Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and settings are property of their lawful owners. This story is written for entertainment purposes only and no profit is made. No copyright infringement intended.

A/N: Thank you for the reviews!

This is the final chapter of this story. More about that at the end of the chapter.

In this chapter I'm playing with the layers again. This takes place a month or so after the ending scene in Threads and is tied quite strongly to that so if you haven't seen the episode (I'm sure such people exist), the ending probably won't make much sense.

I'm also leaning further away from the canon timeline, just because I strongly believe that Jack and Sam finally got their happily ever after. It won't make a difference to this story, I just think they deserved it.

SPOILERS: Up until the end of season 8, especially Threads.

CHAPTER 16

Dean ends up spending the night. He passes out on top of a sleeping bag, under the coffee table. That's the best we could manage as a spare bed in our condition. We don't really talk in the morning, a few grunts here and there when either one of us wants more coffee or pizza. He digs my phone from inside the couch before he leaves which is good because I wouldn't have remembered it otherwise.

The day goes by in a fog. As soon as my headache calms down enough that I can watch TV, that's all I do. TV, pizza and plenty of alcohol-free liquids. Well, and a shower, of course. The apartment is a mess but I can't be bothered to clean up. Tomorrow, I tell myself when I decide it's late enough to go to sleep.

I wake up in the middle of the night to a strange feeling that something's off but I don't know what. I listen carefully but hear nothing unusual, then open my eyes and scan the room. Nothing.

Eventually I turn on the lights, check the hallway to make sure nobody is standing behind the door and even check underneath the bed. But it's not a you're in danger -feeling and that confuses me. I make my way to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water before I go back to bed and then it hits me.

Parking spot eighteen is not empty anymore. I rub my eyes a couple of time because I think I'm dreaming but I'm sure that's Liz's truck.

Keys and flip-flops are all I take with me when I storm out of the building, I don't even remember to grab a shirt. I slow down when I get closer to the vehicle, and finally sneak right next to it. The windows are darkened so if I didn't know what I'm looking for, I would have no idea there's someone sleeping on the backseat.

*knock knock*

Liz sits up and it takes a moment before she realizes where she is and what just happened. She scrolls down the window and I just stare at her with my eyebrows raised, silently asking what the hell she's doing.

"I didn't want to wake you up," she mumbles and runs her hand over her face. She fell asleep with her make up on and now she looks pretty much like a panda. Adorable, but I don't think it's a good idea to say it out loud right now.

"Well I'm awake. You coming in?"

"You don't have to," she says with a sad little smile and I frown, wondering what the hell I'm missing here.

"Well you don't have to sleep in a car in front of your own home."

"It's not my home, Jonathan. It's yours."

"It's been yours since I gave you the key. Now get your ass out of the damn car because I'm freezing here."

"Right," she mumbles and sits up. "I brought someone with me," she says and glances at me, looking apologizing.

"You've got Carter in the trunk?" I ask when she doesn't elaborate.

"No, it's a... a kitten. It's a long story. I didn't know how you feel about cats so I didn't want to burst in with her in the middle of the night."

I look more carefully inside the car and notice a big carton box on the front seat. It has plenty of air holes in it so I suspect that's where the cat is.

"I'm more of a dog person but we can have that conversation in the morning, over a cup of something warm. Just come inside, Liz," I plead because I'm getting really cold and I think we have some kind of misunderstanding going here.

"You're not mad at me?" she asks when she finally opens the door and steps out.

"No," I say and shake my head. I didn't even realize I could be. I probably should have gotten pissed for her leaving with no explanation but instead I've been wallowing in self-pity. "You might be mad at me, though, when you see what a mess I've made in less than a week."

I take the cat box while Liz takes her backpack.

As soon as the cat is let out of her box, she jumps on the coffee table and curls on top of the pizza box tower I've been working on all week. Well one of them, there are actually two piles. But the top box on the other pile got soaked when Dean freaked me out with his question and I wasted a mouthful of good beer by spraying it all over our living room.

