The address they had been given took them to the front step of a little house in the middle of the city, something that looked like it could maybe hold one person, tops. "Man, how did Duncan land a neat place like this right out of the slammer?" Geoff asked out loud, before knocking on the door. "Gonna have to ask him about that when we see him."

To their surprise, it wasn't Duncan who opened the door to greet them. Bridgette's face lit up in a smile at first, but it quickly faltered when she saw the fresh scars on Gwen's neck. "I was wondering when you two would show up," Gwen said with a very soft laugh. "All Duncan has been talking about today is getting to see you guys."

"W-what happened to you?" Bridgette pointed at the scars, which she knew her eyes were lingering on. "Was it him?"

"No," she replied, stepping back to let the two in. "It wasn't him. Long story, don't want to dwell on it. Just get in here so we can all catch up." They did enter the house, which was just as small inside as it looked to be on the outside, the only thing giving it more room being the fact that the bedroom was above the floor as a loft, accessible only through a ladder. Once they were inside Gwen shut the door and returned to what was assumed to be her typical spot on the couch, leaving the two standing in the entryway. "You can sit down on the chairs over there, if you want." She pointed to two folding chairs against the wall. "We're going to be here a long while, so get comfortable."

"What could possibly keep us here for a long time?" Sitting down on one of the chairs, Bridgette taking the one to his left, Geoff had no idea that he was quickly going to have his question answered. "I mean, this is just some talking and catching up, yeah?"

There was a throat-clearing cough that came from up on the loft bed, and everyone's attention turned to it, where a head of green hair could be seen. "Let's think about this, shall we? Dude's been in prison for years, friends come to visit him once he's out, find out that he's crashing with incredibly hot ex-girlfriend of his, and you don't think we're going to be talking about everything late into the night? Man, Geoff, you're as dense as ever, aren't you?"

"Heh, probably dude!" Geoff laughed, and Duncan righted himself up on the loft, before jumping down and hitting the floor with a hard thud. "Whoa, did you really just jump down like that? Aren't you scared you're going to hurt yourself?"

"No way. Used to jumping onto concrete floors, so a wooden one is a lot better." He dusted himself off, before sauntering over to sit right next to Gwen, wrapping an arm around her once he was settled. "Besides, seeing peoples' reactions when I do that gives me the warm fuzzies."

"And I would really like it if you wouldn't do that. You're going to end up hitting your head and I don't think I'll want to help you out if you do." In response to that, Duncan squeezed Gwen tightly, pulling her into him until she yelled for him to stop, which he did instantly. "You have to be careful, please!" she told him, and the two watching this thought she was just referring to him being rough, but Bridgette saw that she was rubbing a bit at that nasty scar. "It still hurts and you doing that doesn't help."

"Sorry babe, got caught up in the moment and forgot about that." To apologize, Duncan gave Gwen a quick kiss, which dropped her focus from her scar and put it on him.

However, it certainly didn't take Bridgette's attention away from the injury. "I know you said you didn't want to dwell on it, but I really want to know what happened to you, especially if it's still hurting you." She tried to make herself sound not so prying, but she was fully aware that by pressing the issue, she was being just that. "It's okay if you don't want to tell the whole story, I guess, but…"

"It's a long, long story. Trust me, if you two didn't think you'd be here all day already, then hearing that story would make this a two-day event." Gwen pulled herself away from Duncan, who was still trying to kiss her even more, and looked at the others with a smile. "Not like we're going to get very far without getting into that stuff, but whatever."

"Then why don't we just get into it now? There's always a quick way to go through things, isn't there?" Bridgette's insistence was not because she was being nosey, but because she really did care about what had happened to her friend. "Can't you just tell us that part of the story and call it good?"

Two things occurred at the same moment after that. As Gwen said that she probably could do just that, and that it may just be easier to tell the part of the story that led to her getting that neck injury, Geoff's wandering eyes started to comb the room due to his lack of attention span. Right as Gwen turned to Duncan to find a good place to start recounting events, Geoff spotted a brightly-colored bag that seemed to have all sorts of little pink things coming out of it. Before saying anything about it, he had to mentally ask himself what something so pink and girly would be doing in a place where two punk-like people were living, and once he had an explanation for it, he shouted it out: "Dudes, does someone here have a secret they need to spill? I see something for babies!"

