I can make nothing but a huge apology that it has been so long until this chapter, for my readers. My family suffered two huge losses since I last wrote, and we have been struggling to stay afloat both together and individually ever since - in my own little world, fanfiction has been the last thing on my mind for some time. But as I started to find my own personal new normal, and started creeping back into fic, amidst the turmoil of teaching during a pandemic, it has been a release, a sanctuary, and I knew as soon as I got back to writing, I would finish this fic. Because I have loved every minute of working with Claire and Owen in this AU. I hope you've enjoyed reading it half as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

This chapter goes out to everyone that's still there, still ready to read this. Life happened (both to myself privately and then to the whole world) and so this must have felt like it was never going to turn up. I do apologise.

Four

When Claire wakes, with the bright sunlight crossing her face through the thin slit in the curtains, she takes one deep breath before everything starts to ache. Despite the dull burning in her muscles, she can't help the smile that sneaks across her face. She can feel every movement - every thrust, every grasp, every shudder - of last night embedded in every inch of her skin. As she stretches and her neck clicks slightly she almost laughs at herself. There's a reason it's not advised to make love on a cold dry floor.

She's alone in the bed, and suddenly she realises with nothing on, and no one to hold her, she's cold. As she draws the coverlet up over her shoulders a slip of paper falls onto her face. She eases herself up onto an elbow to read what's written.

Claire,

You looked so peaceful sleeping (after last night!) I didn't want to wake you.

Don't ever forget how much I love you, and how you're the only one I want to be here with,

Owen.

She feels her heart swell slightly at his words. Her fears, that had overflowed and come spilling out of her yesterday, are still present, they're just somehow more restrained. As she eases herself out of the low laying but sturdy bed (and they got actual physical evidence last night that the bed could hold up with some vigorous disruption, after their initial first crash on the cold hard floor), she stretches her arms, tucking a sheet around her bare body, and can't help the smile on her face.

It's like this is the first day of the rest of her life.

After finding her suitcase and some sensible, boringly practical clothes, she decides to take the remainder of Karen's money – a large portion of it went on the train to Greenville – and wander into town to buy some supplies. All the basics are there in the cottage, sheets, towels, kitchen utensils and a slightly rusty box of tools, but she doesn't suppose she'll find even a morsel to eat in the cupboards.

She locks the front door with a long handled, copper coloured key, smiling to herself. She tucks an old bag over her shoulder she used to use to carry her lipstick in when out riding in a whole different life – one that it seems the further she gets from it, it becomes more alien – and starts walking into the sun.

The main town centre isn't far to walk, and the grocers next to the Post Office has most of the essentials. She picks up a loaf of bread from the bakers and some chicken from the butchers, feeling quite unlike herself and quite proud of herself at the same time as she slips the small few coins of change back into her bag. That's the thought she's still musing, that everything costs a lot more than she ever had the capacity to realise, in her sheltered, artificial existence, when she passes a small shoe shop with a sign tacked to the window.

Shop assistant wanted. Monday - Friday, hours negotiable. All applicants considered.

Somewhere between frowning and chuckling to herself, she steps through the double doors. She never thought she'd be one of the women that worked in a shop, measuring the clientele, abiding by their every request, smiling regardless - but she supposes this is how people of that normal life she's only just found herself a part of find money every week for groceries, and anyway she's not sitting in an empty house all day whilst Owen's at the stud farm. And this way maybe she'll start to find herself a new, entirely different kind of home in Greenville.

She walks up the desk, holding her head high as she was always taught in her classes, gritting her teeth and half-praying that when she speaks she'll sound a thousand times more confident than she feels. The older lady at the desk looks up slightly absent-mindedly, with a gentle smile on her face. Claire thinks she looks friendly, and with a character not unlike Iris the housekeeper, and for a moment she muses that maybe Greenville is home to purely friendly people.

She almost laughs at herself.

"Can I help, Ma'am?" the shop worker asks, and that tells Claire she's holding her head, and herself, high enough, with enough confidence to seem like a Ma'am who might want to buy some shoes, not a girl on the edges of desperate.

Claire tries to give the woman her widest smile. She supposes it would be best to speak in the language of Greenville, with its friendly smiles and welcoming voices.

"I was wondering if you were still looking for a shop assistant, actually."

As Owen lets the rough wooden cottage door swing closed behind him, and roughly kicks his muck boots off onto the stone floor, Claire leans back to put her head around the kitchen doorway, meet his eyes.

"I'm cooking." she announces, almost laughing at herself. "I bought beef from the butchers and groceries and I'm making stew."

With a smile so wide she thinks it might split his face in two, he half-bounds over to her, standing against her back, nuzzling into her neck.

"And I got a job."

Owen appears to choke on nothing at all. She leans her head back against his shoulder, twisting her head to kiss his neck.

"I work in a shop now. A shoe shop, actually."

For a moment he looks like he can't quite form the words, before pressing his lips to the top of her head, gently, full of promise.

A sudden swell of confidence, of surety, rises in her.

"I realised..." she half whispers, stirring the stew mindlessly, "I realised that it might seem that this isn't me, not even slightly - but I have a choice." she swallows, and finds his hand resting gently and promisingly on her hip. "I can be the old me, or the new me."

It feels like it should lead into something else, but she seems to be leaving him to fill the silence.

He raises an eyebrow. "And the new you works in a shoe shop?"

She gives the stew one more stir before turning to place her hands on his shoulders, the smile on her face one of the most real he'd ever seen.

"The new me lives here, with just you, and the new me works, like everyone else. And I'm going to come home every day, and meet you in our little house, and normal's going to be beautiful. Normal's going to be everything."

He starts some sort of response, but she cuts him off. "It's all I want, Owen, perhaps all I've ever wanted. To come home to you, however simple home is, however different to everything I've ever known. Because you're there. You're my home."

"God, I love you." he whispers against the side of her hair as he wraps his arms around her, heart thumping, tears in the corner of his eyes, lump in his throat.

Home.

FINIS