AN: After this chapter, it'll be time for the finale. Enjoy! :)

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"Please don't hurt me," Bonnie cried. She was sobbing. So much sadness… His baby sister didn't deserve such sadness. She deserved all the happiness in the world.

Michael fell to his knees. His knife dropped from numb fingers into the damp soil beneath him. Slowly, as if he was acting the dutiful fugue patient for Loomis, he reached up and pulled off his mask.

Time had stopped. Now Bonnie was staring at him, cowering in the corner, begging him not to hurt her. But he couldn't hear anything. He could only see.

She looked just like their mother, except for the darker shade of her hair. God, he had missed her! Why was she so afraid? All he wanted was for her to look at him with that sweet, childlike grin on her face one more time. He just wanted her to understand.

Everything that I have done, I have done for you.

As he thought it, he saw another face in his mind, a sly grin, pale colorless eyes, curling black hair splayed across a pillow. With a small sigh, he amended his thought.

Everything that I have done, I have done for the both of you.

With numb fingers, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the picture, the one material item he had cherished throughout his silent reign at Smith's Grove. He held it out for her, but she merely whimpered and cowered.

Why was she so afraid of him? Emory wasn't afraid of him. Emory knew what he was thinking almost before he did. But this pitiful little creature was his sister. Shouldn't his sister know him? Shouldn't she recognize him?

He waited. After a few minutes, Bonnie stopped crying. She looked up, her eyes latched onto the photo in his hands.

"I don't understand," she whispered. As she spoke her voice grew more hysterical, "Please, just… just leave me alone!"

Still he held the picture out for her. Maybe if she saw it, she would remember.

But then she took a ragged breath. "I don't know them! Please!"

Please what? He wondered. Let you go? You are free to go whenever you want to, Bonnie.

All he wanted was for her to understand.

And then came the change. One minute, she was hysterical, rocking back and forth in a ball on the floor, and then the next she went completely still. Hope shot through Michael like a lightning bolt. Suddenly, she was on her hands and knees, looking at him, looking down at the ground, and then up at the picture.

"I want to help you," she said in a shaking whisper. Michael tilted his head slightly. She wanted to help him? He didn't need any help. "I want to help you…" She moved forward, inching closer to him. Closer to the picture. Did she remember? Did she finally understand?

And then, somewhere above them, a door slammed, and a woman's voice rang out, laced with fury and anxiety.

"Michael! Where are you?!"

It was Emory. Instantly, Michael's head snapped around towards the basement stairs, and every muscle in his body went tense and still. Emory was awake. She had found him.

She was pissed.

Michael heard Bonnie move just as he was turning back to her. She leapt towards him, screaming a wordless cry of terror and rage, and then the world dissolved in a haze of seething, white-hot pain.

She had stabbed him. It was all he could think as he fell to the ground. His little sister had fucking stabbed him.

She was screaming, beating on the door, but Michael couldn't move. Blood wept from his shoulder, and the blade was pure agony buried in his flesh.

After a moment, he came back to himself. He reached up and grasped the knife handle, clenched his teeth tightly together and pulled.

It really didn't hurt as much as he expected, but he shuddered slightly at the sensation of blood trickling over his skin.

But his mind was already moving away from the pain, focusing on what was going on around him.

Bonnie was stumbling up the basement stairs, crying hysterically as she went.

Michael closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. He had to get up there, he had to see Emory.

She was all he had left now.

As he pulled himself up from the ground, and slowly made his way to the stairs, he felt the weight of sadness like a physical burden on his shoulders.

Bonnie was not his sister anymore.