Now she had two stories she wanted to hear, and although Bridgette's heart had been set on hearing the one about the scar, once she had the baby clothes in the bag pointed out to her, she needed answers for that too. "What is something like that doing here? It doesn't look like it belongs to you guys, and how would it? Unless Duncan's been out of prison longer than he told us, that is."

"Oh, uh, that's another very long story, which sort of goes into the one I've already got to tell you." Gwen, looking at the bag, before her eyes glazed over several other related things that seemed very out of place, gave a small sigh. "Guess we're going to be here all day and night hearing the whole thing, if you want answers about why that's here."

"Which we do." Speaking in unison, Bridgette and Geoff both seemed interested in hearing the whole thing, which made Gwen sigh again. She stood up, getting over to the little kitchen in the house and grabbing a piece of paper off the counter, one that was covered front to back in tiny words.

"It's probably a good thing that I thought ahead and wrote the order of events down then, huh?" she asked, getting a laugh out of the two who had asked for this, although it was a bit of an awkward laugh. They weren't expecting the story to have so much detail that it needed to be written down, but it was too late to back out. Answers were needed, a point that Geoff made after Gwen asked if there was anyone who didn't want to have to hear what she was about to say. "Okay then, but let me tell you, I'm not even in this story to begin with, but you wanted the whole thing. You're getting the whole thing."

Little did either of them know that the whole thing started with something that Geoff and Bridgette had already heard about from a different source. No sooner did Gwen mention a "chance" meeting on an airplane did Bridgette interrupt her. "Sorry, sorry, but we've heard that story before. Sierra told us that already."

"She did?" Gwen's voice took an inflection of curiosity, and Bridgette nodded. "Huh. No one told me that she'd seen you guys. When was this?"

Bridgette nudged Geoff to get him to answer. "Oh, uh, when was it? I don't know. Sierra came in and said dirty things to a picture of Cody and it was just weird. But I think she said it happened a few weeks before she saw us? Maybe. Don't really remember. Trying to block that morning out of my mind."

"She also said that she was trying to get you out of Cody's life, Gwen." Bridgette had figured that Geoff wasn't going to be the most reliable of sources for talking about what had happened that morning, and so she had prepared herself for having to say anything else vital about it. "All she really did was talk about how much she hated other women being around Cody and that was it."

"Okay, well, looks like I can skip some of this story then. Thanks for letting me know you know some things." She smiled at the two, before looking back at her paper of the story as it had happened. "But you don't really know much of anything, so there's that."

"You mean, there's more to this story than that?" There was a lot of regret in Bridgette's voice, because she hadn't even begun to imagine just how intense this story could possibly be. "Are you telling me that you have more stuff to say than that they did things on a plane and you got your throat cut somehow?"

Gwen looked over the top of her paper, straight into Bridgette's eyes. "That's exactly what I'm saying. Now let me get back to this, skipping the whole 'first' plane incident. Because, guess what? There's more."

And so the next few hours were spent with Gwen getting through roughly eight months of time in the form of a compiled story that she had gotten by putting several sources together in one, firm timeline. Along the way were many outbursts, mostly from Bridgette about her aversion to hearing a certain name—"It's either get over that or not get the story," Gwen told her, and she quickly decided that hearing the name wasn't so bad after all—but a few were from Duncan, who had heard the story from some of the sources prior to this and just wanted to cause some trouble. "Yeah, but you've forgotten the best part about all of this," he said each time he wanted to interrupt. "You haven't told them about how it happened."

"Duncan, I swear, I'm not going to touch that, and I'm going to be talking about a lot of things I'd rather not talk about." Gwen had situated herself up on the countertop for optimal storytelling, and she had just flipped the paper over for the second half of the material. "If you want them to know, ugh, those details, then you tell them."

"I mean, I don't get what's so bad about it. You made sure to mention the part about her moaning, so what's so bad about bringing up their kinky roleplaying?" He waggled his eyebrow seductively, making Gwen roll her eyes, while Geoff and Bridgette both covered their faces in disgust at the words that had just left their friend's mouth. "Oh, come on, it's not bad. Just imagine it, will you?"

Gwen sat her paper on her lap and shook her head. "I don't want to imagine it. And I don't think I like knowing that you've imagined it."

"What can I say? She was always a hottie, and those short shorts she used to wear translate well into little pleated skirts." It was clear that Duncan was having fun with making everyone else either uncomfortable or unamused, but he stopped when Bridgette had to stand up and actually leave the room for a second to collect herself.

