It only took me a decade but we're here at the final chapter. I decided that this year I was going to go back through all my old fanfiction and finish up old projects to get used to finishing stories so this is the first in that endeavour. If anyone has anything of mine they'd like to see finished up or if anyone is interested in a rewrite of this, please do let me know as I may be looking at a beta to iron out the quirks in this story.

Thank you to everyone who stuck with this for so many chapters and kept reading.

Chapter 42: Resolution

Johnny's POV

The air smelled of warm dirt as Hal strode to the pit with a bag on each shoulder, side-eyeing Vance's cigarette.

"What? Tobacco's a plant, ain't it?"

"That doesn't make smoking gardening. At least pretend to help."

"Hey!" My voice sounded wheezier than I meant – my own bag of dirt was heavier than I expected. "Vance, get over here and help so we can go home." The tenements, I meant, not actual home. Ma had started asking about my new "lady friend" after years of silence and I didn't trust her not to bring out the bathtub pictures.

"It is a cool idea," Cornelius jumped in. "Making the pit into a garden."

"Yeah, my uncle's got a farm in Louisiana," Vance added, as he'd started to do when his boyfriend talks. "It's kinda nice to grow shit."

"Shit?" Hal's mouth went so big you could have planted a garden in there. "Nobody said we were carrying shit."

"No, Hal, growing shit like tomatoes, not growing 'em with shit. I wouldn't be here if it was, we weren't even at the fight." Vance slung his arm around Cornelius, popping his collar slow enough that I saw the purple on his neck. A cigarette drooped from his mouth, barely hanging on.

"Thanks for breaking your back for us, Vance. Bea, Al – how's that tube going?"

"A work in progress!" Bea squeaked, ripping a piece of duct tape with her slim fingers. "A little more and we can just empty the bags through this instead of throwing them in."

"Does anyone know what they're growing in here?" Bucky piped up, hand whirring away at another apology letters – the other part of our punishment.

"Food, maybe?" Hal suggested.

"I don't think Mr Crabblesnitch thought that far ahead."

Shit, I knew that voice. I clenched my fists and strode towards Bucky, hoping that some reassurance might put colour back in his face.

"Why are you here?" I demanded. He looked back at me, less cool than usual behind his boxer's confidence. He bent, took a bag. I prepared to dodge a swing. He stepped forward and past me to the pit, ripped the back, and tipped more dirt into the hole.

"You people are even slower than my gardeners."

"You didn't come here to give us gardening tips."

"No, I didn't, John," he replied. Why John? I didn't get called John by anyone but that kindergarten teacher who didn't like Giovanni. "My father told me I could come here and help like an honourable man or I could spend my college years in the standard dorms and Sears clothing," Bif explained, glancing at Bucky. "I thought it was better to see you once now than then."

My fists relaxed. That explained it.

"How about when you're working for him?" I needled, more for Bucky's benefit than mine. I owed him some loyalty after getting things wrong before.

With a swift motion, Bif scooped up three more bags.

"Don't push it."

"Ready!" Bea chirped, scurrying over with the tube in tow. "Here, Vance, if you just cut a hole in the bottom of the bag you can empty it from here. Algie's working on another one."

The tubes didn't do that much to get Vance off his ass but we smoothed things out by the time Melvin swung by with Bucky's congratulations cake. It seemed like a weird sentiment: Well done for getting your arm broken. Or maybe it was more of a, "At least you got something out of getting your arm broken." It was pretty good cake, though, and Bea seemed more happy than jealous – which I kind of got, I guess? I'd have rather kept my arm in one piece.

"Have you decided what you're majoring in yet?" Bif asked stiffly. "Law? Politics?"

"Architecture," Bucky replied. (Bea squeaked into her cake in dismay.)

"You should come back and redesign this place," I joked.

"Maybe."

Damn it, more making up to do than I thought. The cola can sweated in my hand; the stuff inside clung to my tongue as I drank it. It took a lot of that stuff to get us through it, though eventually the hole was smoothed out with fresh, dark dirt, ready to hold more than broken bottles and dried blood. We all just lounged for a while, too exhausted to talk. I even saw Bif look down at a tear in his shirt, then sigh, then look away. That's another $80 down the toilet. I almost liked him for not caring.

"I think they're putting that abomination from the Harrington House in here. You know, the huge fly trap with the ridiculous name."

"Crapula Maxima," Bucky smiled. "Maybe we could study it. They need more slides to show chlorrophyll."

"Not from that, it's practically priceless!"

"It's a plant," I pointed out. "It just grows back, though, right?"

