It's the scent that comes to him first; a scent of roses and shampoo and strawberry chap stick. It's the kind of scent that goes hand in hand with blonde curls and perfectly filed pink nails. It floats in the air like music, and then it's gone.
***
He wakes up in the middle of the night with a sharp breath caught in his throat, and it's hard to swallow, so he gets up, he listens. The sky is dark and huge above him. Words begin to form around him, and it's not like what he's used to, not like spoken words. It moves through the bushes, the air. It moves through him.
***
The following night he wakes up to find her sitting at his feet, dainty fingers toying with the hem of her dainty dress. Her eyes are sky blue and her hair is yellow, and her lips are soft and pink. Blood pours from the hole in her chest.
He pushes his upper body from the ground and props himself up on his elbows, takes a good look at her, and tries to think of something to say. She looks at him through thick eyelashes, and a half-smile appears on her lips. She moves like a cat over him, settling with her knees on each side of his hips, and her cold hands come to rest on his naked chest. The little hairs at the back of his neck stand on edge as her hair brushes his skin, a sensation so faint it almost isn't there at all. He closes his eyes, tightly, and sinks back to the ground.
***
He dreams of her in the nights to come, dreams of her calling to him like a siren, beautiful and sad. He remembers her touch even though it never really happened, and her scent escapes his dreams and follows him into the waking world. Images flutter by like butterflies, images displaced and torn out of context, memories of a life that isn't his. A life lost.
***
"My brother used to hunt boar. Fancied himself a hunter." She rolls her eyes at the memory.
She shouldn't still be there after the blinding white light, she isn't born yet, not dead yet. But apparently no one told her because she's very much there, and the science gives him a headache, so he doesn't spend too much time contemplating it.
The boar moves through the bushes without making a sound. It looks confused. People do that too, sometimes – go on about their business like nothing happened, like they don't know they're dead.
"Your brother, huh? Is he on the island, too?"
She smiles. "Yes."
"Where?"
"Around." She looks annoyed. "Maybe you've seen him. Follows Locke like a puppy."
He thinks back, tries to recall the faces of the people he met while with Locke. Then he understands.
"Your brother is dead."
Pain and grief flicker across her features, and her voice is cold and small, little more than a whisper. "Yeah. Locke killed him".
He knows there's more to it than that. He nods his understanding, and stays quiet.