Author's Notes: So this chapter is important-at least more important than it seems. You'll want to read it to the end, because it explains some things about Carol. And explains Judith's relationship with Rick. Thought that might be appreciated.

Chapter 25:

My name is Judith

As the night drew on, the group walked further down the tracks. After about four hours, they had to stop, if only for a moment. The only people unwilling were Carl and Rick. That gave Rick time to talk to his son. With everyone sitting in a group and Carl on point, he had no chance to leave the conversation. He just stood there, looking out into the woods with his sword in his hand and his sherif's hat on his head.

Rick stood next to him, staring out into the woods just like his son. As Carl had grown, he'd come to look more and more like his father. Judith said it was all in the eyes. They were both cold and empty, but still heartbroken.

Everything the Grimes boys had lost, they lost together.

Even Judith.

"You gonna apologise?" Rick asked, but it wasn't exactly a question. For a moment Rick thought he wouldn't, but eventually Carl cleared his throat and said, "I'm sorry, Dad."

Dad.

One of the things Rick would never get tired of hearing.

Carl shuffled his feet, rolling a pebble underneath his shoe; a habit he didn't drop as he got older. "I just..." Carl shrugged, looking at the floor, shaking his head. "I know it couldn't have been your fault." He gave a weak and bitter laugh, and Rick could feel a pain in his chest from that. "I mean, knowing Judith... She probably did something stupid, I guess..." He muttered.

Rick shuffled his own feet, glancing down at them before looking back into the open woods. "No. She didn't do anything stupid. Judith was brave."

Carl looked at his father, hopeful with the words. He would have smiled if he had it in him. The two men stood in silence, until his father slowly and hesitantly extended his hand and placed it on Carl's shoulder. Rick couldn't bring himself to smile either.

"You would have been proud of your sister."

Carl turned his body and looked him in the eyes, allowing Rick's hand to be there. "Were you?"

Rick didn't say anything. At least not to Carl. His hand gave a gentle pat, then dropped to his side before raising his bow from over his shoulder. "Let's go!"

I'd had food and water. I couldn't ask for anything more, let alone that to begin with. Especially for an enemy like me. But that was... I don't know how long ago. But the sun had officially gone down; awhile ago, actually.

Now he sat in front of me with his legs crossed like a little kid at story time with his broad shoulders hunched and his hands entwined. Me? I sat in yet another slight variation as before. There weren't many options for me.

He smiled warmly at me. "I wish I could unchain you, but I don't have the keys," he said. I found it strange how genuine he sounded. "And also, I'm not as dumb as I seem."

I smirked, looking down into my hands. I was no longer seeing double, like before. Then I looked up into his eyes. They were a chocolate brown. Max's eyes were warm and kind with this hopeful naivety in them.

"You shouldn't be here," I told him.

Only a smidgeon of that hope disappeared from those round, wide eyes. "Aw, I thought we were getting along," he joked, but switched to serious after I gave him a look. "I guess... I guess I do stupid things sometimes," he said with a shrug and a smile slowly curled onto my lips. He noticed. "What?"

"Somethin' you and I have in common, I suppose," I grunted. The throbbing in my lip hurt more and more every time I talked.

Pain.

Right... I'm a prisoner. He's the enemy – no, I am.

My smile disappeared and I stared at him coldly. "You should leave," I told him, but it sounded more like an order. How ironic for a prisoner.

He stared down into his hands, before grimacing up at me. "Why?"

"You're just a kid," I said, knowing we were about the same age. "If your people knew you were talking to the enemy, they'd be pissed. I'll be beaten even more, and you..." I trailed off. I had no real clue what the people here were capable of. Not even to their own.

He just shook his head. "The people here are good. I know that's hard to see from where you are—"

"Well, yeah; there aren't any windows," I joked slightly.

He just stared at me, then after a chilling moment, his stare became cold and sad. "Are you a Royal?"

I groaned. "What the hell is a Royal?!"

His eyes narrowed on me. "Are you telling me that a skinny bitch like you survived without any people?" He cocked a brow and I noticed the mole by his brow, which suited him. "What about that dude you were with?"

My stare became colder than his at the mentioning of my father. "That was the only person I was with. We came here to see if you would take us in," I widened my eyes angrily, though I really wasn't. "Next thing I know, we're being shot at, my guy makes a run for it and I have an arrow in my leg."

He looked at me with innocent fluttering eyes. "Oh yeah, sorry about that," he said through his innocent full-lipped smile.