"That's not the point." He clicked his soda open. He was too tired for the point, too, I guess. I thought back to when I'd last bothered with biology – I'd started walking Bea there and now I went in occasionally again. I sort of remembered what chlorophyll was supposed to look like, how plants were made of little green bricks. They weren't that interesting, but it was nice seeing that Bea looked at the microscope the way I looked at an Austin Healey 3000. The little green bricks hung in my head, behind my eyes; as people filtered out, I caught Bea by the wrist.

"Feel like doin' something different tonight?"

The colours in her eyes leapt behind her glasses.

"What, in here?" She pressed her lips together.

"No. I mean, sure, but I actually had another idea. You know the biology lab windows? Do you think you could climb through?"

Her long legs slipped over the window ledge with ease once I'd got the lock off (easy, they were so old they were rusting off anyway). The lights were a little too bright; the room stunk like a surgery theatre, of cheap disinfectants.

"So what did you want to show me?"

I dipped my hand into my pocket. Her eyes widened.

"How did you get that?"

"The same way I get anything, I picked it up." A breeze blew in and the crappy plant behind us shivered as I showed Bea the severed bit of its comrade. "Do you think there's enough for some slides for Bucky and you?" I hadn't taken a lot, just skimmed a bit from under its chin; it gleamed as it changed hands.

"Outer epidermis should be simple enough. This isn't because of the library, is it?" She shifted her balance from one foot to the other.

"Not just that. I…" The coolest phrasing wouldn't come so I had to go with the truth. "I guess I thought it might be fun to see a slide put together. You all seem so focused on it, it kind of made me want to see what it was all about. I'm still not going to college or whatever, but… Yeah," I said firmly, holding myself tall. She looked at me serenely, then kissed my cheek with her small mouth.

"I think I understand. Dr Slawter keeps the slides in the back room. There should be some blank ones in there. And maybe some tweezers," she added, nudging a long white nail along the epidermis like she was searching for the end of a piece of tape. With serene focus, she tweezed the thinnest layer off the top and coaxed it onto a bit of glass. Smiling, she tugged me towards the microscope. "Look!"

Green circles, endless and perfect; they reminded me of a sixties living room. Above the microscope, I saw her beaming like a kid with a picture on the fridge.

"It's really cool. Will you be doing this kind of thing in college?"

"Oh no! No, I'll be looking at animal cells. Cancer is just the body renewing its cells too much so if I can find a way to stop that without radiation, I need to look at bodies." Her voice was slick with confidence. I swallowed my nerves.

"What happens to us when you go to college?" I asked.

She looked at me quizzically.

"As in, will we still be together?"

"I guess."

A vein on her neck jumped out. Shit.

"I mean… It's not something I've really thought about yet… I'd like us to be." She looked at me with a worried expression. "I mean, it is two years away at least, and I have to get scholarships, pass my tests, get into pre-med. That's plenty of time to figure that out." She shrugged – an afterthought. A tight note her voice. "What do you want us to do when I go?"

The cells came out of focus. I coaxed the lens. Focus on the circles, stop looking up at her like a lost pup. "I'd like us to be, too. You might meet your own people at pre-med and I guess I thought you wouldn't… want… to be with a mechanic."

"I mean, I don't know yet. It might be nice, though. The people I meet at pre-med are going to be my colleagues," she pointed out. "And you might decide you want another mechanic."

I made my mouth smile. It wasn't the shiny sure answer I was hoping for, but at least she was being honest with me.

"Who did you have in mind for me? Peanut or Hal?"

A giggle, a hand on my shoulder.

"Let's worry about it in two years. Right now, we're breaking into a lab to learn about cells. Bucky's going to be delighted when he sees this." She squinted behind her glasses. "Are there any more empty slides?"

"A couple."

"Bring them here." This time she was more confident with the tweezers; the work was done in seconds. The slide was tiny, its edges only just peeking from behind her thumb. "Here. That one's yours. This one's mine. Now we'll never forget that time we broke into a lab." The slide shone in my hand, tiny and perfect. Its edges were sharp as my hand closed around it. "We should go. This was an amazing idea, Johnny. Next time we'll hang out at the shop."

The night was quiet as I walked her back to the dorms and snuck a kiss behind a wall before she began her sprint past Mrs Peabody in the corridor. Back at my own dorm, I looked at the slide again, just against normal light, and saw nothing but a green smudge. I thought of what a mess the last year had been and thought about how little sense it must make to someone else, and how little sense some of it still made. My pillow was cool, shaking with Norton's snoring. I set the slide up on my desk. Regardless of college or mechanics or whatever else happened, it was a fun night with Bea – I wanted to remember it.