A/N: Hello fellow humans! Finally, another chapter out! I know, it's been a while (it always is!) but school is a big factor for me now. I hardly have time to write nowadays :(

On a happier note, we're almost to Alexandria! I am STOKED to start writing that; I have so much planned for our lovely gated community. Including the addition of another OC! Props go to ALLTIMEAOT for allowing me to use Sam in my story! It'll be a few chapters until he is officially introduced to NHWW, though, so stay tuned! Now, onto the chapter.

Tears.

It's the only thing that we know will happen as time goes on.

It's been a week. A full week since my best friend died. We've all taken the loss pretty hard. Maggie especially.

We went back to the church grounds; it was the only space we knew about so it just worked. We all sleep in the broken cars and the RV, which leads to many sore necks and little to no actual sleep. Some stay outside on the grass, so long as the coast is clear. It's too much of a risk to try and get the church back from the dead.
We dug a grave for Beth. It was the first thing we did when we came back here. Well, that and copious amounts of tears. I tell myself to stop, that I didn't even know she was alive until a few days ago and that she wouldn't want me to cry over her, but I can't help it. She was an angel to me. My first friend at the prison. The one who helped me find a home amongst the strangers who eyed me every second of the day. It stings to know I won't see her ever again.

Maggie has been so distraught. Every morning, she sits by herself next to the grave, openly weeping to the dirt. It breaks my heart to see her so defeated. And it hurts even more to know I can't do anything to help her. I can't even begin to wonder what Glenn feels like. Even he couldn't break the depressed bubble that holds his wife.

Rick, this morning, told us that we have to move. Go somewhere else. We can't stay here. No more supplies, no room, no shelter. Noah told him earlier of his family's home near Virginia.

"It was secure." Rick tells us. We're all crowded around him, aside from Maggie. "It has a wall, homes, 20 people. Beth wanted to go with him. She wanted to get him there. It's a long trip, but if it works out, it's the last long trip we have to make."

Bull shit. There will always be long trips. Nothing works out for long.

"And what if it isn't around anymore?" Glenn voices my opinion.

"Then we keep going." It's a simple answer.

"Then we find a new place." Mom says, her voice strangely calm despite the whirlwind of emotions that's happened in the last seven days (honestly though, I just assume it's a week. For all I know, we could have been here ten days, or twenty.) I had expected her to guard herself more, clam up like she was before. I worry that's what's happening to me.

But we all agree silently. As much as it hurts Maggie, Rick and mom are right. So we pack ourselves up and head on out, taking a new, kind-of–sort-of functioning car and the RV that the GREATM team found (Tara named them that when they broke off. It has all their initials in it.)

Rick, mom, Glenn, Tyreese, and Noah take the car. The rest of us pile into the back of the RV with Carol as the driver.

It's silent for the first few hours. And by first few, I mean most of the morning, leading to the afternoon. I sit wedged between Carl and Sasha in one bench, across from Tara, Eugene, and Rosita. Eugene and Tara are playing some sort of card game on the table, but they don't speak much. There's no noise but the tires crunching gravel and the wind through the windows as we pick up speed. I look past Carl, out the window, watching the trees fly past us in smudges of green and brown.

I notice a hand waving in my face, breaking my concentration on the trees outside. I look to Carl, concern adorning his features. I look at him in confusion.

"I asked you, are you okay?" He tells me. I was so lost in my head the first time, I didn't even hear him ask the question.

I muster up a smile for him, and nod. I don't say anything. I don't trust my own voice. His response to my silent answer is wrapping his arm protectively around me and giving me a squeeze. I lean in to his touch, thankful for it. He gently presses a kiss to the top of my forehead, and this time my smile, though small, is genuine.

"~Carol?" The sound of Rick coming through the radio steals my attention.

She grabs the one to her left of the steering wheel. "I'm here."

"We're halfway there. Just wanted to check the range."

"Everybody's holding tight. We've made it 500 miles. Maybe this can be the easy part."

"~Got to think we're due."

Bull shit. That's not how the world works.

"~Give us twenty minutes to check in."

