Few years back

Julie was running out of time. If it didn't work, she would simply have to stop. She'd been deliberately walking down this corridor in her university that exact day of the week and in that exact time, so she would pass her former professor on his way to his office. She'd been crashing on the guy ever since she'd seen him her first year. Physically, he was simply perfect and added to that, he was smart. What more could she possibly want? He could actually be a model, but yet, he'd chosen an academic career, which only impressed her more. Still, she knew this was starting to be ridiculous. He hadn't seemed to notice her the way she wanted him to and she needed to stop before she would make a fool out of herself. Yet, she just couldn't imagine letting go and never seeing him again. Now, with only days separating her from graduation, she didn't seem to have any other choice.

She looked at her watch and then walked down the corridor. She already spotted him approaching her from the opposite side. Now or never, she figured. Here goes nothing.

And then, there was a man behind Roys, a man fastening up until he walked past him and… his arm barreled straight into Julie, causing her to stumble and lose her balance.

Suddenly, a pair of hands held her up, making sure she wouldn't fall to the ground.

"Hey! Watch your steps!" Alexander Roys called after the man who'd almost knocked Julie down. "Are you all right?" he then asked her when meeting her eyes, his hands still placed on her shoulders.

It took her a moment before she finally nodded and said, "Yeah, thank you," in a strained voice. She didn't expect this to happen, yet she couldn't be happier. She could as well run after the other man and thank him.

"Are you sure?" Roys asked again when finally letting go of her.

"Yes."

"Wait, I know you. You took one of my classes, didn't you?" he suddenly asked and she groaned internally. So he hadn't even noticed her before? There went her hard work of trying to get his attention.

"Well, yes," she admitted, wishing she'd developed a broader dictionary in his presence by now. "I enjoyed it very much," she added quickly.

"I hope you're not saying that just to make me feel better," he joked and actually smiled to her, causing her to feel all giddy.

"Oh, no, it was very interesting," she assured him when reciprocating the smile and nearly losing herself in his blue eyes.

"Listen, would you like to get some coffee? What are you doing right now?" he then asked the one question she'd been dying to hear and therefore, made her the happiest girl alive.

"I would love to. I have nothing to do right now anyway. I'm graduating, after all."

When Julie and Alex made their way to the cafeteria, Jacob peaked from a corner. He was the one who'd deliberately bumped into Julie. His job there was done.

Now

Desmond arrived at his work and prepared himself to meet with a potential client. The deal he could make would bring the company's subsidiary millions of dollars and once Sun came back from the island, if - his mind corrected immediately when getting him into more somber mood, she would be so proud of him.

Only once Desmond walked into the conference room, he saw a face he'd thought he would never have to see again. He froze on his way to the table, then he finally schooled himself and raised his voice immediately, "You!" He pointed a finger at the man. "What the hell are you doing here?!"

"It's nice to see you, too, Desmond," Charles Widmore said with a smirk on his face and then he raised from his seat, coming closer. "I believe the last time we saw each other…"

"…you called me a coward and a man not worthy of your daughter?" Hume finished after Widmore. "Yes, I remember that. The next thing I knew she died in a car crash. Are you still feeling guilty that the last conversation you had with her was about how unfit I was for her?" Desmond asked bitterly.

"Why? It was the truth," Charles just said and shrugged.

"Really?" Desmond didn't have the patience for that man. He didn't care about money, he never really did, so that was why he simply said, "Get out."

"Well, let's not be so hasty here, Desmond," Charles just told him calmly. "I have a proposition for you."

"I don't care. I don't care if it brings millions to this company. You need to leave and you need to do it now! I don't want to see you ever again!" Des said and directed himself back to the door.

"I found the island, Desmond." Charles chose the moment to inform and Desmond froze with his hand already on the doorknob.

"Excuse me?" He turned back to the older man, a frown marrying his face as he heard that.

"I did my research. You were there. You crashed on the very island I've spent most of my life searching for. Did you know that?" Widmore went on and it only brought more confusion to Desmond.

