AN: So I recently finished watching TWD and obviously loved it and I'd had this idea in my head for a while watching it but only upon finishing it have I been able to write it. It was just this little 'what if' type scenario playing around in my head as to what things might have been like had Carol had another, older daughter, and so Juliet was formed. It's also kind of intended to give some insight in to other characters, what they're thinking at certain events. I would like to clarify that just because I made her up doesn't mean I'm going to insert Juliet in to every single important event which happened in the show because that just wouldn't realistically happen. Basically each chapter is titled after the episode it's based on and events will pretty much follow the TV series, some dialogue will be taken from it if I feel it's important. Some chapters may be ridiculously long, others short depending which events I'm documenting.

I'm also having to write like I hate some characters who I genuinely love (Carol mainly), and as though I like characters I really don't (Lori mainly) but as characters change so will opinions of them from others so bear with me.

Also I realise I'm not doing the colloquialisms properly. I tried. I failed. Please forgive me.

I think that's about it. Enjoy!

Days Gone Bye

Sophia

As a much younger child, Sophia had always felt rather alone in the world. Her father was uninterested in her, and her mother, although she tried her best, had too much else to worry about. It had therefore always been of some comfort to her on the odd occasions that her sister would pay her the smallest amount of attention she could. Juliet was solitary where Sophia liked to find other people to play with and talk to. Despite this, it was not until Juliet had moved out at the end of one long summer that she realised several very important things. One was how much older than her Juliet really was, as for Sophia the talk of college and leaving home seemed too far in the future to comprehend, and for Juliet it was already happening. Another was just how much she would miss her, as even though she spent minimal time with her, Sophia could always hear her, laughing on the phone, playing her guitar, singing badly in the shower, little reminders that Sophia was not utterly alone in the world. The last she learnt was possibly the hardest for her to accept, but nonetheless she did. It was that, love her younger sister as she did, not even Sophia was enough to force Juliet to stay where she did not want to.

Sophia watched now as her sister basked in the Georgia sunlight. Seeing Juliet it would be easy to mistake the direness of their situation for something much less urgent. There was never really a sense of urgency about her, and she tended to do things slowly and leisurely, never running when the opportunity to walk was there.

Her sister was not dressed for the apocalypse that she found herself in. She had been visiting her family, although she had been reluctant to come, and had only what she had packed in her suitcase. She had heard Juliet say before that, if not for Sophia, she would never come home, and it brought upon her an odd feeling of pride, knowing that she mattered more than her parents, although she would never say so, not after how upset her mother had become when Juliet told her so. It made no difference anyway; Juliet still barely spoke to her, favouring her new friend Amy over her sister. There were seven years between them and very little common ground. She recalled Juliet remarking on a number of occasions how she wished she was older so they could talk about 'real things'. Sophia was never quite sure what she meant by this, as before everything Juliet preferred conversations about books and television to real events, but she never questioned her.

She watched Juliet laugh at something Amy said, pushing her dark blonde hair back from her face, dark blue eyes sparkling beneath the glasses she wore. Juliet often thanked whichever higher power was listening that they hadn't broken yet. She could see alright without them but it strained her eyes to go for too long, and no-one wanted to give her more reason to complain about things.

"Sophia, sweetheart, you okay?" her mother asked her and she looked up and smiled. Her voice was always soft and reassuring. Sophia nodded. "Good. I'm just going back to the tent for a few minutes, I'll be right back." She walked away from her, and again Sophia studied her sister, thinking what an odd contrast to her mother she was. She knew her mother's hair had been long once but it had been darker than Juliet's, and now it was short. They looked similar, though Juliet's eyes were larger and blue and her lips slightly plumper. Her mother was also smaller than her; Juliet was fairly curvy where her mother seemed too thin at times.

"Sophia." Immediately she wondered if it might be her mother again but the voice was wrong, a little too high pitched and noticeably colder than her mother's tone ever was. There was also far less of a southern twang to her voice; two years at college in California had taken its toll. "I've been talking to you for like, three minutes. Would you please go find someone to watch you, okay, 'cause me and Amy wanna go for a walk and Carol said not to leave you by yourself." Sophia didn't understand why Juliet never called her 'Mom', but she's been doing it for too many years to question now. "Why don't you go play with Carl? He seems like a nice kid."

"Okay!" Sophia smiled brightly at her sister and she smiled back at her, ruffling her hair.

"Have fun, okay? Don't tell Carol I'm gone, she'll get all worried about me. I'm not going far from camp. Just need to stretch our legs, don't we Amy?"

