TIME IS AN ILLUSION – LUNCHTIME DOUBLY SO

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Three

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I fell into a routine for the next couple of days of waiting outside the church in the morning to see if anybody else came by, then going to the Rousseau's for lunch. A side effect of the revelation that I was dead, that I'd kidnapped and murdered and lied and cheated and ruined countless lives, was that I had at least remembered that I can cook. Every cloud has a silver lining. Danielle and I cooked for one another, and ate together, and then we would go upstairs together. Judge if you must, but if you had just got your first girlfriend after living 73 years, dying as an elderly virgin and then continuing in the afterlife as a middle aged virgin, I bet you'd be taking every opportunity you could to enjoy the long-withheld pleasures of the flesh as well. Anyway, it wasn't just that. It was her, too. I was glad that it was with her. I enjoyed her touch, and enjoyed touching her. I liked her smile, and her warmth, and her laugh. I wanted to make her happy, and so far, our lunchtime dates seemed to be doing that.

Alex would come home late in the afternoon, by which time we'd be dressed and decent, we'd all have dinner together and then I would go and wait outside the church again, before heading back to my now-empty house. Nobody ever seemed to mention or question that I hadn't been to work at the school for days. I understood that on a subconscious level I had made myself a teacher in order to find Alex – which I had done – and to fulfil a longing that Hugo had instilled in me – a longing to help people. I was sure that a few of the kids at that school were real souls from the island – Alex was, certainly – but most were surely invented by me, or by whoever it was that built this world. The figures that I had seen hesitating about the church were all real, and all in need of help. For now, my time was better spent at the church door than in the classroom.

Danielle was seeing to laundry as I left for the church on the third evening, so it was Alex who saw me to the door. She caught my arm before I left.

'It's OK if you want to stay, you know. I know what's going on, Dr Linus…' she smirked a little, 'although, if you're going to sleep with my mother, I suppose I should call you Ben.'

I blinked down at the ground. This was awkward.

'Alex… I know that on paper this all looks horribly inappropriate, but… but when you get to my age, and you feel a connection with somebody… I mean, over the last few days I've been overwhelmed by your mother's kindness and warmth, and…'

'It's fine,' she smiled. 'Better than fine – Mom's been alone for so long, she deserves someone nice, and I can't think of anybody I'd be more pleased to see her with than you. She's been happier the last few days than I think I've ever seen her. And I've felt happy, too.' She paused. 'Am I laying it on too thick, here? I am, aren't I?'

'Not at all. I'm very glad that I have your approval, Alex.'

She held her smile, but there was an odd, faraway look in her eyes. Not for the first time since I'd remembered the island, I worried that she was remembering it, too.

'I want you to stay. Will you stay?'

Of course I wanted to stay. And, if I could have believed that Alex had just remembered and was asking me anyway, I might have done. I think, in that instance, she'd come close – maybe seen a faint flash in the corner of her mind's eye, as I'd done when receiving the pounding of my afterlife from Desmond Hume. It frightened me. I couldn't bear for her to see the way she'd died. If it was me who was making her begin to remember, I wanted to get some distance from her – just for a while.

'Perhaps some other time,' I replied, turning to go.

'OK. Goodnight, "Dad".'

I froze, staring at her. She stared back, then broke into a nervous laugh.

'Joke,' she said. 'Laying it on too thick again. Sorry. I should just…' she finished her sentence silently by pointing back inside. 'Goodnight.'

'Goodnight, Alex.'

She closed the door and I began to walk to the church. Away from her presence, I allowed myself to dwell on the past – on the childhood that she didn't remember. Just for once, I only let myself remember the good times, and none of the bad. The unbraiding of little pigtails; the brushing of little teeth; helping limbs into little pyjamas. Many thousand "Goodnights". I remembered the stories she'd ask for. At one point, when she'd been six, she'd made me read her Rapunzel so many times that in my boredom with the tale, I'd started breaking away from the text, adding strange new embellishments, much to Alex's delight, culminating in an epic adventure tale spanning a couple of months worth of bedtimes in which Rapunzel broke free, battled ogres, aliens and Vikings and eventually became a Pirate Queen, with the help of a talking unicorn named Clyde and an heroic cameo from the Prima Ballerina Margot Fontayn. I remembered painting with her, drawing with her, teaching her piano. That record that she loved so much, over and over again.

