Off-Kilter and On-Target
Characters/Pairing: Kate/Sayid
Rating: PG/13/R
Word Count: 2,230
Summary: Instead of going back to the island, Kate and Sayid go on the run.
A/N: Written for pann_cake, because Five Acts isn't Five Acts without some Kate/Sayid. :-)
three.
They arrive at the airport, just as planned (everyone else’s plans). Kate wears enormous sunglasses and fidgets with her fake passport in the line for security. She never loses sight of the woman holding Sayid prisoner.
There’s no such thing as destiny, she thinks. There’s no such thing as fate.
This is her pep talk.
Ten minutes later, the woman is out cold in a staff-only bathroom and Kate’s picking the lock on Sayid’s handcuffs.
They skip the hellos, the chit-chat. Sayid handcuffs the woman to the railings in the handicapped stall and doesn’t look back.
They head for another terminal (strolling, never running), with Kate’s practical hand-luggage firmly in tow. Sayid has nothing except the clothes on his back and the wallet in his pocket.
They’ve made do with less.
Just before they walk out of earshot, they hear the final call for Ajira Flight 316.
“Where are we going?” Sayid asks.
“Nowhere.”
“Excellent.”
seven.
Nowhere is anywhere but the island. Nowhere is a place where the rules apply. Nowhere is a life where the only ghosts are inside them and the A-Team is just a TV show.
Nowhere, in this instance, is Guam.
Go figure.
They get there via Hawaii and Bali, and it’s the last place anyone will look for them. By the time they check into a backwater resort, the news has broken: Ajira 316 has disappeared, presumed crashed, with all its passengers dead. The television stations cover the story in excruciating detail, wringing out the tragedy of the double crash victims to its fullest extent.
Sitting in their king-sized bed and swimming in bottles of rum and punch, Kate and Sayid watch and drink.
“It worked,” he whispers.
“It’s over.”
Sayid sets down his glass so he can thumb a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s never over.”
Kate knows he’s right. They didn’t go back to the island, but they both know it’s only a matter of time before the island comes back to them.
She leans over him (more to feel some comforting warmth against her ribcage than anything else) and refills his glass. They don’t toast.
Once they switch off the TV, they never turn it on again; there’s no point. The plane will never be found.
fourteen.
They pass a few quiet days splayed sloppily on their private patio, or floating lazily offshore in rented catamarans that they’re always hours late returning. Sayid catches up on what seems like three years worth of sleep while Kate cultivates a tan that gives her a complexion almost as dark as Sayid’s (it's part of their plan).
No matter where they are in the resort, they stare at the sea, imagining the dark clouds on the horizon are actually the mountains of the island, that their friends are just out of sight. They don’t wish they were on the island, not really; the problem is they don’t wish they were anywhere else. They opted out, but they have nothing else to opt into.
Every night, they fall asleep side by side, pressing sweaty palms together and alternating exhales until they drift off into private nightmares. Sayid spends the mornings on encrypted phones and secret internet servers-consolidating money and covering tracks. Kate drinks black coffee and researches possibilities for their next move.
Guam is as good a place as any to pass a few days in transit, but they both know they need to get out of here before they’re marked. Fancy beach resorts aren’t really their thing, and in a place like this, it’s only a matter of time before someone will recognize her face, his gait.
seventeen.
They don’t leave soon enough. It’s clear they’ve gotten too comfortable, too soft.
They’re on an afternoon hike in the jungle outside the resort limits-the irony is lost on neither of them-when a man jumps Sayid out of nowhere.
They may be soft, but they’re always prepared. Kate whips a pistol out of her pocket, but there’s nowhere to aim, because Sayid and the man are intertwined, like a whale and the squid out to get him. Sayid throws the man against a tree and tries to pry murderous arms from around his neck. The man finds a way to pull out his own gun and gets a shot off just as Kate takes advantage of a momentary opportunity to bury a bullet in his neck.
As soon as the body slackens around him, Sayid extricates himself and scrambles to his knees in front of Kate. Even though she’s tough (every bit as tough as he is) she stumbles into his arms. She does it as much for his sake as for hers.
“Kate, Kate, Kate…” he murmurs brokenly, ripping her red tee-shirt open to reveal where the bullet has grazed her side. The gash isn’t bad, but there’s a lot of blood.
Kate stares at him open-mouthed while he tears her shirt into strips that he uses to stop the bleeding. He intermittently presses his lips to her forehead, muttering to himself in a panicked mix of every language he's ever studied. Kate’s in shock, but not because of the pain.
