The Slow Punch
by thommyboyroyle
Branson checked his watch, a Swiss Army. He wiped at the condensation on his upper lip. He raised a branch and peered through the bush toward the dock. I laid behind him, flat on my stomach, waiting for the explosions and the all-clear.
An hour earlier we'd set firecrackers in a pan about fifty yards into the woods, then rigged it up in a cone of sheet metal, to amplify the explosions. Branson had arranged for his friend Karl to light the fuse at 9:00, but it was now 9:12. The noise was supposed to get the watchman away from the dock long enough for us to make it to the sub, submerge it, and set off for Fiji.
"What the frig?" whispered Branson. "Who is—"
I inched further under the bush to see through. A bald guy in gray was creeping out from under the dock, headed at the lookout from behind. "No!" whispered Branson. "Get away from there!" The bald guy put the lookout into a sleeper hold and quickly he went limp. He dragged him back to the dock piling, away from the path, came up with a nylon bag and sprinted it nimbly out to the sub.
"What do we do now, mate?" I whispered.
"We sit tight." He jaw flexed and relaxed. "Once he's off the sub, we'll make a run for it."
I snickered, wondering when my life turned into a Tom Clancy novel, and he turned angrily. He's just so adorable when he's plotting.
"But what if—"
"What if what, Tim?" he whispered.
"Well, what if he takes the sub himself? He wouldn't have put that bloke to sleep if he didn't have something—"
"Did you see how easy he took Aidan down? He must be paramilitary or something. Are you paramilitary, Tim?" I winked and saluted. "Are you going to take him out in a cramped sub where he's already established his presence? Are you?" I shook my head. "It's a poor play, mate. If I learned one thing from my father, it's how to play."
"So the better play is to wait, then? Hope he's just going out there to repair a few—"
Branches broke in the distance, and what sounded like the pounding of many feet, so I figured one of us had tripped a camera, or they'd tried radioing to the sleepy lookout without luck. At the same time, the bald guy climbed off the sub and started walking back up the dock. He was oddly calm. A group of men burst out of the woods behind us just in time to see the bald guy raise his arms, as if conducting the sight spreading behind him—the sub, our only hope of getting off this terrifying fucking island, billowing into a bright ball of flames.
I looked at Branson. He couldn't look back at me, for what seemed like fear of crying.
"I'm so sorry, Tim," he whispered. "But it appears the game has changed."
In the distance behind us, we heard the faint popping of firecrackers.
Branson can be charming when he wants, but he's normally a very serious guy, not one for the jokes. But the funniest thing about him, the first thing that made me love the guy, was his commitment to the slow punch.
I met him in Sydney, where I've been living since university, and for the past three years have been an assistant at Widmore Properties. Branson started a year and a half after me, but he'd already made it into his own office. Usually the guys who rise the fastest are the quickest with a joke, the guys that need to disarm before they can do anything else, so they won't put everyone off with their obvious ambition and thick-headedness. Not in a Widmore company though. The old man is as serious as a Norwegian winter, and he's always built his organizations as such.
Knowing what I know now, I'm not sure if Branson constructed his personality to fit Widmore's bill, or if he'd just always been like that, but I suppose it really doesn't matter.
Anyhow, we hadn't spoken much until a trip to Taipei—normally I don't travel with my boss, but this was a major week of meetings—but when we got to the Sherwood, someone had cocked up the reservation, off by one. My boss is the Managing Director, so he was the only one who got to bring an assistant, and Branson was by far the youngest of the rest, so we got the single and a fold-out. He insisted that we flip for the bed, and I won, but he was very gracious about it.
"Not at all, Timmo. That was the deal. Besides, even if I've got rank, you've got seniority, mate. It's a wash." He pulled off his sweats and climbed into bed, hit the light. "Just keep an eye out for the slow punch."
"The slow-what? I'm not much of a boxer." He didn't respond.
I woke up to go the bathroom at the first hint of light. I noticed that the cot was empty, but didn't register it until I was getting back into bed. Branson was standing completely still in the corner, with a cocked fist. I didn't have the energy to speak, so I just dropped back to sleep. When I opened my eyes a half hour later, he was a few feet closer, still with his fist back. "Whuuuure you—"
"Shhh, mate. Hushabye."
"Is this the..." I fell back asleep.