"What do you want from me?" Hume just asked in an exasperated voice. "I don't care about the island. I spent the worst time of my life there. And if you want information, you should know better. I will never give you anything."

"I don't want information, Desmond, I want you to go there with me. I need you there," Widmore said and it dumbfounded the Scotsman completely. Then he actually laughed the old man in the face.

"Are you out of you mind?" he finally asked when still laughing. "Nothing and no one will ever drag me back there!"

"Even your own wife?" Widmore hinted when Desmond turned to the door and yet again, he came to a sudden stop.

"What did you just say?"

"She's already on her way there, Desmond."

"You're lying."

"Ok, let's say I am. Go back to your house and see for yourself. She's on her way, trust me. And we both know that you won't let yet another woman you love, die."

In that very moment Desmond felt like his life started crumbling down around him. He knew Julie never wanted to come back to the island, he was a witness to her saying no to Jack. Why would she change her mind? Unless… Unless someone did it for her!

Without asking another question, Desmond grabbed his phone and called Julie. She never answered.

"Did you do something to her?" he finally asked Charles.

"No, I had absolutely nothing to do with it, but I must say that what happened is quite convenient for me since we both know that if there is something to convince you to come back to the island, this is it."

The first thing Julie began being aware of was somebody's voice calling her name. It got to her like from a very large distance. It was distorted, ragged… and it was calling her by her name. She slowly realized that her head was aching, thumping violently and she winced at the pain. Then it occurred to her that the air she was breathing into her lungs felt different somehow, it was heavier, thicker than she remembered. There was also a hum coming from nearby, like water falling down and crashing into rocks. A waterfall, something told Julie and she finally managed to sharpen her senses.

"Julie! Julie, wake up! Open your eyes!" somebody was still calling her and she finally realized that she knew that voice well. It belonged to Jack.

They were on a plane… and then the light… She remembered.

Julie opened her eyes widely and then closed them just as fast, blinded by the light attacking her pupils and only worsening her headache. She groaned loudly and winced, deciding it would be better if her eyes just stayed closed.

"Julie, you need to open your eyes. I need to know that you're ok. Does anything hurt?" Jack started talking to her again and that in addition to the heaviness of the air and the sound of the waterfall nearby, finally started making sense to her. She was lying on the ground, she realized. A very hard ground and then she became aware of the soreness she felt all over her body.

They were back on the island, she came to a conclusion and actually raised herself to a sitting position.

"Easy there," Jack spoke again and she felt his hands on her arms. "Are you all right?" he made sure one more time and she finally opened her eyes and this time didn't close them. She looked straight into Jack's worried face.

"I-I'm fine," she finally managed to say and then she slowly looked around. She was right. There were in the part of the island with the waterfall. She spotted the worried faces of Kate and Hugo, but besides them and Jack, there was no one else around. "We're back," Julie stated the obvious.

"Yes, we are," Jack confirmed. "And I can't even explain how we found ourselves here. One minute we were just sitting on the plane and then…"

"The light," Julie cut in. "Yes, that was weird. I guess we should be happy that we're still alive."

"We wouldn't die," Hurley assured her. "The island is not done with us yet."

"Well, I wonder what happens once it is done with us," Julie said sarcastically. It was really hard on her to just come back to the one place she'd wished she'd never have to see again. The only good memories she had from her first time around were connected to meeting Desmond and falling in love with him, but he wasn't here now. He was back home, probably worried sick about her. And it made her feel so sorry for him. Her heart was actually breaking. Ben had done a great job, after all, when predicting that she would feel like this.

"Where's the rest?" Julie asked when getting to her feet with the help of Jack who held his hand out to her for purchase.

"I wish I knew," he said. "I think we need to keep moving. We need to find them."

They all nodded in agreement and set off in the direction of their old camp, the path bringing up so many memories to the surface. Only they didn't even manage to walk far. Suddenly, there was a car pulling by. A car with the Dharma logo on the side and all four of the survivors came to a stop, looking at the vehicle in total and utter confusion. There had been a car the first time around on the island, too, Julie remembered as Hurley had actually found it and fixed. But then it'd broken again when they'd used it to come back to the beach to fight the others. And that car had been rusty and old whereas this one looked brand new.

