Playing the guitar for as long as she had that day made Ellie feel weirdly emotionally raw, and she was distracted and quiet for the entire time that she was helping Maria and Dina clean up after the day's vaccinations. According to Maria the process had been smooth. By her calculations they should be able to finish the next day, and she had no-so-subtly hinted at the fact that she'd like Ellie and Abby to leave pretty much as soon as the vaccinations were finished. Ellie didn't have a problem with doing that. There were a lot of nice things about being here, but it was obviously stressing Abby out. Though she hadn't mentioned it, Ellie knew that Abby was actually very glad she was being sent out on patrol instead of hanging around in town. And after overhearing some of the comments that the townspeople had been making about her, Ellie was inclined to agree. As much as Abby wanted to remain non-confrontational, Ellie knew it was only a matter of time before her hot-headedness prevailed and she snapped at someone.

As Ellie was lost in thought and gathering all the trash together to burn in the fire later, Maria approached her and said: "I'm leaving now. See you in the morning."

"Okay," Ellie said. "Thanks. And thanks for giving me the day off."

"Take tomorrow, too, for all I care." Maria walked off without another word. Ellie, who was already feeling vulnerable, was stung by it more than she'd like to admit. It didn't seem like Maria had any interest in asking her to stay anymore. Apparently she'd decided that marrying Abby was an unforgivable sin, and she no longer felt like Jackson would benefit from Ellie's presence. The whole thing was surprisingly upsetting to Ellie, and she was having a hard time concentrating. She found herself missing Abby so much it actually hurt. When she was in a mood like this, all she really wanted was to be held in her strong arms, safe and protected and loved.

"You okay?" Dina asked her as they folded up chairs and stacked them against the RV.

"Yeah," Ellie replied unconvincingly.

Dina gave her a wry look. "Come on," she said. "I know you too well for that bullshit to work on me."

"I know."

"So what's going on with you?"

Ellie shook her head. "Even if there is something going on with me, it's not you I want to talk to about it. I want Abby to come home."

"Jesus," sighed Dina. "That is so fucking weird."

"Would you rather talk to me about your private emotional situation than your own wife?"

Slamming the chair she was carrying onto the pile with a little more force than she meant to, Dina said, "Today? Maybe. She's kinda pissing me off at the moment."

"Why?"

"It's all your fault, actually. You and that girl of yours. She thinks I'm being unreasonable. She thinks I'm not giving her a shot."

"And you think you are?"

"Nope," replied Dina bluntly. "I'm definitely not. But we disagree that she deserves one in the first place. She doesn't understand how much she took from me."

"She took Jesse," Ellie supplied. "From both you and JJ."

"And you. She took you from us, too."

"She didn't do that. I did that. I was the one who walked away. If I'd stayed at the farm, I never would have seen her again. She was done. I was the one who couldn't let it go. You can blame her for a lot of shit, but I won't let you blame her for that one."

They had finished with the cleanup so they went and sat under the awning of the RV, and Ellie got a fire going to start burning the trash - cotton balls, alcohol swabs, and the wrappers that the needles came in. There was far more of it today than there had been yesterday since more volunteers had been involved. Dina pulled one of the bags over towards her to help. "What exactly happened in Santa Barbara?" she asked. "Why didn't you kill her?"

"I just couldn't. It wouldn't have been right. We were fighting in the ocean and I had her under the water. In those last few seconds I couldn't think of a good enough reason to go through with it, but I could think of at least a dozen excellent reasons not to."

"What about revenge?" said Dina. "Wasn't that your entire motivation in the first place?"

"For going to Seattle, sure," Ellie admitted. "But Santa Barbara wasn't really about that. I was trying to heal myself so I could live again, and it turned out that killing Abby wasn't the way to do that. I had to make my peace with Joel for that."

Dina used a stick to poke a piece of trash further into the fire. "You still wanted revenge, though," she said. "I know you did."

"Yeah, and it was the wrong thing to want. We never should have gone to Seattle. That whole thing… The shit I did there… I can never undo it."

