Chapter 22, everyone! Finally, after years, it's all over. ;v;/

Probably won't be posting any new Don't Starve stories for a while—and definitely won't be posting any new stories next month. Or if I do, they'll be one-shots—gonna focus on my active stories in February and hopefully post a new fic in March, but I wouldn't look for new Don't Starve content from me until September, maybe. Sorry, inspiration hit hard elsewhere. ^^;

Thanks for the review, Grayson Brose! You make me blush. ^^ Thank you, and I will! :D

Don't Starve © 2013 Klei Entertainment

Beetlejuice © 1988 Tim Burton

Several months later….

It was late, and Wilson was still fiddling with the radio.

"Still nothing?" Willow asked, rolling over to look at him.

"Still nothing," Wilson confirmed with a sigh, rolling the knob between his fingers and still eliciting nothing but static.

"Funny, I thought you'd be glad to never hear from him again."

"You'd think, but…."

The ellipses said it all. "I wonder if he ever found Charlie. I wonder—I wonder if…he survived that."

The wild fluctuating of the radio stopped.

"We'll probably never know," Wilson said, sounding morose.

Willow considered this for a moment before sitting up and leaning over to kiss him on the cheek.

"Don't worry about it," she counselled. "We'll find out eventually. If it's meant to be it's meant to be, right? like us?"

He smiled at her, telling her she had said just the right thing. "Right. just like us."

She grinned broadly before flopping back in bed. "Now come on, you big lummox—get some sleep. You get a little crazy when you don't sleep."

"Ha," he noised, giving the dial one last twirl so it landed on 201.3.

It suddenly crackled to life.

"Say, pal! You've tuned in to the Carter channel starring the Magnificent Maxwell—"

"And his lovely assistant Charlie!"

Wilson jerked, Willow froze—they exchanged glances before looking back at the radio, her sitting up abruptly to be closer.

"So terribly sorry, but we're not in the office right now," Maxwell continued, smarmy tone edged with something that might be accurately described with the phrase over the moon. "But you just stay tuned, and we'll get back to you!"

And with that, the radio died.

"Well," Wilson said after a while.

"Well," Willow echoed. "So we've almost got everything wrapped up in a tidy bow."

"Do you really want to go there?"

"No, but it makes me feel better inside," she said, flopping down. "Good night, Wilson."

"Good night, I suppose," Wilson said, staring at the radio.

Perhaps it was for the best.

He laid down, ready to try sleeping himself—

Sat bolt upright when the machine started grinding to life.

Willow was upright too, the first heavy thing handy prepped to throw. "Oh no—none of that intimated I wanted him back—"

Wilson was out of bed, hand questing for something he could start swinging with—

The door slammed open—they flinched—

"Hey, some of us are trying to sleep down here!" Charles called up.

"Dad?"

They blinked, staring—

If they didn't know any better, they'd say that Wendy had just come out of the machine.

She blinked up at them, confused. "Who are you people?"

Wilson dropped the T-square with a clatter, cleared his throat. "I'm…Wilson…Percival Higgsbury…this is…this is Willow. You're…."

Willow connected the dots first. "You're Abigail—Wendy's sister."

"You've seen Wendy?" the girl asked. "Is she okay? How is she?"

"She's—she's fine," Wilson said, gesturing vaguely towards the stairs—gingerly stepped closer. "How—that is, how is it you came out of that machine?"

Abigail turned to look at it, looked at him. "There was this couple…the lady had a flower like mine…and the man said he thought he might be my great-great uncle, or something…."

Well that was horrifying.

Willow slipped out of the bed, went over to Abigail. "And you're okay? They didn't…do anything to you, did they?"

"No," she said. "Just…I think pointed me in the right direction. I don't know," she admitted, looking around. "Where am I?"

Willow and Wilson exchanged glances….

Smiled, led Abigail to the stairs.

"Home," Willow said. "Now come on—there's some people who've been wanting to see you."

Well…maybe Maxwell was good for something, at least.

"Boy, this is killing me."

"Technically—"

"Don't say it."

"She'll be fine," Willow said, crossing over to the window. "You went over that stupid homework with her every night—if she doesn't do well, I don't know what to tell you."

"That now's a bad time to reveal that according to my school, I was a complete hack?"

"Yes, this is true. Ah! Here she comes!"

Wilson tried to look like he was very busy on the model home—now in the middle of the front room—while Willow ran to the door, just in time for Wendy to come in.

"Well?" Willow demanded. "How did it go?"

"Awful," Wendy said. "They made me dissect a frog for science class—I told them no, it was against my beliefs, so I got a C."

"At least you stood up for your principles," Abigail said, watching Wilson work.

"How was the math test?" Wilson called, not looking up—at least, not until her silence stretched painfully.

"Aw come on!" Willow said. "After all that studying you two did?"

Wilson spotted the smirk first—the little…stringing them along. "I got an A," Wendy declared happily.

Abigail ran over to hug her sister, an action she returned before focusing on Wilson.

"Well?" she demanded. "Can we do it?"

Wilson felt the need to string her along as she had done to them. "I don't know, she got a C on the science test…."

"Not everyone can be an ace at science like you," Willow pointed out.

"That's no excuse."

"Wilson, don't make me set you on fire."

Wilson gave her an even look, raised an eyebrow on the side of his face the twins couldn't see—Willow had to fight to keep a straight face.

"All right," Wilson sighed, making a show of feeling put-out. "But for the record, I'm feeling used."

"You can live with that," Wendy said quickly.

"This is true. Now…."

It wasn't taking as much work, to reach into the fabric of his reality through the shadows within, and in short order "Jump in the Line" was playing, with the furniture helping with the tempo. Wilson danced away with Willow as the twins jammed in the living room—and started floating after a little extra juice.

Meanwhile, Charles was trying to slog through some slow reading.

"This is impossible!" he moaned finally, flipping through the book he had been provided, So You're Living With Ghosts. "It reads like stereo instructions—ah, sounds like Wendy got an A on the math test—GYAAH!"

Delia leaned over to examine Charles, fainted dead away—nodded, walked away, carting her new shadow monster sculpture with her. "He likes it."

Elsewhere, two people were slipping through the thin shadows that separated distances in the strange worlds just a hair off from ours. They were perhaps not lost, per se, just looking for the one door that would lead them back home.

But in the meantime, they had each other—holding hands, hugging when they paused for a longer period of time. Apologies had been made and accepted, and while there were still brittle points, they both agreed to move on—they couldn't change the past, just accept it and keep on keeping on.

The Carters were quite talented at that.

They were also tenacious to a fault, one of the things that had attracted them to each other way back when—they'd find their way out, back to Shanter, back to the white house on the hill at 2013 Klei Avenue.

Perhaps by then, Charlie will have convinced Maxwell to be accommodating towards the idea of roommates.

Finis

Total chapters: 22

Total page count: 94

Total word count (in Word): 29,808 words