Author's Note: So, it would appear there is only one more chapter after this, which will bring us to where season 5 ends. But! Do not fear. Once season 6 picks back up in the fall, so will this story. I've been loving writing this nonstop lately, but I use the show for the guideline of what I write. So...enjoy! R&R! xoxo

"The more you adapt, the more interesting you are." — Martha Stewart

No one was talking.

Everyone was standing around, trying to make sense of all the drama that had just unfolded.

Some people turned away and returned to their homes, to burrow themselves and pretend life was rainbows and kittens as usual. Deanna looked at Jake with contained disgust in her eyes as she watched Nicholas walk over to help Tobin with him. Her tired eyes then settled on Abraham and Glenn lifting the unconscious and bloody-faced Rick up.

Deanna frowned and shook her head.

With the public display of violence and Rick's inflamed speech, followed by Georgie's verbal divorcing of Jake, she had to make a decision about what to do for the time being.

With a nod of her head toward Tobin and Nicholas she told them to take Jake to the last house down the road which was currently empty. The doctor would be kept there for now, closer to her own home where she could keep an eye out, and where he would be furthest away from his now ex-wife and son, until a decision could be made about his fate in the community. She then told Abraham and Glenn to bring Rick to one of the basement apartments of the building where her family's rowhouse was. There was an empty one, with a mattress on the floor of one of the bedrooms and would work for now to detain the constable until he could be cleaned up and sleep the rage off.

Georgie walked up to Carol and pulled Tristan into her arms. She crouched down more to his level and cupped his face in her hands before giving him a kiss on the forehead. "I'm so sorry you had so see any of that, honey," she apologized. "I'm sorry all this happened."

"It's okay, mom," he assured, timidly.

"No," Georgie shook her head. "It's really not." Standing back up, she pulled Tristan back into an embrace, just letting him wrap his arms around her waist as she lifted her eyes to look at Carol. "Thank you for looking out for him and being my nursemaid for a little while."

Carol shrugged it off and smiled ruefully. "You should probably still rest."

"I know."

Carol reached out a hand to Georgie's face, where her bruise had been cut open from the hit she had just received from Jake during the tussle. "You need to get that taken care of."

Georgie touched her fingers to where Carol was gesturing and felt a thin coating of blood at her temple. Pulling her hand back she looked at the blood that had transferred onto her fingers and she sighed. "I'll make a stop at the Infirmary for some supplies," she commented. "Could you keep an eye on Tristan a little longer? I need to…" Georgie trailed off, looking back over her shoulder at Rick being carried away like a rag doll.

Carol put a hand on her shoulder and nodded. "It's alright," she said, knowing what the ginger-haired woman needed to do. "Go ahead."

"Thank you."

Running a hand through her hair, Georgie walked back out into the intersection, her eyes spying many drops of blood on the pavement. She continued, walking past the Monroes and following behind Abraham and Glenn at a short distance before veering off to the Infirmary.

Heading inside, Eugene was there, sitting with Maggie, at Tara's bedside.

"What was all that about out there?" Maggie asked, standing up and then noticing how Georgie looked. "Oh my God, what happened?"

"I'm fine," she insisted. There was a slight limp in her walk, though, from when Jake kicked her in the knee back in the house. "I just need to clean up and slap a bandage on or something before I take care of Rick."

"Georgie, stop for a minute." Maggie placed her hands on Georgie's arms and pulled her over to a stool to sit down. "Tell me what happened and I'll bandage you up."

The younger woman walked around the kitchen island and grabbed a cloth that she dampened under the sink faucet. She came back around and brought it to the side of Georgie's head to wipe away the blood, with Georgie wincing at the touch. Eugene took it upon himself to get up and find first aid supplies for Maggie to use, handing them over like a helpful assistant.

"Who did this?" Maggie asked.

"Jake."

"Jake?" Off Georgie's nod, Maggie frowned. "How long?"

"Since yesterday," she replied. "We started to argue and he came after me. Some things happened while I was unconscious that I'd rather not say right now."

"I—uh, I can step out for a few minutes," Eugene offered, pointing at the door.

Georgie looked over at him as he left without waiting for either woman to comment one way or another over his decision to leave them alone.

"You don't have to give details about what happened," Maggie insisted. "I've been at the receiving end of a very bad man who tried to hurt me once."

