I sat down here before this camera with the intention of telling you that you are a puppet, Felix. I was going to lambast you for being a slave.

A slave to the children and their whimsy.

A slave to your mothers desire to have a son.

A slave to your fathers destruction.

All of your life you’ve been a puppet, forced to dance on a string for a master. Your father beat you like a drum, dancing you to the beat of violence. Your mother did her best to coddle you and prop you up, make you confident, and with her strings she pulled them as tight as possible to straighten you out.

Doom used you to help him hide in plain sight whilst becoming the Tag Team Champions. He masterfully puppeteered you into a friendship of falsehoods and deceit, knowing that when he was finished, he could toss you aside like the teddy a child no longer covets.

And finally, there’s me.

I’ve not just grabbed hold of the attached strings and made you dance. I’ve created an entire world for you to reside in. I’ve made your entire universe a stage, Felix. Upon that stage, your story has been nothing short of entertaining. You’ve triumphed. You’ve fallen flat on your face. The crowd have sung with you, mourned with you and hoped for you.

But then it dawned on me…

I’m a slave too.

The strings were attached to me the moment I looked for a cure to my terminal illness and received one. I exchanged one death sentence for a life sentence, and haven’t been able to remove the strings ever since.

I’m made to dance to the tune of the dead, ferrying souls from one place to another for eternity, forced to obey the commands of a man that played his role in my enslavement.

I thought you were a puppet.

A slave.

Yet all this time, I have been too.

Whilst I’m one of those in control of your strings, I didn’t place them there. I didn’t create the puppet that is Felix Foley, just like I didn’t create the slave that is Tombstone.

Your father did that, Felix.

We have that in common, at the very least. Because without Fernicus, you wouldn’t exist as this rotten testament to the dark and desperate truths at Illumination Antiques. Without Fernicus, I would have passed over and been ferried to the other side long ago.

Without your father, neither of us would be fighting at Red Snow.

That’s why this story needs to end. That’s why you need to end, Felix. Everything he put into this world needs to be taken out of it, myself included.

And you should never fear the end. You should never fear being taken out of the world he put you into.

Because the end is where we meet..

And I will send you on your way.