Chapter XXI: Welcome To The Tombs

My anger flickered to life in the night. Sweat and fury rolled from my pores, and hurt twisted deep within me as I realized, now that the rush of adrenalin had faded, how close I had come to losing Michonne today. Because of Rick. And Daryl.

I'd called him "love." He'd called me a bitch. The words pounded still in my ears, laced with a sudden rancour I just couldn't comprehend. Of course he'd been worried about Merle, but God, I'd just been trying to help. To show I cared. But then I'd held him, stroked his hair - his brother's blood had dried on my skin, too.

Daryl had apologized for his words; we didn't talk about what I'd said, which suited me just damn fine, since I was not overly eager to interrogate the precise logic behind me being absolutely shattered by his rejection in one moment, and then whispering endearments into his ear the next. Empathy moved between those two points, I knew that, but it pained me to think I'd allowed myself to be so...so…

"Fuck you," I muttered to the shadows, wishing I could say that to their faces. They'd wanted to use her, to drag her to the Governor and offer her up as a sacrifice. His apology rang hollow in my ears, even the second and third time around; he had yet to acknowledge his part in the scheme. "You ain't nothing," he'd rasped, his voice strained after so much sobbing. "I'm sorry." Unsure of what to say to this, I'd simply reached over and touched a hand to his knee, torn between the pain and the empathy and the stirrings of my fresh rage. It was an old gesture, one he'd practiced in the early days, in the moments after the CDC explosion, when he'd tethered me to sanity and calm with a hand on my knee in his old truck.

But he hadn't acknowledged Michonne. Hadn't said a word to the fact that he and Rick had plotted to kill my friend.

He marked Merle's empty grave that evening, with a roughly hewn wooden cross, and a well of memory that I couldn't touch. I watched him head down the hill, went to bed for an hour or two with a jagged heart and Michonne's breathing above me.

When he returned, we hadn't talked much, but maybe that was a good thing. Part of me wanted to discuss what had taken place out there in the grass, that my lips had brushed his skin for the first time, that I'd called him something other than "Daryl" or "Hey, you," but I understood implicitly that neither of us were truly ready for what that would entail, and that my reckoning of his actions prior to those moments had enlarged that sea of experience between us. Now more than ever, neither of us knew what this was.

Rick shared the new plan with us when he came back inside, and it was blessedly simple: escape. Or, at least, prepare for it. With a little surprise, just for fun. That night was spent in a flurry of activity, as we hurriedly packed up our belongings and cleaned our shelves. Reclaiming our liberty felt almost intoxicating, and our energy abounded throughout the long hours of work, until the grey dawn when we moved outside and began loading up the vehicles. If we were indeed forced to leave, I would miss the prison and the firm comfort of a known home, but there would be something else. Another place we could fortify, live, grow, and heal from the pain inflicted upon us both within and without these walls. We would be better people, far away from the Governor, far away from the worst of of our memories.

I managed to fill just one backpack with my personal items, which amounted now to three shirts, one sweater, a pair of jeans that had seen much better days, a handful of socks and underwear, and two battered paperbacks I hoped to find the time to read during the drive to somewhere. Slipping on a fairly warm green canvas jacket that Carol had magically produced for me, I tried to say goodbye to my cell. It wasn't much, that was for damn sure, but it had been the first space I'd truly been able to call my own since...well, since the college. Since Chloe. There would be others, though, I reminded myself, slinging the backpack across my shoulders and following Carol out to the yard. There would be others.

"You okay?" she asked quietly, as I held open the main door for her.

"As okay as I'm likely to get," I shrugged.

We stepped out into the early morning light. It was the coldest day we'd experienced so far this year, and yet in that, there was a sense of promise. Or perhaps it was urgency masquerading as such. "I'm just glad you went after him," she sighed, peering around the yard until she spotted the "him" we were now apparently talking about. "You brought him home."

Nothing. Bitch.

I followed Carol across the pavement towards Daryl's motorcycle. He was sitting on the ground next to it, bundling up a supply of bolts, set apart from the hustle and bustle of the main group preparing to head out. He glanced up at the sound of our footsteps, but quickly looked away when he realized I was with Carol. Things were still awkward. Holding a grown man while he cries for his asshole brother, stroking his hair, kissing his temple…that'll sour a friendship for a few days, sure enough.

Nothing. Bitch.

"You know," he said quietly, "Merle never did nothing like that his whole life." He shoved a few more items into his rucksack, tugging them down with perhaps a bit more force than necessary.

Carol's response was soft and certain, and so true it hurt: "He gave us a chance."

He had. If Merle Dixon had done nothing else worthwhile or meaningful in his life, he had loved his brother, and through that love, we all had this chance, even if it was just a few moments' head-start. Because of him, I still had Michonne; because of him, we'd live to fight another day. I watched as Carol reached out her hand to Daryl, surprised to see him take it and allow her to help him to his feet. As she walked away, I made to follow, but she shot me a look that clearly said I should stay with him. Uncertainly, I turned, to see him looking uncertainly back at me, too.

