++++++ So who else thinks that Carol's new job should be training Navy Seals? Cause I do. She's so bad-ass. That episode of TWD was amazing and sadly, I still do not own the rights. Please enjoy ++++++

Seventy

The following morning when I woke up, I came into the kitchen to find Carol and Tyreese already at the table deep in discussion. They stopped talking when they saw me and Carol motioned for me to take a seat. "Where are the girls?" I asked, sitting down.

"Sophia's watching the girls outside," Tyreese replied. "The dogs are out with her."

Carol glanced over at me. "We've been thinking about staying," she told me. "Well, Tyreese has been and I think I agree with him."

I looked between the two and shook my head. "What? No! Why? Terminus! Last night you said that I should believe in the place, believe that it would be able to protect us."

Tyreese drummed on the table. "Look, PJ. Maybe we don't need to go to Terminus. I've been thinking. We can stay here. We can live here. There's food, the deer come in. The pecans grow. I know Lizzie and Myka. I know Judith. I know you. You can have the baby here. I trust you two. I don't know if I can get that anywhere else. We could stay. We can live here."

I shook my head. "No. Ah, no. You gotta give me a chance to find the others! Please! You said you trust me, Tyreese, well trust that I have confidence that we will find the others!"

Carol and Tyreese looked at each other.

I cleared my throat. "Okay. Let me try this another way. Me and Sophia will scout ahead for two days and if we can't find Terminus, we'll come back and look at fortifying for the long run. Deal?"

Carol sighed. "What if, PJ, just listen to me. What if Rick didn't make it?"

I shot her a death glare. "I'm not willing to believe that." I stood up. "If you don't want me to take Soph, that's fine. Spirit and I will go on our own." I pushed the chair back. "We'll be back in two days."

Part of me knew that I was being selfish for not wanting to be in that safe place for both me and the baby as well as the others but the other part of me didn't care. I closed the bathroom door behind me with a little bit more force than I intended to and leant up against the basin with a sigh. Looking back at myself I could hardly recognise who I was anymore. I looked tired. My once vibrant red hair was rusty in colour and my green eyes were surrounded by black circles, making me look like a racoon. I pealed my dirty clothes off and turned the shower on. The water was cold but who cares? Whoever had lived here had certainly left in a hurry, leaving behind essentials like shampoo and soap which I practically drooled over.

I didn't see the point of lingering for too long in the cold water, but as I stared at the bottom of the shower, you could see the filth rolling off me. Running my hands over my stomach, you could see that I had a slight baby bump-I had no idea how far along I actually way. When I got out of the shower, I quickly dried myself off and stared back into the mirror-more particularly, my hair. I'd let it get away from me during the prison.

There was a knock on the door as I started searching through the basin draws for a pair of scissors. "Yeah?" I replied.

"Two days okay by you?" Carol asked me. Judging by the tone of my voice it was more to placate me than it was anything else. "Sophia said she'll go with you."

"Thanks," I sighed.

"You bring my daughter back, okay?" Carol all but demanded. "Then we can talk about what we're going to do."

I heard her walk off just as my fingers managed to touch something cold and metal. I glanced down at the pair of scissors and stared at my reflection before I started cutting my hair.

When I finally came out, Sophia was sitting on the floor by the door with Ollie and Spirit. She looked up at me and smiled. "You looked like that when I first met you. You look better with short hair than you do with long hair."

I messed up her hair with a grin. "You ready?"

She nodded.

"Don't wanna clean yourself up?" I asked her.

Sophia shrugged. "I took a jump in the pond."

I raised an eyebrow when I noticed she was dripping wet. "Sometimes I forget you really are a kid."

Sophia practically jumped up and followed me outside. "I've got your back PJ," she assured me. "I heard mum and Tyreese talkin' 'bout staying. I don't want to stay. It's too much like the prison. We were happy there. We were safe."

I slung my bow over my shoulder and climbed the fence. "What's your point, Dove?"

Sophia followed me. "My point is that we were stupid. We lulled ourselves into a false sense of security and we payed for it. Big time. We made a farm, we planted crops and we got comfortable and fat. We payed the price."

I raised an eyebrow and couldn't help but think this is what happens when you spend your important developmental teenage years in a situation like this. You become a soldier. When we first found Sophia she was such a scared little mouse, clinging onto her mother like a baby kitten. I felt a sudden pang of guilt thinking of HG and what he or she would be like when they grew up.

A soldier.

A pure soldier.

As we walked, the two of us remained silent, the occasional sound of a walker meeting out ears or the dogs growling to alert us to more than a single walker. We too anything out that was remotely threatening, not stopping until we reached the train tracks.

When we did, Sophia stopped in her tracks and glanced back at me. "PJ?"

"Not the tracks," I told her. "We follow sideways along the tracks, in the bushes. Tracks are too wide, too open. We don't know what we'll find."

"Or what will find us," Sophia nodded ominously.

"Do you want to take point?" I questioned.

Sophia didn't say anything, choosing to walk ahead of me.

It was almost nightfall before we found it.

Well-Ollie found it.

He disappeared into the bushes and came back dragging part of a pale pink blanket with him. Sophia managed to wrestle it out of his mouth and handed it to me. On the fabric I just managed to make out Jade's name where Ebony had written it on the edge so that she wouldn't lose it at day care.

"Where did you find this?" Sophia asked her dog, snatching it off me and holding it in front of his nose.

Ollie barked once and took off, giving us no choice but to follow.

About five hundred meters into the bushes, Ollie sat beside what looked like a grave underneath a tree. I could see where the fabric had been ripped from a blanket sticking out of the partially dug earth. "Stay there," I ordered Sophia.

I knelt down and used a stick to move the dirt away, uncovering the small bundle. I didn't need to open it to realise immediately what it was. I gasped and covered my mouth when I saw the necklace wrapped around the bundle-Jade's fire opal.

"Is that what I think it is?" Sophia whispered.

With shaky hands I removed a section of the blanket and did an immediate double take at the site of the small hand. "Yeah," I whispered. "It's a baby."

Ebony.

I piled the earth back over the top of the bundle and carved an X into the tree before getting to my feet. In the dirt I could see three sets of prints, a size eight-Ebony, a size twelve-Matthew or Daryl, a child's size-Jade's as well as a set of paw prints on the edge of the clearing beside a size ten-Lucas. At least she wasn't alone. "Can I have the fabric?" I asked her. Sophia handed me the section of the blanket and I held it out for Spirit. "Find Jade," I ordered.

Spirit barked and took off running back towards the train tracks.

I glanced back at the small clearing and Sophia nudged me forward. It was getting dark but this was the first sign of other life we had since the prison. It was just what we were looking for.