IMPORTANT! A/N: I've decided to end this little mini-series of mine. I won't finish Everlasting, and I will probably eventually take it down. I'll finish Revelations, and then I'm done. I'll probably write more Mediator fics down the road, but let me tell you: Two years is entirely too long to spend on a series that never goes any farther than a website on the internet. Five—four, really—stories is a lot of work to try and keep people interested, especially when the writing's as slow going as it has been for Revelations. I can't do a long string of sequels, plus all the other stories I have in the works. I'm going on writing overload, and I think that Revelations is the story that suffers most from that. So I'm ending the series with this one. I've met a lot of awesome people, writing this story, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to get to know y'all. ::half smiles::

Chapter 15

Jesse materialized in George Hunter's office, surprised to see the usually neat and tidy room in complete disarray. Jesse felt his uneasiness at being back at the Agency wash away to be replaced by confusion. What was going on?

He looked around for Hunter, frowning. The little man emerged from the mess, poking his cane through a pile of papers and boxes and waving it until it finally knocked a box out of his way. "Hmph," he grunted, hobbling through the open space. Then he looked up and noticed Jesse. "Ah, Mr. de Silva. What might I do for you?"

"Are you coming to the trial?" Jesse blurted out without bothering with a preamble.

Hunter didn't answer but he peered at Jesse curiously. "You look different, de Silva. What's happened to you? The last I saw you, you were a wreck."

Jesse gritted his teeth, sighing. "Things have changed."

The corners of the old man's lips quirked up. "Yes, apparently they have." He went to sit behind his desk. "To answer your question, I doubt that I'll be able to go." He waved a hand around at the office. "I doubt I could even if I wished to."

Jesse snorted. "Somehow I doubt that. You've managed to leave here before, I saw you."

Hunter shrugged. "Yes, well, there is only so much I can attempt. I'm an old man, Mr. de Silva, and I'm not nearly as strong as I once was." He smiled sadly. "Besides, I could hardly help you. I'm on the wrong side, remember? I am as much at fault for what goes on around here as anyone, and a jury would indict me right along with the rest of the Agency."

"You are wrong, Hunter. I think that we are both very much on the same side." Jesse smiled. "We're both expendable, remember?"

Hunter considered him for a long moment. Finally he gave a slow, wary smile. "Indeed we are."

When the trial day finally came, I was getting pretty tired of waiting. Waiting for the trial, waiting for Jesse—we still hadn't really done anything, despite what had happened before. Oh, we still kissed and touched, and did everything that we had pretty much done before we got married, but Jesse said he wanted to wait until the trial was over before we did anything else. And he always managed to say it in a way that couldn't possibly make me mad at him, so what did I do? I agreed to wait.

And so the day was finally there, and we were all sitting in a big courtroom with all these people—some of whom I recognized, some I didn't. Father Dom was sitting somewhere behind me, looking nervous. I couldn't blame him, I was feeling pretty nervous myself. There were even various ghosts lined up around the room—not that most of the people could actually see them, but our lawyer kept trying to assure me that they would when the time was right. I didn't get that at all, but I figured it was best not to argue with your own lawyer. At least not until after the trial.

So, we were all sitting there, me, my family, and all the ghosts on one side, and people from the Agency on the other side. And mediators. Oh, jeez, where do all these people come from? They weren't all from California—apparently the Agency was bigger than we thought, because there were people from all over the western part of the U.S. That's part of the reason why it took so long for there to be a trial; because it was hard to track down all the mediators the Agency had affected over the years. Some of them didn't even have the same abilities as Paul or Derek or I had. They were the ones that Derek had mentioned when he'd been explaining it all to me; the ones who weren't affected by whatever the Agency had done to us, but had still been old enough to remember what happened.

So, when they were ready to begin, the first thing out of whoever's mouth was "We call Susannah Simon to the stand."

I nearly choked on the water I was drinking. I stood on shaky legs, and walked up to the stand. They made me raise my right hand and did the whole "Do you swear to tell the whole truth..." spiel. The minute I sat down, the questions started.

"When was the first time you can remember coming in contact with the Agency?" my lawyer asked me.

I took a deep breath, taking a quick glance around the room. Derek was standing against the far wall, smiling at me encouragingly. He was clutching the hand of a girl who looked vaguely familiar to me. I guessed it was Amelia, and she was smiling at me, too, even though we'd never actually met.

I turned back to the lawyer and started telling everything from the beginning—at least, from the moment Paul Slater tied me up in an abandoned warehouse and told me I could control minds. That got a few snickers from people, but the lawyer just continued asking me questions.

"What exactly is a mediator?" he asked at one point during my long winded speech, even though I knew perfectly well that he knew exactly what mediators were. But I guess he wanted me to let everyone else know what it was.

