Luckily, Olive's ankle was much better as night fell. Perhaps that was a fortuitous occurrence, seeing as this night would prove to be particularly gruesome for all involved. Daryl was still glued to her side, stringing along if she did end up requiring some assistance with walking, running, or even something more dangerous.

The night was stirring, but when Olive had stopped to unwrap her ankle and get her life back to normal, their evening became more jarring than merely awakening. She and Daryl had fallen significantly behind the group, but from the sounds coming from the clearing up ahead, they were about to find out what maelstrom awaited them.

"Oh, dearie me. You screwed up, asshole. You hear me? You screwed up! Today's a day of reckoning, sir. Restitution. Balancing of the whole damn universe. Shit, and I was thinkin' of turnin' in for the night on New Year's Eve! Now who's gonna count down the ball's droppin' tonight? Ten Mississippi...nine Mississippi...eight Mississippi..."

Joe's voice could be heard loudly and clearly, a booming kind of sound that the pair had not heard from him before. He was clearly pissed off and readying to kill someone, anyone. It appeared that he had found his guy, and, as they entered the clearing with Daryl saying "Joe!" loud enough to catch the man's attention, they were startled by the man whom Joe had said they were after. That man was Rick.

Joe was behind a kneeling Rick, a wearier version than they had left the day that the prison had been taken. His face was one that they thought they'd never see again, but now that he was here and his life was hanging in the balance between Mississippis, they had to stop Joe at any cost, especially once they saw that both Michonne and Carl had also been taken captive by the group they thought they could make it with.

Daryl, Rick, and Olive exchanged looks, knowing glances as all three could feel the sting of a comraderie returned. Olive wanted so badly to say his name out loud and to prove herself a conquering hero, but she stayed her tongue and both she and Daryl mind-melded in that moment and instantaneously knew what had to be done.

"Hold up," Daryl pleaded, calming his voice so as not to sound alarmed.

Joe's eyes, a reddish hell of a shade, peered up at the duo. "You're stoppin' me on eight, Daryl," he commented, his tone an all-knowing obtrusive sound.

"Just hold up," Olive goaded.

"This is the guy who killed Lou, so we got nothin' to talk about!" Tony called out from his place behind Michonne.

"The thing about nowadays is we got nothin' but time. Say your piece."

"These people, yer gonna let 'em go," Daryl said with a definitive nod.

"These are good people," Olive added.

"Now," Joe warned, "I think Lou would disagree with you on that. O' course, I have to speak for him now, seeing as your friend, here, strangled him in a bathroom!"

"You want blood," Daryl said. "I get it." Tossing his crossbow aside as Olive threw down her pitchfork, each put their hands up in surrender. "Take it from me, man."

"And me," Olive requited, her stance equally sacrificial with her lover.

"Come on."

Joe stood up from where his gun had been pointed at the back of Rick's head. "This man killed our friend. You say he's good people. See, now that, right there, is a lie." Olive steadied her hand on the hilt of her knife, her free hand tugging at Daryl's pants so that he would ready himself as well for what was to come next. "Teach 'em, boys! Teach 'em all the way!"

The men whom they had found that they could once have become a part of soon began striking them, delving their blows as subjectively as possible. One of the man dove his boot heel directly onto Olive's injured heel. The sound she emitted was one of pure, desolate pain, but there was not much she could do about it, her own blows of self-defense being given from the place where she was in the leaves.

Tony took the beating of Daryl quite seriously and was hailing a terrible wave of strikes to the redneck who was not given a moment to regain composure and stand once again. The butt of Tony's rifle was quickly shoved - hard - into Daryl's abdomen, causing him to keel over from the pain.

Olive cried out, removing her knife from its sheath and roundhouse-kicking the man over her own body before rushing Tony from behind and stabbing him directly in the throat. His blood spurted and spewed from the wound, her knife withdrawing as she limped into position between her husband and the other man.

"You fuckin' touch him, I'll kill you, too," she warned through a gapless seeth, turning to help Daryl back up to his feet.

At that moment, a fat man dragged Carl out from the set of the car and into the clearing in plain sight.

