---
Sayid was the one that found her. Later, he would say she looked so peaceful, lying there on her side, her back to him, that he almost thought she was sleeping. As he bent to shake her gently awake, his fingers touched something sticky, and he drew back in shock, terror, surprise. Blood. He was almost afraid to move her, if she was hurt or unconscious. He knew he should get Jack, but the urgency of the situation demanded he do something now. He moved Kate onto her back, and then drew back in horror. The ground where she had laid was covered in blood. Had she–but no, her pants were still on, and the deep wounds on her wrists and her blood soaked shirt told him this had been an attack. As he lifted her into his arms, he wondered why. Why they had only briefly taken Sun, and returned her unharmed. Why Kate had been so brutally handled. Why these people insisted on carrying out these experiments on them. Why, why, why.
The Hatch was less than a mile away from their current location, but Sayid walked slowly, so he wouldn't upset Kate in his arms. He knew Jack's shift had begun an hour earlier. She must have been heading in to meet him, Sayid thought. He managed, after a moment, to open the door, and walked down the long hallway into the main room. At the computer, he saw, to his surprise, Locke, looking very intent, doing a crossword. His head raised when he heard Sayid's footsteps, and then jumped to his feet when he saw what the Iraqi was carrying in his arms.
"What happened?" Locke asked, hovering nearby as Sayid carried her into the bedroom and put her on the bed.
"I don't know, John. I found her like his, about a mile out. She must have been on her way here to see Jack."
"Charlie came for him about fifteen minutes ago," Locke said quietly, watching as Sayid raised her shirt over her stomach. "Aaron's fever again."
"We need to get her down there to him right away," Sayid said, pulling her shirt back over her, in disgust at what he saw. What they'd done to her.
"I could run and get him now," Locke offered.
"There's no telling how long he'll be down there. We need to go. Now."
"The button, Sayid. I've got to stay." He reached out and took Kate's limp hand gently. "Seventeen minutes isn't enough time to get back here. You go on down and–" Locke paused.
"What? John, what–?"
"She's not breathing, Sayid. No pulse."
Sayid digested Locke's words and frantically tried to find a heartbeat. He let out a heavy breath that he didn't know he'd been holding when he couldn't find one. Not the faintest trace of life.
"John–"
"She's lost too much blood. What about the–"
"I didn't look. It was them, again, John."
Locke shook his head. "Sayid, you get her down to the beach, right now."
He didn't need telling twice. He pulled Kate's limp body into his arms again, and made a beeline for the door.
---
Aaron whimpers in Claire's hold, whines as Jack tries to take his temperature, check his pulse, make sure it's just a fever, and nothing too serious. At seventeen months old, he's no longer a baby, walking and talking a mile a minute when he feels well. He's not always that well. Fevers, rashes, chills. He gets sick all the time, and he's fussy. He stopped taking Claire's milk when he was four months old, and he had a hard time digesting the mashed up fruits they give him. Jack knows what Claire refuses to acknowledge: her son is not a healthy child.
He assures Claire that Aaron will feel better, he just needs to rest, drink water, get lots of protein and vitamins from the boar meat and fruits. He wishes he could tell Claire that Aaron will be fine, that it's just what happens to kids this young who don't have vaccinations. He wishes he didn't have to look sweet, gentle, kind Claire in the eye and tell her that her son is going to get better, when he knows that Aaron is dying.
Charlie is the first to spot him. Returning from the water trough with cold water for Aaron, he sees Sayid emerge from the jungle with someone in his arms. Charlie knows immediately that it's Kate. He remembered waving to her as she stepped into the jungle, on her way to the hatch. Something was wrong. The way Sayid is carrying her. His mind flashed to the minute details he could remember of Claire's kidnaping, and he felt a wave of cold dread wash over him. He dashed back to the tent he shared with Aaron and Claire, and pulled on Jack's arm.
"Jack..." his finger points to Sayid, and Jack turns to glance over his shoulder. All he needs to see is Sayid carrying the limp body in his arms, scanning the beach for him. Jack hurries over, takes her from Sayid, and just stops. Kate. His eyes take in her bruised body, the cuts and scratches. He gently lays her down on the sand, and runs his fingers over her belly, looks at Sayid, who shakes his head.
No. No. Not her. Not both of them. No. Not her. Not again, please.
He closes his eyes, pulls up her shirt, and takes a deep breath. When he finally lets it go and opens his eyes, his worst fears are confirmed. He's proud of her for fighting, but their punishment was brutal. He can see where they made the incisions in her body, where they did a lackluster attempt to sew her back together. He knows it's gone. He knows she's gone.
"I've–I've.." It hits him, hard. He drops to his knees, her body held tightly in his arms.
They say a man only makes that kind of unnatural, animalistic noise when he is touched by the most extreme kind of grief. It's the kind of noise that carries on the wind, sends shivers down a person's spine. It penetrates the soul and the listener feels the person's anguish to his very bones.
