Author's Note: I just wanted to say thank you so much to the readers who have come this far! There aren't a lot of you, but I appreciate every one of you who is still reading! You give me so much hope. I just wanted to tell you how happy I am you're here. That one chapter down the road is still giving my some difficulties. I'm sure I'll work it out soon though. Also, I've started taking a creative writing class! How long before the teacher finds out I write fanfiction at almost 21 years old? Not long. Not long at all.

I also wanted to take a second to let everyone know that there's a few chapters that have undergone major edits recently! Off the top of my head, I'm sure that Book 1 chapters 2 (Toby) and 11 (Jeff-2) have been overhauled the most. You don't have to re-read them, of course, but just as a summary I made Melanie's reactions to things a bit more realistic in response to some commentary by a reader. I think my writing may have ah... I don't know I know it's weird but I'm hoping I didn't lose a friend over it? Still waiting to see what's going on.

Chapter 15: Little Talks

[A few hours prior]

What remained of the group was due to leave for Moira's castle in an hour. Melanie and Laughing Jack were hurriedly making preparations upstairs. Something about snow boots and scarves, he had heard. She was so close- just one floor away. Knowing that this night could end in a bloodbath, Toby was tempted to go after her. He knew he was needed elsewhere though. Toby looked around at the shadowed faces occupying various corners of the game room. Ben, Brian, Jeff, Tim, and himself. They were all that was left.

The house was too quiet with just the five of them downstairs. There was no video game blaring, no smell of pizza fresh from the oven, no crinkle of beanbags. It felt dead. It felt like it did Before. He began quickly stuffing a myriad of objects into a black and orange backpack sitting on the kitchen counter and making preparations to leave.

He didn't glance up as Ben took a seat on one of the barstools across from him. "You look like you're already going somewhere." Toby shoved one last item in the pack before forcing the strained zipper shut and throwing the straps around his shoulders. "Melanie's not going to be happy if you go off on your own and try to play hero," Ben continued.

"I'm not," Toby said. "I need to pay a visit to someone before we go. I'll be back in time for Laughing Jack to teleport us all out of here as reinforcements once she's inside. I know what the plan is. I'm sticking to it."

Ben leaned onto the countertop and folded his arms. "Mind if I ask who's so important that they get a visit mere minutes before we're about to storm the castle?" The elf's head tilted and he reached for a halfway-stale poptart that had been discarded earlier that day. He munched steadily as Toby fumbled over his answer. There were few at the house who would understand the truth behind the words he was trying to form. Maybe there would be a day, but now was not the time to tell Ben about the striking similarily that Melanie shared with the deceased inhabitant of her old room.

"I'm going, going to see Melanie's parents. They d-deserve to know," was all he said as he made his way out of the kitchen. He passed Brian cleaning a gun on the armrest of the couch as well as the curious sight of Tim gathering a significant collection of gasoline cans.

Ben jumped up and blocked his path. "Wait, what? They don't... she's not going to?" he said, hopping from side to side as Toby attempted to reach the staircase to the second floor. "Dude, god damn it stop walking! If Moira is watching us, do you really think it's safe to draw her attention to them?"

"Nothing we're going to do today will be safe. This is my choice. They've put up with a lot of bullshit from us and I'm halfway surprised any of us are still walking, but they need to know we have her back. There are a few things I need to ask them too. Ben... Ben, please move. I need to leave."

The sprite's eyes drooped downward and his shoulders sagged. The poor kid was just trying to look out for him. Being cocky and going it alone had nearly gotten him killed only days earlier. Toby shifted his backpack uncomfortably and avoided meeting the kid's eyes. "Look, I'll be back before you know it. Just keep yourself busy until then, okay?" He said, ruffling the kid's hair. Ben nodded, pushing Toby's hand away, and Toby sighed with relief as the kid stepped to the side. "And Tim... I don't know what you're planning but it looks fucking awesome. Whatever you're doing, keep doing that. I like that shit." Tim laughed as he added another red canister to the mountain of fuel.

From a little ways up the first hallway, Toby could hear Laughing Jack's voice from one of the supply rooms. He quickened his pace, all too aware of how little time he would have. The grey guardian sensed his approach and moved to stand in the doorway of the room, still keeping up a conversation with Melanie in order to distract her. She didn't need to know that he knew her secret. It would bring up too many painful memories that he knew too well how hard she had tried to put behind her. Maybe it wasn't the best coping mechanism, but hey, whatever kept her sane.

LJ told Melanie that he was going to grab something they needed from another room before motioning to Toby to follow him into Ben's room down the hall. The clown looked like he had been through a fight with an army of geese as well as not having slept for a week, but Toby wasn't sure if he really looked any worse than normal, or worse than the rest of them for that matter. As soon as they were out of earshot of Melanie, Jack turned to Toby and assessed that he had plans to go somewhere.

