Long after it's all said and it's all done and she's sitting on her balcony watching the palms blowing in the breeze, Amy will remember the look.

She'd seen it before, that look, the one on Karma's face, the first thing Amy saw when she walked back through the door of the apartment. She hadn't planned to go back. She had her credit card and her ID and that would be all she'd need to check in at the airport and get her ticket and her boarding pass and her way on to the flight that would take her back to whatever life she might have left in California. Sure, her stuff was still at Karma's but that was all it was, just stuff, there was nothing Amy'd brought she couldn't replace.

Anything that couldn't just be replaced wasn't a thing or a what that she'd be leaving behind, it was who. Or, maybe, it was who she'd left in Cali or, maybe (with the way her luck had been running) it was both of them. Amy didn't know what, or even how, to think about it anymore and even trying made her head hurt and her heart ache and her throat close up like she'd just downed a handful of peanuts, but she was pretty sure there was no epipen for this. Up was down and down was up and Karma was now and Maisie was forever or maybe it was the other way around or maybe, probably, almost assuredly, they were both never and she had no one to blame for that but herself.

Amy hadn't planned to go back to the apartment but she hadn't really planned any of this, she couldn't. She wasn't Karma and didn't plan well to begin with and what little ability she'd had to think more than five minutes in front of her had vanished, had disappeared, had up and fucking left her the moment Maisie had asked (and she hadn't said 'yes' and fuck all, how much easier would this all be if she just had) and her brain went on autopilot (with a GPS heading of Karma) and it hadn't come back, not in the moment Karma confessed all in the dark and definitely not in the Disney Store or on the street or even the steps of the dorm and fuck it this all couldn't have gone worse if she had planned it.

She hadn't planned though and if she'd known, if she'd known that she'd be greeted with that look and then with Karma's lips and then with her hands roaming everywhere and then her skin and her touch and her…

Fuck.

Amy likes to think (and would definitely say if asked but, well, that'll never happen) that if she'd known what would happen, if she'd known she and Karma would end up together like that, if she'd known she would become just like her mother (and let's face it, she often thinks, that was probably inevitable), if she'd known she'd do the one thing Maisie should have found unforgivable, that she wouldn't have gone back. She likes to think, as she sits out on that balcony and watches those palms, that if she'd known, she'd have had the strength to hail a cab and spend the night at a hotel or the airport or on a park bench and never ever have gone back.

She likes to think that and, if ever asked, that would be her story and she'd stick to it.

It's a fucking lie, but she likes to think it. Sometimes, after it's all said and done, thinking that is the only thing that gets her out of bed in the morning and the only thing that makes her think she might (maybe) (kind of) (not really at all) deserve the chance she's been given.

Sometimes it's the only thing that keeps Amy's mind right where it is and not drifting cross country and wondering what the fuck Karma was thinking and how the fuck Karma could have done what she did and why the fuck she never saw it coming.

Amy didn't plan to go back and yet, somehow, that's exactly what she did and she's never been quite sure how except maybe that her feet and her legs and her subconscious knew something the rest of her didn't. Maybe they had the ESP and they knew Karma was waiting, that she'd been prepping a speech for the last hour, a speech she'd forget in a rush of kisses and those roaming hands and struggling to get Amy's clothes off before either of them had the time to think because thinking would have led to second guessing and second guessing would have led to Amy running from the apartment and leaving all her stuff behind, leaving it all there with Karma who would never be able to bring herself to part with one single bit of it (which would have put Amy's stuff a step ahead of Amy herself but she doesn't think about that either.)

Amy likes to think that it if either of them had thought in those moments right after she walked through the door that maybe…

No.

She likes to think it, but she knows better and she knows they'd still have ended up on the bed and she'd still have ended up between Karma's legs and Karma still would've ended up screaming her name and then whispering 'I love you' over and over and over even as she slid down down down and they finally shared everything.

Amy might like to think they wouldn't have but she knows that's not true because it had been bubbling and simmering and rising to a boil just beneath the surface since high school and she knew (and so did Karma) (and probably so did Maisie, once she knew there was something there still) that there was only one way it would ever end.

Karma, Amy knew, always thought sex was the end. The end of the new and the end of the exciting and the end of the beginning and, to Karma, that was the end of everything good because nothing that came after ever worked. It all always fell apart and broke and led to nothing but pain and heartbreak and recriminations and someone hating someone else even if they should have been hating themselves just as much or maybe even more.

When it's all said and it's all done and Amy's watching those fucking palms swaying and slowly drinking a glass of wine (and she's lost count of how many) and it's doing nothing to fill the fucking hole inside?

She knows Karma was right.

