Life was almost normal.

Min woke up the morning afterwards with a cramp in her stomach. She groaned, knowing what this meant. She shuffled her way into the bathroom, opening under the sink and finding the box of pads. She felt stupid for not packing sanitary items before, and made sure to stuff both pads and tampons into her bag.

Her periods in this life were irregular. That would have warranted a trip to the gynecologist, but she never got around to it, and now there was no gynecologist to go to. She just hoped it was like hormones or something, and not anything too bad.

The water cut off four days later. Min was thankful she made sure that her and Chen showered daily, and Lily encouraged Connor to do the same. Now they had to rely on cleansing wipes when they got noticeably dirty, and adjust to always smelling bad.

It had been a little over a full week since everyone in the neighborhood left, leaving their houses abandoned. The Zhang's had a fenced in yard. It was small, only big enough for a small playhouse and not much more. No one left the house but to go into the backyard, where the boys played, though Min always made sure she was out there with them.

She didn't trust Lily to keep them safe.

Said woman wasn't coping well, if at all. Lily didn't talk, flinching at any sudden movement, and seemingly pulling back on herself. At night, Lily slept in Mr. and Mrs. Zhang's bedroom, and Min could hear her crying at night.

She understood. The word just had a sudden shift, her husband died, and the luxuries everyone had grown used to were near nonexistent. She had the right to be miserable, hell, Min was miserable. But still, she couldn't help but feel annoyed at her. There was only four of them, two too young to do anything, and the eldest of them all was lost in her own mind.

Min started to feel stir crazy after a week cooped up in the house. Lily had started to come back to herself, making light conversation with them and telling Connor off when he broke a bowl trying to eat cold spaghetti o'. She then heated them up for him, using the gas stove, which lit with a match now that the electricity was on. They would need one of those camping stove things for when they eventually left.

Though, she seemed to be the only one who realized that eventually, they would have to leave.

"I'm going to check some houses," Min decided, when the calendar (which Lily had been dutiful in keeping track of) said it was September twelfth. Rick would wake up sometime at the end of this month or early October, not that it mattered. Min would avoid him like the plague.

Lily paused. She was eating fruit loops without milk from a bowl. "Why?"

"We're going to need as much supplies as we can. Some of the houses will still have things in them, if not all."

Lily pressed her lips together. That was her go to thing if she was confused, conflicted, upset… generally any bad emotion. She looked Min over, who was dressed in a dark shirt, with a jean jacket and dark jeans. Practically the same thing she wore on her outing to get Lily and Connor.

"Well…" She trailed off, still unsure. "How far will you go?"

"Just this neighborhood."

Lily hesitated, then sighed, "Fine, but stay in sight."

Min agreed eagerly, then grabbed another kitchen knife and a granola bar, and was out the door. She wasn't going to stay in sight, mainly because she would be going into houses, but also she wanted to enjoy her limited time outdoors as much as possible.

So, she walked. She kept a lookout, for any undead beings, but left the row of houses that made up her neighborhood and made way into another one. Neighborhoods in Kings County weren't that big, more a few rows of houses, and then into another one.

Min wasn't stupid, though. She kept close to home, making sure that in an emergency, she could sprint there and get there in time to escape whatever she was running from.

The first house she entered had little to offer, and judging by the fact that photos were taken off the walls and the empty bag of dog food, this family had left for Atlanta or Fort Benning or wherever else, and took the dog with them. There was a pack of trail mix, which Min left, since she didn't want to risk Connor getting into the peanuts.

The next house was locked. Min could not pick locks or kick down the door, so she moved on. The third house's door was already open. She paused, staring at it with furrowed brows. Most people didn't leave their front door open when rushing out, either out of routine or in the naive hope they'd be home soon. Maybe they just happened to?

So, she stepped inside. She waited to hear groans of walkers or even their uneven steps, and heard nothing. So she continued.

The kitchen was bare, even the knives were gone. She shut the kitchen draw she was ruffling through with slowly pooling dread. Something was wrong.

"Who the hell are you?" A voice called, and Min tensed on reflection. She turned her head, looking over her shoulder, and saw a dark skinned man standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He was holding a small pistol. She turned, fully, slowly lifting her hands. The guy frowned , taking in her young appearance, and dropped the weapon. "You're a kid."

"Min." She responded, introducing herself. "I didn't realize anyone was in here,"

The guy nodded, making his way towards her. "Morgan."

Oh. Min relaxed, nodding at him. Morgan and Duane, the first people Rick meets when he wakes up from his coma. "I have a few people I'm staying with, a few houses down." Min wasn't stupid. It wasn't safe to say this to strangers, but Morgan wasn't a stranger, not really

Well. Yes, yes he was. He could be nothing like the TV show, or he could have done terrible things before he met Rick.

"It's just me and my son," Morgan said, a hint of sadness laced within. His wife must have died recently, and now he and Duane were taking up residence in the Grimes' neighbor's house.

Min ended up following Morgan out of the house, and several houses down the street to where a boy was peering at them from the window. They hadn't covered them up with sheets yet, like when Rick met them, and Min faintly wondered what would make them decide to.

Morgan motioned for his son to leave the house, and he did. "Who's this, daddy?" He asked, walking down the sidewalk to stand beside her and his father.

"Her name's Min," she offered Duane a smile, he smiled back, "her and a few others are staying in a house nearby. Now, I figured it'd be safer all together."

"It's me, my little brother, his friend, and his friend's mother."

Morgan side-glanced at her. She started leading the way towards the house, glancing around to make sure no walkers came stumbling over. "And she let a little girl go out on her own?"

