Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing related to The Walking Dead—swear to Buddha.

Warning: This is rated M for language, gore, and suggestive themes.

Note: A little more about Jenna will be revealed in this chapter, and this starts out in Shane's point of view. Sorry again if that's annoying to you, but that's the way I work.

P.S.: I'm only realizing now that I should've probably cleared up this little detail before, but the H in Thao's name is silent. My bad, folks.


"There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds."

—Laurell K. Hamilton


Scar Tissue

SPOV

Shane sat on one of the logs around the fire pit, still trying to come to terms with everything that had just happened hours ago. Half the camp had been lost to the attack the night before. He hadn't felt so helpless in a long time, and it wasn't sitting well with him at all. It had been a mistake having no one up on watch last night, leaving everyone vulnerable to the surprise mob of walkers. So for that, he was to blame—he knew that. He should have taken better precautions, and because he hadn't lives were lost. But he couldn't deny that he thought Rick was partially to blame as well. If he hadn't gone off on a rescue mission for a drug dealer and taken half their manpower with him, then things wouldn't have been so bad.

Looking up at the RV in the near distance, he spotted Jenna coming through the door. Thao moved to follow her, but she halted him with one minute gesture of her hand. He stood at the steps in the RV, and she knelt down to be more at level with him. She looked over to her left briefly, toward where Andrea sat beside Amy's body, and then looked back up at Thao, shaking her head. She kissed his forehead and then nodded over his shoulder, indicating for him to get back inside.

Jenna straightened up and looked over at Andrea and Amy again for a long moment, and then picked up her machete leaning against the RV and wandered over to the remaining carnage just a short distance away.

Shane sighed, looking back at Andrea for the umpteenth time. Something needed to be done, and it needed to be done soon. Amy would wake up as a walker, and then they would have to kill her before she bit anyone else. With Andrea in the state she was in, that would be hard to do, but it needed to be done, if she wasn't going to do it herself. Lori had already tried to talk to her, but it didn't seem to have an effect. This was Andrea's sister, though. Her last living family. This was going to be no easy matter. Not that it should have been.

God, if only he hadn't been so stupid the night before—maybe Amy would've still been alive. Maybe they all would've still been alive.

He got to his feet, unable to sit back and watch others clean up the carnage of the travesty that had occurred last night. Occurred on his watch. If anyone should have had to clear away all the bloodshed, then it should've been him—him and Rick. Shane was caught somewhere in between being thankful that his best friend was alive and well, and furious at him for leaving them all defenseless in the first place. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, so to speak. It wasn't a good feeling.

He wandered around the other side of the RV to the lower part of the camp, where Morales, T-Dog, Daryl, and Glenn were busy gathering bodies and separating them into groups. The walkers would be burned, their own people would be buried.

Daryl was going around, driving a pickaxe into the skulls of all of the fallen for good measure. A little further down, Dusty and Jenna were dealing with more bodies. Together they dragged a fallen walker to the burn pile, having a bit of difficulty with the weight of a dead body between them. They managed to get it to the pile though, and Shane decided to go and help them with the next.

As he drew nearer, he saw that it was Tyler's body they were dealing with now. He shook his head. That boy—seventeen years old, not yet a man—should not have had to die yet. None of them should have.

Dusty reached down to grip his shoulders while Jenna went to grab his legs, and suddenly, his eyes snapped open along with his mouth. A guttural, choked-off snarl forced its way out of his shredded throat, and Shane burst into a sprint. He'd come back as a walker, and Dusty was way too close to his face.

Dusty screamed and Jenna dropped his legs, rushing over and knocking the other girl out of the grasping hands of the boy who'd been alive just hours ago.

"Go, just go, it's alright," Jenna urged Dusty, pulling the machete from her belt.

Before Shane or the others could get there, Jenna swung the machete, and the blade careened downward, cracking into Tyler's skull. She pulled the blade out and flicked off the blood, and then looked up at the rest of them, who were now hovering around, looking on in shock.

"I got it, it's alright," she told them, and looked over at Dusty, who was sitting propped on her hands in the dirt. "You alright?" she asked, pulling the girl to her feet.

Dusty nodded, looking at Tyler's body with wide eyes.

"I'll help her," Shane told Dusty, who was still very shaken. "Why don't you go sit down an' rest up a bit, okay? I got it."

Dusty nodded again and made her way back up to the fire pit. Shane turned to Jenna, who was knelt down by Tyler's head, peering at his face. She shook her head and closed his eyes, head hanging down for a moment.