"You leave him be!" Rick bellowed from where he was still on his knees.

Carl was whimpering as the fat man gripped him too tightly, holding the boy against his gut and whispering "Shhhh" into his ear.

One of the other men held a gun to Michonne's head. "You'll get yours, too," he reassured her. "Just you wait."

Rick put his hands up, his voice turning to Joe as he once more returned to his place behind Rick. "Listen, it was me," he pleaded with the man. "It was just me."

"See?" Joe said. "Now that was the truth - that wasn't some damn lie." He knelt behind Rick and leaned over his shoulder. "First, we're gonna have Daryl's girl, then we'll beat him to death after he's watched us. The woman will be next, then the boy. Then, I'm gonna shoot you and then we'll be square."

"Let 'im go," Rick requested once again.

The man whom Olive had beaten back held Daryl by the arms to keep him from getting away while another one of the men slammed Olive's face into the leaves, positioning himself at her backside.

Daryl shook his head wildly. "No...no! NO!"

"Daryl, you shutcher eyes, okay?" Olive asked of him frantically, her gaze meeting his as well as she could from where she was. "Shut 'em tightly - don't open 'em, baby, no matter what you hear. I'mma be okay..." That statement was more for herself than for him, but she repeated it just in case. "I'mma be okay..."

"Olive! Olive, no! Getcher fuckin' hands off her!" he shouted, the man kneeing him hard in the back while still forcing him to watch as what happened to his wife happened.

The fat man pushed Carl down into the leaves and Carl whimpered, trying desperately to grab his knife, but it was far out of reach. From his position, he was facing Olive, and his eyes found hers as he started to sob.

"Carl," she said to him, "hey, it's okay. You're gonna be okay. You're strong, you know that? Be strong. You'll make it through this, okay? Don't stop lookin' at me."

Carl nodded as she spoke to him, his eyes conveying to her that he was going to completely give up on his struggle, as was she. He reached out his arm, extending it across the leaves as he tried to grasp her hand. Olive's chin quivered as she, too, reached out for him, grasping futilely at the several inches of space between their hands.

The fat man laughed maniacally at the depressing spectacle in front of their eyes.

Rick's expression suddenly turned dark, his eyes hooded as a veil came down behind them, the unadulterated rage compelling him now.

"Let them go," he said, taking harbored, deliberate pauses between each of the words he spoke.

The men behind the pair on the leaves began to unbuckle their belts and that's when the beast was unleashed in Rick's already crumbling psyche. He snapped his head back as hard as he could, coming into contact with Joe's face for a moment and knocking the wind out of him. The desperate father's ears rang and his head spun as he stood, beginning to fight with Joe who quickly look him hostage once again.

"What're you gonna do now, partner?" Joe taunted, his eyes still reddened. He could not see behind the veil in Rick's eyes and, thus, could not predict that this was the moment that Rick struck...literally.

Rick leaned in abruptly and tore out Joe's jugglar vein with his teeth, the inhibitions of humanity cast aside in a moment of sheer hatred. Joe fell back onto the ground, his blood pouring from his neck in a quick and unforeseen bleed-out.

Rick spat out the flesh from his mouth, blood staining around the oriface as if he had been a vampire getting a fix. Instead, he was a father fighting for his son's innocence and survival.

Michonne kicked her captor's gun from his hand, swiftly taking a hold of it and shooting him through the head before turning the gun on Daryl's captor and doing the same. Daryl slipped free from his now-dead restraints and rushed at the man holding Olive against the dirt, smashing the man's head in with his boot heels after many, continuous and forceful stomps.

Rick straightened his body, eyes still hooded with the darkness still compelling him forward. "He's mine," he growled in reference to the man holding his son. Removing his blade from where it had been tucked into his pants, Rick stabbed the man over and over and over again, ceaselessly releasing the rage that he felt towards the disgusting, unforgivable acts of the man who had been wanting to rape his son.

Michonne made her way to Carl's position, lifting his body from the ground and holding him close in a comforting manner.

