Chapter 51 - Would You Like to Save the World?

And who are you? She heard the question as if she were somewhere outside of herself watching, unable to recognize that it had been directed towards her. She stood in the entranceway, with the whispering of the wind in the trees behind her, studying Mikhail as he plopped Sayid into the midsection of a rust colored couch with two square cushions perched on either end.

She flinched when Sayid groaned. His attempt at covering the severity of the pain made itself evident upon the lines of his face and in his clenched jaw. Kate turned her head briefly to the door. "Her name is Sarah. "

"I see. " Mikhail said, examining Sayid's bloodied arm. "So … Sarah, did you crash here on the island as well? "

It would have been a simple question, were it not for the present circumstance, and for the sense of mistrust running wild in her head. She nodded slowly, although his face was turned from her. Then she all but stuttered. "Uh …Y … yeah. "

Sayid stared up at him while Kate watched from a couple of feet away. "You've had experience treating gunshot wounds? "

Mikhail paused for a moment and then a slight smile broke through before he answered. Raised in Kiev, Mikhail joined the Soviet Army and served as a medic in Afghanistan. Sarah had no idea where any of these places were, but Sayid seemed to know. All that seemed significant to her was that he was a soldier, like Sayid.

Sayid fell back into the cushions and Mikhail instructed a reluctant Kate to retrieve the medical kit from the kitchen. Sarah stood by the door, rigid and feeling as though the ground was moving beneath her. That sick feeling in her stomach began to crawl upwards the same as when they were in the Pearl. She barely heard their words for the staggered breaths Sayid let in and out. He flopped his head over the back of the couch, panting with his mouth gaped open, sweat rolling over his face.

Mikhail said that he was dismissed from the military after the cold war and after years of committing atrocities against their enemies, he found himself wanting to do something good. So he replied to an advertisement in the paper that asked read ...

Would you like to save the world?

There was something faulty in the way that he spoke. Something familiar. It was Mikhail's face, Mikhail's voice ... but the words. They were spoken in a way that reminded her of someone else.

Of Ben.

Ben loved to find a persons weakness and exploit it in order to lure one into trusting him. There Sayid sat, a man who had shouldered the burden of shame from his own crimes. Crimes for which he had no other choice but to commit. Crimes that haunted him in the night. And there was Mikhail talking about wanting to do something good after doing so much bad.

Between her thoughts drifting, and the growing queasiness, she hardly noticed Kate return with the medical kit, much less the remainder of the conversation. She caught remnants of some discussion over a purge initiated by Dharma and the conditions by which the others allowed Mikhail to remain there at the communications station after they overthrew Dharma and took over the hatches.

She didn't hear anymore once glancing up and spotting the brown-skinned woman sliding around the couch and placing herself next to Sayid. She was lighter than he, just a little, and then Sarah recognized her. She had seen this woman in part of her vision when she was with Jack in the Hydra. Christian, calling himself Tom, appeared to her after another round of tasering at the hand of Ben.

She had crossed the room, readying herself for what might lie behind the next door, when something stopped her. A deep sob with a heartbreaking admission.

"Yes, I remember you! Your face has haunted me every day since I left Iraq. "

The voice sent her reeling around, catching a glimpse of Sayid chained to the floor, crying nearly as much as she ever had, before a pristine, but quiet woman who was smoothing down the fur of a grey and white cat that lay docile in her lap. The woman listened teary-eyed while he choked. "I am sorry for what I did to you. "

He managed those last words before he crumbled into a drawn up pile. The heavy chains that bound him hit the wooden floor with such a sound. Such a distressingly tragic thump.

It was frightening and confusing at the time, but now she wondered. Was this woman truly someone from Sayid's past, or perhaps his future …an increasingly troublesome thought. Or could it be something she had not thought of before. Could it be that it was a picture of all the darkness he had harbored in his heart for so long? The woman embodying the whole of his supposed victims and the chains being the weightiness of his own guilt?

But if so, why was she here … Now?

Sarah stared at the woman and noticed one puzzling fact. She was not looking back. To be exact, the woman sat as if she was unaware of anyone else in the room. She sat upright, with her hands in her lap stroking the grey and white cat without as much as a blink.

Sarah tilted her head curiously, waiting for someone to say something … But no one seemed to notice the woman and her cat. Frankly, no one noticed Sarah staring off seemingly into empty space either. Sayid was busy gathering information in the midst of the torturing of a pair of metal tweezers making their way to the bullet deep inside of his arm.

Sarah swiftly snapped out of her thoughts when he wrenched his head to the side while grimacing. He raised it again, shiny-faced and holding a puff of air in his cheeks. She stepped forwards, eyes glistening, unaware of the clenched fists at her sides while his jaw stiffened and he sucked in his bottom lip. She took another step forwards, hand flying over her mouth gasping when he let out a raw grunt.

