Chapter 2

Ever since Ben Linus had been exiled from the island, there were many things he was still used too.

It wasn't just indoor plumbing or sleeping in beds - even after the Purge, he'd spent quite a little time in civilization. It was something far more important.

It was being happy, for one. It wasn't until several months after he and Annie had moved in together that he realized the major difference. For the first time perhaps in his entire life, he was living for himself and not some higher purpose. He'd spent so much time protecting the island that it was only after he'd left that he'd come to realize that he'd basically become one himself. Even the love he had felt for Alex – perhaps the only unconditional love he'd felt in his life – had been fundamentally stolen. He had taken a baby from her mother. He'd spent her entire life justifying that he had saved both Alex and Danielle from death, but it didn't change the fact his daughter had spent her entire childhood not knowing her mother and that he helped drive a woman insane. It had been selfish and if he was being honest, Alex had been pulling away from for awhile for her own suspicions.

Annie, by contrast, had never judged him. She knew what he had done in his life – he'd been honest for perhaps the first time in his adult life – and she understood. Hell, she even blamed herself in part – she knew how important the two of them had been to each other, and she had an idea what life with his father had been like. But he'd begged her not to tell anyone – mainly because he had wanted to join Richard and his people. Then she'd been gone, and he had no one. The fact that she'd had no control about leaving didn't change the fact. That was the kind of person she was.

So he wasn't burdened by the island any more. The guilt was still there – he'd woken from nightmares every so often – but it was easing. The longer he was gone, the more he was beginning to seriously wonder why he wasted his life on something that was never going to fill the piece in him that was missing.

That actually brought him to one of the other things he was having troubled getting used too – having friends. Things were still fundamentally awkward between him and the survivors - James had been bluntest about it when he said "Hallmark don't exactly make a card for locking you in a polar bear cage and thinking your heart was going to explode." – and he was pretty sure that Michael and Walt in particular might never be able to find it in their hearts to look at him. He was stunned that John of all people had managed to find forgiveness for him – there wasn't exactly a flower arrangement for shooting you and leaving you to die in a pit of all the other people you've helped kill. Then again, given everything that had happened afterward, maybe he considered the debt repaid.

Karev and Stevens, perhaps because they only knew about his travesties second hand, had been warmer to him. They weren't willing to call him a hero, but both had gone through enough in their own lives even before they had met Ben to be far less inclined to pass judgment. Even more unlikely, Meredith Grey had also been willing to trust him. She was willing admit that might say less about him but more about her, but considering what the two of them had been talking about the last several weeks, that trust counted for a lot.

Then he heard his cell ring. Another thing he was having trouble getting used to – caller ID. "Annie," he said to his wife as they were finishing dinner. "It's Meredith."

Annie nodded. "Send her my best."

He picked up. "This business or pleasure?"

"Perhaps a bit of each. Hang on, I'll put you on speaker."

Ben found his mouth twitching into a smile. Was he now the kind of man who liked group chats with his friends? Locke would be so….well, given where they both were these days, he'd probably understand.

"Ben, you're on with the brain trust," Karev said – it still hurt too much to refer to him as Alex.

"That's an apt choice of phrase considering what we're trying to be doing," Ben said. "Or is that the reason you called?"

"It is actually," Meredith said. "It took a little bit of arm twisting and at least two subtle digs at the Chief for the fact he spent much of my childhood doing my mother, but we officially have approval."

Ben blinked. "I've learned too much about your hospital to be certain: how much of that was sarcasm?"

"More than you'd thinking," Meredith said honestly. "I mean, considering how successful – dare I say groundbreaking - the first two clinical trials I've been associated with have been, you would have thought that would have earned enough latitude to go slightly off the reservation with my next one."

"In Weber's defense, what we're talking about goes quite a bit towards fringe science," Ben told her. "It would not have shocked me if some of the people at Dharma would have issues with it, and bare in mind, one of our stations was dealing with the possibility of time travel."

"You're not getting cold feet now, are you Ben?" Izzie asked.

"I'm merely reminding you that I originally came to the island to join a group that had to abandon civilization to test the fields of science," Ben said. "I'm not exactly stunned that Weber, who has spent his life devoted to it would have issues doing something similar in one of the top hospitals in the country. "

"Nor does it help matters that at least some of the subjects are going to be members of his staff," Meredith admitted. "Given that fairly recently, several interns were suspended for literally operating on themselves, he's less than thrilled to learn that residents are now doing variations on it."

"Even if you're not trying to take out your own appendix?" Ben had heard that story from Meredith and still wasn't sure he believed it.

"We're going to be messing around with our brains," Izzie reminded him. "You can survive a botched appendectomy."

"Izzie, you've been through the research," Meredith said. "We're not going to be doing anything that invasive."

