Okay, folks, so here is the alternate/extended ending. I hadn't originally planned for the story to end this way. It's kind of the same deal as "One Day at Christmas", you can pick for yourself whether you want to end the story this way or leave it off at the last chapter. (Incidentally, this chapter is titled because it's meant to take place after ODaC). As usual, I don't own "Ghostbusters". Warning again for some strong language in this chapter. Thank you to everyone who read and favorited, it means a lot.

Epilogue #2

One Day After Christmas

Peter Venkman was having one of his best days in years. Ray had called late last night to give him the word that the Ghostbusters had rescued Jillian and Voga Ra'El's cult had been dispatched to a dead dimension. He'd crept into the Department of Homeland Security for a little early-morning sabotage (made that much easier because of his recent promotion), and-best of all-he'd walked into the building, enjoying the shock, confusion, and then the joyful congratulations of his co-workers.

If any of them suspected that his "miraculous" recovery had anything to do with recent paranormal events in New York and Las Vegas, they damned sure weren't going to question the Deputy Director about it.

Peter had called Dana to let her know that he'd be late. She'd scolded him again, already angry with him for demanding to be released from the hospital far too early and his insistence on trying to work at all when she didn't think he was physically ready for it (she was correct, of course, but, naturally, he wasn't going to admit it).

He intended to stay and make sure every resource of the department was used to track down his goddaughter, though realistically, he'd known if anyone was going to have the knowledge and the ability to find Jillian, it was the Ghostbusters.

And sure enough, Ray had soon texted him that she'd been spotted in Las Vegas and asked Peter to arrange for the fastest plane at his disposal to get the Ghostbusters there in time to stop whatever Voga Ra'El had in mind. It irked Peter to have to stay behind-again-while his family was in danger. Staring at his laptop and waiting for the phone to ring did nothing to make him feel like he was helping. He was beyond exhausted and drifted to sleep in his overstuffed desk chair.

He'd been awakened abruptly by the feeling that someone—something-was in the office with him.

Peter had opened his eyes and Jillian was standing right in front of him.

Thirty years of dealing with ghosts and ghouls and other paranormal creatures had given Peter enough experience to know a possessed person when he saw one. The fact that a deep, demonic, second voice overlapped with hers when Jillian spoke only confirmed it.

"Gah! Jillian? Or is it Voga Ra'El?" He didn't ask how she could be in New York City when she had been spotted in Las Vegas only a half hour earlier. Again, years of dealing with the supernatural filled in the blanks for him: Specters and demigods pretty much popped up wherever they damned pleased, so crossing the country wouldn't take much more than a wink of Voga Ra'El's eye (or Jillian's eye in this case).

Peter had sat there trying to come up with a plan to help...or to escape if Voga Ra'El decided to attack him. He reckoned he'd be toast before he could slide from his desk chair to his wheelchair.

Jillian/Voga Ra'El was staring at him in a manner that made him feel like a butterfly about to be pinned to a display board. "Peter Venkman. You've destroyed many of my kind."

He wondered if it was weird that he was proud of having a reputation on the paranormal grapevine. "It's a living. Pardon the expression. If you hop out of my goddaughter, maybe I won't turn you into a puddle of slime."

Voga Ra'El was unimpressed with the threat, clearly a bluff since the only weapon within Peter's reach at the moment was his stapler. Even if he'd had a proton accelerator within his grasp, it was an empty threat. Peter wouldn't lift a finger against the Toltec specter while it was residing in his goddaughter. Voga/Jillian circled around the desk, approaching him slowly. Peter made himself fold his hands in his lap in what he hoped looked casual and calm to the ghost.

"I could snap your neck with a thought-but I gave this one my word."

Peter raised an eyebrow. "Oh? What word would that be-?"

Voga/Jillian reached for him with inhuman speed and lifted him out of the chair by his throat. Peter was certain he'd lost his air of nonchalance, in fact he would have liked to scream if she weren't squeezing his windpipe closed…

…but the part of his mind not gripped with panic that he might be strangled by this ghost noticed something.

Feeling.

Feeling in his legs.

The headache that persisted despite the fact that his skull fracture had healed also abated.

Voga/Jillian was setting him gently on feet that he could finally feel. He let out a cry, expecting to fall the moment she released her hold on his throat. He wobbled, clung to the desk for support, but his legs grew stronger with each passing second until he steadied himself.

The specter backed away, satisfied with its work. "A simple trade-she would not come into my family until her former family was made whole and safe," it explained.