Min pressed her lips together, not wanting to answer, but did anyway. "She's not… doing so well. Her husband just died and she isn't coping."

She didn't look behind her to see the two's reaction to this, and neither spoke, so she assumed it was okay to carry on. They didn't talk for the rest of the trip to the house, and when they made it to the front door, which had been left pushed open, Min felt her heart drop to her stomach.

"Chen?!" She called, panicked, ignoring Morgan's confused exclamation behind her. "Chen! Connor!"

No one answered her. Min ran up the steps, further pushing the door out of her way, and rushed into the the house. There was no automatic signs of blood, or gore, or anythign else that would lead to her to assuming that everyone else was dead. Still, her heat pounded loudly in her chest.

"Chen!"

"What're you yelling for?" Lily appeared in the doorway of the livingroom, hair messy and rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Who are they?"

Min blinked, shocked to see her okay, and looked behind her. Lily was referring to a confused Morgan and Duane, who had followed her into the house. She didn't answer her, instead asking, "Where are the boys?"

"They were upstairs in Chen's room… why?"

Min didn't answer her again, rushing up the stairs two steps at a time. Chen's bedroom door was also left opened, but she checked to make sure. They weren't there. "Chen? Connor?" Still, she got no answer, but made sure to check every other bedroom.

They weren't in the house.

Min ran into Morgan on the porch trying to run out of the house to find them. Lily had taken Duane to the kitchen, and given him a bowl of stale Cheerios. "Hold on, hold on," he put a hand out to still her. She made another attempt to pass him, he grabbed ahold of her arm. "Min -"

"No!" She snapped, "I have to find them."

"I get that, I do, but you can't go out there runnin' up and down the streets searching."

Min glared at him. She'd just met the man not even ten minutes ago, and now he was trying to tell her what to do. He didn't understand, he couldn't understand. To him, all he saw was a thirteen-year-old girl, but she wasn't.

She opened her mouth to respond, to yell at him, chew him another one, but a voice cut her off. "Yue! Look what we found!"

It was Chen. Relief flooded her with such intensity she felt almost sick. She turned on her heel, seeing Chen and Connor running up the street and towards the house. In Connor's arms was what must have been a dog, but its fur was so dirt coated and matted it was hard to really tell.

"It's a dog!" Both boys were grinning, and Chen's voice was so loud she was certain anyone (or anything) within the block could hear him. "Look, it's got tags! Her name's Penny."

"Are you fucking insane?"

Both boys faltered, shocked by her response. Min was pissed. "You know not to leave the house! Do you not understand how dangerous it is out there! You could have been killed, or hurt, or worse. And I came home to find the front door opened and you two gone and what was I supposed to think?"

Chen lowered his head, Connor sat the dog down. She expected it to run away, but instead it lowered itself to the ground and seemed to take a nap. They were at the base of the steps now, not yet start walking up.

Morgan had gone inside, probably because he didn't know the kids enough to be included in this conversation, which was good, since she was embarrassed at how easily she crumbled at Chen's sorrowed face.

"Where'd you get the dog?" She tried her best to not come across as angry, and it must have worked, because Chen lifted his head up the smallest bit and answered, "Connor saw him through the window goin' through a yard and we thought we should bring him here."

"Her name is Penny." Connor repeated Chen from earlier, as if to remind her. Penny lifted her head slightly at the sound of her name, and then laid her head back down.

Penny was added to the family. Morgan found a bag of dog food in one of the houses, probably the one Penny came from, and Min helped him carry it across the street to feed her with. The boys (now including Duane) tried brushing out her matted fur to make her more pretty, but all it did was hurt her, so Lily told them to stop.

Morgan and Duane stayed in the house they were originally, mainly at Min's insistence. Rick Grimes needed to meet them, for everything to happen, and Min wasn't sure if she could live with herself if she took that away from him.

That got her thinking. Chen was sleeping in her bed, he had a nightmare, and Penny was snorting quietley above the covers. Min knew that Sophia was going to get lost, get bit, and then die in the woods. Alone, scared. She would leave Carol heartbroken, convince her that in this world, weak children die. Was she wrong? Maybe not.

But she knew Sophia would die. And she could save her.

But she had Chen to think of, Connor and Lily too. Could she drag all of them to the death zone that was Atlanta? Would they even make it?

And what about Duane? She knew he'd die soon, too. She could save him, too, or at least warn Morgan…

Min groaned. Penny lifted her head, sniffing at her, and then laid back down. Min closed her eyes, focusing on Chen's steady breathing and Penny's returning snoring, and managed to get to sleep.

author's note

1.) there is going to be major changes to canon in this, so if you're a stickler to nothing changing, this story isn't for you.

2.) our first canon characters! i'm excited for you guys to see how she deals with duane's impending death

3.) somebody else will be making an appearance in the next chapter, and i'm sure you can guess who. he's going to be a huge part of this story, so i'm very excited!

reviews

Reader 2: there is a reason i use both the names min/yue for her and it will be addressed w the story itself, just be patient! though, for now: the story is from min's perspective (even though it's third person), and she doesn't think of herself as yue. you can see this too, where she intoduced herself to morgan as 'min', and never relaized.

the reason she's going for the TWD group is because first of all, i had one very specific scene in mind when i first started this fic including rick grimes, and second of all, they start out in california and min is currently in georgia. i also know way more about twd as a whole, and have only watched two seasons of ftwd.

body snatching instead of reincarnation is a simple answer. if she went 13 years without watching the walking dead, she'd forget the plotline. the whole point of this story is that min changes things, so.. that'd go against the point.

OldLonBird: Only time will tell! But you're right about the non-perishable foods.