AN: Thank you to BHBrowne for reading the early drafts of this chapter for me. Your feedback and support is incredibly helpful to me.
Also thank you to everyone who was patient with me in waiting for this update.
"Jesus Christ…Jesus H. Fuckin' Christ…"
Amelia waited.
She hadn't done much to get him out here. She saw him leaving the dining hall alone and beat him to the door. Held it open for him and nodded him out onto the porch without a word. She picked up her gun from the collection on the bench, and closed the door behind the both of them.
She'd been listening to a combination of curses and hopelessness and self-hatred, leaning against the wooden balcony with tense shoulders. Waiting. Watching. Trying not to stare at the stump. Contemplating running like a coward, knowing she wouldn't. He was bound to have questions once he was finished…processing. The least she could do was answer them.
In all of this, she still hadn't surprised herself. No one was better than she was at digging holes and then jumping into them. This one felt particularly deep, and narrow, sitting with a man who'd suffered a massive loss, a man who was angry with her for reasons she could've done something about and chose not to, who'd told her to leave twice now and seemed to want her gone more and more with each moment she sat there in silence.
Right hand on his amputated right knee, Pete finally lifted his head and looked at her. Amelia was grateful that looks didn't carry physical weight. Otherwise she'd have been crushed beneath it.
He seemed to want to talk now. She guessed.
She volunteered to go first because she couldn't take the silence anymore. "I'm going to do it. Soon." She insisted, referencing the last thing she'd told him. She'd started with the short version of what happened in Savannah, leaving out the friends who died and the Stranger who drew her to the Marsh House and how far she walked with his blood on her clothes after. She ended with a promise that was worth nothing even to her. Actions spoke louder than words, and her actions had already made her intentions abundantly clear. I'm going to tell the others.
"Am I the one you're tryin' to convince?"
No. No he wasn't.
Then again, it wasn't entirely her choice anymore. He could've left this room and told everyone her secret. She'd handed him the power to throw her under the bus and she knew it was because in a way, she wanted him to. Tell one person and one person tells the rest. Lets you off the hook. She figured she should start with the person who deserved to know the most.
"You understand why I'm worried about it, right?" she asked carefully.
"You should be." Pete said, reminding her that she could look for common ground all she wanted, but it didn't mean she'd find it. "You think the others are gonna take kindly to learnin' this?"
No. I know they won't. Hence, why I didn't tell them. Amelia bit her tongue, metaphorically and literally. The one way to make this worse on Pete than it already was would've been to throw an attitude at him.
He shook his head again. She watched confusion blend into frustration blend into rage and her inability to help with any of it made her want to punch a hole in the wall. That, or it was the guilt.
Probably the guilt.
She watched, knowing it was coming. She waited out of guilt and morbid anticipation more than patience. Until she saw it.
The crack in the pavement that had appeared beneath his feet when she started talking grew wider and deeper without warning. Amelia almost couldn't watch the way Pete's face changed as the crack stretched into a chasm and caved in. It dropped him into the abyss and left him with nothing, save the heavy realization of the truth and consequences of his own actions.
The only thing worse was the realization that it had been for nothing.
"Oh, God…" he dropped his head into his hand, fingernails sinking deep into his own scalp. "Jesus shit, what did I do…?"
She'd known telling him the truth would do this to him. She hadn't planned on being here to watch.
Then he spoke, unexpected as it was. "How do you know?" She could hear the rationalization in his voice, see the gears turning his his head as he worked through the events of that day. Counting hours, thinking back. The bargaining step, if the five stages of grief included much more anger and no acceptance. "How can you be sure it wasn't…?"
Amelia picked up where he trailed off; she could tell that he wasn't about to finish. "Because the virus kills in twelve hours, give or take. That's how long it took to incapacitate me. And…" She trailed off because nope nope nope nope not going there. "…other people. You didn't do what you did until the morning, right?"
Pete didn't answer. He didn't have to.
"Almost twenty-four hours. If you were going to turn, you would have done it long before we found you."
She hated saying it. He hated hearing it. Both needed to happen.
She watched Pete, for the third time in this conversation, contemplate the fact that he'd already been in the clear when he mutilated himself to save his own life.
Uncomfortable silence. The kind of silence she'd expect if she were ever lined up in front of a firing squad.
"Look, how were you supposed to know-"
"Don't. Do not patronize me."
She couldn't say she'd be reacting any differently if she were him. It left her at a loss of what to say. She went with simple honesty, and the irony wasn't lost on her. "I'm sorry. That's the truth. I really, really am." She shook her head. "I didn't want any of this…" Go ahead. Turn this on him because you can't take it being about you. "What would you have done if you were me?"
"I sure as hell wouldn't keep something like this to myself for a damn week."
Fair enough.
Pete's hand tensed over his bad knee. She could see the veins and bones of the back of his hand beneath the skin.
"So, you just…" he paused. She listened. "Kept quiet on this for my sake? Out of concern for me?"
Amelia shook her head again. He knew what the answer was – or should've been – before he even asked. "No. I kept it because I was scared to tell you." If it wasn't reason enough, she hoped it was at least understandable. Pete remembered the circumstances under which she and Clementine met their group as well as she did.
Almost imperceptibly, he nodded. "Alright. Least you're bein' honest. Now."
"I'm sorry for what you went through." She said quietly. "And you deserved to know sooner. If it means anything, I'm sorry."
If they were done here, she couldn't say this had gone much better or worse than she'd been expecting. She'd already known he was going to agonize over this. Grieve all over again after re-experiencing the worst day of his life. It was going to happen no matter when she told him the truth because a grenade would explode no matter how slowly or gently she pulled the pin.
And the aftermath was no less chaotic, no less ruined.
Then: "Nick never went to college, you know."
What? She blinked at the sudden change of subject. Looked to her right, then her left in an awkward freeze, as if she'd find an explanation in the trees on the hillside or stapled to the door to the lodge.
She'd never asked him anything about Nick, on this day or any other. She'd wanted to. But what she knew about him – that she hadn't learned for herself – was limited to the story Pete had told her the day after they'd met, about a hunting trip that took place long before whatever had happened to Nick that gave him the trigger finger he had today. She thought that without judgment. She carried an endless list of habits and personality traits she hadn't been born with. She picked them up after the world went to hell.
She wondered if she could still call it a story about Nick, given that the boy in the story and person she knew today were very different people.
"His mom and I wanted him to. Pushed him to go until he was sick of hearin' it. When Luke got into his university, he tried to get Nick to move in with him, take classes at the city college. We just wanted him to study something. Even something useless like Luke's degree would've been better'n nothing."
Amelia didn't understand where this was going, but knew better than to interrupt. That, and she wanted to hear.
"I said, 'well, what do you think you're gonna do instead?'"
Amelia took a silent guess. Guns and drinking were the only two hobbies of his she could come up with. If he didn't have any academic interests he probably didn't care about history or science. She realized she didn't even know what kind of business he and Luke had failed to start. She'd never asked.