Aw, crap, Jillian…Peter cursed inwardly. Ray had already explained to Peter about Janine's injury and Jillian's bargain for Voga Ra'El to save her mother. It had not occurred to him that she might throw healing Peter into the deal. She barely knew him. Was it because he was family or repayment for his saving her from being a permanent lab rat for the D.H.S.? Either way, Peter wasn't happy.

"It makes no difference to me. You'll be dead soon enough. You may have a few last hours if it pleases her," Voga/Jillain added.

"What does that mean-?" The question was a knee-jerk reaction. He knew the answer: Voga Ra'El intended to unleash the Apocalypse. He didn't care about healing Peter or Janine because they would eventually die in the cataclysm anyway.

Peter tried to move to grab Jillian (a ridiculous notion, since Voga Ra'El could clearly overpower him), but she'd disappeared as quickly as she'd materialized.

The clock on the wall read seven forty-five E.S.T.

Now that Jillian was safe, Peter was rather enjoying literally being back on his feet. For one thing, it made it easier to circle his cringing agents like a lion about to pounce, which added to the fun of the on-going interrogation.

"Let me get this straight: You're telling me that all the data is gone? Paradigm-altering astrophysics has been….deleted?"

He'd been expecting this visit from Agent Rorke and Dr. Valeria Marquez all morning. Rorke had been assigned to guard the artifacts from the Hidalgo; Dr. Marquez was responsible for cataloging and analyzing all the equations that Voga Ra'El had left in Abby Yates' apartment. Rorke had failed miserably to prevent Raina Chaix from reclaiming the Totlec artifacts. Marquez had arrived at the laboratory that morning to a crashed computer and missing files.

The last time he'd enjoyed watching a government employee squirm this much was the day Walter Peck had been booted from the Mayor's office.

Poor Dr. Marquez was so distressed that Peter pitied her. "I can't explain it, Director Venkman. Every file on the hard drive is corrupted."

Peter suspected the industrial magnet that he'd used on the machine before her arrival that morning probably had something to do with the destruction of her hard drive, but, obviously, he couldn't tell her that. "And the automatic back-up?" he asked.

Marquez stared at the ground, too humiliated to look at her boss. "Failed, apparently."

Peter hid a smirk. "Hard copies?"

Rorke supplied the answer to that question. "Accidentally shredded."

"Oops." He raised an eyebrow. Peter might have enough chivalry to regret deceiving Marquez, but torturing Rorke was going to be the director's new favorite past time. After all, the man had still shot Jillian on that roof-top. Peter had used the shredder in Rorke's office to destroy the hard copies of the equations, and he knew damned well they wouldn't find so much as one of Peter's fingerprints in the room or find any security camera logs indicating he'd ever been in the room. Peter knew how to cover his tracks. "Weren't you in charge of security, Agent Rorke?"

Rorke didn't answer.

"Well, kids, all I can say is that's incompetence on an epic scale. A trifecta of fuck-ups, wouldn't you agree?" Peter asked

They were afraid to answer…luckily, they were saved when the intercom on Peter's desk beeped. "What is it, Edgar?" Peter shouted to the receptionist on the other side of his door.

Edgar shouted back (gritting his teeth at his boss' antipathy for the intercom). "Sir—you have a Skype call from Agent Barrett. She said you'd know what it's about. It's on your computer now."

Peter's caustic humor vanished. He turned his back on the two agents with a curt order: "Get out."

Marquez blinked. She'd been expecting to hear him fire her. "Sir?"

He was already in his desk chair, concentrating on his computer. "Amscray. Leave. Buh-bye. Back to work. Try not to delete anything else."

Rorke and Marquez were perplexed, but recognized a reprieve when they saw one. They hot-footed it out the door before their boss changed his mind. Peter had already forgotten about them before he keyed up the Skype call. "Barrett?"

Agent Barrett was not technically under Peter's authority, her specialty skewing more to operating drones and satellites rather than the paranormal. Few agents were better at tracking fugitives by whatever means necessary. She was also a closet UFO buff, Comic Con cos-play champ, confirmed believer in all things paranormal, and secret Ghostbuster groupie since Venkman, Stantz, and Winston had rescued her eighth-grade class from a Class 4 semi-anchored apparition almost twenty years ago. If she hadn't loved computers more than ghosts, he would have transferred the agent to his department his first day at the D.H.S.

She'd put herself at Venkman's disposal for any favor he needed, and therefore distinguished herself as one of a very few agents in whom he had complete confidence. Barrett had been assigned a single task, but one of supreme importance, by Venkman in the last two days…a task that should have been completed by now.

"Director, sir," Barrett greeted him. "I have some information on that A.P.B. you put out two days ago."

