The wood wasn't burning. Twenty minutes of poking and prodding had made it very clear that they weren't getting a fire that night. Clementine huddled on the other side of the fire pit, gripping the arms of her jacket as though it would keep her warm. Amelia tried again to stir the fire, gave up, and sighed; her breath clouded the air in front of her face. They'd skewered the only animal they'd been able to trap, and were failing to cook it in the wisps of smoke coming from the fire pit. All Amelia could say about it with certainty was that it was a mammal…of some kind. Clem had ventured a guess that it was a weasel.

The wood was soaked. It wouldn't catch fire anytime soon. This wasn't a new problem. She'd have burned one of her socks, if she hadn't used both of them to start fires earlier in the week. She ran through a mental list of other things they might be able to burn, and ended up dismissing them all. She thought about burning the fur in her hood, a glove, a part of her shirt sleeve…but when they were this far north, with winter hitting them as hard as it was, the only things more valuable than fire were the clothes on their backs. There had to be something else.

"It's okay." Clementine said, though she shivered as she spoke, making her voice shudder slightly. "I can wait."

She was always so patient. It worried Amelia sometimes. Patience had its uses. But passivity like Clementine's could easily get her killed; Amelia feared that it would one day.

She wasn't passive when she shot that stranger in the head. Saved your life.

This happened often. Somewhere along the way she'd developed a voice, a quiet part of her mind that waited for the most opportune moments to remind her of things she'd deliberately tried to forget. They were sixteen months and two hundred miles away from that night in Savannah. Far out of that nightmare and well into another. But that didn't mean she could forget, hard as she tried.

"You should be the one doing this. You need the practice." Amelia spoke to Clementine over her shoulder. She tried again to stir the dying fire. It dimmed a little more and she shook her head.

Maybe I'm the one who needs practice.

"I know." Clementine said. "I tried."

She had. They'd set up their camp before sundown to leave plenty of time to start a fire. The sun was too low to use the mirror, and they'd burned out their last battery days ago. That left Clem with a piece of flint and a rock. After an hour of failure, after night fell and the temperature dropped, Amelia stepped in and did it for her.

"Maybe Wellington isn't a good idea." Amelia muttered, wishing she'd been quieter only after she'd said it.

"I thought you said it was safe there," Clementine looked up too quickly.

Amelia didn't know it was safe there. She only knew what she'd overheard from people she didn't engage with, what she'd seen scrawled across the walls at safe houses and train stops they'd passed. Go to Wellington, they said. She'd expected that Clementine would have figured out the truth by now: that Amelia had no idea what she was doing. At least no more so than anyone else trying to survive in what was left of the world. While it had been understandable when she was eight, Clementine was getting too old to think that Amelia could divine the answers to their problems from nothing.

Amelia was afraid that if she told her that, then her sister would feel as lost and clueless as she did. Only one of them needed to feel that way. It would happen, eventually. A gradual truth that would dawn on her gently one day. Until then, Amelia had decided, she'd stick with simple truths. Things she could be sure about. And she'd never promise more than she could deliver. Not again.

"You…you lied to me about…about Mom and Dad…?"

Never again.

"No place is safe." she said. "Only safer than where we came from."

"Oh. Right." Clementine said quietly. After a moment of silence, she suggested, "Then…that means all we have to do is keep moving."

"That's true. We don't have to push north. It'll only get colder and I like our chances better in the south." They would never go back to Savannah-

-dead Mom dead Dad dead Ben dead Kenny-

or Atlanta. Any city, for that matter, was out of the question. But going back south was starting to looking like a better idea with every rain-soaked, freezing night that passed.

Clementine lowered her voice. The statement was quick and resentful; the start of an argument, should Amelia take the bait.

"I bet we could make it if we had another group."

Amelia sighed heavily and circled the fire pit, stopping to crouch on the other side. Not that poking at it from a different angle would do the fire any good. She looked up at her sister through the dwindling trail of smoke.

