He fought for breath, the last of his dying memories spilling out of him like water, mingling with the pools of blood spreading quickly around his neck. He fought the urge to close his eyes, beating off the coming darkness with as much strength as he could muster. He wasn’t finished yet, and he prayed he wasn’t already too late.

He watched his memories fill the glass phials; memories that would explain everything and clear his name. But he cared not for the reputation he would leave behind, as some men close to death tend to do. He cared only for what was to come, to know it was alright; that what he had done these last several years was enough to make up for the mistakes he had made in his past.

He felt his grip loosen on the murderer blooded coat and gasped.

“Look... at... me...”

As if in slow motion, emerald eyes found him and he plunged forward, through the iris and into the black it surrounded. His breathing halted, his hand fell, and Elliot Page died quietly and humbly on the dusty floor of his home.

It was as if he had fallen into a light sleep and awoke in the dark. After a time of rest, Elliot was becoming more and more conscious of floating in a space of nothingness, where darkness filled everything and hugged him from all sides. At least, it seemed that way. He wasn’t quite sure if he had a physical body to be hugged. He seemed to be nothing more or less than a ghostly vapor. He could neither see, hear, nor speak; but he could think. And that is what he did.

He thought of the Manor, which had once been his home and refuge. And of the room where he had taught generations of untalented, ungrateful women that mocked him behind his back. He thought of his colleagues- some of the few people he actually respected- and how bitterly they had hated him in the end. He thought of his father, for whom he had served loyally (as far as he knew) and it was him, the one person who is biologically meant to love him, who had disposed of him like a piece of dirty parchment.

And then there was Peter Robins, considered to be the greatest lawyer of the century. But Elliot knew about his other side- a manipulative side that Elliot served and worked for as a triple agent for the Order, protecting the boy from every horrific device FBI had deployed. And for what? So that the boy, Theodore, like himself, could be sacrificed for the “greater good”? What a sick and twisted plan for Peter Robins to keep to himself.

He continued to float there in the black abyss; a ghost trapped in the world between life and death. He could do nothing about it, but feared that he would be stuck here; his sins keeping him from passing on, his efforts for redemption saving him from what he assumed was an eternal hell. If he had a mouth, it would have smirked in self-deprecation. His whole life had seemed to be an eternal hell. But there was a time when he was happy. When he had had someone to care for and who had cared for him right back. Had this love been his downfall? Had it been his weakness? Or had it been his strength? These questions had plagued him constantly for the past seventeen years, but now in death he was sure it was the latter.