Disclaimer… If I owned this, I wouldn't be broke and I'm broke, so obviously I don't own the show or the characters.
Author's Note: In my world religions class we learned about Taoism and the true meaning of the Yin/Yang symbol. Understanding that symbol for real, made me understand these characters a little bit more. The concept of them made more sense to me, and this just sort of flowed out of that.
Yin Yang. Two separate parts that, only together, have a balance. One cannot be without the other, because it's only together that they make the whole. Each has the opposite aspects of the other and that's what made their combination so dangerous. It makes more sense now; why they each played the part they did. Each was inherently good or evil, with traces of the opposite present. The desires of each were completely different, but somehow worked together to create the same desire. To be noticed.
That's what it all seems to have come down to. Yin wanted to be known. He wanted to live on forever in the minds of the people he terrorized. Yang wanted to be noticed as well, but not in the same way. She craved the love of a father, and playing his games seemed the only way she could get that. She was inherently good, but had the misfortune of being raised by a man who was inherently evil.
Juliet knew she would never be able to hate Yang; not after what she did for Shawn and Gus. Yang took the life of her own father to protect them. How could Juliet ever hate her for that? Yang wanted to be loved and she finally realized that doing what her father wanted wasn't going to give her that love. She thought that people would love her if she did the right thing for a change.
Love probably wasn't ever a word Juliet was going to use to describe how she felt about Yang, but she would respect that woman forever. Shawn believed Yang had never really killed anyone, and Juliet couldn't help but believe that as well. Yang's first kill was her own father. Deep down, Juliet knew that in many ways, Yang was a just a child searching for love. She had just wanted to her father to love her, what girl wouldn't give anything, do anything, for that feeling?
Yin on the other hand… Yin was an evil man to the core. Even though he must have had some sort of love for his daughter, he was only concerned about himself. He wanted attention, but not because he wanted love, but because he survived on the fear of other people. The more he was feared, the happier he was. Everything he did was to instill fear in people, not just the person he took, but everyone involved with that person.
When Yin took Juliet and Abigail, he was playing on everyone's fears. Juliet knew how the others had felt, she had read the reports, and she knew Yin had been quite satisfied with himself.
Shawn had been terrified that he wasn't going to be able to save both, that he was going to fail one of them. Henry had been scared his son wasn't going to be able to keep it all together; that he would fall apart. Karen was worried that there would be a death, or two, on her hands and that the public would panic.
Gus was scared that he was going to lose a friend and that it was going to be his fault for not protecting her. That his best friend was going to blame him forever. Buzz was scared that the death of a civilian was going to be on his hands and that his friend was going to hate him forever for her death. Lassiter was afraid he was going to lose the best partner he'd ever had, that the person who understood him the most would be gone forever.
Juliet knew that somehow Yin knew exactly what kind of terror he had instilled in everyone and she knew it delighted him. Shawn said Yin told them he had chosen to 'indulge the crazy'. Yin chose to be who he was. There was no mental illness, no condition that made him that way; he had chosen it.
That fact haunted Juliet more than anything about this whole case. One had chosen that life style, and one had seen no other way. Yang probably didn't even realize that what was happening was wrong until it was too late for her to get out safely.
At the same time, Juliet harbored anger towards her for allowing all this to happen. Yang said she could have stopped him, so why didn't she? Juliet knew she would never understand, it was a position she had never been in, so who was she to judge what Yang did, or didn't do. There was so much of this that confused, angered, and even scared her. If Yang, who seemed good at the core, could be brainwashed into those activities, who was next?
She made a decision then to visit Yang once in a while; it was the least she could do to repay her. She doubted that she would ever call Yang a friend but she would at least show the woman some form of care, without asking her to do anything horrifying for it. Yang deserved to know that the truest form of love came without a price, and if Juliet could help her start to understand that then she would.
That didn't stop the fear she had of the next Yin who would roll in. The knowledge that he couldn't be the only on terrified her, and she hated being scared because that meant he was still winning, even in death. They had been lucky this time, lucky that Shawn had been able to understand the clues, lucky that no one's life had ended in these 'games'. Their luck was going to have to run out sooner or later, and Juliet didn't even want to think about losing anyone.
That's how Shawn found her. Sitting in the interrogation room, staring at a blank report form, barely containing herself from crawling into a hole and hiding from the world forever. She smiled inwardly to herself when she saw him. She knew that somehow, in some way, he was going to make everything okay… At least for now.