"You know why we can't do that, Clementine." She tried to keep the harshness out of her voice; a difficult task when they'd had this argument before. Each time it ended, Amelia had made it clear that she didn't want it to come up again. But once again, here they were.

"I know what you told me." Clementine stared at the dead weasel. The way they'd skinned it and carved out its eyes had left it looking eerily sinister. But no more so than the dead things they encountered daily.

"Then we don't need to start this again." Amelia said dismissively.

Clementine stared out into the trees, seemingly at nothing. The silence gave her a moment to gather her courage. Amelia saw a familiar look in her eyes when she spoke again.

"I think you're wrong." Clementine said. "I think we need to find people to stay with."

Amelia smiled, careful not to let her see. She was happy to see this side of Clementine again. On rare occasions her little sister stood her ground and left all passivity behind. Being reminded that Clementine wasn't afraid to stand up to her gave her hope that she wouldn't be afraid when more dangerous situations – more dangerous people – called for it.

She shook her head and explained calmly: "People are more of a risk than they're worth."

"How can you say that?"

Clementine didn't understand, and Amelia didn't know what to make of it. She didn't know whether it meant Clementine didn't remember the worst days they'd had, the ones that taught Amelia the lessons she was trying to teach her sister the easy way. Or if it meant she didn't think of them the way Amelia did. That they didn't scare her as much. Hadn't come as close to breaking her as they had Amelia.

"You never know who you can't trust, Clem. Not until it's too late." Amelia tossed a handful of brush into the fire, ignoring the prodding sense that telling her sister simple truths without explanation was about to become an old act. Clementine was outgrowing it.

"You said we needed numbers to be safe. Remember?"

She did. She remembered saying those exact words to an eight-year-old Clem, back at the motor inn in Macon and-

-"Duck's been bitten"-

-was surprised that Clem remembered them verbatim.

"That was a long time ago. I was wrong. We're safer alone than we are with other people."

"What about Chuck?" Clementine suddenly went quiet again. "And Omid?"

Amelia lacked an answer. A good one, at least. Their small camp suddenly became very quiet, and they listened to crickets chirping while they waited for the silence to blow over.

"They were exceptions. Meeting two good people doesn't mean we can trust everyone." Or anyone.

Clementine sighed. It was a familiar mannerism that usually meant she was letting the matter drop, for now.

Amelia stood by what she'd said. The risk they would take in joining a new group wasn't worth their lives. That's how it would end – with both of them dead. She didn't want to believe that there were no good people left, but she couldn't change the reality she'd become acquainted with, excessively and painfully so. It had been beaten into her in more ways than one, a lesson she'd never forget because the penalty for doing so was death. The "good people" had been killed off in one way or another, almost always because of things they weren't willing to do. She'd seen it happen, seemingly on a loop, a nightmare from which there was no waking up. It was an unending slideshow of infections, shootings, walker attacks, and more than a few things she never wanted to think about again.

-growin' up in rural Georgia, you're taught not to waste-

There was nothing to wonder about with walkers. They always went for the kill, and they always did it from the front.

Clementine spoke up again, unexpectedly: "If we had a group, you might be able to tell someone about…" She paused, clearly trying to find the right words. "…what you did in Savannah?"

Amelia only blinked. This, Clementine had never brought up. Not once in over a year, not since the first time Amelia explained it to her. She didn't know how to answer.

"What…" Amelia cleared her throat. "Why…would we do that?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "But I think someone should know, eventually. What if you're not the only one?"

Amelia had to admit that the same thought had occurred to her, many times. If an entire group of people had this in common, they might be able to change things. She'd never heard talk of a cure before. But it was a start, and better than nothing.

Amelia couldn't find much else to say. "Maybe." Her way of shooting it down without any reason to.

