Disclaimer: All Spider-Man characters are property of Marvel. Only Lynnea is mine. The line Otto quotes is from the poem 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell, a line I've been wanted to slip in here somewhere.

Moonlight Becomes You

Epilogue – After, in the Dark

November 9 – 10

A thick cloud covered obscured the night sky, plunging the graveyard into near blackness. Otto was struck by a feeling of déjà vu as he threaded his way through the maze of headstones, shadowed by Lynne and Rosie. It hadn't been all that long ago that he'd visited this very same site, seeking his wife's grave. That night had ended in a death, and resulted in his capture, imprisonment, and torture by O'Connell.

He wondered what the consequences of this night were going to be.

The grave site looked very different from when he'd last seen it. Lynnea had (reluctantly) used some of the cash they'd recovered from O'Connell's office to hire someone to dig up Rosie's grave and restore her grave marker and coffin. The casket wasn't as fine as her original had probably been, he saw when he peered downward, but it wasn't just a few plywood boards nailed together, either. It would do.

Lynnea searched his gaze for any sign of disapproval, looking faintly relieved when she saw none. "Ready?" she asked him. She tugged on Rosie's hand, and the woman came to the grave's edge, moving jerkily, like a puppet on strings. There was no expression on her face; there hadn't been since her connection with O'Connell had been severed. "I don't have to do this," Lynnea said, watching Otto through narrowed eyes. "It would be easy for me to tie her to you, make you her controller. You'd never have to lose her again."

His desperate loneliness was such that, for a brief moment, he actually considered Lynnea's proposition. But would he be better off with this cruel parody of life by his side than if Rosie were put back where she belonged? "'The grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace,'" he quoted softly. He'd always taken the line to mean that there was no love after death, an interpretation Rosie had always told him was too grim. In the half-light, he saw Lynnea cock her head curiously, but he didn't explain. "She's dead, Lynnea. She's not the woman I love, not anymore. I would have her body, but nothing else. It's better this way." His voice cracked slightly, but he wouldn't let himself break down.

Not until he was far away from prying eyes; only then would he give in to the despair welling within him. Only then would he let himself completely break down…

She seemed pleased by his answer, and Otto found himself wondering if she actually cared what happened to him. Or maybe it was just easier to lay his wife to rest than bond her to Otto. "I won't ask you not to watch, but stay back. And whatever you see, don't try to stop me, all right?" Otto nodded. Lynnea's voice softened. "Just remember; she won't feel a thing. This'll be just like going to sleep. There's no pain, no fear. It's probably the only ability of mine that I can say that about." Was that regret in her voice?

Otto stepped back from the grave, though he stayed close enough to be able to see his wife's pale face. If Lynnea did anything to hurt her… Though he was no longer certain she'd even feel it anymore, considering her complete unresponsiveness.

Lynnea stood Rosie in the coffin, finding a foothold for herself in the narrow gap between the coffin's edge and the wall of earth behind her. She gave Otto a thumbs up, then closed her eyes and began to murmur, too softly for Otto to hear. What he caught didn't sound to be from any language he was familiar with.

Otto remembered very little of what followed. Lynnea's voice was hypnotic, soothing, and he felt his eyelids drooping. Through that half-lidded gaze, he thought he saw an aura of darkness around the girl; not shadows, but a complete absence of substance, as if the darkness swallowed everything it touched. Otto forced his eyes open and the apparition vanished from his sight, leaving Lynnea alone in the grave with his wife. He wondered if he'd just been seeing things, or if that dark form had really been there…

Lynnea's voice rose to a fevered pitch, the nonsensical syllables spilling from her lips assaulting his ears. And then she pulled a knife from her bag, different from the one she favored as a weapon with its dark, wavy blade and ornate hilt. He managed to hold back a cry when Lynnea used it to draw a shallow cut across Rosie's palm with the tip, squeezing two drops of blood to fall to the coffin beneath them, staining the cream satin lining. He kept his silence as Lynnea put aside the blade, setting it on the grave's edge above her, then drew another, identical dagger from her bag and slit her own palm, adding her blood to Rosie's.

This seemed to be the climax of the ritual; Lynnea said softly, in English this time, "With this blood, to the grave I bind you." The effect on Rosie was immediate and shocking. Her body began to stiffen, and her skin began to show signs of decay. She fell to her knees, then pitched forward into the coffin. Otto wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn't pull himself away from the sight of his wife's rotting body as she positioned herself in the coffin, crossed her arms over her chest, and closed her sunken eyes. Then Lynnea closed the coffin's lid, forever shutting her off from view.

"Could you…" Lynnea tried, but her voice seemed to give out on her. So she just held up her arms, and Otto sent the upper left actuator to gently extract her from the grave. He set her on her feet, but didn't immediately release her. She leaned heavily against the metal coils, then tried to take one wobbly step away. The small metal tentacle retracted into the actuator.