There was no good response to this, and they both knew it. Dina knew as well as Ellie did that she'd crossed boundaries in Seattle that no person should ever cross.

"Abby forgives me for what I did," Ellie continued. "Just think about that for a second. Think about every single fucked up thing I did, and then think about what kind of person she must be to forgive me and to love me the way she does."

"Does she know what you did?"

"She knows everything."

"Even…" Dina paused, then forged on with: "Even Nora?"

"She knows everything," Ellie repeated.

"Fuck," hissed Dina. "I can't believe you told her about that."

Ellie gave a humorless laugh. "I had to," she said. "How could there ever be real trust between us if I was keeping something like that from her?

"How'd she take it?"

"She was angry, of course," Ellie replied. "But she knows she's capable of doing it herself. She blames herself for everything that happened in Seattle. And she was upset with herself that she couldn't stop it. She was actually in the hospital at the same exact time, looking for medical supplies on the lower floors. We just missed each other by less than an hour, as far as we can tell."

"Shit," Dina said, raising her eyebrows. "So you could have ended it that day."

"Yep. And you know what else? She was in the hospital in Salt Lake City the day Joel killed her dad while he was saving me."

"What? Did you ever meet her back then?"

"No."

"Hm," said Dina thoughtfully, finishing with her bag of trash and leaning back in her chair. "Shit would have turned out pretty differently if you had."

Ellie shook her head. "I doubt it, actually. Nothing would have stopped Joel from doing what he did. I think even if I'd consented to have them make the vaccine, he wouldn't have allowed it."

"Maybe you and Abby would have fallen for each other back then, though. It could have made a difference."

"She was straight back then," laughed Ellie. "And she was dating that guy I killed, Owen."

"You killed her boyfriend? And then stole her for yourself?" asked Dina dryly.

"Har har," said Ellie sarcastically. "They were broken up by the time she killed Joel. But they still loved each other, and they were actually kinda on the brink of getting back together when everything went down in Seattle. Those three days were really pivotal for her, even outside of what Team Jackson did. She was going through some shit that had nothing to do with us."

Curious despite herself, Dina asked: "What kind of shit?"

Before Ellie could elaborate, she saw something over Dina's shoulder that made her eyes light up. She stood and brushed right past her, walking directly into Abby's arms and hugging her firmly.

Abby returned the hug without hesitation, immediately picking up on Ellie's mood. "Hey," she said softly. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, now. Just glad you're back."

This didn't fool Abby. She gave Ellie a searching look.

"We'll talk about it later, okay?" Ellie said.

Reluctantly, Abby said, "Okay." She released Ellie and turned her attention to their visitor. "Hey, Dina," she said nervously as she and Ellie took seats around the fire.

"Hi," replied Dina.

"No JJ today?"

"I sent him home with a friend of his for a play date."

"Oh," said Abby. She was disappointed to hear that - it would have been nice to have him around to warm up the atmosphere a little. "Cool."

"Good patrol?"

"We all made it back alive, so yeah, I think that counts as a good one. We have a bit of a mystery going on, actually. Looks like those travelers you guys had a few weeks ago are still hanging around in the area."

"Why?" Dina asked.

Abby shrugged. "No idea. But I don't think it's anything to worry about. We'll figure it out."

"Well, you'd better hurry the fuck up about it," said Ellie. "Maria says the vaccinations will be done tomorrow."

"What?" said Abby, confused. "How?"

"She brought twelve people to help today. I didn't even do a single one. Dina and I took the day off and hung out around town."

This caused an unexpected flash of jealousy in Abby - not because she was worried that Ellie might stray, but because Dina had gotten the pleasure of spending an entire day having fun with Ellie. She cleared her throat and once again said: "Cool."

Ellie burst into laughter. "See?" she said to Dina, pointing at Abby's face. "Told you she'd be jealous."

"I'm not," Abby lied, blushing.

"She totally is."

"Alright," Abby admitted. "I'm a little jealous."

"Ya don't say?" Ellie teased.

Wanting to get the conversation away from focusing on her, Abby asked, "So what did you guys do today?"

"Saw some old friends," Ellie responded.

"Living ones, and dead ones," added Dina pointedly.

