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The tea had gotten cold.
Ben hadn't even had much of it; he had only noticed now because the warmth of the mug in his hands had gone away, replaced by a kind of lukewarm and sickly feeling he associated with late nights and fevers. Looking down into it, his own milky reflection warbled back at him- a big nose, tweedy little glasses, thin hair cropped close enough to be utilitarian but not stylish at all. There were more bruises in that reflection than he thought he had ever seen on his skin before, excluding perhaps, during his childhood. Why, fancy seeing you here, Dr. Linus.
Ben shuddered horribly and looked away, his whole body suddenly overcome with sickly cold. For an instant there had been thousands of tiny icy-footed beetles marching their way up his spine, clambering over each other, as the Germanic tribes had marched on Rome...
Yes, think about history, he told himself, standing up from the couch where he had been sitting to go to his kitchen. Think about anything but that.
He poured the cold tea down the sink and put aside the mug. Instantly, he regretted having nothing to hold, and so flipped the switch on the electric kettle to set its contents boiling again. The small green numbers on his oven read 11:45, and the colon flashed to mark the seconds, eerie and hypnotic. Think of anything else. Anything to keep the cold out, the cold that was now sinking into his veins like a poison-
-have I ever poisoned anyone?-
-and making his hands shake. But it wasn't the cold that was the problem, really. No, the problem was the heat.
Tropical air, warm and wet and filled with the sweet scents of life and the buzzing of insects, infected his mind. A picture perfect recreation of a vacation advertisement, but Ben had never gone traveling to the tropics. No, whenever he had the money and time for such things (which admittedly, was not very often) he went to Europe, to explore the many ancient ruins and battlefields and historical sites that fuelled his doctoral passion. He had never seen the appeal of paying to sit on a beach and drink, there was no intellectual stimulation in that, so he had never gone.
Hell, he had only ever been below the equator once, and back then he had been a child. He knew that, he had gone over his records just hours before, checking and rechecking his passport and tax forms and bank notes and scrapbooks, everything, afraid he was losing his mind. He still wasn't sure if he was or not. It had been a very irrational thing to do, after all, it simply wasn't possible that he could have forgotten something like that. And no, Ben had never gone back to the tropics, not since he had left that strange island as a kid, and yet…
Water began to bubble in the belly of the kettle, but Ben’s eyes were fixated on something else entirely.
What was that landscape he saw so clearly? The high mountains, the forest of thick palms. The little village of dainty yellow houses with white trim, a rusted metal swing set and a brown-haired little girl. Golden beaches that stretched into the distance, molding with the clear blue sea that extended into infinity. He could almost taste the wind on that beach, as clearly as he could taste the sweetness of fresh fruit, mangos and coconuts and papayas. Were these not memories from his childhood? But they couldn't be, the angle at which his mind’s eye viewed these things was too high, they were the visions of an adult. And there were other things as well, things that he was sure (or was he sure? could he be truly certain?) he had never seen- a pyramid in the Aztec style, covered in vines and symbols so old they danced with myth, a clear pool of springwater held in its insides. A cabin of rotting wood where voices whispered from dark corners. A tremendous stone foot, the foot of a giant surely, broken off at the ankle and left there to mark the remains of some much greater thing. He could see inside it, the walls danced with light from a fire, two men stood there waiting for him...
“What about you?”
No.
Ben clasped his hands together, wishing the kettle would boil faster, he needed to hold something to distance himself from the visions. They had the look and feel of memories (though they could not be memories), but were terribly invasive, for some reason he couldn't banish them as one would fancies of the regular sort. Though he had never done such a thing, his hands tingled with the phantom sensation of gripping a gun- or was it a knife? He shivered again. He needed something warm...that was why he had taken the tea in the first place, he remembered now, he had needed it because he had been thinking of something else, something he didn't want to remember. With morbid and almost involuntary curiosity he tried to recall what, and the image bloomed abruptly to life in his mind- a pit in the middle of the jungle, a pit he had ordered dug, open but disguised by the surrounding foliage. He could see it so clearly, it was as though he stood before it. The edges of soft earth around that pit were precarious, it would be easy for someone to misstep and fall, and once inside it was very difficult to get out, especially with a debilitating stomach wound- wait, what?
