A/N: I've been accused of being Anti-Karma. Maybe this will change a mind or two (maybe). Based on the scene from the trailer when Karma tears the picture out of her locker.

Three months.

Karma remembers when three days seemed like forever, when going three days without Amy seemed longer to her than the entire rest of her life stretching out in front of her. Three months… she couldn't have imagined.

She still can't.

There were days this summer she swore would never end and times when it seemed like everything was going by faster than a breath. But every one of them was a day when she missed Amy so much it made every bit of her hurt, when she only made it out of bed because she knew if she didn't, Shane would show up and drag her out, kicking and screaming.

Once was enough.

Her mother talked to her, endlessly it seemed, about how time healed all wounds, even broken hearts. Karma listened and nodded and cried appropriately because she knew it was what Molly (and her father and Shane and even Liam when he breezed back into town for a week) wanted to see and hear.

Still seeking approval… sometimes Karma wondered if she'd ever fucking change cause if Amy leaving hadn't done it...

She didn't bother trying to explain it to them, didn't bother trying to get them to understand that her heart wasn't broken. Her heart was on a bus somewhere in some city she didn't know with some people she'd never met and it was in the hands of the one person she'd thought would never hurt it.

Maybe, Karma thought from time to time, she should have reconsidered that idea after the first time, after Liam and the lies and…

From time to time she made a point to not think about that because it just made those interminably long days even longer and there was only so much of that she could take.

Sometimes, when Molly wasn't trying to cheer her up or her father wasn't trying so fucking awkwardly to talk to her about anything but Amy or when Shane wasn't trying to keep her busy with lifeguarding and updating her wardrobe and incessant probing at her feelings

(and not so subtly suggesting that maybe, just maybe, some of the reason she was so upset was because she felt something she didn't want to or wasn't ready to explore just yet and really, no fuck Shane, which part of 'not ready' was too fucking big for you?)

Karma thought about that time and about how easily, really, she'd let herself think that she'd forgiven Amy. And that she realized was really all it was - thinking she'd done it, telling herself that she'd forgiven Amy because she had to, because the alternative…

Well, the alternative was just unthinkable. The alternative was life without Amy and the alternative just wouldn't do.

Three months. Three fucking months she'd spent living the alternative. Three fucking months she'd spent without Amy not because of what Amy had done but because of what she'd done in a desperate and broken and drunken moment.

And yeah, Karma saw the irony of it all. Saw it so fucking clear.

Amy could fuck Liam and lie about it for months. Amy could fuck her boyfriend

(and no, Karma did not give even one single fuck that she and Liam had broken up before the fucking or that their entire relationship had been based on her lie because fuck that, those fucking details were kinda unimportant when your best-friend fucks your boyfriend)

and Karma would forgive. Karma would have to forgive and have to forget (or try to, pretend to.) Karma would move the hell on and do her level best to ignore that she was homeless, that her parents had gone to jail, that Liam's father had basically treated her like a prostitute (except in reverse and that kinda made it worse), that Amy had moved on with Reagan and then Felix, Liam had moved on with Zita and Shane's sister and she couldn't even beat out Shane for an admittedly not all that attractive and clearly desperation prom night fuck.

Amy could fuck Karma's boyfriend and Karma would do all that. Would have to do all that because she couldn't stand the thought of even a week without Amy.

And Karma could kiss Amy. One single, solitary drunken worst night of my life kiss. One single 'yes, I know it was a fuck up but I was drunk and hurting and you could've pushed me away and not put your fucking tongue in my mouth' kiss.

And Amy would leave.

Karma forgave. Amy left.

Amy left fucking town.

Yeah, that seemed fair. That seemed right. That seemed about par for the fucking course and yeah, Karma got it. She understood. She knew Amy needed to get over her, she knew Amy needed time and space to try and heal. Karma wasn't stupid and she wasn't that oblivious and could have - she so could have - lied. She could have said the kiss meant something.

(even if that wasn't entirely a lie and she wasn't sure it was but then, she wasn't sure it wasn't either and lying about that would have been so much fucking worse)

and kept Amy there. But she didn't. She told the truth as best she knew it.

"I can't."

She couldn't, so Amy didn't (stay) and really, when she thinks about it (so often, way more often than she should, way too long up on her little lifeguard chair when she should be watching for people drowning) Karma thinks that, really, that's it in a nutshell.

