Here it is! I've been anticipating this for a really long time. Enjoy! :)

The room is dark.

Race is starting to regret breaking that lightbulb. Then they would have had some light. But all they have to go off of is the already dull light coming from outside the door. All they can see from their standing point is a bunch of featureless people further back in the room.

Until someone in the back lights a candle. Then another person lights a match. And then there's another light source, and another, and another, until the room is illuminated.

There are so many people here.

People of all ages, shapes, sizes, genders, skin tones--everything. No matter what, they all have dirty faces with hollowed out cheekbones and bags under their eyes.

It's a really sad sight to see.

But the sight of three people who are obviously not with Them gives them hope, and a light to their eyes.

For some time, no one speaks.

"Uh...hi?" Race tries. "We'se come to find you. And ... here we are."

If no one makes any moves this can get awkward real fast.

"Antonio?"

Race would recognize that voice anywhere.

It's accompanied by another voice. "È Antonio? Davvero?"

It's Andrea and Giacomo.

Race nods. "Y-yep."

Their smiles reach their ears. "Antonio!"

They come over to him.

"Come va?" Andrea asks.

"Better than you, I'm sure!" Race replies with a smirk. That gets them to start laughing.

"What are you doing here?" "How did you get here?" they ask him. "How'd you get past Them?"

"Oh, that's a long story," Race answers. "But short answer is: it's all good."

"We should probably introduce ourselves properly," Spot says. "I'll start. I'm Spot Conlon."

"I'm Raymond," Ray introduces himself to everyone.

"And this-" Spot motions to Race with a smile, "is Racetrack Antonio Higgins."

"Racetrack?" Andrea and Giacomo repeat.

"Long story," Race tells them. Then he looks a little ways a way, and sees a girl blinking a lot. "You...you're Annie Kelly, right?"

She steps closer, with an amused smile. "It seems finally we meet again and you remember who I am."

Race chuckles sheepishly. "Yeah, remembering face's ain't my strong suit." She's right. This is the one time we've interacted and I remembered who she was.

"Did you say...Antonio Higgins?" someone asks.

Race turns to them and nods. "Y-yeah. Why?"

The person beckons two people over to Race. "These two people want to meet you very much."

Race squints. 

He's never seen this couple before.

But he has the man's eyes and the woman's face shape.

These are his grandparents.

After sixteen years of life, after being separated from them for a little more than fourteen years, he's finally meeting them face to face.

So, so many emotions are running wild within him.

He can't move, though. His feet are planted to the ground.

That's okay. They move to him, slowly but surely. It's clear that age has worn them down over the years.

But Race can wait for them to walk to him. He's been waiting to meet them for a good long time now. Just seeing them is worth it.

"Antonio?" the woman asks hopefully.

Race nods. "Mhm." He tries racking his brain for all the Italian he's learned. "Piacere, nonna."

He called her grandmother.

"Oh!" she--Mattia----his grandmother--exclaims in happiness. She smiles. Happy tears well up in her eyes. The man beside her--Giovanni--his grandfather--starts tearing up as well. Race starts blinking. Just watching their eyes turn red makes him want to cry too.

The emotions win out, and he feels his face contort the way it does when he cries.

He finds that he can move again. He comes up to them, and hugs them both. They wrap their arms around him.

"Oh, Antonio," the woman--Mattia--Nonna--whispers in Race's ear. "doppo tutto questo tempo..."

"Sono qui," Antonio murmurs back. I am here. After all this time, he finally reunites with his grandparents. I miei nonni.

Abbiamo un raduno di famiglia.

Antonio never wants to let them go.

"Mio nipote," the man--Giovanni--Nonno--whispers in Race's other ear. "ci hai trovato."

Race wants to linger on how nipote means grandchild as well as nephew/niece, but other thoughts drown it out. Because that's not the important one. He wants to linger on how he finally has someone to call him my grandson.

"Sì," he murmurs back. "Ti ho travato." He found all of them, it's true.

"Siamo fieri di te," they tell him.

They're proud of me. 

Race has so many questions. He wants to ask how they've been. What their house is like. What their life was like fifteen years ago when it was just the three of them. He wants to know more about his parents. And he wants to learn all he can about Giovanni Antonio and Mattia Chiara Bonoforte that he can.

