This That And The Others: Fifth In The Series

by DavidB226Morris

It's been nearly three years since the Losties returned to civilization. They've found new jobs, gotten married, had children. They have every reason to believe the island is done with them. The problem is there are people out there who aren't done with the island. They want to get back there. And some of them were on Oceanic 815 before.

14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

"I'll admit that they did put you up in a classy place," Juliet said looking around. "I'll admit it's not as nice at the house you put me up in, but the location's much better."

"Look at this," Alex said, looking behind the bar. "I'm strictly a single malt guy, but this, you have to be living high on the hog to buy a glass of that at Joe's."

"Most expensive anesthetic we'll probably ever use," Izzie said in the living room. "Now do you think there's enough room in here for the kind of table we'd need?"

"Compared to where I had to operate in the past, I think it would be more than sufficient."

Nobody on the island had ever quite seen Ben Linus at this level of discomfort. He'd had every reason to be nervous when Juliet had walked into his hotel room ahead of the rest of them and his nerves hadn't improved when she had walked right past as if he weren't even there. Karev and Stevens had similarly ignored him, each of them caring what in decades past would have been considered a doctor's satchel. They had then walked to the bar, opened them and very casually started removing gauze, gloves – and surgical equipment.

"I think you've made your point, Juliet," Ben said.

"I realize it's your nature to want to have a conversation with the attending," Stevens cheerfully ignored him, "but she'll merely be supervising. Incidentally Dr. Carlson, we want to thank you for the degree of trust you've placed in us."

"I mean, letting us do our first solo field surgery," Karev told them. "In such sub-standard conditions too. Particularly considering our past history at Seattle Grace. I mean the fact that I failed my Med Kats the first time."

"And the fact that I haven't held a scalpel in nearly six months," Izzie was so cheerful it nearly set Ben's teeth on end. "By the way the tremors have almost entirely gone away."

"Well, you know what I find steadies the hand before surgery," Juliet said just as cheerfully. "A good shot of whiskey!"

"Obviously," Izzie said, reaching for a glass. "That's why all the doctors at our hospital go to Joe's when they're on call. Got to be ready to scrub up."

"Oh, and we can use it to sterilize the instruments when we're done!" Alex said.

Juliet walked over to the bar. "Now remember, cardiac surgery is difficult under the most ideal of circumstances. But considering our patient's heart is, by last account at least three sizes too small, you're going to need to do a lot more cutting than usual before you find it."

"Hmmm, "Stevens said thoughtfully. "Maybe we should've considered taking him to Seattle Grace."

The doctors considered this. "Nah," Karev said. "I mean you hear the darnedest rumors about that hospital."

"The OR flooded."

"Doctors having sex in the elevator."

"Nursing staff went on strike."

"Doctors having sex in the locker room."

"Interns operating on patients without the attendings knowing it."

"Doctors having sex in the stairwell."

Juliet rubbed her chin. "Why is everyone in the hospital having sex except me?"

"Well, it's not all roses," Karev said. "There was a raging case of Chlamydia among the staff a couple of years back. One of the interns passed it around."

"You can never trust interns," Stevens said conversationally. "I heard a few months the interns actually started operating on themselves. One of them actually tried to give herself an appendectomy."

"Doesn't say much for the people who taught them." Karev said. "Or for that matter the hospital they train at."

"How much longer does this Marx Brothers routine have to go on?" Ben finally shouted in exasperation.

There was a pause. "You know I never understood your obsession with theatricality and performances until right about now," Juliet was finally looking at him, and it wasn't pleasant.

"I realize you have cause to be upset with me," Ben tried again.

"No Kate has cause to be upset with you. Locke has cause to shoot you in the gut. Jack has cause to beat you to a pulp." Juliet reminded him. "But they don't know you like I do."

She started walking towards him. "I was your prisoner and your hostage for three years. For some reason that wasn't good enough for you. I don't know whatever psychosexual obsession you had with me was based on, and you know something I don't care. Not now. Not then."

