He was alive, and I was dead.

Some ending.

I was found dead one morning, according to the newspaper I scrounged before
leaving town, which I did tell myself I was going to do but couldn't quite make happen. I should have been long gone by daybreak, but I had done so much leaving town that I felt I needed to linger. Tempt them. Make them sweat.

He was alive and didn't come to look for me.

Which was fair. I didn't ask for that sort of commitment.

-

Funny how, when the world opens up to you, there suddenly isn't a damned thing you want to do.

Vacations in Napa, laying out on the beach in the Bahamas, seeing the Eiffel Tower.

Couldn't give a shit.

They had a funeral for me and he came, but no one saw him. I did, with my binoculars.

I wasn't leaving. No one left folded Morley wrappers under my door, either, which meant
that they knew. They knew and had bigger concerns, or they knew and I scared the shit
out of them.

Or they knew and were buying time, thinking of some new, subtle way to come after me.

He watched my funeral under an umbrella about a hundred yards away.

Not much to watch.

Not much in the coffin.

When I knew Fox Mulder, he would have moved heaven and Earth, even if he had to operate
the Caterpillar himself, to find out if it was actually me in that coffin.

I left before he did. I couldn't watch anymore; I didn't know those people.

-

"Alex."

I said his name because it made him real. He always hated when people did that, because he
liked to think he was stealthy, preternatural, some kind of there/not there.

He winced when I stepped toward him. Even behind a cage, he winced.

"You'll rot in here with me, Diana."

I let myself smile and Alex stepped back this time. I knew it had to be frightening.

"They don't know I'm alive."

Alex shook his head and put his hands on the bars again. "They know. They always know."

His eyes spoke volumes, about a missile silo, about his missing hand.

"I'm the ghost now, Alex. Not you."

He blinked and when he opened his eyes, I wasn't there.

-

He was alive and I was dead.

Or so he thought. Practically choked on the cigarette in his trach tube when he saw me.

"Penny for your thoughts."

He liked women who talked like him.

"Diana. I thought resurrection was reserved for the righteous."

Was it? He thought so highly of himself.

"I came to tell you. A ship. In Oregon."

That's scary, his eyes said. She knew and I didn't.

Damned straight, Smoky.

-

I got a grim sort of satisfaction when Mulder and his partner went chasing the sighting in
Oregon. I knew they would find out. I knew they'd want to know.

See, Fox? I'm still in the game.

Still here. Not dead.

He had his hand on her back and I was dead.

Oregon was supposed to be a quick thing. Wasn't supposed to be one of their missions, but
none of us knew any better, we had no connections left. We had guesswork and fifty years of resistance that they knew about.

I don't think I really cared.

Just like that, he was missing.

He always had a fondness for statistics.

-

"When will the world end?"

"When it isn't ready to."

Shooting stars and romance and half-remembered kisses from fever dreams.

I whispered what I knew to someone who gave a damn, and I let it go.

Missing, then dead, then alive, then missing.

"Soon?"

"Maybe."

I hated the taste, but figured I would get used to cigarettes.

Eventually.