No one has ever said her name like that, like it’s the only thing that matters. Until this moment, she had no idea he cared this much about her. Sure, they’ve always meant a lot to each other... Partners? Definitely. Shoulders to lean on? Absolutely. Friends? Forever. And yeah, there’s always been that little edge of something just out of sight, pushed away, forcibly ignored. But she never thought…
Their attacker died before they could ask for whom he works: Ben, Widmore, Avellino, who knows? Ultimately, who cares? Kate and Sayid each take an arm and drag him far off the hiking trail. Sayid wipes the body clean of prints and uses fallen pieces of giant bamboo to cover him with soft soil.
He doesn’t look her in the eye, but she knows him well enough to catch the way his face falls into a beaten-down, hang-dog grimace, the way he barely breathes all the way back to the hotel.
“I’m fine,” she says, taking his hand. “Seriously.”
She’s okay, but he isn’t.
That night, while the rest of the resort enjoys evening entertainment under the stars, Kate and Sayid squeeze into their tiny bathroom and cut off one another’s hair.
She stands on tiptoes behind him, peeking over the top of his head to see the effect her labor is having on his face. He stands still and stares serenely into the mirror; his gaze is fixed on her instead of himself.
He hasn’t spoken since the burial.
As she cuts, she runs her fingers through the long, thick curls for the last time, realizing it’s also the first. She never knew she’d always wanted to do this until now, when she’s destroying the opportunity.
Isn’t that always how it is?
Kate takes the scissors into the shower and watches him shave through the glass door. His gaze is focused on the the blade, either in concentration or out of chivalry. When she slides the glass open again, she’s sporting a freshly cut, freshly dyed black bob.
Only after she’s wrapped a towel around herself does he look at her-at her hair.
“I wish there had been another way.” His nose scrunches in visible disappointment as he offers her a hand she doesn’t need to get out of the shower.
It’s the closest he’s ever come to telling her she’s beautiful.
“Change is good sometimes,” she says, trying to make it sound off-hand. “When I was a teenager, I wore my hair way shorter than this.”
She’s about to slide by him and out the bathroom door, but he blocks her. Tentatively placing one of his feet on hers, he whispers into her ear, “I can’t lose you, too.”
Kate picks at the fold holding her towel up and lets it fall to the ground. Pressing his hand firmly against the sturdy bandages he recently applied to her side, she says, “You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
She knows exactly what she’s saying when she whispers, “Yes, I do.”
It’s easier to say, and it’s easier to mean it, because he isn’t technically asking anything of her.
She lets him back her into the shower again and pulls down his shorts on the way. His hands are everywhere, possessive and hungry, in her hair, along her back, between her legs. She turns the water on and presses against him, letting him take all the comfort he needs.
In giving it, she finally finds some for herself.
twenty-four.
They buy an island. They know how ridiculous this seems, but there it is.
It’s a house on an otherwise uninhabited piece of land somewhere off French Polynesia. It’s safe, the perfect compromise between isolated and accessible to supplies. It starts out as a rental, but as soon as Kate drops the anchor of their new boat, they know it’s home. After three days, Sayid calls and makes an offer the owner can’t refuse.
Sayid’s made it so that no one will ever find them. They have ceased to exist as completely as their friends on that other island. No one will come jumping out of bushes ever again.
In this new life, they’re a hopelessly rich married couple from England. They sign all their bills as Mr. and Mrs. Kamali.
Neither of them have had good or lasting experiences with ‘real’ marriages, but they’re best friends who are sleeping together and have no intention of separating ever again. Kate has told truths that were falser than this lie. This is more real than any of the actual marriages or engagements she's had.
(Part of her knows full well that it being technically untrue keeps her running instincts at bay; technically, there isn’t anything real to run from. She wonders if Sayid planned it that way).
forty-two.
Sayid needs projects to keep his hands and his mind busy; so does Kate. They order supplies to fix up the house, to build a deck, to repair the dock, to modernize and militarize their little fortress. He takes care of the wiring; she shimmies up the sides of things with a hammer. The work is exhausting, but it’s honest. She’s never before seen him this calm or this happy. She’s never before felt that way herself.
They’re too busy to be lonely. Sayid has a list of projects that, conservatively, should keep them busy for at least three years. After that, they’ll figure something else out.
One night, they feel the entire house shake. Kate drags a groggy Sayid out of bed and out of the house. She tries to dismiss it as a regular old earthquake… but somehow it feels personal, pointed.
