Author's Note

Sooo this definitely didn't turn out like I wanted it to. But oh well. I'm lost on how to make it sound better, or make it flow better. And I wanted to get this out today for The Phoenix in the Flames (happy birthday)! So here it is.

Please excuse the crappy writing and try to enjoy!


After changing her shirt and leaving Lori with Hershel and Alison, Caterina set out to help the others. They were moving the cars out of the entrance. Not only would it give them quicker access to their vehicles if something happened and they had to leave the prison, it also let them out without having to maneuver around the other vehicles. At any rate, if they left them there, it would be a clear sign to other survivors that there were people inside. And Caterina knew how dangerous that could be.

But before they could move all the cars, they needed to move the bus. So T-Dog drove the van out into the field, and they used a chain that they found and hooked the van to the truck so he could pull it to the side.

"Okay, let's get the other cars in," Rick instructed once they had moved the bus far enough away. "We'll park 'em in the west entry of the yard."

"Good. Our vehicles camped out there look like a giant vacancy sign," Daryl grunted.

Rick motioned to the corpses littering the yard from their first day there. "After that, we need to load up these corpses so we can burn 'em."

T-Dog looked around at all the bodies that they would have to gather up and sighed. "Gonna be a long day."

"Gabriele and I will get started on that while you move the cars," Michele offered.

Rick nodded to him in thanks. "Thank you."

Michele motioned to his son, and the two of them stalked off into the field, not before Gabriele sent Daryl his usual glare. Caterina rolled her eyes. She wasn't stupid. She had noticed the animosity between the two of them. She had just decided to ignore it for the moment, thinking that Gabriele would get over whatever it was about Daryl that he didn't like after spending a few days with them. But, instead, it looked like it had only gotten worse.

She wasn't sure what his problem was, but she figured that she would have to talk to him about it eventually, because she wasn't about to continue to let her brother treat Daryl so poorly.

"Where's Glenn and Maggie?" Carol asked, her voice bringing Caterina out of her thoughts. "We could use some more help."

Daryl pointed to the tower. "Up in the guard tower."

"Guard tower?" Rick parroted. "They were just up there last night."

Daryl and Caterina exchanged amused looks. If you thought about it, it was blatantly obvious what those two were doing going up in the tower so often. The tension between them was worse than any couple that Caterina had ever met.

Daryl cupped his hand around his mouth and called up to the tower. "Glenn! Maggie!"

They waited for a moment, watching the tower closely. Glenn's head was the first to pop up. They could see from down in the field that he didn't have his shirt on. He stepped out of the box, buttoning up his jeans from what they could tell. And they could see Maggie moving around in the background, apparently putting on her own clothes.

The others on the ground laughed.

"You comin'?" Daryl shouted up.

"What?" Glenn shouted back.

The others laughed even harder at the confusion on his face. Either he hadn't heard correctly, or he didn't get the joke.

"You comin'?" Daryl shouted again.

Glenn continued to look confused, which just made the others all the more amused. Caterina reached out and slapped Daryl on the arm gently. While the teasing was amusing, it was just cruel, seeing as Glenn's mind didn't work like that. He would probably spend the next few hours thinking about what Daryl said before he even began to understand.

Daryl just smirked at her, and Caterina rolled her eyes, grin still in place, as she turned back to the tower. Maggie had come out to join Glenn on the railing. "Come down here!" she called up to them. "We could use a hand!"

"Yeah, w-we'll be right down!" Glenn called back.

The five on the ground started walking back to the entrance, still laughing at the couple up in the tower and Daryl's poorly hidden innuendo.

"Rick!"

They stopped to look back at Caterina's family where they were standing in the middle of the field, among a pile of corpses, staring up at something in the courtyard. Rick turned to see what they were staring at, and his smile fell from his face. Caterina followed his gaze and saw Axel and Oscar walking out towards the fence that separated the courtyard from the field.

Rick's hand went straight to the revolver at his waist as he started up to where they were. "Come with me," he ordered.

The others started after him, Caterina pausing to motion to her father and brother. The two instantly dropped the corpse that they'd been carrying and hurried to catch up with the others as they made their way to the courtyard.

When the prisoners saw the group approaching, they went forward to meet them , coming out into the field to stand on the gravelled road.

"That's close enough," Rick warned .

The prisoners stopped, knowing that it would be a bad idea to anger him any further.

"We had a deal," he reminded them.

"Please, mister, w-we know that," Axel stuttered. "We made a deal."

As he spoke, Glenn and Maggie came walking out of the entrance to the tower behind them. They paused at the sight of them while Oscar looked back at them before deciding that they weren't much of a threat and turned back to Rick and his posse.

"But you gotta understand, we can't live in that place another minute. You follow me? All of the bodies—people we knew… Blood, brains everywhere… There's ghosts."

