Consequences
Title: Consequences
Characters: Sawyer, Ana Lucia, Jack, Eloise, Charles Widmore, Ben, Locke, Jacob, Jacob's nemesis.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers all the way up through S5.
Pairings: references to Eloise/Charles history.
Summary: As the various island leaders reflect on their time leading and the consequences they eventually faced, Jacob's nemesis muses on what he has done to get where he is and looks to the future of the island without Jacob.
When Hugo had first spoken to him about being their leader, Sawyer had thought the idea was a joke.
Him, island leader? Like that was ever gonna work. He was too selfish, and he didn't think he could ever change. A tiger don't change its stripes.
But Hurley said all the camp were looking to him for leadership now. Sawyer didn't know why. If anything, he thought Hurley would have done a better job himself, given the way he'd managed to get Sawyer to be nice.
And if Sawyer's honest with himself, he'd kind of liked it after all. It was like with that Other kid, Karl. It had been weird having someone look up to him, but weird in a nice way.
As it turned out, the Doc and Freckles had been back next day anyway, so Sawyer didn't have to be temporary leader for very long.
But he remembered it the day he'd jumped from the chopper, landed on the island again only to see the smoking wreck that had been their last chance of escape.
They would look to Sawyer again now for leadership, he thought. Locke was unaccounted for, and Juliet, well, even though they'd started trusting her more recently, there was no denying the fact that she was an Other. And no one really trusted Daniel, Charlotte or Miles either, even if Daniel was the only one who understood the thing with the flashes.
And Sawyer remembered Jack's speech from so long ago. He knew he'd do what he'd always done: surviving. But this time, every man for himself wouldn't work.
Three years on, he's still surprised that people look to him for leadership, even after the truce he'd successfully negotiated with the guy with the eyeliner. He's even more surprised at the success he's made of it, although as he's later to tell Jack, it's because he thinks, where Jack reacted.
Yet the day Jack gets his crazy idea about blowing up the Swan, everyone automatically seems to follow him once more. Habit, he guesses.
But he doesn't really care. The only thing he cares about now just disappeared down the shaft.
"I don't think you're a good judge of character," Libby had said to Ana the day she'd shot Shannon. Bernard had made it perfectly clear he agreed, and as soon as Eko had started speaking again, he'd started arguing with her.
And okay, Ana had made some mistakes. She won't deny that. But she'd done the best she could with what she had at the time. And it wasn't as though any of the rest of them had argued with her at the time. Had any of them ever suspected Goodwin? As for Nathan, well, none of them had really tried to defend him either. Libby had commented on how he never talked about himself, and had even sat with Ana as she'd dug the pit. And Cindy had said she had a good memory for faces, and couldn't remember seeing him. Considering she hadn't spotted Goodwin, Ana guessed her talent was exaggerated.
So Ana had made some bad decisions. She knew she'd been the one to place them all in danger by continuing to put her faith in Goodwin. (Probably a good thing she'd quit the force, she thinks, since she couldn't spot the bad guy under her own damn nose.) She still sees them now, Goodwin, Nathan, Shannon. But at the time, she'd thought that she hadn't seen anyone else stepping up to lead them. Cindy, Libby and Bernard didn't want to lead, and who would follow a guy that didn't even speak?
Ana had been the one to keep them alive those first few weeks on the island. She was the one who'd kept her head when Bernard was stuck up the tree, she'd done what she could to protect all of them.
But after shooting Shannon, she realised that wasn't enough. By then, she didn't trust her own judgement either.
It was better for them all if she deferred to Jack's leadership. There's only the dog who trusts her now. And who would trust Ana as leader, when she can't even trust herself?
Jack hadn't asked for any of this.
He'd been sure he wasn't cut out for this. His father had made it pretty clear to Jack what he thought the day he'd defended Marc Silverman against that idiot. "Don't choose, Jack. Don't decide. Because you haven't got what it takes."
But as Jack was later to admit to Michael, sometimes he'd listened to his father a little too much. And he had to admit there was an element of proving his father wrong when he'd finally accepted the role of leader after talking to Locke, even if he couldn't understand why they were all looking to him.
