"Go on living, don't stop loving.
Please find something you can put your heart into.
And if the sun comes up without me tomorrow,
You'll be fine.
Just let it shine on you."
-Trace Adkins
A smile seemed to stick to the face of one James Ford as he walked down the streets of Los Angeles with his daughter, Clementine, by his side. They strolled casually, with no particular destination in mind; just out for the exercise while they got caught up on what had been going on in the last week or so since they had last talked. They tried to get together at least once every two weeks, if not more often; sometimes, Clementine's mother, Cassidy, would join them. More often than not, though, it was just the two of them, as it was that day.
It had taken James a few long, rough months to finally convince Cassidy to let him meet his daughter, let alone be alone to talk with her like he was now. He remembered the first day he had seen Cassidy again after he had returned home. He remembered how she had casually showed up at Kate's house, eager to see her friend again, completely unaware that the father of her child was sitting in the next room.
James sat on the couch in the home that Kate and Jack had used to share. Now, fragments of the life they had once shared in this place were apparent in the framed photographs scattered around the tables and above the fireplace, like ghosts of all their yesterdays. With Jack gone… dead, as they all knew he probably was, but wouldn't say aloud… that's exactly what the photos were. Ghosts. Memories of times gone by, times they could never get back.
He felt awkward, sitting here, on Jack's couch. He did not belong here. But then again, neither did Miles, Richard, or Claire, who all either sat next to him to on the other couch facing him. Kate came into the room, five glasses of ice on a tray in one hand, a pitcher of iced tea in the other. James stood to help her, taking the tray and putting it on the small coffee table next to the couch. Kate was about to pour tea into the first of the glasses when the phone began to ring.
"You should probably get that…" James said as he reached out to take the pitcher from her hands. Kate merely nodded as she handed it over to him. Besides the sound of the phone ringing, it was deathly quiet in the house. It was so weird, being here. In the 'real' world. It had been almost two weeks, but they still couldn't shake the feeling that they'd wake up any moment, with the sun on their face and sights of the beach or the jungle in their eyes. But they never did wake up, for this wasn't a dream. They were really back home.
"Hello?" James heard Kate say into the phone as he began pouring glasses of iced tea for the others.
"Oh my God… yes!…Good to hear from you too…. Of course you can come over." From their spots in the living room, James and the others could only make out snippets of the conversation. They assumed that it was an old friend calling, but James felt a shiver on the back of his neck. An old friend? Nah, it couldn't be her… could it?
He kicked himself out of his worries when Kate reentered the room. In response to their questioning glances, she shrugged and told them that a friend was coming by to see her. She looked like she was about to make a move to sit on the couch next to Claire, but James stepped in her path, looking straight into her eyes and saying quietly, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
Kate looked up at him and nodded, knowing fully where this conversation was headed. The two of them excused themselves, leaving Miles, Richard, and Claire to sip their iced tea while they went into the kitchen for privacy.
"You son of a bitch…" James muttered, as if that were any way to start a conversation.
"Look, I'm sorry…" Kate began.
"You could have at least warned me!" James cut her off.
"You've got to face her sometime James!"
"Yeah, but I'd rather have a choice as to when I do so."
"You're a coward."
"Am I?"
"Yes. You are. Look, James, I want you to be in Clementine's life as much as you want it. I'm just trying to help you get there. And I know if I left it up to you, it might be months, maybe even years, before you get enough courage to so much as look at Cass. Just do it now and get it over with."
They were both silent for a moment, until James finally relented. He couldn't seem to make his mouth form words, so he just nodded and turned to go back to the other room when Kate grabbed his arm to stop him.
"I'm sorry." she said quietly.
"You don't need to be," he said after a moment. "You're right. Might as well get it over with now, before I talk myself out of it."
Kate smiled and released his arm. "She'll be here in about half an hour…" James nodded and returned to the next room. Neither of them filled the others in on what their discussion in the kitchen had been about, and none of them asked. It was Kate that suggested that they play a game of picture charades to get their minds off of things. She went to the closet and pulled out a decent sized dry erase board and markers.
"You play this much?" Miles questioned. Kate grinned and gave James a quick glance before answering.
