In the end, it really doesn't matter how much Amy fights it or how many times she can't bring herself to do it, to pull the trigger and tell Karma the truth. In the end, doing it isn't a matter of choice. She has to.

But before the end… "You'll know when it's time," Shane tells her (over and over and over so many fucking times she hears it in her sleep.) "You'll know when you're ready."

And that, Amy does know, is just the thing. It may never be time. There may never be a perfect moment when she thinks yes, this is it. This is the moment when Karma won't freak, when she won't lose her shit at finding out her best friend is gay (or bi) (or pan) (or something Amy hasn't learned the term for yet, and that's the other thing: how can Karma understand when she doesn't?), when Karma won't pull away or be bugged or be wholly uncomfortable at being loved.

Loved like that.

God, Amy never thought the way she loved Karma might be… too much.

"You don't have to rush," Lauren says to her, repeating it day after day after day until her words, her thoughts, her very fucking voice blends together with Shane's and yes, that's as creepy as it sounds. "You've got time," she says.

Amy knows she has time. She's sixteen. She's got days and weeks and years and decades and that's just fucking great except (and there's always an except, isn't there?) every one of those days and every one of those weeks that slips by, she feels less and less and less like her, and more and more and more like a lie.

Five minutes before she kissed Karma, she didn't know this was who she was but now she does and as terrifying as the prospect of telling Karma is?

The thought of keeping it in even one more day is worse.

She knows that's the thing, the nut, the crux of the problem (and she hates that, she hates thinking of who she is as a fucking problem). Keeping it in is slowly killing her and even thinking about letting it out (and not just to Karma) (to anyone) (cause Karma might be first - or third,really - but she won't be last) seems like a one-way ticket on a bullet train to her own doom. There's a rock and there's a hard place and Amy's already the dirt that's been ground down to nothing under them both.

And there's only one way out. There's only one fix for all this, one move she can make that will take this… thing… hanging between her and Karma (and everyone) (like her mother) (oh, God, her mother) and make it disappear.

"I've gotta girl the fuck up," she says (to the mirror) (cause the mirror isn't Shane or Lauren so it doesn't talk back) (much.) "I've just gotta do it." She stares into her own eyes and feels a calm and a sense of purpose and a strength she didn't know she had well up inside her. "I'm going to do it."

And she will.

Soon.

Like, you know, when she can take the mirror with her. When she can stare into her own eyes as she speaks to Karma. When that strength she didn't know she had doesn't fizzle and fade and fucking run for the hills the moment the words 'I need to talk to you' bubble up to her lips.

So… soon. Like… tomorrow, maybe. Or the day after. Or next week. Next month, at the latest.

But in the end, it really doesn't matter when Amy plans to do it cause in the end?

Utah happens. And she doesn't have a choice.

Amy's never believed in reincarnation or past lives or what goes around coming around and all that.

The Ashcrofts did (do) (she thinks it's still do) (she hasn't exactly asked.) Molly used to talk about past lives and rebirths and karma (the concept, not the daughter) all the time. She used to explain how what you did in one life carried over to the next and the next and so on.

"What we do in this life," she said, "echoes in eternity."

And yes, Amy knew she totes stole that from Gladiator but she didn't point it out cause it was a good line and she kinda liked it. A little. Cause even if she didn't believe, it was still nice to think that maybe, since she got Karma in this life, that she must have done some good, some real good, in another.

Or so she thought.

"A serial killer," she says. It's more of a blurt, really, a sudden interruption into the (kinda) comfortable silence between her and Shane and Lauren at the lunch table. Shane's head snaps up and he looks in her direction, more than a little confused, but happy for any interruption of his half eaten burrito and his barely read chem notes.

Lauren, sitting on the other side of Amy, doesn't even flinch. She's heard this before.

"I must have been a serial killer," Amy says. She's got a spoon in hand, dunked halfway into her cup of soup. "Like Bundy or Manson or Dahmer," she says, swirling the spoon in the cup, her eyes… well… her eyes aren't watching her spoon or her soup or either of her friends. Her eyes aren't really looking at her anything.

