Of Doctors and Car Crashes {JULIET}

[Jack Shephard]

The pain woke him up.

He tried as hard as he could to ignore it but the more he tried to ignore it, the stronger it came on. It hit him first like a whisper; the room suddenly got a thousand degrees hotter, so much so that he broke out into a sweat that instantly turned cold. Shedding his shirt, he pulled her close again, wrapping his arms around her as he buried his face into the crook of her neck. It came quicker then; his fingers started tingling, and slowly, the painful tingling crept up his arms, moving faster until his entire body was encased in the sharp pin-prick tingling. This was the first stage, he told himself. He needed to get it out. He needed to detox, because he didn't need the drugs when he was in Juliet's arms.

But god, it hurt so much and it wasn't even day two.

A slight groan escaped his lips, one that he tried to cover as he curled his fingers around the hem of her shirt before fingers touched her skin, only to pull back as if he had been burned. He pulled away from her then, shutting his eyes tightly as he rolled onto his back in the bed. Instantly, then, he felt the need to go. Run. Do anything. His heart thumped wildly in his chest, and he sat up with a quick intake of hair, throwing the covers off of the bed as he brought his knees to his chest. "I-I can't do this. I can't do this, Juliet. I need--I need something. Anything. Even a lower dose! I could take a lower dose but--"

Then he saw it. Her body, laying out on the slab in the morgue, green eyes staring up at the ceiling, and he remembered screaming at the Medical Examiner to close her eyes. Who the fuck leaved a person's eyes closed?! He remembered touching her face, closing her eyes and he wanted to kiss her, but her skin was ice cold. He remembered the ME's voice breaking his thoughts.

Does Miss Austen have any next of kin?

A wave of pain traveled through his stomach, and he moved as Juliet sat up, taking her head in shaky hands as he pressed his lips to hers almost frantically. "Please. Please tell me you'll stay here. Tell me you'll stay right here, just like this. I-I can't--Kate told me she'd stay. I told her we're stay together and then--" He blinked, heavy tears dripping from his eyes. "They're all gone. Sawyer, Aaron... They're all gone and it's all my fault and--and if you left too, god, I don't know what I'd do. There's hardly anything left of me right now. You make me someone, did you know that?" His thoughts were racing a mile a minute, and he felt his fingers curl around the soft strands of her hair. Foreheads touched, and he narrowed his eyebrows deeply at the stabbing pain in his skull. His hands dropped from her face, settling against her lap as all of the anxiety and rushed sound exited his mouth in a sigh.

"God, my head fucking hurts."

[Juliet Burke]

Juliet's dream had been very lucid, she knew it wasn't real. As she stood on the beach of the island, wind blowing across her face, the water rising up to her ankles with the tide, she almost felt at peace. Almost. Suddenly the quiet serenity was ripped apart by a mechanical roar, and then there was his voice. Somewhere faint...he needed her. She struggled to run to him, but the sand seemed to take hold of her feet. The sound of the monster drew nearer, and she got no further. Just as the black cloud broke the treeline, Juliet willed herself awake, eyes snapping open wide only to see a ceiling.

Rolling over on her side she looked at Jack, Jack. A small smile came over her lips, as she sat up to look down at him, and brushed his cheek. "Jack.." she said tenderly, "you know as well as I do that more drugs isn't going to solve this...you have to stick to the plan we discussed." Tiltng her head, she brushed her blonde hair behind her ear. "Aspirin and coffee only."

She was taken aback when he sat up and took her face in his hands. Closing her eyes as their lips met, she sat still as a statue, not quite sure if she was ready to be intimate with him in this state. He needed other things more. He needed to recover. As he began to babble about all those who had died, and it being his faut, Juliet only stared at him sympathetically. "Jack, you know I'm not going to go anywhere." Pulling her own hand up to his face, she made him meet her eyes, letting him know she was serious. "It's not your fault, Jack. Those people...the others, what happened to them was an accident, Jack. You're going to kill yourself if you keep taking on blame." Brushing her thumb across his cheek, she cracked a weak smile, "and you think its you who needs me..." laughing a bit and winking at him, hoping it would cheer his current mood, "you really have no idea." Leaning in, she kissed his forehead, and then one on the lips, before pressing her forehead back to his.

"Let me go get you some aspirin." Juliet said softly, "I noticed you were out last night, I can get some more coffee while I'm out too..." Pulling away, so she could see his face, she grinned, "and while I'm away," Slowly crawling towards the end of the bed, she gave him a mischievious grin, "you can cook me that breakfast you owe me."

She had never brought up the breakfast he had promised her, as they lay entangled in her island home. She had often forced herself to forget it, especially when she saw the way he looked at Kate, but now. Well now seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring it up.

[Jack Shephard]

I'm gonna make you breakfast.

What she didn't know is that he didn't cook. He made coffee and orange juice and called it breakfast. He made burnt toast that sat on the counter long after he had rushed out, because he never remembered to eat when he worked. The hospital cooked breakfast for him, and as he remembered looking around at the Island barracks home, he realised he didn't have a hospital cooking staff with him.

Thankfully, Jack had been up early that morning. He had watched the sun rise from coves that Juliet had taken him to. Tom had stopped him as he was coming back, and he had hurled a football towards the doctor, which he caught and threw back. He remembered her coming out of the Barracks, laughing. Breakfast had been forgotten as he tossed her the ball. Why the hell were those some of the happiest moments on the Island? Had it been the bright happy yellow paint? The walls with faded wallpaper with little flowers on them? Had it been the fact that for the first time in ten years, he had placed his fingers on the ivory keys of the piano and actually played? No, he thought silently. It was her. It had been her when they had been separated by the thick wall of glass. It had been her when she stood across him as they both hovered over Ben's back. It had been her in that bedroom.

Juliet spoke of leaving, and Jack lifted his head slightly to watch her crawl from the bed. "Wait. Wait, there's--" Didn't his mother have asprin? Of course, Juliet rummaging around in his mother's things, well, she probably wouldn't want to do that. And Jack probably would have tore her room apart if he got in there.

"You don't have to go." There was a worry that crept up into his voice. "You don't have to go, just stay. Stay, I'll--I'll be fine. I'm already starting to feel better." Of course, it was a complete lie, but if it meant that she would stay, he'd tell her that he felt fit as a fiddle. "Just stay." he told her, taking her hand slightly as he played with her fingers, his eyes locked on the smaller fingers against his. "Just don't go out." The simpleness of his statement hid the fact that he had a bad feeling. A nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach...but that was just the feeling that he was going to throw up. Maybe it was nothing.

He needed to start being more trusting. Looking up from her hands, he tried to give her a smile. "You don't have to be this good to me, Juliet. Because...because if you're this good to me, there's a good chance that you can't be real." But she was real. She was very real, and very much his.

"Can you pick up some Dramamine, too? I think if I manage not to feel like I'm going to hurl every two seconds, I'll be okay."