A/N: Thank you to BHBrowne for beta reading. His writing is rad and his Walking Dead stories are a great place to go for new Clementine-related content when you get tired of mine.
Amelia whispered quietly enough that she was the only one who heard, a near-silent curse that turned to fog in the air as she said it. She stepped through the crowd that had gathered on the porch, slid past Rebecca, stepped around Luke's outstretched arm, pulled her wrist out of Nick's grip as he tried to hold her back because what was she looking at-
It was another dream. A detailed illusion her imagination conjured up to bludgeon her over the head with. It wasn't the first time she'd seen things in her dreams, certainly wasn't the first she'd seen that made her want to retreat back into her nightmares – the memories she avoided at all costs because the way in was easier to find than the way out.
It was, however, the first she couldn't tell apart from reality.
She thought she'd been awake, didn't know how and when she fell unconscious and was trying to remember. Adrenaline snaked its way through her veins, ice cold and heart-pounding as she realized Nick wasn't losing it, Nick didn't know what losing it was because he didn't think he was seeing Clementine speak to a long-dead friend. That was all her.
She stared daggers, stepped forward despite wanting to run in the other direction, disappear into the forest where she at least knew she would only find walkers. She drowned her thoughts in radio static and advanced on the three people in front of her, staring down the barrels of two rifles and a shotgun, held by a man and a woman and someone in between them who looked like-
He looked real enough to touch. Stooped down into a crouch with a hand on Clementine's shoulder and warm eyes and a heavily bearded smile. Clementine was still speaking, mid-sentence in some explanation Amelia barely heard despite the fact that her sister was right in front of her, muffled and distant, "-something you need to know about-"
He looked up. Dropped his smile as he saw her and stood. Put both hands back on his gun like she was the thing that didn't belong, the person whose presence here was cause for alarm.
Maybe she had it backwards. Maybe she was the hallucination in his head.
He spoke, and his voice was exactly as she remembered it in every way. "Holy-"
Amelia crouched in the hay, propped on her toes and fingertips, crushing fistfuls of straw in shaking hands and repeating in her adrenaline-soaked brain like a broken record-
There's one of him and two of us there's one of him and two of us there's one of him and
It didn't do much.
Footsteps came closer. Slowly, not because he was careful but because he was deliberate and broken and found some part of this funny.
"I know you're in here…"
She pressed herself up against the stable wall, turning until she faced the opening he would have use if he wanted to get in.
One of him and two of us one of him and-
He did what she'd hoped for and led with the gun, sticking the long barrel of the rifle in first. She stabbed a foot out and kicked it out of his grip, not completely but enough to force him to point it elsewhere. She stood up and lunged, hands out as if her fingers were claws and teeth bared because they were her only weapons and screaming because if he made it through her and Kenny he'd be moving on to the meat freezer where her sister hid.
He reached, trying to regain control of the gun and succeeding just enough to fire a shot into the ceiling-
-shattered wood, splinters flying-
-before Kenny wrenched it out of his hands.
He didn't waste any time, and as if Amelia needed to be reminded that he was fucked in the head, he wrapped both hands around her throat, completely undeterred by the fact that he'd been disarmed. To any normal person, that fight was over and done, but not to him and so not to Amelia, who found it hard to think clearly, to decide what to do while watching him choke her with a smile, slowly spreading.
She reached for her own neck, trapped a single index finger in her fist and in one sharp motion, vicious and rage-fueled-
-you dismembered my friend alive-
-made it point back at him at a ninety-degree angle. Snap. He let her go, and as Amelia dropped to the barn floor she thought-
-you put him on a dinner table you sick fucking-
-he might have screamed but she didn't hear it over the gunshot.
She only heard it after.
She could hear his howling over her own long, ragged inhale, having dropped on all fours and wanting nothing more than to get back up and as far away from him as possible. She didn't think he would stay down. He was a rabid animal; reason and pain were languages he didn't understand and a panicked throbbing in her chest told her the bullet lodged in his thigh was only going to make him angry.
Kenny chambered another round as she stood. The man writhing on the ground unexpectedly fell quiet, and the hard and unforgiving sound of shifting metal was suddenly the loudest thing in the barn.
Rainfall from outside.
"You see? You understand now, don't you? You can have me…" He said, staring straight down the barrel Kenny leveled to his face. He held his own leg – one of his fingers pointing out and back at an unnatural angle – as blood gushed from his upper thigh.
"What did you do with my family, you sick fuck?!"
"It's how the world works now…give part of yourself so others can live!"
"I am not fuckin' around with you! Tell me where they are or so fuckin' help me…"
"You gotta keep me alive…if you kill me, the meat gets tainted. You can't eat it…"
Kenny didn't respond. He gripped the loaded rifle in his hands. He glared with a look of disgust harsh enough to melt steel but he didn't answer and Amelia didn't know why. At first.
She found herself looking back to the freezer. Thinking that coming out here was a mistake, that she should have stayed behind with Clementine and Lilly should be the one making the decision in front of her.
He deserved it. There was no doubt in her mind about that. They all did.
But that wasn't the same as wanting to do it. As being able to. She didn't know, she didn't know, every time she asked herself all she could say was she didn't know. Of the three adults in that barn-
-not including the corpse-
- a list to which she barely belonged, she wasn't the one to ask-
BANG.
Shattered skull. Fountain of blood. Grey matter and a basketball-sized imprint of dark red covered the stable wall behind him. He slumped forward, still and absent and dripping blood into his own lap.
Kenny threw the empty rifle to the floor, as disgusted with it as he was with second skull he'd destroyed in the last ten minutes-
He said something, maybe to her, but she didn't hear over the sound of her own heartbeat.
"-shit…Amelia?"
Wide eyes. Confusion. Maybe even fear.
She didn't get the same fond smile and loving eyes. She was a surprise but not a pleasant one. Clementine was a good surprise by every meaning of the word, a silver lining, an unexpected moment of sunshine in the middle of a hailstorm. Amelia knew by the way he still hesitated to lower his gun that her presence was an impossibility. One exception in the universal rules of the new reality they'd all become accustomed to. It didn't make sense. Wasn't supposed to happen. The way Kenny was looking at her couldn't have been far from the way her new group would have had looked at her given the chance this is why you didn't tell them.
She moved forward, too fast to look natural but it was all she could do to stop herself from sprinting at him, risking scaring one of the many armed people around her-
-Nick-
-into firing. He hadn't fully lowered his gun yet but it was the last thing on her mind he would never shoot me-
-Nick is more likely to shoot me than-
-and she almost shoved Clementine out of the way because she needed to speak before he did.
