Author's Note: I'm really glad that I was assigned to write a Secret Santa for Dance in the Moonlight, whose stories I love and whose style is absolutely wonderful. She's a real inspiration for me, and I hope this story is not way too confusing/random/crazy for you! Thank you, Gwen, because you are awesome and y'know… thanks for everything.

(Really, despite all of this craziness and randomness and complete weirdness… did I mention craziness? I hope you like it.)

AU: Dharmatimes. Naomi got killed. Miles got over it. Then she showed up again outside his door. This might be a problem. Involves dead never-been girlfriend, slights, a stalker, Santa Claus and non-zombies.

Random Facts
(Involves dead never-been-girlfriend, slights, a stalker, Santa Claus and non-zombies)

Miles can't communicate with the dead, he can hear their last thoughts, he can feel them, he can never see them: Random Facts.

Miles rubbed his eyes, yawning loudly in his bed, before he slid down the mattress and down on the floor.

He stayed there on the floor for a minute; for it was a very comfortable floor now that he thought about it. He had his eyes closed and sleep was taking over him again. Jim "I'm the boss" LaFleur had put him on double shifts because Jim was an ass and there were no other reasons for it.

Well, Miles might have deleted some security tapes. But that had been an accident and nothing to hang yourself up on, which Jim had suggested he did because according to Jim Miles was too stupid to live. Instead, Jim had made Miles work way longer than he was supposed to – thus Miles had barely had a moment of rest in forty-eight hours.

Then, when Miles had finally gotten back to his place, looking for a good night (or day) of rest, Juliet of all people had dumped all her laundry on him, saying she'd helped him out or something before (she had set him up on a date with this crazy chick called Sally, which was not help in Miles' opinion) and now Miles owed her. Miles, as the gentleman he was, had accepted the laundry and then dumped it in the entrance to his room before he collapsed on his sweet, sweet bed.

Miles startled again, there on the floor by his bed, and forced himself to stand up, knowing there was someone at the door, and dragged himself out of his bedroom. It was too early in the morning (or day, or night, it was dark outside at least) for this.

If it was Dan coming visiting because there were monsters under his bed then Miles was seriously going to punch him.

Miles opened the door, not bothering to look who was outside before he did it.

"Hello, Miles," Naomi Dorrit said.

Feelings are these things people with consciences have, also known as people who are not Miles: Random Facts.

"Sure I'm affected. She was hot and I dug her accent."

These were the words Miles repeated time and time again when someone asked him about Naomi Dorrit. Why they all wanted to know how he was "affected" was beyond him. It weren't just Dan and Charlotte, the survivors from Flight 815 too wanted to know his "feelings".

Charlotte, with the most pitying look she could muster in those cold eyes of hers, leaned in closer to him. Not to do anything in a way that Miles would enjoy, but to ask how he was. They were all finally reunited after grenades-in-mouth and shootings and all that they had been through. It was lovely. Note the sarcasm.

"Just fine," he'd answered her, fighting the urge to throw sand in her pale face.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," she mumbled, looking over to where Daniel was staring at them both, before he tripped over a grass straw or something on the ground.

He didn't know where they had gotten the impression his and Naomi's relationship went anything beyond this:

Miles (charmingly as ever): Hello, beautiful.
Naomi (slapping him over the head or glowering): Go to hell.

If Miles tried anything beyond that – things would turn ugly. Naomi was all this pent up angsting and repressed sexual feelings (for Miles) inside a pretty Manchester gal. She was short-tempered dynamite (and not in the black fishnets wild-in-bed kind) ready to explode at any second over a too-long glance or a brilliantly witty but still flirtatious comment from Miles.

So, really, such a small irritation (slight) in his life should be easy to forget, but with everyone reminding him all the damn time… of course he did sometimes have a bit of a hard time to sleep thinking about her. Being tied up also contributed to the hard time sleeping. But sure, he gave her more thought that just a "she was hot" comment. He did. This didn't mean he cared. This just meant she had been a slight part of his life for a slight part of time. She was one of those slights. Like that one friend in middle school or high school or something (Brad, Bret, all the same) or that co-worker you used to grab a beer or two with (not that Miles had many co-workers in his chosen job.)

As a slight, he didn't try to think of her that much, because she didn't matter that much, and when having a grenade in your mouth and being almost blown up from time to time you couldn't think of slights. Still, those slights did come into one's mind now and then, even into Miles. He could suddenly think of that friend in pre-school (Brendan?) in the most random moment when he was walking past a park with swings, and wonder what that friend (Brandon?) was doing in just that moment.

A Random Facts Note: Slight for Miles means of little importance.