Just a hint of the old Ben momentarily resurfaced. "You betrayed me to Jack and his friends and you helped ten people die who you lived with for three years."

A hint of emotion appeared on Juliet's face. "I helped bury them before I left. I thought we were about to be rescued, and I knew there wouldn't be time. But Hugo and Jin helped me bury them all. Can you imagine how hard that is? Digging a grave for someone who had a gun to your head just an hour earlier? But they did it because they were good people."

Juliet actually looked sad. "I wasn't an idiot. When I told Jack what you were planning, I knew that I was signing the death warrants of my friends. Of Justin and Tom and Diane and Isabel and Ryan. They'd been in my house. We'd had meals together. Commiserated after surgeries went wrong. Been to book club with me. Of all the horrible things that happened those three years that really was the most painful. Do you know how I gathered the coldness to do it?" Now the emotion was gone, replaced with spite and steel. "I had a good teacher."

Ben actually looked nervous now.

"Watching you those three years. Using people like they were chess pieces in some great plan that it turned out you actually knew nothing about." Juliet was walking towards him now. "Did Jacob even care about the problem you brought me there to solve or was I just another name on another list? When you made me stay on the island rather than try any other kind of experimentation, were those Jacob's rules or your own? Don't bother answering. Because you never saw Jacob and even you did Rachael's cancer never came back."

Ben was trying to find a way to answer. "You have to understand –"

"If I'd followed my mission would you really have let me leave the island then?"

For a man who always seemed capable of talking his way out of everything, the fact that Ben said nothing spoke volumes.

"I played your game for three years. I believed in your dream. I was actually going to let Sun die because I believed it. Now we're back in the middle of it. You are going to tell us everything you know. Everything. Or the little performance we just acted out. It will be the least of your worries."

"Promise me you'll keep her safe," Ben finally spoke up.

Juliet was momentarily thrown, "Who?"

"Maybe that's the reason I focused so much on you," Ben walked away. "She was the only person in my whole lousy childhood who ever didn't think I was a waste of time. After she left… I was glad she wasn't on the island, but I didn't know I'd never be able to find her again."

Karev, who Ben and Juliet had almost forgotten was still in the room, spoke up. "Is that why you left the island so many times?"

"I told everybody I was protecting the island from Widmore. And I was. But I was looking for Annie too." Ben said slowly. "But then when I learned about what happened when women got pregnant on the island I knew I couldn't dare bring her back. And considering everything Widmore knew about me, I knew I couldn't keep searching for her. My loyalty was to the island."

Izzie looked sympathetic. "Was that why you focused on getting Juliet?"

"It's lonely being the Wizard," Ben said slowly. "I was loyal and did everything Jacob told me to do for more than twenty years. I sacrificed everything for the island. And what did I ever get in return? No one ever trusted me. No one ever liked me. And why should they? The only reason they believed me was a lie. I lied to the only person who ever loved me unconditionally about who her mother was. And when she learned the truth, she betrayed me. I demanded total loyalty and I never deserved it."

Juliet was genuinely thrown. Ben had displayed more honesty in the last five minutes than in the entire three years she had known him. "Was being in charge that important to you?"

Ben laughed humorlessly. "I wasn't in charge of anything. I just got really good at pretending. The only one in our camp who really knew better was Richard and that's because he was the only one left from the time I was recruited. He thought I was special. And the second Locke showed up he turned his attention to him. Even if you hadn't betrayed me, my time was just about over. I just couldn't accept it."

Juliet searched Ben's tone and expression for the usual falsities and was astonished to find that none of them were there.

"So we do have that in common after all," Ben said. "After the last few years I wanted to do something I had never gotten to do in my entire life. Live in peace and enjoy the love of another person. But I guess we shouldn't be shocked. It doesn't matter who's in charge. If the island isn't done with you, it won't let you go."

