At five years old, Rick Grimes was the centre of his daughter's world.
She didn't see him as much as she saw the others in the group, she spent most of her day being Carol's shadow, but that didn't change the fact that her father was a hero in her eyes.
She'd never actually seen him take down a walker but Carl had told her about the now their Dad had found them after the walkers took over.
She couldn't quite picture a time before them, she'd always assumed they'd been there forever. No one laughed as they told her that they happened a year or two before she was born.
In fact most of the things she knew about before came from Carl. What their mom was like. Who used to make all the roads and buildings. What Dad was like before.
Carl didn't know what to say when she asked that one. She'd just figured that if everything changed then her Dad must of too. Carl took her reason with a sigh.
"He used to smile more." He said before changing the subject.
For Judith though, it was just like the walkers. She couldn't picture a time when her Dad laughed at jokes or smiled freely.
The only time she really saw him happy was the end of the day when everyone was in for the night and going to bed. Then she gave him a hug goodnight and he smiled just a little but more.
Her dad didn't need to smile more. He was enough.
~o~o~o~
It was the night of her seventh birthday and she was practically falling asleep sitting up.
"Hey baby." She opened heavy eyes to see her Dad crouched down in front of her smiling. It was nice, she thought, he looked relaxed. "You wanna come see the stars before you go to bed?"
Her tiredness receded a little. Time alone with her Dad was a rare commodity. Especially when he seemed inclined to be happy.
She almost got up by herself but she decided to push her luck. It was her birthday after all. Trying to look as bleary as possible she held her arms up.
With a huff of laughter her Dad picked her up and swung her to sit comfortably on his hip. She smiled into his shoulder as he walked to the door, trying not to break the facade now that she was almost entirely awake.
"You're almost too big for me to keep doing this, y'know." Her Dad teased. It wasn't true, not really, she was small for her age and she'd seen her Dad heft bigger things than her about, but she laughed all the same.
"Well, I'm seven now. A grown up." She said.
They reached the outside and he put her down before sitting. She sat next to him and he looked at her.
"Suppose you are, baby. Be teaching you how to drive soon." Her dad was teasing again but she didn't mind. It was the same every birthday. He'd be sad in the morning and then he'd try and be happy for her in the evening. Carl said it was because their Momma died on the same day she was born and it made him sad to remember. It made her sad too and she'd never even met her.
Her dad laid back and looked up at the stars just like he said they would. After a second she followed suit. A creak in a tree made her sit bolt upright again but her Dad was soothing her before she'd even fully processed it. It always made her nervous to be outside at night, and looking up where she couldn't see around her just made it worse.
"Hey, hey it's okay." Her dad whispered, giving her a one armed hug, "I checked everything before I brought you out here. Ain't nobody here but us." She relaxed. If her Daddy said somewhere was safe you could bet your life on it. Least that was what Daryl told her last time she got uneasy.
"So," her Dad began, "seeing as it is your birthday, I may have got you something."
Her head whipped round to look at him in excitement to see that he was still smiling too.
"You got me something? What is it? Can I have it?" She babbled excitedly.
Her dad laughed and reached in his coat. "Close you eyes." He said.
She squeezed them shut quickly, hands out in anticipation.
Something soft and vaguely fluffy was put into her outstretched hands. When she opened them it was easy to see in the moonlight a small stuffed rabbit. She ran a hand over it reverently, feeling small scars where damage had been carefully and expertly sewed back up- courtesy, no doubt, of Carol.
"Found it in a storage room at the back of the mall we hit the other day. Thought you might like it."
She hugged it close to her chest and for a second- a brief but glorious unit of time- the world seemed friendly.
"I love it, Daddy. Thank you."
"Happy birthday, love."
~o~o~o~
She was nine when she tried to kill her first walker.
She'd been pleading and whining for her Dad to teach her for as long as she could remember but he'd always told her she was too young or too small. It sounded like excuses even to her young ears.
It was only one quiet night over dinner that Carol tried to make her understand. Walkers were dangerous.
She'd rolled her eyes and tried to talk but Carol gave her the look and spoke over her.
"Before you say you know," she said giving her a hard stare, "you gotta remember that you're still small. We just don't want anything bad to happen to you is all. Go easy on your Dad."
That shut her up real quick. She knew that there had been more people around when she was younger and she wasn't naive enough to think they'd just wondered off in the night. Someone even said that Carol had had a daughter once. She'd asked Carl but he hadn't answered and the look on his face told her not to ask again.
She thought about it for a while. She was pretty small for her age and some of the walkers were quick. She thought about the look her Dad got on his face every time she asked if he'd teach her.
