The markets are on every Saturday night.

The air is rich with exciting, mouth-watering aromas that intermingle with intermittent bursts of frenzied music from the town square. It lasts late into the night, overrunning streets like the tentacles of a languid octopus extending deep into the sleepiest hollows of outer-suburbia. People weave in and out of other people; finding lost treasures in second hand stalls, trying street food from obscure countries so slathered in sauce that it smears all over their faces, and some just letting go and losing themselves in a timeless haze away from the weary reality of daily existence.

One man, a rose between his teeth, gripping a bottle of wine in his left hand and his jacket slung over his right shoulder, makes his way through the stalls and the people, past the enormous reach of the Saturday Markets until he arrives on the border of an enormous forest. He pauses for reasons unknown to him, to hell with it, and then plunges his way deep into the dark, his way ahead lit by the dimmest starlight.

He smiles slightly when he sees her silhouette on the cliff.

She's resting on her elbows with her legs dangling over the edge and her fingers spread over the warm summer grass. Again he pauses in line with the edge of the forest, you're ridiculous Jeff Winger; you do this every week. He shakes his head slightly trying to clear his mind before walking over and cautiously sitting beside her, ensuring that his chances of plummeting to a gruesome death are at an absolute minimum before placing the bottle in the wine-hole he dug years before and slinging his jacket over her shoulders when she sits up and looks towards him.

He takes the thornless rose from between his teeth and places it behind her ear.

"Milady"

"Jeff". He winces internally.

It's Jeff every time.

Yet it still hurts.

He plasters the smallest of smirks on his face.

She's looking at him hesitantly; her eyes are still so wide and so devastatingly blue after so many years that for a second he forgets everything that happened between them; all of the drama, the history, the late nights at the bar refusing to believe that alcohol was not the solution he was searching for, disappear, and for a second he remembers with absolute clarity, that he loved her, he still does, that he wants to hold her close and never let her go, how good she made him feel, the unbridled euphoria of simply waking up with her warmth next to him, the quiet contentment when he arrived home from the firm to their apartment, THEIR apartment, THEIR APARTMENT that had touches of Annie everywhere, the subtle green cloth over the lamp shade, the hideously lovable coffee table, and the huge swirling purple vase that he gave her on their second anniversary…but then the second passes.

He remembers that it's Annie Edison again, not Annie Winger.

Not anymore at least.

He barks a grating laugh over the cliff before grabbing, uncorking and drinking from the bottle with one fluid motion. She jerks her head towards him, the pop is deafening in the silence of the night but it's the laugh that catches Annie off guard. It was laced with so much bitterness. He never used to laugh like that; like his life was one huge joke that he had paid dearly to hear. In that one moment Annie realizes that she's broken him far more than his father ever did and she dies just a little faster on the inside.

Jeff notices her looking at him, her expression is completely open and unguarded, she looks at him with so much guilt written on her face, as if she'd just molotoved Pinocchio and run him through a wood chipper, and Jeff can't help the short burst of laughter from escaping.

"Jeff!" She hesitates for a moment before smacking him playfully on the shoulder; uncertain as to how he'll respond.

He's looking at her now, his brow furrowing deeply. Slowly his expression clears and he smirks at her gently.

"Hey don't blame me; it's that face of yours, in fact, I defy you to look in the mirror with that face and not laugh."

"What's wrong with my face?"

She pouts ever so slightly.

He cracks up again and both can feel the inherent sense of ease between them from long ago returning.

"It's just…"

She looks up at him expectantly.

"It's just so adoooorable".

She lets out a high pitched "Hmmph", her lips tightening into a taut line.

Jeff takes one look at her angry face and descends into fits uncontrollable laughter.

"Not exactly disproving the theory there Annie", he says breathlessly when he's recovered sufficiently.

"I'll have you know that I have a distinguished face, verified by seven separate accounts".

"Of course you do." Jeff muttered.

She chooses to ignore him.

She closes her eyes contentedly, pointing to her face with her index finger and drawing a circle:

"This is the face of Annie Stephenson, a face that can get things." She says with a tone of mock finality.

She hears a sharp intake of breath from next to her and can almost feel the warmth surrounding her draining away.

"Stephenson…"

She opens her eyes in horror; her face blanches in the knowledge that she's mentioned the one thing that she's kept a secret from him.

She can see the cogs turning in his mind, piecing everything together, the threads of her life slowly unravelling.

She can see the light bulb moment in his mind; his shoulders sag and he turns away from her.

"You married Rich."

He sounds impossibly tired; his voice is barely louder than whisper. He leans back and rests on his elbows; his head rolls back and rests lightly on the grass.

He looks utterly defeated.

