A short one for now, guys, cause the next one's a doozy...

P.S. We are SO FUCKING EXCITED that drawnquincest on Tumblr is now illustrating our story! Holy fuck! We have been DYING to have someone illustrate it (as I'm sure some of you remember!), and she has already posted three fucking amazing drawings of the first two chapters, so go check those out NOW! We seriously can't wait to see what she's going to do with some of the upcoming chapters... and we know you know which ones we mean... ;) Hell, we can't wait to see what she's going to do with chapters we haven't even posted yet!

Part III, Chapter 5: And If You Go

There were a lot of things running through Jamie's mind during the short flight from Berlin to London, but chief among them was the girl in the camera store, what she was going to say to her, and how much she would rather tear out the girl's throat with her bare hands. Against her own will, she played and replayed Tegan's last words to her, over and over in her mind. I wish I'd never met you. . . I never want to see you again. . . you betrayed me. She was too shocked, perhaps, to cry on the plane; stunned to the point of numbness. And that was her initial state of mind the next day when she walked into the camera store and saw the girl, there, at the counter, flipping through a magazine, looking as though nothing at all could possibly be amiss.

"Can I help you?" the girl asked listlessly, before looking up and making eye contact with Jamie. When she did so, there was a momentary flicker, Jamie saw, but she immediately replaced that with a vacuous and already ever-so-slightly defensive expression.

"Well, I'm not sure if you can," Jamie started, only a slight tremor in her voice betraying her. "But one thing you can do is go to YouTube right now and take that video down. Though that won't fix the damage you have already caused."

The girl looked at her, false innocence.

"What video's that, then?" the girl asked, forced indifference giving her an arch look.

"You know what video. You can take it down right now, while I'm standing here."

"I'm sorry but you'll have to be more specific," she said, a little huffy. Jamie's patience was unlikely to hold on much longer; she was never particularly patient with stupidity, and she was also holding back a wave of anguish that was more than she thought she could manage.

"Okay. You took a video off of my camera and put it on YouTube entitled 'Tegan and Sara, Barn Sex,'" Jamie explained tensely.

"Oh, yeah, brilliant video, innit?" the girl asked with a smirk, and Jamie could feel the heat rise to her face. She placed her hands on the counter calmly.

"You stole it from my camera," she said. "And you published. . . lies. . . and you've fucking destroyed the lives of several people."

"Come on, there's no way I could pass that up-"

"It was none of your fucking business," Jamie went on.

"Why'd you leave it on the card, then, if it was such a secret?" the girl shot back.

"I didn't. I deleted it. And what I leave on my camera is my fucking business. You had no right to do that!" The girl shrugged. "Don't you fucking shrug!"

"Look, you can't prove anything," she said. "Next time you drop your camera off somewhere, make sure you don't have a feckin' video of two, like, sisters fucking each other in a barn!" Jamie laughed derisively, but her hands trembled with barely suppressed rage.

"Are you kidding me? You actually believe it was them?" The girl gave her a sardonic look.

"Don't take the piss. It's them and everyone knows it," she said.

"How do you know?" Jamie asked.

"I've been a fan for years. I know what they look like."

"A fan? You have fucking destroyed their career," Jamie said.

"Look, there's nothing you can do about it so you may as well just bugger off," the girl said, snidely.

"You're right. There's nothing I can do about it and I obviously can't appeal to your compassion, because you obviously don't have any. But their record label can and will sue you so maybe if you take it down now, it won't come to that." There was another flicker across her face and this time it was fear. "What are you gaining out of keeping that video up? It's a video of Tegan with her ex-girlfriend. Why should they lose their career and hurt their family and. . . and suffer more than you can fucking imagine just so you can get some hits on your YouTube channel? Are you fucking heartless? What is wrong with you?!"

By then, Jamie was shouting. She was barely hanging on. A tall, skinny balding guy with a patchy beard came up to the counter from a back room.

"Something wrong, then?" he asked.

