JJ's eyes clamped shut, acting like a dam to the tears beyond, but there was only so long he could keep them at bay.

"She...she went for you?" Max whimpered.

JJ nodded. It's all he could bare to do. He could feel his vocal chords shaking like a spindly tree in a storm. After a few moments of composure, he finally continued his story.

"I was expecting her to turn around and pull me in for a hug or something. I didn't even realise what was happening until her hands were around my neck..."

"The bruising?" Max asked, pointing at the nasty looking purple scars painted around JJ's neck. He could see the imprints of Dawson's delicate hands and fingertips, a lasting reminder or what she had become.

JJ nodded again, "The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. I didn't have the energy to fight it. She was choking the life out of me... and those eyes, they weren't hers, you know? They weren't Dawson's eyes anymore."

It had always been the part of the disease that haunted Max the most, the eyes. People always said that they were the gateway to the soul, but once you removed it, they were just gateways to hell. Any drop of humanity drained out through those dry, dead, red vessels.

Max couldn't imagine Dawson in that condition. He didn't want to. That would make it all to real. It would confirm the fact that she wasn't coming back to them, Dawson, as they knew her, was dead.

"How did you get away?" Max eventually questioned.

"I didn't," JJ replied simply.

Max's eyes, painted with confusion, urged him to continue.

"Dawson started lurching around all over the place... like of those old exorcism movies. It was horrible. It didn't look human. One second her teeth were hovering over my neck, the next she was flying backwards onto the road away from me. It was as if she was having some kind of internal battle," JJ explained.

Max sniffed, "Did she come back? Did Dawson win?"

JJ shook his head, "There's no winning with this fucking disease. But she did buy me some time. Enough for me to get away, at least. I just... I... I can't stop hearing the voice in my head, it wasn't her voice, it wasn't Dawson."

"What did she say?"

"'Get out of here,'" JJ recalled. "It came from her mouth, it came from her mind and her good intentions... but it sounded like the devil. She's gone. They're both gone."

JJ broke down into tears, his bloodshot, sleepless eyes echoing his inner pain and misery. If Max didn't already know he was immune, he would almost mistake them for the red eyes of a clicker.

Lizzie had been sat in the corner of the room for the duration of JJ's story. She hadn't moved. She hadn't spoken. She'd barely blinked.

Since the day that JJ had been lost, or rather the day she'd thought she'd lost him, her dreams had been filled with different scenarios of his return. She had dreamt of JJ, Karl and Dawson arriving at Novus, without a scratch on their bodies, and smiles on their faces. She'd dreamt of pulling JJ into her arms and feeling his heart beat against hers. Shed dreamt of kissing him again.

Now he was here, and she didn't know what to do. She was frozen to the spot, as if he were a ghost from her past.

She had mourned him for the past month, and yet here he was. She wasn't sure if she was meant to be thankful, or if she should be shaken up by Dawson's transformation, or even mourning the true death of her friend Karl. She had never been so emotionally confused, as if someone had grabbed a handful of random feelings and tossed them into the eye of a storm.

Lizzie was spiralling around the centre of a tornado, happiness, sadness, fear, depression, love... they all circled around her, trapping her, suffocating her.

She wasn't sure how long Max had been talking, but by the time Lizzie's consciousness was back in the room, he was stood by her side, with a comforting hand on her shoulder.

JJ was still sat, curled up against the far wall, opting against using any of the chairs in the room.

"I'm going to give you guys some space," Max announced, before crouching down to Lizzie's ear. "Make sure he get's some rest. I don't think he's had a decent sleep in over a month."

Lizzie nodded, although she barely heard his words. Her eyes were fixed on JJ as Max exited the room a shut the door softly behind him with a quiet click.

After a couple of seconds, and a deep breath, as if he was about to take a plunge from the top of a cliff, JJ get her gaze. Lizzie instantly looked away. She couldn't do it.

"Why can't you look at me?" JJ asked.

No reply.

"Why can't you even speak to me?" he cried.

Silence.

"Lizzie!"

"Because it makes me happy!" Lizzie screamed. "Because it makes me fucking happy!"

"You say that as if it's a bad thing...?"

Lizzie sobbed, "That's because it is. It's the worst of things."

"What do you mean?" JJ demanded.

"I mean... I mean that when you walked through those gates, and I saw it was you. I was happy. I was happy that you had survived. I was happy that you weren't the one to..." Lizzie couldn't bring herself to utter the words, instead she broke down and buried her face into her hands.

JJ finished her sentence, "You were happy that it was Karl who died."

Lizzie wailed at hearing the thought out loud, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Karl," she looked up again, her tear-filled eyes locking with JJ's. "But yes, given the choice, if only one of you could survive... I needed it to be you!"

JJ winced as he hauled himself to his feet, hobbling over to Lizzie before half-crouching, half-collapsing down to her level, enveloping her in the safety of his warm embrace.

"It's okay," he said simply. "It's okay."

"I'm so sorry," Lizzie sobbed. "I'm so, so sorry."

She knew what it was like to lose family to the disease, to lose those you had once called friends, but she could only imagine what JJ was going through, or rather what he had been through.

They say that all twins have this special, unbreakable bond. They say that they can share thoughts and feel each other's pain. Lizzie's heart clenched at the thought of what JJ must be feeling right now. Not only had he lost his brother, his twin, and his best friend, but he'd also had to witness Karl getting torn apart before his very eyes. And as if this wasn't enough, the only mother figure he'd ever had in his life had turned on him as if he were a stranger, as if he were prey.

Lizzie wrapped her arms around him tightly. He needed her more than she needed him right now. She squeezed him in as close as she could. She wanted him to feel her there with him. JJ had been alone for so long, she wanted to make it clear that he wasn't anymore, and never would be again.

"I love you," Lizzie whispered into his ear.