It wasn't how she planned it.

In the end, Karma will keep going back to that. It wasn't how she planned it and she did plan because, well, her. It was, she knew (then and now and later) that it might not have been how she planned it but it was how she wanted it and maybe (not maybe) how she needed it. She knew from the moment Amy walked through the door that she wouldn't be able to do the right thing and… fuck… she didn't even know if it was right. She was right, they were right, her and Amy together was right, they had to be because otherwise she'd spent half her life wanting the wrong thing and yeah, Karma knew that wasn't unheard of (see: Booker, Liam and Others, Approval) but she and Amy couldn't be wrong.

They just couldn't be wrong and Karma knew they never would be. Not for her. Not then, not now, not ever.

But when it's all said and it's all done and she's curled in a bed that isn't hers with arms around her that aren't Amy's and a pain in her heart that is all too fucking familiar, Karma knows that's the key.

Not for her.

It might not have been how she planned but it was what she wanted and what she needed. Not just needed… it was how she'd dreamt of it, how she'd fantasized about it, even how she'd described it once (to Davis, while drunk, while he fucked her against her closet door, her every word pushing him further and further, so far that, in the end, he didn't flinch when she'd cried out Amy's name instead of his and then refused to talk about it or think about it fucking deal with it after and fucked him again just to shut him up.)

It was all of that for her but she didn't matter because she was only her, only half the puzzle and if the other half didn't fit… well…

When it's all said and it's all done? Karma wonders, more often than she should (so, pretty much constantly) if that puzzle would have fit, if it could have been finished, if all the pieces could have connected and the picture could have come clear, if she'd just been a little… faster. A little quicker. If she hadn't taken so long to figure it out (and really it wasn't even the figuring but the acting, the doing, the not fucking hiding) if maybe Amy wouldn't be on some balcony watching palms and she wouldn't be in some arms that aren't the right ones and Maisie…

Maisie would be with someone who loved her and only her and not caught in the middle of their shit and Karma really wants, even after it's all said and done, to feel bad about that, but…

But fuck her.

Karma tried to be a better person, she was a better person but even better has its limits and feeling bad for Maisie is, in the end, just one step too fucking far.

It just isn't in the plan.

Karma had a speech. She worked hard on it. Hard and fast, almost feverishly cause she didn't know when Amy would be back

(or if she'd be back and yes, she already had a contingency plan for chasing her down at the airport and commandeering the PA system and giving her speech so everyone could hear even as security was dragging her off and then Amy would chase them through the airport, vaulting chairs and crashing into people and calling out her love.)

(Of course she had a plan.)

Karma had a speech (and a plan) and it (the speech) was long and wordy and full of feels and emotions and pleading and feels and begging and feels and love, so much love that she knew the words would never measure up to what was in her heart and, when she thinks about it later, she wonders if maybe that's why she abandoned it so quickly, why she ever even said a word and just rushed Amy (and then said a word, eight actually, as she pressed her lips against Amy's skin and let her hands roam under Amy's shirt and moaned as their hips pressed together), why she pinned Amy against the door and kissed her and touched her and tried (so fucking hard) to show her, at least once (and she knew, even then, it would be once), what she'd never been able to tell her.

Karma had a speech. She had more than one. She had the brief and to the point and lay it all out there quick and dirty speech. She had the long winded, theatrical, so dramatic and so weepy and so guaranteed to leave audiences cheering in their seats speech. She even had, for a moment or two, the Love Actually speech. It would be perfect. Amy would come through the door and see Karma standing there, cue cards in hand, covered with all her words (that would never, ever, express even the tiniest bit of what she felt) and she'd be like the guy from Walking Dead professing his love and Amy would be like (a hotter and sexier and better) Keira Knightley and it would be just like the movie.

Except unlike Keira, Amy would leave the husband (and yes, Maisie was the hubby in Karma's scenario and yes, Karma knew they weren't married, yet, and why would she get bogged down in details when Amy) and they would get the happily ever instead of one chaste kiss in the street.

Because one kiss would never be enough no matter what that fucker in the movie said.

But that plan went out the window cause Karma's handwriting sucked. And she didn't have any big cue cards. And, if after all this time, if she was going to confess her love for Amy when they both actually knew it was happening, then Karma thought Amy deserved to hear it.

After all, Maisie had.

I love Amy. I'm in love with her and I will do anything for her.

Karma paced back and forth by her bed, going over and over her speech and trying (not very successfully) to not think about what Maisie thought about that. She knew Maisie thought it was a line in the sand, a threat, a gauntlet being thrown down, a glove being slapped across her cheeks as Karma challenged her to a duel at sunrise for the fair maiden's heart. To Maisie, Karma figured, it was a call to war.

