Whole Again
Title: Whole Again
Characters: Sayid, Desmond. Mentions of Charlie, Essam, Penny and Nadia.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sayid/Desmond.
Spoilers: Only up to and including The Constant, but mainly The Greater Good.
Summary: Written for the fix-it challenge over at lostsquee, Desmond actually struggles to deal with his guilt over his part in Charlie's death, while Sayid shares his own memories of his guilt over his friend Essam.
Sayid could tell from the sound of Desmond's breathing that he was not yet asleep.
He was not surprised. He doubted he would get to sleep easily himself that night, their first on the freighter. And for Desmond, he imagined it must be harder still, having had his first contact with his girlfriend Penny in several years earlier that day as well as the experience Sayid still felt he had not understood, where Desmond had become disorientated and appeared to believe he was in 1996.
"You're still awake too, brother?" Desmond's voice came from the darkness.
Sayid forced himself not to flinch at the term of address, just as he had done every time Desmond had called him that. He knew that Desmond addressed everyone as "brother", Jack, Locke, Hurley. It appeared that it had become a matter of course over the years for him to address people as such. But when Sayid heard it, he always thought of the last person who had called him "brother". It had meant something then, not like now where Desmond used it for everyone.
You said you were my brother. You were supposed to be my brother, my friend.
Essam Tasir had been the only other person to address Sayid in that way. Even his actual brother, Omer, had only ever addressed Sayid by his given name. In some ways, Essam had been closer to Sayid than his real brother had been.
"Yes," Sayid said simply. "I am awake."
He was not going to explain to Desmond what he was thinking. Since landing on the island, Sayid had never spoken of Essam, the first close friend he had made at Cairo University and the last close friend he had ever had. Of course, he had been on friendly terms with the other survivors, but the friendships such as that which had existed between Charlie and Hurley had eluded him.
Desmond, appearing unaware of Sayid's mood, propped himself up on one elbow and began "I thought everything was going to be okay, brother."
Don't be nervous, brother. We'll be okay.
Sayid winced at that word again, at the echoes of the moment he attempted to talk Essam out of the suicide bombing. He was grateful Desmond couldn't see the look on his face as he continued "For the first time in three years, I'd talked to Penny again. She told me she's been researching the island, that she was going to find me again." Desmond flicked on the light, held out the photograph of Penny in Sayid's direction. But Sayid didn't need to take it; he knew her face by now.
"But then she mentioned Charlie," Desmond went on. "She started talking about how she'd spoken to him just before..." He broke off, apparently unable to say the words. "She talked about how he was the one who had given her hope."
Sayid nodded; he was beginning to understand. He thought that maybe he had underestimated Desmond, that maybe this man in front of him was exactly the person who could understand how he was feeling now, about Essam and about Nadia.
"You have been thinking about Charlie. I understand."
But Desmond shook his head. "You can't understand, Sayid. You weren't there, brother, you don't know what happened."
"All I really know is that he told you that it was not Penny's boat," Sayid admitted, "before the station was flooded by Mikhail."
"I've thought about it over and over again," Desmond continued, ignoring this, "and I keep wondering what I could have done to change things. Maybe if I'd just dragged Charlie out of there, before he had a chance to try and talk to Penny...But no matter what I did, it wouldn't have changed anything. The universe has a way of course correcting, and even if I'd saved Charlie then, he'd still have died."
"You believe in fate?" Sayid asked.
But Desmond didn't reply to this either. "But then I thought I could still change things anyway," he went on. "I had a vision of Charlie being shot by an arrow from one of Rousseau's traps, and I saw the parachute landing, but it wasn't Naomi, it was Penny. And I thought that because I'd saved Charlie, I'd changed everything, and a part of me resented him for being there when Penny wasn't."
Sayid frowned. "I do not believe your actions prevented Penelope's arrival on the island," he replied at last. "I cannot see how that is possible."
"A couple of hours ago, you just watched me not knowing what bloody year it was because my mind kept going back to 1996, brother." Desmond smiled ruefully. "If you hadn't seen that, would you have thought that was possible?"
Sayid was silent, acknowledging the truth of this.
"As I understood it, you would not have had much time," he said at last, but Desmond interrupted "Time was the one thing I did have, Sayid. Okay, there may not have been much time in the Looking Glass, but I'd seen it happen lots of times, brother. Charlie locked me out of the communications room when Mikhail flooded it, he wouldn't let me go myself when I offered to take his place. He sacrificed himself for me, for us, and yet there was a time when I'd have let him die.
"That whole time I was trying to persuade him to come into the jungle with me, he'd been asking me if I'd seen him die again, and I kept telling him no the whole time. He knew in the end that wasn't true, and yet he still saved me.
"He was a hero, Sayid, and I'm just a coward."
Desmond was silent for a few moments after he'd finished his speech. "I don't expect you to understand any of that, brother."