She didn't go far, just outside the front door, but once she was out there she had to take several deep breaths and focus all her energy on pushing those mental images far from her mind, because there were several things wrong with the situation she was in and the worst one was that she was being treated to narrative of the life of maybe the one female Total Drama contestant she hadn't wanted to see again. After a few moments of deep breathing she went back inside and took her seat once more, expecting the story to continue on like it had been. Instead, she was caught up to speed about what she missed in those few moments by her boyfriend. "You missed it," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "He kept going."

"Yes, he did, and now he's going to stop, or I'm going to smack him with a belt and he's not going to like it." The words came out of Gwen's mouth before she realized what she was saying, and once everyone heard it, the two guys laughed. "Okay, not funny. You know what I was going for."

"Sounds to me like you wanted to keep the bad teacher images coming. I'd definitely bend myself over a desk if you were teaching." Once again he did the eyebrow waggling, and Gwen responded by throwing a pan in Duncan's direction. He dodged it, before saying, "Message received. No more. Got it."

"Now that we've gotten all of that sexual stuff out of the way, where was I?" She looked at her paper for a second, before laughing. "Oh, yeah, this was a good day. Might I direct your attention over to the pile of clothing beside you guys?"

Geoff looked to his right, which put him staring directly at the wall. "Uh, problem."

"Other side, genius."

"Oh, okay." Brushing off the insult that Gwen had used, he turned and had to lean over Bridgette slightly to see what was being referred to. "Dude, this is just some clothes. What's the big deal about this?"

That was where Gwen gave some imagery of her own, except this was about as far from sex-related as it could get. "Imagine this, okay? Cody and myself, sitting on the couch, listening to screams of horror coming from the bathroom. These screams could have been in a horror movie, they were so bad. Then, when it gets silent, those clothes come flying from the doorway and hit the wall. Haven't moved since then."

"So you're saying that whoever was throwing a fit did this?" Bridgette was trying to make sense of what she had just heard, but while she was trying to do that, Duncan was losing his calm and laughing up a storm over on the couch. "Okay, what's so funny? Obviously someone had a problem that they solved through getting rid of this stuff!"

"Dude, you're missing the whole point. Haven't you been listening to the story up to this point? The problem wasn't the clothes." Doubling over in an attempt to control himself, it wasn't until he had stopped laughing for the most part that he continued to explain. "But I don't think Gwen would appreciate me stealing that part of the story from her, so if you need it spelled out for you, she can do it."

"I'm not going to," she snapped, angry about yet another Duncan distraction from her story. "What happened wasn't that important, I was just trying to clear everyone's mind of other things you've tried to get stuck with us. Besides, as much as I'm still not pleased with her, the point of all this isn't to make Heather seem bad, so we're done here. I'm moving on to what happened next, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Apparently there was, because Duncan jumped up, grabbed Gwen's phone off the counter next to her, and unlocked it. "Pretty sure there's lots I can do to stop you, babe, first thing being that I can just show them the evidence that you're trying to hide."

"Don't, please! Just let Gwen get through this, so we aren't dwelling on this for longer than it has to be." Bridgette looked like she was about to lose her cool and have to leave again if they didn't just get to the point, and Duncan took what she said to heart, keeping the phone to himself and allowing the story to continue on.

There was a slight problem with Bridgette's line of thinking. She had assumed that they would be close to done with the story at that point, and therefore there wouldn't be much left to listen to before they'd be done. The reality was that, while there wasn't much time left to cover in the story, there was a lot that happened in the short span that was left. Several intertwining storylines that had been nearly converging up to that point all crashed together right after Gwen resumed her story telling, and one point that she mentioned hit very close to home in Bridgette's heart: "No way, you were the friend Leshawna was talking about seeing?"

"Wait, when did you see her? She didn't mention you guys when we were together in all of this." Gwen shook her head in disbelief. "Then again, there was a lot of other things that we were focusing on, so we might have skipped that bit of small talk."

"Guess we saw her right before this, since she was talking about going to see a friend of hers soon after! Huh, what a small world!" Geoff seemed genuinely in shock that something like that could happen, and it was a rather interesting situation to have been had, but it wasn't anything that should have been too shocking. After all, Leshawna had said it was going to be a friend she would be seeing, and who else had been her friend aside from Gwen? It all made sense, especially the way Leshawna had gotten so protective over Gwen when she had been brought up. "But continue on, okay? Don't mean to slow you down more."