He was just another one of them, after all, just another survivor like everyone else. Boone's "Who appointed you our saviour?" made more sense to Jack than Hurley and Charlie looking to Jack to decide what to do about the water shortage.
In other ways, he's wondered if Sarah had hit the nail on the head when she'd said that Jack always needed something to fix. Because that was what he'd been trying to do, the whole time they looked to him for leadership. But he acknowledges now the truth in what Sawyer had said, about the consequences for everyone as well as himself when Jack didn't think things through.
Okay, he'd got them all off the island. But not all of them, like he'd promised. And there had been consequences for all, Sayid losing Nadia, Sun having to raise her baby alone, Hurley ending up back in Santa Rosa. If he hadn't attempted that prisoner exchange, Ben for Walt, maybe Ana and Libby would still be here, while calling the freighter had resulted in the deaths of Rousseau, Alex and Karl among others.
Jack had known all this the day he refused to listen to Ben and then believed he'd caused Jin, Sayid and Bernard's "deaths". And he knows it now, as he prepares to make the decision that will change the events of the past three years.
Maybe Sarah had been right about his need to fix things after all.
They'd argued about it, right before she'd left the island.
Charles couldn't understand Eloise's point of view. To him, it was simple; protecting the island was the only thing that mattered, and anything that came between him and his objective was a necessary sacrifice.
But Eloise understood now that there were things in life that mattered more.
They had tried, but failed to meet half way. Eloise had known that she must leave the island, and soon. Since the Incident, pregnant women were no longer able to carry to term. The only way Eloise's son Daniel could ever be born was if Eloise left the place that had been her home, the people she had once led.
Yet Charles had been unwilling to make this sacrifice for Eloise and for their son. He had been able to leave the island for reasons of his own, to father another child whose existence Eloise had struggled to deal with. Yet he had refused to leave for Eloise.
She doesn't know how Charles could stand in front of her at the hospital and talk of sacrificing his relationship with Penny, and say that Daniel was his son too. Had he felt anything at all the day he went to Daniel and told him to board the freighter, knowing he was sending him to certain death? Eloise can't describe how she felt the day she told Daniel he must accept, knowing that they would never meet again in her future, and what would happen when he next met her in his own. And she can't speak to Charles of all the years she's spent with Daniel, knowing what was to happen, knowing that the only way to prevent it was to force him to spend all his time studying physics, trying to work out how to change the past.
And the only way Daniel could do that was to go to the island.
So Eloise cannot understand how Charles can talk of sacrifice. Eloise is the one who had to give up her home, and the people she no longer felt she was fit to lead. And she was the one to give up the only thing that mattered.
He's sorry the boy's dead, of course. Despite what Eloise might think, he's not completely heartless.
But Charles believes there was obviously a reason the island didn't want Daniel to survive. He was clearly a necessary sacrifice to protect the island. And if Eloise had stopped to think, she'd have understood that too. At one time, she would have.
But now it seems that she has other concerns more important to her. And as much as it grieves Charles to say it, she's clearly not cut out to be their leader.
He thinks the same of Benjamin Linus, the DHARMA boy who had been brought to them in 1977. There had been a time when a leader from DHARMA would have been unthinkable. Yet Ben had survived a shooting that would have killed anyone else. Damn it, he shouldn't be here. But as Charles sits with him and tells him he's one of them now, he chokes on the words. Jacob intended Ben to be saved, Ben is the new chosen one.
It was abundantly clear to Charles that Ben had lacked the qualities necessary to lead them, yet as time went on, he began to notice his people turn from him and flock to Benjamin's side, eventually forcing Charles to leave the island.
Ben had thought he'd had the upper hand the day he watched Charles depart on the submarine, carried to his exile. Yet Charles allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he thought of something Ben did not know, of a day in 1954 when a man named John Locke had arrived at their camp and announced himself as their future leader. Ben's star may have been rising, but he would come down to earth with a bump.
Charles could not deny the schadenfreude as he watched Benjamin land at the exit point. The man who had stolen everything from him had lost it once more.
