RHatch89 Thank you!

DampishPoet oh no

BloodGutsandChocolatePudding Thank you for the inspiration.

Anna Katharyn They're so sweet

johnjohn1970 Thank you, I'll try

Akiie-chan (but I think you're Rolochan and you used your sisters account again on accident xD) I've had Shelter on for the last 4 days... so good. Ooh, that's a cool idea with Oliver and the katana. I'll think about it! Ugh, I need part B now. Like, now... I think the trouble is that Oliver doesn't believe in himself anymore. Anyway, thank you so much.

My second semester of uni starts tomorrow and I'm churning out this chapter as a coping mechanism. Anyone read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe? That is also my coping mechanism currently.

A/N concerning story: There's been a small time stretch, and also Tara's home half an episode early - if you think I'm up to something then you're right, and if you think despite that, that I also have no clue wtf I'm doing, then oh boy you're right, my friend.

In the month after out mattresses were burned, Tara came back, alone, saying she lost Heath and Noah on a bridge and found nothing of them but some tracks and a note that read 'PPP'. She spends a lot of time at the clinic or in her apartment, alone, reading War and Peace, or helping us collect things for the Saviors, who have been back every week to bleed us dry — taking food now, too.

The next collection is in three days and Dad's leaving for an overnight run with Aaron to find anything they can. Before they go, Dad visits me and ask me to come with. Michonne and Aaron wait outside my room.

"Somebody's gotta be here for Judith," I say, throwing darts at my dartboard and missing.

He tells me someone else will, that:—"we'll only be gone a few days at most."

I have plans, I think, but carefully don't speak. I throw again, miss.

"We need supplies," Dad insists. "They're gonna be comin' back soon."

"Is this how it's gonna be now?" I hiss, holding back the—'being Negan's bitch?' The other day Negan called him that again, and the time before that he got Dad to kneel for him. I throw another dart, miss — dammit!

"Yes," Dad says, "it is. You know that."

I throw the last dart, miss, and with a sharp sigh, cross my bedroom and take the darts back, not looking at the three people in my room while I say, "See you in a few days."

Dad sighs. "We should get going."

"He'll come around," I hear Aaron outside, and Dad tells Michonne they're headed north, giving her a walkie for if she changes her mind, too.

"Good luck," she tells him.

"See you soon," he tells her, and they kiss and I turn away and miss another four times, and later, when they're gone, I go downstairs and sit backwards on a chair in the dining room, watching Michonne fill up her pack. She's going out to scavenge, back by tomorrow.

"Why didn't you go with my dad?" I ask her.

"I have to figure some things out."

I step off the chair and follow her into the kitchen. "What is there to figure out?"

"How we can do this," she answers. "If we can."

"We can't," I gripe. "Not like this."

"Your dad thinks differently."

"And he's wrong — you know it."

She does. I can see it in her face. She walks past me towards the door and slings the pack over her shoulder, turning back. "Even if I... think he is. I don't know." She's leaving. "Change your bandage later. And be nice to Olivia." Olivia and I haven't been getting along lately; she keeps accusing me of spending too much time with Enid.

The door shuts and I'm left alone, and at some point, I go to the window, sigh, and march outside into the cold, early morning, small fog clouds forming in front of my mouth. "Enid..."

She's climbing the wall, not looking back at me. "I need to see Maggie."

"You're walking to Hilltop? It's far."

"I'll be fine."

"Maybe..."

"I'll be fine!" She looks at me, shrugging. "I have better aim than you..."

I look at the ground.

She sighs. "I didn't mean it that way."

"I'm not saving you anymore," I tell her.

"That what happened in the armoury? You saved me? You saved Oliver trapping him in the laundry room?"

"Yeah..."

She shakes her head. "You made it back in one piece. You're still here—"

"He's not. And... I'm not talking about that."

She watches me. "I'm sorry you had to see it."

"I'm not."

Then she disappears over the other side of the wall and I'm going back inside, pacing the living room, thinking I meant it, before — I'm not saving her anymore. I've done enough trying, for them both. But Oliver still left and now Enid's leaving me, too and — and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of this being the the way it is. The Saviors' fault. My fault.

I get up, check Judith's asleep, then grab my stuff and leave, too.

Stealing a car is easy. It's no surprise Carol and Oliver were able to do it on separate occasions within the same twenty-four hours. Nobody's even on watch right now — since we know who the biggest threat is now. I take Dad's keys and drive the car right out of the gate with enough confidence to close it behind myself, without a soul noticing, and the driving is sticky and I'm not sure how much I remember and a lot of it I figure out myself, but I do okay.

A mile later, I only realise Bean's following me when I see him sprinting after the car in the wingmirror. "Dammit..." I pull over and a pair of blistered paws hit the glass beside me. Bean's panting hard, leaving fog on the glass, looking like he might collapse. Sighing, I reach over to the passenger door and open it and he clambers across the seat — I have to help pull him in. I shut the door and get driving again, petting Bean when he puts his heavy head in my lap.

I sigh. "Let's go kill some Saviors."