Kate glances at Sayid, who’s looking across the dark ocean. She knows he doesn’t understand it, but he feels it, too.
Just as they never talked about black smoke or polar bears, they don’t talk about this. They simply carry on.
One of their first projects was to set up a small cabana on the prettiest part of the beach. Now that it’s done, when the sun grows too hot for work, they sometimes collapse there, always with Kate’s arms thrown protectively around Sayid and his legs cocooning hers.
They have no deadlines, so they can afford to (sparingly) sleep the afternoon away.
What awakens Kate one day is a voice from a whole world away. At first she thinks it’s part of her dream, but one line is unmistakably real.
“Son of a bitch.”
Kate and Sayid jump to their feet. This time Sayid’s the one with the gun, but as soon as it’s pointed and his eyes adjust to wakefulness, he lowers it again.
“It… it can’t be,” Sayid stammers.
What Kate immediately recognizes as an airplane’s life raft floats a few yards offshore. As it bobs towards them, Kate distinctly makes out Sawyer’s trademark shocked expression and Frank’s wavy grey hair. Behind them sit Claire, looking particularly worse for wear, Miles, and… Richard Alpert?
She and Sayid run into the water and drag the raft up the sand. One by one, they help their friends out. Their skin is chapped and horribly sunburned, and they’re all dangerously close to keeling over from dehydration, hunger, and hopelessness. Worse, there’s something behind all of their eyes: a trauma beyond anything Kate has suffered.
She steps forward and pulls Claire into her arms.
“Where did you come from?” she asks.
“We made it out, but the plane ran out of gas,” Frank says. “It was going down, so we jumped. We’ve been out there for four days. This was the first land we’ve seen.”
“Never thought for a minute it would be anyone we knew,” Miles says.
Richard takes what ought to be the wildest coincidence of their lives like it’s yet another day on the island. “Who else is here? Do we need to hide?”
“We are alone,” Sayid replies. "This is our island."
“The two of you look snug as two bugs in a rug,” Sawyer says, with nothing but relief in his voice. “Like Adam and Eve in your own personal paradise.”
Kate meets Sayid’s eye. He smiles.
They didn’t go back to the island, but the best parts of the island came back to them.
Rating: PG/13/R
Word Count: 2,230
Summary: Instead of going back to the island, Kate and Sayid go on the run.
A/N: Written for pann_cake, because Five Acts isn't Five Acts without some Kate/Sayid. :-)
three.
They arrive at the airport, just as planned (everyone else’s plans). Kate wears enormous sunglasses and fidgets with her fake passport in the line for security. She never loses sight of the woman holding Sayid prisoner.
There’s no such thing as destiny, she thinks. There’s no such thing as fate.
This is her pep talk.
Ten minutes later, the woman is out cold in a staff-only bathroom and Kate’s picking the lock on Sayid’s handcuffs.
They skip the hellos, the chit-chat. Sayid handcuffs the woman to the railings in the handicapped stall and doesn’t look back.
They head for another terminal (strolling, never running), with Kate’s practical hand-luggage firmly in tow. Sayid has nothing except the clothes on his back and the wallet in his pocket.
They’ve made do with less.
Just before they walk out of earshot, they hear the final call for Ajira Flight 316.
“Where are we going?” Sayid asks.
“Nowhere.”
“Excellent.”
seven.
Nowhere is anywhere but the island. Nowhere is a place where the rules apply. Nowhere is a life where the only ghosts are inside them and the A-Team is just a TV show.
Nowhere, in this instance, is Guam.
Go figure.
They get there via Hawaii and Bali, and it’s the last place anyone will look for them. By the time they check into a backwater resort, the news has broken: Ajira 316 has disappeared, presumed crashed, with all its passengers dead. The television stations cover the story in excruciating detail, wringing out the tragedy of the double crash victims to its fullest extent.
Sitting in their king-sized bed and swimming in bottles of rum and punch, Kate and Sayid watch and drink.
“It worked,” he whispers.
“It’s over.”
Sayid sets down his glass so he can thumb a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s never over.”
Kate knows he’s right. They didn’t go back to the island, but they both know it’s only a matter of time before the island comes back to them.
She leans over him (more to feel some comforting warmth against her ribcage than anything else) and refills his glass. They don’t toast.
Once they switch off the TV, they never turn it on again; there’s no point. The plane will never be found.
fourteen.
