"You don't need to get all philosophical on me." He narrowed his eyes, though his focus seemed to be on what his hands were doing. Carefully, he layered a cheese slice onto an individual cracker. Then another. When he paused, it was to brace his palms against the edge of the counter and eye his apparent still-advisor. Well, once you had a job that long, hard to stop doing it. "What do I know," he retorted, irreverently. It wasn't a discussion he wanted to get into. Richard reminded him too much of what he'd lost. Surely, Juliet did too, but she was a woman of this world, and he'd accepted her abandonment sooner, easier. Jacob he thrived for. Needed. As advisor, Richard was impersonal, disconnected from what it meant to be swayed by human emotions. That was the balance; that's why he was never, really, the leader, right? But he did... he did have the one thing Ben did not, and wanted more than anything else.
"It could've been exactly the same. It's not like I ever saw the man." Yet he'd been willing to devote to the cause, to take Richard's word for it whenever something 'came from Jacob'. He'd been an Other. The choice hadn't been his; perhaps one of the biggest of his life, and he had no idea what they'd done to him. Possibly to assuage their own consciences. But while they gained one, Ben lost his.
"No, Richard, what defines us is action. And I think I've made myself pretty clear. Lying, cheating, sending various people to their death." He had picked up the knife and now he gestured with it, the gleaming blade, just as flippantly as he said the words. Well. Perhaps not just. There had been an edge gained since Ben left the island - a crack in his exterior - that now let loose a certain bitterness he had buried time and again. It was the one that tasted of how he didn't know what it had all been for anymore. Not until now had Ben really been forced to face all of his former decisions, to run through every choice and decide if it was a good one or not. Drowning in old regrets would get you nowhere, there were still things to do, but your mind didn't always go along with that. Sometimes, it reflected instead. Benjamin Linus, former master his people, now couldn't even stop his own thoughts. If things were back the way they were, would he do it differently? He couldn't say he would. Because he'd still done everything in his power to protect that place. Except... Alex...
They hadn't allowed him anything else. Now it was just more personal. "Now that I think about it, I'm more positive than ever that John will do a fantastic job."
Yet before wasn't true. Richard wasn't right. It did matter, meeting with Jacob. Because a worthy person would've gotten to. He would have made time for someone important. And now, worthy or not, Ben was going to do everything in his power to be noticed again, and figure out why it had to come to this.