It was a night much like many other nights they had spent together as younger women, and they were so grateful to Alice and Dana that they couldn’t seem to stop thanking them.

As they left the following day, they walked side-by-side down the hallway to the front entrance by the busy street just smiling at each other’s teases with a light airy feel that they’d lost in the many weeks previous. Tina linked her arm with Bette’s, and she rested her head on the strong shoulder as they had reached the elevator.

“So what do you want me to make for lunch?” Tina asked quietly, slipping her hand into Bette’s as the elevator dinged past the sixth floor … the fifth floor … “You know, now that we both took some time off. I thought maybe we could make something like … I don’t know. Some complicated meal.”

As the doors opened and they stepped out into the foyer, they both physically jolted at the image from down the vacant hallway. There before them, certain and horrifyingly persistent, stood Sophia. The biggest scare for Bette was that she wasn’t doing anything at all – not even threatening them. She was simply standing there like she’d been doing it that way for hours. Bette and Tina stumbled backwards at the sight, with Tina’s fingers digging into her wife’s arm.

“Oh my god,” she gasped only to Bette, glancing over the seemingly indifferent girl standing before them: “B-Bette … She has a fucking gun! …”

Without another word, Bette and Tina took off in the opposite direction of their threat – Bette shielding her wife from injury as they fled the place. They flew out onto the street in a panic, Tina reaching for her phone. She dialled 911 with trembling fingers as Bette hurried her along to their car.

“Y-yes … It’s Tina Kennard here – I’m at 5^th and 2^nd, and … and she’s here!” As Tina slipped into the car, she dropped the phone and as Bette got in behind her – wait, behind her?! “HELP-!”

Before Bette could try anything, there was a gun pointed at the woman she loved. There was a surprisingly strong hand that had slipped gently over Tina’s throat, and in broad daylight, the young woman was getting away with it. She didn’t know what to say. She had never been in such a situation before, but immediately she knew she would have to do as she was asked.

“Drive,” she heard from the backseat, and so she turned on the car.

Bette’s breathing was so unsteady that her hands were shaking, but she maintained her focus for Tina. Anything for Tina. “Wh-where?”

“How about you hang up that phone, will you? Do it slow.”

Cautiously, Bette hung up the cell phone, plopped it back into Tina’s purse, and put her hands back on the wheel.

“Where to?”

Sophia smiled innocently at Bette through the rear-view mirror. “That’s more like it.”