A/N: I'm leaving a quick message here, because I've been away from the site for personal reasons. I know it's been a while, so I wanted to drop a thank-you to everyone who has left me reviews and otherwise supported my story so far.
So, thank you very, very much to users Hongo En, ArtemisRenee, and G0nna6oF4rK1D for leaving me your thoughts, as well as everyone else on my favorite/follow lists.
Another thank you to user TheDomdotCom for his continued support, kind messages, and detailed reviews.
And one more for my friend BHBrowne, for his wonderful reviews and for beta reading scenes from all three of the following chapters.
Hearing what you think and communicating with you on the subject of writing means a lot to me. I have serious emotional stake in this story and it makes me infinitely happy that people are enjoying reading it.
If you're still here after my three-month absence, thank you for sticking around. You are part of the reason I write.
Note: I've posted three chapters because, in an effort to develop the characters more and feature more of them interacting with each other, two of them are essentially fluff chapters, set between major plot points of the game. This is why the (originally single) fluff chapter has been split into two: to make them easy to read, and easy to skip if you so choose. So, if you're like me, and you like fluff, please enjoy. If you don't, the relevant plot picks up in "Preemptive."
Again, thank you for reading.
8:49 pm
Twenty-four hours.
Stop it.
Twenty-four hours.
Stop.
Twenty-four hours.
Please. Cut it out.
She felt foolish for asking so nicely. She already knew it wouldn't make the phrase stop repeating itself in her head. That voice of hers, her own malicious stream of consciousness that loved to watch her suffer didn't respond to manners.
But she was out of cards. So she did it anyway. She couldn't listen anymore, and – looking across the clearing at Pete, who'd taken a seat on the ground and still had a sickly grey tinge to his skin – she didn't want to do the one thing that would make it stop. Couldn't Wouldn't.
Luke was standing near Pete, holding an unfolded map at arm's length, tilting it this way and that. Probably regretting leaving it in his pocket until it was almost too dark to read it. He was almost out of earshot, but Amelia could hear every word from Clementine as she wandered around him, talking talking, talking. Orbiting him like a happy, chatty little satellite, when six days out of seven Amelia was lucky to get an unenthusiastic conversation out of her.
She didn't even have his full attention. She was smart enough to see that. It didn't seem to bother her.
"He played the guitar, and he gave me candy." She was saying. Amelia could see the smile on her face from across the clearing. "I don't really remember much else about him, though. But he was really nice."
"That's, uh…" Luke trailed off, frowning as he tried to read in low light. "That's…" He lowered the map and frowned again, this time not trying to see but trying to remember what he'd just heard. Clem didn't seem to mind waiting. "Sounds like you barely knew him, to be honest."
"We didn't, really."
"He could'a been dangerous." Back to the map. Frown. Head scratch.
"Amelia liked him."
"…did she…?" He looked over his shoulder, sweeping the clearing for Carlos, or maybe Pete, Amelia guessed. Someone who could help him figure out how close they were to the mountains. Because he couldn't tell; that much was clear. "I don't really see that, Clementine."
"She did," Clem insisted, and paused as another thought occurred to her. Luke caught Nick's attention and waved him over. Nick hesitated when he saw, looked between Luke and Pete and back to Luke. "…even though she wouldn't let me eat the candy."
"That sounds more like her."
"She took it away."
"I would'a, too." Luke leveled the map in front of him when Nick caught up to them. "We're either…" He tapped a finger to the paper. "…here, or…"
Nick shook his head, the impatience apparent in his voice even from where Amelia stood. "We're past that. We've been walking in a straight line all day."
"You sure?"
He was. Amelia could hear it. There was no uncertainty in his voice, no question of his own judgment. She could also hear that he couldn't wait for this conversation to be over, wished Luke had asked for someone else's opinion. "That's too far off the course. We've been walking northeast for almost twelve hours and we never changed direction. The sun just set behind us."
"I'll take your word for it."
"In the morning, we'll head out that way." Nick pointed out into the distance, where she could assume there were mountains they couldn't see yet. Luke might've had something else to say, maybe another question for his friend, who seemed to be a better navigator than he was. But Nick was already gone, leaving him with, "I have to get back to Pete," uncapping a bottle of water and trying again to get Pete to drink it.
It wouldn't go well, just like it hadn't the first, second, third, fourth time he'd tried. It didn't stop him from trying again.
Pete's voice was distant, but gruff and unmistakably his. "I told you I don't need any more'a that."
Nick matched the irritation in his voice, quickly, effortlessly. "Just have some, Pete, you lost-"
"I already had more than my share. Now get that outta my face,"
They had a long night ahead of them. The first of five. That's what Luke had said.
"I figure we got about five days until we reach those mountains." Because that was where they were going to lose Carver.
The man who had dozens of people slaughtered was going to be stopped by an uphill climb and a few inches of snow.
She hoped they were right. She wanted them to be. The idea was for Carver to lose their tracks in the snow. That wasn't the problem. The hard part would be getting there, before he caught up to them.
She didn't mean to be pessimistic. She couldn't help being aware that their situation was grim and their odds were miserable. They'd walked for an entire day, but a group could only cover so much ground with two children, one adult hobbled and another pregnant. The day had passed with more stops than she would have liked. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. Rebecca needed to rest. Pete came dangerously close to passing out on three separate occasions. Luke and Nick got tired of walking around covered in Pete's blood; they stopped to change their clothes and bury the old ones. Amelia needed Carlos to fix her stitches; that one was on her. She couldn't take the blood dripping into her eye any longer. It stung.
And the fucking pee stops.
They'd stopped so often along the way Carver could have been an hour behind them. She wouldn't have been surprised if he was. Amelia was fighting the urge to grab Clementine's hand and run screaming into the forest. Alone. Far away from these people and the man chasing them.
She'd yet to actually do it. But she was close.
That's not why you want to run screaming.
That, and the thing.
She remembered, about an hour into the forest. Not remembered, so much as failed to keep pushing it away. And there it was, in her mind, on her face, broadcasting her guilt to everyone around her. She'd kept a lid on it, aware that she could only do it for so long. The easiest way to hold it together, so far, had been two things she was no stranger to: distance and avoidance.
So she watched. She watched the backs of the heads of the people in front of her while they walked. And she watched them have their conversations when they stopped. Watched Rebecca sit down and rest her hands on her stomach. Watched Alvin dote on her, urge her to drink water, have something to eat. Watched Nick check on Pete every few minutes, watched Pete tell him to fuck off every time, though not in those words. Watched Clementine hurry over to talk to her new favorite person every time he had a spare minute. Watched him make her laugh twice in one day.
