Ok, this has been a hell of a long time coming, so I'm sorry about that :L but I finally returned to this and managed to finish it :) so thank you to those of you who have prompted me to return to this story over the years (yep, literally years - again, I'm sorry), and I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did :)

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

- Mark Twain

The cold was electric and it made him sick. Emptiness and sickness consumed his body, but his mind was tangible in his mouth. It tasted like steel trimmings. Mikhail was watching the cabin from the tress, noting only a single shadow moving inside, not restless but very calm, like a bird making its nest. The creaking of the floorboards tickled his ears like frostbite, whilst true frostbite but every exposed inch of his skin.

Was Lisbeth dead? Impossible. Gottfried was proving himself to have a particularly dramatic streak. The note on the mirror, the voicemail, the open window - of course, it didn't mean she was still alive, but believing that possibility wasn't an option. If he allowed himself to think that, it would only mean turning around and letting Gottfried (and Lisbeth) rot in that cabin, that horrid, horrid cabin, getting just far away enough to-

'Mikhail.'

The wind carried that word to him and gutted him clean with it. Whose voice it was, he couldn't tell the first time, but it just kept coming. 'Mikhaiiiiiil.' He crept towards the sound as it grew hoarser and more lyrical, feet sinking and melding into the snow.

'Little Mikey!' It was shouting now, or at least trying to. The sound was weak but purposeful, insistent, and base. 'Mickey Mouse! Mikhail, Mikhail, Mikhaiiiiiil shhh I'm dreaming, Lisbeth's dreaming, Mikhail's dreaming, we're all dreaming the same dream.' Then it was silent for what seemed the longest time. Mikhail reached the cabin but stayed crouched underneath the window, realising very quickly that he hadn't brought any weapon to fight with. Gottfried, who he thought must have been the one singing, undoubtedly would. He couldn't hear Lisbeth. What did he mean she was-

'Little Mikey wants a story before his bedtime.' He jumped when he heard that voice again, but something about it was bothering him. He was right outside now, but it didn't seem to be that much louder. If Gottfried was the one singing, he seemed to be underground, perhaps in some kind of cellar or basement. But he kept singing.

'Little Mikey, little Mikey

Wants to go to sleep

Needs to have a bedtime story

But it's night-time now.'

If Gottfried was in the basement, the entrance was clear. He steeled himself, looking back down at the blood trail leading to the front door and clearing his mind. It was this simple: Gottfried had Lisbeth. If Mikhail fought to get her back, there were two outcomes. One - Mikhail would kill him and get Lisbeth out alive. Two - Lisbeth was already dead, and Mikhail would soon be joining her. But Gottfried was old and alone, he wouldn't be able to withstand it. Not Mikhail's rage.

Then how did he get Lisbeth? He's not alone, idiot.

That last word wasn't his own voice. That was Lisbeth. Of course Gottfried wasn't alone. There was no way he would have been able to do this by himself. The calls, yes. Murdering Harriet, probably. But kidnapping Lisbeth? Not a chance. He listened carefully, and between the breaths of the raspy lullaby, he heard someone moving around on the ground floor. Slowly. He moved up on to his knees and looked in to the window.

There were three tables in the room. One was just under the window, which was mostly full of food supplies and a few photograph frames that he could only see the back of. The second was a small coffee table by the fireplace on the other side of the cabin, on which he clocked a small pistol and two medicine bottles. But in the centre of the room was a huge grey stone slab that looked eerily like a gravestone. Twisted around it was about thirty metres of barbed wire, and under that was the unmistakable, unmoving body of Lisbeth Salander.

Was she breathing? He should have risked staying up so long to check, but he couldn't resist, even though he couldn't tell. She could just be trying to keep as still as possible, and as for the blood dripping down, that didn't mean-

No, you failed Mikhail. Again. You failed.

Lisbeth again. I did, didn't I?

He went colder.

There was a chair at the foot of the table, facing the only door in. Erika sat there, as still as the corpse behind her, watching the door for the inevitable. She had managed to leave Gottfried in the cellar, tying her hands to the chair herself, but he still wouldn't stop singing. With the medication she'd given him, he should be asleep in the next few minutes, but Mikhail wouldn't take that long. He had forced her hand, really. Those sleepless nights, the unbearable ego, and the sulking, my god the sulking! This was the best solution for all parties involved.

Gottfried wanted Lisbeth dead - as brain dead as he seemed to be these days, he kept his grudges - and Mikhail needed something to help him get over the Vanger case, which he couldn't is Lisbeth was still alive. Now all living connections he had to it, with the exception of Gottfried (although he wasn't likely to last the winter), were gone. And when he saved her from Gottfried, Mikhail would have a new victory, a better one. One that he could truly treasure. Of course, her brother had also wanted Mikhail dead, but that was only an option if he resisted. With everything she had done for him, Gottfried would just have to make his peace with that.

She had had to cut her face up a little to make it look more realistic, but the blood coming down from above her eyebrow was getting in her eyes and it stung. She slipped her wrist out of her handcuffs and wiped the cut on her sleeve, dragging the blood down her temple and smudging her mascara with it. Now I look ridiculous.

