At first he thinks it is a hallucination. He has had enough of those here.
He tastes blood, thick and vicuous, pooling around the bullet in his abdomen and the stars behind his eyes. There is blond hair shining wet and familiar in the night, long pendulous threads hanging from branches, a trail, a message, a warning, a dead girl's voice chiming in his head and his blood running colder with every breath. The ground beneath him is soft and welcoming and he is sinking, deeper and deeper, closer to the end, closer than he has ever been before. Rain pools in his mouth, over-sweet, tasting of childhood and old age and all the hatred this godforsaken island holds at its core. A core still intact. Perhaps he should have rigged the bomb correctly, helped Jack blow them all to a separate hell and back again. Perhaps he should have let himself go.
The blond hair glimmers like a firelight and his eyes cannot leave it, a moth to flame, blurred and distorted as his vision is, and it is moving towards him, bobbing through the trees until it--she--is before him, blond but not the girl he remembers, eyes wide and knowing and doe-like and still, teetering on the edge between here and there, alive and dead. Claire, he thinks but will not say. He will not speak of the dead. Claire. We left you. I'm not sorry. You were lucky.
A red stain begins to bloom like a firecracker across her white shirt and she looks down, her limbs jerking and incredulous, puppet-like. He feels that gentle pop like another bullet in his own stomach. She gasps and falls forward onto him, face down, blood spattering from her nose all over his jumpsuit, crimson like family jewels embroidered into the Dharma logo.
Someone emerges from the trees, gun still smoking and trembling in hand, and Sayid closes his eyes as Kate gasps, falling to her knees. Claire vanishes from his arms. White light takes them, almost by accident, and Sayid thinks he understands.
Kate cries and screams as the yellow plane crashes to the jungle floor. I'm sorry. It worked. Too late.