A/N: I laughed a little because someone pointed out exactly what I intended the next chapter to do: shift focus to the rest of the group.

Chapter 7: I Am Survivor

"Expansion team," said the man behind the counter, handing Abraham a wooden token rather unceremoniously.

Abraham flipped the item over in his hand and examined it carefully. Probably once a piece of a chair or other piece of furniture, someone had burned "ExT" on one side of the coin and "ASC" on the other. He held it up to the man who gave it to him.

"What does 'ASC' mean?"

"Athens Survivor's Colony," he replied without looking up, "And expansion team leaves from B Gate. Just follow Euclid Street east and you'll hit it."

Abraham gave a grunt of acknowledgement and turned to find the door. He paused to kiss Rosita, "See you tonight, I guess."

"Yeah," she said sadly, "I guess." Truthfully, Rosita was worried about him. Abraham had been so uncharacteristically quiet and subdued since Eugene confessed, he was taking orders without complaint and without question. The man she had known would never just turn around and go to work without asking why, but this man did. He was not the same.

She smiled at the man behind the counter and gave her name when he prompted her, "Rosita Espinosa,"

He scribbled it down in some sort of ledger, "If you could have your pick, what would you want to do?"

"I'm a good shot, but I'm handy with a wrench," Rosita offered. It was strange, a colony giving them the option to suggest what they would be good for, but it made sense. Nobody here knew them except their group.

"Mechanics?" the man offered. He handed her a similar wood token when she nodded her approval, 'ASC' on one side and 'Mech' on the other, "Same direction I sent your friend, just go west instead of east. You'll see it, the mech guys are hard to miss."

So it went, names written in the ledger, tokens handed out, jobs assigned. Glenn chased down Abraham with the intention of walking together to the Expansion Team.

"What do you think they'll have us do?" Glenn did not actually care, he just wanted to break the awkward silence between the two of them. Abraham seemed lost or distant somehow, he was checked out in a way.

"Expand, probably," he offered, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Glenn exhaled a laugh anyway, "I think that's them," He was beginning to get the sense that the massive city they had originally anticipated the place to be was a whole lot smaller than they thought.

There was a cluster of men and women standing outside an old bodega-style market, a middle-aged woman handed out incomplete tool belts to them. When they got closer, she held out her hand and gestured for them to join the group.

"Got your tokens?" she said with a midwestern twang in her voice. They handed her the wooden chips and she pocketed them, "You'll get thirty minutes for lunch, water's available when you need it. If you need to take a break, just take it. We work on an honor system."

"We didn't bring lunch," Glenn said, feeling stupid. They should have considered that before they left the house, part of him blamed Tessa for not warning them.

The woman laughed, "Oh, sweet child, don't think about that. Our guys will take care of you." She waved a hand dismissively and addressed her work crew, "All right, let's head out!"

She stopped Abraham and Glenn, "Are you armed?"

"No," Glenn asked, Abraham's silence was starting to become irritating. He would have walked right along with the group, asking no questions.

"Hmm," she considered them before handing Abraham a handgun from her own holster and Glenn a knife, "Do you know what we do here? Anyone explain it to you?" They shook their heads and she sighed with annoyance, "I'm gonna have to kill Austin, he keeps sending me people and not telling 'em what we're about. I'm Kellyjean Hill, but please call me Kelly," she extended a hand which only Glenn shook, "In ET we take down the temp wall and we move it down a block. Then we clear out all the buildings, repair 'em, and move the wall down again. You're lucky and you missed the moving stage, but we want you to stay armed, the clearing stage isn't quite done. You guys look capable, be extremely cautious. If you get hurt or overwhelmed, blow on these," she handed them a pair of small whistles, "our Guard team will come runnin' and take you to medical or blow some heads off."

"Sound attracts them, how is this a good idea?" Glenn held up the whistle and stared at her.

Kelly shrugged, "When you think of a better system, tell me. Until then, we've got whistles."