She's staring across the courtyard, at the row of lockers closest to the tables. She's staring at Karma (like that's new), watching as she leans against one of those lockers, as she bats her eyes and flips her hair and cocks her hips and… fuck all… once upon a time, Amy might have thought of Karma as hers. As her best friend, her other half, the yin to her yang, the salt to her pepper, the fucking soul to her mate. But that girl… that flirty hair flipping, hip cocking, lip licking, staring up at him (Liam) (like there could be another him) like… that..

That isn't her Karma. And really, Amy's not sure she'd want her to be.

And that breaks her heart all over again and just when she'd spent the whole fucking morning dodging Karma (and him) enough to put it (almost) back together again.

Amy drops her spoon and Lauren does take notice of that, cause - in her experience - there aren't many things that can kill the other girl's appetite. Though, she supposes, watching Liam lean over Karm, his hand pressed against the locker behind her, just might do it.

The spoon splashes a bit of soup (tomato) (the only soup worth eating) out of the cup and across Amy's hand and it's hot but she barely even feels it. She's too busy feeling him, the way his hand keeps creeping closer and closer and closer still, the way she can feel the tiny bit of air between him and Karma slipping away, she can feel the heat (not soup hot) (not the good hot) (though, she guesses, Karma might think different) as his fingers finally graze the bare skin of Karma's shoulder (and who told her that wearing that top, with it's cut out shoulders and it's bare midriff and it's so much… exposed… was even a little OK?)

"No," she says (breathes) (and she's not the tiniest bit sure if she's talking to herself or to him and his touching tickling caressing fingers that she swears - fucking swears - she can feel on her own skin) and she pushes her tray away, tipping the cup and spilling soup across the table, dripping blood red onto Shane's notes.

He snatches the papers away and Lauren's already in motion, piling napkins on the spill and slipping quickly from her seat and around to the other side of the table, putting herself between Amy and… them… (and the thought that they're a them… that just makes Amy wonder how many more pieces her heart can end up in.)

"Amy," Lauren says, snapping her fingers in the taller blonde's face. "Amy, look. Look at me."

But Amy doesn't, Amy can't. Because this… this is her karma (the concept, again) (not the girl) (cause not her Karma) (already established that.) This is her punishment, if not for lying (or for lying about lying) then for something else. Something worse. Because she wants to stop looking, she needs to stop looking but she can't, not even with Lauren in the way, and this is how Amy knows how bad she must have been.

Knowing the person you're in love with is in love with someone else (or, at the very least, wants to be) (desperately) (almost as desperately as you want to not be in love with them)? That's hell, that's like Dante's fucking Inferno, that's like a thousand drops of hot tomato soup spilling over your flesh and there's not enough napkins in the fucking universe.

That's knowing. But Amy doesn't just know, she doesn't just have to spend every day living with the knowledge. She has to watch, she has to see it happen, she has to sit by and take it all in as Karma falls further and further and faster and faster every fucking day and that is some kind of next level shit, some kind of special hell, a circle so deep and so dark that even the writers and the painters and all the 'arteests' wouldn't dare go there. It's a secret hell even if there's nothing all that secret about it. It's a country song, it's a your OTP never even gets a chance before the show gets cancelled hell, it's a too fucking angsty to stop reading fanfic hell.

The Adele wrote a song about it and you can't stop listening to it on repeat over and over and over again hell.

"This is past bad," Amy says (whispers) and it is. It always has been, ever since the moment they kissed and it's only getting further and further and further past it every day. "This…" she says (stammers) waving a hand in the general direction of Liam and Karma and the rest of the Hester world, in the direction of everyone they're lying to..

And that's it. There's the extra, there's the special, there's the thing that takes it just too far.

Because this isn't just tears pricking the back of her eyes, this isn't just watching or knowing or living with Karma and… him. This is the unwavering certainty that every other set of eyes there isn't watching them cause they're all watching her, all of them knowing, all of them seeing what's so fucking obvious and every last one of them knowing exactly how she feels.

And how Karma doesn't.

Except that's not exactly true. It isn't how Karma doesn't cause, really, she does… jst not for Amy. Karma does but it's just for him, and Amy can't blame her or hate her for that, no matter how she tries and how she wishes. Karma can't help her feelings any more than Amy can and she knows that, but knowing it doesn't help. Cause knowing it is still watching it (or imagining cause Lauren's in the way.)