"You...d'you wanna…" He let it trail off, possibly embarrassed or just feeling the weight of the past few weeks. There was kindness there, penitence, but I only heard two words and a world of betrayal between his breaths.

The iciness with which I met his blue eyes was flawed by the tiniest chink of thaw. One wrong move, and my resolve would melt or crumble. There was this vindictive streak in me now, perhaps honed by years as the youngest sibling, at the mercy of my brothers' teasing and pranks and empty apologies. I was angry. At Daryl. And a ride on his bike was not going to nearly atone for the fact that he had almost, indirectly, killed Michonne.

"No, thanks," I replied quietly, looking down at a small hole in the asphalt. Tripping hazard, really. "I'm going in the SUV with Hershel and the kids, in the woods."

"'Kay." He started chewing on his thumb. "I'm...uh...s-"

"No," I interrupted swiftly, holding up a hand. "No more apologies. I know you were upset. You've already told me you didn't mean it."

I'd said some pretty rotten shit in my time, too. Lost track of the number of "dumbasses" I'd flung in my brothers' direction; cussed out Tina Meyers after a field hockey match a fair amount. Those words were shallow, delved from just beneath a sore surface, and I wasn't interested in their origins beyond Daryl's pain and fear in those moments. But there was something else I wanted him to apologize for, something I wanted him to recognize, to point to and say, That was the worst thing I've ever almost done.

I cleared my throat, throwing myself into the painful chasm between us. "The plan...the plan about Michonne…"

"It was fucked up," he said quickly.

My eyes flashed and narrowed. "You're goddamn right it was." I was tempted to use the "m word," but I still cared about him enough to muster even the slightest hesitancy. Shifting my weight and crossing my arms, I waited for his response. Apology. Penance. For the attempted murder of my best friend.

"We thought we had no choice, Riley. It was her or them. None of us liked it. I tried to tell Rick…"

"I don't give a shit. Just know that next time some kind of bullshit idea like that comes into your heads, where you think Michonne's life is worth any less than ours, you better tie me up and drag me with her, because -"

"Because what?" He glared at me. He actually glared at me, as though I was the one in the wrong here.

"Because it'll be over. Everything. Every bullshit thing. If it comes down to it, I choose her." Oh, hell. Once the words had tumbled from my mouth, I knew they weren't entirely true. God, if I'd honestly had to choose them or Michonne, I wasn't sure what I'd do. After all, I'd chosen Daryl before - over every single one of them. But the truth was, I didn't want to have to choose between any of them. What I really wanted was for that situation to never, ever arise again, for none of us to be put in the position where my family had split along the fault lines of misplaced loyalties and short-sighted decision-making. Unrealistic? Of course it was, given our dystopian reality.

"Jesus." He shook his head. "You're such a kid."

I froze. It shouldn't have hurt as much as it did; after all, I was young. But where most people would say it lovingly, teasingly, - Oh, you've got a lot to learn, sweetheart - Daryl fairly spat it out at me. As though my youth were a transgression, a shortcoming, a flaw. As though because I was just twenty-two, I could not understand love or sacrifice. Or pain.

I hadn't expected that from him. So what was I, then? Nothing, bitch, or kid? His expression hardened, and up went the wall. "Fuck you," I muttered. That's what a kid would do, right? Fire off an expletive, sullenly stalk off to find a more sympathetic adult? I found one several yards away. "Do you think this is going to work?" I asked Michonne, helping her to heave a bag into the back of the SUV.

She stepped back slightly, gaze shifting over my shoulder to where Daryl was still adjusting items on his bike, resolutely avoiding my existence. "He didn't do it," she said quietly, reaching out to squeeze my arm. "He was trapped. Same as you in that closet. He was scared. We all are."

Fear, I understood. Grief, I knew that well. But that awareness did nothing to assuage the ache inside; the way I felt scraped raw when memory brushed against those words. I was tired of it, having spent the night tracing the shape of them, the ragged edge of what might have been. Glancing down at the bag in my hands, I repeated my question.

"Even if it doesn't," Michonne said with a resigned sigh, "then at least we can get away. We can start over someplace else."

"With the people who want to kill you," I mumbled, shoving a small laundry basket haphazardly in beside the other bags. God, if we survived this, unpacking these vehicles and settling back into the prison was going to be a bitch.

"With the desperate people who wanted to protect you and the others," she corrected firmly. "Christ, Riley, it was a terrible situation, and I'm glad it ended differently than they planned, but you need to forgive or forget. "

"Why?" I hissed. "Why do I have to? Why does everyone around here think they know what's best for me? Daryl and Rick were willing to sacrifice you, Mich! Kill you. Offer you up to him on a silver freaking platter."

She gave me a wan smile. "I know. But they didn't. They considered it, for a while, and then they realized they were wrong. It didn't happen. Just like when you and Daryl came back. You considered it, realized you were wrong, and then you came back."

