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EPILOGUE…

"OK, Agent Sinclair Donovan. One last time for the record."

Litha sighed and sat forward in the chair. Six months after her ordeal in the hospital and she was still in pain from time to time - mostly when she had to keep sitting for long periods of time and answering redundant questions. "How many times do I have to tell you?" If one counted the 'Angel Tribunal' she'd related all the exact same information to, then it was a grand total of two times now. Not once had her testimony changed, but they kept asking her the same damned questions over and over and over and…

"As many times as it takes for us to be satisfied." Came the flat response.

She braced her arms on the table and smirked at the panel of people sitting in front of her on the raised platform. She tapped the slimline microphone on the table in front of her and then grinned as the feedback whined throughout the hearing room. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm going to tell you this once and once only. I saw things while I was fighting for my life that would possibly turn your hair white. In my line of work, people ask me if I believe in Heaven or Hell. Heaven is coming home and wrapping up in my husband's dress shirts and sinking into his arms, the smell of my baby's hair. And Hell? Hell is the truth seen too late. I have seen the truth… and the truth is I just don't care. Believe me if you wish, don't believe me. I really don't give a damn."

She stood up and picked up her coat, sliding the pristine white cashmere on as she walked out of the cavernous room. As she passed by Adam Wallace sitting in the back row, she stopped and looked at him. Wallace looked up at her and smiled. He put his hand on hers.

Litha looked down at his hand and grasped it firmly. She bent down and whispered in his ear. Wallace turned a pale shade as she stood up and pulled her hand from his grip. The hallway echoed the tap-tap-tap of her heels as she walked out of the hearing. Lilith Morgana Sinclair Donovan strode through the hallways of the Capitol Building and out of the large double front doors.

Down at the bottom of the steps waited a tall man in a crisp black suit and black shoes. A black turtleneck sweater kept the D. C. chill at bay and a pair of sleek black sunglasses shielded his eyes from the sun. He turned his attention to the petite woman walking down the steps. His memory was taken back several years to an airport in another city… a gust of wind blasted down, lifting the heavy mantle of her hair into a near tornado, her white overcoat lifting in the wind as well. The Avenging Angel on wings of black and white. Frank Donovan smiled as his Litha stopped in front of him and looked up.

"What did Adam have to say?"

"Nothing. He told me to take care."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"And you? What did you have to say?"

"I told him if he ever pulled anything like this whole cluster-fuck again, I'd have his 'boys' for my desk paperweights."

Frank cringed visibly and wrapped his arms around his wife. He gently kissed her cheek and turned to hold open the door for her. Lilith Morgana Sinclair Donovan, who, in an out of body experience, had talked to God and subsequently shot Him, slid into the seat and smiled as her husband slid behind the wheel and pulled out into the noontime D.C. traffic. Hours later found them in an airplane on their way back to Chicago O'Hare International airport. Litha had fallen asleep in the flight, her head resting against Frank's shoulder. Her right hand was clenched into a fist once again.

Frank had to chuckle at his wife. Ever since he'd found her at the hospital, with a rookie cop, two paramedics and the Chief Attending of ER watching over her as the surgeons raced time and fate to keep her alive, he'd counted this experience as nothing short of a miracle of Litha's will. The rookie cop, after the surgeon informed them all that the patient would live, had given Frank the burnt feather he had found. Lina, when she finally was able to see her mother in the hospital, had told Mommy all about the feather she had watched fall from the sky and land on Mommy's picture. After the nurse had taken Lina down to get something to drink, Litha had finally opened up her right fist to show Frank what she'd kept a death grip on from the time she remembered the paramedics arriving until the time she woke up.

Frank looked at her hand now as she slept. On her palm, was the burnt image of a feather, as if someone had laid a flaming feather on the palm of her hand. As he looked at it and thought back, he had to wonder just what she had been through while unconscious. Someday she'd tell him. But, for now, she was alive and in his arms once again.

And things went as they did with the bureaucracy of the Federal Government… the Senate committee concluded its hearings on what testimony Agent Sinclair gave them involving the murders of two prominent Colombian political figures and the murder of a reputed drug lord. The finding of the Senate Committee would later prove Litha and her teammates innocent of all charges and the case would quietly disappear.

Adam Wallace finalized Agent Sinclair's complete retirement from active service and put her file into his private cabinet. He pushed her name through the listings, having it removed from all possible sources of operational personnel. In due course, Litha became a legend in the Justice Department, her name falling out of expectation into the light of divine anonymity…

Lilith found more than consolation in the end… she found her completion in the love of her husband and their daughter.

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-finis