"I'm not backing off; I'm part of the study," Izzie said. "But I do understand they're might be risks involved, and I've already had a hole chopped in my head."

"How much criticism are you getting from your husband?" Ben asked.

"Surprisingly little," Meredith said. "He admits there's a fringe part this to this he's not happy with, but when I told him what was at the core of it, he relented."

"How much help are we getting from the…" Ben trailed off.

"That's going to be trickier," Karev admitted. "For reasons that you of all people should understand, most of them don't want to put themselves under this particular microscope. With the exception of Hurley."

"Well, that makes sense," Ben acknowledged. "Is he the one who came through with the funding?"

"No," Stevens said. "He wants to be part of the study, and he knows there's going to be a bias if the foundation is responsible for this."

"Caesar's wife must be beyond reproach," Ben said absently.

There was a pause. "Is that actually in the play or is one of those early Roman saying's that none of us would have heard of?"

Ben blinked a little. "You remember Julius Caesar."

"We did go to college and high school, Ben; it's not like we didn't at least once take and Advanced Lit course," Meredith said.

"Oh, you misunderstand, I'm fully aware of the education you've had. I just thought, given your priorities, the liberal arts would be something you'd barely pay attention too."

"You have to remember when we grew up," Meredith reminded him. "Every year, there'd be three, maybe four adaptations of Shakespeare's work in every movie theater we went to. We might not have gone to those movies, but it doesn't mean we weren't aware of them. Probably more than you were."

"Touché." Ben admitted.

"Besides, while I was recovery from my surgery last year, I had to spend a lot of time reading to make sure my memory retention was getting back to normal," Izzie said. "I figured I might see I could remember my old course load."

Ben couldn't help but be curious. "Which Shakespeare did you look at?"

"Mostly the greatest hits: Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, I did try some of the history plays as well, they don't usually get the same publicity that both of the tragedies do." Izzie said casually. "Is it true that Shakespeare intended to have Falstaff show up in Henry V but changed his mind?"

"I think so," Ben said. "Given how much he dominated both parts of Henry IV, he probably didn't want to overdo it on?"

"This may be a stupid question, but the history plays; Shakespeare didn't write them, you know, chronologically?" Alex asked.

"It's actually not a stupid question; given how theater is these days, you'd expect that," Ben admitted. "I don't know the exact order, but I do know Henry VI was a very early play and Henry IV and V came later."

"I had a feeling you might know that one," Izzie said.

"Why would I…oh," Ben remembered his Shakespeare. "Are you now comparing me to Richard III?"

"It is one of the most famous plays in his repertoire," Meredith said. "And for a place about British royalty, it gets filmed more than most of the rest do."

"You'll have to enlighten me; the island didn't exactly subscribe to Netflix," Ben said.

"Around the time I was eighteen, Al Pacino did a documentary called Looking for Richard," Karev said. "I wasn't much into documentaries or even Shakespeare at the time, but I was a big Pacino fan so I saw it. Apparently it was preparation for a production that Pacino was starring in, and in order to give himself a clear picture, he basically went through the entire play with scholars and some of the cast members, explaining what was historically accurate and what was invention. I was never much for scholarly work, but I would have seen that production in a heartbeat."

"You do know that just because he was writing about history it wasn't truly what happened?" Ben asked.

"Dramatic license may not have been a term, but Shakespeare had to know what it meant," Stevens said. "God knows, he'd have to considering the endless variations filmmakers have been altering his works for the last thirty years."

"I know," Meredith said. "There was a period in college when it seemed like Julia Stiles was playing a teenage version of every Shakespearean heroine. Don't get me wrong, she's a hell of an actress but couldn't they have found someone else?"

"Do I need to know what these films are?" Ben asked.

"Not unless while you were on the island you were desperately missing rom-com," Ben could tell Stevens was rolling her eyes. "Some really good careers got wasted on those films. But I think we've strayed a bit from the path."

"You're talking to a man who spent much of his adult life leading his followers down paths that had nothing to do with what they wanted to know," Ben said.

"We've talked to Jack and Juliet. We're very familiar with how you changed the subject when you didn't want to talk about something important," Karev said, in his usual subtle dig. Oddly enough, Ben didn't mind them as much as some of the ones he gotten from most of the survivors; he knew that this was part of Karev's nature rather than any outright hostility. His bluntness was refreshing.

"The point is, now that we have both the go-ahead and the financing, we thought it would be appropriate for you to drop by and discuss how exactly this would work," Meredith said. "And we thought this week would be appropriate for two specific reasons."

"For starters, everybody from Oceanic is going down to LA this weekend instead of the other way around," Izzie said slowly. "That should prevent any awkward reunions with your former…colleagues."

