All along the front, the combatants fell apart, as both sides turned toward Emperor's Point to see who it was. Everyone saw the little natural born rabbit flailing in mid-air, spinning over and over. Then he disappeared behind the trees and there was a momentary blip of agony, and then silence again.

"Who was that?" voices asked.

"Was it Morellius?"

"It was Boxer!"

"Did he jump?"

"Was he pushed?"

The questions came from all sides. So did the answers. Speculation was thrown back and forth across the frontline. All the rabbits shifted uncomfortably, as if just waiting for the fighting to recommence. For the first time in a long time, it was quiet enough to hear birdsong over Roadkill Turnpike.

From behind the front, Angus looked up at the hilltop. There were only two silhouettes up there. And one was a captive bred.

At another point on the battlefield, Ball'rdo, the sole survivor of the old hare colony, was through with the speculation. He was right at the front, and had just been about to attack Quentin, the leader of the Emperor's reinforcements, when they'd been distracted by the shrill scream of the falling rabbit.

Ready, he lunged forward again.

And Quentin lunged back, not ready. Those rabbits on either side of him also retreated a couple of steps. Quentin visibly but silently gulped and glanced at them out of the corner of his eyes. None were sure...

Ball'rdo lunged again.

Now the rabbits beside the rabbits beside Quentin also shuffled back from the approaching hare, so that there was now an empty buffer zone all around him. All along the front, rabbits on both sides had noticed.

Ball'rdo sighed. "Well, are we going to do this or not?"

The question had been posed to Quentin, but he wasn't sure whether he was qualified to answer or not. So he didn't. But nobody else did either. They all just stood there, eyes flitting around, waiting for somebody else to.

"Hello? Am I addressing the living?" said Ball'rdo.

"That was Boxer," Quentin told him faintly.

"Just another name to me, pal," Ball'rdo retorted.

"He was the Prince Regent..."

"Well, if he wasn't the Emperor, this isn't over."

And Ball'rdo lunged again. Only Quentin didn't move.

"The Emperor's dead," he said incredulously. "You killed him."

"Who? Me?" said Ball'rdo, surprised.

"No. Jack. The courtier. The traitor."

Ball'rdo frowned. "Wait a second. Morellius is dead?"

All along the enemy front, as far as the booming hare could be heard, little rabbit heads nodded up and down mournfully.

"So who's in charge?" Ball'rdo asked.

"Boxer is," Quentin said, then, "Boxer was."

Ball'rdo narrowed his eyes. "So you don't have a leader?"

"I... I guess... I am?" Quentin gulped again.

Ball'rdo's nostrils flared. He reared up even higher.

"Then might I have a suggestion for you, boy..."

Meanwhile, at Emperor's Point, Mopsy was slowly unfurling. When the scream died down, she raised her head. Kurt had just turned round. He was looking at her, no, looking past her. She peered over the precipice.

Boxer's broken body lay motionless below.

"You did it!" she cried. "You killed him!"

Kurt didn't say anything. His breathing was erratic as he came down from the peak of excitement. He lowered his eyes. They fell on Peter.

Mopsy's turned her face as well.

"Father!" She remembered.

As she nuzzled Peter to wake up, Kurt hopped over, and then the pair of them rolled him away from the edge of the headland. They got him on his side on level ground where it was safe, and Mopsy nuzzled him again.

"Wake up," she whispered. "It's over now."

She shouldered Kurt out of the way as she busied around Peter. Kurt took a step back to regain his composure. Peter looked in poor shape. His skin was tight around his jowls, and in fact all over. His fur was sticking up over his joints. It wouldn't lie straight. One side of his face was all black and wet with his saliva still and his eyes were sticky and shut. He was covered in blood.

"Come on, papa. Wake up. Wake up."

Kurt saw Angus hobbling along the hilltop. He had Chris and Dave and Benjamin and Tom and Travis in tow.

"Why won't he wake up?"

She wasn't aiming her question specifically at Kurt. Indeed, she wanted someone who would tell her exactly what she wanted to hear. A friend, a relative, someone who would lie to her rather than have her unhappy.

"Is he breathing? He's not breathing!"

She was too flustered to be able to tell. Increasingly desperately, she ran around him, prodding and shaking him regularly.

"Help me! Do something" she cried.

Kurt approached cautiously. He put his ear in front of Kurt's mouth, snapped at Mopsy to stop poking him for a moment. Then he listened, and when he couldn't hear anything, just waited for the sensation of breath in his ear.

"He's still breathing... but it's very faint."

"He's alive!" Mopsy sobbed.

At that point Angus arrived at Emperor's Point with the others and Kurt took a step away from Peter. Angus gave him a questioning look. Kurt just shrugged. Mopsy didn't see any of it. She was down talking to Peter again.

"He'll wake up soon," she told Angus. "He's still breathing and it's over now so he can wake up now. He's going to wake up..."

Angus joined Mopsy at Peter's side, but Tom, Travis and the others all held back, their faces grey and drawn, but not from war weariness.

Below the headland, the battlefield was silent.

One day, two thousand rabbits would inhabit the warrens of Roadkill Turnpike once more. There would be no more emperors, no more imperial heritage, no more courtiers, no more repression, no more inequality, no more prison warrens for females, no more rape festivals, no more wars. Two thousand rabbits would live in harmony on the hillside and there would be no need for anyone to govern it because everyone would realise they already lived a perfect existence and didn't need anybody ruling over them to create an artificial sense of that. Never again would there be a distinction made between male, female, natural born or captive bred. The dark days of the war against the reign of the Morellius line would seep into legend and quickly be dismissed as stories because of the sheer monstrosity of it...