"What happened to him?"

Maggie's face saddened. "He cut off my daddy's head when he came to destroy the prison we were living in. Michonne stabbed him through the chest with her sword when he was trying to kill Rick. I didn't see what happened to him after that. The prison was compromised and being overrun by walkers. We had to scatter," she recounted, applying a butterfly bandage to the cut on Georgie's temple. "That was about a week before you would've met us all after Terminus."

"Yeah," Georgie nodded. "Carol and I saw the prison, afterward. We'd seen the fire in the distance and Carol needed to come back and help. That's when we followed after Tyreese and caught up with him." Looking up at Maggie's face, she tilted her head slightly. "I'm sorry that happened to your dad, and what happened to Beth, and everything you've had to go through."

Maggie nodded appreciatively. "Thanks. I'm sorry for everything you've lost and suffered, too." She tried smiling and a small laugh came out. "Could you imagine our lives as a movie or a TV show? How depressing would that be?"

Georgie chuckled a little and bobbed her head. "A family drama set in hell, surrounded by the walking dead. I can see the award nominations pouring in."

Both women smiled but the smiles faded when reality came back to them, along with the current situation at hand.

"Is Rick okay? We heard the shouting, and Rick yelling about something. We didn't want to leave Tara, just in case."

"You know about Rick and me, right?"

Maggie nodded with a knowing smile. "Yes, and I'm glad he has someone in his life again. Someone who deserves him."

"Well, we were keeping what we had under wraps for a while until I could work something out with Jake to get Tristan to live with me, but Jake's become a different man. He's a bad, bad man and I was too chicken shit to make a move to get my son out of that house when I had plenty of opportunities to. I was just scared he might hurt Tristan or me before I could get help, so I pretended everything was fine and that I was hopeful to work on my marriage. But Jake saw through the charade eventually. After this," she gestured to her face, "I made it to Rick, but I passed out again, and Carol told him about the man Jake had become and the things he'd done."

"What did he do?"

"Greensboro."

Maggie's face fell. "The people in that room?"

Georgie nodded. "It was Jake and the three other men Deanna exiled months ago apparently. Tristan recognized the hat Jake had been wearing, even though he didn't see his face, and Tristan and I both found the same hat in Jake's closet."

"Oh God. Poor Tristan."

Georgie nodded. "Yeah," she muttered. "I went back to the house, Jake's house, this afternoon to get some stuff. Rick found me there, was going to help me, and that's when Jake showed up. That's when the fight started. I think Rick might've held out longer if Jake hadn't have shoved me away. They were punching and choking each other. They crashed through the front window and ended up in the street. When Deanna showed up, Rick pulled a gun out he'd been hiding behind his back and basically just told everyone that things need to change around here. We can't live inside these walls pretending everything is fine by ignoring what's outside the walls. The way he looked, though, with all that blood on his face, and the way he was trying to get his point across didn't go over so well. He looked like a crazy person, to be honest. But I agree with everything he said, and I stand by everything he said."

"Where's Rick now?"

"Being taken to an empty apartment in the building next door. Michonne knocked him out pretty good to stop his tirade. That's why I came in here to get a first aid kit to clean him up," Georgie explained. "He was protecting me and he wants to protect this place. I just want to take care of him."

Maggie stepped away to a shelf near the bed where Tara was lying unconscious. She grabbed a blue first aid kit off the top shelf and brought it over to Georgie. She then went into the cabinet with different medicine bottles. After perusing the selection she pulled one out and uncapped it, dumping two tablets into her hand and placing them into Georgie's palm. Georgie looked down at the tablets before watching Maggie grab a drinking glass from the cupboard and fill it with water. When the glass was handed over Georgie, the older female looked curious.

"What is this?"

"It's an antibiotic to prevent an infection for your cut there," Maggie replied, gesturing to the side of Georgie's head.

"Oh, thanks." Georgie popped the pills into her mouth and chased them down with a swig of water.

"You gonna be okay?"

Georgie shrugged. "I think I will now." Getting up off the stool, she set the glass down and picked up the first aid kit. "Thank you, Maggie."

"Anytime. And, uh, when Rick wakes up, tell him I hope he feels better, too."

"I will."

