"And on the way, not a word was spoken.
There's not much to say.
Already gave some, already gave too much.
I don't want to be that girl who can't get over it."

- Emily Haines, "Pretty Head"

"Quantum Computer Services," Juliet says.

James looks up from his section of the paper (local arts, go figure), spread out across their formica table at a diner just north of Savannah. "Which one's that?"

She's got the business section, takes another sip of coffee. "That one becomes AOL. I think."

"Ya know they have that merger with Time Warner around the turn of the century."

"Hmm?"

"It don't go so well."

"So it peaks before Microsoft and we sell early."

He nods, reaches for their notebook, writes it down. "OK. I'll get some more Microsoft when I call him, too. We have the money right now."

"Sounds good."

They lapse into silence again, a train horn thundering somewhere nearby. The waitress comes and takes their plates; their fingers are still curled around their coffee cups. Juliet sneaks a peek at him; he doesn't look like he's paying too much attention to what he's reading, unless he's really that interested in a production of "Hello Dolly" at some local dinner theater. "Hey," she says softly, and James looks up almost too fast, like he's been waiting for this, just this. She reaches across the table, taking his hand. "Thank you."

He nods, swallowing heavily. "I, uh... I got somethin' for you, but I don't know if I should've."

Juliet's heart skips a beat although she doesn't know why. "OK?"

"When we were at the restaurant where you... your family was... When I said I was goin' to the bathroom, I actually went back out to your mom's car." James hesitates for a second. "I, uh... At the ceremony I noticed your mom and dad were both takin' pictures, with different cameras."

Breathing seems optional. Juliet presses both hands to her mouth. "We, we... we teased my mom for... for months. Thinking she'd forgotten to put film in the camera." Her pulse is racing now, and she's almost too afraid to hope.

He reaches down under the table, brings a roll of 35-millimeter film to the surface. "She didn't."

Suddenly everything around her seems sharper, more in focus, even though she can barely see anything through the tears in her eyes, and she doesn't want anyone else to see her like this, but the waitress returns suddenly, bringing them their check. James thanks her quickly, getting her to leave, and Juliet's heart seems to be too empty and too full all at the same time.

It feels like an angry, ragged sob waiting to burst from her lungs, but instead laughter supersedes it, and she's crying and laughing all at once. "Thank you. Thank you." It's all she can say, over and over, and James is suddenly smiling so hard that those dimples are all she can see.

Once they're out in the parking lot, James holds her tight while she gets herself under control somehow, petting over the back of her hair, down along her loosely tied ponytail, and she just rocks against him until it's all out of her somehow and she feels better, lighter than she has in maybe years, still half-laughing and she knows she's letting go of something she didn't think she'd ever be able to let go of, not really.

Eventually he reaches both hands back, trying to undo her ponytail. James been doing this for years and years, but somehow he always manages to snag her hair on the rubber band. This time, he unloops the band expertly, no pulling, just perfect, and his big hand smooths over the back of her head, down along the length of her hair.

"You OK? I did the right thing?"

Juliet can tell he's not sure whether he's asking about her hair or everything else, and she hopes her smile tells him what he needs to know, but she finds herself speaking anyway. "Yeah. You did just fine." Whatever happened, happened, and she's so fucking glad.

James looks down into her eyes, pressing his forehead against hers. "So did you, ya know."

"Thanks for having my back."

She pulls him down into a kiss, and his hand runs down along the back of her hair again. "So you ready to go home?" he asks, and Juliet feels him cringe against her once the words are out.

(Except.)

She touches his face. Her smile is genuine. "Absolutely."

At the outskirts of town James asks her if she wants to drop off the film at the Fotomat first.

Juliet fiddles with the tape deck in the dashboard, shakes her head. "I just want to see the boys."

It was the winter of '81 that finally did them all in, back in Ann Arbor. None of them were used to those harsh winters, snow piled up against their doors, the endless unearthing of snow-covered cars, those endless gray Marches. Chapel Hill seemed like a fair compromise, a liberal college town, good school system, and far enough south for better weather, a longer landscaping season. And it wasn't Alabama or Florida or hell, even Encino. Juliet, half-done with her second time through college by then, had managed to land a partial scholarship at UNC (for which she'd gotten a supportive "Didn't know they gave scholarships to 40-year-olds, blondie").

Miles and Jin had moved with them; the six of them were a package deal at this rate, and by then the guys had been talking about starting their own landscaping business, anyway. Miles, of course, crowed over the fact that he had the most money to dump into the company, although probably at least a fraction of that was from supernatural fraud, although Juliet didn't really want to know much more about it. At any rate, Miles had loved smirking about being James' boss for a damn change. It turned out, though, that Miles was an oddly fair majority holder, letting the work be split evenly. Jin handled the books, preferring the quieter side of things. James was out most of the days with their teams, but they'd scored a contract with the UNC campus last year, and financially things are at least doable until the future starts catching up to their investments.