She couldn't.

She couldn't give Amy what Amy wanted and so Amy walked away and yes (fuck you, yes) she knows it isn't that simple and she knows Amy didn't just abandon her.

But knowing it and feeling it? Yeah, those are two very different things.

Kind of like this. Kind of like knowing Amy's going to be back today, knowing she's going to be in school, within seeing and shouting (and hugging and slapping and really, Karma's not sure which) distance. She knows it from the minute she gets to school, from the second she walks into the building, from the moment she opens her locker and finds herself face to photographed face with the person who took her heart and left.

Karma couldn't stand the thought of life without Amy.

Amy needed life without Karma.

She reaches out and grips the corner of the picture between her fingers and pauses, just for a second. For just that moment, the doubts and hesitation creep in (right behind the love and the so glad she's back and the fuck, I missed her) and Karma thinks about being the better person.

Karma's known this day was coming every minute of every day (be they slow or fast, easy or hard and fuck that, they were all hard) for the last three months. And now that it's here?

She has no idea how to feel about that.

But as she tears the picture from her locker and crumples it in her hand, she does know one thing.

Being the better person is fucking overrated.

She sees her in the lunch line first.

It's maybe the weirdest moment in her life which, given who her parents are and that she spent a day in jail, fucked in a thunderbox, and faked being a lesbian, is really saying something.

Karma never imagined she'd see Amy from across a crowded room and, even for the briefest, tiniest most split of split-seconds, not recognize her. It's like putting on a new pair of glasses for the first time (and no, she doesn't think about the rose-tinted metaphor she knows would fit here) and watching everything work its way back into focus, slowly resolve from a blob of misshapen blur to… well…

Amy.

There's a moment - a quick one - when Karma considers running, when she actually thinks about darting from the cafeteria and finding the nearest janitor's closet to hide in. But then Shane is there, at her elbow, gently steering her out of the path of everyone else, out of the line she's not even aware she's holding up.

"You haven't talked to her," he says and Karma knows it isn't a question and, despite the tone she knows he isn't judging (three months has given her more insight and understanding of Shane Harvey than she ever thought she'd want). He's become her… well… her Amy.

And how fucked up is that?

She shakes her head. "I hadn't seen her till now," Karma says, carefully leaving off the 'I could have, if I hadn't changed my schedule - twice - just to avoid having morning classes with her' part. "Have you?" she asks. "Talked to her, I mean?"

Shane tugs on her arm gently, guiding her out of the way of the crowd and over to the far wall of the cafeteria, as far removed from the line (Amy) as possible without actually leaving the room and glances back at the line where Amy is still standing, just out of place with everyone else, her tray full as she makes what he assumes is idle chit chat with Erma. "Yeah," he says, turning his eyes back to Karma to gauge her reaction. "For a minute, before English. You know, the class you were supposed to be in."

Karma avoids his eyes. "Schedule change," she says. "I needed a math class and Mr. Walsh was only teaching the one and…" She drifts off as she feels his eyes burning a hole in her tiny little lie. "Fine. I switched out."

Shane leans against the wall and doesn't seem to notice his hand is still on her arm. "You changed your entire year to avoid her for one day?"

"Who says it's for one?" Karma snaps, the words tumbling out before she can stop them.

"Karma…"

"Don't," she says. "Don't 'Karma' me, Shane." She feels it all welling up inside her and she knows it isn't Shane's fault but there's that knowing and feeling thing again. "All summer long, it's been 'Karma…' this and 'Karma…' that. 'Karma… don't you think maybe you're taking this a little too personally? Karma… don't you think maybe this has a little less to do with Amy and a little more to do with you? Karma… don't you think this should tell you something about how you feel?"

"Karma -"

She snatches her arm away from him, her voice growing louder with every word, enough to rise above the steady waterfall of chatter in the cafeteria. "Don't," she says again. "Don't even fucking start. Don't tell me how I feel, don't tell me what I should do, and don't tell me that I need to talk to her because, quite fucking frankly, right now I don't know if I ever want to talk to her again!"

Karma glares at him, the anger coming off of her in waves but she doesn't pull away when he gently puts his hand back on her arm and slowly turns her.

Straight to Amy.