"Yeah, and we haven't been to annoy Dixon all day. Might start to think we're going soft on him, and we can't have that!" Amy chimed in cheerfully. She knew by Dixon the two meant the younger of the two brothers that she seldom saw at camp, who when he did come by berated Juliet's outfit choices and took her in to the woods to help him hunt. She had followed them one day because she had nothing better to do and she thought it was odd that he never brought much back when he went with her. The pair had walked for over four miles before they stopped. Sophia had been exhausted but she kept going. She hadn't really been able to see what was going on, but that didn't stop her from hearing the gun shot, Juliet clamouring happily about how she almost hit straight, and him saying gruffly that nearly wasn't going to be good enough. She has stayed and watched her try to perfect her aim before the two gave up and went back. She knew why they kept it secret; her father had expressly forbidden Juliet from learning to shoot when a few other people around camp had offered, and he made his dislike for Daryl clear. If he found out, Sophia wasn't sure which he would be most angry about.

Breaking out of her daydream, Sophia noticed Amy and her sister walking away from camp, chatting together quietly. She did as her sister has implored her and got up to go and find Carl and spent a very pleasant afternoon with him.

Juliet

"I only realised this morning how badly I miss my hairdryer." Juliet nodded in agreement with Amy, although she'd never really spent enough time doing her hair to notice the absence of electrical hair products. "I mean it's been a month and a half and I'm still thinking of things to miss, belongings I'll never see again, and it always seems so petty, y'know? My parents are gone and all I can think about is my stupid hairdryer."

"I don't think you should feel bad that you're missing your stuff. We all are." How Juliet had ended up friends with someone like Amy was beyond her comprehending. She was quiet and kept mostly to herself, and Amy was loud and outgoing. Sure, she was opinionated, but she was only ever like that around people she was comfortable with. She hated meeting new people. Being thrown in to a camp with so many strangers had been Juliet's idea of hell, not helped by the fact she had to either trust them or go out on her own and brave the zombies. Walkers. Whatever it was that Shane called them. She wondered if calling them anything but zombies was because no-one could bear to de-humanise them in such a harsh way, or whether it was just so it seemed less like science fiction. It did all still seem rather surreal to her; it only made sense that others would feel the same and do everything possible to make it seem realer so they could deal with it.

"But then I was going through all the other stuff I miss." Amy carried on as though she had not spoken and she sighed softly. "Like my flat iron, my TV, Wi-Fi, and then I felt even worse." She wondered if there was a point to this story. Like many of Amy's there probably wouldn't be. Juliet however, listened with a smile on her face. She would rather be alone, reading, but if that wasn't an option then she was quite happy to listen to Amy chattering. Even if she was scaring all the wildlife away.

Juliet murmured in agreement with anything she said, tired after another night of not sleeping. She opened her mouth to say something to Amy, wanting to ask her to repeat what she has just said when an arrow flew past her ear.

She froze in horror. Amy screamed. She winced at the high-pitched sound she made. Usually she was quite willing to put up with her little ticks but today she had no patience left, and after having spent the whole day with her she was beginning to grow tired of the other girl.

"Son of a bitch." she swore under her breath, marching over to the tree it had hit. She saw it had pinned a squirrel to the trunk and yanked it out, tossing away the squirrel and throwing the arrow to the floor, snapping it with her foot. It was wooden and probably easily replaced, but she felt it made her point well enough.

"What the hell d'ya do that for?" She watched coldly as Daryl walked over.

"Next time you nearly hit me with one of those things it'll be the damn crossbow I stamp on. Consider yourself lucky." As the two stood glaring at each other she realised that for once, Amy was being quiet, not wanting to get involved. She might not care about the repercussions of getting herself on his bad side, but Amy wasn't one to take a chance on something like that.

"Don' walk so close to where I'm huntin' next time." She rolled her eyes exasperatedly.

"Since when do you hunt this close to camp anyway?" she asked, still irritated with him.

"Trackin' a deer. Not my fault it came close to here." He sounded disinterested, but he very rarely didn't. She thought of demanding an apology but she knew it would fall on deaf ears and be a waste of breath. "Not my fault you got in the way either." She was above rising to it.

"Come on, Amy, let's go."

Amy nodded and began to walk away. Juliet went to follow her before she heard her name. She turned around slowly and quirked an eyebrow.

"When d'you want your next lesson?"

