A/N: AND THE FINAL SEASON HAS BEGUN!!! XD Woohoo! Haha I half-wrote this at the end of Season 5 and now I finished it to celebrate the beginning of Season 6! It's pretty short; I just wanted to pay tribute to the fact that Ben is such an awesome character. :)

Warnings: None.

Please read and review.

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He gets caught in the net, caught on purpose and shot with an arrow and the ball starts rolling its treacherous course downhill.

"My name is Henry Gale! From Minnesota!"

The perfect infiltration, and he watches and listens and they hurt him, oh how they hurt him, but it's not like he hasn't endured worse than this before. He lies and manipulates them so easily because that's what he DOES (or maybe what he does is wait, wait patiently patiently like he's always waited, for his father to love him for his friends to forgive him for his chance to escape from this bleak empty hell they call Dharmaville) —

It's not like he's unused to feeling unappreciated, so it doesn't really faze him when they hate him hate him and want to kill him. It's just part of the job. He knew what he was getting himself into.

(Did he?)

Sometimes, sometimes when they stop their whispering and worrying and watching, he thinks he might be a bit jealous of the way they smile and encourage each other and never give up hope, but the shade of a stirring in his stomach is gone as quickly as it came and before long he is back to plotting and planning.

They torture him and he exploits them shamelessly, twisting and turning their words against them and it's almost like fun. Fun and games and the wall comes tumbling down.

He escapes just like he knew he would (he always always always has a plan) and then he sees the blonde mother, the mother and a child and he misses Alex.

Alex is a strange anomaly for him. It's not like he could ever have had his own, circumstances had always been too much of a mess, but when he found himself with her he was amazed and fascinated and he loved her with everything he had.

It was damned from the start just like he was, he supposes, and he watches his little baby girl grow up and lean away and tell him things that burn more than the cancer on his spine ("I hate you I hate your guts I wish you were dead") –

This is the only way things can happen because he needs to be fixed and even if the island didn't fix him it still brought him someone who could. A surgeon, a spinal surgeon, a good spinal surgeon, and he has to do this because no one else has ever been there to look out for him.

"I don't care what happens to you."

He captures them and forces them to do what he wants and when Juliet leaves him it's almost like karma. Pain, he causes them pain in any way he can, and their eyes are tearful and murderous on the cameras but he sits and remembers the things people have said to him, the horrible horrible things – "hard to celebrate on the day you killed your mother" – and he doesn't feel so sorry.

The freighter comes and it's Widmore's closest miss yet, missing him and hitting Alex and his last sacrifice has been made as she slumps to the ground. It's been years and years and he's freezing and aching and finally he's leaving, digging his heels into the ice to twist the goddamn frozen wheel and the world goes white and he chokes on the sand suddenly blowing into his lungs.

It's not normal, not natural, the way he goes right on moving and plotting and weaving his little web like he hasn't just lost everything (everything) that ever made him human, but it's inevitable because he has to has to has to go back, and there's no one he won't whisper to or threaten or strangle on his way there. Slinking and smirking and shadows and he's back on the plane with this doomed little group, luggage falling and seatbelt sign flashing and clock tick-tocking until yes yes he's won (he hates it) and he's back on the island. But it's different now, oh so different, bodies that should be dead and cold are moving and breathing and his power is gone, and he can only follow and think and wonder why.

When Locke breathes the suggestion of betrayal into his ear, it almost feels like fate.

"What about ME?"

All his life, he has been stretched. Taut tension every minute, pulled to extents and extremes that used to be beyond his capacity, but they aren't beyond him any longer – nothing is beyond him now, he's lost his family and he's lost Juliet and he's lost Alex ALEX and now there is nothing left but himself – because it's almost like he's not so much human anymore as rubber or taffy, stretched and pulled and twisted and straining any which way, every which way, anything he must do to get by.

This game has gone on for so long so so long, thirty-five years and ("She's not your daughter") he's finally getting tired of it. Ignored and abused and hated, he has come to consider the knotted, festering whisper in his head that maybe (just maybe) he might love not to be.

"I really hate it here."

All these years of not enough and lying pretending manipulating and "she means nothing to me" are over.

It is here, here at the end –

("What ABOUT you?")

– that Benjamin Linus finally breaks.

[ … Fin … ]