Chapter 23
While Michael was collapsing in the presence of Jack and Kate, Sayid was winding his way through the jungle back to the beach. It had taken awhile for his clothes to dry, and night had fallen before he could return. Ana had called him a fool for making the nighttime trek alone, and she had been right: the survivors' unguarded ways, from which they still had not departed, were foolish. But he was accustomed to his solitary strolls in the jungle, and he hadn't wanted to sleep in the hatch. He knew that if he stayed, the temptation to supervise Ana's interrogation of Gale would have been too great.
He stopped at Shannon's grave before returning to his tent, but he did not linger long. The nightly ritual never brought him any relief. He went habitually, as if to remind himself that she had been real and that the crucifix struck deep into the ground marked something tangible. It was not merely her death that had hollowed out his soul and left him with a surreal feeling of absence; it was the merciless way that the world moved on, the way the survivors never spoke her name in his presence, the way they lived as if she had never lived.
When the morning came, as indifferently as it always came, Sayid awakened and began to ease the pain of idleness with labor. He could not do anything about the guns or the army or the Others until Ana had discovered the number of their enemy. So he built.
He began to dig a hole in which he planned to insert and store a locked box. It would house the guns once he had obtained them from Sawyer. He would parcel them out for training as needed and return them to safety each night. He didn't need the hole, really; the box would be enough, but the hole would keep the guns nearby and yet out of the way. And it was something to do.
Hurley approached him and made light conversation, and Sayid responded readily enough, even though he always found the big man's dialogue to be slightly cryptic. Hurley was asking for the Iraqi's assistance with Libby, and Sayid could not help but think the man's ideas of courtship were a little bizarre. Hurley attempted to explain himself, and Sayid at last grasped the gist of his meaning.
The Iraqi did not smile, but he felt for Hurley an affinity mingled with pity. After Shannon's death, when they had conversed in the hatch Sayid had goaded Hurley to seize the day. The young man finally seemed to be taking the gamble, but he also seemed to be at quite a loss.
Sayid now suggested the beautiful stretch of beach where he had once taken Shannon for a picnic. He felt no protective jealousy of the place. Indeed, his spirit even lightened a little when he considered that someone else might benefit from his discovery in the same pleasant way he had. If Hurley brought Libby there, it would be further proof that those days had not been a mere dream.
Sayid found himself saying, "I took Shannon there once," and it felt like he was shedding a burden by saying her name and recalling her to another person. He waited for Hurley to reply, to ask something about her or about their encounter there on the beach, but the burly man only grew suddenly awkward and conspicuously taciturn.
Sayid went back to digging his hole.