Pandora

"Go be with Carol," Jamie ordered, although she wasn't in such a good condition to be trying as sweat dripped off her chin and Hershel hovered behind her, a stethoscope pressed against her back as he listened to her heart and her breathing. Daryl glared at her in opposition, crossing his arms over his chest. "I told you already, I'm not sick. It's just what happened wasn't something that I was ready to see. Please, Carol needs the support more than I do right now."

"I ain't just leaving you here," Daryl grumbled out, looking back at Hershel for a minute.

"There's nothing that can be done, her body's fighting off the shock. A cold cloth to fight off the fever and a lot of water is all I can tell you," Hershel said as he looked down at the once darkly tanned woman. She looked like a ghost of her former self as she sat on his couch, wrapped up in a blanket and shivering like a kid with the flu.

"Are you sure that there's nothing else that could be wrong?" Rick asked carefully in concern, holding his black sheriff hat in his hands and beginning to spin in around as he fidgeted. Hershel let out a sigh and pulled the stethoscope away from Jamie's back and took a step backward.

"There's nothing more I can tell you. She wasn't bit or scratched so she can't be infected and she's been eating and drinking the same as all of us," he answered back honestly.

"See?" Jamie asked as she looked up at the two men. "You're needed elsewhere. I ain't going nowhere so don't worry. Now, get going before I am forced to get up and kick you out." Daryl and Rick both smirked faintly at her attitude before they each nodded and moved to leave. Rick had to go and give the news on Hershel's final decision and Daryl had been ordered by Jamie to stay with Carol until the graves were done.

"Get some sleep, Angel," Daryl ordered to her as he knelt down to press a kiss against her temple, holding there for a moment before he turned swiftly and left; his posture was tense and his shoulders were squared. Rick patted her knee before following suit, leaving her alone with Hershel and Maggie. Maggie helped her to lie down on the couch, tucking a pillow under her head and laying a cold, wet cloth over her forehead. It didn't take long before she was out like a doused flame.

Rick made his way back toward the barn, watching as the remainder of their group all crowded together near the bodies, trying to think up what to do. Carl and Dale were beginning to make their way toward them and Rick quickly put his sheriff hat on Carl's head, smiling to him as best he could before he continued on over to Lori. His eyes scanned over the damage that had been done, the dozen bodies lying about on the ground and quickly drawing flies.

"Want us to start burying?" T-Dog asked first.

"We need a service," Andrea added in, "Carol would want that."

Instead of Rick, as it was expected by everyone else, Lori was the one to take charge next. "Let's dig a grave for Sophia, and Annette and Shawn. Over by those trees." She didn't sound sure of herself as she tried to guide the others, so accustomed to Rick being the one that took control of any situation. "And we'll need a truck to move the bodies."

Shane moved off to get the truck as Andrea announced that they would burn the rest of the bodies, burying only the ones that they loved. Rick couldn't bring himself to speak, allowing the others to do what they thought was best. He wasn't sure anymore, what it was that he could do for the group. He knew that it would be best to stay on the farm, but Shane seemed to be opposing him at every turn and it was beginning to grate on him.

"What happened to Jamie?" Andrea asked before Rick to become distracted. "I saw you taking her into the house."

"She's sick; Hershel says that her body's in shock. She'll be alright, just needs to take some time. She didn't want anyone to waste time staying with her since she was just going to be sleeping so she sent Daryl and I back out here," Rick answered as easily as he could, looking back toward the camp. He knew that Daryl would be back in the RV with Carol at the moment.

"Sick?" T-Dog asked, the worry that he felt clearly known.

"She wasn't bit or anything, she let Daryl check to ease worries," Rick confirmed, seeing both Andrea and T-Dog relax again.

Jamie felt like she had been down for hours when she woke up the next time, seeing that Maggie had left already. Instead, it was Carl that sat by the window, looking out and watching everything that was going on. Feeling that her fever was gone, because she felt like she was roasting under the wool blanket, Jamie pushed herself into a sitting position with a faint groan. Carl jumped at the sound, getting to his feet quickly.

