She wanted it all to just end. She didn't see the point in boarding the plane, in getting back. What she was getting back to, exactly? A few casual friends and a bookstore? She had no one and nothing else. No life. No close, real friends who would really care about her. She'd had Annie and that had been enough until... Alice shut her eyes and shook her head, trying to stop the tears, but they were still flowing down her cheeks. Eventually, she went to the airport bathroom and splashed some water on her face. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. She was looking at her face – Annie's face – and she couldn't believe she would never talk to her sister again. As morbid as it sounded, she could get over losing her parents. She would lose them eventually, after all since that was the natural order of things, but she'd never expected to lose Annie as well. It was just too much. It was the one straw that broke the camel's back and she didn't know how to deal with it, how to live anymore.

She actually contemplated breaking the mirror and slashing her wrists with the glass. Only in that moment the door burst open and there was a man with short blond hair standing in it.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I could've sworn it was the men's bathroom," he apologized quickly. "Are you all right?" he then asked when taking a closer look at her.

"Yeah... Yes, I'm fine. Thank you," she said and he finally left.

She just shook her head, blew her nose into a paper towel and when she managed to calm herself down entirely, she finally left the bathroom.

By a weird coincidence, she bumped into the very same man when he was walking out of the men's room.

He smiled to her and put his hands on her shoulders when they were trying to go each their way.

"I'm so sorry. We really need to stop meeting like this."

She actually found herself reciprocating that smile, feeling just a little bit better and seeing things in just a little bit brighter colors.

Right now Alice was going with Jack, Faraday and Kate to see the hostiles. She decided to leave what she had to say for later, hoping that Eloise, Faraday's mother, would be more reasonable and refuse to help with the bomb. Who on their right minds would help anyway? Alice wondered. This couldn't just end this way. It didn't matter what Daniel thought he figured out. To Alice they couldn't change anything. Ben getting shot and then being saved by the others and therefore becoming one of them was proof enough for her.

For now, Alice was doing just fine when ignoring both the men and just walking alongside Kate. She could sense that her friend felt and thought the same way and she was just waiting to see what happened next. Only what did happen was tragic.

Alice just sat on a rock, deciding to take a short break as Daniel walked down the slope and into the others' camp, demanding to see Eloise. Next, Alice jumped right to her feet when feeling the sudden fear and the familiar clenching in her stomach. She was ready to run after Faraday to get him back, to tell him not to go there, but Jack caught her, putting his arms around her from behind and preventing her from doing a anything.

She stilled, shocked on the sudden closeness, her heart beating faster. She loved that man too damned much, she decided and got angry. Only then she just forgot about it all when they heard a gunshot and they all stilled, looking down at what happened.

"Oh, my God," Alice whispered when Jack finally let her go and she was able to put her hands to her mouth.

Daniel had just been shot by his own mother.

"We're gotta get out of here!" Jack said and pulled Alice in the opposite to the camp direction, Kate following.

They didn't even manage to get far when a man on a horse cut them off and kicked Jack so hard in the face that he fell over.

"Stop!" both Alice and Kate seemed to scream at the same time, but once Kate stilled and raised her hands in surrender, Alice got to Jack who was now lying on the ground, dazed.

"Are you all right? Jack!" she asked, cupping his face.

Once Jack managed to get up, the stranger led them straight to his camp, pointing his gun at them at all times and making it impossible for them to try and escape.

"Richard! I got them all!" he called out proudly to the dark-haired and handsome man to whom Faraday himself had tried to talk earlier. "They broke the pact! We have the right to..."

"Widmore, stop for a moment," Richard just said when raising his hand.

Alice was actually in shock, taking a closer look at the man who apparently was the young Charles Widmore, the same man who in thirty years would send a freighter with Faraday and the rest to the island.

"Do you know the man I just shot?" the blond woman, Eloise, turned to them to ask.

"Yes," Jack answered her and she just nodded, then said, "I want them in my tent."

"Eloise..." Charles started protesting.

"I need to talk to them!" she cut him off abruptly and the three of them were taken into her tent just like she wanted. Alice looked at the dark-haired man, curious about who he really was. The current leader? Still, that position seemed to be taken by Faraday's mother. All she knew for now was that there was some kind of a mystical and old power coming from him. She suddenly remembered his name being once mentioned alongside Jacob's by no one else but John Locke.

"Alice," Jack turned to her when they were seated inside, having nothing to do but wait.

She was so angry at him that she barely held herself together. She could just explode any second now and in their position it wouldn't do them any good.