Walking with a slight limp out of the Infirmary, Georgie stepped down from the small porch and made a right onto the road, heading around to the front of the rowhouses. Once on the sidewalk there, several safe-zone residents were standing outside, talking among themselves when they saw Georgie approach. They immediately seemed to hush up and just watch as she walked past. Even Deanna and Reg were there, standing on the front steps up to their home, looking after her.

Up ahead, Georgie spotted Abraham standing with his arms folded in across his chest, as if guarding the entrance to the basement apartment Rick was being holed up in. When he saw her, he gave her a sympathetic look and a simple nod of his head as he stepped aside for her to head in.

It was dark inside, when she entered. There was a sheet covering the door in the place of curtains. The inside wasn't even fully remodeled, which meant whoever had originally built up the community, before the outbreak, hadn't finished everything. She turned to her right and saw Michonne and Glenn hovering around Rick who was lying on a mattress on the floor, facing up.

"Hey, Georgie," Glenn greeted with a sympathetic nod, sticking his hands in his back pockets.

"Hey."

He looked between both women and frowned. "If you need me for anything, I'll be near."

"Thanks."

Georgie looked at Michonne who looked back at her. Without a word, she crouched knelt down onto the mattress and set the first aid kit behind her on the floor. Leaning forward slightly over Rick's body, she slowly began to undo his tie and slide it off from around his neck.

"I had to do it, you know," Michonne spoke.

Georgie paused for a second, looking over her shoulder slightly at Michonne but not fully giving her acknowledgement. She just continued with what she was doing; tending to Rick. She let her eyes sweep over his face while she carefully pulled his constable jacket off his shoulders and slid his arms out of the sleeves. When she tossed the jacket away from her, she turned next to unbuttoning his police dress shirt and doing the same with the shirt she had with the jacket.

All the while, Michonne remained standing there, just watching, but Georgie could feel like Michonne wanted to talk.

"Are you going to hover like that or do you maybe want to help me here?" Leaning back on the heels of her feet, Georgie looked up at the other woman and gestured to Rick's clothes. "Maybe you could get me a bowl of water and a towel of some sort so I can clean this blood off him?"

Pursing her lips together, Michonne nodded and stepped out of the room, heading to the unfinished kitchen. She returned a few moments later with a very damp dishcloth and handed it over to Georgie.

"Are you upset with me because of what I did? Because I did it for him, not them."

Georgie sighed. "I'm not upset with you," she assured. "I'm upset with the situation." Using the damp dishcloth, Georgie began to wipe the blood gently from Rick's face. "There are so many bad guys out there, you know? Never mind the walkers. All the assholes I've had to deal with since I first ended up on my own after all this started, and after all the bullshit I've seen or been through, here comes this asshole," she smirked, gesturing to Rick, "waltzing into my life like some sort of Byronic hero and making me believe there are good guys still left in the world."

Michonne moved closer and crouched down at the end of the bed. "Yeah, he does that," she agreed.

"I think he sees himself as a villain sometimes," Georgie continued, brushing his hair off his face. "I think he has a hard time seeing himself how we see him, and he just needs to be reminded he's one of the good guys despite the things he's had to do to keep everyone safe."

"Want me to rinse that cloth out?"

Georgie looked at Michonne and nodded, handing the bloody thing over. In the few moments of privacy she had with Rick, Georgie brushed her thumb over his bottom lip and just admired how handsome he was, even with all the cuts and the blood still covering his face. Michonne returned with the dishcloth again, which was a little less bloody and a wetter than before. Georgie used it to clean off the rest of the blood on his face, in his hair, and across his hands from punching the shit out of Jake.

Michonne took the cloth from her once more but didn't return with it when she came back into the room. She, instead, sat down in the chair against the wall just behind Georgie, watching as the ginger-haired woman opened up the first aid kit. First came some sort of antibiotic cream, which Georgie placed small dabs of over every cut. Then, came the tiny bandages; nine of them in total all over his face, including one across the bridge of his nose. Lastly, a gauze bandage she wrapped around Rick's right wrist and knuckles.

"How bad did Jake hurt you?" Michonne finally spoke up again.

