Every day, we have these little battles going on inside of us

Character Name: June Harris
Character Journal: littlebattles
Status: Inmate
Pairing Information:
June is a willing inmate, and will actually be pretty open to the idea of graduation from the get-go. She genuinely does want a fresh start in life, which is why she stole her sister's identity and got herself aboard a colony ship headed off-planet - but ultimately, she won't be married to that particular path, and will be totally fine with switching tactics and taking fresh-start-via-Barge instead. Hell, she'll even like the Barge option better; it'll mean that after graduation, she can go to another universe entirely, where it would be practically impossible for any of her old baggage to follow her.

But all that said, there’s a big difference between being down for the idea of graduating, and actually changing her mindset enough to graduate - and getting to the latter point is going to take some time. At first, she'll be in denial about what graduation will entail, believing that she'll be able to get herself there simply by being a nice, friendly, productive member of the Barge, even as she's simultaneously lying to and attempting to manipulate everyone else onboard. At least one person knowing the full truth about her will be essential to her graduation - without that, she'll be happy to keep up the lie forever. Because of this, she 100% needs a warden who will read her file. She'll ask them not to, and she'll make very reasonable arguments as to why they shouldn't; she'll point out that there are wardens onboard who never read their inmates' files without permission, and those wardens have graduated people just fine. A warden who would be inclined to agree with her on this front will, unfortunately, get absolutely nowhere with her.

Berating her about the shit she's pulled and forcing her to acknowledge that she is not the good person she thinks she is is something that absolutely should happen, but a good warden for her will be able to recognize the times when she's not as bad as she could be - and they'll also be able to recognize that those times won't necessarily be the most obvious ones. If asked to pinpoint moments of human decency in her past, she'd happily point out the way she pitched in to help the group after the colonists' first crash landing, or the time she rescued a dude while he was stranded, or the way she offered to use her sailing experience to try to get a boat safely through a violent storm, but those are cop-out answers that she shouldn't be allowed to get away with; they completely gloss over the fact that her own self-interest (gaining the favor of others so that they'd vouch for her, saving her own ass, etc.) was at the forefront of all those efforts. The way she gets upset anytime she's reminded of the time she willingly let a man be sucked out an airlock, on the other hand, is something she wouldn't even think to mention, but is absolutely something her warden should seize on. What really needs to happen is for her to realize that that man is no different from every other person who's suffered by her hands, either directly or indirectly. Coming to terms with this will be an incredibly distressing experience for her, but it'll be a necessary one.

She's going to need a warden who has a decent bullshit detector, and who is comfortable navigating a relationship with someone who's highly manipulative; that said, someone who automatically assumes the worst of her and never gives her the benefit of the doubt won't do her much good in the long run. Part of the reason she's dug herself so deep into this pit of crime, lies, and more crime is because she believes that no one would like her, trust her, or give her a second chance if they knew the whole, unvarnished truth about who she is and what she's done. She needs someone who will prove her wrong on that front, while at the same time refusing to let her make excuses for herself.

Not a lot is known about June's early life, other than the fact that she grew up wealthy, with one younger sister, Jessica. As an adult, she often ran afoul of the law; again, not a lot of details are revealed, but we do know that she's been in prison more than once for things like breaking and entering, possession of stolen goods, identity theft, and investment fraud. Despite this, her late mother was at least occasionally willing to bail her out of financial trouble, and her sister helped her out sometimes as well, at one point co-signing a loan for her (which June promptly missed all the payments for).

During the show's timeline, Earth is in the process of colonizing a planet in the Alpha Centauri system; anyone on Earth is allowed to apply to go, but applicants must pass a rigorous testing process to be admitted into the program. Jessica applies, and is accepted into the 24th colonist group. Right before leaving, she invites June over to her house to say goodbye, and to tell her that she'll be leaving her all of her Earthly possessions - she won't need them in her new life. June, however, has other plans: she drugs her sister's drink to knock her out, cuts her identification implant out of her arm, and ties her up in the bathroom. Even with her sister's mansion, car, and money, she knows she'll never be able to enjoy life on Earth to the fullest with her criminal record - but if she becomes Jessica Harris and gets on board that colony ship, she'll be able to leave her past and her record behind.

