How precisely did you weigh up which was the lesser of two evils?

Renee couldn't figure it out. She had two problems sitting in front of her right now - one physically and one metaphorically. Both of them were contributing to her headache, but knowing which one to tackle first was a puzzle seemingly beyond her intellect.

Location was playing a big part in her issues. Regrettably, she had been forced to leave her mom and Louise behind; the necklace was not in Faith Anderson's attic and searching it yet again would not make it appear there. She'd had her PA search her own attic in LA (purely because of timing issues) to be told it wasn't there either. This only left one other option: her father. That would be the father who absolutely despised Justin. That would also be the father she wasn't overly enamoured with at the moment; maybe she ought to be over the divorce, but she still had issues with him dating a secretary only a few years older than Louise. It was the mid life crisis cliché and she viewed it as somewhat of an insult to her mother. All in all, she really didn't want to be in his house.

She particularly disliked being in his house at the moment because apart from treating Justin as if he was invisible, he had dumped her second problem on the table and chastised her for it like she was a child - or worse, like he was her manager. The pictures of her and Justin clubbing had hit the gossip rags, and they were accompanied by stories describing how they'd made a scene on the dance floor with their "steamy" moves. The stories were basically about how they were so in love they couldn't keep their hands off each other and clearly needed to get a room.

Nathan Anderson's issue was probably more to do with disliking the idea of his baby girl and Justin Timberlake having carnal knowledge of each other than any actual fears for her reputation and career. Renee had taken exception to his lecture on both grounds - not to mention on grounds of her being a grown ass woman who could dance at a club with her boyfriend if she felt like it.

Her own issue with the articles was threefold. Firstly she was worried what her own Justin would say if he saw the pictures once he got back, but that wasn't an immediate problem. Secondly, it had created a real atmosphere between the two men which she really did not need to be dealing with right now. She defended Justin, but really it was her boyfriend she was defending - that was who her Dad was aiming his vitriol at, and that was who would hopefully be dealing with any of it in future. This whole trip was fraught enough; she had precisely five days to find the necklace, and she was stressed as it was without them fighting.

The actual core of her heartache, however, was more familiar. It was the nagging guilt at the way she had failed to distinguish one Justin from the other, and most significantly had reacted to him. She had been there in that club and he'd had her mesmerised. The heat had most definitely been felt, and for once the tabloids hadn't been exaggerating what they'd witnessed (even if the embellishing details on what happened behind closed doors were utterly fabricated).

The only thing which made her look up from the incriminating photos was the small swirl of black mist in her peripheral vision. Justin was upstairs searching the attic and her father was wining and dining his plaything, so she felt no compunction in lifting her head and smiling wearily at Claire.

"Hey babe."

"Hey," Claire smiled at her. "How're you bearing up?"

"Shitty." Renee automatically moved down the bench so that her friend could sit next to her. "Which is the opposite of how you look, by the way. They have good boutiques in the afterlife, huh?"

The outfit in question was a nautically striped blue and white shirt and denim skirt. The girl (ghost) looked cute.

"Why thank you." Claire pretended to fluff her hair, preening, and Renee couldn't help giggling sadly. There were a lot of these moments they should have had together; they had been missed on account of Claire's untimely death. "You'd look great if you weren't looking so depressed. Did I mention I love that you dyed your hair? You're like my paler twin."

"Yeah. How come you're dead and still have a darker tan than me?"

"I love being half Latina. Now, come on," she slapped a hand gently on Renee's knee and squeezed. "What's up?"

"My father hates my boyfriend. I hate the guy inhabiting my boyfriend's body. I can't find the necklace to switch the two of them back. And I made the gossip columns again."

"Hmm." Her phantom friend cast a critical eye over the pictures, barely bothering to skim the article. She knew well enough the pictures had been taken post body swap. "Umm… don't hate me for saying this but you don't look so much like you hate him here."

Renee raised a pointed eyebrow. "That's why I hate him."

"Ohhhh. I get it."

"Glad you do. Wanna clue me in?"

Claire very much wanted to clue her in, but she chewed her lip and scrunched her nose in concentration as she tried to think of a delicate way to put it. It was very difficult, trying to gently steer somebody in the right direction without them being any the wiser. She'd been a spirit guide long enough that she was pretty good at it - usually. It was trickier when you were so emotionally involved with the person in question; it clouded your judgment and made you second guess yourself.

"Honey… I've been trying to stay out of this. Hey, I have!" She said indignantly when Renee snorted. "I just… you're avoiding him, and I don't think that's healthy. You guys have issues, and not talking about them is just going to make them fester. Or it's going to make him do something else that's stupid, and I'm still not over last time and the insane chunk of my schedule it's taken up."

To hell with subtle steering, she was just going to give it to her straight.

"What is there to talk about though? He shouldn't be here!"

"And yet he is."

"No shit, Clara."

"I just…" Claire sighed deeply, tucking a strand of Renee's hair back into her ponytail. "I don't think the question you should be asking right now is whether or not he should be here. He's going to have to make that decision, just like you did."

"But that's so unfair, why does he get to choose for both of them?"

"Why did you get to choose for you and her?" she countered. "Because you made the wish."

"Hmm."

At the lack of a decent response, Claire decided to press on. "Honestly, honey… is there a part of you that wants him here?"

