Title: "but words will never hurt me" 1/1
Author: monimaala
Fandom: "Lost" (spoilerish for 1x13)
Rating/Classification: SAC, language, Shannon, gen.
Disclaimer: Bad Robot!
Summary: Everybody's accounted for, right?
The noises don't wait till full dark anymore. Maybe they never did and she was too busy painting her toenails to notice. They start as a hum, a rustle, and then turn into a high amped sound like too many hair dryers going at a shopping mall salon.
The papers slip from her fingers and she starts to shake. "Shitshitshit," she chants, as Sayid says something way more fluid, probably less obscene, in Arabic. It sounds poetic. So, she wonders, "What is that?" She reaches her hand out, finding his as his whispers drown out the awful sound. "What's that you're reciting?"
"It is," he murmurs, switching to English that's no less musical, "a prayer for the dying."
She shivers, but doesn't take her hand back. No, she grips tighter. Boone's palms were always clammy. She never wanted to hold on too long. "Why do you assume somebody's dying? Everybody's accounted for, right?" she asks, glancing around the beach. Except Claire. Still no Claire. But she won't think about that.
"Perhaps here, yes," he allows, following her eyes and her denial. "But not in the world. There is always somebody dying, is there not?"
He's so serious. It's borderline morbid. Maybe it's a Muslim thing. She doesn't know. She hasn't known many Muslims or many things. "Do you pray five times a day, Sayid? Is that why?"
He laughs, softly, and his teeth flash white against the darkness of his beard. "Which way is Mecca?" he wonders, bemused. "Even in Iraq, I no longer knew." While she's deciding whether or not to ask another dumb question--or two, or five--he makes the choice for her, continuing, quietly, "Ignoring the call of the muezzin became habit, Shannon. Choosing to stay away from the mosque became a survival mechanism. Just as eating pork has here."
She draws her knees up to her chin. "Would Allah want you to starve?"
He takes their hands and rests them on her kneecap before skating them down the sharp slope of her bare legs. "Sticks," Sawyer calls her. Sticks and stones...
"Does *your* God want you to starve, Shannon?" Sayid counters, before bring their entangled fingers back down to the sand.
She supposes men in his country have their hands chopped off for what he just did. A simple touch.
His thumb strokes the flat of her palm. He makes no comments about the width of her wrists or the way her knuckles poke out. He makes no mention of the fact that no one has seen her eat in days. Or at all, really.
The monster screams so she doesn't have to.
"Teach me," she pleads, when the beach is silent again except for the people-noise and the buzzing of bugs. "Teach me the prayer?"
"Shannon." He follows her eyes and her denial. Again. "I think you all ready know it by heart."
--end--
December 21, 2004.