A/N: 5 weeks in; 3 weeks after the last chapter.

The Journalist

Chapter Ten

Harbinger

Wet engulfed her. Bright assaulted her. Her eyelids surged to wakefulness. The blurred, pale, off-white walls of her motel room grew quickly into focus as she was flooded with current reality. A reality of a bed and a dresser and an unusable big box T.V. This was the motel. This was her room. Not anywhere else. No desert towns decorated with rubble and doomed-to-collapse buildings. No brick buildings that resonated of downtown Macon, no family drugstores, no stores or store-lined streets that hovered heavy with fog and bestial murderers. Motel. They were at the motel on the outskirts of the city. She was safe.

Her eyes darted toward her nightstand. The calendar fell from the wall again.

"That was a wise way to waste water," a woman's scornful voice said. Carley turned, finding a woman hovering over her. She stood up straight and swerved angrily toward a broad-shouldered second figure. Both quickly came to recognition. Lilly and Lee. The latter clutched an empty water bottle, the source of Carley's now wet hair and clothes sticking to her now clammy skin.

Kenny suddenly burst in the doorway, axe in hand. "Y'all all right?" he exclaimed. "What happened?"

"She's unhinged," Lilly said, scrutinizing Carley with a wary stare before darting to look at Lee and Kenny. "Kenny, go back on watch."

"I have a right to be here if anything's gone to shit-"-"She had a nightmare!"-"...I had a nightmare."

"You have a duty to make sure our defenses stay up!" Lilly said to Kenny, her voice rising higher than either Lee's protest or Carley's vague grumbling. "You left my dad, your kid, your wife and Clementine out there without a lookout."

Kenny frowned, his mustache sinking into a scowl. Despite looking too eager to argue with Lilly, with the gradual increase of walkers wandering toward their camp, Kenny chose to leave the room. He muttered something derisive Carley couldn't hear, though she did notice him mock hacking the axe into the ground.

Lilly turned back toward Carley, the scowl plainer than any décor in the room still on her face. Carley held her breath—her heavy breathing cut short, not wanting to show any weakness against Lilly. "Kids have nightmares," the woman cut. "You've gone psycho."

"Jesus Christ, Lilly have some sympathy," Lee quickly interjected. "It was just a nightmare. Carley—" He turned toward her- "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it was just a—a nightmare," she said. She stole her voice, certain her voice was loud, clear and strong enough to say she okay and it was just some petty nightmare. "I'm fine," she added.

Lilly's scowling resolve didn't change with Carley's assertiveness. Rather, Lilly walked along Carley's bed—Carley eyeing her hawkishly—as she placed Carley's Glock on the nightstand.

Carley swallowed, her stomach suddenly feeling apprehensively empty. Her gun wasn't there while she slept. It wasn't there. It wasn't. She remembered reaching for it, grasping for it, unable to wrap her fingers around where it would be for every poor sleeping terror she experienced, only to wake up and find, yes, yes it was there. But this time it wasn't. God, did it matter? She could have asked herself. It was all a dream anyways.

The words Carley spoke next felt distant in her ears, low as if she spoke in warning.

"What are you doing?" Carley asked.

"Putting this back," Lilly answered, shoving the gun further back along the nightstand and closer to Carley. "At least that's what I was doing before you went apeshit on me."

"That doesn't belong to you."

"No shit. We needed it," Lilly said. "I sent Lee on a perimeter check-" Lee held up both hands in surrender- "Don't be fucking selfish," she added. "He needed the gun."

"For what reason?" Carley said incredulously. "So it could go off-"

"It wouldn't have-" Lee interrupted.

"-and attract walkers from upwards a mile away?" She stood up suddenly and forced eye contact with Lilly. Carley bit down on her molars and blinked twice, fighting the onslaught of vertigo from her sudden movement. "Our little wall isn't going to hold that many walkers. We agreed stealth was the better ridiculeoption."

"Ladies..."

"Why are you getting your panties all up in a bunch?" Lilly pressed. "We needed it for security!"

"We have half a dozen of weapons to choose from, including discrete weapons and you took mine!"

"You should be more than willing to share!"

"I didn't even need it-" Lee attempted.

"You should have asked!" Carley shouted, deaf to Lee's protests.

"I don't need to! I'm the one keeping yours and everyone else's ungrateful ass alive!"

"Yeah, in vainglorious self-appointment."

"Carley, you're being dramatic-" Lee exhaled.

"And look at all the power I can wield with that self-appointment!" She spread her arms in ridicule . "You've just earned yourself Lee's watch patrols for the week and you're grounded from supply runs."

"I'm grounded? Whoa, sorry, Mom, can I mow the lawn and do dishes for a week instead?"

"Enough already!" Lee yelled, startling both Carley and Lilly into silence. "Cut it out! It happened, okay? Carley had a nightmare. Lilly took the gun. Okay. It happened, so grow the fuck up and get over it!"