Juliet didn't think something this was possible but she believed Ben. All the time she'd been on the island he had always referred to it and Jacob in the most reverent terms. This was the first time she could remember talking about it with disdain.

"I have to ask something. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't," Izzie hadn't dared speak up during this interaction – she knew how important it was to her friend – but they had reached a point that she couldn't avoid asking the question any longer. "I've heard you and John in particular talk about the island as some kind of holy place. And that I can accept. But the two of you also have this way of talking as if the island itself was…" It took her a long time to say the word, and even then, it didn't sound like the right one. "…sentient."

Ben didn't seem that shocked by the question. "I had a lot of time to think about it over the years. It's hard enough to accept the idea that there's a god, much less that he lives on an island in the Pacific. And as long as Richard talked about Jacob, I could accept that idea. That was difficult, but I managed to do it. But when you never see Jacob you focus your worship on where he lives. And that's what religion is. Believing that God favors where you live. But the idea that the man who's supposed to be in charge is really being commanded by it… that's an even more terrifying notion than blind faith. To answer your question, I don't know. But some part of me really does believe it."

"Great," Alex muttered. "It's The Da Vinci Code in the Pacific."

"Please," Ben said dismissively. "That's just pap."

Juliet nodded almost reflexively. "We wouldn't even have let that in book club."

"I'm sorry. I'm just really not able to think of things in this heavy a term," Alex actually sounded apologetic. "This whole thing, it's hard for us to wrap our heads around. If I can think of it terms of a crappy action movie with bad guys fighting to gain control of something mystical that even they only vaguely understand, it makes a little easier."

Ben looked as if he'd never considered this as an option before. "You really think if I'd explained that basically people would've listened to me?" he asked Juliet.

Juliet didn't seem that shocked that he was talking to her as a peer less than five minutes after all this emotional outpouring. "It might have helped. Of course, honesty in general might've done you well in general."

Ben took this without insult. "Everything was relative on the island," he said slowly. "The whole time the survivors were on the island, they called us 'The Others' even though the phrase would've fit as well from our perspective. When the Dharma Initiative came to the island, they were the Hostiles and I have no doubt Richard and whoever was in charge at the time thought the same about them. In retrospect when you send spies to a group of crash survivors and abduct many of them, calling yourself 'the good guys' seemed facetious at best. I can't exactly blame Jack for not believing me when I tried to warn him about the freighter being a threat."

"Even though you were telling the truth," Juliet paused. "That time."

"So if we're willing to accept that these people, at their core, represent the same existential threat to the island," Izzie made it clear this was still a very big if at this point, "then they do have to be stopped. Now Jack and the rest are willing to do that and since people in our hospital have been dragged into this without knowing why, we have to get involved too. But I don't have to tell you that we can't play by whatever rules were used on the island."

"Unfortunately, that's the problem," Ben said. "I'm well aware that everybody who came back has to play by those rules. So do you and your friends. The problem is, these people won't and they will not hesitate to exploit any advantage they possibly can."

"Which is why we're here in the first place," Juliet found herself saying. "We need any advantage we have. And right now, hard as that is for us to accept, you're our only real one."

Ben looked a little depressed to hear that. Ironically, that made Juliet feel just the tiniest bit more of respect. Clearly he liked the situation as little as they did. "We're still operating one step behind," he said. "They knew about Robbins before any of us did, which means they no doubt no about the rest of your friends. Please tell me that you're at least protecting them."

"Are you kidding?" Izzie asked Ben. "The second Juliet learned Robbins had been taken we got the rest of them out of the hospital. Right now, two of our friends are getting them the hell out of Seattle."

"Where exactly are you keeping them?" Ben asked.

Everybody went silent. "They didn't tell us," Alex said. "Juliet knows but she said right now anyone who isn't directly connected to the plane crash should know anything they do next."