Welcome to the world of love and laughter, baby…

Yes, and we always had to be sure not to dance to close to the record player, so that the needle wouldn't jump and scratch the vinyl.

Welcome to the sunshine of a brand new day…

Why did they ever do away with vinyl, anyway? The noise of the crackling needle just before the music starts was always such a magical sound.

You've drifted onto the scene, you flowered into a dream, a dream that never…

Caught up in my reverie, I had barely noted that I was approaching the church, but as I got closer, I was pulled sharply from my daydreams.

There was somebody on my bench.

I walked around the bench until I could see her face. This woman wasn't in a flood of tears as Ilana had been, although she didn't look particularly happy, either. She was glaring at the church door in a silent rage.

'Hello, Ana Lucia.'

Ana Lucia Cortez didn't respond at first – she just kept on staring furiously at the church.

'I don't think the doors have been locked,' I added. 'You can go in any time you like.'

'I can't go in,' she replied, quietly.

'What makes you think that?'

'Because Shannon Rutherford went in there,' replied Ana Lucia, finally meeting my gaze, 'didn't she?'

'Yes, she did,' I conceded. 'But I'm not sure how much that really matters, here.'

'What would you know?'

'I killed John Locke,' I told her. 'Murdered him – it wasn't an accident the way it was for you with Shannon. It was calculated and unprovoked – my only motives were my own jealousy and spite. After I killed him, I strung up his corpse to make it look like he'd committed suicide. And even after remembering all that, and all the other ways that I'd made that man's life a misery before cutting it short, still he was able to forgive me in this world. If he could forgive me that, I'm not sure that there's anything that can't be forgiven.'

Ana Lucia stared at me for a moment longer, then got to her feet.

'And why should I believe a word you say, "Henry"?'

She started walking away from me, and the church.

'You know that isn't my name,' I called after her.

'Exactly,' she retorted.

I tried to follow her, but when I turned the corner that she had turned down, she was nowhere to be seen. I returned to linger around the church for a while, but nobody came near again that night. Eventually, I conceded defeat for that session. Perhaps my unsettling conversation with Alex and the vivid memories it had brought forth had affected my persuasive skills temporarily. Half of my mind was still in the past with Alex as it was. I wanted to go to bed, and dream. I went back to my empty house.

I dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed of a hundred thousand beautiful little moments, and of her laugh and her smile, and of the magical crackle of the needle on the vinyl before the same song started up over and over again. There were nights, when her baby teeth were cutting, that she wouldn't let me set her down in her crib without screaming blue murder. The only way that either of us would be able to get any sleep would be if I brought her into my bed with me. We'd always end up face to face – our foreheads practically touching sometimes, and I'd stay awake after she'd fallen asleep and just watch her. I would always hold her the same way – curled semi-foetally around her, with her next to the wall so that she couldn't fall out, with one hand under her head and the other cradling her side. I tell you this because when I woke up that morning in the afterlife, I was holding my pillow in exactly the same way.

My head still swimming with memories, I returned to the church. I still wasn't sure how I might be able to help Ana Lucia, but I had to try. Ana Lucia wasn't at the church when I arrived, and although I waited outside for hours, neither she nor any other lingerers approached. I was just starting to think about going to lunch when Miles Straume sat down heavily next to me.

'Are you still here, Linus?'

'I could ask the same of you,' I replied. 'What unfinished business could you possibly have to keep you here?'

Miles shook his head, smugly. 'The old turn-the-question-back-onto-the-other-guy trick. A Linus classic. I'd missed those. That's a joke. At literally no point during my life after getting off that damn island did I ever think "know what I miss? Ben Linus and his conversation manipulation techniques".'

'You had a good life, then?'

'I had an awesome life. Which is, since I'm sure you're not gonna answer my question 'til I've answered yours, why I'm still here.'

