She met him on the tarmac at LaGuardia- the airport was still LaGuardia, although there had been a movement to give it back its older name of Idlewild; in the end, traditionalists had prevailed, pointing out that LaGuardia was a New Yorker to his bones. The wind howled around her, but she barely noticed it as he swept her up in his arms. "I've missed you, you have no idea how much I've missed you, I dreamed about you every night, I wished you were there with me, I'm so glad to be home..." The words came out between kisses, so many words and so many kisses that the couple had to be dragged off the tarmac to continue their reunion.

The color was high in her cheeks, and her eyes were very bright as she stared at him. "I've missed you too. I'm glad you're home, you're the only one who can make me whole. I've been so lost without you."

"I promise never to leave again," Liam said, stroking her hair with his free hand.

Gina leaned contentedly against him, her arms wrapped around his waist, and let out a satisfied purr. "If you do, you're taking me with you," she whispered before giving herself over to the pleasure of his simple touch.

~**~

Alaine rapped on the bedroom door. "C'mon now, get yourself up. It's past noon, you can't be lyin' 'bout." Gina remained a lump under the blankets, still and quiet.

"Byrdie, did you take my allergy meds again? Dios mío, I keep telling you to get yer own prescription!" Chris yelled from the bathroom.

"I did! It's under the sink!" Alaine called back.

"No, it ain't. I just checked." Chris came into the bedroom and regarded Gina with the same concern as Alaine. "There isn't a pill left in that bathroom, chica."

Michelle entered the scene, standing in the doorway. "There isn't a pill left in the house," she corrected them. "I had to go over to Jen and Beck's to get a fuckin' Midol. Who took all the drugs?"

Alaine started shivering like a leaf in a high wind. "No, no, no, can't be so, oh, God..." She rushed to Gina's side and threw the blankets off.

The expression on Gina's face was peaceful, as if she were just sleeping, but no mere sleeper was so pale or so cold, and when Alaine dared put two fingers to the hollow of her throat where her pulse should have made the skin jump, there was nothing. A foul sweetness filled the air, the undeniable stink of death.

"Why would she-"

"When did the last letter come?" Chris interrupted.

"Near three month back, Ah reckon. They was comin' mighty few this year. Don't know but what he's gone an' given up on her, an' look, now she's given up on herself." Alaine's Southern drawl, which she normally mitigated for the sake of her Northern-born friends, was back in full force, and neither the Brooklynite Chris or the Long Islander Michelle was about to deny her that comfort. She turned back to her friends with her face set in an iron mask. "That feller ever dare set his foot in this town, Ah sure will tan his hide and whup his sorry behind. He done killed her, and Ah cain't be a-havin' with that."

~**~

Liam looked over at Gina, pride shining in his eyes. Neither of them had had any idea of how well she would adapt to Chinese, then Canadian culture, but she was as comfortable talking politics in Toronto as she had been buying duck in Beijing as she had been cursing out drivers on the streets of New York. She wasn't as fluent as he was in Mandarin, but she more than made up for it with the way she had taken to French.

More importantly, she had been just as happy to work on defeating Britney as he was. She wasn't technically oriented, but she had the kind of intuition that complemented his expertise perfectly; he'd present the problem, she'd suggest what she'd do, he'd tell her why it wasn't possible, and then they'd hash out how to make it possible. Together, they'd figured out ways to distort Britney's message so that they could start claiming some of the extremely far north territory, Maine and the border lands.

Somewhere in the middle of everything, he'd remembered to propose to her, and she'd answered enthusiastically. They had a Chinese wedding, and then just in case it didn't take, they had a Canadian wedding. Someday, he hoped to be able to take her to Philadelphia for a belated and redundant honeymoon.

"I love you," he said as she walked into the room.

"I love you too, Captain Random."

"I was just thinking that this wouldn't be the same without you."

"It would kinda suck being alone." There was a distance in her voice and a pen in her hand, and he realized that she was in the process of creating something. He left her alone. He knew better than to interrupt her flow.

~**~

"G, we got trouble," Alaine said, her skin ghostly pale, her face haggard, her glasses askew. "Feds comin' up the avenue mighty strong."

"You can't tell me you didn't know this was coming. We're too much trouble to them. We make people think, and that's bad for the government. Get the group ready. It's showdown time."

"I hate last stands," Alaine remarked.

"Well, you're not gonna be around for this one, so it doesn't matter. I want you to get the group out of here. Go to the Rutgers Building, Broadway and 73rd, you can get there faster from Columbus Circle."

"You think I'm gonna just leave you here? That wouldn't be proper."

"This is something I gotta do by myself, Lainey." Gina's brown eyes met Alaine's blue, determination meeting determination.

"No, you don't. I'm not gonna let you die." Alaine pulled a pistol from her belt and loaded a new clip into it. "If you're goin' down, then so am I, darlin'."

"You're too much of a romantic, love, you know that?" Gina spared a moment to kiss her lover, knowing that this would probably be their farewell kiss. "All right. Go tell Chris the directions- she knows the trains better than you do anyway. I've got a cache of guns under the cupboard in the kitchen- bring back as many as you can carry and we'll take out the motherfuckers before they can kill our girls. If they wanna plug some dykes, we'll give them more than they bargained for."

Fifteen years of being in love, ten years physically together, eight years with rings on their fingers, and it was all coming down to a matter of hours, minutes, seconds. Alaine Byrd-Stewart and Gina Stewart-Byrd had always planned to die together, and they'd always wanted to have a moment of glory, but they hadn't wanted them to come at the same time.

But when Alaine saw the glee that glittered in Gina's eyes, and Gina saw the feral grin that stretched across Alaine's face, they knew that this was exactly what was meant to be, and when the Federal agents finally broke down the door, they died holding hands, their last thoughts purely of each other.

~**~

"I, Georgina Stewart, take this man, William Kincaid, to be my lawfully wedded husband..."