Chapter 16
"You said you never met him," Jack, not unexpectedly, challenged John immediately.
"Well, given how hostile you all were when you found out what Jacob had been doing to us all our lives, I didn't exactly think you'd be open to hearing me out when I told you I had a dialogue with the smoke monster," Locke admitted. "I told you I'd been stalling. This was the main reason."
James seemed genuinely confused now. "Based on everything you'd heard before, you really thought the monster would give you the truth?"
"Not particularly," Locke told him. "But at this point in my time on the island, that hardly made him different from anyone else, myself included."
None of them could exactly argue with him at that. "Didn't they say that he would infect you or something if you listened to him?" Kate asked.
"The Man in Black had said the exact same thing about Jacob to Richard," Locke reminded her. "I'd given up the idea that there was some universal truth about anybody knowing about how the island worked. There were only two creatures on this island old enough to know. Jacob would probably only tell me the truth if I accepted his offer. I wanted to hear the other side of it."
"Did he give them to you?" Hurley, as always, was the voice of calm.
"A lot more than I expected."
WHOOOSH
"They've all told you not to trust me," the Man in Black said.
"I spent the first part of my time on this island listening to Ben's story," Locke told him. "You can't be any worse than him."
"We're going to have some major differences of opinion about this place," The Man in Black didn't even raise his voice. "You think its paradise; I think it's a prison."
"If what Jacob told me is true, you have a very good reason to feel that way. Otherwise, you wouldn't want to kill him so badly." Locke pointed out.
The Man in Black looked sad. "I don't want to. I just want to leave this place. But he'll never let me do it."
"And killing your brother is your only way out?" Locke said quietly.
For a moment, John could see the family resemblance between the brothers. The Man in Black had the same look of melancholy Jacob did. "She always loved me. I didn't realize until it was too late just how disturbed that love was."
"My mother was very disturbed, too," John said.
"Your mother didn't kill the woman who gave birth to you," The Man in Black said calmly. "She didn't lie to you your entire childhood saying there was nothing across the sea. She never answered a single one of your questions about this place, forcing you to live thirty years in exile with horrendous people just to get the hope of leaving."
Locke took this in. "Jacob did omit a lot of that information."
"He always did have trouble lying," There may have been fondness in that tone. "I wish he would've come with me when I left. All of this, it could've been avoided if he would've chosen me over her."
"Why did all this happen?" Locke asked quietly. "How did this struggle begin?"
"I spent years trying to find a way to leave this island," The Man in Black said. "Finally, after years of struggling, we found this place where metal acted strangely. We dug a well, and we built a wheel, and I found a way to harness the island, so that I could finally leave." He looked into the distance. "He must have told her. That's why she came. She said that she just wanted to say goodbye. And despite everything she'd done, I still wanted to leave with her love."
"She knocked me senseless. I must've been unconscious for hours. When I came to, the well had been filled in, the village where the people had lived was burning, and everyone else was dead. I was filled with rage. I went back to the caves and tore their home apart. She came back…"
He trailed off. He looked like he was about to cry. "I put the dagger through her." He seemed to be choking. "She said: 'Thank you'. I begged to know why she wouldn't let me leave. She said" and now Locke did see a tear, "she loved me."
There seemed to be no way for John to just walk up to an immortal deity, however many evil deeds he had committed, and console him. So John just waited.
"Jacob saw me standing over her. I tried to explain, but he was too angry. He knocked me senseless. And…" The Man in Black trailed off. "I never did figure out what he did me. All that I know is that later that day, I woke up in the jungle. I've never been solid since then."
"He took your body," Locke quoted Richard.
"You understand more than all of the others," the Man in Black said. "You know what it's like to have been a prisoner in your own form, never able to touch the ground with your own feet. Not able to enjoy the pleasures that every other person in this world does. Sometimes, I would give anything just to be able to reach for the trees and eat an orange."
Locke looked at him. "I do feel more sympathy for you than I did for Jacob," he began slowly. "That is severely muted, however, by the fact that you've spent thousands of years murdering everybody who set foot on the island. I can understand why you want to kill Jacob so badly, but how does that justify the murder of hundreds of innocents?"
The Man in Black looked at him. "Jacob didn't tell you, did he?"
"I suspect there are a lot of things that he didn't tell me. That's why I'm talking to you in the first place. Why have you been trying to kill all of us since we got here?"
"I couldn't kill you," the Man in Black said. "Jacob's spent a lifetime making sure of that."
