Author's Note: Wow. I really don't know what took me so long to update...I already had this chapter written out months ago. Anyway, considering the season premiere is on Tuesday, I wanted to finish this ASAP before I get all distracted and whatnot again. Hope some of my readers are still out there lol. And I changed the title because I decided I hated it and it didn't fit all that well. Hope you guys don't mind haha

Chapter 6: The Fight I've Come To Like

"So…you can communicate with the dead."

Juliet is sitting on the kitchen floor with her legs crossed and a spoon in her hand. Miles is lounging across from her, leaning back against the counter behind him, his own spoon currently dipping in the ice cream carton they're sharing. He had been the one to suggest this; when she had teased him he only vaguely retorted that this was something his mother always did when she felt like crap. He also pointed out that it's better she stays away from the booze. She had dropped any further protests.

"Something like that."

She stares for a moment. Surviving on this island for the past three years has taught her to keep a vastly open mind—especially when things like smoke monsters, time travel, and world-saving-button-pressing are factored in, but some things never get easier to readily believe.

"Hey, don't look at me like that. I can hear the dead, what can you do?"

"I used to be a fertility doctor," she supplies calmly before smirking a little. "And I'm pretty sure I can kill you with my brain."

"Fair enough," he muses, considering her with a light scoff before passing the carton back to her. "But a fertility doctor? Didn't see that one coming."

"What did you think I was?"

"Not sure. Your badassness with fire arms kinda throws me off, but I'm pretty sure you were like a cheerleader or something in high school."

"Try secretary of the Science Club."

He stares blankly back at her for a moment.

"They had secretaries?"

"Shut up and eat your ice cream, Miles."

She's smiling a little as she regards him. She finds it a little odd how surprisingly easy it is to confide in Miles; he doesn't bullshit, he doesn't expect anything, and for the most part, he seems to really listen—no matter how hard he tries to get everybody to believe the contrary.

As she sets her spoon down, she remembers what she had meant to ask him the other day.

"Who is that woman?"

His head picks up and he flashes her another blank stare.

"What woman?"

"The Asian woman from the infirmary. You get this look on your face whenever she's around."

At his silence she adds in mock-seriousness, "Do you have yourself a Dharma-crush, Miles?"

He wrinkles his nose in sheer disgust. She arches an eyebrow.

"You have no idea how wrong that is."

"So?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Juliet."

"Miles—"

"Trust me, it doesn't even matter—"

"Miles—"

"And hey, maybe my face just looks like that on default. Maybe I should take offense to—"

"Miles—"

"Alright! She's my mother, okay?" He exhales and leans back again. "Have you always been this pushy?"

She recovers a little from the shock to regard him a gentle smile and a steady voice.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"You wanna talk about Sawyer some more?"

He's still uneasy but takes her equally flustered demeanor as a sign of victory.

"Didn't think so."

He watches her trace invisible shapes on the tiles before he speaks again.

"It's getting late, Juliet—don't you think you should get some sleep?"

She opens her mouth, but sure enough Miles puts his hand up to silence her, as if he already knows what she was going to struggle to say.

"You can crash in my bunk tonight if you want—I have to head out soon for graveyard shift anyway," Miles responds casually, as if it's something she would do on a regular basis. "But I can assure you, La Fleur will be harassing me soon enough wondering what's up with you."

She responds with a smile despite how she currently feels.

As she's gently closing the door behind her as to not wake Jin, she ponders how curious it is that fate, or whatever one would choose to call it on this island, had brought them all together. She's also a little bothered that she's not bothered by how she finds a sense of home in being in the company of four men that couldn't be any more unalike even if they tried.

She feels her eyes willingly shut as soon as her head hits the pillow.

She thinks of Sawyer and Kate and as she predicts, morning comes too soon.

Sawyer finds himself confused.

Ever since he'd woken up alone that morning, she hadn't spoken or been able to make eye contact with him in the past few days, and with the sub coming in soon, he felt an annoyingly uncontrollable anxiety creep back into his system.

More than a little fed up, he corners Miles during their shift, who just stares at him for a moment. His prediction had been correct.

"What, are you going to jump me?"

He scoffs and ignores the look he's giving him. Sawyer stares at the ground for a moment before speaking in a slightly subdued voice.

"She ain't leavin', is she?"

To his credit, Miles manages to not roll his eyes.