Izzie wondered if Ben would be insulted at this lack of trust. On the contrary, he seemed impressed. "Well, I guess you and your friends did learn something from their experiences."

"I guess if you get drugged and abducted enough in the middle of the night, you do learn a lesson or too," Alex couldn't help another little dig.

Ben shrugged it off. "Just tell me they weren't stupid enough to try and hide them in Los Angeles," he asked.

"We figured that would be the second place their people would look," Juliet acknowledged. "No we're taking them the last place even these people would think to look."

"And you're sure of this because…" Ben said?"

Juliet grimaced. "It's the last place that some of us want to go."

ALBEQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

From the moment that Arizona Robbins had been taken, all of the survivors knew something with crystal clarity: the rest of the people on the list had to hide. And fortunately for them one of the castaways had been an expert at it long before she was brought on to Oceanic 815 in handcuffs.

Kate knew how hard it was for a single person to run away and it was going to be even harder for five people to make a quick escape. Fortunately, she had an asset that she hadn't had access to when she'd escaped from Edward Mars nearly six years earlier.

Penny may not have had the devious and corrupt nature of her father, but she was no less industrious when it came to exploiting the same resources he had spent a lifetime doing. In a matter of hours she had managed to create a series of documents saying that Derek Shepherd, Mark Sloan, Lexie Grey and George O'Malley were attending a medical convention in Boston for a week. Plane tickets, hotel reservations and an itinerary had been designed. She'd also hired body doubles to be spotted getting on a plane from Seattle to Boston that night. It wouldn't fool their pursuers for that long – at most, no more than a day and a half – but it would buy Kate enough time to drive them out of state and to their hideout.

Jack, understandably, had insisted that somebody accompany Kate – not so much for her protection but for everyone else's. Kate didn't argue the point, but the question had come to who would go with her. Sayid, Jin and Sun might attract attention for the wrong reason and Michael wasn't willing to go without Walt. James had considered coming but based on who was waiting for them at the end of the journey he admitted they didn't need the headache. The final decision did come as something of a surprise – though considering that for most of their time on the island they'd had a decent relationship, maybe it shouldn't have.

"I have to admit Kate," Locke said as they drove down the final stretch of highway "I didn't really think you'd want me to come."

"My husband has been willing to make up with you," Kate said. "Considering how long he tends to hold a grudge, I figured it would be petty of me to do the same. Just do me a favor."

"Name it," Locke said.

"Unless I ask you, don't blow up the car."

"Is that another one of those in-jokes we're better off not getting?" Lexi asked from the back seat.

"Trust me. There are a lot of those," George said. "You sure this person will be willing to help us?"

"That's the fifth time you've asked that question, O'Malley," Sloane said.

"We all agreed to get in this car, get driven two days straight through what five states, and get assured that at the other end of this trip is someone who absolutely will help us," George reminded them. "Someone who doesn't have a connection to the island but rather to you. I tried not to be a little more scared than I already am, considering that one of our drivers has a rap sheet and remind myself that Alex and Izzie wouldn't willing let us go to, let's say, Hannibal Lecter's winter house to protect us. I even let it go that you want to tell me who this person is. Now that it's way too late to back out I don't need to know this person's name or how you know them. All I really need to know is why you're so certain this person will protect four total strangers who show up on their door just on your say so."

Kate finally decided to answer. "Six months after – I did what I did, I went back to Iowa to confront my mother. I met this woman in a gas station trying to pull a half-assed con. They threatened to call the cops and I bailed her out. When she asked me why and I gave her a half-assed response, she called me on my bullshit right away. We got a drink in a dive bar and we told our stories. Three months ago a man had conned her out of her life savings. I told her I needed to talk to my mother. She offered to help me, even though I'd only known her an hour. Because of her, I was able to get the answers I wanted. And as horrible as it was, I'm still grateful she helped me."

Lexi had focused on one particular word in that story. "Let me take a wild guess. The man who conned your friend out of her life-savings was blond, had a southern accent and went by the name of Sawyer."