Lynnea's features were pinched with exhaustion when she finally turned towards Otto. "It's done," she said unnecessarily. "The diggers I hired will come back before dawn to cover the grave, and all will be as it was before." She wiped her hand across her forehead, oblivious of the streak of blood she left behind. Suddenly, her knees seemed to give out under her, and Otto reached out to support her. She permitted the touch without even flinching, letting him lower her to the dry grass. Her movements were slow as she snagged the strap to her bag and dragged it over to her side. To Otto, the ritual had seemed simple; Lynnea's exhaustion suggested that more had happened than was visible to his untrained eye. As the re-animator pulled a roll of gauze out of her pack and began to wrap her palm, Otto retrieved the two knives she'd cast aside. "Be careful with those!" Lynnea said sharply. "Only handle the hilts; do not touch the corpse puppet's blood!"

Otto had been about to snap back that he knew enough not to grab a knife by the edge, but her urgency gave him pause. "Why? What's wrong with the blood?" Lynnea had exchanged knives, rather than reuse the one that she'd cut Rosie with. He'd just assumed it was the normal fear of contamination.

"It's one of the rules of my profession: Never mix a corpse puppet's blood with your own. I don't know why; but I'm not going to question it." Finished with her ministrations, she grabbed a rag from her bag and took the daggers, carefully wiping away the excess blood before wrapping the blades in another rag, then placing them in a plastic wrap. Clearly, she took preventing cross-contamination seriously. Suddenly uneasy, Otto glanced down at his own palm – he hadn't come in contact with the blood on the knife, but there had been a pool of Rosie's blood on the table in his suite, with his handprint right in the center of it… But, except for the slight discoloration he'd noted earlier, there didn't seem to be anything wrong.

Lynnea finished putting her equipment away and stood unsteadily, brushing the dark soil off her knees. Otto didn't offer his assistance; she seemed to be recovered enough to walk on her own. "So… this is good bye," she said. "Working with you has been… interesting." There was a wealth of emotion in that one word, both good and bad. She held out her left hand, since her right had been the one she'd cut, and he took it in his own, careful not to jostle his shoulder as they shook. "No offense, but I hope this is the last time we work together. I don't think I could survive any more encounters with you." She smiled to take the sting out of her words. It was a cruel way of putting it, but she was right; if he wasn't trying to kill her, someone else was as a consequence of his actions. And the feeling was mutual; this woman's powers had only brought him heartbreak, and he felt any further contact with her would bring similar results.

"Good bye," was all Otto said. He watched after her as she wobbled towards the cemetery's entrance, still a little unsteady on her feet but in no danger of collapse. She looked back before she'd gone too far, the moonlight illuminating her pale face and making her dark eyes seem even darker, empty sockets in a bone-white face. Then she turned away, and was quickly swallowed by the shadows.

Otto didn't follow. His wife's grave had been desecrated once; he wasn't going to leave until these men Lynnea had hired covered the grave completely. No one would ever use his wife's body to manipulate him ever again. So he took up his vigil far enough away that he would appear to be just another shadow, beneath a skeletal tree. He was prepared to wait all night if he had to. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go.

First, though, there was an issue that needed to be addressed. "How long have you been watching?" Otto asked.

Above him, the dry, leafless branches rattled as the vigilante perched among them shifted position. "Long enough," Spider-Man said. He dropped to the ground next to Otto, causing the actuators to screech in protest. "You did the right thing, you know. Returning Rosie to her place, I mean." From Spider-Man's tone, Otto had done things the youth clearly hadn't thought were right…

Otto just shrugged. "What do you want, Peter?" he asked, his voice dull.

"I… I just wanted to see if you were all right," Spider-Man said.

"You mean, you just wanted to see if I've developed a taste for killing," Otto said bitterly. He kept his gaze focused on the open grave as he continued, "I've been surrounded by death ever since my accident. As long as the actuators are attached to me, that's not going to change. But this… this was the first time I've actually willfully killed someone without the influence of the actuators and when it wasn't self defense or in defense of others. I should regret my actions. I should be angry at myself. But instead I feel… nothing. I killed two men, and I don't feel any remorse. I just feel…"

"Empty," Spider-Man finished. Now Otto turned to look at him, surprised. "When my uncle Ben was murdered, I hunted down the man who killed him. I cornered him in an abandoned building and confronted him. We fought, and, well, there was an accident and he fell out a window. If he hadn't fallen, I think I would have killed him myself. Afterwards, I felt… well, empty."

"And I suppose now you're going to tell me that it gets better," Otto said.

"No," Spider-Man said. "It fades with time, but never truly leaves you. Unchecked, it eats away at you, leaving behind a hollow shell. I try to fill that void with family, love, and heroics. There are some days where I can forget… but they're few and far between. Too many people have died because of my actions. Maybe I didn't murder them, but they died as a direct result of my actions. And some of them… I wanted them to die…" He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. "Don't let it consume you, Dr. Octavius. Find something to fill that void. Don't let it destroy you."