“So I guess that makes me smarter than you-”
Oh right, the pit had been for dumping tens of tens of tens of dead bodies into. Gassed to death, they had been, the idiots in their matching jumpsuits. The Dharma Initiative, blood from their brains spilling out of their noses and mouths, choking to death on the meat of their own lungs as vessels under their skin popped. All the bodies tossed carelessly there, all but one-
Roger, Workman.
That one he had done personally. And what a satisfaction it had been…
Wait! No! Oh God, please no. Ben came back to himself suddenly, back to his little kitchen, the real world forcing itself into dominance before his eyes. What a horrible thing to think! Ben cared for his father- even if his childhood had been rough at times, the man taking too much drink and lashing out, he had changed. He had looked out for his son, in the end, and they had a good relationship now. Ben would never want to hurt him- let alone murder him- and yet the image of it burned in his brain. Seeing the pit of bodies again, with their vacant eyes and rotting flesh, Ben was suddenly afraid he would be sick. He tried to walk towards the bathroom, but his legs were shaking too much, and at a step they gave out underneath him and he fell uselessly to the floor. His vision blurred a little before his eyes, cold gray lights dancing across his pupils, revealing what was hidden in the dark, exposing more things he didn't want to see.
The inside of a cell, no, an armoury emptied of its weapons and repurposed to a cell. Gray walls and suffocated air, the only source of light dim and artificial, yet he could see a little in the crack beneath the door, hear through the thin walls what was going on outside. Everything hurt, he had been beaten within an inch of his life, and yet he was so pleased to know that those fools out there were fighting over him. He liked one of them in particular, the one that bended so easily to his words, the one with the clear blue eyes. That man tossed the kitchen appliances from their countertop in a rage, and then went away again to push his precious button.
“My name is Henry Gale.”
4. 8. 15. 16. 23. 42.
A hospital room, or something like one, being prepped for surgery. The air smelled thick with cleansants and there were tools lined neatly on trays, shining and untouched, for now. The table in the middle of the room was for him- but he didn't want to lie down on it. It seemed a terrible betrayal in his mind that he should have to, that there should be some evil, mindless thing growing inside him in the first place. And the worst part of it was that he didn't know if he would be alright. It was almost time, now, to fetch the doctor from his shark tank...
A man lay dead beneath his hands, the wicked soldier with glassy blue eyes. Ben had slit his throat, and the blood was pooling, getting all over his hands and face, and yet he had never felt such a savage, vindictive joy. It seemed there was no greater pleasure, no greater release, then this. Someone still alive was there with him, crouching in the dark- his beloved, staring at him with such confusion in those clear eyes.
“What about the people on the boat?”
“Who cares?”
He would kill that man, and that one, and that one too, he would kill everyone who had been involved in the death of Alexandra, who he could now see lying dead in the wreckage of the little village, her brains blown out of her head from the back, that lovable brown hair stained with gore. But no matter who he killed, in the end it was his fault…
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The kettle was going off, sounding a high-pitched electronic alarm, and the noise brought Ben back to himself. He was sitting curled on his own kitchen floor, glasses askew on his face, cheeks a little wet from what he suspected were tears. There was his kitchen table, it was real, and the faux-tile counter he gripped was very solid under his palms. The kettle was hot despite the insulated handle (he needed to get a new one, this thing really was a piece of crap) and he filled his mug to the brim with hot water before opening the cupboard, rummaging around for a teabag. Alexandra wasn't dead, he knew, and neither was she his daughter (wherever had that idea come from?). He had talked to her and her lovely mother only hours before. They had shared a meal in the real world, and no one had been dead, and no one had been hurt. Despite that, he almost wanted to call them now, just to check. Just to hear that she was okay. It was terribly irrational and he knew it, like phoning relatives in the middle of the night to say ‘I had a bad dream’. These things that he saw, they weren't real. They couldn't possibly be real.
Ben stirred the teabag around a little with his spoon, and then scooped it into the garbage. He didn't bother adding milk this time, though he preferred to drink it that way, because he doubted he would drink any of this. The heat and smoothness of the ceramic was comforting, it grounded him a little. He tried to wonder what the scientific explanation was for what was happening to him, tried to tie the experience down with the regulations of reality, because in doing so it would surely become less real. Were those things he kept seeing some kind of hallucination? Had he eaten something, or inhaled something that had hyperstimulated the dream centre of his brain? Or was it more sinister than that- could he truly be losing his mind? Without realizing it, he found he had been pacing in a tight circle around his kitchen with the mug in hand. Now, that was certainly the kind of thing a mad man would do.