"If I'd known she was going to take my advice and turn him in, maybe I wouldn't have been so quick to judge," Kate said sadly. "Then again, she never told me his name. Or that he'd gotten her pregnant."

George was the only one who had heard that story. "So is that why she's going to help you? Because you helped her get justice?"

"I didn't much care or believe in justice," Kate said honestly. "I thought that a bad person needs to pay for doing something wrong. And I don't think even James would argue that point. The point is we helped each other at a bad time in our lives. That kind of debt carries over."

There was a silence as they considered this. "Since you're answering questions now, there's one that's been bothering me ever since Jack and Carlson started telling me what happened on the island," Sloane said. "And since you can't exactly dodge it here, maybe you can answer it."

Kate had an idea what the question was going to be. "Go ahead."

"From the second day of the plane crash Jack tells me that every time somebody tried to get all of you rescued, you volunteered," Sloane told them. "No matter how dangerous or even if there were more qualified people for the job, you were always the first with your hand up. Sometimes even if you weren't asked."

Derek knew that his best friend had a habit of asking question that even if they needed to be asked could only lead to hurtful responses. He didn't, however, tell his friend to shut up because honestly he couldn't figure it out either.

"You were a marshal's prisoner when you got on the plane," Sloane went on. "It was pretty much the worst kept secret the first month on the island until it became public knowledge. You knew what was going to happen the second you and your friends returned to civilization. And in fact that's exactly what did happen to you."

"What's your question?" Kate asked.

"I can get, at least in the abstract, why Locke here wouldn't want to be rescued," Sloane said. "I don't believe in any form of organized religion but if I'd been in John's situation and what happened, happened, I'd probably be willing to believe in miracles. But the thing is you knew what would happen when you left the island. Why were you helping build rafts instead of blowing them up?"

"I didn't exactly do that, but honestly the thought crossed my mind more than once," Locke admitted. "I understand why you wouldn't what to join the Others but you had a more legitimate reason to stay than anyone else. Why did you try so hard to leave?"

Kate was quiet for so long that everyone else car assumed she wasn't going to answer. When she finally spoke it seemed to be about something unrelated. "Edward asked me when he was taking me into the custody the first time why I did it," she said slowly. "Why after all the years of seeing Diane take his abuse and watching him just…looks at me some times, I finally snapped and killed him. All those years I'd been telling myself that my father, the man who loved me, the only person who cared about me, didn't care enough about me to take me with him when she left him."

The people in the back had been in enough scenarios like this to know that you just let the victim talk when they open about their abuse. Locke, who'd been in similar situations growing up in foster care, similarly kept quiet.

"A week before I was making a scrapbook for my father's birthday. That's when I found out that he'd been overseas until Diane was four months pregnant with me. That's when I knew Wayne was…" Even after all this time, it still hurt to say it, "…my real father. And worse, the man who'd done all those horrible things to me and Diane was somehow a part of me."

"Is that why you…" George was tactful even now.

"Diane told me I killed the man she loved and that I'd done it because I was selfish," Kate said. "She was talking out of her ass, but a crumb of it was true. All my life I'd been trying to run away from him. When I learned who Wayne really was, that's when I knew for sure I could never get away from him. So that's why I killed him and that's why I never stopped running. As long as I was in motion, as long as I kept moving I could forget where I came from. "

"'Man is born free, but he is forever in chains'" Everyone looked at Locke. "A line from the real Rousseau. We were more alike than you think, Kate. I was a prisoner too when I got on the plane. The island gave both of us freedom, but neither of us could deal with it."

"Is that why you were so determined to keep us on the island?" Kate asked. "Or appeared that you were?"

Locke hesitated. "At one point Ben asked me if the reason I wanted to stay on the island so badly was because it was the one place my father could never find me. Now to be clear, he was talking out of his ass the same way your mother was about why you did what you did. More so, in fact, because when he said it to me, he was as always lying."