As much as he appreciated Karev's bluntness, he admired Izzie's tactfulness as much. She knew that there was no way in the world you could use the word 'friends' when it came to them, and there wasn't a homonym in the world that seemed remotely adequate. Ben was relieved Karev had stopped using words like 'victims', which unfortunately was the closest equivalent.

"You do know we're on speaking terms," he reminded them.

"I wouldn't have considered this possible if you weren't," Meredith assured him. "I know you did some truly horrible things to them on the island, but at least as far as Jack and Juliet are concerned, you did make up some ground by helping save Seattle Grace two months ago."

"It's a long term project," Ben admitted. "Redemption may be beyond my capacity, but atonement may not be out of the question. I think a project like this is at least part of the way."

"I'm glad you're thinking that way," Izzie said. "This may make the second part of it a little bit easier. Have you met Daniel Faraday and Charlotte Lewis?"

"I know who they are, but our paths have never crossed," Ben told her. "Which is odd, considering that Charlotte was part of Dharma at one point."

"Level with us. You have no memory of her even though she was on the island at least four of the years you were?" Karev was back to his bluntness. "I get why she wouldn't remember you; I barely remember anything when I was in grade school, much less nursery school. But those were your formative years; I find it hard to believe you wouldn't remember every member of Dharma, name, rank and serial number."

Ben decided to reveal something he had never told anyone. "I realize that my credibility with you isn't as bad as it with everyone who survived the plane crash, but this is going to hurt it, probably a bit."

"It's going to hurt it more if you aren't truthful," Meredith said.

"There are gaps in my memory of my childhood, some of which I've never been able to fully explain," he said slowly. "Most of them can be written off as the kinds of things that happen when you get older. But there's a very critical period in my youth where no matter how hard I try to think back on what happened it's like someone erased a tape."

There was a silence on the other end – not a doubtful one, more like three doctors considering the medical inferences of this. "Do you think this could have anything to do with how you ended up working for the Others?" Stevens finally asked.

And because Izzie Stevens was asking this and not Jack or Locke, Ben saw no reason to deflect. "It very well might."

"Then we have another reason for you to come her this weekend," Meredith said. "Dan and Charlotte want to have a conversation with you about your experiences on the island."

Ben thought for a moment. "I know they have knowledge of the island by marriage and family, but how much do they actually know about it?"

"As with everything connected with the island, this comes down to an unreliable narrator more than anything else," Izzie said.

"Well, I know who Daniel's mother is, and I can't say I'm shocked about that," Ben admitted. "You don't get to be leader of the Others without keeping your share of secrets. I never understood why she left the island in the first place, and given the second and third hand information I've heard on how she raised her son, I'm even more baffled as to why."

"I'd think you of all people would have sympathy," Karev said. "Being the leader of the Others and trying to be a good parent appear to be mutually incompatible."

Another dig, but considering the previous leaders, not entirely without merit. "In any case, they're assuming that I'd be willing to fill in some of the blanks for them," Ben summed up.

"You mentioned trying to atone for your sins," Meredith pointed out. "This would be a way to do it."

Ben couldn't deny that. "They're willing to fly in from London just to talk with me?"

"Actually, the two of them are moving stateside this fall," Izzie said. "Apparently Dan wants to finish his doctorate and he'd rather not do it at Oxford."

"Let me take a wild guess: Harvard?"

"That would be the obvious choice," Izzie said. "Apparently, he spent a couple of months in Essex, Massachusetts a few years ago on a New England tour and he always had fond memories of the place. Considering Charlotte's pedigree, the anthropology department made a very generous offer."

"And apparently he won't have to give up music entirely," Meredith said. "The Boston Pops was willing to coordinate with his schedule if he would be willing to participate in the occasional concert."

"And that's why they want to come down to Seattle. To see if I'd enlighten them."

Meredith hesitated. "Actually, they helped quite a bit with the funding for the project."

Ben was surprised to hear this. Based on what he knew about both Dan and Charlotte, they seemed to be as much students of science as Jack or Juliet had been even after they had spent time on the island.

"This is more our doing than anything else," Izzie admitted. "Alex and I had a couple of conversations with them around the same time we met you, mainly about my experience."

"How did they take it?" Ben couldn't help but ask.

"They were about as pissed as Jack was when they learned that Izzie and I had known about it for weeks and had treated is as normal," Karev admitted. "But when they learned about some of the other experiences that the survivors of the plane crash had as well as something that happened to Desmond after he turned the fail-safe key, they've come to realize there might be more to this than can be defined by science."

Ben thought for a moment. "Did you include my experiences as well?"

"We didn't think it was our story to tell," Izzie told them. "I know; we'd showed discretion about someone else's private business. That could get us kicked out of Seattle Grace."

"I'm actually kind of shocked no one beyond your immediate circle already knows," Ben confessed.

