Eighteen Years Ago

"Birds singing in the sycamore tree... Dream a little dream of me..."

Ben pushed open the bathroom door, a cloud of steam escaping as he entered. Although the glass surrounding the shower was misted with condensation, he could see Annie's slim form standing under the water, her dark hair tinged white with shampoo suds. Abruptly, she stopped singing and he saw her turn round and wipe her eyes. "Can't a girl have any privacy?", she called.

He smiled and moved over to the sink. "I think you surrender that right when you spend almost an hour washing your hair."

She did not reply, too busy rinsing out the shampoo. He began to brush his teeth, but stopped when he heard a squeaking noise beside him. Turning back to the shower cubicle, he saw that Annie had drawn a vertical line in the condensation on the glass. "What are you doing?", he asked.

She replied by tracing another line, which became a letter L. Ben watched with interest as she wrote, saying nothing until she had finished the message:

I LOVE YOU.

He examined the glass for a moment. "Your 'E' is backwards," he told her.

"Dammit," she muttered, almost inaudible over the pounding water. He smiled; her perfectionism often rivalled his own. He could almost see her face reddening as it always did when she was annoyed with herself. "Well?", she added after a few moments.

"Well what?"

"You're not going to write back?"

"The condensation is on the inside, Annie."

"Oh dear," she said with mock dismay. "I guess you'll just have to come in here then, won't you?"

"Can I get you any more coffee, sir?"

Ben looked up into the smiling face of the English stewardess. She was caked in make-up with thick, spidery eyelashes and smelled far too strongly of synthetic roses. "Oh. No, thankyou," he answered with a slim, courteous smile that failed to reach his eyes.

"Well, you just let me know if you need anything, OK love?", she beamed, before moving onto the next row of seats. On his brief but frequent trips off-island, Ben had found to his surprise that the women he encountered – stewardesses, shop assistants, hotel receptionists – always seemed to go out of their way to assist and be polite to him. He had figured out long since that this was nothing to do with his personality. It was his stature and non-threatening demeanour, involuntarily giving them the impression that he needed to be mothered, to be looked after. They never noticed the resentful, indignant glare in his eyes, or the twitch at the corner of his mouth as he longed to enlighten them as to the kind of man he really was. All they saw was fragility. All they saw, he thought to himself with a bitter realisation, was Henry Gale.

Annie had never thought him fragile or weak. He wondered, rather vainly, if she had been the only woman to have found him attractive. In all his time on the island, no other woman had shown an interest and he surmised that this was down to revulsion rather than fear. He would have rejected any advances had they come, of course. He had no desire at all for any of the other women. Only her. Always her.

'Ladies and gentlemen, as we will shortly be landing at London Gatwick, we ask all passengers to return their seats to the upright position with trays folded away for your own safety and comfort. Thankyou.'

He pulled his seatbelt around his middle and clicked the clasp into place, then turned his head to look at the view outside, expecting to see nothing but wisps of cloud. There was a fine mist coating the outside of the window and he could barely see anything at all. He peered closer to try and make out some detail, when his eye was caught by something in the bottom left-hand corner. Ben's chest grew tight and his heart began to pound as he saw what it was. A scrawled message, written in tiny letters:

THEY NEED YOU.

Sayid drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and watched the droplets of rain run down the windscreen in erratic lines. His plane had landed two hours earlier than Ben's flight was due to arrive, and after exhausting the few possibilities of entertainment in the arrivals area – uninviting coffee shop, uninspiring newsagents' – he had chosen to sit in the hired car and wait for his employer to join him, wondering with some annoyance why Ben insisted on separate flights, but seemed perfectly comfortable with treating Sayid as his personal chauffeur.

After another twenty minutes had passed, the passenger door opened, blowing freezing rain into the car. Ben, wrapped in a thick coat, slipped into the seat, hurriedly closing the door and running a hand over his damp hair. "Well?", he said, glaring at Sayid. "You do know how to drive, don't you?"

Sighing, Sayid started the engine and manoeuvred the car out of its parking space. "Now that we're in London, am I to understand that you have a plan?", he asked, his eyes fixed on the road.

"After all this time working for me, Sayid, that really is an idiotic question," Ben replied, with no small degree of scorn.

"Do you intend to share it with me?"

"Well, theoretically, there are a number of ways of getting to Charles Widmore," Ben explained, removing his leather gloves as the car's heater kicked in. "For one thing, he does love his daughter very much."

Sayid tensed, his hands gripping the wheel. "I want no part of that," he said stiffly.

"Oh, relax. I don't murder innocent people, I've already explained that. That's why we're the good guys, Sayid."

Sayid scoffed. "Oh, is it?"