With Naomi, there was no wondering what she was doing. She was dead. Meat buried underground. Gone.

Still, he did think of her.

Miles does not overthink things. There's no need to ponder on the mysteries of the universe. There are though, exceptions:

1) His dad.

(The first thing on the list – his dad – was crossed out and written in over and over depending on his mood.)

On the pitiful list his spiritualist ghost-feeling powers aren't on it. He accepted it a long time ago, sure it would be nice to know maybe why he could do it, but he didn't need that information.

But when the grenade-in-mouth and almost-getting-blown-up and time-traveling-issues were over, and he was stuck there in the seventies with the broken pieces of Linus's people, fellow Kahana crew and Oceanic 815 survivors, he did have time to think between working and lying and all the usual loving hippie stuff that came with the Dharma Initiative.

And so it was that the list of overthinking was added with one other thing:

1) His dad.
2) Naomi.

And what he was overthinking was why he was thinking about her when after all she was only one of the slights.

Naomi could speak Mandarin, French, English, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. Naomi couldn't speak Latin but could read it. Naomi couldn't speak Dutch – that rumor was false: Random Facts.

Naomi spoke like, ten languages or something. Miles knew this because when he'd dropped his tray on food on her on the Freighter (completely accidentally) she had, after what Charlotte phrased as "kicking his ass" gone around muttering swearwords under her breath while her eyes flickered around for a sight of Miles, who was hiding in Captain Gault's room. Some of the words Naomi uttered made even some of Keamy's men blush.

Captain Gault found him in the end hiding underneath his desk, reading a copy of Watership Down (Miles didn't appreciate books in the way that he drooled at the sight and swooned at the scent, but he was bored and he knew good literature), and kicked him out. Miles stumbled out in the cramped corridor, right into a swearing-in-six-different-languages woman.

Miles didn't realize his mistake before she'd pushed him up against the wall. And why was it when women did that it wasn't enjoyable for him ever, like, would it kill them to make a move?

Naomi said some words in something that sounded Italian, then she spat out in English, "Stay. Away. From. Me. You hear?" She let him go.

Miles would have replied something smart to that, if he hadn't been too busy breathing in that wonderful oxygen she had deprived him of. Damn, she had a short temper. Women like that, gorgeous and completely crazy.

Naomi was speaking ten-or-something languages now.

"Creo que tu eres una idiota! Queiro matarte!" Amongst other things came out of her mouth after Miles, when regaining his ability to form words with his vocal cords stuttered out, "You're dead."

Miles knew Naomi could speak many languages. He knew her temper was shorter than a goldfish's memory. He also knew Locke threw a knife in her back. He hadn't known that she had the ability to come back from the dead.

The next thing that came out of Miles mouth (after Naomi had walked past him and into his house) was: "This isn't real."

Naomi stood beside his couch looking very much real. There were no blood stains on her clothes, and her wavy hair hung freely and heavy down her shoulders, the blazing look in her dark-brown eyes pierced his, and she stared at him for just a moment without loathing nor a hint of I'm-gonna-try-to-shoot-you-now look. The small moment ended and she glowered at him.

"Have you completely lost the little piece of your mind that's left?" Naomi barked. "Straume, the least thing I need right now is for someone to tell me I'm not real when all I know in this bloody moment is that I very much am."

Random Facts Note: Miles easily accepted facts.

The people from Oceanic 815 were still alive. Okay, fine, just give me the money. Oh, and we're gonna kill them. Cool with me. Time travel. Yeah, as long as I'll live then it's okay if I end up in the old World War I days or whatnot.

Now, with Naomi who-had-been-dead (or still was) in front of him his legs couldn't take the enormous effort it took to keep him standing, so he decided to sit down on a chair.

There wasn't a chair behind him, so he sort of fell down on the floor. It was quite nice there. When he opened his eyes Naomi stood right in front of him.

"Straaaume," she said, "what are you doing? Get up! You have to explain to me what's going on."

Easy thing to do, when you were speechless for the first time in your life and you had barely gotten any sleep the nights before and was confused as hell.

"Straume!" she repeated, even more impatient than before.

He realized the answer of everything that was happening now: Naomi who-had-been-dead, was still dead. She was dead and this was just a development of the mystery he never had a need to solve: his ghost-feeling ability. Why Naomi chose this day and this moment to be seen as a person was beyond him, and other details like her body wasn't buried there and like she died in another time were unimportant compared to a good night's rest.

So Miles stood up, blocked out all the words in all the different languages Naomi was speaking, and closed the door right in her face, stepped over Juliet's laundry, before lying down in his sweet, sweet I'm-never-leaving-you-again bed.

Not before grabbing some of those liquor bottles he kept around.