"Let's assume I believe you," Locke said. "And considering I don't think you dragged me into the jungle to say hello, I have my doubts. Why couldn't you kill me?"
"Because you're a Candidate." He seemed to be capitalizing the word.
"A Candidate for what?" Locke asked,
"I think you know, John."
"Maybe I want to hear someone in authority say it." Locke fixed the Man in Black with a stare, and he retreated a little.
"Jacob has spent years leaving the island, picking and choosing people so that they would come here. Once they came here, he intended to offer them his job. To be Jacob's chosen successor."
"And you don't want that." Locke said.
"For centuries it was easy," The Man in Black said. "Jacob just persuaded people from a distance. Brought them here and just stepped aside. After Richard agreed to work for him, though, Jacob realized that he had to change his approach. So he did the one thing I couldn't. Leave the island and look for candidates. Once he found them, he would mark them. And once they had his protection, there was nothing I could do to them, even when they came to the island. He had faith that you would be ready. He didn't realize just how corrupt you were."
Locke realized that all of the names that had been crossed out on the lighthouse had been killed, but not by the monster. The Man in Black was right. They had done an excellent job of paring the field all by themselves.
"Why haven't you killed the Others?" Locke asked.
"Jacob's supplicants. They've grown smarter over the years. I think you've seen that they've found ways to protect themselves even from me."
"And Eko? He wasn't a candidate."
"Why do you think Jacob let that plane come all the way here?" The Man in Black shook his head. "Other than you, he's the only person in centuries who wasn't scared when I looked him in the eye."
"But you had no problem killing him a few weeks later," Locke pointed out.
"I didn't think I could," the Man in Black admitted. "But he wasn't like you, John. He had faith, but he didn't believe in destiny. He showed weakness for the briefest of moments. I did what I had to do. If I hadn't, Jacob would have been able to claim him for good."
Locke paused for a minute, and asked the question that was on his mind. "You were in the cabin."
"It may surprise you to learn this, John, but Ben was once as easy to manipulate as you were," the Man in Black said casually. "One night, after the Purge, I came to him in a dream as someone he felt sorry for killing. I gave him instructions, and he followed them. I knew how much he wanted Jacob's acceptance, so I used it to work on him. You of all people should appreciate that."
"And then when I showed up, you did that to try and get to me," Locke said disdainfully. "So that you could win me over the same way you did when you appeared to me in the jungle."
The Man in Black didn't deny it. "I had a plan, John. One that took so much time and devotion it made Sawyer's and Ben's cons seem like short cons by comparison. I needed to get to Jacob. I needed everything to fall a certain way, and most importantly, I needed you and I needed Ben. So yes, I used you. But Jacob did, too."
This was a lot to take in, to put it mildly. "Was I ever really special?" Locke asked softly.
"I was special once," The Man in Black said kindly. "I can tell you from experience. It's not as much fun as you think it is."
Locke sat down. "So what happens next?" he asked. "Now that I've met the man behind the curtain. Do I get killed?"
"John, I can't kill you any more than I could Jacob," the Man in Black said. "And as hard as it may be for you to believe, I only kill to survive. I don't enjoy it anymore than anyone else. You may think that I've had some grand purpose to all this, but it's only developed fairly recently. Jacob's the schemer. He's the one who brought you here. He's the one responsible."
"So those are my choices," Locke said quietly. "You or him."
"Those have been the only choices, John," the Man in Black said quietly.
And then, something occurred to him. Something that hadn't before. "Actually, you're both wrong," he said with a certainty he hadn't in awhile.
The Man in Black was clearly unsettled by this. "What are you talking about?"
"I mean, there's someone else I have to hear from," Locke said, as he stood up. "They haven't been alive as long as you have, but they sure as hell are a lot wiser and more sensible than you and your brother have ever been."
"I think you need to think this over, John."
Locke turned around. "Did you ever have a name?"
This clearly took the Man in Black by surprise. "What?"
"You've been around for thousands of years. Haven't you ever had a name?"
"I – my mother never gave me one," The Man in Black said.
"Well, think on that for awhile," Locke said as he walked away. "Maybe if you actually had one, none of this would've had to happen."
WHOOOSH
James recovered from this quickest. "I gotta hand it to you, John," he said admiringly. "I knew you had big ones, but I didn't think they were big enough to tell both God and the Devil to go to Hell."
"They may have been immortal and spiritual, but having spent time with both of them, I'm certain that neither was God," Locke told them all. "For that matter, they'd both admitted that they were human first, and that they'd spent a normal lifetime being human. They'd just spent so long being immortal neither one of them could remember what that was like."
