I'm tilting to the left, my tank top folded up and pinned by my arm so my right side's bared from the bottom of my ribcage to my hip. I'm really cold, and Dad's hands are colder as he undoes my overshirt-bandage. Michonne's come up behind him, and to her left, leaning against the wagon and only partly in my view – LC's found her way here, too. I look at Michonne, but not for very long. Dad gets my bandage undone and I twist my head to see this gash everyone's so worried about.
To me, it doesn't look much different than it did last night. About five inches across, a diagonal cut downwards, deep enough to be serious but not really serious. The bullet hit my hip and kept going down until it hit the road, and last night Rick was saying to Dad how lucky I am it didn't ricochet back up into me. And I am lucky, I know, and not even because of that – a few inches over and I would probably be dead by now.
But no matter how the gash looks to me, Dad still doesn't like it much. Right now he's scowling at it like it's a breathing enemy. "That look infected to you?" he asks over his shoulder.
"Too soon to tell," Michonne answers. "We need to get her to Terminus. They probably have medicine, maybe doctors."
"Yeah, unless it's all a sham." My overshirt's still halfway around my waist, but Dad grabs it and pulls it off of me and then looks all through it. "Bled a lot."
"I feel fine."
"Yeah, don't you always?"
"She's not bleeding anymore," Michonne says.
"It'll start up again when we start walkin'." Dad stares at my overshirt, at the black stains spilled onto the blue, but only for a few seconds. He hands it back to me then, and I wrap it around again, making sure to cover the wound with the clean part. My hands freeze in the middle of tying my sleeves together, though, because for the first time in a while, I'm looking at my belly, my sides, really looking. My ribs – I can see them, all the ones my shirt doesn't cover, and I'm guessing I could see all the others, too. And there's only the barest roll on my stomach when I slouch. My mother, she once told me that around the time girls get their periods they start to gain weight. I got my period last year. All I've done since then is get thinner and thinner, and suddenly, I'm disgusted with this weak little body, and I finish tying on the overshirt and cover back up, against the cold, against my eyes.
"She says she's not in any pain." That's Michonne again. They're still talking about me, about the gash. That's what I should be worried about right now, not my ribs.
"She's lyin'." Dad's tone is bitter and his mouth is set like he tasted something bitter, too. He gives me a look that practically dares me to deny it, but I won't try.
"We don't have a choice," Michonne tells him, gently. "We can't leave her here alone." Her eyes dart to me, then her voice gets lower, and I don't know if she means for me to hear or not, but I do. "And if Terminus is a sham, we'll need you both there."
I clear my throat. "Rick got shot at the prison. He's mostly healed, and he didn't have a doctor or anything."
"Rick ain't a malnourished twelve-year-old girl."
"Mine's just a scrape, though."
"Yeah, from a bullet."
"But, still –"
"Daryl." That's LC's voice, so I tense up and keep my eyes on Dad, just watch Dad. From my right the voice goes on. "Things are more likely to go bad from an extra day without medicine than half a day walking."
Damn it – she should have just kept her mouth shut. Because if she's on my side, that just confuses me, and Dad'll want to argue with her and so I have less of a chance –
Except Dad's not arguing. He's looking at the ground, and grinding his teeth, but he's not arguing, what? And after a little longer of not arguing, he nods. He agrees. "Alright."
And now I'm even more confused. What's he doing? He's listening to her now? Not even snapping at her for trying to be a part of this, acting like she has some sort of say?
The cold around me slips through my skin, gets into my blood. Dad and – her, they spent all that time out there, together, them and Beth, yes, but then – how long were they alone after they were separated from Beth? A few days? More?
Did something happen between them? Like those times, after they split up, when Dad would spend the night, no matter how many fights they'd had before –
No. No.
I grab Owen's jacket, Dad's talking, but I'm too wrapped up in convincing myself I should still want to listen to him, that I'm being paranoid, that he's doing what he thinks is best, just what he thinks is best. Him and LC, he would never – he would never forgive her. Never come close. Not after what she's done.
"Sydney!"
I have an arm halfway in one of the jacket sleeves. "Yeah?"
"You listenin' to me?"
"Sorry, I – what?"
"I said, you feel like it's got too bad, like it's hurtin' too much or you're dizzy or anything, you tell me."
"Yeah. Course." I get the jacket on all the way and jump down, keeping my face still even when a wince tries to break through. It could be a long day.
Someone touches my arm. "I'll keep an eye on her," Carl says.
"Good." Dad picks up his crossbow, slings it over his back. "Best watch how close, though."
