Chapter Four

Back in his tent, Sayid began digging in the sand where he had buried the hunting knife he had borrowed from Locke the week before. He had said he needed it to cut some rope for a shelter he was helping to build, and he had indeed needed it for that. But he had kept it, and Locke had been too preoccupied with the the guns to ask for its return.

Sayid half-smiled, grimly, as he considered how much reverence Locke had for the guns, as though even in their inanimate state their power was somehow fierce and holy, as if keeping them in his own protective hands could stave off the cancer that was growing all around them. Yet what Sayid could do with this knife, what Eko could do with a mere stick, what Sawyer could do with his cunning…

Sayid tested the blade, and when he found it too dull, he sharpened it against a stone. Under the blanket of night he made his way to Sawyer's tent. Before approaching the sleeping man he surveyed the shelter, to see if Sawyer had kept one of the guns near by. He had not. The con man's power lay in knowing where they were, not in wielding them, and he had been wise not to keep one long for himself, lest someone should take it and challenge him.

Sayid turned the knife in his hand to better position the blade, and he thought, for a moment, that the handle trembled in his grasp. He did not like what he was about to do. He had tortured Sawyer once already; he had broken his promise to never resume that abandoned trade. He had dishonored the memory of the woman who had first inspired him to change, and the guilt had sent him roaming.

He had not felt that guilt after Gale. He had been wrong about Sawyer and the medicine, but even if he had not been wrong, Sayid might still have left the camp. But with Gale…with Gale matters were quite different. Sawyer, for all his failings, was one of their own, one of the survivors. Gale was a part of some greater, merciless force that threatened to destroy them all, and remorse was a luxury Sayid could not afford if he wanted to preserve what was now the only home and the only family left to him in this world.

He was startled by his own thoughts. Was that what this now lifeless place had become? Home? Was that what these once-strangers were to him? His own? But what else could they be? There had been no rescue and no sign of rescue, and the survivors had only one another. That, after all, was why he had returned after his first encounter with Danielle.

Sayid did not like Sawyer, and there were others he distrusted or disliked. But he could not choose his fellow survivors anymore than he could choose who his brothers or sisters might be. And if the survivors were either too sensitive or too indifferent to defend themselves against the Others, then the duty must fall on Sayid. They might await the slaughter like sheep, hoping their silence and subservience would shelter them from those they had not provoked, those who had already taken nearly a dozen. But he would not leave the herd defenseless.

Sayid pressed the blade to the Southerner's neck, and Sawyer did no more than open a single eye. When he saw Sayid, he opened the other eye, and a slow, irenic smile stole across his face, forcing the skin about his cheeks to dimple. Sayid supposed there was many a woman who found those dimples attractive rather than merely annoying. The Iraqi would have thought they were affected, if he thought a man could control his own appearance in that way.

"Well, well," said Sawyer in a drawl that was thicker than usual, "if it isn't the noble savage."

Sayid pressed the blade tighter against the exposed flesh of Sawyer's neck. "Take me to the guns."

"Or what?"

"You know what."

When Sawyer smiled this time, his tongue protruded slightly from his lips, and a low laugh rumbled up from his chest. "Everyone is terrified of you, Torquemada. They say you lost it with that gentleman from Minnesota. They say you snapped his pinky off with a pair of pliers."

Sawyer could see Sayid's eyes cringe in the dim light of the fire still half-burning outside the tent. "Me…me on the other hand," Sawyer said as he licked his smiling lips, "I'm going to call your bluff."

It gave Sawyer great satisfaction to see the surprise cloud Sayid's features. And though the Iraqi pressed the blade a little tighter, drawing the tiniest drop of blood, Sawyer did not flinch. But when Sayid drew the blade away completely and sat back across from Sawyer, the cowboy didn't gloat. He pulled himself into a sitting position, and his smile faded and his face grew firm.

For awhile, they just looked at one another, not speaking. Finally, Sayid asked, "What do you want in exchange for the guns?"