And then Jin, Sun's husband, stepped out of the vehicle and pointed a gun at them. Once realizing who they were, he lowered it and… spoke in perfect English.

The fact that they were back on the island apparently wasn't enough. Somehow, they were back in the seventies. They were actually in the past.

Once they talked with Jin, he called for Sawyer who came to meet them immediately, stunned to see them all there. In the end, there was really no other choice for him but to enroll them all into the Initiative. Now Julie was wearing a lei around her neck when sitting in one of Dharma's houses. There were too many of new recruits and all Sawyer could do was to make it look like an unfortunate mistake. Initially, there was a house appointed per family or per a member, but in this case, Julie needed to share hers with Kate and Jack with Hurley. Sawyer apparently lived with Juliet and more than that, they were actually a couple. All in all, the day was very busy and very surreal for Julie and once it finally came to an end, she felt dazed by everything. Dazed and more lonely than ever before. She just wanted to come back home to Desmond, yet there was thousands of miles separating them, not to mention the years, and it was so hard for her to take in. It was so hard to think that she might actually never see him again. Getting out of the island in the first place was hard, not to mention trying to get to their actual timeline first, then finding Claire and then finding a way out. They didn't even know where their plane landed and if it even happened. It might've as well crashed. Or disappeared into the thin air, Julie thought as she remembered as Sawyer checked the radars and then told them that there had been no plane flying over the island or even close to it recently. It was all very confusing.

When she found herself locked in her room, she was exhausted but she still wasn't sure that she would even be able to fall asleep. It didn't matter that she had a bed this time around and a roof over her head, she was still back on the island and the knowledge of that seemed unbearable to her. How was she supposed to do this again? How was she supposed to just get out there, into the Dharma village the next day and pretend to actually be happy to be there? To be happy to be working there? She never wanted to come here. She was forced to and she hated that. She was sick of everything always coming down to the island. Couldn't she just be freaking free of it already? The fact that she was alone in there only made everything worse. She wouldn't want Desmond to have to come back as he'd spent so much more time trapped there completely alone, locked in the hatch, forced to push a damned button every 108 minutes. Still, it didn't mean that she didn't miss him. She wasn't sure how she would fall asleep without him by her side, without his warm arms holding her or just without his presence on the other side of the bed. Once she actually got under the covers, she couldn't stand the defeating silence. It only proved to her that she wasn't living in the city, not even on the suburbs, she was on an island and if Desmond was still out there somewhere, at the moment he was barely a newborn somewhere in Scotland. There was truly nothing left for Julie to do but to cry herself to sleep.

The moment Julie started to wake up in the morning, she felt content and rested. She didn't even remember waking up during the night, which could only mean that she'd been so tired that she'd succumbed to deep sleep. She stretched herself lazily and that was the moment she realized something was off. The bed didn't feel like the one she usually slept in, the one she'd shared with Desmond for so long now. And where was Desmond anyway? She wondered when her hand met noting but the sheets on her left side. And then it hit her even stronger than the day before - there simply was no Desmond. He wasn't there as she was back on the island. Added to that, she was in the seventies in the Dharma Initiative village. She had been forced to come back by Ben and she'd never felt more powerless in her life. She hadn't felt that way even when she'd left that hotel apartment in Australia when going to catch the plane. She hadn't even felt that way once the plane had crashed and she'd found herself stranded on the exact same island she was on right now. Back then it hadn't been anyone's deliberate doing, but this time it was. This was her being blackmailed by a grand manipulator and liar, Benjamin Linus, and forcefully brought back. To do what? She wondered. She didn't know the answer and it was killing her. She hated when someone else made decisions for her, when someone else forced her to do something she didn't want to do. At first, she was just angry, so furious that if Linus suddenly walked into her bedroom, she would throw something at him or maybe even jump to him to strangle him with her bare hands. Then she was just hurt. She missed her husband and she truly didn't know how she would get through this again.

