Author's Note:

**Spoiler Alert**

If you've befriended Jin in Tree of Tranquility, you'll know that he was in a relationship previous to your arrival on the island. He doesn't like to talk about it, but it obviously affected him deeply. There are all kinds of rumors surrounding the end of this relationship: his fiancée died (maybe of an illness, maybe of an accident), or she just up and left one day.

While this may not be entirely true to the plot, I'm tweaking the idea of a lost lover a little bit to bring you this story. Enjoy, and reviews are always nice. Let me know how you think I did. 8]

Disclaimer: I don't own anything or anybody, except maybe Lea. But even she pretty much wrote herself.

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Music pumped through the Clinic, pulsing and strident. Irene, the aging, irritable nurse who had a self-imposed aversion to noise or fun, pressed her hands against her ears against her ears and winced disapprovingly, but she uttered not a word. She knew as well as I that even the harshest of rebukes were pointless. It was almost amusing to me, but not so much to Irene. She cast a sideways glance out of her eye and met my gaze dead-on.

"Let her have her fun," I said, looking back down at the clipboard I was writing on. "Life's too short. You should know that, of all people."

Irene groaned, making it a point to get her aggravation across, but settled back into her duties, frowning.

Footsteps on the stairs pounded, descending quickly and spitting out a beaming girl, arms in the air and laughing as she dashed over to me and grabbed me, pulling me to my feet. "It's three o clock," the girl announced, twirling around in time to the music and mouthing along with the lyrics.

"Since when is three p.m. the designated dancing time?" I asked, smiling as she put her delicate hand on my waist and clasped my hand with her other.

"Since now."

Her blonde curls ballooned as she tapped around the office, not caring that the drapes on the front window were pulled open or that Irene was sending a less than pleased glare in her general direction. She paused in her step to look me in the eye and smile, before urging, "Dance with me, Jin."

"I thought I was."

"Like you mean it, you oaf."

As spontaneous as this random outburst of dance fever was, it didn't surprise me in the slightest. Lea had a way of catching me off guard; sweeping me up and off of my feet at a moment's notice and making me fall for her over and over again. She was natural and guided by her emotions and intuition, which drew me to her like a magnet.

I'm not a fan of clichés, so saying "opposites attract" was accurate in describing what we had was uncomfortable, and yet, it was so blaringly spot on that even I had to stop and look at her, really look at her, to make sure I wasn't in a painfully deceiving dream.

"It's the draw of the three letters, I think," Lea had announced one day as we walked down the stretch of beach below the Clinic, clutching my hand like a lifeline. "Lea. Jin. No one else in Waffle Town has three letters in their name."

"Sue does," I pointed out, squinting across the ocean at the fleck on the water off in the distance.

"That doesn't count, and you know it," she scoffed, punching me lightly in the arm and smiling. "Sue is married, and besides, she doesn't live here. She's on Toucan Island."

"Still."

"Jin, do you have to be so logical? Just accept it for what it is." She kissed me then and there, proving yet again the dizzying power she possessed, especially when it came to me.

She was the daughter of a merchant from the mainland, tired of city life and the selfishness that came along with it. She had always wanted to be a doctor. It had been her dream since she was five years old and broke her arm when she fell out of a tree. "The doctor who set my arm was the nicest man I've ever met in my life," she explained. "There's something so tender and genuine about physicians." She sent a pointed glance my way as she spoke, a smile playing along her rosy lips that were as full of life as she was. "And besides, I've always wanted to help people, but people who really needed the aid."

She had moved to Waffle Island as soon as she graduated from medical school, packing her entire life into two suitcases and catching a ride with the first sailor she could find at the harbor. She stumbled upon Pascal, the local ferryman who just happened to be sitting on the dock with a pipe in his mouth – a nasty habit of his that I had been discouraging for as long as I could remember – and a hat tilted on his graying head.

