Clementine was seated in a barstool at the kitchen counter, while the group's doctor – who'd introduced himself as Carlos – examined her arm.

At Pete's insistence, Amelia had left her axe at the front door. He'd held out a hand, wordlessly asking her to hand over her gun. She complied. He went to unload it, found that it only held a single bullet, and gave her a disapproving look. She answered with a shrug.

Once she'd been disarmed, she heard the story, beginning to end, from Luke. He and Pete had found Clementine in the woods. She'd been bitten by something, and she swore to them that it was a dog. The group couldn't agree on how to handle it. Carlos made the decision to keep her in the shed, to wait it out and give her a chance without endangering his people. Luke had stopped occasionally, leaving room for questions, or reactions, but Amelia didn't have any. She'd only nodded and gestured for him to go on, watching Clementine and Carlos.

She'd been holding onto her building outrage; there would be a time and a place to release it, and now was not it. Not when these people were still armed and paranoid. Not when she still needed their help.

Now, Amelia leaned up against the kitchen wall. Luke had finished his explanation and paced the kitchen, while Nick stood in the doorway, staring into space and biting his thumbnail. All three quietly awaited a verdict from Carlos, though a silent nod from Clementine had told Amelia what she'd needed to know. All they needed now was proof, a decision from someone the people in this house would trust.

Amelia noticed Clementine eyeing the rifle Nick had laid across the kitchen table, and sent her a look, one that said no one here would use it on her if she had anything to do with it.

Luke stopped pacing. "How's she look?"

"Her suturing skills need some work. But otherwise, I'd say she should be fine." Carlos answered. Amelia thought she saw a relieved smile cross his face. If she did, it was brief and almost imperceptible. She could've been wrong. Carlos didn't strike her as a man who smiled often.

"So, it wasn't a lurker bite?" Luke asked carefully.

"If it was, the fever would've already set in and her temperature would be through the roof."

Nick wordlessly left the room. He threw the door open hard enough to hit the wall in the hallway outside. It probably left a dent in the drywall.

Luke threw an irritated look in his direction and quickly followed him out. Now it was Nick's turn to receive a lecture, and Amelia was glad not to be a part of it. She could've cared less about the way either of them felt.

Carlos spoke suddenly, getting her attention in the now silent room. "I wish you wouldn't have done what you did." He'd crossed to the kitchen sink and begun washing his hands. But even turned away from them, his voice was low and grave, and his intent was clear. Amelia got the sense that this man was not to be trifled with.

"What do you mean?" Clementine asked.

Carlos' answer was quick. "You manipulated my daughter."

He had a daughter? Amelia had seen that this group was about to have a child to care for, but she didn't know of any children who were already in the picture. She asked herself if this changed how she felt about them, and came up without an answer.

She didn't know what Carlos meant by "manipulated." She gave her sister a nod to remind her that she wasn't to blame for anything that had happened that night. Clem acknowledged it, and turned back to Carlos.

"I asked for her help." Clem answered, genuinely confused, and like always, trying to end the conflict before it started.

"She's not someone you can just ask for help." Carlos stood upright, flinging the excess water from his hands into the sink. He paused, seeming to calm himself down. "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but there are a few things you need to know about my daughter. Both of you."

"Okay…" Clementine said.

Carlos looked from her to Amelia, who was still leaning against the kitchen wall, arms crossed and waiting. She stared back until she realized he was waiting for an answer from her, and for the lack of anything better to say, repeated her sister.

"Okay."

"She isn't like you." Carlos said. "You may not get that initially, but once you're around her for a while, you'll understand. If she knew how bad the world is…what it's really like out there…she would…cease to function."

Carlos turned toward the window, and Amelia saw something familiar in his face. "She's my little girl. She's all I have left and I would ask that you stay away from her."

Amelia knew this feeling. She knew what it was like to be solely responsible for the only loved one she had left. She knew how terrifying it was trying to protect her from a world that was making every attempt to kill her, how paranoid it could make someone whose worst fear is days, minutes, seconds away from happening at all times.