"He didn't have a damn idea. Just knew he didn't want to be in school. Right out of high school, he got a job, bought himself a used pickup, and moved out. That was that."
Five seconds ticked by in silence while Amelia waited for a point she wasn't about to prompt out of him.
"He's not as educated as you and Luke. But he isn't stupid."
Now it made sense.
Still, she listened. She wasn't dense enough to interrupt Pete Randall on a good day, let alone here and now.
"I say that because you've got a fancy chemistry degree and a Yankee accent you picked up in the city, and you seem to think you're smarter than him."
Despite everything, an insufferable need to correct him jabbed at her insides; the word biochemistry flashed across her brain and she crushed it under her heel. Still, nothing new. Digging holes and jumping into them.
She took a breath to argue, and stopped herself before Pete got the chance. She could tell from his face he wasn't about to let her get a word out if all she planned to do was deny it. Which she did.
He watched her decide against speaking, and went on. "Now maybe you are. Maybe you're not. But you ought to know that it's not as easy to get one over on him as it looks. He's sharp. He already knows you're hiding something. Kid pays more attention to you than he does to the rest of the group."
She thought that over. Did he? She didn't know. She might've known who he paid attention to if she paid any attention to him.
"I see the way you two have been acting around each other. He talks about you."
And? It took self-control Amelia didn't know she had not to ask what he said. She was caught between wanting to know what Nick had said and wanting to know what Pete thought of the two of them and knowing she wasn't about to hear any of it. Not from Pete, at least.
"I'm not here to pass any judgment on it, but I will tell you if you want it to continue, you need to respect him enough not to lie to him. I won't have you sweepin' shit like this under the rug and thinking he's too dumb to figure it out."
She tried not to break eye contact with his stare, knowing there was no better way than to admit he was right on all counts. She may not have intended it but it was what her actions said all the same. Until Pete lost his leg, and even for some time after, she'd thought she could keep a nuclear bomb of a secret and assumed Nick wouldn't notice it if she hid it behind her back.
Pete fixed her with a glare, one loaded with warning and gravity. "'Cause I sure as shit raised him to treat women right, and if that respect isn't a two-way street, then you're both better off if you leave him alone. Understand?"
She did.
Amelia closed the door behind her, having left Pete with a silent nod and one last apology. Like that last one made the difference.
Back through the threshold. From cold air and white hills to warm interior colors and Christmas music. Mark my footsteps good my page, tread thou in them boldly... She swept the lobby for Clementine and-
"Oh."
Silence.
"Oh." Sarah repeated Amelia, sounding just as numb as when she'd said it herself.
Thou shalt find the winter's rage…freeze thy bones less coldly…
"I was…looking for you," Sarah kept trailing off, like her vocal cords were stalling midsentence. "People…want to know where you are so I thought you might be…outside again."
Crickets from outside. Even Pete had gone silent.
She stood just outside the doorway, close enough to the door that Amelia doubted the girl was even pretending she hadn't been listening. Maybe because she was too young and genuine to be deceptive, or maybe because she knew she wouldn't fool anyone if she tried.
Amelia threw a glance across the empty lobby and decided it didn't matter what she'd heard. Not anymore. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her jacket and moved around Sarah, quickly and quietly, about to leave her to decide whether or not to bother Pete – she really, truly hoped she wouldn't, she hoped that once, this one time, Sarah would choose not to ask obvious questions and know when to stay quiet-
"Is that true?"
The words squeaked out and crawled into Amelia's heart in a way that forced her to stop where she was. She froze, but didn't turn around. Not until she took a long moment to decide what to say.
Then she reminded herself. It didn't matter anymore.
She turned around.
"Yes." She said simply.
Sarah didn't seem to know what to do with that. A bitter, judgmental part of Amelia's mind quipped that, knowing her father, it was probably because she wasn't used to adults telling her the truth. Then she tried to remind herself that she was the last person in the group to judge anyone's parenting skills.
She wrung her hands together. Looked from Amelia's shoes to her own and back to Amelia's. She seemed anxious but Amelia didn't have a cure for it – her own head wouldn't have been such a mess if she did – so she moved to leave again.
"I'm glad…" Sarah stopped, and from the look on her face she seemed to regret what she started to say. She went through with it anyway. "I'm glad you…didn't die."
Amelia nodded. She looked toward the lobby, trying not to break into a full sprint. She could still hear Pete mumbling and cursing outside and she was starting to feel claustrophobic despite the open space.
Sarah stopped her one last time with a question. "Are you…? I mean are you…going to...? I don't know what that means…"
Amelia didn't have answers, and knew that if she did they were unlikely to be good ones. So she gave her the same cop-out she'd given her before.
"Ask your dad." She turned to leave again and-
Wait.
A nagging, irked feeling in her gut told her to stop. Something didn't make sense. Like the blanket she'd found draped over her body the morning she woke up in the cabin, something wasn't the same as it had been when she left it. Something important. Like someone had thrown a curved puzzle piece up against a jagged one and tried to convince her that they fit.
Sarah watched her carefully, frozen in her steps just like Amelia was. "Amelia?"
"Something isn't right."
She scanned the lobby again. Across the fireplace and the two-story Christmas tree and the staircase leading up to the indoor balcony overlooking the room. She listened for noises coming from people other than her and Sarah, and heard nothing. Of the twelve people she knew were in the lodge – thirteen if she counted Walter's unnamed partner – not one of them was out here.
Because every single one of them went to bed at the same time. Right.
"What…what do you mean?"
She didn't know. She rarely did. That didn't mean it was nothing.
It's not paranoia if I'm right.
She looked again, frustrated because what she needed to know – or knew, but didn't know she knew – was at her fingertips. Inches away from connecting but refusing to, because she wasn't looking at the right thing.
She remembered the last time the answer had been right in front of her and looked straight down at her jacket laid across the bench in the entryway.
Only her jacket. No guns.
They'd been here when she followed Pete outside. Someone did this in the last ten minutes.
She turned to Sarah. "Sarah, where are the guns?"
"Um-" Her first non-word told Amelia that she knew. She saw the girl start to wring her hands, looking anxiously toward the door, and decided she'd have better luck getting an answer with an easier question.
"Sarah," she injected a note of patience into her voice. "Did you see who moved the guns?" Sarah looked like she thought she was in trouble; like Amelia was a disciplinary figure rather than a bad influence who'd shown her firsthand that shooting people is okay.
-it is, sometimes-
As Amelia had hoped, Sarah jumped on the chance to pass the attention to someone else.
"It was Kenny's idea. But Luke came and took them."
"Why would they do that?" Amelia muttered, talking more to herself.
She didn't like this. She didn't like that the weapons that kept their group alive were somewhere she couldn't see them and she didn't like that she hadn't seen her sister in half an hour.
She reached for her own lower back and took her handgun from her waist.
She was quiet, but still the loudest thing in the empty lobby. Her words almost echoed off the high ceilings, bouncing between rafters wrapped in Christmas lights. "Sarah, where did everyone go?"
A door shifting open on the other side of the room. Footsteps. "Where have you been?"