I don't know where they are, but I do know that someone at Hilltop does. I also know Enid's going to take the same route Jesus mapped out, and since I don't know any other route, I follow it too, so it doesn't surprise me when I find her on the road by an old building, dismounting a blue bike and watching some walker follow after her. She can take it herself, I know. But if there's one thing I know how to do with a car, it's how to run down a walker.

"Bean, hold on!"

The corpse hits the car hood and disappears over the roof, leaving a dent and a big splatter of blood on the windscreen. I forget, however, to brake, so I ram right into a drive slow pillar. I manage to catch Bean before he flies through the glass. He struggles in my arms and through the rear-view mirror, I see the walker get up. Pushing Bean away, I switch to reverse and hit the gas — the car lurches backwards, crushing the walker against a wall.

Slowly, Enid pushes her bike to the window. I roll it down, thinking I'd probably look pretty cool right now if it weren't for Bean clambering over me to get out and greet her. He vomits at her feet. She pets him until he stops crying.

She looks at me. "What are you doing here?"

I shrug and smile at her. "Felt like a drive."

Scrunching her face, she reaches into the car and pulls something out of my hair.

"What is it?" I ask.

She stares at her palm and whispers, "Dragonfly wing," and I don't know why this makes her look like she's just figured something important out, so I ask, and she just tells me, "I don't know. He never told me what he wished for..."

The car doesn't start up again, so we walk. Enid brought another jacket that she lets me wear, but by the time it starts getting dark and we're around five or six miles farther, we're both freezing. Hilltop's only a few hours away, but we know we shouldn't be out in the open at night-time, so Enid helps me inside an mail post office by climbing up onto my shoulders to get in through the upstairs balcony, and once she lets me in from the inside, we find candles for light along with the flash-light in her backpack. She doesn't have any food but we can manage until tomorrow. While we set up a fire, Bean finds a mouse and eats everything but its tail. For the most part, Enid and I keep quiet. The fire we manage to light in a trash can keeps us warn if we feed it the cards on display or the bank bills in the mail slots; Enid won't let me burn the written letters — I guess for the same reason she kept that faded letter on the balloon.

In the firelight, she reads the letters and I switch on a radio I find. It's just white noise until I figure out how to switch it to CD, playing quietly an orchestra compilation already inside.

"Hrmph..."

"No, no," Enid whispers, breath fogging, "keep it on."

I look at her. "Okay."

Frost is starting to grow around the windows. Enid falls asleep after long. Sitting in a chair by the window, I listen to the music until the album finishes, and then it's very quiet. Peeking through blinds, I see nothing outside but the moon flickering in through clouds, hear crickets and the wind and trees — and something else like a possum or a raccoon, scuttling in the garbage.

After a few hours, Enid wakes up. I can't say I'm totally expecting it when Enid sits on my lap and wraps her arms around my shoulders, face in my neck, as if she might still be sleeping. I laugh quietly. Her nose is cold when it touches my collarbone.

"You should sleep somewhere more comfortable," I whisper. "I'm not a very good bed."

"It's okay..." She yawns. "Not tired."

"You're lying."

"No," she whispers, "I'm not."

The candles are burned out but the last few embers in the fire are still glowing — enough to see by. Enid leans off me and peeks through the blinds, then looks at me.

"Your bandage is dirty."

I pull it to make sure it's sitting right. "Michonne told me to change it, but I forgot."

"Felt like a drive," Enid says.

We're quiet for a few minutes — the only noise is my foot rocking side to side against the peeling wallpaper under the window. After long, I'm asked, "Not sorry you saw it?"

I look up and see the moon in her eyes. Figures. Enid's the kind of girl who'd keep the moon in her eyes.

"Yeah," I whisper. "I watched it. Both times. Didn't look away."

"Why?"

"'Cause, when it was happening, I knew that I needed to remember it, so when I have a chance to kill him, I wouldn't have a choice."

"I think I'd kill him, too."

I've never heard her say something like that.

"It's messed up, but..." She shakes her head. "It's how it works. You do things for the ones you love... loved."

I look at Bean who's folded up asleep by the fire.

"It's not for them," I say, then wait for her to speak but she doesn't, so I say, "I'm sorry I locked you in the armoury."

"I didn't need to see it. Oliver didn't."

Hearing someone say this to me is like getting released from a prison for a crime I didn't mean to commit. I'll never know if Oliver would have lived to come back with us in the RV. I'll never know if there was something I could have done to make him stay. I'll never get to tell him I'm sorry, or tell him — really tell him how I felt.

"I don't even know if she's okay," Enid adds, her voice strange.

"We'll get there."

"Yeah..." She sighs. "You should rest. I got this watch."

Sometime in the night in the strange little mail room we found, Oliver visits. He stands there in front of me, hand in pocket. There are big dragonfly wings behind his back, small rainbows glistening between the veins, and his hair is made entirely of vine leaves and flowers, but I can't see his face much, just his light. Made of it from the inside out, translucent skin glowing softly in between heartbeats.

I don't say anything because I'm not sure if I have anything to say, even though before I'm sure I had a lot to say to him.

"I wish..."

"You wish what?"

