Title: "Nowhere Man"
Author: monimala/Mala
E-mail: mala@malisita.com
Fandom: "Lost"
Rating/Classification: angst, futurefic, Sayid/Shannon.
Disclaimer: Bad Robot!
Summary: A companion piece to The Girl Most Likely. He listens to her breathe.
He listens to her breathe, counting her inhalations until his own lungs are keeping perfect time. It is how he finds his own way to sleep. She is his map, his longitude and latitude and every coordinate in between.
He curves his hand around her waist, the flesh of his palm rubbing back and forth across the ragged, raised, flesh of the scar that will never heal.
He knows where he is.
He knows where he will never be.
***
The wine glasses clink, Cabernet sloshing against Riesling as he nurses his flat diet soda and listens to Michael talk about how his contracting firm is getting more business than he knows what to do with. Michael is lucky. It is there, in his eyes, as he watches Walt, who is now a strapping 5'10 and still growing. The pride is there, for his son, for his life. For everything he has accomplished since...
Since.
Everything now is "since."
This year was Michael's choice. A trendy bistro in lower Manhattan, where the business is booming and they welcome tourists with open arms. Even him. Eyes shift past and over him as though his not-quite brethren never left their mark here...as though his nationality is immaterial...as though he does not exist at all until he flashes the crisp green of the almighty dollar bill.
Currency was immaterial on the island. No...no, that is not true. Currency was suntan lotion and guavas and a bigger portion of boar.
He never ate the meat. Just as he does not drink at these so-called "reunions."
He simply laughs with Jack's stilted jokes, asks after Claire and Adam's well-being, and answers, "We are well," when he is asked questions in return.
"I don't know how you do it. I would be three sheets five minutes in," Shannon said to him, standing in the doorway as he hefted his duffel bag onto his shoulder.
"So, why don't you come?" he asked. "I'm sure there are plenty of sheets to go around."
She shook her head, gave him her cheek for his kiss, and gently pushed him out the door.
So, he is here.
But not here.
Not really.
***
He has been back to Iraq just once since.
Ammi and his father died years ago, but his uncle Sharif still lives in the same village, two houses down, and Sharif praised Allah and clasped him close. They broke bread and shared milk and when he showed the photo of the fair-skinned American waiting for him in Malibu, Sharif turned away, whispering "she-devil," saying "another one is lost."
No, Uncle, he wanted to say. I'm found.
But he did not.
And he did not go back again.
***
He is an oddity. Shannon Rutherford's live-in lover. Her older man, her Iraqi. They whisper about him. This, he knows. That he is up to no good, that he is working against the government, that he is now a hired killer for the highest bidder. The reality of securities work, of sub-contracting for the department of Defense, is far less glamorous than the speculation.
And that suits him fine. Glamour is not his world. It is not hers either. Not anymore.
They live a peaceful life. They drink orange juice at 8 a.m. while rustling copies of the LA Times and he kisses her before he climbs into his energy-efficient compact car and drives to an unassuming warehouse filled to the brim with computers. Murray hands him the reports about the Thing in That Place and asks him to run the analysis reports for That Guy and elbows him, jokingly, about not getting much sleep last night because "Shan's a wildcat, eh?"
"Yes. Yes, she is," he agrees, quietly. "My Shannon is a lioness."
He has not raised a hand to another human being since the night he almost killed Jack.
"Man...man, you *need* me." That frantic whisper, pleading with him as he tightened his hands around his throat. "Please...please, let me help her. Let me go."
Jack had begun to turn purple. And Shannon was red. So red with blood.
The baby never even cried.
The word "father" was never spoken. Not by anyone.
Except Sawyer. But that was Sawyer. That was his way. While the others tiptoed around the words and looked away and shuffled their feet at the fresh earth of the open grave, it was Sawyer who handed him the shovel and said, "Here. Here, Daddy. Bury your baby girl."
It was Sawyer who pushed him hours later, when Shannon was finally asleep, and taunted him, "No good-pathetic-loser, can't even knock a girl up right..." until he snapped and screamed and fought...but he did not hit. He did not rip the flesh from the other man's bones. He curled his hands into fists and his nails scraped his own skin raw.
Sawyer never told anyone that he cried. That he rocked, back and forth, in the arms of his would-be enemy. That a maddening amoral creature offered him solace as his woman dreamed of a place where they were happy and their child lived and grew and loved.
Of course, perhaps Sawyer simply did not get the chance.
And perhaps there *is* such a place.
He does not know.
He has not found it.
He does not think he ever will.
***
She always waits up for him, pretending that she is planning the wedding of yet another high society couple and far too busy to rest. But he knows better. He knows, just as she does, that they are far too used to sleeping beside one another...conserving heat and making believe that holding on to another person meant that death would consider itself outnumbered and turn tail.
He tosses and turns in hotel beds. The mattresses are too soft.
And death is always there. Mere inches from the pillows. Sometimes, it speaks with a distinct drawl--"Hey, Faroukh...you comin'?"--and sounds like too much water and not enough air.
He hopes that Sawyer is a better uncle to his little Nadia than Sharif was to him.
***
They all live on or by the beach. He was almost amused when he first realized that. Michael and Walt near the Jersey shore with Sun, Claire "Down Under" where her boy can learn to surf and dive the Great Barrier Reefs, Jack just hours south of them in San Diego...
The deck behind their condo opens right out into the sand. It is comfort, he supposes. Or a sickness of sorts. A lasting reminder of what they've come from. Though none of them are likely to forget.
The year Adam turns five, Shannon turns from drawing circles in the sand with her toes and says, "Boone's mom wants to know when we're going to quit shacking up and plan our own wedding."
"'Shacking up?'" he repeats, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice. Boone's mother is like Boone himself was. Arrogant, overeager, beautiful. And full of loathing for him. "Did she truly say that?"
"Do you *want* to marry me, Sayid?" his lioness asks, her eyes dry of tears and her bare toenails dotted with crystal grains of what-might-have-been. "Do you really?"
He draws her close. He kisses the cynical line of her mouth, the stubborn set of her jaw, and the slope of her breasts. He presses his lips to the faded thread that will bind them together forever and then travels lower.
She inhales, sharply.
He listens to her breathe.
He knows where he is.
*Yes. Yes, I really want to...*
"No...no, Shannon. What we have is enough. It will always be enough."
He knows what he will never be.
--end--
March 19, 2005.