Chapter 22 - Epilogue

Author's note: this is really it, the end of "And Everything Goes Back To The Beginning". Thanks again to everybody who favorited, followed and commented but there'll be no more to this story after this. Any further stories that may be set in this AU (and I have a couple of ideas) will be posted separately.

Happily ever afters only happen in fairytales. In the real world, people fight and make up, hurt and try to heal each other, and sometimes they will fight so hard and hurt so much that they will not be able to find their way back to each other though, if they are very lucky, they may have loved ones who can do that for them. Such it was for Annie Edison and Jeff Winger, and the one they loved who kept them together most of all was Shirley Bennett. For Shirley, after making her initial disapproval at their unorthodox lifestyle and living arrangements very clear, took a conscious decision to reserve her more judgemental remarks for Jeff and dedicated herself to ensuring that that fragile, somewhat frightened young girl with no family of her own save what she had found for herself got all the love and support that Shirley's large heart could offer. When the two of them fell pregnant halfway through the semester in circumstances neither could fully recall around the time of the Halloween party, she chose to see it as a sign that the Lord was looking after them and wanted them to support each other.

After Jeff and Annie started their sophomore year at Greendale, the rows became more frequent - often provoked by Annie's frustration at Jeff's casual attitude to schoolwork - and though Jeff gradually learned that doing his work without complaint was less painful than rowing with Annie (and the glow of pride and hugs he got when he got a B or better was better than either) it didn't save them from a particularly brutal row that blew up about a month before Annie was due to give birth.

When Annie fled the apartment, it was Shirley's house she ran to in a flood of tears. It was Shirley who gave her a hot chocolate and sent Jeff a blunt message -

Jeffrey, get over here and talk to this poor girl RIGHT NOW. If you don't I will visit the wrath of God on your unrighteous ass. DO NOT test me on this, boy.

It was Shirley who opened the door when Jeff knocked on it twenty minutes later, it was Shirley who gave him one piece of advice - "my old momma always said that, whatever else happens, never go to sleep angry" - then showed him into the living room where Annie was crying. It was Shirley who closed the door on them to give them privacy, and it was Shirley who looked in again the following morning to see Annie fast asleep nestled against Jeff's side with his arm around her shoulders, Jeff sitting there awake and haggard and afraid to move lest he woke her up. "Thank you," Jeff mouthed silently when he saw her looking at them.

Plans for summer for the Study Group that year were somewhat tentative, conditioned as everything was by Annie's imminent confinement (Shirley had given birth twelve weeks early during an action packed Anthropology final). As it was, Jessica Marie entered the world in the early hours of Independence Day (for the first eight years of her life her father would tell her that all the flags and decorations that went up around town at that time of year were in her honour, and for the first six she believed him). Pausing only to scold Jeff for the mildly irreverent tone of his text message announcing it ("When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one person to sever the cord which has connected her with another...") Shirley loaded an emergency supply of baked goods into the back of her car and was the first to reach the happy family. The holiday for the Study Group was spent on a recovery ward in the maternity wing of Greendale General - presents were brought in, silly games were played, and the caretaker staff on duty over the holiday driven to distraction.

When Annie and Jessica came home, peace and contentment finally became the rule in the Edison-Winger household as Jeff learned the lesson that whereas disappointing Annie was bad enough, the thought of disappointing Jessica was unbearable. (Pierce, who had come to dote on the group's newest member and shed a tear when Annie rather timidly mentioned to him that Jessica Marie needed a grandfather, once took Jeff aside and gave him a sternly patriarchal lecture. "There's more to being a man than just being a stud like me, you know. Your worth as a man is going to be measured now by how you treat the women who depend on you. Are you up to it, boy?")

When Annie went back to school for Fall semester she changed her major from Health Care Administration to Business Administration, not least so she and Shirley could do as many courses together as possible. When Mother's Day came around the next year, Shirley was surprised by a knock on the door before she left for Church. Standing there was a delivery man, who handed over a large bunch of flowers and a greeting card. Shirley thanked him, went inside and opened the card. When she saw the message inside -

I never knew how wonderful a mother's love could be until you shared yours with me. Thank you so much for everything,

Your daughter,

Annie Edison

- she dissolved in a flood of tears, which she blamed on stress. However, she put the card in her Box of Important Things which she kept at the back of her wardrobe and kept it for the rest of her life.

