Well. I said there would be a couple of more chapters, but I decided to include the epilogue in with this one for simplification's sake. Also, I wanted to get the whole thing posted as a commemoration of October 30th - the date of Alex's death in this story. So here it is. The conclusion of Psyche, after over two years and who-knows-how-many chapter revisions and frustrating waits. I'd like to thank each and every person who's ever read this story, and especially those who sent me encouraging messages and really drove me to keep on writing. If you remember, it started out as a silly project I never fully intended to finish. The overwhelming reaction I got to it was what pushed me to get my act together and finish what I started, and I'm so thankful for that. I've had a blast writing this story, and I hope you've enjoyed it. Thanks for sticking with me through the many hiatuses :)

Much love,

Giz

conclude |kənˈkloōd| - verb; formally and finally settle a treaty or arrangement

Finding the mausoleum was easy. It was a plain stone building by the sandy edge of a green pond, adorned with vases upon vases, like morbid window boxes – only the eyes behind the granite windows were unseeing.

Opening it was the hard part. Justin's hand shook so hard that his wand nearly hummed. There was an eerie calm over the entire cemetery. It was like a sprawling stone garden, and every statue seemed to be watching with a quiet, observant gaze.

"She's scared." Max spoke for the first time in hours. He sounded worn and weak, and as Justin whispered spell after spell to undo the screws on the panel, Max sank to the sidewalk and closed his eyes. Harper followed.

"You sure you're okay with this?" she asked.

Max almost smiled. "You have to be kidding me. I've been waiting for this day for three years."

It didn't answer her question, though.

"Got it," Justin announced. He'd managed to remove the stone panel, and behind it the black wood of the casket glinted in the moonlight, like the eyes of a waking beast.

For several long moments, no one said anything.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Max's eyes flickered, and his tone shifted as Alex made herself known once more. But she sounded more reserved, more hesitant. "We didn't come all this way and almost get arrested by my demented ex just for you losers to get cold feet."

"Alex..." Justin started, pain in his eyes, but his voice trailed off. He took a step forward and grasped his brother's hand. Alex didn't protest.

"Go ahead," she choked out after a moment. "Just get it over with."

It took Justin several minutes of deep thought and two improvised spells, but with a low grind, the casket finally edged forward, out of its prison. Harper clasped her hands over her face, trying to hide a surge of tears. Alex, silent and expressionless, turned her back and set her eyes blankly on the sky.

The casket hit the stone ground with a muffled whack, and reality set in further, like a spreading infection. Justin's face was stark white, his hands clammy, but he squared his shoulders and clenched his first around his wand.
"Are you ready?" he asked Alex.

"Might as well be," she answered hoarsely, and that was that.

They sat down on the cold stone, circling the casket like a twisted campfire meeting, and with a slither of wood on fabric, Alex pulled Max's wand from his back pocket.

"Max will have to say the spell," Justin said, and Alex nodded.

"Okay."

There was a brief silence, then Harper cleared her throat. Her face was patterned with tear tracks, which she wiped away with one fist. "W-well," she stammered, "I guess we should-"

Alex sprung forward, a blur of blue windbreaker and olive skin, and wrapped Max's ropy arms around around Harper's shoulders.

"I'm so sorry," she muttered weakly into the girl's neck. "I was stupid."

Harper shook her head, embracing her friend tightly in return. "Don't. Don't even say that, it's not your fault. If I hadn't called you about Dean-"

"You didn't do anything," Alex argued, pulling back slowly. "This whole mess was my fault. You were the best friend I ever could have had, and I left you. I should have at least let Max say something..."

"I don't blame you for that." Harper's shoulders were shaking again, the corners of her red-rimmed eyes puckering. "I don't blame any of you for anything." She took her friend's hands in her own, and squeezed. Then, with a watery smile, she let go.

Alex sniffed, trying to stifle a smile on her own face, then turned towards Justin.

"Justin, I-"

"I know."

"But I've always been so-"

Justin shook his head, a placid smile on his face. "It's okay. You're my little sister. We're supposed to fight." He offered his hand to her, and she took his fingers lightly. "I love you, Alex."

