[LOST - Ben/Sun] Sympathy for the Devil
Title: Sympathy for the Devil
Author: buongiornodaisy
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Ben, Sun
Pairing: Ben/Sun
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,394
Summary: Two exiles learn to understand each other better. AU-ish.
Author's Notes: Much love for calluna and doihearawaltz for looking this over. ♥
Disclaimer: Do I look like Darlton to you? Of course not! I'm just one person. Alas.
--
In the weeks preceding their departure he had begun to act strangely: detached from everyone, quiet and given to long contemplations of the ocean. Was it a simple reaction to losing power? Had he given up the fight? She wondered about him as they stood side by side on the rickety ferry, saying their goodbyes to people she probably never wanted to see again.
The goodbyes being said, the two exiles turned to look at each other. His face was unreadable, his movements automatic. Was that what a man looked like when his soul was dead?
(Did she look the same way?)
-
“Do you know where you're going?”
It was two in the morning. He was staring out at the ocean from the deck where they stood. Save for the crew, they were the only passengers on this ship.
“Why are you going back home?” he asked, showing no sign that he had heard her question.
She looked up from the railing. “I have a daughter,” she replied, a little startled to hear him speak. He fell yet again into silence.
“You should sleep,” he finally said.
“So should you,” she replied, before turning away and making her way towards her cabin.
She was almost at the door when she heard a splash.
-
He wouldn't have fallen ill hadn't she deliberated whether to save him. She decided that she would, though she wasn't sure why. Was it fear that the crew would notice he was gone, or was it sympathy? She was just as unsure why she was sitting next to his bed, listening to his fevered statements. “Take me with you,” he would say. “I hate it here,” he would say. None of it made sense. Was he talking about the island?
She learned to tune out his rambles. She kept her watch over him, trying to feel nothing as he tossed and turned and mumbled in childish anguish. It gave her a chill. She knew nothing of this man, only that he had done terrible things. But he could show an unnerving vulnerability. He had showed that to her on the island. What vulnerability he had shared, however, could not compare to what she was witnessing now. He was more human than she thought, and she was curious to know how human he really was.
-
“Sun?”
She hadn't noticed that he woke, hadn't even noticed that she was falling asleep. She jerked in her chair, looking at him with alarm.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“You jumped into the ocean.”
He stared at her, confused, until an acknowledgment of what happened crept into his expression. He was disappointed. Disappointed that he had failed, or disappointed that he had turned to suicide? His face, full of emotion as it was, was hard to read.
“Why did you do it?” she asked.
“Because...” He turned on his back, staring at the ceiling. “I remember everything.”
“What?”
“It was Sayid. He - he shot me.”
“When did he do this?" she asked. She supposed she should've been more surprised. Not that she was privy to all of Sayid's actions, but if Sayid had shot Ben, surely she would have heard of it? Still, the idea that Ben had been shot by one of them was not all that novel.
He replied, “He shot me when I was a boy.”
She suddenly sat up straight. There was her surprise. They had breached this subject before, the subject of her so-called friends being in the past. He had confessed that he didn't remember them. Was he lying?
“I suppose they erased my memory when they healed me,” he continued, ignorant of her surprise, “but...”
“So you tried to kill yourself because Sayid shot you?” The question sounded silly, but how else could she react?
“It's a little more complicated than that,” he said, closing his eyes, looking pained. Surely it was more complicated than that, but what would drive a man as unflappable as Benjamin Linus to suicide? She watched as he fell asleep, wondering, again: just how human was he?
-
She figured that he needed some company. None of the crew seemed willing to look after a sick man, nor did they seem interested in what he had to say, so she took it upon herself to bring him food and talk to him. He seemed to be in a morbidly nostalgic mood, talking about his mother, who died when he was born, and his alcoholic father, who blamed him for his mother's death. He talked about DHARMA and “the Hostiles” - the Others, he had clarified - and how he so desperately wanted to run away from home. He thought Sayid, being a Hostile in need of a favor, would be the one to “save” him. Now that he remembered, he wondered if he'd ever have it in him to trust anyone again.
He said he was only telling her this because he had to tell someone, and that he wasn't in a mood to scribble this into a journal that couldn't talk back.
She was surprised to discover how much she could relate to his story. Hadn't she once been a little girl terrified of her father's rebuke? She wasn't sure if his childhood could excuse the things he did, but she understood how it could fuel an anger that made one prone to do the unforgivable. If her childhood had been just as bad, would she have turned out the same?
-
“I'm sorry about you and Jin.”
They had been sitting silently on the deck, having run out of things to say. Looking away, she shook her head and replied, “We changed too much.”
“Or maybe you stayed the same.”
“How do you mean?” She turned her face to him.
He shrugged, shook his head, and stared out to the ocean. “Look, I don't know anything about...relationships, marriage...but people don't change. They've always been the same. It's...it's delusion, that makes us think we're what we aren't. What we call 'change' is really just us realizing that delusion.”
She stared at him silently, her lips pursed. Delusion? “I wasn't deluded,” she said, rising to her feet. “We changed. He was different. I was different and he didn't--”
“Were you really that different from who you were, Sun? Or did you just realize what it was you were capable of?”
“You're a monster,” she said, then walked away.
