Smile for the Camera Pt. 4
Characters: Shannon, the Oceanic Six, Nadia; post-Shannon/Sayid
Rating: PG13
Words: 2367
Summary: Shannon leaves Seoul to go to Christian's memorial service. The rest of the gang is there. Shannon and Sayid have it out. She finally figures out what to do with her inheritance from Boone.
A/N: I guess I lied about not posting for awhile (sorry!). This is a short chapter, but it is the penultimate one! Yay! I haven't posted fic in awhile and wanted to get this off. The idea for this entire series came out of a deleted scene on the dvds about the memorial service, so we finally get to it in this chapter.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Sun urges her not to go, and a part of Shannon wants to listen, but in the end, the self-destructive fame-whore in her wins. She knows she’s being a bad friend, leaving Sun alone and heavily pregnant in order to go to a funeral for someone she never met, doesn’t care about, and who died ten months ago. But although she’s doing fine here taking care of Sun, Shannon’s been secretly itching for LA, for America, for something more familiar, if only for a few days. And yeah, Sayid might be there---fine, will most likely be there---but she isn’t sure if she’s dreading that fact or looking forward to it. Like a moth to the flame, she figures with a toss of her hair as she tells Sun firmly that she’s going.
LA is just as she left it, except colder because now there really is nothing for her there. She hates feeling like a tourist in her own hometown. It uncharacteristically rains almost every day, which ruins her sightseeing hopes. Shannon makes a lunch date with a girl from high school who had emailed her a few weeks before, but the girl ends up flaking on her, leaving her feeling even more alone than she did before. She starts to think this was an even worse idea than she’d feared.
Living with Sun has cut her off from the rest of the survivors in a way that not just distance could achieve; Sun really hates Jack and Kate, and, whether or not she agrees with Sun’s anger, it’s hard for her roommate’s feelings not to have rubbed off on Shannon even a little bit. Between that and the whole business with Sayid, Hurley’s pretty much the only one she’s still completely okay with. However, the visit is going so badly that by the time she’s in her rental car and driving to the memorial service, Shannon’s actually excited at the prospect of seeing Jack and the rest of them.
She spots them all huddled together as soon as she gets out of her car. Jack beckons her with a wave, and Hurley ruins Shannon’s efforts at a sexy sashay by running up to her and grabbing her in a bear hug.
“Hey,” she says quickly, focusing her attention on Jack and Kate. Kate’s trial still hasn’t started, and she’s looking just as stressed out as she did months ago when they’d last seen each other. Out of the corner of her eye, Shannon can see Nadia murmur a hello. Shannon purposefully doesn’t look at Sayid, but she can see his shape hovering in the corner of her eye, daring her to turn her head just a little bit more.
“When did you get in?” Jack asks.
“Day before yesterday. I slept most of the first day,” she lies.
“How is Sun?” Sayid asks. His normally high level of concern is evident, and it grates on Shannon’s nerves. Not a question about her, not an acknowledgement of anything having to do with her. Only Sun. She wonders if that’s exactly the same way that he asked Sun about her over the phone, wonders if she means no more to him than Sun does. Wonders if she ever did.
She finally looks at him as she says it, and her annoyance drops. Behind the wall he’s trying to put up, Shannon can see that he’s nervous. It’s a victory, if only a small one. “Really big now. The baby’s due in another couple of weeks. But we’re doing just fine,” she says, as pleasantly as possible, even though she knows it comes out pretty bitchily and that her voice shakes.
“That’s, uh, good to hear,” Hurley stammers. He’s never been good at awkward situations, even ones that don’t involve him.
Getting back to the topic they’d been talking about before Shannon’s arrival, Nadia pats the golden fuzz that’s finally starting to grow on Aaron’s bald head and coos, “Hello, my sweet.” Then, looking up to smile at Kate, she adds, “He grows more like you every day, I swear.”
