Annie learns a crush can wound

"How's the patient?" Hurley ducked his head into the storage room of the Staff Station and waved at Annie who was intently bending and stretching, moving boxes of supplies. She jumped, broke into a pealing laugh and just kept going.

"You startled me!" She had been working this hard for three days, ever since Hurley warned her Kate might need her help urgently. She had already planned to round up all the medical supplies from Hydra Island and set the Staff up as a full time clinic, and while she hadn't expected to have her first patient so soon she was ready when the sub arrived.

"Lovely," he thought was the word to describe her "And smart and self-assured." He decided his walkie-talkie code name for her would be Eowyn. Hurley did not have a crush on Ben Linus' childhood sweetheart, but he understood why Ben had.

"Kate is still asleep," Annie pointed with her elbow toward the room that used to be the nursery but now was a recovery room. "I think she'll be awake soon, though."

"I'll go sit with her awhile, then, why don't you take a break?"

Annie nodded, put down one last box and wiped her hands on her jeans. "I think I will. If she does wake up, she can have all the water or juice she wants but make sure the IV stays in for the meds. She'll be feeling weak for another day or so, but her vitals are looking great and her blood count is perfect. She's really recovering very well."

"Thanks, Annie," Hurley said as she grabbed a two-way radio and waved it to show she'd be a quick call away. "Going anywhere particular for your break?"

"No, why, need something?" She turned and asked.

"No, just wondered. Ben's bungalow is the one right across from the rec hall," Hurley said and she grinned and rolled her eyes a bit, but for the first time since they'd met he saw a hint of red in her cheeks as she turned again and left.

Hurley pulled a metal chair up next to Kate's cot, grabbed a worn copy of "The Two Towers" that sat on a bookshelf nearby, and settled in for a read.

It had only been about 40 hours since the sub had returned, and caring for Kate and getting Hurley's parents settled into their bungalow had been everyone's priorities. Annie told herself that's why Ben hadn't sought her out but as the hours piled up and he never appeared she realized he was avoiding her. "Time to put an end to that," she thought.

It was late afternoon and the light through the trees was at a strong angle, a little in her eyes but doing beautiful things with the greens and the browns of the jungle and the drops of rain from a recent shower.

Annie was 12 when she and her mom got on the sub and left the island right before the Incident. Her parents were pretty high up in the Dharma hierarchy, and even though they sheltered her well she knew more than they thought she did about the place they lived, their jobs, just about everything they thought she was in the dark about. "Kids always understand more than their parents think," she had told her mom not too long ago. Her mother had said they'd go back to the island, but then she stopped saying it. She had never seen her dad again. One day when she was 27 and visiting home, her mother told her that her father was dead. She wouldn't elaborate, and Annie had learned not to ask more than her mom was willing to tell unless she was actually looking for a fight.

She had started planning her way back as soon as she was old enough to think about college. She insisted on doing her bachelor's degree at University of Michigan to be in Ann Arbor, site of the former Dharma HQ. She took her medical degree via a US government program for underserved communities in Guam, and she traveled the South Pacific looking for the people she knew she'd find eventually: The people who could help her get back to the island. Because although she cared about her mom, everything paled for her except for two things: Becoming a doctor, and figuring out how it was the island was the ultimate MD, able to cure some illnesses and mend some wounds better than any human ever could.

She was at Ben's door now and could hear music playing, Chopin's "Fantasie Impromptu". She raised her hand to knock, stopped, then raised it again and tapped on the door. Seconds later the music went down a notch. She realized she was nervous, something she didn't really feel all that often.

The door opened and there stood Ben, looking at her silently for what felt like so long but was really just a couple of seconds. He was smiling but it was, Annie thought, a smile suggesting five parts dream come true and ten parts pain.

"Annie, come in," He stepped sideways, holding the door and gestured for her to walk by him. He didn't move, though, and as she stepped through the narrow bungalow door her arm grazed his. She thought he was taller than she'd expected him to be, more composed and … well, he was real, not the vague idea of "how Ben might have turned out" that she had carried with her.

She saw he'd been sitting at his coffee table, maps spread out over it and a journal on the couch. She sat at one end and turned the top map to look at his handwriting, notations, and the lines drawn from one place to the next. He sat to her right, moved the journal to an end table and looked at her.

