Richard came up the steps of Ben's home, and opened the front door, ushering himself inside. Ben was found in his study, thumbing through a hardback, reading the words diligently and thoroughly. He was so engrossed in the book's printed word, he hadn't even seen Richard lean against the door frame, let alone walk into the room.

"Oh. Good morning, Richard," Ben snatched his reading glasses from his face and lowered the book into his lap, "Would you like some breakfast?"

Richard wasn't there for breakfast; pleasantries were the farthest thing from his mind. His stomach was not his first priority. The Island was, it always was. "You let them go. Austen and Jarrah."

Ben blinked, unsure of why Richard had a dubious tinge to his tone. "You were there when I shook Jack's hand, Richard. I promised him that I would, and I did."

Richard shook his head, satisfied with that answer, but there was something else, someone else rather, that rattled his poised, calm demeanor in a way that he hadn't experienced before. "What about John Locke?"

What about John Locke? Ben wanted to ask, but refrained. "He's locked up in one of the boiler rooms of the office cottage. Armed guards are watching the door. It's not like he can go anywhere anyways." Ben sensed that wasn't the bit of information that Richard sought so ardently. "I take it you didn't come to inquire about his location."

Richard crossed his arms; his muscular forearms bulged under the fists that his hands hadn't released. The sleeves of his shirt were pushed up to his elbows as they always were. "He said some pretty extreme stuff out there on the dock Ben, about the crash, being it not being a coincidence. Do you know what he meant by that? Do you think he was talking about Jacob? Do you think he knows about him?"

"Do you think he knows?" Ben asked.

Richard sighed, feeling incredibly overwhelmed and burdened by that one question. "No, I don't. But I can't fight the feeling that he's on to something," Richard moved closer to Ben, breaching the barrier of the small loveseat that sat nearby, "and that you stopped him, because he was getting too close." Ben pushed the book's cover closed with an impatient tap, and returned the hardback to his rightful location on the bookshelf. Richard sensed the irritation floating off of him in droves. He began to plead his case. "The plane did crash here, Ben. We both know that Jacob brings people to the Island to—"

"This wasn't Jacob." Ben's tone was sharp, tense, a far cry from his inviting pitch upon seeing Richard standing in his study moments before. "I would know if it was Jacob and it wasn't him. He didn't cause this." He folded his reading glasses and placed them onto a nearby table, and promptly put his hands in his lap. "Jack is right. John Locke is a very deranged, very peculiar man who wants to believe in something bigger than himself so terribly, that he's concocted this tall tale about his plane crashing on this Island for some grand purpose that escapes me to this day. He's chasing something that doesn't exist."

"So, he's wrong. He wasn't brought here for a reason, neither was Jack Shephard." Richard wanted assurance that this was false, that John Locke was indeed making all of this up, because if it were true, the Island would figure out a way to draw Jack back in, no matter how far he was. Its course-corrective abilities astounded him, most things about the Island had, but under Jacob's patient, kind tutelage, he realized that understanding came in due time, and those who wanted to understand had to be willing to sacrifice. Richard was asking Ben because he was the one who would truly know. Jacob had chosen Ben to be the receiver of his instructions, his many lists, a very important, crucial role to play, because Ben showed his loyalty, his allegiance to the Island. Richard had to be sure that what the Island wanted, what Jacob wanted, he would receive, and it all came down to Ben.

Ben sounded annoyed that he hadn't let this go yet. "Yes, Richard, and I resent the interrogation."

Richard shook his head quickly, "I'm not trying to interrogate you Ben, I'm just trying to figure out why he would try to blow up your submarine if it was just for his imagination. That's a big risk to take for something that was just in his head."

Ben looked up at Richard, his expression solemn, but firm, "He's had a hard life. His mother gave him away when he was just an infant. His father came back into his life years later to con him out of one of his kidneys, and pushed him out of an eight-story window when John wouldn't leave him alone. He left him in a wheelchair, and he was on that flight, because he wanted to take a walkabout in the Australian outback. As ironic as that sounds, John believed he had something to prove, to the world, and more importantly, to himself. It doesn't get any more complicated than that."

Richard continued to look unconvinced. He didn't like that feeling at all. Ben finally relented and unraveled his plan, the next improvised step he would take. "John Locke doesn't matter to me and he doesn't matter to this Island, but it is of my interest to toy with, as you call it, his imagination, to agree with what he's saying, so that he has no choice but to follow my lead."

Ben could sense Richard's opposition before he could open his mouth, before the idea elicited any reaction at all, so he continued. "Feeding into his delusion is the only way to keep him under control."

