(no subject)
A few days ago Ben had glanced at the calendar and saw it was his birthday. He told no one about it, barely thought about it, himself, as his actual birthday had passed just a few hours prior to his arrival on this island. His sole reflection was to think of how strange it would be to spend how many number of birthdays on an island that hosted none of the events that marked Ben's past birthdays. There would be no swing set, no hill to bring the mind the people he had loved, hated and lost on that day. He hadn't made up his mind as to whether he liked that idea. At the very least, he still had Annie's doll, which had been enough to remind him of her on the birthdays he didn't spend cozied up in the old DHARMA barracks.
Oddly enough, he was starting to miss that faux-suburban haven. He hadn't been there in days thanks to the conflict with the 815 survivors, and for all that he was a practical man, used to life in the outdoors, he, like any modern human being, didn't much like being away from the comforts of electricity, air conditioning, running water and a soft bed, not when he still had some faint back pains to deal with as the Island gradually cured him. Well, now he had all of those, minus some much-desired privacy, and minus the promise of being healed by the Island. He was stuck with a walking stick he almost didn't need, wouldn't need if he had remained on his Island a day longer. He was stuck on the same island as a just-fine-and-dandy John Locke, who could blow Ben's entire "Dean Moriarty" cover as casually as he had strolled into Ben's camp with his father's corpse on his back. It really was no wonder to Ben why he wasn't so fascinated by his faux-birthday on this island.
As much as Ben had tried to maintain a cheerful countenance for Dean, he couldn't help but be sour-faced as he walked outside the compound, walking stick in hand, and in mind a hope he wouldn't slip and fall and give himself an even more potent reason to walk with that wooden piece of crap.