Alex couldn't have said just how long it had been when she came to, squinting against the sunlight and drawing in a sharp breath, but a few seconds was all she needed to remember why it ought to have been impossible, the last several minutes coming back to her all in a rush. She was meant to be dead; it was as simple as that, and despite the air in her lungs and the throbbing in her head, it was the only explanation, too. She'd died, been killed at her own father's word, and wherever she was now, it was what came after.
The prospect was more than a little frightening.
Sniffling once - she'd been crying, and could feel it still, the urge to start up again - she lay there on the ground for a long few moments, trying to collect herself a little more before she did anything and not even knowing where to start. It was, after all, a lot to take in, and with Ben's words still repeating over and over in her memory, it was a task easier said than done. Finally, though, she moved, tried to lift a hand to her head only to find that she couldn't, that her wrists were still bound. The detail was strange, notably so despite the situation itself, but she supposed it wasn't worth harping on, too small a thing to matter now. She couldn't do anything about it where she was, anyway. And so, slowly, carefully, she brought her palms to the ground, bracing herself and biting down in her lower lip as she pushed herself up until she was sitting, gaze fixed on the grass beneath her as she tried to catch her breath. This was still more than she'd expected to get.
How many times had he relived that moment in the past few weeks? The countdown, Alex's pleas, his own stubborn voice trying to reason with a man who refused to be reasoned with. It was fresh enough still that he dreamed of it, and though he'd already exacted his most immediate revenge on Keamy, there were others who had yet to pay. Widmore was only near the top of the list; Ben himself took first billing.
All of this, of course, meant that he didn't quite believe his eyes when the body - and it had to have been a body - began to move, pull itself up. A breath caught in Ben's throat, and he started forward at the sight of it, hastily making his way to the door, which he wrenched open, but didn't step through.
It was a voice that she'd have recognized anywhere. Even had the sound of Ben speaking not been the last thing she had heard before dying, there was no way Alex could have mistaken it, not after almost sixteen years spent living with him. Instinctively, she lifted her head in his direction, eyes wide, but then she went still, swallowing heavily. This, all of it, was wrong. That she didn't recognize the house in front of her didn't matter so much, but if she was dead, and she knew she was, then there was no reason why she should be facing her father now. He had been fully alive when he'd told Keamy to go ahead and kill her.
"What?" she asked, sounding quieter, more uncertain than she would've liked, confusion more than evident in the look on her face. What she really wanted was to ask what in the world he could have wanted with her when he'd just said that she meant nothing to him, but worn out and disoriented, she couldn't manage it. "What is this, and why are you -"
He remembered closing her eyes and kissing her bloody forehead as the monster raged against Widmore's men. She looked no different than she had that night, save for the fact that she was breathing.
All he'd had to do was step out of the house and go with them, and his daughter would be alive.
"Alex," he said, walking towards her, slowly, as though he were in some sort of lucid dream. "Oh, Alex. I'm so, so sorry. It was all my fault."
When Alex moved again, it was to tense up, all she really could do in her current position. He hadn't been the one holding the gun to her head, but she couldn't deny that what he was saying was true, especially when he'd done a whole lot more than just tell Keamy that it was alright to kill her. Looking at him now, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do, and though she felt her stomach turn, she couldn't say if it was just carried over from before or something new. Either way, here in front of him was just about the last place she wanted to be.
Slowly drawing her knees up to her chest so she could sit properly, arms resting awkwardly on top of them, she inhaled an unsteady breath, her lower lip beginning to quiver. She was aware, as he spoke, that he was apologizing, but what she didn't know was if that was actually going to count for anything. His taking the blame for it wouldn't change why she'd died.
"Did you mean it?" she asked, trying to sound defensive but not quite pulling it off, most of the usual edge gone from her voice. Just asking as much was enough to have her close to tears again, but she ignored that; it wasn't as if he hadn't seen her crying already, and answers were a whole lot more important than maintaining an already fragile composure. "Those things you said. How much of it was true?"
Her questions cut through him like a knife, leaving him to shake his head in a quick, jerky movement. His eyes widened.
"Of course not," he breathed, falling to his knees just a few feet short of her. "Alex, I swear to you- Everything I said, everything I told them... It was a lie, I give you my word. I thought that if I told them you meant nothing, they'd let you go. Alex, I made a mistake."
