XXX: I Was in the House When the House Burned Down
The forest glows with subtly glistening light, each tree and root and leaf seeming to emit an unearthly phosphorescence. Sayid isn't sure if it's their particular jungle, on this specific island, or all jungles, generally. He hopes he'll have the opportunity to find out, back in the real world.
Raindrops fall onto the leaves around them, sounding like pebbles against a metal sheet, uncannily harsh and loud. Once more, like each time it rains, there is no wind, just the monotonous wetness pouring down onto them, a measured, steady flow.
It will wash away the tracks, not just ours – but Sawyer's and his fellow traveler's too, Sayid thinks. We will be out here, having lost both their way and ours. They must keep pressing on while they still can. They must continue to move. At least the rain will serve to drive away any snipers, he hopes. He has to take the chance, because they cannot go backwards, and they cannot stay there, still, waiting in the trap for a second attack.
"Sayid!" Kate's voice breaks through to him, and she clambers through the mud towards him. He turns back to look towards her, feeling the army tag he's hung around his neck again swing with the motion, but doesn't stop moving. If he stops, he'll get stuck in the mud. This environment is so foreign, and he doesn't trust it. "Sayid," Kate repeats his name, apparently unsure if he'd heard it the first time through the rain. "We're going to lose the tracks out here. We can't keep going."
"What do you suggest we do?" he asks, trying to keep the sharpness from his voice despite the need to shout over the rain. "Where should we go? There is nowhere."
"We should find cover," she says, extending her arms for balance as she works her way over a few muddy sluices. "There has to be some. If these things are out here, these hatches, then there must be another one, somewhere."
"And you assume that no one will be there, and that no one will know we are there. You're wrong. Look what happened last time." He scrapes some hair away from his face, turning towards her. He must be blunt. "I did not ask you to come along so that you could encourage us to quit. I asked because I thought you could handle heading through the jungle, no matter what came. If you were planning to quit, you should have said so to me. You did not."
She gives him a petulant look, starting to protest: "Yeah, but I didn't think that – "
Whatever she had not thought, he does not get the chance to find out. As she speaks that, he becomes aware of something sharp and sudden, sounding like it's from everywhere around them at once.
Birds. Squawking. Startled by something. Their chatter sounds like the fussing of children denied their playtime.
The rain stops, as simply as that.
A pair of birds fly from the nearest cluster of ferns, screeching insanely.
Sayid also stops, still, his senses instantly alert. He raises a hand and closes it into a fist, hoping they will recognize the signal: Danger.
He hears no movement behind him. They must have listened. Feeling some relief at that, he sighs, lets his hand drop, presses forward again. Whatever had sent the birds out does not seem about to come after them.
Next to him, Kate seems to be keeping pace and, as the sounds of three other people moving reassert themselves, he can tell that Locke, Eko, and Ana-Lucia are also having no trouble keeping up just behind them. He keeps his voice low, but makes conversation with the girl closer to him to pass the time. "Kate – what were you doing before the meeting at the hatch yesterday? You were late. I admit, I was curious as to why."
She gives him a cross look for a moment, obviously annoyed that he's asked the question. Shaking her head, her hair flinging raindrops everywhere, she folds her arms, pointing out, "I said I was sorry I was late."
"I know. I believe you." He was asking for explanation, not apology, but he doesn't feel like pressing the issue any further. Now is not the time. His own voice sounds pretty apologetic. He feels badly, all but interrogating her. Whatever she was doing, she doesn't want the nearby trio to know, and she probably does not want to let him know, either. He'll leave her to her own devices, then. She'd probably prefer it that way.
He pushes aside a low-hanging branch, holding it aside to make it easier for her to follow. As she does so, passing nearby him, her voice drops low. "I was – I was seeing things, all right? A horse. A black one, like it was straight out of a movie. I think the island's starting to get to me. You can't let on, because," she makes a vague motion behind them, coupling it with two words that explain so much: "John Locke."
Sayid has to suppress a smile at that. He can't blame her. If he were in the situation she was, he would not let on to Locke that he was seeing things. All I do is hear voices, and I saw Walt once. But who is to say that the vision was not Shannon's doing? It may well have been. Why Shannon had seen it perplexes him, too, but he is not going to seek answers where he knows he will find no logical ones. There is no point in idle speculation about fantasy.
"If you see the horse again," he advises her, "tell someone straight away. We cannot afford miscommunication." She frowns on that, and he knows why. "If you would rather not tell Locke, I understand, but consider telling someone. Me, for instance."
She stares at him, shaking her head, somewhere between amusement and disbelief. "You're the last person I would have expected to believe me. There's no logic to this."
