AN1: This is a little rough and a little different than what I usually write. Stay with me, though. Ihave a really long AN at the end.

Warnings: for SPOILERS for season three, a few harsh, unneeded naughty words and a mostly not Jate story. Oh and other stuff, but I'm gonna be mean and not tell you what it is because I think that takes away from the story. Hah.

Stockholm

by Noa08

The first time he sees her, it's in the hallway as he is being escorted to another test. Dharma Monkeys push him past as she blindly makes her way down the hall, carefully reading the open file she has in her hands. For a moment, he thinks he's looking at Sarah. Her straight, blonde hair is pulled away from her face just enough so he can really see it in her features. When they bump shoulders, she doesn't look up.

The next time he sees her, she is across the room as he is being injected with some euphoric liquid; a little slice of heaven in the hell he now reluctantly thinks of as home. Every two days they drag him into this room and hook him up to hospital-type machines even he didn't know the name of. They monitor his heart rate, his brain waves, as they get him high enough to answer questions truthfully.

It's been two weeks and he has stopped fighting coming here. He doesn't even pull at his restraints as they tie him down to the bed with the paper-thin mattress. He doesn't resist.

And that's when he sees her.

This time, her hair is falling softly around her face. He can feel the cold metal in his arm and the warmth of the serum being pushed into his blood stream. He sees her and he is fascinated by the way her hair moves, the way her pink lips form around her words, it's like he's watching some sort of slow motion movie.

She's talking to the Weasel, Henry. She nods and her eyes never look up. Henry looks over and waves at him, like he's being just so fucking neighborly. She still doesn't look up. She just keeps on talking.

Bea's asking him questions now, questions he answers though he doesn't know what he's saying. It's like someone else is answering for him, even though he knows it's just the drug doing its job. He doesn't stop watching her. Even as she leaves, spins on her heels with a curt nod to her boss, and shuts the door behind her, he never stops watching her.

He decides, she looks nothing like Sarah.

His childhood bedroom his captives have recreated for him is where he spends most of his time. Behind a heavy, thick steel door that locks three different ways, and down a long, dank hallway, he's slouched against the edge of the bed. The bed that looks exactly like the one he had in his bedroom in his parents house so many years ago. The bed that had "I hate Christian Shepard" etched into the dark mahogany underside of the frame; the bed that he lost his virginity in when his parents were in San Diego for the weekend in 1983; the bed that he grew up in and that he hates. It's the third time he sees her and he's half awake.

He's sitting and she walks in like it's her own bedroom. She crouches down next to him, hitching up her white skirt as she gets down to his level. He tries not to be too obvious when he stares at the bare flesh exposed, her thigh snaking up the skirt. It's been too long. She doesn't seem to mind the slightly lecherous look he's giving her, because she checks his pupils nonchalantly, pulling his lids up and letting them fall again, writing something down on the clipboard in her hands. He's too sleep deprived to notice when she leaves without a word.

At least she looked at him.

He finds himself worrying less and less about himself and his friends (what were their names again? Oh, right. Kate and Sawyer.). Instead, he focuses on needing to see her. Her blonde hair. Her pink lips. Her hands and her thighs. He can't stop.

When they put him under hypnosis and force him to watch a film reel reminiscent of a McQueen exhibit, he's completely lucid. He's vaguely aware that they're brainwashing him. But it's been three weeks and he's stopped caring. His moral fibre frayed to the point of snapping. He's not even sure he could remember his own name if they asked. What he is sure about, is that she's in the room with him. He watches the film on a loop for hours, until he knows every frame, every image. It's burned into his mind, like a mantra. Like a chemical burn. Like her.

He realizes that he doesn't know her name.

He's stopped thinking about Kate. He gave up worrying about her a long time ago, after they first brought him here, to his old room. Now, her name echoes in his ears like a strange word from a dead language he heard once and only once. He doesn't even remember what she looks like.

And he's already forgotten about . . . what was his name? He can't remember; forgot everything. It's easy enough. After a day or two, things like forgetting always got easier.

Damn, what was his name?

It doesn't matter, because the Dharma Monkeys are moving him again, bringing him to a new room. Two-way mirrors line this room and he tries not to look at his reflection. It's not even him anymore anyway. Just a hollowed out shell of what he used to be. They sit him in a chair and tell him to stay. With a shrug, he says he's not going anywhere. He has no where to be. He knows he's being watched. He knows that they're making another move. He knows they're recruiting.

When she walks in, he doesn't even notice until the clicking of her black fuck-me pumps wakes him up out of his reverie. It's like he's waking up and she smiles at him. When she talks, he can't hear her. He only feels what she's saying to him. That's when he realizes that they slipped him another hallucinogen.

He shakes his head from side to side, watching the grey of the room mix up to make shapes and colors he's never seen before. He knows that a lysergic acid-based drug can change the way a person sees, hears, thinks and feels for up to fourteen hours. He knows this because he used to be a doctor.

