Author's Note: In cleaning out my computer files, I found another very old Lost fanfic I never posted to fanfic net. Enjoy, if anyone still reads Lost fanfic!
PICKING UP THE PIECES
Everyone expected Sayid to be withdrawn and unapproachable, and for the first three days after Shannon's burial, he was. So it came as a surprise to them all when, on the fourth day, he showed up at the golf course and, for the first time, asked to play. Even more surprising was the way he laughed and joked about his incompetence in the sport.
Libby stood among the spectators and watched him with concern.
"Isn't this great?" asked Hurley from beside her, nodding to Sayid.
"I'm not sure it is," said Libby. "I'm worried about him."
Hurley shook his head. "Dude, you were worried about him the first day when he would hardly talk to anyone. You were worried about him the second day when he suddenly started praying five times a day. Then you were worried about him the third day when he stopped praying five times a day. Now you're worried about him because he's having a good time. What can he do right?"
"A sudden change in personality like this," she said, "could be indicative of—"
"Dude," Hurley interrupted her. "You don't even know what his personality was like before Shannon died. You didn't even know him."
"Well," she asked, "was he like this?"
Hurley watched Sayid prepare to strike the ball as Kate laughed at his awkward posture.
Sayid lowered his club and looked back at her with a suggestive smile. "Why not come here and show me how to do it properly?"
Kate complied, and the observing Hurley said, "Uh…not exactly. But it's not like he was all sullen all the time either. I mean, he smiled and was friendly and stuff."
Later that day, Libby approached Sayid where he sat at his workbench, scribbling on a piece of paper.
"What are you doing?" she asked, as she kneeled in the sand beside him.
"Mathematical equations," he replied.
She looked baffled. "To help with the radio?" she asked, motioning to the scattered parts on his bench.
"No," he replied, "Just for fun."
She laughed. "You're doing mathematical equations just for fun?"
He nodded. "It helps to clear the head, concentrate the mind." He made a few more notations, murmuring to himself and occasionally extending his fingers as if counting. "Do you know what I like about mathematics?" he asked.
Libby shook her head.
"There is only one right answer, and you know immediately whether or not you have found it."
Libby considered this statement and attempted to analyze it for some deeper meaning, but if it were somehow a profound reflection of his grieving process, she could not grasp it.
"Sayid," she said cautiously, "I know you didn't want to talk to me two days ago when I approached you, but I was wondering if maybe…maybe you wanted to discuss things now."
"What things?" he asked. "Literature? Russian philosophy? Differential equations?"
She smiled weakly. "You know what I mean."
He put down his pencil, lay his head against his hand, and looked at her. "Do tell me."
"Sayid, you are acting very strangely."
"Am I? And you know this because you…know me?"
Libby sighed. "I realize I don't really know you, but there are five stages to grieving, and you seem to have skipped….well…all of them except maybe anger and depression."
"Which ones have I overlooked? If it pleases you I can always retrace my steps and enact them. I would not want to concern you."
"First there is denial," she said.
He nodded. "She is not really dead," he said. "It was all an illusion brought on by fatigue. In fact, I am asleep right now. In the morning, I will awake and she'll be lying naked beside me."
"Sayid-"
He curled his hand at her in a gesture that urged her to continue. "What is next?"
Libby let out a sort of sigh, which came in a poof and caused the blonde curls of her bangs to rise slightly in the air. This wasn't going quite as she had planned.
"Anger," she said.
"Yes, well, you may ask Ana Lucia about that one."
"Bargaining," she said.
"Bargaining?" he raised an eyebrow.
"You know, I promise I'll be a better person if…"
"I promise I will never again torture a man if Shannon is miraculously raised from the dead."
Libby looked at him with shock and confusion. "Ah…" he said. "Yes. I forgot you did not know about that. Does that throw a wrench in your analysis?"
She seemed to stumble for words.
"What comes after bargaining?"
"Depression," she stumbled.
"I think I have been in that place. And the fifth?"
"Acceptance."
"Well," he said, picking up his pencil again and beginning to make notations. "Now we have arrived."
"You've accepted Shannon's death?" Libby asked incredulously.
