Hope and Memory

Disclaimer: I don't own LOST.

Sayid nodded at Juliet, motioning to the body that they were carrying.

"We should set him down here." Sayid told her.

Juliet just nodded silently and they placed the body on the ground.

The blonde woman had barely spoken a word since Sawyer had shot Tom. Sayid didn't blame her. She had just betrayed her own people, and had watched some of them die right in front of her. Sayid couldn't imagine how that felt.

"Hey Sayid."

Sayid turned as Hurley walked over to him. "Do you think we should like, talk to them?"

"Talk to who Hurley?"

"The Others. I mean, there's more of them, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, we should let them know that we, you know, killed some of their people."

"Do whatever you want Hurley." Sayid smiled slightly at the man. He was the real hero. He had saved all of them.

Hurley grinned and put the walkie talkie up to his mouth. "Attention Others, Come in, Others." Hurley walked over to Sawyer, who was leaning up against the van, enjoying a beer.

"If you're listening in, I want you to know that we got you bastards. And, unless the rest of you want to be blown up, you'd best stay away from our beach."

"Hurley?" Jack's voice came over the walkie.

"Jack?"

Sayid and Juliet stopped and looked at Hurley as he continued to talk to Jack and tell him that everyone was okay.

Sayid glanced at Juliet. "It looks like everything is going according to plan."

Juliet nodded and smiled a little. "We're not out of this yet."

"No, no we're not." Sayid agreed. After all she'd been though, it made sense for Juliet to be cautious.

"I think this is the last one." Juliet said as they set down the last body.

"This must be hard for you." Sayid said.

"A little, but I've not been apart of them for a long time. Your group was exactly what I needed."

"Everyone's okay." Hurley said loudly, looking around him. "Jack's taking everyone up to the tower. They're almost there, and then we're gonna go home!"

"What about Charlie and Desmond?" Bernard asked from where he was sitting with Jin.

"They'll be coming. They have to." Hurley told him. Everything was going so well, Hurley had to believe that Charlie was going to be okay.

Juliet glanced out over the ocean before walking over to Sawyer. "Got a beer for me?"

Sawyer grinned. "I never thought of you as the drinking type."

"After being on this island for three years, I think anyone would be the drinking type."

Sawyer nodded in agreement as he tossed her a beer.

Juliet looked at the Dharma van curiously.

"You act like you've never seen a car before." Sawyer grinned.

"Not since I came here."

"You guys didn't have cars? You have almost everything else."

"Maybe they just never let me see them."

"I never trusted you, and I still don't." Sawyer gave her a look.

"It doesn't matter. By next week we'll be home and you'll never see me again."

Sawyer didn't answer. He didn't want to think about going home. Before the plane crash, he had killed a man, and something told him that they weren't going to just forget that. He was also afraid of going back because he knew it meant never seeing Kate again. The minute they stepped back on land, Kate was going to run. Sawyer was sure of it. Even if she didn't run, he knew that she wouldn't want to stay around with him. For a while he had been convinced that she really did love him, but now he knew the truth.

"What are you going to do when you get home?" Sawyer asked Juliet. He hardly knew anything about her, besides the fact that Jack trusted her and Juliet never left his side until today.

"I'm going to see my sister and her son." Juliet smiled, and Sawyer realized that whoever this sister was, Juliet cared about her more than anything else.

"You're not going to get a cozy home with Jack and play doctor all day?" Sawyer smirked.

Juliet smiled. "As wonderful as that sounds, I'm sure Jack won't want to have anything to do with me when we leave." Juliet remembered all the times that she had witnessed Jack and Kate having one of their moments. Jack never looked at Juliet the way he looked at Kate.

"That's surprising. You two have been attached at the hip since you got here."

Juliet shrugged. "What about you and Kate?" She asked knowingly.

Sawyer glared at Juliet. "That's none of your business."

Juliet just smiled sadly, and the two stood there drinking their beer in silence.

Sayid walked over to Hurley, who was anxiously scanning the shore, looking for Charlie and Desmond.

"They're gonna come right?" Hurley said.

Sayid looked down. He knew how dangerous Charlie's mission had been. Sayid had volunteered for it first. Even though Sayid couldn't wait to get home and continue his quest to find Nadia, Sayid knew that in the time that he and Nadia had been apart she could have found someone else, and why not? He had. Shannon had been a blessing of sorts to him.

"I don't know Hurley."

"They're coming." Hurley said, sure of himself. If no one was going to be optimistic, then he would be.

"Are you excited about getting rescued?" Hurley asked Sayid.

Shannon had asked him the same question after Sawyer, Jin, Michael, and Walt had left on the raft.

Sayid remembered that at the time he had just been happy to take her mind off of Boone.

(Flashback)

Shannon wrapped her arms around Sayid. He and Charlie had been gone getting Aaron back, and for a while Shannon had thought that she was going to lose Sayid too.

"Stay with me. Don't leave again okay?" Shannon begged him.

Sayid held her tightly against him. "I won't." Sayid promised. For a while he had been thinking of going to the hatch to see how the others were progressing with getting it open, but seeing Shannon's face when he returned to the caves convinced him to stay with her.

Shannon pulled away, and Sayid was surprised to see tears streaming down her face. "I was so scared of loosing you."

"Nothing was going to happen to me." Sayid reached for her face and stroked her hair.

A little while later the two sat together, Shannon leaning against him and with his arm around her.

"Are you excited about getting rescued?" Shannon asked quietly.

"Of course I am." Sayid said. "Are you?"

"I'm happy about going back to civilization, but I'm not looking forward to telling my stepmom about Boone." Her breath hitched in her throat, and Sayid guessed that she was trying not to cry.

"I'll go with you."

"Really? No I couldn't ask you to do that. Don't you have family to go to?"

"No. I don't." Nadia came to mind for only a second before he pushed her away. He loved Shannon now, and he would do anything to make her happy.

"I want to have a life with you Sayid." Shannon looked up at him.

"I know. We will. We are." Sayid smiled and kissed the top of her head.

(End Flashback)

"Yes." Sayid smiled at Hurley. "I am excited."

"Do you have anybody?"

"Yes. Do you?"

"Yeah, kind of. You guys are my family though. We gotta get together a lot, and have reunions, like a real family would."

"I think we would all like that." Sayid looked at the ocean once again. He knew it was a possibility that with him looking for Nadia he might not be able to see his friends, and with Jack returning to his life as a doctor, Kate being a fugitive, and Charlie being a rock star, there wasn't going to be much time for get togethers. But he wouldn't tell Hurley that now.

No, for now, they would celebrate in their victory.