"I'm free this afternoon if it's convenient." she suggested quietly. Amy would notice she wasn't behind her listening to her rambling soon and she would come back.

"Nah, I ain't got time." She tried not to wince visibly. She was an English major. Bad grammar made her skin crawl and it was only coming back to Georgia that she realised just how much southern colloquialisms annoyed her. She wasn't up herself enough to correct it with most people, but she did with Sophia. The idea of her little sister growing up not speaking properly was quite horrific. "We'll do it tomorrow afternoon." He didn't show her the same courtesy of asking if that was good for her, just assumed it was or that if it wasn't she'd make time. It was amazing that he was teaching her to shoot at all, that she hadn't had to ask but he had offered, she could at the very least make herself available when he wanted her to be.

"Okay."

"You should go now before the other one comes back." She rolled her eyes. He hadn't bothered to learn the names of many people in camp. It was a miracle he remembered hers, and he probably only did because they were around each other quite a lot.

"I literally said her name two minutes ago. How does all that go over your head?" He shrugged and she sighed. "See you tomorrow."

"See ya."

She refrained from rolling her eyes until she was somewhere between Amy and Daryl. Sure enough, Amy hadn't even noticed her hanging back, and the two fell back in to step with each other. She was praying for anything but another one-sided conversation, which luckily happened as Amy began gushing about her favourite films.

"Some Like It Hot is probably my favourite film of all time." she added when Amy began talking about it. A friend had made Juliet watch it a few years ago and she had loved it ever since. It was her go to movie when she was upset. A few days before everything had kicked off, when she had first arrived back home, she had watched it again. She might have enjoyed it more, and willed herself to stay awake through it all instead of falling asleep in the middle if she had known she would probably never see it again.

"Twins!" Amy had exclaimed, before going on to quiz her about what other classic movies she liked, and most of the ones she mentioned Amy loved. She explained the plot of All About Eve to her, and the other girl seemed regretful that she had never gotten the chance to watch it.

"Uh, Amy?" Juliet interrupted a woeful monologue about all the films she would never see now, and to her credit, Amy looked at her immediately and smiled.

"Somethin' wrong?"

"D'you have any idea where we are?" Amy looked around the expanse of woods they found themselves traipsing through and looked worried suddenly.

"Oh God, I wasn't paying any attention. I don't even know how far we've walked. Omigawd we're gonna die!" Juliet covered her mouth trying not to laugh. Yes, it wasn't a great situation but she loved how Amy blew everything out of proportion. She was so quiet in the group, but on her own she was dramatic and loud, and though she usually avoided people like that, it was actually one of the things Juliet liked most about Amy.

"We'll be fine." Juliet attempted to sound assured, but she was sure she didn't. "We can just follow our track back the way we came, right?" Looking down at the ground she realised this would be harder than anticipated. There was no wet mud, barely any indication of where they had walked. Nevertheless, she began to walk back a way which looked familiar, Amy following her, which the blind faith that she knew what she was going.

As a child in the woods behind her house, Juliet had loved getting lost. She would head out at sunrise, before the rest of her family awoke with a book, and sit all day reading in a tree and then realise she had no idea how to get back from where she was. Sometimes she would be closer to the house than he realised, more often than not she just would have gone a little further than the last time. As she got older the woods became more familiar to her than anywhere else, and she missed the sensation of being lost, romanticising it in her head. Now, lost again and older she felt like she has the first time, and she remembered why she had always tried so hard to get back, even if she completely hated what she was going back to.

"Juliet?" Amy had been silent for longer than Juliet had ever known her to be, and it surprised her when she spoke again in a very timid voice. "Do you have any idea where we are?" She thought about lying, but it was useless, she knew that. She turned around and looked at Amy and shook her head slowly. Amy bit her lip and looked as though she was trying not to cry. She felt intensely guilty for not being able to get them back to camp yet. Sad crystalline eyes looked at her as Amy leant against a tree and sighed softly.

"We can't be that far. I'm sure we've come sort of the same way." It had sounded like a more reassuring sentence in her head than it did aloud. Nonetheless, Amy nodded.

"We'll find our way back eventually."

"But it's getting dark. Won't this place just be full of walker after that?" She fought the urge to scream at her. Pointing out more problems was never going to help them find a solution, and they desperately needed one.

As she was about to say something the pair heard a twig snap. Amy looked at her worriedly, but Juliet took a breath before she picked a large stick of the ground, brandishing it in case anything came for them. Neither had guns or more substantial weapons; they had never needed them on their walks before and most stayed with those in the group who were more apt at using them. Still, a large heavy stick would be enough to take down a walker, and it would do it quietly without attracting them by making more noise. Juliet hoped it would do the job.