Then one day, Ben had called and said he was on the way back to the island. And Charles realised it wasn't over yet.
He'd thought his secret had died with Ethan.
Once the only other person to Ben's knowledge who was aware that someone else had claimed to be a future leader had been removed, Ben had thought that his position was safe.
He should have known that Jacob had other plans.
It had seemed simple enough at the time. Ben had always prided himself on his ability to get people to do his bidding and let them think it was his own idea. A few well-chosen words, and their people were no longer sure they wanted Widmore for their leader. Their people were dying, the process of creating new life only managing to destroy existing lives. And where was Widmore? Leaving the island, fathering a child with an unknown woman while his people suffered.
A few such speeches, and they were eating out of his hand. Ben had had no choice; Richard kept telling him he was special, he was chosen, he was to lead their people. Ben had done what he had to do in order for Widmore to be removed. His people wanted him gone, and they believed it was their own idea.
Soon, Ben had thought it was time for his first meeting with Jacob. But every time he raised it with Richard, Richard just said to be patient, it wasn't time yet.
He allowed everyone else to think he was in regular contact with Jacob. No one doubted him; why should they? He was the Chosen One.
But as time went by, he began to suspect that this meant nothing at all. He wondered when Juliet broke the news of his tumour, he wondered as Alex was gunned down in front of his horrified eyes.
And he wondered when John Locke, the man Ethan had seen in 2001, turned up on the island, paralysis healed by Jacob just as Jacob allowed Ben to be stricken with cancer.
Jacob had chosen, Ben's time was done. Locke was the new Chosen One.
This fact tempered all satisfaction Ben may have felt in returning to the island where Widmore had failed.
He hadn't been overly concerned when Ben had spoken those words to him. "Destiny, John, is a fickle bitch." As far as Locke was concerned, they were the words of a bitter man who knew his time was done.
Locke knows what his purpose is now, after many years of a worthless existence in dead-end jobs. He now has a role in life; to lead the people of the island, to help them all discover the purpose of their own. The island saved Locke, when he first crashed here, by giving him back the ability to walk. Now he must save the island, do whatever it takes to prevent the man named Widmore from exploiting it as Ben had said.
And he finally understands the meaning of all those visits he'd had in his childhood from Richard. Locke had been chosen since birth, Locke was special.
It's not until he finds himself on the mainland again that Locke understands what Ben had meant.
His fellow survivors of Flight 815 had once looked to him as an alternative leader to Jack. Now they despise him and mistrust him. He'd thought he could save the island by bringing them all back, but no one's following him, they don't want to know.
And he's no longer sure that he was meant to lead the island's people. Christian had said that it was Locke, not Ben, who was supposed to move the island, and the person who moved the island was never meant to return. Locke had become the sacrifice that the island demanded. As for the visits from Richard in his childhood, well, they would never have happened had he not told Richard to do so in 1954. So did they mean anything at all? Was Locke really special or just another pretender as Ben had been?
He has his reasons for bringing people here, in spite of what the other man might think.
It's true what Jacob said, about the need to prove him wrong, to show that it was all progress rather than the destruction and corruption his nemesis predicted.
But Jacob also knows that he needs to surround himself with others, for his own protection as well as that of the island.
He knows his nemesis will stop at nothing to find a loophole, in order to kill him. And at first, Jacob's plan works. The new inhabitants of the island revere him, they know what he has done for them, they accept his orders without question. Meanwhile his nemesis is weak, trapped in the cabin by the circle of ash.
Jacob is the leader, the one who protects them all, from threats from the outside world and from the destruction his nemesis would cause.
He does not realise that his decision would eventually lead to his downfall.
Jacob's first mistake had been choosing unworthy candidate Ben Linus to lead them all, a man whose first loyalty was always to himself rather than the island.
His second mistake was to bring Flight 815 to the island.
Because in doing so, he had set in motion a chain of events that would bring about his own destruction.
He knew the exact moment that his nemesis gathered strength again. He's tried to protect himself by enlisting Ilana's help, but he still fears she may not succeed.
Jacob has controlled many people's destinies over the years. Now he is losing control of his own.