Things go smoothly for about, oh, five seconds. As she's boarding the colonization ship Resolute, the guy manning the security desk sees her name flash across his screen, and he jumps up to follow her. He has, it turns out, been having an affair with Jessica, and he's eager to inform her that he's finally ready to leave his wife for her. When he sees June's face, however, he realizes that she isn't her sister. June tries to bargain with him ("You don't tell anyone about me, and I won't tell your wife about your bad taste in women"), but he isn't having it. She tries to get away, but he doesn't let her go; they grapple, and in the process, his arm accidentally smacks against an airlock security pad, and the ID strip attached to his sleeve opens the door. He falls into the airlock, and June jumps back as the doors close behind him. As he screams at her to let him out, the sensor announces that the airlock will release in ten seconds if the override button is not pressed. Though she looks shocked and horrified, she doesn't immediately press the button. She hesitates, wavering, until the airlock releases and the guy is sucked out into space.

An indeterminate amount of time later, the ship's captain discovers security footage of the airlock incident and hauls her into a detention room, where he tells her that, since the colony hasn't yet set up any sort of justice system yet, he can punish her in whatever way he wants - which likely isn't going to result in a happy ending for her. Right at that moment, however, a crewmember bursts into the room, saying that there's been a breach and the captain is needed in the control room. He hustles out, locking June in, but when the emergency systems override the door lock she immediately skedaddles. Outside is chaos: a large metal robot is storming the halls, killing and maiming indiscriminately. In panic, she grabs onto the nearest person (an injured man) and the two duck down onto the floor. Spotting his crewmembers' coat that identifies him as "Dr. Z. Smith", as well as the accompanying ID strip, she helps him remove the coat under the pretense of making him more comfortable. After verifying that he's too injured to walk (and therefore won't be able to chase her), she runs off with the coat, leaving him to the mercy of the robot with nothing more than a quick "I'm sorry!". She heads immediately for the doctor's Jupiter (a mid-sized spaceship used as living quarters for families and for ship-to-planet transportation), where she runs into two maintenance workers who are preparing to steal it and save themselves. She scans her way in using the doctor's ID strip, then invites the mechanics to come along.

Apparently none of these people are very good pilots, because the next time we see their stolen Jupiter, it's crash-landed on a planet at the edge of a precipice. June and one of the mechanics, Don, are still strapped into their seats, and though it's a bit touch-and-go at first they both manage to help each other to safely. They find the second mechanic's body outside, and June insists on taking the time to bury her - if only so she can use it as an opportunity to tuck some of the doctor's personal effects (photographs, identifying documents, etc.) into the grave to get rid of them. Then she and Don hike across the surface of the planet, searching for other survivors. They end up finding another passenger, Angela, who's badly injured; at the same time, they spot an incoming bad storm on the horizon. The two decide that they have no choice but to leave Angela behind, but at the last second, Don changes his mind and hauls her up. Moving much more slowly now, it quickly becomes clear that they won't be able to make it far with Angela in tow, especially in a storm, and so they take shelter in a shallow cave. On the way in, June takes a St. Christopher medal that she'd stolen from the doctor's Jupiter and snags it on a nearby shrub, then panics when she "realizes" that "her" protective medal is missing. Despite his Jupiter-stealing tendencies, she's judged Don to be a pretty decent guy deep down, and she's betting that he'll rush out to find it for her - and she's right. During his brief absence, she steals his last flare gun and leaves the empty case behind; then, when he returns with the medal, she gives an impassioned speech about how she knows he'll never leave Angela, but someone needs to brave the storm to find them help. She assures him that she'll be able to make her way back to the cave again, because he can fire off that last flare to help her find it; this is, of course, bullshit, and she's already written him and Angela off as dead weight. Her plan is to get to a more open area unencumbered and then shoot off the flare, and that's exactly what she does. She's taken in by the Robinsons, a family (parents John and Maureen, kids Judy, Penny, and Will) of fellow crash-landed survivors who are racing back to their Jupiter in their chariot (a futuristic ATV, basically). By this point, that oncoming storm is looking pretty damn deadly, and when the Robinsons ask June if she knows of any other survivors in need of rescue, she says no and tells them to just get the fuck to safety before it's too late.

