She thinks he would’ve been happy with the way he went out. Flowers decorating portraits of him outside of his childhood home, mourners on the news talking about what a horrible loss of talent this was.

Claire sees it all on the computer, hours of footage from the days following September 22, 2004, archived on numerous websites. She watches and reads until she feels like she might vomit from the memories that overtake her.

The second time around, when everything is uncovered and the Oceanic Six are found, the coverage for him lasts less than a day. He’s dead but then again they always thought he was. It’s different for the other six. That’s the real news story. Everything else is too shrouded in secrets and lies for the media to get anything of substance enough to play on or play up.

Even so, a few Google searches tell her there’s a memorial being held the following weekend, specifically for close family and friends, and though she may not have known Charlie in this life she knew him in another. She’d like to think that still counted.

She hangs on the outskirts of the candlelight vigil, makes sure no one really sees her for long enough to realize they don’t recognize her. People speak and reminisce and she listens to the stories of a man she never really knew.

Halfway through the memorial, it starts to rain, heavy enough to put out some of the candles (she notes the irony of it, water snuffing out the candles, snuffing out life) and they all move for shelter. She moves to find her car before someone grabs of hold of her and pulls her under a nearby tent.

As soon as she looks at him she knows exactly who he is and her stomach drops.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Liam Pace asks, hair wet from the rain, blue eyes turning dark against the stormy skies.

Claire had thought of a thousand lies and tales to tell about who she was, why she was here, how she knew Charlie. At the moment she was having a hard settling on just one.

He takes care of that for her. “Wait a minute, I’ve seen you before. You were on that plane.”

She backs up; without control of the situation she can’t help but feel like running. “No, you’ve got the wrong person.”

“They ran your picture on the news. They ran all of the – “ her eyes plead with him not to finish that sentence but the words kind of just fall unbidden, “dead.”

He’s already gone and said it and there’s nothing she can do repudiate it. But if this is her only chance to say anything she’s going to make it worthwhile. She digs Charlie’s ring out of her pocket and puts it in Liam’s hand, telling him. “Your brother died a hero. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

They lock eyes for a moment and then she goes to leave when he calls after her, “You’re supposed to be dead. You died in the crash.”

Claire looks away, thinks for a moment, and then tells him, “So they say.”

She can’t risk standing there any longer, or drawing anymore attention to herself than she already has. As he has just pointed out, she’s not even supposed to be alive. She runs through the mud back to her car and guns it out of there.

At a stoplight she cries, really cries, for the first time since Hurley told her Charlie hadn’t made it. She gets it all out, the entire ride back to the hotel, until she can’t cry anymore. And she wakes up the next day and flies out of the country without looking back.

Closure, she thinks, as she watches the land below her disappear, letting go of the man she once thought would always be with her.