Five

-x-

From that afternoon on, it was as though I had always lived there. There was no 'moving in' to be done – we merely agreed that their home was to be shared with me now, and there I was.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the only change to take place following the revelations of that afternoon. Danielle and I stopped having the Relations that I'd grown so fond of. The way I saw it, she still had a lot that she needed to get used to. If I had suddenly realised that I'd lived Danielle Rousseau's life, I sincerely doubt that I'd be eager to have sex with the man who'd stolen my daughter and made my life a misery either.

It wasn't just the sex. A tenseness began to string itself between Danielle and I – about the whole house. At first, I thought that this was because she was worried about Widmore trying to find me. We talked around and around in circles about it for hours on the first morning that I lived with her. No matter how much I would try to persuade her that I wouldn't let him hurt her or Alex again, all Danielle seemed to want to know was what did Widmore want – a question that I couldn't honestly answer.

That afternoon, she announced that she was going out. Clearly, she didn't see Widmore as big enough a threat to keep her barricaded in the house. She told me that she wanted to see this world with her eyes opened to the truth – to find out more about it. It seemed that she, like me, was in no position to move on yet. She, like me, needed to find something and didn't appear to know yet what that something was. She asked me to come out with her. I declined. Miles Straume had told me that my business now was within this house, and so that was where I intended to stay. I sat alone, and worried about Danielle and Alex out there until they came home. When they did come back, I felt not relief, but an increase in the silent tenseness. Neither Danielle nor I slept well that night. We both tossed and turned and thoroughly annoyed one another until morning, when she went out again, leaving me behind. Another day and night passed, much like the previous one. Then, on the third morning, not long after Alex had headed off for school, Danielle put a dirty coffee cup straight on the table's surface, and something inside me snapped.

'Danielle, would it kill you to use a coaster?'

She looked up at me with a feigned blankness. 'It's my house, Ben.'

'Correction - it's our house now, and I'd rather it wasn't turned into a complete sty.'

'Says who?'

'Beg pardon?'

'Who says this is your house now?'

'You did, Danielle! Please don't do this.'

'Do what?'

'Don't make me out as the intruder. You invited me in.'

'It doesn't mean you get to change everything I have to make it your way.'

We could have gone down a far more serious path at that point. We could have started fighting about the meddling I'd done in people's affairs during life, we could have brought up all sorts of valid recriminations from prior to our deaths, but we didn't. Instead, she started ranting about my re-ordering of her books. I'd stacked them all alphabetically in order of the author's surname, not realising that she preferred them ordered by genre and title, although to be fair, so many of her books were out of even that bizarre system that it was nigh-on impossible for me to have noticed a pattern. I replied with my usual flair for charming the fairer sex by belittling her entire taste in literature. How very romantic of me. She countered by heaping scorn on my dress sense. I told her that I hated Johnny Halliday. She threw a coaster at me. I congratulated her for knowing where the coasters actually were. She threw a magazine. It didn't even hit me, but opened up and wafted back onto her feet, annoying her even further. She began loudly swearing at me in French. I reminded her that je parle Français. She told me (en Français) that she knew, because what would the point be in insulting me if I couldn't understand it. My own range of Gallic insults was more limited than Danielle's, but I used a lot of them that morning. I'd known many a heated discussion in the past, but never in French before. It got to a point where we were both nose to nose, with me having run out of derogatory French terms and reverting back into English, and with her holding a raffia mat aloft in what I assume was supposed to be a menacing fashion. Now, I remember well that on this occasion, it was me who initiated the kiss. I just had to. I was all riled up, and she looked so ferocious and so ridiculous and so very lovely. She dropped the placemat and returned the kiss with a fury I'd never before known.

We found the couch and - you'll have to pardon my language here - we fucked.

I use that word because it's the only one I have that can adequately describe just how animal, and how angry the sex we had that day was. It might be a little misleading a word, because that term often suggests to me something much more instant and basic than what actually happened. This particular bout of Angry Sex lasted for over two hours. We had an awful lot of anger to get out. Didn't begin and end on the couch, either. Somehow we found our way upstairs – seriously, don't ask me how or when that happened. I have absolutely no idea. Towards the end, Gérard joined us as a third party. And not in the way that I hope you'd automatically assume. I'd lost my regular virginity to Danielle five days previously – a lost a whole new one that day. I'd settled Tom Friendly's off-island expenses too many times to have any sort of innocence regarding sodomy. I believe that, were I an attractive Mexican rent boy, what I allowed Danielle and Gérard to do would have set them back something in the region of $70. Mind you, that's 2004's prices; who knows what sort of inflation there's been since then.