"What'd I miss?" she asked quietly, looking up at him. He seemed more at ease when he realized that she wasn't a walker—the way that she had been sleeping could very well have been compared to the dead.

"Not much; they've already done the burials and Beth fainted earlier. Maggie says she's in shock like you," he said softly, sitting back down. Jamie sighed quietly and pulled her long hair over one shoulder to try and let some cool air get at her sweat soaked neck.

"This is too much," she whispered, looking down at the floor and messaging her sore knee gently. Without waiting any further, hating that she had been down for so long as it was, she pushed herself up onto her feet. She stumbled for a moment when she got a rush of dizziness but refused to go down and was soon making her way toward the kitchen to get a new glass of water.

"Hey, Jamie," Rick called, taking her by surprise. "How're you feeling?" he asked as he stepped up to her, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead before she had a chance to say anything. He must have been satisfied with her temperature because he pulled his hand away and didn't ask anything else.

Her reply was a tired shrug of her shoulders. "I hear Beth fainted, is everything alright?"

Rick let out a loud sigh, looking to the door of the kitchen. "Hershel's gone missing; he's got all his wife's things packed up and Shane found an empty flask on his dresser. Glenn knows the bar that Maggie mentioned and he and I are going to go into town to try and find him before anything happens. Beth needs him right now." Jamie placed the empty water glass on the table and turned her full attention to him.

"I'm coming, too," she declared, holding up a hand to stop him before he could say anything against it. "I'm feeling a lot better and I can take care of myself. I am not going to just sit around here while I'm recovering. Besides, we're taking a vehicle in to pick up Hershel, even if we ran into walkers they'd be no trouble." Rick looked conflicted, wanting to deny her. "I don't care what you say, I'm going," Jamie said sternly, knowing that he was getting ready to turn her down.

Sighing loudly once again, he nodded his head in understanding. A broad smile came to her lips when she saw the motion and tapped him once on the cheek. "See, that wasn't so hard." Turning to continue getting herself some water she didn't hear Rick move out of the room, but knew that he probably wouldn't linger. Now, Daryl is going to be a while different story of convincing.

"Fuck no."

"Daryl," Jamie started, moving to follow after him when he marched past her to head back toward the house. "I'm not a child and you're not about to treat me like one. Now, you've got your things that you can do and I need mine. Come on, just let me do this. We're going to pick up a slightly depressed old man, what exactly can go wrong with that?"

"Walkers," he snapped back, turning to face her.

"I've got two men there with me that can shoot just fine and we're taking a car so it's not that bad," she argued, looking over to where Rick was standing in the open door of the car they were taking. Daryl looked between them briefly before he turned to move over to where Rick was standing instead, completely bypassing Glenn and Maggie. Jamie moved to catch up, going as far as jogging lightly on her leg but making sure not to do so much as to injure herself any worse.

"I swear, if you don't bring her back-"

"I'll watch out for her, Daryl. We're just going in, picking up Hershel, and coming back," Rick answered, meeting Daryl's hard stare head on. Jamie moved over to them, grabbed the back of Daryl's pants and began to pull him away from Rick, allowing the other man to breathe. Daryl didn't fight against her and was soon facing her once more, standing a couple of yards away.

"I'll be fine, Daryl," she whispered softly as she pulled him down to her level with his forehead resting against hers. His hands moved to her hips out of natural reaction and he exhaled deeply through his nose, the warm air brushing against her face. "Please, if I stay here any longer I'm going to either slap Lori or kill Shane, both have bad outcomes."

Daryl couldn't stop the laugh that rose in his chest and he nodded his head, knowing that she spoke only the truth. She pressed a kiss against his lips while he was still close enough before pulling away and jogging carefully over to the vehicle. Daryl watched her jog with hidden concern in his eyes, but he also knew that she was a hard headed woman and didn't like to be babysat by people. Even if it was him.

