A/N: Wow, two updates in one day. I had the time and the characters were cooperative so here's number five. This one was inspired by what might have happened if Jessie had listened to Beaver and left Fort Sumner before Billy returned in July of 1881. As always, entertainment only and fair warning, it gets a bit dark. Enjoy!

Fort Sumner, New Mexico territory, July 13, 1881

"Come on, girl, open your eyes!" Beaver stormed around the cantina in a mini fury. "Billy ain't your sole responsibility." He came back to the table in a rush and grabbed her hand. "Kid, get out while you can, please!"

"Billy never left me and I won't leave him!" Jessie shot to her feet. "You don't know the meaning of the word pals!" Beaver stared at her in silence.

"Neither does he," he finally said softly. "If he did, he'd have led you all to Mexico and stayed there."

"We tried!"

"Did he?" Beaver turned and walked away, the door closing gently behind him. Breath coming hard, Jessie sat back down and buried her head in her hands.

Was Beaver right?

She let herself go, mind drifting back into the past, sifting through stacks of memories. He'd left Tommy to his fate, but they hadn't had much of a choice if they wanted to keep breathing themselves… Charlie was already dead … Steve and Alex … Dick … Tunstall …

It hadn't been callousness, it was pure survival. Jessie shot to her feet again and flipped the table in a sudden rage. Why was she even considering leaving him alone? They'd had each other's backs every day for the past three years! If Billy was going to leave her, he'd have done it before now.

So why wasn't he here?

Two months and he couldn't drag his skinny ass into Fort Sumner? Her gaze landed on the nearly completed journal now resting on the floor. All the time she'd spent remembering all the pain and the death … and for what – to try and redeem them somehow?

Fat lot of good that would do if he kept playing his damned games and leaving more bodies in his wake.

"To hell with it." She kicked the journal across the floor and it went spinning off into the shadows. Jessie whirled and stormed outside, almost knocking Beaver over in her haste.

By the time he caught up to her at the livery stable, she was strapping her bedroll behind the saddle. "Kid –" She spun on him, eyes flashing fire, and he snapped his mouth shut. Deluvina rushed in, crying into her apron.

"Do not leave like this, no good can come of it. Give Billito one more day, please." Jessie swung into the saddle and turned the mare. "At least tell me where you will go!"

"I'm done playing games." She urged the animal past them and galloped away.

Abilene, Texas, July 19, 1881

"Did you hear? Garrett killed Billy the Kid."

"I heard he was unarmed, and shot in the dark."

"… came over the wires last night …"

Voices blurred in her head. The whiskey in her stomach burned until it fought for release. Jessie shot away from the bar and staggered outside and around the corner, retching into the scrub next to the saloon, until there was nothing left to bring up. She sat back on her heels with a low moan, wishing she could turn back time.

"You're the only reason he's still alive."

One day.

"… give Billito one more day, please!"

One. Day.

If only she'd waited … Billy had died believing everyone abandoned him … including her. She could only imagine how much that must have hurt. How many times had she insisted Doc didn't understand ? How many times had she had his back?

And then the one time he needed her most, where was she? Anger coursed through her veins. Certainly not in Fort Sumner, oh, no, she'd been tearing off across the desert heading for Texas like a child told no.

God … how could she have left him to face Garrett alone? He didn't even believe the man was an enemy ….

A choked sob escaped and tears stung her eyes. She scrambled to her feet, snatched her mare's reins from the hitch rail, and swung into the saddle, her only thought that she had to get back to Lincoln and make Garrett pay.

Outside Lincoln, New Mexico territory, July 21, 1881

A lonely road and a twenty-one year old kid, somehow it seemed fitting. She'd give Garrett his wish, but he'd never benefit from it.

From her spot on a rise a couple hundred feet away, she sighted down the barrel, tracking the traitor as he loped his horse north to Santa Fe. Finger on the trigger, she whispered, "I'll make you famous, Pat Garrett." She squeezed, the weapon kicked against her shoulder with a sound like snapping wood, and Garrett pitched sideways off Billy's gelding and sprawled in the dirt. "That's for Billy," she said through her tears, and got to her feet. She slipped the rifle into the scabbard and mounted up, putting the mare to a trot. The blaze-faced black flicked his ears and snorted when they drew up next to him and she stared down at Garrett, writhing in the dirt.

"Jessie …" He was fading fast if the size of the bloodstain on his jacket was anything to go by. "Y-you don't …" He coughed and blood flecked his mouth. "Billy –"

"Don't you say his name."

"You … d-don't …kn –" His body jerked and then he was still, light fading from his eyes even as she watched.