Richard's eyes rounded with surprise, his thick eyebrows rose to the ceiling. Ben's mind worked in such devious ways sometimes, that it was no secret to anyone how he stayed in power for so long. "What are you gonna do? Create a story that you hope he buys, so that he joins us?" He paced towards to the door, his hands on his hips and turned back, facing Ben. "What if this backfires? What if encouraging him makes it worse?"

Ben wheeled himself towards his desk, his voice rushed. "If I agree with John, he'll see me as an ally, and not the enemy that he's painted me as in his head. He'll follow my advice; he might even ask me to help him. I'm sure of it."

Richard was incredulous, dumbfounded. Ben had way too much confidence in this plan. If he had showed at least a speck of uncertainty, of trepidation, then Richard wouldn't feel like he was standing on pins and needles, waiting for each and every one to pierce right through him. "You just let Jack off the Island, something that goes completely against what he was trying to do, and you think that after one conversation, he's just gonna pass himself over to you? You think he's that gullible?"

He paced once more, and then stopped, a thought swirled, settled. "And pardon me, but the last time you were sure John Locke would play right into your hands, you barely made it out of their camp alive."

The ends of Ben's lips twitched, a unruly smile breaking through, his assurance welling inside, remorseless. "No, I don't think he's gullible, not at all and yes, I barely made it back here with my life, but it was a risk that I would take again. I had to convince Jack to operate and you and I both know that if I had asked him politely instead of doing what I did, he would have thrown my medical history in my face," Ben looked up at the ceiling mockingly, his eyes shiny with slick humor, he turned them back to Richard, "Oh wait, he did that anyway."

Richard didn't look amused, pleased, or in the least bit complacent about this idea, but Ben was in his element. "Don't you see it, Richard? The desperation? The longing? John is determined to be right, or else he wouldn't be here, and the only way to reinforce that for him is to agree with whatever he says." Ben pointed between the two of them, "We have to be in control of what answers he's given, of what he knows to be certain and if he's with us, we can do that. But if he's against us, then there's no telling what he'll do next."

"I don't know about this Ben…" Richard expressed his skepticism, shaking his head, his eyebrows still raised in thought. "Maybe we should think of something else, something less radical."

"We're talking about a man who just tried to blow up my submarine, Richard. Anything less than radical is not good enough." Ben stopped his thoughts for a second, and met Richard's dark eyes, pleading for backup, for understanding. "It's gonna work, Richard. I promise. We have to protect the Island and we have to protect Jacob and this is the only way to do it."

Richard softened, his resolve melting at the insistence that this plan was for the Island's benefit, for Jacob's profit. "If John wants answers, he'll have to pay for them." Ben opened a drawer behind his desk and pulled out a walkie-talkie. He flipped one of the dials on the side and then spoke into the speaker with a stern, solid voice, his tone when he was getting down to business. "Pryce. Are you there?"

The hushed static on the other end buzzed until Pryce's voice came through loud and crystal clear. "Yes, sir."

Ben nodded, his eyes never leaving Richard's, who simply stared blankly at the exchange. "Good, because I'm on my way." He placed the walkie-talkie back into its proper drawer and wheeled himself past Richard and towards the door.

Richard turned. "Where are you going?"

Ben wheeled himself back around to face him. "To talk to John, of course." He cocked his head in the direction of the open door. "Care to join me?"

Kate and Sayid had been walking through the lush flora of the jungle for hours, with no conversation. He walked in front, leading the way towards the beach, their home. A small machete knife that the Others allowed him to keep whirled at the flick of his wrist as he chopped another intruding branch out of place with a striking force. Its leaves flagged in what little wind that blew around them until it fell to the ground and perished under the heavy land of Sayid's boot. It was humid, hot, and the obvious tension between them baked in their convective ambiance.

Kate untangled the strip of pale blue cloth from her long curls and combed at her hair with her small fingers, pulling the tresses that hung at her temples with the rest of her hair, and sloppily tying the ribbon back in place. Sometimes, she hated her hair, the tousled weight of it. It never wanted to be tidy and out of her face, always finding its way out of a ponytail, even from the grip of a tight, strong elastic. She was surprised that her improvised tear of a piece of cloth was working.

She pulled one strap of her bag from one of her shoulders, and opened it, relieved to find her canteen of water where it was before. While she was sure that the Others had rummaged through it for any evidence of foul play or some tracking system that could lead to where they were, she was grateful that they had given it back to her. She opened the can's top and generously poured the water into her mouth, suckling at the warm liquid thirstily. She hadn't had a drop to drink in a full day. She pushed the bottle back into her pack, and ran to catch up with Sayid.

"Hey! You wanna slow down for a second," she swiped at the sweat that gathered on her forehead, "maybe we can take a break." Sayid kept walking at the same speed, as if he never heard her. She groaned, and followed behind him, doing her best to catch up.