After all, she was just one of the slights.

Miles childhood friend wasn't called Brad, Bret, Brendan or Brandon, his name had been Colin Smith and he was a slight: Random Facts.

Encino, California was never a home to Miles. It was where he lived with his mom in their tiny little place, with a landlord who avoided them the best he could ever since Miles heard Mr. Vonner crying after his wife, while he was lying dead on the floor in his apartment.

His mom couldn't explain why, and in the end she told Miles to stop asking why and do his homework instead. So Miles did as she said (stopped asking why, but decided that exploring was way more fun than studying) and neither of them bothered thinking too much of why and more of what was.

When one's mom worked double shifts and two jobs there were other issues to worry about than why you could hear dead people talk.

He didn't have the time and he didn't want to make the effort to make friends. He wasn't a loner, and he wasn't really an outcast, but he wasn't popular and he didn't try to be. He didn't try to be polite and he didn't try to suck up to people either. He wasn't socially awkward but he had this habit of being honest- Not honest in the way that when a girl asked if she was wearing too much makeup he would say yes, but in the way that he would chuckle and in the end drive her mad with his hints towards the fact that yes, she did look like a clown.

Then there was Colin, one of the slights in his life. Colin had an ordinary face and ordinary everything. He had a mom and dad with ordinary jobs and a dog. Colin was lactose intolerant and he had average grades. Colin melted into the background and was one of those students teachers would say there were high hopes for and then forget as soon as they graduated.

There was one thing Miles and Colin shared with each other and that was what school counselors called: lack of empathy.

Miles never saw Colin as his only friend and Colin never saw Miles as a friend at all and as each other's slights – after Miles made Colin eat ice cream when they were both so drunk the floor was the roof – they didn't talk again. As slights, they didn't think too much of it and they never really felt anything about it other than a: "I wonder what he's doing now," before moving onto the next slight in their lives.

Naomi was supposed to be such a slight.

A woman he flirted with and a woman who hated him and a woman who died and then he had other issues to deal with so he shouldn't be thinking of her.

So when she showed up there on his porch, he shouldn't have been… happy, no happy was wrong – felt something/felt more than nothing to see her again. He should have felt indifferent. But he didn't.

Miles sort of rolls with the flow, if the flow is annoying and dangers his life and doesn't offer him enough money he will probably go against it: Random Facts.

When Miles woke up, he slid down on the floor like he usually did and almost fell asleep again, before struggling up to stand on his legs. He yawned as he put a shirt on, a small smile on his lips as he had the whole day free to…

Do something, he guessed.

He walked right past Naomi who was leaning against the wall by the window, over to his small kitchen in the corner of his living room/hall. He began to prepare the coffee, asking Naomi if she could stop loudly tapping her foot –

Naomi. Standing. There.

He dropped the mug and it hit his foot and it didn't break which he should be grateful for because stomping on small shards weeks later was most unpleasant especially when you brought someone home with you in the middle of the night and the rest of the time was spent in the infirmary patching your date's foot up (not speaking from personal experience here, not at all). But he had dropped it on his foot, and that hurt, bad.

Not bad enough to distract him from the whole Mancunian dialect ten-whatever-languages speaking apparition of the dead Naomi Dorrit standing in his living room/hall/kitchen.

"Hello!" Naomi said way too loudly this early in the – damn, Miles glanced at his clock, it was almost two.

"Uh… hi?" Miles said, squinting at her, the sunlight shone in through the window too bright for… two o'clock.

"Miles!"

"Naomi!"

She sighed, looking so frustrated with him as she clenched her hands. "What the hell is going on?" she asked.

"Well, what's going on with you is that you're dead," Miles told her, in case she'd missed that when Locke threw that knife in her back. "And what's going on with me is that I, after breakfast, am gonna do Juliet's laundry, which means I'll force Dan to do it."

"Dead?" Naomi looked only confused for a second before her head twitched (which Miles had learned from long observance was her way of shaking her head). "Straume, what the bloody hell are you talking about?"

"I'm not talking about anything before I've eaten my breakfast," Miles replied bluntly. He looked into his refrigerator. There was a sorry amount of nothing in it, which meant he would have to visit the cafeteria to eat – lunch, right, it was two o'clock.

The cafeteria didn't open for dinner for about four, so he would have plenty of time to go crazy with a little dead Manchester woman perched on his shoulder. Or he could visit Daniel and eat whatever happened to be in his house.

Miles decided that the pajamas bottoms and t-shirt with dirty stains from beer were adequate enough to be seen outside with and went to get Juliet's laundry that he'd thrown somewhere around…

All while Naomi followed him around, shouting things at him, amongst the different swearwords and idiots, morons, and bloody hells, she asked him questions like what happened! where are we? what's going on! where's Faraday, Lewis, Benjamin Linus? and what happened to the survivors?

