"In the end it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years."
- Abraham Lincoln
~~~~~~~~~~

The room fades away quickly.

We're floating somewhere. It's like being inside a huge ball of light. Tiny iridescent lights sparkle around us.

Adele's face fades away and I turn back to Harry and Niall.

"What's the bloody hold up?" Harry mutters. He pauses for a minute. "Ah! Earthquake in China, lots of new arrivals. We're in a queue." He sighs.

"Are you ok Louis?" Niall asks softly. He's staring at me intently.

"Yeah."

I can feel Harry watching me.

"Louis, stop it." He warns. "You have to want to leave, accept that it's time, otherwise it won't work and Lola-Rose will be stuck there."

I try and focus on that. I don't want Lola to spend an eternity crying for her mother, I really don't. Niall is still watching me with with a thoughtful expression on his face.

"I'm sorry about that girl Lou." He says. "I never saw you like that about a girl, you really love her don't you?"

"Yeah. I do." I feel a stab of pain.

I'll exist for eternity and I'll never see Adele again. Niall's still watching me closely.

"What's taking so long?" Harry mutters.

Suddenly a disembodied voice reverberates through the space that we are in.

"Archangel Haniel?"

"Ah! Here we go." Harry grins and suddenly adopts a posh voice. "Hello? Saint Peter? I'm waiting with the new arrival."

"Excellent." The voice says back. "We're experiencing delays on line 2 at the golden gates. Earthquake in China."

"How long do you think? I'm due back out to deal with the demon in New York subways soon. I really don't have time to hang around." Harry sighs.

"The queue is moving along, shouldn't be long now, it's all the bloody paperwork that I have to fill in with each arrival." The voice answers exasperatedly.

"Tell me about it." Harry sighs. "Thanks Pete."

There's no answer and I stare at Harry. He's floating in mid air with his wings slightly extended and I have to bite back a smile at how banal this all is. Heaven seems so close to the human world.

Suddenly the light around us begins to change.

We're about to pass over.

I don't want to. I want to go back to the house and wait for Adele to wake up.

"I'm sorry Louis." Niall says suddenly. "I spent centuries looking for you, but you'd already found what you needed to be happy. It's not right that it's just taken away from you."

He's frowning at me but before I can answer the lights around us change again and we all begin to fade. The last thing I see is Nialls sad smile before it all goes black.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm in a room. It's like a huge church with a domed ceiling. The light pouring through the stained glass windows is unbelievably bright and an odd peachy colour.

Minutes pass as I look round. Time itself feels odd, it feels like minutes and years have passed at the same time.

Is this it? Is this heaven?

"Hello?"

I call out and my voice echoes round the room. Slowly I stand to my feet and walk towards the huge wooden double doors. They're heavy as I pull them open. Outside is nothing, just more of that peach coloured light with the little iridescent sparkles. The building I'm in is floating in the nothingness.

Bloody wonderful. I thought there would at least be someone to talk to on the other side.

I don't realise I've said the words aloud until Harry's voice comes from behind me.

"This isn't the other side Louis."

He makes me jump and I nearly fall out of the door.

"Harry!" I turn to face him. "What's going on?"

"You're stuck between dimensions. I've been trying to get through for years..."

"What? What do you mean? I was only with you and Niall a minute ago!"

"It might only feel like that but it's been 10 years since I last saw you Louis." He says softly. "I've been trying to break through here for a decade."

"I... I just walked across the room! How can it take ten years to walk across a room?! Where's Niall? And, hang on, what do you mean I didn't pass over? Is Lola stuck? Is Adele-"

"One question at a time!" He says gently. "Time is different here, you're completely outside of it. An earth hour here could feel like a century, or a minute on earth could feel like a millennium here. It's so bloody difficult to get here, I've been trying every single day for ten years!" He scowls at me as if I've done it on purpose.

"Where am I? Didn't I pass over?" I have so many questions I don't know where to start.

