Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone! I'm leaving on vacation for six days, but I felt so awful that I hadn't updated that I quickly penned this chapter for y'all. Hope everyone is having a marvellous holiday so far! :)


On day two hundred and fifty-three, Rick comes back, alone.

The last six days have been pure and utter hell. After they didn't come home the first night, they'd all been worried, but had assumed that they'd simply had to hole up somewhere for the night. They'll be back first thing in the morning, Glenn had reassured her before they'd all settled in for the evening, patting her on the arm and trying to smile.

They didn't come back that morning. Or the next. Or the next.

She had wanted to go after them. Get a group together, head out into the woods, search on a grid like they had for Sophia, so long ago. She'd even gone so far to pack herself a survival kit and extra ammo before Shane had cornered her and asked her exactly how far she expected to make it, hoofing it through the fields and the bus, pointing down at belly and raising a very sceptical eyebrow. She finally conceded that he had a point; what good would an eight months pregnant woman really be in a long distance search party?

However, that wasn't their only problem in coming up with a group to go out and look for their missing compatriots. What were they left with, now? A pregnant woman, a nursing woman, an infant, a boy, a still grieving mother, an old man... Only Maggie, T-Dogg, Glenn, and Shane were the ones capable of truly venturing out into the wilderness to look for Rick and Daryl, and even that would be dangerous, sending out their four most capable people and leaving the others more vulnerable to attack. They all decide to only send two people out at a time, and only out for short distances, wanting to keep them close enough to camp that they could search for half the day, come back, and then send out two other people for the rest of the day.

Three days pass, and they find nothing. They don't have tracking skills good enough to detect the missing men's trajectory through the woods; though they won't say it, they all know they need Daryl's tracking skills, and that's what makes this so difficult, so frustrating. How are they supposed to track down the two people who are the best at this kind of stuff; how are they supposed to find the men that they would send to find themselves?

She and Lori don't really sleep; Lori wouldn't really anyways, not with a new baby keeping her up at night, but they both can't simply retreat into their tents and forget about what's going on long enough to fall into a deep and restful sleep. Instead, they both sit in the living room into the darkest hours of the night, not really saying anything between them, just sitting and hoping and waiting, always waiting.

They are still waiting, watching, from their post in the house when they hear someone at the door, footsteps running up to the porch from the outside. Glenn bursts in, hair dishevelled and eyes wild, breathing hard from his race across the field to the house.

"He's back. Rick –" he pants, leaning on the wooden frame, "he's back."

Both of the women race off (as well as they can) behind him, leaving Carol behind with the children, asleep in the next room. The sun is rising along the horizon, pale light bathing everything in an almost ethereal glow, as they run to the fence line on the eastern side of the house, finding Shane and T-Dogg supporting a motionless figure between them, slowly making their way towards the house.

"Rick!" cries out Lori as they come closer, and the figure raises its head slowly, laboriously moving at the sound of her voice.

He is a mess of dirt and blood and sweat, his clothes stained and worn, missing one entire sleeve of his shirt on the left side. His gun is missing, but Andrea can see a bloody makeshift spear on the ground behind him, a hastily crafted weapon that has clearly seen some sort of battle. Her stomach starts to turn at this thought, and her eyes search the horizon for a second figure, hoping to see him emerge in the new light of the day.

"Rick," breathes the other woman again, finally reunited with her husband. Tears flow down her cheeks as she takes in his physical state, almost unrecognizable under all the grime and the blood.

"Lori," he mumbles, trying to look up at her, but he's too weak to hold his head up, and he slumps down, now a dead weight held up only by T-Dogg and Shane.

"We've got to get him inside," Glenn is saying, walking alongside them. "We've got to check him for wounds, make sure he's okay."

Andrea's stopped moving, still staring out at the rising sun, eyes still fixed on the horizon.

"Andrea?" calls out Dale, having left his watch post and climbed down off of the RV to join them all on the ground.

"He's gone," she whispers, and suddenly she can't think, can't breathe.

"Andrea!" cries out the other man, quickening his pace towards her.

"He's gone," she murmurs again, and suddenly there's pain in her abdomen, strong and fierce and unlike anything she's ever felt before. Her legs buckle, and she's falling, falling down into the dust and the gravel, saved from injury only by the hands that reach out to her just in time, cushioning her descent.

The last thing she sees before she passes out is the redness in the new dawn, morning light that looks like blood, splashed across the land and the sky.


On day two hundred and fifty-four, she breaks her promise to Daryl.

She's been in labour for eighteen hours, lying in the bed where Lori had been several weeks ago, huffing and puffing and just wishing she had a time machine to fast forward to the part where this was all over. So far, he's been right – this isn't the moment that breaks her, this isn't her battle to lose – she's adapted to the pain and fear and the exhaustion surprisingly well, though she knows that part of that is the numbness she still feels from his absence, her distraction from this moment by the thought that he might never come home.

She hates that he's not here. She hates that he's not beside her, where she can grab his hand and squeeze it tight, where she can curse his name and make him rue the day he was born. She hates that she can't have him here when this baby comes into the world, mewling and crying and real, shifting states from theoretical idea to physical entity.

Weeks ago, lying in bed one night, wrapped around each other and floating in that blissful space between sex and sleep, he'd told her that she had to promise to wait for him. He told her that if he wasn't around, gone hunting or out for supplies or whatever, that she had better damn well wait for him. He didn't want to miss that moment, that moment when he ceased to be responsible for only himself and became the thing he'd once feared the most: a father.

But she has to break that promise to him now. She can't wait any longer; she couldn't even if she tried. It's all biology now: all positive feedback loops and hormones, muscles and blood and things far beyond her control. She can't help the way she keeps looking back towards the door, past Carol and Lori, past Rick leaning on the back wall, out past the wooden framework and down the hallway beyond. Part of her can't help but do this, as if the mere act of hoping and wishing and praying will make him appear in the hallway, dirty and grimy but safe, waltzing in late to the party, coming in to grin at her slyly when she asks him what took him so long.

That hoping and wishing and praying didn't bring Amy back, and it won't bring him back now.

"You have to push, Andrea," Carol is saying, and it's Lori who's squeezing her hand now, holding it tight. She does what the other woman tells her too, straining and fighting, working as hard as she can to bring her baby into the world.

When Carol finally places her new daughter into her arms, everyone's crying just like they were when Lori was in this spot, all tears and smiles. They congratulate her and marvel over the infant in her arms, all toes and fingers accounted for. She's crying too – her tears tumbling down onto the face of her baby, and she struggles to brush them away through the blurry veil of her vision. She's happy in this moment – but her happiness is irrevocably tainted with the overwhelming sensation of sadness at the absence of a certain sandy-haired redneck, whose hands should be touching the soft skin of their newborn, whose eyes should be locked in awe at the movement of ten tiny toes, and whose voice should be the second thing their daughter heard upon her arrival, welcoming her to this brave new world, reassuring them both that they'll never be alone.