Ryan sat beside Frank in the dark of the night, with Ray, Bert and Gerard asleep scattered around them, and Frank would be lying if he said he hadn't been expecting this from the moment Ryan joined their group.

Back when he'd been in Lindsey's 'clan', a couple named Brendon and Ryan had passed through, offering food in return for a bed for the night. They'd kept much to themselves, but Lindsey seemed to like them, even if Frank didn't. They'd ended up staying a week, to Lindsey's delight, and when they'd gone, Frank had hoped that he'd never have to see them again. He'd been wrong.

"So, I heard you killed the Way kid." Ryan said, and the younger sighed. "I must say, that was cold, even for Lindsey's right-hand man. How'd she take it?"

"She tried to kill me." Frank hissed in return.

"Understandable. She is a life for a life kinda girl."

"You don't get it."

"Oh, I get it pretty fucking fine, actually."

Frank glared at him with his single working eye, his jaw clenched almost painfully. "Everyone was planning on killing your bitchy ass, you know that, right?" When Ryan looked stunned, he nodded smugly. "Yeah. They all pretended to like you, but we all just wanted you gone. The only reason you stayed was because Lindsey wanted you there. If you'd been there any longer, you'd either have turned into a test subject or dead bodies."

It took a moment for the elder to speak. "At least I'm not a murderer."

"At least I'm not going to die alone."

And then came the slap that woke Gerard, and Frank, with a stinging cheek, got up and left the moulding house they were staying in, not even giving the slightest shit if there were zombies outside. Ryan just couldn't handle the truth. Ryan couldn't handle shit.

~

"Frank fucking Iero." A wicked grin spread over Lindsey's face, and she folded her arms, the murderous, manic look in her eyes almost turning the irises red. Neither Ryan not Ray had ever seen her look so delighted. Frank had.

"Lindsey." He swallowed heavily, glancing at Ryan's mutilated hand, which he'd noticed seconds before he'd turned to leave. "That wasn't your doing, was it?"

She snickered. "Oh, you think so little of me, Frankie. No, that was his zombie boyfriend."

"Zombie...I don't understand." He turned to Ryan. "What's she on about?"

The elder stayed silent, so Lindsey sighed in exasperation, answering for him. "I found Ryan's boyfriend in the middle of a horde of zombies and brought him here. Ryan wants to make him human again."

Frank stared incredulously at Ryan. "Are you fucking nuts?!"

"No, I just...I know I can do it, Frank, I -" with a wave of Lindsey's hand he shut up, clamping his lips together, and Fangy Ray stood by his side, licking his lips every so often.

"Come with me, Frankie. I want to have a little word." She said, leaving the room, and Frank, against his better judgement, followed her.

What was the worst she could do?

~

It turned out, the second he was locked in the lab with a gun pointed at his head, that this was probably only the least she could do. There was blood everywhere; on the walls, staining the tiled floor, on the freaky operating table in the middle of the room - even on the ceiling. He didn't want to know how it got there.

"You came back, you fool," she hissed. "Why would you do that, knowing how much I want you dead?"

"Because Gerard deserved to know the truth." Frank replied, honestly unperturbed by having a loaded gun held by a trigger-happy maniac pointed at him.

"Oh, he's here, is he?" The gun lowered, just the tiniest bit. "Where?"

He shook his head. "I'm not telling you."

"But I just wanna talk to him," she pouted, moving closer, pressing the barrel of the gun firmly against his forehead. "I wanna tell him what you did." Her voice turned into a snarl, and if Frank was anyone else, if Frank was who he'd been before he'd killed Mikey, he'd have flinched, jumped back, anything. But he was too numb for that now.

"I already told him. I showed him."

She slapped him. "That's not enough! You took the man I love and you took his life -"

"Lindsey -"

"- you didn't think stabbing him was good enough for you, oh no, Frankie's too important to get blood on his hands, well -"

"You loved him?"

She stopped talking, staring at him with murder in her eyes. "Yes. Yes I fucking did. I didn't exactly show it, but I -"

"But Lindsey, what about -" he stopped, pressing his lips together, leaving her to figure out the rest.

She barked a laugh, getting it. "You? You think I ever loved you? Oh Frankie, you're unbearably naïve. Nobody could ever love you, not after what you've done."

He knocked the gun away from his forehead, and the impact caused her to pull the trigger, blasting a hole into the wall, less than a foot to his right. "That's not true!"

"It is, Frankie, it is."

"Stop calling me that!" He pushed her back, snatching the gun from her hands and throwing it away. "Stop it!" All the guilt and anger from the past few years had built up and boiled over, and he was scared and lost and hurting and his life had fallen apart.

"Just admit it, Frankie. You know it's true." Her voice was sickly sweet, falsely calm, and he hated it. He wanted to push her and push her and push her until she snapped, just like he did.

"What, and you think Mikey would ever have loved you? A crazy, psycho bitch like you?"

"Of course. What we had was special."