They'll have time for that later, though. Plenty of time. For now, though, there's too much going on.

"Are you all the people They have ever taken?" Spot asks to the crowd.

Most of them nod. "Well, we're the ones who haven't passed away yet."

People have died in captivity here after being taken.

"Is Theodore Stargazer Conlon here?" Spot asks in a small voice.

"No," Andrea and Giacomo answer, and hang their heads. 

"I regret leaving him behind that fateful night," Giacomo says.

"He wanted us to go even when he couldn't," Andrea adds.

"But...he came here, right?" Spot asks.

"No one ever saw him come here," another person says.

"Does that mean...?" Spot trails off.

If none of them have seen Stargazer...

Both Spot and Ray look down, disheartened. Stargazer meant so much to them.

"If they ever kept him anywhere else, we couldn't have known," Annie tells them regretfully. "But we have no clue of knowing where he is. Or if...he still is here, after ten years."

Ten years.

Ray thinks about that.

Ten years since I've seen the only man I've ever loved.

He hears Stargazer's voice in his mind.

...That little house in Brooklyn we'll move in to when we're 21.

That dream never did become a reality.

But she said that if he was kept somewhere else, they wouldn't have known, Spot reasons with himself. There's still a chance...right?

But that was so long ago. Is there a chance that even if he had lived passed that night, he's still alive a decade later?

Race walks over to Spot and takes his hand silently. He knows that this is hard. He looks at Ray. He can see that Ray is trying to be strong, but he is melancholy too. Race takes Ray's other hand. He squeezes both Ray's and Spot's hands. They squeeze back gratefully.

Spot and Ray both had strong connections to Stargazer, and they both have strong connections to Race. Maybe they have more in common than they thought.

But they can't take forever to think about the former leader of Brooklyn.

They face outward to the crowd again, which has semi-moved around them. Some faces they recognize, some they don't.

"Now, I want to know everyone here," Ray tells them. "I want to learn all of your names, all of your stories."

And so they all tell their stories. At this point, the three have lost count of just how many people they've talked to.

There are so, so many people.

All have very different stories, and all different levels of involvement.

Some speak better English than others, some don't. Some worked together, some had gone rogue. Some want to see the family they've left behind, others have given up on hope of seeing anyone that they had once cared about.

No matter how their story started, it almost always ended in the same way: they were so close or had just figured it out. And somehow, They found out that they knew. And so they ended up here. And haven't seen the light of day since.

"What all have you done down here all this time?" Race asks them. No one answers that question directly. It's been explained that most of the time they were in here, but when they weren't...there were a lot of experiences that no one has the emotional strength to talk about. The three sympathize. If the taken don't want to talk about trauma, they don't have to. They've come to save these people; not bring them more despair.

Eventually, they get through every single person in that room. Race wishes that he could have written that all down; put it with all of Stargazer's notes. But he can't; he left the box, as well as all paper and pens, at Fortunato Alam Ishmael Celesto Nephus's house.

"Everyone, listen to me!" Ray announces. "It's been lovely listening to all of you. But now, I have good news: you are all leaving this place. Today. Right now. They aren't a threat anymore. You're coming with us."

That gets people all excited around them. Many incredulous and disbelieving, but hope wins out.

"Well why didn't you say that when you first got here?!" Andrea and Giacomo exclaim.

Even if Ray attempted to justify that when they got sidetracked by learning everyone's stories they forgot to mention why they were there, he wouldn't be heard over everyone chattering excitedly around them.

"Okay, everyone, follow me!" Ray calls out. "Race, you stay behind a little and make sure everyone gets out."

"What about me?" Spot asks.

"Whatever you feel like doing," Ray answers as people start walking.

Good enough for Spot.

"Is that everyone?" Race looks around. They all seem to be heading in the same direction toward the door. No one wants to stay that much longer in this wretched place.

One of the people beckons for Race to come over to him. It's the same guy who brought Race's grandparents over to him. When learning his story, Race found out the guy's name was Jim Barlow. He looks around Ray's age, his skin is a shade darker than Boots', and he has some of the kindest amiable eyes Race has ever seen.

