Part IV: Streamline

Chapter: Yellow house

The yellow house looked deserted.

The furniture on the porch was covered in dust, a chair had fallen over. A coffee mug that had been left on the table had fallen to the floor and was now in pieces. The flowers Margot had carefully planted on the spring had all died, they were dry, withered and brown without her care.

No one had been here since Myers had left six months ago, not even the twins.

Sean and Amy had been living with Margot's parents in Hamburg for most of the spring and summer, and then moved back to Boston for their studies. When visiting Newark, they had stayed in BPRD, with friends, or at the green house with Amanda, Andu and Jacob. Myers had asked Amy a few times if she'd been back home, but she had declined to go there alone. She said, it was too much for her - being an empath. "The memories still live there. I must let them fade before I can go back, and same goes for Sean."

But Myers wasn't an empath. He was just a regular guy, with no superhuman abilities. A guy who was now standing on the porch of the house he had lived for 20 years of his life, and feeling every memory in his veins, in his spine, in his gut, as if he relived them all in a heartbeat.

Silently he took the key from his pocket, and opened the door.

"You sure about this?" a voice asked from behind.

Myers turned around, to face Alice Monaghan. The wind made her dark hair fly around her face, and her eyes were dark and serious.

"Yeah." he nodded. "I have to try, at least. If it's not gonna work here, then I don't know…"

He didn't finish that sentence.

He had asked Alice to channel Margot for him again, but Alice had simply told him that Margot hadn't made another appearance since the time in her apartment a week ago, when she had warned Myers about the Goddess. To contact her, she needed something solid. Something of hers, Alice had said, and that had lead Myers to think about the yellow house.

Maybe it was time to go home.

"I'm not liking this a bit." said Kat, crossing her arms over her chest. "This is a stupid plan and Margot would kick your ass for this."

"Well, I didn't ask you to join us, did I?" stated Myers.

"As if you gave me any choice, you suicidal dick head." Kat snapped. "I'm not gonna let you out of my sight as long as you're being so dumb about it."

Myers didn't reply anything to that, just gave out a sigh.

Hellboy still hadn't returned his gun, and Kat had gone mental after hearing what had happened at the top of the pyramid. That's what friends do, apparently. They give you shit about being in pieces. And what worse, Kat had forced Myers to see the shrink again. He hadn't even known Dr. Sassoon still practiced the profession, but there she was, and Myers had spent two hours talking to her about his death wish this past week. A thing he really didn't feel he was even remotely ready to do.

But Dr. Sassoon had told him one thing that had left him thinking. It was, that if he wanted to go on with his life (which he really didn't want to), he needed a closure. A letter, perhaps, where he would tell Margot how he felt and what he needed.

After that session Myers had picked up the phone and called Alice Monaghan.

If it was a closure he needed, there was better way to do it, than just writing a letter.

"You coming or not?" he asked, and stepped inside.

"Sure." said Alice.

"Reluctantly." said Kat.

But both women followed him in, nevertheless.

Ten minutes later they were sitting around the round kitchen table.

Myers had gathered some of Margot's things - her hairbrush, her favorite coffee mug and such. The curtains were closed, a couple of candles were lit, and between them, in the middle of the table, stood a mirror.

Alice had insisted for the urn holding Margot's ashes to be at the table as well, though it wasn't really an urn. It was just a cardboard box, a plain and simple one that could have hold anything. Nothing about its appearance revealed the fact, that it held all that was left of a whole person - but Myers knew. He remembered the night he had gone to see Margot at the morgue. Her closed eyes, the bloody holes in her neck. The red of her curls against the unnatural paleness of her cheeks. It was all gone now, all smoke and ashes and memories. He would never feel that skin on his own again, never those curls in his fingers. All that was left, was in that box, and he felt sick just watching it, like his guts were tied on a knot and sliced to pieces.

He turned his eyes to Alice, meeting her gaze over the mirror.

"Ready?" he asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be." she replied. "You?"

"No." he admitted. "But let's do this anyways. Is she… is she here?"

"Oh yes, and I didn't even have to call." Alice said, and placed her other hand on the urn, other on the edge of the mirror. "See for yourself."

"Margot-"

It was just a flickering, see-through image in the mirror - but it was her, and she looked just like she had when he had first seen her at the airport in Brussels, her red hair a huge mane of curls around her freckled face, her eyes a deep ocean of green shadows. She looked young and old at the same time, her skin soft and pale and ethereal, and seeing her took Myers' breath away.

"Thad." she whispered, and her voice came through Alice's lips. "Why did you ask me to come?"

"I… I had to see you. I needed to see you. Margot, I-"

"You did as I told you to do, sweetie. You turned on your phone and you saved Maggie. It is done. You don't need me anymore."

Her words were a wrecking ball that hit his gut.