Since she has nowhere else to go, June (under her Dr. Smith persona, which she's expanded on a bit; she's now claiming to be a psychiatrist, presumably so that she won't be put on the spot if anyone needs the attention of a medical doctor) is invited to stay with the Robinsons. She makes nice with them while they're around, and snoops through their stuff when they're not, and everything seems to be going pretty well, as far as she's concerned - but there's a hitch. That killer robot from the Resolute? It's living on the Robinsons' Jupiter. Surprise! She's alarmed as hell at first, but Will (who is, at this point, the only family member who knows that the robot was the one who attacked the Resolute; none of the others witnessed it) reassures her that it's no longer dangerous. In time, she comes to learn that it crash-landed on the planet too, and by the time Will found it, it was no longer in battlemode; indeed, on the contrary, it saved him from a forest fire, and saved Judy when she was trapped in an icy lake. She soon comes to realize that the kid has developed some sort of bond with it and it does whatever he tells it to, which intrigues her.

After a short time in the Robinsons' Jupiter, it becomes clear that they're in a bit of a pickle themselves. The ship had landed in a particularly bad spot, it's now being crushed slowly by a glacier, and fuel levels are dropping for unknown reasons; they assume that there's a leak somewhere. June suggests that they just all pile into the Chariot and vamoose, but Maureen nixes that idea, saying that maybe the chariot could hold enough supplies to sustain one or two people, but not all six. That's all June needs to hear, and she once again decides to cut her losses, heading to the Jupiter's storeroom with the intention of stealing both supplies and the chariot. While she's in there, things go haywire in the hallway outside; some sort of giant wormlike creature drops through the ceiling, and the robot grabs a nearby Will and tosses him into the closet with June, then protectively stands guard at the door. While the rest of the family deals with the worms (tl;dr: they're alien creatures that have infested the bowels of the ship and are feasting on their methane-based fuel), Will and June chat about the robot. He's frustrated that it won't let him go help his family, even though he wants it to; she suggests that maybe the robot senses his fear, and is keeping him away from the danger because of it. She points out that since the robot is so laser-focused on protecting Will, maybe it'll be fine with letting her go as long as he stays behind. She spins it as her wanting to go help out the family that has helped her, but the second she's free, she's back onto her original plan, heading straight for the chariot and planning to leave. As she's about to eject, an automated warning informs her that moving the vehicle at this time will compromise the structural integrity of the rest of the ship. She hesitates... and then aborts the ejection, heading back inside to help Maureen. (This, it should be noted, is quite possibly the only truly altruistic thing she does in the entire goddamn series.) With everyone working together, they're able to defeat the worms and save enough of their fuel to rocket out of the ice. While in flight, they get a call from another Jupiter, confirming that there are other survivors out there; they also pick up a broadcast from the captain of the Resolute, saying that the ship is being stabilized and that the people who escaped in their Jupiters will be thoroughly searched for and rescued. Though they don't have the ability to broadcast back to the Resolute, everyone is ecstatic to hear that they haven't been left behind - all except June, who looks worried and conflicted. After all, for her, going back to the Resolute means going back to imprisonment and punishment. Who knows what's going to happen to her now?

With the Jupiter in a better, safer location, June continues to show a lot of interest in the robot: asking Will how they formed the bond that they did, wondering if there are any more like it, and so on. Elsewhere, Maureen, John, and Judy are off visiting another stranded family's Jupiter. This family, it turns out, had ended up finding and rescuing Don and Angela. Angela tells Judy what she'd seen during the attack on the Resolute... and her description of the killer robot perfectly matches the description of Will's robot. Ruh-oh. When she gets back to her own family's Jupiter, she tells her siblings what she learned, and informs them that she'll be telling their father so that he can take care of (read: destroy, probably) the robot. Wanting to protect it, Will decides to leave the safety of the perimeter fence that's been set up, planning to take it off into the wilderness to hide it. His sisters tag along (Judy to protect Will, and so she'll know where the robot is so she can lead their father to it later; Penny just for the fun of it) - and so does June, but secretly, and at a distance. Later, after the kids have gone, she approaches the cave where Will had instructed the robot to stay. Musing out loud to it, she says that she wishes that she, and not Will, had been the one to find it and earn its loyalty. When she gets back to the Resolute, she's going to need protection from the consequences that are waiting for her there - and what better protection than a fearsome killer robot?