Then it was over.

Mikhail held up the metal tweezers and there a single bullet rest between the prongs. It made a sickening clinking sound when he released it into the small metal dish. But, Sayid's eyes never left his. They never strayed until he caught a glimpse of the small tattered animal pawing at the floor. It was a ratty looking thing, but Sarah realized it was a cat tearing at a faded swath of carpet.

It appeared to be an opposing mirror image of the beautiful animal the woman held in her lap. A small, tattered silver thing, matted fur and a small worn face. The shadow of youth. Sarah nearly pitied it until she heard something that snapped her eyes upwards. Mikhail had muttered something in a strange language and then snipped. "Nadia!"

Sarah was not the only one who was surprised by the name. Sayid flipped his eyes from the carpet to Mikhail's face. "What did you say? "

Sarah, turned her attention to the empty space next to Sayid as a slow dizziness settled in. The woman had disappeared. She had not merely stood up and walked away, she vanished. How Sarah's stomach swelled inside of her as if it were going to expel itself from her throat while she distantly heard Mikhail reference some athlete who was also named Nadia and the person to whom the cat was named.Sarah stared blankly at the couch, shivering.

"Sarah, are you alright? "

She looked at Sayid, shocked at his concern. He was the one who was injured and bleeding all over the couch. She bobbed her head a little. "Y … yea. I just … I'm gonna just step outside a minute. If it's okay? "

"I think you should stay here. " Kate warned, glancing at Sayid for backup.

"It's fairly safe to walk around outside, as long as she stays around the front here. The others will not cross the line. "

Sayid shifted his gaze to Mikhail and then nodded. Sarah stepped down from the steep doorway, and released a large breath of air, hoping she wasn't going to vomit. Thinking of Jack, she took the next few breaths through her nose, hoping she would return to some normalcy.

The fresh air brought only minimal relief. After taking a few short steps, she leaned against the house, and found herself eye to eye with the brown and white horse, who had turned its head to its rear, curious about the rustling behind it. It snorted among the clanging of the cowbells inside the fence where they hung from the necks of the cattle.

She stepped around its side, remembering that when she rode the pony, she was told to stay from its rear end on the chance that it might decide to kick up its heals and you walk away with a shiny new horseshoe tattoo on your forehead. That is, if you were lucky.

She approached it fascinated and timid all at once. It tossed its head a little and then shook its main as if greeting her. She didn't know much about horses, but there was something strange about this one. It sported shorter, smoother fur, a very pretty animal. Yet, this was not the puzzle. The horse was obviously much larger than the meager pony, but the saddle looked nearly the same. It wasn't necessarily the saddle itself, but the stirrups. They seemed to be just as short as the ones on the pony. She wondered how on earth someone like Mikhail could ride, unless he was very good at bending his knees, or perhaps he rode a bit raised from the saddle. That seemed uncomfortable, but who was she to judge?

She was startled for just a moment when it nuzzled her head and then snorted into her hair. She smiled, still considering the saddle. Specifically the fact that the horse was saddled. She wondered if it was normal to have the saddle on when the animal was resting, or if perhaps Mikhail had just returned or was going somewhere?

Crash!This was the sound that sent her mind whirling, and her body whipping around to the doorway. A sound like glass shattering against the wall. It shuddered through the quiet day from inside of the house. Then a series of thumps and grunts. Her heart instantly beat wildly, were they being attacked in there?

Why was it that every time she stepped out from whatever place they discovered, something bad happened? First, the smoke monster, followed by its pursuit of her into the jungle, killed Eko and now something horrible was happening in the house. And the truth was, she could run into the fray, but she wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, except maybe rousing some sort of distraction.

Although, she really didn't think about any of this. She only considered the fact that there was trouble inside of the house and her instincts sent her feet flying towards the door, yelling.

Her feet didn't carry her very far. A strong arm wrapped itself around her neck while a cloth-covered hand slapped itself over her mouth. There was a faint bitter smell that she could not place and as everything around her shrunk into blackness, she heard a voice.

"Goodnight Laren "

It was a feeling not unlike the moment she awoke to her hands and legs bound to a cot in the Hydra, only this time, she was lying like a rag doll, in a very damp and dark place, thumping sounds above her. Her hands and feet were tied together and her mouth was sticky from the thick, nasty tasting tape that held it shut. God, had she been thrown back into the room she had been horrified to return to? The idea sent shivers through her.

She closed her eyes. She was not the same person she was when she first stepped out of the hatch and onto the submarine. She was not the same frightened little girl when Sayid blindfolded her and pushed her forwards and then when they locked her in the cramped room with the yellow swinging light. She was not even the same girl who was tasered in front of Jack, humiliated at the hands of Ben. The man who claimed to be her loving and devoted father.

