A/N: *Insert apologetic comment here* Really though, I feel bad not updating this, but real life got in the way; I think we all know how that goes. I also wasn't too sure about this chapter- I had it written when I posted last, but I took the time to completely rewrite it based on your reviews and the fact that I wanted some sort of character development. That led to this giant chapter because I really couldn't find a good place to break it in half. Overall, thanks to all of you that have stuck with me this long. Hope you enjoy, and I hope the new year is treating you well so far! :)

Melissa couldn't contain the gasp that slipped out; Dean's chest was a mess of open slices slowly oozing blood, making it look a mad artist's painting. The blood dripped down his chest in small rivulets of red. If it weren't for the fact that he was talking and not trying to attack them, Melissa would have thought that he was one of the zombies. "Fuck, you call that a few scratches?!" Melissa asked incredulously. "I'd hate to see what you consider a real injury," Melissa muttered. "I'd say that some of those need stitches."

Dean looked down at the wounds in surprise, his forehead creasing in a frown. "Okay, I'll admit it's a bit worse than I thought it was. I haven't looked since last night, to be honest, and that was in the dark. But I think taking the shirt off reopened a few of them."

"How the hell are you still walking and talking?" Melissa asked him in concern. "It looks like a drunk surgeon tried to operate on you."

"David was more crazy than drunk," Dean commented, looking away from the injuries with a grimace.

Roman meanwhile, had made a beeline for the back of the car, and was already digging through the boxes and bags of supplies, looking for the medical stuff.

Seth edged forward, peering at the other Shield member's chest. His face was pale. "If I had known it was that bad, I would have spoken up a lot sooner."

Dean shrugged, wincing when it clearly pulled on the wounds. "I doubt it would have made a difference. He probably would have kept going for fun. Part of his fucking I-know-what's-best scheme."

"What about your arms?" Melissa asked. "I only you remember you mentioning the arms."

"Arms, chest, whatever. He usually got both of them in one go," Dean muttered, completely removing the shirt.

His arms weren't in any better shape than his chest, but Melissa was relieved to see that they weren't any worse either.

Roman finally came back around with some rolls of gauze, medical tape, and some alcohol wipes. He eyed Dean's injuries. "Do you think they've stopped bleeding enough to clean?"

"Probably. They only got reopened a little because they scabbed against the shirt."

Roman looked at the container of alcohol wipes with a frown. "These say to only use them on minor cuts and scrapes."

"And those don't really count as minor," Melissa interrupted.

Roman nodded. "It says to seek emergency medical attention for anything more serious."

Dean smirked. "Oh yes, let's just call up the local hospital so they can send an ambulance out to pick me up," he said sarcastically.

Roman said nothing, simply motioning for Dean to sit down on the tailgate of the Suburban. Dean did so, leaning back against the door.

"You never answered me on how you're managing to walk around looking like you've just got a few bruises," Melissa commented as Roman started his attempt to clean and dress the wounds. "I know you went through the CZW hardcore death-matches that had barbed wire and light tubes and stuff like that, but still, this looks a lot worse."

Dean shrugged. "Beats me. I just figured I could live with it and save the pain meds for more important stuff, like broken bones or something."

Roman stopped what he was doing for a moment. "Dean, it's not going to help us if you get an infection. You may be trying to be all tough-guy, but sometimes it's just better to let us help," he said in exasperation.

Seth nodded in agreement. "I'd rather have to possibly deal with the pain of an injury later on then have to deal with you being dead now," he said softly.

Dean looked down at his chest again, seeming like he was just looking at the wounds for the first time, taking in the true extent of the damage. He glanced at Roman and Seth for a moment before looking away. He seemed to be ready to say something, but couldn't quite get it out.

At that moment Damien rounded the corner of the car. A low whistle passed through his teeth as he caught sight of Dean. "That does not look pleasant."

"It's not."

Dean's short response seemed to throw Damien off for a moment. He shook his head as if to clear it and said, "We're ready to leave now, but clearly you are not." He glanced at Dean's injuries again with a look of disgust and fright. "Let us know when you're ready to go."

