Chapter 7

Ben had been wearing a poker face so long it was practically his go-to expression. Nothing surprised him, even when it did. But the sight of Claire on his front door clearly unsettled him in a way that she could clearly tell.

"Why are you surprised?" Claire asked. "Because we found you or because it's me?"

"I'll admit to being a little shocked that you're the one who came," Ben said slowly, clearly looking for an advantage. "I thought it might be James or John or Jack who finally tracked me down."

"Because they have a reason to want to hurt you, and I don't," Claire said slowly. "We'll just call the fact that you basically had me kidnapped, stuck with needles and were planning to take Aaron while he was still in my body, how do you Americans call it, a mulligan."

Ben was a master of psychological manipulation, so it was unsettling to hear Claire, a woman he'd had no interaction with on the island at all not only doing it but doing it like a pro. As always, his desire to deflect took precedent: "Ethan was acting on his own," he started.

Claire nodded. "And whose idea was the implant?" she asked nonchalantly.

That blindsided him in a way he couldn't hide. "Juliet told you about that," he said stiffly.

"She felt guilty about it when we were rescued. I realize that's something you have little experience with," Claire said sweetly, "Which I find odd, considering it was one of the few things all of us on the island had in common. "

Ben had taken a lot of beatings at the hands of the Oceanics the two months they'd been on the island together. Somehow, this hurt a lot more. "Why are you here, Claire?" he asked.

"Straight to the point. I guess when you don't have a group of Others lying in wait to rescue you; there isn't much point in stalling." Claire said. "Here's what going to happen. You're going to let me in. I'm going to ask you some questions. You will answer them truthfully. I'll try to keep them short and sweet; you'll do the same with the answers. Then I will leave."

"What's the catch?" Ben asked.

"In exactly one hour, Kate will be here to get me. If I am damaged in any way, you try to stall us, or try to get help; she will take out a gun and shoot you in the head. I'm not entirely happy about that, but you know how upset family gets." She paused. "Then again, I guess you don't."

It was hard to tell which part of that last statement was frankly the most shocking: the matter-of-fact way it was delivered, how certain Claire was Ben would behave, or how much she knew about Ben's past. "Locke told you about what happened to the Dharma Initiative."

"Benjamin, you were never the kind of person who wanted undue attention drawn to himself. So I suggest you invite me in before the neighbors start to ask questions."

There was little point in arguing. "What makes you think I won't kill you the second you walk in the door?"

"Because you want Annie to keep thinking you're still the boy you knew on the island."

Ben knew the only way that Claire could've found him was to trace the aliases he'd been using since he came back to civilization. He knew that Annie had never changed her name and they would have been able to link her to him. But the fact that they knew who she really was and what she meant to him – what she had always meant to him – shook him in a way that he had not felt since he was a boy. Without speaking – because for the first time in he didn't know how long he was at a loss for words – he motioned for Claire to come in.

"How did you know about her?" he asked.

"I could be cruel and say we read your file, but I'm afraid it's far worse than that," Claire said in a surprisingly kind tone. "Before we decided to come here, we had an interesting conversation with one of your old teachers. Someone who I think would've been quite appalled to know that she had Pol Pot in his formative years."

"Annie left with her on the same day," Ben hesitated. "Did you tell her…"

"…that you killed her brother and sister-in-law? She knows they're dead, and that's enough for now." Claire hesitated. "How much did you tell her?"

There was little point in pretending. "I've told her I did some horrible things in my life. She said she didn't care. But she will."

"I don't want to destroy your life, Ben, or hers," The kindness in Claire's voice was genuine now. "Far too many lives have been ruined because of what happened on the island. And unless you tell us what you know, I fear still more will be. That's the real reason I'm here and not any of my friends or family. Because of all of the ones who came back, I'm the only one who hasn't killed anybody. Before or on the island, I'm the only ones whose hands are genuinely and totally clean."

"You think I won't hurt an innocent person," Ben's tone and expression were blank.

"No. But I think you might actually have to think before doing so," Claire said.

Ben didn't answer, at least not directly. "Cup of coffee?" he asked.

"You have any tea?" Claire asked.

