Renee had a bit of a grudge against hotel mini bars.

It was true enough that the record company was paying the bill for this room and so she shouldn't feel guilty about stealing a little wine from it. It wasn't even stealing really, somebody would pay for it. She just never understood why they charged such exorbitant prices when downstairs in their own bar you could get a healthier measure of the same drink for the same price. She would never get that.

Still, she felt the need for a little alcohol. It was midnight, and the witching hour was afoot. This was supposed to be an hour of magic and mayhem, the spirits coming out to play. Black and white became indistinguishable, shadows ruled and if you believed those stories her mother used to read fairies would come out and tend to the flowers in the shrub borders. This was supposed to be the hour when incredible things came to be.

That hour would not be the witching hour for her. It would be the hour before it, the one that would be upon her in 23 hours - the one in which Justin had to irrevocably decide precisely which dimension he was planning to hang his hat in.

She had the feeling it would be a very stressful hour, should he string out his decision that long.

Curled up on the sofa in her flannel pyjamas, hair twisted on top of her head in an untidy knot, she had found herself utterly unable to sleep. It seemed to her like every time she thought about her little dilemma, it changed form; one moment she was fighting off feelings for both Justins, the next she was pondering whether Justins were in general more trouble than they were worth, and then sometimes she had to wonder whether Justin wasn't the only one supposed to be learning a lesson.

That confused her greatly, which was no change. The whole debacle had confused her from the beginning. It just nagged at her, the notion that she had something else to learn from all this; she'd thought it was all tied up the first time. She had learnt a great big lesson about how she was not the same as her other self and could make her own choices - yet now everything being said and done seemed to underscore the idea that they were actually pretty similar. That made no sense, and she resented it. What was the point of shifting the cosmos to teach her a lesson only to teach her a contradictory one later?

Putting down her wine, she picked up Justin's guitar and started strumming idly to herself. She was picking out the chords to one of her own songs, a ballad she had written about finding her inner voice. At the time she had been so proud. The song had been her own little secret, a testimony to her experiences that only she could truly understand. Now it all seemed… inaccurate. Like she'd had the idea wrong in the first place.

"Man that sounds depressing."

A bleary eyed Justin had appeared in the doorway, casting long shadows in front of him as the bedroom light burst through the opening behind him.

"It's on my album. Thanks."

"Oops." He grinned sheepishly before taking the guitar from her and throwing himself down on the couch next to her. "Come on, if we both have to be insomniacs let's make a good time of it at least. Pour me a Jack and coke will ya?"

His fingers deftly began strumming an improvised melody. It was overly cheery, if she was honest, but she still had to grin (a little bit - just inwardly).

"Her name is Renee…" he began to croon.

"Oh Lord." She gave a loud snort while fixing him his drink.

"She sometimes wears a beret…"

"Tell me how you have platinum discs if that's your song writing capability."

"I'd like to take her out for…" He frowned, trying to think of a rhyme. "Umm…"

Even his 'umm' was perfectly in tune, and she really wanted to laugh at him very, very badly. She ought to be more stressed with him for not appearing to have made a decision, but she really wanted to crack up laughing.

"Sushi?" She suggested.

"Sorbet!" He crowed, pointing at her triumphantly. He began to pick up steam, strumming with more confidence and hesitating less between lines.

"I'd like to take her out for sorbet… she has this long dark hair… she's sittin' over there… I wonder what colour is her underwear?"

Renee gasped, simultaneously appalled and dying of laughter. Picking up one of the blue throw pillows, she beat him repeatedly round the head with it a few times while he cracked up at his own hilarity. This only spurred her attack on, and eventually Justin had to put the guitar down purely so he could cover his head with both hands. Clearly the girl had some pent up rage going on.

"Okay, okay, I give!" He laughed loudly, his sides aching with the merriment.

She looked at him with what was trying to be disgust but was more of a smirk. "That was so wrong - so very, very wrong."

"Yeah but it was fun."

"Ass." She picked up her wine and took a gulp while giving him exaggerated evils. Still, she smiled at him as she pulled her feet up onto the couch and tucked them under, sitting comfortably in the lotus position as she sank into the cushions. Some hotel rooms had very ornate, decorative looking couches that were impossible to sit on, but this one was deliciously squishy.

Justin took a gulp of his drink, enjoying the way the alcohol hit the back of his throat. "So you couldn't sleep either, huh?"

"Nope." Strands of hair fell out of her bun as she shook her head. Playing with the hem of her pink pjs, she stared awkwardly at her matching pink pedicure (she hadn't meant to match, it had just happened). She found it amazing how quickly their silences could go from comfortable to awkward.