"And that made up for the fact that they'd been manipulating us all our lives?" Sayid, quite understandably, was still irate.
"Why do you think I'd walked away from both of them?" Locke reminded them. "They were both tremendous flawed and they'd both made horrible choices even before they became what they were. Their mother took away their choices from. She clearly loved one brother more than the other, and we've been paying for it ever since."
Claire, the only one of them who had a sibling, was a little shocked by this. "That's what all of this was about?"
"Their mother was clearly disturbed. That may have been the one thing both brothers agreed on," Locke reminded them. "She clearly favored the Man in Black more. That's the reason she made it so he could never leave the island. She clearly didn't have any problems with her other son doing that. Then, when it was clear that she had lost him forever, she put Jacob in charge of the island despite the fact that he never wanted it."
"And I thought that my mother was a bitch," Kate mumbled to herself.
"She's the one who clearly knew all the answers," Locke went on. "And it's clear she probably had the same duties Jacob had. Maybe for even longer than he did. Maybe that loneliness drove her crazy. I don't know, and in the end, it probably doesn't matter that much."
"That's a real open-minded way to look at the person who's made our lives their bitch for so long," Michael turned to his son. "Sorry I had to use that word."
"I think it fits Dad," Walt said.
"Look, there is only so far back you can go to draw a line to where this all started," Locke said firmly. "Everybody wants to blame everything else on what has happened in their past. But there has to come a point – and I admit that me saying this has to sound a little far-fetched – that you have to draw a line in the sand, and just say: "Enough, I've been dealt a bad hand, and now I have to find a way to play with the cards I've been dealt."
"It's like hearing that an atheist found the face of Jesus in a tortilla," Hurley admitted. "You know, only the other way around."
"I'm amazed they both just let you walk away from them," Kate said quietly.
"Jacob said I had to make my own choice. The other one said he couldn't hurt me. They couldn't exactly get in my way. That's the one thing they both agreed on."
"So who did you go to see?" Jack asked, even though he had a pretty good idea.
"The only people who were left on this entire rock who were capable of making this decision rationally." Locke told them. "Which was ironic, because they believed in the island as much as I did."
WHOOOSH
Locke had to admit he was afraid of approaching Bernard and Rose. It had been a few months since he'd had his last real conversation with her, and he didn't know whether her husband bore a grudge. He imagined that most of the survivors probably still did, even back in civilization.
Finding them was less tricky than he thought it would be. After walking through the jungle for half an hour, he heard a familiar bark.
"Hey Vincent," he said gently, bending down to pet the dog he'd help find just a few days after the plane had crashed. "How's it going?"
Not for the first time he found himself wondering if Vincent was special, too. Walt had always seemed to be safe whenever Vincent was around, and some part of Locke wondered if they had kept Vincent on that raft somehow, would the entire cycle of events that had followed been avoidable? Even given the level of faith he had in the island that seemed incredibly unlikely, but Locke still believed that might be possible.
"I kind of wondered if I'd ever see you again." Locke looked up, and there was Bernard. He had a scruff of a beard and his hair was a little longer, but his face was basically unchanged from the man he'd known months earlier.
Locke raised his arms, only half in jest.
"My wife is a very charitable person," Bernard said neutrally. "She said she forgave you months ago."
"And you?"
Bernard paused. "How good is your aim?" The puzzlement must've shown on Locke's face because the man elaborated. "Rose was about ten feet away from Naomi when you threw that knife into her back. I'm not wild about the fact that she could've died if you'd aimed a degree or two to the left."
Locke considered this for a moment. "Why did you agree to help Jack and the rest get rescued?" he asked. "Rose told me that the two of you were never going to leave the island."
"Jin had helped reunite with my wife," Bernard said simply. "I wasn't going to leave him alone to face possibly being killed. And everybody else wanted to leave. I wasn't going to stop them."
"You did what you did to help what was precious to you," Locke told him. "I was doing the same thing." He paused. "All things considered not only did I take the wrong approach, but I'm not even sure the thing I did it all for is worth it in the end."
Bernard's tone lightened a bit. "Pretty big admission on your part," he admitted.
"The only person I planned to stop was Naomi," Locke told him. "I shot at Jack; I didn't try to kill him. And I certainly would never hurt anyone else on the island. Especially not your wife."
Another long pause. "I got tired of these kinds of measuring contestants when Jack and Sawyer were still on the island."
Locke wasn't that surprised to know that Rose hadn't been that far away.
"Does he pass your test, Rambo?" Rose said softly.