Ben nodded. Claire walked into the kitchen. "Let's start with a very simple question: Did you know?"

"You'll have to be more specific," Ben said.

"Less than a minute and you've already deflected. Fine, we'll do this the hard way. You had files on all of us. You knew everybody about Jack, including why he was in Sydney and what his wife was doing. You knew how Locke ended up in a wheelchair and how he was connected to Sawyer. You knew what crimes Kate had committed and you knew what Sayid had done in Basra. So don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about now."

There wasn't much point in playing around. "Yes, I knew."

"So when you were going through all that rigmarole to get Jack ended up removing the tumor in your back, which involved taking Kate to control him and James to control her, then the obvious question is: why didn't you just take me?" Claire now sounded curious.

Ben hesitated. "Jack was already attached to Kate. We thought it would be simpler."

"Because that's what your entire plan was. Simplicity itself." Claire was poking the bear again. "I mean, obviously a father will do anything for his son, but getting a brother to protect his baby sister? Obviously not the same thing at all."

Was Claire mocking him? The idea would've seemed laughable even ten minutes ago. "It would've taken too much work to explain that part."

"Because obviously if you're going to use files that say you know everything about a person, better not to tell them something they might know." Claire shook her head. "Obviously I would not have made a good Other."

"Are you actually saying you're upset we didn't kidnap you again?" Ben couldn't help but ask.

"Kidnapping us was all you did on the island. By the way, what were your people planning to do with me when you were going to raid the beach?" Claire asked casually. "Did the fact that I'd just given birth give me a 'Get-Out-of-Other-Jail free card?"

"Is this really why you've come here Claire?" Ben asked. "To spend all this time just dealing with the past?"

"My friends want to know what you might have to do with what's happening now." The pretense dropped out of Claire's voice. "But Ethan went out of his way to take me. He hung Charlie and left him for dead and beat Jack to a pulp. You held me captive for more than ten days and the only reason I escaped was before your daughter helped me. Then you said Ethan back and he killed a person as a threat and I have no doubt he would've killed more. And while you were experimenting on me, you left behind a gift that very well could've killed me. So yes, Benjamin, I would like to know why you decided to treat me – an innocent person - like a lab rat."

None of her friends – not even Claire herself – would have thought that she would be capable of expressing such animosity, even towards a man who unquestionably deserved it. Ben was clearly stunned by it, and found himself seizing on the one thing he could. "Alex was the one who helped you escape."

"Your daughter is a good person. Clearly she takes after her mother."

Claire had only partly meant that statement to hurt – Rousseau had, after all, rescued her when she was in no condition to help herself – but the statement clearly did far more damage than any wounds Jack or Sayid had inflicted on Ben when he'd been at their mercy.

"I am sorry for what we did to you." Ben said slowly. "Juliet told you about the situation with pregnancy on the island, and we really did think that we needed to take drastic measures in order to try and resolve that problem. He went off on his own accord, but I won't pretend he wasn't acting under my orders."

"Was it your orders to have me killed after you removed Aaron from my body?" Claire held up her hand. "Don't bother. I don't want to hear you lie again. So let's deal with a subject you might find easier to talk about. Whose idea was it to focus everybody's attention on pregnancy: Jacob's or yours?"

"You've spoken with John. You know the answer to that question already." Ben tried to take the edge back. "Don't try to lessen what I was doing. There hadn't been a successful birth on the island in more than a quarter of a century. In a place that could heal the sick, we couldn't bring about the most basic part of life. This was a problem that needed to be solved."

"Whatever the cost. Even if it meant holding a woman hostage for three years. Saying her sister's cancer had come back to keep her there. That's beyond cruel, Ben," Claire was back to being stern again. "I'm the last person to advocate violence, but in Juliet's case…" She didn't finish her sentence. She didn't have to.

Ben was using all his effort to keep his face completely blank. "I thought you weren't here to destroy my life."