"This. . . person. . . put a video on YouTube that cost me my job," Jamie said around the lump in her throat; her job was the least of the things she'd lost. "It also probably cost two people their career and has destroyed them, and it's all false."

"Oh, the Tegan and Sara video?" the guy laughed. Jamie took a breath.

"You know, they are friends with a lot of bands in the UK. Do you want that kind of publicity for your shop? And can you really afford a legal battle with a major record label?" The guy looked subdued. "Take it down now, and delete the file from your computer while I stand here, and I won't contact the legal department at the label." The girl looked haughty but somewhat deflated. The man, serious. He looked Jamie in the eye for several seconds.

"Look," he said, his hands up, "just a bit of fun, innit? Just a joke, really."

"A joke? They're sisters, and the video claims that they're having sex! You have a fucked up sense of humour!"

"Listen, take it easy-"

"I won't take it easy! Take the video down now, unless you have a team of lawyers stashed away to go to battle with a major record label!" At that point, her anger and the pain in her heart were threatening bring her to tears, but she held the wave back, somehow, as the guy hesitated a little more and then spoke to his employee.

"Delete the video," he said to her. The girl looked affronted.

"It's not-"

"Just delete it unless you want to pay for the lawyer out of your salary?" There was a pause, while the girl looked indignant. "Where is the video stored?"

"On my laptop," she said.

"Get it." The girl huffed, but opened her laptop on the counter. Jamie stood by, her heart pounding, silently waiting. The man watched the girl locate the file in her computer.

"This is it," she said, and the man turned the computer around to face Jamie.

"You delete it," he said to Jamie. Jamie eyed him for a moment, then deleted the file, opened the trash can, and emptied it.

"Now YouTube," she said. The girl opened YouTube and removed the video while Jamie watched.

"Satisfied?" the girl asked, her tone saturated with resentment. Jamie looked at her.

"I think you might be too stupid to realize what you've done. So I guess, in a way, it isn't your fault."

Jamie turned and left the shop quickly. She walked twenty meters and turned, abruptly, into a piss-smelling alley and leaned against the wall. Her senses assaulted, she was reminded of another piss-smelling alley where she had fallen asleep waiting for a bus and woke up to the sound of Tegan's voice. Three seconds later, she burst into tears. She cried in the alley, alone, for a long while. Then she got back on the Tube, back to Heathrow to catch her flight home.

. . . . . . . .

When I'm conscious again, my head is splitting, but I'm somewhere soft and warm. Before I open my eyes, I know I'm on our bus. I know from the smell.

I feel a touch, a gentle hand brush the hair back from my forehead and I open my eyes and it's Tegan, and her eyes meet mine, red and puffy and sad. For a moment, or half a moment, I feel warm relief, and then the wave of dread rises up in me again.

"Tegan, God-" I need to get up. Tegan puts a hand on my shoulder, stops me.

"Nobody else is on the bus. . ." I stop pushing against her, frozen, perplexed. Yes. If we are on the bus again, there is no point. If someone is going to see us, they will, or they already have. God, my head. I close my eyes and lay back down. "You passed out. . ." she says, her hand on my forehead again, soft. "Shaun carried you here."

"Why didn't he put me somewhere else? I can't stay here!" The warmth I feel at her touch is struggling again with this sick heaviness. I need to escape. She looks puzzled, sad. "Tegan, this is the fucking reason that everything has gone to shit! This is why!" I snap at her, pulling away again, quickly, and climbing off the bed.

"Sara, we're alone-"

"We can't be alone! No!" I say, almost a shout. "Never again! Why can't you fucking understand that?" I press my fingers against my temples, against the pulsing ache that is making me feel dizzy again. Her face looks like I've slapped her, and she starts to follow as I move away. "No! You need to stay here, and I need to go to the other bus. That's it, Tegan! You have to. . . fucking. . . face it!" The words almost smother me. Her eyes make me want to die. I leave her there and run away again.