She hooked an arm around him and pulled him close by the neck in something far too aggressive, too urgent to be called a hug. She whispered, a collision of words running into each other because she was too frantic to separate them, but the message was clear:
"Don't say anything don't say anything don't just don't say it don't they don't know just don't-"
He dropped his gun, letting it fall with a thud on the porch wood. Hands gripped her shoulders, pushing her back and holding her there at arm's length. Kenny looked over her face, looking like he was in shock and in pain and like touching her had done nothing to convince him she was real.
She shook her head. She wanted to explain, to tell him to stay quiet, to ask his questions later just whatever you do don't ask them here.
"They don't know." This was all that came out.
His grip on her shoulders tightened, just enough to tell her what was coming had she been focused enough to guess. He pulled her in – yanked her, really – in a motion sudden enough that for a split second she expected to be crushed. But his arms surrounded her shoulders gently in a hug, a real one. One with sincerity and warmth and meaning behind it, not just frantic warning. It was comforting in the way familiar things were, a moment of relief in a sea of strangers and death. He covered the back of her head with one hand like she was much younger and smaller than she was and it resurfaced something she'd buried a long time ago, a voicemail left on her cell phone she never would have deleted if she'd known what was to come your mom and I will be back in time for you to go on your Spring Break trip keep an eye on Clementine and we'll see you soon we love you-
Amelia hugged him back, maybe squeezing tighter than she meant to but couldn't help it with the way her throat was starting to choke up don't cry shut up shut up-
Kenny let her go and held her at arm's length again. He smiled this time. Amelia squeezed her eyes shut and looked away. She felt her cheeks start to burn when her breath hitched, forcibly burying a sob deep into her chest, holding it there until it died and withered away so she could breathe again.
He was still smiling at her when she looked back up. He'd seen it, there was no doubting that. But he wasn't about to tell, or judge.
Another secret of hers he seemed prepared to keep.
Her thoughts wandered behind her to her heavily-armed friends, and she knew without looking none of them had lowered their weapons yet-
"-dammit, Amelia, are you listening?"
She wasn't. She was watching the blood trickle down in a stream, thin and pitter-patter and soaking into the hay that coated the floor. It was starting to make a puddle.
She finally met his eyes. Her head was empty, save for a single thought. Against everything insider her that told her not to, she had the urge to share it and lacked the energy to stop herself.
"We never should have come here."
Kenny didn't answer. He breathed. Loudly. Still buzzing with adrenaline he had to burn off. He checked the gun. Found he'd used the only bullet. Threw it aside.
"Yeah, well it's too fuckin' late for that."
"You didn't have to do that." Amelia breathed, listening to her own words tumble out like auditory vomit, about to be followed by real vomit, if the twisting hollowness in her stomach was to be believed.
"Amelia, don't you start."
Yes. Don't start this again, she thought. Not after we just did it. Different weapon, different corpse, different murder. Same shit. Same day. Death was permanent. It was done. Kenny was ending a fight their group didn't start. These people brought this on themselves.
That was what she told herself.
Without a word, Kenny walked to the corner and took a large, curved meat hook from the wall.
"Kenny, what are you going to-?"
"-Amelia,"
She blinked. Kenny's hand still on her shoulder, she looked back behind her to see guns lowered to the floor. Faces covered in blood and dirt. She felt a small elbow in her hip and looked down at Clementine, then back to Kenny. People seemed to be waiting. On her?
"What?"
"I said, let's get everyone inside."
She nodded her agreement, relieved to be able to avoid words.
The other man spoke up from behind Kenny, making Amelia realize she'd forgotten Kenny wasn't alone. "Great," Amelia looked him over from a distance, listening for the sarcasm that accompanied that word more often than not. "I just started dinner."
She didn't know what to think. The man was either dedicated to his mockery, winding them up, waiting for someone to bite so he could slap them down with the punch-line, great, I just started dinner, why don't you all come in for a three-course and a dip in our hot tub full of champagne-
That, or he meant it. But nobody ever meant it.
"Are you sure you don't mind?" Carlos asked carefully. The idea of food made Amelia want the answer, badly, and she was glad Carlos spoke before she did. She would have phrased it…differently.
Are you fucking with us?
"It'll storm soon. Please, come in."
And he smiled. It was subtle and empathetic, and Amelia knew he was a stranger but at the same time felt he wasn't. She told herself it was because they had a mutual friend – that he knew Kenny, and this other woman in a teal sweatshirt who made her think of a school nurse. She tried to convince herself it was because she found it hard to be afraid of people wearing sweaters-
-Luke-
-when the truth was he seemed too nice to be any trouble. A willingness to share with strangers without even asking questions was the kind of nice that dangerous people didn't know how to fake.
That seemed good enough for her group. The others made their way inside, and while people passed her on either side she didn't move, her shoes planted on the porch wood like they were nailed down. She watched Kenny, trying to show herself one more time that he was real. She was awake. She didn't make this up.
The others could see him too.
She watched him go to the lodge's glass double doors and hold one open for her sister, and watched them both stop in the doorway and look back for her. She waved. I'll catch up.
Clementine understood. She looked up to Kenny, nodded and gestured for them to go in, told him the same thing Amelia had told her.
The door closed behind them. Amelia had expected to be alone, and was vaguely aware that she wasn't. She didn't have to look to know who stood just behind her.
Nick cleared this throat. "So, what, uh…" A pause. "What was that about?"
Her answer was too brief. Too simple. Numb. "I thought he died."
"Oh. Shit…" He looked out over the balcony, trying to look somewhere else. "I feel like an asshole for…" His hands fidgeted with his rifle; Amelia listened to quietly shifting metal, rounds rattling in the chamber. "Sorry."
She shook her head again. The numbness started to give way, sparked into clarity as reality sunk in. Took its time doing it, but it did. "I-I told Clementine he died…because…"
She knew what she saw, years ago. She remembered because she couldn't forget. The last day she saw Kenny was burned into her memory as permanently as every other goodbye that was said before she was ready.
She wanted to know how he survived. She never saw another way out in that alley. She'd looked for one like her life depended on it because it had. The question was like an itch in the dead center of her back. It got worse the more she thought about it, drawing a blank every time she asked herself how he did it.
But, strange as it was, between the two of them, she was the one with more explaining to do.
"I feel like you're leaving something out."
The comment was unexpected. More candid than she was used to from him. She couldn't find words right away and had to force herself not to stutter.
"I told you. I thought he was dead."
Nick's hands buried themselves in his pockets, his gun hung over one shoulder. She watched his thoughts cross his face as he hesitated and then got over it, more quickly than she'd have liked. "That's not how I'd react if I saw someone I thought'd died."
True. She paused, forced her words to come out sounding like she'd thought them through. Like they weren't a filler phrase notorious for its convenient use as a copout.
"It's complicated."
"Usually when people say it's complicated, it's real fuckin' simple."
