Disclaimer: This late in the game, you should know that I don't own any of this. Except, perhaps, Ayesha. 'Cos she is sweet.

I know I should have been writing the last bits of this, but the luxury of having nothing to do means that you, quite often, do nothing. So, in the time since we last met, I went on a cooking course, journeyed to Ireland for a week to spend time with my family (including a cousin whom I hadn't seen for goodness knows how long), got my exam results, squeed over them for about a week, and starting sorting through all this university stuff like a stick through…something horrid. I've also been writing a lot on my novel. And other stories. And reading Deathly Hallows. Ah, Snape; who would have thought you had it in you, you greasy-haired git? ( Sirius's words, not mine; I quite liked that sallow Potions master.)

Again, this chapter gave me trouble, which is why it took a while. Half way through I decided it just didn't work, so I rewrote it from Ayesha's point of view, because she is such a sweetheart and we needed one more chapter with her in it.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe I can get some kind of a happy ending."

"Not only are there no happy endings," she told him. "There aren't even any endings."

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.

Dream, Fables and Reflections, by Neil Gaiman

(These quotes are as celebration unto Neil Gaiman. I've pegged him up there in my list of idols. I am also partly ranting about the fact that Stardust doesn't get to England until October, dammit.)

Endings and beginnings

Ayesha was afraid as she ran through the rooms of the house, crying for Nadir. Where was he, where was he? She was so afraid, afraid as she hadn't been for ages.

She wanted Nadir. She wanted…she wanted her father. Nadir was her father; he had always been her father. She wanted her father!

"Nadir!" she choked, as she rounded a corner. "Nadir, where are you? Something's wrong! Nadir, I'm frightened, Nadir!"

As she ran faster and faster, the face of the man she had encountered up there kept appearing in front of her eyes, making her squeak and try to bat him away. She shouldn't have gone up there, she knew that now. Nadir would be so very angry with her…

But first, she just wanted him with her, if only to shout at her.

"Nadir!" she cried out again, wondering what the hot burning stuff at the corners of her eyes was. "Nadir, please-"

And then there were arms, scooping her up off her feet and into the air, and she knew who it was even as she threw her own arms around her neck. Nadir. Her Nadir. Her father.

"Nadir," was all she said, over and over again, as she kissed his cheeks and his nose and his forehead. "Nadir."

"Ayesha, what is wrong?" he asked, pulling himself out of her reach slightly so that he could look at her, and his green eyes were filled with sorrow. Was he already angry at her? "What is the matter?"

"I…" The words would not come. She tried to hug him close again to her, but he held his neck straight and would not allow her to pull him back. His eyes were no longer sad but piercing, as they always were when she had done something bad. And both of them knew now that she had done something bad.

"Ayesha?" Nadir asked more slowly. "Ayesha, what have you done?"

"I…I am sorry, Nadir," she managed, looking away from him at once, but his arms shifted so that one hand could come up and catch her chin and pull her face back to look at him.

"Ayesha?" His voice was patiently waiting. "What did you do?"

It was the hardest thing to speak, now. She had wanted to tell him, but that was before she had been confronted with him. "I am sorry. I followed you, Nadir."

"You…you did what?"

"I followed you," she went on quickly, trying not to see the surprise and shock in her father's eyes. "You were gone, and you didn't even tell me where you were going. So I went after you."

Nadir groaned, as she knew he would. "Ayesha-"

"I know you've told me not to follow you when you go out, but I…I just wanted to see. It…it was not nice."

"I should think it was not," Nadir said softly, holding her closer to him again. "Did you see anything on the way, Ayesha? Did anything try to - hurt you?"

"No," she answered honestly. "But when I reached – up there, there were many people, frightened and confused. I watched them run, and some of them burn." The people had looked like her dolls, which she used to play out her games with. But she had always made the voices for her dolls. They had never screamed on their own. "I was frightened. I wanted to go home. And then I saw a man staring at me. And I…I asked him if he had been the one who had hurt me."

Nadir stared at her before continuing. "Why?"

"He looked as if he was the sort of man who would hurt women. Lots of women, in bad ways. Then he screamed and ran away. Then I came back here, at once, even though I didn't mean to."

Nadir hugged her to him again, and she could feel a warm wetness on her shoulder. "Nadir? What is wrong?"

"Nothing, Ayesha. Nothing is wrong. And you have done nothing wrong either." Nadir tried to smile, but his smile was all wrong. She touched his face with her hand.

"Nadir? Father?" He started at that, but she pressed on. "Something is missing. Isn't it? Where is Erik?"

And then Nadir began to cry properly, though he smiled as he cried. "Erik's gone, Ayesha. He's happy. He's gone."