He swiped at a dangling vine, watching as it fell to the ground, avoiding Kate, who was sprinting towards him. "We don't have time to 'take a break'. Judging from how long we've been walking, we'll have to make camp soon and I'd like to make use of as much sunlight as possible before we have to."

Kate continued to be adamant about stopping, flapping her arms in irritancy. "Do we have to go so fast? It was morning when they let us go, and we've been walking for two, three hours tops. I'd say that we have around six more hours of sunlight maybe more—"

Sayid, disgruntled and tired, avoided the rest of her reasoning. "I'm very much aware of how much sunlight is at our disposal and yes, we have to go this speed. If you don't mind, I'd like to make it back to the beach as quickly as possible, and put this dreadful experience behind me." He thrashed the sharp weapon spartanly, using the tool to exert the frustration that he was too angry with Kate to direct her way. Whenever Sayid was angry or disappointed, he just reserved his judgment, and stewed of his own accord. It reminded her so much of how Jack used to react whenever he was angry with her. She hated when he bottled himself up, until she couldn't read him any longer, whether he cared or not, whether he was still as invested as she was. He was an enigma of a read sometimes. But Sayid, he wasn't so good at his poker face.

Sayid continued on his worn path, his grip on the machete violently tight. She stopped, huffed, the strength of her breathe blew away the strands of hair that were caught in her eyelashes. "I get it, okay? You're mad. You're not just mad, you're mad at me." She was trying really hard to take his anger as it came, but she was faltering. He stopped walking, his back still turned, but listening.

"I'm sorry Sayid. Okay. I'm sorry that—"

Sayid finally turned to her, the hurt in his eyes cutting through Kate's resolve to get through her apology. "I trusted you. I trusted you when you told me that Jack would come back with us, that you could get through to him, even after I saw him merrily congregating with those people, and you were wrong." He said it with such passion, such embarrassment for trusting that she was doing the right thing. "Jack was of sound mind when we saw him and he was of sounder ability when he left. He wasn't drugged and he wasn't being manipulated in any way whatsoever."

Kate stared at Sayid with distressed eyes, taking in the lashing that he deserved to throw her way. "It was beyond obvious to me that he was no longer on our side," Sayid took a deep breath here, his patience and the calm tornado of emotions erupting, "but you just had to try going, you had to barge in there and almost get us killed, and Jack still left. It was all for nothing."

Sayid turned away from her, allowing the machete to drop from his hand to the ground. "It wasn't all for nothing." She cringed after she said it, because Sayid wasn't in the mood for a friendly debate. This could get ugly.

This will get ugly. She saw it in the penetrating glare of Sayid's opposition as he slowly turned back to her. "We not only lost Jack, we have no idea where John is, or if he's alive and as it seems, we've been barred from ever attempting to find him, that is if he hasn't joined them as well. It's my belief that Ben still has him and will want to know why he tried to blow up his submarine. So, yes, by my estimation, we came out with absolutely nothing."

Sayid turned back, picked up his knife and cleared his throat, not addressing her specifically, more like a general declaration that he felt he should voice rather than keep to himself. "We need to go back to the beach and start from square one."

He was right, Kate thought. They had come out of the situation completely in the red. No Jack. No John. She can only imagine what the group would think, but she hoped that they believed her, that they believed Jack. First, she had to convince Sayid, so the words stumbled out of her mouth before she had time to think them through.

"Jack is leaving the Island to bring back help." It was no longer between her and Jack and she felt a pang of loss at the fact this wasn't their private secret anymore, but it was for a good cause. Kate needed an ally, she was tired of being alone, of feeling alone.

Sayid stopped, his feet dead-bolted to the dirt. He turned, his brow facing north, his lips parted. "What did you say?"

Kate perked up at his sudden interest in what she had to say. She walked a little closer to him, intent to make her point clear. "They let me see Jack after they caught us. He told me that he was getting off the Island and that he was coming back, that he would bring back rescue. I know that it—"

If Sayid never laughed in someone's face, he certainly was now. Kate stopped mid-sentence, her feelings crushed under the snort of Sayid's disbelief. He had actually cracked a smile and was laughing at her.

"What?" She said it with full-blown anger, her voice tense.

Sayid brought a hand over his mouth, rubbing achingly at the cut on his lip, his smile and laughter had agitated it. "You actually believe that Jack is coming back for us?"

Kate cocked her hip, folding her hands over her chest, brewing for a confrontation. She didn't care about Sayid's disappointment anymore. She was too busy nursing her own, surprise at Sayid's reaction melded with her offense. "Why wouldn't I?"

Sayid didn't want to sound impatient with her, but he was treading the line between blowing a torch of truth directly at her or easing into it with gentle care. He opted for a middle ground between the two. "Because he's been there, with those people, for days, and not once did he reach out to us and now I'm to believe that this is some sacrificial pursuit to rescue us?"