All while Miles gathered Juliet's clothes, put on his shoes and went outside without actually seeing much because the sun blinded him and he was still really, really tired and amongst different greetings of hi, Miles! late night at work, Miles? and I didn't know you were a trend-starter, bold choice of clothes there, Miles!

Naomi finally became silent, and Miles didn't look back to see if she was still there, and he certainly didn't think of it at all as he barged into Dan's house because he didn't believe in knocking as much as he believed in making a powerful entrance.

It was two o'clock and after dumping Juliet's laundry on Daniel's couch and searching through all the rooms Miles had to come to the conclusion that Daniel was at work or whatever it was crazy muttering scientists did two o'clock on a normal… day... (Miles couldn't remember it it was Monday or Friday or something in between.)

Miles then went to get some of Daniel's food, which made his breakfast a mix of cold coffee and some green-like things he suspected had once been newly baked bread. The door opened and Miles put the cup with cold coffee down.

He began to turn around. "Dan, Juliet's laundry is somewhere on your couch and you owe me a favor, unless you want me to tell people the story of when you got drunk on the freighter and began dancing on the table with Charlotte's –"

The person who had entered the house was not Daniel Faraday. He heard Naomi snicker somewhere out of his view.

Dr. Chang looked more annoyed than surprised at the sight of him.

"Uh…" Miles said, because at the moment his vocabulary had fallen out of his head.

"Marvin, is it?" Chang said while looking most displeased that the person in Daniel's house drinking Daniel's cold coffee and eating Daniel's food was not Daniel himself.

"Is Faraday here?" Chang continued not waiting for the reply.

"He looks like you," Naomi said.

"Yes because all Asians look the same," Miles replied sarcastically. "Could you be more –"

"What?" Chang said.

"Uh…" Miles said again. Naomi walked up beside him and he could see her rolling her eyes.

Miles realized that Naomi could see Chang, but Chang couldn't see Naomi, which was because Naomi was dead, and Miles was probably crazy and Chang was probably having him evicted to the Hydra Island now and there Miles was probably going to end up like Workman Linus with dead Naomi and polar bears as his company.

"Absurd," Chang muttered to himself, then, "Never mind." And he left.

Miles sank down on one of Daniel's chairs; the chair was located three feet behind him so he sank down on the floor instead.

"He couldn't see me," Naomi said after just a moment of silence.

"Obviously, since you're dead and all," Miles replied.

"I'm here."

"Dead."

"Why did you act so bloody strange?" Naomi asked him, bending down to take a look at his face, she was very close. He wondered if she leaned in if he would be able to feel her hair on his shoulder.

"Seeing your long lost father can be tiresome," Miles replied, and stood up (hoping he hadn't made too much of a fool of himself in front of Naomi, not that it mattered, she was dead.)

Miles finally got why his mom never talked about his father. His father was the kind of idiot who threw them out from the island. And having to leave the Dharma to live in a crappy place in Encino and knowing your husband changed from "Hey! I'm going to make out with you know in outside the recreation room in front of our future son" to "abandoning son and wife", would maybe make a woman not want to talk about said idiot: Random Facts.

Miles found Daniel Faraday asleep in his small backyard leaning against his only tree with a moustache drawn on his face. Miles saw two kids giggling, black markers in hand as they ran away over the fence at the sight of Miles. Miles was glad he made such a threatening appearance.

He went back into the house, and filled a can with water, which he then proceeded to throw over Daniel.

Daniel woke up with a start. "Mi-Miles!" he shouted, smudging out the right side of his impressive moustache when he wiped away water from his eyes. "Why did you…"

"Dan, how many times have I found you asleep in, well, anywhere but your bed?"

"Um…"

"Let me count up the places for you: the floor beside your bed, your couch, your only kitchen chair, your porch, a random truck, in a jail cell, like, how did you get in there without a key? Jim's porch, my porch, the cafeteria, right by the Staff which is in the middle of the damn jungle, Dan and then there was that incident with Amy none of us are ever speaking of again and –"

"Miles…" Daniel stood up.

Miles couldn't blame Naomi for laughing too loudly by his ear. Daniel did look ridiculous with half a moustache and wet hair hanging in front of his eyes, Miles himself couldn't help but chuckle.

Dan frowned. "That's no reason to throw w-water on me."

They both walked back into the house, Miles thought Dan would want to change his clothes, but instead he walked right up to the now empty cup of cold coffee.

