Heterochromia Iridum

Celebrating the 100's today. :) This story is officially over 100,000 words and over 100 reviews! You guys blow my mind; I'm still surprised that anyone is reading this!

Sorry it's been a month since I've updated. I actually had some of this done a few days after I wrote the last chapter, but I suddenly got really busy with life. It feels like ages, I actually reread the last few chapters to get myself back into it. I have a bit more of a consistent schedule now so hopefully I will get back into the swing of things easier. Thanks for the patience and encouraging words, everyone.

Thank you to LeAnn388, ElectroGirl444, addicted2memories, Steph, jeanf, Olivia, writingNOOB, purple-pygmy-puff16, Kaiya's Watergarden, bakaneko7, JenTen & Bactrian Camel for reviewing and thank you to everyone new that has added the story to their alerts or their favourites!

Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead or any of the characters associated with the franchise. I own the plot to this story and any original characters you may see, like Katty or Calum.

Chapter 14: Fast

"The scratch on your arm."

For being so sickly and pale looking, Noah's voice rang clear and deep and struck her to her very core. Katty knew her heart had to have stopped in that moment, and that her face gave away the verification of the scratch instantly. She decided to play it off anyways, though a little voice in her head said that it was useless.

"Yeah," she said, and looked down at the aforementioned limb. "Fell pretty hard in the glass, it cut me up kinda badly. Carol just spent over an hour picking glass out of –"

"Katty," Noah interrupted. His forehead was creased and he looked slightly irritated. "I saw it happen. I know it wasn't the glass that scratched you."

Her breath caught in her throat as Noah called her out bluntly on her lie. She noticed that he didn't name it though. A Walker scratched you. That was what they called them, right? Katty's throat was dry.

Noah's gaze fixed on the clean bandage around her arm. "Show me," he demanded, his voice trembling with unshed emotion. He was angry, Katty decided. He thinks I'm going to end up killing everyone.

Instead, she tried in vain to distract him again. "You've spoken to everyone," she said incredulously, her tone low. Katty glanced over her shoulder to make sure the door was shut securely. "Why haven't you told everyone?"

"I wanted to give you the courtesy that you gave me," Noah spoke softly this time. "You made sure I wasn't put on show for the entire town, and I appreciate that. I wanted to give the same back." His dark, tired eyes held hers once more, an intensity that didn't suit his young face. It made her eyes burn with the need to cry.

She didn't respond right away, so Noah continued, in a much smaller voice. "It's my fault. You shouldn't have been hurt. I've killed you." He spat out, angry at himself.

Her heart wrenched, and she felt conflicted. She had two options. Katty could admit to the scratch and agree that she was, in fact, infected and dying. Or she could tell him the truth. The small, selfish part of her, the one that wanted to protect herself, screamed in her ear to tell him that she was dying.

He would die thinking he killed her.

She couldn't let him die with that on his conscience. Noah didn't deserve that. That was her choice, not his. He couldn't be punished for her carelessness.

Shaking, Katty's hand reached and clumsily pulled the bandage off of her arm. She refused to look down, and locked her nervous eyes on his face. Katty watched as his gaze retreated downwards, and felt it burn into the long scratch on her arm.

Slowly, his hand reached up to the still bleeding wound on his shoulder. His face looked confused, and suddenly his stare was back on her face, scanning her all over.

"It – it's stopped bleeding," Noah whispered, flickering his frantic eyes from her face to her arm.

She hesitated. "Yeah," Katty confirmed lamely, her voice cracking. What else could she say?

Confusion, panic, fear, fatigue, too many emotions littered his face for Katty to count or even attempt to name as they appeared and disappeared simultaneously. The expression, however, pleaded with her to continue. She couldn't find the words, though, and just stared at him.

"How is that possible," he breathed. "I've seen people get bit, get scratched." Noah continued to himself. "You should be running a fever by now. It should be more red, more infected – more everything."

She wanted to look at the floor, anywhere but him. But Katty found she couldn't look away from the younger man, and felt defeated; tired.

"I'm immune."

The room was cold and quiet and you would have been able to hear a pin drop or a cockroach scuttle across the floor. Neither of them breathed for a few seconds, and Katty wished she was better at reading people. What the fuck was he thinking?