"I would have recognized you anywhere," Ben said, the smile a little less sad but now mixed with some bemusement. "How in the hell did you get back here, Annie? How did you find Penny and Desmond?"

"Well I certainly didn't know them… " She said. "But I'd been looking for them, or people like them, for a lot of years. It was really only a matter of time, wasn't it, before someone determined to get back here would find someone who could get them back?"

He nodded briefly and looked down and didn't seem to want to look back up at her. He continued to look down at the sofa cushion as he spoke.

"That's why it's hard for me to say this, but you have to leave."

He was shocked when she laughed out loud, and that got his gaze back up. Annie flinched. There was a little bit of fury in his eyes but then it was gone and the 'ten parts pain' returned.

"I'm serious, you can't stay here. It's not safe. And I may be more of a threat to you than this place ever could be."

She made a sound of deep disbelief, watching him reach forward and play with the corner of one of the maps. Ben's expression hardened at the sound.

"What did Hurley tell you about me?" He asked.

"Not much. He said you'd been through a tough time, like a lot of people here," Annie stood again and found herself walking the room a bit though she couldn't have said why since she had just sat down. "He said you'd done some 'unfortunate' things over the years. He didn't tell me what that meant."

"So he didn't tell you I killed my own father?" Ben asked, almost casually. "He didn't tell you that I was part of the murder of more than 40 members of the Dharma Initiative, your father included by the way, in a purge in 1992? He didn't tell you…" Ben stood and walked toward her and while her brain was almost overwhelmed with trying to digest all this horrifying news, she found her body walking slowly backward toward the door. "That I manipulated many more people's lives and set some of them up to die when they became … inconvenient to me? That some might call me a sociopath?" He nearly spat the last few words out and they both realized at the same second that he was suddenly very in her face and her back was almost against the wall. His right hand was digging down into her left shoulder, gripping it hard enough that it would ache for a couple of days.

Ben stepped back, almost as shaken as she was but mostly angry with himself for tipping his hand, showing so much anger and so little subtlety. He knew it rattled him she was here, but hadn't realized how much.

"Annie, how did you find Penny and Desmond? I heard the story about you striking up a conversation over lunch at a marina, so you can skip all that. Tell me who told you where to find them?"

Her eyes were wide, but they narrowed and she walked in the general direction of the door though it seemed she did that more to be near it than to leave immediately.

"Why be so indirect in your questioning, Ben? If I'm reading you right, you're telling me you think I'm, what, a spy for some lingering Dharma splinter group, or Alvar Hanso's iffy arms dealer buddies or maybe the Widmore Corporation? Or that I'm a pawn of theirs, maybe I agreed to work for them if they'd take to the people who would get me back? Let me save you some time. I am here on my own, and I'm not a spy. And yes, we met over lunch but I waited weeks and did my research and I didn't tell Penny and Desmond my history or ask them to take me with them until I knew what kind of people they are. Of course, if you doubt me then nothing I'm saying here means much to you, right?"

She was angrier than she'd ever remembered being before and when he looked at her and saw her face almost illuminated with it, he thought she was either telling the truth or was a very, very good actress. He'd need more time to be sure which it was.

"Do you remember… do you know how hard I tried to keep you in the DI and not let you run to the hostiles?" Annie said. "I knew that would be the worst decision you could have made. Guess I was right. What in the hell did they do to you?"

"Nothing I didn't participate freely in." Ben said, and walked back over to the couch and sat down. "And nothing I wouldn't do again to protect this place."

The threat was mostly unspoken, but not lost on her. Annie walked back toward the couch but did not sit.

"Well, that's something we have in common, still then," she said more calmly and though he didn't look up at her she knew he was listening. "My folks may have been Dharma, but I never owed that group my allegiance. I'm here for the island. And I'm not leaving. I was hoping all these years to find you here, too – but you were not my top priority. And I'm not going. I would have hoped, Ben, that you'd have had my back. I sure used to have yours. Think about that, maybe, and lose the paranoia a little? If you do, I'll tell you why I'm here. I think you'll like the answer."

He never acknowledged what she had said or moved his gaze from the floor. A few seconds later, she walked out, her hand shaking as she pushed the door shut. She didn't run but walked very quickly back to her bungalow and locked every door and window. It would be a week before they'd talk again.