She would suck it in, all of the terror filling her heart, and she would not give them the satisfaction of falling apart. Not this time. They had managed to take her again. They had managed to cage her like an animal, but they were not going to take away the spark of hope that had claimed its place deep within, burning still. And so, she steadied her breath thinking of everything good.

She thought of every kiss, every moment in Sayid's arms. She thought of Mr. Muggles and of Jack. She thought of John and how she had grown comfortable in his presence. She imagined the feel of the sea foam bubbling over her ankles and the smell of the salty air. She remembered every smile and every laugh and she filled her mind with every warm thought that she could, smothering the fear with everything good in her short life. She was not going to let them have it.

When she'd calmed herself, she opened her eyes and scanned the room. This was not the same dark place she had feared. The ceiling was high, and there were slivers of light shining through it. The walls were lined with shelves holding large white notebooks inside them. This was definitely not the room that terrified her just by the thought of it.

The light shining through occasionally flickered and the flickering was accompanied by a soft rustling. There were people above her. She must be below the house, but what was going on above? Had her three companions been captured? The answer came quicker than expected when she heard the slam of a door being flipped back from above and a thick beam of light shown down from somewhere outside of the room.She knew the voices.

She sat up sharply and whimpered into the tape while kicking the wall. Then she knew she was not alone. She was snatched away from the wall, and yanked into an even darker corner, farther from the shelving and a threatening voice whispered in her ear. "Make another noise and you won't live long enough for it to be heard. Look along those walls there … do you see the wires and the small black squares? "

Eyes wide and scaling the walls, tracing the long wires winding across it, she flinched at the next words.

"This entire building is wired with C-4. Do you know what that means? If you make another sound, or move again, the whole building will go boom along with you and everyone in it. Are we clear? "

Out of everything that she knew of the others, having only been familiar with a handful of their entirety, they were people who followed through with their threats and they did not mind dying if it served their cause. Someone else might have challenged this dark-skinned iron-faced woman, thinking that surely she would not risk her own life or that of her partner in such a way. But this, Sarah could count on - this woman was one of them and cared nothing for killing herself or Mikhail in order to protect the anonymity of the group.

Sarah gave a diliberate, but slow nod, relaxing her tensed muscles in submission and then watched the woman rise, shooting her another warning glance and disappearing into the darkness. The door slammed ominously behind her.

Sarah couldn't help but wonder, was she going to try to kill them? Maybe ambush them? She was curled up there in the corner, unable to warn them for the threat of their imminent death in the blast of explosives. She couldn't think of another less damning situation.

Had she not been in worse circumstances or was she just so frightened that she couldn't think of anything else but the sound of her own beating heart in her ears? Regardless, she was at a loss as to what to do. And as if it could not get any worse or more unbearable, she jerked backwards when the door slammed open by the whack of a foot or a body against it … of which, Sarah couldn't tell. She only knew that she couldn't breath, eyes scrunched shut and she was as close as she could be to the wall aside from climbing into it. Her knees were gathered so tight against her chin that she felt like it would pop through her kneecaps. She trembled, eyeing the door.

A tall, dark figure appeared from the doorway. She winced at the white circle from the beaming flashlight and then trembled in another wave of panic once spying the rifle. The figure made its way over to the shelving, examining the white notebooks and then brusquely snapped around, aiming the flashlight in the far corner of the room.

Wimpering, she clenched her eyes, unable to keep herself still or quiet, but then they fluttered open when she heard her name.

"Sarah? "

She gawked at Sayid, who'd set the rifle down and was kneeling before her. He placed a hand on her knee. She sobbed a muffled cry, shaking her head. He had to go and leave her there before they all died. She had to convince him.

"It's all right. " He took a piece of tape and carefully pulled it loose, apologizing for hurting her.

She continued shaking her head and whispered frantically. "No. No. Please, you have to go. Just take Kate and John and get out of here.Please Sayid. "

"That's ridiculous. " He argued, reaching around to cut her arms and legs loose.

But his eyebrows turned in when he saw the tears in her eyes. She melted inside his embrace, overwhelmed and surprised by it. No sooner had his arms slipped around her, he withdrew them, leaving a hand on her face. "What's going on? "

"Keep your voice down. She can't know you found me. She's going to blow this place up Sayid. And if you take me, she's gonna do it. "

"Who is she? Where is she? "

"I don't know. Please, there's no time … just go. Forget about me and just get out of here before it's too late. Just go so you can still help Jack. "

She gasped and then flinched again upon hearing a series of thumping noises just outside of the door. With a palm resting over her mouth, he locked eyes with her. "Stay here. Everything will be fine. "