Generally, if Alaine was staring off into space, it meant one of two things: either she was deep in the throes of creation and soon the Wraith would publish again, or she was deep in the throes of melancholy and would not soon be cheered up. Since she had neither pen nor typewriter close to hand, Emily and Laurel assumed that it was the second. They flanked her so that she would have no escape, but she didn't seem inclined to get up, or even to acknowledge that her partner and her good friend were standing there. It took Laurel's arms around Alaine's waist to even get the slender Southerner to look away from the window. "I thought you were getting better, sweetness," Laurel said hesitantly.

"I am, swear. I was just tryin' to sort things out." Alaine put on a shaky smile that fooled none of them for a moment. She recognized that with commendable speed and continued in a different tone. "I was thinkin' on something she said years ago, after Supershow, just before y'all joined the party. She looked at the four of us and said, 'From today on, we're dead. You think any of them are gonna take what we did lightly? We shoved the paradox in their faces, and they'll never forgive us for it. So we're the living dead.' And I think back on that, and it should make things easier, shouldn't it? But I never could get my mind around what she wanted us to think. I couldn't ever think of us as dead 'til now, when she really is, when she and Chris died in a shootout and someone dumped Mich on the front steps like so much garbage. I'm the last one left, and I'm scared. It don't feel right, know what I mean?"

"Death never feels right," Emily replied, her gaze even more distant than Alaine's. "Settin' Switch-Hitter aside, 'cause she *was* garbage, I get what you're goin' for here. It's the inevitability thing. It never feels like it is, even when it is. You could talk 'bout bein' the living dead and treatin' your lives like they didn't matter anymore, but it wasn't what you felt, was it? You're not that kind of gal, or at least I'd like to think I know you're not, after fifteen years. You care too much 'bout everything to not care 'bout somethin'."

"We are all immortal," Laurel murmured as if trying to put together a few pieces of thought into one coherent idea. "We don't just exist inside ourselves. No one does. Parts of us are connected to other people: parents, children, siblings, family, friends, lovers, even enemies, because someone can't really hate you unless they know something about you, even if it's something they don't understand. And we live in our work. Everything we write has some part of ourselves in it. Maybe it's just a turn of phrase, but it's always so much more. Style aside, I can tell without looking at the name whether it's either of you, or Bianca, or Jen, or Beck. The feelings, the way people think and act, it's different because it's drawn from your own experiences, you know? You write from what you know, or at least that's what the adage says, right?" She started running her fingers through Alaine's light brown hair to focus herself. "Everything I am, everything you are, everything Gina was, is in the words. Even if we die, the words live on. Even if the floppy disks get destroyed and the hard drives are wiped and every paper copy is burned to ashes, people will remember what they've read, and it changes them. Even when they die, the changes they've made in the world and in other people live on. We are the immortals, 'Lainey, all of us."

"It's a nice sentiment," Alaine admitted, pushing her chair forward, away from Laurel. "Don't change the truth, though, does it? She's gone. She's never comin' back. 'Cry, Freedom' is always gonna be the last thing she wrote, and y'all know how she thought she rushed the end of that one. She's never gonna edit it now. She's never gonna use stolen tickets to heckle the luxury boxes at the Garden again. We're never gonna be able to laugh at her camo bleach job again. Her birthday's next week, you know? She was gonna be 35, and after the way she ragged on me last year, I was gonna pay her back double, 'cause you can do that with your best friend. That chance is gone. I miss her so much! It's not fair! Why'd she have to go and be so stupid anyway? Didn't she know it was suicide?"

"Life ain't fair, and she knew what she had to do. She made her decision. You're just mad 'cause she chased you out instead of lettin' you join the party. She wanted you to live, you and the rest of us. We gotta keep the fire burnin', 'cause if we don't, who will? Quit sittin' here and mopin'. Go on and write it! Twist it, turn it, fit it into somethin', but write it out! It's just like your gal said- she lives on in her work, and in yours and mine too. We all live on in each other. So put a little more of her out there. Let everyone know what she was like to you." Emily patted Alaine's shoulder in what was supposed to be comfort.

Alaine absently fingered the Greek cross around her neck. In one convulsive motion, she wrapped her hand around it and yanked hard on it as if to break the chain that held it on. Laurel reached out to stop her. "What do you think you're doing?" she asked.

"If God doesn't exist, this thing doesn't matter. If God does exist, He obviously isn't worth worship. Hey, if you believe the Jesus freaks back home, He hates us anyway, so why bother givin' Him the courtesy He wouldn't give a dog?" Alaine continued working the chain with fury and bitterness etched on her features.

Emily glanced at Laurel, silently seeking permission to say what she had on her mind. Laurel nodded assent, and Emily squeezed Alaine's shoulder, ignoring the younger woman's sudden stiffness of demeanor. "Fine, go 'head. Ain't no one here cares who or what kind of God you worship. But don't go bustin' up that necklace. If you don't care 'bout it for God, care 'bout it 'cause it was hers. That's why you got it, right?"

Alaine nodded once, sharply, still playing with the elaborate cross, watching the way light reflected off the polished gold and the tiny letters engraved on the back of the cross. It had been in Gina's family for four generations, passed down from mother to daughter, each woman's name inscribed in turn on one arm of the cross. Giving it to Gina had been Celeste Angelos-Stewart's last clearheaded act before going completely under; after that, she had forsaken the traditions of her family and her former faith. That it now rested in the hand of a born Baptist seemed to be the ultimate insult now, no matter how much Alaine had repudiated the church of her family and her people.

Emily sighed loudly enough to get Alaine's attention. "Look, I know you want no truck with churches and such. I know the feeling. But you need to talk to someone, and it's clear that none of us are gonna be any good to you. Travis Head up at First Baptist and Alex down at the Temple both seem like kids with their heads screwed on right- maybe they're young, but they know what they're talking 'bout. I think they can help you."

"Thanks," Alaine said quietly, wearing half a smile. She would keep this to herself, then, this sensation that there was only one person in the world who could help her, and that person was the reason why she was so miserable. There was nothing else to be done; why burden her dearest friends with an insoluble problem?