Georgie shrugged. "I don't even care," she replied. "I'm still here, and he didn't break my spirit. That's all that matters." Looking back over her shoulder again at the other woman, she added, "He did enough, but I'll be okay. I was unconscious for most of it, so I'm trying not to let it bother me so much."

"It doesn't make whatever he did to you right."

"I know it doesn't." Georgie moved from her kneeling position and stood up. "And I want him dead because of it. But not just because of what he did to me." She walked around to the other side of the mattress and sat down next to Rick's sleeping form, leaning her back against the wall as she looked over at Michonne. "Remember when we were all in agreement that those people who were killed in that home in Greensboro deserved to be avenged, somehow?"

Michonne nodded. "Yeah?"

"Turns out Jake was the ringleader of the group who had those people executed. He's…evil. He doesn't deserve to live in this world anymore; not after everything he's done."

"You sound like Rick."

Georgie shrugged. "Birds of a feather."

Michonne tilted her head back against the wall, looking somewhat at the ceiling while folding her arms across her chest. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

"If what happened results in Rick being exiled, would you stay here for the sake of your son or would you take your son and follow Rick?"

Both women turned their heads toward one another. Georgie bent her knees up to her chest and mimicked Michonne in folding her arms cross her chest as well.

"If Rick was exiled and Jake was allowed to stay, I would leave with Rick in a heartbeat," Georgie replied.

"And if Jake is exiled, too?"

"I think I would still follow Rick. I feel safer with him." Georgie looked down at him as he stirred slightly in his sleep and turned his head slightly. "Even when we found ourselves surrounded by a pack of walkers, in the woods at night, with no ammo left, I felt safer with him than I ever did on my own or with other groups. With other groups or alone, I always wondered if I would survive to see another morning. With Rick, I know I can." Looking back at Michonne, she gave a nod of her head. "Would you follow him if he's exiled?"

Michonne paused. There was a ghost of a smile on her lips that preceded the nod she gave. "I would follow him."

"If they knew him like we do, I don't think this would even be an issue." Then, she added, "If we ran this place, things would be very different."

Michonne dropped her arms and folded her hands together in her lap and she hunched forward a little. "We were out there too long, and it's been nice to take a break from it all for a while, but we can't pretend anymore. We can't let this place kick him out. This place has to understand it needs Rick."

Georgie nodded in agreement. "Were you ever an avid reader in the world before?" Without waiting for an answer, she continued. "I read a lot throughout high school and college, and up until after Jake and I got married. After Tristan was born, I didn't have as much time anymore to just sit down with a good book." She smirked. "I always loved Danielle Steel. Her books were a guilty pleasure of mine."

Michonne grinned. "My favorite was Zoya," she offered up.

Georgie chuckled. "Mine was No Greater Love."

"Which one was that?"

"The siblings who survived the Titanic sinking, but lost their parents and how the eldest sister had to raise her younger brothers and sisters; putting her own life on the backburner," Georgie replied. "Zoya was in my top five, though." Shrugging and looking down at her arms, she added, "But, the topic of reading, in general; I just remembered this line from Shakespeare and it just reminded me a little of Rick. It went, 'Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.' It's a little bit beautiful, isn't it?"

"I think it pertains to a lot of us. We're survivors; we've fought hard to stay alive and protect the ones we love, and we would lay down our own lives for those we love. I think that's pretty great."

"Yeah, it is."

The two of them fell silent again until Michonne suddenly stood up.

"You hungry?" she asked.

Georgie nodded. "A little bit."

"Alright. Let me go get us something to eat."

Watching Michonne walk across the room and head for the door, Georgie called out, "You don't have to stay here. With Rick incapacitated that kind of makes you acting constable."

"I'd rather be here," Michonne insisted. "That is, if you don't mind the company."

Georgie smiled. "I don't mind."

With that, Michonne left for a while and Georgie turned to look down at Rick again. Reaching out her left hand, she placed her palm on his forehead and brushed a few errant curls back. Slouching down, she moved to lie on her side, facing him, listening to him breathe.

From everything that had happened the day before and all the physical and mental exertion from the day she was in, Georgie realized her eyelids felt heavy and her body was aching for rest. So, she scooted a little bit closer to Rick and laid her head on his shoulder. He stirred again, at the gesture this time, and seemed to somehow sense she was there. His own head turned more toward her and his chin brushed her forehead in the process.