"Jack... just don't!" was all she managed to say through her clenched teeth, her voice still raised, though.

He wanted to say something else, she could see him already opening his mouth when she cut in, "You can't do this!"

"I agree," Kate spoke to their surprise. It was like they didn't even realize she was there with them until now. "Jack, do you know what you sound like?" she leaned closer to him. "He was crazy, too and you said so yourself!" Clearly, she meant Locke.

"Well, I was wrong," Jack answered her. "If we do what Faraday says, our plane never crashes. All the people that died, will still be alive."

"And what about us?!" Alice screamed at him again. "We'll just go on living our lives like we never met?!"

He didn't have anything to say to that, so she just went on, "Jack, you can't change the past. You just can't! Don't you dare erasing everything! Don't you dare messing with our lives like that! Even if you try... it won't work." She shook her head. "You'll only kill us all by detonating that bomb."

"You don't know that," he just said in a calm voice and Alice was ready to keep on yelling at him or maybe even slap him across the face, but in that moment Eloise went inside and she had to restrain herself.

"The man I shot," she started when turning to them, completely ignoring the fact that they were screaming at each other just seconds ago, "what did he need the bomb for?" she asked.

Jack was already opening his mouth, but then he gave up, not really knowing how to say it for her not to think he was crazy. What could he tell her so she would actually understand?

Eloise, clearing seeing his hesitation and understanding it perfectly, continued, "Years ago I met a man who told me we needed to bury the hydrogen bomb and then he disappeared right in front of my bloody eyes. Just now I shot that man and before he died he told me that he was my son. Explain and I will believe you. How is that my handwriting if I don't remember writing it?" She showed them Faraday's journal.

"Because you haven't written it yet," Jack told her. "You can still save him. We can change things exactly like Faraday said."

At that point, Alice just stood up and left the tent. Jack didn't seem to be the man she thought she knew. He'd gone crazy and made her feel so lost that she didn't even know for what or whom she was fighting anymore. She was actually surprised that Eloise didn't stop her, but once she found herself outside, she only saw Widmore pointing a gun at her. She raised her hands up, but wasn't scared at all. She didn't feel like he would hurt her. And she was right since she heard a voice coming from behind her, saying, "It's ok. Let her go."

Charles sighed heavily and walked away angrily when Alice turned around and saw Richard.

"You're all right?" he asked when looking at her with those warm brown eyes.

"Yeah, I'm just peachy," she answered sarcastically. "My world is falling apart around me and I'm just fine."

"It didn't sound very convincing," he said, smiling to her.

"Well, sure it didn't!" she raised her voice again. "And of course I am not all right! My husband is set on detonating a hydrogen bomb, so he can change our past, so we'll never meet and just start over. Only... for me there really isn't any starting over! If he succeeds, I'm dead. If he doesn't, I'm dead, too."

"I don't quite understand," the man admitted and Alice felt really silly in that moment.

"God! I'm so sorry!" she apologized to him when covering her mouth with her hand. "I shouldn't have said all those things. I don't even know you..." She thought for a moment and eventually she asked, "Who are you, exactly?" For now she hid the fact that she already had a pretty good idea. Still, it wasn't as though Locke had ever given her anything more beside short cryptic answers.

The stranger in front of her didn't manage to answer since Eloise just left her tent, followed by Jack and Kate. "Richard, I'm taking them to the bomb."

"Are you sure it's the right call?"

"I'm positive. It's something I have to do. We need to go right now."

"Have a safe trip and watch out for the baby," he told her and in that moment Alice and the rest understood that Eloise was already pregnant with Daniel.

"Alice, are you ready?" Kate asked since Jack preferred not to say anything, afraid he would cause another outburst. And they didn't have time for that.

"I'm not going," Alice said to her own surprise. "I'm staying here." As crazy as it sounded, right now she felt the safest in the others' camp. She couldn't come back to Dharma Initiative since they'd already been made and she wanted nothing to do with the bomb. As she thought of it, she truly had no place to go and she sadly started wondering whether coming back to the island was the right choice. "I'd like to stay if that's all right," she then remembered that she wasn't exactly a guest there and turned to Richard. It was really strange that she'd been abducted and brought there and now she felt the safest by this man's side.

"Alice," Jack finally spoke and she refused to look at him, afraid of what she would feel inside

once she did that.

"No, Jack," she just said, talking to the ground beneath her. "I will not be a part of this. I'm safe here. Dharma won't get to me and I don't want to be anywhere near the bomb."