Otto laughed hollowly. "'Something to fill that void,'" he repeated. "My wife is dead, my dream is gone, my life is a wreck… There's nothing to fill that void, Peter. Nothing."

Spider-Man didn't seem to have an answer for this. They stood regarding each other in silence for a long moment, then Spider-Man finally ventured, "It doesn't have to be that way, Doctor. Find something to make your life worth living; with nothing to keep you sane, you'll start to lose what's good inside of you."

But, Peter, I think I've already lost it. He didn't say it aloud, though, just sat in silence and thought over what the arachnid had said. He didn't even notice when Spider-Man left, only becoming aware of the fact when he turned to ask the youth how his wrists were and found him gone. Otto felt both relieved and saddened by this abandonment; he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, but… but Peter still seemed to cling to some foolish hope that Otto wasn't beyond redemption, and his belief almost made Otto believe it was true.

Otto just sighed and settled more comfortably under the tree. He had to readjust to spending his life alone; why not start now?

Some time after midnight, two men carrying shovels and flashlights arrived. They glanced around nervously, but there were fewer watchmen around now that Halloween was over and cemeteries had lost their appeal. And in the hours Otto and Lynnea had been here, not one ventured to this section of the graveyard. One of their own had died here, and humans seemed to instinctively avoid places where someone had died.

A thick cloud cover inched across the moon's pale disk, plunging the graveyard into total blackness, except for the lights the men had brought with them. They finished their job relatively quickly, and after about an hour, they gathered up their shovels and lights and left, leaving Otto alone in the dark, silent cemetery.

After, in the dark, Otto stared at the dark mound under which his wife rested, contemplating the life ahead of him. For a brief time, he'd thought he could be happy. Now, he was worse off than before; the police knew he still lived, he was no longer welcome in the Mission he'd come to think of as a home of sorts… he'd lost his wife a second time… He had no idea what he was going to do with himself now. A life of crime didn't appeal to him, and scraping a living off the streets was a hard lifestyle that would wear away at him until there was nothing left. Perhaps that was for the best… After all, hadn't be been slowly destroying himself before he'd been offered this heart-breaking 'second chance?' And yet, slipping back into his self-destructive lifestyle would be harder than it had been before. He'd had hope dangled before him, had even felt a sort of happiness for the first time since his accident. It made returning to his empty existence seem so much harder.

Fill that void; find something to make your life worth living, Peter had said. As if it was that easy.

Shoulders slumped, Otto turned away, feeling as if the weight of the world had been dropped on his shoulders. He glanced back only once, to see a crack had appeared in the cloud cover, and a slender beam of moonlight had fallen across the newly-covered grave, illuminating the name carved into the pale stone. He turned his back on it and vanished into the darkness.

The End

I'm not sure if I like the whole conversation with Spider-Man, but when I tried leaving it out, the epilogue seemed to lose its substance. Hmm… Anwayway… Woo hoo! I'm done! Done! It's been a long trip, with many changes in plot and character, and the ending was initially very different. Some parts I wish could have been better; others came out better than I could have hoped. Will there be a sequel? I have the feeling that, after that ending, if I don't do a sequel, you will all hunt me down and destroy me. I have some ideas, but nothing's set in stone yet (though I think starting a sequel on Halloween would be appropriate). For one thing, I still don't know just what effects the blood of a corpse puppet has on a living human. Plus, he's got to wear that white Armani suit some time. I'm sure I'll think of something, eventually, though if anyone has any good ideas, e-mail me and share 'em! I'm open to suggestions. Susan Riley is going to appear in a Lizard fic called Shedding Skin, but that's about the only thing definite.Originally, this was going to be a trilogy, with the series ending with Otto find a way to bring Rosie back to life that involves human sacrifice – something that Lynnea agrees to because, initially, she didn't have a daughter to live for, and Otto's attack had left her crippled and she didn't have the will to live. After Rosie was brought back, she'd have been… odd, with some of Lynnea's characteristics. But I didn't like how that was going, and decided to go in a different direction, what you saw here. It just seemed a bit 'unrealistic' (yes, I know that the whole corpse puppet thing isn't exactly realistic, either, but still…) I did consider writing it as an alternate ending, but I probably won't. Another alternate ending I thought about – and am seriously considering doing under the title of Death Becomes You – is about Otto's escape from O'Connell's clutches going terribly wrong, and he's killed in the process. Lynnea reanimates him as a corpse puppet to kill O'Connell and, because he's brought back so soon after his death, he's much more aware than the Rosie puppet. You'll probably all utterly despise this fic, but that kinda makes me want to do it all the more. I'm just evil that way… And be sure to watch out for my next fic, NOSCE TE IPSUM, which I'll begin after a brief break. MBY took a lot out of me! Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to fall the floor and twitch for awhile…