"If we don't hear from you, we'll come looking."

"~Copy that."

And the radios are shut off. And we keep driving.

Twenty minutes pass by (or an hour, who knows?) and they check in, with bad news.

"~Carol, you there?" It's Rick again. He always has the radio.

"We're here." Carol answers. She pulls to the woods and stops the RV. We're close enough to where Rick and the others are so we don't need to go further.

"~We made it. It's gone."

The words don't take long for her to process it. A lump forms in my chest, but it doesn't take long to disperse. It's not like we expected it to be there. There was a 2% chance of it actually standing. Not to be mean to Noah- he does seem like a nice person- but it was a long shot.

Carol calmly presses the audio to the radio. "What do we do now?"

"~You guys stay there. We'll grab what we can and head back."

"Got it."

And we stay put. And we wait.

I hate waiting.

I hate this world. It rips all the good it has to shreds. We get the radio message only a few minutes later, the sounds of them scared and frantic and trying to run.

"~Tyreese was bit!" This time it's Glenn. The sounds of pants, most likely someone holding up Tyreese, comes through the static.

"What?!" Sasha runs up to the front, trying to pull the radio from Carol's hands. Carol shoves her away and tries to talk into it.

"What happened?" She asks, keeping her voice calm. Someone needs to be.

"~Don't know. He was attacked, we cut it off. He's losing blood fast." Glenn answers.

"Okay, what do we do?"

"~I don't know." Him sounding so distraught scares me. The thought of Tyreese being bit scares me. I look to Sasha, hear her quick, panicked breaths, and all I feel is hurt. She drops to her knees, her arms grasping the back of Carols' chair as tight as possible, and she begins to cry. I don't look to anyone else but her. I don't want to see any more pain.

Carol looks down to Sasha, sadness in her eyes, and her hands cover the ones that grip the seat so tightly. She gives them a squeeze and she pulls out of the chair, full-on hugging Sasha as she cries. Sasha hugs her back.

I feel a hand go to hold my own. I don't look at him. I know I'll just find the same fear in his face that's in mine. I don't need to see it. Instead, I give the hand a squeeze and look out again, to the trees in the sky. It's too pretty a day for someone to die.

"~Carol, we're at the car." It's Rick again. He's panting and breathless and in the back I can hear car doors slamming. "We need to cauterize the arm and wrap it. Get Sasha and the kids away. They don't need to see this."

Oh god. It's bad.

"Okay." She looks back to the two of us and we nod in response.

She looks to Sasha in her arms. "Honey-"

"No." she vigorously shakes her head. "He's my brother. I need to see him. No matter what."

Carol seems at war with the response. But Sasha says, "Please," and Carol gives a small nod. She's not going to take this well. He's going to be gone and she's going to break down even more.

And my assumptions are correct. I don't want them to be, oh god I don't want to be right, but I am. We lost another friend.

We find a nice place to bury him. In the woods, near some flowers and a creek. He would've liked it.

We go through the motions like we did Beth. We all help to dig the hole. Gabriel reads a passage from his Bible. We all get teary-eyed. Sasha tries her best to stay stone cold, but we all feel her heartbreak. We don't say anything. Instead, we say our goodbyes and we move on. It's what Tyreese would want us to do.
Rick and mom tell us we're going to Washington. It's only 100 more miles away. It could hold something. It's a start.

Days and nights pass by in a blur. The car and RV are running on empty. It's how all of us feel too. We don't have any more food or water left. That's just one of our many problems at the moment.

We go into the woods again, trying to find something, anything to eat. Water too. We would've grabbed water from the creek, but it was dark and muddy and we didn't have anything to clean it with. And we would've run out by now anyways. So here we are, shambling through the woods to find any source of meat or water to drink.

And we can't find anything. Again. So we hop into the car and RV, trying to go as far as possible in them while they still worked. Since we're far from any other vehicle, it's not like we could syphon some gas for them. We're trapped between a rock and a hard place. We don't make it far though. It's barely four miles before the engines sputter out and we're forced on foot.