"Miles," he said, Miles turned around and pretended to be interested in Dan's paintings when he was really looking at Naomi who was actually interested in Dan's paintings. She leaned so close to the paintwork her nose almost touched it. "Did you eat my food?"

"'Course not," Miles said, cleared his throat to change the subject, "Chang was here looking for you."

"You mean your father," Daniel said, almost sounding like he pitied him. Crazy Dan pitying him? Yeah right.

"I mean Chang," Miles muttered, not even able to avoid the grumpy tone in his voice.

"As in responsible for half the biological part of you," Daniel corrected him.

Daniel walked past Miles and Naomi (who he also clearly couldn't see) to sit down in the couch.

"Miles, why are there women's clothes on my couch?" he asked.

"Faraday sounds…" Naomi chose that moment to walk over to Miles and distract him from answering Dan's question. "He sounds more sure of his words, if that's the way to put it."

"He's slightly less crazy and more obsessed madman now," Miles whispered to Naomi.

"What?" Daniel said, trying to put away some of Juliet's cardigans to find a place to sit.

"You should do like Miles and sit down on the floor," Naomi advised him gleefully. Dan didn't hear. Naomi looked annoyed at the fact.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Because. You. Are. Dead," Miles said between his teeth to Naomi.

"No, I'm not," Naomi and Daniel both said.

Daniel and Miles left Daniel's house, with Naomi, but no one saw Naomi but Miles so she didn't count. She was right now rambling on and on about something like "dream" and "life" but Miles wasn't paying attention for her I-am-dead crisis.

"I forgot my keys," Dan explained to why he hadn't been sleeping in his bed this night either. He still had a half-moustache on his face.

"Your front door was open," Miles said, "and it's two o'clock."

"I'm late for work," said Dan.

"I'm late for food," said Miles.

Dan shook his head. "Work is more important."

"You overslept." Miles thought this was a perfectly acceptable reason for not showing up at work.

"There is nothing interesting going on there."

"You mean, socializing with our other acquaintances?" This was a conversation they'd had many times before.

"Are you talking about our friends, Juliet, Jin and Jim?"

Miles nodded. "The three Js, yeah."

"They are uninteresting compared to the strange anomaly in the –"

"– electromagnetic bla bla bla. Dan, what if I was interesting today then?"

"How?"

Miles tried not to be annoyed by Daniel's stunned face at the thought of Miles being interesting in any way, apparently ghost-hearing wasn't that important compared to…. what was it Dan liked? Rocks, yes, rocks and math.

"Naomi is here," Miles whispered like it was a big secret.

Daniel looked around him. Naomi finally shut up and waved her hand in front of his face.

"No she's not," Daniel said after having looked around.

"Yes she is, she's standing right in front of you."

"Miles, I get it, I'm invisible," Naomi said. "Faraday can't help us. He's nutters himself."

"Us?" Miles said. "This is your problem not mine, Naomi."

"What?" said Daniel. "My name is Daniel Faraday, Miles, n-not Naomi."

"Yes you are."

Dan looked thoughtful. "Perhaps this will be a time when food is actually interesting."

The three Js: Jin, Jim and Juliet. They are a tight group. Miles and Daniel are those who does not fit in, but they still care about Daniel. Miles feels like he doesn't really belong. But he isn't going to tell them – this isn't middle school. And after all, Miles has other problems than whether or not his acquaintances… "friends" like him or hoped someone else had survived the time travel thing other than him: Random Facts.

Naomi had seemed to get tired of following Miles everywhere, but when she saw Juliet, Jin and who she called "Sawyer" and Jin sitting together by a table in the cafeteria she changed.

"They if anyone could be of help," she said. "Those there, they were going to get rescued."

Miles as usually, ignored her. He and Daniel got their food and went over to the table.

"Nice to see you out of your cave," Jim said, smirking as Daniel fumbled with his tray.

Miles chuckled at his demise, only for Naomi to throw her fist down on his tray it fell down on the floor, scattering food everywhere.

"What the hell?" Miles shouted, looking at her as he took up the tray, not caring about the pieces of vegetable still lying on the floor.

"This is not something to ignore, Straume!" she growled back. "And thanks for your childish display before I figured I could bloody do this."

"Why don't you bloody stop bloody annoying bloody me, then!" Miles shouted.

The cafeteria had suddenly turned very silent.

"Um…" Jin looked confused.

Jim turned around on his chair. "Boy forgot to take his medications today," he explained to everyone watching them. The people went back to their food and Jim dragged Miles down in his seat.

"Miles, what is wrong with you?" Juliet asked, moving closer to him with her chair.

"Apart from the obvious," Jim muttered.