It's seeing it, over and over and over again in her mind, watching his hand slowly sliding up and down the bare skin of Karma's arm, him leaning into her, smiling at her in that way he's got no fucking right to (except he does) (cause Karmy's not real), right out there, right in front of the whole fucking world, him being with her in a way Amy knows she never will and everyone sees it and they're pitying her or laughing at her or wondering how she can be so fucking blind.

Sometimes (like right now) (so right now) Amy wishes she was.

"This is past serial killer," Amy says. Lauren sits down across from her, one hand still blotting at the soup and the other reaching out, covering Amy's hand with her own but Amy pulls away, like she's been scalded. She shakes her head, resisting the contact, the comfort. She doesn't deserve that, not after what she must have done (and what she is doing.) "This is like… mass murder shit… like Stalin," she says. "Or Mussolini or -"

"President Snow," Karma offers as she just… appears… dropping into the seat next to Lauren and her hand immediately slips over Amy's and this time the blonde doesn't pull away because this time it isn't comfort. Karma's touch might have been that, once upon a time, but now…

Now it's an act, a play. It's a show and Karma's got her role and she's got it down fucking pat and Amy doesn't care what drama club thinks, the girl deserves an Oscar and yeah, Amy thinks, this is what she deserves/

The act. The play. Having everything she wants but not having it at all.

"Yeah," Amy says, her voice and her smile dueling to see which can be the weakest and her eyes fix on Karma's hand, on the way the redhead's fingers gently stroke against her skin, the sort of thing a couple would do, a tiny bit of habitual intimacy that you just fall into when you love someone, the way you unconsciously strive to remind them of that at every opportunity.

It's the sort of thing Amy's always known Karma would be good at, the sort of thing she's always known her best friend has dreamed of. Sure, there's sex and there's kissing and there's everything in between, but what Karma's always dreamed of, what she's always needed like most people need air, is that. The simple things, the tiny moments, the littlest reminders that she belongs to someone and someone belongs to her.

Amy never imagined she'd be that someone, or that she'd even want to be, which is probably why she never once imagined that not being that someone?

Special hell. Special fucking hell.

It's Lauren who finds her and that's a kindness, really, because any other day (any other day before Liam Booker realized she was alive) there would have been no way Amy could have bolted from the lunch table the way she did without Karma hot on her heels.

So, yeah, a kindness. And a little bit more hell too. Best of both fucking worlds.

Lauren leans against the stall door and doesn't say a word, which is just fine with Amy. She's perfectly happy (happy being a relative term) with the other girl just shooting 'get the fuck out' glares at everyone who comes in (and none of them are you know who) (and that makes it better and worse and God, will anything ever just be one thing again?) and occasionally offering Amy a sip from her water bottle in between the sobs.

"You can say it, you know," Amy hiccups out as she pulls blindly at the toilet paper, tearing sheets free to dab at her eyes, but it's kinda pointless, a bit like tossing a sponge in the Pacific.

"Say what?" Lauren asks. Her voice is soft and kind and nothing like the girl who tried to out them as frauds in front of the school and that should make Amy feel better, right? It should make her feel like she's found something, like she's gained a friend, or a sister, and that should make this all at least a tiny tiny bit better. And it does.

But it's kinda like the scales in biology class, with rocks on one side and a feather on the other and there's just no fucking way it will ever balance and Amy hates even more that she can't just have one thing that makes her even sort of happy.

Or something close.

She'd so take something close.

"You can tell me how stupid I am," Amy says. "How ridiculous I am to let her do this to me. How fucking pathetic I am."

"You're not pathetic," Lauren says, even if she knows that falls on deaf ears, but she knows a thing or two about that sense of self hatred, about that urge to beat yourself up - before someone else does it for you - about the need for it to be you.

Cause if it isn't you, it's them and you love them and they're perfect and wonderful and sunflowers and fucking sunshine and they can't be wrong.

"What the hell else would you call it?" Amy asks. "I let this happen. I could stop it. I could do the right thing for me but instead I do the right thing for her and… and… and…"

Amy's body shakes and her hands ball into fists on her thighs and she keeps pounding and pounding and pounding against her legs until Lauren drops the bottle and slips into the stall and catches Amy's fists in her hands.

"Then why?" she asks, her thumbs ghosting across Amy's knuckles, trying to calm, trying to soothe. "If this is what it's doing, why do you keep doing it?"

