A/N: Another note for anyone who's not about that fluff life.

This is a paragraph meant to start Chapter 14 that turned into a short fluff chapter. If it's not your thing, the next (non-fluff) chapter is 90% finished and is coming soon. If it is, then please enjoy this chapter focused on the aftermath of Chapter 13.

Thank you to everyone interested enough to add yourself to my follows list. Thank you to BHBrowne for beta-reading for me again, and for his continued interest in and support of my writing. He writes stories for TWDG and Life is Strange - they're wonderfully written and I really recommend them if you're looking for something new to read.

And lastly thank you for reading my story!

9:09 am

Amelia couldn't stop touching the stitches in her calf. She moved her fingers over the perfect suturing that ran in a horizontal line just above her ankle. From a certain angle it looked like someone had tried to sever her foot, before they changed their mind and sewed it back on for her. Like she was a rag doll who'd lost a limb to the family dog or a sadistic child with a pair of scissors.

She went over them with the tips of her fingers, feeling the way the ends of the stitches poked out of her skin while she searched her mind for something to say to Sarah.

She knew she'd fucked up. Namely because the most talkative little girl she'd ever met sat beside her, wordless and catatonic for the first time Amelia had seen in days. The silence made it hard to ignore that the last person to scare her like this had been Carver.

And now her.

"You need to speak with my daughter." Carlos said, his gloved hands threading another stitch into her leg, which was propped up on his lap. Hours of walking had gotten the gash to darken around the edges, while the fresh blood that still seeped from its center was bright red.

Amelia didn't argue. She was barely listening. She stared at her own feet, still sick to her stomach and thinking about gunshots and grabbing hands and wondering if she still had blood splatter in her hair. Asking herself what she'd done as if the answer had changed since the last time she asked. Stuck in a frenzy of puzzle-piecing and analysis, trying to do the impossible and know what would have happened if the two men had lived. She vaguely remembered something about stitches hurting the last time she'd gotten them, and they probably hurt now. She hadn't been-

"Amelia." Carlos' voice was stern, and just loud enough to get her attention. She looked up, her eyes looking over his face as if she'd just remembered he was here.

"Wh-what did you say…? I'm sorry…" she shook her head. She was sorry. For much more than ignoring him.

"You need to talk to Sarah." Carlos didn't seem ready to accept apologies. He didn't seem much of anything. He'd been focused, and not very talkative while he stitched her up, working a familiar hooked needle through the blood seeping from her leg. Until now. "She will never forget what you did. You need to see what you can do to reduce the damage. It will…she will be more likely to listen if it comes from you."

That was fair. She knew she'd…done damage. In more ways than one. The least she could do was try to fix it.

Carlos hesitated, something she'd never known him to do. He seemed to have something to say. Amelia waited; she wasn't going anywhere. She wouldn't have, even if he hadn't been holding a needle and thread stuck in her body.

"For reasons I don't understand, she seems to be fascinated with you." Carlos began carefully, turning the needle over in his blood-soaked fingers. "She will remember what you say to her." He looked at Amelia. Found her eyes and showed her the face of a father who wasn't fucking around. A look she'd seen many times, from men she'd personally watched lose the children they were trying to protect. "Which means you will think very carefully about the words you choose. Is that clear?"

She hadn't decided on any yet.

It was hard to think, looking out across the clearing and watching the group argue. She couldn't hear what they were saying. Didn't want to, yet. Maybe it was better to let them get the worst of it out. Their worst opinions, assumptions, fears. Put it all on the table while she wasn't around to hear it. The last thing she wanted was for their thoughts to go unsaid because they didn't want to say them in front of her.

Clementine decided to speak. She had to stand up and wave an arm to get everyone's attention, since the discussion was so heated. Whatever she said, it made Luke nod and Rebecca shake her head. Pete said something with a wave of his hand. Nick seemed to object. The argument started up again as quickly as it had stopped. She watched the gestures, the crossed arms, the body language of people who were disturbed. Angry. Watching her while trying to look like they weren't.