Miles did not glance Naomi's way no matter how loudly she was tapping her foot ("Miles, we need to talk about this."). "I'm just tired 'cause Jim's making me work double shifts," he said. "It makes me tired, and it makes me drop food trays of tiredness, and shouting at air."

"Make that triple shifts now."

"James!"

"What?" Jim leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head and curled his lips up in what he probably thought was a charming smirk. "The boy's gotta learn."

Juliet shook her head in disgust but when she went back to her food Miles could see her smile a little.

"Was it Naomi?" Dan whispered in a too-loud-to-be-a-serious-whisper whisper.

"Naomi who?" Jim asked.

"Naomi from the freighter," Dan told him.

"She's dead," Juliet and Jin said. (Naomi shouted in the background: "I'm right here!")

"Obviously," Miles muttered.

"Right, right, right, rewinding." Juliet looked at Dan and Miles seriously. "Explain the situation to us now."

Daniel told them of Miles throwing water over him (Jim laughed) of Miles acting weird (Jin nodded in agreement) of Juliet's laundry on his couch (Juliet threw Miles a dark look) and of Miles saying Naomi was standing right in front of him.

"Daniel," Juliet said with a sigh, and moved closer to him, she put a hand on his shoulder, she spoke like she was talking with her son who had just come home with drawings all over his face (which Dan still had – the moustache). "Miles is not the nicest person." ("Hey!") "He's having you on. Now, let's go and wash that drawing off your face, all right?"

Daniel looked confused. "What drawing?"

Miles is actually kind of okay with the time travel. It's his father and the lack of money he's against: Random Facts.

They blamed it on lack of sleep, the three Js and in the end Dan. All while Naomi behind him went on and on about how they needed to sort this out, just the two of them. She was still saying this as Miles lay down on his couch, staring up at the roof.

"We never even dated," said Miles while she rambled.

She stopped rambling. "What does that have to do with anything?" she asked, moving so she could look down at him.

Miles looked up into her eyes. "Nothing," he muttered.

"Miles," said Naomi with a gentle tone that didn't sound like her at all, and Miles sat up so he could make sure it was really she and not someone else. "Tell me everything that's happened."

And Miles did. He was tired, probably still hung-over or sick or something from the night before. His father didn't know his name (not that he cared about that idiot). His friends – acquaintances thought he was mad. Daniel currently hated him. Naomi was dead and there in front of him, and she was the first one in the whole day to say "Miles" in such a nice way, so Miles told her everything.

Everything took quite a lot of time and by the time he was done, by the time he told her of the freighter blowing up and the arrows on fire and Amy's husband and those two weeks that turned into three weeks and turned into Jim making head of security, it was dark outside.

Naomi had listened with surprising quietness, not even asking questions until Miles leaned back in the couch, and said "The End."

"Miles, am I really dead?" Naomi asked, no questions about how time travel worked, about Widmore, Ben, not any of those questions anyone else would ask, like, have you become millionaires yet predicting the future? Miles realized he kind of actually liked that about Naomi, she did ramble and said bloody a lot and she did ask stupid questions but less stupid questions than most of the people in the world.

"Yup."

Naomi sat down beside him on the couch. She put a hand on his arm. "Then how come I am here? It can't be of your powers, I will die years from now. How am I here?"

"I don't know," Miles said. "But I do know you died."

"No," Naomi twitched her head, "maybe I'm not dead, maybe –"

Scratch the whole not stupid thing.

"You're right," Miles admitted. "You're not dead. You're a result from my newfound mental disability that conjures up hallucinations, and since you are just a figment of my imagination…" He stared at her body.

Naomi looked like she was debating whether or not to attempt to punch him, in the end she shouted angrily, "What are you doing, Straume?"

"As a hallucination I figured you'd be wearing less clothes," Miles said as a matter of fact and continued to stare at her.

Naomi slapped him over the head. Miles winced. "Now how the bloody hell could I've done that without being undead?"

Miles shrugged, moving away from her, he wasn't getting hit again. "Maybe you're a zombie."

"I am not a zombie, other people can't see me."

"An invisible zombie."

It looked like a light had turned on above Naomi's head, her eyes were almost shining. "Maybe other people can. Can see me."

"Naomi –"

Naomi had already left.

The reason for Miles doing Juliet's laundry was this: Juliet thought Miles was lonely and set him up with a chick called Sally Sanders. The date had ended with Sally stepping on a broken piece of glass on his floor so they had to go to the infirmary. Miles was actually relieved for it to end. He was not one for relationships, and Sally had been very, very… insane: Random Facts.

Miles spent his Naomi-free evening reading his mail. Usually, the hippies – uh, the Dharma people – didn't send each other mail, since everything was in walking distance, which made the whole reading mail procedure very strange for him.