"I used to play all the time with a friend of mine."
James knew who she was talking about. Cassidy was a whiz when it came to charades of any kind. Maybe that's why conning people had come so naturally to her…
"Okay, I guess I'll go first." Kate said, and Miles hit the start button on the stop watch on his cell phone while she began to draw.
In the next twenty minutes or so the five of them went through about every island-related picture they could think of to draw. Richard was about to begin his next turn when the doorbell rang. Kate excused herself to go answer it while Richard took his turn.
"Hey!" James could hear Kate answer the door, and despite the cacophony their shouts were making, he could also hear what he knew was Cassidy's voice. Cassidy didn't even know he was here…
James momentarily forgot about the situation when he recognized what Richard was drawing. "Polar bear!" he shouted, and Richard nodded, confirming that he was correct. "Seriously, can't we have one round that doesn't have anything to do with the island?" James complained as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kate reenter the room, Cassidy close behind. His heart stopped for a moment, just long enough to remind him that this wasn't a dream.
Cassidy, caught off guard as she was, stopped dead when she saw him, her face frozen in an expression of disbelief. Nearly six years had passed since she has last seen James; the last thing she had been expecting was to walk into Kate's house and see him sitting on the couch playing charades. Before she could pull herself out of her frozen state to tell him off, or storm back out of the house, or say any of the many hurtful things that popped into her mind to say, he smiled at her. "Hey Cass…" he said softly, and she fought with her emotions, wondering what the hell was going on.
Miles, Richard, and Claire, meanwhile, were all wearing identical confused expressions. Miles looked back and forth between James to Cassidy, to Kate, and back to James. "You know her?" he asked skeptically.
James chuckled under his breath and replied, "Yeah, I know her…"
"Well…" Cassidy said. "Didn't expect to see you here." There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then Cassidy turned to Kate. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come." And before anyone could stop her, she was headed for the door.
James made a move to follow her, but the look Kate gave him stopped him. "Give me a minute." she said almost inaudibly, but James understood, and he just nodded. Kate turned and went outside after Cassidy.
"Cass!" she called once she was outside, seeing her friend just a few steps from her car. "Cass, wait…" she said, approaching her.
"Look, it's good to see you, Kate, but I have better things to do than waste my time making small talk with a good-for-nothing son of a bitch conman who made it pretty clear he didn't want anything to do with me or his daughter." Her jaw was set in a determined way, her hand hovering over the door handle on her car.
"Cass… just… just give him a chance. It's been years since the James you used to know existed. He's changed. He… he's a good man, Cass. Please… just stay. Just for a little bit, anyway. If not for him, then do it for me."
Cassidy seemed to weight the situation in her mind. If Kate said he was worth her time… well, Kate had never exactly given her any reason not to believe her. Maybe, just maybe, she'd give him a chance. If anything, it seemed like the only way she'd be able to spend time with Kate today. She was just about to relent and tell Kate her decision when movement behind her friend caught her eye.
The mixed emotions Cassidy felt when she saw him left her feeling a bit dizzy, but she bit her lip and stared James down as he stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door closed behind him. He gave Kate a pointed look, and Kate glanced between James and Cassidy before lowering her head slightly and heading back towards the house. As she passed James, he placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her for a moment, just long enough to whisper the words "Thank you."
When Kate went back into the house, James stared at the porch beneath his feet for a few seconds before looking up at Cassidy and making his way down the steps and along the narrow sidewalk to her. Whatever Cassidy had been expecting, whether it be a string of insults, demanding that he get to see his daughter, or just plain asking her to leave, she did not get. Instead, James just lifted his eyes to meet her own before asking in a gruff voice, "Want to play some charades?"
Cassidy tried to hide her shocked expression from him, but James saw right through her mask. As good as she was at the game of charades, he knew she had never been all that good at hiding her emotions from him. When she finally got a hold of herself, Cassidy kept her face straight as she replied, "Sure."
To his surprise, James could not hold back a smile at her response. Granted, it was a small one, barely a grin, but it was an honest smile. He nodded his head in the direction of the house. "Well, alright then. Common." He took a few steps towards the house, and her voice brought him back to a halt.
