Author's Note: This doesn't quite feel like the best ending to a story that I ever wrote, but it's an ending. (Endings are difficult, people. Spread the word.) Hope you'll enjoy!

Epilogue

Saturday, July 3rd 2037
11:14 PM
Danville
FLS-Verse

When I woke up for the first time after my chat with my obnoxious, self-righteous, miserable, pathetic… kind of relatable other self, it felt like I was awakening from a coma. Very gradually, my senses returned to me. First came the realization that I had been asleep and was now waking up. Part of me didn't even want to, it was so much easier, less confrontational, to stay asleep… and then came the sound. A soft murmur of a voice close to me. 'Phineas', my mind smoothly filled in. At the same moment I realized someone was pressing my hand, carefully clutching my fingers between his. Strange, I didn't remember him holding my hand when I drifted off, so why would he be doing that now? Unless…

Unless…

I blinked at that thought and tried to sit up as soon as I could. It did not, of course, go smoothly, and everything spun before my eyes. I had opened them but I still couldn't see anything. My hand was pressed again, strongly this time.

"Easy there, Candace." His voice sounded a little bit… I don't know, almost desperate. "Be careful. Please be careful."

"I'll be fine, Phineas" I replied almost without thinking. I sat backwards, blinked repeatedly and slowly cleared my sight. Look around I recognized the familiar contours of the main laboratory of Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. And even if that hadn't been enough, the devoted look in my brother's eyes would have been enough to convince me.

"I'm home" I whispered. "I'm actually home."

"You are" Phineas acknowledged softly. "Welcome back, sis."

I slipped off the bench, still feeling a little instable, and practically jumped into his arms. That smile, that touch, that smell… I was home. Back where I belonged, with the person I loved most in the entire world.

You know, some people talk about bone-crushing hugs and they don't mean it literally, but I think this time I was getting precariously close to actually crushing some of his bones. Even so, turnaround was fair play, and Phineas was hugging me tightly as well. Almost too tightly. I frowned. "Phineas, is something wrong?"

My brother frowned, loosening his grip slightly but not making any move to let go of me, which was another sign that something was up – he usually did that during conversations. "What do you mean?" he asked. "You're hugging me as tightly as I'm hugging you."

"I know" I replied. "But I'm the overdramatic one." I gave him a cheesy grin. "You're usually more mellow. So why are you hugging me as if you thought you might never see me again?"

The expression on Phineas' face was a very uncomfortable one. "Because I thought I wouldn't, Candace" he admitted. "Not literally, of course, because your body would still be here, but I was worried the experiment could have killed you. I've looked at the results of some of the scans we did before and during your counterpart's stay here, and they honestly scared me. I… I never should have asked you to be a guinea pig for my experiment. Especially not without Ferb being with me to help."

I blinked uncomfortably. Death was something I hadn't really given all that much consideration to during my stay in the other dimension, which had been more occupied by my quest to get home and my determination to prove to Other Phineas and Isabella, the world, and most importantly myself that my brother and I were meant to be together. Actually (and embarrassingly), looking back I think I spent more time on that than on actually trying to get home.

As I looked at my concerned brother's face, a thought occurred to me and I actually let out a small chuckle. "Well, at least now you know how I felt."

At seeing his completely confused expression, I explained myself. "Back in the day, when you and Ferb were building stuff in the backyard – before, and even after we got together. Maybe especially after we got together, because then I knew your inventions were as safe as they could be, and you knew about my concerns about them and you'd taken care of it, but I still worried. I tried not to let it show but I think I always remained a little bit scared about you getting hurt, and that I could lose you like I'd lost everything else. And as your older sister, I felt responsible for keeping you safe even though I knew you could do a perfectly good job by yourself. That is how I felt, back in the day, and that's precisely how you're feeling now and you're just as wrong as I was, because if I know you you'd probably taken a lot of safety precautions and the mind transmitter never had a big chance of killing me, but the thought that it could have won't get out of your mind. What do the statistics say?"