"You alright?" he asked, coming to kneel at her side.

She nodded. "Yeah, I'm alright," she said quietly. "He was such a punk-ass, you know? There were so many times I was ready to smack him upside the head…but I never wanted this. No one here deserves this."

Shane nodded in understanding and patted her shoulder, noticing when she tensed slightly in response before relaxing again. He'd forgotten that Jenna didn't seem to like being taken by surprise, whether physical or not. She'd tensed up like that after he'd gone to make sure Merle wasn't harassing her, and clapped her on the shoulder when she'd voiced her plans of leaving.

"C'mon," he said, standing up and moving to the side to give her some room. "Let's get him up with the others."

She moved around to grab his legs again while Shane lifted him up by the shoulders. Together, they brought his body to the enlarging group of dead campers.

"Thank you," she said after they'd both straightened up again.

He looked up at her as she wiped the sweat from her brow with a black bandana and stowed it away in her back pocket. She looked thoroughly exhausted, but then again, she had every reason to be. She'd spent most of the previous day down in the city, and that was enough on its own. Then she'd had to run back up to the hills, and joined in to take down all the walkers that had invaded camp. No one had slept last night.

"No problem," he said, looking back down at the pile of bodies, and realized only then that they'd lain Tyler down beside Dillon. Two boys, about to be buried long before their time.

"I meant thank you for everything you did last night," Jenna replied, and he looked up at her in question. "You kept them safe. You kept Thao safe when I wasn't there. 'Thank you' isn't enough, but it's all I've got."

He shook his head. "'Thank you' is more 'n enough, Jenna," he told her honestly. "More 'n I deserve, to tell you the truth," he confessed.

Her jade eyes locked with his for a prolonged moment, and he had the unnerving feeling of being seen right through, as though he were as transparent as glass. It was unsettling, but he realized there was no judgment in her gaze, and was able to relax a bit.

"This wasn't your fault, Shane," her soft voice toned.

He might as well have been glass clear after all.

He shook his head again and ran a hand through his hair. "Half of these people are dead because I was so careless."

"That's one way to look at it," she replied, running her left hand under her nose out of what he'd gathered was a habit of hers. "The way I see it, these people are alive because you acted so quickly. You got them all behind you with nothing but the RV at your back, and because of that, they're alive right now."

She looked over at the camp center, where Andrea was still sitting beside Amy's body.

"Maybe if five of us hadn't been down in the city, things might not have been so bad," she continued, voicing his own thoughts. "Or maybe they would have been worse. Maybe many more would've died, if we hadn't come back with ammo."

Acting a bit out of character, Jenna reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder gently, looking up at him with earnestness in her eyes.

"No matter which way you look at it, you saved a good portion of these people."

He nodded after a moment, finding that he was unable—or maybe just unwilling—to argue with her, and she lowered her hand. They both turned their gaze back to Andrea to see that Rick was approaching her. When he was right at her side, she suddenly aimed a gun directly at his face, and Shane's heart crashed to a halt.

Rick reacted in the safest way possible, freezing his movement and then putting his hands up as he slowly backed away. When he was a safe distance away, Andrea lowered her gun and turned her gaze back to Amy.

Jenna looked back at him for a moment, sighed slightly, and began making her way to the fire pit where Dusty was sitting with Rick, Dale, and Lori. Shane walked with her, wanting to discuss things with Rick. As hard as it was, something needed to be done about Amy. With Andrea in the state she was in, that would be a very difficult task, but that didn't change the fact that they needed to do something. He just wondered how they would go about it. Maybe Rick had an idea.

"She still won't move," Rick said to Shane in an undertone as they approached, looking over at Andrea.

"She won't even talk to us," said Lori. "She's been there all night…what do we do?"

"We can't just leave Amy like that," said Shane quietly, hating what he needed to say next. "I hate to say this, but we need to deal with it…same as the others…"

Jenna shook her head. "No, we don't need to deal with it…she does…" she said, and everyone looked at her incredulously. "It's not our place to do it. Amy was Andrea's sister, not yours or mine. Let her do it, and don't rush her."

With that, Jenna moved to make her way over to Andrea, and Rick reached out and caught her by the arm. She reacted on what seemed to be an instinctive level, and yanked her arm away and took a step back from him, keeping her eyes fixed on him all the while. Rick put his hands up in a demonstration of peace, wanting her to know that he meant no harm. Apparently, Rick hadn't exactly had the time to pick up on those particular qualities about Jenna, failing to notice that she did not like to be touched or even approached by surprise. She didn't trust men very easily, which had probably served her very well before she'd joined them. A small young woman on her own with a child to look after made for a very easy victim.