"James." The name came out somewhat shaky, and James could tell that she knew what she wanted to say, but did not quite know how to say it. He turned to face her again, simultaneously reaching up a hand to run a hand through his hair.
"Yeah?" he said in a soft voice, reassuring her troubled thoughts, letting her know that Kate was right; James was a changed man. But how? How does a man like that change? What force could be so strong as to drive a man to change his manner, to change the very way he walked the earth?
Cassidy took a few steps toward him, closing the gap between them before speaking again. "What happened?" She somewhat blurted out, eager to get to the bottom of the change she saw in the man before her. He gave her a confused look, not quite sure what she meant before she clarified. "I mean… you're different. It'd odd, really. You look like him, you sound like him… but you don't act like the man I used to know, the man I used to love." She looked up at him, into his deep green eyes, and he returned her gaze for a moment before again running a hand through his sandy blond hair and replying.
"Well, I was on an island for three years…" he began, the smallest fraction of sarcasm seeping into his voice, and for a moment Cassidy saw a hint of the old him, the one she was familiar with. So he hadn't changed all that much…
She didn't speak. She simply gave him a look that said, "I'm aware of that, you ass hole. Now tell me what I really want to know."
He seemed to understand what her stare meant, and he sighed before continuing.
"Okay… there was a girl." he admitted, and for the first time she smiled faintly at him. She had known that she could coax the truth out of him. Now all she needed was the details, anything that might help her decide if she could trust him.
"We lived there together, me and her… for three years." He didn't mention the fact that most of those three years had been spent in the 1970's… but he figured if he was trying to get her to trust him, it'd be best to stick to a believable truth. "I was gonna ask her to marry me, had the ring and everything…" he paused, collecting himself, "… but I never got the chance before she died." He looked so honestly miserable talking about it, Cassidy knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had loved this woman. What was it like, she wondered, to have someone love you like that, with every fiber of their very being? She had thought that she had had such a love with James, but that was before she learned that she was only part of one of his cons, like a little piece in a game he called his life. What a life he had had, she thought; he had lost his parents to a murder-suicide at the young age of eight, had to rely on conning people to make a living for so many years, got stranded on an island for three years thanks to a God-forsaken plane crash, and on top of all that, he had lost the woman he loved to death's cold hands. For a moment, Cassidy admitted silently to herself, she actually felt sorry for the man in front of her.
"What was her name?" she asked quietly, curious about the woman that had made James into the man he was today.
"Juliet." His heart wrenched when he tasted her name on his lips. He stared at the ground, avoiding eye contact with Cassidy, and she knew better than to press him further on the subject. The two of them were silent for a few long moments before Cassidy spoke up.
"So, how 'bout those charades?" James smiled at her, thankful for the icebreaker, before turning and leading her back to the house.
As she joined James, Kate, and their friends in their game of charades, Cassidy couldn't help her glances at James, so perplexed by the change she saw in him. She had once thought that she knew him, but now, she found that the conman in him was gone. She found herself wishing she had more time alone with him, wanting to get to know him all over again. But for now, she'd have to settle with what she had.
James and Clementine continued to stroll side-by-side, oblivious to the world around them as they talked.
"Sawyer…" a voice behind him stopped James in his tracks. No one called him Sawyer anymore… no one. At least no one that had known him in the last thirteen years, since he had left the island. But this voice sounded so familiar…
James turned slowly, mouth agape with confusion when his gaze landed on the owner of the voice. Sure, the man was essentially unfamiliar. He was thinner, with shorter hair than the man that he used to know. But that voice… that face… James knew immediately who he was.
"Hugo?" he said, disbelief apparent in his voice and in his face. What the hell was going on here? He hadn't seen this man since that last day on the island, shortly before he and five others had taken off on the plane and never looked back.
"Hey dude." Hugo said.
Thirteen years. Thirteen years of thinking the island was gone. Thirteen years of thinking Hugo and the others they had left behind were gone as well. There were so many questions James had to ask, so many things he wanted to know. But only four words escaped his mouth.
"Son of a bitch."
