Title: it builds before it drops off
Character(s)/Pairing(s): sayid jarrah
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,025
Summary: sometimes it's a hundred bodies that can be accounted for that lay a path to one murder that can't.
A/N: Written for
zelda_zee who requested Sayid @ the
lostsquee luau. I tried to use lost-pedia to refresh my knowledge of Sayid's path, but I wound up more confused than before, so if I've screwed it all up, I apologize. This is my first time really writing him. Written, also, for the
sacred_20 prompt, writer's choice - cardinal sin
It's not that simple, but then that runs contrary to popular belief. Regardless of race, culture or religion, there is a fundamental law in embedded in every human soul. Men and women grow up with it etched into their thinking - a thick black line they know not to cross. Sometimes human nature shades the edges, makes it possible for someone to stray without getting lost, without crossing.
The law is this - you do not take another life because life is all a person can count on.
Sure, their are religions that promise something more beyond it, but it is never a guarantee. It can't be. One lifetime is all you get, and to cut someone's lifetime short is unforgivable and more than likely inexcusable.
But that's not it. Laws are made to be broken, even the fundamental ones. Not all humans are wired this way, and not all of them are wired wrong. There aren't just serial killers and crimes of passion. Crimes of convenience. Crimes of calculation that border on serial killing. Crimes of justice. There are also those who kill because they've been taught that it's their job to do so. That killing is a means of safety. That it's a duty. Take a life to save another. Those are the real catch-22s.
And more often than not those killings lead to murder. (And yes, there is a difference).
So see...it's not that simple.
Ask Sayid.
---
He was six when he took his first life.
Sayid never hesitated killing small game - chickens and lamb. Never batted an eye when the blood ran over his hands, when startled cries grew into silence. The smell of death was too dull in his sense to even register as nauseating.
The first step to becoming a catch-22 is when you stop seeing life as the force that connects everything on Earth. It's not as grandstanding as it sounds. Most of human kind complete this step - carnivores, after all.
Excuse it. It's really nothing to be ashamed about.
---
It gets trickier when he starts working for the Republican Guard.
Killing becomes the norm. War excludes the laws of nature because they tell you everyone's signed up for it. The lives you take will be ones that were forfeited towards the greater good. It's paradoxical.
Sayid has no choice. It's what young men in Iraq do - especially those as smart and talented as him. He had to work hard to live up to the Jarrah name. Before his base is taken, he doesn't actually shed blood. His information kills hundreds, maybe thousands, but it's not directly at his hands. He doesn't think about it.
When he flips sides, it's because of duty to his family. Tariq had them killed, which means Iraq had them killed which means patriotism is no longer a top priority. He must serve his family first. Communication specialist is what they call him, and he learns quickly he's very good at making them talk.
He flips again when they are done with him because patriotism is now the only option for a man who has seen too much to forget. Torture is not ideal. It's messy and crude, and below someone of his intelligence, but he uses it to his advantage. He uses it to be a good soldier. To make up for the time he wasn't.
So he doesn't quite kill any one, not directly. He just reduces human beings to stacks of information surrounded by barbed wire which he has to twist and pluck at in order to get what he needs.
But he's acting on orders, like any good soldier would. Serving family and country, in that order.
No one expects anything less.
---
He's not a monster. These things do haunt him. They're meant to. There's guilt, which he buries deep within him. He wants to change. He does his best. But his past catches up with him.
He denies it until he can deny no more. Until a scarred young woman begs him for the truth, and he has to own up and accept what he did.
Sins atoned.
It should be over, but it's not. He's just become aware of the consequences.
It hasn't reached it's boiling point yet.
---
There's a man in a jungle. With bamboo splinters under his fingernails. His curses are etched into Sayid's bones. He'll carry them with him like the scars of his victims.
It's called a relapse. And it's just a sign.
---
When he becomes an assassin, he's finally taking life at his own hands.
It's still not murder because Ben tells him these men are just like soldiers. They signed up for this war. Read the fine print and knew what could come next. Elsa is the example he keeps in the front of his mind.
It's killing in the name of friendship. Duty to a widow, a crazy man, a three year old orphan, a drug addict and Kate who's her own silhouette. They are not safe unless he keeps the monsters at bay. This is what Ben tells him.
He forgets of course that Ben lies.
It's all pardoned. He was mislead. Even soldiers follow the wrong orders.
---
This is where the murder comes.
There's a boy, not much older than twelve who will grow up to be a man who puts him through hell. A man whose orders he'll follow wrongly. A man who feeds the beast inside him, plays the soldier against the killer and creates who he is at this crossroads.
Sayid raises his gun. Does not hesitate and puts a bullet in a twelve year old's chest.
The only duty in this killing is to himself.
And now this man who once killed to follow orders murders on his own accord.
It's a hell of a difference.
---
Taking a life is a egregious offense.
The type of thing that builds over time. And sometimes it's a hundred bodies that can be accounted for that lay a path to one murder that can't.
The fundamental rule is not life is sacred, but that it's never simple.