She led them to the first of two temporary walls: one to protect the city, one to section off the block they were clearing out. Someone had thought to saw a functional door into the first and second walls, both made of reinforced plywood. Kelly stopped at a relatively quiet section of housing where a handful of workers were already on the roofs of a few houses.

She turned back to them, "Remember, be careful and don't be too proud to call for help. People are a precious commodity, everyone here is valuable."

Abraham barely waited for Kelly to finish before picking one of the houses. It seemed safe enough at the time, at least until Glenn opened the door to one of the bedrooms with the best roof access. A walker reached for him and grabbed the front of his shirt, Glen pulled back sharply and plunged the knife into its head. Abraham pushed the door open and hauled the corpse outside. Kelly had instructed them to leave the bodies outside and one of their cleanup groups would come and take it to be disposed. Whatever that meant, neither Abraham nor Glenn felt like asking.

Someone called to them from the street and offered them planks and strips of roofing material to patch with. They rigged a pulley system to bring themselves the supplies without having to go back downstairs a hundred times, it was a good system. Glenn wiped his arm across his forehead to wick away the sweat pouring down his face. He was breathing heavily and had lost track of time. Abraham seemed to feel no such exhaustion, silently hammering away at the tiles they tore from the sheet of asphalt shingles. The sun beat down overhead and made the work that much more exhausting. Glenn secretly wished they had taken Tessa up on her offer to shower.

"Hey!" Kelly's voice came from the street and they both leaned over to see her, "That's a good system, can it bring you food?" She was joking, of course, and dropped a recyclable grocery bag on one of the boards that had been loaded up, "Take a break, get your strength back. There's water in there for you!"

Neither of them had realized how hungry or thirsty they were until they reached inside the bag: four hard-boiled eggs, two out of season apples, a can of asparagus to share, and two plastic handmade canteens of water. Nothing was cold, but that did not seem to matter very much. It took them less than their half hour to devour the contents of the bag.

"Eggs," Glenn muttered through a mouthful, closing his eyes to better savor the taste, "Real, actual eggs."

Abraham grunted his reply, the most emotional he ever seemed to get lately. It was obvious he was enjoying the same treat, he took the time to exchange words.

"I normally hate the yolks" Abraham sighed, "But today they taste damn wonderful."

Glenn stared at him, surprised at having heard Abraham's voice after so many hours of silent panting. He stayed quiet, like a man watching a deer step a little closer to him. The silence stretched from seconds to minutes, but it seemed like it was the right choice to make.

"Do you know why I voted to come here?" Abraham said. Nobody had really discussed their reasons since the day they voted. To be fair, they did not really have the time to do so.

"No," Glenn whispered.

Abraham cleared his throat with a swig from the repurposed plastic jug, "After Eugene failed," that was what he had chosen to call it in hopes of limiting how painful it was to think about, "I realized I don't have a whole lot of time left. I have no purpose," he paused and stared out over the city that still waited to be cleared and expanded into, "There is no hope. Not for us, not to get away from this life. This is just how the world is, we're all just screwed. Every time we wake up, our odds of surviving go down."

Glenn swallowed hard and took a drink, knowing thirst was not the problem, "So why vote to come here?"

"Because even if it was a trap," Abraham stared into his jug, "or they wanted to take our stuff and kill us, at least I'd be around other people who were alive. I thought maybe it would make it seem like some people were gonna survive, maybe our odds weren't that bad."

Glenn considered what Abraham said and shifted to sit next to him. He stayed quiet for a few seconds, not because he was waiting for more from Abraham, but because he was choosing how to phrase his own reasons back at him. It felt like the right thing to do, share and share alike.

"I voted to go because of Maggie," as a statement, it seemed obvious, "I want more for her than what we were doing. If there was any chance of making us all safe again, I wanted to take it. Even if it meant we were gonna die, I wanted to die knowing I had taken every chance I had to give her a better life."

Abraham looked over at him and nodded, "You're a good man, Glenn."

"So are you," Glenn found himself trying to find a way to help Abraham find purpose in what they were doing, "We would never have made it without you."

"Yeah, well. A lot of people with me didn't make it because I was too stubborn and stupid to see what was right in front of me," the self-loathing in Abraham's voice was tragic.

