A/N: If you haven't read Chapter 119 or later of RBM, you probably should. I will be alternating the final chapters of RBM with a counterpart chapter that reintroduces the POV in ISO. All of the "Calm Before the Storm" chapters should be considered prequels to Chapter One and Negan's capture of our heroine.

May 24, 2017

- Tara -

Tara picks up the framed print from the end table, studying the black and white prints. Chris sets their youngest daughter down in her play area so she can toddle off to dump buckets of blocks with crowing glee. She drops onto the couch beside Tara, cupping Tara's rounded belly and grinning at the immediate kick.

"Are you still double checking the ultrasound?" Chris is far too amused.

"There is a set of twelve day old twins right down our lane where one twin hid for half the pregnancy."

Chris traces the lines on the second ultrasound, the one done a month ago. "No twin can hide past the anatomy ultrasound, babe. I promise you, there's only one mini-Tara in there."

"He might object to being named Tara."

Her wife just grins. "I'm pretty sure he can claim the name as male if he wants. It's not like there are any other Taras to claim it has to be female."

"Cute, but I'm favoring Casper at the moment."

"Casper Chambler sounds good to me."

"You don't mind him having a different last name than the older kids?" Tara's debated it since she decided their next child would be one she carried. Early in their relationship, she didn't quite understand the urge Chris had to undergo a pregnancy, but the more she was a partner to the process, the more it intrigued her.

"I have no objection as long as he's happy about it. He may get called Dixon a lot by habit. It happens to the cousins often enough. But that's the thing. There are a lot of Dixons with that as their formal surname. If you want your father's name for one or more of our children, I'm all for it."

"Meghan would be over the moon." With her younger niece and only nephew having T-Dog's surname, only Meghan and Tara are left as Chamblers.

"Then think it over. You've got until September. If it feels right, that's his name." Chris is right there. Tara's only twenty-four weeks into the pregnancy right now. There's time to decide.

A solid thud of a wooden block hits the couch next to Chris causing her to get up and scold their errant toddler and plop her little bottom in the corner. Shannon wails pitifully from her timeout seat. "I share, Mama!"

"Throwing toys is not how we share, Shannon. I told you that yesterday and the day before." Chris has the bland tone of a mother long used to toddler logic.

Sniffles continue as Chris comes to sit back on the couch, looking at her watch. "Sure you don't want me to take her to daycare when I go to work?"

Chris has the noon to six infirmary shift, which often turns out to be the busiest one as folks drop by after shifts. Tara's just hit the stage of pregnancy where she doesn't go on patrol outside the walls anymore. It landed her with the six to noon watch shift, but today is an off day.

"I'll be fine, Chrissy. She'll be ready for her post lunch nap by the time you leave anyway, and Christian and Meredith will be home by the time she gets up. You know she's just angry they go to school without her, and daycare won't fix that."

It's Meredith's first year in school, with kids starting whenever between four and six that parents feel they can benefit from classroom versus daycare or home care. At seven, it's Christian's second year, but the classroom setup means the two older children are in the same primary level class.

Chris looks at her watch. "Timeout is over, sweetpea. No more throwing toys."

The toddler makes a beeline straight for the couch, climbing up between her mothers. Her black curls bob around her tiny face. "Mommy look at baby?"

She peers at the set of framed ultrasounds, one a barely recognizable blob taken nine weeks in. The second is the one Tara's been studying, mostly a profile of a cute nose and chin. Shannon isn't quite old enough to truly understand the prints and Tara's growing waistline are related. But she stares at the images with intent blue eyes.

Aside from their eyes, their two girls are unmistakably sisters, with a strong resemblance to Chris down black curls and caramel skin. Meredith's eyes are brown, providing an extra link between Christian and his younger sisters. Tara suspects by the time her oldest is an adult, his adoption will be a remote footnote for his medical files.

Shannon leans down and kisses Tara's belly carefully. "I kiss baby. Can I have cookie?"

The other half of the girls' DNA shows up in their ability to turn on the charm even at a young age, although Chris swears that's as much from proximity to the man as biology. Then again, his coloring isn't so far off Chris's that Tara can truly say how much they might resemble him as they age. Meredith's brown eyes are already one trait from him.

Chris tries to hide her laughter and fails. She lifts the girl, spinning her as she carries her to the table and her high chair. "We're all out of cookies, but there are a lot of strawberries."

"Berries!" Shannon taps her tray repeatedly. She's been on a trend lately where she'll eat anything red without protest, but if anything solid white hits her plate, waterworks ensue. It's not the weirdest toddler habit they've seen raising three kids, but it's sometimes entertaining and easy to solve.