The adoration in Nadia’s voice makes it clear that she means the comment with the most genuine sort of cluelessness. Everyone stiffens, and Kate looks as though she’s going to be sick. Hurley breaks the uncomfortable and damning silence by wheezing out a laugh and murmurs, “Yeah, he does, doesn’t he… right, Jack?”
While Jack stammers his agreement, Sayid, standing just behind Nadia, makes eye contact with Shannon. A split second lasts for longer than it should before Shannon’s shocked expression forces Sayid’s eyes downward. But during that time, Shannon can feel her face curling into a nose-twitching scowl of disbelief.
Sayid hasn’t told his wife. Nadia still believes the lie.
There’s no real reason to feel this outraged, but Shannon does.
It’s not just that he picked Nadia over her. It’s that he picked the lie over her. He’s picked a world in which there were no date beaches or romantic tents-for-two. He’s picked a world in which the only reason he was with her was because Jack had claimed Kate, Sun was a freshly minted widow, and Shannon was just there, not because he’d picked her or wooed her or had anything else to. A romance in those circumstances is easily written off. But that isn’t what happened.
With a pang, Shannon realizes that she feels totally alone in this crowd, with these people who are supposed to be the only ones she can be honest around. She wishes Sun were here, or that she’d listened to her and never left Korea.
“Well,” she says, trying to regain her composure, “I actually think he looks a lot like Jack.” She means it to be stupidly obnoxious, to make all of them uncomfortable, but the creepy thing is that once the words are out of her mouth, Shannon realizes that it’s true. The kid does look like Jack, which is weird and gross and not ok.
She can tell that everyone else sees it, too. There’s a horrified silence that is broken by Jack’s mother coming over to tell them that the service is about to start.
It’s a perfectly nice ceremony, as memorial services go. Jack gives a good speech, and everyone pays their respects to a guy who was clearly an asshole if you read between the lines. As soon as it’s over and people start milling about, Nadia immediately starts fussing over Kate and the goddamn baby again. It isn’t even hers! Shannon wants to scream, but she is sidetracked from her irrational rage by Sayid, who takes his wife’s distraction as an opportunity to beckon Shannon into the hallway. Nadia notices---eyes like a hawk, that one, despite the seemingly sweet disposition---but continues talking to Kate and Aaron like nothing is happening. As she follows Sayid, Shannon dies a little inside to realize that Nadia isn’t even jealous. She poses that little of a threat.
“What do you want, Sayid?” Shannon’s voice is hard and tired, and at this point, she doesn’t even know what she wants him to say. She doesn’t know what there is to say. She just wants to go back home and order take-out with Sun… home. Seoul is home. Shannon hasn’t thought of a place as home in so long that the revelation is shocking. No matter how demoralizing the past couple of days have been and what awful conversation she’s about to have with her now-married ex, Shannon suddenly feels glad that she came here, if only to have figured that out.
“We never had a chance to talk,” he pleads. “I hate the thought that you left feeling… I do not even know what you were feeling. You never told me.” He’s using that soft, romantic voice he used to use only with her. He seems weirdly desperate right now, and Shannon remembers figuring out way back when that he’d never really had that much experience with women. A bunch of one-night stands, yes---he’s too much of a sexy mofo not to---but relationships, no. Good at wooing but not the long haul, kind of like Shannon herself, actually. Between the army and his stupid Nadia pining, he’d never had much of a chance before Shannon. She almost pities him. Almost.
“There wasn’t anything to talk about. You were clearly still interested in her. I’m not pathetic enough to stick around when I know I’m going to get dumped.”
Sayid reaches out and takes her hand. “Shannon, I never wanted---”
“Exactly.” Shannon snatches her hand back. They stare at one another, seething with a lot of emotions that neither of them quite know how to bring up. He may be older, but in a few ways, they're on the same level. Maybe that's why it had worked for as long as it had. As she usually does when things get too intense, Shannon deflects back to small talk. “So,” she snaps with a trembling attempt at nonchalance, “what have you been up to?”