Kate huffed dramatically, her red cheeks blanched with her hot blood. "There's no other way, Sayid! You and I were on that first trek through the jungle to find a signal for the transceiver that Jack and I risked our lives to get, we basically led the group. What did we hear? Nothing, but Rousseau's message, that's been playing on a loop for sixteen years. I helped you triangulate the signal, but nothing came of that either. We even sent our friends out on that raft, and Sawyer almost died, and Michael betrayed us. Everything we've ever tried to do to get off this Island has been a complete and utter failure."

Sayid's face was blank, almost stoic, gravel with acknowledgement, and Kate took advantage of his pause. "Jack is trying to do what he thinks is best for all of us. He says he's coming back for us, and I believe him."

Sayid's temper was sprouting now, and would soon be in full bloom if she continued to believe that he should trust Jack any longer. "Why do you believe him? Why?" His voice was a feral growl, his teeth clinched. Was this what it was like to be on the other end of a conversation with an irrational Kate Austen? He didn't know how Jack ever got through it. "Why must you blindly trust a man who has betrayed you?"

Hurt skidded across her face, "Because he hasn't." She knew she sounded desperate, clinging to a man that so easily left, but that was just it, there was nothing easy about any of this. Jack wasn't proud or happy with leaving her behind. She saw it in his eyes; she heard it in his last words to her. If any of this were up to Jack, if he were in control of anything, they'd all be going home right this second, but instead, she was headed back to the beach where they'd have to call home for who knows how much longer.

Kate clapped her hands together and walked towards Sayid, pleading with him. "Look, I know it looks bad. Jack was living there, and it looked like he was free to do whatever he wanted, but he wasn't. They were watching him, and once they saw me in his room, they pointed a gun at him and threw me to the ground. They didn't trust him and he only trusted that they would let him off the Island," she swallowed hard, tears stinging her eyes, "because I told him to."

Curiosity sprung to Sayid's eyes, then accusation. "Why would you do that? Why would you persuade Jack to trust them?"

She sighed, and felt that familiar, scary, burdensome weight on her back all over again, her memories flooding with gore, helplessness, pain and cage bars. "Because I thought they were gonna kill Sawyer." Her voice cracked a little, the harrowing moments reaching her and holding tight. "After they abducted us, and threw the two of us in cages, they were beating him every chance they could, right in front of me and I thought they were gonna go through with it." She hugged her arms to her chest now. She looked so incredibly small at this point, broken.

Sayid looked confused, his brow scrunched. "I don't understand. How does Jack factor in?"

She took a shaky breath, anchoring the bottom of her hiking boot over a stump that lay at her feet. She practically leaned onto a nearby trunk, as if the mere recollection of the events made her legs irrelevant. "Ben had a tumor on his spine and he needed Jack to remove it, but he wouldn't, he refused to do it. So they told me that I had to convince him or Sawyer would be killed." Tears fell, but she brushed them away.

She thought of Jack, of their last moments before she ran, of the irreverent beeping that he was literally screaming over as he voiced his instructions. Her eyes squinted, glared at a distant spot over Sayid's shoulder. She was suddenly freezing, and she brushed her hands up and down her arms. More tears fell, but this time, she left them.

"But something changed, something happened that changed Jack's mind and the next time I spoke to him, he was telling me to take Sawyer and run. He wouldn't tell me where he was or what he was doing." She left out the part where she recounted the story he told her when they first met. He wouldn't have understood the significance of it, the gravity of it, why Jack needed to hear it in the first place. It was like their special code, not even Sawyer and Juliet, who stood there, watching her teary recitation with wounded eyes, truly understood what they were communicating to each other, but they knew, and that was all that mattered.

She touched the moisture at her cheek, her fingers laid over her plump lips, which were chaffed from dehydration. "The last thing he said to me was to never come back for him and then he hung up." She gasped just then, just like she had when she heard nothing but static disturbance on the other end of her walkie-talkie. "I don't know what happened. Maybe they did something to him after Sawyer and I left, but the man I spoke to last night was your friend, the same person that we crashed here with, and I'm not giving up on that." She wiped stubbornly at her tears now, as she pushed herself from the solidity of the banyan's long, talk stalk.

Sayid's head shook with denial. "I'm sorry for what you had to go through Kate, but whatever history you and I have with Jack doesn't change the fact that he was with them, and that he made no attempts to evade their capture. He surrendered to them. He bargained for a ride off of the Island and I don't anticipate his return." He turned his back on her, his feet moving forward, her tears ineffective.