To describe it as such seemed to Alex an oversimplification, but despite the fact that the look on her face likely said as much, she didn't say so aloud. Though a response like that didn't come as much of a surprise to her - what else was he supposed to say, having to talk to her again now? - she hadn't planned on wanting to believe him, no matter how absurd it seemed. For all her pleading, she had known the whole time that she was going to end up dead, and didn't see how he couldn't have.
"A mistake that got me killed," she added through her teeth, a little colder, though it didn't last long. "I don't know what you expect me to do, I - I don't even know where I am. You're not the one who was shot in the head, how are you even here?"
He closed his eyes, wincing. For all that he deserved every bit of cruelty she could dish out, it didn't make any of it easier to hear. Though his eyes watered as he opened them, he shed no tears, not yet. Benjamin Linus wasn't a man known for displays of genuine emotion, so whenever it finally peeked out from underneath the endless layers of lies, it generally took a moment or two.
"It's this place," he explained quickly, his voice wavering. "Another island, one with as many similarities to our own as differences. I haven't been here very long - just a few weeks - but..." He paused for a moment, looking undeniably bewildered. "You're alive now. I don't know how or why, but you're alive, Alex."
Any response Alex might have come up with was put on hold, however briefly, when she saw the way he looked, her mouth falling slightly open in surprise. For all that she knew him to be an excellent liar, that, she didn't see how he could have feigned. She had wanted to believe him moments earlier, but she hadn't, not yet. Now, she was beginning to suspect that he really had meant it.
"Wait, wait," she replied finally, with a slightly dazed shake of her head to pull her from her own thoughts, again struck by the impulse to hold one hand up, and still unable. She'd been dealing with a lot in the first place, but what he was saying - or what she thought he was getting at, at least - was more than she could wrap her head around just yet. "You're trying to tell me that... I was killed, but I'm alive, and somehow on a different island?" Though she made a face just saying it, she wasn't as incredulous as she likely ought to have been. She felt alive, for one, but she hadn't died before to know if that was normal or not. "You do realize that sounds crazy, right?"
"You move..." Alex began, but trailed off before even finishing the word, let alone the sentence. The more she heard, it seemed, the stranger it got, and the less likely she was to be able to make any sense of all of it. She hadn't even fully processed the part where she apparently wasn't dead yet, and adding a frozen, underground wheel to the story made it more ridiculous, not more plausible. "You're gonna have to slow down a little, I have no idea what you're talking about."
"We should go inside," he said suddenly, pulling out a knife he'd stolen from the Compound kitchen the day he'd arrived. The hut was no more comfortable than outside, but the story he had to tell was involved enough to warrant a little privacy. "Here, give me your hands."
Though Alex flinched at the sight of the knife, it was merely an instinct, one that likely had everything to do with the fact that she'd been shot not long before. The last few minutes may have made the situation a whole lot more complicated than it had originally been, but that didn't mean she was remotely capable of forgetting where she'd been not long before this, kneeling in front of a window and begging for her life. Still, she nodded, holding her hands out as requested and shifting a little closer so he could reach them more easily. "Yeah," she agreed. "Okay. Here."
The ties around her wrists were made of plastic, and it took Ben a few tries to cut through them, the knife not as sharp as the ones to which he was accustomed. He'd have to see about issuing some sort of trade, somehow, though he didn't have much to offer. It'd never stopped him before.
Her hands freed, he stood up, a little unsteady on his feet from the shock of it all; regardless of what Moira had told him on his first day, dead was dead. As grateful as he was, there was a part of him that marveled at how it was possible at all, a feeling reflected freely in his expression, as he extended a hand for Alex to take.
Alex considered the hand for all of a few seconds before she placed one of her own in his, careful as she pulled herself to her feet, not entirely sure of how well she would be able to stand. Not much time had actually passed since she last had - it felt like more - but everything she knew had been upended more than once over since then, and she still hadn't grasped how she was alive to be doing so now, though all signs did point to that being true. It just made no sense, and she didn't have the energy to pretend otherwise, her own expression outright bewildered.
"Thanks," she said quietly, an afterthought, though whether it was for cutting her hands free or something else, even she wasn't entirely certain. After the last things she'd heard him say, it wasn't like she could have expected him to help her at all, let alone seem to actually mean it when he said he was sorry for what had happened.
Ben faltered for a moment once she was on her feet. As Alex had grown older, he'd become less outwardly affectionate towards her, a fact which could be blamed as much on her new attitude as it could his experience with his own father. Still, it seemed awkward to change that behavior so suddenly, even given the circumstances - maybe because of them.