Oh. How did I not realise that he's the one who shot me?

I glared at him.

Max rolled his eyes. "Alright, I'll go," he said and hopped to his feet. I liked him: he hopped... Regardless of the fact that I have a painful hole in my leg from where he'd shot an arrow into.

Max had his hand reaching for the doorknob when he dropped it to his side. He spun on his feet and stared at me with a crooked smile. "Hey... What's your name?"

I smiled back at him as best I could. It was genuine, too. I didn't think I'd ever smile like that again due to my inevitable fate. "You know, when you give a name to things, you get attached," I told him, then my genuine smile became a weaker one. "Tomorrow, I'll be dead. You shouldn't know my name."

His smile was gone and I knew I'd hurt him somehow, but even so his eyes were filled with that hope. I'd never seen eyes like that before. "Fine," he said, then leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. His chunky boots made that more difficult to do because of the grip.

I swallowed hard.

He shrugged his shoulder and smiled at me. "Then I'm staying until you tell me." He gave a weak laugh. "Or until you die," he joked, then stopped smiling and stared down at the floor awkwardly before looking back to me. "Sorry, that wasn't funny..."

I gave him a weak smile and shrugged. "It kinda was..."

Max grinned and for a moment I forgot the pain.

Glenn didn't go see Maggie when he left that girl in that room. Instead he sat at the edge of their bed with his head between his legs, gripping at his shaggy black hair.

Glenn was too sick to eat. Too broken to face the community. Too weak to even look at Maggie.

Glenn thought back seventeen years ago to the farm. He still remembered that kid Randall; the one Shane killed. Glenn knew this was the same situation, only now he was the leader: people looked to him because their lives were in his hands. Glenn thought about what Rick would do, and what Dale would say. He thought about Hershel and his opinion, but all roads led back to Rick.

What would Rick do?

Glenn's fists tightened with his hair tangled in his fingers and he groaned.

Rick would have gone through all the options, and ended at his last conclusion. For all Glenn knew, if that had worked, he and Maggie could have died a long time ago. He couldn't let the girl go. She could still be a Royal, but she didn't seem like the type. If she was lying; if she had people, they could come here and kill them all. Terminus had a lot of people, and a lot of guns with ammo. He had people. An army. But Glenn couldn't risk the girl's group being bigger.

Glenn knew what he would have to do: kill her.

"Having some trouble?" Maggie asked gently from the doorway. The sound of her beautiful voice comforted him greatly.

He clapped his hands together and dragged his eyes away from the floor. "I have to kill her, Maggie."

She stared down at him with concern, but he knew she felt as much weight on her shoulders as he did. He hated she did.

Maggie slowly walked up to him. She pressed her cool hands against his cheeks and stood between his legs and he craned his neck to look up at her. "Do you?"

Glenn frowned in confusion. "How can you say that?" He croaked.

She stroked her thumb over his lips and stared into his tortured eyes. "It's not us."

Glenn wraps his hands around her waist. "What else am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know," she said, then lowered herself to her knees. She pressed her forehead against his and the two closed their eyes. "It's just not us..."

Glenn's eyes squeezed shut before looking into her green eyes. "But we've all got jobs to do. Right?"

"Right."

Max stared at me from across the room with his arms and his ankles crossed. The pain hadn't gotten any better – physically – but the idea of dying was distracted by him.

"You know," I said then swallowed hard and painfully from my dry throat. "When I got here, you asked me three questions."

"Mm?"

I leaned my head against the pole, staring at him through the slit in my one good eye. "What's your answer?"

I noticed Max stiffen, and he sat up. The boy pulled his legs up to his chest and he wrapped his arms around them after tugging at red flannel shirt he was wearing over his black shirt. "What's the first question?"

I sat up, too. "How many walkers have you killed?"

He chewed at his thick bottom lip. "Not as many as you," he said with a small smile. He pointed at me for a brief moment. "Two thousand's impressive," he said then frowned. "How are you still alive?"

I wouldn't be for much longer.

Max coughed awkwardly when the tension became obvious, but as I've come to observe, he did his characteristic shrug and smile. "Um... Well, I work on patrol, and before I came here..." He trailed off in calculation. "Five hundred?" He smirked. "Give or take, a few."

I bobbed my head. "Huh," I said, rather impressed with his record.

He raised his hands in defense. "I mean, it's no thousand, but..." He joked and grinned.

