It was sunset. Shannon was standing on the beach.
From behind, she looked like a goddess, Sayid was suddenly aware. Silhouetted by the blazing horizon, slender and motionless as if she had been standing there forever. Only her hair, gilded by the sunset and whispering around her face like a halo, reminded him of her vulnerability. Her very soul seemed expressed in the golden blizzard swirling aimlessly around her head, blind in pain and hopelessness.
He approached her slowly, almost in trepidation. What had been becoming so safe and familiar was suddenly thrust into a realm beyond his reach or recognition. Sayid was no stranger to grief, but in this almost magical place it had somehow seemed to loosen the imminent vice it had always held on his life. Now, as he grew closer to Shannon's frozen form, he was almost overwhelmed by the crippling familiarity, could almost taste the loss raking bitter fingers through her soul.
His footprints stretched behind him in the sand, a temporary monument to caring.
Shannon did not move as he drew level with her. The silence seemed to pulse in the air between them in rhythm with their hearts. Sayid was frightened by how much smaller she seemed now than from afar. He wanted to help her, to fight the dark shadows of grief and self-loathing that menaced from the edges of her mind. He wanted to apologize, over and over and over, to beg her forgiveness for taking her away when she was finally needed and depriving her of any shred of comfort she may have earned. A fresh wave of regret almost staggered him. Oh, he was so sorry...
It was a moment before Sayid realized she was looking at him. He met her gaze slowly,
hesitantly, with a caution engraved by so many years of sorrow.
Shannon's eyes were liquid pools of cobalt, shot through with gold. Surrealy magnified through two sets of tears, they began to express words neither could ever hope to verbalize. Action and thought, past and present, every wish, dream or desire of their lives was laid irrevocably bare as they blended their grief. It was a sharing more intimate than love, more precious than breath. A gift, one they had earned with tears and sweat and yearning. A price too high to pay, before last night.
They stood on the beach, in a moment neither would ever lucidly remember. They stood together, and they healed.