"Considering we're not sure whether you're going to be the test subject or part of the control group, we don't need to go in with any more preconceptions," Meredith said.

"How many people on staff already hate me?" Ben wasn't sure how serious he was.

"Most of the staff has no opinion at all," Karev said. "Bailey's was inclined against you going into this, but when you helped save the hospital you earned a lot of points with her. And she has a lot of sway at Seattle Grace."

"And where does she come down on the whole idea of this?"

There was a deliberate silence this time. It was pretty clear it was not intended to be offensive but rather as a sign of respect to someone they all admired. "Bailey has her beliefs," Meredith finally said. "Beyond that, none of us are prepared to say anything else."

He put a pin in that for now. "So Faraday is willing to try and get connections from Harvard for this study?" he asked instead.

"Which he admits may not get the credibility we'd hoped for," Meredith said. "I don't know the details about what he was working on at Oxford, but the one thing he'd say was that when he left his fellowship, no one was exactly sorry to see him leave."

"We tried to follow what he was talking about," Izzie said, "but this is a field of science well beyond the type any of us even studied. In that sense, we're all well met in that regard."

"It seems like we have a lot to talk about," Ben said. "Very well, I'll fly out this Friday and we can set up a time to have this out. I will be as forthcoming as I can be, but they need to know that there are not going to be any obvious answers to their questions."

Stevens gave a bitter laugh. "Believe me, that's the one thing all of us have taken away just from hearing about this island. We've always been asking the wrong questions."

SEATTLE GRACE

"Somehow, I think if we tried to properly introduce ourselves, this was end up being an Abbott and Costello routine," Dr. Austin said politely.

"I have to agree with you on that," Kate said with a smile. "Clearly no one would be able to tell the difference between us."

Austin smiled at that. "How exactly do you want to proceed?"

"I think for the sake of clarity, I'd better call you Dr. Austin," Kate said finally.

"And I take it you're fine with Kate."

"Fine is a hard term to use." Kate hesitated. "It isn't just the fact that I spent so many of the years before the plane crash using aliases; it's that for the longest time I was never really comfortable with my own name. My mother referred to me as Katherine and the man I thought was my father called me Katie. I settled on Kate for awhile, but considering that's what he…" she trailed off. "Anyway, you had the name before I did; I figure you have dibs."

Austin paused for a bit. "That's complicated too. Usually, I'd say my friends would call me Kate, but I went much of my professional career without having any friends. People would call me Kate as a note of casual acquaintanceship, but I spent much of my career not being liked. I used it as a point of pride."

Kate thought for a moment. "Were you afraid of people getting to know the real you?"

Austin considered this. "Honestly, I think I cared more about people respecting me than liking me. I was determined to make my mark in the world, to crusade for women in my field, and heaven help whoever got in my way."

"Well, it worked," Kate said. "Jack says you've made your mark in medicine. Hell, even I knew who you were before all this. I remember reading in my local paper that you were going to up into space. I got asked a lot of questions from kids in my neighborhood if you were a relative of mine."

Austin shook her head. "I don't know if you knew, but I never got to fly the mission. I suffered a cyst a week before the launch date. Yeah, that was a bad month for me; two weeks later I got fired."

"I'm sorry." Kate said. "You never got another chance."

"In hindsight, I'm not sure it wasn't more the idea of it than actually doing it," Austin admitted. "I was so focused on the idea of being a pioneer, an ideal for other women to strive for, that I pretty much shoved things aside as to what it would mean for me. I don't remember even asking Sara – my daughter – what she thought about the idea until I'd already made up my mind. It was always about my own needs before any other goal. She said she was fine with it at one point, but I can't even say with certainty I would have changed my mind if she'd objected."

Kate smiled softly. "I'm reminded of something my friends would think if they heard you talking about this. 'All Kate Austen's are alike. First chance you get you'd hop on a shuttle.'

"You had life-long dreams of being an astronaut?"

The smile disappeared. "All I ever wanted to do was run away. This might have been a more effective way than going to Sydney. I kept trying to run as long as I could, even when staying put was safer for me."

Austin paused. "I remember hearing the charges when you were finally arraigned. I have to say; given all the fuss raised I was somewhat disappointed."

"What, you were hoping that I was a serial killer?" Kate asked in jest.

"I'm not sure. Don't get me wrong; it would have been a drag on my career if someone with my name was the next Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson. But I kept thinking: 'either this girl seriously misjudged the severity of her crime or this is another example of the law taking a dim look at criminals who aren't white men.'

"It might have been a bit of both," Kate admitted. "When I finally met with my attorney after I surrendered, he said that if I'd turned myself in after the initial crime, even a public defender could have gotten me off with two or three years, maybe even probation. But when the opportunity the came, I ran and everything sort of spiraled from there."