She should feel something, she'd ridden with him for over a year, Billy had considered him a friend … but she didn't. There was nothing there but hate. She dismounted and loosened the gelding's cinch, then pulled the saddle off his back, leaving it laying in the dirt beside Garrett. "Enjoy your fame," she spit at his corpse, as she mounted back up and turned the mare into the setting sun.

For a moment, she could almost see him, riding up to take the lead, and then it was gone, lost in the amber rays. Jessie choked on a sob and galloped away.

She rode aimlessly for days, not even sure where she was going, until she rode over a ridge and found a herd of wild horses in the valley below. She watched for a moment, then reached over to slip the bridle over the gelding's ears and slapped his flank gently to shoo him down the hill. The animal pranced, hesitating, then picked up speed, approaching the herd at a cautious trot. A bright pinto left the herd, a big bay behind it, and met the gelding several feet away from the rest of the milling animals. When she was sure it was going well, Jessie whispered, "Ride free, Billy," and rode away.

Billings, Montana, July 14, 1891

She couldn't escape it, no matter how far she rode or how much she drank on the really bad days. Ten years. Her hand shook as she raised the whiskey to her lips in a silent toast to the friend she could almost see sitting across the green felt, the ever present smirk plastered on his face. She threw back the shot and signaled for another. The saloon girl brought it over in a rustle of satin.

She'd had satin dresses once, before it all went to hell. Why couldn't they just have left Tunstall alone? All they'd done was destroy everything and everyone around them. A newcomer brushed past and for a moment her heart leaped like a stupid character in a dime novel, and for what – because he had messy blond hair like Billy's?

She couldn't see his eyes under the brim of his hat, but the resemblance ended at the hair. Even at twenty, Billy had been skinny, still only half-grown, unable to grow a beard if his life had depended on it, while the stranger bellying up to the bar and ordering a beer sported a full beard and just enough muscle to enjoy the sight.

At that thought she almost snorted whiskey up her nose. "Damn, you're pathetic," she muttered to herself. Jessie finished the shot and tossed some coins on the table, grabbed her hat, and pushed through the crowd to the bat wing doors.

Out on the sidewalk, she gulped in air and looked around, as lost now as the day she'd ridden out of New Mexico, never to return. The rented hotel room down the street held no comfort, no family or friends, just a place to rest her head for a few hours and pray she didn't wake up screaming.

She had no one to relive the good memories with, no one to talk to when the guilt threatened to bury her.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Jessie." Susan took off her shawl. "The look on his face when I told him that …"

Pain cinched her chest in a vise. He'd died alone, believing a lie, all because she let anger get the best of her. What kind of friend did that? Jessie stared down at her hands, encased in black leather gloves, and wanted to throw up.

They'd never hide the blood.

She stripped the gloves off and tossed them to the boardwalk, then ran for the livery. She had her mare saddled in minutes and rode out, turning the animal's nose towards the freedom of the open plains.

She kept the mare running until she couldn't see for the streaming tears and reined the animal down to a bouncing halt. Jessie slid from the saddle and collapsed in the waving grass, arms around her middle in a vain attempt to hold herself together. After ten long years, the dam was battered and starting to fail, and Jessie knew she'd be swept away by the coming flood.

What did Doc know about hidden pain? He had Yen, little Susie, and whatever they'd named the child not yet born when the Regulators split and Billy died. He'd berate her, call her stupid, shake some sense into her if he could, but he couldn't understand the crippling guilt and the agony of what if.

Jessie choked on a sob and palmed her Colt, the smooth pearl grips feeling like an old, familiar friend in her hand. Why stay in a world that had no room for a lost outlaw? Her finger brushed the trigger and she closed her eyes. It would be so easy to join the friends she'd lost.

"Regulators!" She opened her eyes and could almost see them, standing there in a circle, just like the day they became Regulators.

"As long as one of us lives, the Regulators live." She shook her head to dislodge her own words and cried harder. She'd promised after the fire at McSween's that she'd never leave, and then she had. Jessie curled into a ball and screamed until her throat ached.

"I'm sorry, Billy," she choked out. "I'm so sorry." She closed her eyes again and pictured better times.

Charlie's wedding.

Countless nights in the desert sitting around a campfire with friends long dead.

The few months they'd spent in Patricio.

Lazy summer days at Fort Sumner with Deluvina.

The afternoon at White Oaks before the posse showed up.

"Jessica Dolan?" She stiffened for a split second, her grip tightening on the Colt, before she sagged. What did it matter now?

