AN: Loony Lupin (I love your name) this really is the end, I can't spin it out any more and the end has been forecast for a few chapters. Nobody dies.

Oops I did it again

'Of course I got married,' Rachel said. 'You don't think a little mistake stopped us. We're strong,' She wondered if Emily was not just obsessed, but mad. 'We're lobsters,' she explained. That made Emily look at Rachel as though she was mad.

'When Ross gets here, I'll explain,' Emily said. 'Until he arrives I'm not saying anything.'

'Ross is going to kill you when he sees you,' Monica said. She wished that he would.

'I had no idea you people were so violent,' Emily said, 'That's why I brought my cousin and Ian with me.' The two men nodded slightly in acknowledgement. 'I'd have thought you were all in enough trouble.' That was true, that was so true, Monica thought in fear. How had it all gone wrong? Monica, Chandler and Joey had saved no trouble at all, they had just brought disaster on themselves.

Ross entered the room suddenly, furious.

'You! You - you've wrecked everything!' The two men with Emily stepped between Ross and her.

'Hello Ross,' Emiy said coolly, 'This is my cousin Peter who I'm sure you'll remember.' This was the cousin who had evicted him along with some choice words about how Ross had treated his cousin. At the time, Ross had been so upset with the way everything had turned out, not to mention the eviction itself, that he had had no answer to those words, and the memory of them stung. Ross and Peter stood face to face in a masculine contest where each silently gauged relative size strength and willingness to get hurt.

'And this is Ian,' Emily said. Ross glanced at Ian. Ian stood with arms folded ready for a stare off when Ross and Peter were finished. Emily had not given a label to Ian, but there was something about his attitude and the way he looked at Ross that suggested that he was her significant other. Ross stepped back between Rachel and Monica.

'What the hell are you doing here?' he demanded. He would have answers and he'd have them now.

'I've been trying to contact you for days,' Emily said, 'I didn't want to do it like this, but your friends kept me away.'

'Good!' Ross said, 'They knew I didn't want to see you. Ever.'

'Your friends were very devoted to your welfare,' Emily said, 'A pity they've got you into the very trouble I've tried to save you from.'

'What?'

'I've got something to tell you - do you want to hear it in private?' Emily asked. 'Rachel had better hear it too, since she's now involved, but I don't see that it's anyone else's business.'

'You can say it in front of my sister and my friend as well,' Ross said. Emily stood up, reached in her jacket pocket and pulled out some folded papers.

'Read these,' she said. Ross took them from her outstretched hand, and glanced at them.

'Our divorce papers, so what,' he said. Old news, ancient history...

'Read the names Ross,' Emily said impatiently. He rolled his eyes and read. Read it again. Read a third time. It was still there. He had divorced Rachel Waltham.

He looked back into Emily's face. He wished it was just some horrible practical joke, something that would be exposed but everything in her face told him it was true. These were his divorce papers, he had written them and filed them. He'd destroyed his own copy without reading them again and he'd posted Emily's. That was supposed to be the end.

'We're still married?' Rachel snatched the papers from him.

'Rachel Waltham?' she exclaimed.

'I- I- was upset at the time, I just wanted to get it over with,' Ross said. This really was a nightmare. Monica snatched the papers from Rachel.

'Congratulations Ross, you've just committed bigamy,' Emily said. He'd committed bigamy twice actually, not that Emily knew that. Did that make it better or worse? He had an absurd desire, rapidly suppressed, to ask.

'So have you,' Monica said shakily. 'You got married again.' Maybe not to Ian, since she wasn't wearing a ring, but to someone at some time. They knew Emily had, she'd said so. If Ross was in trouble, so was Emily. She hoped it was worse trouble, although she couldn't see how it could be. But Emily looked calm and said,

'No I didn't. I didn't realise it then, but my attack of nerves the night before was a blessing in disguise in more than one way. I didn't go through with it.'

'You didn't?' Monica stared at her.

'Well it would have been a bad idea under the circumstances don't you think? Marrying a man the morning after ringing an ex to see if there was another chance? What kind of a person do you think I am? Oh don't answer that,' she added bitterly, 'I know what kind of person you think I am after calling airport security out on me, getting the others to crash tackle me, and generally blocking me at every turn. You didn't even think that I might have had a good reason to get in contact with Ross.'

'You don't want him back?' Rachel asked.

'Good Lord no!' Emily said, emphatically, making them all feel a little insulted. Of course they were glad that she wasn't trying to break up Ross and Rachel, but she didn't have to be so - so definite about it. 'All I wanted to do was to stop Ross getting into trouble. If I could. But you all stopped me.'

'What happened to you about the wedding that wasn't?' Phoebe asked, curiously.

'I backed out because I was having second thoughts, and I decided that whatever I did, I'd never marry anyone, ever again.' Ian put a hand on Emily's shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. 'It's something I think you can do too often anyway.' She had no idea how much of a sting that carried, Ross shuddered. Rachel took hold of his hand. They would get through this. Emily continued,

'But I never thought that I couldn't get married if I'd wanted to. I didn't even think about it. I didn't worry that I hadn't received anything in the post because you told me that you'd filed for divorce and you'd got it. You were so keen to do it. You,' she parodied, 'Just wanted to get it over with.'