How could she be so reasonable about the whole thing? Yes, Rick had decided against it, but they had weighed the odds just the same. The absolute wrongness of the situation chilled me again and again, as thoughts crept unbidden to my tired mind: what had happened to them in the months we'd been apart? I thought I had rejoined a stronger group, but perhaps they were just colder now. Maybe their resolution was not a sign of resilience, but bitterness.

The world demanded choices, I'd learned that well months before. And now Michonne was offering me another pair: forgive or forget. Preferably, I knew, she wanted me to do both, for reasons I couldn't quite understand. The events of the past few weeks were so damn heavy, and yet I was not ready to put them down. I wanted to weigh them, coddle them a little, get to know them: Woodbury, the confrontation with the Governor, turning my back on my family and coming home to war and confusion.

And the plan.

The plan, which was all I decided to focus on for the time being, shifting my burdens and weighty thoughts to another mental compartment. Just for now.

The plan involved, in its most extreme case, our escape, but with a few provisions for remaining - or, at the very least, dissuading the Governor from pursuing us. Our cellblock and the cafeteria had been emptied completely, and our vehicles would be hidden in the woods, giving the clear appearance that we were long gone, in the night. As far as the Governor would be concerned, we could be in Senoia or Macon or on our way out of state.

Deeper within the prison, though, there'd be a few surprises lined up: smoke grenades secreted within the Tombs - the lower level corridors that had seen Lori and T-Dog's death and that Carol had been forced to languish in during the chaos of those first few days of claiming the prison. Those smoke grenades would disorient the Governor and his cronies, leaving them unsure of where to run when the walkers started getting stirred up, as they inevitably would.

If they made it back out, we'd be waiting for them, there on the outside of the prison fence. We could fire off a few shots, enough to give them some vivid nightmares, and then we'd leave. A rendezvous spot at a town about twenty miles east had been circled on several maps and distributed to each group, just in case. The location we were aiming for was secure, with a nondescript exterior, ridiculously spacious, and with a wooded area nearby for us to conceal the vehicles.

I couldn't wait to get back to the foam pits.

Rick had said there might be a chance we could stay. If the Governor died or surrendered, and we could rest easy in the knowledge that Woodbury would leave us and the prison alone, then we could stay or at least weigh the prison as a viable option. Our main goal today, though, was not to go out like scared rabbits, but rather to leave the road smoking in our wake.

Once most of the vehicles had been packed up, I drove the SUV and its occupants down to the end of the prison road, nosing in to a little cowpath leading through the woods. The brush was still thick enough, despite the crisp weather, to conceal the vehicle, for the most part, but Beth, Carl, and I did spend a bit of time with some machetes cutting down some extra branches and saplings to cover them more thoroughly.

Four of us - Beth, Hershel, Carl, and myself - went to a small copse of trees several yards away from this point. We'd have a clear vantage point on the prison, enough to see if we needed backup or if things went completely to shit and we needed to get out. At Hershel's insistence only, I was joining them. "Your ankle is unreliable," he'd pointed out earlier this morning, ticking off my lovely inventory of injuries at the same time. "You have stitches on your legs and your head; you have substantial bruising that's still in the process of healing. If you go out there with them and any one of those things gives out or up, you're dead, sweetheart, and anyone who tries to help you will be dead too."

When fired up, Hershel Greene had the kind of bearing that made me wonder how Maggie had ever managed to sneak out to parties or talk back to her father. Meekly, I'd agreed to his demands, but even so, I crouched behind some bushes with the Remington ready to go and a mutinous expression on my face that I dearly hoped he caught.

We didn't have to wait long, and though I knew it had been coming, the sight of those military vehicles (how had he gotten access to those?) barrelling up our road still sent chills down my spine. I tightened my grip on the gun, but there was really nothing I could do, not from this distance, not with the chaos that was about to ensue.

Judith was safe inside the SUV for the moment; Carol had climbed in beside her. Maybe she could even have a nap, I thought idly…

And then watched as they took out three of our towers with something big and automatic mounted on one of the trucks.

No nap today, then.

It seemed to be happening somewhere else, the whole scene before us. A TV screen, perhaps, or in a movie theatre. This was the sort of thing that actors had to deal with, not us. Not a veterinarian and three kids, hiding in the woods. The guard towers exploded in a fiery cascade of concrete and glass, and the trucks kept going, pounding through our gates as though they were made of rubber, rolling over the remains with nary a wobble on their wheels. It all went to shit, though, once they hit the barbed wire platforms, which busted most of the tires and sent them grinding to a halt.

"Oh, my gosh," muttered Beth beside me, watching this all unfold with huge eyes. I loosened my grip on the rifle to squeeze her shoulder comfortingly. It would be fine. It had to be fine.

The whole force of them headed inside our cellblock, guns at the ready. I tried to picture the scene within: they were probably overturning our makeshift tables, ripping apart the mattresses we'd left behind. He was furious, I was sure - his rage growing with each empty cell, each additional sign that we'd made it out, that we'd scarpered right under his nose.