Kate reacted almost immediately, her voice rising, fists balled tightly, relentless, uncompromising. "Sayid! You can't be serious. This is Jack we're talking about. He wouldn't just forget—"

Sayid turned back to her abruptly, his voice whistling through clinched teeth. "I know exactly who we're discussing, Kate! I have the bruises on my face and the scars around my wrists to prove it." God, she wore that wounded look so well, he thought. While he was so incredibly furious with her, she was still his friend, and it was very evident that Jack's departure has destroyed her, and it wasn't letting up on her battered, dejected soul. He had never seen so many tears in her eyes, and he resented himself for not being able to put his own feelings aside and reside in the hope that she felt.

Sayid came to her, his hand came down over her shoulder, squeezing it comfortably. "I'm sorry that you believe what he's told you, but I can't. The man I thought I knew, the man I believed to be my friend would never have left us behind. I was right, Kate. The man we saw conversing happily with his captors was content with his situation and had no intentions of telling any of us of what he had planned for himself, not until he was forced to with your unplanned return."

Did he really still believe that Jack just left them there? Did her words mean nothing? She shook her head, her eyes low, reddened from her tears. "I'm telling you that Jack told me that he would come back for us and you flat-out refuse to believe me? Do you trust me at all?"

Sayid's eyes went soft, his touch softer. "I trust you Kate, but I have reserved the right to question your judgment and your objectivity when it comes to Jack." She bowed her head then, not out of shame, but out of what her allegiance to Jack has done to Sayid, what her intentions have created inside of him. "You didn't even take a second to breathe before you turned around and came back after him. Maybe you want to believe that he's coming back in order to make yourself feel better about nearly ruining his chance to leave, but I don't harbor any guilt or remorse. I don't believe that he's coming back, and neither will any man, woman and child on that beach."

She looked away from him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth to stop it from quivering. She nodded erratically, distress and betrayal bleeding from her evergreen orbs. "I'm sorry Kate, but I can't run the risk of passing hope to them that I myself do not possess. Now, it's time for us to strategize, so that we can survive here without any more conflict."

She looked at him and saw just how sad he was for her. It wasn't only sadness, it was pity. She hated it when people pitied her. "You don't mind if I give it a shot then?" The defiance in her eyes shone like the brightest stars on a clear night. She was going to tell the others what Jack told her no matter what, and she silently prayed that Sayid's lack of faith in their leader wasn't contagious.

Sayid cocked his head. "By all means. I would love for them to hear what you just told me, and to see the disappointment in their eyes when they realize it isn't true. If I'm asked what I believe to be true, I will be honest." He pulled away from her and continued to trek right where he'd left off. He hated seeing the hurt in her eyes, but she was wrong about coming back for Jack, and she could be wrong about him coming back for them. He wasn't willing to take another chance on a hypothetical that was clearly based on a woman who was, at the moment, more heartbroken than sensible. "We should hurry back to the others. I'm sure they're worried sick."

She frustratingly thrust her fist into her pocket, one of her knuckles crashed into the thick glass face of the watch. Jack's watch. It dawned on her then, that he left it for her for times like these, a kind, personal reminder that he had actually said those words, I will come back here for you, and that she had no choice but to believe it, to believe him, against all odds. It wasn't just a remnant of his presence; it was an emblem of his promise. She kept her hand in her pocket, and wrapped her fingers around it, holding it in her small fist and letting its still weight lift her.

Locke dragged his eyes open; his dilated pupils met the shaded darkness of the vacant, shadowy, cold room he'd been tossed into. An extremely dim florescent light above his head buzzed like a queen bee while a thin line of light poured in from the bottom frame of a nearby door. They must have thrown him into a holding cell of some kind, an empty room perhaps. His legs were bent at the knees, embedded into the cold concrete beneath him. His hands were above his head, handcuffed, and joined with a robust steel pipe that ran through the walls and between his cuffed wrists. He changed his mind; he must have been in a cellar of some kind, someplace underground, hence the steel pipes, and cold draft, that made him shiver and shake.

He felt sore all over, achy, like he'd been hit by a car, a freight train. Then it all came back to him, the bludgeoning, brutal, blood-pooling fist fight with one of Ben's men on the dock. How long ago was that? Minutes? Hours? Days? He had no sense of time, his head was spinning, twirling. He felt like he was suspended in nothingness. Lifting his head felt like a chore, but he did so anyways, groaning through the ache at the base of his head. His neck was stiff, the muscles strained and locked in. He whirled his head to try to relax the coiled muscles, but that only made matters worse. He looked down at the inside of his arm and saw a tiny needle mark, reddened and sore. What the hell had they given him? He tried to position himself comfortably, but his legs weren't cooperating. They felt like the lifeless limbs they once were, and a big part of him was scared to death that if he were ever released from this uncompromising position, his legs wouldn't be able to carry him. It was like the Island was toying with him, like a puppet and his legs were the strings.

