'Great! You didn't leave!' Miles met him at the star station, looking mildly happy and partly sarcastic, it was like he knew James wouldn't actually leave. The why, would probably remain a mystery.

James scowled at him.

'What? Juliet did?' Miles frowned lightly, but sarcasm wasn't a tone for him, it was almost like his accent.

'Na, that Quinn guy did,' James answered tiredly, taking the clipboard from Miles and filling out his form for his shift. Damn protocols.

'Wow, they broke up?' Miles was smiling lightly now, looking pleased…with something or rather.

'Na, he just left her, that fu-,' James began, but never finished, sudden realization dawning on him. Just because they didn't handle money any more it didn't mean it didn't exist out there in the real world.

If money hadn't existed in the seventies, he would probably be a stable and happy adult, not stuck on an island and not a crude, emotional cripple. Wow, he was a real train-wreck when you put it like that.

'Did he come and talk to ya?' James asked, serious and one eye squinting more than the other as it did when he was speculating something big.

A surge of anger usually followed these squints. Miles knew as well as anyone around James and his grin crumbled and fell off; a dead thing in his sub conscious.

'Yeah.'

James waited for him to continue, but when he didn't he prompted him with a cutting look and a gentle quirk of his eyebrows, closing the meter between them by a foot.

'Ahem, he…well, he asked me about our "ship",' Miles began, his voice wracked with nerves. He wasn't even sure why himself. 'He asked about what we were doing before and I fed him the same crap about the Black Rock wreck.'

'Money? What did he ask about financial stuff?'

Miles frowned, suddenly confused and no longer scared. 'How do you know he asked about that?'

James raised both eyebrows in great surprise; he hadn't known that, but he had been in the business long enough to guess. 'What did he ask? What did you say?'

'I said…I said we put our money together, most of our savings to make up for the ship we were going on. We were looking for some adventure, getting bored with our city lives, shit like that…' he trailed off once he saw James having some sort of break down.

James paced away from him, his head in his hands, his eyes large with anger and fear. He turned at the small boundaries of the room, like a wild animal in a cage. Untamed, but tortured and punished. He gave a mutilated shout mingled with a scream and abruptly took hold of Miles.

He pawed at Miles with his large hands, gathering the front of his jumpsuit and ramming him back into the wall with force. His breathing was heavy and Miles immediately felt fear. A dark liquid lapping at the sides of his feet, threatening to take over.

'You DUMBASS! Son. Of. A. BITCH! You told him we were broke! You told him, SHE was broke!' James shouted pumping his fists into Miles' scrawny frame with every word. He knew it wasn't Miles' fault. It had even been better that Miles had stopped Quinn from taking her back in a way. That would make things worse. If he left her in the middle of nowhere, that would be right mess.

So why wasn't James thanking Miles?

Miles slipped out of his lumbering hands at his first chance. 'WHY?' he shouted, holding a hand out when James began to come for him again.

That's right, James was an emotional cripple for now.

'He was conning her! He was a fucking CON MAN!' James shouted slamming his hands on the control panel hard. 'He was looking for money. The entire time! AND I SAW IT! I KNEW IT!'

Miles stared at him, his glare softening slightly. 'Its not your fault…she wouldn't listen.'

James' head snapped up and his eyes cut into Miles'. 'I shouldn't have told her! I should've killed the asshole. SHOULD'VE stopped it!'

Miles still didn't understand why James was so angered by this. Juliet would get over Quinn soon enough it was a fling and James was a friend. He had no responsibility to do anything. He hadn't failed anything.

He had no obligations.

'Enjoy your shift,' Miles shot at him, rubbing his bruising neck and beginning to take his leave. If James was messed up, there was no helping that. Let him be.


James is scared of spiders. James is scared of the dark. James is scared of the boogieman. So why is momma telling him to get under the bed? She knows he hates it doesn't she? So why?

'I love you,' she whispers to him, giving him a tight embrace, before ushering him under the bed.

But I don't wanna go under the bed, James thinks as he is propelled forward on his band-aided knee. It stings and he cringes in pain, but his too nervous to make any noise. He hates going under the bed! But he can feel something bad is happening. Something terrible is going to happen and he retreats further into the wallowing darkness as shouts waft up from the stairs.

He stays very still on his elbows and knees, like when he and his cousins play commando and hide and seek. He wonders when they'll come down to their place again to play.

POP! BANG!

He startles and jumps, landing hard on his forearms and tears gathering in his eyes, making it hard to see. That doesn't mean he can't see the sharp jag of light cutting across the room as the door is opened. That doesn't mean he doesn't see the worn leather boots as they approach the bed.

James lays lower as the bed screams in agony and approaches him from above, threatening to crush him. He thinks of the boogieman and his spider friends hiding in the funnels of the bed, ready to eat him if his under it, but scared of him if his on it.

He wants to get on the bed…but his daddy's sitting there.

POP! BANG!

The bed violently lunges down at him and shivers for a moment, the boogieman wails and moans above him, echoing in the shadows of his mind.

James can't hear anything, but a piercing silence spiking into his ears and seeping into him. It hurts to have ears for a few minutes, before sirens take it up. His heart starts up again and he thinks of the sound cowboys with guns make, but he can't quiet process the image of his daddy as the highway gang leader and his mamma the bitch who owned the highway gang leader.