Austin paused. "Did you ever think some of what happened must have been from trauma? I've seen my share of children who come from houses of domestic abuses. Even if the abuser isn't physically harming them, the years watching what your stepfather had been doing to your mother – you must have wanted to escape for years."

"Alan said as much when he mounted my defense," Kate admitted. "There was more to it than that – I'd prefer not to tell you what exactly as we have just met – but I do think that there was also a fair amount of baggage from my mother. It wasn't just that she stayed in that relationship for years; it's that I did what I did because I thought I was helping her, and not only did she turn me into the cops, when I risked everything to try and find out why she did what she did, she thought I'd shown up to say I was sorry. Wayne had been dead for months, and she was still loyal to him over me. Have you seen cases like this?"

Austin sighed. "No, because by the time they get that bad, one of the spouses has killed the other. The irony is, you very likely saved your mother's life, and she's still holding a grudge over it."

"She went to her grave doing so," Kate said. "My mother passed away from cancer last year. They gave her six months; it took her nearly four years. Aside from the trial, the two of us were never in the same state from the moment of our rescue. Even if she hadn't testified against me, I was never going to forgive for everything she'd done. She never asked for me to come to her after I was free, there was no last note. I don't know if she died hating me, but that's fine because I could never forgive her."

Austin shook her head. "I'm beginning to see what Jack said about the survivors of this crash having issues with their parents."

"Mine is by far the most complicated," Kate agreed. "With almost everybody else, it's far more clear-cut as to where the trauma was. But given what I'm learned about a lot of the resident and doctors at this hospital, I'm beginning to think that none of us had the market cornered on parental issues. Are you any different?"

Austin considered this. "My parents were not abusive in the traditional sense." She paused. "You know what Christian Scientists are?"

Kate nodded.

"Both my parents believed more in the power of faith to heal you than the ability of doctors," Austin said slowly. "I think there's a very real possibility that my decision to become one may have been an act of rebellion as much as my love of science. And that worship of it made me arrogant. About a decade ago, my father started suffering from arrhythmia. I dragged him into my hospital, against his wishes – and it was pretty obvious to everyone who would listen that he did not want surgery. Finally, I override his consent and decide to do the surgery on him myself, which violates at least half a dozen ethical guidelines, but what the hell, I have to save my father, even though he's screaming 'God will heal me' right until we put him under."

Kate gave a small smile. "This still sounds like a less punishing way of proving you're a better child to your father than the way my husband ended up proving it."

"Yeah, well the thing is, I caved," Austin said. "I couldn't bring myself to do it. I took my father home, and let him care for himself. His condition got worse, I begged him to go to a doctor, he kept saying no." She looked towards the wall. "He died with me performing CPR on him."

"I'm sorry. I truly am."

"I don't know what kept me up at nights more in the weeks following his passing," Austin said. "My absolute certainty that if this stubborn old goat had just had surgery he would have been alive to see Sara going to college, or the similar certainty that if I had done it, the dictums he believed him would have doomed him to an afterlife without seeing my mother again. All I knew was that my father was gone, and somehow his dying had given him the last word in our argument."

Despite the seriousness of the topic, Kate knew a thoughtful smile was crossing her face. Her namesake saw it as well. "I realize what you and your friends went through must have given you all a twisted sense of irony towards death, but I have to admit this reaction is disconcerting."

"Next time you have a chance, tell Jack about how this happened. He might have some insight in to this particular line of inquiry. Not just about your father's passing, but when it comes to matters of belief."

"You will forgive me for saying this, but part of me is curious to know how he managed to survive out there, a doctor in the middle of nowhere with no supplies." Austin admitted. "I've been through some threadbare situations myself over the years, but I don't think I could have done the kind of things he had to do."

"Him and me both." Kate didn't feel there was anything lost by sharing this story. "About a month and a half after the crash, one of our friends drags another into camp, and that person is basically bleeding to death. Jack calls on me to run to the beach and get all the alcohol we have left. Then he yells at Charlie to find out if anybody has the blood type that matches Boone."

"I make it to the beach in record time, and when I'm on my way back, I trip and fall to my knees." Kate winced. "I'm picked through the wreckage of the liquor and there's Claire. She's going into labor."

Austin blinked. "What the hell did you do?"

"There was a Korean couple on the beach. Jin didn't speak any English; his wife did." Kate waved her hand. "Story for another day. I try my best to convey what's going on with Claire, but that much he can tell. Meanwhile, I try to calm down Claire, which considering how hysterical I am, not a picnic."

"Well, it's not a situation most of us are equipped for. And I'm guessing Jack was in no condition to help."

"Oh, it was worse than that. See there was no one from the crash who knew their blood type. But Jack was Universal Donor. So in order to keep Boone from bleeding out, guess who he decided to use as a source for transfusion."