"There was no way you could have known Eugene was a liar," Glenn offered comfort in his words, "You have to stop seeing it like you caused their deaths, it'll eat you alive if you think that way."

"It's not that easy," he grunted.

"I know it's not," Glenn swallowed again, "They followed you because you gave them what Eugene gave you, you gave them purpose. We don't have a whole lot of that anymore. Stop looking at it like they died in vain. They died believing in something. That's more than most of us still alive can say."

They were silent for the rest of their break, but when Abraham got to his feet he clapped a hand on Glenn's shoulder. It was a small gesture, but Glenn smiled at it anyway. They were all broken and desperate to believe in something, sometimes being reminded of that was the only way to pull someone back from the edge.

Across town, Sasha opened the door to the house she was sharing and walked back inside. Tyreese had been sitting on the floor in the living room playing with Judith. He was surprised to see his sister and watched her as she came and sat on the floor.

"What're you doing back already?" he asked.

Sasha shrugged and reached out to wiggle her fingers at Judith. The baby crooned and gave her a sharp, happy sound, "They put me on the Guard team," she produced a wooden chip and handed it to him to look at.

"ASC?" Tyreese raised an eyebrow and flipped it over to look at the 'GRD' burned into the wood on the other side, but that one seemed more obvious.

"Athens Survivors' Colony," Sasha said, "I take a night watch right after sunset by B Gate. It's across town, but they're good enough to give me the day if I work through the night. It's something," she shrugged, "better than keeping watch every night and every day I guess."

Tyreese nodded, "I'm gonna check with Rick and made sure it's okay to drop Judith with their nursery. It doesn't seem right for me to sit around and do nothing."

Sasha smirked without looking at him, reaching into her back pocket and producing another token, "No need. Why take her to the nursery when you can work there?"

Tyreese took the chip and flipped it over, 'N' and 'ASC' on either side. He looked back at his sister and nodded slightly, "I can do a whole lot more than watch kids."

Sasha looked at him now, her face calm and calculating, her eyes narrowed and catlike, "I know, but I told them to put you there for other reasons. Ty, you do what must be done with the weight of the world behind you. Killing and death? That doesn't suit you at all," she leaned back on her hands, crossing her legs in front of her, "You aren't the guy who deals with the killing and death."

"Then what am I?" Tyreese tried to disguise his amused smile, waiting for his sister's judgment.

"You're the guy who brings out life. You're the guy who stops to water a dying flower when fire is raining from the sky," there was no sarcasm in her voice, no malice. Rather, there was admiration, "You love kids. You would lay down your own life if it meant protecting theirs. I told them to put you with the nursery crew because you're the knight in shining armor that place needs. We'd all feel a little safer knowing you were the one watching over those kids."

Tyreese stared at the coin and mulled over her words in his head. If he were still a teenager with a temper and something to prove, he would have been outraged at her for giving him 'women's work', but the truth of the matter was there was no such thing as 'women's work' and 'men's work' anymore. Truthfully, he was touched by Sasha's words. She was right, he reaped more joy from working with the kids at the prison over the other tasks that had been given to him. Back at Terminus, he had killed someone. After they had reached the church, he had pushed to survive. Living in constant fear was exhausting. Tyreese felt purpose around those kids, it gave him something worth protecting.

He held the chip out to her and smiled, "Thank you."

Sasha reached out and squeezed his knee, turning her attention back to the infant. There was no need to discuss their decision to come to Athens, they both knew why they had voted. Tyreese voted to give them all a better future, to give the baby some safety, and to put Carl in a place where he could have a real childhood. Sasha voted because she had nothing left to lose. Bob would not have wanted her to give up, he would have pushed her to keep hoping for something better. She found herself doing that a lot lately, considering things Bob would do or say to keep her going. He had started to serve as her sort of conscience. In his voice, she had heard him say, Don't give up. If there's a chance, don't give up. So she had cast her vote the way Bob would have wanted. Without exchanging words, they both had known this about each other.