Sayid looks just as ashamed as he should when he gives into the change of topic and answers, “Not very much. It has taken time to accustom myself to this life of leisure. Nadia and I have spent much of our time setting up house.”
“Uh-huh,” Shannon deadpans before she explodes again. The attempt at civility has totally failed. “What happened to us doing all that research to find out what happened to us? What happened to finding a way to rescue the people we left behind? You totally dropped that as soon as she showed up. Because you’re in denial, and she’s giving you a way out. But you know what? Sun and I have kept working on it. We’re the ones getting stuff done while you sit here and… play pretend with your new wife like nothing bad ever happened. Who’s the useless one now?”
“I never said you were useless. Quite the contrary, if you remember.”
It’s true, and that somehow gets her even more riled up. “You know what? For all your torturing and killing and soldiering and whatever, you’re a coward. That’s all. It’s easier for you to sit around with this clueless woman and convince yourself that even you believe all the crap we’ve been saying. You can stay here and hide behind the lie and pretend that everything is hunky-dory and that you landed in LA and found Nadia just like you thought you would, but you and I both know that isn’t what happened. Your marriage is just as much of a lie as the one we’ve been telling. Only there you’re telling it to yourself.” It feels amazing to lash out at him like this, to tell him all the things she’d figured out over the past few months. Granted, some of these ideas are Sun’s, but that makes them no less true.
Sayid looks like he’s been slapped, which in effect, he has. He swallows a few times, his mathematical brain broken by her assault. “Shannon, I know you were hurt, but…”
“Oh, shut it, Sayid. Just shut up. You always used to like to play the hero. If there was one person who could have figured out how to fix this, how to save the people we left behind, I thought it would be you.” She snorts. “Guess I was wrong. Guess you care about other people even less than everyone thinks I do. Doesn’t it bother you? Doesn’t it keep you up at nights?”
“Of course it does,” Sayid replies quietly.
Then do something about it.” This is as good a time as any to make a dramatic exit, and so Shannon does, finally able to pull off the sexy sashay that Hurley had interrupted earlier.
Shannon realizes that there really is something to all this closure stuff that people always talk about. It’s not like these particular unresolved issues have been keeping her up at nights (she has eerily vivid nightmares of left-behind survivors serving that purpose), but Shannon feels better than she has in months, and only part of that is due to the satisfaction of having managed to stick it to such a normally superior bastard.
She returns to Seoul a new woman. As soon as she gets home, Sun waddles excitedly to her with an envelope.
“It finally came! They finally found him!” she cries as Shannon rips it open. It’s been so long since she put in the call to the investigator that for a moment she doesn’t even remember what this is supposed to be about. She assumes that it’s some Widmore-related breakthrough until she reads the letter. Sun’s guys really are thorough. There’s a picture and an address and a detail and everything.
“Hey! This is great!”
That evening, despite her jet-lag, Shannon sits down at her desk and writes a check for the amount of the inheritance she got from Boone. She also takes out a notepad and bites her pen while she thinks of what to write.
Hey Walt,
How’s it going? Just wanted to let you know that Vincent was fine last time I saw him. Sorry I couldn’t bring him back with me, but you know... Anyway, consider this from Boone, not from me. I think he would have wanted you to have this. Oh, and if you want a financial advisor on what to do with it, the guy who’ll get you this is really good. He’ll tell you what to do. Just don’t tell anyone I gave you his name or that this is from me, because we’re not supposed to know each other and all. Have fun in New York. Sun sends her love! Maybe one day we’ll come visit you.
-Shannon
She wonders if she should mention his dad, let him know about what happened on the freighter, but she just can’t. She tells herself that the kind of kid who creepily appears to people like that probably would know, right? She wants to believe it, at least. She wraps the check and the note up in a package to send off to Sun’s and her banker to deal with the next day and smiles. Sayid had been right. It had taken a little bit of time, but she’s made the right choice about what to do with the money. For the first time ever, she feels at peace about Boone. He’d be happy. She has a feeling he is happy.