Our group is eerily quiet as we walk. Normally my ears are filled with the chatter of others, but no one is in the mood to talk. Those who are have thirty-second conversations, small talk, and they are silenced again. I don't even pay attention to the others. It's too much effort to actually listen, and to be frank I don't really care. It's all white noise to me now. Except for when people leave the main group. It's always to try and find food. It always ends up empty handed.

"I'm gonna head out." I hear Daryl say. "See what I can find."

I don't look over to him. I don't raise my hopes. Instead I keep my eyes focused on the cracked asphalt in front of me and watch his shadow ghost to the right. It feels like looking up would take too much energy.

"Don't be too long." Rick tells him.

"I'll go with you." Carol offers. His shadow is joined by hers.

His shadows' head shakes. "I got it."

"You gonna stop me?" Carol asks teasingly. The shadows move to the woods together, disappearing underneath the trees. I listen to the crunching of the grass and the rustling of the leaves as they go deeper and deeper.

A bump against my side gains my attention, and I look up for the first time in a few hours. Glenn.

I raise an eyebrow at the bump. "You doing okay?" He asks. I shrug and look back down. He bumps me again.

"How long has it been since you talked?"

Three weeks.

It's been three weeks since Atlanta. Three weeks since Beth.

I don't answer him though. Instead I shrug again. Talking is just a waste of energy to me. We can't afford to waste it nowadays.

We walk side by side in silence again, holding up the back end of our tiny group. The air is heavy between us. I don't want to fill it. I'd rather suffer in silence.

"I have a sister." Glenn says. I look up at him, astonished. What?!

He winces at saying it out loud. "Had. I don't know if she's still alive or not. She lived in Boston when this started."

My eyes widen with each passing word. "Her name was Emmaline, Emma for short. She was younger than me by a year, but you couldn't tell that if you ever saw us together. I was like an annoying baby brother."

He smiles to himself, and I say, "You were close."

Damn. My voice is so scratchy from not being used. It almost hurts to talk.

"Yeah." He chuckles. "We were conjoined at the hip as kids. Always getting in trouble together. Always getting caught together. As we got older, we started growing distant. Not that we didn't have our bond anymore, but because we were being pulled in two different directions. Emma wanted to be a surgeon. It would have been easy for her. She was academically smart. Way far ahead of me and everyone in her grade. Getting accepted into colleges was easy for her. She found this school in Massachusetts and got in and she packed up and moved. I was still home delivering pizzas."

"What happened to her?" It sounds like I gargled nails.

"Like I said, I don't know. The last time I talked to her was almost two years ago. She called me and my parents just after people started getting sick. She asked if I was okay. I told her that we were fine and there was nothing to worry about. We made a trip for me and my parents to go meet her for Easter that month." The smile he had dropped from his face, placed by a deep sorrow that makes me want to cry. "I'll never know. I'll never find out if my baby sister is dead or alive. It's one of the worst parts about this goddamn outbreak."

Jesus, I think. I never knew.

"I'm sorry." I croak out. I stop walking and hold my arms out to him. He accepts the hug graciously; half because I'm actually interacting with someone after three weeks, and half because it hurt to talk about Emma.

"She's why I keep fighting. Why we all need to keep fighting." He says into my hair. "You honor the dead by going on. Even when you're scared. You live because they don't."

I nod vehemently. And I begin to understand why Glenn has such a big heart. All of his loses, all of his suffering, living in a constant state of, "I don't know," only makes his heart grow. He turns each death into a reason to keep on living, to keep going, and my heart swells in appreciation.

And I say, "Okay," to him.

As we let go of each other and speed up to join the others, I tell him, "I won't say anything to the others."

He shrugs. "You can if you want to. It's not a secret."

"Did you ever tell them?"

"... No."

"Then neither will I. Your secret is safe with me." I give him a smile , which he returns gratefully.

"Thank you."

A/N: How 'bout that twist?

Seriously, I loved writing about Emma. Not that she is, "canon." But really, the writers of the show have NEVER actually given Glenn a backstory so I decided to change that. Tell me what you guys think of Emma's inclusion! Good idea or bad idea?