Chapter 12 - Lesser Harms

The survivor in Ana Lucia knew Juliet needed space, but the cop in her wouldn't allow any more time to pass before talking to the newest member of the beach crew.

There had been doubt cast on Ana's recollection of events, regarding the journey from the tail section crash site. Not even Libby, Eko or Bernard were fully convinced that Goodwin's death had been absolutely necessary. They weren't with her in the clearing when it happened. They hadn't seen the smug smile, or the way he'd lunged at her.

This time there were witnesses. Sayid, Kate and Sawyer had all seen what an Other could do. Jack had treated the wounds, and he'd felt the helplessness and the anger. Now they knew, and they'd deigned to welcome Ana Lucia into their circle of trust.

They needed more than rational minds and steady hands. They needed experience and training. But first, Juliet needed someone to check on her.

Ana Lucia saw Juliet emerge from Sawyer's tent. The doctor walked barefoot toward the surf, a wad of fabric in one hand, and when she reached the water she crouched to rinse a shirt in the shallow.

Ana approached from a ways down the beach, making sure Juliet saw her as she got closer. The last thing she wanted to do was sneak up on the woman. Not after what they'd been through.

Juliet rubbed the fabric of the t-shirt against itself, moving slowly so as not to aggravate her less obvious injuries. She knelt, adjusting from her crouch, and allowed her knees to sink into the sand. Eventually she stopped trying to clean her ruined clothes. Ana Lucia stood beside her now.

"The blood won't come out," Juliet said softly, using the back of her hand to push loose hair from her forehead.

"Never does." Ana Lucia murmured in reply. She put her hands in her back pockets, and toed the surf.

Juliet rested her laundry on her lap. Her pants were now soaked through, but she was too tired to extricate herself from the pulling sand. She looked up at Ana Lucia, asking without words if there was something she wanted to talk about. The other woman's expression was so serious. Juliet had been told by the other Oceanic survivors that Ana Lucia always looked like that. Resting Cop Face.

"How are you doing?" Ana asked earnestly. She wanted to know the truth.

Juliet's limbs felt even heavier then.

"Not great," she said, her usual sarcasm undercut by the near whisper she was forced to speak in. "But I'm getting through it."

She ventured a smile, certain it did nothing to lighten her expression.

"Yeah." Ana's face softened, and the ghost of a sympathetic smile appeared. "Sounds about right."

"I'm sorry," said Juliet. "For what happened to you."

"You don't have to apologize for them." Ana told her firmly. She crouched so Juliet wouldn't have to look up anymore, and she looked into Juliet's eyes. "After what they did to you, you don't have to apologize for anything. I'm sorry. If this was retaliation for what I did-"

Juliet shook her head. Ana Lucia paused, allowing space for Juliet to share her side.

"It's what they're-" Juliet hesitated. "It's what we're trained to do. They told me the combat training was for defense, against…intruding forces."

She shook her head again. Whenever she thought about the extent to which she'd been manipulated, how alone and afraid she'd been when she began to see the truth, she felt the anger begin to surface. Articulating it verbally made those feelings all the more potent.

"Plane crash survivors aren't 'intruding forces.'" she said. "I'm not-"

Her throat was burning from the effort of speaking, and trying not to cry.

"I didn't think they'd…"

Try to kill you, Ana Lucia finished for her in a thought. She wanted to hear Juliet's side of things, but she understood implicitly. Ana Lucia glanced back at the camp, at the flaps of nearest tents blowing in the wind. She knew what she needed to talk about next.

"Kate told me you knew Goodwin."

Juliet looked down at her hands.

"She said you were close." Ana Lucia continued, forcing herself to say the words.

"I thought we were. But…" Juliet tried swallowing. The glass shards said nope. "If he had any part in kidnapping those children…"

Juliet looked up. The damaged skin on her neck pulled every time she moved her head, reminding her.

"If he did that, I didn't really know him at all. And I understand why you had to do it."

Ana Lucia nodded, grateful and relieved. No one in that camp understood more than Juliet did. Ana caught herself staring at the neck bruises again, and she pictured the struggle that would produce such vivid marks.

Juliet watched her. "Did they tell you about Ben?"

Ana's brow furrowed grimly. "A little bit."

