Disclaimer: I do not own Lost or any of its characters.
Chapter 1
Extract from the journal of Benjamin Linus c.1991
It would have been almost funny if I hadn't known. All of them, lying on the ground or draped inelegantly over benches, as if someone had cast a sleeping spell over the entire barracks. When Richard and the others were well out of sight, after I had told them not to retrieve my father's body, I saw him; Joe Anderton, sprawled awkwardly on the grass. I had always imagined that, when this day came, I would be immeasurably glad to have caused his death; this idiot of a man whom you had cared for, who had had you first. But it was the most hollow of victories.
She had been crying for a long time. At first she had brushed the tears away roughly with the back of her hand, until her eyes had felt sore. Now she just let them fall. She was sitting on the cool grass, her knees brought up almost to her chin, in the small, shaded patch of woodland which she regarded as her place; the place where she came to think and be alone. It was situated behind a dense semicircle of trees, practically hidden from view, near to the fence. When she was fifteen, after her father's funeral, she had very nearly thrown herself through that fence. He had talked her out of it of course; brought her here and held her tightly until she had calmed down enough for him to let her go. They had never spoken of it since. The thought of it still made her feel deeply ashamed and he knew it. He had always seemed to know what she was feeling. Today was no exception.
"Annie."
She cursed herself for not going somewhere else. It would have been obvious to him to look for her here.
"Go away, Ben," she said without turning to look at him, and immediately regretted her harshness. "I'm sorry. I just want to be on my own. Please go."
He didn't, of course. Instead, he walked slowly to where she was sitting and knelt down beside her on the grass, looking at her with the especially intense gaze he seemed to reserve only for her. They had known each other for eleven years and that stare still made her feel nervous.
"I thought I asked you to leave," she said after a few moments, more kindly this time.
"Oh, I think you know me better than that, Annie," he replied, flashing her that little smirk of his that had infuriated her so many times in the past.
"You shouldn't have come here," she said. "This isn't fair."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You know very well what I mean. I''ve ruined your birthday. I can be so selfish..."
"Annie, by now you should have realised that my birthdays never turn out to be particularly happy occasions."
Annie wondered if there had ever been a single day in Ben's life that had made him truly happy. She turned to him and placed her hand on his arm. "He forgot again, didn't he?"
His reply came rather too quickly to be entirely convincing. "It's been twenty-one years, Annie. It hardly shocks me any more."
He never showed how truly hurt he was. This year, like every other year, she would have to be angry enough for the both of them. "Well it still shocks me."
They sat together for a few minutes, unmoving, until Annie finally broke the silence. "He was always jealous of you, you know," she said. "Joe, I mean."
Ben glanced skywards, an empty smile playing on his lips. "I very much doubt that," he replied.
"Oh, he was. He never liked how close you and I were." She felt almost embarrassed saying those words as Ben's eyes turned back to her intently. "I mean, we'd always been such good friends and... Joe never liked sharing anything. Not that it matters now, I suppose."
He hadn't broken his gaze. She doubted he'd even blinked. She was, as she had always been, the first to look away; bowing her head as more tears began to fall.
"Annie. Don't cry." There was something almost stern in his tone that made her sense that this had not been a request. She snapped her head up sharply, angry now through the tears.
"Don't tell me what to do, Ben," she snapped. "I'll cry if I want to. I'll sit here and cry all night if I feel like it!"
The smirk was back on his lips again, making her feel foolish and ridiculous. She was twenty and just as fiercely intelligent as he was, yet she sounded like a sulky five-year-old and she hated that he had heard it. She felt the heat rush to her face and hoped that in the half-light, Ben wouldn't notice her blush.
"Annie, look at me."
She did, almost without thinking.
"You're upset and you're angry, Annie, but you need to stop this. Now you can be as furious as you want with me; take it all out on me, say whatever you like. Don't imagine you could ever hurt or offend me. But I will not let you sit here and cry over a man that doesn't deserve you and never, ever has deserved you. Do you hear me?"
"Why did he do it?" she said in a strangled sob. "I don't... if I did something wrong, I don't know, I can't think what I... He never said that he... Ben, it was in front of everyone."
"I know, Annie. I saw."