"You're fuckin' kiddin', right, that's all you have?" She sighed in relief and dropped the makeshift weapon, resisting the urge to hit Daryl who had emerged from the trees, now laden with dead squirrels. Amy looked at him uncomfortably. She looked more the type to sing to small woodland animals and let them dress her in the mornings than hunt and eat them.

"We're not allowed better weapons." she answered, not bothering to yell at him for creeping up on the two of them.

"Then why the hell d'you come out here?"

"Needed a break." she replied with a shrug. "Never had trouble before."

"'Cept now you're lost."

"We're not lost."

"Yeah we are." Amy cut in and she sighed. She'd rather be out there for days more blundering around unable to find their way back than admit how terrible her navigational skills were to Daryl. "How do we get back?" Juliet tried not to groan audibly. She hated anyone to think they were better than her.

"Go North."

"Which way is North?" Amy asked.

"That way." Juliet said, pointing before Daryl could make her seem any stupider. Amy however looked to him for clarification, and seemed only happy to take her word for it once he had nodded in conformation.

"Nex' time you come out here without a weapon and I find you, I'll sling you over my shoulder and drag you back to camp myself, you understand me?" He was talking directly to her now, not to Amy. Juliet frowned and turned to Amy.

"Come on. We need to head back now." Juliet told her and she nodded. Juliet linked her arm with hers and the two walked away. They reached camp in under twenty minutes, and Amy, relieved, dropped her arm and ran back to her sister. Juliet really didn't have anyone to run back to, so she sat on a log by herself silently. She could see her sister playing with three other kids, Eliza and Louis Morales, and Carl Grimes. She looked up and caught Carl's mothers eye who was also watching them play and smiled at her softly. She contemplated going to get a book, but just as she was about to Lori came and sat beside her.

"It's good there's a few kids here. Carl'd get so bored without the others." Lori said, gaze drifting back over to the four of them.

"Yeah, so would Sophia. She was always such a sociable kid. She keeps asking Carol about all her friends and where they are. I have no idea how I'd handle it if I had a kid. I mean how do you even begin to explain something like this to them?" Lori smiled weakly and looked away from her son and back to Juliet. Juliet pushed a long strand of blonde hair out of her face.

"It's not easy. Telling Carl his Dad didn't make it… I almost lied. I almost said that he was okay and he was gonna meet us later, but he deserved to know, to not have false hope. Honestly I'm just taking it one day at a time. God knows what kind of life for him there's going to be. I can't ever see this… hell ending."

"No. Neither can I."

The two women were very quiet for a moment before Sophia rushed over, dragging Eliza behind her, both grinning happily.

"Sorry to interrupt, Mrs Grimes, but can Juliet come play with us?" Sophia asked. Eliza looked down at the ground shyly, but nodded. Juliet looked at Lori who smiled at her and rolled her eyes almost unperceivably.

"Sophia, what did I tell you 'bout callin' me Lori? And I think it's up to Juliet whether she goes with you or not."

"Well since you asked so nicely, and I have been putting it off for a few days I may as well." Juliet said, and the two ran off. "I'll catch up in a minute!" she called after them. "It was good talking to you Lori, I'll see you later." Lori grinned at her.

"Have fun with the kids. Watch out for Carl for me, could you? I'm goin' to find Shane."

"Course I will." she answered. They both got up, and as Lori walked over to the tents to check for Shane, she went towards the kids who all grinned at her. Sophia tackled her into a hug, and she stroked her hair softly before the younger girl let her go. "So, what are y'all playing then? How do I win?" She grinned as they explained the game to her. She was old enough to know that she should let the kids win, but not quite old enough that she was willing to. Despite trying genuinely hard she lost to Carl, after which she exhaustedly decided to go down to the lake before dinner to wash quickly.

"It was good of you to let him win." Lori said with a smile as she walked past, obviously having returned to her seat while Juliet was otherwise occupied.

"Well, there comes a point when you get old enough that you know it's the right thing to do." Lori nodded and carried on chopping up whatever she was making for dinner, and Juliet walked past her and down to the lake.

