Xenogenesis

He is young. The bright blue eyes have not yet narrowed into calculation and coldness. The mouth can still smile, though he does this but seldom. It is a shame, his teachers mutter to each other. The smile lights up his face when it happens, and he looks purely innocent. A bright child, they say. So much aptitude. But he socializes poorly. That's what it says on all his reports. The teachers write them and then send them to his father – Roger, his mind emphasizes. Roger. It lets him pretend there's distance between them. But they write their reports and it's him that reads them and forges his father's signature and sends them back and tries, a little, to live up to what they want. It isn't what he wants, he just wants to get away, and he feels weak and pitiful for how much he knows he whines to himself about this.

There are years yet, before he becomes what fate has said he must be, though he does not know this. The dark man's words whisper to him out of his memory, the smell of the jungle still fresh.

"I don't want to go back there! I hate it there! Take me with you."

"Maybe that can happen, maybe. But if that's what you really want, Ben, if that's what you want, I want you to really think about that. And you're gonna have to be very, very patient."

He is young, and he tries not to think about how lonely he is, and he tries to look at the photograph of his mother as seldom as possible. He practices patience in the only ways he can think of; by measuring his meals out, by pacing books he wants to rush through, by stopping to think for long pauses before answering any question he is asked. He doubts this is what the dark man meant, but it's all he's got. So he's got to try.

He is lost in thought, math book open before him, his pencil hovering over long division. The numbers blend together, mostly unseen. He is not thinking, or so he would tell himself. He is trying so very, very hard not to think that memories and resentments are all but bursting out of him.

Down the hall, Roger Linus continues to vomit into the toilet. He curses, then retches again, the sound dry and hollow. The smell of sour sick and beer is unmistakable in the small home.

Ben blinks, and then finally bursts into silent, frustrated tears. He is angry with himself for not being strong enough to disregard his humiliating family state. He is angry, because he can't yet seem to be patient enough to look at his fath – at Roger – for more than the space of seconds before everything begins to boil up in him again. He is angry, because he can't stop how lonely he feels.

There is a word, a word he's plucked from many a pulp tale, tales where man reaches the stars, where man outstrips everything others have told him he cannot do. Xenogenesis. He clutches at this word like a talisman. Xenogenesis. Like the cuckoo. The child is not like the parent.

Young Ben hitches a shuddery breath and puts his homework away. He hides himself, not just under a great pile of covers, but inside, inside where the Dawn Treader still sails, where the Ring still trudges towards its destruction, where polecats can be gods and magic can still be whispered. He's still just a kid, he knows. Maybe he could yet be some forgotten prince, and these parents of his just some great gag. Maybe he can be free.

He thinks of his mother who would be casually tossed aside in this miracle daydream and loses himself in more sobs. He tries to silence himself, but cannot. He would be comforted to know that Roger could never hear him. Roger has passed out on the cool tile next to the toilet.

* * * *

Ben Linus is regarding a bound and dirty man without active thought. He examines his captive clinically, without real regard for the being as a human. His cold eyes narrow and his lips purse. He looks down at a file in his hand, rereading what he has already read a dozen times. He could recite it now, from memory. And yet the act of reading has always been something of a comfort. An actualization of facts.

The file is a set of police reports from all over the world. There are connections and interconnections made between this man and many others, mostly by way of harm. Much of it he disregards as simply interesting trivia. But the clearest facts of all are the most important to him. He has John Locke's father. Finally he smiles. It is very thin. There is no humor in it, and no innocence. It does not touch his eyes.

"Mr. Cooper," he finally says. "Welcome to my island."

"Go fuck yourself."

Ben's gaze doesn't waver. "I apologize for your current state. But if you saw matters from my perspective, I think you would understand why I'm unable to treat you less poorly."

Mr. Cooper is boring, he ultimately decides. The man's second response is the same as the first. Unimaginative. Ben gestures to Tom, who clubs the man's skull with brute skill. Mr. Cooper would likely have much the same to say about the act.

"Leave me with him a moment, Tom."

The burly man hesitates, looking at his leader with careful disbelief. "What for?"

Ben jerks his head sharply and gives Tom a cutting glare. "Because I said to." He returns to gazing at Mr. Cooper, and does not glance back when the door to the brig clicks shut.

* * * *

It has been a week since his last birthday. Ben is certain that the yearly hurt has not left his eyes, and so he keeps his face down, his manner entirely aloof, his mind traveling the seas around Melnibone. The last few children that might have yet accepted him into their circle are disgusted by what they see as his haughtiness. They call him the little prince, which hurts so much that he pretends not to hear (except that he does hear, over and over, at night, like bats crawling in his mind), and there have been crimes committed against his lunches and his textbooks. The teachers, attention now full with increasing Hostile incursions, let the matters pass. He presents himself as so self-sufficient, they reason with brief and hurried consideration. The boy will handle it fine. He seems so very strong about such things, and patient. They look no closer. Ben tells himself that he prefers this.

Roger sleeps on the couch most nights. His mouth is wide open, and he snores so loud that Ben wakes in the morning still heavy with weariness. Many times Ben stands in the living room for up to an hour, watching Roger's slackened jaw, a thickly corded pillow clutched in his hands. Roger has begun to look more like an insect to him, he tells himself. Something distant. Something forgettable. He never notices the way his hands wring around the pillow, writhing in something like agony. He decides that this, too, is a way of practicing patience, each time finally putting the pillow down on one of the chairs and stalking away. He does not let himself think that he is afraid of doing this final thing to Roger.

Ben still cries frequently, but now he does it in his sleep. He ignores his wet pillow as an inconvenient fact and tells himself that he no longer weeps. He is growing very good at lying. He is his own best practice.

* * * *

Long moments pass before Ben begins to speak to the senseless man. "You're even more worthless than I had expected. You're stupid and base. You do harm with no thought of why or what it gains except money – money of all ridiculous things. You've wrecked entire lives with the same regard as a child tearing the wings off a fly. You broke your own son because it was convenient to your wishes." He is unaware of the sudden heat in his voice. If it were pointed out to him, he would have called the reporter a liar. He surely has defeated his own past, so he tells himself.

"Well. As it happens, what you have done has repercussions, has left patterns. These things must be addressed, of course." Ben sounds faintly pleased with himself. "Your son will be healed, despite what you did. He will come from this much stronger." He pauses. "Or I will know he is too weak to do what must be done."

The memory dogs him, for a moment. The sight of his own father dying. It leaves him empty to think on it these days. He welcomes the emptiness. After all, Roger was an insect. He means nothing to Ben now, surely.

"You're going to die here," Ben acidly tells the unconscious man. His face clenches, again, he does not know this. He does not think on these things, of course, though his mind pulsates with memories he believes are forgotten. "You are going to die."

Again, something whispers inside him, and he ignores it.

Xenogenesis.

Ben is saving John Locke. He believes this entirely. It will be a triumph.

* * * *

Except that somehow it all became another lie. He stares at John Locke, and at Jacob's chair, with a second's pure denial. He has missed something. And yet, as the room begins to whirl into chaos around him, he knows one thing for a pure truth. His moment has gone. He has been abandoned – yet again! screams his mind and he chooses not to hear this, too – and now things will begin to change very, very quickly.

Ben lies to himself about his fear and calmly leaves the cabin. He has always been his own best practice.

~Fin

(ABC's LOST and its characters are not my creation, nor do I claim any ownership or rights to the above content beyond that of the average godforsaken fanfiction writer. All errors are my own.)

(If you like this little bit of pseudo-psychological drabble, please feel free to check out my other tale. I also love your feedback and criticism. Thank you!)

2009/23/3 - MDS