Auld Lang Syne

Epilogue

"Did you get him back to bed?" Claire asked as Sayid lay down sidewise beside her on the floor of the hut.

Sayid nodded and draped his arm around her waist. She rested her hand on his shoulder. The wedding band he had given her shone in the candlelight. "He loves those Arabian adventures you've been telling him. He was getting tired of the Three Little Pigs."

Sayid nuzzled her neck and murmured, "I assure you Aaron is sleeping soundly." He slid his mocha hand over the edge of her night shirt and down between her creamy thighs, which he parted gently. When he began to shift himself closer, she interrupted him with a staying hand and the warning, "It's a fertile day."

He sighed audibly and rolled onto his back. His fingers now delved into his curls, so that his palm rested on his forehead.

Claire turned to press her body against his side. "I'm sorry. I know the rhythm method is demanding, but it's all we have on this island. And," she began to trail her hand lightly down his chest and across his navel, "it's not as if we can't do other things."

He caught her hand and returned it higher.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He was not sure if he should try to have this discussion. She was always so careful to track her cycle, so meticulous in her planning—it was quite clear she did not wish to risk pregnancy again, and could he blame her? She had managed to deliver without a doctor the first time; Sun, Kate, and other mothers had done well with only the assistance of the island's paramedic. But such deliveries were painful and dangerous, and then there followed the around-the-clock feedings without exception, without so much as a single emergency bottle to draw from the refrigerator on the worst of nights. There were the fears, too, for a vulnerable infant without access to modern medicine, the fears Claire had suffered acutely in that first year, and which Sun and Kate were still enduring now.

Claire was looking down at him earnestly; her tender eyes pled with him to let her fix whatever anxiety he was feeling, and he hated to think this conversation might end with her feeling less than content. So he shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "I only stopped you because…I want to please you first."

But Claire was not deceived. "Please, Sayid. You've always been straightforward with me."

He caressed her cheek but did not quite meet her eyes. "Very well. I want to have a child with you."

He glanced up, just a little bit, and saw what he had feared: the soft hesitation of a woman who did not want to wound the man she loved. "I…You don't know how hard it was, Sayid, in the beginning."

He sat up and lifted her to a sitting position across from him. "No," he admitted. "No, I do not. I will not pretend to. But, Claire…I would be with you this time. Every step. I would provide for your comfort in every way I possibly can."

"You couldn't ever feed the baby so I could sleep."

"No. But I could stay up when you were done feeding, if she had not settled—"

Claire's warm smiled was an unexpected interruption. "You want a girl?"

"I…I want whatever we are given."

"If we are given anything. We may not be. And what then? Would you be unhappy?"

"No." He kissed her forehead and then pressed his own against it. "Claire, not a day goes by that I do not thank Allah for the life we have together, for you, and for Aaron. But is it wrong that I should desire to extend that love to encompass another, if such an extension is possible?"

She drew away. His head remained bent. "Of course it isn't wrong. Is it wrong for me to be cautious about it?"

He looked up. "No. But you asked what troubled me, and…that is what troubles me: that you do not seem open to the possibility."

She took his hand in hers. "I am open to the possibility, Sayid."

"You are?"

"I have to be. The method isn't exactly foolproof. I'm keeping track as best I can, but if we keep at the way we have been, and we're both able to have kids…sooner or later, it's probably going to happen. I'm aware of that, and I've accepted it, and I would be honored to be the mother of your child if that happened. But Aaron is still so young, and I'm young, and I'd like to try to prevent it. If it happens by accident…" She raised her shoulders and smiled mildly. "I'm okay with that."

"And if it does not occur by accident?"

"Then a year from now…we could start trying. Would that be okay?"

"Do you want that?" he asked.

"I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't."

He felt his smile growing and thought he must look very silly with such an unusually broad grin. But Claire did not seem to think so. She reacted by tackling him back down to the floor.

Tonight, "other things" would do.