Stop watching. Speculating about what they were saying wouldn't do her any good. She would only imagine the worst, whether or not the worst was actually happening. Focus on something else.

"Um." Amelia had given up struggling for words minutes ago. They'd been sitting in silence since, and Sarah didn't seem to mind. She didn't seem…much of anything. She'd shut down again. Turned inward and retreated from the world outside. Amelia wanted to do the same."Do you…have any questions…? About-"

She looked up and turned straight toward Amelia, suddenly enough to surprise her. "Why did you shoot those men?"

The thousand-dollar question. The million-dollar question was whether or not her reason had been good enough. From the looks of the group discussion, the jury was still out. The midday sun straight above their heads was a reminder that they only had so much time before they had to move again.

"That's…a…good question..." She said, matching Sarah's posture by folding her arms over her knees. A deep breath. Then another. "I…I shot them…because…" she dragged it out, unsure of how to explain herself to a girl no older than fifteen. One who, according to her own father, had no idea what the world had become, and couldn't find out. Amelia believed him. She'd seen the way Sarah reacted to pressure. She'd seen her go catatonic, seen that Carlos wasn't exaggerating even a little when he said she would "cease to function." He couldn't have wanted Amelia to tell her the he'd said, the warning he'd given her couldn't possibly have meant that she was supposed to be honest with Sarah. To explain that people were horrid and couldn't be trusted, that it was easy to see when they had horrible plans in their minds and it was better to stop them before they got the chance.

Carlos cut the final stitch, looping the suturing thread around his finger to tie it off. He took a tube of antiseptic from his medical bag, and though it was already near-flat from top to bottom, squeezed the last of it out over Amelia's stitches before starting to wrap it for her. She thought about apologizing for needing so many of the medical supplies. Three rounds of stitches and antibiotic had taken a toll on what few supplies the group had. And now they were out of something any of the others could need, any day now.

He decided to speak before she did. "I want to thank you. Though I'm not sure that I should."

She didn't know what it meant. His first words made her feel hopeful. Hopeful that there might've been one other person who would have made the choice she did.

"I do not commend what you did." He tied off the bandage, spotting it here and there with her blood, before stripping his gloves off and tossing them into the grass. "But I can see you meant to protect us. Clementine was right about you."

Amelia chose to stay silent. She felt it was best to be quiet and tread carefully through the minefield she'd dropped herself in.

"I have no doubts that those men were bad people. And because of you they will never get anywhere near my daughter. I just wish it could have happened another way."

Amelia didn't know what to make of it. She couldn't tell if she was receiving his approval or another warning. The two sounded the same, coming from him. "So do I."

"Talk to Sarah. I'm…concerned about how this will affect her."

Sarah looked at her expectantly, worried. Her red glasses were crooked again, and it looked like she hadn't noticed. That, or she was too preoccupied to bother fixing them.

"…because…" Amelia said again. She thought of what she would say to an adult who asked her the same question. To someone who understood the reality they lived in and could handle the dark truth that made her decision…not right, but…reasonable, maybe. It was what she planned on saying to Luke, when he came to talk to her, since he would undoubtedly be the one to do it.

It was easy. The truth was easy, for once. She had a host of things she could tell him. Some would be better than others, but every one of them played a part in her decision to pull the trigger. Three times. Once at point-blank range.

I shot them because they wanted more than our stuff.

I shot them because they threatened Clementine and Sarah and Rebecca and Alvin's baby, in one way or another.

I shot them because they were going to shoot us, eventually, after doing much worse than that.

It wasn't right, and she wasn't about to pretend it was. And, thinking back to those men, the way they spoke, the way they acted, the way they took everything from them and still didn't leave…the thought of letting it play out any further than it had shook Amelia so hard it was disorienting. She couldn't have let that happen. She couldn't have seen it any more than she could've imagined stepping in front of a moving train. Putting a gun to her own head and pulling the trigger and expecting to live. It just doesn't happen.

So where did that leave them?

Amelia huffed a heavy sigh, dropping her head down onto her crossed arms. This was getting old, quickly. She sat up and decided to talk. Because talking without thinking had never gotten her into trouble before.