'I don't understand.'

'James helped me remember,' Miles told me, 'not long before he was due at the church. He knew that there were still a lot of people who weren't ready yet… but the first wave…? People like Jack Shepherd and Desmond Hume – they'd already done so much good work for the island – for all of us. They deserved to be fast tracked instead of waiting around indefinitely for people like you to make your peace with your lives. But, we decided, if Hume was going home to the spirit in the sky, someone else was gonna have to help out the second wave. Made sense it should be me. I mean, I did my time on that island, but look what I got out of it – everything I'd gone in for and more. I was able to settle things with Dad, I got away scot free and ended up with the material reward that I'd gone there in the first place for.'

'The diamonds,' I recalled.

He nodded. 'The diamonds – right. Dead people helped me out big time back there. It was only right that I spend a while here helping out as many dead people as I could, in kind. Straight after I'd helped Mom and Dad remember, I sought those diamond guys out especially. Felt like I owed them.' He leaned into me, conspiratorially. 'Did you know they got buried alive?'

I hadn't known that. I sucked through my teeth instinctively.

'I know,' continued Straume. 'I mean, how did you die?'

'Couple of strokes,' I told him. 'Seventy three.'

'Slipped getting into the tub,' he replied, jerking his thumb towards himself. 'Eighty eight. Kinda puts things into perspective, doesn't it?'

'Not really.'

Straume shrugged. 'Anyway, I hope that answers your question. I'm here to lend a helping hand to dead guys. I probably should've done more of that back when I was alive.' He gave me an odd look. 'I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "what made James Ford, the former con man who got off the island OK, turned his life around and lived a full life afterwards, believe that he deserved to be fast tracked along with the martyrs instead of staying to do some more work"? Aren't you?'

As a matter of fact, that hadn't crossed my mind, so I was able to shake my head without any deception.

'His decision wasn't for himself,' continued Miles, unabashed. 'He knew that Juliet Burke would never leave without him, and she'd already sacrificed so much…' He left his sentence open, hanging expectantly over my head.

'About that…'

'Yes…?' There was the trademark Straume Smirk again.

'When you do move on… if you see her, will you tell her how very sorry I am, for everything I did to her. I liked her. I coveted her. I wanted to keep her, and in trying to do so, I destroyed her freedom. I was like a kid trapping a butterfly under a dish until its wings were broken. Tell her I'm sorry.'

Miles' smirk widened into a victorious grin. 'No.'

'Pardon?'

'Do I look like a message boy? Tell her your damn self. Although, that will mean getting up off your ass and going through those doors.'

I sat back. 'I get it, Miles. You're trying to add me to this second wave of yours.'

'Hey, I'm here to help the guys who are still on the cusp of crossing over. And here you are, staring at the big doors…'

'I'm not "on the cusp". I'm nowhere near the cusp, as a matter of fact. I think I still have… unfinished business…'

'"Unfinished business",' repeated Straume, archly. 'So that's what you kids are calling it these days.'

I decided to feign innocence. 'I don't…'

'It's OK,' Miles replied. 'I mean, this is a world of wish fulfilment, right? You wish to work your way back into being Alexandra Rousseau's surrogate father again...'

I nodded, hoping he'd leave it there. 'Right.'

'…to such an extent that you've started banging her Mom,' finished Straume.

Wow. News travelled fast in Limbo.

'It isn't like that…'

'Of course it is,' grinned Straume. 'And I reiterate – it's OK. Dating and sex and love… they all go on in this world. For some of us, they go on a damn sight more than they did in the last one, as a matter of fact – only, most people here are getting together with people they'd already hooked up with in life. But Linus and The Frenchwoman… it's one of the few pieces of decent gossip this world has. Kudos - even when you're trying to be boring, you're still full of surprises.'

'How gratifying to hear that my private life has provided a group of scandal-starved dead souls with something to talk about around the celestial water cooler.'

'I just never thought you had it in you.'

'To tell you the truth, Miles, neither did I. Danielle and I… I have no way of knowing whether there was always a connection there, but how we were in life smothered any sort of attraction, or whether this is all just something I created, to get closer to Alex. If it's the former, that's pretty sad. If it's the latter… well, that's far, far worse, isn't it?'