Noah glanced at her arm again. Every movement he made was amplified for Katty as she waited for his response. The impending anger, denial, dismissal of her words.

"Oh," he finally said, and Katty choked on her spit.

"What?" she stuttered out at him, disbelieving.

"They ignore you," he muttered to himself. Noah's brow was furrowed and he spoke quietly, the gravelly tone echoing in her ears as he held a dialogue with himself.

"They ignored you back when we were outside and one went after Tara. 'I'm not really on their radar,'" he repeated the words she had said to Tara when she had asked her why it had moved past her. "They ignored you when you jumped out of the van. The only point that the Walker actually noticed you was when you were up close, and you had Tara's blood on your hands."

Katty's heart was pounding excessively hard, blood rushing in her ears. It had been so long since she had told anyone, the last person to know had been Merle. And he hadn't known long enough to ask many questions before she escaped Woodbury.

"They see me sometimes," Katty finally found her voice, and decided to clarify it to Noah. What did she have to lose, telling a dying boy, Katty questioned herself bitterly. "If I make too much noise or get too close. They get confused, scratch me sometimes. I've only been bit once though."

She hurriedly undid her pants and shoved them halfway down her thighs, not caring about dignity or privacy anymore. Noah's eyes immediately attached to the mark – the scar – on her right hip.

Katty didn't have to look down to remember what it looked like.

A perfect indent from an intact set of teeth. The Biter had clamped down on her skin through the leggings she had been wearing at the time. It was an ugly, uneven terrain of scar tissue. Uneven in texture and in color. Some of the shallower points were pale in color, lighter than her skin. The rest was decorated in various degrees of red, some points angrier looking than others. A spattering of light bruising was laced around it. The bruises did change. Some would heal, and then reappear a few hours later. Like the wound had altered the composition of her skin permanently; made the surrounding blood vessels fragile and easily ruptured.

"It still hurts," she added, once the silence and Noah's stare had become too much for her. It was true. Katty was so accustomed to having it that she often didn't think of the bite every second of the day. But moments that her mind was focussed on the scar, it would throb, a dull pain that she was used to.

Noah reached out a hand and traced it lightly, his clammy hands felt like ice in comparison to the temperature of her skin. Even though the motion had been expected, it still made her flinch. Much like when Rick had patted her down the first day here and accidently touched the mark. If Noah had noticed her flinch, he ignored it.

"How did it happen?" he asked finally, his gaze still locked on her hip.

Naïve. That could have been the only word used to describe her group.

They had been settled outside of Atlanta for almost two weeks. Reflecting back on their setup, Katty was surprised they had even lasted that long. They were loud at their quietest, and most of them were unaccustomed to camping for a weekend let alone living outside.

There were thirteen of them. Lumped together when the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport had been evacuated. When they had been forced out of the city from sheer overpopulation and the obvious notion that there was no help there, they had all watched from the packed highway as military aircrafts dropped napalm bombs on the city.

Circumstance felt like chains.

Katty selfishly only kept to Tyler in the beginning. She didn't bother to learn more than a few names of the other people in the group. On the surface, she was friendly, but it was a shallow front and one that the rest probably saw through.

Tyler was conventionally good looking, athletic and charming, and easily made friends with everyone. It irritated Katty, and made her resent him. That he adapted so easily to their new environment whereas she only felt worn out. They had been on their way to stay with her father in Florida, when the pilot's voice had calmly explained that the flight would be momentarily inconvenienced and rerouted to Atlanta. He offered no explanation as to why, and Katty had merely shrugged and slid her eye mask back on. Maybe they had miscalculated how much gas the plane would need.

After a lot of panic, yelling, and announcements over the intercom, the thirteen of them had ended up somewhere in the woods outside the city. Stupidly, they had come to a consensus that with less visibility, the undead would be less likely to find them. What they hadn't realized was that it was even less likely that they would be able to spot any threats.

There had been a quarry half an hour down a different dirt road, inhabited by other survivors. Tyler had volunteered himself and Katty to go up and negotiate, see if they were interested in pooling resources and man power.

Initially, an older man and two blonde women had greeted them and been friendly. They had been excited about the prospect of other people, and the younger one of the blonde sisters had been especially excited that Katty had been around her age. It had gone well until a cop, thick and built like a fuckin' brick house, had promptly turned them away once he learned about their numbers.

