Boone was dead. Dead. Deceased. He had ceased to be.

Lina was still having trouble wrapping her head around it. She hadn't known Boone much at all. Hadn't very much liked his sister, if that was any indication. The idea that he was dead, finished… it was hard to bear. He'd survived the crash of a fucking jet-liner, only to die in a 20-foot fall in a Sesna? Bob had a Hell of a sense of humor. She felt sick.

She could feel the grief of the entire camp pressing in on her. She was shocked, saddened, and depressed by the whole thing, but this level of sorrow was not hers. She had to get out, had to get away from them all and find someplace to breathe.

She set off down the beach, away from the funeral, away from all the people gathered on the hill. I'm sorry, Boone. I know I owe you some respect here, but I can't handle this.

She walked and walked until the only thing she could see of the camp was the smoke from Sayid's eternal signal fire. She sat in the sand, and stared at the ocean. She tried to let the sorrow of the people she'd been standing with go, like it was being washed out with the waves. She felt the peace that comes only to those who can't stop grieving. It's like the silt resting on the bottom of a pond. Calm, for the moment, but oh so unstable. Any little movement could send it into chaos again.

She didn't hear him coming, and when he spoke, she jumped in her skin.

"This really ain't the time to be off on your own."

She didn't answer. Her throat still felt too tight to safely speak.

"With everyone worked up, as they are, y'shouldn't leave without telling someone. Might set the whole place to worrying."

She swallowed hard, wanting to say something to make him leave, but couldn't make the words come out.

"People even wanted to know where I was going."

"Go away," she finally forced out. She wouldn't look at him; kept her eyes trained on the waves breaking just off shore.

"If I did that, it would make me a liar," he admonished.

"What do you want? You told me to keep away, so I did. Why are you here?"

"I told you, it's not the time for you to go off alone," he reminded her, plopping down beside her in the sand. "Didn't even bring your girl scout pack."

"I want to be alone."

"Yeah, I gathered that from the way you walked away, all by yourself, like that. I figured you were coming out here all alone to sit and stare at the ocean. Probably have a cry. Damn, you're such a girly girl, Specs."

She felt the lump in her throat growing, but somehow the more he talked the less horrible she felt, as if the crushing sorrow was actually lifting this time, instead f her pretending it was.

"You're the last person on this island who should be calling anyone 'Specs'," she said, in a water voice.

"Don't I know it? But I'm man enough to wear those hideous things, and it don't bruise my ego one little bit."

"And I wasn't coming out here to cry," she insisted, even though she was beginning to cry as she said it. He reached over, and patted the middle of her back, soothingly.

"Oh, I know, I know. You just got a little sand in your eye, that's all," he said, sagely. "I'll just sit here with ya till you get that pesky stuff out."

She gave a sobbing laugh and leaned her head on his shoulder and he wrapped his arm around hers.

"I'm not a big cryer," she informed him, as her tears wet his shirt.

" 'Course not. I bet you never cried a day in your life. How's that sand coming?"

He actually sat there with her. While she cried on his shoulder, literally. Rubbing her arm, and keeping firm hold on her shoulders the entire episode. When she'd finally cried herself out, eight years later, he handed her a rag and called it a handkerchief.

As they walked back to the camp together, he purposely shortened his long strides for her sake. She wondered why he'd done it. She knew he had the capacity for the kind of kindness he'd shown her today, but she had no idea he had the inclination to use it. The only thing he'd ever seemed to want was to be hated, and be in pain, in one form or another. The only conclusion she could come up with was that… he just wanted to be the good guy for a change.

It didn't even stop there. She was floored when she came back to the beach, after heading to the caves to see Sun about maybe finding some kind of tea leaf to be found on the island. Sawyer and Charlie, and Claire's little baby, huddled together, thick as thieves. He read the car magazine like it was a bed-time story. The way he looked at the infant made her breath catch in her throat for a moment, and she wondered if it was possible to fall for someone like Sawyer. If he gave you the chance.

So, they were really leaving. It was supposed to fill everyone with hope that they were heading out to get them all rescued. For Lina, thought, it all seemed so crushingly final. Like when you graduate high school, and all your friends tell you they'll keep in touch, but really they won't, and you all know that.

She felt kind of ill, and hated good-byes, but she helped shove the raft down to the water, along with everyone else. She saw Kate and Sawyer trading glances.

She hadn't spoken to Sawyer in the last few days. He hadn't had the time, working on the raft as he and the other two were. Also, there was the fugitive Kate drama.

That genuinely shocked Lina. Not so much that Kate was the one with the air Marshall, she'd seen her sitting next to the man on the plane. She hadn't mentioned it beforehand because, so long as Kate wasn't some homicidal maniac, she didn't think she could do much harm on a deserted, jungle island. Sawyer had already snagged everything not nailed down, what could she steal? What shocked her, was the way Sawyer had exposed her to everyone. Even rocks had their limit, she guessed.

But now they were going. This very morning. She debated whether she should give a quick good-bye now, and leave the beach, before they actually set off, and everyone got all teary. And then the mast broke, and all the plans were sent into upheaval. Could nothing go as planned on the island, or did everything have to crash at least once?

She watched Sawyer offer to help with the repairs, but when Michael refused him, he stalked off into the jungle to sulk. Charlie came around, carrying a wine bottle, offering up slips of paper to anyone who wanted a message to go out with the boat. She took one, and sat down, trying to figure out what she wanted to write.

She had no one to write to, actually. Yeah, she had relatives, cousins, aunts and uncles, that kind of thing. She didn't really expect any of them to be too worried about her. She'd been pretty much disowned when she gave up the family religion. It was ridiculous, but they somehow looked at her desertion of organized faith as a betrayal of the family. Her parents had died of shock after eating bad seafood. Seafood killed her parents, if that's not a bad made-for-tv movie, she didn't know what was. Maybe Locke was right, maybe a big slice of fate landed them all on the island.

She mused that, when they all got back to the real world, she could write a book about her stay on the island. Maybe they'd make a movie about it. She chuckled, shaking her head. Yeah, right. Stranded on a deserted island. I liked the idea better the first time, when it was called Swiss Family Robinson. Robinson Crusoe… Shipwrecked… Castaway…

A thought struck her, and she smiled, putting pen to paper. In a moment she'd scribbled out a note that was moderately legible, and rolled it up. It took her a few minutes to find Charlie, and his bottle. She looked over at the raft to see how they were progressing in the repairs. They were just finishing the rudder, soon they'd be ready to cast off. That's when she noticed Sawyer had not returned. If he wasn't back soon, she knew Michael; they might just leave without him. Knowing how much getting off the island meant to him, she started off into the jungle, to see if she could find him.