Two

-x-

I went home, and found my father at least a decade younger than he'd been when I'd seen him last. If he'd become aware, he certainly wasn't letting on to me, but for some time now he'd been mentioning that his health felt better than it had, and I'd begun to notice that he seemed to be regressing to the age he'd been when he'd died… when I'd murdered him. What a family.

He was sitting in his chair, his eyes shut. I hoped, as I hoped every time that I saw him, that he hadn't remembered.

'Are you all right, Dad?'

He nodded. 'You were gone a long time.'

'I'm sorry,' I replied, and meant those words more than I hoped he'd ever know. 'How do you feel today?'

'Better,' he told me, 'but kind of… sleepy.'

'Maybe you should go to bed,' I said. 'I'm just about to turn in, myself.'

'Perhaps,' he replied. 'Good night, Ben.'

'Good bye, Dad.'

I went to bed, and dreamed of my mother, and when I got up again, he was gone. Maybe my mother had come in the night, and shown him the truth, and they'd moved on together, there and then. Maybe that was never really my father. Maybe the real Roger Linus never came to this place, and the ailing old man I'd cared for here had just been my way of dealing with the guilt of my Patricide. Who can say? If it was really him, I'm glad he just drifted away. I'm glad he never had to wail into a coffee cup in a full cafeteria over the truth, as I did.

I went out, and wandered. I found myself in front of the church again, and so I sat down once more, watching the doors. After a while, I became aware of somebody behind me. I turned my head. Miles Straume was standing about a hundred feet away. He didn't look at the church at all – it was me he'd been watching. He locked eyes with me and shook his head, disapprovingly.

'What?' I called. 'I can't help but notice, Miles, that you haven't gone in either…'

'Thought you always had a plan, Linus,' he retorted.

'Don't worry about me, Miles, just go on in. Your friend James is already in there. I just need to…'

But Straume was already walking away. 'You got a visitor,' he called over his shoulder.

I turned back to face the church and saw what Sturm had meant. A ten year old boy in shorts and a TShirt leaned against the church's wall, his arms folded, his gaze set on me.

I cast my eyes down. 'How can I help you, Walt?'

'Do you really have to ask?' Walt pushed himself away from the wall and approached me, trying and failing to get me to look him in the eye. 'It upsets you to see me like this. Doesn't it?'

I nodded.

'Sorry,' he replied, his voice suddenly much deeper and richer. 'Is this better?'

I looked up. Walt was now a tall, handsome man in his late 30s. Seeing him even as an adult brought back memories of the kidnapping that I had conspired in, and the subsequent tormenting of the boy's poor father, but the memories were not as vivid.

'I thought it would help my Dad out if he saw me as a kid,' Walt explained, 'but I have to find him first.'

'I haven't seen him,' I admitted. 'I can't promise that he came here at all…'

'I think he did,' Walt replied. 'I think this is the logical place for him to go to after you helped him get away from the island…'

I recalled those many years spent chasing the whispers around the jungle. 'Hugo helped all those lost souls move on from the island,' I corrected him.

'Both of you did.' Walt was clearly in no mood to argue.

'Well, it was the least I could do,' I conceded, 'considering.'

'If you see him, do you think you could help him again? He deserves to be in there, with the others.'

I nodded in agreement. 'He just doesn't believe that he does. I remember how much encouragement it took him to move on from the island. He was a very stubborn ghost.'

'You were always very good at persuading him to do things,' Walt replied.

I nodded again. 'Could you please do me a favour, Walt?'

'Sure.'

'If you meet your father before I have chance, will you please tell him how sorry I am, for everything that I did to him.'

'I think he knows you're sorry,' said Walt. 'I sure do. Haven't you apologised enough?'

'No. Not nearly enough. Not anywhere near.'

Walt nodded, and turned to go. 'Oh,' he added. 'One more thing. Charles Widmore's looking for you.'

And with that, he became a child again and ran off down the street, calling for his father as he went.

Walt's final message filled me with the same cold panic that I'd felt when that car had pulled up the night before. I desperately didn't want to be out in the open any more. I wanted to be somewhere private – somewhere safe. From the church, a bell began to chime twelve. The lunch date. I hurried to the Rousseau residence.

-x-

It turns out that you sweat in the afterlife. I do, anyway. All of those annoying, disgusting bodily functions and bodily needs carry on as normal – at least, it does in this particular stage of post-death consciousness. This has its up sides – it means that the pleasure of a good, hot cup of coffee and a candy bar can be a comfort after receiving the mother of bad news bulletins, and it means that an unexpected, passionate kiss in an alley can be very pleasant indeed, and give you a giddy thrill when wondering whether the woman you're due to meet might kiss you again. I've never counted sweat as an up side to anything. To be honest, it was one of the handful of things I really could have done without on the island, and I still could have done without it as I ran towards the house of the woman who had kissed me – the woman who was preparing our date.