There are so many obvious answers. Fear. Pain. The terror of the possibility of telling your biggest secret and having to literally watch someone leaving you without even if they don't actually move, even if they stand there and say it's OK and they understand and they're fine with it and you want to believe them, you so fucking do.

But you know better.

It's the chance of heartbreak, the way your life will change in an instant and it can never go back.

So many obvious answers that Lauren never even thinks of the most obvious of them all. .

"Because it's the only way," Amy says, her shoulders shaking with every word. "It's the only way I get to have her. It's the only way she'll ever be mine."

And that is somehow still worth it - all of it - to Amy. And she thinks (worries) (fears) (panics) that it always will be.

It won't.

Karma talks to Amy four more times that day and doesn't once ask her what happened at lunch and Amy tries, she tries so fucking hard to focus on that, to spend the afternoon dwelling on the way her best friend isn't even being that anymore. She tries to focus and tries to stay mad because…

"Mad is better," she says to Lauren on the way home. "Mad isn't hurting or… it's not just hurting and if I'm ever gonna end this... that's what I've gotta do. Get mad. Blame her."

Lauren says nothing, her eyes focused on the road, even if all they see is Amy in that stall with her fists and her tears and her shaking…

This is why Lauren never cares.

"It's all her fault anyway," Amy says, pausing just long enough for Lauren or Shane to chime in, to argue with her, but if she's expecting either of them to disagree, then, clearly, she hasn't been paying attention. "She's the one who wanted to fake it," Amy says. "And who does that? Who lies about their sexuality to be popular?"

Lauren sees Shane in the backseat, about to speak (Well, you did, Amy) and she glares at him in the rearview and as terrifying as Lauren usually is?

Only seeing her eyes is about a thousand times worse.

Shane doesn't say a word.

"And she's only keeping it up for him," Amy says, obviously on a roll. "The whole couple act, it's just so she can keep his attention. Like it's perfectly normal and OK for someone to want you only because you're taken."

Amy drums her fingers along the armrest and Lauren counts it down in her head. 3...2...1…

"Not that she's really taken," Amy says. "But he doesn't know that." She spins in her seat, fixing Shane with a glare. "He doesn't know that, right?"

Shane shakes his head. "Liam knows what Karma's told him," he says.

"Her lies," Amy mutters, turning her eyes back to the road. "That's what he knows. Her lies."

Except, Amy knows, they're not just her lies. They're theirs. Hers and Karma's and that's what they have between them now, that's what ten years of friendship - of family - has become. The lies they tell everyone else.

And the ones they tell each other.

Except… those? They're not theirs. Those are all Amy's.

And those? They're the ones doing all the damage.

It's a Saturday. A Saturday day and a Saturday night and Liam's busy doing something Booker-esque and Lauren's gone to see family in Dallas and Shane's got a date and so Karma's got no distractions and Amy's got no excuses.

"We'll work on the project," Karma says. "We're so far behind and I know that's totally my fault and I'm sorry I've been so… busy… it's just that Li -"

"It's fine," Amy says, cutting her off, grateful Karma can't see her over the phone. "I'll come over after dinner," she says.

"Dinner?" Karma asks. "I mean, it's only ten thirty now. You could come over and we could, you know, make a day of it. A little work, a little talk, a little Netflix… a little us."

A little work. On a project that just perpetuates the lie. A little talk. Like it would take more than five minutes for him to come up. A little Netflix. Well...

Amy can't really argue with that one.

A little us.

She can so argue with that.

"I've got some other… stuff to do," she says (lies.) "And my mom actually asked for some help with wedding things and I know it's just cause Lauren's not here but…"

"Say no more," Karma says. "I know it's been killing you, seeing them so close," she says and Amy tries really, really hard to not think of who that really applies to. "After dinner is fine. We can pull an all nighter and you can sleep over and we can roll out of bed at like noon tomorrow and it'll be great."

It sounds great. It sounds like exactly what Amy needs. It sounds perfect. And, truthfully, if it weren't for Utah?

It might have been.

She and Karma don't get to the little work until after midnight and they manage, for the most part, to avoid the talking (he only comes up twice and, for once, Karma's perceptive enough to notice the look in Amy's eyes and she changes the subject) (quickly) and there's a little, or a lot of Netflix, a good half a season of House Hunters and there's doughnuts and enough soda to keep them both up half the night and when they finally do get to the work, Amy thinks she's ready, she thinks she can handle it, she thinks…

She thinks she can make it through one more night without telling Karma.