Even down on the planet, things are getting a little hairy for June. All the survivors gather together, which means that she inevitably runs into Don, who is not too happy about her leaving him behind - and neither is Judy, who by this time has heard Don's side of the story. June comes up with semi-plausible excuses for both, but they're still understandably suspicious, Don especially. She realizes that she needs to ramp up her plans and get the robot on her side sooner rather than later; additionally, she needs to find some way to override the fact that Will has told it to never fight back or threaten people, because if it's going to be her protector, it will very likely need to do both of those things. When the survivors set up a huge light beacon in an effort to signal the Resolute before she can get this done, she becomes determined to shut the thing down - as far as she's concerned, they can't be rescued until she's fully prepared. Noticing that the light is drawing in a swarm of moth-like bugs, she remembers a large predatory creature that she had seen chasing and eating them before, and she shuts down the perimeter fence. Sure enough, one of the creatures shows up to snack on the moths, climbing the beacon and destroying it in the process. It then, naturally, turns on the humans. June convinces Will that this would be the perfect time to call the robot back - saving everyone is more important than keeping it hidden, right? Oh, and he'd better tell it that it's allowed to fight now, too. For the good of the colonists, of course.

Post monster fight, the cat is out of the bag when it comes to the robot. Many of the survivors are suspicious and angry that Will has been making something of a pet out of the thing that attacked their ship; Angela in particular is having a really hard time with it. Ever-"helpful" June offers to act as her therapist to help her work through the trauma, and what she does here is particularly heinous: she encourages Angela to revisit those traumatic memories of what happened during the attack on the Resolute, purposefully works her up into a vulnerable state, "sympathizes" with her about how terrible it is that Will's efforts mean that the robot might end up being accepted and welcomed... and then ends the session, peacing out even as Angela cries hysterically and begs her not to leave her alone. Not long after, Angela shows up at the Robinsons' Jupiter, still visibly distressed, and attacks with robot with a gun. Barely damaged, the robot fights back, advancing on Angela and attacking John when he gets between them. In the aftermath of this, Will reluctantly comes to the same conclusion that many others already have: the robot is too dangerous and uncontrollable to have around. He takes it outside and instructs it to walk off a cliff, where it falls and shatters into many pieces... and where June is all too happy to go find it. Now that she's successfully broken its connection to Will, she reasons, she'll be able to transfer its loyalties to her, once she figures out how to reassemble it. As she gathers its various parts and pieces together, she talks out loud to it (or really, to thin air; she says at one point that she knows it can't hear her, but she likes to think out loud in order to ground herself). She apologizes for the fact that it had to be broken for the sake of her plan, and introduces herself with her real name. She says (and not for the first time) that this is the last bit of shady underhanded shit that she's going to pull; after this, she claims, she's going to be nothing but a useful, productive member of the Alpha Centauri colony. It's complete bullshit, of course - but in that moment, she probably really does believe it.

June is not a roboticist, and so her plan to "put the robot back together" really just means that she arranges all the pieces on the ground and waits for them to fuse together on their own, something that Will had told her it had done when he'd first found it. This time, though, nothing happens. Following the clues from a video log that Will recorded, however, she realizes that what initially caused the robot to reassemble itself was the power from a crashed alien ship that Will had discovered. Time to go track down that ship!

But before she can do that, she's waylaid, because Maureen reveals an issue that's been uncovered: the planet is slowly being pulled into the orbit of a black hole, and life on its surface isn't long for this world. The Resolute has also discovered this, and based on the broadcasts that the stranded colonists are able to receive (though they still can't send back any of their own, particularly now that their beacon idea was sabotaged - thanks, June!), it becomes clear that the search for survivors is soon to be suspended, and the ship is preparing to leave the area. Due to the fuel-eating worms (which several other Jupiters also had trouble with), all of the Jupiters are critically low on fuel, and so a plan is made to take one and strip it down, removing everything that isn't absolutely necessary for it to launch - essentially, these people who are used to slick futuristic space travel will be going back to ultra-basic 1960s-era space travel, and dealing with all of the dangers and uncertainties that came with it. The idea is that if they can get at least one person back to the Resolute, they'll be able to let the ship's crew know that there are still survivors waiting for them.