Bea talks to him but he can't focus on her. He doesn't even know when she came into the room. He sees Bea in the corner, flitting in and out of his vision, like she's been spliced in every few frames.

Blonde hair brings him back.

"This is Juliet,"

And suddenly Kate's there, and she's in front of him, kneeling, pleading with her eyes for him to listen. And suddenly, he remembers everything about her. Wild, dark curls. Green, green eyes he knows he can't argue with. He remembers, for a brief moment, exactly why he fell in love with her.

Love. Was that what that feeling had been?

"Please, Jack!" She snatches him down from his thoughts. "I need you to do this." He can see the blonde, Juliet, out of the corner of his eye.

Do what? He doesn't know what Kate's trying to say. He wants to shake her, make her make sense, but he can't lift his arms.

"I need you to trust her, Jack." She tells him. "Trust her with your life. Believe everything Juliet tells you." She's touching his face now, fingering the rough beard of his cheeks and jaw, something he wished she'd done a long time ago. When she kisses him, it's soft. Far away, in the back of his mind, or in another room, he hears a woman crying out, sharp and painful and full of loss. And then Kate's gone and it's Juliet on his lips, in his mouth and he's never tasted anything sweeter.

It goes on for hours, he feels like it's been hours and when he's awake again, he's in his bed. Alone. And the only thing he can think of is Juliet. Blonde and pink.

Juliet.

He doesn't think about . . . shit. What was that girl's name?

Oh. Yeah.

Kate.

Juliet comes and goes at all kinds of hours now. He begs her to stay with him, in his room, his home now. She's all he can think of and she brushes him off kindly and with a kiss, promising so much more, next time.

Next time, Juliet keeps her promise. When she sleeps with him, it's hard, unbridled. They're not making love. They fuck. And when she comes, she bites him hard on his shoulder, marking him as hers. He trusts her with his life. He doesn't know why, but he does.

One night, sirens blast through an old sound system wired throughout the underground bunker. When he jumps up out of bed, Juliet is beside him, and she doesn't hesitate to open the door and run out into the hallway, revealing an unlocked door and her trust in him. He knows something about this situation is wrong as she pushes past the small crowd that has gathered in the corridor. He follows and keeps following when no one tries to stop him.

The sirens are deafening now, and words that people are shouting at each other are lost in the din. Finally, they get to the stairwell leading to outside. The crowd had dwindled down to only a few now, and Henry is at the head of the group, demanding to know what is going on.

Dharma Guards point their rifles at two bodies in the grass, ten feet from the door, blood seeping out, staining the turf a deep black mess. Two bodies: a man and a woman. Juliet gasps beside him, covers her face with her hands. Bea moans about something being ruined and Henry is telling the guards how disappointed he is in their erratic actions. They were going to run, the guards tell them, hands in the air. They were trying to escape. The deaths aren't on them. Henry sighs and tells them to dispose of them appropriately. Bea's yelling now, and Henry takes her by the shoulder and guides her back down into the bunker.

He looks at the bodies and wonders bleakly who these people were. With the butt of the rifle, a guard rolls the woman's body over, her lifeless eyes staring up at the night sky, and somehow he just knows that those eyes were a vibrant green when she was alive. The man's body is kicked over in the gut and the other guard grabs the body by the legs and begins to pull him away, back behind the rocks that hides the entrance to their home. The shaggy blonde hair of the man drags in the grass, creating a black line behind it. A bullet to the back of the head. It looks like the girl got the same. Which was a shame, he thought, she had such a beautiful head of wild, dark curls.

Shaking his head, he turns to Juliet, who stands beside him, rubbing her arms against the cold of the night. Did you know them, he asks. Yes. Yes, she says, stumbling on the syllables. They were patients of hers.

He nods and slips his hand around Juliet's waist as takes her away from the gruesome scene and they head back to their bedroom. In the back of his mind, he thinks that he never knew that Juliet was also a doctor, that she had "patients." He thinks that he doesn't really know much about her, but he doesn't question it. He believes her.

He believes her and he trusts her with his life.

Someone told him to do that once, but he can't remember who.

AN2: Why Stockholm? Because the Stockholm Syndrome is the only way Jack is ever going to even look at another woman besides Kate. Especially if she's one of the Others like everyone is saying she is.

And this was a one-shot.

I know, I know, I still have Wicked Games and AtS to update, and I will. Chapters are on their way. My muse has just been kind of absent lately. All the stress from my big move across the pacific is freaking her out I think. As a result, she's lost herself in the comfort of Brad Pitt and Edward Norton both being so fucking great in Fight Club. So yes, I blame Chuck Palahniuk for this story. The man can write a novel, that's all I'm sayin'.

Actually, you know what? I'm recc-ing it! If you haven't already,go read FightClub by Chuck Palaniuk. Or watch the movie. It'll change your life, I swear.

This fanfic was written for the LJ Comm 40-mixed. The theme was #39:Forget

Love it? Hate it? Hate me? Review and let me know:-)