"He orchestrated your run-in with Goodwin." Juliet explained. "He knew how you'd react, and he used you. And he did it to punish me. Then he told me you were unstable, so I would believe it was all your fault. But it was Ben giving Goodwin his orders. Ben told him to let those people get taken. To help them take those children. Ben knew you'd figure it out, and that you'd be capable of protecting yourself when you confronted Goodwin."

Ana Lucia glanced at Juliet, meeting her gaze for a moment. Looking back into the water, she watched the surf slowly rearrange the sand around her feet.

"That's what Ben does." Juliet added. "He destroys people."

"You got any ideas on how we can deal with that?" Ana Lucia asked. She looked Juliet squarely in the eye.

Juliet looked back, calm and steady and matter of fact.

"I'm going to kill him."

Saying it out loud, confessing to another person, made it real again. Her companion didn't flinch.

"How can I help?" Ana Lucia asked.

Juliet shook her head. She looked down at her hands, wistful, and continued scrubbing the fabric.

"I don't need help with that part." she said. "I want you all to be able to leave this place. So you can go home to your families. To your lives."

"What about your family?" Ana pressed. "Your life?"

"I need to stop Ben. I'm the only person that can get close enough to him to do it. But, while I'm doing that, someone has to protect everyone else that was on your plane. If you can do that, I can make sure Ben lets you all leave."

Ana Lucia nodded. "Sayid mentioned a plan."

Absent-mindedly, Juliet touched a wet hand to her neck, and prepared to explain the rest.

"Hey," Ana Lucia interrupted her gently. "We can figure it out later. I just didn't want more time to pass before talking to you."

Juliet smiled gratefully. Ana Lucia looked into Juliet eyes a beat longer.

"You put your life on the line to help us." Ana Lucia told Juliet, speaking for the entire group of crash survivors. "We're going to protect you too."

Ana Lucia hesitated, but in the end decided she'd said all she needed to say. She stood from her crouch, and parted with a tight-lipped look of solidarity, leaving Juliet alone with her stained shirt floating in the water and an expression of gratitude caught in her throat.

That evening Juliet choked down an unsatisfying dinner and brought James the same food so he wouldn't have to hop anywhere to get it. They took painkillers together, and James took antibiotics that made him drowsy. Juliet watched him sleep, her mind racing for hours into the night. When sleep finally came for her, her subconscious spun a fantastical mash-up of everything that had happened in the past forty-eight hours. The dream ended with her drowning in the pool James had found next to the waterfall. Her spirit remained conscious, and she knew she was trapped for eternity under the water with only a glimmer of light at the surface to tell her where she'd been.

When she woke up, she was not afraid. She was only sad. Not wanting to wake James, Juliet kept her tears inside, breathing evenly until the feeling passed. She buried her emotions back in the depths, as deep as her drowned spirit. Then she scooted closer to James, as close as she dared without jostling him. Close enough to feel the heat coming off of him. It reminded her that she was still alive.

James woke the next morning when the first light of day peeked through the unsecured tent flap. Juliet was asleep again, having drifted off sometime after her saddest dream. The first thing James did was check which way Juliet was facing, and that her knees wouldn't catch his leg if she had another startled wake up. He braced himself for the day-after effect, gritting his teeth before he attempted to change his position on the sand. His leg ached dully, and his entire body was stiff from muscle ache, but he found he could move without inducing any excruciating stabbing pains. It was nothing like the previous day.

James suddenly felt bad for pulling away from Juliet. He settled back down, got closer to her, and placed his arm gingerly over her waist. She was sleeping too deeply to be disturbed. He didn't want her to wake up alone. And if her body had a delayed reaction to the weight of his arm, she could kick him all she needed to. It was the least he could do for her, after all she'd done for them.

Later that morning, when Jack unwrapped James' leg to take a look, they were all surprised to find the skin had scabbed over already. The wound was deep, and there was still healing needed to make the leg whole again. But based on that overnight progress, Jack could see him being able to walk normally, without too much pain, by the next day.

Their surgeon was shaken by the evidence before him. After the effort expended trying to save Boone's life, he didn't understand how these other wounds would heal so quickly. There had to be a point at which the island could no longer heal the human body. He'd done everything short of bleeding himself dry to save Boone. Seeing the island's healing powers at work did not remove the weight Jack carried, but it helped him see how hopeless the Boone situation had been. There really was no saving the kid, and the island would have taken care of most of it itself.

