Title: First Do No Harm
Author: monimala
Fandom: "Lost"
Rating/Classification: NAC, Sayid, gen
Disclaimer: Bad Robot!
Summary: Just a tag to the Sawyer ep from last week.
The screams chase him. Relentless. Hunters. They kick sand to obscure his footprints. They straighten the grasses he leaves bent in his wake. They drown out his very existence. And they echo.
Sawyer is not the first man he's torn such terrible noises from. Not the first man he's almost killed. Perhaps one of the few he's left alive. He is just that efficient.
This is not an observation Sayid makes out of pride, but out of shame. Out of guilt. Out of a distinct lack of guarantees.
But he made a promise. And he will do his damndest to keep it. He can not falter again. He dares not.
So, he kisses Kate's hand, her skin salt rough and dry and forgiving. And he begins to walk.
The image of sharp bamboo sliding under nails, of blade under skin and the hot spurt of arterial blood, follows closely behind.
It comes too easily to him...brute force, violence. He speaks softly, gently, with intellect, but cuts deep.
He had watched Jack staunch the blood flow with his bare hands, applying pressure until it slowed to a trickle and allowed him to clean and stitch the wound. Sawyer had, mercifully, fainted by then. Gone to a place where the pain couldn't reach and Kate kept vigil.
"He wanted to die," Jack said, later, after they carried Sawyer back to the beach. They were side by side at the water's edge, a matched pair in rust-red shirts that had once been white. "He said...'what have I got to live for?' and begged me to let go."
"But you did not." And even then, Jack's head had been cocked, one ear listening for the slightest change in his patient's breathing. "You saved him. You held on."
"And you brought my bag," the doctor pointed out.
Yes. He'd gone for the medical supplies, breath hitching in his chest, legs nearly cramping as he ran through the jungle. All to heal a man he'd been ready to execute.
"You know...doctors take an oath. We promise to first do no harm. But I hit him. I hit that sorry sonofabitch with *these* hands. And I stood there and let you do worse. Sayid...how?" Idealism had died, for the millionth time, in the younger man's eyes. "How does saving his life cancel that out?"
It doesn't.
He knows.
Because the screams still chase him.
One day, they will catch him.
And he, too, will echo.
He is just that efficient.
--end--
November 11, 2004.