Luau Fic for zelda_zee
Title: Myopic Dystopia
Characters: Sayid
Rating: PG
Words: 1600
Warning: Spoilers for the S4 finale.
Summary: For the Queen of all queens,
zelda_zee who asked for angsty O6 Sayid. Perhaps a little something else her majesty desired can be read between the lines here. Sayid plays tourist in his own past.
x x x
Sayid’s footsteps echo loudly in the deserted room. He should have come during the first weeks of exhibit when the museum would have been bursting with visitors. Instead he had purposely delayed his visit for weeks and then chose a Tuesday morning on a sunny day believing a discreet visit was preferable. Perhaps a crowd would have been better because the solitary tour confronting him presents itself like a pathway dotted with landmines. He approaches the photographs gingerly, as if each step might trigger something explosive buried within him.
Fifteen enlarged images bursting with colour adorn the stark white walls of the exhibit room. For some reason, Sayid had expected them to be in black and white and the hues of blues, greens, and browns sting his eyes with their intimacy.
He focuses on the first seemingly innocuous image which contains two palms with intertwined trucks. One stands tall, the other lopsided, and bent toward the sea. A pyramid of discarded coconut shells lay haphazardly stacked on the sand beside the trees. Light glints off a machete stuck in an unopened coconut as if the person chopping it had only momentarily wandered beyond the camera’s lens.
In the exhibit brochure, the photographer claims everything was left untouched, just as it was found by the team of Navy SEALs who discovered the island whilst on a training exercise earlier in the year. The photographs were supposedly taken in the days before the beaches were stormed by waves of investigators, both civilian and military, who were assigned the daunting task of coming up with answers for the previously uncharted island filled to the brim with evidence of a lengthy, complicated, and contemporary inhabitation.
An abandoned movie set. A modern Brigadoon. A government experiment gone astray. The lost city of Atlantis. Logical explanations were as scarce as the island’s former inhabitants.
Sayid lingers at the photo of the palms which he can see as clearly in his mind as he does with his eyes. He had leaned up against those very trees soon after the crash, catching his breath and whispering a short prayer. He had done the same thing weeks later after Boone’s funeral. He knew to the east lay the camp, and if you followed westward along the beach you would eventually find a wire leading into the sea.
Accompanying the photo is a close-up of the lettering scratched along the horizontal trunk. The caption says the words come from the Beatles’s song, Blue Jay Way. What it doesn't say is who carved it or when and how eerily prophetic the words felt to Sayid when he watched Charlie carve them into the wood six years ago, and even more so now.
There's a fog upon L.A.
And my friends have lost their way
We'll be over soon they said
Now they've lost themselves instead.
Please don't be long please don't you be very long
Please don't be long or I may be asleep
Sayid moves on with the tuneless lyrics dancing in his skull. The next series of photographs are of the Dharma properties - a vine covered hatch door, a pantry full of octagon decorated stores, an unmade bed with the indentation of two bodies still on the sheets and pillows, and a rusty play set he had once been chained to. The slightly blurred swing is caught swaying in the breeze so it gives the impression of a ghostly occupant.
He gives each of these photos a close look but he’s impatient to see more familiar turf. He crosses over to the next wall to confront a scene from the jungle. A doll dressed in pink, with a head made of chipped porcelain and blond curls, with glassy blue eyes and long lashes that look real rests among muddy rain splattered leaves. It reminds him too much of Shannon crumpled in the same position and he moves on. The next one is of the old Volkswagen van lying on its side, like a horse slain in battle. It’s followed by a panoramic image of the sea of makeshift shelters made of bamboo, foliage, and scavenged parts that fell from the sky.
There is a separate close-up of one very familiar and sturdy tent whose insides were almost palatial compared to the others in size and furnishings. Through the flap of tarp Sayid can make out a neatly made bedroll with a pair of faded denim jeans strewn carelessly across the blanket. Next to the bed are a pile of paperbacks on which several bottles are balanced, containing, according to caption, what one investigator called “the best damn moonshine this side of the Mississippi.”
Of greatest interest was not the homemade palm wine but that this tent’s southern wall was constructed from a bank of airplane windows engraved with the serial numbers of the Boeing 777 whose last flight had been Oceanic 815. Even before they began to match the DNA of the bodies at the beach graveyard with those of passengers, it did not take long for speculation to arise that the Sunda Trench crash site and possibly the Oceanic Six story had been a hoax. This, of course, led to burning questions being directed at a number of persons of interest, including six individuals who had once been found only, the public now discovered, to have gone missing again.
As the media and authorities put pieces together that would never form a coherent picture, one additional discovery further complicated the story. Found within a suitcase full of medical supplies was a passport belonging to none other than Dr. Jack Shephard. That alone was not the most startling fact. What stunned people was that it was not the document that he had used to board Flight 815 but rather the new one that had been issued to him after he was declared living again in 2005. There is no photograph of this perplexing item but Sayid does not need to lay eyes on it to know the others made it back as planned.
