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"i chose to be your friend, but falling in love with you was out of my control"
-anonymous

song to listen to: hurts like hell by fleurie

warnings: remember the rest of the warnings on traitor? good, you do. yeah, all of those and then some.

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"A few months ago, my brother Timothy had an unfortunate experience in which he ingested too much of a certain substance." Simon explained to us in the grocery store he worked at, spilling out at least ten medicine bottles onto the register. "He was dead for two minutes. But," he drum rolled. "We got him back!"

"Kate." Deena's words were heavy with both no emotion and all emotions. "It's time for your close-up."

Former traitor and current-ish best friend Kate Schmidt took the lead, dumping out all of the pills into some sort of drug dealing way that made sense. Different piles, and tons of different colors. I am not fucking doing that. None of them have tried to kill me, so our main focus is to kill Sam. I should be in that mix, but whatever protection spell I have hanging over my head is powerful enough to stop any of them from killing me.

"You need to take these in order. Pile one takes the edge off," Simon continued to explain what Sam needed to do. "You're gonna feel like you're being fucked by a unicorn." His words made everybody else give him looks, but I knew better than to question his choice of words at this point in our relationship. "Pile two is gonna bring your core temp way down. You may feel slightly sick. Now, you need to take a five-minute interval between pile two and pile three. That's really important, okay? Pile three brings you down and out, so you gotta take that 'take five' or it's all gonna go to shit!"

"How many of these do we have?" Kate held up a handful of EpiPens.

"Tons. Like a thousand." Simon replied, and I stood up straighter, crossing my arms.

"Wait. EpiPens?" Deena asked, clearly more clueless than Alicia Silverstone's new movie.

"Epinephrine, yeah, it's also known as adrenaline." I pitched in, nodding. "What? Don't give me a look, my dad's a cop, he taught me all this shit."

"Yes, listen to Jen, she's right. This is what brings Sam back." Simon was very confident in his words. "This is Jesus!"

Josh, Kate, Simon, and I all got X's of Sam's blood put onto our shirts as a diversion. We needed to buy her time to die-which was admittedly a strange sentence, but it was true. Sam stood before Kate, Simon, and I; Josh and Deena shared a hug.

"You guys remember half an hour ago, when you wanted to murder me?" Sam was trying to joke, but her voice lacked that feeling. "You don't have to do this. You can leave."

The three of us exchanged a look before deciding that Kate would speak for us; "Remember when you decided to sacrifice yourself for us? We're ending this together."

Simon placed a firm hand on Sam's shoulder; "Die well, my friend."

"We won't let anything bad happen to you, alright?" I finally gave my words of 'wisdom', if you could call it that.

"Thanks," she gave a half-assed smile, but seeing as I couldn't muster up any smile, I cut her some slack on this one.

"We got back door patrol," Simon pointed to Josh, put his arm around his shoulders, and they started to walk away.

"Hey!" Kate called out cutely, and what happened next was quite possibly the cutest yet most awkward kiss ever. She began to walk away casually, "I'll run interference up here."

"May none of us die," I gave a salute to the group and jogged over to Kate.

A smile on Kate's end was all we had for communication the first couple of minutes as we walked around the store, but the silence became far too silent. Far too creepy. Far too unbearable. I had to break it, but I didn't know how to do it in a way that wouldn't be self destructive. Am I really expecting myself to come up with a casual conversation starter right now, in the midst of waiting for killers to try and kill us? Jesus Christ, meanwhile I'm the one thinking Kate's the overachiever in all of this.

"Grab one," The black haired young woman spoke up, motioning to the old store baskets.

"What-why?" I asked as I grabbed one.

"To make it feel normal, I guess?" She suggested, and I looked down.

"We still know what normal is?" My comment dove us straight into silence; we absentmindedly began to put different products into our baskets.

I felt like I needed to say something-like I needed to apologize. One if not both of us might not make it out of this night alive, and I don't want our last real memories of each other to be bitter. She means the world to me, she really does. Kate and I have been best friends since diapers, we've been there for each other through the good and the bad, the high and the low. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have her holding my hand when nobody else would, when not even Simon would. I'd be dead if it weren't for Kate Schmidt.

"I love you." Word vomit just dug my fucking grave.

"What?" She did a triple take; there was a clanging of metal in the distance; both of us stopped walking and turned to face each other.

"I love you, Kate." My words were slow, I couldn't patch this up with saying in a 'platonic' way, because that would be a big fat lie. "And-and I know, I know I'm dating Simon, and you and Josh might be a thing, but...I love you."

"I-I love you too, Jen." Her smile was the most brightest smile I'd ever seen on her face. "You know, there's such thing as poly-amorous couples, right? Like...more than two people dating each other? We would have to talk to Simon about it, a-and see if he's comfortable with the entire thing, but that...we could work that out, if you're comfortable with it."

I nodded and let out a small laugh, "Yeah-yes! Yes, no, of course I'm comfortable with it. If I'm being honest, I really didn't even expect this to happen, a-and I'm sort of still in shock that it did happen, and-"

"Shut up." Kate laughed and kissed me softly.

Simon. This is cheating. You're with Simon. Enjoy the moment. Simon feels the same way. No. You're cheating on him, you're evil. You're not loyal. Start crying. Something ran behind us, we both spun out of the kiss to see Skullmask running straight in Sam and Deena's direction.

"You go that way, I'll go this way-stay safe." I immediately put on a brave face, kissing Kate on the cheek before running down an aisle to save one of the many gays in this grocery store tonight.

I grabbed a butcher knife, sliced my own hand with it by accident, but kept on running. We couldn't let Ryan fucking Torres of all people stop Sam from dying. Another admittedly strange sentence, but I knew what I meant and that's all that mattered.

"SAM! DEENA!" I shouted as Skullmask raised his blade, but just before I could do anything, a burst of flames sprayed into the killer's face.

"Go! Go! Go! Go!" Kate screamed her urgency to the couple, and sure enough they ran off.

That was one problem out of the way.

"You go too, protect them, alright?" Kate asked me sweetly as we both ducked down behind the bakery's counter.

"What? No, no, no, Kate, I'm not leaving you-"

"I'll be fine!" She whisper-shouted soothingly, cupping my cheeks in her hands. "You'll survive."

With a strange sense of deja vu, I gave Kate a smile that would read 'I don't really mean this smile but I'm trying my best for you,' and then ran away. Skullmask tried to grab at me, but I just kneed him into a table that had a wide display of cookies and cupcakes on it. 

Ha. Take that, you motherfucker.

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were you expecting the twist in this chapter?
because i sure wasn't

(legitimately, idk where it came from, but i figured it would work and so i made it work and so i gave jen more trauma for the aftermath)

don't forget to vote and leave many many comments!!!!