After a while, it started to feel like she was looking at them all through a one-way mirror. Observing a group of strangers who had no idea she was there. Including her sister.
But she wanted it that way, she told herself. That's why she stayed so quiet.
She noticed Carlos approaching Luke, and just as she was wondering where he left Sarah she realized someone was looking at her. She realized she was the one being watched now, when Clementine caught her eyes and gave her a smile and a full-armed wave.
Come over here!
Carlos stopped in front of Luke and crossed his arms. "I take it we're staying here for the night?"
"This the best camping spot we've seen all day. Looks defendable. It'll get dark soon, so I figure we're better off stoppin' here than lookin' for something better."
Carlos nodded his understanding. "Make sure the surrounding area is safe."
Luke nodded pleasantly, folding the map back up and returning it to his back pocket. "Yes, sir."
Clementine waved again, standing up on her toes as if Amelia hadn't seen her, and that was the reason she wasn't coming.
Hands in her jacket pockets, Amelia peeled herself away from the tree trunk she'd been leaning against. Anything to get Clem to stop giving her that smiling, hopeful look. Hope always led to expectation. Expectation always led to disappointment. A equals B equals C. She felt she'd already disappointed her sister enough.
"I'll inform the others," Carlos said, leaving them as Amelia got there.
Luke regarded her as pleasantly as he had Carlos. Even gave her a smile. "Amelia. How are you doing? Haven't heard you say two words since we left."
"I'm good. Just, uh, tired…"
"You can take the first turn sleeping, then." He said, when she could see in the shadows under his eyes and way his shoulders sagged just a little that he needed sleep as much as she did. She was about to object, to remind him that she remembered he spent the better part of the night before searching the woods for her and Nick, when Clementine spoke up.
"Amelia said she wanted to help check out the camp."
That was news to her. Luke knew it wasn't true as well as she did.
"Great. I could use the help," he said, looking over his shoulder. "Normally, I'd ask Nick. But he's been, uh…" He turned back and didn't bother to finish. Neither Amelia or Clementine needed him to. "We'll take a walk around the perimeter in a few, alright?"
She didn't answer, not eager to keep following up on promises Clementine made for her, without her knowing. He lingered, expecting something else from her – something more than a noncommittal shrug. Clementine discreetly elbowed her in the hip.
Still, she had nothing to say.
"That's, uh…that's alright," Luke said. "I'll go check with Nick. 'Scuse me a minute."
He walked off in Nick's direction. Nick, who was alone for the first time she'd seen all day, rather than following Pete, imploring him to slow down and take it easy, getting snapped at, snapping back.
Where was Pete…? Amelia turned a full three hundred sixty degrees, sweeping her gaze across the clearing, watching the tree line for him because if he was off doing what she thought he was, then this was her chance to find out if she was right. Or hopefully, to show herself she was wrong.
You know that's not how it's going to go.
She spotted him, limping toward the trees with…with a hand clutched to his stomach.
I could still be wrong.
Then explain the twenty-four hours.
"Amelia," Clementine said, after Luke had left them alone.
Amelia didn't answer, she took a step toward Pete, then a few more, hesitating as she tried to wait until his back was turned. Just as he seemed to be heading off into the woods, Nick caught up with him, sliding his backpack off of his shoulders in preparation to help him walk.
"Hey, Pete, how about you-"
"Aw, God dammit…"
"-sit down over here?"
"Nick, I want a minute alone," he looked like he was trying not to scowl; he by no means succeeded. "Is that too much to ask?"
Amelia stopped listening. She'd heard this conversation a dozen times today.
"Amelia," Clementine said again. "Can you please talk to me?"
Amelia turned around. Looked at her sister and nodded.
"Yeah, Clem. What is it?"
"I know what you're doing."
"Do you want a cookie?"
"You're trying not to know them."
"And?"
Clementine sighed, and her voice remained gentle when Amelia expected that she'd made her angry. "Can you take this seriously? Please?"
Amelia didn't have much to argue with. Her sister's sincerity almost always won her over.
Clementine looked at her imploringly, arms crossed. "I want to stay with these people," She threw a look over her shoulder, and lowered her voice despite the fact that no one was close enough to hear. "You don't have to like them. I think we can trust them. That's the important part."
Amelia knew her sister was right. But, as always, she was resistant to new things-
-new people-
She didn't like any changes to her and Clem's carefully constructed routine. The did things a certain way, the same thing every time because it worked. It was how the found supplies without getting robbed at gunpoint. It was how they slept through the night without getting grabbed in their sleep. It was the reason the two of them were still alive.
"They locked you up."
She'd been stupid to think Clem wouldn't notice, or call her on it. Clem knew when her sister didn't mean something, could see her defense mechanisms a mile away. More than that, she could see what was behind it. She saw Amelia telling a half-truth and, like she'd been trained in it for years – because, in a way, she had – picked out which of the many vulnerable parts of herself Amelia had been trying to defend.
"This isn't about that. You're just using that as an excuse because you're scared."
Amelia scoffed. Challenged her to prove that she knew what she was talking about because she underestimated how well her sister knew her. "Scared of what?"
"That they won't like you."
Shit.
Clem straightened up, seeing in Amelia's change of expression that she was right. Amelia had never been good at hiding her feelings. Making her own face lie for her was something she failed at as often as she tried it. "Or maybe that you'll like them, and they…won't stick around."
Shit.
Clem's face softened. When she took a victory, it was never cruel. There was nothing spiteful about the way she looked at her sister, knowing she'd proved her point for the sake of the point, and not just to be right. "We can't last on our own anymore. What if something like…those men in the woods…happens again?"
"I'll be ready next time."
"You were ready last time." Spotted. Pinned. Called out. Like a machine, a little robot specialized to detect Amelia's specific brand of bullshit. It was a two-way street, however. Clementine looked away, pretending to be looking around for the sake of looking when Amelia saw it for what it was: an attempt to fake nonchalance and hide her own feelings. A convincing effort, to anyone else. Transparent as hell to Amelia. "You almost died."
"Clementine…" Amelia let out a frustrated sigh, at a loss for what to say to an eleven-year old who was far too smart to lie to.