"I don't know who you're talking about," she said without even looking over her shoulder. Air whispered past her shoulder and a book landed in the grass in front of her. She pushed upright and grabbed it, her heart racing as she flipped through the pages. "What the hell is this supposed to be? I can't read or write, mister."

"Bullshit." She turned then, finding the man from the saloon standing a scant few feet away, twin holsters slung about his hips. "I know better."

"Alright, I am Jessica Dolan. I've got nothing left, so why pretend?" She rose from the ground, Colt in hand. "I've already made one man famous, what's another? I'll even draw first and you can claim you beat it, you'll be doing me a favor." She raised her gun, but he didn't even reach. His shoulders heaved once and he raised his head.

"What happened to you, Jess?" He said softly, pain haunting bright blue eyes, and Jessie stumbled backwards, her legs giving out and landing her back on the ground.

"What the hell are you playing at? If you dare try and claim you're –"

"You'll shoot me?" He laughed and something in her gave way as the cackle she'd never forgotten filled the air. "You know, you never did, despite all the threats."

"Billy?" His name was a ghost on her lips. A memory rose from its lonely grave by a Lincoln County trail:

"Jessie …" He was fading fast if the size of the bloodstain on his jacket was anything to go by. "Y-you don't …" He coughed and blood flecked his mouth. "Billy –"

"Don't you say his name."

"You … d-don't …kn –"

"I thought I'd never find you," he said softly, all amusement gone. "It's me, Jess." She dropped the gun and ran, crashing into him full force.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" She slung punches at whatever she could reach. "I thought you were dead and I killed Garrett! You and your damn, stupid, childish games!"

"Jess –"

"All you had to do was listen to me for once in your life and you couldn't do it even when your life was on the line! I thought I'd gotten you killed!" He was laughing, she was crying, and then they were both crying, wrapped in each others arms in a heap on the ground.

"All I could see when I closed my eyes those months in jail was you walking out that door before Charlie and dying in my arms. I'd wake up screaming cause it was so damn real and then you busted me out and I couldn't risk leading Garrett right to you." He framed her face in shaking hands. "I wanted to ride straight to Sumner and never look back, but he believed every word of that California story and … you're the only real friend I ever had and I couldn't lose you." Billy drew in a shaky breath. "I don't know when it became more than friends, but it did, and I love you. I was gonna ride in the next day and we were going to Mexico for real."

"But I was gone." A sob escaped. "I thought you were still playing games with Garrett and I got mad and took off." Billy let out a shaky sigh and rubbed her back.

"I could have sent a note, but I didn't."

"I should have listened to Deluvina, she said no good would come from me leaving like that and she was right." Another sob rose and she buried her face in his shoulder, taking in the scent of horses, leather, and Billy. "I killed Garrett for something he didn't even do." He stroked her hair.

"I thought you wanted him dead."

"He killed our friends, would have killed us, but all I was thinking when I pulled the trigger was how much he deserved it for shooting you down unarmed in the dark. And that was the one thing he didn't do. He tried to tell me as he was bleeding out in the road, but there wasn't time and I didn't want to listen."

"I wouldn't have wanted to listen either."

"You wouldn't have killed him."

"If I thought he'd killed you … I don't know what I would have done."

"I thought you just wanted me like you wanted Jane."

"You're a hell of a lot more than that," he said hoarsely. "There's only one person in this world I trust with my life and I'm looking at her." He pulled her against him, his heart slamming against her ribs, his arms around her back. "So even if you believe that love is just another word for trust, I still love you, Jess. And that's more important than revenge." She couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up through the tears, emerging as a strangled snort.

"God, you're a slow leaner."

"At least I finally learned." His eyes were dead serious. "Ten years gives a man too much time to think, and to read." He nodded at the book. "John wouldn't have wanted us to throw our lives away for nothing. He knew he was gonna die that day, and he didn't care, because he knew Dick would get us out of that mess alive. I ruined a lot, Jess, and I can't change it, but if we can start over now … I think he'd be happy."

"I'm right beside you Billy Bonney, on one condition." He pulled back and met her gaze, a flicker of fear coloring those bright blues. Jessie hugged his neck, the feel of him alive easing the pain that had almost carried her away.

"What?"

"Ask me again."

A/N: And cue fade to black accompanied by the immortal Blaze of Glory. I wanted the last one to be at least semi-happy, I guess I've got a soft spot for the little rodent that is our favorite Billy and want him to have a better ending than the movies gave him. Again, this won't be the last story in my little universe I've got going. I have plans to do some extra scenes spanning the decades between the close of Young Guns II and when Anna Maria found him at the beginning of The Last Regulator. Until next time.