WHEN MY EYES FINALLY CRACKED OPEN, the dim light stung and stabbed at them, and I immediately closed them again, blinking away the built up tears from the overexposure. However, once I built up a resistance, I opened them once more and hesitantly took in my tiny prison.

It was not the Academy, that much I was sure of. Other than that, however, the plain, white walls and ceiling gave nothing away about where I was trapped. The clasps that had held my wrists and ankles were gone and I massaged life into them, grateful for the relief that I had somehow picked up while I was out. There was actually nothing holding me down, surprisingly; it was just me, now wearing a stone grey shirt and shorts not unlike our training uniforms, and the cold walls and floors that only reflected a single emotionless colour back at me.

My head fell back against the wall and I sighed, clenching and unclenching my hands in my lap. This was to be my 'cell', I supposed - at least until my fate was decided and my punishment was served. I wasn't sure how long that would be, but this certainly wasn't meant for long-term, as the only way out was the door that stood in the middle of the wall to my right, and it wouldn't be difficult to fight your way out of there. Not that I was eager to do so. Wherever I was and whatever my fate, it wouldn't be long until I knew and it was carried out whether I wished it or not. There was no point in fighting anymore.

By that point, though I had no way of knowing how long I was out, Peter would have taken the small mixture and drank it all and the letters would have - hopefully - been delivered to Tony Stark, and he would have in turn opened them, hopefully. It would all be over there, and he might even be packing for school to prepare for a day of studying for exams. I could only hope the questions wouldn't mess anything up for him, though I knew they were inevitable. It wasn't often a student just suddenly left, especially so close to the end of the school year. At least Inga had been smart to think of an excuse before it all fell apart, but how well it held, I couldn't be sure.

There were undoubtedly cameras everywhere, waiting for me to make a move but I ignored them and just sat there against the wall, unmoving. I found a vague interest in staring at the blank walls around me as if they weren't even there and didn't move from my spot.

I wondered if he would ever remember anything about it. About me, about the true Freya, about anything. I wished he would replay our fleeting relationship the way my mind obsessed over the last, heartbreaking moments together. It was a dumb wish, of course - the poisons were always thorough if they were anything - but it was a hope I clung to, seeing as I had really none left otherwise.

The moments still played over and over again in my own head, at least, and gave me a way to drone out my surroundings and focus solely on that. The touch of his soft lips, the way he held me close and told me that I was worth something, the way that he looked at me - he looked at me like I wasn't dirt on his shoe or a villain, he looked at me like I was Freya. Just Freya, nothing more.

He would never know again how good it felt to tell him the truth. He wouldn't remember anything, and Freya Knight wouldn't be anything but a hallucination to him, a fevered dream after a long night of saving the day. Peter would wake up in his own bed and probably panic, wondering what was going on, and realise that the transfer student from Canada had left, he had taken down a petty criminal, and exams were right around the corner. While he might remember the littlest bits of memories, it wouldn't last - it never would. I would know, for it was the same substance that I, along with twenty-eight shivering, frightened girls, swallowed down and erased my past with, turning me into the villain I was that day. Peter would only ever know of Emily, and unfortunately, that was the way it needed to be.

Though it was selfish, I still wished he would remember me, or at least some element of the real me. I didn't want him to go throughout his life thinking of me as the girl who led him on and broke his heart, but rather the girl who cared too much for him for his own good, for Freya, the broken record who couldn't stop playing the wrong tune. I didn't want him to hate me, although, if he didn't, it would ruin everything else. I would have those memories, but no one else would and no one else would care.

A choked, broken sob lit up the silence of my prison and echoed off the walls, interrupting the steady gloom that had fallen. I just wanted something to be good - and it had been - but of course, it couldn't ever be mine. Freya Knight, as it so happened, wasn't destined for anything good. She had lost her family, then her old life, her only 'friends', her new fake life, and the only boy who ever looked at her like she was worth something. She was worth nothing and no one would mourn her when she fell - if anyone even remembered me.

I just wished that my life wouldn't end with so many loose ties, with so many mistakes.

All of a sudden, the door swung and creaked on rusty hinges, revealing a small, lithe figure I immediately recognised as Inga. Though she did not come in as the confident, strong, angry woman I knew of, instead, acting much weaker than she was. She stood slouched in the doorway, observing me with a silence that didn't become her - or at least didn't make sense. I expected her to start snapping the second she walked in, yet she simply stood with a large box in her hands, sorrow reflecting in her eyes. She didn't even seem to know what to do.

"How..." my voice was hoarse after disuse, and it took a couple clears to get my voice to sound right again. "...long was I out?"

"Six days."

Six days. That was more than enough time for Peter to forget and adjust to his new life, receive his praise for taking down a criminal, and then head to school and leave the past behind. He would know by now that I was gone, that was at least for sure. Would he care? I doubted it.