Maybe she could wait a little while.
So that night, when her Dad walked back in, she went to tell him that he was right. For now at least.
"Dad, I-"
"Come with me." He took her hand and walked her out of the front door.
"Where we going?" She asked uncertainly.
"You'll see." She looked up at him. He didn't look angry but he looked how he looked when he was working on keeping them all safe. Determined. He didn't look much like her dad.
"Daddy, I don't want-"
"There." Her Dad stopped short pulling her to a halt with him. She looked up and took an instinctive step back. "You see that?" Her Dad asked, staying silent until she nodded her head, "That's where we're going."
They carried on walking with Judith feeling sicker with every step. Each one brought her closer to the walker at the end of the field. It was tangled in the barbed wire she'd seen Daryl and her Dad hang out a few months earlier but even from a distance she could see it struggling.
As they got closer she could hear it; dry rattles of breath into dead flesh and guttural moans that made her want to run. They got close enough so she could see the rotten putrid flesh being scraped off it's protruding bones as it struggled to get to them through the wire.
"Stop." Her Dad stopped ten feet away from it and looked down at her. Then he unclipped the gun from his holster and pushed it into her small hands. It was heavier than she'd expected.
She looked back up at him, a lump inexplicably swelling in her throat.
"I've got it ready for you." Her Dad said looking down at her. He looked cold, he never looked at her like that, "All you gotta do is point it and pull the trigger. Go."
He took a step back and watched her.
She couldn't stand to see that look on his face so she turned back to the walker. She tried to hold the gun up but it shook and dipped with every tremor of her hands.
"Keep it steady." Her dad warned.
She looked at the walker. He definitely wasn't a fresh one. Grey all over and falling apart. He probably didn't have much time left being mobile anyway.
She took a deep breath and fought to keep her hand steady.
He hadn't been much younger than Carl was. His t-shirt was in tatters and almost completely sunbleached but she could just make out a picture. It was some sort of comic hero or something. Maybe he'd liked it when he'd been alive.
Her vision blurred as her eyes filled with tears.
The gun dropped.
After that it was pretty simple. Her Dad killed the walker and held her hand as he walked her back to the group. She sobbed and hiccuped the whole way until he picked her up and carried her back. She really was getting too big by now but she clung to him all the way, as though she thought he might leave her.
They didn't speak of it again and she didn't ask.
~o~o~o~
When she was ten years old caught Carol talking to herself under her breath before she went to bed.
"Watcha doing?" she asked curiously.
Carol smiled, "I'm praying."
Judith gave her a blank look. Carol tried to explain but it looked like something that Judith was just never going to understand.
"But if there's a man in the sky, why don't he fix things?"
Carol didn't have an answer for that but then no one did when she asked. Even Carl who usually knew everything and was the only one willing to tell her.
She asked her Dad eventually if he ever did praying. After what everyone had said about it she was the most sure about his answer over anyone else's.
But he'd suprised her.
"Sometimes." He said guardedly, "Why'd you ask?"
"But why do you pray?" She asked. She really wanted to understand but she just didn't get it. And no one could actually tell her why. It was like it was just a routine for them. They did it because they'd always done it. That was fine but it didn't explain why.
That was when he'd suprised her again.
"Because I've got a lot to be thankful for." He said. She must have given him a look because his mouth quirked up as he tried to elaborate, "We don't got much in this world but we got enough to live. We've got good land and good people. We're not doing too bad all things considered." He paused and looked down at her, "But most of all I thank Him for you and Carl. That's what I pray for."
It still didn't make complete sense but after that night she made sure that before she fell asleep she'd say a quick 'thank you' for everything she had. She supposed they did have it pretty good.
She said 'thank you' for the food and the water. The thick walls and warm blankets. The friends they had around them and their still beating hearts.
But most of all she said 'thank you' for her family. There might only be two of them but as far as she could see that was more than anyone else had.
~o~o~o~
She was eleven years old when her brother died. It wasn't a walker or another group of people or anything that she'd ever thought about.
It was a chicken.
Carl had been scouting ahead for a day or two and managed to catch a wild chicken. Cooked it, or so he'd thought, eaten it, hadn't thought no more about it.
That was until he'd stumbled back into camp, ashen grey and puking his guts up. He stopped throwing everything up once he'd got rid of it all and then some but he couldn't keep anything down, not even the water that she tried to give him.
