A/N- Hello everyone! This is my first ever attempt at creative writing, so I apologize if my style is a little bit…raw. Anyway, I'm not sure where this story will go or how far I'll take it, but for now I just wanted to get it out there to help alleviate the pain of waiting for the new season. Enjoy/criticize to your heart's content! -TA

Jeff Winger has turned the corner.

At least, that's what he told himself, as he held his index finger over the 'Enter' key on his laptop. After the past two months, being expelled, staging an elaborate heist to rescue the real Dean, and effectively setting back his career a good year or two, he felt drained. He felt exhausted. He felt a little….different. Not a bad kind of different, just….different. He felt like he had grown, or at least that he had begun to reap the benefits of three years worth of growing. He thought hard to pinpoint exactly what catalyzed the shift in his attitude that had finally manifested itself during that stupid court case from the day before. However, the more he thought, the less sure that there was a specific event. His thoughts began to wander instead to the group of six people that had been present with him constantly for the past three years.

He thought about Abed, how his weird, inaccessible and sometimes totally creepy detachment from social reality allowed him to be practically bursting with self-confidence. Sure, he expressed it in a different way than most people would, but that was Abed. The important thing was that he showed Jeff that friends can show up where you least expected them to, a lesson Jeff had always kept in the back of his mind, he guessed, but never really appreciated it until recently.

He thought about Troy, Abed's perennial partner-in-crime, a kid so loyal and sometimes flat-out dumb that sometimes Jeff questioned if maybe sometime during their first year he got tackled a bit too hard at football practice. But that loyalty and whimsy that Troy always seemed to carry showed Jeff that the people you care about will be by your side no matter what, that they won't leave you, and that relying on other people isn't weakness, but strength. He thought back to that anxiety pill fiasco and how they'd ended up there in the first place. Troy bent over backwards to protect Abed from that French Stewart impersonator, and the group followed suit. Jeff tried hard to think of a time before Greendale when he would've even entertained that kind of idea. Nothing sprung to mind.

He thought about Shirley, someone who had impacted his life so much more than he had realized. She drove him to adopt the very personality he had slowly been chipping away for the past three years. The callous, narcissistic ass that arrived at Greendale arrived courtesy of the Big Cheddar herself (along with one other event which he was currently blocking out for the sake of reminiscing.) But she had showed him much more than that since arriving here at school. He had never met someone so dedicated to family; even going so far as to force Christmas on them their first semester at Greendale after knowing each other for only a few months. She showed him that family doesn't just mean parents, siblings, cousins, or any of that. It can be anyone, and without a doubt he could call those six weirdoes his family thanks to Shirley 'Big Cheddar' Bennett.

He thought about Britta. Whenever he thought of Britta, his thoughts wandered back to the first semester, when he tried so adamantly to get her into his bed. As he thought that, twisting his face in over-exaggerated disgust at his past-self, he realized he had Britta to thank most of all for his new family, because if she hadn't called his bluff and assembled that group of misfits, he most likely never would have spoken to any of the people he now couldn't go more than a week without seeing. In addition to that though, he saw her generosity. He saw her intense passion about making a difference, and even though she was so bad at it, she never gave up. Whether it was protesting about Beirut or diagnosing a random passerby with schizophrenia for sneezing four times in a row, she attacked issues with the same spirit no matter how dumb or how wrong she was. She was addicted to hot-button issues. Her spirit was strangely uplifting to Jeff. He admired her for her ability to simply be passionate for passion's sake. He hoped it was rubbing off on him.

He thought about Pierce. He would never, ever, ever say it out loud, but even Pierce contributed to Jeff's recent breakthrough. Pierce showed him the dangers of closing yourself off from the ones you care about. He showed Jeff that this cynicism and forced solitude he had maintained for so long was nothing more than a defense mechanism for loneliness. At the same time, though, he showed him that it's never too late. When Jeff first met Pierce, he was basically a walking stereotype for a 1950's cigarette salesman. Bigoted, arrogant, antiquated. But now, in the past week alone, he had witnessed this same man, a guy who almost actively attempted to drive Fat Neil (er, Real Neil? Just Neil?) over the edge, forgo his own inheritance in favor of his half brother and reprimand that douche Alan for calling Jeff gay. If Pierce could change for the better, anyone could. Even someone like himself.

And finally, he thought about Annie. He didn't think anyone had impacted him more over the past three years than this girl- no, young woman - had. She believed in him unconditionally (mostly) and always managed to see the best in everyone. She made him want to become less selfish, she made him want to put others before himself. Of course, he didn't do that very often yet, but the drive was there, and occasionally is better than never, right? Annie showed him that weakness could be overcome, second chances are within reach, and anything can be accomplished if you work hard enough for it, settle for nothing less than you best, and stay optimistic. She was in many ways polar opposite of him, but at the same time they were so similar it was eerie. Jeff always seemed to underestimate her, whether it was her drive, her ambition, her diabolically sneaky, sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle, manipulation techniques. And she was off limits. At least, that what he's been chanting in his head for the past two years, trying to convince himself that they had a brother-sister relationship between them, or a father-daughter relationship, or a cousins relationship, or anything but a potential romantic one. He couldn't afford to let that guard down, and risk destroying what had become his most important friendship here at Greendale. He found that he could talk to Annie about anything, at any time, and taking things further only to have him screw it up with his commitment issues just was not an option. At least, it didn't use to be. But maybe things would be different from now on. And his age argument held less and less water every day. She was 21 now, almost 22, a full-fledged big-time grown up who could and did make her own decisions. Besides, he wasn't that much older than Britta or Abed at 34, and Britta was currently caught up with Mr. Troy 'Truest Repairman' Barnes, barely a year older than Annie. Ok Winger, you're getting off topic. Focus.

He tried to push those thoughts from his mind as he brought himself back to reality, sitting on his laptop at the study room table. No doubt he had been staring intensely at the screen, glassy-eyed for the past ten minutes at least. And he had just Winger-speeched himself in his own head. Maybe Alan was right. Maybe this placed had made him 'so gay.'

He let out a small chuckle and shook his head. His eyes focused once again on the laptop's glossy screen, coming to rest on the text within a search box in the center of a simple white page, emblazoned in huge purple letter above. William Winger. His dad. The man he had despised, who he had blamed for all of his problems, shortcomings, and misfortunes for his entire adult life. He wasn't sure specifically why he had decided to finally seek him out, but all he knew was that somehow, he was ready. The study group had made sure of that in their own special way, each offering him incentive to meet them half-way, to improve himself in order to pay back this group of lovable weirdoes and misfits that had become his family. His finger, having long since dropped back to the table as he reminisced, hovered once again over the black 'Enter' key on his keyboard. With one last deep breath, summoning all of his willpower, and secretly, very secretly, wishing that Annie or any one of the group was here with him, he pressed 'Enter.'