I was so concerned about the etiquette of arriving for a date in my current state of ripeness that I didn't notice the young woman slumped on the street, sobbing until I was practically on top of her. I stopped and watched. Her knees were pulled up to her bowed, shaking head, her arms wrapped around her legs. Her black hair hung down over her face and arms. For a moment, I felt my stomach tighten.

'Alex…?'

Her head shifted away from her foetally curled limbs, and two dark, tear-streaked eyes looked up at me. It wasn't Alex. And, as sad as it was to see her so distressed, I'll admit that I felt a pang of joy on seeing that face again. She had been kind to me in life, this woman. Kinder than I had deserved.

'Ilana.' I crouched down in front of her.

'Linus,' she sobbed.

'I take it that you know, then.'

'I saw the statue,' she replied through sobs. 'In a book… I let you down. I let you all down.'

I realised that the last thing she might want to do would be to hold my hand, but tentatively, I took hers anyway. She didn't protest.

'You didn't let us down. The island let you down.'

'I blew myself up!'

'Yes,' I had to concede, 'Yes you did. But do you really think that dynamite would have gone off if the island hadn't been finished with you?'

She stared at me. 'I thought you loved the island.'

'I did. I'm just saying, I'm not sure how much it cared for us.'

She let go of my hand and hugged her knees again. 'I can't find him. I have to find him. I let him down…'

'Jacob isn't here,' I told her. 'I don't know where he is, but it isn't in this world.' No one had told me this fact, I just knew it. No one I had spoken to since becoming aware had ever mentioned Jacob. I think it was something that we all just accepted, inside. All of us, it seemed, except for Ilana. Poor Ilana, who had devoted her whole life to Jacob, far more devoutly than I ever managed to. In my life, I had loved my daughter Alex and my friend Hugo, and I had been able to be with both of those people in this world. I truly believe that Jacob might have been the only person that Ilana had ever loved, on top of which, she believed she had failed him. She desperately wanted to find him and make her peace with him. Was it any wonder that she couldn't accept that he wasn't here?

Ilana started crying again, harder even than before. I wasn't sure what I could say, or do. In instances like this, I often find it helpful to ask myself what my friend Hugo would do. I shifted myself around so that I was sitting next to her, and put an arm around her shoulder.

'Ben?'

I hadn't realised quite how close to Danielle Rousseau's house we were sat. We were in full view of the Rousseau's kitchen window. Danielle came out of the house now and approached us. I only had time to mutter "she doesn't know" to Ilana before she stood in front of us both.

'Are you all right?' she asked Ilana.

Ilana just hugged her knees again.

'What's wrong? Ben, do you know this woman?'

The impulse to automatically lie pressed strongly on my mind. You'd think that death would have put a stop to all of that, but unfortunately it hasn't.

'This is Ilana,' I told Danielle. 'She's an old work friend. She just got some very, very bad news and she doesn't know what she's going to do about it.'

Personally, I think I did very well with that one. I mean, it wasn't the full truth per se, but it wasn't technically a lie, either.

'Bad news?' Danielle asked. 'Is there anything we can do to help?'

Ilana shook her head. 'There's nothing you can do to change it.'

'There's nothing anyone can do to change anything that has passed,' I agreed, 'but maybe if we talked about things, you'd see it isn't the disaster you think it is right now.' I looked up at my date. 'I know we had plans, Danielle, but…'

I didn't need to finish the sentence. 'There's enough lunch for the three of us,' she replied. 'Please, Ilana, come in.'

I blinked a little. I thought I had just been asking if she minded me staying on the kerb with Ilana for a while. I helped the still shaky Ilana to her feet.

'Guess what they say about French hospitality's true,' muttered Ilana as we followed Danielle to the house. 'Wait a minute… is that… The Frenchwoman?'

She intoned the words "The Frenchwoman" so darkly that I couldn't be under any false illusions that she hadn't heard about what I'd done to Rousseau in life.

'That is Alex's mother, yes.'

'And you're dating her?'

'After a fashion. She's… nice.'

'Dating The Frenchwoman.' Ilana stared at me. 'No wonder you don't want her to remember.'

Danielle opened the door for both of us. 'Please,' she smiled, ushering us both inside. 'Make yourselves comfortable in the sitting room. I have a few things to finish in the kitchen.'

Once Danielle had left, I turned back to Ilana. 'She'll remember when she's ready. Like all of us.'

'And when she does…?'

'I'll… cross that bridge when I come to it.'

'Don't you have a plan? I thought you always have a plan.'

