DISCLAIMER: Carnivale and its canon characters are the property of HBO and the show's producers; no copyright infringement is intended.

Introductory Note: When Carnivale - planned to run for six seasons - was canceled after two, series creator Daniel Knauf was offered an opportunity to wrap up his story in a three-hour HBO Film. He declined, saying that he had too much untold story to be condensed into a film of that length, and that Carnivale would be better left unfinished than finished badly.

I still hope Mr. Knauf will be able to tell the rest of his story, in one medium or another. And I agree that where professional, authorized continuations are concerned, Carnivale is better left unfinished than finished badly. But as a fan who may never learn the real intended ending, I felt compelled to write one that will, in a pinch, provide me with needed closure. I wrote it for myself; if any other fans see merit in it, that's gravy.

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Ben Hawkins dropped to his knees beside the dead body of Justin Crowe.

And gave a despairing moan.

A boy's voice said, "It was Mom who killed him."

Ben hadn't seen or heard the youngster come into the room. He scrambled to his feet, saying, "I'm sorry, Adam."

Then he wondered, Was that a mistake? I'm a stranger to him. How can I explain knowing his name?

But the nine-year-old apparently hadn't noticed - either that, or he took for granted that everyone knew the name of the only child of a famous evangelist. White-faced but eerily composed, he asked, "Are you the police? Do you want me to tell you what happened?"

Ben felt his knees go weak. "Did you actually see it?" Sofie, how could you?

Ben had rushed to the Crowe home in response to an urgent mental summons from Justin, who'd been his ally for months. He was devastated by Justin's death, but not truly surprised, by that or by the identity of the killer. What did surprise and stun him was that Sofie had committed murder in front of her son. No, he corrected himself bitterly, in front of our son.

He'd known for years that he was the father of Sofie's child. But he'd never gotten a close look at him. Now he was shaken by the sight of the boy's snub nose, blue-gray eyes, and mop of medium-brown hair.

Ben rarely thought about his own looks. But now he was grateful that his hair was iron-gray, his face ravaged by a decade of physical pain and mental anguish. If he looked the way he should have looked at twenty-nine, Adam would have had to be blind to not see the resemblance. And Justin was a good father to him, at least as good as I could have been. The last thing he needs now is to start having doubts about who he is.

Ben had feared that his not sensing Adam as his Prince meant that his son was a Dark Avatar. But after he and Justin had put their differences behind them, Justin told him that neither he nor Sofie had sensed Adam as a Prince, either; nor had the child displayed any preternatural abilities. The two men concluded that Adam was a normal little boy, not an Avatar at all.

Knowing that had gladdened Ben's heart.

It makes sense, he reflected now. If Sofie is the Omega - the only Avatar destined to be born into our last generation - it stands to reason that no child of hers can be one. My firstborn son would have been an Avatar if any other woman had been his mother. But destiny brought Sofie and me together so that couldn't happen.

" 'Course I saw it," the boy was saying.

Ben suppressed a shudder. "Okay. I'm not the police." He didn't want to be dishonest with Adam, not about that. Besides, if the police had been called, a real homicide detective might show up at any moment. "But I was a friend of your father's, even though you and I never met. My name is Ben Hawkins. Do tell me what happened, please!"

"All right. I s'pose you're wondering about the door?"

"Door?" In his haste, Ben had barely noticed that the front door was standing open. Now he glanced toward the doorway - and did a double take.

The door wasn't standing open. The house simply had no door.

Frowning, Adam explained, "Mom wanted to go somewhere, and he didn't want her to. They were yelling at each other. She opened the door. Then the knob sort of flew out of her hand, and the door slammed shut, all on its own. She yelled, 'Do you think a trick like that can still stop me?' She just looked at the door, waved at it, and it vanished.

"Then he grabbed her and held on to her, trying to stop her that way. He never hit her. But she kept punching him, again and again, in the chest. He went down, and when he was on the floor, she started kicking him in the chest, and kept it up till he stopped moving.

"And then she just left."