Maggie followed her partner into the expansion district, adjusting the strap of the messenger bag they had given her nervously. She had received her chip and been assigned to the Salvage Crew, they made up the second wave of people who picked through the houses for anything useful and cleared out any straggling walkers that the Expansion Teams had missed. Around Athens, they just called them "the dead", but the effect of the vernacular was the same. People died, came back, bit other people, those people died, came back, et cetera. There had been no reason to adjust how anybody referred to them. Maggie had enjoyed a smattered array of words people used for them: walkers, biters, chompers, zombies, dead, animates, corpsewalkers. In her hour with the Salvage Crew, she had learned a lot about the way people saw the walkers.

Now, Maggie cautiously opened the front door and crossed her knife over the penlight she had been given. Not that it was dark, but too much light was better than too little. She signaled to her partner, Cara, and the young woman followed her in kind. A quick sweep produced no walkers, meaning the Expansion Team that handled this house had done their job right. They were supposed to report if any straggling walkers were left on the first or second floors. Walkers in the basement were apparently normal, but something about their presence up top was significant. Maggie did not bother to question the order, depending on Rick heavily for survival had taught her to follow and order when given. The reason it was given mattered very little in the moment.

She looked around the house and took in the obvious signs of repair that had been done to the house. Opening a few drawers, she shoved some batteries that may or may not work in her bag, some band aids, a tube of Neosporin, some peroxide, bleach from the kitchen, and two heavy leather jackets. There was no more room in her bag, so she went to deposit her bounty.

Carol was waiting for her in the store that had once been a pharmacy. Now, it was reasonably well guarded and used as a general supply store. She lit up when she saw Maggie, "You're going out there and bringing us stuff?"

Carol had already encountered two of the people they referred to colloquially as 'Scavs', short for Scavengers. These were apparently people who traded what they found for what they needed, they did not live within the walls of the city but Gwen had made an agreement with them that they were welcome to trade freely and come and go as they pleased. It was a bit like seeing mole people coming up to find food, most of them were much dirtier than the rest of Athens' citizens, but they brought good things to trade.

"No," Maggie shook her head, "I run Salvage, they send us to the expansion area and we bring stuff back from the houses."

"Hm," Carol nodded, sorting through the contents of Maggie's bag and dividing it into piles. Another young woman behind the pharmacy counter with her took the items and brought them into the back, "It's not a bad system, actually. They make the city bigger and find stuff to use at the same time. I can't think of something that would work better than this, actually."

"You seen Glenn?" Maggie was a little anxious not knowing where he was right now. She knew he had gone to the Expansion sector, but had not seen him.

Carol shook her head, "Not yet. I'm sure he's fine, though."

Maggie nodded and left the store, knowing Carol was right and yet not able to shake her anxiety completely. They had voted to come here together, especially after the walker in Peterson. She knew why Glenn wanted to come here, he wanted to keep her safe. What Glenn did not know, however, is why Maggie had voted to come. She reached her hand down and touched her stomach gently, suppressing the terrible fear that ran cold in her hands when she did.

Carol watched Maggie go and sighed, folding the leather jackets neatly, "Thanks Karissa," she said to the other girl working with her here. They had assigned her to work here in the pharmacy, help sort the loot from the Salvagers. It seemed there were a few stores like this, mostly because one store did not have enough space to keep everything in an organized way. Nobody was sure who had started the system, but it seemed like everything they had no origin story for became attributed to Gwen. Carol doubted she had come up with the system, but to contradict the people felt like she would be taking something away from them.

Carol looked around the shop and smiled at one of the Scavengers who came in. She was quickly picking up on the details that revealed they status: too many clothes on for the season, a larger pack, and covered in grime from head to toe. The woman silently placed little objects on the counter and Carol paused to run her fingers over one in particular. It was a small, plastic horse figurine with a broken off ear. The Scavenger woman paused and stared at her.

"You like that one?" she asked, her voice hesitant and quiet. These outsiders seemed so foreign, like they had a difficult time communicating with people at all. Carol realized then how lucky she had been to have survived with a group. Surviving alone deprived these outsiders of something essential to human survival. It made sense why they could not stay in the city, but at the same time Carol wished to try and offer them a place anyway. One night in this colony and she could sense its value.