"Even at the worst stage in the process, there was only about a nine percent chance of a fatal outcome" Phineas admitted. "But nine percent is too much, Candace. You're still so young, the kids need you, I need you… you shouldn't be in a situation where you could have died because I messed up and I wasn't able to keep you safe."

I gently stroked my brother's red hair. "Welcome to the club" I whispered in his ear. "Look, Phineas – I'm back. What's done is done. I'm not going to deny that there might be lessons to draw for the future but for now, can I just have a lover who is happy that we're together again?"

Phineas hesitated, but then he kissed me. "I am happy you're back, Candace" he whispered, pressing me close to him. "It's been nearly a week, and ordinarily I could deal with missing you that long but I lost you so abruptly, so randomly…"

I smiled comfortingly at him, just intensely happy to be in his arms again. "You really did miss me, didn't you?" I said softly.

Phineas returned the smile. "What gave it away?"

"The way you're looking at me" I replied. "I know your facial expressions and you haven't looked at me like that for some time now." Smirking mischievously, I added: "And of course I can feel it in your pants."

The awkward look on his face as he hastily broke off the hug and took a step back was another one of those little details I wouldn't ever want to miss again. "Candace," he said uncomfortably, "we're in public."

I snorted, taking a step forward so that we were standing opposite each other again. "What happened to me being the cautious one while I was gone? Not to mention that we may be at the lab, but we are in your secluded basement. No one could see us here." I was ready to return Phineas' kiss when something in his eyes caught me off-guard. He was clearly looking behind me, and an uncomfortable truth settled in my mind. Dreading what I would find but already suspecting it, I slowly let go of my brother and turned around.

The face of Baljeet Tjinder as he looked at us then is one I'll never forget. "Funny – even knowing now that you two are intimately involved, it is completely another thing to see it in the flesh" he mused. "Welcome back, Candace."

I just stared at him and back to my brother, who had a sheepish expression on his face as if he wanted to be anywhere but here right now… and I could tell it wasn't because of our PDA. This was supposed to be a happy moment, so I tried to swallow the disappointment that I felt because we'd always kept our secret limited to a circle of friends, and now Phineas had informed Baljeet after all those years… I supposed it could simply have been that he needed his help in Ferb's absence, but even so…

"I couldn't save you alone" Phineas eventually spoke up, confirming my suspicions. "Your counterpart became impatient and homesick, and she didn't understand my insistence on not telling someone who was, as far as she knew, one of my closest friends. She really had a hard time settling in, and eventually she figured that if I wasn't going to take action she would have to do it herself. Baljeet showed up here yesterday morning after Other Candace had contacted him the day before, and he figured out that we were together pretty soon afterwards. I don't think in the end I could have done it without him, not so quickly at least."

I nodded thoughtfully, focusing on the man before me that I had seen so many times over the years but hadn't spoken to in a long while. "And you're… okay with this?" I said carefully.

Baljeet looked pained. "I would not say that I am, but I doubt my objections are going to stop you from doing… well, whatever it was you were planning to do before Phineas alerted you to my presence." Okay, now my brother was blushing because of our very public affection, and I suspected my own face was getting red as well. "And either way, they are irrelevant to your rescue. You two were my friends once, and I do not let my friends down."

I nodded. "Thank you" I said softly. "For… well, for everything, I guess."

"You're welcome" Baljeet replied. He still looked awkward, and glanced at the clock. "I suppose you two have a lot to talk about now" he continued. "I should really be going back home to Ginger, anyway."

He turned around and started to walk towards the exit, and I spoke up before I even realized what I was doing. "Wait, Baljeet," I hesitated, but he had already turned around, "you're still in contact with Buford, right?" He nodded. "You two… and Ginger too, of course… you should come over some time. To catch up. I think it's about time Phineas and I came clean about our relationship."

The guys in the room both looked surprised, but Baljeet recovered first. "I'll do that" he replied. "We will get in touch with you about the date."

