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Summary: Juliet Burke spent six years trying to get off the island and now that she did, she's trying to find a way back.

"Home is not where you live, but where they understand you" – Christian Morgenstern

Home is Where the Heart is

Ch 4

They were sitting in a rented car outside a two story Spanish style house with white stucco walls and red roof tiles overlooking the beach. She saw a bike lying outside on the neatly cut grass and a blue SUV parked in the driveway. She smiled to herself this was as close to Rachel's dream house as she could get.

"What do I say to her?" She asks out loud.

"I find that the truth is the best option" Penny answered turning around in her seat to face Juliet.

"The truth" Juliet repeats. "I wouldn't believe myself if I hadn't experienced it" she replies. "Time travel, teleportation, dead people walking and smoke that can kill people those are some things you actually have to see to believe it. "

"Do you want me to go with you" Desmond offers "to collaborate your story? I was there too"

"Maybe, then I won't sound as crazy." She says with a small laugh.

"If you and your sister were as close as I'm imagining you are from the way you talk about her, the only thing that will matter to her is that you're alive" Penny says to her.

"Alive" Charlie repeats from his car seat next to her. She turns to smile at the boy. She sighs and sinks back in the seat. She was happy that it took a few months to sail here from Los Angeles because that gave her wounds some time to heal. She no longer looked like she was fell down an eighty story shaft, was crushed by a bunch of metal debris and blew up a hydrogen bomb. She held both her hands in front of her face and squeezed them, her left hand still couldn't close all the way, but it was no longer broken. The cuts on her face were still somewhat visible but they were fading. The biggest thing was she still needed a wheelchair to get around her legs were almost completely crushed by the metal, so they would take much longer to heal. She was lucky that the island had already started to heal her more serious injuries before she teleported.

"I've waited six years for this moment" she says.

"Then go see your sister" Penny tells her as Desmond gets out of the car and brings her wheelchair to her side. She opens the door and eases herself on the chair.

"Do you want me to go with?" Desmond asks.

"No, thank you but I need to this on my own" she says and Desmond nods his head in understanding.

"We'll call you when we find a hotel in case you need us" Penny says.

Juliet nods and watches Desmond get in the car and smile at her. She takes a deep breath and rolls over to the door. She closes her eyes to calm her breathing and rings the bell.

She hears a knock on the door and shakes her head at her husband who had made a stupid joke about ducks and thought it the funniest thing in the world. She turns her head and her mouth drops open and her heart all but stops at the sight in front of her. Those bright blue eyes are staring back at her, the same eyes that cried with happiness when she told her that it worked, that she was pregnant. "Juliet" she whispers before losing feeling in her legs.

Juliet watches as the door opens slowly, she could hear Rachel talking to someone. When she finally turns to face her, she watches all the color drain from her sister's face. She moves the chair quickly inside the house and catches her sister as she falls.

Rachel's eyes flutter open and she stares up at the woman. Her mouth keeps opening and closing with no sound coming out. "Juliet?" she finally manages to croak out.

"Yes, Rach. It's me" Juliet says.

"No, you're dead and I'm finally going crazy" She squeezes her eyes closed again hoping to make the hallucination go away. "I don't need this right now" she repeats to herself. "I've spend hundreds of dollars in therapy to be like this"

Juliet watches as her sister kept covering her eyes and peeking through them like she was playing peek-a-boo. "Rachel" Juliet says as her sister puts her hands over her face and repeats it again. Rachel's head was lying across her left arm she was holding it so she wouldn't hit the metal on her chair.

"No, no, you're not real" Her head keeps shakes back forth to try to get rid of the image. This was not the time to be going crazy.

Juliet gently places her hand on her sister face. "Rachel, I'm here and I'm real and you're kind of hurting of me"

Rachel looks down realizing she was still sprawled out across her lap. She jumps up and looks at the wheelchair with her sister sitting in it.

"What's going on? Who are you?" She hears a man's voice say.

She looks up and sees a man with brown hair in police uniform. "My name is Juliet…" she begins when Rachel interrupts.

"Kevin, you can see her?" Rachel asks him.

"Yes, I can see her. What happened?" He asks again concerned to see his wife looking like she's seen a ghost and asking strange question about if he can see a woman in a wheelchair in their doorway.

Rachel once again looks at the woman, she was still there "Juliet" Rachel says softly with tears forming in the corner of her eyes. She looks into the woman's eyes, they were Juliet's eyes. "Juliet" she says again walking closer to her.

"I'm real, Rachel. Believe me I'd given up hope of ever seeing you again too, but I'm real and I'm here." Juliet says with her own tears falling down her cheeks. Rachel places her hand over her younger sisters and kneels. Juliet places her other hand on top of Rachel's. Rachel pulls her hand out and leans forward to hug her and they cry on each other shoulders. When Rachel stands back up she has to wipe the tears from her eyes so she could see Juliet clearly. "How?" she asks. "They said you were dead, they said your plane crashed in the Sound and you were dead"

"I wasn't on that plane; the plane I was on was never going to Portland" Juliet tells her.