Amy who's standing there with her tray in her hands and Karma has a moment, a single second of clarity, when she wonders how the other girl is holding onto it when her hands are shaking like that and when she notices that there's two of everything on the tray, right down to the little cup of flan and she wonders if Amy's just that hungry

(like that's not a reasonable question)

or if she was planning some sort of peace-making lunch offering because obviously Karma's too poor to afford to buy her own and so she needs her best friend's help and it's not charity or a bribe it's just love and really…. really?

Fuck that.

"Karma…"

She hears her best friend's voice for the first time in three months

(and no, she is not fucking counting the videos of them she watched or the clips of Amy singing (badly) with Pussy Explosion that she saw on Facebook or the dreams she had every single night)

and she wants, so fucking badly, to smack the tray out of Amy's hands so the blonde can just fucking hold her (and she doesn't care even a teeny-tiny bit how) but all she can see, all she can hear is how familiar it is. How much the look on Amy's face and the helpless, hopeless, 'I know I fucked up' tone in her voice reminds her.

At least it wasn't with Amy

Have a good summer, Karma

And the words come, the ones she's been thinking for three solid months, for every second of every day, through every moment with Shane, through every talk with her mother, through every single second she'd never expected to live through. They come unbidden and they hang there between them and Karma knows - she fucking knows - that for the good of their friendship, she should take them back. She should bury them. She should shove them down and let every single bygone be fucking gone.

"Fuck you," she says. "Just… fuck you."

She knows she should take them back.

She just doesn't feel like it.

It takes Amy about twenty minutes to find her, which is fifteen more than Karma had figured, so either Amy had somehow forgotten everything about her in three months…

Or she'd totally been stalling.

"Get your pep talk from Shane?" Karma asks as Amy steps onto the roof. "He give you all the right words to say?"

"Karma?" Amy stays by the door, genuinely afraid to take even one more step because Karma's standing on the ledge. Not by it. On it. And Amy doesn't know…

Fuck.

She doesn't know anything anymore.

"I'm not gonna jump, if that's what you're thinking," Karma says. "I just like the view."

"The view?" Amy asks. "But you hate -"

"I hate a lot of things," Karma cuts her off. "The way Liam always held my face in his hands when we kissed, for example. His fingers always smelled like paint and rusty metal shit from his stupid fucking art."

She takes one step sideways on the ledge and Amy feels her heart bottom out and she lets out a little gasp and Karma hates (fucking hates) the tiny smile that little noise brings to her lips.

It means Amy cares. And it means she's in pain. And Karma wishes she knew which of those was more important to her right now.

"And that's another one," Karma says. "His art. I mean, seriously? That 'Karma' sculpture thingy? For God's sake, why not just title it 'I realized I was a fuckboy now can I please get back in your pants?'" She takes another small step, her feet sliding together in perfect sync as she moves. "Of course, it worked for him so I suppose I shouldn't judge too harshly."

"Karma," Amy says, taking one small step closer. "Please get down." There's an undercurrent - no, a fucking current (no under needed), - a Goddamned tsunami's worth of fear in her best friend's voice.

"No."

It's a simple word, really. One syllable and it isn't like Karma hasn't said 'no' to her before

just not like that

I can't

but somehow this one hurts a bit more and Amy takes one more step. "Karma, please."

"I hate heights," Karma says but she makes no move to get down. "Fucking hate 'em. Always have, always will." She lets one foot dangle off the edge

(and Amy can't fucking breathe)

before she hops backward, landing safely on the roof, her back still to Amy. "I dove off the high dive this summer," she says, matter of factly and without even a hint of pride, though it's easily number one or two on her proudest moments list. "In fact, I got fucking good at it. Better than Shane, better than everyone else in our class."

The 'not that you'd know anything about that' goes unsaid as Amy bows her head, trying to get her heart to start beating again and Karma wonders if hers will ever slow the fuck down.

"I hate heights," Karma says. "But I'm not afraid of them anymore. I know I can handle them," she says as she turns and even though she's facing her, Amy still can't see her eyes and Karma doesn't slow down even a bit as she moves.

Amy watches as Karma walks toward her and she braces for anything. A hug, a slap, a kiss… fuck, a punch in the mouth wouldn't be a shock.

"I suppose I sort of have you to thank for that," Karma says. She walks right past Amy to the open roof door. "And maybe someday, I will."

The door shuts behind her and Amy just stands there for a long while, rooted in her spot, afraid to look over the edge.