"Looking forward to it." I watched as he left the room, and then turned back to my brother. "Can you help me get back on my feet? I don't know whether I feel up to walking on my own yet."

"Well, I did just give your counterpart a sleeping pill about an hour ago" Phineas replied. "It's hardly surprising to hear that you're still drowsy." He put an arm around my shoulder and allowed me to lean on him as I walked for a few steps before feeling confident enough to restrict myself to merely holding his hand. Of course ever-curious Phineas chose that moment to speak up again. "But about Baljeet…"

I nodded. "I talked to your counterpart in the other dimension, and it seemed that there are a lot of things in his life that aren't in yours – and that includes a lot of positive things, like having friends beyond our family, rather than just having Isabella for a wife." I couldn't help the scowl on my face. "She did tell you about Isabella, didn't she?"

Phineas smiled. "Of course. It's hardly a subject we could have missed." He shook his head. "It's a really weird thought to consider. I've always liked Isabella as a friend, of course, and I guess I could see myself being happy with her, but I can't imagine pining after her the way she pined after me… or even the way I was crushing on you. My character must have been fundamentally different in the other dimension. In that light, I'm surprised your counterpart and I didn't argue more."

"You do know that your other self only got a crush on her in high school, don't you?" I said. "And Isabella seems to have had the same crush she had in our dimension. My guess would be that in the other universe your feelings for me either weren't as strong as they were in our world, or you simply didn't realize them, or they developed in a different way… any way, that meant that by the time I went off to high school, I was still with Jeremy Johnson, and you… well, I guess you noticed that Isabella was good-looking, and that naturally lead you onto a different path."

"Oh, that makes sense" Phineas replied thoughtfully. "It's strange, though, because based on what your other self said I'd thought Isabella and my positions had simply been swapped, with me having the crush and her being oblivious to it. Then again, Other Dimension Candace and I never did talk all that much about it. Or about anything, really."

I frowned. "Why not?" Even as I asked the question, my mind – or rather, my own words to Other Dimension Phineas earlier that week – already filled in the answer. I would absolutely expect my own counterpart to flip. And judging from the quick chat we had in the limbo between dimensions, that was exactly what she'd done.

Phineas sighed, clearly uncomfortable. "Well, we didn't start off on the best of terms anyway" he said. "She'd been expecting Jeremy to be next to her when she woke up that night, and then she found me. I realized that she was from another universe, but then I had to explain why I was there and she didn't take too well to that. She was uncomfortable around me for the rest of the night, and judging from tonight's outburst she never really let go of that, she just hid it a lot better. I mean, I had noticed how argumentative she was, but I seriously thought she was adapting well."

"Okay. So what happened tonight?" I pressed. "You're making it sound like something extremely dramatic took place."

"Well, I guess it was pretty dramatic" Phineas admitted. "I wanted to take her bowling with the kids because I felt a little guilty for everything I'd put her through, but halfway through we ran into Jeremy and Vanessa. She started talking to him and I tried to stop it because she was making them uncomfortable, and then she snapped. She accused me of trying to see her as a replacement for you because apparently I'd been looking weirdly at her, and she said that I'd deliberately been trying to annoy her ever since I was a kid. I – I'm not gonna lie, that kinda hurt. I guess she did have a point, though, because I have been staring at her a lot especially after I'd found out just how badly I messed up with the mind transmitter."

If my counterpart was here, I'd shove her against the wall and smack her in the face. Repeatedly. But since she wasn't, just clenching and unclenching my fists would have to do. That, and staying close to Phineas to make sure no one could traumatize him again.

I was focusing so much on not freaking out over my counterpart that I hadn't actually noticed that Phineas had moved away. He returned carrying his cell phone. "It just occurred to me that it might be best to call the kids right away and let them know you're unharmed" he said softly.