"Where has he gone?" She didn't really understand. Erik had always been here, ever since he had first come. How could he be anywhere else?

"Somewhere else."

"Will we…ever see him again, Nadir? Father?"

His smile was stronger than his tears. "We may yet, Ayesha. We may yet…daughter."

Later on, how later on she didn't know, after they had both cried together and held each other close, Nadir allowed her into his study with him. She sat down on a cushion and watched as he sat in his great wooden chair pulled back from his desk, resting his hands on the arms, and closed his eyes; and she started when he began to speak to the room and the room spoke back.

"I thought you might contact me again, Darius," he said, and there was the ghost of a grin upon his lips.

"You have your right to know how it ends, Nadir," came a voice from the shadow of a mouth, a mouth, she thought, that looked like Nadir's, even though she couldn't see it. "If it hadn't been for you…"

"Yes, yes, I am aware of that," Nadir interrupted, though without much irritation. "How is everyone?"

"Part of the mansion is damaged by the fire, as well as many fine garments, but fortunately nobody was seriously hurt," said a girl's voice, soft but not timid.

"Except for Louis – he is the husband of Celandine," said another female voice, and she sounded slightly more clipped than the first two, as if all the unnecessary words had been cut out. "He must have been hit on the head, or he was mad to start with. He keeps raving about a little girl with a slit throat."

"Ah." Even though his eyes were looking into something that was not there, she could feel that Nadir was staring at her with disapproval.

"Celandine has asked her brother to arrange an annulment," the clipped woman went on. "She claims that the treatment of her by her husband led to a…what is the word? A miscarriage. Comte Philippe has agreed."

"The younger Comte Philippe, of course," a third girl's voice went on, and she sounded please, very satisfied indeed. "The only one, now. They found the other one's body in one of the corridors, rather than the secret room, so it's still a secret, and we intend to keep it that way. There's no wound, so they think that he died of a heart attack, or some such thing. They can say that he died quickly, or other rubbish."

"And Raoul? And Christine?" Nadir said quickly. "How are they?"

"We are here, Nadir." It was another man, sounding far more tired but also deeply content, from some deep depths. "Darius married us as soon as we came back, and these three and Madame Giry and Comte Philippe were the witnesses. They were the only people we could find who weren't panicking."

"Nadir," and at once she sat up, for it was Christine, the pretty lady, who was speaking now, even though she wasn't there, "we all wish to know…how is Erik?" She spoke as if it was everyone wished to know, but especially herself.

"Erik…Erik is gone, Mademoiselle…Madame Christine."

"Gone?" Christine, the pretty lady, sounded as if she were hurt.

"Gone? Where?" the tired sounding man asked.

"I do not know." As Nadir said that a tear rolled down his face. Perhaps he didn't even know it, as he smiled. "He has moved on, on from the Land of the Dead, to somewhere beyond that – what that is, even I cannot say, Vicomte. He was able to let go of life, at last. He was happy. He is happy, now. He is at peace, forever more."

"I am glad," the tired man said, and he really did sound it. "Nobody deserves peace more than he does."

"And we will have peace now," the satisfied girl said. "We are no longer in danger, any of us. And I think Carlotta is celebrating that, judging by how fervently she attended to that young man who had gotten tangled up in the curtain and nearly choked to death, washing his brow and holding his hand. What was his name again, the one that you called such a silly boy?"

"Oh, hush, Meg, hush! This is no time for that!" The clipped girl sounded annoyed, but not in a bad way.

"I think it is," said Christine. "Erik said that we must learn to live. So here we are, living, each in our own way. And I am so very glad for it."

That made up Ayesha's mind. Nadir had told her not to talk, not to break his concentration, but she wanted to see the pretty lady again. So she got up, and walked over to Nadir, and touched his hand. "Nadir?"

Nadir looked over at her, not as annoyed as she had expected. There was only a very little there, like oil on bread. "What is it, Ayesha?" he asked, softly, gently.

"I want to…can I see? Can I talk to them?"

"Nadir?" One of the voices, the first man, who hadn't spoken for a long time, spoke now, sounding anxious. "What is that?"

Nadir considered her for a moment, and then he smiled. He reached out his arms for her, and she scrambled up and onto his knees, seating herself upon his lap. He put his arms around her, holding her safe.

"Now, look carefully," he said to her, and only to her. "Imagine you're looking for something, something special."

"For Fatimah?"

"Yes, for Fatimah. Now, imagine that you're looking through everything important, and nothing else matters, nothing at all."