At 6:59, a minute before the alarm, he finally made contact with my face. I tried to wriggle away, but he held my ribs down with his other hand. His fist pushed into my cheek harder than I'd expected. "Cooome ooooon," I croaked. He just shushed me.
Throughout the entire slow punch, all two odd hours of it, he never smiled once, but you could just tell, he thought it was the funniest thing in the world. The commitment mostly, the patience a good slow punch required, just put it over the top. I was too tired to acknowledge it at the time, but in retrospect, I agree.
Two hours later, our breakfast downstairs with the developers (and when I say "our," I mean I stood behind my boss with a clipboard) was thrown by the arrival of an unexpected guest—Charles Widmore. The project we'd be breaking ground on, a residential fifty-story glass tower, was a big deal in our division, but it represented a drop in Widmore's bucket, so not even my boss had been expecting him.
"I hear we've got a problem, Hamish," he said as he sank into a seat that suddenly appeared beneath him, the floor captain looking flushed as he retreated. The Taiwanese developers exchanged a look. My boss pulled his seat forward.
"I'm not sure what you mean, Charles. We're set to begin tomorrow first light."
Widmore tented his fingers, never a good sign. "And why would we be beginning a residential property in a lot zoned for commerce, Hamish?"
"What exactly do you—"
Mr. Chen cleared his throat. "We were going to bring it up as soon as—"
"You've been outflanked, Li. Someone pushed a rezoning through two nights ago at a closed meeting, a rezoning that affected a total of two city blocks, both of which ice our projects together. This happened in your city, Li, and you didn't even know it was happening. I had to find out last night from a friend in the civil service."
At that point the breakfast turned into a jumble of excuses, threats, recriminations, and absolute rambling ideas proposed by panicked men, all while Widmore sat back and watched. For about three hours they got nowhere, until finally Branson felt it was time to step forward for the first time.
"Why not make it a sky mall?"
Hamish scoffed. "You want to make shoppers go up fifty stories to buy something? We want to make it easy for them. The elevator issue alone would make it a non-starter."
"We already had plans for the external elevator anyway, now we just add one on each corner, triple the size of each, make two express to the top half, then starting marketing the piss out of it."
"The power," said Mr. Chen's son, "you'd need for something like this would be..."
"Completely worth the expense," said Widmore. "We're selling the future."
And like that, Branson was given a voice. Hamish was losing his mind, convinced that Branson was a lightweight, and that he'd somehow bewitched Widmore, a man not often impressed by others. No one in Widmore's inner circle had ever seen him like this, with such a fiercely personal interest in an underling. While he and I were becoming friends back in Sydney, he and Widmore were becoming intensely wound up, psychically. Daddy issues are kind of a bitch.
Ben slammed his office door shut behind us. "You're what?"
"In love with each other."
"You? And what's-his, Tim?"
"Exactly." He settled into his seat across the desk.
"You couldn't have told me this on the phone?"
"You don't understand. I'm here to say goodbye. I'm never coming back to the island."
"Because you're in love."
"We are, Mr. Linus," I said. "From the moment we met." I felt it was important for me assert myself in his presence, that he not feel like I'd easily be intimidated. Both men ignored me.
Ben stood and turned to look out the window behind his desk; he seemed to carry himself gingerly. "When you told me you were bringing a friend out," he said, "I assumed this friend would have some larger importance, and that it was therefore crucial that I meet him. But no!" We made eye contact in the window's reflection. "It was about...love."
Branson rolled his eyes; I'd never seen him so petulant. "Soooo typical."
"You're not even gay, Branson! I know I've been, well, distant, but I know that much. You think I haven't been keeping an eye on you in Sydney?" Branson shrugged sullenly. "You think I don't realize that you're using this boy to get at me? This isn't the Army. We don't excuse you from service because you feign a limp wrist."
"I resent that, Mr. Linus," I said. It seemed like a good time to stand up. "Branson and I love each other with a ferocity that you could never understand." Ben just smiled at me acidly, until it seemed ridiculous to keep standing.
"Tim Royal," he said, crossing back to his seat. "Twenty-four, gay, single. Assistant to Hamish Hamilton, Managing Director of Widmore Properties. Moved to Sydney for university after an unremarkable childhood in Queensland. Deeply in love with a heterosexual co-worker, who does not return said feelings. How am I doing so far?"
"Back off," said Branson, but Ben just kept watching me for an answer. When I had none, he smiled at me, more genuinely this time. "I understand what you're trying to do. And I appreciate the sentiment." He has a way of speaking that sounds flat and affectless, but behind that you can hear decades of rage and impotence. He was laying it on kind of thick with me.
