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“Barbara.”
“No.”
Joanie’s voice cuts through them. “She’s right.”
The words come out thin. Too quiet. Too wrong in Joanie’s mouth.
She looks down at her arm, then back up at Lyla. Her eyes are wet now, but she doesn’t let the tears fall. “She’s right. You all need to get away from me.”
Silence hits like a body dropping. Joanie swallows, and for once, she has no joke ready.
Lyla steps forward slowly. Her gun is in her hands, but pointed down.
Joanie’s mouth trembles once before she forces it into a crooked smile. “Wow. Getting shot by Lyla. Honestly? Kind of iconic.”
Lyla’s face breaks, lips trembling. “Don’t do that,” she says, voice rough.
Joanie blinks. “Do what?”
“Make jokes so I don’t have to feel this.”
Joanie’s smile fades.
The alley changes around that sentence.
This is Joanie.
The kid who crawled under Lyla’s armor, kicked her feet up, and made herself impossible not to love.
Lyla takes another step, then stops herself like there’s a line on the ground she can’t cross without losing the ability to do what might need done. “Kiddo.”
The word cracks something in Joanie. Her face folds, and she looks younger than she has in months. Younger than the sharp mouth, the quick hands, the violence she wears like armor. For one moment, she looks like a scared teenage girl sitting in dirty snow with blood running down her arm and a unicorn pooping on a rainbow sticker on her chest.
“Lyla,” she whispers.
“I’m here.” Lyla’s grip tightens on the gun. “I’m right here.”
Joanie shakes her head.
“You don’t have to,” Lyla says, voice softer now, and somehow that hurts worse. “You just have to stay with me as long as you can.”
Trish whispers to Lyla, “She doesn’t have much time.”
Wesker makes a small, broken sound behind me.
Joanie’s eyes flick to him, then away, like looking too long will make this real. “If I turn, don’t let me bite anyone.”
“I won’t,” Lyla says.
“And don’t let Jacob feel guilty forever.”
Jacob makes a strangled sound. “Too late.”
Joanie tries to smile at him and fails. “Then only let him feel guilty for, like, a medium amount of forever.”
Lyla’s mouth trembles.
Joanie looks back at her. “And don’t let Carlos do anything stupid.”