Amelia sighed heavily she could stop herself. Might've felt her eyelid twitch. The spark of anger came on fast and unexpected because in nearly three years she hadn't met someone who refused to buy the half-assed excuses she sold. Avoidance and non-answers always worked when she used them. Or they used to.
It was irritating.
And from the look on his face, he wasn't sorry for it.
"It's not."
"You sure about that?"
Maybe it could have been, if she let it. If she cut away all the circumstance and mixed emotions and disbelief, she was left with simplicity. That she told herself she was happy to see her old friend, but when it came time to talk with him she decided to stand out in the cold for no reason she could give.
It didn't matter whether Nick was right. She'd never admit it to him either way.
"I don't know what to tell you." Ease up, she warned herself again. Calm. Down. Or he'll figure it out. She took a breath that shook more than she'd have liked it to. "It's…a surprise. I don't know what to think yet."
Nick hesitated. She wasn't any better at guessing his thoughts than she had been when they met. She watched the idea occur to him. Watched him second-guess whether it was a good idea to say it, then watched him remember that he didn't care.
It wasn't lost on her that he still cared enough to tread lightly when he did it. "Did he…do something?" He paused, trying to knock gently on the door instead of kicking it down. "Did he…hurt you? Or Clementine?"
Amelia blinked through her shock, almost laughed at the best joke she'd heard all day. She shook her head, relieved that for once the truth and the answer she wanted to give were the same thing. "No. Never."
She hoped Nick had inherited his lie-detecting skills from his uncle. He seemed to mull it over; she took the confusion on his face to mean he believed her, but still wasn't satisfied with where that left them. So she offered something else. Another truth that she hadn't planned on sharing that day or any other, but she hoped would be enough for him to let this go.
"Clem and I would both be dead without him."
"What aren't you telling me?"
Enough that the question was almost comical. So many places to start that she'd never be able to choose, which was fine by her.
"I just need a minute." No response from him, which she knew wasn't because he didn't know what was coming. Of the handful of issues that existed between them, so far miscommunication wasn't one of them. At least not when they did it on purpose. "Alone."
There was that look again. Dissatisfied and frustrated and resisting the urge to do what people like the two of them did best – push. Persistently. As hard and as far as they had to to get what they needed. To stay safe. To keep others safe. Amelia didn't like seeing it on him, and turned away. She faced the porch balcony, overlooking the pine-dotted slopes, and gripped the railing, thinking of all things that she should be careful not to work a splinter into her palm.
Things were quiet for a minute, both around her and in her own head, for which she was grateful. She wondered if Nick being out here with her had anything to do with it. She remembered vague, heated thoughts in heated moments, about two broken pieces that don't quite fit together but look less broken when they try. Another damaged mind to stop the volatile runaway train of her own.
She heard the zipper and the rustling of fabric while she was distracted by her own farfetched ideas, and was busy telling herself to let them go. Nick's jacket settled over her shoulders, heavy and soft. She didn't look but she listened to the words fogging up the air just behind her.
"If you're staying out here for a while…here. Come find me if you need me."
She nodded, to no one in particular.
When they do something nice for you, you have to say thank you.
"Thanks."
Then there were footsteps, and she was alone. Just like she asked to be.
She didn't like it.
She counted to twenty. Then to fifty. Then to fifty again. Killing time, but doing it slowly. Stabbing each individual second and leaving it to bleed out at her feet. A stupid thing to do, she knew, when time on this earth was something she and everyone around her had both too much and not enough of.
When she'd decided she'd wasted enough, she turned around and went inside.
Everything around her changed the moment she crossed the doorway. Like she'd stepped through a threshold, a tangible line between one world and another. She'd been surrounded by silence. Isolation. White hills and dim skies. Then there was light. Heat. Colors. Noise. People.
Fucking Christmas music.
All of it came out of nowhere fast enough to knock her sideways. She stopped at the bottom step of the entryway and considered walking back outside just to experience it again. She was greeted by a friendly face and a familiar red sweater at the top of the stairs before she could act on it.
"Amelia, right? I'm glad you're here."
She tried not to look like she was doubting the sincerity of his smile or accusing his obvious kindness of being fake. But when someone had a way of saying things like I'm glad you're here and convincing her that he actually meant it, it was hard to keep the disbelief from showing on her face.
"My name's Walter. Please, come in. You must be cold."
She was. The extra jacket helped. She liked it more than her own because it was already warm when she put it on. It reminded her that the people around her still had beating hearts and body heat – and that at least one of them was willing to share his with her.
That and it smelled like him. Familiar. Comforting.
Jesus… Amelia rolled her eyes, provoked only by her own thoughts and her ability to feel shame. Get a grip.
Getting a grip wasn't the problem. She already had one. One made of iron and attachment and she didn't know how to let go.
Walter threw a quick glance over his shoulder and lowered his voice just a touch. "I doubt he'd admit it, but I think Kenny was starting to worry." He waved a hand toward the bench just inside the doorway. Amelia recognized the backpack she and Clem shared. A small armory of guns, including her own. "You can leave your weapons over there with the others."
"Right. I…" She shook her head, considering herself lucky that she was explaining Hilda's loss to Walter, and not to its original owner.
Walter saw her hesitancy, and misunderstood. "I understand why you might be reluctant. But I promise you won't have any need for them here."
She believed him.
"I don't have any." She said, numb in the fingertips. And the face. "I had one but I lost it."
"Well, in that case, welcome. I know Kenny can't wait to talk to you."
Another voice. Just as warm and twice as familiar. "We talkin' about me?"
Kenny came to a stop at the top of the stairs; this time his smile was warm and immediate. If nothing else, she couldn't say he didn't recover fast.
Walter grinned. "Only good things,"
"Sure, Walt." He chuckled, and nodded toward the bench, arms crossed. "Weapons on the bench, kid. It wasn't easy getting your friends to drop their shit, I'll tell you that."
She could imagine. She took a breath, astounded all over again that the two of them were in the same room despite all the reasons she never thought it would happen again. She smiled. Almost laughed.
"I'm clean."
"You?" Kenny crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow almost as grey and thick as his beard. "Bet you got a switchblade in each sock."
"Joke's on you. I don't even have socks."
He laughed. She didn't think her joke had been that funny, but he gave a genuine laugh anyway.
Walter seemed like the type to appreciate laughter, even – maybe especially – if it was for no real reason. "You two must have some catching up to do."
Neither of the two answered.
You could say that.
She dangled her feet in front of the open fire, legs hanging over the arm of her stuffed chair. The heat penetrated through the soles of her shoes and warmed her entire body in minutes. She could feel her cheeks going red. If she looked to the other side of the room, she could see Clem. Digging through boxes of Christmas decorations and trading brightly colored ornaments with Sarah. Hanging candy canes and stars on a tree that didn't look like it had any space left. Not that Clem wouldn't find a way to do it anyway. She looked happy. Excited about something, for once. Amelia could've watched from a distance for a long time.