"Hey, share some of those strawberries with me." Tara sets the photo frame aside and goes to help Chris wash and trim the berries.

It takes a few bribes of berries to get Shannon to ignore that her mothers are kissing more than preparing more, but it's worth it for the leisurely kisses Tara enjoys with her wife.

- Sophia -

Sophia signs off duty after turning the watch station over to her replacement. It's lunchtime, and she's starving, so she makes her way back to the house she shares with Carl. Only half of their population at King's Cross is permanent. The other twenty rotate in from the other Georgia communities. The seventh Georgia community is the smallest and newest, existing primarily as the train depot.

Carl's former apprenticeship with Eugene makes him one of only three people who fully understand the steam engine, so it was natural for him to be assigned to King's Cross. No one expected Honey and Eugene to live separately, after all. Sophia's willingness to live here full time elevates her to second in command of the little village, despite still being a year shy of twenty.

Her boss, Jorge, and his daughter, Brenda, are two immigrants from Turtle Pointe near Savannah. Brenda keeps their vehicles and weaponry in top condition, while Carl covers everything else that needs a tinkerer, from the train to the water system to the power station.

Since their primary purpose is security for the train, they don't maintain a community kitchen and have smaller scale gardens and greenhouses. Most of their supplies are tithes from the other six communities, arriving with each security rotation. The housing is a neighborhood near the tracks that Homestead simply enclosed along with a section of track that allows the train to move through massive gates. The seventeen houses are nearly identical, with odd concrete porches that have steps on either side instead of the front, and all of them two stories. Only the colors and siding differ to make them stand out.

Her home is a rambling white house next door to Jorge's identical beige one, both at what used to be the dead end of the street near the railroad tracks, but now the first two houses when you approach from their non-residential buildings. The walk is a pleasant enough one despite the day's humidity, and she's more than ready for the air blowing through the house thanks to the strategically located fans. It means Carl's home for lunch before her, and she's glad.

"Carl?" she calls out, setting her rifle into the gun cabinet in the front closet. She doesn't remove the shoulder holster out of long habit. It took some getting used to the shoulder holster versus her years long habit of a belt holster, but she's starting to understand why some prefer it.

"In the kitchen." She can smell something tasty and realizes Carl is grilling some of the homemade bratwurst from Homestead.

"How did you know I've been craving those all morning?" she asks, slipping up behind him for a hug as best as her expanded waistline and his task at the stovetop allows.

"Lucky guess." He puts his tongs down and turns in her arms, kissing her gently before rubbing her stomach. "They confirmed the train arriving Saturday."

"Wonder how long Mama will be torn between lingering here versus heading for home and the little ones?" She lets Carl go reluctantly so he doesn't burn their lunch. She retrieves some of the soft bread she baked yesterday afternoon and slices off a couple pieces. "You want mustard or ketchup?"

"Since the baby isn't due until August, I'm going to guess she'll be able to tear herself away this time." He smirks at her, blue eyes bright and merry. He's barely the same height she is, which she likes, even though he claims he feels like a toddler in a family where even the women trend close to six feet. His long, dark hair is carefully braided still, which means he's intending to go back to work after lunch. Long, loose hair is a dangerous habit in engineering or mechanics. "Ketchup is good. These are applewood smoked."

"I still maintain that it is weird that you don't commit to a hot dog condiment."

"Putting sauerkraut on anything resembling a hot dog regardless of the content of the sausage is weird, too, you know."

She just grins and sets one of the jars of sauerkraut on the counter. The voracious craving for all things sour was actually her first clue she was pregnant. They aren't married, although it's been discussed that they'll get it sorted one day. The baby wasn't planned, but they're both enamored of their happy accident.

Being in tiny King's Cross worries everyone, but she sees no need to relocate just because she's pregnant. Her checkups work out just fine by Cricket visiting once a month, and Susan is a great nurse who'll probably qualify as a physician in her own right one day. She'll travel to Homestead nearer her due date, but she doesn't intend on separating Honey and Eugene any longer than it takes the baby to arrive safely and she and Carl to return home.

She isn't going to mess up their life any more than she has to because her birth control tapped out earlier than predicted. Next time she's going with the IUD that doesn't rely on any hormones at all. As happy as she is about her son, she really didn't intend him to arrive until she was closer to thirty than twenty.

"Be right back." That's one of the joys of being twenty-eight weeks pregnant: the bathroom is a place she gets to hang out in at least once an hour, it seems like. She loves their bathrooms in the old house, though. Big bathtubs, nothing as deluxe as her mother's back at Homestead, but still enough to soak away backaches - or for her boyfriend to join her, back when she wasn't taking up enough room for two all by herself.