"He'd somehow got your father to the island already," Kate explained.

Locke shook his head. "'Magic box'", he muttered. "But just as there was a crumb of truth in what your mother said to you, there was one here. On the island I was free of the horrible life that I'd led. A life that my father had gone out of his way to ruin."

"Well, from what I understand from Jack and based on what the rest of your friends have told me over the last couple of years," George said carefully. "none of you who survived this crash had a perfect life. All of you were kind of miserable. Lousy parents, lousy relationships, and not a lot of support from anybody. Now I'm not saying that was exclusive to you guys – a lot of us have had similar problems. I was in a terrible place before Jack came to the hospital."

"I can't exactly things were thrilling for me when I started my residency," Lexie thought for a second. "Do you think…that's some kind of prerequisite to ending up on that list?"

Neither Locke nor Kate answered right away. "The world is not a fair place," Locke said slowly. "And I'm not going to lie I think one of the reason so many of us ended up on the island was because of what happened to us. But the major difference from the people in this car – and Alex and Izzie, for that matter – is that the rest of you have people in your lives. Friends, family, spouses. A support system that actually matters. In other words, if you got on a plane and it crashed there would people who really cared what happened to you."

"I can be blunt at times but damn, that's cold." Sloane said.

"John's not exactly wrong," Kate pointed out. "There weren't exactly a huge amount of people waiting to be reunited with us when we landed in Hawaii. Sam sure as hell wasn't there. Sayid had family still alive in Iraq and none of them showed up. Neither did Jin's father. Sun's parents were there and I'm pretty sure she never wanted to see her father at all. James had no one waiting for him. And that's just parents. Except for Hurley, none of us had any brothers and sisters waiting for us. Well, Juliet's has a sister but we couldn't exactly make that public right away. Aside from Sun and Jin, there were no spouses there. Basically, until the plane crashed all of us were isolated. Alone. "

She looked back at them. "Jack made a lot of jokes over the last few years about all the sex that was being had behind closed doors in your hospital. And he might occasionally some of your competency as physicians. But none of us doubt that there are real bonds there. You said I was blunt before. Here's a brutal truth. I don't think anybody really gave a damn when they thought some of us were dead. I'm driving you across five states not only because all of you are in danger, but because if something were to happen to you people would grieve. And I've been to far too many funerals already."

Sloane considered this. "If I were more confident in my masculinity I'd be brushing back a tear right now."

"I'm not and I still am," George said.

"Speaking about the drive, is that the turnoff?" Locke asked casually.

"It is," Kate said. "We're just about there."

And five minutes later they pulled up to a nice looking house. "Stay here until she gives me the all clear," Kate said. "I did call her before but I need to be certain."

She walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

Cassidy Philips opened it. "Is there ever going to come a time when you visit and I won't feel like trouble is on the way?"

Kate smiled and hugged her friend. "You knew from the moment we met that this was never going to be an ordinary relationship."

"To be fair, I wasn't certain I was ever going to see you again after that," Cassidy admitted. "The rest of your friends are in that car?"

"Friends is something of a loose term for one or two, but they're all good people."

"And the reason you're hiding them here again instead of just going to the cops?"

Kate raised an eyebrow. "When has that ever gone well for me?" Then in a more serious tone: "The people who want them, cops don't scare them."

"Well that just makes me want to throw my doors open to them," Cassidy said in a similar tone.

"This is probably the last place they'd think to look." Kate said.

Which was true. Kate had made sure with both Juliet that while Cassidy was in the file as the person who'd turned 'Sawyer' in for his con, they had not continued to track her the same way they had all the spouses and siblings that were in the files that Mikhail had compiled on the island. Juliet hadn't even known of Clementine's existence until James had told her when they had returned to civilization. Even if the people trying to hunt down the doctors in the car were going to start a place by place search for potential hideouts, it seemed a good bet that, with the possible exception of one of Anthony Cooper's old houses, this was the last place any of them would look. As safehouses went, this seemed like a good bet.