She decided to stick with simple truths, remembering that Carlos likely wanted her to lie and hoping this was somewhere in between.

"I did it because I was afraid they were going to hurt us." She told Sarah. "I really, really thought they were."

"…were they?"

"I don't know. We'll never know. But I really…think I was right. Those men were…I've met people like them before. They're…the bad people your dad told you about?" She phrased it like a question, hoping something would connect, hoping Sarah would understand if she could find the right way to say it.

Instead she frowned at her, a sudden hybrid of alarmed and confused. "The people chasing us?"

"No. But they were just like them."

"But…how do you know that?"

Amelia sighed, unsure of how to tell a kid her age that…sometimes she knew. Come to think of it she didn't know how to tell that to the adults in the group. But it was true. Every monster she'd crossed paths with in her life had something in common, some intangible quality that told her, from the moment she met them, that these people would kill her, given the chance. Her and her sister and every one of her friends. There were more bad people in the world than good, and only the very clever ones were able to hide what they were. The rest of them wore in on their faces, so plainly that she'd been stupid not to see it every time before.

And unfortunately, it had been others who paid the price for that stupidity, not her.

It wasn't proof. But it was enough that she was no longer willing to bet Clementine's life on the chance she was wrong. She'd been wrong too many times before to take that chance and not expect to lose.

"The point is…" she drummed her fingers on her kneecap. "It was wrong. I…" Should she say it in those words? "I killed someone. Two people. And it wasn't…okay."

"Um…okay…"

"Shooting people is…" she almost cringed at the simplicity of what she was about to say. No shit. She knows this already. What the fuck do you think you're telling her- "…wrong. No matter what reason you have for doing it."

"But…if they were bad people…and you shot them because they were bad…?"

"It was still wrong." Amelia said. "It wasn't…to punish them. It wasn't…it was just to stop them from hurting us. That's all."

"And that was wrong?"

"It was…" Something in between. In infuriating medium that wasn't easily explained or understood, even by her. Necessity and rightfulness were two different things that rarely coincided anymore. But Sarah wouldn't understand that. And she knew in advance that Carlos wouldn't be pleased with her for introducing the idea. "It was wrong." Amelia left it at that. Simple. What Carlos wanted her to hear. About the limit of what she would understand. "And I wish I hadn't done it." But I would do it again.

Shit.

Across the clearing, people were looking at her. Not one or two at a time, for a fleeting second, as they had been. All of them, all at once, and Amelia knew what it meant. She stood up, unsure of how to end her conversation with Sarah – and unsure of how much damage she'd managed to undo – but sure that someone was about to come speak to her. She saw Luke step away from the group like he was about to come get her and decided to beat him to it, if not meet him halfway.

She wasn't on her feet for five seconds when Sarah stood with her and threw her arms around Amelia's waist, squeezing her harder than she'd have liked, given how recently she'd just vomited in the bushes.

"Um-"

Sarah didn't seem to notice. She didn't let go, and Amelia didn't make her, despite not knowing how to react. She froze with her hands hovering in the air, before settling them around Sarah's shoulders and giving her an awkward pat on the back. Finally, the girl let her go.

"What…what was that for?" Amelia asked.

She shrugged, looking worried enough that Amelia knew she'd done a terrible job at what she'd set out to do. "I just really wanted a hug. You looked like you could use one, too."

She wasn't wrong. "…thanks."

Sarah ran a hand up and down her own arm, and gave her an earnest attempt at a smile. The grin she came up with was a shadow of what it normally was. Not much, compared to the way she'd smiled before. "No problem."

Looking out across the field, she could see the group was still waiting. She told Sarah to wait where she was, and made her way toward them feeling like an inmate on death row. A criminal on her long, final walk to the gallows.

Don't be stupid. You're the executioner here, not them.

12:31 pm

"I want to try it again," Clementine told her.

She stood in front of Amelia and walked backwards to face her; it was getting more and more difficult, given that the incline of the hillside they were climbing was getting steeper the higher they got. But, to her credit, Clem hadn't given up. Yet. It was why Amelia relented, and once again pulled her gun from her waist.