Now Austin was blinking. "He poured his own blood into a man who was dying."

"Charlie made that clear when he and Jin showed up to tell me that reinforcements were not coming," Kate said. "Then and now, I'm not sure whether he was wrong. I mean, is there a policy for this in an ER or a surgery if scenarios like this come up?"

"Nothing remotely resembling a case like this. Even if there was, the most reasonable head of an ER would realize that, at a certain point, some patients can't be saved, and you have to concentrate the ones that can be. But…" Austin shook her head. "Nothing about what you went through remotely screams 'reasonable'. Hell, I've been in situations over the years where friends and colleagues of mine were on the table. You know you're the surgeon they'd want on the job, but it doesn't make you any more logical."

"Jack had no good options, on that everybody who came back agrees," Kate said. "Sun – she was essentially his nurse – had to push against him from giving to much blood and from trying to amputate Boone's leg in order to save his life. He still didn't listen to her. Boone practically used his dying breath to tell Jack to stop."

"Surgeons are stubborn, and we don't listen to anybody," Austen said grimly. "Your husband says he was no different, at least back then."

"When it was over, when Boone was dead, Jack practically insisted on finding out how he injured himself," There was no need to go to this part yet. "I convinced him to drink some water, which I'd dosed with sleeping pills. It was extreme, and as I found out later, potentially dangerous, but even then I knew Jack too well. He would have killed himself to learn why Boone died, and the irony would have been completely lost on him as he stumbled over a cliff while passing out from exhaustion."

Austin took this in. "And your experience as a midwife? How'd that go?"

Kate smiled. "Aaron Littleton was brought into the world, remarkably healthy that same morning. I was his midwife, unofficial godmother, and now I'm his aunt. And all the time I was on the island I was so uncomfortable around Aaron."

Kate half-expected her namesake to ask the inevitable follow-up: "Are you and Jack considering having one of your own?" Perhaps because of the path Austin had chosen, she didn't ask it nor did the question come up that day. Instead, Austin changed the subject.

"I'll be honest with you, Kate; we do have something more in common than just our names." For the first time in this conversation, Austin looked slightly uncomfortable. "I don't know why I'm bringing this up. It's not something that naturally lends itself to conversation, and it's not something that looks good on a resume. But as I said, I've never had a lot of friends, my colleagues have rarely wanted to share much space with me, and like most surgeons, I mock the idea of therapy. So I might as well share this with strangers. And if you can't share it with someone who has your name, who can you share it with?"

Kate sighed. "There are a lot of secrets I've had to keep over the years. I need to know just how big a one I'm keeping."

Austin waved it off. "All of this is in the public record, and whatever isn't could probably be found with a decent Internet search these days. Your husband and Juliet have been very forthcoming about how much of a fishbowl Seattle Grace is, but even without their warning I am more than aware how hard it is to keep any secret in a hospital. That said this is not the kind of thing I like admitting to other people, and certainly not myself."

"And you think by talking to someone with your exact name, you are at least doing that much," Kate said with a smile.

"That's as logical a reason as I can think to talk to you about it," Austin smiled back.

"All right. I won't tell anybody." Kate made a Girl Scout sign. "One Kate Austen to another."

"I've had a reckless streak for almost my entire adult life," Austin began. "Tommy, Sara's father, wasn't my first husband. I met him in Vegas when I was just out of college; we got drunk, we had sex for forty-eight hours, we divorced."

"Still more honest than my entire first marriage, but keep going," Kate said.

"My career always came first; that's probably why my marriage with Tommy ended; I came to Chicago for a fresh start, I immediately start clashing with the best cardiac surgeon there, and am grateful when he resigns two months later." Austin held up a hand. "Long story, for now it wasn't my fault. I start a relationship with his best friend, and I immediately torpedo it. I have sex with a younger colleague in his office, he sues for sexual harassment. My husband shows up late at my apartment; I think he's a prowler and take out my licensed handgun. He tells me he's changing our custody arrangement. I start saying I mistook him for a prowler and that I accidentally shot him. He starts to leave; I do shoot him." She paused. "I don't tell him until after I've done it there are only blanks in the gun."

"Speaking as someone who's been in court, that's not the kind of thing you want to get out before you go to court, which I assume you did," Kate said softly.

"He practically made it part of his opening statement," Austin mentioned. "That didn't help with the judge either. Then, when I'm on the cusp of realizing my dream of becoming chief of surgery, I learn that Tommy is getting investors to by the hospital I work at. I get nervous, and I take my daughter on a trip out of state. I lose custody for six months; I get suspended from my job for three months."

"Was it a hostile work environment at this hospital? Because it sure as hell seems like you were begging them to fire you," Kate said casually.