Clem still refused to turn back, and looked over her shoulder at Sarah, who was helping her dad unroll the group's sleeping bags. Sarah noticed Clementine looking, and after a beat, smiled widely and waved to them. "It's really hard to make it without friends, Amelia." Clementine turned back, and stared at Amelia's shoes to avoid eye contact. "You should know. It's harder for you than it is for me. I don't know why you don't want to stay."
"It's complicated, Clem."
That got her sister to look at her. "What does that even mean?"
"It means this might be a bad idea for reasons…you don't see yet."
"You mean Carver?" Clementine asked. "You're willing to take your chances with bandits but not with Carver?"
"I just want you to remember, this group isn't…the answer to all of our problems. And if we stick with them, we have to share their problems, too."
A cold breeze rolled through the clearing. Amelia felt it even through her jacket, and Clementine shivered. "I know you're scared."
Yeah. We've established that.
"We need them, and that's scary. But it'll never work if you don't even try."
Amelia sighed. She'd known this conversation would happen. In a way, she also knew how it would end. She realized her actions carried more meaning than her words, regardless of how cautious or understandable those words were. They were a day and a half's walk into the forest; if she'd really been planning to leave these people, she'd have done it by now.
She unzipped her jacket and let it fall off of her shoulders. Clementine knew what she was doing before she spoke.
"Keep it," she said.
"I don't need it." Amelia held it out to her. Clementine didn't reach for it. "You have a hard time sleeping when you're cold."
"Sometimes I can."
Another voice chimed it at a distance. "Wait, wait!" Sarah rushed over to them with a jacket in her hands, a fluffy, pink one that Amelia had never seen before.
"I grabbed this for you back at the house." She held it out, clasping her hands together after Clementine took it. "I guess I kind of…forgot I had it." She shrugged and laughed nervously. "Sorry."
Clementine didn't waste any time putting the jacket on. Amelia already knew she'd been bluffing about not needing one. It was further confirmed by the way Clem didn't even cringe at the color. "Thanks, Sarah."
"No problem," Sarah smiled. "That's what friends do."
Clementine glanced at Amelia. Sarah did the same, but avoided eye contact.
"Will you think about…what we were talking about? At least?" Clementine asked.
Amelia didn't answer. She folded her arms and looked away, the way she did when she was wrong and didn't want to admit it.
Finally, a nod.
Clementine smiled. It was enough.
8:55 pm
Amelia stepped away from the rest of the group, a short walk away from the sleeping bags on the ground to the clearing's edge, and found Luke trying to get Nick onto his feet. Nick, who'd taken a seat on the ground, had his rifle laid across his lap, wearily watching Pete from a distance. His eyelids were low and he looked ready to nod off. Amelia couldn't imagine he'd gotten any sleep since the shed.
"Look, I-" Luke ran a hand over his head, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Amelia wondered how he'd managed to keep it as long as it was, since everything had changed for the worse. The irony wasn't lost on her, that she was thinking this while wearing a ponytail that reached her shoulders. "I need your help with this."
"You're telling me Alvin won't do it? Carlos? Amelia? They all said no?"
"No, they didn't all-" Luke interrupted himself, the frustration plain on his face. "Alvin and Carlos are busy. They have people to take care of and-"
Nick's response was immediate, and sharp. "And I don't?"
"That's not what I'm saying…" he amended quickly. "I'm just…come on, man. I feel like I'm the one doing everything here. I can live without getting credit for it, but it would be nice if someone helped me out once. Once!"
Nick turned away from him, squaring his shoulders out toward the clearing. There was a silence; its brevity made it no less tense. When Nick spoke again, he was quiet. "He thinks he can take care of himself. And he can't right now."
"Nick, I get it…"
"No, you don't." The sharp edge was there, back as quickly as it had left. "What do you think is going to happen if he passes out again? He probably won't wake up, and then…"
Nick noticed she was there, and not surprisingly, didn't want to finish the conversation in front of her. He cleared his throat and turned away from Luke again, and went back to watching his uncle across the clearing.
His uncle, who even as he stood upright and spoke to Carlos about something she couldn't hear, held one hand to his stomach.
It could mean anything.
It means he feels sick. You know that.
He hadn't done it yet. But she would be waiting until he did. She had to see. She had to know.
Luke turned around, his face broadcasting in every direction that he was still heated from their argument. She expected him to carry that anger into his conversation with her, and was surprised to see him take a breath and soften his face and ask her, as pleasantly as she'd ever seen him,
"What is it, Amelia?"
He was back to the person she knew him to be – kind and patient, if a little exhausted and worried – in seconds. Amelia made a mental note, to try and figure out how he did it. How he placed his anger where it belonged and didn't take it out on people who didn't deserve it.
She thought she was ready to answer, but found she wasn't when she tried.
He fucked up. But so did you.
It didn't do much to change the fact that she really, really, didn't want to have this conversation. Lying to people was easy. People didn't make any secrets about the things they wanted to hear. All Amelia had to do was say it and sound like she meant it. Silence was even easier than lying.
Being honest, really, painfully honest at her own expense was an uphill trudge. It made her feel vulnerable and too open to the judgment of others. She forced words that didn't want to come out, one by one like a dentist pulling teeth.
You owe him one. He and Pete saved Clementine in the woods when it would have been easier to leave her there. They're the reason the group let her – and you – stay.
"I just…" Didn't think of anything to say. "…came to talk to both of you."
Luke didn't seem to know what to do with that right away. Rather, he didn't know what to expect, given the cautious way he looked at her, and she couldn't blame him. Nick threw her a glance over his shoulder before looking back across the clearing – but the posture and body language of a person listening while trying to look like they weren't hadn't changed since the last time she'd seen him do it.
"Sure," Luke crossed his arms, waiting. "Everything alright?"
Shit. This was awkward.
Not to late to turn back. Abort. Pull the plug.
Just get it over with, she told herself. Start with the truth. And try to finish with the truth.
"I don't…have any social skills."
Great start.
Nick's response was quick, thrown over his shoulder without looking. "No shit."
"Nick-" Luke shot him a look he didn't bother to notice. "I…yeah, we'd gathered that…"
More silence. Long enough that Luke started trying to find somewhere else to look.
Amelia took a breath, which she dragged out to buy herself more time to think. What else, what else…
"I haven't been fair to you. Your whole group, really, but mostly…you two." This got Nick's attention – or rather, got him to stop pretending he wasn't paying attention. The look he gave her was strange. Scrutinizing. But at least he seemed to be listening. Luke brought up a hand to rub the back of his neck. He knew exactly what she was talking about, and as nice as he was, he wasn't about to pretend he didn't. "I don't know why. I guess it's because Alvin is too nice to give any shit to and…Carlos, Rebecca, and Pete scare the hell out of me…which leaves you."