When Sayid had seen them all off in Bali three years ago, he had been less than certain that the tasks he had performed to get them all to that point would fulfil anyone’s desires but Benjamin Linus’s, however the quietness that followed after the rest said good-bye proved him wrong. At first the calm had only made him more uncomfortable. It felt wrong and unexpected that he no longer carried a gun everywhere. It felt strange and lonely that the dead no longer visited. Sayid had chosen not to return with the others precisely because he knew himself to be undeserving of the promised peace. After the blood that had been shed for little noble purpose, he felt his presence back on the island would only taint whatever resolution the others hoped their return would bring to themselves and those left behind.
However, his only lingering punishment seemed to be that he’s left out of the loop, almost as illiterate as the rest of the world when it came to knowing what had become of the island’s inhabitants, the friends and foes, the pre-existing and the returned, now, all vanished. Had some catastrophic end come to them? Had they all left for times or places unknown? Were they back here, walking the same streets as he?
Before he came to the museum, Sayid had held onto some distant hope that he would be able to read more within these images than any ordinary person. He would be able to decipher the clues to everyone’s fates, or even, he admits with gall at his grandiosity, that his history would allow him to actually see the missing figures whose presence were so present, yet so empty.
The last photo is of the skirt of sand in front of the kitchen shelter which is covered in dozens of footprints of feet both shoed and bare, suggesting waves of recent traffic in and out of the area. He remains in front of this one the longest, attempting to give names to the different shapes and sizes. There are heavyset ones made with sneakers he names Hurley, a delicate pair he hopes is Claire’s, and a skittish set that reminds Sayid of the nervous physicist. He doesn’t have to squint hard to make out two sets of prints small enough to belong to children the age of Aaron and Ji Yeon and ones that can only belong to a canine.
As he stands there matching feet to faces, the exhibit fills with other visitors who come and go. Sayid knows he risks being identified by someone well versed in the history of the Oceanic 6 and the conspiracy theories surrounding the mysterious island. Yet he remains rooted, as if he too stood invisible, another set of unidentified footprints.
A passerby brushes his arm. Sayid tenses when the person remains close enough to feel the warmth radiating off them. Soon a hot breath tickles his ear, and a voice as familiar as the images singes his soul.
“If you're looking for Waldo, he's not there, Aladdin."
Not wanting to confirm if he’s dreaming or hallucinating, or if the messenger is living or dead, Sayid does not acknowledge Sawyer just yet. A soft smiles plays at his lips. It doesn’t matter. They’ve both been lost and found once again.
x x x
Characters: Sayid
Rating: PG
Words: 1600
Warning: Spoilers for the S4 finale.
Summary: For the Queen of all queens,
zelda_zee who asked for angsty O6 Sayid. Perhaps a little something else her majesty desired can be read between the lines here. Sayid plays tourist in his own past.
x x x
Sayid’s footsteps echo loudly in the deserted room. He should have come during the first weeks of exhibit when the museum would have been bursting with visitors. Instead he had purposely delayed his visit for weeks and then chose a Tuesday morning on a sunny day believing a discreet visit was preferable. Perhaps a crowd would have been better because the solitary tour confronting him presents itself like a pathway dotted with landmines. He approaches the photographs gingerly, as if each step might trigger something explosive buried within him.
Fifteen enlarged images bursting with colour adorn the stark white walls of the exhibit room. For some reason, Sayid had expected them to be in black and white and the hues of blues, greens, and browns sting his eyes with their intimacy.
He focuses on the first seemingly innocuous image which contains two palms with intertwined trucks. One stands tall, the other lopsided, and bent toward the sea. A pyramid of discarded coconut shells lay haphazardly stacked on the sand beside the trees. Light glints off a machete stuck in an unopened coconut as if the person chopping it had only momentarily wandered beyond the camera’s lens.
In the exhibit brochure, the photographer claims everything was left untouched, just as it was found by the team of Navy SEALs who discovered the island whilst on a training exercise earlier in the year. The photographs were supposedly taken in the days before the beaches were stormed by waves of investigators, both civilian and military, who were assigned the daunting task of coming up with answers for the previously uncharted island filled to the brim with evidence of a lengthy, complicated, and contemporary inhabitation.
An abandoned movie set. A modern Brigadoon. A government experiment gone astray. The lost city of Atlantis. Logical explanations were as scarce as the island’s former inhabitants.
Sayid lingers at the photo of the palms which he can see as clearly in his mind as he does with his eyes. He had leaned up against those very trees soon after the crash, catching his breath and whispering a short prayer. He had done the same thing weeks later after Boone’s funeral. He knew to the east lay the camp, and if you followed westward along the beach you would eventually find a wire leading into the sea.
Accompanying the photo is a close-up of the lettering scratched along the horizontal trunk. The caption says the words come from the Beatles’s song, Blue Jay Way. What it doesn't say is who carved it or when and how eerily prophetic the words felt to Sayid when he watched Charlie carve them into the wood six years ago, and even more so now.