She wouldn't have wished it on anyone. No parent should have to live each day afraid of losing their child. But that was the world now. It was the world that woman and her baby were headed for.

Before Amelia could signal Clementine to agree to what he'd asked, she said,

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"We won't speak to her." Amelia wasn't about to argue. He wasn't asking much.

"It's okay." Carlos said, giving away nothing as to what he felt. He told Clementine, "You're forgiven." He addressed the both of them with a warning devoid of threat. "Just don't make any more mistakes."

The room was silent again. Carlos approached the surgical tools he'd laid out on the counter and picked up a small roll of suturing thread. He gestured to Amelia without looking. "Now you."

Clementine jumped down from the barstool and looked at Amelia expectantly, stepping aside so she could take her place. Amelia cautiously obliged while Carlos pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened a half-empty bottle of antiseptic.

"Let me see."

Once in the chair, she pushed her hair away from her face, giving Carlos a clear look at her forehead.

He didn't need to look at it long. "You'll need stitches. Though I'm sure you knew that." Amelia watched him select a long, hook-shaped needle from the layout of tools. The pit of her stomach suddenly felt cold, and she found herself fidgeting in the seat.

"How many?"

Carlos briefly glanced back up at her face, then returned to his work. "Five." He opened a sealed packet of alcohol wipes and used one to sanitize the needle. "I might be able to do it in four. We'll see when it's clean." He looked again. His thick eyebrows furrowed and he looked at her head as if something was out of place. "What did this?"

People...? She realized she misunderstood the question. "A rock."

Carlos shook his head and muttered something in Spanish. Despite two semesters of it in college, Amelia didn't understand him.

"It won't be that bad, Amelia," Clementine said, without any trace of certainty. This, coming from someone who'd just given herself stitches. Amelia saw right through her. The grimace on her face when she looked at Amelia's head wound gave it away. Clem's own surgery must have been excruciating, and she obviously knew that Amelia's would be no easier.

Luke backed into the room, pushing the door open with his shoulder and holding a bowl of something that was giving off steam.

"Hey, uh…" He looked at Clementine and seemed unsure of how to address her. "Brought you some food, if you're hungry." He looked at Amelia and his expression changed when he saw Carlos threading the hooked needle. "There's uh…some for you, when you… finish up in here. It's in the dining room."

Clementine took a seat at the kitchen table, facing Amelia. "Thanks, but I'll stay in here for now."

Amelia shook her head. "Go. You haven't eaten for a day."

Clementine looked at the bowl Luke was holding, and consciously or not, put a hand to her stomach. Still, she seemed unsure. "I think I should wait."

"But they're offering help and we should take it," Amelia couldn't keep the smirk off of her face. Clem dropped her eyelids in a way that said she was not amused. Amelia almost brought herself to laugh. Almost. "It's okay. Go."

Clementine looked one more time between Luke and Amelia, before getting up and heading toward the door. "I'll be right outside…" she said. Luke handed her the bowl and opened the door to the dining room for her. Amelia expected him to follow her out, but he let the door close behind her and came into the kitchen to join Carlos.

"How's uh…how's she look?"

"Not good. But it's fixable." Carlos answered. He soaked a clean gauze pad in antiseptic and pressed it to her forehead.

Amelia flinched at the sudden sting and fought the urge to swat his hand away. She quietly seethed while Carlos wiped away the dirt and blood, dabbing the disinfectant over torn, broken flesh. Luke crossed his arms, visibly uncomfortable; this was hard for him to watch, and it showed on his face.

When he finally finished, Amelia cursed under her breath. "Shit."

"That was the easy part." Carlos set the disinfectant aside. He regarded her with a stoic professionalism he must have developed while working in a hospital, treating horrifying injuries and giving devastating news to his patients. He was direct, but not apathetic. "You're an adult. I don't need to lie to you. This will be very painful. For a cut this deep, I would normally administer an anesthetic. But you'll just have to endure it until it's finished."