"How can I not accept it? It happened. What are my options?"
"So you're completely over your grief?"
"Of course not," he replied. "And I may not be for a long time. But my religion forbids me from any excessive display of grief. And the custom of my country is to grieve no longer than four months and ten days."
"It has only been four days."
"Yes, and I am still grieving. There will be many moments of overpowering sorrow. But in the meantime, whenever I can manage to, I am also going to live." He dropped the pencil again and rested his elbows on the table. "Now," he said, "can you accept that?"
Libby raised her eyes, still clearly incredulous. She tilted her head. "Okay," she said. "But if you ever want to talk, you know where you can find me."
She raised herself up off her knees and walked away, leaving him to resume his computations.
[***]
Libby stood beside Rose, who was hanging clothes on the line. The would-be psychologist watched as Sayid went into his tent, grabbed a blanket to use for a prayer mat, and came out again to say the late afternoon prayer, the third of the day.
"He's doing it again," Libby muttered from behind Rose.
"So?" Rose said, taking one of Bernard's shirts and draping it on the line. "He's rediscovered religion. That might be a comfort to him."
"But I'm told he never did it before. The change is rather sudden."
"That's how religion comes to people sometimes," Rose said quietly, "sudden like."
"But on again, off again?" Libby asked. "He wasn't doing it yesterday, but he was the day before."
Rose shrugged. "We all have our days. I'll confess I've gone entire days without praying, but that doesn't mean I don't believe, or that it doesn't do me good when I do pray."
Libby watched Sayid go back into his tent and come out again, making his way to the jungle. Instinctively, she trailed after him. Libby listened to the sound of wood splintering in the jungle. She wanted to go and speak to him, but she held back. She busied herself working on her beach shelter, right on the edge of the shore and the foliage, but when the sound of the axe didn't cease for over an hour, she sought him out.
When she drew up behind him, she saw he had taken off his shirt, and the sweat was beaded and glistening in the crevices that outlined his muscular physique. Suddenly, she wasn't very interested in psychology.
As soon as he sensed her presence, he thrust the axe into the wood, left it resting there, and hastily put his shirt back on before turning to her. "Did we miss any of the stages?" he asked.
She smiled faintly. "No," she said.
"So what concerns you now?" He walked to the side, sat down on a tree stump, and began to drink a bottle of water.
"I saw you praying again today."
He finished his drought and screwed the top back on the bottle. "That is a statement of fact. Do you expect a response?"
"You know, Sayid," she said hesitantly, placing her hands in her back pockets. "Religion can sometimes be a crutch."
Sayid put the water bottle back on the ground. He rose and walked up close to her—very close. Too close for her comfort, she thought. "Has it perhaps occurred to you, Libby," he asked, "that when something is broken, a crutch can be quite useful?"
He reached out and gently touched her shoulders, pushing her to the side, and then he walked resolutely past her.
[***]
The next day, Libby's eyes trailed Sayid again. She watched him pray and also watched him interact with the other survivors. She saw that he would smile from time to time, help where he could, and involve himself in the community around him. He must have noticed her watching him, because at one point during the day, he walked towards her and paused before passing her. His expressive eyes seemed simultaneously to smile at her and to question her as he said, "You take a peculiar interest in me." The words flustered her, and she could not think of a reply before he walked on. She could only hope he was not misinterpreting her concern.
Although Sayid seemed to be adjusting to his loss and pressing on with life, Libby still worried that he had not yet had the opportunity to open up, vocally, about his grief. She did not care to whom he spoke; she did not need to be the one to listen to him, but no one else, it seemed, was making the effort to bring him forth. They all sidestepped the grim issue of Shannon's death as though it were better avoided than confronted.
Thus, that evening, when she noticed Sayid sitting at his private fire and eating his dinner, now remarkably withdrawn from the rest of the camp, she walked over and took a seat next to him. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and smiled brightly. "I'm like a bad penny," she said.
He looked at her quizzically. "If that is some kind of strange come on…"
Libby burst out laughing. She hadn't thought about the fact that he might not understand the allusion. "No," she said, still laughing. "I mean, I keep turning up."