After an eternity, he shakes his head slightly and slowly stands up. Annie joins him quickly and they both stare over the edge at the murky darkness of the woods below. He shifts his position slightly and turns his head to face her.

She's afraid to look at him.

She's afraid that he'll see the tears in her eyes.

She's afraid that he'll see the tears in her eyes and walk away.

And never look back.

But eventually she gathers the last vestiges of her courage to turn and face him.

He deserves at least this.

He deserves so much more than this.

She's not prepared for the tears streaming down his face.

She's not prepared for the soft smile on his face.

His Annie smile.

"Milady".

There is such a sense of absolute finality in his tone that it sends a shock of pain coursing through her chest, like he's reading the final lines of a script. She realises that he's letting go.

But he can't.

She grabs his shirt and drags him down crashing her lips onto his, kissing him desperately, kissing him passionately, kissing him with everything she has until she pulls away breathless.

It's not until after that she realises that he didn't kiss her back.

In her shock she barely notices Jeff lean down and fill in the wine hole.

She understands though.

He pauses when he's in line with the border of the forest and can't resist the urge to look back, look back at Annie; Annie whom he had loved with everything he had, but in the end it still wasn't enough, Annie whom he had spent the past year trying to forgive only to be steam-rolled over with the fact that she had found someone else.

In the end he can't even blame her.

He chuckles lightly to himself.

Rich wasn't a serial killer after all, huh, I guess he'd make a pretty perfect husband.

He turns back to the forest and begins his long walk back home.

Maybe she can finally move on now.

He doesn't hear her until she's right behind him.

She wraps her arms around him tightly, and presses her face to the back of his shirt, revelling in his warmth.

"I can't lose you Jeff, not again." She murmurs into his shirt.

They stand like that for ages at the heart of the forest, only accompanied by the slightest rustling of the leaves overhead.

Jeff closes his eyes. "You're the one who walked away."

He can't bring himself to look at her.

"You slept with him, you left, and you married him."

She circles around until she's directly in front of him, still holding on tight as she nestles her chin in the small dip on his chest and slowly trails her gaze up until their eyes meet.

"Do you love him?"

She breaks eye contact, chewing demurely on her bottom lip.

"Annie…"

"Yes okay, I love him! You don't just marry a guy without loving him!"

Jeff smiles humourlessly, "You married me".

Her heart breaks completely. OF COURSE I LOVE YOU! She wants to scream it at the top of her lungs, as loud as she can for the whole world to hear, but he's looking at her so gently and broken that she can't speak. She's sobbing painfully into his shirt and suddenly it's too much for him. He disengages himself from her grip and begins to walk away as fast as he can. Annie stands there for a moment stunned to her very core, but then she runs after him, following him into the dark, because she knows that if she were to let him leave tonight, she won't ever see him again, and she will always regret it.

She barely makes it fifty metres before a figure appears behind her and tackles her to the ground. She releases a frantic yelp as her and her assailant's bodies merge to become an amorphous mass of flailing limbs. Her heart is thumping in her chest, her breaths become short and erratic. She ends up facing her assailant on the ground ready to spray with the mace she always keeps in her back pocket.

Oh.

It's only Jeff.

Wait what?

He gives her his biggest shit-eating grin as he slides off her and stands up, brushing off dead leaves and glaring disapprovingly at the new streaks of dirt on his shirt. Annie leaps to her feet still charged on adrenaline and glowers at him slapping his chest hard to emphasise each word.

"WHAT" Slap "ARE" Slap "YOU" Slap "DOING" Slap "YOU" Slap "COULD'VE" Slap "HURT" Slap "STOP" Slap "SMIRKING" Slap "YOU" Slap "GIANT" Slap "CYNICAL" Slap "JERK".

Jeff's eyes are alight with mischief.

"I present to you Annie Stephenson, always had a way with words, she did."

He twinges slightly at Stephenson, but even it can't wipe off the smirk from his face.

"…shut it, Winger."

A small smile breaks through her pout when she realises that he's still smirking at her. His smirk softens at her smile until they're both grinning at each other like idiots.

His grin fades as he looks at her resignedly; his eyes are more open and vulnerable than she's ever seen them.

"Why did you come after me, Annie? You already have Dr Richie Rich. Why couldn't you just let me go?"

"Because I love you! More than anything in the world, more than I ever thought I could love anything, it physically aches on the weeks that you don't come but its more than worth it, because just imagining you smile at me gets me through the day, you drive me completely insane Jeff, but the insanity is worth it, completely and utterly worth it."

"You love me?" His voice is faint and riddled with uncertainty as if considering the validity of the fantastical.

"Yes, you idiot, how can you possibly doubt that now, how can you possibly doubt that the fact that I love you and I always have?"

His jaw line hardens and his eyes darken with intensity until they're almost black.