I duck my head.
Dad disappears around the station wagon with Michonne. LC's already gone, and now Carl's stripping off his jacket, this sweatshirt-like thing with a zipper down the front. "Here."
I tilt my head to the side and give him a look. "Carl."
"I'm your boyfriend." His eyes are unblinking beneath the brim of his hat, "I should be the one giving you my jacket."
A smile sneaks out of me, and it feels good. It feels like I'm not Sydney and he's not Carl, no, I'm a girl in school and he's a boy I like who likes me, and he's jealous because I sat with another boy at lunch. I don't know, maybe I should be annoyed, but it's such a normal slice of a moment that I can't be. "Okay," I say, laughing – no, giggling – a little as I shrug off Owen's jacket. My boyfriend helps me into his. I slide my hands through the sleeves and back into his arms, which wrap around my waist, and my smile fades, because we're Sydney and Carl again, and that's not a bad thing, but it's more serious.
He kisses my head. "I love you. Like Glenn loves Maggie."
And I kiss his mouth, because he's sweet, and because he said loves instead of loved.
. . . . .
LC said walking would be better than no medicine. In my heart, I'd agreed with her. I'm close to changing my mind by the time afternoon hits. My side is burning almost as much as it burned when the bullet first hit, and every step is like ten. I'm sweating through Carl's jacket but I can't give it back to him, even though I know he's cold, because then he would refuse and I would push him and he would ask me how I'm not freezing and I would have to tell him I'm hurting, and I can't. That's the worst part of the gash, really. I have to hide that it hurts, which exhausts me that much more.
Finally, finally, we come across a sign by the railroad tracks. It fell from two wood posts, and Rick clears off a patch of dead leaves to reveal the word TERMINUS.
"We're gettin' close," Dad says when he sees. "Be there before sundown."
Rick nods. "Now we head through the woods. We don't know who they are."
I wonder if people thought like this when we brought them into the prison. I guess they must have. What are the chances of this place being as good, half as good, as the prison?
Then again, the prison couldn't hold its own against everything.
Into the woods we go, all of us readying our weapons. It's a thin forest, not even much brush on the ground. A fence appears minutes in, chain-link and tall, covered in weeds that are all wrapped up in it and climbing, but we can still see through. I'm the smallest of our group, which has its advantages at times, like now, when I squeeze through and get to the front and see everything as best you can. But all I can really see is one brick building, huge, with eight closed white windows going across the top. Under each of the windows is something like a board, and each board has a letter on it, and all the way across it spells out that word again. TERMINUS.
"We all spread out," Rick says, voice low, even though I think we're too far away for anyone to hear us. Unless they have guards, which, really, they probably do. We did. "Watch for a while, see what we see. Get ready . . . We all stay close."
Dad taps my shoulder, and I glance at Carl and turn, but then from behind me comes Rick saying, "Daryl. If it's alright with you, I'd like Sydney to stay with me."
At my name, I turn again, back, and I meet Rick's eyes. I don't get a damn thing from them.
"I think she and I should talk about some things."
My head slowly rotates to Dad. He's watching me but not really watching me. His head's someplace else, I can tell.
"If you'd rather be there –" Rick begins, but Dad shakes his head.
"Mm-mm . . . She's old enough to handle it on her own."
That's really great to hear him say, but I come crashing down as fast as I went up. I feel like I'm walking through mud as I go to Rick. I try to hold his gaze but can't. Instead I find Carl's. Only, he's not looking at me, not at first. At first, his eyes are on his dad, but they're weird eyes, and he has his hat tilted forward, and it reminds me of an animal hiding under a rock, watching the hunter, praying he walks past. But then the eyes come to me and Carl nods like Owen nodded to me last night, that question kind of nod. I nod back.
Carl ends up going with Michonne, and instead of LC or Dad going with them, they go off the other way, with Owen, yeah, but they're still together. I don't like that. I don't like that they don't argue over it. Maybe I should be happy that they're not arguing, but I'm not. These days, I want it, it's right, maybe it always has been.
Owen hesitates before he follows them. His jacket is on him again, where I guess it belongs, and his eyes go from me to Dad and LC and then to his boots, and he chuckles at something inside of his head. But he goes. And, like it was in that house that day a hundred years ago, it's just me and Rick.
He starts walking, and I follow. We go along the wall maybe fifty yards. From there, I can see that there are buildings beyond the one with the boards, but I can't see much more than the tops of them. We go back to our starting point and move fifty yards the other way. Nothing but the first building from here.
