Current music:	Kinetic - Radiohead
Entry tags:	fanfiction, lost fic

Fandom: Lost
Title: For A Minute There
Characters: jack, kate, juliet
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,733
Summary: (future&present) Jack deal with ramifications of his relationships with Kate & Juliet.
Note: it jumps around in timeline, not canon and uses spoilers for 4X10. & ends abruptly because it was thrown together. has no beta, so it's sloppy
Disclaimer: not mine.

for a minute there, i lost myself, i lost myself
- karma police, radiohead

“What are you going to do when you back?”

“Have a drink.”

---

“You want the bad news first or the good news?”

“Bad news.”

“Ah, a pessimist.” The doctor closed the door to the room and gave Jack the chart. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you’re depressed.”

Jack skimmed through his own file. “Then it’s a good thing you don’t.”

His doctor sat at his desk and filled a prescription. “The bad news, Jack, is you’re going to have to see someone.”

“I was under the limit.”

“True, you were under the limit. Still, it isn’t safe to drive under the influence, regardless of the point on the scale.” He passed the prescription to Jack.

“Oxycodone?”

“Just one every two days,” the doc specified. “You know the risks involved, so I’m not worried.”

“What’s the Prozac for?” Jack grinned.

“The good news, Dr. Shepard, is you’re in good hands here at St. Sebastian’s.” The doctor leaned forward and folded his hands together. Jack knew this posture all too well. “You’ve been through a lot, and now this car accident.”

“I crashed into a mail box, for Christ sake. Nobody got hurt,” said Jack defensively.

“That isn’t the point.” The doctor stood up. Giving another doctor a diagnosis was always awkward, even if he was a friend. “The police want you to see a psychiatrist, just for a wind up. To make sure you’re doing okay. And I’m sorry to say, but I agree.”

Jack sighed heavily. Sometimes he hated doctors. “If I don’t?”

“We’re not here to baby sit you. This is a recommendation. No one wants another accident.” The doctor crossed his arms and paused, looking for an easy way to ease into this. Unfortunately there was none. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Jack. These past few months haven’t been easy for you. Now, before you go on trying to deny it, it shows on your face. You’re tired all the time. Talking to someone, anyone, it can help you tremendously. Make you feel better.”

“Isn’t the oxy suppose to do that?”

The doctor didn’t laugh. “The Oxycodone is for your injury. Tell me something, Jack, am I making a mistake here?”

---

“It doesn’t seem to bother you.”

Juliet turned to Rose, startled by her presence. “Excuse me?”

“I see the way you look at him, honey.” Rose gestured to Kate and Jack sitting side by side near the shoreline, soaking their feet and engaged in conversation. “Actually, everyone does. It’s not a secret, you know.”

No point in denying it, really; but admitting it could be just as worse. Juliet drew her attention back to the food in front of her. “The shore’s coming up soon. Maybe the tide will take them in.”

It took Rose a moment, but the older woman laughed. “It took me a long time before I could be morbid about heart break.”

Juliet looked at Rose with an assured yet slightly hurt gaze. “I’m not morbid, Rose. Just, realistic. They should be too.”

--

“Hey, it’s me again. I don’t know if you’re there or if you’re avoiding me. You’re probably avoiding me. I’m sorry about the last message. I didn’t mean it. I was... tired and if you drive around long enough, nothing really makes any sense. I wasn’t drinking, though. I know that’s what you think. I know you think I’m always drunk, but I’m not. Not this time. I just need to talk to someone. Everyone else... they’re all gone. You’re the only person who knows, Kate. The only person who can make this... better.”

---

It’s nothing, absolutely nothing, and it’s better than everything else.

Better than all the drinks in his refrigerator, better than hearing her voice break through the dial tone.

It makes the flights tolerable and the turbulence epic.

He decides when the planes shook, it was another beginning. He looks at the faces sitting all around him and wonders who will be a part of his life.

Then the plane lands and they disappear. Friends he never met, leaving him.

He takes another drink, and waits. He waits until the stewardess tells him he has to exit. He waits until they recognize him, and waits until he regains feeling in the tip of his fingers.

And he could leave the plane easily, without hassle, but he can’t.

He can’t because it’d just be too convenient. Too convenient for fate and the world and everyone else.

Instead he yells and screams. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

It’s a poor excuse, but for the most part it works.

No one dares attack him. Mostly, they pity him.

“Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?!”

If they read the papers they believed they had an idea, and they sympathize, but none of them know.

“Sir! You have to stay calm!”

And they ask him, are you on any medication? How much did you have to drink?