Amelia started to feel claustrophobic, between the chair and the two men in front of her. She was afraid of pain. She always had been. She felt trapped. A needle piercing the split skin of her head was going to be intimately painful, and it had to be done. There were no other options.

She nodded.

"Alright." Carlos picked up the needle, taking her nod as confirmation that she was ready. She wasn't, but there was no time to wait until she was. "I'll try to make it as quick as possible, but it's very important that you hold still." Carlos tilted her head up by the chin and turned it to her left, in Luke's direction. They made eye contact for a charged second, until Amelia broke it by moving her gaze to the floor. "Luke, you can go. You're not needed here."

Luke hesitated and Carlos ignored him, holding Amelia's head steady with one hand and pushing the needle into her skin with the other, showing no sign of hesitation or indecision.

She responded with a quick intake of breath, shocked at how invasive and sharp the pain actually was. She slammed a hand down onto the counter and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for it to pass, but it only seemed to get worse with time. The pain started on the surface and felt like it was drilling deeper, coming closer and closer to her skull.

It was horrible.

Carlos pulled the needle through the other side of the gash, and she winced at the feeling of the suturing thread tightening and pulling the wound shut.

That was one stitch out of five.

"Wait," Amelia held up a hand, stopping Carlos before he went in for the second.

"Prolonging this will only make it worse."

She knew that. Still, she wanted a few seconds to breathe and steel herself for the next one.

Luke stepped closer, and it took Amelia a moment to realize he was offering her a hand. She stared at him, her face asking the obvious question.

"I read that…holding someone's hand makes these things easier." Amelia didn't have the energy to respond with an eye roll. She settled for the expression that took the least amount of effort: a glare. Was this a joke? Did he find this funny? "Really. It calms you down, even if it's a total stranger. I guess it helps, not feeling…you know, like you're doing this alone, or…I don't know."

Amelia stared at the outstretched hand as if he'd slapped her. She looked three times between his hand and his face before squaring her shoulders to face Carlos.

"Do it." She pushed her hair from her face and reminded herself to add, "Please." Politeness, in this world, was useless under most circumstances; this was an exception.

Carlos used one hand to steady her head and the other to go in for the next stitch. She closed her eyes the moment it pierced her skin and felt a thin line of blood run down her forehead and into her eyelashes. She gripped the edge of the counter, feeling Carlos mercilessly tear away damaged skin while her wound screamed.

He finished the stitch. She had time to open her eyes and see that Luke had left the room before Carlos began the third without warning. It didn't get easier with time. Time moved excruciatingly slowly. She asked herself repeatedly if he was near finished; every time she knew the answer was no. Knowing that he was fixing, not hurting, didn't help much.

Screaming and cursing through gritted teeth, however, did.

By the time it was over, the cursing had turned to sobbing. She wiped the tears from her face – taking a smear of dirt and blood with it – and immediately tried to forget it happened. Much like everything she tried to forget, she knew she would remember it well.

Without a word, Carlos removed his gloves, dropped them into the kitchen trash, and washed his hands again. He took a clean white rag from the counter, soaked it in water from the tap, and wrung it out over the sink.

He handed it to her, and Amelia recognized the familiar silence that hangs in the air when someone has something to say. She waited, wiping the rag over her face and coloring it with streaks of black, red, and brown. She noted that, as long as she felt it had taken, he'd finished pretty quickly - or at least that he could've taken longer. She tried to look past the throbbing in her head and remember that, in his cold persistence and lack of hesitation, he'd done her a favor.

Carlos regarded her with the stoic severity she'd come to expect from him.

"I don't know if you and the girl can be trusted. And so I don't know how long you'll be staying. But you would do well to remember that I will not tolerate any threats to my family in this house."

Amelia nodded, trying to ignore that it made the pounding in her head worse. "I understand. Honestly, I thought the same thing of you. Clementine and I aren't here to hurt anyone."

