"You're coming home, right?" Jade asks anxiously as Beck flicks a pencil off of his desk in his childhood room. Beck gives Jade a frown and she smiles. She knows that means yes. "Good. I hate being without you. You promise you'll never ever do that again?" She asks.

He doesn't know what she's specifically referring to, whether it was the suicide attempt, the running away, or the general terrible things that happened during the last couple of years, but he shakes his head absently, his hand running through her hair gently. "We need to leave. My Dad's got the kids."

"Yeah," Beck says, his voice strangely choked up. He loved those kids with every ounce of his being - how could he have been so stupid to almost throw it all away? He'd never do that again. Ever.

"I.." Jade takes a deep breath and clutch's Beck's shoulders in replacement of his hands. "I think I'm ready to move into that house. Our house."

"Really?" Beck says skeptically. "We-ell..." He throws his wife around, unaware of his sore hands, "Let's do it!" Jade lets him have his moment's fun before looking stern.

"Cat is the first person we tell." She says firmly, no room for arguing in her tone. Beck nods.

"Of course. In fact, why don't we tell her now?" Jade nods.

"Okay. Okay. Okay! Let's call her up."

"We have something to tell you," Jade says, smiling happily. Cat closes her eyes.

"Please, don't tell me you're pregnant."

"No!" Jade says indignantly. "I'm done with kids. No more." Jade laughs lightly. Cat pats her and smiles, too.

"So what is it?"

"Beck and I are moving to that house he told you about," she says gently. "It's just down the street from your house!" Cat smiles bravely but Beck and Jade both hear the faucet running and the sounds of Cat's muffled sobs escaping from the door.

"Oh dear." Jade says.

"Yes," Beck agrees. "She's just upset, though. She'll come around."

"I know," Jade says. "And that makes me feel worse. She should resent us."

"No," say Beck. "That's not in her nature."

"But it should be," she persists, but then she lets Beck comfort her by rubbing her back.

Everybody is wordless on the silent journey home, and it's uncomfortable for all involved. Beck ducks his head in a hello to Mr West, but other than that there is no communication. Cat goes straight to bed. Jade sighs and puts Pop Tarts in the toaster oven. She waits, and then when they finally pop, gives two to Beck, and two to Cat, running up the stairs lightly and knocking on Cat's door.

"I'm busy."

"Doing what?" Says Jade, bursting in. Cat is sat on the bed, movies surrounding her, and Jade shakes her head. "These are rubbish movies." She pushes them to the floor and runs to her room, retrieving her favorite. She slips it into the DVD player and sits with her arm around Cat, leaning back against the headboard.

"The Breakfast Club.." Cat reads off the screen. She squints, thinking back. "No, I haven't seen this one." Jade looks shocked.

"No way. I can't know someone who hasn't seen this."

And halfway through the film she's giggling again, eyes widening at the innuendo and blatant references to "dirty things" as Cat put it, while Jade just raised an eyebrow.

"That was like that detention we had! You know, when we were seventeen!"

"Aw, I'm getting a detention? That sucks!" Jade cuts in, and then she blushes, aware of the other important issues at hand. She simply couldn't help it - she thought like a silly highschooler, like she was, not a (not so) independent mother of two.

"Well, no," says Cat, narrowing her eyes in confusion. "You can't go to school while you look like this."

"Lovely."

"You know what I mean!"

"Go on,"

"Yeah, that was funny, wasn't it!" Jade chuckles. Then she sighs wistfully. "I wish I was still in high school. It was so much easier."

"For you, maybe."

"What do you mean?"

"You were respected. Feared." Cat sighs, biting her thumbnail. "I was stupid and depressed, covered up with blood-red hair and a disguised love for Red Velvet cupcakes."

"Maybe," Jade says. "But that's all changed now! I'm washed up, mother of two kids who she can't look after, stupid,"

"Maybe," Cat echoes. "Anyway. C'mon, we've gotta put the kids to bed. Kiss them goodnight."

While Cat was laughing, little did she know that by two weeks from that day, that horrible, fateful day, her clever façade would come crumbling down at her feet while she lay exposed to the elements, fire and ice. AKA Beck and Jade.