Day 3: caregivers. Lost, Harper and Juliet

[tellshannon815]

Title: The Therapist
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Harper, Juliet
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers all the way through
Summary: Harper's spent years hating Juliet Burke. Having left the island and got some distance from the situation, she's come to understand that as caregivers, doctor and therapist, they had more in common at the time than they knew.


Now that she’s off island, managed to get some distance from the situation, even had some therapy herself, Harper’s beginning to understand that maybe she and Juliet were in more similar situations back then than she’d understood at the time.

Even before Harper had found out from Ben about Goodwin and Juliet’s affair, there had been a part of her that had resented Juliet, the wonderful fertility expert that everyone thought was their beacon of hope and maybe would finally be able to help one of them. Anyone on the island who was pregnant, or even just wanted to try, see if they could be the first to carry a pregnancy to term since Ethan’s mother in the 1970s, had mandatory therapy sessions with Harper, and Harper would be sat there listening to them all talk about how maybe it could be different this time, even as they lost Henrietta, Sabine, Stephanie, Grace, and it became clear that nothing had changed. Harper had resented Juliet for being the figure of hope, while she was left to be the one picking up the pieces when the mother inevitably died half way through her second trimester. With hindsight, Harper now wonders whether this was just as hard for Juliet as it was for her, watching all these women, hoping that this would be the time she would succeed, knowing they all looked to her for hope she could not provide. Both Harper and Juliet were trapped in their roles, the caregivers, knowing that nothing they could do was ever likely to make any real difference.

Harper knew by this time that Juliet had raised the subject with Ben about the possibility of taking a woman off the island to see what would happen, and Ben had shut that down, fearing that she wouldn’t come back. Why had he not just let her try, consider the possibility that maybe it would work? God knew, they had the damn sub, it was possible. How many women had that asshole sacrificed by not allowing them the chance to live out their healthy pregnancies off island, just because he couldn’t bear the thought of losing the object of his obsession? Juliet couldn’t have saved any of them on island, Harper knew it, Juliet must have come to some realisation of that by the end. She must have known that her position as the person meant to be providing hope was just as futile as Harper’s position as therapist.

Harper had spent so many years of her life hating Juliet Burke; she now sees that Juliet had never been the villain of the piece, that they had more common ground than she had ever realised, and if Harper had been able to see past her own misery at the breakdown of her marriage, maybe she and Juliet could have come together as friends.

Comments

[cmk418]

Very powerful. I liked that Harper was finally able to see common ground between herself and Juliet and that being a caregiver on the island was a futile endeavor.

[potentiality_26]

Such an interesting piece, especially this line: Both Harper and Juliet were trapped in their roles, the caregivers, knowing that nothing they could do was ever likely to make any real difference. So moving!