When our cellblock was officially declared abandoned, they would move further into the prison, leading naturally to the Tombs. Past the warden's office, down the stairs...they'd have a few moments of peace and quiet, and then one of them would nudge a stray grenade in the dark, and the rest would pop eagerly to life with flashes and curls of acrid smoke. That would confuse and agitate the walkers; there would be a stampede for the stairs, for the safety of the yard and their trucks.

"How much longer?" Carl asked, hands tense on his gun.

"Can't be too much," I guessed. "Once they find the walkers, they'll be getting out of there as soon as they can, I'd imagine."

Another fifteen minutes or so inched by, and then half of Woodbury came bursting through the cellblock door. "Okay," I murmured, finger on the trigger. "Okay."

Really, though, I had nothing to do. Maggie and Glenn had prepared themselves behind the pallet barricades on the exterior catwalks, dressed in full riot gear and armed to the teeth. The element of surprise was to their benefit as well, and the sudden volley of gunfire from two separate points just added to the mayhem brewing in the yard. Several people ran for the trucks, panicked and screaming as they went. I watched as Martinez had to physically bundle the Governor into the lead one - he didn't want to leave unfinished. I knew. It was burning him right up.

The convoy came hurtling back down the road whence they had come, driving out with their tails between their legs, frightened as hell of those crazy-ass prison people. Rick's people, for good or ill. I kept my finger on the trigger even as I swivelled around, hoping that the Governor would see the sheen of my rifle through the leaves and would come half-cocked for a fight. I wanted to see him fall, for the pain he had caused my family; for what he had done to Maggie in the dark. For leaving Merle like that, for it had surely been him.

It never came, though, and that was for the best. We all exhaled, sighing in collective relief, and began the business of readying the SUV for the victorious drive back up the hill. Judith was still, somehow, asleep in Carol's arms, who looked at us with panic bright in her eyes. "Are we heading back?" she asked, as I slid behind the wheel. I nodded, smiling.

Beth was just walking around my side of the vehicle when she froze, and my own heart stopped. Walker? Governor? What? She turned back towards Carl and her father, and through the windshield I gazed at the little boy from the quarry, the kid who'd just always been there, growing up too fast, the child who had had to kill his own suffering mother, and I watched him shoot dead a kid from Woodbury, a kid who was relinquishing at Hershel's firm but not unkind demand to put down his own gun. A kid who was scared, a boy who shouldn't have been out there at all.

He fell to the ground and bile rose in my throat, hot and sour. There was no reason for Carl to shoot him, but he had. Dry-mouthed, I snapped at Beth to get in; watched numbly as Hershel pushed a quiet, pale, trembling boy into the passenger seat beside me, and slammed on the gas with an anger I couldn't even begin to articulate.

We pulled up to the prison yard in silence, none of us knowing what should be said. That was Rick's job, I decided. Not mine. I wasn't Carl's mother, his sister...I was just the girl who slept a few cells down, the girl who would forever have that boy's blue eyes straining her memory, the girl who would forever have that boy's blue eyes emblazoned on her memory, the girl who would have to work damn hard to forgive Carl for that stranger's death.

I grabbed a few things from the back of the SUV to help Carol out, and then followed Beth and Hershel in through the side door access to the cafeteria. The rest of the group had already made their way inside, and judging from the snippets of conversation that I heard as I busied myself with the currently unnecessary task of settling back in. "Hey." I jumped when his voice curled out from the shadows. "You good?"

"Fine," I said, but the lie was not forgiveness. "You?"

His face softened at my inquiry, and he nodded, hand twitching at his side. Did he want to reach out, I wondered? Not long ago, this kind of interaction would've been actually quite thrilling - but now I was ensnared between those moments in the field, when I'd seen him at his most vulnerable, and now, in the aftermath of our fight and the battle and those blue eyes. I felt my resolve and my anger falter a little, and now I really wasn't sure what this was. I hadn't lost respect for him, not at all, but the sounds of "nothing" and "bitch" were still there, bringing me up short especially when I considered how naturally "love" had tripped from my tongue. His words and sentiments had come from somewhere, and, like a simmering acid, they had begun to bite at me.

I liked him a lot, to put it simply. But I'd seen another element to him there, something I hadn't even seen on the Atlanta rooftop. I saw his heart break, for sure and for certain, and that had exposed him in such an intimate way that it was overwhelming me even now, combined as it was with Carl's cold-blooded reaction back there in the woods.

For a fleeting moment, I wished those words had never been said, the whole shit with Michonne had never gone down, and that we were the type of people that could take a few more steps toward each other - that he would feel able to pull me into an embrace, tell me clearly how glad he was that I was okay.

But he wasn't. And those things had happened, so I just watched him walk out towards the yard.

"I'm going with you!" Over my shoulder, I saw Carl stomping away from his father, who was simply left horrified in his wake.

So we were going to Woodbury.