"I'm going to regret this decision, aren't I?" Cassidy asked.

"Probably. But it's still the right thing to do," Kate reminded her.

"You did tell them there's only one guest room?" Cassidy asked.

"Like I said, two of them are together, two of them are doctors so there's used to sleeping on the floor if they have to," Kate smiled. "And then there's Locke. I'm still not a hundred percent sure he ever sleeps."

LGLGLG

"Aren't you too big to be watching Sesame Street?"

"My kid's getting around that age," Mark said in a tone that almost nobody at the hospital would have recognized. "I think I have to get ready for it. Now which one is Bert and which one is Ernie?"

Cassidy looked him in a way that really did remind Kate of her father. "You really can't tell?"

"Never was my thing. Electric Company, that was my show," Sloane said.

"What's that?"

Sloane looked bemused. "Before your time and it wasn't around that long anyway." He looked at her. "How's your reading coming?"

Cassidy lifted up a nearby copy of Green Eggs and Ham.

Derek was shaking his head. "Mark Sloane, father figure. I never thought I'd see the day."

Lexi looked at Derek. "You two thinking about kids yet?"

"I assume you mean after we get out of Oceanic Witness Protection," Derek shrugged. "Meredith had a horrible mother so to say she's still skittish is the understatement of the year. But she's been talking about it more recently. She said next year, when the residency comes to an end, she'd been willing to start trying."

"She could just be stalling. We all know how good she is at that," Lexie pointed out.

"I know. But ever since the clinical trial she talks about the future more. I think she's just about there," Derek looked at her. "All right, sister-in-law, your turn."

"You presume that McSteamy and I are ever going to have that kind of future."

"You've been together a year and a half. Setting aside my ex-wife, that's by far the longest relationship he's ever had," Derek told her.

"He's already a part-time father. Not to mention I think its going to be even further down the road for me," Lexi paused. "My niece, I like playing with her and singing songs to her, but that's still a ways from me wanting to do it myself."

She looked at Kate who was still looking out the window. "What about you?"

"You mean assuming we all survive this latest adventure," Kate said without looking away.

"I guess you're not as optimistic as the rest of us," Derek said. The moment the words left his mouth he winced. Of course she wasn't. Given everything that had happened to her before she'd been forced on the plane, Kate was probably far more used to the worst case scenario being the real one. And that was before you considered the all-too casual remark she'd made about attending funerals - the kind no doubt where she'd had to help dig the graves of her own friends.

"I don't know if I ever seriously considered being a mother. It's not like a great role model," Kate looked away from the window. "Except one time. My first marriage. Kevin never knew my real name but I was happier with him than I could remember being. I actually wanted to stop running. One day I thought I might be pregnant. I took a test and I made a deal with myself. If it was positive I would stop running and stay with Kevin. If it was negative, I'd leave. Considering I'm here, I think we all know how turned out."

"I'm sorry," Derek said slowly.

"It's all right. Enough time has gone by that I actually feel I can live with what I've done," Kate told them. "Jack's been great about it, by the way. He knows he has less time to consider it than I do, and he's got nearly as many painful memories growing up as I do. But being around Aaron has been great for both of us. Because now we have a real family along with the figurative one. We think its something both of us can do. So maybe if everything goes well…." She trailed off, but she was smiling this time.

Locke, who'd been giving Kate and the rest privacy, came back holding one of the burner phones they'd purchased before going on this trip. "I made contact. Gave them the all clear." He snapped the phone in half.

"How long do you think we'll need to hide out?" George asked.

"Until our friends in Seattle figure out the next phase."

"Are you going to tell us what that is?"

"You're assuming we know that part ourselves," Kate told them. "We need somebody who has a clue as to what we're up against. Ben – the man we told you about – has agreed to help but even he admits the lion's shares of his contacts are two years out of date."