When he saw who the letters were from it became less strange and way creepier.

Dear Miles.

I have not been able to stop thinking about you, so I wrote you this poem:

The moment You picked me up
outside the welcome Hall
And YOU were on your Way Home
but I was in Loom
Immediately in your eyes
I saw a Connection like GOLD
We are More Than connected in our souls

LOVe & HeaRTS
Sally Sanders

Miles stared at the poem, there were hearts written all over it. He had hopes those rumors about Sally were untrue, about her being, well, what were the word all of those who'd dated her had said…

A stalker.

No sooner than he'd finished that thought, his doorbell rang. Miles remembered the last time he had opened the door without looking first who it was, and checked through his mirror first. Blonde ponytail, blue flower – yes, it was her. Sally Sanders.

Miles decided to pretend he was not home, and went into his bedroom to finish that bottle; he thought there was something left at the bottom of it.

He heard a thud, and looked up; outside his bedroom window was the creepy smiling face of Sally.

Random Facts Note: A short story on Sally Sanders:

Sally Sanders had joined the Dharma Initiative after an ex-boyfriend of hers recommended her to the program. He then promptly left the island. Sally likes having flowers in her hair and on her free time she writes poetry and wonders why she never has a second date, must be because they don't need to date to be soul mates.

Juliet set them up. It was the worst one and half hour of Miles's dating history (not life, he'd been through way way way worse). Miles thought she got the point when he said he really really never wanted to see her again in all of his life and would likelier date an alligator than her.

Clearly – she hadn't.

Or she was there to murder him. But not according to the poem she'd written for him.

It was with the feeling of impending doom he opened the window.

"Hi!" she said, like it was perfectly normal for her to be outside Miles' window.

"Um… hey?" Miles said.

"Why didn't you answer the door?" Smiling.

"Uh… I was going to bed."

"Okay." Still smiling.

Awkward silence.

"Was there anything you wanted, Sally?" Creepy outside-window-girl.

"Can I watch you sleep?" Big, big, smile.

"No?"

"I can stay out here." Had she had an operation to make her lips up that way?

"Sally, you should go home."

"Home is where you are." No human being could smile that big.

"Home is the house Horace assigned to you."

"But he didn't know about the connection of gold the two of us have."

"Yeah… Sally, have you seen our therapist? He's good. Not that I've visited him or anything."

She laughed. "Oh, people tell me to see him all the time."

"Can't imagine why."

"Must be because of my poetric soul."

"Poetric isn't a word. Poetic is."

She abruptly stopped smiling, Miles took a step back. "I will see you tomorrow, uh, bye."

Miles closed the window. She stayed outside, not smiling. He closed the blinds, waited a minute, then peaked.

Her eyes met his, still without a smile.

He gulped.

Miles is not a coward. He just prefers to stay alive if there's a choice: Random Facts.

"Dan, Dan!" Miles woke Daniel up; he was asleep on his own porch once again. They both walked into the house, but this time Miles locked all the doors and windows.

"M-miles, w-what are you – you doing?" Daniel asked as Miles closed all the blinds and shut off all the light.

"Surviving," Miles said.

"Are you in – in danger?"

"Probably," Miles stopped for a moment, before rushing again, "what do you know of Sally Sanders?"

"She wears flowers a lot, Miles, that's my favorite couch."

"Your only couch," Miles corrected him and blocked the door with it, just in case.

"Oh right." Daniel yawned. "Are you in danger because of… Sally… uh…"

"Sanders. And yeah. I think she's stalking me. She wrote me a poem."

"Maybe she…" Dan frowned. "Loves you?"

Miles thought of the idea of anyone loving him, and it was so bizarre he laughed out loud. "Yeah, right, because every girl that wants a piece of me wants to watch me sleep from outside my window."

"That's… frightening."

"Yeah, this is why I'm sleeping in your bed tonight."

"What?"

"It's not like you ever use it." Miles shrugged.

It ended up like this: Daniel slept on the couch because that's what he did and Miles fell asleep besides the couch because that's what happens when one finds Daniel's entire liquor stash and tell Dan he's sorry for the moustache ("it's okay, Juliet decided to do her own laundry") and then have to hear his drunken stories of a woman with "red hair like fire" and "blue eyes like ice… huh, that rhymes" and then Jim and Juliet woke them up because that's what they do when they feel someone is having too much fun, y'know, sleeping.

Miles woke up, and after screaming "I'm dying! I'm dying" at the bright white light that was the sun. He then checked his reflection in the bottle for any moustaches.

Moustache count on himself: 0. Moustache count on Daniel: Still 1.