They live as fools, and they will die as fools.
He knew exactly what Jacob has been hoping to achieve by bringing people to the island. Jacob still thought he could prove him wrong about the nature of humanity.
But Jacob's nemesis knows that all Jacob's managing to prove is that he doesn't understand human nature at all. And he knows that in the end, he's going to be the instrument of his own downfall.
Take Benjamin Linus. If Jacob had known anything about human nature, he would have known that his neglect of Ben, followed by his later treatment of him, would only leave Ben more susceptible to the idea of killing Jacob. The fool was putty in his hands. He didn't even recognise the same trick he'd used so many times himself.
He'd been waiting a long time for this moment. As he'd waited, imprisoned in the cabin, he's almost begun to give up hope. But then one day, he'd realised that his time had come.
Linus hadn't known of his existence when he'd brought Locke to the cabin. As far as he'd been concerned, he'd been taking Locke to a disused cabin, with the idea of proving that Locke wasn't special after all. But the moment Jacob's nemesis had seen him, he'd thought I have found my loophole. I know what I must do. Locke was going to be the one who would help him.
When he had said "Help me," Locke had believed he was Jacob. He'd believed also that it was Jacob who wanted the island moved the day Nemesis had taken the form of the man Christian Shephard. That had taken care of Linus. And a few days later, when he'd taken that form again and claimed that it was Locke, not Linus, who needed to move the island, Locke had believed that too. After all, it was true - when had Linus ever told him anything that was worth a damn?
It had been child's play, too, to tell Alpert to convince Locke he had to die. After all, it had kind of already happened. So that was Locke removed too, leaving his body free for Nemesis to claim. And the fools hadn't even realised that he was not, as he'd told the Kwon woman, the same man he'd always been.
Any ideas of a coup by Linus were taken care of when he'd taken the form of the girl Alexandra, the only person he would ever accept that advice from.
They are so easily manipulated. And the reason for this? Because he was right and Jacob was wrong, all those years ago, about human nature.
I am Esau. I have triumphed. I am the leader now.
Characters: Sawyer, Ana Lucia, Jack, Eloise, Charles Widmore, Ben, Locke, Jacob, Jacob's nemesis.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers all the way up through S5.
Pairings: references to Eloise/Charles history.
Summary: As the various island leaders reflect on their time leading and the consequences they eventually faced, Jacob's nemesis muses on what he has done to get where he is and looks to the future of the island without Jacob.
When Hugo had first spoken to him about being their leader, Sawyer had thought the idea was a joke.
Him, island leader? Like that was ever gonna work. He was too selfish, and he didn't think he could ever change. A tiger don't change its stripes.
But Hurley said all the camp were looking to him for leadership now. Sawyer didn't know why. If anything, he thought Hurley would have done a better job himself, given the way he'd managed to get Sawyer to be nice.
And if Sawyer's honest with himself, he'd kind of liked it after all. It was like with that Other kid, Karl. It had been weird having someone look up to him, but weird in a nice way.
As it turned out, the Doc and Freckles had been back next day anyway, so Sawyer didn't have to be temporary leader for very long.
But he remembered it the day he'd jumped from the chopper, landed on the island again only to see the smoking wreck that had been their last chance of escape.
They would look to Sawyer again now for leadership, he thought. Locke was unaccounted for, and Juliet, well, even though they'd started trusting her more recently, there was no denying the fact that she was an Other. And no one really trusted Daniel, Charlotte or Miles either, even if Daniel was the only one who understood the thing with the flashes.
And Sawyer remembered Jack's speech from so long ago. He knew he'd do what he'd always done: surviving. But this time, every man for himself wouldn't work.
Three years on, he's still surprised that people look to him for leadership, even after the truce he'd successfully negotiated with the guy with the eyeliner. He's even more surprised at the success he's made of it, although as he's later to tell Jack, it's because he thinks, where Jack reacted.
Yet the day Jack gets his crazy idea about blowing up the Swan, everyone automatically seems to follow him once more. Habit, he guesses.
But he doesn't really care. The only thing he cares about now just disappeared down the shaft.