"Why don't you move the bodies out?" Daryl asked, obviously not feeling at all sorry for them.

"You should be burnin' 'em," T-Dog added.

"We tried," Axel replied. "We did."

"The fences are down on the far side of the prison," Oscar explained. "Every time we drag a body out, those…things just line up. We've been droppin' the bodies and just running back inside."

Axel moved forward earnestly and Rick's hand fell back down to his revolver while the rest of his group shifted anxiously. Oscar glanced back at Glenn and Maggie nervously before moving up to stand by Axel.

"Look, we had nothing to do with Tomas and Andrew—nothing," Axel tried. "You tryin' to prove a point? You proved it, bro. We'll do whatever it takes to be part of your group. Just please, please…don't make us live in that place."

"Our deal is non-negotiable," Rick said matter-of-factly. "You either live in your cell block or you leave."

Axel looked to the ground with a disappointed sigh.

"I told you this was a waste of time. They ain't no different than the pricks who shot our boys," Oscar scoffed, looking pointedly at Rick. "You know how many friends' corpses we had to drag out this week? Just threw 'em out, like…" He paused, obviously upset. "These were good guys—good guys who had our backs against the really bad dudes in the joint, like Tomas and Andrew. Now, we have all made mistakes to get in there, Chief. And I'm not gonna pretend to be a saint. But believe me…we paid our dues—enough that we would rather hit that road than go back into that shit hole."

Rick stared at him contemplatively. He nodded before turning back to Daryl, silently asking for his opinion. Daryl shook his head softly, and Rick looked to Caterina, next to him. She shook her head immediately. In the past, she would've encouraged him to at least give them the opportunity to prove that they weren't against them. But now she wouldn't take the chance.

Rick gave a soft sigh as he turned back to prisoners.


Daryl locked a chain on the fence to the entrance, leaving Axel and Oscar in the fenced area with the rest of their cars and the front guard tower.

"C'mon, dude," Axel muttered.

Daryl walked back to where the others stood at the end of the bus, completely ignoring the prisoners. They were discussing what they were going to do with them. T-Dog wanted to give them a chance like they had asked and let them into the group. Gabriele agreed with him, believing that they should give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, they hadn't done anything to try and harm any of them. Michele agreed with his son.

"Are you serious?" Rick scoffed. "You want them livin' in a cell next to you? They'll just be waitin' for their chance to grab our weapons. You wanna go back to sleepin' with one eye open?"

"I never stopped," T-Dog sighed. "Bring 'em into the fold. If we send 'em off packin', we might as well just execute 'em ourselves."

"I dunno," Glenn muttered. "Axel seems a little unstable."

"After all we've been through?" Carol whispered. "We fought so hard for this. What if they decide to take it?"

"It's just been us for so long," Maggie pointed out. "They're strangers. I don't… It feels weird all of a sudden to have these other people around too."

"You brought us in," T-Dog reminded her.

"Yeah, but you turned up with a shot boy in your arms. Didn't give us a choice."

The Millers didn't even bother mentioning how they had accepted them in their group. It was obvious why they had: They were Caterina's family, and they trusted Caterina. They would not have accepted them so easily if they were just strangers that Caterina had met. But since they're family, they knew automatically that they could be trusted.

"They can't even kill walkers," Glenn added.

"They're convicts—bottom line," Carol argued.

"Does that really matter?" Michele wondered. "There are very few people today who do not have another's blood on their hands."

T-Dog nodded. "He's right."

"I get guys like this," Daryl jumped in. "Hell, I grew up with 'em. They're degenerates, but they ain't psychos. I could've been in there with them just easy as I'm out here with you guys."

"So are you with me?" T-Dog asked hopefully.

"Hell no. Let 'em take their chances out on the road, just like we did."

"What I'm sayin', Daryl—"

"When I was a rookie," Rick spoke up, cutting T-Dog off, "I arrested this kid. Nineteen-year-old, wanted for stabbin' his girlfriend. The kid blubbered like a baby—durin' the investigation, durin' the trial—suckered the jury. He was acquitted due to insufficient evidence and then, two weeks later, shot another girl." He looked around at everyone, making sure that they understood what he was getting at. "We've all been through too much. Our deal with 'em stands."


After gathering the bodies in the field and the courtyard into a pile, the group started back to the entrance, where Oscar and Axel were still locked up.

"Move the cars to that upper yard," Rick instructed. "Point 'em facin' out."

Daryl tossed his keys to Glenn, who took off running ahead of the others.

"They'll be outta the way but ready to go if we ever need to bail."

Rick fell back so that he was walking with T-Dog. When he did, Caterina slowed her pace. She'd been walking behind T-Dog, bringing up the rear. While she didn't agree with T-Dog or her family about taking the prisoners into their fold, she wanted to hear that Rick was at least considering it.

