Title: "Family Album"
Author: monimala
E-mail: mala@malisita.com
Fandom: LOST
Rating/Classification: a bit of language, angst, future fic, Shannon/Sayid, Claire bits.
Disclaimer: Bad Robot!
Summary: The fifth tale in my AU series, newly titled "packing for the crash." Slight spoilers for "The Greater Good." Comes after The Girl Most Likely. Nowhere Man, About a Boy, and Thursday's Child.
It's seven years. Almost exactly. Shannon opens the door to the condo, expecting a man in a brown uniform and a package...not a woman in brown skin and baggage.
She knows right away, of course. She's too beautiful. Too perfect. The way certain memories get sharper, clearer, digitally re-mastered like an old classic movie.
She turns from the half-open door, to where Sayid is standing ...barely...rocking forward on his toes like he's going to faint. "Are you going to leave me?" she asks.
But he doesn't hear her. Of course.
"Nadia," he whispers. Haunted. God, maybe even happy...the happiest he's ever been.
"I...I had to come..." says the memory.
Who doesn't see her. Of course.
Shannon watches them walk out to the beach together. It figures. Sayid's Nadia didn't have the decency to stay dead. And hers...hers couldn't manage to stay alive.
"Fuck," is all she says as she slams shut the door.
She can't compete.
She's not even going to try.
***
Mum tells him he can't possibly remember.
It was too long ago.
He has an overactive imagination, yeah? That's what Mrs. Kinney says sometimes. "Oh, Adam, what *are* we going to do with you?"
"Send me home!" he always suggests...but she never does.
Reckon Teacher thinks he's troppo. And since he was born there...reckon she's right.
But he does remember his old man. He does.
He remembers him reading. And talking.
Most of all, he remembers that his dad loved him.
"He did, yeah?"
Mum kisses the top of his head, gets real quiet like she sometimes does. "Yeah, Addie...Sawyer loved you enough to die for you."
That's a lot.
And he won't ever forget.
***
There is a kind of symmetry, he supposes. He searched for seven years before all was lost...she waited seven more, just when everything was found again.
She is still beautiful. He did not expect otherwise. And he did expect. Has always known. There was, perhaps, the chance that the CIA had lied to him...but the moment he set foot on American soil again, he knew that she was there, watching his return on the television like the rest of the world. He knew she would, eventually, come to him.
So, he waited.
But he did not stand still.
He digs his bare feet into the warm sand, draws circles. "Why now, Nadia?" he asks.
"It was all ready too long, Sayid." Her eyes still hold a thousand midnight dreams. Her voice still echoes with childhood's laughter. "I missed you."
He cannot recall the last time Shannon really and truly laughed.
She has only just learned how to smile again.
Although, he suspects she isn't doing it right now. No, even with his back to the deck, he knows she is standing there, in a rage, expecting him to leave. She has always expected it. Has always feared. Every time the door shut. Every time he climbed from their bed.
He counts the lines on Nadia's face. Natural lines. Her life has been easier here than it was in Iraq. She has Friday night dinners with her girlfriends, a cat...judging by the fine hairs clinging to her blouse...and she did not really miss him much at all.
Until now.
Five days ago, he suspects.
"There were paparazzi at the ceremony," he murmurs, almost to himself. The entertainment news ran photos less than a day later. *Castaway Lovers Finally Make It Legal*...*Shannon Rutherford's Seven-Year-Itch* ...*Shannon and Sayid No Longer Shacking Up*. Some woman stuck a microphone in his face, asking him if it meant he finally had citizenship. He simply smiled, politely, and told her he'd long been a permanent resident of Shannon's heart.
"That's revolting," his wife had told him, tugging him toward the table where Jack was threatening to make a speech. With tears in her eyes.
His *wife*. "I am married." Each time he says the word, it makes it more real. *Married*.
Not in the eyes of Allah, of course. Even in this modern age, finding an imam to unite them proved impossible. But when had God's approval ever meant anything to them? When had God ever given them anything? They'd fought for everything they had. And everything they'd lost.
"Happily?" Nadia asks.
He has to laugh. "Happiness...happiness is not a commodity most can afford." But he remembers each morning, kissing Shannon before he leaves for the office. Each night, cajoling her into painting her toenails...into some tiny fit of whimsy that she had tried to bury in a tiny grave on an island thousands of miles away.
This woman is not his Nadia.
"It's all ready been too long," he agrees with her...and he does not stand still.
***
"Mum, can you tell me what he looked like?"
"Not today, Addie." She kneels in front of him. He's almost bigger than her this way. Now, he can kiss the top of her head. "Please, not today."
"Tomorrow, then?" He hopes. He really, really, hopes.
She hugs him, smelling like soap and pancakes. Mummy smells. "Yeah...yeah, tomorrow..."
He doesn't tell her he knows she's lying.
He'll just ask again.
Until she tells the truth.
***
The glass door slides shut behind him and her fingers tighten around the base of her martini glass. Extra dry with an onion. "Should I set another place for dinner?" she wonders.
"No." His hands come down on her shoulders. He's warm. Her own personal heater.
"Should I move my stuff into the guest bedroom?"
"No." He rubs her arms, up and down, like he's trying to melt the ice barrier she's erected around herself. He's done it so many times over the last seven years, it's amazing he isn't sick of it. Sick of her.
"Sayid..." She wants to lean against him. She wants to fling her drink over the railing and throw herself into his arms and beg him to stay with her...until death do us part. No...not even then, because that beautiful bitch is not getting another shot. Not even in Islamic heaven. "She's Nadia," she says, instead. "She's *Nadia*, Sayid."
"No." His beard tickles her cheek. "She is Noor. An old friend." His arms go around her waist. He pulls her between his thighs and she is so safe...so unbelievably safe. "Nothing more."
"Are you sure? Are you sure about this?"
She has always loved his hands. He covers her left one, brings it up so she can see the gold band that still feels weird on her finger. "Aren't you?" he counters, gently.
She can't compete.
She doesn't have to.
"Yes." She flings her drink over the railing.
She throws herself into his arms.
But she doesn't beg.
She doesn't have to.
It's seven years. Almost exactly. Since she learned the real meaning of love.
--end--
May 05, 2005.