"HE WAS SO pathetic."

She's not putting on that godforsaken mask.

Ellie-Marie knew she wouldn't. Sam, for all her flaws that she now owns and her mistakes she bears like Atlas, isn't a statue crumbling under the pressure of a few expectations. Her resolve is a trait to be admired in better times, but now Ellie can't help the steady IV drip of fear seeping into her veins at the defiance.

Richie Kirsch was a man Ellie spoke to once. Not at the hospital, where Tara had been her main priority, nor in the hallway when he was apparently considering faking his death, but in the Meeks-Martin household. He'd abhorred the idea of being the killer so vehemently that she couldn't help suspecting him then. Ultimately she'd deemed him weak in more ways than one, and she wasn't wrong. Like father, like son.

Bailey scoffs. "That's not true."

Ellie could giggle at the lack of conviction she hears behind it if she wasn't so focused on what will become an out.

"Yeah, your son," Sam continues. "He was a man-baby who made his girlfriend do all the killing."

"He was a strong, virile young man!"

"He was a limp-dick little fuck who cried before I slit his throat."

"Shut the fuck up!"

The battle cry released behind Ellie is easily recognizable. Quinn surges forward and she's ready, crouching down to send Sam's would-be attacker to the ground.

"Tara, now!"

Tara's glimmer of confusion doesn't last long before she realizes what Ellie's called for. She whirls around, kicks across Quinn's rib cage sharp enough to hear a crack from feet away. Shots fire through the air and for a blinding moment Ellie-Marie thinks they've either made it out miraculously quick or they're fucking dead, locked in a killbox and actually ending their stories there. Her head pops up and she pushes to her feet, a breathless laugh bubbling past her lips as she realizes who's firing away.

Kirby.

"Run!" She shouts. Ellie doesn't have to be told twice before she's grasping blindly for whoever she can, taking off for the ladder against the wall. She's gotta get everyone else out of here. She's gotta get out of here.

"Kirby!"

Abi.

The cry of her name is forceful enough for her to reel around, only now realizing who'd she grabbed in her race to get everyone to freedom. Auntie is facing away from her and towards where Kirby stood moments before, where Ethan stands now and it hits her all too quickly that this isn't a negotiable call.

She's just gotta be the first to move.

Surging forward Ellie-Maroe nearly knocks her aunt aside in the race back into danger. She can't let Abi risk herself again, she won't. She doesn't care if it kills her, that's fine.

She's gotta make things right.

She couldn't save Maddie, but she can save Kirby. She will save Kirby, she has to.

Focused as she is on getting back into the threat she doesn't notice Abi reaching for her, doesn't assess the grip around her wrist until it is far too late and she is jolting back.

"No!" She shouts, driving her elbows back in attempts to keep her aunt away. Abi can't go into this. She can't let her, but-

"Get the hell out of here, Ellie-Marie!"

"I'm not leaving you!"

"Yes, you are!" Abi's voice is strong with a fight Ellie typically admires when not aimed towards her. "You've gotta go, I can handle it!"

"No-"

"GO!"

The order is complete with a shove towards the wall. Ellie catches herself against the ladder and whips around just in time to catch sight of Ethan ripping a knife from Julie's side, turning his attention to Abi and grabbing that gun and-

Of course she has a fucking gun.

There's no thought required as Ellie whips her pistol from her holster, aims it Ethan's way and fires off. It catches his shoulder in time for Abi to whip around, frees some sort of fate that Ellie has played in her nightmares on repeat for years and gives her enough certainty to begin ascending up the ladder. Sam, Tara and Rory are already up there, led by Tara into what she wishes would already be freedom rather than yet another false hope.

That's what Ellie-Marie is good at, though.

The pounding of her head and the burn of her ankle pale in comparison to the adrenaline coursing through her veins like a pumped drug. She's getting her family out of her if it kills her, and-

"SAM! ELLIE!"

Tara.

It's like she learned how to fly with how quick she pulls herself onto the balcony. Ellie doesn't know how many rungs of the ladder she actually touched after Tara cried out because frankly, she doesn't give a fuck. Her girl needs her and she needs her now and that's all that matters, not how she feels nauseated at the thought of something happening now.

Not how she screams when she finds what incited the cry.

Tara dangles helplessly from the balcony. Between them stands Bailey, a barrier with a gun right in Ellie's face and a smile that says he knows more than she'd like him to.

"We wondered what would kill Sam the most," he begins, his voice so cold that Ellie's bones catch a chill. "We figured, at first, to kill Tara in front of her. Figuring out how was the hard part, and then...puppy love. You know how my son felt, hearing the love of his life-"

"She was a teenager!"

"DIE in the next room? Unable to help her?"

Out of the corner of her eye she can see Tara beginning to slip. Sam has never looked this petrified before and it makes Ellie sick to wonder why now, Rory grasping futilely for one of Tara's bloodied hands.

"Do you?!"

"You certainly don't," Ellie grits out. "He never got the chance to tell you."

For an instant she finds the bone deep rage in Bailey's face gratifying. This is what he deserves and it keeps that gun focused off Tara, two things Ellie is focusing on most now. If she can keep that gun on her, get her own when Tara's safe...

Her own.

Her gun.

Fuck.

