"Why, Abbey? Why? Why?" Her fists connected painfully with Abigail's chest in a harsh, unsteady rhythm, almost as though the other girl was trying to alter the steady tempo of Abbey's heartbeat. "I thought you loved him, Abbey! I thought you said you loved him! So why? Why did you do that? You killed him, Abbey! You killed him when you said you loved him! You drank a potion to kill Goody Proctor but Goody Proctor sits alive still in the prison and John Proctor hangs in the gallows not one hour dead!" Mary's normally bright, clean, cheerful face was now grubby and stained with dirt. The girl's clear blue eyes were misty and red rimmed and tears were etching shallow rivulets as they streamed down her face. "I said I didn't want to hurt you no more Abbey but how can I when you force me to? How can I when you force me to hang John Proctor for you, Abbey? How? How? You've turned us all into murderers, Abbey! You said yourself that there was never no witchcraft! Even if we did dance, Lucifer never came with his black book to make us sign! We've hanged innocent people, Abbey! We've hanged good people, Abbey! God doesn't love liars, Abbey, but He hates murderers! What have you done to us? What have you done?"

Only numb silence greeted Mary Warren's half screamed questions and eventually her pounding slowed to a halt and her hands dropped to her sides at last as soundless tears continued to course sluggishly down her face. Mary slumped to the ground as her weight suddenly became too much for her legs to bear, sobs still wracking her body. She sat there, shivering and whimpering in her fear and confusion and misery and still Abigail made no sound, no attempt to respond.

Somewhere, distantly, some part of Abbey was vaguely aware that her chest ached where Mary had been pounding her fists against it, but she didn't care about the dull pain. She dimly hoped that her pale skin would be stained with purple bruises after this, a mark of the dark mars that were unseen on her soul. He was dead. She had wanted to get rid of the wife, but instead had killed the husband. Abbey had thought that she had known what she was doing, but she hadn't. So mad, she'd been so mad at him, at what he had said in court, that she hadn't heard the words she and the other girls had forced from Mary, hadn't comprehended her meaning. Hadn't understood that she was condemning the man she loved to his doom. She'd have rather been labeled a harlet than see John Proctor hang. And she had watched. Paris had forced her to watch, to see the long reach of justice. How she hated that man in whose house she was made to live in. It was like watching her parents being murdered all over again, but this time it was different. This time she wasn't the innocent child lying next to them in the bed. This time she was the executioner, the murderer. This time it was her fault.

Not so very long ago, Abbey guessed that she probably would have tried to blame all of this on Mary, after all it was she who had actually spoken the accusation, but if Abbey hadn't tried to save her reputation, had simply confessed her sins of lying, John would still be alive. She closed her eyes, fighting off the tears. The creaking and groaning of the rope as a gentle breeze had blown his dead body back and forth ever so slightly still echoed deafeningly in her ears.

Abbey could have saved him even as he stood waiting with the noose around his neck. If she had just called out, confessed to her trickeries, he would have been spared. She almost did. But in the end, John still loved his wife, not her and she had remained silent and watched him drop and the rope tighten. Watched him die. And only when the rope had begun to creak and groan at her, taunting her, laughing at her broken heart, did she finally scream. But it was too late. He was already dead.