"I don't think you're a good judge of character," Libby had said to Ana the day she'd shot Shannon. Bernard had made it perfectly clear he agreed, and as soon as Eko had started speaking again, he'd started arguing with her.
And okay, Ana had made some mistakes. She won't deny that. But she'd done the best she could with what she had at the time. And it wasn't as though any of the rest of them had argued with her at the time. Had any of them ever suspected Goodwin? As for Nathan, well, none of them had really tried to defend him either. Libby had commented on how he never talked about himself, and had even sat with Ana as she'd dug the pit. And Cindy had said she had a good memory for faces, and couldn't remember seeing him. Considering she hadn't spotted Goodwin, Ana guessed her talent was exaggerated.
So Ana had made some bad decisions. She knew she'd been the one to place them all in danger by continuing to put her faith in Goodwin. (Probably a good thing she'd quit the force, she thinks, since she couldn't spot the bad guy under her own damn nose.) She still sees them now, Goodwin, Nathan, Shannon. But at the time, she'd thought that she hadn't seen anyone else stepping up to lead them. Cindy, Libby and Bernard didn't want to lead, and who would follow a guy that didn't even speak?
Ana had been the one to keep them alive those first few weeks on the island. She was the one who'd kept her head when Bernard was stuck up the tree, she'd done what she could to protect all of them.
But after shooting Shannon, she realised that wasn't enough. By then, she didn't trust her own judgement either.
It was better for them all if she deferred to Jack's leadership. There's only the dog who trusts her now. And who would trust Ana as leader, when she can't even trust herself?
Jack hadn't asked for any of this.
He'd been sure he wasn't cut out for this. His father had made it pretty clear to Jack what he thought the day he'd defended Marc Silverman against that idiot. "Don't choose, Jack. Don't decide. Because you haven't got what it takes."
But as Jack was later to admit to Michael, sometimes he'd listened to his father a little too much. And he had to admit there was an element of proving his father wrong when he'd finally accepted the role of leader after talking to Locke, even if he couldn't understand why they were all looking to him.
He was just another one of them, after all, just another survivor like everyone else. Boone's "Who appointed you our saviour?" made more sense to Jack than Hurley and Charlie looking to Jack to decide what to do about the water shortage.
In other ways, he's wondered if Sarah had hit the nail on the head when she'd said that Jack always needed something to fix. Because that was what he'd been trying to do, the whole time they looked to him for leadership. But he acknowledges now the truth in what Sawyer had said, about the consequences for everyone as well as himself when Jack didn't think things through.
Okay, he'd got them all off the island. But not all of them, like he'd promised. And there had been consequences for all, Sayid losing Nadia, Sun having to raise her baby alone, Hurley ending up back in Santa Rosa. If he hadn't attempted that prisoner exchange, Ben for Walt, maybe Ana and Libby would still be here, while calling the freighter had resulted in the deaths of Rousseau, Alex and Karl among others.
Jack had known all this the day he refused to listen to Ben and then believed he'd caused Jin, Sayid and Bernard's "deaths". And he knows it now, as he prepares to make the decision that will change the events of the past three years.
Maybe Sarah had been right about his need to fix things after all.
They'd argued about it, right before she'd left the island.
Charles couldn't understand Eloise's point of view. To him, it was simple; protecting the island was the only thing that mattered, and anything that came between him and his objective was a necessary sacrifice.
But Eloise understood now that there were things in life that mattered more.
They had tried, but failed to meet half way. Eloise had known that she must leave the island, and soon. Since the Incident, pregnant women were no longer able to carry to term. The only way Eloise's son Daniel could ever be born was if Eloise left the place that had been her home, the people she had once led.
Yet Charles had been unwilling to make this sacrifice for Eloise and for their son. He had been able to leave the island for reasons of his own, to father another child whose existence Eloise had struggled to deal with. Yet he had refused to leave for Eloise.