"Well, it's a person who can see and talk to the dead"—more snickers—"and they help the ghosts of these people clear up whatever is holding them back so they can move on."

While the lawyer asked me more questions, I noticed someone in the back of the courtroom. It was a little old man, kind of hunched over, and I couldn't really see from where I was, but I thought he was probably clutching a cane. He was muttering something that apparently was somehow carrying to other people sitting in the courtroom. What was he doing?

After I'd been questioned by both the defense and the prosecution, I was allowed to step down and go back to my seat. Jesse came over and squeezed my hand, smiling at me. I smiled back, but my gaze drifted to people around us. People were turning to stare at me—at us. That was crazy, though. They couldn't possibly see Jesse, could they? My gaze shot back to Jesse, but he just grinned at me. What was going on?

A string of mediators came and testified, until finally someone said, "We call George Hunter to the stand."

I saw a few people from the Agency kind of stiffen at hearing that name. Curiously, I turned around to see who it was.

Jesse made his way to the back of the courtroom and offered his arm to the old man I'd noticed before. The old man said something loudly about being able to get out of a seat by himself, but still took Jesse's arm and rose unsteadily to his feet. They made a slow progression down the aisle that divided the courtroom.

I raised my eyebrows at Jesse as they passed, but he just kept grinning at me. I noticed the old man—George Hunter, I guess—turned and looked at the woman who I'd met first from the Agency. "Hello, Minerva."

All I heard from what she said was a mumbled "Traitor."

Hunter just grinned at her, and continued toward the stand, still holding Jesse's arm. Now I definitely knew that everyone else could see Jesse. They were all staring at him in shock and more than one person had to run from the room. But that wasn't the half of it, apparently. Oh, no.

Just before he reached the stand, Hunter turned around and said to everyone in the courtroom in a very familiar tone, "Turn around, please."

And everyone did. I stared at him, unable to believe what I was seeing. I'd never been able to control more than one living person at a time, and here this little old man was standing there, commanding dozens of people. But when I turned and looked around me, I heard any number of gasps and shrieks, and more people ran from the courtroom. They were all staring at the ghosts who lined the room. I met Derek's gaze from where I sat, and he did a little wave, grinning just as broadly as Jesse was.

How, I wanted to know, could you possibly command an entire courtroom to see all those ghosts?

Apparently, though, I wasn't going to find out any time soon, because Hunter turned and hobbled up to the stand.

My lawyer stood up and walked up to the stand. He looked at Hunter for a long moment, then said, "Tell the court of your affiliation with the Agency."

"Well, I suppose you could say I was its founder," Hunter said, leaning his cane against his chair.

"You suppose?"

"Yes. I was one of them, but I was also pretty much the head of the Agency for the first several years."

"Why did you found something that was technically illegal?"

"It wasn't illegal when we started it," Hunter said, shaking his head. "When we started, we took only mediators who were adults, mostly in their early twenties, or teenagers with the permission of their families. It was only afterward that they started to deal illegally."

"After what, exactly, Mr. Hunter?"

"After I was told by the Agency that I wasn't needed anymore." Hunter smiled wryly. "They decided that it was too risky to let me go for fear that I'd go public with what happened, and it was even riskier to outright kill me. The Agency hasn't been quite so considerate with others whom they've thought were a danger to it, but apparently to them it wasn't worth the risk." He shrugged. "So for the past twenty years I've been relegated to the top floor of the Agency where I won't be able to cause them any trouble."

"Then how did you get here?"

Hunter smiled slowly. "I plead the fifth."

Hunter was on the stand for a long time. When he was done, he turned and looked at everyone—the judge, the lawyers, the jury, and everyone else left in the courtroom—and said, "I don't care if you indict me along with the rest of them, but I wanted the truth to be known." He stood shakily, leaning heavily on his cane and stepped down from the stand. Jesse helped him back up the aisle to his seat where he sat quietly for the rest of the trial.

As I watched them move back there, an idea started to form in my head. Something that I hoped would help Jesse—and me. Something Hunter could definitely help me with.

The trial lasted a few more weeks. In the end, the Agency was indicted on all charges—including first degree murder and illegal testing on minors. The people who had run the Agency were going away for a very long time.

George Hunter got off since he hadn't been involved in any of the actual illegal activity. He'd been locked up in a room in the Agency, barely ever let out.

Kind of like Jesse had been.

Which, I guess, is why I went to see him a few days after the trial was over. There were certain things that needed to be done, and in all honesty, I didn't have the heart to do it myself.

A/N: That was entirely too long for my taste. Though it should make up for lack of updating... I hope. :-) Sorry, y'all, I have to be evil just one more time. Just once, I promise. But come on, do you really think I could go that long without being at least a little evil? ::grins::