Some time after Heather's conversation with DJ and his mom, Courtney approached Gwen. "Hello Gwen," she said in a very calm tone.

"Hello Courtney," Gwen said, apprehension evident in her voice.

"I just want you to know," Courtney began, "that I no longer blame you entirely for what happened with Duncan."

After thinking over everything Heather had said about letting bygones be bygones and how she was human, Courtney had decided to apply the same things to Gwen. She was still mad at the goth girl though, just less so.

"Furthermore," Courtney continued, "I've decided that I don't care about you and Duncan anymore. As far as I'm concerned, the two of you deserve each other."

"Thanks," Gwen said. She knew that what Courtney really meant was that they deserved each other because they broke Courtney's trust and the brunette C.I.T hoped one of them would hurt the other like they'd hurt her. Gwen also knew that she had to put a lot of effort into being civil for there to be any hope of diffusing Courtney's anger.

"One last thing," Courtney said. "When I was with Duncan, it never occurred to me that he would cheat on me, so it hurt that much worse when he did. So if you think that he isn't going to cheat on you because he's simply incapable of doing so, then you're a f#*king idiot."

Surprisingly, this had little effect on Gwen. Despite how insulting she was being, Gwen knew that Courtney was factually correct. Besides that, her encounter with Heather had shown her that she couldn't keep thinking of herself as always right or get out of problems by playing the victim card: she had to own up to what she did.

"For what it's worth," Gwen began, "I'm sorry about what happened with Duncan."

"Whatever," Courtney said, then turned around and started walking away.

The sad thing is, Gwen started thinking, that this is the closest Courtney and I will get to real closure.

….

It had about a week since the final challenge of TDWT. The most interaction Heather had had with Leshawna was the occasional awkward glance. Heather didn't mind that Leshawna hadn't come around like Gwen and Courtney: in 24 hours, she was going to be hundreds of miles away from Leshawna when she initiated phase 2.

The former contestants had been told that they would be leaving Hawaii to head back to Canada the following day. Heather was in her room packing when she heard a knock at the door.

"It's me," Eva said from the other side of the door. Heather opened the door and walked inside, looking troubled.

"What's bothering you, Eva?" Heather asked.

"You know how we likely won't see each other again after tomorrow?" Eva asked and Heather nodded yes. They had shared a little personal information about themselves and found out that they lived on different sides of Canada.

"I do," Heather said.

"I just want you to that this," Eva paused as she motioned her hands between her and Heather, "whatever we've had going on has meant a lot to me. You are the closest I've had to a friend in a long time. So thanks for that. Goodbye."

Eva turned to leave but didn't get far. "Wait, E," Heather said, causing Eva to stop. "Our…. time together has meant a lot to me to. You were the first person to give me the benefit of the doubt about me wanting to change. And we probably will not see each other in person again, but there are alternatives: cell phone calls, e-mail, video chatting. My point is, I would like to continue being your friend."

"I'd like that too," Eva said as she got choked up with what she assumed was emotion. She had felt for a while that her relationship with Heather had gone beyond a simple series of business transactions even though that's how it had started. Until now, she had no idea that Heather felt same way, so it was great to see that she did.

Eva felt the urge to give Heather a hug. After resisting the urge for a few seconds, Eva gave in hugged the Asian girl while being very careful to mind her own strength.

…

Off in another hotel room, someone else was packing. He had heard about Heather recent acts of niceness and was impressed. He had no idea that giving Heather that ticket to see 'Megamind' would have this much effect. He knew that Heather was capable of being not so evil and was grateful to have his faith rewarded.

He heard a knock on his door and went to open it. He saw Leshawna standing there. "Are you done yet, Harold?" she asked.

"I'm done," he said and left with Leshawna for one last walk along the beach.

…

After a long plane flight and a brief detour to show DJ and his mom their new home, Heather walked into her room. She laid her suitcase down and unpacked the only item she was interested in right now: the DVD with the recording of her calling out Gwen, Leshawna and Courtney.

She sat down in front of her computer and turned it on. She decided she was going to check all the messages she had received since she was away before adding the recording to her blog. She looked at her messages and was surprised at what she found.

There had been a drastic change in the tone of the messages she had been sent. Before, she had a relatively small number of fans and many more haters. But now her messages could be divided into several categories: condolences for the Germany incident and losing the prize money, assurances that she was far less evil than Alejandro, statements of defection from former followers of Gwen's blog, apologies for earlier accusations of demonic lineage and miscelanious (that last one was only about 20% of the total). Heather started counting up all the different screen names and found that the number of people sending her kind words numbered in the hundreds.

A few tears started coming out Heather's eyes as she processed this information. Ever since she had decided to abandon her bitchy ways, she had always thought that getting the fan base to put aside their animosity of her would be a very uphill battle. But now she saw that the events of TDWT had already won over many people. It was all incredibly heartwarming to her.

As these thoughts went through her head, she looked at the DVD. She had only wanted to put it on her blog in the hopes of changing some minds about her but that had already been accomplished. About half the messages included echoes of her own opinions about the fallacies of Gwen, Leshawna and Courtney's perceived purity.

She thought about putting the recording up anyway, but decided against it. In addition to the unnecessity of it, it would be a step backward on her quest of morality. Heather knew that if she failed in her attempt at self-improvement, she would use the recording for evil. So Heather placed the disk so that was half was the table and half was over air. She raised her hand and brought it down on the half off the table and broke the disk.

There's a good chance that I'm going to regret that, Heather thought. Then again, I had a similar opinion about inviting Gwen to go bowling and that worked out well. Maybe this will too.

Heather took the fragments of the broken DVD and threw them away. But now she had problem: she wanted to do something special for her first post season 3 and now had no ideas. She knew she wanted to express gratitude towards all the people who had undergone a change of heart about her, but she also wanted to do something grander than just saying 'thank you'. She had no idea what to do but was confident that she'd think of something. The hard part was over at least.

…...

Author's notes: I apologize if the Gwen and Courtney scene seemed out of place, but I wanted to address their issues in the context of this story, so I did. Besides, I think it's thematically consistent with the rest of the story.

I also apologize for how anticlimactic the ending is. I thought about Heather signing a song to express her gratitude but nothing specific came to mind, so I'm leaving it as is.