"You're joking? You slept with Rich when we were married, when I was hospitalised, and you left a week after I came home, and not two years later you've married Rich.

I will doubt your love every day until the day I die, Annie and there is nothing you can do to make me doubt you any less." His voice crescendos and breaks under the strain.

"I was scared Jeff, scared out of my mind, scared that I would lose you, scared because whether you lived or died was completely out of my hands and THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD DO ABOUT IT!

Rich was a mistake, he had just lost his wife; we shared our pain with each other and it felt better. I left because I was a coward Jeff, because I thought that nothing would ever fix it, so I didn't try, the first time I took the easy way out and I lost everything, I thought that there was no way that you would want to be with me ever again."

"THEN WHY DID YOU MARRY HIM," each word is stressed with and shouted through clenched teeth, "WAS IT BECAUSE YOU WERE SCARED THEN TOO, HUH? IS THE REASON YOU LOVE HIM SO MUCH BECAUSE YOU'RE SCARED?"

After Jeff calms down he huffs out a laugh.

"At least you were right about something."

Annie reels internally at the callousness of his words.

"YES I MARRIED HIM BECAUSE I WAS SCARED; I WAS SCARED THAT I HAD FOUND THE LOVE OF MY LIFE AND I HAD WALKED AWAY FROM HIM, THAT I WOULD SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE ALONE LONGING FOR A TIME THAT HAD PASSED!"

"I never left Greendale, you knew where to find me, you've always known."

"I guess I settled down and grew content with my new life, content to grow old surrounded by dreary mediocrity than to risk it all with you, and I eventually deluded myself into actually believing I was in love with Rich."

Jeff lets out a long drawn out sigh.

"So what now Annie, what do you want from me?"

"I want you."

He smiles at her sardonically.

"Come on now be realistic, we've both already established that's not going to happen."

She glances at him thoughtfully, a playful smirk dancing around the corners of her lips.

"And why is that?"

"Uh…You're married to my mortal enemy."

"I can get a divorce, and then I'll TP his house with you."

"We're a bit old for TPing a house aren't we?"

"Not unless time is linear."

"I'll make your ass linear."

They both chuckle briefly as Jeff is drawn into Annie's game.

"I don't think I can ever forgive you."

"Eh… I can live with that."

"Really? Why is that?"

"Because I love you, duh." She makes the "he's crazy" gesture with her right hand.

He rolls his eyes.

"I don't think I can trust you at all."

"Well then I guess I'll just have to prove myself to you."

"How?"

"We'll figure it out."

Jeff's beyond intrigued.

"I'm not sure I love you anymore."

"Oh hush you, of course you do, next question."

He's about to protest but he stops suddenly, Huh I guess she's right, and huffs out a laugh instead.

"I will question whether you actually love me every single day until the day I die."

"If you take me back I will marry you every single day until the day you die to prove how much I love you."

Jeff cocks his head slightly.

"And just why exactly do you think I'll be the first to die?"

"Because you said… but what I meant was… shut up… you're not getting the full picture."

She flushes slightly and he laughs.

"Okay so what's the whole picture?"

"The whole picture is that I love you Jeff Winger I can't live without you and the years that we weren't together where the worst of my life because I knew that it was all my fault, I know I've made so many huge mistakes but after 6 years I still love you as much as when we first started and if you let me I'll spend the rest of my life with you trying to correct my…"

Her speech is cut short by his lips enveloping hers; the kiss is much softer this time, each relearning the soft contours of the inside of each other's mouths. Jeff slowly pulls her flush with his body so that she's standing on the tips of her toes as he winds a lazy hand through her hair and deepens the kiss. After two years of absence have been accounted for they both pull back breathing heavily.

"Run away with me Annie."

She lets out a tentative "what?" looking at him adorably confused.

"Run away with me, we'll go anywhere, everywhere far away from this suburban nightmare, until either Rich or reality catches up with us."

She lets out a giggle. "Why?" She asks him curiously.

"Because I don't know if I can trust you, or if there is a blind spot in your love called Rich, because you broke me the last time you walked away from our relationship and I don't know if I can go through it again, this way we'll go on whacky adventures and if you want out, there's a very comfortable Rich shaped safety net to break your fall and I won't be too devastated. But if at the end of everything we're still together? Then we'll know it was meant to be, you can divorce Dr Do-no-wrong and we can move on from there.

What do you say?"

"Yes."

"You can think about it if you want."

"Nope."

You sure?"

"Yup."

"Reaaally Sure?"

"Jeeeeefff".

"Okay pack your bags and get everything ready, we'll meet back here at dawn."

"It's a date."

"Milady"

Her smile is absolutely radiant.

"Milord"

And for the first time in two years Jeff's smile reaches his eyes.