"How many times must we go over this? She said she'd stay, so she'll stay."

"So she's just not gonna speak to me, is that it?"

Miles crosses his arms in front of him and surveys the image of a disgruntled Sawyer standing in front of him. The side of his mouth twitches in amusement.

"What are you, twelve? Man up, La Fleur."

"Watch it, Ghengis," he practically growls and Miles simply rolls his eyes this time. "Since you two seem to be buddy-buddy these days, will you tell me what the hell has her so damn peeved?"

"You talk in your sleep," Miles retorts bluntly, watching, as Sawyer just looks even more confused.

"What?"

He looks like he wants to laugh, unsure if Miles is joking or not. He reconsiders when Miles remains staring.

"I don't remember sayin' anything…"

"Of course you don't."

"Now what's that supposed to mean?"

Miles sighs as he takes a seat in one of the office chairs. This might take awhile.

"You're saying that you honestly don't know the answer to that?"

"Oh so it's my fault she got herself drunk and injured and hates people who babble in their sleep so apparently now she's descended the cone of silence? Well shit, that solves everything, thank you for the insight, Short Round."

Instead of being aggravated too, Miles smirks at the quick rate Sawyer's words are coming up.

"Look, what the hell did I say—that I'm gonna kill her or something else equally ridic—"

"Freckles. You said Freckles. Personally, I think it's a shitty nickname but hey—"

Sawyer's stunned look turns into a death glare as he processes what Miles' is saying.

"I'm just calling things as I see them," Miles says now, rising from the chair. "For the record, I'm not the one who mutters other girls' names while I sleep. And I'm not the one who has her convinced she'll always be second best, even with you."

He doesn't even wait for Miles to walk away before he's out the door first.

As usual, he finds her in the motorpool. Healing pretty quickly, she had been back to work for the past couple days; now he takes her eagerness to hone her mechanic skills as a reason to not be in the same house as him. Her head picks up from the manual she's studying with a determined fervor, only to stare at him with those unnervingly blue eyes of hers.

"Can I help you with something, Jim?"

He sputters, bothered not only by her arctic gaze, but that name coming evenly from her lips.

"I—Can you not call me that?"

"Why not? Everyone does—that is your name."

"Not you."

She stands there staring for a moment, unable to decide what she wants to do—stay, leave, or slap that silly stare off his face. Instead, she sighs.

"Miles told me what I said."

"I figured you didn't remember," she replies coolly, already turning her attention back to the engine at her station. He wasn't sure what to say to that. Before he can come up with anything to respond with, she's calmly setting down the rag in her hands and attempting to walk away.

"Hey, don't go leavin' on me. Honestly, Blondie, I don't remember sayin—"

"Let go, James," she warns, snatching her arm from his grip and narrowing her eyes.

One look and he drops her hand; her tone is enough to stop him dead in his tracks, but he won't let her win that easily.

"It's a damn nickname," he exclaims with a gesture, confused as to why she's so bothered. "If you haven't noticed I got one for everybody—"

"Yes, James, and Blondie is just so endearing in comparison."

He freezes, staring at her in helpless exasperation as she pulls the bandana from her head to tiredly rake her fingers through her hair.

"Can you just tell me what's the matter? I can't get squat done with you descendin' your damn cone of silence."

She let out a dry laugh, despite of herself. She doesn't respond otherwise, and he takes this as a cue to keep talking.

"I didn't ask for this. To be put in this situation. It's this goddamn island. I deal with what it gives me."

"And I don't?" she asks, her perfectly arched eyebrow already in place.

"Look, I'm not gonna stand here and play 'who has the shittier life' with you. It's an old game, trust me."

"Then don't."

She turns her back to him again, and he tries not to feel defeated.

"We're a team, Juliet."

He cringes at his own words and the hostile look she turns around with.

"Let's face it, Sweetheart. We're in this together. Maybe I can't help what comes out of this mouth of mine, but what I know is we're a team. We can tear each other down all we want, but at the end of the day we have each other's backs."

"Wouldn't want to inconvenience you."

Juliet looked at him, and then looked down at his hand that had ended up on her shoulder. She said nothing; for the life of her, something inside her didn't want to give in, didn't want to admit that maybe she was okay with this too.

"I'll be honest—I think about her sometimes."

She gives him a look. "Okay, a lot of the time."