Being able to discuss it all with Juliet was another marvel. He remembered her voice before Ethan's attack. She'd been a soft talker before, and she was taking it easy on herself now, keeping her voice low and steady. But she was no longer in excruciating pain, at least not that she would reveal.

"Have you seen this before?" Jack asked about the rate of healing of Sawyer's leg, and her own neck.

Juliet shook her head. "All the medical emergencies I've experienced here…they were more like Boone."

Jack sobered at her reminder that she'd lost patients there too. Mother and baby alike.

"I'm starting to understand why Ben protects this place so fiercely." she remarked.

"Do you have any idea if it affects the aging process?"

"I haven't been here that long." she said, her smile sheepish yet appreciative of Jack's scientific excitement. It certainly provided a bigger picture to fascinate them, a distraction from the trials they faced. And, on a personal level, a huge fucking relief for the wounded.

Juliet sought Sayid soon after the check-up with Jack. James limped along next to her, and they found Kate and Ana Lucia too. With Ethan gone, there was no need to meet in secret, though it would have been wise to be more discreet.

"What's that all about?" Claire murmured when she saw them gathered in the shade of the tree line.

"Looks like the new war council." Charlie answered her. He was surprised to see Ana Lucia among them.

Hurley frowned at the scene. "That's not good."

"Can you please tell us," Charlie asked Hurley. "What has been good about any of this since we crashed? Present company excluded, of course." he added, with a smile for Claire.

Charlie had squeezed some answers out of Kate about what happened out in the jungle. He knew they were discussing what to do, now that Juliet had been attacked by one of her own. Charlie also knew that Ethan had not returned from his 'hike', and would likely never be seen back at camp ever again. As agreed, he hadn't breathed a word to Claire about the details.

"I didn't get a chance to talk to her after we turned back," said Claire. "Are you sure they're alright?"

Juliet was standing in the shade, too far away for them to see any details. From that distance, she seemed fine. But James was still limping, and they'd all seen the white bandage peeking through the hole in his jeans. Charlie knew that Claire felt guilty, and she thought she had been the cause of the attack. They'd only gone out there to get her an ultrasound. So Charlie rubbed her back, supportive and comforting, and assured her that Sawyer and Juliet were both perfectly fine.

Sayid looked over the crude maps Juliet drew into his spare notebook. Landmarks included the submarine dock and a weapons cache situated a mile from the repurposed Dharma Initiative settlement. He also listened as Juliet explained, in a hoarse but rapidly improving voice, what she thought their approach should be.

"Wait," Jack interrupted gently. "You told us, when you first came to the beach, they won't hesitate to kill all of us, if they don't need us. Now you're saying that we should all join them, just like Ben is expecting us to?"

Jack glanced at the rest of them. Sayid, Ana Lucia, Kate, all had their arms crossed, not wanting to give their opinions yet either way.

James stood by Juliet. He understood Jack's hesitation but he wanted them to give Juliet's plan a chance.

"I know it seems…" Juliet searched for the word.

"Crazy?" Jack supplied.

"I still think the best course of action is to play along." Juliet persisted. "We can rest, gain enough trust to really infiltrate them, and then…"

She glanced at Sayid. He understood right away.

"Have you ever done undercover work?" Jack asked Ana Lucia, a hint of bitter humor in his tone.

"Yeah, actually," she replied. "But this cult of yours…" She glanced at Juliet. "Not really the same crowd."

"And," Sayid cut in. "We'd have to convince everyone else to play along."

"Unh-uh," James disagreed. "For them it's still just a place to stay while they wait."

"What?" Kate looked at him with a tired form of disbelief.

"We keep 'em in the dark, to protect them. Only this group knows the real plan." James gestured to the current company. "And only this group takes action when the time comes."

Kate looked ready to back out immediately. Ana Lucia's eyebrows rose at the audacity of the plan, and Sayid wished he had faith that it would work. He thought of Claire, of Hugo and Neal, all the vulnerable and easily stressed members of their patchwork tribe.

Juliet could sense their trepidation. She had anticipated it and she understood their reasons.

"We can't leave anyone on the beach." she explained. "Splitting this group will only make them more vulnerable. A very small number of Ben's people could pick them off one by one."

"That's what made them so scary in the first place." said Kate. "Convincing everyone to join them, after Goodwin and Ethan…?" she trailed off.

