A Means to an End

by Scouse

My heart left the fight a long time ago. Sana, Shayid and Sayana camaraderie. Very angsty so read something happy afterwards unless you want to be depressed.

Title: A Means to an End

Rating: PG13

Pairing: Sana and Shayid because I'm demented and I love them both!

Summary: My heart left the fight a long time ago and now I welcome my end

Warnings: Angsty angsty angst, some light swearing, angst, a little blood, angst, oh and mass character death...ummm, what else? Sayana camaraderie if that scares you consider yourselves warned, lol! and more Angst!

Status of fic: Completed One shot.

Author's Notes: It seemed like a good idea yesterday when I started writing it...now I'm depressed! Lol! I dunno, I suggest you have something happy to read afterwards. I thought I'd post it anyway just because I spent my whole day writing it…okay so I'm definitely writing Sana fluff for my next fic.

Disclaimer: I don't own Lost or the characters...I'd like to, but I don't. Thems the breaks I guess.

A Means to an End.

They were all gone. All of them. Dead. Slaughtered like animals or taken like them. They had spared the "Good Ones" though there were only very few that They considered "good". They had bound them and blindfolded them and then dragged them away to whatever horrific fate that They had planned out and deigned to give them. They had killed the rest. Without mercy nor remorse nor hesitation. All of them were dead to him now as he sat alone, huddled in the very back of the caves, attempting to disappear. It was the only place left that They had not taken yet. The only place left untouched by Their hands…but he didn't supposed that would last for very much longer. He was expecting Them. He knew They would come for him. Eventually and with no place left to run to, what was left for him to do other than wait? The wound to his arm, though superficial, burned angry and hot but he ignored it. Pain was no longer an issue as he waited for his own imminent doom to come. Resigned to it, to the fact that no amount of running or fighting was going to save him from death. Not with only two bullets left in his chamber anyway. They needed to be punished, apparently for conspiring to build an army and overthrow them, the Others who ruled this island. This Hell that he was now trapped on alone.

Scuffling outside drew his attention immediately away from his dark contemplations and he raised his gun, levelling it at the entrance to the cave from where he has pressed himself against the very back wall, deep in the shadows. What good that would do him he didn't know. They knew everything anyway. They probably even knew that he was there right now, shifting his sweating palms against the hot metal of the gun in his hand. He had two bullets left…

It was curious however that They were making so much noise when they had always moved silently before. The only warning ever being the whispers that incited panic within your heart. Never before had They made the dull thudding, the dragging sound, the heavy-footed , staggered steps that betrayed injury. Perhaps one had been injured? And perhaps they were trying to lull him into a false sense of security…

He clenched his fist about his last and only weapon so tightly that his knuckles shone bone-white through the gloom of the cave, waiting for them to show themselves.

Then she came into view. She stumbled into the cave mouth, like an old drunk swaying under the influence of far too much alcohol, but he could see that she wan not drunk. She wheezed, hand pressed firmly to her right breast, coated entirely with slick, glossy crimson, a colour that stained also the left leg of her jeans, though she had removed her belt from her waist and fixed it above the wound in an attempt to staunch the blood flow. Her other arm lashed out through the air trying to keep herself on her feet as she lurched sideways while still clutching her gun in it's grasp. Dark eyes couldn't focus as she lurched again, pitching forwards instead of sideways and landing with a thud on her knees, her weapon skittering away from her.

It took him a long moment sat there watching her for him to realise exactly who she was. That someone had escaped, or barely so by her current state, their horrific end. He stood swiftly, gun still in hand in case it was all merely an elaborate ruse laid by the Others, and made his way towards her.

"Ana! You are alive?" his voice was a mixture of shock and relief as he slid his hands beneath her armpits and hauled her to her feet again. If she had managed to survive then there could be others who had escaped their brutal fate…

Her eyes flickered about her lazily, eyelids drooping as if heavy with sleep, until she focused upon him, realisation dawning dimly in their brown depths.

Her laughter at his question was slow and tired and something, some liquid gurgled and clicked where it had collected in the very back of her throat as she gasped in her breath, chest heaving.