She knew the gun was empty – the magazine was already in her back pocket – but checked it again, pulling back the action and lifting it until she could see light coming through the chamber. "Okay," she said, shaking her head slightly and hoping Clem couldn't see the way Amelia was hiding her smile. She couldn't help it. She loved that Clementine had always liked learning things, and was relieved to see she still did. Even after everything that might have ruined that for her.

She tried not to give any warning. Not that it did much. Clementine was getting more and more difficult to catch by surprise. Amelia pointed the gun at her in a single sudden move, as fast and abrupt as she could make it. It didn't take Clementine more than a couple seconds to react; suddenly her arms were up, grabbing the barrel with one hand and pushing Amelia's inner wrist with her palm to force her hand off of the gun. It wasn't bad, to be fair. Amelia had a few complaints – she could've been faster and she was still too reserved in hitting her wrist to make her let go; she still wasn't sure if it was because Clem didn't want to hurt her or because she needed to learn to hit harder in general – but she saw the look on her sister's face and decided now wasn't the time to share them.

Clem turned the gun around in her hands, holding it out to her no doubt because she wanted to try again, immediately. Amelia took it from her and realized she'd seen this before. Once, years ago, after she disappeared through a doggie door and unlocked an abandoned Savannah home from the inside.

Big smile, standing up on her tippy-toes with her short arms up in the air and "Ta-da!"

It looked different now that she was older. But Amelia could still see it. Still heard it even though it sounded like, "That was faster this time, right?"

"It was."

Clem frowned, having grown to be wary when Amelia gave short, simple answers. There had to be more. There almost always was. "What?"

"Did you hear the click?"

Clem's smile disappeared. "One more time." She answered Amelia's raised eyebrow with crossed arms. "I can do it,"

"Later." Amelia put the gun away, and realized she shouldn't have. Now that her hands were empty they felt strange. Jittery. Cold. A little numb. She took a sharp, quick breath. The cold forest air was like ice in her lungs and it didn't do much to quiet the electricity in her fingers or the feeling of blood rushing in her head.

"Amelia?" Clementine asked her quietly. "Are you-?"

"Cool!" Sarah chimed in from somewhere behind them, dragging the word out as she jogged to catch up with them. "I want to try," she said, all eagerness and hope and wonder, back to everything that made her who she was like the flip of a light switch. Amelia thought she was annoyed until she recognized her own jealousy, out of place and unreasonable but there all the same.

Speaking of. She looked ahead, scanning across each of the people walking around her until she found Luke, not far off to her right. She remembered the way their last conversation had ended. He'd looked like he had something to say. Still did.

"So…" Amelia started the conversation quietly, seeing quickly that no one else was about to. "What does…everyone think? I want to know." The exchanged glances, crossed arms, and quiet discomfort told her she was surrounded by strong opinions. About her.

Hours later, she was wishing she hadn't asked, and wouldn't be doing it again.

Whatever he'd had on his mind, he didn't share it. She thought it fair, seeing how she much she'd heard from him already.

"…and if you had listened to any of us in the first place, none of it would'a happened."

"I know." That much, she agreed with, and was sorry for. She'd have said it if she hadn't already, half a dozen times. It was getting so redundant she worried she was only making it worse with each new apology. But didn't ask for any of this. Or rather, she did but never meant to. "You're right."

She held herself back from telling him it was a part of why she did it. She'd drawn those men to their camp, and it made her responsible for anything they might have done. She worried that if they knew – or if she said it rather, since it wasn't hard to guess – they would see her actions as an attempt to cover her own ass. Which they weren't…she thought.

His arms were crossed, and had been since she approached the group. Defensive, a barrier between him and her that she hoped wasn't there because he thought she was dangerous now. His once-angry expression had long turned to stern frustration. She imagined him to be the kind of parent that didn't yell when his children were guilty, but crossed his arms and lectured until the sun came up the next morning. I'm not mad, just disappointed.

She realized that made her the child, in trouble for playing with guns, and wondered bitterly who among them was the angry parent. The one who yelled.