Alex was crying now, slowly and shakily, the tears looking foreign on Max's face. "I love you too." She looked over at Harper again. "Both of you."

Justin scooped her up into one final hug, and for a few moments they stayed locked together, tears dripping rhythmically onto his shoulder. If Justin closed his eyes, he could imagine the sharp brush of manicured nails, the smell of perfume and chewing gum. The husky cackle of a voice he hadn't heard in years.

It was all about to be over.

"Are you ready now?" he repeated at last, and Alex nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Yeah."

"Then let Max through."

"Okay." With the wide, uncertain eyes of a child, Alex took one last look around at her brother and best friend, and then muttered, "Bye." With a familiar flicker, the brown eyes softened, the tense shoulders fell, and Max Russo stared back at them.

He looked pained for a few moments, but at last he settled back onto his knees and looked over at Justin. "Give me the spell."

It was Harper who jumped up, reaching into her pockets. "I have it, right here."

Justin reached out and laid a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Take as much time as you want, bro."

"Mm-hmm." Max dipped his head.

The hinges creaked as Justin started to lift the lid. "I should warn you guys," he started, "that Mom didn't want her embalmed-" He opened the lid a bit more "-so nature will have taken its course with..."

Justin trailed off. The orange glow from the streetlamps slipped into the open casket, illuminating its contents. Snub nose, pale eyelids, brittle curls obscuring a bird bone neck – each feature was revealed to him one by one, like a fossil dig, until the small, motionless face was in full view.

She looked as though she had been dead only moments, instead of years.

"Justin?" Harper leaned forward, and her breath caught when she saw into the casket.

"It must be the spell," Justin managed. "Her body-switching spell." Hesitantly, he reached out, ghosting one hand over his sister's arm. She had been buried her black Homecoming dress, with vinyl heels strapped to her tiny feet – it was as though she had been suspended in the very night that Dean Moriarty altered the course of her life, waiting for an outcome. As though this Alex in front of them – this peaceful, beautiful Alex – was just waiting for a soul, so that she could get on with her evening.

"Should I say it now?" Max asked, his eyes locked on Alex's face.

"Whenever you're ready."

Max nodded, then cleared his throat and raised the paper up. Clutching his wand in one hand, he rasped out four small, clipped, anticlimactic words.

"Please brain, leave brain."

The result was instantaneous. He scrunched his eyes shut and his hands flew up to clutch at his hair, but within mere moments the discomfort seemed to dispel, and he looked up at Harper and Justin with something akin to shell-shock.

"It's quiet," he said at long last, and that was how they all knew.

It had taken three years, but Alex Russo was finally gone.

They sat there, silent, for the longest time, listening to the hum of traffic and the slither of wind in the leaves. Harper leaned into Justin's arms, and Max pulled sharply at tufts of grass, keeping his eyes as far from the casket as possible. A deafening silence roared in his head, blaring over his own thoughts, making him dizzy. It felt wrong.

After several minutes, Justin finally straightened up and cleared his throat.

"We should put her back," he said, leaning over to close the casket, but when he did so, something caught his eye – a tiny flicker of motion. He froze.

"What's wrong?" Harper asked, following his line of vision.

Justin furrowed his brow. "She just-" And it happened again – a ghost of a twitch near her eye, a flutter of movement in her stomach. Justin's heart nearly stopped as he leaned in close, his jaw clenched tightly, waiting for confirmation.

Alex's chest rose.

"Did you see that?" Harper exclaimed, motioning to Max. He shuffled up to her side, doubt etched in his face, but he watched just as intently as the others.

When Alex's hand flexed, the three of them gasped in unison.

"Alex!" Justin reached for her wrist, her neck, anywhere that there was a pulse – and when his fingers found a faint beat, he could have cried. "Alex! Alex!"

Her eyelids twitched, then fluttered, then, after what seemed like a slow, tugging eternity of moments – they opened.

Dry lips struggled to move, and bony fingers popped in their joints, flexing with ancient, stumbling movement. She tried to turn her head, but winced sharply at the motion; a tiny gasp of pain escaped from her throat, basic and honest as a child, but her eyes were full of deep understanding, and deep fear.

