*Juliet voice* Hey there.
I've been kind of on a writing sporadical for the better part of a year, just having all of these story ideas rattle around in my head and having no motivation to get started on them. So i'm glad to finally be getting out of the worst of it and begin writing again!
After watching Lost this summer, I became inspired. There are very few love stories that have sticked with me quite like Sawyer and Juliet's, and with them having so little scenes on the show as a couple, my mind goes to creating some of my own. I hope you like what I've come up with!
The last thing to come back to him was sleeping in a normal sized bed, getting used to waking up alone without her curled up next to him. He used to sleep in different hotels and motels for so long it became a fixture to be in a new environment by the next day. It didn't really get hard until a couple of months after he left the island, when he realized this was his life now and he couldn't keep drifting in the hopes of being saved. Sawyer had to find a reason to go on.
Adjusting to a new routine somewhat resembling normalcy wasn't what was difficult, although it took time. It was accepting that she was gone and never coming back that was the worst. He thought about her all the time. How ideally he'd be hearing her voice calling him "James" from the next room over because they were late to some Dharma meeting thing, and didn't he want to get there sooner so they could leave quicker? And what did he want for dinner when they got back?
The guilt never really went away. It was his persuasion that initially kept her on the island in the first place, and so she stayed. If wasn't for him she'd be alive.
He went through the motions because he knew he couldn't simply cease to exist, no matter how much he might want to. That's not what she would have wanted, was what he kept hearing himself, Kate, and probably every grief counselor on the planet say. But he didn't feel worthy of happiness, he almost didn't want it. Not without her by his side, his happiness. Honoring her memory was what got him through that first year, he spent months trying to track down her sister Rachel. Turns out there are hundreds of women with the same name who lived in Miami, Florida. He told her in the best way that he could what had happened to her sister, and although he left out any unnecessary information, it was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do in his life. Still, he'd never forget the look on her face when he asked if she had any sort of relation to a woman who disappeared years ago, a woman named Juliet Burke.
Amazingly, she believed and fully accepted his story with very little proof, although when he mentioned the name Richard Alpert fishing for any sort of connection, her eyes widened and she keeled over in shock. They never stopped looking and they never had a funeral. She kept telling him over and over how grateful she was to him to have even known her, known of her existence. Because although Rachel had never stopped looking, it had been six years of not knowing if her sister was even alive.
After that, everything else seemed almost like light work. He found Clementine and Cassidy Phillips, who at first wanted nothing to do with the man who refused to accept his daughter, but gave in when she saw the look on Sawyer's face when he saw a recent picture of their child. She had gotten married, which was good, because Clementine needed a father figure who would always be there for her. He saw them every few Christmases or so, but it got difficult to explain just how he knew her mother as Clementine grew older, Cassidy was insistent Sawyer keep his distance until she ever found it necessary to reveal to their daughter exactly who he was.
Eventually Sawyer met Julian too, and he kept in contact with him and Rachel on occasion. Kate would call or they would meet up someplace whenever it was convenient for the both of them, but she was doing pretty much the exact same thing he was. Scraping by, living in fragments of a life she once had. He still cared about her, but not in the same way as he used to. Nothing was ever the same.
Time went on and Sawyer moved with it. Yet even years later, (though how many had passed since the incident he couldn't tell) during quiet moments he'd think about her and remember how it felt to have her legs wrapped around his, the sound of her laugh, the way her hair moved in the wind and how her eyes looked in sunshine. He'd think about how her lips and skin tasted and he'd miss her calling him James, and how he never had a care in the world because as long as he had her and she had him, everything was right.
He read all of her most treasured books multiple times, knew all of her favorite songs, how she liked her pancakes, everything stayed with him. He saw her in the sky on a sunny day, in the first flower of spring, or in Julian when he smiled.
She existed only in memory now, there were no pictures, nothing to prove the time he and Juliet shared together. Just three years, and she remained in his soul forever.