I glance at Liz, trying to decide if I should ask whether she or Carter is pregnant but I decide it's better to just keep my mouth shut and trust that she would tell me. Besides, now that I'm sober and actually do the math since her last chocolate hoarding days, it's impossible that she's pregnant.

"Her name is Cookie," Liz explains to me when we've been standing silently in the corner of the living room, just watching the kitten get comfortable. "We found her in the dumpster behind the motel. There were four kittens but the others... didn't make it. Sam couldn't take her so I did. I took the bus back. That's why it took me longer."

"Why not give her to Cassie?" That would be my first option if I found an orphaned animal in the Springs.

"Cassie is a big girl now," Liz says softly. "She's away in college. I don't know where, though."

"Christ," I mumble when I suddenly realize that the little girl we rescued is now older than me.

"Yeah," Liz sighs and I think it's as weird for her as well. I wonder is she's seen Cassie. Probably not.

The silence stretches once again and in the end I decide to pull both of us out of our memories and back to present. "I can call her Choc'chip, right?" I ask and nod towards the kitten.

"Of course you will," Liz chuckles. It's not a permission, really, she just accepts the fact that I will give the cat my own nicknames along the way, whether she likes it or not.

It's easy to guess where the cat got her name. She's brown with small black patches all over her. She's not much larger than a cookie, either, when she's curled up like that.

"I see you've been living on the couch," Liz finally states the obvious. She doesn't comment on the sleeping bag under the coffee table.

"Uh, yeah... You can take the bed." My best guess is still that she left to figure out if our relationship has a future and I assume there's some big conversation we're supposed to have before we get all comfortable again.

She looks at me, painted eyebrows raised and I try so hard to ignore the smudges in her make-up. "If I'm going to sleep alone, I might as well sleep in the car," she says.

"OK. Bed it is then," I nod and make my way to the couch to gather my pillow and comforter.

"Jonathan..." Liz whispers softly, sounding hesitant, and I realize she hasn't moved an inch.

"I don't know why you left," I confess. "And I don't know why you came back. So I wanted you to have the choice. You know, in case you're mad at me or something." I'm starting to think my first guess was wrong and now I kinda feel like an idiot.

"I'm not."

"Good. Can we sleep now? We can talk in the morning, OK?"

She nods and grabs a pair of my sweats from the drawer before she makes her way to the bathroom.

We get settled on our sides, facing each other, close but not quite touching, both still feeling a little awkward and not quite sure where we stand. It's funny, really, that we both think the other one is upset.

"I left because I had a bad hunch," Liz finally says when it becomes obvious we're not going to sleep, both too anxious to get things sorted.

"Were you right?" I ask even though I'm not sure if I want to know.

"I was," she says and I can see the sadness in her eyes. I'm not sure if I want to know who died. I'm not sure if I want to know how many have died since I left. They're at war, after all. Some days I can almost forget that.

"But something good came out of it anyway," Liz continues. "They finally went fishing," she says with a smirk that tells me she knows a lot more details than I'm comfortable with. Because if Liz knows details about Carter's love life, she probably knows some about ours. But at least that means the Col - General didn't die.

I'm pretty sure that fishing means beginning of something, though. It means they went to the cabin and talked. It means they finally gave the relationship a chance and decided to see if it works out or not. I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean hot sex on the dock. I frown, confused about the whole concept of thinking about their relationship. It's bit like thinking about your parents having sex except it's not your parents, it's you except it's not exactly you anymore, either. Something between an identical twin and parents, I guess. Either way it makes my brain hurt.

"That's good," I finally reply and Liz grins at me, obviously aware of the thoughts running in my head.

Liz closes the distance between us and buries her face in my neck. Her arm wraps loosely around my waist. "There was tequila," she mumbles and I'm not quite sure if she's talking about her get-together with Carter or about the fishing trip our originals had together. Probably Carter. Fishing goes with beer, that's the rule.

"And the manager of the motel thought we were having an affair," Liz continues and somehow her tone sounds like she's confessing her sins.

"It was a little weird at first to see her. But the alcohol helped. We talked about everything. She deleted my spreadsheet," Liz snorts, obviously upset about it. "She gets irrational when she's in love. I wasn't expecting that."