"She means Jesse and Joel," Ellie supplied helpfully.

"I gathered," Abby said flatly. To Dina, she said, "Look, do you want to hit me or something?"

"There's no way I could beat you in a fight," Dina replied.

"I didn't ask you if you wanted to fight."

"You think letting me hit you is going to help? Would that make you feel like you're gaining the moral high ground?" said Dina mockingly. "I don't want to hit you. I should have shot you in that fucking book store."

"Yeah, you probably should have," said Abby. "Don't think you'll get another chance now." She stood and picked up her backpack, swinging it over her shoulder. "See if you can get your wife to do it for you. She's coming on patrol again tomorrow." Then she turned and went inside the RV, shutting the door behind her.

Ellie got to her feet as well. "Time for you to go," she said.

"Gotta go see to your killer wife now, huh?"

"I'm a killer too, Dina," said Ellie. "And maybe it's not such a good idea for you to forget about that." Without giving another thought to Dina, she followed Abby inside the camper. She found Abby unpacking her things at the booth in the kitchen area. "Minor setback, huh?" she said.

"Yeah, well, you didn't get over wanting to kill me in a matter of days, either," Abby replied. "I'm not worried about it. The vaccinations will be done tomorrow and then we can go." She left her bag where it was sitting and turned to face Ellie. "Tell me why you were upset earlier."

"It seems stupid in retrospect," Ellie admitted. "I just… Remember how I told you I used to play the guitar?"

"Yeah," said Abby, glancing at Ellie's three-fingered left hand.

"Edna had one at her shop and I was playing it for a while today." She went over and sat on the bed, trying to figure out how to put words to what she was feeling. "Do you think I'm too hard?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, my heart or my soul or whatever. Am I hard?"

"Yes," Abby said, coming to sit beside her. "But I don't think you're too hard."

"When I lived here, playing music was a way I bonded with people. It brought me closer to Joel, and to Dina, and to a lot of other people in Jackson… I guess I never really realized how much that meant to me. Playing today, it made me understand that I didn't stop playing because of this." She held up her left hand with its missing fingers. "I stopped because I couldn't deal with remembering those times. It was just another way for me to avoid dealing with my shit. It's the same fucking thing I always do, and it gets me into trouble every fucking time."

"So stop doing it," Abby suggested.

Ellie glared at her. "Thanks, genius," she said sarcastically. "That's a fucking awesome idea. Why didn't I think of that?"

"I'm sorry," laughed Abby. "What do you want me to say? I've been on the receiving end of what happens when you bottle up your issues. And I've also been on the receiving end of how awesome it is when you open up about them. So if you want to work through it, I'm in. Honestly, I'm sure I'd enjoy the shit out of that. I love that crazy brain of yours. I want to see what happens when you let whatever's trapped in there roam free." She reached out and tapped Ellie's forehead affectionately, then leaned forward and kissed it.

Warmth rushed through Ellie's body, a familiar feeling that she had grown to associate with the absolute pleasure of being loved by Abby. This feeling, this woman, meant so much to her. And she'd rather die than let herself fuck this up by losing herself to mental illness again. She needed to learn to open up about this stuff before it got to a breaking point, and there was no one in the world she'd rather open up to than Abby. Before Abby could fully withdraw, she wrapped her arms around her and pulled her in for a proper kiss. "Okay," she said. "Let's try it. But let's start tomorrow, okay? Tonight I want to revel in that sexy jealousy I saw earlier."

Abby laughed. "You know I wasn't jealous because I was worried you were going to cheat on me. I was jealous that she got to spend all day with you and I didn't."

"Well, you're with me now."

"Yes I am," said Abby appreciatively. She advanced on Ellie, pushing her gently back on the bed and following along after her, pinning her down with a kiss. "Did you choose to sit here because you had some kind of ulterior motive?"

"Me?" asked Ellie innocently. "Never."

"Mm hmm," hummed Abby, unconvinced. She trailed her lips down to Ellie's neck, inhaling her scent. "Were you smoking weed earlier?"