Until he stops and sits somewhere away, after the section manager has to come over and deal with the situation.

He stops making a scene when the papers caught wind of his constant travels. When she calls him for a change.

“You have to stop, Jack,” she says, her voice low. “Please.”

This time, he hangs up.

---

“Is something wrong?”

“Why would something be wrong?”

“You haven’t said a word to me in days.”

“Days?”

“Okay, a few hours.”

He was smiling. Smiling as if everything was good and going according to plan. “Since when did you become so optimistic, Jack?”

Jack continued to smile, entering her tent. “I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “It’s... new. You should try it some time.”

Juliet sat on her bed, looking up at him. There wasn’t much room and he was tall, he had to crouch. “What are you doing here?”

Surprised, Jack uncomfortably shuffled on his feet. She was uninviting and he knew sitting down without her consent would make her more... hostile. “I need a reason to talk to you?”

“I’m not going to do this,” she said simply.

“Do what?”

“I’m not going to play your game.”

He chuckled. “What game, Juliet?”

“Yours and Kate’s.” Juliet found it amusing he was so dumbfounded. “One day, when this is all over, we won’t be here.”

“We?”

---

“Am I supposed to say something?”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“You know who I am.”

“This is the age of instant media. Of course I’ve heard of you. I don’t know you, though. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I was in a little car accident.”

“Little? Car accidents are never little. Were you drinking?”

“I had a few drinks. I wasn’t over the limit. I didn’t hurt anyone.”

“That’s why you’re here? You were court appointed to see a psychiatrist?”

“No. It was recommended.”

“You don’t seem to want to be here.”

“I don’t.”

“But you’re not forced.”

“I guess I’m not.”

“Do you think you’re here because you have a problem?”

“I don’t think I have a problem.”

“You had a few drinks and then you went driving. You’re a doctor. Isn’t that an oxymoron? You could’ve taken a cab.”

“I wanted to be alone.”

“How come?”

“Because... I prefer being alone. I can’t talk to anyone.”

“Talk to anyone about what?”

“About... my life.”

“Then that defeats the point of being here, doesn’t it, Dr. Shepard?”

---

He fell over unexpectedly, his chin as high as he could keep it. The last thing he saw was her face, her blue eyes full of worry and fear. He could feel her hands on his face and hear her voice, muffled by every one else’s sounds.

He kept saying he was fine, but not even then did he believe it. Before he passed out it’s all he said, “I’m fine.” He didn’t need her help. He didn’t need her.

---

“I ain’t her.”

He kisses her anyways. He kisses her so hard she begins to pull away, and as much as she wanted this, it wasn’t the way she wanted it.

“Jack!”

This was before the calls, before the drinks, before the flights.

Before the truth broke through his denial.

“What, Kate?! Isn’t this what you wanted?”

She didn’t respond. She could only glare at him, shocked and insulted. “What I wanted?”

“Yes!” he screams. “You chose me. After everything! You chose me.”

---

“How long have I been out?”

“Just a couple of hours. You shouldn’t try to get up. The stitches are... premature at best.”

Jack wanted to see. Stitches always looked like shoelaces through skin. One could always tell if they were done right. “So, you’re talking to me now?”

“I never stopped talking to you, Jack.” She took a damp cloth and passed it over his forehead. The cool made him relax and his eyes closed. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah,” he let out, letting his hands trail to his where the stitches were.

“You’re just like a kid,” she said, gently putting her free hand over his and moving it out of the way. “Always picking at scabs. You’re a doctor. You should know better.”

“I can’t help it. It’s like a car crash.”

“What happened to the optimist?”

Jack smiled. “The optimist just had an appendectomy done by a fertility doctor without anesthetics. Come back to me if I don’t die within the hour.”

She grinned. “Do you doubt my abilities as a doctor?”

“Absolutely.” Jack stopped her hand from going any further and held on, forcing her to pay him attention. “I need to able to talk to you, Juliet.”

“I’m here, you can talk to me.”

“No.” He let go of her hand and forcefully stood up despite her gestured objections. “After everything we’ve been through, I need you here with me.”

“You don’t have –“

“I’m not just saying that, Juliet. I’m not. I know you think I am, because of what you said earlier, but it isn’t that. I swear. It isn’t that. You aren’t a last resort, a choice. I need you with me.”

---

“Every day it leaves just a little bit more. Every day I forget something else, something I swore I’d keep with me. I don’t know what I’m gonna do when it’s gone completely. If I’m awake, I’ll lose her completely.”


.end

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hope this fuels your jacket needs (and the secret jater still hiding in there), prettybutt.