"That's too many mouths to feed, sweetheart. I'm sure you can understand," he had explained to her like she was a child. Katty bristled at the memory of the officer's face, watching her under his blue hat that said 'POLICE' on it and puffing his chest at the same time.

A willowy brunette had stood off a distance from them, and watched with a concerned expression. She had called out to him softly with a name that Katty couldn't remember now, and he had paused briefly before readdressing Katty and Tyler.

The hat was pulled from his head and the man scratched at the back of his skull, his meaty forearm flexing.

"Look," he continued, his tone not as boisterous. Katty raised an eyebrow at the change. "If it was just you two, it might be different. We're stretched thin as it is; another thirteen people would be difficult to keep fed."

They had liked their height advantage, the clearing, and the fact that they had water available for bathing and washing clothes. Past that, Katty hadn't been interested in joining their group, and wasn't nearly as put-out as Tyler had been at their dismissal from the officer.

Still, she wondered how different things would have been if they had left their group and joined the quarry.

"We'll try again in a few weeks, yeah?" Tyler had asked her as they drove away. "We should have brought a welcoming gift or something." He continued, placing a hand on Katty's upper leg. She shrugged in response, unconcerned.

Life had been bleak to say the least. Looking back at it, Katty knew it had all been her negativity that made her so miserable and redundant. She helped out around their camp, did her part, but moped around at the same time. Everything about her life, and especially her relationship with Tyler, was forced.

It wasn't his fault. Tyler hadn't changed whatsoever. Katty, however, was angry with the world and it spilled over into their personal life as well.

They used to talk, they used to have fun, they used to have a connection and Katty used to think that they had a shot together. Now, it just felt like she was with Tyler because she didn't have a choice, rather than because she actually wanted him. He was the last trace of her normal life from before, and she selfishly knew that if given the chance, she wouldn't let Tyler go. Simply because that would feel like the last shred of herself was ripped away. So they didn't talk like they would have before hand. They didn't laugh or smile together. They still had sex, but it was different. It felt like a yearning for normalcy and a shredded connection that had been lost, rather than a physical or emotional want.

Katty couldn't decide what was more fucking pathetic. The fact that she was using someone who genuinely liked her, or the fact that she was using him because she didn't have anything left of herself.

How could she even explain that to anyone? That a boyfriend was the only thing she identified with who Katty was anymore? She hated herself.

And she definitely didn't appreciate him. Or anyone else in that group. And within a few, short, short weeks, Katty would come to regret how she treated or viewed anyone.

It had been the early evening. She had been out in the forest, collecting edibles and basically avoiding human contact, walking through the woods in a perimeter around their camp. Popping berries into her mouth and stalking around, Katty swung the bat in her hand lazily around.

Five of those dark berries hit the ground when she heard the screaming. Scrambling in the direction of camp, Katty tripped and fell over a log, swearing loudly. Ignoring the stinging sensation in her wrists and knees, Katty threw herself to her feet and started to run.

Katty had wandered farther than she normally did, and her lungs burned with exhaustion and panic when the small break in the treeline appeared. The screaming, snapping, growling, crying, all grew louder as she approached; the cacophony of noises made her want to vomit.

The soundtrack to a fucking massacre.

She hadn't been sprinting for more than a few minutes. It was impossible that the carnage that greeted her had transpired in that short amount of time.

There were dead ones everywhere, all in varying degrees of decay, all in varying degrees of descending upon the living. An older husband and wife being torn into simultaneously was the first of many to make the bile rise in her throat. It made her stumble and fall to her knees, the bitter contents of her stomach rushing into her mouth and onto the ground.

A family was screaming collectively a few meters away. The mother had been holding her son in her arms protectively, with little effect as they were overrun. Five dead ones were lying motionlessly around them, and Katty felt frozen as she watched the father swing a crowbar carelessly and futilely at the remaining group that surrounded them.

"KATTY! KATTY, WHERE ARE YOU?"

The masculine voice made her jump, and she cowardly tore herself away from the dying members of her group, her eyes refusing to make contact with any of the people being devoured. There was so many of them, Katty didn't know what to do. Something grabbed her foot, and she fell for the third time today.

