She had passed out on the way back to the prison, head rolling backward to lean against my chest. It was a good thing she was so small, or I might not have been able to drive and hold her stationary on the bike.

Rick was waiting at the gate for me as usual, and, of course, had plenty of questions to fire at me after I had cut the bike's engine off. "So, you found her?"

I hauled the girl's body up into my arms, heading for the prison block, nodding. "Yeah, but she didn't come 'cause she wanted to. Her apartment building was overrun when I got there. We fell on a fire escape and she broke her leg. Passed out on the way here."

I noticed Rick's eyes searching her face. "How old is she?"

I opened my mouth to respond… and realized I had no idea. With the level of maturity necessitated by her prolonged survival, she could've ranged anywhere from thirty to forty. But with that slight frame, those full cheeks, that young personality… she was in her early twenties at the most, maybe even a teenager.

I settled for a shrug and continued into an empty cell, laying her body gently on the threadbare mattress.

When I stood up, Glenn was behind us, looking down on the girl with a confused expression. "What happened to her?"

"Broke her leg. When I got there, she was running away from a huge group of walkers."

"Whoa," Glenn murmured. "Something she couldn't handle?"

I heard a soft grunt from the bed. Laila was struggling to sit up, blinking at her surroundings. "I can handle myself just fine, thank you."

Suddenly angry at this girl's inability to show weakness, I grumbled, "I had to save your life."

She turned heated eyes on me. "If it weren't for you, my life wouldn't have needed saving."

I was about to snap back, but the words died on my tongue as I remembered the moment the fire escape had collapsed under us. If I hadn't been on it, she would've made it down without a problem. Her leg wouldn't have been broken, and she would have been able to sneak her way out of town to wherever it was she'd be headed next. The realization that she was right only made me madder. I swallowed my arguments and strode from the room.

LAILA'S POV:

"What's his deal, anyway?" I grumbled, trying to sit up without jostling my right leg too much.

I noticed the two men in the room exchange a glance. One of them was the guy I had saved from being turned into zombie chow last week.

Without answering my question, the man with curly black hair and a scruffy beard squatted in front of the bed, bringing him eye-level with me. "What's your name?" his voice was soft, but somewhat scratchy.

"Laila Gibson," I answered.

"Well, Laila," he eyed me thoughtfully. "I'm Rick Grimes. This is Glenn." He gestured to the Asian-looking man beside him. "I have some questions for you before we fix your leg."

I frowned. "How many questions?"

He shook his head. "Only three."

I gazed down at my busted leg, keeping my eyes trained on the fraying material of my jeans where blood was seeping through. "Fine."

"How many walkers have you killed?"

It didn't take a whole lot of inference to gather that "walker" was the term these people used for the undead. "As many as I've needed to," I answered in a whisper.

"How many people have you killed?"

I counted them up in my head. "Six."

"Why?"

I lifted my eyes, aware of the fact that the ghosts of my past were swimming behind them, revealing to him the guilt and sorrow at having expended those innocent lives for nothing. "Because I was too weak to stop it."

He considered these answers for a long moment, watching as my own torment slowly sank to hide within me again. Apparently satisfied with my answers, he nodded.

DARYL'S POV:

Glenn stopped by my cell, a large jug of water and some bandages in his hands. "We're going to need your help with getting her bone back in place."

I knew who he meant by her and I was in no mood to see her. "She don't want my help," I shook my head, starting to walk past Glenn and out the door.

"No," he stopped me, grabbing me firmly by the arm. I glanced back at him. "She needs your help."

I stood there debating for a moment. Did I care enough to swallow my pride and help her? Was I still so emotionless that I would let a young girl linger in pain when I could do something about it? The two sides of my internal argument went round and round until finally, I gave up and nodded.

I followed Glenn back to the cell I had left Laila in. She was laying on her back on the bed, taking slow, deep breaths, with Rick standing over her, inspecting her leg.

"She's got an open fractured fibula," Rick told me when I entered.

I didn't know what exactly that meant, but one of the bones connecting her ankle to her knee was poking through the skin of her leg, blood gushing out around it.

"If we don't reset it, she'll never walk again."

At those words, her eyes flew open. "You're not gonna do it while I'm awake, are you?"

Rick met her eyes and nodded sympathetically. "We'll have to. We don't have anything to knock you out with."

I smirked down at her. "Don't worry. Ya won't be awake for long."

She still had enough strength to muster an unamused look.

The three of us surrounded the bed, pulling it out from the wall a little bit so we had easier access to her. Rick stood at the foot of the bed, Glenn to the side, and I stood hovering near the head of the bed.

Rick poured a few liters of water mixed with iodine over the wound, cleaning it as best as possible under the conditions. She gritted her teeth, but didn't cry out.

Rick dropped the bottle, meeting Glenn's eyes and nodding. At the same time, the three of us grabbed her and secured different parts of her within our grasps. I squeezed her shoulders in my hands so she didn't squirm too much. Glenn put both of his hands on either side of her knee. Rick pulled on the heel of her foot.

She gave a breathy grunt, going a little paler as her hands flew up to grip the metal frame of the bed. She closed her eyes forecfully, knuckles whitening as the bone strained against the skin.

Agonizingly slowly, Rick pulled until the bones of her leg were aligned and then gradually released the pressure of his hands, watching to make sure the bones went back together. All throughout the process, the girl was biting her lip, thrashing her head from side to side and every now and then a half-formed whimper escaped.

"Should we sew it up?" Rick asked, looking up at the two of us.

"No, it needs to be left open a little," Glenn said. "The one thing I learned in health class; open fractures should never be sutured. We can use some of these strips to keep the skin from reopening." He held out a nearly squished cardboard box of Steri-strips.

Rick took the box and used two or three of the strips to pull together the ripped edges of the skin of her leg, leaving quite a bit of open space between them.

I glanced down at her face. Her eyes were becoming heavy-lidded and unfocused.

"We're going to go get some crutches, she'll need to be kept off that leg for at least a week," Rick said as he and Glenn rushed out of the cell. "Keep an eye on her." Even if I had wanted to speak out, I couldn't; they were already gone.

"Is it over?" she whispered, head turned sideways on a tattered pillow.

I rounded to the side of the bed. "Yeah," I murmured back, all of my anger from before suddenly evaporated now that I could see how completely she was being forced to rely on us, total strangers to her. "It's over."

"Could you do me a favor?" she asked, voice quieting as her eyelids began sliding further closed.

Seeing no real choice, I seated myself on the ground in front of the bed. "What do ya need?"

Her chest gave a short convulsion as a laugh that almost turned into a sob bubbled up. The way she held her jaw taught gave away the fact that tears were likely coming. "What I need is for my mom to come back. I need my family to be alive again. But what I want you to do is easier."

I leaned closer as her words began slurring together.

"Just bring me the pieces of my bow." I watched her face as, eyes closed, the muscles in her cheeks and forehead jumped when pain registered, switching between agony and tranquility.

I nodded, and, though I was sure she couldn't hear me anymore, whispered, "Sure thing, kid."