He's going away.

I reach out but catch nothing.

"Please don't... Please don't go."

And then I open my eyes and the air is cold and the sun is waking up. My face is wet. I rub it. Enid is awake, watching me, her face all arched up like a bridge.

"Is it time to go?" she asks.

"Yeah."

"Okay."

The walking is miserable and I know Enid is crying. She hasn't really stopped since we left, so I keep my distance, watching her back. I know it's me making her so upset. After Oliver and after Glenn and Abraham, and even Maggie... I think she knows what I'm doing here.

I wish more than anything that we could at least get to Hilltop on a good note.

Off to the side of the road, in the ditch, I see a dead body and decide to loot it. There's a backpack, and inside, nothing except two sets of roller-skates. Suddenly, I get an idea.

"Enid... stop."

I must fall ten times before we make it a hundred yards. Not Enid though. Enid gets the hang of it almost immediately. She skates like Oliver boards, like swimming downstream.

I stagger and Enid grabs my hand, laughing. Bean runs in circles around us. I almost fall again, but she keeps me on two legs, keeping hold, fingers locked.

"We did this last week," I decide to tell her, skating backwards even though I'm trying to face forward. "Me and Oliver, in Alexandria. He had his board and I took a bike."

"Was it fun?"

I smile. "Yeah."

The smile falls. "He said he hated me," I add. "That was the last thing Oliver told me."

She watches me, tugging a little when I almost lose my balance again.

We stop and stand very still.

"You're still in love with him," she says, and I say, "Yes," and she shuts her eyes and lets out a long breath and tells me, "I think I am, too."

I'm quiet.

"I never told you why we stopped," she says. "But... I think that's why. 'Cause I knew I was. It wasn't a big deal, when it was just kissing, but... then when we were... I just knew — I knew that Oliver wasn't really there with me. And when it was over he was so sad."

My eyes are welling, breath short and harsh.

"I never meant to hurt either of you," she says.

"You didn't," I say, sniffing. "I... I'm not upset that you were both together. I just wish I'd done a better job at being there for him. For both of you."

She smiles. "I think I would have liked that."

I wipe my face, managing a smile back.

Enid takes my hand. "C'mon, Carl. Let's get there."

Roller-skates off, we go through the forest until we see, through the tree-line, a small compound-looking plot of land, probably about the size of the front field back at the prison. The wall is made of thick wooden beams and a few Hilltop people are on top holding spears. Inside, over the wall, I see the top few floors and roof of a big fancy-looking building, like a hotel or museum.

Barrington House, Jesus said.

Savior trucks surround the front gate. My heart sits in my throat, hand on my knife. We stop at the edge of the tree cover.

"I don't think Negan is here," I say. "I don't see that black truck."

Bean sticks to Enid's side, his eye watching them like a hawk. I spot Simon giving orders to the rest of his men.

"You weren't taking a drive," Enid says. "You weren't coming to get me."

"I can't let him get away with this. You know I can't."

"I know."

"Come with me... You wanna kill him, too. We can do it."

She shakes her head. "You said it. It would be for us. Not for Abraham. Not for Glenn. Not for Maggie, or Oliver... You're doing it for you."

"Yeah..."

Her stare snaps between bandage and eye, like I still have two.

"Say it all goes right," she whispers, "and you do it... How do you get away?"

"It wouldn't matter."

"It would to me."

She puts her forehead against mine, and I think that there are a million ways to tell someone you love them. It can be something as simple as a hug, or reminding someone to put a seatbelt on, or asking someone to dance, or sit and read comics until you fall asleep together. I think there are a million ways to say goodbye, too... but I'm only realising this now, so I tell Enid I love her, and I tell her goodbye, but I don't do it with words — I kiss her forehead, and then, after a second, I kiss her mouth too.

I understand it now. Why Oliver kisses her like that — like this. It does mean something, because Enid, she's like fairy dust. You never really know how long she'll be around but you know when she's there because you're flying.

And then, gently, she puts me down on the ground again.

"Please don't go," she whispers. "I don't wanna lose you, too."

"I'm just gonna go home."

"You're lying."

"No," I whisper, "I'm not."

Enid sighs.

"You shouldn't go," she says, "but I can't stop you..."

She walks away towards Hilltop, Bean beside her.

"I'll see you," I say.

"No," Enid answers, "you won't."

Yeah, I think, I probably won't.

When she is gone and nobody is looking, I sneak into a truck and huddle into a hidey-spot behind a crate of fruit and vegetables and scotch. There's a crate of guns beside me. I know what I'm going to do. I also know I'm not making it out of this. And I think a small part of me is even counting on it, but not before a bullet is in Negan's skull.

As we're driving away from Hilltop, the truck shuddering under my knees and my mind racing a million miles a minute, I suddenly realise I'm not alone. A box is opened, by the sounds of it, and when I peek over the crate I'm hidden behind, I see Jesus —his trench coat and his beanie hat pouring a bottle of scotch out the open back of the truck.

I step out so he can see me.

"Hey."

Notes

I think Carl has a thing about kissing people after they take him skating...

As always,
Happy reading.