"That kid was scared," Hershel said heavily. I didn't want to hear this; couldn't relive this. "He was handing his gun over."

Rick hesitated before answering, and I read in his silence a crumbling surety that Hershel was wrong, mistaken, because Carl could never do something like that. "He said he drew." Hershel shook his head gravely. "Carl said it was in defence," Rick countered slowly.

"I was there. He didn't have to shoot."

Rick caught my eye. "Riley?"

A vindictive longing rose within me. Karma, I thought briefly. The universe's subtle retribution for what he had tried to do to Michonne. But old love and respect filtered in through the cracks in my smouldering fury, and the instinct to dither or even outright lie fanned inside me, at the sight of Rick's uncertain, hopeful expression. It would've been easy, just to offer him a different angle on the matter, enough to abate his concern for now and put the whole issue on the back burner. But those blue eyes in the woods were piercing mine, tangling with the image of another pair - just as blue, just as scared - and I couldn't bring myself to do it. I sighed. I breathed forgiveness to life, and I broke Rick's heart. "I'm sorry. The kid was trying to hand his gun over...Carl chose to do it, and he didn't have to." Rick looked away.

Hershel wasn't done yet, though. "He had every reason not to -"

"Maybe it looked like that to you," Rick snapped, rounding on him, but Hershel cut him off with a shout of his name that made both of us jump.

"I'm telling you," he added after a beat, quieter this time, "he gunned that kid down."

Rick's face fell, but there was nothing I could do for him. Carl's actions were his and his alone, not even Rick's, and in the aftermath of this attack, we had much bigger fish to fry. It worried me that, at such a tender age, Carl was already able to easily give in to a sense of bloodlust, but I wasn't exactly qualified in either the psychology or the parenting department to be dispensing any advice. So I just grabbed Rick's hand for a brief moment, and hoped that said everything I could not.

"You coming with?" Michonne asked as we stood together, surveying the damage from the Governor's attack. If we were going to stay here - and conversations were firmly pointed in that direction - we would need to repair those gates and the fencing as soon as possible, and see about doing something to the guard towers. They'd taken out three, but the mosts and main structures were still standing...if we were able to find some sort of staging or something, maybe we could rebuild a sort of wooden lookout on top.

"Riley? Hey?"

She shook my shoulder gently, my good one, and I snapped back to the present. It had been swiftly decided that a small group would head out to Woodbury, aiming to finish what we'd started here. I didn't like the idea of re-engaging their forces, not when we'd just been so successful, but watching them blow the holy hell out of our home had enraged me in such a fundamental way that seeking out another fight, finishing everything and winning our freedom - that was vastly more appealing than hiding again, or running away.

This place was worth it.

"Yeah, I'll come," I muttered. "Just don't tell Hershel."

I helped her pack ups a few things into the truck, tucking a Glock into my jeans and sheathing my knife carefully. She loaded up the vehicle with a couple of rifles, taking a bag of something from Daryl, who pulled his bike around to park next to us as we waited for Rick to finish a conversation with a dejected Carl, who was watching our busyness with envy. Rick had refused to let him go with us. I looked away.

By the time we'd finished packing up the truck with an assortment of weapons, Glenn and Maggie had come down to join us, bearing regretful expressions and a few more guns. "Rick," Glenn said, as he walked back over to us. "We're staying. We don't know where the Governor is. If he comes back, we'll hold him off." It made solid sense, and I was glad to think that the remaining inmates wouldn't be alone or undefended. Maggie and Glenn were both good shots.

"Just the four of us?" Daryl interjected, slinging a rifle across his back. "All right." It was impossible to tell if he was pissed off or relieved, and I suppose it didn't really matter. We were all making choices today, and none of us had any real right to judge another for theirs.

"I appreciate you staying," Rick said, and Glenn nodded at this, offering a weary smile in return.

Beth and Carol had busied themselves with taking care of some eager walkers at the interior gate, thus clearing something of a path for us as we proceeded. Glenn and Maggie heaved the broken gate (which had been merely propped up against the fence) aside for us to pull through. Daryl led the way, alone on his bike, riding through the gate and down the hill with one foot dragging on the road, likely to keep him fairly steady on the uneven terrain and sweeping curve.

We flew down the windswept prison road, encountering little disturbance and only a handful of walkers, which we simply ignored. Fall had arrived in full force over the past couple of days, and the Georgia landscape had been dully varnished. After about twenty minutes, we reached the farm-heavy expanse between the two residential areas, roughly where the feed store had been located. Daryl had set the course for Woodbury today and I figured he wasn't eager to return to Logan Road; I couldn't blame him.

Up ahead, we could see some of the military-grade vehicles that the Governor had brought to our door. They were parked askew on the road, and nearby, a few walkers hunched over some forms laying on the pavement and grass. Had they succumbed to some of their injuries? Had they gotten into an accident?