Carley shot Lilly a glare, one so ferocious Carley didn't think she had it in her to hold Lilly's stare. Carley refused to blink, refused to let the burning in her eyes give way to tears; she would use her mental prowess, that vague mind over matter mentality to have her corneas suck the sting from her eyes. In all that focus, of needing to knock Lilly down a step, Carley felt a tinge of lightheadedness creep up on her. She'd been holding her breath too long, too long to maintain this unfazed façade.

Only then did she realize the cut on Lilly's lip and the swelling on her cheek. Only then did Carley feel the ache in her knuckles.

Carley was wrong. And she knew it. The longer she held her breath—the longer she maintained this stubbornness—the more she regretted her outburst. God, it was her gun, yes, but it wasn't the only firearm they had. She could trust Lee with it, of course, and she understood where Lilly was coming from. Did they borrowing her gun bother her that much to host a petty argument with a frazzled leader? Carley was in the wrong. Whatever night terror beleaguered her was beyond her control—weren't they all?—and her inability to cope sparked this nasty temper tantrum, causing things to go from bad to worse. They didn't need another split in their group. This was stupid.

Carley exhaled. "Lilly, I'm sorry-"

But Lilly only huffed and stormed out, looking only at Lee as she slammed the door behind her. Lee exhaled deeply, his shoulders slumping in a visible sigh. The expression he wore wrestled wide eyes of disbelief and confusion with a frustrated, disappointing scowl.

"Please don't make me choose sides," he said.

She closed her eyes, inhaling the stale air of her room as if it was fresh mountain air. She slowly exhaled. "Talk to her."

"...Car-"

"I'm fine," she spat, but she instantly regretted it. Her harsh tone was unwarranted, especially for Lee and she hastily apologized. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. I'm just... still heated."

He didn't look convinced. In fact, he didn't look like anything, at least this was an expression of his she wasn't familiar with. It was plain, unexpressive. He could be angered, disappointed—the man had a mean poker face if that was the case. But he wasn't either, not by traditional nonverbal expressions. He breathed steadily, not with lost patience or frustration, but rather disappointment meeting resignation, as if he were waiting. Maybe he didn't know how to react either and this was just the axiom on which he subconsciously based his expressions. Whatever this look was, it made her uneasy.

"Look," she said. "I'm not mad, least of all at you."

He remained silent.

"She only has her dad and I don't want her getting a daddy's little princess inspired ego trip when she starts shedding tears on his lap," she added. "Go talk to her."

"I'm not going to defend you."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Good, because I think that was one of the stupidest arguments I've ever seen around here. Over a gun, Carley? Really? And that's after you sock her in the face?"

"I only just realized that happened."

"What did happen?"

Carley looked away. "Like you said, it was a nightmare."

"You punched her. I ran in right when it happened."

"Do you really think I would knowingly and willingly punch Lilly?" Her eyes flickered back to meet his, but his uneasy gaze caused her to drift back to the unbiased eyes of the sofa's buttons.

Lee squeezed at the plastic water bottle in his hands, the noise sharp and crinkling. His voice low and gruff, he asked, "Was it that bad?"

She shrugged.

He exhaled.

"Okay, I get it," he said. "You don't want to talk about it. But you need to apologize."

"You saw how she stormed out. Just go talk to her," Carley said, a spark of urgency in her voice. "If you don't, we'll be feeling the offshoot for a week."

"If I don't?" Lee said disbelievingly. "Look, Carley, I don't know what you're going through and I appreciate what you're doing for me, but I'm not at your beck and call," he seethed. "You're the only person I don't have to tiptoe around, but I'm not your errand boy and I'm not Lilly's bootlicker."

His gaze bore into her, eyes wide now with incredulity, driving into her in a look that a few mere words from violent. Yet in the split second it took for Carley's gaze to falter down to the water-stained carpet and back up to him, she thought she saw a flicker of concern. She very could have entertained the concern to be a form of wish-fulfillment—for someone to sit down and ask her what's wrong and why is she acting so out of her usual composed character—but even that softness in his brow faded, replaced by that menacing expression. It softened.

"You're better than this," he said.

"Please," she said.

His scowl deepened and he left without a word.

She sunk down on her bed and fell back, more than happy to have gravity pull her into the firm mattress. She closed her eyes, not out of pursuit of the ever-fleeting sleep, but in physical representation of shutting herself off from the world, of allowing herself to be swallowed in the peace of dark.

A knock on the door startled her from her reverie. Lee had the left door slightly ajar, enough for Katjaa to peak in, gently pushing it in. Carley sighed again and sat up, wordlessly gesturing for her to enter. In one hand she held thermometer and a bottle of water.

"Lee sent me," she said. "Is everything okay?"

Carley felt her clothes were still wet.