She looked back to Clementine and fought the anxiety that came with watching her huddle and shiver. Burning more clothes wasn't a good idea. She decided to sweep the forest again for something flammable; if she didn't find anything, she'd cut the hood off of her jacket.

"I'm going to look for something to burn. Keep the fire lit." She didn't want to put Clem under any pressure. But their options for starting another fire were exhausted. The fire they had was small and pathetic, but it was the only one they would get that night.

Clementine nodded her understanding. The worried look on her face said she was under pressure anyway.

Amelia crouched near the hollow log she and Clementine had hidden their backpacks in. She took the pistol they shared and held it out to her, gripping it by the barrel. "Don't use it unless you need to. We don't need the noise." She'd said this countless times before. At this point it was more to make herself feel better than to instruct Clementine. Leaving her alone for any amount of time was never easy for her. She'd started to feel that Clementine understood this. It was probably why she tolerated Amelia's sudden need to tell her things that were common sense to the both of them.

Clementine only nodded again, took the gun, and immediately checked that the safety was on.

Amelia pulled her yellow climbing axe from her bag and attached it to the strap on her back. Not hers, specifically. Each time she used it, she thought to herself that if she ever saw its original owner again, she'd give it back. The thought was always followed closely by a grim reminder that it would probably never happen.

"Watch the trees. Stay quiet, listen for footsteps…" Amelia walked slowly out of their clearing and toward the trees. "Call if you need me, okay?" I'll come running.

"I will." Clementine began searching her backpack, probably for her lighter.

Amelia didn't move.

Clementine saw her hesitate, and nodded reassuringly. "I'll be fine. I promise. I'll be right here when you get back."

Amelia nodded in return, feeling no less uneasy, and headed into the forest.

She used to enjoy quiet walks at night. They gave her time to think, away from all the noise that came with being around other people. But things were different now. Now it only meant that she was alone in a far deeper sense of the word. Dark forests, empty warehouses, rotting tunnels. These were the temporary homes of her and Clementine's new life. This was their life now, and it wasn't showing any signs of changing.

She wondered how Clementine felt about it. They hadn't had much time to talk about things like that lately.

That's not a good enough reason.

She knew it wasn't. It wasn't completely honest, either. There was no such thing as "not enough time." Not anymore. Amelia knew she was avoiding the conversation – and every conversation like it – for reasons other than that. Reasons that had more to do with herself.

Ask her when you get back to the camp. Whether she would actually help or make things worse remained to be seen. She worried about the emotional state of any eleven-year-old who's seen the things Clem had, and worried even more that she couldn't do anything to help her.

A branch snapped beneath a footstep that was not hers.

Shit.

She heard voices. Two…three of them. Maybe more. All male.

Shit, shit, shit.

She heard them coming from more than one direction but didn't see them until she turned around and met the gun in her face, staring directly down the black hole of a barrel about to blow a hole in her forehead.

A large man with a mop of curly brown hair held the gun to her and told her not to move. She turned around slowly to see two more emerge from the trees – a hooded black man armed with a pistol, and a lanky white man carrying a blood-stained machete on his belt.

"I told you not to move!" said the first man. "Turn around. Don't fucking test me!"

She did as she was told, and he took the climbing axe from her back, tossing it onto the ground too far away for her to reach it. Not that it would've done her any good.

"Where did you come from?" The lanky one demanded. He took the machete from his belt and Amelia knew he meant it as a threat. "Where are the people you're with?"

She didn't answer. She looked over her shoulder and slowly turned so that she didn't have her back to any of them. She took a cautious step back to gain some distance and-

"Bitch, are you fucking kidding me?" the man with the brown hair snarled. "We asked you a question!"

"I'm alone," Her eyes darted between the three of them. Only two guns. The third man didn't seem armed.

"Cut the shit." The man in the hood put his gun in her face. She stared down the barrel and, like a deer in headlights, mentally froze. Numbly, she repeated herself. "I'm alone."