Carol was the one looking after him the most while her Dad and Maggie went to try and find a pharmacy in the next town over. Glenn didn't argue with Maggie but she didn't miss the look in his eyes. She wasn't stupid- it had been nearly twelve years since the walkers started. If there was a pharmacy in town there most certainly wouldn't be anything in it.
Her dad left, Carol went to fetch some fresh water and suddenly it was just her by her brother's bedside. He'd been hit pretty hard by the fever and he couldn't seem to stop shaking even if he had the energy to try.
She was just sitting there quietly when his eyes fluttered open and she could see he was actually there this time, not some fever sick man she didn't know.
"Hey." He said weakly.
She shuffled nearly quickly, "Hey." She whispered back, "How you feeling?"
It was a stupid question but his chalky lips pulled up at the corners, "Peachy. Just peachy."
At a loss for anything to do she moved the wet washcloth on his forehead. It wasn't actually much cooler than him at this point but she was useless to do anything else.
He reached up with a shaky hand and pushed back a loose strand of dark hair, "You got our Mom's hair, sis."
She reached up and took his hand in hers. She held it tight as though if she could keep it still then her brother would be fine and he wouldn't die from a stupid fever.
There was a silence before the words that she wanted to ask were said, "You scared?"
He looked at her and she knew they both knew what was coming. There was no point denying it or trying to stop it. Her brother was going to die.
"No." He said after a moment, "Can't be much worse than this, right?" She looked at him, sick, dying and in pain and for a second she thought he might be right, "And, if all that heaven shit's true, who knows? I might even see Mom again."
Her throat felt like it was closing up as she looked at him. Any minute now she was going to shatter but all she could do was try and hold on for the last few minutes of her brother's life.
"What was she like?" She asked thickly.
Carl looked at her and smiled though it was looking more and more painful for him to try and find the effort. Still, he took a deep racking breath and started how he always started these conversations. Her brother was the last link she had to the mysterious woman who'd given her life. Some of the others talked about her once in a blue moon, but Carl was the only one who knew what she was like as a Mom. And somehow asking Dad had just never seemed right.
"She would have loved you. Already did, even though you weren't even born yet." That was what he always told her and yet somehow it never lost impact. Her mother had loved her. She'd never get tired of hearing that.
"She was real pretty," her brother said reaching for her hair again, "looked just like you."
"Was she nice?"
It was their routine for talking about Mom and yet even as she said it she realised it was the last time she'd ever ask.
"The best. She was-" he broke off for a hacking cough that racked his frame and left him gasping. She sat by unable to do anything except hold on to him and pray that he wasn't leaving just yet, "-a good mom. Always loving us and being there." He paused to grasp her hand, "Didn't mean she was too soft though. I told you about the time I took Daryl's gun and she gave me such a dressing down I couldn't look her in the eye for a week."
Judith laughed at that. Her brother was a skilled fighter who fitted this world like two pieces of a jigsaw. The idea he could be cowed by their mother was as out of place as it was endearing.
There was silence for a minute only interrupted by the harsh rattle of Carl's breathing.
"Judith?" She wasn't imagining that his voice was weaker. She felt like she should get someone but Dad was gone and the others were all searching for some kind of solution. She was the only one left.
"Yeah?"
"Go get my holster."
She climbed to her feet and crossed the room to grab the holster that sat on a chair, casually flung there after they'd carried her brother in. It was heavy.
She gave it to him and looked as he fumbled with the catch. When it was done he dragged out the gun.
"Here." He said pressing the cold metal into her hand, "You gotta take this."
Confusion set in before it was lifted and horror replaced it, "No." She said shifting back, wide eyes fixed in her brother, "I won't do it. I won't!"
Carl sighed, ignoring the way the breath caught in his throat, "Judy, you asked me if dying scares me and it doesn't. Becoming one of them scares me."
She didn't move. She couldn't.
He sighed again, his voice becoming weaker, "It's the same one I used for Mom when she had you. Beginning to think being shot might be hereditary." He smiled to himself as though he were remembering an old joke and closed his eyes as though savouring better times.
Minutes passed.
"Carl?" No reply.
She leant over and put a hand on pulse. She had to wait a moment to feel it but it was still there. Barely.
"Carl!" She tried again more forcefully. Nothing.
He didn't wake up again.
She didn't know how long she spent just staring at him but at some point his pulse stopped in his neck and his skin finally began to cool. It was too little too late. She knew it was dangerous to be there now but she didn't move. She couldn't even look away.
By the time her Dad got back empty handed and bitter she was stood outside beside Carol with a gun in her hand and her brother truly and finally dead.
~o~o~o~
At seventeen years old the unthinkable happened.
Her Daddy got bit.