The walkers didn't really notice us until there was a bolt between their eyes or a katana through their neck. I took care of a couple, mainly the ones preoccupied with eating, shoving my knife into their temples and disengaging as quickly as possible. Probably a good dozen or so of them were actually active; the rest of the bodies numbered well into the twenties. It looked as though every Woodburian who had participated in the attack was dead in front of us - in some way, shape, or form.

We surveyed the scene together, trying to piece a story together that could somehow explain how things had changed so quickly, within the space of no more than a few hours. I opened my mouth to suggest an accident, but before I could get the words out, there came a loud bang from the truck window directly behind Daryl, jolting us all into defensive poses. There, hands pressed against the glass, a terrified woman looked out at us.

Rick raised his gun, and Daryl reached up to unlock the door, Bowie knife still in hand. The dark-haired woman emerged, stepping down carefully, even as Daryl shoved her slightly to hurry her up. I couldn't name her, not right away, but her face was definitely familiar from my time in the town. Perhaps she'd worked in the pantry? As one of the logistics officers, I'd spent plenty of time in there.

Daryl slammed the truck door shut and Rick lowered his gun as we approached her. She was frightened, but unharmed, and when her eyes found mine, her whole face relaxed. "Riley, I'm so glad to — "

"Don't talk to her," Daryl growled, stepping in front of me, as though she'd been about to politely drive a knife through my face. "What the hell happened here?" I stepped back around him, flashing a glare in his direction.

Woodbury's forces had left the prison in a mad panic, as we'd suspected. The Governor hadn't been happy with the way his troops had fallen back, despite his orders to stand down. "He stopped the convoy," she told us tearfully. "And he just started shooting everyone."

Karen — her name came back to me as she wept in front of us — had survived by pulling a body shot through the head on top of her, by playing dead when the Governor inspected his bloody work. "And then I heard them drive off. I waited a while, and then I got into the truck and I just...I waited…" She finished with a sob, and despite the fact that Rick tensed as I did so, I pushed gently past him to reach out my arms to her. I'd never been much of a hugger before this, but the only thing Karen needed right now was forgiveness, and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to give it to her.

"He twisted them against us," I said quietly, looking over at Rick as I held the weeping woman in my arms. "Our fight was never with his people."

A lot of things in my life had changed, but one thing just couldn't die, not even in this new world: the profound, utter pleasure I took in being right. I watched as concession dashed across Rick's face, and I smiled in receipt.

He'd probably killed his militia to blame it on us, we decided, as we worked together to formulate a new plan. But returning to Woodbury with no citizens could backfire pretty damn quickly. "It would demonize us, but it wouldn't necessarily inspire the survivors," I pointed out, helping Karen into the truck. She was still shaking, still apologizing profusely. I shut the door gently behind her.

Michonne nodded. "He may not even have gone back to Woodbury."

We decided to keep going with our original plan, assuming that the Governor was still there and that the town was still against us. If, as Michonne suspected, the Governor was not there and had abandoned his remaining people, then we could pursue with some form of negotiation — ideally, this time it would be far more successful than our previous attempts.

The day was fading fast, by the time we'd finally all agreed on the plan and had loaded up again ready to go. Daryl gingerly navigated the graveyard of walkers and corpses, and the truck followed close behind. Within, Karen and I were squeezed together, her hands gripping mine tightly, desperately. I felt sorry for her, and she seemed to get some comfort from my presence, perhaps because to her, I had successfully managed the transition from Woodbury citizen to prison inmate, something that now, she likely hoped to accomplish.

Every passing second brought us closer to Woodbury, and heightened the extreme sense of panic currently flooding my veins. The sense of dread was overwhelming, as I tried to avoid picturing the kind of welcome we'd receive: we were enemies no matter what, and even if the Governor wasn't there, we would have a tough road ahead of us in convincing those who remained that weren't actually all that bad — all things considered.

The last time I'd been within Woodbury's walls, I'd been imprisoned against my will, beaten nearly to a pulp, lied to and manipulated for such a long time. Coming back now felt so different, as though years had passed rather than weeks. When I had last been here, Merle had been alive; Andrea had been my friend; and Daryl and the others had been nothing but a small, secret, flickering hope.

It was fully dark, past nine o'clock I'm sure, by the time we made it to the outskirts of Woodbury. We'd parked the vehicles about a mile out, down and around a side street. Approaching through the woods nearby, it was clear that there wasn't much going on within the walls: the area was silent, still.

Karen came with us, partially because she wasn't willing to remain alone back in the truck and because I suggested to Rick that she could be a useful element in gaining entrance: "If it's just ordinary people in there and they can see that we haven't hurt her, they'll be more likely to trust us."

Now, we moved stealthily in a line around the maze of vehicles parked haphazardly around Woodbury's perimeter. I had gained the surrounding step of a gazebo I'd never noticed before, and was following Michonne towards a line of cars near the front gates when the first shots rang out. Obviously, they'd left someone on guard duty.