"Apparently…" she answered finally and then the look in her eyes changed. They clouded over as she removed her hand from where she clasped it devoutly to her chest, revealing the wound to his view. The fatal wound and he understood. "…For now…anyway…"

Her knees buckled beneath her again in protest of holding her own body aloft for so long and Sayid reached out to support her once more, murmuring that perhaps it would be for the best if she sat down. And so, slowly and in tandem they swaggered their way into the back of the cave, where he lowered her to the rough, cold ground, propping her against the rocky wall.

"I thought that they had taken you…" he mused offering her the chance to swill her mouth free of blood from his water bottle before holding it up to her lips until she had drunk her fill.

"They did," she replied catching her breath as he took his place opposite her. "I managed to escape...barely. They had Eko to deal with and he told me to go. That he would catch up…" she paused, still a little breathless, whether from the water she had consumed or the fact that Eko had not caught up to her as he had promised, Sayid was unsure. Instead of explaining more she straightened her wounded leg out before her with a hiss and a grimace. "I don't suppose it'll be long though. 'Til they find us…" dark eyes focused upon his briefly before glazing over and wandering again as if she were having a delirious dream. "They know everything." her body sagged from the effort of staying conscious and keeping a constant pressure on the worst of her injuries and she allowed her head to loll back listlessly against the hard stone supporting her.

"You should let me tend to your wounds." Sayid announced finally, though he made no move to rise from his place and do so. "I am certainly no doctor, but my medical knowledge is sufficient to give you a few…" he halted suddenly, eyes leaving her face as he swallowed and stared instead at the stony ground between them. "…A few extra hours perhaps."

Ana snorted, eyes falling closed for a long moment as she rolled her head from side to side where she was resting it. Whether she was doing so to indicate her reply to his offered aid or merely to keep herself awake, he was not certain.

"Don't bother," she responded, words thick as they fell slurred from a sluggish tongue. "I want to be stone-dead by the time They find me." another gurgling, bloody chuckle, the reddish life staining her teeth and lips now as she smiled to the cave ceiling. "Actually, I'm surprised you're even offering. You should want to see me dead…" her voice petered out as she fixed him with an almost unseeing eye. "You should hate me for what happened…"

Sayid considered her coolly, not entirely sure that he was comfortable with the direction that their conversation was taking. He shifted slightly and her eyes opened again, seeking out his face and an answer. Perhaps it was because she was dieing that he felt compelled to answer her despite his uneasiness…

"Please believe me when I say that I have wanted to hate you…but I have wronged far too many people in this life to be granted the right to judge someone else."

She smiled again to the dark ceiling rocks, eyelids drifting so close to shutting that only a sliver of white glinted across at him. She seemed to be satisfied with his answer.

"Believe me when I say I wanted you to hate me, because I've wronged too many people to escape judgement."

Sayid snorted at her mimicked response, drawing his knees up so that he could rest his arms atop them, distracting himself by considering his own, surface wound. "Perhaps then it is best that we leave Allah to decide." he pondered and Ana grunted her vague approval of that notion as she struggled for comfort in her spot, only to still immediately when she failed. Apparently she had decided to conserve the last dregs of her energy.

It was then that Sayid's thoughts wandered from life, from their imminent death and their dire situation, to her. To Shannon. And as if she had known his mind, as if she had somehow seen his thoughts now that she was so close to death, she spoke out.

"If it means anything now…I wanted to tell you before I…that I'm sorry, about what happened that day. I don't think I told you that." her voice was soft even though the air making it's way into her possibly punctured lungs, caught in the back of her throat audibly and he nodded clenching his jaw tight.

"Did you know that she had a brother?" he queried suddenly, out of the blue, drawing her weary eyes open once more and this time she looked slightly irritated that he was keeping her from unconsciousness.

"Who? Shannon?"

He clenched a fist as the sound of Shannon's name, spoken so ordinarily from her lips and nodded curtly.

"No. No one told me." she continued, pausing to take another moment to catch her escaping breath. "Who was he?"