The kids. Oh my goodness, the kids. How had I forgotten about them? Well, I suppose I had been a little distracted ever since returning home, and it had only been a few minutes. I watched with anticipation and a touch of nervousness as Phineas called our home number. It was barely a moment before Amanda answered. "Dad, is that you?"

Her voice sounded frantic, and Phineas gave me a small smile. "Yep!" he replied, sounding so vibrant and full of life that I wondered whether he had just managed to wash off all the worries and melodramas of the past hours. Could he… he was Phineas, of course he could. (Still couldn't hurt to keep a close eye on how he was feeling over the next couple of days, though.) "Your mom's back! Took us some work to pull it off, but she's here and she's all right."

"Mom?" I smiled at Amanda's wonder. "Right here, sweetie." I'd missed her and her brother more than I had realized. Somehow the pang in my heart at hearing her voice, my own daughter's voice again, made me feel almost a little bit relieved. I hadn't just been obsessed with Phineas and our relationships all the time. I had been separated from my kids for days, and I was genuinely glad to be back with them.

"Wait, Mom is back?" I heard Xavier rush towards the phone, accompanied with a sound of… I don't know, something falling on the floor. "Mom! I'm so glad you're home… are you all right?"

I chuckled. "I'm fine, Xavier" I replied, despite knowing he wouldn't quite believe it until he saw it for himself. "Your Dad and I are just about to leave work, so we should be back home soon. You'll take care of the welcoming party, right Amanda?"

"It depends" Amanda said playfully. "Do you just want a few pieces of wrapping paper lying around with a cardboard sign saying 'welcome home Mom' or do you want a big Dad and Uncle Ferb/Xavier and Fred style party?"

"Probably not the last one," I replied, "as it would take too much time to clean up again and we are going to go on holiday in a couple of days." I took advantage of their surprised silence to slip in a 'see you' before nodding to Phineas to end the call. My brother was looking curiously at me now, and I suppose I couldn't blame him. I shrugged, trying to appear casual as I walked ahead towards the elevator. "What? You deserve it. The kids deserve it. Maybe it's time we started living a little more freely here. We can't let fear of discovery ruin our lives forever."

Phineas frowned. "Okay, now you've got to tell me about what happened in the other dimension" he replied. "What did you discover at Jeremy's house that made you change your tune so much?"

I sighed, figuring that this would be as good a time as any to spill the beans – and that was something I was going to do, because unlike my counterpart I was not a hypocrite, and I'd just spent days telling them all to be more open to each other. "I didn't actually spend much time at Jeremy's at all" I replied. "I sought you out within the first hours of the first day, and that's when I came into contact with the fact that you were with Isabella. You had a daughter together, and you loved her, and you could be open about that much more than you ever can with Xave and Mandy here. I… I just felt uncomfortable about the whole idea that there could be good things to you dating Isabella, and after telling your counterpart the whole truth about us I asked for his side of the story. He told me this bizarre tale about how he'd gotten together with Isabella, I tried to point out the flaws in it, and at a certain point I guess I really went too far in wanting him to hook up with the other me instead. We had an argument, and it took a full day before the rift was healed. But I just kept thinking about their relationship afterwards, and the fact that… I don't know, it just couldn't be. I mean, Isabella and you? I mean, we all know that was never going to happen…"

"But it did, didn't it?" Phineas said softly, stepping closer towards me again. "Candace, I don't pretend I understand why my other self apparently ended up in a relationship with Isabella. But you shouldn't have tried to turn them against each other. It's their life."

"I know, I know!" I exclaimed. "That's what your other self said. But… I just couldn't let it lie there, Phineas. I couldn't accept that in another world we weren't together, because that means that maybe we weren't meant to be, but we're just a quirk, an oddity amongst all of those dimensions, and why are we even together?"

Phineas frowned. "Well, I would think that we're together because you love me and I love you" he said. "Isn't that kind of how relationships work?"