"Listing your sins isn't destroying your life," Claire said. "Its reminding you – very clearly – of what you've done. You kept saying to my brother that you and your people were 'the good guys'. Now I'm well aware that 'good' is a relative term. None of us were without sin. But the difference between my friends and your people is that every we did was in reaction to what you did. A plane exploded in mid-air, and your first instinct was not to send out a rescue party, but to send spies. We spent most of our days searching for food and water with little more than the clothes on our back. You saw that as a threat. And somehow either staying on the island or attempting to leave it were mortal sins in your eyes. At any time during the period we were on the island, did it ever occur to you – for one moment – to simply send someone there to explain what the island was and why we were on it? Of course it didn't. Because we held you prisoner for a week and you wouldn't even give us your name."

Claire could see very clearly that despite all the years that had passed Ben was still looking for the right words to justify his actions. He might not be on the island any more but he still thought he could talk his way out of this somehow. And then after nearly two minutes, he did what was probably the hardest thing he could ever do: he gave up.

"I thought it was in the best interest of the island. Just saying it out loud makes me realize how pathetic it is." Ben just sat down. "I assume Desmond and John told you about Charles Widmore? Of course they did," he answered himself. "I have to admit, you did a much better job dealing with him than I ever could."

"Because we were in civilization or because we didn't kill him?" Claire asked.

"Both, actually," Ben admitted. "I have to admire your compassion, considering what he planned to do to you when he sent the freighter."

"We'd seen enough death on the island. I would hope at this point its common ground."

"I was trying to protect the island. From him. Not only because I knew how dangerous he was." Ben hesitated. "But because I was no different from him. He wanted the island for himself. I wanted acceptance from it. And since we were basically both willing to kill to get what we wanted, what difference does it make? I sacrificed everything for a man I never even saw. And what did it get me? The island gave me cancer. My daughter rejected me. And I was banished."

Claire put her hand on Ben's shoulder. "You stole her from her mother when she was just a week old. You lied to Alex her entire life about that, and then you kidnapped her boyfriend and had him tortured. No one in our group exactly had the best parents, but none of that exactly makes you Father of the Year."

"Widmore ordered me to kill her." Ben said suddenly. "First he sent to me kill Danielle and I was going to do it, when I saw Alex. I took her and told her not to follow me and to run away if she ever saw one of us. When I brought Alex back to our group, Widmore ordered me to kill her. I'd had difference with him in the past, but this time I confronted him directly. I asked him if this was what Jacob wanted, and then I said if it was, then you do it. I think that may have been the first time an underling questioned his authority, because instead of actually following through, he just stormed off to his tent."

Claire was a bit stunned to hear this.

"Now I know that I probably helped push Danielle the rest of the way over the edge, bur I did everything in my power to be a good father to Alex. I'm not saying that as an excuse and you have no reason to believe me, but with the exception of Annie, Alex is the only true good thing that ever happened to me." Ben looked at her. "I'm not proud of what I did to her mother, but I'm not ashamed of what I did for Alex."

"When she came with you that day," Claire asked, "were you reuniting her with her mother or did you intend to banish her?"

Ben looked down. "You know, I'm not sure any more," he admitted. "I knew what had happened on the beach and I knew the only reason it had was because Alex had betrayed me. Right up until the point I intercepted you, she was questioning everything I ever did. I was trying to explain, but I wasn't doing a very good job."

"I'm a little surprised you weren't proud of her." A look of genuine befuddlement appeared on Ben's face. "She just betrayed the people she spent her life with for the other side. That's the clearest sign I ever saw that she was her father's daughter."

Ben considered this for a moment and did something none of her friends (and it probably wouldn't have shocked her to learn none of the Others) had ever seen him do. He started to laugh. And it was clearly a genuine one. "She basically led a coup, and she didn't even have to kill me to do it," he said, chuckling. "I guess every generation does improve on the previous one."

Claire smiled, more because she was impressed that she had finally gotten Ben to accept responsibility for at least some of his actions. (Though she had to admit Sawyer and Sayid in particular probably would have seen the black humor in this situation.)

"All right, Claire. I've now been more honest with you about what I did on the island in," he looked at his watch, "the last fifteen minutes than I was pretty much the entire thirty years I spent on it. Now will you do me the courtesy of telling me what you really came here to ask me?"

"It's simple." Ben looked at her. "Well as simple as things get in our lives I should say. My friends and I believe that people are searching for the island, and based on intelligence we have gathered, there is a strong possibility that it is tied to the Dharma Initiative."