"His name was Boone," he cleared his throat gently. "He died in a fall from a crashed missionary plane in the jungle," and it was then his turn to take pause, unsure if he wanted to speak his next words and let Ana-Lucia off the proverbial hook so easily. But he did anyway. He supposed it was the least that he could do to ease the mind of a dieing woman. "She tried to kill the man responsible for the accident but I prevented her from doing so."

"Why?"

Of all the questions that she could've asked him, of the who's and the how's, that one word was the least expected of them all. It surprised him, drew his eyes up to meet hers which were suddenly a lot more alert than before.

"Pardon?"

Ana rolled her eyes at his formality and politeness.

"Why did you stop her? From killing him?" she clarified as if it was the most obvious thing for her to ask in the world and perhaps it was. Perhaps his memories of both Boone and Shannon had made him less sharp.

He shrugged finally, face straight and truthful as he spoke simply and honestly to her.

"I did not wish for her to endure the guilt that taking another's life creates."

"You speaking from experience?" she queried, cocking her heavy head to one side as she considered him, but she did not wait for him to reply verbally. She did not need to, for the reality was written upon his strong features. She shuffled in her seat slightly, wincing as she did and peeling her stiff hand from the right of her chest so that she could take a glimpse of her wound before replacing it firmly. "You remember what I told you about that kid who shot me and made me lose my baby?" her tone was deceptively light for the theme of her question and she avoided his eyes desperately whilst fighting to keep her face emotionless.

"You neglected to mention that you had been pregnant but continue. Please." he stated, waving a hand in her direction as a gesture for her to do so. If he was surprised at all by her admission, he did not show it outwardly much to her relief and she nodded her thanks of that.

"You remember what I told you happened to him?" her almost ebony gaze drifted up to meet his as his eyebrows quirked together in slight confusion, wondering where this was leading them.

"You never found him." he stated slowly. Warily.

"I lied." the words sprang forth from her mouth before she thought better of it and stopped them. "I found him and I shot him. Over and over. Like six, maybe seven times. Even though I knew he was dead after the first shot." she sighed as if she were releasing an enormous weight from her shoulders and Sayid guessed that he was the one person that she had told about this fact. "I wish I'd had someone like you to stop me…" she smiled weakly, eyes fluttering closed once again as she rubbed at the back of her neck with her free, unbloodied hand and rested her head back against the wall again. "Maybe then I'd be somewhere else right now…"

Sayid chuckled lightly at that provoking her to squint only one eye open at him that time, waiting for him to justify his amusement to her.

"Perhaps," he smirked, lips twisting up at the corners ever so slightly. "And then again, perhaps not." she returned his smirk with one of her own. "Now we shall never know."

Silence fell between them for a long scattering of moments until Ana tightened her belt about her upper thigh to slow the renewed flow of blood there until her vision blurred and dizziness overwhelmed her and she swigged down some more water with Sayid's assistance.

It was only when he had settled back into his place that she resumed their conversation.

"So, I know why you stopped her, but why did you stop yourself? Why didn't you kill me that day? I know you loved her and I know you wanted to. What does one more body to your count matter when it's someone who deserved it?" her voice was terse and whether that was from her pain or the effort that it had obviously taken her to ask that question, the one that must've been plaguing her since that fateful day, he could not guess.

He smoothed a hand over his beard, though it was unruly now and matted with blood and dirt alike, asking the question to himself. Why hadn't he killed her? Had it been to torture her, to let her live with her guilt? No, in truth, though he had wanted to kill her as much as he had wanted to hate her, it had been Shannon once more who had stayed his hand the way he had hers. Perhaps she had been returning his favour…

"I do not think that it would have been…acceptable for me to have stopped her from taking her revenge only to exact it myself. That would have been hypocritical of me." he mused aloud, almost forgetting that she was there. That it was her question that he was answering. "Should not one practice what they preach?" he turned his glance back to her finally as she watched him with a certain mixture of respect and envy that he had been strong enough to overlook his desire for vengeance when she had failed to do so with Jason. Part of her was sorry for killing the man, that much was clear and yet, deep in her eyes there was a spark that told him she would no hesitate to do so again given the chance and there was a small part of him that envied her for her conviction, her courage to do so no matter the consequences.