Amelia turned around to meet Luke, coming to a stop in front of the both of them. Rapid fire questions flashed in front of her eyes and she settled on one.
"Luke, what's going on?"
Luke ignored her, and Amelia wondered if it was intentional. "Here, let me get that for you," he reached for the gun hanging at her side. She turned so she held it on the other side of her body, watching him carefully as if staring at him hard enough would explain his actions.
"Why?"
"I'll just, uh, put it away," he put a hand out for the gun, and when she didn't offer it he reached for it, covering it up with fake nonchalance that might have fooled someone who wasn't as paranoid as she was. She pulled it back, holding it up by her shoulder and just out of his reach. She frowned at him, and waited.
Luke looked from her face to her gun and back again. He sighed. "We moved 'em all…upstairs. Kenny asked."
A pause. Amelia waited, getting more agitated with each second Luke refused to tell her what was going on.
"Any reason?" She asked, in disbelief that she had to prompt answers out of him.
"No, just- let me put that with the others for you," he reached again, this time stepping close enough to grab it even if she moved it. She matched his step forward with a step back, more convinced with each attempt to confiscate it that her gun shouldn't be anywhere but in her hands.
"Is someone here?"
"No," he said quickly. His second thoughts were clear on his face. "Well- yeah, but, you should talk to-"
Amelia blinked through her shock. Someone had found them. But he didn't seem alarmed and she couldn't tell why. "Luke, just tell me if there's a problem." She didn't bother to use a name; they both knew why. "Is he here?"
If Luke was telling her the truth and someone had found them, she didn't understand why he'd hid the guns instead of passing them out. She couldn't guess why everyone was missing - or had they already cleared out? And Luke stayed behind to wait for her and Pete since they'd been out of the building when it happened?
All of this would have had to happen in the last ten minutes. She was doubtful.
"Luke." She pried when he hesitated to answer.
"It's fine, Amelia, I promise," he said, looking over his shoulder again. Amelia followed his glance and realized he'd been looking to the door to the dining room. He nodded to Sarah, who still stood behind Amelia, wringing her hands. "Sarah, why don't you go find your dad? He's lookin' for you,"
Sarah was on her way before he finished. He turned to call after her, "Don't go wanderin' off anymore, alright?" She'd already disappeared into the dining room.
Amelia gave him a light push to the shoulder to pull his attention back to her. "Luke, who's here? Do we need to-"
"Not Carver, alright? It's not him."
Oh.
Then why didn't this settle the creeping feeling in her stomach.
"Look, we have a…situation," he hesitated to give it a name and Amelia wondered why. It was usually a word people used to replace problem or catastrophe or clusterfuck. "Just wait for Kenny, alright? He's, uh…" He looked directly at her. "He needs to talk to you."
Just me. Amelia thought. Tell me this doesn't have anything to do with Clementine. "Did someone get hurt?"
"No, no," he shook his head. "Nothing like that, just…look, just trust me, alright? Wait here until Kenny gets back…" He looked again at the door. Faster this time. More impatient. "I don't know what's takin' him so long…"
Amelia tried to wait. She lasted about three seconds before she shouldered past Luke and went for the dining room.
"Amelia!" He walked faster than she did, covering enough ground to pass her and block her way. "Amelia, stop-"
"I just need to see Clem,"
"She's fine. Do you trust me? I'm telling you she's fine,"
"Then why aren't you being straight with me?" She stopped like he asked, just outside the door. She put her gun back in her waist and waited, giving him a chance. She decided on a five-count. Five seconds to let her out of the dark before she found the way out herself.
Instead, he crossed his arms. "I can't let you go in there."
Amelia knew a bluff when she heard it. It might have carried more weight from someone else. Anyone else.
She inched around him and put both hands on the swinging double doors. She threw them open while Luke said something behind her, something that sounded like,
"Hey, listen to me, you don't know what's-"
Kenny was in the doorway, seconds after the doors swung open. She looked past him, sweeping over the empty tables looking for Clementine. He blocked too much of her view for Amelia to find her – he gripped her shoulders and moved with her every time she tried to side-step him – but she could see others. She spotted Rebecca and Alvin across the room. She saw Carlos and Sarah just as they were leaving.
No, not leaving. Carlos was leading her out of the room. Pushing her out, almost. They were in a hurry.
"Kenny-" she pushed him, not hard but not gently. He didn't move. "Kenny, I swear to God if you don't-" She stopped when she tried to push him again. The man was made of iron when he wanted to be.
"I gave you one job, kid," Kenny sniped, his words sharp. Amelia was used to this tone. She'd heard it so many times before it took her a moment to realize she had no idea what he was talking about, and that he was speaking to Luke.
He stopped behind her, following her closely into the room. Immediately, he was defensive. "Hey, don't put this on me. I tried-"
"I asked for five goddamn minutes!"
"What was I supposed to do?" Luke snapped again, the second time she'd ever seen him do it. She felt her hopes that the two groups would stay together after tonight fade a little more. She doubted even Luke could get along with someone who touched nerves as adeptly as Kenny-
Weight and cold metal disappeared from her lower back as gun was pulled from her waist. She whirled, outraged but not surprised. "You're kidding," Luke didn't say a word, and tucked her gun into the empty holster at his hip. "Luke-"
Kenny glared. "You didn't take her gun? Jesus-"
"-I just did, alright? Relax-"
"-shit, kid, are you that stupid?"
"Kenny," Amelia interrupted, as tired of the fighting as she was of being talked about like she wasn't in the room.
Finally, he acknowledged her, hands still in a solid grip on her shoulders, keeping her back every time she tried to shove her way into the room. "Amelia, we need to talk,"
"About what?" Amelia had to force herself not to yell. An impending sense of danger had long torn through her reserve of patience. She didn't have any left. "Kenny, what is going on?"
What have you been hiding from me since dinner?
"You need to let me explain before you come in,"
Oh, God. It was Clementine. Kenny was trying to brace her to see the aftermath of an accident. A walker that got past the boarded windows and surprised Clem in a hallway, maybe. The need to see what Kenny wasn't letting her see burned almost as painfully as the need to be wrong.
"Clementine?" she called past him, hoping for an answer to crush this nightmare of a fear before it grew into something terrible.
Kenny's voice was soft. Night and day when compared to the way he talked to Luke. "Amelia, just-"
Signs of sympathy alarmed her even more.
"Clementine! Answer me-"
Clem ducked under one of Kenny's arms before Amelia could finish and say please. Her hat dipped down and back up as she popped up between the two of them. Amelia released an audible sigh she hadn't known she was holding in.
"Amelia, it's okay," she said. She reached for Amelia's hand. Clementine's palm was damp with sweat.
She looked between her sister and Kenny, over her shoulder to Luke.
Then what the hell was this about?
She shook her head, at a loss. She stood there, holding her sister's hand and waiting for an explanation.
And then, a voice that was both new and very old. Amelia had jumped the gun in thinking she'd never hear it again.
"Kenny, just let her in."