Ben winced. He understood all too well what Sofie had done. She'd deliberately dislodged the blade of his dagger, which had been imbedded in Justin's chest for ten long years. Driven it into his heart, and killed him a second time.

He supposed Justin could also be restored to life a second time. But he instantly rejected that idea. As Sofie knew I would, he thought ruefully. He could only have done it by killing someone else. And he had by now developed such reverence for life that he couldn't have brought himself to kill even Adolf Hitler (if the man had still been alive, which he wasn't).

Killing Justin's killer - as he had, long ago, killed Ruthie's - might have been morally acceptable. But that was out of the question, and not solely because of his feelings for Sofie. Ben didn't know whether the Omega would in any case have been stronger than any other individual Avatar. But he'd known for years that she was stronger than either himself or Justin, if only because of the damage they'd inflicted on each other in their battle in the cornfield. They could only have hoped to overpower her - to stop her from doing anything she wanted - by joining forces.

Why didn't you let her go, Justin? Wait for me to get here, so we could go after her together?

But he knew why. Justin had hoped to delay her, if not until Ben arrived, at least long enough that she'd have less of a head start.

And he, like Ben, hadn't dreamed she'd commit murder in front of Adam.

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It suddenly occurred to Ben that the boy might be alone in the house. He knew where Sofie was going, knew he had to follow her - hopeless though his mission might be. But he couldn't leave the child unattended, with a dead body. "Are you alone here, Adam?"

"No. The bodyguards and the maid and cook ran off, but -"

"Adam? Who are you talking to?" Iris Crowe emerged from an inner room; she gave a faint gasp on recognizing Ben. "Oh - Mr. Hawkins." She put a protective arm around Adam, holding him tight.

"Miss Crowe." They'd met a few times over the years; Ben knew Iris was unnerved by how changed he was from the youth she'd caught with a hatchet in her brother's bedroom. Changed in more than looks: thanks to Belyakov's boon and his own voracious reading, he was now at least as knowledgeable and well-spoken as the typical college graduate.

"Believe me," he said cautiously, "I'm sorry about what happened here."

"Y-yes. I know you are." Like the boy, she was pale and drawn, but dry-eyed and rigidly erect. Both still in shock, Ben realized.

"I'm glad you're here for Adam," he told her. To reassure her, let her know he didn't mean to snatch his son. "Have you called the police?" He hoped she hadn't.

"No. I was about to call a doctor we've known for years. I can trust him to issue a death certificate saying Justin died of a heart attack."

"Hmm." Iris went up a notch in his estimation. "That's a good idea."

Unless...

He still felt uneasy about leaving.

Does what I'm thinking of always happen, or only sometimes?

And if it's going to happen here, which way -?

Suddenly, he was aware of a ringing in his ears. He felt a wave of vertigo. The room began rocking like a ship at sea...and as it rocked it grew ever brighter, all its surfaces shimmering with an unearthly, pearly radiance.

Iris, who'd fallen to her knees, let out a shriek.

"It's all right!" Ben yelled. Yes, I know it's all right. "I've seen this before!" Somehow steadying himself, he took Adam by the shoulders and turned him to face Justin's corpse. "Don't be afraid," he told the boy. "Watch what's going to happen."

The rocking had ceased. Now, as the three of them watched, the dead body lifted off the floor, rose to the ceiling...and seemingly passed through it. Out of sight.

The light faded, and the room returned to normal - except for the corpse being gone.

Iris moaned.

"His body ascended," Ben explained quietly, "to symbolize the fate of his soul. Like I said, I've seen it before. Just once, after the death of a very saintly man."

Adam, gazing at the spot where the body had lain, said, "He was a saint." His voice shook only slightly.

Iris was still kneeling. To Ben's surprise, she murmured, "Each of us carries within us the seeds of our own salvation...and our own damnation." Then she looked up at him and explained, "I heard Justin say that. Long ago."

Even from a distance, Ben saw the torment in her eyes.

She didn't expect Justin to be saved, he realized, after some of the things he'd done. And she feels doubly bereft because she wrote herself off as damned a decade ago.

