"Carol?"
She turned at Olivia's hesitant voice. The young woman couldn't even make eye contact with her.
"What's wrong?" Carol's gaze swept the area and her hand gripped her knife; her nerves were still raw after the recent Wolf invasion.
"N-nothing." Olivia stuttered, eyeing the knife on Carol's waistband. "I mean, obviously the attack was horrible and it- it was really bad. So bad. But, I was wondering, I-"
"Olivia." Carol's stern voice quieted her immediately and her spine straightened, as if she was responding to a general. "Just spit it out. What is it?"
Olivia took a deep breath and tried to look Carol in the eye. "How long have you… been Rambo?"
Carol stared back at her for a solid ten seconds before she snorted and gave a tiny smile. Olivia wanted to laugh with her, but was still incredibly nervous around this woman she thought she had known.
The same woman she greeted on her first day in Alexandria. And back then, she couldn't even pull the rifle over her shoulder without wincing. There was no way she could have faked the helpless housewife ruse for this long, could she? The same Carol whose top talents used to be making cookies with a handful of ingredients and sharing casserole recipes now took on the persona of a sharp shooting, naturally leading warrior-woman?
"I'm not Rambo." She broke Olivia from her trance. "I just adapted to my surroundings." The long-term Alexandrian nodded in understanding, still in shock between the recent invasion and the revelation of her friend being nothing short of Wonder Woman.
She smiled at Olivia again. "And you can too. The woman I was pretending to be? I was her a few years ago…" Carol's eyes flashed to Jesse's house nearby. She noticed Sam curled up on his back porch with arms wrapped protectively around himself. "I didn't think I could be strong, but I had to. And so do you, if you wanna make it through all of this." She took one of her many knives off her waistband and handed it to Olivia with a tiny grin. "These are good for tasks other than prepping an entree."
Olivia nodded eagerly as she received Carol's knife. A part of her wanted to ask Carol to sign it, but she held back the request.
Carol glanced back up to Sam's house and her heart dropped into her stomach and her legs started sprinting without even thinking.
"Sam! Run!" Carol shrieked. She didn't feel her shoulder when she knocked into Olivia as she ran. She didn't hear voice as she continually screamed for Sam to get away. All she could see was Sam and a man lurking behind him.
A man with a bloody red 'W' on his face.