On to Part 5 (last chapter!)...
Rating: PG13
Words: 2367
Summary: Shannon leaves Seoul to go to Christian's memorial service. The rest of the gang is there. Shannon and Sayid have it out. She finally figures out what to do with her inheritance from Boone.
A/N: I guess I lied about not posting for awhile (sorry!). This is a short chapter, but it is the penultimate one! Yay! I haven't posted fic in awhile and wanted to get this off. The idea for this entire series came out of a deleted scene on the dvds about the memorial service, so we finally get to it in this chapter.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Sun urges her not to go, and a part of Shannon wants to listen, but in the end, the self-destructive fame-whore in her wins. She knows she’s being a bad friend, leaving Sun alone and heavily pregnant in order to go to a funeral for someone she never met, doesn’t care about, and who died ten months ago. But although she’s doing fine here taking care of Sun, Shannon’s been secretly itching for LA, for America, for something more familiar, if only for a few days. And yeah, Sayid might be there---fine, will most likely be there---but she isn’t sure if she’s dreading that fact or looking forward to it. Like a moth to the flame, she figures with a toss of her hair as she tells Sun firmly that she’s going.
LA is just as she left it, except colder because now there really is nothing for her there. She hates feeling like a tourist in her own hometown. It uncharacteristically rains almost every day, which ruins her sightseeing hopes. Shannon makes a lunch date with a girl from high school who had emailed her a few weeks before, but the girl ends up flaking on her, leaving her feeling even more alone than she did before. She starts to think this was an even worse idea than she’d feared.
Living with Sun has cut her off from the rest of the survivors in a way that not just distance could achieve; Sun really hates Jack and Kate, and, whether or not she agrees with Sun’s anger, it’s hard for her roommate’s feelings not to have rubbed off on Shannon even a little bit. Between that and the whole business with Sayid, Hurley’s pretty much the only one she’s still completely okay with. However, the visit is going so badly that by the time she’s in her rental car and driving to the memorial service, Shannon’s actually excited at the prospect of seeing Jack and the rest of them.
She spots them all huddled together as soon as she gets out of her car. Jack beckons her with a wave, and Hurley ruins Shannon’s efforts at a sexy sashay by running up to her and grabbing her in a bear hug.
“Hey,” she says quickly, focusing her attention on Jack and Kate. Kate’s trial still hasn’t started, and she’s looking just as stressed out as she did months ago when they’d last seen each other. Out of the corner of her eye, Shannon can see Nadia murmur a hello. Shannon purposefully doesn’t look at Sayid, but she can see his shape hovering in the corner of her eye, daring her to turn her head just a little bit more.
“When did you get in?” Jack asks.
“Day before yesterday. I slept most of the first day,” she lies.
“How is Sun?” Sayid asks. His normally high level of concern is evident, and it grates on Shannon’s nerves. Not a question about her, not an acknowledgement of anything having to do with her. Only Sun. She wonders if that’s exactly the same way that he asked Sun about her over the phone, wonders if she means no more to him than Sun does. Wonders if she ever did.
She finally looks at him as she says it, and her annoyance drops. Behind the wall he’s trying to put up, Shannon can see that he’s nervous. It’s a victory, if only a small one. “Really big now. The baby’s due in another couple of weeks. But we’re doing just fine,” she says, as pleasantly as possible, even though she knows it comes out pretty bitchily and that her voice shakes.
“That’s, uh, good to hear,” Hurley stammers. He’s never been good at awkward situations, even ones that don’t involve him.
Getting back to the topic they’d been talking about before Shannon’s arrival, Nadia pats the golden fuzz that’s finally starting to grow on Aaron’s bald head and coos, “Hello, my sweet.” Then, looking up to smile at Kate, she adds, “He grows more like you every day, I swear.”
