*short chapter, but please enjoy!*

How long had it been?

Time escaped her. Maeve contemplated for miles and miles, unable to feel herself since...ugh...she was too afraid to think about it. It'd been a few months, or was it several? Maybe "few" and "several" seemed too generous to say. Five months, she counted the days of frozen trails, abandoned camping grounds, and various apartments they'd stayed at for nights while they healed from their injuries.

A sting erupted through her hip up to her side. It was like a knife cut through the feeble scar tissue, reopening it to carve her organs out. She pressed her palm over her shirt, the fabric irritating the healing flesh beneath it. The soles of her feet ached with her scar. They'd been walking for miles on end, not resting.

They were almost there. The hospital was here, in this city. No rest would be allowed until they arrived.

Cars clogged the freeway, strewn out carelessly through the abandoned roads ahead...just frozen in the clusters of fear their drivers had during the outbreak. A part of her tried to pull from the phantom doomsday that stirred in her imagination, yet the rusted vehicles lay around. The silent air had disembodied screams and screeching tires and blaring car horns. Though, she seemed to be the only one to hear them.

"...us?"

She caught sight of a broken headlight when she heard the muffled call for her, and stiffly, she brought her sights up, observing her surroundings yet again. She blinked at the men looking toward her and Ellie, who had stopped to stare at an engraving of a sprinting doe on the concrete freeway wall.

"Girls!" Joel's voice called to them once more, tearing them into reality.

"What?" She hadn't meant to sound so sharp, or rude. The words left her before she could even control her tongue. Just the slip of words, that was all. Fortunately for her, the guys didn't seem all that butthurt about her tone.

"Did you hear me?" Joel was the one to speak, his boots scraping against the pavement of the freeway.

"No," the sisters glanced at one another. "What?"

"Look," the older man gestured to the sign above the road. "Hospital. Let's go, kiddos."

Her feet felt heavy as she followed after them. The warmth of the sun had scorched her even though it wasn't at all hot. The backpack weighing on her shoulders made her flesh uncomfortable. She caught sight of herself passing a car window, her breath grappling about in her throat. Her once-long hair had been sheared short, it wasn't something she could try to forget about. It had been choppy and ugly before Ellie helped her even the jagged ends out. A blistering heat bubbled behind her eyes as she lifted a hand to graze her now neck-length, almost ear-length hair. The edges weren't straight, and even after being fixed, it was still messy.

Hair would grow back, but why did hers have to grow so slowly?

She felt the world was tormenting her for being...

A strangled breath left her, and she looked away from the dirty reflection of the car window. Her own face haunted her, churned her stomach, lurching her heart in ways it hadn't lurched since...

Her heart hammered within her chest, unable to calm as the memories flooded into her cranium. She felt reality around her slip away, almost as if she stepped into a ready-to-cave sinkhole.

"Mae?" The upcoming trauma was shattered by the soft voice. Her watering eyes flickered toward Ellie's face. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," The older girl responded and hurried to wipe her eyes dry. "Don't worry about me."

As far as Maeve was concerned, neither Ellie nor Joel knew what happened to her, only TJ. He respected her desire to be quiet about it. She was grateful about it, to him that he didn't say a single word. Despite all the nights she woke them up practically screaming and thrashing from her sleep. She knew she was only hurting her sister by not telling; after all, she knew what David had tried to do to her, only for him to be chopped apart by his own machete. The most they knew, or she assumed they knew, is that David's son was killed by TJ.

And that is all they'll ever be allowed to know, she vowed. She'd never let Ellie know what had almost happened to her.

After she shook herself back into reality, quickly before she was overcome with tears and all, she peered around. Their location was distant, but somehow closer to their destination. She'd already made that observation, why was she making it again? Her mind eluded her, avoided every possible situation, every scenario that occurred in the depths of her imagination, her flight or fight. The focus she should've had, wasn't there. Every little noise caused her blood to feel electric, screaming to run even though there was no real danger within her vicinity.

"—day like this," she heard Joel's voice, "I'd just sit on my porch, pick away at my six string. Yeah," he nodded to no one in particular. "Once we're done with this whole thing, I'm gonna teach you two how to play guitar. I reckon you'd really like that. Whaddaya girls say, huh — Ellie, Maeve, I'm talking to you."

The girls looked toward Joel, finally registering that he, in fact, was speaking to them.

"Huh?" Ellie hummed in confusion. "Oh, um..."

"That sounds great, Joel." Maeve finished for them. She supposed the both of them were out of it since the cabin resort.

And then they carried on, passing a wrecked bus. Its paint was rusted, but the picture on the side of it seemed intact still, advertising an airplane company, or something of the sort.

"I had a dream about flying the other night." The younger girl approached the bus.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." Ellie gazed at the vinyl photo on the transportation vehicle.

They stopped to listen to her, but she didn't continue. The pause had Maeve looking toward her sister.

"Go on," she encouraged, nudging her arm. "Tell us about it."

"Okay, um..." Ellie clasped her hands together, rubbing her left pinkie and ring finger with her right. "So, I'm on this big plane of people, right? And everyone is just screaming and yelling cause the plane's going down. So, I walk to the cockpit, open the door, and there's no pilot. I try to use the controls but...I obviously don't know how to fly a plane. Right before we crash, I wake. I've never been on a plane before. Isn't that weird?"

TJ shrugged. "Dreams are weird. I wouldn't think much of it."

"I guess..." Ellie fell silent again.

They traveled further down the road, coming across an exit ramp. Many roadblocks were scattered down the ramp and at the bottom of the ramp, as well as other cars. The rotted tires seemed to fade into the concrete like the weeds that poked out of the surrounding cracks.

She was always one to reminisce about time, and how changing it could be. The more she thought about it, the more depressed she felt. Winter made herself question life and its answers. What happened scared her. She felt more scared, compared to losing Jordan in Boston. Having to experience that kind of thing took a toll on her, for obvious reasons, and as much as she tried to forget, the more her mind made her remember. Her eyes fell to the cracked roads again; she bit her lip nervously. She didn't dare imagine what would've happened if TJ had come ten seconds too late, or if he had gotten the wrong building, or had been killed by those other hunters.

"Hey," a hand made contact with her shoulder, causing her to flinch near violently. "Are you sure that you're alright?"

She met TJ's gorgeous blue eyes, somehow the color brightened under the sun's light. It was surprisingly vivid for him. The sun miraculously enhanced his features, toning his skin with kisses and slight redness. He was pretty for a boy, she thought. Just like Jordan had been. The only things dividing them were the fact they never knew each other, and they were polar opposites, personality-wise. And the fact that Jordan was literally a Firefly. And the fact that Jordan was biologically related to Marlene. Though completely different, she saw similarities between the two. Their devotion, the um, the determination they had, and have. That annoyingly annoying front they shield up with when around other people, the whole tough-guy act. Nonetheless, he saved her ass, and in a way, she seemed to be putty in his hands. Not putty, per se, but she definitely leaned onto him for the apparent safety net he gave her.

After a moment, her lips thinned. She wanted to say she wasn't okay, that she was collapsing on the inside.

Stay strong, she urged herself. For Ellie.

"Yeah, I'm fine." She lied right through her teeth. TJ wasn't convinced either, but he didn't further to badger her, and that, she was grateful for. She wasn't about to let herself fall apart when they were so close to finishing this. It was all for Ellie. Thankfully, he went ahead, keeping his long stride at a slow pace so she wouldn't have to practically jog after him.

She followed her sister and Joel as they began down the ramp into an abandoned bus terminal and quarantine zone.