Wow, it's been a long slog, but here it is – the final chapter! Sorry it's taken me so long to get here.

The End

The sunlight glimmered through Julia's eyelashes. She heard a voice, but it ebbed away, and the light moved here and there. Clouds seemed to skit across the sky, making everything intermittently light and then dark.

Eventually, the voices, which would rise and fall, like the tide, because clearer, and occasionally Julia would hear a word, and then a sentence. The light soon was joined by colours, dim outlines. A vase of flowers, a figure. People came and went, their motions sometimes sped up, sometimes achingly slow, as if a child were playing with the buttons on an old video recorder. She was touched and soothed, and cold cloths put on her face. There was a beep that sounded sometimes, and wires that coursed everywhere, tangled, like hair. One day, she heard her name, and felt her body move. Someone came near her, and as her eyes flickered into the sunlight, she saw who it was, and smiled.

Some days later, though Julia did not know if it were days, or minutes, or weeks, the same thing happened, and Julia's head rolled to one side. She smiled. There was Jin, leaning forward, his face fixed on her. When he saw her smile, he leapt up, and gripped her hand,

'Julia, you're awake!' She nodded, not knowing why. 'How do you feel?'

'Tired' she answered weakly. 'So tired.' and let herself drift into unconsciousness again. Eventually, she was awake enough to sit up in bed, and saw that what she had thought was sunlight was in fact the strip lighting of the medical wing. Her whole body felt heavy, and stiff, and she was surrounded by medical equipment. The flowers were gone. How long had she been here?

'Three weeks.' She looked round, startled. There was Jin.

'Oh, I didn't know I said that out loud.' and she was surprised by how thin her own voice sounded.

'It's a miracle you're alive.' He came over, and sat by her. She smiled weakly at him, and let her fingers fall into the spaces between his knuckles. For a brief moment, there was no context – no past, no future – just the feel of Jin's skin against hers, and the knowledge that she was still alive. But that was wrong … Julia knit her brow, because, of course, things had come before. Slowly her mind began to clear.

'But, Jin, the devil, you, you're not …' And Julia felt fear grip her stomach. She tried to fight the oncoming memory, to push it back, away, as she had done before, but it would not be resisted, and Julia's eyes were wide with horror as remembrance came crashing at her; and she was there, again, in the arena, her hair quivering in the strangely quiet aftermath of the transformation -

She was standing over Jin. There was a thick smog screening the sunlight. There was gunfire, muffled at first, then louder and louder, until it was there, and real, and so was she. Had it been her? Had she finally done it? Had she saved him as she was prophesised to do? But, no, there was someone else there too.

Asuka.

And suddenly it all made sense. How terrible, how terrible. The words echoed in her head, but she could not voice them, not now. Because there was something more important … Her mouth opened, words tumbled out. Those words which had drifted away at the time, were now etched sharply and irrevocably on her mind,

'Jin.' she said, 'Do you love Asuka?'

He was stunned for a second. Asuka seemed about to say something, to protest, but he looked at her. It was almost accidental – a glance of uncertainty, but their eyes locked, as if a gossamer thread had been cast from one to the other, holding their gaze in place, and, without looking away, he answered,

'I've loved Asuka since I was twelve years old.' Asuka was frozen.

'Asuka, do you love Jin?'

There was a silence, and then, very quietly,

'Yes … yes.' Asuka looked up at Julia, her eyes brimming with tears.

'Julia! Julia!' Jin was shaking her shoulder urgently. Julia awoke from the memory,

'It wasn't me.' she said quietly.

'What?'

'I wasn't the one who saved you. I … I wasn't the one …' Jin's face fell.

'Julia, I love you. I –'

'It's not enough.' Julia shook her head slowly, her eyes beginning to prickle with heat. 'She is the one, the one Maria was talking about. All this time I thought it was me, but …' Jin's face was intense and confused,

'Julia, I don't understand.'

'Asuka.' Julia waited for Jin to say something, but he didn't. He couldn't. He looked away, and his expression, torn and pained, was enough.

'I have to go.' mouthed Julia, and she got up. Wires clung to her like brambles, but she broke free of them, and fled. She felt Jin try to grab her, and thought she heard him call her name. Doors and people moved past Julia, her bare feet slipping on the polished floor as she ran blindly through the corridors. Everything seemed to be tumbling, crashing, imploding. Julia only knew that she could not turn back. She could not face a life with Jin knowing she had forced him to compromise, that he had sacrificed his destiny for her. And more than this, she could not bear it. She simply could not bear that he loved someone else better than her. When every fibre of her self was for Jin, Jin, Jin alone. She did not think these thoughts logically, but they were what drove her on, through the gleaming white corridors, away from the only man she had ever loved, the greatest happiness she had ever know, and the most pain. Finally, she flung two doors open, and stumbled out, blinking, into the sunlight.

Julia felt her knees buckle. It was as if every fibre of strength that she had built up over the past, harrowing few months had snapped at once, and she broke down. She curled into herself and wept with a pain and a loss greater than anything she had ever known. At that moment, it felt that everything had gone, that her world was crumbling around her. Julia felt, wildly but certainly, that nothing, nothing could ever be good again, because she did not have Jin. She buried her face in her hands and wished, hopelessly, that it could be different, that it all could have been different. But it wasn't, and it couldn't. She had lost him. She had lost Jin.

Julia wept. She wept until she had run out of tears to shed, and then she carried on sobbing until her throat was raw. Soon she slept. She slept because she was tired. She slept because there was nothing to be awake for.

The days rolled on, and each morning that she awoke and remembered, it seemed to be happening all over again, the pain as fresh as ever. But one day, so distant, it seemed to Julia, that it would never arrive, it would get better. She would wake up, she would look out of the window across the Arizona skyline, dark and rugged and familiar. She would rub her eyes and go to her desk, where the notes of her research would be scattered from the night before. She would gather them up into a loose pile. As she did so, for no particular reason, she would see the scar on her palm. She was so used to it that she hardly noticed it any more. But as she absent-mindedly ran her fingers over the faint ridges, she would recall how it had happened. She would smile dimly, because the memory was so strange and so far away that it hardly seemed real any more. When she thought of her husband, whom she loved gently and unswervingly, the wild, all-encompassing love she had known for Jin all those years ago would be tempered by a hard-won realism - such a love cannot last – she could not have felt like that forever, or she could not move. She could not have eaten or slept or thought – she would be paralysed with it. She had loved Jin, because it had been necessary to love him. Asuka may have saved him, but it had been Julia who had sustained him. Reflecting on this, Julia would smile sadly, then tuck her research into a file, and prepare for another day.

Firstly, let me say thank-you so much for making it this far! I've truly been blown away by the response this story has gotten.

Next, I know that this might not be the ending some of you were hoping for. I felt for various reasons that I could not authentically deliver an entirely happy ending. Sorry for being a little vague, but if you feel a bit disappointed, and want to understand my motives a little better, you are welcome to message me directly.

Anyway, I only say this by way of explanation, not to guilt you into giving me good reviews! But please do review, and be as honest as possible. You've already paid me the biggest compliment you possibly could by making it to the end of my story, so the least I can do is listen to your opinions on it – good, bad, whatever. I doubt I'll be writing any more fanfiction after this, but my original stuff has been published here and there, and a few people I respect have mentioned the idea of going into writing professionally to me, so I'd always appreciate the input of some impartial readers to help me gauge whether it's something worth pursuing. Big love to you all!