"I don't know…" she broke the silence that had fallen across them, removing her hand from her chest wound once more to wipe it free from her blood on the leg of her jeans and responding to his rhetorical question. "Maybe that's the problem. Some people preach too much and some people practice too much. You preach too much and I practice too much."

And he nodded his head in contemplation of her words, straightening out his suddenly stiff legs in front of him.

The cave darkened around them as day made it's last descent into the firsts of evening and Ana dozed in a fitful, troubled half-sleep until her pain became too much and drew her awake.

She coughed harshly, like someone who had smoked forty cigarettes a day since their early teens, spitting her mouth free of the blood that continued to accumulating at the back of her throat. A deep draught of water served to soothe the rawness there.

"What was she like, Sayid?" she murmured, on the verge of fever, voice contorted with sleep or death. It was the first time, he noticed, that she had used his name.

"Shannon?" he knew who she was talking about but he craved the opportunity, the excuse to speak her name. "I cannot possibly describe her. Words would not do her justice." he paused watching as she drew nonsensical patterns in the silty dirt of the cave floor with the forefinger of her unemployed hand, eyes cast downwards. "She was my everything…I was only able to show her so once…I only told her so once…right before…" his traitorous throat closed over, overwhelmed by the emotion threatening to rise, cutting off his words as he blinked back fresh tears so easily remembered from the day that Shannon had been taken from him. And he glanced up, hoping to see the remorse that she ought to be feeling displayed upon her face, and to his surprise he found shimmering tears so near to falling shivering in her eyes from behind a shaking hand. Fingers pressed hard into the corner of one eye trying to hold them back. Ebony eyebrows knit together and drew upwards as she fought her own emotion, unable to control it, to keep it hidden when all of her effort was focused upon bearing her pain and holding onto the thin strings of life for that little bit longer. "What is wrong?" he questioned at length as she fought to reign herself in and she held up her shuddering hand to halt his query as she gasped a breath in hastily.

"I know that it's not much of a consolation but…" she cleared her tear clogged throat, refusing to tear her eyes away from her own boots. "You should hold onto the fact that you told her. That she knew…" a flash of brown his way before her gaze dropped again.
"Ana?" he was curious now, more than anything, as to why and what had broken her down like this. Had made her face pale beyond the pallor of pain to something far harder to bear, by his standards anyway. Regret.

"He died." she continued bluntly, raising her chin in defiance of her upset. "They killed him before I had a chance to-" she bit back her next words before continuing on. "They made me watch him die." eyes turned cold as they locked with his. "They knew somehow, that I…that I-" she swallowed hard again, her neck convulsing with the effort it took, and she looked to the ceiling, heavenwards, chewing on her tongue with her back teeth and drawing a deep, dizzying breath. "Sht! I can't even say it now that he's-" she halted once more, returning behind her stony façade. The one that was typically Ana-Lucia. The one that he now knew was her attempt at keeping herself from getting hurt. "He died thinking that I hated him."

That confuse Sayid even more. Never once had it seemed that she and Jack had ever disliked each other. On the contrary, they had always got on like a house on fire I his estimation, though he may have felt betrayed by the doctor at first.

Ana must have guessed his misunderstanding from the puzzled frown on his brow and she gave a small, half-hearted laugh, brushing her bedraggled hair from her face with filthy, splayed fingers.

"I'm not talking about Jack, Sayid." she illuminated and after a moment of further reflection, it dawned upon him. He raised his eyebrows in sudden comprehension.

"Ah. I see now. You were talking about Sawyer?"

Her own eyebrows quirked again at the mention of his name as her tears threatened to return but she suppressed them and coughed instead while nodding in confirmation.

"The other side of the island," she began between wheezes. "I was the reason his shoulder got infected. I hit him. I trod on his bullet wound. I did everything short of holding a gun to his head and pulling the trigger…" she was rolling her head in a languid shake again as it rested on the wall behind her and Sayid titled his head slightly, lightly surprised at first by her almost-admission to caring for Sawyer and then that she was the reason that he had almost died. Not that he didn't think that Sawyer had provoked it. The Southerner had a penchant for pain and Ana-Lucia a penchant for dishing it out where it was deserved.

