After Sayid had gone back to the hotel, Ben wasted no time in clearing away the instruments, locking up the surgery and rushing to the nearest U-Bahn station. Seeing to Sayid's injury had only caused a delay of fifteen or twenty minutes, but after eighteen years of separation, he resented every second he was without her.

The woman known as Camille Moriarty lived in a large, old house in Wilmersdorf with a red door. There were flowers in her window and a small black cat stretched out on the windowsill snoozing quietly in the cold winter sunlight when Ben arrived. He was wearing his best black suit with a waistcoat and grey shirt and hoped it didn't look too formal, too funereal. He took off his glasses as he approached the door, then wondered if he should keep them on. She had always liked him in his glasses. No. Definitely too formal. He slipped them into his coat pocket, took a deep, shaky breath and rang the doorbell.

He wondered if she would look different. She would be older, of course, and that would take some getting used to. For eighteen years, Ben had had the same image of her in his mind; a girl, bright-eyed and smooth-skinned and forever twenty-two years old. He was well aware that he had aged too. In a moment of dreadful, shallow insecurity, he worried that she would no longer find him attractive. He worried how he would broach the subject of Alex. He worried about how much he should tell her about the Purge, about Dharma and Widmore and why he sent her away. He worried that she would not recognise him. He worried she would want nothing to do with him at all.

He rang the bell again, wondering why she had not answered the door and hoping he had not called when she was out. Should he leave and come back, he wondered, or simply sit on her doorstep and wait for her to return? Another twenty seconds went by and he realised he was holding his breath. This was not how it was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be perfect. She was supposed to answer the door, then gasp in amazement, then cry, then fall into his arms, then... She was definitely not supposed to be out.

Reluctant to give up so easily, Ben tried the door handle and was surprised to find the door unlocked. Maybe she simply didn't hear the bell. He smiled inwardly as he remembered how she used to work with headphones clamped to her ears, lost in the music and oblivious to his attempts to engage her in conversation. He walked inside quietly, carefully pushing the door closed behind him. The hallway was immense compared to the modest house they had shared in the barracks, with several doors leading off into various rooms and a staircase curving upwards to the first floor. The décor showed impeccable taste; Ben had expected nothing less. He wondered if he should call out, but decided against it. He wanted to surprise her.

The first door on his right was ajar. He could see wooden floorboards, the edge of an armchair and part of what may have been a bookcase. The light was dim, as if the curtains had been drawn. Moving very quietly, he walked over to the door and gently pushed it open. What he saw made him cry out in horror.

She was lying in the middle of the floor, motionless, in a spreading pool of blood, two gunshot wounds in her chest. Ben sank down next to her, trembling, almost unable to breathe. Her eyes were open; still the same, warm brown, but now dull and lifeless. Her cheeks and lips had not yet lost their colour and the blood on the floor was still fresh. She could not have been dead longer than twenty minutes.

"Oh God...", he whispered, touching her face, hoping he was wrong, that she was somehow still alive. "Oh please, no...".

A scream from behind him made him leap to his feet and grab the gun from his jacket. A woman, around sixty, stood frozen in the doorway, a look of terror on her face. "Nein, nein bitte!", she screamed, turning to run.

"Stay where you are," Ben commanded, and the woman stopped, turning back to face him slowly. "Do you speak English?"

"Yes," she answered. "Please... please don't hurt me."

"Who did this?"

"I... I thought you... Oh, Camille..."

"Who are you?"

"I... I clean for Frau Moriarty." Her voice was shaking so much her speech was almost incomprehensible.

"Calm down," Ben ordered. "Did she tell you she was in danger?"

"Danger? No. Camille, she-"

"Her name was Annie."

"No..."

"You call her Annie, do you understand?"

She recoiled, her lip quivering. "Yes. I'm sorry. Please..."

"Did she ever mention someone named Charles Widmore?"

"I... no. I do not remember that name, no. No men."

"What do you mean, 'no men'?"

"She had no husband. No, ah, no... boyfriends. No men in this house," the woman explained. "She told me she was waiting. Waiting for someone to come back to her. She would never tell me his name. She said she had been waiting for eighteen years."

Ben had tried to be realistic. He had of course remained faithful to Annie, but, much as it pained him, he had fully expected that she would have found someone else. But she never had. She had loved him, waited for him, right to the end. If he had not spent most of his life perfecting the art of appearing unfazed under pressure, he knew he would have lost all control on hearing those words.

The telephone on the table rang shrilly, causing the woman to jump violently. "Answer it," he told her.

The woman picked up the receiver with a shaking hand. "Ja?", she said, her voice a nervous squeak. There was a moment's pause as she listened to the caller, then she held out the receiver to Ben. "He wants to speak with you."

Ben snatched the phone and held it to his ear. "Yes?"

"I trust I'm speaking to Benjamin Linus?" The voice was chillingly familiar; English, refined and very, very cold.

"Yes."

"This is Charles Widmore."

"I know who you are."

"Your wife is very beautiful, Mr. Linus. Such a terrible shame."

Ben gripped the receiver, his knuckles turning white.

"And such a tragic story, I believe," Widmore continued. "Waiting for you all those years. How very romantic."

Ben did not reply. His head was swimming and he was so angry he could hardly breathe, let alone speak, but he knew he could not stay silent for much longer.