Well, me neither. Carter? Irrational? Those two words just don't fit in the same sentence. But it's also kinda funny that there's something about Carter that Liz doesn't know because isn't that bit like finding out something new about herself? I wonder if Liz gets irrational when she's in love, too. That would explain why she flipped when I fell in the shower, though.

"She asked if I'm happy. I said yes and then she tore the paper where I wrote the new equations and she deleted the spreadsheet and told me to go home because life is too short."

That's not just Carter being irrational because she's in love, I'm pretty sure that's tied to whatever went on in Springs before Liz got there. "What happened?" I ask because I think she needs to say it out loud, whatever it was that proved her bad hunch correct.

Liz is silent for a long time, breathing slowly, and for a brief second I think she might be sleeping already but then she whispers a quick "Jacob" and I can feel my own throat constricting.

"It was peaceful. She was there until the end. It's..." she stops to search for the right word to describe how she feels but in the end she settles for "hard" which I know doesn't describe even remotely how she feels right now.

Are we allowed to mourn for the people who used to be our family or closest friends but who don't even know we exist? Or should we treat them like strangers? I don't think there's a rulebook about these things. There should be, though. I could have used a copy of "How to Deal with the Fact That You're a Clone".

"And there were other things," she continues but I know she won't explain those in detail, she just wants me to know Jacob's death wasn't the only thing that's gone wrong lately. But I'm glad she mentioned that something's gone right as well.

"I'm sorry about Jacob."

"So am I," Liz sighs. "It was funny, really, when we sat there and drank and just... remembered. We both had clung to different memories. I had already forgotten the things Sam talked about and she hadn't thought of the events I remembered for years. There's a big part of us that is the same but... We're very separate now."

The way she says it lets me know it's important to her, that it was the big revelation that made her trip worth it.

"Are you staying?" I ask because despite everything, that's the question I most need an answer for.

"Of course I'm staying," Liz says softly but firmly like it was the most ridiculous question ever.

"So, you know... The whole deal? Is that still the plan? Puppy and house in the suburbs?" We already have a cat and I know it's staying. I don't ask about marriage because that's a conversation we shouldn't have in the middle of the night when we're both still feeling a little shaken and because it doesn't really matter all that much in the long run.

"Yes. Just don't buy me a house without asking me, OK? It's fine with airplanes, just... Not with a house."

"Why would I buy you a house without asking?" I frown, wondering if this is some old mistake I made and she's scared of me repeating, maybe she is pissed about the plane after all, or if this is something about Carter. "I mean... We're great together but... I wouldn't even pretend to know you well enough to buy a house." I have no idea if she wants a wooden house or a brick house or something else. I have no idea about the color of said house, I don't even know how many rooms our house should have. There's no way I would buy a house without asking her.

Liz cries. Somehow I get the idea that those are happy tears or at the very least, relieved tears. But I can't be sure so I just pull her closer.

"But a puppy would be fine, right?" I whisper and stroke her back gently. "Puppies are closer to airplanes than houses, right? At least when it comes to size. But I guess it would be a lot like a house in the way that you have to see it every day." Now I'm starting to confuse even myself.

"Puppy would be fine," she mumbles against my shoulder, her voice full of tears but there's a hint of laughter as well.

"Good. But maybe I should wait until you buy us a bigger place, huh? Don't wanna turn this into a zoo."

~The End~

A/N: I know it's bit of an abrubt ending but for some reason it felt right.

I was thinking about writing about the prom or about the graduation but couldn't figure out anything worth writing. If I get a sudden inspiration, I might add either of those as an epilogue at the end of this story but that's unlikely.

I also have a sequel idea that starts when they go to university and I've written about 6000 words of it but I have no way of knowing if it will work out or not in the end so no promises. This story might continue one day but that's probably months away at least.

This was supposed to be the funny little story in between my more serious projects but now I just don't know how to let go. I always feel empty when a story comes to an end.

Thank you for joining me on this ride! And thank you for all the reviews and messages and encouraging words.