Author's Note: The last chapter is finally here! To think I tore myself up feeling bad over not finishing this for 6 years, and here it is almost done in less than a week. Is it great? No. Do I wish I could find more of my notes on the epilogue and final chapters from the first time around? Yes. But, it's what I've got. Better than nothing. To everyone who's returning or new readers, thank you for making it this far. I'm not going to do the epilogue I had planned years ago because it was like a teaser for a 3rd book which I do not plan to write anymore. However, I do have a My Hero Academia story coming! I'm still waiting for my AO3 invitation, as it ah... cannot be posted on . If you're looking for more T-rated stories of mine it's not that one! I'm going to try to have the same username (4riadne). I'm so happy to be back to writing! It was a great run we had. I'll miss these characters. I couldn't think of what to name a frequent location in my new fic so I'm stealing "The Toasty Mug" from this one because it's cute.

Human

Melanie shot upright and gasped, hearing Toby next to her do the same. Before she could check to make sure they were really alive, truly unharmed, someone popped up in front of them. She... had she seen this person before? It was like when she saw her face in dreams and knew it must have been her own despite it looking nothing like her.

"Who...?"

The person's face dropped. "Did you lose your memories? Why are you looking at me like that, Sweets?"

She squinted, roving this man's features for anything familiar. Wait... Sweets?!

"LJ?!" she exclaimed. "But... you're..." she gestured to all of him. He looked down and gasped, seeing why she hadn't known it was him. His hands, no longer clawed, tugged at clothes he hadn't been wearing before. Instead of the frayed, monochrome clothes she had always seen him wear, he was wearing, well, regular clothes. He was certainly dressed for being in snowy mountains. He had thick snow pants on and a poofy maroon and black jacket with brown and white fur around the hood. The man himself was no longer grey either. His hair was the same haphazard mess as was common to everyone in her family. But instead of black, it was a brilliant white, with the faintest, almost invisible highlights of every color in the rainbow dotted throughout. His hair looked like light reflecting off of snow. Before, his eyes had been mostly black with a few flecks of silver peeking through. Now, they were a cool green so light they were almost grey- like seafoam.

Her guardian looked himself over in shock. Knowing that he couldn't see his hair, Melanie held up her phone with the camera on front view so he could see. LJ gasped and ran his fingers through it.

"Woah.. is that... is that LJ?" Toby asked. He scooted around LJ, who was still just as tall as when he was a bound spirit, so that they could all three see each other. "You're so... colorful. I feel like I need sunglasses on! Your hair looks like cake batter ice cream with sprinkles, or something."

Toby looked much the same as he had in the void, except his scar was gone and his eyes no longer glowed. There were just faint hints of yellow mixed in with the light brown.

"I can't believe it," Toby said. "I just can't believe it. Is this real?"

"It's real. I'll explain at the house."

The three of them embraced and breathed heavy sighs of relief. It was time to find the others and go home.

Collecting everyone and bringing them back to the mansion had been easier said than done. Rounding up everyone at the castle was easy enough. There had been lots of cheering, confusion, and just boys running amok in general. Ben had just about died laughing when he saw the formerly ferocious Puppeteer looking so very human, remarking that he looked like a contestant on The Bachelor whose name would be some misspelling of 'Brad'. He didn't seem too hurt by this.

When EJ, Tim, Brian, LJ, Toby, Melanie, and Ben were all assembled, they looked around at each other and squinted. It was only when an outrageously large reddish-brown dog walked into the room, looking very lost, that they all looked at each other and gasped. The room immediately descended into chaos. While Ben was trying to explain to everyone what had happened to Jeff, but it didn't matter anymore because they were all alive again, LJ attempted to teleport to Jeff.

A confused and annoyed look crossed his face as he tried again. There was a brief pause before a moment of realization crossed his face.

"Oh shit," they all said in unison.

"Uh... I forgot I wouldn't be able to teleport. Melanie... how exactly did you word that request to the fates?!" LJ asked.

"Well, I sort of... asked them to send us all back to where we were when we died. I didn't know Jeff didn't make it!"

"Oh shit," Ben and LJ repeated. "He was at a graveyard, which was a crime scene, because he had just been murdered. Oh my God, I hope he made it out of there."

Melanie shrugged. "He can take care of himself."

Ben shook his head emphatically. "You don't understand. He's in Louisiana. And we- oh SHIT!"