Jamie slid into the backseat since Glenn had already called 'shotgun' and she scooted herself over to the center, placing her gun on the seat beside her and looked back up to the house. It was a pain to get in and out because the car didn't have back doors and she was forced to manoeuvre around the two front seats. Maggie was standing on the porch, her arms crossed and a frown on her face. That was maybe the third time that Jamie had seen her in that exact position and she would admit it was oddly disturbing.

"Your girlfriend's a guard-dog," she teased quietly, looking over to Glenn. He balked slightly, shocked at what she had said, and Jamie let out a breathy laugh. Rick was glad to hear that she was back to normal, but didn't say anything on the matter as he listened to Jamie lightly poke and tease Glenn, knowing that she was simply trying to keep the mood up. They weren't exactly going into town for shits and giggles.

They had already reached the outskirts of the town before Glenn spoke up.

"She told me she loved me," he finally admitted, immediately drawing Jamie's interest enough for her to lean forward in her seat to put herself between the two front seats. Glenn's eyes flickered over to her quickly before he looked up to Rick again. Ah, she thought, man talk.

Leaning back once more, she just listened to what Rick had to say, noddinf her head along with everything along the way. He was right; Maggie was smart enough to understand her own feelings. It was amusing, though, to hear a man's point of view. Even with Rick trying to calm him down Jamie could see that he was concerned and knew where he was coming from—being a girl herself—but she also knew that it wasn't all that much to worry about.

"Dude, this isn't a soap-opera. Women don't flip out when a guy doesn't say 'I love you' back the first time. I told Daryl it dozens of times before he finally got to balls to say it back. Words don't always mean a whole hell of a lot; you've told her that you want to keep her safe and protect her. You've shown her that. That's really what counts," Jamie explained, keeping her eyes closed and leaning back against the seat.

"When did Daryl finally tell you?" Rick asked curiously.

"It was completely random. I had just had a really bad day at work and had said 'fuck it, I'm going to sleep' to everything. He called me at one in the morning, which provoked me to no end, but before I could bite his ear off for it he said 'I love you. Thought you might want to hear that' and hung up," she told them, grinning from ear to ear and laughing softly at the memory. Glenn couldn't stop himself form chuckling in the front seat, looking back at her.

"When did you tell him?"

"When I first realized I actually loved him," she answered back honestly. Leaning forward, she rested her arms on the console between the seats, looking forward to the road. "Rick, are you seriously obeying the laws of the road?" she asked in surprise as he kept to the right of the yellow lines.

"It's all the hills," he defended. "If by chance we do run into someone else then this way we don't have to worry about a collision."

"Trust me," she drawled out slowly, looking over to him. "They'd hear us coming a mile away." Silence fell in the car and they could all hear the rickety sound of the motor, not only loud because they were in the car but just plain loud.

Lori rushed over toward one of the furthest points of Hershel's fields, where the remains of a stone building were all that was left there. Daryl sat at the base one of the walls, a cluster of straight sticks beside him as he pulled his knife along the end of one, sharpening it. She knew that he was making himself new arrows, that didn't take long to figure out, and she was slightly unsettled at the angry way he handled his knife.

"Move into the suburbs?" she called when she was close enough, but he never stopped the rapid movements of his blade along the stick. "Listen, Beth's in some kind of catatonic shock. We need Hershel," she explained as she walked up to him, stopping a few feet short.

"Yea, so what?"

"So I need you to run into town real quick and bring him and Rick back," Lori answered, falling into a crouch so that she was a closer level to him. He didn't appear to care either way, though, and continued with his work. She wondered how it was that Jamie could stand to be around him all the time. "Daryl?" she asked when he didn't show any sign of caring. He looked up sharply, finally drawing his eyes from his blade and stick.