I licked my dry lips and gestured towards the large box in the woman's hands. "What is that for?"

Inga just set it down, almost hesitantly, and knelt down to face me. "They're going to keep you stable. Among other things."

Her words, while didn't allude to specifics, weren't hard to make sense of; they were meant to hold me still so that when the end came near, I didn't move. Death was always easiest when the victim didn't fight it, and the handcuffs would only help prove that theory correct.

I peeled off of the wall, grimacing as my back screamed with new pain, and set myself so that it wasn't hard for Inga to slide it onto my body. "This is it, then?"

She opened the box and pulled out the same cuffs I vaguely remembered from nights before; as the woman slid them onto my wrists, I took note of the blood that coated the metal, leaving a faint rust smell that coated the inside of my nose. However, I still didn't resist, even when she put them a size too tight and they dug into my wrists, for the pain barely matched the wounds ripping at my broken heart.

"What happens to you?"

Inga glanced up at me, hooded eyes searching mine, the usually bright green now lifeless and dull. She didn't hesitate with her movements, hands almost robotically moving for the needles and pulling them apart to inject some unknown formula into me. "I go back home."

Home; the Red Room, of course, that's what she meant, for there was no other 'true' home for girls and women like us. "Won't...won't you get in trouble? Punished?"

"I already was," she muttered, shutting down my other questions with a few short syllables. As she worked and I bit back my screams of pain, I took note of the scars that laced up her barely exposed back; while I could only see bits of the flesh, I could see that the wounds were done at many different times in her life; some, from the looks of it, barely a week old. "My crime wasn't as severe as yours, and my life meant more to them than yours. You are replaceable enough - hence why they sent a student, not an adult to go through the process much faster. I, however, have some value to them."

"Oh."

She pulled another thing from the chest, but this wasn't another form of torture, not of the physical sort. It was a small picture, and one I recognised well; it was Peter and me, frozen in a candid, sweet kiss, one that we thought was invisible to all but us in the dark gloom of New York. My hand itched to grab it, but in my handcuffs, I could only stare. It was almost torture and I wanted her to pull it away, but all I could do was stare at the perfectly unperfect moment that would never be experienced again. "Where...who took this?"

She frowned and spoke, and I blinked and realised that it was not a picture of us but her empty, lily-white palm offered to help me up. Surely, I was going mad.

"You did the right thing, Freya."

I lifted my gaze to meet her sad one, unsure what to say. The picture wouldn't leave my head; I supposed that the image was some form of sweet torture, meant to tide me over until my inevitable fate. "What?"

"You did the right thing. The boy didn't deserve his fate that he could have been given. He will live a good life, too; he's taken it and doesn't remember a thing. They'll move on from him now that Stark is aware. He won't ever be one of their victims."

My heart ached at her words, for though it was what I wanted and worked for, it still stung to know my life, my words, my feelings would end up meaning nothing to no one but myself. "Oh."

"You did well."

I didn't look back at her. I couldn't, the pain in me was getting too much to hold in, and a single look at the woman who had made my life hell would immediately break me into the smallest of pieces. Instead, I simply brought my knees to my chest and stared at the cracked, bleeding skin that covered them. "What now?"

"I think you know what now."

I did know what now, I just wanted to hold onto the tiniest fragment of hope that maybe it could all blow over. That maybe she'd leave me to run and I could find Peter and explain and it all and live a happy, joy-filled, normal life. That maybe, in the end, her expression would morph into one of bitter love and she would grip my wrists and tell me that this wasn't the end, that she was going to help me out of there, that my life was going to be worth more than less than nothing. However, such was not the case, and I would be a fool to think it could be.

"Okay." My hands scraped at the walls as I struggled the stand, my movements sluggish and exaggerated in my weakness. My eyes didn't leave Inga's frame, though I still couldn't look at her; I needed to be strong. "Let's go, then."

She, however, held me back and gripped tight to the arm on skin that was somehow unscathed. "I am sorry."

"You are not the one doing this to me."

"Not that, no." Inga sighed. "But I am still sorry. If I could have saved your life, I would - but I am not the woman that you are. I am too far gone to have a heart half as good as yours."

"You still have a chance; everyone has a chance to do the right thing. A...he taught me that. If I could, you can - you did. You can still do this."

But my words didn't mean anything, simply bouncing off her invisible walls. Inga had made up her mind, and I was left with empty sounds and sentences that did nothing but irritate her. I resigned myself to plodding along behind her, feet dragging at the weight of the chains around them, and tears welling up like the crybaby I was - though, I mused, I had a right in a situation like the one I was in.