Ben forced himself to sit, swallowing a scalding mouthful of the bitter and burning tea, which was painful and did little to ease the jitters in his limbs. His eyes scoured the table for something to hold on to, and landed on a little yellow sticky note, placed front and center so he would remember it. Written across the thing was a local phone number in cheap blue ink. That was right- he had brought that home earlier today. Mr. Locke had given this to him, it was Mr. Locke’s phone number. Although, had he not asked that Ben call him ‘John’ instead? He was a nice fellow, John, very kind, he had a good spirit in him…
...and so very easy to trick. No matter how many times it happened, he always came crawling back…
Ben’s head was suddenly filled with images of John, strange visions of him, altered from reality the way stress dreams were. John Locke without his wheelchair, standing strong and tall in the middle of the jungle; those were two very different parts of Ben’s life, and why would he imagine him able-bodied? John’s expression as he surveyed the landscape was that of a captain or a general, confident and intelligent and steady. But then he looked back, to meet the phantom-Ben’s eyes, and he became a little sweeter, and a little less sure of himself. For some reason, Ben liked that.
There he was again, sitting now, carving the flesh of a mango with a knife, a knife that was somehow innocent in his hands. He smiled at Ben and offered him a piece, beckoning for him to come and sit. Still happy to see him, despite everything.
John looking at him when he thought Ben wasn't paying attention, when he thought he was invisible, frowning to himself. Unsure of what to do, or what to feel, Ben could see his heart through his eyes as one would look upon rocks in the bottom of a very clear pond. It was as endearing as it was foolish.
John kissing him tenderly, cupping his face with one hand, gentle- as though he wanted to keep him there but was also too afraid to ensure it. Skin that smelled of salt. The kisses moved down the side of his face and neck, and Ben pretended to be overwhelmed by them; or rather, if he were to be honest with himself, he pretended that he was pretending.
John embracing him from behind, pressing his face to the hollow where Ben’s right shoulder met his neck, silent. Reaching out to hold his hand. Neither one of them tried to talk about it, but they both knew why he was acting this way.
The aftermath of a carnal act, Ben was trembling and weak, surprised by the passion of it; John was still touching him, murmuring praises and other sweet nothings, his hands running down Ben’s sides the way one might pat a cat, or a horse. He didn't deserve this, did he? No. But he would take it anyway.
Ben said something cruel and found himself suddenly with his back against a tree; such a pure, powerful rage there was in those blue eyes! And desire, too- he didn't know which one was more flattering. He wasn't afraid, though he rolled his head back and let John do whatever he wanted, smother him in bites and kisses and things partway in between, let doubt start to work its way into the other man’s mind.
John saying it for the first time, entirely by accident, the terrible admission slipping from his tongue while they lay together, comfortable and embraced. It was a brand he burned himself with, the words were a bullet fired into his own skull, once let out completely irreversible and made entirely real. With his own mouth he had taken it from behind his eyes and put it, tangible, in the warm air between them, to be used and abused however was seen fit; a secret they both knew, but only now it did not belong to him. There were few mistakes he had made in his life worse then telling Benjamin Linus ‘I love you’.
In his kitchen, Ben shivered again, but this time it was a warm feeling, almost hot. He felt hyper aware of his skin where it touched the soft fabric of his clothes, and when he swallowed his throat was dry. Where had all that come from? The numbers on the paper glared at him a little bit, and out of some insane spite he grabbed a box of tissues and covered the note with it, as though the little ink markings were responsible for that sudden flood of...memory.
No, they weren't memories! None of those visions were memories. He hadn't met John- Mr. Locke, some professionalism please, Dr. Linus- until just weeks ago. They had never been on any island together. They had never been so...close. That hadn't even been something he had considered- how could it be? To approach someone like that, to approach another man like that, it was wholly impossible. There was a reason why Ben lived alone, even now, why his only dinner guest was his decrepit father. And even if such a thing were a possibility, he wasn't sure if he would want it- that feeling from the hallucination, that John would suffer terribly for his affections, it boiled inside of him. The Benjamin Linus with whom that other, stronger, able-bodied Locke had fallen in love with- he was a monster, Ben had seen it.