They all seemed to speak over each other, escalating a vicious verbal assault that would turn physical any second now. She didn't keep track of what was coming from who. Didn't speak because she knew not one of them would listen.

"Don't fucking lie to us!"

"Who do you think you're fooling?"

"You fucking with us?"

"Where's the rest of your group?"

"Give us the truth and you won't get hurt!"

She didn't believe that for a second. She'd learned a long time ago that anyone could declare themselves capable of restraint; it was almost never true.

"Okay!" Amelia shouted to be heard over their threats. "My group has a camp-" she pointed north, toward the river and away from Clementine. "-just over there."

"How many people?"

"There are six of us."

None of them lowered their weapons or looked even remotely convinced. The man wearing the hood lowered his gun. He placed it in the holster strapped to his thigh and crossed his arms.

"Yeah? What are their names?"

"...we don't have anything worth stealing."

"Tell us. Their fucking. Names."

Amelia tried to keep an eye on the other two. The brunette man still had his gun pointed at her chest. "Kenny-"

-torn apart by walkers-

"-and his wife, Katjaa-"

–blew her own brains out-

"-and their son."

-I shot him in the head-

"And…and my friends, Doug-"

-eaten alive in a drugstore-

"And Carley."

"She couldn't be trusted. I was trying to protect all of us."

The three men exchanged skeptical looks, and it dawned on Amelia that they wouldn't believe the truth if she gave it to them. They didn't want the truth. They wanted to hurt someone and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Bullshit." said the man with the machete. "This is fucking bullshit." His friends clearly agreed. "You expect us to believe-"

A rock the size of a baseball made a beeline through the air, hitting him square in the eye. He screamed, recoiled, and doubled over before Amelia realized where it had come from.

No.

"Amelia! Run!" Clementine shouted from a distance.

No! The one thing Amelia had needed was for her to stay out of this.

The lanky man recovered from the blow to the face, holding his bleeding eye socket and cursing through his teeth. "Hey!" Machete in hand, he took off after Clementine, who had disappeared into the forest.

"No!" Amelia tried to follow him until the hooded man threw out an arm and clotheslined her to the ground. Her back hit the forest floor and the impact knocked the air from her lungs. He hooked a thick bicep around her neck and pulled her to her feet in a headlock.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" the man with the brown hair angrily came toward her, trying to grab her legs while she kicked desperately at nothing. Amelia gripped the forearm beneath her chin and tilted her head up, trying to find breathing room where there was none.

No no no no no no not Clementine…

She had to catch up to them. She had to get to him before he got to her. She would kill him, she would kill him with her hands and teeth if she had to...

Oh, God, what is he going to do to her?

She started to feel lightheaded; the man was choking her out, and wasn't about to ease up. Her stomach turned when it occurred to her that if they wanted her dead, they'd have shot her. They wanted her unconscious. That, or they wanted to kill her with bare hands instead of the guns they had easily within reach. Both were sickening.

The man in front of her got a firm hold on her left leg and trapped it under his arm. He bent to catch the other one and Amelia landed a clean, forceful kick to his face. A sharp crack resounded through the forest and he stumbled back, holding his broken nose and howling.

"You little bitch!" he snarled at her through the blood gushing over his mouth and lunged for her. He reached high, so she swung her leg low, into his gut. He doubled over and Amelia put all of her lower body strength into kicking off of the ground and into the air, hoping to throw the man behind her off balance. He bent backwards slightly but didn't fall to the ground like she'd hoped; the difference in height and body weight was too much. Bright spots lit up her vision, throbbing in time to her pulse pounding away inside her head.

She tried again, gasping for air and throwing all of her weight into his upper body. The man only took a few steps back to regain his balance, then tightened his grip on her neck. The pressure was becoming unbearable; her heart was beating mercilessly in her head and she was convinced with each new pulse that this would be the one to crack her skull from the inside.

"Come here!" the other man growled, grabbing her legs and lifting her off the ground. "God damn it, stop fighting!"