"It's lovely," she said, unable to stop looking at it.

The Scavenger woman eyed her carefully and pushed the base towards her with a single, dirty finger, "You can keep it."

There was a tenderness in the woman's voice that forced Carol to look up at her. In the woman's watery blue eyes she saw a sadness that was deep and penetrating, felt a sense of loss so catastrophic it meant only one thing.

"You lost a child, too?" the woman asked her quietly.

It was the word 'too' that bothered Carol, but she gave a slight nod, "A little girl. Sophia." Saying her name would never get easier. Carol had refused to do what the others had, to push Sophia from her mind. In truth, her daughter was never far from her thoughts. She thought about Sophia every single day and never pushed away reminders of her. It had been a heartbreaking decision to do, keep Sophia in her mind. Some days, it seemed easier to do what everyone else did and just forget. Now was one of those moments where the sense of loss hit Carol like a truck.

"Anna," the woman replied, pushing the base of the horse at her again, "She loved horses. Yours, too?"

"Yeah," Carol said, picking up the small plastic thing to examine it, "she spent an entire Saturday bugging me to let her take riding lessons, but it wasn't an option for us." For so many reasons, not the least of which was that I'd be beaten for asking, Carol thought, but did not say aloud.

"Keep it. Remember her," the woman gave her a smile, the kind shared between two women who had experienced something so great it separated them from all the world around them.

"Thank you," the gesture choked Carol, but she slipped the horse into her pocket and wiped her eyes. It had not occurred to her that she had started to tear up, "What can I get you for the rest of this?"

It was this that brought Carol here, this need to survive at all costs. She was a utilitarian, she would sacrifice the few in order to save the many. The choice to be this way had weighed on her, she had the option to escape the fate she had ascribed herself so many times and yet refused to do so. Utilitarianism was the only way to survive without walls. Being in the prison had afforded her the luxury of being practical and rational instead. When the disease hit, Carol had become the person she had been beyond the walls again: a survivor. She was a survivor in more than one sense, the kind that survived the apocalypse and the kind that survived a brutal husband. Something about that combination had made her the way she was now, calculating and decisive in her sense of preservation for the many.

The moment with the Scavenger woman, whose name Carol had not bothered to learn, reminded her of why she was bothering to survive. She stayed alive for the people she had loved and lost. It was the same reason she had only set up the car as an option. Carol could never have left her people, she needed them the same way they needed her. Nobody else would make the hard choices, but Carol could. If she had left them, then nobody would make those choices and they would all die. All their months of suffering would have been for nothing. Despite her moments of resentment for Rick over exiling her, she could not have conceived to let that happen. Carol chose the best, most rational option to keep the most of them alive.

Rosita paused in front of the mechanic shop and lifted the brim of her had slightly. It had never been repurposed, the building was always an auto shop. She had been used to dealing with the lewd comments and suggestive remarks of mechanics back before the disease, but there was none of that now when she entered she shop.

"Whoa there, hold up, little lady," said a middle aged man who swung himself from the dirty main office, "Let me check your token," he turned it over and passed it back, "You're in the right place. I'm Chuck, come find me if you need anything. Larry back there will give you a project and test you out. If you're any good, we'll keep you. If not, we'll send you back to Admin to be redistributed."

Rosita had to smile at the atypical mechanic names of the two men, the stereotypical nature of it made her feel like laughing. She handed her token to Larry who waved it away and pointed at a busted walkie-talkie.

"Test your metal on that. If you can fix it, we'll keep ya," Larry was a gruff, older man as well with the same no-nonsense attitude of Lyal. Rosita would not have been surprised if they were related.

Without a word, she picked up the radio and opened it up. She spotted the fried circuit in seconds and held it up to Larry, "Where do you keep your parts?"

"Back," he said, offering no further assistance.

Rosita hopped off the stool she had been using and meandered into the back room. She found someone who looked like she might know where to look, "Excuse me, I need a circuit for this thing."