"Actually," Sayid replied, "I understand better than you think."
"What do you mean?" Desmond asked.
"There is a woman," Sayid began. "Her name is Noor Abed-Jazeem. Nadia. We were separated seven years ago in Iraq, and I have spent those seven years searching for her ever since. Eventually, I was informed that she was living in Los Angeles."
He remembered the moment when Agents Cole and Hewitt had shown him the photograph of Nadia, told him that they knew where she was, but how he'd been afraid to let himself believe it at first. He'd been given other leads on Nadia which had proved false, including information that she had been killed after returning to Iraq for him. Sometimes, he had still wondered whether that one could be true after all. That was why he had claimed Nadia was dead when speaking to Rousseau, the only time he had spoken of Nadia since crashing on the island.
"I had a friend," Sayid continued. "His name was Essam Tasir. He and I shared a room at Cairo University. We were close friends while we were there, but we did not see each other for several years after we graduated and I joined the Republican Guard.
"Essam had been married to a woman named Zahra, who had been killed by a bomb blast. Essam had wanted revenge for her death, and had fallen in with the wrong crowd."
Although Sayid had said "And why should I care?" to the agents when they had informed him of his friend's fate, Sayid had been shocked in fact to hear of the path Essam had taken. It had seemed so at odds with the man he had once known. But it was possible that Essam had not wanted his friends to know what he had become, in much the same way that Sayid had not wanted Essam to know of his torturing days.
"The CIA had told me that in return for information on Essam's terrorist cell, they would tell me where I could find Nadia. Almost as soon as I met up with him again, I realised that Essam wanted out. But the agents told me that if I did not cooperate, they would arrange for Nadia's arrest. If I was ever to see Nadia again, I was to sacrifice my best friend. So you see, Desmond, I understand better than anyone what was going through your mind that day in the jungle."
"So what happened, brother?" Desmond whispered at last.
"They had given me the choice: Nadia or Essam. But I began to wonder whether there was a way that I could save both. So the day that we were given the target, I confessed the truth to Essam and gave him the chance to run."
"And did he take that chance?" Desmond asked, before glancing at Sayid's face and reading the answer in his eyes. "Oh - I'm sorry, Sayid."
"He died believing I had betrayed him." Sayid stated tonelessly. "He took his own life because he felt I intended to sacrifice him for a woman. I delayed my flight to Los Angeles by a day in order to arrange him a Muslim burial. The next day I boarded Flight 815."
"Tell me something, brother," Desmond began. "Do you ever - see your friend Essam now?"
"I am not sure I understand what you mean," Sayid began.
"Because I've seen Charlie," Desmond admitted. "That's why I'm not sleeping. I see him in my nightmares all the time. Sometimes I'm in the jungle, taking the helmet off the parachutist, expecting to see Penny, and instead it's Charlie. He looks at me, tells me I'm a coward, and then he dies. Last night, I saw him and he asked me why I let Claire go with Locke. He accused me of lying about what I'd seen."
Sayid thought about this. He remembered that it had taken him a long time to get to sleep at all the night after Essam died, but when he did fall asleep he had been awakened by a variation of his usual nightmare. Many nights he'd relived the day he'd shot Omar, only to find he had shot Nadia with his own gun. But that night, Essam had appeared in Nadia's place.
You were supposed to be my brother, my friend.
The next day, of course, Flight 815 had crashed, and Sayid couldn't honestly say he'd dreamed of Essam since. He opened his mouth to tell Desmond this, but Desmond interrupted with "And he's right, they were all right. I am a coward."
"I did not have the courage to leave Iraq with Nadia when she asked me to," Sayid told Desmond. "So if you are a coward, that makes me one too. But Nadia told me that I have more courage than I know, and I believe that that is true of you. You are no coward, Desmond Hume," he said, pulling Desmond close, running one hand through his matted hair, the other hand reaching underneath the blue shirt to stroke Desmond's back.
As they began to kiss, Desmond was the first to pull away. "We shouldn't, brother," he whispered. "Penny, and uh...Nadia. It feels...I don't know exactly."
"Wrong?" Sayid suggested, continuing to unfasten the buttons of Desmond's shirt, parting his lips with his tongue.
"We shouldn't," Desmond repeated, but with less conviction than before. "I'll be going home to Penny soon, and you'll be with Nadia..."
"In the future, hopefully yes," Sayid answered. "But this is now."
Desmond hesitated, nodded at last. "It's just this one time," he said.
"Yes," Sayid replied, meeting Desmond's eyes and knowing, as the other man did, that it wouldn't be.
As Sayid pulled Desmond's face closer to his with one hand and fumbled with the zipper of his jeans with the other, the final words Essam had ever said to him flashed through his mind once more.
Maybe Sayid and Desmond were the only people who could make the other whole again.