Somewhere in her chest she started to feel lighter. A weight lifted – it had many names, Fear, Guilt, Discomfort – one that had been there so long she'd almost forgotten it was there. The more she talked, the easier it became to keep talking. To breathe. To understand herself, which contrary to what she used to think, wasn't always easy for her to do.
Luke took the open pause she left to answer her. "I don't blame you for trying to protect your sister. We're all just…trying to keep our people safe."
"I just…blamed you for a lot. Things that weren't your fault. You made your decision as a group and…" She felt the urge to lie creeping back in, a subtle feeling that getting along with these people was better than being honest with them. Clementine wanted to stay. She also would have wanted her to tell the truth, but Amelia had told her before that she couldn't always have everything she wanted, especially when one thing contradicted another. A half-truth was better than nothing. "I…understand why you did it."
Luke looked to the ground, shaking his head slightly. Maybe it was at her. Maybe it wasn't.
"Look, Amelia, I know you don't mean that. You don't have to. I don't have any excuses for what we did."
"I do." Nick spoke unexpectedly, sliding them both an unfriendly look over his shoulder.
"What does that mean?" Luke cut him a sideways look.
"It means you know why we did it. Would have been stupid not to. Just asking for the same shit to happen again."
"Nick." Luke said, a subtle warning in his tone. "She's trying to-"
"I know what she's trying to do. If y'all want to hold hands and sing campfire songs go ahead. We made the right call and I'm not apologizing for it."
Luke glanced to Amelia, maybe expecting her to be upset by his words. She offered him a raised eyebrow, and not much else.
"Why are you being like this, man?"
Amelia spoke quietly, but both Luke and Nick still heard. "Because you almost lost someone today."
She expected Nick to turn around, maybe say something cutting to her, maybe start hurling insults or obscenities. She was no stranger to any of it, both taking it and handing it out. He didn't. He looked down into his lap, suddenly fascinated with the way he was wringing his fingers together.
She could hear it. The lack of patience that came from being emotionally overtaxed, pushed beyond personal boundaries and then some. She could see the buildup of stress and paranoia, sparking off of him like electricity from an overcharged car battery. Surging everywhere, looking for an outlet, causing him pain for as long as it took to find one. The signs were all there, like a frequency that could only be seen and heard by people who'd been there.
Hours ago he'd been knee-deep in the blood of his last remaining relative. The last person, she assumed, he could say he loved. Pete's death, or the potential for it, had been guillotine hanging over Nick's head for an entire day, sometimes looking like it might stay put, others dropping hard and fast to just an inch over his neck, before crawling back up the rails to do it again later.
"It's…" Amelia spoke cautiously, knowing she would likely regret everything she was about to say. "…easy to get hostile toward the entire world when you're that…afraid. Trust me." She realized she didn't need to tell them; they'd been watching her do it since day one. "Makes me feel better anyway."
You know that about me by now.
Change the subject change the subject change the subject. "Um. Anyway."
"We don't need to talk about this anymore if you don't want to." Luke told her.
"No." This had to be said. She'd come this far. Clementine would have been disappointed if she backed out now. "If you hadn't picked Clem up in the woods, I never would have found her. I see that now. I saw it before, I just didn't…"
Want to forgive you yet.
"You don't owe us anything." Luke insisted.
Amelia disagreed. "It's been a long time since we've…" Don't hide behind Clementine. This isn't about the both of you. "…since I've been around people. And I want to try but it's harder than I remember." Luke looked at her with gentle sympathy, and a subtle smile that said he understood. Not from experience, obviously. "But if you can be patient with me, I'd like to try to get to know all of you…that seems like a start."
Luke's smile was genuine and reassuring, and when she saw it she didn't know why she'd been expecting anything else from him. "It's a great start. I'm sure the group will be happy to hear it." She doubted that. But she'd been wrong before. Plenty of times.
"Do you…still want help clearing the camp?"
"Give me a minute. I'll tell the others what's goin' on. Tell them not to set up until we get back."
He walked back toward the group, on his way talk to Carlos, leaving Amelia in a silence so thick she'd almost forgotten Nick was still there.
Then, out of nowhere,
"Does it really make you feel better?"
She knew what he was talking about, and knew it would be childish to pretend she didn't.
"You either take it out on something or you turn it in on yourself. Breaking stuff is more fun."
He might have been about to tell her something. She could see on his face that he had something to say but Luke returned, walking fast and directing her to the edge of the clearing. Probably pushed into a rush by the fading light; it was getting too dark to see the walkers they'd be looking for.
"Over here. This is as good a spot as any."
Amelia looked back to Nick. He was already on his feet, and leaving.
9:09 pm
Amelia and Luke didn't have much to talk about. They walked in silence, save for the crunching of dead leaves under their footsteps.
Amelia debated saying it. She held onto it for a while, trying to remember she was no good with jokes. But it eventually came out in the silence, driven more by boredom than anything else.
"So…did you want to sing campfire songs?"
It made him laugh.
9:47 pm
Amelia stood quietly behind Pete as he kneeled on the ground, doubled over and retching his guts out.
She had to wait all of half an hour to spot him limping into the woods alone. She followed him without being seen – by him or by the rest of the group – astounded that he'd held out this long –
-please, you don't know how long you held out –
That was true. She'd been unconscious, for a number of days she didn't learn until she caught up with Clementine and asked her how long it had been. Had she been awake, she doubted she'd have been able to last nearly as long as Pete had without…
Doing this.
Pete retched again, adding to the pool of hot tar growing in front of him, a seething mass of something both disgusting and familiar. Disgusting because it was familiar, but also plenty vile in its own right.
She'd wanted to know. And now she knew.
Are you happy, now?
No.
She passed her water bottle to him over his shoulder, holding it there for a long time before he reached back to take it. She knew what it felt like. All of it. The fever that burned up every drop of water in his body, the black tar that tore through him and took what little he had left. She knew without asking him that his head was pounding, throbbing painfully in time with his heartbeat. She knew he was on fire, and in pain, and empty. She knew he felt dead inside, because until recently, he was. His insides had been drowning in an insatiable poisonous infection until his body rejected it. Gathered it up in the pit of his stomach and threw it out. Violently.
"God damn…" he choked out. "After all this…I'm still gonna die…" He curled his fingers into fists, gathering up handfuls of wet dirt. "Ain't that…ain't that the biggest pile'a horseshit you ever heard in your life, Amelia…?"