"Me?" Ellie repeated in the same innocent tone, although this time she was a little breathless. "Never."

"Liar."

"Little bit, yeah."

"It's okay. I love you anyway."

"We have more," Ellie said, hardly even aware of what she was saying. "If you want it."

"Kinda busy at the moment," Abby replied as she slid her hand beneath Ellie's shirt.

"Fuck yeah you are." And then they didn't talk for quite a long time.

They had only been asleep for a few hours when a knock on the door woke them both up. Sleepily, Abby raised her head and glared at it. "It's not morning, is it?" she said.

Ellie opened one eye and looked at the window. "It's still dark."

"Fuck," sighed Abby. "That can't be good." She started extracting herself from the bed and Ellie's arms.

"Don't forget to put some clothes on."

"Smart. Thanks." Abby quickly dressed and then went to open the door, surprised to see Dina standing there. She looked extremely worried about something, and it made Abby instantly concerned, despite the fact that Dina had said she wanted to kill her. "Hey," she said gently.

"Hi. Sorry, I know it's late," Dina said.

"It's fine," Abby assured her. "What's wrong?"

"Is JJ here?" Dina asked in a rush. "We can't find him."

Behind Abby, Ellie got out of bed and started getting dressed. "What?" Abby asked.

"I got up to pee and when I checked in on him he wasn't in his bed and his window was open."

"Well he's not here," Abby told her. She glanced behind her and wordlessly confirmed that Ellie was thinking the same thing she was. That done, she continued: "We'll help you look. Where haven't you been?"

"Pretty much everywhere. I came right here, and Amanda is checking at George's house. That's the friend he was playing with today."

Ellie came over and joined Abby in the doorway. "Let's check the orchard. He's been hanging around there a lot," she said. "Abs, you want to get the west side, Dina and I will get the east side?"

"Sure," said Abby. Ellie passed her her backpack and then slung on her own, and they came out of the trailer, bright-eyed and ready for action.

"Thank you," Dina said gratefully. "If you find him, please bring him home so I can kill him? I'm so sick of him wandering off like this."

"He definitely has a mind of his own," Abby said. "Don't worry. I'm sure he's fine. We'll find him. Meet you back here in a few?"

"Yeah," Ellie said.

They split up. Abby flicked on her flashlight and started heading off in one direction, glancing behind her to catch one last glimpse of Ellie and Dina going the other way. Then she turned her attention back to the task at hand. It was so dark, and she thought the orchard was sort of creepy at night. The shadows that were cast by the beam of her flashlight were confusing her - she kept thinking that she was seeing movement out of the corners of her eyes. There were too many places for a kid JJ's size to hide in here. Figuring that JJ probably wouldn't mind coming out for her, she called out: "JJ? You out here?" But she got no reply.

She continued to try every once in a while until eventually, when she was mere feet away from the border fence, a small voice finally replied: "Over here."

Abby followed the sound of JJ's voice and found him sitting under a tree. He was wearing his pajamas and holding a far-too-dim flashlight, and he was once again surrounded by apple cores. "Oh, you're in big trouble, buddy," Abby said as she approached him. "Your mom is pissed."

"Fuck her, and fuck you," snapped JJ. "She's a liar. And YOU killed my dad!"

The bottom dropped out of Abby's stomach, and she stopped dead in her tracks. "How do you know that?" she said.

"George told me. And his dad told him." He got to his feet, his hands clenched at his sides. "Is it true?"

Swallowing hard, Abby choked out: "Yes."

"WHY?" he yelled.

"JJ, it's complicated…"

"STOP SAYING THAT! WHY DOES EVERYONE ALWAYS SAY THAT?"

"Because there is no good answer, JJ," said Abby hoarsely. "I made a mistake."

"So you killed him on ACCIDENT?"

Right then and there, Abby decided that she would never lie to him or talk down to him again. No matter what Dina and Amanda thought about it, she couldn't bring herself to deceive him about this. It felt wrong to her. She thought of what Ellie had told her about her relationship with Joel - how Joel had looked her dead in the eye and lied to her repeatedly, and how it had eventually caused their relationship to fracture so badly that it never had a chance to mend before Abby had killed Joel. There was no way lying to JJ could be the right thing to do. So she shook her head and answered honestly: "No. I meant to do it."