She was interrupted only occasionally by a cough from Kenny.
He took a breath, about to speak, and let it out in a sigh. "Well." It was a pleasant sigh. One he followed up with a smile like someone had just told him a good joke. Or he'd just come up with one. "I'll just come out and say it. You should be dead."
Amelia couldn't stop herself from smiling back. Receiving news that hit like a train and taking it in stride – with humor, even – was something she'd never figured out how to do. Everything was dark to her. Everything was life-threatening or about to be followed by its worst possible outcome, which she had to be ready for. Being around people who smiled about things was different. Uplifting.
That, and she didn't think she'd ever see Kenny happy again.
"That makes two of us."
"Look, Amelia, before we talk, I just…I gotta ask. Me, I got lucky. Found a sewer grate and got away from those things underground. Almost bit it a dozen times over, but I made it. But you…"
"Just-" Amelia turned to sit upright in the chair, putting her feet flat on the floor and leaning in, elbows resting on her knees. "Just keep your voice down, please."
Kenny threw a half-hearted look over his shoulder checking that no one else in the lobby was within earshot. Amelia didn't bother. She'd checked every thirty seconds since they sat down.
He seemed to disagree with her choice, but lowered his voice anyway.
"I saw you. I saw the bite."
"Do you have to use the word?" Amelia whispered sharply. She was hoping for a conversation vague enough that even if they were overheard, no one in her group would know exactly what it was about. They would have to ask her. Which would give her a chance to lie. Another necessary evil she would choose for a good reason. Or so she told herself.
She pulled herself back. "Sorry." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I just-"
"Haven't told 'em." Kenny finished, leaning back in his seat. "I figured." There it was again. The look on his face might've been judgment, might've been something else. May or may not have been directed at her. She wanted to know what he was thinking but didn't want to ask.
She pushed a fist in her her own hand, cracking all five fingers at once. She didn't mind explaining. As long as they kept it fast and quiet. So she decided to give him the short version, just above a whisper.
"I got sick. I passed out. I woke up."
"Just like that," He repeated slowly. Squinting at her. "You 'woke up'."
"It surprised me too." It's not like I planned it. Or asked for it.
Did she?
For the first time in years, she remembered that somewhere between the selfish relief and morbid fear for Clementine's life, she'd stopped screaming just long enough to wish for a second chance. Silently in her own head, she made a promise to nothing and no one that if she had the chance to do it over, she wouldn't fuck it up again. Not ever.
She did ask for this. She didn't think there was a chance in hell she would get it. But she asked.
Kenny leaned back in his seat on the couch, slouching against the cushion. "Well, shit."
Yeah. Shit.
No one spoke for a minute. Amelia didn't mind, and she went back to listening to the fire crackle and burn. She'd forgotten that Kenny wasn't one to demand explanations. Which suited her just fine, as someone who hated giving them.
He cleared his throat. "Clem filled me in. Told me where you ended up, how you got here." He went quiet. "I'm sorry it's been so hard on you girls. I wish I'd found you sooner."
Amelia spoke to her own hands, not to Kenny. But she meant what she said. "It wasn't your fault."
"I looked for you."
"I know you did."
"She says they're on the run?" He shook his head in disbelief. "From some guy chasin' you through the mountains?"
She nodded. Again, Kenny didn't seem to want much of an explanation – which suited her well since this time she didn't even have one to give. She had an idea. One she hadn't asked anyone to confirm because she already knew no one would.
"Well I can tell you one thing. You two don't have to worry about that. It ain't your problem anymore."
She frowned. Tried not to look like she was thinking too hard and went with a nod. "Yeah." She should have liked the way that sounded. She knew it was because her new friends and their problems were a package deal. She'd already accepted both, and didn't want to take the decision back. At least she didn't think she did.
No, she didn't.
He leaned forward in his seat. He didn't ask right away, leaving a five-second pause for Amelia to brace herself for whatever was about to come. "Amelia, do you trust these people?"
"Yes." Without meaning to, she broke eye contact. She kicked herself, realizing it only after it was too late.
"That's not very convincing, darlin'."
She held back a frustrated sigh. It wasn't convincing because she wasn't sure if she meant it. She tried. But trusting one or two wasn't the same as trusting them all. "I don't know what to tell you."
"Did something happen?" Yes. There was a shed and Pete cut off his own leg and another shed and two strangers and a bridge- "You can tell me."
"We've been on the road for five days. A lot happened."
"I heard."
Amelia's eyes darted from Kenny to her sister; her back was turned and she was trying to hang an ornament on a branch just an inch too tall for her, even on her tiptoes. Sarah plucked the hook from her fingers with a smile, and hung it for her.
Amelia looked back to Kenny, and thought too late that she should at least try to keep the alarm from showing on her face. "Heard what?"
Kenny had followed her eyes to Clementine. "You were always willing to do whatever it takes to keep her safe. I've always been proud of you for that." She waited for him to say something else. Add something to the contrary because that wasn't all he had to say. He didn't.
Maybe Nick had been right. She could choose to make things complicated or let it be simple. Clementine was alive. She might not have been if Amelia had chosen differently.
"I know it ain't easy. Tellin' yourself you did the right thing when…I wouldn't say this in front of her, but…you did good, Amelia. Don't forget that."
Amelia tried to think back to the things her group had said to her. About her. The reasons they disagreed, the reasons they were angry and the reasons they took her gun away. She couldn't remember any, at the moment.
"Tell me about 'em." Kenny eyed the small crowd of people gathered about the lobby. Most had their backs turned. Amelia could see Sarah and Sarita decorating the Christmas tree by the staircase. Carlos seemed to be mid-conversation Nick. Nick was looking out through the window while Carlos was talking and Amelia could tell from here that he wasn't listening, and she silenced a laugh. "That doctor fella the one in charge?"
"Uh." Amelia brought herself back to their conversation. She'd been asked who was in charge. Or something close to it. "Luke makes a lot of the decisions."
"Farm boy's callin' the shots?" Kenny turned around to look again. Amelia did the same. She swept the room for broad shoulders in orange and didn't see them. "Huh." Kenny leaned back into the couch and fixed Amelia with a scrutinizing look. She recognized it, and didn't know what he was expecting her to say.
"What?"
"What about that punk in the baseball cap?" Kenny nodded in the general direction.
"What?" Amelia repeated herself, feeling dumb and redundant but doing it all the same.
"He say somethin' while you were alone out on the porch?"
Disbelief and non-answers were all she could fall back on. She couldn't believe what he was asking, let alone find something to answer him with. "Are you serious?"
"What about farm boy?"
Her words came out sharper than she'd meant them to. "What about him?"
