It's a cat and mouse game, and it's getting old. His shadow looming over you, his eyes drilling holes in your back – you don't turn, don't want to catch him in the act, because some small part of you still chooses to shut the truth out. You used to pray that if you kept your head down and played ignorant, he'd have no choice but to let you go, but you know better now, you know him better.
Benjamin Linus will never let go of the things that are his.
He reminds you so much of a beetle; a small, disgusting thing hiding under a rock. It might seem easy to stomp it out, but Ben can take more abuse than you might think; he's an odd little man, really. And you might think you've won, but you haven't. He's just hiding under another rock, and he'll come out again, soon enough.
***
The sand is pleasantly hot under your bodies as your lover pushes a stray strand of hair out of your face, and you smile at him, you're content. It's not a particularly grand thing, not any sort of epic love story; but he's a nice man, no, more than that, he's an honest man; and he genuinely cares about you. Hell, it might even be love – the quiet, long-lasting kind. You fall asleep with your head on his chest, his arms protectively wrapped around you.
***
You see your escape, right there, burning across the sky. Someone will be looking for them; it doesn't even matter whether there are any survivors or not, someone will want to know what happened to them, regardless. This is your chance to make contact with the outside world. All you have to do now is wait – you will have your opportunity, sooner or later.
***
All your illusions are shattered. He's not a small man; it's the image he created for himself, but in reality, in this small reality right here, he might as well be God. He decides who lives and who dies, and who gets to leave. And he is the one who killed Goodwin, no matter how it happened, he's the reason. You're the reason. It might not have been a celebrated love story, but he died for his precious Juliet; it might not have happened like in the story, Romeo was young and crazy in love and definitely didn't already have a bitter soon-to-be ex wife, but they met the same end. It wasn't part of the story, but Romeo, at some point, was a decaying corpse. Much like your lover now, pinned to the dirty ground, with a face as cold and hard and gray as death.
You said goodbye to many things that day, Juliet.
***
And there you have it, open war at last. You scratch him viciously, you bite him when he offers you tender kisses, and oh, he tries to be gentle, he really does, but you make him wince in pain and he tugs at your hair. He's forceful enough to leave marks on you, and you hate yourself for taking such horrible pleasure in it.
"What would you have me do?" He often asks, his voice the portrait of a mix of guilt and sorrow, but his eyes gleam with hope. For all his wisdom, after all this time, he still believes in happy endings. In this fabricated suburbian dream, in some god-forsaken corner of the world, he believes in yellow houses with white picket fences and two point five children. You stopped believing in children a long time ago, didn't you, Juliet?
You never, ever wake up together.