The next morning, after begrudgingly helping with the laundry, she sat by herself. A few members of the camp had gone in to Atlanta, and Amy was worried about her sister Andrea who had gone along with them, which meant she wasn't really in the mood for talking. She might have gone out to the forest by herself, but Daryl, who was probably out hunting again, if he'd even gone back at all, and risking running in to him unarmed, put her off doing that, so she was stuck. She'd probably get roped in to helping with the dinner sooner or later, but they wouldn't start that until at least after midday which meant a morning of nothing. Again. She wished she had gone with the others to the city, but it wasn't like she would have been much help. Plus, as much as she was grateful to the younger of the Dixon brothers for teaching her to defend herself, she didn't have to like the older of the two, and she sure as hell wasn't going to volunteer to go out on the same run he insisted on going on.

"There y'are." Juliet froze and looked up. The figure loomed, blocking out the sunlight, with a voice cold and recognisable. She knew her own voice was clod and lacked emotion, but that was because she forcibly blocked it out. He was just like that.

"Yes, daddy?" she asked, willing herself to keep her eyes fixed on him, to not look away. She wished she wasn't by herself. It was harder to handle him when she was.

"You wash them shirts I gave you this mornin'?" she nodded. "Good. Your bitch mother ain't been doin' 'em proper. Nex' time you do 'em get your sister to help. She needs to stop being so fuckin' useless." She nodded again and pursed her lips together. Of all the times there might have been an apocalypse, it would have had to be the one time she had come home from college, the first time in two years that she had seen this man. She would have to be stuck with him, forced to see him every day, watching as he treated her mother the same way he always had, unashamed to do it so the others could see.

"I'll put them in your tent when they're dry." Her voice was small, quiet, scared, everything she'd felt as those years she lived with him flooding back in a few seconds. He wasn't even here to hurt her. He hadn't since all this had started; she always made sure to be around other people when she saw him just in case he tried to. He might not have been above hitting his wife in front of them but he wouldn't let the others watch him hit his daughter.

He grunted in wordless acknowledgement and wandered away from her, and finally she felt as though she could breathe again.

"Y'okay?"

She looked up at Shane who had replaced her father, and motioned for him to take the seat next to her, which he did with a half-hearted smile.

"Yeah, I'm fine." It didn't sound assured at all, but Shane knew better than to question it.

Juliet felt around him the way she did around most good-looking men who she didn't know very well – extremely awkward. She had little to no common ground with him, at least none that she had discovered, yet he was nice to her and always tried to talk to her. She saw the looks of disdain he gave Ed when Carol turned up with fresh bruises. He always went over in the evenings when her three family members sat alone. He always made sure her little sister was okay. He seemed like a good guy. He was one of the few people she had met that she trusted.

"Look, it's not my place to say anything, but your Dad gives you any trouble you come to me, you understand?" Her eyes flitted to her mother who had already started ironing some clothes, probably ones that had dried from the day before.

"Thank you, for that, but it's really not me you need to be worried about." He followed her gaze which remained resting on Carol and nodded, a gesture which she could barely see out of the corner of her eye.

"Well, I'll watch out for the both of you."

She might have said something else, but it was with slight surprise that she instead heard the crackling of the radio and a voice coming over it. Amy was at it in an instant, trying to reply to whoever was speaking on it. She could barely make out one word from another, trying to reply.

"We're just outside the city." She was saying in to it, although her voice did not appear to be going through to whoever was speaking on the other end of the transmission. "Dammit!" she exclaimed, clearly having lost it altogether. "Hello? Hello?" she kept trying, although it now seemed even more futile than before. "He couldn't hear me. I couldn't warn him." Amy spoke to no-one in particular and sounded rather defeated by the whole affair.

"Try to raise him again." Juliet looked to where the voice was coming from, Dale, a man of probably over sixty sat atop his RV, as always with his binoculars and a shotgun close by his side, keeping watch. If she was tallying how many people she trusted, at least to keep them safe, Dale was probably among them, although she couldn't recall ever speaking to him outside of the group. "Come on, son. You know best how to work this thing." He was looking at Shane now, and he nodded, leaving Juliet alone and went towards the radio.

Amy

"Hello, hello, is the person who calls still on the air?" As Shane began to speak in to the radio, now transmitting only static, Amy went to stand with Juliet and gave her a look of confusion, which her friend returned. Amy knew she wasn't the type of person that someone quiet like Juliet wanted to be around, Juliet wasn't really the type of person she would have been friends with outside this kind of setting either, she was too quiet and bookish, and in turn Amy was too bubbly and childish and she sure as hell wasn't intelligent the way Juliet was, but she needed to be around someone other than her sister and Juliet was on her own too. "This is officer Shane Walsh, broadcasting a person unknown, please respond." Shane continued over the radio. The static however remained, and no reply came through. With a small sigh, Shane put it down. "He's gone."