She didn't just hear that. She'd been right, she was losing it. She'd graduated from nightmares to waking hallucinations because there was no way she'd just heard the voice she thought she heard.
Kenny seemed unsure, and she was sure the look on her face wasn't doing anything to help. But he stepped aside.
The ponytail was new. She still had the same taste in tank tops, and black.
Of all things, Amelia's first thought was this, absent and slow.
Huh. We're a match.
A hundred things to say, all caught in an emotional bottleneck so not one of them could get out.
The building pressure was maddening.
Her mind was frozen and so her body was too, motionless and lost. Amelia searched her own mind for an idea of what to do next and got a ringing in her ear. Static from a dead radio, rushing water, waves crashing on a beach with no words to be found in the midst of the white noise.
Kenny stepped into her view, hands out and gripping her shoulders. He was directly in front of her so that Amelia couldn't see behind him. It didn't matter; she still knew she was there. Leaning against one of the long dining room tables, not ten feet from her. She still knew she was inside this lodge, which was the same as being inside her heart and inside her head and Amelia needed her out. Out of her life. Off the face of the earth, if Amelia could help it.
"Amelia," Kenny said, in the tone of someone trying to keep her calm. "Just talk to me, alright…"
Kenny's voice faded out like someone had put him on mute. She knew he was still talking but she didn't hear a word.
She could hear a single gunshot. The sound of a body hitting the ground blending together with flashes of a purple winter coat and lots and lots of blood-
But no words from Kenny. Just strong hands gripping her shoulders harder with each attempt to push him aside. Holding her in place while Amelia tried to convince herself she was finally seeing things. She'd always been horrified that her worst dreams and fears might bleed into her waking moments, had always been afraid of what would happen to her should that day ever come. Now she'd give anything for it.
She almost asked Kenny. Is she real?
But she knew. The others could see her too. Everyone she knew was watching her, looking back and forth between her and Amelia and Kenny and Clementine, waiting while braced for disaster. Luke and Carlos and Nick and Alvin and Rebecca and Pete and Sarita and Walter, all watching Amelia like she was a lit match in a room full of fireworks.
It wasn't real. She tried again like she could make it true. This was just another nightmare, conjured up by that twisted part of her mind that wanted her to suffer. She would wake up drenched in tears and sweat any second now. It wouldn't be the first time. She would wander the lodge, silent and dark since everyone else had gone to bed, until she found Nick, who knew how to comfort her without prying. She'd crawl into his bed without caring how it looked, and hope he would let her stay. She wanted to be somewhere quiet and warm, where she could feel a beating heart other than her own and the closest thing to a monster in in the room was her.
Kenny said her name again, drawing her attention back to him.
You lied to me.
He went on to tell her something along the lines of everything is fine, let's all just have a talk just like he'd said at dinner. But it wasn't true then, either.
You said it was going to be okay. In what world is this okay-
"-just listen to me, alright…?"
Crossed arms and listen, Amelia. I don't want to hear anymore excuses. You need to learn to shoot and you're going to do it today.
Hand on her shoulder and listen, we're going to check it out. If they can trade us food, we don't really have a choice.
Chest compressions and damn it, Amelia, I need you! Please help me!
And in a sudden moment of silence and clarity, the moment Amelia decided to listen, when she thought it couldn't get worse…
She spoke to her.
She had the nerve to look Amelia in the eyes and speak to her.
And the sound of her voice – a voice she hated more than anything she'd ever heard in her life, more than hello Amelia and more than it's how the world works now and more than whaddya say Amy – was the catalyst that shocked her out of her frenzy of toxic thoughts. She knew what to do the moment she heard it. She wasn't retreating into her head anymore. She was here, present in a room that had one too many people with a knife-jab of a thought in her mind her or me, one of us has to go.
"Amelia, calm down and-"
Amelia let her backpack fall from her shoulder, catching the strap in the bend of her elbow as it dropped and letting it slide down into her hand. She held it up against her own body, gripping the bag with both hands until her knuckles went white.
"-just talk to me."
There was a silent five-count where no one spoke, standing rigid with the kind of tension that would suggest there was a bomb in the room, ready to be detonated by the first person to move.
Lilly sighed. She looked as happy to be here as Amelia was to have her. Amelia didn't notice much else about her. Looking at her face only forced her to recall, to feel too hard and too quickly how much she hated everything about it. "I know this is…" she paused and tried again. "I know this isn't-"
Amelia hurled her backpack at her head with a full-armed overhand swing. It wasn't heavy – there wasn't much in it – but it did the job. She reacted as quickly as Amelia expected her to, arms up to catch it before it hit her in the face but by then Amelia had already reached her legs, which she'd left wide open. Amelia closed the short gap between them in a rushed and furious charge, throwing her arms around her lower body and putting her full weight into taking the both of them down.
Familiar voices in her ears. Luke's. Clementine's. Nick's. Kenny's. All of them overlapping, arguing, yelling.
"-woah, woah, Kenny, what the hell-"
"-Kenny, make them stop!"
Lilly hit the floor first, shoulder blades slamming flat on the hardwood while Amelia landed tangled in her legs. She heard the fall knock the wind straight out of Lilly's chest – she'd fallen like that herself enough times to know the sound, and knew Lilly would need a few seconds to be able to breathe again – and took advantage of it, clawing her way toward her head and swinging one leg over to sit on her stomach.
"-don't get in the middle of it-"
"-someone's gonna get hurt!-"
Higher would have been better – the only thing that trapped a person harder than pinning them at the stomach was pinning them at the chest – Lilly knew this, and forced Amelia back with gritted teeth and a forearm pressed across her throat.
"-these two need to work things out-"
"Kenny!"
Amelia tried to pin her arms down under her knees; Lilly was fighting her hard enough that she only trapped one. Lilly was stronger than her – always had been – and if she kept struggling like this Amelia knew as well as Lilly did the woman would throw her off-
-and she'd want to be anyone but herself when that happened-
-so she started swinging while she still had leverage. She raised a fist and drove it into her face once-
-think you're some tough bitch-
-twice-
-like no one can hurt you-
-three times-
-but you're just a scared little girl-
-four times until a gob of blood flew from Lilly's mouth, hitting the floor and staining Amelia's knuckles bright red. Amelia barely saw through her own tears; if her eyes had been clear she may have seen the fist coming-
BAM straight into her throat with Lilly's free hand. Amelia sat up before she could think, leaning back on Lilly's hips to cough and inhale a ragged breath before she remembered that she was in the perfect position for Lilly to-
The world upended beneath her and turned sideways around her as Lilly threw her off, not accidentally, not messily. It was quick. Practiced. A clean turnover meant to put Amelia on her back and Lilly on her feet. Amelia was on the floor before she realized what was happening, and was still on her knees when Lilly was already standing. Amelia glared up at the woman stood over her, furious and bleeding, bruises Amelia had left around her eye and the left side of her face already starting to show. Lilly could hurt her from here, easily.
Amelia regretted nothing.