Carlos remained unconvinced. If anything, his frown deepened. "I will ask you this only once: Is there anything about you or the girl that I should know?"

She didn't know how to answer that. If he wanted to know every horrible thing she'd ever done, they'd have been there all night. Did he want to know how many people she'd killed? Or how many deaths she could've prevented, and didn't? She remembered them all. She couldn't forget.

Did he want to know about the time she was bitten and didn't turn?

She suddenly felt scrutinized and guilty, like he already knew. He knew what she was thinking and was giving her a chance to come clean; a chance that he'd make her regret passing up.

"Why do you hesitate?"

"We've all done something. All of us."

"I'm aware of that." He looked away – shame briefly flashed across his face and Amelia recognized it as something she herself did often – and quickly returned his attention to her. "I do not give second chances, Amelia. If you have something to tell me, you do it now."

Nothing good would come of them knowing what happened. They wouldn't have believed her – which would have been the best way for things to turn out. The worst involved her being locked in the shed. Maybe they'd kick her out, and leave her and Clem without shelter for the night. Maybe they'd shoot her on the spot, put her down because countless people had been bitten and turned and not a single one had ever survived. She should have been one of them.

They wouldn't understand, and people – including her, especially her – feared what they didn't understand. So Amelia looked him in the eyes and answered honestly.

"We're not dangerous people."

"You are very dangerous. Whether you are dangerous to us has yet to be seen." Carlos crossed the room, apparently on his way out. "You may use the shower upstairs. Five minutes, no more. Have Luke show you where it is."

Amelia's reply made him pause with one hand on the door to the dining room.

"Thank you for the stitches."

He didn't answer, and left the room. She may have seen him nod, but she couldn't have been sure.

"So…what happened to your parents?"

Amelia stopped when she heard Luke's voice on the other side of the door. For a second, she considered going in anyway. But she knew from the moment he asked the question that she wouldn't.

She and Clementine had never talked about their parents. Not ever. Amelia had no idea how to talk to a girl who'd seen her parents dead at nine years old. She didn't know how much Clementine remembered, let alone how she felt. Amelia had never gotten her to talk about it, and it wasn't for lack of trying. When it came to avoiding painful subjects, Clem was almost as adept as her sister. Amelia had allowed this, telling herself she couldn't make Clementine talk about their parents. But she knew she'd let it go because she didn't want to talk about them either.

Luke continued, his voice gentle and hesitant, trying not to overstep any boundaries. "If you don't mind me asking. I mean, I assume what happened to them is what happened to just about everyone's parents. You're just so young…and your sister, she's… too young to be doing all this. Making it, with the way things are, and taking care of you…"

There was a short pause.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by that." Luke amended. "I just didn't think you two could've made it on your own for so long, but maybe you did."

Another pause.

"Does it matter?"

Clementine responded in a tone Amelia had heard before. It was a subtle warning. As close to a threat as Clementine ever got.

"I was just curious on how you made it this far." Luke explained, sounding prepared to let the matter drop.

There was a long silence, and Amelia was about to go in and join them.

Then, so quietly that she nearly missed it: "They died."

Amelia stared at the floor, suddenly feeling something weigh heavily on her shoulders. She'd thought about it repeatedly, in the first few months after it had happened. But she'd never put it into words.

Then the room was quiet again, and Amelia was afraid that Clem didn't have any more to say.

"Hey, I'm sorry, I…I shouldn't have asked."

But Clementine answered. She took a deep breath, and started slowly, sounding like she was telling Luke what she knew as she thought back and remembered it. "My parents left me with a babysitter, and never came back…then Amelia came and found me…we went to Savannah to find them. But they were already dead."

Luke answered quietly. Like Amelia, he seemed to be at a loss for words. "Wow… I'm sorry to hear that."

"We met up with other survivors and we all tried to make it. But…it didn't work."