"I was just a joke, wasn't I? If he had ever cared for me at all, he would have just ended it. If he had ever felt anything for me, he wouldn't have wanted to humiliate me so much!"
"May I ask you something?"
A little startled at his matter-of-fact tone, Annie stopped sobbing and stared at Ben through teary eyes. "Um... yes?"
"Are you hurt because of what he did or because you've lost him?"
His expression was completely innocent but his eyes remained intense, as if everything depended on her answer to his question. "Because of what he did, Ben," she said quietly, trying to breathe evenly. "It's not as if I loved him. It hadn't got that far. We were just... oh, God, but what he did..."
It happened very suddenly. A moment of stillness, then a cold hand turning her face, another hand on her shoulder and his lips crashing onto her own. It was clumsy and awkward and all wrong. He pressed his lips so hard onto hers that she instinctively pulled away almost immediately. Annie saw the expression on Ben's face then and knew that she could hurt him after all. He looked devastated; something she had never seen in him before. Even with everything he had been through he had never let his eyes betray him once, but now he looked positively wounded and it suddenly dawned on her why. He's never kissed a girl before.
I should be angry, she thought. You don't move in on a girl minutes after she loses her boyfriend, when she's still crying over him, you just don't. Yet, strangely, she found she wasn't angry at all.
"I'm sorry," he blurted out, looking at the ground. "I didn't… I'm sorry."
She stared at him, her best friend, her Ben, sitting inches away from her, utterly crushed, eyes averted, and wondered what on earth she could do to make him look at her again. Then, after what seemed like a very long time, she made a decision. And then it was her turn to take him by surprise, lifting his chin very gently, running a hand through his hair and kissing him softly. This time when they broke apart, neither one of them felt the least trace of embarrassment. All the hurt had disappeared from Ben's features, replaced with a look that was earnest and hopeful.
"Annie, I love you," he said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. "I always have."
Everything can change in a fraction of a second. Things Annie never knew she felt suddenly surfaced at his words. She was at once light-headed, elated, relieved… More than anything however, she was annoyed that he had waited so long to tell her.
"I love you too," she said as they fell gently into each other's arms; a perfect fit.
Ben allowed himself a smile as he cradled Annie in his arms, breathing in the scent of her hair as she rested her head on his shoulder. She smelled like jasmine, like evening on the island. He had held her before; awkward embraces to comfort her or congratulate her, but now everything was different. For years he had dreamed of this and now it had finally happened. He only wished he could have made it happen in another way, one less painful for her. When Joe Anderton had begun to deride and insult her in front of all her friends and co-workers, Ben had fought every instinct in his body to rush to her defence immediately. The wounded, devastated look in her eyes – those beautiful, wise eyes - had almost broken his heart. Almost, but not enough to make it stop before she ran away towards the fence in floods of tears.
He had to admit, Joe had surprised him. He had always been obnoxious and something of a bully, but as it turned out, the boy had a streak of rather imaginative viciousness in him as well. He had used every last weapon in his possession to hurt Annie. Calling her dull and needy and pathetic, revealing secrets she had told him in strict confidence and laughing as he spoke them, telling her he was bored of her and that she had been nothing more than a joke to him, just a silly girl he could easily string along, and all the time looking at her as though she was the most ridiculous, disappointing thing he had ever seen. He had certainly done what he was told. Ben reassured himself that any fool willing to give Annie up merely for the chance to have Ben write his final year assignments for him was better off out of her life, no matter how much it had torn her apart. Ben had known for weeks that Joe was failing. He also knew the expectations Joe's parents had of him and what their reaction would be if he achieved anything less than the highest grades. The Andertons were extremely well-respected within the Dharma Initiative and, beneath all the bravado and arrogance, Joe was terrified of letting them down. So Ben had approached him one afternoon and made him an offer. To his disgust, Joe had needed barely a second to think about it.
Yes. He had done the right thing, albeit in a particularly cruel way. Annie, his best friend, his only friend, whom he had worshipped since they were both children, was in his arms; the end justifies the means, as Richard Alpert frequently told him. It was beyond doubt that Ben loved her more deeply and more completely than anyone else ever could. She was his, finally, and he had no intention of ever letting her go.
He just had to make sure Joe Anderton kept quiet.