Lilly raised her right fist and clocked Amelia once in the head. Amelia squeezed her eyes shut just before it made contact; when the world was dark, she felt the blows, one-two one after another. Lilly's fist hitting her head and her head hitting the floor. She didn't move for a moment, aware that something wet and warm was seeping out onto the floor beneath her face.
Clementine's voice was louder than the others. "Kenny! Stop her!"
Amelia expected more, pressing her palms flat and pushing up, peeling her face off of the hardwood. Walter said something, some long sentence about something all she heard was please in a genuine, pleading tone. On all fours, Amelia lifted her head. She stared down at the blood smeared across the wood paneling. Watched one, two, three more drops fall from her own forehead one by one and though her thoughts were fuzzy and incoherent they went something along the lines of I just got these re-stitched, fucking bitch-
Lilly seemed finished. Breathing heavily, she turned her head over one shoulder and spit another mouthful of blood onto the floor behind her.
Amelia could hear Kenny addressing Clementine. "If they don't work this out now, they'll do it later when no one's around!"
He's right, Amelia thought, pushing herself onto her knees. She wiped the blood away with the back of her hand, dragging a red stain down the back of her forearm, becoming more motivated with each searing throb of her head to to make Lilly feel the same. If others got in the way, she'd wait until there was no one to stop her.
She threw a glance over her shoulder, the echo of Lilly's strike to her head pounding away inside her skull in time with her heartbeat-
-bam bam bam bam-
-and noticed she wasn't far from her legs. And her back was turned. Amelia planted one hand on the floor-
"Jesus…" Kenny turned to Lilly, hands up, his tone suddenly sharp. "Damn it, Lilly, you said you'd go easy if it came to this!"
"And you said you would talk to her so this wouldn't happen," Lilly scowled, arms crossed. "I guess we're both-"
-and stabbed a foot out and caught her in the knee. She'd been trying to kick it out of place, shatter it if she could, but she settled for putting Lilly on the floor again. She wasn't caught by surprise this time, and even though the pain made her cry out and swear when she dropped she landed on a shoulder this time and rolled.
Amelia stood up fast. She ignored the white noise of "-stay outta this-" and "get of of my way-" and "-Amelia that's enough-" and "-stop them before they get hurt even-", catching Lilly before she had a chance to get up and sending a shameless, spiteful kick straight into her ribs.
-scared little girl-
She wound up for another one, because she wasn't deterred even a little bit by the way Lilly seethed through gritted teeth to stop herself from screaming, but someone came up behind her. A hand closed around her wrist and an arm wrapped around her waist. She knew who it was by the voice, by the way he said her name and told her "This has to stop, now." The way he spoke gently and smiled often and told bad jokes had made her forget that he was strong enough to lift her off the floor; he picked her up, turned her away from Lilly, and set her down kicking now that he stood between them. She pressed her hands against his forearms and pushed until he let her go, breaking out of his grip and turning on him.
"Enough," Luke spoke before she could, his face dark and his voice stone hard in a way she'd never heard before. "No more, Amelia. She's had enough."
"Stay out of this, Luke," she warned him, shaking her head. She wasn't afraid of him and she wasn't afraid of the woman on the ground. Not anymore. "If you care about me at all, in any way, you'll stop protecting her."
"Look at her." Luke pointed to Lilly as she held a hand to her side, slowly pushing herself up onto her feet. Like the sight was supposed to make her feel something other than malice and rage. There was a change in his voice, to those who were close enough to hear it. "Look at you."
"What happened to 'I'm your friend?'"
"I am, and that's why I'm not lettin' you do this,"
You don't understand. Hot rage burned in her throat. A dull, deep pain throbbed behind her broken stitches like someone had shot her in the forehead with a nail gun. More than that, she couldn't take the misunderstanding. The idea that Luke or any one of her friends saw Lilly as the victim just because she looked like one now made her want to bite through her own tongue.
Her hands shook, burning with an incessant buzzing in her fingers that could only be satiated by closing them around Lilly's neck and choking the life out of her. It would make them both murderers-
-not that she wasn't already-
-but she was more than willing to live with it.
Amelia spoke quietly. "You don't know what she did."
"I do. We all do."
The five words shocked her into a blank pause. He knew. For just a second, she ignored Lilly – forgot she was there completely – and looked past her, past Luke, looking for some trace of confusion in any one of their faces. She braced against the nearest table, turning around to sweep across the everyone watching and saw that they knew. Kenny had told them while she was out and Lilly was still allowed to be here. Her friends-
-even Clementine-
-had agreed to ambush her in the dining room when Kenny had hidden this from her all night-
A hand was on the back of her head, wrenching a handful of her hair and forcing her to bend facedown onto the table. Her left arm was twisted behind her back and held there by the wrist, high enough that her fingertips nearly brushed the back of her own head.
"Hey-!" Luke stepped in with a hand on Lilly's shoulder, trying to pull her back. Amelia didn't need to see it to be able to tell him Lilly wasn't about to be moved.
"She's done. Right?" Lilly said, her voice dripping with warning and venom and go ahead, push me again. She leaned in, slowly adding pressure to the back of Amelia's neck with one hand and twisting her locked arm with the other. "Right, Amelia?"
Cheek flat on the table, Amelia breathed hard but remained silent. She recognized Nick from the ribs down, spotting the bottom half of his Chasers shirt when he came to a stop on the other side of the table.
"You're hurting her. Let her go,"
"I'd be happy to let go," Lilly said, her words clipped and angry, purposefully measured out in the manner of someone trying to stay calm. "Once she tells me she's done,"
Amelia closed her free hand into a fist. Useless in this position, except to have something to squeeze as the pain became unbearable. Lilly didn't have the patience to wait for a submission when she could crush it out of her. She pushed harder, twisted further, until the tension in Amelia's shoulder made a gradual rise that had her gritting her teeth. She'd scream listening to her shoulder snap sooner than she'd tell Lilly she won. She'd rather lay here bleeding onto the same table at which Kenny had successfully created the most awkward dinner she'd ever had, the same table where-
-"Pass me that can, Duck,"-
-and before she knew what she was doing she reached out for Luke's glass, solid, heavy, real glass and threw its contents over her shoulder. Immediately the pressure was gone. Lilly's hands disappeared and Amelia felt her flinch in shock and take a step back. She was still wiping at her face and spitting water, eyes closed, and didn't see when Amelia turned around, glass in hand, and smashed it into the side of her head. It cracked on impact with her skull and fell in large jagged pieces at her feet.
Lilly stumbled but didn't fall, as stunned as she was, she kept on her feet and, wiping the blood and water from her eyes she turned back to take a fast but disoriented swing; Amelia leaned back just enough that it whiffed just in front of her face.
Amelia watched the blood loss catch up to her, watched Lilly's face change as the adrenaline gave way and finally let her feel the glass shards in her temple. She staggered back a single step, then another, one hand out to signal a momentary time-out as if Amelia would listen. Amelia knew she wasn't the one with glass in her head because she'd fought dirty. Teeth and fingernails, feeling around for a golf club in the weeds. Now wasn't the time to ask her to show sportsmanship.