"No, you didn't."

"So Lola got stuck anyway..." I say sadly.

"No, Lola is fine. She's 15 now, I check on her every now and again." He smiles.

"But how? If I didn't go in her place?"

"Niall did it for you."

"What?! I thought you said he couldn't?"

"Well he couldn't technically. He would never have chosen to pass over in Lola's place because he was too confused, he had no idea what was happening. But he did it for you, he saw how unhappy you were to leave and he made the decision to go in your place. To give you a chance at happiness. Of course.. It didn't quite work out the way he thought it would." Harry gives a sad smile.

I think about the look Niall gave me just minutes, or should I say, years ago.

"He misses you terribly." Harry says.

"I can't believe Niall did that for me." I say quietly.

"He always did care about you Louis."

"I just don't understand any of it."

Harry sighs and sits down on one of the benches and pats the spot next to him.

"Come sit down. I guess I've got some explaining to do..." He leans forward with a sigh.

"Where to even begin? ... Do you remember how I told you that people have entirely their own free will? And we just know the choices that they make?" I nod. "Well that's all very well and good but sometimes we have to intervene. Earth, from our point of view looks sort of like..." He struggles for a second. "... Sort of like a giant game and all the beings, humans, ghosts- everything, are the playing pieces. We have to make sure that they run smoothly as a whole. Obviously when you have 7 billion humans with a will of their own it gets a little tricky. And that's not counting the 3 billion ghosts, they're more hard work than humans." He sighs.

"But what does this have to do with me?"

"Well this is where you fit in. You see, Lola was always going to fall, although we knew it was going to happen, we couldn't actually stop it because it was her series of decisions that led to that moment, but in our bigger plan we could see that, if she lived it would benefit humanity as a whole-"

"How?"

"Well, Lola is only 15, but the fall and her long recovery was a very traumatic moment in her life. She had to learn to walk again, but you see, that incident has inspired her to go into medicine. She thinks she's going to be a nurse but we can see that she'll get involved in medical research, and her findings, not in her lifetime, but not long after, will lead to a breakthrough in the cure for cancer.
So you see, she's a very important soul. Although she was technically supposed to die, we could see how it would benefit humanity if she lived, and, of course, that's always our ultimate aim."

"But why did you need me?"

"I'm getting to that!" He tuts. "The problem is that when someone dies their soul has to be accounted for, either as a rogue or having passed over. It would bugger up the whole of space and time if just one soul went unaccounted for, a tiny butterfly effect that would tear a gaping hole in the fabric of time." His voice has risen dramatically and I roll my eyes.

"You sometimes hear of people having near death experiences, having seen the light or died on the operating table etc... Well the thing is, it was their time to die... But we knew that it was important that they carry on living. So we have a ghost like you. A soul who we classify as a rouge on paper, but actually wants to pass over and does so when the human 'dies', allowing their soul to return to their body. It's just one of the ways we can alter the world without directly interfering with the free will of humans."

"But why me? How did you know that I'd help her?"

"Please, Louis, when you were alive you used to cry when you had to kill a chicken on the farm." He says smugly.

"I didn't." I flush.

He just smirks at me.

"We knew straight away that you were perfect, so much compassion in one soul... There was no way you wouldn't help her. We just didn't expect you to bloody fall in love with Adele... That's one thing I didn't foresee, humans are so unpredictable when it comes go emotions. You've got no idea of the stress I was under trying to keep you apart."

"Why did you want to keep us apart though?"

"It's obvious isn't it? I needed you to move on, that wasn't going to happen if you had a reason to stay."

"But you let me speak to her towards the end..."

"Yes." He looks tired suddenly. "I thought if I allowed you that time with her, a bit of happiness, you'd be easier to control."

I nod, trying to absorb all this information.

"Good job Niall was there to pass over." I say finally.

"Yes, now that's something we could never have foreseen, there's no telling what a rogue will do. It's the biggest coincidence I've ever known and you're bloody lucky Louis." He frowns.

