A.N. The lines referenced in the title and the end are from the poem Spirits of the Dead by Edgar Allan Poe :)

Chapter 16: Dark Thoughts of the Gray Tombstone

Marissa arrives at Skippsy's HQ to find it just as empty as she had left it. "I would have thought Rachel would be back by now...Oh well, if she's spending the night with that boy, I just hope she's being smart about it or Skippsy will have her tail...Without me helping her get away with it." She sighs and locks her lab door behind her. She turns and presses her back against the door as she looks at the piles of half finished, barely started, and nearly completed inventions scattered about. A pile of rolled up plans sits on her desk as well.

Marissa sighs and walks in. She grabs the rolled up plans and puts them in a bag and starts to zip it, before stopping half way and going over to her work desk. She takes out her journal and pen and sits down for a half second.

'Dear Kowalski. I know we've had our differences et cetera, but we really did used to be good friends and with that, I'd like for you to have my not yet started plans, do with them what you will. I won't care, I'll be dead.' She taps her pen on the desk in thought. 'The started but not completed inventions, I want for Trixy to work on. I know she will do a great job on them and they will all be of good use to my team. Please also, Kowalski, give her some pointers on chemistry and medicinal things since she will have to be stepping up. Thank you, with love, Marissa.' She places the ribbon at that page, shuts it, and places it within the bag as well before zipping it up the rest of the way.

"Well...Now for the inventions...If I keep my mind busy, I won't start the anxiety and thinking everything under the lamp light is a symptom of the end…" She sighs and goes over to her inventions. "I don't even remember what half of these were going to be!" She moans to herself.

"Come on, Marissa, get it together, girl. Keep it together." She takes a deep breath and runs her flipper over her feathers and adjusts her glasses. "Kowalski and Cecelia could pull through after all...It might be a quicker thing than they anticipate...M-maybe." She bites her tongue and starts work on one of the nearly finished inventions. She then looks over at her desk and slides another note book over.

'My last Thoughts:' She writes and takes a deep breath and creates two more columns. 'Regrets:' and 'Accomplishments:'

"This is a waste of perfectly good inventing time…" She mutters to herself. "But...Maybe it'll help me stay focused…"

She starts to fill in her three columns as she works on her inventions. Occasionally, she just stops doing anything all together and sits there with her eyes closed and thinks. She then will just shake her head with a shaky sigh to keep from crying and returns to the invention building and the notes.

Marissa looks over at the door once as she hears Rachel return. She slides a note up under the door. 'DO NOT DISTURB NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS OR WHAT SOUNDS YOU HEAR!'

"Not that she will hear anything once she puts on her headphones and music like usual…" She chuckles awkwardly to herself. "Maybe she'll go to sleep too and completely miss this all...That'd be the best scenario...The most likely scenario as well." She nods to herself. "Yes."

Marissa sits in the floor again with her back to the wall and the invention in her flipper, the notebook by her side. She leans her head back and bites her tongue again. "I'm going to miss them all...So much…"

She flips up the last page of the notebook to a picture of her and Kowalski. "Even you…Especially you." She softly traces his outline with her flipper and sniffs. "I was so stupid...Putting my own ego before our friendship…" She sniffs. "And then the assumptions...I-I should have just admitted everything from the start...But...But at least I...At least I had the chance to maybe m-make up for it…" She wipes her eyes. "Not that you'll miss me any, no." She laughs awkwardly and depressed. "No, you've got your British girl or your dolphin or that chicken or whatever girl you want. Why would you miss a thorn in your side?" She bitterly murmurs and looks at the invention. "It'd be a waste of stupid time to waste time being sad over someone who has made him feel so miserable over the years. Over such an idiot that has loved him but instead has done nothing but hurt him. Errrrrrrrrgh." She pinches the bridge of her beak and slides her glasses up for a moment and takes a deep breath.

"I'm getting no where with all this monologuing…" Marissa wipes her eyes again, letting her glasses fall back down her face, and scratching a quick note, she picks up her tool again. "Before I go mad of start getting symptoms I need to get as many of these accomplished as I physically can…" She takes a deep breath. "I need to concentrate. Concentrate, Marissa! Con-cen-trate!"

"Oh! I know, I'll put on some music." She nods and gets up. "That should help." She walks over to her computer and turns it on and turns on the music loudly on 'Portal' songs and some other songs. "Surely that'll help some." She nods and sits down again on the floor. "Yeah, this should help."

Marissa returns to what she was doing before. "I hope they prove me wrong...They better prove me wrong…...Kowalski! You BETTER prove me wrong!" She shouts. "You hear me?! YOU BETTER!"

"Oh Galileo's germaniums! I'm losing it!" She gasps and pulls on the ends of her ponytail, divided over her shoulders. "I'm screaming at things that's not here...Not good, not good!" She slaps herself and takes a deep breath. "Steady, Mari, steaaaady now." She takes another deep breath slowly and looks at her work. "Let's finish this one first...Just think on this one little thing...Yes, this one thing then we'll consider the others...One thing at a time, Marissa. Just one thing at a time."

Marissa works on the invention and concentrates only on it. She finishes it. "Yes! One down, ninety-nine others to go! Haha! Ninety-nine inventions to go, ninety-nine inventions! Take one over and wire it down, ninety-eight inventions to go!" She laughs and cries.

"I'm flipping losing my mind!" She says to herself with a sob-laugh. "I'm not handling this as well as I thought I would!" She now just starts crying. "I'm going to diiiiiiiiie!" She lets herself slide down the rest of the way so that she is lying on her back on the floor and crying. "I don't really want to die yet! Kowalski's never going to love me, but he needs someone to make him try harder!" She cries. "But he doesn't need me. His team encourages him enough! I'm just a pain!"

Marissa laughs a little. "Yes! Just a little pain in the side that never goes away enough." She laugh-cries in the floor. "Why do I even wait for an excruciating death? I've had moments of wanting to test a lethal chemical on myself, why not do so now? It's not like things will turn out any different! I'll be dead either which way!"

She rolls over onto her belly and stares at the next invention and sniffs. "But I still need to finish these...Or maybe I should leave them for Trixy...They'd be better off in her care…" She sniffs and leans her chin on the floor. "And it's not like I have anything to look forward to...Eventually the girls will probably all find some dashing agent or other team member they love and go off and have lots of little eggies...And then there will be me. The sarcastic witch who stands there glaring at them all alone and locks herself up in her lab all day…" She sighs and turns over onto her side. "And then the living torture of watching Kowalski have his little family…" She trembles. "But I guess that'd be my just desserts…"

Marissa closes her eyes and lays there for a moment, biting her tongue. "He's just doing this because it's the honorable and most right thing to do...He doesn't really care if I live or die...He hates me now...His life would be a hundred times better with me gone...I should go with the painful death that's coming. I deserve all that I'll be feeling...All the horrors...I mean...It won't be much more horrific than my nightmares usually are...Though it'd have a peaceful ending for once…" She opens her eyes and sits up with a sigh.

"Back to the inventions...If I'm to go out...Then I might as well go out doing something instead of moping around...The guilty don't get to mope...They suffer and pay…" Marissa sighs. "And I guess it's just became my time to pay….I'm sorry Kowalski...I really, really am…" She starts working again. "Maybe you'll get the antidote finished and I can tell you that myself...But if it doesn't, I guess it won't matter…"

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish -

Now are visions ne'er to vanish -

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more - like dew-drops from the grass.