When Andrea bursts through the crowd – it's off the bleachers now, the crowd, everyone's gathered in a tight circle and screaming for Dad and Merle to die – I'm relieved. Because Andrea is dead. Which means that this, all of this, is just another one of my bad dreams. Even in a bad dream, though, Andrea is being nice. She shoves her way past some of the Governor's men – no, now one's grabbing her arms and holding her back – and she tells the Governor that he can't do this. The Governor barely looks at her. He says it's not up to him anymore. The people have spoken. Andrea looks shocked, but it's okay, Andrea, it's just a dream. And now, as someone cuts my dad's hands loose, the Governor's pointing at Merle, reminding him that he said his loyalties lie with Woodbury, and now is his chance to prove it. There's a drip of blood coming from the Governor's eye bandage. And he's saying the words brother against brother. Winner goes free. Fight to the death.

Bad dream. Bad dream. Very bad dream, and I need to wake up. Right now. This feels so real, though, right down to the arm around my chest. I reach up and touch it. Yep, seems very real. I'm in a deep sleep, and I need to come out of it, right now. Right now.

Andrea begs. But people are cheering and she gets drowned out. Yes, they're cheering. They like this fight to the death plan. My dad and my uncle look at each other, and then my uncle lifts his fist high in the air. "Y'all know me!" he shouts to the people. "I'm gonna do whatever I gotta do to prove –" He punches my dad in the stomach and my dad falls, coughing.

"– that my loyalty –" Merle kicks Dad as he's starting to get up – "is to this town!"

People are screaming with joy, with excitement, chanting Merle's name like he's a hero. Except me. I'm pretty sure I just called him a son of a bitch. Wake up, Sydney. Wake up, please. Please. Please. But I don't wake up. Instead, I watch some men bring walkers into the square, walkers with their heads caught at the end of poles. The men direct the walkers towards Merle and Dad, keeping the things on the poles but close, so close, and the crowd goes wild. And it's at that point, at what would be the worst part of the nightmare, that I decide to accept that it is not a nightmare at all. And just as Merle makes a grab for Dad and Dad nails him across the chin instead, I start to thrash around. These arms around me have become my number one worst enemy. I will take care of them and then I will go after Merle. I will go after the Governor. But right now, these arms. I kick and claw and the arms squeeze, both of them wrapping around me like rope. "Stop it, kid," someone, I think the owner of the arms, is saying. "You'll only make it worse for yourself –"

I ignore him, steal a glance at Dad and Merle. Dad's on the ground again, Merle's over him, but Dad has his hands around Merle's neck, so –

And then my uncle is yanking my dad to his feet and they're back to back, hands up. Four walkers on poles surround them, but the two of them aren't fighting each other anymore, and I might try and figure out what just happened if I didn't have to focus so much on getting these arms away from me. I'm biting one right now, hard, and the hand grabs my hair and tries to pry me off, but I'm stubborn, I've always been stubborn, and I just bite until I'm tasting blood and the person holding me is grunting in pain and we're both on the ground, and he tries to get me off of him and he does but I take some skin with me. I hear punching noises from the square. And the arms have loosened. For just a moment, the arms have loosened, and sometimes, being small can come in handy. Like when you can scramble out from someone's grasp before they even know you're gone. I look back and see that it's been Backwards Hat holding me, that he's clutching his arm, and I have just enough time to check over at the square and see the Governor standing calmly on the sidelines – as my dad and my uncle fight walkers – when one of the walkers is hit by a bullet and slumps to the ground and people scream, not in excitement anymore, it's fear, fear, fear. Another body falls, this time a woman in a baseball hat, and Backwards Hat is reaching for me and I kick his hand and scramble away, and smoke begins to erupt from somewhere – there, that thing, it looks like a can, sort of, but it's pouring out smoke and now people are running, shouting, and the guns from somewhere keep going off and off and off.

I told Merle they'd come back.