He looked like he'd been about to say something else, but dropped it. Probably because he remembered enough about Amelia to know that if she was keeping a secret it wouldn't be pried out of her like this, no matter how persistent he was. Kenny was one of the few people who matched her on that front. As stubborn as she was about keeping secrets, she already knew he was just as hard to convince – even when there was no secret to keep.
"Look, I know you don't know them…"
Kenny leaned forward in his seat. Lowered his voice again but looked directly at her without a hint of a smile.
"Either one of them lays a hand on you, you let me know."
Amelia's thoughts pinballed between telling him no one here was a threat and demanding to know why he thought she needed his help-
-all while her vindictive subconscious hissed something along the lines of three days too late-
If she wasn't capable of spotting dangerous people and dealing with them when they needed to be dealt with – twice, in the last week – she and Clem would have died a long time ago. She tried not to take offense to it, knowing it wasn't what Kenny meant. Of the two points, one of them was far more important to make.
"They're good people. They're not dangerous." She could tell without a word from him that Kenny wasn't about to budge.
"And you're the expert, with you're whole five days of knowin' them."
She thought so. Ever since the world went to shit, as far as she'd seen, people weren't patient enough to hide who they really were for an entire week. When they were the type Kenny was talking about, the type to lock them in a freezer or stalk them through a city or kidnap a child…they made it clear much faster than that.
"-growin' up in rural Georgia, you're taught-"
"-think very carefully about the next words you-"
"-so whaddya say, Amy? Should we just kill these folks and take all their-"
The train ran away again. She put the brakes on hard until she got sparks and red rails. Now wasn't the time to reach back into her mind for those people. Not now, not ever. They were in her past or in the ground, where they belonged.
Why she had such a hard time leaving them there was a question for another day.
"Kenny. Listen to me." Amelia sat forward in her seat. Almost stood up. She wouldn't be misunderstood, not even by someone whose opinions were as resolute as Kenny's. For a split second, she was back in Macon, arguing with Kenny over some disagreement the group had been struggling with for days, fighting in circles because they'd hit the impasse that they always came to when they argued. "You don't need to expect the worst from them. I already did. They showed me I was wrong."
He considered it. She could see that much. He took a breath. "Alright."
Now she was the one who wasn't convinced. Kenny didn't drop things this easily. She felt something else was needed, and remembered that honesty had a way of paying off, even when she used it in small amounts. "They're my friends. I trust them."
"With your life?"
That wasn't fair. He knew that. That kind of trust wasn't something Amelia handed out freely. She gave it to so few people she wasn't sure she knew how anymore. But she couldn't say it without sounding defensive. Not without admitting she was wrong about her friends, even in some small, indirect way.
"…that's a big jump, Kenny."
"You still trust me with your life?"
Amelia didn't often speak without thinking. There weren't many things she could say without any second thought.
"Of course."
"Doesn't seem that big, then, does it?"
"You know that's not the same thing."
Kenny leaned back and crossed his arms. "These people don't know you survived a bite 'cause you don't trust them enough to tell them." He raised an eyebrow in a way she still hated as much as she did the first time she ever saw him do it. It meant the argument was over, no matter how far from over she wanted it to be. "That says everything I need to know."
Amelia hesitated to answer. This wasn't the first time she'd unintentionally spoken volumes with what she chose not to say.
She felt she'd already done enough, and that talking in circles wouldn't serve to fix any of it. She nodded, and stood up to leave.
"Amelia," the sound of her name stopped her before she got any further. The voice speaking it was kind and warm, not screaming it in panic because of a disaster in the back of a cigarette truck, or shouting at her with a mix of rage and caution by someone who was both furious at her and afraid of her. She turned back to look, and found that Kenny's expression matched the affection in his voice. "I'm real glad to have you two back. I hope you know that."
It brought up a smile that just barely touched the surface.
She told him she would help her sister decorate the tree. She might have even meant it at the time. She'd seen her sister digging through a cardboard box big enough for her to make a fort out of, trading candy canes and snow globes with Sarah. Handing them to the woman Kenny had called Sarita to put them up higher than either of them could reach. All three of them smiled and it looked like the kind of peaceful, quiet fun Amelia hadn't seen or heard in a long time.
But she'd walked right past it – the massive artificial pine reached almost to the ceiling, clear up to the second story – slipping into a quiet hallway before anyone could ask her to stop and help. She might have kept her word if she thought Kenny had heard anything she'd told him about her friends.
He'd heard her. But with Kenny, hearing and believing were two different things. She remembered him well, and knew he rarely did both at the same time.
So instead she found herself tailing him through the kitchen, down the hallway, up the stairs at a distance. Oddly enough, she knew he of all people would understand. She wasn't alone in her trust issues.
He stepped into a room that, unless he'd picked up a habit of talking to himself over the years, which Amelia wouldn't have blamed him for – wasn't empty. He'd arranged for someone to meet him here, far from the lobby where they might be overheard.
She stopped just outside the door, pressing against the frame and trying not to make the floorboards creak they way they always did when she was trying not to get caught in the silence. She'd left her conversation with Kenny certain that, as far as the trust he had for the strangers in his lodge, she'd hurt more than she helped. She'd listen for as long as it took to gauge how much damage she did.
Kenny's words were low. Rushed, but not urgent.
She didn't hear everything from where she stood and couldn't get any closer. Kenny was doing most of the talking. -look, this is gonna be- and –gotta listen to everything I'm gonna- and –need to get in front of this- Walter cut in occasionally, -okay slow down- and – we'll just talk to them-
"-Kenny, relax, I'm sure Luke and his friends-"
The beginnings and ends of their sentences dissolved into nonsense, muffled by the door that stood between them. Pressing her ear up against it didn't do much to help. She strained to hear, and only caught pieces of Kenny's words.
"-need to talk to their people before-"
"-Amelia won't-"
"-by dinner, and we don't need the-"
The mention of her name had her hand on the doorknob before she considered whether she should try to hear more. Turn. Push. Creak.
Kenny looked surprised, if only for a moment. He seemed to remember that he shouldn't have been expecting anything else from her. She walked into the room, looking between him and Walter. She stopped an arm's length away from Kenny and waited for the explanation – the one she was sure Kenny had no choice but to give after being caught like this.
He didn't offer one, so she asked. "What are you talking about?"
Kenny shot Walter a look she didn't understand. "Nothin' you need to worry about right now," he told her.
No fucking way.
"Kenny." You can't be serious. She crossed her arms, amazed and irked that his stubbornness truly had no limits. She stopped herself from swearing out loud, thinking it would make her come off as angrier than she was. Apprehension and aggression were different things to her; though one could turn into the other at the drop of a hat. "I heard my name."
