Scott apologised. It wasn't really his fault, but I blamed him anyway. I blamed everyone; Jean, 'Ro, the professor…myself. But in reality I couldn’t blame any of them - no one could stop the bombs from going off. No one had the power to turn off the mutation suppressing collars. No one even knew where the facility that the professor had been watching for months was, except of course for Charles himself. And mutant number 458 25 243. But of course it was too late by the time we found out what was going on.

There were a few scattered half burnt pieces of paper found from the files after everything had finished smoldering. 'The mutation has not been reacting as expected…suppression collar used to control…dangerous.’ I wanted to kill Scott when he finally got around to telling me. I suppose he felt it was his responsibility as the rescue mission that had failed had been under his command. For a while I didn't believe him - it simply wasn't possible. Even when Jean showed me a few 'living' memories from the mission, I simply couldn't take it in, that this was it, that everything was over. Because that's how I felt, how I still feel, that there's no point in living anymore because a whole part of me died in that lab, something irreplaceable.

We put the grave in our clearing in the woods, where we had spent most of our time, where we had first declared our love for each other. Now whenever I look out of my bedroom window and see that little path leading into the woods, I feel like part of me dies again and again, and I'll keep looking at that path until I'm carried there myself. Time hasn’t healed the pain – they all lied to me, said time heals all wounds. But when you’re invulnerable and full of constantly regenerating cells, how much time must pass before there is any relief from the jagged pain that stays fresh in your heart?

So until we’re reunited in the great beyond, I'll continue to drift through time, breaking down every time I see something that makes me remember, whether it be the kitchen where we used to share a beer late at night in the mansion, the bed we slept in together in our first house, the magnolia tree we sat under in the summer. There are a hundred places I dare not go for the memories they evoke, seeking some new, quiet place that we never shared, never talked about. Where he never trod the ground, blew smoke into the air and gave that crooked smile that meant he loved me. And I'll hold the tags in my hands, gloved again, in tears because there is no trace of him there and I’ll remember him again, wishing he could visit this new place and make it his, make it ours.

I travel the earth as a ghost, half living in the present, half wishing myself into the past, stricken in every memory that stands as clear as they day he lived in it.