"If there was a way to make things unpleasant at Chicago Hope, I would find it," Austin said sincerely. "I burned every bridge I had there, rebuilt them, and then burnt them down again. I got my old job and immediately resigned. Then I spent two months slowly divorcing myself from the hospital, and the day I was finally going to leave, I got stuck in an elevator with a repairman, and when it opened I decided to stay. But as horrible as all of those things are, they're not even close to the worst thing I ever did."

Kate thought she knew what was coming, but she knew that Austin had to say it first.

"Two of my female colleagues are going on what amounts to a work holiday. One just got threatened by her ex-boyfriend and wanted to get out of town; the other was pregnant and her husband was in Africa doing charity work. Neither of them is inclined to be my strongest ally at the hospital, and I invite myself along." Austin shook her head. "I could tell from the moment I said that they were looking for any possible excuse to do this without me. And honestly, the idea of going camping in the mountains isn't something appeals to be normally. I didn't know what either was going through, and honestly I didn't care. My daughter was with my husband that weekend, and I didn't want to be alone."

"We get to the cabin, it's already pouring, there's no electricity, no landline, no cell service, and I'm already bitching. Then there's a knock at the door. This man is there he says, his car broke down and he wants to get call a tow truck. I'm nervous, but Lisa lets him in. About ten minutes later, he pulls a gun."

Kate could see the broad strokes now, but she still didn't see why Austen was upset.

"He holds us hostage; he makes us cook for him. He gets tired; Lisa makes a grab for the gun. He wakes up and starts to choke. I tackle him and knock the gun out of his hand." Austin paused. "Then I kicked him in the head. Again and again. Lisa and Diane yelled at me to stop, but I just kept doing it. Finally Diane pulls me off. Lisa starts doing CPR, but we're all doctors we know what a dead man looks like."

"The whole trip back to civilization, neither of them will look at me. I keep saying that he was going to kill us all. They reminded me that we were trained physicians all capable of recognizing when an injured person is no longer a threat." Austin shook her head. "Even after the police cleared me of any wrongdoing, neither of them ever looked at me the same. For that matter, neither did most of the staff once they heard what had happened. None of them had ever needed an excuse not to like me, but after this, they would stop talking when I walked into a room."

Kate listened. "How do you want me to respond to this?" she finally asked. "As someone who once killed somebody, or as somebody who spent a lot of her life doing reckless things?"

"You had a much better reason to do what you did than I did," Austin said simply.

"My actions were pre-meditated; yours were heat of the moment;" Kate pointed out. "The District Attorney was very clear in the difference at my trial."

"Then let's discuss being reckless, because we both have quite a bit of that in our characters," Austen looked at her. "I remember the publicity around the trial, and I can't be the first person to tell you that many of the crimes you committed after you escaped custody were because of reckless behavior."

"My attorney pointed that out in our first meeting, but he was nice enough to spare the details in his defense," Kate admitted. "You don't have to tell me how reckless I was. I got married to a man I'd known for three months - a cop, no less – who never knew my real name. I ran away to protect him. I went back to see my mom twice, the second time after she got sick and knowing full well that she said she'd scream for help the next time she saw me. I tricked a good man into helping me, and it went so badly, he died. I joined a gang to rob a bank because I wanted a memento from that man that was locked in a safety deposit box. Then I betrayed them. After the plane crash, I did countless reckless things, both disregarding my own safety and the fact that rescue would mean I would end up in handcuffs at the end of it. You could say I have the market cornered on reckless behavior, but you haven't met all my friends yet."

"Why do I have the feeling their stories put mine to shame?" Austin said with a smile.

"Let's not start measuring contests with the boys yet; let's focus on our own," Kate smiled back. "Jack said that I was always running away from my feelings; James said I was always coming back for other people. In either case, it would do maximum damage to the ones I loved. Maybe that's how we should view your behavior, Kate 1. Why were so reckless? Were you running from something or did you keep coming back for them?"

"I've never thought of it that way," Austin said. "Looking at my career, certainly in Chicago, I was running from human connection towards some ephemeral career goals. Being a good mother, a good girlfriend, any kind of friend, all of that pales towards being the first at something. And every time I got it, I immediately ran from it. Only each time, the excuses kept getting thinner. The thinner the got, the less I ran. I think I may have gotten to a point where I wanted people to choose me even though I had literally done nothing to earn it."

"Was this because of how you came up?"

"I hate to say this, but everything I did I wanted to be given to me on merit without having to earn it. I wanted to be Sara's full time mother, but I didn't want to sacrifice doing my job full-time. I didn't want gender to have anything to do with why I was picked, but every time I fought for anything, I wanted to make it about women. Whether the women I fought for agreed with how I did things or even wanted them done, was completely irrelevant and I wanted them to be grateful for my sacrifice. Only there came a point when I didn't want to sacrifice." Austin blinked. "You know, saying it out loud, it actually sounds worse than when I lived through it, and it was pretty terrible living through it." She blinked again. "I spent all that time berating Geiger, and I was as bad as him."