Erika resumed her watch on the door, listening out for any sign of Mikhail. When he came in, she had to act drugged, which wouldn't be difficult. It was an experience that her brother had made her familiar with, but it had done her good. She owed him everything. Her career, her fortune, her life. He had made her strong. A woman like her needed to be strong, and that strength could only come from understanding pain. She was his sister, and no Vanger could ever be subordinate to anyone other than another Vanger. Now she looked after him in return for that strength, and it would be that strength and that wisdom that would make Mikhail better. With all that singing, it was hard to hear anything outside, but she sensed him anyway. Any second, he was going to walk through the door and see her good work, and he would become good again. This was her gift to him.

Only, Mikhail never came through the door. He sat outside in the snow, trying to dissolve into the walls of the cabin, the grief static and catastrophic in his heavy head and chest, waiting for some kind of motivation to give him direction. There was white noise, white snow, white trees, and white skies. That was all. His legs, outstretched and lame, smudged it all, ruined that purity with chalk grey and black. And there was that red trail. He should have been questioning it all. Three paths he could take - the white, the grey and black, or the red. And there was nothing. Why was there nothing? Because Lisbeth was dead. Dead. Her breath was no longer in the air, there would be no more of her voice to be heard, nothing truly hers to be had.

Then the singing began again. He wasn't sure that it ever stopped, but it was like hearing it for the first time, if the memory of it had been erased, even though he knew it hadn't. It didn't hit his ear like it did before, in fact it was almost as if it wasn't hitting him at all but it was burning something inside him. It was fuel on a fire that Lisbeth had sparked.

'Mikhail had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, he led her to the slaughter-'

He knew exactly where the red trail would take him. Straight through the door. That was what Gottfried wanted. It becomes hard, reader, to tell you how he came to make his choice. He doesn't remember making it, or thinking anything during what came to pass. Everything inside him became blank, but not an empty blankness. It was charged with a rage so pure it became incalculable, a separate force inside that removed any thought or memory of thought. That rage was his rage, but it wasn't him. The rage and Mikhail moved together, two beings in one, and pulled themselves up from the snow. They walked away from that cabin, about six feet before making a sharp turn backwards, running, and then jumped through the window Mikhail had cowered under. The smashing glass was there, Mikhail knew it was, but with the rage he neither felt nor heard it. Before any order came back over him, the gun was in their hand, the cellar door was open, the decrepit old man in the bed had a bullet in his kneecap, his gut, his shoulder, then his throat. On reflection, Mikhail knows the hideousness of that man's features; the diseased look of his creased and yellowed skin, crisp grey eyes, and shrunken limbs. Then, Mikhail, in that almost supernatural state, didn't have the energy or capacity to care.

There was still the matter of his accomplice to deal with.

Erika considered running then. He hadn't even seen her, or if he had, he cared so little about seeing his lover in chains that it wounded her. She had failed. She hadn't dared to consider the possibility of him not wanting to save her. Mikhail-

And it struck her.

He couldn't care about her in chains, because Lisbeth was dead in hers. She had always been his goal, not Erika. Even lying in bed that night, denying and denying that he wanted to see her, everything he had done had been for her. Kept his distance to avoid upsetting her, going back to protect her, coming to the cabin - it was to save her. Not once during his investigation had he contacted her. No phone call. When he was with Lisbeth, Erika didn't come into the equation.

So what did she do now? She should run. Run.

No. The strong do not run. The strong are not conquered by fear. The strong kill fear.

So she would have to kill Mikhail. It was regrettable, but it was what Gottfried had wanted all along. She was foolish to have thought that, even in his declining state, she could ever be better than her brother. He had always been right, and still was. That was when she heard the gunshots.

Perhaps the greatest surprise of that night is the fact that Mikhail still feels no remorse for what he did. After killing Gottfried Vanger, thought began to slowly come back to him, not as objections or instructions or even as regret, but only as the cool and calm realisation that the person who killed Lisbeth wasn't the one he had just killed. That old bastard didn't have the strength to bring her here, and judging by his incessant singing and the medicine he had seen on the table, there was no possible way he could have outwitted her either. There was someone upstairs, he knew. So he went back up.

He saw her, recognised her, failed to register any kind of shock or surprise before shooting his last bullet straight between her eyes.

After that, he handed himself over almost immediately to the authorities, dear reader. The mad rage he had has dissolved but not disappeared. He awaits trial but doesn't seem to be waiting for anything, just existing in the same cell for the past two months now. He asked me to write this down as his last story. He never said as a free man-

I just came back from my rounds. It is my unfortunate duty to inform you, dear reader, that Mikhail Blomkvist has been found, hanged from the neck until dead, in his cell. There was a note, which I shall include here for your perusal:

'To the guard who wrote my story: I am sorry for this inconvenience. I hope that the potential profits you may make from this story, should you chose to publish this, may make up for the pain and paperwork my choice has caused.

'To the remaining friends/relatives of Erika Vanger: I do not apologise for my actions. Nor should you feel anything like grief for such a woman. Lisbeth was investigating her before we re-opened the Vanger case. If you go to her apartment or ask the police for Lisbeth's remaining belongings, you should find the files. If you are in any doubt as to her true character, or believe what I did wrong, I suggest you read them.

'To Dragan: Use the rest of my money for Lisbeth's memorial. I am sorry that neither of us can be of further use to you.

'To Lisbeth: I am coming.'