"Sawyer has…" she looked up at him almost severely, as angry as he had felt when she had spoken Shannon's name. "He had a certain way of…trying one's patience." he concluded, turning his own eyes from her to the shadowy rock behind her head. "He almost wanted the punishment. He craved it."

Her sigh was deep, air whistling through the blood collating in her gullet relentlessly.

"Do you remember what I told you about tying a man to a tree and torturing him for something that he did not have in his possession?" he didn't bother to glance down at her when she responded.

"Yeah, I remember."

A deep inhalation through his nose. "Sawyer was that man." he told the wall and the darkness and her. "Jack and I were led to believe that he had found Shannon's inhalers. She suffered an asthma attack and he refused to return them." he kept his tone deceptively untroubled and shrugged as if what he had done had been common practice. That anyone would have done the same had they been in his position and perhaps Ana-Lucia would have had she been presented with such a dilemma and an uncooperative captive. "I place three inch bamboo spikes beneath his fingernails and hammered them home…" a hand moved to rub at the tension gathering in his temples. A tension that gathered every time he thought about some wrong against his fellow man that he had committed. "I did not stop when I heard him scream."

If he had expected Ana to struggle to her feet and attack him angrily, he had been wrong. If he had thought that she would announce her hatred for him, for his torture of Sawyer, he was wrong again. Instead she offered a sad smile of surprising acceptance.

"I guess we both treated him pretty bad, huh?" though she managed to pull off her smile, her attempted laughter failed miserably, falling flat in the stale, blood-tainted air.

"I guess that most people did." he agreed as her eyes drifted out of focus like they had been the entire time they had spent together in the back of the cave. He knew that she was struggling to stay awake now. That it was hard for her as death snapped at her heels.

Her smile widened languidly to a broad grin as she allowed her head to rest on her left shoulder, wincing but not stopping when the skin about her injury tightened and stretched.

"He took it on the chin though," had her eyes been open then, he almost expected them to be shining with wonder. Almost. "I admired that about him even before I realised that I-" she paused, catching herself again and stopping the words from slipping off her tongue as easily as they wanted to.

"It is alright, Ana. You can say it." he encouraged and he watched the struggle upon her face as she squeezed her eyes closed a little more tightly and raised her free hand to shield them, from him or from her tears.

"I loved him…Christ!" she spat forth bitterly. "I kept pushing him away and he kept on coming back for more." the hand lowered slightly and she peered at him from between her fingers. "The first time that he tried to kiss me, d'you know what I did? Take a wild guess."

"I cannot imagine." Sayid responded calmly and she laughed again, the same embittered, cheated snigger as she had before.

"I bit him."

He couldn't help but laugh at that. At the idea of Ana biting down hard on Sawyer's lip and the expletives that would not doubt have poured forth from both of their tongues. She might have even punched the Southerner again, from what he knew of her and after a moment or two Ana joined his laughter, though she only did so to keep herself from breaking down once more.

"It is no wonder, then, why Sawyer kept returning to you. He was punishing himself, Ana. For what? I do not know." and Ana sobered at his words, removing her hand entirely from her face.

"That's messed up." she announced in the end, with a snort and a droop of her eyelids, betraying just how much their conversations had sapped her strength.

"We are in accordance." he agreed, chuckling again. "But who is not 'messed up' in this life?" and Ana fixed him with a bleary glance, watching carefully as he drank deeply from his water bottle and turned to stare at the entrance to the cave in the growing gloom.

Silence once more coalesced around them, leaving them each to their own sombre thoughts and memories of loved ones and lovers and the could-have-been's.

"Guess it won't be much longer." she mused after an extended heartbeat of stillness and he turned back to look at her, head back to lolling on her shoulder, breathing back to being laboured as she had allowed herself to slump further down the cave wall.

"Much longer until what?" he knew and yet he still asked.

Her smirk was neither as cocky as before nor as bright and she closed her eyes before responding to his query, sounding as if she'd just realised that she'd been made the punch line of a bad-taste joke.