"Would it…"

"Would it what?"

Justin was tempted to say 'never mind' as he looked at her small frame. It would be incredibly easy to just remain quiet. If he voiced the thought in his head, he'd probably have to commit to it. He was enjoying their nice, easy banter and wasn't entirely sure he wanted to put an end to it by taking the conversation in the direction it probably ought to go.

"Would it make it better if I told you I kind of made a decision, sort of?"

Renee gulped, a lump rising in her throat and sticking there uncomfortably. "How do you sort of kind of make a decision?"

"Never mind." His skin flushed with embarrassment, and his head bowed a little, blue eyes hitting the carpet and staring intently at it where it was beginning to bobble with age.

"No, what? You made a decision?"

"I umm…"

"I promise I'm not going to hit you if I don't like it."

That raised a touch of a smile, and it steeled his nerves enough for him to take a deep breath and tell her. "Well… I guess what I mean is I made one decision but I have another to make, is what I mean by kind of sort of."

"So…?" She let the question drift off, open ended.

Forcing himself to take the plunge, Justin told her. "I decided that whatever else I do with my life… I'm going back. Home."

It was an odd sensation. Perhaps she should have been ready to feel shock at whatever he said, but she had blithely assumed she would feel euphoria on him saying that he wanted to go back. For a brief moment a little part of her wanted to take it as rejection, but she quickly quashed it by reminding herself the lengths he had gone to in order to be sitting there in the first place. A million thoughts battled for supremacy in her mind at once, but slowly a settled expression began to take over her face. The emerging victor was the warm feeling rushing to her face and stomach.

"I think… I think that's a good decision," she said slowly.

Unmistakeable relief washed over Justin. His body sank back into the cushions, his stature going straight from rigid to serene in less than a second. An audible release of breath exhaled from his lips.

"You do?"

"Yeah." She nodded compulsively, her nods getting more assured as they continued. "I honestly do."

"Good." His smile was still a little sad, but encouragingly hopeful. It was certainly more hopeful than she'd seen it in the past three weeks. "I just… you know what I figured out, after we've been hanging the last couple of days.?"

"Enlighten me."

"I was so desperate to see you…" he admitted shyly, refusing to meet her inquisitive eyes. "For two years I've been kind of obsessing over the attraction we had and thinking about it constantly and then I get here and like… please don't take offence, but it's kind of gone."

"Oh sure, I won't take offence that you find me unattractive," she kidded. Well, she was mostly kidding, but a little part of her was unimpressed with his lack of tact.

"I got here and it was so overwhelming to be near you and it was such a head spin but, now… we've been hanging out as friends the last couple of days and I haven't been tempted to hit on you or felt really affected by you that way at all. And I didn't expect that. I expected to be more confused than this."

That really would have been a kick in the teeth, but with a moment of clarity she understood exactly what he meant. Heck, she even agreed with him. The last few days would have been very relaxing and enjoyable if not for the pressure of the wish deadline looming.

"You know…" she began. "I got confused, but… now I think about it, I think it was just because I kind of expected to be. You obviously caught me off guard and it was a head fuck, but… nah. I can't say I've been tempted to kiss you or anything either."

It was strange, given how much obsessing she'd done about her inability to tell one Justin from the other, but since she had learnt who he was she couldn't say she'd ever been tempted to kiss him. It seemed ridiculous, now she thought about it. All that agonising she'd done and she hadn't even stopped to notice that he wasn't exactly setting her aflame there.

"I think I worked it out, finally." Justin picked up the guitar again and settled it on his lap thoughtfully, strumming a few random chords as he talked. "Like… I thought this life was the thing to aspire to, but I finally worked out that it's not mine and it's not my choices and that if I was meant to have this life I would have made these choices. I don't belong here and it was pointless trying to wedge myself in. Like, maybe we're the same at the core, but there's a reason he went left and I went right. So now I just get to know that I can do better than I'm doing now, but I can find that on my own terms."

Scratch that, she was seriously tempted to kiss him now - not romantically, but in a purely congratulatory way. It was just about the smartest thing he had ever said. It was exactly the lesson she herself had learnt first time around, but he had verbalised better than she ever had. (That said she'd never literally verbalised it for fear of being locked up in a psych ward and diagnosed as delusional).

"I have to hand it to you Justin." Tears glittered in her eyes, a bittersweet mixture, but she was happy for him. "I had my doubts there but I think you made the right decision. So… umm… I know this is awkward, but… do you wish now?"

"Umm…" He scratched his head, knowing that he was getting to a part she wouldn't like. "You know how I said I sort of made a decision?"

"Yeeees?" Renee eyeballed him warily.