"Thanks for not making that too long of a distraction. Really appreciate it. Now let me get back to where I was, when we were discussing the very recent events in that bathroom…" Things in the story dragged on, getting even more complicated as the number of individual storylines dwindled and everything stayed together. By the time an hour or two more passed, the span of just a few weeks had gone by in the story, and it was getting to be a bit too much on the limited attention to things that Geoff was able to give. Right as he was about to make a comment about how he wasn't really following what was happening anymore, that was when Gwen hopped off the counter, set the paper down and pointed to her scar. "Now, to one of the two things that made you guys have to hear this whole dumb thing in the first place. How I got this scar."

"Is it going to take a long time to tell? 'Cause I've got to take a leak and maybe stare at some birds or something before I can hear much more of this." True to his word, Geoff was dancing as he sat, and Gwen sighed, told him that it would take a while and that it would be best for him to handle his business before she started, and he was up like a rocket, running into the little bathroom beneath the loft bed as fast as he could. He was in there for a few minutes, long after they all heard the flush, and when he came back out he was holding a couple of items that, upon sitting down, made Bridgette question what he had been doing for all that extra time.

"Uh, Geoff, last time I checked, using someone's bathroom didn't mean going through their stuff," she said, looking at the items he had brought out with him, all of which were little soaps with one washcloth. "You're not planning on stealing those, are you?"

"Nah, just really liked the smell of these things. Figured if I brought them out here, they'd be something to keep me distracted while I listen to this story." He beamed at her, expecting her to buy what he said, but she ordered him to go back and put the things away. As he did, Duncan started laughing over on the couch, Gwen rolled her eyes where she stood, and Bridgette felt the smallest bit of shame for being with someone who acted like that. But once again, he was gone far longer than he should have been, and this time, he didn't return. Instead, his head popped out of the doorway and he looked a bit flustered. "Question time. If I found someone's undies in here, wha—"

"Just get out here and stop going through Gwen's stuff!" Now Bridgette was definitely embarrassed, and she hoped that what Geoff had just said didn't embarrass their friend too. Duncan was cracking up so hard he had fallen over, but righted himself just in time to see Geoff make the walk of shame from the bathroom back to his chair.

He happened to bring the offending item with him, though, and placed it on his lap once he was seated. Gwen noticed this, walked over to him, picked the underwear up and sighed, looking at them as she did. "Huh. Didn't know these were still in there."

"They're a bit, uh, colorful to belonging to you, aren't they?" Speaking with a straight face, Geoff was genuinely asking if that was the case or not. "And why were they back in the corner? Kinda weird if you ask me."

"I will say this once, then we will drop the subject completely and get back to my story. These are not mine. No matter how many times I would wash these, I would never wear these because they are not mine." Gwen tossed them casually on top of that clothing pile she had pointed out before, and turned to Duncan, who was on the floor laughing and wiping his eyes. "Get up. This is the part where you come in, after all."

"Sorry, sorry," he replied, sitting back on the couch and trying to collect himself, tears from laughter collecting in the corners of his eyes. "Just can't help but laugh at the fact that he found that in there. Thought I got rid of all her stuff when I brought you back here from the hospital. We gonna burn those too? I mean, she wasn't the one living here, she doesn't get an excuse."

The words that filled the air caught Geoff by surprise a bit, as he had figured that the undies he had found had belonged to Gwen, but hearing her say they weren't hers, and then hearing Duncan offer to burn them made him only more confused about who they did indeed belong to. "Wait, so whose panties was I holding?"

"They're Sierra's. We aren't at that part of the story though, so if you could just wait a moment, we'll be getting there." The look of disgust on his face made it clear that he hadn't been expecting that answer, and Gwen could only watch as he jumped up, ran to wash his hands, and came back a bit shaken by the fact that he had been something that had been up close and personal with Sierra's nether regions. "Now that we're all settled in, can I finally get to the part about my scar?"

"Please, it's only why we started this whole thing to begin with." Bridgette was trying to comfort Geoff as he recovered from knowing what he now knew, and she looked to her friend with pleading eyes. "The faster we learn this, the faster we can get him out of here so he doesn't have to think about what he just did."