"Damn it, Amelia," she seethed, her voice rough and her glare hot. Blood ran down the side of her face in streaks; Amelia had made the mirroring half of Lilly's face as blood-streaked as her own. "This is your last chance." She stood upright and whipped her hand toward the ground, flinging red onto the floor. Her voice shook, just a little to those who were listening carefully. "Stop this before I hurt you."
"You already did."
Amelia didn't know whether she'd hurt Lilly enough to even their odds. She didn't care. One outcome or another, the two of them were ending this now.
She made it no further than two steps before their small crowd of spectators closed in. Bodies immediately filled the empty space between her and Lilly. Luke's. Kenny's.
"No-" she felt Nick stop behind her, a hand on her shoulder more to remind her that he was there than to control her. Amelia tensed at the touch and had to fight the urge to turn around and swing on him; it wasn't until then that she realized the people trying to calm her down had a point. Focused rage served a purpose. It was when her violence became indiscriminate that she scared herself as much as she was scaring others. "No…no, no-" She lurched forward, forcing Nick to catch her by the arms, holding her above the elbows. "-we're not done here!"
She watched Luke take Lilly out of the room, helping her along with caring and gentle hands the woman didn't deserve while Kenny blocked her from coming toward either one of them. He was an oak tree in her path; no amount of uncontainable rage would rip his roots from the ground.
"You are now."
She dragged her arms out of Nick's grip, contemplating fighting each and every person who stood in her way because she had a special kind of fury pulsing through her veins, one that didn't listen to reason or think of consequences, one that could only be brought on by a special kind of pain. A specific, intimate, life-ruining pain that came from feeling love for another human being and then having it ripped from her heart without anesthesia.
Everyone here had felt it. If any one of them could come face to face with the person responsible and do anything different, she'd believe it when she saw it.
She had more arguments to give. More words to throw like knives and more energy to fight her way through the crowd of people trying to protect her least favorite-
-living-
-person. Her heartbeat pounded away at the insides of her ribcage. She swore it was pushing more and more blood from the open stitches in her forehead from the way she was getting lightheaded.
"No-" She took a step that was much further to the right than it was supposed to be. The ground felt uneven. Suddenly her balance was wrong. Her knees couldn't hold her up this way and they buckled. Nick caught her and didn't let her go even after he set her upright again. Whether arms were wrapped around her either as support or as restraints. She couldn't tell. "Nick, let me-"
Walter was coming toward her from a direction she didn't expect him to be in. He approached her from the front, hands out, while the ground seemed to swing back and forth under her feet.
"Amelia, remember? 'All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.' You're not thinking."
"Get…" she closed her eyes, waited for the whirlpool in her head to stop, and tried again. "Get out of my way, Walter."
"You can do so much better than this, Amelia. You might feel like you don't have a choice right now but you do."
A high-pitched ringing in her ear. She noticed for the first time it was on the same side of her head as the blood. She almost couldn't hear herself over it.
"I made my choice…"
She didn't mean to yell.
Had she yelled?
"No, you haven't. Not yet. It's not too late. Let's talk about this. You're too smart for senseless violence." His words made sense but they were drowned out, smothered by the throbbing in her skull. She didn't listen and didn't look like she was listening, but that didn't stop him. "You don't need it. Just come with me and we'll all come back talk about this. No one has to get hurt. Don't you think enough pain has been caused already?"
Yes, and no.
Yes.
Amelia hurled another chair across the room, overhand.
She passed up the metal folding chairs propped in the corner in favor of one made of solid wood, gripping it under the backrest and hoping she'd break something valuable.
It made a deep, jagged hole in the drywall before crashing to the floor, shattering the glass casings of hung photographs. Frames fell from their hooks, landing in a shiny bed of broken glass and fractured plaster.
Walter had escorted her – a word she preferred for forced and quarantined – to an empty room down the hall almost twenty minutes ago.
"You did the right thing, Amelia. I know it wasn't easy."
She only shook her head, stepping into the room and knowing from the way he lingered in the doorway that he wasn't about to stick around. Kind words or none, she knew she was being put on a time-out. If there had been a lock on the outside of the door she wouldn't have put it past him to use it.
"I'm sure you don't feel that way at the moment. But I'm proud of you." He still sounded like he meant it. He couldn't have meant it, not while she stood there with blue and purple knuckles and Lilly was in the other room having a doctor pick glass out of her scalp.
Still, he was convincing anyway. She didn't bother to tell him Lilly wasn't forgiven, that Lilly was as guaranteed to die unforgiven for the lives she took as she was.
He'd left her with a promise to come back that she was sure wasn't empty at the time, but suspected it was now. Boredom and rage were not a good combination, she'd learned today.
She was tired of pacing. Tired of waiting for someone to come interact with her, tell her something to keep her from going crazy-
-too late-
-in here. She wanted it to be Clementine but by now she'd settle for anyone.
This was a mistake. This was always a mistake. She asked herself which part she meant. Which decision in her long list of decisions over the past week was the mistake. Or rather, which was the biggest one?
The door opened behind her and she whirled at the sound of hinges creaking. Nick took in the broken remains of the chairs, the hole in the wall, the broken glass, and he nodded slowly. He didn't show any judgment on his face. Like this wasn't out of the ordinary for his life any more than it was for hers. He held a first aid kit by the plastic handle, looking like he was holding a tiny, fire-truck-red briefcase.
Amelia braced against the table, the only thing in the room she hadn't thrown only because she didn't have the upper body strength to deadlift it over her head. She tried not to sound as out of breath as she was.
"Here to tell me to calm down?" Because I'm not there yet. Come back tomorrow.
Nick looked down at a wooden chair turned over by his feet, covered in a layer of plaster dust after Amelia put it through the wall. He left a handprint in it as he picked it up, set it on four legs, and slid it across the room. It came to a gentle stop just in front of her.
She eyed him carefully, searching his face and his body language for some kind of catch, even knowing there wasn't one. There never was with him.
She grabbed it one-handed, the dust fine and smooth under her fingertips, and heaved it as she turned around, aiming for the last set of pictures she'd yet to break and knock off the wall. She got most of them, cracking their frames and sending them down onto the hardwood to join the pile of garbage she'd turned them into. It wasn't even a little bit satisfying.
After the last shard of glass hit the floor and the room fell silent, he nodded toward the table. "Come here. Take a break."
She didn't move at first, wondering what he'd do if she told him no. If she jabbed the word at him, razor sharp and laced with the kind of challenge that usually ends in a fight. Verbal or physical, she wouldn't care.
She considered it. Then walked over to join him by the table. She took her time doing it.
Nick already had the first aid kit open on the tabletop. She didn't get the chance to speak before his hands found her waist and lifted, giving her a gentle boost that was as quick as it was unexpected. She settled onto the tabletop, her legs hanging over the edge and her toes off of the floor.
He went back into the kit and passed her a hand towel. It was wet to the touch. She pressed it to her face and dragged down from her forehead, doing what she could without a mirror.
She fought the urge to ask him why he was here.