It dawned on all of them that they were stuck in the middle of a frozen wasteland somewhere in Europe. Thankfully, they were all dressed for the cold, but there was no telling how long it would take them to get to a town.

It took a long time. After hours of hiking, and a few more of hitchhiking by mountain goat, carriage, car, and then bus, the strange group made it to a small town with a name they couldn't pronounce. They drew more than a few glances. When it turned out none of them had brought their phone, there was a question of how the hell they were going to call the missing family member.

Ben made a disgusted sound. "I'm disappointed. In all of you! Am I the only one who memorized your numbers?" They were all in awe, but he was from a different time. He was still used to memorizing phone numbers, unlike most of the rest of them. After finally locating a payphone, which they absolutely paid for honestly, they dialed up his cell to see if he had brought his. The first time it went to voicemail. The second time, Ben had to remove the phone from his ear. The cacophony coming from the other line rang loud and clear even to the outside of the phone booth. Melanie had heard huskies at the groomers making less of a fuss than Jeff.

"You left me. IN. Louisiana! At the crime scene of my own death!" he yelled. They all chimed in trying to both reassure him they were going to figure something out and asking if he was alright. He had at least made it away from the graveyard and was holed up in a 24-hour drive-through. It was implied that he, like any good citizen, had been paying for his meals over the last few hours with money acquired honestly.

"So, you guys are uh... are you guys flying out here? How is this working?" he asked.

"Um, we uh... we're sort of... we're stuck in Europe."

"WHAT!?"

Melanie covered her ears. "We're stuck in Europe! Get the turds out of your ears. I know you heard us the first time. We're uh... we're going to do our best to get back, but I don't know how we're going to manage to get flights home for all of us. Wait. SHIT. We don't even have passports, oh God, we're going to become criminals on the same day we managed to get a clean slate!"

"Mel, in case you haven't noticed," Tim said through a mouthful of cookie, "we became criminals when we stole the money to pay for the phone."

She stared at him and his handful of loose cookies. "Where... when... how did you pay for those?"

He shrugged. "Same way we paid for the payphone."

"Well, uh... if it's going to take some insane planning to get us all home, want to uh... want to just catch up?" Jeff asked with a surprisingly earnest tone. "First thing I want to know is how the hell did she pull this off?"

"Well," Melanie began. "I thought if I cheated death the first time, and had some sort of crazy powerset I didn't know about... that I could ah... fix things, in the void, if everything here went south. I'm glad it worked, but it was a crap shoot. The fates let us all come back as long as we agreed to being mortal."

"But how. Why?"

"Turns out the fates are rat bastards and they thought it would be funny. I guess they saw the "stuck in a foreign country" thing before we did. I'm sure they're laughing at us from the void right now."

They all talked and talked around the payphone for over an hour until the biting cold had become too much to ignore. It was nice though. At least they could rest assured that their family member who was separated was doing just fine in a diner somewhere.

It would be a week before everyone was finally home safe and sound, but that made it all the more sweet. It was strange, walking into a house full of all manner of twisted experiments that had been conducted in past lives, blood stains on the walls, bodies buried in the garden. They all looked at it, trying to size up this place. Was it time to move on? Was there anything left to save? In the end, they decided to keep the place. There were too many memories to let it go. Everyone armed themselves with buckets of bleach water, gloves, sponges, and trash bags, and scrubbed away the things that didn't belong in their lives anymore now that they were human. It was a strange experience.

Melanie didn't exactly have any crime scenes to clean up. She went back to her old room. She'd taken a lot of her things out of it, but some of her belongings were still there- things she didn't want around. She slid the closet doors open and knelt down on the carpet. There was a tan shoebox exactly where she had left it. She blew the dust off the lid and wiped away the remaining grime. On the front of the box, it just said " S" in black permanent marker. She took a slow, deep breath and opened the lid. There were more than she remembered. Going through them wasn't her goal for the day. There wasn't anything inside she wanted to keep. She placed a hand over the letters and sighed before taking her hand out and closing the lid.

Melanie tucked the shoebox under her arm and went out into that familiar hallway she used to call home. It made her own apartment feel so small and quiet. She used to complain about the boys keeping her up, but now she missed it so much it ached. From all around the house, she heard music playing, off-key singing, playful bickering, and at least a few shenanigans. She smiled. It looked like things were going to be okay.