They pass a few quiet days splayed sloppily on their private patio, or floating lazily offshore in rented catamarans that they’re always hours late returning. Sayid catches up on what seems like three years worth of sleep while Kate cultivates a tan that gives her a complexion almost as dark as Sayid’s (it's part of their plan).
No matter where they are in the resort, they stare at the sea, imagining the dark clouds on the horizon are actually the mountains of the island, that their friends are just out of sight. They don’t wish they were on the island, not really; the problem is they don’t wish they were anywhere else. They opted out, but they have nothing else to opt into.
Every night, they fall asleep side by side, pressing sweaty palms together and alternating exhales until they drift off into private nightmares. Sayid spends the mornings on encrypted phones and secret internet servers-consolidating money and covering tracks. Kate drinks black coffee and researches possibilities for their next move.
Guam is as good a place as any to pass a few days in transit, but they both know they need to get out of here before they’re marked. Fancy beach resorts aren’t really their thing, and in a place like this, it’s only a matter of time before someone will recognize her face, his gait.
seventeen.
They don’t leave soon enough. It’s clear they’ve gotten too comfortable, too soft.
They’re on an afternoon hike in the jungle outside the resort limits-the irony is lost on neither of them-when a man jumps Sayid out of nowhere.
They may be soft, but they’re always prepared. Kate whips a pistol out of her pocket, but there’s nowhere to aim, because Sayid and the man are intertwined, like a whale and the squid out to get him. Sayid throws the man against a tree and tries to pry murderous arms from around his neck. The man finds a way to pull out his own gun and gets a shot off just as Kate takes advantage of a momentary opportunity to bury a bullet in his neck.
As soon as the body slackens around him, Sayid extricates himself and scrambles to his knees in front of Kate. Even though she’s tough (every bit as tough as he is) she stumbles into his arms. She does it as much for his sake as for hers.
“Kate, Kate, Kate…” he murmurs brokenly, ripping her red tee-shirt open to reveal where the bullet has grazed her side. The gash isn’t bad, but there’s a lot of blood.
Kate stares at him open-mouthed while he tears her shirt into strips that he uses to stop the bleeding. He intermittently presses his lips to her forehead, muttering to himself in a panicked mix of every language he's ever studied. Kate’s in shock, but not because of the pain.
No one has ever said her name like that, like it’s the only thing that matters. Until this moment, she had no idea he cared this much about her. Sure, they’ve always meant a lot to each other... Partners? Definitely. Shoulders to lean on? Absolutely. Friends? Forever. And yeah, there’s always been that little edge of something just out of sight, pushed away, forcibly ignored. But she never thought…
Their attacker died before they could ask for whom he works: Ben, Widmore, Avellino, who knows? Ultimately, who cares? Kate and Sayid each take an arm and drag him far off the hiking trail. Sayid wipes the body clean of prints and uses fallen pieces of giant bamboo to cover him with soft soil.
He doesn’t look her in the eye, but she knows him well enough to catch the way his face falls into a beaten-down, hang-dog grimace, the way he barely breathes all the way back to the hotel.
“I’m fine,” she says, taking his hand. “Seriously.”
She’s okay, but he isn’t.
That night, while the rest of the resort enjoys evening entertainment under the stars, Kate and Sayid squeeze into their tiny bathroom and cut off one another’s hair.
She stands on tiptoes behind him, peeking over the top of his head to see the effect her labor is having on his face. He stands still and stares serenely into the mirror; his gaze is fixed on her instead of himself.
He hasn’t spoken since the burial.
As she cuts, she runs her fingers through the long, thick curls for the last time, realizing it’s also the first. She never knew she’d always wanted to do this until now, when she’s destroying the opportunity.
Isn’t that always how it is?
Kate takes the scissors into the shower and watches him shave through the glass door. His gaze is focused on the the blade, either in concentration or out of chivalry. When she slides the glass open again, she’s sporting a freshly cut, freshly dyed black bob.
Only after she’s wrapped a towel around herself does he look at her-at her hair.
“I wish there had been another way.” His nose scrunches in visible disappointment as he offers her a hand she doesn’t need to get out of the shower.
It’s the closest he’s ever come to telling her she’s beautiful.
“Change is good sometimes,” she says, trying to make it sound off-hand. “When I was a teenager, I wore my hair way shorter than this.”
She’s about to slide by him and out the bathroom door, but he blocks her. Tentatively placing one of his feet on hers, he whispers into her ear, “I can’t lose you, too.”