There's a fog upon L.A.
And my friends have lost their way
We'll be over soon they said
Now they've lost themselves instead.
Please don't be long please don't you be very long
Please don't be long or I may be asleep
Sayid moves on with the tuneless lyrics dancing in his skull. The next series of photographs are of the Dharma properties - a vine covered hatch door, a pantry full of octagon decorated stores, an unmade bed with the indentation of two bodies still on the sheets and pillows, and a rusty play set he had once been chained to. The slightly blurred swing is caught swaying in the breeze so it gives the impression of a ghostly occupant.
He gives each of these photos a close look but he’s impatient to see more familiar turf. He crosses over to the next wall to confront a scene from the jungle. A doll dressed in pink, with a head made of chipped porcelain and blond curls, with glassy blue eyes and long lashes that look real rests among muddy rain splattered leaves. It reminds him too much of Shannon crumpled in the same position and he moves on. The next one is of the old Volkswagen van lying on its side, like a horse slain in battle. It’s followed by a panoramic image of the sea of makeshift shelters made of bamboo, foliage, and scavenged parts that fell from the sky.
There is a separate close-up of one very familiar and sturdy tent whose insides were almost palatial compared to the others in size and furnishings. Through the flap of tarp Sayid can make out a neatly made bedroll with a pair of faded denim jeans strewn carelessly across the blanket. Next to the bed are a pile of paperbacks on which several bottles are balanced, containing, according to caption, what one investigator called “the best damn moonshine this side of the Mississippi.”
Of greatest interest was not the homemade palm wine but that this tent’s southern wall was constructed from a bank of airplane windows engraved with the serial numbers of the Boeing 777 whose last flight had been Oceanic 815. Even before they began to match the DNA of the bodies at the beach graveyard with those of passengers, it did not take long for speculation to arise that the Sunda Trench crash site and possibly the Oceanic Six story had been a hoax. This, of course, led to burning questions being directed at a number of persons of interest, including six individuals who had once been found only, the public now discovered, to have gone missing again.
As the media and authorities put pieces together that would never form a coherent picture, one additional discovery further complicated the story. Found within a suitcase full of medical supplies was a passport belonging to none other than Dr. Jack Shephard. That alone was not the most startling fact. What stunned people was that it was not the document that he had used to board Flight 815 but rather the new one that had been issued to him after he was declared living again in 2005. There is no photograph of this perplexing item but Sayid does not need to lay eyes on it to know the others made it back as planned.
When Sayid had seen them all off in Bali three years ago, he had been less than certain that the tasks he had performed to get them all to that point would fulfil anyone’s desires but Benjamin Linus’s, however the quietness that followed after the rest said good-bye proved him wrong. At first the calm had only made him more uncomfortable. It felt wrong and unexpected that he no longer carried a gun everywhere. It felt strange and lonely that the dead no longer visited. Sayid had chosen not to return with the others precisely because he knew himself to be undeserving of the promised peace. After the blood that had been shed for little noble purpose, he felt his presence back on the island would only taint whatever resolution the others hoped their return would bring to themselves and those left behind.
However, his only lingering punishment seemed to be that he’s left out of the loop, almost as illiterate as the rest of the world when it came to knowing what had become of the island’s inhabitants, the friends and foes, the pre-existing and the returned, now, all vanished. Had some catastrophic end come to them? Had they all left for times or places unknown? Were they back here, walking the same streets as he?
Before he came to the museum, Sayid had held onto some distant hope that he would be able to read more within these images than any ordinary person. He would be able to decipher the clues to everyone’s fates, or even, he admits with gall at his grandiosity, that his history would allow him to actually see the missing figures whose presence were so present, yet so empty.
The last photo is of the skirt of sand in front of the kitchen shelter which is covered in dozens of footprints of feet both shoed and bare, suggesting waves of recent traffic in and out of the area. He remains in front of this one the longest, attempting to give names to the different shapes and sizes. There are heavyset ones made with sneakers he names Hurley, a delicate pair he hopes is Claire’s, and a skittish set that reminds Sayid of the nervous physicist. He doesn’t have to squint hard to make out two sets of prints small enough to belong to children the age of Aaron and Ji Yeon and ones that can only belong to a canine.
As he stands there matching feet to faces, the exhibit fills with other visitors who come and go. Sayid knows he risks being identified by someone well versed in the history of the Oceanic 6 and the conspiracy theories surrounding the mysterious island. Yet he remains rooted, as if he too stood invisible, another set of unidentified footprints.
A passerby brushes his arm. Sayid tenses when the person remains close enough to feel the warmth radiating off them. Soon a hot breath tickles his ear, and a voice as familiar as the images singes his soul.
“If you're looking for Waldo, he's not there, Aladdin."
Not wanting to confirm if he’s dreaming or hallucinating, or if the messenger is living or dead, Sayid does not acknowledge Sawyer just yet. A soft smiles plays at his lips. It doesn’t matter. They’ve both been lost and found once again.
x x x