"It's all right with me," Richard assured them. "She can stay and I will protect her, I promise. No harm will come to her in this village."

"Richard, just think about it for a moment," Widmore started again, but the man in question already made up his mind.

"You are not the leader here, Charles and she is harmless. Stay out of it. And you, Eloise, good luck."

Faraday's mother nodded and then left, taking two of her people with her and, of course, Jack and Kate. Deep down inside Alice really hoped this wasn't the last time she saw her husband. Her heart ached and she felt so lost. Maybe more than ever. Yes, she most definitely was tired of being heartbroken.

"Richard," she turned to the dark-haired man to take her mind off everything else. "I actually heard your name before. They said something about you always being here," she deliberately chose the word 'they' instead of 'him'.

"They would be correct," he confirmed once they were left alone.

"How is that even possible?" she wanted to know.

"Will you come on a walk with me?" he offered then.

She hesitated. It was one thing to talk to him here, among all those people and another for them to be alone. She wasn't sure she could trust him, but then again... all the people around them were the others who had always been trying to take or hurt her friends. And this guy had just promised Jack to keep her safe. There was also another thing that spoke for Richard as she didn't have any weird premonitions of danger coming.

"You are gifted by Jacob, aren't you?" Richard suddenly asked, which caused her mouth to open in surprise.

"H-how?" she finally asked. "How can you tell?"

"It's because I am gifted, too and I guess I could tell you a few things you really want to know. Don't worry, I will not hurt you. You can tell that as well, can't you?" he asked, just looking at her with those warm brown eyes.

"How come I feel like I already trust you if I don't really know you?" she asked him,

completely mesmerized by those eyes.

"Let's find out." He reached his hand to her in an encouraging gesture and eventually, she took it, letting him lead the way. Then she let go of him since it felt kind of weird to keep holding on to a man who technically was still a stranger, even though he didn't feel like one.

"I heard your name only one time," she admitted when they found themselves away from the crowd, "and I never really understood any of what I heard. Apparently, you were always here. How is that possible?"

He hesitated for a moment and then his eyes were set on hers again as though he was looking for something in there, some familiarity none of them could grasp.

"I guess you'd be gone tomorrow anyway," he just said.

"Sorry?" She frowned.

"If your friends are telling the truth," he explained, "you'd be gone anyway."

"They aren't telling the truth."

"You can't know that. Let's say they do. I've seen a lot since I got to this island and I can believe anything. Trust me, nothing will surprise me anymore."

"How old are you exactly?" she wanted to know, fascinated by this man.

"I stopped counting at some point, but I'm nearly a hundred fifty," he told her.

For a moment there, she was just speechless and then she finally said, "Wow, they really are right when they say you're always here since no one is old enough to tell any difference. How it happened, though? How did you manage to live this long without ageing?"

He hesitated for a moment again and then he just sat down on a trunk of a fallen tree.

"What the hell, right?" she heard him saying, "if you disappear soon, I can as well get it out of myself, can I? You see, I never told my story to anyone. I'm... kind of a messenger, a connection between Jacob and the rest of the people on this island. I talk to them in his name, relay the message. The less they know about me, the more power I have and it's not like I enjoy power... I just need to help them. I need to help them follow the right path, because Jacob... he doesn't want to engage."

"Why not?" Alice asked, interested. She sat near him and waited for the answer.

"He likes to believe in the best in people. Just before he gifted me, he said that the island is the cork that's holding the evil at bay and if it was to pop out, the evil would spread. He kept on bringing new people here and he watched them, hoping one of them would take his place, take over his job. Only everyone always ended up killing each other. That was until you apparently came along and then actually managed to leave and come back again."

Alice listened carefully, a small wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows. She was intrigued, she could say that much. It turned out that there was some kind of a grand plan behind it all and it kind of overwhelmed her. Jacob – the guardian of the island, a person that could grant a special gift, a grand manipulator... she thought. Without his mysteries and presents, she'd be much happier, she decided.

"When did you come here?" she asked Richard.

"1867," she received in answer and gasped at that. "Before I came here, I had a wife and a clear vision of our future together. We were learning English, so we could go to the New World and start a family there. It seemed a much better option than staying in Spain. Only she got sick..." Richard stopped for a moment and Alice could tell that thinking about the past hurt him even after such a long time.

"It's ok. You don't have to..." she began to say as he shook his head and looked at her.