He heard footsteps outside of the door, the shadow of feet outlined clearly. Keys jangled, voices hushed, the doorknob squealed as it was turned. Once the door was wide open, stinging light poured into the room. Locke's eyes felt as if Supernova had been sitting at the end of his nose.

Pryce stepped into the room, eyeing Locke with a careful assessment, his hand sitting over the handle of the gun that sat in the holster of his belt. He sneered down at Locke, satisfied that the older man was stuck, cornered. Locke forced his eyes to concentrate. On the opposite wall, he noticed the silhouette of a man, sitting properly in a wheelchair. Ben. That son of a bitch, Locke thought. As soon as the angered thought popped in his mind, Ben wheeled himself into the room, with Richard close behind.

Ben cocked his head, his lips itching to break into a smile, but he refrained. He wasn't here to gloat, and it wouldn't have been hard at all if he were. "Good morning, John."

Locke's breathing became shallow, his eyes bled with his intent for vengeance, but he was too feeble, too weak to execute. If he weren't handcuffed, he could have snapped Ben's neck in half. "What did you give me?"

"Something to help you sleep." Ben said simply enough, his hands lying in his lap. "You had a pretty rough night."

Locke's voice went still, void of emotion. "Can you uncuff me, please?" His shoulders were absolutely killing him. His muscles felt like stiff bricks, lagging against his already aching bones.

Ben spoke up. "As long as you promise not to try anything. As entertaining as it would be to see you and Pryce go for round two, I don't think it would be a fair fight, considering the shape you're in. The effects of the sedative we gave you haven't worn off yet."

Locke snorted, his amusement tickled, cynically so. "It's nice to know that you care so much, Ben."

Ben's shoulders shuffled nonchalantly under the striped, starched, collared shirt he wore. "I try. Pryce, uncuff him please."

All Locke could see in his eyesight was Pryce's black, smudged combat boots squeaking against the concrete floor. "If it weren't for the fact that Ben needs you alive, I would have killed you."

"Pryce was it?" Locke asked as he looked up at him, his face still bruised from his fists, and his neck bandaged with medical gauze. "How's that cut? Does it sting like hell? I sure do hope so."

Pryce smiled rigidly, and proceeded to uncuff Locke's hands. Once the click of the lock released the cuff from one of his wrists, he balled his fist and threw it low, slugging Locke in the lower abdomen, watching as the older man bowed towards the cold concrete beneath him, his wrists wrought with blisters, groans of debilitating anguish ricocheting through the small room.

Pryce stood over his body, satisfied. He snatched at Locke's other arm and released the other cuff, stepping away to the far wall with them in his hands.

Ben shook his hand in disappointment. "Why must you insist on making things so hard for yourself, John?"

Locke rose moments later, his back leaned into the dusty green wall behind him. "Because you weren't around to do it for me." He looked down at his legs forlornly, sensation hadn't returned. He would be damned if he looked concerned or scared for himself in front of Ben, so he played it off. Ben could see that he was favoring his knees, rubbing them as if he couldn't feel them at all. He wanted to believe that it was just the unjust position the guards hung him with, but there was something else.

"How are your legs, John?" Ben's snarly tone lingered over the operative word like a snake skittered slowly through grass. "Do they hurt? Can you fee—?"

"They're fine!" Locke's baritone snapped, irritated, on the verge of tears. "How are yours, Ben? Did Jack do a good enough job patching you up?"

"Actually, he did. He's a very skilled, experienced surgeon. Maybe if you had told him about your, erm…condition prior to the Island, he would have believed you."

Locke swayed his head against the wall, seeing straight through Ben's ploy to play it cool, to keep him on the defensive; it was too bad that wouldn't last very long. "It must really hurt your feelings."

Ben's eyes sparkled with curiosity. "What's that?"

"That the Island healed me, but not you." The words cut through Ben with a fierce, sizzling truth. It was the truth, after all. He read Locke's medical files, down to every speck of punctuation. There was no conceivable cure for his paralysis, but he had walked ever since the crash. Jack's surgical genius probably could have saved his legs had they ever crossed paths, but they hadn't and John never told him about his pre-crash state. Ben had wondered devastatingly, lost sleep over it even. Why had John Locke been healed and he hadn't? Why had the Island failed him when he needed it the most?

Ben shifted in his chair, the first break from equanimity that Locke had seen since he wheeled himself into his presence. "Don't be so smug John, it's very unbecoming. Anything the Island gives can very easily be taken back. You would know all about that, wouldn't you?"

Locke decided to ignore him, on a roll with catching Ben completely off-guard. He rather enjoyed it. "So, Tom fetches things for you, Pryce beats people up for you…what exactly does he do?" He gestured towards Richard, who was still standing next to Ben, watching the interplay between the two men fester and burn. There was a lot of unresolved animosity in the air they both breathed simultaneously, and Richard couldn't help but believe that this was only the beginning.