Daryl, meanwhile, pulled Olive from the ground and gave her a thorough check-over to make sure she was alright. Olive's body was suffering from terrible tremors, her hands seeking out the lapels of his shirt to hold on for dear life as her knees gave way and she yanked him to the ground with her, sobs finally shaking loose from her body as she burrowed into her husband's love and affection. Daryl, soon, was shaking with sobs as well, having almost witnessed her undoing at the hands of men they knew that they couldn't trust.

::::

That night was sleepless and terrible, each of them staring at the bodies of men who had recently been alive and well and full of an evil that they should have been able to see coming long before it struck them in the face quite literally.

Carl slept on Michonne's lap in the car. Her hand stroked his hair sweetly, her eyes distant and foreboding.

Rick sat beside the car, hands and face still bloodied from what he had done the night before. Olive and Daryl moved over to where Rick was, having been successful in stopping Olive's terrible tremors.

Olive took a rag from her back pocket and poured a bit of the water from her canteen onto it before handing the dampened rag over to Rick.

"You should save that to drink," he suggested, really wanting to decline her generous offer.

Olive shook her head. "You can't see yourself..." she mentioned, nodding her head in Carl's direction. "...he can." She sat down directly beside Rick as he took the rag and began to wipe off his beard and then work on his hands and forearms.

"We didn't know what they were," Daryl confessed as he sat down on Olive's other side.

"How'd you wind up with them?" Rick questioned, trying to be as gentle as possible.

Daryl decided to start back to the fall of the prison. Perhaps, he figured, that was as good of a place as any to begin. "We got out together," he began. "We were out there for a while. That's when they found us. I mean, we knew they were bad, but they had a code. It was simple...and stupid, but it was somethin'. It was enough. Said they were lookin' for some guy. Last night they said they spotted 'im. We were gonna leave, but we stayed. That's when we saw it was you three, right when you saw us."

Olive nodded, her agreement with everything that Daryl had just said sparking through her expression. "We didn't know what they could do," she added.

Rick shook his head, wiping off the last of the chunks of flesh from his beard. "It's not on you two," he reassured them. Both Daryl and Olive made eye contact, their shared glances conveying a kind of regret and guilt that they should've done something before all of the previous night had occurred. "Hey, it's not on you. You being back here with us, now, that's everything. You're my brother...and my sister." Olive smiled at him softly.

"Hey," Daryl said, speaking out, "what you did last night...anybody woulda done that."

"No, not that."

"Somethin' happened. That ain't you."

"Daryl," Rick said, turning his head just enough to gaze at his comrade, "you saw what I did to Tyreese. It ain't all of it, but that's me. That's why I'm here now. That's why Carl is. I want to keep him safe. That's all that matters."

::::

The tracks and those that followed them were tiresome, weary, and more strung-out than they had ever been before. The mere thought of having to walk farther and fight harder was a concept all-too-familiar to this ramshackle group, but they all admitted to themselves that it would have been nice to stop for a while and find a place in which they could truly relax and unwind. For now, however, they pressed on and stumbled across another board for Terminus.

"Gettin' close," Daryl commented after gazing over the map for a moment. "Be there before sundown."

"We need to go through the woods now," Rick suggested. "We don't know who they are."

"Alright," Michonne agreed, and the group slipped off the tracks and made their way through the woods on a sidewinder. Silently and swiftly they traveled until they were stopped by the perimeter fence. Through it, a large manufacturing building, now used for other purposes, was labeled TERMINUS in the windows as a symbol to outsiders that this was, in fact, the place they had been searching for.

"We spread out," Rick said to them, "watch for a while, see what we see. We all stay close." The group was in a consensus, so he turned to his son. "You wanna stick with me?"

Carl shrugged, only making brief eye contact with his father. "It's alright," he answered, heading out with Daryl and Olive instead. Rick appeared to be a tad wounded from this gesture, but Olive shot him a look with her eyes that reassured Carl's safety in her grasp.

Rick and Michonne headed out on their own so that Rick could bury a duffel bag full of most of their weapons. Daryl followed because, Lord knew, he couldn't bear to hear what Olive was about to undoubtedly confess to Carl.

