"Grace, what's with all the shouting outside," asked Ellen as she ate her breakfast.

"Protesters."

"What the hell are they protesting?"

"Prosecuting you as Vera-Ellen Firefly, the death penalty, legalizing pot and who knows, saving the seals or something probably."

"They're all here...for me," she asked, incredulous.

"Come see," the senior nurse helped the younger woman to her wheelchair and rolled her to the window, pulling the curtain. Lines and lines of people surrounded the building, many carrying signs with various slogans, and some deluded souls obsessed with the Fireflys as the ultimate anti-heroes, just like Charles Manson had admirers even after the Tate-LaBianca killings which put his Family on the map. Now the public had another family to obsess/loathe about--the Fireflys.

"There's another reason they're here," put in Maria. The Capital Punishment Abololitionists and the Governor have been hashing it out over you, and you'll be meeting...the other survivor."

Ellen blinked her pretty eyes for a moment, then said, "One of my family? But why? So I'll recognize him and give them a reason to kill me?"

Grace sighs. "It's Sheriff Dobson's doings, I'm afraid. He wants to get you back for killing a fellow cop."

"Well, at least let me put something clean and decent on," Ellen declares.

Dressed in a simple blue cotton dress she is rolled into one of the conference rooms, crawling with lawyers, doctors and cops. Her body was still mostly useless and she'd resigned herself to it, at least for some time. A cot was rolled in with a slender figure strapped to it, one that despite being crippled struggled mightily and cursed and bellowed in his gravelly voice. When he spotted Ellen he ceased immediatly, a look of shock and longing upon his features. "Baby..." he breathed. The hospital bed was adjusted to let him sit up and she saw he was a twisted, mangled thing, body riddled with bulletholes and missing the last two fingers on each hand. His stringy hair had been lopped to just past his ears and beard shaved to better reveal his injuries. "Aw, Baby, they got you too. You look like shit."

Ellen's mouth worked, but nothing came out. He was comforting and familiar, but she had no idea who he was.

"Angel, ain't you got nothin' to say ta me? Baby?"

"I don't know you...I feel I should, or I did, but I don't remember you."

"It's me, Otis. Your brother," his eyes searched her face. "What did they do to you, huh? Bastards," he yelled, struggling against the straps again. "Motherfuckers! Baby, it's just me an' you now, girl. We're all that's left, we can't let em get us! We gotta--"

"No," she said firmly, shaking her head. "You see where fighting got us, don't ya? No, it's time to find another way."

Otis looked at her with horror and abject sadness. "You can't mean that. You do mean it. You're not Baby..." tears rolled down his craggy face. "So this is how it ends. My girl, I love...," he couldn't say it.

Her heart went out to him, but she couldn't reach out and touch him. All the fight had went out of him and he refused to say or do anything else. Ellen felt hollow, empty, worthless. Still no trigger for her memory.

The next week finds Ellen squinting under harsh lights, wearing a stylish wig and an outfit donated to her by the Baby Firefly Preservation Society, fidgeting and uncomfortable in her wheelchair. She still hadn't left the hospital, all the lights and equipment had been trucked in at the TV station's expense to keep the hospital's star patient secure.

"Fifteen minutes till on the air," called a technician, and the whole place was abuzz with people bustling about doing their jobs.

"Vera-Ellen Johns," asks a man's voice.

She looks up and sees a tall, slender man in thick glasses and an even thicker mustache looking down at her. "Yes?"

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you," he beams, holding out his hand. She takes it and he shakes it vigorously. "I'm--"

"..Lance Brockwell, I know. I see you on the tv every night," she interrupts. In person his tacky fashion sense was even more appalling.

He smiles, a wide, attractive, toothy smile, his blue eyes twinkling. One thing could be said, he may not be able to dress himself correctly but he had some charisma going on. "I see you're nervous. Not to worry! I'll be here to help you, and I won't break anything too traumatic on you. Just take a deep breath. Yeah, that's it." The woman followed his advice and smiled at him tentatively and it almost took his own breath away. Despite her ordeals, the scars and her battered form she was radiant when she smiled and he couldn't help but notice. Could this softspoken, unassuming girl have committed all those horrible crimes she was accused of? That's what he intended to find out.

"Welcome, this is Lance Brockwell with Channel 6 News. We're here with the infamous criminal-turned-amnesiac Vera-Ellen 'Baby' Firefly to see her side of things--as they always say, there's two sides to every story." He turns to Ellen, who's smiling nervously in front of the cameras. "Just relax, Miss Firefly," he grins warmly at her. "As most know, you were captured at a roadblock while on the run from numerous murders, then one day you wake up in a hospital with no recollection whatsoever of your whole life. So you recall nothing at all?"

"No. Nothing."

"And your personality--well, there's been no evidence of any murderous tendencies on your part, is that right?" She nods. "What are your feelings on what's happened to you since you regained consciousness?"

"Ah...well, uh, mostly confused at first," she elicits some laughs from the camera crew. "The staff have been very kind, and I've had to relearn most everything," she answers.

"Such as," Lance questions.

"Reading, writing, pretty much everything about culture. Only since they've been letting me watch TV a week ago do I know who you are, Lance."

"Wow, that's a pretty extreme case of memory loss," he observes.

"Yeah, so they tell me," she giggles, a childish hitching laugh, the lone holdover from her life before. Lance watches her with growing interest and attraction, taken with her unconscious aura and charisma.

Clearing his throat he then asks, "So Miss Firefly, would you kill someone?"

"No, never," she responds, taken aback.

"You have no urge to murder or kidnap someone?"

"Of course not!"

"So it's safe to say you are nothing like the Baby Firefly that committed all those terrible crimes?"

"Well..yes, that'd be true," she says.

"So the person that was being hunted by the police, is in fact, dead. Prosecuting you would serve no purpose other than to persecute an innocent person."

The production assistant begins hissing at Brock, telling him that's totally not what the station wanted, to start contraversy.

"I think you hit the nail on the head, Mr. Brockwell."

"Please, call me Lance."

Ellen was so glad to get that over with, even though flirting with Lance was utterly fun. She was rolled into her room by Maria when she spotted Roy Dobson waiting for her. His flanking deputies stepped between the young nurse and the patient's wheelchair. "I'm placing you under arrest," he announces. Ellen idly wondered how he kept his crazy hair and sideburns perfectly coiffed.

"What took you so long, Sheriff," she asks him, levelling her blue-green eyes at him.

He seemed at a loss for a moment, then said, "If you're well enough to have a televised interview you're well enough to pay for your crimes."

"Fine, take my crippled ass to jail."

Dobson takes her wheelchair, whirls it around and pushes her out the door. "I got a better idea, whore," he hisses.

"Hey," Maria shouts, wondering where the hospital-appointed guards were.