"It doesn't matter anyway," said Branson. "So you might as well let Tim alone. I'm done with this island, and I'm done with this thing you've got going on with Widmore, I'm just...done."
Ben leaned into the desklamp light. "This thing I've got going on with Charles?" Branson didn't respond. "Branson, we sent you there years ago for exactly this purpose—to get to exactly the position we're in right now. And while I know we've had our disagreements, I can't tell you how impressive you've been. You have his ear. We! Have him."
"But I don't even know why I want him so badly."
Ben's wide eyes widened. "Because he's my sworn lifelong nemesis?"
"Is that even enough?"
"Well, shouldn't it be, Branson? I can't believe I'm—"
"In the past six months I've learned more about Charles Widmore than I've ever known about you. He invites me to his box at Aussie Stadium. We go deep sea fishing on his yacht, Our Mutual Enemy. He knows my birthday. He never imposes, but he's never neglectful either."
"Branson, you know if the situation were—"
"He's a pretty great man, Dad. You could have learned a thing or two from him."
A burly gray-haired man burst into the office. "Ben, we've got a problem. It's about the captives." Ben looked from the man in the doorway to Branson, then to the door and then to me. He remained stuck in his seat. Branson stood up, so I realized it was time for me too, and we headed out towards the sub, pushing past the burly guy.
As told to me by Branson: his first memories are from on the island, but he's told that he wasn't born there. He's never been given the full story about his birth mother, but he knows that she was a young woman from the Ann Arbor area who met Benjamin Linus at a local bar, during an odd bender that wasn't typical of the fastidious Linus.
He returned to the island unaware of his having a child on the way, but as soon as he learned, he tampered with the woman's living situation, implying in a letter to her boss at a Christian bookstore in Livonia that the young widow might not have been married to her son's father, as she'd claimed. Without a job, any family to speak of, and shunned by her circle of friends, she found it impossible to continue raising the child alone.
Ben then convinced another Dharma Initiative member to forge documents showing Branson to have an extremely rare blood disorder, which in the presence of electromagnetism showed all sorts of odd effects. Branson was by then four years old. He was taken in by the childless wife of a Dharma scientist, who spent six months out of the year with her husband on the island.
She brought Branson along with her—but also insisted on leaving with him every year, so that he wouldn't become "a full-on islander." While he was there, he was at first subjected to tests, but they were soon called off after researchers concluded that the island must have cured his blood disorder. His friendship with the workman Linus did not go unnoticed, but most remembered Ben's troubled relationship with his own father at that age, and their leader Horace thought it therapeutic for the both of them.
Branson took an immediate interest in the submarine, hanging around it long enough every day that he started getting lessons from the operator, and by the time he was eleven, he'd been allowed to handle the controls briefly before being sedated on his way back to Ann Arbor. The following year, however, would be his last on the island.
One December morning, Ben pulled Branson out of class and hurried him to the sub, which, he explained, would be taking Branson to Sydney, where a new life awaited him. When Branson hesitated at the foot of the dock, tears welling in his eyes, Ben crouched down eye-to-eye. "I'm going to tell you something of great importance, Branson. Do you understand me?" Branson nodded. "There is a man in Sydney, a man named Charles Widmore, and he is about to do a terrible thing to everyone on this island. We don't know if we'll be able to stop him, and so we need to get you to a safe place, but either way, what I need you to do, Branson?
"I need you to, over the next ten years, become close to this Charles Widmore. I need to you make him aware of you in his peripheral vision, and then disappear, so that by the time he meets you again, he'll forget he's met you. You'll seem strangely familiar. It's the only way you can help your mother, and your friends on this island.
"I once met a man who told me that I needed to have great patience, and he was right. Patience is the answer, Branson. Can you be patient with Charles Widmore?" Branson nodded. "Good boy," said Ben, tussling Branson's head. As the boy started walking up the dock, Ben called out to him: "Also? Don't be alarmed, but the man you've been calling your father is physically unable to have children. I'm your father, Branson." He smiled. "Have a safe journey."
After the bald man and the others were out of earshot, Branson popped up to his feet. "I know where we can go," he said, and set off into the woods. There was nothing to do but follow him, so I did, until we reached the edge of the village. We waited for an opening and then sprinted into the house nearest us, leaving the lights off.