"Among other reasons. No, I always find that the simplest way is often the most effective. So we're just going to walk into his house and kill him."

Sayid glanced over at Ben, wondering if this was his strange idea of a joke. Ben fixed him with a level stare.

"I'm sorry if that's not quite James Bond enough for you, Sayid, but that's the way it is."

"How on earth do you expect us to walk into Widmore's home and..."

"I'll explain everything in due course. I'll even use a flipchart if it'll help you understand. How far is it to the hotel?"

"We should be there in half an hour," Sayid replied, knowing from experience that it would do no good asking further questions.

Ben turned away to stare out of the passenger window, his elbow resting on the door. He had been unusually quiet ever since they had left Berlin that morning; the haunted, troubled look Sayid had seen in his eyes often returning when he thought he was not being watched. He had not said a single word in the taxi to the airport and now he had lapsed into silence again. If it had been anyone else, Sayid would have asked about Camille Moriarty. He would have tried to offer words of comfort, or at least show some sign of support. Instead, he kept his eyes on the road ahead and concentrated on driving.

It was almost fifteen minutes before Ben spoke again, as they pulled to a halt at a red light. "Turn the radio off," he said, still facing the window.

"Excuse me?"

"Turn it off."

Sayid stared in bafflement at his employer. "The radio isn't switched on," he told him. "It's broken. I tried it earlier."

Ben turned to him, his face very pale. "What?" He leaned forward to examine the radio, pressing buttons at random, producing no response from it. Sayid could only stare, a little fearful that Ben had completely lost his mind.

Ben leaned back, his lips pressed together. "Green light," he said. "Get moving."

Ben had much preferred his suite in Berlin. This hotel room was darker and more cramped and had clearly not been aired for some time. He hung his coat in the wardrobe and sat on the bed, unsure of what to do. He did not feel hungry, or thirsty. He had no desire to read or watch TV. He felt tired and somehow hollow, as if he might collapse and shatter into pieces at any moment, but he knew there was little point in trying to sleep. More than anything, he felt painfully alone. Ben had always been something of a solitary man - excepting those few blessed years when Alex had still loved him and had wanted to spend her days in his company – but he had never felt particularly lonely. He had always been able to tell himself that, however many miles away she was, Annie was still out there in the world somewhere, and draw comfort from that thought. Now, however, there was nothing left to comfort him.

The first tear had rolled halfway down his cheek before he even realised he was crying. It was an unusual experience for him, but one he found that he no longer had the strength to resist as more tears came, rapid and unstoppable. He slumped forward, his head in his hands, and began to rock gently backwards and forwards, his breaths becoming increasingly ragged and difficult.

"Stars fading, but I linger on, dear... Still craving your kiss..."

He brought his head up sharply, hearing the song which he had heard playing so clearly on the broken car radio. It was just a moment, a brief snatch of noise, but he had definitely heard it again, too distinct to have come from a neighbouring room. He would not have recognised the voice of Cass Elliot had Annie not played the song to death after they had married and moved in together.

"Ben."

She had only said one word but he recognised her voice instantly. Wiping the tears roughly from her eyes, he finally saw her. She was standing inside the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door, smiling softly. She wore the same white shirt and jeans he had seen her in that morning, but now there were no wounds, no blood. He tried to speak, to say her name, but the words stuck in his throat and all he could do was stare.

"Please don't cry," she said. "They need you."

He stood and made to move towards her, but the image vanished, leaving no trace that Annie had ever been there. He touched the glass tentatively, finding nothing out of the ordinary, then leaned heavily on the wardrobe, fearing his legs were about to give way. As he leant his forehead against the cool glass of the mirror, he thought about how she had looked. Beautiful, of course, and clearly not in any pain, but she did not seem happy. There had been a look in her eyes; a certain sadness, as if she was not entirely at peace. Ben knew how to read a look like that. He had seen it before, in the eyes of his mother. Twice now, Annie had told him he was needed. Perhaps, he thought, if he completed his task, he would see her again. The sooner Widmore died, the sooner she would return. He stood upright, a little shakily, taking several deep breaths, each steadier than the last. Eventually, when he felt able, he moved back across the room and picked up the phone on the bedside table. A bored-sounding female voice answered and Ben asked to be put through to another room. He listened to the phone ring three times, before Sayid answered.

"Meet me in the bar in ten minutes," Ben said. "We need to discuss the plan. Oh, and Sayid? I'm so sorry to disappoint you, but I lied about the flipchart."

He replaced the receiver and sat back down on the bed. Wit was always a very useful thing to hide behind. He had relied upon it for years. Alone in the dark, musty room, tears still drying on his face, Ben realised that it was really the only thing he had left.