Chapter One

She walks chained toward the prison. The gray structure is familiar to her, not so different from the one where she had born up under the pain just a few months ago. The sun is bright, almost blinding, but the fog of fear and the heavy portent of violence clouds the world around her; yet she walks with dignity, head held high. She will not allow them to humble her. Until two months ago, she was accustomed only to admiration. By now, however, she has known the mortification of torture, has felt the great weakness of being forced to plea for mercy, but she at least prides herself in this: she did not break, and she will not break now, though the anticipation of suffering weighs heavily upon her.

As she walks she hears a voice. She does not recognize its deep and restrained tones, but it nonetheless captures her attention, and she turns. The face she knows instantly. Sayid Jarrah: the little boy from the schoolyard, the only one who did not dote on her. The face is young still, but masculine now, the chiseled features accented by a beard. His eyes are cool, not so warm as those that belonged to the child she had known, but beneath the glassy front she thinks she see a tenderness still lurking. He catches her eye as she passes; she sees his attention riveted to her, knows that the words of his superior must be fading in his ears. She thinks she sees a glimmer of doubt flicker across the stoic mask, and she wonders if he recognizes her.

She turns away and feels a new heaviness constrict her heart. This is not trepidation. This is not the flinching that begins before the fists fall, before the knife flays, before the acid corrodes. This is sorrow. Sayid Jarrah…such a boy…a gentle but determined boy…humble yet intelligent…for such a boy to have become such a man…Sayid Jarrah, Republican Guard, servant and protector of the state that grinds its heel against the masses, that rolls the dirt into the graves of innocents.

She pushes down the thought, deep down in some compartment of her soul, one of the many where she hides the other emotions: the fear, the weakness, the anger. It does not matter. She will find herself in a cell soon enough, at a table, before some other man who will interrogate her. She will not see Sayid again. She need not think of what he was, of what he has become, of the bitter loss of the beauty and the innocence of a childhood corrupted by the inevitable march of time. She will forget those days again, when life was carefree, when her brother protected her instead of betraying her, when the boys flattered her instead of beating her, when religion was a celebration instead of a crutch to lean on when the sickness of the world infected the aching soul.

Those days are gone. This is her world now.