"You're going to see them?" he asked. Toby nodded. He'd asked the clown to teleport him often enough before. It wasn't as though it was some rare surprise. But they both knew that the circumstances were a little different this time. Laughing Jack sighed and tapped his foot, apparently working out the time crunch in his head. "You can make it back in time? I'm going to be taking you all one by one. Complicated explanation, but, it's easier. You and Jeff are going to be last. I need Tim and Brian ready to roll as soon as possible because of what they're putting together down there. Be ready to leave at 6:30 exactly. I don't care what you're in the middle of; I'm ripping you out of there. Got it?"

Toby nodded again. "I can make it. This is important to me. Can you take me now? Before she notices what's up?" Toby was expecting a verbal response. But as Melanie's voice and footsteps echoed through the hall, Laughing Jack instead grabbed Toby's shoulder as he found himself sucked into the void. Sound, smells, sights, everything disappeared here. It was just darkness. So dark you couldn't see your own body. He was always thankful that they only passed through there for a handful of seconds before arriving at their destination. If he ever got trapped in that awful place, he would run headfirst into the arms of death in order to escape it. Vaguely he knew that this place, or perhaps absence of a place, was somehow related to the source of an Operator's power.

His train of thought was cut short by the sudden sensation of sensation again. The ability to feel anything rushed him like a train from all directions in an overwhelming cloud of information. Toby stumbled and tried to regain his land legs as a hand caught his arm. "You've got twenty-six minutes," the voice of Laughing Jack said. Before his body had even fully materialized yet, he was gone in the other direction again, taking with him the only sound in this desolate space.

Toby looked out at the snowflakes drifting down in front of the setting sun, spiraling down toward earth and coming to rest softly on a sprawling graveyard.

Though the snow was falling slowly, the air was that kind of cold that felt like an animal biting at your skin. Toby pulled his goggles down over his eyes and wrapped himself in a blue plaid scarf. He then walked down the familiar dirt pathway that he now knew by heart. Along the way, he passed dozens of graves. Most of them were covered with snow, leaf litter, and dead flowers due to the recent weather. He was thankful for it at the moment, as he was the only human being in sight. It would be just his luck to be recognized on a day like this.

The path wound up a hill and Toby braced himself against the wind as he trudged through the loose snow. When he reached the hilltop, he collapsed under the bare branches of an oak tree, breathing heavily. The thin gloves he wore did little to keep his hands from going numb. He preferred the dexterity over warmth, but he was soon going to lose both of those if he stayed much longer. He had fallen just in front of the only three graves that occupied the cliff. He had memorized the words on them a long time ago. Toby reached forward and rubbed the snow from each of the headstones.

Katherine Day, nee Hill: April 9th, 1972- January 24th, 2015. Loving mother and wife. An angel was lost that day. Christopher Day: August 7th, 1974 – January 24th, 2015. He lives on in our hearts. Monique Hansen: September 28th, 1990 – January 24th, 2015. Her love of life and adventure lives on in her children and sister.

Toby's throat tightened as he thumbed through the boxes of things he had left over the past year. The most recent on the top was a candid Polaroid of Melanie laughing herself out of a chair after a particularly amusing board game. There were countless letters from himself and from Melanie that Slenderman, the Puppeteer, and later Laughing Jack had delivered here filling her parents in on everything that they'd missed. He had cried when he first read the early letters she had written out so frantically and rushed up to the attic to have sent to her parents she'd said must be worried sick. He hadn't known then that she'd been living with her aunts and her parents were nothing but memories kept alive through words and drawings faithfully delivered. He hadn't meant to read them. But he'd been so shocked the first time that Laughing Jack brought him here. Toby's breathing hitched as he recalled the first time Melanie's guardian had dropped him off at this place.

The spirit was fiercely protective of Melanie and stubbornly insisted that Toby get the blessing of the girl's father before eloping to Paris with her for the holidays. Toby had bitched and whined and gone with him all but kicking and screaming as LJ dragged him along through the void. What would her father say when he finally came face to face with one of the murderers his daughter had lived with? He wouldn't say a word, he'd kill him on the spot, that's what he'd do! Toby had been through all sorts of hell on earth but never in his life had he been forced to face the father of a girl he was dating. Ex-killer or not, that was a prospect that terrified any boy or man with his head screwed on properly enough.

So it was with great surprise that Toby had found himself ankle deep in snow staring out over a desolate graveyard somewhere in Pennsylvania. He had searched for words but had been unable to find any. Laughing Jack had spurred him on up the hill. Never said a word about the fact that her parents were dead. It was then Toby had realized she didn't want anyone to know. Didn't want anyone to know that she lived a lie to avoid a painful truth. Didn't want anyone to know that she prided herself on being adventurous and living for danger and loving the dark as much as the light because that's how her parents and sister had lived. They had been fierce and loving and wanted to explore every corner of the Earth, just like her.