Only she had to. She simply had to get through this. There was no alternative. She would never lose her hope, she decided right then and there. She would live for hope and for the day she would be able to leave. She just couldn't admit defeat. She couldn't believe that once they'd traveled back in time, they wouldn't be able to do that again. With that, Julie forced herself to finally get up and stop moping. She could only act from now on. She was sure that Jack and the rest also didn't want to stay here.

It'd been almost three weeks. Three weeks trapped in the seventies. Three weeks of working for the Dharma Initiative. Faraday had come back to the island and yet, he didn't have a clue of how to get them back to their timeline. He was still working on it, but so far Julie hadn't heard anything optimistic. And then there was the other problem she had, a problem which was nagging at her hard and she wasn't really sure that she wanted to even to talk about it with anyone. She knew the best choice for this kind of a talk would be Juliet. She didn't know the woman well, but she was the only one Julie could trust right now to go to for an advice as it was her field of expertise. Still, Julie was just scared. She didn't want to know. She'd rather live in a blissful ignorance. Only when she'd thrown up the third morning in a row, Kate really started worrying about her. Julie told her it was nothing, that she was just having indigestion and after having washed her teeth, she went out to get something and once she came back home, she locked herself up in the bathroom.

"Julie!" Kate knocked on the door. "Julie, are you sure you're all right?" she asked. "I'm really worrying about you here."

"Yes! I'm fine!" Julie shouted back quickly when sitting on the edge of the bathtub and looking dazedly at the stick she held in her hand.

And then, a few minutes later or maybe more, Julie couldn't really tell as her whole attention was focused on the one issue at hand, there was another knock on the door. She ignored it, trying to just breath evenly, in and out, trying to just focus on her breathing so she wouldn't start panicking. So she wouldn't start counting the days she had left…

"Julie? Kate got me. She said you've been sick lately. Is everything all right? May I come in?" Jack asked from the other side of the door.

At first she didn't answer and he called out to her again, this time his voice sounded scared and she finally yielded. "Come in," she said with a resigning sigh. She needed to talk to a doctor, after all, and Jack was both a doctor and her friend.

The door opened and he walked inside, closing it immediately after. He spotted her just sitting on the edge of the bathtub and he walked over to her, taking a seat right next to her.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Do you think we'll stay here forever?" Julie just asked him when meeting his eyes, but then his sight shifted to what she was still holding in her hand.

His mouth parted for a moment, an ambiguous look appeared on his face and she wasn't sure whether it was a happy or troubled one.

"Are you pregnant?" he finally asked and she threw the stick into the trash without answering him. "Julie, I honestly do not know if we'll ever come back," he then answered her previous question. " But we need to have hope. There has to be a way to bring us all back to our timeline. We got here somehow, didn't we? So we need to get out."

"We were trying to get pregnant," Julie suddenly confessed when looking down at her hands. "Me and Desmond. We were ready to finally start a family and then…" she stopped, taking a deep and shaky breath. "It worked. I am pregnant now, Jack," she confessed when meeting his eyes from aside. "I'm pregnant and I'm so, so scared. What if… What if I never get to see him again? What if I have to give birth to this baby here? Am I supposed to wait another twenty years and then go to Scotland to see a younger version of Desmond? And then what? I won't stand him making a life for himself without me in it."

"Hey, hey, this won't happen," Jack told her when grasping her hand to give her some comfort. "It just won't, ok? I promise."

"You don't know that and you can't possibly promise that. Even if we come back…" Julie started again, finally facing what she'd been so afraid of a moment earlier. "If we come back to our timeline and I don't get out of the island on time… I'll die, Jack. I will die and the baby will die, too."

Jack frowned as though he tried to remember something and then he finally did. Pregnant women died on the island.

"But this baby wasn't conceived here," he pointed out. "There should be no danger then, should there?"

"Even if, there's still a chance something can go wrong. I know that Claire had Aaron on the island, but she was taken by the others first, remember? They did something to her to make sure she and the baby were healthy. And even if, she was so close to giving birth. She was way past the week in which the women on the island usually died. I'm not. I just found out!" Julie raised her voice, actually wheezing by now, so scared she was getting. Leaving Desmond back in LA was bad, but it was to save his life. And now not only she might not come back to him, but one day he might actually find out that he lost both her and their unborn baby. This would truly destroy him, she knew that much.