They have their house to themselves, just like Jorge and Brenda have theirs, and Susan and her twin, Robert, share the home across the street from Jorge. It's the transient security teams that often share the big four bedroom houses. Few people want to be alone in a house with as small as King's Cross is.

Sophia washes her hands and returns to the kitchen to find that Carl's got their lunch moved to the table, with big sides of potato salad he must have made last night after she zonked out on the couch in the middle of watching DVDs of an old television series. The joy of living with Carl is that he's a better cook than she is. It's not that she can't cook. Her mother saw to that, even tackling teaching Scout not to turn out charcoal instead of edible food, but she doesn't enjoy it.

Even simple meals are best made by someone who likes what they're doing, she thinks, and she grins as she takes the seat next to Carl. "Do you really have to go straight back to work after lunch?" she asks, taking his hand instead of going for the messy pile of lovely bread, bratwurst, and sauerkraut on her plate.

Carl arches a brow, but she draws her fingers along his palm with a lazy smile. The questioning look changes to an intent one. "I'm sure an hour or two wait won't hurt."

Sophia just grins wolfishly, relinquishing his hand so they can both eat, the promise of dessert that isn't in the kitchen on both of their minds now.

- Lori -

Lori parks the electric-powered golf cart next to the daycare. As time passes by, their mechanics and engineers tinker more with small transports like this one for those whose duties or family obligations make horses a little more problematic for transport. Lori's cart isn't quite as powerful as the larger Polaris vehicles that have been converted to biofuel, but most of the time she doesn't need it. Any heavy deliveries to and from the creamery on the horse farm are usually handled with the work trucks.

She steps to the fence surrounding the schoolhouse now, watching the kids on the playground playing a game that it takes her a minute to recognize as Red Rover. It's just the primary school kids in the pretty little fenced area, as the older, elementary aged kids are usually considered old enough to not need adult supervision once they're done with class for the day at two. It's a little more freeform in supervising children than Lori would have once been entirely comfortable with, but none of the Homestead children can be considered sheltered. There are no child predators within their walls, either.

Rick is happily directing the game, with kids not wanting to play the game drawing on a large slab of concrete set up generally for peewee basketball. It ends up as an art canvas more often than a sports one, thanks to the tubs of sidewalk chalk the smaller kids delight in. She thinks idly that her ex-husband missed his calling entirely when he went into law enforcement instead of teaching like he originally intended. He needed to serve and protect, yes, but not with a gun and a badge.

It's not her own school age daughter who spots her first, but Tyreese and Karen's son, Tyler. The curly-headed little boy hands his green chalk off to Nico Morales and goes to pat Rick on the hand and point toward where Lori's leaning near the gate.

Rick flashes her a smile as he thanks the boy before whistling the game to a halt. Judy beams at seeing her mother. She throws her arms first around Hershey Rhee, before also hugging her teacher tightly. She trots over toward her mother, scooping up a blue and gray camo backpack from the pile on the playground. Her neat pigtails are half undone, brown hair fluttering around her head as she flashes her gap-toothed smile.

"You lost more teeth today?" Lori asked, knowing exactly what the big grin is all about. The daughter she sent to school had both top front teeth.

Judith fishes in her backpack's pouch, retrieving an envelope made out of construction paper. "One came out at lunch and the other at snack."

"Well, at least your Daddy won't have to pull these like the last ones."

The two lower teeth made Judith miserable, refusing to fully turn loose and making eating painful. After a consult at the infirmary, it was determined they needed to be pulled, but Judith wouldn't allow anyone near her mouth but Daryl.

Her daughter giggles. "I think it hurt him to pull them last time."

Lori agrees. Daryl swore up and down he was never playing dentist again, even though Judith seemed to experience no pain at all when he pulled the tiny milk teeth.

"Give me the packet so we can keep them safe until tonight." With the realities of the world Judith and her generation grow up in, Homestead maintains the sweet childhood fictions like Santa and the Tooth Fairy faithfully. "Let's go pick up your sisters, so I can get home to start supper."

Judith nods, calling out a farewell to her friends and "Mister Rick", making the man grin at the careful emphasis his niece places on 'Mister' while at school versus 'Uncle' at home. She follows Lori next door to the pretty little building that serves as Homestead's daycare.

"Can I go see Tåta and Nåna when we get home?" she asks, as Lori opens the gate.

"Sure. They'll probably be happy to have you helping, with Anaya away."