Amy watched as Lori and her son came over to the group. Lori looked almost relieved that the transmission had come through.

"There are others. It's not just us." she said. She didn't exactly sound happy, but it sounded as though a weight was off her shoulders. Although they had all assumed they couldn't be the only survivors of this, there was always a small doubt in everyone's mind as to whether they might be. The thought was completely isolating, imagining that the twenty odd members of group might be the only inhabitants of the Earth left.

"Yeah, We knew there would be, right, that's why we let the CB on." He had the same relieved tone as Lori, though he had always reminded everyone that there would be others. Still, whoever the man on the other end was, he was the first to come through on the CB. Whether others had tried or not, Amy didn't know.

"Lots of good it's been doing. And I've been saying for a week, we ought to put signs up on 85 to warn people away from the city."

"Folks got no idea what they're getting into." Amy cut in, and beside her, Juliet nodded.

"We don't have enough time." Shane said with a shake of his head.

"I think we need to make time." Lori challenged him.

"I agree." Juliet spoke for the first time since the transmission, cutting Shane off from whatever argument he might have been about to make back. "It's not fair to let people drive in to that. I mean, how much time is it actually gonna take? We make signs up here in the evenings, get the group who go on runs to get us something to make them with, then we get them to take them the next day, it's like an hour we have to spare and we could save a bunch of people." Shane looked quiet.

"The ones who go on runs, we already put them at risk enough by going it to the city, now you want them to travel further down the highway? Which of them is going to agree to that? Who the hell would you propose to send?" Dale interjected.

"I'll go. Give me a vehicle." Lori said sharply, glares split between Dale and Shane.

"Nobody goes anywhere alone, you know that." Shane interjected before she could say anything else to plead her case. Juliet frowned, and Amy watched her closely.

"Well I you won't let her go alone, I'd go with her. I don't care about putting my life at risk; we're saving people from walking in to a city overrun with walkers."

"All due respect, Juliet, you wouldn't be much help, would you, if somethin' happened? Look, we'll talk 'bout this again when things are a lil' more stable 'round here. 'Til then anyone goin' to the city is just gonna have to take their chances." Juliet looked poised and ready to argue this, but Amy put a hand on her arm and silently begged her not to. There had been a lot of arguments in camp over the time they had all been there, a lot of tension, and everyone was just starting to get over it. Whether Juliet agreed with him or not was beside the point. Juliet sighed but nodded and Lori, looking defeated, walked away from the group. Her son went to follow her, but Shane told him to stay back and followed her himself.

"Thanks for the help, Dale." Juliet said, annoyance clear in her tone.

"Juliet, I want these people to die about as much as you do, but we have to think of our own first. We help each other first and other survivors second. You need to remember that." She didn't seem to have an argument to that, so she simply sighed again.

When she had first been at camp, Juliet had been quiet all the time. She had rarely involved herself in group discussions, much less the arguments, but Amy had noticed that as she became more comfortable around all of them, she would speak a lot more, rarely to the whole group but often to individuals, and if she had a relevant point then she would make it in a discussion.

"C'mon, Juliet. Lori said she wanted to go pick mushrooms, and unless you wanna stay here and run about with the little kiddies again or read by yourself you should come along. Hell, you probably know more 'bout them than we do."

"Yeah, I really don't, but I'll help. Remember to take a knife. Wouldn't want to be caught without a weapon in the forest again." Amy chuckled and went to find one as Juliet slipped her shoes on and sat waiting for her to return.

"Ready to go?" Amy asked her. She was daydreaming again, something she slipped in to a lot when she was by herself. Amy wished she could shut off reality that easily, but from the very little Juliet had actually told her about her life, she had been shutting herself off for years, and she'd had ample practice.

"Yeah." Juliet stood up hurridly and Amy wondered why until they left and she turned to see Juliet's mother Carol walking over in the general direction they had been in, although she headed towards her youngest daughter seemingly without a second thought. Obviously she'd been worried that Carol wanted to talk to her. Amy, who had had a very good relationship with both of her parents, didn't really understand it. She hadn't asked and Juliet hadn't offered to tell her. It was clearly personal, and it would be a little out of line for Amy just to ask, although she could be a little insensitive in what she said, not meaning to be, just not thinking much through before she spoke.

The two found Lori easily, and without a word the three women headed in to the forest.