Rick and Daryl fired back, while I pulled Karen down behind the closest car. The other three followed, Rick edging out ahead to continue shooting. The rapid volley of gunfire was resounding in my ears, but I managed to pop off a few shots of my own by poking my head up through one of the broken windows. Behind me, Michonne briefly rested her gun on the trunk lid to fire off more rounds, ducking down quickly after the responding fire.

"Tyreese!"

Jesus. Karen was trying to stand, hollering out to whoever she thought was on guard duty. "It's me, don't sh — "

"Get down!" Rick reached up to yank her firmly down to the ground.

In the hush that followed, I counted our odds, the grimmest kind of math. How likely was it, I wondered dully, that we would survive now? Two minutes in and we were already firing at each other, and Karen's cry could turn this into a hostage situation in less time than that. "Karen?" a deep, male voice replied from the ramparts. "Karen, are you okay?"

Faster than Rick could reach for her, Karen slipped out from behind the car to stand in the middle of the road, hands held high. "I'm fine!"

"Where's the Governor?" the guard asked.

Karen swallowed, hard. "He fired on everyone. He killed them all."

A stunned silence was the only reply. Daryl crawled around my back, gun still in hand, inching closer to Rick, covering us from any potential fire from another position. Now that Karen was further away from us, the guards might just decide to fire sporadically. "Why are you with them?" The man's voice was strained, as though he was struggling to process everything. That was understandable.

Tearfully, Karen replied that we had saved her. "We're coming out," Rick said, in the wake of this particular revelation. Daryl made an angry noise of dissent, but Rick just ignored him. "We're coming out!"

Rick stepped out first, around the hood of the car — gun holstered and hands up in the air, a clear sign of surrender. I followed behind, slinging the rifle carefully across my shoulders before standing. Daryl hurried around the back side of the car, gun raised; after a sharp look from Rick, he raised his own hands indignantly.

As a group, we moved slowly towards the front gates, watching as they creaked open a few seconds later. Two guards emerged, both armed, both obviously uncertain about how to proceed. I guessed their boss hadn't prepared for them for this. "What are you doing here?" the first guard, a tall, burly black man, asked.

"We were coming to finish this," Rick said in an impressive show of honesty, "until we saw what the Governor did."

"H-He killed everyone?" the man — Tyreese, it seemed — asked hoarsely.

Rick seemed to take forever to respond, but perhaps he too was still having trouble wrapping his mind around what the Governor had done to his own people, simply for being scared. "Yeah," he nodded. "Karen told us that Andrea hopped the wall, going for the prison. She never made it."

Maybe she'd been waylaid, had holed up in a local house or…I licked my lips nervously, my mouth suddenly dry. The other option was too sinister to think about right now. Andrea had enjoyed a good relationship with the Governor for a long time, but was it possible that things had changed between them, as well? Had he disapproved of her efforts to make peace between our groups? I recalled the defeated expression she had worn when stomping out of the barn that day, the way the Governor had silently loaded up his people, they way she'd just snapped to attention when he emerged from the barn.

"She might be here," Rick was saying, and Tyreese nodded, agreeing to grant us entrance and help us look for her. The woman standing guard with him offered to stay on the wall, closing the doors behind us.

Woodbury was deathly quiet as we made our way through the streets. Memories of trying to think of this place as home made me feel sick. Michonne seemed to share my sentiments, reaching out a comforting hand once we'd reached the cover of some of an alleyway. Together, we filed down the long corridor, her hand wrapped firmly in mine, only stopping once we'd reached a set of doors at the far end. Rick wrenched them open, telling Tyreese that the Governor had once held Glenn and Maggie somewhere behind them.

"The Governor held people here?" Tyreese asked incredulously.

Daryl raised his gun as we rounded the corner of another hallway beyond. "Did more than hold 'em."

Michonne dropped my hand so that we too could prepare our guns. There was no real way of knowing what we would find down here. Although this new urge to find Andrea was strong and insistent, a larger part of me hoped that the room would be empty, that Andrea was simply just holed up somewhere, safe and sound, waiting for us to find her.

This second hallway was far shorter than the alleyway we'd just traversed, so after just a few steps, we could all plainly see the sight that made Rick Grimes stop short, lower his gun. In front of us was a metal door with a small, angry pool of blood seeping out from beneath it. A simple sliding latch was the only thing barring it.

Dread filled my veins like ice, chilling me so badly that all I wanted was to run away, off somewhere else, because the one thing I hadn't considered, the one heartbreak I hadn't prepared myself for — the most devastating thing I could imagine in this moment was likely behind that door. A sob bubbled up in my throat, but I managed to keep it down, aimed my gun and stood by Michonne's side. We would face this together. We owed her that much.

Michonne asked Rick to open the door. He nodded, raising his Python as Daryl shifted on his feet, agitated. "One…" Rick whispered, "two…"

Three was an open door, Milton's body bloody on the ground in front of us, two bare feet to the left of the opening. "Andrea!" The katana and my rifle clattered uselessly to the floor as Michonne and I dashed inside the room.