Jenna looked Rick up and down intently for a moment longer, and then continued on her way to Andrea. Rick didn't stop her that time, and they watched as she neared the older woman, and knelt down beside her in a gentle motion. Her voice carried just enough for Shane to be able to make out the soft tones.

"It feels impossible… You're stuck somewhere between wanting this…in between period to last, and wanting it to be over and done with. I don't need to tell you what this feels like though…you know." Jenna's head lowered again for a moment. "In the first couple weeks of all this, I found myself in the exact same place you are now…with my brother."

Lori gasped slightly, and Shane's heart sank a bit. Dusty put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. Shane felt suddenly that they were all being rather invasive, listening in on a conversation not meant for them to hear. But at the same time, he couldn't not listen.

Andrea looked up at Jenna for a moment, and then back down at Amy.

"The whole time, I felt like I couldn't do it. I didn't think I'd be able to do it, but I knew that I had to. Because there was no I way I was letting my little brother turn into something that wasn't even him…something that was just a cruel mockery of the person he used to be. There was no one else with us, so it was just him and I. I had to be the one to do it, no matter what. And honestly, I don't think I would have let anyone else do it either. Because it wouldn't have been their place. He was my brother, not theirs.

"It feels impossible, but you'll know when the time is right. Somehow, you'll just…you'll know. So there's no rush here. We won't do it before you're ready…we won't do it at all. You will."

Jenna and Andrea locked eyes for a long moment that seemed to stretch on forever, and finally, Jenna nodded lightly, rose to her feet again, and laid a hand on Andrea's shoulder gently before leaving the woman to mourn.

She stepped into the RV, presumably to check on Thao, and then exited again before picking up her machete and going back to help Jacki and Glenn with the remaining bodies. Shane felt like he should talk to her, but knew that there were no words to make anything okay again in this situation. And he didn't think that she would want to hear any words of comfort anyway. There was still so much that he didn't know about Jenna, but he did know that one piece of the puzzle had fallen into place just now.

Daryl approached them at the fire pit, pickaxe in hand, looking around at them incredulously, and their brief trance of shock and sympathy vanished.

"Y'all can't be serious," he said, looking between Shane and Rick. "You can't let that girl hamstring us," he went on, gesturing at Andrea. "The dead girl's a time bomb."

"Well, what d'you suggest?" Rick asked.

"Take the shot," Daryl replied intently, and made a shooting gesture to his own head. "Clean, in the brain. Hell, I can hit a turkey between the eyes from this distance—"

"No," said Lori firmly, and Daryl turned his gaze to her. "For God's sake, let her be," she said, sitting back down beside Dusty.

Daryl looked from Rick to Shane again, seeing the agreement in their expressions, and shook his head in disgust, spitting as he turned and walked away. Shane looked around at the camp and spotted Jenna near the group of their dead, seeming to be inspecting them. When she moved the arm of one—Rodger—off of Millie's head and cracked her machete down on Millie's skull, he realized what she was doing. She was making sure none of them would be waking up as walkers, same as Dixon had been doing earlier with the pickaxe.

Unable to stand back and watch Jenna take this burden upon herself alone, Shane made his way over to her, approaching as she split through the skull of old Lennie. Wordlessly, he picked up a shovel and helped her finish off the rest.

"Sorry about your brother," he said after they'd finished.

Her eyes rose to meet his briefly, and she just nodded in acknowledgement before giving her machete a small, quick swing to flick off the blood.

"You didn't have to do this alone, you know," he added after a moment. "You could've asked for help, Jenna."

"I didn't need help," she answered, securing her machete to her belt once more. "But thank you for coming to help anyway. Just thought I'd take care of it before anyone else had to."

Shane nodded, contemplating. "You don't always have to be the one to do the hard part, you know."

She was silent for a moment, looking off into the distance, also contemplating. Her eyes met his for a moment and then she looked back toward camp. "I've been there," she said, nodding her head, and he followed her gaze to see Andrea sitting beside Amy. He looked back at Jenna, beginning to follow her point. "This isn't so hard for me anymore," she explained, looking down at the fallen victims.

Shane was silent, unable to find any words to respond with to that. How horrible must it have been to get to the point where cracking a machete into the skulls of their dead—people they'd known, who'd been alive just hours ago—wasn't so hard? But, he guessed that if she'd been in Andrea's situation, if she'd had to keep her own brother from coming back as a walker…if she was tough enough to get through that, she was certainly tough enough to withstand this.