-
Ben had spent a long time wondering how a man could give himself over, mind, body and soul, to addiction. Of course he was wondering about his father, but he was also wondering about Jack Shepherd. Shepherd's father had problems with alcohol. Hadn't Ben intervened with his offer of salvation by Island, Shepherd would have gone the same way. He was certainly in a sorry state when Ben found him hovering over Locke's coffin, searching for meaning he hadn't found in his pills. Perhaps that was why Ben never fell into the throes of addiction: he knew the answer couldn't be found in a substance that couldn't talk back. The only thing you could find in those substances was oblivion, and you could only afford oblivion when you had nothing to lose.
Right now, Ben had nothing to lose. He had no purpose. Nobody needed him. Sun only talked to him because there was no one else. Add another party and he'd be alone again. Hell, he was alone now. Eventually something happened to make him lose another member of the Reluctant Fans of Ben Linus club. He sat on the edge of his bed, filling his second glass of whiskey, wondering how much of it was on this boat and how quickly he could go through it. He was about to take a sip when he heard a knock at the door. Setting his glass down, he moved over to the door, opened it, and wasn't able to process anything until she had pushed both of their bodies onto his bed. There, he was able to push Sun off of him.
“What--?” he asked, knowing she wouldn't answer the moment he saw at her curled up body. She was crying. “Sun?” He placed his hand on her shoulder, feeling so confused that he didn't stop to think about how that was the first time he had been kissed.
-
Eventually, she began to tell him her story: of her childhood with a distant father and a controlling mother, of her unsuccessful attempts at rebellion, of her thinking she had found a person who understood what she went through, and of her finding Jin because of it -- Jin, someone so off the beaten path she thought he would be her salvation. He became corrupted for her sake. She saw her hopes of salvation dashed and reverted to the same means of quiet rebellion she tried to conduct under her parents' watch. This time she would slip away from him, into that freedom she had yearned for all her life; yet that moment at the airport in Sydney made her believe that if she gave him a second chance, things would be different; that if she stayed with him longer, maybe they'd find a way to break free. If she stayed with him, maybe he'd change back into the man she loved. Their situations were reversed: now she had become corrupted for his sake. He couldn't bring himself to love that; she couldn't bring herself to be the old fragile, carefree Sun. They had changed, irreconcilably so. Ben understood that to be the reason behind her actions. She felt abandoned. So did he.
Things had reversed Ben and Sun as well: now he was spending time in her room, listening to her stories, watching her as she stayed in bed, too depressed to get out of it. He made sure she ate and gave her an ear when she wanted to talk. He found himself relating to her, to her childhood and the time she had spent believing her husband was dead. He understood the loneliness that lead one to vengeance. He understood her more than she might've thought he did, and for that, he found himself drawn to her. Infatuated. The fact amused him greatly.
Her mood improved. He decided he should spend less time with her, read those books he hadn't cracked open. He had to cool down. The last time he had an infatuation, somebody died. He doubted he'd take his jealousy out on the crew, but he was wary of doing things based his emotions. If he were to blend into the general populous he would have to learn to keep his emotions in check. But she noticed his retreat. She sought him out, cornering him on the deck, visiting his cabin, interrupting his alone time. He didn't mind. He greeted her presence with an amused resignation. They grew to be comfortable around each other, to the point where he often found her hand sitting on top of his in a comforting gesture.
There wasn't a repeat of the incident that had inspired this new round of conversations. There was no surprising knock at the door, no desperate kisses, no curled-up bodies on the bed, crying -- instead it happened quietly, when they were sitting on his bed, her hand on top of his. He leaned in and kissed her, and though she tensed, she didn't pull away. She kissed him back. She caught him off guard. He had never done this before, didn't know how to kiss in a satisfactory way and knew this was awkward. But she continued to kiss him, had her arms on his shoulder as he tried to kiss her back and laughed, sweet-natured, pushing him down onto the bed, this initiating that all-too short encounter that belied the physical manifestation of his loneliness. He was embarrassed by it. She was amused.
She spent the night in his room.
-
Time, like this boat, was constantly in motion. One day, one hour later and the timezone had changed. He hadn't bothered to adjust the clock in his room because of it. If he had to guess what time it was presently, he'd say some time after two in the afternoon. He wasn't sure. He could barely see the window from where he lay. Her sleeping profile blocked his view.
He was waiting for her to wake up. The adage that men slept after sex had never been true for him, and that fact often left him feeling lonely in moments such as these. He thought it ridiculous, knew it was so, for she wouldn't be here if he were truly alone; but even though relations had improved between them he could not bring himself to believe it would last. She would understand why he felt that way.
Suddenly, she stirred. He jerked back the hand that had been resting on her waist. She captured it, grinning. “Are you leaving me?” she asked, her eyes still closed.
“No,” he replied, and sighed. He wasn't leaving, but she was. They'd be in Incheon in two days. From there she'd go to Seoul, back to her daughter, back to her life. From there he would go -- where? He hadn't made up his mind. Perhaps back into the ocean if he ran out of options.
“Ben?”
He looked up from the pillow. She was looking at him. "What's wrong?” she asked.
He stared at her silently, his tongue pressed between his lips. “I don't want you to leave,” he replied after a moment.
“I know. But I have a daughter.”
“But...but can't you just get her and leave? Disappear? It's not impossible. We could plan it out. We only have two days, but I've...”
Her laughter cut him off. “Everyone will be watching me, Ben. The press, my family...”
“It's not impossible, Sun. I've pulled off unlikelier.”
She stared at him. He wasn't sure whether she thought him mad or genius. “I'll think about it,” she said.
“Okay,” he replied, and in spite of himself, he smiled.