"How can you say that? I need you, I need you like you're the air I breathe! I-"

"John, really." Margot sighed, moving Alice's lips, using her vocal chords. "This isn't right. You should've known better."

"Told you so." noted Kat, but Myers noticed she was pale too, and she leaned closer to the mirror, as if wanting to see Margot better, wanting to be closer to her.

"Not that it isn't good to see you—." Kat said to the image in the mirror. "But just that you know, this wasn't my idea."

"I know, Kat. I miss you too. You are my sister, and I'll never see you again."

And Myers knew what that meant. Kat was immortal. If she didn't die of an accident or an injury, she wasn't going to die at all. There would be no afterlife for her, no seeing Margot again.

But what came to himself—

"Margot, I need to know—" he managed. "I need to know if I would be with you if... if I killed myself. Would you be there waiting for me? Would we be together, if I—"

"Again with that?!" Kat yelped, and smacked Myers at the back of his head. "Margot, tell him to stop that whining!"

"Kat this is none of your fucking business! This is my life we're talking about—"

"Your life, John." Margot interrupted, her voice suddenly dark, piercing. "Your life! Not your death."

"Just..." He breathed. "Just answer me. I'll do it today, if that gets me to you."

"I held your heart in my hands. I made it start when it had stopped. I saved your life, John. You died and I brought you back. Don't you remember?"

"How could I not?"

"Then you know you can not throw it away."

Myers bent his head, let the tears fall to his cheeks, to his jaw. His shoulders were shaking, he was trembling, fighting against losing it completely.

"You saved my life. It doesn't mean you get to decide how it ends."

There was a small silence, only a few seconds but it felt like it lasted for an eternity. Myers raised his gaze back to the mirror, back to Margot's face, to her eyes that were so dark now, ponds of sadness in her milky white face.

"You always say how I saved your life, but darling, it is the other way around." she finally replied. "You saved me. You saved me in more ways than I ever deserved, and now it is time for you to save me one last time."

"How? How can I save you?"

"You have to let me go."

"No. Not that. Ask me anything else, anything, but not that—"

"John, please. I don't want to become one of those souls who are trapped in between forever. You cannot want that for me either. I know you love me, and because of that, you have to live and you have to let me go."

He was silent for a long while, unable to answer, swallowing the tears that tasted like blood, steel and heartbreak.

"I didn't know I was keeping you stuck." he finally said, his voice thick and hoarse. "I am sorry."

"I don't want you to be sorry. I don't want your apologies. I want you to live, really live. I want you to eat and drink and love and laugh and raise our children and fall in love again and—"

A sound, half sob, half laugh left Myers throat.

"I can never fall in love again. Don't ask that of me."

"Babe." Margot smiled. "Don't forget that the dead always know important stuff better than you do."

"Oh, come on! How can I?" Was his broken response. "How could I? Love again? You took my heart when you left!"

"I don't know. But I need you to try. Loving is in your nature."

Another silence. Myers shook his head, wiped tears off his cheeks but they just kept on flowing. It was like they had a will of their own, and he could do nothing about it.

"But what if I don't want to live? What if all I want to do, is die?"

He saw the pain in Margot's flickering image, in her eyes that reflected unknown stars and galaxies. She was silent for a long while, long enough to make Myers think that she wouldn't answer at all. When she finally did, her voice was almost inaudible, nothing but a faint whisper that left Alice's lips.

"It's so easy to find something worth dying for. But John, do not die, do not die for me. I need you to live. It is the only thing I ask of you. Please, live for me."

He was shaking his head. What she was asking him to do, was impossible. He felt the crushing weight of her request on every part of his soul, and yet he knew he couldn't tell her no. He had never been able to deny anything from her.

"I don't know how. I am nothing anymore. I am barely a human. There is nothing left for me here, Margot, nothing, because I am broken beyond repair."

"Thad, before I met you, I also thought that I was broken beyond repair. You proved me wrong."

Myers didn't reply anything to that. He felt like choking, like he was drowning and it was so hard to breath.

"Will I ever see you again?" he finally managed. "Please, Margot, please, tell me that… that this isn't the end."

"Oh John. There isn't such a thing as the end. It all goes around in circles. You will see."

Her image began to flicker like an old film, and Myers felt it in his gut that she was leaving. That this was the end, no matter what she said.

A dagger of pain, a burning blade, cut through him.

"No!" He growled. "I won't let you go, Margot please—"

"I love you." she said, with a smile that took his breath away. "And I love you too, Kat. Take care of John for me, will you?"

And then she was gone.

The mirror was empty, the room silent, and Myers' felt the tears falling to his neck, to his shirt collar and he couldn't breath.

"Well, that was some rough shit." Said Alice. "Damn, I hate it when they use my mouth."

Sooo, let's see if Myers finally stops that whining! :D This part IV is almost over. If you've managed to read this far, you're a superhero. And if you're a superhero, you can manage a review.