A/N: And here is the conclusion to "For Ransom"! I'd like to say thank you to a few of you readers for leaving some great reviews that helped me build my story! Especially to two of you who just recently left some LONG reviews, you two really helped me rethink this epilogue :P

I hope you guys enjoy the ending and I hope I made the story a good read :]

Now without further adue, the ending!

Epilogue

Five Years Later…

I'm sitting on the park bench in Central Park, watching couples pass by holding hands, children running off away from their parents, dogs taking dumps in the snow. It was all so normal for an afternoon in New York City in the middle of December… However, for me, it was anything but.

I'm nervously rubbing my hands together to keep them warm, I'd forgotten to bring a pair of gloves. My legs are shaking at a million miles an hour.

I can't believe I'm doing this…

I looked around for someone I thought I would recognize. Yet, it'd been five years since I last saw him… I doubt he looked the same any more… I took a deep breath to try and calm myself, which did absolutely nothing.

Since the trial of David Yates, my life never went back to the way it was. I always was the outsider of everything because I distanced myself from everyone. In college, I studied harder and graduated with a 4.0 in computer science. I never partied; the only friends I made were the ones that were in my classes. I'm terrified of people touching me; even my own parents can't hug me anymore.

I've grown to become terrified of humans in general, all of them are evil.

The first few years after the trials, I'd been recognized constantly by people walking down the street. I hated being known as the kid who was kidnapped and raped for half a year… what kind of reputation is that? Do people think they're being nice? Telling me their glad I'm alive and well? Bitch. I don't even know you.

"Alex?"

I jumped out of my seat and spun around to find the face I'd been dreaming/nightmaring about for the past five years.

"David…"

He smiled at me and held his hand out, "How're you doing?"

I didn't take it; I just stared at it as though he was handing over the aids virus in a vial. His smile dropped as well as his hand.

"I never thought you'd call after all this time… I didn't even know if you'd call period," he said, stuffing his hands in his coat pockets.

"I honestly didn't think I would either…" I replied.

"You want to sit back down?" David asked taking a seat on the bench I had just been occupying.

I hesitantly sat back down next to him and made sure to keep a large distance between us. He noticed this right away and sighed, his breath making a small cloud in front of his face. He was still very much as attractive as he had been all those years ago. He was older, now probably twenty-nine, but his face had barely changed.

He took out a cigarette from his coat pocket and put it in his mouth.

"That's going to kill you, you know," I pointed out.

He chuckled, "I'm going to hell anyways."

I looked down at the concrete and snow under our shoes.

"Why did you call?" he asked, lighting his cigarette.

"Have you read the news papers lately?"

"I don't read that shit."

"Cricket was killed in prison…"

There was a long pause. It seemed as though he didn't know how to respond to this.

"Are you glad?" he asked

"I'm never happy when a human life is taken."

He grinned, "That's what I thought you'd say."

"What about you?"

Another pause. He took his cigarette out of his mouth between his two fingers and blew out smoke, it looked the same as his breath earlier.

"I'm indifferent."

We sat there for a few minutes, I watched as he took a drag from his cigarette over and over. I rubbed my hands together in an effort to keep them warm; stupid me just had to forget gloves. Before I knew what he was doing, he pulled off his own gloves and handed them to me. I looked at them for a second and looked back up at him. He was staring straight ahead, taking a drag. I put his gloves on and relaxed a little.

"Your card said to call if I wanted answers," I said finally.

"You have to give me a question first," he replied simply.

I didn't know what questions I wanted to ask, I had so many yet none of them came to mind except for one.

"Why?"

He looked at me for a moment; I looked back at him as though he was the only one that held the key to my past, my future and my present. Because he was.

"The story I told in the court room that day… it was true. None of that was a hoax to get the jury on my side. Mr. Marks was killed in prison as well about half a year before we… well you know."

I looked back down at the snow, how white it seemed, how pure and untouched as it flitted onto the tops of our shoes and knees.

"When I'd heard about his death, all I could think about was you… the relationship we had, the vow I made to protect you, the hurt he had caused us both."

"Then why did you take me to a place like that?"