Her blonde hair was slick with blood and sweat, her gaze vacant but still alive. "I tried to stop them," she murmured, as Rick knelt beside me. She leaned her weight into Michonne, but one hand managed to rest on my knee, a sign that she knew we were both there with her.

"You're burning up." Michonne was right — the heat rolling off of Andrea's body could only mean one thing. Though she didn't have to, though I could've lived the rest of my life without the image imprinted in my mind, Andrea gingerly pulled back the collar of her jacket and the shirt beneath it, revealing a vicious, bleeding bite to her neck. I choked on the sob, let it come, let it be what it was.

"Judith," she groaned. "Carl…the rest of them…"

"Us," Rick corrected, eyes shining. "The rest of us ."

"Are they alive?"

They were, Rick told her, and she smiled around at all of us. Because that's all she'd wanted, all she'd ever wanted. That's all she'd ever tried to do, but we'd been so angry and afraid that we'd lost sight of that.

Michonne was stroking her hair; there was nothing else we could do for her now. A bite to the neck was a death sentence any way you looked at it. No amputation was possible. "It's good that you found them," Andrea said softly, looking between Michonne and I. "No one can make it alone now."

I pressed my face into her blood-streaked hair as I wept, another strike of pain burning me alive as Daryl agreed with her: "I never could," he said, grief biting his words too.

A long time ago, we'd been three women lost in the woods, ambling towards nothing, but together. A long time ago, we'd slept on cold floors, eaten from cold cans, and warmed each other with stories and jokes from our lives before. A long time ago, the women I sat with now had been my entire world, the only voices I heard for months on end. Those months had been hard, just like I'd told Maggie, but they had also been good. For every nightmare I had about Daryl's rejection or Lori's jeering, I had Michonne or Andrea's reassurance and comfort; every panic attack had bought an embrace, a tender word, some maternal reassurance you never know you're craving until it's over.

I'd gotten plenty irritated with Andrea numerous times throughout our relationship. In fact, everyone in the room with us now had, too. But holding her there, feeling her heartbeat weakening within our twined arms, Michonne and I shared something far more intimate than even Daryl's breakdown over Merle had been, there with Andrea. There was nothing we could do; we hadn't just been too late. We'd been wrong.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I sobbed. This was my fault, this was all my fault. If I'd worked harder to make her see; if I hadn't valued my own ego out there in the prison yard, more than I'd valued her…if I hadn't, if I hadn't.

"Oh, Riley, sweetheart," she whispered. "Don't, please. You have nothing to… I just…I just didn't want anyone to die."

I had once thought that Andrea wasn't suited to this world, that her vanity and impulsiveness would be her undoing. In a way, I was right, but I was also terribly, terribly incorrect: she was built for this world, she'd just tried to build it up with the wrong people. She looked around at us one more time, a benediction and a goodbye all in one. "I can do it myself," she said slowly.

"No!" Michonne tightened her grip.

"I have to," she insisted. "While I still can." Michonne's lip trembled and any semblance of resolve she had collapsed as she nodded in agreement. This was Andrea's last request, and the very least thing we could possibly do for her now would be to honour it.

"Please?" Andrea turned to Rick, eyes heavy and sad. "I know how the safety works." It was an old, unfunny joke, taking us back to the day Amy died, when she'd held him off from her sister's dead body with a gun. Rick's jaw tensed in response, and he reluctantly handed over his pistol, pressing it gently into Andrea's bloody hands.

How could this be happening, I wondered frantically? How could this be happening to us? The fissures along which our friendship broke didn't seem so wide or treacherous now, in the dim light of this tomb, and I was amazed we'd fallen out at all. How could we have, when we had survived the whole winter together? How could we have broken, have cracked wide along the fault lines of good intentions?

"Well," Michonne said, her voice trembling in a strange, new way. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Me neither." I wiped furiously at my eyes. We would not leave her, she would not be alone down here for another second. And when I got the chance, I'd kill him for this. I'd tear him to pieces.

Andrea looked at Michonne, then at me, and then finally at Daryl and Rick. "I tried," she breathed, pain wracking every note.

"Yeah," Rick whispered. "You did." He shuffled to his feet. "You did."

Quietly, he and Daryl filed back out into the hallway, gently closing the door behind them. This was our moment, our private goodbye, just the three of us. That's the way it had been for a long time, and that was the way they knew we wanted it now. "I'm sorry," I murmured one last time, selfish until the end, because I craved her forgiveness. I craved her absolution. She gave it to me in a kiss, feathery on my temple, and a smile I could call my very own.

Winter ended; spring came with the sound of a bullet, the rattle of a casing hitting the floor, and a limp body in our arms. I cried soundlessly, Michonne easing her from my hands and I wrenched open the door, my hands slippery with blood and tears. I couldn't breathe; I couldn't think. I fairly stumbled into him — he'd stood at the sound of the door opening, and as though it were the most natural, least surprising thing in the world, he pulled me into his embrace. I wept into his chest, grasping the front of his shirt with manic hands because I could not bear it, I could not bear it, I could not bear it.