Justin could feel his heart pounding in his ears, his fingertips, the soles of his feet. With shaking hands and trembling knees, he brushed a hand over his sister's hair. "Don't move. Just... just stay right there, we'll figure this out."

But Harper was starting to cry all over again, and Max was standing in dumbstruck disbelief, and Alex was alive holy shit she was actually alive again, and Justin couldn't even think of what to do next. He just touched her head, her cheek, her hand, until she gave another tiny gasp – almost a cough – and Justin began to feel rooted to the ground again.

"Alright," he said, trying to focus, "we need to get the casket back in the wall, and figure out a way to get her out of here. Alex, do you think you can walk?"

She gave another cough, then the fainted whisper of something that sounded like, "Legs."

Harper wiped one fist across her red-rimmed eyes, and gave a single, sarcastic chuckle. "Justin, you're all wizards. I'm pretty sure we can just leave the way we-"

She froze in mid-sentence.

Neither of them saw the headlights until they were too close, already climbing over the hill like a slow-chugging train. Yellow light raced across the grass, spreading over the mausoleum walls like floodwaters, and Harper held her breath, all of the color draining from her face.

"Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?" The guard was livid, his voice filled with raw shock and rage. The cart slammed to a stop on the cold sidewalk, and a burly figure leapt out, his flashlight shining wildly and harshly into the faces of four very startled young people.

It was Justin who pulled his wand from his back pocket first, but Max who barked the orders.

"I have an idea!" He pulled out his own wand, and took one stumbling step into the grass, a dazed uncertainty in his eyes. "I'll meet you at home."

Justin could hardly move his mouth to speak, but urgency overcame logic, and he found himself reaching blindly for Harper's wrist with one hand, and Alex's with the other. As his lips moved and the wind started to roar in his ears, he tried to focus on Max and the security guard. But then the stars vanished and the trees changed, and he was lying flat on his back with the groan of traffic in his ears.

For several moments, Justin just stayed where he was, looking up at the sky. Harper's sobs finally slowed into heavy, short breaths. Alex coughed again, and her hand flexed against his arm.

It took Max exactly eight torturous minutes to finally appear in the clearing, panting and chilled to the bone, but thankfully unharmed.

"Never underestimate the power of a weird spell," he said wisely, before collapsing next to Harper and recounting a short but thrilling tale that involved goats, fake snow, and some low-level memory alterations. He looked as though he could curl up and sleep for a year, but there was a light in his eyes that hadn't been there just hours ago. It was faint, but it was steady.

"Where are we?" Harper asked when Max was finished. She finally sat up, brushing pine straw out of her hair.

"The woods behind our house," Justin explained. Then, his face went white. "I haven't even started thinking about how we're going to tell Mom and Dad."

Alex opened her eyes long enough to add, "Dump me in their bed. Dad loves surprises." The others laughed, and Harper reached out to grab her best friend's hand.

"I guess we should explain beforehand." The porchlights of the Russo house were just barely visible through the dense trees, like a distant beacon. "Harper, would you like to help me do the honors?"

She shook her head violently, but a minute's persuasion – and a kiss that Alex tried her best to grimace at – later, Justin was pulling her into the woods, towards the treeline. Their footsteps on the frosty ground faded into a whisper, leaving Max and Alex alone.

For a minute, no one said anything. Max leaned back into a tree, and Alex looked numbly up at the stars. Then, after a long, peaceful silence:

"Thank you." Max tilted his head down to look at his sister. "A lot."

Alex tried to smirk, but it came across weak and sad. "Thank you. For keeping your mouth shut even when I was a bitch." Her voice was still weak and harsh, and her lips moved clumsily, but she sounded like herself. It was a voice that no one had heard in years, and it warmed Max's heart.

"C'mon, you weren't a-" Max made a point of reconsidering his answer. "Wait, wait – you kind of were."

"I'd slap you if I wasn't so tired," Alex groaned. She stuck her tongue out partway, then closed her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath.

"Things are about to get a lot harder," she noted after another minute of silence. Max hummed in response, and reached down to flick a strand of hair off of Alex's forehead.