I roll onto my elbows and crawl, fast, over to the bleachers. I have to work by memory, since the smoke's pretty much covering everything up. It doesn't seem like normal smoke, but I don't think about it now. My hand touches onto the cool bleachers and I prop myself up on them, coughing. I listen to the pounding footsteps, the guns, the cries, and what I think is my uncle grunting and a skull being pounded into a pulp. A woman – Andrea, it's Andrea – calls my dad's name. Then mine.

Andrea?

But this isn't a dream! And Andrea – we thought –

"Sydney!"

That was my dad. I forget Andrea, I look up, but I can't see a thing through the yellow smoke, except barely-there flashes of people from all over. "I'm here!"

A moment passes, and then a figure comes running out at me. Not my dad. Merle. He swings me up into his arms before I can even think about if it's a good idea to let him. "I got her, Daryl! Go!"

I don't understand how Merle knows which direction to take until I look in the direction he's chosen and I see a white, round light through all the dull yellow. And after a few of Merle's strides, the smoke is thin enough to where I can see my dad running in front of us, I can see him jerk his crossbow out of the hands of the bastard who took it, and the smoke's almost completely absent here and Merle and me are following Dad, who's following Rick, who's with Maggie, and we all break away from the other people as they stream from this opening to somewhere. We're running for a while, and then it's quiet, the sounds of terrified people just background noise, and we're heading down a path bordered on both sides by a picket fence and now we're out onto grass, and now asphalt. We're behind two buses that I think make up part of the wall, I can't remember, and Merle's putting me down. "They're all at the arena! This way!"

"You're not goin' anywhere with us!" says Rick in one his worst voices, and his gun's aimed at the ground, but the look on his face tells me he wouldn't at all mind pointing it at Merle instead.

"You really wanna do this now?" Merle goes in between the two buses, where a piece of fence is, and it's a tall fence, made of some sort of metal. Tin? Is tin that strong?

"C'mere, baby girl –"

My dad. My dad. My dad's down beside me and I let him pull me to him and I throw my arms around his neck and I hold him as tightly as I can manage, even though he's sweaty, because he's my dad and he's here and he's fine and I'm fine and I'm safe now. "Daddy . . ."

He sighs into my hair. "Just so you know, you ain't ever leavin' my sight again," he says in a strangled voice I've only heard a handful of times in my life, and I tell him okay, because that doesn't sound half-bad right now.

There's a bashing sound from Merle and the gate. Dad separates himself from me and cups my face, moves my head back and forth. Checking me over. "You alright? Nobody hurt ya?" Even as he says this, he touches on my scraped arm, and he either feels the cuts or sees me flinch because then he's turning me to get a better look, and his fingers graze over my damaged skin. "What happened to your arm?" He's looking up before I can answer. "Merle! What happened to her arm?"

There's a loud bang and the piece of metal in front of my uncle opens up, gaping big enough for him to pass through, and he does just that. "You wanna fix her boo-boos or you wanna get her outta here?"

Dad stands. "C'mon," he says even as he pulls me along with him through the hole in the fence, after Merle, before Maggie and Rick. Maggie. She looks okay. But where's Glenn? Merle said he got away, but –

There it is again, the crack-squish noise of a skull being broken through. Merle's already put a walker down, beating its head into the road with his metal arm, even though there's no blade attached to it. He looks up at us. "A little help would be nice!"

More walkers are coming, coming down this nice suburban road, and I reach for the bow I don't have and my dad steps up and shoots an arrow into the nearest walker. Maggie puts a bullet in one, then Rick does the same with another, and I very much hate not having a weapon on me. There are more making their way down here, too . . .

"We ain't got time for this!" yells Merle, and he runs off, and Dad nudges me after him.

"Go, go – let's go!" But I don't think that last part was to me, because I look back, and Maggie and Rick trade a bad sort of look before they run after us, and I can see that they don't like it, they don't like running with Merle. Of course not. That makes three of us. But my dad's following Merle, and so that's the only option that makes sense, and so that's the option I go with.

For now.