"Help," a dark haired man gurgled at her, thick blood bubbling out of his mouth. There were two dead ones attached and ripping into his legs as he uselessly tried to crawl away. The pleading look in his eyes made Katty hesitate from running away, and she stopped. Letting instinct take over, she clumsily swung her bat over his head and towards the creature biting him.

A sickening crack sounded as the bat made contact with its head, and the undead paused, momentarily stunned. Katty quickly got up and twisted her body as she hit it repeatedly with the bat, brain matter spraying her. Immediately, she turned to the other dead counterpart and resorted to scrunching her eyes closed as more pieces of skull and brain matter ornamented her face.

The man on the floor gurgled something at her, but her head and attention twisted away as another yell ripped through the air for her. She ran, looking around as Katty tried to zero in on where Tyler was. It was definitely him yelling for her. Who else would be concerned for her safety?

Katty ducked in between tents and jumped over bodies of fallen undead and people alike, her breath catching as Tyler appeared in her sights. He was dirty and covered in blood and guts, and still somehow retained his good looks. Tyler was wielding a hunting knife, and was in the middle of thrusting it into the head of a dead one. He winced as he drew it back.

Relief flooded his features as his gaze landed on Katty.

"Fuck, there you are, I thought –" a scream ripped from his mouth as another clamped down on his forearm. Katty's own scream mirrored his as she lunged forward to uselessly try to stop what had just happened. Tyler grunted and used his other hand to stab the offending creature through its forehead.

Katty felt tears and vomit welling up simultaneously as she stumbled towards Tyler and grabbed him. Together, they broke and fell to the ground, Katty sobbing and Tyler muttering something to her that she wasn't coherent enough to understand or appreciate.

Sitting on the ground covered in each other, the remaining chaos didn't register to Katty. The screams and growls were muted, and she couldn't hear anything over her gasping breaths. The sharp pain in her hip barely registered as teeth clamped down on her hip through her leggings, until the blooming pain captured her attention. Her head swiveled around to watch in horror as the undead latched onto her skin, and then paused before unclamping from her skin, seemingly confused.

She didn't have time to wonder why it didn't rip flesh from her and dive in for more, before a shot rang out and the dead slumped forward.

"Fuck!" Tyler swore angrily, and used his good arm to pull Katty to her feet. He shoved the Glock back into the front of his pants and grabbed her hand.

"We need to get out of here," he yelled in her ear, and pulled her roughly to follow him.

Katty's feet followed on their own accord, but she felt numb. She was going to die. She was dead. Tyler was dead. She was going to be one of those things. Where she had been sobbing before, Katty couldn't feel anything but shock now. It had happened so fast; one minute she had been eating and walking in the woods, and then everyone she knew post-apocalypse was fucking dead.

It barely registered to her as the trees cleared and Tyler pulled her to sit beside him on a rock. He hissed in pain as she bumped against his bitten arm, and Katty apologized dully. Tyler shook his head dismissively at the 'sorry'.

It was silent for a while as they both caught their breath, the shaky gasps the only thing that echoed between them.

It was odd, Katty thought forlornly. Sitting pressed against someone and somehow feeling so far away.

He shuffled beside her and pulled the gun out from the front of his jeans, placing it in his lap.

"Two left. What a coincidence." He drawled sarcastically, anger seeping into his tone. Katty didn't reply, just leaned her head on his shoulder. Tyler let out a puff of air and Katty felt him sag slightly beside her in defeat.

Her hip throbbed and she gingerly reached a hand down to trace a couple fingers over the bite. It stung, but she resisted moving away and laid her hand fully over the indent. Her leggings were ripped at her hip and blood flowed freely down her leg.

"I can't believe that happened," he muttered, and the cynical part of Katty wanted to laugh. They had been in the middle of the woods, with no defenses other than a person or two on watch. Their group was loud and boisterous, careless and childlike; it was a miracle that they had lasted this long.

But she didn't say any of that. What was the point?

"Yeah," Katty agreed instead, wondering why she decided to spend the last moments of her life lying. Was it for Tyler, or was it for her?

He started to babble, and Katty tuned out. Tyler was explaining what he had been doing before the herd descended on them, who he had seen die, and how many he had been able to take out before Katty came along. It was comforting, listening to his deep voice speak, even if she wasn't really hearing the content.