Her face pales when she dares a glance over the rail. Her gun sits on the floor below, presumably dropped from her hands when Tara cried out. She has nothing.

She has nothing.

Bailey's rage has shifted into poignant satisfaction when she looks back up. He cocks his gun, head tilting mockingly.

She can't see Rory anymore.

Tara's slipping.

She's gonna die here.

"You're dying for a greater cause, Ellie-Marie!" Bailey exclaims, stepping closer. "A domino effect if you will. How will Samantha feel, seeing Tara's distress when your broken body-"

Tara falls.

Nothing he has left to say matters. Ellie's charging forward regardless of what he plans to do, hearing that gun go off and then a yell and then nothing. Nothing hits her.

Rory.

Her sister has slammed Bailey into the rail. His gun fired off into nothingness, a bullet without a target because of her sister risking her fucking life.

"Rory!" Ellie shouts in wild disbelief, hand rising to her chest. "What the fuck-"

"Grab the gun!" Rory shouts. "Grab his fucking gun!"

There's another one, Ellie realizes. It sits in his holster perfectly unprotected as Rory holds the blade to Bailey's neck, the feral terror in her eyes sending Ellie's stomach plummeting. They have one chance.

She has no clue why Rory's eyes widen impossibly further.

She has no clue why Sam screams her name.

She has no clue.

And then there's pain.

ELLIE REMEMBERS WHAT the knife felt like that first time.

It sank into her hip without mercy. Charlie wasn't bluffing when he spoke eagerly of her death, determined enough to kill her that fighting back deterred him none at all. That blade buried itself a fourth of a way into her skin then, yanked up with a force that may as well have ripped her open. Ellie wakes up some nights with the blood still lingering in her mouth because her younger self couldn't stand to swallow it. The scar is ugly and ridged to this day. Her fingers trace it when she's alone sometimes, keeping score of the first battle she ever lost.

There's no forgetting. Her body was smaller then, small enough for Daddy to put her on the hospital desk and demand that she get help immediately because she was already out like a broken light. She'd woken up loopy and afraid that the bad man had been right, that her Daddy was dead and she only made it through because of a sacrifice she never wanted him to make.

Last year, too. She'd woken up before the doctors expected after her surgery, listened as they spoke of her near death like a novelty. Amber barely missed her heart. Four times over there was a blade sinking into bone or filtering just between, barely lucky enough to make it out alive. The pain was unfathomable, bested only by her fear that Daddy and Abi would turn around and get themselves hurt or worse right beside her. She still cannot breathe properly when she exercises, leans against walls and takes yet another ibuprofen until she can breathe without the burn again.

This is nothing new. It hurts all the same.

Ellie lets out a breathless gasp as she looks down to her side. Opposite of the first scar, the original marker through her hip, is the handle of a knife.

The detail is sickeningly familiar.

Rory lets out a sound that may be a battle cry or may be pain, Ellie doesn't know. She can't focus on anything besides the way her attacker rounds to the front of her, barely giving her enough room to catch how Bailey slams Rory into the ground.

She wants to scream. She wants to stop him. She wants her sister.

But Quinn doesn't care about what she wants.

"You recognize this?" Quinn grits out, pushing the knife deeper into Ellie's hip. She can't contain the half moan, half wail of pain she lets out, ripping from what's left of her as she stares up.

"You match now," Quinn continues, eyes narrowing. "Or, you will. I think it went a little something like-"

The blade yanks up.

Ellie doubles with a scream she can't withhold, weakly trying to force Quinn away with a push she can't throw herself into. She can't go down like this. She won't. She's been a pincushion enough times to not go out like this.

Vaguely she can't help but wonder just how fucked her organs might be now, but that's not what she needs to focus on.

The iron sinks deep into Ellie's tastebuds as she stares up to Quinn, forcing herself to straighten. "Fuck," she starts, the word formed in a small gasp.

The knife twists inside her.

Ellie lets out another cry at the feeling. She won't let this kill her, but it may very well make her limping that much worse.

"Fuck?" Quinn taunts.

"Fuck," she starts again, forcing the word around her wheezing. "You. You dumb...fucking...bitch."

Somewhere beneath her she can hear a cry. Buffy or Tara one, they blend momentarily in her mind as she bares her teeth in a bloodied snarl.

She's stronger than this. She's not dying in front of her family, not dying in front of Tara, not dying with her father outside or with Mom and Lulu waiting on her. She's not going to. She's a fucking Riley. She can take this.

She can take Quinn.

"So vulgar," Quinn chides, tone mockingly playful. "Don't worry, Riley. I'm sure Anika will love seeing you aga-"

Ellie's fist slams across Quinn's jaw before she gets the chance to finish.

The force is enough to knock Quinn aside, releasing the knife to catch herself against the bars. "Bitch!"

Ellie-Marie says nothing. After all, Anika didn't get to.

Instead she goes to shove Quinn, push her over the railing while her father is helpless to watch. Poetic justice, she thinks bitterly.

What she doesn't expect is for Quinn to grab onto her shoulders as she tips.

What she doesn't expect is to go first over the railing, clutching Quinn's hair like a lifeline.

Glass shatters beneath them as Ellie lands first on her back, head slamming against the concrete for the second time tonight.

All there is, is black.