Ben, to his credit, did not look stunned. "I had hoped that they given up the search years ago."

"Because somehow you had managed to keep a secret that there had been a Purge."

"If they had learned what had actually happened, there would've been notifications to forces that it would have been hard to stop," Ben admitted.

"The Hanso Foundation."

Ben nodded. "The family seems to have a link to the island we've never been under able to understand. The Black Rock – the ship you found the dynamite on – it was originally captained by a Magnus Hanso. How he ended up on the island – and frankly, how the ship ended up on dry land – is something I don't know." He hesitated. "Richard might, but I never had the courage to ask him."

Claire decided not to let Ben know that Richard had told Locke about his connection to the Black Rock and the island itself. After everything else, it would just be rubbing it in. "We actually knew part of that," she told him. "The previous occupants of the hatch, one of them drew a map on the blast door."

Ben was slightly surprised to hear this. "Was it Radzinsky?"

Claire wasn't surprised. "I guess you never got to him."

"After…the Incident, he got banished to the Swan. I never heard the details, but considering how it got built I think the higher-ups considered it punishment."

"And one of the things you did when you took over was send assistants?"

"A couple. I'm guessing Desmond was working with one of them before you arrived?" Claire nodded. "What happened to him?"

"He killed himself."

"That was probably a good thing long term. From what I remember, the man was egomaniacal, paranoid and angry all the time. All he wanted when he was on the island was war. I'm not sure his time in the Swan let him reflect on the horrors he had done." Ben paused. "Sorry to be so blunt."

"I'm used to it. I don't like it, but I'm used to it. What else did you to fool Dharma?"

"When Mikhail took over the Flame, his job was to keep up communications with Ann Arbor. Make it seem like everything was normal, and they wouldn't come looking. But they must have started to get suspicious not long after you arrived."

"What makes you say that?" Claire asked.

"The pallet drops – Dharma would air drop a supply of food for the coming year. We never got it."

Claire actually looked a little sheepish. "Technically you did. We just intercepted before you could."

Ben considered this, and then waved it off. "Well, considering that you were in worse condition than we were I can't exactly blame you. They probably would've become suspicious soon anyway. After the sky turned purple, we lost all communication with the mainland. At some point, the people in charge would have noticed and tried to find out what happened."

Claire decided that it was not the time to remind Ben his role, however indirect, in the hatch being blown. It's not like it hadn't worked out for all of them.

"Of course, all of this makes the assumption that Dharma Initiative could find the island again in the first place. If you're asking me how they managed that part, I don't have an answer."

Claire decided not to take the bait. She tried playing a card of her own. "How did your people find the island when they left?"

"There were coordinates built into the submarine." Ben said softly. "I guess trying to tell you it's a shame Locke blew it up is a lost cause." Claire nodded. "I wasn't lying to him about the fact that it would've been a one-way trip when Jack and Juliet got on it. That's one of the reasons I was so hoping he'd resolve the issue for me."

"You never did give him enough credit," Claire pointed out.

"I'm well aware of that," Ben acknowledged. "In any case, if there are forces that want to find the island, they obviously know it will go through you and your friends. I do appreciate that you haven't told the world about what actually happened."

"You think anyone would've believed us if we had?" Claire asked.

"Ninety-nine percent of the world would have dismissed you outright," Ben admitted. "Of that remaining one percent, most of them have little connection to reality. It is that small remainder, however insignificant it may seem that would have taken it seriously. And the only reason they would is because they've been looking for the island themselves for far longer."

Well, now was the time. Claire told them about what they knew about the man they knew as Matthew Abaddon.

"He went to Jack and Juliet's hospital," Ben asked neutrally, "and went to a friend of theirs. Any particular reason why they chose her?"

Claire had absolutely no intention of outing anybody at Seattle Grace. "Izzie suffered from a form of skin cancer that went to her brain," she said carefully. "One of the symptoms was a hallucination of a former love, one who apparently died in that same hospital."

Ben took this in. "Is there any possibility is was more than just seeing things?"

Claire played a card she didn't want to. "It was also auditory and tactile. For months she ignored the possibility that she was going insane because she preferred to live in the lie."