"Why didn't you go with your dad?" she asked, receiving no response from Carl's end. She paused and took a few more steps before stopping. "You know...back there, when they almost..." She halted mid-sentence, unable to finish that precise thought. "You were really brave about it. That wasn't exactly my first time in that type of situation." Carl was all ears now.

Olive went on to explain to the young teen what she had told Maggie all that time ago, on a day when vulnerability was as high as the tension. Mid-story, tears streamed from her eyes and she struggled to keep composure as the look on Carl's face depicted an empathy she had never seen from anyone save Maggie. Even Daryl had been more pissed off than anything about what had happened to her, but this was different. At times, this was what was needed - a real human connection deepening into something substantial.

Carl shed a few tears as well while her story came to a rough close and he realized what she had been through.

"He was just another monster," Olive concluded, wiping the trails of tear-stained dirt from her cheeks. "...and so was I. I was gone for a long time..." She then paused briefly, a smile returning to her lips. "...but then Daryl brought me back, your dad brought me back...you did." Carl's face fell. "I see how you've been lookin' at your dad. You don't have to be afraid of me or of him."

Carl shifted his weight a bit, readjusting the bag over his shoulder. "He told me the other day that he was proud of me...that I was a good man. I'm not."

Olive shook her head. "Carl..."

"I know more now about what he wanted from me, and I tried, but I still have these...these thoughts. I'm not what he thinks I am." The tears returned and his chin quivered. "I'm just another monster, too."

Olive's heart shattered for him, reaching her arms out and pulling the young man into a solid embrace, the tears now more real than ever.

From a bit of a distance away Rick watched as his son held Olive close to himself. Daryl explained in certain nonspecific terms about what Olive had just told his son, and Rick confessed that he would never have guessed what had happened in spite of knowing of her relentless hate for the Governor.

"Just in case," Rick said to the other two as he completed burying the duffel bag and signaled for the others to group up.

The five of them climbed the chain-link fence in turns, each spotting for the others before slipping into Terminus at, what seemed to be, an anonymous setting.

The place seemed clean enough, but was undoubtedly emptied of life, at least for this section. They made their way to an area that would be absolutely populated by people who could help settle the issue and get them acquainted with what this place claimed to offer: a sanctuary for all.

A large warehouse building had some voices coming from within, so Rick and Michonne thought that this would be a good place to meet the Termites, a nickname that Carl had concocted while they were on the road.

Entering the building seemingly unnoticed, Rick was first in and was the first to speak to them openly. "Hello," he said.

A few people looked up from their tasks to see them and one man approached them in an almost too-casual kind of way that set Olive on-edge. That was how the Governor had approached her when she had initially set foot in Woodbury.

"Well, I bet Albert is on perimeter watch," the scrawny, hipster-looking man said to them. "You here to rob us?"

"No. We wanted to see you before you saw us."

"Makes sense. Usually we do this where the tracks meet...welcome to Terminus. I'm Gareth. You look like you've been on the road a fair bit."

"We have. I'm Rick." He gestured to the group members in turn. "That's Carl, Michonne, Daryl, Olive." The others didn't move, eyes staring straight ahead at their surroundings.

"You're nervous - I get it. We all were. We came here for sanctuary. That what you're here for?"

"Yes."

"Good. You found it. Alex." Another man approached them having left his task group. "We've got nothing to offer like the front, but the welcome wagon is a whole lot nicer. Alex will take you, ask you a few questions." Gareth paused, putting up a finger. "Uh, but first, we need to see everyone's weapons. If you could just lay them down in front of you..."

Rick was hesitant, eyes scanning the place to make certain that they were not in any immediate danger prior to turning over their weapons. He nodded in Gareth's direction pertly. "Alright." He glanced at the others, giving them the go-ahead to lay their weapons down onto the concrete beneath their feet.

"I'm sure you understand."

"Yes, I do."

Alex skimmed them all one-by-one for other, hidden weapons or pieces that hadn't been initially checked. He could see Daryl's shiner and Olive's scraped cheek, a matching look on Carl as well. "I'd hate to see the other guy," he commented.

Olive nodded. "You would."

"Did they deserve it?" Gareth asked.

Daryl made eye contact with him and nodded. "Yes."