"Nobody else knows it was Ethan that did this to Juliet." James reminded them. "We can tell 'em Goodwin went rogue, and the same person that took everyone from the tail took Ethan last night. He set us up better than we could hope for with that bullshit hiking story."

"And what if someone talks about this made up version of events with one of the other…Others?" Jack asked, unable to find a less silly way to put it.

"Ben will have to accept this as his new story too." said Juliet. "I'll tell him it was the only way to convince you all that it was safe to travel there. He'll have to pretend Goodwin was acting on his own, or he'll have to admit that everything Goodwin did was done on his behalf. And that wouldn't serve his overall purpose."

Sayid tapped his forefinger against his arm. "How certain are you that this will work?"

Juliet looked him in the eye. "I think it provides the best chance of everyone escaping this place with their lives. And…I think Ben will be so proud of me for pulling this off, he won't notice an ulterior motive."

"He should be proud." James declared. "He taught you well enough to beat him at his own game."

Juliet hoped so, but she wasn't ready to claim victory.

"We haven't beaten anyone yet." she said.

Well, I beat the hell outta Ethan, James wanted to say. But he held his petulant tongue.

They agreed to break for the day, and to consider each other's proposals. Jack still thought they should go in guns blazing; subterfuge wasn't really his style. Sayid was torn between the two plans. Ana wanted to bring in a few more people, either way.

Juliet had no intention of changing her plan. She knew with James' help they could convince them all eventually.

They were beginning to trust her. Already they were sensing a shift in the unspoken power structure of the camp. She hadn't intended it to play out that way, but the ring around her neck was a symbol of leadership. She'd suffered the trial of separating from the Others, and she had a plan to get them home. That was more than Jack could offer as their martyr.

"I gotta sit down." James muttered.

Both doctors checked his face for more urgent signs of fatigue.

"Are you okay?" Jack asked him.

"I'm fine." James sighed. "I can get around. Everything still just kinda sucks."

Juliet chuckled faintly at his grousing. She felt the same.

"I'll bring you some water and Tylenol in a bit." Jack offered.

"Don't go soft on me, Doc. I don't need you tending to me."

"Fine," Jack replied. "I'll have Kate bring it to you."

Kate gave Jack a look, part laugh, part wrinkle-nosed disgust. Jack winked at her before heading out, and she rolled her eyes at his joke suggestion as he walked away, intending to chat with Claire to make sure she was okay. Ana Lucia went back to her shelter, to sit and meditate on all the ways their plans could go wrong.

As the group dispersed, Juliet lingered, looking again at the maps she'd drawn in the notebook. Sayid watched her.

"You have a mind for strategy."

He intended it as a compliment, but her reaction held no pride. Sayid caught the momentary sadness in her expression, perhaps a bit of repulsion, and he felt a familiar, sympathetic sting. There were things one could become good at, that they wished they'd never learned. He too had once mourned his former self.

"The training is…thorough." Juliet replied simply.

"It kept you alive." Sayid pointed out.

Juliet closed the notebook, and handed it back to him. She hadn't considered that. So Ben had trained her to endure the rest of his tortures. Huzzah.

Before she could ask if he really thought so, Hurley appeared before them.

"Hey what are you guys talking about?" he asked, pushing the words out as quickly as possible.

"Our plans," Juliet spoke up before Sayid's hesitation became obvious. "To go back to the settlement where I live."

Hurley nodded. "Isn't that, like…Otherville?"

Juliet stifled a smile, and nodded.

"Aaand…isn't that where the people that tried to… kill you?…live?"

"The person that did this," Juliet put her fingertips to her clavicle, not all the way to her neck. "He didn't like me much. The leader of our settlement would never…he wouldn't want to hurt me…"

Down the beach a ways, James sat next to the water trough and watched Hurley clock their sneaky plans. Big guy was a lot smarter than he let on. They were going to have to keep an eye on him.

James watched Juliet too. She wasn't backing down. She wasn't giving in. She was going to stick to their plan, even if it killed her. And that was the only part James couldn't live with.

'I think it provides the best chance of everyone escaping this place with their lives.'

It hadn't slipped by James that she'd neutralized the concept of everyone escaping with their lives.

Your lives, was what she meant. Mine is already forfeit.

James had himself a side quest. He was going to make sure, with Kate and Ana Lucia's help, that Juliet made it off this rock too. Ben wasn't gonna win this one. Not on their watch.