"We'll give the prisoners a week's worth of supplies for the road," Rick stated.

"Might not last a week," T-Dog grumbled.

"Their choice."

"Did they really have one?"

Rick stopped and held his hand out in front of T-Dog, forcing him to a stop. "Hey. Whose blood would you rather have on your hands: Maggie's, Glenn's, or theirs?"

"Neither," he sighed.

He continued on to the entrance, leaving Rick to stare after him with his hands on his hips.

"Do you remember Randall?" Caterina asked as she stepped up next to Rick.

Rick looked at her and nodded, his gaze curious (and was that hope that she saw in his eyes?)

"Back then, I said that we should give him the benefit of the doubt," she reminded him. "He was just a kid who'd gotten in with a wrong crowd. Axel and Oscar—they're degenerates, like Daryl said; they aren't hardened criminals."

"You think I should let 'em stay."

"No."

Rick frowned, obviously confused.

"I already told you, I'm not the same woman I was back at the farm. I don't care about giving people the benefit of the doubt anymore."

Rick stared at the side of her face, seeing as she refused to look away from the rest of the group as they got the vehicles ready. Carol had gotten in to the Hyundai while Daryl was on his motorbike and Michele and Gabriele were in the truck, Glenn and T-Dog standing by the gate and waiting for them to go through so that they could close it again.

"What happened to make you change?" Rick asked carefully, as if he was worried that asking would make her snap.

Caterina finally looked at him. She thought back to what Lori had said, about talking to someone about what she went through. She'd told her family a bit about what happened, but not enough for them to truly understand it. But, for a moment, she thought that maybe she should tell Rick—all of it. Then she remembered what he'd told her, about finding her arrows.

She turned her gaze back on the others. "It doesn't matter."

She saw Rick open his mouth, possibly to argue that it did matter, but he seemed to think better of it. Instead, he just sighed and turned to watch the others with her.


Caterina stood with Rick, Daryl, and her father in the field while Glenn took a box of food to the prisoners. Her arms were crossed, and she was fidgeting slightly as she stood between the two men. Both of them kept throwing worried glances at her. She knew why Daryl was doing it (she figured that Alison had told him about her PTSD after they had tried to wake her up), but she wasn't so sure why Rick was. She knew that he was able to tell that something was up, especially after what she'd told him about her no longer being the same woman (and the display that he had walked in on that morning), but he didn't seem to know what. Thankfully, no one had told him about her condition yet.

When Glenn rejoined them, they went out to where they had made the hole in the fence when they first arrived at the prison. Glenn undid the lacing so that the four of them could step out.

Glenn raised his gun and motioned to a walker across the water. "Should I take her out?"

"No. If that armory hadn't been picked clean, we could spare the ammo," Rick sighed.

"Cat and I'll start makin' runs," Daryl offered. "The sooner the better."

Rick, Michele, and Glenn started walking off while Daryl and Caterina stayed by the entrance, guarding it from walkers while the three went to the nearest line of trees to start gathering wood.

"We'll throw as much wood as we can in the dog run," Rick said.

"Won't a fire attract more walkers?" Glenn asked."Maybe we should bury 'em."

"We're behind the fence. It's worth the one-time risk to get rid of the bodies for good."

"Rick is right," Michele agreed. "Who knows what it would do to the soil. It would be safer for the rest of us if we just burned them."

The three disappeared into the trees, leaving Caterina and Daryl to themselves. She could see him throwing those glances at her still, and it was starting to get on her nerves.

"If you want to say something, just say it," Caterina ordered after a moment. "The quiet glances are getting annoying."

Daryl threw her another glance before turning his gaze back on the walkers across the water. "What d'you think about what we're doin' with the prisoners?" he asked. "You think it's right?"

"It doesn't really matter now, does it? Rick has already made up his mind. He's not going to change it."

"He might, if you told him to."

Caterina looked at him, wondering why he thought that.

"He listens to you more than any of us," Daryl explained. "He cares more about your opinion then the others'."

She scoffed. "I find that hard to believe."

"It's the truth. He was real broken up when we thought you were dead."

"That's not what I heard."

"Then you didn't hear right."

Caterina stared at him from the corner of her eye, wondering what it was that Daryl wasn't telling her about Rick. While she still hadn't forgiven him for what he told her about knowing that she was alive and acting as if she wasn't, she was looking for a reason to. She wanted to know that he was still the same man that she knew back when they were on the farm, the man who had readily put himself in danger to get Randall off of that fence. She wanted to know that he hadn't just brushed her off because he felt like the others were better off without her.

She shook those thoughts from her head. Now wasn't the time to think about that. She would worry about it later. For now, she would continue to be unforgiving.