I raised my chin, knowing how horrible the next question was to answer.

"How many people have you killed?"

I saw him noticeably flinch. Max's smile was gone. "None."

I pressed my lips together before asking "Why?"

Max frowned a frown of concern and nodded towards me. "I think your answer would be more interesting."

I mimicked his position and brought my legs up against my chest, only I couldn't wrap my arms around them. "I said: self defense."

He blinked. "Say more."

I'd never been in this situation before: everyone I'd known already knew everything about me, and everything that'd happened to me. They were all there.

I'd realised now in this moment that I wanted someone else to know. Or maybe I just wanted him to know.

"Well," I began, and said all of the rest with painful swallows in my swollen throat. "The person I killed... She was a good person – I mean, in the end she wasn't, but that was just her last moments. The woman I killed took care of me as a kid. She was like an aunt to me."

"Why'd she try and kill you?"

I stared past him at the door. Looking at him was harder than I thought when I was thinking about this. "She said she was doing the right thing. For the sake of the group... She said we were going to check the snares when our group had temporarily migrated into the woods. But, um, when I went to check the snares, I heard her cock her gun.

She told me I was weak. That I would never make it in the group, and my weakness would get everyone killed."

Max let go of his legs and leaned closer.

I smiled, staring at him for a moment. "By that age, I had killed more walkers than Bet—than my mom," I said. Beth would be a secret. She'd have to be. "But we were in a war. There were bad people that threatened what we had, but I could never pull the trigger. I just... I couldn't kill someone," I smirked and looked at Max again. "She considered that weakness."

"So then what happened?"

I shrugged. "A lot happened. She said things, I said things. I kept repeating that she was wrong. I kept saying it, over and over again... I was lying to myself. I was weak, and I couldn't do it. But she wasn't right," I said and swallowed. My eyes started to get watery and I didn't know if it was from emotional pain, or physical.

I let my head fall back against the pole. "I wasn't weak. I could kill people if it meant my life was in danger, or my family's. When a walker came at us, she was distracted and I managed to get the gun off her," I blinked away tears. "I didn't even hesitate when I pulled the trigger."

Max didn't say anything; neither of us did. I don't know how long the silence went on for, but I was okay with it. With Max in the room, I felt safe. Like I could trust him – just not with my life, or my family's.

Max just stared at me with unblinking eyes. Even through the pain in them, I could still see the hopefulness. I could feel that hope.

"I'm sorry."

I gave him a bitter smile. "Me too," I said, and the next part just slipped out. "You know, my father wouldn't even look at me after that dat."

"What?"

I squeezed my one eye shut and I knew there would be a new stain of tears among the blood. "After I killed her, I couldn't leave her side. For hours I just stayed there, cradling her and wanting her to be not dead... My Dad's the one who found us." My eyes stung, and more tears fell.

"What did he do?"

I forced myself to swallow. "I walked over to him and reached my arms out for his touch," I croaked. "He actually backed away from me." I sniffed, wanting to wipe my nose. "He looked at me like I was a monster; like I was evil..."

At that moment, things went silent again, and I looked to Max. I had never seen someone feel so much empathy, before. There were tears building up in Max's doe eyes, and a single tear fell down his cheek.

I coughed awkwardly, and tried to stop crying. "Since that day, our relationship was ruined," I said, then my one eye darted up to look at Max, and I added coldly, "Up until the day he died," I said. Good to keep his existence a secret.

I didn't know I would feel anything, but I ended up feeling guilt over lying to Max. I saw his eyes had stopped watering, and he wiped away the tear on his cheek with his sleeve.

I swallowed hard and leaned my head back against the pole. "Look," I said, "I know I'm an idiot, sometimes... I do stupid shit and I don't use my head," I confessed. "But at least by the end of the day I can say that I'd done everything I could to protect the people I love," I laughed weakly. "At least I can say I am not weak."

Then Max did something weird. He got onto his knees, and I thought for a moment he was about to stand and leave me – had I slipped up? But Max didn't leave. He quickly shuffled over to me. He sat up directly in front of me so the kneecaps of our crossed legs were touching. Max reached over and I flinched instantly, but I didn't have to. He tucked a long tangled piece of black hair behind my ear and kept his hand cupped on my cheek.

He dropped it, but didn't move away from me.

Then another thing slipped from between my bloodied, swollen lips. I knew this was stupid of me, but this time, I didn't care.

"My name's Judith."