Andrew's in their driveway on his bike when they pull up to the curb, and he starts waving and trying to spray the car with a water gun all at once. Of course, that leaves him trying to stay upright without the use of his handlebars, so Juliet's first moments back home consist of jumping out of the car and checking him over for scrapes.

"I'm OK, I'm OK," he keeps insisting, and finally pulls her into a fierce hug. She's down on her knees on the warm pavement, Andrew sitting cross-legged at this point, and she just buries her face into his hair and tries to figure out how it was possible to miss anyone this much after only a few days.

"Dad!" he calls out as James approaches, leans down and cuffs him on the shoulder.

"They call 'em handlebars 'cause you're supposed to keep your hands on 'em, Evil Knievel."

"I know," Andrew sulks as Miles comes around the house from the backyard. He winces when he sees Andrew on the ground, starts trying to apologize.

"Miles, please don't worry about out. It's not your fault -" Juliet reaches for Andrew's water gun - "that Mr. Andrew here doesn't want to actually hang onto the bike." She squirts her son in the shoulder, and he squeals and grabs it from her (of course, she lets him, considering those Other ninja reflexes are still in the back of her consciousness somewhere, deep down). James starts to laugh, and Juliet looks up and catches his eye. Not five minutes home and she's sitting on the driveway soaking wet and giggling like this is the funniest thing in the world.

Seth tears around the side of the house, holding onto his Pogo Ball. "Mommy!" He hurls himself against Juliet, inadvertently smacking her with the side of his toy and knocking the wind out of her. Juliet collapses into laughter and gives up, flopping onto her back.

"Did you catch the Crazy in Florida or something?" she hears Miles say.

"Maybe a little." Juliet brushes dirt out of her hair and hugs Seth again before he ducks away and grabs onto James.

"Jin and Anna are here with the kids. We figured we'd exploit your absence for a drunken barbecue, show Amelia how to do a proper keg stand."

"Wow, you guys really know how to have fun, dontcha?" James says. "Next thing you'll be tellin' me you're playin' dress-up back there."

"Look, what I do in my private life is none of your business."

Jin waves from the grill when they reach the backyard, having decided they'll deal with unpacking later. Anna is pushing her daughter on the swingset; Betsy's got Amelia in the Snugglie and is pushing Anna's son. It makes sense that Jin's been seeing a widow; they understand each other in a way that other people can't. And Anna's kids make for a built-in family, all of them filling in each other's empty spaces.

That's all any of them have ever been doing, really. What Juliet hadn't expected was how it's all turned out better than she could have possibly imagined.

James and Juliet usually split up putting their kids to bed; he tucks in Andrew one night, and she takes Seth, and the next night they switch. Tonight is a non-fighting night, though, and the boys beg to have a sleepover in Andrew's room. It's summer vacation, anyway, so James sets up the Spider-Man bed tent on the floor and the little guys drag their sleeping bags in there. Once upon a time, either decades ago or not even ten years ago, Juliet and Rachel had held similar events, and not all that much sleeping had been accomplished, but that had been the point after all.

"You still want your story?"

"Yeah," they chorus, but they scramble into the tent, and James and Juliet glance at each other with some approximation of They've gotta be kidding us.

"You go," James finally says.

"It's a boy tent," Juliet smirks.

"Is anyone coming?" Andrew demands from inside the tent.

James winks and hands her The Twenty-One Balloons, gesturing toward the entrance. "Be my guest."

Juliet's on her hands and knees crawling into the tent when she suddenly thinks of another time she'd been crawling like this. On the dock, outside the sub, Ben waiting for her at the dock with a bunch of wildflowers in his hands. Somehow she can't quite figure out how that moment had managed to flow into this one, but she doesn't dwell on it for long as she lies down in between her kids and feels Seth's head on her shoulder.

Andrew hands her the flashlight, and she turns it on, hovers it over the page.

"There are two kinds of travel. The usual way is to take the fastest imaginable conveyance along the shortest road," she reads aloud. "The other way is not to care particularly where you are going or how long it will take you, or whether you will get there or not."

A few minutes later, Juliet trails off when she realizes that, miracle of miracles, they've actually fallen asleep. She keeps her voice quiet so she won't wake them up, not really. "Sometimes you end up in another place entirely, but that's OK, too," she whispers, and Andrew stirs slightly. Seth's utterly still, hanging onto his Pound Puppy. She's at the door of their tent, about to crawl out. But she pauses. Looks over her shoulder and watches, as they edge closer to each other in their sleep.