Her sudden perceptiveness startles him. He blinks a few times, continues to walk through the damp jungle muck, and finally says, "There's no logic to any of this, I agree. However, if this horse exists, it is information, and the more information we have, the better. Then we can sort truth from falsehood. Let's not concentrate on that, though. We are not yet in a place where we can do so."
"Literally or figuratively?" a new voice breaks through. Locke comes up alongside of them, his tracking stick swinging from a hand. He's grinning, but Sayid notices that it's a tense expression. For all of his love of the island, Locke has none lost for their search. His blue eyes are widened, as if something has surprised him, and Sayid knows he does not want to ask what thoughts are running through the bald man's head. "What place do you expect us to get to?"
"Safety," Sayid responds quickly. "It is unlikely that we will find it by any means except continuing to walk until we discover something – another hatch, perhaps? A lean-to? I would be satisfied with a military trench."
"So we're not going to search for Sawyer anymore," Locke replies, coming to a conclusion quickly. "All right, then. I agree. Like I said before, why don't we just turn back?"
Sayid can feel his spine go rigid, his jaw clench. He waits a few moments until the urge to say something sharp to Locke dissipates, draws a deep breath, and then remarks quietly, "I will not get into an argument with you, John. This has already been discussed to death."
"Sayid!" Once more, Kate speaks his name suddenly, drawing his attention. Her own is elsewhere, though. She jerks an elbow in the direction of the Tail-enders, who have stopped to stare at something. Eko's hand is on Ana-Lucia's shoulder, as if he is trying his best to restrain her from something, and Sayid looks over the Latina's head towards where the pair are staring.
They are right to be so transfixed, he thinks as he, too, now stares into the middle distance. None of the others move, either. They stand on the path, very still, and Sayid suspects that they all have the same shock running through their minds. Now is not the time to canvass for opinions, though. Now is the time to observe.
A person would have to be more than blind to miss what they are staring at. He would also have to be deaf and without a sense of touch, because the crackling and the heat are just as audible and palpable as the flames at the edge of the jungle are visible. If he squints a bit, Sayid can see what's intermittently covered by the flames – a small structure, looking not unlike the Hatch. He stares for a long moment, as if to make sure that he is not hallucinating or dreaming the sight into existence. The wind carries the smoke away from them, the fire seeming contained somehow. Is someone there to monitor it?
"I would imagine this is how Moses felt before the burning bush." Eko is the first to break the silence, his deep voice sounding somewhere between startled and vaguely amused at his own comment. His hand still rests on Ana-Lucia's shoulder, and Sayid wonders how much he is having to restrain her at the moment. All of Ana's attention seems to be on the fire; she leans forward, as if straining to see something within the fire. "Ana," Eko continues, looking down towards the small woman. "What is the matter?"
Ana-Lucia's voice is as tense as she looks. She doesn't sound exactly frightened, but neither does she sound relieved at what she sees. "Just – nothin', all right?" She jerks away from Eko, her face troubled.
Sayid is surprised at which of them chooses to address Ana-Lucia first. Of all people, Kate steps alongside her, her brows drawn together in confusion and concern. "Do you see something?" Her voice is suddenly urgent, and Sayid knows why, now. The horse. She thinks Ana-Lucia is seeing the horse. He watches as Kate moves closer to Ana-Lucia, despite her visible reluctance to do so. "What do you see?" Her voice is soft, any snappishness she had earlier shown at the other woman gone in her concern – not concern for Ana, Sayid knows, but concern for what the policewoman is seeing.
"Who do I see?" Ana-Lucia counters, some irritation rising in her voice at the question. She looks past Kate towards Eko, and her eyes are very large. "Goodwin."
Whom, Sayid thinks, but does not venture a correction. Instead, he quickly looks towards Eko, gauging the Nigerian's reaction. For once, he sees Eko show genuine shock, and that surprises him. He would be lying to say that he doesn't feel a little chill course through him at that, a sudden jolt of fear. If Eko is afraid, then it is with good reason.
"That is not possible, Ana," Eko replies. "There is no one there. And Goodwin's spirit is… elsewhere." There is an uncertainty about the last word that makes Sayid want to ask about it, and about Goodwin, but he does not get the opportunity.
He is conscious, initially, of a slight burning sensation. It is not bad. It is not electrocution. It is just discomfort, and he raises his hand to his neck, from which the feeling emanates. Perhaps I've been shot with something. His fingers slip through the chain on which he's hung the tag, and the slight burning turns to a sudden, intense flaring. It surprises him enough to cause him to let out a shout and jerk his hand away. As he cradles his hand, he can see the criss-cross pattern of the chain, burned into the meat of his palm.
