For my Swifties, here's the Couples As Midnights Songs absolutely nobody asked for. Open for debate.

Seth and Katie: Sweet Nothing
Jake and Nessie: Maroon
Embry and Bethany: Glitch
Quil and Claire – Labyrinth (could also be persuaded for You're on Your Own, Kid)
(Bonus, Brady and Mia: Mastermind)

Do you all prefer these short updates more often, or should I hold off and give more at one time? Things will start to pick up in the next chapter, methinks.

Been around the world… Found no one quite like you – "Road Song" by Zane Christopher

Claire

Healing doesn't happen instantly. At least, not that I can tell. It's not like I wake up one morning and decide to be happy. Just like I didn't wake up two months ago and decide to be depressed.

At first, it's little changes. Eating more of whatever's been placed on my plate, realizing I like the taste of it. Before, I would eat because someone told me I needed to, and it took too much energy to fight back.

Then it's sleeping more soundly, working out the last remaining bits of jet lag and culture shock as I returned to the beginnings of a gray-as-ever Washington winter. Sleeping alone, without my sister's elbow in my spine.

It's being ready for therapy before Quil arrives to take me. Opening up about little memories of my mother. I tell Paula about the morning of the SAT, and the night Callie and I heard my parents fighting.

Healing is my father burning bread in the toaster, returned to its sentinel on the counter after my medication stabilizes my moods and emotions enough for me to be removed from suicide watch.

It's Christmas morning in matching pajamas.

"I'm going back to work," Quil tells me later that day. We agreed not to do gifts this year—I've had enough experience to last me a while. We're getting ready to head to Jacob's for dinner; I'm sitting at my vanity, trying something different with my hair.

I catch his eye in the mirror. "When?"

"First of the year," he says. He's leaning against my headboard, his socked feet crossed at the ankles. "You're welcome to hang out at the station any time. I already got it approved with Chief."

Something in his tone, maybe the set of his jaw, tips me off. "He was going to fire you if you didn't come back, wasn't he?"

"He's under a lot of pressure. His best lieutenant saves some lives, wins an award, and goes off on sabbatical after the grant money comes in?" Quil coughs. "It doesn't look great. And now that I know you're not—well, I think it's time."

I grimace, going over logistics in my head. With Quil and my father back at work, and Callie back at school… I know my limit, and staying in this house alone all day would push me directly over it. "Maybe I'll get a job, too."

"You could go back to school," he says. "If you wanted."

I give up on my hair and brush it straight again. "Maybe in the fall. Callie and I could go together."

"No we could not," Callie shouts from her bedroom.

"Stop listening to our conversation!"

"Stop talking so loud!"

I roll my eyes and turn in my chair to face Quil. "Can we leave now?"

He smirks at me, even as he stretches his arms above his head. His t-shirt rides up, and yeah, those abs didn't go anywhere, even if I did.

I think it's the first time he's been in my bed since he took my virginity. Heat flashes up my neck at the memory of him, cheeks and eyes dark with desire for me. Over me. In me.

Aside from our tryst on the beach, I haven't felt anything remotely close to sexual desire in nearly two years. With my anti-depressants, Paula told me to expect it to be dulled for a while longer, that it might never come back full force.

I peek at Quil's stomach again before I turn back to the mirror, sweeping my hair off my neck and into a ponytail. It's too hot to have it down.

It's not full force, no.

But it's still there.

"Don't kill her," Quil says as he deposits me at the firehouse front desk.

Mia Shelton sits behind it, eyeing the two of us warily.

"I'll be fine," I say before I mean it. I force a smile. I'm wearing jeans and a hoodie, my winter coat folded over my arm. If the firefighters get to wear their casual clothes in the station, then so do I.

"I was talking to Mia," Quil says, grinning. He kisses my forehead before he heads for a door labeled Chief. It shuts firmly behind him.

Deeper in the station, weights clang in the gym. Someone is fighting over the remote. Someone else is complaining no one is helping move the equipment.

Mia eyes me up and down as I step around the desk, and I do the same to her. It's been just over three months since the fire that injured her; her leg looks normal (at least from what I can see). She looks just as I remember, except for her rounding stomach. She's wearing a station-logoed t-shirt, and it stretches tight over her belly.

Quil's filled me in on all the Brady-and-Mia updates I missed. I know as much as he does: tension-filled shifts, secret rendezvous, a surprise pregnancy. The novel writes itself.

"I will give you," Mia says, drawing my attention up to her face, "two minutes to ask as many questions as you want. And then we'll get to work." She sounds bored as fuck.

That's funny how she worded that. My stomach churns. "We'll get to work?"

"Minute fifty-seven."

Oh, shit. "How far along are you?" I drop into the empty chair beside her, my bag finding the floor.

"Twenty-four weeks."

"When are you due?"

"April nineteenth."

"Boy or girl?"

She picks at a cuticle. "We aren't finding out."

"Do you have names picked out?"

"We aren't telling."

"How's your leg?"

Surprise flashes in her eyes. "Fine."

It's so regressive of me, but I remember what Quil said about Mia's traditional parents, and I can't help asking: "Are you and Brady getting married?"

"Yes."

I glance at her left hand, but her arms are crossed in a way that I can't see if she's wearing a ring. "When?"

"Whenever he asks me." Her cheeks take on a rosy hue, and she breaks my gaze. "My turn."

I swallow. Something tells me I overstepped somewhere, and she is about to make me pay for it in spades.

"What are you doing with Quil?" she says, voice flat and yet somehow menacing at the same time. This time when we lock eyes, hers are pure steel.

Confusion wrinkles my forehead. "He thought I could come hang out here until my applications—"

"No," Mia says, and her tone makes my teeth snap together. "Why are you stringing him along?"

Shame burns my cheeks. "I'm not—"

"Because Quil saved my life, and my baby's life," she interrupts again. "I won't let him be hurt by a little girl who doesn't know what the hell she wants."

Of this, I am certain. "I know what I want," I say. "I want Quil. I'm just not worthy of him right now. Maybe I haven't ever really been worthy, and he loved me too much to care. But I care. Now. And I think caring too late is still better than never caring at all."

I shove back from the desk so fiercely the chair bangs into the wall. "And I'm not a little girl."

I grab for my bag blindly. I'll go sit on a fucking weight bench for the next twelve hours before I have Mia Shelton tell me I'm not loving someone the right way. She only learned how to love, like, last year at best. I turn away, face hot and prickly.

Quil is standing just outside Chief's office, the biggest shit-eating grin I've ever seen crinkling his eyes.

"What?" I snap. I miss caffeine. I miss my vices.

I miss my mom.

These days the Black isn't so black anymore. It's back to Gray. The Gray lets me feel that thought about Mom, in the heart of me, and acknowledge it without collapsing. I used to think it meant I was weak, that I felt it in the first place.

Now I know it makes me the strongest of all.

People rarely come back from hell; I am one of them.

"Just wanted to make sure things were…" His head tilts, and his eyes study me intently. The veins in his forearms pop out. "Okay."

I barely avoid rolling my eyes. "I'm fine."

"Good," he says.

"Great," I spit.

He grins brighter, wider. And he nods. "So great."

"You repeated. I won." And I can't help the smile that comes to my face.

Something warm sparks in my chest, like how I felt when sliding back into these old jeans this morning. Comfortable. Familiar. At home.

The station alarm blares, details for the call getting blasted throughout. Firefighters jump into action. Quil should already be moving.

Before he does, though, he winks. "Feels an awful lot like we both won that one."