"Do you know where Roy McFadden is?" Jenna asked after a moment, snapping Shane out of his musings.

He frowned in puzzlement. "No, why?"

"I haven't seen him since I left with Daryl and the others yesterday, and I haven't seen his body lying anywhere," she replied, looking around the campsite, and then waving a hand at the pile of bodies at their feet. "And he's not here, or in the burn pile."

Shane studied the pile and then scanned his eyes around camp, finding that Roy was nowhere in sight. He hadn't noticed until now.

"Maybe he's in his tent—or maybe he took off last night," Shane suggested, "to save himself."

"Maybe," she said quietly, seeming to be spacing out a bit.

He followed her gaze to see that she was looking at Dusty, who was sitting on the ground near the fire pit, arms wrapped around her legs. Shane assumed she was still thinking about Tyler. That little surprise while lifting his dead body must've shaken her like crazy. For all of their bickering and jaunting, Shane knew that Dusty had been really very fond of Tyler—looked at him like the little brother she'd never had. Dusty, like Shane himself, had lost her whole family very early on when the outbreak hit. She'd found an older sister in Jacki, and a little sister in Sophia. And now, seemed to have found another one in Jenna, and a mother of sorts in Carol. It must've been hard to see the little family she'd found diminishing so suddenly.

"You reap what you sow!" said Daryl suddenly as he and Morales dragged Tito's body toward the row Shane and Jenna stood beside.

"You know what? Shut up, man," said Gabe angrily.

Daryl dropped his hold on Tito's right shoulder, and the extra weight slipped out of Gabe's hands as the body fell onto the ground with a thud.

"Y'all left my brother for dead!" Daryl spat at the group angrily as he strode around. "You had this comin!" he declared, pointing at the row of dead campers before storming off.

At Shane's left, Jenna sighed and ran a hand through her hair haphazardly, her face turned up toward the sky, eyes closed, as if seeking divine intervention of some kind—or maybe just patience. He really couldn't blame her. They really didn't need any of Dixon's tantrums at the moment.

"Sorry 'bout Dixon," said Shane. "I'd say you get used to 'im, but then I'd be lyin."

"He lost his brother," she said with a sigh, her tone one of understanding. "Hell, to him, Rick all but killed Merle. In his own way, he's mourning." Then she shook her head and ran a hand through her abundant hair again. "Just wish he'd be a bit more tactful about it," she muttered then.

Shane studied her demeanor for a moment. She looked thoroughly exhausted, fed up, weary. He wondered if this was why she seemed to prefer being on her own—the less people you got attached to, the less people you had to lose. And from the sound of it, she'd lost enough people already.

"Too bad ya didn't take that Dodge and head outta here while you had the chance, huh?" he asked, wondering if that was where her mind was at—she seemed lost in thought again.

Her eyes turned up to his then, seeming mildly stunned for a moment. "Yeah, too bad," she said with a shrug, though there was no real conviction in her tone.

With that, she headed back toward Dusty and settled down at her side, running her hand up and down the other girl's back in soothing motions, and leaving Shane somewhat puzzled. Did that mean that she was glad she'd stayed behind, even after last night? She'd wanted to head out on her own with Thao just a couple days ago—what had changed her mind? He had no clue, and all he could seem to put together was that the tiny woman was a bit of an inherent contradiction.


JPOV

Sitting next to Dusty on the dirt and gravel, Jenna kept her eyes closed, trying to keep the horrible images from passing through her memory. Dusty kept her head buried in her arms, knees held clamped to her front while she sat curled up in a ball. Jenna guessed she was trying not to remember as well. If only that were possible.

Most of the time, Jenna found that it was possible to keep the memories from overwhelming her mind. It took a lot of effort, and it helped that the constant need to be vigilant kept her good and distracted, but it was possible. It wasn't until Thao had come along that she'd really had any success at it, though. There were two times when her memories had free reign of her thoughts, two times of weakness which her memories took full advantage of; sleep, and the aftermath of times like these. When new wounds were inflicted, scar tissue ached with phantom pains, as though not wanting to be forgotten in the wake of new destruction.

Watching Tyler die had been horrible. Knowing that she'd been too late to help him was horrible. He looked so much like her own little brother, and it was like watching his death all over again.

She hadn't been able to help him either.

Josh's death hadn't been nearly so graphic, but the end result was the same—he'd been bitten, and he was now dead. Eighteen years old, caught somewhere between a kid and a young man, who had done all he could to protect their family. In the end, it had all been in vain.