"Why isn't he waking up?" Mopsy asked.

Angus shook his head. "I don't know, dear..."

"He has to wake up," she cried. "He can't... he can't... die. Not now. Not this late. We're so close to winning. It's almost over."

"It is over, Mopsy," Angus told her.

She looked up at him, eyes glistening.

"The Emperor's dead," he went on. "Someone killed him days ago. Boxer was in charge now. And you and Kurt just killed him."

Mopsy frowned. "Who killed Morellius?"

"Oh, they died doing it. Somebody called Jack?"

Mopsy's eyes welled up and she turned away.

"You've got to wake up," she whispered to Peter. "Did you hear what grandpa just said? It's over! The fighting's stopped. You can't come this far and then miss this. You're gonna be needed even more now. And not just by me..."

Her tears began to fall into his fur.

One day, there would be a terrific storm and high winds would blow wet mud across the A414. Later, seeds would fall and weeds would sprout in this light covering of earth. And one day, the tarmac would fall into such disrepair that the road would crack up as more weeds pushed through from below. In the distant future, the road would disappear altogether, lost beneath a new sea of vegetation, unused as the roads would be, for the generations since man last drove down them...

"Look, Tom and Travis are here," Mopsy whispered.

She was lying on the ground, her nose to Peter's.

"We did it, papa. We survived. Please wake up."

Angus returned to Mopsy's side, speaking softly.

"I think maybe we should begin to prepare ourselves for the possibility that Peter isn't going to wake up, Mopsy dear..."

"No," she said sharply. "No."

"Come on," Angus said.

"Leave me alone..."

Angus looked to the others for help. The others just looked back. Part of them knew he was probably right, but part of them wanted to hold on to the same sliver of hope as Mopsy. "Oh, Mopsy." Angus sighed.

Mopsy got up again and slid in closer to her father, to the point where she was curled up in the crook of his prostrate form. He felt cold and stiff, but she told herself that was only because he wasn't cuddling her.

"If you wake up," she said between sniffles. "I promise I won't ever talk about war again. I won't ever wish that we could fight rabbits again, let alone humans. But we will tell the next generation what actually happened here, so that they can learn from our mistakes rather than making them themselves."

Travis had to leave. Tom followed.

"We'll create the perfect rabbit society right here," she whispered. "But with no Morellius, no Boxer, no Alexander or Nicholas. No emperors, courtiers, elders or anything like that. And everyone will be equal and free."

"Mopsy..." Angus went.

"We won't lie to anyone. And we'll all just live here as individuals together, not just parts of some bigger colony. Nobody will exist solely to ensure the future of the warren. The warren will just be our home. It won't be us."

"Mopsy..." Angus repeated.

"You could marry again," she continued. "I'm sure mama wouldn't mind. I know I won't mind. I miss having brothers. You could have some more. I... I don't know if I could ever replace Jack. I don't know if I want to. But you'll want some grandkids, won't you? Well, then, you'll have to wake up."

Angus appeared over her.

"Because if you don't wake up..." She began to cry. "Then I'm to blame, aren't I? You only came here for me and I got you involved in all this. If I'd never come here, you'd never have followed. You'd never have stayed and you'd never have... never have got yourself... killed!"

She burst into great sobs, resisting Angus and Kurt's attempts to coax her away and pulling herself back round to face Peter.

"You have to wake up!" she wailed. "You can't die now! You have everything to live for! This is our chance to change the world! I promise..." And she got up. "I promise, if you wake up now, every day from here on until the day I die I'll dedicate to making this a better world than it has ever been before."

"He's dead," Benjamin sobbed.

"Get up," Mopsy told Peter.

Tom and Travis had returned to Emperor's Point. They'd run into many of Peter's old friends. They were all shuffling around the rocky outcrop. Eleanor and Ball'rdo both looked heartbroken when they saw.

"Get up," Mopsy said more forcefully.

Angus and Kurt squeezed their way between her and Peter. Angus was again proving to be far stronger than his frail frame gave away.

"Get up!" Mopsy cried.

But they were leading her away, leading her toward the ever-growing crowd on Emperor's Point. There weren't only allies there. A gloomy-faced Quentin was standing aloof, looking very guilty and depressed.

"Get up! Get up! Get up!"

"Mopsy, it's over," Angus whispered. "He would have woken up by now. You can still make this a better world without him..."

"It doesn't have to be this way!"

She fought against their hold.

"IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!"

And then, slowly, Peter began to open his eyes.

One day, a mischievous little bunny would go missing. He would have asked about his father and somebody would tell him that his father had gone over the hill a long time ago with a lot of other bunnies' fathers. The curious bunny would then climb the hill to look for his father and get lost in the wilderness beyond. Even though nobody would be obliged to, several hundred would turn out to search for him - but it would be his own gallant grandfather who would find him.

That bunny would be part of the first litter at Roadkill Turnpike born to a mother who actually loved their father. The bunny would be named after him. His mother would call him Jack.

One day, someday soon.

NOTES:
And so here we are, at the end, some 144,355 words, 249 pages, 48 chapters, 8 months (and 11 days) later. I've posted my final thoughts about the story overall at the chapter listing page, but in regards to this short chapter itself, I had no qualms in dragging out all the sentimentality I've kept at bay throughout. I wasn't quite sure how to end it, but given that most of the rabbits (and humanity, for that matter) are dead, I thought it best if I bring it down to a close and personal level, so that Peter's eventual survival is a happy ending.

Also, in the last of my little movie references, Ball'rdo's line, "Am I addressing the living?" is taken from "Poltergeist", a line which midget medium Tangina uses when the Freeling guy tries to test out her supposed psychic abilities by answering a question with his mind.