When Victor had turned tiny Tabitha towards her, Miranda had pulled the exhausted girl into her lap. The warmth of Tabitha helped Miranda. It helped to have someone else to focus on, someone who was helpless and even more scared than she was.
Miranda was hungry and exhausted herself, her stomach growling in protest. She felt like an idiot for not eating lunch before all this, as though somehow she should have known. She wondered what Kat and Cordelia were thinking, if they knew where she was yet.
The gunshot went off and Miranda started to scream before stuffing her knuckles into her mouth to try and stop it. Tabitha. Sleeping Tabitha. Ian. Dead Ian. Blood. Guns.
Her whole body shook with the force of holding back her scream and the desire to sob. She felt like her stomach and chest was convulsing and breaking with the sheer weight of it.
Don't wake her. Don't wake her. But Tabitha was stirring, asking mommy?, woken by three people in the room breaking down. She clutches Tabitha tighter, pushing the girl's face against her chest. She didn't want her to see anything. She wanted to hide her.
Her body gave out though and she started crying, Tabitha squirming now to try and get free of Miranda's locked up arms.