Out of leverage and out of air, Amelia felt the familiar choke that came from holding back tears.

He's going to kill my little sister and I don't know what to do…

And in that moment she thought back, and she remembered, and she understood. A sudden clarity, a saving grace from a God she'd stopped believing in. There was no time to kick herself for taking this long to get it.

She reached down for the man's thigh, grabbing uncoordinated, messy handfuls of denim, of leather, of nothing and more nothing until she found his holster. She closed her hand around the grip and before she knew it the familiar weight of a loaded gun in her hands had her feeling vengeful, unforgiving, fucking mean. Immediately she was reeling, riding a high-pitched head rush, all anger and no control, all violence and no remorse. She pointed it in the face of the man who had her legs-

-die-

-and fired once. The first of many, should she get the chance.

His eyes widened and he spit out the words "Oh shit-" He moved just enough to take the bullet in his shoulder. He screamed and collapsed, and as he did she put another round in his leg, not for him or for even for Clementine, but for her.

Amelia turned the gun down and fired again, into the hooded man's kneecap, and through all the chaos in her head and in her heart, one thought came through with perfect clarity-

I hope I fucking blew it off.

Then she was falling, falling and landing hard on her shoulder. Air rushed into her chest and she gasped, coughing and inhaling in ragged, desperate breaths. Her vision was suddenly filled with swimming colors and she couldn't see past them. She pushed herself up and turned to face the two wounded men, about to fire a blind shot and hope she killed someone. The man she'd shot in the knee swung a rock into her head before she had a chance to lift the gun, sending her back down into the mud.

She tried to crawl but he was on her before she knew what was happening. Hands closed around her throat, warm blood seeped from her forehead, into her eye, down her cheek, cursing and anger and I'll fucking kill you and she'd lost the gun and could only feel empty grass in her outstretched hand, where is it where is it-

She looked up into his face, ugly and twisted in animalistic rage, and spit a mouthful of blood and saliva into his eye, hard.

"Fuck!" He flinched, releasing her neck with one hand to wipe his face. Amelia rolled underneath him. She didn't get far, but she got far enough. She found the handle of her climbing axe, picking up a handful of grass and mud with it. She screamed in rage, desperation, and exertion as she swung the sharper of the two ends into his temple. His arms fell, his face went blank, his eyes hollow. He fell and Amelia got to her knees, pulling the blade from his head with a gut-wrenching suction sound she'd hoped never to hear again.

She stood up on buckling legs and found the gun, a few feet away from where she'd been pinned. She picked it up and turned her attention to the brown-haired man, who hadn't gotten far. He writhed on the ground, pressing a hand to the gushing wound his shoulder, and looked up at her with hatred in his eyes.

His voice trembled as he spat, "Fuck…y-..."

Amelia put the gun on his head and pulled the trigger. Clean shot, messy aftermath. The force knocked him flat onto his back; skull and grey matter painted the ground behind him.

She strapped her axe to her back, checked the magazine, and ran in the direction the last man had chased her sister.

She had one bullet left, and it was for him.

Her head pounded with every step she took until the pain forced her to slow to a stop. She ran a hand over her forehead – it came away red and slick, blood dripping down her forearm and disappearing inside her jacket sleeve.

Her thoughts were slow. Her own inner voice was sedated and faint. Quiet, for once.

…that's…a lot of blood…that's…that's too much blood…

She already regretted trying to run without giving herself a few minutes to recover, but she didn't have time. Clementine was somewhere in this direction, Clementine needed her. She had to…catch up…

The Earth turned itself on its side, shifting beneath her feet until she was on the ground. She tried to sit up but was too disoriented to keep her balance; she fell again, falling flat on her back and staring up at the night sky. Stars blurred in and out of focus, and the ground seemed to undulate slowly beneath her, rocking her to sleep in a fading world that was suddenly soft, dreamy, and gentle.