"Ok," Jack just said when thinking hard over the issue. "Ok, then we simply stay here until you have that baby."

"I can't, Jack. I just… can't. I won't do this without Desmond. I am aware that otherwise my life might be threatened, but I need to believe that I'll get home in time. I just can't do this alone." She kept shaking her head.

"But you won't be alone," he assured her and put his arm around her, pulling her closer to his body and giving her the much needed support. Julie gave in to his embrace, tired of holding on, tired of doing everything by herself. She might seem strong, but on the inside she was a one big mess. She was terrified of the upcoming future. The decision to get pregnant hadn't been easy for her in the first place as she'd had to get over so many issues she'd had and now, atop of it all, she was in a mortal danger because of it. It was too much to take in for one person, especially when she was separated from her husband whom she missed like crazy.

And then suddenly, Jack shifted and his lips were on hers, kissing her. At first she froze, surprised by what was happening and not really understanding why. Then she finally woke up and jumped to her feet, breaking the kiss and getting away from Jack.

"What are you doing?!" she asked, even more confused now than ever.

"I-I don't know," Jack admitted, seeming slightly dazed. "I'm sorry, Julie. I didn't mean to do that. I didn't plan on it, I swear."

"Jack, I'm happily married," she told him, still being confused. "Why would you do something like this?"

"I-I don't know," he said again and hid his face in his hands when sighing deeply. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. Maybe it's just that I always feel the need to fix everything. You were hurting and I… I just wanted… I don't know what I was thinking. I know I could never replace Desmond."

"Well, here's some news for you!" Julie told him, actually getting angry with him. "You can't fix everything, Jack! Some things are just beyond your control! You had a life! You actually had a perfect life when we left the island in the first place! You had Kate and Aaron and you were still practicing medicine and then… then you had that stupid idea planted in your head that you needed to come back to the island to help the rest! You keep finding new things you think you need to fix! It's not healthy! And look where you are now! Now you want us to actually stay here for nine months, so I could have my baby?! Are you out of your fucking mind?!" Maybe she was being too hard on him, but she didn't care. He needed to hear it. He needed to change. She wouldn't stay in Dharma Initiative even a second longer than it was necessary. She wanted to go home no matter what the cost! And it was her decision. Maybe it was a stupid one, but she wouldn't stay, she needed to come back to Desmond. She needed and loved her husband more than anything in the entire universe and without each other, they would be simply left broken. Without the other person, they would've never mended each other the way they'd done.

"I think you should just go," Julie said after a moment of silence.

"I just want to help you," Jack tried one more time when finally raising up to his feet and directing himself to the door.

"Yeah, well, I thought I needed your help, but not like this, Jack. What I need right now is to come back to our time. If you want to help me, make that happen."

Julie couldn't believe this. She just couldn't believe how someone whom she trusted so completely could just betray her like this! They'd left the Dharma Initiative when Faraday had apparently come up with an idea. It'd been still unclear to Julie back then, but the knowledge of the upcoming purge in Dharma had been enough for her not to ask any questions and just follow the rest out of the village. It was once she heard about the bomb Jack was getting and about his plan that she actually went ballistic. Faraday was dead by now and there was no one else who could figure out the time traveling, therefore theoretically they didn't have any choice but to do what Jack wanted them to. Only then Julie discovered that Jack didn't actually plan on getting them back to their original timeline, no, he actually wanted to blow up the magnet that would in the future be in the hatch along with Desmond. No magnet, no hatch = no plane crash.