"FUCK you!" shouted JJ, and he turned to run away. But Abby caught up to him and grabbed him around the waist, lifting him up in her arms. "Let me go! LET GO OF ME!"

"I'm taking you back to your mom," grunted Abby as he struggled against her. "Hate me all you want, but you need to go home."

"NO! I DON'T WANT TO!"

"JJ, stop-"

A loud bang behind them made Abby whip around to look at the border fence. A huge hole had been blasted into it, and as she watched, two people ran through it. She put JJ on the ground and pushed him behind her. "What's going on?" he asked, scared.

"I don't know. Stay behind me, okay?" Then she saw that four more people were coming through, and they were all holding guns. "On second thought, run! Go!" She turned to run, pushing him forward too, but as soon as she took a step she felt something wrap around her legs, tying them together and causing her to fall flat on her face. "Fuck! Run, JJ! Get the fuck out of here!"

JJ looked at her in fear and hesitated, and that one second was too long. One of the intruders caught up to him and hit him over the head with the butt of his gun. The kid dropped to the ground like a sack of bricks, completely motionless.

"Leave him the fuck alone!" snarled Abby, dragging herself towards him by clawing at the ground with her hands. She had a horrible feeling of deja vu - this was just like what had happened to her and Lev in Santa Barbara, when they had been captured by the Rattlers. Except this time she had no weapons of her own, her legs were tied together, and there were a few more people in this group. As she was trying to go towards JJ, one of the people stepped over her and stood on her wrists. She cried out in pain.

"Cut her backpack off," said a male voice from behind her. "And tie them up. We gotta get out of here, NOW."

Abby struggled against her captors so much that when someone knelt on her back and started using a knife to cut the straps of her backpack, he accidentally nicked her shoulder pretty badly. "Stop fucking fighting me," said the person, and then he cut her again, intentionally this time. She felt warm blood dripping down her sides. "If you don't stop fighting I'll kill you."

"Someone here is definitely going to die," shot back Abby, not stopping her struggles even one little bit. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Hurry up," said the first voice Abby had heard. "We don't have time for this. Get her under control!"

"Dude, look at her," said the man who was sitting on top of Abby. "This bitch is fucking strong."

"Then knock her out, god damn it!" commanded the first man. "Let's get the fuck out of here!"

A third man entered Abby's field of view, stepping right in front of her face. The last thing she saw was his heavily-booted foot headed directly towards her head, and then everything went dark.

Ellie and Dina had heard the explosion from the other side of the orchard and took off running at full speed towards it. They arrived just in time to see a group of strange men finish loading two unconscious bodies - one large with a long, tell-tale braid, and one small with short, dark hair - onto the back of a pickup truck, hop in behind them, and drive off through the hole in the fence. "Fuck!" yelled Ellie, putting on another burst of speed. "ABBY!" Her heart was pounding in her throat, and her lungs were on fire from running, but she didn't slow down. She could tell that Dina was still right behind her. "GET BACK HERE! Fuck, I need my GUNS!"

"I have one," Dina panted. "Here, take it!"

Pausing for the briefest second, Ellie took the gun from her and raised it, sighting it at the wheels of the quickly retreating vehicle. It was too far away to get a good enough shot, but she emptied the entire clip anyway. She couldn't even tell if she'd managed to hit any of the tires, and then the car was gone, swallowed up by the darkness. "FUCK!" Ellie yelled, collapsing to her knees in the grass.

"They took JJ," said Dina, panicked. "Ellie, they have JJ!"

"It's okay," Ellie said, sick to her stomach. "They have Abby, too. She'll protect him." Of that, Ellie had no doubt. If only one person was going to make it through this, it would be JJ, not Abby. She wouldn't hesitate to give her life for his. It was up to Ellie to make sure that didn't become necessary. She had to find them and get them back, and fast. "Come on." She stood and started running back towards town.

"Where are we going?" asked Dina as she followed her.

"To get my fucking guns back."