Smiling contentedly to herself, Georgie yawned and closed her eyes.

Twenty minutes later, Michonne returned with two tuna fish sandwiches and bottles of water. When she noticed Georgie had fallen asleep, she shrugged and walked back over to the chair against the wall. She held one sandwich in her hand and the other balanced on her leg.

"More for me," she muttered and began to eat.

Georgie awoke from a nightmare in the middle of the night.

She was lying on her right side, facing an unfamiliar wall and sat up trying to remember where she was. Peering through the darkness, she looked across the room and could just barely make out Michonne asleep on the floor, using her deputy jacket as a pillow. Turning to her left, she saw Rick was still asleep as well, lying on his left, facing the wall where Michonne had been sitting in the chair.

Placing a hand to her abdomen, she looked down, half expecting to see the gaping wound she had received in her nightmare from an undead Jake.

But there was no fatal stab wound. There was no undead Jake.

She breathed a sigh of relief and looked toward the door, wondering what time it was.

She couldn't shake the nightmare completely after waking up. It was just there in the back of her mind like an annoying hangnail. It made her wonder what would happen if she went back to Rick's house — her house — and grabbed a butcher knife, since she forgot where her hunting knife was, and took it to the house where Jake was being kept. She wondered how easy it would be to sneak in, quiet as a mouse, and slit his throat while he slept. She wondered what his last thoughts would be about as his hands clamored for his neck in a futile attempt to keep from bleeding out in seconds.

Georgie closed her eyes.

If she did just that, would she be exiled?

Wouldn't she be justified in her actions?

Would Rick leave with her if she had to leave?

Would they survive outside again with their children?

Would others follow them out of Alexandria?

Georgie opened her eyes.

Standing up, she reached into her pocket and felt around and until she found what she was looking for. Pulling out her wedding ring, she smirked at it and then fisted it tightly in the palm of her hand.

With a look over at Michonne, and then over to Rick, Georgie walked over to the door and let herself out into the night air.

A few hours later, Rick woke up.

He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and sat up, wondering where he was. He looked to the right side of the mattress he had been sleeping on and could've sworn someone had been beside him, but no one was there now. The emptiness of the right side of the mattress felt a little depressing.

Chuckling to himself, he laid back down, putting a hand to his head.

"What's so funny?" he heard Michonne ask from somewhere in the room.

Lifting his head, he turned to his left to find her sitting in a chair against a wall, her feet planted firmly on the ground and her arms folded across her chest, staring back at him.

"You were here the whole time?"

"All night," she answered. "Georgie was, too."

Rick looked to his right again, as if expecting Georgie to suddenly appear. With no such luck, he turned back to Michonne. "Where is she now?"

Michonne shrugged. "I fell asleep for a while. She must've slipped out then." Then, asking again, "What's so funny?"

Rick sat up and leaned against the wall, pulling his legs up toward his chest and resting his arms over his knees. "It's—it's like the train car. After the whole thing, I'm still there."

"Deanna wanted you in here, calm things down. Georgie patched you up. Carl came by for a while when you and Georgie were asleep. I sent him home." Standing up, she dragged the chair closer to the mattress and sat back down. "Rick. What are you planning?"

Rick shook his head slightly as he put his hand behind his neck, rubbing it and wincing. Michonne sighed and sat back in her chair.

"We put Jake in another house. You could have told me what was happening with Georgie."

"It moved fast. And then Noah," he replied. "I couldn't tell you about the gun."

"Nah, you couldn't." She shook her head at him.

"Oh, you wanted this place."

"We had to stop being out there."

Rick looked around the room. "Well, we're here," he remarked dropping his left leg and arm down.

Michonne scoffed. "Well, you just said you weren't."

The door opened then; Glenn, Carol and Abraham walked in.

"Where'd you get the gun?" Michonne inquired.

"You took it, right? From the armory?" Carol asked, playing dumb; because, in fact, she was the one who stole the guns. It was something only Rick, Daryl, Carol, and inadvertently Georgie, had been in on. "That was stupid. Why did you do it?"

Rick looked at Carol and tilted his head. "Just in case," he answered, looking back at Michonne.

"Deanna's planning to have a meeting tonight," Glenn informed, his hands shoved in his pockets. "For anyone who wants to."