Lea was certainly a beautiful girl. Imagine the stares that she received as soon as she stepped off of the boat, especially from the younger male population. Fresh blood! New life! No one had moved to the island since flamboyant Julius, four years ago, and while that arrival was much discussed as well, it was nowhere near as talked about as Lea's was. She was young, vivacious, pleasant, and pretty, sure to attract the attention of the high-runners in town like Luke or Chase. As fascinating as she appeared, I figured there was no way I could compete with the more well-liked men. And so I lingered within the Clinic walls, guarded as I always was.

No one was more surprised than I when Lea walked through the doors of the Clinic, focusing her sea-green eyes directly on me and slowly smiling. "Hi," she had said, sounding almost timid. I blinked.

"Hello."

She relaxed her shoulders a little bit, and smiled. "I'm Lea."

"Jin." I sounded stiff, monosyllabic. I always did. My goal was to sound as strictly professional as possible, and I usually did an excellent job. The trouble with that, however, was sounding so impersonal that no one bothered to talk to me unless they needed a treatment.

"It's nice to meet you." The smile was still on her face, though she was obviously trying to appear formal. She walked over to a plastic chair in the waiting room and looked at a poster in the wall. "So, you're the doctor around here, huh?" I nodded. "I love doctors." She laughed, a light and unconcerned sound.

From then on, for whatever reason, her visits had become more and more frequent. At first, she had always made up some excuse for stopping by- she was growing herbs on an empty field, and needed some medicine to bolster her energy as she labored. Then, as time went on, she would stop justifying her reasons for visiting at all, and would simply find a place to sit and talk for a while.

"My uncle was a doctor," she mused one day, running the tips of her slender fingers along the curtain of the makeshift hospital room. "So were my cousin, Dane, and my half-sister. They're all on my dad's side of the family. And, of course, I take after my father." She frowned. "My mom was the polar opposite. She was the lighthearted one. The hippie. 'Free-your-soul-and-eat-lots-of-tofu.' Her priorities were skewed. Or maybe I was just unimportant to her. For some reason or another, she left when I was little." She shrugged, looking forlorn, a new expression in her repertoire. She seemed not to notice the silence that fell over the lobby, or that I shuffled uncomfortably in my chair. She was electric and unpredictable in words and in actions. I never knew what tidbits of information she would offer up to me, but the little morsels she fed me on her visits left me curious for more. I wanted more.

She established her ability to shock me again when she asked me about the Firefly Festival towards the end of the summer. Stammering, I explained that it was an annual event, where the fireflies flew away from the valley in a spectacular display of light, a fantastic yet short-lived feat. She nodded, accepting this, and then asked if it was traditional to ask someone to go along with you to the occasion. I said yes, wondering where she was going with this. She smiled, tucked a lock of golden hair behind her ear, and easily invited me to go with her, simple as that.

I had, as much as it shamed me to admit, never been to the Firefly Festival, though I had lived on the island since I was young. While we walked side-by side through the Caramel River District, she almost seemed to have a clearer grip than I did. She led me to the waterfall, sat down promptly on the damp ground by the bank, and tilted her head up at the sky.

"This is nice," she said, closing her eyes. Her eyelashes fluttered on her cheeks, like a butterfly kiss. She reopened them seconds later, as the fireflies emerged and flickered up to the sky, little orbs of light that disappeared almost as fast as they had came. Lea watched, breathless, and awe quickly turned to disappointment. "That's…it?" She sounded upset. It didn't last long. "Oh well. Next year, we'll see it again!"

"Really?" I winced at the sheer level of shock in my voice. I had been under the impression that I was utterly unexciting- at least, that was what I got from the other girls around the valley that didn't give me the time of day. I hadn't said a word since I met up with her at the Inn earlier in the evening. Why in the world would she want to return to this place year after year? She deserved better than me. Didn't she?

She looked over at me, smiled, and said, "Of course." She leaned over, smelling like sweet perfume, and pressed her lips softly against mine.