Bernard smiled for the first time since Locke had arrived. "Yes he does, dear."
"Well, then why don't you let him join us for supper?"
LLLLLL
In the past several months, Rose and Bernard had built their own little jungle hideaway – a lean-to made up of bamboo and branches that still looked a lot better than all the lean-to's they had built on the beach. "People spend their whole lives looking for a place to retire to, so we built our own."
They'd built some traps in the woods to catch animals, Bernard would go out fishing every day, and they'd go and pick fruit off the trees. If anything, they seemed to be living more comfortably than they ever had when they were living together those first few months after the crash.
"How have you been managing the wildlife?" Locke said subtly.
"That thing hasn't bothered us once in the middle of the night," Bernard said slowly. "You have something to do with that?"
"I doubt it," Locke admitted. "In fact, given what I know now, I'm stunned that thing hasn't torn your place down a hundred times over."
"I'm guessing you found out about the island's secrets," Rose told him. "More stuff that you wish you never learned?"
"Sort of, but at least this time I've got specific people to be angry at."
"I thought you'd reached some kind of truce with them," Bernard said.
"Yes, just not with the people who brought us here." Locke took a deep breath and told Bernard and Rose everything he knew about Jacob and his brother. How long they'd been on the island, what they'd been fighting about for centuries, how they'd dragged everybody who had come to this island into their war, often without any of them knowing it – and now, how both sides seemed to want him to join them.
Rose and Bernard took this in with greater equanimity than anyone else who'd heard (or would hear) the story.
"Well, I knew I knew these people had a purpose, I just didn't know it was so crazy," Bernard said quietly.
"Have these two poor boys even tried talking it out over the millennia?" Rose asked.
"I get the feeling they have over the years," Locke said slowly. "And just looking at the two of them, they're long past resolving this peacefully."
"Jacob give you a reason why his brother can't leave the island?" Rose asked.
"He just said that if he did bad things would happen for everyone," Locke told them.
"Which means he doesn't know," Bernard replied.
"Boy's just doing what his mother told him," Rose acknowledged. "And now, he's trying to recruit you because he wants to retire."
"He didn't put it that way, but it does seem like that's the main reason," Locke said. "Only I think for him, retirement means… death."
Rose sighed. "My guess, he just wants some peace. Everyone likes the idea of eternal life. Until they actually have to do it."
"And the other one?" Bernard shook his head. "I don't know which is worse, living forever, or living forever without even a name."
"He wants me to kill Jacob. End of story." Locke told them. "What exactly happens when Jacob dies is, of course, left maddeningly vague, but I can't imagine it would be pretty."
"Are you considering that offer?" Rose said neutrally.
"If he's God, he sure as heck isn't the one that you or Eko or any of our friends believe in," Locke told them. "I never knew my Bible that well, but I'm pretty sure that Jacob's been playing a very loose interpretation to the book of Job with all of us, and I'm not exactly wild about that either."
"I've always been more of a New Testament woman myself," Rose admitted.
"And I admit, you and I in particular have seen some of this island's miracles," Locke told her. "But I have to tell you Rose, I'm having a much harder time working up the kind of forgiveness that you and your husband are capable of. For either of these wretched children with their eternal lives."
"And you're the one who'd probably have the least trouble dealing with this," Bernard reminded him.
"This would probably drive poor Jack up the wall," Locke said with a consideration for his great rival that he'd never really had before.
"None of them would take it well," Rose said, accurately foreseeing the reactions of her fellow survivors.
"And heaven help me, I'm actually starting to feel sympathy for Ben Linus," Locke said sadly. "He spent the better part of thirty years following every order that he was given by Jacob. He never even saw the man he followed. And he doesn't even know that the man he thought was Jacob was actually his sworn nemesis."
"I'm still not willing to see him as anything other than the man who ordered my murder," Bernard reminded him.
"From what I understand, his men fired into the sand. It was another bluff." Locke told him. "He wasn't going to kill you no matter what."
John didn't feel any need to tell Bernard that, given what he had seen at the lighthouse, the orders had probably been not to kill Sayid and Jin. Then again, there was no reason for them not to shoot Bernard under any scenario, and they'd let him live.
"The way I see it, if Jacob is the good guy, then Ben's spent the last decade going to the cabin and listening to the wrong man. On the other hand, if Jacob is the bad guy, then Ben has spent his entire life working for the devil himself. No matter how you slice it, Ben's entire time on this island has been a bad joke."
"I'm a little surprised you wouldn't want to rub it in his face," Rose said quietly. "He put you through hell."
