Disclaimer: I do not own LOST.

To Love and Let Live

Boone's Prologue

The day of rescue never came. In the beginning it was so certain; rescue would come, we would be whisked off the fantastical island and thrown back into our dreary, mundane, hopeless lives. That's what we all wanted and prayed for, hoped for with every ounce of our beings. But the years slowly dripped by, the days stretching on endlessly, each seeming longer and more tedious than the last. And the hope ran out.

Michael never got his boat to work, despite three attempts to make it past the waves. One day he just gave up and started working on a shelter for him and Walt. Sayid eventually let the signal fire burn out. Kate stopped watching the horizon for hours on end each day. Jack stopped wondering what he was going to tell his mother when he got home. Charlie stopped telling people that he was in a band called DriveShaft. The day eventually came when he just didn't think about it, when suddenly it wasn't important anymore.

Claire stopped wishing that she could buy her son new baby clothes instead of the tattered rags that he wore over his thin body. My sister stopped talking about L.A. and new clothes the first time she referred to her shelter as "home." The word just slipped out and she barely even noticed.

The shelters scattered around the beach began to resemble communities as one by one they settled in with each other, made new families. Sayid cut a safer path from the beach to the caves and Sun's garden began producing new fruits and vegetables. With her help Jack began discovering new plants to use medicinally, new ways to keep people from getting sick.

The mysterious island monster had made fewer and fewer appearances over the years. Until one day someone noticed that it had been five years. No one heard the whispers anymore. Jack had been the last to hear them. Oddly enough, that was the day that he had decided to stop believing. That was the day they each began to feel safe in their new home.

Not that it was without dangers. Each year the numbers dropped. We had started with 48. After two years there were only 42. After five years there were 23. That's when everyone began to give up hope. When makeshift shelters suddenly became home. When Jack began to try and convince people that they needed to find a way to live on the island. Charlie began to joke about needing a new name. They weren't castaways any longer. And they had become more than survivors. He and Hurley began calling themselves the Pioneers, referring to the island as their own personal Oregon trail. That's when they began wondering if there had ever even been life beyond the island.

People still got sick and hurt though and sometimes there was nothing that Jack or Sun could do. The ever-growing cemetery was a daily reminder of that. Each name scratched out on makeshift wooden crosses telling a different story.

Boone. Yeah, that's right. I barely made it two months. From the second we stepped foot on that sand I had believed that I could make it through 'til the end. At least until the day of rescue. I was strong and for the first time in my life I would really be able to prove myself. But I was one of the first.

It all happened so fast. One minute I was running and the next… there was I standing above my body, above it all. And all I wanted to do was laugh. Because I finally understood. Everything was so clear. So simple.

I couldn't watch when Jack and Sayid broke the news to Shannon. I couldn't watch when she spent the next weeks crying herself to sleep, almost killing herself with hysterical asthma attacks. Sayid would hold her and comfort her and for the first time I was happy to see her in somebody else's arms.

The only regret is that I couldn't apologize. For anything and everything. But I think she knows. Sometimes I go to her and just watch her sleep, watch her play with her daughter. She is happy. And for me, that is enough.

There are others who have joined me.

Johanna. Scott. Steve. Sawyer. Sawyer survived five years. Long enough to see Kate give birth to their first son, James. Everyone had been shocked to see the change that came over him whenever that little boy was around. He would laugh and smile, make cooing noises over the child. Only Jack knew that Sawyer was sick. The headaches had never really gone away. And then one morning he just didn't wake up. Three days later Kate realized that she was pregnant again.

Joseph. Sayid and Shannon's second child. He died before he was able to take his first breath of air, almost killing his mother in the process. In fact… well, you'll see. Shannon could hardly stand to look at his lifeless body and she wasn't there when Sayid dug the tiny grave.

Christine. Greg. Sam. Jin. Just a month after he and Sun had reconciled Jin slipped and fell on some rocks near the waterfall, hitting his head. Jack had been unable to stop the bleeding. Sun had sat there quietly holding his hand watching as the life slipped out of his eyes. No one ever saw her cry.

Claire. When she had survived seventeen hours in labor with Adam, Charlie had claimed her to be invincible. After fifteen years on the island she began to think it was true. It happened just as quickly as Sawyer. She woke up with stomach pains one morning and was unable to keep food down all day. That night before she closed her eyes she took one last look at her husband and three children, knowing that she would never see them again.

That was the death that seemed to rock them the hardest. Charlie had disappeared into the forest for three days after threatening to kill Jack. When he came back there was something missing from his eyes. They all knew that he wouldn't have come back if it weren't for the kids.

The gathered at her grave, all of them, looking into that dark hole, wondering what lay beyond and who would be next. That's the way it always was when they gathered there under the trees. Who would be the next to die? It seemed inevitable. A holding pattern that they couldn't escape. Home and yet not…

One by one they drifted away until only Charlie and Adam stood there staring down at the fresh mound of dirt not wanting to believe that she could be under there. Mother, lover, friend… Charlie suddenly found himself craving peanut butter. Not that he could even remember the taste of that anymore…

He took Adam's hand and led the teenager away. He couldn't stand there forever. Or could he? Why not? There was nothing else… just the days and the nights drifting slowly in and out like the endless surf. There was nothing beyond that…nothing beyond the days and night. Each day an eternity. Each night a lifetime. That's what hell was. He knew that at that moment.

They all knew that as the hope diminished, as they forgot their old lives, as they made a home in hell. They were lovers, friends, mothers and fathers and it all seemed so normal. But what's normal about sitting around and waiting for death? The monster was gone and with that the hope. Sometimes it seemed for them that Claire and Sawyer and Jin and myself, we were the lucky ones. We were the ones that made it off the island. We were the survivors.

It was that thought that made living impossible.

But the tide continued to move in and out each day. The survivors continued to live and die and love.

They learned to live for each other.

They learned to live without the hope. Because somehow, that didn't really matter anymore.