"Why are you asking?" Ben asked.

Locke stared into the silvery depths of Ben's stormy eyes, feasting. "Because I saw him last night."

Richard's chiseled facial features swept up in surprise. "You saw me? Where?"

"You came from the jungle, you had this paper in your hand, and you were headed toward the offices". Richard looked down at Ben, who sat almost like a pagan statue, allowing Locke's acute observations to roll off of his back. "Now, what was so important that you had to get to Ben at such a late hour?"

Richard was about to speak, to lie perhaps, to come up with some convenient excuse for his rushed arrival onto the compound. He felt this unexpected, eerie obligation towards Locke, and was almost compelled to tell the truth, to ditch Ben's plan to deceive him, but before he could, Ben cleared his throat, interrupting.

"That's none of your concern, John. What you should be concerned with is your life and whether or not I'm up for taking it." His steely eyes were now shown through the scrutinizing slits of his eye-lids. He knew what John was doing. Maybe he had underestimated him after all. "Why did you really come here? Because blowing up the submarine was just your first step, wasn't it? It was something that you thought of on the trek, wasn't it? Keeping Jack on the Island was the first order of business, but what was to come after that? I'm sure I factored into your plans somehow."

"I already told you Ben, not everything is about you."

Ben leaned in. "You stole my dynamite, snuck onto my compound and attempted to blow up my submarine. So please John, don't bother with telling me that this has nothing to do with me. My intelligence is extremely insulted as it is."

"Your dynamite?" Locked asked.

Ben sat back then, getting reacquainted with being the one in control of the conversation. "I recognized the packaging almost immediately. You stole it from the Flame station, that's located about two miles before you reached the sonar pylons. I'm guessing you ransacked the place and it was Kate's brilliant idea to take Mikhail with you, because she thought that I would trade Jack for him, but you had other plans, of course." He bore that inspective glare again. "Tell me John, did you kill him?"

Locke breathed deeply. "If it makes you feel any better, he tried to kill me first."

Ben's head shook with regret. "I wish you hadn't done that, John. Mikhail was an important, irreplaceable asset to my team."

"Boohoo, Ben." Locke felt his temper rising again. "Let me shed a tear for one life lost on your end, when you unnecessarily caused the deaths of two people in our camp. So, please, don't be surprised that I'm less than sympathetic to you and Mikhail. He got exactly what he deserved."

"Oh." Ben's eyes went bright with a smile, his lips lifted, his teeth visible. "So that's what this was all about huh, John? Revenge." This was Ben's time to conquer. "And now your blood is boiling even more, because Jack defied you and left, even against your boisterous pleas that it was all wrong. You should know him a little better than I do, John. He's not the kind of man who likes being told what to do."

"You want to know what I do know? I know that you knew about each and every one of us before we knew each other, and you knew all about that hatch, even using it to spy on us from some location that not even your precious people know about." Locke rubbed at the back of his head. "I recognized the equipment in Mikhail's station, so there had to be a way for you to communicate with him and with Desmond, the man in the Swan hatch before we inhabited it, but you didn't."

Richard looked unnerved, rattled at how much information Locke had deduced, by simply observing and listening. He was worried now, deathly worried. Ben seemed blank, no action or reaction to the scenario that Locke was proposing, because it was right on the money.

"Then, you discovered you had cancer, a spinal tumor in fact, and would you look at that!" John smiled then, his hands raised on each side of him. "There's a spinal surgeon in the other camp, one of the crash survivors. So, why not dig deeper and pretend to be a lost tourist in the jungle, so that you can infiltrate our camp, to get any info you could." Locke took a breath, basking in how shell shocked Richard seemed. Ben had too much to lose to show any kind of valid retort.

"You had Michael all that time, and in order for him to get his son back, the child you took, he had to rescue you from the hatch and bring Jack to your camp. So, he led Jack, Kate and the others into a trap, and in your own special warped way, you got him to do exactly what you wanted, but not for nothing." This was the clincher that Locke had waited for, ever since that verbal throwdown with Jack on the dock. "In return, he wanted a way off the Island and you, Mr. Helpful himself, provided it."

"I hope Jack realizes that while dealing with the Devil, getting burned is unavoidable." Locke said, his tone acidic and hateful.

Ben scoffed at the accusation, and giggled at the satanic reference. "Are you suggesting that I wanted harm to come to Jack?"

"I'm suggesting that you have something to gain from getting rid of him." Locke was certain of this, he just didn't know how he could prove it. He knew that Ben had probably granted Jack's last wish and released Kate and Sayid, to stay on good terms with the doctor, and he was also sure that they knew of his plan to blow the submarine, and that he wasn't there to save Jack after all. This wouldn't bode well if he ever got out of here.

