I haven't written anything for this fandom in quite a while, but rewatching some old episodes brought back my love for it all. So, here's some more of what I do best: dark Jimmy/Cindy. This is heavily inspired by one of my favorite films. I've peppered in a few references.

Life was perfect. So beautifully perfect. Too perfect.

Lately, he couldn't shake the thought.

The night breeze rustled through the palm trees. He could hear Cindy stirring slightly in their bed. She slept in a fetal position, like a child.

Like a child.

How young they'd been on that day so many years ago, when they'd first washed up on the island. The red-hot memory of salt-water stained shirts and hacking chest coughs after treading water for hours came back again and again, tugging at the shore of his subconscious.

"Jimmy?" She called out for him.

Something within him had shifted. He was almost scared to turn and look at her. He had felt a growing dread in his heart for the past week.

He walked over quietly and slipped into bed beside her. His back was turned to her. She draped her arm around his waist.

Something was very, very wrong.

The following morning, they sat side by side. She sipped her coffee. Wisps of her long blonde hair had come undone from her fishtail braid. A pearl sat at her throat, suspended from a thin thread. The pearl he'd looked through one hundred and thirty seven oysters to find.

Her beauty was somehow both inviting and threatening. Her emerald green eyes had never lost their divine spark. Today, they probed his for some answer.
Why have you been so lost in your own world lately?

He had the inkling of an answer itching at the corner of his mind, but right as he began to grasp it, the inkling flitted away. It was maddening.

She was maddening.

He had taken to expressly avoiding her as much as possible. He took solitary walks. Sometimes, he sat at length on some rock, high up, and thought about what he'd given up to be here. His friends, his parents, his inventions, Goddard. Vestiges of a life once lived, and then a life unlived. He'd been young, he'd taken a chance on an impossible love that had turned out to be not so impossible.

And for what?

So, he had her. He was meant to be with her, and she him. That much he knew. But was it enough? When he thought about her, instantly, the answer came to him. Yes. And he'd do it again. Or would he?

Yes, he told himself, I would have done it again. And he almost believed himself. Believed that giving up one love (science), for another (Cindy), was all worth it. Wasn't it worth it for the joy of knowing she was his forever? To kiss, and hold, and argue, and laugh with until they were old and withered and swept away by the serene turquoise blue waves? Jimmy wept under the watchful gaze of the peach-colored evening sky.

They had conquered everything together. She had carved their names into a tree together as a girl, and they had carved their names into each other's hearts for eternity. They had built their own world together. Then why did the very thought of their love prick so mercilessly at him?

Why did he feel so trapped?