"I have to. You don't understand. I have to tell you this, Alice. I've been holding it in for so long... I just need to finally let go. I was never able to with my people and when one of you came along... I was always needed, either to save John Locke's life or to deliver a message or direct you towards a certain goal. I am tired of this. I just need to finally say it. The first time I confessed to killing a man, a priest was listening to me and he told me he couldn't grant me absolution for my sins. What I did was an accident and I was going to be killed for it and he..." Richard closed his eyes and shook his head. "He just sold me out as a slave instead of granting me the one thing I wanted."

"I'm sorry," Alice said, shaken and she tentatively reached her hand to Richard's and touched it for a moment to give him some comfort. She was confused by his story, but was still listening on.

"I killed my wife's doctor," he finally admitted. "It took me half a day to get to the village and be able to see him and he said he wasn't going to travel in such an awful weather. He didn't want my wife's cross, the only valuable thing we had and I just lost it. I pushed him and he fell and hit his head and... and that was it." Instead of taking her hand away, Alice only squeezed Richard's. "And that's how I got to prison and then was sold as a slave. The ship, the Black Rock, ended up here."

"The Black Rock?" she asked. "The ship filled with dynamite?!"

"Yes."

"What about your wife?" she then asked. "Did she get better?"

"When I came back home, she was already dead," he confessed and Alice felt so bad for this poor man that she truly didn't know what to do or say. She felt like crying, but that would be

inappropriate since it might make him cry, too, she thought, trying to fight the sudden urge.

"Did Jacob save you?" she finally asked in a stifled voice.

"No. The Black Smoke did. Just another person... or thing," Richard thought for a moment, "that tried to use me. Jacob helped me. He granted my wish not to ever die. I was very... religious back there," he admitted. "I mean, I grew up in Spain in the nineteenth century, so naturally, I was a Christian. It was once I found myself here that I saw a different world. I saw the whole world changing, actually. But at the end of the day, I know it was a mistake. I was wrong. I should have never asked for immortality, but it lies in our very nature to wish for what is worst for us, doesn't it?"

"At least you asked for this. I never ask for my ability," Alice said. "I think Jacob's gifts are really cursed. Mine is killing me."

"No," Richard denied, "mine is a curse, not yours. Your ability helps you see more, Alice while I got mine because I wasn't brave enough to die, because I wasn't ready for what comes after death. I didn't want to be judged."

"You know that this priest of yours was probably a much worse man than you ever were?" Alice asked Richard. "He refuses to grant you absolution and then he accepts a payment and sells you off? Who does that? If you ask me, I never believed in confession in the presence of a priest. You want God to forgive you? Pray to Him. Talk to Him on your terms," she advised.

"It's too late. I'm already immortal," Richard just sighed. "And coming back to Jacob and his gifts... the best things in life come to you when you don't ask for them because you don't know what to ask for. If he gave you this ability, he did it for a reason. That much I'm sure of."

Alice actually snorted when she heard that. "You still follow him," she summarized. "I got what I got because I had the potential. I had a dead twin sister and an open connection."

"Doesn't mean it didn't happen for a reason."

No, she still couldn't admit him right. She just couldn't. For all she heard, Jacob was a

manipulator. Without him, they might've never come to this island. Then she realized that she started to think like Jack. No, she didn't regret her time spent on the island because it helped her heal after the loss of all her family, she reminded herself.

"Is Jacob also the one who heals people or decide if they're going to be healed?" she then asked Richard.

He seemed surprised by that question.

"My knowledge is limited, Alice. All I know is that Jacob is capable of giving people something when they have the potential, when he sees more in them. I... I was just convenient. He needed a servant, a mediator, so he granted me my wish. He didn't want to help me. It was from purely selfish reasons. All I know is that the island always has a reason. You just haven't found it yet."

"I'm grateful for all the information, I really am," Alice said after a moment of thinking. "But I'm still confused. I got some answers, but I have so many more questions now."

"Don't give up on him just yet," Richard then spoke and she looked at him in surprise, but he was already standing up. "You still have something worth fighting for. Don't forget that. He is still alive."

"You mean Jack?" she guessed. "Well, thank you, but... I think I've fought enough. I don't even have my dignity anymore. I've pleaded and fought too much, Richard." She also stood up and brushed her clothes from the dust.

"There usually is no such thing as dignity or pride in love," he just said and simply walked away.