He might have been trying to muster a laugh. But he didn't even get close.
"You're not dying." She told him, speaking up to be heard over his violent coughing.
He didn't answer her. He might have been about to before he dropped back onto his hands and puked again.
Amelia said it again, because she knew he didn't believe her the first time. "You're not going to die. This means you're going to live."
Pete spit onto the ground, and sat up again on his good knee. He failed to keep his balance that way, and sat back further, propping his elbows up on his knees and wiping muck from his mouth with the back of his hand.
A moment of exhausted breathing came and went. Amelia waited.
"What…in the hell…makes you say that?"
Amelia gave a half-hearted wave toward the mess on the ground, knowing neither she nor Pete wanted to spend any time looking at it.
"That was inside you. Now it's not. Give it a day."
"You a doctor now?"
"No."
Another moment of silence. Then a few more. Pete spit again and if Amelia could still have been surprised after the most resent shock of her life-
-"I'm awake, I can walk, and I'll be damned if Carver catches up to us because'a me-"
-she'd have been floored by how far it went. She imagined him sitting on a porch somewhere, sharp shooting into a bronze spittoon. Ping.
"I s'pose you still think I ought to believe you."
"It'd be nice."
"Ain't a lotta shit left in the world that's 'nice.'"
"Nope." Amelia let a few more seconds tick by. She had things to say but lacked the willpower to say them.
You survived for twenty-four hours with an infection that kills in twelve.
Hacking off your own leg with a rusty hand saw had nothing to do with it.
She'd thought it over, many times. Taken her best guess of the time frames involved and did the math, over and over. She was bitten in the morning, shortly after returning from the night she spent trying to loot the Crawford settlement. She'd caught up to Clementine by that evening. Hardly made it through the horde before she passed out. Chained herself to a radiator. Sent Clem out the back door with her gun.
Twelve hours, no matter how she cut it.
Duck was bitten on a morning, too. Late morning, but morning still. He was dead before the sun set that day. Sitting up against a tree and struggling to breathe while the virus turned him into a living corpse.
Twelve hours, just about.
"You feel better, don't you?"
Again, Pete didn't answer her and she didn't need him to. She could already hear the way his breathing had relaxed. She couldn't see much of his face in the dark but she remembered that after the miserable exodus came the empty relief. The only upside to being suffocated was that it felt indescribably good to be able to breathe again.
"Give it a day." She said again.
"You gonna tell anyone what you saw?"
Even in the dark, she could hear very clearly that the answer, for her own good, had better be "no."
It was. "No."
"I better not hear about this from any of the others."
"Pete."
"What?" He snapped quickly, and didn't seem to regret it. Not until his face softened. Not by much, but it did, and Amelia would remember she saw it.
He ran a hand over his head, staring at the ground between his legs. Likely paying more attention to the one that was no longer there.
"I know. I've been a real bastard today." He sighed, shaking his head and refusing to look up at her, no matter how long she stood there. She took the hint and sat down, crossing her legs and prepared to stay for a while. "Especially to Nick."
Only to Nick, really.
"I think you're entitled to a bad day."
If he disagreed, she couldn't tell. Amelia was an open book, as hard as she tried not to be. So was Nick; she'd already seen it more than once. Luke was pretty easy to read. Pete was not. If Pete didn't want to be understood, if he didn't want to let her in on his thoughts, then she would never know any of it. It was why he was easy to misunderstand. Amelia imagined people getting the wrong impression of him. Being fooled by his gruff exterior and his low tolerance for stupidity. She was sure it happened a lot – before, when there had been more people around – and guessed that Pete didn't care enough about it to correct them. She was almost one of them. If Clementine had let her strike back out into the forest the night they met him, she'd never have gotten to know who he really was.
The nicest mean old bastard I ever met.
Finally: "I've seen people get infected before. And I've seen just about every one of 'em do the same thing when the fever runs its course. The ones that didn't shoot themselves, anyway." His head moved in the dark – the only thing that told Amelia he was looking at her. Or trying to. "I've never seen this. Never heard of anything like it."
Amelia was silent, painfully aware that a lie of omission still made her a liar.
He deserves to know-
He thinks he's dying-
They should all know-
She took a quick, silent breath that usually did the trick to stop her runaway train of thought. She closed her eyes and brought it to a grinding halt on the rails.
Pete will know he's not dying when he wakes up tomorrow better than he was today.
But the voice, the one that taunted her with every one of her past mistakes but was happy to become a voice of reason if it would make her suffer, wasn't satisfied with that.
He needs to know he's immune.
Because if he's ever bitten again, you already know he'd rather kill himself than go through this a second time.
And she would tell him.
Not now.
Because-
-because you're a coward-
-she didn't know how he, let alone the rest of his group, would react to it. It was the reason she'd been hiding it from day one. Whether they would understand, and take it in stride or be furious with her for hiding it this long would be a crapshoot, and losing would, at worst, leave her and Clementine a day's walk into the forest, with next to no food and water, and…
No friends.
She couldn't tell him yet. So she kept her mouth shut and tried to imagine that it was the right thing to do.
"Every one'a those people…after they got bit, they all did the same thing." Pete absently ran his hand over his knee – his bad knee, the one he mutilated beyond repair because he thought he had to make a choice – probably still getting used to part of it being missing. "They panicked. They cried. They lost their goddamn shit."
Amelia couldn't pretend that she was better than any of them, these people Pete was talking about. When it was her time – or so she'd thought – she couldn't say she'd stared death in the face with unwavering eyes and a brave heart, like she would have expected from some superhero. Maybe Clementine thought she did. Only because she hadn't been there. Not for the worst of it.
Pete cleared his throat, then lapsed into a cough. It came easier. Amelia could tell by listening. "Back in that truck, I wasn't much better. Always thought I would be. But sittin' there for hours, knowin' your life is gonna end and there are people you're never gonna say goodbye to…it does a number on your pride. You don't care anymore. You just want to live.
"I said to your sister…said to a little girl… 'I don't wanna die, Clementine.' Like some kinda…"
Pete trailed off, likely not because he didn't have words to use, but because he didn't want to admit that any of those words now applied to him.
"I'm not…one of those idiots who can't do a damn thing for themselves. I…got scared. I did. But I'm not…" He looked up. Stopped trailing off mid-sentence and went back to talking like the person she knew him to be. The hard-ass of an old man who could see bullshit a mile away and thought indecision was for morons. "I ain't one of those idiots."