"Is that what bad pennies do?" he asked, and now he was laughing, too. "I did not know pennies could be guilty of waywardness."
Libby didn't know why he thought this was so funny, or why he was now laughing so hard. But the tears were streaming from his eyes. They were because of the laughter, Libby thought. Except, gradually, he wasn't laughing anymore, and yet the tears kept coming. He wiped them furiously from his eyes, and then he stabbed at the food in his bowl.
"Sayid," she said gently from beside him. "Are you ready to talk yet? I might be able to help, if only you will let me counsel you."
He had regained himself. Calmly, he spoke: "It was Vladimir Nabokov who said, 'Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts."
Libby looked at him with a mixture of confusion and surprise. "You've read Nabokov?"
"No," he said, "but my roommate at Cairo University was a student of philosophy, and he read much literature. For some reason he found that quote endlessly amusing. He used to say it all the time. That is why I remembered it."
She glanced at him and saw a new emotion play across his features: it was not grief, but guilt. Sayid, she knew, had other woes than Shannon; she had learned enough to know he had once been a member of the Republican Guard and that he had tortured men. But what memory haunted him now as he recalled his college roommate? Was even his youth plagued by anguish? She saw the feeling flicker in his eyes and fade inwards, as though he were compartmentalizing it in his soul.
"Well," said Libby, attempting to lighten the heaviness that seemed to have overtaken him, "I haven't tried to apply any Greek myths to your…uh…"-she hoped she wasn't blushing-"…private parts."
"You mean," he asked, putting down his bowl, "you do not care to ask about my mother?"
"I hardly see the relevance," she said. "And I don't put much stock in Freud."
He smiled. "Well, at least we can agree on that."
She sat silently beside him for awhile, hoping he would say something. When he didn't, she asked, "The other day, why did you flirt with Kate?"
He turned at her and blinked. "What do you mean?"
"You know, at the golf course."
He shrugged. "Why not?"
"You don't think it's a little strange that, just four days after Shannon was buried, you were flirting with another woman?"
His eyes narrowed. "What are you suggesting?"
"I am only suggesting that you shouldn't try too hard to compensate for your grief. And that you should be wary of rebounding."
"Rebounding?"
"It's a term borrowed from sports. It means-"
"I can guess what it means," he said. "And I can assure you that I have absolutely no intention of rebounding. And certainly not with Kate." He shrugged again. "Besides which, what would be the point? I lose them all eventually."
"Them all?" she asked.
He bit his lip. "This…romantic love thing. I think, in the future, I would do better without it."
"Sayid, don't write off the possibility of love—"
"Did you not just tell me to be wary of rebounding?"
"I mean, later," explained Libby. "Don't think there is never going to be…don't…"
"Why not? Would it not be easier to avoid entangling the heart? Then it could never again be injured. I do not mean I will become an emotional recluse. I made that mistake before; I will not make it again. I will not cut myself off from the world. I will always have friends. But the other…" He shook his head. "I hardly see the point anymore."
She couldn't think of how to respond. She could only look at him, mouth slightly agape.
"I am not being morbid," he said. "Or self-pitying. It just seems a highly practical course to me."
"If it happens again, Sayid, if you ever fall in love again, you won't be able to stop it just by reasoning."
"One has to encourage these things," he said. "Love does not blossom entirely on its own. One must make the occasional effort."
Libby shook her head.
"You do not like this response of mine either?" he asked. "What could I do to ease your mind? Let us say I mourn, oh…let us say six months, and then, if we are still on this island, I pursue you. Would that make you stop worrying about me?"
She knew he didn't mean the question; she knew he was being facetious, perhaps even bitter, but still his suggestion unnerved her. "Sayid…maybe, maybe this wasn't such a good idea, me trying to counsel you."
"Perhaps not," he agreed, somewhat coolly, but not impolitely.
She stood and left him alone by his fire.
[***]
For the next three days, Libby did not try to approach Sayid again, though she often thought about him and observed him—she hoped subtly—and from a distance. It came as a surprise to her when, as she labored still on her unfinished tent, she heard a masculine, accented voice speak from behind her. "You have no hope of properly tying that knot."
