Title: Anchor
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. A girl can dream, but alas...
Warnings: Character deaths.
Summery: They each needed and anchor, someone to tie them to the world, to not let them slip away.
Author's Note: I've been trying to get this out for about a week and yesterday it finally came. Thank god.



They stare at each other from their respective positions in the sand, a blanket covering both of their bodies up to the waist. Sun absently runs strands of her hair through her fingers, more out of need to do something with her hands than anything else. But Jack just stares. He stares at her in that kind of way that tells her he is deep in thought. There are a lot of things she wants to say to him, to ask him, but she is sure she will pull him from his thoughts. So she remains silent.

"How do you do it?" he asks, suddenly. Or it feels sudden, after half an hour of silence.

"Do what?" she replies, wondering if she's supposed to understand what he's talking about.

"Let is go."

His gaze shifts from her and falls over her shoulder. She turns, looking behind her, then sighs. The cemetery. There are so many crosses now, so many graves. She remembers them all, their names, which graves they occupy, even though not all of them have crosses adorned with their names. They weren't necessary. The both of them remembered.

She turns back ot Jack, wondering what she can say that will give him comfort, that will ease his pain. But she is left only with the truth.

"I don't," she says. She reaches for his hand, slowly, but he doesn't wait. He grabs onto it, gently pulling her whole body into his arms. The blanket bunches in between them, so Jack right it.

"Would you ever have thought..." he starts to ask, but the words die before they leave his mouth. He feels her whole body sigh, and he responds by pulling her closer and resting his chin on top of her head.

"No," she answers the question that he never finished. "I never would have planned on any of this."

The fire in front of them crackles and sparks. Sun stares into it as she listens to Jack's heart beating against his chest.

It's been three years to the day since she'd lost Jin, and a year to the day since Jack had lost Kate. The grief came and went, for the both of them, and the only comfort that they found was in each other.

During the day Sun busied herself in her garden, stopping every now and then to treat a burn or small cut with aloe from the fully grown plants she had raised. Jack continued to do what he had always done, taking care of major injuries, making sure everyone had enough food and water. It was what he needed, to convince himself he was still in control even as the world fell down around him.

In the night, when the bonfires started to roar, they were together. Neither of them was sure how it had begun, but they knew now that they needed each other too much to stop. Without what they had, the would drown in a sea of grief that was constantly threatening to swallow them.

They each needed and anchor, someone to tie them to the world, to not let them slip away. They knew how close they were to drowning. And they knew that their combined strength was the only thing keeping them alive.

"I wish I could forget," he tells her, gazing over her head at the cross he knew was Kate's.

"No you don't," she replies, having heard, and told, this same lie many times before.

"No," he agrees. "No. I don't."

She looks up at him and he looks down at her. She sighs sadly and softly says, "They say that something lives only as long as the last person that remembers it." He swallows heavily and she pulls away, sitting up to look him directly in the eyes. Her gaze never wavers as she says, "As long as we remember them, they are never gone."

His voice shakes slightly as he asks, "Is that enough?"

She thinks a moment and is, once again, left only with honesty. "It has to be," she tells him. "Because that is all that there is."

He sighs, shaken by the weight of her constant gaze and her unfailing honesty. His eyes fall down to her hands, which he holds in his, then pulls around him. Their backs fall to the sand and their eyes drift to the stars.

They never move, not even long after the fire has burned out.