The adoration in Nadia’s voice makes it clear that she means the comment with the most genuine sort of cluelessness. Everyone stiffens, and Kate looks as though she’s going to be sick. Hurley breaks the uncomfortable and damning silence by wheezing out a laugh and murmurs, “Yeah, he does, doesn’t he… right, Jack?”
While Jack stammers his agreement, Sayid, standing just behind Nadia, makes eye contact with Shannon. A split second lasts for longer than it should before Shannon’s shocked expression forces Sayid’s eyes downward. But during that time, Shannon can feel her face curling into a nose-twitching scowl of disbelief.
Sayid hasn’t told his wife. Nadia still believes the lie.
There’s no real reason to feel this outraged, but Shannon does.
It’s not just that he picked Nadia over her. It’s that he picked the lie over her. He’s picked a world in which there were no date beaches or romantic tents-for-two. He’s picked a world in which the only reason he was with her was because Jack had claimed Kate, Sun was a freshly minted widow, and Shannon was just there, not because he’d picked her or wooed her or had anything else to. A romance in those circumstances is easily written off. But that isn’t what happened.
With a pang, Shannon realizes that she feels totally alone in this crowd, with these people who are supposed to be the only ones she can be honest around. She wishes Sun were here, or that she’d listened to her and never left Korea.
“Well,” she says, trying to regain her composure, “I actually think he looks a lot like Jack.” She means it to be stupidly obnoxious, to make all of them uncomfortable, but the creepy thing is that once the words are out of her mouth, Shannon realizes that it’s true. The kid does look like Jack, which is weird and gross and not ok.
She can tell that everyone else sees it, too. There’s a horrified silence that is broken by Jack’s mother coming over to tell them that the service is about to start.
It’s a perfectly nice ceremony, as memorial services go. Jack gives a good speech, and everyone pays their respects to a guy who was clearly an asshole if you read between the lines. As soon as it’s over and people start milling about, Nadia immediately starts fussing over Kate and the goddamn baby again. It isn’t even hers! Shannon wants to scream, but she is sidetracked from her irrational rage by Sayid, who takes his wife’s distraction as an opportunity to beckon Shannon into the hallway. Nadia notices---eyes like a hawk, that one, despite the seemingly sweet disposition---but continues talking to Kate and Aaron like nothing is happening. As she follows Sayid, Shannon dies a little inside to realize that Nadia isn’t even jealous. She poses that little of a threat.
“What do you want, Sayid?” Shannon’s voice is hard and tired, and at this point, she doesn’t even know what she wants him to say. She doesn’t know what there is to say. She just wants to go back home and order take-out with Sun… home. Seoul is home. Shannon hasn’t thought of a place as home in so long that the revelation is shocking. No matter how demoralizing the past couple of days have been and what awful conversation she’s about to have with her now-married ex, Shannon suddenly feels glad that she came here, if only to have figured that out.
“We never had a chance to talk,” he pleads. “I hate the thought that you left feeling… I do not even know what you were feeling. You never told me.” He’s using that soft, romantic voice he used to use only with her. He seems weirdly desperate right now, and Shannon remembers figuring out way back when that he’d never really had that much experience with women. A bunch of one-night stands, yes---he’s too much of a sexy mofo not to---but relationships, no. Good at wooing but not the long haul, kind of like Shannon herself, actually. Between the army and his stupid Nadia pining, he’d never had much of a chance before Shannon. She almost pities him. Almost.
“There wasn’t anything to talk about. You were clearly still interested in her. I’m not pathetic enough to stick around when I know I’m going to get dumped.”
Sayid reaches out and takes her hand. “Shannon, I never wanted---”
“Exactly.” Shannon snatches her hand back. They stare at one another, seething with a lot of emotions that neither of them quite know how to bring up. He may be older, but in a few ways, they're on the same level. Maybe that's why it had worked for as long as it had. As she usually does when things get too intense, Shannon deflects back to small talk. “So,” she snaps with a trembling attempt at nonchalance, “what have you been up to?”