"I followed Jacob blindly knowing nothing. That doesn't make me much smarter." Locke sighed. "Which basically leaves me here. Stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, with two roads diverging and no idea which one to pick."
"You don't have to pick either," Rose told him. "Way I see you could just live on this island peacefully for the rest of your life. Ignore the whispers in the jungle, and lead the people of this island."
"And tell them what?" Locke said. "For better or worse, the Others have spent their lives on this island convinced that this place is special and that the man who is guarding serves the higher purpose of all. Hell, some of them were passengers on our plane."
Now Bernard got genuinely concerned for the first time. "Have you seen the kids? Are they all right?"
"What, Zach and Emma? They're fine. But…" Locke tried to put into words what he'd seen. "I don't know how it's possible, considering they were barely with the Others for a few weeks. But somehow, it seems they've been totally indoctrinated. They don't ask about their parents any more."
Rose actually got angry at this, and Locke had never seen her upset. "What is up with these people and other people's children? It can't just have to do with some kind of fertility problem."
"I don't know," Locke said sincerely. "They seem to genuinely believe that it's about giving these children a better life. They really think that…"
"Keeping children away from their mother in the middle of the jungle is the right thing to do?" Rose seemed madder then he'd ever seen her. "I'd think as leader of the Others, you should be able to do something about it."
Now Locke did feel guilty. When he'd told Frank Lapidus that anyone who wanted to leave could go with him, he'd forgotten about those passengers who'd now taken sides with the Others. Admittedly, he'd still been in the early stages and had been finding his legs – pun not intended – but he seemed to have basically forgotten that some of the survivors were still on the island.
"I screwed up," he admitted.
"Well, at least you're being honest about it," Rose said in her no-nonsense way. "Now why don't you go and ask the children if they want to go home?"
"I'm not sure that there's a way to do it anymore," Locke said quietly.
"I find that hard to believe," Rose said. "These people have clearly been coming and going from the island for awhile."
"Michael took the boat, remember?" Locke said quietly. "And even if the submarine was working…"
"Wait a minute," Bernard said. "Jack was very clear about you blowing up the submarine. He was rather pissed about it, as I recall."
"Let's just say that, in the end, I didn't trust Ben any more than he did," Locke said. "But I had to make him think I did."
Rose and Bernard looked at each other. "All right. The sub is still there. Why couldn't you use it?"
"It was one thing to maneuver it a few hundred feet. I doubt I could make it all the way across the Pacific," Locke told them. "Not to mention I'm given to understand that you have to follow a very specific course, and if you vary by even a degree, there will be unpleasant side effects. "
"Is there anyone among the natives who could pilot the submarine?" Bernard asked.
"There must be," Locke admitted. "When Ben was giving me his spiel about how important it was I didn't blow up the sub, he wouldn't have been making this argument in the first place if there wasn't someone who could've done it. Assuming" he shuddered, "that person didn't die last year in all our skirmishes with the Others."
Bernard clearly appreciated Locke including himself; after all he'd killed at least three in December. "All right, let's say you can get the submarine working, and that there's someone who can pilot it. Then at least Zach and Emma could go home."
"There is one thing that Ben was very clear on that I do believe," Locke told them. "When I blew the hatch, the sky turned purple, which means there was some kind 0f EMP. When that happened, the instrumental readings this island had with civilization were permanently disrupted. Anyone who left on the sub could never come back to the island."
"And that's what's bothering you the most," Rose correctly surmised. "If you did the right thing, you'd have to leave your paradise."
Hadn't that been part of the reason Locke had tried to justify blowing up the sub in the first place? But considering that he'd basically torn up whatever contract he'd had with himself about anyone leaving the island in the first place, that argument didn't exactly hold water any more.
"I have nothing to go back to," he finally said. "My father's dead; my mother is crazy. I didn't have any real friends or family waiting for me back in the real world. Maybe that's the real reason I seized so hard upon this island being special. Because my life had been so miserable and that this place had given me a miracle – freed me from that wheelchair – that I swore loyalty to it immediately. It would be a betrayal to break that contract."
"Well, in that case John, why don't you go back to Jacob and take his offer?" Rose said. "Maybe this place does it have its flaws, but you care about it. You really could make a difference. You already have."
Indeed, to be the next Jacob seemed to be the destiny he'd spent his whole life looking for. He'd been willing to make the commitment that Ben had talked about so piously. And then it occurred to him the real reason why he was hesitating.
