Chapter Eight
Sayid would have to find where Sawyer had hidden the guns. It was a resolution, and not a plan, that sent him to his tent to grab his backpack and begin his journey. The front was unzipped, but he did not notice the fact as he pulled the satchel up by its handle and jerked it from his tent, spilling the contents just outside on the ground.
As he knelt to gather his scattered things, he heard the soft approach of footsteps, muffled by the sand. He looked up to see Ana Lucia looking down at him. "So?" she asked. "Is he going to tell you where the guns are? I mean, you won, didn't you? But you just walked away."
"No. He is not going to tell me." Sayid began to pick up his clothes, maps, and a water bottle. He shoved them back into his sack.
Ana lowered herself to the sand to help him gather the rest of his things and to better gain his attention. "He reneged? I said you couldn't trust him."
"He did not renege," Sayid insisted. "We agreed the loser must ask his opponent to stop. Sawyer never asked me to stop."
"But you did stop," Ana replied as she picked up something from the ground.
"I had to. He was not going to say it. He was going to let me kill him."
Ana seemed suddenly distant. She did not protest Sayid's words or decision. Instead, she gazed with curiosity at the tattered paper she held in her hands. "Who is she?" she asked. "Your sister?"
Sayid looked over at the ex-cop and saw that she was holding Nadia's charred photograph, the one he had recovered from the ashes of Rousseau's lodging and had buried deep in his backpack. He had not drawn it out in weeks. Angrily, he wrenched it from her hands.
Sayid glanced down at the picture's surface, at the determined cast of Nadia's countenance. He saw the haunting, ghost of a smile that almost threatened to curve her lips and the confident yet tender eyes that had once pierced his soul. And he saw blighting the smooth skin of her cheek a dull smudge: his own fingerprint in Sawyer's blood.
Yet it was not Sawyer's blood he now considered: it was the blood of years of composed torture, but it was also the blood of Henry Gale, the blood of passion. Frantic to remove the offending mark, he made a fist and began rubbing the edge of his hand against the bloodstain.
Apparently he had not realized that part of his hand was bloody too. Ana observed the look of dismay that distorted Sayid's features when he saw that he was only spreading the blood farther, darker, and more permanently across the woman's face.
He ceased his efforts with his hand and grabbed a white wash cloth he had already returned to his pack. He put the photo down against the satchel and began to rub hard with the cloth. The print seemed to dull and start to fade before the blood did. Some of the red-brown grime transferred to the cloth, but the rest ran deeper into the contours of Nadia's face. "It will not come off," he said said, rubbing still harder. "I cannot get the blood off. The blood will never come off now. I cannot clean--"
Ana grabbed him by the shoulder. "Stop, Sayid. Stop. You're only making it worse. Let me help."
When he let go of the cloth and threw himself into a sitting position on the sand, she began to work gently on the photograph. "Who is she?" Ana asked again.
Sayid did not want to answer—not to anyone, but especially not to her. Yet he found himself saying, "Someone I once hoped to deserve." He looked away from the ex-cop's work, towards the jungle. "Do not bother with the blood, Ana," he said quietly. "You and I…we both know it will not come off."
Ana ignored him and kept running the cloth against the photograph. "It can," she insisted. "Most of it can."
"Never all of it," he replied mechanically. "Never enough."
"No," she said, still working, "never all of it. But sometimes enough."
She stopped and handed him back the photograph. He looked at the face that was looking back at him. It now appeared muddy rather than bloody. There was a slight tear on both cheeks. Nadia's eyes were not so vibrant now, not alive like they once were, but he could still see them clearly, could still see them looking through him.
Feeling unexpectedly queasy, Sayid crouched forward and returned the photograph—the last scattered item—to his backpack, and then he zipped it up roughly. He swung the backpack behind himself and looped his arms through the straps before rising from the ground. "Do you want to help me find the guns?" he asked Ana, but he did not look in her direction.
She didn't say the quest was pointless. She didn't say that neither of them could guess where Sawyer might have hidden the guns. She didn't point out how vast the jungle was. She only rose and followed him. She, too, needed something to do.