'I gave up trying to make those some time ago, Ilana. I'd have expected you to understand that. My plans weren't working out so well for me when we knew each other on the island, remember?'

Ilana looked down, remembering. 'Mine didn't work out too well, either.'

'You do know that we were able to stop the monster, don't you?'

Ilana shook her head. 'You're the first person I've spoken to who remembers the island. At least, the first who's talked to me about it.' Her expression brightened a little. 'So, you were able to blow up the plane after all?'

'We didn't need to. He was made mortal trying to destroy the island. He died. Hoist by his own petard. I know what that feels like.'

'You and me both,' she replied with a faint, self-deprecating smile.

'A lot of good people escaped on that plane we'd have blown up,' I added. 'Including Richard Alpert – he finally got to live a normal life.'

Ilana's smile grew. 'He deserved it.'

'Want to know who Jacob's long term replacement ended up being?' I didn't wait for her to reply. 'Hugo Reyes.'

Ilana's expression glowed with approval.

'I saved his life before the monster was destroyed,' I continued. 'I helped him save the island, and then I stayed with him until the day I died. We did a lot of good together.'

'You turned a corner. Good for you.'

'I'm not sure I'd have done it if it weren't for you,' I replied. 'You offered me that first hope that I could redeem myself – that I could become somebody who didn't sicken myself any more – that I could get back the one thing that had ever really mattered to me… to be with somebody that I loved. I don't know for certain what I'd have done without that hope, but I can make an educated guess, and it doesn't involve helping Hugo Reyes. I wish that there were something more concrete I could give you, Ilana, but as far as I'm concerned, you didn't let me down. And you didn't let the island down either.'

I paused, watching her.

'That's all I've got. Would you still like to stay for lunch?'

She shook her head, absently.

'Are you going to go to the church?'

She thought about this. 'Not yet. But I think… maybe later.' She gave me a small, businesslike smile. 'Thank you for stopping to talk. It was very helpful. When I go, will I see you there?'

'I don't know yet.'

She nodded. 'Thank you.'

'Thank you.'

She let herself out of the Rousseaus' small house, and walked away.

Danielle came out of the kitchen with a bowl of potato salad just as the door shut behind Ilana. 'She's leaving, already?'

'We had a little talk,' I replied. 'I think she's feeling much better about things now.'

Danielle set down the bowl. 'You helped her?'

'I hope so.'

'You help so many people.'

'I try.'

Don't be fooled into mistaking my replies for false modesty, by the way. People eulogising about my humanitarian efforts made me nervous even before I remembered what I used to be. Now, it makes me positively queasy – especially coming from somebody like Danielle Rousseau.

'Well,' added Danielle, going back into the kitchen, 'without wanting to appear uncharitable, I'm glad she's gone. I was looking forward to it being just you and me.'

She came back out again with the piece de resistance of the lunch spread and set it down in the centre of the table. I blinked at it a few times.

'You baked a ham.'

My troubled tone unsettled her. 'You're vegetarian,' she hazarded, nervously.

'No.'

'Jewish…?'

I snapped myself out of it. She'd gone to all this effort.

I forced myself to smile. 'No. I'm sorry – I just had a moment of Deja-vu. This all looks delicious.'

I sat down, and allowed her to serve.

'I have that sometimes, too,' she said.

'Beg your pardon?'

'Strong sensations of Deja-vu. I'll admit, I feel it sometimes around you.'

I put my fork down and looked at her.

'There's something about you,' she continued. 'Something very kind, very caring. A real warmth.'

I started eating again. If her memory was returning to her, it was obviously faulty. I was glad. Let her stay that way – she was obviously much happier like this. She had what she needed – all she'd ever needed. She had Alex. Just for a moment, I wondered what my life might have been like had I as a young man stayed with the mother and her baby, and kept them together, protecting them both, but I quickly chased those thoughts away. That wasn't who I was, back then. It would never have worked. Still, it was a good fantasy – to be able to be with Alex as well as this woman, the sunny smile not crushed out of her.

'You're very beautiful.'

Had I said that? Apparently, I had. I meant it, too.

She beamed. 'Thank you. It's been a very long time since a man's said that to me.'

'That's impossible.'

'You're sweet.'

She dabbed at her lips with a napkin. Lucky napkin. I wanted terribly to kiss her right there and then. What does one do, on a date where one eats, when hit by the overwhelming urge to kiss? Having a mouth full of pork was probably a bad start. I swallowed.

'Last night,' I said, 'when we kissed…'

'I'm sorry if I came across as a little forward. I find you very attractive.'

'You're crazy,' I replied with a smile, and then instantly cringed inside, regretting it before it was barely out of my mouth.

She took it with good humour, though. 'Not any more.'

'I'd very much like to kiss you again, Danielle.'