It took us a while to come down from the whole experience. After Danielle had realised that my hand gestures meant I was ready for my wrists to be untied and the underwear to be unstuffed from my mouth, I was able to speak.

'I think I might have ruined Gérard for you,' I told her, apologetically. 'I assume that there are places where one acquires adult toys in the afterlife – I'll buy you a new one.'

She shook her head. 'I have a feeling I won't be needing him any more. Besides, I think he likes you better.'

'We did bond today,' I admitted. 'I seem to recall destroying your blouse, as well.'

'Two popped buttons and a ripped seam,' she confirmed.

'I'm sorry.'

'It was surprisingly manly of you.'

'And the photographs…?'

She picked up the camera. 'Want to see?'

I shook my head.

'Spoilsport.' She set about deleting them. 'Digital cameras. What will they think of next?'

I lay back as she went through the images, laughing and deleting as she went.

'I feel better,' she said. 'Do you feel better?'

'Much,' I replied. 'I'm glad you're feeling happier, too. Is this going to put an end to your daily sojourns without me?'

'After a fashion.'

'I don't like the sound of that.'

'I still want to go out today, but not without you. I think you should come with me.'

'Danielle…'

Danielle just raised her eyebrows at me.

'You know I don't like you going out.'

'I don't care.'

'And I really don't want to go out myself any more.'

'I don't care about that, either. This is for your own good, Ben.'

'I never trust the phrase "this is for your own good".'

'Probably because whenever you used to say it, you were lying.' She got up, and found a fresh blouse. 'Come on – I'm bringing a picnic.'

'Not before I have a shower,' I told her. 'And please tell me you're going to wash your hands very thoroughly before you even so much as go near a picnic basket.'

'You're one of the most cleanliness obsessed people I ever knew, Benjamin Linus.'

'Well, that's because most of the people you ever knew were French.'

Danielle gave me a dark look. 'Just get in the damn shower.'

-x-

Even as we left the house, I knew where we were headed to, without her having to tell me. We were going to linger where all those lost souls who know that this world is not life, but aren't yet ready to move on to what lies beyond linger. We were going to sit outside the church. The journey to said church seemed to take less time than I remembered it doing before.

'Is this place shrinking?' I asked.

'Maybe,' replied Danielle. 'More and more people are becoming aware, and leaving, it seems. Perhaps this place is only as big as those within it need it to be.'

We walked on in silence for a while longer.

'Are you going to be all right sitting on the ground?' she asked.

'I'll be fine, thank you.'

'I brought a little cushion, just in case. It's all right, nobody need know. If anybody asks we can just say you have hemorrhoids.'

'Seriously, Danielle. Tais-toi.'

Two men were waiting on my bench outside the church as we approached. Danielle smiled and waved. They waved back.

'You didn't tell us we were meeting people,' said I.

'You didn't ask,' she replied. 'I got talking with them yesterday. They said they'd like to see you before they left.'

They got up and walked over to meet us. The first man was Walt Dawson – thankfully middle-aged again. Trailing behind him was his father.

I forced a smile. 'Congratulations, Walt. You finally found him.'

'Had a little help from a guy called Miles,' Walt replied, 'but yeah. I got him.'

I nodded at Michael. 'Hello again.'

'You're not going to apologise again, are you?' said Michael with a faint wince. 'You did that enough already while you and Hurley were helping me move on from the Island.'

'I can't apologise enough,' I replied.

'Well then, please stop trying. That's not what I wanted to meet with you about.'

'All right, Michael. What did you want to discuss?'

'Always so formal.' Danielle was already sitting on the lawn, unpacking the food. 'Come on, gentlemen. Sit. Eat.'

'Sorry,' I said with a shrug. 'I think she might be making up for lost… Frenchness.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' She asked as Michael, Walt and I joined her on the grass.

'The obsession with dining, the laissez-faire attitude,' I replied. 'Look what you've packed – brie, grapes, pain flute… why don't you just walk around with a string of onions around your neck and have done with it?'

'Because you don't like onions,' she countered, primly.