I hired her to work with me not long after that. Whoever said that love in the workplace was destined for failure was mistaken. Lea was a bright light in the dull workplace that I had been in for the past eight years. She could be serious when the job called for it, and truly loved what she did. Irene slowly learned to accept her. She even showed her some of the medications and vials of herbal remedies that we kept in the storage, explaining in her hoarse voice what each did, and when to prescribe it. Lea nodded solemnly, taking notes on the pad that she toted around with her.

Her formalness didn't last for very long. Before the snow started to fall on the ground, there were traces of Lea all throughout the Clinic- lollipops in a crystal bowl on the front desk, posters of smiling children in the lobby, stickers plastering the counters, even bells on the front door. If you stayed long enough, which generally wasn't very long at all, you could hear her humming from the room upstairs, where she was undoubtedly reading a book on local herbs or playing with my microscope.

"Jin," she called one day. I was downstairs with Ozzie, the owner of the local fishery, who had gotten a hook stuck in his arm.

"Just a second."

"Hurry."

Ozzie looked up at me, grinning despite the metal lure in his upper limb. "That sounds important. You'd better go see what she wants."

I sighed, and finished removing the hook. "Irene!" I called. She shuffled in, patting her hair with a wrinkled hand and regarding me coolly. "Bandage Ozzie's arm, please. I'll be back in a moment." She nodded, setting to work briskly, not bothering to make small talk with the fisherman as she reached for the gauze.

I set my clipboard down on the counter and walked up the stairs, steadying myself on the banister. She was sitting in her favorite chair, her back facing me as I stepped up on the wooden flooring. She was slouching.

"Lea," I said. She didn't turn around. I frowned and walked over to her. She was holding a piece of paper in her hand, staring down at it like it was written in a foreign language. "Lea?"

She looked up at me vacantly, like she couldn't remember who I was. "What's wrong?" I pressed, instincts setting in. Worry burst through the floodgates, typical of me however well I managed to hide it.

"My…dad," she said finally. Her voice sounded distant. "He died yesterday."

My mouth dropped open. "Oh, Lea." I reached out to her, pulling her into my arms and holding tight. She didn't resist, but she didn't return the gesture, either. She just sat there limply in what I recognized as shock.

"I have to go," she said, finally pushing away from me. She stood up and walked over to the window, pressing her palms against the windowsill and staring out.

"Where are you going?" I watched her, but didn't advance towards her. She needed space. Grieving was a personal affair.

She turned to me, with an expression that clearly said I shouldn't have asked the question. "I have to go home, Jin," she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I have to go back to the city."

I swallowed. "OK. Um, when do you think you're going to have to leave?"

"As soon as I can, I guess," she said softly. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and spilled over onto her cheeks. My chest squeezed painfully. "Pascal…he can take me tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" It seemed so sudden. "Do you want me to go with you?"

"No!" she snapped, crying harder. "I don't want you to go with me!" She crumbled, kneeling on the floor and burying her face in her hands as she sobbed. I crawled over to her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and brushing her hair back with my palm, wrinkles working themselves into my forehead. She turned her face into my chest, crying harder and harder still until they subsided to sniffles. "Tomorrow."

---

She boarded the ship with two suitcases, one in each hand. Pascal offered to take one, but she refused. She climbed up the ramp and stood on the deck, staring past the harbor out unto the mountain range just behind the town. The sun was rising.

She looked down to where I was standing on the dock. My arms were folded over my chest as I tried to fake a reassuring smile. She put just about as much effort into the one she returned, and I realized how much life had been drained from her in the past day alone. I knew how close she had been to her father, the one from the family of the prestigious doctors but who was a professor himself. The one who had raised her when her free spirited mother left, and the one who I reminded her so much of, which her friends found a little odd but I found endearing. The light behind her eyes had died, and as Pascal stood behind the wheel, sailing out into the ocean, I wondered just how much of the Lea that danced and sang in the Clinic lobby would return to me.

As it were, she didn't return at all.