I bashed my head against his chest, something I'd wanted to do in a long time. "Of course I love you, and I want to be with you. But I… I never quite knew whether it was right, or justified, and I think that's really why I wanted to break them up the most – that I just wasn't sure about my own life. And that is just so messed up. I mean, we've been together for how long again?"

"It'll be twenty-five years in October" Phineas murmured.

"Exactly. Twenty-five years, that's ten times longer than I ever spent with Jeremy Johnson, and yet…" I sighed. "It's not about you, though, believe me. You're everything I could have ever asked for and more. It's just the whole incest thing, and for the past two decades whenever I did feel unsure I've been telling myself that it's okay, because this was meant to happen, right?" I managed a small smile. "But then I come across this world in which I'm not with you but with Jeremy, and it could have been literally anyone else in his place and it still would have sent the message that you're not my universal, unambiguous soul mate, that you and I were not meant to happen, and only if their relationship is so messed up that it would be clear our world was superior can I convince myself that I couldn't have taken a different path. I mean, our sibling relationship has caused us so much trouble and is likely to cause some more, so I just wanted assurances to know I was doing the right thing, and that is messed up because I've been with you for twenty years and if I still feel uncertain about that then we're more dysfunctional than they could ever be, and I do love you, we just haven't been expressing it to each other all that much anymore, it's just been so much of a routine lately. I mean, when was the last time we even told each other 'I love you'?"

Phineas frowned. "Just now?"

I gave him a look. "Okay, so maybe we do say we love each other in dramatic situations like this. But in our day-to-day life, I think we haven't said it for a while now."

"Oh, I see." Phineas pondered that for a second. "Well, I wouldn't be able to tell you for sure, but you may have a point there. We still say it, but not as many times as we once used to."

"Right?" I said, my nerves so on edge that I was feeling lightheaded even though I hadn't had a drop to drink. "That's my whole point. We've fallen into a normal, boring routine, and they've also got a normal, boring routine, and it's like they're interchangeable but if they're interchangeable why are we committing incest and they're not, and there's a whole world out there in which I'm with Jeremy and you're with Isabella," I emphasized the name of our ex-crushe(r)s to make clear how ridiculous it was, "and it looks like with all their troubles they're still making it work, and they can't make it work, they have to be horrible and we have to be amazing but we're not, we've become too normal over the years, and now I'm questioning you and myself about all this and I feel so terrible about it and, and…"

"Candace," Phineas said softly. "Haven't you always wanted us to be normal?"

"Yes!" I stuttered. "I mean, no! I mean… I just don't know anymore, okay?" I sighed, feeling Phineas' arms fold around my waist. "Their relationships were clearly flawed, but they still cared about each other. Why couldn't they have been a dysfunctional mess with people who hated each other. Or an homicidal crime gang. It would have been so much easier if they'd been an homicidal crime gang."

"Candace, listen to me." My brother looked back at me, and for a moment he just seemed so much younger (and yet wiser) than his thirty-eight years. "Don't you think I have moments where I wish that everything was normal again, the way it was before we got together, and that I could just be on my own for a while, happily inventing away with no relationships or secrets to worry about? I have those moments of doubt too, sis. But I never indulge in them for more than a few seconds because I know – better than you do, apparently – that you love me. And I love you, and I love the kids. And I don't know if that's good enough for our counterparts in the other dimension in their fractured relationships," he placed a soft kiss on my cheek, "but I do know it is good enough for me."

I pressed my head against his chest. "You're so perfect."

Phineas shook his head and chuckled, patting me on the back of my head. "No I'm not."

"Phineas." I looked up at him, our faces inches apart. "I'm sure that by tomorrow, I'll already be complaining again about you forgetting to put your clothes away or turning my toothbrush into a robot without asking. Just relish in the fact that for once, I'm calling you perfect."

My brother smiled awkwardly, a blush on his cheeks. "Well, okay then."

He was so cute when he blushed. Twenty-five years on, and he was still cute when he was embarrassed. It was another thing that made me feel a little bit better about our relationship.

