The Others

JULIET

Desmond and I sat at the small kitchen table, eating cheese sandwiches and discussing what had happened. I began from the beginning, when James came up from the water in all of his shirtless glory, black smoke in the back ground. It was where we began. It was really the first time we talked. We shared a drink, watching the boat that we believed the person each of us cared for most were on disappear. I stared into the blackness, seeing Jack's face, and he did the same, seeing Kate's. It brought us together, losing them. I wanted to laugh at myself. Was there really a time that I thought I belonged with Jack?

I told him about the flashes, and Charlotte and Dan.

"Sawyer was banging on your door like a madman. That's when Charlotte got sick awful nosebleed. We gave up and left. Dan told us we couldn't change anything.

"I remember that," Desmond said.

My eyes widened. "You do?"

"He kept knocking, Dan. I finally went and he told me I had to go see his mother at Oxford. Then he disappeared. I didn't know what to think. I thought I was crazy, hallucinating or something. The next time I saw him, back…or now, I guess, in 2004, I didn't remember. I guess cause it didn't happen yet? But three years later, I woke up, and it was there."

"Wow. So, it's like the two times were going on all at once, and you talking to Daniel didn't really happen until he made it happen. And, when he did, it was at the same time as when you were home? Does that make sense?"

"Does any of this?" He asked.

I smiled. "No, I guess not."

He got up and cleaned off his plate. "Why do we remember?" He wondered out loud.

I followed him to the sink. "Well, we were already here. They never had any contact with the island. So, it's affecting us differently." It's the only thing that made sense.

He nodded thoughtfully as he cleaned his plate methodically. I wondered if he realized there was a dishwasher right next to him, but didn't want to interrupt his thoughts.

I sunk back into my chair and put my head in my hands. I tried not to think. The thoughts that came were impossible to deal with.

"So," Desmond said slowly, coming back to the table. I looked up. "You think The Others remember too?"

I had to consider that one a bit. "No." I responded finally. He eyed me skeptically. "When we were time traveling, they didn't come with us. We moved, but they stayed. They were…connected to the island in a way that we weren't. If the island is the same as it was in 2004, then they are too." I prayed I was right. It was logical, but that didn't mean it was true. The island didn't follow the rules.

Desmond just nodded. "Makes sense. But there is only one way to be sure." He raised an eyebrow at me.

"No." I said sharply as soon as I understood. "No, definitely not. Desmond, you don't understand what it was like for me there. Ben loved me-loves me. I was trapped. They wouldn't allow me to leave. I was-am no more free than you. They will come looking for me. And they can't take me back there. This is one of the only places on the entire god damned island they don't have control over. Please, Desmond. I can't leave. I can't go back there." I stared into his eyes, pleading.

He looked at me for a moment, and then nodded to the side. "Extra beds in there."

"Thank you," I whispered, leaning over to hug him. I couldn't believe how pathetic I was being.

"You never finished." He said, ruining the moment. I moved back to my side of the table.

"What?"

"How we got here."

Oh. Right. I began where I left off, giving him the quick version.

"Well, it was just me, James, Locke, Miles, Dan and Charlotte. And then," I laughed at the beauty and impossibility of the memory. "While we were in hiding, we saw someone. We thought it was a Dharma worker, or, worse, an Other. Sawyer held him at gunpoint, and then he turned around, and it was Jin."

"Jin?" Desmond was incredulous. "It can't be. He died, I saw it happen." He winced, recalling the time, no doubt. Seeing the boat blow up from afar was bad enough. Being right there, seeing all the people, seeing Jin, seeing Sun watching it; I couldn't even imagine. I couldn't stop myself from putting myself and James in the same situation. I cringed and answered quickly to get the pictures out of my mind.

"But he didn't. He got back here, swam or something. He found us. Locke found a way to stop the flashes. It was too late for Charlotte. Jin made Lock promise not to tell Sun he was alive." Desmond opened his mouth to ask before I continued. "He didn't want her coming back, Charlotte said to never bring her back. He didn't want her to die too.

"Well, Locke died or disappeared, we never really found out. But, either way, he was gone. Dan had a bit of a breakdown after Charlotte and after effectively joining the Dharma group, we sent him off on the sub to the other Dharma island so he couldn't do anything rash and risk having us exposed. Things were going pretty well. James and I, we got pretty close and ended up living together-" Desmond broke me off with a burst of laughter.

"You and Sawyer? Wow, I did not see that one coming! Way to go, brotha!" I waited, arms folded and glaring like an old school teacher. His hysterics began to fade. "You done?"

He looked up at me and laughed once more before nodding. "Yeah, I'm good."

I sighed. "Anyhow, yes, Sawyer and I went out. We were happy, until three years later. Jin called to tell us. They had come back. Jack, Hurley…Kate." It was hard to get the name out. "Sayid was back to, but he wasn't as…fortunate. He was found in the Jungle, and they thought he was a hostile. He was held prisoner. Ended up escaping and shooting an eleven year old Ben. Kate and Sawyer took him to the others to save him. Phil-he worked with James-got it on film. That's when it all started to get out of hand. Dan came back with all these plans to ignite a bomb that would bring us back to the crash. Apparently it had something to do with stopping the radiation some incident set of while building this." I motioned to the room around me. "If we could stop it, they wouldn't need to have the button and the plane would never have crashed." I paused, looking over at the numbers slowly heading toward zero. "I guess it didn't fully work," I mumbled, feeling guilty. Miles was right, we caused it. The bomb was the incident.

"Um, Dan got shot and killed trying to reason with the others." I tried to remember the details. Kate had filled me us after. "It was, the strangest thing. His mother, Eloise, killed him. And Richard was there, and, some other guy…Charles."

Desmond's entire body went numb.

"Desmond?"

He grabbed my wrist. "What was his name? Charles? What was his last name?"

"Um, I don't know. Why?"

"Whitmore! Was it Whitmore?!"

"Desmond, I don't know! I wasn't there; I only know what Kate told me."

He released my arm roughly. "That son of a bitch," he muttered. His eyes burned with hate.

I moved on quickly. "Jack was determined to set off the bomb. James and I were on our way to the outside world when Kate got on the sub to get us to help her stop Jack. So we went back. And somehow in the whole mess we ended up agreeing to erasing it all," I decided to leave out all the gory details. "Sayid got shot, and was about to die. Jack, Kate, James, and I went to take care of the bomb. We threw it into the hole, but it didn't work. It began a magnetic pull. I-I got caught in some chains. They pulled me down. Kate and James tried to get me out but it was useless. I had to let go, or else I'd pull James under with me. I fell for what felt like miles. I hit the bottom, and was still awake. I was being tortured in a worse version of hell. Stuck down there in all the pain, alone, unable to move. That's when I saw it. The bomb, perfectly intact. It took all that was left in me, but it was the only way to save them. I grabbed a piece of the debris surrounding me and hit the bomb until one final white light came. When I opened my eyes, I was laying above the hatch, totally unscathed." I took a long, deep breath.

"Wow," Desmond stared at me, his eyes full of sympathy. "You really went through a lot, didn't you?"

I nodded, holding back a tear. There was nothing more to say. We sat in silence, staring at our laps and fiddling with the hems of our clothes.

"So," Desmond broke the silence. "You don't think anyone else remembers?"

I shook my head. "I'm almost sure of it."

It was his turn to lay his face in his hands. "What about Penny?" he cried. "What about Charlie?"

"Charlie?"

He brought his hands down just enough so that I could see his red, tear rimmed eyes. "My son."