SPECULATION/AUTHOR NOTE:

OK. Something is going on here. Saywer calls Hurley tubby, Miles calls Hurley tubby and then Hurley says:
"OH AWESOME, THEY SHIPPED US ANOTHER SAWYER"
Which I would just write off except... in the new episode Sawyer calls Lapidus "yahoo" and in 4x03 Miles says:
"IN CASE YOU WERE ZONING OUT WHEN YOU WERE TWEEZING YOUR GOATEE, ONE OF THESE YAHOO'S TOOK CHARLOTTE PRISONER."

So maybe Hurley was right all along? Maybe like a certain theory I've been reading lately, a character's dialogue is all forced by a character "telling the story" hence the Sawyer/Miles connection is purely through the story teller.


Either way... Miles sounds so much better when he says it than Sawyer - Though they're both full of awesome.

--Disclaimer: I don't own Lost. Duh.--

--Memories of a Dead Woman--

Miles crumpled the picture of Ben that he had on him. He remembered when Naomi had given him the picture. Benjamin Linus was who they had come to find. Well, that's what they told everyone their mission was - it wasn't that simple and when Miles had imparted that as being their agenda, he knew it was pretty much a blatant lie. He knew who Ben was before getting on the Kahana and that wasn't the real reason why he had come.

He remembered Naomi. He had his own reasons for going to island and he knew she did too. He didn't know what they were, but he didn't care. They hardly knew each other from the short time they spent on the freighter and Miles was the kind of jerk that didn't get attached to anybody - so it was probably for the best that she'd been killed. Now he could concentrate fully on his own mission. Now he could take control of the situation he was placed in with no one looking over his back or getting in the way.

She was so... efficient. Even speaking with him after death, she communicated how it all went down with such efficiency, as if there was no personal connection between them at all... as if it was their first meeting all over again...

--

"Now, there might be survivors from 815 there." Naomi replied in a hushed whisper as if she wasn't supposed to be revealing that information.

"815?" Daniel Faraday asked, and Frank Lapidus was suddenly coming to the realization why he'd been recruited.

Frank exchanged a look with Miles. Miles was the one to say it. "Oceanic 815 Genius."

"Oh, right." Faraday replied. He was in his own head most of the time. It bugged Miles to no end.

"So we'll have a code in case one of us gets into trouble. How about - tell my sister I love her? That way it sounds realistic." Miles listened attentively but he felt like he was the only one doing so. It was mostly because her accent was hot. Sure, Charlotte was British too but the two women sounded different to him. Charlotte sounded like a pushy bitch who liked to throw around her education. Naomi was much more... real.

Naomi opened up a briefcase, inside was loaded with weaponry. "I got this from the security team that's ordered to bring Ben back upon the freighter. This is our portion of their supplies."

"Only Ben?" Charlotte asked, Daniel was humming to himself in a trance beside her.

"That's the orders" Naomi said perkily. "Now I have standard models to give you all" she took out a gun from the case for each of them. Daniel took his with surprise, inspecting it and then waving it around in an odd manner until Charlotte took it from him.

Miles came up to Naomi after she'd handed out the the guns, explained a little more of their mission and everyone else had left.

"Lapidus and Faraday... you'd think they'd never seen a gun before. And Charlotte. I could imagine her shooting an ex-boyfriend or something."

Naomi gave a polite grin and just listened to Miles going off on a rant. "Yeah, sure" she added, while clearly interested in something else. Perhaps why she spent all that time alone, on the communications lines with other senior management, bosses and others that were in the background of this mission - those spoken of but never by name.

"So what? Am I supposed to babysit them or something? Is this Widmore's covert op? A child-care center?"

"You have to babysit them?" Naomi responded incredulously, "You have no military experience, no field ops training..."

"I pick up things fast." He replied with a smirk of his own.

"Yeah, and I'm the Queen of England."

Miles loaded his gun in the blink of an eye and cocked it at her. She raised an eyebrow though he was clearly looking for approval.

"Look, if you want to learn some things, you don't position it like that" Naomi put her hand over his and raised the position of the gun.

Miles looked bothered by her tuition but he kept his gaze on her steady. "So what else am I supposed to do Senior Management?"

"Military training is pretty intense" Naomi explained.

"Intense waste of time" he kept the gun on her. Naomi didn't seem bothered by it.

"Are you going to keep talking the talk or are you going to want to learn something?" Naomi asked him bluntly.

"Sure, whatcha got?" he challenged. She grabbed his arm and twisted it before he had time to think about his next move, yanking the gun out of his hand. He yelped in pain as she held him down, put his arm behind him and lowered him to the floor.

His face was smashed against the ship deck, she pushed him further down, resting herself on his back.

"Will that do you?"

Miles struggled against her with his usual smirk, not bothered by her closeness. "Yeah, that does just fine."

She released his arm and kept the gun trained on him. He spun around, but she continued to sit on his torso, looking down to him with the keen eye of a professional assassin.

He returned her gaze. "This is actually quite enjoyable."

Naomi had her time to smile. "Oh really?" She stuck the gun to his forehead.

"Yeah. Nothing hotter than a girl that can make a mark in your face with your own gun."

He wasn't joking, but she released the gun anyway. She handed it over and was in the process of getting up when he yanked her back down on top of him. She sprawled against his figure unwillingly.

"Show me something else" he whispered in her ear.

"Like what?" she replied, in regarding their position. Miles wasn't the type of guy to not go after what he wanted. She was thinking about how this might look. Herself senior management, caught in this position with one of her team. "You want to learn some more moves?" She asked, wriggling uncomfortably until he grabbed her and pulled her along with him so he was on top of her this time.

"Why?" He asked, "I already got you to release the gun."

That was true enough. She'd stopped wriggling. She knew that she could knock him out in an instant, but for some reason she didn't want to. He went in for the kill and pressed his lips to hers and she reciprocated knowing anyone could walk in at any moment.

She immediately stopped him mid-kiss and pushed him off of her. "We can't do this here."

"What?" He asked, clarifying... "Here?"

She smiled once and he followed her to her cabin on the freighter, glad there was some place they could do it... someplace... covert.

--

Miles took one more glance to the picture as he threw it into the foliage, Sawyer was snoring in a way that caused Miles to roll his eyes. He remembered Naomi and just like he'd promised - he would see the mission through. They both would.

Nope. Miles Straume didn't get attached to anybody.

Thanks again to GuitarHeroLostwho has been why I've been so enamored with this pairing. This is actually the second version of this fic I had to do - as I re-watched 4x02 and 4x03 today for the first time and realized there was a lot of stuff I forgot from last time such as what I commented on earlier.

The open ending is in case I get requests for more!

And also because I may think in some sense that Naomi is still alive. After all... who would give a dead woman a flashback?

Review and let me know if this pairing is interesting to you too! (Or just that there's someone else out there besides GuitarHeroLost and I reading this fic!)