Trapped in the same house with him, I can't avoid Rick for long. This is proven right after Michonne's gone upstairs to hunt for clothes, when Carl's in the middle of trying to get me to eat some cereal before I clean the coon. Our conversation's gotten heated again, and Rick appears in the very spot Michonne stood a minute earlier when I hugged her so tightly. He looks exhausted, naturally, and his hand is pressed against where the Governor's bullet got him, but he's leaps and bounds better than what he was. He tells me Carl's right. He tells me to go eat, that I have to keep my strength up. I find I can't look him in the eye. That makes it very hard to argue, so I don't.

I go with Carl into the dining room. A stack of bowls and some spoons and a bag of cereal and a couple of water bottles and Carl's hat are already there. He pours a bowl and hands it to me. I drop it in front of a chair and sit, running my tongue along my mouth.

"Michonne got here about an hour ago," says Carl as he pours his own bowl. "You would have known that if you'd been here." He adds water to his cereal and then offers the bottle to me. I ignore it and dip my fingers into the bowl only to crunch the flakes between my fingers.

"I meant it, okay?" Carl says, sitting. "You can't do that. You need to tell me when you leave. And I should go with you, anyway."

"We've been through that." I sprinkle crumbs over the flakes.

"I know, but – Syd, would you just eat it?"

I drop all of the crumbs into the bowl. "What are you doing?"

"What do you mean, what am I doing? I'm telling you –"

"Exactly. You're telling me don't play with my food, don't go hunting alone, don't make a move without asking permission –"

"I didn't say –"

"You can't do that! You can't give me orders, Carl, you're not my –"

I can't say the word. It was my first word, more or less, so it should be the easiest word in the world to say, but my tongue struggles and gives up and I give up and lean back in my chair and rub my eyes with one hand. I do this for a while.

"Your dad?" Carl says before a while is up. I say nothing back. I should have ignored Rick. I should have just cleaned the stupid raccoon. I'm damn sure not about to get this cereal down me anytime soon.

"Sydney."

I push my fingers farther into my eyes and watch the pretty stars.

"Sydney, look at me."

My hand falls and I do, I look at him as the stars dissolve, even as I say, "I told you, don't give me –"

"Do you remember Jim?"

The name grabs me and pulls me back so hard and far that I feel like I'm falling for a second. "Jim from Atlanta?" I say steadily.

"Do you remember – when our dads were gone, back into the city to find your uncle – do you remember what Jim said to us?"

Jim. Jim worked on the RV with Dale, worked on all the cars. Jim got sunstroke, and he dug holes, and then Shane tied him to a tree, and Jim said to us –

"He said that he had a dream about our dads." I look at a clock on the shelf behind Carl. "He said that we were worried about our dads in the dream, but that we shouldn't be worried about them, really . . ."

"He said that my dad's as tough as nails. And he said your dad's a survivor."

There ain't nothin' gonna stop those two from gettin' back here to you, I promise you that.

"Jim also said, 'I'm okay, I'm okay.'" I get another handful of cereal and clear my throat.

"Sydney, if we got out – if Michonne got out –"

"Carl –"

"He could've gotten out, too. I mean, if anyone could –"

"Carl – I know. I know, Carl, I –" Crunch, crumble. Watch the broken cereal fall from my fingers. Crumbs and my lips, those are two things I still have power over, so I dust around the crumbs and shape my lips so the corners are up, I think they're up. "I know."

I can tell by the way he's looking at me that I'm not being convincing, but with my energy levels where they are, I can't do much else. So I nod at his cereal. "Eat. I'll eat if you eat."

He hesitates. "What, you want me to starve?" I say.

So he takes a bite, and another, checking me after each. I look down at my bowl, wondering how I'm going to pull this off, when I'm saved by Michonne. She's found a new shirt, white and clean, but it's a man's button up and it swallows her, making her look so different from her usual self that it draws a laugh from Carl. It's a nice sound to hear and even I smile a bit. Michonne looks back and forth between us, rolling up her sleeves. "Do you have something to say about my extremely comfortable and attractive shirt?"

