[A/N: This should probably have been part of the last chapter - but I wasn't quite ready to post this when I posted Chap 18. Well, you're getting it now.]

Asha found Rick in a quiet corner of the courtyard, sitting on the ground, arms wrapped loosely around his knees, staring up at the catwalk.

'Am I interrupting?' Asha asked as she walked up.

Rick's eyes didn't move from the catwalk.

'No,' he shook his head and took a deep breath. Asha watched him scan the length of catwalk. 'No. You're not interrupting.'

Asha sat down beside him.

There was silence whilst she searched for the words.

'I owe you an apology.'

Rick looked at her in surprise. 'That is not what I was expecting you to say.'

Asha bristled immediately. 'What, you don't think I know enough to realise when I'm wrong?'

Rick arched both eyebrows at her.

Shit.

She scrubbed the heel of her palm across her forehead. 'I come over here to apologise for one fight and I near end up in another. This is an awesome dynamic we've got going here Officer Friendly.'

'Don't call me that.'

Right, Merle called him that.

She looked across at him. His eyes were tracking across the catwalk again.

'I was outta line, after Merle, and this afternoon too when you tried to help I guess.'

Rick met her eyes, before Asha turned away, looking up at the night sky.

'He was my friend and I was pissed that he was dead.' She swallowed the lump in her throat. 'And I was...pissed, that you would give up Michonne. Because if you were willing to give her up, you'd easily give me up.'

She glanced at Rick. His jaw had tightened, but she didn't need him to confirm or deny that. She looked back at the stars spattering the night sky. 'But I've got no right to criticise anyone else's moral compass. Don't know that anyone does these days.'

Rick was looking at her, but he stayed silent.

'I don't take back what I said about being unwilling to stay here and second guess your decisions, but if you're only one voice in many, I don't see why we can't figure out some sort of middle ground.'

She left it hanging whilst Rick stared across the courtyard. After a long moment he looked across at her.

'You weren't that outta line,' he said quietly. 'And you proved at Woodbury that you are capable of thinking clearly about things—at least when it doesn't involve your brother.' Then he gave her a tiny, weary smile. 'It's possible that you haven't been seeing me at my best.'

Asha forced a grin. 'Rick Grimes, that is the first hint of a sense of humour that I've seen from you. maybe you aren't a lost cause after all.'

He forced a half laugh, before slumping back over his knees. His eyes immediately returned to the catwalk.

'Do you see her?' Asha asked softly.

Rick shook his head. 'Not since we brought back the people from Woodbury... Is it bad that I miss her more now? Feels like she's really gone.'

'Nah.'

'Still reckon it was a mistake to bring them back?'

Asha took a long breath. 'In this particular case, no, I don't think it was a mistake. But I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't scare the absolute shit outta me just letting people in like that. There's gotta be a system Rick. We can't do that in future. It's asking for trouble.'

'What, we oughta lock them in the cells until we don't think they're a threat anymore?'

'There are stupider systems,' she said seriously. 'And I don't object to the fact that you locked me in a cell.'

Rick looked at her incredulously.

'Yeah I was pissed at the time—but mostly because you were stopping me look for Nash. And I didn't appreciate being bait for Merle.' She paused to give him a hard look. 'But if I'd been asking you to take me in, I wouldn't have objected to there being certain restrictions on my freedom until you were satisfied that I wasn't a danger.'

Rick narrowed his eyes at her. 'What happened with your last group?'

Asha sighed. She didn't want to get into this, especially not now when she was so damn drained after the last few days, but it was important—and much as she might talk about Rick's voice being one of many in their fledgling new democracy, there was no doubt that it was the loudest, and probably would for a while.

'You said before that you let the wrong people in.' Rick pressed. 'And then they let worse people in?'

'Yeah.' She wiped both hands down her face and past her mouth. 'It was a mother and her daughter. They were half starved, so scared. So grateful to be taken in.' She shook her head. 'You would never have thought they were any sort of threat. The little girl, she would only have been ten or so, barely spoke a word, and the mother spent the whole time jumping at her own shadow. We weren't stupid. We watched them for a few days, but there didn't seem to be any real threat. And if they were a bit more skittish than most people we took in, well we just chalked it up to them having been on their own for a while. Honestly, we were just amazed they'd survived.'

She paused, and Rick waited. Her voice sounded dead in her own ears when she spoke.

'One night, about a week or so after they arrived, they lit a fire in one of our storage sheds. Drew most of our people in to put it out. But they'd also slit the throats of the two of our people that remained on watch. By the time we realised what had happened it was too late. Their people had swarmed us. Men only, the worst kind. The kind that were only too happy to throw off whatever restraints the world used to have over them.'

She ground her teeth together, lip lifting in a snarl. 'And they smiled. That woman and her daughter, whilst those men swarmed us, locked us up. They smiled.'

Her hands were shaking and she clenched and stretched them reflexively, but her voice was rock steady. 'I'd like to think it was just the mother—if they even were mother and daughter—that did it all, that set the fire and killed the people on watch, but she couldn't be in both places at once. That little girl played her part.'

Rick was watching her carefully. 'What happened?'

She leant away from Rick and spat on the ground. 'They didn't kill us all to start with, kept most of us locked up.' She shivered with the memory. 'We got out, fought back.'

She shrugged off the rest of his enquiry. She really didn't want to get into that.

'Why didn't you stay there, with your group? After I mean?'

'Some of them got away.' She swallowed and wiped both her hands down her face again. 'They had our sister. Nash and I went after them. Took us a while to catch them. After...after, I just didn't want to go back there. Neither did Nash.'

'I get it,' Rick said. 'We gotta be careful, get a system in place.'

Asha watched her hands still clenching and flexing of their own accord for a moment, then she forced them to be still, balling them tightly into fists. 'You gotta be so much more than careful Rick,' she whispered. 'Honestly, mandatory cell time's not such a bad idea.'

Rick pushed himself to his feet. 'Hershel and Carol, they've been talking to Sasha and Karen about forming some sort of council, make decisions for the group. They need to know about this.'

Asha nodded. 'You tell them. That's why I told you.'

He nodded, and started towards the cell block. He stopped before he was half way there and turned back.

'Hey Asha, where was this old camp of yours?'

Asha shrugged. 'To the south somewhere, in Georgia still. Dunno if it really had a name before. It was just the spot where a whole bunch of train lines converged. We called it Terminus.'

[A/N: Yep, Asha and Nash are from Terminus.]