Kate picks at the fold holding her towel up and lets it fall to the ground. Pressing his hand firmly against the sturdy bandages he recently applied to her side, she says, “You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
She knows exactly what she’s saying when she whispers, “Yes, I do.”
It’s easier to say, and it’s easier to mean it, because he isn’t technically asking anything of her.
She lets him back her into the shower again and pulls down his shorts on the way. His hands are everywhere, possessive and hungry, in her hair, along her back, between her legs. She turns the water on and presses against him, letting him take all the comfort he needs.
In giving it, she finally finds some for herself.
twenty-four.
They buy an island. They know how ridiculous this seems, but there it is.
It’s a house on an otherwise uninhabited piece of land somewhere off French Polynesia. It’s safe, the perfect compromise between isolated and accessible to supplies. It starts out as a rental, but as soon as Kate drops the anchor of their new boat, they know it’s home. After three days, Sayid calls and makes an offer the owner can’t refuse.
Sayid’s made it so that no one will ever find them. They have ceased to exist as completely as their friends on that other island. No one will come jumping out of bushes ever again.
In this new life, they’re a hopelessly rich married couple from England. They sign all their bills as Mr. and Mrs. Kamali.
Neither of them have had good or lasting experiences with ‘real’ marriages, but they’re best friends who are sleeping together and have no intention of separating ever again. Kate has told truths that were falser than this lie. This is more real than any of the actual marriages or engagements she's had.
(Part of her knows full well that it being technically untrue keeps her running instincts at bay; technically, there isn’t anything real to run from. She wonders if Sayid planned it that way).
forty-two.
Sayid needs projects to keep his hands and his mind busy; so does Kate. They order supplies to fix up the house, to build a deck, to repair the dock, to modernize and militarize their little fortress. He takes care of the wiring; she shimmies up the sides of things with a hammer. The work is exhausting, but it’s honest. She’s never before seen him this calm or this happy. She’s never before felt that way herself.
They’re too busy to be lonely. Sayid has a list of projects that, conservatively, should keep them busy for at least three years. After that, they’ll figure something else out.
One night, they feel the entire house shake. Kate drags a groggy Sayid out of bed and out of the house. She tries to dismiss it as a regular old earthquake… but somehow it feels personal, pointed.
Kate glances at Sayid, who’s looking across the dark ocean. She knows he doesn’t understand it, but he feels it, too.
Just as they never talked about black smoke or polar bears, they don’t talk about this. They simply carry on.
One of their first projects was to set up a small cabana on the prettiest part of the beach. Now that it’s done, when the sun grows too hot for work, they sometimes collapse there, always with Kate’s arms thrown protectively around Sayid and his legs cocooning hers.
They have no deadlines, so they can afford to (sparingly) sleep the afternoon away.
What awakens Kate one day is a voice from a whole world away. At first she thinks it’s part of her dream, but one line is unmistakably real.
“Son of a bitch.”
Kate and Sayid jump to their feet. This time Sayid’s the one with the gun, but as soon as it’s pointed and his eyes adjust to wakefulness, he lowers it again.
“It… it can’t be,” Sayid stammers.
What Kate immediately recognizes as an airplane’s life raft floats a few yards offshore. As it bobs towards them, Kate distinctly makes out Sawyer’s trademark shocked expression and Frank’s wavy grey hair. Behind them sit Claire, looking particularly worse for wear, Miles, and… Richard Alpert?
She and Sayid run into the water and drag the raft up the sand. One by one, they help their friends out. Their skin is chapped and horribly sunburned, and they’re all dangerously close to keeling over from dehydration, hunger, and hopelessness. Worse, there’s something behind all of their eyes: a trauma beyond anything Kate has suffered.
She steps forward and pulls Claire into her arms.
“Where did you come from?” she asks.
“We made it out, but the plane ran out of gas,” Frank says. “It was going down, so we jumped. We’ve been out there for four days. This was the first land we’ve seen.”
“Never thought for a minute it would be anyone we knew,” Miles says.
Richard takes what ought to be the wildest coincidence of their lives like it’s yet another day on the island. “Who else is here? Do we need to hide?”
“We are alone,” Sayid replies. "This is our island."
“The two of you look snug as two bugs in a rug,” Sawyer says, with nothing but relief in his voice. “Like Adam and Eve in your own personal paradise.”
Kate meets Sayid’s eye. He smiles.
They didn’t go back to the island, but the best parts of the island came back to them.