"To kick Rick out?" Abraham wondered.

"To try," Carol remarked.

"We don't know that," Glenn said. "Maggie's with Deanna right now. She's gonna find out what it is."

Carol looked directly at Rick. "At the meeting, you tell them exactly the kind of man Jake is, what he did before he came here and what he's done to Georgie. You say you took a gun just to be sure that Georgie was safe from the man you believed would endanger her and, unfortunately, has. You tell them that Jake attacked you when you confronted him about his crimes. If they don't seem to believe you, for whatever idiotic reason, you say you'll do whatever you want them to. Just tell them a story that they want to hear. It's what I've been doing since I got here."

"Why?" asked Michonne.

"Because these people are children and children like stories."

"What happens after all the nice words and they still try to kick him out despite the evidence stacked in Rick's favor?" Abraham piped up, looking at Carol.

"They're guarding the armory now," Glenn stated.

Carol looked at Rick again, still keeping hush about their stash of gun she stole. "We still have knives. That's all we'll need against them."

"Well, tonight at the meeting, if it looks like it's going bad, I whistle. Carol grabs Deanna, I take Spencer," Rick rattled, and then gestured to Michonne, "you grab Reg, Glenn and Abraham cover us, watch the crowd."

"We can talk to them," Michonne insisted.

"Yeah, we will. If we can't get through, we take the three of them and say we'll slit their throats."

"Like at Terminus," Glenn said.

Rick shook his head. "No, we just tell 'em. They give us the armory and it's over," he assured, tiredly, with a wave of his hand.

Glenn seemed upset, almost betrayed. "Did you want this?"

"No," Rick swore. "I hit my limit. I—I screwed up. And here we are." He looked around at the three faces looking back at him. Moving to lay back down on his side, he announced, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm just gonna sleep some more."

Without another word, Michonne stood up and walked out with Glenn, Carol and Maggie, leaving Rick alone.

Michonne walked back home, heading into the main house to seek out Georgie, but didn't find her there, so she checked next door, and still nothing. Taking pause, she pursed her lips in thought as she stood out on the porch. Looking to her left, at Jake's house, Michonne smirked to herself.

She walked down one porch and then up another.

Someone had put up a sheet over the broken front window and swept up all the glass as a courtesy, possibly thinking Georgie would still want to live in the house with Tristan. Pulling open the front door, she walked inside and took in all the damage done by Rick and Jake before their fight continued outside. The art easel was cracked, the coffee table was demolished, and there was a pile of broken dishware in the kitchen that someone had swept up but not thrown out.

She hadn't actually been inside this house yet, but she could feel the negative energy inside of it.

Walking through to the kitchen and out into the back hall, she turned and headed upstairs to check there next for Georgie. In the hall there was a chair that belonged to the kitchen set downstairs, and one of its legs were broken where it laid in front of an open door. The door's frame showed signs of damage, as if someone had kicked the door open. Inside that particular room, the bed was in disarray, the mirror above the dresser was smashed and, the closer Michonne got to the bed, she could see there were a few blood stains on the duvet she assumed belonged to Georgie.

Swallowing a lump back in her throat, feeling remorse over what happened to her friend, Michonne left what she determined was obviously Jake's bedroom.

The bathrooms were empty but there and so was the last bedroom she figured must've been where Georgie slept. Georgie's clothes were in a pile on the floor. There were even two items of make-up on the dresser. This room felt nicer. There were no signs of a struggle ever taking place in here.

Perplexed with where the ginger-haired woman had gone off to, Michonne returned back downstairs, but when she heard noises coming from the garage, she stopped.

Opening the door, she found Georgie standing at the work bench, tinkering with something small and gold.

"Is that a bullet?" Michonne asked, foregoing a 'hello' or 'there you are'.

Georgie smiled down at her hand. "No," she replied, holding it up and looking at Michonne. "It's my wedding ring."

"Looks like a bullet."

"Well, yeah, technically it is now." She continued to smile, admiring her handiwork. "I melted it down along with a gold necklace Jake had me wear to Deanna's party and some gold earrings I found in a jewelry box upstairs. I took apart a regular bullet and affixed it to this beauty." She cast her eyes upon Michonne who seemed equal parts concerned and impressed.

"I think I can assume where you want that bullet to go."