"Too bad we don't have magic powers or something."

"Damn, that would make things so much easier."

"Totally."

The two collapsed into matching smiles, and with their fingers linked they stretched out on the frost and waited for the echo of approaching voices and the crunch of rapid footsteps to tell them where to go next.

Several months later - Colorado Springs, CO

"I think I'll go out for basketball. Or football. Or gymnastics."

Max narrowed his eyes. "You're making that up. High schools don't have gymnastics teams." But he leaned over a little in his chair, trying to catch a glimpse of the pamphlet in his sister's hand.

Alex tossed the paper back on the table and picked up her slice of pizza. "How would I know? I didn't read it."

The two ate in silence for several minutes, their feet propped up on the kitchen table and their eyes trained on the picture window, where a pink sunset was just slipping behind the mountains. They couldn't see Pike's Peak from their house, as Theresa had hoped, but after growing up with a view of bricks and stone and people passing like a river of sound and motion, the evergreen trees and bright blue sky were worthy of a souvenir post card, at the very least.

They had picked Colorado by a dart throw – Jerry had tacked up his best atlas on the living room wall, and a blindfolded Max tossed darts until one finally landed somewhere that wasn't anywhere near New York. They had rung Harper up on speaker phone, and pretended that it had landed on Alaska just to hear her reaction.

Harper had remained in New York City, sharing a small apartment with Justin while she saved up enough money to set her sights on the Fashion Institute. It was all she talked about in her weekly emails to Alex – her portfolio ideas, her job as a waitress, her new sewing machine. Each email was a reminder that on that cold, dark night in early November, Alex Russo hadn't been the only person to get her life back.

Alex scooted away from the table, gripping the counter to pull herself up. Her reed-thin wrist shook under the effort, but it was an improvement. After three years of disuse, her body was weak and withered; her hair was thin and dry, her dark eyes sunken, but there was a light about her. A certain peace. She could only walk short distances without having to collapse into her wheelchair, and speaking for too long left her throat hoarse and raw, but every day there were steps forward. Forward and onwards and infinitely upwards. Because when one has survived death – has attended their own funeral and laid dormant in a coffin for three long winters – no feat is unimportant. The simple miracle of motion and breathing, the mere thumping of a heart, is cause for celebration.

"When is Mom getting home?" Alex slid her plate across the counter, and leaned into the granite, coming away with pink ridges in her skin. "Isn't she taking you driving?"

Max pulled his feet down from the table, a smile broad and genuine on his face. "Dad's taking me, if he gets home before dark."

Theresa and Jerry had been overseeing the renovation of an old meat market into what would become the third incarnation of the Sub Shop. Theresa complained that it smelled like pig, but the windows were tall and bright, and the front stoop was worn brick and looked like home, and while it would never have a subway car jutting out from one side or a fruit market across the way, or the constant hum of conversation, it was the closest thing to normal that any of them had felt in years.

Teaching Max to drive had been one of the final steps in the normalization of the Russo family, and the attempt to reverse the effects of those three hellish years. Every night before dinner one of their parents took him out to drive square around downtown Colorado Springs, until the sun set behind the mountains and the local radio station announced rush hour. It would be Alex's turn, one day. After all, she was still sixteen. She and Max, both. They had come to be known as the Russo Twins, a title that held gravity no classmate or friend in Colorado would ever come to know. After all, they had always been a family of secrets, and of rumors, and of lies. That was one thing that would never change.

Max joined his sister at the kitchen counter, and for a long time the two of them leaned over the granite edge and looked out the window at the pink-tinged sky of early evening, their socked feet barely touching.

"Can you even remember where we were this time four years ago?"

Alex rested her head on her hands and looked up at Max, her expression tranquil, her eyes filled with the softest of nostalgic glows.

"Alex, I'm about to have to do homework." Max made an exaggerated grimace. "Don't make me think right now."

With a ghost of a cackle, Alex gave Max a light shove, before leaning into his shoulder. And as the clocked ticked loudly on the wall and the sun fell further behind the peaks, they stayed like that, just barely brushing one another, but linked nonetheless.

Fini.