Ben's face cracked with a deprecating smile. "Your imagination has had quite the workout, John. First, you and Jack were brought here for a reason and now I'm the one trying to impede your discovery of that very explanation." He was once again, disappointed. "You weren't only here to stop Jack, you came to make a statement, to me."

Ben wheeled himself to where Locke sat, still on the ground, his back against the wall. "This is what you really wanted John. This, right here, you and me, face to face. You wanted my attention; you wanted me to know without a shadow of a doubt that I had failed at trying to break you." Ben was teary-eyed now, emotional, playing right into John's sensibilities, his hopes. "I heard it loud and clear, John, and I'm here to help you find the answers you seek."

"Help me?" Locke couldn't help but let out a small giggle, until he was laughing gladly at Ben's performance. "Like you were helping me press that button by lying to me about ever pressing it to begin with? Playing with my head just because you could! Because you wanted what you wanted and damn anyone who gets in your way?" He was showing his long-buried despair with bright enthusiasm. "What makes you think I trust you after that?"

"Nothing makes me think that, John. You have every reason to doubt me, but I'm asking you to trust what I'm telling you now, in this moment." Ben never broke his gaze, never backed away, he only dug, deeper. "You don't need Jack to accomplish what you need to accomplish. Whatever part you think he plays, he doesn't. If you had succeeded in stopping him, it wouldn't have gotten you any closer to the answers you're looking for."

Locke shrugged, his hands coming up in the air and falling back to the ground with helpless abandonment."You tell me then Ben, why am I here? Why did the Island bring me here?"

Hook, line and sinker, Ben thought. The question to end all other questions, and he'd finally gotten Locke to ask him. "Because you're special, John." He could see Locke fighting the bout of satisfaction that fumed in his heart, but it still showed. "You have a communion, a relationship with this Island that I have never seen from an outsider."

"Is that right?" Locke asked.

Ben nodded emphatically, hopeful, almost gleeful. "Yes. I don't have all of the answers, but I have the pertinent ones, the ones about why you belong here and what you can do, what you're truly capable of." Ben wheeled himself back, watching as Locke looked on, interested. "But you have to do something first."

"And what is that?"

"Join us, John." There it was, the offer that Locke had long since considered, but he couldn't help but sense something about it that wasn't right. "With Jack gone, the group on the beach will pose nothing but a burden that you don't want to bear, they'll only hold you back from your full potential. If you join me, you'll be free to discover the Island and everything it has to offer, and I can be right there with you, leading the way."

Locked looked resolute, decided. "Thank you for the offer Ben, but I think I'm better off on my own."

The hopeful glint fell from Ben's eyes like a shower of untrained sparks. He was completely sure, confident that his plan would work, but it hadn't. He couldn't kill him, there were so many extenuating reasons why Ben wanted to, but alas, he couldn't. "Well," he cleared his throat, the panic that suddenly rose startled him, "I was hoping that you would make the right decision, John, but I have no choice but to let you go." His smile was so fake, it was flaking in mid-air. Richard and Pryce were equally shocked that Ben was actually letting him walk. What had just happened here?

Ben, Locke and Richard were planted on the green grass of the courtyard now, at the breach of its borders. Community members were looking on, watching, and Ben allowed them to see him peacefully let Locke go. He had to maintain trust with his people. He knew what was going on, he was aware of the rumors about what had happened on the dock, that a man was almost murdered. He couldn't be seen as a murderer, not to the innocent people who had no idea what was really going on here.

"Destiny is a fickle bitch, John. Don't make me regret turning you loose." Ben extended his hand, his eyes squinting against the high afternoon sun. "Good luck."

Locke cracked a smile as he pulled his backpack over his shoulder. He reached for Ben's hand, shaking it firmly. "I'm sure we'll meet again, Benjamin." He let his hand go, still meeting his eyes. "Hopefully you're prepared when we do." Locke winked, pleasantly satisfied by the momentary slip of Ben's smirk. He made it to the end of the compound, disappearing behind one of the Dharma houses, and then hiked up an inclined patch of grass; the jungle greeted him like an old friend, kind and inviting.

Richard gripped the handles of Ben's wheelchair, watching as Locke hiked into the jungle. "That didn't go at all how you planned, did it?"

"No, unfortunately, it did not." Ben was already churning out the details of Plan B, silently plotting the dots in his mind. He wasn't sure if it would work, but he had to try. "John Locke is gonna be a bigger problem than I originally anticipated."

Phew! Don't worry! Not every chapter will be a book. I just have a lot to set up, character dynamics, motivations and such, that will carry on throughout the story. Also, JATE is coming. There is a very slow build to a very promising conclusion. Trust me. Please, please stay tuned.

If I haven't said this already, I will now. Thanks so much for reading. ;)