost didn't hear…

"Ehum, ehum."

Her eyes flew open; the unmistakable cough of an accidental voyeur.

"James," she pushed at his shoulders, his grip tightened.

"James," she repeated.

He let out a low grunt but pulled back.

She coaxed her head in the direction of the sound; James half-turned, then a sly smile spread across his face and she mentally rolled her eyes. Of course, he would be excited about getting caught red-handed, he practically lived for the thrill of forbidden moments like these; out in the open, yet, far enough away from prying eyes.

"Goodmornin' Doctor Long," he said, his hands leisurely sliding out of her jumpsuit.

"Mr. LaFleur. Miss Carlson."

Juliet's cheeks flushed a brighter shade of red, but Long hardly seemed to notice. If anything, he looked rather blasé about the matter, as though he'd just taken a sip of a particularly bitter cup of coffee and had decided that nothing could possibly ruin his day more.

"What brings ya to this neck of the woods?"

"I was hoping to have a word with miss Carlson, here" Long said, studying the undone buttons on her jumpsuit with a raised eyebrow.

James inclined his head.

"Don't let me stop ya."

"In private," he added.

Juliet looked up in surprise; what could possibly be so important that it demanded her immediate attention? He could hardly be here about a van. Long did everything on foot; good for the lungs, he said. Suppose he didn't consider chain smoking his way through DHARMA meetings a tad more hazardous to his health than a sedentary lifestyle. Not for the first time since they'd arrived she'd marvelled at the general attitude of the 70s; 'the era of the wilfully ignorant and the blissfully blind', Miles had said at some point. He might be onto something there.

"You OK?" James asked, pulling her attention back to the present.

"Yeah," she nodded, finishing buttoning up her jumpsuit. "I'll finish up here; I'll see you tonight."

"OK, then," he shrugged, the subtle shift in his demeanour conveying that he was anything but OK with the abrupt brush off, but he would let it go for now.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"Don't forget to bring the tacos."

"As long as you bring the game."

He laughed and winked.

"Count on it, Blondie."

With a knot in her stomach she watched him go. He'd soon realize that the stars in his eyes weren't truly meant for her. He longed for green emeralds, and lush brown curls. She knew; her name had slipped from his lips in his sleep on more than one occasion. It hurt. It hurt a lot. But neither time travel nor distance could make him want her. He had to come to that conclusion on his own. He might never, and that was OK too. It wasn't supposed to mean anything anyway.

She shook the thoughts from her head.

"What can I do for you, Doctor?"

"I'd rather we talk some place private. I do not usually discuss topics of a delicate nature out in the open like this."

"Delicate?"

Didn't he just clear her last week?

"Should I be worried?"

The way he stood there, chin up in full on doctor mode; it gave her pause. It was familiar. Too familiar. She used to approach women in the clinic in a similar manner. When their hopes of seeing two pink lines would be dashed by that disappointing singular one. 'I'm sorry; maybe, next time,' she'd say.

But Long wasn't a fertility doctor, and he certainty wouldn't be alluding to a next time of any sort, not after all he'd just been privy to.

"Let's go to my office, shall we?" his expression remained void of emotion and it did nothing to reassure her. She could almost hear James whisper in her ear: 'He'd make for a great Other. Stoic. Empty eyes. Soulless. Kinda like you in the beinning.'

She followed him across the square to the infirmary; inside Alice and Debra were seated behind long white desks. Fragments of excited conversation fluttered about the room, the air filled with an ease that she'd never quite associated with the infirmary before. She greeted them, and they responded in kind.

"Juliet," Long began, after he'd closed his office door behind her.

"Please, sit."

She almost laughed out loud; the irony of the situation crept through thick layers of unwritten pieces of paper and sticky post-it notes on yellow bare walls, this used to be her office. Or rather, it would be, 26 years from now. In her time, it looked more desolate, discolored paint peeling off the ceiling and walls, pieces of brown tape desperately trying to hold onto corners of hastily torn off leaflets. Here, right now, it looked freshly painted; no marks of wear or the inevitable sense of dread that would soon inhibit the place; it even smelled better.