"Your parents… they didn't want you to remember anything… not even me… I'd tried to get in contact with them over the years, but they would never return my calls. It was as though I'd never excised… I wanted them to experience the same pain I had gone through when they took you from me… all of this was about them…"

"You're not telling me the whole truth… if you truly cared about me like you said you wouldn't have let them rape and torture me…"

The gruesome scars on my back had never really faded away, every once in a while I would see a glimpse of them in the mirror… a cruel reminder.

He sighed and took another long drag. "When Mr. Marks was killed, it brought a lot of painful memories back… things I'd taught myself to forget had all of the sudden reappeared… I started smoking and popping some bad drugs Alex… my actions… it was all because of the drugs… I was reenacting what had gone on in that house so many years ago. I was becoming the devil and I couldn't stop myself… deep inside, I wanted to kill those men, I wanted to stop them and hold you until you could stop crying… but the anger I had built up against everyone had gotten to a point that I couldn't control myself. I was angry at you, how you could forget me so easily, how you left me to a system that wouldn't give two shits about my well being. I was angry at your parents for throwing me to the curb… at myself for not really protecting you. That's what happens when you're a drug addict."

"It's an excuse not to take responsibility," I snapped at him.

He was quiet and frozen in place. We shared a moment of silence and understanding. We would never see that time the same way as the other, there was no way.

"Alex… when I was younger… while other boys and girls would pretend to be married, I would secretly want to be married to you. I wasn't the same as the other kids. I'm not gay, but when it comes to you…" he sighed and threw his cigarette into the snow. "When I realized what I had done to you, the day that Chris had carved your back open, it was too late… I snapped back to reality and I stopped the drugs; I wanted nothing more than to send you back home. Chris reminded me a lot of Mr. Marks… and to my word… I killed him. Alex I-" his voice staggered for a moment.

"I'd always known I loved you. You were the one hope I had in life… words cannot express my sorrow for what I did to you… what I put you through… it was wrong, it was horrid and grossly unfair to you or your parents."

I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest.

"Did you know that after that I can't touch anyone?"

I saw out of the corner of my eye, a slight frown on his face.

"I haven't been able to have a normal life… barely any friends, no relationships… I can't even be around my parents, they look at me with blank stares and I guess I do the same… I'm not who I used to be anymore… I've buried myself in school… for a while it was just me and school… that's all I had going for me until I graduated."

"You graduated?" he asked.

I nodded, "Computer science."

He grinned at that, "you always were a little geeky."

I grinned slightly; I guess he did know me a little.

"I never graduated college. After the trial, I decided to quit."

"That's a shame…"

Out in the park we watch children building a snow man, an older boy picked up a younger one and put him on his shoulders to let him put the finishing touches on the head.

"I wish I could start over," he stated, "With life in general… the cards we were dealt started off as shitty in the first place… there was no winning with that hand."

"What would you have changed?"

He paused to think for a moment, "just a few things… letting him hurt you for one, letting them separate us, and then… letting my emotions get the better of me."

I bit my lip and glanced up at him.

"I also wish… that the last day you were there… in my room… I wish I had kissed you… so that you could at least remember one last good moment."

At that moment, I really believed him.

But only for a second.

"I hated you… I still do."

"You have every right to be."

"But sometimes… I wanted to like you… in the court room I was thinking to myself that I wanted you to be found not guilty…"

He stayed silent.

"At first… I thought it was Stockholm syndrome, but I still feel this way after all this time… this isn't normal for a victim… I guess there were still some hiding feelings for you after all after all this time and after all that happened."

We both stared at each other for what seemed like forever, until he stood up and held his hand out to me, "This is me wanting to start from scratch, you can take my hand and we'll do all of this over again… or you can leave right now and we'll never see each other again… it's your choice."

The logical part of my mind was telling me to run away, get the hell out of there… that this was all a trap. But the illogical part of me, my heart, was saying to take his hand and jump into this head first. Both sides were going back and forth, they both were making sense. Before I even realized what I was doing…

I took his hand.

"My name is David Yates, nice to meet you," he smiled at me, his hand was cold and it wasn't until now that I remembered that I was wearing his gloves, just another example of how he cared.

"Alex Anderson…" I said, a grin formed on my face and I shook his hand. "We were really close as kids weren't we?"