Nick tore open the paper envelope of a gauze pad and left it open on the table. He took the towel from her – she didn't give to him when he tugged at it. He shot her a look and waited until she let it go – and dabbed it lightly around the split in her head.
"She, uh…fucked you up pretty good…"
"I know." Amelia said shortly. "I was there."
"Hey. I'm not the one you're mad at, alright?" He gave her another look. One less forgiving this time. "If you're still hot, then do what you have to do. But I'm not your punching bag."
No one moved. Nick held the blood-stained towel and watched her carefully, maybe waiting for her to make it worse. She was sure he didn't want that. But he might have been expecting it. There were a dozen things she could have said to drive him away. Half of them, she wanted to say just for the sake of arguing to argue. But when the fight was over, when there was no more yelling or heat or banter to distract her, he would leave.
She didn't want that.
She broke eye contact by looking down and nodded her understanding. Almost immediately he went back to tending her head wound.
She tried not to wince each time Nick pressed the towel into her skin and only succeeded half of the time.
"Looks like…" Nick peered closely, frowning the way people did when they were trying to read small print. Amelia hadn't expected him to be this comfortable around this much bleeding. "Two are broken. Could be worse."
Amelia stared straight ahead, looking over his T-shirt for a band she'd never heard of in her life while he dug his fingernail into a roll of tape, trying to peel up the end.
"You didn't try to stop me." Amelia pointed out, not sure what kind of response she was expecting.
Nick shook his head, looking like he was considering his answer carefully. "…not until you started losing." He looked up from the tape, looking for a smile without finding one. "Too soon?"
Amelia didn't answer, pushed into silence not by the joke but by Nick's actions and what they meant. The freedom to make her own decision, as bad of a decision as it was, was something no one else in the room had been willing to give her. The choice was hers. As was the consequence. Nick seemed to understand that in a way Kenny, Luke, even Walter, didn't.
She felt herself stirring uncomfortably while he slipped the gauze under her bangs and pressed it there. She found herself speaking even though she had nothing to say.
"Um…" she trailed off while he stuck tape onto the bandage, pressing the edges down carefully. "…"
"You don't have to fill the silence," he said, with a patience that was unlike him.
Was it unlike him?
She'd never seen him as patient. But then she'd never looked past the habits he'd built up on the surface, the qualities she knew were there because she'd done the same herself. The defensiveness, the quick temper, the snap judgments. They were the first thing anyone saw because he'd been shaped that way. They were all anyone ever cared to see, if they did what they were meant to do and pushed others away.
There was patience, somewhere underneath it all. Kindness. A sense of humor and a need to take care of others. She'd seen it. She was sure he used to wear them openly, and one day he stopped when the price became too high.
Nick started talking when she hadn't been expecting him to. "I like that about you. You're not…freaked out by silence. I don't know many people who…" He trailed off, maybe thinking he was sharing too much. "Can you imagine if Luke had to sit still and be quiet for five minutes?"
Amelia almost laughed. She didn't quite make it. It didn't stop Nick from grinning, even though it was small and short.
Amelia could see these parts of him more easily now. It just took time to learn when they could be seen. The way he smiled when he talked about people who were important to him. The way he volunteered to do nice things for those people once he trusted them.
She remembered the secret she'd been carrying, and wondered if she would earn or shatter that trust when he learned it. Two people know. It was on its way to him, one way or another.
She couldn't tell if he trusted her. She knew he wouldn't if he heard it from someone else.
"Nick, I-"
The door opened, the hinges creaking loudly and telling them they were no longer alone.
"Vanilla Ice. Take a walk." Kenny came into the room. He stopped short, taking in the ruins of what had once been the furniture in this room. If it surprised him, it didn't do it for long. He faced the two of them and waited with crossed arms.
"I'm good here, thanks." He started putting the pieces of the first aid kit back in the case, fidgeting with the gauze, tape, objects she knew he didn't care about just keep his hands busy.
Amelia had done the same many times, trying to ignore things that irked her. She watched him turn back to her and purposefully try to ignore him. Then she watched the irritation etch across his face when Kenny came into the room anyway and insisted again.
He brought a hand down hard on Nick's shoulder. Amelia almost jumped just watching.
Nick didn't.
"I said, take a walk."
Nick brushed Kenny's hand off of his shoulder, no gentler than Kenny had been when he put it there. "I heard you. I'm not going anywhere."
Amelia could see she'd worn Kenny's patience as thin as he'd worn Nick's. Remorse prodded at her, not for the fight she started or for the bruises she gave Lilly or even for the ones Lilly gave her, but for the consequences of her choices. She hadn't set out to make Kenny's life any harder than it already was. She remembered that, even through the anger simmering just below the surface, about to be brought to a boiling point if she had to wait any longer for Kenny to explain himself.
She sighed. "Give us a minute," she told Nick quietly. Her eyes and her words were sharper when she slid a glance to Kenny. "Kenny and I need to talk."
From the way Nick faced him she would have thought Nick was talking to Kenny, not her. "Yeah, the same kind of talk you had with Lilly?"
"I hope you're not implying what I think you are."
"What if I am?" Nick didn't move. If anything, he inched closer to her. "After this, why should any of us trust you?"
"I've never raised a hand to her. Never will. But you…we're comin' up on that real quick."
"Kenny. Stop." Amelia warned. She didn't have time for this. She knew she didn't have any ground to stand on and talk about avoiding fights. "Nick, please go. You know we need to talk."
This got him to turn around and look at her, searching her face like he was trying to tell if she was joking. "Why can't I be here?" Amelia was quiet. She knew there was no answer she could give that he would agree with. Not even the truth. His face changed. The surprise melted down into the pessimism she knew and expected from him. "You're really telling me to leave?"
"For now."
They'd already had this fight. He thought she would back him up and she didn't. Like last time, she hoped they would go back to talking soon. Finally:
"Whatever." He shook his head and went for the door.
Kenny called after him. By now, Amelia knew what it sounded like when Kenny was doing nothing more than trying to push buttons. "Close the door on your way out."
He did. Not a second after it was closed, Amelia started. "I hope you have one hell of an explanation."
Kenny didn't answer right away. He turned and paced a few steps into the room. Then came back.
"You gotta understand…" Kenny trailed off, and paused long enough for Amelia to know he was reconsidering what he was about to say. He sighed. Then, finally: "When I left Savannah I knew both you girls were dead."
Amelia didn't answer. She shook her head. She should have known he thought that. Should have realized it when she found out he wasn't dead. Of course Kenny would have assumed her and her sister to be dead at the ages of twenty-one and nine. Nine. She'd thought the same of him. And so she'd never imagined him grieving for them. Even after she'd learned he was alive, it didn't occur to her until she saw it.
"Everyone was gone." He said quietly. "That made…three kids I was supposed to look out for..."
She knew what he was reliving. Isolation and grief and survivor's guilt were languages they both spoke fluently. Hearing it in Kenny's voice dragged up her own, and she forced it back down. Kicked at it with a merciless heel until it retreated into the depths of repression where it belonged. She'd barely been able to handle it when it had been recent. Now was no different.