"We found something in your blood that I think we should discuss."

"Oh?"

"How have you been feeling, lately?"

She shrugged.

"Just some headaches, but nothing so bad it'd be worth mentioning. Why?"

"You and LaFleur have you been seeing each other long?"

She narrowed her eyes at him; that was an odd question. What did that have to do with anything? And besides –

"I don't see how that's any of your business."

"Well, it becomes our business when you decide to procreate."

"Excuse me?"

"Procreate, it means –"

"I know what it means; I haven't a clue what you're talking about."

"The DHARMA Initiative has rules about pregnancies, Juliet. You have to submit the proper documents, and apply for absence of leave so that you can be thoroughly examined on the mainland before try outs start," he paused. "Unless you've decided to leave the island, of course. Obvously, you'd be free to do whatever you want, then."

"Try outs? What are you–?"

"There's no need to deny it; according to the data you provided last year you're not in the habit of regulating your menses, you've not been prescribed any type of birth control, and the Initiative has been denied requests to import male contraceptives. That only leaves us with one possible scenario. You planned for this to happen," he hesitated. "I'm a little surprised, though. Did you really think you could hide it from us? Surely, you must have known there'd come a time we'd find out."

She stared, her eyes all but rolling out of her skull.

"You're saying, I'm…?"

She shook her head. No, no, no.

"You're wrong,"

Something must have gone wrong with her blood test; a mix up, maybe. A false positive, surely. She grabbed the file from his desk and started flipping through it. The RFLP and SNP aligned perfectly with what she remembered from her med-school results. Her brows knit together. These were hers, but…

"It has to be a false positive."

"We're quite sure."

"I can't be pregnant."

"According to our–"

"You're not listening to me; I can't get pregnant."

Long frowned.

"You mean; you haven't been able to conceive until now?"

"No," was she really going to have to spell it out? Was he that dim?" I'm infertile."

It hurt to say; she'd never actually said it out loud before.

Long appeared confounded.

"You're infertile?"

"Yes, I – I– "

How could she ever explain that the adult version of the boy who currently lived three barracks down the road from her had been the cause of her infertility? How could she begin to explain that in 26 years' time he was going to lure her to the island, and lay claim to her as though she was his slave to keep: 'After everything I've done to get you here! After everything I've done to keep you here! How could you possibly not understand…that you're mine?!'

Ben had forced her hand, and after all this time the memories of that day continued to fester like big open wounds, growing more and more repulsive each day.

"There's this drug called Chlorhydelone. It's a trial drug," she began. "I took it a little over a year ago."

"Why?"

Why?

She watched little Benjamin Linus sometimes, from the window inside her barrack; the sight of him always ignited confusion. She hated him, but she also pitied him; a dichotomy of indecision forevermore debating with unrelenting thoughts, wracking havoc with her original proclamations.

He'd glanced up once, as though he'd sensed her eyes on him, and they'd stared at each other; this broken boy with his busted Harry Potter glasses complete with duck tape, minus scar, and the object of his future obsession, staring. She'd hastily stepped away, and pulled the shutters down with a force that vibrated through the entire house.

"I was told that it was safe," she lied. "But eventually, I learned that the effects of the drug had done irreparable damage to my reproductive organs."

Long shook his head.

"What was the trial for? Why didn't you mention this during your first medical exam?"

"I didn't think it worth mentioning."

"You didn't think infertility would be worth mentioning?" Long pinched the bridge of his nose, and leaned forward on his desk. "Juliet, don't get me wrong, this truly is quite a remarkable story. But you have to understand that from where I'm sitting, I'm having some trouble piecing together certain facts; why would you be involved in this? How did you get involved? Were there more people who were being tested on like you?"

"Evan," she put her arms on the desk, mirroring him. "I can't talk about the experiments, or who performed them," she lied. "And I didn't mention it, because–" she looked away, the painful reminder of what had happened in the weeks following her actions bubbled to the surface. It surprised her how much of that faded pain still felt so fresh.

"Because I couldn't."