They start with the research basics, finding the facts and the figures and the data on same sex parenting. Karma finds numbers on adoptions by state and Amy finds a chart detailing the number of couples that have their own biological children. Karma digs up a study on the mental health of children raised in same sex households (good, in case you were wondering) and Amy finds three different testimonials from badass football players with two dads and one from a heterosexual as it gets mother of six who was raised by two moms.

They've got pie charts and bar graphs and anecdotal evidence and even a ten minute YouTube video. There's a half a dozen blogs from children of same sex parents and at least as many tumblr sites and six different TV interviews.

And then there's Utah.

Karma's the one who finds it and, in some ways, that actually makes it worse. "Will you look at this?" she asks, staring at her laptop screen. There's anger dancing in her eyes, the kind Amy's used to seeing when Zen has done something Golden Boy-ish or when Karma found out The Hills was all staged. "This," she says, "is just fucking wrong."

She swivels the laptop so Amy can see and the headline nearly jumps across the room.

Utah Judge Removes Lesbian Couple's Foster Child

Amy can only see those seven words, she can't see the details of the story, she doesn't know all the facts (as if those would help) but she already feels something… different. It's not the last piece of the puzzle falling into place, it's nothing quite that… perfect. But maybe… maybe it's the last edge piece, maybe it's the border being finished, the outline of the thing (of her) coming together, the cradle that will hold everything else in place.

She takes the computer from Karma and sets it on her lap to read the article. She reads about the judge, some conservative old white fucker (such a shock.) She reads how he removed the child from the couple, how he took their daughter away because, he said, it was in the best interests of the child. Because, he said, it's been proven that straight couples make better parents, that they have healthier and more well adjusted children, that they raise more productive members of society.

Because, he said, he's a close minded bigot who only approves of lesbians when they're on the Internet or those old VHS tapes he keeps in the bottom drawer of his desk.

And yeah, he didn't really say that last part, but Amy knows how to read between the lines.

Somewhere in the background (though it may as well be a thousand miles away), Amy hears Karma ranting, hears her spewing some serious righteous indignation at the affront to these two women.

"It's just fucking wrong," she says (again.) "I thought love was love and the child was what mattered," she says (yells.) "He can't just… do that."

Except he can. And he did.

Five minutes before she kissed Karma, Amy still would've thought this was wrong.

But this isn't five minutes before. This is now and this is… this could be her. Someday. Maybe.

And for the first time, Amy kinda feels like maybe is enough.

"It's insane," Karma says. "It's insane and it's wrong and… ugh." She slaps a hand down on her desk and pushes back in her chair. "It isn't fair," she says and Amy might (would) agree, if she were really listening.

If she weren't starting at the picture with the article. If she weren't staring at the two women, holding their daughter (their daughter) outside a courtroom. If she weren't staring at the tears streaming down the little girl's face and the ones brimming and threatening to spill over from her mothers' eyes.

"I just don't… understand," Karma snaps and Amy hears that (and yes, she notes the fucking irony of it, too.) "How can… people are just so… fuck." She stands up and paces across the room, trying to work off some of the angry (and soda) (and sugar) energy. "What's the point of this whole stupid project?" she asks. "It's not even fucking reality, not if we'd never even get to have a kid because of assholes like that."

"We wouldn't," Amy says and she doesn't even realize she's talking until she hears her own voice and by then… well… by then the words are out and there's no taking them back. Not that she'd have to, not that they say much of anything, not that they tell Karma a single fucking thing.

But maybe she's not the one they're for.

"What?" Karma asks, stopping in mid-pace to look over at her best friend. "I know that, Amy," she says, a not very subtle undercurrent of duh rippling through her voice. "I know it wouldn't really affect us. But it's solidarity, you know? Like my mom joining PFLAG and allies and all that. One for all and all for -"

"No," Amy says, stopping Karma cold. "Not all for one and not one for all." Her eyes still haven't left the screen, they still haven't moved from the little girl's teary face and, in the end, she'll always think it was her that did it. Her that broke the dam that Amy had been slowly and carefully building and tending to since that moment in the gym.

Since 'woah' and 'I know' and that realization a split second later that Karma didn't know.