Melissa nodded, looking back at Dean. He had a frown on his face, as if he was seriously considering what Roman and Seth had said. She hoped he wouldn't be so difficult to deal with, but she knew reforms hardly happened overnight. At least he was letting them clean him up now, rather than letting it get infected.

Damien left, leaving the four of them alone again.

Melissa cleared her throat, starting to feel nauseated by looking at Dean's injuries. "I'm…I'm gonna go look around and make sure it's all clear."

Dean nodded, his eyes closed again. Roman also nodded before using his arm to brush some of his hair out of his face.

Seth spoke up. "I'll come with you."

"Buddy system," Melissa joked half-heartedly. They walked to the edge of the orchard in silence before Melissa finally stopped and leaned up against one of the trees, exhaling deeply.

"You okay?" Seth asked her, concern in his voice.

"I've never done well looking at an injury for too long," Melissa explained. "It makes me nauseated."

Seth nodded in understanding. "They'll be done soon enough."

They started walking again, meandering along through the edge of the trees. Melissa stopped again, spotting Alicia through the trees. "I feel sorry for her," she murmured.

"Who? Oh, Alicia," Seth said as he spotted the ill woman.

"Yeah. She not only has to deal with the zombie apocalypse, she has to deal with a very serious looking flu, if she can hardly get out of the car," Melissa murmured sympathetically.

"Though if she's been in the car most of the time, she probably hasn't really had to deal with the zombies at all," Seth reasoned.

"I guess," Melissa said, once again running a finger across the hilt of the knife.

Seth spotted the motion. "You keep touching that knife," he commented neutrally, his sentence somewhere between a question and a statement.

"It's a form of reassurance, I guess," Melissa said, gazing down at her shoes, unsure of how to respond. "I guess I'm just trying to remind myself that I can defend myself if I need to." She scuffed her shoe across the ground and some of the fallen leaves. "I don't like having it…hell, in any other circumstance, I would have thrown away first chance I got…" Her gaze was troubled. "I killed someone with it." She repeated the sentence, her eyes widening slightly. "I killed someone with it."

"Melissa…" Seth started, clearly seeing where this was headed.

Melissa interrupted. "No, you don't get it. I should get rid of it. I shouldn't want to be anywhere near it!"

She sank down against the trunk of the tree. "It wasn't even a zombie. It was a person. I ended his life," she whispered, her arms wrapped around her knees, her gaze staring out somewhere beyond the trees. "I did the one thing that I promised myself I would never do. I told myself I would keep my humanity. A zombie's one thing… it's already dead…" she mumbled, unaware of Seth sitting down next to her. "I took away his life. I ended it…" Her tears were slowly tracing a path down her cheeks. She stared down at her hands, imagining David's blood soaking them. She had killed him with those very hands. She had raised the knife, had stabbed him in the stomach, and finally in the head. She was responsible for the one thing she had never wanted to be responsible for.

"It's not your fault Melissa." Seth interrupted her mental breakdown. "You said it was him or Punk and you."

The mention of Punk seemed to make it worse. "And then I left Punk behind," Melissa sobbed. "I killed David to save him and then just left him behind. I thought he deserved to die…"

"Punk made his own decisions. He left you, remember? And remember all those children that David killed?" Seth reminded her gently. "All those older people? The ones he had staked out on the hill?"

Melissa involuntarily shivered and leaned in towards Seth. He carefully wrapped his arms around her, holding her as she dealt with the fallout.

"…he wasn't even dead yet like the zombies…" Melissa choked out softly, repeating herself from earlier. "…and I can't even count how many of those I've killed now…"

She wondered what her brother would say. How she missed David…

David.

She choked on a scream, trying to hold it in as she realized the coincidence. David. Her brother. David. Her victim.

"Melissa!" Seth nearly shouted. "Melissa, what's wrong?"

"David, his name was David," Melissa sobbed.

"Yes, his name was David," Seth said, not knowing the connection.