"Oh, come now, Mr. Linus. You can't wage war and not expect some form of retaliation. You don't seriously think you're going to win, do you?"

"I don't think you're fully aware of who you're dealing with," Ben said eventually, somehow managing to keep his voice level. "You've seen what I've done already, which should tell you I'm not a man who lets injuries against those I love go unavenged. I'm always willing to do what is necessary to win. In the case of your imminent death, however, I think I'll actually enjoy it too."

"Mm. I've heard you can talk the talk, as it were. Very threatening. You'll forgive me if I'm not quaking in fear at the thought of you and your pet Iraqi hunting me down."

"I always have a plan, Widmore. Do you imagine this changes that fact?"

"No, I don't," said Widmore. "But it's broken your heart, Mr. Linus. Do you imagine my death will change that?"

The line went dead. Slowly, Ben replaced the receiver, staring straight ahead, his lips pressed together in a thin, furious line.

"Who was that?", the woman asked, staring warily at him.

"A dead man," he answered coldly.

"I call the police," she offered, stepping towards the phone.

"No."

"Then... what?"

"I'm so sorry," he said softly.

He barely had to look at her as he raised his gun and pulled the trigger. She dropped to the floor inelegantly and lay there in a heap, breathing raggedly for a few seconds until her head slumped to one side, her mouth lolling open.

Ben returned to Annie's side, hardly able to look at her. Her face and hands were growing cold to the touch. His followers on the island used to hold the belief that nothing ever got to Ben, nothing ever managed to crack the surface of his cold, detached demeanour. They were wrong, of course. He just never let his emotions show in front of them. He had always been somewhat proud of this image of himself that he had created and maintained for years, and there was still work for that man to accomplish. He knew that if he allowed the grief inside him to well to the surface now, it would be beyond his capabilities ever to suppress it again.

Very slowly, he stood, reluctant to let go of Annie's cold hands. He half-thought about covering her up or moving her, wanting to give her some degree of dignity, but he knew that would be unwise. Even though the thought almost tore him apart, he knew he would simply have to abandon her. For the second time in his life – for the last time - Benjamin Linus would have to let Annie go.

The news report had interrupted the programme Sayid was half-watching as he lay stretched out on the hotel bed, his wound still aching beneath its dressing. Although his grasp of German was still very basic, he could understand the newsreader well enough. A double murder, two women, one aged forty, one in her sixties, in a wealthy area of Wilmersdorf. Names – Silke Hoffmann, who seemed to be the older woman, and Camille Moriarty. He recognised the second name and the picture they displayed on the screen. Ben had never found out about Sayid discovering the file he kept hidden in the vet's surgery, full of photographs and documents, all relating to the same woman. In the file, she looked younger, but it was unmistakeably her. He wondered why Ben had seen it necessary to kill her. It sickened him slightly that he had assumed it had been 'necessary' at all. Sighing to himself, he realised that he had been working for Benjamin Linus far too long.

A sharp knock on the door drew his attention from the TV. He slid off the bed and went to answer it. Ben stood outside; his coat flecked with snowflakes, his face drained of colour. He looked chilled to the bone, as if he had been outside in the freezing air for hours. His blue eyes, usually menacing and all-knowing, looked tired and haunted.

"Pack your things," he ordered. "We leave in five minutes."

"Where are we going?", Sayid asked.

"We're going after Charles Widmore."

"So soon?"

"It's time."

Without another word, Sayid walked over to the wardrobe and began to pull out clothes and shoes, stuffing them into a small suitcase with no particular care. Despite his instincts, the past weeks had taught him not to argue with his employer too much. Ben was still hovering in the doorway, resting a hand against the frame. "Do you remember what she looked like when you found her?", he asked quietly.

"I'm sorry?", said Sayid, setting down the shirt he was holding and turning to look at Ben.

"Nadia. When you found her."

"I..."

"You would remember." Sayid recognised those deliberately chosen words; they had once been his, when things were different, when the power balance had been reversed. He locked eyes with Ben, trying to work out what was really behind the question and, after a moment of silence, suddenly everything fell into place.

"She looked even more beautiful than I had remembered," he answered finally.

"Yes," said Ben, nodding slightly, his eyes fixed on some distant point. "Yes..."

Sayid had never seen Ben like this; vulnerable, affected. If he wanted to, he thought, he could make things worse for him. He could twist the knife a little, use what had happened to hurt him. Or he could use it to manipulate him, as Ben had used Nadia, and try to regain a little power. But for some reason, he found he could not bring himself to do either.

"I never knew," he said instead.

"You never knew what?", Ben snapped. "That someone like me was capable of love?"

"That's not what I meant."

"All I wanted to do was keep her safe," he murmured, more to himself than to Sayid. "She would have been better off staying on the island. I could have had years with her... I didn't even speak to her when I called. If I had..."

He stopped mid-sentence, as if realising how out-of-character he was behaving, then steadied himself and fixed Sayid with his usual glare.

"Finish packing. I'll be waiting outside. We never speak of this again," he said, and turned to leave.

"Ben."

He turned back.

"I promise you, even if it's the last thing I ever do, I will kill him."

The haunted look had vanished from Ben's eyes, replaced with something colder, something calculating and vengeful. "Be sure that you do," he said.