by Cazzza
Disclaimer: Big surprise here, but I don't own Lost or any of these characters. I was just bored and waiting for Wednesday night.
Rating: PG
Authors Note: I was bored and thought I would write some angsty Shannon/Sayid fic. To my knowledge, there are no spoilers in this piece. This is all completely made up on my part. Please R and R! Thank you and enjoy!
There were nights now when she couldn't sleep at all. She lay awake and stared up at the darkness, picturing the stars hanging in the sky. They seemed so beautiful in her mind, or, at least, that was the way she used to see them when she was on the ground, against the sand and in his arms.
Sometimes, when lying in the dark was too much for her on those sleepless nights, when she felt restless and lonely, she would go to her closet and find the box. She didn't always open it. Sometimes she just started at it, or run her hands over the brightly coloured cardboard. It had been slightly damaged during its long stay on the island, but it remained true to its purpose, containing the only thing she had left of him.
On this particular night, touching the shoebox wasn't enough for her. Slowly lifting the lid off, and placing it at her side, she carefully pulled back the blue tissue paper that surrounded the shoes. There were grains of sand in them still, serving as a reminder to Shannon of a time when she thought that the sand would never leave her alone. It used to be everywhere, in between her toes, caught in her bathing suit, crusted in her eyes when she would awaken, it was even stuck in his black hair whenever she ran her fingers through it. She gingerly picked up a few grains of it and pressed it between her fingertips. Weird, how she even missed the dirt.
After a minute, she let the grains drop back into the box and focused her attentions on the contents. Stilettos, about three inches high, with purple and blue straps. She picked one up and stroked the soft fabric. This had become somewhat of a ritual for her. There were nights when she would only touch them for a minute, and then there were nights when she would touch them for hours. Those were the nights when it hurt the most, when she felt so lonely without him that tears would slid down her face all night. Those were the nights when she needed him the most, when she would give up anything she had just to have him hold her one last time, to brush the hair from her face. But he wouldn't come, not now, and not ever again. She was still of sound mind, even after all that had happened, and despite of some of the impossible things she had seen on that island, she knew that people couldn't come back from the dead.
Once she was finished caressing the shoes, she would always carefully put them back in the box, repack the tissue paper, replace the lid, and put the box back in its rightful place in her closet. Somehow touching those shoes always gave her peace enough to sleep, if only for one more night. She never wore those shoes. It wasn't that she had lied to Sayid about her feet shrinking on the island. They had shrunk. But when he had first given them to her, she hadn't worn them for fear of ruining their beauty by getting them wet or dirty. Instead, she had kept them with her, and treasured his gift. When the helicopter arrived, the pilot said there wasn't room for extra personal possessions onboard. But she refused to leave without them. Even now, back in L.A, in her home, she never put them on her feet. It felt like a show of disrespect to just wear them around like any old shoe she could have bought downtown. These were so much more than that.
Everyone had been so happy to see her return, her stepmother and friends hugging her and crying. Like she actually meant anything more to them than a cash settlement and fifteen minutes of fame. Reporters were there too, and they hung over her every word. After all, she was only one of a handful of survivors of flight 280. They wanted to know all about the crash and living on a deserted island with complete strangers for more than two years. But she never answered their questions, never made comments or gave them interviews. They could never understand and she didn't want them to try.
At first she made an effort to pick up the pieces of her old self, tried to go shopping with her old friends for fancy designer clothes and all those superficial things that had marked the old Shannon. She tried to chat with her stepmother like everything was normal. But they told her she was different, not like herself at all. Shannon was fine with that. She didn't want to be her old self. She was somebody else now. A person who knew what it had felt like to be truly loved, and have it all taken away in a single instant. And it both hardened and softened her. So she closed herself off to all those who had known her before, and most of the time, she didn't speak at all. Most of the time, she couldn't bring herself to leave this bedroom.
But still, there was a part of her that still clung to hope. Hope that maybe one day she would again find her strength and try to carry on with something close to a normal life. As long as she knew that there were a few of the others out there still. As long as she had those shoes in that box in her closet, she still had hope, and a part of him with her. Even if that was all she had, it was still something. It kept her alive.
Ironically, shoes had once been her obsession, an addiction. Now, they were her salvation.