Peter didn't have the heart to be sarcastic with her, so he settled for slight teasing: "Kimberly, in case you hadn't heard, Dr. Holtzmann has been located."

She made a face as though Peter had uttered the stupidest words she'd ever heard. "I know, sir, but you need to see something: Security at the Altamont Hotel in Las Vegas reported Dr. Holtzmann on site at five twenty-three p.m., Pacific Standard Time, on Wednesday night, correct?"

Barrett called up the security camera images to display them on Peter's screen. His jaw twitched at the sight of Jillian surrounded by the Toltec cultists. He wished he'd been there to see the little surprise she'd unleashed on the ghouls. "So?" he asked.

"Security camera footage at a bank ATM in Albany, New York, caught an image of Dr. Holtzmann there Wednesday night at seven fifty-seven p.m., Eastern Standard Time, which is four fifty-seven p.m. Las Vegas time," Barrett informed him.

"You said Albany?" There was only one thing he knew of that connected Jillian to Albany. Peter could literally feel a chill run down his spine.

She nodded. "I did. Sir, the footage had to have been altered. It's physically impossible for Dr. Holtzmann to cross the country in less than thirty minutes-"

It had been seven fifty-one when Voga/Jillian paid Peter a visit. He recalled this because every electronic device in his office had been frozen at that time after they'd departed.

Peter chided her. "Kim-have I taught you nothing? She was possessed at the time, so let's keep a flexible definition of 'impossible'. Never mind about that. I'm sending you a photo. Put out an A.P.B. on this person." He fussed with his computer until he remembered how to properly send a file from his device to her cell phone. He could operate a nuclear accelerator, sure, but all this social media garbage was a whole other level of 'pain in the ass'…

Barrett's phone beeped. Her eyes widened when she saw the picture. "Um, Director Venkman, with all due respect, are you screwing with me? This is a joke, right?"

He would have said the same thing if their places were reversed. "That's a fair question. Just do it. And, Kim, please…keep it quiet."

She shook her head. If the boss wanted to waste her time on pointless searches, well, this was a government operation. If she piddled away enough time and resources on a dead-end task, she might just end up with a promotion. "Yes, sir."

Peter offered her a grateful smile, which fell from his face the instant she ended the call. He couldn't decide whether to hope his instincts were right or pray to God he was wrong.

Two Months Later…outside Albany, New York

The homeless encampment was normally visible only to the indifferent passengers of the commuter trains that rolled through the area. They had deliberately found a spot along the Hudson River close enough to town that they could visit the food banks and shelters when the weather was too harsh but far enough from the 'respectable' areas that the police didn't bother to run them off.

He'd been in the camp as long as he could remember-which wasn't all that impressive when his memory went back only about two months. He'd been found wandering in the woods by a kind-hearted young woman, who'd dropped him off at the local hospital. After farting around with doctors who could do absolutely nothing to restore his lost memory or help identify him, he'd given up and checked himself out of the hospital.

It had seemed like a good plan, except that he'd belatedly figured out he had no place to go except the street, the shelters, and eventually this camp.

He wondered if anyone out there missed him, if he had a worried family searching for him (or maybe he'd been such a complete bastard that they'd dumped him out on the street for dead and he'd been so traumatized by the betrayal that he'd developed hysterical amnesia…except that he didn't feel particularly hysterical and his behavior since being found so far hadn't caused his few acquaintances to call him any derogatory name like 'bastard').

The police had taken his fingerprints and picture and promised to try to find his identity when he'd arrived at the hospital. That had proved fruitless, he'd called them thirty times only to be told each time that they had nothing yet but were working on it. He'd snatched a cell phone from his doctor's pockets and familiarized himself with the device in order to search on his own (at least until the doctor figured out what happened and reclaimed his property, swearing to add the data minutes to his patient's bill—a ridiculous threat considering he knew his patient had no money to pay his bill in the first place).

He was sick of wandering into town every morning to sit on the streets and beg people for spare change, of fighting for a bunk at the overcrowded homeless shelters and generally not getting one, and trudging back to this dirty, smelly mattress that he called home day after day after day. He'd decided that, as soon as winter was over and he dared move away from the warmth of the fires that burned in rusted out barrels around the camp, he would try searching on his own (assuming the cold or hunger didn't take him before springtime).

The black SUV that rolled into the encampment that afternoon caused a mild stir among the residents. It was quite obviously a government vehicle. The government tended to show up only when they wanted the homeless to relocate themselves, so their first reaction to the intruders was to make themselves smaller on their mattresses or inside their cocoons of blankets and tarps. A few hurled insults at the gray-haired man in the fedora and the houndstooth overcoat when he climbed out of the passenger seat of the vehicle.