"Are you ready to go home, Candace?" he softly murmured into my ear.

"I… I think so" I replied. "But there's still definitely more that I have to tell you, though. We're in love – might as well share all my insecurities right now and regale you with every single aspect of my flaws. I mean, it's not like you're not familiar with them, but you might want a reminder on why you getting together with me was such a crazy idea."

Phineas chuckled, having recognized the deadpan tone. "That's what I'm here for, Candace" he said. "Go ahead. Let it all out. I have to get a couple of papers from my office anyway, so that leaves enough room for us to talk."

I stared at him and shook my head with a small smile as I followed him into the elevator. "You're imperturbable, aren't you?" I quipped. "You never complain, and I always do, but it never really gets to you. You just don't let it, no matter what I do to you. No matter what my counterpart does to you. You're such a dork. You should really stop letting people – including me – walking over you, Phineas."

Phineas snorted. "What, so when you call me a dork, I call you an idiot?"

I shook my head. "That's not what I meant and you know it… wait, do you think I'm an idiot?" It was odd to feel how those insecurities could be suppressed through time and effort, and yet they surfaced surprisingly easily when I was confronted with them.

"Hardly, but I do think you're prone to making some stupid decisions" Phineas replied. "Like the one about denying our kids a vacation. Even if you seem to have come back on it now, it still wasn't your brightest idea. We did promise each other to give them a normal childhood back in the day, remember? Keeping them holed up inside all the time probably isn't the best for their development."

"Phineas, I barely remember anything from that time, as I was too nervous to be a mother" I pointed out. "Whereas you kept your cool throughout and suddenly flipped on the day of Mandy's birth."

"Hey, it was a huge change to my life!" Phineas insisted. "I'd always been free to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to, and suddenly having a daughter I was responsible for really shook me up."

"Well, you had been responsible for me for a lot of time" I remarked. "Not quite the same thing, but you can't say you weren't prepared. You'd had a lot of practice for raising a kid just by keeping track of me… and to a certain extent vice-versa."

Phineas frowned, walking ahead towards his office while shaking his head. "Candace, now you're making this weird."

"It doesn't get much weirder than us" I said. "Either way, I agree that you and the kids deserve more out of life than what you've gotten thus far. We can't hide in the shadows forever, and if that requires taking a few more risks that people will find out about us… well, what's the worst that could happen? You meeting a pretty girl just over half my age probably carries more consequences than a gossip journalist getting lucky. "

My brother let out a deep, long-suffering sigh. "Candace…"

"I'm joking, I'm joking" I hastened to reassure him. And then, because this was a night on which truths had a way of coming out anyway, I added: "Although I do wonder how much my actions in the other world were influenced by jealousy."

"Candace, I demoted Kirsty for you" Phineas replied, shaking his head. "I don't know what more I could do."

"I don't want you to do any more than that, I just… feel that way, I guess" I said. "I mean, I know you love me and you're loyal to me, but I'm never going to like Kirsty or anyone else looking at you that way. I don't know why, but that's a prejudice I can't seem to overcome. Busting was one thing, but this is just too big a mountain to climb. And hey, if I'd flirt with some other guy you would be jealous too, wouldn't you?"

Phineas snorted. "I know you're not going to flirt with some other guy, Candace. And the mountain is only too big to climb if you don't set your mind to it."

"Maybe, maybe" I replied. "But I wouldn't count on being able to overcome insecurities that I haven't been able to overcome in twenty years. Not to mention that even if I did really feel threatened by Kirsty, it's not like it's a completely irrational fear, you know. There are lots of older guys who hook up with younger women, and there are younger girls who have crushes on older men."

Phineas shook his head. "Candace, I know you know me well enough by now to be able to tell that I'm not like 'lots of guys'. If I was, I would have married Isabella."

My initial reaction was to share his chuckle, as I usually did, but then I sighed and frowned. "Don't you see? This is exactly what I meant. We used to be able to laugh about this."