Jenna had seen two very different sides of Josh that night in Seattle, back in their father's house. He'd fought like a true hero, selflessly and fearlessly, to keep the swarm from overtaking the house. Even after their dad had fallen, and their little sister, Katie…even after, he'd kept on fighting until he and Jenna had killed all of the rotting corpses. It was only then, when the bodies had all fallen, that he revealed the bite on his shoulder—his death sentence. And that was when Jenna had broken down. All of that struggle, all of that bloodshed had been for absolutely nothing, and she'd lost her entire family.

Josh, the one who'd received the Grim Reaper's seal of death, was still strong enough to want to protect Jenna even further—he'd decided to make sure Katie and their dad didn't wake up like the rest. And that was what brought Jenna back from her misery. That was what had cleared her head. Because there was no way in hell that she was going to let that be Josh's final memory—smashing the skulls of his father and little sister to make sure they wouldn't be returning from the dead.

So she'd done it. She brought Josh up to his bedroom and made him lie down, and then she'd gone back downstairs into the blood-soaked, corpse-littered living room where her dad and Katie lie amongst the rest. She'd pulled the crowbar from her father's dead fingers, and she'd ended them.

To this day, she hadn't been able to pick up another crowbar.

Kneeling at her brother's bedside and waiting for the fever to run its course was the hardest thing she'd had to do up to that point. He'd said that he wanted to hold on as long as he could, and Jenna could only oblige—she was not eager for the process to be shortened in any way. She was dreading the inevitable end. And she was losing confidence in herself as the seconds passed; she didn't believe that she'd actually be able to do it. Her dad and Katie had been torture, and she didn't think she could handle even more.

And then she'd seen the second side of her brother, completely contrasting the first, when the fever had reached its peak.

Barely more than three hours before, he'd been a fearless defender—a hero. But lying there in his childhood bedroom, moments away from death, he'd been a terrified boy who was just afraid to die. And seeing him break down that way had demolished any trace of resolve Jenna had left. She knew she wouldn't be able to end things for him the same way she had with Katie and their dad. And if he hadn't spoken up in those last moments, she might not have.

"Jenny…I'm there…I can feel it," he'd said in barely more than a whisper, his tears having dried long before hers. "I'm there…I don't wanna be one of them, Jenny. I don't wanna be one of those things. They killed dad…they killed Katie…I don't wanna be that," he'd cried, tears running anew.

Six foot two, taller than their father, and still, she could see the trace of the little boy she'd grown up with in his terrified hazel eyes.

"You won't," Jenna had promised him, forcing her resolve back into place.

But she didn't know if he'd even heard her, for in the next moment, his eyes had turned from terrified to absolutely blank. Lifeless. His heartbeat had ceased, and his breathing had stopped. He was gone.

And with a monumental effort, Jenna had closed his eyes and raised her Beretta—which suddenly felt red-hot and seemed to be made of lead—and put a bullet through her brother's head, feeling like she'd just shot out her own heart in the process.

Shaking her head slightly, she tried to dispel that image and stop the ringing in her ears. She rubbed Dusty's shoulders gently, rhythmically, hoping fruitlessly to provide comfort.

Shane had asked her if she regretted staying with the group, and for some reason, that question had completely thrown her. Because in that instant, she realized that, oddly, she didn't regret staying, and she wasn't sure if she completely understood why. It certainly would've spared her this interlude of agonizing recollection. She wouldn't have grown attached to any of these people—she wouldn't be mourning their deaths if she and Thao would have just moved on.

But would Gabe Morales have survived if she hadn't been there? Would anyone have stopped Dusty from getting herself mauled by the walker that killed Tyler? Not knowing the answer to that, Jenna couldn't honestly say that she would have preferred to have been absent for this disaster. Not if it meant two people had survived who otherwise wouldn't have, at the very least.

And, it seemed that Dusty needed someone to sit with her at the moment, and Jenna was glad to do it. She wished she'd had someone sitting with her when she'd lost everyone.

"A walker got him!"

Both Jenna's and Dusty's heads snapped up immediately at the sound of Jacki's startled voice in time to see her striding backward away from Jim.

"A walker bit Jim!" she cried.

Jenna's heart sank at the look of terrified dread on Jim's face as she and Dusty rose to their feet in alarm. Things had gone from bad to worse yesterday, and the night had ended in calamity. And yet, things only seemed to be spiraling downward even further.

Just when you think you've hit rock-bottom, the ground begins to crumble beneath your feet.