Characters: Sayid, Desmond. Mentions of Charlie, Essam, Penny and Nadia.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sayid/Desmond.
Spoilers: Only up to and including The Constant, but mainly The Greater Good.
Summary: Written for the fix-it challenge over at lostsquee, Desmond actually struggles to deal with his guilt over his part in Charlie's death, while Sayid shares his own memories of his guilt over his friend Essam.
Sayid could tell from the sound of Desmond's breathing that he was not yet asleep.
He was not surprised. He doubted he would get to sleep easily himself that night, their first on the freighter. And for Desmond, he imagined it must be harder still, having had his first contact with his girlfriend Penny in several years earlier that day as well as the experience Sayid still felt he had not understood, where Desmond had become disorientated and appeared to believe he was in 1996.
"You're still awake too, brother?" Desmond's voice came from the darkness.
Sayid forced himself not to flinch at the term of address, just as he had done every time Desmond had called him that. He knew that Desmond addressed everyone as "brother", Jack, Locke, Hurley. It appeared that it had become a matter of course over the years for him to address people as such. But when Sayid heard it, he always thought of the last person who had called him "brother". It had meant something then, not like now where Desmond used it for everyone.
You said you were my brother. You were supposed to be my brother, my friend.
Essam Tasir had been the only other person to address Sayid in that way. Even his actual brother, Omer, had only ever addressed Sayid by his given name. In some ways, Essam had been closer to Sayid than his real brother had been.
"Yes," Sayid said simply. "I am awake."
He was not going to explain to Desmond what he was thinking. Since landing on the island, Sayid had never spoken of Essam, the first close friend he had made at Cairo University and the last close friend he had ever had. Of course, he had been on friendly terms with the other survivors, but the friendships such as that which had existed between Charlie and Hurley had eluded him.
Desmond, appearing unaware of Sayid's mood, propped himself up on one elbow and began "I thought everything was going to be okay, brother."
Don't be nervous, brother. We'll be okay.
Sayid winced at that word again, at the echoes of the moment he attempted to talk Essam out of the suicide bombing. He was grateful Desmond couldn't see the look on his face as he continued "For the first time in three years, I'd talked to Penny again. She told me she's been researching the island, that she was going to find me again." Desmond flicked on the light, held out the photograph of Penny in Sayid's direction. But Sayid didn't need to take it; he knew her face by now.
"But then she mentioned Charlie," Desmond went on. "She started talking about how she'd spoken to him just before..." He broke off, apparently unable to say the words. "She talked about how he was the one who had given her hope."
Sayid nodded; he was beginning to understand. He thought that maybe he had underestimated Desmond, that maybe this man in front of him was exactly the person who could understand how he was feeling now, about Essam and about Nadia.
"You have been thinking about Charlie. I understand."
But Desmond shook his head. "You can't understand, Sayid. You weren't there, brother, you don't know what happened."
"All I really know is that he told you that it was not Penny's boat," Sayid admitted, "before the station was flooded by Mikhail."
"I've thought about it over and over again," Desmond continued, ignoring this, "and I keep wondering what I could have done to change things. Maybe if I'd just dragged Charlie out of there, before he had a chance to try and talk to Penny...But no matter what I did, it wouldn't have changed anything. The universe has a way of course correcting, and even if I'd saved Charlie then, he'd still have died."
"You believe in fate?" Sayid asked.
But Desmond didn't reply to this either. "But then I thought I could still change things anyway," he went on. "I had a vision of Charlie being shot by an arrow from one of Rousseau's traps, and I saw the parachute landing, but it wasn't Naomi, it was Penny. And I thought that because I'd saved Charlie, I'd changed everything, and a part of me resented him for being there when Penny wasn't."
Sayid frowned. "I do not believe your actions prevented Penelope's arrival on the island," he replied at last. "I cannot see how that is possible."
"A couple of hours ago, you just watched me not knowing what bloody year it was because my mind kept going back to 1996, brother." Desmond smiled ruefully. "If you hadn't seen that, would you have thought that was possible?"
Sayid was silent, acknowledging the truth of this.
"As I understood it, you would not have had much time," he said at last, but Desmond interrupted "Time was the one thing I did have, Sayid. Okay, there may not have been much time in the Looking Glass, but I'd seen it happen lots of times, brother. Charlie locked me out of the communications room when Mikhail flooded it, he wouldn't let me go myself when I offered to take his place. He sacrificed himself for me, for us, and yet there was a time when I'd have let him die.
"That whole time I was trying to persuade him to come into the jungle with me, he'd been asking me if I'd seen him die again, and I kept telling him no the whole time. He knew in the end that wasn't true, and yet he still saved me.
"He was a hero, Sayid, and I'm just a coward."
Desmond was silent for a few moments after he'd finished his speech. "I don't expect you to understand any of that, brother."