Phineas frowned. "Candace, you don't think I'm about to leave you for Isabella just because my counterpart married her, do you? Because I could think of half a dozen reasons right where why that would be a phenomenally bad idea."

"Name them again for me?"

"It wouldn't be fair to our kids, or to her kids" Phineas ticked off. "Ferb would be left all alone. They would have to get a divorce which could get tricky because of her Jewish religion. Me getting together with a previously married woman would cause a scandal. No one in our family would understand. Isabella and my characters would clash if we were together, as your stories from the other dimension seem to point out. Oh, and then there's this last detail – I don't love her. I love you."

"Fair enough" I said, smiling faintly. "I know that, and I couldn't live without you either. But it seemed so real in the other dimension, and you weren't there, and my other self and I had this whole fight about whether he should get together with his Candace and all of a sudden I started worrying again even though I didn't want to, and maybe this is an issue we'll never be able to resolve, but I… I didn't know what to do. I know I teased you earlier about missing me, but I was the one who really felt alone out there."

Phineas looked at me sympathetically and took my hand. "Did you really miss me that much?"

I sighed. "I missed you so much that I let your counterpart win in Skiddley Whiffers the first night after we had that argument just so that he wouldn't walk out on me again."

Phineas smirked. "You let someone else win in Skiddley Whiffers? Wow. Are you sure he didn't legitimately beat you?"

"He was way behind me in the first part of the game," I spluttered. "I had to deliberately throw three ones in a row just to get us on an equal footing again. I know, I probably would have tried to claim that I'd let him win even if he had beaten me, but this time I really did."

My brother laughed. "It's all right, Candace. I believe you."

We were silent for a moment as we walked out of the building, ready to go home, and I pondered those words. Phineas believed me and supported me, like he had always done over the past twenty years. Maybe that was the biggest difference between us and Other Candace and Jeremy, or Other Phineas and Isabella. Phineas always had my back, and I tried to have his. I wasn't so sure whether everything worked so smoothly in the other dimension.

"So…" Phineas said as we got to the car, reminding me all of a sudden of that day so long and simultaneously such a short time ago when we'd stepped into the car to get home, not realizing that I'd be taken out of my home dimension that very night and transported into a weird and dangerous place, leaving me unable to get back for a long, long time. It made me all the more enthusiastic about the realization that tonight I would be able to sleep in my own bed again, where I would finally be able to wrap my arms around my brother and not let go of him again for the rest of the night. You know, among other things.

I'd been so caught up in those thoughts that I had missed Phineas' actual question and came to that realization when I caught him staring at me. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

Phineas gave me a good-natured sigh. "I was wondering whether at the end of this whole adventure, there are things you think we should do differently from now on" he replied. "I think I should definitely keep from making major projects when Ferb isn't here, and certainly not do anything that puts you in any danger. Also, I ought to be more alert on how I act around others, and how and why they act a certain way around me. I think that could have prevented a lot of the problems we had with our counterparts. Finally, I should put some effort into getting back into contact with old friends, and we should take more time to really be parents to the kids, even if that does involve taking a few risks with our hidden relationship. What do you think?"

"Those… seem like good things to do, I guess" I replied. "I think I should probably give you more space for all of that. To trust you more, not just with maintaining our secret to the people we don't want it to slip out to, but also with revealing it to the people you do want to tell. Like I said before, you don't talk back to me enough. I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as the other you and Isabella – I think he was actually repressing his feelings a lot and they got into arguments about it without ever really getting to the heart of the matter. You don't feel like you have to repress your feelings around me, do you?"

Phineas snorted. "Not in the slightest."

"Good." I got into the car on the passenger's side and watched as my brother activated it and drove it off the parking lot. I couldn't help but cast a glance over my shoulder at Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated – hey, there had been a possibility I would never see it again, okay - before I continued. "But I still think that because of me telling you so many times that our relationship should be secret, you haven't told as many people as you would have otherwise, and you know, maybe I should trust you on that. No matter how much of an oblivious dork you once were," I had to resist the urge to ruffle his hair while he was driving, "you've grown up a lot since we were kids."