"Where are we?" I whispered.
"My father's house," he said.
He headed into a closet and didn't reappear, and since I didn't like being exposed by myself, I followed him in. There was a false back that led into another room. He was dialing a satellite phone. "Close the door behind you," he whispered. Then: "Charles Widmore, please...Charles! We have a small problem, and I need your help...Yes, I know the connection's not great, because I'm..." Branson's face went white.
"How could you possibly know that? No, I didn't think you were..."
I stood beside him and tried to turn the phone so I could hear, but Branson waved me away. Days of fearing for my life on this unnatural island, and the knowledge that my best friend was somehow making it worse, welled up inside me. I didn't even want to come in the first place! Branson just wanted a witness, a pair of judging eyes to make sure he went through with it, so he fed me some line about how it was "important to him that I see this part of his past." All of that came through in my deathstare, the first I'd ever really given him, and he caught it. He tilted the phone up so I could hear, and we sat head to head.
"...that you thought you could ever pull something over me. It's astounding."
"Charles, the last thing I thought was—"
"There's no need to explain yourself, son. I know who your father is. I've always known. I understand your role. You're just a minor player, a barely noticeable walk-on, and now you're headed off. You delivered your two or three lines proficiently enough, our scenes together went as they should have, and now your night is done."
"But we had a rapport, Charles! I didn't imagine our bond! You used my ideas!"
"Oh please. A sky mall? It's preposterous. Something out of sci-fi."
It was brutal to see Branson like this, getting sacked by his pseudodad. I could tell that things were wrapping up, but apparently he had another play left. "One last thing, Charles. Until five minutes ago, you had an ally on the island. I understand your feeling betrayed, but my heart has always been with you." He let that sink in for a moment, and then: "I'll call you again in some time, Charles. I expect by then you'll have had some time to figure out how to make better use of me here." Branson hung up.
As we shoved the false wall open to leave, we could see under the closet door that a lamp was on in the bedroom. I looked to Branson and motioned back to the hidden room, but Branson shook his head. "It's OK, Tim-mo. He knows we're here."
Ben was in silk pajamas and glasses, lying on the bed reading Thucydides. He looked at us over the top of his glasses. "And how did that go, gentlemen?"
I didn't know what else to say, and since we were in his bedroom, I apologized quietly.
"Not a problem, Tim. I have an excellent long-distance plan."
Branson surprised us all by curling up at the foot of the bed, his head an inch from his father's feet. "I think you know how it went."
"You mean, Charles let on that he's always known about you, pretended to be cool and in control, then told you to take a long walk off a short, still-burning pier?"
"Basically. But he has known about me for a long time. He was playing me."
"You're still surprisingly gullible, Branson. I thought we'd drilled that out of you by now." He paused, over dramatically, lording over whatever was coming next. "He had no idea until twenty minutes ago, when I got the message to him. Through a number of intermediaries, of course."
Branson let out a soft groan at the foot of the bed, but he seemed too tired to get angry. "I just wanted to leave the island," he said. "That's all I wanted."
"Then you never would've come back in the first place," I said, surprising myself.
"Thank you, Tim," said Ben. "Precisely what I was saying—you could've told me this on the phone." He looked back to me. "There might be hope for you yet." Branson remained fetal, avoiding my eyes.
"I must say, Branson, while I wasn't crazy about all of your choices today, I'm impressed with your pluck. You were going to steal our only way off this island! Like a common car thief!"
"Like you couldn't find yourself another within days..."
They both chuckled, then sighed to a stop simultaneously.
"Listen to us," said Ben. "Arguing like, well, you know. I've missed you, Branson."
Branson looked up and into Ben's eyes for the first time. "I've missed you too, Dad."
It sounded hollow to my ears, like Branson had just made another decision about our best way out of here, but it didn't seem like Ben noticed, as he was nothing less than verklempt. He turned to me, still standing in the doorway, and through his brimming tears, said, "There's just one last thing to tie up. Branson, in the morning I need to you to bring your friend out to the fence and let him through alone. I'm sure you'll understand—we cannot tolerate distractions right now, and he just isn't one of us."
My breath caught in my throat, and I turned to my best friend. He avoided my eyes. Kicking his legs off the side of the bed, he said, "I'm not feeling all that tired anyway, Dad. I'll just bring him out there now."
Benjamin Linus gave his son a great, wide reptilian smile.