No one was, and none of them did. After a while she almost wished that somebody would.

"Amelia."

"Hm?" she looked to her sister, who'd fallen into step beside her. She pointed toward Sarah. Whatever Clementine was referring to, Amelia hadn't heard. She looked to Sarah and waited.

She clasped her hands together, eyes wide and excited. "Can I try it, too?"

"Ask your dad." She hoped she wouldn't. She was grateful Carlos hadn't been nearby to hear her ask. It only occurred to her now that she probably should have put her gun away altogether, and left it there.

"Um," Sarah looked around, hesitating. "Never mind." After a beat of awkward silence, she slowed down to fall back in the group and walk with Carlos.

"You could have shown her, too." Clementine suggested. Amelia looked down sharply, sure she was joking. Clem wasn't looking at her, and Amelia saw only the top of her hat. "I think she should know how to do it."

"Clem, I think I've…done enough. For a while." Enough involving guns and Carlos' daughter.

"Look…with the way he was walkin' up on Clementine I see why you did it. I…might've done it too." Luke didn't seem to like what he was saying, and she wasn't sure if he meant it or if he was just trying not to be so hard on her. Trying to be fair when there were no fair points to give in her favor. "It just...Amelia, you didn't even blink."

Was that what this was about? Not what she did, but in the way she did it? There had to be more to it than that.

"Do you mean that? You would have done it, too?"

"…" Luke broke eye contact, and whether he meant to or not, looked to the ground in a way that said two things: the answer was yes, and he wasn't proud of it. Which meant he wasn't proud of her. Something she didn't realize how much she'd dislike until she felt it.

Clementine walked beside her, trudging along the uphill path for a long silence. Long enough for Amelia to relive more of that conversation than she'd have liked to.

She remembered it all in vivid detail she couldn't forget, replaying it in her mind – not for the first time since it had happened – after isolating herself from the others. She remembered each person's words and tried to understand what they meant, what they now thought of her. Whether they could trust her now and whether they ever had in the first place.

She remembered Luke pointing out what had occurred to her more than once already before he said it.

"You got the gun out of his hands. He was unarmed. I'm just gonna say it…I think you went too far."

She remembered Nick cutting in, too fast and a little too loud, and remembered thinking he shouldn't have. Not this time.

"Are you saying she should've let him go? He would've come back with more of his people. We'd be in front of a firing squad right now,"

"Calm down, Nick." Pete shook his head, broadcasting disapproval that Amelia didn't like seeing, despite not knowing who it was for – her or Nick. It always seemed to be one of the two.

"I'm just saying," Nick snapped back at him, which he hadn't done in days. "You know it had to be done!"

"And I'm sayin' you need to calm down, boy! We don't need everyone gettin' riled up right now!"

Amelia stayed quiet. Even she agreed he was coming in too hot. But she was grateful for an ally, one person who was pointing fingers somewhere other than her, and wasn't about to say so.

She curled her hands, put one fist inside the other and pressed until her fingers popped, remembering the way Pete shook his head. Remembering that with all the horrors Pete already had to live with she'd given him one more.

"You gunned those men down without flinching. That's somethin' you never get used to seein'. But to tell you the truth, Luke, there aren't many ways a confrontation like that'll end."

Clementine spoke her name, and got her attention. Her voice was quiet in a way that said she already knew the answer, and knew it long before she asked. "Are you still thinking about it?"

She was. Words were coming and going, starting to lose focus and fall out of chronological order. She remembered a "Hey, they're the ones that tried to rob us. We didn't ask for trouble-" interrupted sharply by "Alvin, please."

Bec and I are staying out of it and Was she supposed to wait until they shot someone first and I'm just sayin' bein' the first to shoot ain't always better and I'm sorry and she felt herself starting to sweat, despite the frost on the grass and the frigid air that had everyone huddling inside their jackets. This was bad. This was bad. This was bad, and she didn't know how to fix it. Everything she tried to fix ended up more fucked than it was in the first place. Her mistakes were fatal and permanent and she couldn't decide which of her skeletons was worse – the one she was hiding from the group or the one they'd all seen firsthand. Give them a day and a half and they'll decide you and Clem need to go, she thought. This was your last chance. You won't meet people like them again, not in your short lifetime. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket, pressing down hard to steady her hands stop shaking-

"Amelia," Clementine said again, stopping in front of her and forcing her sister to stop with her. Clem's eyes darted up and down, fast, almost frantic. "What's wrong with you?"