"And you wouldn't be incorrect." Georgie shrugged. "But even if it doesn't get used, at least now it serves a purpose. I could drill two little holes at the top here and find a new chain, wear it around my neck as a reminder."

"What kind of reminder?"

"That we're all one bullet away. That what hurt us in the past only makes us stronger and gives us more of a reason to fight on." Putting the gold bullet into her pocket, she looked down at the workbench. "Rick said it. We fight or we die."

"Rick woke up," Michonne informed. "A little while ago."

"Oh, okay." Georgie turned from the work bench and walked up beside Michonne to head inside the house.

Michonne followed, closing the door behind them. "He's planning something for tonight. There's going to be a meeting to determine if he's exiled or not. But he won't let that happen. We won't let that happen."

Georgie nodded. "Should I bring him something to eat, do you think?"

"He had us leave so he could sleep a while longer." Michonne watched as Georgie picked up a bag with a few clothes that was sitting on the kitchen table. "You should still be resting, too."

Georgie scoffed. "I've rested enough. I'm done with resting." She looked at Michonne. "I was never weak," she remarked, slightly out of the blue. "I was always a pretty strong person. Not necessarily physically. I mean, I can't bench press two hundred pounds or run a mile without getting winded, but I never let anything hurt me that I could handle. I dunno—mentally, spiritually, maybe? Nothing hurt me, nothing destroyed me. And then I lost a child. You know that pain. Carol knows that pain. And it hurts, but it hasn't destroyed us. Jake hurt me, and I let it get to that point. I never would've let it get to that point before. I would've stabbed him in the heart if he lifted a hand to me before. Yet, somehow I let him hurt me and I think maybe it felt like I deserved it in a way. Not for his reasons, but as karma. For me being ignorant about my brother's condition and not realizing he'd been bitten. For not keeping my daughter safe enough so she could be here now, too." Tears began stinging her eyes as she leaned against the edge of the table. "I let him hurt me. I fought back. Not enough, but I did. But he still hurt me and I was a fucking idiot for letting it happen. But he hasn't destroyed me."

Michonne had stood by, frowning empathetically while Georgie spoke. Feeling it the right thing to do, she stepped forward and hugged her ginger friend.

"No, he hasn't," Michonne agreed. "And Jake will pay."

When both women parted, Georgie nodded. "Yeah. I mean, you can't break what's already broken, right? You can just melt it down and repurpose it." She pulled the bullet back out of her pocket and set it on the kitchen island to admire again.

Michonne looked at it and picked it up, nodding in approval. "It really is a beauty," she complimented with a sly smile.

"Wake up."

Rick jumped slightly. He turned his head to find Carol sitting at the base of the mattress. Pulling himself up, he leaned up against the wall again and focused on her.

"It's good what happened last night. We have more cover now," she remarked. "All of them think you've been found out, that it's over."

"It's not over. Not while Jake lives and has even the slimmest chance of going after Georgie again," Rick countered. He sighed. "Is she alright? Have you seen her yet today?"

Carol nodded. "I just passed her and Michonne coming from Jake's house. I think she was gathering up some belongings to bring back to our house for her and Tristan."

"Is she doing okay?"

"She looks fine. A little more rested."

Rick nodded, looking down at his lap. "Good, good." Leaning his head back, he lifted his eyes toward Carol again. She handed him a new gun, which he hesitantly took. "Why didn't you want to tell them we had more guns?"

"Michonne stopped you. She knocked you out."

"Well, I deserved it."

"Well, it was stupid," she agreed. "I told you we had to go about this a certain way, to not go half-cocked. And then you go waving a gun around like a crazy person."

Rick shrugged and frowned. "Well, I said I made a mistake. And, Michonne—she's with us. Glenn is. You know Georgie is."

"I didn't tell them about the guns just in case."

Tilting his head a bit, Rick sighed. "I don't want to lie anymore."

Carol smirked. "You said you don't want to take this place. And you don't want to lie?" She looked at him like a child who couldn't get his way. "Oh, sunshine, you don't get both."

Giving him a pat to his leg, Carol stood up and left without another word.

Rick just sat there, bringing his focus to the gun in his hand. He checked the clip, but it was empty. He'd need to get bullets for it if he was going to use it.