Sayid looks just as ashamed as he should when he gives into the change of topic and answers, “Not very much. It has taken time to accustom myself to this life of leisure. Nadia and I have spent much of our time setting up house.”
“Uh-huh,” Shannon deadpans before she explodes again. The attempt at civility has totally failed. “What happened to us doing all that research to find out what happened to us? What happened to finding a way to rescue the people we left behind? You totally dropped that as soon as she showed up. Because you’re in denial, and she’s giving you a way out. But you know what? Sun and I have kept working on it. We’re the ones getting stuff done while you sit here and… play pretend with your new wife like nothing bad ever happened. Who’s the useless one now?”
“I never said you were useless. Quite the contrary, if you remember.”
It’s true, and that somehow gets her even more riled up. “You know what? For all your torturing and killing and soldiering and whatever, you’re a coward. That’s all. It’s easier for you to sit around with this clueless woman and convince yourself that even you believe all the crap we’ve been saying. You can stay here and hide behind the lie and pretend that everything is hunky-dory and that you landed in LA and found Nadia just like you thought you would, but you and I both know that isn’t what happened. Your marriage is just as much of a lie as the one we’ve been telling. Only there you’re telling it to yourself.” It feels amazing to lash out at him like this, to tell him all the things she’d figured out over the past few months. Granted, some of these ideas are Sun’s, but that makes them no less true.
Sayid looks like he’s been slapped, which in effect, he has. He swallows a few times, his mathematical brain broken by her assault. “Shannon, I know you were hurt, but…”
“Oh, shut it, Sayid. Just shut up. You always used to like to play the hero. If there was one person who could have figured out how to fix this, how to save the people we left behind, I thought it would be you.” She snorts. “Guess I was wrong. Guess you care about other people even less than everyone thinks I do. Doesn’t it bother you? Doesn’t it keep you up at nights?”
“Of course it does,” Sayid replies quietly.
Then do something about it.” This is as good a time as any to make a dramatic exit, and so Shannon does, finally able to pull off the sexy sashay that Hurley had interrupted earlier.
Shannon realizes that there really is something to all this closure stuff that people always talk about. It’s not like these particular unresolved issues have been keeping her up at nights (she has eerily vivid nightmares of left-behind survivors serving that purpose), but Shannon feels better than she has in months, and only part of that is due to the satisfaction of having managed to stick it to such a normally superior bastard.
She returns to Seoul a new woman. As soon as she gets home, Sun waddles excitedly to her with an envelope.
“It finally came! They finally found him!” she cries as Shannon rips it open. It’s been so long since she put in the call to the investigator that for a moment she doesn’t even remember what this is supposed to be about. She assumes that it’s some Widmore-related breakthrough until she reads the letter. Sun’s guys really are thorough. There’s a picture and an address and a detail and everything.
“Hey! This is great!”
That evening, despite her jet-lag, Shannon sits down at her desk and writes a check for the amount of the inheritance she got from Boone. She also takes out a notepad and bites her pen while she thinks of what to write.
Hey Walt,
How’s it going? Just wanted to let you know that Vincent was fine last time I saw him. Sorry I couldn’t bring him back with me, but you know... Anyway, consider this from Boone, not from me. I think he would have wanted you to have this. Oh, and if you want a financial advisor on what to do with it, the guy who’ll get you this is really good. He’ll tell you what to do. Just don’t tell anyone I gave you his name or that this is from me, because we’re not supposed to know each other and all. Have fun in New York. Sun sends her love! Maybe one day we’ll come visit you.
-Shannon
She wonders if she should mention his dad, let him know about what happened on the freighter, but she just can’t. She tells herself that the kind of kid who creepily appears to people like that probably would know, right? She wants to believe it, at least. She wraps the check and the note up in a package to send off to Sun’s and her banker to deal with the next day and smiles. Sayid had been right. It had taken a little bit of time, but she’s made the right choice about what to do with the money. For the first time ever, she feels at peace about Boone. He’d be happy. She has a feeling he is happy.
On to Part 5 (last chapter!)...