"No, no, no, no," cackles Carl, "It looks great . . ." He points out a button she missed. I suddenly realize that my insides feel lighter, just a bit lighter, and before they can flip back to how they were I toss a palmful of cereal into my mouth and chase it down with water. Amazingly enough, I don't start gagging. In fact, my stomach growls – the monster that lives in there seems to have remembered that it likes food, what do you know? I pick up a spoon and take another bite, don't even need the water this time. I make sure to catch Carl's eye as I do. Maybe I imagine it, but it looks like his shoulders relax some.

Michonne sits and helps herself to the cereal and a bowl. "Wish we had some soymilk."

"Seriously?" says Carl.

"Yes, seriously."

"Soymilk's good," I hear myself agree. "My – um, it's really good in oatmeal. And pretty much anything else."

"Gross!"

"Have you ever tried it?" Michonne asks, and Carl glances at me.

"My best friend in third grade –"

"You had a best friend before me?" I swallow yet another bite of cereal and lift my eyebrows.

"Yes, and I liked him a lot more than you." His foot nudges mine.

"Musta been special. Go on."

"He was allergic to dairy, and every day he would bring this soy stuff to lunch. I tried it."

"And?" says Michonne.

"I threw up!"

"Oh, yeah, right." Michonne grins, Carl laughs some more, I eat cereal. I'm not about to throw up. Hear that, stomach? You and me, we're good.

"Alright, alright, I almost threw up, but I was like, blaaaah . . ."

"You must have not had the good kind." I fill my spoon.

"There's no way that stuff could have been good in any form! It was so gross, I mean, literally – I would rather have powdered milk than have to drink that stuff again! I would rather have Judith's formula –"

The spoon doesn't make it to my mouth. It hangs in the air, just like Carl's words. He's leaning towards Michonne. I see his eyes slip almost to me but not quite, and then he's standing and moving, cracking the ice in the air.

"I'm gonna go finish my book . . ." he mutters. "Couple of chapters left . . ."

I push my bowl away as he leaves. Michonne is stooped over her bowl, smile more than wiped off her face. Her gaze comes to me. A question's hidden there.

"We found her carrier." It's all I can say. It's all Michonne needs to hear, I think. She nods once, looks down at her bowl, but I doubt she's any hungrier than I am now. No, the monster inside of me has sworn off food again. Maybe he's sleeping. I don't blame him.

Then Michonne says, lowly, "How are you?"

My tongue's having a rough time this morning. It stumbles for words again, I'm telling it to look for I'm fine, but instead it pushes out, "You know how I am with food. When times get bad – or, well, really bad. So I'm not too great there. Not with sleeping, either."

I immediately regret talking, Michonne's looking worried now, and no, not over me, I don't want her worried over me. "Is that why you look so bad?" she asks.

Well, that or the vodka.

"I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. How long has it been since you –"

"Michonne, don't, I'm – I'm fine." That's better, good job, tongue.

"You're not fine. Let me try and –"

Good job, legs, too, they've got me standing. "What, help me? You wanna help me, help – help him." I look at the archway. The room feels really empty without Carl and I want to hear his heartbeat. "He won't talk about Judith. Not even to me. And he's –"

Carl's hands all over me, Carl running to his dad in the dark.

"He's taking everything . . . really hard." I press my fists into the table.

"And you're not?" says Michonne. Gently.

I push down, cracking my knuckles. "Just . . . if you've gotta worry, worry about him." I step away. "I have a coon to clean."

. . . . .

"There's no way I'm not coming."

We're out on the porch when I say this, all four of us, Michonne and Carl to my right and Rick to my left. Rick's the one I'm staring down – looking him in the eye turns out not to be much of a problem when he's trying to separate me from his son. But Rick, he stares right back, eyes bloodshot.

"Michonne says you said you haven't been eating or sleeping. You look sick. If I need to rest, you definitely do."

"You were shot. I'm okay –"

"I've heard that before," says Carl. Low blow.

Michonne reminds me that I have the raccoon to cook up anyway, and I know I can't win this, so I lean back on my heels and say Fine, even though it's not fine, not at all. Not at all.

"It's eight-fifteen now," says Rick.