"This story isn't fast, so he's just going to have to deal with the consequences of rummaging around in my bathroom." The scar was touched again, its pink still vibrant and painful-looking. "So remember how I had mentioned getting letters from this guy?" She pointed to Duncan, who whistled innocently. "Well, it all came to this point where I got to see him the day he got off the prison bus. What also happened on that day will be brought up later, but right now, let's just focus on what happened at the bus station."

"Yes, let's focus on that. Let's focus on what got me put back in jail for a night." Duncan sounded sarcastic as he spoke, but he finished with a laugh. "I'd complain, but hey, I got out the next day and got to see your pretty face."

The sigh Gwen gave was the clue that she was more than tired of the interruptions she kept facing. "Please, just let me get through this story without any more of your sass, got it?"
"Sure thing. I'll make sure to keep my lips nice and shut."

"Thank you." With that, the entire story of what went down that day at the bus station was explained to the people who didn't know what had happened, from the part where Courtney had also been getting letters from Duncan—something he interjected and explained wasn't his idea to begin with—to where she completely lost her mind and attacked Gwen for seemingly no good reason. She was going to backtrack in the entire story and explain the real reason behind Courtney's turn into murderous territory, but a small cough meant to interrupt her caught her attention. "Okay, what is it, Bridgette?"

The blonde woman looked down at the floor when she spoke. "I'm pretty sure I know where this is going to go. She got thrown in jail for this, didn't she?"

"Yeah, she did. What, did you hear that somewhere?" Gwen was half thankful that she wasn't necessarily going to have to get into the full explanation about her attacker's motives, but half annoyed that she had been interrupted once again. "Or, let me guess, you just assumed based on what you've heard."

"No, none of that. I got a call from her asking for me to give her some money to bail her out of jail. I mean, I didn't answer the call and I didn't think she was being serious, but…yeah. I guess I was her one call or something." She shrugged. "You don't have to keep talking about that if you don't want to. I'm sure it's painful to remember."

"Oh, what a darn shame it is that you're not going to have to tell everyone the entire chain of events that finally sent my crazy ex to the slammer," Duncan dramatically and sarcastically said, falling to his side on the couch. "Sorry Gwen, love hearing your stories, don't love hearing about her."

"No one said I wasn't going to keep going, you know." There had been a moment before Gwen spoke in which the two guests to this story had actually thought that, by Duncan saying what he had, they were going to move on, but then she spoke and their hopes deflated just as quickly as they had gone up. "But, I guess, if Bridgette knows that Courtney's out of our hair for a long while, then I probably should just get to the other point of why I started telling everyone this. And yes, before you ask," she looked to Geoff, who had just opened his mouth to present a question, "I am going to make this part go by quickly. Still a bit angry that this part happened."

But first, before she got into that, she had some unfinished business to attend to. "Oh, right, I have to start this differently than I would otherwise, since someone," once more she looked to Geoff, again about to speak, "had to find something belonging to that liar. While I was off about to get attacked, she was here, about to do something that I warned her—and the other two—not to do. Ever. And for some reason, who knows with Sierra, she decided to change her clothes in my bathroom and leave them on the floor. She was probably too excited about breaking my one request to remember to grab her stuff."

"And so when I brought Gwen back over here after she got out of the hospital and I got out of jail for the second time, I burned it all." Duncan had sat back up and seemed to be taking things seriously, until he looked to that pile of clothing with the offending garment on top. "Looks like I get to burn something else, so thanks, bro."

"No problem, dude!"

Stopping the distraction before it could really start, that was when Gwen finished her story, spending the next fifteen minutes just wrapping up everything as she knew it, and ending at the present time. "So there you go. That's the story. Any questions?" To be the problem that he had been for much of the afternoon, Duncan raised his hand and was promptly ignored, because Gwen was focusing on the other two. He coughed a couple times, trying to get her to look his way, and it wasn't until he pretended to choke that she paid him any mind. "Okay, fine, what is it, Duncan?"

"You, heh, forgot my favorite part of the story. Can you tell that part, please?"

She glared at him for a moment before sighing. "Is it the part with the whales?" When he started snickering, she only glared more. "That's not my part of this story to tell, so if you want to tell our guests about how you rudely insulted someone who lived here for a while by comparing her to a whale—even though you never even saw her—then you go right ahead."

"Oh, you just ruined the fun," Duncan replied, snapping his fingers as if he was disappointed, but then he turned to look at Geoff and Bridgette, who both still seemed a bit overwhelmed at everything they had heard. "But seriously, if you hadn't already packed it all away like the great underappreciated friend you are, I'd suggest showing them some of those clothes."

