Chapter Two

Claire could have been a model for a new workout video, the way she was bouncing Aaron and stepping side to side in rhythmic fashion. Desmond couldn't help but laugh. "Hard to settle, is he?"

"A bit," Claire admitted, but her smile revealed that her motherly affection ultimately eclipsed her frustration.

In another life, Desmond might have expended a greater effort to flirt with her. She was a cute, friendly thing, and she certainly provided a refreshing break from all of the solemn jakes moving about and speaking in self-important, hushed tones to one another. But that eejit Charlie was always panting around her heels like an overzealous puppy, and Desmond wasn't planning to make the philandering Odysseus his model anyway. He'd play Penelope if he had to. Damn Sayid's insistence that there was no moral obligation to wait, no reason to sit at home knitting and preserving purity. What did the gun-toting Iraqi interrogator know? He likely didn't have a true romantic bone in his body.

I will always wait for you. That's what Pen's letter had said. Always. But she hadn't wanted to wait for him to reclaim his honor. Not for that. She'd probably set a date by now. And if he ever returned to her, he would return a disgraced man. He'd stayed intoxicated so he wouldn't have to think about his shattered reputation, but the bottles were running empty now, and the cold fact of his failure stared him in the face. He hadn't won the man's race. But maybe he could still grasp something. He could be loyal for once in his life, the way he hadn't been as a soldier. He could keep his honor intact in this one thing: he could wait for Pen.

"Hey!" Claire said, recalling him to the present moment. He shook the thoughts from his mind and made eye contact. Blonde hair and blue eyes were quite a cliché, he thought. There was nothing profound about that combination. But in that cliché, the eyes were never such a remarkable shade of blue, were they? "Sayid was looking for you."

"Right. He probably wants to explain why he came back on foot without my sailboat. Do you know where he is, then?"

Claire slid her arm more carefully around Aaron so she could support him one handed. With her free hand she motioned down the shore to Sayid's shaded workbench.

As Desmond approached, he saw Sayid sliding a rod into the barrel of a rifle and yanking it back out. The Iraqi removed a small white cloth, now blackened from its journey into the gun. He replaced it with a clean piece and again guided the rod expertly inside. He pumped it back and forth with smooth force inside the barrel, and when he swiftly pulled it out, the rod emitted a painful scraping sound. Desmond flinched. "That's worse than fingers on a chalkboard."

Sayid tossed the dirty cloth onto a growing pile on his workbench. He put down the rod and began to reassemble the parts of the gun. "How often did you clean these rifles when you were in the hatch?"

"You're supposed to clean guns?"

Sayid raised his eyes without raising his head. He didn't laugh at the joke. The Iraqi snapped the last piece into place. He checked the chamber, dry fired a few times, and then lay the rifle on the table.

Desmond raised his hand, which clasped Our Mutual Friend. He tossed the book on the pile of guns. "Why don't you read that? It's not my time to. It won't be for awhile yet." Sayid began disassembling another rifle. Desmond had heard rumors that one man had possession of all the guns and had been parceling them out, but that man had been captured. He wasn't sure how Sayid had recovered so many rifles; perhaps he had been told where they were, or perhaps he had found them. Either way, it looked like he was preparing war inventory. "You do read, don't you?"

"Yes, but not often fiction."

That figures, Desmond thought.

"Consider lending it to Sawyer after I have rescued him."

"So you're making another attempt, then? Back to the hostiles?" Desmond now rested a hand on Sayid's table and leaned against it. "There's not much point. They're all deserted. Always have been."

Sayid slammed down a buttstock a mere inch from Desmond's outstretched hand. The Scotsman tried to be nonchalant about it, but the doolally Iraqi had almost taken off a finger.

Sayid's teeth appeared to be tightly clenched when he spoke. "You might have mentioned that before I left."

Desmond drew his hand from the table. "And you might have asked more questions when I told you ignorance was bliss. But you didn't. You seemed rather sure of yourself and your plans, brother."

Desmond knew enough of remorse to recognize the expression when it flickered across Sayid's face, but that expression was soon eclipsed by a cloud of anger. "You are utterly indifferent," the Iraqi said. "You sit and you drink and talk with the women and wander around giving people books while our enemies plot our destruction. Do you have any idea what is at stake here? Do you know that three of us have been taken? Do you know how many of us have died?" Sayid stroked his bearded chin. Desmond thought that perhaps the man was attempting to calm himself. He seemed to regret his outburst. The hairs of his beard were coarse and growing long. Desmond wondered when Sayid had last bothered to shave.

"What do you want from me?" Desmond asked, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of resignation.

"What do you know about the decoy camp?"

"I saw it once when I left the hatch. I took a very long walk about. It felt deserted, like a stage set."

"Yes, precisely. But if even their decoys are that well constructed, they must have technology . They may even have a means of communicating with the outside world. Yet if that is so, why do they insist on living here and on keeping us here? For what purpose do they take our people?"

Desmond shrugged. "I don't know anymore than you do. But I do know that if we don't go on little heroic jaunts we don't end up captured, now do we? We can sit here and eat and drink and entertain the ladies. Or we can go out in the jungle and die." Desmond patted the book. "You've just gotten home. Stay on the beach awhile, brother. Take the time to read it. You're not going to find your friends. The powers that be are beyond our grasp. We're like ants who do best to stay in their hills and avoid the giant foot." He smiled slightly, flippantly, but it was a difficult expression to maintain while looking into Sayid's dull eyes. It was hard to bury the pain with levity, maybe even harder than burying it with anger. "And when you do read it, tell me if it's any good."

Desmond left the book on the table and left Sayid gazing into the distance.