A few yards away, an eleven-year-old boy buries his head in his father's shirt and cries, unashamed. A Korean woman holds her husband close and wonders why she was spared. A blonde woman cradles her toddler and wonders how close they had come to this. A blonde man's eyes cloud over and drop tears onto his paperback novel, as the pain cracks the hard shell around his heart. A Nigerian priest drops to his knees, his hands folded and his head bent in prayer, asking God if he will forgive the sins of one of his lost sheep and show her the way to heaven.
Not quite five miles away, in an underground bunker, a bald man sitting in front of a blank computer screen looks up from his crossword puzzle. His pencil falls to the ground and he feels a pang hit him in the heart.
Six miles away, in a dark cave, a woman lifts her head from her papers and says a silent prayer for the man she knows is grieving. She made the sound too, once, eighteen years ago, when someone she loved was taken away from her.
Fourteen miles away, the inhabitants of a small, hidden community look up from their dinners. They know what it is. They know why it had to happen. And yet, not one of them can continue eating.
Seventeen miles and another island away, a stout, white-haired man in his fifties watches from behind a glass window as a blonde woman presents a short, thin man in glasses with a tiny baby boy, and tells him the operation was a complete success. A lie, on her part. She doesn't feel any remorse, until that noise hits them. In the man's arms, the baby begins to cry, a weak, feeble cry, as if he knows that is the sound of his father grieving over the lifeless body of his mother. In the man's arms, the child suddenly shudders and falls silent, and there's blood on his hands, in more ways than one.
And then there is silence. The birds have stopped singing. The insects have stopped chirping. Even the waves no longer crash violently against the sand. There is an almost peaceful serenity to it all. There is no movement on the beach, except coming from the man whose voice has fallen silent. He grips her so tightly, the rest of them are afraid he's going to damage the body. He's shaking violently, his body racked with sobs. Sayid and Charlie both move forward to pull her lifeless form away from him, but now Jack looks up, his eyes red-rimmed, his face pale. They stop, because if looks could kill, his would cause a genocide.
"Don't fucking touch her," his voice spits venom. He breaks away from them and carries her to their tent, and places her on their bed. He changes her shirt, because he doesn't want to look at the one that's covered in her blood. He can already feel it in his heart, as it begins to break. He wonders what happens when–if–the others get rescued. Wonders if his mother will cry when she hears that three generations of their family died within two years. Because he knows, in the way that fathers do, that the baby is gone too. And as he looks at her, kisses her, touches her, for what he knows will be the last time. Already, it's time. He can feel the island working its magic, tearing his heart in two. He holds her, because it seems like the right thing to do. In his last moments, he waits, and he can almost see her, beckoning him, a tiny bundle wrapped in blue, nestled in her arms.
"Come, Jack," she calls to him, her voice like an angel. "Come, Jack. Come see your son. His name is Samuel Christian Shephard, remember? For our fathers. Come, Jack. We haven't been waiting long, have we? Come, Jack. Come home to us."
Ten minutes later, when Sayid enters the tent, he already knows what he's going to find in there. Locke and Eko built a large box for them. They'd want that, to be buried together.
Locke finds the child's body two days later, in a tiny coffin, placed on the outside of Jack and Kate's tent, like some gesture of forgiveness by their unseen enemies. They dig a smaller hole just a few inches from the larger one. It's the second funeral in three days. But not the first. And not the last. Aaron is sick again, worse than before, and even Claire knows it's just a matter of time. But then the rescue boat comes a week later, and the ship's doctor gives him vaccines, and he's up again, running around the deck, babbling, talking, walking, laughing.
None of them can stand to watch the ship's crew dig up the graves to exhume the bodies and transport them into wooden coffins for the journey home. It's too hard.
Sayid Jarrah is a brave man. He tortured many, some his own countrymen. He could deal with the screams of the guilty ones, sometimes even ones he knew were innocent. But the noise he heard that day will haunt him for the rest of his life. When they arrive at LAX, he takes it upon himself to tell Boone's mother about the deaths of her son and stepdaughter. He finds Jack's mother, and tells her about the loss of her husband, son and grandson. Both women are cool, calm, collected. He wonders why they can't grieve for their families. He wonders why he couldn't grieve for Shannon like Jack grieved for Kate. It's just the way people handle things. Soul mates. True loves. Sayid's never believed in those things. But maybe some people do.
He knows they did.
---
A/N: If any of you saw "The Princess Bride," picture the scene in the Pit of Despair, where Wesley is being tortured with that machine that takes years off his life. What I was going for here is the scene where Humperdinck puts the machine all the way up to 100 and Wesley lets out the scream that can be heard across the kingdom. This story came to me at like 3am, so if it's a little confusing, let me know, I'll answer questions! And for the record, I don't think Jack's mom ever knew that her husband died in Australia. I think she thought he died in the crash.