Long regarded her with calculated suspicion over the rim of his aviator glasses. Then he sighed and pushed himself up from his chair.

"You should have been more forthcoming, Juliet. We could have run our own tests. This island–" he stopped.

"This island, what?" she repeated, knowing full well where he'd intended to go with that line of thought.

"Forget it," he waved the thought away with his hand. "The truth of the matter is that the tests we conduct here are very accurate. If what you're saying is true, then there's only one way to confirm it."

She nodded.

"I understand."

DHARMA Initiative: Infirmary, July 1975

"This is going to be a little cold."

Debra applied the thick blue gel to her belly, squirting it out over her skin with flowery adolescent strokes. She shivered, her bellybutton's repurposed design looking oddly disturbing in all of its crooked glory. Debra laughed.

"First time?"

Juliet nodded, not quite sure how else to respond. She'd been through the motions countless times before: apply the gel, clearly express what the patient can expect, apply the proper amount of pressure to the probe, move it in the longitudinal plane across the belly–

"Longitudinal."

"Sorry?"

"You're holding it wrong."

Debra frowned.

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are," she placed her fingers on top of the young nurse's hand. "Let me show you."

Debra started to protest, but Juliet was already moving the transducer down to her pubic bone. She applied a little more pressure, and slowly maneuvered the device upward.

"See?"

Almost instantly an image popped up on the monitor.

Debra turned her head, her frown deepened as she scratched her head with her other hand.

"How did you know?"

"Just simple logi–" She trailed; her eyes arrested by the image on the monitor, an unmistakable flutter catching her attention. It appeared at the bottom of the screen, a steady rhythm, corroborated by the rapid thumping that emanated from the monitor's speakers. A heartbeat.

Her hands flew to her mouth.

"Omph! Careful," Debra said.

It was small. So small. She'd almost missed it; the size of a raspberry, and because she knew where to look did she see the tiniest of hands shift ever so slightly into view, showing signs of life that could not possibly be thriving inside her body.

"Oh my–" she whispered.

Up until that moment she'd been so sure. There'd been no morning sickness; no sign or indication of any sort that her body was preparing itself for radical changes. For all intense and purposes the Chlorhydelone should have completely destroyed both of her fallopian tubes and uterus. She hadn't had her period in months, and yet here she was bearing witness to the impossible.

She moved closer to the screen; Debra shifted the probe into a different position to accommodate her better.

"It looks to be about–"

"63 days," Juliet whispered. "9 weeks."

"How–?"

"I just do," she swallowed hard; her breath catching in her throat.

"Well," Debra shrugged, and turned her attention back to the monitor. "It looks healthy. Strong."

"It does," she smiled, betrayed by the tremor in her hand as she reached for the screen. Still captivated by the image, the tightness in her chest continued to expand further and further, until soft drops of relief and sadness carved red roads of opportunity down her cheeks. "It really does."

There was so much that she wished she could say to the young nurse, yet there was so very little she could actually reveal. The DHARMA Initiative would never understand the true power of the island. How it healed the irreparable, cure the terminal, restore fertility. But also, how it could take all of that away in the blink of an eye. Over the years she'd learned how the island acted as some type of enabler, pulling strings on puppets through time and space per Jacob's request. And now, she appeared to be in the eye of its hurricane.

She abruptly pulled her shirt down; the image on the screen cut off.

"Wha–?!" Debra started.

"I have to go."

"We're not done, yet!"

"I can't stay."

A/N: I am sooo excited to be sharing parts of this story with you guys already! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to drop a line. It's going to be quite a ride. I don't even know how long this story is going to be, but it took me about a month to work out all of the details. I know how it ends! Just don't know how long it will take for me to get there! It will definitely be a Suliet story, but MANY of the other characters will also appear in this story, along with some original character, like Danny! For every subsequent chapter and section I'll insert a place and time, because if I don't do that it will turn into a mess very quickly. So, I recommend that before you start reading each section you take note of where all of the characters in the story are and at what time!

Other than that, I hope you guys enjoyed this first chapter! And if you got this far, thank you so much for reading!