An Illusion of Peace
He hadn't blamed her, but he hadn't precisely offered her forgiveness either—at least, not in the way she had wanted. Ana-Lucia slid off the log and lay down sideways on the unyielding ground. She faced away from him, but she could sense him still sitting there rigidly. His silence was painful, and it made the otherwise gentle crackling of the fire sound like an angry popping.
"Sayid?" she whispered, but there was no response. Her apology hadn't fixed anything. It hadn't dissolved the emptiness in his eyes, and it hadn't thawed the icy loneliness that was even now hardening itself about her soul.
Yet what had she wanted him to say other than that he held no grudge against her? And he had said that much. But when she had declared, "I am what I am," he had offered no reassurance. And why should he? The most important people in her life had expected her to change—her mother, her husband…no one had ever accepted her as she was. She could not expect this man, who ought to be her enemy, to tell her it was permissible to be herself.
She had distantly hoped her confession would bring them both some measure of peace, but that tranquility was nothing but a mirage now. This burden she carried was not going to be borne, even partly, by anyone else.
I am what I am, she thought as she shifted onto her back and stared up at the dim light of the stars piercing the canopy of the trees. Those stars, however weak, were innumerable and unattainable. And though she had not attended Mass in years, she suddenly recalled a reading from the lectionary: "When I behold the moon and the stars which You have set in place—what is man that You should be mindful of him?"
And what am I? she wondered. What am I but a lone vigilante, reaching out with an arm that is too short ever to grasp a friend? Eko had once offered her the comfort of his arms as she wept, but he had left her in the end, and where had he been these past several days? Bernard had once given her his loyalty, but he, too, had deserted her, plodding off to find the only real companionship he desired.
She had tried to gain camaraderie by flirting with Jack, but—though her feminine side was real enough—there had been something forced in the exchange. And it had produced nothing in the end. She understood Sayid better than she understood Jack, and it was a bitter irony that the man she could relate to most easily was the one man who had the greatest reason to hate her.
Ana did not think she could sleep with this guilty burden crushing her mind. But her eyelids fluttered, and she turned on her side again, away from the faint yet accusing lights of the sky. She was sure she could not sleep, and yet sleep overtook her.