Her work was finally done.

The city rushed by, a blur of hazy, yellow-white light flickering through smog, and she watched
it pass with her cheek pressed up against the cool tinted glass. In the front seat, a quiet
country-western song drowned out the sound of the agents' hushed whispers and secret cellphone
conversations. Beside her, the little boy slept peacefully, balled up beneath a blanket. She
didn't doubt he'd sleep right on until the morning.

Hammond informed her in his normal way - gruff, but still cordial, not unlike a stern grammar
school principal - that they had smiled and said goodbye, and bade her good luck in her new life.
Her second new life, she corrected herself, pressing her lips together. The first new life would be
ending as soon as it had begun; according to the agents, movers had burned the midnight oil to
empty out her house and destroy all traces of Emily.

Emily. Tomorrow, Emily would be only a memory, a ghost haunting her quiet, suburban
neighborhood, forgotten to the late-winter snows and quiet, starry night skies of Wisconsin. In
some, subtle ways, she would miss those skies, so clean and unmarred by fog. She would miss the
streets as well, without their garbage and clutter, miss the silence of the evenings when no
almost-famous rapper plied his trade on the street corner and no ambulance careened down the
block, on the way from one place to another.

But there were other skies she would miss, more. Skies of a Manhattan February, gray and heavy
with snow, supported by the tall pillars of skyscrapers whose top floors hidden from view. Skies
bright with light in all hours of the day, streetlamps of the cityscape stretching long into the distance,
battling the darkness with their endless light.

Those skies, too, were now memories, ghosts to haunt her mind.

Or perhaps, she was the ghost. Perhaps, on that fateful night two years earlier,
the bullet struck her heart and she had died, on the street, Olivia's face wet with tears above her.
Perhaps she now lived as a ghost, floating from place to place, seeing the faces of the people she most
loved without being able to truly touch them. Without reaching for a hug or stealing a pat on the
back. Without shaping anything.

A ghost that came, served her purpose, and then faded from view, all unfinished business tied up in a
neat little bundle, bow and all.

She pressed her face further against the glass, her skin cold as she watched New York City rushing by,
readying itself to fade out of view and out of her life forever. She ached for one last touch, one last
smell, one last taste of the world she'd always known - and the world she would never know again.

Her work, Hammond had pointed out sourly as they'd loaded Antonio's belongings in the trunk of the
black, dark-windowed sedan, was finally done. Until she could bring her expert testimony to corral a
drug lord, she could not live as Alexandra Cabot. And, while hiding her until trial risked forcing her to
live out her life as a ghost, the risk was acceptable. Far more acceptable than seeing her gunned down
on the streets of New York a second time.

The next assassin, if she remained in the city, would not miss.

And so, she watched the city she loved disappear without protest, without indigence, without fear.
Regret, however, remained deeply entombed in her heart, far more painful than she imagined any gunshot
could ever be.

She never had the chance to say goodbye.

The glass was cold and smooth against her face as, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from calling
out, she hummed the "Mr. Softy" song and cried.

Fin.

Author's Note: Just a post-ep for "Ghost." God, I love Alex and will miss her so,
so much.

February 23, 2005
1:20 a.m.