Ben considered this. "How sure are the doctors that what she saw was a symptom of the disease?"

"The hallucinations stopped as soon as the tumor was removed," Claire paused. "But as Jack would put it, correlation does not equal causation. Regardless, we don't think Abaddon went to her by chance."

"Of course he didn't. He saw a weakness and thought he could exploit it. There's a chance he thought he could recruit her the same way they tried to recruit people for the previous expedition." Ben was thinking now. "Maybe they think she's special."

"That's not a word any of us like to hear," Claire admitted. "Do you think he's making another move?"

"You'd know better than I would. His daughter helped dismantle his organization," Ben paused. "Didn't she?"

"She's spent the year and a half doing just that. But it's not like she knows where all the bodies are buried." Claire pointed out. "Just the obvious ones."

"Even if he isn't attached, there are still people who are loyal to him. Who share his interests. And that's why you're here, isn't it? For me to tell you who these people are."

"We can't assume it is Widmore. Wouldn't whatever's left of Dharma consider him a mortal enemy?"

"Which doesn't preclude them forming an alliance with him to find the island again."

"You didn't."

"He did send a freighter full of men to capture me. I'm not that desperate." Ben hesitated, and then looked at his watch. "You might want to call Kate now."

Claire wasn't surprised to find that nearly forty-five minutes had gone by. "I'll call her in ten minutes. There's something we need to do in the meantime."

Ben nodded. "Name your terms."

Kate wasn't entirely certain what she expected to find when she knocked on Ben's door three minutes before the deadline. Claire opening it with a small smile on her face was slightly more than she had dared hope for.

"I guess you're still whole," she said with a relieved look on her face.

Claire mock pouted. "You're telling me you didn't expect this to work."

"You still haven't shown it has."

"Come in and see for yourself."

Kate couldn't help the queasy roll of her stomach as she got the first look at Ben since he had supposedly given the order to kill Sayid, Jin and Bernard. Did Ben know she'd practically begged Jack to kill him afterwards? Well, he'd spent so much time being threatened maybe he wouldn't hold a grudge.

"Hello, Kate." There was no menace or hint of ill-will in Ben's tone. She was not surprised that she instantly felt loathing just the same. "You look well."

"That's what three years of not being tied up by your people will do" she said without thinking.

"Kate." It was odd to hear a word of warning in her sister-in-law's tone.

"It's quite all right, Claire," Ben's tone hadn't changed. "After everything that happened I would've stunned if you weren't still at least a little angry at me. And it's perfectly understandable why none of you thought you could trust yourself to spend a few minutes locked in a room with me."

That might have been as close to an apology as they were going to get from him. And in typical Ben Linus fashion, he had managed to put the onus on them.

"I'm still not entirely certain I trust you, Ben," Claire now sounded sterner. "That's the reason Kate was willing to risk going back to prison to make sure I came out of here safe. I realize the idea of that kind of devotion without an ulterior motive may be a foreign concept to you but it is how my friends and I live."

Ben remained stoic. "I realize that you have only come here out of necessity," he said calmly. "But I am grateful for the understanding you have shown. And I do hope to prove that I'm worthy of your trust."

"Well, it's a step in the right direction." Claire paused. "And since you bring up trust, earlier I said I never lied. So I won't now. You may some day, perhaps when this is all over, have earned all our trust. That's important and that's good. But I need to make this clear up front."

It was hard to describe what happened next, even for Kate who knew Claire better than almost anyone on the island. It was the kind of shift that would have been familiar to Sayid or Sawyer or even her brother. But on Claire, it was completely unrecognizable. Her outward appearance – the cheerful girl who had joked with Shannon about having a stomach and asked Kate about her sign – was gone. In its place was someone much harder and truly angry.

"It is possible that some day in the future, I will possibly be able to forgive you for what you and your people did to me. But I will never, ever be able to forgive for what you did to Charlie."

Ben had managed to hide his surprise pretty well the last hour. But the shift in Claire's expression and voice clearly caught him off guard. He'd spent so many years being able to manipulate people – particularly the survivors – that he clearly had forgotten what it was like when someone else did it.