Amelia looked around, over Clem's head to see others had stopped, too. From a short distance she could see but not hear as people started to fan out, lay their backpacks on the ground. They were making another rest stop, and Amelia – aware of how little time that gave her – looked around until she spotted the person she'd been looking for.

"Nothing…" She trailed off, walking past Clementine and toward the group. She was out of earshot before she muttered. "Nothing's wrong…" as if her sister could still hear her.

12:43 pm

She lied again.

"I have to show you something." That's what she'd said to get him out here.

Then again, she realized, it wasn't completely untrue.

"What is it? Are you…" he trailed off, blinking through his surprise when she stopped just in front of him, turned around and stood up on her toes. "…o-okay…?" He cleared his throat, looking from her eyes to her mouth then back, then back again. "Are you alright, I mean…? That's…what I meant…"

She didn't answer his question, and had no intention of bringing up anything she felt. As far as she was concerned it was the fastest way to get him to run in the other direction. Besides that, she wouldn't have known what to say. Okay was starting to sound like a word she'd repeated too often in her head, for so long that it didn't mean anything anymore.

"Do you have a minute?" She wasn't good at being direct with him. That much, she'd shown herself more than once. She looked up into his eyes, close enough to feel his breath shudder when he reached up to adjust his hat and looked for something else to say. She tilted her head, waiting. It was as clear of an invitation as he was going to get.

"I…have…uh-" He dragged his words out, buying time to think. She could see him carefully running through the words he had to choose from and hesitating to pick the right ones. She wondered whether it was a quality of his, or a fault of hers. Whether he was the type of person to worry over making mistakes or whether she'd made him feel that way. "…more than that, for you,"

Glad to hear it.

So here they were, again. Trains colliding, broken pieces of glass trying to fit together despite missing an uncountable number of tiny shards. She didn't have a name for it and didn't want to give it one. He'd picked her up, or maybe she'd jumped – she didn't recall because things were starting to run together like the colors of a wet painting – and wrapped herself around him like the life raft he was. Somewhere along the way he'd backed her up against a tree trunk, holding her up while she clung to him with her arms around his shoulders and her mouth on his, refusing to come up for air she felt she didn't need.

Same drill, different day, and nowhere near as nice. The two of them had her to thank for that.

Then again, she hadn't come here for nice.

She'd come out here to dodge the shitshow going on inside her head, convinced despite all reason and evidence that her feelings couldn't catch her if she ran fast enough. She couldn't say she hadn't gotten what she wanted. It didn't just quiet the thoughts she didn't want to hear from, went far beyond drowning them out. It looped a fucking piano wire around their necks and dragged them away kicking.

The gun in her hand that lost three bullets but somehow became much heavier. The blood and the crying girl and wait wait wait, the unambiguous proof that he was begging for his life when she shot him dead. The two bodies they left to the animals, after moving them deeper into the woods so as not to leave a trail. They followed her, as hard as she tried to leave them behind. But then she'd taken the fireworks and butterflies of their first night, heated it all to a boiling point and mainlined it straight into her veins. And just like that, all of it was lost. Thrown away in a haze of lip biting and hair grabbing and body heat.

She looked at herself and thought about a flooded beach she'd seen once. Deserted and littered with downed trees and broken chairs. Pilings of shattered wood and drowned umbrellas and dead things. A cloudy disaster no one wanted to visit, herself included. Her only saving grace was the rising water, pouring in over everything about her that made her damaged so she could at least pretend not to be such a mess. At high tide she looked normal from a distance and it could only be seen as the lie it was by those unfortunate enough to be close to her.