Miles was confused for a second, because the female voice speaking didn't have a Manchester dialect but he still said: "Naomi, you're dead. If you're not – go make me some coffee." He waited for the slap over the head that never came, and then he turned his head.

Juliet stared at him with an I'm-disappointed-in-you look. Jim was raiding Daniel's refrigerator.

"Don't say it," Miles mumbled.

"We thought Daniel was dead," said Juliet exasperated.

"What?" mumbled Daniel somewhere above Miles.

"You never lock your door, Dan, of course we thought there was something wrong! We even sent Jin to get Horace, and James here was freaking out –"

"No I wasn't," Jim interrupted her.

Juliet raised an eyebrow. "You were screaming," she said to him.

Jim came back with what Daniel had in his refrigerator: nothing. "I was just worryin' about whether or not I would get Danny-boy's booze, which I know guess is out of the question." He smirked.

"Your never-ending love for us is always a surprise," Miles muttered, sitting up. He looked down at the bottle again, realizing he'd spilled more than he'd actually drunk. Huh.

"We were actually worried –" Juliet began.

"Speak for yourself," said Jim. "Miles, we gotta get to work."

Miles looked around the room, but there was no sight of Naomi. He sighed and followed Jim out the door.

Since apparently Miles wasn't fit for "public display" (Jim talked of him like he was an animal in a freaking zoo) he had to sit at the desk, looking at the monitors now and then doing freaking paperwork. This was freaking boring. He put down the paper (who the hell cared about those accidentally deleted tapes, it wasn't like anything interesting had happened) and began to rub at his temples.

"Your life is pathetic," Naomi spat.

Miles swirled around on hic chair and saw Naomi take the last step of the stairs, looking at him, arms crossed, all Naomi Dorrit.

"Why are you grinning?" she asked, walking over to him, leaning on the table with a hand.

"I'm not," Miles said and turned around in his chair.

Naomi decided to let it go. "Nobody else can see me, Miles."

"No kidding. Last time I checked I was the only ghostbuster around these areas."

"That's not funny," Naomi said.

"It is a little."

Naomi made something that might have been a smile but she turned her head and her hair fell over her face so he couldn't be sure. "Working hard, I see. Security." She chuckled. "You have really changed haven't you?"

"Still young and good-looking though."

"No doubt," Naomi said, and now she was definitely silent. Miles himself frowned.

"What is it?" she asked.

"What do you want?"

"Miles –"

Miles raised his eyebrows.

She sighed. "Look, I know you got a life, a pathetic one but –"

"And your life isn't?" Miles interrupted, know annoyed when he knew it had all been an act. "Wait… right, you have no life since you're dead."

Naomi was silent beside him. He sighed, and then turned to look at her.

She was staring at him, her usually big eyes narrow. "I'm not stupid of course I'm dead, Jesus, Miles. You don't need to remind me every other second. The point is that out there is the real world. Though it might be the seventies, Widmore is out there. Benjamin Linus –"

"That has nothing to do with me."

"You were a part of my team –"

"Years from now." Miles turned away from her. "As you said, I have a pathetic life here, if you will excuse me I have to do pathetic work right now." He picked up the paper again.

Naomi didn't leave; he could hear her tap her foot against the floor. The words on the paper blurred together. The tapping became louder.

"What?" he shouted.

"No, not 'what' – me!"

Miles swirled once again around in his chair. Sally came skipping down the stairs with what looked like pie. Pie.

Miles leaned back in his chair the most he could but there was a table in the way and oh god and all other gods Sally was smiling and bringing him pie.

"Is that your girlfriend?" Naomi asked with a snort. He looked at her, having completely forgotten she was there. Naomi looked strangely annoyed; Sally had that effect on people he assumed.

"Yes," Sally said at the exact time Miles said "No."

Sally and Miles stared at each other.

"We went on a date!" Sally shouted, she dropped the pie but Miles caught it.

Miles, with pie in hand, shouted back: "You can see her!"

"You can see me?" Naomi asked and took a step forward.

"Yes I can you are right there!" Sally waved with a hand at her. "Is she the reason you wouldn't let me watch you sleep, Miles? Have you been cheating on me?"

"No – wait, yes, I mean what?"Miles shouted. A lot of shouting went on for a minute and nobody heard what anybody else was shouting until Naomi screamed.

"EVERYONE SHUT THE BLOODY HELL UP!"

And then Phil, Jim, Jin and Horace ran down the stairs with weapons to see who was being murdered.

Author's Note: There is a second part I'll post in a few days. Let me know what you think!

Yeah.

Namaste.

And Happy (late) Christmas and Happy New (late) Year!

Yeah…