Alice waited a moment before she, too, returned to Richard's camp. He gave her a lot to think about for sure, but he also confused her more. She was sure Jack was simply going to kill himself with the bomb and she felt strangely numb when she thought about it. Richard, on the other hand, told her to be a believer because it might actually work. She'd lose Jack either way, she decided, pushing all the thoughts about Jacob and the island out of her mind and just focusing on the one that was the most important - on her husband and her own happiness. What if she could talk to him? What if she could still change his mind? Would going to him again and trying to speak to his mind be worth it all? It always would, something told her, it would because it was Jack.

Yet, before she went to look for her husband, she decided to say goodbye to Richard. It was

weird, really as she'd barely met the guy and she felt like she'd always known him. She couldn't explain this and couldn't even think about it because once she did, her head just hurt. Because there was no way she could've met him before. No way she could've seen him in the jungle. She would've remembered. The other reason was that he knew the shortest way to the Swan station.

"You are my friend now any friend of mine is a friend of these people," Richard told her when pointing at the others. "Whenever you need help, I will always be here to give it to you."

"Thank you. Goodbye, Richard."

"Goodbye, Alice. I really hope you'll succeed."

She reached her people just in time to see that James and Juliet were already on Jack's side. Even Kate was. Alice was shocked, but maybe she shouldn't really be. Kate just wanted to do right by Claire, to give her another chance to stay with Aaron, to keep him in a real world and not to give birth to him on an island. Alice knew they were all wrong, that detonating that bomb would be a disaster, but she didn't have the time to convince them all, she just needed to talk to one person.

"Jack!" she caught him when he was putting a backpack with the bomb inside on his back.

"Alice!" his face truly lit up when he saw her and she wished she could see him like this all the time. Still, this wasn't just because she was there, this was because he thought she changed her mind. Which she didn't.

"Jack, please, just listen to me..." she started and she saw how quickly his face saddened.

"I can do this, Alice. I can give us another chance! I've never been so sure of anything in my life!" he told her and right away realized it was a mistake. "Wait... I didn't want this to come up this way..."

"But it did," she said bitterly, folding her arms on her chest. "Jack, I can't do this again. I can't land in LA and deal with everything again! I just can't!"

"I'll help you, I promise," he told her and she just frowned.

"Yeah? How?" she asked.

"Because I believe that if it's meant to be, it will happen. We'll find each other again. And this time I will do everything right. We'll have a clean slate, another chance."

"Jack, it doesn't work that way! Life just doesn't! You can't write yourself a better story!"

"What do you sense, Alice?" he suddenly asked, completely ignoring what she just said.

"What?"

"What do you sense? Is there any danger?"

She thought about it when reading into her body's signals and she discovered that she, indeed, didn't feel anything. Still, she couldn't tell him that. But she couldn't lie to him either.

"I will fix this," he promised her, so sure of himself that she was actually scared, but not the way he asked her. She didn't feel the panic and the nausea and she didn't understand why. She did have her common sense, though, didn't she? She would never condone detonating a bomb!

"Just think about all the people we lost, all the people who died in the crash. They'll be alive

again. They'll be given a second chance. I can help them all."

"Since when are you such a believer, Jack?" she just asked sarcastically. "You want to fix things again. When will you finally just let it go?! When will be the end? Where is the line? Or maybe you've crossed it already? You just can't change the past."

"No, I can. Even Faraday said so, Alice," Jack disagreed again and she saw a glimpse of his face in pain as she turned around to simply walk away. She didn't know if she was doing the right thing. She never knew with him those times, but she was done asking and pleading. She was simply done. He could fight for them for a change. The worst part was that he thought he already was. She felt her eyes stinging and let the tears in. Then she stopped for a moment and looked back, but he was already gone. He must've taken the bomb and just left.

"Alice," she heard James's voice, but she pushed him away as he approached her.

"James, don't!" she screamed and ran through the jungle towards something she didn't even know. Then she realized where she was going, but she didn't stop. How many times Jack would break her heart? Maybe he'd already used up all his chances. This was just too much and for a moment she felt vindictive. After all, it was better than letting the pain in again. She thought that if he really succeeded, she would never bother to speak to him, she

would never let him approach her on the plane or at the airport after landing. He didn't deserve that! He didn't deserve her! Only if he did succeed, she would have no memory of it, so nothing really mattered. Maybe... just maybe if he wasn't right and if she were far enough, the blast from the bomb wouldn't reach her, maybe she still had a chance at living.

Then she came to a stop because there was really no version of her life that didn't have Jack in it.

In the end, she just closed her eyes, waiting.

Finally, there was a flash of blinding light and everything was just gone.