"Amelia," Kenny rested a hand on her shoulder. She fought the urge to brush it off and demand he tell her the truth. She did neither, knowing it wouldn't get her anywhere.
"If there's something going on, I need to know,"
"You've been out there for too long. You're safe here."
She agreed with him on the first. Didn't have a comment on the second.
"Now isn't the time. I'll catch you up later, but you need to trust me on this." He waited for an answer and didn't get one. "You just get to the dining hall and wait for dinner, alright?"
She wanted to believe him. She'd been reminded in the last week that earning trust started with giving it.
But she'd been reminded more times than she could count that when she thought something was wrong, she was usually right. She was familiar with the unease in the pit of her stomach, and she was just as familiar with the tone of someone telling her to back off – no matter how reassuring the words sounded.
Kenny had been away for a long time. But not long enough for Amelia to forget that he was an immovable goddamn object. Knowing she'd heard the truth but not the whole truth didn't change the fact that she couldn't pry the rest of it out of him if she'd been armed with a crowbar.
"You trust me on this, don't you?"
She nodded a yes, unsure of how much she meant it, and did as she was told.
"Right here, girls!" Kenny's hand in the air drew their attention not three steps into the dining hall, each with a bowl of peaches and beans in hand. It looked like he beat Luke to saying the same thing by no more than a second. Luke dropped his hand, looking between Amelia, Clem, and Kenny's table before turning to face forward in his seat. Amelia tried not to look at Nick.
She could've guessed that the two groups would separate. She knew they didn't trust each other even a little. Should have guessed it sooner. Then she and her sister wouldn't have been on the spot, the way they were now.
One table or the other. She hoped she was the only one who thought their choice could be indicative of more than the people they preferred to eat with.
Yeah. No one else thought that.
Clementine fidgeted with her bowl, looking anxiously between their options.
"Split up?"
"There's an idea." Amelia might not have thought of that herself. But she was onboard. Then no one could say they played favorites with one group over the other, at least as a pair.
Clem cleared her throat. Amelia could hear her hesitation. Last time she'd spoken to her alone, she'd seemed happy. Relieved. Comfortable, for the first time in a long time. What was bothering her?
"You should go sit with Luke. And Nick and Sarah…"
Amelia knew an afterthought when she heard it. She thought briefly that she should ask why. She wanted to know, but not as badly as she wanted answers out of Kenny. She had a strong feeling that she had a time limit in which she had to find the truth before something bad happened. Everything else could wait.
"I have to talk to Kenny."
"Are you sure?"
"It's important. Go ahead." Sorry kid. Amelia saw her disappointment, but didn't understand it. If asked to guess, she'd have thought Clem would want to sit with their new friends. She spent the last five days surgically attached to Luke at the hip but didn't want to eat with him now?
One thing at a time.
She repeated it to herself as she sat down across the table from Kenny and the woman who'd met the group outside.
"Amelia, I don't think you met Sarita," Kenny said as she sat down. The woman greeted Amelia with a warm smile, which she tried her best to return.
"It's nice to meet you, honey," she said, in an accent Amelia quickly decided she liked listening to. "Clementine speaks very highly of you, you know."
Amelia smiled again. It faded slowly as she looked back to Kenny and remembered why she'd chosen his table.
"Is Clem gonna join us?" he asked her.
"Maybe later."
Kenny took a huge bite of peaches that could barely be contained in his spoon. "I take it you want to talk about what you heard earlier. Since you're over here lookin' at me like you don't trust me."
Amelia raised an eyebrow. If he thought he gave her a reason not to trust him, that said more than she could with her own words. You said it, not me.
Kenny paused, spoon in the air, mid-bite. He rolled his eyes. He seemed irritated, if only for a second, before he buried it under a smile and a low chuckle. Whether it was genuine or forced, Amelia couldn't tell.
"Don't do the silent thing, Amelia. Drives me nuts."
Amelia didn't know what to tell him. She'd stop the silent glare when they had the conversation he'd tried to avoid twice now.
"There's an explanation for all of it. We just need to have a talk, that's all."
"I'm listening."
"After dinner, darlin'. Trust me. Everything'll be alright."
She believed him. Despite the fact that it went against every habit she'd formed over the last two years, she put her suspicions to rest, if only temporarily. She remembered pushing only got her so far. Especially with Kenny.
She picked up her fork-
"I talked to the kid. What's his name…Luke?"
-and set it down, resting it against the bowl's rim with a tink. "And?" She drummed her fingers on the table, waiting and expecting nothing good.
"Ken," Sarita dragged his name out just a little, implicit with warning. "There's no need…"
"Sarita, we don't know these folks,"
"No, but we know Amelia. And Clementine." Amelia noticed she already used we, and she didn't mind it. "I think we can trust their judgment of character. Their friends seem nice-"
"Gators seem nice, too, 'til one of 'em bites your damn arm off,"
She rolled her eyes, something Amelia guessed she did often. "Kenny,"
He propped an elbow on the table and pointed at Amelia. "How much have they told you about this guy they're runnin' from? 'Cause he wouldn't tell me jack shit."
Amelia's fingers moved faster. Taptaptaptaptap. She broke eye contact and looked away, searching for something interesting she could pretend to be looking at.
Kenny nodded, a grin, of all things, on his face. "They didn't tell you either, did they?"
Amelia picked up her fork again, pretending that her food needed to be stirred more than they needed to finish this conversation.
"Amelia."
"No." She huffed. "They wouldn't tell me." She had an idea. One based on dark suspicion and the process of elimination. One she'd kept to herself because having it confirmed or denied wouldn't have been worth the turmoil it might have caused. Especially if – when – their plan to disappear into the mountains worked. "It's not going to matter when we lose him."
"It's not gonna matter tomorrow." Kenny corrected. "They'll leave in the morning and you and Clem can stay here,"
Sarita nodded. "Absolutely. Honey, you and Clementine can stay with us as long as you want."
"They're stayin' for good,"
"If that's what they want," Sarita looked to Amelia, maybe expecting her to answer. Kenny did it for her.
"Of course they do."
Amelia didn't know how to start a conversation full of things Kenny wasn't going to want to hear. She didn't want their new friends moving on without them any more than her sister did; she didn't know how to get Kenny onboard with an idea he was going to hate.
"About that-"
"This is like a dream. Damn it, I am so happy right now. I can't even tell you!"
Amelia stopped herself and decided to start small. If Kenny knew she was trying to change his mind, then it would never happen.
Amelia folded her arms over the tabletop and leaned forward, lowering her voice. She threw a glance over her shoulder, looking for Nick. He sat next to Pete, and Amelia was relieved to notice the color had returned to his face. One meal and the man already seemed less hollow in the cheeks and under the eyes. They were talking as they ate, at a volume Amelia couldn't hear. Pete even smiled. Once. Briefly.