"So you can what? Make more jokes? I don't think so." Gwen hopped off her countertop seat and went into the little sitting area underneath the loft bed, obviously looking for something. "Besides, there's a better way to get your point across than making fun of her clothes."

He heard what she had said and considered it for a split second, before deciding that his way was better and stood up, standing right in front of the still-slightly dazed couple on the chairs. "Since I'm not risking getting my ass kicked to the curb for this, watch as I demonstrate." Duncan pulled his shirt as tight to his skin as he could get it and motioned for them to see what he was doing. "Example A. The kind of clothes that you'd see Heather wear, like the ones in that pile there." No one needed to look at the pile, after the things that had been said during the long story time. "And example B." For this, he let his shirt go, letting it hang like it usually would, then he looked around for something he could use as a prop. There was no such item to be found, something he quickly realized. "Okay, uh, bear with me. Think of a tent."

"Duncan, you better not be doing this," Gwen said, her back turned to what was happening. "If I hear the words you're about to say…"

"I'm talking about tents!" he snapped in response, before laughing. "I got it. Think of a tent. Think of me wearing a tent. Think of that. And that's what it was like when I, ha, tried on one of those shirts I found my first day in here. I was wearing a tent. And that's the kind of thing that example A skinny bitch was having to wear."

Having found whatever she was looking for, Gwen turned around, a stack of what looked like pictures in her hand. "I'm surprised. You got through that without referring to her as a wh—"

"She must have looked like a fucking whale by the time she popped that kid out." Duncan had interrupted Gwen, using the word she was just about to praise him for not using, and the reaction he got was a glare from her, a shocked look from Bridgette (who began moving her arms in such a way to see how big that must have meant), and a surprised gasp from Geoff, whose mental gears had started turning in realization.

"Wait, so you're telling me that the story Gwen told was true?" he asked in that same sort of surprise, which turned Gwen's glare onto him. "What's that look for? I thought you were just making small talk."

She didn't smack herself in the forehead, but it was apparent that Gwen wanted to, although her action of choice was to motion to the scar that was featured so prominently on her neck. "Yeah, I cut myself open with a key to make this story so realistic."

"No, I believed that part. It's the rest I didn't believe." Geoff blinked a few times as he processed everything that had just happened, before his eyes tracked back to that bag of baby things on the floor. "I really just thought you were trying to make a fun story about why that's there. Never thought it could be true."

"Well, guess what? It is. And I've got to go and give all that stuff back to the person it belongs to, even though she pulled the ultimate bitch move and left when I told her not to." Gwen shook her head, setting down the stack of pictures on the counter before moving to start putting that pile of clothing, aside from the underwear on top, which she threw at Duncan, into a bag. "Plus, on top of that, I get to do this with the people who helped her leave!" She was angrily throwing the clothes into the bag, ranting as she did. "Then, oh then, I get to go teach people about art history for what will feel like an eternity, because afterwards, I'm expected to go back and interact with those backstabbers. Again!"

"To be fair, you're doing that one because you want to see the baby," Duncan added, flinging that pair of underwear back at Gwen's head.

"Oh shut up."

"Hold on, there's actually a baby?" Geoff's eyes widened and everyone else kind of stopped what they were doing to just look at him like he was missing an entire point. "Oh, right, story was real, you told that part, got it."

An hour later and everything that didn't belong was fully packed up and by the door, ready to be loaded into the car and taken with Gwen to whatever destination that meeting was going to happen at. "Before I go," she said, smiling at Bridgette, "I want to ask you something."

"Go for it, I'm all ears."

"What are you two?" Gwen's smile got bigger, as Bridgette's face fell a bit. "I know, loaded question, but I'm fairly certain that, after what we've discussed today, it deserves to be asked. You two have been together for a long time, after all." By the now-opened door, Duncan grinned and shot a thumbs-up into the house before he grabbed a bag and took it out to the car, leaving the three alone for a bit.

He was back and gone again before Bridgette had an answer. "I guess I don't know if we're anything more than just dating, really," she said, her face showing that she had been deep in thought. "I mean, if we were something more, it wouldn't be rushing anything at all! But we've never talked about it and I just don't know."

