Lost/Recap/S01/E09 Solitary

Season 1, Episode 9:

Solitary
Alone, sitting on a beach and looking at a photo of a woman, Sayid notices something sticking out of the sand: a buried metal cable that runs from the jungle out into the ocean. He starts following it into the jungle. At the beach, Jack changes Sawyer's bandages, and they bait each other about Sawyer's torture and his isolation from the other survivors. Once they're finished, Jack finds Kate looking out across the beach and worrying about Sayid, who left two days ago. He reassures Kate by reminder her that Sayid is a trained soldier. In the jungle, Sayid follows the cable until he comes across a tripwire. He carefully steps over it, only to walk into a snare. Night falls before someone cuts Sayid free, but he's too groggy and passes out.

At the caves, Jack tends to a survivor with a simple outbreak of hives while listening to others argue over nothing. Hurley thinks the problem is that everyone is too stressed out, but Jack's main concern is keeping everyone alive, and reminds Hurley that things could be worse. Meanwhile, Sayid wakes up in a run-down shack in the jungle, tied to the bed, while someone asks him about "Alex" in English and French. When he claims to know nothing, his captor uses a generator to torture Sayid.

Sayid, part of the Republican Guard, tortures a suspected mastermind of a terrorist plot. Later, Sayid talks to his friend and commanding officer, Omar, about the promotion to Intelligence Division. As they speak, Sayid is distracted by a woman being escorted to a cell (the same woman from his photo): when she looks up, they recognise one another.

At the caves, Locke and a man named Ethan return from hunting and bring Hurley a suitcase for him to sort through. Walt goes to Locke and asks if he can go hunting too, but Michael forbids him. Hurley finds something impressive in one of the suitcases. In the shack, Sayid is tortured and repeatedly asked "where is Alex?" He tells his captor about Oceanic 815's crash, finding the wire and looking for the source of the Frenchwoman's distress signal. His captor is revealed to be the Frenchwoman and she knocks Sayid out, not believing his story. Sayid comes to the next day and sees the Frenchwoman's name, "Rousseau", stencilled on a jacket. Rousseau reveals that her signal is being broadcast from a different location, but it's now controlled by "the Others", the people she believes Sayid is one of. She gets Sayid's name from the envelope with the photo and a letter inside and asks about the woman, whose name is Nadia.

Sayid is assigned to interrogate a suspected associate of the terrorist plot: Nadia, who remembers Sayid from when they were at school together as children. He threatens her with torture, but she simply shows off the scars from previous interrogations and remains defiant.

Sayid reveals to Rousseau that he used to be a soldier. She wants to know more about Nadia, but Sayid wants to know about Alex. At the caves, Walt complains about being bored and Michael tells him to find ways of entertaining himself. Hurley rushes in and out, looking for odds and ends for a secret project. In the shack, Rousseau still doesn't believe Sayid, questioning why he'd be alone in the jungle if over 40 people survived the plane crash. He admits to having left the others because he's ashamed of something he did. Rousseau asks if he left Nadia too, but Sayid says that she wasn't on the plane: "She's dead. Because of me." At the caves, Michael shows Jack his idea for rerouting some of the water into makeshift showers. Charlie arrives to fetch the pair and show them Hurley's project: a two-hole golf course, complete with a set of clubs recovered from the luggage. Jack and Michael dismiss it at first, but Hurley claims that with everyone stressed to the nines about getting food and avoiding monsters, it's important that people have something to do that's fun or relaxing. At the shack, Rousseau shows Sayid a broken music box that her late husband, Robert, gave her. Sayid offers to fix it, but she ignores him, instead retrieving a rusty syringe and a vial of sedative that she injects him with. On Hurley's golf course, Jack and Michael are having a friendly competition with Hurley and Charlie. The survivor suffering from hives shows up and, on seeing the golf course, asks if he can play too. At the shack, Sayid wakes up, chained to a chair at a workbench. In exchange for fixing the music box, Sayid asks to know Rousseau's first name and how she ended up on the Island. Danielle Rousseau tells him about being part of a science team, along with Robert, when their ship's instruments went haywire and they ran aground on the Island.

"Rousseau: The ship slammed into rocks, ran aground, the hull breached beyond repair. So, we made camp, dug out this temporary shelter. Temporary. Nearly two months we survived here, two months before-- Sayid: Your distress signal? The message I heard, you said, "It killed them all." Rousseau: We were coming back from the Black Rock. It was them. They were the carriers. Sayid: Who were the carriers? Rousseau: The Others. Sayid: What others? What is the Black Rock? Have you seen other people on this island? Rousseau: No, but I hear them. Out there, in the jungle. They whisper. [pause] You think I'm insane. Sayid: I think you've been alone for too long."

After weeks in the Iraqi cell, Nadia is still unwilling to talk to Sayid, instead trying to convince him that he's a good person and not a torturer.

At the beach, word is spreading about Hurley's golf course, so Kate, Boone and Shannon go to check it out. In the shack, Sayid gets the music box working again. He asks to be freed, but Rousseau insists that it's not safe for him outside the shack. Just then, they hear something roaring outside and Rousseau takes a gun to go find it.

"Rousseau: If we're lucky, it's one of the bears. Sayid: If we're lucky? It might be that thing out there, the monster! Rousseau: There's no such thing as monsters."

A month after Nadia's imprisonment, Sayid is ordered to execute her as a warning to others who won't cooperate. He enters her cell and tosses her a black bag to put over her head.

In the shack, uses a screwdriver to free himself. He takes several maps drawn by Rousseau and leaves, forgetting to pick up his photo of Nadia. On the golf course, a crowd is watching the game. Kate is amazed and thinks Jack is responsible, but he's quick to give Hurley the credit. Walt arrives, upset that Michael left him alone at the caves. Michael offers to let Walt have a swing, only to rush back to the game when it's his turn, leaving Walt alone again. In the jungle, Sayid comes across Rousseau and demands she drop her gun, but she doesn't.

Sayid is escorting Nadia to her execution and relieves the guards. Once they're gone, he frees Nadia and tells her how she can escape the base and hide from the Republican Guard. She is writing the note on the back of her photo when Omar arrives and realises what's going on. Sayid shoots Omar and then himself, non-fatally, so that the Guard will assume Nadia stole a gun and escaped on her own.

In the jungle, Sayid warns Rousseau and, when she doesn't lower her weapon, pulls the trigger on his own… and nothing happens.

"Rousseau: The firing pin has been removed. Robert didn't notice it was missing, either -- when I shot him. Sayid: But you loved him. Rousseau: He was sick. Sayid: Sick? Rousseau: It took them, one after the other. I had no choice. They were already lost. Sayid: You killed them. Rousseau: What would have happened if we were rescued? I couldn't let that happen. I won't. Sayid: [throws down his rifle] I'm not sick.

Rousseau: I know."

Sayid tells her that the writing on the back of Nadia's photograph means "You'll find me in the next life if not in this one" and that he's spent seven years searching for her. He asks Rousseau to come with him back to the survivors' camp: she refuses, but tells Sayid to watch the other survivors very carefully. As she leaves, Sayid asks Rousseau who Alex is, and she reveals that Alex was her child. On the golf course, the game is coming to a close with Jack putting on the green and everyone watching--even Sawyer turns up, though the rest of the survivors only reluctantly accept his presence. In the jungle, Locke is practicing knife-throwing when Walt turns up and asks if he can learn how to do it. Locke hands him a knife. Elsewhere, night is falling as Sayid makes his way back to the beach, hearing whispers in the jungle around him.