Claire didn't give him a chance to react. "I know you have experience with what its like to lose someone you love. Now imagine what it would be like to lose them and not even know it. Can you imagine that Ben? Knowing that the man you loved – the man you were considering having helped raise your child when you got back to civilization – sacrificed himself to save your life and you didn't even get to say goodbye to him? Never even got the chance to say that you loved him?"

It had been years – decades probably – since Ben had ever allowed himself to be lured into a false sense of security. Claire had done such an adroit job of being herself that he was completely unprepared for this change. For the second time in less than an hour, he'd completely underestimated the woman in front of him.

"It's taken a lot for me to get past his death," Claire said in a slightly softer tone. "And I realize that Charlie wouldn't want me to spend the rest of my life mourning him. But considering everything you and your people did to him, I'm just as certain he would never want me to forgive the man responsible for his death."

The thing was Kate believed that as much as Claire did. Charlie had been flawed but she remembered him nearly as fondly as Claire did. She hadn't forgotten the man who had trekked out into the jungle with them their second day on the island to get the transceiver, who'd come with the group to try and get a signal from it and who clearly had wanted to know: "Where are we?" Her heart had truly hurt when she'd seen him hanging from his neck and how sure she was he was dead. She knew Charlie was flawed - they all did – but she'd known he was a noble soul well before he'd gone on what he'd known would be a one-way trip to the Looking Glass. She didn't miss him as badly as Claire or Hurley did, but there were times it still hurt. Somehow, in the midst of all the horrible things Ben and his people had done to them those three months, she had allowed herself to forget what they had done to Charlie.

Now seeing the hostility on Claire's face, she saw this was one last victory the Others had managed before they had gotten off the island, one last trauma that would never fully heal.

"Are you sure about this Claire?" Kate said slowly.

Claire's glance never shifted from Ben. "We need him. And I won't let my desires for vengeance cloud my judgment. I won't be like him."

Somehow that hurt even more than everything else Claire had said in the last hour. Ben had looked docile before; now he looked broken. Neither woman thought for a moment this was his true face, but they knew that he was well aware of how the thin the ice was beneath his feet.

"The terms, Benjamin, are as follows," Claire's shift to pure business was even more out of character for her than her hostility just five minutes earlier. "You're going to help us find exactly who is chasing us and what connection, if any they have to you and your people. Kate and I will act as representatives between you and our friends. As I told you, you're not safe from them."

"Am I safe from you?"

Claire took a page out of Ben's playbook. She didn't answer the question. "Whatever you ask for you will get, if it's within our capabilities, maybe even if it isn't. In return, you will give us complete and utter honesty in every interaction. Should you we suspect that you are hedging or trying to earn better terms, we will turn you over to the one person who wants to hurt you the most. I know that covers a lot of ground, Ben, but I can assure, it's not who you think it is."

Ben didn't seem to have any objections to this part. "What about Annie?"

This time Kate spoke up. "That's your problem to solve. Tell her whatever you want to tell her. Hell, maybe even tell her the truth if you think she can stand to hear it. If there's one thing you were always good at, it was making up a story."

Ben didn't even bother to deny that part. "If all of this works out, what do I get in return?"

Claire was clearly ready for this. "Whatever you want. If you do want to get back to the island, we might be able to make that happen. If you want to live in peace with Annie for the rest of your life, we'll allow you to do just that. Personally, I think there's far more to be said for domestic tranquility than there is to foraging for your own food in the middle of the Pacific, but to each his own. One last thing: should you choose to betray us, we won't exactly be shocked. It takes a lot of work for a tiger to change their stripes. Should you choose to do so, however, there will be consequences far beyond your capabilities to imagine."

"I have a great imagination," Ben said softly.

"Then let's be direct." Kate said bluntly. "You may think that you will be escape consequences if you do so. But you can't run from your sins. Not even there."

"No one could find it before," Ben reminded them.

"It's under new management now," Claire said plainly. "And they'd be less inclined to be forgiving then the old one."

THE NEXT DAY

"I'm surprised after everything, you still think he'll just show up," Kate said as she sipped her coffee.