"We'll need to get you cleaned up," he said, letting go of her hand as he peered at her forehead, the sharp twist of guilt making feel ill. He turned away quickly, starting towards the house. "The wound's likely closed, but it's hard to tell. Does it hurt?"
The prospect was more than a little frightening.
Sniffling once - she'd been crying, and could feel it still, the urge to start up again - she lay there on the ground for a long few moments, trying to collect herself a little more before she did anything and not even knowing where to start. It was, after all, a lot to take in, and with Ben's words still repeating over and over in her memory, it was a task easier said than done. Finally, though, she moved, tried to lift a hand to her head only to find that she couldn't, that her wrists were still bound. The detail was strange, notably so despite the situation itself, but she supposed it wasn't worth harping on, too small a thing to matter now. She couldn't do anything about it where she was, anyway. And so, slowly, carefully, she brought her palms to the ground, bracing herself and biting down in her lower lip as she pushed herself up until she was sitting, gaze fixed on the grass beneath her as she tried to catch her breath. This was still more than she'd expected to get.
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All of this, of course, meant that he didn't quite believe his eyes when the body - and it had to have been a body - began to move, pull itself up. A breath caught in Ben's throat, and he started forward at the sight of it, hastily making his way to the door, which he wrenched open, but didn't step through.
"Alex?"
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"What?" she asked, sounding quieter, more uncertain than she would've liked, confusion more than evident in the look on her face. What she really wanted was to ask what in the world he could have wanted with her when he'd just said that she meant nothing to him, but worn out and disoriented, she couldn't manage it. "What is this, and why are you -"
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All he'd had to do was step out of the house and go with them, and his daughter would be alive.
"Alex," he said, walking towards her, slowly, as though he were in some sort of lucid dream. "Oh, Alex. I'm so, so sorry. It was all my fault."
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Slowly drawing her knees up to her chest so she could sit properly, arms resting awkwardly on top of them, she inhaled an unsteady breath, her lower lip beginning to quiver. She was aware, as he spoke, that he was apologizing, but what she didn't know was if that was actually going to count for anything. His taking the blame for it wouldn't change why she'd died.
"Did you mean it?" she asked, trying to sound defensive but not quite pulling it off, most of the usual edge gone from her voice. Just asking as much was enough to have her close to tears again, but she ignored that; it wasn't as if he hadn't seen her crying already, and answers were a whole lot more important than maintaining an already fragile composure. "Those things you said. How much of it was true?"
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"Of course not," he breathed, falling to his knees just a few feet short of her. "Alex, I swear to you- Everything I said, everything I told them... It was a lie, I give you my word. I thought that if I told them you meant nothing, they'd let you go. Alex, I made a mistake."
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"A mistake that got me killed," she added through her teeth, a little colder, though it didn't last long. "I don't know what you expect me to do, I - I don't even know where I am. You're not the one who was shot in the head, how are you even here?"
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"It's this place," he explained quickly, his voice wavering. "Another island, one with as many similarities to our own as differences. I haven't been here very long - just a few weeks - but..." He paused for a moment, looking undeniably bewildered. "You're alive now. I don't know how or why, but you're alive, Alex."
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"Wait, wait," she replied finally, with a slightly dazed shake of her head to pull her from her own thoughts, again struck by the impulse to hold one hand up, and still unable. She'd been dealing with a lot in the first place, but what he was saying - or what she thought he was getting at, at least - was more than she could wrap her head around just yet. "You're trying to tell me that... I was killed, but I'm alive, and somehow on a different island?" Though she made a face just saying it, she wasn't as incredulous as she likely ought to have been. She felt alive, for one, but she hadn't died before to know if that was normal or not. "You do realize that sounds crazy, right?"
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Her hands freed, he stood up, a little unsteady on his feet from the shock of it all; regardless of what Moira had told him on his first day, dead was dead. As grateful as he was, there was a part of him that marveled at how it was possible at all, a feeling reflected freely in his expression, as he extended a hand for Alex to take.
"Come on."
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"Thanks," she said quietly, an afterthought, though whether it was for cutting her hands free or something else, even she wasn't entirely certain. After the last things she'd heard him say, it wasn't like she could have expected him to help her at all, let alone seem to actually mean it when he said he was sorry for what had happened.
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"We'll need to get you cleaned up," he said, letting go of her hand as he peered at her forehead, the sharp twist of guilt making feel ill. He turned away quickly, starting towards the house. "The wound's likely closed, but it's hard to tell. Does it hurt?"
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