Thanks to the apprenticeship system, both Anaya and Abby are both far away from Homestead. Her oldest daughter is up north, studying with Eugene and Honey at Hilltop, trying to add to their still negligible number of engineers. It wasn't a surprising choice, considering Abby's hero worship of Carl, but the selfish part of Lori wishes Carl were experienced enough to serve as his sister's mentor. King's Cross is so much closer.

"Mama!" Getting greeted by Sarah is sometimes a deafening experience, and Lori grins and lifts the four-year-old over the half-gate that keeps the little ones from reaching the front door. "What are you going to do when you get too big for me to carry?" she asks.

The little blonde's smile fades a little. "When I get big and you get little, I will carry you, Mama," she declares solemnly. It's such a mirror of Daryl in tone and mannerism that Lori struggles to hide the smile it causes.

She hugs the girl tightly and kisses her forehead. "I know you will, sweetheart. Now slide down a minute so I can go find your sister."

"She's napping," Sarah says, but slides down to the floor obediently, going to unhook her pink backpack from the row near the door.

Miranda Morales smiles from where she's rocking one of the babies. From the wispy black tufts of hair and denim overall shorts, Lori thinks it's Rick's youngest daughter. "She's been down about an hour, so she should be good if you wake her."

Lori approaches the small crib and smiles at her daughter's starfished form. Despite all the advice of making babies sleep on their backs, Talia's always hated it. From the time she could roll herself over, she's slept sprawled on her stomach. Lori rubs her hand along the eighteen-month-old's tiny back before doing a quick diaper check. It stirs the toddler to wakefulness.

As always, she looks around when seeing Lori, as if Daryl might be hiding somewhere. Their youngest child is a certifiable daddy's girl in a way none of the others are. Daryl swears it's just a stage, but Lori knows he revels in the toddler's determined affection.

"Daddy's not here yet," she says softly, rolling Talia over to change her diaper. She swears the girl rolls her eyes, but she doesn't protest at least. There was a stage three months ago where she would sob if Lori picked her up instead of Daryl.

With the toddler on her hip waving a languid hand in farewell at her teacher and the two teenage assistants, Lori leads the other girls out to the golf cart. Judith and Sarah are old enough to not really worry about trying to tumble out of the vehicle, but it never fails to amuse Lori that she drives a golf cart with a car seat rigged into the back.

They're home within minutes, Judith leading her sisters to the cabin as Lori parks the golf cart next to two others that are used by different members of the Dixon Village part of Homestead. She hooks up the charging cable so it'll be ready for tomorrow and heads inside.

Talia's happy chatter alerts her that Daryl's actually home before she is, even before she spots his boots in the tray near the door. There's very little that resembles clear English in the toddler's speech, but Daryl's nodding solemnly like he always does. He sees Lori and sets the girl on her feet, sending her to go find a particular stuffed animal that will keep her busy for at least a few minutes. The other girls are nowhere to be seen, probably sent to put away their school bags.

He greets her with a kiss, making her smile. He's younger than her by a few years, but in looks, it always seems like even more. She doesn't think he's aged much at all since the thirty-year-old she met and disliked at the Atlanta Quarry. His hair is sunbleached to a blond nearly as bright as their younger daughters', but she knows in winter it will often darken almost as dark as hers and Judith's.

"Came home and needed that tub of antiseptic cream and found something interesting tucked behind it in the bathroom cabinet," he says softly.

"Oh." She smiles, because he sounds happy, not worried, which was her initial concern.

"You're aiming for as tangled a family tree as Carol, aren't you?" he teases. "Grandma having a baby younger than her grandbaby and all."

She can't help but giggle. It's not that they weren't going to try, but getting pregnant the same month she had her IUD removed? That wasn't exactly expected. Cricket spent a good thirty minutes cautioning Lori that being past forty would make it harder to conceive. Apparently, her uterus and ovaries disagreed.

Daryl does turn a little solemn as he slides a hand against her still very flat stomach. "Maybe the last one though?"

There's the worry she expected, and she understands. Babies at her age run a higher risk of birth defects and complications to the mother. "Last one," she promises.

She already has a wealth of children she never expected she would see, before the world got turned upside down. A sixth child is definitely enough to call her family complete.

- Beth -

Beth steps out onto the back porch of her house, enjoying the cool breeze coming in off the Atlantic. It's past supper time, but the Council meeting ran longer than expected, so she availed herself of the leftovers Alex left in the fridge before coming outside. When she initially decided that traveling back and forth between Homestead and the Savannah area communities wasn't working for her as a veterinarian, she expected a little bit of fuss from Hershel or Mary at moving so far away. Instead, her father and mother-in-law both understood, and the journey either way isn't an impossible visit. She knows when she travels up to Homestead with the trade caravan on Friday, they'll both be waiting at Homestead to steal Elijah away for grandparental spoiling.