"Your bitch went window shopping, you want him fetch him yourself," he snapped back. His irritation and anger from the day was starting to bubble over and the fact that she was in his face after he knew what she had said to Jamie only made things worse for her. "I got better things to do."

"What's the matter with you? Why would you be so selfish?" Before the question was even completely said Daryl had bolted to his feet, turning to face her with a glare set in place.

"Selfish?" he demanded, "listen to me, Olive-Oil, I's out there looking for that little girl every single day. Nearly lost Jamie to a fucking horse, I took a bullet and an arrow in the process; don't be telling me about getting my hands dirty!" He was yelling and pointing at her with the knife in his hand, leaving her nervous and unsettled to have the sharp object swung in her direction. He scoffed in a mock laugh of amusement before moving to sit back down. "You want those two idiots, have a nice ride. I'm done looking for people."

"What about Jamie, she's out there, too."

"Now you act like you care?" he growled out, looking up at her again from his returned sitting position. "Don't you act like you care about her, accusing her of fuckin' your husband like you did. Don't you fucking dare act like you care! Go back to your own fucking marriage problems; keep 'em away from me and mine!"

Lori didn't know what else to say, especially now that the conversation had taken a very different turn than she had been expecting. Daryl had already resumed his work and she knew that she was not going to be getting anything else from him. Turning to head back toward the camp, she felt shaken after the exchange. It was not only the knife swinging around or the yelling, but the fact that he had so openly yelled at her about her earlier accusation to Jamie.

Inside the bar, the other three weren't fairing much better with trying to get Hershel up and moving. Glenn and Jamie stayed back and out of the conversation, leaving things up to Rick as he had a one on one with the older man. Hershel tried to defy them at every turn, but Rick seemed to know exactly what to say. Hershel knew deep down already that the other man was right, but he couldn't bring himself from the darkness that he had slipped into in order to realize that.

"You know what the truth is?" Rick asked finally, leaning closer to Hershel as he spoke. "Nothing has changed. Death is death, it's always been there," he explained, pulling himself up again until he stood at his full height and looked away from Hershel. Jamie silently agreed with him, knowing that things weren't entirely different. The world had suffered through many sicknesses, this was no different. "Whether it's from heart attack, cancer or a walker, what's the difference?"

Jamie looked over to Glenn, seeing that he was trying to show in any way that he was not there and end up disrupting the conversation. It appeared that Hershel was finally starting to listen and they didn't want to chance breaking the direction of conversation between the two elders. Jamie adjust her seat on the counter and looked down at her gun, knowing that there were several more bullets in her pockets and in the glove compartment of the car. She couldn't help but think back to the first time she had fired the gun, back in the city of Atlanta.

Not the best memory.

"You know what; this isn't about what we believe anymore. It's about them," Rick was saying, looking down at Hershel carefully. Jamie looked between them before she felt her stomach clench when Hershel just knocked back the rest of the drink in his glass, leaving Rick to straighten up and turn away slightly. They were all surprised, though, when he turned the glass upside down and slammed in onto the counter.

Done.

Rick placed a hand on his shoulder in relief, Jamie and Glenn passing one another a quick smile. Before they had a chance to depart, though, the door they hand entered through swung open. Light flooded the darkened space of the bar and Jamie squinted her eyes to try and see who was standing there, her hand tightening on her gun. Two figures stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light.

"Son of a bitch," one of them said, before he turned toward his friend, "they're alive."

Jamie looked over to Rick slowly as she was quickly filled with dread. He motioned for her to move back behind the counter, his face serious. She didn't take the time to hesitate and spun around on the counter, carefully dropping down to land on her good leg and blocking herself off from the others. The two men strode in as if they owned the place, looking cocky and overjoyed.

"How about a drink?" the same man asked, looking to each of them in turn. Jamie didn't want to make any kind of a scene and discretely got shot glasses for them all, even though she had no intention of drinking it. Any other time, sure, but not when her entire body was on high alert. She should have just stayed back with Daryl. God knows he's not exactly having the best day.