"My brother's name was David," Melissa cried. "What if I…"

There was no reasonable explanation for her feelings. She only knew she felt a deep-seated sense of horror that she had killed someone that shared her brother's name. What if her killing David drove her mad? What if she did find her brother? Would the name drive her over the edge, anger at the name of the man who had caused her to leave behind her morals, the very morals that defined her as a person?

"What if nothing," Seth said firmly. "Nothing will happen. If we find your brother, we find your brother. The name means nothing. It's the person behind the name that matters."

Melissa continued sobbing, her breath hitching every few seconds as she gasped in air. "We don't know that…" She looked at Seth before quickly looking away. "We don't know anything. Even if I don't see my brother, what if it just drives me crazy? What if I attack one of you?"

"Melissa, look at me," Seth said. "Look at me," he repeated when she didn't. "We both know that's not going to happen. I may have only known you for a few days, but I know that you're above that."

"What if I've fallen though?" Melissa mumbled, staring at her hands again.

Seth sighed in frustration. "Melissa, I know it's difficult."

"Do you?" Melissa spat out, suddenly angry at Seth's attempts of comfort. "Have you killed someone?" she demanded. "Not a zombie, an actual person?"

"I have." Seth's statement, though quiet, made her fall silent.

"Wha-what?" Melissa stuttered, at a loss for words. A few tears still made their way down her cheeks, but his words had stopped her sobbing dead in the water.

Seth was now the one to gaze at his hands. "I didn't want to. I really didn't want to." Now he was the one who seemed lost to the ghosts of the past.

Melissa was about to say something as Seth spoke again.

"Dean and I had just left the hotel to go find Roman. We were driving over to the restaurant where he was having breakfast with the Usos. We made a wrong turn at some point and ended up in a hotel parking lot. We were going to go back out on the street when a person jumped out in front of the car. Dean managed to hit the brakes in time. He was going to roll down the window to yell at him, but instead the person came over to the open window."

Seth paused for a moment before speaking again. "Imagine our shock when we realized it was Jimmy Jacobs, a person we both spent years working with on the indies," Seth laughed bitterly. He breathed in deeply. "We offered to give him a ride, but he said no. He asked me to get out of the car so he could talk to me. I did. Looking back, I wonder if the outcome could have been different, if I had just stayed in the car."

Taking another breath, Seth closed his eyes, leaning back against the tree. "I got out of the car like he asked. He asked me to take a quick walk with him. When we were out of Dean's sight, he had us stop. He… he took a shotgun out from where he'd hidden it in a nearby bush. I freaked out and asked him why he had it. I almost wish I hadn't asked," Seth whispered.

Melissa almost spoke up, wanting him to stop. She didn't want to hear how this ended. She couldn't get the words out though.

"He asked me what I thought I had it for. I didn't say anything, so he asked me what I thought was going on in the city. I told him I didn't know, because, honestly, at the time I don't think anyone had a clue to what the hell was happening. He flat-out told me that it was the zombie apocalypse. I wanted to laugh when he said it, but he said he was serious. I asked him how he knew."

Seth paused. "He said that he'd seen proof. He said that about an hour before he had heard a gunshot while he was watching TV in his hotel room. He said that he'd gone out into the hallway to find one man standing over another. The man standing had a shotgun and the other had a huge bloody wound in his chest. Jimmy walked over as the other man started to leave. He demanded to know why he'd shot the other man. The man told him that the other had been 'bitten' and was infected. Jimmy called 911, but the lines were busy and the man with the shotgun told him to go watch the news as he walked away. Jimmy stayed with the other man, trying to stop the bleeding. The man told him it was pointless and explained that he had been bitten by one of the people infected by the epidemic. Jimmy wanted to know why he couldn't go to the hospital, but the man apparently died right after. Jimmy even checked for a pulse. He found nothing. But he didn't want to just leave the body lying in the hallway, so he decided to wait until emergency services could be called out to take care of it. He checked his phone after trying to make another call. He went to a news site, like the man with the shotgun had suggested. There were a lot of videos and photos of what was happening right outside in the rest of the city—the fires, the infected, the dying, the dead. He spent the next twenty minutes worrying and checking the man's pulse, just to make sure he really was dead and he wasn't just leaving him there to die."