When she used to think about anyone of their group dying she always thought it would be different for each of them.
Daryl would go out on a hunt and never come back.
Carol would stand her ground and protect all the small ones behind her.
Dad would go down in a blaze of glory, saving them all.
The reality was worse. He was collecting water at the time. Fucking water. He didn't hear it coming and it got the best of him.
They heard the shout in their make shift camp. Her eyes immediately turned to everyone else, frozen in the same position as she. Then time sped up and she was hurtling through the woods, tearing through undergrowth and whipping past trees.
By the time she got there the walker was dead and her Dad was half way to joining it.
As far as bites went it was bad. Right between the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Even as she watched the blood was pouring out from between weak fingers as he tried feebly to stem the flow. She collapsed onto her knees beside him and replaced his shaky hand with her steadier one.
He was already too pale. He was almost gone and they both knew it. The rest of group gathered round but none came forward.
She didn't realise that she was crying until her father's hand came up and clumsily wiped it from her face.
"Don't cry."
She tried to speak but all that came out was a sob. Her Dad was dying in front of her and she couldn't even say goodbye.
"You gotta be strong now, baby."
She looked at him through swimming vision to see him trying to smile.
"Dad-" she croaked.
"You still got that gun?" He asked, voice barely above a whisper. She didn't need to know what gun he meant. She nodded miserably.
"You're gonna need to use it, baby."
She didn't bother arguing. They both knew what was happening.
There was silence for a moment before she took a shuddering breath and pulled out the gun that had killed her mother and then later on taken her brother.
Her Dad looked at it and a wet noise came from the back of his throat. It sounded like it might have been a laugh once.
"I guess getting shot must be hereditary." He gasped.
She couldn't make her hand move, "I can't." She cried.
He fixed with a stare that still carried a familiar weight despite the fact that he was weaker than she'd ever seen him, "Yes, you can."
He watched as she brought the gun level with his head, barely repressing the sobs that shook her. In contrast, he seemed almost calm. At peace.
"I love you, Dad."
"I love you too, Judy."
~o~o~o~
At age nineteen she left the group and along with it everything she'd ever known.
There was no reason for it, or at least not an immediate reason. It was simply that she woke up one day and Maggie had a cold, Carol's arthritis was playing up and Daryl just looked so old.
She wasn't going to watch these people die.
She waited till they were asleep. Just snuck out leaving a note saying she was sorry and she loved them. She didn't take much. Couldn't in all conscience when she knew they needed it more than she did. Just enough food to last a few days, the knife her dad always wore round his belt and the family gun with one bullet. She wouldn't be needing more than that.
She slipped off into the night and hot wired the first serviceable car she found. It didn't get her very far, but it was a remote enough and safe enough place that they wouldn't find her and she wouldn't get eaten in her sleep.
Even so, she stayed awake that night. Just looked at the stars like she'd done with her dad once as she tried to pick out the constellations he'd taught her. When she couldn't do that she made up her own.
It passed the time and it stopped her from thinking about the loved ones she'd left behind who probably thought she was dead by now.
It wasn't really a life but an existance now. It most certainly wasn't much but it was what she had. Anymore would be asking for trouble. Anymore would be dangerous.
~o~o~o~
At twenty four she gave up. Or at least she thought she did.
She'd floated around with a few other groups that would have her but invariably she always left before she got too attached or ended up wanting to stay.
She was actually on her own when she got bit. It got her hand, right through the palm before she pistol whipped it with the family gun and put a knife right through its sorry eye socket.
She'd fallen back against a tree just looking at the blood bleeding sluggishly from her hand and making her fingers slick.
She could always cut it off, she thought objectively. That's what had saved Hershel and it was only a hand. She took a deliberately long time considering it until she could feel the burn way past her shoulder.
She'd left it too late. Amputation wouldn't save her now. For a brief second she wondered if refusal to act counted as suicide.
If not then what she was going to do next most certainly would.
She looked at the the one bullet she'd taken everywhere. Bullets were rarer than gold these days and infinitely more precious. Far too precious to waste on walkers.
How sad was it that that one bullet looked like an old friend? It had been a constant these last five years and the promise that if things got too rough she always had the ultimate escape plan.
She brought it up to her temple and pressed it there.
"I guess getting shot must be hereditary." She laughed.
There was no one there to hear her final words but even if there had been they wouldn't have understood them.
Her last thought was she wouldn't mind if all that heaven shit was true. Might be nice to see the family again.
With a final final breath Judith Grimes pulled the trigger and left the world just as she'd entered it; covered in blood and surrounded by the dead.