Miles paused for a moment, looking away, as though distracted. I knew false change-of-subject body language when I saw it.

'Did you know my parents are together again in this place?' he asked. 'Have been since before any of us became aware.'

'As you said,' I replied, 'people who were together in life do keep finding one another again.' I paused. I remembered the Changs from my childhood. 'Good for them.'

'Good for me,' said Miles. 'Without wanting to underplay the feelings between them, sometimes I think maybe they got back together for my sake – subconsciously, I mean. Because I wished it. It makes things so much easier for me that I feel I won't have to choose between my Mom and my Dad when we all move on…'

He left the sentence hanging over me again.

'Very subtle,' I replied.

'I'm just saying,' Miles told me, 'you've got nothing to feel bad about over hooking up with Frenchie.'

'She has a name, you know.'

'However,' continued Straume, 'Carrying on the way you've been doing, putting up walls and running away to sit here every night all so that they won't remember…? That's something to feel bad about.'

'I don't want to hurt them any more, Miles…'

'You're hurting them right now,' interrupted Straume. 'You come here twice a day because you know there are people that you need to help move on, don't you? But the only people that you have to help aren't gonna come to the church steps, because they're waiting for you at the house that they keep inviting you in to. And if you keep refusing be honest be with them, if you won't show them how they lived and died for fear of losing them again, then they're gonna be stuck here when they deserve to be somewhere else – someplace better. And that would be the biggest tragedy of all, Linus, because your daughter and her mother deserve peace after all they went through, but also because it would mean that, in spite of everything that you went through – in spite of your penance, in spite of you staying on the island, in spite of all the good stuff you and Hurley did together, you still haven't changed. It would mean that you're still the kid trapping butterflies under a dish.'

I had started to feel the knot in my stomach and the hot tears welling up before Straume had even got half way through his speech. I lost my battle with them as he finished, and turned my head away from him.

'Holy crap,' muttered Straume. 'I actually made you cry. That's… a little disturbing.'

'I don't want to be that person any more,' I told him, truthfully. 'But the last time I had this much to lose… well, I lost it. All of it.'

My tears, and the fact that he'd caused them, seemed to have wrong-footed Miles somewhat. His tone softened. 'For what it's worth, I don't think you are that person any more. You just needed a hard shake to get you to do the right thing.'

'Well, consider me shaken.' I blew my nose.

'I don't want to see you on this bench any more,' said Miles, not unkindly. 'Don't worry about those other lingerers – they're my responsibility. Most of them learned the hard way in life not to believe you even if you said the sky was blue and peach cobbler was delicious, anyway. You go back to the Rousseau's. And you stay there, and you help them. All you have to do is to give them the opportunity to remember. It isn't much.' He paused, and put a hand on my shoulder. 'If you love them, let them go.'

Pocketing my handkerchief, I treated him to what I hoped was a withering look, but was probably too red-eyed and anxious to be taken at all seriously.

'It's for the greater good,' added Miles.

I made to stand. 'I'd better leave, then, before you offer me any more tired platitudes.'

Miles patted a farewell on my shoulder as I rose from the bench. 'You love her,' he said, 'don't you?'

'Of course, I love Alex.'

Miles smiled a little. 'Call me presumptuous, but I'd kinda taken that you'd love the girl you'd single-handedly raised as a daughter for sixteen years as a given. I was talking about Frenchie.'

I have to admit – I've never liked it when Miles Straume knows he's right about things. He always has to be so smug about it.

I wasn't sure how or when it had happened – how a connection and an attraction had changed into something more. Maybe it was because our mutual love for Alex created a certain affectionate bond. Maybe it was because Alex subconsciously wished for us to be together. Maybe it was due to feelings that I'd repressed in life. Maybe it was just her kindness, and her smile. But yes, I was falling in love with her for her own sake, not just Alex's. As I say, though, I don't like it when Miles Straume knows he's right.

'Her name is Danielle,' I told him, and walked away.