Chapter Two

"To those who despair of everything, reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred."

Albert Camus

Sayid watched Ana Lucia banging a tent peg into the sand with a rock. She had already built her own shelter; she was now helping Libby. She was actually helping someone. Well, he supposed, she did that a lot, after all. She had saved many and killed few.

He hated her, but he did not hate her for killing Shannon. He hated her for not killing him.

He stood a few feet behind her, stealthily, simply watching. She jumped when she finally sensed him. When she turned, fear flickered in her face first, before she could suppress it. Then there arose in her features an expression something like embarrassment, which was only half covered by a mask of forced annoyance. "What do you want?" she asked and turned back to her work.

"To provoke you."

She smiled sarcastically. "What the hell does that mean?"

He pulled his handgun from his waistband. He had reloaded it. He kneeled and left it on the sand beside her. "You are weak," he said just inches from her ear. "I read you like a book, back there in the jungle. And I broke you. What kind of leader breaks like that? You think you are strong? You are weak. You are not capable of protecting anyone."

He turned his back to her and walked away. She did as he had planned. She grabbed the gun and leveled it at him. "I am not weak!" she shouted.

He turned to face her. He could not hope that she would shoot him in the back.

"It was once my job to see the truth in people that others do not see," he said. "And sometimes it was my job to ignore that truth and hurt them anyway. I do not know what you were before this island, but I know this—you let someone close to you die."

She grimaced and coked her head. She also cocked the gun, as though she thought that would actually appear threatening. "So did you," she spat.

"So I did."

"I'm not going to kill you, Sayid. I don't have to be able to read people to know you want to die."

"And you hate me too much to afford me that pleasure."

"I don't hate you," she said. "What reason could I possibly have to hate you?"

"Because hatred is easier to feel than guilt."

She lowered the gun and walked up to him. He looked her coolly in the eye. She flinched.

"Whom did you let die?" he asked.

Her eyes were cast aside, on the sand. "My child," she said.

"How?"

"I was a cop. I didn't react quickly enough. I wasn't hard enough. If I had been harder, if I had been quicker, my child would have lived."

"You think you know guilt?" he asked. "Perhaps you even feel badly for killing the one I loved. But there is nothing you could do to me…nothing…that would be worse than what I have done in my life." He glanced at the gun. "Last chance."

She turned the gun around and handed it to him barrel first. With angry disappointment, he seized it and shoved it back into his waistband.