"Huh, interesting. Looks like you've got a lot more sense in you than certain other people I'm ashamed to be friends with." Laughing, Gwen picked that stack of pictures back up and handed them to Bridgette. "Here, these are actually for you. Been saving them for the day I saw you again, to remind you of the friendship we used to have. Don't be a stranger, okay? You know where I am, let's keep some sort of friendship between us."

"Oh, yeah, you got it!" She took the pictures and looked at the top one, which was a drawing of herself that Gwen must have done at some point. "Wait, all of these are for me?"

"You and Geoff, yeah." At the sound of his name, Geoff, who seemed to have been lost in thoughts of some sort, came back into reality and waved. "You treasure those forever. Worked hard on them."

Bridgette nodded. "Definitely. I'll put them with all my precious things when I get back home. Maybe I'll frame some of these."

"Framing? My art? I'm glad you think it would deserve such an honor." Gwen smiled at them both, picked up what was the last bag on the floor, and headed outside. "I'll see you guys around, yeah?"

They agreed and she was soon gone, Duncan coming back inside not long after with a lighter in one hand and a bag of ashes in the other. "Sorry, had to take care of that burning business before I forgot," he explained, taking his seat once more on the couch. The couple returned to their chairs, Bridgette enamored with the pictures she had been given and Geoff idly looking around, noticing the small things like the way the room felt emptier without all those bags of clothes. "Wow, you two are being very talkative today. Must be something on your minds."

"I'm just looking at what Gwen gave me," Bridgette explained, her eyes focusing on all the details of all these portraits that she had been given. A lot of them were memories from their time on Total Drama, but some pictures were of red carpet events, and other still were just pictures of old friends and enemies. Each one was beautiful, and she made the mental note to have to thank Gwen better for this gift the next time she saw her.

"That's your excuse, got it. Geoff, man, got anything you want to say?" There was a part of Duncan's voice as he asked that which made it sound like he had rehearsed what he had just asked, and the way he got an affirmative noise in return just seemed all too staged. But rather than look to see what was happening, Bridgette was too focused on the bottom picture of the stack, the one that had been most definitely been saved for last.

It was of her, standing with her hands on her face, as she looked down at Geoff, who was doing that very stereotypical "down on one knee, hands holding a box" thing that, up to this point, she had only imagined in her dreams. She thought to herself about how funny it was that Gwen had sort of asked about that situation before she handed over these pictures, and she was going to make a comment out loud when she heard shuffling beside her. She looked up from the picture and there, before her, was exactly what had been depicted in the art.

Naturally, she jumped to her feet and did the very pose she had been drawn in. "Bridge," Geoff said, his voice slightly shaking, "you've been my ride or die babe for what feels like forever, and I think it's about time we make this official. In this thing called life, this crazy journey, this excellent, amazing, and definitely fantastic adventure, everyone gets one soulmate, and, Bridge, you're mine." He opened that little box he was holding, and when the light shined off the ring inside of it, Bridgette burst into tears and started nodding her head rapidly, her emotions rendering her unable to speak.

"I'd say that's about the cutest thing I've ever seen," Duncan said, pretending to wipe a tear from his eye with the hand that wasn't holding a camera. "Bet Gwen will wish she was here to see this rather than doing the dumb thing she had to do."

"Dude, can you shush for a moment?" His voice was still shaking as he spoke, and Geoff had looked away from his crying now-fiancée to reprimand his friend. "You're killing the mood."

A mood that had only ever found its way into existence because two young teens met and fell in love on reality television, and had found the ability to stick together on the crazy path life had decided to take them on. When Geoff had called it an adventure, he certainly had meant it, and now there was nothing stopping them from going on that adventure at each other's side forever.

A/N: Oh man, this chapter still hits my heart like it did when I wrote it. Yes, there's a lot of reference to a completely different fic, and yes, there's a lot of shipping nonsense in this, but it's just so...touching. And a bit humorous.

Anyway, as this is the end, I've got to say some thanks. Thank you to kamikaze2007 for editing this for me on a weekly basis - you're super helpful and definitely the most supportive boyfriend I could ever ask for. Thank you to Kristenschaalisahorse for being such a huge fan of the story, being one of the two people to get the chapters as they were written (the other, of course, being Joos), and for being there when I just needed to talk about this fic. Could not have done this without either of you around. :D And thank you to everyone who pushed me to participate in NaNoWriMo 2k14, because without you, I would never have written this!

I hope everyone who read this had some enjoyment in their journey! :3