Daryl and Michonne were gone before breakfast. Rick didn't know when they left, but he guessed it was pre-dawn, knowing them as he did. He grumbled about this to himself, a little, but he had far bigger fish to fry. Maggie, Glenn, Bob and Sacha were really all that he had left of people he trusted that could be sent along with Martha. He knew Maggie, Sacha and Glenn were capable, but part of this task was going to be moving heavy loads and he wasn't sure that group had quite the shoulders for it. They'd need at least one more and as he sat and ate his oatmeal and looked out at the groups sitting around, getting to know each other like it was the first day of college, he found that he trusted no one.

As he was thinking this, there was a little bit of a holler at one of the fences. He heard, "Don't shoot, they're human!" and sighed. Martha had warned him of this. The signs leading folks to Terminus were all along the train tracks. She had calculated for this, allowing five arrivals per day, but so far it was the only thing that seemed to worry her. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to beat down the stress of it all. "Let Martha think long term," he said out loud.

He carried his bowl up to where she stood, directing a few teenagers who were cleaning bowls as they came in and ladling them full of more oatmeal to hand out to the ever diminishing pack of unfed, still rubbing their eyes from sleep. He stayed a moment to watch her work. He couldn't quite put an age on her. She was younger than he was, for sure. A day ago, when they'd met, she'd registered around thirty to him, maybe because of the baby. She'd looked exhausted, too, and a little gaunt. Today there was color in her face and watching her move between the teenage girls, he realized she looked more like one of them than she did like him. He was impressed with the way she marshaled the other girls, keeping them in line while also making them laugh. The one boy working with them was clearly trying to impress her. As he watched, she stepped back to survey the process and seemed to find it working just fine. There were nearly enough clean bowls to feed the rest of the people in the line as it was, and the oatmeal would hold, too. She dunked her hands in the wash bucket and wiped them on her skirt as she stepped over to her baby, who was propped in a pile of blankets on a bench behind the serving table. The baby was very young, maybe just a couple of months, but delighted when its mother held it. She pressed their foreheads together and rocked back and forth for a moment, celebrating. When she turned back to the serving area, she caught Rick watching her and smiled. He smiled, too, suddenly awkward, but was saved from this moment. "Rick?"

He turned to the side. Being ushered into the line, still holding his things from the road was Tyreese. They just blinked and each other for a moment and then stumbled together into a hug. "Sacha!" Rick yelled. Tyreese snapped his head around, looking. His eyes were shiny with hope at the sound of the name. She came trotting around the corner just a few seconds later with nothing on her face but satisfaction from the night's sleep and the meal. When she saw Tyreese, she stopped and her eyes got big and shiny, too. She shook her head. Her hands flew to her face. A damn burst and she was crying in earnest, but Tyreese was already at her side. They wrapped their arms around each other and held on, tight. They fell to the ground, holding on, while everyone around them watched, silenced. Rick wiped at his own eyes and turned back to Martha, who was grinning from ear to ear. He watched as Maggie and Glenn and Bob and Carl arrived to greet Tyreese, piling on the bear hugs.

It was Carl who stopped short and stared past Rick. His jaw went slack and he took a step toward him. "Dad…" He turned. Carol was standing before him, looking beaten and wan and shabby. Her eyes were red and her face was wet, but in her arms she was holding something Rick couldn't understand. As he stared, Carl ran past him. His body intertwined with Carols in a hug that brought them to the ground, gleefully cradling the little person in her arms. Without giving himself permission to walk, Rick found himself a part of the mass of happy bodies on the ground and found that he, too, was crying.

After a moment, Carol scooted away and left the two men to sob, their heads together, holding on to the little baby, who giggled and gurgled with joy at the sight of them. On her feet, Carol wiped roughly at her face and scampered away. She paused at Maggie and Glenn to give swift hugs, but he eyes never stopped moving. She spun in tight circles, reviewing every face.

"He's okay, Carol." Maggie told her. "He's here; he and Michonne went out on a run."

"Michonne, too?" Carol's voice cracked. "What about Beth?"

Maggie shook her head and Glenn draped an arm over her shoulder. "We don't know."

"Okay. Okay." Carol's face dropped into her hands. They all lay comforting hands on her shoulders. The whole group hung onto each other, unwilling to let go for some time.

