- One Month Later -

Kicking the door shut behind him as he walks into the cabin, Johnny could already hear the sound of Elizabeth stumbling through the kitchen, causing a slight groan to escape his lips. In all his life, he has never met anyone as stubborn as her, completely intent on pushing herself past her limit in order to get better.

"If you wanted to kill yourself, you shouldn't have knelt in front of my car." Johnny greets her as he walks into the kitchen. "Keep it up and you'll work yourself right back into being bedridden."

"I'm fine." she says with conviction, holding onto the counter as she tries to walk on her own. "I can almost...walk...on my own."

"Right." he scoffs, dropping the grocery down onto the counter before walking over to her and stopping her. "You need to pace yourself."

"Its been a month, Johnny." she says seriously. "I have to get my strength back."

"And you will." he assures her, his eyes softening at her tone. "But you have to pace yourself. It won't do you any good to push your body past its limit...trust me."

"Fine." she voices, allowing him to help her into a chair, feeling more than a little dejavuish about the whole situation. Memories of her time with Jason coming to mind. "Happy?"

"Ecstatic." he says teasingly, before grabbing her a bottle of water from the fridge. "Drink up."

"I'd prefer something stronger."

"Not while you're on pain killers and antibiotics." he says seriously, finding her taste for a alcohol a little humbling, having believed that she was some kind of miss perfect or something. "Now, are you feeling up to helping with dinner?"

"Sure." she says plainly, lifting her legs onto a chair when he pushes it in front of her, that knowing look in his eyes. "I guess."

Letting the conversation drop there, knowing that she was already desperate to get out of there and back to her life, Johnny puts the vegetables in front of her to chop while he gets started on the main dish. Things between them have gained a kind of balance, something he hadn't expected, but found to be preferable, given the circumstances.

While he starts humming his favorite rock song, Elizabeth couldn't help but feel like she would never get the strength back in her legs. When ran her down, her legs had taken the brunt of it all, making her recovery less than ideal.

Every morning she wakes up, her anger only proves to grow, finding more and more reasons to hate the obsessed trio. When her anger hits its peak, she finds that her mind begins to wonder if the trio really knew how badly they had screwed up by not making sure she was truly dead.

With every day, her overactive imagination begins to come up with ways to pay them back, anger fueling her every idea. The longer she's forced to hide away, the more precise her revenge becomes, making her almost sorry for the trio once she regains her strength. Almost.

"Ready to finish that conversation?" Johnny questions as they set the table for dinner.

"What more is there to say?" Elizabeth counters, inching her way into the chair, smacking his hand away when he tries to help her. "Come on, Johnny. If nothing else, I can sit down by myself."

"Sorry." he retreats to his chair. "Sometimes I can't help but see you as the girl that knelt in front of my car."

"I'm sorry." she sighs. "I just...I swore to myself that I'd never be in the position where I had to rely on someone else again."

"I'm nothing like that Lucky guy." Johnny says seriously before going for light humor. "If anything, I'm Unlucky. Totally different."

"You were saying something about finishing our conversation." she counters after rolling her eyes, used to Johnny's sense of humor by now.

"Right. That." he voices, drinking some of his beer before shaking his head. "If there's no way to talk you out of it, I'm willing to help you."

"Seriously?" she looks at him questioningly, confused by his change of heart. "I thought you said that revenge was stupid."

"They tried to kill you." Johnny says with a shrug. "If that doesn't warrant retaliation, I don't know what does."

"Retaliation?" she scoffs, shaking her head at the thought. "They tried to kill me, Johnny. This is war."

Normally he'd think she was being a little too melodramatic, something she normally would agree with, but Johnny could see that she was being completely literal and he didn't blame her. From what she told him, what those wenches did, it would send even the sanest person to the brink of insanity, leaving them with a thirst for blood.

"If you're really going to do this, I have some things to handle." Johnny says after a long moment, placing his fork down onto the plate. "You gonna be okay on your own for a few days?"

"Sure." she says with a shrug. "What kind of trouble can a girl in my condition really get into?"

"Honestly, Liz..." he chuckles before shaking his head. "There's nothing I'm willing to put past you."

"Very smart man." she replies when a thought hits her, prompting her to question, "Do I want to know what you're going to be doing?"

"Probably not." he admits. "Plausible deniability and whatnot."

"Fair enough." she states, lifting her spoon into her hand before meeting his eyes with a serious. "Just don't get yourself killed."

"Ditto."