Disclaimer: Despite this being the last chapter, I still own nothing.

A/N: WOW - so many responses to last chapter! To those of you that didn't enjoy it, I'm sorry, but that's just the way things go sometimes. I appreciate all the anonymous reviews I received as well, even though I can't personally respond to all of them. This is the final chapter - enjoy!

A/N: Melissa, I have no words. I used too many in the first version of this chapter. =P

He left the office in a state of mental and physical disarray. The physical disarray, he supposed, could not be blamed on the meeting; simple tasks like ironing and folding properly were ones with which he could not be bothered. This had been the case for three months now, ever since…well ever since the event that had triggered his now weekly meetings had happened.

The mental disarray was easier to understand. Relaying his emotions to a virtual stranger, especially as often as he was forced to do, was enough to wear on anyone's mind. It seemed that no matter how many times he visited the office, he could not escape the intense feelings of grief and guilt that constantly plagued him.

He'd now stopped going to work. He'd returned a mere week after the coffin had been laid to rest, much to the surprise and against the advice of his colleagues. Even his boss, for whom empathy was simply not in the dictionary, had insisted he had come back too soon. At first, the need to be doing something, anything, with his time had prevailed; being at work was better than wandering around an empty house. But as the weeks passed, he found himself withdrawing from his teammates, boss, and everyone else around him. He could not shake the memories that tormented him in his waking hours and transformed into nightmares as soon as he fell asleep. At their worst, they threatened to keep him in bed all day, as he relived the recollections over and over.

They called it depression, or at least, that's what the psychiatrist did. He'd been feeling hesitant toward the entire field of psychiatry as of late, not that he had ever been a fan to begin with. It had been one of his worst rotations during residency, a fact he now regretted. Perhaps if he had been paying a bit more attention, he would have caught what seemed to be obvious to everyone else – or at least, what seemed to have been obvious to his boss.

The psychiatrist's description of what happened was one he probably could have pieced together himself, had he been so disposed. The official diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia, though he knew it was based on solely his descriptions – and a select few descriptions from others – about their experiences with the stalker. Her death had sparked, in addition to the outpour of sympathy, an extensive investigation into exactly what had gone wrong in that hospital room. The syringe that had been found on her bed had been taken as evidence; her fingerprints were later found on the depressor. They found the needle mark in her leg where she had injected herself with air, causing the embolism. The autopsy report guessed that it would have taken her between five and ten minutes to die.

He knew, of course, what he had been doing during those fateful minutes. He had been outside her room, talking to the police officers who were supposed to be keeping her safe. But from what? For the psychiatrist had an explanation for this behavior, too. While at first some hypothesized that she had purposefully committed suicide by injecting air into her bloodstream, the psychiatrist had come to a different conclusion. So had he. She was not suicidal; she never had been. He refused to believe she had injected herself on purpose, although he had trouble explaining to others how she could have done it accidentally.

The psychiatrist's hypothesis was plausible, at least: She had been hallucinating at the time and didn't realize what she was doing. Perhaps, the psychiatrist had said, she thought the stalker was in the room with her and he told her to stab herself. The psychiatrist had concluded resolutely that the stalker was imaginary, a manifestation of the schizophrenia. When he had tried to explain about the note and the dream, he found himself thwarted by his boss, who insisted he had found the receipt for a bouquet of flowers from the flower shop near the hospital. (How he had managed to get a hold of her wallet was unknown, though not, on the whole, relevant.) The psychiatrist was very interested in the receipt, as it seemed to confirm the diagnosis that she had been schizophrenic: the voices in her head had told her to send the bouquet to herself.

But he knew she had never said anything about hearing voices. She had seen the stalker, had dreamed about someone attacking her, had been threatened by a note – whether or not she wrote it to herself, he had pointed out, she was still hit by a car a mere thirty minutes after receiving the bouquet. The psychiatrist had sided with his boss; she had run in front of the car because the voices had told her to do so. This bolstered the position of those who argued she had committed suicide, though the psychiatrist was at least more sympathetic, claiming she had been unable to avoid the strength of her subconscious telling her that running into oncoming traffic was a good idea.

It was still unclear what had caused the psychotic break. The psychiatrist had insisted - most unhelpfully, in his opinion - that it had been caused by some sort of traumatic experience. When asked if she had mentioned any, he recalled the details of the memory-like dream, and although the psychiatrist had seemed interested at first, the ultimate conclusion was that the dream had been simply a dream – a bad one at that, but a dream nonetheless.

Unconvinced, he had scoured newspapers for evidence of a violent crime that had taken place near the hospital where she had been working. The closest he came was an article found two months after her death that reported a man by the name of George Harmon, who worked at the same hospital as she had, had been arrested for multiple counts of rape. According to the article, Harmon's trademark was the use of GHB, which would at least explain why she wouldn't remember the rape if it had happened. Though he had pointed this article out to the psychiatrist, without any evidence that it had occurred, no definitive conclusions could be drawn.

All in all, he was in a state of mental disarray as he drove down the empty streets of Princeton. He was on auto-pilot, his concentration severely lacking. He braked suddenly, realizing he was about to drive into oncoming traffic. He couldn't help but notice that a small part of him wished he hadn't managed to stop the car in time.

As he sat at the light and waited for it to change, he realized the direction in which he was headed. It was one that he followed regularly, though he never consciously decided to go. It was as if his car were attracted in this direction by some kind of magnetic pull, no matter how many times he swore the previous time would be the last.

Yet he could not bring himself to turn around. As he pulled the car into the small lot by the cemetery, he looked up at the darkening sky. He could tell it was going to rain. Though he had an umbrella in the trunk of his car, he opted not to retrieve it, instead setting off in the direction of her grave. He kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes averted. He did not need to look at the markings on the stones to know he was getting closer.