A dark feeling suddenly bloomed in the back of his head- the shadow of an incoming tidal wave on an otherwise tranquil shore. The world before him started to blur a little, losing focus- he was going to have more of those visions, and with a sensation of deep dread, Ben somehow knew what he was going to see. If he could have had anything then, anything in the entire world, he would have wished for the hallucinations to stop. He didn't want to hurt Mr. Locke…
John, looking at him with such shock and betrayal, discovering for the first time that Ben wasn't who he said he was. Not the tragic and misunderstood widower from the balloon crash who had let John kiss him so delicately. No, he had been a viper all along; the horror, turning to anger, in those crystal blue eyes was very entertaining. But it wouldn't have any lasting effect- John’s heart belonged to him, he had made sure of it.
“Who...who are you? What's your real name?”
“I'm Ben.”
John tossed the body into the dirt in the middle of the camp, where it landed with the messy thud characteristic of a corpse; the weight of the thing as he hauled it there left his shoulders bent. Making one of his followers peel the tarp away, Ben saw that it was the right body- Anthony Cooper, strangled to death, his face slack and his flabby neck black with bruises born of chains. Ben had forced him to do this- forced him to murder his own father- using words and the assumption of choice, to ensure John would lay all the blame onto himself. What a good boy.
The deafening strike of a gunshot, and John was falling into the pit, the pit Ben had seen earlier, full of gaping skulls and grasping dead fingers. He should have known what was going to happen to him. In his chest, the bullet wound bloomed, thick red blood staining his shirt, slipping from severed veins. Glassy eyed misery was a good look on him.
John had given up on his quest, on his delusions of grandeur and purpose and destiny. That was clear from the cord he had wrapped around his neck. Well, if that was what he wanted, Ben wouldn't deny him- after he had what he came for, at least. Coaxing John down from his position and back into Ben’s arms was sickeningly easy, and it was even easier to slip the noose back around his neck, and see those clear eyes go dark. Ben would miss him, but it had to be done; in the end, Ben always destroyed those who got close to him. He always killed the ones he loved.
And then, Ben remembered, there had been the monster. But that hadn't been anything, really. John had been dead all along.
When Ben came back to himself this time he was crying outright, like a child. The visions felt terribly real, and the more he had them the less certain he became that they weren't. He could feel in his hands, as clearly as though he were doing it now, the electrical cord with which he had strangled John to death- could hear in his own ears the horrible promises and assurances he had fed the other man before doing it, the very worst kinds of lies.
Was he really the sort of man who would do such things? He had never thought that he was a bad person before. Ordinary and foolish, a bit of a failure perhaps, but he had never considered himself capable of evil. But then, all evil people must start out normal, no one could ever read the destiny of a newborn child. What was it his father had said to him, so recently, when Ben had been complaining idly about his job- ‘if we had stayed on that island, who knows what you would have become?’ God, thank goodness they had left! Thank goodness Alexandra was not his daughter, thank goodness John Locke was not his lover, because if they were they would both be dead!
Ben looked down at his hands, releasing the mug from its death grip to look at the soft skin on his palms. Scholar’s hands, with calluses only from holding a pen, pale and unmarked and weak. In the other world behind his eyes they were stained with blood, soaked in it, the red tides of hundreds of lives pouring over him to mark him with his guilt. He felt filthy. How could he live with himself, after all of that? How come he hadn't taken a cord to his own neck? Ben thought he might die just from thinking of it all, from the weight that was the inescapable knowledge of his own actions. The only hope he had- that all of those things he saw, the things he somehow knew, were in fact nothing more than explainable and natural hallucinations or fever dreams- was dwindling. As the night went on he was becoming increasingly certain that both sets of memories in his head were true. How, he had no idea, but he was Dr. Linus, the schoolteacher who had never ruled nor harmed anyone, and simultaneously he was Benjamin, the cruel and calculating leader of the Others, a liar who had killed and killed and killed, each time knowing it would be easy to do it again…
He could feel the blood between his fingers, slick and hot and syrupy, it didn't look or behave the way they made it seem to on TV, and he knew it. He couldn't stand the sensation, couldn't bear to look, certain he would find himself covered in the stuff. Instead he ran to the bathroom, as quickly and awkwardly as his legs could take him- and then he stopped, turning back to the kitchen. There was a sink there, as well, and that one didn't have a mirror over it. Ben didn't think he would be able to look at himself without breaking down into complete hysterics. John said his eyes were cute, but Ben thought they were ugly, and John was dead.
