Title: Asunder
Rating: PG
Summary: She loves them both.
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost. At all. I wish, but alas...
Author's Note: For
halfdutch and
that_evening. This is not the prompt that either of you gave me, but I've had an idea in mind for a little while now, and you have both said you were interested in seeing Sun/Sayid, so here you are anyway. :)
After two days of being back on the beach, Sayid approaches her. She is hanging her laundry on the line outside of her tent, and he walks up behind her, his face soft and gentle. She greets him pleasantly and he smiles back, slowly, apprehensively. Confusion begins to take over and she asks him if something was wrong.
He takes a deep breath and his head falls. He suggests that they take a walk, and Sun wipes her hands on her jeans, standing next to Sayid as they began a slow amble up the beach, away from the camp.
When they are a ways off, Sayid stops and takes a seat in the sand. He gestures for Sun to sit with him, and she does even though there was a knot of fear, of growing dread in the center of her stomach. She doesn’t know why Sayid has brought her here, what he is going to tell her, but their distance from the camp all but speaks for him. Whatever Sayid has to say, it can't be good.
“Why are we here?” she asks, as they watch the sun set over the horizon.
“I will understand if you don't wish to wish to speak of it,” Sayid replies, turning to face her. “But I would like for you to tell me what happened on the boat.”
Sun sighs and looks away, casts her gaze down to the sand and shakes her head. “Why?” she asks.
“Because I do not believe that it is the kind of burden that you should bear alone,” he answers kindly. Sun liftes her eyes once more and lets out another sigh.
“You don’t know what happened,” she says, quietly, as if she doubts there is any truth to the words even as they come out of her mouth. Sayid lets out a sigh of his own and smiles a thin smile. He doesn’t have to reply; his eyes reply for him.
*
Everything snowballs on her after that. She watches Sayid from across the camp, watches as he seems to have an argument with Kate by one of the water basins. She sighs and leans back against one of the polls of her tent. She watches Sayid confer with Locke before they part ways, heading toward their respective tents.
“I’m going for a walk,” Sun tells Jin, with a small smile. He smiles back and nods before turning back to his lunch. Sun watches Jin to make sure his eyes aren’t following her before she jogs along the shoreline to Sayid’s tent.
“You’re leaving,” she says, upon her approach, watching as Sayid loads a gun. He looks up at her, apprehensive, and swings the strap over his shoulder. He sets his hand against the poll of his tent and lowers his eyes.
“Yes,” he replies. “John and I are following Kate. We are going to bring Jack home.”
Sun nods, slowly, and Sayid looks back and forth, makes sure no one is watching before he takes her hand and pulls her behind the cover of a line of trees, hiding them from the view of the people milling about the beach.
“Be safe,” Sun tells him. He nods, gazes down at her hand as he holds it in his.
“I will be,” he answers, with a nod. She nods back and reaches forward, wraps her arms around his neck. His arms wrap around her back and he closes his eyes in her hair.
*
She loves them both. She keeps going back and forth in her mind, asking herself who it is that she loves. With Jae it was simple. She knew she didn’t love him. She knew that she only returned to him, day after day, time after time, because he made her feel loved and valued and important. He built his world around her, and she had selfishly indulged herself in the way that felt. Jae’s death had ended that, and she had mourned it’s loss more than she had mourned the man himself.
But it isn’t like that with Sayid. Yes, he makes her feel loved and valued and important. He makes her feel strong and capable. He makes her feel as though she shares something with him that she can’t share with anyone else. Not even Jin.
She loves Jin as well, however. She loves his loyalty and his kindness, two things she has not seen from him in a long time, qualities that she had almost forgotten he possessed. She loves him as she had when they had first begun, before they were husband and wife, when he was just a waiter and she was just a girl, before time had complicated them.
She wants a future with Jin, but she could no longer imagine a life without Sayid. She feels selfish and guilty, but she can’t give one of them up for the other. She loves them both.
*
They all think she’s worried for Jin. They’re half right. Her mind is occupied by fear of losing the both of them, by the thought that the plan will fail, that they will both die, far away from her. With each step she takes, her thoughts grow heavier and harder to bear. She feels as though she’s walking through a dream, like none of this is real.
If she loses them, she doesn’t know what she’ll do.
*
She sees Jin first, they’re reunited at the tower, where they are all waiting to be rescued. She throws herself into his arms, kisses him deeply and holds onto him as he lifts her into his arms. She watches Sayid over his shoulder, as he parts ways from Sawyer and Juliet, digs through his pack for a bottle of water. Jin puts her down and begins shaking hands and hugging those that greet him.
Sun’s eyes find Sayid and she watches him slip behind the tower. She follows.
She finds him waiting there and she goes to him, repeats her actions with Jin. She kisses him with the same passion and strength, holds onto him just as tightly, and revels in the feeling of him in her arms.
A time is coming when it will no longer be like this, when Sayid will be in one place and she will be in another. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do when that time comes, but that time isn’t now, so she just keeps kissing him, and he keeps kissing her back.