Final chapter is up! I know it seemed like the story was finished but I couldn't resist adding this last scene in, hope you enjoy!

X-X

New

It's instantaneous: no dramatic bang or whirling sensation. One moment he's freezing on the cliff top, held by his family and the next everything collapses into white and warmth and peace.

There's a strange glinting mass spread out ahead of him. Todd blinks a lake...?

"Well you took your time."

The familiar, teasing voice from the air causes him to jerk around.

Suddenly without warning he finds himself staring at Neil's grinning face. The poet looks the same as he did on the night of that play: young, energetic and full of excitement.

For a moment Todd feels awkward, appearing to his former companion as an old man. A second later he realises that he too is as young as he was in their shared imprisonment at Hellton – but in body and spirit this time. As such he replies even more easily than he did then.

"All these years and you're still the one moaning at me?"

Neil laughs but a faint shadow of pain flashes through his eyes and whether through instinct or some benevolent insight this place gives Todd knows what he's going to say.

"Forget it." He says, cutting Neil off. "It's not important anymore."

"But I just want to say I'm sor –"

"No." He states empathetically.

"But –"

"No."

Neil blinks at him and Todd realises that what he said was true: it's not important anymore –the anger, the guilt, the pain...it's all gone. Maybe Neil should have waited, shouldn't have give up so easily but it's over. That day has finished.

Neil sighs and slings a warm arm around Todd's shoulder. "Well I was right anyway." He says insistently.

"What?"

"I told you remember: that you could do anything, nothing was impossible...I'm glad that – even if I didn't – you managed to prove that was true."

Todd looks at Neil's eyes and loses himself in the tirade of emotions there: for a moment the symmetry of admiration and love and friendship and peace is so perfect that he thinks that it isn't Neil's soul he's looking into but a reflection of his own.

Like he had minutes before Todd breaks into a smile – but this time Neil smiles with him.

A new day dawns.

X-X

Ta da! I know this chapter was a bit random, the 'after life' and everything but I didn't feel I could leave the story without Neil appearing and Todd finally seeing the person he'd lived so hard for. It was the closest to a Dead Poets happy ending as I could get!