She turned and saw Sayid smiling bemusedly. "Allow me to help," he said. He stepped forward and undid her own pathetic efforts, and then he retied the rope. "You know," he said, "Shannon was very skilled at tying knots."
"Was she?" asked Libby, tending to another part of the tent while Sayid continued to assist her.
He nodded. "It was a skill she acquired from one of her former boyfriends. She acquired much knowledge in that manner. She was young, but she had quite the life education."
"And what did she learn from you?" Libby asked, encouraged that he was speaking without provocation.
His answer was nothing like what she had expected. "I hope she learned," he said, fastening another knot, "that she was not useless."
Libby raised her eyebrows in slight confusion. Sayid noticed. "If you are told often enough and long enough that you are worthless," he explained, "you will start to believe it, and you will start to act like it. But…if someone tells you differently…if someone believes in you, despite all the evidence to the contrary, then you will start to believe differently too." He pulled on the pole to test the strength of his knot. "I know this from my own experience."
Libby leaned an arm against one of the poles and asked him, "What other skills did Shannon have?"
The expression that now flickered across his face caused her to blush. "Perhaps that was not well phrased," she said hastily. She was relieved when he laughed.
"Well, in addition to other unique abilities," he said with a smile, "she knew French. I once asked her to translate some maps for me, and she acted as though it were the first time anyone had trusted her to do anything productive."
He talked on like that, while he helped Libby to build her tent. When there was a lull in his monologue, she said, "Sayid, you don't know how glad I am that you are finally talking to me about Shannon."
"Finally?" he asked, in a tone of disbelief.
"Yes," she said. "It has been over a week now, and…"
Sayid's eyes revealed his puzzlement. "I have wanted to talk abut Shannon for days. But you never asked me about her."
Libby's mouth fell agape. "Of course I did, repeatedly-"
"No, no you did not. You wanted me to talk about me. About my grief. About my feelings."
Libby blinked at him, hardly processing what he was saying.
"No one talks about her," he said. "No one asks me about her. It is rare that they even say her name in my presence. It is as if…she never existed." He stopped working on the tent and came and stood directly across from Libby. "I do not want to talk about her death, or about how it affected me," he said. "I want to talk about her life."
Libby upbraided herself for not perceiving his need sooner. "Society is sometimes overcautious," she said. "We don't talk about the dead in the presence of the grieving, for fear we might cause them more grief. But it is really the silence that makes it worse, isn't it?"
Sayid nodded. "I understand better now how Shannon must have felt when Boone died. After the funeral, no one really talked much about him either…I know I rarely did."
"Boone?" asked Libby.
"Her brother. A lot has happened on this side of the island you still know little about."
"Quite a lot," Libby agreed. "But right now, I just want to know more about Shannon."
"Do you?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied gently and sincerely, and she glanced in the direction of a nearby tree. He followed her and they sat together beneath its shade. The words began to roll out of him, and Libby listened without interruption, without question, and even without analysis.
When his words at last trailed off, the sat quietly for a moment, and then she ventured a question. "Did you really mean what you said the other day, about never wanting to fall in love again?"
"I suppose it is unreasonable to be so reasonable," he replied. "I am not going to be looking for love, but…no, I do not think I will resist it if it should come to me again."
"I'm glad to hear that," she said.
"Why is that?"
"Because I would like to see you happy."
"And," he asked, somewhat deliberately, "you do not think I am capable of being happy without a woman?"
"That is not what I meant at all," replied Libby. "I just don't think you would be happy if you did find yourself falling in love one day and yet you fought against it. The fight would exhaust you."
He smiled wearily. "The loving might exhaust me too. The losing certainly would."
"Next time, there might not be a loss."
"I might be fortunate enough to die first."
Libby felt a little shiver and ran a hand up her arm. "I wouldn't put it so morbidly."
He laughed. "No, I am sure you would not." After a pause he said, "Thank you, Libby, for wanting to talk about Shannon."
She smiled. "I'm only sorry I didn't understand sooner."
The smile Sayid returned her left her with the assurance that, in time, his wounded heart would be whole again.
THE END