Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel Comics and are being used for non-profit entertainment only. The story belongs to me.

Alternate Universe Alert. I'm not going to tell you what kind, that would ruin it.

She stares at the bottle of pills on the counter, the smooth, red pills twenty of them. She counted them last night. Dumped them out on the fake marble counter and carefully counted them, one at a time, over and over again until the sun came up and things got better.

Things aren't going to get any better tonight. Things aren't going to get better ever again.

He's gone.

She fights to hold the tears inside, fights to stay in control of her emotions as she reaches for the bottle. The label screams at her to stop. The cap won't open and her hands are shaking so much that she can barely twist it the right way.

He's gone but she sees his eyes in the window, flawless blue eyes staring in at her from the darkness of the abyss that has swallowed him, closed the whole house in its fist of misery.

Her hand tightens on the bottle, fingers conforming to the spherical shape of the plastic. "Go away," she whispers under her breath to the ghost in the window. "Leave me alone."

He's gone but the wind still lifts the strands of soft blond hair away from his face, it stills whispers across his face to touch his cheek and skip across the paleness of his lips.

"Go away!" she screams at the phantom. "You're dead! You're dead. We buried you."

He's gone but he floats outside the window, his skin the shade of death and all expression stolen from his face. And in the spaces between the end of this world and the beginning of the nest one, he seems to say; "You're better than this. Don't give in to this."

Rage overwhelms her and she hurls the medicine bottle at the window. However, the plastic bounces off, landing in the sink among the other dirty dishes. And she drops to her knees on the ground, strands of light blond hair falling into her eyes.

He's gone yet he touches her, reaches out to her and brushes his cold fingers against her cheek, turns her chin up so that she's looking at him, looking through him, seeing the face of God and the face of Douglas Ramsey all at the same time.

"Doug. Doug, I'm sorry," she tells him but her words cannot pass through the barrier between life and death and they are reflected back at her, cutting into her skin like knives.

He's gone. Dead and buried in a box six feet under the Earth. Nevertheless, he's still there, waiting outside every window, looking in at her through every mirror and piece of glass.

And Illyana Rasputin stays in her room, huddled under the covers of her bed, keening and sobbing. No one understands what happened to her the night after they buried Doug. They don't know why she has cuts running up and down her arms or why she shrinks away from mirrors.

Sometimes at night, Roberto slips into her room and sits with her. He says she always talks about a bottle of pills and the window.

The End