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It was always going to come to this.
Pure selfishness would have her claim that it was the moment when Abby Anderson, fueled by burning fury, hammered the final nail in the coffin in which Joel Miller would forever rest. When Abby, blatantly ignoring desperate pleas for her to practice mercy, struck the beaten man in the neck. When she concluded his life prematurely. When she murdered him, without the smallest shred of remorse to be found anywhere inside of her.
But, she knows better. She knows that when personal feelings are responsibly set aside, when she peers through a lens of sheer neutrality, logic rises. Fact, untouched by human emotion, doesn’t care for one’s feelings. It doesn’t give a damn about the fuel contained within one’s heart. Love, resentment, guilt. None of that matters.
None of it erases the fact that it wasn’t Abby who set things into motion. She despises her with every fiber of her being, and there will never come a moment when that becomes untrue. However, that eternal loathing isn’t blinding. Not right now, at least. Standing here, internally wrestling with the apprehension that one naturally feels when they have a gun aimed at them while being unarmed, she can only see the truth that exists beyond hatred’s fire.
All of this started when Joel committed a hellish massacre. All of this started when he turned a once fortified hospital upside down and left a trail of Firefly corpses behind. When, without blinking an eye, he executed an unarmed doctor. A conscientious doctor who was also a father to a daughter who seems to have loved him dearly.
A cycle was born in blood that day. A vicious cycle that devours lives and corrupts those caught in the eye of the storm. It was inevitable that someone would seek vengeance following Joel’s devastating act in Salt Lake City. It was only a matter of time until someone relentlessly hunted Joel in pursuit of retribution. Whether because they were enraged by the irrevocable loss of an opportunity to produce a cure or because they were wounded by the loss of a loved one who had the misfortune of being at the hospital that fateful day.
It just so happens that the person who embarked on that quest for revenge was someone willing to risk everything to fulfill her mission. Someone who’s a good shot, even though it irritates her to admit that. Someone who will always be driven to ensure that anyone who does her or her loved ones a personal injustice will regret it.
Abby Anderson.
It was inevitable that she, in turn, would seek revenge following Abby’s slaying of Joel. For, despite her complicated feelings about Joel and what he did that consequential day years ago, she cares deeply for the fallen man. Still does. He was the closest she ever got to having a father of her own in her life. Through the moments of feeling like a disgruntled teen peeved by their father’s unwanted nosiness. Through the moments of feeling like a beloved child who could count on their thoughtful father to remember and celebrate their birthday. He was always there. Both in ways that might seem utterly insignificant to others and in ways that no one can deny are extremely important.
The idea of the people responsible for Joel Miller’s assassination walking around, living life as they please, was never going to sit well with her. It was never going to be a pill that she could swallow. Not even the knowledge that those who participated in killing him carried legitimate and understandable reasons for doing what they did would have been enough to wash down that enormous pill.
So, as one does, she refused to.
She launched a journey that would have her sentence each person involved with Joel Miller’s demise to death. Simultaneously furnishing Abby with more reasons to return to target her, she worked diligently on tearing to shreds the scenario of Joel’s killers evading the consequences of their actions. To her, they’re all shameless monsters who deserve to die in any of the worst ways possible.
Yet, fact once more demands to be seen. The fact is that they are cherished friends of Abby’s. The proof of that is currently staring her down while pointing a gun directly at her. This too was inevitable. As has now been proven on more than one occasion, Abby is the type of person who will always turn to bloodshed when a loved one is permanently stolen from her. They’re really not so different in that way.
Maybe, just maybe, Abby has realized that herself. After all, just a moment ago, she looked slightly stunned. As though she was genuinely shocked to see her here, the place to where Abby ventured under the impression that she would find the person who killed her friends. She falsely presumed that that person was Tommy. But, she should have known. Only one person vowed in Abby’s presence to come after her and her friends in the wake of Joel’s death. She’s not merely at the scene of the crime, so to speak. She is the crime’s architect.
In spearheading this campaign to eliminate Abby and her friends, she’s placed herself in Joel’s weathered shoes. With Abby ready to make her pay in the way that she made Joel pay.
It was always going to come to this.
What she underestimated was just how red her hands would become due to the loss of people who were not involved with Joel’s demise. She failed so spectacularly to give sufficient thought to the idea, the inevitability, of innocents perishing because of this crusade. Collateral damage, some might say. Difficult for her to say when she glances down to look upon the lifeless body of a friend she was serenely communicating with what feels like mere moments ago. Jesse, who was meant to live to be a proud father. Difficult for her to say when she thinks of the baby who succumbed to death within the body of Abby’s friend, Mel. And now Tommy is caught in the crossfire, on the precipice of premature death just as his brother was?
Is this who she is now? If she survives the confrontation at hand, can she really live with this change in herself? Can she live as this…this monster who's allowed innocent lives to be discarded into the inferno that is her detestation of Abby Anderson? This bloodthirsty monster who lets people she calls friends follow her down this path of destruction even while she withholds vital pieces of information from them?
Is there even any coming back from this? Any stopping this from worsening? Or has she gone past the point of no return?
Is her only path forward, descending further and further into chaos brought on by her own grief?