"I need to put off the wish for a few more hours?"

"Is that wise?" The screech in her voice hadn't been intentional, but it was present nonetheless. "We're on the clock here, Justin."

The settled look on his face had disappeared in a matter of seconds, to give way to a small amount of fear. It was surprising enough that it made her stop her tirade before it had really started. Her hands gripped a cushion a little too tightly, and his wrung themselves together in his lap.

"I… I know I have to go back…" he told her slowly, "but… I still… I still haven't worked out what to do about her."

Renee's mouth opened to say something, but the best she could do was form a silent 'oh' as she twiddled unnecessarily with a lock of loose hair.

"Well… I don't want to sound like I'm just trying to get rid of you, but maybe it would be a better idea if you considered that back home, given the time constraints?"

"But…" He felt weak for admitting it to her, but he had no choice. It wasn't manly or even very adult, but it was what it was. "Here I'm guaranteed to be able to avoid her."

"Justin…"

"No, no, listen to him, he's got a point!"

None of them had even noticed the black cloud slipping in behind them, but both jumped at the sound of the harried voice.

"Clara?" Renee asked dumbly, a little taken aback. She hadn't seen her for a few days and now she turned up to say Justin should stick around? After all the campaigning she had done to make him leave?

"He's got a point, Renata, I mean what's a few more hours so long as he meets the deadline? Oh, and by the way Justin, congratulations on a very smart decision. Always knew you'd do the right thing."

Justin rolled his eyes. "No you didn't."

"No I didn't," she responded immediately, "but so long as you did who cares? Seriously, you need to stay put for a few more hours."

Since this fit in perfectly with Justin's plans, he wasn't looking Claire's sudden change of heart in its gift horse mouth. Renee, however, having been Claire's best friend for too long, immediately smelled a rat. Claire didn't literally smell of anything since she was dead, but Renee knew her far too well to take this at face value.

"What's happened?" She demanded.

"Nothing, nothing!" She protested weakly before meeting her best friend's disbelieving and reproving gaze. "Well, nothing much. Minor hiccough. Really, I'm all over it and totally on top of it."

"Are you ignoring the obvious sexual innuendo there too?" Justin asked Renee who nodded in agreement.

"I just need a few hours, that's all. I promise, Claire will fix it."

"Fix what?"

Renee dearly wanted an answer to that question, but her best friend had infuriatingly disappeared before she could answer. She'd used to do that in school, too, drop a tantalising hint of gossip and then disappear to class before she could be forced to dish.

The habit was no less irritating when she was dead.

***

Another Justin sat on another couch, similarly unable to sleep. He however was sitting in a mansion, not a hotel. He found it odd how this house was far too big for him; his own home was a similar size, and even when alone in it he didn't feel quite so dwarfed. The best he could suppose was that it was other people's homes that made you feel small - places where you didn't belong. Sometimes he thought maybe he could belong there, given time, others he wasn't so sure.

With a pang in his heart he was staring at a magazine. It was the round up of the red carpet he had done with this reality's Renee, and it was utterly strange to see himself with his hand tucked into the blonde's. It felt more like he was staring at old pictures of him and Britney than brand new ones taken within the week.

He couldn't help comparing it to the last set of pictures he'd seen of him and his girlfriend. They weren't posed like these; they never did red carpets together so the only shots of them as a couple naturally came from the paparazzi. With bodyguards in tow they had been walking down the street hand in hand, having just picked up some sustenance before heading back into their respective studios - they'd only met up for a quick lunch break together.

The pictures of him in the blonde probably fit the profile of 'couple in love' better. Touchy feely, beaming smiles, looking picture perfect. This would be the shot of love's young dream that most tabloids would prefer to run as a cover shot. The paparazzi photos had involved perfectly normal, expressionless faces. It was only when you saw the way her eyes fell on their clasped hands or his glance sideways at her that you caught the notion they were focussed on each other.

Justin was trying to take Claire's words to heart, he really was. He was trying to focus on what he would do either way, wherever he wound up at the end of all this (with less than 24 hours to go). More than anything he was trying to work out how to live his own life no matter where the location. That used to come so easy to him, but the last three weeks had made him question everything he'd ever thought of his life and decision making process.

The door bell rang, and he frowned quizzically. It was gone midnight, who could it be? Claire never used front doors and Renee wasn't prone to late night visits… he supposed it could be Trace. Scratching his itchy, stubble covered head, he padded towards the front door, yawning and cursing himself for being unable to sleep.

As he opened the door, all blood seemed to rush from his head. He felt dizzy and faint.

Renee Anderson stood at his door.

A brunette Renee Anderson stood at his door.