She didn't want anyone to know that was how they died. A family road trip. Melanie had been in school and Monique's two young girls were with their grandmother for the day. The three of them were trekking through ghost towns and forests and eventually a mine that up and caved in on them. She'd lost all three at once. He didn't know how exactly she was coping before she'd gotten to the mansion, but it seemed like once she got there and saw the state they were all in she'd known she would have to be strong and tough it out for everyone's sake and pretend to be fine.

That damn clown had made Toby kneel on the frozen ground and write out a letter to put in the box. He had been so confused as to why he had had to bring paper with him, but LJ wouldn't let anything slip until they arrived. His hands had shaken three times more than usual as he wrote long into the afternoon with LJ sitting cross-legged to his side. He remembered choking up as he wrote out for the first time that he loved Melanie. He always had. Just didn't have the courage to say it out loud to her yet. What if she didn't feel the same way? Then he had explained that after he figured out about his memories he had done his best to figure out what a normal life was like anymore. To begin to track people down and try to make up for all the things he'd done. Tried to piece together his past. He'd worked under the table jobs and saved up since the summer. He had asked Mr. Day to forgive him for everything if he would. If he could. He knew he didn't deserve it. But if he knew one thing in his half-dead heart, it was that he would try to be better by her. That he would protect this girl to his dying breath.

He'd said today, I want to ask you if I can take your daughter to Paris. But someday in the future, I'm going to be back here kneeling on the ground. And on that day I'm going to ask for your permission to marry her. I've got commitment issues and my tongue always gets tied into knots and let's not even get into the obvious lifestyle reasons why I would absolutely never be able to bring myself to ask her that... so it's not going to be on any normal day. It's going to be on a day when everything goes to hell. A day when we think the world is going to end and everything is in ruins and the ground is falling out from beneath our feet. Because that's how it was when I first met her, and that's what's going to take me back to that moment and remind me that I don't want to know what life is like without her. I'll know when that day comes. No matter how quickly the sky is raining down, I will make the time to come here and ask you.

And he had continued on with the letter. It took over an hour to write as he kept having to erase the parts where his hand jerked the pencil out of the lines. LJ didn't say a word, just wrote a brief letter of his own that he sealed with wax before tidying up the area and conjuring flowers made of sugar glass.

Toby removed his goggles and wiped his eyes with a shaking hand as he reread his letter from last December. He was usually so flustered with a thousand trains of incoherent thought. But here he had had enough foresight to realize that settling into normal life for the first time would drive the family apart from those who could not. He had known then it would take a second disaster to make them all closer than before. To realize they were a family whether they liked it or not, or whether it made sense or not. Because they had all killed, they all had secrets, and they were all running from something. Melanie was never some innocent waif who needed to be protected from the darkness. Despite her thin frame, bright rose highlighted hair, and cheerful disposition, she had never turned away from the darkness. They both knew she would always have that streak within her, waiting for a chance to wake from its long sleep. She was no angel, and that was fine with him.

With half-frozen hands, Toby pulled out a pad of stationery paper and a ballpoint pen. He knew if he went for the pencil he would spend an hour erasing and perfecting his handwriting that would never be salvageable. As the sun sank lower, he wrote the letter he had always thought would come someday, but never pictured someday becoming today. He renewed his promise to protect the last surviving member of the Day family. He told them of how brave she had been and was going to be in this last battle.

He asked if Mr. Christopher Day would give Toby Rodgers the blessing to propose to his daughter. If it was at all possible, could he send some kind of sign? Because there's that urgency of the end of the world and all. Or at least their world. Toby pulled his scarf tighter and slipped the letter into the box on the left before latching it shut. Snow lightly dusted all of his clothes now. He was regretting wearing jeans.

His watch said he had less than two minutes before Jack would return. Anxiously, he rose and looked around the graveyard. Far, far away, down the hillside and outside the graveyard, was a meadow buried under the snow. He could just barely make out two figures walking together through the snow. In the smallest space in the sky, the clouds parted to allow the last dusk rays of sunshine through onto the couple. The golden light was striking against the cold grays of the clouds and graveyard. It made the evening air seem less cold, though he knew that was impossible. The clouds covered the space as quickly as it had been opened, and the couple disappeared along with the sunshine.

When Laughing Jack stepped out of the void on the hilltop, he cast a glance at the three graves under the Oak tree. The boy was not sensitive to spirits on the other side. He had never really believed his letters would be answered. Though he had never said so, the monochrome clown standing in the snow knew otherwise. He had always felt Katherine and Christopher's presence. He knew they cared deeply for the boy who would spend hours kneeling on the frozen ground to tell them of their daughter's life. Who never left out a single detail, so that they would never feel left out. Now as the boy stood facing away from Laughing Jack wiping icy tears from his face, he could feel the presence of the Day family stronger than ever. What he also sensed, as well as saw written all over the hooded figure at the cliff's edge, was that their aanswer had been a resounding yes.