Tyreese was well enough rested to round out the run to the construction site, and Carol took charge of Martha's baby, whose name turned out to be Tulip, as well as Judith. She took charge of setting up the nursery. Rick had asked her if she'd take the elementary school and though she paused to smile at the moment of forgiveness and trust, she asked that she stay with the infants and toddlers for a time. Rick thought of Lizzy and Mika and wondered whether she had interpreted their absence to mean their death. He supposed that was what it meant. They found another handful of nurturing and educated types-some of whom had actually been teachers-and set them to work preparing their classrooms. Rick spent the whole day appointing people to various tasks. He thought often of Herschel and saw clearly how right Martha had been that nothing after water, food and rest was so essential to survival as purpose. Everyone went straight into their tasks. Of the two hundred plus people there, not one able bodied adult shied from taking something on. Not everyone was entirely competent, but they were all trying.

Mid-afternoon, the two giant trucks that had left after breakfast returned with another two behind them. They were loaded high with bricks, bags of concrete and spools of chain link. The returning group was sweaty and starving, but they all had toothy grins of satisfaction, and supper was a very cheerful affair. Everyone ate tasty stew made from the fifteen rabbits, twenty six squirrels and two raccoons the hunting team had brought back and everyone boasted about what they had done that day. The classrooms were all comfortable and safe and stocked with age appropriate books and enough paper and pens to get along with for now. The library was neatly arranged with books sorted into a few different subjects and alphabetized. There were a few couches up there, as well, to make a cozy little reading area. A nice meeting hall had been laid out in the big warehouse room and all the signmaking materials had been burned or handed over to the classrooms. The grounds had been scrubbed of bodies and blood and the hospital was now staffed with its three doctors, (and ear, nose and throat surgeon, a gynecologist and a dermatologist, but they'd have to do,) an assistant for each and an administrator. Martha pointed out between mouthfuls of stew that the next big step was to find plumbers. They were just flushing the toilets like it was nothing because there was plenty of water coming from the wells and that's what the Inhabitants had done, but no one knew whether they were on a septic system or what and if they found out the hard way, it could actually ruin the place. Rick took a mental note for the next morning.

That night, they put up their second layer of fences. The real work on the wall would start in the morning and for now, everyone was tired and happy and they should be allowed to be that. The night was warm and everyone just sat out under the stars for a long time. A group began to sing and folks joined in when they knew the words. It was funny how sweet it was to hear Journey and Beyoncé and The Four Tops again and how they had all become one kind of thing in everyone's minds. They were all dead. These are the songs we know, now, Rick thought, listening. He rocked Judith in his arms as the courtyard fell apart laughing when everyone started singing the guitar part from Bohemian Rhapsody and marveled that she would never hear the song itself, but might hear homages such as this one a thousand times. When they started singing Hey Ya next, he marveled that it would never mean anything to her that Freddie Mercury had been dead when all this started and that André Benjamin had not.

More than fifty miles away, under the same stars, Daryl and Michonne were curled up in their seats in the Honda Fit they had taken for their journey. Daryl's eyes were closed, but it was obvious to Michonne that he was not asleep.

"You have a thing about saving people, don't you?"

He didn't open his eyes. "I ain't got a thing. I just don't like people to be out by themselves is all."

"No, it's a thing with you. You never relaxed at the prison."

"Nobody relaxed at the prison. Ain't nobody gonna relax at Terminus, neither."

She sighed and rolled facing away from him. "We might. We'll have to, some day."

"I ain't saying I don't want to. I just keep starting to think we're safe someplace and we never are."

"It's not just that. You're still alive, and so are a lot of other people, because you keep your head in a crisis. Sometimes people like that, people who thrive with a threat, they just don't function the same way when things are going well. They look for new crises even when there aren't any. Sometimes they create them."

"Okay, well, I ain't like that." Daryl tried to make it sound final. He didn't like the conversation at all.

"If we don't find Beth-"

"Michonne…"

"Daryl, if we don't find her-"

"Damn it, Michonne! Why you gotta say shit like that when we ain't even hardly looked?" In the small space of the car, his yell was loud. She shushed him and he lay back down, but he was mad now, she was sure. There was no point in going any further tonight; he was closed off. She had known people before who were like that. People who lived in a heightened state. They couldn't come down from the party or they couldn't come down from the drama. It wasn't like that with Daryl. It wasn't so foolish. She had had a brother who had gone to Afganistan. It was more like that. She wasn't sure he'd be able to come down from the war.