Staring at the sky, Katty watched the darkening hues of the sunset; blues, purples, deep oranges, all drifted away like an exhaled breath.

How fitting, she thought dully.

"I don't know if I'll be able to shoot you and then myself," Tyler commented bluntly, and Katty glanced sideways at him. He, too, was watching the sunset disinterestedly. She should have probably been offended with how nonchalantly he talked about killing her, but Katty understood. If you tried to distance yourself emotionally from the subject matter, it was easier to talk about.

And it needed to be talked about.

Katty thought over his words briefly, and what he might as well have come out and asked in that moment.

"I could do it," she said monotonously, and grabbed the Glock from his lap. "Maybe." She added uncertainly. It was heavy in her hands, and she passed the weight between her left and right. Katty could feel Tyler watching her out of the corner of her eye, and she put the gun back in her lap and glanced at the sky once more.

It reminded her of California, of home, of life before the world died. When she was a server and a college dropout and her biggest problem was her debt. Katty turned her head and traced her eyes over Tyler's face, pale with pain. The sky reminded her of when they would stay up all night, watching movies, fucking, and talking.

"Or," she swallowed a lump in her throat and continued. "We could pretend we aren't dying, pretend we're back in California and just talk all night." Katty looked over at Tyler and smiled lightly. "Watch the sun rise and lose our fuckin' minds together."

Tyler let out a loud laugh, one that didn't suit the gravity of their situation. "Fuck, you sure are romantic, huh Katty?" he ran a hand through his sweat slick mop of hair and pushed it back out of his eyes.

And they talked. It wasn't monumental and Katty didn't fall in love with him in the dark hours of the night when all that illuminated them was moonlight. Some conversations were new; some were repetitions of old stories that they had told each other before. They laughed and cried and Katty even slapped Tyler at one point for an argument that didn't mean anything and that she couldn't recall even now in the present moment.

That's the funny thing about words, they may fade from your memory but the feelings attached to them are burnt into your skin for so much longer.

And in the early hours of the morning when the sun rose, Katty looked at Tyler in the new light and recognized that their story didn't have to be a Romeo and Juliet tragedy about love and death and poison and daggers. They were simply two people that tried to make it work and looked out for each other.

A cough interrupted her thoughts. Katty tugged her bottom lip into her mouth and watched him. Tyler had progressively gotten worse throughout the night, his complexion became sickly, almost grey, and his breaths became ragged. They were now sat on the floor, leaned against the rock instead of on top of it. Katty suggested they move when Tyler became weak, barely being able to hold himself up. She had watched him decompensate during the night, and tried to accept it as it came. A small voice in the back of her head wondered why she felt alright, other than tired, but brushed it off. Maybe it was because she was bitten lower down on the body than Tyler was, and it took longer to affect her.

"I think my time's up, Katty."

Her breath caught in her throat at his words. They had talked about everything last night, even the prospect of ending it. It was almost comical to think that they could wander the world together as undead, but neither of them truly wanted that. And Tyler had made sure to echo that thought to her consistently throughout the night.

Katty supposed that this was it for them.

Her nose and eyes burnt as she picked up the gun that had been placed beside her. If she had thought it was heavy earlier, it felt like a fucking sack of bricks right now. Her vision blurred and she blinked rapidly to clear it. Shaking, she raised the gun halfway to the side of his head and stopped, unable to look at Tyler.

"Look at the sky, Tyler" she choked out, "We said we'd watch the sun rise together. Just look at the sky."

A clammy hand guided her face up a few degrees and her eyes snapped to his. Through the pain, the sickness, the infection, his face was warm and genuine and Tyler smiled at her.

"I'd rather look at you."

She refused to let the sob escape her, and mustered a small, watery smile at her companion as she raised the gun to rest on his temple.

"See ya later, Katty."

Katty didn't look away as she pulled the trigger. She had been enough of a coward, and she owed it to Tyler. The shot was deafening at the close contact, and Katty scrunched her eyes shut as soon as she heard his body slump to the ground. Katty didn't need to remember him like that. As a corpse.

Turning away and back towards the sky, Katty double checked that there was indeed, one bullet left.

Maybe it wouldn't be hard to pull it if she didn't think about it.