She laughed. 'This isn't an AGM! What do you intend to do – pencil me in to your schedule?'

Sucker for wordplay that I am, I joined in with the banter. 'Just pencil? On our second date? I'd say that was worth writing you in in pen.'

'I bet you have a beautiful pen.'

'It's a steel-nibbed fountain. I've had it for years, but it's never failed me yet.'

I was fairly certain that we weren't talking about stationary any more.

She got up from her chair. I followed her lead. She walked up to me and kissed me again. It was different from how it had been the other night – gentler, but with that same passion, that same promise of so much more. This time, I was much quicker and more confident in kissing back. Our hands were allowed to take their natural course, although she was much bolder in running her palms over the upper half of my body. I'll admit; I chickened out of putting my hands on her breasts. Eventually, she had to grab my wrist and manoeuvre it herself, so that my right palm was resting against the curve of her left breast. That was the moment when my body chose to make its intentions towards her clear. She must have felt it, pressed against one another as we were. I pulled away, embarrassed. That had always been a very private reaction to a comely lady, as far as I was concerned. To impose it upon anybody, let alone press it against a woman's thigh, was in my opinion, as close to the antithesis of gentlemanliness as one could get.

'Sorry.'

'Don't be.' She tugged at my belt, pulling me close again. 'It's been a very, very long time since I've been anywhere near one of those.'

'Danielle?'

'Not since Alex's father died,' she added in a conspiratorial tone. 'And please don't take this as an insult, but I get the feeling it's been too long for you, too.'

Yes. 73 years of life and who-knows-how-long of afterlife is probably too long. I didn't say anything.

'Let's go upstairs,' she whispered.

'Danielle…'

'What? What's wrong?'

I was afraid. That was what was wrong. Besides the worry that something more intimate than just kissing might awaken memories of life in her, she had built me up far too much in her imagination. I was going to be hideously disappointing to her. I decided. It was about time that I told her what I had never told anyone about myself. It was time to continue down the road of honesty, even at the cost of my last shred of dignity.

'I've never…' I tried, 'never had the time or opportunity for… I've never.'

'Never…?'

'I was always too busy with other projects,' I replied, lamely.

She stared at me. 'You must have been really busy.'

I just nodded.

'Do you… want to?'

'God, yes.'

She smiled again. 'Well, then, that makes this very special, doesn't it?'

I wondered whether the right thing to do would be to leave anyway. I wondered whether it would be taking advantage, knowing what I knew that she didn't. But she wanted me. No one had ever wanted me before – not like that. Maybe I've always just wanted to be wanted a little too much.

'I'll be gentle,' she promised with a tone of fond mockery. Then she took my hands and began to lead me upstairs, and I followed.

I'd always held a misconception that, if there were indeed an afterlife, it would be without sex – that sexual urges arose largely from an impulse to procreate, which would not trouble us after we left the mortal realm. It would have been bad news for me if that were true. Maybe there are people in this next world who have left sex behind them. I, on the other hand, found myself in the peculiar situation of finally losing my long-held virginity some time after my death. Smacks of a lurid headline in a tacky magazine, or the title of some trashy novel, but there you go. And for a woman who created an electric torture rack and once shot me in the back with a crossbow bolt, Danielle Rousseau proved a sensual, tender, considerate partner. I can't pretend that I instantly, magically became a regular Casanova that afternoon, but she was a patient tutor. We barely spoke, but she guided my fingers, and later, my mouth, with gentle hands and whispers of encouragement. It's not that I'd never come to climax before during life – I was a virgin, not a robot – but doing so while staring into the eyes of the beautiful woman on top of me was so special, so wonderful… and, after that came something so much more wonderful – not just pleasure, but such pride; the pride I felt as she tautened and gasped and grabbed at my hair, as I felt her body pulse with the strokes of my tongue. It's probably a good thing Danielle Rousseau never seduced me while we were alive. If it were anything like how it was that afternoon, I'd have probably lost my life cheerfully concentrating on what was between her thighs as a Polar bear slowly gnawed me to death.

We held one another afterwards, remaining in silence for a while. After a long time, she spoke.

'I needed that.'

'You're telling me.' I paused. 'I feel like I should get some sort of certificate.'

She laughed, as she checked the time. 'Look at that,' she said. 'Alex will be back soon. We'd better get dressed.'

I nodded, searching the floor for my clothes. 'Do you want me to go?'

'No, Ben. I want you to stay.'

'I want to stay too,' I told her.

And I meant it. It seemed that Limbo was infinitely better than Catholic doctrine had ever portrayed it to be. If this was Purgatory, well frankly, you could keep Paradise. I wanted to stay. And I wanted them to stay with me. I wanted to stay.