"I…" She immediately tried to deny it, but the words died on her lips. There wasn't a piece of her being that didn't hate herself for it, but she couldn't refute it. "I don't even know why. I already left him once before and I love my boyfriend, I really do. But I couldn't even tell them apart, and obviously I was still attracted to him… fuck, maybe I did know and just didn't want to admit it, I can't work it out and it's driving me crazy. I don't even know what the hell there is for us to even say."

"Do you not think maybe talking with him would help that? I mean, I know you're scared sweetie but the only way you're gonna work out how you feel is to be around each other and thrash this thing out with him."

"I just…I can't even work out which is which any more." She brushed a tear quickly away before her friend could spot it falling. "Like, I think of all the things about my guy that made me fall for him and suddenly I can't remember whether that was him or whether I'd done it all before in the other dimension, you know? Like, I can't work out whether I fell for the guy or I fell for the face of the other guy, if that makes any kind of sense. And I feel horrible because I should know that, there shouldn't be any question."

"But there is, sweetie," Claire pushed. "You're gonna have to face up to that and deal with it. Because whether he stays or goes, you need this finished in your head or you're going to spend the rest of your life struggling with the consequences. That's not fun, babe."

Renee smacked the magazine off the table in irritation, watching it fall into the pool. Her father would probably chew her out for that, but she was disinclined to care.

"Look." Going for another tack, she put her arm around Renee's shoulders and tried again. "I already said a million times that some parts of them are the same and some parts are different. Clearly, the parts which are the same attract you and let you feel for each guy. The devil's in the difference, though. You gotta work out what it is you want from there."

"I just… UGH!" She raised her hands to the heavens. In her mind's eye, she was glaring at Claire's bosses for screwing with her life. She really, really hated destiny. "I left him once before. I belong here, I do, and I know that. So the Justin that was born here should belong here too, right? So why is this even a question?"

"But you missed him, right?" It was a good point. "And just because you belong here doesn't say anything about which Justin does. You could just as easily have belonged there, you know."

"You are not helpful."

"I'm not helpful if you want instructions on what to do, no," she said wryly. "If however you want pointers on how to find the right answer yourself, I think I'm pretty damn excellent."

Renee was surprised that Claire had stopped being so gung ho about switching the two Justins back. It was less surprising, however, if you considered that she'd been in and out of all four lives that would be affected and she saw the consequences in each decision. Neither decision was perfect. She supposed it depended on what you wanted the outcome to be - the right decision might not necessarily mean 'happy ever after' for all of them. There were selfish decisions which could be made, and there were ones which could lead to heartache.

Claire was looking a little further ahead than either of the Justins or the Renees, considering a bigger picture and choices to be made beyond the mere 'to switch or not to switch.' They saw only the pebble hitting the water, but she was seeing the ripples.

"So," she abruptly changed the subject, "why does your Dad hate Justin so much anyway?"

"I have no idea."

"I was trying to get off the nasty subject, throw me a bone here."

"Like this one's any better?"

"Shut up."

"Sometimes," Renee snorted with an evil smirk, "I think being dead made you even more of a brat than you were before. Think all that cosmic knowledge went to your head."

"Like fame didn't go to yours?" she teased in response. "Never used to make assistants go buy your tampons, did you?"

Her friend's dropped open with incredulity and not a small amount of embarrassment. "How the fuck did you know that?"

"Cosmic knowledge." She stuck her tongue out. "Come on though, I'm curious, what did Justin do?"

Renee shrugged, which caused the precariously thin straps of her lacy camisole to slip down her shoulders. She'd long ago given up on rearranging them if they did that, they only seemed to fall down again within seconds. She was wearing them with a long string of pearls and little pinstriped shorts. The look was entirely stolen from a look she'd seen in Vogue while in England; it was probably long out of fashion, but she liked it.

"Breathed, pretty much. It was just after we got together, we went out to dinner with him and his floozy and Justin was charm itself. Didn't seem to matter. Mom loves him, but Dad thinks he's a waste of space."

Claire pried a little further, surreptitiously trying to get Renee thinking on her relationship. "How about you and his parents?"

"I get on fine with his mom, we're not like best friends but she's always nice to me. I mean she's one of those ladies who would be nice to you whatever, but I think she likes me. His step dad's a really nice guy, but I haven't met his biological dad yet. They're not so close as him and Paul."

"So Lou gets on okay with him and your Mom loves him, you're doing okay with his family but your Dad just hates him?"

"Yep." Her glossy hair glinted a little in the sun, showing signs of some caramel streaking (and also a few roots starting to poke through). "I'm not sure whether he just got this playboy impression of Justin from the papers or it's just a protective father thing he'd do to any man I bring home, but I hate it. J's always busted his ass to be pleasant to him."

"Thus ruining the picture perfect 'everybody loves everybody' thing?"

"Ahh, we were never picture perfect. I guess they have tabloids in Heaven too and you've been reading too much of that shit."

"And on that note," Claire poked her indignantly, "I'm out. Though I am actually going to stop by your beloved next so any messages?"

"You're not going to tell him about…"

"Ha!" She screeched. "Do I look stupid? Wait, don't answer that. Anything you want me to tell him?"

The words 'I love you' sprang to mind, but somehow she didn't feel right saying them. Almost like her disloyal thoughts would noticeably have sullied them and he would somehow pick up on it. It was totally irrational, but she hadn't been feeling rational in some time.

"Tell him I miss him." She knew that much was true.