November 2035

For a very long time, the old man doesn't visit. It didn't seem important; what's gone is gone, he had thought, and there's no bringing it back.

Sure, he's passed through at least four of those five stages everyone talks about and no one expects until they're actually confronted with death, in your face and very, very personal.

He'd found it interesting that some of the stages weren't all they're cracked up to be. As he sits in the late-autumn sun, with its diffuse, sheltering light, he ticks them off one by one.

Denial, he thinks, didn't really happen. How could he have denied the evidence before his eyes? The broken, limp body in the ER had been self-evident, just like the truths in the Declaration of Independence. There was no getting around it; the man had been killed instantly by the drunken driver in the Range Rover.

Anger -- for a while he'd been angry, that's true. Angry at the God he doesn't believe in, angry at the other driver who'd walked away without a scratch, angry at --. Yes. Well. He'd been angry.

The very idea of bargaining ... that was just stupid. Dead was dead. There was nothing he could've done; it wouldn't have made any difference if they'd driven in together that morning or not. Not even if they'd left later because he couldn't find his left sock. It was something and it had happened, and that was that.

No difference at all.

Depression had been the one stage that had managed to catch him by surprise. He'd expected it, waited for it, but it had bided its time. When it finally came it had seared him to the core, burning away the last remnants of the wings he hadn't deserved in the first place. He knew his own reputation -- caustic, bitter -- hell, you'd think he was an acid instead of a human being. He realized he'd scared people a little back then, his former Fellows especially. Cameron had kept making him tea, Chase had kept looking at him silently, Foreman had -- Foreman had just been Foreman. Remembering, the old man rubs a hand across his forehead. Cuddy had been good to him. Probably why he'd ended up marrying her.

With an effort, he wrenches his attention back to the present. He supposes he's in the last stage now, acceptance, although he'll be damned if he'll ever accept this. This is all wrong. He'd been the one everyone expected to go first -- whether from Vicodin abuse or a stupid motorcycle accident, or shot by a deranged patient, it had always been clear the other man would outlast him. Always.

They'd only had three years of living together. Three years of happiness, or something very much like it. Maybe that was all he deserved.

The old man taps his cane on the ground. He doesn't really need it anymore. Hasn't for years since the great medical breakthroughs of the 2020s, but he keeps it to remind himself of who he was. Who he used to be.

It was the way Wilson knew him, and he won't surprise Jimmy at this late date.

The old man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a stone. Leaning forward, grimacing a little at the arthritis pain in his hips, he holds the pebble in his hand for a moment as he looks at the square granite marker. Most of the stones already there are his from past visits, but they're not enough. He has decided he needs to leave a stone for each year Wilson's been gone; it's a task he's set for himself, just like he used to race against the clock to put all the clues together and solve a case. At this rate he's not entirely sure he'll make it, but he has to try.

He can't come every day. Once or twice a month his youngest son (the one that spends the most time with him) drives him out here. Evan waits by the car as the old man makes his way slowly through this quiet place, to this one spot.

He's studied the actuarial tables and factored in his own history and genetics. He knows that statistically he's got one more good year.

At Jimmy's funeral, the rabbi had taken him aside and told him that the best way to honor Wilson would be to live, to diagnose, to save lives. And so that's what he'd done. He'd never said Kaddish, had never sat shivah with Jimmy's parents and brother, even though he'd been invited.

Now, coming to the end of his own life, approaching it sideways through the falling seasons of the year, he regrets that. He should've taken time. Should've mourned. This is his penance, late enough as it is.

He lays the stone on the marker, and hopes Wilson will forgive him.

fin