She lay on the edge of one of the rows near a patch of wildflowers. He hoped, anyway, that the wildflowers were still there. Each day grew colder and many of the surrounding plants looked neglected and dead. The wildflowers were the only source of color surrounding her gravestone, as he never brought flowers of his own. It wasn't that he didn't want to bring something to brighten the grave; it was simply that he never knew exactly when he was going to visit.

There it was, her name carved into the stone. It looked the same as it had the last time he had visited, the time before that, and the time before that. He noticed the wildflowers were dying, a few already completely wilted. He did not speak. He had long ago decided that there was no point in speaking to an immobile stone. The psychiatrist disagreed, insisted that he needed to say good-bye, to gain a sense of closure so he could finally move on, but he felt closure would be hard to come by, regardless of how hard he tried.

There could be no closure until he forgave himself, and he knew that would not happen anytime soon. He had watched her fear for her life, terrified of a stalker that, as it turned out, did not even exist. He had been skeptical at the beginning; how could he have allowed her to change his mind? He should never have believed her. He should have called the police at the beginning. Even if it turned out that he was sending them after no one, even if they had realized no one was stalking her, the schizophrenia might have been discovered sooner, before she ever had the chance to hurt herself.

The knowledge that he should have figured it out himself, should have saved her, ensured he could never forgive himself.

He knew it was irrational. He never would have figured it out himself. He had always given her the benefit of the doubt. Even now, with all the evidence staring him straight in the face, a part of him still thought there was a chance that everyone was wrong. That someone – Harmon, or whoever else – had really been in her room that night, had stabbed her with the syringe and used gloves to make it look like she had stabbed herself. Or even, and he hated himself for even thinking it, that she had committed suicide, just to avoid the constant fear that she lived in that the stalker would kill her. Maybe she had wanted to kill herself first. He didn't want to believe it, because it forced him to admit that she committed suicide, but at the same time, it hurt to believe the stalker had been a hallucination the whole time.

The psychiatrist was no help. Constantly insisting that it was not his fault was not a cure for anything, particularly when he believed he could have done something to save her. He had forced the doctors to try to resuscitate her when they had found her, and that hadn't been enough. It wasn't about what happened after the embolism entered her lung; it was about everything that had happened before that. If he had refused to let her in that fateful night, or if he had refused to believe that she was right and that they shouldn't call the police, or if he had pressed her harder for the name of the so-called blind date, maybe he could have saved her. (He doubted she had ever gone on a blind date; the blind date was her brain's way of justifying why she could not remember a name she had tried so hard to repress.) If he had realized something was wrong when she thought her stalker was her former boss, if he had done more than just be skeptical, if he had just realized that something was wrong with her, maybe he wouldn't be standing here right now.

He stared at her headstone for a while, the depression and guilt threatening to consume him from the inside out. He did not speak, but simply stared and thought, and wondered. What if he had called the police? What if he had realized? What if he had never left her alone? What if, what if, what if.

It was a long time before he realized the wet drops on his skin were not there simply because he was crying.

It was raining.

He had no umbrella, no hood, nothing to prevent the relentless drops from soaking his hair as he stood. As it was, the rain was the least of his problems.

-END-

Author's Note:

It feels strange to be writing another one of these end author notes so soon - writing 12 chapters in three months is probably the fastest I've written a complete story of this length. I think that's more indicative of how much free time I had during the summer, insetad of how easy this story was for me to write, because this story was, I think, one of the hardest ones I've done.

This story was a first for me in a lot of areas. The big first, of course, was Chameron. It's not a pairing I dislike, it's just not one I've usually written. And I have to say, despite what I said at the end of Under the Same Moon, I'm not sure how many more Chameron stories I can write. It's not a pairing that comes easily to me, I think because Chase is a character that doesn't come very easily. Maybe I will go back to Hameron after all. We'll see.

I know this story might have upset you, or felt confusing at times. I think this chapter clears it up, or at least provides a definite answer for Cameron's behavior throughout. Some people will dislike this answer, but all I can say is take it up with my muse because she's calling all the shots. If you are really confused, leave me a comment in a review, or send a PM, and I will provide an explanation.

This story was, above all else, an experiment. When I told Pandorama I wanted to write something provocative and different, this was the idea she came up with and I ran with it. I will admit it's not one of my favorite stories, but it is one that's important to me for its own reasons. I am satisfied with the ending I chose (which was not the original one I had planned), though I won't pretend I am glad to see this story finally be over.

That being said, thank you to everyone, and I mean, absolutely everyone, who reviewed even a single chapter of this story. Your reviews of encouragement and support meant more to me on this story than ever before. If I didn't have such strong support from the reader base, I probably would not have been able to finish this story. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know some of you don't like it, but thank you anyway. Special shout-out to the reviewers whom I know are Hamerons - Ellie, Woody2792, Shootingstar7123 - for reading and reviewing this story anyway. And of course, to Pandorama, for putting up with yet another non-Huddy pairing story of mine.

What's next from me? I'm not really sure. I leave for school on Friday and my life will increase ten-fold in work load and stress level. I am going to try to keep writing, but I will change the way I post stories. Normally, I post a chapter as soon as I finish writing it. In this story, I didn't post a chapter until I had the following chapter(s) already written, to ensure I could handle the direction in which I was moving. From this point on, I will be finishing stories completely before posting anything. This will definitely increase the time between posted stories, but it will decrease the amount of time you have to wait between chapters, and will eliminate the possibility of me abandoning a story for an indefinite period of time. To keep you updated on my progress as I write, I will start posting on my author page, so check there for updates. If you want to be the first to know when I post a story, add me on author alert.

Thanks again to everyone that made this story possible - Melissa, Pandorama, my faithful readers and beloved reviewers - you are all amazing.

-holadios