Amelia had tried to get her sister to talk to her. About their parents, about Macon, about the people they'd met, about anything. Those conversations ended soon after they started. And here she was, telling Luke more about their past than Amelia had ever heard her say. Hearing it was strange, and she wondered what about him was so trustworthy, what about him made Clem open up to him when she'd never done the same for her…but more than anything, she was glad to hear her finally talking. If she felt any kind of jealousy toward him, it was beside the point. It wasn't important.

"Yeah…" Luke sounded as disappointed as she did. "I hear a lot of stories like that. And ever since then, it's been just you two?"

Clem answered faster this time. Her voice had been barely above a whisper when she started. Now she spoke up.

"Amelia taught me how to stay safe. She taught me how to shoot a gun. We met a lot of people on the way to Savannah. Most of them tried to hurt us."

Luke didn't say anything. Maybe he didn't know what to say to that. The ugly truth of the world was something children as young as Clementine shouldn't have had to be acquainted with.

Clementine went on. "They would've hurt me, but Amelia never let them. I made it this far because she saved me, lots of times."

"Well," Luke said softly. "It sounds like you're lucky to have her."

"I am."

There was another silence. When Clementine spoke again, Amelia heard something different in her voice. It was subtle, but clear enough – at least to her. She suddenly sounded cautious, like she was testing the waters by carefully moving to a new subject. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully.

"Sometimes…she'd save me by making sure people hurt her instead. We always got out…but she always made sure that if one of us wasn't going to make it, it was going to be her."

Amelia didn't like hearing this. She'd underestimated how much Clementine really understood about what she'd been through years ago. Amelia didn't want Clementine to understand, so she told herself that she didn't. But she knew how smart her sister was. Amelia should have expected that she knew and remembered more than she told.

Luke didn't answer right away.

"Then she must really love you. Like I said, you're lucky to have someone like that."

"She does. It's scary to think about sometimes."

"What, uh…" Luke hesitated. "What do you mean?"

"It scares me because I think, if she had to, she would die to protect me."

Amelia became worried, finally understanding where Clem was going with this. She should have seen it from the moment she took the conversation in this direction. Clementine couldn't be doing what Amelia thought she was doing. She wouldn't share with Luke what Amelia thought she was about to, no matter how much she liked him.

Still, she put a hand on the door, ready to push it open the second Clementine started to say too much.

Luke said, gently, "It's normal to feel that way about people you love. There's nothing wrong with being afraid of losing people."

"But…there were…a lot of times when she came close…"

"Are you...trying to tell me something, Clementine?"

Don't do it. Don't do it.

"There was this one time…when I really, really thought she-"

Amelia was a little too rough in pushing the door open. She interrupted the quiet, careful mood of their conversation with the abrasive slam of her hand on wood.

Realizing this only after she did it, Amelia looked between their surprised faces and said struggled to find words.

"Um…I…"

Another door opened on the other side of the room. Pete came in, disregarding his own intrusion on a talk Amelia had already disrupted.

"I hate to interrupt, but I'm out there standing watch and I can't help but notice this place is lit up like a goddamn beacon in the middle of the woods."

Luke nodded his understanding to Pete, then looked back at Clementine with a kind and genuine smile – one she returned.

"Yeah. It's time to turn in anyway."

"Get your winks while you can, 'cause we're going fishing at first light. Couple of fresh brookies for dinner? Wouldn't that be nice?" Pete turned his attention to Amelia, who still stood with her back against the kitchen door. He gestured to his own forehead, asking, "How's the head?"

She nodded, but couldn't bring herself to return his smile. "It's, uh, better."

"Good to hear." Pete waved a hand for Luke to follow him, then left the room.

Luke stood up to follow him out, stopping to look cautiously at Amelia.

"Did you, uh…need something?"

"Carlos said you could tell me where the shower is?"

Luke smiled again, suddenly more approachable than she'd been expecting. Under better circumstances she would have admitted that he had a very nice smile.

"Yeah, of course. It's right upstairs – I'll show you."

Amelia followed him out of the room. She tried to shoot Clementine a look on her way to the door, which Clem avoided by staring into her food.