She understood this part. She didn't understand what came after.
"I know. So…" she took a breath, forcibly calming her own voice. "…how could you trust her when she helped tear everything apart?"
He didn't answer. He was somewhere else. Somewhere Amelia had visited many times; enough times to know not to shock someone out of that place. He had to come back on his own, and it was better not to force it.
"Thinkin' about Clementine was the worst. I wanted you to find her, Amelia, I did. But you were sick. I just…I fuckin' knew that bastard still had her and…" Amelia watched the change in his face as he came back. Pulled himself out when the waters got too cold and too dark. Stepping back into bad memories had to be done in moderation. Going in too deep and staying too long had…consequences. "And I couldn't do a damn thing to find her."
She wasn't a stranger to this. There was nothing he'd described that she hadn't felt that morning she found Clementine's hat on the sidewalk. Getting bitten, getting a death sentence that guaranteed she only had a day left had only made the turmoil in her head worse. She became a time bomb – and she wanted nothing more than to find the Stranger and make sure she took him with her when she detonated.
She wondered if it would make Kenny feel any better to know what she did to him when she found him. That she tried to kill him with her hands and with some help from her sister, left him in a shallow grave-
-closet-
-after repainting the walls with the contents of his skull.
Something about the way his shoulders sagged told her he wouldn't find comfort in it. She didn't, once the novelty of anger and fear wore off. The relief she felt when the Stranger dropped dead wasn't to be confused with satisfaction. She regretted nothing and still wasn't proud of anything she'd done. She knew Kenny understood the difference long before she learned it.
"I spent a long time alone after that. It was, uh…"
He stopped altogether. Amelia didn't expect him to pick back up again. She wouldn't have pushed. Not after she saw the look on his face.
"And then I met Sarita. Thank God." He spoke quietly, something Amelia had never seen him do. "I used to think I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't but, uh…no. I know exactly where I'd be without her."
She thought about stopping him, telling him he didn't owe her the story of this part of his life. She could guess it was already harder for him than for most people, baring his deepest emotional scars when he'd likely never done much of it in his life. But she knew he wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't important for her to understand. She listened; it was easier than talking.
"About a year back, we found her, and…I thought I'd been in bad shape..." Kenny rubbed his palms together. Amelia wasn't sure if it was something he did when he was uncomfortable or just something he did while lost in thought. "First thing I wanted to do was leave her. But Sarita couldn't do it. She wouldn't let it go and by the time we finished talkin'…I don't know. It made sense. Givin' her another chance."
That was it? "You felt sorry for her? You actually felt sorry for her?"
"Yeah, I did." He said it with enough certainty to make Amelia doubt her own; there was no question in his voice, and it made Amelia think if she'd seen Lilly at the time, she might have felt sympathy herself.
No. Pity, maybe. Never sympathy. Nothing that required she-
-still-
-care about her in order to feel.
Amelia shook her head. This wasn't what she'd wanted to hear. She asked herself what she'd been expecting, what kind of explanation would have made her happy and quickly pushed the question back down.
"This doesn't make sense," she found herself pacing. Anger burned into energy, in her experience, and suddenly she had too much of both. "That's it? That's it?" Kenny watched her calmly, stoic and quiet while she paced the floor. "She was one of us. She killed one of us."
Kenny seemed to consider this, though it wasn't for long. "So did I."
Amelia froze. That night had been scorched into her memory as permanently as every other disaster she and Kenny had survived as a group. She remembered vividly how strongly she'd disagreed with him that night. How she'd been doing chest compressions when he-
She stopped there. She skipped ahead, past the things she didn't want to look back on.
She remembered yelling at him. She remembered telling him how wrong he was. She remembered calling it murder because he may or may not have already been dead. And now they would never know. Still didn't, to this day.
To defend it now would be insincere and hypocritical. But it was the only argument that would help her here.
She wondered if Kenny did that on purpose.
"She made a mistake, Amelia."
"I swear to God, if you start talking about how none of us is perfect-" she cut herself off abruptly, knowing that sentenced ended with something violent and no matter how angry she was, she didn't want to threaten Kenny. Threats weren't for friends.
"It was a goddamn awful mistake, and she paid for it. Just like I did."
"That makes it okay?"
"Amelia-" Kenny stopped himself from shouting back, which didn't make a difference to Amelia. His staying calm wouldn't stop her from yelling. She didn't care how one-sided it was. "When we found her, she-" He shook his head, but Amelia didn't wonder for a second what he wasn't saying. She didn't want to know. She'd have stopped him if he tried to tell her. "She paid for it. More than you'd have wanted her to."
"So it's okay to do terrible things if later, terrible things happen to you?" Amelia went quiet. "Is that what you're saying?"
Kenny shook his head, openly frustrated with her. "I'm sayin' at some point, enough is enough. I'm not sayin' I forgive her. I don't think what she did can be forgiven."
Amelia waited. He said something she agreed with. Which meant something that would infuriate her was on its way.
"I'm sayin' I gave her a second chance. Same second chance I got. If she's willin' to group up with us after what I did-"
"It was not. The same. Thing." Amelia raised her voice, aware that people didn't even have to be outside the door to hear her; the group could have been listening from the dining room, to every word. She didn't want to be doing this. Digging into the past so it could never be put to rest. Just because it followed her around daily didn't mean she had to make it haunt everyone else just as much. But she didn't understand how Kenny could leave it behind so easily. "She did it for nothing. Nobody had to die that night."
Kenny turned away, muttering to himself. She didn't catch all of it but made out something like, "…dammit…Sarita was better at this…the fuck to say…"
When he turned back he looked like he was about to give up on convincing her. Fine by her.
"I know you've done a lot, Amelia-"
"-you're turning this on me, now-?"
"-and I ain't-" he raised his voice to get her to stop before she derailed this into another argument. "-blaming you for it. You and me, we do what needs to be done. But it weighs on you. I know there's plenty you'd like to be forgiven for."
She'd expected too much. She'd come here hoping to hear an explanation that made sense. It was hard to feel disappointed when she'd known from the beginning that such an explanation didn't exist.
"So that's it? She forgives you, you forgive her, and everyone's absolved of every shitty thing they've ever done?"
"That's not what I said, Amelia."
"Sounds like it." Amelia crossed her arms. The first of many barriers she'd put between her and Kenny. "Just go." She knew what he said. If that was all he had to say, they were done here. She didn't want to hear it put into different words.
The number of times she'd heard Kenny speak this gently could have been counted on one hand. "Go ahead. Do what you do. Shut everyone out. I'll be here when you decide to come back."
She refused to make eye contact. "I'll 'come back' when she's gone."
Kenny sighed, the both of them knowing he'd done all he could. They'd come to the end of a conversation in which Kenny seemed to think understand meant the same thing as agree, one of which Amelia did very well and the other she would never do, ever. He left her with one last head shake, closing the door behind him and leaving her in the wreckage of broken walls and toppled chairs.
She was alone again. Just like she'd asked to be.
She didn't like it.