"We'll be back by noon," promises Michonne. I see Rick's gun pass in front of me and land in Carl's hand. Rick tells him to follow Michonne's lead, and we'll see them in a couple of hours. I can't help it, I meet Carl's eyes, and his are already on mine, and suddenly I desperately, desperately want to kiss him, hold him close, hear his heartbeat like I craved earlier and never got around to because I was too busy slicing up that stupid raccoon. But Rick's here, and Michonne's here, so all I do is nod. Carl nods back and walks off with Michonne, a bag we need filled dangling from his hand.

Maybe this'll be a good thing. I told Michonne to help him, after all. Maybe she'll figure out a way, maybe she'll say something, maybe a real grown-up will be better with him than I've been . . . But I still feel nervous, a weighted kind of nervous that's probably dangerous to the few bites of cereal in me. Though that feeling could be because I'm about to spend four hours alone in a house with Rick.

I head back through the open door. He's right behind me.

"Don't worry," he says. "He's safe with her."

"Yeah, I know."

"They're pretty close. She's a good friend to him."

I don't know what kind of answer I'm supposed to give that so I don't give it any answer at all.

He closes the door behind us, shoves the couch back against it. The effort nearly makes him double over. I ask if he's okay, he says yes, and then he thinks for a moment and asks if I've done anything with the bandages on my wrist. I forgot he knew about that. I say no, he says we should both change our bandages.

I wait in the kitchen with the bloody innards of the raccoon until Rick brings in some gauze and pins. This house really wasn't hit very bad at all. I pinch my right wrist as Rick sets the stuff on the counter. "I thought I'd boil the meat. Probably shouldn't start a fire, and the stove uses gas. I checked it, it works fine, and, um . . . Carl and I brought back a few more bottles of water yesterday, so I think it'll be alright."

"Sounds good." He comes toward me with a strip of the gauze.

"No, you first."

"I already did mine."

"Oh. You're fast."

I roll up my sleeve instead of taking off my overshirt altogether. No need to put all of the scars on display. Of course, the ones that come into view when Rick cuts off the old bandage – I can't do anything about those.

I'm lucky, though, I know I am. The cuts don't look bad, not as bad as they could have. I mean, they're still red around the edges, but no more red than they were the last time I saw them, and the corners of them have closed up some, I think.

"Should I have gotten stitches?"

"It looks like they'll heal fine on their own." He starts rewrapping the wrist. His hands are careful, he holds my arm like it's breakable, and I wish he'd be faster about it. As if he didn't care about me.

"I can do it myself," I say quietly.

"It's fine."

I fidget. The cuts, I focus on the cuts. "I know it was dumb."

"You've done worse things."

A chill runs through me.

"We all have," Rick says.

I relax. "Yeah."

He pins me up and releases my arm. I find a reasonably clean pot and put it on the stove. Rick leans against the counter, watching me, and I pour water from a couple of bottles into the pot. Rick doesn't leave.

"I know you watched out for Carl," he says eventually. "While I was . . . like I was."

I turn the stove on. The flame flickers. "It's what we do."

Rick huffs out a breath. I put the pot on the stove. "You should lie down. I can get you when the meat's ready, if ya want."

He stays where he is, head down, hands behind him and clasping the counter. He needs a change of clothes, like me. He's talking again.

"I found out who killed Karen and David."

A watched pot never boils. I watch it anyway.

"Who?"

"Carol."

"What?"

"She admitted to it."

"No – she couldn't have –"

"She did. She said she thought she could keep the infection from spreading."

Carol – Carol?

"I took her on a run with me. While you and the others were on the run for meds. I sent her away . . ."

No, I saw her at the prison, I – no, I didn't. I didn't, I never saw her at the prison. Not after we got back that night. My palms are sweating. How did I not notice? So she wasn't at the prison when –? She could be alive? She must be alive, but – she killed Karen and David –

"I couldn't have her at the prison. Couldn't have her around my children. Couldn't trust . . . couldn't trust anyone . . . who could even think about killing in cold blood."

"But she was your friend," I say.

"Yeah. She was."

"Family."

"Yeah."

"Rick?"

"Yeah, Sydney?"

"You weren't unconscious last night, were you?"

"Not unconscious enough," he says, and walks out of the room.