Her mind disagreed. She wasn't sure how long she sat there, in the damp grass with the gun pressed to the side of her head. All the instincts in her body told her not to. Katty was sweating and her chest was heaving, a mix of adrenaline, fear and anguish coating her. Her arm hurt from holding it up for so long, the limb shaking in protest.

"Quit bein' a fucking coward, I thought we were done with that," she muttered to herself angrily and refused to remove the object from her temple. Maybe she should try counting to three.

As fate would have it, Katty would never know if counting would have helped her pull the trigger.

The gun was roughly snatched from her hand, and her arm toppled uselessly down to her side.

"I'll say you're a fuckin' coward, tryin' to opt out," a masculine voice chided, and Katty jumped to attention.

Scrambling to her feet, she seethed up towards the lanky male that greeted her with raised, unimpressed brows.

"I've been bitten, you useless fucking sack of shit," Katty spat at him and ripped the side of her torn leggings down by her hip to expose the mark.

The taller man took a step back and looked down at where she gestured.

"How long ago was that?" he asked evenly, his light eyes dancing between her hip and her face.

"It doesn't matter," Katty snapped irritably and made a move to grab the Glock from him again. The lanky young man easily took another step back and moved so she couldn't grab the weapon from him. "Yesterday evening. Now give it back!"

"Yesterday? You're sure?" he asked dubiously, and then raised both hands defensively at her murderous look. He tucked the gun into the back of his pants and then looked Katty over once more.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" she growled at him, and started to think of a plan of attack to get the gun back from him.

"Name's Calum," the lanky, annoying man answered with a flash of teeth. "And I think we have a lot to talk about."

"How did it happen?" Katty parroted back at Noah, "Fast." She answered shortly. It would have been nice if she could have told him the entire story. Would have been nice if they had the time and would have been nice if either of them had had the energy to tell or listen to it.

But time was not on their side. So 'fast' seemed like a suiting answer. That was how the infection spreads. That was the frame in which you lose people. That was the pace of the world.

Fast.

"Calum found me and stopped me from – 'opting out' as he put it," she decided to elaborate. "He saw that the bite hadn't gotten infected, it had stopped bleeding for the most part – I wasn't sick." She summarized with three words. "We travelled together."

"Katty, you could be the answer to everything," Noah's eyes pleaded with her to confirm it. Confirm that she had some secret cure in the works and that she was going to end it all.

Her next words hurt to say. "There's no cure, Noah." She said quietly, regrettably. "The people at Woodbury tried. The CDC in Atlanta tried. The greatest minds in the word tried. I can't just – spit on people and then everyone can start swing dancing with Biters."

Through the pain, Noah laughed and reached out to grab her hand. "You're wrong. It's alright that you're wrong."

She frowned at him, and he released her hand to fumble beside him for something. Katty took this time to straighten her clothing and readjust herself. Noah grabbed the black, bound book that Reg had given him earlier that day. The one that she had seen him writing in.

Noah handed it to her with a smile, and she gingerly took it and opened the front cover.

"This is the beginning." Was written in his tidy scrawl. Tears welled up in Katty's eyes and she handed the book back to him.

"Alexandria is the beginning of civilization, and you're the beginning of the end of the infection," Noah stated soundly. Katty was blubbering too hard, she couldn't disagree with him. "Even if they don't make a cure from you or because of you, maybe it's a sign that the human race is adapting to it. This is the beginning, Katty."

She was freely sobbing now, embarrassingly loud and ugly. "I'm supposed to be the one comforting you!" she cried at him.

Noah was laying in the bed, broken and dying, but still had more spirit than she did.

He took her hand in his again. "You are comforting me," he said quietly. "It's stupid, but I have more hope now than I did before."

Katty didn't know how to respond, so she just stood there dumbly.

"You have to promise me," Noah said suddenly, his face serious and his dark, tired eyes locked on hers.

"Anything." Katty replied without thought or consideration. She owed him a promise.

"Promise me that you'll tell them someday."

Noah saw the hesitation in her eyes and interrupted whatever negative thoughts Katty was about to have. "I get it, something happened before to you. But they're different," he affirmed. "Please."

"Yeah," Katty confirmed, her voice shaking and her heart pounding. Still a fucking coward, lying to a dying man. "I promise."