As Race walks over to him, Jim Barlow murmurs, "There is one other person."

"Oh?"

"First, let them all leave."

"We'll catch up in a moment!" Race calls out to Ray in the front. Ray nods in acknowledgement and keeps counting heads as they exit the door.

Spot walks up to them. "What's going on?"

"You don't have to stay with us."

"Yeah, well Ray told me to do whatever I felt like doing, and this is what I felt like doing."

"Alright, then." Race turns back to Jim Barlow. "He's staying with us."

"Alright." Then, after making sure it's just them, he says, "There is someone still in here, in a little room tucked away back there. No one knows about 'em, though."

"What?!" Race and Spot exclaim. 

"Everyone knows that something is in there, but it was in the middle of the night when they were brought in--I was the only one awake," he begins to explain. "I couldn't see who it was. I just know that once they went in, they never left."

"Wasn't anyone else curious about who or what is in there?" Spot asks.

"Maybe. But most of the times They would go in there, we wouldn't be here. Still, no one dared ask. Or try to find out. They already had enough on their plate. They found out secrets that they shouldn't have, and they got the consequences for it. No one wanted more."

Understandable.

"Can we go let 'em out, now?" Race asks.

Jim Barlow nods. "Yes. Right back here."

He leads them to the farthest corner of the room, and against the wall there is a little door that looks like it was probably made for a storage room.

"Is it locked?" Spot asks.

"Unfortunately, yes."

Before Race can ask so what are we going to do? Spot pulls out his key. "Don't worry. I picked one lock today to get out of a miserable cell. Hopefully it'll work the second time."

Then it hits Race that that is probably how Spot and Ray escaped the room they were being held captive in.

But the key is ... broken. It didn't look like that the last time Race saw it. He must have done that to pick the lock. Race knows that the key meant something to Spot. 

"Alright." Spot gets to work. "Here goes nothing." 

And, fortunately, after a lot of twisting and turning both the key and the door knob, there's a click and the door opens. Spot takes a step back, admiring his handiwork.

"You did it, Spot!"

"Yeah." Spot smiles. "I did."

They look inside. It's not actually a room: but a tunnel to somewhere else. And at the end of the tunnel is the glint of another doorknob.

Race motions for Jim Barlow to go first. "After you."

He steps in. "Follow me."

Race follows him, Spot not far behind him.

"How long ago was it that the person came in here?" Race asks suddenly.

"Mmm, around ten years ago, I'd say," Jim Barlow answers.

Once they get to the end, they test the door knob. Locked.

"How many locked doors does someone need?" Spot grumbles. He's fine with it, though. If he gets to help whatever poor soul is locked away in here, then that's all he needs.

Spot successfully picks the lock. Tentatively, together, they all open the door.

And inside, they find a young man tucked into the corner of the room, murmuring to himself, electric blue eyes slightly hazy.

It's Stargazer.

AAAAAAAAA THERE WE GO!!

STARGAZER IS BACK!!!

What did you think of that? Was there enough build up? Enough plot twist/cliffhanger?

I'm glad that even before this I was getting comments on how Stargazer should come back.

Finally!! The taken have been found!! And set free!!

I'm so glad that Andrea and Giacomo got to come back. :)

Turns out, I don't kill off original characters. I just convince everyone (including my own characters in the story) that I do haha.

I really, really loved writing the part where Race reunites with his grandparents. And I had to take a moment a couple of times because oh my gosh, that was so sweet and I was so happy that I could finally give Race what he wanted: his biological family.

I realize that I never specified his grandmother's full name before. I just wanted to put it in somewhere since his grandfather is Giovanni Antonio. So, now we have Mattia Chiara. And because I can, here's her name before marrying a Bonoforte: Mattia Chiara Gazzetta.

This story isn't over yet. It's getting close, but it can't quite end just yet.

Now, we just need someone to go fetch Ray and reunite the hopeless star-crossed lovers.

I can't wait! :)

Please, no homophobia, profanities, hate etc in the comment section at all times.

Best,

~Your Beloved Author (who loves their cat who is sleeping on their bed very very much)