Disclaimer: see chapter one. Should mention that I don't own E.T either. Just covering my bases, even though it's a teeny-tiny reference.

AN: So, it's been a busy couple of weeks. The indoor swimming pool became a reality, and real life gave way to uni issues and everything spiralled out from that point. Not to mention a slight reluctance to do this chapter, just because of what's happening and who it's happening to. Having said that, thank you for sticking with this for so long, even with sporadic updates. Hope you guys enjoy... well, enjoy is the wrong word, but you know what I mean.

Chapter Twelve

There is a saying in the English language: there is always a light at the end of a tunnel.

In some cases, this is true.

In some cases, this is false.

You're more likely to find the light at the end of E.T.'s finger. At least, that was what was shown in the classic film, the remake of the classic and the remake of the remake. E.T. always had that light guiding him.

The cold, harsh reality is that your life runs on a set of train tracks. You land on your feet and start running in one direction, always checking over your shoulder to keep the monster at bay. You run to avoid the light.

You see, the light at the end of the tunnel really isn't a light. Nor is it at the end of a tunnel.

In actual fact, it is the headlamps of a speeding train.

At eighty years of age, the only thing the man has lost is weight. He is still as stubborn, as obstinate as he was when he was a little boy. It is this stubbornness that caused him to deny the fact that cataracts was clouding his vision, clouding his judgment.

Had he been a little less stubborn, he would not have dragged himself behind the wheel of a car on a dark, moonless night. He would not have taken a curve on the road too fast. He would not have careered wildly, trying to avoid the unforeseen potholes, crevices deeper than the moon craters he had marvelled at when he was in space, flooded from the rain that was pelting down. He would not have flipped the car onto its roof. The car would not have skidded and smashed through a fence. He would not have woken up, freed from the car, disoriented, and stumbled out onto the train tracks.

In the distance, a small light source shines in the distance. I watch him as he turns and waves at it. As it grows bigger, he hobbles towards it. The train passes the point of no return, and the peroxide haired elder still hasn't realised.

Only when he is moments away from being cleaved in two underneath the steel wheels of the train, realisation dawns. He turns again, steely determination in cool blue eyes, but there is no point.

It happens in a flash. The train passes through him, a knife sliding through melted butter, clean in two.

Off with his head, I think to myself.

Blood smears away in two neat lines as the train slices through him. Brain matter leaks out from his ears. Such a waste of an intellectual.

Once the train passes, I kneel down by him and piece him back together again. There are no King's horses, and no King's men here; it is just me stitching him together again, and it is painstaking work. There are 206 bones in the human body, and I know that this man will not come with me until I have pieced him back together with anatomical precision. He will not accept a radius missing from his left arm, nor will he like me omitting his zygomatic arch. There is nothing I can do about his liquids, his flat-as-a-pancake organs, though.

I think of the nursery rhyme, the one where the egg shatters into thousands of pieces, just because he sat on a brick wall. Just because he was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

When he is whole, he rises up, nods at me and gives me a hug.

Would never have thought you would have done that, Alan.

I shrug.

Thank you, for my dignity.

It's the least I could do. His hand slides through the crook in my elbow, and he smiles.

Where to, now?

Where to, indeed?

He knows not. I know not. We move with fraternal fluidity, the way we always have, to wherever we are supposed to go.