She took her free hand and ran it over Noah's face, committing his features to memory. "I'm going to miss you, Noah." She muttered.

He weakly squeezed her hand and smiled with the same resolve. "See ya later, Katty."

Her heart broke again in that moment, the parallel's between Tyler and Noah's last moments shredding her resolve. Once out of the room and in the hallway, Katty remembered to readjust the bandage on her arm before rejoining the group in the main living area.

She looked a wreck, but no one said anything to her. The majority of them looked as upset as she felt, just in different ways. Glenn and Rick were back inside from their talk, and Glenn immediately addressed her.

"He's alright if I go in?" he asked wearily. Glenn looked as emotionally drained as she felt. He already had to recount the day's events to two different people, and now he had to go console a dying friend; Katty wished she could reach out to him and say anything comforting.

Instead, Katty just nodded. "I'm sure he'd love it, Glenn."

She stepped out of his way so that Glenn could continue down the hallway, but he stopped her. Her eyes widened when Glenn wrapped his arms around her securely, crushing her into his chest.

"Thank you, Katty," he mumbled against her hair. She didn't ask why, just hugged him back before he released her and continued down the hallway to see Noah.

She just stood there for a while, still unsure where she fit in the group dynamic. Everyone was there, and a couple faces that she didn't entirely know. They all fit together, and Katty suddenly felt out of place in the family. She couldn't save Noah. She was the reason that one of their family didn't come home – didn't come home safe. Should she apologize to everyone? Make a speech?

Katty considered the option that she should leave still. That had been the original plan before they left for the warehouse. Get everyone home safe and then leave. Look for Calum and be on her own again. Looking around the room, she knew she couldn't leave. Katty owed it to them. She also would have to find a way to either fulfill her promise to Noah or make up for lying to him – she wasn't sure what yet. Her business was anything but finished in Alexandria.

"Katty," Rick's voice broke through her somber thoughts. He cleared his throat and she looked up at him. He looked drained as well, she noted. "Let's talk outside."

She followed him out, and sighed when the cool night air brushed across her hot face.

"Glenn's already filled me in about what happened," Rick started, getting straight to the point. "And everythin' about your involvement as well."

Katty looked off into the distance and chewed her lip, unsure how to respond. She wasn't sure what that meant, so Katty decided to remain silent and wait for Rick to continue.

"I just wanted to be transparent with you," he continued once he realized Katty had chosen to remain mute. "I had some doubts about you in the beginning. You've caused some – stirs since you've been here and we don't know everything about you, so it was hard not to see you as a threat at times."

Rick chose his words carefully, but Katty understood. After everything that the group had been through, it would be stupid for Rick to trust her so inherently. Even if she had spent the majority of the night before crying on his shoulder. It was difficult in this day and age.

He reached a hand to clasp on Katty's shoulder. "Glenn said you saved his life, and you brought Noah back," Rick summarized in one sentence. Katty fidgeted beside him. "We are all grateful."

"I couldn't save him," Katty responded, still looking into the darkness of Alexandria. "I tried, but I couldn't."

"You tried. People die, but at least you tried." Was Rick's simple declaration. His hand slipped off of Katty's shoulder as he retreated inside.

Her head hurt from the crying, the thinking, and the guilt. She knew that nothing she said or did was going to make anything better. Katty wished she could just go to sleep and forget that this day happened. But sleep would assuredly not come easy to her tonight, not after today, not after Noah and not after recounting her past.

So she just slid down the siding of the house and sat on the cold material of the porch and stared out at Alexandria with blank eyes. Her back screamed in protest at the sudden pressure, but Katty just ignored it, along with the rest of her surroundings.

If she had the energy, she would have wondered what Noah would choose in the end. Either way, she prayed it would be fast.

A/N: Hello! Thanks for finishing through another chapter. I don't update in so long and then I end with two deaths in one go, I'm sorry. :( I know I promised Daryl in this chapter, and I intended to, but I couldn't fit him in to where it didn't seem disjointed.

The next chapter I plan on catching up to the Season 5 finale, though, so I swear he will be in the next one! And their relationship will progress soon. I can't wait just as much as you guys!

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-Submechanophobia

Next Time: "Pete? What are you doing?"