"There is a bright side."

"What could that possibly be?"

"You didn't have to survive a plane crash, live off the elements for three months, spend a year on the run and another year and a half in prison to come to this realization." Kate said. "I assure you, in the battle for self-realization, you're always going to come in second to me on that one."

"And you called me Kate 1 because…"

Kate smiled. "You were born first. This is the rare case where beauty prevails over age."

"It usually does, but we'll let that go," Austin shrugged. "So now that I've achieved this enlightenment that I ended up wasting most of my life, what do you suggest I do now?"

"One of the most obvious lessons all of us who came back from the crash got: don't waste time on the trivial." Kate said. "From what you're telling me you spent the first half of your career burning every personal relationship you have in favor of professional advancement. Which you subsequently avoided when you got it. So spend the second half of your career focusing on the personal over the professional."

"Your husband and Juliet told me something very close to that," Austin noted.

"You know what they say about two out of three doctors recommending something?" Kate asked.

"I don't think the rest of the residents or interns would agree with you on that," Austin said.

"I may not have gone to college, so you're just going to have to trust me on the math," Kate said. "The rest of the staff, collectively, they all count as one giant doctor. Don't get me wrong, most of them are great people, but with few exceptions, most of them are that generic third doctor. And what study do you know of that ever cares what that generic doctor says?"

Austin thought for a minute. "There was a long period when they used doctors' recommendations for cigarettes and alcohol."

"I assure you," Kate said. "In those studies, Jack and Juliet were the doctors whose opinions they didn't count."

"You really do have a high opinion of them," Kate said.

"To be fair, that only really started after I was sure they weren't sleeping together," Kate told her.

"Is someone ever going to get around to telling me how the two of them met?" Austin was starting to get a little flustered at the secrets.

"At the aquarium," Kate said sweetly. "Where else?"

AUTHOR'S NOTES

This was originally going to be two separate chapters, but I decided it was easier to do one.

Yes, Ben is becoming a human being. And as a result, he's realizing the lousy decisions he made along the way. Perhaps that's the reason so many people from Seattle Grace are more forgiving – it helped not to know him. ;)

Ben is trying to figure out ideas about the bizarre vision that Meredith and Izzie had in the first five seasons of Grey's Anatomy and if there's a connection between what he and everyone else saw on the island. A link between science and faith, who'd have thought?

I've always wanted Ben to discuss Shakespeare; there are so many characters in the Canon that make me wonder how much he actually read growing up and if there were any he sympathized with. Considering where he grew up, he would likely have no knowledge of the major adaptations that show up on film every year (unless Dharma had a secret Netflix account). For the record, I highly recommend Looking for Richard and Julia Stiles did play variations on Ophelia, Desdemona and Katherine at the turn of the last century. Stevens cursing out rom-coms is of course a bitter in-joke considering how much of Katherine Heigl's post Grey's career had so many flawed ones after beginning her career with two magical ones Knocked Up and 27 Dresses.

So how did Benjoin the Others if Season 5 didn't happen in this world? I'm going to cover that in this story, and Charlotte and Dan are critical to it. Spoiler: Dan's idea of whatever happened, happened is close to the truth in this story.

I know everyone's going to have trouble telling the Kate Austen's apart which I referred to the one from Chicago Hope as Austin. Let me know if you had trouble, but this scene needed to happen for both characters. As for everything that happened to the Chicago Hope one, it's all part of her saga, told slightly out of order.

Many of the characters on Chicago Hope – Christine Lahti's and Mandy Patinkin's in particular - I see as early drafts of the antiheroes of later seasons, characters who crossed the borders of their profession and went out of their way to be unlikable. I'm not sure during Lahti's four seasons that her character every came to a reckoning with that by the end; part of the reason I'm having her have this discussion is because at this stage in her life, she's finally starting to wonder, and who better to do it with than someone who has her own name?

Well, Juliet and Jack did meet at the aquarium. Of course, at the time, Jack was in the aquarium, but still…

By the way for those of you who have no memory of Chicago Hope and want to learn about it, I have some sad news for you. You may have an impossible time finding the series anywhere. As far as I'm aware, none of the major streaming services carry it and it's not on DVD anywhere (at least in America; European DVDs do have it, but you'd need an all-region DVD player to find it.) The only reason I remember is because several obscure cable channels ran it in syndication and that was over a decade ago. Start searching your obscure streamers first (Paramount Plus might have it; it originally aired on CBS). And seriously, if any of you can find it, tell me. This was a very good series and I'd love to see it again.

More characters from both shows in the next chapter, and more faces from other series to come. Read and review!