He chuckled, "The closest."

One Year Later…

Who would have thought that after everything we've gone through I would be here right now?

I certainly didn't…

He moved into me slowly, I never was able to get quickly acquainted to his… well, man part. But he knew this instinctively; I never had to tell him. I clutched the sheets underneath me, almost tight enough to draw blood from my palms with my finger nails. He kissed my shoulder in a loving gesture of kindness. I tried my hardest to get used to his member deep inside me, but my muscles couldn't relax that fast. It felt so good to me though, I was in heaven or hell, one of the two. Because certainly, having a man penetrate me for my own pleasure was going to send me straight to hell… but was I one to complain?

David was the only person I'd had sex with since the events that brought us back together and honestly, I'm glad it was him… he made me so comfortable our first time, I wasn't scared of sex anymore or anyone touching me. In fact, I wanted him to touch me, all over, everywhere, oh god!

He gripped my throbbing member and stroked it slowly, trying to help me relax, but my body tensed even more from this touch. Dear god, he knew exactly what to do and what I wanted.

I haven't talked with my parents since I moved away at only nineteen years old, they don't know about my relationship with David, nor do I plan on telling them.

"David…" I moaned; I knew he wasn't getting any pleasure from just being inside me, even though he constantly denies this and that he enjoys that part thoroughly.

He moved slowly at first, to make sure I was alright and wasn't in pain. A soft moan escaped my lips and he quickly devoured those too. His lips were sweet and soft on mine, gentler than anything I had ever experienced before in my life. His thrust picked up speed; he held my hips with his hands and pushed me into him while he pushed back with his crotch. When he lost control of his body, this is what would happen, I'm not complaining though, I quite like it.

His eyes closed tight in concentration and in ecstasy. Sometimes I wished he would look at me while he was in so much pleasure, but he never could even when I would beg him to.

I pulled the sheets over my face, trying not to cum so early.

"You don't want to touch yourself?" David asked; my eyes opened slightly to find him smirking slightly, his eyes still closed tight.

"I want… to do it… with you…" I panted, grinning up at him.

He chuckled at me, "I like it when you do it first though, because your insides spasm."

"Not tonight…" I begged him.

"Then I guess I'll have to get you to cum on my own," he smirked and thrusted in just the right spot. I threw my head back and let out a loud gasp of pleasure. I felt the warm sticky liquid on my chest, my own semen, but I also felt the same warm substance inside me, that would be David's.

"You were holding yourself back," David chuckled, leaning down to kiss me.

"So were you," I chuckled and kissed him back.

He collapsed on the bed next to me and rested his arm across my belly. "Guess what," he said, his eyes still closed, about to fall asleep.

"What?" I asked, stroking his hair.

"I love you."

I smiled at him and said the words that no one would have ever guessed I would say to my former kidnapper, "I love you too."

After all these years of hating someone and then trying to come to terms with what they've done... you see what you would have missed if you hadn't taken their hand after an apology. I would have missed out on getting to know (again) a person who was victimized himself, an amazing person who'd made wrong choices.

Even now, sometimes I'm scared of being around him… those times, I'm horrified that I'll revisit those days in captivity and I'll never be able to kiss David again. But when he comes into the room and notices my hesitancy… he understands.

I don't talk about our days during the kidnapping nor about our childhoods… I don't need to know or remember. All I need to know is right now, I'm in love and I'm happy.

And that right now I don't want this moment to end.

A/N: :D THANK YOU TO ALL WHO'VE STAYED WITH ME FROM THE BEGINNING IN 2010! Couldn't have done it with out a lot of kicks in my ass :]

To all who would like to read more amazing tales from me, I hope that you add me to your alert list. I'll be starting a new story called "District X" based on a post apocalyptic world taken over once again by the Catholic church (And yes, there'll be some pedophilia involving a catholic priest :P [Don't hate me! I'm catholic! D:]). If you liked this story, I guarantee you that you'll like this next one :D

Anyways, Please review! I'd really like to know what you guys thought and how I could have improved. You have no idea how much reviews help me in writing my stories. (Also I really want to get to 100 reviews o-o)

Hope to see you again!
~Kirie