When the Greendale Seven graduated a year later, Jeffrey finally went down on one knee outside the library and proposed to Annie. She jumped in the air with delight and cried as she said yes.

"About time you finally made an honest woman out of this poor girl, Jeffrey." Shirley said, though her stern tone was belied by the huge smile on her face and her squeal of delight when Annie showed her the ring.

During the last semester, Jeff had spent much of his free time looking for jobs after he graduated and formed a realistic expectation of just how unlikely it was that a formerly disbarred lawyer with a Greendale degree would get a job with a serious law firm, so he hung up his slate on an old store front and went into business under his own name. Annie put her own qualification to use by coming to work for him as his office manager, and the combination of her discipline and organisational skills and his charisma and courtroom skills got them through a rough first year and slowly saw them build up a stable of reliable clients.

They got married that September, everybody agreed that Jessica was a delightful flower girl and, much to her horror, the bouquet was caught by Britta Perry. They did not have a honeymoon as they couldn't afford to take time away from the business. Pierce died only a month afterwards, and his will split his fortune evenly between the son of his heart and the granddaughter of his heart. Typically, he put odd conditions on both legacies - Troy had to sail around the world for his, and Jessica's was put in a trust fund with her mother as sole trustee and a condition on it that the money was not to be touched until she reached her 18th birthday or her father finally admitted he was gay, whichever came first. Seven million dollars was enough money that Jeff actually pretended to consider making such an announcement, but Annie pinched him in the side and told him not to be so absurd.

That Thanksgiving the Wingers (Annie had dropped the Edison when she got married) announced that Annie was pregnant again, and Edward Pierce Winger joined the family in May the following year. As much to his own surprise as anybody else's, the choice of names had been Jeff's.

Five years after Edward's birth, Jeff accepted a merger offer from an established law firm - ironically one of the firms that said he'd never work again when he'd been job hunting - which ensured the financial security of the Winger family, gave Jeff the partnership that had always been his ambition and allowed Annie to finally resign from her role with the firm.

Annie instead devoted herself to the charitable work that had always been one of her first loves, until after another couple of years she was invited by certain citizen's groups to run for mayor of Greendale. Jeff, who had never quite got over the feeling that Annie had sacrificed her own ambitions to support his, enthusiastically urged her to go for it. After two successful and popular terms as mayor and standing down due to term limits, Annie was persuaded (though in truth she needed little persuasion) to run for Governor of Colorado, becoming the first woman to hold that office. After two terms, and once again standing down due to terms limits, Annie briefly considered a run for the presidency. Despite Jeff's willing support - he had always said he believed she could do the job - she decided in the end not to run and instead returned to charitable work using the connections she'd built up to support her work. And if that work focussed mostly on assisting homeless teenagers find accommodation and education and where necessary treatment for addiction issues, nobody criticised her and those of her friends and family who remembered Annie Adderall and the young woman she became would have a moment of respectful understanding and quietly rally round when the ghosts of her past got too burdensome.

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Happily ever afters only happen in fairytales. In the real world people are broken, and do not have the luxury of knowing what plan there is in store for them and they have to find their own healing. But sometimes, if you take two people who are broken in different ways and bind them together tightly enough they will form one thing that is whole, and stronger than either part of the source material. Such it was for the couple at the heart of our story, and thus it was one fine summer's day almost twenty five years after first meeting Annie Edison, that Jeff Winger - still tall, slim and rakishly good looking despite being only a few years shy of his 60th birthday - could be found in a particularly sharp suit walking Jessica Marie down the aisle of Greendale Baptist Church. He looked ahead of him, and saw the expression of awed wonder on Ben Bennett's face as he saw his bride approach. He risked a quick glance at Annie, her face glowing with joy and pride, and then back at Ben.

You think you're the luckiest man here, and that's right and proper. But you're not. I am.

THE END - thanks for reading.