"Actually," Sayid replied, "I understand better than you think."
"What do you mean?" Desmond asked.
"There is a woman," Sayid began. "Her name is Noor Abed-Jazeem. Nadia. We were separated seven years ago in Iraq, and I have spent those seven years searching for her ever since. Eventually, I was informed that she was living in Los Angeles."
He remembered the moment when Agents Cole and Hewitt had shown him the photograph of Nadia, told him that they knew where she was, but how he'd been afraid to let himself believe it at first. He'd been given other leads on Nadia which had proved false, including information that she had been killed after returning to Iraq for him. Sometimes, he had still wondered whether that one could be true after all. That was why he had claimed Nadia was dead when speaking to Rousseau, the only time he had spoken of Nadia since crashing on the island.
"I had a friend," Sayid continued. "His name was Essam Tasir. He and I shared a room at Cairo University. We were close friends while we were there, but we did not see each other for several years after we graduated and I joined the Republican Guard.
"Essam had been married to a woman named Zahra, who had been killed by a bomb blast. Essam had wanted revenge for her death, and had fallen in with the wrong crowd."
Although Sayid had said "And why should I care?" to the agents when they had informed him of his friend's fate, Sayid had been shocked in fact to hear of the path Essam had taken. It had seemed so at odds with the man he had once known. But it was possible that Essam had not wanted his friends to know what he had become, in much the same way that Sayid had not wanted Essam to know of his torturing days.
"The CIA had told me that in return for information on Essam's terrorist cell, they would tell me where I could find Nadia. Almost as soon as I met up with him again, I realised that Essam wanted out. But the agents told me that if I did not cooperate, they would arrange for Nadia's arrest. If I was ever to see Nadia again, I was to sacrifice my best friend. So you see, Desmond, I understand better than anyone what was going through your mind that day in the jungle."
"So what happened, brother?" Desmond whispered at last.
"They had given me the choice: Nadia or Essam. But I began to wonder whether there was a way that I could save both. So the day that we were given the target, I confessed the truth to Essam and gave him the chance to run."
"And did he take that chance?" Desmond asked, before glancing at Sayid's face and reading the answer in his eyes. "Oh - I'm sorry, Sayid."
"He died believing I had betrayed him." Sayid stated tonelessly. "He took his own life because he felt I intended to sacrifice him for a woman. I delayed my flight to Los Angeles by a day in order to arrange him a Muslim burial. The next day I boarded Flight 815."
"Tell me something, brother," Desmond began. "Do you ever - see your friend Essam now?"
"I am not sure I understand what you mean," Sayid began.
"Because I've seen Charlie," Desmond admitted. "That's why I'm not sleeping. I see him in my nightmares all the time. Sometimes I'm in the jungle, taking the helmet off the parachutist, expecting to see Penny, and instead it's Charlie. He looks at me, tells me I'm a coward, and then he dies. Last night, I saw him and he asked me why I let Claire go with Locke. He accused me of lying about what I'd seen."
Sayid thought about this. He remembered that it had taken him a long time to get to sleep at all the night after Essam died, but when he did fall asleep he had been awakened by a variation of his usual nightmare. Many nights he'd relived the day he'd shot Omar, only to find he had shot Nadia with his own gun. But that night, Essam had appeared in Nadia's place.
You were supposed to be my brother, my friend.
The next day, of course, Flight 815 had crashed, and Sayid couldn't honestly say he'd dreamed of Essam since. He opened his mouth to tell Desmond this, but Desmond interrupted with "And he's right, they were all right. I am a coward."
"I did not have the courage to leave Iraq with Nadia when she asked me to," Sayid told Desmond. "So if you are a coward, that makes me one too. But Nadia told me that I have more courage than I know, and I believe that that is true of you. You are no coward, Desmond Hume," he said, pulling Desmond close, running one hand through his matted hair, the other hand reaching underneath the blue shirt to stroke Desmond's back.
As they began to kiss, Desmond was the first to pull away. "We shouldn't, brother," he whispered. "Penny, and uh...Nadia. It feels...I don't know exactly."
"Wrong?" Sayid suggested, continuing to unfasten the buttons of Desmond's shirt, parting his lips with his tongue.
"We shouldn't," Desmond repeated, but with less conviction than before. "I'll be going home to Penny soon, and you'll be with Nadia..."
"In the future, hopefully yes," Sayid answered. "But this is now."
Desmond hesitated, nodded at last. "It's just this one time," he said.
"Yes," Sayid replied, meeting Desmond's eyes and knowing, as the other man did, that it wouldn't be.
As Sayid pulled Desmond's face closer to his with one hand and fumbled with the zipper of his jeans with the other, the final words Essam had ever said to him flashed through his mind once more.
Maybe Sayid and Desmond were the only people who could make the other whole again.