Ben flipped the head of the faucet on the sink over to ‘hot’ and shoved his hands under the stream, scrubbing them together even as the water went from cool to warm to scalding. He wasn't sure what he was seeing- it seemed that the stream that touched his skin fell away both clear and thick with red, and even though he held them under there for a long time, the second image refused to go away. Furiously he scrubbed at them, even as steam started to curl up from the sink, but it didn't do any good- what was a little water to so many years of blood?
Eventually Ben became aware of the pain in his skin- surely, he was burning himself with the water so hot, and it was doing no good anyway. With a pathetic whimper he drew his hands away and turned the faucet off, and for an instant it seemed to him that the entire sink was coated in blood now, and his hands only more so; the skin on his arms was stinging, and his joints were hypersensitive- every move he made caused them to ache. His face was wet now with his own tears, and when he blinked his lashes sent little flecks of liquid onto the inside of his glasses. He was breathing as though he had run a marathon. When he looked down again, his hands were red only from the hot water, and his kitchen was a spotless as he kept it.
Suddenly, in a moment of clarity, Ben stepped back to look at himself as a stranger would, and saw that he was insane. Out, damned spot, out I say! He might have laughed if he wasn't in so much pain, both inside and out. The clock on the oven read 3:15. Was it really that late? How much time, then, had he spent sitting there, absorbed in the visions behind his eyes? He found he wasn't crying anymore, but he felt sick to his stomach, and strangely empty inside. Vulnerable. What should he do? What could he possibly do? Was it even possible for him, as he was now, to go back to the life he had led before all of this? The dull and typical life of Dr. Linus now seemed unimaginably appealing, but simultaneously out of reach. Ben didn't want to be a murderer. He didn't want the Island.
And in that moment, he didn't want to be alone. He desperately didn't want to be alone- he wasn't sure what he would do to himself, in the dark of night, with only his own head stuffed full of those dreadful memories. If there was anyone, anyone at all to talk to, to remind him of where he really was, it would be an incredible comfort.
Looking across the kitchen, he was reminded of the note Mr. Locke had left him- but no, that would be ridiculous. Of all people, Ben had no right to try and talk to him. He wouldn't even be awake at this hour. The last thing the poor man needed was Benjamin Linus calling him in the middle of the night. The thought of John trying to comfort him now- not knowing what Ben had done to him, not seeing those horrible things- broke his heart.
But he couldn't help himself. The isolation was too much to bear- the only sound in the kitchen was that of his own breathing, and it ground in his ears like the buzz of a chainsaw. So selfish, he was, until the very end, and he almost wanted to stick his hands back under the hot water for it.
Instead, Ben pushed aside the tissue box covering the sticky note, and peeled it gently from the table. The numbers wobbled a little in his vision, but they were legible, and on shaking legs he carried the note over to his telephone, hating himself for every step. Thank goodness the digits did not resemble that code at all, the tattoo of six numbers that had been thumping in his head before.
With the number dialled in, Ben put the receiver up to his ear and closed his eyes, resting his forehead against the wall in front of him. It was surprisingly cool to the touch- was he feverish? That would explain some things, perhaps. The tone sang clear and high in his ear, once, twice. There was no way anyone was going to pick up. It was the middle of the night, all good people were sleeping… he told himself this, and had almost convinced himself that it was useless when the third ring was interrupted by a soft, surprising click.
“Hello?” It was John’s voice, made flat by the filter of the telephone, and Ben almost started crying again at the sound of it. The image of this man lying dead on the beach, spilled from an overturned casket, had been imprinted so firmly in his mind.
“J-John, hello, it's me,” he replied, too eager to hear Locke speak, his own voice sounding as pathetic and broken as he felt. “It's Ben.” His name sounded like a curse in his ears.
“Ben! I was hoping you would call.” So friendly, so warm, his words were. Ben suddenly found his throat closing over, unable to reply, choked on all the feelings in his chest. But it didn't matter- John spoke for him, and what he said was a shock great enough to knock Ben senseless, and snatch his own treacherous voice from his lungs almost permanently.
“So tell me, Ben...what do you remember?”