(lost) freedom
Title: Freedom
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Sayid, Hurley
Spoilers: Through Season 4 Finale
Prompt: I began writing this for lostfichallenge #73: freedom, but it was never posted.
Summary: Sayid steals Hurley away from the institution.
The unmarked car pulled out of the gated entrance, gravel churning against the tires like a growling beast. Sayid glanced over his shoulder at Hurley, who sat in silence in the back seat, mechanically running the belt from his robe between his fingers as he stared vacantly out of the window.
Sayid turned his eyes back to the road. His heart sank in his chest at the condition of his friend, and his conscience nagged at him for his lack of contact until now. The waiting had been necessary. Ben had been adamant that the Oceanic Six fade from the ever shifting public eye before initiating his plan. But that did not excuse the fact that Sayid’s sparse visits had dwindled to nonsexist after his broken heart had been feebly mended by revenge. He allowed his thoughts to disappear into a vat of regret, but only for a moment. Then his mind was filled with the image of the man whose life he had just taken, and the memory of the sound of the bullet slapping into flesh snapped him out of his thoughts.
Focus, he told himself. Remember the plan.
He glanced out of the tinted window to his right and checked the horizon. It was still hours before daylight. Excellent. He brought his eyes back to the road. In four hours, they would reach the safe house and could hide out until morning and await the others. He looked at the bag in the passenger’s seat and reached over to rummage sightlessly through its contents. His fingers brushed past the smooth, leather exteriors of two false passports and he retracted his hand, satisfied. The tension in his shoulders eased slightly, and he enjoyed a moment of relief, even if the strain would never dissipate entirely.
He directed his focus on the road ahead of him, the seemingly endless dashed lines lulling him into an uneasy stupor. He had driven over 500 miles in the last six hours on virtually no sleep. He had learned to thrive on very little sleep-what choice did he have?-but the miles and miles of endless stretches of road were beginning to take their toll.
An unexpected noise brought him back to his senses, and he quickly turned his head to look behind him. He was surprised to see that Hurley had rolled down his window, and even in the darkness of the car, Sayid could see that Hurley’s face had softened, his eyes twinkling reflections of the stars outside.
A familiar pang returned to his chest, the one that Sayid knew he could never push away completely, a hunger pain for something that had always remained just beyond his reach. There would always be something pulling him back by the scruff of the neck, holding him prisoner, keeping him from the one thing that he had never truly had, the very thing that he had just seen radiating from Hurley’s face.
Freedom.
Sayid rolled down his window so that the night air washed over his face like a baptism. He felt no different, but for the time being, he would feed off the emotions of his friend. He glanced at Hurley through the rearview mirror and his heart stopped beating in his chest. He blinked and looked again, but the blonde-haired woman with bittersweet eyes that had been sitting beside Hurley, staring straight at Sayid in the mirror, was gone. Hurley met his gaze and smiled.
- June 1, 2008