She wanted to dive in head-first, whatever it took to get away from everything she was above the surface. She wanted to forget, to be submerged, dark and freezing as the water was because it was a small price to pay. She wanted to be oblivious. Weightless and cold and unafraid of the fact that she wasn't able to breathe-

-but life is for the living-

So she did, and she was, before he muttered, "Wait," and pulled away from her, breathing hard and taking the tide with him. Taking away the last resort she had for fixing her problem without fixing it.

Wait for what? She couldn't think of a good answer to her own question, not in the seconds she spent trying. She didn't want to.

"What?" She heard the impatience in her own voice and hoped he'd hear it too. Hoped he'd drop whatever he was about to bring up and take what she was offering while it was still on the table. She hadn't expected him to interrupt, or argue, or ask her anything. She was trying to give him what he'd wanted because at the same time it would give her what she wanted – needed, maybe – from him. She'd dropped it into his lap; every time she'd been here, with every person she'd been here with, they'd gone along with it without any questions. She'd never met anyone – any man she could think of – who wouldn't.

She didn't want to talk. Talking freed her mind to wander, when there were too many places it was unsafe to go. The people and things she didn't want to think about were a minefield, placed so densely around her thoughts that any step in any direction would have her losing her mind. Writhing in the aftermath of doing something very stupid that she couldn't take back. She didn't want to talk, didn't want to listen, didn't want to hear. She wanted to feel arms around her and hear running water roaring in her ears so she wouldn't have to think.

"Is now really…the time to do this?"

"Look, if you don't want to…"

"No, no, I do. Don't think I…" He shook his head, frustrated enough that she didn't think for a second it was at anyone but her. "I-"

"Then what's the problem?" Whatever it was, she couldn't think of any reason it couldn't wait. She could hear it later. Unless it had something to do with her. If that was the case, she didn't want to hear it ever.

"Amelia, come on," he said, sounding like he was on the verge of rolling his eyes.

"Fine," she said, her voice coming out higher than she'd meant it to. She braced her hands on his shoulders and let herself down, hopping to the ground and crushing dead leaves beneath her feet. "You're not into it, clearly. I got it." She wasn't about to push, or pry, or ask more than once. She reacted badly – impulsively, violently, preemptively – to having her own boundaries crossed. Stepping over those set by others – that was one thing she didn't do.

"Stop, hold on." He turned to follow her when she gently shouldered past him. "You know that's not it. You know what this is really about,"

She did. And she wouldn't be admitting it to him anytime soon. She turned around sharply, meeting him face-to-face and surprising him into stopping short. She hadn't meant to startle him; her own movements were more abrupt than she was used to. She had too much energy and no idea where it had come from. It had her hands unsteady, her thoughts quick and impatient, and her legs burning to sprint somewhere far away.

"People are probably looking for us."

"You're not okay. We can all see it."

"Congratulations." She wasn't done, not at first. The rising panic in her chest had her feeling defensive when she hadn't been attacked. It urged her to resort to sarcasm, her cheapest defense mechanism. She had to stop herself from asking him if he wanted a cookie for figuring out the obvious, worried that if she was mean enough he wouldn't kiss her again. "I said I just needed you to wait while I figure things out. And I'm done…doing that… so you don't have to wait anymore." She fought the urge to shrug. "Alright?"

"That's not what you meant. I know that's not what you meant."

Amelia almost threw her hands up, exasperated and long out of patience. "It is if you go with it,"

"Are you serious? I'm not just gonna…" Nick cut himself off, maybe because like her, he felt particular words were better left unsaid. That, or they were too hard to say. "Amelia, you need…some kind of help that…this…isn't gonna give you."

She started walking away and talking to him at the same time, sensible choices being the least of her concerns. "I think I'm-" she stopped doing both when he reached for her, catching her by the arm and guiding her to turn back around.

"-come on, don't be like that-"

"-I think I'm the one to judge what kind of help I need."

No you don't. Because you're not.