It's at this point that Rick finally, finally begins to talk.
"I hated lying to him."
Crunch, crunch, go our feet, slow and easy. "So why did you?" I say, calm enough, in spite of my dry mouth, the tremble hiding in my throat.
"Because after everything he'd been through . . . I couldn't bring myself to tell him the truth."
Does he remember that night as well as me? How shiny the gun was? How it shook, then steadied, all in my hands? "Couldn'ta blamed you if you had."
"I don't just mean your side of things, Sydney."
I don't understand. I just keep walking and listening. The pain in my side is welcome now. It shouldn't be, but it is.
"If I'da told him I'd left you . . . left you to fend for yourself with those assholes . . . he would have naver been able to look at me again."
"Yeah, he woulda. After you told him about my side of things."
"Your side of things wasn't nearly as bad."
I kick a stick out of my path. "I pointed a gun at you."
"I've pointed a gun at your dad three times, by my count."
"It was different."
"That's what I thought. At first." He pauses, so long I think I'm supposed to talk again, but then he says, "I thought you were dangerous. Too much of a flight risk. That's just . . . that's just how my brain was workin', how I got myself to leave you behind. To tell Carl you weren't at the house, that – that we had no way of findin' where you were. He . . . he took it hard. And that's an understatement."
"He didn't take it as hard as he would have."
"No. No, not that hard. And I got him to keep moving. And as we kept moving, gettin' farther and farther from that neighborhood, I kept . . . thinkin' about all sorts of things, concernin' you. Thought about how you shot the Governor, saved my life. How you kept my son alive while I was hurt . . . And how you're his best friend. Not me, not Michonne. And how I've watched you grow up over the past two years as much I've watched him."
Rick takes a deep breath, and he stops, and I stop, and I can look at him – can't help it, actually – but he can't look at me, or at least doesn't. His voice has gone even raspier than usual.
"I hadn't just left some kid behind for the sake of my son. I left behind a kid who, after everything, is practically mine. I realized that after about the second night. I wasn't just upset because of Carl." He shrugs. "I missed you."
I don't know what to say to that. I feel like I've come across a deer in the forest. Don't move fast, don't do the wrong thing, or it's gone.
Rick rubs his eyes – are they wet? – and he leans over on his knees, so we're eye level. Yes, his eyes are wet, and bloodshot, and real. "Abandoning you like that . . . it was one of the most despicable things I've ever done, and I swear to you, I will never make a mistake like that again. Not with you."
My words say themselves but my throat makes them crack. "You did it for Carl."
". . . Yeah. At the end of the day, I did. Just like what you did, you did for Carl."
Around us, the trees whisper and leaves fall and twigs break, but between us it's quiet, and it's not a bad quiet, but I have to break it anyway to say, "We're the two people who love him most in the world, aren't we?"
"Maybe so." He straightens up, nods a little, and we start walking again. "I don't think there's any doubt that he needs us both." His voice is better now, raspy but not too much. And what he just said, about Carl and me – nobody's ever been so understanding about our relationship. He seems to get it, Rick. And it's a relief. No, everything, everything about this conversation has been a relief.
He doesn't hate me. He wants me here. He missed me.
I missed him, too, I think. No, I know.
We reach our starting point again, and there, just out of hearing range and on the bottom of the slope leading up to the fence, Carl and Michonne are talking, face-to-face, not just side-by-side. Rick and I stop at the same time, and my shoulders lift a bit, my chest tilts on the inside, because Carl's face is bad, bad like – like he might be crying? Why would he be crying?
But he hasn't seen us. And right now, things are between him and Michonne, so I grip my bow and stay put. He'll talk to me about it later. He always does.
"He might need you more than me for a while," Rick murmurs. "What I did last night, he . . . he's havin' trouble with it."
"I'll keep an eye on him." Does Rick talk this way to Carl? Like he's just another grownup? Rick said I was almost like one of his own, and Carl really is his own, so maybe he does, sometimes, but I've never heard it. "You were only doin' what you had to do, by the way. If I know that, so'll Carl."
He doesn't answer. Michonne pulls Carl into her arms. I want to go down to him, know I shouldn't. Snap-click, goes my trigger, snap-click. "So are we ever gonna tell him the truth?"
"I think the sooner we forget about it, the better."
That sounds nice, so nice, but . . . "Really think we'll be able to do that? Just go back to normal?"
His gaze locks onto mine and we stay trapped like that for too long, but I won't be the one to look away. "I think we can get there," Rick finally says, and he grips my shoulder for a second, and that's enough to make me believe him.