He let go of Adam, who seemed to be coping well, and walked over to Iris. Bent to put a hand on her shoulder - the first time I've ever touched her - and gazed deep into those tortured eyes. How much can I say, without its being too much in front of Adam?

He decided on a gentle, "Your brother was right, Miss Crowe. But the emphasis should be on salvation. While there's breath in our bodies, it's not too late to repent and be saved."

Voice quavering, she asked, "Is salvation possible even for...for Hitler?"

He knew she wasn't really thinking of Hitler.

"Yes," he said firmly. "I'm not saying he was saved. I don't know. But it was possible, till the very end."

Privately, he suspected that Hitler's culpability had been reduced by mental illness. He may have less to atone for, in God's eyes, than the sane men who appeased him.

Mental illness could be a mitigating factor in Iris's case as well. But he knew better than to tell her that.

He didn't think he'd said anything very inspiring. He would have liked to tell her he knew about the murders she'd committed, and assure her that God would forgive those specific sins. But he couldn't do it within earshot of the boy.

Iris, however, seemed genuinely moved by what he had said. Tears welled up in her eyes; but the emotions he read there now were relief and hope. As he helped her to her feet, she whispered a heartfelt, "Thank you."

Ben wasn't sure what he'd done. (He'd done it before, and was never quite sure.) But despite knowing Iris wasn't ideally stable, he felt better about leaving his son in her care.

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"I'll have to be going soon," he told her. "And you'll need to make some hard decisions.

"If you're sure you can trust that doctor, you could have him make up the death certificate without seeing a body. Then you could bury a closed, weighted coffin.

"Or if the people who saw the body can be persuaded not to tell anyone else, you could say Justin has simply disappeared. Claim his marriage broke up, Sofie left, and he was so depressed that he went missing. I remember hearing he did that once before, years ago. This time, he could wander off and not come back."

Iris shook her head. "No!" Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw that Adam was shaking his head, too.

"No one would believe Justin would do that now," Iris said quietly. There was a hint of pride in her voice. "Everyone who knows him knows he'd never abandon Adam."

Ben felt a lump in his throat. And he told me he knew from the start that Adam was my son, not his.

He swallowed hard. "So you'll have to go with the closed coffin."

Iris nodded. "It won't be a problem. The doctor will do whatever I ask."

"The bodyguards, maid, cook -"

"No problems there either," she assured him. "They heard angry voices, then saw Justin dead on the floor and the front door missing. But they didn't see anything Sofie did.

"As for the door, it turned up in the cornfield! So she just used her powers to move it. That can be explained as a prank by vandals."

Ben sighed. "All right. I hate to leave you like this, but I need to catch up with Sofie. I don't know whether she'll ever come back here" - he saw Iris stiffen at the prospect - "but I can't wait."

Adam said diffidently, "Mr. Hawkins?"

Ben wanted to say, "Call me Ben."

He wanted even more to hug the boy. To tousle his hair, just once...

No. It would be wrong to make him think I want to be his friend, because he'll almost certainly never see me again.

So all he said was, "Yes, Adam?"

With downcast eyes, Adam said, "I don't think Mom means to come back, to take over the ministry or anything.

"I forgot to tell you the last thing she did before she left. She chucked something in the wastebasket.

"I think it was her wedding ring."

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Ben knew a moment's temptation.

I could stay with Adam and Iris, and let Sofie do her worst. I probably can't stop her, anyway.

She's signaled that she's burning her bridges behind her. And Adam is an innocent victim in all of this. Justin wouldn't have abandoned him, but his own mother has.

Iris can fill in for his mother. But a boy needs a father figure, too. I know how hard it is to grow up without one. I could become that father figure for Adam, even if I never tell him the truth...

Then he set his jaw. No. Those are exactly the thoughts Sofie hopes I'll have.

He sensed that there would be other innocent victims. Victims whose lives would be at stake.

I may not be able to save them.

But God help me, I still have a duty to try.

He turned on his heel, said a brusque goodbye, and left before he could change his mind.