His cigarette hit the ground, and in my mind I couldn't tell for sure that it really was a cigarette. It seemed to me it was a rose, a white rose, falling on a coffin lid, and that he and I were the only ones at some joke of a funeral.

I think I might've sobbed, and I think the bastard just walked away without a word. No matter. The dead man on the ground needed no eulogy tinted with the scent of Morleys.

It was the last thing I saw, the embers of his Morley smoldering in the blood that was not yet cold, that poured from a body not yet stiff. I curled up fetally on the floor, something sticky soaking my hair, and the revulsion I felt at realizing it was blood just made the sobs come faster and harder, choking off my air supply and leaving me gasping and dry-heaving.

I don't know how long I lied there. Maybe minutes, maybe hours. I was hallucinating. I heard his voice, felt him move and breathe next to me, blaming me, cursing me. Sure this was my fault. Sure it was! Who fetched him from Tunisia? Who brought him back to the smoking bastard?

Me.

And didn't that all lead to this point? Did that not take him back into Fox Mulder's world, back into the deceit and the conspiracy and give him a hobby-horse about saving the world?

But I didn't dwell on that long before the sweeping sound of a black leather trenchcoat brushing the concrete made me open my eyes. Black patent leather shoes stood before me, Florsheims I'd bet, and I could see my face reflected in the flawless shine. A whisper told me that the shoes were not alone, though part of me believed it was the devil come to collect Alex.

Warm hands wrapped around my upper arms, and I heard a vaguely familiar voice, feminine, urge me to get up.

"Let them take of this. Alex would understand."

My sobs resumed, harder and wetter this time. Would he? Would he understand? I thought maniacally of the phone call that had brought me here to the Hoover building garage. *he's dead, Ms. Covarubbias* How, I had thought, and why? But it was what entered my mind next, as I hung up the phone, that sent me convulsing into the arms of the woman. I had thought, what about me? Am I next? Was that a threat? Grief was not causing these tears, but fear. What would I do without Alex in my life?

"Shh, Marita. Come with me. I know what its like to lose the man you love to obsession."

For the first time, I looked up into her eyes. I knew I recognized the voice.

She crookedly smiled, tears making her pinch her eyes into a pouty squint, the wrinkles standing out. All this time I had thought her dead, as we all did. And I nodded, thinking of what she said. She knew better than anyone what obsession would do, where it would lead. The dark depths of self-loathing still lurking in the corners of her eyes spoke volumes. Here was a woman that undoubtedly wondered if she had pushed him to it, and wondered why she should suffer for his mistakes and his passion. I wondered that too, and when I took her hand and leaned into her for support, it was as a sister in the crisis of self-discovery.

Blood still on my forehead and in my hair, I turned away from Alex's body and closed my eyes in real grief for the first time since I'd heard the shadowy voice on the phone. The sounds of cleaning up came from behind me, and the zipping of the body bag was like a suture for a deep wound. I wasn't through, I still had so long to go, but I could and would get over this, over him. I squeezed her hand a little tighter as she led me away from that battlefield. She had done it and come out the other side. I would too.

She stopped and I looked at her face, questioning. She let me go, and turned back toward the blood puddles and the still-warm corpse. Three steps, maybe four, and she stood outside the blood. In front of her lay the cigarette. In one more step, she unceremoniously crushed it, grunting a little as she did.

She looked up at me and her eyes were bright with triumph.

And we walked away from that scene to go on with our lives, alone and brave in a world without them.