Passive reassurance, they call it.

Sawyer’s hand on her shoulder, the imaginary ‘there there’ that passes through his mind but thankfully not his lips (she would’ve hit him if it had, she would’ve hit him and he would’ve bleed and then at least one of them would feel something).

Instead it’s just the rum while they watch their dreams burn with the wreckage.

---

Sometimes she’ll forget he isn’t there.

She’ll be in the jungle and she’ll take her eyes off the ground in front of her feet, tripping over fallen branches or rocks. Juliet will feel his hand on her arm, steadying her, the ‘you alright?’ that sounds like habit. Only she’ll look up, to smile at him and tell him she’s fine, and he won’t be there.

The island does that. Makes you see things that aren’t there.

Feeling things that aren’t there – somehow she imagines that has very little to do with the island.

---

They open lines of communication again.

The outside and all it’s glory, except she isn’t one of them, one of the others, she’s just someone on their land.

She still asks Richard about that boat, when she runs into him in the jungle. About the helicopter.

“They call them the Oceanic Six,” he tells her, waiting for the relieved smile, the one she tries not to show.

And he must know, because he spares her the details of everyone else. Something she isn’t entirely comfortable with but grateful for.  

“He’s engaged. To Kate Austen.”

She drops her eyes.

Sometimes it’s better to not know. She’d forgotten that lesson.

---

“We’re supposed to be happy for them.”

The waves crash at the shore; the air tastes like salt.

“It’s better this way.”

Sawyer doesn’t seem to even be doing a very good job of convincing himself. He isn’t the comforting type.

Thank god.

---

Juliet still has friends in high places.

“I’m not a part of this. You know that.”

And then the island is nothing more than a slowly fading landmass and she is no better than the rest of them.

---

They aren’t engaged anymore.

She should be happy about this too, for selfish reasons.

But she sees him on a bridge on the news, saving people, and she knows he wasn’t just taking a leisurely drive.

---

To her credit, she initially tells herself she will leave him alone.

She’ll just make it worse. And Ben still doesn’t know she’s back, but he probably knows where Jack is, he’s probably watching him, and that’s enough to drive her away for a little while.

But that’s before she learns what’s been going on in her absence, about John Locke, about the island.

She decides she has to see him then.

---

“Hello Jack.”

And it’s like he’s looking right through her.

She’s never really sure if he ever believes she’s anything more than a ghost.

Too little, too late.

And there won’t be a hand on her shoulder, passive reassurance, this time around.