She pointed a discreet finger over her shoulder at Nick, knowing anyone at their table might be watching. "You know that one saved my life?"
Kenny paused. Scrunched thick eyebrows as he looked over Nick at the other table, frowning like he was trying to remember where he'd seen him before. She wasn't surprised. She hadn't expected his skepticism to disappear just like that. But she was glad to hear it when he said, "No. I didn't know that."
"He pulled me out from under a pile of walkers. And he…" she switched arms, pointing over her other shoulder with a subtle index finger. "Saved Clem."
Kenny blinked. Amelia hoped it was surprise. She hoped it was the look of someone rethinking his first impressions and snap judgments. "He found her out in the woods when we got separated. They took her in until I caught up with her."
And the shed I found her in will never be mentioned here, ever. It was the last thing she needed.
Kenny didn't answer. Amelia waited for him to respond.
"You gotta understand why I don't like this. A bunch of strangers is one thing. But you're runnin' around with a couple a'boys I don't know from a hole in the ground. And neither do you, for that matter."
"You and I were strangers once."
Amelia heard shuffling, dishes clinking, and realized people were getting up. She turned around at the noise and instead of seeing people leaving, she saw her sister up and walking, followed by Luke and Nick. All three were coming for their table. Probably about to take the empty seats on either side of her and Kenny.
She faced forward again and lowered her voice, talking fast to get the words out before her friends were in earshot. "I know what you're expecting of them and it's not who they are so try to be less of a dick. Please."
He seemed to consider it, when Amelia wouldn't have been surprised to see him reject it out of hand. He sighed. "What are their names again?"
Amelia sat upright, knowing full well she looked like she'd just been sharing secrets. The quizzical look Nick gave her as he took the seat next to her told her how obvious it was. She tugged the corners of her mouth up in a fast half-assed smile that disappeared as quickly as it showed up. Clem sat on her other side, and she watched Luke lower himself into the seat across the table, next to Kenny.
Crickets. The kind of tense silence where everyone had something to say but wasn't about to say it.
"Hey there."
"Hey."
"Hope you like the food."
"Oh. It's, uh…it's great. Thank you."
More crickets.
"Peaches and beans. Great for nutrition. Not too great on the way out though, I'll tell you," Kenny barely finished before erupting into a laughing fit loud enough to fill the dining hall.
Amelia's palms were flat on the table, pushing her up and out of her seat but Clem moved faster than Amelia had given her credit for; a small hand hooked into her elbow and pulled her back into the seat with a sharp tug.
Damn it.
Nick stifled a laugh, badly, and Amelia knew it wasn't at Kenny's joke. Maybe it was at her obvious discomfort, maybe that her attempt to bolt for the door had been crushed by an eleven-year-old. She considered both equally embarrassing. She swung her knee into his leg under the table, not gently. She tried not to smile while she did it.
"So…" Kenny started once he recovered. He pointed to the wrong people as he said, "It's…Luke and Nick."
Luke cleared this throat. Nick shook his head staring down into his food. Other than that, no one corrected him.
"Luke and Nick." Kenny said again. "You guys sure do look like a match."
Luke's fork hit the tabletop with a sharp clank after fumbling out of his fingers. He picked it up, shooting Kenny one of the first intentionally unfriendly faces she'd ever seen him make.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Nick asked, a sharp edge in his voice Amelia had heard enough times to know he was defensive, and irritable.
"I'm just sayin' you look like good friends, that's all." Kenny chuckled to himself. "Relax. I'm givin' you a hard time. Clem and Amelia know the drill."
Amelia muttered into her glass and wished immediately that she'd done it more quietly. "The one where you make people uncomfortable on purpose?"
"That's the one."
"So…what was your plan here? Hold out for the winter?"
"Actually, we're thinkin' of movin' on. Somewhere up north." It was clear that Amelia and Clementine were the only people at the table he was addressing when he asked, "You ever heard of a place called Wellington?"
Luke answered anyway, and the irritation showed on Kenny's face.
"Wellington? The hell is that?"
"A place."
"What kind of place?"
"A good one, Einstein,"
Clementine cut in, for which Amelia was grateful. Clem looked to her as she answered, maybe for confirmation of something they hadn't talked about in a while. "We were thinking of going there." Amelia didn't comment. They'd thought about it. Amelia hadn't been a fan of moving further north, where they'd have to survive freezing temperatures on top of everything else.
"Supposed to be a big camp up near Michigan."
Amelia hoped a question would distract Kenny or Luke or the both of them before things escalated. She already knew Luke wouldn't be the one to do it. Escalation was one of Kenny's hobbies, and she'd seen plenty of it.
"It's in Michigan?" she said. The messages she'd seen all pointed to Wisconsin. None of them said Michigan. She processed the news that had she and Clem left for Wisconsin they may have ended up in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing.
Kenny raised an eyebrow at her, a smirk hiding somewhere beneath the facial hair crowding his face. "You go and get a hearing problem while you were gone? Yeah, fuckin' Michigan."
A pointed and unamused response was on the tip of her tongue but Nick gave one first.
"Back off."
Luke tried to cut in, "Nick-"
"She was just asking a question."
"Relax. If you knew her for more than a week you'd know both these girls are tougher than that."
Nick crossed his arms over the table and leaned in. "What are you trying to say?"
Amelia swung her knee into him a second time, not playfully. Her level of irritation was fast approaching his. She lowered her voice. "Stop."
"Relax," Kenny said again, not at all as calming as when Luke used the word. It didn't ease anyone at the table – in fact it did the opposite.
"No," Nick said; Amelia wasn't sure if it was meant for her or Luke. From the way he was glaring, she decided it was for Kenny. "Just 'cause we don't know you doesn't mean we're all fuckin' strangers."
Kenny laughed again. Harder than he had at his tactless joke about peaches and beans.
"Now that's funny. You don't know the first thing about either one of them."
Oh no.
Luke tried again. "Nick-" Amelia knew Nick was going to ignore him before it happened.
Oh shit.
"That's what you think."
Shit shit shit
She could see where this was going. The competitive mistrust shooting back and forth between the two of them like a tennis match was headed straight for a train wreck she could see coming. Maybe she was wrong. She eyed the closest breakable thing on the table – Luke's glass, which was real while hers was plastic – and inched her hand toward it flat on the table because she'd have rather been paranoid than right.
"You wanna bet-" Kenny stopped short when the glass hit the table, tipped over into an abrupt slam that filled the dining hall like a gunshot.
They were left in silence.
What was left of Luke's water formed a fast-spreading puddle on the tabletop. Everyone was quiet. Staring at her, but quiet.
Amelia stood. She wasn't about to insult the intelligence of anyone at the table by saying, "oops." Instead, she reached for the glass and tried not to stare for too long at the look Luke was giving her. Not because he seemed upset about the spill – he didn't – but because he, like everyone else, had no explanation for what she just did.