Except it wasn't.

The war, Karma had wanted to say, was over and she knew it. She'd known it since that fucking rock and since Amy had talked to Lauren and had said what she said (even if it was what she didn't say that told Karma everything) and since the Disney Store and the street and, really, if she was being honest?

Since 'just not like that' and 'I can't' and 'have a good summer, Karma'.

How did that song go? Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost and yeah, Karma was assuming she was the 'good guys' even if definitely Maisie and maybe Lauren (and maybe even Amy) might disagree, but it was her head and her thoughts and she could cling to whatever delusions she had left.

Karma wanted to say that (just like she had her speech for Amy) but she couldn't and so she didn't, so instead she said "would you" even though she already knew the answer. Amy had said it, out there on the street. She'd told Karma Maisie would always take her back, would always give her another chance, that her love was that unconditional (and if Karma thought that made Maisie sound a little too perfect and a little too much like a Mary Sue, well, she just had to conveniently forget that Amy's description of Maisie fit her to a fucking T too and maybe then it would be OK.)

Karma knew. But she had to know.

"I will do anything for her. Will you?"

It was a quiz in Karma's head.

Would you take Amy back if she said she had to think about it? Would you take Amy back if she left you in Cali and flew to me? What if she said she loved me (and yes, Karma knew she hadn't but...well.. fuck you very much for pointing it out, as if she wasn't thinking it enough all on her own.) What if she came here to find out how I felt and what if how I felt would make her decision for her and what if she lied to you and told you she was home and what if she spent the night (all night) fucking me the way she should have been for the last five fucking years?

"What if Amy was on her flight tomorrow?" Karma asked. "What if she landed in California right on time, with all her baggage and a plan to never leave again?" She watched Maisie on the screen and a fucking blind woman could have seen the light that flickered behind the other woman's eyes at the very thought of Amy coming back to her. "What if Amy came back to you even after she and I…"

Karma stared down at the desk in front of the laptop, at the thin sliver of wood between the computer and the edge and felt like she'd been dancing on it, skating on that edge for so damn long and now all she wanted to do, all she could do, was fall off.

Fall. Or dive. Out of her control. Or completely in it.

"If Amy came back tomorrow and said she wanted you and wanted to marry you," Karma said, still staring at the desk. "Would you take her back?"

Maisie was silent for a long moment. "Is she here because she wants me?" she asked. "Or because you don't want her?"

Karma lifted her eyes and stared at the other woman across the country. "Would it matter?" she asked and she got the answer she knew she would and she nodded and clicked off the call without another word.

And went about planning her speech.

She ditched the Love Actually. She second guessed writing a song. She chose not to head out of the apartment and scour the city, calling Amy's name on every corner. She paced and she sat and she paced and she leaned against the desk and she paced and she fought off one panic attack after another and she prepped and she planned and she was so fucking ready.

And then Amy walked through the door.

After everything is said and everything is done, Karma will never remember the five or six seconds between Amy coming through the door and their lips crashing together. She'll never remember the conscious decision to charge Amy and pin her against the door or to kiss her or to let her hands roam up under the back of the blonde's shirt or even the moment (and she might not remember it but Karma's sure it was there) when she marveled (and reveled and gloated and celebrated and thanked God) that Amy didn't push her away.

She won't remember all that. But she will remember the ring.

Amy pushed back, moving them off the door and into the room, driving Karma toward the bed (like she needed the steering) and Karma's hands found their way to the hem of Amy's shirt and tugged it up and over the blonde's head even as Amy shoved her down onto the bed and straddled her and Karma's eyes (and hands) found that fucking rock as Amy's hips pressed down onto her and she stifled a moan.

Karma gripped it, she held that diamond in her hands, trapping it between them as Amy hovered over her. "Do you want me?" Karma asked and Amy nodded but that… no… that wasn't near fucking good enough so Karma reached her other hand up and slipped it behind Amy's neck, pulling her down and she pressed her lips to Amy's ear and whispered again. "Do you want me?" Amy nodded but Karma held tight. "Say it," she whispered. "Say yes."

Amy tipped her cheek against Karma's and let her hands wander across and under the other girl's shirt and up and up and up and Karma moaned as Amy's hands found her breasts as she whispered to her.

"Yes."

Karma's back arched as Amy's hands cupped and squeezed and her tongue and her lips worked along the skin of Karma's neck as the redhead yanked hard once on the chain, snapping it against Amy's skin, that fucking rock coming loose in her hand and then falling falling falling to the floor as Amy guided Karma's hands up over her head, pinning them there as she stared down.

"Yes," Amy said. "Always yes."