He crawls out from under the bed oblivious to his own fragmented life, his tears all for the pain shooting through his bones. He can feel a lump in his throat as he crawls out through a curtain of his daddy's legs and doesn't look back. He runs, bare-footed and unstable. As he skids around the corner and reaches the stairs he sees a limp figure on the floorboard, but its too dark to see much. James just sees the boogieman and he flees past, slipping on a thick, sticky liquid as he goes, falling down the stairs.

Falling, falling and falling. The fall never ending. His feet sticky with the boogieman's goo and his elbows and knees on fire.

Somewhere in his fall he grew up and he knew it was his fault for acting like a kid. For being scared. He should've protected her or at least been with her instead of cowering under the bed. So, that was then and he could be excused for an eight year old with knobby knees and irrational thoughts...but Juliet? He could've protected her from Quinn, he should've.

He should've fought Quinn properly and held him away.

Why was his damn life filled with these reoccurring nightmares he could never stop in time?

'Jim! Jim!' James' eyes fluttered open and he swallowed, rising out of his clearest memory and dream. He looked at eyes covered by glasses for a long minute, before remembering what followed that nightmarish night.

'H?' ha, if he could get fired, this would probably be it.

'Jim, we have a problem, three of our guys are caught out of the perimeter, they're being chased by that…that…THING! They need help!' Horace obviously has no time for lectures; sweat thick on his brow and his hair tangled and messier than it usually was.

James jumps to his feet, his knees weak for a long second. He eventually gathered himself and followed Horace through the sun split commune and into a hippie van at the motor pool.

Thank God Quinn wasn't around.

Where was Juliet though? She liked her job.

He didn't have time to worry. He had a real boogieman to deal with now.


She ate when she got home, thank you very much (James). Things after that took a slightly better definition and she was able to look around and assess her destroyed life with a little more realism.

Therefore, she was still fucked.

Juliet stood at the window and took a deep breath. Okay, so…so now, she waited until the submarine came back and she would get more test (all of them) and try out again.

She took a deep swing of her "OJ". Okay, so maybe she couldn't wait…wait…wait…

Fuck waiting.

She changed again into something a little less shabby and left the house, determined to go through with the blood test. She just had to know. Juliet made it without too much damage and by the time she entered the cooled and white infirmary it was just about one in the afternoon. She waited for the doctor at the reception area, not willing to wait much longer than a few seconds, when…

'Oh, hello Juliet,' Bella's half-lidded eyes met Juliet's vibrant blue ones…and world war three was about to commence. Bella's tone was asking for it and Juliet was purposively pregnant, so she couldn't quite control her actions. Not that she wanted to anyway.

Juliet swallowed however and took a deep breath to calm her self. 'I'm looking for the Doctor…'

'He has gone out for an emergency…don't know what though, he just rushed off…' Bella told her, flicking back her long ponytail. Hmmm, just one pull would even be satisfying, Juliet thought.

'So, any nurses around?'

'Well, I'm a nurse in training and I can do most of your basic stuff…' Bella answered proudly. 'You know, I'm studying to get a real degree.'

You are a stain on all branches of the medical profession. 'Can you do blood tests?'

Bella nodded off-handedly, looking partly offended at the thought that Juliet was underestimating her. 'Come on, I'll get it done in a sec.'

Juliet followed her, her temper firing up. She wasn't even that angry with Bella, she already knew she just needed somewhere to pump out frustrations about Quinn and a possibility of becoming a single mum in nine months.

She could start venting by being a bitch to Bella.

Juliet observed as Bella went through the procedure of taking blood, getting the what-not's ready and cleansing, then numbing the veins on the reverse side of Juliet's elbow. She smiled at Juliet artificially as she inserted the needle and flicked the tube for a moment.

'So…why is it you need this blood test?'

Juliet leaned back into the chair a little. Should she? Should she?

'I took the pregnancy test, but I just want to make sure, because they aren't always that accurate. James and I just want to be sure,' Juliet told Bella calmly as if passing on salon gossip.

Well, he had offered and she never said James was…it anyway.

Suddenly she felt the syringe pulled out of her skin, making it sting badly. Juliet cringed a little and waited until she got a band-aid on, not looking up at Bella for the entire time so she could hide the tears from her.

When she did look up, she wanted to start laughing. Bella's lips were pressed into a thin line and her eyes were dark with malice. She seemed at the verge of tears and a scream at the same time.

'We'll send you the results.'

'Thanks,' Juliet smiled lightly and left, feeling a lot lighter.

Well, it would probably be out everywhere that she and James were going out, and that she and Quinn never did. She wondered what James would think, but she figured it didn't matter much since he had made the offer.

Suddenly however her thoughts were interrupted by a speeding vans screeching to a stop a few feet from her. She watched in stunned silence as Horace pulled open the door and with the help of Miles pulled James out of the van, his leg bloodied and torn.

She was at his side before she even knew. 'James! …What happened?'

Horace, however, was too busy panting.


Alright, this took a very long time to figure out and I wasn't really sure...but hopefully I didn't kill it too much. Anyway, review etc etc :)

Thanks for reading