The hallways were long and cavernous and they echoed our footsteps as if they were the sounds of a thousand men. I focused on my feet, watching them twist and turn as she did, trying to memorize when and where we switched into a new hall - though it would not matter in the end, it gave me something to concentrate on aside from the ever impending doom waiting for me at the end of the journey. Left, right, up and down, faster, slower, back and forth until it became a rhythm nearly lulling me into a peaceful state of mind.

"This is it," she announced, slowing to a stop at a large, metal door. No noises sounded from the other end, though I supposed it was designed that way so that no one would know what was happening from the outside. "Are you ready?"

No. I wasn't. Was one ever ready? My breaths grew thick and short, gasps as if each one was going to be my last. I supposed that wasn't far off from the truth. I tried not to think about the action itself, focusing on the good I did somehow, but it was hard when all I could think about was the fact that soon it would all be done and nothing would matter anymore - I wouldn't matter anymore.

"Okay." I wasn't 'okay', but I didn't want to dwell on this any longer. If this was the way it was, so be it, but I would rather it to be quick then drawn out. "I'm ready."

Before opening the door, however, Inga clasped my shoulders and drew me in for a rough embrace, one especially out of character, and tapped her claws against the small of my back. Her shoulders heaved and I realised that she was in pain as well, though for reasons I was not sure of. "I am sorry."

Her words, strangely, gave me peace, and when she drew away, I only nodded and fixed a smile. "It's...it's okay. I am just happy I can go knowing that...that he's okay. Will you make sure that he is okay?"

Inga nodded, though it was an empty promise, "of course."

"Thank you." Peter's perfect, sweet face fell into my mind one last time, and I clenched my fists, relishing the memory of when our lips joined for the final time. I breathed in slowly and let it go, along with everything else, freeing my mind of everything I had done. "Okay."

  "Safe journey, dau-Freya." She seemed to want to say more, and rested her hand on my hair for a prolonged minute, but decided against it and simply gestured for me to go in.  "До свида́ния."

"Do you not come in?"

"I cannot."

"Oh." I clenched the doorknob, a strange decoration in such a cold, terrifying place, and shot one last panicked look at the woman who would be the last piece of my past that I would see. Strange, how the one I had despised most would turn out to be the last face to haunt me; I wasn't upset over it, surprisingly, just calm, and at a peace that dulled the pain of my shattered heart. "Good...bye."

The door barely made a noise as I swung it open and slipped inside, and I immediately turned to take one last glimpse of Inga, the last piece of my past, before it slipped away and I was left to await my punishment.

As a girl, death had been an overbearing presence in my life. I saw it everywhere; in the peers that were too weak, in the bodies that fell at the single sound of a gun, even in my dreams, the cold hands ran down my spine and tickled my thoughts until death and I, like every other woman at the Academy, walked hand in hand. The shadows of cold embraces hung upon everyone and one would be foolish to not accept that fact.

In some instances, in the beginning, it was a horrifying idea. As girls I once smiled and talked with fell to the floor with blank expressions and paling skin, I feared the idea of my body matching theirs someday, twisted into a last grotesque image of pain and suffering. As my shadow pirouetted and flew through the invisible but everpresent stains of blood, I held my breath and couldn't bear to look down for fear that would end my fate there. As a child, with hopes and dreams and ambitions that stood ten times taller than my small frame, death was the epitome of fear.

But as I grew, and learned, and lost, and loved, and began to realise just what the world was like and what it would do to a person, death was not something to fear anymore. Rather, it was just a symbol to represent the end, and the finish line was not something to hate. As a race, humans view death as a suffocating hold, ripping away what we held onto - but really, it is only the people who never finished their tasks who had a reason to fear the end. As a girl who had few objectives in a short life, and nearly all of them finally completed, death was simply a friend there to relieve the pain and escort to a place where one could finally rest tired eyes. As I stood alone in the dark room with shadows that pressed into my flesh and bones, a smile coated bloody, cracked lips, for I had finally accepted my fate. I had finally accepted the end of my road would be there, and I was ready to let go of it all.

This was the end, and I was not afraid, not anymore. As the cold, skeletal hand of death snaked into my own and clenched it tightly, I walked into the darkness with a newfound confidence and barely felt the splitting pain that erupted, sucking me into my doom.

Je suis desole, mes cheries. 

Just one chapter left.

However, there isn't just that - there's more [if anyone actually wants to read more haha]? I've written out three alternate endings, and while they're not as well done as my other chapters because, well, they were just alternates as I decided what direction to go in, they'll be posted just after chapter 45, so you can enjoy that. Also, there are two exclusive one-shots that'll be available with that - one for Freya/Peter, extremely fluffy and adorable, and one a prelude following Inga. I hope you stay tuned for that, but if not, well, there's one chapter left of this sad tale. I'm sorry, my darlings.

Thank you for reading.