How could he not? Once they were done running for their lives, there was nothing to do but wait. Wait and lay awake thinking about her. Lie awake and miss her, even if she was the one always running away.

Her eyes remain strewn downwards, her hands trying to keep busy, as her face remains neutral. She knew she should give him the benefit of the doubt; he didn't ask for this fate any more than she did.

"Are you tryin' to tell me you don't think of the Doc sometimes?"

Her face is stone as she fixes him with a look.

"Everyone at that beach camp knew how Mission Impossible you two were together. You were the Sodom to his friggin' Gomorrah. That's why Kate came bargin' in my tent in the first place..."

Her movements pause at that. He is acknowledging that they both had lost someone and for the first time he wasn't denying it, he was trying to admit it. She knows he was right, knows that they can only deny for so long before being run down by their own ghosts, but she didn't trust herself to speak. At least, not to bite back a lame comeback or to crumble completely.

"I don't care whose name I said. I ain't denyin' it – no real need to. You were there when the world went white…she wasn't."

She finds herself shaking her head. "I can't play a poor man's version of Kate to every man I meet, James."

"Am I askin' you to?"

She gives him another look.

"You think that's why I asked you to stay," he mutters to himself, barely realizing it came out more like a statement than a real question.

She doesn't respond, but he sees her gaze shift uncomfortably in the silence.

"C'mon, Juliet," he all but spits, his voice a dangerous octave of a whisper. "You can stand here and pretend to be a damn robot, or you can talk to me."

The irritation from this basically one-sided conversation begins brimming to the surface, and he makes himself pause. He takes a moment to collect himself, which is something he wouldn't normally do, but he knows he won't get through to her otherwise.

"I didn't mean…" he sighs, trying to find the words. "What matters right now is that I need you on my side or this can all go to hell. And that's all I know where to start from."

If she had better control, she'd choose to not listen to him, but lately she found herself hanging off every word he said. Even when it hurt. Her eyes remain focused on his boots, and she tries not to think that his words echoed and reminded her suspiciously of Miles'.

"It's suffocating."

"Come again?"

Her eyes finally shift to his, her penetrating orbs and steely tone unsettling him more than he'd like to admit.

"Before, I didn't know how you did it," she muses, her gaze now on a loose bumper as if she wasn't really addressing him or his confusion. "How you pulled those 'long cons' I read about in your file," she clarifies more to herself than to him and he stares, trying to figure out where she's going with this.

"But I get it now. I've been on this island for almost four years, I've been someone I can't even recognize most days, and all I have to say for myself is that it's suffocating."

She laughs through the sudden tears and James thinks of masks and cons and rifles and being left behind and wonders if they really are more alike than he originally thought. He stands there, the fact he's dumbfounded to see someone he thought so mighty and stoic be on the brink of tears had him rooted instantly to the spot.

She recognizes this vulnerability almost at once, and she can't stop herself from hating how broken she feels.

"You were right, James. I'm not a robot," she says in a quieter voice, leaning against the wall of her station.

"I had feelings when I thought Jack cared about getting me off this island. I had feelings every time I saw a mother die and I could nothing about it. I had feelings when I thought you and Sayid were two seconds away from torturing me."

He flinches, she continues. "I had feelings when I saw the corpse of a man who loved me lying in a ditch because of me, and I certainly had feelings when I realized I'll never see my sister again…"

She swipes furiously at her tears.

"And look where that all got me."

She lets out a defeated sigh, placing a palm on her forehead as if both ashamed of the tears while also daring them to continue falling. She turns away from him as she mutters to herself. "When did I become so easy to con?"

James lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

"I'm not conning you, Juliet."

His tone is quiet and controlled and she feels his hand on her arm again.

At her silence, he felt the twinge of humor surface in his discomfort. "Look, chances are if I were to jump from a helicopter today, it'd either be with you or for you so if you're done doubtin' and otherwise not believin' me just listen when I say that I'm not con—"

Before he could back up or speak or run, she had whipped around and grasped underneath his arms and pulled him to her with such a force, his words died on his tongue, rendering him speechless. Her chin seems to fit perfectly in the crook of his neck and his arms move with a mind of their own, snaking their wary selves around to envelop her. As he feels her almost inaudible "I know" mumble against his neck, he realizes something.

This is the first time she has ever hugged him.

To be continued...Reviews are love!