Tell him how scared you got.
Something inside her started the train again. Threw too much coal on the fire and ripped out brake lever, sending it barreling out of control while she was belted down somewhere onboard.
Tell him about the way you ran crying to Kenny, as if there was anything he could have done to save you. A miracle in his pocket, a reset button that could give you your life back.
Tell him about the way you panicked, and refused to accept that Clementine was going to have to move on without you. That you couldn't protect her anymore. You'd taken her as far as you could, and now her life would be in the hands of other people and you were never, ever going to see her again.
Tell him about how you took it out on the Stranger. You had a chance, a chance you were too stupid to take. You had the gun to his head and you put it down because you wanted to hit him, and hit him again, and again, and again, because, to you, at the moment, all of this was his fault. His fault you were dying. His fault you had to be left behind. A bullet in the head was too good for him and you thought you could take him because you were so angry you forgot how weak you were. You threw your gun down to start a fistfight you couldn't finish.
And you were lucky Clementine picked it up.
Tell him you cried when you told her to leave without you. Tell him that even as you did, you were still holding back while you told her where to go, told her how much you love her one last time and then, once she was gone you let loose and cried so hard you couldn't breathe. You writhed on the floor handcuffed to a radiator and screamed until you couldn't feel anything anymore.
Amelia sat quietly, and waited for it to pass. Her nightmares could only play themselves on repeat for so long at a time. She tried hard not to cry in the meantime. Pete's voice brought her back to their spot in the forest.
"Some shit happens to you and suddenly everyone thinks you're 'special.'" Pete wrinkled his nose and scowled at the word. "Everyone thinks you need help with shit you never needed help with before and…" Another scowl. "I don't need help walkin'. I'm gonna gut-punch the next person who tries to help me walk."
So, Nick.
Amelia understood. Like everyone else, she had her sources of anger and poor ways of dealing with them.
They stayed there, in a silence, that, for sitting on the forest floor, up in the middle of nowhere on a desperate flight into the mountains, was comfortable. Neither of them spoke and neither of them felt the need to. No one moved until they heard footsteps. Voices that belonged to people they knew, flashlights sweeping the trees and about to stumble onto them at any second.
Amelia pushed herself up. Crossed to Pete and offered him a hand, which he took.
She leaned back, trying her hardest to help pull him up while he struggled to stand. Once he was on his feet, dusting himself off, she sighed.
"You know it means he loves you, right?"
Pete threw the dust from his jacket sleeves with long, rough sweeps of his hand. He sighed reluctantly. "Yeah," he said, aware that, for all his nephew's hovering, if he wasn't around to bother him Pete would wish he was. "I know it does."
They returned to the camp, and met Nick and Luke on their way out to look for them. Nick immediately helicoptered around his uncle, throwing him rapid-fire questions where did you go are you okay do you need anything let me help you sit down. And though he'd been doing it all day, and would do it again later, Pete didn't yell at him this time.
1:32 am
Night fell. The group laid out their tarps and sleeping bags under a dark sky. Their only light came from the stars and a moon heavily concealed by thick clouds; they wouldn't be making campfires on their walk into the mountains. Not at night. No campfires and no guns. These were Carlos' rules, which the group had agreed on unanimously. There was no point in running from Carver's men if they sent up a smoke signal of their location every night.
Amelia had volunteered to take the first watch. She didn't know when someone would be coming to take her place, and she almost didn't want them to. When the group packed everything up, there hadn't been enough blankets and tarps left for Amelia and Clementine to have one. Amelia realized shortly after leaving the cabin that, if she didn't want to sleep on the ground, she was going to have to ask someone to share.
Four hours into her watch, she was about to take the ground.
No one in the group seemed to notice that she needed one, aside from Clementine. Clem had asked her where she would be sleeping. Amelia told her the truth: she didn't know. For most of the day, it had been the last thing on her mind.
Amelia sat far enough from the group to feel she was alone, despite knowing she wasn't. She laced her fingers together, raised her arms above her head and stretched, looking out at the forest with two handguns within reach; her own in the center of her crossed legs, and Luke's resting in the grass at her side. He'd asked her to hold onto it while he slept. Something about sleeping with a loaded gun on his person apparently made him uncomfortable, which Amelia didn't understand. She couldn't sleep without one.
Still, when he held it out to her, she took it with a nod so he, Nick, and Rebecca could take the first sleeping shift. He slept on his side, curled up in something close to a fetal position, which Amelia found endearing in a man his age. Clementine shared the lower half of his tarp, sleeping perpendicular to him and using his legs as a pillow.
Amelia smiled. Clementine was able to sleep, despite the cold. One less thing to worry about.
And it was cute.
Which she wouldn't admit at gunpoint.
Bushes rustled a few yards away. She switched on the flashlight she'd been given, sweeping a spotlight over – where she'd thought – she saw the brush move. The bushes were still and quiet for a full count of five…and a squirrel scurried out of the branches. Stood up on its hind legs, looked around.
She sighed, and mustered the will to shoo it away, albeit unenthusiastically. "Shoo." She propped her head up on one hand, and lazily waved with the other, hoping the motion would scare it off. "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here." The squirrel tilted its head at her, twitching its nose and making its tiny whiskers jump. Amelia stared back, debating whether she'd be able to catch it for food. …nah. "Fuck off." She pointed the flashlight at it and rapidly switched the light on and off. The flashing light startled it into a jump, then a frantic scurry back into the bushes it came from.
She was rethinking whether she should've tried to catch it-
-could've brained it with a rock, or something-
-when low voice spoke, just behind her.
"Good job." She twisted around to see Nick coming to sit by her. He took a seat on the ground and said, "Don't know what we'd do without you scaring away all the critters."
The moment had crept up on her as quietly as Nick did. She didn't realize it was coming until it was already here, and now her chance to thank him for what he did was sitting patiently in front of her, apathetic to the fact that she had no idea how to bring it up.
Amelia thought it was her turn to break the silence. "I thought you were asleep."
"Can't." Nick crossed his legs in the long silence that followed. "Are you okay?"
She almost laughed. "You're asking me?" After your uncle? After you almost bit it because of me?
"Looks like it." He waited. Then, when she didn't answer. "So?"
"Fine."
"That was convincing."
She knew it wasn't.
She knew all she had to do was say it. But something else tugged at her, reminding her it wouldn't be that easy because she didn't just want to thank him. She wanted to know why. She had to know, had to ask, and it would be much harder to say. Nick gave a long, open-mouthed yawn.