While all this is going on, Maureen lures June into a supply closet and locks her in, informing her that she knows she's not who she claims to be - apparently, Don found the real Dr. Smith's picture ID and told Judy, who in turn told her parents. June "reveals" herself to be Jessica Harris and comes up with a sympathetic-sounding story, but Maureen is still suspicious, and tells her that she's going to keep her locked up for the time being, just in case she really is dangerous. In a desperate bid to get out and continue her plan, she starts trying to manipulate various members of the family in turn. To Maureen, she claims that she has secured an alternate escape route for herself and sabotaged the Jupiter they're preparing to launch, and if Maureen lets her go, she'll undo the damage she did. Maureen doesn't fall for the lie, though she's clearly rattled by it. John is her next target. She tries to paint Maureen as delusional and unhinged, playing into his fears about the launch, which John and Don have been chosen to pilot; she tells him that Maureen (who had previously filed to divorce him, and has only recently started to tentatively reconcile with him) had locked her up after she discovered that Maureen was using the risky mission as a convenient way to get him out of the picture. He, too, is rattled - though he, too, ultimately doesn't trust or release her. Lastly, she tries Will. She tells him that some people believe that kids should be protected from difficult truths, but she believes that he should know that the mission his dad is preparing for is a suicide mission, and that even though the Jupiter will be able to make it to the Resolute, anyone onboard will not survive the trip; in other words, she says, John is planning to sacrifice himself to save everyone else. But if she's given a chance to put the robot back together the way he had before, then the robot can fly the Jupiter, and his dad will be spared. This time it works, and Will sets her free; she promptly ties him up and leaves him in the closet, so that he can't tattle if he ends up having a change of heart. Then she grabs Maureen, who unbeknownst to her, is serving as mission control of the Jupiter that Don and John are piloting. With Maureen suddenly out of the picture and unable to walk them through how to deal with some unexpected turbulence, the ship destabilizes and explodes.

Maureen wakes up outside of camp, with her hands tied and no one but June by her side. June warns her to be careful moving because she probably has a concussion, then admits that the Jupiter exploded and that John and Don are presumed dead. She offers a brief apology for this, with only the barest hint of regret ("If you hadn't locked me up, I wouldn't have been in the dark about how your presence was vital to their survival, so clearly this isn't even really my fault" seems to be the implication here), then matter-of-factly informs Maureen that despite her understandable anger, she needs to move past it. She'd planned to force Maureen to show her where the alien ship's crash site was so that they could reassemble the robot there; now, she figures that once that's been done, the robot might be able to make the ship flightworthy so they can use it to get back to the Resolute - with June's bodyguard robot in tow, of course. Maureen tells her that with her engineering and mechanical skills, she might be able to help fix the ship too, and tries to convince her to untie her; June refuses, but allows her to wander freely around the ship. Together, they explore, and they discover some things about both the alien ship and the robot that are important to the main plot of the show but not especially relevant to June's personal story, so I'm not going to get into them here because holy shit this is already long enough. Kudos if you're actually reading this, by the way. I like writing character histories and I'm still kind of hating myself by this point. Anyway, Maureen escapes with the help of Judy at just about the same time as the robot finally manages to reassemble itself. Judy tells her that Will has figured out a way to get everyone off the planet together (tl;dr: use their waste converters to turn the large amounts of animal dung that they discovered in a cave into fuel for the Jupiters), but as the two are in the process of jetting off in their chariot, the robot steps in and stops them - with June by its side. Looks like her attempt to switch its loyalties to her has worked, at least for now. Judy suggests that they find some way to shake her and strand both her and the robot on the planet, but even after all she's done, Maureen refuses to leave her to die, and they bring them back to their Jupiter.