"Where was that plane going, where were you, Juliet?" Rachel asks. "Why are you in wheelchair? What happened?"

Her heart was rapidly beating against her chest as she looked at her sister. How could she tell her what she did, what she'd become.

"Why don't we invite her in and talk about this in the living room or at least inside the house" Kevin suggests.

"Right" Rachel says as Juliet rolls forward so Rachel could shut the door.

"I'm Kevin, by the way" The man says holding his hand out for Juliet to shake. "Kevin Callis"

"He's my husband" Rachel finishes for him.

"Husband" She says smiling at her sister. He had thick brown hair that stopped at the nape of his neck; he had blue eyes, kind eyes and a charming smile. She thinks about his name it sounded really familiar, but she shook her head; she didn't really care about that now. Her sister had her son, she was married and she had a house, she had a life and she was so happy for her.

A few minutes later Rachel was sitting on the couch in front of her with Kevin sitting besides her holding her hand as she told them the story.

"That company that recruited me" She begins.

"Mittelos Bioscience" Rachel says interrupting. "They were the ones that notified me of your death"

"Who did, did you get the name?"

"Richard Albert" Rachel tells her

Juliet closes her eyes and nods her head, of course it was Richard. "Mittelos Bioscience works for another group and in that group was a man that wanted me. He was the one that was holding me against my will" She was rushing through the story and she hated keeping things from her sister, but she couldn't tell Rachel about the things she's done.

"You were kidnapped!" Rachel says with her hands over her mouth.

"That was a very well throughout kidnapping" Kevin says to her.

"It was, because they did need me, the people on the island were unable to have children. The fetus' would reject the mother and kill both of them. I was kidnapped because they needed a fertility doctor"

"And you were the best" Rachel says to her.

"How did you get escape?" Rachel asks.

I teleported by blowing up a hydrogen bomb. How could she tell her sister that without sounding crazy? She had gotten so good at lying that they lies just came out. She couldn't tell her sister about what she had done, the person she became so she left that part out as well as the real story of her escape. She told them that a man named Desmond had crashed his boat on the island around the same time she arrived there and that he had rebuilt it and that is what they used to escape. She told them that there was a battle going on during the escape where Desmond had been shot and where she gotten her own injuries.

She told them that all she knew about the location of the island was that it was somewhere in the South Pacific which she had just found out from reading the survivor stories of Flight 815 because that is where the Oceanic Six were too. They ended up in LA where a woman found them and took them to a hospital and that's where she spent the past few months before she was well enough to find her.

Rachel ran over to her sister to hug her again. She knew Juliet was stronger then she looked but to have survived all that took some real strength.

"Mommy" a voice said from the hallway.

Juliet's head went to the doorway where a little boy was standing. Another little boy stood behind him with woman holding his hand.

"Sorry where a little late Rach" The woman said. "The boys wanted to stop at the gift shop"

"I gots a polar bear" he says holding the stuffed animal out for his mother to see.

Juliet's breath caught in her throat as she stared at him with tears forming in her eyes. He gotten so big from the last time she saw him on a grainy video feed in the Flame station. He was five now. The fact that he had a polar bear brought her thoughts back to the island but she shook it off. Her nephew was standing a few feet in front of her, the nephew she had wanted to meet since her sister told she was pregnant.

Rachel smiled at Juliet looking at her son. He wouldn't have existed it wasn't for her. She walked her friend to the door and thanked her for taking Julian to the zoo. She stood at the doorway and asked about the women in the wheelchair and she told her that she was a friend. She didn't want to lie but she did tell people that her sister was dead and she wasn't sure Juliet didn't want the exposure of being alive again quite yet.

She walked back into the room to see Kevin and Julian playing with the polar bear. Julian's attention was suddenly distracted from the polar bear and onto Juliet who was wiping the tears from her eyes. Rachel walks back over to them. "This is my son, Julian" she tells her.

Juliet looks up at Rachel; her hands were covering her mouth and nose as the tears just streamed down her face. She brought her hands together as if she was praying as she looked at the smiling blond boy making growling noises with the polar bear.

Julian turns when he hears her sniffling. He slides of the coach and walks over to her. "Who are you?" he asks.

Juliet looks to Rachel in what to say to him. Rachel nods her head. "I'm Juliet"

"Julian" he replies.

"Nice to meet you" She says with a smile.

"Why are you sad?" He asks "Is it cause your hurt?" he asks concerned.

"I'm not sad, I'm happy" She answers.

"Happy" He repeats "You're crying"

"You can cry when you're happy too" she tells him. His face contorts into confusion as he thinks about that one. Then he smiles at her, his attention then goes back to the polar bear.

Rachel smiled as her son for the first time met the woman that's responsible for him being here, his namesake. She looks back at her sister smiling at Julian and Kevin and she saw pain under that smile and knew Juliet was hiding something, she knew that story she told wasn't the complete truth.

Tbc…