"Ben Linus is many things but he's not an idiot," Claire reminded her,

Kate shook her head. "I still can't believe that last bit worked, "she said. "And I'm used to these kinds of plays."

"It's not like it was a complete exaggeration on my part," Claire said sadly. "You know how hard it's been for me to move on without Charlie. I'm just surprised Ben, of all people, didn't realize it. I know you and Juliet in particular told me how good he is compartmentalizing everything he's done over the years. But I really didn't think he could just forget what had happened to Charlie."

Kate shrugged, "Maybe he really thought that because he didn't do it himself, he wasn't really responsible. Juliet mentioned that, too."

"It's one thing to just be 'following orders', it's another if you only give them?" Claire was frowning now.

"Like you said, he spent a lot of his life compartmentalizing," Kate reminded her.

A taxi pulled up to the café where they were waiting. Even though he'd told them to be here right at this time, both of them were still a little surprised to see Ben get out of it, carrying only a small bag.

"Are you alone?" Ben asked.

"No, we're all hiding in the trees around us," Kate indicated. "I give the word, everybody's going to light up torches."

"I'm glad you've kept your sense of humor," Ben said.

"You never forget your first time," Kate deadpanned.

"What did you tell Annie?" Claire asked.

"That I was helping some old friends with a problem."

"Pretty close to the truth for you," Kate said.

"How did she take it?" Claire asked.

"Do you care?" Ben said in the same tone.

"I wouldn't have, even a few days ago," Claire admitted. "But I was telling the truth about not wanting to ruin any more lives."

Ben looked at her. "There haven't been a lot of people in my life who've ever been completely honest without anything," he said slowly. "I'm not trying to use it as an excuse or a defense for my behavior. Just that I spent nearly thirty years on an island loyal to a man who never even deigned me worthy of his presence. All my life I was told to be patient. That ultimately everything would be made clear to me. I passed that along to my people and I can't imagine any of them were happier about it then I was."

He looked at Kate. "This new leadership, is it more open?"

"From what I understand, very much so."

Both women expected more questions from Ben, particularly who these new leaders were. Ben must have suspicions, probably a hypothesis as to who they were. But as they had come to expect, he continued to keep his cards close to the chest.

"The manifest for your flight," he said instead. "How much trouble would it be to get a copy?"

This was not a question they had expected. "Didn't you and your people have it memorized?" Kate asked. "And even if you didn't, what were those lists for?"

"My apologies," Ben said slowly. "There's no reason you should've known this. I didn't tell anyone about it, not even Richard."

What else is new? flashed through Kate's mind.

"After your plane crashed, a few days later I received another one of those lists that Jacob sent me. But in addition to everything else that we were dealing with at the time, I could see that there really was a potential threat." Ben held up his hand. "I recognized the names of one of the passengers."

That was something they genuinely hadn't known. "Where did you know him from?" Kate asked.

"A long time ago, he'd been a part of the Dharma Initiative. He was a little younger than me."

"I thought all the women and children were evacuated." Claire said.

"There were new recruits," Ben reminded them. "And he ended up leaving the island with his mother in 1986."

"Do we know who he is?" Kate asked.

"I'm honestly not sure," Ben admitted. "I never saw him in any of the media coverage about your rescue." He paused. "To be fair, I wasn't looking that closely."

That didn't seem the Ben they knew. "Why not?" Claire asked.

"Because I ordered Ethan to kill him. And before your boyfriend shot him, he told me he had."

AUTHOR'S NOTES

I really liked writing the Ben/Claire scene. I was planning to make her to be the same kind, warm woman we all knew. Then I remembered what happened to Charlie, and I honestly don't think even Claire could forgive Ben for what he did. And honestly, should she really?

For those who can't believe Claire couldn't even fake being that angry, let me remind you: Season 6, jungle hair Claire. Granted, she was abandoned for three years and left at the mercy of Smokey but we all know how much grief can hurt a person. (Sun anyone?)

I'm not pulling the last twist out of my ass. Instead, I'm actually going to solve one of the lesser (but nonetheless frustrating) mysteries of the series' early seasons. And if you were paying even closer attention then all the nerds out there (and that's even closer than I was) you might know what I'm hinting at. Revelations to follow…sort of.

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