Michael gazed at us both with more than a hint of distaste. 'Jesus. Get a room.'

'We had a room, Michael. We left it because you'd asked to see us.'

'It was my idea that we have lunch,' Danielle told me. 'When I met them yesterday they were preparing to leave, but as they told me how Michael had come to be able to do so, it made certain aspects of this world make a lot more sense to me. I thought you'd benefit from hearing it, too.'

'You know why I found it hard to move on from the island,' said Michael.

I nodded. 'You were ashamed. You felt you were The Lando.'

Walt raised his eyebrows. 'We're referencing Star Wars, now?'

'Thirty years as Hugo Reyes' only companion,' I reminded him. 'Yes. We do reference Star Wars now. And as Hugo pointed out to you before, Michael, Lando doesn't end up in the Sarlacc's belly, he ends up dancing badly behind a row of Ewoks.'

'Well, that's what I'm going to do,' replied Michael, 'if by "dancing badly behind a row of Ewoks" you mean "moving on in death with my son and the daughter-in-law I never met". But, as much as Hurley's words helped me get off the island, they weren't enough for me here. I needed something more. When I found myself in this world at first, I hid myself away from everyone. I didn't want to have to deal with their resentment. Especially Libby and Ana Lucia's. They deserved to hate my guts. By the time Miles and Walt found me, Libby had already gone on into the church. How was I supposed to move on in peace and happiness knowing that she was in there? I explained all this to Miles, and he nodded, put me in a car, drove someplace, got out… and then he came back with Ana Lucia Cortez and locked us in the damn car together. I'm not going to repeat the names I called him for pulling that one in front of your ladyfriend, Ben.' Michael munched contemplatively on a grape. 'We had no alternative but to talk. But as we did, I found out the damndest thing – she didn't hate me. She didn't even resent me for what I did. She should have done – by her own admission, she's not exactly the Forgive And Forget type. We talked about all the people we should really hate by rights – I'm not gonna lie to you, Ben, your name certainly cropped up – but we found there was no bitterness there any more.'

'I met her,' I told Michael, 'after we'd both become aware. She didn't seem particularly happy with me.'

'She didn't trust you,' replied Michael, 'and can you blame her? But she didn't resent you, either. I'm betting you just assumed she did because you still kinda resent yourself. That was what Ana Lucia and me worked out in the car.'

'The only grudges we're able to carry from the last world into this are the ones we hold against ourselves,' concluded Danielle.

I stared from Michael to her.

'We were both surprised that I wasn't angry with you about what happened on the island,' Danielle reminded me. 'Now we know why. Think about yourself – you want to stay away from Widmore, but why? Is it because you hate him?'

I blinked to myself. I hadn't thought about that. But no. I didn't hate Charles Widmore. His presence here troubled me no end, but it was with anxiety rather than anger or bitterness. Even recalling Alex's death failed to bring that knot of vengeful wrath to my chest any more. It just filled me with sadness and regret.

'It's just the way this world works, I suppose,' added Walt. 'Recriminations would only hold us back. This place got rid of them for us. I think it wants us to move on.'

'And I think,' said Michael, 'that the time has come for us to do just that.' He began getting up. 'Eating a picnic while Ben Linus and Rousseau flirt with one another, with my son who got more grown up than I ever did is where this world becomes officially too weird for me, and that's even after a pretty crazy couple of days to start with.'

Walt got to his feet as well. 'I hope this was helpful for you.'

'I think it was,' I replied, lost in my thoughts. 'Thank you. And I'm glad you two found one another again.'

'I think we all find the people we need to find here, sooner or later.'

And with that, father and son walked away together. I helped Danielle to pack away the picnic and then we walked back to the house. We didn't say much as we went – I was still mulling over the idea of us all being stripped of our resentment towards one another, left only with that which we have towards ourselves. I wondered what that meant for me.

So caught up was I in my musings that I didn't see the figure standing by the front door of our house until it was too late for any sort of evasion tactics. I came to a halt on the front garden path, staring at the interloper as he nodded at me with a grim, businesslike expression.

'Hello, Benjamin.

I should have known that it was always going to happen – he'd been trying to find me for days in a shrinking world where Danielle and I being an item was quite the gossip about town. He was bound to track me down at the Rousseau household, sooner rather than later. He'd found me. Widmore had found me.