He scoffed. "In your dreams, sweetheart."

"He loved me, he told me so."

"Bullshit. He hated you. We all did."

He expected her to explode, but she didn't. She smiled. "Did you hate me too, Frankie?"

"Yes." He spat, completely lacking conviction, and she knew it, for her smile widened. She was still holding the gun in her hand, casually at her side, but her grip on it was tight, as if she was going to raise it any second.

And he'd be damned if he was going to die today.

"I don't think that's true, is it?"

"You'd better fucking believe it, because with what you were doing, I'd be surprised if anyone liked you at all!"

Her facial expression turned, darkening slightly. He was almost there. A few more pushes. "You're a liar, Frank Iero. You idolised me. I was protecting you. I was protecting us."

He stepped closer, shaking his head. "You wanted to create an army that was as bad - if not worse - as zombies. The only one you were protecting is yourself."

"Well yes, I wanted an army, but I was doing it to protect us all."

"Right, yeah," he snorted. "you do remember all those lives you took, don't you? You do remember Jack, and Ash, and Tyler, and Hayley, and -"

"You're not the Saint you want to be, either! You're a hypocrite! You do remember Mikey, don't you?!" She screamed at him, throwing the gun aside. It skidded across the floor, hitting the door and coming to a stop. "Remember how you pushed him over the edge of a cliff for no fucking reason at all?!"

"That was an accident! You set out to kill those people and destroy them!"

"Mikey Way's death was a tragic accident -" she mocked his voice and gestured with her hands, much like Frank did when he was speaking. "- if you're trying to make me sound like fucking Voldemort, it's not working! You're the only snake-like, cold-blooded bastard around here!"

"Oh I'm sorry, Little Miss Let Me Cut You Open!"

She slapped his other cheek, before spitting in his face. "You're worthless, Frank. Nobody's ever gonna want a half-blind, fucked-up, post-apocalyptic teenage virgin, are they? Least of all Gerard."

He seethed, his cheek stinging. "Don't bring him into this."

"How is he, Frankie?"

"Fuck - you!" He shoved her hard, and she hit the trolley on which her operating tools lay.

She snarled, snatching up a scalpel, and she lunged at him. He had just enough time to dart out the way before it would've punctured his working eye, leaving him completely blind. He twisted his body around, swinging out, his fist hitting her side and knocking some of the air out of her. Normally he wouldn't hit a woman, but desperate times meant desperate measures. In other words, he didn't really want to be stabbed.

She came right back around, jabbing at his side with the scalpel, and he cursed himself for leaving the sword in the car. For leaving it with Bert. Fucking Bert.

Bert wasn't his biggest problem right now - for once.

They fought for at least five minutes, the scalpel slashing across his face and arms, pooling blood onto his skin. She ended up on his back, the blade digging into his neck, and the more he tried to shake her off, the deeper it dug, to the point that he was concerned that she'd slit a major artery or something.

"Get off of me!" He yelled, slamming her back against the wall in a desperate attempt to rid him of her. A five-and-a-half-foot tall teenage boy against an almost-six-foot tall woman, should've been easy, right? Of course it wasn't.

"Gerard deserves better, you selfish wretch!" She snapped, and as he grabbed her wrist and pushed his thumb against a certain point, the scalpel fell from her clutches and clattered against the floor.

"Well Gerard hates me now, so I guess that'll make you smile!" He spun around and tore Lindsey off of him, and she hit the floor with a muffled thump.

She groaned, temporarily immobilised, and Frank surveyed his surroundings. The operating table had been moved, and a lot of the items on the trolley had been knocked onto the floor. There was a dent in the wall, made by her back, and there were a few drops of blood on the floor, from his face and arms.

He was breathing heavily, definitely not expecting a fight like this. It was definitely a fight to the death, and they both knew it. Neither of them wanted to die. Not any time soon, at least. He had to kill her before she killed him, only he didn't think he was up to being responsible for another person's death, even if it was the psycho bitch named Lindsey, the woman responsible for destroying so many people's lives.

Because Lindsey was a monster; she pretended that she had a survivor's camp set up, and she lured people to it, offering protection, offering salvation, offering freedom. What she didn't tell them was that, one by one, they'd be drugged, and in their sleep they'd be taken from their beds, and they'd wake up in the lab with wires plugged into them and sometimes with their bodies cut open. She said she was making a new breed of enhanced human, something that could withstand a zombie bite. Everyone else said she was a murderer, a meddler, someone who messed around with genetics and didn't give a shit.

She didn't want to turn zombies back into humans. She wanted to make something that could fight back against the zombies.

Her best creation/alteration was Ray, but even then it wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.

Frank turned his head for a split second, a second too long, as he searched for something to kill her with, and he remembered his knife just as she lunged at him. He pulled it out upon impact with the wall, and all he could do then was thrust it upwards, and the choked gasp that left her throat told him that he'd hit his target, the blade buried up to the hilt in the soft flesh of her belly.

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