Temporarily, Julie was too stunned to actually say or do anything. She could just sit on the ground and think hard over the issue. It seemed so incomprehensible to her that with one bomb they could actually change their whole lives and not only theirs, but also the lives of the people who'd died in the plane crash and after it. Shannon, Boone, Ana Lucia, Libby… the list was very long and all those people would get their second chance at life. Still, it slowly dawned on Julie that without the plane crash she would never meet Desmond, fall in love with him, come back with him to LA and marry him. She couldn't imagine, couldn't even comprehend her life without him now. She'd been so broken back then on the plane after everything that had happened to her in Australia. So broken and so lost. How could she ever go back to that? She didn't need another chance. She liked the one she had right now. Well, technically she and Desmond had been brutally parted, but there had to be another way to find a solution to that. There was always a way, wasn't there?

"Julie, are you all right?" Kate asked when approaching her.

"No, of course I'm not all right!" Julie raised her voice immediately and the brunette hesitated.

"Julie, I know this is hard…"

"No! You don't know anything!" Julie stood up from the ground and faced her friend. "It won't make much of a difference for you since you and Jack will be on the same fucking plane and maybe, just maybe, fate will bring you two together again! Well, guess what?! Whereas you will have your chance, I'll have none!" Julie spread her arms. "While I will land in the fucking LA airport, Desmond will probably be living in Scotland and I won't even know I should go there to try find him because I won't fucking remember him!"

"Julie, I'm sorry, but there really isn't any other…" Kate started again.

"Hey, is everything all right?" they heard a third voice. A voice that belonged to Jack, the last person Julie wanted to see at the moment.

"You! How could you betray me like this, Jack?!" Julie pointed her finger at him. "I trusted you!"

"Julie, I'm doing the very best I can," Jack slowly said, not even angry that she was yelling at him again. He was only sad and that agitated Julie even more. It would be easier if he was mad at her. "What else am I supposed to do?" he then asked when making his way to her. Kate discreetly retreated, relieved to leave this to Jack. "We can't stay here for much longer. Once we escaped the village, we've become their enemies and they will hunt us down. Our only chance at normal life is to detonate the bomb and…"

"Reverse everything?" Julie finished after him bitterly. "I'm pregnant, Jack! If you do this, this baby won't even exist!"

"You don't know that," he kept on arguing. "The truth is that none of us knows what will happen, but we need to do this. I need to do this, Julie. I am so sure about this!"

"It's easy to say for you. Kate will be on that plane. Desmond won't be."

"Julie…"

"No, Jack, I'm done listening to you! I don't care what happens! I don't care if you'll remember this conversation once you detonate that bomb and find yourself back on the plane! I don't care! I just want you to know that I hate you!" She had tears in her eyes as she screamed that to him. She felt like he'd betrayed her in the worst way possible. He was taking everything away from her. Her life with Desmond, her unborn child, her own emotional stability as she wasn't sure she could deal with her pain the second time around. She'd been so destroyed after Australia. She'd been destroyed because of a man who'd used her and now it was happening to her again. Jack didn't use her like Alex had done it, but he as well might've because it hurt just the same.

"Julie…" he said her name one last time when she actually turned her back on him and walked away. "Julie, please!"

"I hate you!" She only repeated, her voice breaking completely since she started crying. And Jack was near that state as well because he hated himself, too. He hated himself for hurting her like this. Yet, there was truly no other choice.

She couldn't stop them in the end. She was just one small woman against Jack, Sayid, Sawyer, Juliet, Kate and Hugo. She couldn't do anything. If she tried, she would be killed on the spot and it wouldn't even be because of her friends doing her harm, no, it was because the Dharma people were guiding the well.

When Jack was dropping the bomb inside, his and Julie's eyes met briefly and she did everything she could to convey as much hate in her expression as possible. He needed to know how much she loathed him at the moment, he needed to remember that it was the last thing she ever said to him. Even if he wouldn't recall it later, he needed to know it now. It didn't matter how many lives they could save. It didn't matter how much pain they could spare the passengers of the flight 815. None of it mattered to Julie. Maybe she'd been right once when she'd told Desmond that she was egoistic. She was in love and she was to become a mother, or wait, correction, thanks to Jack she wouldn't. Maybe that was why she'd never really wanted any children. Maybe she just wasn't supposed to have them in the end?

And then the bomb was dropped and everything went to hell…