"There's nothing you could offer me. The only thing I want from you is your humiliation." Sawyer thought of the way Sayid had stared at him when he had shot that gun into the air to proclaim his reign. He thought of how the Iraqi's self-righteous eyes had drilled into his own. And he knew that Sayid had felt vindicated; he knew Sayid had thought, Why should we ever have expected anything more of him?

"Do you know why I want these guns?" Sayid asked.

"Everyone wants them."

"That man I interrogated is an Other. I did no more than beat him." When he said these last words, Sayid bit his bottom lip. He hated that he felt the need to justify himself to Sawyer. He should not have bothered to correct the man's misassumptions. "I can finish my interrogation tomorrow. I can find out where Walt is, where Michael is, where the other children are, and after we train, we can get them back."

"Why should I care?"

"The children," Sayid insisted. "What happened to Claire and Shannon and--"

"Again I ask, why should I care?"

Sayid's own words seemed to come full circle upon him. Sawyer felt as little for his fellow survivors as Sayid had for the populace of Australia. The ex-soldier was unconcerned with the impersonal, teething mass known as humanity. For him, there was only family, tribe, and country; beyond that, there was nothing. But for Sawyer, there was simply nothing.

Sawyer's eyes narrowed. His lips smiled, but his face grimaced. "Do you think that out of the goodness of my heart, I'll hand over the guns to you? Come now, Mohammed, you know I haven't got any heart. You've always known that. Maybe you're the only one who never started believing there was some secret kindness in me. Kate was so willing to believe it. But not you."

Kate had been willing to believe it, Sayid thought. She had wanted to believe it because she saw in Sawyer something of herself, something of her own past, and if Sawyer was capable of reformation, then that meant she was capable too.

"And I know you," Sawyer continued, "I know you've always been a barbarian."

"If you think that, why are you so certain I will not torture you?"

"Because I know you still believe you're civilized."

When Sayid did not rise to this bait, Sawyer let one arm hang casually over his knee as he leaned forward and said, "I'll fight you for them."

"Pardon?"

"I'll fight you for them," Sawyer repeated. "The guns. In the morning. In front of the whole camp. Mano a mano."

"Hand to hand?"

Sawyer snorted. "Good to see you're a translator as well as a torturer."

"I do not understand," said Sayid, and his face revealed his confusion.

"If you win, you can have the guns."

"You want to fight for the guns?" Sayid asked pointedly. "Like schoolboys sparring over insults?"

"Well, Gahndi, it ain't like you never did it before. Back when I accused you of bringing down the plane, you could have just turned the other cheek. Instead, you called me a redneck and took the first swing. So why don't you drop the holier-than-thou attitude and agree to fight me for the guns? Whoever asks for mercy first loses."

Sayid sat quietly for a long while. At last he said, "Very well."

"You haven't asked me what I get if you lose." Sawyer's voice was cold. He hadn't expected Sayid to ask, and yet having that expectation met only fueled his loathing.

"I do not see how I could lose."

"Of course you don't. You think too highly of yourself." When Sawyer and Sayid had fought after the plane crash, the Iraqi had done well, but Sawyer still believed that if they had not been pulled apart, he would eventually have won. Sayid had training and endurance and anger. But how much actual experience did he have? Modern war didn't exactly call for fistfights, but the barroom certainly did. Sawyer had been in countless fights, and he too had endurance. He also had something more powerful than anger—he had spite.

"I was a soldier," Sayid said, "and an interrogator, and I have beaten many men—"

"Men bound to chairs? Men tied to trees? Wispy, middle-aged men from Minnesota?"

Sayid clenched his teeth. But he asked the question Sawyer was waiting for. "What do you get if I lose?"

Sawyer smiled, not a feigned, satirical smile, but a smile almost of genuine delight. "Pure satisfaction," he answered. And a chance to prove to everyone else that you aren't quite the man you think you are.

They set a time to meet in the morning, by the shore, and they established some basic ground rules. There weren't many. Sawyer watched Sayid take his knife and leave. He lay back down on his pillow, folding his arms behind his neck, and he smiled like a satiated baby as he drifted off to sleep.