Back on the family's Jupiter, Will receives a Morse Code message from John on his radio - somehow, against all odds, he and Don have survived. After some back and forth, Will is able to communicate that they now have fuel, and John is able to communicate that he and Don are going to try to send a signal so that the others will be able to find them and pick them up. June isn't a fan of taking the time to search for them, but of course, the rest of the family overrules her. They hear again from the Resolute, and find out that all the other Jupiters have made it back except for them; they have just a little over an hour to show up, or the ship will leave without them. A little panicky - she has her robot protector! She's ready to go back now! - June again insists that they don't have time to try to rescue Don and John, and Maureen locks her and the robot in the Jupiter's central hub to keep them from interfering. She fires a large harpoon attached to a tethering wire at the men (who are, it turns out, clinging to a piece of wreckage that's floating through space - good thing they wore their spacesuits!), but it falls short, and they can't reach it to reel themselves in. June finds the door lock's manual override and escapes, only to discover that they've run out of time, and the Resolute has left without them.

The family doesn't really have time to mourn their failure, though, because they have the now-hostile robot to contend with; it has loyalties to nobody but June now, and so it's attacking them outright, and all their efforts have to go towards stopping it. It sort of works; Will ends up getting through to it and reminding it that he had its loyalty first, but it ends up being knocked out the cargo hatch regardless. Awwww. Elsewhere on the ship and blissfully spared any robot aggression, June decides that since they lost their chance to get back to the Resolute, they might as well keep trying to save John and Don while they're here - after all, maybe Maureen will vouch for her if she rescues her husband. She fires off the harpoon again, and this time, it makes it. She tells Maureen that she did it because she's sorry about everything that happened, but Maureen's reaction is pretty much, "Cool, that's nice. We're still locking you up." Which, fair. They prepare to try to book it to the Resolute (which has very nicely turned back to get them after all), but suddenly find themselves no longer able to control their Jupiter. Then a wormhole opens and swallows them up. Season 2 gets into why this happened, but again, the details are pretty tangential to June's story and so I'm not even going to attempt to get into them here. I'm sorry. Wormhole. Robots. Please just roll with it.

Seven months and a timeskip later, they've landed on yet another planet! This one has air that isn't particularly breathable, but they've done their best to make do; after all, they're sort of low on options here. They have a decent set-up, though, as far as things go; there's plenty of water nearby, and they manage to put together a makeshift greenhouse, so they're surviving. June is kept locked away, only let out for bathroom breaks and monitored exercise; she spends her time reading, decorating her little space as best she can, and secretly studying the Jupiter's flight manual. She continues to try to make nice and sweet-talk the others into giving her more freedom, and they continue to not respond to her bullshit.

Meanwhile, Maureen is getting antsy. John is happy to stay and live out the rest of their lives here - after all, they're safe, and after everything they've been through he doesn't particularly like the idea of heading off into the unknown. But Maureen doesn't want the kids to live their entire lives trapped on a spaceship, unable to go outside without spacesuits on, with no one to interact with but their parents, Don, and their pet criminal. Initially, John isn't swayed, but increasingly stormy weather and high winds cause their greenhouse wall to rip open, killing their plants. Later, June implies to Maureen that she'd been secretly escaping at night and that she damaged the wall herself because she agreed with Maureen's plan to try to leave, but it's never made clear whether this is true or whether she was just fucking with her. Either way, John reluctantly agrees to go, and they start working out a plan. They've noticed that there's an area off in the distance where frequent thunderstorms occur (they compare it to Catatumbo lightning), and Maureen theorizes that if they can make their way over there, they can set up a makeshift lightning rod to charge the ship's batteries and take off. Using supplies from around the ship, they create a set of giant sails, planning to sail their spaceship across the water to the stormy place. June claims to be an experienced sailor and offers to help if they let her free; her offer is rejected, but Penny does take her advice about how to stave off seasickness.

While they're at sea, another, separate storm starts up, and the family is quickly overwhelmed; they know the basics of sailing, but this requires more skill than they have. June continually shouts instructions and advice at them, and after John is injured and Will nearly drowns, Maureen relents and lets her out so she can help. In canon, she manages to expertly sail them through both the storm and a treacherous rocky area. In TLV, she'll have fallen into the water and drowned, because even good sailors have bad luck sometimes.

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