Gareth seemed to be impressed with their will to fight. "Just so you know, we aren't those kind of people, but we aren't stupid either, and you shouldn't be stupid enough to try anything stupid. As long as everyone's clear on that, we shouldn't have any problems...just solutions. Okay." He walked away, and Alex handed their weapons back piece by piece.

"Follow me."

The group trailed behind the man as they exited the building and stepped into the setting sunlight. They were all on-edge now, but as they saw people doing everyday things that they hadn't seen since before everything started - unless Olive was the one observing, in which case she would have commented that these were things that the Woodbury folks had done - they began to settle down and feel a bit more at-ease.

"So how long's this place been here?" Daryl questioned, breaking the silence.

"Since almost the start," Alex responded. "When all the camps got overrun, people started finding this place. I think it was instinct, you know? Follow a path. Some folks were heading to the coast, some out west, and others out north, but they all wound up here."

Alex was smiling, to be sure, but there was something still not clear about this place, an underlying kind of malcontent that the group members could all feel.

A large courtyard ahead was their apparent destination. There was a garden of sorts, a large grill, and a middle-aged woman standing by simmering meat. She had a messy side-braid of what appeared to be faded red hair and bore yet another large smile on her face. Why were all the people there looking at them like that?

"Hi," the woman greeted them. "Heard you came in the back door. Smart. You'll fit right in here."

"Hey, Mary," Alex said, "would you fix each of these new folks a plate for me?"

Rick's eyes instinctively began to scan once again, this time viewing the people and the surroundings suspiciously.

"Why do you do it?" Michonne asked of them. "Why do you let people in?"

"The more people become a part of us, we get stronger, invite people in. It's how we survive."

Olive noticed a woman sitting at a table wearing a poncho much like Daryl's in pattern, style, and size, if it wasn't identical, and then she could see a man wearing riot gear similar to the gear that Glenn was wearing at the prison, again identical.

Rick, too, was noticing things out of the ordinary. Alex was wearing a pocket watch chain identical to the one that he had given to Carol prior to forcing her out of the group. He stepped up behind Alex and pointed his pistol at the man's temple, wrapping his arm quickly around his neck as well.

"Where the hell did you get that watch?" he interrogated through gritted teeth. The others raised their weapons in response and now all those in the area were watching them.

"You want answers? You want anything else? You'll get 'em when you put down the gun." Alex was trying to keep a cool head about this, but Rick was having none of it.

"I see your man on the roof with a sniper rifle." Olive took aim at the sniper just as Rick commented about it. "How good's his aim? Where'd you get the watch? Where'd you get the watch?!"

"Don't do anything!" Gareth said, his tawny stature coming out of what could have been said to be thin air. "I have this! Just put it down! Put it down!" The sniper lowered his rifle, so Olive, too, changed aim. "You'll wanna listen to me. There's a lot of us."

"Where'd you get the watch?"

"I got it off of a dead one," Alex explained. "I didn't think he'd need it."

"What about the riot gear? The poncho?" Olive demanded.

"Got the riot gear off a dead cop," Gareth confessed, shoving his hands into his pockets as if he didn't take them seriously. "Found the poncho on a clothesline."

"Gareth, we can wait - " Alex began.

"Shut up, Alex."

"You talk to me," Rick dictated to Gareth, the man who was probably more in-charge than others.

Gareth shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "What's there left to say? You don't trust us anymore."

"Gareth, please," Alex pleaded.

"Shut up."

"Gareth, please..."

"It's okay, it's okay." Gareth faced Rick. "Rick, what do you want?"

"Where are our people?"

"You didn't answer the question."

Rick turned around with Alex in-hand and a man behind him took a shot, shooting Alex through the head. Gunfire ensued from both sides - save Gareth himself - and Rick's group took off, darting about the area they were in and easily dodging the cross-shots as they were fired upon. This was all in an attempt to get out of this place, to run like hell until they were freed of whatever this place was hiding.

After rushing into another clearing between buildings, they then became trapped and were forced to go through a door marked "A". They could see shipping containers, large metal ones, in which people were banging on the walls from the inside, trapped in there and screaming for help, for rescue, for anything.