She snuck quietly out the front door and knelt in the soft dirt of the garden. There was a spade exactly where she left it from her last gardening project. It made her sad to think of the flowers she had so carefully planted that summer languishing. Her determination to visit more often strengthened.

"Burying the past?" a female voice asked.

"Oh!" Melanie exclaimed. "I haven't seen you since the night we were attacked! How have you been?"

The Woman in White smiled and floated to a sitting position in the shade of the house next to the flowerbed. "Talking with you made me realize there were still good things outside these walls. I've been doing a lot of traveling. There's still so many beautiful places out there. I hear you've had your fair share of excitement. Just about the whole underworld knows what you did. Congratulations, to all of you, on having your humanity back. Are those your letters?"

"Yes. I think... it's finally time. Even if I don't live here anymore, and it wouldn't matter if I didn't, I want to get rid of them. I think it would make it more real for me. I'm at least going to bury them where they can decompose and help a flower someday though." She opened the lid and began scraping some dirt from an area not too close to any roots.

"What of your other self?"

Melanie tilted her head as she continued digging. "I'm curious, but I've accepted that I might never know. The fates said all our powers were gone."

The ghost smiled as if she knew something that Melanie didn't. "Threads of destiny that have been tangled are still a powerful thing. I hope everyone is adjusting alright. I need to find some shade, but... I'm happy for you."

Melanie smiled and thanked her. She finished burying the letters and went inside. After over a week of travel, and another week of clearing their sanctuary of darkness, they finally felt like they could relax. It felt like this was their first day home, officially. It goes without saying that there was a pizza party for the ages. Instead of the more reclusive housemates going upstairs at the end of the night, everyone stretched an enormous blanket fort across the whole living room and fell asleep in a pile in front of TV. It felt good to be a family again, to feel whole. There were still things to do. Adjusting to normal life would be difficult for everyone, but for now... it felt like they were kids in summer vacation- like they had all the time in the world.

Melanie was the first to rise in the morning. It was a habit she'd kept from when she'd lived there. Making breakfast for everyone gave her joy. She wanted to freshen up first, seeing as her hair was trying to build the new Tower of Babel. With sluggish feet, she trudged barefoot into the bathroom at the top of the stairs. She blinked sleepily at her reflection.

"Hmm. Why do I look better than I feel like I do?" Melanie asked, reaching up to touch her hair and puffy eyes. When her reflection did neither, and simply smiled, Melanie gasped. She leaned over the counter so fast she almost fell, placing her hand on the mirror. Her reflection did the same and smiled. Her eyes were misty. Melanie saw her turn her head to the side and call for someone, but she couldn't hear any sound from the other world. Her other self made a signal to Melanie that looked like she wanted her to mirror her actions and act like a normal reflection. She nodded and did her best to follow her other self.

When two people entered the bathroom, looking a little confused, it was hard to keep a neutral face. Melanie's lip wobbled and her eyes welled up with tears that she tried to blink away. She didn't know what they were all saying, but... it was her parents. It was her and her parents. Even if she couldn't be there, just seeing them for a moment, knowing her other self got to have back what she couldn't have, that was enough for now. When they walked out, it was hard, knowing it could be the last time. This might not even be a permanent connection- maybe just the fates giving them a little glimpse.

Her other self lit up like she remembered something, grinning from ear to ear. She pulled out her cellphone and unlocked it, proudly holding it up to the mirror. Melanie put her hands over her mouth in shock. Her other self's glee was contagious. On her home screen was what would look to anyone else, like her and a bunch of buddies at a Halloween party. Melanie knew though. That was their found family. She could see in her other self's eyes that she'd found the same things Melanie had that summer- redemption, friendship, honesty, healing, and plain old fun.

Her other self lowered the phone. Something about this felt very final. As she thought that, the image started to waver a little, and then stopped, like a warning that their time was running out. Her reflection sighed, still smiling, but her expression was bittersweet.

"Thank you- for everything," she mouthed.

Melanie placed her hand over her reflection's. "Take care of them."

And then she was just looking at herself. She turned and leaned against the doorframe. How the hell her crazy plan worked out, she just couldn't question. She'd gotten one family back, and a chance to see her other family, if only for a moment. Life was good.

A clatter from downstairs followed by a lot of shouting about pop tarts told her that someone was awake. Some things would never change.