Can't sleep, huh?
She doubted he was in the mood to be interrogated about the choice he made to save her life. He probably wanted a simple "thank you." Why else would he have come over here?
She wanted to know. She really, really did. But she thought maybe she should consider it the best way to thank him; to see that he probably didn't want to talk about it, and leave it alone.
Amelia drew a breath, one she was going to let out in saying thank you for saving my life and leave it at that, when Nick stood up abruptly.
"Come on."
Amelia looked up at him. Um…what?
He repeated himself when she didn't move or speak. "Come on. Get up."
"And do what?"
"Come with me." He said impatiently, looking over his shoulder and getting more frustrated with every second she refused to move. "I found something you're going to want to see, just…come on."
"I'm on watch."
"Not anymore. Now it's Alvin."
Amelia twisted in her spot, to look where Nick was pointing. Alvin had picked up a rifle and taken up a position on the other side of camp. Now, with him and Carlos, they had three people when two were needed.
"You coming or not?" Nick said. "You don't have anything better to do."
He's got you there.
She stood up, checked on Clementine – who was still asleep – and decided not to ask where they were going. He probably wouldn't have told her if she had.
2:31 am
"Alright…" Nick said, dragging his words out while he was thinking. Then it came to him. "Alright, okay…"
"Spit it out," Amelia said with genuine impatience. The two walked side-by-side, the forest in front of them lit by their flashlights. The sky was a dark navy blue that permitted them a little bit of light – not like the black nights Amelia preferred not to think about – so that they could see their surroundings. Not much more than ambiguous shadows and tree trunks.
"The most fucked up thing you've ever done to one of them. Let's hear it." Nick said, a smug edge in his voice. He must've been confident that this one would be hard for her to answer.
He was going to be disappointed.
Amelia thought of a dozen examples right away, conjured images of golf clubs and flat screen televisions and electric fences. She decided on one just make it quick.
"I crushed one of their heads in a car door once." Over and over and over.
Nick snorted a laugh. "Damn. That's hardcore. I should watch my back if you're that hardcore." His chuckling told just how ridiculous he found the idea; Amelia got the sense he was laughing at her, not with her.
Amelia rolled her eyes without a smile, despite knowing he wouldn't see it. "It attacked me. My gun was empty."
"Oh…" He feigned sudden understanding, which made her certain he was mocking her. "Did you break a nail? I hope not."
Her voice was dry and quiet. "You're hysterical." When he went quiet, she reminded him, "Your turn." After asking her a question like that, he wasn't about to get away without answering it himself.
That, and she found herself genuinely wanting to know.
"I, uh…" he hesitated, and Amelia thought she could hear shame. He cleared his throat, and Amelia knew stalling when she heard it. "I…bashed one of their heads in with a bat…until it was just…gone. It died after the second hit, but I didn't stop." He went quiet again. For a few seconds, the only sound was the the rhythmic crunching of dead leaves beneath their footsteps. "I didn't want to."
She didn't have anything to say. It wasn't her place to judge his actions, not with the death toll she had hanging over her own head.
Nick rubbed his arm, maybe embarrassed that he'd said so much already. Which left Amelia wondering, if he was embarrassed, why was he telling her any of this? She'd asked, but she didn't have a gun to his head.
"I…kind of went on a tear after…after my mom."
She understood. Maybe it didn't look like it, to people who didn't stop to think about it, to try to feel what he'd been feeling. She understood that violence had a way of looking senseless, in any context. But sometimes it was something she could accept; sense couldn't bring back her dead parents. Sense couldn't save friends she'd already lost. Death had become too familiar. A constant threat, a vulture perched on her shoulders, always threatening to take away the only things she felt she had to live for. It was cruel, and fast, and would sweep in to take another loved one away in its talons because Amelia turned her back for too long, or forgot to reload her gun, or…needed saving. Her new reality had one truth, one rule with an infinitely cruel caveat: she was allowed to have friends, if she wanted. But she would always have to remember that she'd never be able to hold onto them forever. Sooner or later, each of them would slip away and absolutely nothing she or anyone could do about it. It had happened once. It would happen again. What was there left to do?
Scream. Break things. Take it out on something before she took it out on herself.
She didn't want to say all that to Nick. It would have hurt to form the words and she was very sure he already knew. So she said quietly, "I understand."
"I think you're the only one who does."
Amelia looked at him, knowing he likely wouldn't see her in the dark. "What-?"
"We're here." He said, speeding up to walk ahead of her. "This is it." He stood aside, so she could see.
A shed, not unlike the one they'd spent the previous night in. Looking at it from the outside, it might have been bigger.
Amelia remembered passing, about an hour before the group had stopped to camp for the night. They'd stopped to search it over for supplies and didn't find anything useful. After that, they'd moved on and she hadn't thought of it since. It was far enough off the path that she wondered how Nick had been able to find it again. Maybe a sense of direction like his was a perk of growing up in rural backwoods.
She gave him an unamused look and waited for him to explain.
"After you." He said. When she didn't move, he went to the door gestured for her to come in while he held it open.
Amelia was quiet for what felt like a long time.
"If you're going to kill me, could you just do it? Because I really don't need the buildup."
Nick humored her with an unenthusiastic pity laugh. "Ha."
Amelia walked into the shed, despite still not understanding what they were here for. She'd already seen what was inside. They all had. Nothing but miscellaneous junk. She shined her flashlight over the bare wood-panel walls, across crates and empty bottles and collapsed camping tents.
"You walked an hour for this?" she said, sweeping her light over what looked like a Walkman.
Nick came in after her, letting the door shut gently behind them. "We did," he corrected her, gesturing between the two of them. "Joint mistake."
"You're serious." She said incredulously, kicking the MP3 player aside. The floor was covered in some kind of garbage or another; there was nowhere to walk without stepping on something.
"Where did you think we were going?" he asked. "You knew nothing else was out here."
"I told you." she looked back at him with a straight face. "I thought you were planning to kill me."
"Ha." Nick picked up a small folding table, sending a waterfall of dust and dirt and pebbles sliding off of it when he did. He propped it up, and started looking around the shed floor for something else.
Amelia realized she was standing on a pair of headphones. The wire had been ripped out and she'd cracked them in half when she stepped on them. People have been using this place as a dump, she thought. Travelers passing through would find the shed, comb it over for something useful, and drop the things they didn't want to carry anymore. Unless Nick had walked all this way for a torn hammock and a moldy ironing board, it was time to turn back. She was more agitated at herself than she was at him; she should've known better than to take his word for it when he said it was worth seeing.