"Let me get that," and got up to leave the table with glass in hand before Luke or anyone else could answer.
Kenny snorted. Again, his words sounded mean to anyone who didn't know better, and this wasn't the place for Amelia or Clementine to explain it. "Nice one, kid."
Nick raised his voice. Not by much, but enough to get the rest of their group at the other table to turn around and look. "I said, lay off her, man."
"Nick-" Amelia hissed. She didn't have time to react to his raised voice before Kenny raised his own.
"Listen, Vanilla Ice, I don't know what your deal is, but you're more than welcome to take off in the morning."
"Well that'd be just fine by us."
"It's fine, Nick. We're not staying."
Kenny snorted. His laugh was short. Sharp and bitter. "Ha. They're stayin'." He jabbed a rigid finger through the air over the table, pointing at the space between Clementine and Amelia as if they were the people pissing him off.
"They're stayin'."
Luke stuttered. Briefly, but he tripped over his first word all the same. "Wh- 'scuse me?"
"You heard me."
Clementine was willing to try what Amelia wasn't; it didn't work, and Amelia could have told her it wouldn't beforehand. "Please don't fight,"
The yelling had attracted attention from others in the room, including Walter. "Gentlemen, please. There's no need for this." Amelia watched Kenny and Nick carefully, positive that neither of them was about to listen. "Now look, we've all had a long day. Please, eat."
Kenny jabbed a finger at the last can of peaches sitting in the center of the table, half an arm's reach from Clementine.
"Pass me that can, Duck."
Kenny didn't react for a long two-count.
Amelia didn't know her thoughts could stutter until now. Her train of thought didn't stop so much as tip over on the tracks, leaving a crater in the ground and killing everyone inside. Amelia slowly realized what he'd said. Then he did the same.
Awkward silence settled over the room, a snowfall that left everyone cold and uncomfortable.
Maybe it was only her and Clementine who felt it. Luke didn't seem to understand. Neither did Nick.
"Duck? Who's-"
Clementine was quiet, as if she thought she could talk to Luke without Kenny hearing. "Leave him alone, Luke."
Amelia looked when she couldn't purposefully avoid him anymore. Kenny had wilted into the table, having fallen into a slouch that hid his face. She wouldn't have expected anything else after the mistake he'd made. A single misstep onto the landmine he'd been trying to avoid for years.
She wished there was something she could say. But she knew there were no magic words of condolence that could take the pain away. Time was the only bandage, and sometimes even that wasn't enough.
She got up from the table quickly, and took the empty glass with her.
She'd been lost in thought, and didn't realize it until the glass overflowed and cold water ran over her hand. She took her time reaching for the faucet, watching the water disappear the black drain because it was a distraction she was happy to have. Anything to draw her attention away from the volcanic eruption waiting to happen outside.
The handle squeaked as she shut the water off. She noticed her hand shaking – the water vibrated in ripples running across the surface – and told herself it was because the glass was heavy now that it was full. She raised it and downed half the glass; the room was starting to feel hotter. Stuffy.
Was this her fault?
Maybe.
Yes.
Was it something she could fix?
Yes.
Maybe.
Shit.
She turned around to set the glass on the counter and dry her hands, and realized she'd been preoccupied enough that she didn't notice she'd been followed.
By a very tall, large man in a bright red sweater who'd been making no effort to be quiet.
She made a mental not that she was losing her edge, and needed to start paying more attention. She was getting too comfortable, forgetting to watch her own back. It was asking for another Del to sneak up on her all over again.
She tried to think of something to say to him, and instead went with another drink. Walter was patient enough to wait for her to finish.
"Are they still going at it out there?"
"I'm afraid so."
Amelia nodded. She put the half-empty glass on the counter and placed her palms flat on the kitchen countertops.
"You know, I used to be a teacher. And I remember what it's like to be caught in the middle of two cliques."
"I wish it was that simple."
Walter nodded his agreement. He probably knew better than she did. "I suspect they'll find common ground soon enough. It may take a little time, but that's just how these things work. Everything will be fine."
That was where they disagreed. To Amelia, these conflicts didn't just work themselves out. They grew, and they worsened until something happened. Until someone left, at best. Until someone died, at worst.
But still. The phrase everything will be fine got her to breathe and relax if only a little. True or not, there was something comforting about hearing it from someone other than herself.
"They say the world is over."
Amelia didn't know what to say to that. She'd never heard a single person tell her the world was over. She'd only had countless people show her.
"But I'll tell you a secret: it's not."
She forced herself not to shake her head. She didn't believe that, and didn't know anyone who did. She wanted to think the way Walter did. It probably would have made her happier than she was.
She wasn't about to say that. Being incapable of optimism herself made her appreciate it in others.
"People are more political now than they ever were before. In the end, we can't change the world. All we can do is continue to learn from each other. To empathize and use our heads."
Amelia's first impulse was to dismiss it. Shoot the idea down as an idealistic impossibility. She forced herself not to, and worked the idea over in her head. She tried to think of it as another case of stripping away complexity. Somewhere behind all the reasons the people in this lodge had found to hate each other, they all had at least two things in common. Each of them was alive and each of them wanted to stay that way.
But, somewhere behind even that, in Amelia's own mind…the conflict made as much sense to her as getting along. It wasn't as simple as that, as much as she wanted it to be.
"'All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.' Steinbeck."
You can call it that. But Amelia had learned a dozen times over that when two people had guns on each other, only one of them had to lack empathy to force the hand of the other. She didn't call it a failure to think so much as a choice that was made for her. To pull her own trigger first. To finish what someone else started when they had no intent of stopping on their own. The brutality was the same every time. Visceral and disturbing and a reminder that the people left in this world – herself included - owned the title 'human' in name only.
It was a failure of compassion, maybe. But not a failure of logic.
She hesitated to call it a failure at all when she wouldn't have lived this long without it.
"You look like something is bothering you," Walter stepped further into the kitchen, closing the distance between them while staying well out of her personal space. She noticed. "There's almost nothing you could tell me that would surprise me." He said sincerely, reminding Amelia that she was either getting worse at hiding her feelings or that she'd never been as good at it as she thought. "Is there something you want to tell me, Amelia?"
I have something to tell someone else.
She shook her head, despite the answer being yes.
She thanked Walter for talking to her; they didn't seem to agree on much, but the effort meant something to her. She didn't know how to tell him that, and so she fell back on the thank you. She left the kitchen in a hurry, sweeping the lobby and filtering through the many familiar faces for one in particular. She spotted him, stepping outside onto the front porch.
People will never trust you if you don't trust them.
Amelia walked quickly as she followed him out, as if she could outrun knowing where she heard those words.