"So Jack and the others are going to find the only person who might be able to tell us what we need to know," Locke said.

"And what makes you so sure they can?" Lexi asked.

"Because she seems to have the ability to know what happens before it does."

LOS ANGELES

OUTSIDE THE LAMPPOST STATION

"That old line that a criminal never returns to the scene of the crime," Desmond said as he walked into the nave of the church. "I never really believed it."

"You always had something of a limited imagination," the old woman said, not stopping from her candle lighting.

"It's been expanding considerably the past ten years," Desmond said. "I'd say I have you to thank for it, but I'll be damned if I thank you for anything."

"Is that how you found me?" Eloise Hawking still hadn't turned around.

"Honestly, this was the last place we thought to look," James admitted, walking up behind Desmond. "With all the added security measures that have been taken not to mention the fact the enemy is no doubt looking for this place right now, we didn't think anyone – much less someone with your apparent foresight – would be dumb enough to come back here. There might have been sentiment involved, but based on what we know about you we don't think you have a sentimental bone in your body. So basically it came down to the only thing we knew for certain."

"And what's that?"

"That you've always thought of the bigger picture. That you always thought things were supposed to happen a certain way. That's the real reason you're here. You came here because it was your path."

Even now Eloise didn't react directly at the cruelness in the speaker's voice. She just slowly got up and turned around – mechanically, like she was supposed to do it.

"Hello, mother," Dan said.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

Yes, it's the Juliet/Ben confrontation. I wanted to show that Juliet had learned a few tricks at play acting herself so I let her do that little three part act with Alex and Izzie about deciding to cut Ben to ribbons. (BTW, for those of you who never watched Grey's Anatomy everything that Alex and Izzie were joking about not only happened but some of them were storylines.)

If you watch the Season 4 premiere in the background you'll see Juliet burying the dead. She wasn't a monster like Ben, I can't imagine how hard it was for her to see people she'd lived with for three years being mowed down one by one. This explains her part.

Sympathy for the devil? In the second half of the series as dark as Ben's character got we increasingly felt sorry for him as we realized just how much of an act everything we saw in Season 3 really was. When Ben gave that speech about Thomas the apostle just before they returned to the island, I think a lot of it could have applied to him at times – its hard to believe after everything that happened that his faith in the island didn't waiver a little, especially after he got cancer.

Maybe I'm giving him too much credit that he would spend his time off the island looking for Annie but I know from his relationship with Alex that Ben was capable of showing love. He just never had the best role models.

A question that has no doubt plagued Lost fans since the Pilot: just why was Kate so desperate to make sure everybody got rescued? It's always been difficult to try and figure out Kate's psychology; this is as close an explanation as I've been able to come up with after more than a decade.

Almost every major character on Lost was isolated in some way. It wasn't merely the bad parental situations; almost none of them had siblings involved in their lives, their romantic situations were nearly as bad as their parental ones, and I'll be damned if any of them had any real close friends in their lives. How much of that was because of Jacob will never be clear, but there were never a lot of people waiting for them at home. Say what you will about the relationships on Grey's Anatomy; I don't think any of the characters on Lost ever had a friendship (pre Oceanic) that was as deep as Meredith's and Christina's. In that sense Kate's bluntness about the difference between the people on the list in this story is justified.

Yes Cassidy is back. Considering she didn't seem to be on the radar of the Others the same way everybody else was, I think there's a chance she'd be on the same way.

It's hard to believe but when I first pictured this story I wanted to have a major plotline where Jack and James are both contemplating fatherhood? Oh my, how far I've come from that concept. Well, maybe later on.

It was inevitable that Eloise would get involved again. But she may not be here for the reason you're thinking. Still there's going to be a lot of anger expressed in the next chapter.

The end keeps getting further away; I have a feeling this story will be a two parter.

Keep reading and reviewing: I feast on praise and pans alike.