She doesn't know how Charles could stand in front of her at the hospital and talk of sacrificing his relationship with Penny, and say that Daniel was his son too. Had he felt anything at all the day he went to Daniel and told him to board the freighter, knowing he was sending him to certain death? Eloise can't describe how she felt the day she told Daniel he must accept, knowing that they would never meet again in her future, and what would happen when he next met her in his own. And she can't speak to Charles of all the years she's spent with Daniel, knowing what was to happen, knowing that the only way to prevent it was to force him to spend all his time studying physics, trying to work out how to change the past.
And the only way Daniel could do that was to go to the island.
So Eloise cannot understand how Charles can talk of sacrifice. Eloise is the one who had to give up her home, and the people she no longer felt she was fit to lead. And she was the one to give up the only thing that mattered.
He's sorry the boy's dead, of course. Despite what Eloise might think, he's not completely heartless.
But Charles believes there was obviously a reason the island didn't want Daniel to survive. He was clearly a necessary sacrifice to protect the island. And if Eloise had stopped to think, she'd have understood that too. At one time, she would have.
But now it seems that she has other concerns more important to her. And as much as it grieves Charles to say it, she's clearly not cut out to be their leader.
He thinks the same of Benjamin Linus, the DHARMA boy who had been brought to them in 1977. There had been a time when a leader from DHARMA would have been unthinkable. Yet Ben had survived a shooting that would have killed anyone else. Damn it, he shouldn't be here. But as Charles sits with him and tells him he's one of them now, he chokes on the words. Jacob intended Ben to be saved, Ben is the new chosen one.
It was abundantly clear to Charles that Ben had lacked the qualities necessary to lead them, yet as time went on, he began to notice his people turn from him and flock to Benjamin's side, eventually forcing Charles to leave the island.
Ben had thought he'd had the upper hand the day he watched Charles depart on the submarine, carried to his exile. Yet Charles allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he thought of something Ben did not know, of a day in 1954 when a man named John Locke had arrived at their camp and announced himself as their future leader. Ben's star may have been rising, but he would come down to earth with a bump.
Charles could not deny the schadenfreude as he watched Benjamin land at the exit point. The man who had stolen everything from him had lost it once more.
Then one day, Ben had called and said he was on the way back to the island. And Charles realised it wasn't over yet.
He'd thought his secret had died with Ethan.
Once the only other person to Ben's knowledge who was aware that someone else had claimed to be a future leader had been removed, Ben had thought that his position was safe.
He should have known that Jacob had other plans.
It had seemed simple enough at the time. Ben had always prided himself on his ability to get people to do his bidding and let them think it was his own idea. A few well-chosen words, and their people were no longer sure they wanted Widmore for their leader. Their people were dying, the process of creating new life only managing to destroy existing lives. And where was Widmore? Leaving the island, fathering a child with an unknown woman while his people suffered.
A few such speeches, and they were eating out of his hand. Ben had had no choice; Richard kept telling him he was special, he was chosen, he was to lead their people. Ben had done what he had to do in order for Widmore to be removed. His people wanted him gone, and they believed it was their own idea.
Soon, Ben had thought it was time for his first meeting with Jacob. But every time he raised it with Richard, Richard just said to be patient, it wasn't time yet.
He allowed everyone else to think he was in regular contact with Jacob. No one doubted him; why should they? He was the Chosen One.
But as time went by, he began to suspect that this meant nothing at all. He wondered when Juliet broke the news of his tumour, he wondered as Alex was gunned down in front of his horrified eyes.
And he wondered when John Locke, the man Ethan had seen in 2001, turned up on the island, paralysis healed by Jacob just as Jacob allowed Ben to be stricken with cancer.
Jacob had chosen, Ben's time was done. Locke was the new Chosen One.
This fact tempered all satisfaction Ben may have felt in returning to the island where Widmore had failed.
He hadn't been overly concerned when Ben had spoken those words to him. "Destiny, John, is a fickle bitch." As far as Locke was concerned, they were the words of a bitter man who knew his time was done.
Locke knows what his purpose is now, after many years of a worthless existence in dead-end jobs. He now has a role in life; to lead the people of the island, to help them all discover the purpose of their own. The island saved Locke, when he first crashed here, by giving him back the ability to walk. Now he must save the island, do whatever it takes to prevent the man named Widmore from exploiting it as Ben had said.