"I'd have to do it forever," he said quietly. "And I've seen first hand what happens to the people who make their lifetime commitments to this island. You become a Ben, willing to sacrifice everyone and everything for the good of someone you've never met. You become a Richard, acting as a go-between, following a master plan your leader has never told you. Or you become Jacob, making everybody dance to a tune that only you can hear for reasons no one else can understand. I may not be any of these people now, but after a few decades, a few centuries," it took him a moment to say the next words, "a few millennia, who knows what I might become?"
"Only you know that much, John," Bernard said gently.
"I've learned a lot in the past year," Locke said slowly. "Oh sure, I've learned about this island, about why I came here, about why this place is important. But I've also learned a lot about myself. And while I doubted myself immensely when I was in the world and I thought I changed, I'm not entirely sure all those changes were necessarily for the better. I may have done some good things recently, but I did some truly reprehensible things in order to do them."
Neither Rose nor Bernard asked him what they were. They probably already knew most of them, and Locke had no intention of sharing the rest. "When James told all of us about Juliet's betrayal, he wouldn't tell us how he got the tape," Rose said slowly. "You gave it to him, didn't you? Even though if it got back to Ben, you would've been done with the Others."
Locke couldn't face her. So he just nodded.
"He said you were following your own path," Rose said quietly. "But that path meant that you still felt a tie to us, didn't it?"
Locke had never truly thought of it that way. "I couldn't let him hurt Claire or Sun," he said quietly.
"You had to know that tape would get back to Jack somehow," Rose kept going. "And whatever happened afterwards, there was probably going to be some bloodshed."
Again, Locke had to admit the basic truth of that statement. If he hadn't intervened, the people at the camp would've been abducted and there would've been deaths – Ethan had demonstrated that very clearly. People had died as a result – in fact, all the Others who went to the camp were slaughtered – but somehow, that had never bothered him as much as the possibility of the people at the camp being killed.
"You may have always thought that you were allied with the island above all else," Bernard picked up the statement, "but despite everything you did, you still were tied to us. So what does that tell you, John?"
The white light flashed before his eyes. Only this time, it was an epiphany. "That Jack's been right this entire time. That unless we live together, we'll die alone." Locke looked at them. "And it just occurred to me that I don't want to do that."
He then spent the next few minutes thinking. "The two of you are very wise, you know that," he finally said. "It seems that you'll be as happy here as I could've been."
"You're going to leave the island, John?" Despite everything he'd just said, Bernard seemed a little surprised by this.
"Not quite yet. I still have some responsibilities that I have to fulfill as leader of my people," John replied. "And I have to ask Jacob some questions that only he can answer."
"You think he will?" Rose asked.
"He knows the only way this works is if I make the right choice," Locke told them. "Which also means I have a question that I need both of you to answer. If both of you say no, then it's all right. I have someone else I want to ask."
"You don't have to, "Rose was smiling in that earth mother way she always had. "Bernard and I are perfectly happy together. And we will always be happy as we are."
"Are you sure?" Locke said. "There's a lot of responsibility, and there may be a lot more coming down the line."
Bernard seemed to have gotten the message as well. "Where Rose goes, so do I."
Locke nodded, and told them where the statue was. "I'll leave at first light. Give me an hour's head start. I may need that much time just to get him to agree. And there's one last thing I'm going to need to work out."
LLLLL
Jacob didn't seem surprised to see John at all the next day. "Have you come to a decision?"
Locke didn't answer directly. "Is she alive?"
Jacob didn't react immediately. "Who are you talking about?"
"Pleading ignorance doesn't suit the omniscient," Locke put forth.
Jacob looked out at the water. "She is. She thinks about you a lot ever since the false wreckage was found."
Locke's heart grew a bit lighter just at the thought. "The names that I found on the lighthouse. All of them were Candidates."
Jacob didn't even seem surprised that John knew the term now. "That's right."
"Could someone take your job even if they weren't written down?"
"It's just a name on a wall. If they want the job, it's theirs."
"And once they had it, they would have the same protection from your brother that I do?"
"Absolutely." Jacob finally turned around. "I take it you've decided to pass on my offer."
"I have. But the good news is I've found someone else who's more than willing to accept," Locke said slowly. "But it's a package deal. You have to give your protection to both of them."
If Jacob was at all shocked by this, he gave no sign of it. "You sure they're willing to take on the responsibility?"
Locke turned around. "You can ask them for yourself. The two of them should be getting here any minute now."
"No need to be so impatient, John. We're more than ready," Rose said as she looked into the eyes of Jacob for the first time.