Seth paused once again, his eyes opening to stare up at the tree branches above them. "The whole time there had been nothing. But he said that when he decided to check for the last time… he reached down, his arm passing right in front of the other man's face. He didn't have any warning when the man sat up. Jimmy reacted too slowly and… and the other man bit him." Seth stumbled over his words. "I…I asked him if he was sure that the man had been dead. He told me that he had been no pulse and the body had started cooling off too before it attacked. He had managed to yank away without too much damage and he had run down the hallway, wanting to get away from what he said was clearly a zombie. There was no other explanation for the dead getting up and biting people. I asked him if he was sure it wasn't all a dream. He pulled up the sleeve on his jacket, showing me a bite mark on his arm. I tried to say something, that we could go to the hospital and see about getting him treated. He told me that it was too late; we'd both seen the news—the hospital was on fire from an ambulance explosion, and the fire department had also had problems with the infected. He told me that he'd found the man from earlier—the one with the shotgun—lying in a pool of his own blood in the hotel lobby. Whatever had attacked him had left."

"Jimmy says that he ran over and got the man's shotgun. He'd been waiting in the parking lot for the last forty minutes or so, waiting for someone to go by. He tried to get a ride from one person, but once they realized he was bitten, they left. He said that he didn't want to deal with… with becoming a zombie."

Seth's voice cracked. "I saw where it was going. I told him I couldn't. There was no way I could. But he asked me anyways. He asked me to put him out of his misery. He asked me to kill him."

Melissa inhaled sharply, but Seth didn't seem to notice. "In the end, he begged me to. He said that if I was truly his friend that had been his tag team partner for so long, I would do it for him. He practically shoved the shotgun into my hands. He eventually asked me what I would want if it came down to me being infected. I hesitated, because I knew that I wouldn't want to come back as a zombie… Jimmy knew before I even protested. He didn't say I told you so, but his eyes said it for him. I didn't know what to do, or even say. Jimmy said that he would miss me, and I started to say I wasn't going to do it. Then I realized he was lunging at me with that railroad spike he carries around with him sometimes."

Seth fell silent. "I reacted on instinct," he finally said. "I pulled the trigger. I immediately dropped the gun, and ran to where Jimmy had fallen. He'd made sure I got a headshot, somehow. There was blood, so much blood… I tried to make it stop bleeding, but… Jimmy was gone."

"I left the shotgun with his body. I didn't want anything to do with the weapon that killed my friend. I didn't know what else to do, so I went back to the car where Dean was waiting. He mentioned hearing a gunshot, but I didn't say anything. He asked about Jimmy, and I told him that Jimmy would be staying at the hotel. We left after that, and we eventually found Roman." There were tears making their way down Seth's cheeks as he finished. "I never told Roman or Dean."

He leaned further back against the tree, staring up at the sky for a moment before gazing at Melissa. "I worried about the same things you worried about. What if I went crazy and attacked Dean or Roman, thinking that I would be putting them out of their misery? What if I ended up thinking that it would be a mercy if I was to end it now before it got any worse? What if one of them was bitten? What if I hadn't gotten out of the car? What if I had just tried to talk Jimmy down? What if I had let him hit me with the railroad spike? What if?" Seth met Melissa's gaze. "I gave up dealing in what ifs. I realized that if I was to keep dealing with them, I'd be so preoccupied with dealing with the possible problems that I could end up putting them both in danger. I realized that I wouldn't have to deal with all the 'what ifs' when I put all my energy into making sure Dean and Roman stayed alive."

He paused for a moment before rising to his feet. "I killed one of my best friends and I've made it this long. You killed a crazy stranger who was trying to kill you. If I can make it this damn long you can too." He started to walk away before he turned back to face Melissa. "And if you say a damn word to Dean or Roman about what I just told you…" His face was dark as he stared at her intensely. Melissa resisted the urge to look away as she finally came face-to-face with the darker side the Shield usually saved for the ring. "If you say a damn word to either of them you will regret it."