'Hold on,' Monica said, 'Are you saying you didn't know?'

'Not until I got those in the post last week,' Emily said, pointing to the papers which were now in Phoebe's hands.

'Last week? I posted that thing years ago!' Ross exclaimed.

'I know,' Emily said, 'The postmark says so. But it got lost.'

'You moved around too much,' Ross said. 'That's why it got lost.' It was her fault, it had to be. Not his fault. Sure he'd written the wrong name but it just couldn't be his fault. Not all his fault.'

'Well it was actually lost here in the US postal system so don't blame me. Once it arrived in England it took another week which is unusually efficient for the Royal Mail. I was told that it's a little unusual for big things like that to get lost, normally it's postcards and little letters, but all the same, those papers were lost. I thought I'd better let you know, in case you hadn't already worked it out. Naturally I wasn't going to trust the post again and since I was coming to New York anyway I thought I'd tell you in person. I thought you'd like to see the papers for yourself, not take my word for it, since this was such a big thing. Actually I thought you were already married.' She glanced at Rachel at this. That was part of the story nobody would be telling Emily - what was the point of that? Emily continued,

'I was very surprised to find that you hadn't got married. I rang around to see if I could find you and I was told you were getting married very soon, so I knew I had to hurry, before you committed bigamy. Plus there's something someone told me about perjury so you could be in trouble for that too.' Ross remembered having to swear that he was free to marry. He'd told a lie under oath. 'I had to tell the police all about it so that I could explain that I had a good reason for being at the wedding, so I'm afraid you can't pretend you haven't done anything wrong, Emily said, 'Probably they'd go easy on you since you didn't do it on purpose, but it would have been better to avoid it.'

'Oh yeah.' Ross just wanted to go away somewhere. He didn't know where, just as long as it was away from this problem.

'Why didn't you tell me?' Monica asked.

'If I'd told you, you'd have torn those papers to shreds without reading them, and told me I was lying,' Emily said. Monica was silent. Emily was right. That grand gesture with Emily's telephone number now seemed so stupid. 'I'd have lost those papers, because they're the only copy I have, and no-one would have believe me. The rest of you would have done the same. Anyway, Ross had the right to be told first, before any of you. I don't see why I should have told any of you.'

'You didn't try me,' Rachel said, staring at her. 'I had the right to know first too.'

'You wouldn't have believed me, would you?' Emily said. 'You'd have thought I was obsessed, mad, even. So.' Emily looked at Ross, 'I tried to stop you doing this but your friends wouldn't let me. If you want to blame anyone and you don't want to blame yourself for getting it wrong, again, blame them.' They were all silent. Monica remembered Emily's words "I hope you're not going to regret doing that." Emily walked to the door, flanked by her minders. 'I don't expect thanks, since I wasn't able to stop it after all, but of course, if I had warned you in time, you probably still wouldn't have thanked me would you?'

Epilogue

Ross, Monica, Chandler and Joey pleaded guilty to the charges against them. What with audiotapes, videotapes and 'Rachel Waltham,' they hardly had a choice. All got away without having to go to prison, although with Monica it had been touch and go for a while. The authorities had had enough of hoax calls and had wanted to make an example of her, but Monica had become ill with worry and had to go to hospital, so the prosecutor did not end up pushing hard for imprisonment. Joey returned to LA with his life essentially unchanged, although his agent was appalled. No-one in the media picked up on the story.

Chandler went in fear that someone would find out about his record and fire him, and he and Monica needed a lot of support from Ross and Rachel, who moved in with them temporarily during the worst of it. After a year of anxiety, Chandler solved his problem by deciding to go into business for himself and be his own boss. Of course that brought new anxieties, but he was able to work from home, and between them, he and Monica were able to arrange their lives pretty close to the way they'd wanted them to be.

Ross was able to entangle himself from his second marriage without too much difficulty, although he came out in a rash at the idea of trying a wedding, for a fifth time. After Phoebe announced that she was pregnant, the first good news they had had in a long time, Ross and Rachel obtained the licence and then went to City Hall and got married without telling anyone. After all, their lives didn't stop.

'It's not the wedding, it's the marriage,' Rachel said. They were in no hurry to tell anyone else. It was enough that they had done it.

By coincidence, on the same day, Emily married Ian at a registry office. Emily had not trusted Ross to get the divorce right and had taken her own steps to make sure the marriage was ended. With the money Monica, Chandler and Joey had paid Emily to settle her claims against them, she paid her parents back for the wedding that wasn't. She had never been able to afford to do this before, and in a strange way she felt that paying the money back had ended that episode too. Emily suspected that Ross had provided the money and she couldn't help feeling that it was fitting that she had used the money this way, since she would never have rushed into that second wedding if it wasn't for the disaster of the first.

It hadn't been her intention to attend Ross's wedding, but she also couldn't help thinking that that had turned out to be a good thing for her, crash tackle and all. Hearing Ross say "Emily" was the antiserum to the virus of Ross's "Rachel." An end to the hurt that had buried itself so deep she hadn't even realised that it had stopped her marrying the man she loved, the man who knew the second she was ready to say "yes."