And he finally understands the meaning of all those visits he'd had in his childhood from Richard. Locke had been chosen since birth, Locke was special.
It's not until he finds himself on the mainland again that Locke understands what Ben had meant.
His fellow survivors of Flight 815 had once looked to him as an alternative leader to Jack. Now they despise him and mistrust him. He'd thought he could save the island by bringing them all back, but no one's following him, they don't want to know.
And he's no longer sure that he was meant to lead the island's people. Christian had said that it was Locke, not Ben, who was supposed to move the island, and the person who moved the island was never meant to return. Locke had become the sacrifice that the island demanded. As for the visits from Richard in his childhood, well, they would never have happened had he not told Richard to do so in 1954. So did they mean anything at all? Was Locke really special or just another pretender as Ben had been?
He has his reasons for bringing people here, in spite of what the other man might think.
It's true what Jacob said, about the need to prove him wrong, to show that it was all progress rather than the destruction and corruption his nemesis predicted.
But Jacob also knows that he needs to surround himself with others, for his own protection as well as that of the island.
He knows his nemesis will stop at nothing to find a loophole, in order to kill him. And at first, Jacob's plan works. The new inhabitants of the island revere him, they know what he has done for them, they accept his orders without question. Meanwhile his nemesis is weak, trapped in the cabin by the circle of ash.
Jacob is the leader, the one who protects them all, from threats from the outside world and from the destruction his nemesis would cause.
He does not realise that his decision would eventually lead to his downfall.
Jacob's first mistake had been choosing unworthy candidate Ben Linus to lead them all, a man whose first loyalty was always to himself rather than the island.
His second mistake was to bring Flight 815 to the island.
Because in doing so, he had set in motion a chain of events that would bring about his own destruction.
He knew the exact moment that his nemesis gathered strength again. He's tried to protect himself by enlisting Ilana's help, but he still fears she may not succeed.
Jacob has controlled many people's destinies over the years. Now he is losing control of his own.
They live as fools, and they will die as fools.
He knew exactly what Jacob has been hoping to achieve by bringing people to the island. Jacob still thought he could prove him wrong about the nature of humanity.
But Jacob's nemesis knows that all Jacob's managing to prove is that he doesn't understand human nature at all. And he knows that in the end, he's going to be the instrument of his own downfall.
Take Benjamin Linus. If Jacob had known anything about human nature, he would have known that his neglect of Ben, followed by his later treatment of him, would only leave Ben more susceptible to the idea of killing Jacob. The fool was putty in his hands. He didn't even recognise the same trick he'd used so many times himself.
He'd been waiting a long time for this moment. As he'd waited, imprisoned in the cabin, he's almost begun to give up hope. But then one day, he'd realised that his time had come.
Linus hadn't known of his existence when he'd brought Locke to the cabin. As far as he'd been concerned, he'd been taking Locke to a disused cabin, with the idea of proving that Locke wasn't special after all. But the moment Jacob's nemesis had seen him, he'd thought I have found my loophole. I know what I must do. Locke was going to be the one who would help him.
When he had said "Help me," Locke had believed he was Jacob. He'd believed also that it was Jacob who wanted the island moved the day Nemesis had taken the form of the man Christian Shephard. That had taken care of Linus. And a few days later, when he'd taken that form again and claimed that it was Locke, not Linus, who needed to move the island, Locke had believed that too. After all, it was true - when had Linus ever told him anything that was worth a damn?
It had been child's play, too, to tell Alpert to convince Locke he had to die. After all, it had kind of already happened. So that was Locke removed too, leaving his body free for Nemesis to claim. And the fools hadn't even realised that he was not, as he'd told the Kwon woman, the same man he'd always been.
Any ideas of a coup by Linus were taken care of when he'd taken the form of the girl Alexandra, the only person he would ever accept that advice from.
They are so easily manipulated. And the reason for this? Because he was right and Jacob was wrong, all those years ago, about human nature.
I am Esau. I have triumphed. I am the leader now.