"Take a look in the drawers," the young girl said, much too young to be holding a job in any other context, "We take apart what can't be fixed and save the good stuff."

Rosita rummaged through the drawers until she found what she needed, replaced the circuit, and brought the radio back to Larry. He tested it a few times, 'hmm'ing and 'huh'ing.

He eyed her suspiciously, "Okay then. There's a typewriter that keeps jamming on that table over there, that's your next project. Come find me when you're done."

It must have been the busy work they kept her feeling fulfilled. Rosita hardly noticed half of the day move around behind her. The mechanic shop was dark without electricity, but most of the guys had solar powered lanterns which seemed to help push away the darkness. Larry nudged her and handed her a pair of hard boiled eggs which she happily consumed. He stayed and sat down on the low workbench beside her.

"Happy you came," he offered kindly, though his voice did not seem to reflect the words he spoke, "we can always use more people who can do this stuff."

Rosita nodded without saying much and sank her teeth into the hard skin of a young tomato. Larry paused and looked at her curiously, "You don't say a whole lot, huh."

"I do," she shrugged, "I'm worried about my friend." It was the truth, she was still focused on Abraham. The mechanic work she was doing had been a brief respite from her concerns, but taking a quiet lunch had brought them right back to her.

"What's wrong with 'im?" Had it been so obvious she was talking about a guy? "We've got a doctor, he can go see him."

"Not that kind of worry," she said with a slight laugh.

"Hm," he grunted, "Emotional stuff."

"Yeah, that kind," Rosita could not decide if Larry was simple or just curt.

"This place can be overwhelming for lots of folks. It's not as big as you think, though. Just lots of us shoved together," he looked around at the men all stopped to take their lunches, "There's maybe seventy of us now, though it doesn't seem like that little. Is he havin' a hard time adjusting?"

"No," she shook her head, "He feels betrayed by one of our people," the words just sort of poured out of her without thinking, "We had a lot riding on him and he let us down."

Larry nodded and considered his next statement, "I think we've all been let down like that."

"What do you mean?" Rosita paused and looked at him, but he kept his gaze straight ahead.

"Doctors were supposed to fix this, scientists, politicians, all the people we relied on to keep us safe. Now look at us. Stuck in a town that's really just a hodgepodge of displaced people with no direction sitting in a corral pretendin' the world outside these walls don't exist. We've all been betrayed, but we're still here," Larry finished his tomato and looked over at her, "and focusin' on that betrayal ain't gonna get us any more reconciliation than pretendin' it never happened does." It was not with a measure of disdain for what had been built up around him, but rather a sort of rare blunt honestly that people did not always offer each other.

Rosita nodded, considering it, and looked around her. She had voted to come here for Abraham, to save him, but now that she was thinking about it, maybe it had really been to save herself. Abraham was lost, wandering without a reason to live because it all felt hopeless. Rosita had felt it, too, but had never let herself abandon the belief that whatever they were facing could not have been all there was. Someone offered them salvation when they seemed to need it most, so she took it. So, maybe, it was not because of Abraham that she cast her vote, but for her own sake. To keep herself going, she needed a reason. The idea of Athens was her reason.

The day was ending and the people took time to reinforce their temporary walls, gather arms if they needed to, and head up to the walls to stand watch when they were assigned. A sort of sleepy lull seemed to fall over Athens once the day had been complete. Rosita stretched her legs and turned to Larry, thanking him for the work and giving him good wishes for the next day. He waved her off, no time for frivolity, and she left.

Finding her way back to the Administration building had not been difficult, she deposited her wooden coin into what had been a mail drop box at one point. Newcomers were to return their chips if they wanted to keep their jobs and keep them if they did not. She wanted to keep her job.

Abraham and Glenn walked towards the office, mumbling a conversation she could not quite make out. Rosita waited when she saw them and offered Abraham a smile. To her surprise, he returned it. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her to walk along with them.

"Tell me everything," Abraham said. Rosita stared up and him, not exactly knowing what to say, and let her smile say it for her.