He watched as the fancy government man ordered his driver to wait in the car. Government Man unloaded two large boxes labeled "military rations" from the back of the vehicle and deposited them at the center of the camp. He rolled his eyes at the man's blatant bribe. After he backed away, slowly, hesitantly, people made their way to the boxes to snatch up the foil packets of food. Probably setting everyone up-make nice with the vagrants before kicking them off the land.

Leaving the men and women to their meals, Government Man began searching the faces of the people gathered beneath the bridge and along the riverbank, pausing to hand money from a small wad of bills to anyone who asked. He didn't move from his mattress, merely kept his distrustful gaze on the man as he slowly made his way closer.

When Government Man spotted him there, burrowed beneath the threadbare thrift-store coat and filthy blanket, he froze in his tracks, suddenly turning ashen-faced. "I will be damned."

He took a step closer before the vagrant growled a warning in a gravelly, barely-used voice: "I don't care if you got a court order, we aren't leaving, buddy. Fuck off."

The last reaction he'd expected was for Government Man to grin and step closer. "I probably shouldn't have expected a hug. I'm sorry." He moved to kneel beside the mattress-not so near that the homeless man on the mattress perceived him as a threat and lash out, but close enough to look him in the eye. "I'm guessing you don't remember me, but my name is Peter."

The homeless man blinked. Beneath the blankets, his fingers curled around the pipe he kept for self-defense. No, he didn't remember Peter. He didn't even remember himself. "Nice to meet you, Peter. Fuck off."

Peter the Government Man chuckled, a bitter sound. He wondered what was so damn funny. He wouldn't laugh when the pipe connected with his skull if he didn't take the hint and move on. "I'll bet you don't even remember your own name. Probably you don't remember anything beyond…oh, two months ago?"

The homeless man stiffened a bit. Peter could see that the words hit home, so he pressed on: "Your first memory is probably a very pretty young woman with a funny voice. Like two people talking at once? And I'll bet she found you somewhere near the cemetery, right?"

Now the homeless man sat up. Peter the Government Man was either psychic (and he couldn't be much of a psychic if he didn't know about the pipe that might bash in his skull if he displeased the vagrant) or he'd done his homework. Someone had come specifically looking for him.

Did Peter the Government Man know him? His name?

He didn't dare to hope. Still, he was intrigued enough to play along a bit longer. "She left me at the hospital." She told him that she'd found him and that the hospital would help him. He'd be safe. She had held his face in her hands. He had wondered about that, whether they were friends, who she was, how she'd found him, but she'd never come back. "Who was she?"

Peter rocked back on his heels, then cringed when his back protested the crouching and painfully stood up. "After the nice lady left you, the hospital kept you a couple of days and then kicked you out. You were sent to the mental hospital to be treated for amnesia. They probably told you it was irreversible before they kicked you out, too. You went to the police, but they couldn't find your fingerprints anywhere in the national database? No pictures of you on the internet. No missing persons reports at the police station. No posters of you at the post office. Like you'd never existed…"

The homeless man stood up, pulling the blankets around his shoulders. He stared into Peter's eyes, as if the orbs would tell him what was going on in the Government Man's mind, his agenda…or if he could pull answers directly from the man's brain.

"You were erased, just like me. No fingerprints or photos left on record. No birth certificate, no home address," Peter added. "The government can hide anyone…or make them disappear."

"Who are you, Peter?"

Peter was the very picture of sincerity now. "I've been looking for you for the last two months-the hospitals kicked you out before I got there. I'm sorry I'm late, buddy."

The vagrant man still dared not hope, but he asked anyway: "You know me? You know who am I?"

"That's a really long story. You were-away-for a very long time. The nice lady who found you...she didn't come back for you because she doesn't remember what she did." Peter's gaze was sorrowful. "There's going to be a lot of people who will be very surprised to see you. Let's take this really slow because, I'm not going to lie to you, it's going to get a little weird."

He'd been living on the streets with no memory. Teenagers had tried to beat him up for fun. People had tried to rob him of his few possessions while he slept. He'd had more days than he could count going without food. 'Weird' didn't scare him. "You didn't answer my question, Peter."

"No, I didn't." The Government Man took a deep breath and then offered his hand, which the vagrant hesitantly shook. "My name is Peter Venkman. And your name is Egon Spengler."

The End

I know, I know…turns out I just didn't have the heart to leave ol' Egon killed off. As I said, pick whichever ending you like.