"Here we go…" Nick bent to pick something up and Amelia heard clinking glass. He started lining up empty bottles – some of them already broken – setting them up like an incomplete bowling pyramid. When he was finished, he took a step back and gestured his flashlight to the table, as if Amelia was supposed to know what that meant.
She looked at him expectantly, wondering how long he would stand there without explaining. Maybe he was waiting for her to ask. So she did.
"What the hell?"
"You said breaking stuff is more fun. Let's do it." He pointed his light at the table again. "You can take the first shot."
He was serious. He was actually serious. Her first thought was no. Her second was we're not doing this. You're crazy and I'm crazy for following you out here.
This was a bad idea...wasn't it? They'd already wandered an hour from the camp. And they would be an hour out whether or not they did this. She'd done worse on a whim.
She took Hilda from her back, keeping the handle in a tight grip. She kept a cautious eye on Nick as she put herself in a batting position in front of the bottles, knowing he was watching her and feeling scrutinized by the fact that she couldn't read his thoughts.
Was he judging her? Setting her up to act like a violent basket case so he could laugh at her when she did?
No. He's a jerk sometimes. But he's not a mean person. A mean heart – one that was genuinely cruel and broken – was easy to spot and hard to fake. Nick didn't have one.
So what was he getting at? She felt strange, floating in an intermediate limbo of not caring what he thought of her and wanting desperately for him not to see her…the way she saw herself. She felt that doing this would share things about herself she'd never intended for him to know, that showing him how dysfunctional she could get would bring her closer to him than she'd ever intended to be.
She found herself wondering where his boundaries were. Sure, he was encouraging her to do it now, but how much violence and emotional baggage could he witness and still understand? She hesitated to do anything because she didn't know where his line was, and didn't want to cross it.
He cleared his throat. "Sometime tonight, would be good."
Fuck it.
She took a swing. Sharp, fast, one shoulder to the other. Threw Hilda's blade smack into the glass and sent it rocketing into the wall. It broke twice – once when she hit it and again, into tiny pieces when it hit the shed wall.
"Nice!" Nick grinned with crossed arms.
That was…awesome.
And there it was.
A rush, a little one that would get bigger if she did it again, and bigger still if she kept going. She didn't expect it to hit her as hard as it did. She'd forgotten how exciting it was to be reckless, after years of being careful every minute of every day because her life depended on it, to let something out, finally, after years of keeping all the baggage to herself so as not to burden her sister with it.
She decided that this had been a good idea. Take it all out on breakable objects, not people, not herself. No harm done.
"Go again." Nick nodded toward the bottles. He seemed to think she enjoyed it.
Seems to think? You're about to start giggling like a schoolgirl. Tone it down.
She took her shot, almost before he finished talking. Swing. Whack. Smash. A clean hit. Shattered glass.
She laughed this time. The relief was liberating. The weight lifting from her shoulders made her feel like she could breathe again.
He smiled back. "It's that much fun, huh? Think I can get a turn?"
She held the ice pick out to him with a nod. The sooner he took his turn the sooner she could go again.
She stepped back, out of the way while he wound up his swing. With a grunt he launched the bottle from the table easily twice as hard as she had. Broken glass scattered across the floor, filling the otherwise silent shed with gentle clinks as they did.
"That was our last one," he said, straightening up and turning around to look at her.
Shame. Amelia liked breaking glass. She found the Walkman at her feet and picked it up. She held it out to Nick without a word. Only a smirk on her face, hiding an ear-to-ear smile.
His own smile spread across his face when he realized what she meant. He took one, two steps back. "Pull!"
She lobbed it into the air, and he destroyed it with a well-timed swing. Plastic and metal went flying, and Amelia flinched to take cover from it. Buttons popped out of place and skittered across the floor.
Amelia wanted to clap, jump up and down, insist that it was her turn again. She only did the last. "Switch," she held a hand out, and after he gave Hilda back to her he picked up a walkie talkie, one with no antenna and no other walkie to pair with it. Amelia started to hear a voice she thought she'd forgotten, one muffled and broken up by static as it greeted her eerily and quietly.
"Pull,"
Nick gave her an easy shot, straight up into the air and arced gently at her; static popped again in her ears. Hello, Ameli-
She wasn't gentle with her swing. The walkie talkie beelined for the wall, and both she and Nick ducked for cover as it broke into far-flying, useless pieces.
That's what he gets.
Amelia didn't leave a pause to wonder if they should keep going. She already knew the answer. She turned around looking for something else to break and decided on the ironing board. She kicked it its dead center, putting a sharp dent in its middle and sending it to the floor.
Nick picked up a folding chair, gripping it under the back and hurling it into the wall with one arm.
She picked up a wooden tent pole and broke it over her knee, making him laugh.
He kicked a toaster on the floor – a plugin toaster, of all things – up into the wall like a soccer ball. It hit the wall hard and came back to him at an angle, hitting the floor by his feet with a massive dent and a now-missing dial. She asked him to do it again. He did.
She enjoyed being destructive, liked taking her turn for once, when she spent her days running from destructive people, trying to keep them away from the one thing in the world she still loved. Putting herself between them and Clementine, because better me than her. She destroyed one object for every outstanding thing that left her feeling powerless and furious, listening to Nick be just as destructive in the background.
Clementine barely remembered their parents.
She might have put her sister in grave danger, taken on problems that would have consequences for the two of them because Amelia got selfish and wanted to have friends again.
She knew something that might make everyone in her new group despise her. It would only get worse with each day she continued to hide it.
She was out on a five-day trek through the woods and she fucking hated camping.
Any and all of it was fair. Valid. For once, it was okay to feel and okay to lash out.
She shattered something for all the nights she'd been unable to find Clementine something to eat. Something for every mistake she regretted dearly and wished she could take back.
One for every friend she'd seen die.
One for Nick's mom.
One for her mom.
One for all the goodbyes that should have been said, and weren't.
It didn't change any of it. Didn't undo what was already done, didn't bring anyone back, but it made her feel better. Which, she decided, was worth something in itself.
3:12 am
In the aftermath, they stood quietly, both knowing it was time to leave. Amelia found Hilda and reattached it to her back. Nick picked up his hat from the floor. He held the door for her on their way out. She muttered a thank you, he quietly answered, "sure," and other than that, no one said a word until they reached the camp.