"I don't-" He stopped himself again, and she was caught between feeling sorry for dragging him into this – sorry for every time he tried to tell her something he didn't seem ready to say – and thinking it was his own fault that he hadn't figured it out yet. She couldn't help that he hadn't picked up the secret from her: that the easiest way to avoid this was to avoid talking at all. "You think I've never done this before? It won't make you feel any better." She could see thoughts running by behind his eyes, unpleasant memories that meant she may have had more in common with him than she already thought. "You just…feel worse when it's over."

"I don't think I can feel any worse than I do." She regretted the words after they'd come out. Not because they weren't true but because the world around her would, if anything, take that as a challenge. She'd take it as a challenge – that small-

-"small." It's fucking enormous-

- part of herself that liked to seek out all things self-destructive like she needed something inside her to break in order to be whole.

He brought a hand up to the side of her face, touching her along her jawline, similar to the way Del had tried to and at the same time nothing like it. He ran a thumb over her cheek and frowned at her like he was trying to put together a puzzle with missing pieces, solve a Rubix cube in black and white, knowing it was likely impossible and a waste of his time but hadn't given up on it yet for some reason she couldn't think of.

And he didn't say anything, for a moment. Maybe he had figured it out.

His hand trailed down her neck, stopping when his fingertips were on her collarbone and his palm was flat over her heart. She watched his face change just as she was wondering how he'd react if she kissed him again then and there, not because she wanted to be distracted but because he was looking at her in a way that made it hard to think about anything else.

"Jesus, your heart is beating…way too fast. Have you been like this all day?"

"I don't know," Amelia answered sharply, quickly, but honestly. She had no idea, and probably wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't noticed for her. "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to calm down-"

"I'm calm-"

"-you're not-"

"I'm calm."

"-calm, Amelia. You're not." He raised his voice just enough to get her to listen, seeming to know that hearing and listening were different things and at the moment she was doing one and not the other. "You're panicking."

The fuck does that mean? Before she could ask in as harsh a tone as she could manage, his hands were on her shoulders again. He took one of her wrists – her left – and brought it up, turning it until her own hand was placed flat on her chest, where his had been. Like she was saluting the flag with the wrong hand.

"What are you-"

"Just trust me-"

"-I don't need you to-"

"-this helps. Listen."

She did. Only when she stopped raising her voice to him, stopped defending herself from someone who was trying to help her, not hurt her did she start to feel her own heartbeat, pounding away against her palm hard enough that she realized why she'd felt close to passing out earlier.

"It's happened to me." Nick told her, hands in his pockets and making her wish he'd touch her again, now that he'd stopped trying. "Sarah does it, sometimes. This is, uh…what you do. You count. And-and…" Amelia wanted to look elsewhere, was about to start darting her eyes between everything around and behind him when she realized he was just as, if not far more uncomfortable. He was looking away, looking to the trees behind her and down to his shoes like he was doing it just for the sake of glancing around when they both knew better. "You breathe. In time with the counting. It helps."

"It helps." She repeated, numb and doubtful.

He nodded.

Her first thought was bullshit. But apparently not bullshit enough for her to count her heartbeats until she reached ten. Then ten again. Then twenty. She didn't bother to breathe with it, but the counting preoccupied her. She was too busy keeping track to remember what had her so on edge. She wondered how long she could keep it that way.

"Um-" Nick broke the silence. "I'll be…back at the camp, if you…need anything." She answered with a nod. No talking. Not yet. She listened as he left, his footfalls in the brush creating a second rhythm, alternating and inconsistent with the one pounding away beneath her palm. She tried to count them both at once, switching between them every time one interrupted the other. It was impossible, but not frustrating. A tedious distraction. Peaceful chaos.

When she was alone, she breathed in for a count of five. She breathed again, trying to make it for a full count of ten.

Silence. Birds. A gentle, freezing cold breeze. And nothing else. There was something else, maybe. In the distance. Far away from her. Too far away to be heard. Breathe. Count up to thirty. Breathe. Count back down.

Ten minutes later, she rejoined the group. She sat down by her sister and didn't say a word. Clementine didn't ask her anything; they waited until the group was ready to move, and got up when it was time to leave with them.

Twenty minutes after that, Nick caught up with her as the group walked. Asked her if she was going to be alright.

She lied again.