And she did. It was quite easy, really. She felt Nadir's knees under her, and his arms around her, but suddenly she wasn't looking at Nadir's study at all. She was looking at a man sitting opposite her, quite near. His skin was quite brown, his hair was short, and he was dressed in black. That cheered her. She liked black, it was what Erik had always worn. She didn't like his wrist so much, because there was blood that had come from it, and she didn't like blood. But she liked his face. She liked it very much. In some small way, it looked like Nadir. On either side of him were shadow figures.

"Nadir, who is this?" asked the man who was sitting down, with some surprise. He was the one who had spoken first.

She felt Nadir's chin rest on top of her head, and his jaw move as he spoke. "This is Ayesha, Darius. My daughter. Ayesha, dear, this is Darius, my great grandson."

"Hello," she spoke shyly – she was always shy with people she didn't know.

"Good evening." Darius didn't look surprised any more; he looked as if he understood. He was smiling now.

"Excuse me, please, but I wanted to speak to Christine. Is she here?"

One of the shadow figures moved forward, revealing the pretty lady, Christine. "I'm here, Ayesha."

"Hello, Christine. Are you upstairs again? Nadir said you came from upstairs. I went upstairs a little while back, but I wasn't supposed to, and I scared a man so that he ran away. How did you get back?"

One of the shadowy figures said, lowly, "Well, at least we know that Louis wasn't imagining things," and the clipped girl replied, just as lowly, "Does it matter? He is mad now, for better or for worse."

"My friends helped me get back, Ayesha. They were very brave." Christine smile now looked watery, not because it was failing but because her eyes were leaking not-quite tears.

"Christine? Will you come and see us again? I liked playing with you."

Christine shook her head. "I'm sorry, Ayesha, but I don't think that I'll be able to see you again, or at least not for a very long time. I'm staying up here, you see."

"Oh. Yes." She thought, and then she looked at the other shadowy figures. She could see there faces now. There was a girl with honey colored skin and red hair, and a girl with golden hair, and a girl with dark hair like Christine's, and a man with white hair. They all looked at her curiously as she spoke. "I hope you know how lucky you are. You're all very lucky to have Christine, and to have each other. You must take good care of yourselves, all of you, and take good care of each other. Do you understand?"

There was a chorus of "Yes," from all of them, as they smiled. They did understand. That was good. She looked back at Christine. "Goodbye, Christine. I hope I will see you again, though not too soon if you don't want it."

"I look forward to it as well, Ayesha." Christine blew her a kiss. "You take care of yourself and Nadir as well."

Then they all thanked Nadir, one after the other, for helping them so much, and the man with the white hair and Christine thanked him most of all, saying that they would never forget his kindness. And Nadir smiled and thanked them all in turn, holding her close on his lap and bidding them farewell, hoping to see them again, though, as she had said, not too soon.

And then they drew back into the shadows again, and Darius was the only one that they could see. And Nadir said goodbye to him, more slowly now, and she said goodbye as well. She liked Darius. She liked him very much indeed.

"Farewell, Nadir. And farewell to you too, Ayesha. Perhaps we shall meet again."

"I have no doubt of that, Darius. I'll always be here, waiting for you. Both of us will."

Then Darius was gone, and they were sitting in Nadir's study once more. She wriggled around so that she could look at Nadir, tears on his face but still smiling. She thought for a little while before she said what she was thinking.

"They've all been sad. Haven't they? Just like Erik. They've all been sad and afraid and lost. But they're happy now. They've found each other."

"They have, Ayesha. In more ways than one." Nadir ran his fingers through her hair, and hugged her close to him. "Oh, little Ayesha. You're so much cleverer than so many others. Including me, and that is not a small admission, I'll have you know."

"What will happen to them, Nadir?"

"I can't answer that. What do you think will happen to them, Ayesha, my wise little daughter? And to us, at that?"

She thought a little more, and then she snuggled close to him, tucking her head under his chin. "We'll be all right. And they will, as well. They're going to be all right."

Daaaw. Feel the love, people! It's rather odd that this relationship built up, considering that in the beginning Nadir was based on Elder Gutknicht (that old skeleton with the beard in the roomful of books) and Ayesha was based on the little skeleton girl with the pigtails and the pink dress, both from Corpse Bride – but I felt that it worked. They're just so cute! And Ayesha is useful as well, in that she is rather a simple little soul – in a good way – and so she doesn't need massive amounts of explanation or description that really isn't needed. I should have used her more. But at least she got to take revenge on one of the many men who 'hurt' women. Amen to that.

ONE MORE CHAPTER, PEOPLE! SHOULD BE OUT TO YOU, VERY, VERY SOON! ASSUMING NOTHING GOES WRONG!

Oh, and reviews for the half-Irish seamstress, please.