She chose Tybee as her home base over the smaller Jekyll Island, larger Turtle Pointe, or the agricultural Savannah Farm because it had more of an immigrant population from Homestead. She might not have been particularly close to Andrea, Amy, or the others, but they were familiar, and Jamie in particular might as well be family, as long as she lived as a sort of adopted Dixon herself.

Considering he delivered Elijah when he arrived three weeks early and faster than Dr. Stevens could arrive back from a planned medical visit to Jekyll Island when summoned by radio, she guesses she knows Jamie better than she ever thought she would.

"You gonna come swim?" Alex calls out. He's in the water, knee deep, making sure that Elijah stays safely close to shore. Being born near the ocean seems to have convinced their two-year-old that he's part dolphin, an idea encouraged by the fact that he's been out in the smaller sailboats regularly since birth to observe the dolphin pods that live near Tybee, along with the migratory pods that pass by each season.

"Planning on it." She sets up her beach chair and drops the bag with her own towel next to Alex's chair and bag. His prosthetic was back on the porch, because he claims he never wants to deal with sand in regards to his stump ever again. From the scattered beach toys, Elijah started out with a sand castle project before being lured into the waves. She kicks off her sandals and revels in the feel of warm sand under her bare feet,

Beth doesn't go far into the water, sitting down where it's waist deep and letting Elijah lurk her way, pretending to be either a shark or a dolphin. His hand held up as a fin could go either way. He grins and climbs into her lap for a hug instead of pretending to bite her, so today's a dolphin day.

Alex wades in to sit beside her, leaning in for a kiss that encourages Elijah to reach up and smoosh them together longer. He's a little fascinated by kisses at the moment.

"How did your checkup with Jamie go?"

"Bloodwork is all good, and he says he'll get us on Cricket's schedule for an ultrasound at Homestead on Friday. Think the kids will survive a day off school here?"

Alex laughs. "One thing that never changes even when the world does, is that small children love to be set free of the classroom to do their own thing. He agrees with Christmas as the due date?"

"Yeah, thereabouts. I know he could do the ultrasound easily, but I figure Daddy and your mama will appreciate being included. I'll confirm that she'll be there, but I doubt she'll let anything distract her from coming to Homestead with Elijah promised to be there.

"She'll be overjoyed, you know. We may need to plan for a month-long visit."

Beth knows, because Mary Murray takes being a grandmother as a calling. Officially, she calls Terminus home still, serving as their senior nurse and helping Gareth and Cynthia raise their two children. But since Elijah arrived, she's spent about a third of the year on Tybee, too. With a fully-trained physician at Terminus, they can spare their most experienced nurse as she takes her "Grandma Vacations".

"Maybe we should see if Gareth and Cynthia would let the kids come for a visit, too? They're both old enough to enjoy a month at the beach."

"Works for me, and Cynthia's getting into her busy season for crops and livestock anyway. She might appreciate a short break."

Beth makes a mental note to send a radio-email to her sister-in-law. Cynthia will keep the surprise for her, and she can send her two children along with Mary easily under the guise of visiting Elijah at Homestead.

When Elijah wiggles away to crawl through the sand and water again, Alex gets back to his feet, leaning down for a kiss. "Our little Noel, right? Works for a boy or a girl."

She just laughs. "Only if he or she arrives exactly on Christmas."

This is what contentment feels like, she thinks, as she watches her husband play in the surf with their toddler. One day, they'll probably move away from Tybee, when the population supports another community in Georgia, but for now, she's happy to be a farm girl who lives by the sea.

A/N: I did say that most of the babies with a donor/surrogate parent would be made obvious in this story. While I didn't deliberately name Cricket's donor, I'm sure the clues are pretty obvious. (*coughs* Shannon... *coughs*) Tara's clue is either really obvious or not... but her son isn't Meredith and Shannon's biological sibling. ;)

I also have to go back and correct the Tara/Cricket scene in RBM, because I blathered along with "Cricket" when Tara's POV should not use that nickname for her wife, but the more grownup Chris or occasionally the affectionate Chrissy.

I know there were a lot of guesses that Sophia or Beth might be Negan's captive, but here's your confirmation that both our blonde badasses are safely far away in Georgia. There's a subtle elimination of another popular guess as well, with something one of the children says in this chapter. ;) Being pregnant and/or family obligations will not keep our ladies from going Amazon warrior style to Virginia, however, once the alarm is raised.

Please continue to consider the PDFs subject to change... I'll be uploading a small update to add in the King's Cross characters mentioned by Sophia so there's a point of reference as to who they are.