Rick used the bottle that Hershel had already had opened and poured the two newcomers each a shot before he poured one for himself, Glenn and Jamie. He met her eyes when he was standing before her, the larger new comer a couple of feet away at the counter. She nodded her head as discretely as she could, holding onto her gun below the counter and taking the shot glass in the other. He moved away again, stepping over to where Hershel was standing.

"I'm Dave," the skinnier of the two men introduced, sitting back at one of the tables. Jamie didn't completely care who he was. She wanted him gone; she had known a lot of guys through her time alive and she knew one that she couldn't trust when she saw one. "That scrawny looking douche-bag over there is Tony."

Tony laughed, leaning back against the counter Jamie was standing behind. "Eat me, Dave."

"Hey, maybe someday I will. We met on I-95 coming out of Philie," he explained, picking up the shot that Rick had poured for him.

"I'm Glenn," the Asian said in introduction, waving shortly to the two newest bar occupants. Jamie didn't speak, watching them all cautiously as she kept her hand over present on her gun. "It's nice to meet some new people."

"Rick Grimes," Rick said neck, handing Glenn his shot glass.

"What about you, not having one?" Dave asked when Hershel refused to take anything to drink from Rick, leaving Dave curious. Hershel just replied with, "I just quit" before going quiet again. "Well," Dave started again, "You have a unique sense of timing, my friend."

"This is Hershel, he lost people today. A lot of them," Rick explained as his voice lost the lightness from before. Jamie felt her stomach twist as she remembered when the barn had been opened up. It was like Pandora's box. When she looked up again, Dave's eyes were on her. She repressed the urge to shiver in disgust at the look that he was giving her.

"I'm truly sorry to hear that," he said, not taking his eyes off her for a moment. When he did, he lifted his shot in cheers and spoke directly to Hershel this time. "To better days and new friends, and to our dead. May they be in a better place." Jamie waited until everyone else was taking back their shots before she dumped hers under the counter and placed the newly emptied glass back on the counter, none the wiser. "What about you, sweetheart, who're you?" Dave asked as he slid his shot onto the table, looking over to her.

"Jay," she answered shortly, saying and doing nothing more. Dave didn't look pleased at the lack of proper response but didn't chose to say something and instead reached over the table to pick up the bottle that Rick had placed down to pour himself another shot. In doing so, he revealed the gun he had tucked into the back of his pants.

Rick eyed the gun wearily, waiting until Dave did something.

"Not bad, huh?" Dave asked as he pulled the gun free and showed it to Rick in a non-threatening way. "I got it off a cop."

"I'm a cop," Rick answered back blandly.

"This one was already dead."

Wow, this one was long. I hope that you all liked it, I made sure to add some length to make up for the lack of proper updates. I'm barely getting any reviews, though, it's disappointing. Where did you all go? Please, come back! I need you!

Shoot out comes in the next chapter!

Chapter 32 – Don't Blink

Jamie looked up at Rick again and pointed a finger at him in silent warning, her way of telling him to keep his mouth shut. She could hear them begin to walk away, many of them beginning to doubt that anyone was in there as the main guy continued to call for them. Jamie looked into Rick's blue eyes before she glanced up at the fogged glass where there were shadows of the men revealed from the car headlights.

"They drew on us!" Rick called, getting a smack on the cheek from Jamie. He tried to silently convey that it was all he could do and Jamie glared at him, yelling at him in nearly inaudible whispers. She smacked him again in frustration before they both fell still, waiting for a reply.

"Dave and Tony in there?" the man outside asked, his voice back to the same distance as before. "They alive?"

"No," Rick answered, holding his hand up when Jamie went to smack him again to ward her off for the time being. "I had to," he explained in a hushed yell, getting a frustrated sigh from her in return. Glenn watched them in confusion, wondering if they realized that Jamie was pretty much straddling him as she leaned against his thigh. If Glenn hadn't known any better, he would have through that Rick and Jamie were a couple.