And the realization right now that she still doesn't.

Karma scoots across the room and kneels in front of Amy, putting a hand on her arm. They've been best friends - fucking family - for so long that she knows when something's wrong (even when she doesn't have the tiniest clue what that something is) but the look in Amy's eyes when they finally come free of the screen, when Amy looks at her…

It's enough. Enough for Karma to realize that maybe something's been a lot wronger for a lot longer than she thought. And that she missed it?

Karma doesn't know what to do with that.

"Look, Amy, I know we're not really lesbians, OK?" she says, ignoring the way Amy's eyes darken as she speaks. "And I know we've got… privilege… and all, and that nothing like this would ever happen to us, but -"

"You," Amy says, and there's those words again, slipping loose before she even knows she's thinking them. "It would never happen to you."

And there it is. Just like that. No giant build up and no fanfare and no stammering and stuttering 'I need to tell you something' and no hemming and hawing 'I know this might be hard to hear' and definitely no 'I have these feelings' cause, in the end, Amy finally figures it out.

It isn't about Karma.

Though, from the look on Karma's face, Amy's not so sure she gets that.

"What?" Karma asks and the hand on Amy's arm doesn't leave, she doesn't pull away, but her grip loosens (just a bit) (a tiny bit) (just enough) and it's there, Amy can see it in her eyes, that Karma understands - that she's starting to - but the other... thing... is there too, the 'I understand but I don't think I want to cause… no… cause… change… cause… fuck' thing.

Amy knows that thing. She's seen it in the mirror enough.

She looks back down at the screen, her her heart breaking all over again and Amy realizes that yeah, this is the moment and Shane was right, she does know when it's time but not because she's found the perfect moment or because she finally suspects that maybe Karma does have feelings (that… thing… pretty much kills that) but because that picture and that article and those women and their (their) daughter…

It makes it all so clear.

This heartache and this loss and this… special hell… that she's been living in? All about losing the girl she never had? It sucks. It sucks out fucking loud and it's real and it's pain and she hates every fucking second of it.

But it's easy. It hurts like nothing Amy's ever known, but it's easy compared to… compared to what might be. What might be out there, what might be waiting for her. Compared to the world outside Hester and Austin and her tiny little Shane and Lauren and (maybe) Karma bubble, this might be as easy it ever gets for her.

And that's what does it.

"These women, Karma," she says. "They're suffering. Real suffering, real pain. They're not missing out on a boy because he doesn't notice them and they're not not popular because people in high school are fucking blind and stupid."

"Amy -"

Amy shakes her head and Karma grows silent again. "They… dared. They dared to say who they were and to claim it and to… want it and to want her," Amy jabs a finger at the screen, at the tiny girl whose name she doesn't even know. "And now, because of that? They're in pain, they're in hell. They're going through that and you're faking and I'm…"

She trails off and she can feel the words - like those ones that slipped free all on their fucking own just a minute ago - right there and she's so close and she feels like they're caught in her throat, trapped (suffocating) in the air as she breathes and if she can just push them out, if she can just breathe them into life, if she can just…

But she can't. She can't say it and she can't not and she can't breathe and she can't stand and she can't move and she just can't…

"I can't be here," she says, the words coming in a rush and Amy can feel her lungs expanding and contracting and every one is a labor, every one is concentration, forcing and pushing and driving the breaths through her body.

She pushes herself off the floor, Karma's laptop tumbling to the ground as Amy snatches up her own computer and her books and (almost) Jenny, clutching them all to her chest as she bolts for the door.

"Amy!" Karma yells, freezing her at the door.

She looks back and she can see it all in Karma's eyes - the eyes she knows maybe even better than her own - and it fucking kills her. It's all there, the way it's been in the mirror for weeks. The understanding and the denial, the truth and the faking and she can see that… desperation there, swimming in the tears. The last desperate hope that everything hasn't changed and that Amy hasn't been going through something and she missed it and that the entire fucking world hasn't just tipped upside down.

"We…" Karma says. She blinks and her breath is short and it's everything Amy can do not to run across the room and hold her. "We were faking."

Amy hears it. The question in Karma's words and this isn't how she wanted to do it, it's not even close, but this hasn't been about what she's wanted in a very long time.

"No, Karma," she says. "You were."

And the door shuts quietly behind her as she goes.