Phineas smiled at me. "So, anything more?"

"I should really get over my jealousy issues" I ticked off. "As far as that's possible. And… well, I think that's basically it. Trust you more, spend more time with the kids, allow you to spend more time with the kids… I think openness is probably the key. We should never have to feel like we can't or shouldn't talk to each other if something is wrong. I think I have felt that way in the past. I… I didn't want to raise more problems. You helped me deal with a lot of my flaws, so to find out that they were still there so many years on… I think I just wasn't sure how you'd react. You would gladly help me of course, but even you're not saintly enough that it won't wear you out under the surface. You've been so good to me, and I don't want to take advantage of you."

"Candace, what did you just tell me about the things you had to complain about, like with the toothbrushes, and when I forget dates, or when you think I trust too many people?" Phineas shook his head. "You're not taking advantage of me anymore than I'm taking advantage of you for continuing to put up with that – and if I should ever change my mind on that, I'll tell you about it. Maybe that's one more thing that I have to learn, that we both have to learn, that we'll always have flaws and we can't always take out the positive and eliminate the negative. We aren't perfect, but we've always accepted that from each other. As long as that's the case, who cares what our counterparts think? It's not important. We're happy, and we'll stay happy until the end of our lives together."

"But… but… but…" I stammered, suddenly disturbed by the confidence expressed in that last sentence. "But it can't be that simple! It's never that simple! Life doesn't work that way, Phineas. Things change, and everything you care about can just disappear overnight if you make a small mistake…"

Phineas shrugged. "That could happen sometimes, I guess" he agreed. "But that doesn't mean you can't undo those mistakes and get the things you care about back. Why does that idea make you so upset all of a sudden?"

I bit my lip. "Because all good things in my life seem to have a tendency to disappear" I whispered. "I've known that since I was a little girl. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me, you and the kids, and you're the only one who has the patience to understand me. I don't want to think about you getting enamored by another woman, and I know you love me, but… on some level, I can't help but think that it simply can't work out that way. Everything goes away. Everyone leaves. Remember our biological Dad? Remember how everything you built was always gone by the end of the day before I could bust you guys? Heck, remember my relationship with Jeremy? Nothing lasts forever."

Phineas put his hand on mine. "Except us" he said simply. "Candace, I've already seen you at your worst so many times. If I had wanted to end our relationship I would have done so ages ago – heck, I wouldn't have even started it. Remember when you told me the truth about busting? I did break up with you then, but we got through that one and we came back together. If some small voice at the back of your head still says that there's even the slightest possibility that I could leave you now, just because another version of myself didn't end up with you, then that voice is mad."

I sighed. "Are you sure we're doing the right thing, Phineas?"

"We've argued at length about that when we first got together and that entire first year after our relationship started" Phineas pointed out. "We've always had only the best intentions with it, and we never took it lightly. That's got to count for something, right?"

"If you say so" I said.

Phineas smiled softly at me. "It's a difficult dilemma, I know, but the arguments we had to stay together then are certainly no less valid now. And…" he stopped the car in front of our house and tooted the horn – brazenly, without regard for any of the neighbors who might be watching us, and for the moment I didn't care, as we'd deal with that when that time came. "I think we managed to add two more since."

And as our kids ran out of our house to greet us, I knew exactly what he meant. Feeling the love of my children as they hugged me and Phineas' affectionate smile as he joined in made me realize that in our relationship, the good outweighed the bad by far. Sure, we still have issues, but even those are minor in comparison with those that torment other peoples' relationships, including those of our other selves. What mattered is that after twenty years, we can still hold passionate speeches about how we love each other, that we miss each other deeply when the other is gone, and that together, we are a family and we can feel at home.

Who cares about our counterparts.

We have each other. And that is enough.