"It all worked out though." I think for a minute. "Why was Adele increasing my powers if she had nothing to do with it?"

Harry just smiles at me in an annoyingly wise way.

"What's the strongest thing on earth Louis?" He says eventually.

"Nature? Angels?"

"No." He smiles. "Love."

I can't help a little snort of laughter at the dreamy look on his face.

"No it's true!"

"But hatred can drive people to murder, wars, death, destruction!" I protest "Love doesn't have the power to kill thousands in the way that hatred does... In fact, loss and grief are more powerful than love, and guilt, those things drive people insane! I've seen so much of it over the centuries, loss destroys people-"

"Yes but hatred can be unlearned. Even the most awful, twisted souls can find redemption and learn to love. Hatred can be unlearned, love can't, not ever. You can teach someone not to hate, but tell them not to love all you want, it'll never stop them.
Love drives people to do things they would never have dreamt of doing, I see it every day in my work. A mother who'll go hungry to see her children fed. A soldier who'll survive months in a war zone because he knows he has to get back to his sweetheart. Even what Niall did for you. Nothing breaks love Louis. All children are born knowing instinctively how to love. Not one knows how to hate until they're taught." He smiles at me gently.

"That's the reason your powers increased. You'd been alone and unhappy for so long, Adele brought out every part of you that was capable of being happy and you blossomed. It had nothing to do with why you were there or Lola. It was love." He says sadly.

We sit for a while. I watch as the odd peachy light pours in through the windows and makes rainbows on the stone floor. Suddenly something occurs to me.

"How much earth time has passed while you've been here Harry?"

"About 3 seconds." He laughs. "I told you, time is strange here."

"But it's been ten years since I was last on earth?"

He nods warily, suddenly seeming to catch on to where I'm going with this.

"So Adele is 30?! Is she still in the house?"

"Yes." He sounds testy, as if he doesn't want to talk about this.

"Is she's ok? What's happened in her life?"

Harry sighs.

"I don't think-"

"Harry." I stare at him. Something about the way he's acting tells me that something is seriously wrong.

"Louis, I've come to get you to move on, that's why I'm here."

Something occurs to me.

"Will I see Niall if I go with you now?"

Harry's face breaks into a grin.

"Yes! In fact he's waiting for you, he's so excited-"

"But you said I'd never see Adele again if I passed over... Why?"

The grin slips from his face.

"Louis..."

"Tell me." My voice is hard. "If you don't tell me I'm not coming with you and you can come here as often as you like but I won't leave."

He looks stressed as he stares at me before his face softens.

"Ok." His voice is quiet. "After you left Adele... Well she didn't handle it well. She was devastated. Every morning since you left I've placed a white feather on her pillow. I wanted her to think you were still watching over her." He smiles sadly. "That poor girl has had so little love in her life... It broke her when you left."

My heart twists as I imagine how lonely Adele must be.

"After a few years she got into another relationship, but this guy made Derrick look like Mother Theresa. The thing is Louis, you accept the love you think you deserve and Adele just doesn't believe she deserves to be loved."

"What about now? Is she still with him?"

"No. He left a few days ago, he doesn't come back." Harry looks extremely uncomfortable. "The problem is... Well the problem is that she doesn't know she's pregnant. She doesn't find out until it's too late and the guilt of what she's done to her baby traps her."

"What do you mean?"

"She becomes a rogue."

I stare at him.

"How?" I whisper, feeling sick. He pauses before answering. Although his answer is barely a whisper every word cuts into my soul.

"In a months time Adele kills herself Louis."

~~~~~~~~

AN- I wrote this all in one go, just making it up as I go along as usual so I hope it all makes sense! Tell me if there's anything I haven't explained ;)

What did you think of this chapter? And I'm really curious how you think it's going to end? (I do know that much)

Please vote/comment and all that lovely stuff bc it's like oxygen to me ;) x