They are staring at him. He can see the whites of their eyes. They back away, and he is not sure why, at first. Then, a sudden spark catches his eyes, and he glances down towards his chest.
The dog-tag has gone up in flames, just like the building they've come across. There is only mild discomfort to wearing the tag itself, though as he tries to move his hand towards it a small curl of fire licks at his fingers, searing them with severe pain. Apparently it doesn't want Sayid to interfere. He is more than happy to oblige. As always, he is relegated to observer.
"What the…" Locke sounds fascinated, and his rapt attention does not seem terribly healthy. "Can you feel it?"
Sayid shakes his head no, carefully. He does not dare do anything more. He does not want to interfere with the process. It is only a few moments before the flame goes out, but to him, carefully still, it feels like hours, and he suspects his compatriots feel the same. The fire extinguishes itself, and he can't seem to find a cause of it. It was real, though. It happened. The charred black surface of the tag, its surface now unreadable, assures him that it did happen.
He does not want to touch it. He will get burnt again. Something has to happen, though, and so after a moment of acknowledging the baked tag, he reaches out for it, expecting it to feel like molten lead in his fingers and doing his best to prepare himself for it. It is cool to the touch, though, and he cannot restrain a startled exclamation of Arabic at that surprise.
The girls flinch, and Eko and Locke tense, clearly having expected the foreign words to bode ill. Sayid yanks the dog-tag from his neck by its surface, worried about touching the chain now, and then reveals it in a hand, fingers splaying and extending towards the other travelers.
The numbers that had been on the surface before – numbers which he can recite in his sleep at this point, 4-8-15-16-23-42 – are now gone. The char on the surface makes it difficult to make out anything further, but as his thumb moves across the surface of the tag, a few blackened flakes drifting to the ground, he can make out a name on the main surface. An N, an A, and he needs to read no other letters to know what it of course says: Nadia.
He turns the dog-tag over. The other letters, he can feel, but not read. An 'L' and a 'W.' They are crudely fashioned, as if written in haste, or hammered out with a chisel that has a habit of slipping its mark. They are quite obvious, though.
He looks up from the tag towards his acquaintances, taking their reactions each in turn. Locke still stands there, terribly interested in the tag, craning his neck towards Sayid to see if he can make it out. His face is entirely contorted in wonder, the ardor of it at least momentarily making him silent. Ana has gone back to focus on Goodwin – whomever he may be – staring off towards where the suspicious brushfire had flared. Eko appears torn between Ana's obliviousness and Sayid's army tag, and keeps on glancing back and forth between the two of them, apparently unsure whom to counsel first. Kate's concern is for Sayid; she watches him steadily, not caring about the tag he holds or the freakish burning of it.
They all approach this so differently, he thinks. They all are so different. I thought I chose well for the trek, and I did, but we will never see eye to eye. If we cannot do that, Sawyer will be abandoned. He pockets the tag, shaking his head to clear it. They came out here for a purpose, and they are only being distracted.
"Do you think that was his work?" Kate asks as they set off again, their trek into the jungle only continuing. Sayid turns towards her, staring, confused. "The fellow that Ana-Lucia brought back. The Other. The one you let go. Maybe he's following us. Maybe he set the fire. Maybe it was meant for us."
"It would not have spread this far," Sayid says. "Everything here is so contained. We were safe. I doubt it was the Other; he hadn't the intellect." He glances back towards Eko and Ana again, doing his best to ignore the billion questions running across Locke's face. The Tail survivors are moving along, if a bit more slowly than he and his more familiar people, Ana shooting occasional looks back towards the fire again.
He too glances that way despite himself. Perhaps he can get a look at this Goodwin fellow. Perhaps he can find out, just from mere surveillance alone, what it is the two of them are so worried about. He peers through the trees, trying to make himself as sharp-eyed and observant as possible.
He could have sworn for a moment he saw a figure through the trees – there, right nearby the fire. He stares at it, nearly tripping over a branch. He is not sure, however. It keeps on changing size and shape, the leaves casting mottled shadows across it that cause its outlines to contort and twist crazily.
At first, he sees a woman in a hijab, luminous and wraithlike, her scarves and skirts tinged with flame. The vision seems straight out of some folktale, and he can't think to rationalize it. The woman grows shorter, then, and darker, limbs lengthening and becoming coltish, form changing to something that might turn masculine in a few years. The features become less delicate, but not so much that it is an adult standing there. Nadia has changed into a ten-year-old boy, and the boy is someone he recognizes.
His voice catches in shock as he speaks to the branches, the trees, the birds that chatter raucously anew. Perhaps they are only continuing from when they flew out of the bushes. He has not been listening. He barely listens now, too, except to the sound of his own voice: "Walt?"