"'Til I die or They find us…Whichever happens first." she snorted at her own words, finding amusement in them where he could not possibly. "What are you going to do?" her eyes looked tired to him then, dulling fast in the dimness separating them. She didn't have much longer, much strength left in her to hang on and remain in that life…and that thought terrified him. The last person that he was likely to speak to. The very last person before he too slipped into death at the hands of the Others when they came for him.

He allowed his eyes to study his own hands suddenly, clasped so futilely about his gun. They never stood a chance. Any of them. Their prides had been their downfall when they had actually believed that they had stood any sort of chance against the Others…it had always been Their island. It had always been Their game and They had been playing with them, toying with them until things had gotten serious and the talk of an army had spread around the camp. They never stood a chance.

"I do not know. I am waiting for inspiration to strike."

She nodded her head as if that had been the answer that she expected from him all along. As if the Fates had whispered in her ear informing her how the whole thing was going to play out. As if she knew the ending to their little story right then…and the moral learned from it all.

"How many you got left?" she interrupted his thoughts again, jerking her chin in his direction, indicating the gun in his lap and he considered it a second time carefully, cradling it in large, powerful hands.

"Pardon?"

"Bullets. How many?" another jerk of her chin, though he could tell by the grimace on her face that it pained her to move so.

"Two. Not enough to fight a war with." he replied gravely and the smile tugged again at her lips as eyes rolled, dangerously close to unconsciousness.

Suddenly something thrummed in his ear, like a humming bird's wings or the breath of a spectre come to haunt him as he glanced around, eyes finally stilling upon Ana-Lucia again and he knew that she had heard it too. He knew what it was.

"They're coming." she announced for him, saving him the trouble of speaking it out loud and making it seem more real. "I can hear Them. Inspiration striking for you yet, General?"

Sure enough the air shivered about them with the almost noise, the maddening half-whispers half-silence. The sound curled and swooped through the air, darting close to their ears and then away to nothing, trying to lull them into a false sense of security but both of them were beyond falling for that trick.

He remained silent in the face of her joking question.

"You should go while you can, you know." she muttered from her semi-recumbent position where she was currently considering the wound in the right side of her chest with feigned disinterest. "Go east. Try to find their base or something." eyes blinked lethargically, dreamily, trying to see him as if the cave's innards where shrouded in mist. "You're a soldier. You could make it…"

"No, Ana. I cannot-"

She huffed impatiently at his protestation.

"I'll keep them busy for you as long as I can."

He almost expected her to come out with the words 'and that's my final offer', as if they were merely bartering together for some thing of little importance, not the remainder of her life.

"Ana-" he tried again and her eyes hardened, taking on that coldness, the granite, the steel that he'd witnessed in them many times since they had first met under such agonizing circumstances. The look that imparted determination.

"I'm dieing, Sayid!" she hissed, vehemently as she could managed. "Leave me a bullet and get out."

"And prolong the inevitable, Ana?" he shook his head, ignoring her hint at suicide, and fixing her with a glance, partially reproachfully and part sadly. The heaviness of inevitability had settled there on his shoulders, at the back of his neck, filling his body with lethargy. The whispers where getting louder now. They didn't have much longer… "I am not a man to invest in foolishness or flights of fancy. I know when to stop running. My heart left the fight a long time ago and now I welcome my end."

And she paused, blinking several times and squinting to keep her eyes vaguely in focus until, seeing his resolution there deep in the set of his jaw, she nodded her acceptance, silently agreeing to drop the futile notion of his escape. They would only find him anyway. Like They had found the Scottish guy and the French woman. Like They had found Claire and her baby curled and cowering in the bowels of the hatch. Like they had found Michael wandering the jungle to the north, miles and miles from Their territory and all reasonable knowledge. They knew everything and They could not be stopped.

"My heart left the fight a long time ago too." she hummed in accordance and he had little doubt to what she was referring. No one deserved to suffer the loss of a child. Just as no one should have to bury the love of their life, the other half of their soul.

"At least we're not alone, right?" she laughed wildly, delirious now from the blood loss and exhaustion and panic and he smiled widely at her in reply as the whispers rose in their crescendo and the entrance to the cave darkened beyond the pitch of night announcing Their arrival.

"At least that is something." he agreed and together they closed their eyes.

-oOo-