"What the hell?" Daryl blurts out as Rick tells them to keep running. A small area ahead liined with fences and clotheslines with piles of molten carcasses lying on the pavement was enough to make anyone with a weak constitution vomit into the next life, and the smell was nearly overpowering, but they literally pushed past it.

Another door led them into a room full of lit candles, a shrine of sorts, and they slowed to a halt, glancing around at the shadows.

"What the hell is this place?" Daryl asked, more to himself than to anyone in the room.

"These people..." Michonne said with a shake of her head, "...I don't think they're trying to kill us."

"No," Rick said in agreement with her, "they were aiming at our feet." A door at the side of the building was marked with a large red "A", so Rick pointed at it and said "There!"

Along the ground in the shrine are the names of real people, all circulating about the room. Leaving this place be, they began to go out through one door, but it shut and wouldn't budge, so they were forced to go through the only other door in the room, the one marked with the "A."

As they exited the building, the five realized that they were entirely surrounded and stopped short, all of them ready to fire if it came to that.

"Put your weapons down!" Gareth shouted from his place now at the top of one of the buildings. "NOW!"

One by one, the five place their weapons on the ground, careful to unload each and every one of them as they had been catalogued upon their entrance into this place, so they knew that Gareth was aware of all of their weaponry and would probably wound or kill if insubordination arose.

"Ringleader, go to your left." Now he was barking orders, this time at Rick himself, the only one in the group to whom that title could have made any sense. "The train car. Go." Rick hesitated once again, and Gareth could tell that. "Do what we say and the boy goes with you. Anything else and he dies, and you end up in there anyway."

Rick listened, albeit through gritted teeth, standing just outside the train car door.

"Now the Archer."

Daryl.

"Now the Farmer."

Olive.

"Now the Samurai."

Michonne.

"Stand at the door. Ringleader, Archer, Farmer, Samurai. In that order."

"My son!" Rick shouted.

"Go, Kid," Gareth yelled.

Carl was the last in the line.

"Ringleader, open the door and go in."

"I'll go in with him."

"Don't make us kill him now..."

Rick held it together as best as he could, opening the door and entering, followed by the others in-turn. The door shut itself behind them, and Daryl pulled Olive close to himself.

A thud from the back of the train car startled them, but as the figure emerged and said, "Rick?", they could see that it was just Glenn. Maggie appeared by his side, and then Bob, Tara, Abraham, and Sasha made themselves known.

"My God," a female voice said from the back of the group, and the others made way for the woman, a woman with long, black hair and bright blue eyes with her own story to tell. Rick knew immediately who it was and he put a hand up and over his mouth. "They were right...you're alive..."

"Jenna?" Rick managed, tears coming to his eyes as he rushed to her and threw his arms around her embracing her as the pair were reunited, though in the dark place that they now were. "Jenna. My Jenna."

Jenna chuckled through her sobs, her hands stroking his hair and pushing her fingers into his clothing to keep him close. "I thought you were dead."

"I'm here." He pulled back, his forehead against hers. "Caroline?"

"She's here. C'mere, baby. It's Rick. Carl's here, too."

"Caroline?" Carl repeated, making his way over to the young raven-haired beauty and smiling softly at her before she rushed to him and took his hands into hers. She was different now, harder now than she was when they had first met, but she was just as beautiful, if not moreso, even in the darkness.

Abraham, Tara, Rosita, and Eugene, newbies to the group, hung around and watched the reunion of the Sumners and the Grimes. They were silent.

"They're our friends," Maggie introduced them. "They helped save us."

"Yeah," Daryl agreed. "Now they're friends of ours."

"Yeah, for however long that'll be," Abraham said.

"No," Rick interjected, regaining that mental stability that he had garnered and shaped since everything had gone to shit. "They're gonna feel pretty stupid when they find out."

"Find out what?"

Rick shifted over to where the train car door left a very small gap of light. Jenna was with him, refusing to let him go. His eyes searched the group, individually examining each of the people in that area and who they had become. That was what mattered now and what the Termites had to fear the most.

"...that they're fuckin' with the wrong people."